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      Robert Spano to Lead Washington National Opera as Music Director

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      The veteran conductor, who won acclaim as a champion of new music at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, will begin a three-year term in 2025.The conductor Robert Spano, who won acclaim as a champion of contemporary music during his two decades at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, will serve as Washington National Opera’s next music director, the company announced on Tuesday.Spano, 62, will become music director designate effectively immediately and begin a three-year term with the company in 2025, succeeding Philippe Auguin, who stepped down in 2018 after his contract was not renewed.Spano, who serves as music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in Texas, said in an interview that he had been eager to do more opera since leaving his post as music director in Atlanta in 2021. He said that he wanted to “carry opera into the future” and that he planned to promote contemporary works, as he did in Atlanta.“New work and masterpieces — they go hand in hand,” he said. “I’ve lived my life in music feeling like the works of living composers inform our understanding of the works of the past. They keep reinvigorating our understanding of these masterpieces.”Timothy O’Leary, the general director of Washington National Opera, said in an interview that he was impressed by Spano’s experience and fresh perspective on opera.“He’s got this track record of conducting the major standard works in the opera repertoire,” he said, “but he’s also really identified with championing new music and the next generation of creators.”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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      Toby Keith, Popular Country Music Singer-Songwriter, Dies at 62

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      Mr. Keith, who announced in 2022 he had cancer, cultivated an in-your-face persona with hits like “Who’s Your Daddy” and “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.”Toby Keith, the larger-than-life singer-songwriter of No. 1 country hits like “Who’s Your Daddy?” and “Made in America” and one of the biggest stars to come out of Nashville in three decades, died on Monday. He was 62.His death was announced on his official website. Elaine Schock, Mr. Keith’s publicist, said in an email that he died in Oklahoma, where he had lived his entire life.Mr. Keith announced in the summer of 2022 that he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and was being treated with chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.In a recent interview with the Oklahoma City television station KWTV, Mr. Keith, who played a run of shows in Las Vegas in December, said he was still in treatment. “Cancer is a roller coaster,” he said. “You just sit here and wait on it to go away — it may not ever go away.” He said that his Christian faith was helping him get through the treatment and the potential dark outcome.Singing in an alternately declamatory and crooning baritone, Mr. Keith cultivated a boisterous, in-your-face persona with recordings like “I Wanna Talk About Me” and “Beer for My Horses.”Built around clever wordplay and droll humor — and more than a little macho bluster — both topped the Billboard country chart, with “Beer for My Horses,” a twangy, Rolling Stones-style rocker that featuring Willie Nelson as guest vocalist, crossing over to the pop Top 40.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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      Killer Mike Calls His Grammys Arrest a ‘Speed Bump’

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      The artist was arrested on a misdemeanor battery charge after winning awards for best rap album, best rap performance and best rap song.Hours after he was released from police custody in Los Angeles after police said he was involved in a physical altercation on Grammys night, the rapper Killer Mike said in a radio interview Monday morning that the arrest was a mere blip in a triumphant night when he won three Grammys.“We hit a speed bump and then we head back to the party, man,” the rapper told the hosts of the Atlanta-based Big Tigger Morning Show, saying that he had just left his final party in Los Angeles following the awards show.On Sunday night, his “Michael” won best rap album and one of its songs, “Scientists & Engineers,” took the awards for best rap song and best rap performance. The nominees he was up against included some of the most popular and lauded rappers of the moment, including Drake, Travis Scott, Doja Cat and Nicki Minaj. A prolific rapper who won his first Grammy in 2003 for his collaboration with Outkast on the song “The Whole World,” these were Killer Mike’s first Grammys as a solo artist.Details about the arrest remained unclear on Sunday. The Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement that he was booked on a charge of misdemeanor battery and released after an altercation at Crypto.com Arena, the site of the awards ceremony, but declined to elaborate; he has a court date scheduled for the end of February. A representative for the rapper, born Michael Render, did not respond to requests for comment, and the Grammys directed questions to the police.The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that, while detained on Sunday night, Killer Mike sent a text saying that “overzealous security” was to blame for the encounter.The rapper has a nuanced relationship with policing: He has criticized law enforcement in the past, rapping about police violence and advocating for systemic changes to policing. He has also defended the police at times, standing alongside the Atlanta mayor and police chief at a news conference in 2020, identifying himself as the son of an Atlanta police officer as he urged protesters “not to burn your own house down” when demonstrations escalated in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.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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      Taylor Swift Prop Bets Dominate Super Bowl Action

