Culture and the Arts - ArtsBeat Blog

Oct 22 1:30 pm

Spring-Season Rockettes Show Is Reborn, With Weinstein’s Help

Madison Square Garden Entertainment announced on Wednesday that its $25 million extravaganza “Heart and Lights,” a Rockettes show that was in development for Radio City Music Hall, is being reconceived by Tony Award-winning Broadway artists with input from the producer Harvey Weinstein.

The new show, “New York Spring Spectacular,” is Madison Square Garden Entertainment’s latest attempt at a long-held goal: To create an annual springtime attraction for tourists with the drawing power of its popular “Radio City Christmas Spectacular.” The show will begin seven weeks of performances on March 12.

Mr. Weinstein, an Academy Award-winning film producer, has been a key behind-the-scenes player on the shakeup of the spring spectacular, reflecting his growing involvement in New York theater. He is close friends with James L. Dolan, executive chairman of the Madison Square Garden Company, and was among those joining Mr. Dolan at rehearsals for “Heart and Lights” last spring, when that production was initially supposed to begin performances. Mr. Weinstein and others raised concerns with Mr. Dolan that the show’s script needed more work, leading Mr. Dolan to postpone the show – less than a week before its first performance.

Mr. Weinstein is now helping to oversee the reshaping of the show, along with, among others, the Tony-winning director Diane Paulus, who was named Wednesday as co-creative director. Ms. Paulus is directing Mr. Weinstein’s coming Broadway musical, “Finding Neverland,” in which Mr. Dolan is an investor.

In a statement, Mr. Weinstein said he was looking forward to collaborating on “an experience that families from around the world will love” and that he hoped would be “another New York tradition for generations to come.”

The original creative team on “Heart and Lights” has been replaced. Its director, Linda Haberman, is out, and is also no longer artistic director of the Rockettes, after 20 years of working with the dancers and their various shows, a Madison Square Garden spokeswoman confirmed. It was not clear on Wednesday if Ms. Haberman was fired or if she resigned after “Heart and Lights” collapsed. The spokeswoman declined to comment, citing employee confidentiality, but added, “Linda’s creativity and dedication were important parts of two decades of Christmas Spectacular success, and we wish her well in her future endeavors.” Ms. Haberman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Funny How? ‘Goodfellas’ Actor Files Suit Against ‘The Simpsons’

By Dave Itzkoff

As far back as he can remember, the character actor Frank Sivero has been best known for playing gangsters, in films like “The Godfather Part II” and, most famously, in “Goodfellas,” which cast him as the mobster Frankie Carbone.

And as the real-life mobster Henry Hill could have told you, being a goodfella means nobody can mess around with you, not even a long-running animated series that may or may not be paying homage to your work.

Mr. Sivero, who evidently wants it to be known that he is not a clown and not here to amuse you, has filed a lawsuit against Fox and the creators of “The Simpsons,” saying that the character of Louie, a cartoon mafia man who occasionally appears on that show, is an appropriation of his likeness and an infringement on his right to publicity.

Court documents reported at Deadline.com show that Mr. Sivero’s suit was filed Tuesday in California Superior Court for Los Angeles County. The lawsuit states that Mr. Sivero has had contact with “The Simpsons” since 1989 (when he lived in the same Sherman Oaks apartment complex as some of the show’s writers), and that the “appearances and mannerisms” of the Louie character, who first appeared on the show in 1991, “are strongly evocative of” Mr. Sivero.

The suit asks for up to $250 million in damages and injunctive relief, considerably more than was netted in the notorious Lufthansa heist. A representative for Fox said the studio had no comment. A lawyer for Mr. Sivero did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Oct 22 12:28 pm

Plowing Deeper: A New Historical Association for the Midwest

By Jennifer Schuessler

The Midwest has long had cornfields, niceness and plenty of jokes about such by (ahem) coastal types. And now, it also has its own historical association.

The Midwestern History Association, which was officially founded at the recent convention of the Northern Great Plains History Conference in Sioux Falls, S.D., aims to give the region “a stronger voice in the historical profession,” according to a news release. It will hold an annual meeting, award three prizes for scholarship and publish a new journal, the Middle West Review.

“Unlike other regions, the Midwest hasn’t had a journal focused on its history until now,” Jon K. Lauck, a lawyer and historian in Sioux Falls and the group’s first president, said in an email. Mr. Lauck, the author of the recent book “The Lost Region: Toward a Revival of Midwestern History,” added, “We think it’s time for the Midwest to stand up for itself.”

