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.cls-1 { fill: url(#linear-gradient); } .cls-2 { mask: url(#mask); } The Town With a Song in Its Heart Jamming on the porch of the Wildflower Bed & Breakfast in Mountain View, Ark. Houston Cofield The Town With a Song in Its Heart Follow the winding roads to Mountain View, Ark., home of the Ozark Folk […] More
The group founded in 1967 has carried on after the death of its longtime leader, Edgar Froese, but his impact on its music is still resonating.Before this spring, the last time Tangerine Dream performed live in the United States was on Sept. 30, 2013. The occasion was “Live From Los Santos: The Music of Grand Theft Auto V,” a showcase presented during the 51st New York Film Festival.Surrounded by fellow composers and a phalanx of session musicians, the pioneering electronic-music band was hard to pick out of the crowd. But you couldn’t miss the group’s leader, Edgar Froese, front and center in his signature black hat.It was the final New York performance by Froese, who died of a pulmonary embolism in 2015. He had founded Tangerine Dream in Berlin in 1967, and kept the trailblazing group alive through myriad lineups and stylistic shifts: from eerie soundscapes and hypnotic sequencers in the 1970s, through anthemic synth-pop suites and successful film scores in the ’80s, and guitar-stoked E.D.M. during the ’90s, to the splashy, stage-friendly sextet of his final years.Now, a new Tangerine Dream is touring the U.S. and Canada, arriving at the Knockdown Center in Queens on Saturday — precisely a decade after its last New York appearance. Huddled together for a video call backstage in Tucson, Ariz., before a recent show, the current members — the keyboardists Thorsten Quaeschning and Paul Frick, and the violinist Hoshiko Yamane — delighted in the tour’s progress so far.“Absolutely brilliant,” said Quaeschning, 46, a member of the group since 2005 and its musical director since 2013. “It’s getting better from concert to concert.”“A lot of people talk to us after the show, who share their memories of old Tangerine Dream shows and albums from before I was born,” Frick, 44, said.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesApart from a one-off South by Southwest festival show in March, this is the first time Tangerine Dream has performed in the states without Froese. But the former leader is uncannily present: not only in back-catalog selections like “Phaedra,” “Stratosfear” and “Love on a Real Train” (the haunting theme from the film “Risky Business”), but also in new music fashioned with musical sketches and digital recordings from a 60-hour archive Froese bequeathed to his second wife, the German artist Bianca Froese-Acquaye, who now supervises the band and its legacy.“For him, Tangerine Dream was always a kind of project which could be developed,” Froese-Acquaye said in a recent interview in a Times Square hotel cafe. “The individual musicians never were that important; he always said the music was the star.”It wasn’t the first time Froese had proposed a Tangerine Dream without him. “I had previously had the slightly strange idea of placing the group’s musical future into other hands in 1990, and to perhaps work on as a provisional director from behind the scenes,” he wrote in “Force Majeure,” an autobiography completed and published in 2017 by Froese-Acquaye.The line of succession now pointed toward Quaeschning. “There was always this sort of teacher-pupil situation between us,” Quaeschning said. “He had very set and crystallized views about scales and sound design, and the ideas behind the music.”“I feel like Edgar watches us at every concert,” Yamane said. “Or maybe I want him to.”Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesYamane, 42, enlisted in 2011, adding violin and cello to a lineup already augmented with guitar, saxophone and percussion. When Froese stripped the band back down to its electronic core in late 2014, Yamane — who uses a five-string electric violin to control keyboards — opted to carry on with the group, which added another keyboardist, Ulrich Schnauss.“I add the sound of my violin not as a solo melodic instrument,” Yamane said in an email interview, “but as one of all the sounds that can be played from the synthesizer.”After Froese died, the trio worked briefly with Peter Baumann, who had played with Froese and Christopher Franke in the foundational early ’70s lineup, and signed a later version of the band to Private Music, his upstart record label, in 1988. Baumann’s renewed presence might have allayed concerns about a Tangerine Dream without Froese. But the combination failed to gel.“For them, it was hard with me coming in from the outside and obviously having a history with the band,” Baumann said by telephone from his home in Northern California. “I didn’t want to fight, saying, ‘I’m the senior person here and will do what I want.’ It just was not fun, let’s put it that way.”“There was always this sort of teacher-pupil situation between us,” Quaeschning said of the group’s former leader.