Entertainment

How bass-baritone singer Davóne Tines is rethinking America’s anthem

Published

2 years ago

August 19, 2022

How bass-baritone singer Davóne Tines is rethinking America’s anthem

Davóne Tines has love on his thoughts. The evening earlier than our Zoom chat, the tall bass-baritone tells me that he went on a unbelievable dinner date at a steakhouse in Vail, Colo., the place he was performing on the 2022 Vail Dance Competition. “It was nice, and I spent manner an excessive amount of cash and ate lots of wagyu beef,” he says with a content material smile.

Whereas in Vail, the 35-year-old inventive additionally workshopped a brand new piece that meditates on the idea of affection — extra on that later — and finalized the lighting scheme and different particulars for tonight’s premiere of “Concerto No. 2: Anthem” on the Hollywood Bowl, a brand new work he devised and created in collaboration with poet Mahogany L. Browne, and composers Michael Schachter, Caroline Shaw and Tyshawn Sorey.

Other than a handful of main world premieres and reprisals, Tines has spent much less of his profession singing standard roles in opera homes and extra vitality creating musical works that double as deeply private, totally thought-about creative statements.

A decade in the past, Tines discovered himself wrestling with the truth of life as a Harvard-educated, Juilliard-trained, Black American vocalist performing for largely white audiences. As he thought-about his state of affairs intellectually and emotionally, he labored via it musically. Over the course of a number of years — and dealing together with Schachter and director Zack Winokur — he developed a musical theater work primarily based on Langston Hughes’ poem “The Black Clown” that premiered on the American Repertory Theatre in 2018 to acclaim. (Tines says the work is now “probably slated for Broadway, we hope.”)

In 2021, Tines unveiled “Recital No. 1: Mass” on the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. Centered round a newly composed setting of the Latin Mass by Shaw and that includes music by Bach alongside conventional American spirituals, the recital was Tines’ manner of deconstructing classical music’s traditionally strict efficiency practices.

Tines’ strategy avoids a complete demolition of type and as an alternative makes use of and reinterprets established classical music buildings. He adopted “Recital No. 1: Mass” with “Concerto No. 1: Sermon,” a vocal interpretation of an orchestral type that historically juxtaposes a violin, piano, or different instrumental soloist with the bravado of a full orchestra. “Concerto No. 1: Sermon” maintained the concerto’s standard construction — three actions contrasting soloist and orchestra — whereas exploring extra modern thematic and vocal realms.

Because the work’s soloist, Tines’ lent his potent, memorable voice to a meditation on social justice. He additionally co-created “Vigil,” a newly-composed portion of the concerto devoted to the reminiscence of Breonna Taylor. As he defined in a promotional video: “I needed to share with an viewers what it would imply to be a marginalized id wanting to have the ability to transfer in a manner or exist in a manner despite marginalization.”

This week, Tines is unveiling his new work “Concerto No. 2: Anthem,” the results of a Los Angeles Philharmonic fee. The orchestra requested Tines to create one thing for his or her Thursday “American Tales” live performance on the Hollywood Bowl, which Joseph Younger will conduct. Tines says that when he met with Younger to debate the efficiency, they requested themselves, “What’s going to two Black males, standing in entrance of this orchestra [with] this huge platform and large venue, select to say?”

It appeared like the right alternative to “carry out a magic trick,” Tines says. Why not “flip the Star-Spangled Banner into ‘Elevate Ev’ry Voice?’”

“Elevate Ev’ry Voice,” a hymn written and composed by brothers James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, is named “The Black Nationwide Anthem.” Its lyrics don’t contain bombs bursting in air or references to conflict and enslavement. As a substitute, it calls upon the collective, asking each voice to come back collectively and sing joyfully about liberty.

Tines says that the present U.S. nationwide anthem “outlines very colonialistic beliefs.” Whereas the primary, acquainted verse echoes “the thought of sovereignty via conflict and conquering,” he says, issues get darker in subsequent stanzas that embrace imagery of trampling your enemies and instilling worry in enslaved individuals.

“These will not be the foundations I feel our nation ought to stand on,” Tines says.

Bass-baritone Davone Tines off-stage on the Hollywood Bowl.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Occasions)

When Tines has concepts for musical preparations or new items, he scribbles them down on paper or sorts them up in a phrase doc, not not like a storyboard. These notes then act as a degree of inspiration and a map for the composers he collaborates with.

