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      in Theater

      TKTS to Open Booth in Philadelphia, Hoping to Boost Local Theaters

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      The first domestic TKTS outpost outside New York comes at a time of rising concern about ticket prices and theater economics.TKTS, the landmark theater discounter that has been a Times Square mainstay for 51 years, is expanding to Philadelphia at a time when regional theaters are struggling and ticket costs are a persistent cause of consumer concern.The new booth, located inside Independence Visitor Center in the city’s historic district, will be the first in an American city other than New York. London and Tokyo also have TKTS booths, and New York has a second booth at Lincoln Center.The Philadelphia booth will sell tickets to local theater, dance and music productions, as well as for some touring Broadway shows; the tickets will be discounted by 30 percent to 50 percent and can be purchased up to 72 hours before curtain (in New York, the purchase window is shorter). The visitor center, which is near major tourist attractions including the Liberty Bell, drew 1.3 million people last year and already sells tickets to other attractions.The TKTS kiosk will begin selling tickets on Thursday and will be open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.Angela Val, the president and chief executive of Visit Philadelphia, a tourism marketing agency, said her organization had contacted TDF, the nonprofit that runs the TKTS booths, to propose the expansion. The agency was motivated by a concern that ticket prices were limiting audiences for local arts and culture events. “We wanted to make sure all people had access to theater,” Val said. “Everyone, no matter how much money you have, should have access to arts and culture.”More than 20 presenting organizations will offer tickets through the program, including Ensemble Arts Philly, which has three venues that host music, dance, comedy and theater performances, as well as touring Broadway shows. Also participating are the three top-tier regional theaters in the city — Arden Theater Company, Philadelphia Theater Company and Wilma Theater (the recipient of this year’s Regional Theater Tony Award) — as well as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Philadelphia Ballet and BalletX.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      At the Serpentine, Holly Herndon Taught A.I. to Sing

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      Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst are presenting their first large-scale solo museum show. It sounds gorgeous, even if its visual elements are lacking.Although it’s easy to feel alienated by the opaque processes behind artificial intelligence and fearful that the technology isn’t regulated, the artists Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst want you to know that A.I. can be beautiful.Their exhibition “The Call,” at the Serpentine Galleries in London through Feb. 2, is the first large-scale solo museum show for the artist duo, who have long been at the forefront of A.I.’s creative possibilities.Herndon — who was born in Tennessee, grew up singing in church choirs and later received a Ph.D. in music composition from Stanford — has made cutting-edge, A.I.-inflected pop music for over a decade. With Dryhurst, a British artist who is also her husband, she has branched out to make tools that help creatives monitor the use of their data online, and recently, into the visual arts.The couple’s work “xhairymutantx,” commissioned for this year’s Whitney Biennial, uses A.I. text prompts to produce an infinite series of Herndon portraits that highlight the playful nature of digital identities.The Serpentine show combines musical and visual elements. With the varied a cappella choral traditions of Britain in mind, Herndon and Dryhurst worked with diverse choirs across the country, from classical to contemporary groups of assorted sizes, to produce training data for an A.I. model. In a wall text, the artists explain that “The Call” consists of more than just the A.I.’s output. They also consider the collection of the data and the training of the machine as works of art.“We’re offering a beautiful way to make A.I.,” the artists’ statement adds. Their utopian take is that A.I. is collectively made: It learns from whatever it is exposed to and can therefore be shaped for good.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Man Behind the Legendary Donkey Kong Country Soundtracks

