Month: January 2018

A growing number of actors are distancing themselves from Woody Allen and his next film, heightening questions about the future of the prolific 82-year-old filmmaker in a Hollywood newly sensitive to allegations of sexual misconduct.

Timothee Chalamet on Tuesday said he will donate his salary for an upcoming Woody Allen film to three charities fighting sexual harassment and abuse: Time’s Up, the LGBT Center in New York and RAINN. The breakout star of “Call Me By Your Name” announced on Instagram that he didn’t want to profit from his work on Allen’s “A Rainy Day in New York,” which wrapped shooting in the fall.

“I want to be worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with the brave artists who are fighting for all people to be treated with the respect and dignity they deserve,” said Chalamet.

Chalamet is just the latest cast member of an Allen production to express regret or guilt about being professionally associated with the director. In recent weeks, Rebecca Hall (“A Rainy Day in New York,” ”Vicky Cristina Barcelona”), Mira Sorvino (“Mighty Aphrodite”), Ellen Page (“To Rome With Love”), David Krumholtz (“Wonder Wheel”) and Griffith Newman (“A Rainy Day in New York”) have all in some way distanced themselves from Allen or vowed that they wouldn’t work with him again.

The rising chorus suggests the road ahead for Allen may be particularly challenging, even for a director whose personal controversies have for decades made him an alternatively beloved and reviled figure in movies. Financial support for the filmmaker has not previously waned in part because of the eagerness many stars have for working with a cinematic legend. But fielding a starry cast may prove increasingly difficult for Allen in a movie industry in the midst of a “Me Too” reckoning.

“If I had known then what I know now, I would not have acted in the film,” Greta Gerwig, who co-starred in Allen’s 2012 comedy “To Rome With Love,” told The New York Times last week . “I have not worked for him again, and I will not work for him again. Dylan Farrow’s two different pieces made me realize that I increased another woman’s pain, and I was heartbroken by that realization.”

Dylan Farrow, Allen’s adopted daughter, has said Allen molested her in an attic in 1992 when she was seven. Allen, who has long denied the allegations, was investigated for the incident but not charged.

Farrow has previously questioned why the “Me Too” movement hasn’t ensnarled Allen. In an op-ed published last month in The Los Angeles Times , she wrote: “Why is it that Harvey Weinstein and other accused celebrities have been cast out by Hollywood, while Allen recently secured a multimillion-dollar distribution deal with Amazon, greenlit by former Amazon Studios executive Roy Price before he was suspended over sexual misconduct allegations?”

Price, the former head of Amazon Studios, resigned in October following an allegation that he had sexually harassed television producer Isa Hackett while she was working on the Amazon series “The Man in the High Castle.”

“A Rainy Day in New York” is the fourth project for Allen with Amazon, which bet heavily on the filmmaker to help establish its film production arm as a home to auteur filmmakers. It reportedly spent $80 million to lure Allen into television to make the 2016 series “Crisis in Six Scenes.”

Amazon, which didn’t respond to queries Tuesday, also distributed Allen’s “Cafe Society” in 2016 and “Wonder Wheel,” which opened December 1. It has grossed a mere $1.4 million domestically on an estimated budget of $25 million but had more success overseas, grossing $7.8 million.

“A Rainy Day in New York,” a romantic comedy due out sometime this year, also stars Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Liev Schreiber and Elle Fanning. In his statement, Chalamet tellingly noted that due to “contractual obligations” he couldn’t comment on the long-standing allegations against Allen.

The announcement by Chalamet, a favorite Oscar contender for best actor this year, followed a similar one Friday by his co-star Hall. She said she was donating her salary from the film to Time’s Up, the recently formed initiative to combat gender inequality in the entertainment industry. “It’s a small gesture and not one intended as close to compensation,” Hall wrote on Instagram.

Some have continued to publicly support Allen, though, including Alec Baldwin.

