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    Broadway Musicians Object to David Byrne’s ‘Here Lies Love’

    The show plans to use recorded music instead of a live band, but a labor union says its contract for the theater requires musicians for musicals.A labor union representing musicians is challenging David Byrne’s next Broadway show, “Here Lies Love,” saying it opposes plans to stage the production with recorded instrumental tracks instead of a live band.The musical — an immersive, dance-driven spectacle about Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines — is scheduled to start previews June 17 and to open July 20 at the Broadway Theater. Byrne co-wrote the music with Fatboy Slim.The musical has previously been staged Off Broadway, in London and in Seattle, each time with a singing cast accompanied by recorded music. There are a few moments in which actors have instruments as part of the action being depicted, but there are no full-time instrumentalists.“Since ‘Here Lies Love’ was first conceived 17 years ago, every production has been performed to prerecorded track; this is part of the karaoke genre inherent to the musical and the production concept,” the production’s spokesman, Adrian Bryan-Brown, said in a statement on Tuesday. “The music for ‘Here Lies Love’ was inspired by the phenomena of ‘track acts,’ which allowed club audiences to keep dancing, much like this production aims to do.”But Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians says its contract with the Broadway League requires the use of 19 musicians for musicals at the Broadway Theater. (The number of musicians required under the contract varies based on theater size.)The union says it is seeking to preserve jobs for musicians and quality for theater lovers.“We’re not going to stand by and let this happen,” said Tino Gagliardi, the local’s president and executive director. “It’s not fair to the public.”Since February, the producing team of “Here Lies Love,” led by Hal Luftig, has been seeking to have the show declared a “special situation,” which is a category in the labor agreement that allows for the employment of fewer musicians. The request is to be assessed by a panel that includes neutral observers as well as representatives of the Broadway League and the musicians’ union; it is not clear how long that process will take, and the ruling can be appealed to arbitration.The League did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, but Bryan-Brown said, “This process is ongoing and may ultimately culminate in a final and binding arbitration decision, but until that time, we will continue to work in good faith with the union to move through the steps of the contractual process.”There have been multiple Broadway shows staged with reduced orchestra sizes over the years, but it is rare to have a musical without an orchestra at all. The best-known example was “Contact,” a dance show produced by the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater that won the 2000 Tony Award for best musical. In 2011, the union objected to a reduced-size orchestra, along with recorded music, for the Broadway production of “Priscilla Queen of the Desert.” More recently, “The Little Prince” was staged at the Broadway Theater with music sung to recorded tracks; that show was not Tony-eligible and had a short run, so the union did not object.The musicians say they are disappointed that the request is coming from a show associated with Byrne, whom they revere. Byrne’s last Broadway production, “American Utopia,” showcased musicians, with the band onstage playing instruments and dancing with the star.“I was really excited that David Byrne was bringing something else to Broadway,” said Ray Cetta, a bass player and union member who has occasionally played in the band for “Chicago.” “The current situation is very surprising and disheartening. Any musician would want to work with David Byrne and bring his music to life.” More

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    Morgan Wallen’s ‘One Thing at a Time’ Earns a 12th Week at No. 1

    The Nashville star’s latest album will be challenged next week by an older one: Taylor Swift’s “Midnights,” which was rereleased as a deluxe version with bonus tracks.The country superstar Morgan Wallen continues to dominate the Billboard album chart. His latest release, “One Thing at a Time,” holds No. 1 for a 12th straight week, surpassing a milestone by Whitney Houston and marking the longest chart-topping run for a country album since Billy Ray Cyrus three decades ago.The 36-track “One Thing at a Time,” which first arrived at the top of the Billboard 200 chart in early March, remains undefeated after three full months. In its latest week, it had the equivalent of 129,000 sales in the United States, including nearly 163 million streams and 6,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate. Since the album came out, it has been streamed 2.8 billion times in the United States.Last week, Wallen tied a chart feat by Houston, whose 1987 album “Whitney” spent its first 11 weeks at No. 1. The last album to debut at No. 1 and hold there for a longer stretch is Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life,” which had 13 weeks in 1976 and 1977.As a country album that has made it to No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200, “One Thing” has also now surpassed Taylor Swift’s “Fearless,” which logged a total of 11 weeks there in 2008 and 2009. The last country album to have a longer run on the main chart was Cyrus’s “Some Gave All” — which included the ubiquitous “Achy Breaky Heart” — in 1992. (It opened at No. 4 and then notched 17 consecutive weeks at the top.)Wallen’s song “Last Night” also clinches the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 singles chart for an eighth week.How much longer can Wallen hold the No. 1 album? His next major challenger is not a new release, but Swift’s “Midnights,” which came out in October and racked up a total of five weeks at No. 1. (This week it is in third place.) With a new deluxe version of the album, including extra tracks like a version of “Karma” featuring Ice Spice, “Midnights” has a shot at retaking No. 1 on the next chart.Also this week, SZA’s “SOS” rises five spots to No. 2, propelled by its release on vinyl and CD. Wallen’s last LP, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” is No. 4. Dave Matthews Band’s new “Walk Around the Moon” opens at No. 5 with the equivalent of 44,000 sales. More

