Music

As part of the influential Bang on a Can All-Stars, he helped popularize experimental music through international tours and well-regarded albums.Robert Black, a virtuoso bassist who collaborated with prominent composers including Philip Glass and John Cage and was a founding member of the influential Bang on a Can All-Stars ensemble, died on Thursday at his home in Hartford, Conn. He was 67.His partner, Gary Knoble, said the cause was colon cancer.Mr. Black was already a prominent interpreter of modern music for bass when he was invited, in 1987, to perform at the first Bang on a Can festival, a freewheeling marathon of contemporary music in downtown Manhattan.“He had a beautiful sound,” the composer Michael Gordon, one of the founders of Bang on a Can, said in an interview. “He did everything with the bass: He danced with it, he drummed on it, he scraped it, he coached all kinds of amazing sounds out of it.”At that festival, Mr. Black performed Iannis Xenakis’s “Theraps” — an extraordinarily difficult piece that traverses five octaves through uncanny glissandos — and Tom Johnson’s “Failing,” which asks the performer to play increasingly complex passages on the bass while at the same time reading aloud a humorous text that self-consciously describes the possibility of failure.“When I fail to succeed, I will succeed in communicating the essence of the piece,” Mr. Black stated while playing a tricky line — as per the composer’s instructions — to laughter from the audience, captured in a definitive live recording.In 1992, Mr. Gordon and his fellow Bang on a Can directors David Lang and Julia Wolfe asked Mr. Black to join the newly formed All-Stars sextet, which brought further renown and attention to the festival’s visceral, rock-inflected music. His technique was central to the group’s sound: In Ms. Wolfe’s 1997 piece “Believing,” written for the All-Stars, he improvised frenzied passages that Ms. Wolfe once called “quintessential Robert Black-isms.”As a soloist and a chamber musician, Mr. Black championed contemporary music and commissioned work from dozens of composers. His reserved personality belied the cacophonous sounds he could summon with his instrument, a double bass nicknamed Simone that was made in Paris in 1900.Mr. Black’s theatrical approach to performance extended to dramatic speaking — he commissioned a large-scale work from Philip Glass that includes the recitation of poetry by Lou Reed and Patti Smith — and even dancing, as a member of Yoshiko Chuma’s School of Hard Knocks, an interdisciplinary troupe.Mr. Black in 2021. His reserved personality belied the cacophonous sounds he could summon with his instrument.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesRobert Alan Black was born in Denver on March 16, 1956, to Ned Black, an engineer, and Frances (Canzone) Black. Growing up in the suburbs of Denver, he began playing bass in middle school. He attended the University of North Texas before transferring to the Hartt School in Connecticut, where he studied with Gary Karr. While in college, he started performing music composed by his friends, and he freelanced in the New York area after graduating in 1979.“It felt like nobody really trusted me,” he recalled of this time in a 2015 interview. “I would go to the orchestra rehearsal, playing along, and my colleagues were going, ‘Yeah, but you also do that strange contemporary music, you play John Cage.’ And then I would go to a hard-core new music thing, and they’d go, ‘Yeah, you’re really not one of us because you also play in an orchestra.”But, inspired by his longtime partner, the composer James Sellars, as well as the pianist Yvar Mikhashoff, Mr. Black increasingly dedicated himself to contemporary composition, at a time when few classical virtuosos were committed to new works. An early showcase was Mr. Sellars’s “For Love of the Double Bass,” a piece for bass and piano that combines music and theater, in which Mr. Black seduced his instrument, buying it a dress, dancing with it and ultimately taking it to bed.As part of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Mr. Black helped popularize experimental music through international tours and well-regarded albums. He and the guitarist Mark Stewart, the only two original members to remain with the sextet, performed together for more than three decades.