The Puerto Rican pop star logs a seventh week at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart; numbers for “Renaissance,” Beyoncé’s latest, arrive next week.Before Beyoncé arrives with oomph on the charts, Bad Bunny is spending a seventh nonconsecutive week at No. 1.“Renaissance,” the feverishly anticipated and extensively teased seventh solo studio LP from Beyoncé, will debut on next week’s Billboard rankings; industry estimates predict an easy ride to No. 1 on the album chart, with totals between 275,000 and 315,000 total units including sales, streams and downloads. Spotify said on Saturday that the first 24 hours of “Renaissance” made it the most-streamed release by a female artist in a single day so far this year.Those predictions, though not final, would put the singer near the top of the sales heap for 2022 debuts. But Beyoncé would still fall well short of the biggest opening to this point: Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House,” which opened with 521,500 units in May, including 182,000 copies on vinyl, the most of the modern era. Beyoncé, too, is selling multiple physical versions of her new release, but Billboard’s rules dictate that they will only be counted toward chart position when they are shipped to customers — an open logistical question that will affect her final first-week totals.In the meantime, Bad Bunny remains on top of the Billboard 200 for the fifth week in a row, during a relatively slow time for fresh releases from major artists. “Un Verano Sin Ti,” the fourth album from the Puerto Rican rapper and singer, earned 98,000 in sales by Billboard’s metrics, almost all of which came via the 135.9 million streams of songs from the album, according to the tracking service Luminate.Released in May, “Un Verano Sin Ti” had topped 100,000 units in each of its previous 11 weeks on the chart, according to Billboard.Also in the Top 5 this week, with modest numbers: the country singer Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album,” released in early 2021, is back up to No. 2 with 49,000 units; “Harry’s House” is No. 3 with 48,000 units; the South Korean group Seventeen is No. 4 with 34,000 units; and Future’s “I Never Liked You” is No. 5 with 33,000 units. Jack White’s latest solo album, “Entering Heaven Alive,” debuts at No. 9. Lizzo’s “Special” falls to No. 7 from No. 2 in its second week out, down 58 percent to 29,000 units. More

A writer struggled with being present. This Brazilian drum helped her pay attention.Earlier this year, Paul Simon’s “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” came on at a party I was at. I didn’t recognize the song at first; the room was crowded, and making out Simon’s strumming over multiple streams of chatter and conversation proved difficult. But then I heard it: a sharp noise, cutting through the track’s major chords in jagged intervals like a pair of blunt scissors. When I asked my friend what she thought the sound was, she paused, then guessed it might have been a duck. Another friend likened it to throat singing. They didn’t expect that the alien noise came from a type of drum — the cuíca.The cuíca is an odd instrument. It can buzz, hum, squeak and squawk; it can moan or creak; sometimes it even sounds like it’s weeping. If we’re being specific, cuícas are Brazilian friction drums, and although the word “friction” refers to the method used to play the instrument (musicians reach inside the drum to manipulate a wooden stick while their second hand applies pressure to the other side), the word also describes the abrasive effect it can have on listeners. Punching through songs as if it disagrees with how they’re supposed to sound, the cuíca is a key instrument in the bateria, the drumming wing of Rio de Janeiro’s samba ensembles during Carnival.I can’t remember the first time I heard it. Maybe it was in my grandmother’s living room in Brasília late one Christmas Eve, when, after a few drinks, my aunt Patrícia would put on Chico Buarque’s “Apesar de Você.” Or perhaps I heard it when I was still a baby, when my mom would play one of her favorite songs, “Carolina Carol Bela,” by Jorge Ben Jor and Toquinho. The particular moment hardly matters. The cuíca’s central role in most Brazilian music — from samba to Tropicália — means it has swathed me all my life. While I’ll never know where I first heard the drum, I keep going back to that sound, searching it out.I left Brazil when I was 1 and have spent most of my life outside the country. Though I now live in London, I’m still sensitive to sounds and smells that remind me of my