Music

“Grounded,” a new work about the psychological toll of drone warfare, drew scrutiny after its presenter, Washington National Opera, advertised the support of a major military contractor.When the Washington National Opera announced that it would open its coming season with the premiere of “Grounded,” a new opera exploring the psychological toll of drone warfare, its star composer, Jeanine Tesori, got less attention than its listed sponsor: General Dynamics, the military contractor.Anger erupted online, with critics accusing Washington National Opera of serving as a mouthpiece for the defense industry. A think tank that advocates military restraint labeled it a “killer drone opera.” New York magazine gave the opera a “despicable” rating on its Approval Matrix, describing it as “the drone-bombing opera ‘Grounded,’ sponsored by General Dynamics.” RT, a state-owned Russian news outlet, said the work showed the strength of the American military-industrial complex.The creative team behind “Grounded,” an adaptation of an acclaimed Off Broadway play, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which commissioned the opera, grew disturbed by how the new opera was being portrayed. They worked behind the scenes to push the Washington National Opera to make it clear that General Dynamics, which has been a major sponsor of the opera company since 1997, had nothing to do with the creation of the opera.“I felt action was needed to guarantee that the audience would see ‘Grounded’ knowing that it is solely the work of its creators,” Tesori, a major Broadway composer who has expanded into opera, said in a statement to The New York Times. She added that she had only recently become aware of the philanthropic support of General Dynamics.The composer Jeanine Tesori said that “action was needed to guarantee that the audience would see ‘Grounded’ knowing that it is solely the work of its creators.”An Rong Xu for The New York TimesOn Tuesday, after days of negotiations, Washington National Opera posted a statement seeking some distance from its benefactor.“For the sake of clarity,” the statement said, “no sponsor or supporter of W.N.O. had any involvement in the creation of ‘Grounded’ or in the contents of its libretto.”The company changed its website, whose “Grounded” page had described General Dynamics as its “presenting sponsor,” to clarify that the company is a “W.N.O. season sponsor.” It also rewrote its promotional text for the opera, removing some militaristic language, including a line that had described its protagonist as a “hot shot F-16 fighter pilot, an elite warrior trained for the sky” and a line noting that “war ‘with all the benefits of home’ isn’t clear-cut.” The new description cut a reference to the “horror of war.”An early rendering of the set of the opera “Grounded.”Design and rendering by Mimi LienThe episode highlights the difficulties that cultural institutions sometimes face in protecting the integrity of their art while cultivating rich donors. The Kennedy Center, the parent organization of Washington National Opera, has in recent years faced pressure to cut ties with some benefactors, including tobacco companies.General Dynamics has long been a sponsor of Washington National Opera, providing more than $500,000 to the company each year in recent years. Gregory S. Gallopoulos, a senior vice president at General Dynamics, is a member of the opera company’s board.Timothy O’Leary, the general director of Washington National Opera, said in an interview that General Dynamics had no input on “Grounded,” or any other works.“No sponsor has any say in our artistic decisions, or ever could,” he said. “Any sponsor who tried to interfere in that way is not a sponsor from whom we would accept support.”The “Grounded” opera, adapted from a play by George Brant, was announced by the Met in 2017, part of an effort by the company to promote contemporary opera. The Met agreed to co-produce the opera with Washington National Opera ahead of its planned Met premiere in 2025.The New York Times described the play it is based on as a “haunting portrait of a woman serving in the United States Armed Forces coming under pressure as the human cost of war, for combatants as well as civilians, slowly eats away at her well-armored psyche.”Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, described the work as an “antiwar opera” and said that it provided a nuanced portrayal of the costs of war. He said he had advised his counterparts in Washington to take swift action once concerns started spreading on social media about the opera’s support from General Dynamics.“If this misperception was not corrected, it would be very bad for the work,” he said in an interview. “The work would be somehow tainted before anybody ever got a chance to see it.”General Dynamics on Tuesday declined to comment on the controversy, but said in a statement, “We are proud to support the arts.”Phebe N. Novakovic, the chairman and chief executive of General Dynamics since 2013, is an opera buff who grew up listening to recordings on a Victrola record player with her Serbian grandmother. Shortly after she rose to the top of the company, General Dynamics became a full-season sponsor of Washington National Opera.When asked in a 2016 interview why the company was such a big supporter of the opera, Novakovic cited her grandmother’s influence.“I have honored both her memory and my love of that form of human expression through supporting the opera,” she said at the Economic Club of Washington. “We get folks from all over our company coming to the opera.” More

