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    I Don’t Know if I Believe in God, but I Believe in Gospel Music

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    How music convinced a religious skeptic to rethink faith.Before I began listening to gospel music about 12 years ago, I was not the most obvious candidate to become a fan of the genre. Raised by divorced parents who were not particularly religious, I didn’t give much consideration to faith. Though my father was a longtime member of the Christ Temple Baptist Church — a Black congregation in Ypsilanti, Mich. — he wasn’t a regular presence at Sunday service nor did he pressure me to join him when he did go. My mother, who was a nonobservant Jewish woman, spent much of her adult life criticizing what she viewed as a patriarchal religion; we never attended synagogue, and I didn’t have a bar mitzvah.My mother’s iconoclasm shaped my attitude toward life, including my taste in music. As a teenager I was drawn to punk rock — loud, fast, angry music that reflected my vague and indeterminate outrage at the world. I defied authority, ranting and raving against the powers that be, including cops, politicians, security guards and my teachers at school, though my defiance usually involved little more than cutting holes in my clothes and quoting song lyrics. I was a perpetually cynical and distrustful young man who believed the world’s problems could be solved by my music and clothing preferences, not by organized religion.As I matured and entered my 30s, my father and I grew closer. We bonded over Donny Hathaway, Curtis Mayfield and Aretha Franklin, artists who sang love songs distinctly informed by their respective backgrounds in the Black church. These singers were my conduit to gospel. After hearing the Swan Silvertones sing “Mary Don’t You Weep” on a compilation album of early R&B and gospel groups, I was instantly hooked, and I sought out their LPs as well as records by the Davis Sisters, Marion Williams, Brother Joe May and the Blind Boys of Alabama. I was drawn to the music not because of its religious lyrics but because its rhythms and vocal harmonies moved something deep in my core. I felt the music in my soul before I had even acknowledged the existence of a soul. Each minor chord on the piano, each impassioned cry from the singer broke through my cynicism. I was carried away — if only for a few minutes.I came to understand that the music’s religious spirit was inseparable from the music: Each served the other, to help us express our connection to and yearning for the ineffable, to give form to that which is unseen. When a gospel vocalist sings of faith and love of Jesus, it sounds to my ears like a higher power is pouring out of them, using the artist as an instrument. At the top of the Staple Singers’ 1965 song “Let Jesus Lead You,” for example, the band leader, Pops Staples, launches into the opening and his three children follow, creating a simple call-and-response: “Let Jesus lead you/Let Jesus lead you/Let Jesus lead you/All the way/All the way/All the way from Earth to glory,” before Mavis Staples takes over, her voice slowly building, from mortal earth to the heavenly realms.The sound of the Staple Singers’ early records is blues-influenced, trading church organs and a large chorus for a small band, stripping the music down to its raw core. But like much gospel, the Staple Singers’ music hinges on a buoyant joyfulness that invites the listener to share in their exaltation. Listening to this song, I clap my hands and stomp a foot on the backbeat. My heart swells with each repetition of the refrain, and I feel myself transported to places I’ve never visited but that the music conjures for me: some storefront church or a down-home revival. I’m connected to a history, to a not-so-distant past that is not a part of my personal experience but is bound up in my cultural heritage.It reached into the hidden, malnourished and underserved parts of my spirit that I so often tried to repress. To paraphrase Mahalia Jackson’s memorable description of gospel, the music brought good tidings and good news to my life. In a world that increasingly fosters self-interest and social isolation, gospel points me toward something more intimate, more collective. Though I don’t subscribe to any particular denomination, I aspire to lead a life of curiosity, generosity and compassion — all the best hallmarks of any faith and of great gospel music.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Is She Jazz? Is She Pop? She’s Laufey, and She’s a Phenomenon.