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesForging ahead, the nascent trio was met with skepticism from concert promoters and industry executives. “It was really a tough time,” Froese-Acquaye said. “They called us a cover band and things like that.”Former band members have also challenged the group’s legitimacy. Among the first to protest was Froese’s son, Jerome Froese, who played in Tangerine Dream from 1996 to 2005. “Tangerine Dream was my Dad and my Dad is dead and so is Tangerine Dream,” he wrote on Facebook in 2015.By email, Jerome confirmed that his position hasn’t changed. “What has happened here,” he wrote, “is classic legacy hunting by people who would not have had a career without the name Tangerine Dream.” The idea that his father left behind surplus musical material, he asserts, is a “fairy tale.”Johannes Schmoelling, who played in Tangerine Dream 1979 to 1985, says the current group lacks the technological tools and musical capability to match the historical band’s innovations. “It is much easier and commercially more successful to adorn oneself with this once world-famous name instead of having to earn one’s own laurels,” he wrote in an email.The crowd taking in Tangerine Dream at Mohawk Austin.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesEven Baumann is skeptical. The original band’s success, in his view, was less about genius than serendipitous timing. “You can’t really recreate what happened in the ’70s,” he said. “You don’t have the same kind of instruments, you don’t have the audience, you don’t have the atmosphere, you don’t have the cultural environment.“There’s nothing wrong with a cover,” Baumann added. “But it’s not the original, you know?”Quaeschning has heard it all before, even in response to projects led by Froese, like a cantata trilogy based on Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” In the 2000s, Froese himself recorded new versions of several Tangerine Dream albums, including “Phaedra,” “Tangram” and “Hyperborea.”“I’m used to people saying, ‘This is not Tangerine Dream,’” he said, laughing. “But what is Tangerine Dream?” Anyone hearing “Electronic Meditation,” the group’s clangorous 1970 debut, then “Phaedra,” its sequencer-driven 1974 landmark, and “Optical Race,” a slick digital release from 1988, would find it hard to reconcile the differences, he said.“It’s hard to spot the Tangerine Dream sound from a distance,” Quaeschning said, “but the feeling and the concept were always there. And it feels quite right at this moment.”“Quantum Gate,” released in 2017, and “Raum,” its 2022 follow-up, sound very much like Tangerine Dream, and not just because material by Froese was used. “The idea was going back to everything Edgar had done with Tangerine Dream in the ’70s and ’80s,” Quaeschning said, “with contemporary sound design and the idea that everyone has a role in the band, like an orchestra.”Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesOn tour, the upstart group won fans over with a mix of its new music and back-catalog staples. Harking back to the wholly improvised concerts of the earliest era, each show would end with a spontaneous collaboration lasting 20 minutes or more. Rather than improvisations, Quaeschning terms these performances “sessions.”“I don’t like the idea of improvisation, because sometimes it feels like people doing the muscle-memory thing,” he said. Here, just enough information is shared in advance — often just a key signature and tempo — to harmonize collaboration, sometimes accommodating guests.Schnauss departed in 2020, and Frick, 44, signed on. “A lot of people talk to us after the show, who share their memories of old Tangerine Dream shows and albums from before I was born,” he said. But new listeners are showing up, too, including some surely attracted by his work in the heady German techno trio Brandt Brauer Frick.Frick is the first Tangerine Dream member who never met the group’s founder. But for his bandmates, Froese remains vividly present.“I feel like Edgar watches us at every concert,” Yamane said. “Or maybe I want him to. I’m sure he will give me some advice, like, ‘You were good today,’ or ‘You should do this better.’” More
The Florida rapper’s latest hit LP bumps Olivia Rodrigo’s “Guts” to No. 2 in its second week of release.For many music fans, the name Rod Wave may not immediately come to mind as one of today’s hip-hop superstars. But over the past few years, this 25-year-old from St. Petersburg, Fla., has quietly become one of the most successful artists in the genre with a distinctive style that combines rapping and singing and has helped him score his third No. 1 album in a row.“Nostalgia,” Rod Wave’s new album, opens with the equivalent of 137,000 sales in the United States, beating Olivia Rodrigo’s hit LP “Guts” by a few thousand, bumping it to second place after one week at the top. “Nostalgia” was a big streaming hit, particularly on Apple Music, garnering 188 million clicks, according to Luminate, which tracks music data.“Nostalgia” is Rod Wave’s third straight No. 1, after “Beautiful Mind” last year and “SoulFly” in 2021; before that, his album “Pray 4 Love” peaked at No. 2. According to Luminate, Rod Wave, who began releasing mixtapes in 2017, has logged more than 15 billion career streams in the United States alone.Rodrigo’s “Guts” is No. 2 with the equivalent of 134,000 sales. Zach Bryan’s self-titled album holds at No. 3, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is also stationary at No. 4, and SZA’s “SOS” — which recorded 10 weeks at No. 1 from late 2022 into February — rose one spot to No. 5 in its 41st week of release. More
