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      Diane Weyermann, Executive Who Championed ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ Dies at 66

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      A former public interest lawyer, she oversaw this and many other documentaries that addressed urgent social issues.Diane Weyermann, who oversaw the making of potent documentaries like “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Citizenfour” and “Food Inc.,” and in so doing helped change the documentary world from an earnest and underfunded backwater of the movie industry into a vibrant must-see category, died on Oct. 14 at a hospice facility in Manhattan. She was 66.Her sister Andrea Weyermann said the cause was lung cancer.“Diane was one of the most remarkable human beings I have ever known,” Al Gore, the former vice president and presidential candidate whose seemingly quixotic mission to educate the world about climate change through a decades-long traveling slide show became an unlikely hit film with an odd title, “An Inconvenient Truth,” said in an interview. “She was enormously skilled at her craft and filled with empathy,” he added. “It is not an exaggeration to say she really did change the world.”So did his movie. “An Inconvenient Truth” earned an Oscar in 2007, and Mr. Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize that same year, sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The film, which became one of the highest-earning documentaries ever made, was the second documentary made by the activist film company Participant, where Ms. Weyermann was a longtime executive, and hardly anyone in Hollywood thought it was a good idea. It was a movie about a slide show, after all.When the filmmakers screened it for a major studio in hopes of getting distribution, some of the executives fell asleep. “There was audible snoring,” recalled Davis Guggenheim, the director, “and when it was over one of them said, ‘No one is going to pay a babysitter so they can go to a theater and see this movie, but we’ll help you make 10,000 CDs for free that you can give to science teachers.’”Dejected, Mr. Guggenheim, Mr. Gore, Ms. Weyermann and others repaired to a steakhouse in Burbank, Calif., to brood, but Ms. Weyermann refused to be cowed.“Just wait till Sundance,” she said.“An Inconvenient Truth” received four standing ovations at the Sundance Film Festival, and Paramount bought the distribution rights.No one thought that a movie about a former vice president and his slide show about the dangers of climate change would make for great cinema. But “An Inconvenient Truth,” starring Al Gore, was a hit, and Ms. Weyermann was one of its early boosters.Eric Lee/Paramount ClassicsParticipant had been started in 2004 by Jeff Skoll, a social entrepreneur and the first president of eBay, with its own mission: to make movies about urgent social issues. A former public interest lawyer, Ms. Weyermann was running the documentary program at the Sundance Institute when Mr. Skoll hired her in 2005, though he was worried that Robert Redford, a friend and the founder of the institute, would be irked. (He wasn’t, and blessed the move).“From the start, Diane brought knowledge, relationships, context and industry insights into our team,” Mr. Skoll said in an email. “Participant was a small, burgeoning company at the time, direct film industry expertise was limited, and we had very little documentary experience.”Participant would go on to make over 100 films, including the features “Spotlight,” “Contagion” and “Roma” and the documentaries “My Name Is Pauli Murray” and “The Great Invisible.”“Diane built an incredible slate of films that have made a difference in everything from nuclear weapons to education to the environment and so much more,” Mr. Skoll added. “She was the heart and soul of Participant.”It was Ms. Weyermann’s job to find, fund, form and promote documentaries from all over the world, and she traveled constantly doing so.In 2013, Laura Poitras, the director of “Citizenfour” — the Oscar-winning tale of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who exposed the government’s widespread surveillance programs — was holed up in Berlin when Ms. Weyermann came to see her.“Diane knew I couldn’t travel to the U.S.,” Ms. Poitras said, because she was worried that she might be detained or arrested; during the course of her reporting, Mr. Snowden had become a fugitive and a cause célèbre. “She wanted to make sure I was OK, and I wanted her to see the cuts. I had hundreds of hours of film, and I told her right off, ‘I’m not going to be able provide any documentation’” — film studios typically require detailed written proposals — “and she immediately said, ‘We’re going to do this and I’ve got your back.’”“She loved being in the editing room,” Ms. Poitras added. “She had an amazing ability to see a film when it was really raw and be in tune with it and what the filmmaker needed. You wanted her notes; she always made the work better.”“A director’s whisperer” is how Mr. Guggenheim described her.The former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, left, and the journalist Glenn Greenwald in Laura Poitras’s documentary “Citizenfour” (2014). Ms. Weyermann, Ms. Poitras said, “had an amazing ability to see a film when it was really raw and be in tune with it and what the filmmaker needed.”Laura Poitras/Praxis FilmsIt wasn’t just the big box-office movies she supported, said Ally Derks, the founder of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. “It was the small, fragile films she nurtured too. She was in India with Rahul Jain, whose movie about pollution in New Delhi just screened at Cannes. She was in Siberia with Victor Kossakovsky” — the Russian filmmaker whose 2018 film, “Aquarela,” has barely any dialogue or human beings and takes an immersive look at water, from a frozen Siberian lake to a waterfall in Venezuela to glaciers crumbling in Greenland.In her New York Times review, Jeannette Catsoulis called “Aquarela” a “stunning, occasionally numbing, sensory symphony,” and took note of the film’s ending: a rainbow over the world’s tallest waterfall. “It feels,” she wrote, “a little bit like hope.”Diane Hope Weyermann was born on Sept. 22, 1955, in St. Louis. Her father, Andrew, was a Lutheran minister; her mother, Wilma (Tietjen) Weyermann, was a homemaker and later worked for a glassware company.Diane studied public affairs at the George Washington University in Washington, graduating in 1977, and four years later earned a law degree from the Saint Louis University School of Law. She worked as a legal aid lawyer before attending film school at Columbia College Chicago, graduating in 1992 with an M.F.A. in film and video.That same year, “Moscow Women — Echoes of Yaroslavna,” her short documentary film about seven Russian women, filmed by a Russian and Estonian crew, was screened at Ms. Derks’s festival in Amsterdam. She also made a short film about her father’s hands.Ms. Weyermann turned from making movies herself to helping others make them in 1996, when she became director of the Open Society Institute’s Arts and Culture Program, one of the billionaire investor George Soros’s philanthropies, now known as the Open Society Foundation. She started the Soros Documentary Fund, which supported international documentaries that focused on social justice issues. When she was hired by the Sundance Institute to set up its documentary film program in 2002, she brought the Soros Fund with her. There she set up annual labs for documentary makers, where they could work on their films with others, creating the sort of community that documentarians craved.Ms. Weyermann, left, with Ally Derks, center, the founder of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and the movie producer Elise Pearlstein at the Women’s March at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017. Laura KimIn addition to her sister Andrea, Ms. Weyermann is survived by a brother, James. Another sister, Debra Weyermann, an investigative journalist, died in 2013.When Ms. Weyermann became co-chair, with the screenwriter and producer Larry Karaszewski, of the foreign-language film category for the Academy Awards in 2018, they promptly changed the name of the category to “international feature film,” pointing out that the word “foreign” was not exactly inclusive. “Diane had a way of cutting through everyday nonsense,” Mr. Karaszewski said.In a 2008 interview, Ms. Weyermann was asked if she thought it was asking too much for a film to make a change in society.“When films are made solely for that purpose they fall like a lead balloon,” she replied. “What I love about film is it’s a creative medium. It’s not just ‘Let’s focus on an issue and educate,’ but ‘Lets tell a story, let’s tell it beautifully, let’s tell it poetically. Let’s tell it in a way that isn’t so obvious.’” More

