Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Dudamel Leads a Premiere by a Youthful Ravel. Not Bad for a Kid.

      by

      The New York Philharmonic and its next music director gave “Sémiramis” its first public hearing, alongside other Ravel pieces and works by Varèse and Gershwin.It’s not every day that a critic gets to review a premiere by Ravel.He died almost a century ago, after all. And while some previously unknown works have come to light over the years, it happens considerably less than once in a blue moon.So my pen was out and alert on Thursday at the New York Philharmonic’s delightful concert at David Geffen Hall, practically vibrating with the opportunity to be among the first to weigh in on a piece by the creator of some of music’s most enduring and gorgeous classics.The work that the Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, its incoming music director, were playing, part of a program celebrating Ravel’s 150th birthday, was long assumed to be lost. Written around 1900, when Ravel was still a conservatory student stormily at odds with the musical establishment, the score for selections from a cantata called “Sémiramis” turned up at an auction in 2000, when it entered the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.An entry in the diary of one of the composer’s friends, the pianist Ricardo Viñes, indicates that it was played, probably as a class exercise, in 1902. (“It is very beautiful,” Viñes wrote.) There’s no record of it being performed in public between then and Thursday.Grave and gloomy, bronzed by the low luster of a gong, the first section rises to the dramatic punch of an opera overture. The music then accelerates into a gaudy Orientalist dance that looks back to the Bacchanale from Saint-Saëns’s “Samson et Dalila” and the “Polovtsian Dances” of Borodin, one of the Russian masters Ravel adored.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

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      JD Vance Is Booed at a Kennedy Center Concert After Trump’s Takeover

      by

      It was supposed to be a moment of celebration: Vice President JD Vance was attending a concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on Thursday evening for the first time since President Trump’s stunning takeover of the institution.Instead, as Mr. Vance took his seat in the box tier with the second lady, Usha Vance, loud boos broke out in the auditorium, lasting roughly 30 seconds, according to audience members and a video posted on social media. Mr. Vance was shown in the video waving to the audience as he settled into his seat.The incident put on display the outcry over Mr. Trump’s decision last month to purge the Kennedy Center’s once-bipartisan board of its Biden appointees and have himself elected its chairman. (The president, who broke with tradition during his first term by not attending the Kennedy Center Honors after some of the artists being celebrated criticized him, complained that the center had become too “wokey.”)Mr. Vance attended Thursday’s performance by the National Symphony Orchestra, one of the Kennedy Center’s flagship groups. The ensemble, under the baton of its music director, Gianandrea Noseda, performed Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 2, with Leonidas Kavakos as the soloist. After an intermission, the orchestra played Stravinsky’s “Petrushka.”The Vances stayed for the entire concert, audience members said. Ms. Vance was recently appointed by Mr. Trump to serve as a board member at the Kennedy Center, alongside other Trump allies like Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host.The concert started about 20 minutes late because of added security measures, audience members said.Roma Daravi, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy Center, said she had no comment on the episode.A White House spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.In February, President Trump ousted the Kennedy Center’s longtime chairman, the financier David M. Rubenstein, the center’s largest donor. His new board of loyalists elected him chairman and fired Deborah F. Rutter, the center’s president for more than a decade. At least three other top staff members were also dismissed.Performers, including the actress Issa Rae and the musician Rhiannon Giddens, have dropped out in protest amid fears that Mr. Trump’s calls to rid the center of “woke” influences, drag shows and “anti-American propaganda” would result in a reshaping of programming. The musical “Hamilton” recently scrapped a planned tour there next year.While Mr. Trump has not yet articulated his vision for the center, his appointees have provided some hints. Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump named as the center’s new president, recently said that the center planned “a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas.” More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      Dawn Robinson, En Vogue Alum, Says She’s Been Living in Her Car for 3 Years

