Music

The director and production designer of the latest installment in the robot action franchise discuss recreating the sights and sounds of 1990s Brooklyn culture.In previous “Transformers” movies, fans have seen their beloved robots Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Arcee battle their way out of plenty a dilemma. But have they ever seen an Autobot kick butt to the rhymes of LL Cool J? That’s the energy of “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” (in theaters), with its director Steven Caple Jr. giving the franchise an inclusive spin.The down on his luck Brooklyn native Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) is recruited by the Autobots to retrieve an artifact held by the museum researcher Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback) that could transport the stranded Autobots back to their home planet, Cybertron.Robot fights ensue (mainly with a rival faction called the Terrorcons), but apart from the dazzling effects and globe-trotting backdrops, what gives Caple’s film its singular identity is the 1990s New York City hip-hop it takes inspiration from.“The ’90s was a specific era, in general, that is definitely what we wanted to tap into with the film,” Caple said in an audio interview. A sense of Black cultural spirit — the fashion, music, and community — was one that Caple felt was missing from many big budget movies of that decade. He said that it was only present if you were watching films by Black directors like John Singleton and Ernest Dickerson, major influences for Caple.To imbue the film with this nostalgic presence, the production first needed to transform a section of Montreal into Brooklyn. The effects of gentrification in Brooklyn were a factor that necessitated the move across the border. The team referred to the photography of Jamel Shabazz and the television series “New York Undercover” as visual touchstones to capture the city’s past aesthetics. They also scoured Montreal for a semblance of a street that could serve as Noah’s neighborhood, and populated the area with vintage Oldsmobiles, Cavaliers and an Acura Legend. A tracking shot near the film’s beginning creates a vivid reawakening of the era: Noah walks down the street past classic cars, and through scenes of people sitting on crates and drinking quarter waters, of some selling tapes out of their trunk.Dean Scott Vazquez with Anthony Ramos in “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.”Paramount PicturesCaple and the production designer Sean Haworth credited Ramos and Fishback — both New York natives — with providing notes that added to the film’s authenticity.“They start bringing things that they remembered from their childhood,” said Haworth in an interview, “things they liked or the music they listened to, the books they read.”Another texture from the ’90s arises in the film’s period-accurate fashions. Caple credited the costume designer Ciara Whaley with rewatching television shows like “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “Living Single” to inspire the fly look composed of chokers and suspenders for Fishback’s Elena. For Noah’s appearance, Caple wanted to draw from the decade’s popular clothing lines. “I was very specific in being like, I wanna work with the Karl Kanis and the Walker Wear, the gear we were pushing during that time, but also were Black owned,” he said.While the film’s visual callbacks are imperative, it’s the hip-hop soundtrack that gives “Rise of the Beasts” its sonic verve. The music occasionally springs from diegetic sources. Fishback, for instance, suggested to Caple that Elena should sing to herself whenever she’s nervous. It’s why when the Terrorcons infiltrate Elena’s museum, she can be heard crooning TLC’s “Waterfalls” to herself.At other times, a needle drop of a radio classic will propel a scene, such as Digable Planets’ “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” powering a heist sequence whereby Noah attempts to steal an Autobot disguised as a Porsche. Other soundtrack samplings include Black Sheep’s “The Choice Is Yours,” The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize,” A Tribe Called Quest’s “Check the Rhime” and Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.” The music remains prominent even when the action shifts from the confines of New York City to the rolling hills of Peru. During the final battle between the Autobots and Terrorcons, LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” provides a sharp punch that put a dent in the film’s budget.“It fits so perfectly, but the studio said this is gonna be the most expensive song in the movie,” Caple said. “It was that pricey. But it just felt so right.”As did commissioning the soundtrack’s sole original song, “On My Soul,” by Tobe Nwigwe (who also stars as Noah’s friend Reek) and the hip-hop legend Nas, featuring Jacob Banks. The defiant track not only gives the final battle a firmer edge beyond the easy grooves of the throwback needle drops, it marries contemporary recording techniques with ’90s flair, particularly through Nas’s sharp verses. In an interview, Nwigwe said that Nas “came in and just cooked up greatness.”To Caple, harnessing the ’90s hip-hop scene was more than artistically fulfilling. It’s a vision of urban Blackness that needn’t be politically important, even as it showcases a specific cultural lens of music and fashion. And while it’s easy to see “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” as a bid for nostalgia, Caple doesn’t want to call it a comeback. It’s a resurgence. More

