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      The Maestro Wore Blue: Bringing Pizazz to the Pit at the Met

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      Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, dressed in a blazing sapphire jacket and trim black pants, stood before a mirror backstage on a recent afternoon and smiled.“Oh my God, it’s so good,” he said, waving his baton. “I love it so much.”There were three days until the opening of Puccini’s “La Bohème,” and Nézet-Séguin, surrounded by a small team of tailors, designers and assistants, was offering feedback on his attire, which had been designed by the Met’s costume shop.His outfit was modeled on one worn onstage by a band leader in Franco Zeffirelli’s classic production. Could the golden braid that dangled from his right shoulder be fastened, so it did not create a distraction in the pit? Was the jacket comfortable enough to accommodate the sweeping gestures that the music demanded? And should there be more red, or maybe gold?The Met’s costume shop has designed outfits for Nézet-Séguin for eight productions, including this jacket for “Bohème.”“The more unusual elements,” he said, “the more fun for the audience.”Since the Met returned from the long pandemic shutdown, in the fall of 2021, Nézet-Séguin has been on a mission to challenge sartorial conventions, wearing eye-catching outfits designed by the Met’s costume shop in eight productions. There is limited space to make a statement; the designers focus on his back, since that is what most audience members will see.“We want to get some attention but not be too distracting,” said Robert Bulla, the Met’s assistant head costumer. “Nothing too obnoxious, but something that occasionally catches the light.”A conductor’s look book: clockwise from top left, “Champion,” “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” “The Hours” and “Lohengrin.”Nézet-Séguin sports a black-and-white hooded jacket modeled on a vintage Everlast boxing robe for Terence Blanchard’s “Champion,” an opera about the boxer Emile Griffith that had its Met premiere this month. (At the start of the second act, he enters the pit wearing the hood and boxing gloves, but removing both to conduct.)For “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which opened the season in 2021, Nézet-Séguin wanted to wear something special. The opera’s costume designer, Paul Tazewell, suggested this fireworks pattern.Rose Callahan/Metropolitan OperaHe wore a stained-glass pattern on his jacket for a 2021 revival of Puccini’s “Tosca,” which opens in the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome. And he switched from green to red to white shirts in Wagner’s “Lohengrin” this season, mimicking the look of the choristers, whose robes changed colors throughout the show.Nézet-Séguin said his outfits helped strengthen the bond between the pit and the stage.“You don’t want to ignore the orchestra,” he said. “If the conductor is there and seen, I think that helps the connection. It’s much more integrated.”At work in the costume shop. The jacket being constructed echoes one worn by a band leader onstage in the production.The costumes are also part of his efforts to make opera, which has long had a reputation for conservatism, more exciting and accessible.“We have to be more modern and approachable,” he said. “We want to welcome everybody.”While earlier music directors at the Met, all men, favored white tie and tails, Nézet-Séguin, who has held the post since 2018, has long had a more eclectic style, both in his clothes and appearance. He has bleached-blond hair and wears a diamond earring and several gold rings. He is fond of performing in clothes by designers like the Canadian Marie Saint Pierre and can be seen onstage in red-soled Christian Louboutin shoes.“The more unusual elements,” Nézet-Séguin said, “the more fun for the audience.”As the Met prepared to reopen its doors to the public after the pandemic shutdown in 2021, Nézet-Séguin felt it was time for a change.The Met was preparing to open the season with Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” the first work by a Black composer in the company’s history. Nézet-Séguin wanted to wear something to reflect the importance of the moment. The costume designer for “Fire,” Paul Tazewell, suggested a fireworks pattern, with flashes of red, indigo, teal and orange.“To be plain dressed — it just felt wrong to me,” Nézet-Séguin said.Beyond white tie and tails. “We want to get some attention but not be too distracting,” Robert Bulla, an assistant head costumer at the Met, said.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesThe designs often riff on an opera’s central themes. For Kevin Puts’s “The Hours,” based on the 1998 novel and the 2002 film it inspired, he wore a floral pattern, a nod to the work’s many references to flowers.Comfort is a priority — the designers want to ensure that he feels unhindered, and they use lightweight and stretchable fabric for flexibility and to absorb sweat. The costume shop often produces several of each jacket so he can change into a fresh one between acts.Some operas are more challenging than others. The team struggled to come up with an idea for “Bohème” before recalling that the production includes a scene in which a band leader guides a procession of soldiers across the stage.Nézet-Séguin, who painted his nails fuchsia for “Champion,” sometimes adds his own touches.“It’s good to be breaking this mold of what everyone thinks classical music and opera is,” Bulla said. “Some people say it’s taken a long time to start this evolution process. But at least it’s evolving.”Nézet-Séguin sometimes adds his own touches. He painted his nails fuchsia for “Champion,” to match the purple robe worn onstage by Ryan Speedo Green, who plays Griffith. And he said he was eager for a day when the Met orchestra musicians would be allowed to dress with more variety. (The dress code demands tuxedos or long, flowing black clothes for evening performances.)“It’s baby steps,” he said. “When I make statements like this, mentalities can evolve. We have to think more creatively and ergonomically. This is only the beginning.” More

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      Les Arts Florissants Returns to New York, Endangered