For “Concerto No. 2: Anthem,” Tines requested Schacter to create an association of the primary verse of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that will lean into the Hollywood Bowl’s grandeur. Give me “Tremendous Bowl, Disney World, MGM Musical, Whitney Houston,” he stated. For verses two and three, he particularly needed the temper to shift. His notes for these verses learn, “Eerie, blood-soaked battlefield” and “grotesque.”

Tines doesn’t take into account himself an activist. He doesn’t create a recital or concerto with an agenda. His artwork is extra process-driven, a figuring out of emotions and concepts via music, textual content, creative collaboration, and efficiency. If he considers a query artistically, he’s additionally contemplating it personally: What does it imply to be a Black performer in white areas? What does it imply to be a Black American? What does it imply to be American?

For Tines, being an American means being the descendant of enslaved ancestors. It means being the grandson of a retired naval officer who additionally served because the native church choir pianist. It means rising up in Fauquier County, Va., a picturesque, principally white neighborhood southwest of Washington, D.C. Tines describes it as “a very sophisticated place that exists within the remnants of the Civil Battle, a spot the place contradictions are wrapped in the fantastic thing about its panorama.”

These deeply Southern, deeply American contradictions have been obvious all through Tines’ early years. He describes life in Fauquier County as “like rising up in a Ralph Lauren advert” and remembers singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” earlier than weekend polo matches in highschool. A proficient younger violinist, he performed in youth orchestras with all-white or mostly-white friends. “I can actually say that exterior of my household and church neighborhood, I had one Black pal,” he says about his childhood and highschool days.

Attending providers at Windfall Baptist Church in Orlean, Va., together with his grandparents, who raised him, related him together with his native Black neighborhood and influenced him musically. Church choir practices at Windfall Baptist Church, which went on for hours, have been “a labor of affection,” he says. As a younger boy he was usually bored and “rolled round on the ground questioning when it will be over.” However he additionally grew to become obsessive about triads, or chords — the mix of three notes sounding concurrently that kinds the idea of Western concord — as he internalized gospel rhythms and watched his elders expertise ecstatic, music-driven worship experiences.

Tines’ musical concepts replicate his life experiences, combining the classical kinds and timbres he fell in love with as a younger violinist and studied in-depth at Juilliard with the gospel traditions pivotal to his upbringing. His creative work has additionally persistently grappled with race and id. “Concerto No. 2: Anthem,” continues that thematic path, however for his subsequent undertaking — a recital centered on the theme of affection — he’d prefer to step away from the heaviness of America’s racial wounds and wrought politics.

“I’ve achieved lots of work coping with race and id,” Tines says. “You attain a saturation level, possibly even a sure level of exhaustion.”

Maybe that’s why “Elevate Ev’ry Voice” means a lot to him proper now. Not like the present U.S. nationwide anthem, which he says glorifies a bloody previous, the “Black Nationwide Anthem” is inherently constructive and forward-looking.

“The vast majority of the [American] inhabitants can exist in a manner that romanticizes the previous,” Tines says. “However I feel [Black people] must be future-leaning as a result of that’s the one manner we will transfer towards a spot the place we really really feel welcome. ‘Elevate Ev’ry Voice’ is probably a better option [for a national anthem] as a result of it’s about collective unity. Liberty, freedom — that’s what concord is.”

The forthcoming work is reflective of how Tines is concentrated on pursuing concord and love in his private life. “I’m actually completely happy at this level in my creative life to start out on a journey of pursuing one thing a bit extra private, but in addition probably common,” he says, including that he’s been studying about love within the works of C.S. Lewis and bell hooks.

And that great date he went on in Vail? It was a solo affair.

“Proper now I’m having a very nice time relationship myself,” Tines says. “I’m fairly enthusiastic about exploring what self-love really is in order that I can share that with others.”

This Thursday evening, as he steps on stage on the Hollywood Bowl in a customized white dinner jacket commissioned from Black tailor Brandon Murphy of B|M|C, search for sparks of Tines’ subsequent undertaking whereas contemplating his proposal: a brand new, extra inclusive, extra joyful, extra loving anthem for America’s future.

