music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Michael Bublé Always Finds a Way

      by

      Hustle, charm and a remarkable ability to slot himself into songs have made the musician a star — even though his style has never aligned with pop trends.Michael Bublé had a lot to share in the first five minutes of a recent video chat. He hates having to use the bathroom at a movie theater, because the idea of missing a crucial plot point is stressful. The creamy vegetable soup he apologized for eating on camera — not great. He also did not care for “The Matrix Resurrections,” the 2021 installment of the sci-fi franchise; that said, he loves Keanu Reeves, who lives on his street in Los Angeles. Though they’ve never met, every time Bublé and his family pass the actor’s house, they say, out loud, “Hi, Keanu.”“He’s a Canadian, too,” the singer pointed out. “So there’s this giant urge to go, ‘Hey, we’re connected.’”Bublé, who turned 46 last fall, has built his career off such immediate accessibility. Perhaps you’ve seen him on one of his televised Christmas specials, where he sings holiday songs alongside stars like Barbra Streisand, Jimmy Fallon and Kermit the Frog. Maybe you’ve watched his many appearances on “The View,” “The X Factor,” “30 Rock” or “Sesame Street,” or just about any talk show you can think of. The traditional showbiz entertainer is a disappearing breed, but Bublé, an exceptionally congenial singer who can seamlessly slot himself into any song, room or situation, is built in this classical mode.Bublé is most famous for reinterpreting other people’s songs. His tastes draw from a deep pool of eras and genres: Dean Martin, Louis Prima, the Bee Gees, Nat King Cole, Justin Timberlake, the Drifters and many, many more. (He has, improbably, tackled the theme from the “Spider-Man” cartoon.) On “Higher,” his new album out March 25, he belts “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” which was popularized by Vera Lynn in 1940, and directly follows it with “Make You Feel My Love,” a 1997 Bob Dylan song also notably covered by Adele in 2008.The through line for these seemingly disparate selections is his buoyant and mellifluous voice, capable of roping any and all material into the realm of genuine romance. Bublé’s earnest commitment to rendering songs written for many generations of lovers has won him cross-demographic popularity. He has released four albums that have gone to No. 1 on the Billboard charts, and has sold north of 70 million records around the world, despite having never aligned with contemporary pop trends at any point in his career.“I can never just expect that they’re going to stick me on the radio,” Bublé said.Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times“It’s hard to categorize what I do; people would like to, and I’ve fought it my whole life,” he said very matter-of-factly. “I categorize myself as a soul singer who loves the great American songbook, but loves writing pop songs. It’s a very strange place to live.”Bublé’s passion for the classics was fomented during his childhood in Burnaby, British Columbia. His grandfather, a plumber, would play songs from the ’40s and ’50s and explain their history to Bublé, who “fell in love with the depth of what it meant to that generation.” At the time, he was a self-described “nerdy kid” with “no girlfriends” and said his growing interest in this music was a means of feeling unique.“I wasn’t one of those guys who wanted to dress in retro clothing,” he said. “The music just moved me, and so I knew, even at that age, that was all I wanted.”His intent on pursuing a singing career through an off-market style of jazzy big band music led him down some winding paths. The nightclub gigs were “the good ones,” he said; more humbling were the cruise ships and shopping mall performances, and worst of all were the singing telegrams, where for $20 he might sing for a lucky birthday girl at the Canadian restaurant chain White Spot.In 2000, Bublé was hired to perform at the wedding for a daughter of Brian Mulroney, the former prime minister of Canada, and met the producer David Foster there. Eventually, he convinced Foster to sign him to his Warner subsidiary label, with the caveat that Bublé had to personally raise the budget to make a new album. The result was the 2003 LP “Michael Bublé,” which placed multiple singles on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts and ultimately went platinum.When he broke through, Bublé was approaching 30 — young for the world, but not the music industry. While some record executives paled at his age, one bonus was that he was ready to meet his moment with proper humility, when it finally came. “I was so late to this party, that I was already who I was,” he said. The years of grinding had also inculcated a relentless work ethic that, in retrospect, came with trade-offs. “I was blinded to anything that wasn’t the ascension of a career — becoming the greatest musician, the greatest songwriter, the greatest entertainer,” he said. “Everything I did was going toward that goal, and I never stopped to smell the roses.”He missed friends’ birthdays and weddings; he said he rarely explored the cities where he’d perform. Greater success followed, both professionally and personally: In 2011, he married the Argentine actress Luisana Lopilato and released “Christmas,” a record of holiday songs that remains the best-selling of his career. But when his commercial momentum momentarily flagged with “Nobody but Me” in 2013, “It was the first time that I probably had ever felt a sense of panic,” he said, pausing to let the thought sink in. “I felt like my false self had started to get the best of me — I started to doubt myself and who I was and what I wanted to do.”In 2016, he learned his eldest son, Noah, then 3 years old, had a rare form of liver cancer. “I just remember thinking that for the first time, I could see everything completely clearly,” Bublé said. “That’s when I started to have a much healthier relationship with this thing that I do — this person you become when you go on tour.” (After months of chemotherapy, Noah went into remission.) Bublé started paying closer attention to his fitness so that he could better maintain the stamina required for long performances; he also allowed himself to open up the creative process, after what he called a “micromanaging” approach to his earlier work.“I was so late to this party, that I was already who I was,” Bublé said of finding success a little later than many pop personalities.Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York TimesOn “Higher,” that partly manifested out of necessity. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, it wasn’t always possible to hash out an idea in person; instead, he would trade ideas and demos over email with other musicians, and excitedly await their response. Bublé isn’t a trained musician, but he can play piano well enough to feel his way through a song. He described one solo session in between Zoom calls where he stumbled upon an arrangement for Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me,” which he likened to gospel by way of Donny Hathaway and Elvis Presley, leading him to immediately call the producer Bob Rock (Metallica, Aerosmith) with his idea. He pronounced the result the best thing he’s ever recorded.“People still think of him as a singer who’s been handed material to sing,” said Greg Wells, a first-time collaborator with a vast résumé who executive produced the album. “But he’s a real record maker — he had this incredible Hubble telescope overview of what he wanted to accomplish.” He pointed out that many of Bublé’s highest-charting songs, like the jaunty 2009 track “Haven’t Met You Yet,” are ones he co-wrote himself, contrary to his reputation as an interpreter.“Higher” also benefited from a series of lucky happenstances that are just very Michael Bublé. A duet with Willie Nelson on his standard “Crazy” developed through Bublé’s friendship with Nelson’s son Lukas. And after Bublé recorded a demo of Paul McCartney’s late-career ballad “My Valentine,” McCartney agreed to produce the version that appears on the record. Bublé’s interpretation sidesteps McCartney’s guitar-driven arrangement and applies what he called a “cinematic flair” — stirring strings and swelling builds, guided by his tender vocals. (He and McCartney hit it off, and occasionally text; after waffling over whether to refer to him aloud as “Sir Paul” or “Mr. McCartney,” he displayed his phone, which lists the former Beatle as “Sir P.”)Though Bublé described the “sense of anxiety and dread” that comes with every album cycle, there were bigger things to think about. He pointed out, his voice turning soft, that the week of our interview also marked five years of clean cancer scans for Noah. He emphasized his appreciation for all he’s been able to do, and acknowledged this sounded like a cliché. But he said he was still motivated to find his audience, regardless of how trends change or the methods we use to listen to music evolve.“You just have to find a way to satisfy that hunger,” he said. “I can never just expect that they’re going to stick me on the radio.”After expounding further on how he had openly bawled watching “Marriage Story” (a recommendation from the director of his wife’s new comedy, he noted with bewilderment), our conversation came to an end. The singer had been chatting from a hotel room in Los Angeles, to avoid potential interruptions from a noisy gardener near his home. As usual, Michael Bublé was finding a solution. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      The Artists Turning Nina Simone’s Childhood Home Into a Creative Destination