Hear songs that memorably accompanied scenes in “Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and more.Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot Tenenbaum in “The Royal Tenenbaums.” She’s always late, but worth waiting for.Touchstone PicturesDear listeners,One day when I was 14, I stayed home sick from school and watched a weird little movie called “Rushmore” on Comedy Central. When it was over, I thought to myself, “Oh, so that’s what a director does.”I had never before encountered a movie that so distinctly seemed to come from a single person’s perspective. The filmmaker Wes Anderson had created his own alternate reality, with its own color scheme, its own vernacular, and — perhaps most crucially — its own killer music. I wanted to live inside of that world. I bought the soundtrack as soon as I could.For aspiring aesthetes, Anderson’s movies can be gateway drugs. Eager to catch all of his cinematic references and influences, his films led me to the work of directors like François Truffaut, Yasujiro Ozu and Satyajit Ray. But the songs in his films are vehicles of discovery, too. I’d never heard the Creation’s “Making Time,” that garage-rock classic with guitars that rev like a souped-up engine, or the Who’s gloriously bombastic rock opera “A Quick One, While He’s Away” until I saw “Rushmore.” I learned about Nico from “The Royal Tenenbaums” and Seu Jorge from “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.” Anderson’s carefully curated soundtracks felt, to me, like eclectic, handmade mixtapes.As I got deeper into movies, I realized that even the most personal-seeming film is the result of collaboration with countless others: cinematographers, production designers, wardrobe stylists, and, of course, music supervisors. The needle drops in most of Anderson’s films are the result of his longtime working relationship with the music supervisor Randall Poster. In more recent movies, like the Oscar-winning “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and the underrated “The French Dispatch,” he’s also worked with repeatedly with the composer Alexandre Desplat, who has composed intricate and appropriately quirky scores that help bring Anderson’s worlds to life.In honor of Anderson’s new movie, “Asteroid City,” which I am very excited to see when it comes out this weekend, I put together a playlist of some of the most iconic and unexpected songs featured in his films. Quite a few have become inextricably tied to Anderson scenes. Never again will I hear “These Days” without picturing Margot Tenenbaum walking off a Green Line bus in slow-motion, or “A Quick One, While He’s Away” without imagining Herman Blume destroying poor Max Fischer’s bicycle. Sic transit gloria, indeed.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. The Creation: “Making Time”The tracks used in Anderson’s movies often serve as unofficial theme songs for characters, reflecting the way they see themselves — the song playing in their own heads as they walk down the street. Fischer, the scheming protagonist of “Rushmore,” is too square to truly embody the bratty, take-no-prisoners attitude of this jangly 1966 rocker from the British band the Creation; for him, it’s more of an aspirational soundtrack. (Listen on YouTube)2. The Ramones: “Judy Is a Punk”Anderson is a master of the montage, and many of his most memorable ones rely on a great, propulsive song to give its disparate shots a unified mood. One of my favorites compiles footage of a private detective’s dossier on Margot Tenenbaum’s secret life in “The Royal Tenenbaums.” The sonic jump-cut from silence to the Ramones’ explosive “Judy Is a Punk” sets the moment apart from the rest of the film, and makes all of Margot’s exploits seem that much cooler. (Listen on YouTube)3. Paul Simon: “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”Or maybe this is my favorite montage in “The Royal Tenenbaums.” When the disreputable patriarch Royal, played indelibly by Gene Hackman, wants to bond with his precocious, track-suited grandsons Ari and Uzi, he takes them out for some light mayhem: go-karting, water-balloon-throwing and petty larceny — all to the tune of Paul Simon. It’s against the law! (Listen on YouTube)4. Seu Jorge: “Life on Mars?”Anderson’s 2004 feature “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” featured the Brazilian musician Seu Jorge as a kind of one-man Greek chorus, singing acoustic covers of David Bowie songs in Portuguese. The melodies are so universally recognizable that you don’t need to understand the language to at least hum along to Jorge’s tender, sweetly crooned renditions of classics like “Rebel Rebel,” “Starman,” and of course, “Life on Mars?” (Listen on YouTube)5. Nico: “These Days”It’s the scene that launched a million Halloween costumes: Richie Tenenbaum waits for his escort from his days on the circuit, his sister, Margot. As usual, she’s late — but well worth the delay as she gets off the bus in her ever-present fur coat and raccoon-rimmed eyes, to the heart-stopping musical cue of Nico’s “These Days.” (Listen on YouTube)6. The Beach Boys: “Old Folks at Home/Old Man River”Several Beach Boys songs are used to great effect in “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” but none as stirringly as “Old Man River,” which soundtracks a heavenly moment at the end of the film when the animals find themselves in a supermarket. “Get enough to share with everybody,” Mr. Fox instructs, “and remember, the rabbits are vegetarians and badgers supposedly can’t eat walnuts.