Latest news with #JohnColtrane
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Off the Grid: Sally breaks down USA TODAY's daily crossword, Turtles All the Way Down
There are spoilers ahead. You might want to solve today's puzzle before reading further! Turtles All the Way Down Constructor: Orca Jimmy Peniston Editor: Jared Goudsmit LEEKS (38A: Veggies worn on Saint David's Day) Saint David's Day is the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales. It is observed on March 1, which is the date of Saint David's death in 589 BCE. Traditional Saint David's Day activities include wearing daffodils and LEEKS, two national symbols of Wales. ACTS (9A: "Into the Woods" has two) Into the Woods is a 1987 musical by Stephen Sondheim that intertwines the plots of several fairy tales. As the clue informs us, it has two ACTS. KNEE (15A: Joint bent in a Nordic hamstring curl) The Nordic hamstring curl is an exercise in which a person starts in a kneeling position (i.e. with KNEEs bent) and then slowly lowers their body forward by extending the KNEE. SHIP (16A: Captain Hook's vessel) We're talking about the fictional Captain Hook here, the antagonist in J. M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan. Captain Hook's vessel was the pirate SHIP the Jolly Roger. TEAMMATE (20A: Bronny, to LeBron James, e.g.) An astute solver might have guessed the answer here was "son" – until seeing the letter count of the answer. LeBron "Bronny" James is the son of LeBron James. Both LeBron and Bronny James currently play basketball for NBA's Los Angeles Lakers, making them TEAMMATEs. EGYPT (33A: Country where Sham el-Nessim is celebrated) Sham el-Nessim is a national holiday in EGYPT that marks the beginning of spring. The holiday's name translates to "smelling the breeze" in English, and appropriately, it's celebrated outside with picnics, music, and games. Sham El-Nessim is celebrated on the Monday after Coptic Easter (which occurs later than the Easter holiday in Western Christianity). SAX (44A: John Coltrane's instrument) John Coltrane (1926-1967) was a SAX player, bandleader, and composer. In 2007, John Coltrane was posthumously awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for his "masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship, and iconic centrality to the history of jazz." BERT (45A: Muppet with a pet pigeon) and ERNIE (62A: Muppet with a rubber duck) and ELMO (54D: Muppet with a pet named Dorothy) This is a lovely little Muppet sub-theme. I like the choice to write all three clues in the "Muppet with a..." format. By the way, BERT's pet pigeon is named Bernice, ERNIE's rubber duck is named Rubber Duckie, and ELMO's pet named Dorothy is a goldfish. CLICK BAIT (58A: "This One Weird Trick..." headline, e.g.) Resist the CLICK BAIT, no matter how interesting or intriguing it seems. REES (67A: "Mudbound" director Dee) Mudbound is a 2017 movie directed by Dee REES. It is based on Hillary Jordan's 2008 novel of the same name. The movie is a historical drama telling the story of two World War II veterans – one white, one Black – who return home to Mississippi after the war. UNDER THE SEA (6D: "The Little Mermaid" song that features steel drums) "UNDER THE SEA" is a calypso-style song sung by the crab Sebastian (voiced by Samuel E. Wright) in Disney's animated 1989 movie The Little Mermaid. The song is Sebastian's attempt to dissuade Ariel (the titular mermaid) from her plan to go after Prince Eric. I can hear those steel drums now... "UNDER THE SEA / UNDER THE SEA / Darling it's better / Down where it's wetter / Take it from me..." FRUIT NINJA (30D: Mobile game that involves slicing apples, mangoes, coconuts, etc.) FRUIT NINJA is a game in which a player uses their finger to slice fruit that appears on the screen. It's been quite some time since I've played FRUIT NINJA (but amazingly I have played it), but I recognized the description here immediately. TACOS (47D: Foods "al pastor") TACOS al pastor is made with pork that has been marinated with pineapple, dried chilies, and spices and then skewered on a spit and grilled. ONION (Cajun holy trinity veggie) In Cajun cuisine, which originated in Louisiana and was developed by CAJUNs (an ethnic group who are descendants of Acadian exiles), the "holy trinity" of aromatic vegetables – green pepper, ONION, and celery – is used in many recipes. BAR (59A: Mixologist's workplace) A mixologist, aka a bartender, mixes and serves alcoholic beverages at a BAR. PENALTY BOX (3D: Place for a punished hockey player) UNDER THE SEA (6D: "The Little Mermaid" song that features steel drums) FRUIT NINJA (30D: Mobile game that involves slicing apples, mangoes, coconuts, etc.) TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN: The last word of each vertical (DOWN) theme answer is a type of TURTLE: BOX TURTLE, SEA TURTLE, and NINJA TURTLE. TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN is an expression alluding to a mythical TURTLE that holds the Earth on its back, and suggests that this TURTLE rests on the back of another TURTLE, which rests on another TURTLE, etc. TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN is also the title of a young adult novel by John Green and the 2024 film adaptation of the novel. Today TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN is an appropriate title for this puzzle in which types of TURTLES are found DOWN in the theme answers. Thank you, Orca Jimmy, for this interesting puzzle. USA TODAY's Daily Crossword Puzzles Sudoku & Crossword Puzzle Answers This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Crossword Blog & Answers for May 27, 2025 by Sally Hoelscher
