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    Listening to Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ References

    A tour through key samples, references and influences on the pop star’s 2022 album as her world tour arrives in North America.A scene from the screens at Beyoncé’s North American Renaissance World Tour opener in Toronto.The New York TimesDear listeners,Last weekend, I traveled to Toronto to catch the first North American date of Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour. I returned home feeling like the human incarnation of the starry-eyed emoji (so many sparkles!) and with a new appreciation for “Renaissance,” the loose and sprawling album that Beyoncé released this time last year.“Renaissance,” Beyoncé’s seventh studio album, is a sonic odyssey through the history of dance music, with a specific focus on the genre’s Black and queer pioneers. It achieves the perfect balance of many opposing forces: “Renaissance” is studied and referential but still maintains a fun lightness. It celebrates community and a kind of artistic plurality while still centering Beyoncé’s singular star power. It contains a few of Beyoncé’s strongest stand-alone singles and yet plays like a continuous D.J. set: Sometimes I will get an urge to hear one particular song and, before I know it, I will have listened to the rest of the album in its entirety — again!Witnessing the way Beyoncé staged some of these songs live has helped me hear new elements in an album I have already played approximately four billion times. Some of that has to do with the way she contextualized the “Renaissance” songs within the evolution of her own catalog (the vampy, hard-hitting “Diva,” from 2008, sounds like a transmission from Beyoncé’s future), but she also made sure to situate “Renaissance” within a larger continuum of pop music, electronic sounds, and Black and queer culture.That’s a project I’d like to continue with today’s playlist, which is a kind of musical tour of the samples, references and influences heard on “Renaissance.” It is highly indebted to a great piece that the music journalist and electronic dance music scholar Michaelangelo Matos wrote for The Times right after the album was released, which served as a listening guide to its many sonic footnotes.Come along for the ride as Beyoncé pays homage to the Chicago house of Adonis, the postmillennial bounce of Big Freedia, the pulsating bass of Reese and much more. May this playlist help you hear “Renaissance” anew, learn a little about electronic music history or maybe just make like Beyoncé and Grace Jones and move.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Adonis: “No Way Back”One of the formative early classics of Chicago house — a localized subgenre of dance music that spread through the Windy City’s underground club scene in the mid-80s — Adonis’s 1986 track “No Way Back” has a menacing intensity and a grimy low-end that would prove enormously influential … (Listen on YouTube)2. Beyoncé: “Cozy”… and “Cozy,” the second song off “Renaissance,” certainly bears that influence. Production and a writing credit from the Chicago-born D.J. and musician Honey Dijon also add some house-music credibility to this hypnotic track. (Listen on YouTube)3. Chic: “Good Times”Sumptuous, timeless, transcendent — Chic’s glittering “Good Times,” from 1979, remains one of the best-known and most frequently referenced tunes in the history of dance music. Bernard Edwards’s bass line is a thing of beauty, rightly given its own extended solo. (Listen on YouTube)4. Beyoncé: “Cuff It”If you’re going to pay homage to Chic, as Beyoncé does on this groovy disco throwback, you might as well get Nile Rodgers on the track. “When I got called to play on this song, it was the most organic thing that ever happened to me,” Rodgers said, accepting a Grammy when “Cuff It” won best R&B song. (Beyoncé was fashionably late.) “I heard the song and I just said, ‘I wanna play on that. Right now.’ And it was one take, I promise.” (Listen on YouTube)5. Robin S.: “Show Me Love”Driven by the unmistakable sound of the Korg M1 Organ 2, this 1992 hit — technically a remix, by the Swedish producer StoneBridge, of a little-heard 1990 track by Robin Stone — brought house music to the mainstream in the early ’90s, and its much-sampled keyboard riff is still ubiquitous today. (Listen on YouTube)6. Big Freedia: “Explode”Beyoncé first sampled Big Freedia, a.k.a. the Queen of Bounce, on her 2016 hit “Formation.” She once again drew upon the New Orleans musician’s highly flammable energy on “Break My Soul,” which samples her 2014 single “Explode.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Beyoncé: “Break My Soul”A house homage updated with some fresh zaps of New Orleans bounce, the “Renaissance” leadoff single “Break My Soul” was a worthy introduction to the album’s kinetic, highly referential sound. (Though, as the reporter Rich Juzwiak found when speaking to StoneBridge and Robin S., exactly how directly “Break My Soul” references “Show Me Love” is up for debate.) (Listen on YouTube)8. Reese/Kevin Saunderson: “Just Want Another Chance”The term “Reese bass” refers to the dark, warbling low-end that rumbles through the foundation of “Just Want Another Chance,” a pivotal Detroit techno track released by Kevin Saunderson — under the moniker Reese — in 1988. The Reese has become so popular that there are innumerable patches and presets that now replicate Saunderson’s groundbreaking bass sound. (Listen on YouTube)9. Beyoncé: “America Has a Problem”The most bonkers staging on the Renaissance World Tour comes when Beyoncé plays this one live — donning a custom Mugler bee costume and performing from behind a desk like she’s a newscaster attempting to brainwash the world. The Reese-indebted tones give this song, and its live performance, an ominous edge. (Listen on YouTube)10. A.G. Cook: “Beautiful”In the mid-to-late 2010s, the experimental production collective PC Music pushed pop to its most frenetic, gloriously synthetic extremes, reveling in surface sheen and outré ideas. The English producer A.G. Cook was at the forefront of this wave (sometimes called hyperpop), and his zanily infectious “Beautiful,” from the 2015 compilation “PC Music Volume 1,” is emblematic of his distinct sound. (Listen on YouTube)11. Beyoncé: “All Up in Your Mind”Beyoncé goes hyperpop — sort of — on this distorted earworm co-produced by Cook himself. The instrumentation sounds like a malfunctioning computer program, but there’s a growly physicality to Beyoncé’s vocal that gives the song an intriguing textural friction and keeps things in the realm of flesh and blood. (Listen on YouTube)12. Donna Summer: “I Feel Love”Arguably the most innovative and influential dance record of all time, “I Feel Love” is Giorgio Moroder’s wholehearted embrace of electronic music’s nascent, seemingly boundless possibilities. Donna Summer plays the ghost in the machine, unfurling an ecstatic vocal and achieving a kind of cyborgian bliss. (Listen on YouTube)13. Beyoncé: “Summer Renaissance”It’s risky business, referencing the iconic “I Feel Love” as blatantly as Beyoncé does here. But over the course of four-and-a-half minutes of airy falsetto and giddy sass, she effectively makes the argument that quoting Summer is the only way to end an album like “Renaissance.” It’s the ultimate, inevitable conclusion — a fireworks-display finale to this dazzling tour through dance music past, present and future. (Listen on YouTube)Release your wiggle,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ References” track listTrack 1: Adonis, “No Way Back”Track 2: Beyoncé, “Cozy”Track 3: Chic, “Good Times”Track 4: Beyoncé, “Cuff It”Track 5: Robin S., “Show Me Love”Track 6: Big Freedia: “Explode”Track 7: Beyoncé, “Break My Soul”Track 8: Reese/Kevin Saunderson, “Just Want Another Chance”Track 9: Beyoncé, “America Has a Problem”Track 10: A.G. Cook, “Beautiful”Track 11: Beyoncé, “All Up in Your Mind”Track 12: Donna Summer, “I Feel Love”Track 13: Beyoncé: “Summer Renaissance”Bonus tracksSpeaking of dance floor anthems that pull knowingly from house music history: I am very much digging Troye Sivan’s new single “Rush.” I don’t know if the Song of the Summer is a thing anymore, or if it ever really was, but I nonetheless appreciate him making a run for it.“Rush” is just one of the 11 new songs we recommend in this week’s Playlist. Check out the full selection, featuring tracks by Billie Eilish, Jamila Woods and Jlin, here. More

