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    AriAtHome Walks the Streets, Making Beats (and New Friends)

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    On the SoHo corner where Prince and Elizabeth Streets meet, dog walkers, errand runners and lunch breakers squinted through the April sun at the part man, part beat-emanating automaton approaching them.Ari Miller, 25, known by his artist name AriAtHome, is a New York-based wayfaring musician who turns heads with his mobile beat-making rig. Donning a get-up that looks like a cross between a Ghostbusters proton pack and a ballpark-vendor tray, he dishes out on-the-spot hip-hop, neo-soul, funk and house beats throughout the city’s streets, all created entirely from scratch without breaking stride.“I built the rig with New York City in mind,” Miller said. “When you make a good song with a stranger in the street it’s like, ‘Whoa, did we just become best friends?’”Ari Miller (a.k.a. AriAtHome) at work, with his videographer Dylan Goucher capturing the scene and livestreaming. Miller making his way up subway stairs wearing 55 pounds of gear.The guts of the machinery Miller and a friend assembled for his mobile music project.Crammed with keyboards, a looper, six speakers and a controller with dozens of knobs and faders, Miller’s Frankenstein instrument offers a buffet of drum, keyboard and bass sounds, interfaced through the music software Ableton. In the back, a mess of cables hides a Mac Mini M4, a modem and the hot-swappable camera batteries that power it all.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jill Sobule, Singer of ‘I Kissed a Girl,’ Dies in House Fire

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      Ms. Sobule, 66, died Thursday morning in Woodbury, Minn., her publicist said. She had been scheduled to perform songs from her musical later in the week.Jill Sobule, the singer and songwriter whose hit “Supermodel” and gay anthem “I Kissed a Girl” were followed by three decades of touring, advocacy and a one-woman musical, died on Thursday morning in a house fire in Woodbury, Minn., according to her publicist. She was 66.The Public Safety Department in Woodbury, a Minneapolis suburb, said that firefighters had responded at 5:30 a.m. to a house that was engulfed in flames. The homeowners said one person was possibly still inside. Firefighters found the body of a woman in her 60s inside the house, the department said.The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.Ms. Sobule was scheduled to perform songs from her one-woman musical, “F*ck7thGrade,” on Friday at the Swallow Hill Music venue in her hometown, Denver, according to her publicist. She was staying with friends in Minnesota while she rehearsed for the musical, the publicist said.A free, informal gathering will be held in Ms. Sobule’s honor instead.On her 1995 self-titled album, Ms. Sobule, who was bisexual, featured “I Kissed a Girl,” which tells the story of a woman kissing her female friend. The song came out when it was “dicey” to be a queer musician, Ms. Sobule recalled. But it broke into the mainstream, making its way onto the Billboard charts.“Supermodel,” a rebellious rock song from the same album, was included on the soundtrack of the romantic comedy “Clueless” and further cemented Ms. Sobule’s popularity.“People call me a one-hit wonder,” Ms. Sobule said in a 2022 interview with The New York Times. “And I say, ‘Wait a second, I’m a two-hit wonder!’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ronan the Sea Lion Is Probably Better Than You at Keeping a Beat

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      This is Ronan. She’s a California sea lion and she probably has better rhythm than you.Scientists earlier showed that Ronan, a resident of the Long Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was the first nonhuman mammal who could be trained to keep a beat, including moving in time with music. That was in 2013 when Ronan was young. Researchers recently decided to test the 15-year-old sea lion’s skills again and showed that not only had she improved her ability to bob her head in sync with beats, but she is even better than most humans at doing so.“I think that it demonstrates conclusively that humans are not the only mammals able to keep a beat,” said Tecumseh Fitch, a cognitive biologist who studies biomusicology at the University of Vienna and wasn’t involved in the new study, which was published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.Parrots are known to be able to keep a beat by moving their bodies. And recent studies have highlighted the beat-keeping capabilities of other mammals, such as monkeys and rats. But after more than a decade, “Ronan the sea lion’s rhythmic entrainment is clearly the best known in nonhuman vertebrates,” Dr. Fitch said.The researchers trained Ronan for a few months, focusing on enhancing her precision with the old tempos on which she was trained in the past. Then, they looked at how good Ronan was at keeping a beat compared with when she was 3 years old — showing that she improved her skills as she matured.Then, the team tested Ronan’s ability to move her head in time with tempos of 112, 120 and 128 beats per minute and compared it with the ability of 10 people aged 18 to 23 to move their arm in time with those same tempos. “The hand is like the sea lion’s head, and the arm is like the sea lion’s neck, and it’s about the same size, so they can move through the same amount of space and do the task,” said Peter Cook, a cognitive neuroscientist with a specialization in marine mammals at New College of Florida.Human participants and Ronan performed comparable rhythmic tasks at 112 beats per minute.University of California Santa Cruz, NMFS 23554We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Carla Bley’s 1970s Experimental Masterpiece Gets a Belated Premiere

