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How Aaron Dessner Discovered His Voice (With an Help From Taylor Swift)

How Aaron Dessner Found His Voice (With an Assist From Taylor Swift)

COLUMBIA COUNTY, N.Y. — Aaron Dessner sat down at the black upright piano in his Long Pond Studio, pressed the soft pedal and played a four-note phrase that had changed his life. It was the first notes — G F E-flat F — of a music file he sent to Taylor Swift in March 2020.

Swift had been a fan of Dessner’s long-running indie-rock band, the National, and she contacted him out of the blue as the pandemic shutdown was beginning. “One night I was just sitting at dinner,” Dessner recalled, “and I got a text saying, ‘This is Taylor. Would you ever be up for collaborating remotely with me?’

“I was flattered and said, ‘Sure,’” he continued. “She said, ‘Just send anything, even the weirdest random sketch that you have,’ and I sent her a folder of stuff I’d been working on. And then a few hours later, she sent that song, ‘Cardigan.’”

“Cardigan” — which became a No. 1 hit — started the collaboration that grew into Swift’s two career-repositioning 2020 albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore.” The creative partnership didn’t end there: She wrote and sings “Renegade” for Dessner’s own indie recording project, Big Red Machine, and supplied the title for its second album, “How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?,” which arrives on Aug. 27.

“We talked a lot about, how did it actually happen that we made so many songs together in such a short period of time?” Dessner, 45, said in a conversation on his lawn, looking over the pond. “It’s kind of abnormal, and it’s hard to sustain. You have this streak going, but you don’t know when the ideas or the inspiration or the spark will extinguish.”

For Swift, Dessner’s music unlocked new ideas. “The quality that really confounded me about Aaron’s instrumental tracks is that to me, they were immediately, intensely visual,” Swift wrote in an email. “As soon as I heard the first one, I understood why he calls them ‘sketches.’ The first time I heard the track for ‘Cardigan,’ I saw high heels on cobblestones. I knew it had to be about teenage miscommunications and the loss of what could’ve been.”

She added, “I’ve always been so curious about people with synesthesia, who see colors or shapes when they hear music. The closest thing I’ve ever experienced is seeing an entire story or scene play out in my head when I hear Aaron Dessner’s instrumental tracks.”

The studio is in a converted barn a few steps from Dessner’s house near Hudson, N.Y. It’s an open room with a church-high ceiling, tall windows and a woodland view, neatly set up to record any of his instruments — guitars, keyboards, drums, percussion — whenever an idea strikes. He can open it up to let in the sounds of birds, insects, frogs or the wind in the trees. Dessner has recorded most of his music at Long Pond since making the National’s 2017 album, “Sleep Well Beast.” During the pandemic, he has kept busy there.

“For someone like me who’s traveled for 20 years, rarely with more than a month or two off completely from touring, it was good to be home for almost two years, where I’m just in this beautiful place,” he said. “I’ve made heaps more music than I had ever made before. And I think it’s allowed me to elevate or push what I was doing, and take it to different places.”

Dessner founded Big Red Machine with Justin Vernon, who records as Bon Iver and is known outside indie circles for working with Kanye West. The new album also draws on, as Dessner said, “almost everyone I’ve made a record with.” That includes his twin brother, Bryce, who is also a member of the National, along with the songwriters Robin Pecknold (of Fleet Foxes), Anaïs Mitchell (whose musical based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, “Hadestown,” will reopen on Broadway in September), Sharon Van Etten, Lisa Hannigan, Naeem, Ben Howard and others.

“Establishing and contributing to a musical community matters so much to Aaron,” Swift wrote. “He’s technically in the music ‘industry,’ but really all he wants to do is play and make music with his friends.”

Paradoxically, Big Red Machine’s sprawling collective effort grew into something deeply personal. As Dessner and the other musicians put together the songs, largely remotely, themes coalesced: childhood memories, lost innocence, struggles with mental health. And after years of working in the background — with the National and as a producer for other songwriters — Dessner has stepped forward, for a few songs, as a lead singer.

“I remember he was really nervous about having his own lead vocals on there,” Mitchell said by phone from Vermont. “And I was like, absolutely — you should do that. Especially given his work with Taylor over the last year, it felt like really nice to have people get a look behind that curtain, to get to know the person who’s behind a bunch of this stuff.”

Big Red Machine is not exactly a band. “To me it’s like a laboratory for experimentation and also a vehicle to collaborate with friends and try to grow,” Dessner said. “And also to just reconnect with the feeling of what it’s like when you first start playing music — what it’s like when you’re making stuff without really knowing what it is.”

Dessner’s musical fingerprint is a fondness for patterns: evocative little motifs that can interlock in complex ways. In the songs that the National has been releasing since its 2001 debut, they can be soothing and meditative, or they can hint at the agitation behind a pensive exterior. For Dessner’s collaborators, those little musical cells help spawn larger structures.

“I’ll catch myself in little patterns, where I get this feeling that you could build some sort of architecture out of it,” he said. “A lot of times there is something a little odd about the timing, or something I may have lifted out of a classical piece I heard. There’s a kernel, and then I start to build.”

For Dessner, there is also healing in repetition. “When I really started playing music seriously, I was going through a fairly severe depression when I was a teenager,” he said. “I wasn’t disadvantaged at all, there was nothing bad — it was brain chemistry. I found that playing music in this way is soothing to me. The rhythm and melody are in this circular way of playing. That’s when I feel the best with music. At some point the ideas started to take on odder time signatures, and there were more experimental sounds around them. But still, at the core of it is this emotional, circular musical behavior.”

Big Red Machine grew out of a fruitful misunderstanding. Dessner wanted to write a song with Vernon for “Dark Was the Night,” a 2009 all-star indie-rock album that the Dessner brothers produced for the Red Hot Organization, the nonprofit H.I.V. charity. He sent Vernon the sketch of a song he called “Big Red Machine” after his hometown baseball team, the Cincinnati Reds; Vernon, unaware of the sports reference, wrote lyrics about the human heart instead.

Dessner and Vernon went on to create and curate the Eaux Claires music festival in the mid-2010s and to assemble an idealistic music collective styled 37d03d (which reads, upside-down, as “people”). In 2018 they released the first Big Red Machine album, a gleefully experimental set of songs featuring Vernon upfront, full of cryptic lyrics and electronic effects, and they assembled a jammy live band for a handful of gigs in 2018 and 2019. (One song on the new album, “Easy to Sabotage,” was collaged together from boisterous concert improvisations, new lyrics from Naeem and complex computer processing.) Before touring evaporated in 2020, Vernon had convinced Dessner to play arenas as an opening act for Bon Iver.

Dessner had already been sketching new Big Red Machine tracks. Many of the new songs have a pastoral, rootsy tone, at times suggesting the Band, although they’re also often laced with drum-machine rhythms and stealthy electronic undercurrents. “I liked the idea of trying to make something that was more song-oriented this time, and more cohesive,” he said.

Vernon, meanwhile, wanted a less central role in Big Red Machine. “I wanted it to feel much more inclusive and representative of all the extracurricular energy that we’ve been putting in over the years, trying to make the music industry a little more communist or something,” he said. “And I got so tired of being lead singer guy, and I’m in another band. I was like, you’ve got so many connections. Let’s reach out and see what other people have feelings on these tracks. And I wanted to continue to support Aaron and honestly challenge him, frankly, to get out in front more. There are little bits and pieces that I show up and do on the record, and I obviously wrote some words and sang some tunes, but really, this is Aaron’s record.”