A well-written letter and other methods of persuasion can help reduce the cost of expensive hits and produce unforgettable results.Beau, the addled midlife wreck played by Joaquin Phoenix in “Beau Is Afraid,” isn’t just afraid, he is terrorized: harassed, beaten, stabbed and even kidnapped in a surreal black comedy that often feels less like a conventional film than a three-hour panic attack. (In the hands of high-anxiety auteur Ari Aster, of “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” fame, consider that a compliment.)Thanks to his monstrous mother, he has become a man resigned to life without love or companionship. Then, deep in the movie comes a reprieve — a late chance at romance with his childhood crush (Parker Posey), soundtracked, incongruously, to the lilting strains of Mariah Carey’s smash 1995 ballad “Always Be My Baby.” Things go obscenely, catastrophically awry from there, as they are wont to do with Beau, but the song plays on.When the scene played at a preview at the Metrograph Theater in Manhattan this month, a packed room of industry insiders, press and celebrities that included Phoenix and the actor Robert Pattinson collectively gasped in recognition, then cheered. How exactly did the queen of five-octave pop end up here? For Aster, it turns out, there was never a second choice.“Ari had written a first draft of the script over 10 years ago, and ‘Always Be My Baby’ was in it from the very beginning,” said his production partner, Lars Knudsen, who also works frequently with filmmakers like Robert Eggers (“The Northman”) and Mike Mills (“Beginners”). “I honestly didn’t know how integral and crucial it was to him to have that song until we were in the edit, but we knew that it was going be very expensive, and that Mariah might not approve it. There was a feeling like, ‘Look, we’ll try, but we likely won’t be able to afford it.’”Nevertheless, Aster penned what Knudsen called “a very beautifully written letter” to the singer and pleaded his case; improbably, she said yes. When she first received the request, Carey said via email, “I was quite intrigued. Then, as I watched the scene, I was a bit shocked at first because of my prudish nature (ha!), but immediately understood the importance of that particular moment.”The writer-director Ari Aster wrote a letter to Carey, one strategy indie directors use when they can’t afford a song.A24She continued, “I’m really happy with the way people are responding to it, and thrilled that Ari is being recognized for his talent, creativity and artistic vision.”(Several days after the Metrograph screening, Carey briefly lit the internet ablaze when she appeared beaming on the red carpet alongside Posey and Aster at the film’s official New York premiere, resplendent in black leather.)“Beau” is perhaps the most prominent recent example of indie movies — many of which seem to stem from the tastemaking studio A24 — that stake their wildest hopes on finagling the rights to an instantly recognizable and often formidably expensive pop song. When the pairing goes well, it can be a zeitgeist-y boon for the kind of projects that rely more on word of mouth than marketing (in addition, of course, to fulfilling the highly specific vision of their creators).Think of ’N Sync’s elastic boy-band anthem “Bye Bye Bye,” which runs prominently throughout “Red Rocket,” the 2021 festival hit from writer-director Sean Baker (“The Florida Project”) about a washed-up porn star, or Paris Hilton’s featherweight bop “Stars Are Blind,” which provides a rare moment of levity in the bleak hard-candy noir of Emerald Fennell’s 2020 “Promising Young Woman.”A movie like “Guardians of the Galaxy” has Marvel Studios to underwrite its wall-to-wall usage of hits by David Bowie, the Jackson 5 and Marvin Gaye, among others. (The franchise’s director, James Gunn, once said he had paid “a million dollars” for a single song.) For small independent projects like “Aftersun,” though, the dreamy, elliptical father-daughter drama by the first-time director Charlotte Wells, a track like Queen and Bowie’s anthem “Under Pressure” — used to harrowing effect in a climactic scene — can easily consume the entire budget.That’s where highly personal appeals to the artist or estate with rights to the song — and no small amount of serendipity — often come into play. For “American Honey” (2016), a sexually frank