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5 Issues to Do This Weekend

5 Things to Do This Weekend

The spring jazz program is back in full swing – most of it is still virtual, but some of it is personal. The big event on Friday is International Jazz Day, an annual UNESCO-sponsored celebration that is now taking place for the tenth time and culminating in an All-Star Global Concert that takes place at 5 p.m. Eastern Time on jazzday.com with artists like Herbie Hancock and Melissa are streamed. Aldana and Angélique Kidjo are streaming in from all over the world. (PBS stations broadcast a special documentary at 8 p.m. on International Jazz Day.)

Separately at 7 p.m., pianist Anthony Wonsey will be performing a live-streamed trio performance from the WEB Du Bois Institute of African American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst as part of an ongoing weekly YouTube series “Fire Fridays: The Cats Talk Back” from a talk by musicologist Maya Cunningham on gender roles in African American music.

Two festivals will take place in other cities on Friday and Saturday evenings: the Chicago Jazz String Summit, organized by cellist Tomeka Reid, is streamed on his website; and the first Bayfront Jazz Festival will take place in person in Miami, but will also be broadcast on live.eluv.io/bayfront-jazz-festival.
GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

The closure of the pandemic forced the Museum of the Moving Image to stop the exhibition Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey about the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey. But it will return when the museum reopens to members and certain other ticket holders on Friday and to the general public on Saturday, as well as regular film screenings open to everyone starting Friday. Starting this weekend, “2001” will be shown alternately on Friday evening on 70 millimeter film and every Sunday afternoon on digital projection.

The museum will also play Kubrick’s other features, starting with “Dr. Strangelove ”(on Sunday and May 7th) and bring you his longtime See It Big! Series that this month includes Steven Spielberg’s Kubrick project “AI Artificial Intelligence” (May 9th and 15th) from 2001.

The museum asks visitors to check its safety guidelines in advance. Information on opening times and tickets can be found at moveimage.us.
BEN KENIGSBERG

comedy

For the past four years, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has hosted the Get Salty stand-up event at the Comedy Store in West Hollywood, California, which attracts fun famous people like Sarah Silverman to raise funds to help fight the disease. Since the store has not yet fully reopened this year, the foundation has concentrated on an area that extends across the real and virtual world: the InCrowd Interactive Stage. Then the performers are surrounded by a semicircle of screens populated by viewers who are present via zoom.

Muhammad Ali was such a larger than life figure that it can be hard to imagine him as anything other than a world champion. But that’s exactly what Idris Goodwin did in And In This Corner: Cassius Clay of the Atlantic for Kids division of the Atlantic Theater Company.

Directed by Reggie D. White, this episodic audio adaptation of Goodwin’s play follows the Boxer, who was born Cassius Clay Jr., aged 12-22. It shows that Cassius (Franck Juste) was sensitive to injustice – he defeats the bully from the neighborhood – The script also tells about his internal conflict over participation in a wider struggle: the fight for civil rights.

This nuanced work, which requires reservations, can be streamed free of charge as four segments or as a 55-minute performance on the Atlantic website until May 24th. YouTube listening parties for the entire production are also held every Saturday at 10:30 am Eastern time. This is followed by a discussion with the director and the cast on Saturday and a workshop on making radio plays on May 15th.
LAUREL GRAEBER

Art museums

After Derek Chauvin’s conviction, it is difficult to find out where we are in what President Biden called our “March for Justice in America.” To provide perspective, the New York Historical Society is offering “Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow” for free on its website. The exhibition, which appeared in Society in 2018 and 19 and has toured the country since then, explores how deeply ingrained the circumstances of the murder of George Floyd – and many other violent acts like this – really are.