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    Billie Eilish’s ‘Barbie’ Ballad, and 10 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Troye Sivan, Jamila Woods, C. Tangana and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Billie Eilish, ‘What Was I Made For?’Billie Eilish draws a connection between the public’s consumption of pop stars and plastic dolls on “What Was I Made For?,” a sparse, forlorn piano ballad from the “Barbie” soundtrack: “Looked so alive, turns out I’m not real,” she sings in a quivering whisper. “Just something you paid for.” The song hews closer to the more traditional, crooner-inspired fare on Eilish’s album “Happier Than Ever” than to the rest of “Barbie the Album,” which features upbeat tunes from Dua Lipa and Charli XCX. Still, Eilish knows how to tease out the pathos and a subtle sense of macabre from a particular kind of feminine malaise. “I’m used to float, now I just fall down,” she sings, making life in plastic sound less than fantastic. LINDSAY ZOLADZMargaret Glaspy, ‘Memories’Margaret Glaspy sings as if every word is a struggle in “Memories,” a song of sheer grief and loss: “I’m lonesome without you/but I’m a wreck thinking about you.” Her voice arrives behind the beat and then leaps onto the note; the vocal quivers, cracks and sometimes breaks, conjuring emotions that are still raw. JON PARELESJamila Woods featuring duendita, ‘Tiny Garden’Jamila Woods sings about incremental, ordinary but genuine feelings of love in “Tiny Garden”: “It’s not gonna be a big production/It’s not butterflies and fireworks,” she sings. “It’s gonna be a tiny garden/But I feed it every day.” As she describes a real but undemonstrative connection and the testing phase of a romance — “You want to be sure that I want you/Not just someone fun to do” — the track pulses with keyboard chords and rises with gospelly backup vocals, promising that there’s a true spiritual link. The artist duendita joins her near the end, more than willing to “watch all the purpose we place multiply slowly over time.” PARELESTroye Sivan, ‘Rush’Troye Sivan — the Australian pop musician, ex-YouTuber and rare musician who actually proved to be a watchable screen presence on “The Idol” (ahem!) — returns triumphantly with “Rush,” a sweaty, kinetic, gloriously hedonistic summer dance-floor anthem with a lightly NSFW video to match. Sivan’s breathy vocals dance atop an insistent beat and house-inspired piano riff, while a chorus of deep male voices chant the song’s infectious hook: “I feel the rush, addicted to your touch.” At last, Xander is free! ZOLADZSid Sriram, ‘The Hard Way’Born in India, Sid Sriham grew up in California, studying Carnatic (South Indian) music with his parents while soaking up American R&B and jazz. He built a career in India, singing Bollywood hits along with Carnatic ragas. For his American debut album, “Sidharth,” due Aug. 25, Sriham veered toward the experimental, working with the producer Ryan Olson (from Poliça) and musicians including Justin Vernon (Bon Iver). “The Hard Way” is a lovelorn ballad — “I would do anything, anything, anything to make you smile,” he insists — that’s chopped up and placed within a jittery electronic exoskeleton: racing double-time beats, pitch-shifted vocals, bursts of multitracked harmony. It’s bold; he could easily have chosen a more commercial, less thorny approach. PARELESYard Act, ‘The Trench Coat Museum’It is a law of nature that there is never too much cowbell. Yard Act, the post-punk band that could almost be LCD Soundsystem with a British accent and a social-media update, has re-emerged after its debut album. That means post-punk nostalgia folded in on itself like origami. “The Trench Coat Museum” imagines that there might be such an institution — celebrating a garment that’s assertive, concealing, protective, too long and too evocative — in a spoke-sung eight-minute track that easily gives way to its early 1980s groove: beat, bass riff, turntable scratching, clawing rhythm guitar, synthesizers and Latin percussion that definitely includes cowbell. The open secret of post-punk is that no matter how cynical the vocal gets, the song is always about the groove. PARELESC. Tangana, ‘Oliveira Dos Cen Anos’C. Tangana, the Spanish songwriter who started as a rapper and has delved ever deeper into the musical past, stays out of the foreground of his latest project, a hundredth-anniversary song for a soccer team from Galicia, Real Club Celta de Vigo; his father is from the town of Vigo. “Oliveira Dos Cen Anos” (“Hundred-Year-Old Olive Tree”) is rooted in Galician folk tradition but underpinned by electronics. C. Tangana is one of the songwriters and co-producers and the director of a sweeping, scenic video; Galician musicians sing lead vocals. An ardent choral anthem, with folk-song lyrics vowing love and loyalty, gives way to a traditionalist six-beat stomp, with a fierce cameo from the drumming, singing women of As Lagharteiras, along with a glimmering harp interlude and a stadium-sized singalong. “I will always be here,” men shout. “Celta forever! PARELESLoraine James featuring RiTchie, ‘Déjà Vu’“Not everything is quite audible,” the rapper and singer RiTchie calmly observes in “Déjà Vu.” The producer Loraine James constructed a perpetually disorienting mix of jolting electronic glitches, soothing piano and furtive snippets of percussion and synthesizer. RiTchie, from the group Injury Reserve, layers on multiple vocals, sung and spoken, and sounds completely unfazed by his surroundings: “You just gotta soak it all in,” he advises. PARELESOxlade featuring Dave, ‘Intoxycated’Oxlade, a singer and songwriter from Nigeria, and Dave, a rapper from England with Nigerian roots, commiserate about straying lovers and social media in “Intoxycated.” Oxlade decides “love is overrated” after seeing his girlfriend with another guy on Instagram; Dave reflects, “Love’s easy to find, harder to hold/Most stories end and start with a phone.” A minor-key Afrobeats groove with little guitar curlicues sums up the mood: sleek and resigned. PARELESJlin, ‘Fourth Perspective’The composer and producer Jlin — Jerrilynn Patton — built head-spinning electronic music out of percussive sounds, so it made perfect sense for her to write music for live acoustic performance by the ensemble Third Coast Percussion, which appeared on the group’s 2022 album, “Perspectives.” Now, Jlin has reworked those compositions for her own mini-album “Perspective,” due in September. Her new version of “Fourth Perspective” brings back electronic sounds, moving a ghostly, plinking, minimalistic waltz toward the ratchety, foreboding terrain of trap. PARELESmaJa, ‘A Vivir en Desacuerdo’MaJa — the Dominican songwriter Maria-José Gonell — sings about contentedly being a fish out of water in “A Vivir en Desacuerdo” (“To Live in Disagreement”). Her airy voice makes her seem tentative at first, but the production — by her songwriting collaborator Gian Rojas — radiates growing confidence, as a beat slips in and electronics sparkle ever more brightly. She’s not diffident; she’s above it all. PARELES More

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    “The Greek Passion” Takes Center Stage at the Salzburg Festival

