Monday, 15 July 2019
Sunday, 14 July 2019
Prefab Sprout vinyl re-issues coming soon...
Three albums and a compilation will all be made available once again on vinyl
Christian Eede
The Quietus
4 July 2019
Prefab Sprout will reissue four albums from across the '80s and '90s this September.
Amongst the reissues are the three albums Swoon (from 1984), From Langley Park to Memphis (from 1988) and Jordan: The Comeback from 1990. The re-releases are rounded out by a compilation, Life of Surprises: The Best of Prefab Sprout, which dates back to 1994.
The reissues will be released via Sony Legacy on September 27, and all of them have been overseen by the group's chief songwriter Paddy McAloon. There is also a new album, titled Femmes Mythologiques, coming later this year.
Prefab Sprout will reissue four albums from across the '80s and '90s this September.
Amongst the reissues are the three albums Swoon (from 1984), From Langley Park to Memphis (from 1988) and Jordan: The Comeback from 1990. The re-releases are rounded out by a compilation, Life of Surprises: The Best of Prefab Sprout, which dates back to 1994.
The reissues will be released via Sony Legacy on September 27, and all of them have been overseen by the group's chief songwriter Paddy McAloon. There is also a new album, titled Femmes Mythologiques, coming later this year.
There are rumours of a rarities set too. Of course, there are always rumours...
Buy the vinyl; get the t-shirt:
Saturday, 13 July 2019
Rip Torn RIP
Anita Gates
The New York Times
9 July 2019
Rip Torn, who earned a glowing reputation as a versatile actor on both stage and screen, but who never quite shed a less savory one as an inveterate troublemaker, died on Tuesday at his home in Lakeville, Conn. He was 88.
His publicist, Rick Miramontez, announced the death.
Mr. Torn made his reputation as a gifted actor in the works of Tennessee Williams and in roles as diverse as Walt Whitman, Richard Nixon and Judas Iscariot. But no role brought him more fame than that of the bullying producer on “The Larry Sanders Show,” one of the most acclaimed television comedies of the 1990s.
As the gruff Artie on “Larry Sanders,” which starred Garry Shandling as the neurotic star of a late-night talk show and which ran from 1992 to 1998 on HBO, Mr. Torn stole practically every scene he was in.
9 July 2019
Rip Torn, who earned a glowing reputation as a versatile actor on both stage and screen, but who never quite shed a less savory one as an inveterate troublemaker, died on Tuesday at his home in Lakeville, Conn. He was 88.
His publicist, Rick Miramontez, announced the death.
Mr. Torn made his reputation as a gifted actor in the works of Tennessee Williams and in roles as diverse as Walt Whitman, Richard Nixon and Judas Iscariot. But no role brought him more fame than that of the bullying producer on “The Larry Sanders Show,” one of the most acclaimed television comedies of the 1990s.
As the gruff Artie on “Larry Sanders,” which starred Garry Shandling as the neurotic star of a late-night talk show and which ran from 1992 to 1998 on HBO, Mr. Torn stole practically every scene he was in.
Artie was so loyal to Larry that when Larry’s wife locked her husband out of their bedroom, it was Artie who broke down the door. When a drunken writer half Artie’s age tried to rush the stage while the show within a show was on the air, he tackled the young man to the floor without a second’s hesitation.
Mr. Torn’s outsize performance brought him six Emmy Award nominations for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series. He won the award in 1996.
Mr. Torn with Garry Shandling in an episode of the HBO series “The Larry Sanders Show,” one of the most acclaimed television comedies of the 1990s
Almost 30 years earlier he had received Obie Awards for his Off Broadway work, as an actor in Norman Mailer’s “The Deer Park” (1967) and as the director of Michael McClure’s “The Beard” (1968). But despite the critical accolades he consistently received in the following decades, other awards were elusive.
His last performance on Broadway, as a self-deluding Texan in Horton Foote’s drama “The Young Man From Atlanta” (1997), was warmly received. Ben Brantley of The New York Times cited Mr. Torn’s “imposing quality of emotional largeness,” which he said “brings mythic dimensions to this small-scale drama without bursting its seams.” But to the surprise of many, Mr. Torn was not nominated for a Tony Award.
Almost 30 years earlier he had received Obie Awards for his Off Broadway work, as an actor in Norman Mailer’s “The Deer Park” (1967) and as the director of Michael McClure’s “The Beard” (1968). But despite the critical accolades he consistently received in the following decades, other awards were elusive.
His last performance on Broadway, as a self-deluding Texan in Horton Foote’s drama “The Young Man From Atlanta” (1997), was warmly received. Ben Brantley of The New York Times cited Mr. Torn’s “imposing quality of emotional largeness,” which he said “brings mythic dimensions to this small-scale drama without bursting its seams.” But to the surprise of many, Mr. Torn was not nominated for a Tony Award.
Torn and Alan Alda in The Seduction of Joe Tynan, 1979
In fact, in a long stage and screen career, he was nominated only once for a Tony, for his performance as a sadistic young man in Williams’s “Sweet Bird of Youth” (1959), and only once for an Academy Award, for his turn as a hard-drinking backwoodsman in “Cross Creek” (1983), Martin Ritt’s drama about the author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (played by Mary Steenburgen). He did not win either time.
