Music

Anders Adlercreutz’s recording of a patriotic Ukrainian song was widely circulated online, and prompted a response from Moscow.Anders Adlercreutz, Finland’s minister for European affairs, has long been a critic of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, denouncing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for leading a “crazy war” and calling on Western governments to send tanks to Kyiv.On Sunday, Mr. Adlercreutz tried a different tactic: he posted a video of himself on social media playing a patriotic Ukrainian song on the cello to mark the conflict’s 500th day. The video also shows images of bombed buildings, juxtaposed with phrases like “unspeakable aggression,” as well as hopeful symbols like sunflower fields and a dove in flight.500 days of unprovoked aggression, countless war crimes, lost futures – but also of encouraging success. Ukraine fights for its independence, but also for Europe’s. Finland stands by you, today and tomorrow.В пам’ять про тих, хто віддав своє життя за свободу. pic.twitter.com/P5D9WpPH39— Anders Adlercreutz (@adleande) July 9, 2023
“I wanted to provide comfort to Ukrainians here in Finland and in other countries,” Mr. Adlercreutz said in an interview, “and to make clear that they are not ignored, and their culture, their music and their language is not forgotten.”To his surprise, the video garnered more than a million views across a variety of platforms, and he received a flood of comments from Ukrainians moved by the performance.Russian officials tried to portray the video as part of an effort by Western countries to sway public opinion ahead of a NATO meeting this week that was attended by President Biden and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. (Finland became the alliance’s 31st member state in April, a strategic defeat for Mr. Putin.)In a television appearance this week, Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, denounced the NATO meeting as a “colorful performance” that was “in the worst traditions of Western manipulation,” according to Russian news reports. She went on to say that “Finnish government ministers are recording cello solos in support of Ukraine.” Russia has in recent months been highly critical of Finland for joining NATO, saying it has “forfeited its independence.”The video features the Ukrainian song “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow,” written during World War I, which has long been associated with Ukraine’s fight for independence.Since the invasion, the song has emerged as a popular anthem for the Ukrainian cause. A few days into the war, the Ukrainian musician Andriy Khlyvnyuk, from the band Boombox, recorded a defiant rendition with a rifle slung across his chest.Last year, Pink Floyd released a reworked version of the song, featuring Mr. Khlyvnyuk, to raise money for the people of Ukraine, its first new track in almost three decades.Since the invasion, Ukrainians have used music to bring attention to suffering, following in a tradition of impromptu performances by ordinary citizens in war zones, in the Balkans, Syria and elsewhere. A cellist last year performed Bach in the center of a deserted street in Kharkiv, with the blown-out windows of the regional police headquarters behind him.Mr. Adlercreutz, who began studying cello as an 11-year-old, said he had been inspired by Ukrainian musicians, including Mr. Khlyvnyuk. He recorded “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow” in February at the Parliament House in Helsinki, playing different musical lines that he later mixed together.He said it was important to use culture to bring attention to Ukraine.“I want to send the message to Ukrainians that we see you, we recognize you, we support you, and we don’t forget where you are coming from and what you are going through,” he said. “We can easily forget the war, but this is a message that we really have to repeat.” More

Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The unfortunate incident between the pop queen Britney Spears and soon-to-be N.B.A. rookie sensation Victor WembanyamaTaylor Swift’s rerecording of her 2010 album “Speak Now,” an altered lyric and ongoing fan chatter about her songs’ true targetsThe new No. 1 album from Lil Uzi Vert, “Pink Tape”The latest Wes Anderson film, “Asteroid City”New songs from NewJeans and Rylo RodriguezSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at [email protected]. More

