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      Morten Harket, a-ha’s Lead Singer, Has Parkinson’s Disease

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      Harket, best known for his band’s infectious 1985 synth-pop hit “Take on Me,” revealed his illness in an interview on a-ha’s website.Morten Harket, the lead singer of the Norwegian synth-pop band a-ha, best known for its 1985 hit single “Take on Me,” said Wednesday that he had Parkinson’s disease.Harket, 65, revealed his illness in an interview with Jan Omdahl, a-ha’s biographer, on the band’s website. Harket did not say when he received the diagnosis.“I’ve got no problem accepting the diagnosis,” he said. “With time I’ve taken to heart my 94-year-old father’s attitude to the way the organism gradually surrenders: ‘I use whatever works.’”His announcement comes days after the 40th anniversary of the release of a-ha’s first album, “Hunting High and Low,” on June 1, 1985. The first single from the album, “Take on Me,” became a global hit that year, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States on the basis of the song’s infectious synthesizer hook and innovative video that mixed animation with live action.In the interview, Harket said he took medicine to manage his symptoms. Last June, he traveled to the United States, where surgeons at the Mayo Clinic implanted, inside the left side of his brain, electrodes that receive electrical impulses from a small pacemaker-like device in his upper chest. He underwent the same procedure in December for the right side of his brain.The treatment, known as deep brain simulation, is an established treatment for Parkinson’s. Omdahl writes that the treatment has helped keep Harket’s symptoms in check.Still, problems with his voice “are one of many grounds for uncertainty about my creative future,” he said. The dopamine supplements that he takes affect his voice, but his underlying symptoms become more pronounced if he doesn’t take them, he said.Parkinson’s is a progressive and incurable disease that affects the central nervous system and causes tremors, muscle stiffness, impaired balance and other symptoms. More than 10 million people worldwide are estimated to be living with Parkinson’s, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation.Harket, who has released six solo albums, said he has worked on songs in recent years.A-ha formed in Oslo in 1982. Harket and his two bandmates, Paul Waaktaar-Savoy and Magne Furuholmen, spent their early days playing in London before they eventually landed a contract with Warner Bros.Though a-ha is largely known as a one-hit wonder in the United States for “Take On Me,” its second single, “The Sun Always Shines on TV,” cracked the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 1985. The band went on to sell millions of copies of its albums worldwide, and has performed before audiences in 38 countries. Its most recent studio album, “True North,” was issued in 2022. More

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      Alf Clausen, Who Gave ‘The Simpsons’ Its Musical Identity, Dies at 84

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      He created the music for hundreds of episodes over 27 seasons, spanning jazz, rock, blues and musicals. He won two Emmys and was nominated for 28 more.Alf Clausen, a composer and arranger whose songs, interludes and closing credits for hundreds of episodes of “The Simpsons” were so central to the animated sitcom’s success that its creator, Matt Groening, often called him the show’s “secret weapon,” died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 84.His daughter, Kaarin Clausen, said the cause was progressive supranuclear palsy, a brain disorder similar to Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Clausen worked on every episode of “The Simpsons” across 27 seasons, from 1990 to 2017.He did not compose the show’s memorable opening theme — that was Danny Elfman — but he was responsible for everything else, including classic musical numbers like “Who Needs the Kwik-E Mart,” “We Do (The Stonecutters’ Song),” “We Put the Spring in Springfield” and “You’re Checking In.”Mr. Clausen won Emmys for the last two songs, in 1997 and 1998. He was nominated for 19 more awards for “The Simpsons,” and was nominated nine other times for earlier work.When Mr. Groening first approached Mr. Clausen to work on the show, he demurred. He wanted to work on dramas; cartoons and comedy did not interest him.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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      Sean Combs, Defendant: Gestures to His Family, Sticky Notes to His Lawyers

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      With no cameras in the courtroom, few have glimpsed the music mogul as he helps direct his defense, facing charges that could put him in prison for the rest of his life.He shakes his head and fidgets in his seat during testimony, passes notes to his lawyers and blows kisses to his mother in the courtroom gallery. Sometimes Sean Combs pulls out chairs for the women on his legal team.His federal trial has drawn worldwide attention, with minute-by-minute coverage from the press and social media influencers who broadcast live updates from the street outside U.S. District Court in Lower Manhattan.But since federal courts bar cameras, Mr. Combs’s demeanor during the most critical eight weeks of his life — Does he smile? Does he seem mad, nervous, sad? — has been largely outside public view, captured only by the sketches of courtroom artists.For weeks now, Mr. Combs, who is facing sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges that could put him in prison for the rest of his life, has been an attentive and largely easygoing presence in the courtroom. His expressions of disagreement with witnesses have been subdued, showing no inkling of the volcanic, violent temper often described in testimony.When George Kaplan, a former assistant, described the pace of working for Mr. Combs as “almost like drinking from a fire hose,” the mogul nodded in approval. When another assistant, using the pseudonym Mia, said she would be punished if she did not do “everything that he told me to do,” he just scoffed and shook his head.It is an understated posture for a man whose profile as a chart-topping producer, rapper, reality-TV star and gossip-page fixture was larger than life, giving rise to the multitude of nicknames — Puff Daddy, Diddy and Love — by which he has been known.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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      Woman Expected to Testify That Sean Combs Held Her Over a Balcony