Carlos Acosta’s first major commission as the leader of Birmingham Royal Ballet celebrates a local band and the hard-rocking genre it invented.On a recent afternoon, 18 members of Birmingham Royal Ballet spun, pirouetted and leaped across a rehearsal room, with all the grace and skill associated with classical dance. Yet the music blaring out of the sound system wasn’t by Tchaikovsky or Ravel. It was by Black Sabbath.When the dancers finished the sequence to the Ozzy Osbourne-fronted band’s pounding track “Iron Man,” Pontus Lidberg, the lead choreographer for the company’s new production, “Black Sabbath: The Ballet,” nodded approvingly. Then he decided he needed movement more suited to the aggressive music.“Shall we try a stage dive?” he said.In 2020, Birmingham Royal Ballet — based in England’s second most populous, but often overlooked, city — grabbed the British dance world’s attention when it appointed the Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta as its artistic director. Now, Acosta said, he hoped that the Black Sabbath Ballet, which has its premiere Wednesday, would gain the company global attention, too, as well as help the company find a wider audience at home.A mural celebrating Black Sabbath in their hometown of Birmingham.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesA preview performance on Saturday attracted a mix of Black Sabbath and ballet fans.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesThe second part appears to be working. An eight-show run at Birmingham’s vast Hippodrome theater is sold out, as are runs in London and Plymouth, England.Acosta said he had chosen Black Sabbath for his first major commission at the company because the heavy metal band was one of “Birmingham’s jewels.” Before forming, the group’s four members worked in the city’s factories and abattoirs, but soon after they came together in 1968, they began mixing lyrics influenced by horror movies with hard rock, in a style that was eventually christened heavy metal. Over the following decades, most major metal bands, including Iron Maiden and Metallica, cited Black Sabbath as a key influence, and the band sold over 70 million albums.Acosta noted that Birmingham has a canal bridge named for Black Sabbath, but otherwise, he said, the city hadn’t done enough to celebrate the brand or the genre it created.Birmingham Royal Ballet’s artistic director, Carlos Acosta, said he hoped that “Black Sabbath: The Ballet” would gain the company global attention and also help the company find a wider audience at home.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesThe idea of melding heavy metal music and dancing on pointe was initially met with some confusion, Acosta said, including from Black Sabbath’s members. Tony Iommi, 75, the band’s guitarist, said that when he heard about the project, his first thought was: “Dancing to Sabbath! How’s that going to work?”Still, Iommi agreed to meet Acosta and was won over by the dancer’s enthusiasm for the band and a shared background: Acosta came from a poor part of Havana, Iommi said, while Black Sabbath’s members hailed from rough districts of Birmingham, where street brawls were common and ballet lessons nonexistent.“Carlos had such a belief in what he was doing,” Iommi said.It took Acosta several years to work out how to stage a full-scale ballet to the band’s music. Ben Ratcliffe, writing in The New York Times in 1993, described the ideal Black Sabbath song as “slow and low, loud and long.” Lidberg, the ballet’s lead choreographer, said that the repetitive, angry riffs of the group’s most famous songs, like “War Pigs” and “Paranoid,” at first seemed more suited to contemporary dance.Acosta and Black Sabbath’s guitarist Tommy Iommi collaborated on the show. “Carlos had such a belief in what he was doing,” said Iommi. “The whole band signed it off.”Drew TommonsIt was only with a deep dive into the band’s catalog that the creative team realized there were other songs — including the psychedelic “Planet Caravan” — that had gentler moods. The final ballet will contain orchestral versions of eight Black Sabbath tracks, as well original music by a team of composers. A metal guitarist will play onstage, too.Although the piece is no story ballet, it does feature scenes based on real events, including an industrial accident Iommi suffered in 1965 that was key to the development of Black Sabbath’s sound. The guitarist, then aged 17, was working a shift in a Birmingham sheet metal factory when he caught his right hand in a machine. It tore off the tips of two fingers, leaving bloody bones sticking out.To continue playing, Iommi fashioned new finger tips out of dishwashing soap bottle caps, then slackened his guitar strings to ease the pressure as he pressed down on the fretboard. Those changes helped create Black Sabbath’s — and so metal’s — signature booming sound.Five years later, when Black Sabbath released its self-titled debut album, critics hated it, but fans flocked to the band’s concerts. Black Sabbath made headlines throughout the ’70s for its drug-fuelled antics as much as for its music. (The sleeve notes for the band’s fourth album, recorded in Los Angeles in 1972, thanked the city’s drug dealers.) But even for Black Sabbath, Osbourne went too far, and in 1979, the band’s other members fired him. In the solo career that came after, Osbourne once bit the head off a live bat onstage.The ballet features “head banging, air guitars, and moshing,” according to its lead chief choreographer, Pontus Lidberg. Ellie Smith for The New York TimesLidberg said that he had toyed with including many strange, real-life moments in the ballet, including the bat biting, but, ultimately, the show would be thematic, rather than specific. The first act centers on how Birmingham’s clattering factories influenced heavy metal’s sound, he explained, and the third act is about the band’s fans.Lisa Meyer, a Birmingham music promoter, is credited as the ballet’s “metal curator,” tasked with ensuring authenticity — but it remains to be seen what metal fans will make of it.Barney Greenway, the Birmingham-born lead singer of Napalm Death, a band that pioneered the metal subgenre of grindcore, said he hoped the dancers didn’t rely on “metal stereotypes, like throwing the ‘devil horns,’” a hand gesture often seen at rock concerts. Nonetheless, he said, his interest was piqued.Iommi predicted one subset of fans that would likely appreciate the ballet: Black Sabbath’s original followers from the 1970s. “They wouldn’t want to go to a rock concert anymore,” he said. “Some are in their 80s!” This show would be perfect for them, Iommi added: They can watch it sitting down. More
