Music

The 20-year-old singer-songwriter’s follow-up to her 2021 debut, “Sour,” has the fourth-biggest opening of any LP this year so far.Olivia Rodrigo’s new album, “Guts,” has a blockbuster opening at No. 1 on Billboard’s chart, and the latest solo release by a member of BTS — V’s “Layover” — starts at No. 2.“Guts,” the second LP by the 20-year-old Rodrigo, becomes her second No. 1 album, after “Sour” (2021), the debut that made her an instant star. “Guts” opened with the equivalent of 302,000 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate — a hair better than Rodrigo had for the opening of “Sour,” which arrived with 295,000 and eventually spent five weeks in the top spot.“Guts” has the fourth-biggest opening of any album this year so far, after Taylor Swift’s “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” (716,000), Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” (501,000) and Travis Scott’s “Utopia” (496,000). Rodrigo’s single “Vampire,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in July, returns to No. 1 this week, rising from No. 9.Rodrigo’s new album, which is also No. 1 in Britain, Canada, Australia and elsewhere, had 200 million streams in the United States and sold 150,000 copies as a complete package. “Guts” was offered in an array of physical configurations, including 13 vinyl editions, four on CD, a cassette and various deluxe boxed sets. Last week, Rodrigo announced a 75-date world tour to begin in February 2024.V, one of the seven members of the BTS, the kings of K-pop, is the latest to put out a solo release since BTS went on hiatus as a group last year. “Layover” opens at No. 2 with the equivalent of 100,000 sales, including 13 million streams and 88,000 copies sold as a full album.Also this week, the singer-songwriter Zach Bryan’s self-titled LP falls to No. 3 after two weeks at the top. Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 4, and Scott’s “Utopia” is No. 5. More

Global performers including Angelique Kidjo, Laurie Anderson and José Feliciano will inaugurate the theater at ground zero.The first public events at the new $500 million Perelman Performing Arts Center, the opulent new theater near the site of the World Trade Center, are deliberately laden with symbolism. The center is opening its doors with five shows on Sept. 19-23, collectively titled “Refuge: A Concert Series to Welcome the World.”Each concert offers a different kind of refuge as its theme: Home, Faith, School, Family and Memory. Home (Sept. 19) presents musicians who gravitated from around the world to New York City; Family (Sept. 22) has sibling and multigenerational groups. School (Sept. 21) features musicians who have made education an integral part of their work.The series affirms the city’s diversity with an international lineup that includes Grammy-winning stars — Angélique Kidjo on Sept. 19, Common on Sept. 21, José Feliciano on Sept. 23 — along with lesser-known musicians dedicated to preserving and extending deep-rooted traditions. The program for Devotion: Faith As Refuge, on Sept. 20, includes klezmer music from the Klezmatics, electronic transformations of Afro-Cuban Yoruba incantations by Ìfé and Moroccan Sufi trance music from Innov Gnawa.Two decades after the Sept. 11 attack, the center’s artistic director, Bill Rauch, describes the Perelman’s mission as “civic healing.”“We want to say that everyone is welcome,” Mr. Rauch said. “There’s a lot of trauma and resilience on our part of the island that we want to honor. You know, there were 93 countries represented in the people who lost their lives on 9/11. And so it’s important that we welcome as many different artists and audiences into our building as possible.”The Perelman joins a New York City arts landscape full of big-budget performing-arts institutions, from Lincoln Center to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to the Shed. Is the scene too crowded? “When every man, woman and child who lives in the five boroughs of New York City has a life that is saturated in performing arts, then we can begin to talk about whether there’s too much,” Mr. Rauch said.The center’s artistic director, Bill Rauch, describes the Perelman’s mission as “civic healing.”Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAngélique Kidjo alongside the dancer Supaman on Sept. 14, opening night at the Perelman.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAlthough the new arts center is a monumental marble cube with elaborate technological underpinnings — theaters that can be configured more than five dozen ways, sitting on foot-thick rubber supports to insulate them from subway noise — the tickets for the inaugural shows were priced pay-what-you-will from $15-120. Most of the concerts are sold out, but some will also feature free after-parties in the Perelman’s public lobby. Forró in the Dark, which plays upbeat music from Northeastern Brazil, follows the Sept. 19 show. The center plans frequent free lobby performances.Arturo O’Farrill, the pianist who leads the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, is performing on Sept. 20 in the “School as Refuge” concert. He founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, which provides instruments and music lessons to public-school students in New York City. When the center was being built, Mr. O’Farrill was part of an advisory committee of artists; he urged the center to pay close attention to acoustics. “I found it incredibly welcoming to artists’ voices,” Mr. O’Farrill said. “That’s not always the case with