New York Times
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Jazz at Lincoln Center's New Season Highlights Ties to Africa
Jazz at Lincoln Center's 38th season will celebrate jazz, Africa and the African diaspora with programs that pay tribute to genre greats like John Coltrane and Miles Davis, while others will spotlight vocalists, pianists and other trumpeters. It will also include a tour of Africa by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. The new season opens on July 24 with a preview concert,, 'Reflections on Africa,' in the Rose Theater. The program, with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Vincent Gardner as the musical director, offers compositions reflecting the effect of African consciousness on music composed by jazz artists including Coltrane, Randy Weston, Jackie McLean and Horace Parlan. The season continues on Sept. 18 with 'Afro!,' a new composition by Wynton Marsalis, the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, which illuminates his meditations on the African continent. It will also feature the vocalist Shenel Johns, the djembe player Weedie Braimah and the drummer Herlin Riley. On Oct. 3-4, Jazz at Lincoln Center will present a 91st birthday retrospective of the 75-year-long career of the Capetown-born pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim. (He was known as Dollar Brand when Duke Ellington first heard his trio in 1963 and sponsored his first recording.) On Oct. 24 and Oct. 25, the Orchestra will feature another South African pianist, Nduduzo Makhathini, including a debut of new work that he has composed. Works by Ellington take center stage Jan. 15-17, 2026, with 'Duke in Africa.' The music directors for that program will be Chris Lewis and Alexa Tarantino, two of the Orchestra's newest members. On Feb. 13 and on Valentine's Day, Dianne Reeves will explore the universal theme of love as she shares songs that highlight rapture, anguish, romance and heartbreak. The Orchestra will feature works by Davis from May 14-16, 2026, in 'Sketches of Miles: Miles Davis at 100.' Later that month (May 29-30, 2026), Jazzmeia Horn, the winner of the 2015 Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Vocals Competition, will present a program showcasing her vocal range and improvisation, with the Her Noble Force big band. Etienne Charles, the Trinidad-born trumpeter and composer, will take on Anglophone Afro-Caribbean traditions in 'Folklore LIVE Vol. 2' from June 5-6, 2026, in the Appel Room. Later that month, June 12-13, 2026, the Orchestra with Marsalis will also explore the African roots that help make up the genres of Brazil, with 'Soul of Brazil,' featuring Hamilton de Holanda and the music of Moacir Santos, in the Rose Theater. The full season is online at
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
High Point Preservation Society looks to the city to help fund the restoration of John Coltrane's home
HIGH POINT, N.C. (WGHP) — The clock is ticking on a project years in the making. The High Point Preservation Society is renewing its push to preserve the childhood home of renowned saxophone player John Coltrane. They say grant money from 2022 has dried up, and there's still work to be done. 'He's very integral to the city of High Point. He was raised here. He learned to play music here. He attended high school here,' Treasurer of High Point Preservation Society Coralle Cowan said. As you walk through the door of John Coltrane's boyhood home, the wooden bookcase and the fireplace take you back in time. 'I can hear a saxophone working upstairs. I can hear him talking to his grandfather in the living room with the fireplace going and learning stories that passed from one generation to the next. I'm getting chills talking about it,' Cowan said. The famous saxophone player's roots are in High Point on Underhill Street. 'If you don't return it to what it felt like when it was first opened as a new place, you're not going to get the same passion,' Board Member of High Point Preservation Society John Conrad said. In 2022, the High Point Preservation Society received a grant of $250,000, but it quickly ran out, and the preservation society is asking the city to help. 'We worked on a lot of the foundational aspects of it. We did literal foundation work. We did a lot of light demolition, repaired windows and did a lot of grading,' Cowan said. The estimated cost of finishing the job is going to cost the city around $300,000 to $ 400,000 to finish the flooring, patch up the walls, and make it feel like the home it once was. The goal is to let others experience where the magic all started. The preservation society wants to do it right, and that requires more money. 'You're not here to …tear out that cabinets and then just drywall and paint … This is wood that John Coltrane actually probably touched or put things on or he interacted with on a daily basis,' Cowan said. The public can't go inside Until the preservation society can get a Certificate of Occupancy, and there's a lot to do before that can happen. That's why Conrad took his fight to City Hall and asked local leaders to allocate the money to help them finish the job. 'Jazz is American. No question about it. But jazz is truly not American when you consider the people who love that music. It's worldwide. And why can't we have them visit the city of High Point and be where John Coltrane generated his passion?' Conrad said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Los Angeles Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
By deifying Alice Coltrane, we're missing out on the actual idiosyncratic person she was