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      William Christie’s early-music ensemble, once a staple at Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, finds a new home in Carnegie Hall.The pair of concerts that William Christie and his ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, offered at Carnegie Hall this week made me a little sad.Not the concerts themselves: They were excellent, occasionally exquisite. What depressed me was the question of whether there’s a future in New York for this pathbreaking early-music group, founded in France four decades ago by Christie, an American.Its longtime bases when on tour in the city, Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, have jolted away from the kind of music programming that was until recently a core part of their identities — and the kind that Les Arts Florissants embodies. But this ensemble gives the lie to the suggestion, made by certain administrators, that presenting music of the past necessarily means sleepy renditions of the standards.Sure, Christie and Les Arts Florissants don’t do contemporary pieces. Their repertoire, with its founding specialty in the French Baroque of Lully, Rameau and Charpentier, doesn’t check fashionable boxes of diversity, equity and inclusion.But that doesn’t mean they are reactionary, dull, irrelevant or unworthy of being presented alongside the best of the present day. For decades, they have been fulfilling the task of any truly important cultural institution: opening up new worlds of beauty and excitement, both emotional and intellectual. Not merely rehashing what’s known, but introducing modern audiences to works and composers overlooked for centuries.Les Arts Florissants opera productions, in particular, have been deep and poignant — and very vibrant — excavations. But the organizations with the spaces and resources to put them on in America’s cultural capital no longer seem to think that’s a meaningful endeavor. That’s a loss for New York.So gratitude is due to Carnegie, one of the city’s few remaining major presenters of early music, for offering the ensemble a place to land — at least for the moment and in spare numbers. On Tuesday, Christie and the young violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte appeared upstairs, at Weill Recital Hall. And on Wednesday, Christie led slightly (but not much) beefier forces downstairs, at Zankel Hall.Christie and Langlois de Swarte gave a version of the violin-harpsichord program they recorded a few years ago, featuring sonatas from the early 18th century that demonstrate the influence that passionate, tumblingly virtuosic Italian music had on the austere, even severe dances of 17th-century France.The revelation of that album — and the best part of Tuesday’s recital — was the work of Jean Baptiste Senaillé, a favorite of the aristocracy in his day but now an obscurity. He was particularly adept at inflaming restrained French elegance with Italian intensity, as in the inexorably winding violin line of a G minor sonata’s prelude, exploding in arpeggios that lead to a fiery yet stylish gavotte.Langlois de Swarte, his tone clear but with an appealing hint of wiry bite, played with vivacity and wit. And the Adagio harpsichord introduction to a sonata in C minor showed off Christie’s magic touch, his phrasing noble yet gentle.Both this and Wednesday’s program were canny: short enough to do without an intermission, yet focused enough to feel immersive. So many programs these days valorize variety, but to spend a bit over an hour in a single sound world can be a profound experience.Better to be left wanting more. But I ever so slighted rued that, since it consisted mostly of selections of movements, Tuesday’s recital included only one full Senaillé sonata. (The recording boasted four, alongside two by his slightly younger contemporary, Jean-Marie Leclair.)On Wednesday, Christie led from the organ an ensemble of, at its most robust, nine male singers and seven players in a set of sacred works by Charpentier, whose opera “Les Arts Florissants” gave the group its name.This was, a little belatedly, music for the Lenten period, beginning with Charpentier’s beautiful, sober yet luscious set of 10 “Meditations for Lent” — a kind of proto-Passion that charts the story of the Stations of the Cross. Soloists sing some of the lines of biblical dialogue, with the narration given a hypnotic setting for groups of voices.In these meditations and three “lessons,” traditionally sung as part of evening services during Holy Week, the instrumentalists were superbly restrained. And, if none of the individual voices were particularly impressive, the choir achieved remarkable, moving effects of hovering gauziness and almost whispered sweetness; the sound was sometimes mellow, sometimes thrillingly emphatic. Precision of attack let even this modest-size group take on fearsome grandeur when singing of the ripping of the temple’s curtain as Jesus was crucified.The almost excruciating impact of tightly shifting harmonies matched the accounts of pain and torture in the texts. The hall lights were dimmed almost to darkness; the mood, unbroken by applause until the end, was rapt.It, like Tuesday’s recital, was a performance to be celebrated. But it was hard not to feel like these bite-size concerts were whetting the appetite for a full meal that may never come this way again. More

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      April Stevens Dies at 93; Her ‘Deep Purple’ Became a Surprise Hit

