Latest news with #NinaSimone
BBC News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'I don't need to hide my tics after charity song'
A woman from Pool has been chosen to sing in a choir to record a song to highlight Tourette's Willoughby, 38, joined a group of singers who all have the condition to record the Nina Simone song 'Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood' to help charity Tourettes Action raise awareness."It's the perfect song for this campaign because Tourette's syndrome is one of the most misunderstood disorders," Mrs Willoughby Action said the condition affects one in 100 school-aged children and more than 300,000 people in the UK. 'I didn't know' Mrs Willoughby said her symptoms began when she was eight years old when she started grunting, coughing and worsened, she said, and she was diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome three years later in Willoughby said school had been very difficult and she had not wanted to go because she had not been sure what was said: "I didn't know what was going on, I'd blink, I'd tic and my eyes would twitch."This drew looks from other pupils, she said, and from teachers, too."I had a teacher mimic me," she said."I didn't know I was doing it so I didn't know why the teacher was mimicking me back and it was really upsetting."Child psychologists were assigned to her, but she said they did not understand why she did not want to go to school."I was the child that was treated like I was misbehaving, with them saying I was a problem and that I didn't want to go to school," she said. 'Comfortable in my own skin' It is people with Tourette's syndrome being misunderstood that inspired Mrs Willoughby to take part in the charity music said: "I've never been around people with Tourette's syndrome so to go to London and do that video with so many wonderful, beautiful people - to be accepted and to feel comfortable in my own skin and with who I am and to feel free to tic was the most special experience I've ever had."She said being with others with the syndrome made her realise how much she had hidden her tics."From that I have learned so much. To feel accepted and accept myself and I now feel I don't need to hide who I am and I don't need to hide my tics," she said: "The experience has had a longer lasting lifetime effect."I am who I am and I am learning not to be embarrassed because I've always felt I'm the weirdo, I was always treated like the weird child, like the problem."Being in that room was a sort of love and acceptance from people that understand and that was the amazing part for me."
New York Times
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Ute Lemper Still Sings Songs of Rebellion. The Stakes Are Still High.
'Welcome to Weimar — to the year 2025,' Ute Lemper announced. The German-born singer and actress was greeting friends and colleagues who had squeezed into the Birdsong Society's small headquarters by Gramercy Park to hear her perform songs from her latest album, which celebrates Kurt Weill, a composer Lemper has championed for four decades. Sliding into the album's title number, 'Pirate Jenny,' Lemper got even closer to a listener who had been standing just a few feet away, fixing him with a snarling grin. Featured in 'The Threepenny Opera,' the most celebrated of Weill's noted collaborations with the playwright Bertolt Brecht, the tune has been covered by artists from Nina Simone to Judy Collins. It's also the only standard written from the perspective of a hotel maid waiting for a ship of pirates to arrive and, at her behest, murder all the guests. 'It's a song about revolution and rebellion,' Lemper explained in an interview before the event. The singer is less intimidating in conversation than she is when channeling bloodlust. She'll turn 62 in July, and with her long, lean frame and impossibly high cheekbones, she still projects the cool beauty of a runway model. Lemper was perceived as something of a rebel herself, at least in her native country, when Decca Records released 'Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill' in 1988. The album, which evolved from 'a little fringe record I made in Berlin' a couple of years earlier, earned Lemper an international fan base — with one notable exception. 'The Germans hated it,' Lemper recalled. 'They weren't interested in speaking about the past.' Decca's chief executive at the time, Roland Kommerell, German himself, had started a project dedicated to bringing back music that had been banned under the Nazis, including classical symphonies and Weimar-era cabaret songs — music composed by Jews who were persecuted or, like Weill, forced into exile. 'It was a huge chapter to rip open; it was still bleeding at the time,' Lemper said. 