Movie Reviews

Do Aur Do Pyaar Movie Review: A poignant meditation on love and marriage

Published

2 hours ago

April 20, 2024

Press Room

Do Aur Do Pyaar Movie Review: A poignant meditation on love and marriage

Love is usually explored in popular culture with whatever happened leading up to it. It is seen as a trophy, as the means to cleanse you of suffering. That way, there is a burden of fantasy attached to it; love seems to offer a resolution. However, through all of this, it is not given any expiry date. If there is a tangible moment in time when two people define their feelings for each other as extraordinary, then when does it cease to be that way? Who breaks the bubble of the ‘happily ever after’? Do Aur Do Pyaar lingers on such questions, and delves deeper into flawed individuals, beyond the often-projected perfect exteriors. The film is not interested in looking at smiling family portraits but the marks that they leave behind on empty walls.

Director: Shirsha Guha Thakurta

Cast: Vidya Balan, Pratik Gandhi, Ileana D’Cruz, Sendhil Ramamurthy

It features Anirudh (Pratik Gandhi) and Kavya (Vidya Balan) as a couple who have been married for 12 years. Coming from different parts of the country, they had to elope in order to get married. Now, after all those years, the dreams woven together by young hearts have begun to fizzle. Love is ultimately not enough, it seems. For them it stays hidden, often crawling up on the bed in the space between the two or making its absence known through eyes that lack any spark when they meet. Hence, both of them seek companions outside their marriage in order to fill the emptiness in their hearts. Anirudh has been seeing Nora (Ileana D’Cruz) for two years and finds comfort in her presence. Similarly, Kavya latches on to photographer Vikram (Sendhil Ramamurthy) as they make plans to live together at a sea facing flat in Mumbai. The exciting rhythm of these new-found romances is broken when Kavya’s grandfather dies and she has to visit her native place, Ooty. To her surprise, Anirudh decides to tag along.

Entertainment

L.A. Times Book Prize winners named in a ceremony filled with support for USC valedictorian Asna Tabassum

Published

3 hours ago

April 20, 2024

Press Room

L.A. Times Book Prize winners named in a ceremony filled with support for USC valedictorian Asna Tabassum

The spotlight shined on great literature Friday night at the 44th Los Angeles Times Book Prizes ceremony at USC’s Bovard Auditorium, where 13 winners took the stage to celebrate their honors and, in some cases, call attention to the free speech controversy unfolding on campus.

A political undercurrent ran through the night’s speeches following the university’s cancellation of a commencement speech by pro-Palestinian valedictorian Asna Tabassum. Emily Carroll, who won the Book Prizes’ graphic novel/comic category, ended her speech by calling on USC to restore Tabassum’s appearance, “so that she may inspire her community of peers with, as she’s put it, her ‘message of hope.’ Also, I would like to express my own solidarity with Asna and also my solidarity with Palestine.”

Applause drowned out Carroll’s words at times. Later, Tananarive Due, who won for science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction, used her speech to add: “As we face the horrors in our in our cities, in Gaza and elsewhere, and witness true-life racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism, let us honor the courage of young people.” They, Due said, have been the drivers of change throughout history.

Upon accepting the award for the current interest category, Roxanna Asgarian added her support for Tabassum. “She earned her right to speak,” Asgarian said. “Let her speak.” Amber McBride, who won for young adult literature concluded her speech by saying, “Free Palestine.”

The focus for the rest of the evening were the books themselves — more than 60 finalists plus three special honors. Jane Smiley accepted the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, which pays tribute to a writer with a substantial connection to the American West. The L.A.-born author, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1992 for her novel “A Thousand Acres,” gave a brief, heartfelt speech, noting, “I love to write novels, I love to go for walks and look around. And I think the greatest pleasure of the novelist’s life is curiosity.”

Claire Dederer received the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose for “Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma.”

“‘Monsters,’ a book-length expansion of an essay on the problematic relationship between masculinity and fame, considers how we come to love art made by less than perfect humans,” read the selection committee’s praise. “Dederer engages the essayist form at its best and the result is both critical, literary and provocative.”

“These are really, really dark days,” said Dederer, accepting the award. “And I’m so grateful for this bright moment.”

The final special honor went to Access Books, which received the Innovator’s Award for its work renovating school libraries to enhance access to books and literary resources for underserved students and communities.

