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      For a Night at the Theater, Bring a Negative Coronavirus Test

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      A pilot program in Berlin is reopening some of the city’s landmark cultural venues, despite surging numbers of infections and toughened restrictions in other areas of life.BERLIN — On a snowy, gray morning last Friday, as a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic in Germany was taking hold, Anna Schoras, 30, lined up outside a pop-up testing site inside a repurposed art gallery in Berlin. Cultural life in the German capital has largely shut down because of the virus, but if Schoras’s test came back negative, she would be allowed to attend the first live stage production in the city in about five months, scheduled for that evening.“I’m just really looking forward to getting out of the house and to consuming live culture,” she said, adding that before the pandemic, she would go to the theater or the opera about twice a month.Earlier that week, Schoras had been among the lucky few to secure one of 350 tickets to the show at the venerated Berliner Ensemble theater. They sold out in four minutes.The performance was part of a pilot project, coordinated by the city of Berlin, that allows its landmark cultural venues to put on a show in front of a live audience — as long as the audience members wear masks, maintain social distancing and present a negative result from a rapid test taken no longer than 12 hours before curtain. The test, which is included in the price of the ticket, must be administered by medically trained workers at one of five approved centers.Along with two nights at the Berliner Ensemble, live performances are being held at two of the city’s opera houses, the Philharmonie and Konzerthaus, and at the Volksbühne theater. Holzmarkt, a nightclub, will also host a sit-down concert. The short run of shows is intended to test whether organizers can put on cultural events safely, even as infection numbers soar.Despite an extension announced on Monday to restrictions that have been in place in Germany since October, Torsten Wöhlert, the city official in charge of the project, said he was determined to keep it running. “The pilot is designed to be safe even when infection rates are high,” he said.But given a recent surge in new cases, regional lawmakers could be called to vote on whether to continue the project, Wöhlert conceded. On Friday, Berlin surpassed the health authorities’ warning level of 100 infections per 100,000 people in a week. The Berlin Senate decided on Tuesday to move back three shows that had been scheduled for the Easter weekend, though others set to be staged before then can go ahead.Germany’s muddled national response to the virus has given way to local initiatives to keep life going, including a program to keep shopping and outdoor dining open for tested customers in some cities. As well as an epidemiological experiment, the Berlin initiative is a signal from a city that prides itself on its vibrant arts scene that — despite being shut down since October — culture still matters.“There is a big appetite for art,” said Wöhlert. “That was evidenced by the speed with which the shows sold out.”Of the 350 people who snapped up the Berliner Ensemble tickets for Friday’s performance of “Panikherz,” a gritty work examining eating disorders and featuring heavy drug use, everyone tested negative before arrival, according to the theater. (Anyone testing positive is guaranteed their money back.)The theater’s bar and coat check were closed, but in any case there was no intermission, to keep mingling opportunities to a minimum, and the compulsory empty seat between spectators, which was supposed to ensure social distancing, also made an excellent substitute coat rack.The Berliner Ensemble’s auditorium, shortly before a performance on Saturday. Spectators had to wear masks and maintain social distancing; every second seat was left empty.Gordon Welters for The New York TimesBerlin is not the only city that could benefit from the insights from the project, with findings expected in mid-April.New York is also experimenting with ways to bring back indoor live performances. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said this month that, beginning April 2, arts and entertainment venues would be allowed to reopen at a third of their regular capacity, holding up to 100 people indoors — and up to 150 if they require audience members to bring proof of a negative test. Some venues are preparing to test audiences themselves. Others will also accept proofs of vaccination.But with New York City still reporting high numbers of new infections each day, real risks remain. Plans by the Park Avenue Armory to stage a new work this week by the choreographer and director Bill T. Jones before a limited, virus-tested, socially-distanced audience were postponed after several members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dance company tested positive for the virus.Other European nations are running their own trials. This month, the Netherlands hosted a series of pop and dance music concerts called “Back to Live,” with up to 1,500 tested attendees and no social distancing. Britain’s government has announced plans to run several similar pilot events in April, including at a nightclub in Liverpool, England.In addition to Berlin’s performance-venue project, museums reopened around Germany last week after the federal authorities loosened the rules. At the Alte Nationalgalerie in central Berlin, each visitor — who can visit without having to present a negative test result — is allocated 430 square feet of space, meaning that only 360 preregistered guests can visit daily, about a fifth of the number the museum would usually attract on a busy day before the pandemic. Tickets are sold out for the coming weeks.Ralph Gleis, the museum’s director, said, “You realize that museums are an essential space in society, where one can go to be distracted, to occupy oneself with external things — especially during a crisis, culture is really important.”But even that respite hangs by a thread. Although museums were open on Wednesday, the rising rate of infections in Berlin could oblige them to close again on very short notice.Visitors at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin on March 16. German museums were allowed to reopen this month after coronavirus lockdown measures were eased.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockHolzmarkt, a sprawling club complex on the Spree River, was the only nightlife venue to join the performance pilot. Although the club’s organizers said that they were happy to put on a concert for 80 people in a space where 400 people could usually cram in — with very few sitting — Konstantin Krex, the club’s spokesman, said that the management was not content with the rules that have kept the venue shuttered since October.“It’s a pretty long way from the real club feeling,” Krex said of the seated concert at Holzmarkt, planned for March 27.Even if the restricted performances lack the bustle of a packed house, the audience at the Berliner Ensemble on Friday night seemed excited to be part of the brief reopening. The actors were nervous after a five-month enforced break, said Oliver Reese, the director.After the cast took its bows, the play’s author, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, jumped onstage to thank the crowd for being part of the project.“It is not a superspreader event — it is culture,” he said. Judging by the applause, the audience agreed. And when the findings of the pilot program come in next month, they will know if he was right.Alex Marshall contributed reporting from London. More