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      Leslie Bricusse, Prolific Songwriter for Stage and Screen, Dies at 90

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      His songs from “Stop the World,” “Willy Wonka,” “Goldfinger” and other shows and movies became hits for a range of performers.Leslie Bricusse, a composer and lyricist who contributed to Broadway hits like “Stop the World — I Want to Get Off” and “Jekyll & Hyde” and popular films like “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and “Goldfinger,” died on Tuesday. He was 90.The BBC said his agent had confirmed his death. News accounts said he died in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, where he had a home.Mr. Bricusse’s songs, many written with the actor and singer Anthony Newley or other partners, were recorded by a vast range of vocalists. Among the first was Sammy Davis Jr., who, when performing in London in 1961, saw the Newley-Bricusse show “Stop the World,” which had just opened in the West End, and became an ardent fan. He garnered a Top 20 hit in America in 1962 with his version of a song from that show, “What Kind of Fool Am I?”A decade later Mr. Davis would take Mr. Newley and Mr. Bricusse (pronounced BRICK-us) to the top of the charts when he recorded a largely unnoticed song from the film musical “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” with the Mike Curb Congregation. (The film had been released the previous year to negative reviews.) The song was “The Candy Man,” and it reached No. 1 on both Billboard’s pop and easy listening singles charts, the biggest hit of Mr. Davis’s long career.Another song from “Willy Wonka,” “Pure Imagination,” has been recorded by numerous artists, among them Josh Groban, Maroon 5 and Barbra Streisand. Shirley Bassey had a Top 10 hit in 1965 with “Goldfinger,” the title song from the 1964 James Bond movie, for which Mr. Bricusse and Mr. Newley wrote the lyrics to John Barry’s melody. Another Bond film, “You Only Live Twice,” featured a title song by Mr. Barry and Mr. Bricusse that was sung by Nancy Sinatra and recorded later by many others.One of Mr. Bricusse’s biggest, and earliest, hits in his native England was a song that some listeners may not have even realized he had a hand in: “My Old Man’s a Dustman,” a chart-topping novelty number recorded by Lonnie Donegan in 1960. Mr. Bricusse wrote it with Mr. Donegan and Peter Buchanan but used a pen name, Beverly Thorn, “because I was worried about it being down-market,” as he told The Telegraph of Britain in an interview in January.When Mr. Bricusse published a memoir in 2015, “Pure Imagination: A Sorta-Biography,” one of its several forewords was written by his friend Elton John.“His catalogue of songs is enormous — his achievements endless,” Mr. John wrote. “Anyone who has written ‘What Kind of Fool Am I?’ and ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’ should be revered for ever.”Sean Connery as James Bond on the set of “Goldfinger” (1964). Mr. Bricusse and Mr. Newley wrote the words and John Barry wrote the melody for the movie’s title song.Sunset Boulevard/Corbis, via Getty ImagesLeslie Bricusse was born on Jan. 29, 1931, in London.“I fell in love with the idea of writing songs when I was a child,” he told The Herald of Glasgow in 2016. “I thought I was going to be a journalist at first, but I gradually fell in love with all these great writers like Irving Berlin and Cole Porter, who were at the peak of their powers then. The great thing about them as well was that they were literate, and wrote story songs.”As an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, he was active in the drama club Footlights, writing and directing musical comedy shows. Beatrice Lillie, a star of the day known for offbeat musical comedy, saw his work and was impressed, hiring him to be her comic foil in a show she was performing at the Globe Theater, “An Evening With Beatrice Lillie.”“Auntie Bea sort of adopted me,” Mr. Bricusse told The Sunday Express of Britain in 2017.In 1961 he was working for Ms. Lillie when Mr. Newley approached him about collaborating on what became “Stop the World,” a show about an Everyman character named Littlechap and the lessons he learns from birth to death. Mr. Bricusse had free use of Ms. Lillie’s apartment in New York, and Mr. Newley joined him there from England; they wrote the show in four weeks (or, in another telling by Mr. Bricusse, eight days).“We had a nice thing of it in New York,” Mr. Newley told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1961. “Pleasant flat, no one to bother us. It went like cream.”From left, Anna Quayle, Mr. Newley and Susan Baker in the Broadway production of “Stop the World — I Want to Get Off,” the first Bricusse-Newley collaboration.Friedman-AbelesThe show, with Mr. Newley starring, opened at the Palace Theater in Manchester, England, in June 1961 and then hit London, where it caught on, propelled by strong songs like “Gonna Build a Mountain” and “I Wanna Be Rich,” in addition to “What Kind of Fool Am I?” It opened on Broadway in October 1962 and ran there for more than a year.The two men followed that with “The Roar of the Greasepaint — the Smell of the Crowd,” an allegory in revue form about class struggle in which Mr. Newley again starred; it also made Broadway, in 1965. Decades later, Mr. Bricusse had two other Broadway successes: “Victor/Victoria” (1995), for which he wrote the lyrics (as he had done for the 1982 film on which it was based), and “Jekyll & Hyde” (1997), for which he wrote both the lyrics (Frank Wildhorn did the music) and the book. That book earned him a Tony Award nomination, his fifth.He was equally successful in the film world, and not just for songs. He wrote the screenplays as well as the music for “Doctor Dolittle” (1967) and “Scrooge” (1970), among other films. He later adapted both into stage musicals. His song “Talk to the Animals” from “Doctor Dolittle” won him an Oscar, and he shared an Oscar with Henry Mancini for “Victor/Victoria.”Rex Harrison in the title role of “Dr. Dolittle” (1967), for which Mr. Bricusse wrote the screenplay as well as the songs. The best-known song from that score, “Talk to the Animals,” won Mr. Bricusse an Oscar.PhotofestIn an interview this year with NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Mr. Bricusse recalled that when he visited the set during the filming of “Willy Wonka” he was struck by the contrast between the treatment it was receiving and the slick production being filmed on a neighboring soundstage: “Cabaret.”“I was a bit nervous about the amateur style of our show compared with the professionalism of Bob Fosse,” the director of “Cabaret,” he said.The critics, too, found “Willy Wonka” a bit amateurish, but it developed a following over time, especially once it began turning up on television and the music filtered into popular culture.Mr. Davis’s hit version of “The Candy Man” was one of some 60 songs he recorded that Mr. Bricusse wrote or co-wrote. One of Mr. Bricusse’s more recent projects had been a musical about Mr. Davis’s life and career. A version of it was staged at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego in 2009, and Mr. Bricusse had been continuing to refine it.Mr. Bricusse’s survivors include his wife, the actress Yvonne Romain, and a son, Adam.In a 2015 interview with the London publication The Stage, Mr. Bricusse talked about how he and Mr. Newley, who died in 1999, worked.“When I write a song, I hear the music and words at the same time — one suggests the form of the other,” he said. “And Tony was exactly the same. We would sing at each other across the room; it was a very bizarre, unofficial way of writing songs.”He was nonchalant about his ability to work with a wide range of other writers and composers.“I’m a good collaborator: I haven’t ever fallen out with any of them,” he said. “Though there have been one or two tricky ones that I won’t name.” More

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      Betty Lynn, Thelma Lou on ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ Dies at 95