institutions.”He added, “Bill’s a very forward-looking person. This programing is about community. He’s a very thoughtful man, and he’s looking to expand the conversation on what performing arts is, what elitism does to the arts. He’s not interested in perpetuating elitism.”Laurie Anderson, who is to perform on Sept. 19, is pragmatic but hopeful about the center’s future. “Sometimes a place opens and it never finds its audience,” she said. “I always like it when it’s opened up to the people who live in the neighborhood, but nobody lives in that neighborhood — it’s mostly abandoned offices now. So how do you make a community out of a bunch of empty offices? We’ll see. Maybe you make it by bringing music that’s just so incredible that everybody wants to get on the subway and go down there. That would be great.”Ms. Kidjo, the clarion-voiced singer and songwriter whose albums have connected West African music to the Americas and Europe, was enthusiastic about the center’s inaugural statement. “We are all refugees from somewhere,” she said. In 1983, she fled to Paris from the dictatorship in her homeland, Benin; she now lives in Brooklyn. “I think that each one of us, we have the responsibility and the duty to welcome somebody that is in a dire situation. For a performing arts center to support that speaks straight to my heart. Because everybody needs a place to put your load down and say, ‘I’ve found a place.’She added, “We have a special status after what happened on 9/11 — to prove our openness to the rest of the world. And we have the place called the Perelman Center right next to ground zero that is open to the whole world. It’s just the beginning. We have to live up to the promise.” More

With its home theater under renovation, the Komische Oper branches out, beginning with Henze’s “The Raft of the Medusa” at Tempelhof Airport.The 1816 wreck of the French frigate Medusa, from which just a handful of passengers survived after nearly two weeks on a makeshift raft, was still very recent history when Théodore Géricault painted the scene.Exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1819, “The Raft of the Medusa” divided those who saw it, especially because the tragedy had stirred anger at the restored Bourbon monarchy.In 1968, when Hans Werner Henze premiered his oratorio of the same title, it was polarizing too: The performance was canceled when the police intervened after fights broke out among audience and artists over leftist posters and banners hoisted in the concert hall in Hamburg, Germany.On Saturday, though, when the Komische Oper of Berlin staged the work in and around an enormous pool built by the company in a hangar at the disused Tempelhof Airport, “The Raft of the Medusa” seduced more than it polarized. It is an ambitiously scaled, superbly performed, conceptually clever, politically adroit yet emotionally cool spectacle.Directed by Tobias Kratzer and conducted by Titus Engel, the show, which runs through Oct. 3, is most notable as the rare venture outside a home theater for a major opera house.It comes at a period of transition for Berlin’s three important companies. (Yes, three — a legacy of the city’s divided era and of Germany’s commitment to culture.) The Deutsche Oper and Berlin State Opera both face changes of artistic director and chief conductor. And the Komische Oper is beginning a multiyear renovation of its base in the center of town.While the Komische Oper will be largely spending this time at the Schiller Theater — as the State Opera did during its renovations some years ago — the company is also taking the opportunity to put on productions in less traditional spaces. Each nomadic season will open at the Tempelhof hangar, which is part of a complex built by the Nazis in the 1930s; most of the old airport is now a park and, more recently, an emergency refugee camp.“The Raft of the Medusa,” with its sprawling orchestra and chorus, including an eclectic battery of percussion and a boys’ choir, doesn’t feel lost in the huge space, even if — with just three soloists — its storytelling is essentially intimate.Henze dedicated the piece to Che Guevara, who had died the previous fall, and the final line, spoken to a rhythm drawn from the protest chant “Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh,” foretells revolution: “But the survivors returned to the world, instructed by reality, feverish to overthrow it.” Ernst Schnabel’s text toggles between poetic and starkly journalistic.A character named Charon, after Greek mythology’s ferryman of the underworld, narrates the wreck of the ship and the horrifying days that followed. Death is a dreamily alluring soprano; Jean-Charles, an agonized representative of those aboard the raft.The chorus of the living, dying and dead solemnly intones and angrily cries out. Henze’s orchestra, too, is capable of explosive power, but mostly the score restrains these grand forces to a stunned, wary quiet, played by the Komische Oper’s orchestra under Engel with remarkable sensuality and subtlety given the necessity of amplification.At Tempelhof, members of the chorus are unidentified at the start as they sit among the audience of 1,600, which is arranged in two blocks facing each other across the pool, with the orchestra on a third side of the quadrangle. The choristers, wearing black and white clothes, begin singing from their seats and eventually walk down to the pool.On Rainer Sellmaier’s pool set, performers splash violently, and powerfully, in the water.Jaro SuffnerAs the Medusa’s voyage begins, Kratzer