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      Demi Lovato Confirms Collaborations With Saweetie and Noah Cyrus for New Album

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      Instagram

      The ‘Cool for the Summer’ hitmaker reveals two more names of her collaborators for upcoming studio installment ‘Dancing With the Devil… The Art of Starting Over’.

      Mar 24, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Demi Lovato’s upcoming album features collaborations with Saweetie and Noah Cyrus.

      The 28-year-old singer recently told The New York Times that “Dancing With the Devil… The Art of Starting Over” features a tune with Ariana Grande. And now, Demi has told PAPER magazine that the record also includes duets with Saweetie – on “My GFs Are My BFs” – and Noah.

      Ariana provided backing vocals on “Met Him Last Night” while Demi’s previously released Sam Fischer duet, “What Other People Say”, will also be on the LP.

      Over the past couple of days, Demi has been sharing brief preview clips of the instrumentals to the songs on her social media pages.

        See also…

      It’s already known that there is a track called “Melon Cake”, which is about taking back control and is named after the watermelon and fat-free cream she would be given instead of a birthday cake.

      And “California Sober”, which is described as “strummy mid-tempo,” reflects where she is in her sobriety.

      She admitted in a recent interview, “I haven’t been by-the-book sober since the summer of 2019. I realised if I don’t allow myself some wiggle room, I go to the hard (expletive). And that will be the death of me.”

      The follow-up to 2017’s “Tell Me You Love Me” – which is released on 2 April (21) – is set to act as a companion to her upcoming Michael D. Ratner-helmed documentary series, “Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil”, which explores aspects that led to the singer’s nearly fatal overdose in 2018, and her “awakenings in the aftermath.”

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      Phoebe Bridgers, Perfume Genius and Run the Jewels Land Top Nominations at 2021 Libera Awards

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      Instagram

      Beside going head-to-head for Record of the Year at the annual awards from A2IM, the trio are also shortlisted for Video of the Year as well as Best Live/Livestream Act among other nods.

      Mar 23, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Singers Phoebe Bridgers and Perfume Genius and rap duo Run the Jewels have landed top nominations for the independent music industry’s 10th annual Libera Awards.

      “Punisher” by Bridgers, “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately” by Perfume Genius, and “RTJ4” by Run the Jewels will go head-to-head for Record of the Year, alongside “It Is What It Is” by Thundercat, “Saint Cloud” by Waxahatchee, and “Heaven to a Tortured Mind” by Yves Tumor.

      The top acts are also shortlisted for Video of the Year, with Bridgers’ “Savior Complex”, Perfume Genius’ “Describe”, and “Ooh La La” from Run the Jewels named with FKA twigs’ “Sad Day”, Christine and the Queens’ “La vita nuova (Because Music)”, and “Fruit&Sun” by ford..

      Additionally, they are each nominated for Best Live/Livestream Act.

      Run the Jewels stars Killer Mike and El-P have snagged further mentions for Best Hip-Hop/Rap Record and the A2IM Humanitarian Award, a category which also features hip-hop sensation Megan Thee Stallion, while Bridgers’ “Punisher” album will also compete for Best Alternative Rock Record.

      Other notable nominees include Margo Price (Best Country Record for “That’s How Rumors Get Started”), Arlo Parks (Breakthrough Artist/Release), Lucinda Williams (Best Americana Record for “Good Souls Better Angels”), and Bad Bunny (Best Latin Record for “El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo”).

      The celebration, organized by officials at the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) trade organization, will take place virtually for the second year in a row, due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the winners unveiled on June 17.

      The nominees for the 2021 Libera Awards are:

      Record of the Year

      Phoebe Bridgers – “Punisher” (Dead Oceans)
      Run the Jewels – “RTJ4” (Jewel Runners, Inc.)
      Perfume Genius – “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately” (Matador Records)
      Yves Tumor – “Heaven to a Tortured Mind” (Warp Records)
      Thundercat – “It Is What It Is” (Brainfeeder)
      Waxahatchee – “Saint Cloud” (Merge Records)

      Video of the Year

      FKA twigs – “Sad Day” (Young Turks)
      Perfume Genius – “Describe” (Matador Records)
      Phoebe Bridgers – “Savior Complex” (Dead Oceans)
      Run the Jewels – “Ooh La La” (Jewel Runners, Inc.)
      Christine and the Queens – “La vita nuova” (Because Music)
      ford. – “Fruit&Sun” (Foreign Family Collective)

      Best Live/Livestream Act

      Run the Jewels (Jewel Runners, LLC.)
      Phoebe Bridgers (Dead Oceans)
      Fontaines D.C. (Partisan Records)
      Perfume Genius (Matador Records)
      Arca (XL Recordings)

