Colman Domingo, Paul Tazewell, Sean Bankhead to be Honored at Native Son Awards
This year, the organization will honor actor Colman Domingo, costume designer Paul Tazewell, choreographer Sean Bankhead, multidisciplinary artist Derrick Adams, National Black Justice Collective CEO and executive director Dr. David J. Johns and founder of the Black AIDS Institute Phill Wilson.
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'I'm deeply honored to receive this recognition at the Native Son Awards,' Tazewell, who made history earlier this year when he became the first African American male costume designer to be nominated for the Academy Award for best costume design, which he later won for his work on Wicked, tells The Hollywood Reporter. 'This organization is incredibly close to my heart, and to be acknowledged by a community that celebrates the brilliance and resilience of Black queer and gay men is truly humbling. Thank you for seeing me.'
In addition to recognizing the aforementioned honorees, the event will feature performances by Grammy award-nominated singer-songwriter Durand Bernarr and The Voice contestant Deon Jones. The program will also include social impact moments led by former Native Son Awards honorees Rashad Robinson, Alphonso David and Keith Boykin highlighting Black and queer history.
The Native Son Awards were created by media professional and professor Emil Wilbekin as an extension of his Native Son movement, designed to be a safe space for the Black gay community to commune and celebrate one another. The gala, first held in 2016, serves as a fundraiser to support Native Son's programs and initiatives throughout the year.
'As Native Son looks toward our milestone 10th anniversary next year, it is incredible to think about not only how much the movement has grown but how much it was and continues to be needed in this community,' said Wilbekin in a news release. 'The work that we are doing and the safer spaces we have created is especially critical as we think about the countless challenges we are facing at this moment in our country's history. Our community is seeing erasure, rollbacks of important protections and, in general, the enforcement of anti-LGBTQ legislation. At Native Son, we are committed to remaining steadfast in the storm to continue to uphold and archive the voice, visibility and existence of Black gay and queer men.'
The Native Son Awards will be held during Pride Month on June 11 at the IAC Building in New York City. Former CNN broadcast journalist Don Lemon will serve as host for the third consecutive year.
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Los Angeles Times
5 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Gustavo Dudamel is briefly, joyously back at the Bowl with the L.A. Phil
Tuesday night, Gustavo Dudamel was back at the Hollywood Bowl. This summer is the 20th anniversary of his U.S. debut — at 24 years old — conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and becoming irrepressibly besotted with the amphitheater. He walked on stage, now the proud paterfamilias with greying hair and a broad welcoming smile on his face as he surveyed the nearly full house. The weather was fine. The orchestra, as so very few orchestras ever do, looked happy. For Dudamel, his single homecoming week this Bowl season began Monday evening conducting his beloved Youth Orchestra Los Angeles as part of the annual YOLA National Festival, which brings kids from around the country to the Beckmen YOLA Center in Inglewood. But it is also a bittersweet week. Travel issues (no one will say exactly what, but we can easily guess) have meant the cancellation of his Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela's trip to the Bowl next week. Dudamel will also be forced to remain behind with them in Caracas. After 20 years, Dudamel clearly knows what works at the Bowl, but he also likes to push the envelope as with Tuesday's savvy blend of Duke Ellington and jazzy Ravel. The soloist was Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, whose recent recording of Ravel's complete solo piano works along with his two concertos, has been one of the most popular releases celebrating the Ravel year (March 7 was the 150th anniversary of the French composer's birth). Ellington and Ravel were certainly aware of each other. When Ravel visited New York in 1928, he heard the 29-year-old Ellington's band at the Cotton Club, although his attention on the trip was more drawn to Gershwin. Ellington knew and admired Ravel, and Billy Strayhorn, who was responsible for much of Ellington's music, was strongly drawn to Ravel's harmony and use of instrumental color. On his return to Paris, Ravel wrote his two piano concertos, the first for the left hand alone, and jazz influences were strong. Cho played both concertos, which were framed by the symphonic tone poems 'Harlem' and 'Black, Brown and Beige, which Ellington called tone parallels. There has been no shortage of Ravel concerto performance of late — or ever — but Ellington is another matter. Although the pianist, composer and band leader was very much on the radar of the classical world — 'Harlem' was originally intended for Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony; Leopold Stokowski attended the Carnegie Hall premiere of 'Black, Brown and Beige,' as did Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson and Frank Sinatra — Ellington never played the crossover game. The NBC 'Harlem' never panned out and became a big-band score. Ever practical, Ellington, who composed mostly in wee hours after gigs, always wrote for the occasion and the players. He tended to leave orchestration to others, more concerned with highlighting the fabulous improvising soloists in his band. The scores, moreover, were gatherings, developments and riffs on various existing songs. 