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      At 80, the Modest Queen of Contemporary Music Keeps Exploring

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      The pianist Ursula Oppens will celebrate her birthday at Merkin Concert Hall with a program drawn from the large catalog of works written for her.On a cold afternoon in early January, the pianist Ursula Oppens was making an album at Brooklyn College.At 79, Oppens is a little fragile, tiny and stooped. But when she sat down at the piano — shoes off, Diet Coke on the floor — out came playing of power and technical aplomb.Most of the time, at least. Oppens was setting down the first recording of an early, unpublished sonata by the uncompromising modernist Charles Wuorinen, and, like much of Wuorinen’s music, it was treacherously thorny. She had been studying it, on and off, for a year, but it was still slow going.“I played a couple of correct notes,” she said after an early take, “but not many.”That kind of modesty has been mixed in with mastery throughout Oppens’s long, distinguished career. With crystalline lucidity, warm sensitivity and utter authority, she has guided generations of listeners through the seductive complexities of Wuorinen and Elliott Carter, Anthony Davis and Conlon Nancarrow, Frederic Rzewski and Joan Tower, and on and on. She is “the queen of contemporary music,” said Tania León, one of the many composers who have written for her over the last 60 years.Born on Feb. 2, 1944, Oppens will officially celebrate her 80th birthday at Merkin Concert Hall in Manhattan on Saturday. But — again, that modesty — this isn’t exactly an Ursula Oppens recital. She will be joined by seven pianist colleagues in a concert focused less on her than on the music she has helped bring into the world: eight pieces from her dizzying catalog.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?  More

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      5 Places to Visit in Tucson, Arizona, With Singer Linda Ronstadt

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      In the course of becoming a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner and the subject of a forthcoming biopic set to star Selena Gomez, Linda Ronstadt has packed theaters around the globe. But her favorite sits on a one-way side street in Tucson, Ariz.Ms. Ronstadt in Tucson in September 2022. She still makes occasional trips to the city, where she was born and raised.Cassidy Araiza for The New York TimesWith a courtyard draped in vines and string lights and a main stage the size of “a good little opera house,” the 1927 Temple of Music and Art is “just magic,” said Ms. Ronstadt. Before the onset of progressive supranuclear palsy — a Parkinson’s-like disorder that ended her singing career in 2009 — she could fill the auditorium with her unamplified voice (little surprise to anyone who’s ever heard her belt out “Blue Bayou” or “Long Long Time,” for the legions who may have just discovered her on “The Last of Us”). She also loves the theater’s proscenium: a stage-framing arch that instantly focuses the eye — “like that fireplace,” she explained, gesturing toward a wall near the sofa where we chatted in her cozy San Francisco living room.At 77, Ms. Ronstadt now lives in the Bay Area, close to her kids, but the Sonoran Desert borderlands where she was born and raised will always be home. And despite the changes she sees when she returns every six months or so, plenty of familiar local pleasures remain, for starters: bubbling-hot cheese crisps at El Minuto Cafe, ice-chilled shrimp cocktail at Hotel Congress, giant saguaros at every turn and live entertainment of all kinds at the Fox Tucson Theater, where her father — a businessman with a renowned baritone — used to perform as Gil Ronstadt and His Star-Spangled Megaphone.The Ronstadts have been part of the Tucson music scene since her grandfather arrived from Mexico in 1882 and helped found the Club Filarmónico Tucsonense civic band. And perhaps no place highlights the family’s cultural legacy like the former Tucson Music Hall, rechristened the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in May 2022. The naming ceremony took place during a mariachi spectacular that featured Jesús “Chuy” Guzmán, who’d recorded with Ms. Ronstadt on the 1987 “Canciones de Mi Padre” — still the best-selling non-English album in U.S. history. This ode to the borderland classics she’d grown up on was remastered and rereleased last fall, and there may be no better soundtrack for exploring her hometown.Here are five of her favorite places to visit in Tucson:1. Barrio BreadMs. Ronstadt always stops at the artisanal bakery Barrio Bread on her way from the airport when she visits.Cassidy Araiza 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?  More

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      If It Isn’t Perfect, Is It Still K-Pop?