This online version was compiled from photos taken while Black Citizenship was at the Atlanta History Center earlier this year. With this online version, visitors can enlarge images of objects and click on panoramas for a 360-degree view. Starting with Dred Scott’s struggle for citizenship, the exhibit looks at the events that led to the creation of freedoms for black Americans, and then shows how they persevered when Jim Crow’s laws took away many of those freedoms and lifts them off the advancement and advancement of progress has long shaped the life of blacks in this nation.
MELISSA SMITH

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New Netflix Authentic Films in June 2021

New Netflix Original Movies in June 2021

It’s always exciting when Netflix announces its original films, especially when the streaming service has proven it can handle just about any genre. And if you thought you had already seen it all, just wait to see the June releases. Want a thriller with Liam Neeson trying to be a hero? With Netflix you are well prepared The ice road. Wondering what the story would be if Paul Revere looked more like RoboCop? Boom, America: the movie. As you’d expect, there are a few titles on this list that will make you cry. I don’t know about you, but the idea of ​​Kevin Hart as a widower raising the adorable Melody Hurd is tearing me apart. In front of you are all the films that you can look forward to in June. So prepare your watch parties accordingly.

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Wayne Peterson, Pulitzer Prize-Profitable Composer, Dies at 93

Wayne Peterson, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Composer, Dies at 93

Wayne Peterson, a prolific composer whose winning 1992 Pulitzer Prize sparked the debate over whether the best judges of music were the experts or the average listener, died in San Francisco on April 7th. He was 93 years old.

His son Grant confirmed the death in a hospital that he said came just seven weeks after that of Mr. Peterson’s decade-long companion, Ruth Knier.

Mr. Peterson won the Pulitzer for his composition “The Face of the Night, the Heart of Darkness”, but it was only after the 19-member Pulitzer Committee rejected the advice of the three-member music jury that Ralph Sheay’s “Concerto Fantastique” received the award.

The jury consisted of composers who had the opportunity to study the scores of the works under consideration, while the members of the committee, mainly journalists, had no particular musical expertise. The dedusting began when the jury’s recommendation to the committee only presented one piece, Mr. Shapey’s, and not the usual three candidates.

The committee returned the recommendation and requested at least one more name. When the jury responded with the work of Mr. Shapey and Mr. Peterson and indicated that Mr. Shapey’s work was the first choice, the committee awarded the award to Mr. Peterson instead. The judges responded with a sharply worded complaint, which in part said: “Such changes by a committee with no professional musical expertise, if continued, will guarantee a regrettable devaluation of this uniquely important award.”

The incident sparked considerable contemplation as to whether experts or a more general body should determine the winner of the music award, an issue the Pulitzers previously faced in other genres. The argument was puzzling because, as the New York Times music critics later wrote, it wasn’t necessarily that Mr. Peterson’s work was more listener-friendly than Mr. Shapey’s – both men wrote atonal works. Some authors suggested that it was simply the Pulitzer Committee, which reiterated its dominance over the jury.

In any event, the controversy put Mr. Peterson in an awkward position because he knew the judges who had objected to the decision and because he showed admiration for Mr. Shapey’s work.

“He would have been thrilled to finish second,” said Grant Peterson.

“There was no bad blood,” he added. “It was just kind of crap because he didn’t do it.”

Mr Peterson himself admitted that the argument left him with mixed feelings.

“I had submitted the work as a lark and I didn’t think I had any remote chance of winning at all,” he told The Times in 1992. “I’ve won other awards, but the Pulitzer’s prestige is greater than that.” that of the others. The controversy made it a little different. I just hope the Pall that cast it doesn’t jeopardize what the Pulitzer could mean to get my music into circulation. “

Grant Peterson said the episode turned out to be a plus in that regard – the award increased his father’s notoriety and earned him more lucrative jobs.

Wayne Turner Peterson was born on September 3, 1927 in Albert Lea, Minnesota. His father, Leslie, was “a victim of the Depression,” he told The Associated Press in 1992, who “jumped from one thing to another”. ;; His mother, Irma (Turner) Peterson, died when he was young, and he lived with his grandmother afterwards, his son said.

His musical skills, which he said came from his mother’s side, showed up early on.

“I was very interested in jazz piano and was a professional jazz musician from the age of 15,” he said. “I made my way through college playing jazz, three degrees from the University of Minnesota” – a bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree, all of which were earned in the 1950s.

