In recent years, China has become an increasingly attractive market for Hollywood producers, despite tight state controls. Chinese investors also have been looking at opportunities in the U.S. film and entertainment industry. While some people express concern over these growing ties, others say they are mutually beneficial. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from Los Angeles.
…
They came for the music, the mind-bending drugs, to resist the Vietnam War and 1960s American orthodoxy, or simply to escape summer boredom. And they left an enduring legacy.
This season marks the 50th anniversary of that legendary “Summer of Love,” when throngs of American youth descended on San Francisco to join a cultural revolution.
Thinking back on 1967, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead recalls a creative explosion that sprouted from fissures in American society. That summer marked a pivot point in rock-and-roll history, he says, but it was about much more than the music.
“There was a spirit in the air,” said Weir, who dropped out of high school and then helped form the Grateful Dead in 1965. “We figured that if enough of us got together and put our hearts and minds to it, we could make anything happen.”
San Francisco, now a hub of technology and unrecognizable from its grittier, more freewheeling former self, is taking the anniversary seriously. Hoping for another invasion of visitors – this time with tourist dollars – the city is celebrating with museum exhibits, music and film festivals, Summer of Love-inspired dance parties and lecture panels. Hotels are offering discount packages that include “psychedelic cocktails,” “Love Bus” tours, tie-dyed tote bags and bubble wands.
The city’s travel bureau, which is coordinating the effort, calls it an “exhilarating celebration of the most iconic cultural event in San Francisco history.”
One thing the anniversary makes clear is that what happened here in the 1960s could never happen in San Francisco today, simply because struggling artists can’t afford the city anymore. In the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, which was ground zero for the counterculture, two-bedroom apartments now rent for $5,000 a month. San Francisco remains a magnet for young people, but even those earning six-figure Silicon Valley salaries complain about the cost of living.
In the mid-1960s, rent in Haight-Ashbury was extremely cheap, Weir, now 69, told The Associated Press.
“That attracted artists and bohemians in general because the bohemian community tended to move in where they could afford it,” he said.
During those years, the Grateful Dead shared a spacious Victorian on Ashbury Street. Janis Joplin lived down the street. Across from her was Joe McDonald, of the psychedelic rock band Country Joe and the Fish.
Jefferson Airplane eventually bought a house a few blocks away on Fulton Street, where they hosted legendary, wild parties.
“The music is what everyone seems to remember, but it was a lot more than that,” said David Freiberg, 75, a singer and bassist for Quicksilver Messenger Service who later joined Jefferson Airplane. “It was artists, poets, musicians, all the beautiful shops of clothes and hippie food stores. It was a whole community.”
The bands dropped by each other’s houses and played music nearby, often in free outdoor concerts at Golden Gate Park and its eastward extension known as the Panhandle. Their exciting new breed of folk, jazz and blues-inspired electrical music became known as the San Francisco Sound. Several of its most influential local acts – the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, which launched Joplin’s career – shot to fame during the summer’s three-day Monterey Pop Festival.
“Every fantasy about the summer of ’67 that was ever created – peace, joy, love, nonviolence, wear flowers in your hair and fantastic music – was real at Monterey. It was bliss,” said Dennis McNally, the Grateful Dead’s longtime publicist and official biographer who has curated an exhibit at the California Historical Society that runs through Sept. 10.
The exhibit, “On the Road to the Summer of Love,” explains how that epic summer came about and why San Francisco was its inevitable home. McNally uncovered 100 photographs, some never seen publicly, that trace San Francisco’s contrarian roots to the Beat poets of the 1950s, followed by civil rights demonstrations and the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1960s.
The national media paid little attention to San Francisco’s psychedelic community until January 1967, when poets and bands joined forces for the “Human Be-In,” a Golden Gate Park gathering that unexpectedly drew about 50,000 people, McNally said. It was there that psychologist and LSD-advocate Timothy Leary stood on stage and delivered his famous mantra: “Turn on. Tune In. Drop out.”
“After the media got hold, it just exploded,” McNally said. “Suddenly, a flood descends on Haight Street. Every bored high school kid – and that’s all of them – is saying, `How do I get to San Francisco?”’
An exhaustive exhibit at San Francisco’s de Young museum, “The Summer of Love Experience,” offers a feel-good trip back in time. There’s a psychedelic light show, a 1960s soundtrack and galleries with iconic concert posters, classic photographs and hippie chic fashions worn by Joplin, Jerry Garcia and others. It runs through Aug. 20.