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      Her unusual version of the standard, which she recorded with her brother, Nino Tempo, reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart in 1963 and won a Grammy.April Stevens, whose rushed recording of “Deep Purple” with her brother, Nino Tempo, became a chart-topping single in 1963 and won a Grammy Award, died on April 17 at her home in Scottsdale, Ariz. She was 93.The death was confirmed by her stepson Gary Perman.The Stevens-Tempo version of “Deep Purple” — a jazz standard that had been a hit for Bing Crosby — featured the siblings harmonizing over a mellow arrangement accented with a harmonica. Ms. Stevens had the idea to record the song, originally written for piano by Peter DeRose, with lyrics added by Mitchell Parish; Mr. Tempo came up with the arrangement; and Glen Campbell played on the record as a session musician.In one section, Ms. Stevens recited the lyrics and Mr. Tempo sang them back in falsetto. They went, in part:“When a deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls/ and the stars begin to twinkle in the night/ In the mist of a memory you wander back to me/ breathing my name with a sigh.”The siblings had stumbled on the spoken-word idea after Mr. Tempo had failed to memorize the lyrics in time for a rehearsal, so Ms. Stevens fed them to him during that session. A friend loved the effect, Mr. Tempo said in a phone interview, and “we knew we had backed into something magical.”They recorded “Deep Purple” in just 14 minutes, at the tail end of a session with Ahmet Ertegun, the Atlantic Records co-founder who had signed them to his Atco Records imprint. Mr. Tempo, who was not a harmonica player, picked up the instrument and tried a few licks.But the final result felt sloppy, Mr. Tempo said, and after executives at the label listened to the song, Mr. Ertegun told him that his partners “think it’s the worst record you’ve ever made.”In response, the siblings said that if Mr. Ertegun did not release “Deep Purple,” they would want to be released from their contract — they hoped to sign with the music producer Phil Spector. Mr. Ertegun relented. The song came out in September 1963 and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart the week of Nov. 16.The song did not stay on top for long: About a week later, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and most of the country’s attention was drawn far from the Top 40.But “Deep Purple” went on to sell more than a million copies, and the siblings won a Grammy for best rock ’n’ roll recording of the year.The duo of April Stevens and Nino Tempo released several more records that made the charts, but they never again reached No. 1; their brand of jazz-inflected pop music soon gave way to the rock ’n’ roll of the British invasion, with the Beatles first topping the Billboard charts in 1964.Carol Vincenette LoTempio was born in Niagara Falls, N.Y., on April 29, 1929, to Samuel and Anna (Donia) LoTempio, both descended from Italian immigrants from Sicily. Her mother was a homemaker, her father a grocer.Her brother, born Anthony Bart LoTempio, was musically gifted and sang onstage with Benny Goodman before he was 10 years old. The family moved to Los Angeles to develop his music career, where Carol attended Belmont High School.Before they became a brother-and-sister act, the siblings each established solo musical careers — he as a jazz saxophonist who played with artists like Bobby Darin, and she as a singer who recorded popular versions of songs like Cole Porter’s “I’m in Love Again.”Ms. LoTempio took the name April Stevens before releasing several records during the 1950s, including “Teach Me Tiger,” a sultry number with lyrics like “Take my lips, they belong to you.” Though some listeners found the song offensive, it reached a modest No. 86 on the Billboard chart in 1959. (In 1983, NASA used the song to awaken astronauts on a shuttle mission and invited Ms. Stevens to watch the landing.)The siblings appeared on “American Bandstand” and shared a stage with the Righteous Brothers and the Beach Boys among other gigs in the United States, Europe and Australia.Their other charting singles included versions of the standards “Whispering” (No. 11) and “Stardust” (No. 32), both in 1964. Both made use of their spoken-and-sung lyrics device.Ms. Stevens married William Perman in 1985; he survives her. In addition to her brother and stepson Gary, she is survived by another stepson, Robert Perman; two stepdaughters, Laura LeMoine and Lisa Price; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.With bookings drying up, the siblings stopped performing together as the 1970s gave way to the ’80s. Mr. Tempo later recorded and performed as a jazz saxophonist, but Ms. Stevens never returned to singing.They had left an imprint, though. Not long before the Stevens-Tempo act dissolved, another brother and sister duo, Donny and Marie Osmond, recorded their own duet of “Deep Purple.” Complete with harmonica riffs and the same spoken and sung lyrics, it reached No. 14 on the Billboard chart in 1976. More

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      Karl Berger, 88, Who Opened Minds of Generations of Musicians, Is Dead