      Breakthrough Artist/Release (Presented by Ingrooves)

      Arlo Parks (Transgressive/[PIAS])
      Bonny Light Horseman (37d03d)
      Overcoats (Loma Vista Recordings)
      Arlo McKinley (Oh Boy Records)
      Orion Sun (Mom + Pop Music)

      A2IM Humanitarian Award

      Rev. Moose (Marauder/NIVA)
      Killer Mike & El-P of Run the Jewels (Jewel Runners, Inc.)
      Megan Thee Stallion (300 Entertainment)
      Paul Redding (Beggars Group)
      Kevin Liles (300 Entertainment)

      Best Alternative Rock Record

      Phoebe Bridgers – “Punisher” (Dead Oceans)
      Soccer Mommy – “Color Theory” (Loma Vista Recordings)
      Car Seat Headrest – “Making a Door Less Open” (Matador Records)
      Lido Pimienta – “Miss Colombia” (Anti- Records)
      Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – “Sideways to New Italy” (Sub Pop Records)

      Best Americana Record

      Bonny Light Horseman – “Bonny Light Horseman” (37d03d)
      Kevin Morby – “Sundowner” (Dead Oceans)
      Calexico – “Seasonal Shift” (Anti- Records)
      Courtney Marie Andrews – “Old Flowers” (Fat Possum Records)
      Lucinda Williams – “Good Souls Better Angels” (Highway 20/Thirty Tigers)

      Best Blues Record

      Bobby Rush – “Rawer Than Raw” (Deep Rush Records/Thirty Tigers)
      Don Bryant – “You Make Me Feel” (Fat Possum Records)
      Robert Cray Band – “That’s What I Heard” (Nozzle Records/Thirty Tigers)
      Fantastic Negrito – “Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?” (Cooking Vinyl Ltd.)
      Sonny Landreth – “Blacktop Run” (Provogue Records)

      Best Classical Record

      Erik Hall – “Music for 18 Musicians (Steve Reich)” (Western Vinyl)
      Paul Moravec – “Sanctuary Road” (Naxos American Classics)
      Echo Collective – “The See Within” (7K!)
      Niklas Paschburg – “Svalbard” (7K!)
      Vitamin String Quartet – “Vitamin String Quartet Performs Lana Del Rey” (CMH Label Group/Vitamin Records)

      Best Country Record

      Margo Price – “That’s How Rumors Get Started” (Loma Vista Recordings)
      Waxahatchee – “Saint Cloud” (Merge Records)
      Colter Wall – “Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs” (La Honda Records/Thirty Tigers)
      Various Artists – “Willie Nelson American Outlaw (Live at Bridgestone Arena/2019)” (Blackbird Productions)
      Jaime Wyatt – “Neon Cross” (New West Records)

      Best Dance/Electronic Record

        See also…

      Caribou – “Suddenly” (Merge Records)
      Arca – “KiCk i” (XL Recordings)
      Ela Minus – “acts of rebellion” (Domino Recording Co.)
      Yaeji – “What We Drew” (XL Recordings)
      Actress – “Karma & Desire” (Ninja Tune)

      Best Folk/Bluegrass Record

      Ben Harper – “Winter Is for Lovers” (Anti- Records)
      Angel Olsen- “Whole New Mess” (Jagjaguwar)
      Gillian Welch – “Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs” (Acony Records)
      Jason Molina – “Eight Gates” (Secretly Canadian)
      Laura Marling – “Song for Our Daughter” (Partisan Records)

      Best Hip-Hop/Rap Record (Presented by Virgin Music)

      Run the Jewels – “RTJ4” (Jewel Runners, Inc.)
      clipping. – “Visions of Bodies Being Burned” (Sub Pop Records)
      Little Simz – “Drop 6” (AGE101/AWAL)
      The Koreatown Oddity – “Little Dominiques Nosebleed” (Stones Throw Records)
      Naeem – “Startisha” (37d03d)

      Best Jazz Record (Presented by Qobuz)

      Gil-Scott Heron & Makaya McCraven – “We’re New Again – A Reimagining by Makaya McCraven” (XL Recordings)
      Jeff Parker – “Suite for Max Brown” (International Anthem)
      Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge – “Azymuth JID004” (Jazz Is Dead)
      Christian McBride – “The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons” (Mack Avenue Music Group)
      John Carroll Kirby – “My Garden” (Stones Throw Records)
      Raul Midon – “The Mirror” (Artistry Music)
      Jyoti – “Mama, You Can Bet!” (SomeOthaShip/eOne)

      Best Latin Record

      Bad Bunny – “El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo” (Rimas Entertainment)
      Gabriel Garzon-Montano – “Aguita” (Jagjaguwar in partnership with Stones Throw Records)
      The Mavericks – “En Espanol” (Mono Mundo Recordings/Thirty Tigers)
      Buscabulla – “Regresa” (Ribbon Music)
      Jungle Fire – “Jungle Fire” (Nacional Records)

      Best Metal Record

      Architects – “Animals” (Epitaph Records)
      HUM – “Inlet” (Earth Analog Records)
      Ghostemane – “Anti-Icon” (Blackmage)
      Ingested – “Where Only Gods May Tread” (Unique Leader Records)
      Pyrrhon – “Abscess Time” (Willowtip Records)