This year’s Book Prizes featured a new category:achievement in audiobook production. That award, which honors performance, production and innovation in storytelling — given in collaboration with Audible — went to Dion Graham and Elishia Merricks for “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir.” The judges noted Graham’s “transcendent” narration of musician Sly Stone’s “percussive and almost musical writing” in his memoir.

Ed Park’s novel “Same Bed Different Dreams” took the fiction prize. The selection committee singled it out for being “as playful as it is moving, as serious as it is otherworldly and as funny as it is intellectually stimulating.”

The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction went to Shannon Sanders’ debut, “Company: Stories,” which features 13 stories that follow the lives of a multi-generational Black family from the 1960s to the 2000s in cities including Atlantic City, N.J., New York and Washington, D.C. “The prose is magnificent, mature and breathtakingly precise, and the collection resounds with a sensitivity and wisdom rarely seen in a debut,” noted the judges.

Gregg Hecimovich won for biography with “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative,” about a slave who escaped from a Southern plantation and spent the rest of her life evading capture. The book was chosen out of more than 100 entries, with the selection committee writing, “Through Hecimovich’s painstaking historical detective work and keen literary analysis, the reader is rewarded with a captivating and vivid portrait of a life once stolen by enslavers and long robbed of recognition. This is at once a startling and original work.”

Carroll won for “A Guest in the House,” an adult horror story about a woman who marries a dentist and discovers there is a mystery to be solved when it comes to the death of his former wife. “A fleshy, sensuous journey that pushes the limits of the medium in ways that only Carroll can. A skin-crawling gem, not to be missed,” wrote the selection committee.

Joya Chatterji took home the prize for history with “Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century,” which limns the region’s trajectory from British colony to three complex, independent nations.

The mystery/thriller award went to Ivy Pochoda for “Sing Her Down.” The unique nail-biter takes place in the shadows of L.A.’s homeless camps, run-down motels and dark alleys, following women who have turned — for various reasons — to a life of crime. The judges, including Alex Segura, Wanda Morris and mystery fiction critic Oline Cogdill, wrote, “Pochoda brilliantly explores her characters and this setting, while sifting through myriad literary tropes, including allusions to Macbeth, mythology, even a bit of a Greek chorus.”

Airea D. Matthews’ “Bread and Circus” was honored in the poetry category. Matthews is an associate professor of creative writing and the co-director of the creative writing program at Bryn Mawr College. She was named the 2022-23 poet laureate of Philadelphia.

The prize for science fiction fiction was given to Due for “The Reformatory.” The book is part horror, part historical fiction in its examination of life under Jim Crow law in the South.

Eugenia Cheng’s “Is Math Real? How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths” nabbed the prize for science & technology, with the judges writing, “Beginning with a dedication to readers who think math isn’t for them, Cheng shows us that not only is math for all of us, but so is the act of searching for meaning in shapes, patterns and symbols that simultaneously seem like they have nothing to do with us and also everything to do with who we are as a species.”

Cheng uttered perhaps the most helpful line to all the writers in the room, noting to applause, “If you have ever been made to feel bad at math, you didn’t fail math, math failed you.”

The story of a 12-year-old blue-skinned girl called Inmate Eleven who is being groomed to be a partner to a white-skinned teen clone, and future president of Bible Boot, is the plot of McBride’s “Gone Wolf,” which won for young adult literature. “McBride mixes American history with speculative fiction to dissect melancholia and political anxiety for young people who are living through uncertain times — in the future and today,” wrote the judges.

The full list of finalists and winners is below.

Achievement in Audiobook Production

Maria Bamford, narrator, “Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere”

Sophia Bush, narrator, “Wild and Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver”

Helena de Groot, lead producer, “Wild and Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver”

Dion Graham, narrator, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir”

Kerri Kolen, executive producer, “Wild and Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver”

Helen Laser, narrator, “Yellowface”

Adam Lazarre-White, narrator, “All the Sinners Bleed”

Elishia Merricks, producer, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir”

Elishia Merricks, producer, “All the Sinners Bleed”

Suzanne Franco Mitchell, director/producer, “Yellowface”

The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

Stephen Buoro, “The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa: A Novel”

Sheena Patel, “I’m a Fan: A Novel”

