music

This essay is adapted from Merrick Morton’s “La Bamba: A Visual History,” published by Hat & Beard Press.

“Dance!! Dance!! Dance!! to the music of the Silhouettes Band!!” read the handbill. The Silhouettes featured Ritchie Valens — “the fabulous Lil’ Richi and his Crying Guitar!!” — at a 1958 appearance at the San Fernando American Legion Hall in Southern California.

He was 16 years old. The Silhouettes was Ritchie’s first band, and they launched him into history. But a silhouette itself is an interesting thing: You can see the general shape of something while you hardly know the figure casting the shadow. Valens’ musical story begins with the Silhouettes, and we have been filling in his story, and projecting ourselves onto it, ever since he left.

A founding father of rock ’n’ roll, he would lose his life barely a year later, when the plane carrying members of the Winter Dance Party Tour — Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Valens — crashed on Feb. 3, 1959, in an Iowa snowstorm. A Chicano icon. A stranger.

Ritchie was a kid playing his guitar to make money for his family and one song he played was a version of “Malagueña.” The number was rooted in centuries-old Spanish flamenco music that had spread in all directions, becoming a classical music melody and a Hollywood soundtrack go-to by the 1950s. In his hands, it became a catapult for guitar hero god shots.

Candid shot of Ritchie Valens, Big Bopper (J.P. Richardson) and Buddy Holly during the Winter Dance Party Tour.

(C3 Entertainment)

“Malagueña” communicated experience and rico suave flair to his audience. Meanwhile, his mom was selling homemade tamales at his shows in the American Legion Hall. This guileless 17-year-old, Chicano kid from Pacoima found a way to introduce himself to America by taking something familiar and making it feel like nothing you had heard before.

From the beginning, Ritchie heard the possibilities in turning a familiar sound forward. He saw, even as the teenager he will forever be to us, how in reinventing a song, you could reinvent yourself. Listen to “Donna,” the heartfelt love ballad that felt familiar to Chicano ears, listeners who for years had tuned in to Black vocal groups. In the process, he cleared the way for so much great Chicano soul to come in the next two decades.

Valens performing to a packed house.

(C3 Entertainment)

Most of all, of course, listen to “La Bamba.” A centuries-old song from Veracruz, Mexico; the tune has African, Spanish, Indigenous and Caribbean DNA. In the movie, he encounters the song for the first time when his brother Bob takes him to a Tijuana brothel, but however he first heard it, Valens viewed it as a prism, a way of flooding all that was in front of him with his voice and guitar.

The music he made came from Mexico, and it came from Los Angeles, where 1940s Spanish-language swing tunes, Black doo-wop sounds and hillbilly guitar-plucking were mashed together in a molcajete y tejolote. Most of all, it came from the radio, which lined up sounds that were not like the ones that came right before and blasted them out on AM stations from corner to corner across the Southland. Radio devoured difference and transformed it, and if Ritchie is now regarded as a pioneer of Chicano music, he was in his own, brief time, a product of AM democracy, a silhouette with a spotlight shining on him.

Danny Valdez knew all the songs. In the early 1970s, the artist and activist had released “Mestizo,” billed as the first Chicano protest album put out by a major label. The singer-songwriter and his buddy Taylor Hackford would drink beer, belt out Ritchie Valens songs and make big plans. They talked about someday shooting a movie together, with Valdez playing Ritchie and Hackford directing. “Neither of us had a pot to piss in,” said Hackford, “so we never made that movie.” But years later, after Hackford had a hit with “An Officer and A Gentleman,” Valdez called him and raised the idea once more.

There were many steps to getting “La Bamba” on the screen, but it began with an understanding that it would be about the music. That meant they had to make the music feel alive — namely the handful of recordings produced by Bob Keane that Ritchie left behind. The owner of Del-Fi Records, Keane was a guiding figure in the singer’s life, recording his songs, urging him to mask his ethnicity by changing his name from Richard Steven Valenzuela and giving him career advice. Keane booked Gold Star Studios, cheap at $15 an hour, and brought in great session musicians as Ritchie’s backing band, including future Wrecking Crew members Earl Palmer and Carol Kaye. But the recordings he made were not state of the art, even in their own time.

“They weren’t high-quality,” said Hackford, comparing them to the early Ray Charles sessions for the Swing Time label. “I had a commercial idea in mind, of music selling the film, of people walking out of the theater singing ‘La Bamba’ who had never heard of it before,” he said. That meant he needed contemporary musicians who understood the records and could re-record Ritchie’s songs and reach an audience that was listening to Michael Jackson, Madonna and George Michael.

Valens signing autographs for his fans.

(C3 Entertainment)

Ritchie’s family, including his mother, Connie, and his siblings, had already heard that Los Lobos were playing “Come On, Let’s Go” live in East L.A. When the band played a concert in Santa Cruz, where the Valenzuela family was living by the 1980s, a friendship grew.

“Danny and I knew Los Lobos in the ‘70s when they were just starting out,” says writer and director Luis Valdez, “when they were literally just another band from East L.A. We were very fortunate that they were at that point in their career where they could take on this project. Without Los Lobos, we wouldn’t have Ritchie. David Hidalgo’s voice is incredible. I don’t think we could have found other musicians to cover him. They come from East L.A., they’re all Chicanos. They were paying an homage. We happened to be in the airport together when they got the news that ‘La Bamba’ had become number one in the national charts.”

“They called themselves the spiritual inheritors of Ritchie Valens,” says Hackford. “And they went in and re-recorded Ritchie’s songs plus several that he had played in concert but never recorded.” Now Hackford had his own album of old tunes that turned in a forward direction.

Next, Hackford made sure there were roles for modern performers to play the classic rockers from the Winter Dance Party Tour. He cast contemporary performers who could re-record their material too: Marshall Crenshaw as Buddy Holly, Brian Setzer as Eddie Cochran and Howard Huntsberry as Jackie Wilson.

Then there’s the surprise of the first song heard in the film — a rumbling version of Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” that had Carlos Santana, hired as a soundtrack composer, playing with Los Lobos, and Bo himself offering a fresh vocal over everything.

“We were so happy to have the touch of Carlos Santana as part of Ritchie’s story,” said Luis Valdez. “It’s his guitar that underscores a lot of the scenes and he had a theme for each of the players. We screened the whole movie for him first and he was very moved by it and ready to go right away once he saw it without his contribution. He was alone on the soundstage at Paramount, where we recorded his soundtrack, doing his magic with his guitar. He became a great friend as a result of that. It’s incredible what an artist can do.”

Actor Lou Diamond Phillips as Ritchie Valens in the 1987 film “La Bamba.”

(Merrick Morton)

The original soundtrack recording topped the Billboard pop charts and went double platinum.

Hackford loved pop music; his first feature film, “The Idolmaker” (1980), was a rock musical. Releasing hit music became a key promotional element of the package. In advance of 1982’s “An Officer and a Gentleman” came “Up Where We Belong” by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. It went to No. 1 a week after the opening. For 1984’s “Against All Odds,” he selected Phil Collins to sing the title cut, a song released three weeks before opening; the song soon went No. 1. 1985’s “White Nights” had two No. 1 songs, Lionel Ritchie’s “Say You Say Me” and Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin’s duet “Separate Lives.”

One looming problem for “La Bamba” was that the 1987 moviegoing public was not familiar with the name Ritchie Valens. Hackford had ideas for that as well. He set out to introduce him to contemporary audiences — convincing the studio to fund a unique teaser trailer to run weeks before the official movie trailer went into theaters.

The producer assembled a parade of familiar faces to reintroduce Valens. The short film included Canadian hitmaker Bryan Adams and Little Richard talking about the icon. There was also the vision of Bob Dylan in a top-down convertible riding along the Pacific Coast Highway. The 17-year-old Dylan was present at a Valens concert in Duluth, Minn., just days before the plane crashed; he popped up talking about what Valens’ music meant to him. “You bet it made a difference,” said Hackford.

After the “La Bamba” soundtrack became a hit (there was also a Volume Two), Los Lobos made the most of their elevated success. They had experienced head-turning celebrity with “La Bamba,” and they followed it up with “La Pistola y El Corazón,” a gritty selection of mariachi and Tejano songs played on acoustic traditional instruments. They had banked cultural capital and directed their large new audience to this music that many had never heard before. “La Pistola y El Corazón” won a Grammy in 1989 for Mexican-American performance.

The “La Bamba” soundtrack helped set a precedent for the crossover global success of Latin music, which has become a major force in mainstream pop culture. From Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez to Shakira, Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma, Becky G, Anitta, J Balvin, Karol G and Maluma, among others who are dominating the charts, racking up billions of streams, headlining massive tours and festivals.

Does Hackford think “La Bamba” helped set the table for subsequent Latino pop star success?

“I think the one who set the table was Ritchie Valens. He recorded a song in Spanish, a rock ’n’ roll version of a folk song, and he made it a huge hit.

“I challenge you, any party you go to — wedding reception, bar mitzvah, whatever it is — when ‘La Bamba’ comes on, the tables clear and everybody gets up to dance. That’s Ritchie Valens; he deserves that credit. We came afterwards.”

RJ Smith is a Los Angeles-based author. He has written for Blender, the Village Voice, Spin, GQ and the New York Times Magazine. His books include “The Great Black Way,” “The One: The Life and Music of James Brown” and “Chuck Berry: An American Life.”

A jury in the United States has found musician Sean “Diddy” Combs guilty of prostitution-related offences but cleared him of more serious charges after a federal criminal trial.

Combs, a celebrated figures in hip hop music, was convicted on Wednesday of transportation to engage in prostitution but acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and two counts of sex trafficking.

The verdict culminates seven weeks of trial in which two of the music mogul’s former girlfriends – singer Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and a second woman referred to as “Jane” – testified that Combs physically and sexually abused them.

The jury’s decision also represents a partial win for the former billionaire known for elevating hip hop in US culture, through his work with artists like Notorious BIG and Usher.

After the jury read its verdict, defence lawyer Marc Agnifilo asked US District Judge Arun Subramanian to release Combs on bail.

“This is his first conviction and it’s a prostitution offence, and so he should be released on appropriate conditions,” Agnifilo said. Subramanian will determine Combs’ sentence at a later date.

The acquittals on the sex trafficking counts mean he will avoid a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence. He could have faced life in prison if he were convicted of sex trafficking or racketeering conspiracy.

Prosecutors say that, for two decades, Combs used his business empire to force his romantic partners to take part in drug-fuelled, days-long sexual performances with male sex workers in hotel rooms. These performances were sometimes referred to as “freak-offs”.

During raids of Combs’s homes, authorities found drugs and 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant that he would use in the performances, prosecutors said.

Combs, 55, had pleaded not guilty to all five counts. His lawyers acknowledged that the Bad Boy Records founder, once famed for hosting lavish parties, was at times violent in his domestic relationships.

But they argued the sexual activity described by prosecutors was consensual.

The musician has previously faced a number of civil lawsuits accusing him of abuse. Ventura, for example, sued Combs in November 2023 for sex trafficking.

Combs, also known throughout his career as Puff Daddy and P Diddy, settled with Ventura for $20m. He has denied all wrongdoing.