His reputation for volatility was one possible explanation. As he once acknowledged, “I get angry easily.”
He lost his cool most notably in 1968, when he was filming “Maidstone,” an underground film written and directed by Mailer. Mailer was also the star, playing a writer running for president. Mr. Torn played his half brother. In a decidedly unscripted moment, and for reasons that have never been made precisely clear, Mr. Torn struck Mailer with a hammer on camera; Mailer responded by attacking Mr. Torn and biting his ear. The fight became the centerpiece of the film.
Torn with Shirley Knight in the Broadway production of Horton Foote’s “The Young Man From Atlanta” in 1997
Later in life, Mr. Torn professed to have mellowed. In 1997 he told The Los Angeles Times: “I just don’t give people trouble anymore. I say, ‘Excuse me, I only fight with friends.’ And I walk away.”
Or at least he had moved on to fighting in court. Dennis Hopper told a story on “The Tonight Show” in 1994 about how Mr. Torn had pulled a knife on him during an argument in the 1960s. (It was apparently as a result of this argument that Jack Nicholson and not Mr. Torn was cast as the Southern lawyer in Mr. Hopper’s hit film “Easy Rider.”)
The way Mr. Torn remembered it, Mr. Hopper had pulled a knife on him, not the other way around, so he sued for defamation. He won.
Yet Mr. Torn maintained his bad-boy image to the end. He was arrested on drunken-driving charges several times in his 70s. In 2010 he was arrested after breaking into a Connecticut bank at night with a loaded gun in his possession. Explaining that he had been intoxicated and thought the bank was his house, he pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment, criminal trespass, criminal mischief and illegally carrying a firearm. He was given a suspended sentence and placed on probation for three years; during his probation he was subject to random drug and alcohol testing.
His brushes with the law may have defined Mr. Torn’s image for many people; he often suggested that this image and his political activism — he was an avid leftist — cost him work.
Later in life, Mr. Torn professed to have mellowed. In 1997 he told The Los Angeles Times: “I just don’t give people trouble anymore. I say, ‘Excuse me, I only fight with friends.’ And I walk away.”
Or at least he had moved on to fighting in court. Dennis Hopper told a story on “The Tonight Show” in 1994 about how Mr. Torn had pulled a knife on him during an argument in the 1960s. (It was apparently as a result of this argument that Jack Nicholson and not Mr. Torn was cast as the Southern lawyer in Mr. Hopper’s hit film “Easy Rider.”)
The way Mr. Torn remembered it, Mr. Hopper had pulled a knife on him, not the other way around, so he sued for defamation. He won.
Yet Mr. Torn maintained his bad-boy image to the end. He was arrested on drunken-driving charges several times in his 70s. In 2010 he was arrested after breaking into a Connecticut bank at night with a loaded gun in his possession. Explaining that he had been intoxicated and thought the bank was his house, he pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment, criminal trespass, criminal mischief and illegally carrying a firearm. He was given a suspended sentence and placed on probation for three years; during his probation he was subject to random drug and alcohol testing.
His brushes with the law may have defined Mr. Torn’s image for many people; he often suggested that this image and his political activism — he was an avid leftist — cost him work.
Torn as Judas Iscariot, speaking with the director Nicholas Ray during the filming of “King of Kings” in 1961
Elmore Rual Torn Jr. was born on Feb. 6, 1931, in Temple, Tex., a small city north of Austin, to Elmore and Thelma (Spacek) Torn. (The actress Sissy Spacek was a cousin of hers.) He inherited the nickname Rip from his father, an economist.
The younger Rip attended what is now Texas A&M University, where he studied agriculture, before transferring to the University of Texas and switching his focus to drama. After graduating, he served in the Army for two years and then moved to New York to study at the Actors Studio.
Early on, Mr. Torn played a small, uncredited part in Elia Kazan’s Southern Gothic film “Baby Doll” (1956), written by Williams, and a credited one in “Time Limit,” a 1957 drama starring Richard Widmark as an Army officer accused of treason. He also became a familiar face on television anthology series like “The United States Steel Hour” and “Kraft Theatre.”
Elmore Rual Torn Jr. was born on Feb. 6, 1931, in Temple, Tex., a small city north of Austin, to Elmore and Thelma (Spacek) Torn. (The actress Sissy Spacek was a cousin of hers.) He inherited the nickname Rip from his father, an economist.
The younger Rip attended what is now Texas A&M University, where he studied agriculture, before transferring to the University of Texas and switching his focus to drama. After graduating, he served in the Army for two years and then moved to New York to study at the Actors Studio.
Early on, Mr. Torn played a small, uncredited part in Elia Kazan’s Southern Gothic film “Baby Doll” (1956), written by Williams, and a credited one in “Time Limit,” a 1957 drama starring Richard Widmark as an Army officer accused of treason. He also became a familiar face on television anthology series like “The United States Steel Hour” and “Kraft Theatre.”
Torn with Geraldine Page and Muni Seroff in a 1972 television version of Chekhov’s “A Marriage Proposal"
His first two Broadway appearances were in Williams plays directed by Kazan. In 1956 he took over the lead male role, Brick, in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” toward the end of its run. Three years later he was in the original cast of “Sweet Bird of Youth.”