verité road trip with a largely unknown cast, the British director Andrea Arnold had little choice but to get permission after the fact, or recut the film entirely; tracks including Rihanna and Calvin Harris’s “We Found Love” were not overlaid but woven into scenes that had already been shot.In that case, said Knudsen, who also produced “Honey,” both artists were moved enough by the material to not only give their permission, but also provide a sort of friends-and-family discount: “If it had been made by a bigger studio, then obviously we would have to pay” full price, he said. “But because we were an under-five-million-dollar movie with a reputable director who was trying to tell this very personal story where that song was the center of it, I think it definitely helped.”In the right circumstances, of course, less-expected collaborations like these can very much serve the musicians, too, even when they reduce their fees — a feedback loop of indie cred and mainstream appeal that confers fresh relevance to both parties.“When you make a convincing case, the publishing companies and the artists do understand,” Knudsen said. “I mean, ‘American Honey’ played in competition at Cannes, and A24 released it. If there wasn’t a sliding scale, then no independent film would be able to have any of these songs in their movies.”For directors like Arnold or Aster, those scenes become signatures. And for a certain kind of cinephile, “those songs will just have a very different place in their hearts. So that’s good for everyone, right?”Little Indie, Big Song“Aftersun”: David Bowie and Queen’s classic “Under Pressure” underpins the emotional climax of this impressionistic 2022 drama, which earned Paul Mescal an Oscar nomination for best actor.“Red Rocket”: ’N Sync’s 2000 hit “Bye Bye Bye” bookends this scrappy 2021 film, a character study of a prodigal porn star (Simon Rex) returning to his Texas roots.“Promising Young Woman”: Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind” provides a rare moment of connection for two damaged characters in this highly stylized 2020 neofeminist revenge tale.“American Honey”: The Rihanna-Calvin Harris banger “We Found Love” becomes a sort of central theme for conflicted lovers played by played by Sasha Lane and Shia LaBeouf in this 2016 road movie.“Spring Breakers”: Britney Spears’s lachrymose 2003 ballad “Everytime” plays as a girl gang in pink balaclavas goes on a crime spree led by a demented James Franco in this 2013 nihilist comedy. More

Steven Fox and the Clarion Choir are tending to a less well-known part of the composer’s canon for his 150th birthday: His choral works.In a classical music world obsessed with anniversaries, be they grand or modest, the 150th birthday of the Russian émigré composer Sergei Rachmaninoff has inevitably drawn notice. Just as inevitably, commemorations have tended to focus on his war horses: the symphonies, piano concertos and solo piano works.It seems to have fallen to Steven Fox and his excellent choirs to tend to Rachmaninoff’s motley but treasurable body of choral works. The sacred ones, particularly — with their flowing yet restrained lyricism and none of the bombast or sentimentality often associated with the composer — represent the very best of Rachmaninoff.On Wednesday, Fox, the artistic director of the New York-based Clarion Music Society, will return to his alma mater — Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H. — to lead the Clarion Choir in Rachmaninoff’s exquisite All-Night Vigil, a pinnacle of the rich Russian Orthodox repertory. They will repeat the performance on Friday at Carnegie Hall.Fox, 44, first conducted the work — commonly called the Vespers, after a liturgical service included in it — as part of a senior project at Dartmouth in 2000. He also handled the logistics — simple enough, you might think, because Russian Orthodox practice bans musical instruments, using only voices.But those voices must be special, combining virtuosity with smooth blend. The basses, in particular, have to travel comfortably and sonorously below the clef, and typically, professional ringers are needed to fill out an amateur performance. (Clarion will feature Glenn Miller, the current go-to American basso profundo, in its two performances.)And to boot, the text is not quite in Russian but in antiquated Old Slavonic.“I can’t say I knew exactly what I was doing at that time,” Fox said in an interview. “There was a point about a week before the concert when I felt overwhelmed. I remember calling my adviser in tears and saying: ‘It’s too much. I can’t keep track of all the details.’ But leading up to the performance, even during it, I just felt calm. That really was the moment I discovered that I wanted to pursue conducting as a profession.”Fox has since made specialties of Russian Orthodox music in general and Rachmaninoff in particular. He and Clarion have presented the Vespers often at New Year in New York and recorded it beautifully for Pentatone.Fox, who first tackled the Vespers as an undergraduate at Dartmouth, has since made specialties of Russian Orthodox music in general and Rachmaninoff in particular.Olivia Galli for The New York TimesThe performances this week are just one part of Fox’s yearlong celebration of the Rachmaninoff anniversary. At New Year, he led Clarion performances of the composer’s other great sacred work, the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. And in March, he conducted the Cathedral Choral Society, of which he is music director, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in a stirring rendition of “The Bells,” Rachmaninoff’s tribute to Edgar Allan Poe, at the National Cathedral in Washington.Still to come, in November, are the cantata “Spring” and “Three Russian Songs,” with Clarion at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City, where Fox lives.Might Fox worry about the appropriateness of celebrating a son of Russia so deeply rooted in its culture as Russia wages war on Ukraine?“I did have misgivings,” he said. “My main concern was singing liturgical music, given the church’s role in what is happening now. But as I thought more about Rachmaninoff’s story, I thought in a way it relates to what many Ukrainians are experiencing. He kind of kept politics at arm’s length for a long time, but at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, he said: ‘I have no choice. I have to leave.’”In the end, Clarion added a program note for the New Year performances of the Liturgy: “There is a terrible war taking place in the part of the world from which this beautiful music comes. As we sing tonight, we pray for peace in the New Year.”And Leonid Roschko, an Orthodox priest and a basso who sang the Deacon in those performances, added a prayer to the Liturgy: “That Thou mightest enlighten with the light of Thy divine wisdom the minds of those darkened with hardness of heart, and protect the people of Ukraine from any harm.”On study and work travels to Russia before the invasion, Fox honed another specialty, Baroque music. He founded Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg, which called itself the nation’s first period-instrument orchestra. He also unearthed what he calls “the earliest known Russian symphony,” from about 1771, by the Ukraine-born Maksym Berezovsky.Back in New York, Fox took the lead in reviving the Clarion Music Society, which had fallen idle shortly after the death of its founder, Newell Jenkins, in 1996. Fox took it over in 2006 and, while expanding its range and pushing it to new heights of virtuosity, he furthered his own ventures into early music, notably including that of Bach.So when the New York Philharmonic asked him to cover for Jaap van Zweden during a run of Bach’s towering “St. Matthew Passion” in March, he was eager to do it. No matter that rehearsals were to begin the day after the “Bells” performance in Washington.“I know the piece, and it would have been hard to say no,” Fox said. “Jaap and I got on very well. I admired his intensity. I thought he knew the score really well, and yet every time I went back to his office, he was studying it more, preparing.”Van Zweden reciprocated the sentiment: “Steven Fox comes from the same school of interpreting Bach that I do,” he said in an email. “His excellent ears and good ideas were a real asset. I have asked him back next year when we do the Mozart Requiem at the New York Philharmonic.”And Fox continues to till Russian soil. Spurred by the renowned music publisher Vladimir Morosan, Fox has been exploring music by Alexander Kastalsky. For Naxos, he recorded “Memory Eternal to the Fallen Heroes” with Clarion, and prepared Clarion and the Cathedral Choral Society to take part in Leonard Slatkin’s recording of an expansion of that work, “Requiem for Fallen Brothers,” with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.Morosan has described Kastalsky as “a seminal figure upon the landscape” of the early 20th century. Yet he remains so obscure in the West that he didn’t even register in the 2001 edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. What other rarities might Fox and Morosan unearth? More

Picking through the bins at the Academy Records Annex, and rediscovering “Switched-On Rock,” as well as albums by Tim Hardin and Otis Redding.Lindsay ZoladzDear listeners,It’s time for another installment of the recurring Amplifier segment My Record Haul, honoring the serendipity and bargains that can be found at brick-and-mortar shops. Today’s features weird and wonderful finds from one of my favorite places in Brooklyn, the Academy Records Annex.I’ve been shopping at the Academy Records Annex (the Brooklyn offshoot of Academy Records on 12th Street in Manhattan) for long enough that I’ve visited it in three different locations: its huge former home on North 6th Street in Williamsburg; the Greenpoint spot it moved to in 2013 right by the East River*; and, now, its brand-new store in the same neighborhood, at 242 Banker Street.My latest visit was particularly fruitful — especially in the dollar bins — and I’ve put together a playlist from the records I bought that day. It’s fun, breezy and, as you’ll see at the very end, contains a few unexpected musical connections.