In 1960 he became professor of music at San Francisco State University, where he taught composition for more than 30 years. He was living in San Francisco when he died.

Mr. Peterson’s career as a composer began in 1958 with the performance of his “Free Variations” by the Minnesota Orchestra. He composed for orchestras, chamber ensembles and other, sometimes unusual, groups. “And the Winds Shall Blow”, which premiered in Germany in 1994, was described as a fantasy “for saxophone quartet, wind instruments and percussion”. There was also his duo for viola and violoncello.

“The duo is a nervous, effectively written piece, filled with dark melodies that are well suited to these lower string instruments. It reaches a quick and exciting climax,” wrote Michael Kimmelman in The Times when the work was on 92nd Street in 1988 Y was listed.

Mr. Peterson felt it was important for a composer to hear the works of others across a broad spectrum.

“I don’t limit myself to a group of composers,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1991. “I try to hear everything and when I hear something I like it gets distilled in my psyche and comes out somewhere in my music. “

His love for jazz found its way into his compositions, including “The Face of the Night, the Heart of Darkness”.

“There’s a lot of syncopation that can be associated with jazz,” he said of the work, “but it’s not a jazz piece.”

It was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony in October 1991. George Perle, the chairman of the Pulitzer jury who recommended the Shapely piece, endeavored to praise Mr. Peterson’s composition despite the controversy.

“It’s absolutely worthy of a Pulitzer Prize,” he said in 1992. “But the Pulitzer Prize is supposed to be for the best job of the year, and on that occasion we felt there was one job that was more impressive.” ”

Even Mr Shapey, who died in 2002 and was known for being open-minded, came to view his missed award with a touch of humor.

“A Chicago critic called me ‘Ralph Shapey the Non-Pulitzer Prize Winner,'” he told The Times in 1996. “You have to put that on my tombstone.”

Mr. Peterson’s marriage to Harriet Christensen ended in divorce in the 1970s. In addition to his son Grant, three other sons, Alan, Craig and Drew, as well as two grandchildren survive.

Grant Peterson said that since his father’s death he had looked through his papers and marveled at his productivity – not just about his 80 or so finished compositions, but also the countless fragments.

“There is the stuff that is bound and ready and released,” he said, “but mixed in with it is the chicken scratch on yellow tablets. The guy was a music machine.”

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‘Greatest Summer season Ever’ Evaluate: Not Simply One other Music and Dance

‘Best Summer Ever’ Review: Not Just Another Song and Dance

“Best Summer Ever” is a high school musical. It’s not a “high school musical” – it’s better. Delicate and exuberant, it contains set pieces based on the model of “Footloose” and “Grease” and feels closer to these films in spirit than to the Disney Channel. This type of film vibrates with the energy of the people who made it and whose enthusiasm radiates from the screen. The actors and filmmakers seemed to have had a very good time bringing “Best Summer Ever” to life. Seeing it made me happy.

In Michael Parks Randa’s and Lauren Smitelli’s film (available upon request), Tony (Rickey Wilson Jr.) is the star quarterback who privately longs to become a ballet dancer. Sage (Shannon DeVido) is the daughter of hippies who work in the pot trade and whose nomadic lifestyle has made it difficult for her to settle down. Tony and Sage fall in love at summer camp, but when summer ends and Sage ends up in Tony’s school, the young lovers are besieged by the usual teen movie crises – the scheming cheerleader (MuMu), the soccer rival (Jacob Waltuck). and of course the big game, the outcome of which rests heavily on Tony’s reluctant shoulders.

It’s all very familiar. What’s new is the cast, largely composed of actors with a range of physical and mental disabilities. These disabilities are never mentioned, and disabilities do not play a role in the plot. The effect of this inclusivity is a sense of amazing warmth and camaraderie that is most compelling during the film’s many original musical numbers, which are staged and shot with panache. The cast has a wonderful screen presence – especially DeVido, whose turn it is as the heroine in love. Representation is important. And in “Best Summer Ever” the film comes to life.

The best summer ever
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay-TV operators.