      by

      Rashid Johnson, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton and Ellen Gallagher are working both to preserve and transform the North Carolina house where she was born.IN 1997, WHEN he was 20 years old, the New York-based artist Rashid Johnson traveled with a friend from their hometown, Chicago, to Ghana, on a pilgrimage to the final resting place of the most prominent Black intellectual of the 20th century, W.E.B. Du Bois. Arriving in Accra, Johnson enacted a ritual familiar to Black Americans across generations: that of searching for home in a lost ancestral past. More than 30 years earlier, in 1961, Du Bois, disillusioned after a life spent fighting Jim Crow racism, had left the United States for Ghana at the invitation of the Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah. Two years later, he became a Ghanaian citizen, and on Aug. 27, 1963, the eve of the March on Washington, he died. “I remember just being in this house and feeling his presence,” Johnson, now 45, recalls.T’s Spring Design Issue: A Place to Make ArtWhere creativity lives, from Los Angeles to the German countryside.- Located on the grounds of a former agricultural collective an hour north of Berlin, the artist Danh Vo’s farmhouse brings together all kinds of creative talents.- Inspired by Nina Simone’s invaluable legacy, the artists Rashid Johnson, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton and Ellen Gallagher decided to purchase and preserve her childhood home.- It was a hands-on renovation of one couple’s Greenwich Village apartment that prompted them to start designing home goods.- The focal points of this Edwardian townhouse in northwest London? The eccentric bathrooms.Five years ago, Johnson partnered with three other prominent Black American artists — the conceptualist Adam Pendleton, the abstract painter Julie Mehretu and the collagist and filmmaker Ellen Gallagher — to help bring another towering ancestor into focus: the genre-defying musical performer and civil rights activist Nina Simone. Simone’s childhood home, located in Tryon, N.C., a small town of 1,600 nestled at the base of the southern escarpment of the Blue Ridge Mountains, was at risk of succumbing to age and neglect. Once the artists were made aware of this, they bought the house, for $95,000, in 2017. The following year, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated it a national treasure.The French historian Pierre Nora invented the concept of les lieux de mémoire, “sites of memory” — be they places or personas, objects or concepts — that contribute to the symbolic coherence of a nation’s identity. In 2022, much as in the 1960s when Simone answered the call to activism, the United States is openly contesting its collective identity. Some seek a return to an imagined America whose greatness depends on selective erasure of its diverse and complex history. “We live in a moment when half the country would be perfectly content to forget somebody like Nina Simone,” Pendleton says. “What a precarious state; what a precarious place to be culturally, historically.”The artists have an important partner in Brent Leggs, the executive director of the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. Launched in 2017, the action fund aims to identify and preserve what Leggs calls “nationally significant projects that express the Black experience.” Leggs, 49, saw in the modest clapboard home the very qualities that make many historical Black American sites so necessary — and so vulnerable to loss. “I was inspired by the simplicity of this unadorned vernacular structure that at first glance might appear to be missing history and meaning,” he says. “I believe deeply that places like the Nina Simone childhood home deserve the same stewardship and admiration as Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello or George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore estate.”Eunice Kathleen Waymon, a.k.a. Nina Simone, at age 8, photographed at the Tryon Cemetery in Tryon, N.C.© The Nina Simone Charitable Trust, courtesy of Dr. Crys Armbrust, Nina Simone Project Archive Simone performing at the 1968 Newport Jazz Festival.David Redfern/Redferns, via Getty ImagesNINA SIMONE WAS born Eunice Kathleen Waymon on Feb. 21, 1933, in the 660-square-foot house at 30 East Livingston Street. Simone’s mother was an ordained minister and domestic worker; her father ran his own dry-cleaning business and worked as a handyman. Modest though the home might seem today, back then it embodied the promise of prosperity. The Waymons’ plot of land afforded them room for a vegetable garden. They enjoyed other small luxuries, as well, as described in Nadine Cohodas’s 2010 biography, “Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone”: a stove in two of the three rooms to keep the house warm during cold months and to heat water for bathing; a small pump organ where Eunice picked out her first notes; a swing in the yard; even a tennis court just across the street. The exercise of segregation was more nuanced in Tryon than it was in large metropolitan areas like Charlotte and Atlanta, but it nonetheless exerted itself as a palpable lack. Simone, her parents and her siblings (she was the sixth of eight children) lived in the home until early 1937, when her father suffered an intestinal illness that left him incapacitated for a time. The next several years were itinerant, the family moving to close to half a dozen now-forgotten