Tag: Rufus Wainwright (1-8 of 8)

Sep 25 2012 11:10 AM ET

Norah Jones live on PBS' 'Live from the Artists Den': EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

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Image Credit: Frank W. Ockenfels 3

Reason #782 to love public television (no, seriously, Mitt!): the Live from the Artists Den series, now in its fifth season.

The charmingly peripatetic performance showcase has featured the likes of Adele, Elvis Costello, and Death Cab for Cutie in a host of non-traditional spaces, from a 1930s silent movie theater and the world’s oldest sailing vessel to the marble halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Watch below as Norah Jones performs “Good Morning” at Brooklyn’s Green Building in a clip exclusively available on EW.com, and tune in Oct. 5 at 10pm (check local listings for channel info) when she officially kicks off the new season with a full show.

Also scheduled to follow her this fall are the Wallflowers, filmed at Bimbo’s 365 Club in San Francisco (Oct. 12), Rufus Wainwright at the Church of the Ascension on New York’s Fifth Avenue (Oc. 19) and Mayer Hawthorne at the historic Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles (Oct 26).

Anyway, on to Norah! READ FULL STORY »

Apr 3 2012 12:37 PM ET

Rufus Wainwright releases video for 'Out of the Game,' featuring Helena Bonham Carter: Watch it here!

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What’s better than one Rufus Wainwright? Three Rufus Wainwrights, plus a bonus Helena Bonham Carter!

The indie-pop singer-songwriter and opera composer dons costumes for three separate personalities in the new video for “Out of the Game,” the lead single from his forthcoming album of the same name (out May 1).

The video takes place in a library overseen by Bonham Carter, who is seen lip-synching and, in Wainwright’s words, “being very naughty.”

“We have been friends for years,” Wainwright told The Sun. “Not only is she very beautiful, very glamorous, but she is also incredibly funny. At the end of the video, she is basically wearing a bra. So I very much appreciate her friendship for furthering my career.”

Check out the new Bonham Carter-starring video below and let us know if it makes you think differently of the Dewey Decimal System.

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Feb 20 2012 12:33 PM ET

Rufus Wainwright's 'Prima Donna': Major drama, done up in a sequined ball gown

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Rufus Wainwright (Credit: Stefania D'Alessandro/Getty Images)

This weekend, Rufus Wainwright premiered his French-language opera, Prima Donna, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, to a packed crowd that included Yoko Ono and Anjelica Houston.

Which begs the question: what other pop star could get away with (a) writing a French-language opera and (b) calling it Prima Donna?

Well, if anyone can pull it off, it’s Wainwright. The Canadian king of cabaret pop has always had a flair for the dramatic. He loves penned-in-cursive lyrics about cigarettes and peach trees and angels on high.

Fashion-wise, he’ll gladly trade the traditional for the elaborately feathered. And, according to the recent documentary Prima Donna, he’s always loved opera. He’s been listening to it since he was a teenager, casting his sister and his cousins in elaborate versions of Tosca, which he filmed with the family camcorder.

So when the Metropolitan Opera first suggested that he might submit a libretto, he composed one with Bernadette Colomine. (When the Met insisted that they stage the opera in English, Wainwright took it to the NYC Opera, which took it to BAM.) Loosely inspired by the life of Maria Callas, it’s about an aging opera star named Régine Saint Laurent, who’s hiding out in Paris in the 1970s, anxiously preparing for her comeback after losing her voice six years previously.

“One of my favorite things that I like to say now is that I relate a lot to Mozart,” Wainwright recently told EW.com. “Not so much in terms of the genius factor. More in terms of the dead factor. It’s so, so laborious and time-consuming and emotionally draining. You can’t skimp on the work, whether it’s the first violin part or the heartstrings.”

The opera’s also a pretty hard sell, even for your average Wainwright fan. (I should know. I’ve only seen one opera, Tosca, and even now, I couldn’t tell you what distinguishes it from other operas. The death? The betrayals? All the singing about death and betrayals?) So I attended the Brooklyn premiere of Prima Donna with one question in mind: Should you spend your night listening to rising-star tenors and sopranos, delivering hard-bellowed odes to “faded glory” and “passionate love”—in French?

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May 14 2011 06:58 PM ET

Norah Jones, Emmylou Harris, Rufus and Martha Wainwright pay musical tribute to the late Kate McGarrigle

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Image Credit: Harold Barkley/Toronto Star/ZUMA Pres

On Friday night, New York’s Town Hall was filled with family, friends, and followers of the late singer/songwriter Kate McGarrigle, who passed away last year at age 63 after battling sarcoma.

Performing songs from her rich catalog for the second night of this sarcoma fundraising tribute, the stage was filled with an eclectic array of musicians including Norah Jones, Emmylou Harris, Antony Hegarty, her sister/collaborator Anna McGarrigle as well as her children, Rufus and Martha Wainwright (from her marriage to Loudon Wainwright, who was not present but nevertheless “richly implicated in the evening” as banjo player Chaim Tannenbaum so brilliantly phrased it).

