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      Tzadik’s Experimental Music Is Streaming. Start Here.

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      Listen to 15 streaming highlights from the vast catalog of Tzadik, the imprint founded by John Zorn.John Zorn started the Tzadik label with Kazunori Sugiyama in 1995. Since then, this imprint has amassed a vast catalog of experimental music from the worlds of classical, jazz, rock and beyond.It has also resisted the streaming economy — that is, until last week. As Zorn was celebrating his 70th birthday with concerts, most of Tzadik’s offerings began popping up on Spotify and other platforms.The range of offerings — from over 800 releases — is astonishing. To get an idea, start with these 15 albums.Electric Masada: ‘At the Mountains of Madness’The large-group setting here offers extraordinary, maximalist power in the Jewish folk themes that Zorn wrote for his first Masada Quartet. (Later, he presented them in new arrangements that reflected his interest in chamber music and metal.)Lee Hyla: ‘My Life on the Plains’Tzadik’s Composer Series line has spotlighted artists whose works deliver a synthesis of concert music and jazz or rock energies. In “Polish Folk Songs,” Hyla combines gorgeous string writing with percussive explosions and clarinet riffs.Shelley Hirsch: ‘The Far In, Far Out Worlds of Shelley Hirsch’Excerpts from radio dramas and live shows populate this multifaceted vocalist’s album. Even during a miniature like “So Tender,” Hirsch can create drama by deploying tensile torch-song vibrato, lip smooches and born-in-Brooklyn Jewish accents.John Zorn: ‘Myth And Mythopoeia’In one of Zorn’s most ravishing classical collections, boisterous items like “Hexentarot” elicit hot playing from select members of the JACK Quartet. “Missa Sine Voces” makes dreamy then abstract use of harp and vibes, and the soprano-and-strings “Pandora’s Box” packs plenty of drama into 14 minutes.Keiji Haino & Tatsuya Yoshida: “New Rap”In the late 1990s, Tzadik was the best-distributed source for Japanese experimental rock in America. This 2006 set from its “New Japan” series is among the most unhinged, and most sublime. Credit the relentless energy of Yoshida, the Ruins drummer, as well as Haino’s textured yelping and guitar playing.Julius Hemphill: ‘One Atmosphere’This saxophonist and bandleader was also active as a chamber music composer — one to whom the classical mainstream paid scant attention, but for whom Tzadik rolled out the red carpet. On the title track, spare material alternates with jolting motivic activity, with Hemphill’s partner, Ursula Oppens, at the piano.Annie Gosfield: ‘Almost Truths and Open Deceptions’This composer’s 2012 set reflects her vast talent: Percussion, piano and cello take their at-bats during “Wild Pitch”; a sampling keyboard and Roger Kleier’s electric guitar power an excerpt from “Daughters of the Industrial Revolution”; “Phantom Shakedown” offers Cagean meditation; and the title work is a thrilling cello concerto.John Zorn: ‘Godard/Spillane’Zorn’s famed “file card” pieces advertised a quick-cutting, cinematic experience for the ears. “Godard,” a mid-1980s entry, was reissued by Tzadik in 1999. And it does evoke the French New Wave works of Jean-Luc Godard, particularly “Alphaville.” It also offers a look at a distinguished Zorn collaborator, the turntablist Christian Marclay.George E. Lewis: ‘Endless Shout’This release presents a wide-angle Lewis portrait. “North Star Boogaloo” is a kinetic work for samples and the solo percussionist Steven Schick. “Smashing Clusters” reinterprets the legacy of Harlem stride piano legends. And in “Voyager” Lewis plays trombone against orchestral backing realized by his improvising software program of the same name.Craig Taborn and Ikue Mori: ‘Highsmith’Mori’s solo-electronics sets have been important to Tzadik, but her skill as a collaborator is just as crucial. Here, she teams up with Craig Taborn, a jazz-world star, for a set of improvisations that cavort and splinter with indefatigable invention.Naked City: ‘Naked City Live Vol. 1: Knitting Factory 1989’This concert date doesn’t benefit from the wild contributions of the ensemble’s regular vocalist Yamataka Eye. Even so, Zorn’s early rock group — capable of delivering grindcore in one minute and the “Batman” TV theme the next — puts on quite the show.Wadada Leo Smith: ‘Golden Quartet’Tzadik championed Smith, reissuing his early albums and putting out new sets. There’s a great band on this one, with the composer on trumpet, Jack DeJohnette on drums and Malachi Favors Magoustous on bass, as well as Anthony Davis on piano.Derek Bailey: ‘Ballads’Bailey, a giant of the free-improvisation scene, enjoyed a fine late-career run on Tzadik, including this at-first-glance quizzical approach to jazz’s core songbook. But the precise use of extended techniques lends an idiosyncratic grace to the chords that you can barely glimpse when Bailey plays “Stella by Starlight.”Alvin Singleton: ‘Somehow We Can’This American artist was recently celebrated at the Darmstadt Summer Course in Germany. Yet he rarely receives the kind of attention he deserves at home. On Tzadik, he does: Here, there is variety, including a duo for Wadada Leo Smith and Anthony Davis, as well as the chamber orchestral highlight “Again.”John Zorn: ‘Spinoza’Simulacrum is one of Zorn’s best groups: a fine-tuned metal band and a smoking jazz-organ trio. Typically, he doesn’t play with the ensemble, but on this 2022 set, he pulls out his sax for the second suite. Both of the album’s long tracks are protean in style, yet unmistakably driven. Very Tzadik. More

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      After Viral Beef, Robert Glasper Returns to the Blue Note

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      Mounting his fifth annual residency at the Blue Note (after a viral beef at the Grammys), the pianist, producer and composer is hungry for a challenge.In February, on the night of this year’s Grammy Awards, the pianist, producer and composer Robert Glasper was enjoying himself in the audience at the Microsoft Theater when he realized he didn’t have his phone. He had given it to his assistant earlier in the evening, before taking the stage to accept the award for best R&B album — his second win in that category and fifth career Grammy.When he retrieved the phone, Glasper saw that it was filled with messages about the R&B singer Chris Brown, who was among the nominees whom he had just bested. Brown had reacted to the loss with a discourteous post to his 131 million followers on Instagram: “Who the [expletive] is Robert Glasper,” appending a crying laughing emoji to the word “who.”The comment, which Brown followed with a video comparing his success on the record charts to Glasper’s, was an attempt to undercut his rival’s achievement. But Brown had fallen into a trap. Over the previous 10 years, Glasper had been methodically chipping away at the boundaries between jazz — the music for which he originally became known — hip-hop and R&B. In some ways, his winning album, “Black Radio III,” was designed to force precisely the kind of showdown with contemporary Black popular music that Brown’s intemperate posting had unwittingly supplied.Scrolling through his phone at the venue, Glasper was almost giddy.