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      She played Deputy Barney Fife’s girlfriend on the long-running sitcom and was remembered by fans with fondness more than 50 years later.Betty Lynn, who portrayed Thelma Lou, the patient girlfriend of Barney Fife, the bumbling deputy sheriff of the homespun town of Mayberry in the long-running 1960s sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show,” died on Saturday in Mount Airy, N.C. She was 95.The death was announced by the Andy Griffith Museum in Mount Airy, Mr. Griffith’s hometown and the inspiration for fictional Mayberry.Ms. Lynn joined the cast of the show in 1961, late in the first season, for an episode in which Sheriff Andy Taylor (Mr. Griffith) plays matchmaker between Barney and Thelma Lou.Thelma Lou’s occupation through 26 episodes remained a mystery, as did her surname. Although Barney (Don Knotts) had an occasional telephone flirtation with Juanita, a diner waitress who was never seen, it was clear that Thelma Lou was Barney’s steady girl. But in a 1966 episode, after Mr. Knotts departed as a series regular, Barney returned for a high school reunion to learn that Thelma Lou had gotten married.Still, all was not lost for him. When much of the cast reunited in 1986 for a two-hour television movie, “Return to Mayberry,” Thelma Lou had gotten divorced. She and Barney married in the film.Ms. Lynn moved from West Hollywood to a retirement community in Mount Airy in 2007. In addition to the Griffith museum, the town offers recreations of familiar Mayberry haunts like Floyd’s barber shop. Ms. Lynn became a nostalgic lure to tourists, who would stand in line once a month to get her autograph, to give her a kiss or to chat about the series.“I think God’s blessed me,” she told The Associated Press in 2015. “He brought me to a sweet town, wonderful people, and just said, ‘Now, that’s for you, Betty.’”Elizabeth Ann Theresa Lynn was born on Aug. 29, 1926, in Kansas City, Mo. Her mother, Elizabeth, was a singer, organist and church choir director who raised Betty with her parents. By 14, Betty was singing in local supper clubs and at 18 began performing in U.S.O. shows. After the war, she had small roles in the Broadway musicals “Park Avenue” and “Oklahoma!”She appeared in films like “Sitting Pretty” and “June Bride” in 1948 and “Cheaper by the Dozen” in 1950. On television, she acted in anthology series, westerns and sitcoms, including “Family Affair and “My Three Sons.” In 1986, she played Mr. Griffith’s secretary on four episodes of his dramatic series, “Matlock,” in which he played a lawyer.Ms. Lynn never married and did not leave any immediate survivors. Among regular cast members of “The Andy Griffith Show,” only the director Ron Howard, who played Opie, Sheriff Taylor’s son, is still alive.Ms. Lynn said that she could have stayed with the series, which ended in 1968, had she accepted the producers’ offer to make her the owner of a hairdressing salon. But Mr. Knotts was gone, having moved on to a film career.Without Barney, she told The A.P. in 2007, “I didn’t think Thelma Lou made much sense.” More

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      Brian Goldner, Hasbro Executive With Hollywood Vision, Dies at 58