The songs often touch on loss and fragility. The album is bookended by two songs featuring Mitchell’s whispery soprano: “Latter Days,” which was written before the pandemic but imagines living through a disaster, and “New Auburn,” a reminiscence (set in the geography of Vernon’s Wisconsin) of childhood road trips, reflecting on when “We were too young to be unforgiven.”

One of the first songs Dessner wrote for the album was “Brycie,” which offers gratitude for the way his brother saw him through bouts of depression; it begins with folky guitars and turns into a prismatic mesh of hand-played and synthetic sounds behind Dessner’s gentle voice.

Dessner and Swift recorded “Renegade” in Los Angeles, during the week leading up to the 2021 Grammy Awards; days later, as producer and performer, they shared the award for album of the year for “Folklore” (along with the album’s other producer, Jack Antonoff.) Dessner already had a Grammy — best alternative album for the National’s “Sleep Well Beast” — but this was a much higher pop profile; lately he has been “approached by people,” he said.

“I love colliding with new people and learning from people, so it’s an exciting time,” he said. “But I also tend to be kind of shy. I like the idea that I could count my collaborators on one or two hands, to stay with this family feeling. So I’m not rushing out to work with a million people. It’s not really my personality.”

He added, “I’ve yet to make something where I’m feel like I’m trying to satisfy a commercial instinct. I don’t totally know how I would do it. I don’t know that I have the skills to do it.”

Not ready to gear up his own hit factory? He shrugged. “I guess I could move to L.A. and set that up,” he said. “But it wouldn’t end well.”

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5 Pioneering Black Ballerinas: ‘We Need to Have a Voice’

Five Pioneering Black Ballerinas: ‘We Have to Have a Voice’

Last May, adrift in a suddenly untethered world, five former ballerinas came together to form the 152nd Street Black Ballet Legacy. Every Tuesday afternoon, they logged onto Zoom from around the country to remember their time together performing with Dance Theater of Harlem, feeling that magical turn in early audiences from skepticism to awe.

Life as a pioneer, life in a pandemic: They have been friends for over half a century, and have held each other up through far harder times than this last disorienting year. When people reached for all manners of comfort, something to give purpose or a shape to the days, these five women turned to their shared past.

In their cozy, rambling weekly Zoom meetings, punctuated by peals of laughter and occasional tears, they revisited the fabulousness of their former lives. With the background of George Floyd’s murder and a pandemic disproportionately affecting the Black community, the women set their sights on tackling another injustice. They wanted to reinscribe the struggles and feats of those early years at Dance Theater of Harlem into a cultural narrative that seems so often to cast Black excellence aside.

“There’s been so much of African American history that’s been denied or pushed to the back,” said Karlya Shelton-Benjamin, 64, who first brought the idea of a legacy council to the other women. “We have to have a voice.”

They knew as young ballet students that they’d never be chosen for roles like Clara in “The Nutcracker” or Odette/Odile in “Swan Lake.” They were told by their teachers to switch to modern dance or to aim for the Alvin Ailey company if they wanted to dance professionally, regardless of whether they felt most alive en pointe.

Arthur Mitchell was like a lighthouse to the women. Mitchell, the first Black principal dancer at the New York City Ballet and a protégé of the choreographer George Balanchine, had a mission: to create a home for Black dancers to achieve heights of excellence unencumbered by ignorance or tradition. Ignited by the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he founded Dance Theater of Harlem in 1969 with Karel Shook.

Lydia Abarca-Mitchell, Gayle McKinney-Griffith and Sheila Rohan were founding dancers of his new company with McKinney-Griffith, 71, soon taking on the role of its first ballet mistress. Within the decade, Shelton-Benjamin and Marcia Sells joined as first generation dancers.

Abarca-Mitchell, 70, spent her childhood in joyless ballet classes but never saw an actual performance until she was 17 at the invitation of Mitchell, her new teacher. “I’ll never forget what Arthur did onstage” she said of his Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at New York City Ballet during a Tuesday session in January. “He made the ballet so natural. Suddenly it wasn’t just this ethereal thing anymore. I felt it in my bones.”

Marcia Sells, 61, remembered being 9 and watching with mouth agape when Abarca-Mitchell, McKinney-Griffith and Rohan performed with Dance Theater in her hometown, Cincinnati. “There in front of me were Black ballerinas,” Sells said during a video call in April. “That moment was the difference in my life. Otherwise I don’t think it would’ve been possible for me to think of a career in ballet.”

Shelton-Benjamin left her Denver ballet company, where she was the only Black dancer, turning down invitations from the Joffrey Ballet and American Ballet Theater, after reading a story about Dance Theater of Harlem in Dance magazine. Abarca-Mitchell was on that issue’s cover — the first Black woman to have that honor. At her Harlem audition, Shelton-Benjamin witnessed company members hand-dying their shoes and ribbons and tights to match the hues of their skin. Here, no traditional ballet pink would interrupt the beauty of their lines. “I had never seen a Black ballerina before, let alone a whole company,” Shelton-Benjamin, 64, said during a February Zoom meeting. “All I could think was, ‘Where have you guys been?’”

Finding one another back then, at the height of the civil rights movement, allowed them to have careers while challenging a ballet culture that had been claimed by white people. “We were suddenly ambassadors,” Abarca-Mitchell said. “And we were all in it together.”

They traveled to American cities that presented such a hostile environment that Mitchell would cancel the performance the night of, lest his company feel disrespected. But they also danced for kings and queens and presidents. In 1979, a review in The Washington Post declared their dancing to be a “purer realization of the Balanchinean ideal than anyone else’s.” Their adventures offstage were similarly electric, like the night in Manchester when Mick Jagger invited them out on the town. “We walked into the club with him and everybody just moved out of the way,” Shelton-Benjamin said.

Cultural memory can be spurious and shortsighted. Abarca-Mitchell was the first Black prima ballerina for a major company, performing works like Balanchine’s “Agon” and “Bugaku” and William Dollar’s “Le Combat” to raves. In an April Zoom session she said she first realized how left out of history she was when her daughter went online to prove to a friend that her mother was the first Black prima ballerina. But all she found was the name Misty Copeland, hailed as the first. “And my daughter was so mad. She said: ‘Where’s your name? Where’s your name?’ It was a wake-up call.”

While Abarca-Mitchell paused to wipe her eyes, Shelton-Banjamin stepped in: “I want to echo what Lydia said. There was a point where I asked the women, ‘Did it all really happen? Was I really a principal dancer?’ And Lydia told me: ‘Don’t do that! Yes, you were. We’re here to tell you, you were.”

Sells went on to a career that included serving as the dean of students at Harvard Law School, until she left this year to become the Metropolitan Opera’s first chief diversity officer. Shelton-Benjamin is now a jeweler who recently became certified in diamond grading. She, along with Abarca-Mitchell, McKinney-Griffith and Rohan, continue to coach and teach dance. They all have families, including another grandchild on the way for McKinney-Griffith, who announced the happy news to whoops on a recent call.