“Oh yeah,” he thought to himself. “This is going to be great.”Glasper, 45, whose long face and soft features are capped by closely trimmed hair, ascended the ranks of modern jazz nearly 20 years ago. Born and raised in Houston, he arrived in New York to study at the New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in 1997, right as the neo-soul movement, pioneered by artists like D’Angelo and Erykah Badu, was integrating jazz instrumentation and vocal performance into a chart-topping variant of R&B.At the New School, Glasper befriended the singer Bilal, a member of a loose musicians collective called the Soulquarians with D’Angelo, Badu, the producer J Dilla, and the rappers Common, Yasiin Bey (then known as Mos Def) and Talib Kweli, among others. The group shared recording space at Electric Lady Studios and occasionally attended concerts together. At the same time, Glasper was getting an education in the world of straight-ahead jazz while playing piano in bands led by Christian McBride and Russell Malone — both took him on tour, at the expense of his attendance record — and forming his own acoustic trio.The Blue Note residency (and a related festival in Napa Valley) unites Glasper’s extended universe of friends and forebears in one setting.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesHis first album, “Mood” (2004) and two follow-ups for Blue Note Records, “Canvas” (2005) and “In My Element” (2007), hewed largely traditional, with an occasional nod to hip-hop, as on the “In My Element” track “J Dillalude.” But by the release of his fourth album, “Double Booked” (2009) — half featuring the Robert Glasper Trio and half featuring a new electric fusion ensemble called “The Robert Glasper Experiment” — Glasper’s inner Soulquarian was edging into view.“Real jazz is supposed to reflect the times you’re in; that’s the true history and tradition of the music,” he said. “I’m not supposed to sound like Thelonious Monk did when I have so much more music to be influenced by.”The “Black Radio” series, which Glasper described as a distillation of his brand, made breathing room for those influences. The first album, released in 2012, featured several of his neo-soul compatriots — Badu, Bilal, Musiq Soulchild — as well as rapping from Lupe Fiasco and Bey, with covers of songs by David Bowie and Nirvana thrown in for good measure.“Black Radio” earned Glasper his first Grammy Award (for best R&B album) and set him on a collision course with popular culture not seen from a jazz musician this century. He played piano on several tracks of Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 album, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” released a remix album with the house music producer Kaytranada and was recruited by the actor Don Cheadle to compose the score for “Miles Ahead,” a 2015 biopic of Miles Davis.“He has that desire to get to the next level,” said Common, who appeared on “Black Radio 2” (2013) and formed the group August Greene with Glasper and the drummer/producer Karriem Riggins. “He wants to be the one that people will look to and say, ‘Yeah, he was the greatest of that time.’”Last month, Glasper arrived at a recording studio in Downtown Brooklyn to work on his latest film score, for a documentary about Luther Vandross, one of his mother’s favorite artists. “The first time I fell in love with acoustic piano wasn’t Duke Ellington, or Monk, or Herbie — it was Luther,” he said, crediting Nat Adderley Jr., Vandross’s longtime pianist and arranger. His large frame was draped in a black T-shirt with a portrait of Dilla, whose idiosyncratic production style inspired a generation of hip-hop and jazz musicians before and after his death in 2006.“Watching him work changed the way I play,” Glasper said.A couple of days after the session, Glasper would fly to Johannesburg for nearly two weeks to play festival dates. He is also working on a Christmas EP and composing another film score, for a documentary about Billy Preston. On Wednesday, back in New York, he began his annual, monthlong residency at the Blue Note Jazz club, colloquially known as “Robtoberfest.” The residency (and a related festival in Napa Valley) unites his extended universe of friends and forebears in one setting. It has become known for drawing A-list surprise performers (Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock are fans) and, this year, will mix tributes to giants like Herbie Hancock and Art Blakey with featured performances from Bey, Norah Jones, Yebba, D Smoke, Terrace Martin and Kamasi Washington, among others.Glasper finds scoring films a welcome challenge. “Ease can be a bad thing, and making my own music, a lot of times, is easy,” he said.Jasmine Clarke for The New York Times“It’s a reflection of his unique contribution to music,” said Alex Kurland, the director of programming at the Blue Note. “He enables everyone around him to sound great and to feel great.”Since the pandemic, Glasper has lived full time in Los Angeles. He got an apartment there in 2017 on the suggestion of Martin (with whom he, Washington and the producer 9th Wonder perform as Dinner Party) and to be closer to the film business. He composed the music for the 2020 film “The Photograph,” starring Issa Rae and LaKeith Stanfield, and for the television series “Run the World,” “The Best Man: The Final Chapters” and “Winning Time.” (He has also appeared in front of the camera, including in a small role on Showtime’s “Black Monday,” the since-canceled series Cheadle starred in and executive produced.)Of his many jobs, Glasper said he finds scoring the most challenging. It requires two acts of translation — from image to sound, and from director to composer — for which his background as an artist provided little preparation.“Directors will ask you to do weird things: ‘I need this to feel melancholy — but in a calypso way,’” he said, laughing. “But it’s good exercise. Ease can be a bad thing, and making my own music, a lot of times, is easy.”During the pandemic, he was inspired to make “Black Radio III” in part because his usual, “easy,” recording methods were unavailable to him. Instead of inviting musicians to jam live in a studio, he worked more like a hip-hop producer, crafting beats and soliciting vocal performances remotely. The result — featuring, among many others, H.E.R., Ty Dolla Sign and, on a special edition produced in partnership with the streetwear label Supreme, Mac Miller — is the most accessible and thoroughly modern music Glasper has released.Even Chris Brown eventually had to pay his respects. The day after his viral Grammys outburst, the singer posted a public apology: “After doing my research I actually think your amazing,” he wrote.Glasper gladly accepted — and quickly printed “Who the [expletive] is Robert Glasper?” on T-shirts. More