homes in and around Tryon.Those early years on Livingston Street established Simone’s foundation as an artist. “Everything that happened to me as a child involved music,” Simone wrote in her 1992 autobiography, “I Put a Spell on You.” “It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.” Her mother, Mary Kate, sang church songs to her daughter; her father, John, introduced her to jazz and the blues. By the time Eunice was 4, she was accompanying her mother on piano as she preached Sunday sermons at St. Luke C.M.E. Church.The years that followed were quite literally the stuff of storybooks (two children’s books about Simone’s life have come out in the last five years): Recognized as a prodigy, Eunice studied under a white woman, whom she called Miss Mazzy, who schooled her in Beethoven and Bach; the town rallied around Eunice and raised money to support her education, including time in New York City, at Juilliard; soon thereafter, she faced wrenching rejection from Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute, where she had hoped to continue her studies in classical music; instead, she made a surprising star turn as a lounge singer at an Atlantic City, N.J., nightclub, leading to a recording contract; a string of hits followed for Eunice (now called Nina); then, galvanized by the social and political upheavals of the 1960s, she achieved artistic complexity and individualism through what she would later call “civil rights music.”The artists on the grounds of the property.Nydia BlasLike Du Bois, Simone was an expat: When she died in 2003, after a protracted illness, she was living in Carry-le-Rouet, a small seaside town in the south of France, some 4,500 miles away from the house on East Livingston Street where she had been born 70 years earlier. Even though she lived nearly half her life outside of the United States — from Liberia to the Netherlands and beyond before settling in France — she remained forever enlisted in the cause of racial justice in America. Simone’s enduring power emanates from her art and from her activism, as well as from her activist art. Her biggest hits — “I Loves You, Porgy,” “Trouble in Mind,” “I Put a Spell on You” — are ingenious reinventions of other people’s songs grappling with love, loss and longing. But her most cherished recordings — “Four Women,” “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” “Mississippi Goddam” — are original compositions that give voice to an insurgent Black pride and defiance. It is these qualities, this complexity of vision, to which the four artists respond.“I think the most interesting question is ‘why, why, why?’” Pendleton says. Why Nina? Why now? For him, the answers are clear. “I’m interested in the questions that Nina Simone’s legacy raises. And these are not just questions about music; [they’re] questions about the avant-garde, about abstraction, about how artists speak to each other across generations and across time.” Pendleton, 38, whose work often incorporates language layered like a palimpsest, finds his artistic connection to Simone in a shared commitment to the complexity, at times the indeterminacy, of voice. (Simone once said of her vocal instrument, “Sometimes I sound like gravel and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.”) Listening to recordings like “Sinnerman” or “Feeling Good” or “Why? (The King of Love Is Dead),” which she performed in the days after Martin Luther King Jr.’s April 1968 assassination, “demands a kind of deep listening, a kind of geometry of attention,” Pendleton explains.It is fitting, if unexpected, that a group of visual artists — not musicians — came together to rescue Simone’s childhood home. They share common goals: that the home be preserved as a place of artistic creation and invention; that it support aspiring artists, particularly those pursuing the path from which Simone was excluded, in classical performance and composition. In the fashion of Simone’s classical compositional approach, the artists offer variations on these shared themes. Pendleton wonders if the home might function like a StoryCorps site, providing a space for oral history and reflection. Mehretu, 51, thinks it could “offer a refuge and a space of development” for creative people. Johnson, perhaps inspired by his travels to Ghana, imagines it as a site of pilgrimage — in both the physical and the virtual worlds. Leggs understands all of these visions and more coming together as part of the enduring legacy of the home, and ensuring that Tryon, as Leggs puts it, “has a Black future.”The language of historical preservation — easements, adaptive reuse, stewardship planning — might not inspire much passion. But in the mouths of Leggs and the four artists, these words become incantations. Collectively, they understand that while Simone’s childhood home is a potent symbol, it is also a century-old structure in need of maintenance and basic upkeep. It’s a contrast worthy of Simone herself, a singer both of show tunes and knife-sharp indictments of racist duplicity, a loving freedom fighter and truculent aggressor, a figure who tests our capacity to contain the challenging but essential facets of our national history. Nearly two decades after her death, she is still bearing witness, living her life after life through the artists she inspires in the house where she was born. More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Timmy Thomas, Singer Whose Biggest Hit Was an Antiwar Anthem, Dies at 77