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      A vibraphonist, pianist, educator and musical thinker, he co-founded the Creative Music Studio to bring all kinds of musicians together to foster cross-pollination and improvisation.Karl Berger, a musician, composer, educator and author who taught improvisation and his concept of an attentive, collaborative “music mind” to generations of musicians and artists at his Creative Music Studio near Woodstock, N.Y., died on April 9 in Albany, N.Y. He was 88.Billy Martin, the studio’s executive director, said the death, at Albany Medical Center, was caused by complications following gastrointestinal surgery.Mr. Berger was a pianist and vibraphonist who performed and recorded with leading jazz musicians including Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, John McLaughlin, Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, Jack DeJohnette, Pharoah Sanders, Dave Brubeck and Lee Konitz, among many others.Mr. Coleman, Mr. Berger and his wife, the singer Ingrid Sertso, founded the Creative Music Foundation in the early 1970s, to focus on improvisation and musical cross-pollination. The foundation ran the Creative Music Studio, in various locations in and near Woodstock, where Mr. Berger and other artists performed and taught. There, internationally known musicians from jazz and other traditions worked with musicians at all levels of skill, from amateur to virtuoso.Through the years, Mr. Berger played with small and large ensembles, recorded extensively, led university music departments, wrote arrangements for rock and pop albums, taught schoolchildren and adults, and developed his own techniques to unlock and encourage individual and collaborative musical thinking. His compositions often made connections with non-Western styles, and his musical practices drew on Eastern spirituality and meditation.“It’s not what you play, it’s how you play,” he often said.Mr. Martin said Mr. Berger’s musical approach was “not about genre.”“It’s about listening and making sound together,” he said, “starting from that fundamental place and building from there.”The jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, a frequent collaborator with Mr. Berger, with students at the Creative Music Studio in 1978.In his book, “The Music Mind Experience,” written with Rick Maurer, Mr. Berger insisted that “everyone is born with an abundance of musical talent,” and that all music shares fundamental common elements: rhythm, sound, space and dynamics. He sought to teach both players and listeners to escape routine and to concentrate their attention “fully in the moment.”Mr. Berger was born on March 30, 1935, in Heidelberg, Germany. He began studying classical piano at 10, but at 14 he heard a jazz jam session that made him decide to play his own music. In 1953, he joined a group that included Ms. Sertso, whom he would soon marry. She survives him along with their daughter, Savia.In the 1950s, as the house pianist at the Heidelberg club Cave 54, Mr. Berger learned modern jazz in late-night jams with American musicians from military bands stationed nearby. He earned a Ph.D. in musicology and philosophy in Germany in 1963 and held philosophy professorships at two universities in Germany. But by the mid-1960s he had turned to music.He moved to Paris and joined a group led by the trumpeter Don Cherry, who had been learning world-music melodies from shortwave radio broadcasts. In 1966, Mr. Cherry invited Mr. Berger to New York City to play on “Symphony for Improvisers,” a landmark free-jazz album.Mr. Berger made his debut album as a leader, “From Now On,” in 1967, and recorded with Mr. Cherry and others in the late 1960s. He went on to make more than two dozen albums as a leader and many others as a sideman. His lean, linear, freely melodic vibraphone playing repeatedly made him the top vibraphonist in the Down Beat magazine musicians’ poll.In 1971, Mr. Berger started the Creative Music Foundation with Ms. Sertso, Mr. Coleman and an advisory board that included John Cage, Gil Evans, Buckminster Fuller and Willem de Kooning. He moved to Woodstock in 1972 and inaugurated the Creative Music Studio, which settled into a nearby mountain lodge with residences and performance spaces.Leading musicians including Mr. Braxton, Mr. DeJohnette, Cecil Taylor and Dave Holland joined students in improvising groups. More than 550 performances were recorded and later digitized for an archive that was purchased by the Columbia University Library in 2012.During the 1980s, grant funding dwindled, and the studio curtailed its programs in 1984. But Mr. Berger remained active as a performer, touring Europe, Asia and Africa with Ms. Sertso.In the 1990s, he was also in demand as a string-section arranger. After working on Jeff Buckley’s 1994 album “Grace,” he wrote arrangements for albums by Natalie Merchant, Angelique Kidjo and others.Mr. Berger in 2008. The Creative Music Studio lost funding and curtailed its programs in the 1980s, but he continued to teach, perform and compose.Phil Mansfield for The New York TimesMr. Berger was a professor of composition and dean of music education at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts in Germany, and chairman of the department of music at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth during the early 2000s — although he objected to the department’s emphasis on classroom study rather than performance.He and Ms. Sertso opened Sertso Recording Studio in Woodstock in 2004. In 2010, with the help of musicians who had studied at Creative Music Studio decades earlier, they revived the organization. Mr. Berger led concerts in New York City and elsewhere by an Improvisers Orchestra, and in 2013 the studio restarted intensive semiannual workshops in the Catskills with musicians including Vijay Iyer, Henry Threadgill, Steven Bernstein and Joe Lovano.Mr. Berger relinquished the leadership of Creative Music Studio in 2017. But he continued to record and perform. His most recent release, in 2022, was a trio album, “Heart Is a Melody,” with Kirk Knuffke on cornet and Matt Wilson on drums. The album reached back to Mr. Berger’s free-jazz inspirations, with an Indian-inspired Don Cherry piece, “Ganesh,” and a tune called “Ornette.”“We all are infinitely more talented than we’ll ever realize in one lifetime,” Mr. Berger wrote in “The Music Mind Experience.” He continued, “Once we get in touch with our own voice, our own ways, we simply have to stay with it.” More

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      The Boston Symphony Finds Surprises and Strengths in New Music

