Latest news with #TheCrossover
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Emmy Award-winning producer visits Victory Theater
HENDERSON, Ky. (WEHT) — Poet, educator, Emmy Award-winning producer and New York Times bestselling author of 40 books Kwame Alexander is coming to the Victory Theater. Organizers with the event say Alexander is an Emmy Award-winning producer of 'The Crossover', his Newbery Medal-winning novel turned Disney+ TV series, and the creator of the new animated PBS special 'Acoustic Rooster's Barnyard Band'. Alexander will be at the Victory Theater Thursday night to discuss his work and share insights. The event is free to the public and starts at 7:00 p.m. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Warriors Could Avoid Giannis Antetokounmpo Trade After Major Question Raised
Warriors Could Avoid Giannis Antetokounmpo Trade After Major Question Raised originally appeared on Athlon Sports. The Golden State Warriors have an important offseason ahead of them as they try to build around their aging trio of Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green to compete for a championship next season. Advertisement Of course, the Warriors ended the regular season on fire as they climbed to seventh in the Western Conference and then advanced past the No. 2 seed Houston Rockets in the first round. Golden State was then eliminated in the second round by the Minnesota Timberwolves after they were unable to overcome a hamstring injury suffered by Curry in Game 1. Golden State Warriors stars Jimmy Butler and Steph CurryTroy Taormina-Imagn Images Now the Warriors enter the offseason with some key decisions to make regarding how they want to build around their aging trio to make the roster into a title contender. One route they could go is potentially trading for Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo as they have been linked to the two-time MVP winner. Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo reacts during the first Penner-Imagn Images Despite this, a recent question was brought up about how adding Giannis could impact the future of the franchise. Advertisement 'What it would take to have Giannis, Steph, Jimmy, and Draymond all on the Warriors, you're talking about a carcass. Those four and 12 Pat Spencers,' Mark Willard said on The Crossover. 'And you'd have no assets for years to come. What if you get Giannis, I guarantee a title next year, however after that you have 12 years of no playoffs. Do you make the trade?' This is an interesting question to ask and also a good one as the Warriors would give up their entire future to potentially land Giannis for a chance at a championship. Of course, a roster headlined by Giannis, Curry, Butler and Green would be a title contender next season but with three of the four players in the final years of their careers and Giannis not likely to stick around after they retire, it would be a major risk for the franchise's future. Dec 25, 2020; Milwaukee, WI, USA; Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo (34) dribbles the ball against Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) during a NBA game at the Bradley Center.© Handout Photo-Imagn Images Because of this, it may be better for Golden State to instead go after a different star or worry about upgrading their depth as they try to capture another championship next season behind their aging trio. This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 3, 2025, where it first appeared.
New York Times
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Kwame Alexander on Bringing the Free Spirit of Jazz to Young Viewers
In 2010, the poet and novelist Kwame Alexander faced a challenge that is familiar to parents everywhere. His younger daughter, then a year old, wouldn't stop wailing. Lullabies failed. Rocking didn't help, nor did a car ride. Finally, Alexander put on a few records and found the solution: It was jazz, Baby, jazz! 'So I would play her Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald,' he said in a video interview in mid-April. 'I would play her bossa nova, and she would stop crying. And I thought: Wow, this is kind of cool. Maybe I should write something about jazz for her.' The result was 'Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band,' Alexander's first children's book. But an enterprising rooster doesn't crow only once, and the author's feathered, guitar-strumming character has lived on, in a 2021 Kennedy Center stage musical and in three more books. And now Rooster is making his television debut: On Thursday, PBS Kids is premiering 'Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band,' a one-hour animated special that Alexander created with the screenwriter Kay Donmyer. (The special is streaming on all PBS digital platforms; check local listings for broadcast times.) Alexander, 56, is no stranger to TV: He was the showrunner of 'The Crossover,' the Disney+ 2023 adaptation of his Newbery Medal-winning middle-grade novel about basketball, which won an Emmy for best young teen series. In 'Acoustic Rooster,' he and Donmyer, who collaborated on the script and the lyrics, are presenting a, well, cockier version of the book's strutting hero. In the special, Rooster wants to win a jazz band contest, but first he needs to be part of a group. He plans to join the famous Barnyard Band — which has members like 'Mules Davis,' 'Lil Herdin' and 'Ella Finchgerald' (voiced by the jazz singer Dee Daniels) — and help it win the competition by being its undisputed star. But he has a few things to learn, as does the show's preschool audience. 'Acoustic Rooster,' which features original songs composed by the jazz musician Mark McLean (who also wrote additional lyrics) teaches young viewers not only about jazz but also about collaboration and compromise. Produced by GBH, the special is accompanied by 'Acoustic Rooster: Jazzy Jams,' a series of 20 three-minute animated shorts, each including a song and often solving a problem, musical or emotional. Two jams from the series, which features guest artists like the pianist Herbie Hancock and the bassist Amy Shook, have been officially released already. Others will follow weekly, starting on May 9, and several can be previewed on YouTube. (Like the special, the shorts are being broadcast and streaming.) An interactive online game, Groovin' With Acoustic Rooster, will offer children opportunities to create their own music. 