'And suddenly, I was in the position to have to respond to hundreds of journalists about this music. I became almost the representative of my generation, the Cold War generation, in Germany.' Lemper lived for a while in Paris and in London, where she starred in the Brecht- and Weill-inspired musicals of John Kander and Fred Ebb, winning an Olivier Award for her portrayal of the merry murderess Velma Kelly in 'Chicago,' a role she also played on Broadway. Since 1998 she has called New York home; she currently resides on the Upper West Side with her second husband, the musician Todd Turkisher. Turkisher played percussion on 'Pirate Jenny,' which also features 'Mack the Knife,' 'My Ship,' 'Speak Low' and 'Surabaya Johnny.' Co-produced by David Chesky, Turkisher's frequent collaborator, and Lemper, the tracks wrap her pungent, dramatically astute vocals — applied through the years to the words and music of artists as diverse as Jacques Brel, Philip Glass, Nick Cave and the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda — in Chesky's atmospheric, often eerie arrangements. The album sprang from a conversation Lemper had last year with Chesky, who released it on his label, the Audiophile Society. Lemper pointed out to Chesky, also a composer, that 2025 would be the 125th anniversary of Weill's birth. 'And he said, 'you should do something different. Let's make it more accessible for a new generation, with a groovy component, but without watering down the strength of the stories.'' In an email exchange, Chesky wrote, 'Ute owns this genre of Weill material; she understands the world of Brecht and Weill better than anyone I have ever encountered. But I proposed to her, what if we took these classic songs and set them in this dark, late-night, Berlin cabaret vibe, while using the electronic language of today's music? Then you have versions that still honor the songs but have a more direct connection to today's world.' Adrienne Haan, another German-born, New York-based singer who has won acclaim performing a range of international material, including Weill's songs, was a teenager when she first discovered Lemper. In a phone interview, Haan, 47, said she had been influenced by many artists who recorded from the 1920s through the '50s, 'but Ute was much closer to my age, and she was such a strong interpreter. There was a certain steel in her voice, and I found it fascinating that someone from Germany, from the generation above me, could make it in America.' A prolific live performer, Lemper will trace Weill's life and songbook on May 27 and 29 at the Manhattan cabaret venue 54 Below. The engagement follows one earlier this month at Neue Gallerie, where she presented another favorite program, 'Rendezvous With Marlene,' based on a three-hour phone conversation she had in the late 1980s with another German woman known for denouncing Hitler: Marlene Dietrich. Lemper had written Dietrich, then in her late 80s, 'to apologize' for comparisons that had been drawn between them, 'and to thank her for the inspiration she had given to generations of women,' she said. 'Marlene was a woman ahead of her time; she raised the gender question 100 years ago — she was bisexual, she dressed like a man,' she added. 'And she became an American citizen and fought against the Nazis, entertaining troops on the front lines. She wanted to go home later, but the Germans thought she was a traitor.' Attentive to history's darker recurrences as well as its nuances, Lemper is wary of certain comparisons that have been made involving President Trump. 'There is only one Hitler,' she said, but called the current moment a 'new chapter,' that is 'really worrisome' in no uncertain terms. Lemper has also been interested in expressing herself more through songwriting. In 2023 she released 'Time Traveler,' consisting entirely of original material, as well as a memoir in German with the same title, 'Die Zeitreisende' — featuring an epilogue by her daughter, Stella, who just earned her master's degree in creative writing at Columbia University. 'I had already published a memoir when I was 30,' Lemper mused. 'An East German publisher asked me to write it, because so much had already happened with my career, and living through the fall of the Wall.' She hopes the new book, which has been translated into Italian, can also be made available in English: 'I incorporated tales from those times, and obviously followed that up with more decades of life and motherhood and ups and downs. I so appreciate aging. I would never want to turn the wheel back — except maybe for a little less backache, and a new hip.' Lemper is considering a replacement, but only when she can find time in her schedule — which this spring alone has also included a German revival of a staging of Brecht and Weill's 'The Seven Deadly Sins,' which she first performed in more than three decades ago. 'We're going to take it to Paris next year, and then London,' she said. 'I still have more to give, and I have to give it at every performance. The more you give, the more you have.'
