Jim Beard, a Grammy-winning keyboardist, composer and member of Steely Dan since 2008, died Saturday in a New York hospital of complications from a sudden illness, a publicist announced. He was 63.
Beard had been touring with Donald Fagen’s Steely Dan on the Eagles’ current “Long Goodbye” tour; his final performance was Jan. 20 in Phoenix.
Beard worked alongside such jazz legends as Wayne Shorter, Pat Metheny and John McLaughlin and recorded with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, The Brecker Brothers, Mike Stern, Dianne Reeves, Meshell Ndegeocello and Steve Vai during his career.
He produced for Chick Corea, Al Jarreau and Esperanza Spalding and taught at institutions including the Mason Gross School of Arts, Berklee College of Music, Aaron Copland School of Music and the Sibelius Academy in Finland.
Beard recorded six solo CDs spanning the years 1990-2013 and won his Grammy in 2007 as a featured performer on the album Some Skunk Funk,...
Beard had been touring with Donald Fagen’s Steely Dan on the Eagles’ current “Long Goodbye” tour; his final performance was Jan. 20 in Phoenix.
Beard worked alongside such jazz legends as Wayne Shorter, Pat Metheny and John McLaughlin and recorded with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, The Brecker Brothers, Mike Stern, Dianne Reeves, Meshell Ndegeocello and Steve Vai during his career.
He produced for Chick Corea, Al Jarreau and Esperanza Spalding and taught at institutions including the Mason Gross School of Arts, Berklee College of Music, Aaron Copland School of Music and the Sibelius Academy in Finland.
Beard recorded six solo CDs spanning the years 1990-2013 and won his Grammy in 2007 as a featured performer on the album Some Skunk Funk,...
- 3/6/2024
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Jim Beard, a pianist, keyboardist, composer, producer and arranger known for his work with Steely Dan as well as jazz musicians Wayne Shorter and John McLaughlin, died March 2 in a New York City hospital from complications of a sudden illness. He was 63.
His death was announced by a representative.
Born August 26, 1960, in Ridley Park, Pa, Beard moved to New York in 1985, launching a career that saw him perform with Steely Dan, McLaughlin, Shorter and Pat Metheny.
A member of Steely Dan since 2008, Beard until had been touring with the band as openers on the Eagles’ Long Goodbye Tour. His last performance with Steely Dan was on January 20 in Phoenix.
Beard also recorded with artists including Dizzy Gillespie, the Brecker Brothers, Dianne Reeves, Meshell Ndegeocello, Toninho Horta and Steve Vai.
Beard has more than 100 published compositions featured on recordings by John McLaughlin, Michael Brecker and many others and in books such as The New Real Book.
His death was announced by a representative.
Born August 26, 1960, in Ridley Park, Pa, Beard moved to New York in 1985, launching a career that saw him perform with Steely Dan, McLaughlin, Shorter and Pat Metheny.
A member of Steely Dan since 2008, Beard until had been touring with the band as openers on the Eagles’ Long Goodbye Tour. His last performance with Steely Dan was on January 20 in Phoenix.
Beard also recorded with artists including Dizzy Gillespie, the Brecker Brothers, Dianne Reeves, Meshell Ndegeocello, Toninho Horta and Steve Vai.
Beard has more than 100 published compositions featured on recordings by John McLaughlin, Michael Brecker and many others and in books such as The New Real Book.
- 3/6/2024
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Erykah Badu, executive producer of the forthcoming documentary about late jazz and R&b trumpeter Roy Hargrove, wastes no time in elaborating on the influence her collaborator and high school classmate exerted on her life and career.
“It started with Roy,” says Badu, who first met Hargrove in 1985, when she was a freshman at Dallas’ Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. “Roy was the first person I met in high school: he in the music department and jazz band, me in dance right next door. We danced to that band’s versions of John Coltrane, Miles Davis. That helped me understand what jazz was, and how to interpret it. It was a subtle rebellion. Roy was already a legend as a sophomore — truth is,” she adds, “Roy was actually a legend starting in junior high.”
Hargrove would go on to legendary peaks in both R...
“It started with Roy,” says Badu, who first met Hargrove in 1985, when she was a freshman at Dallas’ Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. “Roy was the first person I met in high school: he in the music department and jazz band, me in dance right next door. We danced to that band’s versions of John Coltrane, Miles Davis. That helped me understand what jazz was, and how to interpret it. It was a subtle rebellion. Roy was already a legend as a sophomore — truth is,” she adds, “Roy was actually a legend starting in junior high.”