      by

      His “Why Can’t We Live Together” rose to the top of the Billboard charts in 1973. He could never match its success.In the summer of 1972, the singer and keyboardist Timmy Thomas was watching the “CBS Evening News” and heard Walter Cronkite tick off the day’s death count of American and Vietcong soldiers.“I said, ‘what?!’ You mean that many mothers’ children died today?” Mr. Thomas told Spin magazine in 2015. “In a war that we can’t come to the table and sit down and talk about this, without so many families losing their loved ones?’ I said, ‘Why can’t we live together?’”His question became the title of his best-known song: a soulful, plaintive statement against the Vietnam War which he sang to his own accompaniment on the electric organ and drum machine. With a sentiment similar to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” from a year earlier, Mr. Thomas sang on “Why Can’t We Live Together”:No more wars, no more wars, no more warUmm, just a little peace in this worldNo more wars, no more warAll we want is some peace in this worldEverybody wants to live togetherWhy can’t we live together?The song, released on the Glades label, a subsidiary of the Miami-based TK Records, reached No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart and No. 3 on its Hot 100 chart in early 1973 and sold upward of a million copies.Mr. Thomas never again had a hit anywhere as big as “Why Can’t We Live Together,” but the song had a lasting impact. Forty-two years later, Drake sampled it on “Hotline Bling,” his hit about late-night cellphone calls from a former lover, which rose to No. 1 on the Billboard rap chart and No. 2 on the Hot 100.“He had an opportunity to use Snoop Dogg beats, Dre beats, all these new beats,” Mr. Thomas told Miami New Times in 2018. “He went all the way back … and used my original.”“Why Can’t We Live Together” has also been covered by artists including Sade, Joan Osborne, Santana, Steve Winwood and Iggy Pop, who recorded it with the jazz organist Lonnie Smith for Mr. Smith’s 2021 album, “Breathe.”Mr. Thomas died on Friday at a hospital in Miami. He was 77.His wife, Lillie (Brown) Thomas, said the cause was cancer.Timothy Earle Thomas was born on Nov. 13, 1944, in Evansville, Ind. His father, Richard, was a minister, and his mother, Gwendolyn (Maddox) Thomas, was a homemaker. By the time he was 10, he told Blues & Soul magazine, he was playing organ at his father’s church. “I always had a good ear for music,” he said. “I was one of 12 kids and most of them were into music, but I guess I pushed a little harder.”After graduating from high school in 1962, he spent a week studying at a Stan Kenton summer music clinic at Indiana University, Bloomington, where his teachers included the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and the trumpeter Donald Byrd.While attending Lane College in Jackson, Tenn., from which he would graduate in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in music, Mr. Thomas recorded a few songs in Memphis for the Goldwax label and was a session musician at Sun and Stax Records.Even as he pursued a career in music, he worked as a financial aid director at Lane and a vice president of development at Jarvis Christian College, in Hawkins, Texas, and Florida Memorial University, in Miami Gardens.He later shifted his focus to teaching. In 1993 he became the choir master at Miami Norland High School, and from 1996 to 2005 he taught music at Shadowlawn Elementary School in Miami. He earned a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale in 1997.Mr. Thomas in 2017. His 1973 hit has been covered by Sade, Steve Winwood and others.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for BMIIn addition to his wife, Mr. Thomas is survived by his daughters, Tamara Wagner-Marion and Li’Tina Thomas; his sons, Tremayne and Travis; 12 grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; his sisters, Diane Winton, Mary Davis and the Rev. Velma Thomas; and his brothers, Ray, Kenneth, Roland, Jerome and the Rev. Jeffery Thomas.More than a dozen of Mr. Thomas’s songs landed on the Hot R&B chart between 1973 and 1984, but the outsize success of “Why Can’t We Live Together” cast him as a one-hit wonder. And he understood that it was difficult to replicate the success of his megahit.He recalled that he once asked Henry Stone, the co-founder of TK Records, what he thought the problem was.“He said, ‘Timmy, your major problem was what you said was so profound that you could never back it up,’” Mr. Thomas said, recalling the conversation to Spin magazine. He added, “I thought about it, I said, ‘You know, that’s tough. … ’ I had some nice regional records after that, but nothing that worldwide.” More