      by

      Robinson’s mother said in an interview that the revelation about her estranged daughter had been hard to take but if she could see her now “I would grab her, I would hug her.”Dawn Robinson, a founding member of the ’90s R&B group En Vogue, said this week that she had been living in her car for roughly three years after several living arrangements fell through.In a nearly 20-minute video that was posted to her official YouTube channel on Tuesday, Robinson said that she did not want anyone’s pity and that she was comfortable with the decision she had made. Although she said she would rather have her own apartment, she put somewhat of a positive spin on her circumstances.“I’m glad that I made this choice because I needed to go through this fire,” Robinson said in the video, adding that she was in the middle of a spiritual journey involving a period of isolation from family and friends. “I’m in the trenches of this right now and I’m like, ‘I wouldn’t trade my experiences and what I’ve gone through for the world.’”A representative for En Vogue, which is still active without Robinson, declined to comment beyond saying that the group had not been in contact with her in more than five years. Robinson could not immediately be reached for comment and did not say in her video where her vehicle is.From left, Cindy Herron, Dawn Robinson, Terry Ellis and Maxine Jones in June 1991, when En Vogue performed at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood.Mike Guastella/Getty ImagesBarbara Alexander, Robinson’s mother, said by phone from her home in Las Vegas on Thursday afternoon that she was first alerted to the video on Wednesday.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

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Sofia Gubaidulina, Composer Who Provoked Soviet Censors, Dies at 93

      by

      Sofia Gubaidulina, a Tatar-Russian composer who defied Soviet dogma with her openly religious music and after decades of suppression moved to the West, where she was feted by major orchestras, died on Thursday at her home in Appen, Germany. She was 93. Carol Ann Cheung, of Boosey & Hawkes, Ms. Gubaidulina’s publisher, said the cause was cancer.Ms. Gubaidulina (pronounced goo-bye-doo-LEE-na) wrote many works steeped in biblical and liturgical texts that provoked censors at home and, beginning in the final decade of the Cold War, captivated Western audiences. She was part of a group of important composers in the Soviet Union, including Arvo Pärt, Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov, who found disfavor with the authorities but acclaim abroad.She explored the tension between the human and the divine, and sought to place her music in the service of religion in the literal sense of repairing what she believed to be the broken bond between man and God. Using musical terms, Ms. Gubaidulina often spoke of her work bringing legato, a sense of connected flow, into the fragmented “staccato of life.”Soloists who performed her work, among them the violinists Gidon Kremer and Anne-Sofie Mutter, often spoke of the emotional intensity that the music required. Conductors, including Valery Gergiev, Charles Dutoit and Kurt Masur, were strong advocates for her music.Folk traditions also fascinated Ms. Gubaidulina, who credited her Tatar roots with her love for percussion and shimmering sound colors. She favored soft-spoken or tenebrous instruments including the harp, the 13-stringed Japanese koto and the double bass.Ms. Gubaidulina in 2009 at a music festival in Berlin. She credited her Tatar roots with her love for using percussion in her compositions.Kai Bienert/ullstein bild, via Getty ImagesWe 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

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Sofia Gubaidulina Was Both Fully Modern and Sincerely Spiritual

      by

      Sofia Gubaidulina’s work, with its thorniness and religious themes, put her at odds with the Soviet government.The Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina, who died on Thursday at 93, was that rare creature: an artist both fully modern and sincerely spiritual. “I am convinced that religion is the kernel of all art,” she said in a 2021 interview.That is hardly a universal worldview these days. The era of Palestrina and Bach, who aimed to glorify God with their work, is centuries past. Music that is adventurous, religious and great is unusual in our secular time, and some of the most significant was written by Gubaidulina.Hers was never a soothing or tuneful faith. Her music is darker and more bracing than that of, say, Arvo Pärt, whose minimalist spirituality has been co-opted for meditation playlists.Gubaidulina’s work is not the kind of thing you put on during morning yoga. She makes sounds of struggle and disorder; of awaiting some signal from beyond with hushed anxiety; of the strenuous attempt to bridge the gap between humans and the divine. Transcendence, if and when it arrives, is hard won.Inspired by Psalm 130, “De Profundis” (1978), a wrenching solo for the bayan, the Russian accordion she loved, begins in the instrument’s depths and rises to harshly radiant heights. Stark focus suffuses “The Canticle of the Sun” (1997), written for the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, a small choir and percussion, and based on a song by St. Francis praising God. Her grand St. John Passion (2000) has apocalyptic force.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