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      ‘Joan Baez I Am a Noise’ Review: Fountain of Nostalgia

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      A new documentary about the folk singer and activist Joan Baez contains a gold mine of archival materials.In a letter to her parents, the singer Joan Baez describes the work of recalling repressed memories of being abused by her father as “the bone-shattering task of remembering.”Her account of that experience, which she says her parents denied, is shown in the new documentary “Joan Baez I Am a Noise.” In the wistfully immersive film — directed by Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky and Maeve O’Boyle — Baez reveals these “bone-shattering” secrets while winding down her 60-year career as a musician and political activist.At 82, Baez seems to have processed her struggles. She is plain-spoken about her early fame and her devotion to Bob Dylan, and does not let herself off the hook when her son admits to feeling her absence while she was “busy saving the world.”The documentary has a gold mine of material: drawings and journal entries, concert footage, family videos and vintage photographs. Included in the mix is audio from one of her therapy tapes, setting the stage for her unflinching confessional about abuse.As Baez rediscovers many of these items in her mother’s storage unit, her memories come alive, as if we are with her on this journey. O’Connor, Navasky and O’Boyle make imaginative visual choices to give Baez a full cinematic dimensionality, such as animating her sometimes haunting sketches.There is ultimately a sense of resolve for Baez in “I Am a Noise.” And for the rest of us, the documentary is an eloquent meditation on making peace with the past.Joan Baez I Am a NoiseNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Kate Soper Returns to Opera With a Story Medieval and Modern

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      On a recent summer morning in New York, three sopranos, a director and a small crew gathered for a rehearsal of “The Hunt,” a new opera by Kate Soper.One soprano had a ukulele stored offstage. Another had a violin close at hand. And a third, placed center stage at the Miller Theater at Columbia University, mimed speaking into a smartphone as the day’s blocking work began.While that character, Fleur, primped and preened for an imagined camera as if on a livestream, she bragged about her “social media fluency” on an address to a “royal hiring academy.” All three sopranos were creating separate, self-taped auditions, for a show within the show.And yet: They were clearly doing so in some bygone era.“The King seeks spotless maidens for the hunt of the unicorn,” the sopranos recited in unison, “whose conquest will bring riches to our kingdom, expansion of our realm and everlasting power over all our enemies.”So far, so anachronistic. All of this, though, was precisely on brand for Soper, the composer and librettist of “The Hunt,” who was also in the auditorium day, keeping a close eye on the early rehearsal for the opera, which premieres at the Miller on Oct. 12.Ever since her witty and sophisticated chamber opera “Here Be Sirens,” from 2014, Soper has been plying fields similar to the one she has cultivated in “The Hunt.” She consistently borrows ancient literary texts and tropes — freely quoting from and playing with, say, Aristotle or Christine de Pizan — in dramatic works that have contemporary urgency and comic thrust.Soper has been known for witty, idiosyncratic stage works since the creation of “Here Be Sirens” in 2014.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“The Hunt” revives texts from Hildegard von Bingen and Thibaut de Champagne, among others. (On some occasions, Soper also writes her own translations.) And, as in “Sirens,” the instrumentation is limited to what the soprano performers can play onstage while also singing her complex music.Because of pandemic delays, this new opera is Soper’s second major stage premiere of 2023: In February, her grandest dramatic creation to date, “The Romance of the Rose,” made its belated debut at Long Beach Opera in California.“Probably this is the only year of my life in which I’ll have two opera premieres,” Soper said, self-deprecatingly, with a laugh during a telephone interview. Still, there’s nothing that suggests she won’t remain in demand — in New York, on the West Coast or even elsewhere.After all, her work is readily available to curious listeners. An archival video of Morningside Opera’s scrappy, celebrated production of “Sirens” — which includes Soper in its cast — can be streamed for free on Vimeo. And on YouTube, Long Beach Opera’s more recent highlight reel from “Rose” shows Soper expanding her compositional palette.In “Rose” there is the kind of experimentalism that Soper has regularly engaged in as co-director of the cutting-edge Wet Ink Ensemble. But there are also numbers that approach the hummable quality of show tunes.“This is not the kind of opera I thought I would write when I was in grad school,” Soper said. “That’s part of what ‘Sirens’ is about, feeling just sort of disgruntled and ashamed of some of my musical impulses: ‘No one’s going to take me seriously if I write this stupid show-tunes stuff.’”She added that the character she sang in “Sirens” was “struggling with this idea that you can’t have pleasure and intellect at the same time, or something. Like most people, I just sort of have gotten over my completely pointless hangups I had in my 20s or early 30s.”Ashley Tata, center, is directing “The Hunt” at the Miller Theater at Columbia University.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesThe soprano Christiana Cole, who plays Briar in “The Hunt,” said that Soper’s writing is some of the richest that they have sung, in a career that has encompassed both contemporary classical music and Elton John’s stage adaptation of “The Devil Wears Prada.”“I have done so many new pieces in my career,” Cole said. “Sometimes there are big hits and sometimes there are big misses.” But in Soper’s music, they added, avant-garde density merges with tunefulness in rare fashion.“It’s as though Kate has a microscope, and she uses it on every measure,” Cole said. “The level of detail is not just incredible because it’s maximalist and baroque at the same time — but it’s amazing because it sounds good.”In “The Hunt,” Cole also plays the principal ukulele part, in songs that, they said, are not easily scanned for patterns.“The way the words sit on this very Minimalist, repetitive, beautiful ukulele part that I’m playing — the text sits differently every time,” Cole said. “For the audience, the feeling is that you are both listening to something that is ancient, that has been around forever, and that also does something different to your body than any music you’ve ever heard.”There is asymmetry, too, in Soper’s approach to contemporary political commentary in “The Hunt.” While the opera mines ancient lore about unicorns and how to catch them — per canonic literature, virgins are the best bait — it also tweaks that received wisdom through contemporary discussions surrounding gender presentation. By consciously setting out to cast a nonbinary soprano for the role of Briar, Soper hoped to welcome transgender rights to her earlier explorations of gender.