In staging the storied rock opera in Chicago, its creators argue that the show’s exploration of celebrity worship and childhood trauma is more relevant than ever.Thirty years ago, when the Who’s 1969 concept album “Tommy” was transformed into a rock opera for Broadway, it was hailed as a triumph of the form — a production that had finally managed to authentically marry theater and rock ’n’ roll.Fueled by the spiritual exploration of a 23-year-old Pete Townshend, the Who guitarist and songwriter, the original production of “Tommy” drew crowds of baby boomers primed with adolescent nostalgia for the story of a boy who discovers a superhuman aptitude for pinball despite not being able to see, hear or speak.The Broadway show raked in a record number of ticket sales the day after opening night, ran for nearly 900 performances and won five Tony Awards, including one for its director, Des McAnuff.With its depictions of rebellion against authority and analogies to spiritual enlightenment, the show was firmly rooted in the youth culture of the 1960s. So why would McAnuff, for whom “Tommy” was a career-defining success, take the risk of reimagining the work for today’s audiences?“Sometimes you just don’t get things out of your system,” McAnuff said in an interview shortly after his new production of “The Who’s Tommy” opened last month at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. “I felt like it was time to make it contemporary.”In resurrecting “Tommy,” McAnuff and Townshend, who wrote the book together, sought to prove that the work was not simply of an era, but carried the promise of timelessness.In 2023, McAnuff argues, Tommy’s transformation from catatonic schoolboy to a kind of charismatic cult leader resonates even more strongly when considering the modern-day culture of celebrity worship. And the show’s exploration of trauma — including post-traumatic stress disorder, sexual abuse and bullying — is something that audiences now have a much deeper understanding of.The reimagining of “Tommy” is not so much in story but in style, with McAnuff opting for futuristic austerity over 1960s nostalgia. Tommy displays his skill not on a kitschy pinball machine but a spare set piece (designed by David Korins) in which the outline of a machine is represented by narrow panels of light. The personality cult that encircles Tommy feels more sinister than in the original production.A 1972 concert staging of “Tommy” at the Rainbow Theater in London brought together, from far left, Merry Clayton (whose back is to the camera), Peter Sellers, Sandy Denny, Graham Bell, Steve Winwood and Roger Daltrey.Getty ImagesThe production, which runs through Aug. 6, has received rave reviews in Chicago, with the critic Chris Jones of The Chicago Tribune calling it a “ready-for-prime-time stunner.” The Goodman says the show is on track to be its highest-grossing production ever, a boon for the organization during a time of high anxiety around regional theater’s post-pandemic return. The show’s commercial producer, Stephen Gabriel, said several options for the production’s future are being weighed, including a Broadway run.The story at the center of this production is much the same as the one the Who told when it played its new album at Woodstock in 1969.A 4-year-old Tommy watches as his father — a British Army captain believed to have died while on duty — shows up at the family’s home, ultimately killing the mother’s new lover during the ensuing fight. Tommy then loses his senses, becoming the victim of sexual abuse by his uncle, relentless bullying by his cousin and medical exploitation by an army of invasive doctors. After the world discovers his stunning talent for pinball, he becomes a messiah-like figure with a band of devoted followers.Whether “Tommy” can become a national phenomenon again, and not just a nostalgic tribute, depends, in part, on its ability to capture a new audience.McAnuff sees Ali Louis Bourzgui, the 23-year-old lead, as the show’s “doorway to Gen Z” — though not long out of college and largely unknown, he is viewed by the director as a natural star who will be appealing to a new generation of prospective “Tommy” fans.To Bourzgui, Tommy’s meteoric rise has parallels to the frenzy over certain social media influencers, artists or tech gurus.“He gets filled up by his followers,” Bourzgui said. “He keeps feeding off that, getting more gluttonous with power, until he realizes they’re following him because they want to feed off his trauma.”Bourzgui was born 30 years after the release of “Tommy” the album, but he has his own memory of his first listen — to the vinyl, in fact — in a friend’s apartment his freshman year. He remembers feeling moved by the music, if not a little bit befuddled by the plot. (McAnuff likes to call the story a “fable,” gesturing at the suspension of disbelief required to accept Tommy’s arc from silent child to pinball wizard to cult leader.)In preparation for the role, Bourzgui pored over performance videos of the Who on YouTube, finding himself in awe of the band’s magnetism. Wary of falling into mimicry, he hasn’t watched videos of the earlier production.“We’re not in the business of presenting museum pieces,” said Roche Schulfer, the Goodman’s executive director, who was approached about staging “Tommy” before the pandemic upended the theater world.Schulfer was persuaded by McAnuff and Townshend’s ideas for an update as well as their consideration of how certain themes and language might translate onstage today.The Who performing “Tommy” in Los Angeles in August 1989. Des McAnuff developed the show for the stage in the early 1990s.Ebet Roberts/Redferns, via Getty ImagesThe question is one that theater makers across the country are grappling with: Should revived works be altered to align with the worldviews and sensitivities of present-day audiences?In “Tommy,” McAnuff and Townshend’s answer was, largely, no.For example, the lyrics “deaf, dumb and blind” are central to some of the album’s hits, including its most famous: “Pinball Wizard.” When Townshend originally wrote “Tommy” in the 1960s, the word “dumb” was commonly used to refer to someone who was nonverbal, but it is now considered to be an offensive and archaic term. McAnuff said that he and Townshend did not seriously consider changing that language, viewing it as too much of a lyrical departure in foundational songs such as “Amazing Journey.”