birthplace. I would be lying if I said I like to listen to the cuíca for that reason, though. When I hear the cuíca, it doesn’t take me back to Brazil; it takes me somewhere else altogether.I struggle with being present, and often gravitate toward things that demand my attention in quick bursts: fountains, spicy food, the color orange, Leos. Cuícas fall into that category. They swallow me whole one moment, only to cough me back up the next. Hearing the sound feels like the aural equivalent of driving over a pothole. For a second or two, I jump in my seat. My stomach clenches. I lose track of space and time. Then, after a few measures, I’m back in the real world again, only now everything around me feels clearer and louder — and emptier, too. Sometimes I feel as though I may have misplaced something in the process. But when I rack my brain for what that might be, I can never figure out what I’m looking for.It can buzz, hum, squeak and squawk; it can moan or creak; sometimes it even sounds like it’s weeping.In some ways, the cuíca’s ability to transport listeners is part of its appeal. When Paul Simon was recording “Me and Julio” with the Brazilian jazz percussionist Airto Moreira, he said he wanted something that sounded “like a human voice” in the mix — a noise that would surprise and move people, making the song’s characters come alive. After Moreira played the cuíca for him, Simon knew he’d found what he needed. He wasn’t the only one who liked the way it sounded either: In 1972, the song charted in the U.S. for nine straight weeks.It’s a strange yet pleasant sensation, often making me think of the different processes that move sounds across space and instruments across continents. Pain and joy commingle in the history of the cuíca. Some historians believe that, like many percussion instruments in the region, enslaved Africans brought it to the Americas; it took root in Brazil in the form of samba. It’s believed that people originally used the drum to hunt lions, hoping that the animals would mistake the noise for another living being. After all, not many instruments sound like weeping or laughing, ducks or singing.The more I reflect on the uniqueness of the sound, the more I find myself reckoning with the complex history of migration — both forced and otherwise — that underpins it. It makes me think of how, in the Americas — where most of us are migrants or descendants of migrants — it’s hard to know exactly where or what “home” is. Sometimes it’s beans and bay leaves and strangers whose voices undulate when they talk. The cuíca, though, reminds me of my own history of movement. It complicates the idea of home.A few months ago, I was out at a bar when I heard the instrument again — this time in the form of Jorge Ben Jor’s “Taj Mahal.” Seated at the table with my friend, I couldn’t keep track of what we were talking about. That strange noise — laughing? gasping? weeping? — in the background commanded my attention. Once the song was over, I returned to the conversation in full. Secretly, though, I’d been carried to a different time and place entirely, and found myself wishing I could stay there a while longer. Carolina Abbott Galvão is a writer based in London. More

After decades of failed attempts, the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center are hoping that the new $550 million renovation has finally fixed the hall.The efforts to fix the New York Philharmonic’s troubled Lincoln Center home date back almost to the night it opened in 1962, when the auditorium, originally called Philharmonic Hall, was found acoustically wanting.In 1976 a gut renovation transformed the space, which had been renamed Avery Fisher Hall in honor of a large gift from the audio equipment pioneer Avery Fisher, and tried to fix its acoustics. But problems persisted. More tweaks were made in the 1990s. The Philharmonic tried to leave for good in 2003 to return to its old home, Carnegie Hall. Plans for new designs by Norman Foster and Thomas Heatherwick came and went.Now the hall, renamed David Geffen Hall after a $100 million gift from the entertainment mogul David Geffen, is reopening in early October after a $550 million overhaul that everyone hopes will finally get it right. Here is a brief timeline of the long road to the new hall.Sept. 23, 1962A Glamorous Opening, Troubling SignsLeonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic at the opening of the hall in 1962.Eddie Hausner/The New York TimesPhilharmonic Hall, which was designed by Max Abramovitz and was the first part of Lincoln Center to be completed, opens