logo
Indie rock band surprises young patients with mini-concert at Mass. hospital

Indie rock band surprises young patients with mini-concert at Mass. hospital

Yahoo5 days ago
After playing the Newport Folk Festival this past weekend, Mt. Joy made a pitstop in Boston to perform for young hospital patients.
The indie rock band surprised patients, families and staff at Mass General Brigham for Children with a miniature concert on Monday evening, July 28.
The band — consisting of vocalist Matt Quinn, guitarist Sam Cooper, drummer Sotiris Eliopoulos, keyboardist Jackie Miclau and bassist Michael Byrnes — played several songs including 'Highway Queen.'
The visit was made possible by the nonprofit Family Reach. The organization works with Mass General Cancer Center to support patients facing the financial challenges of cancer treatment.
More boston
Harvard hands over employee ID verification info after Trump subpoena
Revere appoints interim chief to full-time position; first female chief in county
Mass. Reps. Pressley, Lynch and Moulton lead call for end to trash strike
Harvard is open to paying $500 million to settle with Trump admin, NYT reports
More than 2K homes planned as part of massive development near Alewife
Read the original article on MassLive.
Solve the daily Crossword
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Tiler Peck Knows Jerome Robbins, and Knows What She Wants
Tiler Peck Knows Jerome Robbins, and Knows What She Wants