“He was deeply kind, often playful, gently yet fiercely devoted to the composer and his colleagues onstage,” Mr. Stewart wrote in an email. “His humility was real because his wisdom came from listening.”Mr. Black also pursued a solo career, building a sizable new repertoire for his instrument and recording the complete bass music of Giacinto Scelsi and Christian Wolff. A dedicated pedagogue, he taught at the Hartt School for 29 years. In 2017, he formed the Robert Black Foundation to support contemporary music. He frequently commissioned work from young and emerging composers, whose music he performed as part of a monthly Friday series during the pandemic, live-streamed from his home.At Mr. Black’s final concert, which was in April amid a grove of trees in Philadelphia, he took part in “Murmur in the Trees,” a piece for 24 basses composed by Eve Beglarian.In an unconventional arrangement, Mr. Black had been partners since 1974 with both Mr. Sellars, who died in 2017, and Mr. Knoble, and he had also been married to Elliott Fredouelle since 2016. (They all lived together.) He is also survived by a sister, Debbie Walker.In 2013 Mr. Black, a gifted improviser, trekked into the culverts of Moab, Utah, with his bass to make a new album — a duet with the desert. The recording captures not just the vast array of strange sounds he drew from Simone, but also the murmurs of birds and insects. It was, he explained, an attempt to “make the environment start to sing.”“I would just fool around on the instrument, getting used to the space and the sound,” he told Colorado Public Radio. “When it came time to record — this sounds like such a cliché, but it really is true — I would just try to empty my mind, start listening, and just let my hands move.” More

The state has inspired memorable songs by Randy Newman, R.E.M., King Princess and more.R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, perhaps suggesting we put our heads together and start a new country up.Martial Trezzini/European Pressphoto AgencyDear listeners,For six of the past seven summers, I’ve spent a long weekend visiting college friends in northern Ohio — a part of the country with which I was previously unfamiliar but has now come to feel like a home away from home. A highlight of these trips is always, weather permitting, when we get to tube lazily down the Cuyahoga River. We tend to start the drive with this excursion’s unofficial theme song: “Burn On,” Randy Newman’s wry but warmly sung ode to that time in 1969 that the infamously polluted Cuyahoga caught fire.More than 50 years later, the fact that we can comfortably float in the Cuyahoga speaks to the success of the high-profile cleanup campaigns that have restored the river to its past glory — so much so that in 2019, the conservation association American Rivers named it “River of the Year.” I did not even know that was a thing. Congrats, Cuyahoga!Newman isn’t the only musician to be fascinated by the plight of this particular river. A song called “Cuyahoga” appears on R.E.M.’s great fourth album, “Life’s Rich Pageant”; Michael Stipe uses the word as a metaphor not just for environmental degradation but for the seizing of land — and even language — originally belonging to native people. “This is where they walked, this is where they swam,” Stipe sings, then adds with bitter irony, “Take a picture here, take a souvenir.”Perhaps because of the sing-songy, vowel-heavy composition of its name, the state of Ohio itself has inspired quite a few notable tunes. I collected a few for today’s playlist — from the likes of Harry Nilsson, King Princess and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young — to round out those musical odes to the 2019 River of the Year.Will this be the first in a long series of 50 Amplifier installments, each devoted to songs about a specific state? Well, even Sufjan Stevens couldn’t finish his 50 States Project, so I’d say don’t hold your breath.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Randy Newman: “Burn On”“There’s a red moon rising on the Cuyahoga River,” Newman begins in that inimitable voice, accompanied by his own plinking piano, “rolling into Cleveland from the lake.” Released on his 1972 album “Sail Away,” “Burn On” is featured in the opening montage of the classic 1989 baseball flick “Major League,” because — according to a Wikipedia statement without a citation that I will choose to believe anyway — the director David S. Ward said the song was “the only one he knew of that was about Cleveland, Ohio.” (Had he never heard “Cleveland Rocks”?) (Listen on YouTube)2. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: “Ohio”Recorded just two weeks after the fatal 1970 incident at Kent State University, when the Ohio National Guard killed four students and wounded nine more, the searing “Ohio,” featuring lyrics by Neil Young, was rush-released the following month and effectively tapped into the countercultural consciousness. (Listen on YouTube, because this one isn’t on Spotify for presumably Young-related reasons)3. R.E.M.: “Cuyahoga”On “Life’s Rich Pageant,” “Cuyahoga” is preceded by the jangling single “Fall on Me,” a song about the effects of acid rain. Taken together, these tracks indicate the band’s growing social conscience and its particular focus on environmentalism. (Listen on YouTube)4. King Princess: “Ohio”This rollicking live staple frequently closed out King Princess’s early shows. Some of her fans were so vocally upset that this song did not appear on her debut album that, in a 2019 Instagram story, the artist born Mikaela Straus cheekily wrote, “I recorded a version of Ohio that is almost done so everyone just calm down.” She kept her word: The sultry studio version of the song — addressed to a former flame who’s gone home to the Buckeye state — appeared on the deluxe edition of the album “Cheap Queen.” (Listen on YouTube)5. Damien Jurado: “Ohio”Ohio is also depicted as a mythical elsewhere — a love interest’s faraway home — in this heart-wrenching acoustic ballad by the Seattle singer-songwriter Damien Jurado. It appears on his 1999 album “Rehearsals for Departure” and also on many, many mix CDs I burned in college. (Listen on YouTube)6. Harry Nilsson: “Dayton Ohio 1903”What is it with Randy Newman and Ohio? He wrote this sweetly nostalgic ditty and recorded his own version for “Sail Away,” though in the spirit of mixing thing up, I chose Harry Nilsson’s version from the earlier, 1970 album “Nilsson Sings Newman.” The song recalls a simpler time, when people dropped by for tea and, perhaps, the Cuyahoga ran clear and blissfully inflammable. (Listen on YouTube)Burn on, big river,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Odes to Ohio” track listTrack 1: Randy Newman, “Burn On”Track 2: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Ohio”Track 3: REM, “Cuyahoga”Track 4: King Princess, “Ohio”Track 5: Damien Jurado, “Ohio”Track 6: Harry Nilsson, “Dayton Ohio 1903”Bonus tracksThis 2009 New York Times report, pegged to the 40th anniversary of the Cuyahoga catching fire, has a lede so vivid it is worth quoting in full: “The first time Gene Roberts fell into the Cuyahoga River, he worried he might die. The year was 1963, and the river was still an open sewer for industrial waste. Walking home, Mr. Roberts smelled so bad that his friends ran to stay upwind of him.”Also, it feels almost sacrilegious to talk about the music of Ohio and not mention Guided by Voices, so cue up “Glad Girls” — or another of the approximately 71 billion rippers the Dayton band has recorded over its career — and crank the volume up. More

Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThe song defining Pride month this year is Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam,” a thumping tease that’s lightly campy and has taken on outsize importance as a gay nightlife anthem and meme-culture staple.For Minogue, 55 — a bona fide superstar abroad but more of a pop curio here — it’s one of a handful of breakthrough moments that have cemented her embrace among gay listeners. But “Padam Padam” is also part of a longer list of diva anthems — from Lady Gaga, Madonna, and many others — that become, in effect, gay canon.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about “Padam Padam” and how songs get inscribed into the gay pop canon, Minogue’s not-quite-stardom in the United States, and how a younger generation of pop aspirants like Rina Sawayama and Charli XCX perform their embrace of their gay fans.Guest:Jason P. Frank, news writer at VultureConnect 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]. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

After performing at Glastonbury Festival over the weekend, Capaldi, the popular Scottish singer-songwriter, said he would stop touring “for the foreseeable future.”The Scottish musician Lewis Capaldi announced on Tuesday that he would take a break from touring “for the foreseeable future,” including the remainder of his current world tour, in order to adjust to life with Tourette’s syndrome, with which he was diagnosed last year.During a performance Saturday at Glastonbury Festival in England, Capaldi, 26, lost his voice and had to enlist the help of the enormous, enthusiastic crowd to finish his 2018 hit “Someone You Loved.”We love you Lewis Capaldi ❤️Glastonbury crowds are the best. pic.twitter.com/x6ZnIIgRpP— BBC Radio 1 (@BBCR1) June 24, 2023