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Ukraine’s National Anthem Reverberates Around the World

      by

      Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the soaring melody of Ukraine’s national anthem has been heard worldwide, from antiwar protests in Moscow to the stages of major concert halls, from N.B.A. basketball arenas to TikTok posts.Known by its opening line, “Ukraine’s glory has not perished,” the anthem is being heard daily in Ukraine too, played by military bands in the middle of bomb-damaged cities, sung tearfully by women sweeping up debris in their homes and, on Saturday, in a vital open-air performance by an opera company in the port city of Odessa, despite fears of an imminent Russian bombing campaign.L’opéra d’Odessa vient de donner un concert hors les murs. FrissonsL’hymne ukrainien : pic.twitter.com/KcEYkTUpWW— Pierre Alonso (@pierre_alonso) March 12, 2022
      And on Monday night, the anthem shook the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, whose white travertine exterior was draped in an enormous Ukrainian flag and bathed in blue and yellow lights for its “Concert for Ukraine.”Alyona Alyona, one of Ukraine’s biggest rappers, said in a Skype interview from her home in Baryshivka, a town east of Kyiv, that she was hearing the anthem about “20 times a day” on Ukrainian TV, where it was being used to rally the country. She had contributed to a compilation of the country’s music stars singing it, she added. “This song has a very big meaning,” she said.Even in Russia, Ukraine’s anthem has been heard, with some antiwar protesters in Moscow having been filmed defiantly singing it while being arrested.Paul Kubicek, a political scientist at Oakland University who has written extensively about Ukraine, said the anthem was penned in the 1860s when much of what is today Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire. It was “a time of cultural awakening,” Kubicek said, with elites looking to “revive and celebrate a Ukrainian heritage that was at risk of being lost to a process of Russification.”Those elites included Pavlo Chubynsky, an ethnologist and poet, who in 1862 wrote the lyrics after being inspired by patriotic songs from Serbia and Poland. The following year, a composer and priest, Mykhailo Verbytsky, set Chubynsky’s words to music.Rory Finnin, a professor of Ukrainian studies at Cambridge University, said Chubynsky’s song was one of a host of texts that worried the Russian authorities around that time. In 1863, they began censoring almost all Ukrainian publications, Finnin said. Soon, Chubynsky was expelled from the country “for disturbing the minds” of the public, Finnin added.The Russian Empire’s efforts to quash Ukrainian identity didn’t meet with much success. After World War I, Chubynsky’s song was briefly made Ukraine’s anthem (in 1918, The New York Times published its lyrics) until the country was absorbed into the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities later gave Ukraine a new anthem, claiming the country had “found happiness in the Soviet Union.”It was only after the Soviet Union collapsed that Chubynsky and Verbytsky’s work returned as the national anthem., and it has been a vital part of Ukrainian life ever since. In 2013 and 2014, it was sung hourly in Kyiv’s Maidan Square at protests against President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s push to make the country closer to Russia. Finnin said he was present at some of those protests and the anthem “was almost used for counting time.”Now, the anthem’s being used to inspire once more, both within the country and abroad. Below are some of the more notable international performances from the past two weeks:Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo MaTo open a recent performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos said he wanted to play Ukraine’s anthem as a sign of “respect and solidarity” with the country. What starts as a gentle, almost brittle, rendition, soon brings out the melody’s power.How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 7Olga Smirnova. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Olivia Rodrigo, BTS and Billie Eilish to Perform at Grammys