    Bohuslav Martinu’s “Greek Passion” poses a timeless question: when a group of refugees seek protection in a new community, what will the locals do?Bohuslav Martinu’s final opera, “The Greek Passion,” explores a story that was as explosive in the mid-twentieth century as it is today. When a group of refugees seeks protection in the village of Lycovrissi, the community is thrown into upheaval: Will the villagers reaffirm their Christian virtues or indulge in acts of selfishness?This Aug. 13-27, the opera will be performed for the first time at the Salzburg Festival in a production directed by Simon Stone. Maxime Pascal, the 2014 winner of the summertime event’s annual Young Conductors Award, leads — his first fully staged opera here — in the Felsenreitschule.The festival has performed Martinu’s work occasionally since 1950, presenting the world premiere of his orchestral piece “Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca” in 1956. Recent editions have seen mostly chamber music.“The Greek Passion” had personal resonance for Martinu, who was perpetually homesick in his last years. Born in 1890 in Policka — a town in Bohemia just over the Moravian border (in the modern-day Czech Republic) — he came into maturity as a composer in Paris in the 1920s and ’30s. In 1941, as a member of the French Resistance, he fled the Nazis for the United States. Martinu would die in Switzerland, in 1959, unable to return to his native country for political reasons.Bohuslav Martinu in 1948.Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone, via Getty ImagesAfter a long search for a tragic subject matter that he could personally adapt into a libretto, he discovered the novels of Nikos Kazantzakis and won approval to adapt his book “Christ Recrucified.”“I now feel ready for another step,” the composer wrote to the Guggenheim Foundation in 1956, “which is most difficult and entails the greatest responsibility, and that is a musical tragedy.”Martinu collaborated closely with Kazantzakis as he worked through the novel, in an English translation by Jonathan Griffin. The original conflict, involving Turkish rule, was tightened, so that the standoff in Lycovrissi (a town north of Athens) involved only Greeks.Ales Brezina, director of the Bohuslav Martinu Institute, explained that the story line, as such, had particular import to the composer in the context of Cold War politics that pitted people of the same nation against each other. Having taken up American citizenship, Martinu was considered a traitor in his home country. In the United States, he had to face the repercussions of being a Czech native during the anti-communist McCarthy era.“In the context of a bipolar world where everything was suspect,” Mr. Brezina said, “Martinu was moved by the topic of what people were capable of doing to their fellow countrymen.”Mr. Pascal, the conductor, also emphasized the centrality of this dynamic to the work. “A group of Greeks arrives in a Greek village, and they start to chase them away,” he said. “This reveals the viciousness of an angry mob toward another human being and humanity itself.”The score features two choruses — one representing the people of Lycovrissi, another, the refugees — a structure that follows a long tradition of musical settings of the Passion, or the story of the Crucifixion, as told in the Gospels of the Bible. In “The Greek Passion,” art becomes life as the villagers re-enact a Passion play. The shepherd Manolios, who portrays Christ, is ultimately murdered after he challenges his fellow villagers about the authenticity of their values.Mr. Pascal pointed out that Kazantzakis was considered a heretic for reinterpreting the doctrines of faith as they had been handed down by the church. “He saw a revolutionary figure in the figure of Christ but most of all saw in the mystery of Christianity something along the lines of a legend or myth,” he said.Simon Stone is directing the production.Jan Friese/SFMartinu left behind two very different versions of “The Greek Passion” because of an unusual twist of events. He chose the Royal Opera in London as the location for the premiere, although there was also interest from the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival and La Scala in Milan.Yet the opera was ultimately rejected by external advisers to the theater’s board. The musicologist and conductor Anthony Lewis argued that certain works by the Czech natives Smetana and Janacek had yet to be heard in London, and that the house needed to champion contemporary English composers.Despite the relentless support of the Royal Opera’s music director, the Czech-born Rafael Kubelik, the board would not reverse its decision. Martinu, for his part, believed that the war for independence in Cyprus — which was affecting diplomatic relations between Britain and Greece — might have tainted the subject matter.He revised and tightened the score for the Zurich Opera, where the show premiered in June 1961, after Martinu’s death, under the baton of his friend and patron, Paul Sacher. The original version, intended to premiere in London, did not hit the stage until 1999 at the Bregenz Festival in Austria.Mr. Brezina, who reconstructed the score for that production, compared the original version to a “dramatic fresco” or a “mosaic in which individual scenes and appearances blaze against each other.” The Zurich version, which will be performed in Salzburg, by contrast resembles “a kind of oratorio with wonderful melodies and choral scenes,” he said.Martinu’s mature works achieve an unprecedented synthesis of Czech and French elements, combining Bohemian rhythms and Moravian cadences with the influences of such composers as Stravinsky and Debussy. His “Greek Passion,” however, is distinct in that he carefully absorbed Greek Orthodox music, only occasionally alluding to his Czech roots. In 1955, Martinu traveled to New York to meet with friends of Kazantzakis and learn about Greek folk music and liturgy.Mr. Brezina explained that Martinu was keen to portray simple people while keeping his distance from the “farmer’s music” that can be found in the works of Janacek, who was the first composer to adapt Moravian speech patterns and melodies to the operatic stage. “He found in Kazantzakis exceptional intelligence, but also a down-to-earth person,” he said. “All the characters in the ‘Greek Passion’ have almost no education. They behave instinctively.”Mr. Pascal noted that the displacement of peoples in Greece echoed developments in Martinu’s native Czechoslovakia. “The oral songs and dances that migrated from region to region must have spoken enormously to him,” he said.The conductor also pointed to the score’s strongly Impressionist character. “There is incredible violence, but at the same time everything seems to be bathed in sunlight,” he said.Mr. Pascal further reflected on the superimposition of time periods that can be typical for a composer’s ultimate statement: “The after-war period, the period of Christ, Greece: There is a continuity between the past and present that is vertiginous.This is also found in Mahler’s ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ — in which 8th-century Chinese texts bifurcate with a text that the composer wrote himself — or Gérard Grisey’s ‘Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil.’”Although it is rarely performed, “The Greek Passion” is considered Martinu’s greatest operatic achievement, alongside his 1938 surrealist masterpiece “Juliette.” “It is the self-proclaimed pinnacle of his work for the stage,” Mr. Brezina said. 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    The Baritone Andrè Schuen Performs at the Salzburg Festival

    Andrè Schuen stars as Count Almaviva in the Salzburg Festival’s new production of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro.”Andrè Schuen, a fast-rising young Italian baritone, brings innate musicality to his performances. Born in La Val, a small village in Südtirol, the mountainous region at the border with Austria, Schuen grew up speaking three languages: Ladin, Italian and German.This summer, Schuen, 38, stars as Count Almaviva in the Salzburg Festival’s new production of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” running from July 27 to Aug. 28. With rehearsals underway in late June, he spoke in a video call about his background and upcoming performance. The following conversation, translated from German, has been edited and condensed.You hail from a remote region and are part of a cultural-linguistic minority, the Ladin people. How did this background influence your musical formation?From childhood onward, music was always the most important thing. That was also the case with my father, who got his love of music from his father.You need to remember that 100 years ago people were very poor where I come from. Before tourism, they were all farmers who lived off their fields and cows.My grandfather acquired a small collection of instruments, which my father passed on to us. That means that we grew up with music, including many folk songs, with my father playing accordion and clarinet, my two sisters on violin, and me on cello.We also made music together as a family and put together a program connected to our Ladin national saga, about the legend of the Kingdom of Fanes. Later, I was in a band and did covers of everything, including punk songs.You weren’t listening to Schubert alone in your room.Not at all! Quite the opposite. For instance, when I was 13, soccer meant everything to me. I was on a team. It’s