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      On a recent afternoon at the New School, the Tishman Auditorium vibrated with the hum of voices. The sound started so imperceptibly that it took a while to realize that it came from the 10 singers who appeared motionless, lined up in front of microphones.As the low drone grew louder, individual voices peeled off with microtonal shudders and ululations, and foghorn-like trombone blasts wormed their way through the vocal texture. Eventually, a 20-piece jazz orchestra joined in, forming a vast mushroom cloud of sound.“Whatever it is can’t have a name,” a spectral voice intoned, “since it makes no difference what you call it.”The ensemble, made up of students and faculty members, was rehearsing “Escalator Over the Hill” by Carla Bley with lyrics by Paul Haines for a performance on Friday. Remarkably, it will be the staged American premiere of this masterpiece of 1970s experimentalism. In an essay, Bley, who died last year, wrote that the work was conceived as a jazz opera, though “the term ‘opera’ was used loosely from the start, an overstatement by two people who didn’t have to watch their words.”Carla Bley in a photo from around the time that “Escalator Over the Hill” was released. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWhen a recording was released in 1971, the album cover identified it as a “chronotransduction,” an invented term playing on time and conversion. Whatever it is, “Escalator” became a cult album.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares54 Views

      in Movies

      Jack Black’s ‘Minecraft Movie’ Song, ‘Steve’s Lava Chicken,’ Hits the Charts

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      “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” a 34-second song from “A Minecraft Movie,” made the Billboard Hot 100. He charted before with a song from “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”Don’t call him a one-hit wonder. Jack Black made a surprise return to the Billboard Hot 100 chart this week with another unlikely song from a video game movie: “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” a 34-second song from “A Minecraft Movie.”The song entered the chart at 78, fueled by its popularity on TikTok, where it has been used in more than 280,000 videos. On Spotify, the song has racked up nearly 22 million streams.“Steve’s Lava Chicken” is Black’s second Hot 100 hit from a video game-themed movie. In April 2023 his song “Peaches,” from “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” peaked at 56 on the chart, according to Billboard.What makes “Steve’s Lava Chicken” so unusual is its length: It is just 34 seconds, which Billboard said set a record as the shortest song in the chart’s 67-year history. It is nearly three minutes shorter than the average length of last year’s No. 1 hits, according to Hits Songs Deconstructed, a company that provides analysis of hit songs.Black, a movie star known for playing quirky characters, is also a musician. He appeared in “School of Rock,” a film about a failed rock star who pretends to be a substitute teacher, and lampooned heavy metal with the comedy-rock duo Tenacious D, alongside Kyle Gass.“A Minecraft Movie,” co-starring Black and Jason Momoa, was released more than three weeks ago and has earned nearly $380 million domestically at the box office. Warner Bros. Pictures wants to cash in on the craze — and people who want to shout “I am Steve” and “Chicken jockey.”The studio announced that it would host a “block party” on Friday at participating theaters where fans can embrace the film by singing or meme-ing along to their favorite songs and scenes. More

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      David Thomas, Leader of the Band Pere Ubu, Dies at 71