“Woody Allen was investigated forensically by two states (NY and CT) and no charges were filed,” Baldwin said Tuesday on Twitter. “The renunciation of him and his work, no doubt, has some purpose. But it’s unfair and sad to me. I worked with Woody Allen three times and it was one of the privileges of my career.”
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A Bulgarian skier has come out of retirement for another shot at Olympic gold. He competed in Sochi under the Balkan country’s flag, but at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, he’d be a one-man team. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Curling, once a minority pastime played mostly by Scots and Canadians, will sweep onto the ice at next month’s Pyeongchang Olympics with the proud boast of being the world’s fastest-growing winter sport.

The “roaring game,” with its origins in the frozen ponds and mists of medieval Scotland, is now popping up in the sort of sunny places where ice usually comes in cubes to cool the drinks.

Qatar’s men’s curling team celebrated their first international victory last November, beating Kazakhstan on Australia’s sun-soaked Central Coast north of Sydney.

A few months earlier, Middle Eastern neighbors Saudi Arabia secured conditional membership of the World Curling Federation along with fellow-newcomers Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Portugal.

Las Vegas, in Nevada’s Mojave desert, will host the men’s world championship next April.

“You’d obviously think curling is for winter sport countries, it’s not really,” said Kate Caithness, the Scottish head of World Curling and one of only two female presidents of any Olympic sports. “You can have curling anywhere in the world.

“Give us a hall and we’ll make ice. We’ve got these new facilities where we can almost roll out a mat, plug it in, add water and freeze it,” she told Reuters from her headquarters in Perth, Scotland.

In order to be included on the full program at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, curling needed to have 30 member nations. Twenty years on and there are 60, with more to come and a growth explosion predicted.

“We’ve never been in better shape, actually,” said Caithness. “Mexico and Guyana are new members, and there’s other members in South America waiting to come on board.”

At the 2010 Games in Vancouver, curling was the most watched Winter Olympic sport on television in Brazil — a country that recently challenged Canada for a place at the men’s world championships.

There are no member nations from Africa as yet, but there has been interest with South Africa most likely to be the first on board.

Looking to Beijing

Curling is big in Korea and Japan, and the main growth areas over the next four years for a sport also known as “chess on ice” are likely to be China, host of the 2022 Olympics, and the United States.

“China is a huge, huge market for us,” Caithness said. “We’ve just signed a $13.4 million contract with a sponsor [Kingdomway Sports] in China for the next four years in the runup between now and 2022.”

Curling at those Beijing Winter Games will be held in the “Water Cube” facility that hosted swimming at the 2008 summer Olympics.

Transformed into the “Ice Cube,” the plan is to have a three sheet rink in the basement so that fans can watch the competition upstairs and try their hand at the sport downstairs.

“I’m on the 2022 IOC co-ordination commission, so I do have the inside information. I’ve been there already with the IOC,” Caithness said.

“They are going to put 300 million people through winter sport [in China] between now and 2022. … I understand they are building 500 new ice rinks. I think the sport’s going to explode.”

Sleeping giant

Starting this year, a new made-for-television World Cup will start up with four city events on three continents forming the “Road to Beijing.”

In the United States, USA Curling last year signed a sponsorship deal with Pepsico’s Frito-Lay brand Cheetos that features tight end Vernon Davis of the National Football League’s Washington Redskins.

As part of the promotion, the cheese curl snack has come up with a rap video “Teach me how to Curl” featuring curling moves and dance.

Even if Cheetos said in a statement that the deal aimed to “help raise awareness for one of America’s least participated in sports,” Caithness felt things were moving in the right direction.

“I think we’re going to see things go crazy in the United States. They’ve woken up at last,” she said.

Curling, whose tournament starts a day before the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang and runs right through to the last Sunday, can also expect more television coverage than any other sport.

To win a gold medal in men’s or women’s curling takes up to 33 hours on the field of play, with nine round robin games of three hours each followed by a semi-final and final. Pyeongchang sees the debut also of mixed doubles.

“We’ll have non-stop curling every day from dawn until dusk. We have huge TV coverage and this is really going to help our sport as well,” Caithness said.

Watch related VOA video story: 
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No assistants. No wardrobe or make up people. No lighting technicians.