has the performers frolic in the calf-high water as they play with inflatable rings. (The simple, effective pool set is by Rainer Sellmaier, with Olaf Freese’s lighting conveying the harshness of both night and day.)Rather than early-19th-century sailors, these people suggest contemporary bourgeois beachgoers, much like the oblivious leisure-seekers of the recent opera-installation “Sun & Sea,” too focused on tanning to perceive rising seas or the migrants lost in them. Jean-Charles (the forthright baritone Günter Papendell) here might be an accountant or lawyer.Benches come together to form the raft and are occasionally detached to use as platforms around the pool. Death (the soprano Gloria Rehm, her voice never too harsh or hard) is here a glamorous diva in a sparkling, skintight black gown. As they expire, the choristers trudge out of the water and back to their seats, so we in the audience end up eerily immersed in the ghostly sound of the afterlife.In both Gericault’s painting and Kratzer’s production, a lone Black figure is a focal point. Unlike the painting’s heroic savior, waving red fabric to get the attention of a ship on the horizon, the staging’s Charon, a Black woman (the resonant mezzo-soprano Idunnu Münch), is a pained, helpless witness: an aid worker in a rowboat too small to save anyone.With the production already depicting the bourgeoisie transformed into desperate refugees, forced to undergo agonies they usually ignore, this casting decision furthers the sense of a reversal of the standard order of things, in which whites look on (or not) as people of color suffer.It’s an intriguing decision. But in attempting to mix realism and stylization, Kratzer tends too naturalistic. As the shipwrecked passengers first scramble en masse toward the raft, splashing violently in the water, the sight is powerful. Later on, though, the survivors’ reaching, grasping hands and twitching bodies come off as strenuous cliché, lessening rather than increasing the intensity and depth of feeling. It’s not necessary to see an actor dressed as the Jesus that some of the poor souls hallucinate in their hunger, thirst and fear.But near the end, the hangar’s tremendous door, near the side of the pool opposite the orchestra, slowly slides open. The temperature drops as the fresh night air pours in, and you get a tiny, terrifying glimpse of the relief that people in such a situation might find in death. The survivors emerge from the pool and walk out toward the dark, vast expanse of Tempelhof Field, led by an emergency van.It would have been obvious, even without the van, that this forlorn procession was meant to evoke the path taken by the migrants who have been housed at Tempelhof over the past decade. But the opening of the door was a true, visceral dramatic coup, a fitting climax for a staging with the heft to feel worthy of a remarkable space.The Raft of the MedusaThrough Oct. 3 at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin; komische-oper-berlin.de. More

The singer, who appeared on the hit track “Where My Girls At?,” took a “medical leave of absence” from the group late last year; a cause of death was not immediately available.Irish Grinstead, a member of the R&B trio 702, known for its 1999 hit “Where My Girls At?,” died on Saturday evening at the age of 43, according to her sister.A cause of death was not immediately available, but the group announced in December that Irish Grinstead was taking a “medical leave of absence due to serious medical issues.”LeMisha Grinstead, Irish Grinstead’s sister and bandmate, said in an Instagram post announcing her death that she had “had a long battle and is finally at peace.”“That girl was as bright as the stars! She was not only beautiful on the outside, but also within,” LeMisha Grinstead wrote. “Sharing the stage with her was a joy I will cherish for the rest of my life!”Members of 702 (from left): Kameelah Williams, LeMisha Grinstead and Irish Grinstead attending the Teen Choice Awards in 1999.Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesThe Grinstead sisters and Kameelah Williams comprised 702, which was named for the telephone area code in Las Vegas, where they were from.“Devastated & heartbroken,” Ms. Williams wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday. “There’s a lot I want to say, but there’s no way to say what your heart hasn’t fully accepted.”The group’s 1996 debut album, “No Doubt,” included a song called “Steelo,” featuring Missy Elliott. A version of the track was the theme song for the Nickelodeon show “Cousin Skeeter.” The song was also sampled in a 2019 dance music hit produced by Diplo.“Irish May your beautiful soul Rest Peacefully in the arms of the Lord,” Ms. Elliot wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday. “Multitude of prayers for the entire Grinstead family.”702’s defining hit was “Where My Girls At?,” which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1999, according to Billboard.As news of Irish Grinstead’s death circulated, fan tributes flooded social media in the form of music video clips featuring Irish Grinstead dancing alongside her sister and Ms. Williams in distinctive ’90s glam and choreography.The group released its last album, “Star,” 20 years ago but continued to perform shows, with several scheduled through the rest of this year.Irish Grinstead’s twin sister, Orish Grinstead, died in 2008, according to IMDb. More