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Françoise Hardy, “Le temps de l’amour”In “Moonrise Kingdom,” from 2012 and set in 1964, young Sam and Suzy run away together and attempt to live out their own feral version of adulthood on an island. Among their possessions is a portable record player for 45 RPM singles, meaning they can soundtrack their own lives. Just before the awkward beachside dance that results in their first kiss, Suzy puts on Françoise Hardy’s 1962 single “Le temps de l’amour,” an achingly perfect choice for a 12-year-old trying on an air of sophistication like a pair of too-big high heels. (Listen on YouTube)8. The Rolling Stones: “Ruby Tuesday”As it’s used in a crucial scene in “The Royal Tenenbaums,” this early Stones classic casts such a rosy, romantic glow that you almost forget that you’re rooting for Richie Tenenbaum to end up with his adopted sister. (Listen on YouTube)9. The Kinks: “This Time Tomorrow”Like the Beach Boys in “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” sometimes an Anderson film will feature several songs from a single artist. Anderson’s fifth feature, “The Darjeeling Limited,” conjures its Indian setting by using instrumentals from the films of Satyajit Ray, though its placement of several songs from the Kinks’ 1970 album “Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One” — including the sweetly bleary “This Time Tomorrow” — serve as reminders that the film is filtered through a Westerner’s sensibility. (Listen on YouTube)10. The Who: “A Quick One, While He’s Away”Yet another top-tier Anderson montage, from “Rushmore”: a battle of petty acts of revenge between Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) and Blume (Bill Murray), given an anarchic grandeur thanks to this nearly nine-minute epic by the Who. Fun fact: While the version that appears on Rushmore’s official soundtrack is from the Who’s unrivaled 1970 concert album “Live at Leeds,” the version used in the film comes from the storied 1968 BBC special and eventual live record “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.” (Listen on YouTube)11. Van Morrison, “Everyone”Anderson has a knack for ending his movies with a bittersweet, emotionally resonant song that lingers in the air long after the credits roll. One of my favorites is “Everyone,” the clavinet-kissed Van Morrison track that rings out at the end of “The Royal Tenenbaums.” At once melancholy and hopeful, it’s the perfect way to conclude a movie that pierces your heart even as it’s making you laugh. And I think it’s a pretty good ending for this playlist, too. (Listen on YouTube)The Amplifier was written in a kind of obsolete vernacular,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Wes Anderson’s Best Needle Drops” track listTrack 1: The Creation, “Making Time”Track 2: The Ramones, “Judy Is a Punk”Track 3: Paul Simon, “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”Track 4: Seu Jorge, “Life on Mars?”Track 5: Nico, “These Days”Track 6: The Beach Boys, “Old Folks at Home/Old Man River”Track 7: Françoise Hardy, “Le temps de l’amour”Track 8: The Rolling Stones, “Ruby Tuesday”Track 9: The Kinks, “This Time Tomorrow”Track 10: The Who, “A Quick One, While He’s Away”Track 11: Van Morrison, “Everyone”Bonus TracksSeriously, behold that performance by the Who in “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus,” and bow down to Keith Moon in all his glory. Some people believe that the reason the Stones shelved the TV special and did not officially release it until 1996 was that they thought the Who upstaged them. I’ll let you be the judge: Watch this performance and ask yourself if it’s an act you’d want to follow.If you’re looking for new music, too, this week’s Playlist has fresh tunes from Meshell Ndegeocello, Doja Cat, Peggy Gou and more. More

Anthony Braxton’s music is difficult to program even among forward-thinking institutions. Leave it to the scrappy companies to get the work done.Anthony Braxton’s music is inherently theatrical. It’s also serious, and hilariously entertaining.It is not, however, performed with a frequency that befits Braxton’s stature, in a glaring, countrywide omission. More on that in a bit, but first: When seasoned practitioners of his work gather to explore some of his most overlooked pieces, which is happening this weekend at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn, that should qualify as a major event.On Thursday night at the Brick, the scrappy Experiments in Opera company pulled off a delirious debut performance of what it’s calling “Anthony Braxton Theater Improvisations.” The one-hour show proved delightful; and the small, cozy venue was rightfully sold out. The run continues through Saturday, so grab one of the remaining seats while you can.Those who can’t make it can still dig into this side of Braxton’s music, thanks to how doggedly he documents his projects. The Experiments show deserves attention, and perhaps documentation, given the way it provides a new lens on a corner of Braxton’s more conceptual side.The trumpeter Nate Wooley.Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesRob Reese served as both narrator and director.Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesThe evening is based on Opuses 279-283 in Braxton’s catalog: comedic efforts written for a narrator and an improvising instrumentalist. Back in 2000, Braxton — playing a range of saxophones and clarinets — recorded several of these works with a young stand-up comedian, Alex Horwitz.In Composition No. 282, that narrator is called upon to read the day’s newspaper (with an option to crumple it for timbral effect), while the instrumentalist improvises. In No. 281, bebop-like phrases run underneath one-liners and observational humor.But with just two people, the recording’s charm sometimes peters out. The Experiments show maintains higher energy, and brings three artists to each performance: a narrator-actor (Rob Reese, who also directed); another scene partner and soprano (Kamala Sankaram, a veteran of Braxton opera recordings); and an instrumentalist (on Thursday, the trumpeter Nate Wooley, who participated memorably in some larger Braxton ensembles during the 2010s).Before the show, the saxophonist James Fei, who performs on Friday’s set, told me that Composition No. 279 is essentially a compendium of jokes. That piece didn’t make the cut in Braxton’s recording with Horwitz from 2000, but it was featured in the Experiments show.Holding a top hat, Reese paced among the audience members and asked some of them to pick a card from inside it. A card might carry one of Braxton’s “language music” organizational prompts (like “intervallic formings”), paired with a genre of joke from Composition No. 279 (like “Republican/Democrat jokes.”)While Wooley and Sankaram worked with strident, leaping intervals, Reese delivered a joke that tended toward the school of the one-liner king Henny Youngman (to whom Braxton dedicated Composition 282). I roughly transcribed one of the jokes this way: “Why are Democrats always in favor of gun control? Because they keep shooting themselves in the foot.”On the page, this may not seem like much. But set against a duet of wildly leaping figures, it all produced a dazzling novelty that also reinvigorated a vintage form; the borscht belt never sounded so endearingly strange.Reese, who collaborated with Sankaram on her imaginative opera “Miranda,” also improvised some scenic work at the front of the stage with her. Some of their material was less obviously connected to the Braxton compositions as previously recorded but felt in the right spirit — as did Wooley’s improvisations away from his horn. In the background of one scene between Reese and Sankaram, the trumpeter sat against the brick wall at the stage’s rear. While lit with the penumbra of a spotlight aimed elsewhere, he coolly mimed the smoking of a cigarette with a kazoo.And since Braxton has written that “all compositions in my music system can be executed at the same time/moment,” the troupe reveled in that possibility. At one point, Wooley relished the languid, bop-tinged opening theme of Composition No. 23D, originally recorded on the album “New York, Fall 1974.”Then Sankaram swung into one of the meatier passages written for her in Braxton’s Composition No. 380 — the opera “Trillium J,” which was recorded and performed in 2014 at Roulette in Brooklyn. In one scene, Sankaram plays the role of “Miss Scarlet,” a “helpless maiden who happens to own 400 nuclear weapons stockpile containers — not to mention the chemical gas warfare options.”Coloratura singing, written for those lines? That’s funny. In the full opera — which is available on Blu-ray and as a paid download on Vimeo — the moment of humor that Sankaram really sells can whiz by amid all the orchestral complexity. But it had new verve when she brought it back around in the improvisational maelstrom of Thursday’s more intimate set.Some of the assorted instruments used during “Anthony Braxton Theater Improvisations.” Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesAll of this spoke to the unexplored potential of Braxton’s oeuvre. His catalog of over a half-century’s compositions and his playing on reed instruments are both rightfully talked about with awe, as is his record as a mentor. Wave after wave of celebrated player-composers, including George E. Lewis and Mary Halvorson, have cut their professional teeth in his ensembles. Aaron Siegel, the executive director of Experiments in Opera, has also served as a percussionist in those groups. In opening remarks on Thursday, he credited Braxton as one of his company’s original mentors.Braxton has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Foundation grant, and an NEA Jazz Masters award. If you talk to leaders of forward-thinking orchestras and opera companies, you’ll often hear (off the record) about their desire to program Braxton’s ambitious pieces — the ones that carry traces of bebop and Karlheinz Stockhausen, of Hildegard von Bingen and American folk dances.But it’s evidently difficult to make happen. When the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang was young and working with the New York Philharmonic, he tried pushing Braxton’s orchestral music on his superiors. No dice. Perhaps that’s because Braxton asks players to improvise as well as pay attention to complex notated material.So, for now, we have to rely on smaller organizations like Experiments in Opera to find the right balance and bring Braxtonia to life properly. And this week, they’re nailing it. More

