12-year-old wins ‘America’s Got Talent’ $1M prize
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A 12-year-old singing ventriloquist is getting a $1 million prize and her own Las Vegas show after taking the “America’s Got Talent” crown on the season 12 finale of the NBC reality competition.
Darci Lynne Farmer of Oklahoma City beat out another youngster, 10-year-old singer Angelica Hale, for the “AGT” title Wednesday by garnering the most votes from viewers. Farmer told The Associated Press after the show that she was “overcome with joy and luckiness.”
Judge Heidi Klum said the girl “is the full package,” adding that “she really touched people’s hearts” and “made people laugh at home.”
Farmer faced a final-week surge of popular sentiment for her Hale. In the end, the popular vote went to Darci, making her the third ventriloquist to win “AGT,” following Terry Fator (season two) and Paul Zerdin (season 10).
Boston kicks off a year of U.S. tributes to Bernstein
BOSTON (AP) – He was a wunderkind: the youngest music director ever to lead the New York Philharmonic and the genius behind the score to “West Side Story.”
The late Leonard Bernstein would have turned 100 next year, and on Friday, the Boston Symphony Orchestra kicks off a new season dedicated to the Massachusettsborn composer-conductor, one of America’s most famous maestros.
Carnegie Hall gets into the act, too, launching its 2017-18 season on Oct. 4 with a Bernstein program by the Philadelphia Orchestra and music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin.
And the New York Philharmonic will perform Bernstein’s complete symphonic works in a centennial remembrance that starts Oct. 25.
Andris Nelsons, the Boston Symphony’s music director, calls Bernstein an “iconic figure” who influenced generations – including his own.
“Growing up in Latvia in the 1980s and ’90s, Leonard Bernstein always loomed large in the hearts and minds of all of us who aspired to a life in music, including mine,” Nelsons told The Associated Press in an email.
“It was Bernstein’s exuberance, passion and all-encompassing love of music that convinced all who encountered him that music was essential, affirming and necessary for a full life, in which beauty and inspiration ignite the very best of the human spirit,” said Nelsons, now in his fourth season leading the BSO.
Anthony Rapp embarks, thrilled, on ‘Star Trek: Discovery’
NEW YORK (AP) – “Star Trek” has always promoted diversity and tolerance.
Now, a half-century after the original “Star Trek” premiered, a new “Star Trek” arrives with its mission unchanged. “Star Trek: Discovery” takes a step forward by including in its crew an openly gay character, played by an openly gay actor.
Anthony Rapp says he’s proud that “Star Trek” has always been grounded in philosophical and ethical questions. He says it will continue to explore what it means to be human and to understand alien cultures.
He says this is a theme that’s pretty relevant these days.
” Star Trek: Discovery” debuts on the CBS All Access subscription channel and on CBS this Sunday.