Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Kaija Saariaho, Pathbreaking Composer, Is Dead at 70

      by

      She brought new colors to modernist music, sometimes using electronics, and became the first female living composer to have two operas staged by the Met.Kaija Saariaho, a Finnish composer who was brought up in the world of male-dominated high modernism but who broke away to forge an identity of her own, becoming the first woman to have more than one work of hers staged by the Metropolitan Opera, died on Friday at her home in Paris. She was 70.She had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2021, said her publisher, Chester Music, which confirmed the death.Ms. Saariaho brought new and often mysterious colors to classical music.In Paris, where she had settled permanently, she experimented with tape and live electronics, which she applied to nearly every form in classical music: works for solo instrument and small ensemble, and for symphony orchestra and opera. Over the years she rose to the top of her field, a slow-changing industry that only in recent years has made steps to correct the repertoire’s gender imbalances.Her first opera, “L’Amour de Loin,” which premiered at the Salzburg Festival in Austria in 2000 and came to the Met in 2016, won the Grawemeyer Award for music composition. Her most recent entry into that genre, “Innocence,” debuted at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France in 2021 and will travel to the Met in the 2025-26 season.When the Met joined the work’s list of commissioners, Ms. Saariaho in turn joined a select group of living composers to have a second opera mounted by that house — and the only woman to gain that distinction.Kaija Saariaho was born on Oct. 14, 1952, in Helsinki. She studied at the storied Sibelius Academy there, and was a pioneering impresario of contemporary music, forming the group Open Ears with fellow young artists. She left to continue her education in Freiburg, Germany, with summer courses taken in the modernist hotbed of Darmstadt. She moved to Paris in 1982 to finish her studies at IRCAM, the institute founded by Pierre Boulez.A complete obituary will appear soon. More

    • 75 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Moons, Junes and 7 Summer Tunes

