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Terry Carter, barrier-breaking actor and documentarian, dies at 95
NEW YORK, NY.- Terry Carter, who broke color barriers onstage and on television in the 1950s and ’60s and later produced multicultural documentaries on jazz luminary Duke Ellington and dancer-choreographer Katherine Dunham, died Tuesday at his home in midtown Manhattan. He was 95. His death was confirmed by his son, Miguel Carter DeCoste. Carter was raised in a bilingual home next door to a synagogue in a predominantly Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. His best friend was future jazz great Cecil Taylor. In his first stage role, at 9, Carter played Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama on a voyage of discovery. And in a wayfaring six-decade career, he was a merchant seaman, a jazz pianist, a law student, a television news anchor, a familiar character on network sitcoms, an Emmy-winning documentarian, a goodwill ... More

NGV presents tenth year of Melbourne Art Book Fair
MELBOURNE.- In May 2024, the National Gallery of Victoria presents the 10th annual Melbourne Art Book Fair, a state-wide celebration of art book publishing and Melbourne’s status as a UNESCO City of Literature. Over 11 days, from 23 May to 2 June 2024, the Fair will enliven venues across Melbourne and Victoria with book launches, talks, exhibitions and more, including a special in-conversation with art historian Katy Hessel, a TV gameshow pop-up and showcase art and design publishing from across Australia and beyond. Esteemed British author, art historian and founder of The Great Women Artists podcast, Katy Hessel will be joined by NGV Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture, Simone LeAmon for the live conversation, Katy Hessel in Conversation: The Story of Art Without Men on 29 May. Presented ... More

Kathleen Hanna's music says a lot. There's more in the book.
PASADENA, CALIF.- The first draft of Kathleen Hanna’s memoir, “Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk,” was 600 pages long. As she worked to cut the manuscript, Hanna found herself excising page after page of male violence. “It’s pretty sad, if you read the book, because there’s still a lot in there,” she told me. “I had a joke with my editor about it.” Like, she’d already removed a rape and a kidnapping and a guy who threw a wineglass at her head! “What more do you want from me?” Hanna is super funny. When she takes the stage as the frontwoman of Bikini Kill, Le Tigre or the Julie Ruin, she plays a kind of punk trickster, shifting her voice to resemble a bratty Valley Girl, a demonic cheerleader, an obnoxious male fan. She is always subverting femininity and disarming bad guys with her spiky and irreverent lyrics. But when it came time ... More

Kamasi Washington wants to remain unstoppable
NEW YORK, NY.- Before Kamasi Washington unveiled his breakthrough opus, he admits, he second-guessed it. “The Epic” (2015) was a major moment, not just for the Los Angeles saxophonist and composer, but for jazz at large. Arriving on the heels of Kendrick Lamar’s seismic “To Pimp a Butterfly” — an album featuring contributions from Washington and his tight-knit hometown coterie — it contained nearly three hours’ worth of surging, spiritually charged music, spearheaded by Washington’s roaring tenor sax. Despite its daunting scope and operatic grandeur, it resonated broadly, serving as a gateway to jazz and the thriving scene orbiting Washington’s label at the time, Brainfeeder. But in the long interval between its recording — most of which took place in 2011 — and its release, Washington toyed with the idea of trimming ... More

Cait Bailey can't avoid the spotlight
NEW YORK, NY.- “Not tonight,” Cait Bailey told a photographer trying to take her picture inside an area cordoned off for special guests at a Louis Vuitton party at the Miami Beach Convention Center. “Not this time.” Bailey, 34, suggested he instead aim his camera at Alix Earle, an influencer, and her boyfriend, Braxton Berrios, a professional football player with the Miami Dolphins. “I’m not used to being the subject,” Bailey said as the photographer snapped Earle at the event, held during Art Basel Miami Beach in December. Anonymity has become more elusive for Bailey, a publicist and brand strategist who runs the New York office of Align Public Relations, as her clients have grown to include people with large followings like Earle, “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper, sibling influencers Charli and Dixie D’Amelio and singer Zayn ... More