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      For Laufey, 2024 was a whirlwind year. 2025 may be even wilder.Last year, the indie singer-songwriter, who cannot be described without a flurry of hyphenated hybrids — Icelandic-Chinese, jazz-pop-classical, TikTok-trad — became a breakout star with a quirky pop style that draws equally from Taylor Swift and the romantic whimsy of midcentury musicals. She won a Grammy Award and attended the Met Gala in a rosé-colored princess gown and, in perhaps the ultimate orchestra-nerd Easter egg, a veil embroidered with a Bach fugue.In an interview this spring, as she prepared to release her third studio album, “A Matter of Time,” Laufey, 26, was still practically glowing over those accomplishments. But seated at a control console at Electric Lady Studios in New York, where she recorded three of the album’s 14 songs, she also cataloged the jitters and anxieties she felt being thrust into the machinery of fame.“I wanted 2025 to be this year where I was less anxious,” she said, “and instead of walking meekly onto the red carpets or meekly into relationships, I wanted to walk with confidence.”“And I wanted to write a country song,” Laufey continued. She paused a beat. “Country-ish,” she amended herself, and then pushed a button to play “Clean Air” — a twangy starting-over ballad that she said was partly inspired by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris’s “Trio” albums from the 1980s and ’90s.In just a few years, Laufey — her name is properly pronounced with a vowel unfamiliar to most English speakers, but she answers to LAY-vay — has become a phenomenon almost without comparison in contemporary pop. Even in an age of scrambled genres, she stands out as a master code-switcher who cites inspiration from Prokofiev and Chet Baker yet has racked up more than five billion streams with concise, witty earworms that paint a glamorous wonderland shaded with the second guessings of a Gen Z diarist. Despite ruffling some feathers among the conservative gatekeepers of jazz, she has cultivated a vast fan base online and this fall will embark on her first arena tour, including two nights at Madison Square Garden.And she has big fans.Despite ruffling some feathers among the conservative gatekeepers of jazz, Laufey has cultivated a vast fan base. Olivia Rodrigo and Barbra Streisand are among her A-list admirers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Tosca’ Is the Boston Symphony’s Andris Nelsons at His Best

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      Andris Nelsons led a concert performance of Puccini’s opera at Tanglewood. It was a high point of the season.Andris Nelsons may have become a fitful, inconsistent music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but every once in a while, he proves that he has still got it.Such was the lesson on Saturday night at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in the Berkshires, as Nelsons and a starry cast delivered a concert “Tosca” of high intensity and even higher emotion.This Tanglewood season is a solid one, with the premiere of a new John Williams piano concerto written for Emanuel Ax on the agenda next weekend, a Gabriela Ortiz-curated Festival of Contemporary Music sprawling around the grounds at the same time, and the obligatory appearances of Yo-Yo Ma, famous friend of the orchestra, to come in August. New at Tanglewood this year: tastefully installed screens next to the Shed stage that show the musicians at work, and, by some miracle, enhanced cellphone service. Still unchanged: the humidity.But “Tosca” was always likely to be a high point of the season, and it was. Opera has often brought out the best in Nelsons in Boston, and the closer to the most commonplace parts of the repertoire the work has been, the stronger the performance from him. Wagner transfixed him as a child, and it was at the Latvian National Opera that his career began to take off in his 20s. Now 46, he rarely looks more engaged on the podium than when he is supporting a singer in full flow.And for this Puccini, Nelsons had some singers of quality to support. Bryn Terfel sang his last staged Scarpia at the Met earlier this year, but he still brings unrivaled authority and conviction to a role that has defined his career. Has the passing of time brought a more vicious edge of desperation to his portrayal, as if an older Scarpia might feel as though this is his last, appalling chance to corner his prey, causing him to act with such depravity? Either way, Terfel’s snarling chief of the Roman police remains a privilege to see.So, too, the glorious Cavaradossi of the Korean baritone-turned-tenor SeokJong Baek. Here, as at the Met last fall, his extraordinarily firm, high cries of “Vittoria!” drew instant applause, and they were far from the only point at which this colossal voice, wielded by turns with machined precision and melting sensitivity, could have earned such approval.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Justin Bieber’s Experimental ‘Swag’ Resurgence

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeEarlier this month, Justin Bieber surprise-released his seventh album, “Swag,” and it is his most idiosyncratic and musically adventurous release to date. Early in his career, he was a superstar by force, and later by will, or something like it. Now, after a few years out of the spotlight, he’s verging toward tastemaker, or at least someone who pays close attention to actual tastemakers.Midcareer artist rebrands are a dime a dozen, but in the current algorithmically-driven moment, rarely do they veer in such uncertain directions. But Bieber’s work with the guitar innovator Mk.gee, the soul provocateur Dijon, the frisky hip-hop producer Cash Cobain and more indicates a willingness to disrupt his fame a little if it means potentially making something interesting.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Bieber’s tug of war between pop success and R&B passion; how his tabloid life influences his musical directions; and whether any artist can actually navigate the level of fame Bieber has experienced.Guest:Joe Coscarelli, New York Times pop music reporterConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

