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      Yvonne Loriod Was So Much More Than a Composer’s Muse

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      Loriod, the vessel for Olivier Messiaen’s piano works, had a rich musical life beyond him, which is captured in a new set of recordings.The composer Olivier Messiaen’s earliest students at the Paris Conservatory liked to call themselves the Arrows. They didn’t see themselves as mere pupils; with the help of their teacher, one of the most important voices in 20th-century French music, they imagined themselves shooting arrows into the future.They weren’t just dreaming. Messiaen’s first batch of students, in the 1940s, included Pierre Boulez, who would become the de facto face of French serialism and modernist thought. Their teacher, though, was partial to another musician in the class: a young pianist named Yvonne Loriod.Born 100 years ago and a prodigious keyboard talent from an early age, Loriod so impressed Messiaen that he quickly began to write for her, immense masterpieces like “Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus” and “Catalogue d’Oiseaux.” She challenged him to push the piano to new limits; he in turn gave her more to chew on than the standard repertoire with which she had built her reputation. They elevated each other, creating what The New York Times would eventually describe as a composer-performer partnership likely without parallel in music history.“It’s obvious that while writing ‘Vingt Regards’ or ‘Catalogue d’Oiseaux’ I knew they would be played by Yvonne Loriod,” Messiaen said in a book of interviews with Claude Samuel. “I was therefore able to allow myself the greatest eccentricities because to her, anything is possible. I knew I could invent very difficult, very extraordinary, and very new things: They would be played, and played well.”Their relationship was formalized by marriage in 1961, and it was so fruitful that it’s hard to imagine 20th-century piano music without those solo works or the extravagant, orchestral “Turangalîla-Symphonie.” But their collaborations also tend to overshadow Loriod’s life before and beyond Messiaen. Her devotion to him required renunciation: She let go of her composing ambitions and gave over the majority of her schedule to performing his scores. Yet she remained a brilliant artist with a broad-minded, generous view of her instrument and its long history.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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      Karl Wallinger, Who Sang With World Party and the Waterboys, Dies at 66

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      As a songwriter and instrumentalist as well, he blended pop and folk influences into music that helped define college radio in the 1980s and ’90s.Karl Wallinger, a Welsh singer-songwriter who helped define college radio in the 1980s and ’90s as a member of the Waterboys and the founder of World Party, died on Sunday at his home in Hastings, England. He was 66.His daughter, Nancy Zamit, confirmed the death but did not provide a cause. Mr. Wallinger suffered a brain aneurysm in 2001 that forced him to stop performing for several years.Following on the heels of the post-punk, new wave and new romantic movements of the early 1980s, Mr. Wallinger embodied something of a throwback to the classical pop and folk styles of an earlier era, with music and lyrics influenced by the Beatles and Bob Dylan.Though he rejected the label “retro,” onstage he looked like a stylish hippie, with long stringy hair and tinted round glasses that would have fit in at Woodstock.Mr. Wallinger was widely admired for his instrumental skills. He primarily played keyboards for the Waterboys, an influential folk-rock band founded by the Scottish musician Mike Scott, but on his own he usually played a guitar — which, though he was right-handed, he played upside down, with his left hand.After two albums with the Waterboys, Mr. Wallinger left in 1985 to form World Party, which was at first a one-man act: He wrote all the music and recorded all the parts in the studio. Only when he began to tour did he add members and make it a true band.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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      9 Sunny Songs for Springing Ahead

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      To celebrate the return of daylight saving time, here’s a playlist full of songs about sunshine and daylight.Harry Styles curses the sun on “Daylight.”The New York TimesDear listeners,Is it just me, or has this winter felt never-ending? Snow, cold rain, cloudy days when the sun sets before work ends — enough already!Thankfully, this weekend brought what I always consider the first harbinger of spring: The beginning of daylight saving time. As someone who reaches for the snooze button more often than I should, springing forward presents its own challenges. But I’ll gladly deal with them for an extra hour of sunlight in the evening.That bonus sunlight has inspired today’s playlist, full of songs about sunshine and daylight. Light takes on a spiritual quality in some of these tunes (including a modern standard by Hank Williams) while others bask in its meteorological reality (the bees and things and flowers name-checked by Roy Ayers Ubiquity). A few of these artists (the Velvet Underground; Harry Styles) claim not to care about the sun, but the incandescence of their music begs to differ.Am I jumping the gun a bit by celebrating sun songs in mid-March rather than during the dog days of summer? No way! Plus, by then we’ll probably be sick of them. Best to celebrate the sun’s welcome return, and especially on such a bright day here in New York. Here’s your soundtrack for strutting down the street in the short-sleeve outfit you’ve been waiting all winter to wear. (And then, you know, rushing back into the house to grab a light jacket, because it’s still only March.)Also, I’ll be out on Friday, but I’m leaving you in the very capable hands of a special guest playlister. Till then!People gotta synchronize to animal time,LindsayWe 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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      Meet George Collier, YouTube’s Star Music Transcriber

