Folk icon and activist Joan Baez is ready for her close-up. At a Hamptons Film Festival’s SummerDocs screening in East Hampton Sunday night, August 13, she was joined by fellow music legend Laurie Anderson and director Karen O’Conner for a packed A-list screening and conversation about Joan Baez I Am A Noise (co-directed by Miri Navasky and Maeve O’Boyle).
Read MoreThe Sunken Lands Songwriting Circle will be held in Riceland Hall at the Fowler Center, located at 201 Olympic Drive on Saturday, Aug. 12. This event will be hosted by Rosanne Cash, along with performers Rodney Crowell and Sarah Jarosz. “My father’s music began in the sunken lands in the Arkansas Delta and the gumbo soil stayed with him his entire life. I am excited to return to Arkansas to honor and continue his legacy,” said Cash. “I am especially excited to be joined by Rodney and Sarah, along with John Leventhal. They are masterful songwriters, and I look forward to an unforgettable evening.”
Read MoreBono made a surprise appearance at the Sarajevo Film Festival this evening, where he accompanied the crew behind the U2-inspired Bosnian war documentary Kiss The Future, which opened the festival. Bono was joined by his U2 band member The Edge on the red carpet at Bosnia’s National Theatre alongside CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour, who also features in the doc, during which she recounts her time as a young reporter covering the Bosnian conflict.
Read MoreDescribing Jane Birkin an icon is a given. The British-born actress and singer appeared in countless films, wrote several albums worth of songs, acted on stage, and threw herself in political and social activism. Birkin passed away earlier this year at the age of 76, but she will forever be an inspiration.
Read MoreAfrican musicians and social activists Angélique Kidjo (Benin), Letta Mbulu (South Africa) and PJ Powers (South Africa) will be honoured with Lifetime Achievement awards at the 2023 Basadi in Music Awards (BIMAs). "I am very honoured to be receiving a Basadi in Music Award from South Africa,” Kidjo, a five-time Grammy Award winner, said. “South Africa has a special place in my heart since I first heard about Miriam Makeba when I was young. She was a role model and then a mentor. It is important to celebrate women in music so that many young singers can be inspired to pursue their dream.”
Read MoreIrish singer-songwriter Glen Hansard will share his first new music in four years this fall. His fifth studio album, All That Was East Is West of Me Now, is set for release on October 20 via ANTI Records. The nine-track project was born from five intimate, unpublicized concerts that the Grammy-nominated artist played in his local pub in November 2022. “I told no one. We set up in the corner and played to the locals, some of whom were only half listening,” Hansard says in a statement.
Read MoreUCAP board member Joan Baez & UCAP co-founder Karen Redlener in Warsaw at a program supporting refugee children from war-torn Ukraine [...] "Joan Baez meets dozens of children, mostly 5 to 15 years of age, in the sunshine of a beautiful summer’s day. They sing to her, and Joan sings to the kids. They are dancing and laughing – and finally surround Joan, enveloping her with hugs. An extraordinary moment." Karen Redlener said.
Read MoreThrowback on the interviews we did with the #ToastToFreedom artists for Amnesty International..
Here is #JaneBirkin :
"People have far more power if only they know it. I have always believed that if millions of people sent letters that chockablock the front doors of some ministers, some presidents, and just by the sheer weight of the letters, of the appeals, then they would have to look."
As part of the festival, the renowned Lahnstein Blues Prize, the “Blues-Louis”, which has been awarded since 1997, will this year be awarded to guitarist, singer and composer Carl Carlton. "For decades he has been the most popular German blues guitarist, both nationally and internationally," the organizers explain.
The laudatory speech will be given by the author, moderator and music journalist Volker Rebell.
Read MoreWord is out, tickets are out: Melanie Wiegmann & Carl Carlton - Glory of Love Tour 2023.
13 cities across Germany, from November to December 2023. Don’t miss your spot.