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      While casino gambling focuses on the Super Bowl itself, online sports books are flooded with options on what Ms. Swift will wear, how she’ll celebrate and more.The Super Bowl always draws crowds to betting windows and online sports books, but some of the most talked about action this year will leave a blank space in Las Vegas.With in-person sports books limited to action on the field, Adam Burns, the sports book manager for BetOnline.ag, found himself capitalizing on the moment by preparing odds for a flood of unusual wagers: What sort of outfit will Taylor Swift wear to the game on Sunday? Will the CBS broadcast show her holding a beverage or giving high-fives? Will she cry if the Kansas City Chiefs lose to the San Francisco 49ers?For some much-needed assistance, Mr. Burns turned to a reliable source: his teenage daughter.“Friends are like, ‘Come on over and watch the game with us,’” Mr. Burns said in a telephone interview from his home in Montreal. “I can’t. I have to watch Taylor Swift. You can ask me the next day who won the game, and I won’t even know. But I’ll know how many times Taylor Swift was shown on TV.”Ms. Swift, who won two Grammys on Sunday night and announced the release date for her next album, was a phenomenon long before she started dating Travis Kelce, Kansas City’s star tight end. But her regular appearances at his team’s games this season — clad in red, celebrating Mr. Kelce’s touchdowns, and even sharing a luxury box with his bare-chested, beer-swilling brother — have produced crossover magic with the N.F.L.BetOnline.ag, which is based in Panama, has so many Swift-related Super Bowl prop bets — 89, a reference to her album “1989” — that Mr. Burns had to plumb the depths of the absurd, including: What shade of lipstick will Ms. Swift choose for the game? (Red, a signature color for Ms. Swift, is favored, followed by “any other color.”)Bet U.S., an online casino based in Costa Rica, also has a smorgasbord of Swift-related bets.“If it’s something that’s going to attract some attention and we can make legitimate odds on it, there’s a good chance that we’re going to do it,” said Tim Williams, the director of public affairs for Bet U.S. He added: “We expect to see as much interest, if not more interest, in all of these Taylor Swift bets compared to bets related to the halftime show, and that’s really unprecedented.”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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      How Billy Joel Returned to Pop Music

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      Billy Joel’s first new pop song in nearly two decades was sparked by someone miles from the record business: a Long Island doctor.Joel, 74, has long made it known that he isn’t interested in making more albums. He released 12 studio LPs between 1971 and 1993 — most platinum several times over — and retired from the format, though he never stopped tinkering with classical music, or playing live.But new songs? “I have this fear of writing something that’s not good,” he said in an interview last month at his estate in Oyster Bay, N.Y. “I have a very high bar for myself. And the work to get there is intimidating. I don’t want to go through it anymore.”Joel’s influence as a songwriter has endured, drawing in new generations. (“He is everything,” Olivia Rodrigo, 20, who referenced him in her song “Deja Vu,” said last summer.) Over the years, the list of people who’d tried to cajole him back into writing and recording grew legion: Clive Davis. Rick Rubin. Elton John. Yet when Joel’s family doctor urged him to meet “a kid” interested in discussing music near his place out east in Sag Harbor, he agreed to a lunch.The eager man across the table two years ago was Freddy Wexler, now 37, a Los Angeles-based songwriter and producer who grew up in New York and sure knew a lot about Billy Joel. He’d been trying to track down his idol via industry channels with little luck, but his wife — secretly devoted to keeping this dream alive — found an improbable connection.Joel ordered clams on the half-shell and a BLT to go, Wexler recalled, so he knew he had to move fast: “I said, I don’t believe that you can’t write songs anymore or that you won’t write songs anymore. And he said something like, ‘OK, believe whatever you want.’” More

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      Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs Gave America a Rare Gift: Harmony