But they are done swallowing a mythology of firstness that excludes them, along with fellow pioneers like Katherine Dunham, Debra Austin, Raven Wilkinson, Lauren Anderson and Aesha Ash. It’s true that Misty Copeland is American Ballet Theater’s first Black female principal. It is also true that she stands on the shoulders of the founding and first generation dancers at Dance Theater. A narrative that suggests otherwise, Sells said, “Simply makes ballet history weak and small.”

Worse, it perpetuates the belief that Blackness in ballet is a one-off rather than a continuing fact. And it suggests a lonely existence for dancers like Copeland, a world absent of peers. “We could’ve been Misty’s aunties,” Abarca-Mitchell said. “I wish she was part of our sisterhood, that’s all.”

Dance Theater saved them from being the only one in a room. The work was so hard, the expectations so high, the mission so urgent, that those early days demanded a familial support system among the dancers. “Someone would take you under their wing and say, ‘You’re my daughter or sister or brother,’” McKinney-Griffith said. “The men did it also. Karlya was my little sister, and we kept that through the years.”

Like in any family, the relationships are complicated. The women speak of feeling shut out of today’s Dance Theater of Harlem. They are rarely brought in for workshops or consultations on the ballets they were taught by Mitchell. At his memorial service in 2018, they wept in the pews unacknowledged. “We’re like orphans,” Rohan said with a laugh in a Zoom session. “If the outside world neglects us, it seems all the more reason that Dance Theater of Harlem should embrace us.”

Virginia Johnson, a fellow founding member, is now the company’s artistic director. She assumed the helm in 2013 when Dance Theater returned after an eight-year hiatus caused by financial instability. “It makes me sad to think that they feel excluded,” Johnson said in a phone interview. “And it’s not because I don’t want them. It’s just because I can’t manage. I’ve probably missed some chances but it’s not like I haven’t thought about the value of what they bring to the company. They are the bodies, the soul, the spirit of Dance Theater of Harlem.”

“We all think about and love and respect what Arthur Mitchell did,” she added, “but these are the people he worked with to make this company.”

By the end of May, the five members of the 152nd Street Black Ballet Legacy were fully vaccinated. They traveled from Denver, Atlanta, Connecticut, South Jersey and, in Sells’s case, five blocks north of Dance Theater of Harlem for a joyful reunion. So much is different now at the building on 152nd Street. The old fire escape in Studio 3 where they’d catch their breath or wipe tears of frustration is gone. So are the big industrial fans in the corners of the room, replaced by central air conditioning. But they can still feel their leader all around them in the room. Crying, Abarca-Mitchell told McKinney-Griffith, “I miss Arthur.” (Though they all laugh when imagining his response to their legacy council. “I do believe he would try to control us,” Rohan said. “’What are you doing now? Why are you doing that? Let me suggest that. …’”)

The body remembers. In Studio 3, all Shelton-Benjamin had to do was hum a few notes of Balanchine’s “Serenade” and say “and” for the women to grandly sweep their right arms up. “These women help validate my worth,” Abarca-Mitchell said afterward. “I don’t want to take it for granted that people should recognize Lydia Abarca. But when I’m with them I feel like I felt back then. Important.”

Even as the world reopens and they grow busy again, they’ll carry on with their Tuesday afternoons. They want to amplify more alumni voices. They dream of launching a scholarship program for young dancers of color. This fall, they’ll host a webinar in honor of the director and choreographer Billy Wilson, whose daughter Alexis was also part of Dance Theater.

“What we have is a spiritual connection,” said Rohan, who turns 80 this year. She was 27 when she joined the company, already married and hiding from Mitchell that she was a mother of three young children for fear it get her kicked out. When she eventually confessed a year later, he got mad, insisting he would have increased her salary if he’d known she had mouths to feed.

“Arthur planted a seed in me, and all these beautiful women helped it grow,” she said. “Coming from Staten Island, I was just a country girl from the projects. My first time on a plane was to go to Europe to dance on those stages. I thanked God every day for the experience. This year, coming together again, I remembered how much it all meant to me. I didn’t have to be a star ballerina. It was enough that I was there. I was there. I was there.”

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All Her Life Research: A Downtown Dancer Finds Her Voice

All Her Life Studies: A Downtown Dancer Finds Her Voice

Leslie Cuyjet has performed with dozens of contemporary choreographers over the years, but she’s still something of a mystery. Her subtle, strong presence unassumingly grounds the stage. She has a way of revealing and receding.

But the layers are being peeled back: Lately, Cuyjet, 40, has unveiled a potent choreographic voice, excavating the solo form through video, writing and, of course, the dancing body.

“Blur,” a solo that looks at objectification and race, is set to debut on Friday at the Shed as part of its Open Call series. Cuyjet (pronounced SOO-zhay) also has a video piece, “For All Your Life Studies,” in an exhibition called “In Practice: You may go, but this will bring you back,” at SculptureCenter in Long Island City. Looking ahead, she’ll appear live on June 13 as part of the Performance Mix Festival in Manhattan and offer a virtual presentation on July 11 for the Center for Performance Research.

Earlier in May, as part of the Kitchen’s Dance and Process series, she presented “With Marion,” an elegant, complex look at identity partly inspired by Marion Cuyjet, her great-aunt, a pioneering teacher of Black ballet dancers who formed the Judimar School of Dance in Philadelphia in 1948.

“With Marion” seems to sum up Cuyjet’s approach as a choreographer, which is to bring the past into the present through writing and movement, as well as to surround herself with intimate artifacts. In this labyrinthine work of video, text and movement, she brought the image of her pandemic studio — a desk — into the space (Queenslab in Ridgewood, Queens), and operated a complex system of projections that included a photograph of her great-aunt.

It’s a feat to pull off something so conceptual and personal; Moriah Evans and Yve Laris Cohen — who curate Dance and Process, an incubator that affords choreographers the space and time to develop work — were impressed. Evans said she admired the nuances of seemingly simple gestures in the piece, as well as its “delicate shifts,” which “contain all the complexity that I think is within Leslie as a person and as a performer: the subtlety, the control, but also the anger, the rage, the freedom.”

Cuyjet’s dance lineage and her experience growing up in a middle-class Black family are complicated for her. In “With Marion,” she said she was looking at the privilege afforded by light skin. Marion “started teaching because she was kicked out of the corps in a ballet company when they found out that she was Black,” she said. “But before that, she had been successfully passing.”

Cuyjet didn’t know her great-aunt well. “When I started really getting into dance — I was maybe a preteen or a teenager — someone at a family reunion was just like, ‘You know that she’s a dancer,’” Cujyet said. “I thought she was this untouchable character. There’s something bigger brewing about celebrating her and her life and her legacy; this piece for the Kitchen felt like a start.”

As she digs deeper into how her identity both shapes and is shaped by the world, Cuyjet seems to be the kind of choreographer whose works, once unleashed, will continue to grow and morph. In the video “Life Studies,” she explores a favorite topic: Black bodies and water. Her younger self is shown swimming in a competition as well as simply basking by the pool. The children’s laughter you hear alongside splashing water is infectious, a familiar song of summer.

“That was just an expression of the privileges that I had growing up,” Cuyjet said. “I have all these home videos of us swimming in competition and enjoyment, and that’s the makeup of this piece.”

Over the years, Cuyjet has danced for many choreographers, including Kim Brandt, Jane Comfort, Niall Jones, Juliana F. May and Cynthia Oliver, her mentor. She loves to be in a process of collaboration. “Years and years of my work is embedded in Jane Comfort’s work,” she said. But “I started asking questions like, ‘What is my work going to be?’”