with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic at a white-tie gala attended by the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, and other luminaries. But in his review the next day the critic Harold C. Schonberg in The New York Times notes a “decided lack of bass” in the orchestra section that worsens in the loges and at the back of the hall, where he likens it to “a high-fidelity outfit with the bass control out of the circuit.”Sept. 25, 1962“We’re not going to tear down the hall and rebuild.”Philharmonic Hall on opening night.via New York Philharmonic Shelby White & Leon Levy Digital ArchivesThe hall’s acoustician, Leo Beranek, tells The Times that he is “not entirely satisfied” with the sound but believes that adjustments will improve it. “In other words,” the article quotes him as saying, “we’re not going to tear down the hall and rebuild.” A series of remodeling efforts begins, but by 1974 visiting ensembles, including the Boston Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra, decide to return to Carnegie Hall.The Reopening of David Geffen HallThe New York Philharmonic’s notoriously jinxed auditorium at Lincoln Center has undergone a $550 million renovation.Reborn, Again: The renovation of the star-crossed hall aims to break its acoustic curse — and add a dash of glamour.‘Unfinished Business’: After a 17-year run in Los Angeles, Deborah Borda returned to the New York Philharmonic, which she led in the 1990s, to help usher it into its new home.San Juan Hill: Etienne Charles’s composition for the reopening of the hall honors the Afro-diasporic musical heritage of the neighborhood razed to build Lincoln Center.Timeline: From a troubled opening in 1962 to a full gutting in 1976 to the latest renovations, here is a brief timeline of the long road to the new hall.1975Gutting the Hall and Starting Againvia New York Philharmonic Shelby White & Leon Levy Digital ArchivesLincoln Center announces plans to gut the hall, now called Avery Fisher Hall, and to completely rebuild it under the supervision of the acoustician Cyril M. Harris and the architect Philip Johnson. “There was no point any longer taking halfway measures in relation to the hall,” Fisher says. “A fresh start was needed.”1976Avery Fisher Hall Reopens, to HopeThe philanthropist Avery Fisher, center, was in the audience when the newly renovated Avery Fisher Hall opened in 1976.Eddie Hausner/The New York TimesAvery Fisher Hall reopens, and the early reviews are good. This time Schonberg writes in The Times that in “any part of the dynamic range, too, from the wispiest pianissimo to the most stupendous forte, Fisher Hall came through with extraordinary clarity.” But for all his early enthusiasm, he notes that the bass sound, while improved, “tends to be a little weak.”1992The Musicians Still Cannot Hear Each OtherSound reflectors were added around the stage to help the players hear each other.via New York Philharmonic Shelby White & Leon Levy Digital ArchivesMusicians still complain that they cannot hear one another on the stage, so sound reflectors — some called “bongos” for their curved appearance — are placed on the walls and ceiling. Allan Kozinn writes in The Times that “Avery Fisher Hall’s acoustics have troubled musicians and listeners ever since it opened in 1962 as Philharmonic Hall. And although the 1976 renovation was considered an improvement, critics continued to complain of an overly bright brass sound and a weak bass.”2003The Philharmonic Tries to Leave Lincoln CenterThe Philharmonic stuns Lincoln Center by announcing that it plans to leave Avery Fisher to return to Carnegie Hall. The announcement throws the center’s on-again, off-again redevelopment plans into chaos (three finalists had been selected to compete to redesign Fisher: Norman Foster, Rafael Moneo and the team of Richard Meier and Arata Isozaki). But the plan, which also called for the Philharmonic and Carnegie to merge, proves unworkable and is soon abandoned.2005Norman Foster Tapped, But Nothing Comes of ItThe Philharmonic board selects the architect Norman Foster to redesign the hall, but plans stall.March 4, 2015David Geffen Gives $100 MillionDavid Geffen, center, with Katherine G. Farley, chairwoman of Lincoln Center, and Jed Bernstein, who was then its president.Richard Perry/The New York TimesDavid Geffen donates $100 million to renovate the hall, which is then named for him, after the Fisher family agrees give up the naming rights in exchange for several inducements, including $15 million.Dec. 9, 2015Heatherwick Studio Briefly on Design TeamThe London firm