But that summer’s invasion carried a dark cloud. Tens of thousands of youths looking for free love and drugs flooded into San Francisco, living in the streets, begging for food. Parents journeyed to the city in search of their young runaways. An epidemic of toxic psychedelics and harder drugs hit the streets.
“Every loose nut and bolt in America rattled out here to San Francisco, and it got pretty messy,” Weir said.
The longtimers saw it as the end of an era, but one that shaped history.
“We created a mindset that became intrinsic to the fabric of America today,” said Country Joe McDonald, now 75. “Every single thing we did was adapted, folded into America – gender attitudes, ecological attitudes, the invention of rock and roll.”
Half a century later, McDonald, who lives in Berkeley, feels the rumblings of history repeating itself.
UC Berkeley is again at the center of a free speech debate, albeit of a different nature. Discontent with the U.S. government and President Donald Trump has stirred the largest protests he’s seen since the Vietnam War. In the women’s marches across America, he felt echoes of the Summer of Love.
“I think there’s a similarity,” McDonald said, drawing a parallel to the massive anti-Trump turnout marked by nonviolence, playful pink protest hats, creative signs and a determination to change the country’s political course. “Both were about saying goodbye to the past and hello to the future.”
…
A museum that tells the stories of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks will reopen Tuesday in a new space, a little farther from the World Trade Center memorial but with triple the exhibition space of the temporary quarters it occupied for a decade.
The 9/11 Tribute Museum was originally founded in 2006 as a temporary shrine to the victims in the years that the larger, better known National September 11 Memorial and Museum was under construction and even after it opened in 2011.
The Tribute Museum offered daily guided tours of the rebuilt World Trade Center site led by people with close personal connections to the tragedy, including attack survivors, first responders, recovery workers and relatives of the dead.
More than 4 million people have visited the museum, originally called the Tribute Center and co-founded by CEO Jennifer Adams-Webb and the September 11th Families’ Association, causing it to outgrow its original home in a space formerly occupied by a delicatessen.
The new space, a few blocks away, is 36,000-square-feet, about half of which is exhibition space. It is located on the ground and second floors of a high-rise building.
“Originally, when we started, we weren’t sure where we were going,” said Lee Ielpi, whose firefighter son, Jonathan, died in the attacks. “We realized, as the years went on, that we are making an impact.”
Artifacts on display at the museum include “missing persons” posters that were hung throughout the city in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, when families still held hope that their loved ones would be found alive. Other items on display include a death certificate, a boarding pass for someone who was on one of the flights, and a section of window from one of the hijacked planes.
On a tour of the space last week, Ielpi, a retired firefighter, stopped before one display that left him in tears: his son’s helmet and fire department jacket.
“It is crucial that we pass on the understanding of 9/11 to future generations and the tremendous spirit of resilience and service that arose after the attacks,” said Ielpi, who helped carry his son’s body from the rubble.
Ielpi had nothing but praise for the much larger National September 11 Memorial and Museum, which serves as the country’s principal institution that tells the 9/11 story through interactive technology, archives and filmed narratives. He said the institutions “complement each other,” with the Tribute Museum able to truly personalize the experience of the day through the volunteer guides.
The new space cost $8.7 million. Private and public funds for it include donations from American Express, Zurich North America and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the Trade Center site.
The museum also offers programs for visiting schoolchildren who were not even alive on Sept. 11, 2001.
Lee Skolnick, whose firm designed the exhibit layout, said the Tribute Museum’s power comes from the survivors, relatives and recovery workers who lead the tours and who have agreed to share their personal stories.
“The fact that survivors, responders and citizens discovered the `seeds of service’ growing out of unimaginable tragedy is a testament to the power of the human spirit and an amazing life lesson for us all,” said Skolnick. “What can you do for others, for the world?”
…
James Taylor might just be the happiest road warrior touring today, so what makes him happier?
Bringing on old friend Bonnie Raitt this summer for concerts that include the ultimate in Americana, some of the country’s most storied baseball parks.
“I’ve loved her music and her for a long, long time,” Taylor told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “I’ve interacted with Bonnie, and happily so, at numerous benefits for numerous causes — environmental, social, political causes — over the years. We’re very much in sync in that way. She’s an incredible giver.”
Among their stops will be Boston’s Fenway Park, where Taylor’s home-state team, the Red Sox, live and where Raitt last joined him on the road in 2015. And the first time? Well, that was back in 1970, when he invited the Harvard junior and budding blues singer, guitar player and songwriter onstage for a campus gig at Sanders Theatre after the two met through a mutual friend.