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      David Thomas, the singer and songwriter who led Pere Ubu and other bands that stretched the parameters of punk and art-rock, died on Wednesday in Brighton and Hove, England. He was 71.Mr. Thomas had suffered from kidney disease, but the announcement of his death, on Pere Ubu’s Facebook and Instagram sites, did not specify a cause, citing only “a long illness.” He lived in Brighton and Hove, but the announcement did not say if he died at home.Through five decades of recordings and performances, Mr. Thomas maintained an audacious, unpredictable, ornery and ambitious spirit. He perpetually defied and upended structures and expectations, and he reveled in dissonance and unsprung sounds.In the mid-1970s, at the dawn of punk rock, Pere Ubu described itself as “avant-garage.” And as punk developed its own constraints and conventions, Mr. Thomas purposefully warped or ignored them. When late-’70s punk bands sported T-shirts, leather and ripped jeans, he performed in a suit and tie. And while much of his music stayed grounded in rock, he also delved into chamber music, cabaret, electronics and improvisation.Mr. Thomas in performance in 1979. Big-boned and overweight, he wielded his bulk proudly onstage. David Corio/Redferns, via Getty ImagesHis voice was always distinctive: a liquid, androgynous tenor that he pushed to its limits and beyond — crooning, chanting, whooping, muttering, barking, burbling, yelling. His lyrics could be apocalyptic, free-associative, mocking, euphoric, cryptic or startlingly direct. Onstage, gesticulating vehemently, he veered between endearing and irascible.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares82 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Macbeth in Stride’ Review: A Leap and Stumble Into a Classic

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      One of the most performed and reimagined works of English literature becomes a fourth-wall-breaking musical revue.“You gon’ rework a 400-year-old play just for your ego?” asks one of three witches in the new show “Macbeth in Stride.” Whitney White, who stars as Lady Macbeth in this quasi-feminist concert reimagining of Shakespeare’s Scottish Play, smugly responds: “Yup. Sure did! Sure did!”I don’t fault “Macbeth in Stride,” which is now running at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater, for its ego. We can always use work exploring what it means for a woman to proudly assert herself, to show her agency, to dare to grasp at power in spaces where she is meant to be secondary to a man. In this show, the artist invites us to see her through the role of Lady Macbeth, breaking the fourth wall to bring us into her process of recreating a character from one of the most frequently produced and remade works of English literature. But “Macbeth in Stride” is more ego than execution, more gestures than statements. And White’s heroine is much less substantial than the very character she’s critiquing and reworking in her own image.White, who wrote and performs this piece, is one of the city’s essential director-performers and is having an extended moment on New York stages this spring. Throughout her career she has focused on directing works by and about women and Black artists, including Bess Wohl, James Ijames and Aleshea Harris.In this work, White is centered as a kind-of Lady Macbeth (she’s just called “Woman” in the script) who’s a glam queen, a lead singer in a black bodysuit. She’s on a concert stage with a live band (the effortlessly talented Bobby Etienne on bass; Barbara Duncan, a.k.a. Muzikaldunk, on drums; and Kenny Rosario-Pugh on guitar), and those three witches (played by Phoenix Best, Holli’ Conway and Ciara Alyse Harris) are her backup singers and commentators.The main medium here is song, and “Macbeth in Stride” is an almost perilously eclectic mix of genres. The first song, “If Knowledge Is Power,” features the show’s music director and conductor, Nygel D. Robinson, on piano singing with glossy John Legend-style vocals. The melody suggests something lush and romantic, like a nocturne, but when the witches join in, they evoke the TLC days of 1990s R&B, with matching dance moves courtesy of Raja Feather Kelly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      The Concert Cold War in a Quiet Enclave

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      When Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. designed Forest Hills Gardens, he was trying to bring the respite of an English village into the bustle of New York City.A landscape architect and city planner like his father, one of Central Park’s designers, Mr. Olmsted laid out tree-lined alphabetical streets and open spaces in a pocket of Queens about nine miles east of Times Square. In 1909, these were not mere aesthetic choices: Forest Hills Gardens was an import of the English garden city, a turn-of-the-century movement in urban planning rooted in a utopian ethic.Mr. Olmsted planned for the Tudor-style houses to thoughtfully integrate with their manicured landscapes, for winding pathways to promote leisurely strolls and for curved residential streets to discourage vehicles from passing through.He did not plan, however, for the Australian rock band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Or for the sold-out shows by the Irish singer Hozier. Or really for anything about the concert venue that was once a storied tennis stadium and is now rattling both windows and nerves in the neighborhood.“It does disrupt the calm,” Mitch Palminteri, a Forest Hills Gardens resident, said at a recent community board meeting. “I don’t want to close my window on a summer night.”Others like what the concerts represent.“Music is about community,” said Joseph Cooney, who lives in adjacent Forest Hills. “We have it in spades in this neighborhood. How can we ever let that go away?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More