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‘So You Assume You Can Dance’ Alums Are All over the place

'So You Think You Can Dance' Alums Are Everywhere

In the beginning, “So you think you can dance” seemed unstoppable. The “American Idol” -style reality competition met with enthusiastic audiences when it premiered in the summer of 2005. In the late 2000s, at the height of the show’s popularity, the names of the “So You Think” dancers were familiar enough to pepper the casual conversation of the audience at the dining room table. Did you call to vote for Benji or Sabra or tWitch?

A decade and a half later, “So You Think” is on shaky foundations. The show has not been on for nearly two years, and Covid forced the abandonment of season 17 at the eleventh hour last June. While the series hasn’t been canceled, production has yet to begin making another summer without it likely. “We’re holding our breath,” said Jeff Thacker, an executive producer on the show. “We’re not drowning yet.”

While “So You Think” may be pausing, the dancers haven’t slowed down. During the pandemic, they were all over the small screen, the big screen, and inevitably our phone screens.

Season four Stephen Boss, known as tWitch, is co-executive producer on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Season 6 Ariana DeBose starred in Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of “The Prom” and played Anita in Steven Spielberg’s new remake “West Side Story”. Season 13 Tate McRae released a single called “You Broke Me First,” which drove a TikTok wave to the top of the Billboard charts. Like dozens of other alums, each of these artists has hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Instagram followers.

If So You Think faces an uncertain future, it will be part of its legacy: the show helped propel dancers into the mainstream. By presenting them as individuals, it contradicted the entertainment industry’s tendency to view dancers as interchangeable, a sea of ​​blurry faces behind musicians and marquee actors. “So You Think” brought dancers into focus, paved the way for high-profile, lucrative entertainment careers – and paved the way for dance influencers on social media.

“The show was a huge platform for dancers,” said Allison Holker Boss, a season two contestant who is now a television and social media personality. (She and tWitch started dating “So You Think” after a graduation party and got married in 2013.) “That put our stories in the foreground. And there weren’t many places for that elsewhere. “

In the days leading up to So You Think, entertainment industry dancers were generally, and sometimes deliberately, anonymous. “Most musicians, when they had backup dancers, didn’t want people to pull the focus,” said Julie McDonald, founder of McDonald Selznick Associates and one of the earliest talent agents to represent dancers.

Thacker described commercial dancers of the ’90s and early’ 00s as “transparent – no name was ever attached”. Or a voice. At auditions, Thacker said, they were expected to “say nothing, do what they do, smile and get out.” Those who sought fame left the dance behind. “The dancers who wanted to be stars? You had to start studying acting, ”said McDonald.

But “So You Think”, created by “American Idol” producers Simon Fuller and Nigel Lythgoe, saw evaluation potential in these charismatic artists. True to the basic rules of reality television, not only technicians are auditioned in the show, but personalities are also cast. “The concept was originally loosely based on the musical ‘A Chorus Line’, which wasn’t all about skill. It was, ‘Who are you?’ “Said Thacker. “We didn’t want America’s best dancers, we wanted America’s favorite dancers.”

The weekly episodes are about live performances by the participants, but also about recordings of rehearsals that familiarize the mainstream audience with the demanding, often invisible work of a dancer. And the show doesn’t shy away from the dance language. Technical terminology spices up the judges’ criticism and nudges the audience to take the dancer’s craft seriously. “The talk about dance that was on prime-time television – ‘Oh, your passé, your grand jetés’ – was completely new,” said McDonald.

“So You Think” competitors also receive a crash course on self-expression. The show contains get-to-know segments that allow them to feel comfortable in front of the camera. Live tours after the season, in which the dancers perform both as actors and hosts, offer particularly intensive training courses. “We did full skits!” said the witch. “It was a 360-degree preparation not only to perform the movements, but also to present yourself as yourself.”

From its first season on, “So You Think” shaped dance influencers who were known to fans of the show for both personality and technique. But “influencer” was not yet a career option. Early season alums – so many Cassies now out of the choir – often took a whack figuring out how they fit into the dance industry. “I think a lot of them didn’t know exactly where to go,” said Thacker.