'Harlem' is an acoustical enrapturement of the legendary Harlem Renaissance and one of the great symphonic portraits of a place in the repertory. 'Black, Brown and Beige' is an ambitious acoustical unfolding of the American Black narrative, from African work songs to spiritual exaltation with 'Come Sunday' (sung by Mahalia Jackson at the premiere) to aspects of Black life, in war and peace, up to the Harlem Renaissance. Both works are best known today, if nonetheless seldom heard, in the conventional but effective orchestrations by Maurice Peress and are what Dudamel relies on. The version of 'Black, Brown and Beige' reduces it from 45 to 18 too-short minutes. The primary reason for these scores' neglect is that orchestras can't swing. The exception is the L.A. Phil. With Dudamel's surprising success of taking the L.A. Phil to Coachella, there now seems nothing it can't do. The time has come to commission more experimental and more timely arrangements. But even these Peress arrangements, blasted through the Bowl's sound system and with the orchestra bolstered by a jazz saxophone section, jazz drummer and other jazz-inclined players, caught the essence of one of America's greatest composers. Ravel fared less well. The left-hand concerto has dark mysteries hard to transmit over so many acres and video close-ups of two-armed pianists trying to keep the right hand out of the way can be disconcerting. This summer, in fact, unmusical jumpy video is at all times disconcerting. Ravel's jazzier, sunnier G-Major concerto is a winner everywhere. But for all Cho's acclaim in Ravel, he played with sturdy authority. Four years ago, joining Dudamel at an L.A. Phil gala in Walt Disney Concert Hall, Cho brought refined freshness to Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto. In Ravel at the Bowl, amplification strongly accentuated his polished technique, gleaming tone and meticulous rhythms, leaving it up to Dudamel and a joyous, eager orchestra to exult in the Ravel that Ellington helped make swing.
Newsweek
8 hours ago
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Sydney Sweeney's 'Great Jeans' Illuminate the Dangerous Resurgence of Eugenics
American Eagle came under fire recently for an ad campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney. In one ad, Sweeney fiddles with her jeans, saying, "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My genes are blue." A male narrator finishes with, "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans." It's a play on homophones, but the wordplay reveals a more sinister element: Sweeney does not just have great American Eagle jeans, she has great American genes. Picking a blonde, blue-eyed, able-bodied all-American girl was not an accident. It was about showcasing what are "good genes," and thus what are "bad genes." It's a modern eugenics movement proudly re-emerging amid a welcoming political climate. A window display of actress Sydney Sweeney is seen on a window of an American Eagle store on Aug. 1, 2025, in New York City. A window display of actress Sydney Sweeney is seen on a window of an American Eagle store on Aug. 1, 2025, in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images The American eugenics movement has historically promoted the superiority of Anglo-Saxon, able-bodied, wealthy people, leading to harmful policies from the Immigration Act of 1924 barring immigrants from Asia to a practice of unnecessary and undisclosed hysterectomies performed on Black women in the South so widespread it was coined the "Mississippi appendectomy." Eugenicists promoted anti-miscegenation laws and forced sterilization of those in prison and in poverty and of those with disabilities or mental illness. These practices have not died. In 2020, low-income immigrant women detained by ICE in Georgia were forcibly sterilized. As we hear rhetoric from the current administration about immigrants "poisoning the blood" of our country, it invites horrifying thoughts of what may be happening to immigrants currently being detained by ICE. Even more sinister, however, is a modern eugenics movement camouflaged by in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF is increasingly popular, and rightfully so. Couples with fertility issues can conceive. Women can freeze eggs. Queer couples can have genetically related kids. IVF can also ostensibly prevent harm. IVF clinics might screen embryos for sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, BRCA1, and Down syndrome. Things get confusing and uncomfortable, however, when we try to define what harms are worth preventing. In a world where whiteness and conventional beauty are tightly coupled with success, couldn't selecting for these features be a way to minimize a child's future suffering? Most sperm donor companies have a height minimum of 5'9". 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In this modern era of eugenics, as immigrants are expelled while neo-Nazis spew hateful theories of "great replacement," it is no wonder American Eagle felt bold enough to declare that Sydney Sweeney has great genes. America must reject this renewed, government-endorsed eugenics. Scientists must think deeply about ramifications: Just because we can, or think we can, does not mean we should. IVF companies should be barred from making false promises about the heritability of traits like intelligence, BMI, and hair color. While fatal diseases like breast cancer are fair to select against, prospective parents should think twice about what is lost when selecting for subjective social norms. We all have great genes and we all deserve a society that embraces us, that makes us feel whole, and bold, and beautiful—like a pair of great jeans. Tania Fabo, MSc is an MD-PhD candidate in genetics at Stanford University, a Rhodes scholar, a Knight-Hennessy scholar, a Paul and Daisy Soros fellow, and a Public Voices fellow of The OpEd Project. Her PhD research focuses on the interaction between genetics and diet in colorectal cancer risk. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Refinery29