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      He turned a traditional maker of toys and games into an entertainment company with its own TV and movie studio.Brian Goldner, who transformed Hasbro, a traditional maker of toys and games, by rethinking its many brands as properties that could become films, television series and online games, died on Monday at his home in Barrington, R.I. He was 58.Hasbro announced the death but did not give a cause. Mr. Goldner received a diagnosis of prostate cancer in 2014 and took a leave of absence from the company the day before he died.Mr. Goldner, who was named Hasbro’s president in 2008, oversaw a company whose brands include My Little Pony, Monopoly, Dungeons & Dragons, Power Rangers and Nerf.One of his most notable successes was persuading Hollywood executives that Hasbro toys and action figures like Transformers and G.I. Joe were as film-worthy as Batman or Spider-Man.“We had relegated these brands to an experience that was limited to the playroom floor or the kitchen table,” Mr. Goldner told The New York Times in 2009. What he envisioned for the company was something more expansive.The Transformers — toy robots that can turn into vehicles or beasts, which Hasbro introduced in 1984 — were adapted into six big-budget movies that have grossed about $5 billion worldwide since the release of “Transformers” in 2007. Mr. Goldner was an executive producer on all those films and a producer on two G.I. Joe movies.Since 2007, Optimus Prime and the other Transformers, which began life as Hasbro action figures, have starred in six big-budget movies that have grossed about $5 billion worldwide.HasbroTo coincide with the opening of “Transformers: Age of Extinction” (2014), the fourth film in the franchise, he challenged his design team to recapture the toys’ original magic by making them less complex so that they could transform with the push of a button rather than in a dozen steps.“We’ve made incredibly sophisticated robots, but it can be like a 1,000-piece puzzle,” he told The Times in 2014.For much of his time at the company, which is based in Pawtucket, R.I., Mr. Goldner espoused a brand blueprint that reimagined Hasbro as a play and entertainment company.“He came into a traditional toy company that was making stuff, and he believed we weren’t in the business of making things but in the business of storytelling,” Rich Stoddart, the interim chief executive of Hasbro, said in a phone interview.But, he added, Mr. Goldner encountered some skepticism with his plans.“Some people said, ‘Yeah, yeah, it sounds nice,’” Mr. Stoddart said, but Mr. Goldner had to keep pushing to bring his vision to reality. “He didn’t waver, because he believed to his toes that it was the right strategy.”Mr. Goldner’s effort to tell stories using Hasbro brands went even further in 2019 with the $3.8 billion acquisition of Entertainment One, a Canadian production studio that is also known by the shorthand name eOne. At the time, it was producing the popular children’s series “Peppa Pig” and “PJ Masks.”The purchase of eOne gave Hasbro the ability to produce its own programming, rather than make it only in partnership with Hollywood studios, which it had done with its Transformers and G.I. Joe movies as well as with its movie “Battleship” (2012). The film was part of an ultimately failed deal with Universal Pictures that was to have included movies based on the games Monopoly and Candy Land.“What we’ve found is that as all of the big studios have streaming services, they are increasingly holding on to their own I.P.,” Mr. Goldner told CNBC this year, referring to intellectual property. “Therefore, it gives us the opportunity as an independent to go out and present world-class, powerful brand I.P. to these streaming services like Netflix, Apple, Amazon and several others who used to have access to other people’s content and are now looking for great brands.”Mr. Goldner, left, and Adam Goldman, the president of Paramount Pictures, at the premiere of the movie “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” in Los Angeles in 2013.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesBetween 2022 and 2023, he added, eOne would produce two to three movies and three or four streamed programs every year.Among the projects in development are Power Rangers and Dungeons & Dragons films and TV series based on Transformers and the board games Risk and Clue. The animated film “My Little Pony: A New Generation,” based on that Hasbro line of toys, had its premiere on Netflix last month.Eric Handler, an analyst at the equity trading firm MKM Partners, said by phone that Mr. Goldner had taken “the Disney approach to creating a virtuous circle and monetizing brands beyond the toy aisle.”He added: “Toys are still the core of Hasbro’s business, at least for now. But Brian recognized that you can do so much more with its brands and build them across franchises that cut across toys, consumer product licensing, movies, TV shows and theme park attractions.”Under Mr. Goldner, Hasbro also became a toy and game licensee for the Walt Disney Company’s Marvel universe of characters, including Iron Man and Spider-Man, and continued its licensing of “Star Wars” characters, which began in the 1970s.Brian David Goldner was born on April 21, 1963, in Huntington, N.Y., on Long Island. His mother, Marjorie (Meyer) Goldner, was an investment adviser. His father, Norman, worked at Eaton, a power management company.After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in government, Mr. Goldner was hired as a marketing assistant at a health care company. He then worked at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, where he rose to director in charge of entertainment before leaving to become an executive vice president of Bandai America, a subsidiary of a Japanese toy company.He became chief operating office of Bandai but left in 2000 to join Hasbro as executive vice president and chief operating officer of its Tiger Electronics subsidiary, which makes the Furby robotic toy and many other products. He climbed quickly, becoming Hasbro’s chief operating officer in 2006. The success of the first “Transformers” movie helped lead to Mr. Goldner’s appointment in 2008 as president and chief executive. He was named chairman in 2015.He is survived by his wife, Barbara (Genick) Goldner; their daughter, Brooke Goldner; his mother; and a brother, Bradford. A son, Brandon, died of a heroin overdose in 2015.In 2018, Hasbro acquired the Power Rangers television and toy brand (originally the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) from the billionaire Haim Saban for $522 million. For Mr. Goldner, it was a reunion: He had worked with Mr. Saban when Bandai had been the Power Rangers’ global master toy licensee.“From time to time,” Mr. Saban said when the acquisition was announced, “Brian would say to me, ‘So when are you coming to Hasbro?’”It took a while, but Mr. Goldner finally added the Power Rangers to Hasbro’s ever-widening constellation of merchandising, television and movies. More

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      Andrea Martin, R&B Songwriter, Dies at 49