Some plowed their way back into the show and returned as choreographers, judges, or all-star partners for contestants. Some jumped into the other dance shows that were beginning to populate the air waves, from “Dancing With the Stars” to “America’s Best Dance Crew”. Many became teachers at dance congresses and took advantage of the show’s popularity with dance students.

But a few seasons after So You Think began, the rise of social media began to normalize the idea of ​​dancers as pop culture personalities and create a new realm of opportunity for the show’s standout personalities. Video and image-based social platforms were found to be particularly dance-friendly, and as YouTube and Instagram exploded, dancers everywhere became far more visible. Many “So You Think” stars built big fans and opened the door for lucrative sponsorship and business activities.

Witney Carson McAllister, a season 9 contestant who is now a pro on Dancing With the Stars, built a lifestyle brand with the help of her Instagram fan base. “Social media was a continuation of what ‘So You Think’ started: an opportunity to connect with people on a more personal level, to be a voice and personality rather than just a dancing body,” she said. “It became a place where I could start a clothing line and build a business because people knew me.”

As influencer culture continued to raise the profile of dancers, even those who had opted for a more conventional dance career began to feel the impact. Season 10 Jasmine Harper, who started dancing for Beyoncé after being spotted on “So You Think,” said She saw a new level of respect for the dancers’ work. “You will still be in the background – we all know why people are at a Beyoncé concert,” she said. “But you get a lot more support than maybe dancers in the past. You can now see fan pages on Instagram dedicated to an artist’s dancers. “

This fundamental change in the entertainment world isn’t always reflected in the wages or treatment of the average dancer. Several So You Think hits have used their clout to support other dance performers in the industry, including season five winner Jeanine Mason, who is now on the TV series Roswell, New Mexico.

“I always try to take care of the dancers on set to make sure they are compensated and given breaks, ”Mason said. Several alums cited the efforts of the Dancers Alliance, which advocates fair prices and working conditions for non-union artists. “This is the next frontier: we can enjoy and love dancers, but we also have to take care of them,” Mason said.

When the world changed around “So You Think”, the show began to feel behind the times, once ahead of its time. If what happens on Instagram and TikTok feels more relevant than what happens on network television, dancers have a path to prestige that doesn’t require undergoing the trials and humiliations of a televised dance competition.

“I think part of the magic of ‘So You Think’ in the beginning was that it gave strangers a start,” said season 12 winner Gaby Diaz. “Now the dancers who audition for the show are on social media most of the time. Those are names. “

“So You Think” remains stubbornly indifferent to the social fan base of the participants. “We have people who say, ‘Oh, you should get this dancer in the top 20, they have 16,000,422 followers,’ but we deliberately don’t let that affect our audition decisions,” Thacker said.

In recent seasons, however, the pool of auditioners has looked different, littered with established influencers. During the 2016 Next Generation season, which featured dancers ages 8 to 13, many participants arrived with big followers and long résumés despite their youth.

“‘So You Think’ definitely helped my career, but when I auditioned, I had a million followers on Instagram,” said Kida Burns, who was 14 when he won the Next Generation season. “I danced for Justin Bieber, Chris Brown, Usher.” (Burns now has 4.3 million Instagram followers, as does Missy Elliott.)

The current production limbo of “So You Think” seems ominous as some other dance shows continued during the pandemic. Although NBC recently canceled “World of Dance,” ABC just renewed “Dancing With the Stars” after kicking off a successful Covid-adapted season last fall. Fox, home of “So You Think”, ended the airing of a new reality dance series, “The Masked Dancer”, in February.

Whatever the fate of “So You Think”, both its graduates and fans are already feeling nostalgic. A few weeks ago, season seven alum tWitch and Alex Wong recreated a popular So You Think dance, Outta Your Mind, on TikTok – two influencers forged in the show’s melting pot and an 11 year old Televisions performed routine for a large audience of social followers. Tens of thousands liked and commented.