Kate, who released two seminal albums in the ’70s with her sister Anna, was a pioneer of cerebral folk music that was at once heartfelt and ironic: it was traditional music coming from connected urbanites (born in Montreal, living in New York) who wryly fetishized the perceived simplicities of rural life. READ FULL STORY »

Mar 8 2011 05:07 PM ET

Norah Jones joins Rufus Wainwright, Jimmy Fallon and more in two-day concert tribute to the late legend Kate McGarrigle -- EXCLUSIVE

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When folk icon Kate McGarrigle passed away over a year ago after battling a rare cancer, not only did Rufus and Martha Wainwright lose their mother, but music lost one of its most unique singer-songwriting voices.

McGarrigle inspired a host of high-profile musicians throughout her four-decade career, and EW can now exclusively reveal that jazz songstress Norah Jones will be joining an all-star roster of artists paying tribute to her in New York’s Town Hall this May.

The nine-time Grammy-winner Jones will join an all-star roster of artists for a two-day concert event, which is set to include performances by Rufus and Martha, Emmylou Harris, Jimmy Fallon (appearing in a musical capacity), Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons), as well as Anna McGarrigle, Kate’s sister and musical partner. READ FULL STORY »

Apr 27 2010 05:30 PM ET

IFC's 'Dinner with the Band': Chef/host Sam Mason's Music Mix playlist

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Dinner-with-the-band-sam-masonFollowing a six-episode run last fall, IFC’s Dinner with the Band returns tonight at 10:30pm EST, with guests like Rufus Wainwright (this evening’s inaugural sous chef/performer), Andrew W.K., the Mountain Goats, and Au Revoire Simone.

Host Sam Mason, a Manhattan culinary star known nearly as much for his tattooed, camera-ready panache as his high-profile restaurant gigs and outre cooking style, loves good music in the kitchen nearly as much as he loves a good olive confit.

After the jump, a playlist he composed for EW of some of his all-time favorites, including tracks from Beck, Devo, the Clash, Waylon Jennings, and (indeed) Steely Dan.

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Jan 19 2010 12:48 PM ET

Kate McGarrigle dies at age 63

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Very sad news: Kate McGarrigle has died, her manager confirms. The beloved Canadian folk singer was 63. The CBC reports that she passed away on Jan. 18 after fighting a rare cancer.

McGarrigle first found fame in the 1970s, performing songs in French and English with her older sister Anna, often billed as the McGarrigle Sisters. From the start, they reveled in creating the kind of perfectly matched vocal harmonies that only a pair of talented siblings can pull off. More voices joined the chorus when Kate McGarrigle’s children Rufus and Martha Wainwright (born during her marriage to singer Loudon Wainwright III) joined the family trade and began careers of their own in later years. Kate McGarrigle went on to perform frequently with her sister and kids, helping introduce a new generation of fans to her work. This writer was lucky enough to see them all on stage more than once, most recently at Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday celebration last May. You can watch a clip of McGarrigle and Rufus performing “Over the Rainbow” last July after the jump.

“When inevitably I read today in the papers that my mother lost her battle with cancer last night, I am filled with an immense desire to add that this battle, though lost, was tremendously fruitful during these last three and a half years of her life,” Rufus Wainwright said in a statement posted online. “She witnessed her daughter’s marriage, the creation of my first opera, the birth of her first grandchild Arcangelo, and gave the greatest performance of her life to a packed crowd at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Not to mention traveling to some of the world’s most incredible places with both my sister, her husband Brad, my boyfriend Jorn and myself. Yes, it was all too brief, but as I was saying to her sister Anna last night while sitting by her body after the struggle had ceased, there is never enough time and she, my amazing mother with whom everyone fell in love, went out there and bloody did it. I will miss you mother, my sweet and valiant explorer, lebwohl and adio. X”

The Music Mix extends its condolences to Kate McGarrigle’s family, friends, and fans. Please share your memories of her in the comments section.

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Mar 31 2009 07:20 PM ET

Rufus Wainwright talks about penning his first opera, 'Prima Donna'

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Rufuswainwright_lPlenty of ambitious stars have created rock operas for the stage. But how many pop musicians can claim to have written an actual, full-fledged, no-qualifier-necessary opera all by their lonesome — with lyrics in another language, no less? Leave it to Rufus Wainwright, whose French opera Prima Donna will premiere at the Manchester International Festival this July after three long years spent composing it. "One of my favorite things that I like to say now is that I relate a lot to Mozart," Rufus quips when the Music Mix catches up with him last night at a New York City press conference for the U.K. cultural festival. "Not so much in terms of the genius factor, more in terms of the dead factor. It’s so, so laborious and time-consuming and emotionally draining. You can’t skimp on the work, whether it’s the first violin part or the heartstrings." Click through to the jump for more on Prima Donna, Rufus’ other upcoming projects, and his iPod rotation.

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