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      Musical acts like Balming Tiger are challenging the idea that K-pop is nothing but polished, perfectly synchronized boy bands and girl groups.What comes to mind when you hear the word “K-pop”? Is it the global boy band phenomenon BTS, wearing studded jackets and dancing in perfect sync? Or the girl group Blackpink, performing at Coachella in trendy fashions and perfectly curled hair?How about an “independent music collective” of casually dressed people, crowded around a mixing board in a one-room studio, across the street from a Seoul restaurant specializing in fried chicken?“Give me some more bass,” said Omega Sapien, a vocalist with electric-green hair and grills, swaying his hips and grunting to the beat. The studio was cluttered with art, vinyl records, dumbbells and other odds and ends. Another singer lay prone nearby, nursing a bad hangover.For Balming Tiger, this is daily life as an alternative K-pop band. Their music, a fusion of diverse genres from electro to hip-hop, is funky and edgy. Their look, unkempt and grungy, is far from the professional styling of the groups that most of the world associates with K-pop.“Even if we wanted to be like idols, we can’t,” said Chanhee, far left, a vocalist with Balming Tiger. Other members are, from left, Mudd the Student, Unsinkable, BJ Wnjn, Omega Sapien and Sogumm. Woohae Cho for The New York TimesBut they claim that label, too. K-pop is any music that comes out of South Korea, according to Omega Sapien. “Everything in that realm is K-pop,” he said.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?  More

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      Radiohead Spinoff the Smile Gets Wonderfully Stranger

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      A spinoff of Radiohead, the trio of Jonny Greenwood, Tom Skinner and Thom Yorke pushes further from the solid ground of pop on its second studio LP, “Wall of Eyes.”“Don’t think you know me,” Thom Yorke intones near the end of the Smile’s second studio album, “Wall of Eyes.” He adds, “Don’t think that I am everything you say.” With its new LP, the Smile makes itself increasingly elusive. It’s now a band intent on destabilizing structures and dissolving expectations.The Smile is still unmistakably a Radiohead spinoff. It’s the trio of Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead, with the British jazz drummer Tom Skinner. Yorke’s tormented voice has stayed upfront, and the songwriting leans into Radiohead’s dissonances, odd meters and fully enveloping aura of anxiety.The Smile’s 2022 debut album, “A Light for Attracting Attention,” and its live recordings introduced what was mostly a stripped-down, cerebrally twisted funk band — akin to Yorke’s 2012 project Atoms for Peace, which had Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers on bass. But on “Wall of Eyes,” the Smile questions and undermines its grooves. The band often lets them emerge only gradually, then deflates them or obscures them in complexly hazy productions.In the Smile’s new songs, solid ground — verbal or musical — is rare and precarious. The priority is atmosphere, not legibility. Yorke’s lyrics are fragmentary and bleak, full of apocalyptic tidings. “Soon you’ll be there/in all that fire and ice,” he croons in “Teleharmonic,” over chords that keep sliding out from under him. The album’s most coherent narrative, “Bending Hectic,” is the last words of a driver steering along the hairpin turns of an Italian mountain road, then “letting go of the wheel.” The track is an eight-minute exercise in suspended time, meditating on two slowly alternating chords before plunging into a cacophony of hard-rock guitars.Greenwood has long had a sideline scoring film soundtracks — among them “There Will Be Blood,” “Phantom Thread” and “The Power of the Dog” — and the Smile’s new songs allow themselves to be as amorphous and open-ended as film music. They’re not about hooks or choruses. Melodies recur while arrangements change radically around them; songs suddenly leap into entirely new territory.“Read the Room” begins with prickly guitar arpeggios and a sputtering beat, veers into a pretty bridge that doesn’t stay that way and spends its final two minutes seething over an entirely different riff. “Under Our Pillows,” which may be a reproach of social media — “You give yourself freely/Nowadays everyone’s for sharing,” Yorke chides — starts with crisp cross-rhythms: hopscotching guitar picking and a contrapuntal bass line over Skinner’s stop-start drumming. But the momentum shifts, the odd meter turns into a motoric 4/4 and then recedes into un-metered, breathy spaces. For a full minute, the track is nervous but ambient. Throughout the album, the Smile’s music feels molten and improvisatory, though it’s clearly premeditated.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?  More

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      21 Savage Holds Off Green Day for a Second Week at No. 1

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      The rapper’s latest, “American Dream,” easily outstreamed the veteran pop-punk band’s 14th studio album, “Saviors.”21 Savage, the London-born Atlanta rapper, easily fended off a challenge from Green Day to hold at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart for a second week.“American Dream,” 21 Savage’s latest album, featuring guest spots by Doja Cat, Travis Scott, Lil Durk, Young Thug and others, remains atop the Billboard 200 chart with the equivalent of 78,000 sales in the United States — down 40 percent from its debut — including 103 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate. “American Dream” is the first new title to reach No. 1 on the chart in 2024, after holdovers by Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen.Green Day’s “Saviors,” the veteran pop-punk stars’ 14th studio LP, opens at No. 4 with the equivalent of 49,000 sales; the majority of that, 39,000, came from traditional album sales, while songs from “Saviors” also garnered about 12 million streams. Green Day’s first appearance on the Billboard album chart was almost exactly 30 years ago: “Dookie,” the band’s breakthrough classic, made its chart debut in February 1994, at No. 127, and eventually rose to No. 2.Also this week, Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is in second place, Drake’s “For All the Dogs” is No. 3 and Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” is No. 5. More