      by

      The 64th annual awards ceremony, the second in a row to be delayed by the pandemic, will be held in Las Vegas on April 3.Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, BTS and Lil Nas X will perform at the 64th annual Grammy Awards on April 3, the Recording Academy announced on Tuesday.They, along with the singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile and the country duo Brothers Osborne, are the first batch of performers announced for the show, which was delayed nine weeks by the pandemic and is being held in Las Vegas for the first time. Trevor Noah of “The Daily Show” is the host.The show, at the MGM Grand Arena, will be broadcast by CBS and can be streamed on Paramount+.Rodrigo and Eilish are each up for seven awards, and will compete against each other for record, album and song of the year. Rodrigo, whose debut album, “Sour,” was one of last year’s biggest hits, is also up for best new artist, raising the possibility that she could sweep the top four awards — for the first time since Eilish did so in 2020.BTS has one nomination and will perform during the ceremony.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersLil Nas X, the singer and rapper who rose to fame three years ago with the meme-ready “Old Town Road,” is up for five awards, including album of the year. Carlile was nominated in four categories, including twice for song of the year (for “Right on Time” and “A Beautiful Noise”). Brothers Osborne have two nods, and BTS one. Jon Batiste, the bandleader on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” has the most nominations, with 11.Other top nominees include Justin Bieber, Doja Cat and H.E.R. The Recording Academy, which presents the Grammys, drew controversy last year when it emerged that it had made a last-minute change, unknown to voters, that expanded its ballot from eight to 10 nominees for the four top categories. Among the beneficiaries of that change were Taylor Swift and Kanye West.This year’s show is the second to be delayed by the pandemic, and while last year’s production was well received by critics as a fresh new take on the format, its rating slipped to a low of 8.8 million, down 53 percent from the year before. In 2012, when the Grammys were held the day after Whitney Houston’s death, the show drew nearly 40 million viewers. More

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Trinity Church Fires Conductor After Misconduct Accusation

      by

      The conductor, Julian Wachner, denied the allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2014. The church said it had not verified the accusation, but fired him for behavior “inconsistent with our expectations.”Trinity Wall Street, the powerful New York church, said on Monday that it had fired its music director after receiving an allegation of sexual misconduct against him.On Saturday, Trinity said it had placed Julian Wachner, its acclaimed director of music and the arts, on leave as it investigated the allegation, which stemmed from a 2014 incident. But in a statement on Monday, the church’s rector, the Rev. Phillip A. Jackson, said that the church had fired Mr. Wachner.“The investigation is ongoing, and thus the investigator has not yet made any determination about the veracity of the 2014 allegations,” the church’s statement said. “Still, we have concluded based on recent information that Julian has otherwise conducted himself in a manner that is inconsistent with our expectations of anyone who occupies a leadership position. For this reason, Trinity has decided to end Julian’s employment with Trinity as of today.”The allegation was made by a former Juilliard School employee, Mary Poole. Ms. Poole said in an interview with The New York Times that during a music festival in Aiken, S.C., in 2014, Mr. Wachner pushed her against a wall, groped her and kissed her, and that he ignored her demands that he stop.Mr. Wachner denies the accusations. His lawyer, Andrew T. Miltenberg, said in an email on Monday: “We are exceptionally disappointed that Trinity has acted prior to completing a thorough investigation. Depriving Mr. Wachner of the benefit of the full narrative is the antithesis of due process and allows distortions to triumph over the truth.”Two people interviewed by The Times — a friend of Ms. Poole’s and a former colleague — recalled hearing Ms. Poole describe the details of the encounter with Mr. Wachner at the time. Ms. Poole said she did not report the incident to the police since she was in another state and pressed for time in the middle of a tour. She did report the incident to Juilliard, which said on Saturday that it was aware of “unacceptable conduct” by Mr. Wachner in 2014 and that it had not hired him again.Mr. Miltenberg, Mr. Wachner’s lawyer, said on Monday that “Juilliard’s statement, which Mr. Wachner saw for the first time in The New York Times, is flawed and erroneous.” He added that “Mr. Wachner continues to dispute the nearly decade-old, misleading and untrue allegations made against him.”In an interview on Monday, Ms. Poole praised Trinity’s decision to fire Mr. Wachner, adding that it was important that the church lead a thorough investigation into his behavior.“I hope this is the beginning of a bigger conversation about how we handle harassment in classical music, and how conductors are often held on a pedestal,” she said. “Everybody needs to be held accountable for the same kind of appropriate behavior in the workplace.”A conductor and composer, Mr. Wachner oversaw Trinity’s critically praised choir, Baroque orchestra and contemporary-music ensemble, which together present hundreds of events each year. These forces have perhaps been best known for their annual performances of Handel’s “Messiah”; in 2018, The Times credited Mr. Wachner with leading “the best ‘Messiah’ in New York.”In recent months, he has emerged as one of three finalists to serve as the next artistic director of the renowned Oregon Bach Festival. The festival has not responded to requests for comment. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Juilliard’s President Is Challenged but Retains Support of Board