That’s how Afshin Shahidi spent his most cherished moments with Prince over nearly a decade as his go-to photographer, and he included many of their more intimate encounters among 250 photos in his recent book, Prince: A Private View.

Shahidi, also known as black-ish and grown-ish actress Yara Shahidi’s dad, is a Minnesota son like the superstar. He sheds light only he could provide on Prince, who died in 2016 of an accidental drug overdose.

There was the time Prince made him tea after a photo session and the two sat and talked about Rembrandt. There was a goofy side, too, with Prince clowning in an empty airport hallway, then clicking into his trademark deadpan when outsiders materialized.

While much of Shahidi’s work captured Prince onstage or was intended for official use in tour books or fodder for his fans, it’s the quieter times that sustain the 48-year-old Shahidi.

A conversation with Afshin Shahidi:

AP: You grew up in Minneapolis and were still a kid when Prince hit it big. What was running through your mind when you first met him in person?

Shahidi: I was in junior high and high school when I became aware of Prince and he was a big departure from the kind of music that I was listening to and the things I was into. He was this gender-bending phenom who could play all these instruments. I was always a fan but I wasn’t a hardcore fan who would go to every show and knew every fact, so I jumped at the opportunity to meet him in ’93.

I was starstruck. It was the era when he had “slave” written across his face and everything about him was mysterious and amazing to me. I had moved back to Minneapolis after finishing college and I was trying to get into the film business. I was 23 and got a page asking for a film loader to work on a music video and they wouldn’t say who it was for. I didn’t know how to load film but I thought I had a few days to learn, so I said, yeah, I can do it and then they said, well we need you right now and it’s in Chanhassen. That’s where Paisley Park is so I knew it had to be for Prince. I said, OK, I’m on my way.    

​AP: Did you and Prince talk about you doing this book?

Shahidi: I had done two books with him prior to this and we had discussed a third. We did not discuss this book in particular and quite honestly it took me months to be able to even look at any of the images that I had. They brought back a lot of memories that I wasn’t ready for.   

After he passed, a lot of fans had started reaching out asking if there was anything I was going to do so I toyed with the idea. Once I could finally start looking at the pictures I started putting something together. It felt very therapeutic for me. I felt like it would be selfish to keep them to myself. I have thousands of images.

AP: Why did you stop working for Prince and what did you do during those early years?

Shahidi: I started in the capacity of a technician and slowly made my way up to being a cinematographer, photographer and more of a creative collaborator. The last time I photographed him was in 2011. We continued to stay in touch and he would call occasionally to see if I was available. A big part of stopping was my family and just keeping the schedule that was necessary to keep up with Prince, to travel internationally at a moment’s notice and all the late nights and that sort of thing.

The other part is that Prince also didn’t need as many images of himself as he did when I first started working with him because a lot of the images were being used for his online music club, which was a subscription-based thing — and he was one of the first artists to do that — so once he dismantled the music club, the need to constantly update diminished. 

AP: Was it difficult to gain his trust?

Shahidi: It was a very organic process. We built a mutual trust. He was very guarded and he was also very guarded with his image. To break through that and to then be able to capture a more authentic, less-posed Prince, where I could be in a room with him and he’s not on for the camera was pretty special and it took a little bit of time. Being on the road with someone for months at a time, you decide you really like someone a lot or you don’t like them at all. 

AP: He kept a photo of Yara on his desk at Paisley Park.

Shahidi: I didn’t really know about it until after he had passed and somebody messaged me about it. It still brings tears.

AP: How did you steal all those unguarded moments?

Shahidi: I tried to blend in. It was important for me to try and capture those. We would just be hanging out and I would pick up my camera and shoot. I think he enjoyed looking at them. 

AP: What do you think Prince got out of your friendship, not only with you but your wife and kids?

Shahidi: I think normalcy. We were just a normal Minnesota family. He enjoyed children. He liked their energy and creativity. That would put a smile on his face.