“‘Sensory impaired’ — I don’t think it would work,” McAnuff said. “I think it’s a song that has a certain amount of pedigree and dignity.”The story behind the concept, Townshend told an interviewer in the 1970s, came from his devotion in his early 20s to the writings of the Indian spiritual leader Meher Baba — also an inspiration for one of the Who’s biggest hits, “Baba O’Riley” — who taught, as he put it, that as humans, “there are whole chunks of life, including the whole concept of reality, which escapes us.”Over the years, Townshend has described the character of Tommy as autistic, explaining that his condition was a metaphor for humanity’s limited view of reality.Revivals over the years, including one by McAnuff a decade ago in Ontario, Canada, have given the book writers the opportunity to re-examine the show’s handling of sensitive issues. Around that time, Townshend acknowledged in an interview that the rock opera does not allow for explanation or discussion around serious issues such as sexual abuse, but that audiences can consider those topics themselves in a modern context.“We have to live with the rock opera version that we did 20 years ago,” Townshend said at the time. “We also have to live with the fact that ‘Tommy’ started as a rock opera in 1968, ’69. And yet times have changed. Attitudes have changed.”In the 1990s, McAnuff, who first developed the show at La Jolla Playhouse in California, staged the sexual abuse scene in such a way that had little need for alterations today. A revolving bed suggests the violation without any significant physical touch — an approach the director views as key to protecting the child actors involved in the show.After the Broadway debut, there were some complaints that the scene was less daring than the one in Ken Russell’s provocative 1975 film, to which McAnuff responded, “That’s a real little boy up there. Does anyone actually need me to abuse that child to get the idea across?”The most significant change in the Chicago production on the issue of abuse is the removal of a short song, “Tommy’s Holiday Camp,” that brings back the sexually abusive uncle in a way that no longer seemed necessary, McAnuff said. There is also some toned-down staging in “The Acid Queen,” the wailing barnburner — performed by Tina Turner in the film version — in which Tommy’s father takes him to a prostitute and con artist who promises to cure his condition with drugs.Without being too heavy handed in any moralistic messaging, McAnuff hopes the audience sees what the intent of the work has been since the beginning.“At the end of the day, we portray what happens to him not to condone it but to condemn it,” McAnuff said. “And I think that’s the point of view of the whole piece.” More

The “Pillowtalk” singer speaks candidly of his departure from the group: “We’d got sick of each other.”After a hiatus from public life and interviews, Zayn Malik, the former One Direction member, appeared on a podcast that aired on Wednesday and talked about his decision to leave the group, what life has been like since then and his new single in his first interview in years.“There were great experiences, I had great times with them, but we’d just run our course,” Mr. Malik said of his time in the band on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, hosted by Alex Cooper.Mr. Malik was the first to leave One Direction in 2015, after the group had steadily put out chart-topping songs like “What Makes You Beautiful,” “Story of My Life” and “Best Song Ever.” The boy band, assembled through the British musical competition show “The X Factor,” was together for about six years and developed a feverish following among its young fans, who were known for their shrieking and devotion to the five members.One Direction continued to make music after Mr. Malik’s departure, but the group officially disbanded in 2016. Mr. Malik put out his debut solo single “Pillowtalk” that same year.During the interview, Mr. Malik told Ms. Cooper that around the time of his departure, the bandmates were beginning to clash.“We’d been together every day for five years and we’d got sick of each other, if we’re being completely honest,” Mr. Malik said, adding: “I look back on it now in a much fonder light than I would’ve as I’d just left. There were great experiences, I had great times with them, but we’d just run our course.”He began to see signs that it might be time to go and that others might be doing the same, he said, and he wanted to “get ahead of the curve” and “be the first” to release his own record.