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    For Lorna Courtney of ‘& Juliet,’ New York Has Always Been Her Stage

    To pursue her dreams of stardom, Lorna Courtney didn’t have to move far away from home. But she did have a lengthy daily commute. In her teens, she would take a bus and two trains (or three, “depending on how long I wanted to walk”) from her home in South Ozone Park, Queens, to the prestigious LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts on the Upper West Side in Manhattan.“That’s not even bad, because there were people that commuted from Staten Island,” said Courtney, the young, Tony Award-nominated star of the new Broadway musical “& Juliet.”The real distances, however, were not measured in miles. At LaGuardia, Courtney was thrown into a new world. “I realized that I was with people who had free lunch and people whose parents had yachts,” she said recently at a cafe near Union Square.She made the most of her years studying voice at LaGuardia, performing in student productions and taking on the roles of Nina in “In the Heights” and Belle in “Beauty and the Beast” (in which her fellow Tony nominee Micaela Diamond played Mrs. Potts.)Fast-forward eight years, and Courtney, 24, is portraying another strong-willed ingénue, Juliet, on Broadway. That would be Shakespeare’s Juliet, except in this musical flight of fancy, the protagonist is not a 14-year-old killing herself for love but a young woman eager to experience the world and figure out who she is. Oh, and this Juliet is belting hits written by the pop mastermind Max Martin, including “Stronger,” “Since U Been Gone” and “Roar.”Courtney in the musical “& Juliet,” a girl-power romp featuring songs by the pop hitmaker Max Martin, at the Stephen Sondheim Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt’s a “blow-you-away performance,” as the New York Times critic Jesse Green put it in his review. Courtney said that she was shocked to hear her name listed among the other Tony nominees for leading actress in a musical, and “got to eat cake as a celebration at 9 o’clock in the morning.”Courtney was born in New Jersey in 1998, the same year Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time,” the first song she performs in the show, was released. She grew up in an ethnically and religiously mixed family; a DNA test informed her that the highest percentage in her ancestry “was 18 percent for Nigeria, followed by Ireland, Jewish-Eastern Europe, and then it was Mali, and I also have Mexican mixed in there, too,” she said.Little predestined her to show business. Her parents were not particularly interested in music, though when her mother saw a segment on “60 Minutes” about Vy Higgensen’s Gospel for Teens program, she encouraged her daughter to join. At 15, Courtney was performing in Higgensen’s long-running musical, “Mama, I Want to Sing!” with the choir in Japan.“It was then that I decided that I could see myself doing musical theater instead of opera, which I studied in high school,” Courtney said. She was off to the races, and proved to be not just gifted, but also enterprising.“All throughout my life, if I had an idea and I felt strongly about it, I was always working to get to that goal,” she said. “I didn’t have many resources easily available and easily accessible but I would use what I had.”While many of her peers at the University of Michigan enjoyed spring break during what she called her “junior-slash-senior year” (she graduated early), Courtney traveled to New York for non-Equity auditions. Waiting to meet with a regional theater for a summer-stock gig, she spotted a call for a “Dreamgirls” revival and managed to pass along her headshot and résumé, even though she didn’t have an agent. She earned a callback, but was not cast. (The production ultimately did not happen, either.)Around graduation, Courtney was back in New York, auditioning for “Dear Evan Hansen” and the Ivo van Hove revival of “West Side Story.” She landed both, starting as a standby in “Hansen” before moving on to “West Side Story” as a member of the ensemble and the understudy for Maria.This was a bracing time for Courtney, who said she relished working with van Hove and the avant-garde choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker on their boldly staged revival, even when they tested her comfort zone. “That particular process was challenging only because in the ensemble, dancing isn’t my forte,” Courtney said. “Particularly, Anne Teresa’s style is very specific, and I had no idea how to move in that way.”The pandemic shutdown — a time when Courtney, like most actors, felt in limbo — put a definitive end to that experience: “West Side Story” was not among the Broadway shows to reopen. Once things crawled back to life, she sent what she estimated to be around a hundred video auditions. (And she landed a part on the pilot of the Queen Latifah series “The Equalizer.”)Then “& Juliet” materialized.The show had premiered in Britain in 2019 to lukewarm reviews, but received nine Olivier Award nominations the following year. By the time the director, Luke Sheppard, conducted auditions for a pre-Broadway run in Toronto, he was very familiar with the role of Juliet. And yet Courtney took him by surprise.“She was able to find a version that was distinctly her version,” he said in a video interview. “It was joyful and eccentric, wonderfully naïve but also incredibly intelligent — this special intelligence that just saw the best in the world around her.”“I’ll just never forget hearing her unbelievably beautiful, powerful pipes,” said the actress Betsy Wolfe, whose callback appointment for “& Juliet” was right after Courtney’s. “Meeting her a couple of minutes later, I thought, ‘Well, this is their Juliet.’”OK McCausland for The New York TimesIt didn’t hurt that she could sing, too.Betsy Wolfe, who plays Anne Hathaway in the show (and who is also nominated for a Tony), remembers that she and Courtney had back-to-back appointments for their callbacks. “Before I even saw Lorna or heard her speak, I heard her sing through a thick wall in a studio rehearsal room,” Wolfe said in a phone interview. “I’ll just never forget hearing her unbelievably beautiful, powerful pipes. Meeting her a couple of minutes later, I thought, ‘Well, this is their Juliet.’ It’s very, very hard for me to even separate the two of them at this point.”Courtney received the good news in December 2021. At the time, she was working behind the desk at an Equinox in Hudson Yards. “I get a call from my agent and manager and they say, ‘You got the role of Juliet,’” she recalled. “Because so many people that work there were also actors, singers and dancers, they were all so excited for me and we were jumping up and down, screaming.”Between the runs in Toronto and on Broadway, Courtney has spent about a year with the musical. She said it’s helping her “grow as a person,” and she values its message. “It’s about staying true to yourself, and finding your own voice, and not being afraid to speak out,” she said. “It’s also about love — multigenerational love, love of friends, love of people who may not be your biological family, and relationships.”And though her family has been an invaluable “support system,” she is at last ready to move into her own place after staying with relatives in either in South Ozone Park or in Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan.In mid-May, her application for an apartment had been approved and she was anticipating the move — because it was in Harlem, a neighborhood she was familiar with from her days in the gospel choir, but also because this savvy New Yorker knew her commute to the theater district in Times Square would be a cinch.“The 2 and 3 is one block away, and then the B and C is another,” Courtney said with obvious relish. “It’s a straight shot.” More