      by

      Listen to a playlist that summons the heady days of a fresh season.Florence Welch, presumably in a June mood.Djamila Grossman for The New York TimesDear listeners,I do not know how this happened, but it did: It is already June.When I think June, I think moons … and spoons — that most infamously clichéd of all rhyme patterns, which Joni Mitchell both mocks and (internally) capitulates to in the second verse of “Both Sides Now,” when she admits that sometimes love does feel exactly the way those mushy, sing-songy ditties from your youth predicted it would:Moons and Junes and Ferris wheelsThe dizzy dancing way you feelAs every fairy tale comes realI’ve looked at love that wayMaybe Mitchell was thinking of Doris Day and Gordon MacRae (yes, that rhymes too) singing “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” in a 1953 film of the same name. Or maybe she was thinking of any of the countless versions of that oft-covered standard, which was written back in 1909. In any event, she wasn’t the first songwriter to bemoan that rhyme pattern’s overuse: By 1923, the Tin Pan Alley satirist Billy Murray was already tired enough of the whole moon/June/spoon thing that he included this line in his song “Stand Up and Sing for Your Father”:Oh I’m so sick of all these ditties about “moon” and “spoon” and “June”So will you stand up and sing for your father an old time tuneRest assured, there will be no such ditties on today’s playlist. But there will be a collection of songs that reference the month of June, or summon those heady days of late spring/early summer. Two of them are by artists with “June” in their names, which is sort of cheating, but I doubt you’d begrudge any opportunity to hear Johnny duetting with Ms. Carter.I tend to think of June as a time of excitement and joy — Juneteenth! Pride! Kids getting out of school for the summer! — so I was a little surprised that most of the songs I know about the month skewed melancholy. Maybe the phenomenon of June Gloom isn’t limited to Southern California, spiritually speaking. Or maybe there’s a bit of sadness inherent in any transitional moment. Regardless, may this playlist — featuring songs from the Kinks, the Everly Brothers, the Decemberists and more — help you over that hump and into the light.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Nina Simone: “Memphis in June”I love the slow, swooning pacing Simone brings to this 1961 version of Hoagy Carmichael’s song — as if the early summer heat had made her contentedly woozy. The tempo and sparse arrangement allow the listener to linger on the scene she describes, which is as vivid as an imagistic poem: “Memphis in June/A shady veranda/Under a Sunday blue sky.” Sounds divine. (Listen on YouTube)2. The Everly Brothers: “June Is as Cold as December”Released on their 1966 album “In Our Image,” this mid-period Everly Brothers tune is a warning to stay away from that icy gal June, who apparently “doesn’t have a heart to offer anymore.” The Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Byrds were all influenced by the harmonies and arrangements of the Everly Brothers, but here — listen to that rich, chiming guitar sound — they’ve clearly learned a thing or two from their students. (Listen on YouTube)3. The June Brides: “In the Rain”Here’s a jaunty little ditty from the British indie-pop band the June Brides, who in the mid-80s put out a string of skittishly melodic singles and EPs that were beloved by a cult audience that included, among others with discerning tastes, a teenage Dave Eggers. You’ve got to love a rock band with a trumpet player and a violist. (Listen on YouTube)4. The Kinks: “Rainy Day in June”Speaking of rain, here’s a drizzly mood piece from the Kinks’ great 1966 album “Face to Face.” Ray Davies gets points for rhyming “June” with “gloom,” “tomb” and “doom” — no moons and spoons for this guy, thank you very much! (Listen on YouTube)5. Florence + the Machine: “June”On this track from Florence + the Machine’s 2018 album “High as Hope,” Florence Welch sings wistfully of “those heavy days in June, when love became an act of defiance.” (Listen on YouTube)6. The Decemberists: “June Hymn”Like “Memphis in June,” this song from the Portland, Ore., group the Decemberists (featuring backing vocals from the folk greats Gillian Welch and David Rawlings) is full of crisp imagery that evokes, as the vocalist Colin Meloy puts it, “summer’s early sway”: “Pegging clothing on the line/Training jasmine how to vine/Up the arbor to your door.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Johnny Cash & June Carter: “Jackson”I couldn’t resist. (Listen on YouTube)Up jumps the moon to make it so much grander,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Moons, Junes and 7 Summer Tunes” track listTrack 1: Nina Simone, “Memphis in June”Track 2: The Everly Brothers, “June Is as Cold as December”Track 3: The June Brides, “In the Rain”Track 4: The Kinks, “Rainy Day in June”Track 5: Florence + the Machine, “June”Track 6: The Decemberists, “June Hymn”Track 7: Johnny Cash and June Carter, “Jackson”Bonus tracksThe Fontane Sisters, too, have that moon, June, spoon feeling.Plus, in this week’s Playlist, we have a long lost recording from John Coltrane, along with new music from the Weeknd, Claud and more. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Review: Julia Wolfe’s ‘unEarth’ Is Crowded Out by Multimedia

