Latest news with #TheJuilliardSchool
The Star
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Feature: Prestigious piano contest winner from China cherishes heritage, pressure in artistic journey
by Qin Mingwei NEW YORK, June 12 (Xinhua) -- Aristo Sham, the newly crowned winner of the 17th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, attaches high importance to the heritage he represents as well as the extreme pressure in the marathon piano contest. The 2025 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition concluded on June 7 in Texas, the United States, featuring outstanding performances by 340 pianists from 45 countries and regions. Sham, 29, became the first pianist from Hong Kong, China, to win this 63-year-old competition. Sham was educated in Hong Kong, and then in Britain and the United States. He recently obtained an artist diploma from The Juilliard School in New York, and lives in the city currently. Sham began learning piano at the age of three and has won numerous international awards. Looking back on his artistic journey, Sham said that his childhood and his early piano training in Hong Kong nurtured his music expertise, allowing him to better understand the music he plays from different perspectives. "I'm very happy to be representing a part of the world which is part of my heritage. And I think it's great that music is such a universal language that we have artists and competitors from all over the world who are on the largest stages of the world," Sham said at a themed press briefing in Manhattan on Wednesday. Sham said that the biggest challenge in preparing for the competition was that the Cliburn was "a real marathon," requiring him to play six different repertoires in two and a half weeks. "The fact of having to prepare this program to such a high quality that we have to present both to the audience and jury there and also to audiences worldwide who are watching, is definitely something that pushes us to the extreme," said Sham. But Sham also appreciates the pressure, "because without this kind of pressure, we would not be able to sort of achieve the level that we have. And I like to see this in a positive way, and it's what really pushes the boundaries of what we can do and what we can do with art," Sham said. As the first Hong Kong pianist to win the Cliburn, Sham admitted that his artistic journey has faced prejudice against his Asian identity. "Even though it's much less than 20 or 30 years ago, there are still viewpoints out there that are loaded with prejudice and racism," Sham said. Sham considers his award as an opportunity to help consolidate and truly affirm the status of Asian artists on the world stage. "I think it's also up to us to try to break down these barriers and really just make everyone understand that we're all the same and we're all equally worthy of presenting art and being great artists," Sham said. Maisie Ho, director of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in New York (New York ETO), attended the press briefing to congratulate on Sham's achievement. "It is really such great news for a lot of Hong Kong people... and we can't wait to see how he would bring his own heritage and also his talent into the world stage, and we are prepared to support him along his journey," Ho told Xinhua on the sidelines of the event on Wednesday. The New York ETO, as the official representative of the Hong Kong government, will continue to support and promote more Asian artists to the world stage, such as hosting various cultural activities, according to Ho. "We could all learn and we could all exchange, and through people exchange, that's how our really treasurable friendship and artistic relationship could flourish," Ho added. While Chinese artists have gained greater global influence, an increasing number of Chinese pianists have made their mark on the international stage. Seven of the 30 finalists in this year's Cliburn hailed from China, setting a new record. Held every four years, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious contests in classical music. The gold medalist will receive a comprehensive and personalized career development plan lasting three years, including concert bookings, artistic support and publicity.