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      She co-wrote hits for En Vogue, Toni Braxton and other artists in the 1990s and 2000s and was also a singer, releasing an album.Andrea Martin, a songwriter behind a string of R&B hits, including Monica’s “Before You Walk Out of My Life” and Toni Braxton’s “I Love Me Some Him,” died on Sept. 27 in a hospital in New York City. She was 49.Her songwriting partner, Ivan Matias, confirmed her death but said the cause was undetermined.Ms. Martin’s first major songwriting credits, which she shared with Mr. Matias and other co-writers, came in 1995. Along with Carsten Schack and Kenneth Karlin, she wrote “Before You Walk Out of My Life,” which peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and established Ms. Martin as an in-demand writer.Ms. Martin, Mr. Matias and Marqueze Etheridge together wrote En Vogue’s “Don’t Let Go (Love),” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart and was nominated for best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocal at the 1996 Grammy Awards.Ms. Martin was also a talented vocalist, initially finding work as a backup singer, and Drew Dixon, a vice president at Arista Records in the 1990s, took notice. She signed Ms. Martin to her label as a solo artist, and Arista released her album “The Best of Me” in 1998. The record was not a commercial success, though one of its tracks, “Let Me Return the Favor,” charted on the Billboard Hot 100 as a single.“Hearing people sing my songs was the greatest feeling ever, but it wasn’t a chance for me to express how I felt,” Ms. Martin said in a 1999 interview with The Daily News of New York about the release of her album. “The songs were about my life, but somebody else was singing it. I just wanted people to know this is me and present an album that represents me.”Ms. Dixon cited racism and colorism in the recording industry as possible reasons that Ms. Martin’s solo career did not take off. Had she been lighter-skinned, Ms. Dixon said, her career might have gained more traction.“Andrea was, without a doubt, one of the best singers I ever encountered in my career, and I’m including Whitney, Aretha, Lauryn and Deborah Cox when I say that,” Ms. Dixon said.Andrea Martin was born April 14, 1972, in Brooklyn to Reginald Martin Sr. and Mavis Martin. Her family lived in the East New York neighborhood.She told The Daily News that her biggest inspiration as a child was Michael Jackson. “I’d try to imitate him all day,” she said.She attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan, graduating in 1990, and jumped right into writing songs and performing locally — even resorting to singing in the lobbies of buildings housing music publishing companies to attract the attention of executives. Her big break came when Rondor Music, a major publisher, signed her to a contract in the early 1990s.She is survived by two children, Eresha and Amaya; her parents; her sisters, Audrey and Wendy Martin; and her brothers, Reginald Jr., Michael and Shane.Ms. Martin continued to work steadily through the 2000s, writing for Leona Lewis, Melanie Fiona and Sean Kingston and appearing as a featured artist and backup singer for other acts. Mr. Matias said he expected to see unreleased projects featuring Ms. Martin emerge in the coming years.“She had a very specific sound to her writing,” Mr. Matias said. “And it didn’t matter who she worked with. She was infused into the melody.” More

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      Raymond Gniewek, 89, Met Orchestra’s Enduring Concertmaster, Dies

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      For 43 years he was a steadying force with the ensemble as he helped it become one of the world’s most esteemed.Raymond Gniewek, the concertmaster for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for 43 years and a quiet but vital force in elevating that ensemble to a new level of renown, died on Oct. 1 in Naples, Fla. He was 89.His daughter Susan Law said the cause was complications of cancer.Mr. Gniewek (pronounced NYEH-vik), a violinist whose solos invariably drew acclaim, was just 25 in 1957 when he was named the orchestra’s concertmaster. He had two obstacles to overcome.In a genre, opera, with a heavily European heritage, he was only the second American-born musician to hold the job at the Met. And he was the youngest member of the orchestra when he was made concertmaster, whose duties include advising musicians with much more tenure and experience.He managed to make it work.“I sort of waded my way through things, wasn’t too arrogant, and the musicians were very supportive,” he told The New York Times in 2000 in an interview occasioned by his retirement.The concertmaster, the leader of the violin section, is most visible in tuning up the orchestra before a concert, but is more crucially a conduit between the conductor and the rest of the players, helping to bring about the interpretation the conductor wants. That often means mastering a particular passage or effect, then demonstrating to fellow violinists the bowing technique or fingering needed to achieve it.