Mariusz Trelinski returns to the Metropolitan Opera next year with a new staging of “La Forza del Destino,” which leans into psychoanalysis and fate.In Verdi’s epic opera “La Forza del Destino” (“The Power of Destiny”), none of the characters can escape the inexorable drive toward a tragic ending. The director Mariusz Trelinski, originally a filmmaker by training, has identified one force in particular that determines the events.“It is a story about patricide and the consequences,” he said by phone from Lyon, France, referring to the death of the Marquis of Calatrava. “The killing of the father in the first act determines the fate of all the characters. They are pushed like billiard balls and can only continue rolling passively.”From Feb. 26 to March 29, Mr. Trelinski will mount the Metropolitan Opera’s first new staging of the opera in nearly three decades. It is a co-production with Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw, where Mr. Trelinski serves as artistic director and where the production was first seen in January.At the Met, the music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts a cast including Lise Davidsen in her role debut as a Spanish noblewoman, Donna Leonora de Vargas, and Brian Jagde as her suitor, Don Alvaro, who is half Peruvian. Igor Golovatenko plays her brother Don Carlo de Vargas — whom Alvaro kills in a duel.The relationship between Mr. Trelinski, 61, and the Met began in 2015 with a double bill of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” and Tchaikovsky’s one-act opera, “Iolanta.” The next year, the Met’s season opened with his staging of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.” Both operas emerged in co-production with the Polish National Opera (“Tristan” was additionally mounted at the Baden-Baden Festival in Germany).A scene from “Bluebeard’s Castle” at the Met, which was directed by Mr. Trelinski in 2015.Marty Sohl/Metropolitan OperaThe director’s career in opera first took off with a 1999 production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” that traveled from Warsaw to Washington and Los Angeles, followed by stops in Valencia, Spain; Tel Aviv; and St. Petersburg, Russia. Known for his contemporary but clear visual language, Mr. Trelinski was in 2018 named best director at the International Opera Awards in London.The following interview has been edited and condensed.You often approach your characters from a psychoanalytical perspective. Tell us more about your production of “La Forza del Destino.”For me, Calatrava is the symbol of patriarchy. His assassination is a rejection of everything that has formed us: norms, laws and logos. After that moment, the characters become slaves of the situation.It is an epic story that unfolds over about 20 years. We begin with Calatrava’s birthday party, where we see the elite of society and the prestige of military forces.After that, war breaks out. We see that the world is turned upside-down. And in the third part, after so many years, we see the ruin of civilization. Our heroes are older and tired.The set is in almost permanent motion, as a kind of metaphor for the mad rush of fate and events that you cannot stop. We cannot stop these wheels from turning until the end of our lives.Does faith or God offer any promise of redemption?Nowadays faith does not consist of the divine judgments we find in Verdi’s opera, but rather human complexes that are deeply inscribed in the fabric of life. The result is broken lives, children searching for a kind of surrogate father, and a series of false unconscious choices.This is the reason Leonora takes refuge in a monastery and Alvaro joins the army. They choose a surrogate father because these are patriarchal institutions. We cast the same singer [Soloman Howard] as Calatrava and the superior of the monastery, Padre Guardiano, to drive home this principle.“La Forza del Destino” at the Polish National Opera.Krzysztof Bieliński/Teatr Wielki – Polish National OperaAnd true love has no chance in these societal structures?I think Verdi’s answer is pessimistic. Love initially gives Leonora and Alvaro together hope for a different life. But patricide separates them for many years.When they finally meet again, they see in each other the ones who killed the father. They both feel guilty and cannot live together.Verdi is very clever here. The crime leaves behind such a wound that even love cannot really repair it.I have staged “La Traviata,” where you also have a domineering father who represents patriarchal society. It was important for me to return to this opera and understand this as key to the story.How has your relationship with the Met and [the general manager] Peter Gelb evolved over the years?I’m very happy with the trust we’ve built. And I think a big part of it is my filmic approach. People today see the world through the eyes of cinema — they speak through pictures.This is a key issue because what does it mean to be opera director? An opera director is somebody who can visualize the music.The music really shows you the energy of the production, the tempo of the changes. And it’s always the truth, because there are a few librettos that are really great, but in, let’s say, 70 percent of operas, we have genius music, and the libretto is secondary. And if we want to bring this genre to life, we have to keep this in mind, because the music is eternal. More
