Names and faces
■ Singers Nicki Minaj and Tracy Chapman have settled a bitter lawsuit over Minaj’s sampling of the 1988 hit song “Baby Can I Hold You.” Chapman decided to accept the rapper’s $450,000 offer to resolve the civil case, ending a two-year dispute and avoiding an even costlier trial, according to federal court records obtained by the Daily News. The lawsuit accused Minaj of copyright infringement for sampling Chapman’s song in her 2018 tune “Sorry,” which leaked on social media and almost made it into Minaj’s album “Queen.” Minaj’s version features rapper Nas and includes several verses from Chapman’s original track. Minaj and her agents did make multiple requests to license the song in summer 2018 — even though she had already recorded her version “without the requested license,” the lawsuit alleged. Chapman repeatedly denied the requests, but Minaj provided a copy of “Sorry” to a popular DJ who later shared a link to the recording on Twitter, according to the complaint. The link connects users to a website that, until recently, included an embedded video player with the song “Sorry,” Chapman’s lawyers said. The $450,000 settlement, filed Thursday in California federal court, covers all costs and attorney fees incurred to date.
■ Conductor Rafael Payare was hired Thursday as music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal starting with the 2022-23 season. A Venezuelan, Payere, 40, has been music director of the San Diego Symphony since 2019-20 and has a contract there through 2025-26. Payare first conducted the Montreal orchestra in September 2018 in Schoenberg’s “Verklaerte Nacht,” Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 with concertmaster Andrew Wan and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. Payare returned to the orchestra in July 2019. He was in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he served as music director of the Ulster Orchestra from 2014-19, when Montreal orchestra CEO Madeleine Careau and another official visited him in January 2019 as part of the recruiting process. Trained as a French horn player, Payare, who lives in San Diego and Berlin, is married to cellist Alisa Weilerstein, and they frequently perform together. He will serve as music director designate in 2021-22 with a five-to-six week commitment, then spend 14 to 16 weeks annually as music director, in addition to 10 weeks a season in San Diego. Initial Montreal programming will depend on what artists are available as the pandemic alleviates.