“It’s my job to make technical translations of the desired sound,” Mr. Gniewek said in the 2000 interview. “And you have to show, not tell, because the same words can mean different things to different people.”Another part of the job is to ensure stability and continuity, especially important in an orchestra like the Met Opera’s that is often led by guest conductors. As the Berklee College of Music describes the job on its careers page, “While conductors may come and go — with differing styles and approaches — the concertmaster provides the orchestra with consistent and technically oriented leadership.”Mr. Gniewek found that being concertmaster could mean being an alarm clock. There is Met lore about a German conductor who would fall asleep during the dialogue of Carl Maria von Weber’s “Der Freischütz”; Mr. Gniewek would awaken him with a subtle, “Jetzt, maestro” (“Now, maestro”).Mr. Gniewek was credited with helping to raise the ensemble’s game considerably. When he was first named to the post, the orchestra was workmanlike at best. By the early 1990s it was playing concerts, making acclaimed recordings and being compared to the world’s great orchestras.“It plays with astonishing precision, nuance and insight,” Katrine Ames wrote of the Met Orchestra in Newsweek in 1991, adding, “Fifteen years ago that orchestra was little more than adequate: it gave some fine performances (usually Verdi) and some dismal ones (usually Mozart). To hear it was largely to ignore it.”Much of that improvement was credited to James Levine, who became the Met’s principal conductor in the 1973-74 season and was soon named its music director. But insiders knew that Mr. Gniewek was vital to executing Mr. Levine’s vision, something Mr. Levine himself acknowledged when Mr. Gniewek retired.“The single luckiest thing to happen to me since I have been at the Met,” he said, “is that Ray Gniewek was the concertmaster.”“I sort of waded my way through things, wasn’t too arrogant, and the musicians were very supportive,” Mr. Gniewek said of how he navigated becoming concertmaster in his mid-20s, when he was the youngest member of the orchestra.Raymond Arthur Gniewek was born on Nov. 13, 1931, in East Meadow, N.Y., on Long Island. His father, Jacenta, was a tradesman and barber who also played violin, and his mother, Leocadia (Kurowska) Gniewek, was a church organist and homemaker.After graduating from Hempstead High School, he attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., becoming a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra while an undergraduate. He graduated in 1953. In 1955, he was named concertmaster of the Rochester Civic Orchestra and assistant concertmaster of the Rochester Philharmonic.He had been Met concertmaster for almost a decade — and for some 1,700 performances — when he made his New York City recital debut in 1966 at Town Hall. Richard D. Freed, reviewing that performance in The Times, could barely contain his enthusiasm.“Mr. Gniewek has everything that could be wanted in a violinist — impeccable intonation, a technique so secure that he is free to concentrate on problems of interpretation and a pronounced flair for particular style,” he wrote.Early in his tenure, in 1958, Mr. Gniewek had to take the baton when the conductor Fausto Cleva fell ill during a performance of “Manon Lescaut.” That might have been a fantasy fulfilled for some concertmasters with conducting aspirations, but not for Mr. Gniewek.“I’d rather play,” he told The Times in the 2000 interview. “I have strong feelings about sound, the actual act of playing of the instrument. It’s what I do best.”Mr. Gniewek moved to Florida after retiring and lived in Naples at his death. His first marriage, to Doris Scott in the 1950s, ended in divorce, as did his marriage in 1960 to Lolita San Miguel. In addition to his daughter, who is from his first marriage, he is survived by his wife, the soprano Judith Blegen; a sister, Cecilia Brauer, who is also a musician; a stepson, Thomas Singher; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Another daughter from his first marriage, Davi Loren, died in May.In 2000, in Met Orchestra concerts that were to be among Mr. Gniewek’s last, Mr. Levine gave him a rare honor by having him stand out in front at the program’s end to play Massenet’s Meditation from “Thais,” as an encore. When he did so at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Willa J. Conrad of The Star-Ledger of Newark wrote, “It was pure eloquence and grace, and as tribute to a particular musician’s legacy to a normally invisible orchestra, provided a particularly poignant close.”When he did the same at Carnegie Hall two nights later, the ovation — from the orchestra as well as the audience — stretched past the five-minute mark, lasting longer than the solo itself. More

