Publisher Burt Bacharach working on memoir
Jan 19, 2012 Abercrombie Fitch
NEW YORK Burt Bacharach will be handling the words for his next project: a memoir.
The award-winning collaborator on such hits as “I Say a Little Prayer” and “What the World Needs Now” has a deal with HarperCollins for a memoir due in November. The publisher announced Wednesday that his book will be called “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” named after one of many songs Bacharach and lyricist Hal David wrote for Dionne Warwick.
According to HarperCollins, Bacharach will open up about professional success and personal troubles. His partnership with David broke up bitterly, and he has been divorced three times, from singer Paula Stewart, actress Angie Dickinson and fellow songwriter Carole Bayer Sager. His daughter, Nikki, committed suicide at age 40.
Bacharach, 83, has won three Academy Awards and eight Grammys. He helped write dozens of top 40 songs, covered by everyone from Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin to Alicia Keys and the cast of “Glee.” His career spans decades of music history: He was Marlene Dietrich’s arranger in the 1950s and `60s and caught on with audiences in recent years through his work with Elvis Costello, Dr. Dre and others and through his cameos in the “Austin Powers” movies.
His book, like so many of his songs, will be a team effort. Robert Greenfield, whose biography of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun came out in 2011, will assist with a story “told in Bacharach’s own words.”
Michigan school district is candidate for takeover
Jan 8, 2012 Abercrombie Fitch
(Reuters) Michigan officials on Wednesday declared the Highland Park School District in a financial emergency, a step that could lead to a state takeover of the school system.
The school district of Highland Park, a small, low-income city entirely surrounded by the city of Detroit, would become the fifth public entity in Michigan to be run by a state-appointed manager.
A 10-member review team appointed by Governor Rick Snyder in November concluded that no satisfactory plan exists to resolve the district’s fiscal problems and recommended the governor appoint an emergency manager to run the district, which serves an estimated 969 students.
Snyder has 10 days to review the report.
The Detroit Public Schools and the cities of Benton Harbor, Ecorse, Flint and Pontiac are already being run by state-appointed managers. Detroit, Michigan’s largest city, also faces a possible state takeover.
Snyder last week named a review team to do an assessment of Detroit, to determine if it, too, has a financial emergency that warrants the appointment of a manager.
A 2011 law made it easier for Michigan to intervene in a fiscally troubled government. The law, which is being challenged in court and is the subject of a ballot repeal drive, also beefed up emergency managers’ powers, allowing them to void contracts and collective bargaining agreements.
The state team that reviewed the Highland Park School District said its cumulative deficit rose by 51 percent over the past fiscal year, while its enrollment has decreased by 58 percent since 2006. The team also found the district had more than $1.7 million in old bills that could lead to a court-ordered increase in the property tax levy.
“The thorough review completed by the financial review team clearly shows that (the district) is facing monumental financial challenges,” said State Treasurer Andy Dillon in a statement.
Edith Hightower, the district’s general superintendent, said the school board will examine the review team’s report this week. If the state process helps the district provide a quality education for its students,Wholesale Ed hardy belts, “we welcome it,” she said.
(Reporting by Karen Pierog; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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Zooey Deschanel finds music a (Pooh) bear necessity
Jan 5, 2012 Abercrombie Fitch
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) Writing a song for a Disney animated film puts a songwriter into a long and legendary line that has produced 30 nominations and 10 wins going back to “When You Wish Upon a Star” in 1940.
And writing a song for a “Winnie the Pooh” movie is just as daunting a task, because it requires a songwriter to follow in the footsteps of Richard and Robert Sherman, who penned the well-known “Pooh” theme song and also wrote “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “It’s a Small World” and “I Wan’na Be Like You,” among many others.
“The tradition of music in Disney animated films is pretty spectacular. But I tried not to think about it, because I might be overwhelmed if I did,” said actress and singer-songwriter Zooey Deschanel,wholesale Ed hardy underwear, who couldn’t exactly ignore that history when she was drafted to contribute to this year’s Disney version of the A.A. Milne stories.
Her initial task, after all, was to record a new version of the Sherman brothers’ theme song. When that went well, she was asked to write and record an end-credits song, which turned out to be “So Long,” one of the film’s two Oscar entries. And after that, she was asked to contribute vocals to other songs in the film … all while finishing a tour with her band, She and Him, and getting ready to begin filming her new TV series, “The New Girl.”
“It kind of happened in little bits and pieces over the course of the year,” Deschanel told TheWrap.
“That’s the thing with music for me. Songwriting was always something that I did in my private time as a release, very much on my own. It didn’t come out into the world until later in my life. But now, as my schedule has gotten so weird and so busy, I feel like I need to keep going back to it.”
Deschanel first got involved with “Winnie the Pooh” when music supervisor Tom McDougall showed her a 10-minute segment that had been cut to a She and Him song, and asked if she’d record the title song. She enlisted bandmate Matt Ward (who goes by M. Ward) to produce, and settled on an approach to a song whose original version was recorded by a large chorus of anonymous singers.
“I think there was something that Matt and I saw in that song that we could pull out, that wasn’t really focused on in the original recording,” she said. “That was the warmth and the intimacy of the song.
We wanted it to feel very warm and sweet. I felt like it should welcome people into the story.”
Her Oscar entry “So Long,” though, ushers viewers out of the story through its placement in the final credits. “They showed me a rough cut of the movie, so I knew what was leading up to that song,” she said. “I knew that I wanted to write a love song, but about friendship love.”
Her models, she said, came from albums she loved both as a kid and as an adult: Harry Nilsson’s “The Point,” Carole King’s “Really Rosie” and the compilation “Free to Be … You and Me.”
“I listened to all of those again,” she said. “They all had classic chord progressions and catchy melodies with good lyrical hooks and very strong choruses. I wanted a song that was upbeat and made you feel happy walking out of the theater, and also one that kids would enjoy.”
The discipline, she added, was dramatically different from writing for her own band, in which she’s free to tackle any subject and take any approach.
“There’s something overwhelming about being able to write about anything, which I can do in She and Him,” she said. “This was like cracking a code. I had to think, ‘How do I accomplish all these things for the movie, how do I tell the story without getting too literal or writing something totally off-topic?’
“But once I did crack the code, it was inspiring. And the movie people pretty much let me do my thing. They were extremely cool about letting me have my creative moment with the song.”
So far, she adds, there’s just one additional thing she’d like out of the experience — and it’s not an Oscar nomination, but a face-to-face with her predecessors in the “Winnie the Pooh” songwriting gig.
“I haven’t met the Sherman brothers yet,” she says. “I would love to, I’m such a fan.”
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