That play was good to him: Tony-nominated for his supporting performance as Tom Finley, the brother of the lead character’s old girlfriend, Mr. Torn eventually took over the lead role, the drifter Chance Wayne, from Paul Newman.
With Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth, 1962
Mr. Torn, Newman and Geraldine Page, Mr. Torn’s future wife, who played the faded movie star whom Chance takes up with, all reprised their original Broadway roles in the 1962 movie version. When “Sweet Bird of Youth” was adapted for television in 1989, Mr. Torn played yet another role: the vengeful Boss Finley, Tom’s father. Among his other TV roles was the dying Southern patriarch Big Daddy in a 1984 adaptation of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
Mr. Torn’s nine other Broadway appearances included three acclaimed revivals: Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie” (1975) and two plays by Eugene O’Neill: “Strange Interlude” (1963) and “Anna Christie” (1993). He also appeared frequently Off Broadway in the 1960s and ’70s.
Mr. Torn’s nine other Broadway appearances included three acclaimed revivals: Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie” (1975) and two plays by Eugene O’Neill: “Strange Interlude” (1963) and “Anna Christie” (1993). He also appeared frequently Off Broadway in the 1960s and ’70s.
The Wonder Boys, 2000
His movies ranged from the gritty drama “The Cincinnati Kid” (1965) to the biblical blockbuster “King of Kings” (1961), in which he played Judas, to escapist fare like “The Beastmaster” (1982) and “RoboCop 3” (1993).
His performance as Nixon came in the 1979 CBS mini-series “Blind Ambition,” based on a book by the former White House counsel John Dean (played by Martin Sheen). He was Walt Whitman in the 1990 movie “Beautiful Dreamers.”
Mr. Shandling said it was Mr. Torn’s performance as Albert Brooks’s unconvincingly reassuring afterlife lawyer in the comedy “Defending Your Life” (1991) that won him his role on “The Larry Sanders Show.”
With David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth, 1976
Among Mr. Torn’s better-known movies were two science-fiction hits. In the dark “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976), he was a cynical scientist who befriends the title character, a space alien played by David Bowie; in the lighthearted “Men in Black” (1997), he headed an organization supervising extraterrestrials who secretly live on Earth. He reprised the role in the film’s 2002 sequel.
Will Smith, Torn and Tommy Lee Jones in The Men in Black, 1997
But he seemed to earn his best reviews and his most passionate audiences for films that were not hits.
“Payday” (1973), a road movie about a ruthless country singer, did not fare well at the box office but developed a cult following. His performance as an aging Memphis record producer in the 2005 drama “Forty Shades of Blue” was critically praised but also little seen. In his Times review of that film, A. O. Scott called Mr. Torn “a crafty and powerful actor” who was “easily the peer of Jack Nicholson or Tommy Lee Jones.”
Mr. Torn’s last screen roles included a lascivious Louis XV in Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” (2006) and a blustery network chief, a character reminiscent of his Emmy-winning Artie, on the sitcom “30 Rock.” In 2016 he played the voice of a talking letter M wearing a top hat on the offbeat animated series “TripTank.”
As President Richard M. Nixon, with Martin Sheen as the White House counsel John Dean, in the 1979 CBS mini-series “Blind Ambition”
Mr. Torn married the actress Ann Wedgeworth in 1955. He married Ms. Page in 1963, two years after he and Ms. Wedgeworth divorced. They remained married until her death in 1987, but by then Mr. Torn had already begun a long-term relationship with the actress Amy Wright, who worked with Mr. Torn and Ms. Page’s Sanctuary Theater Workshop in New York.
In addition to Ms. Wright, Mr. Torn is survived by four daughters: Danae, from his first marriage, the actress Angelica Page, from his second, and Katie and Claire, from his relationship with Ms. Wright; two sons, Anthony and Jonathan, both from his second marriage; his sister, Patricia Alexander; and four grandchildren.
In a 1997 interview with The Times, Mr. Torn credited Geraldine Page with teaching him the secret of emotional health.
“I learned from Gerry that all you need is time on the stage,” he said. “No matter how I felt, no matter what anyone said about me, I always had the audience.”
Jacey Fortin contributed reporting.
Friday, 12 July 2019
Thursday, 11 July 2019
Lines Off by Hugo Williams - review
Lines Off by Hugo Williams review – fascinating reflections on body and mind
Inspired by a spell in hospital, Hugo Williams confronts the body in crisis with irresistible styleKate Kellaway
The Guardian
Tuesday 9 July 2019
Hugo Williams’s “lines off” – a stage direction – were written during a period in which he had dialysis, followed by a kidney transplant. Hospitals are dramas in themselves – operating theatres appropriately named. In Transplant 2014, the surgeon is poised to give “the performance of a lifetime” (and let us not forget, Williams once worked as a theatre critic). But sickness and the surgeon’s knife do not necessarily make great poetry. What matters is Williams’s own writerly performance, his ability to rally while undergoing the trials of Job. It is the gallantry of his writing that moves. The raffish intelligence that makes all his poetry a pleasure to read does not desert him in extremis. There is – thank the NHS – never any sense of his being diminished on the page.
His old style cooperates with his new predicament even if hospital is not his preferred habitat. His gloom as he casts himself a has-been is offset by the doctor’s disbelief (in The Check-Up) that he has survived:
“Oh yes, we thought he was a goner,”
the doctor tells his student nurse.