“I was nervous to play because I hadn’t really broken my chops in for concerts that much,” Raitt said by phone from Toronto while on a swing through Canada. “But I was so excited. It was an honor to be both at my school and opening for him. He couldn’t have been warmer and more friendly. It was intimidating to meet one of my heroes but he was just so down to earth.”
Raitt got her first recording contract and dropped out of school around that time. Though she was based on the West Coast and Taylor on the East, the two stayed in touch over the decades.
“The affection between us is so clear and so palpable. Our two bands love each other. James and I are both social activists and we’re really proud that a dollar of every ticket will be donated to various causes,” Raitt said.
The two haven’t worked up their sets yet but Raitt just may include Taylor’s 1968 “Rainy Day Man,” from his debut album and one of her all-time Taylor favorites, written by him and Zach Wiesner. It’s old-school Taylor, desperate and lonely, focused on making a dope connection soon after he tried opiates for the first time in real life, setting him on a 20-year path of addiction.
Raitt covered the song in 1974 on her “Streetlights” album.
“What good is that happy lie/All you wanted from the start was to cry/It looks like another fall/Your good friends they don’t seem to help at all/When you’re feeling kind of cold and small/Just look up your rainy day man.”
“It’s so complex and deep as a point of view, especially for someone as young as James when he wrote it,” Raitt said. “He was so insightful and so deeply in touch with the inner workings and the darker side of the human soul and relationships, and so much of that point of view was so beautifully expressed in his music. That song just speaks to me and always has.”
The summer tour has the two working together for six weeks, kicking off July 6 at Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, and winding up at Fenway, Taylor’s third turn there, on Aug. 11. Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., Wrigley Field in Chicago and AT&T Park in San Francisco are among their other ballpark stops.
Taylor, 69, and Raitt, 67, will play hour sets, guesting for each other as well. Come fall, Taylor will come off the road, where he’s averaged about half of each year for the last three years, to begin work on a new studio album, this one a look back at his musical influences.
“I don’t have a release date. We haven’t started recording yet. Past experience has shown me that if you set a deadline you’re just setting yourself up for a fall. I’m not writing these songs. I’m looking at the songs that basically were the source for my musical education. The way I want to record them is just my guitar arrangements,” he said.
His last album of original material was in 2015, “Before This World,” some of which explored his road to recovery. The album didn’t come easy. He left the family, including twin teen boys, to hole up in Newport, Rhode Island, following a 13-year gap for release of new songs.
Raitt put out a studio album last year called “Dig in Deep” and generally works in five-year cycles for recording,
“It’s a lot more fun to be out here on the road playing than it is looking for ideas for a new record,” she said. “Some people enjoy writing and it’s always satisfying, but really the payoff for me is being able to travel around and make people happy every night, including me.”
…
The fate of comedian Bill Cosby is now in the hands of the jury after both sides wrapped up their cases Monday in his sexual assault trial near Philadelphia.
The 79-year-old Cosby is charged with drugging and assaulting Andrea Constand, a former director of operations of the Temple University women’s basketball team.
He allegedly gave her pills that paralyzed her and left her unable to resist when he started touching her in his Philadelphia home.
Constand had gone to Cosby’s house for dinner and to get advice about her career.
Cosby’s lawyers used their closing arguments to say Constand lied on the witness stand about her relationship with the comic. They pointed out that she telephoned Cosby more than 50 times after the alleged attack, but told police she had no contact with him.
“It’s not a fib. It’s not a mistake, It’s a stone cold lie,” Brian McMonagle told the jury.
Constand said the calls were just business and that Cosby, as a Temple alumnus, could help the basketball team.
“This isn’t talking to a trustee. This is talking to a lover,” McMonagle said, accusing Constand of trying to use Cosby’s name for financial gain.
The prosecution relied heavily on parts of the deposition Cosby gave to police in a 2005 civil suit brought by Constand.
In it, Cosby admitted getting a prescription to a sedative called Quaaludes back in the 1970s and giving the drug to women he wanted to sleep with.
District Attorney Kevin Steele told the jury these words prove Cosby knew exactly what he was doing when he allegedly gave pills to Constand, telling her they were herbal relaxants.
“Drugging somebody and putting them in a position where you can do what you want with them is not romantic. It’s criminal.”
Steele said no amount of “fancy lawyering” will save Cosby from his own words.
“Ladies and gentlemen, he has told you what he has done,” Steele said to the jurors. “It is about as straightforward as you are ever going to see in a sex crimes case.”