In the three weeks leading up to Glastonbury, he had canceled shows, he said, to take a “moment to rest and recover.”In his statement on Tuesday announcing the break from touring, Capaldi wrote, “The fact that this probably won’t come as a surprise doesn’t make it any easier to write.”“I used to be able to enjoy every second of shows like this and I’d hoped 3 weeks away would sort me out,” he wrote. “But the truth is I’m still learning to adjust to the impact of my Tourette’s and on Saturday it became obvious that I need to spend much more time getting my mental and physical health in order, so I can keep doing everything I love for a long time to come.”Tourette’s syndrome is characterized by sudden jerking movements and uncontrollable tics and vocalizations, and Capaldi could be seen twitching onstage during his performance Saturday.His next show was scheduled for Wednesday in Zurich, followed by performances across Asia, Europe and the Middle East.This spring, he released a Netflix documentary, “How I’m Feeling Now,” about his diagnosis and the management of his illness. He also discussed it during an interview with The New York Times last month, before he released his second studio album, “Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent.”“This sounds gross, but it’s become part of like a marketing strategy,” he said. “Every piece of content or thing I see with my name next to it is closely followed by Tourette’s.” More

The country singer’s latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” has now notched more weeks atop the Billboard chart than any album in more than a decade.The country star Morgan Wallen is back on the road after six weeks of rest, and back once again at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, notching his 14th nonconsecutive week on top since the release of his latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” in March.With 14 weeks at No. 1, “One Thing at a Time” separates itself from Drake’s “Views,” which totaled 13 chart-topping week in 2016, and gives Wallen the most weeks at No. 1 in more than a decade, since Adele’s “21” ended up with 24 nonconsecutive weeks in 2011 and 2012.This week, “One Thing at a Time” totaled 110,000 album equivalent units, including 139 million in streams and 4,500 in sales, dropping just 1 percent in listener activity since last week, when it returned to No. 1 after two weeks at No. 2. In the 16 weeks it has been out, Wallen’s album has not fallen under 100,000 in equivalent units, tying Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” for most weeks totaling six figures in the modern counting era, according to Billboard.Wallen’s world tour in support of “One Thing at a Time” resumed last week in Chicago, following six weeks of postponement that the singer said was recommended by doctors for vocal rest. In April, Wallen had abruptly canceled a concert in Mississippi just before he was set to take the stage, angering some fans. Wallen’s tour continues through most of the year, with some rescheduled dates stretching into 2024.In what has become a chart fixture this year, a K-pop group selling collectible CDs also found success this week: Ateez’s “The World EP.2: Outlaw” is No. 2 with 106,000 units, including 101,000 in album sales. Billboard reports that of the 10 albums this year to sell more than 100,000 copies as a complete album, seven have been by K-pop acts offering various CD versions.The rest of the Top 5 includes Gunna’s first album since being released from jail, “A Gift & a Curse,” which totaled 85,000 units at No. 3; Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” at No. 4 with 60,000 units; and SZA’s “SOS,” up to No. 5 from No. 8 with 48,000 units. Wallen’s previous album, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” which spent 10 weeks at No. 1 in 2021, is No. 6. More

With a big voice and big personal changes to sing about, Clarkson ends up with arrangements that don’t match the power and rawness of the emotions fueling them.When a musician known in part for her fiery breakup anthems announces the dissolution of her marriage, fans can sometimes react with an impolite if somewhat understandable presumption: “Well, at least the divorce album will be good.”That was the response in 2019, when Adele separated from her now ex-husband Simon Konecki, though she certainly fanned the flames: In the promotional cycle for her 2021 album “30,” when a fan asked what her new record would be about, Adele replied with the instantly memed quote, “Divorce, babe, divorce.” Still, she rose to the challenge: “30” was her most radically honest and stylistically adventurous album yet.Earlier