not like my parents forced me in a musical direction. If I had said I wanted to be a carpenter, then I would have become a carpenter.When did you start playing cello?When I was about 7. I studied cello for 12 years. I knew that I liked to sing, but singing classically would have never occurred to me. One of my sisters told me, “You sing well. Why don’t you give it a shot?”So I auditioned for voice at the Mozarteum [University] in Salzburg. And that’s how it happened. Without ever thinking about it too much, everything pretty much came together harmoniously.What does singing give you that playing the cello doesn’t?I think it has a bit to do with the fact that you are the instrument yourself, that you don’t have to take something in your hand and practice on it. And of course, there’s the added element of text. I think being an opera singer has more parameters. It’s not just about singing.This summer you’ll be appearing as the Count in “Figaro.” You’ve also sung the title character many times. What’s it like being both upstairs and downstairs in this opera?Personally, I prefer singing the Count. He’s not exactly a positive character, but that’s exactly what makes him interesting. He has more layers than Figaro. He has a soft, seductive side, but he’s also aggressive or irascible and you need to switch quickly between emotions.Most recently, you sang the Count in Barrie Kosky’s acclaimed, comically astute Vienna production of “Figaro.” Is Martin Kusej, the director in Salzburg, going to show us a different side of “Figaro”?Definitely. [Kusej] doesn’t want to reproduce the piece the way it was intended in [Mozart’s] time. He’s trying to bring out something relevant that still touches or concerns us nowadays. But I don’t think he’s looking for that through the comedy.You recently sang your first Wolfram in “Tannhäuser.” How was it singing such a meaty Wagner role?I was emotionally transported. As for other Wagner roles, we’ll see where else my voice leads me. But Mozart will probably remain a key part of my repertoire until the end. The Count is not a part I want to retire, because it’s a role you can still sing when you’re 60. More

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    Five Questions for the Director of the Documentary ‘The League’

    Five questions for the director Sam Pollard about his documentary, and the preservation of the history of the Negro leagues.Sam Pollard’s documentary “The League” introduces audiences to the teams, stars and little-known figures who populated the Negro leagues by chronicling how Black professional baseball first sprouted. It covers the period from just before the majors instituted a gentlemen’s agreement banning African Americans from playing with white players, to the Negro leagues becoming one of America’s biggest Black-owned businesses, to its demise.Archival footage and interviews with former players, along with the words of the former Negro league umpire Bob Motley (narrated by Pollard), bring to life the athletic feats and civil rights achievements by people like Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson and more who made the space between the white lines a more fully realized Black experience.In an audio interview, Pollard spoke about how he set about constructing his film, and the ways he connected the Negro leagues to the Civil Rights movement. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation.Where did you find the archival Negro league interviews?We were very fortunate that the project was initiated by Byron Motley, who, with his dad, Bob Motley, a former Negro league umpire in the 1940s and 1950s, wrote a memoir about those days growing up in the South, becoming a baseball fan and loving the Negro leagues, and after World War II becoming an umpire. Byron also interviewed, through his dad, former Negro league players on video. He had access to that material too. That was a very important element.With Negro league box scores difficult to come by, how were you able to formulate the statistics that appear in the film?One of our advisers and one of the people we interviewed is a fanatic about Negro league statistics. That’s Larry Lester. He’s done a deep, deep dive into the statistics of players like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson. That’s where we were able to compare the batting percentage of Josh Gibson against Barry Bonds. That’s where we were able to compare the pitching percentage of Satchel Paige versus Nolan Ryan. Because Larry Lester really has done his homework. So, these stories don’t feel apocryphal anymore. They feel very cemented in facts.The director Sam Pollard.Magnolia PicturesHow does the film tell the story of Black baseball in Latin America?I mean, the fact that a lot of Latin players who were dark-skinned couldn’t play in major leagues, they had to play in the Negro leagues; and vice versa, when the Negro league season was over, a lot of these players went to the Caribbean and Mexico to play. It’s amazing to think about when the major leagues were integrated, by the 1960s, a lot of Latin players who had been informed by watching Negro league players play, were inspired to play baseball.It’s a rich story. Some of the footage we got, for example, the American poet and writer, Quincy Troupe, who wrote the book “Miles: The Autobiography” with Miles Davis; his dad, who’s also named Quincy Troupe, was a Negro league catcher. Some of the footage in this film was from his archives, such as footage of him traveling to these Latin American countries. So, it was an opportunity to tell a richer and more complicated story.Why link the Negro leagues to the Civil Rights Movement?America as we know it is a very complicated place, but its history is based on systemic racism. We’ve gone through many trials and tribulations in the evolution of this history. Black folks had to build our own communities. You saw these communities built in places like New York’s Harlem or Chicago’s Bronzeville, or Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Okla. By living together, we had to rely on each other in terms of entertainment and economics. There was no way you could tell the story of the Negro leagues without telling the story of the larger perspective of Black communities from the 1920s all the way up until integration really took hold.Why did you decide to end the story before getting to African Americans in contemporary baseball?Think of it this way, this film is an hour and 46 minutes. If we were to go into the material you’re talking about, which is obviously very vital and important in understanding the state of American baseball today — that story needs to be told — you can’t do justice to that story by trying to cram in another four or five minutes in this film. That wouldn’t be fair. From my perspective, we’re still a little tight because we’re still trying to get some information in at the very end. If I can raise the money, that’d be the next film: What happened to the African American explosion in baseball? By the late 1970s, early 1980s, it dwindled. Why did it dwindle? That’s a good question. More

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    How a Jay-Z Exhibit Took Over the Brooklyn Public Library