It then became clear to her, she said. She wanted to be the one in charge.

Cuyjet has also become more vocal on another topic: In a joint interview in March with another Black choreographer — “Leslie Cuyjet and Angie Pittman are not the same dancer” — she talks about the “shared experience of what it’s like to be the black dot on the white stage.”

Recently, Cuyjet spoke about some of her projects and practices, which weave together her life and her art. What follows are edited excerpts from that conversation.

How did “With Marion” develop?

It was completely shaped by the pandemic. I really started picking up writing to make sense of what was happening and to catalog this momentous occasion in our lifetime. I created a photograph: a collaged image of items and objects that were on and around my desk.

And that includes an image of Marion, which shows up in the work. What kind of comfort did having her so close to you during the pandemic bring?

I don’t know. She was tenacious, stubborn. I don’t know why I feel hesitant to talk about this, but I think the reason that I perform for other people is so that I don’t have to be out in front. I don’t have to use my own voice.

But that is changing. Why?

In the summer, with the movement for Black lives, I felt myself just sort of shoved in front of a microphone. And it felt really uncomfortable for me to feel like it was earned or deserved. And I think when I look to Marion — and I looked at everything that she went through for me to have this place where I am in this privilege — I feel like I have to take some of these opportunities. Now it feels like I can talk about nuance and I can talk about how my experience might be different than other Black artists.

How do you see your self as a Black woman in the contemporary dance scene?

I recently had a conversation with Angie Pittman [for Critical Correspondence, the online publication of Movement Research]. It was so monumental to talk about how, basically, we’re interchangeable. We are rarely cast in the same pieces.

This experience of being fluent in so many different dance languages and so many different postmodern and experimental forms is that it’s hard to decipher whether you are there for your virtuosity and knowledge or to check a box on somebody’s grant application. I want to feel like I’ve earned everything that I have, and I work really hard and I work all the time.

For years.

For years. It’s really isolating to be typecast. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but then there’s the other side of that, where it’s like, “Oh you’re Black, so you can give me these things.”

I want to feel free to let my freak flag fly a little bit, instead of being contained into “this is what Black art is.” And I’m definitely calling my work “Black art,” but sometimes I feel like that’s been challenged and I’ve had to defend it, and it’s just like, why? Why do I have to do this?

What is the background of your SculptureCenter video?

The piece grew out of research for a life-insurance project. My great-grandfather was the president of a Black-owned life-insurance company and was able to give my dad’s side of the family mobility and property and all these things. My mom’s first job was at the insurance company. So it really sort of secured a middle class-ness of both sides of my family.

How else has your family influenced your work?

I remember my parents [who grew up on the South Side of Chicago] telling me a childhood friend of theirs wrote this book about the way they were brought up, and it was Margo Jefferson’s “Negroland.” And I was like, Margo Jefferson was your friend? They sent me a copy and I read it, and I was floored. I changed the whole trajectory of my work. [Laughs]

Her memoir is about being a member of Chicago’s Black elite. Do you have a sense of privilege that is uncomfortable for you?

Absolutely. And it’s hard to acknowledge. And it’s so complicated when people are like: “No, but you have so much oppression. So it’s OK.” [Laughs] But this book and the way that Margo spells it out about being raised this way — it made a lot of sense to me. It’s making me understand my place in the world.

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Curtis Fuller, a Highly effective Voice on Jazz Trombone, Dies at 88

Curtis Fuller, a Powerful Voice on Jazz Trombone, Dies at 88

Curtis Fuller, a trombonist and composer whose expansive sound and powerful swing made him a driving force in post-war jazz, died on May 8 in a Detroit nursing home. He was 88 years old.

His daughter Mary Fuller confirmed the death but did not give the cause.

Mr. Fuller came to New York in the spring of 1957 and almost immediately became the leading trombonist of the hard-bop movement, which emphasized jazz’s roots in blues and gospel while delivering crisp and humble melodies.

By the end of the year he had recorded no fewer than eight albums as a leader or co-leader for the independent labels Blue Note, Prestige and Savoy.

In the same year he also appeared on saxophonist John Coltrane’s “Blue Train”, one of the most famous albums in jazz, on which Mr. Fuller developed a series of timeless solos. On the title track, which is now a jazz standard, its trombone plays a central role in carrying the bold, declarative Melody.

Mr. Fuller’s five-choir solo in “Blue Train” begins by playing the final notes of trumpeter Lee Morgan’s improvisation, as if curiously picking up an object a friend had just put down. Then he moves through a spontaneous repertoire of syncopated phrases and skillfully crafted flourishes.

In his book, Jazz From Detroit (2019), critic Mark Stryker wrote, “The excitement, authority, and construction of Fuller’s solo explain why he became a major influencer.”

Mr. Fuller was also responsible for naming “Moment’s Notice”, another now classic Coltrane composition on this album. “I made a comment,” Fuller said in a 2007 interview for the National Endowment for the Arts, recalling the scene at the Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey. ‘John, you put this music on us in no time. We have three hours to rehearse this music and we are going to record? ‘And that became the title of the song. “

Mr. Fuller carried his talent for a precisely set melody and for elegantly tracing the harmonic seams of a melody into his work as a composer. His many original pieces include “À La Mode”, “Arabia” and “Buhaina’s Delight”, all of which are now considered standards.

These three pieces found their way into the repertoire of drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Hard Bop’s flagship ensemble, of which Mr. Fuller was a core member from the early to mid-1960s. The band was arguably at its peak in those years when their membership included trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Cedar Walton, and bassist Jymie Merritt (later replaced by Reggie Workman).

“I owe Art Blakey a lot in many ways,” said Fuller. “We were all driven by the fact that he encouraged us all to write. There was no leader. “

In 2007, Mr. Fuller was named NEA Jazz Master, the country’s highest official award for a living jazz musician.

In addition to his daughter Mary, seven other children survive, Ronald, Darryl, Gerald, Dellaney, Wellington, Paul and Anthony; nine grandchildren; and 13 great-grandchildren. His first marriage to Judith Patterson ended in divorce. His second wife, Catherine Rose Driscoll, died in 2010 after 30 years of marriage.

Curtis DuBois Fuller was born on December 15, 1932 in Detroit. (His year of birth was incorrectly stated throughout his life – a discrepancy that was not resolved until after his death – in part because at 17 he had exaggerated his age by two years and could enter the world of work.)

His father John, who was from Jamaica, worked at a Ford Motor Company plant but died of tuberculosis before Curtis was born. His mother, Antoinette (Heath) Fuller, a housewife, had come north from Atlanta. She died when Curtis was 9 years old and he spent the next several years in a Jesuit orphanage.

During his mother’s lifetime, she paid for Curtis’ sister Mary to take piano lessons. He listened through the wall and learned the basics of second hand music. He showed interest in the violin at the orphanage, but became discouraged after a teacher told him it was an unsuitable instrument for blacks.

Shortly thereafter, he saw JJ Johnson, the leading trombonist of Bebop, in concert with saxophonist Illinois Jacquet, and he was fascinated by the “majestic sound” of the trombone, he said in an interview with Mr. Stryker.

“Illinois Jacquet was an act: honking and screaming, biting reeds, squeaking and such. The crowd was going to go wild, ”said Mr. Fuller. “But JJ just stood there and played and he looked like the guy who really knew what he was doing.”