If found guilty, Cosby could go to prison for the rest of his life.
More than 50 women claim Cosby sexually assaulted them in incidents dating back to the 1960s, when he emerged as a major comedy star. Most of the alleged incidents occurred too long ago to be prosecuted now.
Constand’s complaint is the only one that has come to trial. Cosby has denied all the charges.
Cosby won fame for stand-up comedy routines focusing on his Philadelphia childhood and growing up in a middle class black family.
He played a wise and genial doctor in his 1980s television comedy series, The Cosby Show. It was the country’s most popular TV show for much of its eight-year run.
…
Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” is playing to sold-out houses in a star-filled revival in London, and Peter Eotvos’ operatic version premiered Saturday in New York at City Opera. A response to the AIDS epidemic and the lack of U.S. government action, the work still resonates in an era of polarized politics.
“The play in English has lasted now for 25 years, which is not long compared to ‘Oedipus,’ but it’s pretty long for a contemporary play to still be able to generate excitement, and it’s taught everywhere in colleges,” Kushner said. “All of my stuff does best during Republican administrations because I hate them so much, and there is an anger in the plays that I think really speaks in times of political mischief of a high order.”
Formally titled “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” the two-part play runs for nearly seven hours, not including intermissions. “Millennium Approaches” premiered in San Francisco in 1991 and “Perestroika” the following year in Los Angeles, Both parts won Tony Awards, and “Millennium Approaches” earned the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
An HBO miniseries in 2003 directed by Mike Nichols starred Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson. When Paris’ Theatre du Chatalet was seeking to commission a new work from Eotvos, a composer friend recommended “Angels.”
“He asked me if I would prepare a libretto. And I said no. I said I don’t quite understand how a 6 1/2 hour-long play can be turned into a libretto that’s anything shorter than the Ring Cycle,” Kushner said. “But I said that he was welcome to try.”
Eotvos’ wife, Mari Mezei, took about a year to condense “Angels” to an opera of just over 2 hours. They traveled to New York, attended “Rent,” “Cabaret” and other Broadway shows to get a feel for the city.
“I went out to Central Park at night and listened to the sounds,” the 73-year-old composer said through a translator. “There were remote sounds of city in the background. There was actually a guitar playing, and that’s where this guitar solo is actually coming from.”
“Angels” centers on Prior Walter, who has AIDS, the people in his life and controversial lawyer Roy Cohn. Central is Prior’s vision of an angel, who declares him a prophet.
“The idea of the angel and the hallucinations was musical inspiration,” Eotvos said. “Everything that is abstract can be put into the music.”
The opera version shifts the emphasis.
“Politics is not the territory of music,” Eotvos remembered telling Kushner. “The names of politicians are gone in a certain amount of time, so they’re not interesting anymore. It was much more important to emphasize this human condition.”
A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Eotvos composed “Angels” with speech morphing into song, syncopating percussion and electronic keyboards.
The opera was given its world premiere at the Chatalet in 2004 with Barbara Hendricks and Julia Migenes. It has since appeared in Hamburg, Germany; Amsterdam; Boston; Fort Worth, Texas; Frankfurt, Germany; London; Wroclaw, Poland; and Los Angeles.
Michael Capasso, who brought New York City Opera out of bankruptcy last year, decided to cap the first full season of the company’s return with four performances of “Angels” running through June 16, the first installment of a LGBT Pride Initiative that will include Charles Wuorinen’s “Brokeback Mountain” next June.
And while the opera makes its New York premiere, Marianne Elliott’s acclaimed staging starring Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane is running until Aug. 19 at London’s National Theatre. Kushner says it likely will transfer to Broadway next season.
“It feels to me like I can stop worrying about it once and for all. I think it’s going to last,” said Kushner, who turns 61 next month. “I don’t know if the human race is going to last. But I think that the play is.”
…
The New Hampshire Political Library doesn’t include any books about President Donald Trump, but even he likely would agree its new collection of presidential biographies, memoirs and monographs is huge.
Arthur Young of Manchester spent 25 years collecting 2,744 books on the presidency, the founding fathers and other people and events related to the nation’s highest office.
He donated them to the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College, where staff spent the last six months cataloguing them and building custom glass-front display cabinets to hold them.
The collection spans from George Washington to Barack Obama, and includes scholarly tomes as well as what Young considers fun works, such as a book about Teddy Roosevelt written by his valet.