    “The Book of Hov,” an elaborate summer exhibition at the borough’s main branch, was quietly conceived by his team as a surprise tribute that opens Friday.Earlier this week, when passages of Jay-Z lyrics from songs like “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” and “Justify My Thug” appeared on the Art Deco-style, curved limestone facade of the Brooklyn Public Library’s main branch, fans and passers-by could only speculate on the occasion for the building’s sudden makeover. A surprise concert for the rapper’s home borough? A tribute to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop this summer?The answer, it turned out, was neither — and also a secret even from the man himself.On Thursday evening, when Jay-Z entered the library for a private event surrounded by an inner circle of family, friends and business associates, he was greeted by his live band playing instrumental versions of his hits out front, and a career-spanning archival exhibition that he never asked for inside.Jay-Z learned about the exhibition at a private event held at the library on Thursday night.Simbarashe Cha for The New York Times“I know he wouldn’t let us do this,” said Desiree Perez, the chief executive of Jay-Z’s entertainment empire Roc Nation, about keeping such elaborate plans from the boss. “This could never happen if he was involved.”Featuring artwork, music, memorabilia, ephemera and large-scale recreations of touchstones from a sprawling career, “The Book of Hov,” which will run through the summer, might seem more at home at the Brooklyn Museum down the block. But by installing the showcase across eight zones of a functioning library, its architects are aiming to bring aspirational celebrity extravagance to a free public haven just a few miles from the Marcy Houses where Jay-Z grew up.“Jay belongs to the people,” Perez said. “It’s a place that feels comfortable. It’s not intimidating. A lot of people go to the museum, but a lot of people don’t.”Nicola Yeoman and Dan Tobin Smith’s mash-up of instruments that was photographed for the “Blueprint 3” cover.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesA Gucci jacket tied to the release of Jay-Z’s 2010 memoir, “Decoded.”Amir Hamja/The New York TimesA mural by Jazz Grant made of hand-cut and scanned imagery from Jay-Z’s archives.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesOnly the debut on Thursday was meant to be exclusive. Following a private tour through his own memories, Jay-Z made himself scarce when the tightly controlled doors opened, content to leave the V.I.P. guests among representations of his many likenesses, from Mafioso M.C. to boardroom mogul to social justice string-puller.Even his elusive wife, Beyoncé, mingled more, at least momentarily, as crowds gathered outside to catch glimpses of the Jay-Z extended universe — athletes like Jayson Tatum and Robinson Cano; the musicians Lil Uzi Vert, DJ Khaled and Questlove; the director Josh Safdie and the businessman Michael Rubin.By Friday, when the exhibit opens to the masses, the hors d’oeuvres and passed drinks — Jay-Z’s brands, naturally — would be gone. But remaining among the stacks are statues, sneakers, paintings, platinum plaques, trophies and news clippings tied to Jay-Z’s 13 albums and the companies he founded, including Rocawear and Tidal.The library had initially pitched Jay-Z as an honoree for its annual fund-raising gala. But when its chief executive, Linda E. Johnson — the wife of another Jay-Z ally, the developer Bruce Ratner — floated the idea to Perez of Roc Nation, the pair pivoted.One area of the library features playable turntables and vinyl representing the samples used across Jay-Z’s catalog.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“I just asked her, ‘How big is the library?’” Perez recalled. “And when she said 350,000 square feet, I couldn’t believe it.”Throughout the pandemic, Perez and Roc Nation had been plotting to display artifacts that conveyed Jay-Z’s influence across music, business and broader culture, including the pallets’ worth of master recordings he had regained ownership of over the years.“That archive belongs in Brooklyn,” said Johnson, who oversaw the merger of the Brooklyn Public Library and Brooklyn Historical Society.Together, the teams began planning “The Book of Hov” in January, tapping the production designers Bruce and Shelley Rodgers, Emmy-winning veterans of the Super Bowl halftime show, as well as the creative agency General Idea to conceive and execute the elaborate project.It wasn’t just displaying memorabilia. Beyond the library’s main atrium, beneath an enormous Jay-Z collage, now sits a full-scale replica of the main room from Baseline Recording Studios, where Jay-Z created some of his best-known songs. Every detail had to be correct, down to the TV size and the tub of Dum Dums on the counter.A full-scale recreation of the main room from Baseline Recording Studios, where Jay-Z created some of his most famous songs.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesA reel-to-reel machine in the replica of Baseline Studios.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesA Betacam master tape of the song “99 Problems.”Amir Hamja/The New York Times“They had the wrong couch, the wrong soundboard,” said Juan Perez, a Roc Nation executive and longtime friend of Jay-Z’s, who designed the original studio and gave plenty of notes for the recreation.Another area of the library features playable turntables and vinyl representing the samples used across Jay-Z’s catalog, surrounded by the encased tape reels, floppy disks and CDs containing his original music.Bruce Rodgers, the production designer now working on his 18th Super Bowl halftime show, called the project “probably the most intense installation I’ve ever been involved in,” adding: “We didn’t want to interrupt the normal workings of the library, but we wanted to make a statement.” That included flying in “ninjas” from the West Coast who could rappel up and down the building to install the lyrical facade in time.An area of the exhibition designed for children to make paper planes.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesThe paper plane is a Roc Nation logo attached to an inspirational motto.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesPart of the exhibition is dedicated to Jay-Z’s philanthropy and social justice work, as well as his various businesses.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“People thought I was a little out of my mind,” Johnson, the library executive, said. “I don’t think I’d be going out on a limb to say that this is the biggest exhibition we’ve ever done.”While the valuables will require additional security, Brooklyn Public Library was not paying for any of the production for the show, she added. “Roc Nation is doing a lot for us financially,” Johnson said, including a substantial donation tied to the gala in October, when Jay-Z and his mother, Gloria Carter, will be honored.In the meantime, Jay-Z will also be helping, perhaps unwittingly, with sign-ups. In addition to the draw of the exhibition itself, the library is producing 13 limited-edition library card variations featuring its homegrown star — one for each album.“I’m concerned about crowds,” Johnson said, conveying equal parts trepidation and excitement. “We’ll run out, I suspect.” More

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    Louis Langrée Wraps Up a Quietly Transformative Era of Conducting

    Rehearsals led by the conductor Louis Langrée tend to follow a trajectory. Early on, he speaks poetically and tells stories; during preparations for a May concert with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where he is the music director, he explained Saint-Saëns with references to the Kyrie of a Mass and the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. But then his language becomes technical and specific; that day, broad explanations of mood gave way to meticulous balance and bowing as the playing took shape like an increasingly detailed, fine sculpture.Langrée wasn’t afraid, at that point, to repeat a phrase until it was right. Musicians are capable of understanding a direction when it’s given to them, he said in an interview later, “but they need to feel it, physically.”The result is often an interpretation rich in specificity and color, to a degree that can impress even seasoned musicians. On that program in Cincinnati, Vikingur Olafsson joined the orchestra as the soloist in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, and although he had toured the piece all season, he felt that rehearsing it with Langrée, a Frenchman, was like “talking about Chopin with someone in Warsaw.” And, Olafsson added, “there were things that I hadn’t heard before, and that’s a big compliment.”And yet, at 62, Langrée has never been one of the world’s most famous or sought-after conductors. His career has been a steady climb of prestige and quality, quietly remarkable but undersung even as he has transformed ensembles: in Cincinnati, where he has been at the podium for a decade, and in New York, where he has been the music director of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra since 2003.Langrée conducting in Cincinnati. “He’d rather leave five years too early,” Jonathan Martin, the orchestra’s chief executive, said, “than stay five minutes too late.”Madeleine Hordinski for The New York TimesHis time at both posts, though, is coming to an end. Lincoln Center has dropped the Mostly Mozart Festival, keeping its orchestra but changing its music director and name, so Langrée is set to depart this summer at the end of his contract; and his tenure in Cincinnati concludes next season. All this, as he settles into his new job as the leader — not the conductor — of the Opéra Comique in Paris.Cincinnati, which is still searching for his successor, will have a mourning period, said Jonathan Martin, that orchestra’s chief executive. But Langrée is returning to France on a high note.