He was also impressed by the local trombonist, Frank Rosolino, whom he soon heard performing and who became his teacher. He met a group of young jazz musicians in Detroit, many of whom were destined for jazz notoriety, including pianist Barry Harris and guitarist Kenny Burrell.

“It was like a network in Detroit. We generally stuck together, “he said in 2007.” There was a lot of love and real closeness. “

in the In 1953, Mr. Fuller was drafted into the army, where he joined one of the last all-black military bands, the other members of which were future stars Cannonball Adderley and Junior Mance.

After leaving the armed forces, he returned to the Detroit scene before traveling to New York in 1957 with saxophonist Yusef Lateef’s band. When Miles Davis offered him a job, he decided to stay.

Playing with Davis led to his meeting two particularly important people: Coltrane, the band’s tenor saxophonist, and Alfred Lion, a founder of Blue Note Records, who heard Mr. Fuller on stage with Davis’ band and invited him for the Record label.

As he made a name for himself as a band leader, Mr. Fuller also found work alongside celebrity musicians such as Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie and James Moody.

Holiday, who became a mentor, encouraged him to consider the range and tempo of his own voice when improvising. “When I came to New York, I always tried to impress people and play long solos as quickly as possible – lightning fast,” Fuller said in 2007. “And suddenly Billie Holiday said, ‘When you’re playing, you’re talking to me People. So learn how to edit your thing you know ‘ That I have learned. “

In 1959 Savoy released The Curtis Fuller Jazztet, a lively album that featured saxophonist and composer Benny Golson. Soon afterwards, Mr. Golson and the trumpeter Art Farmer formed their own band under the name Jazztet with Mr. Fuller as a side musician. It would be one of the epitome of the 1960s jazz ensemble, but Mr. Fuller soon moved on to other endeavors. (He and Mr. Golson remained close friends until his death.)

The untimely death of Coltrane, who was also a dear friend, and Mr. Fuller’s sister in 1967 plunged him into a depression, and he left the music business and took a job at the Chrysler Corporation in downtown Manhattan. But about a year later, Gillespie persuaded Mr. Fuller to join his band on a world tour, and he re-entered the jazz scene for good.

In the mid-1970s he spent two years in Count Basie’s orchestra and again directed his own ensembles.

In the 1990s, he survived a battle with lung cancer (although he had never smoked) and had part of a lung removed. He spent two years reinventing his trombone technique to accommodate his impaired breathing ability. He succeeded and released a number of well-received albums in the late 1990s and 2000s.

But as his health continued to deteriorate, he devoted himself more to teaching, transferring to faculty at Hartford University’s Hartt School of Music and the Kennedy Center’s Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program.

When asked in 2007 to describe the distinctive sound that had so indelibly shaped jazz, Mr. Fuller mentioned the importance of accepting one’s own identity. “I’m trying to be warm. Warm and effective, you know. And sometimes I feel cold and defective, ”he said. “This is how water runs. I am not God, I am not perfection. I’m just me “

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Entertainment

Martin Bookspan, Cultured Voice of Lincoln Heart Telecasts, Dies at 94

Martin Bookspan, Cultured Voice of Lincoln Center Telecasts, Dies at 94

Martin Bookspan, who turned a classical music childhood into a career as an announcer for the television shows “Live From Lincoln Center” and radio shows for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, died on April 29 at his Aventura home. Fla. He was 94 years old.

The cause was heart failure, said his daughter Rachel Sobel.

Mr Bookspan started violin lessons at the age of 6, but when he entered college he realized that he would never be the next Fritz Kreisler or Jascha Heifetz. After an early career behind the scenes at radio stations in Boston and New York, he established himself as a steadfast contributor to Live From Lincoln Center, the PBS show that became America’s premier source of classical music on radio television. He joined the program when it aired in 1976.

“Live From Lincoln Center” was not much different to him than radio – it was heard but not seen. He opened the show and then handed it over to presenters such as Beverly Sills, Dick Cavett or Hugh Downs.

“The camera was never on Marty,” said John Goberman, the program’s longtime executive producer. But, he added, Mr. Bookspan “was more than just the announcer. The convenient and familiar part of every show was Marty Bookspan. “

Mr. Bookspan’s voice “didn’t sound like a lion,” said Mr. Goberman. “He spoke in a very uncomplicated, friendly and talkative manner.” The Palm Beach Post, describing Mr. Bookspan’s voice after an interview in 1994, said, “Even on the phone, it’s a voice that resonates with the undiluted atmosphere of high culture, the kind of voice you get on a public Hear TV promises could drive. But it’s not so stuffy that you can’t imagine delivering your favorite team’s game after game. “

Mr Bookspan himself said: “If I have a technique, it is the sportcaster technique.”

“With sports promoters bringing the game to life, I hope I’ve brought concerts to life,” he said in 2006 as he prepared to leave Live From Lincoln Center after 30 years. “I want the audience to be engaged and love what they hear.”

By then, Live From Lincoln Center audiences were used to hearing his warm-up exercises before the concert and his withdrawals after the concert. With a well-dressed crowd in the audience and well-known actors on stage, the action had an air of glamor, but not necessarily for Mr. Bookspan. He and his microphone were sometimes installed in locker rooms and closets – even in Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, in a women’s bathroom. He was connected to the stage through his headphones and a video monitor.

Martin Bookspan was born on July 30, 1926 in Boston. His father Simon was a dry goods salesman who later switched to selling insurance. his mother Martha (Schwartz) Bookspan was a housewife. Simon Bookspan was passionate about Jewish liturgical music and took his son to hear prominent cantors.

At Harvard, Martin did not study music, but German literature. He graduated with honors in 1947.

He could also be heard on the campus radio station, where he conducted his first important interview in 1944. His guest was composer Aaron Copland, who revealed he was considering writing a piece for choreographer Martha Graham. It turned out to be the ballet “Appalachian Spring”.

In his future radio career, Mr. Bookspan interviewed more than 1,000 performers and composers, from the conductor Maurice Abravanel to the composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

After working as music director at WBMS, a classical music broadcaster in Boston, he joined the Boston Symphony staff in 1954 as radio, television and recording coordinator. In 1956 he moved to New York to become director of music recording at WQXR, then owned by the New York Times.

At WQXR he hired John Corigliano, then a young composer, as an assistant. He turned out to be a concerned boss.

Mr Corigliano called sick one summer morning. “I should have known better because Marty was so considerate that he called later that afternoon,” said Corigliano, who won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Music, in an interview. “I went to the beach. Marty called and my roommate answered the phone. Marty said, “How is John doing?” My roommate said, “Oh, he’s great. He’s on the beach. ‘

“I came in the next day. There is Marty. I approached him slowly and said, ‘I’ll never do it again.’ “

Mr. Bookspan left WQXR in 1967 and joined the ASCAP music licensing agency as the coordinator for symphony and concert activities. He later was Vice President and Director of Artists and Repertoire at Moss Music Group, an artist management agency. He was also an Associate Professor of Music at New York University.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he was an art critic for several television networks, including WABC and WPIX in New York and WNAC (now WHDH) in Boston. He hosted “The Eternal Light,” an NBC program produced with the Jewish Theological Seminary, and announced the CBS soap opera “The Guiding Light” in the 1990s and early 2000s.