There’s a lot that still makes me sad about his passing. He’s one of the first friends that I’ve lost. He exercised regularly, he ate healthy. I never saw him abuse anything, not even alcohol. To me it was a big shock. I had hopes that Prince would honor me by coming to my funeral, not the other way around.
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British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor donated $1 million Wednesday to five charities working with refugees worldwide, in a bid to alleviate a record-breaking global displacement crisis.

Kapoor, who was born to an Indian father and Iraqi Jewish mother, won the Genesis Prize — dubbed the Jewish Nobel — last year for his commitment to Jewish values.

“Like many Jews, I do not have to go far back in my family history to find people who were refugees,” he said in a statement. “Directing Genesis Prize funds to this cause is a way of helping people who, like my forebears not too long before them, are fleeing persecution.”

The United Nations says the world is witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record, with more than 65 million people forced to flee their homes, surpassing numbers after World War II more than 70 years ago.

U.N. efforts to agree a voluntary pact on safe, orderly and regular migration suffered a setback in December when the United States quit the negotiations.

“In recent months, awareness of the plight faced by tens of millions of refugees and displaced persons worldwide has fallen significantly while the refugee crisis continues unabated,” said Kapoor, a longtime social activist.

Holocaust memorial

Kapoor, who lived in Israel briefly before settling in Britain in the 1970s, won the Turner Prize in 1991 and created a Holocaust memorial for London’s Liberal Jewish Synagogue.

Winners of the Genesis Prize, which is granted by the Israeli government, award $1 million to charities of their choice, with the aim of inspiring the next generation of Jews.

One of Kapoor’s grantees is the International Rescue Committee, which is working with refugees in Uganda — home to more than 1 million people who have fled war in South Sudan — and with stateless Rohingya in Myanmar.

He is also providing food for refugees in Greece and France and medical care for Syrian refugees.

Previous winners include former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and actor Michael Douglas. The 2018 winner, Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman, plans to focus her award funds on promoting women’s equality.
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Next month’s Winter Olympics is the immediate focus for Sweden but the country is already training its next generation of winter sports athletes in special high school programs that combine sports and education for ambitious teenagers.

At the Jamtlands Gymnaisum high school in Ostersund, some 550 kilometers (340 miles )north of Stockholm, promising young skiers and biathletes are put through their paces four mornings a week by highly-qualified coaches at a local ski stadium.

They return to school at lunchtime, piling their plates high with pasta and salad in the cafeteria before heading to the classroom to catch up on their studies.

And when they are done in the classroom, they head back to the gym to work on their strength and conditioning before finishing their homework and heading for bed at the end of a long day.

It sounds like a gruelling schedule, but for those taking part it is a dream way to spend their school years.

“It’s very important, it feels like this is my life,” Julia Albertsson, a budding cross-country skier, told Reuters after strapping on her skis for her morning training session.

“You feel like you’re not just a person, you’re a cross-country skier. Right now it’s the most important thing,” she said before setting off at a blistering pace under the watchful eyes of coach David Engstrom.

Application period

“Eventually, we want them to reach the elite. It’s a very long way, and this is just the start of that long road,” Engstrom said as the skiers raced away.

“We’ve just completed an application period, and I’d say we take in around eight (athletes) every year. It’s up to themselves how good they can be.

“They decide the level of ambition, and how much time they put into training and everything else they need to become really good.”

Albertsson and the cross-country students train alongside the school’s biathletes, who are coached by Jean-Marc Chabloz, a four-time Olympian from Switzerland who has made his home in the area.

“We have good clubs in the area who work with young people, so we have them served up to us on a silver platter,” Chabloz said as he gave the teenagers shooting tips.

Despite his own Olympic history, where he took part in the Games in Albertville, Lillehammer, Nagano and Salt Lake City, the 50-year-old said it was not essential for him that the athletes go on to compete at the Games, or in the World Cup.

“I wouldn’t say that’s what drives me as a coach, it’s more about creating a platform so that they can move on in their sporting lives, or in something else. But obviously it’s great when they succeed in sport,” he explained.