She looks at me admiringly,
imagining me dead. I take a little bow.
Readers – particularly older ones – will be tickled by his sense of the body as a docile soldier, continuing to oblige
There are not many openings for dandies on hospital wards, but there is reason to swank a little about a faithful servant in Dear Arm. Readers – particularly older ones – will be tickled by and recognise Williams’s sense of the body as a docile soldier, continuing to oblige. But the body is not always compliant. And if performance is the thing, what happens when you “dry”?
What is fascinating about this collection is Williams’s curiosity about the body in crisis. The most impressive poems are about what happens when the mind temporarily unfastens itself. In My Absence describes this state as another country (from whose bourne this particular traveller has returned). It is vertiginous, alpine and avalanche-rich:
I’m buried alive
in an abstract expression
of blizzards and ghosts,
blubbing, terrified, lost,
as I try but fail to exist.
The schoolboy’s word “blubbing” tempers our pity and underscores a resolve never to take himself too seriously, not to let what Patrick White once called “luxurious self-pity” rule. But if sickness is a landscape to be navigated – and Williams has a generous sense of its metaphorical scope – its precise geography repeatedly eludes him. And in Fall Zone (Royal Free Hospital), bad weather spreads to his notebooks, which have by now become a territory in themselves, assailed by “a blizzard of crossings-out”.
In Carphology, there is irresistible comedy in the account of how the human need for purpose translates to the hospital bed:
Since we are here, we reason,
we might as well get on
with collecting bits of fluff
from our hospital blankets
and placing them in piles
against a rainy day.
And several autobiographical pieces would serve well for that rainy day. These are beguiling poems that look back at childhood, sepia set pieces from the mind’s family album (My War, Tea-time). But they lack the urgent strangeness of the hospital poems. Williams has a gift for making poetry read as effortlessly as conversation – a huge accomplishment. And the final poem, The Half-Open Door, is so simple it barely exists, beautifully balanced between the pedestrian and profound. If it has a metaphorical implication, it is light as a coat slung over an arm:
Hat or umbrella?
Raincoat or windbreaker?
It’s hard to be sure
when the sun is shining
and rain is falling
from a clear blue sky.
Dear Arm
How many times, dear arm,
have you put yourself in danger
for my sake? How many times
have you found your way home
through the dark, or saved me from falling?
I didn’t have to ask you twice.
Poor arm! I broke you once.
I burnt you once. More than once
I cursed your weakness
at arm-wrestling and swimming,
but I was proud of your tan
when I rolled up my sleeve at school.
You aren’t so handsome now,
but you soldier on, one of the faithful
in my band of volunteers,
my noble standard bearer
in the war within a war,
the daily clash of purposes.
Dear arm, hold still for me now,
while I make you suffer once more.
Be brave, while the surgeon
creates an “access fistula”
that will wash my blood for me.
It seems you must save my life as usual.
Hugo Williams’s “lines off” – a stage direction – were written during a period in which he had dialysis, followed by a kidney transplant. Hospitals are dramas in themselves – operating theatres appropriately named. In Transplant 2014, the surgeon is poised to give “the performance of a lifetime” (and let us not forget, Williams once worked as a theatre critic). But sickness and the surgeon’s knife do not necessarily make great poetry. What matters is Williams’s own writerly performance, his ability to rally while undergoing the trials of Job. It is the gallantry of his writing that moves. The raffish intelligence that makes all his poetry a pleasure to read does not desert him in extremis. There is – thank the NHS – never any sense of his being diminished on the page.
His old style cooperates with his new predicament even if hospital is not his preferred habitat. His gloom as he casts himself a has-been is offset by the doctor’s disbelief (in The Check-Up) that he has survived:
“Oh yes, we thought he was a goner,”
the doctor tells his student nurse.
She looks at me admiringly,
imagining me dead. I take a little bow.
Readers – particularly older ones – will be tickled by his sense of the body as a docile soldier, continuing to oblige
There are not many openings for dandies on hospital wards, but there is reason to swank a little about a faithful servant in Dear Arm. Readers – particularly older ones – will be tickled by and recognise Williams’s sense of the body as a docile soldier, continuing to oblige. But the body is not always compliant. And if performance is the thing, what happens when you “dry”?
What is fascinating about this collection is Williams’s curiosity about the body in crisis. The most impressive poems are about what happens when the mind temporarily unfastens itself. In My Absence describes this state as another country (from whose bourne this particular traveller has returned). It is vertiginous, alpine and avalanche-rich:
I’m buried alive
in an abstract expression
of blizzards and ghosts,
blubbing, terrified, lost,
as I try but fail to exist.
The schoolboy’s word “blubbing” tempers our pity and underscores a resolve never to take himself too seriously, not to let what Patrick White once called “luxurious self-pity” rule. But if sickness is a landscape to be navigated – and Williams has a generous sense of its metaphorical scope – its precise geography repeatedly eludes him. And in Fall Zone (Royal Free Hospital), bad weather spreads to his notebooks, which have by now become a territory in themselves, assailed by “a blizzard of crossings-out”.
In Carphology, there is irresistible comedy in the account of how the human need for purpose translates to the hospital bed:
Since we are here, we reason,
we might as well get on
with collecting bits of fluff
from our hospital blankets
and placing them in piles
against a rainy day.