Jon Butler, a retired Yale professor and board member of the new group who lives in Minneapolis, said that the region, with the exception of Chicago, was “as much the flyover zone in history as it is in public culture.” He added: “Or think of it another way: a book for every minor Puritan, Southern military man, and Western cowboy, while Hubert Humphrey gets a footnote.”

In a sense the last major professional group of Midwest historians, the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, was a victim of its own success. That group, founded in 1907 in Lincoln, Neb., gradually broadened its focus. In 1965 it renamed itself the Organization of American Historians, and it remains the leading scholarly group dedicated to American history.

Music Oct 22 11:09 am

Pairing Composers and Orchestras, With an Eye on Younger Audiences

By Allan Kozinn

The League of American Orchestras has always encouraged its members to champion new music, but lately it has been particularly active in establishing programs to bring composers and orchestras together. Music by the youngest generation of composers has a proven appeal to the younger audiences that orchestras are trying to reach, and as those audiences are drawn in they are finding the appeal in older contemporary (and earlier) works as well.

The league’s Music Alive: New Partnerships program, which it administers with New Music USA, is a matchmaking program of sorts. Now in its 14th year, it brings together composers and orchestras (12 each, this year) that have never worked together. Unlike many such programs, this one is not meant to expand the repertory through commissions. Instead, the program provides $7,500 grants, underwritten by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to cover weeklong residencies during which each participating orchestra will perform a work from the resident composer’s catalog.

The composers (and orchestras) receiving this year’s grants are Clarice Assad (Boston Landmarks Orchestra); Douglas J. Cuomo (Grant Park Orchestra, of Chicago); Annie Gosfield (Chautauqua Symphony); Takuma Itoh (Tucson Symphony Orchestra); Jing Jing Luo (Princeton Symphony Orchestra); Missy Mazzoli (Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra); Rick Robinson (River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, of Houston); Carl Schimmel (Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra); Laura Schwendinger (Richmond Symphony Orchestra); Derrick Spiva (Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra), Sumi Tonooka (South Dakota Symphony Orchestra) and Dan Visconti (Arkansas Symphony Orchestra).

Oct 21 3:20 pm

Celebrating 50 Years of Peter, Paul and Mary — Give or Take

By Allan Kozinn

Peter, Paul and Mary, the trio that became stars of the 1960s folk music boom, and had enduring hits with their covers of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and songs of their own like “Puff the Magic Dragon,” have assembled a three-pronged celebration of their 50th anniversary – or at least, what the surviving members, Noel Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow (Mary Travers died in 2009) are calling their 50th anniversary.

A new album, “Discovered: Live in Concert,” will include 13 songs the group performed in concert but never recorded in the studio. The recordings were made at a handful of concerts in the 1980s, and rediscovered when the group was compiling “Carry It On,” its 2004 career overview. Only one of the songs, “Mi Caballo Blanco,” was included in that set. The remaining 12 – among them, “Midnight Special,” “You Can Tell the World” and “Cactus in a Coffee Can” – are previously unissued. Rhino will release the set on Nov. 17.

Also due in November is a coffee table book, “Peter, Paul and Mary: 50 Years in Life and Song” (Imagine/Charlesbridge). And on Dec. 1, PBS will air a documentary, “50 Years With Peter, Paul and Mary,” which promises to include archival footage from the group’s appearances at Civil Rights and antiwar demonstrations.

Exactly why this fall should be regarded as the group’s 50th anniversary, however, is a mystery. The trio was formed in 1961, and released its first album, “Peter, Paul and Mary,” in 1962. That would make it closer to 54 years.

“Yeah, it’s kind of an inside joke,” Mr. Stookey explained in an email. “Do you remember the PP&M album called ‘Late Again’? We have a reputation for taking longer than expected because we’re meticulous and sensitive to each other’s reservations. We never did a thing as a trio that all three of us didn’t agree on. We finally agreed on this book – Mary in absentia, mostly, though much of her writings contributed to the text, as well as our recollections of conversations and attitudes.”

Oct 21 3:12 pm

CMJ 2014: It’s Here, With the Kills and Bombay Bicycle Club Leading the Way

By Jon Pareles

Want to feel like a college radio DJ, A&R executive, music blogger or compulsive club-hopper? That is, awash in possibilities but faced with far more imitators than innovators?