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    For Freeman Vines, Guitar Making Is a Way of Life

    Art of Craft is a series about specialists whose work rises to the level of art.Freeman Vines was chasing a sound.He couldn’t remember where he’d heard it, but it reverberated in his mind. His attempts to replicate it on mass-produced guitars were fruitless, so Mr. Vines took matters into his own hands: In 1958, he started to make guitars.“I didn’t care how the guitar looked. I didn’t care what color the guitar was,” Mr. Vines said in a 2020 documentary called “Hanging Tree Guitars: the Art of Freeman Vines,” produced by Music Maker Foundation, a nonprofit that supports Southern artists like Mr. Vines. “I was looking for a tone.”Freeman Vines in his store, with some of his creations. Mr. Vines, now 80, never did replicate the sound, but along the way he crafted dozens of unique guitars, using wood from barns, troughs and other unexpected — and meaningful — sources. A series of his guitars featured in a traveling exhibition (currently at the Maria V. Howard Arts Center at the Imperial Centre in Rocky Mount, N.C.) came from wood extracted from a tree that had been used to lynch Black people.Mr. Vines, who now works out of a storefront in Fountain, N.C., grew up on a plantation in nearby Greene County during the Jim Crow era, working alongside his mother in the fields for meager wages. When he got older, he toured for a bit as a jazz musician. But the quest to recreate that one sound proved to be the animating force of his life. He carved guitars in different shapes, with specific designs and electronic configurations. Some are crafted to look like traditional African masks.“These guitars here got a character and a sound of their own,” Mr. Vines said in a video accompanying his exhibition. “To somebody else, it’s just some wood glued together. To me, it’s something else.”Chris Bergson, a musician and associate professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, said there had been a big jump in independent guitar-making in recent years. “You’re going to get something really special and unique, like the opposite of a guitar you just buy off the rack.”Mr. Vines has multiple myeloma but hasn’t slowed down. “He cat naps a little bit and just keeps working, keeps creating,” said Timothy Duffy, founder of Music Maker Relief Foundation.Mr. Vines was recently discharged from a rehab facility after a stint in a cancer ward. “They really wanted him to stay there,” Mr. Duffy recalled. “He said, ‘Look, I can sit here and be bored. Or I can go back to my shop and tinker around. They say I’m dying, but you could be dead in three minutes. I’m living now.’”Mr. Vines said it’s important to “let the saw do the work” in shaping guitars.“It’s just like making biscuits. Ain’t no two biscuits look alike.”The wood used to make the “hanging tree guitars” has a “characteristic of its own,” Mr. Vines said. “All that stuff in there, people thought I carved and put in there — I didn’t do it. It was in there.”Mr. Vines’s storefront in Fountain, N.C.His sketchbook. On the right is his vision for an unusually shaped lap steel guitar.A photo of Mr. Vines, circa 1960.“Wood talks to me,” Mr. Vines is quoted as saying in the book “Hanging Tree Guitars.” “Wood has a character.”“There’s spirits in each one of these woods,” Mr. Duffy said of Mr. Vines’s philosophy.One of Mr. Vines’s creations.Mr. Vines, in his wheelchair. He toured as a jazz musician when he was younger.A wooded pond near Mr. Vines’s storefront. More