“I think audiences can feel these deep connections with So You Think dancers,” said Twitch. “Yes, they can really dance. But you also remember your “So You Think” favorites as people. “

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Hari Ziyad Black Boy Out of Time Interview | E book Assessment

Hari Ziyad Black Boy Out of Time Interview | Book Review

Black boy from the time is the debut memoir by Hari Ziyad, who is among other things editor-in-chief of Racebaitr, Lambda Literary Fellow 2021 and prolific essayist. In a word, it’s exquisite.

At the heart of the memoir is the concept of abolition, which, according to Critical Resistance, refers to “a political vision aimed at eliminating detention, policing and surveillance, and creating permanent alternatives to punishment and incarceration”. In practice it looks like living together in an actual community: a real hug of our perceived other beyond institutions that would put people in cages and out of the public eye rather than social problems like homelessness, inadequate health care and unemployment to tackle. as trumped by the abolitionist icon Angela Davis. According to Ziyad, “It all comes back to the work we do to become free.”

Ziyad writes with a clarity and strength that surpasses any recent memories, and interweaves writing about abolition and carcinoma with a rousing series of letters to her younger self as part of her inner-child work. One of 19 children in a mixed family, Ziyad was born to a Hindu Hare Krishna mother and a Muslim father in Cleveland, OH. They are black, strange, and – like too many racial children are made – grew up painfully fast. But in her memoir, Ziyad dials back the clock and turns inward. As they peel off the fetters, they reveal to the black child and adult a plethora of truths about the need for blacks’ liberation, and when given the grace to grow freely they become variable.

Carcinogenic logic is so widespread that the work of abolition goes beyond dismantling prisons and wards that wreak havoc and penetrate deep into the psyche, which becomes a place of reproductive logic of carcinogenic until we consciously unlearn it.

Ziyad patiently reveals how harmful cancer is for black people and how intrinsically punitive thinking can be, how we understand our outer and even inner life. Carcinogenic logic is so widespread that the work of abolition goes beyond dismantling prisons and wards that wreak havoc and penetrate deep into the psyche, which becomes a place of reproductive logic of carcinogenic until we consciously unlearn it. Liberation is therefore as much inner work as outer work. Like a social archaeologist, Ziyad tries to discover his true self – the inner child – who lives beneath binary thinking and what shape it as misafropedia, or “the anti-black contempt for children and childhood experienced by black youth” . They encounter places of trauma and get away with nuances and new meanings by taking care of their inner child with the care of a loving parent. “I would like to offer colonized blacks – and especially myself – a kind of road map to win back those childhoods we sacrificed,” writes Ziyad, “or which were given up for us because of misafropedia.”

The joy of Black boy from the time is in the unconditional love it exudes for all blacks and how it cares for black children’s experiences. It is in its utter surrender to freer, more daring black futures; in his mind. It lies in the calm and wisdom of its author who is the kind of cultural critic and black liberation advocate that our political moment yearns for. Hailed by Darnell L. Moore as “the black-loving art that is both shotgun and balm”, Black boy from the time is just great, to the point that the best this reviewer can do is ask you to read it and know for yourself.

In February, I sat down one on one with Ziyad – then one on one plus a live studio audience (via Google Hangouts) as part of a speaker series at Group Nine Media – to talk about it Black boy from the time and the healing work of abolition in action.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Paul Oscher, Blues Musician in Muddy Waters’s Band, Dies at 74

Paul Oscher, Blues Musician in Muddy Waters’s Band, Dies at 74

An uncle gave Paul a harmonica when he was 12, but he didn’t learn how to make the most of it until one day when he was delivering groceries after school. A customer who happened to be a blues musician overheard him trying to play “Red River Valley” and taught him the ropes.

Updated

April 26, 2021, 11:15 p.m. ET

By the age of 15 he was playing in black clubs in Brooklyn and had become part of a network of musicians in that scene. He was 17 when he was introduced to Mr. Waters one night after a Waters show at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Three years later, when Mr. Waters returned to perform in New York City and did not have a harmonica player, he invited Mr. Oscher to sit down. At the end of the show, Mr. Waters offered him a job.