Hargrove would go on to legendary peaks in both R...
- 5/27/2022
- by A.D. Amorosi
- Variety Film + TV
“I’ve got an old friend around here somewhere,” Steve Van Zandt told the crowd near at the end of his set at Asbury Park’s Paramount Theater on Wednesday night. “I don’t know where.” That seemed like a safe bet that Bruce Springsteen was somewhere in the house, but it wasn’t certain until Disciples of Soul kicked into “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” and Springsteen walked out onto the stage as the crowd went into complete hysterics. “Little Steve and the Disciples of Soul!” Springsteen yelled into the mic before beginning the song.
- 5/9/2019
- by Andy Greene
- Rollingstone.com
“Some people get intimidated by jazz,” Joni Mitchell told Rolling Stone‘s Cameron Crowe in the summer of 1979. “It’s like higher mathematics to them.”
Still, the singer-songwriter wasn’t letting that awareness deter her from continuing to explore the style. Fresh off a series of increasingly challenging albums, the latest of which was a collaboration with legendary bassist Charles Mingus, she was getting ready to go out on the road with a band made up entirely of A-list jazz musicians: saxophonist Michael Brecker, guitarist Pat Metheny, keyboardist Lyle Mays,...
Still, the singer-songwriter wasn’t letting that awareness deter her from continuing to explore the style. Fresh off a series of increasingly challenging albums, the latest of which was a collaboration with legendary bassist Charles Mingus, she was getting ready to go out on the road with a band made up entirely of A-list jazz musicians: saxophonist Michael Brecker, guitarist Pat Metheny, keyboardist Lyle Mays,...
- 11/7/2018
- by Hank Shteamer
- Rollingstone.com
Roy Hargrove, a Grammy-winning trumpeter and jazz musician that worked alongside artists like D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, Common and Sonny Rollins, died Friday at the age of 49.
Hargrove’s longtime manager confirmed the trumpeter’s death to NPR, adding that the cause of death was cardiac arrest; earlier in the week, Hargrove was admitted into a New York City hospital with kidney issues.
On Instagram, the Roots’ Questove paid tribute to the jazz musician. “The Great Roy Hargrove. He is literally the one man horn section I hear in my...
Hargrove’s longtime manager confirmed the trumpeter’s death to NPR, adding that the cause of death was cardiac arrest; earlier in the week, Hargrove was admitted into a New York City hospital with kidney issues.
On Instagram, the Roots’ Questove paid tribute to the jazz musician. “The Great Roy Hargrove. He is literally the one man horn section I hear in my...
- 11/3/2018
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
In the mid-1970s, Paul Simon was worried about his image becoming too, too serious, so he welcomed the chance to host one of the very first episodes of “Saturday Night Live,” as Robert Hilburn’s new biography of the singer recalls. And for a few moments early in his show Tuesday night at the Hollywood Bowl — the first of three “Farewell Tour” gigs at the venue — he put on the turkey suit, figuratively speaking, and did some solemnity-dispelling shtick.
“It was a cold winter night when Paul Simon began his farewell tour in Los Angeles,” he quipped, addressing the unseasonal chill in the air. And then: “So, the thing about a farewell is… well, I’ve changed my mind. What it is is that it’s not so much a final tour that I like as I like raising the ticket prices to the level…”
Like any practiced standup,...
“It was a cold winter night when Paul Simon began his farewell tour in Los Angeles,” he quipped, addressing the unseasonal chill in the air. And then: “So, the thing about a farewell is… well, I’ve changed my mind. What it is is that it’s not so much a final tour that I like as I like raising the ticket prices to the level…”
Like any practiced standup,...
- 5/24/2018
- by Chris Willman
- Variety Film + TV
New York’s Hudson River valley has a long history as a haven for artists either fleeing the exhausting grind of New York City or seeking to the area’s natural beauty. It’s where Bob Dylan retreated for an extended retreat following his (possibly exaggerated) motorcycle crash in 1966, it’s where Van Morrison conceived of Moondance, and it’s currently home to — among others — jazz musicians Jack DeJohnette (drums), John Scofield (guitar), John Medeski (keyboards, of Medeski, Martin and Wood) and Larry Grenadier (bass), who formed the newly-organized collective Hudson. People is pleased to premiere their version of Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay,...