      by

      The school’s chairman and biggest benefactor, Bruce Kovner, had wanted its president, Damian Woetzel, to leave after a negative evaluation. He marshaled support and stayed.When the charismatic former New York City Ballet star Damian Woetzel was named president of the prestigious Juilliard School in 2017, the school’s powerful chairman, Bruce Kovner, praised his “unusual mix” of intellectual and artistic qualities.But earlier this year Kovner told Woetzel that an internal evaluation had found a lack of confidence in his leadership and asked him to resign by the end of June, a year before the end of his contract, according to a letter Woetzel sent to the school’s trustees that was obtained by The New York Times.Woetzel fought back and succeeded in rallying support behind him, getting testimonials from several eminent artists including the trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis, who directs Juilliard’s jazz program, and the pianist Emanuel Ax, a leading member of the faculty. And he wrote in his letter to trustees that the performance review “was extraordinary and highly inconsistent with best practice in nonprofit governance — it was conceived, initiated and managed by our board chairman.”Things came to a head at a board meeting last month. The trustees were informed of the evaluation and Kovner’s recommendation that he leave, but declined to take steps to ease Woetzel out. Kovner, long the school’s biggest benefactor, is planning to step down this June after 22 years as its chairman, a move that one associate said had long been planned.Kovner declined to comment, and Juilliard provided a statement from the board to The New York Times in which it said that “at its most recent meeting, the board strongly reaffirmed its support for President Damian Woetzel” and the 10-year strategic plan that the school created in 2019.The statement said that the board was “unwavering in its focus on the best interests of the students of the Juilliard School, and remains committed to supporting the school’s exceptional faculty, staff and management.”Some saw the conflict as a rare power struggle between two prominent figures in the cultural world, a showdown between old guard and new blood.Given Kovner’s immense influence as Juilliard’s biggest patron — and as an important figure at Lincoln Center, Juilliard’s home, where he serves on the board and has given large sums — some were surprised to see Woetzel prevail. One trustee likened it to a David and Goliath story.Woetzel, 54 — who earned a master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard while still dancing — has built a national reputation, having directed the Aspen Institute Arts Program and the Vail International Dance Festival and served on President Barack Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.Kovner, 75, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $6.2 billion, has been something of a permanent government at Juilliard, having served as chairman for an unusually long time. With his wife, Suzie, Kovner’s gifts have included $25 million toward a new wing and scholarships in 2005; a trove of precious music manuscripts in 2006; $20 million for the early music program in 2012; and $60 million for a new scholarship program in 2013.At Lincoln Center, Kovner was one of the biggest donors to the redevelopment of the performing arts complex, serves on the board of the Metropolitan Opera and was formerly a trustee of the New York Philharmonic.The standoff posed a challenge for the board and the school, given that Kovner’s ongoing support of Juilliard remains crucial.Bruce Kovner, the chairman of Juilliard, and his wife, Suzie, are the school’s biggest benefactors. He sought to ease Woetzel out after a negative evaluation. Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images For Lincoln CenterWoetzel’s evaluation was sent to 49 members of the faculty and staff — including every department head and 18 direct reports — 43 of whom responded to it anonymously. There are about 700 full-time and part-time members of Juilliard’s faculty and staff.The review was designed and conducted by Kovner and J. Christopher Kojima, a vice chairman, Woetzel’s letter to the board said. His letter said that it was “not conducted at an arm’s length distance by an independent party as is best practice for nonprofit institutions of our scale.”The responses included 143 comments, more than three-quarters of which were negative, according to someone privy to a summary of the report who was granted anonymity to describe this sensitive personnel matter.The feedback amounted to several key criticisms, according to the summary, which was described to The Times: that Woetzel focused on performance instead of education; had weak administrative leadership; failed to consult faculty members on key decisions; and created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.A question about confidence in Juilliard’s future met with a negative response from more than half of those who responded, according to the person familiar with the summary.On Jan. 27, Woetzel was asked to leave, according to his letter to the board.“Bruce Kovner communicated — on behalf of the Executive Committee — that my service as president would be terminated prior to the end of my contract, and that the decision was ‘irrevocable,’” Woetzel wrote in the letter to trustees.“Having communicated to me this intent to terminate,” the letter said, “Bruce then emailed me an offer of a severance package that would include a jointly crafted statement that would create a false narrative that I was resigning as of June 30th.”The letter gave Woetzel 96 hours to respond. He decided not to resign.On Feb. 4, Kovner sent the results of the evaluation to the full board, saying the findings were concerning and would be discussed at the regularly scheduled board meeting four days later.Woetzel marshaled support from a number of prominent artists and colleagues, who sent letters to the board in advance of the meeting.“Damian has a record of excellence in his leadership of the school, especially during two pandemic years and these deeply troubling social, political and financial times that have changed the social landscape of America,” Marsalis wrote in his letter, obtained by The Times. “He has been engaged with students, faculty and board in attempting to create a modern institution that is nimble and able to address the very real concerns of students and alumni around the world.”“I feel how we are going about this brings our ethics into question,” Marsalis continued. “This attempt to remove him seems to be poorly thought out, poorly executed, and it will place a stain on our institution that even our love of resources and fragile spirit will not easily remove.”Juilliard has had successes, but also problems, since Woetzel took charge.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThe trombone player Weston Sprott, who is the dean of Juilliard’s Preparatory Division, warned in an email to Ax, an influential faculty member, that “a decision to terminate Damian will be incredibly harmful to the institution.”“In the midst of managing the bumps and bruises that could be expected in navigating the national reckoning regarding racial injustice,” Sprott continued, “Damian has put together perhaps the most diverse, inclusive and successful leadership team in our industry — one that is respected by students and faculty and is the envy of its competitors.”Kovner and the executive committee expect Woetzel to address the problems raised in the evaluation with outside coaches and under the guidance of the trustee Reginald Van Lee, a former management consultant, according to the person familiar with the summary. But one trustee said no such course of action has been decided by the full board.Woetzel started out as an unconventional choice for Juilliard, having never worked in academic administration, let alone at one of the world’s leading performing arts schools, which at the time of his appointment had a $110 million annual budget, a $1 billion endowment, and more than 800 students.At Juilliard, Woetzel has made several noteworthy advances, securing a $50 million gift to expand the school’s weekend training program aimed largely at Black and Latino schoolchildren; filling several key positions; and guiding the school through the challenging two years of the pandemic.But he has also had bumps along the way. After a drama workshop at the school involving the re-enactment of a slave auction prompted an outcry, Woetzel issued a “heartfelt apology” in a note to the community.Last June, students protested a planned tuition increase, occupying parts of Juilliard’s Lincoln Center campus and holding street demonstrations. (Several other leading music and drama schools offer free tuition.)Kovner, who made his fortune as a hedge fund manager, has contributed extensively to conservative causes and has served on the boards of the American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute, both right-leaning think tanks. Last May, City Journal, which is published by the Manhattan Institute, criticized what it described as the school’s “growing cadre of diversity bureaucrats” in an article headlined “The Revolution Comes to Juilliard: Racial hysteria is consuming the school; unchecked, it will consume the arts.”Kovner has also supported left-leaning organizations, including the Innocence Project, which aims to free the wrongfully convicted; and Lambda Legal, devoted to civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.Now Juilliard is preparing for the next chapter. This week the school’s Duke Ellington Ensemble was scheduled to perform a celebration of the 20th anniversary of Juilliard Jazz at the Chelsea Factory, a new arts space. More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Dolly Parton Bows Out of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Nomination