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    Alan Menken on ‘The Little Mermaid,’ New Songs and Revised Lyrics

    The composer talked revisiting “The Little Mermaid” after nearly 35 years and the similarities between working with Howard Ashman and Lin-Manuel Miranda.Alan Menken composed the musical versions of “Little Shop of Horrors” and “A Bronx Tale,” but he is at peace with being known as a Disney composer.Mostly.“One of the areas where it got to me — you go to the Alan Menken Pandora station, and it’s all these little Disney tunes, and I go, ‘What is that?’” Menken said. Listeners could probably answer him: after all, he’s best known for the scores for beloved Disney animated films like “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast” and of course “The Little Mermaid.”Menken was speaking by video on a recent morning from his sunlit studio at his home in North Salem, N.Y. At 73, he is an EGOT winner with eight Oscars, 11 Grammys, an Emmy and a Tony prominently displayed in a glass case behind him. It was a few weeks before the release of the live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid” and as with Disney’s other live-action and stage adaptations of the classic animated films he scored with the lyricist Howard Ashman, he collaborated with a new partner — in this case the “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda — to add a few more numbers to his original Oscar-winning tunes.In some ways, Menken said, working with Miranda reminded him of his decade-long partnership with Ashman, who died from AIDS in 1991 at age 40.“Sometimes your collaborator goes, ‘Oh, that’s the problem, because this is doing this and it’s overstepping emotionally here,’” Menken said. “It’s something that Howard had. I have those same moments with Lin where I go, ‘He knows.’”(The remake also includes a few adjustments to old songs. A verse in “Poor Unfortunate Souls” urging Ariel to keep quiet was dropped and a line in “Kiss the Girl” suggesting Prince Eric kiss her without asking was changed. Menken has said elsewhere that the filmmakers wanted to avoid suggesting both that the prince “would, in any way, force himself” on Ariel and that young girls might feel they shouldn’t use their voices.)In a recent interview, Menken discussed what it was like to revisit a score he wrote nearly 35 years ago, his experience working with Miranda on new songs and how he learned to embrace being known as a Disney composer. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.DisneyYou have approximately 10 million projects in development, among them “Animal Farm,” “Hercules,” “Nancy Drew” and “Night at the Museum” stage musicals; the live-action adaptation of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”; and a new animated musical film, “Spellbound.” Do you just have a spreadsheet?Yeah, kind of. [Laughs] After a while, you feel like a workaholic.Do you enjoy revisiting your older work, or do you do so more out of a sense of protectiveness?A little of both. These are my babies — I don’t want to walk away from them. Sometimes I’ll think, “What more do we have to say in the telling of this story?” And then it will be incumbent upon me to get to know the director, the book writer, and talk to them about the things they want to add. That’s where it becomes fun for me.What was it like working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on new songs for “The Little Mermaid”?It was a lot of fun — I knew about him because he went to the [Hunter College Elementary School] with my niece, and I would always hear about this little boy, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and how he was obsessed with “The Little Mermaid.”Of the three songs we did together, one is more in my and Howard’s wheelhouse, “Wild Uncharted Waters.” It’s a ballad sung by Prince Eric, and it’s the roiling inside him — it’s very emotional. “For the First Time,” which Ariel sings when she gets legs about all the things she’s noticing for the first time, is a real combination of our styles. I had given Lin a fragment from the score from the original animated movie, and he said, “Wait, can we put a 2 against the 3?” [referring to the tempo], and so it got that real rhythmic rub to it. And the one that was much more in Lin’s wheelhouse was “The Scuttlebutt,” which is sung by Scuttle and Sebastian [played by Awkwafina and Daveed Diggs]. I gave him a little Caribbean tune thinking he would lyricize that, and in fact, he rapped over it! It was just one of those moments where you sense somebody’s brilliance.In 1997, David Horn, now the executive producer of PBS’s “Great Performances” series, told The New York Times, “When there’s a Sondheim musical, everyone refers to it as a Sondheim musical. When it’s something Alan has done, they refer to it as a Disney musical.” Do you still mind your shows being known as Disney musicals?I sometimes would have a little resistance to simply being characterized as “Disney composer Alan Menken” because I already had a huge hit with “Little Shop of Horrors” before I went to Disney. And while I was at Disney, I wrote so many other outside projects — the “Christmas Carol” that was at Madison Square Garden for [nearly] 10 years with Lynn Ahrens, [stage shows] “Sister Act,” “A Bronx Tale,” “Leap of Faith,” [the series] “Galavant” — but there is no musical opportunity that is at the level of writing a musical for Disney. If you do your work right, you will have an experience that nothing else can match.What’s your favorite musical of all time?I remember when I saw the original “Chorus Line” — Blew. My. Mind. It pulled back the curtain in terms of the back story of people who work in theater, especially dancers and the ensemble. It was so powerful, and that was the stagecraft as much as anything else. Michael Bennett [the show’s creator] was such a genius.What dream project is still on your bucket list?Howard, before he died, wanted to do a musical based on a Damon Runyon story — [adapted for a] movie called “The Big Street” — and I took a number of cracks at writing it. The problem is, it has an unlikable central character. It’s challenging, and I still want to do it — maybe it should be an opera. I wrote, I think, a brilliant musical with David Spencer, “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” [previously a novel and a movie]. But it’s very hard to get that musical on — it’s thorny and challenging, but I don’t shy away from those. I just have to go with what happens. More

