Edinburgh festival
American drag queen among Fringe acts
Eddie Jen, a drag queen from San Francisco, wants to show that “America still fights for kindness”, while Abby Govindan, a US stand-up comic of Indian heritage, aims to convince audiences Texas is not what they think. The performers are among those who make the number of US acts at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe the highest in at least a decade.
The Edinburgh International Festival, held every August, was established after World War 2 with the goal of using culture to heal divisions. It immediately spawned an unofficial Fringe that became bigger than the original festival, attracting thousands of maverick performers in venues citywide. This year’s Fringe includes productions from Armenia to Zimbabwe, organisers say. The percentage of US acts is 12.1%, compared with 11.1% last year and 6.1% in 2014. No earlier data is available. British acts have decreased to 69.8% of the total, from 71.2% in 2024, and 81.5% in 2014. Performers have said high costs, especially for accommodation, are a deterrent.
For US artists, that can matter less. Their numbers had already risen as producers chose Edinburgh to test the appeal of musicals as a cheaper alternative to Broadway. US President Donald Trump, who changed laws on diversity after he returned to office in January, making many artists anxious about freedom of expression, is a factor. Govindan said she would have brought her show How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents to Edinburgh “regardless of politics”.
TV
Disney and Carano settle dispute
Walt Disney has resolved a legal dispute with actor Gina Carano over her firing from the Star Wars streaming TV series The Mandalorian, a spokesperson for Disney unit Lucasfilm said on Thursday. Disney removed Carano from The Mandalorian in 2021 over social media posts that the company at the time called “abhorrent and unacceptable” for “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities”.
Carano sued Disney in 2024 for wrongful termination and sex discrimination with backing from billionaire Elon Musk. The actor argued she was fired for voicing conservative opinions and that male stars who spoke out did not suffer any consequences. In Thursday’s statement, the Lucasfilm spokesperson said Carano “was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff, and she worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect”.
“With this lawsuit concluded, we look forward to identifying opportunities to work with Ms Carano in the near future,” the spokesperson added.
No details on the settlement were provided. Carano, in a post on Musk’s social media platform X, called the resolution “the best outcome for all parties involved”. “I am humbled and grateful to God for His love and grace in this outcome,” Carano said. She also thanked Musk “for backing my case and asking for nothing in return”.
Disney fired Carano from the show after the series of social media posts. “Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbours … even by children,” Carano wrote on Instagram, according to a Variety report at the time.
Music
Latin jazz pianist Palmieri dies
Eddie Palmieri, a Grammy-celebrated pianist, composer and bandleader widely recognised as a leading figure in the Latin jazz and salsa music scene, died on Wednesday at his home in New Jersey, according to his Facebook page. He was 88.
No cause of death was given. Born in the Spanish Harlem section of Upper Manhattan to Puerto Rican parents, Palmieri began studying piano as a youngster and made his musical debut performing at Carnegie Hall at age 11. Two years later, he grew fascinated with percussion and joined his uncle’s Latin jazz orchestra on timbales at age 13, but soon switched again to piano and never looked back, according to a biography posted on AllMusic.com.
Still, his early infatuation with percussion went on to inform his dazzling, thunderous piano style, and compositions that transcended the boundaries of Afro-Caribbean music, jazz, funk and soul. As described by AllMusic, his technique as a pianist incorporated bits and pieces from contemporaries ranging from McCoy Tyner to Herbie Hancock and recycled them through a dynamic, Latin groove.
“His approach can be compared to Thelonious Monk's for its unorthodox patterns, odd rhythms, sometimes disjointed phrases and percussive effects played in a manner that is always successfully resolved,” AllMusic wrote.
Recording
US muso exports Russian microphones
From a small factory in Tula, a city south of Moscow, US musician David Arthur Brown exports Russian-made Soyuz microphones to Europe, the US, China and beyond. While sanctions are squeezing Russia’s trade in commodities and technology, Brown’s company is one of the many nonsanctioned businesses with foreign connections battling geopolitical headwinds to maintain ties between Russia and the West. But unlike multinationals such as Nestle, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble that have chosen to continue operating in Russia while hundreds of others have exited the country, Soyuz, which means “union” in English, represents a much smaller niche.
With a team of about 60 workers, the company makes microphones by hand and from scratch at its two-storey Soviet-era factory in Tula, a city also known for spiced gingerbread pryaniki cookies, traditional water-heating samovars and arms production.
“You would have to be crazy to go into this business because it’s a tiny market and an extremely crowded market,” Brown said. “But I believed that we had a strategic advantage because Tula has very highly skilled labour here, because of the arms industry, and lower salaries than Moscow because it’s a regional city.”
Brown launched Soyuz in 2013 and the company’s microphones, some designed to evoke the distinctive onion domes of Russian Orthodox churches, retail for thousands of dollars.
Having loved using Soviet-made Oktava condenser microphones in 1990s Los Angeles, Brown wondered whether he could create a high-end microphone with Russian character that was equally as good as those of Austrian and German competitors. Brown, frontman of the band Brazzaville, was touring in Russia when a visit to Oktava’s production site in Tula sparked a new ambition in him.
“The West made tanks, Russians made tanks, the West made rockets, Russia made rockets, microphones, cameras, everything,” Brown said. “It’s drawing from a long, rich tradition, it’s not just inventing something out of the air.”
Soyuz is not under sanctions, but all businesses operating in Russia have to contend with the barriers to trade that sanctions have erected, such as more complicated payment flows and circuitous trade routes through third countries to access the European market.
Reuters
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