Lincoln Center's Summer Festival to focus on civic bonds
NEW YORK, NY.- Lincoln Center said on Wednesday that it would devote its summer festival to themes of community and civic participation, with a mix of hip-hop, comedy, dance, classical music and more under the motto “life, liberty and happiness.” The festival, Summer for the City, will feature premieres of anthems about contemporary hopes and struggles. Classical music concerts will be more participatory than in the past; at one event, audience members will be asked to vote on the program. And civil rights will be prominent, with the New York premiere of an opera about Eric Garner, who died in 2014 at the hands of police officers on Staten Island. “We know the performing arts have a role in strengthening our community and strengthening our civic bonds,” Shanta Thake, Lincoln Center’s chief artistic officer, said in an interview. ... More

Alfred Molina on the museum he never misses when he's in New York
NEW YORK, NY.- After more than 30 years in Los Angeles, Alfred Molina is enjoying his newly minted status as an Upper West Sider. “My wife and I have bought an apartment here, and we’re slowly transitioning to New York,” he said last month at Lincoln Center Theater before a rehearsal for the Chekhov classic “Uncle Vanya,” which opens on Broadway on Wednesday. Molina, 70, has been nominated for three Tony Awards, for “Art,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and, most recently, “Red,” in which he starred as painter Mark Rothko in 2010. “Vanya,” in which he plays the pompous professor Alexander Serebryakov, is his return to a New York stage after nearly 15 years. The play is “a chance to work with some fantastic people,” he said of the cast, which includes Steve Carell as Vanya, Jayne Houdyshell as Vanya’s mother, and William ... More

For 'Mary Jane,' parenting is a life sentence
NEW YORK, NY.- Soon after Alex was born at 25 weeks, with several catastrophic disorders, Mary Jane’s husband, unable to cope, fled their marriage. Still, she hopes he “finds some peace, I really do.” She also thinks kindly of her boss, who means to accommodate her but pretty much fails to. “It’s daily moral agony for her,” Mary Jane marvels. “It’s really something to behold.” Mary Jane’s own moral agony is likewise something to behold. She feels guilty about putting the super of her Queens building, where she shares a junior one-bedroom with Alex, in a difficult position by removing the window guards. “It’s just that he loves looking out the windows, especially when he’s sick and I can’t take him outside?” she explains in upspeak. “It’s the law,” the not-unkind super replies — though Alex, now 2, can barely sit up, let alone reach the sill. “You’re an excellent superintendent,” Mary Jane say ... More

In a pair of 'Macbeth' productions, only one does right by the lady
NEW YORK, NY.- “Macbeth” isn’t one of Shakespeare’s so-called “problem plays,” and yet, the vast contradictions and reversals of the central couple often present a problem for those staging it. Two “Macbeth” productions now running — the Royal Lyceum Edinburgh’s “Macbeth (An Undoing),” at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn, and the Shakespeare Theater Company’s “Macbeth” in Washington — take opposite approaches to the text, particularly in their depictions of Lady Macbeth. The results are two wildly different kinds of tragedies, one more successful than the other. The project of “Macbeth (An Undoing),” written and directed by Zinnie Harris, is to re-evaluate the female characters in Shakespeare’s tragedy. The play, presented by Theater for a New Audience and the Rose Theater, begins as a loose adaptation ... More

What to know before booking a National Park trip this summer
NEW YORK, NY.- In 2023, the seashores, lakeshores, battlefields, historic sites, monuments and more that make up the National Park Service had 325.5 million visits, an increase of 4% from the year before. The National Park Service director, Charles Sams III, praised the surge of interest in “learning our shared American story throughout the hidden gems of the national parks system.” Expecting an even greater turnout in 2024, the Park Service and Recreation.gov, the booking platform for federal land reservations, have implemented new measures to streamline the park experience, manage overcrowding and safeguard the environment. To better avoid congested trails, packed parking lots and overflowing trash cans, additional parks are joining Rocky Mountain, Arches and Glacier National Parks this year in requiring day-use permits, ... More