SeokJong Baek, a South Korean tenor about to make his Metropolitan Opera debut, has had a meteoric journey to the most hallowed halls of the opera world. But to hear him tell it, his whirlwind career has been simply about timing.On a recent sweltering day over coffee in this city’s Gangnam neighborhood — where coffee can cost up to $8 — Mr. Baek spoke about his career with an innocent modesty. He will make his debut at the Met as Ismaele in Verdi’s “Nabucco” (opening Thursday) just a couple of years after retraining his voice from baritone to tenor.Three of his first roles as a tenor were at the Royal Opera House in London, a level of prestige that many singers work years, if not decades, to achieve. It’s an enviable trajectory for any opera singer, and one that Mr. Baek, 37, seems to shrug off as just the story of a humble guy from South Korea who got a break. Or, one might say, a series of breaks.Born in Jeonju in southwestern South Korea, Mr. Baek studied music in high school and at Chugye University for the Arts in Seoul before moving to Toronto to study English and work for a few years. In 2010, he was accepted into the Manhattan School of Music in New York, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees (with a two-year stint back in South Korea for his required military service). He graduated in 2019.But a chance meeting that same year with the South Korean tenor Yonghoon Lee changed the course of his career.“Yonghoon said that I had a great voice as a baritone, but that he heard something different in my voice,” Mr. Baek recalled. “He said that I could be a greater tenor.”Along with a piano accompanist at Mr. Lee’s apartment in New York, Mr. Baek sang “Recondita armonia” from Act I of “Tosca.”“I was shocked how I could sing the upper register,” he said. “We were all a bit surprised.”Mr. Baek performing in “Cavalleria Rusticana” with Aleksandra Kurzak at the Royal Opera House.Tristram Kenton/Royal Opera HouseSoon after, Mr. Baek was accepted at the young artists program at the San Francisco Opera as a baritone. But for the final student concert in late 2019, he was allowed to sing the same aria from “Tosca” and another tenor aria.“I decided to change my voice in September, and the concert was in December, so that was a very short period of time to prepare as a tenor,” Mr. Baek said. “Going from tenor to baritone is easier. But to go from baritone to tenor is much more difficult. But I made it.”Two months later, the pandemic hit, and Mr. Baek spent that time retraining himself to be a tenor, which involved vocal exercises and “opening up my chest to resonate with my whole body” and repeating the high register over and over.“For 90 minutes almost every day for 18 months, I sang by myself at the San Francisco Korean United Methodist Church in my neighborhood,” he recalled. “The training was quite brutal. It was lonely. And for a few months, it didn’t work. But after about a year, I could maintain the high register on several arias.”Soon after, he took first prize at the prestigious Loren L. Zachary voice competition in Los Angeles in 2021 — as a tenor — and then took first prize later that year at the Vincerò opera competition in Italy, where he met a casting director from the Royal Opera who arranged an audition. This led to his being cast as the cover, or standby, for the role of Samson in the Royal Opera’s “Samson and Delilah” in May 2022. It was his first role as a tenor.Mr. Baek performing the role of Samson in “Samson and Delilah” at the Royal Opera House.Tristram Kenton/Royal Opera HouseIn early 2022, before performances began, the tenor Nicky Spence had a serious leg injury and had to cancel all performances as Samson. Mr. Baek was suddenly tapped for eight performances.“It’s been an extraordinary trajectory,” Oliver Mears, the Royal Opera’s director of opera, said in a recent video interview. “It’s not unheard-of to go from baritone to tenor, since it really is a matter of retraining the voice, but I think the thing that struck me about SeokJong was that he hadn’t had any real stage performances when he was seen at a competition.”The week after “Samson” ended with great success at the Royal Opera, alongside the mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca as Delilah, the tenor Jonas Kaufmann dropped out of “Cavalleria Rusticana.” Mr. Baek was asked to step in.“It was crazy,” he said. “I didn’t know the opera and there was only two weeks before opening night. I had three shows left of ‘Samson’ while I was learning ‘Cavalleria Rusticana.’”He was then offered the role of Radames in “Aida” in May of this year after the tenor Francesco Meli dropped out of the final five performances.Mr. Baek in New York. He says his performance schedule is almost fully booked into 2027.