And several autobiographical pieces would serve well for that rainy day. These are beguiling poems that look back at childhood, sepia set pieces from the mind’s family album (My War, Tea-time). But they lack the urgent strangeness of the hospital poems. Williams has a gift for making poetry read as effortlessly as conversation – a huge accomplishment. And the final poem, The Half-Open Door, is so simple it barely exists, beautifully balanced between the pedestrian and profound. If it has a metaphorical implication, it is light as a coat slung over an arm:
Hat or umbrella?
Raincoat or windbreaker?
It’s hard to be sure
when the sun is shining
and rain is falling
from a clear blue sky.
Dear Arm
How many times, dear arm,
have you put yourself in danger
for my sake? How many times
have you found your way home
through the dark, or saved me from falling?
I didn’t have to ask you twice.
Poor arm! I broke you once.
I burnt you once. More than once
I cursed your weakness
at arm-wrestling and swimming,
but I was proud of your tan
when I rolled up my sleeve at school.
You aren’t so handsome now,
but you soldier on, one of the faithful
in my band of volunteers,
my noble standard bearer
in the war within a war,
the daily clash of purposes.
Dear arm, hold still for me now,
while I make you suffer once more.
Be brave, while the surgeon
creates an “access fistula”
that will wash my blood for me.
It seems you must save my life as usual.
Tuesday, 9 July 2019
Monday, 8 July 2019
Sunday, 7 July 2019
João Gilberto RIP
João Gilberto obituary
One of the most important figures in Brazilian music who was known as the father of bossa nova
Robin Denselow
Soon, US jazz musicians would be visiting Brazil to hear the new music for themselves. In 1961, the guitarist Charlie Byrd arrived, and inevitably he found his way to “Bottle Alley” in Rio de Janeiro, where bossa musicians gather and collaborated with jazz players such as Sérgio Mendes.
Byrd returned home excited by what he had heard, and on his return to the US he recorded the album Jazz Samba with Getz. It became a best-seller, staying in the American charts for 70 weeks – an astonishing achievement for a jazz album.
It was now inevitable that Gilberto would be invited to perform in the US, and in November 1962 he played in New York at an historic concert that also featured Jobim, Mendes and other Brazilian artists including Carlos Lyra, alongside Byrd and Getz.
According to some of the Brazilian musicians, the concert was something of a mess – Lyra claimed “they just wanted to do a recording session on stage” – but this was a high-profile event that helped to boost Gilberto’s reputation in the US. And there was further American success to come.
In 1964 he and Getz released Getz/Gilberto, which included the massively successful Girl from Ipanema, written by Jobim and Moraes as they sat in a bar off Copocabana beach in Rio, watching the girls go by, and still one of the most celebrated songs of the bossa nova era.
Bossa nova had become a new global pop fashion, thanks very largely to Gilberto, but in 1964 the Brazilian music scene suddenly changed. A military coup ended the years of optimism, and Brazil’s easy-going, romantic image was shattered.
New styles would now emerge, from protest songs to the experiments of the Tropicália movement, and leading musicians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil would later be jailed and then exiled by the authorities. Many of the bossa nova stars – including Gilberto – simply decided to stay in the US, where their music was so popular.
Gilberto remained in self-imposed exile until 1980. He made further recordings with Getz, and with Herbie Mann, spent two years living in Mexico, where he also recorded, but spent much of his time practising, playing privately, and reviving songs by earlier Brazilian composers.
On returning to Brazil, he also began to work with a younger generation of Brazilian musicians, and in 1981 he recorded the album Brasil with Veloso, Gil and Maria Bethânia, who regarded Gilberto as a hero of Brazilian music.
In an interview in 2007, Caetano told me that he first heard Gilberto when he was 17, and it was “like enlightenment for me. It was like an incredible revelation of everything, of aesthetic criteria and deep emotions, and most of all, hope in Brazil … hope in our future, and the idea that we had a kind of mission. I still think João Gilberto is our greatest artist.”
Gilberto continued to tour and record, though he always insisted that the acoustics in a concert hall should be excellent, and that audiences should remain quiet. He performed in the US and Europe, and became a cult hero in Japan, where there was an enthusiastic following for bossa nova. One of his finest live recordings, João Gilberto in Tokyo, was released in 2004.
He was a recluse, and an eccentric perfectionist, and Brazilian musicians delighted in telling stories about him. Lyra described him as “a fantastic artist and a very special man, very neurotic like all of us, but probably a little more so”.
Gilberto was very fond of cats, and Lyra re-told with some glee the story of how one of his cats was allegedly driven to jump from an eighth-floor window, driven crazy by his master’s constant repetition of a guitar phrase.
His daughter, the singer Bebel Gilberto, described him like this: “My father changed Brazilian music. I would sometimes see him seeking for different chords for classics he’s been playing for 14 years. I can’t believe his obsession – always seeking for perfection, something that could be better, a version that no-one had thought of before.”
He is survived by João Marcelo, his son from his marriage to Astrud, which ended in divorce; Bebel, his daughter from his marriage to the singer Miúcha, who died in 2018; and Luisa Carolina, his daughter from a relationship with the journalist Claudia Faissol.