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. The Moog Machine: “Get Back”I have a morbid fascination with the many novelty synthesizer records that were pumped out in the late 1960s after Wendy Carlos’s “Switched-On Bach” became an unexpected commercial hit. By 1970, there was “Switched-On Country,” “Switched-On Bacharach” (clever) and my personal favorite in title if not in execution, “Switched-On Santa.” I did not own a copy of “Switched-On Rock,” one of the most popular of the bunch, and when I saw a cheap one in the crates, I could not resist. Please enjoy what I hope is one of the strangest Beatles covers you’ll ever hear, centered around a Moog modular synthesizer just five years after it was invented. For all their overwhelming kitsch, there’s something I genuinely love about the “Switched-On” records and this era of electronic music in general, when there was a palpable sense of wonder (and slight confusion) about what these newfangled machines could actually do. (Listen on YouTube)2. Otis Redding: “Mr. Pitiful” (Live at the Whiskey a Go Go, 1966)A year before his untimely death, Otis Redding played a three-night, seven-show residency at the Whiskey a Go Go, the famed Los Angeles rock club that at that point didn’t book many soul acts as headliners. This quick, ecstatic performance of Redding’s own “Mr. Pitiful” is just a taste of the brilliance that the audience (which, according to the liner notes, on this particular night included Bob Dylan) witnessed at those shows. It comes from the 10-track “In Person at the Whiskey a Go Go,” which was released in 1968. But if you’re looking for more Otis (and really, who isn’t?), a comprehensive boxed set of the complete Whiskey recordings was released in 2016. (Listen on YouTube)3. John Cale: “Dead or Alive”Remember just a few weeks ago, when I sent out a newsletter about John Cale and raved about his 1981 post-punk record “Honi Soit”? Just days later, I managed to find a copy in Academy Records’ New Arrivals section! Record-shopping serendipity is a beautiful thing. (Listen on YouTube)4. Tim Hardin: “Don’t Make Promises”Tim Hardin, if you’re not acquainted, was a superbly talented folk singer-songwriter who lost his battle with addiction in 1980, at just 39. While he could have done a lot more, the work he left behind is sterling. This jaunty little tune is one of my favorites on a 1970 Golden Archives Series compilation — a record that I totally forgot I already owned. I have no regrets, though, since it was a dollar-bin find too good too pass up, and I’m sure I can locate a friend who wants it. (Listen on YouTube)5. Roger Miller: “Dang Me”Perhaps the best dollar I have spent this year was on an unscratched copy of the goofball country singer Roger Miller’s greatest hits. It is scientifically and psychologically impossible to stay in a bad mood while listening to Miller: I have tested this hypothesis many times over. Same goes for this zany video of Dick Clark interviewing him on a 1964 episode of “American Bandstand,” which gives Miller an opportunity to do his impression of a telephone. (Listen on YouTube)6. Chuck Berry: “Memphis, Tennessee”Speaking of value (and, oddly enough, telephone operators), I was pleased to find a two-LP compilation of Chuck Berry songs in the bargain bin for just $2. “Memphis, Tennessee” isn’t one of his hardest rockers, but it’s a favorite nonetheless. (Listen on YouTube)7. Kermit and Fozzie: “Movin’ Right Along”OK, maybe this was the best dollar I’ve spent this year: a pristine copy of the soundtrack from “The Muppet Movie.” The LP cover alone made me smile and filled me with memories of a movie I loved as a kid, but this particular bop was the one that really brought me back. At first I thought I would put it on the playlist as a lark, especially since there’s been a relative lightheartedness to today’s selections. But then, while scrutinizing the liner notes of “Switched-On Rock,” I noticed a wild coincidence: The keyboardist on that Moog record was Kenny Ascher, the jazz pianist and composer who co-wrote the songs on the “Muppet Movie” soundtrack with Paul Williams. So, unexpectedly, today’s playlist ends where it began. I will say it again: Record-shopping serendipity is a beautiful thing. (Listen on YouTube)Footloose and fancy free,Lindsay*The Academy Records Instagram boasted of the new space, “It’s bigger! It’s clean! It doesn’t smell weird!” As a loyal customer I would contest the implication that the previous Oak Street location smelled weird, but I can confirm that there was some lovely, musky incense burning at 242 Banker Street, so I will admit, at least on the day that I visited, that this new space is the best-smelling Academy Records