Jane Birkin graced the front pages of most French newspapers on Monday as France mourned the death of the late British actress and singer who enjoyed icon status in the country that she had called home since the late 1960s. “Our tears can’t change anything,” proclaimed Le Parisien newspaper, which first broke the news of Birkin’s death at the age of 76 on Sunday. Libération ran with the simple headline “Without Jane”, while regional newspaper Le Maine Libre referred to the late actress as “The Eternal English Bride of France”.
Read MoreRest in peace, Jane Birkin. We were so honoured to have you part of Amnesty’s Toast to Freedom.
“France’s favourite “petite Anglaise”, the British-born singer and actor Jane Birkin, has died at her home in Paris aged 76. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, paid tribute to Birkin, saying she “embodied freedom and sang the most beautiful words in our language”.
Read MoreMs. Birkin released “Oh! Pardon tu dormais…,” her first album of her own songs written in English, in 2021. “The results are an emotional tour de force from an artist who has never gotten her musical due outside of France,” the music writer Ben Cardew wrote in a review for Pitchfork. Ms. Birkin also continued to act, including in films by Agnès Varda and plays by Patrice Chéreau. She was also popular in France as an activist for women’s and L.G.B.T.Q. rights as well as for her British accent when speaking French, which the French found endearing. “The most Parisian of the English has left us,” the mayor of Paris wrote.
Read MoreMarianne planned to be known, but a pop princess career was the last thing on her mind. She’d be an artist of some kind—she’d go to Cambridge, or the Royal Academy of Music to continue classical singing. She idolized the young Vanessa Redgrave, who once came to talk to Marianne’s theater group. Perhaps Marianne would also play Rosalind, or Imogen in Cymbeline, or even sing Tosca in Covent Garden. Awake long in the night in her convent room, she bent over her workbook, filling page after page of potential stage names, pen names, fantasy names. In time she would realize her real name was her own.
Read MoreSinger and activist Joan Baez tells CNN's John Vause about her work with the Ukraine Children's Action Project, which helps kids who have been affected by the war.
Read MoreThe recordings of the altogether 15 songs were made in the course of the last three years, when the music world more or less came to a standstill, in Berlin, Ireland and Malta and are stylistically most likely to be placed in the genre term "Americana". [...] With "Glory Of Love" a warm-hearted musical diary has been created, which convinces with its idiosyncratic song selection, unpretentious arrangements and natural charm. Perhaps the most beautiful surprise: Here not only two souls have found each other, but also two wonderfully harmonizing voices.
Read MoreU2 frontman Bono has created a range of limited-edition merchandise to raise money for Ukraine following the Russian invasion. Earlier this year, the singer created an illustration of President Zelenskyy which he painted on a backdrop of yellow and blue, celebrating Ukraine’s flag. It also features the following quote from Zelenskyy: “The choice is between freedom and fear.” The image and quote are now available to purchase across a set of five items with funds going to UNITED24, who will use the money to buy ambulances.
Read MoreWhen Christine and the Queens, the progressive French pop artist who also goes by “Chris,” decided he wanted Madonna to voice the narrator on his ambitious, new three-act pop opera, Paranoïa, Angels, True Love, he had to think fast. Now with the magnum opus finally coming out — the end of his “quest” (a word he uses frequently) — Chris tells Rolling Stone he’s just now learning what Paranoïa, Angels, True Love means to him. He also explains how presenting a large-scale dramatic work has informed his vision of the future.
Read MoreRosanne Cash and her husband and producer, John Leventhal, have revealed the launch of their new label RumbleStrip Records. The label will manage archives, forthcoming projects, and reissues, including the first vinyl pressing of Rosanne’s 1993 album, The Wheel, which has been remastered as an expanded edition to commemorate its 30th anniversary. Produced by Leventhal, The Wheel was a landmark album for Cash, marking a new shift in her sound after she moved to New York City.
Read MoreNashville Opera has joined forces with Lexicon Classics to release the first-ever recording of Carly Simon‘s sole opera, “Romulus Hunt.” Nashville Opera will present the recording as a birthday gift to its creator, who will celebrate her 80th birthday on Sunday, June 25, 2023. The work was originally commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the Kennedy Center in 1993 and is a semi-autobiographical work by renowned pop singer Carly Simon.
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