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      Over two nights at Carnegie Hall, the Boston Symphony Orchestra presented the New York premieres of works by Thierry Escaich and Thomas Adès.When orchestras come to Carnegie Hall, their programs typically tell you two things: who they are and what they can do.That was true earlier this season when the Vienna Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann offered authoritative Strauss and Bruckner. Or when the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko opened up the complex worlds of Mahler’s Seventh with coordinated virtuosity. Or when the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel found irrepressible dynamism in blazing scores by Gabriela Ortiz.And over two nights at Carnegie this week, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Andris Nelsons, told their story gradually, one piece at a time, in canonical works by Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Sibelius and Mozart. It was only when they unveiled two New York premieres — Thierry Escaich’s “Les Chants de l’Aube,” with the cellist Gautier Capuçon, and Thomas Adès’s “Air,” with the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter — that they tapped into something special all at once.Among American orchestras, the Boston Symphony’s sound is enviably rich. That opulence was readily apparent in the ceaseless flow of cantabile melodies in Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony. You could hear it too in the briefest articulations, such as the resonant pizzicatos of Ravel’s cheeky “Alborada del Gracioso,” which on Monday opened the first concert, or the sonorous orchestral stabs on the last page of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, which on Tuesday closed the second.The Rachmaninoff often felt like an hourlong showcase for the spacious, burnished tone of the orchestra’s violin section. Nelsons coaxed gorgeous, heart-in-your-throat playing from them in one long-breathed line after another. As if to balance that, the Sibelius symphony was rife with woodwind and brass chorales; the strings don’t even enter until the 18th measure. The ensemble’s new principal horn, Richard Sebring — a longtime Boston Symphony player who recently won the chair after an international search — anchored his section with a glowing, edgeless sound.Nelsons seemed to celebrate one section at a time without employing his full forces — or full imagination — in the standard repertory pieces. Occasionally, an overwhelming plushness traded the vulnerability of Rachmaninoff’s music for invincible solidity. In the final movement, the players relaxed into the piece’s complexity, its romance caught in a swirl of vexed intent. Nelsons took the second movement of the Sibelius, built on a deceptively simple rhythmic unit, at face value, without the pluck, personality or sly contentment others have mined in it. In a piece as graceful and zesty as the Ravel, the slowly accumulating strength of the orchestra could be taken for turgidity.The violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, left, was the soloist in the New York premiere of Thomas Adès’s “Air.”Fadi KheirIn the two New York premieres, though, Nelsons unleashed the ensemble’s astonishing range of colors to enliven the particular atmosphere of each work.In a program note, Escaich compared his cello concerto “Les Chants de l’Aube” to a stained-glass window. The metaphor isn’t readily apparent; the music doesn’t bring to mind a mosaic of translucent, jeweled tones. If anything, its palette feels cool, foreboding.Escaich might be embodying spiritual forces both good and evil. With a glinting, coppery tone, Capuçon gave the opening phrase — a Baroque homage that nods to Bach’s Invention No. 13 — a cunning flicker of darkness and light. The violins played long notes on high, not unlike the angelic overture to Wagner’s “Lohengrin,” as the horns droned down below. Flutes dipped like swallows, and brasses popped out like goblins. Tubular bells tolled ritualistically. Within this frame, both beatific and ominous, Capuçon’s cello maneuvered: warm, bodily, determined.In that sense, the cello, in both design and execution, was very much the piece’s animating force, passing through light and shadow, and knowing something of both. Escaich wrote cadenzas to link the three movements into a continuous form, and Capuçon emphasized their atmospheric expressivity as opposed to their show-pony virtuosity. The orchestra navigated the shifting meters and watery textures of the second movement with conviction, and Nelsons masterfully plotted the way in which the final movement’s heavenly motif for celesta and harp melted away into a dangerous dance. Jazzy dalliances and an abrupt ending didn’t ultimately detract from the concerto’s absorbing sound world.Adès’s “Air,” by contrast, devotes itself to a single idea — one of fragile beauty — for its 15-minute duration. The way Adès pitches the violin writing high up, almost daring the soloist to sustain it, recalls the extreme tessitura for the soprano role of Ariel in his opera “The Tempest.” This time, though, the effect is serene instead of unnervingly otherworldly.Mutter, who gave the world premiere of “Air” at the Lucerne Festival last year, played at Carnegie with a platinum tone, densely concentrated. The orchestra drew mesmeric circles around her, conjuring a world of glass, as Mutter’s sound irradiated a childlike innocence full of whispered awe.With the sensitivity of an opera conductor who loves his singers, Nelsons consistently scaled the orchestra’s sound to his soloists’ resources. If his rendition of Sibelius’s “Luonnotar” — a tone poem about the mythic creation of the earth and firmament — lacked a cosmic spatial sense, then at least its quiet intensity was of a piece with the soprano Golda Schultz’s rosy tone and haloed high notes; these performers were very much describing, rather than dramatizing, the piece’s world-shattering dimensions. Nelsons cushioned Mutter’s elegantly assured playing with spirited, swift touches in Mozart’s First Violin Concerto, and he matched Capuçon’s dazzling, consuming focus and mercurial coloring. Each collaboration felt natural, intuitive.At times during the Boston Symphony’s performances, the parts were greater than the whole. A textbook reading can be exemplary but also plain. But when this orchestra had a new story to tell, it was full of surprises. More

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      Meet Jelly Roll, the Rapper Turned Country Singer Rousing Nashville