“A book itself is an object of art, from its binding to its font,” Young said at a dedication ceremony Friday. “Important ideas and skillful writing are enduring treasures of our culture.”
Young, 76, is a former director of libraries at the University of Rhode Island, University of South Carolina and Northern Illinois University. He said he grew up in a home with thousands of books and has spent his life dedicated to the care, preservation and dissemination of books.
He acknowledged he hasn’t read all of the presidential collection, but said he hopes they will be useful to students.
The collection shows how perceptions of presidents have changed over time. For example, the earliest book about Washington was written in 1931; the latest in 2009. The most recent addition is a 1,400-word book about Obama that covers his life until just before he became president.
“Washington is a good example — the first president continues to be cited as a model of decorum and honesty and all of those good virtues going back a couple hundred years,” Young said. “You learn how the presidency and its meaning changes over time.”
Neil Levesque, director of the institute, said the donation reinforces the facility’s value to scholars, journalists and the public and will provide rich research opportunities for students.
“The students here are going to use this for many, many years to come,” he said.
Until now, the library has mainly been devoted to campaign memorabilia and other items related to New Hampshire’s tradition of holding the first-in-the-nation presidential primary every four years.
The small room that is now lined with glass-front bookcases filled with Young’s donated books had been used as a meeting space and reading room but had few actual books. Young, who has seen many libraries, called it “beyond splendid.”
“I don’t have to make any exaggeration to say this is the best setting for books I have ever been in, and that’s not just because they used to be mine,” he said.
…
Actor Bill Cosby could charm jurors at his sexual assault trial if he testifies this week, but experts say the risk would be considerable.
Accuser Andrea Constand has told her side of the story. The jury also heard Cosby’s version in the form of his police statement and his lurid deposition in her 2005 lawsuit. But will they hear from the 79-year-old actor himself when the defense starts Monday?
Cosby’s spokesman says maybe, but his lawyers remain mum.
“He could be a fantastic witness. … He’s an actor and he’s a very good actor,” said Duquesne University School of Law professor Wes Oliver. “(But) he is potentially opening the door to a whole lot of cross-examination that they fought really hard to keep out.”
Prosecutors wanted 13 other accusers to testify at the trial, but the judge allowed just one, an assistant to his agent at the William Morris Agency. That meant the prosecution rested its case on Friday, just five days after the trial began.
If Cosby testifies, and denies drugging and molesting Constand or anyone else, the judge might allow more accusers to testify as rebuttal witnesses.
“It would be very bad for him for the jury to even begin to think about the other women,” Oliver said.
The defense’s main goal this past week has been to attack the credibility of Constand and the William Morris assistant, Kelly Johnson. Johnson had corroborating evidence in the form of her 1996 worker’s compensation claim. A lawyer on the case recalled her startling account of being drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby, but his notes revealed a glaring discrepancy in the account. He said the encounter occurred in 1990, while Johnson insists it was 1996, the year she left her job.
The defense had more trouble trying to discredit Constand. They hammered home the point that she doesn’t know just when it happened, and they questioned why she had regular phone contact with Cosby later that spring. Constand said she had to return calls from the Temple University trustee because he was an important booster and she worked for the women’s basketball team.
She filed a police complaint in January 2005 after moving back home to the Toronto area, and then sued Cosby in March 2005 when the local prosecutor decided not to charge him.
Cosby’s testimony in her civil case shows just how hard a witness he would be to control. His answers, like his comedy routines, meander from point to point and veer toward stream of consciousness.
And he uses jarring language to describe his sexual encounters with various young women. He talks in the deposition of “the penile entrance” and “digital penetration,” and he told Constand’s mother, when she called to confront him, that her daughter had had an orgasm. And he can display hints of arrogance.
“One of the greatest storytellers in the world and I’m failing,” Cosby said when asked to repeat an answer in the deposition.
The defense could call other witnesses to try to bolster their argument that Cosby had a consensual relationship with Constand, 35 years his junior.
The trial would move to closing arguments on Monday if they decide not to put anyone on the stand.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Constand and Johnson have done.
…
Katy Perry opened up about having suicidal thoughts during a marathon weekend livestream event.
“I feel ashamed that I would have those thoughts, feel that low, and that depressed,” she said Saturday on YouTube during a tearful session with Siri Singh from the Viceland series “The Therapist.”
The pop star has been livestreaming herself since Friday, filming her life for anyone with an internet connection to see. She’s been doing yoga, hosting dinner parties, sleeping, applying makeup and singing, of course.