“He’d rather leave five years too early,” Martin said, “than stay five minutes too late.”BORN IN MULHOUSE, France, Langrée is a proud Alsatian, who studied in the region at the Strasbourg Conservatory. From there, his work was primarily as a vocal coach and assistant conductor, at institutions including the Orchestre de Paris, where he encountered eminences like Pierre Boulez, Georg Solti and Daniel Barenboim.Solti passed down a bit of wisdom for conductors he had heard from Richard Strauss: Go into the hall to listen. Langrée doesn’t always need to do that, though, because he leans on the ears of his assistants, like Samuel Lee in Cincinnati. Langrée said that Lee “knows what I like,” and turned back to check in with him often during the May rehearsals, asking about articulation and whether specific textures were coming through.Starting in the early 1990s, Langrée began to pick up podium appointments in Europe, including at the Opéra National de Lyon and Glyndebourne Touring Opera. He said that his children practically grew up at Glyndebourne, in England; his daughter, Céleste, is now studying scenic design at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, he added, because she was brought up by stage hands instead of nannies.Langrée first conducted the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra in 1998, in a program that included Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor. He still remembers details of those rehearsals — working with the ensemble to perfect the style of a minuet by way of connecting the piece to “West Side Story” — and of quickly developing a relationship with the players, who were assembled from a variety of sources, like Lincoln Center institutions and Broadway.In 2002, he was appointed music director after the departure of the orchestra’s longtime conductor, Gerard Schwarz, and a strike that left the players’ morale battered. The ensemble was no critic’s favorite, but once Langrée took over, “he put his heart and soul into every aspect” of it, said Jane Moss, who shepherded Lincoln Center’s artistic programming from 1992 until 2020.Langrée rehearsing Saint-Saëns at Music Hall in Cincinnati.Madeleine Hordinski for The New York TimesThe orchestra, and the Mostly Mozart Festival, flourished under the leadership of Moss and Langrée. He hired most of the ensemble in its current form — he is particularly proud of Ryan Roberts, “this genius” from the New York Philharmonic, who recently joined as principal oboe — and steadily turned it into a powerhouse of Classical style.At the same time, the festival’s repertoire broadened, the programming including contemporary music; idiosyncratic, interdisciplinary performance; and international hits like George Benjamin’s opera “Written on Skin” and Barrie Kosky’s staging of “The Magic Flute.” The ambition, Moss said, flowed from her and Langrée’s relationship as “muses to each other.”“She needed me, and I needed her,” Langrée said. Moss agreed, adding: “We fed each other a very special energy. And that came through to the audience. It was about communicating how much he loved music. It was a golden age, and he was really its star.”When Langrée took over in Cincinnati in 2013, he moved his family there based on advice he had heard from Simon Rattle about his time with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Rattle, he recalled, told him: “If you want to have a deep experience as a music director, you should live in the city. It’s more than conducting many concerts or programs. You have to understand the power and weakness of the city, and think about how the orchestra can be part of the solutions.”Choosing to live in Cincinnati, said Martin, the orchestra’s chief executive, “inevitably led to roots growing out into the community.” Langrée was even an active parent at Walnut Hills High School — where Céleste was involved in theater and his son, Antoine, played in the band; and where he conducted the school orchestra several times. He was tickled by the fact that he worked in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of the city, given that he was born “over the Rhine” in Alsace.Living there also meant that Langrée was present to see the Cincinnati Symphony through the darkest days of the pandemic shutdown; he devised ways, almost immediately, to commission new music and stream concerts for free online. “The thing that was important to Louis was to keep things going,” Martin said.The Cincinnati Symphony today, as with the Mostly Mozart orchestra, is largely a product of Langrée’s efforts. He was actively involved in the renovation of its home theater, Music Hall, and has hired, Martin said, “somewhere between a third and half” of the players. The ensemble has built a reputation on nurturing new works on the scale of concertos and symphonies; 65 of those were led by Langrée during his directorship. And, crucially, the group is performing at a level of excellence that reflects his taste for color and nuance.“He’s set a high bar,” Martin said. “It’s not going to be easy to find someone at least as good.”“He’s set a high bar,” Martin said of Langrée in Cincinnati. “It’s not going to be easy to find someone at least as good.”Madeleine Hordinski for The New York TimesLangrée told the Cincinnati Symphony in 2021 that he wouldn’t renew his contract there beyond the 2023-24 season. That year, he was hired by President Emmanuel Macron of France to run the Opéra Comique; it was, Langrée said, the first job he had ever applied for.His departure from Mostly Mozart, though, was blurrier. His contract there was set to conclude this summer, but there was no formal announcement about whether he would renew. The festival had gone dark in 2020, and by the time it would have come back, last year, Lincoln Center had a new artistic leader, Shanta Thake, who rolled out a summer series that included no festival proper and fewer performances than before by the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. The 2019 edition was unceremoniously the festival’s last. How, Langrée said, could he renew for something that doesn’t exist?Langrée didn’t want to say more about the end of his Mostly Mozart tenure — by any measure a triumph of ensemble-building and musical curiosity. He wanted to protect the players, and for the orchestra to continue. Recently, Jonathon Heyward was made its music director, an appointment that came with the news that the group’s name would change.Thake said that, as a New Yorker who knows the Mostly Mozart orchestra as a beloved New York institution, she can see that going into Langrée’s final season, “they’re stronger than ever.” And there are still echt Langrée performances to come, like a pairing of Mozart’s C-minor Mass and a premiere by Amir ElSaffar, beginning July 25.Langrée moved to Paris once he started at the Opéra Comique, and when he is working in the United States, his day begins early, with about three hours of meetings before rehearsal starts. It’s a challenge, but in the future, he will conduct less: Beyond his concerts in Cincinnati next season, he has only a couple of guest appearances.In lieu of score study, he is now getting acquainted with the nonartistic side of his field, stressed now not about orchestral concerts, but about, say, the effect of inflation on the cost of running a theater.“It’s the last major project of my life,” he said of his job with the Opéra Comique. He will conduct one production there each season. And, as a guest, he will lead a “much-reduced repertoire” that he wants to explore more deeply than he could as a music director. Those moments, which he referred to as a “luxury,” will almost be the easy part of his career’s new phase.“I come from a musical background,” Langrée said. “When you have to read these Excel things and have to balance budgets and work with subsidies from the government — now, I feel like I’ve been plunged into real life. And that’s hard.” More

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    Why Can’t We Stop Quitting the Grateful Dead?

