Anthony Gelo is one of the hardest working DJs in New York. Anthony was born and raised in Queens, New York and has been in the DJ Entertainment business since 1994. He has performed at events ranging from Wedding Receptions, Corporate Events, Private Parties, School & Nightlife Events to working the crowd in Times Square during Fleet Week. He is a graduate of St. John’s University, where he still regularly works the crowds with expert beat matching and a vast collection of music. Anthony’s company is Good Times Productions, LLC.
Notes from the show:
Anthony got his start working in a video store, and got the opportunity to DJ his boss's teen dance party. It was a disaster. But he was hooked on DJing.
He bought entire record collections from garage sales.
He doesn't consider himself a specialist.
"When I'm playing to a crowd, I'm playing for them, not myself."
His Monday routine: download music from DJ services such as Promo Only Track Trends and Prime Cuts, and organize.
Anthony doesn't like to emcee a lot; he prefers the music to do the talking.
He switched to Serato Scratch Live (Serato DJ) in 2004.
Experience trumps a great music collection.
He thought he was going to have a career in radio.
To this day, Anthony is still very protective of his personal brand; he still considers himself "single op."
His advice to young DJs: get an all-in-one controller, learn basic beat matching, learn different types of music, how to deal with clients, how NOT to make the work about you.
Most of Anthony's clients come from referrals and online reviews.
A Yankee fan from Queens.
The difference between Brooklyn/Manhattan weddings and Long Island weddings.
What it felt like to work Times Square during Fleet Week.
How he stays healthy and builds routines.
Recommended books:
Recommended conference: DJ Times Expo
Recommended social media: Facebook
This podcast hosted by New York attorney Michael Prywes was sponsored by Prywes, PC, a law firm devoted to artists and entrepreneurs.
This podcast may contain attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee future outcomes.
Rhoda Sherbell is an American sculptor whose work has been compared to Rodin's. She has been commissioned by the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY as well as private commissions from Yogi Berra, Casey Stengel, Aaron Copland, among a host of other celebrities. Her sculptures are in the permanent collections of twenty-five museums throughout the country, including the the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Jewish Museum, the State Museum of Connecticut, William Benton Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum. She is a member of the National Academy Museum, and is on the board of the Portrait Society of America. In 1960, Rhoda was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters alongside Philip Roth and Norman Mailer. In 2013, the National Association of Women Artists awarded Ms. Sherbell as Artist of the Year, an award previously bestowed upon such luminaries of the art world as Mary Cassatt and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.
Notes from the show:
She grew up going to Brooklyn Museum of Art; she didn't love Rembrandt's as her father had. She loved the Egyptian rooms; she would hug the giant cat sculptures.
Her father believed you weren't a complete person if you didn't have a fill exposure to the arts and literature.
Her parents wanted her to go to Cooper Union, but the artists she admired were all at the Arts Students League. She asked for, and received, a scholarship, and asked to study with Reginald Marsh and William Zorach.
She was by far the youngest student there in the 1950s, and Zorach took her under his wing and called her "Baby." He quickly asked MOMA to have her teach sculpting during Christmas break.
Rhoda works on a half-dozen to a dozen pieces at a time.
Her focus now is a series called "The Woman's Question."
She was not interested in portraiture until Zorach asked her to do a portrait of him and his wife Marguerite.
She was not and is not interested in commercialism and wonders if it is a fault. She is interested in exploring "truth."
It was tough to be a woman in sculpture in the 50s and 60s. But she became an academician very early.
"You never feel like you arrived. There's always another hill to climb."
Oronzio Maldarelli didn't want her to be in the American Academy of Arts and Letters because she was a woman, and it would be "a wasted vote."
The foundry with which she initially worked would ignore her and only take care of men. She eventually switched to "Roman Bronze."
The owner of the Portland Sea Dogs Boston Red Sox affiliate commissioned her to sculpt "American Baseball Family."
Zorach didn't use tools, but Rhoda likes tools--she will use anything that works.
Rhoda doesn't sketch, because then the sketch becomes the work of art, and she doesn't want to do a second version.
Rhoda would not take photographs of her subjects.
She recommends going to Shu Swamp Nature Preserve in Mill Neck, NY.
She sculpts from memory, sometimes in the near dark.
You should always strive for a "unity of opposites" in line and volume.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is her favorite museum.
Artists must acknowledge and try to connect with an audience.
She loves Pierre Puvis de Chavannes' paintings.
Her discovery that "Las Meninas" by Velasquez was painted impasto.
"Spirit of the Dance" killed William Zorach.
"Artists need a William Zorach in their life."
Rhoda always knows when to stop sculpting a certain piece.
Yogi Berra was lots of fun. His wife was fiercely protective of him. He wanted "Sherbell portrait" like Casey Stengel had.
Percy and Joanne Uris were Rhoda's Medici-like patrons.
The story of Aaron Copland's confused Great Dane.
The camaraderie of MacDowell's Artists Colony and Rhoda's decision to leave.
"To be an artist, you need to know who you are.""
"If you're a person of purpose, you have to say 'My time is valuable, I'm not going to live forever. Protect the time..."
This podcast hosted by New York attorney Michael Prywes was sponsored by Prywes Schwartz, PLLC, a law firm devoted to artists and entrepreneurs.
This podcast may contain attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee future outcomes.
Cinematographer Reed Morano is the Director of Photography for HBO’s hit new show Vinyl, executive produced by Martin Scorcese and Mick Jagger.