this year, when Kelly Clarkson — another beloved, recently divorced powerhouse vocalist — announced the release of “Chemistry,” expectations were high for some scorched-earth catharsis from the woman who unleashed the feel-good breakup song of the millennium, “Since U Been Gone.” After a holiday album and a covers EP, “Chemistry” is the first album of original pop material Clarkson has released in six years, following the debut of her popular, Daytime Emmy-winning talk show and her 2020 split with her husband, Brandon Blackstock. The track list — featuring song titles like “I Hate Love,” “My Mistake” and “Red Flag Collector” — practically screamed divorce, babe, divorce.But Clarkson, 41, said she wanted “Chemistry” to depict a full arc of a relationship, including its high points. “Favorite Kind of High,” an upbeat, electro-pop tune that Clarkson wrote with the producer Jesse Shatkin and Carly Rae Jepsen, attempts to capture the fizz of new infatuation. (A remix by David Guetta kicks the song into an even higher gear.) The slower, sultry “Magic” addresses a more long-term devotion: “Magic takes time, and I’ve got my sights and they’re set on you,” she sings breathily. Clarkson delivers these vocals with her signature virtuosity, but she doesn’t quite inhabit these relatively faceless songs as fully as she does when she’s singing about love gone wrong.Clarkson has always brought a sharp authenticity and feisty independence to her recording career. The popular “Kellyoke” segment on her daytime program has become a showcase for her genuine appreciation for all sorts of music and proof that she can sing expertly in just about any genre.“Chemistry” never quite lives up to her reputation for excellence, though, and it fails to find a sound that fits the rawness of much of its subject matter. The album is often a showcase for the elemental power of Clarkson’s voice and occasionally for her clever turns of phrase as a lyricist, but the arrangements too often rely on modern pop clichés rather than push for innovation or reach back to the soulful traditionalism of her 2017 LP, “Meaning of Life.”The production — helmed by Clarkson’s longtime musical director Jason Halbert and her frequent producer Shatkin, along with new collaborators Rachel Orscher and Erica Serna — often feels excessively compressed and synthetic, keeping Clarkson’s voice and emotion at an unfortunate remove. “Down to You,” with its sassy, hair-flipping energy, has a few zingers — “I tried to be your friend/I won’t make that mistake again” — but its sputtering, faceless chorus demands about 1 percent of her voice’s potential wattage.The wrenching, piano-driven torch song “Lighthouse,” on the other hand, gives her a little more breathing space and puts a spotlight on one of the album’s most impassioned vocal performances. “My Mistake” relies on a more synthetic pop sound, but its swooping melody gives her more room to vamp. It’s one of only two songs on the record Clarkson didn’t help write; she imbues the other, the booming, ’80s-inspired pop-rock standout “High Road,” with a lived-in weariness and convincing emotional maturity: “To become stronger, you have to listen/Keep it open, don’t try to hide it/And if you need love, don’t try to fight it.”Perhaps surprisingly for a record born from the heartbreak of divorce, “Chemistry” is at its most distinct when it abandons the weight of pathos and allows Clarkson to get loose. Across the final trio of songs, starting with the octave-leaping “Red Flag Collector,” she switches gears into a more conversational delivery — teasing out a sensibility shared by country, cabaret and Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never, Ever Getting Back Together” — and lets her quirky personality lead. Steve Martin, of all people, plays banjo on the stylistically restless “I Hate Love,” while Sheila E. provides percussion on the breezy finale “That’s Right.”These three songs may still be about a breakup, but they’re not tear-jerkers: “Turns out I like things that you don’t,” Clarkson sings on the closer, before hitting the beach — which he hated, apparently — and reconnecting with herself. “Chemistry” ultimately feels like a missed opportunity for more depth and daring, but at least it sometimes sounds like a vacation.Kelly Clarkson“Chemistry”(Atlantic) More