In 1971, Alvin Ailey choreographed 'Cry!' as a birthday gift for his mother. Alongside music by Laura Nyro, Alice Coltrane's elegiac 'There's Something About John Coltrane' anchors the choreography, which features a Black female solo dancer, costumed in regal all-white, who moves from pantomimes of brutal labor under captivity to ecstatic but brooding liberation silhouettes that wheel and wallow in the restoration of her sovereign identity. Her body maps the path and rites of passage of Black womanhood so eloquently that the stamina the dance requires is hardly perceptible to the spectator, which itself speaks to the conditions of Black femininity: Make harrowing exertion appear effortless, gorgeous, all by yourself, and don't act isolated, be your own accompaniment. Judith Jamison was the first to interpret 'Cry!' It's remained in the company's repertoire for decades, and the use of Coltrane's elegy for the love of her life has made that music into two dirges, one for husband John Coltrane and another for the woman on the invisible mourner's bench honoring and channeling him for the rest of her days. The cry here is not one of vulnerability or angst but the unruly register of creative freedom, of calling your power back. Alice Coltrane's life and legacy is a series of those callings. She was a natural mystic who spoke in a lilting near-whisper sometimes, with the measured timbre that makes you lean in closer and yearn for her words until you come into their chorus, delicate but fierce in intellect. 'Cry' and cries aside, her work is in and out of revival, while John Coltrane's is a cultural metronome such that even his inaccessible-for-some late-period recordings and live performances — during which he squealed and screamed his way toward another realm of psalm — are embraced by critics and jazz fans who dismiss the jazz avant-garde, his free playing their only exemption. He pleases even stalwarts who treat jazz as a series of trivia questions about who played on what LP, and who was in what band and when. Meanwhile, Alice Coltrane, despite having been one of John's pianists, is maneuvered into the margins by subgenre euphemisms like 'spiritual jazz,' by which many mean, music for hippies and poets, while mainstream jazz is for men who read Esquire and smoke performative cigars on business trips. The sensuality of Alice's compositions is an imposition on those who were seduced into loving Miles' impervious cool or Art Blakey's hard bop sound. And yet when people need a portal into or proxy for spiritual awakening, Alice Coltrane's music often becomes integral, a newfound household name, because her staggered textures are gracious enough to accommodate both the ascetic and the philistine. Hers is the sound of belonging in and transcending any instant you find yourself in. Because of this, along with her uncanny ability to be both accessible and impossible to contain, her sound and style often become stand-ins for life's pivots to desolation and blank slates, as if we were constantly using her as our master of ceremonies for a homegoing service and entreating: Pray for us, while we pray to you. The deification of our jazz dead is stunning to behold that way. We can't help it. They become archetypes in the Black American mythmaking tradition and arbiters of our constantly shifting Black myth. In the case of Alice Coltrane, the myth of the pious Black saint only she can inspire makes us feel enveloped in the holiness we project onto her until an abyss of good distorts the actual idiosyncratic person she was and we get a pin-up Alice, a good, clean symbol. Alice Coltrane's nephew, musician Steven Ellison, stage name Flying Lotus, played a gorgeous DJ set on the opening night of 'Monument Eternal,' on Feb. 8, at the Hammer Museum's ongoing exhibition devoted to Alice Coltrane's life and work. This is a group show curated by Erin Christovale, with archival contributions from Alice and John's children Michelle and Ravi Coltrane, the Coltrane Estate and many of the members of the ashram community that Alice created in L.A.'s Agoura Hills neighborhood from the 1970s onward. Every Sunday, in a concert series curated by Christovale and Ross Chait, a close associate of the Coltrane family, there's a live concert within the exhibition, set on a stage built by GeoVanna Gonzalez. This series began with harpist Brandee Younger and includes Michelle Coltrane, Jeff Parker, Mary Lattimore, Jasper Marsalis and Radha Botofasina, among many others, through the end of April. 'It has a groove, it has freedom, it's a beginning for some who can't just dive right into experimental improvisational music, to start there,' Michelle Coltrane tells me in our conversation about the show. The rebirth is necessary, an unburdening and a kind of justice for her and her family. The exhibition itself is a tension between the deeply private spiritual leader Turiya — the Sanskirt name Alice assumed after John died at 39 — and the public-facing brand that is Alice Coltrane, the widow of John Coltrane, turned by some into a relic and representative of a member of the royal court of jazz's bittersweet golden era. This music doesn't just evoke nostalgia, it invents the sonic texture of nostalgia and gives us excuses to covet the frequencies of the past as if they could save us from a bleak and dire series of unknowns ahead. John purchased the harp that Alice would learn to play before he died, and it arrived at the family home after he was gone. Her evolution into Turiya occurred alongside him that way; she carried him with her. He was the harp strings made of guts of animals sacrificed for music; her hands bled into them as communion. He was what she embraced in his absence as ether, as resonance. Michelle tells me in an interview that one day a plane landed in the backyard of their home outside of Philadelphia, and Alice took it as a sign to pick up and move West with their four children. Her song 'Om Supreme' describes the sense of being ordained to reunite in California, as if this would be the site of their shared reincarnation. She wasn't so much superstitious as obedient, devoted to making the ineffable routine and mysticism accessible even to the uninitiated. 