'They'll come away understanding what it means to improvise,' Alexander said. 'They'll come away with what scat is — Skip-it-a-bebop, boo! They'll learn a little bit about the history of jazz, which, in fact, is about the history of America. And really jazz is about the history of democracy, and how you have all these people onstage, and they've all got to work together to create this beautiful piece.' These are edited excerpts from the conversation. What is the origin story of the 'Acoustic Rooster' characters? You've said you were in Tuscany when you got the idea. I was on a writer's fellowship, and every morning, on my walk to the local cafe to get tea and a croissant, I would pass by a farm. And on this farm were all these animals who were dancing. At least in my imagination, they were dancing and partying. And one thing led to another. Acoustic Rooster was the first character I came up with. And then I had to sort of begin to give the rooster a community. And from there, I thought, Well, there's got to be a cousin, and maybe the cousin, if the cousin is related to the rooster, then the cousin might be a hen or a duck. And then it just hit me: Duck — Duke — Ellington. And once I got that [Duck Ellington], that was my first sort of jazz-inspired animal. Why did you and your collaborators decide to give the TV adaptation this form — as opposed to, say, a series with half-hour episodes? This is an introduction to jazz. And so the idea is, if you like it, if you love it, if you show us you love it by watching it, then absolutely, I think there are a lot more stories to tell in a full, fledged-out series. What we're trying to do with the shorts is try to give people sort of a quick slice of what this universe, this rooster jazz universe, is like. Does Acoustic Rooster represent you at all? My advanced-creative-writing professor, sophomore year [at Virginia Tech], was Nikki Giovanni, may she rest in peace. And I thought I knew everything there was to know about poetry as a sophomore. And, of course, she's a legend, and I would challenge her nonstop, and she would give me Cs. And I remember having a conference with her during office hours, and she said to me, 'Kwame, I can teach you how to write, but I can't teach you how to be interesting.' And I remember just being livid at that, like, 'What are you talking about?' And, of course, you know, she would end up becoming, besides my parents, the most influential person in my writerly life. And it took me a while to see it. I think part of our goal with Rooster is to follow him on this journey, so he can get to that point. Why did you decide to use original songs instead of works from the jazz canon? For the special, it was important for us to create, to really be highly original, and to really showcase our talents. And again, this is an introduction. I really view this as a way to engage kids into this brilliant, masterful music, American form of music, that we call jazz music. I think outside of that, perhaps it just may be a little too expensive at this stage to secure some of the rights. Did you have a say in the look of the animation [by Global Mechanic Media]? Part of my big thing was our show should not look like any other show. It should incorporate the jazz motif of albums from the '50s and the '60s. It should be electric. It should have a certain color palette that screams, 'Verve!' Herbie Hancock is one of your guest musicians. Why did you think he was a good fit for the 'Acoustic Rooster' shorts? Herbie Hancock likes to tell this story about how he was playing with Miles Davis's band in Germany. They were on tour [around 1963-64], and Miles was known to be a pretty ornery person, and if you did the wrong thing, you could get fired immediately. And Herbie Hancock talks about how he played a chord that was the wrong chord. He totally messed it up. In that moment, he knew that he was going to get fired, like it was over for him at the end of that show, and he said the note that Miles played next made Herbie's chord sound brilliant. I feel like that's a big lesson that improvisation and jazz teaches, and something that I adhere to. We're going to do some things that we may not think are going to work, or we're going to be told 'no' in life, or we're going to have the blues. But the measure of our humanity is not how we succumb to that. It's how we overcome it. It's how we bounce back.
Yahoo
20-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Michael Jordan jersey worn during 1992-93 season could sell for millions
The jersey has been photo-matched to 17 games during the 1992-93 season. (Credit: Heritage) Another Michael Jordan game-used uniform has hit the auction block with a pre-sale estimate in the millions. Heritage is selling a jersey and shorts worn by Jordan during the 1992-93 season, as well as on the cover of Sports Illustrated in October 1993 that announced his first retirement. The lot has an estimate of $2 million and up. Advertisement The red road jersey has been matched to a remarkable 17 games during the season and is said to be the only jersey matched to any games from the Bulls first three-peat (1991-93). Later in Jordan's career, especially in 1998, he began wearing more jerseys as their value became more recognized, with each featuring fewer games of wear— in stark contrast to gamers from earlier years that were worn for extended periods of time. RELATED STORIES: In November 2024, MeiGray said in its history it had authenticated 25 game-worn Jordan jerseys from the 1997-98 season, with 20 of those being used in just a single game. The authenticator also said, at the time, it had examined 130 jerseys said to be worn by Jordan from the seasons prior to 1997-98, but had only found four to be authentic. Advertisement Last November, a 1996-97 jersey matched to 17 games — the same number as the jersey at Heritage — and described as 'the most extensively worn Michael Jordan Bulls game-worn jersey ever submitted to MeiGray Authenticated,' including 'The Crossover' game, sold for $4.68 million. The jersey worn by Jordan in his NBA preseason debut sold last month for $4.2 million. Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture.