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“When I saw him in ‘Aida,’ I was struck at how much he had progressed,” Mr. Mears said. “Richard Jones, the director, and Tony [Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera] worked him incredibly hard on ‘Samson,’ and he absorbed everything they threw at him.”A casting director from the Metropolitan Opera had attended a “Samson” performance and offered Mr. Baek the upcoming role in “Nabucco.” Mr. Baek was also given the role of Calaf in “Turandot” at the Met, which will open Feb. 28 (he has sung that role now a few times in concert, including this year in Seoul, and at smaller opera houses). From there, Mr. Baek said, his performance schedule is almost fully booked into 2027.“I’m a little bit of an introverted guy from South Korea,” he said. “Everything has happened so fast. Sometimes it feels like I still don’t realize what’s happening.He paused, and smiled, taking a sip of that $8 coffee.“But what I really need to do is accomplish the things ahead of me right now,” he said. More
At the Park Avenue Armory, an imaginative and viscerally shocking staging of Schubert songs from the director Claus Guth and the tenor Jonas Kaufmann.In the classical tradition, a song often evokes intimacy and solitude: a poet baring vulnerability, a composer painting a miniature. That sense of seclusion extends to the performance as well: a singer and pianist alone onstage, a listener absorbing the work in an intimate recital hall or immersed, alone, with headphones.These conventions surround the final group of songs written by Schubert, known as “Schwanengesang” (Swan Song) and published after the composer’s death in 1828 at age 31. But those expectations were upended in “Doppelganger,” which had its world premiere Friday at the cavernous Park Avenue Armory Drill Hall. The director Claus Guth, the star tenor Jonas Kaufmann, the pianist Helmut Deutsch and a raft of collaborators transformed “Schwanengesang” at the Saturday night performance into an entire wartime narrative.Kaufmann is a soldier who lies dying in a military hospital. Far from being alone with Deutsch onstage, he is one of nearly two dozen injured and sick soldiers being tended by a fleet of six nurses, the rest of the cast is made up of dancers. Deutsch and the piano are dead center among more than 60 hospital beds that stretch across the hall’s immense floor. Kaufmann’s soldier spends the last hour of his life revisiting his memories in a cascade of Schubert’s songs, stitched together with ominous new music by the German composer Mathis Nitschke.Guth’s imaginative and powerful staging for his New York debut recalls history. This drill hall has served as a hospital and shelter; “Doppelganger,” which had originally been intended for a fall 2020 premiere, also invokes the field hospitals hastily erected at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.The inventive and minimalistic set design by Michael Levine is dominated by hospital whites, and the clever lighting is by Urs Schönebaum.Monika Rittershaus/Courtesy of Park Avenue ArmoryMichael Levine’s inventive and minimalistic set design is dominated by the blanched shades of hospital whites and khaki uniforms. Growls of Nitschke’s sound and clever lighting by Urs Schönebaum suggest thunderstorms and bombings.Does the theatrical conceit serve Schubert’s songs? In the hands of Kaufmann and Deutsch, who have long worked together, yes — and it reignites the master’s music in a fresh, intelligent setting without sacrificing the duo’s artistry as classical performers.At one point, the piano becomes a main character in the drama, as Kaufmann and the dancers gather to listen in respite to Deutsch perform the second movement of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960. It was a rare treat to hear Deutsch, who usually performs an accompanist, take literal center stage.In a concession to the Armory’s sheer expanse, Kaufmann’s voice was lightly amplified. This was occasionally distracting when he turned his head away from his microphone, and his normally crisp articulation was slightly muddied. But Kaufmann’s sweet tone transcended the limits of the technology, particularly in Schubert’s yearning song of desire “Ständchen.”In the evening’s climactic song, “Der Doppelgänger,” Kaufmann’s soldier encounters his ghostly twin at the moment of death. Although the audience knows this was coming, having already seen the soldier being mortally wounded, the theatrical ingenuity and visceral force of “Doppelganger” was so strong that the audience let out an audible gasp of shock. When was the last time you heard something like that in a classical concert hall?DoppelgängerThrough Thursday at the Park Avenue Armory, Manhattan; armoryonpark.org. More
“It’s an honor of a lifetime to finally check a Super Bowl performance off my bucket list,” the eight-time Grammy winner said.Usher Raymond, the eight-time Grammy-winning singer known as Usher, will headline the halftime show of Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, the National Football League, Roc Nation and Apple Music announced on Sunday. It comes in the second year of the league’s multiyear deal with Apple Music and will be Usher’s first time starring in the show.