      by

      Not for the first time this season at the New York Philharmonic, a premiere was muddled by obvious, sometimes intrusive video art.Since moving back into David Geffen Hall this season, the New York Philharmonic has tried to use its newly renovated, technologically adept space to give extra multimedia glamour to a few premieres.Etienne Charles’s “San Juan Hill” opened the season in October, and dealt directly with the midcentury displacement of economically vulnerable populations on the blocks that became Lincoln Center. “The March to Liberation,” a program in March featuring the music of Black composers, was accompanied by video art.On both occasions, I felt that the multimedia — however sensitively rendered — undercut my experience of the music. During “San Juan Hill,” Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic’s music director, would be building a real rapport, and momentum, with Charles’s group Creole Soul; but then there would be a pause for a lengthy new interjection of video commentary. And a new work by Courtney Bryan during “The March to Liberation” was so transporting, I at times found myself closing my eyes to avoid having my experience filtered so strongly through the lens of another artist.I felt the need to close my eyes again on Thursday, when van Zweden led the Philharmonic in another buzzy premiere that showed off the multimedia capabilities of Geffen Hall. It happened during the imaginative second movement of Julia Wolfe’s “unEarth” — the latest in her recent series of oratorio-like protest efforts, which served as the opening of two weeks of ecologically minded programming.During that second movement, Wolfe — a Pulitzer Prize winner and a founder of the influential Bang on a Can collective — amasses a powerful mix of sonorities: chattering, antiphonal choral music (often heard uttering the word “tree” in different languages); percussion indebted to gamelan tradition; punchy orchestral writing; intense electric guitar lines that, as played by her regular collaborator Mark Stewart, were biting but not too imitative of rock styles.After the solemn choral writing in the first movement — which drew on the combined talents of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City and male singers from the Crossing — this mix of sounds was a welcome transition. The writing for Stewart’s guitar was a reminder of the muscular verve heard in the “Breaker Boys” movement from Wolfe’s “Anthracite Fields” (2014), for which she won that Pulitzer. And in moving from dry orchestral ruffling to powerful tutti riffing, this section of “unEarth” also recalled the “Factory” movement of her “Fire in my mouth” (2019), which the Philharmonic premiered and memorably recorded.When the soprano Else Torp entered — with beaming, stratospheric straight-tone singing that quoted Emily Dickinson’s “Who robbed the woods” — this movement of Wolfe’s piece proved delightfully, consistently weird. But it was a weirdness in service of dramatically clear ends, since the whole thing worked as a sonic commentary on the wonders of biodiversity.The piece was designed for both amplified and acoustic sounds, which van Zweden kept in balance. The animated projections that accompanied “unEarth,” however, were far less imaginative than the score; the video played instead like a slideshow of each language’s word for “tree,” along with some local arboreal information at the margins. The music was an impassioned litany; the multimedia amounted to a listicle.When a stage director (Anne Kauffman), projection designer (Lucy Mackinnon), two animators and four video technicians are listed in the program — while soloists like Stewart and the electric bassist Gregg August are not — that’s another sign that the multimedia urge has transgressed a bit much on the Philharmonic’s presentation of, you know, music.This same literalism of the video art held sway, in sound and image, during the third and final movement of “unEarth,” in which Wolfe sets some texts contributed by the younger singers to droning yet anxious music. Here, the projections — portraits similar to screen tests, featuring members of the Young People’s Chorus — were of a piece with the music: serious, but a bit too obvious to be moving.The entire concert was something of a muddle, down to the random-seeming pairing of “unEarth” with Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, in which the solo part’s difficulty was often audible in the account by Frank Huang, the Philharmonic’s concertmaster.Next week’s program seems to be on firmer conceptual footing, though. The orchestra will present Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes From ‘Peter Grimes,’” Toru Takemitsu’s “I hear the water dreaming” and the New York premiere of John Luther Adams’s majestic “Become Desert.”Most important: On those nights, the focus will be entirely on the music.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      The North to Shore Festival Comes to New Jersey