Heatherwick Studio, led by Thomas Heatherwick, and Diamond Schmitt Architects of Toronto are chosen to redesign the interior of David Geffen Hall. They join the acoustic design firm Akustiks and the theater design firm Fisher Dachs.2017Back to the Drawing BoardLincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic scrap the current plans and go back to the drawing board, saying that the proposals were growing too complicated and too costly, and would force the orchestra out of the hall for three seasons.2019A Plan, and a Design Team, at LastAn artist’s rendering of the plans for the new hall. New York PhilharmonicA new $550 million plan is unveiled to make the hall more intimate, cutting more than 500 seats, reducing capacity to 2,200 from 2,738. It also calls for adding seats behind the stage, fixing the acoustics, rethinking the public spaces and, yes, adding more restrooms. Heatherwick Studios is off the design team, which now consists of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (lobbies and other public spaces); Diamond Schmitt Architects (the auditorium); Akustiks (acoustics); and Fisher Dachs Associates (theater design). The hall is scheduled to open in March 2024.2021The Pandemic Shutdown Speeds ConstructionThe concert hall being rebuilt in 2021.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe pandemic, which has shut down live performance, allows the Philharmonic and Lincoln Center to accelerate the construction schedule, and to push the reopening to this fall. That keeps the orchestra’s nomadic period to just one season, which saw it play at Alice Tully Hall and the Rose Theater with forays to Carnegie Hall.2022David Geffen Hall Set to ReopenThe new hall, so many years in the making and remaking, will come to life this month. There will be two concerts Oct. 8 featuring the world premiere of new piece that Lincoln Center commissioned for the occasion: Etienne Charles’s “San Juan Hill,” about the vibrant neighborhood that was razed to make way for Lincoln Center. It will be performed by Etienne Charles & Creole Soul, and the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Jaap van Zweden. Tickets will be available on a choose-what-you-pay basis. More

Also among the performers at the annual event in Los Angeles is Idina Menzel, who belts out ‘Frozen 2’ hit ‘Into the Unknown’ along with vocal performers for Elsa from other countries.
Feb 10, 2020
AceShowbiz – Besides announcing winners of each categories, the 92nd annual Academy Awards also offered both the audience and viewers at home with amazing performances. Opening the event was Janelle Monae, who took the time to call out the academy during her number.
In the beginning of her performance, Janelle paid tribute to Mr. Rogers by slipping into the iconic red sweater while crooning a sweet rendition of “Mister Roger’s Neighborhood” theme song. At one point, she even ventured into the audience to serenade Tom Hanks, who was nominated for best actor in a supporting role for his portrayal of Mr. Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”.
Moments after handing Tom her hat, Janelle returned to the stage and broke out into an original song dedicated t this year’s nominated films and actors. That was when the 34-year-old sang, “The Oscars, it’s so white, it’s time to come alive,” before Billy Porter joined her onstage to perform Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing”. She received a standing ovation for her performance.
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Later on during the event, Idina Menzel treated everyone to a stunning performance of “Frozen II” hit song “Into the Unknown”. However, the actress wasn’t the only one singing the song on the stage. Clad in a strapless white ballgown, she was joined by vocal performers for Elsa from other countries such as Denmark, Germany, Japan and Latin America.
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Meanwhile, Eminem successfully made a lot of people shocked when he took the stage to deliver a surprise performance. Ahead of the performance, Lin-Manuel Miranda highlighted the importance of the songs featured in film as a montage of memorable cinematic music moments followed. Right after that, Em appeared on the stage to perform “Lose Yourself” from “8 Mile”.

Some people in the audience looked noticeably confused by Em’s unannounced performance, including Idina and Billie Eilish. On the other hand, “The Irishman” director Martin Scorsese was captured on camera falling asleep. Despite making some people confused, Em still received a standing ovation.