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    Henry Threadgill’s Musical Spring Is Varied and Extreme. Like He Is.

    The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer has released a memoir, “Easily Slip Into Another World,” and a new album, “The Other One.”Even as a child, Henry Threadgill liked to experiment.In this Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and saxophonist’s new memoir, “Easily Slip Into Another World,” he recounts a youthful attempt to fly from a window using a “contraption” of his own devising.He managed to escape the ensuing, predictable crash without breaking any bones, but the young Threadgill did earn a reputation for daring in his Chicago neighborhood. His mother’s response — “Henry, why do you have to be so extreme?” — became, as he writes, “the refrain of my childhood.”That same question may have occurred to a few listeners. But Threadgill, 79, has done plenty of soaring, on stages, over the years: composing music intended for social dancing, and pieces for orchestra and string quartet in which players are encouraged to improvise. He has also led some of the most widely acclaimed ensembles in the past half-century of American jazz.

    kronosquartet · Henry Threadgill – SixfivetwoAppropriately, he has an interdisciplinary spirit. In addition to his book — written with Brent Hayes Edwards and published by Knopf earlier this month — Threadgill is engaged in a flurry of additional artistic activity, including a new album, “The Other One,” out on Pi Recordings.Scored for a 12-piece ensemble and recorded live at Roulette last year, Threadgill’s chamber music on this release impressed me immediately, as I wrote when it was performed. Those concerts also featured multimedia elements, which Threadgill incorporated into a documentary film that provides a fuller look at the material. That movie, which he produced and edited with D. Carlton Bright, screened at the Museum of Modern Art in late May.Both the show and the film helped Threadgill scratch a long-held creative itch. In a recent interview, he recalled having been impressed by Alban Berg’s opera “Lulu,” which, in an unusual touch for its period, makes dramatic use of a short film at its midpoint. (“That’s one of my favorite operas,” he said. “Love ‘Lulu!’”)Threadgill said that when he produced the staged version of “The Other One,” he realized: “Now is my chance to integrate art, poetry, photographs — everything — into one piece.”This can be a lot to keep up with. But as in his childhood, Threadgill comes by his extreme approach to artistic production honestly.That much was clear earlier this spring when I met him at one of his favorite spots: a combination coffee shop and plant store in the East Village. At one point, as I was peppering him with questions about his mutability, he gestured to consumers throughout the store.Threadgill writes in his new book, “I find that the less I say about my music, the better.”Rahim Fortune for The New York Times“It has to do with cognition,” he replied. “What do we really see or observe? All these people are different sizes, but it’s the same bone structure.”Put another way, all his work is connected, even if he’s not going to get into the DNA of it all with you at the drop of a hat. As he writes in his book, “I find that the less I say about my music, the better.” (And at another point: “Music is about listening. Nothing I say can mean anything once you start to listen.”)Still, a question or two may linger. For example, doesn’t the piano music that kicks off “The Other One” flirt in a surprising way with noirish harmony? And doesn’t that represent something of a break with much of his output this century, which has been conceived outside major/minor composition?