School sporting director Michael Soderkvist and his team of teachers and coaches look after the student athletes, making sure they stay focussed on their studies as well as their dreams of representing Sweden at a future Olympics.

“The goal is to give students a chance to get an education, and in combination to see how far you can get with your sporting talent,” Soderkvist said.

Wrestling with maths

Back in the classroom, some of the student athletes wrestle with mathematics while those with no lessons scheduled sit on sofas in common areas, catching up on schoolwork or talking through the competitions they took part in at the weekend.

Aside from winter sports, the school offers a number of other pursuits such as soccer, basketball and fencing.

The local soccer club in Ostersund, which the school is in regular contact with, is set to meet Premier League giants Arsenal in the last 32 of the Europa League in February.

For Soderkvist, Sweden’s long-held tradition of making both sport and education accessible to all is the secret behind the success of the programs offered by similar schools, where there are no tuition or coaching fees.

“If we compare it to the States, where most of the sports are in college or schools or the private market, it’s very much different here. Because of this culture with no-profit clubs, many people can afford to do sport.” Soderkvist said.

The school is one of many with such programs all over Sweden, and every year dozens of athletes from the age of 16 and upwards apply to attend.

The handful of chosen athletes aim to follow in the footsteps of Charlotte Kalla, who had a similar high school education before going on to win multiple Olympic gold medals, and will head to Pyeongchang as one of the country’s brightest medal hopes.

Julia Albertsson is typical of the well-mannered, conscientious teenagers attending the school, and though she could never be described as cocky or arrogant, the 17-year-old is crystal clear about her burning ambition to emulate Kalla.

“You work successively, year after year, to be better, and in the end you want to get to the Olympics,” she said.
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A growing number of actors are distancing themselves from Woody Allen and his next film, heightening questions about the future of the prolific 82-year-old filmmaker in a Hollywood newly sensitive to allegations of sexual misconduct.

Timothee Chalamet on Tuesday said he will donate his salary for an upcoming Woody Allen film to three charities fighting sexual harassment and abuse: Time’s Up, the LGBT Center in New York and RAINN. The breakout star of Call Me By Your Name announced on Instagram that he didn’t want to profit from his work on Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York, which wrapped shooting in the fall.

“I want to be worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with the brave artists who are fighting for all people to be treated with the respect and dignity they deserve,” Chalamet said.

Chalamet is just the latest cast member of an Allen production to express regret or guilt about being professionally associated with the director. In recent weeks, Rebecca Hall (A Rainy Day in New York, Vicky Cristina Barcelona), Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite), Ellen Page (To Rome With Love), David Krumholtz (Wonder Wheel) and Griffith Newman (A Rainy Day in New York) have all in some way distanced themselves from Allen or vowed that they wouldn’t work with him again.

The rising chorus suggests the road ahead for Allen may be particularly challenging, even for a director whose personal controversies have for decades made him an alternatively beloved and reviled figure in movies. Financial support for the filmmaker has not previously waned in part because of the eagerness many stars have for working with a cinematic legend. But fielding a starry cast may prove increasingly difficult for Allen in a movie industry in the midst of a #MeToo reckoning. 

“If I had known then what I know now, I would not have acted in the film,” Greta Gerwig, who co-starred in Allen’s 2012 comedy To Rome With Love, told The New York Times last week. “I have not worked for him again, and I will not work for him again. Dylan Farrow’s two different pieces made me realize that I increased another woman’s pain, and I was heartbroken by that realization.”

Dylan Farrow, Allen’s adopted daughter, has said Allen molested her in an attic in 1992 when she was seven. Allen, who has long denied the allegations, was investigated for the incident but not charged.

Farrow has previously questioned why the #MeToo movement hasn’t ensnarled Allen. In an op-ed published last month in The Los Angeles Times, she wrote: “Why is it that Harvey Weinstein and other accused celebrities have been cast out by Hollywood, while Allen recently secured a multimillion-dollar distribution deal with Amazon, greenlit by former Amazon Studios executive Roy Price before he was suspended over sexual misconduct allegations?”