At the trial, jurors saw surveillance footage from 2016 showing Combs kicking and dragging Ventura in the hallway of an InterContinental hotel in Los Angeles, where she said she was trying to leave a “freak-off”.

Jane later testified that Combs, in June 2024, attacked her and directed her to perform oral sex on a male entertainer, even though she told him she did not want to. That alleged attack took place a month after Combs apologised on social media for his 2016 attack on Ventura, footage of which had been broadcast on CNN.

“The defendant used power, violence and fear to get what he wanted,” prosecutor Christy Slavik said in her closing argument on June 26. “He doesn’t take no for an answer.”

Combs’s defence lawyers argued that, while he may have committed domestic violence in the context of volatile romantic partnerships, his conduct did not amount to sex trafficking.

His defence team said Ventura and Jane were strong, independent women who voluntarily took part in the sexual performances because they wanted to please Combs.

They also suggested that Ventura and Jane were retrospectively accusing Combs of forcing their participation in the performances because they were jealous he was seeing other women.

Both women testified they spent time with Combs and took part in sexual performances after he beat them.

“If he was charged with domestic violence, we wouldn’t all be here,” defence lawyer Agnifilo said in his closing argument on June 27. “He did not do the things he’s charged with.”

Ventura’s lawyer Doug Wigdor, meanwhile, praised his client’s courage to speak up, saying she “paved the way” for Combs’s conviction.

“By coming forward with her experience, Cassie has left an indelible mark on both the entertainment industry and the fight for justice,” Wigdor said in a statement.

Separately, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York published remarks underscoring the lasting impact of sexual violence.

“Sex crimes deeply scar victims, and the disturbing reality is that sex crimes are all too present in many aspects of our society,” the statement read. “New Yorkers and all Americans want this scourge stopped and perpetrators brought to justice.”

Foo Fighters are celebrating the anniversary of an old album with the release of a new song.

Nearly 30 years to the day after Dave Grohl’s stadium-filling rock band dropped its self-titled debut on July 4, 1995, the group on Wednesday revealed “Today’s Song,” its first piece of original material since 2023’s “But Here We Are” LP, which itself followed the death of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins in 2022.

“I woke today screaming for change / I knew that I must,” Grohl sings over a subdued organ part, “So here lies the shadow / Ashes to ashes, dust into dust.” Later, the frontman sings about “waiting for someone to repair you” as the song explodes with the band’s signature guitar theatrics and bludgeoning drums.

In a statement, Grohl, 56, said, “Over the years, we’ve had moments of unbridled joy, and moments of devastating heartbreak. Moments of beautiful victory, and moments of painful defeat. We have mended broken bones and broken hearts. But we have followed this road together, with each other, for each other, no matter what. Because in life, you just can’t go it alone.”

Referring to former members of the band, he added, “It should go without saying that without the boundless energy of William Goldsmith, the seasoned wisdom of Franz Stahl, and the thunderous wizardry of Josh Freese, this story would be incomplete, so we extend our heartfelt gratitude for the time, music, and memories that we shared with each of them over the years. Thank you, gentlemen.” (Freese, who took over as drummer following Hawkins’ death, was fired from the band in May for reasons he’s said remain unknown to him.)

“And… Taylor,” Grohl continued. “Your name is spoken every day, sometimes with tears, sometimes with a smile, but you are still in everything we do, everywhere we go, forever. The enormity of your beautiful soul is only rivaled by the infinite longing we feel in your absence. We all miss you beyond words. Foo Fighters will forever include Taylor Hawkins in every note that we play, until we do finally reach our destination.”

A spokesperson for Foo Fighters declined to specify who played drums on “Today’s Song,” though the playing recalls Grohl’s work on the band’s debut, which he recorded as a one-man band, and as the drummer of Nirvana. Earlier this week, Foo Fighters released a cover of Minor Threat’s early-’80s hardcore classic “I Don’t Wanna Hear It,” which the band said combined music recorded in 1995 with vocals recorded in 2025.

“Today’s Song” comes less than a year after Grohl — who has three daughters with his wife, Jordyn Blum — wrote in an Instagram post that he’d fathered a daughter with a woman outside of his marriage.

“I plan to be a loving and supportive parent to her,” he wrote. “I love my wife and my children, and I am doing everything I can to regain their trust and earn their forgiveness.” Grohl’s oldest daughter, 19-year-old Violet, performed Nirvana’s “All Apologies” with Nirvana’s surviving members at January’s FireAid concert; his second-oldest daughter, Harper, designed the single artwork for “Today’s Song.”

Foo Fighters are scheduled to play a series of concerts in Asia in October before headlining Mexico City’s Corona Capital festival in November.

Following the success of Louis Theroux’s series called Boybands Forever, the journalist is planning a girl group version, but one iconic group has reportedly shunned his approach

Louis Theroux is used to interviewing the best in the business. However, one band has reportedly shunned his advances to tell their story.

The popular journalist is creating a new bombshell BBC documentary on girlbands following on from last year’s successful production of Boybands Forever. It’s thought Louis had seen the iconic band as being instrumental in any production.

However, a TV insider has claimed that the quintet – made up of Victoria Beckham, Emma Bunton, Melanie C, Melanie Brown MBE and Geri Horner – aren’t prepared to bare all just yet.

While last year’s boyband version saw Robbie Williams open up on his turbulent time in Take That, the source says the Girl Power group aren’t looking to follow suit.

Talking to the Sun, a source said: “The difference is that the Spice Girls are fast approaching 30 years since the release of their debut single Wannabe and have a string of projects in the pipeline.

“Many of the issues that Robbie brought up on Boybands Forever were wholly justifiable, and most viewers sympathised with his situation when he was in Take That.

“But none of the Spice Girls want to do the same, and they feel it wouldn’t be fair on their loyal fans to spoil the magic of Girl Power so close to their anniversary year. They want 2026 to be a moment when they celebrate the group’s achievements.”

While the Spice Girls are reportedly steering clear of the offering, other groups from the era are expected to feature. With it thought chats will be conducted face to face, members of groups such as Eternal, Atomic Kitten, Girls Aloud, Sugababes and All Saints are rumoured to be taking part.

Boybands Forever, which was released at the back end of last year, was a series that focused on boybands of the 90s and early 2000s. Among those who featured, as well as Robbie Williams, was Simon Cowell.

Prior to its release, Louis said of the series: “It involves some of the icons of modern British pop – and we see them through their highs and lows.” He added: “It’s how they came together, the experience of sudden fame, the opportunity and temptations that came their way, conflicts within the groups, between the groups, and between the boys and their managers.

“It’s a gripping fable about getting everything you dreamed of, and it not being what you imagined, centred on a generation of young men, and their managers, who were wildly successful and also immensely vulnerable, having the times of their lives and also in some cases cracking up.”

READ MORE: FatFace’s ‘cool’ summer dress that ‘doesn’t crease’ and will ‘pack well for holidays’

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Warner Music Group will lay off an unspecified number of employees as part of a months-long restructuring plan to cut costs, Chief Executive Robert Kyncl said in a memo to staff Tuesday.

Kyncl said in the memo that the plan to “future-proof” the company includes reducing annual costs by roughly $300 million, with $170 million of that coming from “headcount rightsizing for agility and impact.” The additional $130 million in costs will come from administrative and real estate expenses, he said.

The cuts are the “remaining steps” of a period of significant change at the company, Kyncl said, with previous rounds of layoffs and leadership switch-ups happening in the last two years as he worked to “transform” the company.

“I know that this news is tough and unsettling, and you will have many questions. The Executive Leadership Team has spent a lot of time thinking about our future state and how to put us on the best path forward,” Kyncl said in the internal memo that was reviewed by The Times. “These decisions are not being made lightly, it will be difficult to say goodbye to talented people, and we’re committed to acting with empathy and integrity.”

It’s unclear how many employees will be laid off or what departments will see cuts, but Kyncl emphasized the company will be focused on increasing investments in its artists and repertoire department and mergers and acquisitions.

Hours before the news of layoffs, the company announced a $1.2-billion joint venture with Bain Capital to invest in music catalogs. The collaboration will add to the company’s catalog-purchasing power across both recorded music and music publishing, Kyncl said.

“In an ever-changing industry, we must continue to supercharge our capabilities in long-term artist, songwriter, and catalog development,” he wrote. “That’s why this company was created in the first place, it’s what we’ve always been best at, and it’s how we’ll differentiate ourselves in the future.”

In 2024, Warner Music laid off 600 employees, or approximately 10% of its workforce, and in 2023, 270 jobs were cut.

Warner Music Group shares closed at $27.83, up 2.17%, on Tuesday.

An enormous shadow hovers over the characters in “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” and it’s the same one that has been dogging composer Alexandre Desplat ever since he was a teenager in Paris.

That shadow? The music of John Williams.

“He’s such a legend for all of us,” says Desplat, 63, on a Zoom call from London, where he’s been burning the midnight oil on the score for Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming “Frankenstein.” “He’s just the only one to follow.”

Like Williams, Desplat is now a grizzled (though painterly handsome) veteran himself, with hundreds of films to his name. He’s already completed three scores this year alone — for the French-Swedish Palme d’Or nominee “Eagles of the Republic,” Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme” and this week’s “Jurassic” heavyweight.

He’s also making his North American conducting debut on July 15 in a grand survey of his film career at the Hollywood Bowl, a fitting, if overdue, coronation of his two-decade reign as an A-list composer in America.

When Desplat began scoring Hollywood films in the early 2000s, his music swept in like a breath of fresh French air — elegant, restrained, melodic, idiosyncratic — and the list of filmmakers who sought him out reads like a sizable section of the Criterion Closet: Terrence Malick, Ang Lee, Kathryn Bigelow, David Fincher, Jonathan Glazer, Greta Gerwig.

“He’s the last tycoon of American movie music,” Desplat said in 2010 of his idol John Williams. “He drew a line and we just have to be brave and strong enough to try and challenge this line. With humility, but with desire. It’s a kind of battle.”

(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)

His ride-or-die partner is Anderson, who first employed him on “Fantastic Mr. Fox” in 2007 and who teed up Desplat’s first Oscar win with “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” (He’s been nominated eleven times.) May’s “The Phoenician Scheme” marked their seventh collaboration.

“As I started being a film composer, I had my idols in sight — of course Hitchcock and Herrmann, David Lean and [Maurice] Jarre, [François] Truffaut and Georges Delerue,” Desplat told me in 2014. “All these duets were strong and they showed how important the intimacy between a director and a composer would be for both of them. It’s not only good for the film, it’s good for the composers, because these composers actually developed their own style by doing several movies with the same director.”

In a town too often filled with generic, factory-farmed scores, his were like a gourmet French meal, even though he grew up on the same diet of American movies and their iconic scores. The young Desplat was obsessed with U.S. culture — listening to jazz, watching baseball and the Oscars — and he decided he wanted to score movies after he heard “Star Wars” in 1977. Emblazoned on the cover of that iconic black album were the words “Composed and Conducted by John Williams.”

“That,” Desplat told his friend at the time, “is what I want to do.”