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      David Wise turbocharged the Super Nintendo for scores inspired by the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Prokofiev, Duran Duran and more.The initial hype about Donkey Kong Country, which was released for the Super Nintendo 30 years ago this week, was centered on its impressive 3-D-ish graphics. But the game’s legacy proved to be its soundtrack.As players led a brawny ape and a cartwheeling monkey through jungles, ancient ruins and snowscapes, they were treated to a musical smorgasbord of atmospheric tunes. The self-taught British composer David Wise, with valuable contributions from Robin Beanland and Eveline Fischer, had managed to coax a richer variety of sounds than had ever emanated from a game console.“Dave really knew the S.N.E.S. inside out, so he could push it as hard as he could to make it do things that people hadn’t heard before,” the video game composer Grant Kirkhope said. At the core of Wise’s music, though, is “melody, melody, melody.”Wise joined the studio Rare in 1985 and composed for its games, including several entries in the Donkey Kong franchise, until 2009. He has continued to work in the industry, with his latest score accompanying Nikoderiko: The Magical World.A legion of gamers cherishes the music for Donkey Kong Country and its sequel, which are a bit like the “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper” of video game music. In a recent interview, Wise unpacked the process and inspirations, musical and otherwise, behind his music for the first two Donkey Kong Country games.‘DK Island Swing’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Two Bee Gees Drummers Die Within Days

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      Colin “Smiley” Petersen, the original drummer, and Dennis Bryon, who played during the band’s disco heyday, died within four days of each other.Two drummers for the Bee Gees — one during the long-running Anglo-Australian pop group’s early days of hit-making ballads, the other during its white-hot disco superstardom — died four days apart, according to posts from a tribute band and former bandmates.Dennis Bryon, 76, the Bee Gees’ drummer starting in 1973, died on Nov. 14, according to Blue Weaver, who played in the band Amen Corner with Mr. Bryon. He announced his death on Facebook on Thursday, but gave no cause of death for Mr. Bryon.Colin “Smiley” Petersen, the band’s first professional drummer, died on Nov. 18 at the age of 78, according to Evan Webster and Sue Camilleri, who work on The Best of The Bee Gees Show, a tribute band. Mr. Petersen died from a fall, they said.Mr. Petersen, who joined the Bee Gees in 1967, played on the band’s first four albums. He started playing in the The Best of The Bee Gees Show five years ago, Mr. Webster said.Mr. Petersen played on a string of hit ballads from 1967 to 1970, including “Massachusetts,” “To Love Somebody,” “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” “I Started a Joke” and “Words.” He was also a child actor, known for his role in the 1956 film “Smiley,” which was the origin of his nickname, among a few other movies in the late ’50s.In a 2022 interview with The Strange Brew Podcast, Mr. Peterson said that the band would always create songs together in the studio.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Park Avenue Armory Will Host Yoko Ono’s ‘Wish Tree’ and Jamie xx

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      The Armory’s upcoming season also includes the world premiere of “DOOM,” a new work from the Golden Lion winner Anne Imhof.The Park Avenue Armory announced its 2025 season on Monday, which includes the North American tour debut for the musician and producer Jamie xx’s new album “In Waves” and the largest ever North American installation of the artist Yoko Ono’s “Wish Tree,” a grove of almost 100 trees that will arrive at the Armory for visitors to attach wishes to.“This season, some of the most cutting-edge artists of our time will be invited to the Armory to illuminate complex histories, contemporary society and visions of the future,” Rebecca Robertson, the founding president and executive producer of Park Avenue Armory, said in a news release.The season opens on Jan. 9 with “In Waves.” The show is a return for Jamie xx, one-third of the British electro-pop band the xx, after that group took over the Armory for 25 performances in 2014. “In Waves,” Jamie xx’s first solo album in nine years, was released this September, and will feature in the four-night residency along with some of his early solo music and songs from “In Colour” (2015).A “Wish Tree” installation in Germany. The ongoing work by Yoko Ono invites people to tie personal wishes to trees; 92 of them will be installed at the Armory.Klaus Ohlenschlaeger/Alamy“Wish Tree,” Ono’s ongoing participatory work where visitors are invited to tie personal wishes to a tree, will have 92 trees in honor of Ono’s 92nd birthday on Feb. 18. It will start on Feb. 14 and run for four days. A two-day symposium with panels and performances will celebrate Ono’s work during the installation.The Armory’s season will also include the world premiere of “DOOM,” a new durational performance piece from the cross-disciplinary artist Anne Imhof, who won the Golden Lion, the top prize, at the 2017 Venice Biennale for her installation “Faust.” The performance, which opens on March 3 and is curated by Klaus Biesenbach, will take over the Wade Thompson Drill Hall with performers, sound and scenery to explore the balance between apathy, activism and resistance.In addition to those productions, the Armory’s upcoming season includes:The North American premiere of “Constellation,” an exhibition of more than 450 prints of the photographer Diane Arbus’s work, some of which are still unpublished.“The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions,” a musical theater adaptation from the composer Philip Venables and the writer-director Ted Huffman of a cult favorite gay liberation fantasy novel, self-published by the activist Larry Mitchell.The North American premiere of “Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow,” a hybrid work from the choreographer and dancer Trajal Harrell that uses the form of a dancing runway show on a catwalk to juxtapose everyday gestures and extravagant poses with historical references, pop culture and political rhetoric. More