Hear tracks by Peggy Gou, Killer Mike, Sparklehorse and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at [email protected] and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Meshell Ndegeocello featuring Jeff Parker, ‘ASR’The songs on Meshell Ndegeocello’s magnificent new album, “The Omnichord Real Book,” are always in flux. In its seven-and-half minutes, “ASR” hints at fusion jazz, Funkadelic, Ethiopian pop, reggae and psychedelia; the guitarist Jeff Parker, from Tortoise, teases the music forward. As the song accelerates, Ndegeocello sings about pain, heartbreak, healing and perseverance, and she vows, “We’re here to set the clock to here and now.” JON PARELESPeggy Gou, ‘(It Goes Like) Nanana’Peggy Gou is a South Korean-born, Berlin-based D.J. and producer with a penchant for dreamy house beats and a velvety touch. Her latest single “(It Goes Like) Nanana” plays out a bit like her own personal reworking of ATC’s ubiquitous 2000 hit “All Around the World,” but with a kinetic energy that’s distinctly her own. “I can’t explain,” Gou sings over a thumping beat and light piano riff, before deciding she can best express the feeling she wants to describe in nonsense words: “I guess it goes like na na na na na na.” LINDSAY ZOLADZDoja Cat, ‘Attention’Doja Cat returns with a vengeance on the menacing “Attention,” a statement record that puts her pop sensibility aside (at least for now) and leans into her ample skills as an M.C. “Look at me, look at me — you lookin’?” she begins, and for the next few minutes commands the floor with charismatic grit. “Baby, if you like it, just reach out and pet it,” she sings on a hook that recalls ’90s R&B, albeit filtered through Doja’s alien sensibility. The verses, though, are pure venom: “Y’all fall into beef, but that’s another conversation,” she spits with that signature fire in her throat. “I’m sorry, but we all find it really entertaining.” ZOLADZKiller Mike featuring Future, André 3000 and Eryn Allen Kane, ‘Scientists & Engineers’Ambition and achievement, electronics and exaltation all figure in “Scientists & Engineers” from “Michael,” Killer Mike’s first solo album since he formed Run the Jewels with El-P. “Scientists & Engineers” has five producers including James Blake and No I.D. The track pulsates with keyboard chords under the elusive André 3000 (from Outkast), who insists, “Rebelling is like an itch.” The music switches to silky guitar chords for Future, who sings, “It’s better to be an outcast in a world of envious.” And a beat kicks in with trap drums and blipping synthesizers behind Killer Mike, who boasts in quick triplets: “I’m never chillin’, I gotta make millions.” A multitracked Eryn Allen Kane wafts choirlike harmonies — and gospel-tinged sentiments like “I’mma live forever” — while the rappers redefine themselves. PARELESFlesh Eater featuring Fiona Apple, ‘Komfortzone’None other than Fiona Apple decided to collaborate with Flesh Eater, a Nashville avant-pop group, on the mercurial seven-minute excursion “Komfortzone.” Over a low, sputtering programmed beat and outbursts of noise and electronics, Flesh Eater’s lead singer, Zwil AR, sings hopscotching melodies reminiscent of Dirty Projectors. Apple sprinkles in some piano and eventually adds vocal harmonies on refrains like “A field of sunflowers with their backs toward me/I’m on the train.” It’s as willful as it is arty. PARELESSparklehorse, ‘Evening Star Supercharger’Mark Linkous was making his fifth album as Sparklehorse when he died by suicide in 2010. Now his family and a handful of collaborators have completed it, due for a September release as “Bird Machine.” A preview single, “Evening Star Supercharger,” tops unhurried folk-rock with the tinkle of a toy piano, as Linkous cryptically but matter-of-factly considers mortality and depression: “Peace without pill, gun or needle or prayer appear/Never found sometimes near but too fleet to be clear.” In the sky, he calmly watches a star going nova: “Even though she’s dying, getting larger.” PARELESOmah Lay, ‘Reason’The Nigerian singer Omah Lay has split his songs between partying and self-doubt; he has also been featured by Justin Bieber. “Reason,” from the newly expanded version of his 2022 album, “Boy Alone,” has minor chords and grim scenarios: “I don’t know who to run to right now/Army is opening heavy fire.” The beat is buoyant, but the tone is fraught. PARELESDavid Virelles, ‘Uncommon Sense’A low-riding shuffle beat isn’t the Cuban-born pianist, composer and folklorist David Virelles’s most common environment. But “Carta,” Virelles’s new LP, puts him and his longtime first-call bassist, Ben Street, together with Eric McPherson, an innovator and tradition-bearer in today’s jazz drumming. This is the closest Virelles has come to making a standard-format jazz trio album, though it’s still not exactly that. On the opener, “Uncommon Sense,” McPherson’s shuffle kicks in after 25 seconds of solo piano, and Virelles has already led things down a tense path, changing keys capriciously while building up a foundation for the Cubist phrase at the center of the tune. McPherson’s elegantly splattered drum style, using traditional grip to roll his rhythms out as close to the ground as possible, gives solid support to Virelles while he toys with contemporary-side influences: the bodily elocution of Don Pullen’s piano playing, the harmonic splintering and superimpositions of Craig Taborn, the rhythmic restraint of a Gonzalo Rubalcaba. You wouldn’t need to be told this album was recorded at Van Gelder Studio to realize it’s speaking with jazz history — the antique, the modern and what’s barely come into shape. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBen van Gelder, ‘Spectrum’“Manifold,” a new album from the rising bandleader Ben van Gelder, celebrates the voice. The voice of his saxophone, the voice of the pipe organ, the human voice, the collective voice of an eight-piece band. Each has its own grain. The organ has its own prominent side-narrative in jazz history, but the Amsterdam-based van Gelder is culling from a different stream, closer to contemporary classical composers like Arvo Pärt and György Ligeti, using dissonance and space. The Veracruz-born vocalist Fuensanta sings no words on “Spectrum,” the album’s rangy centerpiece track; she joins the horns, sounding almost like another reed instrument. Beneath them, Kit Downes toggles between minimalism and high-rising waves on the pipe organ. RUSSONELLOElliott Sharp, ‘Rosette’The composer Elliott Sharp has been devising systems of pitch and structure since the 1970s. His latest album, “Steppe,” is inspired by geography. It’s music for six overdubbed vintage electric steel guitars, microtonally tuned and arrayed in stereo, exploring texture and resonance. “Rosette” is built from quick, cascading, staggered, overlapping little runs. It’s bell-toned and spiky, crumbling and reassembling. PARELES More