It’s fitting and kind of funny that two decades after charming audiences with a delicate, waltzing score for the 2003 Scarlett Johansson prestige picture “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” the composer is now promoting a stomping monster score for a blockbuster behemoth starring Johanssson and a bunch of CGI dinosaurs — and tampering with John Williams’ sacred musical DNA.

“Jurassic World: Rebirth” isn’t the first time he’s had to brave the T-rex-sized footprints of his hero: Desplat scored the final two films in the “Harry Potter” series, and he was also the first composer on “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” He left the latter when Tony Gilroy took over the project from original director Gareth Edwards, and before composing any notes.

“I went as far as the change of directors and change of plans,” Desplat explains, “and the weeks passing by, and then I had to move on because I wanted to work with Luc Besson” (on 2017’s “Star Wars”-esque “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”).

“I dreamed of writing for symphonic scores,” Desplat says, “but for many years there was no way I could do it in French cinema, because the movies didn’t offer that, or the producer didn’t offer that. I had to learn how to sound big with very little amount of musicians.”

(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)

Much like his work on “Harry Potter,” Desplat’s odes to Williams in “Rebirth” are more whispers than shouts — though there are a handful of overt declarations of both the iconic anthem and hymn for Steven Spielberg’s 1993 dino-masterpiece. More subtle homages arrive in his use of solo piano and ghostly choir, and in the opening three notes of his motif for the team led by Johansson’s character — a tune that almost begins like Williams’ “Jurassic” hymn.

“So there’s a connection,” Desplat says. “I take the baton and I move away from it.”

He composed new leitmotifs for wonder, for adventure, for danger. His score, much like the original, is an amusement park ride full of sudden drops, humor and family-friendly terror, with a few moments of cathartic, introspective relief.

Mostly, Edwards kept pushing him for more hummable motifs.

“When I was tempted to go back to something more abstract — you know, French movie,” Desplat says, winking — “he would just ask me to go back towards John Williams’ inspiration of writing great motifs that you can remember and are catchy.”

Desplat worries this is becoming an extinct art in Hollywood. “I don’t hear much of that in many movies that I watch,” he says. “It’s kind of an ambient texture — which is the easiest thing to create.”

In college, he would listen to the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” score on a loop, and as his own scoring career developed, he was paying keen attention to John Williams’ more intimate chamber scores like “The Accidental Tourist” and “Presumed Innocent” — as well as juggernauts like “Jurassic Park.” Besides the music itself seeping in, he learned that it was important to score every kind of film, no matter how big or small. Williams’ work also taught him “that I could have something elegant, classical, but with some seeds of jazz in the chords or in the way the melody evolves.”

Whenever he hears someone talking dismissively about Williams, Desplat gets defensive. “I want to punch them,” he says, only half kidding.

“He’s the master, what can I say?” Desplat told me in 2010. “He’s the man. He’s the last tycoon of American movie music. So that’s everything said there. He drew a line and we just have to be brave and strong enough to try and challenge this line. With humility, but with desire. It’s a kind of battle.”

Jonathan Bailey and Scarlett Johansson in the movie “Jurassic World Rebirth.”

(Jasin Boland / Universal Pictures )

When Desplat received his first Academy Award nomination, for “The Queen” in 2007, the one person who called from Los Angeles to congratulate him was Maurice Jarre, composer of “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Doctor Zhivago.”

Desplat had met the French legend a few times over the years, including an early invitation to a mixing session for the 1990 film, “After Dark, My Sweet.” Desplat was aghast when he saw director James Foley taking away Jarre’s melody and all the various musical elements on the mixing board, save for a simple electronic thump.

The young composer expressed his dismay and Jarre calmly said: “It’s his film. I have to accept that.”

“That’s a lesson that I learned very early on,” Desplat says. “I’ve never forgotten that, because it’s still the same,” he laughs.

He was also warmly received as a young man by Georges Delerue, the great serenader of the French New Wave in films like “Jules and Jim” and “Contempt.” “They were so kind,” Desplat says, “such sweet men, both of them.” (Michel Legrand? Not so much, Desplat says: “He said awful things about me in books.”)

What they all have in common — besides a penchant for composing beautiful music — is the defiant, transatlantic leap from the French film industry where they started to the highest perch in Hollywood. Jarre left Paris in the early 1960s after the enormous success of “Lawrence” and never looked back, forging meaningful partnerships with directors like Peter Weir and Adrian Lyne. Delerue uprooted from Paris to the Hollywood Hills after winning his first Oscar in 1980 and scored a few hits including “Steel Magnolias” and “Beaches.”

“I really think that people who work a lot are lazy,” says Desplat, who has already completed three scores this year. “That’s why they work a lot — otherwise they wouldn’t work at all.”

(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)

Desplat started professionally in France in 1985 and wrote roughly 50 scores before “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” the English-language film that put him on Hollywood’s radar. He continues to do French films amid the summer blockbusters and American art house pictures.

“I dreamed of writing for symphonic scores,” Desplat says, “but for many years there was no way I could do it in French cinema, because the movies didn’t offer that, or the producer didn’t offer that. I had to learn how to sound big with very little amount of musicians.”

He enjoys the freedom of a big-budget project. “To be able to have a studio say, ‘Go, write what you need to write.’ The director, he wants an orchestra, he wants 95 musicians. Great! They don’t even say anything. You just go and you record. They book the studio. They book the musicians.”

Still, the limitations he trained under gave Desplat some of his greatest strengths: creativity, resourcefulness, speed. He had to orchestrate everything himself, which means his music bears a distinctive fingerprint. And composing for small, sometimes unorthodox ensembles gave his music a clean, transparent signature as opposed to the all-too-typical wall of mud.

He can’t say much about his 100-minute score for “Frankenstein,” which he just finished recording with a giant orchestra and choir at both Abbey Road and AIR Studios, and which comes out on Netflix in November. The reason he does so many films, Desplat proposes, is because he’s lazy.

“I really think that people who work a lot are lazy. That’s why they work a lot — otherwise they wouldn’t work at all.”

National Public Radio journalist Felix Contreras, best known for chronicling Latino music in his podcast “Alt.Latino,” will be honored this year at the 38th annual Hispanic Heritage Awards.

The Hispanic Heritage Foundation named Contreras as a recipient of the 2025 Hispanic Heritage Award for journalism on Thursday, one of several honors bestowed on notable public figures for their accomplishments and cultural contributions to the Latino communities.

Past awardees at the Hispanic Heritage Awards include Bad Bunny, America Ferrera, Becky G, J Balvin and others; Contreras is one of the few journalists to receive the esteemed honor, one he says is hard for him to accept.

“We learn early on that [journalists] are not supposed to be the story,” explains Contreras in a phone call with The Times. “That’s the largest stumbling block as to why I’m having a difficult time accepting this accolade.”

Known among friends and colleagues as “Tío Felix,” a familial term of endearment, Contreras has been a dedicated reporter for close to 50 years. Born and raised in Sacramento, he began his journalistic career as a TV news photographer for the NBC affiliate station in Fresno until 1998, later transitioning to NBC News in Miami.

“My point has always been to tell our Latino stories through the news, good or bad,” he says.

Contreras began working for NPR in 2001 as a producer and reporter for the news arts desk. In 2010, he co-created the innovative “Alt.Latino” radio program and podcast alongside NPR’s current immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd. It was a way to fill the dearth of coverage of alternative Latino music — Spanish-language stations gave little airtime to alternative rock groups such as Los Fabulosos Cadillacs or Café Tacvba, says Contreras. Their first guest on the show was a young, then-burgeoning artist from Colombia named Juanes, who appeared just after releasing his debut album, “Fíjate Bien.”

At first, it was an uphill battle to get artists to recognize the podcast’s cultural significance. “ We had to beg people to send us their CDs,” Contreras admits.

Now in its 15th year, “Alt.Latino” has become a go-to hub for Latin music enthusiasts looking to learn more on the rise of musica mexicana, the rumblings of Latin jazz, the transformation of Latin rock and more.

“Independent artists, alternative artists, even some pop artists now consider ‘Alt.Latino’ and NPR as a viable source to get their artist seen or heard,” Contreras says.

To this day, Contreras continues in his role as co-host of “Alt.Latino,” now alongside Tiny Desk producer Anamaria Sayre, who says she cried when she heard Contreras was being recognized.

“ Felix created space for us in the music media landscape in where there wasn’t previously,” says Sayre, who has been working with Contreras since 2023. “He did it with no one telling him that what he was doing was valuable.”

The 38th annual Hispanic Heritage Awards will take place on Sept. 4 at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Apple Music on Monday said it’s opening a three-story studio in Culver City this summer that will have a 4,000-square-foot soundstage for live performances and fan events.

“With this new studio, we are furthering our commitment to creating a space for artists to create, connect, and share their vision,” said Rachel Newman, Apple Music’s co-head, in a statement.

The facility spans more than 15,000 square feet and includes two radio studios for live interviews and performances, a spatial audio mixing room, booths for songwriting and podcasting, and rooms to help artists create content, Apple said in a post about the studio.

The facility is located in Culver City in the Hayden Tract neighborhood. Los Angeles architect Eric Owen Moss, known for his distinctive and sculptural structures throughout Los Angeles, designed the building that houses the new studio. Apple didn’t provide an exact date for the studio’s opening.

The new space shows how Apple, headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., has been expanding its real estate footprint in Southern California as it pushes further into the entertainment industry.

The tech giant is building a new office complex on the border of Culver City and Los Angeles that is expected to house the company’s television streaming service Apple TV+.

As technology, including the frenzy around artificial intelligence, continues to reshape the way musicians and filmmakers tell stories, tech companies are emphasizing that they want to support creativity.

Last year, Apple apologized after an iPad Pro ad that showed a hydraulic press crushing musical instruments such as a piano and other creative tools before the thin device was revealed, sparked backlash. While the commercial showcased Apple’s thinnest product, some critics viewed it as a symbol of technology destroying creativity.

Apple said the new studio will serve as the anchor for a global network of creative hubs that are already open in New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris and Nashville. The company said it plans to open more studios soon.

Apple also announced that as part of its 10-year anniversary celebration, Apple Music Radio starting on July 1 will start counting down the service’s top 500 most-streamed songs. Apple Music is also releasing a way for its listeners to see and stream the songs they’ve played the most since they joined the service in a “Replay All Time” playlist.

Speaking with musician and producer Adrian Quesada elicits a calming effect, as if a salve has been applied to the people conversing with him. His voice moves and bounces with intrigue and interest, but never catapults itself upward in decibels.

The soothing and entrancing qualities of his disposition mirror that of his latest album, “Boleros Psicodélicos II,” a 12-track sonic field trip through Quesada’s Latin American influences — and a testament to teamwork — that dropped on Friday.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the mellow Austin-based musician prefers to kick it in the background, fancying himself more of an Izzy Stradlin than a Slash — despite having his name splashed across his imminent record.

“I always consider myself more of a producer than an artist. Being a solo artist is a very recent thing for me,” Quesada told The Times on a recent sunny day by Echo Park Lake. “It’s really raw and kind of a weird thing for me because it’s not my style to be in the forefront. I just like to make the music. I try to move in silence.”