USA Today
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Harris Yulin, 'Scarface' and 'Ghostbusters II' actor, dies at 87: 'One of the greatest'
Harris Yulin, 'Scarface' and 'Ghostbusters II' actor, dies at 87: 'One of the greatest' Harris Yulin, the Emmy-nominated actor known for his wide-ranging roles in films such as "Scarface," "Ghostbusters II" and "Clear and Present Danger," has died. He was 87. Yulin died of cardiac arrest on June 10 in New York City, according to a press release shared by the actor's representative Sue Leibman. A memorial service is scheduled to be held at a later date. In the weeks leading up to his death, Yulin was preparing to start production on the Michael Hoffman-directed series "American Classic," which was slated to star Yulin alongside Kevin Kline and Laura Linney. "Harris Yulin was very simply one of the greatest artists I have ever encountered," Hoffman said in a statement. "His marriage of immense technique with an always fresh sense of discovery, gave his work an immediacy and vitality and purity I've experienced nowhere else. "And what he was as an actor, he was as a man, the grace, the humility, the generosity. All of us at'American Classic'have been blessed by our experience with him. He will always remain the beating heart of our show." A native of Los Angeles, Yulin got his showbiz start in the theater community of New York City, appearing in a 1963 production of the James Saunders play "Next Time I'll Sing to You." He made his Broadway debut in the '80s with the Lillian Hellman play "Watch on the Rhine" and went on to perform in other shows such as "The Price," "The Visit" and "Hedda Gabler." In 2004, Yulin starred in a Chicago production of "Finishing the Picture," the final play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller. The actor also directed a number of plays himself, including "The Glass Menagerie," "The Trip to Bountiful" and "This Lime Tree Bower." Yulin made his cinematic debut in 1970 with a starring role in the dark comedy "End of the Road." In the '80s, Yulin stretched his acting chops with roles in the gangster drama "Scarface" and adventure comedy "Ghostbusters II." The actor continued to switch things up in the '90s, appearing in the political thriller "Clear and Present Danger" and slapstick comedy "Bean." Brian Wilson dies: Beach Boys cofounder was 82 Yulin also lent his talents to the TV world with recurring roles in the series "Ozark," "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" and "Billions." He received a Primetime Emmy nomination in 1996 for his guest role on the sitcom "Frasier." "Yulin was part of the vanguard of a generation who cared passionately about the craft of acting," a statement from Yulin's death announcement read. "This deep, lifelong dedication led to extraordinary, resonant performances that were a gift to audiences, the actors he worked with, and the art of acting itself." Additionally, Yulin gave back to his fellow actors through teaching stints at The Juilliard School and Columbia University. 10 bingeable memoirs to check out: Celebrities tell all about aging, marriage and Beyoncé Yulin is survived by his wife Kristen Lowman, son-in-law Ted Mineo, nephew Martin Crane, and godchildren Marco and Lara Greenberg.
San Francisco Chronicle
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Dakota Johnson says dad Don Johnson cut her off financially after she didn't get into Juilliard
In a candid conversation with her 'Materialists' co-star Pedro Pascal, actor Dakota Johnson revealed that she faced financial struggles in her early 20s after being cut off by her father, actor Don Johnson, when she failed to gain admission to The Juilliard School. 'I didn't get in and my dad cut me off because I didn't go to college,' Johnson said in the interview published in Elle UK. 'So, I started auditioning. I think I was 19 when I did 'The Social Network', and then little jobs and stuff after that.' Though she comes from a prominent Hollywood lineage — her parents are Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, and her grandmother is screen icon Tippi Hedren — Johnson said she found herself scraping by in Los Angeles. 'For a couple of years it was hard to make money,' she said. 'There were a few times when I'd go to the market and not have money in my bank account or not be able to pay rent, and I'd have to ask my parents for help.' She added, 'I'm very grateful that I had parents that could help me and did help me. But it certainly was not fun. The auditioning process, as you know, is the f—ing worst.' Johnson, who spent part of her childhood in San Francisco while her father filmed the television series 'Nash Bridges,' recalled growing accustomed to the comforts of luxury hotels like the Fairmont. But after Juilliard turned her down, she found herself facing a far less stable reality. 'That f—ing process was so awful and terrifying,' she said of the audition process. 'When you get accepted for an audition, it's a two-day-long chorus-line thing. You're supposed to get called back for a second audition, and I didn't. It was fine.' College never appealed to her, she explained. 'Because Juilliard felt so small — the idea of being in a classroom with the same group of people, and figuring out how to be a human in that environment, after growing up surrounded by so many different kinds of people and immersed in different cultures through traveling all over… It just felt really wrong to lock myself in one place,' Johnson said. Despite the initial struggles, the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' star said she always knew she wanted to act. 'I grew up on set,' Johnson said. 'My parents were always working with amazing artists, and I just loved it. I wanted to be a part of it so badly.' During the same interview, Johnson shared that Pascal once suggested she explore a different kind of side hustle — joining the subscription platform OnlyFans. 'Pedro Pascal told me that I should have an OnlyFans and that I could just like wiggle my toe and make money,' she said. 'Should I do that?' Johnson admitted she was unfamiliar with how the platform works. 'I don't know anything about that,' she said. 'I don't know. OnlyFans is the place where people go to watch people do weird things? Are OnlyFans models hot? Are they different to regular models?' While she appeared curious, she stopped short of seriously considering it. 'I feel like I would look at OnlyFans models on Instagram if I knew how to do that,' Johnson said. 'It sounds interesting. Sounds intriguing.' Johnson stars opposite Pascal and Chris Evans in 'Materialists,' a romantic drama from 'Past Lives' director Celine Song. The film opens in theaters June 13.