Annex yet.The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Moogs and Muppets: Record Shopping in Brooklyn” track listTrack 1: The Moog Machine, “Get Back”Track 2: Otis Redding, “Mr. Pitiful (Live at the Whiskey a Go Go)”Track 3: John Cale, “Dead or Alive”Track 4: Tim Hardin, “Don’t Make Promises”Track 5: Roger Miller, “Dang Me”Track 6: Chuck Berry, “Memphis, Tennessee”Track 7: Kermit and Fozzie, “Movin’ Right Along”Bonus tracksA person dressed head-to-toe as Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker. An inflatable boa constrictor worn around someone’s neck. An inflatable alligator crowd surfing. A Jerry Springer T-shirt worn in seemingly earnest tribute. (R.I.P.) These were just some of the things I saw on Saturday night, when I left the rational world behind and went to a sold-out 100 gecs show.100 gecs are the sonically anarchic duo of Laura Les and Dylan Brady; if you’re unfamiliar with them, my colleague Joe Coscarelli’s recent profile is a great primer. Their latest album, “10,000 gecs,” is a brash, frequently hilarious assault on good taste — and with each passing day I become more certain that it’s one of my favorites of the year. (See: the towering, Blink-182-esque “Hollywood Baby” or, in keeping with our Kermit theme, the absurdist and deliriously catchy “Frog on the Floor.”) Its appeal is perhaps impossible to explain (or, some might say, justify) but I keep coming back to an idea that the critic Julianne Escobedo Shepherd articulated in her astute review of the album for Pitchfork: “It’s a re-evaluation of the most déclassé and dunderheaded rock genres that roiled the 2000s, positing that when it’s not delivered by misogynistic frat guys, it can be terrific music. 100 gecs are speaking to and for the regressive ids of us all; dumb [expletive] should be inclusive too.” A lot of the punk-rock humor espoused by the bands I grew up with was, when you held it up to the light, woefully homophobic, sexist or racist — sometimes all of the above. Like Shepherd, I appreciate the more inviting inanity of this new generation of weirdos. As I realized, chanting “gecs! gecs! gecs!” among my fellow misfits on Saturday night: The kids are all right. More

A spherical concert hall inspired by the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ideas will be suspended in the Shed’s McCourt space.At the height of musical modernism, the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen conceived a spherical concert hall — the Kugelauditorium — that would surround its audience with dozens of meticulously arranged speakers for an entirely new kind of listening experience.A form of it came to life at the 1970 World Expo in Osaka, Japan, where Germany’s pavilion presented works written for the Buckminster Fuller-esque dome, including music by Stockhausen himself. Hundreds of thousands of people visited it, but the idea never caught on.Next month, though, the Shed in Manhattan will erect the Sonic Sphere, a modern realization of Stockhausen’s idea, with listening events and interdisciplinary concerts, the performing arts center announced on Tuesday.Alex Poots, the Shed’s artistic director, said in an interview that as he worked with Stockhausen earlier in his career, they often talked about the Kugelauditorium and about “centering the auditory experience.”“We talk about going to see concerts, when we’re probably going to hear them more than we see them,” Poots added. “The idea of centering the sound — I find that fascinating.”This iteration of the Sonic Sphere — the creation of a group founded by Ed Cooke, Merijn Royaards and Nicholas Christie — is the 11th and the largest, with a diameter of 65 feet and an audience capacity of roughly 250. Visitors will be surrounded by more than 100 speakers arranged throughout the geodesic frame, which will be suspended within the Shed’s cavernous McCourt space.In a statement, Cooke recalled reading about the Kugelauditorium as a teenager, learning that it was presented in the same fair as the first mobile phone. “In the decades that followed,” he said, “I became increasingly confused that since 1970 our society had created 15 billion mobile phones but no further spherical concert halls.”The sphere’s programming at the Shed will run from June 9 through July 7 and will feature a D.J. set by Yaeji as well as one by Carl Craig, who plans to map the family tree of electronic music through a playlist. There will be listening sessions of the xx’s debut album, released in 2009 but remixed for the Sonic Sphere, as well as of Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians.”Artists will also perform live, including the pianist Igor Levit, who — in a programming departure from his usual New York appearances at Carnegie Hall — will play Morton Feldman’s “Palais de Mari,” with a visual accompaniment by Rirkrit Tiravanija.“I’ve tried to have quite a broad charge in terms of what we’re doing,” Poots said. “I view the Sonic Sphere almost like an instrument. We’re trying to figure out how to play it, but I think it has huge potential.” More