He managed to maneuver the music industry by flying under the radar up until a few years ago by playing in large ensembles. His former band, Grupo Fantasma, had 10 members; his mid-2000s Latin-funk group Brownout was also a dectet; and his Grammy-winning group, Black Pumas, had seven (sometimes eight) members. While he obscured himself physically, his musicianship and production skill always stood out.

Grupo Fantasma’s “El Existential” won a Grammy for Latin rock or alternative album in 2011. Black Pumas were nominated in the new artist category in 2020, then received three more Grammy nods in 2021 — which included record of the year for the track “Colors” and album of the year for the group’s eponymous album. Black Pumas also nabbed two Grammy nominations in 2022 and another one in 2024.

Quesada embarked on his journey as a solo artist with “Boleros Psicodélicos” — the spiritual precursor to his latest album. It featured covers of boleros from across Latin America, as well as original material, with Quesada enlisting artists such as iLe from Calle 13, Mireya Ramos and Gaby Moreno to lend their voices to the project.

The Times called that 2022 album a “tropical mystery-thriller of a record,” imbued with a “crispy, 1960s psych-rock feel [that] … sets the scene for Latin indie’s best and brightest vocalists to truly sparkle.”

“Boleros II” finds Quesada as aurally slick as ever as he tackles the oft-covered romantic Spanish standard “Cuatro Vidas,” plus Los Pasteles Verdes’ “Hoy Que Llueve” and brand-new tracks — all while integrating his signature three-over-two rhythms.

(James Carbone / For De Los)

Born and raised in the border town of Laredo, Texas, Quesada always felt he was “at the crossroads of a crossroad.”

“It’s not quite Mexico, but it’s not quite Texas and it’s not quite the Rio Grande Valley,” Quesada said. “Laredo is completely bilingual, everybody just speaks Spanglish. I didn’t have a distinction between English and Spanish and it was a couple of different cultures together. Now with music, people seem really caught up on genres — this is in Spanish and this is in English. And none of that really fazes me.”

Like most American kids of the ’80s and ’90s, Quesada’s biggest source of musical consumption came from binge-watching MTV, with a sprinkling of recommendations from friends.

“I was home a lot by myself and I would just watch MTV, so I used to watch all the shows: ‘Yo! MTV Raps,’ ‘Headbangers Ball,’ ‘Alternative Nation’ and ‘120 Minutes,’” he said. “That was where I was discovering stuff. And then friends had an older cousin who used to make me cool tapes, and other friends would pass around hip-hop tapes.”

Quesada says he finally became curious about what a music producer does after listening to N.W.A in his teen years. He recalls sitting in front of his Casio keyboard with its pre-programmed drum machine and trying to dissect the intricacies of what producer Dr. Dre was able to craft.

Revealing the arbitrary nature of self-imposed borders — of both countries and genres — is one of Quesada’s artistic goals, opting to build bridges and not walls.

“There’s a thing called the narcissism of small differences, which means we can’t get over our differences that we have with other people that are so minuscule, we have to differentiate ourselves,” Quesada said. “And I’m starting to finally feel a responsibility for showing people nothing is that different. Latin rhythms are not that different from soul rhythms, or funk rhythms, or rock ’n’ roll. That’s probably the biggest [impact] my upbringing has on me.”

Despite his deeply Texas roots and sensibilities, Quesada’s “Boleros II” and his recent life experiences have been immensely L.A.-coded.

Quesada was nominated for original song at this year’s 97th annual Academy Awards, for writing the track “Like A Bird” with Abraham Alexander, as featured in the Colman Domingo-led film “Sing Sing.”

“I had fun with that. I was catching key things in the movie, seeing what they did visually, and what I could do musically on the song,” he said of working on the piece.

That process led to him spending more time in L.A. than anticipated. “The Oscars kind of flipped my world upside down,” he said. “I had to be here a lot between the nomination being announced and Oscars night. That was the first three months of the year.”

Carrying the L.A. momentum from the Academy Awards to “Boleros II” is the notable presence of Angelenos on the album, including Hawthorne’s perpetual sadboi Cuco, El Monte native Angélica Garcia and Carson soul singer Trish Toledo. (L.A. producer Alex Goose may not be Latino, but his intrepid hip-hop production chops blend seamlessly with Quesada’s eclectic sensibilities.)

“L.A.’s such a predominant Latino town,” said Quesada. “All the references I was showing Angelica, Trish and Cuco, they were very familiar with all that stuff. It came really natural to them. So I do think there’s something with L.A. where they get it culturally here. I leaned on a lot of L.A. artists.”

Quesada is currently touring as part of Trio Asesino, in support of Hermanos Gutiérrez on their U.S. tour. Quesada will perform songs from “Boleros II” at L.A.’s Grand Park on Aug. 2, as part of a free summer concert series by Grand Performances. (Editor’s note: De Los will be a co-presenter of Quesada’s performance.)

“‘Sing Sing’ was about rehabilitation through the arts and how it can change people’s lives, not just reaching people as a fan, but also reaching more kids who can take up art,” Quesada said of the mission of the Grand Performances series. “I believe in the power of art. Everything from a song inspiring a whole movement to a song just making you smile for the day, that’s the power of music.”

Thousands of fans chanted ‘free Palestine’ and waved Palestinian flags as the Irish trio performed in the UK.

Irish-language rap group Kneecap has performed at the Glastonbury Festival in front of tens of thousands of fans chanting “Free Palestine”, defying United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer who said he did not think it was “appropriate” for the band to appear.

The group’s Liam O’Hanna on Saturday also gave a “shout-out” to Palestine Action Group, which UK Interior Minister Yvette Cooper announced last week would become a banned group under the Terrorism Act of 2000.

“The prime minister of your country, not mine, said he didn’t want us to play, so f*** Keir Starmer,” said O’Hanna, who appeared on stage wearing his trademark Palestinian keffiyeh in front of the capacity crowd, including many people waving Palestinian flags.

“This situation can be quite stressful but it’s minimal compared to what the Palestinian people are [facing],” O’Hanna, who performs under the name Mo Chara, added, referring to the backlash the band has faced for its outspoken support of Palestinians in Gaza.

He is facing charges under the British Terrorism Act of supporting a proscribed organisation for allegedly waving a flag of Lebanon’s Hezbollah armed group at a concert in London in November last year.

O’Hanna has said he picked up a flag that was thrown onto the stage without knowing what it represented.

The rapper is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August.

“Glastonbury, I’m a free man!” he shouted as the trio took to the stage at Glastonbury’s West Holts field, which holds about 30,000 people.

The trio also thanked festival organisers Michael and Emily Eavis for resisting pressure to cancel their appearance, including from Starmer.

Several Kneecap concerts have been cancelled since the band’s performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California in April, where they accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians, enabled by the United States government.

At least 56,412 Palestinians have been killed and 133,054 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

Ireland’s people and government have been some of the most outspoken critics of the war, as well as Israel’s deliberate starvation of Gaza’s population, which many people see as having parallels to the English occupation of Ireland.

The BBC, which broadcasts dozens of Glastonbury performances, did not show Kneecap’s set live, but said it planned to make it available online later.

The broadcaster said it would not be re-airing the live performance of British rap punk duo Bob Vylan who appeared on stage before Kneecap and led chants of “Free, free Palestine” and “Death, death to the IDF [Israeli army]”.

A BBC spokesperson said the comments were “deeply offensive”, and that they would not be available to rewatch on BBC iPlayer.

The BBC also reported that UK Culture Minister Lisa Nandy spoke to the BBC director general, Tim Davie, seeking an “urgent explanation” after the chants were aired live.

According to the BBC, Avon and Somerset Police also said that they would be reviewing footage of both Kneecap and Bob Vylan’s sets to “determine whether any offences may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation”.

The bands were among about 4,000 performers across 120 stages to appear at this year’s festival, which also featured headliners including Neil Young, Charli XCX, Rod Stewart, Busta Rhymes, Olivia Rodrigo and Doechii, as well as a surprise appearance by Britpop band Pulp.

As someone who has permanent ringing in the ears (tinnitus) as a result of hearing damage from concerts, I must take exception to how loud the music is played at sporting events these days. Despite quotes from Dodger players and executives stating how “great” the loudness at Dodger Stadium is, they are putting the paying customers and employees at risk for hearing loss with the excessive volume. Entertaining the fans is one thing, assaulting the delicate instrument that is our ears is quite another. I’m sure they could turn it down to safer decibel levels and everyone will still have a good time.

Mark Furcick
San Pedro

Dodger Stadium hosts a Military Appreciation Night, a Salvadoran Heritage Night, and a Guatemalan Heritage Night. But we will never see an Autism Spectrum Night. The ear-shattering sound system would cause fans to run from the stadium screaming in pain and terror.

I suffer from a condition called hyperacusis, where loud noises can cause ear pain lasting for days or even weeks. It’s rare in the general population, but more common among autistic people. I love baseball, and used to love going to Dodger Stadium from the year it opened until 20-something years ago. But now I’d have to wear industrial-strength ear protection.

Russell Stone
Westchester

I used to like bleacher seats but won’t sit there again — way too loud right under the sound system.

Bob Wieting
Simi Valley

Sure it’s “entertainment.” Sure the players like the enthusiasm. But there are seats located beneath or near speakers that are simply painful to the ears.

Richard Melniker
Los Angeles

No pop artist today has a more tangled relationship to a venue than the Weeknd has with SoFi Stadium.

First, he chose SoCal’s flagship stadium as the site to film the denouement of his cult-campy HBO series “The Idol” during one of his concerts. Unfortunately, during the set, he lost his voice four songs in and had to send fans home for the night so he could recover and make up the date. For such a perfectionist, that must have been a body blow.

He rebounded a few months later with a triumphal return and the concert doc “The Weeknd: Live at SoFi Stadium.” But that nerve-racking experience stuck with him. He revisited it in his recent feature film (and album) “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” where a fictional version of the Weeknd loses his voice onstage, kicking off a surrealist, violent night with Jenna Ortega. A brief interlude from that LP is titled “I Can’t F— Sing.”

So Abel Tesfaye must have had a range of mixed feelings when he walked out at SoFi on Wednesday night, the first of four nights at the site of some of his greatest triumphs and most bitter disappointments as a live performer. “This is bigger than me — it’s a reflection of the power of music and its impact on people,” Tesfaye told The Times in a brief email just before the show.

The Weeknd performs during his After Hours til Dawn Stadium Tour at SoFi Stadium.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

This slickly cryptic, immaculately performed 2½-hour set covered the whole of his era-defining catalog. But is this run of SoFi dates a swan song to one of the most successful recording projects of our time?

Since first emerging as an anonymous voice atop gothic, coked-up R&B productions on a trilogy of 2011 mixtapes, Tesfaye’s tastes and his unlikely commercial success grew together.

An underground fan base turned up for the nihilism of “Wicked Games” (“Bring the drugs, baby, I could bring my pain”). But with assists from Max Martin and Daft Punk, he became a bona fide pop star. His mournful Ethiopian melodic lilt stood out like nothing else in Top 40, and he hung onto enough art-freak sensibility that he could headline the Super Bowl halftime show with dancers in full-face plastic-surgery bandages. His ’80s-noir, 2019 single “Blinding Lights” remains the most-streamed song on Spotify, ever.