Hamilton Spectator
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
William Christie is busy as ever at 80 and putting his imprint on the period-instrument movement
NEW YORK (AP) — William Christie, a conductor renowned for Baroque performances, thought back to a 2014 phone call from Nikolaus Lehnhoff, a year before the German director's death. ''I think a 'Tristan' with Christie would be really a great thing,'' Christie recalled Lehnhoff referencing Wagner's opera. 'I said: `That's a bad joke.′ I said: `I'd be coming into an arena as a puny little boxer who doesn't know sort of how to sort of box, someone who has no idea what all this is about. I'd be sliced to ribbons.′' In a season celebrating his 80th birthday this past Dec. 14, Christie has no Wagner plans. He is as busy as ever as a leader of the period-instrument movement, conducting, playing the harpsichord, administering his Les Arts Florissants ensemble and teaching at The Juilliard School. 'He's always brought his flair and say-so,' director Peter Sellars said. 'He was the chef de cuisine at a certain moment in history. You look at the personnel on all of his early recordings, and anybody who's done anything came through the apprentissage in his kitchen.' Christie's 2024-25 season included a striking Robert Carsen staging of Rameau's 'Les Fêtes d'Hébé (The Festivities of Hebe)' at Paris' Opéra-Comique. It moved the action from 1739 to the contemporary Élysée Palace and featured the French national soccer team celebrating during a ballet, followed by a closing scene on a Seine tourist boat passing a sparkling Eiffel Tower. 'I like mixing epochs visually and musically,' Christie said. 'I can remain I think true and faithful to the things that I think make my music eloquent: old instruments and being faithful I think to performance practice.' Teaching the next generation Christie has become an elder statesman of the movement highlighting 17th and 18th century performance practice. Since 2007, he's offered to Juilliard students his knowledge of Baroque articulation, subdued vibrato and lower pitch. 'They eat through maybe eight to 15 different conductors a year and some of them I admire, and some of them I think are on the merry-go-round just because it's fashionable and I wouldn't have hired them,' he said. 'Some of them have, well, sort of very perverse ideas about French music, for example. And so I try to say to them, first of all, I'm here because for certain repertory I have at least better ideas than you individually, and I think I can sell them to you.' He founded Les Arts Florissants in 1979 to impart knowledge he felt was getting ignored. He used his own orchestra when he led Charpentier's 'Médée' at the Palais Garnier last spring. 'I worked with orchestras that have made me feel so awful and so low and so mean and miserable,' he said. 'Baroque orchestras are not (Sergei) Prokofiev or (Dmitri) Shostakovich orchestras. They're not Ravel orchestras. They're not Korngold orchestras. But then modern orchestras playing Mozart sometimes are hideous.' He adds that one 'dug holes 6 feet under and buried Mozart.' Emmanuel Resche-Caserta, Les Arts Florissants' concertmaster since 2017, was uncertain whether to stay with music, pursue political science or switch to art history before he encountered Christie at Juilliard. 'If I can do music with this intensity that he is asking for, I can dedicate my life to it,' he said. 'I was very impressed by his natural charisma. He enters the concert hall or the rehearsal room. and we play differently because we want to please him.' Christie founded Le Jardin des Voix (Garden of Voices) in 2002. Lea Desandre joined the academy in 2015 and has blossomed into a star mezzo-soprano. 'He is a wonderful teacher because he knows so much, he reads so much,' she said. 'I feel like I have someone who's going to put me in a very comfortable place, even if maybe was not a comfortable role for me.' First encounter as child Christie grew up in Williamsville, near Buffalo, New York, and then South Wales. His mom, Ida, arranged piano lessons when he was 5 and conducted the choir at St. Paul's Lutheran Church. 