Lauren Messman

The production, which opened in January 2014 and features a collection of beloved songs written by King, her ex-husband Gerry Goffin and writing partners Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, will have played 2,418 regular performances and 60 previews at the Stephen Sondheim Theater. It will close as the longest-running and highest-grossing show in that theater’s history: Since its opening, “Beautiful” has grossed nearly $250 million.

With a book by Douglas McGrath, "Beautiful” portrays King’s origins as a young songwriter in New York, her rocky marriage to her writing partner, Goffin, and the parade of hits she wrote for the Drifters (“Some Kind of Wonderful“), the Shirelles (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow”), Aretha Franklin (“Natural Woman”) and later for her own chart-topping album “Tapestry.”

Over the years, the role of Carole King has been played by multiple performers. (“Beautiful” also featured King herself, who surprised audiences in January when she sang the final song onstage to celebrate the show’s fifth anniversary.) Jessie Mueller, who opened the show in the role, won a Tony Award for best actress in a musical in 2014. After Mueller left in 2015 to star in “Waitress,” Chilina Kennedy took over and played King in more than 1,000 performances. Mueller’s sister, Abby, and actress Melissa Benoist have also played the lead.

And last month, Vanessa Carlton made her Broadway debut as King. She will remain in the role through Sept. 1.

The show is soon to embark on its fifth North American tour, with a sixth confirmed. There is also a film adaptation in the works from Sony Pictures, with Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Paul Blake attached to produce.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/theater/beautiful-carole-king-closing.html" id="df1c0546-794d-312a-ab4e-2a2b8bf0fe8e">The New York Times</a>.

'Beautiful' to close at the End of October

NEW YORK — “Beautiful,” the Tony and Grammy Award-winning jukebox musical about the life and songs of Carole King, will close Oct. 27, 2019, producers announced Wednesday, after nearly six years on Broadway.

The announcement was made in Baku, Azerbaijan, where the World Heritage Committee had been meeting to review the sites currently on the list, and 35 others that had been nominated. Inscribed as “The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright,” the addition encompasses eight of Wright’s more recognizable designs, spanning the various American landscapes that served as his inspiration.

The designation includes homes Wright designed for clients, like Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, Hollyhock House in Los Angeles, the Robie House in Chicago and the Jacobs House in Wisconsin, alongside the sites that served as his private residences and housed his architecture school — Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and Taliesin West in Arizona. It also includes famous public works that bookend his career: Unity Temple, built between 1906 and 1908 in Oak Park, Illinois, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, which was completed in 1959.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, an organization that works to preserve the nearly 400 remaining buildings Wright designed, embarked on the nomination process more than 15 years ago, after a suggestion from the International Council on Monuments and Sites, which advises UNESCO.

The council “felt that Wright’s contribution to modern architecture was too significant to have it represented by only one building and requested that we undertake a serial nomination,” said Lynda Waggoner, a former director of Fallingwater and a founding member of the conservancy’s board. Waggoner will now lead the Frank Lloyd Wright World Heritage Council, established to support coordinated conservation efforts for the eight World Heritage sites.

“These works exerted major influence on modern architecture in their open plans, abstraction of form, use of new technologies and materials, connection to nature and ability to adapt to modern living,” Waggoner said.

The World Heritage Program was created in 1972. Before Sunday’s announcement, it included more than 1,000 properties “that are considered to be of outstanding value to humanity,” according to the UNESCO website.

The designation of the Wright properties followed the United States’ withdrawal from UNESCO at the end of 2018. The move means the United States can no longer be represented on the World Heritage Committee, which determines which sites are added to, or removed from, the World Heritage List. Maintenance and preservation of individual sites is the responsibility of the host country.

The Wright designation does not mean the eight sites will get more resources or money for preservation efforts. But Jeff Goodman, vice president of communication and partnerships for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation at Taliesin West, said that including Wright’s name among the 24 World Heritage sites in the United States is bound to bring more visitors and visibility to all of the architect’s existing work.

“We really believe that sharing Frank Lloyd Wright’s work with more people around the world will make the world a better place,” he said. “He continues to teach us about not only how we relate to the world, and the impact we have on the world, but how we relate to each other.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/arts/design/frank-lloyd-wright-unesco.html" id="963c40b7-8471-3283-a65b-a543d011c7e8">The New York Times</a>.

UNESCO Adds Frank Lloyd Wright's Architecture to World Heritage List

Eight major works designed by Frank Lloyd Wright were inscribed alongside international treasures like the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids of Giza on the UNESCO World Heritage List on Sunday, the first recognition by the United Nations cultural organization of American modern architecture.

UNESCO adds Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture to World Heritage list

This September, “Almost Famous” will open the 2019-20 season at the Old Globe in San Diego, directed by Jeremy Herrin (“Noises Off”) and featuring a book by Crowe.

When Crowe was a teenager, he met Lester Bangs, a rock critic who is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the film. “As this experience started to be where we could actually open the play at the Old Globe, right across from where I used to live and within a 1-mile radius from where I first met Lester and first fell in love with music,” Crowe said Friday, “It just felt like, OK, this becomes a personal story that kind of goes back home to where it all began.”

The show will begin previews on Sept. 13, with an official opening date of Sept. 27, and will follow a 15-year-old writer named William Miller, who embeds with an up-and-coming rock band in 1973 for Rolling Stone.