      by

      A new arts festival featuring local and marquee-name talent is coming to the Garden State.Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, along with the first lady, Tammy Murphy, had a vision: A new performance festival in their home state that could rival South by Southwest in Texas or Bonnaroo in Tennessee. And they had a plan to distinguish it.“Austin and Nashville are great towns,” the governor said, referring to two famous arts hubs that are connected to notable festivals. “But if you stop to consider the cultural priorities of the states that govern them, you say, ‘Wait a minute.’ You’re hoodwinked if you get taken by the coolness.”A festival in New Jersey, they argued, would be produced in a state whose values align with issues like gun safety and reproductive rights, a bragging right difficult to come by in the south. But what organizers are really touting with the event, which is being produced for the first time this summer, is the mix of homegrown talent and national acts (Halsey, Santana, Jazmine Sullivan) performing across three different cities, from the state’s largest city to the coast.The North to Shore Festival will roam from Atlantic City to Asbury Park to Newark throughout the month. Its inaugural run will feature more than 220 acts — including music, comedy, dance and film — in 115 venues. “When you combine all the talent we have in New Jersey with the fact that our values are on the right side of history, we thought, there’s no reason we couldn’t give this a shot,” Mr. Murphy said.In May, the festival doubled in size, in part because of a commitment to local talent. Grants of up to $5,000 were handed out to 58 New Jersey-based artists.“What I love about it is that it’s a combination of the biggest names in entertainment and comedy and film,” said John Schreiber, president and chief executive of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, which is producing the festival, “but it’s also a chance to turn up the volume on the local folks I call the local heroes — the artists, the creators, the presenters, the producers — who work in these cities 365 days a year.”One example of this kind of artistic convergence is “You Got VERRRSED: NJ Poets vs. New York Poets,” which will take place in Newark on June 24, the day after Marisa Monte, a Grammy Award winner, performs there.In each host city, venues stretch beyond the familiar. Newark, for example, will host “Jersey Club 101,” a combination dance lesson and party, at Ariya Plaza Hall, a local dance club known for hosting private events and the occasional concert, on June 24.On June 9 in Atlantic City, a brewery, The Seed: A Living Beer Project, will host a multidisciplinary event, “From Earth to Cup,” with live music, pottery making and samples of its craft beers. The following afternoon at Sovereign Avenue Field, a popular skatepark, local hardcore and punk bands will play free shows in the “Back Sov Bullies Concert.”While Asbury Park’s famous rock club, the Stone Pony, will see its share of action — with Eric B. & Rakim, Brian Fallon, Demi Lovato and the B-52’s all scheduled to perform — stages at the lesser-known Watermark, down the street, will also be in heavy rotation and can expect to see more traffic than usual.Alexander Simone and his seven-piece band, the Whodat? Live Crew, will play there on June 14. Mr. Simone, 34, who is from the area and the grandson of Nina Simone, won a grant to take part in North to Shore with the band, which leans toward funk and R&B, after being nominated by local fans. The recognition confirmed something he already knew: “I am definitely one of the most known bands in this community,” he said.Now he hopes that other parts of the country will pay more attention to his music. “Artists are coming this way, to Jersey, and bringing people with them the way South by Southwest brings people to Texas,” he said. “They’re coming to see what we have to offer on this end.”Billboards along the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike are promoting the festival. Mr. Schreiber said he expects more than 350,000 people to attend. The overall windfall for New Jersey’s economy, he added, could be $100 million. “We’re betting the economic impact in all three of these communities will far outweigh any of the investment we have to make,” Mr. Murphy said.Amanda Towers, a founder of the Seed, a Living Beer Project, which will host a multidisciplinary event with music, pottery and beer in Atlantic City.Jennifer Pottheiser for The New York TimesNatalie Merchant, accompanied by New York City’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s, will perform in Newark on June 25. “I think it’s really ambitious and impressive,” she said of the idea behind the festival.But her decision to participate did not have much to do with performing in a liberal-leaning state, Ms. Merchant said. “I tend to not penalize my fans in states with political conditions like abortion restrictions.” Instead, “I talk about them onstage.”The North to Shore Festival will take place June 4-11 in Atlantic City, June 14-18 in Asbury Park and June 21-25 in Newark. More

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Music

      Alicia Keys Is Making a Musical. Her Own Life Inspired the Story.