'And so when I was 7 or 8 years old, I heard Bach and I heard Handel and I heard Purcell and I heard Orlando Gibbons, and we sang 19th century hymns,' he said. 'It was a curious kind of childhood because I was playing sports, and summer vacations were down at the lake. But I already had this extraordinary idea of a different world.' Christie first heard the harpsichord when he was 9 or 10 and his mom and her mother, Julia, took him to Handel's 'Messiah' at the Buffalo Philharmonic's Kleinhans Music Hall with conductor Josef Krips and Squire Haskin at the keyboard. 'He (Haskin) was part of this funny groupings of cultural people in cultural boondocks like rural New York, upstate New York,' Christie said. 'That was a great moment for me to hear this instrument that was going to be the center of my life.' Christie took piano lessons from age 12 with Laura Kelsey. His mom worked at the music store Denton, Cottier & Daniels, and in 1952, he became fascinated by an Erato recording with French harpsichordist Laurence Boulay and soprano Nadine Sautereau of music by François Couperin. 'It sort of changed my life,' he said. Moving to Europe Christie received a Harvard undergraduate degree in 1966 and a Yale master's in 1969, then taught at Dartmouth. He moved to Europe in the fall of 1970 to avoid the U.S. military draft, and in 1985 bought a house in the Loire village of Thiré — where he has created a grand garden and launched a vocal academy. He gained French citizenship in 1995. Christie does like music he isn't known for. He calls 'my secret life' playing Liszt's 'Transcendental Études' or Schubert. But those are not for public listening. 'I think myself what I would do differently,' he reflected, 'but I'm not courageous enough to say, all right, in the 2028 season William Christie is going to recycle and is going to start with Haydn and finish off with, I don't know, how about Dvorak? How about Bruckner motets?'
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
William Christie is busy as ever at 80 and putting his imprint on the period-instrument movement
NEW YORK (AP) — William Christie, a conductor renowned for Baroque performances, thought back to a 2014 phone call from Nikolaus Lehnhoff, a year before the German director's death. "'I think a 'Tristan' with Christie would be really a great thing,'' Christie recalled Lehnhoff referencing Wagner's opera. 'I said: `That's a bad joke.′ I said: `I'd be coming into an arena as a puny little boxer who doesn't know sort of how to sort of box, someone who has no idea what all this is about. I'd be sliced to ribbons.′' In a season celebrating his 80th birthday this past Dec. 14, Christie has no Wagner plans. He is as busy as ever as a leader of the period-instrument movement, conducting, playing the harpsichord, administering his Les Arts Florissants ensemble and teaching at The Juilliard School. 'He's always brought his flair and say-so,' director Peter Sellars said. 'He was the chef de cuisine at a certain moment in history. You look at the personnel on all of his early recordings, and anybody who's done anything came through the apprentissage in his kitchen.' Christie's 2024-25 season included a striking Robert Carsen staging of Rameau's 'Les Fêtes d'Hébé (The Festivities of Hebe)' at Paris' Opéra-Comique. It moved the action from 1739 to the contemporary Élysée Palace and featured the French national soccer team celebrating during a ballet, followed by a closing scene on a Seine tourist boat passing a sparkling Eiffel Tower. 'I like mixing epochs visually and musically,' Christie said. 'I can remain I think true and faithful to the things that I think make my music eloquent: old instruments and being faithful I think to performance practice.' Teaching the next generation Christie has become an elder statesman of the movement highlighting 17th and 18th century performance practice. Since 2007, he's offered to Juilliard students his knowledge of Baroque articulation, subdued vibrato and lower pitch. 