“It’s an honor of a lifetime to finally check a Super Bowl performance off my bucket list,” Raymond said in a statement. “I can’t wait to bring the world a show unlike anything else they’ve seen from me before. Thank you to the fans and everyone who made this opportunity happen. I’ll see you real soon.”Raymond, 44, performed at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2011 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, as a complement to the lead act, the Black Eyed Peas. Raymond had been rumored as a potential candidate for this year’s halftime production after he extended his residency of shows in Las Vegas, which began in July 2022. His participation comes amid the N.F.L.’s partnership with Jay-Z’s sports and entertainment agency Roc Nation, which was signed in 2019 to boost the quality of its halftime shows.“Beyond his flawless singing and exceptional choreography, Usher bares his soul,” Jay-Z said in a statement. “I can’t wait to see the magic,” he added.Raymond’s performance follows Rihanna, who performed last year in Glendale, Ariz., making her pregnancy public from the sky-high Super Bowl stage, and catching the attention of fans on social media. In February 2022 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., as a nostalgic nod to the Super Bowl’s return to the region, the Los Angeles rap icons Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar performed at the halftime show, along with Eminem, Mary J. Blige and the special guest, 50 Cent.Raymond, a 23-time Grammy nominee, won his first Grammy in 2001 in the category best male R&B vocal performance for the song “U Remind Me.” His popularity rose in 2004 when he released the album Confessions. His most recent Grammy win came in 2013 for the song, “Climax.” Raymond, who has served as a coach for the game show The Voice and appeared in handful of movies, is currently performing concerts in Paris.The Super Bowl will take place on Feb. 11, 2024, and be hosted for the first time in Las Vegas at Allegiant Stadium, the $2-billion jet-black venue built by the Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis ahead of the team’s move to the city after the 2019 season.The N.F.L. had long shunned Las Vegas as a market and its association with gambling until 2018, when the Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited sports betting. Since then, Las Vegas has hosted the draft and the league’s annual all-star game, the Pro Bowl, but has also struggled with a string of high-profile arrests of players in the city. More
In conservative South Korea, few L.G.B.T.Q. entertainers have ever come out. The young members of QI.X don’t see the point of staying in.At a bar in Euljiro, one of Seoul’s up-and-coming hip neighborhoods, two voices intertwined in a duet. One was high-pitched, the other an octave lower.But there was only one singer, a 27-year-old named jiGook. The other voice was a recording made years ago, before he began his transition and hormone therapy deepened his voice.“I don’t want to forget about my old self,” he told the 50 or so people at the performance, a fund-raiser for a group that supports young L.G.B.T.Q. Koreans. “I love myself before I started hormone therapy, and I love myself as who I am now.”jiGook performing at a bar in the Euljiro district of Seoul.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesLike many other South Korean singers, jiGook, who considers himself gender fluid, transmale and nonbinary, wants to be a K-pop star. So do Prin and SEN, his bandmates in QI.X, a fledgling group that has released two singles.What makes them unusual is that they are proudly out — in their music, their relationship with their fans and their social activism. They call themselves one of the first openly queer, transgender K-pop acts, and their mission has as much to do with changing South Korea’s still-conservative society as with making music.In the group’s name — pronounced by spelling out the letters — Q stands for queer, I for idol and X for limitless possibilities. Park Ji-yeon, the K-pop producer who started QI.X, says it is “tearing down the heteronormative walls of society.”Very few K-pop artists, or South Korean entertainers in general, have ever been open about being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. Though the country has become somewhat more accepting of sexual diversity, homophobia is still prevalent, and there are no legal protections against discrimination.The bandmates saying goodbye after a livestreaming session in Seoul. “Someday, we want to be on everyone’s streaming playlist,” Prin said.For entertainers, coming out is seen as a potential career killer, said Cha Woo-jin, a music critic in Seoul. That applies even to K-pop, despite its young, increasingly international fan base and its occasional flirtation with androgyny and same-sex attraction.“K-pop fans seem to accept the queer community and imagery so long as their favorite stars don’t come out explicitly,” Mr. Cha said.That’s not a compromise that QI.X is willing to make.The bandmates’ social media accounts, which promote their causes along with their music, are up front about who they are. So are their singles, “Lights Up” (“The hidden colors in you / I see all the colors in you”) and “Walk & Shine,” which Mx. Park says “celebrates the lives and joy of minorities.”