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Mercedes’s Most Affordable Sedan Will Be Electric

      by

      The German luxury carmaker said its latest compact sedan solved problems that had kept people from buying electric vehicles.Mercedes-Benz said on Thursday that the latest version of its least expensive sedan would be available first as an all-electric car and then as a hybrid. And the company will no longer sell a gasoline-only version of the car.That’s a big break from how Mercedes and other established carmakers have typically operated. Until recently, most automakers adapted vehicles designed for fossil fuels to be powered by batteries. The Mercedes sedan, the CLA, which the company unveiled in Rome with the rapper will.i.am, is an example of how at least some established carmakers are developing electric cars first, then adapting them for customers who still want a gasoline engine.The CLA, the first of more than two dozen Mercedes vehicles that will use the same basic technology, is a sign that many global carmakers are placing a priority on electric vehicles even as Republicans in the United States try to roll back Biden-era legislation that was intended to promote battery technology.Yet faced with uncertain demand for electric vehicles and unpredictable government policies, Mercedes is tempering its bets by offering hybrids, which pair traditional gasoline engines with relatively small batteries and electric motors.“If the world is not dominant electric by 2030, we as Mercedes-Benz, as an established manufacturer, we cannot walk away from a significant part of our revenues,” Ola Källenius, the chief executive of Mercedes, said in an interview in Rome. “So indeed, you could call it a hedge.”Mercedes did not disclose a price for the new CLA, but said it would be affordable for owners of the current version, which starts at $45,000 in the United States. Eventually some of the components from the car will be used in sport utility vehicles and a station wagon.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

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Interview: Tori Amos on Her Children’s Book and Her Reading Life

      by

      What inspires the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter? Her first picture book, “Tori and the Muses,” offers an answer. In an email interview, she shared how her gently rebellious mother made her a reader. SCOTT HELLERWhat books are on your night stand?“Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals,” by Jamie Sams and David Carson. It’s an interactive book and card set where you can pull a card and read about the healing properties that each animal embodies as it relates to mind, body and spirit. Jamie Sams was of Indigenous heritage, and I feel like some of it was passed down to her as a gift she has channeled for us all.How do you organize your books?Let’s put it this way: Being a librarian is a fantasy of mine. In my album “Tales of a Librarian,” I’m dressed in different imagined librarian costumes, and in the liner notes the tracks are organized by the Dewey Decimal System. My own little libraries don’t have a system, but I have dreams of one! What kind of reader were you as a child?My reading was all inspired by my mother, Mary. My father, a pastor, believed that she was reading me Bible stories. But what she was doing, and I’m convinced this was her rebellion — her Methodist minister’s wife rebellion, because it was difficult to rebel, especially as a minister’s wife in the late ’60s if you wanted to stay married and accepted by the parishioners and society at large — was reading to me from the collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s works. What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?“Growing Up,” by Russell Baker, which I got a few years ago from my friend Mary Ellen Bobb. I’d never heard of Baker and I couldn’t put the book down. The way he could tell the story of his life made me feel like I knew everybody in it by the time I finished. I grew up in Baltimore and he put the city in a different light for me: more like a shining city on a hill.What’s the last great book you read?I’m rereading “Landmarks,” by Robert Macfarlane. The way this man writes about landscapes, particularly in the U.K., makes the wild tracks and the sea roads come alive.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

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Ahead of World Tour, Blackpink’s Members Venture Out On Their Own

      by

      On new solo releases, Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rosé each face a choice: double-down or retreat from their roles in the smash K-pop girl group.As K-pop supergroups go, Blackpink was — remains? — a supernova. In the late 2010s, it released a series of EPs and singles that emphasized maximalism and pandemonium. Its songs were huge, and pugnacious, and rowdy — a bit of a rejoinder to some of the delicate girl groups that preceded it, and a bit of a taunt about just how much mayhem a pop hit could contain.Blackpink was also utterly modern — though functionally split between its true singers, Rosé and Jisoo, and its rappers, Lisa and Jennie, there was a surprising amount of vocal versatility across all the group members. Their flexibility kept the group’s music nimble and unpredictable — ideas arrived at warp speed, and departed almost as quickly.After a few years, though, Blackpink’s chaos began to rattle and rankle a bit — its hugeness in sound, and also in global success, threatened to topple the empire.And so there was a hiatus, albeit a brief one, that’s now ending with the release of solo projects by all four members, in advance of a reunion tour that begins in July. (Reunions aren’t what they used to be — the group last toured in 2023.)In theory, the albums should be an opportunity to underscore what each of the four does best, and an opportunity to expand on the roles they played in the group — and sometimes the new releases do. But more often, holding the albums side by side tells a story about record label ambitions and the more legible parts of K-pop’s genre cross-pollination more so than the artistic ambitions of each member.Lisa and Jennie, most responsible for Blackpink’s signature attitude, are reckoning with similar pressures on their new albums, both of which nod to the sound that made the group erupt while attempting to chisel out a path forward.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