Recording Academy to increase diversity with almost 2,000 new members

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Columbia Records has entered into a joint venture with former Capitol Records chairman-CEO Jeff Vaughn to launch Signal Records, the company announced Wednesday. The Los Angeles-based imprint will operate as a new label with Columbia Records of Sony Music Entertainment and begin operations immediately, with an artist roster to be announced in the coming weeks. As founder and CEO, Vaughn will lead the company’s creative direction and business development while utilizing Columbia’s marketing, promotion, and label services. Ron Perry, Chairman & CEO of Columbia Records, said, “I’ve admired Jeff’s work from afar for a while. He has incredible musical instincts, an infectious work ethic, and great passion. I’m looking forward to working together on this new chapter.”

ACADEMY SCREENING ROOM  “All the Old Knives”                      “The Bad Guys” (animated)“Emergency”                                 “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”“Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song” (documentary)“Hustle”“Marry Me”“Master”                                          “Navalny”“Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams”“Thirteen Lives”                              “Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb” (documentary)DOCUMENTARIES“Anonymous Club”“The Automat”“Bad Axe”“The Balcony Movie”“Bitterbrush”“The Camera of Doctor Morris”“Children of the Mist”“Civil”“Claydream”“Cow”“Deep in the Heart: A Texas Wildlife Story”“Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel”“Fanny: The Right to Rock”“Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen”“Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song”“Hold Your Fire”“A House Made of Splinters”“I’m Wanita”“Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story”“Keep Stepping”“My Old School”“Navalny”“Only In Theaters”“Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams”“Sirens”“The Story Won’t Die”“Surviving Sex Trafficking”“Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb”ACADEMY SCREENINGSLos Angeles:Saturday, Oct. 1: “Don’t Worry Darling”Sunday, Oct. 2: “Sidney” (documentary)Sunday, Oct.

An upcoming unauthorized biography takes a look inside the final painful days leading up to Anthony Bourdain’s death.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Orlando Wharton has been named executive vice president of Capitol Music Group and president of Priority Records. The announcement was made by CMG chair & CEO Michelle Jubelirer, to whom Wharton will report.  According to the announcement, in his new position, Wharton will sign and guide artists across CMG’s portfolio of labels, and will relaunch the legendary Priority Records label as a dedicated home for new, developing and established hip hop artists.  Wharton will assume his positions at CMG early next year, and will be based at the company’s offices in New York. The announcement closely follows the company’s hiring of Doja Cat co-manager Gordan Dillard as EVP of A&R and artist development.

Rihanna appears to be getting ready for her big performance!

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Metallica have announced that they will perform a special tribute concert on Nov. 6 to honor Jonny and Marsha Zazula, the founders of their original label, Megaforce Records. The group, which will be joined by fellow Megaforce alums Raven, will perform songs from their early career, dating from 1983 and ’84. The concert will take place at the 7,000-capacity Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla. — an unusually small venue for the band. The Zazulas, for decades an influential and well-respected power couple on the metal scene, passed away within a year of each other in 2021 and 2022.

Alternative/ExperimentalOlivia Peace, “Against Reality,” University of Southern CaliforniaAnimationJan Gadermann and Sebastian Gadow, “Laika & Nemo,” Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg, GermanyLachlan Pendragon, “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It,” Griffith Film School, AustraliaYanis Belaid, Eliott Benard and Nicolas Mayeur, “The Seine’s Tears,” Pôle 3D Digital & Creative School, FranceDocumentaryShuhao Tse, “Found,” New York UniversityJared Peraglia, “Here to Stay,” New York UniversityGabriella Canal and Michael Fearon, “Seasons,” Columbia UniversityNarrativeNils Keller, “Almost Home,” University of Television and Film Munich, GermanyWelf Reinhart, “Rooms,” University of Television and Film Munich, GermanyFreddy Macdonald, “Shedding Angels,” American Film Institute

Ime Udoka, the fiance of actress Nia Long, could reportedly face a one-year suspension from the NBA.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Compton-based house-music producer-singer Channel Tres has inked a deal that sees him joining RCA Records in partnership with L.A. indie Godmode. The partnership kicks off tonight with the release of the new single “No Limit,” with his debut full-length album “Real Cultural Shit” arriving later this fall. The album will also feature his singles from earlier this year, “Acid in my Blood,” “Ganzfeld Experiment” and “Just Can’t Get Enough.” Channel Tres, who has toured with Robyn, Vince Staples, Disclosure and Toro y Moi and performed at Coachella and New York’s Gov Ball, calls his style of dance music “Compton house”; it meshes the rhythms of Chicago house and Detroit techno with the bite of West Coast rap.