Darryl Eaton, his agent at CAA, told The Times that the 200,000 tickets sold for this SoFi run alone is “like selling out an entire American city.”

Yet Tesfaye has recently hinted at retiring the Weeknd as a premise. “It’s a headspace I’ve gotta get into that I just don’t have any more desire for,” he told Variety recently. “It never ends until you end it.”

Whether he wants to release less conceptual, more personal music, or if he’s simply run out of gas with this all-consuming pop entity he’s created, this SoFi run is likely one of the last chances L.A. fans will get to see the Weeknd. Tesfaye will surely keep making music and films, but it makes cinematic sense that he’d come back to the scene of his most painful night onstage to put this all to bed.

After a brief and typically roiling set from Tesfaye’s recent collaborator Playboi Carti, Tesfaye emerged in black and gold, eyes lit with LED pinpicks, over a ruined cityscape. Opening with the “BoJack Horseman”-riffing “The Abyss,” he grimly promised, “I tried my best to not let you go / I don’t like the view from halfway down … I tried to be something that I’ll never be.” It sure felt like he was saying goodbye to this way of being an artist.

The show kicked into gear with Tesfaye surrounded by a trim live band and minimalist, moving-sculpture dancers in rose-colored robes. He didn’t need much more to let that once-in-a-generation voice carry everything. Tesfaye’s a uniquely dedicated live vocalist on the stadium circuit (it’s kind of honorable that any serious vocal troubles might mean the show’s over). For all his high-concept misdirections in videos and films, you could feel the troubled intimacy that’s kept fans invested in this music over so many aesthetics.

For all his close reads of Michael Jackson’s records on singles like “Can’t Feel My Face,” Tesfaye’s not an especially physical dancer onstage. But he knows exactly how to inhabit and set-dress this music to make it eerie and monolithic, even at its poppiest.

The Weeknd.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

“After Hours” made a seductive case for letting an obviously toxic man back into your life (“Different girls on the floor, distracting my thoughts of you”). After finally taking off his face mask, he played “Take My Breath” like a revving, neo-disco floor-filler that still winked at the darker choke-kinks of his old music.

When he cranked up the pyro on the midcareer lurker ballad “The Hills,” the front rows of SoFi got a bracing reminder of how volatile this music is even when it sits atop streaming charts. Alongside Carti on their collaborations “Timeless” and “Rather Lie,” Tesfaye grounded his pal’s smeary Atlanta noise with evilly pretty melody. This is a voice you just can’t help but believe, even when it’s calling you to self-destruction.

The Weeknd performs at SoFi Stadium.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

If this tour is indeed at the end of his tenure as the Weeknd, at more than three dozen songs, Wednesday’s set delivered every possible angle of valediction — the thrumming decadence of “Often,” the desperate sincerity of “Die for You” and “Is There Someone Else?” Newer material like “Cry for Me” and “São Paolo” showed that, whatever his exhaustion with this aegis, he’s got tons of startling ideas still brimming.

When Tesfaye buried the hatchet with the Grammys back in February, it was a generous gesture to an organization that inexplicably locked him out of honors for “Blinding Lights,” which he should, obviously, have contended for. When he played that double-time, neo-New Wave single toward the end of his Wednesday set, it felt like a strange pearl that he’d discovered — one of the biggest pop songs of all time, played by a guy whose music emerged from a murk of MDMA licks and mournful threesomes.

With perhaps the exception of his (exceedingly stylish if critically skeptical) film career, he’s always found his voice, over and over again. SoFi Stadium has dealt the Weeknd his greatest defeat and some of his finest hours as a performer. Now it’s sending him off to Valhalla, wherever that takes Abel Tesfaye.

Los Angeles is neither a dance center nor a dance desert. We don’t have much of a history of nourishing major ballet companies. We do have a plethora of smaller companies — modern, classical and international.

You may have to look for it, but somewhere someone is always dancing hereabouts for you.

I sampled three very different dance programs last weekend at three distinctive venues in three disparate cities and for three kinds of audiences. The range was enormous but the connections, illuminating.

At the grand end of the scale, Miami City Ballet brought its recent production of “Swan Lake” to Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa — beginning a run of varied versions of Tchaikovsky’s beloved ballet this summer. It will be Boston Ballet’s turn at the Music Center this weekend. San Francisco Ballet gets in the act too, dancing excerpts at the Hollywood Bowl as part of this year’s Los Angeles Philharmonic “Tchaikovsky Spectacular.”

On a Television City soundstage in the Fairfax district, American Contemporary Ballet, a quintessential L.A. dance company that explores unusual sites around town, is presenting George Balanchine’s modernist classic “Serenade,” along with a new work by the company’s founder, choreographer Lincoln Jones. Meanwhile, on Saturday night, violinist Vijay Gupta and dancer Yamini Kalluri mingled Bach and Indian Kuchipudi dance tradition at the 99-seat Sierra Madre Playhouse.

Miami City Ballet has attracted attention for mounting what is being called a historically informed “Swan Lake” by the noted Bolshoi-trained choreographer Alexei Ratmansky. He has done his best to re-create the 1895 production at the Mariinsky Theater in Ratmansky’s hometown of St. Petersburg.

Historically informed performance, or HIP, is a loaded term, and “Swan Lake” is a loaded ballet. HIP came about when the early music movement discovered that trying to re-create, say, the way a Handel opera might have sounded in the 18th century by using period instruments with what was believed to be period practice techniques proved deadly boring. Eventually, the movement realized that using the old instruments in sprightly, imaginative and contemporary ways instead made the music sound newly vital, and even more so when the staging was startlingly up to date.

Ratmansky’s reconstructed “Swan Lake” does much the opposite with modern instruments and old-fashioned ballet, and it got off to a disorienting start Sunday night. Tchaikovsky’s introduction was played glowingly by the Pacific Symphony in a darkened hall meant to prepare us to enter a different world. But the modern orchestra and distractingly bright audience phones only served to remind us that it is 2025.

The orchestras of the late 19th century had lighter, more spirited-sounding instruments, a quality that matched the choreography of the time. But when Sunday’s curtain rose to archaic scenery, costumes, choreography and acting, it felt, in this context, like wandering into a tacky antique shop.

That said, Ratmansky has a lot to offer. Going back to 1895 can, in fact, signal newness. There is no definitive version of “Swan Lake.” Tchaikovsky revised it after the first 1877 version but died before finishing what became the somewhat standard version in 1895. Even so, choreographers, dancers, producers and even composers have added their two cents’ worth. The ballet can end in triumph or tragedy. Siegfried and his swan-bride Odette may, individually or together, live or drown. “Swan Lake” has become so familiar that modern embellishments become just a lot more baggage.

In this sense, Ratmansky’s back-to-the-future compromise with modernity is an excellent starting place for rethinking not just an iconic ballet but ballet itself and the origins of its singular beauty. The two swan acts display an unfussy delicacy.

Cameron Catazaro, a dashing and athletic Siegfried, and Samantha Hope Galler, a sweetly innocent Odette and vivacious Odile, might have been stick figures magically wondrous once in motion. Meaning was found in Siegfried’s impetuous leap and the Black Swan’s studied 32 fouettés. All else was distraction.

That is precisely the next step Balanchine took 40 years later, in 1935, with his “Serenade,” which uses Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings,” written just after he composed “Swan Lake.” In Balanchine’s first ballet since arriving in the U.S. in 1933, the Russian-Georgian choreographer wanted to create a new kind of ballet for a new world — no story, just breathtaking design.

Although ACB made no mention of the fact, Balanchine moved to L.A. in 1938, three years after the American premiere of “Serenade,” to a house just a few blocks up Fairfax Avenue from Television City. In the few years he spent in Hollywood, he played a significant role in making dance for the movies that entranced the world.

ACB, though, did seem to have movies on its mind in the darkened soundstage with the dancers lit as though in a black-and-white film. But with the audience on bleachers very close to the makeshift stage, the musicians unseen behind the seats and the dancers up close, there was also a stark intimacy that exposed the exacting effort in re-creating the beauty of Balanchine’s steps. The effect was of being in the moment and, at the same time, going into the future.

“Serenade” was preceded by the premiere of “The Euterpides,” a short ballet with a score by Alma Deutscher. The 20-year-old British composer, pianist, violinist and conductor wrote her first opera, “Cinderella,” which has been produced by Opera San José and elsewhere, at 10. “The Euterpides” is her first ballet, and it offers its own brand of time travel.

Each variation on a Viennese waltz tune for strings and piano represents one of the classical Greek muses. The score sounds as though it could have been written in Tchaikovsky’s day, although Deutscher uses contemporary techniques to reveal each muse’s character. “Pneume,” the goddess of breath, gets an extra beat here and there, slightly skewing the rhythm.

Jones relies on a dance vocabulary, evolved from Balanchine, for the five women, each of whom is a muse, as well as the male Mortal employed for a final pas de deux. History, here, ultimately overwhelms the new staging in a swank contemporary environment.

Gupta makes the strongest conciliation between the then and the now in his brilliant “When the Violin.” On the surface, he invites an intriguing cultural exchange by performing Bach’s solo Violin Partita No. 2 and Sonata No. 3 with Kalluri exploring ways in which she can express mood or find rhythmic activity in selected movements. She wears modern dress and is so attuned to the music that the separation of cultures appears as readily bridgeable as that of historic periods.

Well known in L.A., having joined the Phil in 2007 at age 19, Gupta has gone on to found Street Symphony, which serves homeless and incarcerated communities, and to become an inspirational TED talker. He is a recipient of a MacArthur fellowship and, since leaving the Phil, a regular performer around town in chamber programs and plays a Baroque violin in the L.A.-based music ensemble Tesserae.

For “When the Violin,” Gupta employs a modern instrument in a highly expressive contemporary style, holding notes and expanding time as though a sarabande might turn into a raga. He pauses to recite poetry, be it Sufi or Rilke. His tone is big, bold and gripping, especially in the wonderful acoustics of this small theater. The Bach pieces are tied together by composer Reena Esmail’s affecting solo for “When the Violin,” in which the worlds of Bach, Indian music and Kuchipudi dance all seem to come from the same deep sense of belonging together and belonging here and now.

It took only a violinist and a dancer to show that no matter how enormous the range, the connections are, in such a dance, inevitable.

The once-clashing R&B songstresses Brandy and Monica are back — together.

The titans announced their first-ever co-headlining tour, “The Boy Is Mine,” on Tuesday, paying homage to their 1998 hit of the same name. Kelly Rowland, Muni Long and recent “American Idol” winner Jamal Roberts are scheduled to appear as special guests along the road.

“This really is a full-circle moment,” Brandy said in a statement to Variety. “Monica and I coming together again isn’t just about the music — it’s about honoring where we came from and how far we’ve both come. ‘The Boy Is Mine’ was a defining chapter in R&B, and to share the stage all these years later is bigger than a reunion — it’s a celebration of growth, sisterhood, and the love our fans have given us from day one.”

She added that she recognized the love “The Boy Is Mine” still received, saying that the song “means everything to me.”

Upon its release, the song spent 13 weeks at No. 1. That was 27 years ago, and though the pair have been on “different journeys” since, they’ve come back together to give “the people what they’ve been asking for.”

“God’s timing perfectly aligned us,” Brandy said.