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      Culture can too often drive us apart. At the Grammys on Sunday, two artists delivered something different.When a beloved artist who has not performed live in some time returns to the stage, we often expect them to appear fragile, unsteady, ill at ease. But during Sunday night’s Grammy Awards, when the camera first pulled back from a tight shot of a woman’s fingers picking a familiar riff on an acoustic guitar and revealed the face of the great, elusive folk singer Tracy Chapman, what you noticed was the joy radiating from her face. Her contented smile. The unwavering tone and rich steadiness of her voice.It was a genuine moment of warmth and unity, the sort seldom offered these days by televised award shows — or televised anything, really. Singing her rousing 1988 hit “Fast Car” live for the first time in years, duetting with the country star Luke Combs — whose faithful cover of the song was one of last year’s defining hits — and taking in the rapturous applause of her musical peers, Chapman gave off the feeling, in the words of her timeless song, that she belonged.Thirty-five years ago, at the 1989 Grammy Awards, Chapman stood alone onstage and performed a wrenching rendition of “Fast Car” accompanied by only her own acoustic guitar.What made Sunday night’s performance feel different wasn’t just the time that had passed, or the gray hair that now elegantly frames Chapman’s face. It was the presence of Combs, born a year after that Grammy performance, regarding Chapman with an awe-struck reverence. He seemed to be a stand-in for the many, many people over the years — of all races, genders and generations — who have heard their deepest desires reflected in this song and wished to pay Chapman their gratitude.They traded a few lines and harmonized beautifully on the chorus — her tone opalescent, his bringing some grit — but Combs never overshadowed Chapman. He knew that in that moment, no one could. Something about the way he looked at her said it all: His eyes shone with irrepressible respect. Here was a grown man, an assured performer who sells out stadiums, visibly trembling before the sight and the sound of the folk singer Tracy Chapman.He was hardly alone in that: The few crowd shots during the performance revealed some of music’s major stars, including Brandi Carlile, on their feet, thrilled, before a standing ovation. More

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      The Grammys Aim for a Big Tent, but Not Everyone Feels at Home

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      The most awarded artists were diverse on Sunday night. How those winners received their honors, however, differed mightily.Sunday night at the 66th annual Grammy Awards, Jay-Z accepted the Dr. Dre global impact award, a sort of éminence grise prize. He’s previously won 24 Grammys, but he did not treat the moment like a homecoming.Instead, he used his speech to alternately nudge and excoriate the Recording Academy, the body that awards the Grammys, for its mistreatment and short-shrifting of Black artists: “We want y’all to get it right. At least get it close to right.” He mentioned his wife, Beyoncé, winner of the most Grammys ever, yet never a winner for album of the year. “Think about that,” he said, as he scrunched up his face with distaste.By this point, the room seemed to understand what was happening — Jay-Z was rinsing the Grammys on its own stage. Beyoncé, in the audience, appeared to be somewhere near tears. “When I get nervous,” Jay-Z said, “I tell the truth.” He reached out and grabbed the hand of his daughter Blue Ivy for support before urging those who have been overlooked and slighted to persevere “until they give you all those accolades you feel you deserve.”Jay-Z’s speech took a moment of acclaim and turned it into a moment for reflection, and maybe a lecture. Over the past few years, several Black artists have effectively been boycotting the Grammys by declining to submit their music for consideration, frustrated with how hip-hop and R&B are treated, particularly in the biggest all-genre categories.This year was no different — album, record and song of the year were won by white artists, though broadly speaking, the most awarded artists were diverse: three each for SZA, Killer Mike and Victoria Monét; four for Phoebe Bridgers (three of which came as part of boygenius) and two each for Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Miley Cyrus.How those artists received those honors, however, differed mightily.In their speeches, Monét and SZA emphasized how long and roundabout their paths to this moment had been. During her acceptance for best new artist, Monét called the prize the endpoint of “a 15-year pursuit.” She’s primarily been known for her songwriting, particularly her work with Ariana Grande. And while she’d released music independently through the 2010s, her 2023 album, “Jaguar II,” was her first major-label LP. “My roots have been growing underneath ground, unseen for so long,” she said. “And I feel like today, I’m sprouting.” More

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      Goodbye Mostly Mozart, Hello Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center

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      The renamed ensemble will present a mix of new and old in its first season under the conductor Jonathon Heyward.Last summer, Lincoln Center bid farewell to the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, a fixture of the city’s cultural scene since 1973, saying it was time to reimagine the ensemble for a modern and more inclusive age.On Monday, the center offered a preview of its plans. While the ensemble will remain the same in size and membership, it now has a new name, a new music director and a program aimed at drawing more diverse audiences to classical music.The Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, as the ensemble is now called, will convene in July for its first season under the rising conductor Jonathon Heyward, as part of the center’s Summer for the City festival.Heyward said in an interview that he wanted to maintain the orchestra’s innovative spirit.“It’s not that I am at all reinventing the wheel,” he said. “We’re just continuing in a way that is very much in line with a previous legacy of the orchestra.”The lineup for this summer includes a world premiere by the composer Hannah Kendall; the North American premiere of Huang Ruo’s “City of Floating Sounds”; and classics by Beethoven, Haydn and, yes, even a little Mozart.There will also be offerings aimed at drawing new people to Lincoln Center, including a “Symphony of Choice” concert in which audience members will be allowed to construct the program by voting, as well as an augmented-reality exhibition about mental health and Schumann, who suffered from depression.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