“I don’t want to go into too much detail, but there was a lot of politics going on. People were doing certain things. Some people didn’t want to sign contracts, so I knew something was happening,” he said.Ms. Cooper also broached the topic of a reported confrontation between Mr. Malik and Yolanda Hadid, the mother of his former girlfriend, the supermodel Gigi Hadid, with whom he shares a daughter, asking about his decision to largely remain silent on the issue. In response, Mr. Malik said he believed that the issue should stay within the family.“I just keep to myself. I knew what the situation was, I knew what happened and the people involved knew what happened, too,” Mr. Malik said. “I just didn’t want to bring attention to anything.”In recent years, he has lived a much quieter life in suburban Pennsylvania, he said. He said he was happy to get away from the bustle of New York City, enjoying a life mostly free from paparazzi and spending many of his days in the studio, writing and making music.He said he enjoyed spending time with his cats, dogs, turtles and chickens. (Mr. Malik noted that he got too attached to one chicken that died and decided to stop naming them.)Being out of the public eye also allows for his daughter to live a more private life, should she choose to do so, he said.“I’m just trying to give her an option,” Mr. Malik said. “If she wants to be away from it, she can be out here.”Mr. Malik said there was a constant stream of fans following the band around when it was together. He recalled one day before the band had ever released a single when fans hid in trash bins outside of a studio in Sweden waiting for the performers to emerge, then popped out and grabbed at them. “I think I had a mini heart attack,” he said, jokingly.One Direction’s hit song “What Makes You Beautiful” was on Billboard’s Hot 100 list for 34 weeks, peaking at No. 4 in 2012. In 2013, “Story of my Life” had a similar staying power, with 32 weeks, and peaked at No. 6 in 2013. “Best Song Ever,” however, climbed the highest — it reached the No. 2 spot in 2013 and spent 21 weeks on the chart.The group held four world tours, performing in North America, Asia, Europe and South America, and sometimes sold out shows in minutes. More

Fans trying to purchase tickets to six of the pop superstar’s concerts faced long queues and technical issues before the company said that a new on-sale time would be announced.Ticketmaster has once again cracked under the weight of a Taylor Swift ticket sale — this time in France.As French fans prepared on Tuesday to purchase tickets to six concerts in May and June 2024 on Swift’s Eras Tour — four shows in Paris, two in Lyon — Ticketmaster’s website displayed a gigantic queue of customers ready to buy; one screenshot appeared to tell a fan that 1,023,504 shoppers were in line ahead of them.Soon, Ticketmaster announced that sales for those shows had been placed on “pause.” The company said that a new on-sale time would be announced, and that “all codes not already used will remain valid.” But some fans’ social media posts seemed to show technical errors on Ticketmaster’s website, including a progress icon that “keeps spinning and spinning and spinning,” as one fan — speaking English with an American accent, but with 762 euros’ worth of tickets in their shopping cart — put it.A few hours later, the French branch of Ticketmaster offered some more detail on social media, blaming the problem on a “third-party provider” that the company did not identify, and adding that tickets were still available. A representative of Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster’s corporate parent, said that the provider works with Ticketmaster only in France.The situation in France appeared to be a frustrating repeat of the problems that plagued Swift’s North American presale in November, when an influx of millions of fans — and bots — overwhelmed Ticketmaster’s systems, and fans reported issues like tickets in their shopping carts disappearing before they could be purchased. Ticketmaster shut down its public sale as a result, though the company also said it had sold more than two million tickets to the tour in a single day.Problems like those at Swift’s presale in November — as well as long-simmering concerns over Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s market dominance — led to a brutal Senate Judiciary hearing in January. Senators from both parties flatly called the company a monopoly and were skeptical of an executive’s explanation that Ticketmaster was unable to defend itself against an onslaught of bots during Swift’s presale.“This is unbelievable,” Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, said at the hearing. “Why is it,” she added, “that you have not developed an algorithm to sort out what is a bot and what is a consumer?”Yet the demand for Swift tickets has been extraordinary, with Swift selling out stadiums everywhere she plays and tickets going for thousands of dollars on the secondary market. She is scheduled to complete the North American leg of her tour next month, then play in Latin America, Asia and Europe.The Justice Department has separately been conducting an antitrust investigation of Live Nation. The Justice Department has not confirmed that investigation, but Live Nation’s chief executive, Michael Rapino, has spoken about it openly. More