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      in Theater

      Broadway Shows to See This Fall: ‘Our Town,’ ‘Gypsy’ and More

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      Broadway Shows to See This Fall: ‘Our Town,’ ‘Gypsy’ and MoreA guide to every show on Broadway, including new musicals, Tony winning-dramas, quirky hits and veterans like “Hamilton” and “Chicago.”Jim Parsons, at left, as the Stage Manager in “Our Town,” which runs through Jan. 19 at the Barrymore Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMusicals to Leave You HummingCabaret“Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome” — but for real this time. With a sinuous, sensuous Adam Lambert now starring as the Emcee, Rebecca Frecknall’s darkly seductive take on the Kander and Ebb classic has acquired a much more human feel. Inside Tom Scutt’s Tony-winning immersive design of the Weimar-era Kit Kat Club, the show is newly rebalanced for the better with Auliʻi Cravalho as Sally Bowles and Calvin Leon Smith as Clifford Bradshaw, while Bebe Neuwirth as Fräulein Schneider and Steven Skybell as Herr Schultz will still charm your heart, then break it. (At the August Wilson Theater.) Read the review.The Great GatsbyEva Noblezada (“Hadestown”) stars as Daisy opposite Jeremy Jordan (“Newsies”), who plays his final performance as Gatsby on Jan. 19. This musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age novel has a book by Kait Kerrigan (“The Mad Ones”), with music by Jason Howland and lyrics by Nathan Tysen (both of “Paradise Square”). Marc Bruni (“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical”) directs. Linda Cho’s luxurious 1920s costumes won the show a Tony. (At the Broadway Theater.) Read the review.GypsyGrabbing the baton first handed off by Ethel Merman, Audra McDonald plays the formidable Momma Rose in the fifth Broadway revival of Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim’s exalted 1959 musical about a vaudeville stage mother and her daughters: June, the favorite child, and Louise, who becomes the burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Directed by George C. Wolfe, with choreography by Camille A. Brown, the cast includes Danny Burstein, Joy Woods, Jordan Tyson and Lesli Margherita. (Starts previews Nov. 21 at the Majestic Theater; opens Dec. 19.) Read more about the production.Hell’s KitchenAlicia Keys’s own coming-of-age is the inspiration for this jukebox musical stocked with her songs. With numbers including “Girl on Fire,” “Fallin’” and “Empire State of Mind,” it’s the story of a 17-year-old (Maleah Joi Moon, a newly minted Tony winner making her Broadway debut) in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, growing into an artist. Shoshana Bean (through Dec. 1) and Brandon Victor Dixon play her parents, and Kecia Lewis plays her piano teacher in a Tony-winning performance. Directed by Michael Greif, the show has a book by Kristoffer Diaz and choreography by Camille A. Brown. (At the Shubert Theater.) Read the review.Maybe Happy EndingRobot neighbors in Seoul, nearing obsolescence, tumble into odd-couple friendship in this wistfully romantic charmer of a musical comedy by Will Aronson and Hue Park, starring Darren Criss and Helen J Shen. Michael Arden (“Parade”) directs. At the Belasco Theater. Read the review.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Allee Willis Documentary Sheds Light on Songwriter for Earth, Wind & Fire and ‘Friends’