    The Other One by Henry ThreadgillWhen I brought that up, Threadgill said, with a touch of good-natured evasion: “These tonal centers, they don’t really mean anything. I love harmony and stuff. But it’s kinda like looking at those flowers over there. You keep scanning; you never really stop.”Fair enough. This piano music — laced as it is with those recognizable tonalities — doesn’t simply resolve there. At the end of that opening section, two saxophones enter with staggered lines that hustle into a more frenetic state of mind. That’s the more recognizable, recent sound world of Threadgill’s music, driven by a quasi-serialized use of intervals, that has most often been performed by his core ensemble, Zooid.Subsequent sections in “The Other One,” like the track titled “Mvt I, Sections 6A-7A,” sound more like the Zooid recording of “In for a Penny, In for a Pound,” which won Threadgill his Pulitzer.

    The Other One by Henry ThreadgillStill, there’s a sense of that language being developed on the new album, particularly in the music for strings, which is featured during much of “Movement II.” “I’ve been able to expand the language,” Threadgill said. “I have a whole ’nother freedom now, where I’m moving.”

    The Other One by Henry ThreadgillHe then leaped from his seat, seeking a piece of paper from the shop’s employees. On the scrap, he began to diagram some of the modernist composer Edgard Varèse’s ideas about flipping musical intervals — an approach he also describes toward the end of “Easily Slip” — and showed how he was building on Varèse’s example in “The Other One.”After Threadgill filled up the paper with sequences of intervals and melodic phrases — the latter built from a pattern, like Morse Code, of long and short phrases — he moved to toss his notes in the trash.I stopped him. Preserving Threadgill’s working methods is no small matter. Throughout “Easily Slip,” there are tantalizing references to recordings of vintage orchestral performances that have yet to be made available to the public. Some important collaborations, such as concerts with Cecil Taylor, ‌have not been preserved on fixed media at all.Threadgill is thinking about fixing some of these problems. One orchestral recording in his possession may eventually see the light of day on a website, currently under construction, called Baker’s Dozen, a portal that he also plans to offer to other artists who have valuable unreleased tapes in their possession. (He mentioned the pioneering Minimalist Terry Riley as someone who might wind up providing material for the site.)“The Other One” is a majestic addition to Threadgill’s discography, but its film version deserves a wider airing, too. It captures his sense of humor, which tended to emerge during this show whenever he was discussing photographs that he took of possessions abandoned in New York City streets early in the pandemic. He is currently sending the documentary to various festivals, he said, “to see what kind of credits we can pick up.”Other projects in the works, as ever, seem bound to have an unconventional slant. Threadgill said that he has been impressed by the strides that collaborators and acquaintances like Anthony Davis and Terence Blanchard have had in mainstream opera, a world he says isn’t really for him.Instead, Threadgill is planning what he called a “corrupted oratorio,” featuring two choirs: “a traditional choir and a gospel choir,” plus piano and organ, and other instruments as it develops. “I don’t like preconceived forms, you know?” he said. “I like to create new forms.” More

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    Gustavo Dudamel in New York: Selfies, Hugs and Mahler