'They eat through maybe eight to 15 different conductors a year and some of them I admire, and some of them I think are on the merry-go-round just because it's fashionable and I wouldn't have hired them,' he said. 'Some of them have, well, sort of very perverse ideas about French music, for example. And so I try to say to them, first of all, I'm here because for certain repertory I have at least better ideas than you individually, and I think I can sell them to you.' He founded Les Arts Florissants in 1979 to impart knowledge he felt was getting ignored. He used his own orchestra when he led Charpentier's 'Médée' at the Palais Garnier last spring. 'I worked with orchestras that have made me feel so awful and so low and so mean and miserable,' he said. 'Baroque orchestras are not (Sergei) Prokofiev or (Dmitri) Shostakovich orchestras. They're not Ravel orchestras. They're not Korngold orchestras. But then modern orchestras playing Mozart sometimes are hideous.' He adds that one 'dug holes 6 feet under and buried Mozart.' Emmanuel Resche-Caserta, Les Arts Florissants' concertmaster since 2017, was uncertain whether to stay with music, pursue political science or switch to art history before he encountered Christie at Juilliard. 'If I can do music with this intensity that he is asking for, I can dedicate my life to it,' he said. 'I was very impressed by his natural charisma. He enters the concert hall or the rehearsal room. and we play differently because we want to please him.' Christie founded Le Jardin des Voix (Garden of Voices) in 2002. Lea Desandre joined the academy in 2015 and has blossomed into a star mezzo-soprano. 'He is a wonderful teacher because he knows so much, he reads so much,' she said. 'I feel like I have someone who's going to put me in a very comfortable place, even if maybe was not a comfortable role for me.' First encounter as child Christie grew up in Williamsville, near Buffalo, New York, and then South Wales. His mom, Ida, arranged piano lessons when he was 5 and conducted the choir at St. Paul's Lutheran Church. 'And so when I was 7 or 8 years old, I heard Bach and I heard Handel and I heard Purcell and I heard Orlando Gibbons, and we sang 19th century hymns,' he said. 'It was a curious kind of childhood because I was playing sports, and summer vacations were down at the lake. But I already had this extraordinary idea of a different world.' Christie first heard the harpsichord when he was 9 or 10 and his mom and her mother, Julia, took him to Handel's 'Messiah' at the Buffalo Philharmonic's Kleinhans Music Hall with conductor Josef Krips and Squire Haskin at the keyboard. 'He (Haskin) was part of this funny groupings of cultural people in cultural boondocks like rural New York, upstate New York,' Christie said. 'That was a great moment for me to hear this instrument that was going to be the center of my life.' Christie took piano lessons from age 12 with Laura Kelsey. His mom worked at the music store Denton, Cottier & Daniels, and in 1952, he became fascinated by an Erato recording with French harpsichordist Laurence Boulay and soprano Nadine Sautereau of music by François Couperin. 'It sort of changed my life,' he said. Moving to Europe Christie received a Harvard undergraduate degree in 1966 and a Yale master's in 1969, then taught at Dartmouth. He moved to Europe in the fall of 1970 to avoid the U.S. military draft, and in 1985 bought a house in the Loire village of Thiré -- where he has created a grand garden and launched a vocal academy. He gained French citizenship in 1995. Christie does like music he isn't known for. He calls 'my secret life' playing Liszt's 'Transcendental Études' or Schubert. But those are not for public listening. 'I think myself what I would do differently,' he reflected, 'but I'm not courageous enough to say, all right, in the 2028 season William Christie is going to recycle and is going to start with Haydn and finish off with, I don't know, how about Dvorak? How about Bruckner motets?'