'Monument Eternal' deftly repurposes archival materials, such as programs from ashram services and vintage concert bills, alongside dreamy images of Turiya that exude divine consciousness, the way a church might display saints or priests. But access alone cannot translate the depth of a spirit that wants to exist on her own terms. The walls of these rooms accomplish a kind of muting of her aura, a place where veneration feels austere or regimented by bureaucracy. I get an uneasy feeling, searching for her echo in these galleries, like she doesn't want to be found there. The light is too harshly angled and full of diodes, too precise, too careful and still somehow not careful enough, not surreal, sepia and tender enough. Perhaps it is simply too literal to have her things on display. The dynamic in the exhibition is redeemed by the live events within it and their play against the archive, which feel earned but also alienated from the original artworks. We gather now to let her be real. At home, it's Alice Coltrane's laughter that could break this spell or stupor or almost hagiography. When I speak with Michelle Coltrane about her mother, her expression carves out the space where grief and awe meet, a burnt auburn aura of the sacral orange they wear in ceremony, and she recalls a woman from Detroit by way of the bandstand by way of Philly by way of California, a traveler with a steady hand who invented the road as she walked it; and she walked alone as well as in the company of her children and many apprentices. Michelle Coltrane, now the matriarch of the family, and Ravi Coltrane, his father's near-twin and torch bearer, inheritor of his skill on the horn, harbor so much reverence for the family legacy it covers them like a penance. For years now I've been interviewing the Coltrane family, beginning in 2021 with an oral history of the ashram performed live at L.A.'s 2220 Arts, and most recently on assignment in Detroit, covering the jazz festival there and a performance of Alice's compositions. Once in a while, Michelle texts me about a show of her own or one of Ravi's, or sends me a photo from that first event in 2021. I get the clear sense that she was raised to allow people in but also keeps a safe psychic distance, a spiritual boundary that, when respected, falls away. I learn things in our conversations, like how Alice Coltrane condemned vanity but not at the expense of grooming, how she rebuked the cult of fame and celebrity but never abandoned legacy — her husband's, the creators or her own. Alice Coltrane, though not militant, upheld the tenets of co-terminal groups like the Black Panthers in forming a self-governing collective, though hers was not overtly racialized; it was radical in the sense that it broke with dead roots to plant new ones that endure until now. The ashram she built in the Santa Monica mountains was as subversive as any free school or fringe arts cohort, just without the shrillness of dogma. The household was vegetarian before this was trendy or socially acceptable, and yet not in an uppity way. Michelle recalls her and her siblings riding bikes with the Jackson family children in some idyllic nondenominational order of Black music. Ravi bears an eerie resemblance to John on the day of the Super Bowl, when we gather at Michelle's Topanga home for an ashram service for which Alice's voice is the master of ceremonies. She laughs into the room, about vanity again, against it, about the soul. We sing Sanskrit bhajans as an ensemble and break to watch Kendrick's halftime show. Black music is so relentlessly true to itself when you look away from the trappings of industry, it's the closest estimation we have of utopia. Ravi circles the room with a camera the way his father did to capture footage of family road trips from the early 1960s. It's not luck that sustains this closeness but dedication, to the spirit of Alice and that of John, so that the now-decadent obsession with them is both warranted and a threat to all this depth and private beauty. Commercialized saint-making is dehumanizing, and bypasses genuine mourning by reducing people to idols. The unsuspecting saints may be gone by the time they realize that the pedestal to which we annexed them was a cliff or tripwire trapping them in the theater of an idea of themselves. Then their effigies become our pedestals, which we stand on to feel whole (they have no say in the matter). I don't see a way out for Alice Coltrane other than through the extractive and back into the quiet. Maybe a museum retrospective offers just that, and the ability to pose these ideas. In the galleries, Coltrane is divinity itself, the muse, where a muse is someone who remains silent so that you can speak for her as you wish. But it's not possible to use her in this way undetected. What we ultimately witness is the feeling of the Hammer itself praying on her altar, which is what's brilliant about the curatorial work of the project: Its limitations become the artistic statement.