New York Times

time2 minutes ago

  • New York Times

Tiler Peck Knows Jerome Robbins, and Knows What She Wants

Tiler Peck is the kind of ballerina who makes dancing look easy. Known for her musicality, her virtuosity, her incisive technique and her spirit — guileless and wise, opinionated and sharp — she has been a sparkling principal at New York City Ballet since 2009. But early on she encountered a bump in the road. She was young — 17 or 18 — and cast as the woman in Pink in Jerome Robbins's ballet 'Dances at a Gathering,' set to Chopin. Her debut seemed to go well. She performed the right steps. And yet she wasn't ready for it. 'I didn't understand the simplicity of the ballet,' she said. 'So much of the Robbins work is understated. You really have to dig deeper into who you are as a person and bring that to the role.' That was one of the reasons she said yes to overseeing a Robbins festival, a presentation this month by the Joyce Theater Foundation initiated by the Robbins Rights Trust. His ballets, she said, taught her much about what it means to be a ballerina. Just because a dancer can fly, it doesn't mean that's all she can do. Peck can just walk. Simply and to great effect. For 'Ballet Festival: Jerome Robbins,' Aug. 12-17, Peck is giving a group of top-tier dancers the chance to find out more about themselves, too. Handpicked by Peck from City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, the Paris Opera Ballet and the Royal Ballet, these dancers won't be meeting in yet another star showcase or gala setting, but sharing the stage in a serious way. 'I wanted it to not only be something exciting for the audience, but I wanted it to be exciting for the dancers involved, selfishly,' Peck said, in a video interview from London, where she was performing in the musical 'Little Dancer.' She added, 'I wanted it to be growing experiences for all of us.' As far as the repertory is concerned, Peck worked with the trust — mainly with Jean-Pierre Frohlich, who is also a repertory director at City Ballet who assisted Robbins and stages his works. 'She knows what she wants and she knows what she likes,' Frohlich said. 'And that's really important. Plus, she has taste.' A festival highlight is Peck's debut in 'A Suite of Dances,' a solo created for Mikhail Baryshnikov. She's the first woman to dance the role. Two years ago, Peck asked Frohlich if she could learn the part. (She wasn't the first woman to ask.) The answer, then, was clear: no. It was reserved for male dancers. But now the trust has shifted its thinking. Casting at companies has become more open. At Pacific Northwest Ballet, Ashton Edwards, a nonbinary dancer, performs male and female roles. And in contemporary ballets, men and women have been known to switch parts, like the lead couple in 'The Times Are Racing' by Justin Peck. 'If we're going to do it, it should be now,' Frohlich said of 'A Suite of Dances.' And it's important to do it while the people who worked with Robbins are still here to coach and to supervise. Frohlich was in the studio when it was created. 'If it works, it works,' he said. 'If it doesn't work, it might not happen again. So we decided to go for it.' After spending time in the studio with Peck, he's feeling optimistic. Her femininity, he said, adds a different dynamic. Robbins choreographed 'Suite,' in which a solo dancer and cellist perform as partners, like an impromptu conversation, in 1994. While the ballet is difficult and an endurance test, it isn't necessarily gendered. 'It's funny because J.P., the first day he's teaching me, he's like, 'OK, so we're going to have to change some things,' and I said, 'Well, can I try?'' Peck said. 'And I'm doing all the same steps. I didn't want to get offered this and fix it! Literally, I want to do the part. That's what's important to me.' Peck's early jazz training has made it possible for her to execute the steps. She can perform as effortlessly in a flat slipper as a pointe shoe. 'If I didn't have my jazz training, I don't know if, honestly, I would be able to do the hops in second the way I can do them,' Peck said, referring to a challenging sequence of à la seconde turns. 'Also, it's very jumpy. And clearly I'm not able to jump as high as a male. But what you have to remember is when this was actually made on Misha, he was much older. It was in his later part of his career.' Peck is determined to dance the role as it was choreographed. 'I never want to get anything because I'm a female,' she said. 'I want to do it because I am the right person for it.' Frohlich has found the rehearsal process with Peck to be fascinating. 'I think if anyone is the one to do it, it's her,' he said. 'Her training and her musicality and her sensitivity and her understanding of Jerry. How you cannot force anything. For this ballet, it's like you're in a studio by yourself, listening to the music with your choreographer, and you're trying out steps.' In selecting repertory for the Joyce, a more intimate setting than Lincoln Center, Peck was constricted by music choices. 'It really was, 'Here are the ballets that we can do with a quartet, a piano' — that kind of thing — and I was given a list,' she said. 'They were pushing certain ballets, and I was like, 'There's a reason they don't go. I'm not going to put them on just because they haven't gone in a while.'' Peck may have been only 10 when Jerome Robbins died in 1998, but she knows her way around his dances. And she has an eye for who should interpret them and how that will advance their dancing in the future. As a choreographer, too — she will create her second work for City Ballet next year — she sees the bigger picture. She thinks like an artistic director. The Robbins festival is an extension of that. One ballet she is presenting, 'Rondo,' an elegant, subdued duet, was on the list and is 'one of the more interesting ballets,' she said. 'If you have two very interesting people, then the work is just going to be lifted even more.' Making her debut in 'Rondo' opposite Mira Nadon of City Ballet, is the American Ballet Theater principal Chloe Misseldine, who is new to Robbins. 'It's a crash course,' she said. 'I've never danced anything like it.' And as Peck said, 'Who doesn't want to see Mira and Chloe dance side by side?' A lesser-seen ballet that Peck wanted to bring back was 'Four Bagatelles,' which she danced years ago and thought would be a wonderful challenge for Emma Von Enck and David Gabriel, two gifted dancers at City Ballet. 'I found the choreography very different for Robbins, with some really interesting timing things, and it's very hard,' Peck said. 'It is the perfect time in their careers to tackle something like this. And the partnering is quite hard even though it doesn't look it. So it'll be good for David because it will help get him there.' For the trio 'Concertino,' she selected Dominika Afanasenkov, a rising corps de ballet member at City Ballet, as the female lead. 'They've pushed her a little bit at City Ballet, but I'm like, you need to keep it going to nurture that,' Peck said. 'You can't just give her one thing and then not give her something for so long. You have to keep building. I really wanted her to lead a ballet and keep going in that direction.' When the trust suggested another dancer, Peck recalled that she said: ''No, I really want Dominika. Is that OK?' And they were like, 'OK.' I said, 'Great.'' Peck is also a longtime fan of Cassandra Trenary, until last month a Ballet Theater principal, who will make her debut in 'Other Dances' with Roman Mejia just days before she joins Vienna State Opera. Trenary is thrilled. She's been wanting to learn 'Other Dances' for as long as she can remember. 'It's one of those pas de deux that is just dance if you can really find and capture that feeling of spontaneity and freedom,' she said. 'And of course it takes an insane amount of work to get to that point, and I don't expect to find all of that in the first go, but it's just a beautiful ballet. It's one of those pieces that I put on a pedestal and so I'm honored.' Peck is also proud that 'Dances at a Gathering,' the ballet that started her own transformation as a dancer, will be part of the festival. Normally it's an hour; following the model of a previous Robbins staging, she will present an excerpt with four of the five couples. Cast-wise, it wasn't bigger than some of the other ballets put forth as possibilities by the trust, but at first the answer was no. 'I said: Why? I don't understand,' she said. 'We are going to show these ballets in this intimate setting. We need to lean into that and not try to pretend we're just going to do pas de deux and trios. That's not interesting to me.' And it was never her vision. 'The point of this was to bring people together, to experience these ballets together,' she said. 'And so I didn't want it to look like a gala. I wanted it to look like a festival.'