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      Italy Cancels Valery Gergiev’s Festival Appearance

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      Some lawmakers in Italy had argued that Valery Gergiev’s planned appearance sent the wrong message as Europe strives to remain united in its support for Ukraine. A concert at a festival in Italy that was to have been the conductor Valery Gergiev’s first in Western Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine more than three years ago was canceled on Monday amid a backlash over the musician’s close ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.Antonella Giannattasio, a spokeswoman for the Un’Estate da RE festival, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Gergiev would no longer perform on July 27 at the Royal Palace of Caserta, a historic site north of Naples.Italian activists and politicians had denounced plans for Mr. Gergiev to conduct at the event. Mr. Gergiev, a staunch ally of Mr. Putin, lost all his engagements in the West when Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022.There was concern in Italy and more broadly in the European Union about Mr. Gergiev’s participation, given that the festival is bankrolled by the bloc. There were fears that his presence could be seen as an endorsement of Russia at a time when Europe is scrambling to provide weapons to Ukraine as the Trump administration’s support for Kyiv has seemed to waver.Italy’s culture minister, Alessandro Giuli, said in a statement on July 15 that allowing Mr. Gergiev to participate in the festival “risks passing the wrong message.”“Ukraine is an invaded nation, and Gergiev’s concert may turn a high-level but objectively controversial and divisive musical event into a sounding board for Russian propaganda,” Giuli added. “Which for me would be deplorable.”The planned concert also drew international condemnation. Yulia Navalnaja, the widow of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, wrote in a guest article for the Italian daily la Repubblica last week that Mr. Gergiev’s performance in Italy “would be a gift to the dictator.”Before the war in Ukraine, Mr. Gergiev was one of the world’s most sought-after conductors, with regular engagements at leading concert halls and opera houses. But his work in the West dried up after he declined to denounce Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He lost numerous engagements, and the Munich Philharmonic removed him from his post as chief conductor three years before his contract had been set to expire.Mr. Putin rewarded Mr. Gergiev in 2023 by tapping him to lead the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. The move put him at the pinnacle of Russian culture, since he was already the artistic and general director of the nation’s other leading performing arts institution, the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. (In Moscow Mr. Gergiev replaced Vladimir Urin, who had been the Bolshoi’s general director since 2013 and who had signed a petition expressing opposition to the war in Ukraine.)Mr. Gergiev and Mr. Putin have known each other since the 1990s, and the maestro has supported the Russian leader in election campaigns.Elisabetta Povoledo More

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      Can Indigo De Souza Spin Pop Gold From the Wreckage of Her Past?

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      Indigo De Souza and Elliott Kozel almost canceled their musical blind date.In January 2023, De Souza — a singer and songwriter who had increasingly toyed with borders around indie-rock, soul and pop — flew to Los Angeles from her home in Asheville, N.C., where she’d made her records with old friends. Now she wanted to try meeting strangers in their studios and seeing if, together, they might create a pop anthem. She was anxious, since this “blind session” would be her first. Kozel wasn’t nervous. He’d long done 60 such sessions a year. He had, however, been up late, playing songs in a small club. He was hung over.“He was very grumpy, like the world had beaten him down,” De Souza said during a recent video interview, a day after turning 28, laughing beneath the radiant-green tree canopy of a rural spread where she sometimes stays near Asheville. “He wasn’t putting on any frills. He was showing me exactly who he was. That’s what I needed.”Within an hour, Kozel had found a synthesizer sound and vocal sample De Souza loved. As the music looped, she sat down and, in 10 minutes, wrote “Not Afraid,” an existential examination of life, aging and death, of recognizing the inevitability of them all. Kozel was stunned she could explore her own mortality so readily in front of someone new, let alone sing about it.Though De Souza went to other sessions, she returned only to Kozel to write and record in his garage. With its heroic keyboards, romantic guitars and insistent rhythms, the absorbing 11-track result, “Precipice,” makes good on her longtime ambition to release a sophisticated pop album. It is a vivid and gripping reintroduction, putting her in unexpected conversation with stars like Lorde and Charli XCX.Indigo De Souza’s new album, “Precipice,” makes good on her ambition to release a sophisticated pop record.Perhaps more important, De Souza’s work and camaraderie with Kozel allowed her to write about lifelong struggles with mental illness and abusive relationships with newfound clarity and confidence.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Renée Fleming, Star Soprano, Tries Out the Director’s Chair