      by

      The show is a highlight of the Public Theater’s new season, which will also include plays by Suzan-Lori Parks, Itamar Moses, Mary Kathryn Nagle and Ife Olujobi.For more than a decade, Alicia Keys has been quietly developing a musical inspired by her own turbulent adolescence growing up among artists in New York City. Now that musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” is almost ready for viewing: It will be staged this fall at the Public Theater, the downtown nonprofit where “A Chorus Line” and “Hamilton” were born.By any measure, the musical will be big: It has a cast of 20, the biggest budget of any show the Public has ever done, and, of course, music by Keys, an R&B and pop singer who has sold tens of millions of records. The show will feature some of Keys’s best known songs, as well as new material she has written for the musical.“This is my pride and joy,” she said in an interview. “This is a major, major turning point in my journey.”“Hell’s Kitchen” doesn’t precisely track the events of Keys’s own life, but there are strong parallels. Set in the 1990s, it takes place over a few months in the life of a 17-year-old named Ali, who is being raised by a single mother in Manhattan Plaza, a large housing complex where many of the residents are performing artists; there is family tension, sexual exploration and musical discovery. (Ali, like Keys, is transformed by a passion for piano.)Keys has been deeply involved with the show’s development, and her own production company has the commercial rights to whatever life the show might have beyond the Public. “I’m never hands off,” Keys said. “There’s not one page, there’s not one sheet, there’s not one word, there’s not one song, there’s not one melody, there’s not anything that happens in this piece that moves without me completely immersed in it and ensuring its authenticity.”The musical was Keys’s idea, and in 2011 she selected the playwright Kristoffer Diaz (“The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity”) to write its book; in 2018, the two asked Michael Greif (“Rent”) to join the project as director, and Greif then brought it to the Public.“It’s very much about a young woman testing boundaries,” Greif said. “It’s a story about a series of collisions she has with very important people in her life when she’s 17, and how those collisions affect the person she was to become.”“Hell’s Kitchen” is scheduled to begin previews Oct. 24 and to open Nov. 19. An emerging actor named Maleah Joi Moon will play Ali; her mother will be played by Shoshana Bean (“Wicked”), and her estranged father will be played by Brandon Victor Dixon (“Hamilton”); Camille A. Brown will choreograph.The Public is already planning to stage “Hamlet” this summer, directed by Kenny Leon and starring Ato Blankson-Wood, as its sole Free Shakespeare in the Park production, but now will follow that with a new Public Works adaptation of “The Tempest,” with songs by Benjamin Velez and directed by Laurie Woolery. The Public Works program, which stages musical adaptations of classics featuring a handful of professional actors and a large ensemble of amateur New York City performers, began in 2013 with a different adaptation of “The Tempest.”“The Tempest” will be the final production at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park until 2025; the Public is trying to figure out whether and where it might stage a production next summer while the Delacorte is being renovated.In October, the Public will partner with NYU Skirball to present three Seán O’Casey plays staged by Ireland’s Druid theater.Starting in November at its downtown theater, the Public plans to stage “Manahatta,” a play that connects Manhattan’s Native American history with its contemporary finance industry, written by Mary Kathryn Nagle and directed by Woolery. That will be followed in February by “The Ally,” written by Itamar Moses and directed by Lila Neugebauer, starring Josh Radnor as an atheistic Jew whose social justice commitments are complicated by Middle East politics. In March comes “Sally & Tom,” written by Suzan-Lori Parks and directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, about a contemporary theater company trying to do a play about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. And in April is “Jordans,” written by Ife Olujobi and directed by Whitney White, a comedy about Blackness in an overwhelmingly white workplace.One thing the Public will not be doing: presenting its previously annual Under the Radar Festival of experimental work. “It’s entirely a financial decision,” said Oskar Eustis, the Public’s artistic director. “This does not mean the Public is abandoning its relationship with downtown experimental artists, but we’re going to be looking for a new way of embodying that.” More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Hipgnosis, the Album Artists Who Made Pink Floyd’s Pig Fly