Black America Web
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Black America Web
Curator Dr. Ashley James Is In The Business Of Preserving Black Art
Source: Grant Faint / Getty Art, in any form, should speak to the people and for the people. Art can be a rally cry from the canvas, an expression of beauty, struggle, love, and admiration, or a time capsule captured with a stroke. Nina Simone said it best, 'An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times .' For Black curators like Dr. Ashley James, the Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim Museum, 'the role of a curator is to research, preserve, and exhibit works of art for the enrichment of the public. It means playing close attention to artists, what and why they make work – and then determining how to best communicate the meaning of these works.' The NYC native and daughter of Jamaican parents knows what it's like to navigate the curator space as a Black woman. She is the first Black curator to work at the Guggenheim full-time. 'I think the art world reflects the very same racial, gender, national, etc. biases that determine other institutional formations,' said James. 'So, of course as a Black woman I've had to navigate imposed expectations and deliberate occlusions. That being said, I've been fortunate to find great collaborators across all the demographic spectrum — especially alongside the colleagues with whom I've been able to co-curate shows and co-lead groups.' With an administration built on diminishing the Black existence, Black art is in a state of attack. At the beginning of this year, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14151, titled 'Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.' It was a haymaker to the face of Black artists and creatives who depend on key funding and programs to exist. As written by Kelli Morgan in a piece called, Trump's Executive Orders Are a Direct Threat to Black Art, History, and Truth,' 'By imposing federal control over the Smithsonian museums—specifically targeting the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC)—this order seeks to rewrite history through a white supremacist lens.' The Black Art Movement of the 60s and 70s was instrumental in establishing the Black identity, reclaiming Black expression, and rebelling against the status quo. It challenged Eurocentric norms, making it a target for oppressors. Recently, a Black Lives Matter mural, painted in 2020 during the pandemic, on a street a jog away from the White House, has been removed. It's one of many acts to silence our history. At the intersection of Black art and politics, there is a government eager to dismantle the institutions that protect sacred work. Despite the danger that lurks under the guise of misused political power, Black people are resilient. All of which is why James' passion for curating runs deep through her veins. 'I've loved many exhibitions but perhaps a show that very clearly changed my life would Soul of A Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power . Curated by Zoe Whitley and Mark Godfrey for the Tate Modern, Soul of A Nation toured the U.S. including a stop in Brooklyn. I organized the Brooklyn Museum iteration — my first task upon starting at the museum in fact — and it was a wonderful experience in terms of the organizational process and the exhibition itself. I learned so much about making shows and the artists in that show continue to inform my thinking about contemporary art more broadly.' SEE ALSO Curator Dr. Ashley James Is In The Business Of Preserving Black Art was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
New York Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A ‘Romantic Idealist' Renovates a Derelict House on an Artist's Budget
Standing in his kitchen, with walls the color of green tea, Peter Daverington stops, closes his eyes and surrenders to Nina Simone's melancholy rendition of 'Mr. Bojangles,' a haunting lullaby of love and loss. He plays it twice. 'This song is about taking on hardships with grace,' he explains. 'Turning something ugly into something beautiful.' He understands this well. As an Australian-born street artist turned landscape painter, and an accomplished Turkish ney — flute — player, Mr. Daverington, who is an acquaintance of mine, has dedicated his career to the enrichment of space and the pursuit of the sublime. As a recently divorced 51-year-old man, he has rebuilt his life by rehabilitating a derelict old house on a small lot in Esopus, N.Y. 'This house is healing medicine to me,' he said of the 1897 three-story vernacular just steps from the Hudson River. 'It is my deliverance from the darkest of nights and it's my phoenix rising.' Mr. Daverington, known for his public works fusing old master sobriety with new urban swagger, renovated the house with the eye — and the wallet — of a working artist. Enlisting a contractor and designer was out of reach, so he did most of the work himself. Sourcing his materials from accessible vendors like Home Depot and Facebook Marketplace, he remodeled his home from a blank canvas of beams and studs to a historically detailed live/work studio. Purchased as a two-family fixer-upper with his ex-wife for $60,000 in 2020, the house remained uninhabitable until the marriage ended two years later. With no other place to live, he moved into the owner's unit in 2022, camping out on the floor for a full year while struggling to work and pay bills. 