- 5/24/2017
- by Alex Heigl
- PEOPLE.com
Sundance is always on the move. Skywalker and George Lucas himself are refocusing on the indies and choosing sound design as their point of entry.
Sundance Institute and Skywalker Sound recently announced that the Sundance Institute Music and Sound Design Labs at Skywalker Sound will take place at Skywalker Ranch in 2013 and 2014 and also listed the artists that will participate in the 2013 Labs. This is the first time the two organizations will collaborate to support independent filmmakers and film composers and marks a significant expansion of the Institute’s existing Composers Labs to include sound design.
The Institute has hosted its Composers Labs at Sundance Resort for fiction feature films since 1999 and documentaries since 2005, allowing composers and independent filmmakers to collaboratively explore the process of writing music for film. Fellows also participate in workshops and creative exercises under the guidance of leading film composers and film music professionals acting as Creative Advisors.
Keri Putnam, Executive Director of Sundance Institute, said, “Hosting the Composers Labs at Skywalker Ranch allows an expansion of the program to include sound design, giving further insight into the powerful ways that sound and music can impact independent films. We are deeply grateful to the Skywalker team for working with us to provide our Fellows with the tremendous benefit of accessing this legendary facility”
Josh Lowden, General Manager of Skywalker Sound, said, “We’re very excited to formalize this relationship. Sundance Institute is virtually synonymous with independent film, and Keri and her team have done an amazing job to honor the Institute’s legacy. Twenty-five years ago Skywalker was founded by a filmmaker for filmmakers, and we have never forgotten our roots. We continue to believe in independent filmmaking, and are thrilled to deepen our relationship with the Institute by hosting these Labs at Skywalker.”
The Composers Lab for fiction feature films is a joint initiative of the Institute’s Film Music Program and Feature Film Program, and the Composers Lab for documentaries is hosted by the Film Music Program and Documentary Film Program and Fund.
Peter Golub, Director of the Sundance Institute Film Music Program, said, “Skywalker Sound is a leader in the field of post-production and sound design, and their world-class facilities offer the ideal environment for our Composers Labs. Lab fellows will have access to Skywalker’s sound designers and mixers for ongoing collaboration, as well as the state-of-the-art facility during their stay.”
Artists and projects selected for the 2013 Sundance Music And Sound Design Lab – Documentary (June 3-10) are:
Filmmakers
Director: Kirsten Johnson
A Blind Eye (U.S.) — The voice of an American camerawoman explores the nature of cinematography and what she has failed to see while filming in Afghanistan through her encounters with two Afghan teenagers. Najeeb, a one-eyed boy, struggles to hide what really haunts him, while a bold teenage girl must decide how much she will risk to be visible. A U.S. Military surveillance blimp in the sky over Kabul tracks their every move.
Director: Judith Ehrlich
Open (U.S.) — The fight for free speech in the 21st century is being fought in cyberspace, and its most dramatic story may be unfolding in Iceland. Open follows trailblazing Internet revolutionary Birgitta Jónsdóttir and three generations of digital “hacktivists” as their stories converge in the tiny island nation now poised to become the world’s first haven for freedom of information and transparency online and off.
Director: Thomas Allen Harris
Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (U.S.) — A 90-minute documentary film with an innovative companion transmedia project that explores the ways black communities have used the medium of photography to construct political, aesthetic and cultural representations of themselves and their world. This will be the first film to vividly bring to life the individual photographers, photographic collectives, and anonymous and celebrated subjects, whose work has transformed the lives of African Americans through the magic and power of the camera lens.
Director: Mark Grieco
Marmato (Canada/Colombia) — A peaceful gold-mining town in rural Colombia confronts destruction by a Canadian multinational mining company.
Composers
Kathryn Bostic
Kathryn Bostic is a prolific composer, pianist and singer-songwriter. She is a recipient of several awards and fellowships including the Sundance Fellowship for Feature Film Scoring, Bmi Conducting Fellowship and the Ascap Musical Theatre Workshop. She has written for both off-Broadway and Broadway productions. Currently her score can be heard in the Mark Taper production of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
Omar Fadel
Los Angeles-based composer Omar Fadel has carved out a niche fusing an eclectic palette of musical instruments and styles. He has scored numerous features films, documentaries and television shows, including Walt Disney Studios’ first ever Arabic language feature film, The United.