      by

      The filmmaker Anton Corbijn’s documentary “Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)” tells the tale of the London design company devoted to crafting the perfect LP sleeve.In early 1980, Aubrey Powell, the then-33-year-old co-founder of the pioneering British design company Hipgnosis, flew to Hawaii to photograph the cover for the British rock band 10cc’s “Look Hear?” album.The shoot involved a specific sheep (only one was available on Oahu, at a university farm) seated on an old-timey psychiatrist’s couch (which had to be constructed by a Honolulu props company) on the island’s North Shore. The sheep, out of its element and skittish from the crashing waves, ruined the first day of the session, so a veterinarian was called in to tranquilize the animal for day two. Success.The final cost of the sleeve design, including airfare and a sheep wrangler, came to £5,043 — about $26,000 in today’s money and a big sum for the time. (But then again, as Powell, known as Po, said in an interview, back then the music industry “was awash with money.”) In the end, at the behest of Hipgnosis’ other co-founder, Storm Thorgerson, the U.K. version of the LP jacket was dominated by the words “Are You Normal” in large capital letters. The photo of the sheep on the chaise longue was shrunk to about the size of a postage stamp.A scene from the documentary shows the 1980 shoot for 10cc’s “Look Hear?” album artwork, which involved a sheep.Aubrey Powell/Hipgnosis LtdIn an interview, the 10cc singer and bassist Graham Gouldman admitted that though he’d had the album art explained to him in the past, he couldn’t recall what it meant. “But I know it’s a brilliant picture,” he said. As for all that pricey effort for such a tiny image? “It doesn’t matter, does it?” Gouldman said. “It’s art. So it’s got to be done.” He added, “And in Hipgnosis’ case, if you can get the record company to spend the money, then good for them.”The Dutch filmmaker Anton Corbijn, the director of “Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis),” a documentary on the design firm that opens in New York on June 7, had a slightly different take. “It’s just not normal to fly all the way to Hawaii to do that picture,” he said. “But it makes for a good story.”“Squaring the Circle” is full of this and other good stories about the oft-absurd lengths the London-based Hipgnosis traveled in pursuit of the perfect LP sleeve in the era before Photoshop. Among the 415 album covers Hipgnosis made between 1968 and 1983 was Pink Floyd’s “Animals” (1977), for which a 40-foot inflatable pig was photographed floating between the chimneys of London’s Battersea Power Station. Unfortunately, the single cable affixed to the pig snapped, and up the balloon went — into the flight zone for Heathrow Airport.“That was all very exciting, and rather alarming,” recalled the Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, whose bandmate Roger Waters came up with the idea for the shoot, “because it was obvious that you could have a major disaster for an airline that happened to fly into the escaping pig.” No planes were harmed in the making of the LP cover, but in the end, Hipgnosis had to resort to a photo collage to achieve the desired effect.The documentary — shot largely in high-contrast black and white by Corbijn, himself a rock photographer and video director known for his work with U2 and Depeche Mode — features new interviews with Powell, plus a number of high-profile former Hipgnosis clients, including all three surviving members of Pink Floyd (David Gilmour, Mason and Waters) and Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel and Gouldman are also among the talking heads. Noel Gallagher, a fan, provides some modern-day context and comic relief.HipgnosisA selection of Pink Floyd album covers designed by Hipgnosis, clockwise from top left: “Atom Heart Mother,” “Wish You Were Here,” “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “Animals.”HipgnosisMuch of the film focuses on the close working relationship between Powell and Thorgerson, who came up together in the Cambridge, England, art scene of the 1960s, where they were friends with young members of Pink Floyd. (Peter Christopherson, a founding member of the British industrial band Throbbing Gristle who died in 2010, became a full partner in Hipgnosis in 1978.) The design studio would end up doing nearly all of Pink Floyd’s album covers, including “Atom Heart Mother” (1970), which was simply a photograph of a cow in a field, and, most famously, “The Dark Side of the Moon” (1973), with its iconic image of a triangular prism refracting light into a rainbow pattern. (Hipgnosis’ second-best-known cover also came out in 1973: Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy,” which features a group of naked children scaling basalt columns.)The “Atom Heart Mother” jacket in particular represented a major departure from the style of the time, which Mason described as putting “a picture of the lovable moptops on the front.”“We started making demands — which Pink Floyd totally backed us on — saying ‘No title, no name of the band on the cover,’” said Powell, now 76. “This was unheard-of in the world of marketing and record companies.” He described presenting the “Atom Heart Mother” artwork to the suits: “When you walked in there with long hair and earrings, showing them a picture of a cover of a cow, they would go apoplectic.”It tended to be Thorgerson, by all accounts a stubborn genius, driving the record executives to apoplexy. “The greatest line about Storm was that ‘He’s a man who wouldn’t take yes for an answer,’” Mason said. “It was almost inevitable that whatever was done, particularly by the record company, would involve Storm having to shout at them.”Thorgerson and Powell took different approaches to communicating with artists and labels.Hipgnosis LtdThorgerson, who died in 2013, could be confrontational with the musicians as well. “He didn’t care if it was Paul McCartney or Roger Waters, he would express himself quite vehemently,” Powell said. “And often I would have to go around fighting the fires to maintain some kind of credibility. At the end of the day, it kind of worked because I managed to persuade the artists that it was the idea that was important. Forget about Storm’s personality.”Corbijn said that, ultimately, the documentary was a “story of love and loss.” Hipgnosis came to an end at the dawn of a new era, in which music videos ruled and compact discs, with their significantly smaller artistic canvases, became the dominant mode of distribution. (Of course, today most people see album art in miniature on their phones.) Thorgerson and Powell, who were moving over to filmmaking, had a falling out over money and didn’t speak for 12 years after that. “It was like the end of a marriage,” Powell said. The two reunited after Thorgerson fell ill; he died of cancer at the age of 69.In more recent years, Powell said, he’s been heartened to see that Hipgnosis’ album covers have broken “that barrier to be taken seriously as fine art.” He added, “A lot of thought went into those pictures. We didn’t take photographs of the band and slap it on the front with their names big and the title in big white letters. This was work that was taken extremely seriously. And I hope that comes over in the film.”Powell pointed to Hipgnosis’ cover of Led Zeppelin’s final studio album, “In Through the Out Door” from 1979, which involved lovingly recreating an actual New Orleans juke joint in a studio in London. He indicated that making the album’s visuals (which, after all that work, came wrapped in a brown paper bag) likely cost more than it did for the band to record the music itself.“You know,” Powell said with a laugh, “that sums up the period of time.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Billy Joel Will End Madison Square Garden Residency in 2024