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      The 38-year-old artist born Jason DeFord has been turning his struggles into music for years. Now it has a bit more twang, and a lot more attention.At the CMT Music Awards this month, the least likely nominee turned into the night’s biggest story.In a room full of country music royalty, the artist Jelly Roll — a 38-year-old face-tattooed former addict and drug dealer who got his start selling his own hip-hop mixtapes out of his car — took home the most trophies, beating superstars including Morgan Wallen, Kane Brown and Luke Combs. The crowd was on its feet as he performed his new single, “Need a Favor,” in a studded leather jacket, his gravelly voice backed by a full gospel choir.“It was an absolute dream come true, the best-case scenario, and I’ve had a worst-case scenario life up to this point,” Jelly Roll said in a telephone interview the following week, excitedly recounting his interactions backstage with Shania Twain and Slash. “I spent my entire childhood feeling like I didn’t belong — in every situation, I felt like the uncomfortable fat kid. So that was like my high school prom and the graduation I never had, on national television.”On June 2, Jelly Roll’s debut country album, “Whitsitt Chapel,” arrives, but it’s far from his first release. Since 2011, he has put out more than 20 albums, EPs and mixtapes, many of them independently released collaborations with other Southern white rappers like Lil’ Wyte and Haystak. His music has often addressed his criminal past and his journey to sobriety — what he calls “real music for real people with real problems.”Jelly Roll (born Jason DeFord) grew up in Antioch, a culturally diverse working-class suburb south of downtown Nashville. His father was a meat salesman with a side hustle as a bookie, while his mother struggled with her mental health and addiction. He was first arrested when he was 14 and spent the next decade in and out of juvenile centers and prison for charges including aggravated robbery and possession with intent to sell.Inspired by Southern rappers like Three 6 Mafia, UGK and 8ball & MJG, Jelly Roll started writing rhymes of his own, getting serious about pursuing music after learning that he had a daughter, now age 15. He began touring relentlessly and eventually racked up hundreds of millions of streams with virtually no mainstream visibility.In the last few years, though, he has leaned further into a heartfelt country-soul/Southern-rock style. “The music started evolving as the man did,” he said. “The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve found my singing voice and my love for instrumentation.”Since 2011, Jelly Roll has put out more than 20 albums, EPs and mixtapes. His official country debut is due in June.Gabriel McCurdy for The New York TimesThough Jelly Roll had several previous singles that had been certified gold, the real acceleration came with his 2020 song “Save Me,” a bluesy ballad sung over fingerpicked acoustic guitar. Emotional and despairing (“I’m so damaged beyond repair/Life has shattered my hopes and my dreams”), it was written on a Sunday, recorded and filmed on Monday, posted to YouTube on Tuesday and immediately exploded, racking up more than 165 million views to date. He recut the song as a duet with the rising star Lainey Wilson for the new album.In the last year, his bruising, fuzzed-out song “Dead Man Walking” went to No. 1 on rock radio while the mid-tempo “Son of a Sinner” topped the country radio chart, and Jelly Roll held the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s emerging artist chart for 25 straight weeks, the longest run in that ranking’s history. In December, about a year after headlining Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium, he sold out all 17,000 or so seats at Bridgestone Arena there. The Bridgestone show is chronicled in a new documentary, “Jelly Roll: Save Me,” premiering on Hulu on May 30.“Some traditional country music fans might be scratching their heads at his image and style of music,” Storme Warren, a host on SiriusXM’s The Highway channel, wrote in an email, “but I think they’ll come around when they realize he’s the real deal.”“In my opinion, he’s as country as any other artist,” Warren continued. “His stories are real and relatable. He’s living proof that anything is possible.”As Jelly Roll’s profile grows, he’s not slowing down his nonstop work habits. (“Drug dealers never take a day off,” he said in 2021, “and I wanted to apply that drive to music.”) This summer, he’ll be on the road with his Backroad Baptism Tour, as well as playing some shows with the country standard-bearer Eric Church. Several Nashville A-listers, including Miranda Lambert and Hardy, wrote with him for “Whitsitt Chapel.”“I could tell right away we would be fast friends,” Lambert wrote in an email. “He is so genuine and kind. He is very strong in who he is and what he wants to say as an artist. I respect that so much.”Jelly Roll, who notes that he’s “still trying to make fans when I’m at the gas station,” has long been studying the careers of country legends and what he can learn from their relationship to their fans. “They’ve stayed true to themselves,” he said. “You know who they are, and they know who they are and who they’re singing for.”“The music started evolving as the man did,” he said. “The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve found my singing voice and my love for instrumentation.”Gabriel McCurdy for The New York TimesHe wrote more than 80 songs for “Whitsitt Chapel” before landing on the album’s predominantly spiritual themes. “Everything was great, but it didn’t feel like it had a purpose,” he said. “I’m always diligent about the why, what’s the purpose? And if it’s just that it’s catchy or it’s easy to monetize, we don’t put that out.”Then in one night, he came up with “Dancing With the Devil” and “Hungover in a Church Pew,” which became the record’s final tracks, and knew where he wanted the project to go. “Those two songs were talking to each other, dealing with the same story,” he said. “I was thinking about the choices I made, some horrible decisions. My music is a constant cry for help and growth — it tells a story of change, and I wasn’t ready for this before now.”He admitted he went out drinking after the CMT awards show (he had announced those plans from the stage), but said he is “quite a few years removed from doing the drugs that were going to kill me,” explaining that “sobriety looks different on everybody.”His focus is on the “therapeutic” role his music can play for people with addictions and on his work for at-risk youth in Nashville. He donated all the profits from the Bridgestone show and, working with the local nonprofit Impact Youth Outreach, built a recording studio inside Davidson County Juvenile Detention Center.“That’s not even scratching the surface of my plan,” Jelly Roll said. “I’m going to build halfway houses and transitional centers — that’s my real heart.”“I just never forget being that kid,” he continued. “Those years in juvenile were so formative, and it was so devastating for me to miss that time. On my 16th birthday, I didn’t get a car; I woke up incarcerated. I didn’t get my G.E.D. until I was 23 and in jail. I just missed so much of life. So I want to be remembered as a guy that did something for the kids in this town.”After grinding for a dozen years only to finally find himself recognized as a “new artist,” Jelly Roll isn’t settling into a formula now. “Music is like human nature,” he said. “It evolves or dies. Artists should always be pushing the boundaries of what’s uncomfortable, and I plan to be doing that the rest of my career. That’s what I was thinking about when I was leaving the CMTs — now that I’ve gotten here, I deserve to stay.” More

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      Harry Belafonte, Folk Hero