He also wrote reviews of recordings for the New York Times (on open-role tapes in the 1960s and on CDs in the 1990s). He wrote several books, including “101 Masterpieces of Music and Its Composers” (1968) and, with Ross Yockey, biographies of the conductors André Previn and Zubin Mehta. He oversaw radio broadcasts for the Boston Symphony and later for the New York Philharmonic.

His wife, Janet Bookspan, died in 2008. In addition to Mrs. Sobel, a son, David, survived; another daughter, Deborah Margol; six grandchildren; and a great grandson.

Tenor Jan Peerce called Mr. Bookspan’s musical knowledge “encyclopedic,” and it served him well when he had to ad libitum.

One night in 1959 he was the announcer for a program on the Boston Symphony in which pianist Rudolf Serkin played Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2. Mr. Bookspan made his usual introduction before Serkin and conductor Charles Munch took the stage. Mr. Bookspan told The Berkshire Eagle in March that after the immersion, she said, “I did what I learned that I should never do it again: I left my booth.”

He went into the green room with Serkin, who “struck off with all his might, hit the pedals for everything they were worth, got caught up in work and didn’t notice anything else” – as Mr. Bookspan recalled in another interview to chat with Aaron Copland who was on hand for the concert.

Suddenly there was silence in Brahms’s second movement.

“I ran across the stage and up the stairs, tapping the news that there was a problem with the piano,” he told The Eagle. “I went to the microphone and puffed and puffed and said, ‘There was a problem with the piano’ and that ‘as soon as I catch my breath I’ll tell you what’s going on.'”

Mr. Bookspan spoke non-stop for more than 15 minutes until the piano was repaired and Serkin and the orchestra started playing again.

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Entertainment

Watch This Cowl of Elton John’s “Your Track” on The Voice

Watch This Cover of Elton John's "Your Song" on The Voice

In spite of The voice Since the performers are a group of highly talented singers, not every performance is given standing ovations by the judges. Nick Jonas, John Legend, Blake Shelton, and temporary team leader Kelsea Ballerini don’t stand up for anyone, but Rachel Mac and Bradley Sinclair’s cover of Elton John’s “Your Song” made them jump from their seats. Even Shelton yelled, “Finally! Finally! Standing ovations!” At the end.

Jonas had a tough decision to make when choosing Mac and Sinclair for his team, especially since Legend said both singers sounded “perfect” during the performance. Ballerini advised Jonas to pick Sinclair, but Shelton left Mac more thinking when comparing the 16-year-old to Jonas’ experience in the industry as a teenager. We do not envy who is allowed to stay! Check out the full performance above and decide who you think Jonas should have picked for himself.

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Health

Edith Prentiss, Fierce Voice for Disabled New Yorkers, Dies at 69

Edith Prentiss, Fierce Voice for Disabled New Yorkers, Dies at 69

Edith Prentiss, a fiery disabled attorney who struggled to make the city she loved more navigable for all, died on March 16 at her home in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. She was 69 years old.

The cause was cardiac arrest, said her brother Andrew Prentiss.

In 2004, the city’s taxi fleet had only three wheelchair-accessible taxis – minivans with ramps – and people like Ms. Prentiss had less than one in 4,000 chances of calling one. “They’re like unicorns,” she told the New York Times earlier this year. “You have to be clean to catch one.”

The number of vehicles available would eventually increase to 231, but it took nearly a decade and a class action lawsuit – of which Ms. Prentiss was the plaintiff – before the city’s taxi and limousine commission agreed to make the fleet 50 percent accessible by 2020. (This deadline has been postponed due to the pandemic and other issues; the fleet is now 30 percent.)

Ms. Prentiss also fought for accessibility in subways and in police stations, restaurants and public parks. And she fought on issues that did not directly concern her, such as those that could hinder people with intellectual, visual, acoustic, or other disabilities.

When the city held a hearing in 2018 on banning plastic straws, a matter close to environmentalists but not the disabled community, they made sure a group was put together and an opinion was given. There are those who cannot hold a cup the group wanted to point out, and straws are an essential tool when visiting a restaurant.

At the meeting, group after group testified in favor of the ban. But Ms. Prentiss and her colleagues were not called.

“It’s hard to miss us – most people are in wheelchairs,” said Joseph G. Rappaport, executive director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled and communications and strategy director of the Taxis for All Campaign. Prentiss was the chair, “but it went on and on and finally Edith had it. She said, “Hey, we’re here to speak. We have an opinion on this bill. ‘“The group was allowed to speak.

“She worked inside, she worked the angles, and when she had to scream, she did,” added Rappaport. “And she did well.”

She was bristle and relentless and always prepared. Woe to the city officials who failed to keep their promises or did their homework. She knew up to an inch how long a ramp was and how high a curb should be cut. She drove her motorized wheelchair while she spoke with tremendous confidence and sometimes a little deliberate recklessness; She wasn’t overwhelmed with riding the toes of anyone in her way.

Among the many New York officials who made statements about Ms. Prentiss’s death were Gale Brewer, president of Manhattan District, and, in a joint statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Victor Calise, mayor’s commissioner for people with disabilities.

In May, Ms. Prentiss will be inducted into the New York State Hall of Fame for Disability Rights, and Mr. Calise will appear in her place at the virtual ceremony.

“She was brilliant,” Ms. Brewer said in a telephone interview. “She didn’t take any prisoners. She skipped the finer points, but her heart was so generous. “

Edith Mary Prentiss was born on February 1, 1952 in Central Islip, NY, on Long Island. She was one of six children (and the only daughter) of electrician Robert Prentiss and social worker Patricia (Greenwood) Prentiss.

Edith was an asthmatic and later a diabetic. She started using a wheelchair when her asthma became severe when she was in her late 40s.

After graduating from Stony Brook University on Long Island with a degree in sociology, she attended the College of Art and Science at Miami University, Ohio.

Early in her career, Ms. Prentiss was an outreach clerk for ARC XVI Fort Washington, a senior services center. She worked at the Port Authority’s bus station, doing blood pressure tests, and helping elderly people apply for city services and other benefits. She later worked with Holocaust survivors. Fern Hertzberg, the executive director of ARC, said Ms. Prentiss’ last job before she retired around 2006 was at a physical therapy center in her neighborhood.

Ms. Prentiss was president of the 504 Democratic Club, which focuses on disability rights, and has held positions with many other interest groups.

She was not only known for her strong arms. Years ago, Susan Scheer, now the executive director of the Institute for Career Development, a working and training group for the disabled, was a government official in New York City, and she met Ms. Prentiss the usual way: being yelled at in hearings. But when Ms. Scheer, who suffers from spina bifida, started using a wheelchair about a decade ago, she called Ms. Prentiss for help. She realized she had no idea how to navigate the bus from her East Village apartment to her town hall job.

“Don’t worry,” she remembered Ms. Prentiss. “I am on the way.” (It took a while, with the usual obstacles like broken subway elevators.)

Once there, Ms. Prentiss led Ms. Scheer out of her building and through the growl of traffic on 14th Street, blocking the vehicles that threatened her as she trained Ms. Scheer through her first bus launch which was rocky. As she ping-pong down the aisle, she ran over the driver’s toes. “Not your problem,” Mrs. Prentiss called from behind her.