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After a year and a half, the company’s forces came together for an outdoor performance of the sprawling, ecstatic symphony.The Metropolitan Opera hardly ever plays concerts at home at Lincoln Center. But before Saturday evening, the company had opened its season with Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, the “Resurrection,” once before.In 1980, a bitter labor battle kept the Met closed more than two months into the fall. When peace was re-established, Mahler’s sprawling journey of a soul, ending in ecstatic renewal, seemed just the thing — and the symphony, with its enormous orchestral and choral forces working in intricate lock step, is nothing if not a paean to cohesion.“The ‘Resurrection’ Symphony almost chose itself,” James Levine, then the Met’s music director, said at the time. It was, he added, “a way for the company to get in touch with itself again.”If there has ever been another time this company needed to get in touch with itself, it is now. That two-month hiatus four decades ago seems like child’s play compared with the situation today.Twenty twenty-one has, like 1980, brought contentious labor struggles — on top of a pandemic that has threatened the core conditions of live performance and kept the Met closed for an almost unthinkable 18 months. Its orchestra and chorus, as good as any in the world, were furloughed in March 2020 and went unpaid for nearly a year as the financially wounded company and its unions warred over how deep and lasting any pay cuts should be.The “Resurrection” Symphony brought the full company and its audience back together in grand style: 90 minutes; an orchestra of 116; a chorus of 100; and 2,500 attending in the park.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesJeenah Moon for The New York TimesJeenah Moon for The New York TimesJeenah Moon for The New York TimesInstituting a vaccine mandate and gradually coming to terms with the unions, the Met inched closer to reopening as the summer dragged on. And on Aug. 24, it removed the final barrier by striking a deal with the orchestra, paving the way for a resurrection — and a “Resurrection.”The company scheduled a pair of free Mahler performances outdoors at Damrosch Park, in the shadow of its theater, on Labor Day weekend, at the start of what has become an opening month. On Saturday, the Met will return indoors for Verdi’s Requiem, in honor of the 20th anniversary of 9/11. And on Sept. 27 the opera season begins in earnest with the company premiere of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” its first work by a Black composer, and, the following evening, a revival of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov.”Led by the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the “Resurrection” Symphony brought the full company and its audience back together in grand style: 90 minutes; an orchestra of 116; a chorus of 100; and 2,500 attending in the park, as well as hundreds more listening from the street. The mood was a blend of parks concert — one woman tried to muffle the crinkling of her bag of potato chips — and serious focus; a man sitting on the aisle followed along with the score, brightly lit on his tablet.With so much to celebrate, this was indeed a celebratory, smiling reading: Punchy and taut at the start, yes, but without the neurotic, feverish quality that some conductors sustain throughout. There was an overall sense of gentleness and soft-grained textures. The second movement was more sly than sardonic; the climactic burst of dissonance in the third movement was beautiful, not brutal. The chorus, facing the audience in front of the stage and getting its cues from screens, sang with mellow sweetness.It goes without saying that outdoor classical performance is never ideal. (Speaking from the stage, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, claimed, tongue perhaps in cheek, that Lincoln Center’s president had promised no helicopters in the area for the duration of the symphony. Well. …)Ying Fang, the soprano soloist, is a symbol of the company’s present and future.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAmplified violin sections are inevitably harsh; woodwinds tend to get swamped by the strings and brasses, even more than usual in Mahler’s dense orchestration. And so much of this and every symphony’s power depends on musicians massed in a room together with their audience. Under the open sky, even on a gorgeous, mild evening like Saturday, the visceral and emotional impact of the music is diffused.But the offstage percussion and brasses finally sounded like they were coming from a real distance, as they rarely do in a concert hall. And there is special resonance in a great opera company performing this score, so redolent of the music-theater repertory, especially Mahler’s beloved Wagner. The stormy start of “Die Walküre”; the motif of the sleeping Brünnhilde from the end of that work; the mystically stentorian choruses of “Parsifal”; the sighing winds as Verdi’s Otello dies — all echo through the visionary excess of the “Resurrection.”It was moving to see Denyce Graves, a classic Carmen and Dalila at the Met 20 or 25 years ago, onstage and dignified in the great alto solos, even if her voice is a shadow of its former plush velvet. The soprano soloist, Ying Fang, a radiant Mozartian, was a symbol of the company’s present and future.While no one is ever hoping for distractions during Mahler, there was something heartwarming about the siren wailing down 62nd Street and tearing into the symphony’s majestic final minutes. What would a New York homecoming be without noise, and more noise? More