The lineup for the artistic director’s final season will feature an interactive food theater performance and several dance programs.An intimate dinner-party performance, a fire-and-brimstone immersive show and a slew of dance performances are on tap for the coming Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the performing arts center announced on Friday.The festival will be the last to be programmed under David Binder, the artistic director, who announced earlier this year that he would step down and transition to an artistic advisory role on July 2. An interim artistic director will be announced in the coming weeks.This year’s edition of the storied festival will be scaled back, featuring seven programs — nearly half the last slate — from Oct. 19 through Jan. 13. The festival’s offerings have been steadily declining in recent years. In 2019, Next Wave featured 16 programs, down from 31 in 2017.“We prefer to think of it as dense and not necessarily shrinking,” said Amy Cassello, the festival’s associate director of programming. “I don’t think it’s any secret that arts institutions are pressed for funding.”The program is “an incredibly intentional effort,” she said.First on the schedule is the U.S. premiere of “Broken Chord” (Oct. 19-21), a retelling of South Africa’s first Black choir by the South African dancer and choreographer Gregory Maqoma and the composer Thuthuka Sibisi. Using atmospheric soundscapes and traditional Xhosa movement, the performance will feature a single dancer, four vocal soloists and a live local choir.Also on the lineup is the theater maker Geoff Sobelle’s surreal interactive dinner performance, “Food” (Nov. 2-18), in which audience members gather around an colossal banquet table. The show, which debuted at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2022, and which the New York Times critic Alexis Soloski called “a meditation on what and how and why we eat,” is the third in a trilogy of Sobelle’s performance works at BAM, following “The Object Lesson” in 2014 and “Home” in 2017.The artist and filmmaker Lynette Wallworth’s “How to Live (After You Die)” (Dec. 7-9) is a personal monologue on the seduction of cults and the extreme edges of organized religion. The choreographer Trajal Harrell’s “The Köln Concert” (Nov. 2-4), a dance work inspired by Keith Jarrett’s genre-hopping piano recording of the same name, will be performed by Harrell’s Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble. And the choreographer Rachid Ouramdane’s “Corps Extrêmes” (Oct. 27-29), an aerial dance work, contemplates the space between earth and sky, set against the backdrop of a climbing wall and a suspended high rope.The season will conclude with Huang Ruo’s “Angel Island” (Jan. 11-13), an opera-theater work about the plight of Chinese migrants who were detained under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1883. In collaboration with the Del Sol Quartet, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street and the archival filmmaker Bill Morrison, Ruo’s BAM debut will present a multimedia requiem based on poetry engraved on the detention center’s walls.“BAM has always said that we follow the artist,” Cassello said. “The work in this festival is very much attuned to present-day issues. We don’t take for granted that people are wanting to come back to theater.” More

The event is also moving two competitions into its “general” field, adding three awards, and setting a new threshold for collaborators in album of the year.Two years ago, the Grammy Awards abruptly increased the number of nominees permitted in its top categories, going to 10 slots on the ballot, from eight. Now, it is going back.The Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammys, said on Friday that the number of nominees would once again be set at eight in the four top categories — album, record and song of the year, and best new artist — for the 66th annual awards, scheduled to be presented in early 2024.Among other tweaks to the awards rules is the addition of two categories to the all-genre “general” field: producer of the year, nonclassical, and songwriter of the year, nonclassical, a new prize introduced at the most recent ceremony, in February. This change — the first addition to the general field since 1959 — would allow all the academy’s voting members to cast votes in those categories.The move to 10 nominees, decided by the board just one day before nominations were announced in 2021, made the always-surprising Grammy process even more unpredictable. Some voters complained privately that broadening the field lowered the mandate for winners too far, allowing — theoretically, at least — one artist to prevail with little more than 10 percent of the vote.Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the academy, said in an interview this week that the organization had not heard any such complaints, but he acknowledged that similar questions were on the minds of board members when they voted last month to change the rules.“Does the vote get split? Is 10 too many? Does it minimize the nomination?” Mason said. “All these conversations were happening in trying to find what is the best number.”At the Grammy ceremony in February, Harry Styles won album of the year for “Harry’s House,” beating out releases by Beyoncé, Adele, Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny.The change announced Friday is the third of its kind in five years. In 2018, the academy increased the ballot from five to eight; three years later, it went from eight to 10.In another shift, the Grammys are setting a new eligibility threshold for collaborators on album of the year. In recent years, the Grammys have required that contributors like songwriters, engineers and guest performers appear on at least 33 percent of an album’s playing time, but for the 2022 awards, that bar was reduced to zero — a change that in some cases resulted in more than 100 names appearing in the nomination.That threshold has now been raised to 20 percent, which should cull many songwriters and other contributors who appear on just one or two tracks on a typical album.Among other changes, the academy is introducing three awards for next year: best African music performance, best pop dance recording and best alternative jazz album.Those additions bring the total for the 66th ceremony to 94 categories, a number that has been growing rapidly. As recently as three years ago, the Grammys had 84.In another change that raised some eyebrows in the music industry, the Grammys shifted the eligibility period for the 2024 awards twice recently, first announcing an 11-month window and then adding two weeks two it, resulting in an unusual eligibility period of 11 and a half months, covering Oct. 1, 2022, to Sept. 15, 2023. More

Eschewing a conventional narrative, Jillian Walker’s soulful show seeks to heal deep wounds through ritual and celebratory singalongs.In “The Whitney Album,” a heady and ritualistic new show that recently opened at Soho Rep, the playwright and actor Jillian Walker uses Whitney Houston as an object lesson: The pressures heaped on gifted and famous Black women, Walker suggests, are stifling, destructive and rooted in colonial subjugation.Unlike the pop-diva-inspired musicals proliferating uptown, “The Whitney Album” eschews a hit catalog for a soundtrack that’s sui generis, with percussive body movements, a cappella solos and, eventually, a group singalong. The director Jenny Koons’s production unfolds — on a mostly white stage (designed by Peiyi Wong), with a brass singing bowl gleaming down center — as a kind of happening, unconcerned with conventional narrative. The show assumes the style of what Walker might call “a vibe.”After offering a warm welcome, the playwright delivers a lecture about the power of theater to remake history (“the archive is the unsung silence,” she says). Dense with academic syntax and punctuated by elemental rites (like the pouring of water or sand from one vessel to another), “The Whitney Album” blends intellectual theory and ceremony to the point of abstraction. (Walker studied to become an Afro-Indigenous priest, she says, after being passed over for a prestigious full-time professorship.)The actor Stephanie Weeks joins Walker onstage, and the two trade off playing Houston and the women she was closest to — her mother and a longtime confidante — in scenes fraught with the stress of celebrity. (The sound designer Ben Jalosa Williams, who operates an onstage board, briefly plays the role of an impatient white interviewer.) Walker likens Houston’s prodigious perspiration to the sweat, tears and saltwater graves of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, tracing the consumption and disposal of Black women over three centuries. It’s a powerful argument, at once persuasive and oversimplified. (“The Whitney Album” does not extend to consider today’s Black female pop stars, like Beyoncé, for example, who maintain a high degree of control over their labor and publicity.)The show’s shuffle of forms — including direct address, re-enactment, live and recorded vocals — can feel like an especially soulful, high-concept record that’s more evocative than linear. But its piled-up ideas, many of them couched in esoteric language that’s not easy to parse in a 90-minute performance, ultimately don’t cohere into a moving or insightful whole.Walker’s passion and intellect seem to place her along the continuum of artists and scholars she calls out by first name — like Saidiya, Lauryn and bell, among others. But how can Walker avoid participating in the cycle of consumption she aims to critique? It’s a question that she proves has no easy answers.The Whitney AlbumThrough July 2 at Soho Rep, Manhattan; sohorep.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