The Russian star soprano appeared in her first staged opera in Germany since the Ukraine invasion, still under fire for her past support for President Vladimir V. Putin.The Berlin State Opera’s production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” begins with the madly ambitious Lady Macbeth slowly walking over a burning battlefield, carrying a sword as she negotiates a stage littered with corpses.As the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, who sang that role at the State Opera on Friday, crossed from left to right, the scene was a hallucinatory version of real life: a powerful woman attempting to make her way through a world aflame with war.Netrebko, one of opera’s biggest stars, has been under fire in the West since the Russian invasion of Ukraine for her long history of support for President Vladimir V. Putin. But on Friday, she was appearing in a staged opera in Germany for the first time since the war broke out, the latest milestone in her return to major cultural institutions.She received a warm ovation at her curtain call, even as she performed in the face of opposition from political leaders and robust, angry protests outside the opera house that continued through the end of the show, including rounds of chants that her appearance was “Schande,” a disgrace.Inside, isolated but loud, sustained boos were mixed with the applause after both parts of her opening aria. She responded by standing center stage with arms folded and lips pursed, breaking character to blow kisses to the conductor and orchestra.After the Russian invasion, in February 2022, Netrebko’s performances were called off for a time as she gave confused signals about her position. That March, the Metropolitan Opera canceled her contracts, and did not change course after she announced she opposed the war but refused to denounce Putin. (Last month, Netrebko sued the Met for discrimination, defamation and breach of contract.)But over the past year and a half, she has gradually returned to stages in South America and Europe, including the Vienna State Opera, Paris Opera and Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The response has been a mix of protests (usually outside) and cheers (in).Berlin, though, is a hotbed of pro-Ukraine sentiment. So her appearance at the State Opera — she was engaged for four performances of “Macbeth” that continue through Saturday — has been the object of intense scrutiny.Netrebko bowing on the stage of the State Opera after performing in Verdi’s “Macbeth.”Annette Riedl/DPA, via Associated Press“It’s a difficult decision, of course,” Matthias Schulz, the company’s general director, said in an interview. But, he added, “I’m still absolutely behind that decision.”He and Netrebko’s other defenders argue that her statement was sufficiently clear — “She used the word ‘war,’” Schulz said, “and she used the words ‘against Ukraine’” — and that she distanced herself from Putin, even if she stopped well short of criticizing him.Such direct criticism, they add, is nearly impossible when dealing with an authoritarian government, as it might expose Netrebko, her family and friends, especially those still living in Russia, to security risks. (Netrebko, a citizen of Russia and Austria, lives in Vienna.)Schulz emphasized that her behavior since the war began has not further compromised her. Unlike some Russian artists — including her mentor, the conductor Valery Gergiev — she did not remain in the country, nor has she returned to perform there. The Greek-Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis has drawn criticism for the support he received from a sanctioned Russian bank, but has continued to be engaged in the West, though he has made no public statement about the war.It is crucial, Netrebko’s supporters say, not to tar all Russian artists with the same brush and thus play into the hands of Putin, who claims that the West is implacably Russophobic.Yet agreeing that all Russian artists shouldn’t be condemned isn’t the same as saying that none should. Given Netrebko’s stardom, and her documented history praising and receiving recognition from Putin, her case is different from that of less prominent Russian musicians who have condemned the war. Nevertheless, her posture has been that of victim.“She just doesn’t understand why she’s been made responsible for this,” Schulz said.Netrebko seems to believe that she is being held responsible for actions in which she’s had no part, and that she has been blamed for her behavior before the war more than, say, political leaders in Germany and elsewhere who did business with Putin. The Met and other companies were protested for years for engaging her and Gergiev as Russia passed anti-gay laws and annexed Crimea.But many of those people and institutions have admitted that they were wrong. Netrebko’s statements have expressed no remorse for her support of Putin, nor for an incident in 2014 in which she gave a donation to an opera house in Donetsk, a Ukrainian city controlled by Russian separatists, and was photographed holding a separatist flag.And on social media, Netrebko has kept up her prewar parade of lavish dinners, designer fashion and family vacations — a spectacle that was amusing enough before the invasion but feels dishearteningly tone-deaf now.“Yes, I think she was politically naïve or stupid in the past,” Schulz said. “But is this enough to say you cannot sing any more on any stage?”Netrebko, though, doesn’t have any inherent right to be onstage. And yet her artistry is still formidable. For a listener who had not heard her live since well before the pandemic, she has maintained her immediately recognizable, seductively dark and heavy sound, with its slightly, excitingly breathless quality.There were protests outside the opera house that continued through the end of the show, including rounds of chants that Netrebko’s appearance was “Schande,” a disgrace.