“Sirens,” Soper said, asked: “How do you go through life when you want to change who you are but can’t? How do you deal with expectations, based on how you helplessly present yourself?”By contrast, she sees “Rose” as being “a bit more open: like ‘How do you stay in love?’ And ‘Who are you in love?’ And ‘How do you try to empathetically perceive the world, in other people, without constantly getting wrapped up in your own tendencies?’”A recent rehearsal for “The Hunt,” which Soper said is about how to “survive in a culture that is specifically hostile to what you are.”Amir Hamja/The New York Times“The Hunt” is less concerned with those internal questions, and more with threats from the outside. “Certain new norms and ways of behaving — and ways of reacting to thought — seem suddenly medieval,” Soper said. “Who has power, and who has rights?”This opera, she added, is ultimately about how to “survive in a culture that is specifically hostile to what you are. And what do you do? What’s the solution?”In the interview, Soper didn’t want to give an answer that would spoil “The Hunt.” But the production’s director, Ashley Tata, who also staged Soper’s “Ipsa Dixit” at the Miller, pointed to the fact that the theater’s listing for the show credits an intimacy choreographer — so it isn’t much of a spoiler to say that the opera embraces physical pleasure.Soper said that there were “two things I felt I could offer, despite the lack of optimism I feel.”First, “When someone tells you that you’re disgusting and shameful and you don’t own your body, you can use your body to give and receive pleasure,” she said. And second, “You can say: I can do what I want with my body. You actually do have autonomy.”The intimacy among performers in “The Hunt” is remarkable, in part because of the chaste turn that much of contemporary opera has pursued in a politically fraught era. By contrast, Soper’s characters are always alive to the possibility of pleasure, even when the path forward is murky.Also enjoyable is how literate her characters are in exploring their identities. “That tends to happen in my operas, that there’s a self-conscious readership going on,” Soper said. “In ‘Here Be Sirens,’ my character was constantly reading and referring to books — as if that was going to help her.”These investigations are also laced with humor — another seemingly lost art in American opera. And Soper hopes that the pleasure she allows for characters translates to enjoyment for audiences, too.“Somehow it’s important to me,” she said. “I’m also going to write some dirty jokes in this opera. And I am a woman — whatever, deal with it.” More

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      James Jorden, Parterre Box Opera Blog Creator, Dies at 69

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      With Parterre Box, he brought together high culture, punk aesthetics and gleeful camp in an irreverent source for news, criticism and gossip.James Jorden, a feisty, influential writer and editor who brought together high culture, punk aesthetics and gleeful camp in his opera zine-turned-website Parterre Box, was found dead on Monday at his home in Sunnyside, Queens. He was 69.The police, asked by a friend in a 911 call to check on Mr. Jorden, discovered his body, but it was unclear when he died, according to the New York Police Department. The medical examiner was to determine the cause of death.In the early 1990s, Mr. Jorden was struggling to find work as a stage director in New York when he got the advice to try writing about opera rather than producing it.The East Village at the time was “a little past the peak of punk music zines, fan zines,” he recalled in a 2009 interview. “And I really liked the aesthetic, even though I had no idea what it was they were talking about.”Issues of Parterre Box in its zine form, based on the punk zines Mr. Jorden saw around the East Village.Mimicking those DIY projects, Mr. Jorden played around at home with some text, photographs cut from magazines and a glue stick. Parterre Box — which would go on to become an irreverent, essential source of news, criticism, rabid discussion and archival recordings — was born.With a four-page inaugural issue published in December 1993, it was likely the world’s first “queer opera zine,” as it described itself. Parterre Box embraced both the sublime and ridiculous aspects of the art form with a breathless, over-the-top tone familiar to the gay fans who kibitzed during intermissions at the Metropolitan Opera.Maria Callas was on the cover of that first issue (and, as Medea, graced the back of Mr. Jorden’s left shoulder in tattoo form). The contents included intense poetry; parodied the columns in more strait-laced publications like Opera News; imagined Cecilia Bartoli starring as the Long Island temptress Amy Fisher in “Cavalleria Suburbiana,” a takeoff on “Cavalleria Rusticana”; and made cutting observations about less-favored divas.“Parterre Box,” Mr. Jorden wrote on the second page, “is about remembering when opera was queer and dangerous and exciting and making it that way again.”At first, Mr. Jorden distributed copies of the zine at the Tower Records store near Lincoln Center and at the Met — tucking them into brochures in racks in the lobby and leaving them in bathroom stalls. On one occasion, caught stuffing the racks before a performance of “Salome,” he was ejected from the theater by security guards.That pugnacious, underground spirit fit the era. “It was a very activist time in the gay community, in terms of fighting back against AIDS,” Richard Lynn, a longtime contributor, told The New York Times in 2018. “And I view Parterre Box as part of that bigger cultural trend. It wasn’t afraid to be in your face or confrontational or angry. I felt it was therapeutic.”James Glen Jorden was born on Aug. 6, 1954, in Opelousas, La. His father, Billy Wayne Jorden, worked for the Louisiana State Highway Department, and his mother, Glenora (Jory) Jorden, was a high school teacher as well as a local theater director and actress. (He is survived by two brothers, John and Justin Jorden.)Mr. Jorden got his start in opera modestly, costuming a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore” when he was in a gifted-and-talented program in his teens; his co-designer was a young Tony Kushner. After Mr. Jorden’s mother grew tired of his constantly playing his recording of “Pinafore,” she bought him “Carmen,” and his obsession turned to opera in general.In 1976, while attending Louisiana State University, he hitchhiked to Dallas to hear the Met on tour and saw the soprano Renata Scotto in the three leading roles of Puccini’s triptych “Il Trittico.”