By Sunday, the most revealing 60 minutes of the four-day “Katy Perry – Witness World Wide” event was her time with Singh.
Perry told Singh she struggles with her public persona. In the past, she said, she has had suicidal thoughts. She talked about the challenge of being her authentic self while promoting her public image as she lives “under this crazy microscope.”
“I so badly want to be Katheryn Hudson (her birth name) that I don’t even want to look like Katy Perry anymore sometimes – and, like, that is a little bit of why I cut my hair, because I really want to be my authentic self,” she said.
Perry is sporting a new short, blond hairstyle.
The YouTube event is a promotion for her new album “Witness.” The livestream will culminate in a free concert Monday in Los Angeles for 1,000 fans.
…
Dear Evan Hansen, a musical about a lonely high school student who pretends to have been a friend of a classmate who committed suicide, won six awards during Sunday’s annual Tony Awards ceremony.
The surprise hit of the 2016-17 season took home Tonys for best musical, best book (the combination of the show’s music, lyrics and story) for playwright Steven Levenson, best score, orchestrations, best leading actor in a musical for Broadway newcomer Ben Platt, and best featured actress for Rachel Bay Jones.
The Tony Award for best play went to Oslo, an examination of the negotiations that led to the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace accords; cast member Michael Aronov won the for Tony for best featured actor.
Three well-known Hollywood actors took home Tony Awards Sunday. Kevin Kline took home his third Tony for playing the lead in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter; Laurie Metcalf, a three-time Emmy Award winner for her work on the television comedy Roseanne, won her first Tony as leading actress in a play for A Doll’s House, Part 2, a sequel of the Henrik Ibsen classic; and Cynthia Nixon, a star of the 1990s television comedy Sex and the City, won her third Tony, this one for featured actress in a play for her role in the Lillian Hellman classic The Little Foxes.
The highlight of the night was 71-year-old actress/singer Bette Midler winning her first competitive Tony as leading actress in a musical for Hello, Dolly!, which won for best revival for a musical. Midler’s award came 50 years after her she made her Broadway debut in Fiddler on the Roof. She won a special Tony Award in 1974.
Veteran actor James Earl Jones received the lifetime achievement award.
The Tony Awards, named after Antoinette Perry, an actress and director and co-founder of the American Theater Wing, celebrates the best plays and musicals of New York City’s Broadway theater district during the previous season.
…
Judy Garland has been laid to rest in a mausoleum named for her at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
A spokeswoman for Garland’s estate says her family and friends held a private memorial service for the actress Saturday, which would have been Garland’s 95th birthday. She was buried in the Judy Garland Pavilion.
Garland’s children, Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft and Joe Luft, wanted to bring their mother’s remains “home to Hollywood” from her original burial site at New York’s Ferncliff Cemetery, publicist Victoria Varela said. They attended the service, along with Garland’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
In a statement released to The Associated Press, they offered gratitude to their mother’s “millions of fans around the world for their constant love and support.”
Garland’s children announced earlier this year that they had relocated their mother’s remains to Los Angeles. Garland’s third husband, Mickey Deans, buried her in New York, but her children said she wished to be interred with her family in Hollywood, Varela said.
The Judy Garland Pavilion is intended as a final resting spot for Minnelli, Luft and other family members, cemetery spokeswoman Noelle Berman said in January.
Garland, star of classic films including The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me in St. Louis, died in 1969 at age 47 in London.
Jayne Mansfield, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino and Cecil B. DeMille are among the entertainment luminaries buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Rocker Chris Cornell was laid to rest there last month.
…
Natural caves where desert natives once made their homes … places where massive boulders appear to rise up from the desert … ancient rocks inscribed with symbolic carvings … a once-active volcano where visitors can walk down into its center. These are just a few of the timeless wonders that national parks traveler Mikah Meyer recently visited during his journey through the southwestern state of New Mexico. He shared highlights with VOA’s JulieTaboh.
…
Music is as much about math, as it is about sound. It’s also about imagination and learning. But it’s out of reach for some disabled or physically challenged students, until now. A team of Polish inventors has created a push-button instrument that almost anyone can play. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…
Pianists from South Korea and the United States took the top three places Saturday in the 15th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition held in Fort Worth, Texas, this past week.
Yekwon Sunwoo, 28, of South Korea claimed the gold medal, while Americans Kenneth Broberg and Daniel Hsu followed as silver and bronze medalists, respectively.