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Joy Sunday glides into the lobby of The Whitby Hotel in New York City's midtown donning a caramel corset and flouncy Emilio Pucci mini skirt. Sunday's presence and her features are strikingly captivating, but she doesn't need the striped blazer or greenish-blue contacts she wears to suit up for her role as Bianca Barclay on Netflix's Wednesday to turn heads in real life. It's clear that Sunday's confidence gives life to Bianca, the siren with the power to mesmerize and persuade even the most strong-willed. Bianca is Sunday's first role as a main character in a TV series. And with the show being Netflix's most watched English language original series ever, she hit the ground running. Now going into a new season — the first four episodes premiere today, Wednesday, August 6 — Sunday assures you, me, and everyone else watching that she isn't stopping. At all. 'I'm being very strategic about how I'm moving forward, because I'm not losing this platform,' the 28-year-old New York native said matter of factly. 'I'm taking it to the end, and I want to take others with me. It's not a threat, but it's a promise.' ' I'm taking it to the end, and I want to take others with me. It's not a threat, but it's a promise. joy sunday on acting beyond 'wednesday' ' In Season 1, we're introduced to Bianca as a popular student at Nevermore Academy who has control over her powers, despite the mistrust she faces from others, including her ex. When Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) shows up, they share a brief rivalry before Bianca joins her investigation into the mayor's death. Season 2 goes deeper into Bianca's vulnerability, Sunday explained. Bianca's past comes back to haunt her and she begins reckoning with her relationship with her mother, a siren who uses her powers to scam and wants her daughter to follow suit. 'In Season 2, she's trying to hide herself and conceal what's going on in the background, and so she's really having to come to terms with what she really didn't want to do in Season 1,' Sunday said. 'Now she's being forced to [be a] more compassionate individual. Because that's something that she judged her mom, Gabrielle (Gracy Goldman), for so heavily in Season 1, and that now she finds herself in the same position.' Addressing motherhood wounds plays a huge part in Season 2 overall. Viewers will see most of the main characters' relationships with their moms, for better or worse. As Bianca navigates her own challenges at school, she's now faced with the task of protecting Gabrielle, a theme the teen experienced in their relationship growing up. Sunday said she appreciates the duo's redemptive arc and the opportunity to find healing for them. ' Young Black women are forced to mature faster than anyone else is to understand their relationship to the world... I think that's why it's so special to get to see Bianca need help and to eventually learn to ask for it. joy sunday ' Despite this being a fantastical world, Sunday believes that forgiveness is important to see. Especially for Black girls who often have to mature faster than others. 'Young Black women are forced to mature faster than anyone else is to understand their relationship to the world and to the family, how the world sees them and how they see themselves,' Sunday passionately stated. 'I think that's why it's so special to get to see Bianca need help and to eventually learn to ask for it. And it's also nice to see people come to her aid without her asking for it, and to see people advocate for her as well.' Though Bianca's confidence may have wavered a bit since the first season, Sunday's has only grown. Three years ago when Wednesday first premiered, Sunday was still new to doing press runs and red carpets. 'I almost felt like I needed to play a role or to fit in terms of how I was presenting myself,' she admitted. That feeling has faded as she's gotten her reps in for projects like Rise (2023) and Under The Influencer (2024). But with the writers and actors strike in 2023 and a shaky Hollywood economy, Sunday admits that work hasn't been as steady. Thankfully, becoming a global ambassador for Lancome has helped sustain her and her family. 'It's been a journey of working my way back to this feeling of confidence and this feeling of, I've got some shit to do,' she explained. 'I've been through trials and tribulations, but I think it's really an important part of the actor's journey to share that it's not always going to be the 'hurry up.' Sometimes it's going to be the 'wait.'' This isn't looking like a 'wait' season for Sunday, however. In February, Deadline announced that the actor would be joining the HBO limited series DTF St. Louis. And ahead of its Season 2 premiere, Netflix renewed Wednesday for a third season. Going forward, Sunday is prepared to show the industry more of what she's made of. She's eyeing more fantasy and supernatural roles and some action. (She's specifically manifesting Interview With the Vampire and Ghost Dog 2.) In this era, Sunday knows she's more than good. 'I feel empowered to say I am that much more extensive of an artist, and I'm not afraid to show that,' she said. 'In Season 1, I was kind of afraid of having to fit in the boxes. I wanted to make sure that everything would go well, but I'm not afraid any more. I'm excited.'