“That turned me around,” Mr. Jorden said in the 2009 interview. “I saw what the possibility was. And I actually choose that date as the birthday of La Cieca” — his draggy Parterre Box alter ego, named after the blind mother in Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda.”After finishing college and remaining for a time in Louisiana, he moved to New York — all the while teaching, coaching, directing, acting and working day jobs, all of which continued even after Parterre Box was founded.The zine’s length, sophistication and readership gradually grew; professionals in the field began to feed Mr. Jorden valuable bits of inside information and casting news. In the voice of La Cieca — and informed by a capacious knowledge of classic theater, music and film — he skewered Met productions, aired rumors about its administration and star singers, and took other writers to task for their vocabulary quirks and for doing boosterism instead of real criticism.“I know that his blog was often very critical of the Met and me,” Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, said in an interview. “But ultimately, he was on the side of opera, and I always respected him for that.”With a deep love of the art form lying just under the barbs, the obsessively informed, fiercely opinionated, often hilarious tone of the zine translated well to the budding blogosphere when Mr. Jorden added a web version in 1996. Parterre.com’s blind items, fervent cast of regular contributors and often irascible commentariat of readers anticipated the influential internet style that would emerge in the early 2000s.Parterre Box, both as a zine and a website, became an irreverent, essential source of news, criticism, rabid discussion and archival recordings.Mr. Jorden always tried to stay ahead of the technological curve: His podcast, started on a whim in 2005, long before the medium took off, became one of the great online resources for live opera recordings. La Cieca, the host, would announce Parterre Box’s motto in an over-enunciated blue-blood accent: “Where opera is king, and you, the readers, are queens.”Parterre Box’s print version ended in 2001, but Mr. Jorden continued to run the website, in addition to writing criticism and features for other publications, including Gay City News, The New York Post, The New York Observer and The Times.As its founder and editor gained more mainstream affiliations and respectability, Parterre Box mellowed a bit. Its reviews — from a lineup of critics around the country and world — grew more measured. (The comment sections, though, could still be bracing.)At the Met, from which Mr. Jorden was once thrown out for distributing the zine, Parterre Box now has press seats. When one of its critics was granted a ticket for opening night of the company’s 2015-16 season, the moment was “a total game changer,” Mr. Jorden said. “It felt like being an adult.” More

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      The Met’s ‘Dead Man Walking’ Goes to Sing Sing

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      One by one, the inmates filed into a chapel at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y. — past a line of security officers, past a sign reading, “Open wide the door to Christ.” Under stained-glass windows, they formed a circle, introducing themselves to a crowd of visitors as composers, rappers, painters and poets. Then they began to sing.The inmates had gathered one recent afternoon for a rehearsal of “Dead Man Walking,” the death-row tale that opened the Metropolitan Opera season last week. Together, they formed a 14-member chorus that would accompany a group of Met singers for a one-night-only performance of the work before an audience of about 150 of their fellow inmates.“I feel like I’m at home,” said a chorus member, Joseph Striplin, 47, who is serving a life sentence for murder, as the men warmed up with scales and stretches. “I feel I’m alive.”Steven Osgood, the conductor, with Sister Helen Prejean. Osgood rehearsed with the inmates for more than five hours, practicing rhythm, diction and dynamics.James Estrin/The New York Times“Dead Man Walking,” based on Sister Helen Prejean’s 1993 memoir about her experience trying to save the soul of a convicted murderer at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, has been staged more than 75 times around the world since its premiere in 2000.But the opera, with music by Jake Heggie and a libretto by Terrence McNally, had never been performed in a prison until last week at Sing Sing, which is home to more than 1,400 inmates.There were no costumes or props. Chorus members, who were dressed in prison-issued green pants, had to be counted and screened before entering the auditorium, lining up by cell block and building number. Arias were sometimes interrupted by the sound of security officers’ radios.Yet the opera, with its themes of sin and redemption — and of the pain endured by victims’ families — resonated with inmates.Michael Shane Hale, an inmate, with Jake Heggie, the composer of “Dead Man Walking” and DiDonato. Working on the opera, Hale said, “reminds you not to get lost in prison.”James Estrin/The New York TimesMichael Shane Hale, 51, a chorus member serving a sentence of 50 years to life for murder, said that he often thought of himself as a monster. In the 1990s, prosecutors sought the death penalty in his case. (New York suspended the practice in 2004.)Hale said the opera, which portrays the friendship between Sister Helen and Joseph De Rocher, a death-row prisoner, had taught him to see his own humanity.“We feel so powerless; we feel so invisible,” Hale said. “It reminds you not to get lost in prison.”Not everyone at Sing Sing, a maximum-security prison about 30 miles north of New York City, was enamored. Some prisoners declined to take part in the opera because of concerns about its dark themes, including the portrayal of a prisoner’s death by lethal injection. Carnegie Hall, which helped to bring the opera to Sing Sing through the education initiative Musical Connections, said that about half of the 30 inmates in the program did not participate. (Musical Connections, which has offered instruction in performance, music theory and composition to inmates since 2009, is among similar projects nationwide that aim to help prisoners connect with society through culture.)In the prison chapel, Wendy Bryn Harmer (at the keyboard) warms up the inmate participants, including Bartholomew Crawford, front. Crawford said the opera offered hope: “It shows you’re not alone in this world.”James Estrin/The New York TimesBartholomew Crawford, 54, who is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for burglary, said he understood the concerns of his fellow inmates, but that, for him, the opera offered hope.“It shows you’re not alone in this world,” he said. “It shows you that in the darkest hour there’s light somewhere.”The idea for bringing “Dead Man Walking” to Sing Sing emerged several years ago when an inmate promised the renowned singer Joyce DiDonato, who plays Sister Helen in the Met’s production, that the men could sing the chorus parts.