Though much of the plot will likely follow that of the film, the musical will feature new songs by Tom Kitt, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2010 for his score for the rock musical “Next to Normal.” The show will also incorporate classic songs. The film’s soundtrack included music by David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and Elton John.

Although he wants to keep most of the music a surprise, Crowe, who said he had been asked by John whether his song “Tiny Dancer” would be used, said, “The answer, of course, is yes.”

The show will be produced by Lia Vollack on behalf of Columbia Live Stage, Joey Parnes, Sue Wagner and John Johnson. The cast has not yet been announced.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/theater/almost-famous-musical.html" id="ee59d420-f66b-3884-a3cd-e42b299939b6">The New York Times</a>.

“Almost Famous,” Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical film about an aspiring music journalist starring Billy Crudup and Kate Hudson, hit theaters nearly 20 years ago. Now, a musical based on Crowe’s Academy Award-winning screenplay is set to debut in the city where the story is based.

'Almost Famous' Musical to Open in San Diego

<h1>NEW YORK — The Morgan Library &amp;amp; Museum’s McKim building, which houses the rare books, drawings and artifacts J.P. Morgan collected over his lifetime, is going to get a face-lift — this time of its exterior.</h1>

On Thursday, the museum’s director, Colin B. Bailey, announced the $12.5 million project, which aims to improve the landmark building’s roof, metalwork fence, weathered limestone and sculptures that adorn the Italian Renaissance-style palazzo. The complex underwent a $106 million renovation and expansion in 2006, designed by Renzo Piano, and revamped the McKim’s interior for $4.5 million in 2010. This, however, will be its first exterior renovation since the building’s completion in 1906.

The project also includes enhanced lighting to better illuminate the building from 36th Street, and new landscaping for the library’s surrounding grounds, by New York-based Future Green studio and landscape architect Todd Longstaffe-Gowan.

For Bailey, the new project is an attempt to restore the “jewel in the crown of the Morgan’s campus,” and return it as closely to how Morgan and the building’s original architect, Charles McKim, envisioned it.

“This is the first time that we have the opportunity to really improve the way the building and its decorations and its sculpture looks,” Bailey said in a phone interview. “We can try to bring attention on 36th Street to this historic architectural treasure. And we can, at the same time, tell the story of how McKim and Morgan came to build this wonderful building.”

Bailey said the Morgan has spent the last two years carefully reviewing the building with Integrated Conservation Resources, a firm specializing in historic restoration, to document its condition and generate a needs assessment. From there, it raised nearly 75 percent of the needed funds through private gifts from its board of trustees and major foundation supporters, including the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and Morgan Stanley, but, Bailey says, “We still have quite a way to go.”

The renovation to the building’s exterior will take place this year, wrapping up in December, and the landscaping work is set to be completed and accessible to the public by fall 2020. Bailey says that while visitors will be able to see the restoration in process outside, none of the interior spaces or the museum’s activities will be impinged.

In October 2020, visitors to the Morgan will be able to see the how the building came to be, both over its original construction from 1902 to 1906, and through its more recent restoration by way of an exhibition featuring documents, images and models from its history, and a new book.

This article originally appeared in <a id="67dabc0a-cc44-4208-b5a5-f1d800f101c7" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/arts/design/morgan-library-museum-renovation.html">The New York Times</a>.

Morgan Library & Museum announces $12.5 million exterior renovation

On Thursday, the museum’s director, Colin B. Bailey, announced the $12.5 million project, which aims to improve the landmark building’s roof, metalwork fence, weathered limestone and sculptures that adorn the Italian Renaissance-style palazzo.

The list of this year’s inductees was announced on Saturday’s episode of “CBS This Morning” and featured an appearance by Hall of Fame chairman and musician Nile Rodgers, who called Elliott “one of my favorite writers of all time.”

Not only is Elliott, a Grammy Award-winning artist, responsible for monumental hits from the early 2000s like “Get Ur Freak On” and “Work It,” but she’s also the only female rapper to have six studio albums certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Over the course of her three-decade career, she’s written for some of the music industry’s most talented female artists, including Beyonce (“Signs”), Whitney Houston (“In My Business”), Aaliyah (“If Your Girl Only Knew”), Mary J. Blige (“Never Been”) and Ciara (“One Two Step”).

In its announcement, the Hall of Fame recognized Elliott as “a groundbreaking solo superstar, pioneering songwriter-producer and across-the-board cultural icon.”

On Saturday, Elliott responded on Twitter by congratulating “all the AMAZING songwriters who have been inducted” this year, all of whom became eligible 20 years after their first commercial release of a song.

The 2019 class also includes singer-songwriters Yusuf Islam (better known as Cat Stevens), John Prine, Tom T. Hall, Jack Tempchin and hip-hop producer Dallas Austin, who wrote the TLC hit “Creep.” The six artists will be inducted at a ceremony on June 13 in New York City.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/arts/music/missy-elliott-songwriters-hall-of-fame.html" id="33b7d341-c6c2-33f7-a593-ff5c20bbdad0">The New York Times</a>.

Missy Elliott will be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, making her the first female hip-hop artist to receive the honor. The tribute makes Elliott the third rapper to ever be honored by the organization, following Jay-Z’s induction in 2017 and Jermaine Dupri’s last year.

Missy Elliott to Be 1st Female Rapper in Songwriters Hall of Fame

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