More than half a century ago, international relations between the United States and Russia warmed when a tall, soft-spoken young pianist from Texas claimed first prize at the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
Not long after, the piano competition that bears his name — Van Cliburn — was founded, attracting outstanding young talent from around the globe to compete for the coveted gold, silver and bronze medals every four years.
The competition began with 30 competitors, and the winners were announced Saturday evening.
As the gold medalist, Yekwon earns a $50,000 cash prize, Broberg, $25,000, and Hsu, $15,000. All three receive three years of professional concert management.
Leonard Slatkin, conductor and chairman of the jury, said the Cliburn competition, one of more than 200 piano competitions in the world, is an important one.
“Clearly the Cliburn is the premiere competition in the United States,” he notes. “It attracts the highest level. … The Cliburn ranks in a similar manner as, say, the Queen Elizabeth or the Tchaikovsky in terms of the international prestige it brings.”
Life-changing and surreal
Twenty-five-year-old Rachel Cheung from Hong Kong, one of the finalists, said earlier this week that attending the competition would change her life, “because this is really the biggest competition in the world, and the engagements that would bring with winning it, would be very, very helpful to my career, and there will be a lot of opportunities and exposures.”
Hsu said being a finalist at the Van Cliburn competition was a bit surreal.
“Even though it’s a competition, and there’s a lot of stress and preparation, but the overall feeling is just incredible and it’s a lot of fun, and I’m having a blast,” he said.
All of the competitors have played concerts. But for some, including Georgy Tchaidze, a 29-year-old finalist from Russia, playing in a competition is different from an ordinary performance.
“It’s all about pressure,” Tchaidze said. “Pressure is so high that sometimes you forget to enjoy the music. And music making is all about enjoying it. And to bring the joy and pass it to the audience.”
On the other hand, Hsu said he doesn’t approach a competition performance any differently from a concert.
“I’ve heard people say that, in competitions you should be more careful, and you should try and play for the jury. I didn’t particularly take that approach for this competition. I played how I felt in the moment, and how I thought the music should be portrayed.”
A life in music
Earlier this week, Yekwon said no matter the outcome of the competition, qualifying for the Cliburn validates a dedication to a life in music.
“My passion and love for music is just, deeply enough, and I can never get enough of it. You have to spend a lot of hours, and really such dedication to it,” she said.
Slatkin added that the Van Cliburn is not the be-all and end-all to a career.
“It should be just one possible step among many paths that the pianist can take. They wouldn’t have gotten this far if they weren’t good enough to be at the Cliburn.”
…
Danger lurks at Dracula’s castle.
Romanian authorities have closed a 13th-century fortress connected to Vlad the Impaler after a mother bear and her cubs were found roaming in the area.
The citadel, atop a mountain in central Romania, can be reached only by climbing 1,480 steps. It was shut in late May “for the safety of visitors,” its website said Saturday.
Local prefect Emilian Dragnea says the Environment Ministry had agreed to capture the four bears and relocate them elsewhere. Authorities blame people for leaving food in the area.
The citadel was repaired by 15th-century Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler, who inspired Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic novel “Dracula.”
Bran Castle, also associated with Dracula, is a bigger tourist attraction.
Romania is home to between 5,000 and 6,000 brown bears.
Adam West, the actor who played the title role in the kitschy 1960’s “Batman” television series, has died at age 88, Variety reported on Saturday, citing a family statement.
West, who was so closely identified with his tongue-in-cheek portrayal of the cartoon superhero that he had trouble landing other roles when the show ended, died on Friday evening after a struggle with leukemia, his representative told Variety.
His representatives did not immediately return calls or emails seeking comment.
…
U2 turned their first headlining appearance at a U.S. music festival into Bono-roo.
The Irish rockers performed a two-hour set Friday night at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, as part of their world tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of their Grammy-winning The Joshua Tree album.
They played the full album, as well as some of their other hits, including New Year’s Day and Beautiful Day, to tens of thousands of music fans.
Toward the end of the performance, lead singer Bono asked if they had made a mistake in not coming to the festival sooner, and later added, “Thanks for naming it after me.”
The band kicked off their tour last month in Canada, which hits the United Kingdom, Europe and Central America through Oct. 19.
The band has previously played the Glastonbury Festival, but their appearance on the Bonnaroo lineup this year was a huge get for the 16-year-old music festival.
Before their set, U2 guitarist The Edge received the Les Paul Spirit Award in a presentation from the Les Paul Foundation on the festival grounds. The Edge, whose name is David Evans, called Paul an inventor and innovator who pioneered advances in electric guitars and recording.