“This is not just theater,” said DiDonato, who has been visiting Sing Sing since 2015. “This is a story that has real consequences.”An inmate in the choir at Sing Sing. Some prisoners in the Musical Connections program declined to take part in the opera because of concerns about its dark themes, including the portrayal of a prisoner’s death by lethal injectionJames Estrin/The New York TimesFor months, the men at Sing Sing worked on an abridged version of “Dead Man Walking.” Bryan Wagorn, a Met pianist, coached them via video chat and recorded individual chorus parts for them to study. (It took several weeks for the files to clear security.) He joined Manuel Bagorro, who manages Carnegie’s program, on visits to the prison.Paul Cortez, 43, who is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for murder, worked with Wagorn to learn the score and held Saturday night rehearsals with small groups of prisoners at Sing Sing. Some were initially hesitant, unsure if the opera advanced prisoners’ rights and fearing they “might be exploited,” he said, but eventually more people started showing up.“It was daunting at first,” said Cortez, who majored in theater in college. “I did not know how I was going to get the guys in shape. But they were so diligent. They took it seriously.”From left, Sister Helen; Wilson Chimborazo, an inmate who sings in the chorus; McKinny; Joseph Striplin, another inmate singing in the production; and DiDonato.James Estrin/The New York TimesLast month, DiDonato, joined by Sister Helen, 84, visited the prison to work through the music and to get to know the participants. They discussed life in prison, morality, shame and stigma, as well as Sister Helen’s efforts to abolish the death penalty. Some inmates, saying they were still consumed by guilt about their crimes, asked about seeking forgiveness.DiDonato and Sister Helen returned last week, two days after opening night at the Met, joined by singers and staff from the Met and Carnegie Hall, and by Heggie, who offered guidance on adapting the opera for a smaller stage and reviewed some of the inmates’ Musical Connections compositions.“We’ve got each other’s backs,” DiDonato said to everyone as rehearsal got underway. “This, now, is our circle.”DiDonato, who has been visiting Sing Sing since 2015, rehearsing in the chapel with inmates. “This is not just theater,” she said. “This is a story that has real consequences.”James Estrin/The New York TimesThe Met singers introduced themselves, taking pains to remind the inmates that they were only pretending to be prison guards and police officers. (“Clemency!” a prisoner shouted, after the bass Raymond Aceto announced he was playing the role of a warden.)Sister Helen, standing among the inmates, said that there was love and trust in the room.“This is a sacred gathering,” she added. “There is no place on earth at this time that I’d rather be. We’re going to create beauty today, and you’re going to feel it.”For more than five hours, the men worked with the Met artists, under the conductor Steven Osgood, practicing rhythm, diction and dynamics in three sections that feature the chorus.They stomped their feet and clapped their hands in “He Will Gather Us Around,” a spiritual that opens the opera, which is typically performed by women and children. And they sang with fiery intensity as De Rocher confesses his murder, shortly before his execution.The Met singers and Sister Helen after the performance. Susan Graham, third from left, told the inmates that she had not fully understood the meaning of the opera until that day.James Estrin/The New York TimesThe bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, who sings the role of De Rocher, offered encouragement, telling the inmates, “This is your moment to shine.” The soprano Latonia Moore, who performs as Sister Rose, complimented the speed with which they had learned a contemporary opera. “Bravo to you,” she said.And Susan Graham, the mezzo-soprano who plays De Rocher’s mother at the Met and originated the role of Sister Helen at the premiere of “Dead Man Walking” in 2000, told the inmates that she had not fully understood the meaning of the opera until that day.Then, around 6:30 p.m., an audience of inmates and corrections officials took their seats in the auditorium, adjacent to the chapel.“The most beautiful thing in the world is a human being that does something and is transformed,” Sister Helen said in introducing the opera. “Everybody’s worth more than the worst thing they ever did.”“How you lifted your voices tonight — that spirits stays here,” DiDonato told the inmates after the performance. “It is embedded in my heart.”James Estrin/The New York TimesThe prisoners watched intensely, tapping their toes on the concrete floor and gasping when an irate De Rocher tells Sister Helen: “You’re not a nun. You’re the angel of death.” One man stood up to applaud a scene near the end when De Rocher and Sister Helen tell each other, “I love you,” shortly before he is killed. After the final rendition of “He Will Gather Us Around,” the audience offered a standing ovation.Chorus members were moved too, including Hale, who said that De Rocher’s confession “blew me away.” He hoped that the opera would inspire inmates to take responsibility for their crimes.“We have to deal with the life we have left and move forward,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing here. You have murderers singing this piece at Sing Sing.”A guard watches over the production. “You have murderers singing this piece at Sing Sing,” said the inmate Michael Shane Hale.James Estrin/The New York TimesDiDonato told the chorus members that they had created something indelible.“How you lifted your voices tonight — that spirits stays here,” she said. “It is embedded in my heart.”In their few remaining minutes together in the chapel, the prisoners and artists embraced and signed programs. Security officers wandered the pews, reminding the inmates that it was time to go back to their cells.As a guard motioned toward an exit, Cortez thanked DiDonato and the other artists, telling them, “I will never forget this moment.”Then he headed for the door. “Now,” he said, “back to reality.” More

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      Maren Morris: The (Deluxe) Interview

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify |Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, features an interview with the country star Maren Morris, discussing:What it took to begin her career in country musicArriving in Nashville at the peak of “bro country,” with few women on the chartsReceiving backlash from her earliest singles for not being faithful to the genreChoosing to now step back from participating in country music institutions such as award shows and radio promotionSpeaking out against Nashville’s poor track record of providing opportunities for female and non-white performers, and also against peers like Morgan Wallen and Jason AldeanHow the rightward politicization of country music has changed the tenor of working in Nashville, and the breakthrough of Oliver AnthonyHer recent EP, “The Bridge,” and working on new music with Jack AntonoffA Texas-themed snack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Sarah Vaughan