“Someday, we want to be on everyone’s streaming playlist,” said Prin, 22.SEN dancing before the start of a recording session in Seoul for Q Planet, an online show, as jiGook and QI.X’s producer, Park Ji-yeon, watched. As a producer, Mx. Park, 37, who identifies as queer and nonbinary, has worked on hits for well-known K-pop acts like GOT7 and Monsta X. But she wanted to make music that spoke directly to people like her, with “an artist who could encapsulate our lives, love, friendships and farewells.”She met some of the QI.X members through a K-pop music class she started in 2019, designed with queer performers in mind. (In other classes, she said, “It was assumed that female participants only wanted to learn girl-group songs and male participants only boy-group songs.”)SEN, 23, said that when Mx. Park asked her to join QI.X, “it was as if a genie in a bottle had come to me.”SEN had been a dancer and a choreographer for several K-pop management agencies, including BTS’s agency, Big Hit Entertainment, now known as HYBE. The people she worked with knew she was queer, and they were welcoming.Mx. Park, leaning against the mirror, with SEN and other QI.X members during a rehearsal in June. In the red shirt is Maek, an original member who has since taken a break from the group. But whenever she auditioned to join an idol group, she said, she “never fit the bill for what they wanted.” People would say she was too short or boyish, or comment about her cropped hair.That’s not an issue for QI.X, which doesn’t aspire to the immaculately styled look of the typical K-pop act (and, in any case, couldn’t afford the ensemble of stylists those groups have). Individuality, they say, is part of the point.QI.X often performs at fund-raisers, for L.G.B.T.Q. and other causes, and sees its music as inseparable from its activism. Maek, for instance, an original member who sang on both singles but is on hiatus from the group, works for the Seoul Disabled People’s Rights Film Festival and volunteers for a transgender rights organization.With no support from a management agency, Mx. Park and the group do everything themselves. They handle their own bookings and manage their social media presence, recording videos themselves to post on TikTok and Instagram.Many of the videos are shot at LesVos, an L.G.B.T.Q. bar in Seoul that often serves as QI.X’s studio and rehearsal hall. Myoung-woo YoonKim, 68, who has run LesVos since the late 1990s, grew up at a time when lesbians were practically invisible in South Korea. “I would often think, ‘Am I the only woman who loves women?” they said.Rehearsing at LesVos, an L.G.B.T.Q. bar in Seoul, as its manager, Myoung-woo YoonKim, and Mx. Park look on.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe QI.X members adore Mx. YoonKim, whom they call hyung, a Korean word for older brother. During a recent video session at LesVos, after dozens of increasingly comical lip-syncing takes of “Walk & Shine,” Mx. YoonKim started to join in. Before long, everyone was bent over with laughter.To a casual observer of K-pop, it might seem surprising that so few of its artists are out. As Mr. Cha, the music critic, notes, L.G.B.T.Q. imagery has been known to surface in K-pop videos and in ads featuring its stars.Some critics see this phenomenon as “queerbaiting,” a cynical attempt to attract nonconformist fans — or to deploy gender-bending imagery because it’s seen as trendy — without actually identifying with them. To Mr. Cha, it suggests that K-pop has a substantial queer fan base, and that some artists might simply be expressing their identities to the extent they can.From left, SEN, Prin, Maek and jiGook livestreaming on YouTube in June. Many of QI.X’s fans live outside South Korea and follow the group online.Mr. Cha thinks the taboo against entertainers’ coming out reflects a general attitude toward pop culture in South Korea: “We pay for you, therefore don’t make us uncomfortable.” (Similar attitudes seem to prevail in Japan, where one pop idol recently made news by telling fans he was gay.)QI.X’s fans, who call themselves QTZ (a play on “cuties”), love the group for charging over that boundary. Many are overseas and follow the group online, leaving enthusiastic messages. “I’m so happy I can finally have an artist in the K-pop industry that I can relate to on a gender level, on a queer level,” one said in a video message to the group. “I’m so excited for you!”The band also gets hateful messages, which its members do their best to ignore. Prin, 22, is optimistic that attitudes in South Korea are changing. (Joining QI.X was Prin’s way of coming out as gender queer, but friends were much more surprised by the news that Prin was in an idol group.)The biggest show of QI.X’s career, so far, was in July at a Pride event, the Seoul Queer Culture Festival. In recent years, it had been held at Seoul Plaza, a major public square. But this year, the city denied organizers permission to hold it there, letting a Christian group use the space for a youth concert instead.QI.X onstage at the Seoul Queer Culture Festival in July.Activists saw that as discrimination, though the city denied it. Conservative Christians are a powerful force in South Korean politics, having lobbied successfully for years to block a bill that would prevent discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people. Organizers held the festival in Euljiro.For its set, QI.X had about 20 backup performers, some of whom were their friends (Mx. YoonKim was one of them). They had rehearsed only once together, on the festival stage that morning, because they hadn’t had the money to rent a big studio.Christian protesters were picketing the festival, some with signs that read “Homosexuality not human rights but SIN.” But fans were there, too. As QI.X sang “Lights Up” and “Walk & Shine,” hundreds crowded in front of the stage, many wearing headbands that were purple, the group’s color. There were Pride flags, and signs that read “We only see you QI.X.”A Pride parade was part of the festival. Hours later, the excitement still hadn’t faded for QI.X. “I felt alive for the first time in a while,” SEN said. More