“60 Years,” a compilation marking the 60th anniversary of his Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, spotlights the pianist and community organizer, who died in 1999.There’s a name engraved in the sidewalk along Degnan Boulevard in Los Angeles’ Leimert Park neighborhood: Horace Tapscott, the local pianist and organizer whose ensemble, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, gave many musicians their first gigs and helped heal a community impacted by racism.“He saved Los Angeles when it comes to progressive music,” said the vocalist Dwight Trible, a performer with the Arkestra since 1987, in a telephone interview. “Because if you were going to get involved in that, you had to come through Horace Tapscott.”Tapscott started the group in 1961 and maintained it until his death in 1999, at 64. Yet his name has never rung as loudly outside of L.A. He didn’t tour much and his albums of vigorous Afrocentric jazz weren’t released on mainstream record labels. A new compilation titled “60 Years,” out Friday, may change that.The double LP set collects unreleased songs from every decade of the Arkestra’s existence, up to its present-day iteration with the drummer Mekala Session at the helm. Through a mix of home and live recordings, along with written track-by-track breakdowns from past and present members in the album’s liner notes, “60 Years” offers perspective on a group that’s largely flown under the radar.Featuring Bill Madison on drums; David Bryant on bass; Lester Robertson on trombone; and Arthur Blythe, Jimmy Woods and Guido Sinclair on saxophone; the Arkestra started in Tapscott’s garage and grew dramatically over the following 17 years.Tapscott founded the band and the Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension, an artists’ collective, to provide more gigs for progressive jazz musicians living in L.A., and to get local children involved in the arts. His own journey in music began when he was young; his mother, Mary Lou Malone, was a stride pianist and tuba player and as a teen he played trombone locally before entering the Air Force.After a tour of the South with the vibraphonist Lionel Hampton’s band, he wasn’t enamored with life on the road. During a stop in L.A., where Tapscott had lived since he was 9, he hopped off Hampton’s tour bus for good. “No one discovered I was gone until they got to Arizona,” he said in a 1982 interview.“He was way more interested in feeling and sounding like himself with his friends, who were also really unique,” Session said on a video call from Los Angeles. Still, Tapscott’s mission stretched beyond music. During the Watts riots in 1965, he had the band play in the middle of the road on a flatbed truck. (Police responded, with guns drawn.) They group would often perform in churches, community centers, prisons and hospitals for little to no money, and at benefits for Black Panther leaders, drawing attention from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.Though Tapscott released his first album, “The Giant Is Awakened,” with a separate quintet in 1969, his debut LP with the Arkestra didn’t arrive until “The Call,” a mix of bluesy ballads and orchestral arrangements with grand flourishes, in 1978. Along the way, noted musicians and vocalists like Nate Morgan, Kamau Daaood, Adele Sebastian and Phil Ranelin played in the band.Trible came across Tapscott in the late 1980s as a singer in another group who wanted to work with the Arkestra. Two weeks after they performed separately at a festival, Tapscott offered an invitation. “He said, ‘I want you to come to my house tomorrow at 3 o’clock,’ and he hung up the phone,” Trible remembered with a laugh. “And just about every concert that Horace played from that time on, I sang with him in some capacity.”Trible performed a fiery rendition of “Little Africa,” a rapturous gospel song, with the current version of the Arkestra at National Sawdust in Brooklyn earlier this month. The festive night of shouts and praise featured older and younger Arkestra members, and served as a showcase for Session, the band’s leader since 2018; Mekala is the son of the saxophonist Michael Session, who led the band before him.In an interview before the gig, Session recalled joining the band as a teen. “I’m 13 and my first gig with the Ark is with Azar Lawrence,” he exclaimed, referring to the noted saxophonist and sideman to Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner and Freddie Hubbard. “It’s actually a very humbling thing to be a medium, a conduit for the ancestors trying to spread this vibration as far and as hard as possible.”The idea for the compilation arose shortly after the band’s 50th anniversary, which came and went without much fanfare. The collective vowed to not let that happen for its 60th. “We were like, ‘We’re going to make a product that will introduce a bunch of people to this band in a way that’s comprehensive and concise,” Session said. “This is for us, by us. We wanted to present something to the people from the band that can directly pay the band and support the band, and then be turned into other projects. It’s the first time the Ark has been able to do that, really.”Renewed interest in Tapscott and the Arkestra dates back at least seven years, when a new crop of L.A. jazz musicians — including the bassist Thundercat, the saxophonist Kamasi Washington and the producer and multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin — helped the superstar rapper Kendrick Lamar create his avant jazz-rap opus “To Pimp a Butterfly,” shedding light on the city’s still-fertile jazz scene. Since then, various labels have reissued Tapscott’s work. But the music on “60 Years,” remastered from old cassettes and CDs, hasn’t been heard beyond the Arkestra.Six decades since Tapscott formed the band, Session said the group’s mission hasn’t changed, and he vowed to continue pushing forward. “I want to get weirder. I want to get back to how Horace did shows at prisons and high schools and colleges for free,” he said. “We could sell out Carnegie Hall and then come home and do the same set for 50, 60 cats. I want that balance. It sounds impossible, but we can do it.” More