    Jerry Garcia died in 1995. The band bid fans farewell in 2015. This weekend, Dead & Company will close out its Final Tour. Why can’t we stop quitting one of rock’s beloved acts?Dead & Company fans twirled on the floor of Citi Field in New York in June. The last shows on the band’s Final Tour are this weekend in San Francisco, where the Grateful Dead got its start.The first time Albie Cullen said goodbye to the Grateful Dead was on Aug. 9, 1995.A co-worker told Cullen, an attorney for a Boston-area music label, that Jerry Garcia, the Dead’s iconic lead guitarist, had died that day. Cullen had attended dozens of shows. He reveled in the Dead’s improvisational spirit, the way no two performances were alike: “When you saw the Stones a dozen times,” he explained recently, “it was pretty much the same show.”Despite the Garcia news, Cullen kept his plans to see RatDog, a side project of Garcia’s bandmate Bob Weir, play a concert in Hampton Beach, N.H., that evening. Weir, a rhythm guitarist, told the crowd that Garcia — who at 53 suffered a fatal heart attack at a drug rehab facility — “proved that great music can make sad times better.” During an encore of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” Cullen, 59, recalled, “There was not a dry eye.”“Everybody kind of knew that was the end,” he added.The Grateful Dead had replaced departed members before, but this was different. With his rootsy tenor, Santa-gone-gray beard and unmistakable plucking, Garcia had defined a touring juggernaut and its vibrant subculture, which had become synonymous with the ’60s. The band’s four surviving original members agreed they would never use the name “Grateful Dead” without Garcia.Fans at the band’s show in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., came decked out in a mix of tie-dye and ’60s chic.But the Dead did not die. The next year, several members participated in a tour. They maintained side projects that mainly played Dead songs. Different permutations toured together — as the Other Ones, as Furthur, as the adjective-less the Dead.Finally, in 2015, the band staged another goodbye, playing five shows with Phish’s Trey Anastasio on lead guitar. The mini tour was called Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead.That adieu, too, did not take. That fall, Weir and the Dead’s original drummers, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, assembled a new act, Dead & Company, with the keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, the bassist Oteil Burbridge and the lead guitarist John Mayer (yes, that John Mayer).A funny thing happened as this new band wound its way across the United States: The Dead became a cultural touchstone again. Dead & Company attracted a new crop of younger fans, as did tribute bands like Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. Last August, the Dead had its largest week of record sales in 35 years, according to its publisher; in February, it won its first Grammy. Between 2012 and 2022, U.S. streams of Dead songs increased at nearly double the rate of the Rolling Stones, according to the tracking service Luminate.The Dead had found its moment again.The uniqueness of each Dead performance is crucial to the music’s lasting appeal.A young fan waiting for the Saratoga Springs show named a caterpillar “Bertha,” after the Dead song of the same name.“This could sound wildly corny, but I don’t care: The community of the Dead is a necessary community in a year like 2023,” said Bethany Cosentino, 36, of the indie rock band Best Coast. She became a fan just a few years ago thanks to her “Gen X boyfriend.”“There’s a real ethos of joy to be in a room with a bunch of people who are just connecting to music in their own way but having this communal, collective experience,” she added.Cullen said the Deadheads have taken note: “I joke with my friends — they’re bigger now than they ever were.”Now there is yet another farewell. After more than 200 shows, Dead & Company has sold out stadiums across the country with its so-called Final Tour. The run concludes this weekend with three shows at Oracle Park in San Francisco, the city where the Grateful Dead formed nearly 60 years ago.“It’s a part of the life cycle. In life, there’s death,” Hart said in a video interview. “But it all depends on what you call death. Because there’s life after death — in music, anyway.”What draws Dead fans to shows like the one that took place in Saratoga Springs? “There’s a real ethos of joy to be in a room with a bunch of people who are just connecting to music in their own way but having this communal, collective experience,” said the indie rocker Bethany Cosentino.Bands led by Weir, the original Dead bassist Phil Lesh and Kreutzmann (who was replaced for this tour by Jay Lane) all have concerts scheduled in the next couple of months. Hart allowed for the possibility of a future for Dead & Company, while confirming this was its last tour.“The music’s never going to go anywhere — and one of the brilliant things about the music is there are thousands of concerts we all have access to,” said Andy Cohen, the Bravo host and executive producer who has been a Dead fan since high school. “But the communal feeling of all of us being at Citi Field together and enjoying two banger shows,” he added, “that’s something I don’t envision we’re going to get again.”We are, it seems, always saying goodbye to the Grateful Dead. But Weir and Mayer warned fans not to expect a eulogy.“I think everyone’s had enough loss in their life to go to San Francisco and have this be funereal,” Mayer said.“I’m dead-set against that happening,” Weir added. “I’ll be stir-fried if I’m going to let that happen.”Mayer continued: “If I had my wish, it would be for people to say goodbye to Dead & Company without the pain of goodbye.”In the parking lot at Citi Field, where vendors hawked T-shirts, jewelry, fresh cooked food and less licit fare.Fans hoping for a spare ticket to the show outside the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.THE PROMOTER PETER SHAPIRO, who owns the jam band redoubts Brooklyn Bowl and the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, N.Y., and promoted the Fare Thee Well shows, observed that the true volume of people who would pay to see the Grateful Dead — a band that stopped touring the year before Ticketmaster sold its first ticket over the Internet — wasn’t revealed until 2015, when Dead fans broke the site’s record for most buyers in a queue.Ticket sales for the five concerts that year — two at Levi’s Stadium near San Francisco and three at Chicago’s Soldier Field — brought in $40 million. Nearly 71,000 people attended each Chicago show; many more viewed theatrical and pay-per-view simulcasts.