Presale for the tour begins on June 26, with general tickets going on sale on June 27. The run currently includes one Los Angeles-area show on Nov. 9 at the Kia Forum.

Brandy and Monica had a widely publicized fallout in 1998. Monica is said to have punched Brandy in the face just before they took the stage at that year’s MTV Video Music Awards to perform their hit single.

The duo was seen as a monumental combination of ‘90s talent, with both Brandy and Monica being lauded for their debut records. Brandy had already achieved RIAA platinum status with her eponymous album released in 1994 when she was just 15. “The Boy Is Mine” was an instant hit when it was released four years later, but the VMAs incident seemed to spawn acrimony.

Though both would remain in the music industry, Brandy would also pursue an acting career. The “Vocal Bible” took off following her role as the first African American actor to play Cinderella in 1997. More recently, she starred as a rapper in the ABC drama series “Queens” in 2021.

Monica’s 1995 debut, “Miss Thang,” went platinum when she was 14, but the singer largely remained out of the spotlight following the release of “Code Red” in 2015. She teased a pivot into the country music genre in 2022 with “Open Roads,” which she says was produced entirely by 10-time Grammy winner Brandi Carlile. Though she confirmed its completion in 2023, it has yet to be released.

After the kerfuffle in 1998, it wouldn’t be until 2012 that the two collaborated again on “It All Belongs to Me” and 11 years more before they worked on a remix of “The Boy Is Mine” for Ariana Grande. In 2021, Brandy and Monica appeared on “Verzuz,” a popular webcast series made by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland where two artists pit their best hits against each other.

The affair went down smoothly until about 30 minutes in, when Monica spoke of how she had come a long way from “kicking in doors” and “smacking chicks,” a (seemingly autobiographical) line from her hit song “So Gone.”

“You sure was,” Brandy replied. “I was one of the ones.”

But Monica refuted the quip, claiming, “People think I’m abusive. That’s not what happened.”

After a little back and forth, Brandy conceded, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that … I didn’t mean no shade by that.”

“It was a misunderstanding,” Monica replied before moving on, as both singers seemed to have done with the announcement of the upcoming tour.

Ed Intagliata leaned his body against the cash register as he greeted customers with a heartfelt goodbye hug. After nearly 78 years of business, his beloved music shop is closing in light of his retirement.

All that remains of Cassell’s Music are empty shelves, scattered boxes and unsold instruments — a quiet ending for what was once a lively hub for music lovers and aspiring musicians.

Eric Knight, 29, reminisced about his childhood years spent inside Cassell’s.

“My dad came in, he bought me a bass and a little amp to go with it and set me up with some lessons back here,” Knight said. “As I got older, I started making some friends that played music and we all got together, drove down here and spent about two hours in that back room, three or four teenagers piled into that tiny room. If we ever did that in Guitar Center, we would be kicked out. But Ed would pop his head in, listen and get back to work. He made everyone feel welcomed and invited.”

Cassell’s in San Fernando has been a beloved fixture within its community for decades, with customers noting owner Ed Intagliata’s welcoming presence.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Intagliata, now 71, became the shop’s owner after he graduated from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in music. At the time, Intagliata worked in the complaint department at Sears.

“The success of the store was on my shoulders as a 24-year-old kid,” Intagliata said. “I made some mistakes, but I grew from it. My father taught me some very savvy business advice, which I’ve governed the store by for 48 years and it’s been a good run. We’ve weathered all the recessions and things like that.”

His father, an aerospace engineer at the time,
bought the store from its founder, Albert Cassell, in 1978 after seeing an ad for it in the Los Angeles Times. His father, Intagliata said, employed his siblings to fund their college education.

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“My brother Robert was a marketing major at Cal State Northridge. He started implementing a lot of ideas he was learning in his marketing class,” Intagliata said. “And one of the things we did was we donated a guitar and some lessons as a giveaway to somebody at Dodger Stadium at every last Dodgers home game.”

His brother John repaired band instruments for about 12 years, Intagliata said. His next brother, Paul, taught trumpet lessons to a student who eventually went on tour with Green Day. Intagliata said his sister, the baby of the family, obtained an engineering degree from Cal State Northridge and taught piano at Cassell’s for about eight years.

“A lot of students still remember her,” he said. “They come in and ask, ‘What’s your sister doing? I took piano lessons from her 30 years ago.’ ”

“I didn’t realize how deep the impact and influence the store had on people’s lives around here, getting them started on music,” Intagliata said. “Just how it’s kind of a nice place to hang out and be creative with.”

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Mornings come in early for Intagliata, much to his dismay. He commutes regularly from his home in Santa Clarita to his shop, nestled in San Fernando on Maclay Avenue in front of a Fosters Freeze, Valley relic. Originally from Connecticut, Intagliata’s family moved to California in 1960, setting root in Palos Verdes — where his mother still lives today.

“I hated the peacocks,” he said. “They’re a mess.”

Originally located in the San Fernando Mall, Cassell’s has been around since 1948. The shop sold teenage rock star Ritchie Valens his first guitar, a sleek Gibson ES-225 electric, in 1958.

People from around the world visited Cassell’s after it was featured in “Wayne’s World,” which starred famous actors such as Mike Myers and Dana Carvey.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Intagliata’s father put down a down payment and purchased the store’s orignal name for about $5,000 in 1978. Ed Intagliata paid about $173,000 in a span of five years, he said. And six years after purchasing it, he moved Cassell’s to its current location on Memorial Day 1984. The location used to be an electronics store that sold CB radios and TV antennas, Intagliata said.

“I remember in the early to mid-80s, before they moved out to Maclay, they were in the heart of San Fernando Mall and I was in elementary, buying cassettes,” said Rago Mier, 52-year-old San Fernando resident. “It’s just heartbreaking for me that this store is no longer going to be here. I’m gonna miss it.”

Intagliata said Cassell’s used to be a record store at one point. He kept one of the original plastic sleeves with the shop’s logo.

At one point, Cassell’s sold records, with one that is still kept at the store pictured here.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

“It was one of those things where you can come in, put on your headphones and listen to the latest thing,” he said. “We would put these sleeves on all the LPs.”

Intagliata personalized almost every corner of his store: buying luau decor from Party City to feature his assortment of ukuleles, frames of signed celebrity headshots and a prized possession: the white 1964 Fender Stratocaster electric guitar featured in the 1992 film “Wayne’s World.”

In the movie, Wayne’s character played by actor Mike Meyers makes repeated visits to the shop just to gaze at the fender guitar. Posters of the song “No Stairway to Heaven,” are scattered all around the shop. Intagliata said he had no idea how big the movie would be.

“They had a location scout come in one day and he was just asking, ‘Hey, we are looking for a music store to film a movie of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch,’ and I didn’t see him for many months,” Intagliata said. “He came back in again and said they liked my store, and apparently went to like seven or eight states looking for a music store that would fit what they were looking for.”

On display at Cassell’s Music is a “Wayne’s World” guitar signed by Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, after a scene from the movie was filmed at the store.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Intagliata said “Wayne’s World” put Cassell’s on the map after film crews decided to keep the store’s name in the movie. Visitors from all over the world came to see the guitar on display, one New Zealand fan even asking him for the case dimension to make a replica at home, Intagliata said.

“People come here and feel like the actors can come out any minute,” he said. “It gives them a real sense of excitement.”

The guitar will be featured in a shrine alongside the car used in “Wayne’s World” at a father-and-son museum in Canada, Intagliata said.

“I’m just finding out that I didn’t realize how deep the impact and influence the store had on people’s lives around here, getting them started on music,” he said. “Just how it’s kind of a nice place to hang out and be creative with.”

Intagliata recently revived an old T-shirt design from 1978 he found in his father’s closet. The shirts sold like hotcakes the same day the shipment was delivered. All Intagliata has from those days, besides a few shirts and the memories, is the first guitar he ever sold: an auditorium guitar, hung up in a corner of his store.

“I think I’m going to keep it,” he said as he stared at it. “They want me to sell it, but I’m going to keep it.”

Intagliata’s plan is to visit Italy next year. He has been eyeing the Amalfi Coast after he saw a picture of the Ravello Music Festival stage.

“Isn’t that something?” he said, admiring his computer screen. “I sing in a classical choir up in Santa Clarita. This is my genre, not rock ‘n’ roll. It’s this.”

Intagliata toyed with the idea of retirement a few years prior. After successfully selling his store via an online listing, Intagliata went on Facebook to make the announcement.

“I want to be able to travel while I still have relatively good health because I’m getting up there in age. I know I don’t look it,” Intagliata said, jokingly.

Cassell’s Music will be open until July 21. My Valley Pass, an online visitor’s guide to the San Fernando Valley, will be screening “Wayne’s World” at Cassell’s on July 10 starting at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $35 per person and can be purchased online.

Intagliata took over the store’s ownership from his father after graduating college, and looking back on his 48-year tenure, he says, “It’s been a good run.”

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Back in the worst pandemic days of 2020, Elizabeth Garo and Melanie Tusquellas were terrified they would lose their nightclub.

The co-owners of the Alibi — an independent music venue with space for up to 300 people in downtown Palm Springs — opened in late 2019, just before COVID-19 shut down the live music scene.

Garo was a former booker for the Regent, Echo and Echoplex in L.A. (She also opened Stories Books in Echo Park.) Tusquellas was a hospitality veteran behind Los Feliz’s El Chavo and Silver Lake’s historic Edendale restaurant. The two said they had invested hundreds of thousands into renovating and opening the Alibi.

“It’s difficult to run a small independent venue any time, and during COVID it was particularly hard,” Garo recalled in an interview. “A lot of them didn’t make it.”

Garo heard that Marc Geiger, then a WME music executive she had known and worked with for decades, and former WME board member John Fogelman had founded Save Live, a company investing in independent venues to help them survive the pandemic.

When Save Live offered to buy 51% of the Alibi and let the co-founders continue to run it, the deal “felt like such a relief,” Garo said. “It felt like a lifeline, like, ’Hey, we’re gonna make it.’”

Instead, Garo and Tusquellas claim in a 2023 lawsuit and an interview with The Times that the partnership ruined them. Their lawsuit, which seeks compensatory damages, alleges that Geiger and Fogelman negotiated the deal in bad faith, forcing them out of the company’s operations soon after the purchase. After briefly reopening in 2022, the club permanently closed later that year. A trial is set for August.

Attorneys for Save Live, which has since rebranded as Gate 52, declined to comment when reached by email.

In a cross-complaint to the suit, Geiger and Fogelman say Save Live “bent over backwards to try to resolve the parties’ differences” and call Garo and Tusquellas’ claims “salacious — and utterly false — allegations of misogyny and bad faith.”

The suit raises questions about the future of local indie music venues like the Alibi and about Save Live’s intentions. Does the firm rescue troubled venues or capitalize on their financial vulnerability?

Gate 52 now owns 13 music venues across the country, including Electric City in Buffalo, N.Y., the Eagles Ballroom in Milwaukee and the Criterion in Oklahoma City. In California, the firm owns the Fremont Theater in San Luis Obispo and the Golden State Theatre in Monterey, and collaborates with dozens more “network venues” across the country.