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      Ricarlo Flanagan, Comedian Who Contracted Covid, Dies at 41

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      Ricarlo Flanagan, a comedian, actor and rapper best known for his appearances on TV’s “Last Comic Standing” and “Shameless,” died on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 41.He contracted Covid-19 a few weeks ago, said his representative, Stu Golfman, who could not confirm the disease was the cause of Mr. Flanagan’s death.On Oct. 1, Mr. Flanagan said on Twitter that “this Covid is no joke. I don’t wish this on anybody.”On “Last Comic Standing,” Norm Macdonald, a comedian and a judge on the show who died recently, said Mr. Flanagan was his favorite comic in the competition.“I was stunned,” Mr. Flanagan would later say about the exchange.After his run on “Last Comic Standing,” he appeared on several TV shows, including “Insecure” and “Shameless,” the Showtime series that featured him in a four-episode arc, according to his IMDb page.He discovered his love of stand-up after he took a comedy class that he saw advertised on a flyer in Ann Arbor, Mich., according to a statement from his representative.“After the first class, he was hooked and never stopped getting on stage,” the statement said.He had moved to Michigan after graduating from college in 2007, but his comedic talents soon brought him to Los Angeles, his representative said.Mr. Flanagan also dabbled in rap, tweeting recently that he had almost finished an album. In a song called “Revolution” that he released last year, he lamented police brutality and said, “We got to mobilize.”“I’m tired of seeing my brother on the ground with his face pinned down,” he rapped.Ricarlo Erik Flanagan was born on March 23, 1980, in Cleveland, according to a death announcement. He is survived by his mother, Katrina McLeod, his father, Keith Flanagan, and his grandmother, along with several aunts, uncles and cousins. More

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      Paddy Moloney, Irish Piper Who Led the Chieftains, Dies at 83