He also played mandolin in the act, Jim & Jesse, performing with his brother for 55 years.Jesse McReynolds, for 55 years the lead singer and mandolin player with Jim & Jesse, the first-generation bluegrass duo he established with his older brother, Jim McReynolds, died on Friday at his home in Gallatin, Tenn. He was 93. His death was confirmed by his wife, Joy McReynolds, on her Facebook page.Bluegrass’s longest running brother act, Jim & Jesse developed a smooth blend of harmony singing that contrasted with the more piercing, down-home vocal arrangements of Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers. Mr. McReynolds sang the melody line in a crystalline baritone, while his brother, who died of thyroid cancer in 2002, added honeyed tenor harmonies on top.The McReynolds’s instrumental approach likewise was more polished than that of their peers, creating a bridge between the barnyard twang of early sibling duos like the Delmore Brothers and the more streamlined sounds of mid-20th century country music.Typically backed by banjo, fiddle and bass, the duo’s music — built around Mr. McReynolds’s plaintive mandolin playing and his brother’s metronome-like rhythm guitar — was not without its experimental side. Most notable was Mr. McReynolds’s widely imitated cross-picking technique, which employed a flat pick to approximate the three-finger banjo roll of the bluegrass pioneer Earl Scruggs.“I was sort of listening to what he was doing,” Mr. McReynolds said, discussing the origins of his Scruggs-style picking, an approach that influenced mandolin virtuosos like David Grisman and Sam Bush, in a 2019 interview for the website candlewater.com.“I didn’t know how he was doing it. I knew he was using a three-finger roll on it,” he added, but “I was trying to do it with a straight pick so I could play my other style, too.”That other style, which also qualified as an innovation in bluegrass, involved a split-string technique in which Mr. McReynolds used his pinkie to hold down one string of his mandolin’s four pairs of strings while letting its counterpart reverberate, or ring open, to achieve a droning effect. Requiring great precision, this sleight-of-hand produced two distinct notes from a pair of strings which, on the mandolin, were usually played in unison.The duo’s 1963 recording of the instrumental “Stoney Creek” is often cited as the quintessential vehicle for Mr. McReynolds’s prowess as a mandolinist. His Scruggs-inspired “mandolin roll,” though, already could be heard a decade earlier on gospel recordings like “I’ll Fly Away” and “On the Jericho Road.”The McReynolds brothers sometimes incorporated electric and steel guitar into their performances in lieu of bluegrass’s customary banjo and fiddle. In 1969, Mr. McReynolds contributed mandolin to a track on “The Soft Parade,” an album released by the countercultural Los Angeles rock band the Doors.Repertoire was yet another area in which Jim & Jesse were in the bluegrass vanguard. Nowhere was this more evident than with the 1965 release of “Berry Pickin’ in the Country,” a collection of bluegrass covers of Chuck Berry songs, including a chuffing take of “Memphis.” The album proved to be one of the most popular of the brothers’ career.Jesse McReynolds, center, in Nashville in 2014. He continued to perform after his brother Jim died in 2002. Erika Goldring/Getty ImagesTheir untrammeled musical instincts notwithstanding, Jim & Jesse were among the most commercially successful bluegrass acts of the ’60s and ’70s. They placed 10 singles on the country chart, notably “Cotton Mill Man” (1964), a worker’s plaint, and “Diesel on My Tail” (1967), a truck-driving song featuring steel guitar that reached No. 18.Jesse Lester McReynolds was born on July 9, 1929, in Carfax, Va., in the mountains of southern Appalachia. His father, Claude Matthew McReynolds, was a coal miner and amateur banjo player; his mother, Savannah Prudence (Robinette) McReynolds, played guitar, banjo and harmonica and taught her sons to sing gospel harmonies. Mr. McReynolds’s grandfather, the fiddler Charles McReynolds, recorded as one-half of the Bull Mountain Moonshiners at 1927’s Bristol Sessions, the so-called big bang of country music that produced landmark recordings by the likes of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family.Although raised in a musical family, young Jesse did not take up the mandolin in earnest until he turned 14 and was recovering from an automobile accident that left him with two broken legs. Four years later, he and his brother started a banjo-less string band that played country music throughout southwestern Virginia. It was not until 1952, when they began working with the producer Ken Nelson at Capitol Records, that they first described the music they were making as bluegrass.