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      Bryana Bongolan, a friend of the mogul’s former girlfriend Casandra Ventura, is set to give her account of being dangled from a 17th-floor balcony.A woman is expected to take the stand at Sean Combs’s federal trial on Wednesday to give her account of the music mogul dangling her over a 17th-floor apartment balcony.Bryana Bongolan, a friend of Casandra Ventura, Mr. Combs’s former girlfriend, filed a lawsuit against Mr. Combs last year. In her complaint, Ms. Bongolan said she had been staying in Ms. Ventura’s Los Angeles apartment when, early one morning in 2016, Mr. Combs stormed in, yelled at Ms. Bongolan and held her over the balcony railing — “with only Combs’ grip keeping her from falling to her death” — before he pulled her back and slammed her onto a patio table.Her full account has been anticipated for months. The indictment that charges Mr. Combs with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy made brief mention of what appears to be Ms. Bongolan’s account, saying that “on one occasion, Combs dangled a female victim over an apartment balcony.” Her story was also referenced in Ms. Ventura’s bombshell civil suit in November 2023, which led to the government’s investigation and Mr. Combs’s arrest.The racketeering charge against Mr. Combs involves accusations that the mogul engaged an inner circle of bodyguards and high-ranking employees to help him commit a series of crimes over two decades.Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His lawyers have said that he and his employees were involved in legitimate business operations, not a criminal conspiracy, and that the sex at issue in the government’s case was entirely consensual.Prosecutors, nearing the halfway point of what they expect to be an eight-week trial, said they will soon call “Jane,” the second woman — after Ms. Ventura — who the government says was a victim of sex trafficking by Mr. Combs.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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      At 85, Composer Annea Lockwood Is Far From Done Listening

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      Lockwood, a composer who spins music from the sounds of the natural world, is sharing with and learning from a new generation of artists.Outside Annea Lockwood’s house you could hear the sounds of a gentle breeze, rustling the leaves of her tree-lined driveway and swinging the wind chimes in her backyard. Every so often birds would interject with a bit of song over the rumble of a car down the road.“This neighborhood is a lovely, peaceful little place,” Lockwood said one morning last month. “But it has a very radical background.”Lockwood, 85, a composer of insatiable curiosity and a singular ear for the music of the natural world, lives about an hour north of Manhattan, on street named after Baron de Hirsch, a 19th-century philanthropist who sponsored the resettlement of persecuted Russian Jews. Her house was originally built for the Mohegan Colony, a community with anarchist roots. Not far away, toward the Hudson River, people attending a Paul Robeson concert were once attacked in what came to be known as the Peekskill Riots.“So this is an area with a right-wing town and a left-wing colony,” Lockwood said. “Fascinating, isn’t it?”For the last 50 years, Lockwood has lived and worked here in Crompond, N.Y., in a house that she shared with her partner, the composer Ruth Anderson, until her death in 2019. But Lockwood also spends a lot of time outdoors, especially in recent collaborations with a younger generation of musicians that have taken her on adventures along rivers like the Columbia and the Elwha.For Lockwood, listening is a way to connect with the nonhuman world. “I am seeking ways to recognize that we are part of that world, not dominant and not separate,” she said. Brian Karlsson for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Ella Fitzgerald