This is the week, as the annual CMJ Music Marathon returns with its plentitude — or overload — of musicians eager to be heard. While CMJ’s spring counterpart, South by Southwest, in Austin, Tex., has become a magnet for pop and hip-hop hitmakers, CMJ has fewer celebrities and more strivers, including what seems to be every band in Brooklyn (and there are plenty) and a contingent of 60 Australian acts.

CMJ’s largest club shows aren’t arena acts but college-radio choices like the primal roots-rock of the Kills, peppy pop band Bombay Bicycle Club and the reunited 1990s shoegaze band Slowdive, playing Terminal 5 tonight, Wednesday and Saturday. (The Kills will also play an undoubtedly packed Bowery Ballroom show on Thursday.)

The more immersive marathon experience is to download the CMJ app, click through unknown bands’ songs for the standouts and track down their showcases. Or to wander the clubs that are clustered on the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, with their many free daytime showcases and paid shows at night, in hopes of stumbling upon something remarkable. Jon Caramanica and I will be doing some of each over the next days, with nightly reports here and a Spotify playlist of our discoveries.

Oct 21 2:14 pm

Museum Showcases an Unseen Louis Armstrong Trove

By Allan Kozinn

The Louis Armstrong House Museum, housed in the brick building in Corona, Queens, where the great jazz trumpeter lived for the last 28 years of his life, has just opened an exhibition of Armstrong memorabilia from the expansive collection of Jack Bradley, a sailor (and sometime jazz club owner and manager) who befriended Armstrong in 1959, and amassed what is said to be the world’s largest private collection of Armstrongiana. The museum acquired the collection in 2005, but only recently finished cataloging and preserving the materials, which it has never shown before. The exhibition runs through March 29.

Mr. Bradley, whom Armstrong called “my white son,” collected everything he could find that had anything to do with the trumpeter, including letters, handwritten set lists, posters and even laundry receipts. A centerpiece of the exhibition is a Giardinelli trumpet mouthpiece, made to Armstrong’s specification. The museum has another 15 mouthpieces.

“Jack was never obnoxious about his collecting,” Ricky Riccardi, the museum’s archivist, said in an interview. “And Louis appreciated that, so he had no problem giving him things like the mouthpiece when he was no longer using it.”

Mr. Bradley, who is now 80 and lives in Cape Cod, was also an avid photographer who took close to 8,000 pictures of Armstrong. One, in the museum’s show, captures Armstrong playing along with his 1954 recording of “Trees” two weeks before his death, on July 6, 1971. Another, taken backstage before a performance in 1968, is shot from behind, but shows Armstrong, reflected in a mirror, looking intently at his trumpet. And particularly striking is a photograph, taken at a party on May 26, 1970, in which Armstrong and Miles Davis are huddled together, smiling and chatting warmly.

“They were polar opposites in most ways,” Mr. Riccardi said, “but they respected each other. Louis loved Miles’s recordings, particularly the ones he made with Gil Evans. And although Miles, in his autobiography, was critical of Louis’ showmanship, he never said a bad word about his trumpet playing.”

Tatiana Maslany to Star in New LaBute Play

By Patrick Healy

Tatiana Maslany, the star of the BBC America series “Orphan Black,” will make her New York stage debut in May opposite Tony Award nominee Thomas Sadoski (“reasons to be pretty,” “The Newsroom”) in the world premiere of Neil LaBute’s play “The Way We Get By,” Second Stage Theater announced on Tuesday.

The drama centers on two pros in the dating world who sleep together after a drunken wedding reception and then reckon with the hook-up and modern romance the next morning. The Tony nominee Leigh Silverman (“Violet”) will direct. Previews are scheduled to begin May 12.

Ms. Maslany, who plays multiple clones on the thriller “Orphan Black,” which is now filming its third season, has performed on stage in Toronto in “Dog Sees God” and “The Secret Garden,” among other shows. Mr. Sadoski, who will return to HBO next month for new episodes of “The Newsroom,” has had a long association with Mr. LaBute, whose plays include “Reasons to Be Pretty” and the recent Off Broadway satire “The Money Shot” as well as films like “In the Company of Men.”