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      ‘The World According to Allee Willis’ shines a light on a musical artist whose creative spirit wasn’t limited to one genre or even to music.“I’m the world’s best-kept secret,” Allee Willis says at the start of a new documentary about her. Willis, a songwriter and artist, is being hyperbolic, but only a little: Unless you’re a music trivia hound, Willis’s remarkable career may have escaped your notice.I, for one, didn’t know until I watched “The World According to Allee Willis” (directed by Alexis Manya Spraic and in theaters starting Friday) that the same woman was a co-writer of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September,” the Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance” and the Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There for You,” better known as the “Friends” theme song. She wrote dozens more hits, too — sometimes lyrics, sometimes music — and occasionally produced them as well. She even contributed music and lyrics to the Broadway version of “The Color Purple.”It’s unfair but axiomatic that the most influential people are often the ones who fly under the radar, and that’s Willis, who died in 2019 at 72. Spraic’s approach is two-pronged. There are interviews with Willis’s many friends and collaborators, so many that I couldn’t jot them all down, but here are just a few: Lily Tomlin, Pamela Adlon, Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, the comedian Bruce Vilanch, the singer-songwriter Brenda Russell and Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman, one of Willis’s closest friends.Somewhat unexpectedly, the mogul Mark Cuban appears a lot in the film, speaking warmly and earnestly of Willis’s expansive imagination. She spent much of the 1990s, in the still-nascent days of the internet, developing a collaborative social network and story-driven interactive platform called Willisville, and Cuban was her business partner.A lot of this was captured on video by Willis, who turned on a camera as a girl in Detroit in the 1950s and filmed constantly throughout her life. That is the other prong of Spraic’s film: There is a lot of Willis’s footage, which fills in details of her life, the ups along with the downs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      6 Ambient Tracks to Transport You Someplace Else

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      Listen to Gas, Hiroshi Yoshimura and Lou Reed (yes, that Lou Reed).Wolfgang Voigt performing as Gas.Chad Batka for The New York TimesDear listeners,For several reasons, I have found myself listening to a lot of ambient music this week — even more than usual, which is already a significant amount. I have a new upstairs neighbor who seems to really like high-BPM techno, so I’ve needed to ensconce myself in a more inhabitable soundscape.As I noted last year, when I shared a previous ambient playlist, I am incredibly wary of streaming culture’s emphasis on “chill-out music,” a blanket term that dulls the kaleidoscopic differences between all sorts of ambient compositions. That puts the emphasis not on the artistry of musicians but on the kind of predictable and inoffensive user experience it can offer the listener. I am also aware, though, of the genre’s very worthy history as “functional music,” to borrow a phrase from the man who more or less invented ambient music, Brian Eno. As he told me in an interview recalling his earliest forays into “discrete music,” “The emphasis was on saying, ‘Here is a space, an atmosphere, that you can enter and leave as you wish.’”I believe it is possible to have it both ways: to turn to ambient music for its “functional” purposes while also developing an appreciation for all the varied sounds, textures and subgenres that fall under that category. And so, on today’s playlist, you’ll hear some minimalist compositions, some drone and even some ambient techno, from the likes of Hiroshi Yoshimura, Gas and Lou Reed (yes, that Lou Reed). I’ve culled all six of these tracks from albums that were either released or reissued in the past year or so, just to keep things fresh.I hope that it brings you some respite from whatever ails you — be it noisy neighbors or the usual dread — and that it also compels you to seek out more.Discretely,LindsayListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More