      Best Outlier Record (Presented by The Orchard)

      Khruangbin – “Mordechai” (Dead Oceans)
      Oneohtrix Point Never – “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” (Warp Records)
      Yves Tumor – “Heaven to a Tortured Mind” (Warp Records)
      Beverly Glenn-Copeland – “Transmissions” (Transgressive/[PIAS])
      Mary Lattimore – “Silver Ladders” (Ghostly International)
      Moses Sumney – “Græ” (Jagjaguwar)

      Best Punk Record

      IDLES – “Ultra Mono” (Partisan Records)
      Protomartyr – “Ultimate Success Today” (Domino Recording Co.)
      METZ – “Atlas Vending” (Sub Pop Records)
      Viagra Boys – “Common Sense” (YEAR0001/AWAL)
      Porridge Radio – “Every Bad” (Secretly Canadian)

      Best R&B Record

      Thundercat – “It Is What It Is” (Brainfeeder)
      Khruangbin & Leon Bridges – “Texas Sun” (Dead Oceans)
      Robert Glasper – “Better Than I Imagined” (feat. H.E.R. & Meshell Ndegeocello) (Loma Vista Recordings)
      Son Little – “aloha” (Anti- Records)
      Orion Sun – “Hold Space for Me” (Mom + Pop Music)
      Steve Arrington – “Down to the Lowest Terms” (Stones Throw Records)

      Best Rock Record (Presented by Mitchell; Silberberg & Knupp LLP)

      Fontaines D.C. – “A Hero’s Death” (Partisan Records)
      King Krule – “Man Alive!” (True Panther Sounds/Matador)
      Bartees Strange – “Mustang” (Single Memory Music)
      Bob Mould – “Blue Hearts” (Merge Records)
      Caroline Rose – “Superstar” (New West Records)

      Best Spiritual Record

      Sun Ra Arkestra – “Swirling” (STRUT)
      Lecrae – “Restoration” (Reach Records)
      Jon Hopkins – “Singing Bowl (Ascension)” (Domino Recording Co.)
      Thad Cockrell – “If in Case You Feel the Same” (ATO Records)
      Wande – “EXIT” (Reach Records)

      Best World Record (Presented by Redeye Worldwide)

      Antibalas – “Fu Chronicles” (Daptone Records)
      Bebel Gilberto – “Agora” ([PIAS])
      Altin Gun – “Ordunun Dereleri” (ATO Records)
      Songhoy Blues – “Optimisme” (Fat Possum Records)
      Emel – “The Tunis Diaries” (Partisan Records)

      Best Re-Issue

      J Dilla – “Donuts (Jelly Edition)” (Stones Throw Records)
      Pylon – “Pylon Box” (New West Records)
      Hiroshi Yoshimura – “GREEN” (Light In The Attic)
      Pixies – “Bossanova 30th Anniversary Reissue” (4AD)
      Motorhead – “Ace of Spades 40th Anniversary” (Sanctuary Records)
      Elliott Smith – “Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition” (Kill Rock Stars)
      Grandaddy – “The Sophtware Slump 20th Anniversary Collection” (Dangerbird Records)

      Best Sync Usage

      Run the Jewels (Jewel Runners, Inc.) – “Ooh La La” – Season three of Netflix’s “Ozark”
      Black Pumas (ATO Records) “Colors” – Samsung Galaxy S20
      Brittany Howard (ATO Records) “You’ll Never Walk Alone” – Johnnie Walker’s #KeepWalking Campaign
      Blood Orange (Domino Recording Co.) “Tuesday Feeling (Choose to Stay)” – Season four of HBO’s “Insecure”
      IDLES (Partisan Records) “Grounds” – Watch Dogs: Legion

      Creative Packaging

      Soccer Mommy – “Color Theory” limited edition back to school binder (Loma Vista Recordings)
      Black Pumas – “Black Pumas (Deluxe Edition)” – ATO Records
      Perfume Genius – “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately” vinyl (Matador Records)
      Pylon – “Pylon Box” [CD Box Set](New West Records)
      IDLES – “Ultra Mono” (Partisan Records)

      Independent Champion (Presented by Merlin)

      Bandcamp
      SoundExchange
      Secretly Distribution
      TuneCore
      The Orchard

      Marketing Genius

      Jewel Runners, LLC – Run the Jewels x Cyberpunk2077 “No Save Point”
      Beggars Group – Supporting Indie Retail #loverecordstores Campaign
      Phoebe Bridgers – “Punisher” (Dead Oceans)
      Light In The Attic – Social Media & Digital Marketing
      Perfume Genius – “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately” Campaign (Matador Records)

      Label of the Year (Big) (Presented by ADA)

      Partisan Records
      Sub Pop Records
      Warp Records
      Stones Throw Records
      Ninja Tune

      Label of the Year (Medium)

      Light In The Attic
      Sacred Bones Records
      Matador Records
      Ghostly International
      Rough Trade Records

      Label of the Year (Small) (Presented by Spotify)

      Daptone Records
      Innovative Leisure
      Fire Talk Records
      International Anthem
      Hardly Art
      Oh Boy Records

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      Katy Perry Sets Twitter on Frenzy After Hinting at Possible Taylor Swift Collab

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      WENN/Instar/Avalon

      Katy’s hypothetical question quickly sparks chatter on Twitter with fans of both singers wishing the collaboration will really happen as one fan writes, ‘OMFG GOD MAKE THIS HAPPEN.’