Miles Jay
Miles Jay is a composer, contrabassist, and multi-instrumentalist with many traditional and cross over artists around the world. Supporting himself as a musician around the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa for much of the last decade, Miles has re-imagined the contrabass, adapting a wide range of melodic ornamentation to his own technique, as well as having invented and hand-built a new type of contrabass utilizing rawhide for a soundboard. Miles has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Emirates Palace Abu Dhabi, Ted, and the United Nations.
Todd Reynolds
Todd Reynolds is a long-time New York violinist for Bang on a Can, Steve Reich, Broadway, and founder of the string quartet known as Ethel. His double CD set, Outerborough, rose to "best in classical" on the Amazon classical charts of 2011. A classical violinist 'gone horribly wrong', his genre-defying and technologically savvy music and performances have been called "a charming, multi-mood extravaganza, playful like Milhaud, but hard-edged like Hendrix."
Artists and projects selected for the 2013 Sundance Music And Sound Design Lab – Feature Film (July 10-25) are:
Filmmakers
Writer/director: Miguel Calderón
Zeus (Mexico) — Sporadically employed and still living with his mother, Joel finds his only joy in falconry in the flatlands outside Mexico City, until an encounter with a down-to-earth secretary forces him to face reality.
Writer/director: Meredith Danluck
State Like Sleep (U.S.A.) — Under the surreal cloud cover of northern Europe, a young American widow reluctantly revisits her past when her mother is hospitalized in Brussels. While coping with the bleak reality of parental loss, Katherine explores her deceased husband's secret life of underground sex clubs and finds comfort in a relationship with a stranger as equally broken as she is.
Co-writer/co-director: Ian Hendrie
Co-writer/co-director: Jyson McLean
Mercy Road (U.S.A.) — Based on true events, Mercy Road traces the spiritual odyssey of a small town housewife and mother, as she becomes willing to commit violence and murder in the name of God.
Writer/director: K’naan
Maanokoobiyo (Somalia/U.S.A.) — In war-torn Somalia, an artistic orphan named Maano joins the mercenary killing squad of a notorious warlord, only to discover his adoptive father and gang leader is responsible for wiping out his family.
Writer/director: Pamela Romanowsky
The Adderall Diaries (U.S.A.) — Writer Stephen Elliott reaches a low point when his estranged father resurfaces, claiming that Stephen has fabricated much of the dark childhood that that fuels his work. Adrift in the precarious grey area of memory, Stephen has to navigate the unstable terrain of truth and identity, led by two sources of inspiration: a new romance, and a murder trial that reminds him more than a little of his own story. Based on the memoir by Stephen Elliott.
Co-writer/director: Eva Weber
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (UK/Germany/U.S.A.) — Twenty-eight-year-old Clarissa discovers on the day of her father's funeral that everything she believed about her life was a lie. She flees San Francisco and travels to the Arctic Circle to uncover the secrets of her mother, who mysteriously vanished when Clarissa was fourteen. Based on the novel by Vendela Vida.
Composers
Jongnic Bontemps
Jongnic Bontemps has had the pleasure to score numerous films, including award-winning Daughter of Fortune, A Different Tree, Soaring on Invisible Wings and Saudade. Jongnic's scores incorporate ethnic instruments with organic and synthetic textures to create a unique musical world for a film. This skill has been honed through his music education at Yale University, Berklee School of Music and the University of Southern California and his collaborations with some of the top film composers. Jongnic's scores have been heard at film festivals around the world including Cannes, The Pan African Film Festival, American Black Film Festival and Run & Shoot Martha's Vineyard
Larry Goldings
Larry Goldings is a Grammy-nominated pianist, organist, composer, and arranger, whose talents have been sought-after by an impressive range of artists including James Taylor, Norah Jones, John Mayer, Sia Furler, Madeleine Peyroux, Maceo Parker, Michael Brecker, and John Scofield.
Lucas Lechowski
Based in Los Angeles, Polish born Lucas Lechowski is a violinist/guitarist who creates music, experiments with sounds, improvises and performs. His recent film scoring credits include a 2013 Student Academy Award winner “Un mundo para Raúl” (dir. Mauro Mueller). Currently he is composing music for a two-hour NBC News television special commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of President Kennedy, entitled "Where Were You?"