• João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira, musician, born 10 June 1931; died 6 July 2019
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2019/jul/06/joao-gilberto-obituary
Robin Denselow
The Guardian
Sat 6 Jul 2019
João Gilberto, who has died aged 88, was one of the most important and best loved figures in Brazilian music, who played a key role in the development of bossa nova in the late 1950s and early 60s.
Along with the composer Antônio Carlos “Tom” Jobim, he created a romantic, reflective new style in which samba rhythms were mixed with influences from the American “cool jazz” scene. As a guitarist, he pioneered a new technique that mixed the syncopated plucking of acoustic guitar chords with jazz-influenced harmonies and chord progressions, while as a singer his style was laid-back and understated.
Bossa nova was a new, cool and sophisticated style that reflected the optimism of Brazil in the early 60s and initially became popular among middle and upper-class Brazilian music fans. Then its popularity began to spread.
Along with other leading Brazilian musicians, Gilberto appeared at a now legendary concert at Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1962, and the following year he released the album Getz/Gilberto with the American saxophonist Stan Getz, who had become fascinated by bossa nova. The album included the single Girl from Ipanema, sung by Astrud Gilberto, to whom Gilberto was then married. It sold more than a million copies, and brought him international acclaim.
It was an extraordinary achievement for a musician who had initially struggled to succeed and find acceptance for his music. Born in Juazeiro in Bahia state, he began playing the guitar as a teenager, forming a band while still at school. He tried working as a singer on a radio station in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, and at the age of 19 moved to Rio de Janeiro as singer with the Garotos da Lua, but was fired because he could never be trusted to turn up for rehearsals.
He now found himself out of work and depressed, and after a period working with a vocal group in the southern city of Porto Alegre, he moved to Minas Gerais state to live with his elder sister. Here he spent months practising, and perfecting his new musical style.
In 1956 he eventually returned to Rio, and his fortunes changed. Jobim was impressed by the new approach, and set about finding a suitable song for the new bossa nova style. Chega de Saudade was written by Jobim with lyrics by a third hero of the early bossa movement, Vinicius de Moraes, and became the first bossa nova hit.
It was followed by a full album with the same title. In 1959, the new music enjoyed international success when Gilberto and Jobim helped to contribute the music for the cult film Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus), in which the Greek myth was re-told in the setting of a Brazilian carnival.
It won an Academy Award for best foreign language film in 1960, and the Palme D’Or at the 1959 Cannes film festival, and was helped by a soundtrack that included Gilberto’s recording of A Felicidade. America began to discover a brand new, cool and sophisticated Brazilian music, and the bossa nova boom began.
Sat 6 Jul 2019
João Gilberto, who has died aged 88, was one of the most important and best loved figures in Brazilian music, who played a key role in the development of bossa nova in the late 1950s and early 60s.
Along with the composer Antônio Carlos “Tom” Jobim, he created a romantic, reflective new style in which samba rhythms were mixed with influences from the American “cool jazz” scene. As a guitarist, he pioneered a new technique that mixed the syncopated plucking of acoustic guitar chords with jazz-influenced harmonies and chord progressions, while as a singer his style was laid-back and understated.
Bossa nova was a new, cool and sophisticated style that reflected the optimism of Brazil in the early 60s and initially became popular among middle and upper-class Brazilian music fans. Then its popularity began to spread.
Along with other leading Brazilian musicians, Gilberto appeared at a now legendary concert at Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1962, and the following year he released the album Getz/Gilberto with the American saxophonist Stan Getz, who had become fascinated by bossa nova. The album included the single Girl from Ipanema, sung by Astrud Gilberto, to whom Gilberto was then married. It sold more than a million copies, and brought him international acclaim.
It was an extraordinary achievement for a musician who had initially struggled to succeed and find acceptance for his music. Born in Juazeiro in Bahia state, he began playing the guitar as a teenager, forming a band while still at school. He tried working as a singer on a radio station in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, and at the age of 19 moved to Rio de Janeiro as singer with the Garotos da Lua, but was fired because he could never be trusted to turn up for rehearsals.
He now found himself out of work and depressed, and after a period working with a vocal group in the southern city of Porto Alegre, he moved to Minas Gerais state to live with his elder sister. Here he spent months practising, and perfecting his new musical style.
In 1956 he eventually returned to Rio, and his fortunes changed. Jobim was impressed by the new approach, and set about finding a suitable song for the new bossa nova style. Chega de Saudade was written by Jobim with lyrics by a third hero of the early bossa movement, Vinicius de Moraes, and became the first bossa nova hit.
It was followed by a full album with the same title. In 1959, the new music enjoyed international success when Gilberto and Jobim helped to contribute the music for the cult film Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus), in which the Greek myth was re-told in the setting of a Brazilian carnival.
It won an Academy Award for best foreign language film in 1960, and the Palme D’Or at the 1959 Cannes film festival, and was helped by a soundtrack that included Gilberto’s recording of A Felicidade. America began to discover a brand new, cool and sophisticated Brazilian music, and the bossa nova boom began.
Soon, US jazz musicians would be visiting Brazil to hear the new music for themselves. In 1961, the guitarist Charlie Byrd arrived, and inevitably he found his way to “Bottle Alley” in Rio de Janeiro, where bossa musicians gather and collaborated with jazz players such as Sérgio Mendes.
Byrd returned home excited by what he had heard, and on his return to the US he recorded the album Jazz Samba with Getz. It became a best-seller, staying in the American charts for 70 weeks – an astonishing achievement for a jazz album.