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      George Collier started his YouTube channel as a way to stay engaged with music during the pandemic. Now nearly a million followers tune in for his notations.For some budding musicians (and even old pros), the very sight of sheet music can elicit a fight-or-flight response, bringing up painful memories of strict piano teachers and high-pressure recitals. George Collier, a 20-year-old music transcriber, is doing his part to change that.Collier, a student at Warwick University in the United Kingdom, takes snippets of videos from live performances by well-known artists like Wynton Marsalis and Celine Dion, or bedroom musicians who’ve posted clips online, and adds detailed directions for what’s being played. Juggling harmony, melody and rhythm, he turns sounds into wildly detailed notations and shares the results with an audience of over 882,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, where his most popular videos have between 5 million and 18 million views.“Music can be a bit uptight, particularly in the whole music theory land,” Collier said during a break between lectures, as he video chatted from a light-filled campus building where the sounds of bustling university life swirled around him. In his videos, made with the help of a team of transcribers, he deciphers mesmerizing cadenzas, barbershop quartet arrangements, funk jams and jazz solos in an entertaining way that softens sheet music’s reputation as something academic and unforgiving.His video “When You Make the Trombone SING” takes on a soaring trombone solo by Frank Lacy from a performance in 1988 with the Art Blakey Big Band. Another clip, titled “She Practiced 40 Hours a Day for This,” captures a virtuosic Mozart piano cadenza by Mitsuko Uchida. While Collier specializes in jazz, he also showcases performances from the classical world, as well as everyday people with impressive talents. A clip titled “When Your Family Is Musically Competent” features a version of “Happy Birthday” that turns into improvised gospel-laden riffing. His video “Pro Musician Jams With Street Performer on Subway” notates a saxophonist on the London Underground as he spontaneously engages a guitarist in a version of Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”“The transcriptions are to understand the musical decisions made by performers,” Collier said. “It doesn’t really matter how famous you are. If you make good stuff, then people are going to want to listen.”Because he’s navigating full-time university student life, Collier works with transcribers from the United States, Germany and beyond to keep his channel uploading consistently.Alice Zoo 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

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      Eric Carmen, Raspberries Frontman and ‘All By Myself’ Singer, Dies at 74

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      He sang on the power-pop pioneers’ 1972 breakout hit, “Go All the Way,” before launching a successful solo career as a soft rock crooner.Eric Carmen, whose plaintive vocals soared above the crunching guitars of the 1970s power-pop pioneers the Raspberries before his soft rock crooning made him a mainstay of 1980s music, has died. He was 74.His death was announced on his website by his wife, Amy Carmen. She did not give a cause and said only that he died “in his sleep, over the weekend.”The Raspberries, which formed in Cleveland, burst onto the American rock scene in 1972 with their self-titled debut album, featuring a raspberry-scented scratch-and-sniff sticker and their biggest hit: “Go All the Way,” a provocative song for its day, sung from the point of view of a young woman.Dave Swanson of the website Ultimate Classic Rock called it “the definitive power pop song of all time,” as the emerging style, known for grafting bright ’60s-era vocal harmonies onto the heavy guitar riffs of the ’70s, would come to be called.“The opening Who-like blast leads into a very Beatles-esque verse, before landing in some forgotten Beach Boys chorus,” he wrote. “Thus was the magic of the Raspberries song craft. They were able to take the best parts and ideas from the previous decade, and morph them into something new, yet familiar.”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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      Review: The Met’s ‘Roméo et Juliette’ Is Saved by Its Stars