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      A young soprano was rehearsing a difficult aria from Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte” when the director stopped her and made a suggestion.“I always liked to lay down for this part,” the director said, “because it lets the body relax.”It’s not every opera director who can talk about performing choices in the first person. But on that summer afternoon in Aspen, Colo., the woman staging the scene was Renée Fleming, perhaps the most famous soprano of recent decades. Fleming was passing on a career’s worth of accumulated wisdom to a cast in which the oldest singer is 32.Among her lessons was when to say no.“Just remember, you’re going to be more nervous onstage than you are now,” Fleming said as the group worked on some aerobics-style choreography for the production, set in the early 1980s. “So maybe don’t do these jumps, because even if you can sing while you’re doing them now, you’re going to be out of breath on opening night.”Fleming is making her directing debut with this “Così,” which opens on Monday at the Wheeler Opera House as part of the Aspen Music Festival and School, one of the country’s most prestigious summer programs for rising artists.The soprano Lauren Carroll (left, with Fleming) is singing Fiordiligi, Fleming’s old role.Matthew Defeo for The New York TimesShe joins a select group of divas (and divos) turned directors. This fall, the tenor Rolando Villazón’s production of Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” comes to the Metropolitan Opera. And the mezzo Denyce Graves is staging Scott Joplin’s “Treemonisha” for Washington National Opera next year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Roger Norrington, Iconoclastic British Conductor, Dies at 91

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      His work, largely unknown outside Britain until late in his career, was often based on historical treatises. It was seen by many as refreshingly innovative.Roger Norrington, the English conductor who became a star of the historically informed performance movement by provocatively applying scholarly research about tempos and tone production to a broad expanse of the symphonic repertoire, from Beethoven to Mahler and even the modernist Stravinsky, died on Friday at his home outside of Exeter, England. He was 91.His death was confirmed by his friend and musical colleague Evans Mirageas, who is the artistic director of the Cincinnati Opera.Mr. Norrington was known for his brisk, lively and often audacious performances of Handel, Mozart and Haydn before he turned his attention to Beethoven and Berlioz; after that, he forged deeper into the 19th and early 20th centuries. He led both period-instrument and modern orchestras, using the same interpretive principles, and though some of his performances drew criticism for their brash iconoclasm, many listeners regarded them as insightful and refreshingly original.Lanky, bespectacled, bearded and balding, Mr. Norrington projected both affability and authority, and he loved making the case for his ideas — not only in interviews but also in seemingly off-the-cuff comments at his concerts. He often cited centuries-old treatises as well as his delight in the “pure” sound, as he put it, of strings playing without vibrato. He once famously referred to vibrato as “a modern drug.”Toward the end of his career, he preferred to conduct while seated, usually on a high swivel chair that allowed him to turn to the audience to smile conspiratorially at a light moment within the music, and even to encourage applause. He was known to tell audiences that they could applaud between the movements of a symphony or a concerto, a common practice in the 18th and 19th centuries that is frowned on today.He reveled in being provocative. In a 2021 interview with The Telegraph, he referred to his 2007 recording of Mahler’s Second Symphony as his “last hand grenade.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      W.N.B.A.’s All-Star Weekend Is Still Buzzing, Even Without Caitlin Clark

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      The temperature had crept past 80 degrees, but on Friday afternoon, on a basketball court in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, Ava Shampo, 5, was feeling good.“I made it!” she said, smiling, after heaving an orange-and-white basketball toward a hoop that towered over her.The line of nets on Monument Circle, the traffic roundabout at the city’s center, was one of more than a dozen public events held in connection with the W.N.B.A. All-Star Game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on Saturday night. The game was expected to feature fan favorites like Aliyah Boston of the Indiana Fever and A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces — even if the biggest name, the Fever’s Caitlin Clark, was sidelined by a right groin injury she sustained earlier in the week.The turnout for All-Star Weekend — a fervent crowd seemingly undiminished by Ms. Clark’s injury — reflected both the explosion of interest in the W.N.B.A. and the excitement around the sport in Indianapolis.Fans descended on Indianapolis for more than a dozen public events held around the city in connection with the W.N.B.A. All-Star Game.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesA young fan decorated her sneakers.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesDonna Motley of Chicago made her own outfit for the weekend.Lee Klafczynski for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More