    Our photographer followed the maestro when he came to town to conduct Mahler’s Ninth — his first time leading the New York Philharmonic since being named its next music director.The violins were tuning, the woodwinds warming up and the trumpets blaring bits of Mahler. Then the musicians of the New York Philharmonic began to whistle and cheer.Gustavo Dudamel, one of the world’s biggest conducting stars, strode onto the stage this month for his first rehearsal with the Philharmonic since being named the ensemble’s next music director. On the program was Mahler’s epic Ninth Symphony.“I will have the opportunity in the next few days to hug everybody,” he told the musicians, smiling and pumping his fist. “I’m very honored to become part of the family.”As it happened, the orchestra’s new hall, the recently renovated David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, was occupied that day, so Dudamel’s first rehearsal took place at its old home, Carnegie Hall. Dudamel said he felt a connection to Mahler, who conducted the Philharmonic at Carnegie when he was its music director from 1909 to 1911.At his first rehearsal, in Carnegie Hall, Dudamel offered a mantra for his tenure: “We will have a lot of fun.”James Estrin/The New York TimesWhile the orchestra rehearsed Mahler, Dudamel rushed to the center of David Geffen Hall to briefly assess the acoustics.Dudamel, one of the world’s biggest conducting stars, is known for his bouncy curls and fiery baton.The violinist Ellen dePasquale warmed up backstage before a rehearsal of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, one of the repertory’s most sweeping and profound works.“This was Mahler’s orchestra,” he said, noting Mahler’s ties to New York when he wrote it. “Even if they are not the same musicians, they have that heritage of Mahler.”While Dudamel does not take the podium in New York until 2026, his five days with the Philharmonic this month, for rehearsals and performances of the Mahler, were an unofficial start. They came at a moment of transition for him in more ways then one: a week later he would announce that he was resigning as music director of the Paris Opera. But New York felt like a new beginning, and as he got to know the orchestra and the city, he offered a mantra for his tenure: “We will have a lot of fun.”Dudamel took a pause backstage before going to meet with percussionists during a break in rehearsal.“I’m very honored to become part of the family,” Dudamel told the Philharmonic’s players.Dudamel grabbed a sip of coffee in his dressing room during a break in rehearsal.Dudamel examined a Mahler score that once belonged to Leonard Bernstein, a predecessor. He said he felt a connection to Mahler, who led the Philharmonic from 1909 to 1911. “Even if they are not the same musicians,” he said, “they have that heritage of Mahler.”Judith LeClair, the Philharmonic’s principal bassoon, embraced Dudamel after a rehearsal. He was greeted as a rock star by the orchestra, with musicians lining up for selfies and hugs.There were hours of intense rehearsals, during which Dudamel urged the players to embrace Mahler’s operatic impulses and his varied style.There were Champagne toasts and rites of passage. In his dressing room Dudamel examined a Mahler score that once belonged to Leonard Bernstein, a predecessor and noted Mahlerian. There were hours of intense rehearsals, during which Dudamel urged the players to embrace Mahler’s operatic impulses and his varied style.“It’s not bipolar, it’s tripolar,” he said of one passage. “This is Freud. A new character — a new spectrum of humanity.”When Dudamel and the orchestra got back to Geffen Hall for the final rehearsals and performances, there were some surprises.After a spectral whirring sound surfaced during an open rehearsal, he turned to the audience. “Maybe it’s Mahler,” he said.Dudamel spoke backstage with members of the Philharmonic’s artistic team about the timing of a rehearsal break. A few seconds before walking onstage for his first concert at the newly renovated Geffen Hall, Dudamel adjusted his tie.The Philharmonic was warmly received at its performances with Dudamel. On the first night, the ensemble got a seven-minute standing ovation.Dudamel’s appearances were highly anticipated by music fans eager to catch a glimpse of the Philharmonic’s next music director. All three concerts sold out.Dudamel abstained from solo bows, gesturing instead to highlight the contributions of the members of the orchestra.Dudamel in his dressing room. “To arrive here, to achieve this connection with you, is for me a prize of life,” he told musicians at a reception. “We will develop this love, this connection.”Throughout his visit, Dudamel was greeted as a rock star, with musicians lining up for selfies and hugs.“You’re part of my family,” Cynthia Phelps, the principal violist, told him at a reception. “Welcome.”Dudamel thanked the musicians, saying he never imagined he would one day lead one of the world’s top orchestras.“To arrive here, to achieve this connection with you, is for me a prize of life,” he said. “We will develop this love, this connection.”At the opening concert, Dudamel was nervous. As is his custom, he conducted the symphony, one of the repertory’s most sweeping and profound works, from memory. At the end of the piece, Dudamel abstained from solo bows, gesturing instead to highlight the contributions of the members of the orchestra.Backstage, an aide handed Dudamel a glass of scotch.“My God,” he said. “What a journey.”Dudamel with his longtime friend and mentor, Deborah Borda, the president and chief executive of the New York Philharmonic, who lured him east from Los Angeles. More

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    Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Touches Down in New Jersey