'For a long time, I didn't know where my next dollar was coming from, because I rely on periodical sales of my paintings,' he revealed. 'I had to live like that and just felt defeated.' With little savings, Mr. Daverington needed help with the down payment during the marriage and the equity buyout during the divorce. Simon Ford, a retired investment banker and longtime super-patron in Sydney, came to the rescue by commissioning a painting to provide funds for the initial purchase of the property and mobilized other Australian patrons to follow suit for the buyout. 'Artists particularly have trouble buying a house because they can never put the deposits together,' said Mr. Ford on a video call. In the background hung one of Mr. Daverington's commissions: a colossal $40,000 quadriptych based on Giovanni Boccaccio's 14th-century book The Decameron. 'Everyone needs a home, and we were happy to help.' At the time of purchase, the house was covered in beige siding and dead vines, and the inside housed a warren of bleak rooms and fixtures awaiting demolition. 'The rooms had all been cut and chopped up, and I had to put all the character back in,' he said. Out of necessity, Mr. Daverington addressed the kitchen and bathrooms first. He moved the location of the kitchen and installed basic white cabinets with butcher block countertops from Home Depot. He later painted them green. To complement the warmth of the laminated surfaces, he exposed and varnished the wooden beams in the ceiling, which raised the room height by several inches. He added visual interest to the kitchen with a set of arched corner cabinets flanking a widened Greek Revival-style architrave enhanced by a pair of fluted columns. Having collected these elements from various thrift stores, lumberyards, and Facebook Marketplace, he unified the decorative pastiche with several coats of white paint. For the primary bathroom, he wanted early 20th-century mosaic flooring but found the cost prohibitive. Instead, he bought sheets of black-and-white penny tile and methodically sequenced each tessera to form diamond-shaped patterns. The process took months. He also mounted a vintage pedestal sink that he bought from an online seller for $100, and swapped the baseboard heater for a functional antique radiator, which required an overhaul of the plumbing system. Maintaining aesthetic consistency was worth the extra effort. 'I'm not a practical person,' he confessed. 'I'm a Romantic idealist.' This philosophy is most evident in his upstairs hallway, which is being transformed into a panoramic, Zuber-style scene of the Hudson River Valley at sunset. With exacting detail and astonishing depth, his hand-painted mural evokes the landscapes of the Hudson River School, a deeply Romantic collective of 19th-century landscape painters who celebrated the intensity of emotion and the splendor of nature. For a maximalist like Mr. Daverington, plain white walls beg for color, texture, and pattern. He has lacquered walls in phthalo green, burnished ceilings with Venetian plaster made of marble dust and lime, stretched old painted canvasses as wallpaper, and is currently hand painting a second bathroom in a repeating pattern of kookaburras, kangaroos, and koalas in a style he has named 'Australasiaoiserie.' Walls also tell stories about the house's past. In what is now the guest bedroom, original lath and plaster smoothed over a rough brick insulation called nogging, had decayed in sections, and was coated in five layers of paint. Gentle application of a scraper revealed a floral lattice wallpaper, which he left as is, creating a distressed cottage-core atmosphere. In addition to painted walls, he taught himself to make bluestone ones using the historical abundance of materials quarried in Ulster County. Inspired by Harvey Fite's Opus 40 in Saugerties, he used traditional techniques — no mortar — to build retaining walls, curved steps, garden niches, and a flagstone patio. Avi Gitler, an art gallerist in Manhattan and neighbor in nearby West Shokan, N.Y., saw Mr. Daverington's masonry and hired him to build a sprawling stone terrace and fire pit to accommodate 'en plein air' retreats for artists at his home. 'Peter is such a Renaissance man,' said Mr. Gitler. 'He's a great musician, a great painter and street artist, and a hell of a builder.' To date, Mr. Daverington estimates that he has spent $300,000 on his ongoing project. 'When I sell another painting, I'll put in reclaimed vintage flooring,' he said. Since the job in West Shokan, Mr. Daverington has landed several more commissions to paint residential murals upstate, allowing him to carry on the ideals of his artistic predecessors in addition to paying for new renovations on his house. 'I have discovered my own America here in the Hudson Valley,' he said. 'I came here to pursue a career in contemporary art in New York City, but what I really discovered was New York State.'