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      Ella Fitzgerald, “the First Lady of Song,” had a voice so nuanced that it conveyed vast emotions within the contexts of jazz and soul with unparalleled grace and dignity.Born April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Va., she grew up in Yonkers, N.Y., working odd jobs — including one as a runner for local gamblers — then, as a teenager, she’d go to Harlem and catch shows at the Apollo. There, in 1934, she won a chance to compete in Amateur Night, and only decided to sing (she was going to dance initially) after a dance group, the Edwards Sisters, did such a great job that she needed to switch gears. Fitzgerald wowed the crowd, and from that moment, her career was set. “I knew I wanted to sing before people the rest of my life,” she once said.Ella Fitzgerald’s masterful use of scatting has been copied by vocalists the world over.National Jazz Archive/Heritage Images, via Getty ImagesBy the mid-1930s, as the frontwoman of Chick Webb’s big band, Fitzgerald started experimenting with her voice, using it as an additional horn in the group in the emerging style that became known as scatting. To this day, her masterful use of it is copied by vocalists the world over. At 21, Fitzgerald became a star with her sprightly version of “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” which sold more than one million copies. Over the next decades, she was a fixture in jazz and entertainment, touring and performing with pretty much everyone of note while cementing her own status as a cornerstone in music.Fitzgerald’s stature has only grown since then. Here are 16 songs chosen by musicians, authors, curators and scholars who admire the singer’s contributions to art and culture. Find playlists embedded below, and don’t forget to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’Valerie June, musician and authorOnce Cupid’s arrow strikes, falling in love is the easy part. Staying in love is where we get one chance in a lifetime to conjure the best of ourselves with the only true love of our lives. I write this with joy in my soul and sadness in my heart as I dedicate this Ella Fitzgerald song, “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” to my brother and his wife, Rae Marie Hockett. You see, Rae Marie and Jason were high school sweethearts. I wasn’t initially sure if they were a fling or forever. But until death do us part was truly their love story. Last month, Rae passed away suddenly from heart issues at 45. Her life was short but full of love and sweetness. It was like a dream, and their passion tells the tale of longevity and beauty, as we never know how long we get to spend with those we love. Artists like Ella and Count Basie are the forces that hold us together with songs. Once the curtain closes, it might feel like a dream, but every time we hear the song, it reminds us that every moment is real. While my heart beautifully breaks with grief and loss, “Dream a Little Dream of Me” is from Ella to Rae Marie. Love true, love hard, love and let go — it will come back to you.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 Never Rerecorded ‘Reputation.’ Thank God.

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      After buying back her master recordings, the superstar says she has no plans to finish remaking her sixth album — her most inventive, shocking and risky yet.“Reputation,” Taylor Swift’s rowdy and sly 2017 document of exasperation and recrimination followed by blooming love, is, in a deep catalog of very fine albums, her finest. It is profoundly and disorientingly effective — sinister and hilarious and almost lighthearted in its viciousness — and also an experimental release from a superstar who had previously largely steered clear of formal risk.“Reputation” broke all of Swift’s formulas, taking her from an underdog prodigy who treated every win as an unexpected thrill to a pop star willing to play in the mud (and hurl it at her enemies). It may not be her most representative work, but it demonstrates her versatility and her ability to engage with the predominant sound of the moment, and reveals a snarl that had previously gone unseen.Last Friday, Swift announced that she would not be making a new recording of “Reputation” to join her Taylor’s Versions of “Fearless,” “Speak Now,” “Red” and “1989.” Those releases are the result of a long-running battle over the ownership of the master recordings of her first six albums. Swift has now acquired those assets — in a deal reportedly worth about $360 million, according to Billboard — so she no longer needs to produce an alternate version to draw fan interest away from the originals.Which means she no longer needs to tinker with memory, either. The Taylor’s Version projects were foundationally ahistoric, grand-scale curios that muddied the place Swift’s originals held in the public consciousness. They also implied, via force, that Swift’s original artistry was somehow insufficient. And it relegated old recordings to relic status, largely in the interest of commercial concerns.What they succeeded at, however, was acknowledging that for an artist with several generations of fans, some older material might benefit from a refresh and a reintroduction. The commercial and chart success of these albums — her remake of “1989” had a larger opening week than the original, the equivalent of 1,653,000 sales in the United States — suggested that old work, rethought and repackaged, could be as lucrative as new songs.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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      15 Surprising Show-Tune Covers for Broadway’s Big Night

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      Get ready for the Tony Awards with songs from Sylvester, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Queensrÿche and more.“One Night Only” originated in “Dreamgirls” and was later covered by Sylvester.Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,This is Scott Heller, the former theater editor (now I’m on The New York Times Book Review). With the Tony Awards this Sunday, I’m serving up show tunes to Amplifier readers — but not the usual fare.There are no deathless standards here, like Judy Collins singing “Send in the Clowns” or anything from Barbra Streisand’s “Broadway Album.” And if you’re the kind of person who saves your Playbills, you’ve already listened to the Pet Shop Boys version of “Losing My Mind” — a lot.Rather, I’m hoping this edition of The Amplifier is full of surprising covers, and covers of show tunes you may not know as theater songs in the first place. I’ve mostly stayed away from pop albums designed to market the shows themselves, though I couldn’t resist opening with one, from well before “Hamilton” got into that game. And, alas, one of my favorites — Jill Sobule’s “Sunrise, Sunset,” recorded for the “Fiddler” tribute compilation “Knitting on the Roof” — doesn’t seem to be streamable. But you can find it on her website.Laden with happiness and tears,ScottListen along while you read.1. Diana Ross & the Supremes: “If a Girl Isn’t Pretty”Who knew? This delightful curiosity comes from a 1968 Motown album on which the trio performed 11 songs from “Funny Girl,” a tie-in released just as the movie version reached theaters. Take away the ugly duckling story line and the Brooklynese and it doesn’t exactly add up. But who cares when greeted with brash horns, sunny vocals and a group cheer after the unforgettable rhyme, “When a girl’s incidentals / are no bigger than two lentils.”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