For a while, Mr. Oscher lived in the basement of Mr. Waters ‘house in Chicago and shared the room with Otis Spann, the well-known Chicago blues pianist and member of Mr. Waters’ band. Mr. Oscher later said that he learned his blues timing from Mr. Spann.

He toured Europe and the United States with the band, often dressed like his bandmates in a red brocade Nehru jacket. (Mr. Waters was wearing a black suit.) When they reached the segregated south, he was usually not allowed to stay in the same hotel as his bandmates, and he remembered one day the group fell silent on the street when they saw a sign stopped by explaining, “You are entering Klan County.”

Mr. Oscher left the band in the early 1970s to pursue a solo career in New York City. Over the years he has performed with Eric Clapton, Levon Helm, T-Bone Walker, John Lee Hooker and many others.

In addition to the harmonica, he often played the piano and guitar at the same time – his harmonica in a neck stand, his guitar on his lap and one hand on the keyboard. He also played the accordion and vibraphone.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Oscher was playing in Frank’s Cocktail Lounge in Brooklyn when he met Suzan-Lori Parks, the playwright and author, and she asked him to teach her to play the harmonica. They married in 2001 and separated amicably in 2008. They later divorced but remained friends. Mr. Oscher had no immediate survivors.

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Why the 2021 Oscars Weren’t So Totally different From the Previous

Why the 2021 Oscars Weren't So Different From the Past

In the streaming era, it is difficult to find the answer. But when films are in an existential limbo, at least there are still movie stars. Perhaps the message to give them the grand goal they had hoped for was a safeguard, a memory, and a promise in equal measure. We like these people and look forward to seeing them again in better times.

Updated

April 26, 2021 at 12:32 AM ET

MORRIS Boy do i hope you’re right But it was also such a confusing night to show this off. It had this grand opening when Regina King picked up a statue and then took command, first guided by Soderbergh’s priorities for movement and vigor, then her refulgence set in to honor the scriptwriting nominees. An upcoming attraction for the capers.

But after that launch that was so fun and bragging and cinematic, the show went … to the Oscars. But even less than usual, as there wasn’t even very much television to be seen after this opening effort. The seminal excerpt from Kaluuya’s mom was wonderful, and the view of Chloé Zhao in the background of someone else’s close-up at her table after she was named best director was still stunned, shaking her head in disbelief that she actually is The Oscar winner was a fleeting high point. I just don’t know what the show wanted to know from us about the academy or the movies. It felt defensive and desperate and Hubristian celibate. No musical performances! No comedians! No clips of anyone acting!

There was no bait for anyone to be on. If you watch the Super Bowl or any debate, at least you know what it is about. You have a sense of someone’s narration. Last night was the night for some sort of MC to walk us through the basics and advocate keeping us up to date. This used to be the biggest commercial Hollywood could invent for itself. That kind of pride feels shameful now. This is partly because the industry has a lot to rethink who does what in both the C-Suites and craft guilds, thanks to this show. But it’s also because the industry continues to give itself up.

I mean, it’s eight years to the week that Steven Soderbergh gave the film’s death knell in a big speech at the San Francisco International Film Festival, at least the way he saw it. And there he was doing the academy’s custody work last night after proving himself extremely adaptable to what cinema is, to use its term, will – or will. Am I exaggerating? Are we past the point of no return when it comes to any of these distinctions? Should a Steven Soderbergh, one of our great filmmakers and the sharpest thinker of film as a philosophy, just be happy to have a job at this point?

SCOTT But what does this crisis really look like? Whatever the worries and blind spots of our jobs, you and I are people who like movies. In the 14 months since the last time we did this, I’ve liked a lot of movies, including a handful – “Nomad Land,” “Minari,” “Judas and the Black Messiah” – that took home some statues. These are not all good films; It’s also films that seem promising to me for the future of the art form, regardless of whether audiences find them on large or small screens.