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesLady Macbeth has been one of her greatest triumphs, and she still clearly relishes the character’s machinations and chesty exclamations, even if the top of her range is now more effortful and less powerful. Her soft singing doesn’t quite have its old floating presence, making the final sleepwalking scene impressive rather than unforgettable.Her future is not entirely clear. Some of her performances, including a concert in Prague next month, continue to be canceled under pressure. Serge Dorny, of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, which canceled her engagements early in the war, wrote in a text message that there were no current plans for her to appear there, declining to comment further.But she is scheduled to return to Vienna, Milan and Paris in the coming months. At the Salzburg Easter Festival early next spring, she will sing the title role in Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda,” directed by Oliver Mears, the artistic leader of the Royal Opera in London.“At the beginning of the war, things were very raw,” Mears said in an interview about the possibility of her return to London, adding: “Never say never.”Nikolaus Bachler, the Easter Festival’s director, said, “The passage of time always has a big meaning.”Things inevitably take on a Rorschach quality in these polarized situations. If you’re for her, the fact that Netrebko is appearing at the plainly pro-Ukraine Berlin State Opera, and that “Macbeth” depicts the devastation wrought by war, is a kind of covert admission of feelings she cannot openly express. If you’re against her, she is merely using the company’s — and Verdi’s — ethical bona fides without earning them.As with so much else in our politics, the battle lines have been drawn, and are wearily unmoving. What has happened, as Macbeth puts it in the opera, has happened.This is all really between Netrebko, her conscience and what she hopes will be written in the obituaries when she’s gone. “She did the bare minimum” is hardly the noblest epitaph, and even her defenders can’t argue that she’s shown courage.“She is no Marlene Dietrich,” Schulz said, referring to the German film star who renounced her citizenship in 1939 and spent World War II rallying American troops through the U.S.O., earning a Medal of Freedom. “And she will not be rewarded as such.” More

The Rolling Stone co-founder’s exit comes a day after The New York Times published an interview in which he made widely criticized comments.Jann Wenner, the co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine, has been removed from the board of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, which he also helped found, one day after an interview with him was published in The New York Times in which he made comments that were widely criticized as sexist and racist.The foundation — which inducts artists into the hall of fame and was the organization behind the creation of its affiliated museum in Cleveland — made the announcement in a brief statement released Saturday.“Jann Wenner has been removed from the board of directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation,” the statement said. Joel Peresman, the president and chief executive of the foundation, declined to comment further when reached by phone.But the dismissal of Mr. Wenner comes after an interview with The Times, published Friday and timed to the publication of his new book, called “The Masters,” which collects his decades of interviews with rock legends like Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen and Bono — all of them white and male.In the interview, David Marchese of The Times asked Mr. Wenner, 77, why the book included no women or people of color.Regarding women, Mr. Wenner said, “Just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level,” and remarked that Joni Mitchell “was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll.”His answer about artists of color was less direct. “Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right?” he said. “I suppose when you use a word as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.”Mr. Wenner’s comments drew an immediate reaction, with his quotes mocked on social media and past criticisms unearthed of Rolling Stone’s coverage of female artists under Mr. Wenner. Joe Hagan, who in 2017 wrote a harshly critical biography of Mr. Wenner, “Sticky Fingers,” cited a comment by the feminist critic Ellen Willis, who in 1970 called the magazine “viciously anti-woman.”Mr. Wenner did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday evening.Mr. Wenner founded Rolling Stone in 1967 with the music critic Ralph J. Gleason and made it the pre-eminent music magazine of its time, with deep coverage of rock music as well as politics and current events. Much of it was written by stars of the “new journalism” movement of the 1960s and ’70s like Hunter S. Thompson. Mr. Gleason died in 1975.Mr. Wenner sold the magazine over a series of transactions completed in 2020, and he officially left it in 2019. Last year, he published a memoir, “Like a Rolling Stone.”Mr. Wenner was also part of a group of music and media executives that founded the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation in 1983, and inducted its first class in 1986; its affiliated museum, in Cleveland, opened in 1995. Mr. Wenner himself was inducted in 2004 as a nonperformer.The Rock Hall has been criticized for the relative few women and minority artists who have been inducted over the years. According to one scholar, by 2019 just 7.7 percent of the individuals in the hall were women. But some critics have applauded recent changes, and the newest class of inductees includes Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow and Missy Elliott, along with George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against the Machine and the Spinners. More