In early 2013, Reed was invited to become the youngest member of the American Society of Cinematographers; she is one of very few women out of approximately 340 active members in the organization. She has been named one of variety's"10 Cinematographers to Watch", one of ioncinema.com's "American New Wave 25", and one of five innovative cinematographers in icg magazine's "generation next" spotlight. In 2012, reed's work was featured in Indiewire's "On the Rise '12: 5 Cinematographers Lighting Up Screens in Recent Years" and "Heroines of Cinema: An A-Z of Women in Film in 2012." Some of Reed's thoughts on the digital revolution and how it has affected filmmaking are featured in Keanu Reeves' acclaimed documentary Side by Side. She was honored to be featured in Kodak's long-running OnFilm series.
Reed's work appears regularly at the Sundance Film Festival including the premieres of Little Birds, Shut Up and Play the Hits, and For Ellen. Frozen River won the Grand Jury prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and went on to be nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Actress for Melissa Leo and Best Screenplay) and seven Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Picture; Reed's work on the film was the subject of an article in American Cinematographer. In 2013, Kill Your Darlings, a 35mm period piece about the beat poets set in 1943, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Jason Leigh was released theatrically and premiered at Sundance, as well as the Toronto and Venice film festivals. Also in 2013, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete, premiered at Sundance and was released theatrically that fall; the drama was directed by George Tillman Jr. and stars Jennifer Hudson, Anthony Mackie, and Jeffrey Wright.
In January of 2014, HBO premiered the first season of its new original series, Looking, shot by Reed. Reed's other theatrical premieres of 2014 include The Skeleton Twins, War Story, Autumn Blood, and Rob Reiner's latest feature, And So It Goes, starring Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton, written by Mark Andrus of As Good As It Gets.
In the summer of 2014, Reed began production on her first feature as both the director and DP; Cinedigm's dark drama "Meadowland" stars Olivia Wilde, Luke Wilson, Giovanni Ribisi, Elisabeth Moss, Juno Temple and John Leguizamo. Reed is currently leading the charge on a movement to control motion interpolation a.k.a. "the soap opera effect" on our HDTVs; Reed's change.org petition is supported by nearly 10,000 signatures and has gained momentum, attracting the attention of both the film and technology communities.
Reed currently lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children.
Notes from the show:
Her dad suggested NYU film school to her because of her love of photography.
All DPs develop an intuition so they can tell from a script how it wants to be shot.
No one teaches you in film school what the etiquette is for a cinematographer.
It takes years and years to find the right combination of your style, the director's ideas, and what's right for the story.
Vinyl's pilot had already been shot before Reed's interview for the HBO series.
Reed likes to light a whole space and yield to amazing spontaneous moments more than planning every shot.
There's a fear of not having enough light.
Reed left film school in no rush to direct.
Reed started working in the grip and electric departments on local shoots. Her first "big" film was Returning Mickey Stern, shot on Fire Island, NY.
Fellow filmmaker and college buddy Toshiro Yamaguchi invited Reed to join the crew of Mickey Stern.
Gripping gave Reed a real understanding of the set. It also provided a paycheck while she shot films on the side.
You build up stamina and muscle memory over time.
She feels like "just one of the guys"- you have to "have a trucker's mentality... you have to be chill."
That time she saw Conrad Hall, ASC speak.
The moment she found out she had been invited into the ASC.
How she got into the ASC.
Her partnership with Olivia Wilde.
The American Cinematographer Manual
The photography of Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Find Reed on Instagram at ReedMorano
This podcast hosted by New York attorney Michael Prywes was sponsored by Prywes Schwartz, PLLC, a law firm devoted to artists and entrepreneurs.
This podcast may contain attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee future outcomes.
Gene Seymour is an arts critic and culture reporter who writes frequently for CNN and USA Today. In New York, he was a longtime film and jazz critic at Newsday. His writings have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Entertainment Weekly, the Washington Post, and many other publications. Gene is a contributor to The Oxford Companion to Jazz and is the author of Jazz: The Great American Art, a history for young adults. Gene is a two-time winner of the New York Association of Black Journalists Award for distinguished criticism.
Notes from the show:
Gene started out as a reporter, and approaches criticism from a reporter's perspective.
Got his big break when Nels Elson passed along opportunity to cover the Philadelphia Jazz Festival.
Gene's years as a television critic were among his happiest as a journalist because he got to cover tv, politics, and culture.
Gene's came to Newsday as a New York City jazz critic, but later provided movie criticism.
Gene was raised in a Hartford CT household which always had jazz records playing: Miles Davis, Ahmed Jamal, Dave Brubek, Chet Baker, Charlie Parker.
His Dad's motto: "If it doesn't have soul, it isn't worth it."
His Dad loved Paul Desmond's "Time After Time" and Sonny Stitts's "Who Can I Turn To?"- these songs became emotional touchstones.
Music critics range from composer Virgil Thompson to George Bernard Shaw.
It is not Gene's role to explain on behalf of a musician, but to write on behalf of the spectator.
The art of note-taking during a live performance vs. a movie.
Lena Horne vs. the cell phone.
First Book of Jazz - Langston Hughes
"Jazz is the 20th century."
"Have We Reached the End of Jazz Itself?" - The Nation
Flying Lotus, Kendrick LaMarr, and the future of jazz.
Groundhog Day, The Big Lebowski, and giving movies a second look.
Critics' controversy over Wes Anderson.
John Leonard's disdain for All in the Family.
Better Living Through Criticism - A.O. Scott
Recommended Blogs:
The Psychology of What Makes a Great Story - Brain Pickings
This podcast hosted by New York attorney Michael Prywes was sponsored by Prywes Schwartz, PLLC, a law firm devoted to artists and entrepreneurs.
This podcast may contain attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee future outcomes.