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Assessment: The Brooklyn Academy Dips a Toe Again in With Dwell Skating

Review: The Brooklyn Academy Dips a Toe Back in With Live Skating

It was strange enough to see a performance in person. Try to be in a park at dusk and sit on the same stage as the performers: a sheet of ice. The public’s ice rink section was covered, but despite the mild April night, a fresh breeze was still blowing around your ankles.

On Tuesday, the Brooklyn Academy of Music presented their first live performance in more than a year with Le Patin Libre (“Free Skate” in French), a contemporary Montreal skating company. The performance at the lakeside LeFrak Center in Prospect Park even brought out Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said in a pre-performance speech, “When the cultural community comes back, all things are possible.”

That’s probably because culture is usually one of the last things to come back, but well – it’s been a long year. It was nice to see bodies moving in space. And skating is something bigger than a blade and a body: it’s the idea to fly, to fly, to resist gravity. By nature, skating is an uplifting act and art.

Due to its personal rarity, this show, a mixture of skating and dancing, had a lot to offer – maybe too much. Not every show is going to deliver transcendence, although after so much time performing live there is an expectation, good or bad; “Influences” weren’t particularly bad, but hardly euphoric.

As for the performance itself? It was fine up to a point – this ensemble, founded in 2005 by Alexandre Hamel and other skaters, has set itself the goal of making skating more inclusive and celebrating aspects that are unrelated to scoring competitions do have. (Even so, the crowd was happiest to applaud the tricks.) I love skating, especially when it’s otherworldly and hypnotic; But the Le Patin Libre program was full of starts and stops. The electronic score sometimes sounded like a thin drum machine.

“Influences” was the title of the program as well as a work from 2014 that filled the second half of the evening, often in an obvious way to examine the subject of the individual vis-à-vis the group. Vignettes focused on bullying, or the playful tension between rivals. This stand-alone work had a quality that was both expansive and predictable, as the skaters took turns at certain moments. Taylor Dilley gives his skating a sense of weight and control in the martial arts as he curled up in deep, low turns and hooked one leg behind the other. Samory Ba, tall and lanky, possessed an elegant, unmanned daring.

All performers, including Pascale Jodoin and Jasmin Boivin – the composer and musical director of the group – are credited with the choreography, some of which could have been better served by a stronger point of view. This company is big at gliding, and that’s powerful: that’s what figure skating is all about. Yet even when skating phrases reflected the intricate footwork of the dance in an interesting way, the choreography repeated itself.

And all night there were moments of stomping and knocking with skaters treating the ice like a dance floor. it doesn’t always look as innovative as it needs to feel. In a way, the short introductory pieces – no titles were given – were more succinct in how they showed the tight quality of the group. Exciting moments of bird watching, in which skaters move like a flock of birds or a school of fish, showed the momentum: deep edges, river and that gliding again.

In the last brief piece of work, Jodoin, the only woman and one of the directors of the group, led the others in a back and forth pattern that snaked gently across the expanse of ice. Eventually their space narrowed as the skaters – their arms swayed, their blades moving briskly – wound in and out of a narrow figure eight. The lights dimmed as their blades continued to scratch; Now in silhouette, the skaters rode their bodies with a powerful, muscular ease. It was nice to see, but somehow even better to feel: even though they were wearing masks, you could feel that these bodies were breathing as one.

Free skating

Until April 11th at the LeFrak Center in Lakeside, Prospect Park, Brooklyn; bam.org/influences.

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Entertainment

Why Is Misha Collins on the 2021 Oscars?

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 4: Actor and writer Misha Collins attends the Build Series to discuss the book

Image source: Getty / Gary Gershoff
Seeing Misha Collins in the wild isn’t something you are ever really prepared for, especially when it comes to the 2021 Oscars. During the ceremony on Sunday evening, the Supernatural Actor sat with Sound of metalDarius Marder, director and cowriter, while Regina King announced the nominees for the most adapted script. It turns out that Misha was there to support one of his best friends as the duo have been close together since seventh grade. In case you are wondering, it means they have been friends for over 30 years. From the theft of the scene at Darius’ wedding to his plus on the biggest night of the film, Misha is there for Darius and Darius is “proud of it” [his] Friend. “