An intense and uncompromising player, he made music that one critic said was more about “motion and spirit” than tonal centers, rhythms and melodies.Charles Gayle, an uncompromising saxophonist who spent years living and performing on the streets of New York before beginning a recording career when he was nearly 50, died on Sept. 5 in Brooklyn. He was 84.His son Ekwambu, who had been caring for him as he dealt with Alzheimer’s disease, announced the death but did not specify a cause.Mr. Gayle said he had chosen to be homeless because it gave him the opportunity to explore music unencumbered by worries about changing tastes or living expenses. He was part of an ecstatic lineage of jazz avant-gardists like late-period John Coltrane and Albert Ayler, purveyors of a style often referred to as “fire music.”Mr. Gayle’s playing was eventually documented on nearly 40 albums under his name on a host of labels; he also recorded with the pianist Cecil Taylor, the bassist William Parker and the punk singer Henry Rollins.Reviewing the 2014 Vision Festival, at which Mr. Gayle was given a lifetime achievement award, the New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff wrote, “He plays tenor saxophone in cries and gabbles and interval jumps and long tones; his music usually describes motion and spirit rather than corresponding to preset tonal centers, rhythms and melodies.”An ardent Christian, Mr. Gayle channeled his intense spirituality not only into his sound; it was also reflected in the titles of many of his albums and in the screeds he delivered extemporaneously during his performances.Mr. Gayle also had an alternate musical persona called Streets: He would dress in a torn suit and clown shoes and wear makeup and a red nose. At first it was an occasional diversion, but he later performed as Streets regularly. In a 2014 interview with The New York City Jazz Record, he explained:“It wasn’t a gimmick or anything like that. I looked at myself one day in the mirror and said to myself, ‘Stop thinking about Charles.’ So I put a rubber nose on and said ‘That’ll work.’Mr. Gayle would sometimes dress in a torn suit and clown shoes, wear makeup and a red nose, and perform as an alternate musical persona called Streets.Northern Spy Records“It was really that simple,” he continued. “I saw a lot of clowns when I was young in the circus, but it was so liberating to go out in an audience while the band is playing and give a lady a rose or get rejected by her and everything — I can’t do that with regular clothes on. It helps a person mentally to escape — there’s a purpose in the escape, and it is the same thing as being in the music and trying to get past certain things. In order for me to do that I had to disappear.”Charles Ennis Gayle Jr. was born on Feb. 28, 1939, in Buffalo to Charles and Frances Gayle. His father was a steelworker. He studied numerous instruments in high school and excelled in basketball and track and field.Mr. Gayle in 1994. His recording career did not begin until he was nearly 50, but he steadily released albums as a leader from 1991 onward.Alan NahigianAfter a period at Fredonia State Teachers College, Mr. Gayle returned to Buffalo to begin his music career. He first played trumpet and piano in local clubs before concentrating more on tenor saxophone in self-produced concerts, while also working at a Westinghouse factory and later at a bank providing loans for Black-owned businesses.From 1970 to 1973, Mr. Gayle was an assistant professor of music at the State University of New York at Buffalo (now the University at Buffalo). But, tiring of institutional responsibilities, he left academia and moved to New York City to pursue music exclusively. He had been there for almost a decade when he decided to live on the streets.In the 2014 interview, he recalled: “I just walked out one day and that was it. That was one of the greatest experiences I had in my life, though I didn’t do it for that reason. You have nothing and you’re not asking anybody for anything. We seek security, and you learn about how people perceive you because of what you look like or what they think you’re about.”He had music ready for release by ESP-Disk, Mr. Ayler’s label from 1964 to 1966, but those plans were scuttled when the company went out of business in 1975. (That session has yet to be heard, but the label was revived in 2005 and released a 1994 performance by Mr. Gayle’s trio in 2012.)Mr. Gayle spent more than 15 years homeless, performing on the streets of New York. Then, in 1987, he began his second act.After the promoter Michael Dorf heard Mr. Gayle play, he was booked regularly at Mr. Dorf’s Lower Manhattan club, the Knitting Factory. Music he recorded at sessions in April 1988 became three albums for the Swedish label Silkheart Records. From 1991 onward, Mr. Gayle would steadily release albums under his own name — some as the leader of a trio or quartet, others as a