Heather McIntosh
Heather McIntosh is a cellist, bassist and composer who got her musical start playing with the Elephant 6 collective in Athens, Georgia and continued on to perform with artists such as Gnarls Barkley and Lil Wayne. Recently relocated to Los Angeles, her film credits include Compliance by Craig Zobel and The Rambler by Calvin Lee Reeder.
Vladimir Podgoretsky
Vladimir Podgoretsky started his professional career as a musical theater composer. His 2007 ballet Snow Maiden (Snegurochka) was a huge success and continues to be regularly performed in theaters throughout Moscow. Vladimir moved to the Us to become a film composer and after graduating from the UCLA film scoring program has been working with leading composers on films such as Rise of the Guardians, A Single Shot, The Eagle, Season Of the Witch and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. He has also worked on the acclaimed video game World of Warcraft and the ABC TV series Revenge.
Mac Quayle
A resident of Topanga Canyon, California, Mac Quayle has written music for over 20 films and television shows and accumulated a long list of credits as a music producer, dance remixer and multi-instrumentalist, including a Grammy nomination for producing Donna Summer. His music is heard in films such as the Indian documentary Beyond Grace and the Irish drama A Belfast Story and some of his collaborations as an additional composer appear in Drive, Spring Breakers and Only God Forgives.
The Sundance Institute Music and Sound Design Labs at Skywalker Sound are made possible by Bmi, Time Warner Foundation, and the Film Music Foundation.
Sundance Institute
Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, Sundance Institute is a global, nonprofit cultural organization dedicated to nurturing artistic expression in film and theater, and to supporting intercultural dialogue between artists and audiences. The Institute promotes independent storytelling to unite, inform and inspire, regardless of geo-political, social, religious or cultural differences. Internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival and its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, film composers, playwrights and theatre artists, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amreeka, An Inconvenient Truth, Spring Awakening, Light in the Piazza and Angels in America. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
Skywalker Sound
Skywalker Sound, a division of Lucasfilm Ltd, is one of the largest, most versatile full-service audio post-production companies in the industry. Skywalker Sound offers comprehensive post-production services and utilizes the talents of Academy Award®-winning sound professionals working on sound design, editorial, Foley and re-recording mixes as a team. This provides filmmakers the most efficient model available for the audio post-production process. More information is available at www.skysound.com.
Lucasfilm Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. Skywalker Sound, the Skywalker Sound logo, Star Wars and related properties are trademarks in the United States and/or in other countries of Lucasfilm Ltd. and/or its affiliates. © 2013 Lucasfilm Entertainment Company Ltd. or Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved.
Sundance Institute and Skywalker Sound recently announced that the Sundance Institute Music and Sound Design Labs at Skywalker Sound will take place at Skywalker Ranch in 2013 and 2014 and also listed the artists that will participate in the 2013 Labs. This is the first time the two organizations will collaborate to support independent filmmakers and film composers and marks a significant expansion of the Institute’s existing Composers Labs to include sound design.
The Institute has hosted its Composers Labs at Sundance Resort for fiction feature films since 1999 and documentaries since 2005, allowing composers and independent filmmakers to collaboratively explore the process of writing music for film. Fellows also participate in workshops and creative exercises under the guidance of leading film composers and film music professionals acting as Creative Advisors.
Keri Putnam, Executive Director of Sundance Institute, said, “Hosting the Composers Labs at Skywalker Ranch allows an expansion of the program to include sound design, giving further insight into the powerful ways that sound and music can impact independent films. We are deeply grateful to the Skywalker team for working with us to provide our Fellows with the tremendous benefit of accessing this legendary facility”
Josh Lowden, General Manager of Skywalker Sound, said, “We’re very excited to formalize this relationship. Sundance Institute is virtually synonymous with independent film, and Keri and her team have done an amazing job to honor the Institute’s legacy. Twenty-five years ago Skywalker was founded by a filmmaker for filmmakers, and we have never forgotten our roots. We continue to believe in independent filmmaking, and are thrilled to deepen our relationship with the Institute by hosting these Labs at Skywalker.”
The Composers Lab for fiction feature films is a joint initiative of the Institute’s Film Music Program and Feature Film Program, and the Composers Lab for documentaries is hosted by the Film Music Program and Documentary Film Program and Fund.