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      All it might take is a second and a half of hearing her sing to make your spine tingle or your heart drop. Opera singers, jazz vocalists, writers and Vaughan’s biographer share their favorites.For over a year, we’ve been rooting through jazz history five minutes at a time. We’ve covered favorites by Ornette Coleman, Mary Lou Williams, New Orleans’s jazz greats and many others. Now let’s turn our attention to a vocalist who epitomized — but couldn’t be contained by — jazz: Sarah Vaughan, “The Divine One,” owner of perhaps the most impressive vocal instrument in recorded history.Forget five minutes, all it might take is a second and a half of hearing her sing to make your spine tingle or your heart drop. Across her wide contralto range she could easily alternate between thick vibrato and crystal-clear precision. Vaughan began her career as a teenager singing bebop — a then-new style that was almost exclusively the domain of hotshot instrumentalists. But she could improvise an exacting scat solo, right alongside the horn players.Raised in a musical family in Newark, Vaughan first hit the road with Earl Hines’s big band in the mid-1940s, after its other singer, Billy Eckstine, saw her win a talent show at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She became an integral part of the band, and then a star. Though naturally shy, she made it clear early on that she was to be treated as any other musician, and her bandmates soon started calling her “Sailor,” because of her fluency with four-letter words.Heading off on a tour with Hines in 1944, she and the pianist John Malachi were lugging their suitcases into Union Station in Washington when he made the mistake of chivalry, holding the door open for her. “What are you standing up there looking at me for, fool?” she demanded. “Go on through the door! You damn fool.” Maybe that’s the moment when he gave her another of her many nicknames: “Sassy.” In any case, it stuck, and it’s the one she is still known by today.As her career progressed, Vaughan — who died in 1990, at 66 — ventured into rock and Brazilian music. Read on for a sampling of standout Vaughan performances selected by opera singers, jazz vocalists, critics, fiction writers and Vaughan’s biographer. Enjoy listening to their choices, check out the playlist at the bottom of the article and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Lizz Wright, vocalist“Tenderly”Sarah Vaughan’s voice is a whole atmosphere. In a few exquisite phrases, the current of her vibrato and the richness of her tone usher the listener into a place in time, into the poetry of song, and hint at the wealth of a great mind. As a Black woman in America, Sarah found a way to stand before masses of people around the world commanding their patient attention, respect and admiration through her powerful vocals and masterfully whimsical phrasing. Her enchanted voice gently opened doors that were often closed to women, people of color and vocalists. Everything under Sarah’s voice is draped in a playful and sacred charm that makes the moment richer than it was. She was aptly called “The Divine One.”Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Wesley Brown, novelist“Send in the Clowns”Sarah. Words fail to measure up. Like Beckett, I try to fail better. A hush steadies all in the club. The mic rests ready against her chest where voice and heartbeat greet. Me on the ground, she in midair with her usual flair. Every breath a parachute, full of rumbles and quivers and flavors of sass. Such a flirt she is, the shimmy in the shoulders, much girlish mischief in the mouth. Isn’t it bliss? Me still on the ground, she in midair. Words not up to snuff. Quick. Don’t bother. She’s here!Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Cécile McLorin Salvant, vocalist“Maria”The most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard is Sarah Vaughan singing this. I believe this is one of the most luxurious vocal recordings of all time. I go back to this video very often when I want to treat myself. I’m so fascinated by her vibrato and by the moments when she gives us those sweeps in range. This version of “Maria,” a song from “West Side Story,” has an intimate, secret quality at crucial moments, and yet it is overwhelmingly grandiose, regal. I have always loved this about Sarah Vaughan. She can take you to these incredible heights with her voice, but with a word, a note, is able to infuse her interpretations with a quotidian, offhand quality. She does not keep her voice in the same place — it is heterogenous, which is what makes it so fun, so rich, so moving. She is divine and human.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Emily Lordi, writer“I’ll Be Seeing You”Many artists have performed “I’ll Be Seeing You,” Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal’s ballad of lost love and longing. But no one has lingered in it as languorously as Sarah Vaughan. Her version of the song, recorded live with her veteran trio at Tivoli Gardens in 1963, expresses no interest in moving on or “healing.” Instead, Vaughan initiates a long, slow waltz with heartache. By casting herself into every phrase, she implies that the pain of imagining her lover in their old haunts (carousels, cafes) not only revives him; it enlivens her (hence the protracted “I” with which she begins). In a feat of breath control, she bridges the song’s two opening statements — inviting, even willing, a world made more vibrant by the afterlife of love, as it smudges the edges of everything.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Samara Joy, vocalist“Time After Time”I admire how much care she puts into every word, making sure that the story of the song is heard and felt. Any improvisatory changes made to the melody are done with taste and feeling. I also love how she uses the full range of her voice to deliver the song. I almost thought the song ended once she hit that final high A-flat, but after descending two octaves lower, oscillating between G and A-flat, this Sarah performance became an instant favorite.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Ben Ratliff, former Times jazz and pop critic“The Thrill Is Gone”I like hearing Sarah Vaughan tear it up on an extra-slow-tempo ballad, 50 beats per minute or lower. With small groups, her unremitting virtuosity made a certain kind of design sense: She filled in the canyon-like spaces between beats. But I also like hearing her singing at slug tempos with thick, commercial, easy-listening studio arrangements: In an atmosphere of languid appeasement, she bounces off the walls. For the front half of “The Thrill Is Gone,” on “Vaughan and Violins” (1958), the arrangement by Quincy Jones clears open space for her to go full Sarah, strange Sarah, with her feats of breath control, mic technique, timbral shifts, trilling and sliding notes, hard emphatic gestures. But she keeps doing it after the tide of violins enters. I mean, the first “gone” is more than three seconds long, most of it the letter “n”; at 0:34, she delivers a pinched, acid “… si-ii-ighs”; at 0:38, “a-hand re-ee-huh-a-lize”; at 0:51, “the nights: the nights are so cold.” At a certain point you’re noticing every detail. Most affective ballads work their affect intermittently — there are a few select peaks, which makes them easier to remember. Vaughan’s were nearly all peak, and in that she took a risk.