solo performer — among them “Repent,” “Consecration,” “Testaments,” “Daily Bread” and “Christ Everlasting.”In a 2013 interview with Cadence magazine, he reflected on the perils of being outspoken about his religious beliefs in his concerts, delivered with the fervor of a country preacher:“People have told me to shut up and stuff. I understand that I can turn people off with what I say or do. The problem that people have with me is not me, it’s Christ they have a problem with. I understand that when you start speaking about faith or religion, they want you to keep it in a box, but I’m not going to do that. Not because I’m taking advantage of being a musician; I’m the same everywhere, and people have to understand that.”Mr. Gayle also had a notable collaborative group with Mr. Parker and the drummer Rashied Ali and was a guest on two albums by Mr. Rollins. In addition to tenor saxophone, he played alto and soprano saxophones, piano, viola, upright bass and drums. He is seen and heard in an interview and playing with the German bassist Peter Kowald’s trio in a 1985 documentary, “Rising Tones Cross,” produced and directed by his former wife Ebba Jahn.A biography of Mr. Gayle by Cisco Bradley, with all proceeds going to the Gayle family, is scheduled for publication in late 2024.Mr. Gayle’s three marriages all ended in divorce. In addition to his son Ekwambu, from his second marriage, his survivors include two other sons, Michael, from the first, and Dwayne, from his marriage to Ms. Jahn.The drummer Michael Wimberley, who worked Mr. Gayle from the early 1990s well into the new millennium, called him “a father, mentor and friend whom I had the pleasure of creating some of the most adventurous improvised sounds, shapes and musical dialogues with.”“Charles’s intensity on the horn,” he added, “was so powerful in person. I had never experienced anything like music of that intensity before! He pulled me into the sonic center of his sound and raptured me.” More

The singer-songwriter’s seventh album, “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We,” is out Friday.Ebru YildizDear listeners,The singer-songwriter Mitski first caught my ear in 2014, when she released the sharply penned and tunefully guitar-driven album “Bury Me at Makeout Creek.” (It’s a “Simpsons” reference.)I clocked her then as a smart chronicler of millennial malaise and a punk-adjacent indie-rocker working in the D.I.Y. tradition, figuring she’d subsequently release a few more albums that fit that description. I could not have predicted where she’d go in the next decade: an Oscar nomination for a song she wrote with Son Lux and David Byrne, an accidental and somewhat reluctant foray into TikTok stardom, and a creatively adventurous, consistently challenging discography that includes her seventh studio album, “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We,” which is out today.“A Mitski song lasts about as long as it takes to poach an egg,” E. Alex Jung wrote in a profile of Mitski last year. “They are small and will knock you out, like pearls slipped inside the left ventricle of your heart.” I like thinking of Mitski songs in these terms, polished and self-contained, but sneakily potent. She perfected that method of songwriting on her 2018 album “Be the Cowboy,” which contained a song that, appropriately enough, likened the creative process to having “a pearl in my head” that the singer would “roll around every night just to watch it glow.”“The Land Is Inhospitable” is a veritable string of such pearls. Its songs sound labored over, yes, but they also have a looseness and an airiness, which are not qualities I usually associate with Mitski. With tracks like the lilting ballad “Heaven” or the country-tinged “The Frost,” listening to this album feels like stumbling upon the welcome glow of a crowded saloon in the middle of a desolate night, beckoned by the inviting sounds of someone casually playing music inside.It also feels like a notable departure, maybe even a course correction, from the more pop-oriented direction Mitski seemed to be on with her previous album, the new wave-y “Laurel Hell.” I spent some time with Mitski right before the release of that album, when I was profiling her for The New York Times Magazine, and found her to be a thoughtful and refreshing voice of skepticism in this musical era of algorithmic optimization. Mitski had stumbled into virality — through no effort of her own, her songs “Washing Machine Heart” and “Nobody” became TikTok hits in 2021 — and found the experience strange and disorienting. Rather than try to replicate that success, she’s followed a muse that has led to more mature sounds. “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” is not one of her most immediate albums, but over repeated listens, I think it reveals itself to be one of her best.I also think it’s best appreciated in the context of Mitski’s larger discography, which I’m going to spotlight on today’s playlist. If you’re unfamiliar with her music, it serves as a comprehensive introduction to her sound. And if you’re already a Mitski fan, I hope it will provide connections between her new and old songs and give you an entry point into her latest album.