      Mar 23, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Katy Perry excited fans when she randomly mentioned about a possible collaboration with fellow singer Taylor Swift. Katy made the comments in the Monday, March 22 episode of “American Idol” where she serves as one of the judges.

      Following a great duet performance by contestants Althea Grace and Camille Lamb who sang Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me”, Katy gushed over them. “That’s what queens do,” she said, before announcing that both of them were sent to the next round.

      The performance apparently was so stunning that it prompted the “Fireworks” hitmaker to think what could it be if she collaborates with the “Cardigan” songstress. “Can you imagine if Taylor and I work together, what we could do?” Katy asked her fellow judges, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie.

        See also…

      The hypothetical question quickly sparked chatter on Twitter with fans of both Katy and Taylor wishing the collaboration would really happen. “please grant our wishes, @taylorswift13 @katyperry,” one fan wrote on Twitter. “why is good morning america and american idol teasing the kaylor (katy x taylor) collab so much im scared,” another person added.

      “OMFG GOD MAKE THIS HAPPEN,” a wishful fan tweeted. “AMERICAN IDOL IF Y’ALL ARE JUST USING THIS TO HYPE UP YOUR SHOW I’M COMING THERE AND IMMA BURN THE WHOLE BUILDING @taylorswift13 and @katyperry please collab,” another comment read.

      Katy and Taylor used to be beefing for years before the singers eventually buried the hatched in 2018, when Katy sent a beautiful note and olive branch to Taylor on opening night of Taylor’s Reputation Stadium Tour. The duo also appeared together in Taylor’s “You Need to Calm Down” music video.

      “When we saw each other, it was just very clear to both of us that everything was different, that we had grown up, and that we had grown past allowing ourselves to be pitted against each other, and it just was very, very clear that we remembered how much we had in common,” Taylor previously shared. “So, both of us have been in a really good place for a while, but I don’t think either of us really knew if we were ever going to talk about it publicly.”

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      Hollywood Vampires Forced to Once Again Scrap European Tour Over COVID-19 Concerns

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      Instagram

      In a released statement, the supergroup formed by Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Joe Perry claims to have been trying to make the summer gigs happen but are hindered by travel restrictions.

      Mar 23, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Johnny Depp and Alice Cooper’s supergroup the Hollywood Vampires have scrapped their summer European tour due to COVID-19 concerns.

      The band had previously rescheduled dates to August and September, but because of safety concerns surrounding the pandemic, the tour has now been canceled.

      A statement reads, “We are beyond disappointed to announce that the Hollywood Vampires must cancel our rescheduled UK/European tour this Summer.”

      “We kept trying to make it happen, but unfortunately due to the uncertainty of COVID-19 travel restrictions, it is just not possible… Thank you for understanding, and we WILL be back rocking with you once the world returns to normal!”

        See also…

      The news comes as Depp is still embroiled in two lawsuits, both linked to allegations he abused his ex-wife Amber Heard – the actor is fighting to overturn a libel ruling against him in the U.K. and land a retrial against The Sun newspaper, and he’s also suing Heard for defamation in the U.S.

      The European tour was originally set to support of the band’s second studio album, “Rise”. When it was first announced, Cooper gushed, “This show has something for everyone. I like to joke that The Vampires are the world’s most expensive bar band, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that this is a real rock band, not just some novelty.”

      “I wouldn’t keep doing it if it weren’t such a great band,” he continued. “Everybody gets along, the musical chemistry is as good as it gets and the show will be the highest energy hard rock shows you will see all year. I never get tired of playing with these guys!”

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      Dua Lipa and Neil Patrick Harris to Make Merry Elton John's 2021 Oscars Pre-Party

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      Instagram

      Amid ongoing COVID concerns, the annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards event is being turned into a one-of-a-kind livestreamed special for the first time.

      Mar 23, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Elton John has recruited Dua Lipa and Neil Patrick Harris to help celebrate the 2021 Oscars with a livestreamed pre-party special.

      The rock legend has been hosting his annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards event for the last 29 years, but with ongoing COVID concerns, he has decided to mark the run-up to Hollywood’s big show on 25 April with a virtual countdown bash.

      Actor Harris will co-host the one-hour party with Elton and his husband, producer David Furnish, while Dua will be among the performers, with others set to be announced in the coming weeks.

      “This year, we are bringing our Oscar Party into people’s homes for the first time virtually for an unforgettable evening with David, myself, our dear friend Neil Patrick Harris, and the incredible Dua Lipa plus many fabulous surprise names,” Elton shared in a statement.

      “Now more than ever, we need to ensure that one pandemic does not override another, and we cannot forget the 38 million people living with HIV globally who need our care, love and support so we hope everyone joins us for this special one of a kind Oscar pre-party.”

        See also…

      The event will stream at four different times to line up with each region’s Oscars broadcast, with North America’s taking place live at 7 P.M. ET on April 25 – just before the awards take place in Los Angeles.