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      Cool and charismatic, Belafonte channeled his stardom into activism. He was a true people person, who knew how to reach, teach and challenge us.Of the many (many) job titles you could lay on Harry Belafonte — singer, actor, entertainer, talk show host, activist — the one that nails what he’s come to mean is folk hero.Not a title one puts on a business card or lists in, say, a Twitter bio. “Folk hero” is a description that accrues — over time, out of significance. You’re out doing those other jobs when, suddenly, what you’re doing matters — to people, to your people, to your country.Belafonte was a folk hero that way. Not the most dynamic or distinctive actor or singer or dancer you’ll ever come across. Yet the cool, frank, charismatic, seemingly indefatigable cat who died on Tuesday, at 96, had something else, something as crucial. He was, in his way, a people person. He understood how to reach, teach and challenge them, how to keep them honest, how to dedicate his fame to a politics of accountability, more tenaciously than any star of the civil rights era or in its wake. The forum for this sort of moral transformation probably should have been the movies. But the Hollywood of that era would tolerate a single Black person and, ultimately, it chose Sidney Poitier, Belafonte’s soul mate, sometime suitemate and fellow Caribbean American. Belafonte did make a handful of movies at the beginning of his career. “Odds Against Tomorrow,” a naturalist film noir from 1959, is the meatiest of them — and his last picture for more than a decade, too. Poitier became the movie star, during a dire stretch for this country. Belafonte became the folk hero.“Tonight With Belafonte,” a 1959 show that aired on CBS, featured work songs, gospel and moaning blues performed on spare sets.CBS Photo Archive/Getty ImagesIt began, of course, with the songs, actual folk music. Well, with Belafonte’s interpolation, which in its varied guises wed acoustic singing with Black spiritual arrangements and the sounds of the islands. He took his best-selling music on the road, to white audiences who’d pay a lot of money to watch him perform from his million-selling album “Calypso,” the one with “Day-O.” A major part of his knowing people was knowing that they watched TV. And rather than simply translate his hot-ticket cabaret act for American living rooms, Belafonte imagined something stranger and more alluring. In 1959, he somehow got CBS to broadcast “Tonight With Belafonte,” an hourlong studio performance that starts with a live commercial for Revlon (the night’s sponsor) and melts from the gleaming blond actor Barbara Britton (the ad’s pitchperson) into the sight of Black men amid shadows and great big chains.They’re pantomiming hard labor while Belafonte belts a viscous version of “Bald Headed Woman.” The whole hour is just this sort of chilling: percussive work songs, big-bottomed gospel, moaning blues, dramatically spare sets that imply segregation and incarceration, the weather system that called herself Odetta. Belafonte never makes a direct speech about injustice. He trusts the songs and stagecraft to speak for themselves. Folks — Black folks, especially — will get it. It’s their music.“The bleaker my acting prospects looked,” Belafonte wrote, in “My Song,” his memoir from 2011, “the more I threw myself into political organizing.” That organizing took familiar forms — marches, protests, rallies. Money. He helped underwrite the civil rights movement, paying for freedom rides. He maintained a life insurance policy on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with Coretta Scott King as the beneficiary, because Dr. King didn’t believe he could afford it. The building he bought at 300 West End Avenue in Manhattan and converted into a 21-room palace seemed to double as the movement’s New York headquarters. (“Martin began drafting his antiwar speech in my apartment.”) So, yes, Belafonte was near the psychic core and administrative center of the movement.But those bleak Hollywood prospects — some incalculable combination of racism and too-raw talent — kept Belafonte uniquely earthbound, doing a kind of cultural organizing. It wasn’t the movies that have kept him in so many people’s lives these many decades, though he never stopped acting altogether, best of all in a handful of Robert Altman films, particularly “Kansas City,” from 1996, in which he does some persuasive intimidation as an icy 1930s gangster named Seldom Seen. His organizing happened on TV, where he was prominently featured throughout the 1960s, as himself, and where his political reach was arguably as penetrating as his soul mate’s, on variety shows he produced that introduced America to Gloria Lynne and Odetta and John Lewis.There was also that week in February 1968 when Johnny Carson handed his “Tonight Show” over to Belafonte. The national mood had sunk into infernal tumult driven by the Vietnam War and exasperation with racist neglect, for starters. (It was going to be a grim election year, too.) Whether a Black substitute host of a popular talk show was an antidote for malaise or a provocative reflection of it, Belafonte went beyond the chummy ribbing that was Carson’s forte. He was probing. His guests that week included Poitier, Lena Horne, Bill Cosby, Paul Newman, Wilt Chamberlain, the Smothers Brothers, Zero Mostel and, months before they were murdered, Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. King. Belafonte turned the famous into folks, mixing the frippery of the format with the gravitas of the moment.Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was among the interviewees when Belafonte guest hosted Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” for a week in February 1968.Associated PressPaul Robeson preceded Belafonte in an activism partly born of artistic frustration. Robeson’s pursuit of racial equality, for everybody, won him persecution and immiseration and derailed his career. He personally warned Belafonte and Poitier of the damaging toll this country will take on Black artists who believe their art and celebrity ought do more than dazzle and distract. Belafonte watched the American government drag Robeson through hell and decided to help drag white America to moral betterment in any arena that would have him, somewhat out of respect for his elder. (“My whole life was an homage to him,” Belafonte once wrote about Robeson.) Those arenas included everything from “Free to Be … You and Me” and “The Muppet Show” to Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” and, on several indelible occasions, “Sesame Street.”With some artists, a legacy is a tricky reduction. What did it all come down to? And it just can’t be that the immense career of Harry Belafonte — with its milestones and breakthroughs, with its risks and hazards, with its triumphs and disappointments, with its doubling as a living archive of the latter half of a 20th-century America that he fought to ennoble — can be summed up by the time he spent talking to the Count.But that, too, is how a people person reaches people. That’s how Harry Belafonte reached a lot of us: little kids who were curious and naturally open to the wonders of the human experience. So it makes sense that the sight of this elegant man, reclined among inquisitive children and surly felt critters, speaking with wisdom in that scratched timbre of his about, say, what an animal is (and, by extension, who an animal is not), told us who we were. People, yes, but perhaps another generation of folks with this hero in common, learning through the osmosis of good television how to live their lives in homage to him. More

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      Readers’ Picks: 12 Motivating Workout Songs