Ms. Prentiss then instructed the less enthusiastic driver to secure Ms. Scheer’s chair (the drivers are not always diligent at this step). And when the passengers groaned and rolled their eyes, said Ms. Scheer, Ms. Prentiss stared at them and announced: “We’re learning here, folks. Let’s be patient. “

On her extensive travels, her brother Andrew said, Ms. Prentiss has had many road accidents and was hit by numerous vehicles, including taxis, a city bus, and a FedEx truck. She was often in the emergency room, but if there was a community board meeting or hearing in town, she made sure to call from the hospital.

In addition to her brother Andrew, her other brothers Michael, Robert Anthony, William John and David Neil survive.

In early January, Ms. Prentiss received her first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at the Fort Washington Armory. Needless to say, she had some ailments when she told Ms. Hertzberg: The pens used to fill out the health questionnaire were known as golf pens and were too small for people with certain manual disabilities. The writing on the questionnaire wasn’t big enough. And the chairs in the waiting area after the vaccination didn’t have arms that many people can use to stand up.

She called the hospital that administered the program there – and Ms. Hertzberg said you can be sure that it would not take long to fix the problems.

For the past three years, photographer, writer and filmmaker Arlene Schulman has been working on a documentary entitled “Edith Prentiss: Hell on Wheels,” a title that originally addressed the subject. She didn’t think it was strong enough.

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Business

Albor Ruiz, a Journalistic Voice for Latinos, Is Lifeless at 80

Albor Ruiz, a Journalistic Voice for Latinos, Is Dead at 80

Albor Ruiz, a well-known Cuban journalist whose columns campaigned for Latino immigrants for The Daily News, El Diario and Al Dia News and demanded that the United States lift its long-standing trade embargo on his homeland, died on January 8 in Homestead, Florida He was 80 years old.

His sister, Enid Ruiz, said the cause was pneumonia.

Mr. Ruiz reached his largest readership at The Daily News in New York, where he was an editor for 23 years. the editor of his short-lived bilingual spin-off El Daily News; and a columnist who wrote with passion on immigration, politics, education, housing, art, literature and racism.

Mainly focused on the Queens borough and its vast range of nationalities, Mr. Ruiz wrote often about Latinos. But he also described people from other backgrounds, like the four Polish immigrants who were killed in a fire in an illegal apartment in the Maspeth area of ​​the district – reminding him of having fled illegally with seven friends in a small apartment living in Miami, Cuba in 1961 – and “accented people who speak loudly these days,” like Pauline Chu, a Sino-American woman who unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the city council in 1997.

People with “myriad accents,” he added, “added music to the sounds of New York.”

Sandra Levinson, the executive director of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York, said that Mr. Ruiz “cared about being an immigrant and identifying with everyone”.

Mr. Ruiz’s passion and concern for Cuba remained a foundation of his work. He wrote with cautious optimism in 2009 when President Barack Obama allowed Cuban Americans to visit them as often as they wanted. However, he criticized President Obama and Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for failing to end the 1962 embargo imposed by President John F. Kennedy.

Mr. Ruiz has returned to his homeland several times. In 2000, he reported on the intense battle between Cuba and the United States over custody of Elián González, who fled Cuba at the end of November 1999 as a 5-year-old boy with his mother who drowned on the way to Florida. Over the next seven months, Elián became the focus of dramatic clashes between the governments of the two countries and his relatives in Cuba and Miami.

Shortly after Elián’s return to Cuba in the summer of 2000, Mr. Ruiz described his personal connection with the boy he had campaigned for to retreat to Cuba. They were born in the same coastal town, Cardenas, and attended the same school.

“For the journalist who always tries to keep his distance from his topics and to report as objectively as possible,” he wrote of Cardenas, “there are still stories that play their emotional strings powerfully and sometimes make wonderfully happy music, sometimes terrible sad melodies. For me, the Elián González saga is one of those stories. “

Albor Ruiz was born in Cardenas on November 27, 1940. His father Ricardo ran a grocery store and his mother Micaela (Salazar) Ruiz worked there.

At first, Albor was satisfied with the Fidel Castro revolution. However, his political outlook changed in 1961 when his father was sentenced to five years in prison on unsubstantiated charges. Albor’s subsequent anti-Castro activities, which sentenced him to death in absentia, resulted in him and two friends escaping Havana in a 14-foot boat in November 1961, a 12-hour journey.

About a year later, Mr. Ruiz’s two sisters and two brothers came to see him in a rented house in Miami. “He met us at the airport and bought us everything we needed,” said Enid Ruiz in a telephone interview. “Even at 20 or 21 he was so responsible.”

Her parents joined her after her father’s term ended in Miami.

Mr. Ruiz graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1969 and earned a master’s degree in philosophy from the school a year later.

For the next decade, he taught English as a second language in Manhattan, philosophy in Puerto Rico and Spanish at Lehman College in the Bronx. He was also the manager of a bookstore and publisher specializing in Latin American books.

And he was part of a Miami-based group of Cuban exiles, the 75-member committee that helped negotiate and process the release of 3,000 political prisoners from Cuba in 1978.

In 1985 he moved to the Spanish-language newspaper El Diario, where he worked as an editor, columnist and news editor. He also served as the editor of two Hispanic magazines from 1990 to 1993 before joining The Daily News as an editor. After two years he was named editor of the El Daily News.

“It was very exciting,” said Maite Junco, the editor of El Daily News in the metropolis, over the phone. “That big New York newspaper put this paper out. It was very big for the Latino journalist community. ”

However, due to limited circulation and distribution problems, the paper was closed after five months.

After it closed, Mr Ruiz told the New York Times, “We feel – and I speak for the editorial staff – that we did our job and I think in that sense we don’t regret it.”

While at The Daily News, Mr. Ruiz developed a reputation as a newsroom mentor.

“Albor was always there and believed in me and told me I was a great reporter, often when I needed to hear it most,” Ralph Ortega, a former reporter for the Daily News, said over the phone.

Mr Ruiz remained on The News’ staff until 2013 when he was fired, but worked as a freelance columnist until 2016 when he was fired. He then began writing columns for Al Dia News, a weekly magazine, and continued through November.

He was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in 2003.

In addition to his sister Enid, another sister, Lidice Lima, and his brothers Ricardo and Elián survive Mr. Ruiz.

Mr. Ruiz was also a poet. His first collection, “Por Si Muero Mañana” (“In Case I Die Tomorrow”), was published in 2019. In the title poem he reflected on his love for Cuba – where his ashes are strewn – and concluded:

Back to the ground, Cuban country
I am a foreigner and she calls me
Everyone knows that Cuba claims me
In case I die tomorrow

How translated it says:

Back to the ground, Cuban country
I am a foreigner and she calls me.
Everyone knows that Cuba claims me.
In case I die tomorrow.

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Health

As Pandemic Rages, Well being Care Unions Discover a Voice

As Pandemic Rages, Health Care Unions Find a Voice

Despite the decade-long decline of the labor movement and the low number of unionized nurses, labor officials have used the effects of the pandemic to organize new chapters and contract negotiations for better terms and benefits. National Nurses organized seven new negotiating units last year, compared to four in 2019. The SEIU also said interest has increased.

Nurses from various unions across the country have participated in dozens of strikes and protests. National Nurses held a “day of action” Wednesday, with demonstrations in more than a dozen states and in Washington, DC, as negotiations began in hospitals owned by major systems like HCA, Sutter Health and CommonSpirit Health.