      Airings for Europe and Australia and New Zealand will take place on April 26 at 7 P.M. local time, with North American viewers offered a final repeat at 10 P.M. ET.

      Each streaming session will have room for 100,000 attendees, with tickets costing $19.99 (£14).

      For tickets and more information, visit Ticketmaster.

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      SXSW Came Back With Genuine Joy. Here Are 15 of the Best Acts.

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      The festival in Austin, which was canceled last year, returned online with more international performers and music forged during the pandemic.South by Southwest 2020 was abruptly canceled last March as the reality of Covid-19 set in. This year, it returned March 16-20 as SXSW Online, viewed remotely and downscaled to the size of a screen. Its music festival offered prerecorded virtual showcases — from studios, clubs, living rooms, backyards, city streets and odder places — for about 280 bands rather than the 1,000-plus of recent years. Though some showcases vanished after they were webcast, conference attendees can rerun many of them until April 18, and with luck the performances will make their way to a wider public afterward. For once, it’s possible to see nearly all the music at SXSW.The reduction, and the chance of replays, changed the festival’s focus. It shifted the lineup toward bands that could find management or government sponsors, which led to a much higher proportion of international performers. (Corollary: Where is federal, state or urban arts funding?) Nearly two-thirds of the festival’s acts came from abroad, including multiple bands from Britain every night.The online format also invited video ingenuity, mostly but not always low-budget, around the real-time performances that SXSW has always prized. After a year of pandemic isolation, the showcases featured the genuine joy of musicians getting together to perform, even if the audience was just a camera crew, and some showcases revisited clubs that have held out through the pandemic. The sets also unveiled songs that have emerged from a year of quarantines and reassessments. As always, there was music worth discovering, though a brief SXSW set is just a hyperlink to a career. Here, in alphabetical order, are 15 of the best acts from SXSW 2021 Online.After canceling the festival last year, SXSW returned with an online format that invited ingenuity.SXSWALIEN TANGO The singer, guitarist and keyboardist Alberto Gomez leads Alien Tango, a group from Spain that’s based in London; it was part of a Sounds From Spain showcase. Its hopped-up pop-rock songs switched between manic glee — frenzied guitar scrubbing, arpeggiators going full tilt, falsetto la-las — and sardonic crooning to match the humor in Gomez’s English-language lyrics: “You and I are gonna live a thousand years/You and I are gonna have a thousand beers.”CLIPPING The avant-hip-hop group led by the “Hamilton” star Daveed Diggs appeared in a showcase selected by NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, and took “tiny” as a video mandate. As Diggs rapped into a thumbnail-size microphone, his collaborators, Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson, pretended (on split screens) to play miniature versions of (among other things) a laptop, guitar pedals and a windup music box, as the music warped itself from pink noise to music-box tinkle to industrial distortion to techno beats. No simulation was involved in the tour de force that was Diggs’s breakneck, virtually nonstop rapping, with rhymes that raced from free-associative wordplay to nightmare imagery to a grimly prescient 2019 song, “Nothing Is Safe.”Theon Cross performed both solo and with his band, which merged wah-wah funk with Caribbean carnival rhythms.SXSWTHEON CROSS A British project called Jazz re:freshed Outernational booked Abbey Road Studios for a SXSW showcase that included a virtuosic set by the tuba player Theon Cross. He performed with an electronic backing track and, even better, with his band, which merged wah-wah funk with Caribbean carnival rhythms as Cross hopped between holding down the bass lines and joining the band’s brassy melodic crossfire.JON DEE GRAHAM and WILLIAM HARRIES GRAHAM The deep local loyalties of SXSW were summed up in a showcase for the roots-rock songwriter and guitarist Jon Dee Graham — an Austin native with a grizzled voice and a long discography of kindly and hard-won songs — and his son William Harries Graham. They were performing at Austin’s long-running Continental Club, singing rough-hewed roots-rock songs about empathy, acceptance and willed optimism. “All the mistakes I’ve made/They brought me here to you,” Jon Dee Graham sang in his weathered, forthright rasp.HeLING Part of CaoTai Music’s showcase of electronic music from China, HeLing appeared mostly with his back to the camera in a closet-size studio surrounded by synthesizers, keyboards, computer screens and flashing lights. Pecking at controls and turning knobs, he calmly constructed a performance that evolved inexorably from rich, undulating drones through swoops, blips, chirps and hissing beats to dizzying, flat-out techno — and then ended so abruptly it risked whiplash.Jade Jackson, left, and Aubrey Sellers at SXSW Online last week.SXSWJADE JACKSON and AUBRIE SELLERS Two Los Angeles-based roots-rock songwriters with solo careers decided to write together during quarantine, and