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      Listen to Mary J. Blige, Gang of Four, Outkast and one track that was far and away the most frequently suggested.Working out to Mary J. Blige is more than just fine.Kevin Winter/Getty Images For The Recording ADear listeners,Last week, I shared a workout playlist and asked you to submit a song that motivates you to move. I thought I’d publish a few of the responses at the end of a future newsletter. But so many of you suggested such fun and varied selections that I’ve decided to do something completely unprecedented in the whole history of The Amplifier: create a playlist composed entirely of reader recommendations.I know, I know, “the whole history of The Amplifier” is, like, a month and a half at this point. But still — it’s unprecedented!As I wrote last week, for me, a good workout playlist combines familiarity and novelty. I kept that in mind when selecting and sequencing these tracks, so you’ll hear a mix of the new and old, the popular and the obscure. I loved reading about why these songs motivate you and what they inspired you to accomplish, so I’ve included your comments below.I also had fun seeing which tracks recurred in the recommendations; the one song that was far and away the most frequently suggested had to make it onto the list, and it appears here as track 11. (In the interest of suspense, scroll down for the reveal.) Bluegrass, baroque orchestral music, Beyoncé: Your picks truly encompassed a vast musical spectrum. More than one of you admitted to loving Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s “Good Vibrations,” which, honestly, you do you.I’m so happy we’re creating this musical community together — I think the collaborative nature of today’s playlist really speaks to that.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. Fleetwood Mac: “Tusk”I love how the song starts quiet and slow and builds and builds and builds on itself. I’ve seen it performed live and it puts a zing in my blood. I find it ideal for the warm-up that leads right into the workout. — Virginia Moench, N.C. (Listen on YouTube)2. Mary J. Blige: “Just Fine”The lyrics and beat are uplifting and encouraging. It’s great to walk, run, bike or lift to, plus you can take dance breaks! — Alexa, Philadelphia (Listen on YouTube)3. Janet Jackson: “If”This song has it all, and let’s not forget that epic video! If you have soul, “If” is guaranteed to make you break a sweat. Now drop and give me 20! — Paige Getz, Conn. (Listen on YouTube)4. TV on the Radio: “Wolf Like Me”It has the highs, the lows and the perfect crescendo at the end. I had a spin instructor that knew it was my favorite and would drop it in for me pretty regularly. — Shelley, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Listen on YouTube)5. Gang of Four: “I Found That Essence Rare”It’s gritty, rhythmic, has great energy and drives me to move the weights in the opposite direction than the pull of gravity. — Rick Gaston, Oakland, Calif. (Listen on YouTube)6. Hot Chip: “Flutes”My best runs help me recall the bodily sensation of losing myself on the dance floor. This song gets me there! — Greta, Chicago (Listen on YouTube)7. Sylvester: “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”Back in the day of aerobic classes, this was one of the songs we used on a regular basis — never got tired of it or the exercise. It’s also a great song to dance to! — Betsy Wendt, Silver Spring, Md. (Listen on YouTube)8. Jamie xx: “Gosh”This song is just what your neurons need when you want to shut the world off and pump through something in hyper-focus. I play it to work or jog and it makes me feel like I’m putting on sunglasses and rocketing into the matrix. Every single time. — Natalia, Manhattan, N.Y. (Listen on YouTube)9. Grimes: “Kill v. Maim”If I’ve got to do three minutes on a treadmill to spike my heartbeat in a strength session, it’s Grimes’s “Kill v. Maim.” Pretending you’re a vampire gangster (or whatever it’s about) frothing at the mouth is extremely motivating! — Laura, London (Listen on YouTube)10. Outkast: “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)”I made a mix a few years ago for a half-marathon I was preparing for. The fifth or sixth song I selected was Outkast’s “Bombs Over Baghdad.” On the day of the race, when I got to that song about 30 minutes in, it inspired me to pick up the pace. From there, I hit repeat for the next 90 minutes and felt amazing! “Bombs Over Baghdad” gives me a lift like no other. — Michael Pittman, Durham, N.C. (Listen on YouTube)11. Eminem, “Lose Yourself”It’s a cliché, but it is undeniably one of the greatest workout songs ever created: “Lose Yourself,” by Eminem. The believe-in-yourself lyrics, the dramatic tension heightening throughout the song, and the fact that the b.p.m. perfectly accompanies a cardio workout. — Joe Stracci, Cold Spring, N.Y. (Listen on YouTube)12. The Avalanches, “Because I’m Me”It’s like someone took Runner’s High and sonically bottled it into this recording. The initial beat drop! The horns! “Knock it out the ballpark, Frankie!” This song never fails to give me the extra push I need to finish a particularly tough run or workout. — Andre Plaut, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Listen on YouTube)Mom’s spaghetti,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Readers’ Picks! 11 Motivating Workout Songs” track listTrack 1: Fleetwood Mac, “Tusk”Track 2: Mary J. Blige, “Just Fine”Track 3: Janet Jackson, “If”Track 4: TV on the Radio, “Wolf Like Me”Track 5: Gang of Four, “I Found That Essence Rare”Track 6: Hot Chip, “Flutes”Track 7: Sylvester, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”Track 8: Jamie xx, “Gosh”Track 9: Grimes, “Kill v. Maim”Track 10: Outkast, “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)”Track 11: Eminem, “Lose Yourself”Track 12: The Avalanches, “Because I’m Me”Bonus TracksTwo weeks ago, the enigmatic underground pop star Jai Paul made his live debut — 12 years after the release of his debut single. Tonight, he plays the first of two shows in New York City. In honor of this occasion, why not revisit the gorgeously glitchy pair of tracks that started it all, the menacing “BTSTU” and the shyly sensual “Jasmine”? And if you want a primer on why so many people care about this guy in the first place, I would humbly suggest this Pitchfork article I wrote about him almost exactly a decade ago (!) which doubles as a time capsule of 2013 internet ephemera. Were we ever so young? More