Shannon Sanders, “Company: Stories”

James Frankie Thomas, “Idlewild: A Novel”

Ghassan Zeineddine, “Dearborn”

Biography

Leah Redmond Chang, “Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power”

Gregg Hecimovich, “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative”

Jonny Steinberg, “Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage”

Elizabeth R. Varon, “Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South”

David Waldstreicher, “The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence”

The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose

Claire Dederer, “Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma”

Current Interest

Bettina L. Love, “Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal”

Roxanna Asgarian, “We Were Once A Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America”

Zusha Elinson, “American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15”

Cameron McWhirter, “American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15”

Christina Sharpe, “Ordinary Notes”

Raja Shehadeh, “We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir”

Fiction

Susie Boyt, “Loved and Missed”

Yiyun Li, “Wednesday’s Child: Stories”

Elizabeth McKenzie, “The Dog of the North: A Novel”

Ed Park, “Same Bed Different Dreams: A Novel”

Justin Torres, “Blackouts: A Novel”

Graphic Novel/Comics

Derek M. Ballard, “Cartoonshow”

Matías Bergara, “CODA”

Emily Carroll, “A Guest in the House”

Sammy Harkham, “Blood of the Virgin”

Chantal Montellier, “Social Fiction”

Simon Spurrier, “CODA”

History

Ned Blackhawk, “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History”

Joya Chatterji, “Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century”

Malcolm Harris, “Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World”

Blair L.M. Kelley, “Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class”

Nikki M. Taylor, “Brooding Over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women’s Lethal Resistance”

Innovator’s Award

Access Books

Mystery/Thriller

Lou Berney, “Dark Ride: A Thriller”

S. A. Cosby, “All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel”

Jordan Harper, “Everybody Knows: A Novel”

Cheryl A. Head, “Time’s Undoing: A Novel”

Ivy Pochoda, “Sing Her Down: A Novel”

Poetry

K. Iver, “Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco”

Airea D. Matthews, “Bread and Circus: Poems”

Maggie Millner, “Couplets: A Love Story”

Jenny Molberg, “The Court of No Record: Poems”

Simon Shieh, “Master: Poems”

Robert Kirsch Award

Jane Smiley

Science & Technology

Eugenia Cheng, “Is Math Real? How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths”

Jeff Goodell, “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet”

Jaime Green, “The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos”

Caspar Henderson, “A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous”

Zach Weinersmith, “A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?”

Kelly Weinersmith, “A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?”

Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction

Tananarive Due, “The Reformatory: A Novel”

Daniel Kraus, “Whalefall”

Victor LaValle, “Lone Women: A Novel”

V. E. Schwab, “The Fragile Threads of Power”

E. Lily Yu, “Jewel Box: Stories”

Young Adult Literature

Jennifer Baker, “Forgive Me Not”

Olivia A. Cole, “Dear Medusa”

Kim Johnson, “Invisible Son”

Amber McBride, “Gone Wolf”

Sarah Myer, “Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story”

Movie Reviews

'Do Aur Do Pyaar' movie review: Feel good movie about complex marriages

Published

9 hours ago

April 19, 2024

Press Room

'Do Aur Do Pyaar' movie review: Feel good movie about complex marriages

Debutante filmmaker Shirsha Guha Thakurta’s ‘Do Aur Do Pyaar’ is a modern take on love, marriage, and everything that surrounds it. The comedy-drama follows Anirudh (Pratik Gandhi) and Kavya (Vidya Balan) who are stuck in a loveless marriage. The working professionals have both created separate lives for themselves and their conversations stay limited to the mundane details of life. They rarely have deep conversations.

The film explores infidelity. Both the characters, married for over 10 years, are in love with other people. Kavya is in love with Vikram (Sendhil Ramamurthy), a photographer. Anirudh is in love with Nora (Ileana D’cruz), a struggling actress.

The film sees the characters find the love they still have for each other.

The storytelling is perfectly paired with music by ‘The Local Train’, Lucky Ali, and other artistes. The actors do a good job of bringing life to their characters. Their thoughts and feelings are not dependent on dialogues but are conveyed through their body language and through their silences.

Overall, the movie surely makes you laugh. But more importantly, it shows the institution of marriage in a new light and highlights the complexity of modern relationships.

(Published 20 April 2024, 00:47 IST)