      by

      The singer-songwriter, one of New York’s most beloved musicians, will conclude his monthly gig at the Manhattan arena after his 150th career concert there.In December 1978, Billy Joel headlined Madison Square Garden for the first time, playing three shows on the tour for his first No. 1 album, “52nd Street.” Dozens more performances followed there over the years, and in January 2014, Joel began a monthly residency as the Garden’s first “music franchise.”Now the monthly gig is coming to an end. On Thursday, Joel and the Garden announced his final 10 shows in the series, saying the residency will conclude in July 2024 with his 104th show in the series, which will be his 150th lifetime performance at the Garden.“I’m kind of flabbergasted that it lasted as long as it did,” Joel said at a news conference at the Garden. “My team tells me that we could continue to sell tickets, but 10 years, 150 shows — all right already!”James L. Dolan, the chief executive of MSG Entertainment, which owns the Garden and other venues, added: “Billy Joel’s franchise run has made history — not only for Madison Square Garden, but also for the music industry overall.”Joel’s run at MSG has been a cultural phenomenon and a business unto itself. Every show has sold out, and aside from a dozen or two standards — you are all but guaranteed to hear “Piano Man,” “Allentown,” “New York State of Mind” and “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” — the set list varies enough to keep fans coming back again and again. The roster of special guests has included Bruce Springsteen, Tony Bennett, Olivia Rodrigo and Joel’s daughter Alexa Ray Joel.The residency has continued on a roughly monthly schedule since its inception, aside from an 18-month break during the Covid-19 pandemic, returning in November 2021.According to the trade publication Pollstar, Joel’s residency has played to nearly 1.7 million people through its 89th performance in April, and sold $207 million in tickets. By his final show, the residency will have grossed over $250 million.The idea for the residency came about following Celine Dion’s two record-breaking runs in Las Vegas, which started in 2003 and ultimately sold about $660 million in tickets. But Joel balked at traveling there. “I knew I didn’t want to be a resident in a place like Vegas,” he once said. “I don’t even like Vegas.”Joel’s performances at the Garden have become “the Super Bowl of music events,” Dennis Arfa, his longtime booking agent, told The New York Times last year. It has also inspired a new residency model that has lately taken hold in the music business, with some superstar artists preferring longer stays at a smaller number of venues, rather than crisscrossing the map one gig at a time — a move that can reduce touring costs and provide a bit of branding buzz. Last year, for example, Harry Styles played 15 dates at the Garden and, in late 2022 and 2023, another 15 at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif.Joel, 74, will begin his 10 countdown shows on Oct. 20. A representative for the singer said that while he is ending this run, Joel is not retiring.“There’s only one thing that’s more New York than Billy Joel,” Mayor Eric Adams of New York said in a statement, “and that’s a Billy Joel concert at MSG.” More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Popcast (Deluxe): Morgan Wallen, Indie Sleaze and ‘Survivor’

      by

      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicWelcome to Popcast (Deluxe), a new weekly video show hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli that breaks down essential pop culture. This week’s episode includes segments on:Morgan Wallen, the country singer who continues to top both the Billboard album chart and the Hot 100 despite the postponement of several dates on his stadium tour because of a vocal cord injuryThe Dare, a rising star of New York neo-electroclashThe Hulu documentary “Queenmaker,” about early 2000s It Girls and the blogs that alternately fawned over and savaged themThe season finale of “Survivor,” in which a gaggle of star-level outcasts made it to the end of the gameNew songs from YoungBoy Never Broke Again and Lana Del Rey More