It was now inevitable that Gilberto would be invited to perform in the US, and in November 1962 he played in New York at an historic concert that also featured Jobim, Mendes and other Brazilian artists including Carlos Lyra, alongside Byrd and Getz.
According to some of the Brazilian musicians, the concert was something of a mess – Lyra claimed “they just wanted to do a recording session on stage” – but this was a high-profile event that helped to boost Gilberto’s reputation in the US. And there was further American success to come.
In 1964 he and Getz released Getz/Gilberto, which included the massively successful Girl from Ipanema, written by Jobim and Moraes as they sat in a bar off Copocabana beach in Rio, watching the girls go by, and still one of the most celebrated songs of the bossa nova era.
Bossa nova had become a new global pop fashion, thanks very largely to Gilberto, but in 1964 the Brazilian music scene suddenly changed. A military coup ended the years of optimism, and Brazil’s easy-going, romantic image was shattered.
New styles would now emerge, from protest songs to the experiments of the Tropicália movement, and leading musicians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil would later be jailed and then exiled by the authorities. Many of the bossa nova stars – including Gilberto – simply decided to stay in the US, where their music was so popular.
Gilberto remained in self-imposed exile until 1980. He made further recordings with Getz, and with Herbie Mann, spent two years living in Mexico, where he also recorded, but spent much of his time practising, playing privately, and reviving songs by earlier Brazilian composers.
On returning to Brazil, he also began to work with a younger generation of Brazilian musicians, and in 1981 he recorded the album Brasil with Veloso, Gil and Maria Bethânia, who regarded Gilberto as a hero of Brazilian music.
In an interview in 2007, Caetano told me that he first heard Gilberto when he was 17, and it was “like enlightenment for me. It was like an incredible revelation of everything, of aesthetic criteria and deep emotions, and most of all, hope in Brazil … hope in our future, and the idea that we had a kind of mission. I still think João Gilberto is our greatest artist.”
Gilberto continued to tour and record, though he always insisted that the acoustics in a concert hall should be excellent, and that audiences should remain quiet. He performed in the US and Europe, and became a cult hero in Japan, where there was an enthusiastic following for bossa nova. One of his finest live recordings, João Gilberto in Tokyo, was released in 2004.
He was a recluse, and an eccentric perfectionist, and Brazilian musicians delighted in telling stories about him. Lyra described him as “a fantastic artist and a very special man, very neurotic like all of us, but probably a little more so”.
Gilberto was very fond of cats, and Lyra re-told with some glee the story of how one of his cats was allegedly driven to jump from an eighth-floor window, driven crazy by his master’s constant repetition of a guitar phrase.
His daughter, the singer Bebel Gilberto, described him like this: “My father changed Brazilian music. I would sometimes see him seeking for different chords for classics he’s been playing for 14 years. I can’t believe his obsession – always seeking for perfection, something that could be better, a version that no-one had thought of before.”
He is survived by João Marcelo, his son from his marriage to Astrud, which ended in divorce; Bebel, his daughter from his marriage to the singer Miúcha, who died in 2018; and Luisa Carolina, his daughter from a relationship with the journalist Claudia Faissol.
• João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira, musician, born 10 June 1931; died 6 July 2019
Saturday, 6 July 2019
Restoring Rembrandt's The Night Watch
'Like a military operation': restoration of Rembrandt's Night Watch begins
Elaborate process will be livestreamed from Amsterdam’s RijksmuseumDaniel Boffey
The Guardian
5 Jul 2019
The restorers, data experts and art historians at the Rijksmuseum call it Operation Night Watch. “Because it is like a military operation in the planning,” said Taco Dibbits, the museum’s general director.
At 9am on Monday, as the doors of the Amsterdam museum open to the public, the largest and most elaborate public art restoration in history will begin.
In a specially constructed seven sq metre glass chamber, a team of 12 experts will work to bring back to its former glory one of the world’s most spectacular paintings: The Night Watch by Rembrandt.
The process will not only be performed in front of the public, in the building built in 1885 as a “cathedral of the arts”, where The Night Watch occupies the “high altar” in the museum’s gallery of honour, but will be livestreamed to millions around the world.
Beyond conserving the painting for generations to come – it was last restored in 1975 following a knife attack by a Dutch teacher – it is hoped that an initial 10-month research stage using the most sophisticated technology will bring new insights into how Rembrandt van Rijn made his masterpiece in 1642, whether he did, as is believed, make a preparatory sketch across the vast canvas and what changes he made along the way.
Over the last two weeks, an iron frame into which plates of clear glass can fit to form the restoration case has been constructed in a warehouse just outside Ghent in Belgium. The team did one practice run putting it all together, but there were some precarious moments. “You have to gain the experience of moving such long glass plates and that was not easy,” said Dibbits. “None broke, but it was very good to do that before.”
On Saturday the construction of the chamber will be completed – on the spot where The Night Watch is viewed by 2 million people every year. The painting was moved a week ago to a different part of the gallery of honour to allow for preparations. “It was always wisest to move the painting well out of the way and not build the glass case around it,” Dibbits said.
After the last visitors have left the Rijksmuseum on Sunday afternoon, about 25 people will start the arduous task of transporting the 337kg painting into the waiting chamber and on to a tripod-like imaging frame, a job that is expected to take until midnight.