    The pop megastar’s first of three shows at MetLife Stadium featured an appearance from the rising rapper Ice Spice, a fan-favorite song and loads of sequins.On Friday afternoon, a seemingly endless parade of Taylor Swift fans wearing flowery dresses, sparkly cowboy boots, sequined T-shirts and handmade friendship bracelets made their way to East Rutherford, N.J., turning the vast asphalt parking lot at MetLife Stadium into a pop-up performance space, a fashion runway and a meeting ground for friends, old and new.Two months and 25 shows after the pop megastar’s career-spanning Eras Tour began, the show arrived in the New York area for three weekend dates — her first concerts near (but not quite in) her adopted hometown in five years.“I really, really missed you!” Swift told the sold-out crowd of more than 72,000 people.And they had missed her.Fans in the parking lot of the stadium came with balloons.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesFans dressed up as Swift in different eras, wearing colorful and sparkly outfits.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesMelanie Murrat, an enterprising Swift devotee, entertained those gathered in the parking lot.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesOne young woman announced that she was crying tears of joy as she strode down a tunnel leading to the parking lot. Two fans with tickets to Saturday’s concert who had traveled from Costa Rica came hoping to see Swift on Friday as well. A woman in an “I ❤️ T.S.” shirt refused an interview request, admitting that she teaches at a public school and was not supposed to be at the stadium on a Friday afternoon.Even getting into the parking lot required dedication — and a potentially pricey ticket.Six months after ‌a Ticketmaster presale filled with snags, a single seat at the show on Friday was available on the secondary market for no less than $1,000. The astronomical costs led Swift’s loyal fans, known as Swifties, to band together to help each other find tickets at fair prices.Charlie Tokieda, 39, of Brooklyn, got face-value tickets to Friday’s show by waiting online during the presale, and he bought another pair of tickets on the secondary market to a show in Denver to celebrate his birthday in July.“We did get a great deal, and that great deal could have bought a pretty nice used car,” he said.On Friday afternoon, security guards in orange shirts stood near the gates that formed a perimeter around the parking lot and demanded to see proof of admission before stepping aside. It was part of an effort to crack down on “Taylor-gating,” — hanging out in the lot and listening to the concert without a ticket — which MetLife Stadium said would not be allowed.While the mood outside the stadium was celebratory, a host of ticketless fans camped out, hoping for a chance to see the show.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesMaria Naeem, 32, who arrived via Uber around 9:30 a.m. and slipped into the parking lot unnoticed, was among the smattering of fans and chaperones who remained outside as Swift was preparing to go onstage. Naeem, a doctor, had asked two colleagues to cover her shift and driven from Virginia in hopes of buying a ticket at will call.“They’re not selling, and everything online is very expensive,” she said, disappointed.Many of Swift’s most dedicated followers dressed in D.I.Y. costumes, resembling the singer during different moments of her career. One fan draped herself in a pink-and-white “Taylor Swift 2024” flag. Others sported skirts that featured snakes, a reference to Swift’s 2017 album, “Reputation.”Robert Pszybylski, 19, of Long Island, wore a flowery shirt inspired by Swift’s 2021 Grammys dress, more or less custom-made for the concert.Though Swift didn’t take the stage until close to 8 p.m., the scene in the parking lot was bustling most of the afternoon.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesFans made and traded friendship bracelets.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesSwifties admired their newly procured merchandise.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times“I kept Googling ‘3-D embroidered floral fabric,’” he said. “I ordered off Etsy from China. It took a month to get here.”Even those who were not fortunate enough get tickets found other ways to take part in Taylor Mania.For months, fans with and without tickets have been obsessed with procuring concert merchandise, sometimes camping out overnight to get first dibs on the most coveted items. Perhaps in anticipation of a mad rush to vendors, MetLife Stadium’s flagship store began dispensing merch a full day early.But those efforts did little to shorten the lines on Friday, when, in addition to a prized blue crew neck sweatshirt, fans were hoping to take home a new special edition “Midnights” CD (yes, a CD!) that included a remix of the ‌song “Karma,” featuring the up-and-coming Bronx rapper Ice Spice.Fans in the parking lot enthusiastically sang along as though they were inside the show.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesNear the end of the show, Swift premiered the remix’s video starring Ice Spice, announcing that while in the studio, she “not only fell in love with her, but just decided she’s the entire future.” The rapper later joined Swift onstage to debut the remix and close the show. Cue a fresh round of frenzied screaming.Though she has played about 40 of the same tracks during each three-hour-plus set, Swift has also unveiled a handful of “surprise songs” to keep delighted fans on their toes.On Friday, she invited her frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff to perform “Getaway Car,” a fan favorite from “Reputation,” then took a seat at a piano for “Maroon” from “Midnights,” the most recent of the four albums she has released since her last tour.The LP, she said, was about “nights throughout my life,” “things that kept me up” and “memories you keep going back to.”“Maroon,” she said, was about a memory from — you guessed it:And I lost youThe one I was dancin’ withIn New York, no shoesLooked up at the sky and it was maroonFans who had spent the show in the parking lot at the end of a long night.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times More