“We were hesitating over whether we’d even feature the five-string banjo,” Mr. McReynolds said in an interview for the liner notes to “Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys: In the Tradition,” a 1987 album released by Rounder Records. “But it turned out that Ken Nelson was expecting us to record as a bluegrass band, so that’s what we did.”Mr. Nelson also encouraged the brothers to change the name of their ensemble from the Virginia Trio, under which they made their first recordings in 1951, to Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys. In 1960, after more than a decade of performing on many of the radio barn dances of the era, they began hosting their own syndicated television program, sponsored by the Martha White flour company.The duo was a popular draw on the early ’60s folk circuit, appearing, among other places, at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. A year later they became members of the cast of the Grand Old Opry, having gained a reputation, like Bill Monroe before them, for attracting elite talent to their band like the fiddle players Tommy Jackson and Vassar Clements.The ensuing decades found the brothers returning to a more traditional approach to bluegrass while consolidating their reputation as one of the premier ensembles in the history of the idiom. Mr. McReynolds served as the affable frontman of the group, his brother as manager of their business affairs.In the late ’80s, Mr. McReynolds toured and recorded with the Masters, a bluegrass supergroup that included the fiddler Kenny Baker, the dobroist Josh Graves and the banjo player and guitarist Eddie Adcock.In 1993, Jim & Jesse were inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Hall of Fame. Four years later they received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.Mr. McReynolds remained active after his brother’s death. Among other projects, he released a 2010 collection of songs written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead, a band upon which Jim & Jesse were a formative influence.Besides his wife of 27 years, Mr. McReynolds is survived by a daughter, Gwen; two sons, Michael and Randy; eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.Much has been made of Mr. McReynolds’s debt to the ebullient banjo phrasing of Earl Scruggs. While certainly the case, Mr. McReynolds also improvised on his forebear’s technique by reversing the order of the notes he played in his variant of the Scruggs banjo roll to create a more melancholy tonal effect.“Ultimately, I ended up playing the opposite of what he did,” Mr. McReynolds explained, talking about the differences between his technique and that of Mr. Scruggs in a 2017 interview with Bluegrass Today. “My rolls went backwards, while Earl’s rolls went forward.” More

The crowd at the singer-songwriter’s first announced concert in more than two decades was intergenerational and grateful.The Joni Jam, featuring a cast of collaborators, was part of Brandi Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon festival.On the night of June 10 at the majestic Gorge Amphitheater in George, Wash., on the lip of the Columbia River, the 79-year-old singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell played her first headlining show in 23 years. Her appearance had the air of a comet’s return: rare, breathlessly awaited and well worth camping out all night. That many concertgoers had traveled long distances made the experience feel all the more like a Mitchell song — perhaps one of the poetic highway travelogues recorded on her 1976 album “Hejira,” or even one of the romantic, intercontinental voyages she sang about on her 1971 landmark “Blue.” It was a crowd dotted with tie-dye and graying braids, yes, but also one full of lifelong friends reunited, mothers and children bonding over intergenerational musical tastes and enough homemade Mitchell T-shirts to rival Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. As Mitchell said to the adoring crowd as it held glowing cellphone lights aloft, paraphrasing one of her most memorable songs, “You’re stardust, and golden.”Loretta Pervier Grant, 64, a lifelong Mitchell fan, had never seen her play live. So she and her husband, Larry Grant, 65, drove from Arizona for the show.From left: Rose Paisley, Julie Chinnock, Vivian Pedegana, Lola Pedegana and Greg Pedegana. Rose Paisley’s daughters wore their grandmother’s clothes to the show, including her cowboy boots and jewelry.Dan Waldron and Elizabeth Ford drove from Canada to see Mitchell’s show.Suzanne Park, 64, said she grew up listening to Mitchell’s music in the ’60s and ’70s, and would play her songs on her guitar in high school. More