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      Joni Mitchell Will Perform at the Grammys

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      The Canadian singer-songwriter joins a roster of performers at this Sunday’s awards, including Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Travis Scott, U2 and Billy Joel.Nine years ago, Joni Mitchell fans wondered if they might ever hear her perform again, after Mitchell — the Canadian singer-songwriter and icon of the folk movement — had an aneurysm that initially left her unable to speak.But in recent years she has made a gradual recovery, and in 2022 she surprised the music world with a performance at the Newport Folk Festival. And on Sunday, at age 80, Mitchell is set to perform at the Grammy Awards for the first time. Show organizers offered no details about her appearance, including whether she is expected to play solo or with guests.Mitchell, who was given a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2002 and has won nine competitive Grammys throughout her career — going back to best folk performance in 1970 for “Clouds” — is up this year for best folk album with “Joni Mitchell at Newport,” where she was joined by Brandi Carlile, Wynonna Judd and Marcus Mumford, and sang classics like “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Both Sides Now” and even George Gershwin’s “Summertime.”The Newport appearance — an unannounced set facilitated by Carlile — sparked Mitchell’s first ticketed live performance in more than 20 years. The show, a headlining set at Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon festival at the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Wash., in June 2023, was a nearly three-hour marathon, and “a resurrection,” Lindsay Zoladz wrote in The New York Times. “To hear Mitchell hit certain notes again in that inimitable voice was like glimpsing, in the wild, a magnificent bird long feared to have gone extinct.”Other announced performers at the Grammys this year include Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Travis Scott and Burna Boy, along with U2, in an appearance from the Sphere in Las Vegas, and Billy Joel, who this week is set to release his first new pop single in nearly 20 years, “Turn the Lights Back On.” More

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      Marlena Shaw, Venerable Nightclub Chanteuse, Dies at 84

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      She sang jazz (with Count Basie, among others) and later funk and disco, frequently in intimate venues, where she regaled audiences with tales of old love affairs.Marlena Shaw, who cultivated a sultry stage presence and husky voice from the final echoes of the big-band era, to the go-go Playboy Clubs of the 1960s, to the rise of funk, to disco and finally to the modern cabaret circuit, died on Jan. 19. She was 84.Her daughter MarLa Bradshaw announced her death on social media but did not share any further details.Ms. Shaw first came to public notice in the mid-1960s, when she performed at Playboy Clubs around the country. Describing one of those performances in 1966, The Los Angeles Times labeled her a “pretty girl singer” but also called her “the surprise of the bill.” That same year, Jet magazine reported that “three record companies were waving contracts in her face” after a New York engagement.She signed with Cadet Records, which in 1967 released her recording of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” a vocal version of the Joe Zawinul tune that had been a hit for Cannonball Adderley. It reached No. 58 on the Billboard pop chart and 33 on the R&B chart.It also got the attention of Count Basie, who invited Ms. Shaw to try out for a job singing with his 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?  More

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      Prosecutors in Nashville Drop Charges Against Country Singer Chris Young

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      The country singer had been charged with disorderly conduct, assaulting an officer and resisting arrest after an altercation at a downtown bar.Prosecutors on Friday dropped all charges that had been brought against the country music singer Chris Young in connection with an altercation with an Alcoholic Beverage Commission agent at a Nashville bar.“After a review of all the evidence in this case, the Office of the District Attorney has determined that these charges will be dismissed,” Glenn R. Funk, the Nashville district attorney, said in a statement.Mr. Young, 38, had been charged with disorderly conduct, assaulting an officer and resisting arrest following the episode on Monday night.“Mr. Young and I are gratified with the D.A.’s decision clearing him of the charges and any wrongdoing,” Bill Ramsey, the musician’s lawyer, said in a statement.The episode that led to the charges occurred as Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents were checking IDs at the DawgHouse Saloon, a downtown bar. Mr. Young was accused of hitting one of the agents, according to an arrest affidavit filed with a criminal court in Nashville. Agents handcuffed Mr. Young after he did not comply with their orders, the affidavit says.Mr. Young’s representatives previously shared surveillance footage showing that the singer was standing by the bar when agents walked past him.In the video, as one of the agents walks by, Mr. Young places a hand on him, walks backward with the agent and apparently says something. The agent pushes Mr. Young with two hands, and Mr. Young staggers backward and hits his back on a corner of the bar table, causing him to briefly fall, the video shows.He then gets up, raises both of his hands in the air and walks backward away from the agents.Mr. Young rose to stardom after winning the country-music reality TV competition “Nashville Star” in 2006, and his second album, “The Man I Want to Be,” released in 2009, reached the platinum sales mark in the United States. He has been a familiar presence on the Billboard country charts since.John Yoon More