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. “Bug Like an Angel” (2023)The leadoff track and first single from “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” showcases two of Mitski’s signature songwriting skills: her knack for succinct, imagistic lyrics (“There’s a bug like an angel stuck to the bottom of my glass”) and her affinity for unexpected contrasts between quiet and loud. Here, that dynamism comes from the tension between Mitski’s flat, lonely vocal during the verses and the resounding, earnest backing choir that bursts forth from the void without warning, tearing the roof right off what seemed to be a muted, acoustic lament. (Listen on YouTube)2. “Your Best American Girl” (2016)And here, that dynamism comes from a quick stomp on the distortion pedal. “You’re an all-American boy,” Mitski hollers on this sky-scraping chorus, “I guess I couldn’t help trying to be your best American girl.” A standout from what is still my favorite Mitski album, the impeccably named “Puberty 2,” “Your Best American Girl” is also on my long list of best songs of the millennium so far. (Listen on YouTube)3. “Townie” (2014)Sometimes — especially on her earlier, more rock-oriented albums — Mitski will kick a song into a high gear immediately and continue escalating the intensity until the track sounds like it’s ready to burst into flames. That approach works well on the blazing “Townie,” a cathartic exorcism of 20-something anxiety from her 2014 album, “Bury Me at Makeout Creek.” “I want a love that falls as fast as a body from a balcony,” she sings, translating the song’s frantic momentum into another memorable image. (Listen on YouTube)4. “Heaven” (2023)Mitski’s music occasionally contains a faint country influence, albeit filtered through her own distinct sensibility. I hear some of that on this lovely ballad from the new album, but I also hear Mitski experimenting with sounds she hasn’t before explored on her records, like chamber-pop grandiosity and soaring orchestral accompaniments. (Listen on YouTube)5. “Lonesome Love” (2018)The country influence is more pronounced here, on this galloping ditty from the aptly named 2018 album “Be the Cowboy.” So is Mitski’s wry sense of humor: “In the morning, in a taxi I am so very paying for.” (Listen on YouTube)6. “Stay Soft” (2022)Here is my favorite song from Mitski’s previous album, “Laurel Hell,” which has the slightly misleading reputation as her happiest, poppiest release. (The opening track, “Valentine, Texas,” is one of many brooding songs that complicate that understanding.) On this song Mitski demonstrates how much depth she can mine from a seemingly simple lyric and a satisfying chord progression. “Open up your heart, like the gates of hell,” she sings, a perfect encapsulation of her macabre take on romance. (Listen on YouTube)7. “Nobody” (2018)This glistening, disco-kissed confession of loneliness is perhaps Mitski’s best-known song, thanks to its unexpected popularity on TikTok. “I don’t get it, but it’s nice!” Mitski told me last year, when asked about her fame on the app, which she is not on, herself. “All of the businesspeople are like, ‘This is so great!’ And I’m like, ‘Please stop texting me these TikToks.’” (Listen on YouTube)8. “Francis Forever” (2014)An early example, from “Bury Me at Makeout Creek,” of Mitski’s command of pop melody, “Francis Forever” charts the emotional and physical restlessness that comes from missing someone: “I don’t know what to do without you,” Mitski croons, “I don’t know where to put my hands.” (Listen on YouTube)9. “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars” (2016)I love the rough-hewed texture and unrelenting fury of this highlight from “Puberty 2,” which plays out like a stream-of-consciousness airing of quarter-life grievances: “I wanna see the whole world!/I don’t know how I’m gonna pay rent!” Each line is delivered with the urgency of an inebriated epiphany shouted at a close friend during the waning hours of a house party. (Listen on YouTube)10. “Class of 2013” (2013)Mitski released her first two albums, “Lush” (2012) and “Retired From Sad, New Career in Business” (2013), in relative obscurity when she was a student at SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Music. Although these albums have belatedly become popular with some of her fans, for their uninhibited expressions of young-adult angst, they mostly still feel like rough drafts of what was to come. An exception is this brief, raw, piano-driven song, which culminates in Mitski letting out a blistering howl and foreshadows the clear, concise songwriting style of her best later work. (Listen on YouTube)11. “My Love Mine All Mine” (2023)“Nothing in the world belongs to me but my love,” Mitski sings on her latest single, a warm, lushly atmospheric ballad that exemplifies the easy confidence and sonic spaciousness of her seventh album. (Listen on YouTube)I work better under a deadline,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“An Essential Mitski Primer” track listTrack 1: “Bug Like an Angel”Track 2: “Your Best American Girl”Track 3: “Townie”Track 4: “Heaven”Track 5: “Lonesome Love”Track 6: “Stay Soft”Track 7: “Nobody”Track 8: “Francis Forever”Track 9: “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars”Track 10: “Class of 2013”Track 11: “My Love Mine All Mine”Bonus TracksJon Pareles profiled the Rolling Stones (!) ahead of the band’s forthcoming album, “Hackney Diamonds,” and, among other impressive things, made Keith Richards cry: “Thanks for bringing me to tears.” I know you want to find out why.Speaking of the Stones, this David Marchese interview with the Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner is … really something.And if it’s new music you’re looking for, as ever, we’ve got a Playlist for that. This week’s selections feature Maren Morris, Chris Stapleton and Cat Power. Listen here. More