Peter Golub, Director of the Sundance Institute Film Music Program, said, “Skywalker Sound is a leader in the field of post-production and sound design, and their world-class facilities offer the ideal environment for our Composers Labs. Lab fellows will have access to Skywalker’s sound designers and mixers for ongoing collaboration, as well as the state-of-the-art facility during their stay.”
Artists and projects selected for the 2013 Sundance Music And Sound Design Lab – Documentary (June 3-10) are:
Filmmakers
Director: Kirsten Johnson
A Blind Eye (U.S.) — The voice of an American camerawoman explores the nature of cinematography and what she has failed to see while filming in Afghanistan through her encounters with two Afghan teenagers. Najeeb, a one-eyed boy, struggles to hide what really haunts him, while a bold teenage girl must decide how much she will risk to be visible. A U.S. Military surveillance blimp in the sky over Kabul tracks their every move.
Director: Judith Ehrlich
Open (U.S.) — The fight for free speech in the 21st century is being fought in cyberspace, and its most dramatic story may be unfolding in Iceland. Open follows trailblazing Internet revolutionary Birgitta Jónsdóttir and three generations of digital “hacktivists” as their stories converge in the tiny island nation now poised to become the world’s first haven for freedom of information and transparency online and off.
Director: Thomas Allen Harris
Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (U.S.) — A 90-minute documentary film with an innovative companion transmedia project that explores the ways black communities have used the medium of photography to construct political, aesthetic and cultural representations of themselves and their world. This will be the first film to vividly bring to life the individual photographers, photographic collectives, and anonymous and celebrated subjects, whose work has transformed the lives of African Americans through the magic and power of the camera lens.
Director: Mark Grieco
Marmato (Canada/Colombia) — A peaceful gold-mining town in rural Colombia confronts destruction by a Canadian multinational mining company.
Composers
Kathryn Bostic
Kathryn Bostic is a prolific composer, pianist and singer-songwriter. She is a recipient of several awards and fellowships including the Sundance Fellowship for Feature Film Scoring, Bmi Conducting Fellowship and the Ascap Musical Theatre Workshop. She has written for both off-Broadway and Broadway productions. Currently her score can be heard in the Mark Taper production of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
Omar Fadel
Los Angeles-based composer Omar Fadel has carved out a niche fusing an eclectic palette of musical instruments and styles. He has scored numerous features films, documentaries and television shows, including Walt Disney Studios’ first ever Arabic language feature film, The United.
Miles Jay
Miles Jay is a composer, contrabassist, and multi-instrumentalist with many traditional and cross over artists around the world. Supporting himself as a musician around the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa for much of the last decade, Miles has re-imagined the contrabass, adapting a wide range of melodic ornamentation to his own technique, as well as having invented and hand-built a new type of contrabass utilizing rawhide for a soundboard. Miles has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Emirates Palace Abu Dhabi, Ted, and the United Nations.
Todd Reynolds
Todd Reynolds is a long-time New York violinist for Bang on a Can, Steve Reich, Broadway, and founder of the string quartet known as Ethel. His double CD set, Outerborough, rose to "best in classical" on the Amazon classical charts of 2011. A classical violinist 'gone horribly wrong', his genre-defying and technologically savvy music and performances have been called "a charming, multi-mood extravaganza, playful like Milhaud, but hard-edged like Hendrix."
Artists and projects selected for the 2013 Sundance Music And Sound Design Lab – Feature Film (July 10-25) are:
Filmmakers
Writer/director: Miguel Calderón
Zeus (Mexico) — Sporadically employed and still living with his mother, Joel finds his only joy in falconry in the flatlands outside Mexico City, until an encounter with a down-to-earth secretary forces him to face reality.
Writer/director: Meredith Danluck
State Like Sleep (U.S.A.) — Under the surreal cloud cover of northern Europe, a young American widow reluctantly revisits her past when her mother is hospitalized in Brussels. While coping with the bleak reality of parental loss, Katherine explores her deceased husband's secret life of underground sex clubs and finds comfort in a relationship with a stranger as equally broken as she is.
Co-writer/co-director: Ian Hendrie
Co-writer/co-director: Jyson McLean
Mercy Road (U.S.A.) — Based on true events, Mercy Road traces the spiritual odyssey of a small town housewife and mother, as she becomes willing to commit violence and murder in the name of God.
Writer/director: K’naan
Maanokoobiyo (Somalia/U.S.A.) — In war-torn Somalia, an artistic orphan named Maano joins the mercenary killing squad of a notorious warlord, only to discover his adoptive father and gang leader is responsible for wiping out his family.