“I owe him a great debt of gratitude not only for the contributions he made to music, but in terms of his contributions to the technology,” Evans said.
The political nature of the album, which was inspired by the band’s fascination with America, was reflected on the giant screens behind the band. The screens showed images of female activists, scenes of the American desert and poems from American writers. Often Bono would stop singing to let the chorus of voices from fans complete the song.
As he ended the performance with their hit, One, he called it “a night we will never forget.”
…
Thousands of people from around the world packed Israel’s streets of Tel Aviv for the city’s annual Gay Pride march, one of many festivals for gay rights taking place this weekend.
The festival is billed as the largest event of its kind in the deeply conservative Middle East.
Israeli police estimated that more than 100,000 people participated Friday with many coming from other countries.
The annual parade featured floats and dancers with this year’s theme being “Bisexuality Visibility.”
The festival is sponsored by the city of Tel Aviv, which has promoted gay tourism in recent years, becoming one of the world’s most gay-friendly travel destinations.
While Tel Aviv is seen as liberal and welcoming of gays, Jerusalem is seen as more conservative with the population’s views varying on gay rights. A gay pride parade there in 2015 ended in tragedy when an extremist ultra-Orthodox Jew stabbed a 16-year-old girl to death.
Across the rest of the Middle East, gay and lesbian relationships are largely taboo.
Watch: From a Jail Term to Legal Marriage in US
Gay pride festivals are taking place this weekend in dozens of cities around the world, including Los Angeles, Athens, Sydney and Rome.
A large-scale “Equality March” is planned for Sunday in Washington, with organizers saying they want to combat anti-LGBT rhetoric in the country.
Many more gay pride events are scheduled around the world later in June, the month gay pride is traditionally celebrated, chosen because of New York’s 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan, which is regarded as a catalyst for the gay rights movement.
Next week, Shanghai, China, will host its ninth gay pride event, but without a parade that accompanies most events in other cities around the world. Organizers say they expect around 6,000 people to attend. For the 10th anniversary next year, they said, they hope to expand to other cities including Beijing.
…
Every springtime in the United States, boys don tuxedos or suits and girls wear elegant gowns on one special night. For decades, the high school prom has been a major moment in the teenage experience. While movies portray the evening as a night of magic and romance, the reality can be quite different. Jesusemen Oni followed a couple of high school students to their prom for an inside look at this decades-old tradition.
…
The hosting rights for both the 2024 and 2028 Olympic Games should be awarded at the same time, the International Olympic Committee’s executive board recommended on Friday.
Paris and Los Angeles are the only candidates left in the race for 2024 and, if passed, the recommendation would almost certainly mean that each would host one of the next two summer Games, with only the order still to be decided.
IOC president Thomas Bach said the recommendation would be put to an extraordinary IOC session in Lausanne in July.
Decision in September?
There is a further IOC session in Lima in September which was originally scheduled to choose the 2024 hosts and may now decide whether Paris or Los Angeles go first.
“Having two such great cities, two such great countries, two candidates who are really enthusiastic and promoting the Olympic Games and the Olympic spirit … this represents a golden opportunity for the Olympic Games,” Bach told reporters.
“It is a win-win-win situation.”
Bach heavily implied that, if the recommendation was passed, there would be no chance for other candidates to enter the race for 2028. He also denied that getting the 2028 would be a consolation prize.
“It is a fascinating race to have Paris and Los Angeles striving for the Olympic Games, it is hard to imagine something better and it is a very strong sign of stability,” he said.
Bach praised both cities for including a high number of existing venues in their plans, saying this would “lead to significant cost reductions in the organization of the Games and make them more sustainable and more feasible.”
The Paris and Los Angeles organizing committees both welcomed the announcement.
Cities pulled out of bidding
The Olympic Games, once perceived as the hottest of sports properties, is now seen by many cities as a liability that can potentially drag an entire country’s economy down.
Rome, Budapest, Hamburg and Boston all pulled out of bidding for 2024.
Bach said the board had proposed the same 28 sports for 2024 which featured in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, provided they “comply with the Olympic charter and this includes the world anti-doping code.”
Extra pressure on weightlifting
But he said there was an extra condition for weightlifting, which has been plagued by doping with numerous participants testing positive in re-tests of samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
“The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) has until December 2017 to deliver a satisfactory report to the IOC on how they will address the massive doping problem this sport is facing,” he said.
He added that the IOC had already sent a warning to the IWF by reducing the number of athletes for the 2020 Tokyo Games from 260 to 196.