After weeks of dominance on Billboard’s album and singles charts, the country superstar was bested by the rapper’s LP “Pink Tape” and the singer-songwriter’s track “Vampire.”Olivia Rodrigo and the rapper Lil Uzi Vert have shaken up the Billboard charts after weeks of dominance by the country superstar Morgan Wallen, with Rodrigo taking the top single and Lil Uzi Vert the top album.Rodrigo’s “Vampire,” the first new single in two years from the 20-year-old singer, songwriter and actress who was catapulted to music stardom in early 2021 with “Drivers License,” opens at No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart. It had nearly 36 million streams and 26 million “airplay audience impressions,” a measurement of a song’s popularity on the radio, according to data from the tracking service Luminate.Rodrigo’s arrival bumps Wallen’s song “Last Night” to No. 2, after a total of 13 weeks at No. 1, the last 10 of them consecutive. “Vampire” is the first release from Rodrigo’s second studio album, “Guts,” due in September.On the album chart, Lil Uzi Vert scores the first rap No. 1 of the year with “Pink Tape,” a sprawling 26-track release filled with bits of rock and metal. “Pink Tape,” which Lil Uzi Vert — a 27-year-old from Philadelphia who emerged as part of the “SoundCloud rap” generation in the mid-2010s — has teased for more than two years, had the equivalent of 167,000 sales in the United States, including 210 million streams and 11,000 copies sold as a complete package.“One Thing at a Time,” Wallen’s latest album, falls to No. 2 in its 18th week of release. It has been No. 1 a total of 15 times, including the last three weeks. “Dangerous: The Double Album,” Wallen’s last LP, from 2021, is No. 5.Peso Pluma, a songwriter and performer from Mexico, holds at No. 3 for a second week with “Génesis,” the highest position ever for an album of regional Mexican music.Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” is No. 4, and Swift is favored to take over next week’s chart with her latest rerecorded album, “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” which was released on Friday and instantly became a major hit on streaming services. More

The pop superstar’s global outing spotlighting her decades of hits will begin in October in Europe. “My focus now is my health,” she wrote on social media.Madonna’s North American tour is officially postponed.Two weeks ago, the pop star’s new Celebration Tour — a greatest-hits outing announced to great media fanfare in January, which was set to open this week — was put on an undefined “pause” after the singer’s manager said she had been admitted to a hospital with “a serious bacterial infection.” Rampant concern and speculation ensued among fans and within the music business about Madonna’s well-being, as well as the fate of her world tour, which had the potential to be one of the year’s biggest events.On Monday, a message from Madonna on social media clarified that the entire North American leg of her tour — 41 shows, about half the total that had been announced for the full world outing — would be rescheduled, and that the tour would now open in Europe in October. Live Nation, which is producing the tour, asked fans to “hold onto their tickets as they will be valid for the new dates once announced.”“My focus now is my health and getting stronger and I assure you, I’ll be back with you as soon as I can!” Madonna, 64, wrote in her first statement since her manager’s post on June 28. She also posted a photo that appeared to show her in her home in Manhattan.“I’m on the road to recovery and incredibly grateful for all the blessings in my life,” she added.Ticket sales for Madonna’s tour opened with a splash; according to an announcement in March, more than 40 dates had already sold out by then. But a glance at further dates on Ticketmaster’s website shows a number of locations — Sacramento; Tulsa, Okla.; even Barclays Center in Brooklyn — where plenty of seats are available.Last week, Beyoncé canceled a date in Pittsburgh, and postponed two others, over what was announced as issues with “production logistics and scheduling.”Rescheduling a major tour, for any reason, can be a complex and expensive process these days, music executives say. That is because with the return of live music after its shutdown by the Covid-19 pandemic, large venues typically lock in their schedules many months in advance, with little wiggle room for changes. In its announcement about the Madonna tour, Live Nation said simply, “Rescheduled dates will be announced as soon as possible.” More