Writer/director: Pamela Romanowsky
The Adderall Diaries (U.S.A.) — Writer Stephen Elliott reaches a low point when his estranged father resurfaces, claiming that Stephen has fabricated much of the dark childhood that that fuels his work. Adrift in the precarious grey area of memory, Stephen has to navigate the unstable terrain of truth and identity, led by two sources of inspiration: a new romance, and a murder trial that reminds him more than a little of his own story. Based on the memoir by Stephen Elliott.
Co-writer/director: Eva Weber
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (UK/Germany/U.S.A.) — Twenty-eight-year-old Clarissa discovers on the day of her father's funeral that everything she believed about her life was a lie. She flees San Francisco and travels to the Arctic Circle to uncover the secrets of her mother, who mysteriously vanished when Clarissa was fourteen. Based on the novel by Vendela Vida.
Composers
Jongnic Bontemps
Jongnic Bontemps has had the pleasure to score numerous films, including award-winning Daughter of Fortune, A Different Tree, Soaring on Invisible Wings and Saudade. Jongnic's scores incorporate ethnic instruments with organic and synthetic textures to create a unique musical world for a film. This skill has been honed through his music education at Yale University, Berklee School of Music and the University of Southern California and his collaborations with some of the top film composers. Jongnic's scores have been heard at film festivals around the world including Cannes, The Pan African Film Festival, American Black Film Festival and Run & Shoot Martha's Vineyard
Larry Goldings
Larry Goldings is a Grammy-nominated pianist, organist, composer, and arranger, whose talents have been sought-after by an impressive range of artists including James Taylor, Norah Jones, John Mayer, Sia Furler, Madeleine Peyroux, Maceo Parker, Michael Brecker, and John Scofield.
Lucas Lechowski
Based in Los Angeles, Polish born Lucas Lechowski is a violinist/guitarist who creates music, experiments with sounds, improvises and performs. His recent film scoring credits include a 2013 Student Academy Award winner “Un mundo para Raúl” (dir. Mauro Mueller). Currently he is composing music for a two-hour NBC News television special commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of President Kennedy, entitled "Where Were You?"
Heather McIntosh
Heather McIntosh is a cellist, bassist and composer who got her musical start playing with the Elephant 6 collective in Athens, Georgia and continued on to perform with artists such as Gnarls Barkley and Lil Wayne. Recently relocated to Los Angeles, her film credits include Compliance by Craig Zobel and The Rambler by Calvin Lee Reeder.
Vladimir Podgoretsky
Vladimir Podgoretsky started his professional career as a musical theater composer. His 2007 ballet Snow Maiden (Snegurochka) was a huge success and continues to be regularly performed in theaters throughout Moscow. Vladimir moved to the Us to become a film composer and after graduating from the UCLA film scoring program has been working with leading composers on films such as Rise of the Guardians, A Single Shot, The Eagle, Season Of the Witch and Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. He has also worked on the acclaimed video game World of Warcraft and the ABC TV series Revenge.
Mac Quayle
A resident of Topanga Canyon, California, Mac Quayle has written music for over 20 films and television shows and accumulated a long list of credits as a music producer, dance remixer and multi-instrumentalist, including a Grammy nomination for producing Donna Summer. His music is heard in films such as the Indian documentary Beyond Grace and the Irish drama A Belfast Story and some of his collaborations as an additional composer appear in Drive, Spring Breakers and Only God Forgives.
The Sundance Institute Music and Sound Design Labs at Skywalker Sound are made possible by Bmi, Time Warner Foundation, and the Film Music Foundation.
Sundance Institute
Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, Sundance Institute is a global, nonprofit cultural organization dedicated to nurturing artistic expression in film and theater, and to supporting intercultural dialogue between artists and audiences. The Institute promotes independent storytelling to unite, inform and inspire, regardless of geo-political, social, religious or cultural differences. Internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival and its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, film composers, playwrights and theatre artists, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amreeka, An Inconvenient Truth, Spring Awakening, Light in the Piazza and Angels in America. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
Skywalker Sound
Skywalker Sound, a division of Lucasfilm Ltd, is one of the largest, most versatile full-service audio post-production companies in the industry. Skywalker Sound offers comprehensive post-production services and utilizes the talents of Academy Award®-winning sound professionals working on sound design, editorial, Foley and re-recording mixes as a team. This provides filmmakers the most efficient model available for the audio post-production process. More information is available at www.skysound.com.
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- 6/6/2013
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
I once wrote that Yoko Ono (born February 18, 1933) made more great albums than any solo Beatle, but also more bad albums. Of course, perspectives on Ono's music vary wildly, and the albums I think are great are the ones the mainstream rejected most vigorously. It's when she makes the most concessions to pop norms (whether rock or dance/electronic) and her lyrics get sappy that I don't like her work. But certainly anyone starting to explore her music could use some guidance.
There are plenty of places to read about her life, so I won't review that info, especially as I touched on some of it in my recent interview. But a few points are worth making, over and over, to counter clichés and misconceptions that have thrived for decades. Ms. Ono was a respected artist for years before she and John Lennon met near the end of 1966. And she didn't break up the Beatles,...
There are plenty of places to read about her life, so I won't review that info, especially as I touched on some of it in my recent interview. But a few points are worth making, over and over, to counter clichés and misconceptions that have thrived for decades. Ms. Ono was a respected artist for years before she and John Lennon met near the end of 1966. And she didn't break up the Beatles,...
- 2/18/2013
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Saxophonist David S. (Spencer) Ware was a towering presence on the New York free jazz scene, an artist of compelling gravity and musical intensity. Even after health problems that culminated in a 2009 kidney transplant, he came back strong, his post-operation return coming in a completely solo concert that was a strong statement. This year, the kidney problems returned, and he passed away last night after being hospitalized.
As I once wrote here, Ware united two strands of free jazz: the powerfully full-toned tenor sax blower, and the intellectual craftsman. Although Ware was classified as a free jazz player, he was mentored by Sonny Rollins (who among other things taught him circular breathing), and Ware's music looked back to some earlier jazz styles, though almost always in a fully assimilated way that had no revivalism about it.
Ware started playing around age 11. Oddly, while he played alto and baritone saxes plus bass in school,...
As I once wrote here, Ware united two strands of free jazz: the powerfully full-toned tenor sax blower, and the intellectual craftsman. Although Ware was classified as a free jazz player, he was mentored by Sonny Rollins (who among other things taught him circular breathing), and Ware's music looked back to some earlier jazz styles, though almost always in a fully assimilated way that had no revivalism about it.
Ware started playing around age 11. Oddly, while he played alto and baritone saxes plus bass in school,...
- 10/19/2012
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
This is the point at which I'm supposed to ponder the immediate present and near future of jazz and improvised music. Not gonna do it. No matter how dire the straits of the music industry, changing distribution and presentation, etc., this music will continue to be made because it has to be made, and artists feel compelled to keep it going despite travails. It's all about the music and its amazing power for catharsis, its ability to lift us and inspire us. So without further ado, here's what inspired me most in 2011.
1. Richie Beirach: Impressions of Tokyo (Outnote)
I was going to call this a comeback, but Beirach (above) hasn't exactly been gone, certainly not as far as recordings are concerned -- he's had 18 released under his name in the past 11 years, plus collaborations (one of those appears further down this list). I guess I think of it as a...
1. Richie Beirach: Impressions of Tokyo (Outnote)
I was going to call this a comeback, but Beirach (above) hasn't exactly been gone, certainly not as far as recordings are concerned -- he's had 18 released under his name in the past 11 years, plus collaborations (one of those appears further down this list). I guess I think of it as a...
- 12/31/2011
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
R&B princess Beyonce dominated the 46th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, winning five of the six categories in which she was nominated, but hip-hop duo OutKast won the night's top honor, album of the year, for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Luther Vandross, who was too ill to attend, posted four wins, including the coveted song of the year trophy for "Dance With My Father". In one of the evening's surprises, Brit-rockers Coldplay were awarded record of the year for their hit song "Clocks", shutting out Beyonce from the key category. The ceremony took place at Staples Center in Los Angeles and was broadcast on CBS. OutKast and country star Alison Krauss picked up three trophies each, and the White Stripes, Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z, Eminem and Michael Brecker each took home two. 2003's best-selling artist, rapper 50 Cent, was shut out despite five nominations. Several performers who died during the past two years were honored. June Carter Cash and Warren Zevon each received two Grammys, and Johnny Cash, George Harrison and Celia Cruz picked up a win apiece.
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