emerged as a duo. Their video set for SXSW, with a partly masked backup band, was their first public performance. They leaned into electric Southern-rock stomps, shared modal harmonies, and introduced a new waltz about a year without concerts: “I want to go back to the way it was before we had distance between us,” Jackson sang.MILLENNIUM PARADE Live Nation Japan sent SXSW a concert-scale production with the melancholy synth-pop group D.A.N., the cheerfully arrogant rapper-singer Awich (surrounded by dancers) and the full-scale overload of Millennium Parade, a large band led by Daiki Tsuneta with two drummers, plenty of computers and keyboards and multiple lead singers, male and female. It reached back to the bustling, horn-topped R&B of Earth, Wind & Fire, added latter-day sonic heft and occasional rapping, and surrounded itself with a video barrage that rocketed it into a “Blade Runner”/anime futurescape. In “2992,” between a bruising bass line and a fluttering orchestral arrangement, Ermhoi sang, “In this life we live, everyone is made to feel confused” — confused, perhaps, but exhilarated.HARU NEMURI The Japanese songwriter Haru Nemuri started her set, which looked like a one-take video, as if it were going to be soft and gauzy. She was alone in a room and rapping in a near-whisper over a looped choir of women’s voices, with hints of Björk and Meredith Monk. But when she suddenly opened a door and ran upstairs to a rooftop, hard-rock guitars and a drumbeat came blasting in, and her vocals turned to a scream. Her next song was a shouted rap-rocker named “B.A.N.G.” and, after a breathless speech about wanting her music to “create something precious on this planet,” she was twirling and rapping at top speed over a galloping beat and dense organ chords; the song’s title, and chorus hook, was “Riot.”ONIPA Based in Sheffield, England, Onipa drew on music from across Africa. Onipa means “human” in Akan, a language in Ghana, and its music had roots in Ghana, Congo, Senegal, South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Algeria, along with hints of the African diaspora. The lyrics were in English, while the grooves were fusions that put momentum first.ANNA B SAVAGE Solo on an electric guitar, the English songwriter Anna B Savage dealt in ruthless, self-lacerating confessionals, delivered in a tremulous, vehement contralto that brought drama to each phrase. Revealing her pain, she exorcised it.Squid’s performance was an inventory of cantankerousness.Thomas JacksonSQUID Headlining a British Music Embassy showcase of hard-nosed post-punk, along with Do Nothing and Yard Act, Squid was an inventory of cantankerousness. Vocals were chanted, yelped, muttered and barked, sometimes overlapping at cross purposes. The guitarist delivered barbed lines and outbursts of scrabbling chords; the keyboardist chose piercing, nagging tones; the band shared dissonant odd-meter vamps or locked into compulsive, motoric repetitions. Songs about feeling thwarted and controlled fought back, furiously.TUYO “I came here to warn you that the future is over and the people are survivors,” Lio of the Brazilian band Tuyo sang in their set, the finale of the superb Flow.Ers Agency Brazil showcase. “No need to be scared, I walk with you in this permanent hell,” she sang. The song, “Sem Mentira” (“Without a Lie”), came out in the middle of 2020. Lio and the band’s other two founders, Lay Soares and Machado, share lead and harmony vocals in songs that laced pealing indie-rock with electronics and undercurrents of Brazilian syncopation, earnest yet always graceful.Vocal Vidas sang about love and the power of music.SXSWVOCAL VIDAS This four-woman vocal group performed on a hotel rooftop in Santiago de Cuba as a tie-in to “Soy Cubana,” a documentary about them that was shown as part of SXSW’s film festival. Vocal Vidas performs Afro-Cuban songs using just voices and percussion, turning themselves into horn and rhythm sections as well as a call-and-response chorus, singing about love and the power of music; their mini-set also included a South African song: “Freedom Is Coming.”The genre-blurring Y2K92 came across as quirky and casual.Flipped Coin KOREAY2K92 Equal parts cute and baffling, Y2K92 is a South Korean duo: the producer Simo and the vocalist Jibin. The tracks were amorphous and genre-blurring: swirling flutes over sparse trap beats; loops of women’s voices over a double-time jungle-ish rush; distant distorted guitar strumming topped by someone’s whisper and strings playing a phrase of “Rhapsody in Blue”; skittering electronic plinks over shifting offbeats. Jibin, wearing a pink dress over green track pants, sang and danced with video projected on the wall behind her, and subtitles appeared as she switched between English and Korean, revealing lyrics like “I’m round and round in a hot tornado sucked in quickly./This is a jungle of silence. Parade of spiral.” It was a 21st-century pop reverie, finely constructed to come across as quirky and casual.YENDRY A Latin showcase performed at S.O.B’s in New York City included the Dominican singer and songwriter Yendry and her band in their first live set since the pandemic began. She moved easily among idioms and languages: Spanish and English, bolero, bachata, reggaeton, merengue. Her singing voice had a wiry core while hinting at the fluttering trills of flamenco; her rapping was a no-nonsense staccato. And her message was that even if she’s vulnerable, a woman has power. More