The firm is a far cry from giants like Live Nation or AEG. But as a well-capitalized operation that has acquired majority stakes in struggling small venues, it has become a significant player in secondary markets.

The two-story, Spanish colonial-style building that would become the Alibi first opened as a switchboard hub for the GE Telephone Co. in the 1920s. Later, it became Georgie’s Alibi Azul, a popular gay bar and restaurant.

In 2018, Garo and Tusquellas, both wisecracking Gen X veterans of L.A. nightlife, were looking for “a swan song” for their careers, as Tusquellas described it. Garo, one of the most influential talent bookers in L.A. for decades, had been laid off from Live Nation after the mega-promoter bought local promoter Spaceland Presents.

After touring the Alibi, Garo and Tusquellas saw potential for a venue like the ones they’d built in L.A., a place to book local and global artists in a creatively adapted old building.

“We were surprised by how chic and international Palm Springs was becoming,” Tusquellas added. “Growing up in L.A., when we went to Palm Springs as kids, it was like God’s waiting room. But we were quite surprised by this scene with all these local musicians but no venues to play at.”

Alibi soft-launched with packed Pride events in fall 2019 (to avoid the summer heat), and formally opened in October. With its glazed-tile outdoor bar and emerald-hued mood lighting, the venue was a chic standout in desert nightlife.

“We had everything from ‘Dynasty’ theme parties to Modernism Week events,” Tusquellas said. “We had a goth night. There had never been a place to go for them in Palm Springs and they came out of the woodwork.”

Local musicians hoped the venue would be transformative for their scene.

“Alibi was the first place where we got a taste of the real deal,” said Spencer Stange of the band Host Family, which booked a monthly night of experimental music at Alibi. “It was the only venue I knew there that was legitimate and professional. Good bands played there and you could do a real sound check. They were so hospitable, it felt like a home base.”

Louise Minnick, a local promoter with Lesbo Expo, said Alibi was an important venue for queer women in the desert.

“Liz and Melanie went out of their way to make our events special,” Minnick said. “They offered their patio for women to have first access to watch Pride, which meant a lot to me.”

Five months later, the pandemic annihilated those plans.

Garo and Tusquellas said their company, 369 Palm Inc., was too new to access the federal patchwork of Paycheck Protection Program loans. They eventually got a grant from the National Independent Venue Assn., but it was for only $20,000. According to a slide deck cited in Save Live’s cross-complaint, the venue had $250,000 in outstanding bills from the shutdown.

“We used all our savings to pay the rent,” Tusquellas added. “We’re entrepreneurs who are not funded by big people, so we had to pay the $15,000 a month rent ourselves for a year and a half. It was really hard.”

Meanwhile, Save Live launched in 2020 with $135 million raised from venture capital firms and a clear mission: to buy majority stakes in small clubs.

“Save Live’s business model was to invest in local, independent, ‘mom and pop’ live music venues, providing critically needed financial relief and funds to renovate dated facilities to bring them back stronger than ever before,” the company says in its cross-complaint.

Save Live’s founders were well-known in L.A. entertainment. Geiger co-founded the Lollapalooza festival and led WME’s music division from 2003 until 2020. Fogelman was the former head of motion pictures at William Morris Agency and a founding board member when it merged with Endeavor to become WME. The Alibi was one of Save Live’s first venue deals.

“Being able to partner with Save Live is a dream come true,” Garo said in a 2021 announcement. The deal let the two owners “stay true to our roots knowing we have their full support. … It doesn’t hurt that we’ve known some of the people at Save Live for years — we all came up through the business together.”

“I didn’t know Marc at all, but he was very charming,” Tusquellas said. “He and Fogelman were titans of the industry. We felt that we were in very good hands. We knew what we were doing, and they knew that.”

According to the suit and cross-complaint, Garo and Tusquellas’ company, 369 Palm Inc. (with partner David Gold), agreed to sell 51% of their ownership of the Alibi’s business to Save Live for $400,000. The Alibi’s business would be co-owned under a new company, Alibi Venue Operations LLC. Garo and Tusquellas say in their suit that, under this agreement, the pair and Geiger “would have decision-making authority over the day-to-day operations.”

Garo and Tusquellas claim in their suit that 369 Palm “retained 100% ownership of [the Alibi’s] ABC liquor license” and would continue to manage the venue’s bar. Save Live agreed to provide $565,000 for renovations and expenses, according to Save Live’s cross-complaint.

Garo and Tusquellas’ suit claims that Save Live had “hatched a plan to exploit the weakness in the independent live music industry to try, by means of deception and then intimidation, to acquire The Alibi and its business without paying a fair price.”

Scott Timberlake, the Alibi building’s landlord, said he had a friendly relationship with Garo and Tusquellas. But once Save Live got involved, he said, “I was really surprised by Save Live’s ego and entitlement. When I asked to see their financial statements before taking over the lease, they lectured me about ‘Don’t you know who we are?’”

Garo and Tusquellas say in their suit that, when the venue reopened on April 1, 2022, “SL Alibi acted as if it were the sole owner.” They claim in their suit that Geiger and Fogelman contracted with an outside ticketing company, Tixr, without Garo’s consent, and that Save Live didn’t sufficiently fund day-to-day operations. Garo and Tusquellas claim in their suit that Save Live switched to its own accountant for bookkeeping and backed out of a plan to hire a general manager.

In its cross-complaint, Save Live says that “contrary to the claims in their lawsuit, Save Live did not try to take over the Venue.” Save Live says “Tusquellas and Garo had gone significantly over the pre-opening budget, resulting in … an operating budget shortfall.”

According to Save Live’s cross-complaint, private investigators discovered “a separate, undisclosed cash register used only for cash transactions … there was no record, whatsoever, of any such sales.” The cross-complaint alleges that Tusquellas “embezzled most of (if not all) of the cash sale proceeds.”

Tusquellas denied the embezzlement claims, saying all sales, including cash, were accounted for and reported as income.

Save Live says in its cross-complaint that both parties “always understood and intended for 369 to transfer” the venue’s valuable liquor license, and called Garo and Tusquellas’ refusal to do so “a ruse to get Save Live’s money.”

Garo and Tusquellas said they never sold, or intended to sell, the venue’s liquor license. “That may have been part of Save Live’s secret plan,” said 369 Palm’s lawyer, David Sergenian. “But that was never agreed to.”

On July 13, 2022, Garo and Tusquellas’ lawsuit says “Geiger and Fogelman called a meeting of the Board … as a pretense to ambush Tusquellas and Garo with false accusations. Geiger and Fogelman…falsely accus[ed] Tusquellas of embezzling funds from the company to enrich herself.”

“Fogelman aggressively threw a chair to the ground, as he raged,” the suit says. “Tusquellas and Garo were appalled by Fogelman’s shocking behavior and scared for their future, as he was threatening to ruin the business by shutting down The Alibi.”

Garo and Tusquellas’ suit claims Geiger and Fogelman ordered the venue shut down and that Garo and Tusquellas be removed from operations with their salaries cut off. The bar staff would be fired and 369 Palm’s concessionaire agreement canceled, according to the suit.

The Alibi closed on July 25, 2022. It never reopened.

The situation at the Alibi echoes the tumult surrounding the ownership of the beloved Pioneertown venue Pappy & Harriet’s. Starting in 2021, Knitting Factory Chief Executive Morgan Margolis and partners Stephen Hendel and John Chapman battled the venue’s co-partners, Joseph Moresco and Lisa Elin, about who controlled the operations at the rustic venue, where acts as big as Paul McCartney and Robert Plant have played in addition to hardscrabble desert locals. Margolis prevailed in late 2024.

Meanwhile, the new Acrisure Arena, built by mega-manager Irving Azoff and former AEG President Tim Leiweke, attracts A-list pop, rock and Latin acts to Palm Springs. The nearby Yaamava’ resort has spent millions on top talent.

“It’s great to have an influx of money and big artists at venues like Acrisure Arena that helps the Valley feel bigger. But losing small venues is detrimental and cuts away at the uniqueness of the experiences people have here,” said Kristen Dolan, executive director of the California Desert Arts Council, a nonprofit group advocating for cultural development in the Coachella Valley.

“Places like Alibi have a bigger impact than people think. The workforce here is largely in hospitality, and clubs like the Alibi are important places to start out,” Dolan said. “People were really upset when the Alibi closed, and it was heartbreaking for artists cultivating their community. The economy here is unstable right now and I hope we don’t lose more small venues like it.”

Former Alibi owners Liz Garo, left, and Melanie Tusquellas at Silver Lake’s Edendale restaurant.

(Annie Noelker / For The Times)

The post-pandemic future for such independent live venues is unsettled. Nonprofits like NIVA were effective advocates for legislation (like the $16.25 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, a federal program that gave money to struggling venues) and fundraising, and concert attendance boomed once venues reopened. But inflation, reduced tourism and a volatile economy threaten to keep fans home.

“What word describes our situation right now? I would offer that one word is ‘unknown,” NIVA’s executive director Stephen Parker said at the group’s 2024 conference. “Forty years ago, independent stages were the norm, now multinational, publicly traded conglomerates are. Everyone in this room knows that competition is a misnomer and the increasing lack of it is, perhaps, our greatest threat.”

Meanwhile, Garo and Tusquellas have returned to L.A., picking up the pieces at an unexpectedly late phase of their careers. Garo will book shows at a new independent Yucca Valley venue, Mojave Gold.

Building owner Timberlake said that after months of fighting with Save Live over the venue’s debts, he accepted a settlement, and a new restaurant tenant has moved into the Alibi.

“I didn’t have the financial capability of fighting someone like Save Live,” he said. “It was just so unnecessarily negative.”

No matter how the August trial ends, Garo and Tusquellas are facing the same headwinds as the rest of the live industry. Only now, they are truly on their own.

“I have lots of ideas,” Garo said. “But that’s all kind of locked up until we get this resolved. I don’t want this to be my final chapter.”

EXCLUSIVE: Renowned DJ, Judge Jules, has opened up about his appearance on The Chase’s Celebrity Specia,l which saw a historic victory for him and his co-stars

Judge Jules has revealed that the pressure was eased slightly during his appearance on The Chase Celebrity special, thanks to his connection with the studio. The renowned DJ appeared on the ITV special last year alongside other famous faces, including Lesley Joseph, Jenni Falconer and Patrick Kielty.

The group went up against Shaun ‘The Dark Destroyer’ Wallace in the tense rounds before eventually all four celebs were part of the final chase. It was during the final round that they managed to get one over on Wallace and walked away with a total of £200,000 to split between their chosen charities.

But while some may crumble under the intense pressure of the ITV game show, lawyer and DJ Judge Jules, 58, admits that he didn’t feel too pressured due to a connection with the studios where the show is filmed. “I’m not nervous in my normal activities, before I go on the decks or anything else related to the music business,” he exclusively told the Mirror.

The Londoner went on to add: “It was a little bit nervy because it’s such an unfamiliar environment. The weird thing was, it’s filmed in Elstree Studios where EastEnders is filmed, or it was when I did it anyway. My dad (Shaun O’Riordan) worked there his entire working life, so I’d been to those studios multiple times – my dad was a TV director so I think maybe that eased off the pressure a little bit.”