“Fare Thee Well was supposed to be an ending,” Shapiro said, “and it was a new beginning.”Mayer was secreted away during the Chicago shows, already a planned addition. He had met Weir and Hart through Don Was, the producer and record executive. Mayer gushed to them about the Dead’s music, which he came to well after his formative listening years; he compared it in a recent interview to “cilantro, if all I’ve been eating is meat and potatoes.”A fan gets an impromptu (and not permanent) tattoo in the Citi Field parking lot.Hart had been only glancingly familiar with Mayer’s music, but knew he was an excellent guitarist. “On our stage, he’s not a pop star or anything like that,” Hart said. “He has so much respect for the Grateful Dead — I have much respect for him for that. He treated the music like his own.”While some purists grumbled at Mayer’s inclusion (as, indeed, some grumbled about the Fare Thee Well shows), most fans “made a decision,” said Dennis McNally, a former Grateful Dead spokesman and biographer, “that they were not in love with ‘the band’ — the people — they were in love with the music, and that it was to some extent a matter of taste regarding who was playing it. That it was its own genre, almost like jazz or blues.”While many classic rock artists spawned cover acts, a website dedicated to Grateful Dead tribute bands has more than 600 groups in its database, 100 to 150 of which, its proprietors estimate, are active.Some Dead tribute acts are straightforward and quite popular, like Dark Star Orchestra, which recreates specific Dead concerts by set list. Others employ the Dead’s music as a jumping-off point. There is a jazz band and an Afrobeat one. Brown Eyed Women is all female. Warlocks of Tokyo sing in Japanese.The electronic artist LP Giobbi, a Millennial daughter of Deadheads, uses sonic loops and stems over house beats to create what she calls Dead House. “I am blown away by how many ravers I meet who are also Deadheads,” said the artist, who played at after-parties following many concerts on this Dead & Company tour.“The thing about this music is it doesn’t take place at home — no one’s home. People are trying to get home,” the guitarist John Mayer said.The uniqueness of each Dead performance is crucial to the music’s lasting appeal. Al Franken, the author, former senator and longtime fan who once opened for the band, recently caught up with friends who had seen Dead & Company outside St. Louis. “I asked what they played, and I was striking out. ‘Did they do “China Cat Sunflower”?’ ‘No.’ This is a big, big body of music. You can go to four nights in a row and basically not hear the same tune. And they play things differently all the time.”The Dead’s eclectic songbook comes out of rock, folk, blues, country and bluegrass; its lyrics, many by Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow, tend to be ambiguous yet buoyant (“strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand,” “wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,” “what a long strange trip it’s been”).“The thing about this music is it doesn’t take place at home — no one’s home. People are trying to get home,” Mayer said.“There’s something about the fantasy of transience for people who don’t necessarily have it in their lives, like myself,” he added. “The fantasy of the perpetual searcher, the person with the knapsack who can sleep on couch after couch. Most people who go to Dead concerts don’t necessarily live that life, but aspire to spiritually have this devil-may-care attitude.”Trey Pierce, 20, began discovering the Dead in middle school via CD boxed sets, DVDs and the Internet Archive, which hosts free tapers’ recordings of Grateful Dead shows. Now he is a die-hard who drove for hours from St. Lawrence University in northern New York to see Phil Lesh and Friends perform in March outside New York City.“That’s what’s gotten me through much of my life,” he said. “Any weird stuff I’ve had going on, challenges I’ve had, it’s been relating to those lyrics and Jerry” — who died eight years before Pierce was born — “belting into my soul.”A fan displays “Grateful” knuckle tattoos in the Citi Field parking lot.IN A PARKING LOT across from Citi Field in Queens before the second of two Dead & Company shows last month, car stereos blasted recordings of live Dead as the subway clacked over the elevated lines. Vendors hawked T-shirts, jewelry, fresh cooked food and less licit fare. Erin Cadigan, who specified that she had seen 72 Dead shows “with Jerry,” performed tarot readings on a licensed, Grateful Dead-themed tarot deck she created with a partner.The tour has tended to be well reviewed by fans. “Closest thing to the original I’ve seen,” Cullen wrote in a text message after leaving Fenway Park in Boston last month. “Ironically it’s ending just as they seemed to have figured it out.”Mariah Napoli, 45, a self-described “second-generation” Deadhead, said she had seen on this tour “a lot more people crying the last two songs than you usually do.”She added, “I’ve been doing it so long, I don’t see myself stopping until they’re all dead. At that point, it’ll be time for me to hunker down and start to grow older.”Why do we keep saying goodbye to the Grateful Dead … then welcome them back, and then do it again?Several generations of Dead fans attended Dead & Company’s most recent run of shows.Dustin Grella and a friend bought a used Kentucky school bus and turned it into a canvas for Dead fans to express their love of the band through art.“The Buddhists believe that knowing every minute you’re going to die is what makes life so precious,” said Elena Lister, a New York-based psychiatrist and grief specialist. “If you know you’re going to lose something of any sort, you treasure it all the more while you have it. If you deny it, you miss that opportunity.”Dustin Grella, 52, a professor of animation at Queens College, has a more dramatic Dead story than most. In the spring and summer of 1995 he was following the Grateful Dead on what would turn out to be its last tour. But he missed the final two concerts at Soldier Field after he sustained an injury to his spinal cord when a porch collapsed at a campground outside a show near St. Louis.“When you’re experiencing that kind of trauma,” Grella said of the recovery period, “you want just to go back to normal. For me, that was being a touring Deadhead.”In 2015, he saw in the Fare Thee Well shows in Chicago a chance for closure — “my opportunity,” he said, “to make peace with the Dead.”But that did not mean he would miss another occasion to say goodbye. For Dead & Company’s final tour, Grella and a friend bought a used Kentucky school bus, attached panels to both sides and covered them in chalkboard paint. Grella, who uses a wheelchair, parked the bus in the lot, put chalk out and encouraged passers-by to add their own designs. He had begun the spontaneous artwork by etching a lyric from “Scarlet Begonias”: “Once in a while you get shown the light/In the strangest of places if you look at it right.” More