Price, the former head of Amazon Studios, resigned in October following an allegation that he had sexually harassed television producer Isa Hackett while she was working on the Amazon series The Man in the High Castle.

A Rainy Day in New York is the fourth project for Allen with Amazon, which bet heavily on the filmmaker to help establish its film production arm as a home to auteur filmmakers. It reportedly spent $80 million to lure Allen into television to make the 2016 series Crisis in Six Scenes.

Amazon, which didn’t respond to queries Tuesday, also distributed Allen’s Cafe Society in 2016 and Wonder Wheel, which opened December 1. It has grossed a mere $1.4 million domestically on an estimated budget of $25 million but had more success overseas, grossing $7.8 million.

A Rainy Day in New York, a romantic comedy due out sometime this year, also stars Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Liev Schreiber and Elle Fanning. In his statement, Chalamet tellingly noted that due to “contractual obligations” he couldn’t comment on the long-standing allegations against Allen.

The announcement by Chalamet, a favorite Oscar contender for best actor this year, followed a similar one Friday by his co-star Hall. She said she was donating her salary from the film to Time’s Up, the recently formed initiative to combat gender inequality in the entertainment industry. “It’s a small gesture and not one intended as close to compensation,” Hall wrote on Instagram.

Some have continued to publicly support Allen, though, including Alec Baldwin.

“Woody Allen was investigated forensically by two states (NY and CT) and no charges were filed,” Baldwin said Tuesday on Twitter. “The renunciation of him and his work, no doubt, has some purpose. But it’s unfair and sad to me. I worked with Woody Allen three times and it was one of the privileges of my career.”
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Simone Biles watched as her friends and former Olympic teammates came forward to detail abuse at the hands of a now-imprisoned former USA Gymnastics team doctor.

Drawing in part from their strength, the four-time gold medalist acknowledged Monday she is among the athletes who were sexually abused by Larry Nassar.

Biles, who won five medals overall at the 2016 Olympics, released a statement via Twitter outlining that abuse. Nassar, who spent more than two decades as a physician at USA Gymnastics while also working at Michigan State University, has admitted sexually assaulting gymnasts, possessing child pornography and molesting girls who sought medical treatment. He was sentenced in December to 60 years in federal prison for possessing child pornography and is facing another 40 to 125 years in prison after pleading guilty to assaulting seven girls.

Biles, now 20, called Nassar’s behavior “completely unacceptable, disgusting, and abusive, especially from someone whom I was told to trust.” She joins a list of high-profile gymnasts who have come out against Nassar, including six-time Olympic medalist Aly Raisman, 2012 all-around champion Gabby Douglas and two-time Olympic medalist McKayla Maroney.

Like her Olympic teammates, Biles detailed abuse by Nassar that he disguised as treatment.

“It is not normal to receive any type of treatment from a trusted team physician and refer to it horrifyingly as the ‘special’ treatment,” Biles wrote.

Biles is in the beginning stages of a return to competition, a journey that includes visits to the national team’s training center at the Karolyi Ranch north of Houston, where she said the abuse occurred.

“It is impossibly difficult to relive these experiences and it breaks my heart even more to think that as I work towards my dream of competing in Tokyo 2020, I will have to continually return to the same training facility where I was abused,” Biles wrote.

USA Gymnastics initially agreed to buy the Karolyi Ranch in the summer of August 2016, following the retirement of longtime national team coordinator Martha Karolyi, but then backed out of the deal. The national team continues to use the facility while options for a replacement are explored.

Biles says she initially wondered if she was to blame.

“For too long I’ve asked myself, ‘Was I too naive? Was it may fault?”’ Biles wrote. “I now know the answer to those questions. No. No. It was not my fault. No, I will not and should not carry the guilt that belongs to Larry Nassar, USAG, and others.”

USA Gymnastics said in a statement it is “heartbroken, sorry and angry” that Biles and other athletes were harmed by Nassar.

“USA Gymnastics’ support is unwavering for Simone and all athletes who courageously came forward to share their experiences,” the organization said in a release. “We are our athletes’ advocates. USA Gymnastics will continue to listen to our athletes and our members in our efforts of creating a culture of empowerment with a relentless focus on athlete safety every single day.”