David Farrier has made his mark in the past several years with documentaries with off-beat subjects like 2016’s “Tickled” and his 2018 Netflix series “Dark Tourist.” Now, he’s back with his latest feature, “Mister Organ,” about perhaps his most weirdest subject yet. READ MORE: Fantastic Fest 2022 Lineup: New Films From Luca Guadagnino, Park Chan-wook, Martin McDonagh, & More Added To The Event The upcoming doc follows Farrier as he becomes interested in the titular Michael Organ, a wheel clamper in New Zealand.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent After “Midnight in Paris,” Woody Allen will return to the French capital for his 50th movie which he’s described as a “poisonous romantic thriller” with a pair of French stars, Valerie Lemercier (“Aline”) and Niels Schneider (“Love Affair(s))”. The untitled film, the plot of which is being kept under wraps, will start filming next month and will be entirely in French with a budget in the $10-million range. Allen has described the film to be similar to “Match Point,” in that it would be “exciting, dramatic and also very sinister.”  Allen sparked headlines earlier this week after Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia ran a story reporting that the New York-based filmmaker had told them he was planning on retiring. Allen’s representative then issued a statement saying that the director had “no intention of retiring.”

In an increasingly surprising story in the UK, a campaign to remove two star TV presenters from their morning show has now reached almost 30,000 signatures. Their alleged crime? Jumping the queue to see the late Queen. 

New Order and Pet Shop Boys kicked off their joint North American tour over the weekend – see footage, pictures and the setlists from their opening night below.The British synthpop titans’ tour got underway at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage on Saturday (September 17) following delays due to the COVID pandemic.The Unity Tour’s revised dates include guest DJ Paul Oakenfold and take in an additional date at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in New York. Head here for any remaining tickets.New Order opened their set on Saturday with ‘Regret’ and wrapped with a cover of Joy Division‘s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.Pet Shop Boys, meanwhile, opened with ‘Surburbia’ before closing with ‘Being Boring’.

Thania Garcia The Recording Academy‘s Black Music Collective (BMC) has added new members to its honorary chairs and leadership council. Together, the group is committed to the “inclusion, recognition and advancement of Black music and its creators and professionals within the Recording Academy and music industry at-large,” according to the BMC. Yolanda Adams, Valeisha Butterfield Jones, Ethiopia Habtemariam and Yvette Noel-Schure will be joining returning honorary chairs Jeff Harleston, Jimmy Jam, Quincy Jones, and John Legend. New on the leadership council are Prince Charles Alexander, Jimmie Allen, Denzel Baptiste and David Biral (Take a Daytrip), Jennifer Goicoechea, Mickey Guyton, Claudine Joseph, Ledisi, Herb Trawick, Ebonie Ward and Yola.

The Academy needs to create new revenue streams that do not rely on the Oscars show, but it also needs to bring the Oscars to a position of “power, honorability and importance,” Academy leaders told the organization’s membership in an all-members meeting on Saturday.The meeting, led by new Academy CEO Bill Kramer and new president Janet Yang, took place in the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and was available to be attended virtually by members not in Los Angeles.In some ways, the gathering was reminiscent of the all-members meeting held by then-president Hawk Koch and CEO Dawn Hudson in May, 2013, which took place simultaneously in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. At that point, the Academy consisted of about 6,000 members and was predominantly white and male; the #OscarsSoWhite protests had yet to push the organization to become more diverse, while the Academy Museum was in the planning stages.This year’s meeting came at a time when the Academy has expanded to 10,627 members, more than doubling the number of women and people of color and including a very large international contingent.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The European Film Academy will honor Palestinian auteur Elia Suleiman with its European Achievement in World Cinema Award. The Paris-based Suleiman, whose most recent work “It Must Be Heaven” premiered in 2019 at Cannes, is the first Palestinian director to win this prestigious prize. Suleiman will be an honorary guest at the 35th European Film Awards ceremony to be held on Dec. 10 in Reykjavik. Born in Nazareth, Suleiman started his career in New York where in the early 1990s he shot two short films, “Introduction to the End of an Argument” and “Homage by Assassination” which won several prizes.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Franco-Swiss director and New Wave linchpin Jean-Luc Godard, who revolutionized world cinema with his ground-breaking debut, “Breathless,” and never stopped pushing the envelope of his creativity, has died. He was 91. The news was first reported in Liberation.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large As they get ready for TV’s biggest night, Television Academy chairman/CEO Frank Scherma (above, left) and president/COO Maury McIntyre (right) spoke to Variety about what to expect as the Emmys return. Monday’s ceremony, which airs live starting at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on NBC and Peacock, is hosted by Kenan Thompson and will feature John Legend performing his new song “Pieces” during the “in memoriam” segment of the show, as well as Zedd as the evening’s DJ, and comedian Sam Jayas announcer. Here’s an excerpt of that chat, which ranges from the logistics behind this year’s ceremonies, the return of the Governors’ Gala, what to expect with host Thompson and the return of producers Done+Dusted and Reggie Hudlin, and what may be next in terms of category rule changes.