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      Lana Del Rey Takes a Road Trip Into the Past

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      On “Chemtrails Over the Country Club,” her latest album, the singer leaves Los Angeles and arrives somewhere more sharply personal, yearning for a lost time.On her sixth major-label album, “Chemtrails Over the Country Club,” Lana Del Rey wants to get away from it all.After her great, California-centric 2019 epic “Norman _____ Rockwell!,” maybe she’s just craving a change of scenery: “I’m ready to leave L.A. and I want you to come,” she announces on the new album’s wanderlustful first single, “Let Me Love You Like a Woman.” Other “Chemtrails” songs name-check stops on an American road trip, from Yosemite to Lincoln to Tulsa. But on some of the record’s most stirring moments, Del Rey seems to desire an even greater spiritual sense of oblivion: “I’m in the wind, I’m in the water, nobody’s son, nobody’s daughter,” she sings on the haunting title track, sounding blissfully untethered. During the album’s opening number, “White Dress,” she pirouettes across the upper edge of her vocal register, her airy falsetto evaporating into the space around her like a fleeting, soon-to-be-illegible piece of skywriting.One of the album’s several stunners, “White Dress” is a melancholic, piano-driven tone poem that conjures the emotional intensity of Cat Power and reimagines a “simpler time” when the narrator was a 19-year-old night-shift waitress in — of all the places in Norman Rockwell’s America — Orlando, Fla. But she felt happy, capable: “When I was a waitress, wearing a white dress, like look how I do it, look how I got this.” The tempo is unhurried, and the song saves some of its most affecting revelations — “it kind of makes me feel like maybe I was better off” — for its unsettling final moments.From the moment she emerged with the semi-anachronistic torch song “Video Games” in 2011, Del Rey has always branded herself an old soul. Like much of her music, “Chemtrails” often bends backward to grasp at an elusive and irretrievable prelapsarian state. (As she put it on one of her best songs, 2019’s unofficial anthem “The Greatest,” “nobody warns you before the fall.”) Sometimes the past she glorifies is mass-cultural (the muted, subtly auto-tuned “Tulsa Jesus Freak” mines a Manson-family aesthetic similar to Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”), but just as often on this record it is sharply personal, yearning for a lost time when making music was a carefree hobby and not Del Rey’s job. Throughout, “Chemtrails” finds her meditating on the value of her art, wondering if it’s too late to get back to the garden.Fame is the album’s recurring boogeyman, most explicitly on the languidly guitar-driven “Dark but Just a Game,” which Del Rey has said takes its name from something her producer Jack Antonoff said to her while they were musing about the tragic fates of so many stars. (“Chemtrails” reunites Del Rey with Antonoff, who co-produced “Norman” with her and once again gives her billowing voice the appropriate amount of compositional elbow room.) “The cameras have flashes, they cause the car crashes,” she sings on the gently surging “Wild at Heart” — another highlight. On two other occasions she references “Candle in the Wind,” that masscult elegy that Elton John barely needed to rework to fit the fates of both Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana.Easy as it can be to forget, though, the particular slab of blue over the country club is hardly the entire sky. This finite perspective makes “Chemtrails” more of a minor offering than “Norman _____ Rockwell!,” which took big swings and often connected, capturing something that had been difficult to articulate about her generation’s larger sense of malaise. Perhaps to avoid repeating herself, “Chemtrails” finds Del Rey scaling back, seeking more insular insight.“Chemtrails Over the Country Club” is Lana Del Rey’s sixth major-label album.Interscope Records and Polydor Records, via Associated PressWhen all of its virtues are working in tandem — rich melodies, compositional surprises, only-Lana-would-say-it turns of phrase — Del Rey’s music casts an engrossing spell. But in the moments when its tempos and timbres grow a bit repetitive, as they did on her sleepy 2015 album “Honeymoon” and do for a several-song stretch in the middle of this album, its limitations come into focus. “Not All Who Wander Are Lost” builds a chorus around bumper-sticker wisdom, while vague lyrics like “let me love you like a woman, let me hold you like a baby” lack the specificity of her better songs.At best, Del Rey’s hyper-referential music convincingly recreates the particular feeling of encountering art in a postmodern age, when the past is so cluttered with worthwhile cultural artifacts that everything new reminds one, at least a little bit, of something old. But as she dances on that fine line between evoking and signifying, Del Rey sometimes risks outsourcing her profundity to things other artists have said more vividly before.Such is the gamble of ending an album with a Joni Mitchell cover — though here that’s a risk Del Rey pulls off. On a gorgeous, reverent and harmony-enlivened rendition of “For Free,” she is joined by the musicians Zella Day and Natalie Mering (who records as Weyes Blood), and in Mitchell’s lines finds echoes with many of the questions she’s been pondering about the relative value of art and the distortions of fame. The song comes from Mitchell’s 1970 LP “Ladies of the Canyon,” but if “Chemtrails” has a kindred spirit in Mitchell’s discography, it’s 1972’s “For the Roses,” her own “leaving Los Angeles” album, which Mitchell composed in the solitude of her stone cottage on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia.By the end of “Chemtrails,” though, Del Rey has found solace not in solitude but solidarity, specifically with other women. The album regains momentum on its final trio of songs, which are suddenly populated with other female voices and names. (In addition to Day and Mering on “For Free,” Del Rey is joined by the country artist Nikki Lane on a song Lane wrote, “Breaking Up Slowly.”) The cathartic “Dancing Til We Die” finds her doing a late-night Louisiana two-step with an imagined clique of her musical heroes, some of whom (Stevie Nicks, Joan Baez) Del Rey has already toured or collaborated with. “God, it feels good not to be alone,” she exhales, shortly before the faint, lonely sound of a horn drifts into the mix, as if from another bar down the road. Momentarily, it leaves its mark in the blue, and then just as quickly it’s gone.Lana Del Rey“Chemtrails Over the Country Club”(Interscope) More