The Night Watch has been moved only a handful of times in the last 150 years, including its transportation into a bunker in the coastal dunes at the start of the second world war, and later in the conflict into mines in the south of the Netherlands.
“Any move of any painting, especially The Night Watch, which is such a large painting, you always have to be very careful and it is very precisely done,” said Dibbits. “It is moved from the wall by hand and then hydraulic lifts on to a kind of cart especially constructed for it on wheels, and then it is pushed into the glass case which has one very high door which enables it to move it there without barely any vibrations.”
On Monday morning, Dibbits will offer the gathering crowds and online viewers an introduction to the team working on the masterpiece. “And then we will let them get to work,” he said.
“What we will do over the coming 10 months [is] map it layer by layer and pigment by pigment, and then on the basis of that we will make a plan for the conservation and then after that the conservation will start,” Dibbits said.
Dibbits said that because the painting has always been on view even those who knew it best had much to learn. “I have been working there for 17 years and I have never seen the top of the painting – you can’t just put a ladder in front of it. We know so little on how he worked on making The Night Watch.”
5 Jul 2019
The restorers, data experts and art historians at the Rijksmuseum call it Operation Night Watch. “Because it is like a military operation in the planning,” said Taco Dibbits, the museum’s general director.
At 9am on Monday, as the doors of the Amsterdam museum open to the public, the largest and most elaborate public art restoration in history will begin.
In a specially constructed seven sq metre glass chamber, a team of 12 experts will work to bring back to its former glory one of the world’s most spectacular paintings: The Night Watch by Rembrandt.
The process will not only be performed in front of the public, in the building built in 1885 as a “cathedral of the arts”, where The Night Watch occupies the “high altar” in the museum’s gallery of honour, but will be livestreamed to millions around the world.
Beyond conserving the painting for generations to come – it was last restored in 1975 following a knife attack by a Dutch teacher – it is hoped that an initial 10-month research stage using the most sophisticated technology will bring new insights into how Rembrandt van Rijn made his masterpiece in 1642, whether he did, as is believed, make a preparatory sketch across the vast canvas and what changes he made along the way.
Over the last two weeks, an iron frame into which plates of clear glass can fit to form the restoration case has been constructed in a warehouse just outside Ghent in Belgium. The team did one practice run putting it all together, but there were some precarious moments. “You have to gain the experience of moving such long glass plates and that was not easy,” said Dibbits. “None broke, but it was very good to do that before.”
On Saturday the construction of the chamber will be completed – on the spot where The Night Watch is viewed by 2 million people every year. The painting was moved a week ago to a different part of the gallery of honour to allow for preparations. “It was always wisest to move the painting well out of the way and not build the glass case around it,” Dibbits said.
After the last visitors have left the Rijksmuseum on Sunday afternoon, about 25 people will start the arduous task of transporting the 337kg painting into the waiting chamber and on to a tripod-like imaging frame, a job that is expected to take until midnight.
The Night Watch has been moved only a handful of times in the last 150 years, including its transportation into a bunker in the coastal dunes at the start of the second world war, and later in the conflict into mines in the south of the Netherlands.
“Any move of any painting, especially The Night Watch, which is such a large painting, you always have to be very careful and it is very precisely done,” said Dibbits. “It is moved from the wall by hand and then hydraulic lifts on to a kind of cart especially constructed for it on wheels, and then it is pushed into the glass case which has one very high door which enables it to move it there without barely any vibrations.”
On Monday morning, Dibbits will offer the gathering crowds and online viewers an introduction to the team working on the masterpiece. “And then we will let them get to work,” he said.
“What we will do over the coming 10 months [is] map it layer by layer and pigment by pigment, and then on the basis of that we will make a plan for the conservation and then after that the conservation will start,” Dibbits said.
Dibbits said that because the painting has always been on view even those who knew it best had much to learn. “I have been working there for 17 years and I have never seen the top of the painting – you can’t just put a ladder in front of it. We know so little on how he worked on making The Night Watch.”
The livestream: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/nightwatch
Friday, 5 July 2019
Wednesday night's set lists at The Habit, York
I'll See You In My Dreams
Just My Imagination
Da Elderly: -
Midnight On The Bay
You've Got A Friend
The Elderly Brothers: -
Love Hurts
The Sound Of Silence
You Really Got A Hold On Me
Out Of Time
It was a full house for most of the evening, no slow start like last week, with plenty of players old and new. First in line were Boroughbridge duo Phil and Ann (pictured), who haven't been for a while - they chose The Eagles' Tequila Sunrise and The Lovin' Spoonful's Summer In The City. A guy claiming folky roots sang two songs acapella: the first about fishing for cod off Iceland, the second about sheep rustling....never say The Habit lacks variety! The surprise of the evening was a guy from Middlesbrough whose guitar style would have fitted nicely into a Leon Redbone song. He sang two numbers by Hoagy Carmichael: Rockin' Chair and a sublime Georgia On My Mind. The Elderly's closed out the night and, after a short refuelling stop continued until closing with some acoustic tuneage........with a smattering of drinking songs - very apt given the circumstances.
Thursday, 4 July 2019
Tuesday, 2 July 2019
Monday, 1 July 2019
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