The organization has taken several steps in recent months. President and CEO Steve Penny resigned under pressure last March and was replaced by Kerry Perry, who took over on Dec. 1.

The organization hired Toby Stark, a child welfare advocate, as its director of SafeSport last summer. Part of Stark’s mandate is educating members on rules, educational programs and reporting. The federation also adopted over 70 recommendations by Deborah Daniels, a former federal prosecutor who oversaw an extensive independent review.

That’s not far enough for some. Raisman has urged the organization to remove chairman of the board Paul Parilla among others. Biles, like Raisman, wants USA Gymnastics to take a deeper look at the conditions that allowed Nassar’s behavior to run unchecked for so long.

“We need to know why this was able to take place for so long and to so many of us,” Biles said. “We need to make sure something like this never happens again.”
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20-kilogram ((19.96kg)) granite stones shuffled across ice and aimed for a bull’s-eye. That’s the basic gist of the team sport of curling. A privately owned island off the coast of Scotland is birthplace to every curling stone to be used at the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea Feb.9th – Feb. 25. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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In Frederick, Maryland, Wheeler Stone, who is known by Doc Stone, is living his dream. He’s creating leather costumes and accessories for people who love to dress up as fictional characters from movies. He’s also designing and making various leather products for everyday life. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, thanks to the Internet, Stone’s authentic, handmade pieces find a growing market. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Edwin Hawkins, the gospel star best known for the crossover hit “Oh Happy Day” and as a major force for contemporary inspirational music, died Monday at age 74.

 

Hawkins died at his home in Pleasanton, California. He had been suffering from pancreatic cancer, publicist Bill Carpenter told The Associated Press.

 

Along with Andrae Crouch, James Cleveland and a handful of others, Hawkins was credited as a founder of modern gospel music. Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke and numerous other singers had become mainstream stars by adapting gospel sounds to pop lyrics. Hawkins stood out for enjoying commercial success while still performing music that openly celebrated religious faith.

 

An Oakland native and one of eight siblings, Hawkins was a composer, keyboardist, arranger and choir master. He had been performing with his family and in church groups since childhood and in his 20s helped form the Northern California State Youth Choir.

 

Their first album, “Let Us Go into the House of the Lord,” came out in 1968 and was intended for local audiences. But radio stations in the San Francisco Bay Area began playing one of the album’s eight tracks, “Oh Happy Day,” an 18th-century hymn arranged by Hawkins in call-and-response style.

 

“Oh Happy Day,” featuring the vocals of Dorothy Combs Morrison, was released as a single credited to the Edwin Hawkins Singers and became a million-seller in 1969, showing there was a large market for gospel songs and for inspirational music during the turbulent era of the late 1960s.

 

“I think our music was probably a blend and a crossover of everything that I was hearing during that time,” Hawkins told blackmusic.com in 2015. “We grew up hearing all kinds of music in our home. My mother, who was a devout Christian, loved the Lord and displayed that in her lifestyle.”

 

“My father was not a committed Christian at that time but was what you’d call a good man,” he said. “And, of course, we heard from him some R&B music but also a lot of country and western when we were younger kids.”

 

In 1970, the Hawkins singers backed Melanie on her top 10 hit “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” and won a Grammy for best soul gospel performance for “Oh Happy Day.”

 

Meanwhile, George Harrison would cite “Oh Happy Day” as inspiration for his hit “My Sweet Lord,” and Glen Campbell reached the adult contemporary charts with his own version of the Hawkins performance. Elvis Presley, Johnny Mathis and numerous others also would record it.

 

Hawkins went on to make dozens of records and won four Grammys in all, including for the songs “Every Man Wants to Be Free” and “Wonderful!” In 2007, he was voted into the Christian Music Hall of Fame. He also toured on occasion with younger brother Walter Hawkins, a Grammy winner who died in 2010.

 

Edwin Hawkins is survived by his siblings Carol, Feddie, Daniel and Lynette.
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