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Charenee Wade, vocalist“Once in a While”Sarah Vaughan, my first musical love, always brought newness to everything she sang each time she stepped onto the stage. There is a great early recording on MGM in 1949 of this song where, if one listens closely, her undeniably infectious tone and masterful phrasing speak through. This particular clip of her live performance of “Once in a While” is filmed almost 30 years later, and that essence is still there, but even more enriched. Her vocal range was unparalleled and became even deeper as she “seasoned.” She is a soulfully spontaneous and playful improviser. Her stage presence is transfixing, and her comedic timing is delightfully charming. She holds the entire room in the palm of her hand with each story she tells and intimate moment she shares. Her vocal technique is flawless, no matter which decade of her career, and one would be blessed to be able to witness her sitting down at the piano and accompanying herself just as well as any pianist had for her in the past. She is iconic, and quintessentially the definition of a True Jazz Vocalist. My first love, and I know you will love her too!Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Elaine M. Hayes, biographer“Whatever Lola Wants”Sarah Vaughan’s “Whatever Lola Wants,” released in 1955, is a pop masterpiece. In less than three minutes, she perfectly embodies her role as a provocative temptress while demonstrating her vocal prowess, technical mastery, and savvy as a storyteller. On the surface, she sings straight. But she in fact infuses the Broadway tune with her trademark vocal inflections and nuances. A delicious slide here, a microtonal bend there. With each verse she adds layers of complexity that build momentum, pulling the listener through her performance. And while Vaughan keeps a strict beat, she deftly conveys uncertainty and spontaneity, constantly pushing the boundaries between control and the loss of control to produce a delightful tension between the two. Musically, she has re-created the dynamics of a successful seduction. By the time she sings the final “I’m irresistible, you fool/Give in, give in, give in,” her success — and the success of her single, which peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard and Variety charts — seems a foregone conclusion.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Fredara Hadley, scholar“The Shadow of Your Smile”The older I get, the more I revel in listening to grown women’s voices. We often think of what age subtracts, but I’m attracted by what it adds. Growing up in church, people would say, “You have to be a certain age to sing that song.” Sometimes, life experience has to catch up with lyrics. One recording that always makes me feel this way is Sarah Vaughan’s 1966 interpretation of Johnny Mandel and Paul Francis Webster’s “The Shadow of Your Smile.” Sarah Vaughan is a master interpreter of song, both melodically and narratively. I know there are countless recordings of this song, but whenever someone mentions it, I only ever think of hers.This is Vaughan in her 40s singing with an alluring alchemy of tender reflection with the gravitas of life experience. All of her soulful vocal virtuosity paired with an orchestral arrangement infused with a bossa nova groove lulls the listener into a dreamscape. It is nearly four minutes of her starting deep in her rich contralto voice and carrying us higher into her lilting soprano. Her vocal ascent reflects the lyrical joy of remembrance, and then toward the end, she gently descends and places us back into reality. It’s an expertly crafted blend of shadow and sun, light and dark, in the colors of her voice and the story she tells. This is Sarah Vaughan in full bloom as a singer and as a woman.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Will Friedwald, author“Misty”Back in the ’80s, my favorite selection on the jukebox at the Angry Squire was the 1959 single of Sarah Vaughan singing “Misty,” with Quincy Jones’s orchestra and Zoot Sims on tenor. Even at that noisy bar in Chelsea, the first notes of that 45 would cause the whole room to instantly freeze — as if the voice of a goddess were beaming in from another world. Some critics accused Vaughan of not paying enough attention to lyrics in general, but here was a song where she didn’t just sing the words, she actually became them. She didn’t just get “Misty” in the sense of teary-eyed, but she seemed to dissolve bodily into the atmosphere and cling “to a cloud.” Even 30 years after her passing from this world to the next, that record still has that effect on me.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Angel Blue, vocalist“They Can’t Take That Away From Me”The brilliance of Sarah Vaughan reaches far beyond her exquisite sound. Perhaps her most intriguing quality is her vocal ability. Going from a high soprano range to a low contralto range effortlessly seems to be something that she was able to do within any song. One of the songs that I find particularly fascinating is “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”: She demonstrates her ability to catch the listener’s ear with a simple melody by her strong use of diction, straight tone singing, and embellished vibrato to highlight a specific word or end of the phrase.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz critic“Like a Lover (O Cantador)”In the last chapter of her career, Vaughan built herself a new home in the music of Brazil, recording three albums of bossa, jazz and contemporary Brazilian pop. At the end of the first LP, “I Love Brazil,” she’s joined by the Rio de Janeiro-born balladeer Dori Caymmi on his song “Like a Lover (O Cantador).” Caymmi adds the occasional cascade of wordless vocals, as if to provide Vaughan with her string section, but mostly it’s just his acoustic guitar and her voice, singing lyrics in English about an unrequited love. In her mid-50s, Vaughan sounds like someone who knows the feeling of desire inside and out: its urgency, its unreason, the sting that can sometimes be its only reward. But enough with all that. You don’t get very far weighing Sarah Vaughan down with conversations about “authenticity” or “message.” She is concerned almost completely with the joy of singing: the variety of shapes that her notes can take, how they feel, how they taste, whether they’ll sit still or wriggle in her grasp. And that’s where the optimism that you can hear in this track comes from: She knows a song is a lover that will always requite. Sure enough, if you go back to the original Portuguese lyrics, they aren’t actually about a lover at all, they’re about a singer’s devotion to song. One of them translates to: “If only I knew how to cry/Alas, I’m a singer, I can only sing.”Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆ More