Day: November 8, 2017

Country star Keith Urban will debut a new song on the Country Music Association Awards on Wednesday inspired by the allegations of sexual assault and harassment hurled against Harvey Weinstein.

BMI country songwriter of the year Ross Copperman said that the widening sexual harassment crisis that has developed after multiple women accused the top producer and film executive inspired him to write a song and record it with Urban.

“We actually wrote a song three weeks ago called Female,” Copperman said during the red carpet Tuesday for the annual BMI Country Awards. “It’s from the Weinstein announcement. We’re in a room and we’re like, ‘What can we do about this?’ And that’s the one thing we can do is write songs.”

Urban, who was honored by BMI for his philanthropy, said the song was so important that he immediately recorded it.

“I think it’s just time for a recalibrating of the past, you know? Things have been a certain way for a long, long time, and I think you’re seeing a turning of the tide for that,” Urban said. “This song just spoke to me. I just wanted to get in and record it right away.”

Urban, who is married to actress Nicole Kidman, said as a father and a husband, the topic has struck him.

“I am surrounded by females in my life. I grew up in a house with boys, no sisters. Now I am in a house that’s all girls. So this song speaks to me on a lot of levels,” he said.
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For every era of film in the last half-century, there’s a memorable Donald Sutherland role.

Whether it’s his breakthrough performance in “The Dirty Dozen,” his portrayal of a demented arsonist in “Backdraft” or playing a ruthless president in “The Hunger Games” films, Sutherland’s career spans roughly 140 films in every genre, his performances tinged with wit, charm, and often a hint of unpredictability.

None, however, have earned Sutherland an Academy Award, let alone a nomination. That will change Saturday when Sutherland receives an honorary Oscar at the film academy’s ninth annual Governors Awards ceremony.

Although Sutherland has known about the honor for weeks, it doesn’t mean he isn’t feeling some jitters.

“It had never occurred to me not even remotely … that people would think to honor me in such a way,” Sutherland said during a recent interview.

“It’s a dinner,” he said of the ceremony, “and if you think I’m going to eat, you’re nuts.”

He likened the experience to carrying the flag of his native Canada in the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 and trying to keep up with the pageantry of the moment. ”All I could think of in the middle of it was that I wished that my mother, who had been dead for probably 20 years, could see me now,” he said. “And I feel kind of that way. I wish Brian Hutton were alive and could see me now.”

Hutton directed Sutherland in 1970’s “Kelly’s Heroes,” in which he played Sergeant Oddball. He said to this day, the character remains the role he hears about most from fans.

Sutherland is the best-known recipient of this year’s honorary Oscars honorees, which include director Agnes Varda, writer-director Charles Burnett and cinematographer Owen Roizman. None of the honorees have worked together, but Sutherland and Roizman share something in common – bouts with polio when they were young.

Raised in a small town in Nova Scotia, Canada, Sutherland said his sights were always set on acting. His father wanted him to have a more practical career and steered him toward electrical engineering. That was never appealing to Sutherland, who instead took the advice of his acting instructors to focus on his performances.   

When Sutherland takes on a role, even if it’s a small one, he said it stays inside him forever. That includes his turn as X in “JFK,” whom he played for a day, as well as roles he’s spent much longer on, such as the damaged father in “Ordinary People.”

The actor remains busy, and said his character from his upcoming film “The Leisure Seeker,” is “running around like crazy inside me.” Sutherland stars opposite Helen Mirren as a couple on an epic road trip in their RV.

At 82, Sutherland has no intention of slowing down. Asked if he finds the roles for older actors fulfilling, Sutherland said, “Hey, as an actor, I can walk onto a scene, say hello (makes gargling noises) crash onto the floor and have a heart attack and that’s enough.”

“Except that it hurts my shoulder,” he said. “Truly, my shoulders are in terrible trouble because I die a lot – and I’m cramming for my finals.”

Not that Sutherland would have any regrets if his last performance included his final breath.

“I’m really hoping that in some movie I’m doing, I die but I die, me, Donald, and they’re able to use my funeral and the coffin,” Sutherland said. “That would be absolutely ideal. I would love that.”

 
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Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood are celebrating their 10-year anniversary — as hosts of the Country Music Association Awards.

The duo has hosted the show consecutively since 2008, and they return Wednesday for the 2017 CMA Awards at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee.

While Underwood and Paisley plan to tell jokes, watch performances and hand out awards, they also want to honor the 58 people who were killed at a country music festival in Las Vegas last month.

“We can’t ignore that, but at the same time, I think it’s our job to use this as something that’s uplifting. This show can be a combination of entertainment and therapy to some degree, and it feels like we’re going to do our best to honor those we’ve lost and also sing this music at the top of our lungs,” Paisley said.

Jason Aldean was performing at the Route 91 Harvest Festival on Oct. 1 when a gunman fired on the crowd from a hotel room. Nearly 500 people were injured.

Underwood said country music wants to pay tribute to the victims and their families.

“You just want to be respectful and do it right. They’re a part of our country music family and we want the families to know that we care a lot,” she said.

Underwood will wear several hats during the show as host, performer and nominee. Last year she ended Miranda Lambert’s six-year streak as female vocalist of the year. Both singers are nominated for the award this year, along with Reba McEntire, Maren Morris and Kelsea Ballerini.

Nominees for the show’s top prize, entertainer of the year, include Luke Bryan, Chris Stapleton, Keith Urban, Eric Church and last year’s winner, Garth Brooks. Stapleton, Urban, Church, Thomas Rhett and Dierks Bentley are up for male vocalist of the year.

Sam Hunt’s Body Like a Back Road, which set a record for the most weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot country songs chart with 34, is nominated for single of the year and song of the year, a songwriter’s award. In the latter category, Hunt will compete with Taylor Swift, who wrote Little Big Town’s No. 1 hit Better Man.

Little Big Town is among the country stars set to perform during the three-hour show. Others include Brooks, Stapleton, Bryan, Lambert, Thomas Rhett and pop singer Pink.

The night will feature a number of collaborative performances, including Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Ballerini and McEntire, Maren Morris and Niall Horan of One Direction, Paisley and Kane Brown, and Bentley and Rascal Flatts.

Underwood said she’s most excited to see Alan Jackson, the artist she first saw live.

“I love it when legendary artists like him perform on the CMAs. I think in our world today and even in country music, it’s kind of like … ‘Who’s new? Who’s hot? Who can we get for the show?’ And it’s nice when you can have somebody that can go up there and show us how it’s all done,” she said.

But Paisley said Underwood will have the night’s brightest performance.

“I’m telling you if that’s not the No. 1 most-talked about thing the next day, then I will be as wrong as I’ve ever been,” he said.

Urban will kick off the CMA Awards, airing live on ABC at 8 p.m. Eastern, with a performance featuring Church, Lady Antebellum and Darius Rucker. Brothers Osborne, Jon Pardi and Old Dominion will also perform.
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Sean Combs says he was only joking when he announced over the weekend that he had changed his nickname from Diddy to Love, as in Brother Love.

The rapper and producer took to Twitter and Instagram to set the record straight after he says he learned “you cannot play around with the internet.” He says Love is one of his “alter egos.” Combs’ other nicknames over the years include Puff Daddy, Puffy, P. Diddy and Diddy. He now says he’ll answer to any of those names and also Love.

That’s the opposite of what he said in a video posted on his 48th birthday Saturday. He told fans in that message that was going by “Love, a.k.a. Brother Love” and wouldn’t answer to anything else.
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The 150 poems in the Book of Psalms represent a range of human voices and emotions, and are among the Bible’s most widely read verses. They have been a source of solace for generations.

“Historically, what the psalms have been for are challenging times,” says Lincoln Center’s director of programming, Jane Moss. “I mean, they are really explicitly designed to help you out when the going gets rough. And they include, which I find wonderful, all sorts of human complaints to God — about, like, where are you in these challenging times?”

Tido Visser, the music director of the Netherlands Chamber Choir, agrees. “Although they are two and a half to three thousand year-old texts that were written by our ancestors, they are about the here and now,” he says, noting that the psalms have inspired composers for thousands of years.

He and Moss teamed up to create a series of twelve hour-long concerts featuring all 150 psalms by 150 different composers – including nine U.S. premieres. Lincoln Center is now presenting the festival of choral settings, called The Psalms Experience.

Relevant messages

Four choirs from around the world are singing music from the 12th century to today. Each concert is centered on a theme, Visser says, such as justice, faith, gratitude, lamentation. “The Psalms are about refugees, they are about unrighteous leaders, they are about abuse of power, so they are incredibly timely.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw was commissioned to write music for Psalm 84, which begins, ‘How lovely is your dwelling place, oh Lord.’

“I really identified with it because it has to do with finding a home and finding a refuge and a place and sort of celebrating this sense of safety, but also there’s a yearning for a home that feels very relevant today.” Shaw says she was thinking of Syria as she wrote it. “And the second verse is ‘the sparrow found a house and the swallow her nest, where she may place her young,’ which is just a beautiful image of, you know, a bird trying to keep her children safe. People trying to keep their family safe.”

Pulitzer Prize-winner, David Lang, who set Psalm 101, says the poems were meant to be sung.

“One thing I really like about the Psalms is that they’re sort of like a catalog of all the different ways that you could have a conversation with God. So, some of them are very hopeful and some of them are very lamenting and some of them are very full of praise; really sort of like every way you can imagine talking to God. This one seemed the one that was most like a negotiation.”

Writing choral music is not easy, says another composer commissioned for the project, Mohammed Fairouz. “Because it requires a certain commitment to simplicity. There’s nowhere to hide, the counterpoint’s very, very exposed. It’s sort of like the Oval Office has no corners, you know.”

And, in these difficult times, conductor Tido Visser hopes audiences will get some comfort, contemplation and community.

“I truly believe that there’s one amazing thing about choral singing,” he says, “and it’s the fact that it unites people.”

 
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