      by

      The country singer, who was among 17 genre-spanning nominees this year, said, “I don’t feel that I have earned that right” and asked to be removed. Voting has already begun.Dolly Parton does not feel rock ’n’ roll enough for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.The country singer, known for crossover hits like “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You” and “9 to 5,” said on Monday that she wished to be removed from consideration for the annual honor after earning her first nomination in February.“Even though I am extremely flattered and grateful to be nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I don’t feel that I have earned that right,” Parton, 76, wrote in a statement posted to social media. “I really do not want votes to be split because of me, so I must respectfully bow out.”❤️ pic.twitter.com/Z6LKfWtlxg— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) March 14, 2022
      The Rock Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Selection was underway as of last month, and it was unclear what would happen to any potential votes already cast for Parton.Among the 17 nominees eligible for inclusion alongside Parton were others who stretch the traditional definition of rock music: Eminem, A Tribe Called Quest, Lionel Richie, Carly Simon, Dionne Warwick and Kate Bush were selected for the ballot along with bands like Judas Priest, MC5, Rage Against the Machine and New York Dolls.Ballots were sent in February to the more than 1,000 artists, historians and music industry professionals who choose their top five inductees each year, with the winners — typically between five and seven in total — scheduled to be announced in May. This year’s induction ceremony was slated for the fall.The Rock Hall asks its voters to consider an act’s music influence and the “length and depth” of its career, in addition to “innovation and superiority in style and technique.” Following complaints about its treatment of female and Black musicians over the years, the Rock Hall has recently expanded its tent to include artists from rap, pop, R&B and beyond, including Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Jay-Z and the Notorious B.I.G. Artists in both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock Hall include Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Brenda Lee, among others. Parton was inducted into the Country Hall of Fame in 1999.On its website, the Rock Hall praised Parton as a “living legend and a paragon of female empowerment,” adding that her “unapologetic femininity belied her shrewd business acumen, an asset in the male-dominated music industry.”A 2019 look at the organization’s nearly 900 inductees found that only 7.7 percent were women.Other artists have balked at inclusion in the club before: John Lydon, better known as Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, thumbed his nose at the band’s induction in 2006, with the band opting not to show. In 2012, when Guns ’n Roses made it, Axl Rose said he would decline to participate and asked that he not be inducted in absentia. Both acts were inducted anyway.In her statement, however, Parton left the door open. She wrote that she hoped the Rock Hall would “be willing to consider me again — if I’m ever worthy,” noting that she had been inspired by the recognition to “put out a hopefully great rock ’n’ roll album at some point in the future.” More