Jules, who will be DJ’ing across the UK and Balerics this summer, went on to add: “It’s fast moving, you meet three others who you’ve never met before, all of you are there for a common purpose, it’s quite comedial backstage but at the same time, it’s more the alien environment.

“When you’re experienced in one area and suddenly you’re thrust into this alien environment, it makes it more nervous. We earned a chunk of money for charity, which was great. It was £200,00, so it was quite a lot.” This year, fans will see Judge Jules, the nephew of Rick Stein, at Tom Kerridge’s Pub In The Park Festival, Foodies, as well as dates across Ibiza and Sheffield’s 90s Fest at Don Valley Bowl.

“I’ve done quite a few food-oriented festivals,” he said. He went on to add: “I think the core element of the sound stage and DJ’ing is quite similar, it’s more about what’s going on around the edges. It’s one of those that, as a DJ, I might under normal circumstances turn up an hour before, do my set and then probably go reasonably soon afterwards if I’ve got somewhere else to go, whereas I would make a day of it because there’s so much more to do.”

Jules explained that he faced difficulties last year after taking part in a live cooking demonstration on the stage, which was “very comedic”. Last summer, he and his wife were also judges on a cocktail-making stage just before he took to the stage himself. “It’s a unique day out,” he joked.

He said: “It’s the perfect thing for the more senior music business person to go and do. It’s such a varied experience. There is more than just food stalls, there’s comedy, there’s music, it’s an amazing experience.” Reflecting on dance music taking centre stage at festivals this year, with Reading and Leeds Festivals bringing the Chevron Stage back, he said: “It’s a different immersive action at a festival, dance, music. I’m the ultimate salesperson for it, and I don’t really know any different. I’m truly institutionalised by the experience of sort of dance floors.”

Having been in the industry since the Eighties, it’s fair to say that Jules has seen his fair share of odd moments. One memory that sticks out to him during the vinyl era was one clubber running up to the decks and stealing the record, before running back through the crowd, while the record was actually playing.

LONDON — Music streaming service Deezer said Friday that it will start flagging albums with AI-generated songs, part of its fight against streaming fraudsters.

Deezer, based in Paris, is grappling with a surge in music on its platform created using artificial intelligence tools it says are being wielded to earn royalties fraudulently.

The app will display an on-screen label warning about “AI-generated content” and notify listeners that some tracks on an album were created with song generators.

Deezer is a small player in music streaming, which is dominated by Spotify, Amazon and Apple, but the company said AI-generated music is an “industry-wide issue.”

It’s committed to “safeguarding the rights of artists and songwriters at a time where copyright law is being put into question in favor of training AI models,” CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a press release.

Deezer’s move underscores the disruption caused by generative AI systems, which are trained on the contents of the internet including text, images and audio available online. AI companies are facing a slew of lawsuits challenging their practice of scraping the web for such training data without paying for it.

According to an AI song detection tool that Deezer rolled out this year, 18% of songs uploaded to its platform each day, or about 20,000 tracks, are now completely AI generated. Just three months earlier, that number was 10%, Lanternier said in a recent interview.

AI has many benefits but it also “creates a lot of questions” for the music industry, Lanternier told The Associated Press. Using AI to make music is fine as long as there’s an artist behind it but the problem arises when anyone, or even a bot, can use it to make music, he said.

Music fraudsters “create tons of songs. They upload, they try to get on playlists or recommendations, and as a result they gather royalties,” he said.

Musicians can’t upload music directly to Deezer or rival platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Music labels or digital distribution platforms can do it for artists they have contracts with, while anyone else can use a “self service” distribution company.

Fully AI-generated music still accounts for only about 0.5% of total streams on Deezer. But the company said it’s “evident” that fraud is “the primary purpose” for these songs because it suspects that as many as seven in 10 listens of an AI song are done by streaming “farms” or bots, instead of humans.

Any AI songs used for “stream manipulation” will be cut off from royalty payments, Deezer said.

AI has been a hot topic in the music industry, with debates swirling around its creative possibilities as well as concerns about its legality.

Two of the most popular AI song generators, Suno and Udio, are being sued by record companies for copyright infringement, and face allegations they exploited recorded works of artists from Chuck Berry to Mariah Carey.

Gema, a German royalty-collection group, is suing Suno in a similar case filed in Munich, accusing the service of generating songs that are “confusingly similar” to original versions by artists it represents, including “Forever Young” by Alphaville, “Daddy Cool” by Boney M and Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5.”

Major record labels are reportedly negotiating with Suno and Udio for compensation, according to news reports earlier this month.

To detect songs for tagging, Lanternier says Deezer uses the same generators used to create songs to analyze their output.

“We identify patterns because the song creates such a complex signal. There is lots of information in the song,” Lanternier said.

The AI music generators seem to be unable to produce songs without subtle but recognizable patterns, which change constantly.

“So you have to update your tool every day,” Lanternier said. “So we keep generating songs to learn, to teach our algorithm. So we’re fighting AI with AI.”

Fraudsters can earn big money through streaming. Lanternier pointed to a criminal case last year in the U.S., which authorities said was the first ever involving artificially inflated music streaming. Prosecutors charged a man with wire fraud conspiracy, accusing him of generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs and using bots to automatically stream them billions of times, earning at least $10 million.

Chan writes for the Associated Press.

The two New York teams dropped by Dodger Stadium a couple of weeks ago, first the Yankees and then the Mets, and broadcasters for each team made sure to complain about how loud it was.

“The Dodger Stadium center field speakers are in full assault mode,” Yankees radio voice Dave Sims tweeted.

On the ESPN Sunday night broadcast from Dodger Stadium that week, Karl Ravech introduced an in-game interview with the Dodgers’ Tommy Edman this way: “He’s in center field now, being blasted by, I think, arguably the loudest speaker system I have ever heard in my life.”

Notwithstanding the audacity of New Yorkers whining about someone else’s volume, the broadcasters did lend their distinguished voices to a long-running debate among Dodgers fans: Is it loud at Dodger Stadium, or is it too loud?

“It’s just all part of an entertainment show,” Mookie Betts said. “There is no ‘too loud.’”

Organists Helen Dell and Nancy Bea Hefley soothed generations of fans, but the traditional soundtrack to a Dodgers game has gone the way of $10 parking and outfield walls free of advertisements. The fan experience now includes a finely choreographed production at virtually every moment except when the ball is in play, and that includes recorded music, cranked up.

“We don’t make it louder just to make it louder,” said Lon Rosen, the Dodgers’ executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “It’s all part of what fits in the presentation.”

And the players, the ones whose performance determines whether the Dodgers win or lose, love the presentation.

“I think it’s great,” Clayton Kershaw said. “Even on the road, I’d rather have that than quiet. St. Louis was just really quiet. It almost felt like golf at times.

“The louder, the more fun, the better. The Dodgers have the best sound system out there. So why not use it?”

Said former Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen: “When I used to come out to ‘California Love,’ that thing used to bang. The bass they have, you can feel that thing shake in your chest.”

Just how loud is it at the ballpark?

To find out, I downloaded a decibel meter and visited Southern California’s three major league ballparks during an eight-day span this month. At Dodger Stadium, I walked around the ballpark, and up and down to different levels, but the readings were relatively consistent no matter where someone might be sitting.

Bottom line: It’s pleasant at Angel Stadium, lively at Petco Park, booming at Dodger Stadium.

Caveat: Even with all other things equal, it always will be louder at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers sell 50,000 tickets to a game more often than not; no other major league ballpark even holds 50,000.

At 60 and 30 minutes before game time, as fans settled into the ballpark, Angel Stadium and Petco Park registered in the 65-75 dB range, roughly the sound of a normal conversation on the low end and household appliances on the high end.

The introduction of the home team lineup registered in the 80-85 dB range at Angel Stadium, 85-90 dB at Petco Park, and 90-95 dB at Dodger Stadium, roughly the sound of a noisy restaurant at the low end and power tools on the high end.

The high-end levels would be hazardous if sustained throughout the evening, but sounds ebb and flow as the game does. (Decibel levels are measured logarithmically, so an increase of 10 dB means sound is heard 10 times louder and an increase of 20 dB means sound is heard 100 times louder.)

The highest levels at any stadium occur not when a voice pleads “Get loud!” or “Everybody clap your hands!” but organically, as the result of a big moment in the game.

My decibel meter hit 100 dB twice during my three test games: immediately after the Angels’ Travis d’Arnaud homered in Anaheim, and as the Dodgers’ Will Smith slid safely into home plate with the tying run at Dodger Stadium, as the opposing catcher tagged him but dropped the ball.

What distinguishes the Dodger Stadium experience is the hour or so before the game starts. The Angels offer music, spotlight fans on the video board, and “invite you to enjoy the hospitality of Angel Stadium.” The Dodgers impose a relentlessly loud pregame show, with hype guys and hype girls, pounding away well above the 65-75 dB levels in Anaheim and San Diego, with dB readings into the 80s.

A Dodger Stadium screen encourages fans to be loud during Monday’s game against the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The Dodgers’ pregame show attempts to force anticipation upon the audience, as if that is somehow necessary. It’s not. You’re about to see Shohei Ohtani!

There is always something happening before the game in the center field plaza: a band, product giveaways, Instagram-worthy photo opportunities, the live pregame broadcast for SportsNet LA. You can get hyped there, if you like. Or you can enjoy a conversation with your friends in your seats, instead of getting a headache before the game even starts.

Tyler Anderson, who pitches for the Angels now and used to pitch for the Dodgers, said he finds no fault in the traditional way of presenting the game, or in the Dodgers’ way.

“It’s like you’re trying to turn that venue into one of the best bars in town, where you just go to the bar and listen to loud music and people are having a good time,” Anderson said. “I think that’s the atmosphere they’re trying to create. It’s a fun atmosphere for the fans too.

The center field plaza area at Dodger Stadium is always a lively spot for fans before a game.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“And then some places are more family-based. They’d rather have kids and older families, and young kids and grandkids coming to games. They probably have less of a party atmosphere and less of a bar kind of atmosphere.

“There is no right or wrong way.”

In his ESPN in-game interview, Edman called the Dodgers’ sound system both “absolutely absurd” and “great.”

I asked Edman about that seeming contradiction.

“That was one of the things that stuck out to me my first time playing here, just how loud the speakers are,” he said. “You can’t hear yourself think.”

He got used to it, and to how he need not be distracted because the sound shuts off “once the play actually starts.” He likes it now.

“It makes it more fun,” he said. “It’s like a big league game.”

The Dodgers’ game presentation is creative and compelling. And, instead of eliminating the beloved organ, the Dodgers include talented organist Dieter Ruehle as part of the show. Really, just tone down the pregame hour, and we’re good.

Rosen shrugged off the notion that the Dodgers should tone down anything. If fans did not enjoy the production, he wondered, why would they keep packing Dodger Stadium?

“It’s really not any louder than any other of the more popular stadiums,” Rosen said.

He might be onto something. Veteran baseball columnist Bob Klapisch reported that, during last month’s Yankees-Mets series at Yankee Stadium, “the decibel levels at the stadium routinely reached the mid-90s.”

That, Mr. Yankee Announcer, would be “full assault mode.”