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      The band he fronted for nearly 60 years toured the world, collaborated with rock stars and helped spark a renaissance for traditional Irish music.Paddy Moloney, the playful but disciplined frontman and bagpiper of the Chieftains, a band that was at the forefront of the worldwide revival of traditional Irish music played with traditional instruments, died on Monday in Dublin. He was 83.His daughter Aedin Moloney confirmed the death, at a hospital, but did not specify the cause.For nearly 60 years the Chieftains toured extensively, released more than two dozen albums and won six Grammy Awards. They were particularly known for their collaborations with artists like Van Morrison, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Nanci Griffith and Luciano Pavarotti.“Over the Sea to Skye,” the Chieftains’ collaboration with the flutist James Galway, peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard classical album chart in 1996.“Our music is centuries old, but it is very much a living thing,” Mr. Moloney told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1989. “We don’t use any flashing lights or smoke bombs or acrobats falling off the stage.” He added, “We try to communicate a party feeling, and that’s something that everybody understands.”In 2012, when he was vice president, President Biden told People magazine that his desire was to sing “Shenandoah” with the Chieftains “if I had any musical talent.” He invited them to perform at his inauguration this year, but Covid-related restrictions kept them from traveling.“Over the Sea to Skye,” the Chieftains’ collaboration with the flutist James Galway, peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard classical album chart in 1996.Mr. Moloney was a master of many instruments: He played the uileann pipes (the national bagpipes of Ireland), the tin whistle, the bodhran (a type of drum) and the button accordion. He was also the band’s lead composer and arranger.Asked in 2010 on the NPR quiz show “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me” what he thought was the sexiest instrument, he chose the pipes.“I often call it the octopus,” he said, “and so, I mean, that’s something that gets every part of you moving.”The Chieftains performed at the Great Wall of China, in Nashville and in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990, joining with Roger Waters of Pink Floyd to play “The Wall.”Their best-known recordings included “Cotton Eyed Joe,” “O’Sullivan’s March,” “Bonaparte’s Retreat” and “Long Black Veil” (with Mr. Jagger). Their 1992 album “Another Country,” a collaboration with country artists like Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson and Chet Atkins, won the Grammy for best contemporary folk album.Their other Grammys included one for best pop collaboration with vocals for “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?,” a collaboration with Mr. Morrison from their album “The Long Black Veil,” released in 1995, and one for best world album, for “Santiago” (1996), consisting of Spanish and Latin American music.Mr. Moloney had an affinity for country music.“I always considered Nashville like another part of Ireland, down to the south or something,” he said on the website of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in 2020. “When I’ve come over there and played with musical geniuses like Sam Bush or Jerry Douglas or Earl Scruggs, they pick everything up so easily. You don’t have to duck and dash.”The last track on “Another Country” — “Finale: Did You Ever Go A-Courtin’, Uncle Joe/Will the Circle Be Unbroken” — features Ms. Harris, Ricky Skaggs and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Rambles, a cultural arts magazine, described it as “the closest you will come to an Irish hooley on record,” a reference to an Irish party with music. The track, the magazine said, sounded like “a few pints were quaffed and the boxty bread was passed around before the assembled greats of music decided to have a musical free-for-all.”Mr. Moloney in 2012. That year, the 50th anniversary of their founding, the Chieftains embarked on a tour that ended on St. Patrick’s Day at Carnegie Hall.Greg Kahn for The New York TimesPatrick Moloney was born on Aug. 1, 1938, in Donnycarney, in northern Dublin. His father, John, worked in the accounting department of the Irish Glass Bottle Company. His mother, Catherine (Conroy) Moloney, was a homemaker.Paddy came from a musical family: One of his grandfathers played the flute, and his Uncle Stephen played in the Ballyfin Pipe Band. Paddy began playing a plastic tin whistle at 6 and began studying the uileann pipes shortly afterward, under the tutelage of man known as the “King of the Pipers.”He took to the pipes easily, gave his first public concert when he was 9 and performed on local streets.“There were five pipers around the Donnycarney area,” he told Ireland’s Own magazine in 2019. “I’d go around the cul-de-sac playing like the pied piper, and my pals would be following behind me.”After leaving school in the 1950s, he started working at Baxendale & Company, a building supplies company, where he met his future wife, Rita O’Reilly. He joined the traditional Irish band Ceoltóirí Chualann in 1960 and formed the Chieftains in 1962; the name came from the short story “Death of a Chieftain” by the Irish author John Montague.In the 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Moloney was an executive of Claddagh Records, of which he was a founder, and produced or oversaw 45 albums in folk, traditional, classical, poetry and spoken word.The Chieftains — who hit it big in the mid-1970s with sold-out concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London — were strictly an instrumentalist ensemble at first. But in the 1980s the band pivoted from their early purism, and Mr. Moloney emerged as a composer, writing new music steeped in Irish tradition.The Chieftains began to blend Irish music with styles from the Celtic diaspora in Spain and Canada as well as bluegrass and country from the United States. They collaborated with well-known rock and pop musicians and with an international assortment of musicians as far-flung as Norway, Bulgaria and China.On his own, Mr. Moloney branched into writing and arranging music for films, including “Barry Lyndon” (1975), “Babe: Pig in the City” (1998) and “Gangs of New York” (2002).In addition to his wife and daughter, he is survived by two sons, Aonghus and Padraig; four grandchildren; and a sister, Sheila.In 2012, on the 50th anniversary of their founding, the Chieftains teamed up with 12 folk, country, bluegrass, rockabilly and indie rock artists — including Bon Iver, the Decembrists, the Low Anthem and Imelda May — to record the album “Voice of Ages.” They also embarked on a tour that ended at Carnegie Hall on St. Patrick’s Day.“What’s happening here with these young groups,” Mr. Moloney told The New York Times at the time, explaining the album’s concept, “is they’re coming back to the melody, back to the real stuff, the roots and the folk feeling of them all. I can hear any of them singing folk songs.” More