Hospitals claim that unions make public health policy during a public health emergency, saying they have no choice but to ask more of their workers. “We are in a moment of crisis that we have never seen before and we need flexibility to care for patients,” said Jan Emerson-Shea, a spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association.

At the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago, the death of two nurses from the virus helped staff strike for the first time last fall, said Paul Pater, emergency room nurse and union representative for the Illinois Nurses Association. “People really took it to heart, and it really despised the current administration at the hospital.”

In their most recent contract, the nurses there have been given provisions to ensure the hospital hires more staff and provides adequate protective equipment, Father said. “To be honest, we have only made great strides in protecting our employees.”

The hospital did not respond to requests for comment.

Some nurses remain very skeptical of union efforts, and even those who advocate an organization recognize that their options have serious limits. “I’m not sure the union is enough to get us this far,” said Mrs. McIntosh, the riverside nurse.

Many healthcare workers view vaccines as the beginning of the end of the pandemic. But large numbers – especially those who work in nursing homes and outside hospitals and tend to be more reluctant to give vaccines – refuse to be vaccinated. During a crisis that disproportionately threatens health workers with color, a recent analysis found they are receiving vaccinations well below those of their white counterparts.

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Entertainment

Pixar’s ‘Soul’ Has a Black Hero. In Denmark, a White Actor Dubs the Voice.

Pixar’s ‘Soul’ Has a Black Hero. In Denmark, a White Actor Dubs the Voice.

COPENHAGEN – Like most of their peers around the world, Danish film critics first hailed “Soul,” Pixar’s first animated feature film that enthusiastically focused on black characters and African American culture, and praised the sensitive, joyful portrayal of a jazz musician on a quest for one meaningful life.

The film has been described as “a miracle” by one reviewer in Denmark and “beautiful and life-giving” by another.

What the Danish press, by and large, initially failed to focus on was the race of the characters. However, that changed after the film was released on December 25th, when the knowledge spread that the Danish-language version had been dubbed mainly by white actors. This is also the case in many other European-language versions of “Soul”.

While the movie’s voice-over casting is barely public knowledge in most countries, in Portugal more than 17,000 have signed a petition asking Pixar to redesign the local edition with color cast members. “This film is not just another film, and representation is important,” the petition said.

Joe Gardner, the main character in “Soul”, is Pixar’s first black protagonist. The studio took steps to accurately portray African American culture by hiring Kemp Powers as co-director and establishing a “cultural trust” to ensure the authenticity of the story. Actor Jamie Foxx, who voices Joe in the English-language original, told the New York Times: “Playing the first black lead in a Pixar movie feels like a blessing.” (To make matters worse, due to various plot machinations, Joe is voiced by Tina Fey for a decent portion of the film, a decision that has generated some criticism.)

In the Danish version, Joe is voiced by Nikolaj Lie Kaas, who is white. When the national newspaper Berlingske interviewed scholars and activists who expressed their disappointment with the fact that the casting was an example of structural racism, a heated controversy erupted which led Lie Kaas to issue an explanation as to why he was accepted the role.

“My position in relation to any job is very simple,” he wrote on Facebook. “Let the man or woman who can do the job the best they can get the job.”

Asta Selloane Sekamane, one of the activists who criticized the casting in the Berlingske article, said in an interview that no one could say there wasn’t enough black talent to star because color actors were hired to cast some of the votes express smaller parts. “It can’t be the constant excuse, this idea that we can’t find people who meet our standards,” she added. “It’s an invisible bar that connects qualification with white.”

Mira Skadegard, a professor at Aalborg University in Denmark who studies discrimination and inequality, said resistance to allegations of structural racism was not surprising. “In Denmark we have a long history of denial about racism and a deep investment in the ideal of equality,” she said.

“We don’t really see this as a criticism of institutions and structures. We see it as a criticism of who we are, ”she added.

In Denmark and Portugal, dubbing is generally reserved for animation and children’s programs. In other European countries, including France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, most mainstream foreign films are dubbed and the practice is viewed as an art in its own right – one based on practitioners’ ability to be inconspicuous.

“The best dubbing should go completely undetected,” said Juan Logar, a leading Spanish dubbing director and voice actor.

“My job is to find the voice that best fits the original,” said Logar. “Black, white, Asian, it doesn’t matter.”

The German voice actor Charles Rettinghaus expressed a similar feeling. In his 40-year career, he has been the voice of actors such as Jean-Claude Van Damme and Javier Bardem, but he said he feels a special connection with Jamie Foxx, who he has featured in more than 20 films, including the German version of “soul”.

Despite being white, Rettinghaus said he didn’t feel compelled to abstain from any black roles, adding that the same opportunities should apply to actors of all races. “It doesn’t matter if you’re black, you should and are allowed to synchronize everything,” he said. “Why shouldn’t you play a white actor or an Indian or an Asian?”

Kaze Uzumaki, a black colleague from Rettinghaus, said it was more complicated. Uzumaki names the character of Paul in “Soul” and has lent his voice to the German versions of dozens of other American films and TV series. Almost without exception, his roles were originally played by color actors.

“I really didn’t like it at first,” he said. “But I thought I would feel more comfortable doing the role than many other white colleagues who don’t have a good command of the English language and can’t really tell what a black person sounds like.”

Uzumaki said he called color doctors on hospital shows only to learn from the director that he sounded “too educated.”

“They don’t even realize that they are racist,” said Uzumaki. “But every time a director says something like, ‘No, you sound too polished. You know how to talk, right? ‘I feel like I’ve been hit in the face with a stick. “

Discrimination is often double-edged. Ivo Chundro, a Dutch color actor who named the role of Paul in “Soul” for distribution in the Netherlands, said: “The directors will only cast white actors for white parts and tell the color actors: ‘No, your voice is not’ . t know enough. ‘”

Some directors say demographics limit choices. “We don’t have a second generation of immigrants in Spain,” said Logar. “Except for a few very young children, there aren’t many black actors born here who speak Spanish without an accent.”

Color actors like Chundro and Uzumaki claim that these directors just don’t look too closely. But there are signs that things are gradually changing. In 2007 a voice actor in France told actress Yasmine Modestine that her voice was wrong for a role because she was a mixed race. Following her complaint, the French Equal Opportunities Commission examined the dubbing industry as a whole and found a culture of prejudice and stereotypes.

Since then, the possibilities for voice actors of color have expanded there. Fily Keita, who voiced Lupita Nyong’o in the French-language version of “Black Panther”, said that she didn’t feel held back as a black actor working in the industry. She has also cast roles that were originally played by white actresses such as Amanda Seyfried and Jamie-Lynn Sigler.

“I love to dub because it’s a space of freedom,” she said. “Where you are not limited by your looks.”

Chundro, the Dutch actor, said the Black Lives Matter movement was starting to shift the conversation around race and representation in the Netherlands. He cited a demonstration in Amsterdam in June to open eyes to ongoing racism.

“I used to have a lot of discussions about racism that people just didn’t understand,” said Chundro. But the protest “was like a bandage torn from a wound and it’s been a lot easier to talk about since then,” he added.

With that greater awareness, there are more possibilities, he said. “There’s more work out there and I’m getting a lot more busy.”

Sekamane, the Danish activist, also attributed changes in attitudes to the movement. “I’m 30 years old and all my life I’ve been told that racism is on my mind,” she said. “It wasn’t until last year that the conversation changed thanks to Black Lives Matter.”