The Guardian
13-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Dining across the divide: ‘He said you need strong leaders. Then he referenced Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage'
Occupation Retired businessman, used to run a small tool-making company Voting record Conservative for the majority of his life; now doesn't vote Amuse bouche Bought a cabin in the Canadian mountains in 2010 and splits his time between the UK and Canada Occupation Recently retired from the NHS Voting record Lifelong Labour voter, often reluctant – in the last election, voted Green Amuse bouche Is in a jazz group, singing John Coltrane, Stevie Wonder, anything from the canon and beyond Bob One of the first questions out my mouth was, 'Do you work for the NHS?' And she said, 'Why would you say that?' And I said, 'It's just a feeling.' And she said, 'I've worked for the NHS all my life.' I'd just thought, I'm a small business owner, what would my opposite be? Probably a civil servant. JC When he found out where I used to work, he sort of went, 'Huh, I would have thought so.' Bob I had the roast beef. JC I had the vegetarian roast. Bob We talked about second-home ownership. I don't think you can stop that. You might think I'm biased because I'm guilty of it, but it's different for me and my wife, because one day we'll choose between living here or in Canada. Here, we're constantly told we can't afford this or we can't afford that. Do we have a need for social housing in this country? By the sounds of things, we have a need for quite a lot of social housing because, back in the 80s, Margaret Thatcher decided that every Englishman should have his own castle and flogged them all off. JC For me, it's not so much about second or third homes, it's properties standing empty. I feel the same about landlords who don't maintain their properties. I gave passionate examples of younger colleagues of mine trying to find somewhere to live; just to rent, you have to bid over the asking price – it's a real Squid Game scenario. I think he approves of social housing, but wants to shrink the state. Bob Surely we need a new social housing building programme? After the second world war, Winston Churchill got dumped out of office because the people of the country said, 'We've endured five years of hardship and war, where's our reward?' Suddenly Attlee comes in, and despite the fact that we were bankrupt, we managed to start the NHS and the biggest housing programme we've ever seen. Broke or bankrupt, it's all bollocks, isn't it? You just have to take the long view. JC He said you need to be bold and take risks, and what you need for that is strong leaders. Then he referenced Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, and I said, 'But those two are functionally useless.' Later, he referenced Churchill and Angela Merkel, who fit the 'leader' description a little better. JC He said, 'I've been told I lack empathy,' and then he explained it's because he's an engineer, and you have to be very detached and focused on what you do. And I thought, listening to what he said, there's a lot of similarity between engineering and medicine: it has to be evidenced; the consequences of getting it wrong are significant. I found him to be quite compassionate and insightful, I wouldn't agree with the lack of empathy. I asked who said that, and he said, 'My wife.' Bob As engineers, you've got to have a final physical thing that works. It's not a set of ideas, it's a finished item. So you're striving for the best way of doing something. And it does mean, particularly in manufacturing, you have to be looking over the next horizon. You can't take the short view. Bob We discovered very early on that we had a lot in common during Covid. JC He was making testing devices for frontline staff, I was working on a vaccine trial – we were working to the same ends. Bob I think of all these wonderful people – engineers, research scientists – who spent hours and hours and hours sleeping under their desks, doing 80- to 100-hour weeks. Bob It was delightful. We shook hands. I don't think we'll be seeing each other again. JC It was curious. I think maybe he came ready for battle, then didn't find it. Additional reporting: Kitty Drake Bob and JC ate at The Fat Pig in Exeter Want to meet someone from across the divide? Find out how to take part