Oct 21 12:00 pm

‘Hand to God’ to Bring Its Sock Puppet Act to Broadway

By Patrick Healy

The critically acclaimed play “Hand to God,” a dark comedy about a demonic sock puppet that wreaks havoc on relationships and faith in a small Texas town, will open on Broadway at the Booth Theater in April, the producer Kevin McCollum announced on Tuesday. The play, by Robert Askins, was performed at New York’s Ensemble Studio Theater in 2011 and then at MCC Theater last spring. The Broadway production will feature the cast from the most recent run, led by Steven Boyer in the role of a shy young man, Jason, battling with the sock puppet, Tyrone, that is fixed to his hand. “Hand to God” will begin preview performances on March 12 and open on April 7. The director is Moritz von Stuelpnagel; Mr. McCollum is a Tony Award-winning producer of the musicals “Rent,” “Avenue Q” and “In the Heights.”

“Hand to God” is a relatively unusual entry in the current Broadway theater season and the race for the 2015 Tony for best play, which thus far is dominated by new plays from Britain (“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” “The River,” “Constellations,” “The Audience” and “Wolf Hall: Parts 1 & 2”). The press release announcing “Hand to God” on Tuesday went so far as to note twice that it was a “new American play,” a point that will surely be made to Tony voters and audience members next spring. “Hand to God” is also a commercial production, which, for plays, often feature star actors or have earned major prizes (like the new play “Disgraced,” which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize). But the show does have strong reviews from its earlier run and an Obie Award-winning performance by Mr. Boyer.

A spokesman for “Hand to God” said that the play’s capitalization would be just over $3 million and that there would be changes for Broadway, both in the script and the physical production, just as there were between the Ensemble Studio and MCC Theater runs.

Oct 21 11:20 am

Bessie Awards Honor a Wide World of Dance

By Siobhan Burke

In recent years, the Bessies, or the New York Dance and Performance Awards, have become a yes-to-everything kind of institution. Yes to all dance forms, from tap to kathak, from ballet to movement that barely moves. Yes to all performers, be they stilt-walkers or starlets of contemporary dance. Yes to Megan Fairchild, the New York City Ballet principal, and Crazy Legs, the Bronx-born break dancer, presenting an award side by side. Yes to technical difficulties and no technical difficulties. Yes to free pizza for everyone after the show.

Such was the guiding philosophy on Monday at the Apollo Theater, where the Bessies, named for the beloved choreography teacher Bessie Schonberg, celebrated a 30th anniversary. The ceremony, produced with Dance/NYC, was a lot like last year’s: haphazard, fun and occasionally mystifying. Two titans in the field were honored: Arthur Mitchell, the founder of Dance Theater of Harlem, with a lifetime achievement award; and Chuck Davis, the founder of DanceAfrica, for service to the field of dance. Four very different productions, out of 12 nominees, won for outstanding production; likewise for outstanding performers.

The atmosphere, even for dance enthusiasts, was at times overwhelmingly dance-positive. But then again, on what other night can we appreciate artists as distinct as Stuart Singer and Linda Celeste Sims? Both were anointed outstanding performers, he for his dancing in John Jasperse’s “Within Between,” she for her work with a much larger enterprise, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. With its radically inclusive ethos, the Bessies prioritizes common ground over aesthetic camps, thrusting far-flung pockets of the dance world into close contact. Maybe everyone in the theater saw something new.

There was, however, at least one self-proclaimed outsider. “Good evening people of the dance: I am not one of you,” said the actress and playwright Lisa Kron, our exceptional host. Her nightlong juggling act — cue cards one hand, mic in the other — was nearly Bessie-worthy in itself.

Introductions begat introductions. Ms. Kron’s came after remarks from New York City’s first lady, Chirlane McCray (“dance is the most beautiful art”), which came after remarks from the Bessies director Lucy Sexton and her fellow producers, which came after an opening shebang by Jennifer Miller and Circus Amok. There were also performances by Megan Williams (in Mark Morris’s “Bijoux,” a 1984 Bessie winner), Michelle Dorrance, Urban Bush Women and, more informally, Mr. Davis, who danced at the center of an onstage drum circle and got the rest of us, briefly, up and moving.

The awards for outstanding production — presented by, among others,Wendy Whelan, just 48 hours after her last dance at City Ballet — went to Okwui Okpokwasili’s “Bronx Gothic,” Akram Khan’s “Desh,” Mr. Jasperse’s “Within Between” and Camille A. Brown’s “Mr. TOL E. RAncE.” The other outstanding performer awards went to Aakash Odedra of “James Brown: Get on the Good Foot” and Rebecca Serrell Cyr for her performance in Donna Uchizono’s “Fire Underground.” The duo Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly received the juried Bessie. The previously announced winners in the emerging choreographer category, Jen Rosenblit and Jessica Lang, were also honored.

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