“Farming,” a choral work that had its New York premiere at Caramoor, is a chaotically ambitious reflection on colonization, consumption and marketing.Google search results broke my heart this weekend.Which was strange, because they didn’t include anything overtly emotional. They were lines like: “Yes, we are open. Call our consultants today.” And: “Reliable, seasonal work force.” The kind of thing you get when you look up “H-2A visa program,” which grants temporary admission to the United States for agricultural workers.But set to soulful, almost retro, doo-wop-honeyed music by Ted Hearne in “Farming,” these bland fragments seemed to touch the very core of our country: its rapacious economy, its broken immigration system, its corroded politics.Performed at Caramoor in Westchester on Sunday by the 24 vocalists of the Crossing, the precise and luminous new-music choir led by Donald Nally, it was the sweetest, saddest song.A suggestive, chaotically ambitious, often poignant reflection on colonization, consumption, marketing, entrepreneurship — you name it! — “Farming” reaches well beyond that Google search. Its quilt-like libretto encompasses 17th-century letters by William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, and 21st-century musings by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, as well as absurdist out-of-context bits from UberEats’s Twitter feed and the Farmer’s Fridge customer loyalty program. (“Green are the Farmer’s Fridge reward currency,” the singers intone with maniacal severity.)As he has in superb works like “The Source” (based on the Afghanistan war logs leaked by Chelsea Manning) and “Sound From the Bench” (which set excerpts from Supreme Court proceedings), Hearne takes these found-text nuggets and gives them music that moves from lushly meditative to frenetic and obsessively repetitive — a visceral translation into sound of the information overload that is contemporary life.The singing is sometimes pure and sometimes processed into exaggeratedly AutoTuned “Alvin and the Chipmunks” automation. On guitars, keyboards, percussion and electronics, the six instrumentalists also veer from moody industrial rock and elegiac synth drones to jittery, hypersaccharine pop. (Occasionally resting, as in “Search,” that Google section, somewhere in between.)Not quite an hour long, the nine-part “Farming” is Hearne’s latest collaboration with the Philadelphia-based Crossing, which premiered it a few weeks ago in Bucks County, Pa., and already toured it to the Netherlands before this performance at Caramoor, its first in New York. The threat of rain on Sunday forced a move inside and an adaptation of the staging and complex sound design.“Farming,” with a patchwork text that includes the words of William Penn and Jeff Bezos, was sung by the 24 vocalists of the Crossing.James Estrin/The New York TimesGiven the circumstances, the production and the sound were impressively polished. A QR code included with the program linked listeners’ phones to the libretto; accessing it also involved signing onto Caramoor’s Wi-Fi, and it seemed that many in the audience weren’t doing it.Without following the words, it would be nearly impossible to have any idea what was going on in this non-narrative but intensely text-focused work. I’m no fan of wasting paper, but this was an appropriate occasion to print out the libretto for everyone — and future iterations might want to experiment with supertitles.And Ashley Tata’s perkily surreal corporate-parody staging, which put the performers in bright orange, magenta and white uniform-type costumes, felt like a complexity too many in a piece already full of them. The attempt to tie together the work’s many thematic strands by enacting onstage what Hearne’s program note called “a new corporation, powered by quasi-religious fervor,” was confusing — though maybe things were clearer in the original, outdoor conception.While this piece is less scattered than Hearne’s most recent major work, “Place,” a deeply personal reflection on gentrification, “Farming,” too, feels like a grab bag into which there’s always assumed to be room for yet one more idea. The central pairing of Penn and Bezos, the two pioneers — their vast differences, their essential similarities — would probably have been a more than sufficient subject here.The Penn quotations conjure some of the fundamental, irreconcilable tension of our country’s founding: his efforts to maintain good relations with the Indigenous population, on the one hand, and the commercial interests he wanted to expand, on the other.To what extent are Bezos’s manipulative doublespeak and high-minded invocations of empowerment through selling a break with Penn’s colonial promises? To what degree are they merely a continuation of what were sour lies to begin with?These are the kind of huge, unanswerable questions that Hearne’s works have presented so enigmatically yet powerfully over the past decade, fired by his passionate, resourceful music. I found other parts here — the Farmer’s Fridge, the Twitter fragments, the staging — a distraction from that burning central point.Yet I would have hated to lose “Search.” And Hearne’s earnest too-muchness, his eagerness to stuff as much as possible into each piece, has become such a central feature of his artistry that it’s hard to think of it as a weakness. It’s who he is.‘Farming’Performed on Sunday at Caramoor. More