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      Bartlett Sher’s middling production returned to the Metropolitan Opera, with a glorious Benjamin Bernheim and Nadine Sierra in the title roles.Sometimes you just need a few great singers.Two weeks ago at the Metropolitan Opera, a superb cast in “La Forza del Destino” outshone a new, somewhat confused staging by Mariusz Trelinski. And now, Bartlett Sher’s handsome yet unconvincing 2016 production of Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette” has returned to the house with a pair of singers in splendid form.Sher’s staging situates the action on a raised platform surrounded by stone facades and colonnades. Each sharply etched scene from Shakespeare’s tragic romance — the ball, the balcony, the bedroom, the tomb — occurs more or less in a town square.Beautifully lit by Jennifer Tipton and costumed by Catherine Zuber, the production runs out of ideas quickly. But that doesn’t really matter when you have singers on the order of Nadine Sierra and Benjamin Bernheim in the title roles. For an opera steeped in raptures and reveries, in which fantasies of romantic bliss compete with premonitions of a pessimistic outcome, Sierra and Bernheim were a dream at the revival’s second performance on Sunday.Sierra was luscious, lovely and free throughout her range. Although her full, warm voice sounded a tad mature to portray a teenage girl, the disarming generosity of her sound conveyed a trusting, childlike quality. Reluctant and bashful in Act I, with a naturally youthful demeanor, Sierra started Juliette’s waltz with a coy, plain-spoken quality — a bold choice for the opera’s most famous set piece — and rendered the coloratura with a plump tone.Her ripe timbre signaled that she probably would be better suited to the Act IV potion aria, and more than that, she was stupendous. Once again, she began the aria softly. Then it blossomed with Juliette’s fatalistic determination and came to multiple climaxes with a magnificent series of high notes that spun like liquid gold. Daring to glory in her sound, Sierra touched the operatic firmament. The applause went on and on.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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      Morgan Wallen, With Latest No. 1, Tops a Garth Brooks Record

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      Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” notches its 19th week atop the all-genre Billboard 200 chart a year after its release.Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” was already a chart monster. The album, released last March, spent its first 12 weeks at No. 1, then notched another four by the fall, and two more early this year. Thanks to consistently huge streaming numbers, it was the most popular album of 2023.Now Wallen has another feather in his cap. “One Thing” has hit No. 1 for the 19th time, breaking Billboard’s record for most weeks at the top for a country album — surpassing Garth Brooks’s 1991 classic “Ropin’ the Wind,” which had era-defining country hits like “Shameless,” “What She’s Doing Now” and “The River.” (At least 11 non-country albums have logged more weeks at No. 1 in the 68-year history of Billboard’s all-genre chart, including Adele’s “21,” with 24 weeks, and the “West Side Story” soundtrack, with 54.)In its latest week, Wallen’s “One Thing” had the equivalent of 68,000 sales in the United States, including 90 million streams and 2,000 copies sold as a complete album, according to the tracking service Luminate.That is a modest take for a No. 1 album, but it was enough in an otherwise slow week. With Ariana Grande’s long-awaited new album “Eternal Sunshine” already posting big numbers, and sure hits by Beyoncé and Taylor Swift on the way in coming weeks, this might seem Wallen’s last shot at the top. But it also seemed that way last June, when he posted his 15th week at No. 1. Or in October, for his 16th.Also this week, Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” climbs to No. 2, a new peak; released a year and a half ago, the folk-pop-y “Stick Season” — with banjo, mandolin and catchy hooks — went to No. 3 last summer and has been bubbling through the Top 10 for months.“Vultures 1,” by Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and Ty Dolla Sign, holds at No. 3; fans continue to wait for the promised release of a second volume. SZA’s “SOS” is No. 4 and Drake’s “For All the Dogs” is No. 5. More

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      Adrianne Lenker Isn’t Scared of Sadness

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      When the singer and songwriter Adrianne Lenker was 21, she was involved in a bike accident that knocked out one of her incisors. For a while, she walked around with a fake, gold-colored cap in her mouth. But after she was able to invest in a porcelain tooth, Lenker realized she actually didn’t want to forget about the injury.“After all that time with just a gap, it kind of felt strange to not see the scar,” she said in a recent interview.Today, Lenker’s grin twinkles with a permanent gold replacement. And over the past several years, she has earned a reputation as a songwriter who sees the scars, and turns them into something beautiful. Much of this acclaim has come through her work in the band Big Thief, which since 2016 has released five albums of folk-indebted rock music that’s both stylistically adventurous and totally unguarded — like Fleetwood Mac, if it went to group therapy. Though Big Thief is a band of four equals, Lenker — who sings, writes and plays guitar — is the engine powering its sound.The music producer Philip Weinrobe, who has known Lenker for nearly a decade, described her unadorned, crisp singing as “so honest and so true.” “She’s willing to go to the edges of her skill without fear or embarrassment,” he said.In person, Lenker, 32, is disarmingly sincere and attentive. “I still like looking at the world around me with softness and an open heart,” she said at a Manhattan diner in late January, where she’d met to discuss “Bright Future,” her fifth solo record, over coffee and eggs. The night before, she’d stayed out late at the Alphabet City jazz club Mona’s, and hadn’t slept much. She pulled off a beanie to reveal a tousle of brown hair.“There’s so many opportunities to numb out, and go on autopilot — and that numbness, to me, is the enemy of songwriting.”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