Cannonball with Wesley Morris: Beyoncé Isn't Giving Up on America
Cannonball with Wesley Morris: Beyoncé Isn't Giving Up on America

New York Times

time2 minutes ago

  • New York Times

Cannonball with Wesley Morris: Beyoncé Isn't Giving Up on America

Listen to and watch 'Cannonball': Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadio Hosted by Wesley Morris Featuring Salamishah Tillet Produced by Elyssa DudleyJohn WhiteJanelle Anderson and Austin Mitchell Edited by Lisa Tobin Engineered by Daniel Ramirez Wesley went to the final stop of the tour. He talks through what he saw — the genre of it all, and the quietly powerful politics — with Salamishah Tillet, Times contributing critic and the professor behind an entire class about Beyoncé. Cannonball is hosted by Wesley Morris and produced by Elyssa Dudley, John White, Janelle Anderson and Austin Mitchell. The show is edited by Lisa Tobin. The show is engineered by Daniel Ramirez and recorded by Maddy Masiello, Kyle Grandillo and Nick Pitman. It features original music by Dan Powell and Diane Wong. Our theme music is by Justin Ellington. Our video team is Brooke Minters and Felice Leon. This episode was edited by Amy Marino and Pat Gunther. It was filmed by Alfredo Chiarappa and Michael Cordero. Special thanks to Paula Szuchman and Sam Dolnick.

‘It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' Review: A Singer's Soul
‘It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' Review: A Singer's Soul

New York Times

time2 minutes ago

  • New York Times

‘It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' Review: A Singer's Soul

When he was staying in Memphis, taking time off after a grueling stretch of touring, Jeff Buckley would visit the butterfly garden at the zoo. Watching the zookeeper at work, he often worried. The chrysalises of the butterflies, he told friends, weren't being handled gently enough. It's a brief anecdote in 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' that captures the remarkably sensitive soul that animated the singer-songwriter's work. The film, directed by Amy Berg, is a largely by-the-book, behind-the-music documentary that looks at the musician's rise to fame and struggle with stardom. Most artist documentaries attempt but rarely get to a true and palpable essence of their subjects, but it's this sense of his earnestly tender nature, pieced together from loved ones and old archive interviews of Buckley, that leaves an impression. The pressures of fame prove to be a harsh light for Buckley, who was raised by his mother, Mary Guibert, while the shadow of his absent father, the musician Tim Buckley, hovers over him throughout the film. According to a former partner, these pressures were perhaps enhanced by what Jeff Buckley suspected was bipolar disorder. That same fragility, though, was what made him special — it's in the singular quality of his voice and in his care for others. The most striking, heart-rending moment comes at the end, when Buckley's mother plays his last voice mail to her, expressing his admiration of her strength as a woman bringing a child into the world. It's a wondrous act of seeing, from a son to a mother; it also seems like it wasn't uncommon from Buckley. It's Never Over, Jeff BuckleyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store