His rich baritone and gift for melodies made him one of the most popular artists of the 1970s with songs like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “If You Could Read My Mind.”Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian folk singer whose rich, plaintive baritone and gift for melodic songwriting made him one of the most popular recording artists of the 1970s, died on Monday night in Toronto. He was 84. His death, at Sunnybrook Hospital, was confirmed by his publicist, Victoria Lord. No cause was given.Mr. Lightfoot, a fast-rising star in Canada in the early 1960s, broke through to international success when his friends and fellow Canadians Ian and Sylvia Tyson recorded two of his songs, “Early Morning Rain” and “For Lovin’ Me.”When Peter, Paul and Mary came out with their own versions, and Marty Robbins reached the top of the country charts with Mr. Lightfoot’s “Ribbon of Darkness,” Mr. Lightfoot’s reputation soared. Overnight, he joined the ranks of songwriters like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton, all of whom influenced his style.When folk music ebbed in popularity, overwhelmed by the British invasion, Mr. Lightfoot began writing ballads aimed at a broader audience. He scored one hit after another, beginning in 1970 with the heartfelt “If You Could Read My Mind,” inspired by the breakup of his first marriage.In quick succession he recorded the hits “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “Rainy Day People” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which he wrote after reading a Newsweek article about the sinking of an iron-ore carrier in Lake Superior in 1975, with the loss of all 29 crew members.For Canadians, Mr. Lightfoot was a national hero, a homegrown star who stayed home even after achieving spectacular success in the United States and who catered to his Canadian fans with cross-country tours. His ballads on Canadian themes, like “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” pulsated with a love for the nation’s rivers and forests, which he explored on ambitious canoe trips far into the hinterlands.His personal style, reticent and self-effacing — he avoided interviews and flinched when confronted with praise — also went down well. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m being called an icon, because I really don’t think of myself that way,” Mr. Lightfoot told The Globe and Mail in 2008. “I’m a professional musician, and I work with very professional people. It’s how we get through life.”Performing in London in June 1973.Michael Putland/Getty ImagesGordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. was born on Nov. 17, 1938, in Orillia, Ontario, where his father managed a dry-cleaning plant. As a boy, he sang in a church choir, performed on local radio shows and shined in singing competitions. “Man, I did the whole bit: oratorio work, Kiwanis contests, operettas, barbershop quartets,” he told Time magazine in 1968.He played piano, drums and guitar as a teenager, and while still in high school wrote his first song, a topical number about the Hula Hoop craze with a catchy last line: “I guess I’m just a slob and I’m gonna lose my job, ’cause I’m Hula-Hula-Hoopin’ all the time.”After studying composition and orchestration at the Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles, he returned to Canada. For a time he was a member of the Singing Swinging Eight, a singing and dancing troupe on the television show “Country Hoedown,” but he soon became part of the Toronto folk scene, performing at the same coffee houses and clubs as Ian and Sylvia, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen.He formed a folk duo, the Two Tones, with a fellow “Hoedown” performer, Terry Whelan. The duo recorded a live album in 1962, “Two Tones at the Village Corner.” The next year, while traveling in Europe, he served as the host of “The Country and Western Show” on BBC television.As a songwriter, Mr. Lightfoot had advanced beyond the Hula Hoop, but not by a great deal. His work “didn’t have any kind of identity,” he told the authors of “The Encyclopedia of Folk, Country and Western Music,” published in 1969. When the Greenwich Village folk boom brought Mr. Dylan and other dynamic songwriters to the fore, he said, “I started to get a point of view, and that’s when I started to improve.”In 1965, he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival and made his debut in the United States at Town Hall in New York. “Mr. Lightfoot has a rich, warm voice and a dexterous guitar technique,” Robert Shelton wrote in The New York Times. “With a little more attention to stage personality, he should become quite popular.”A year later, after signing with Albert Grossman, the manager of Mr. Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary, Mr. Lightfoot recorded his first solo album, “Lightfoot!” With performances of “Early Morning Rain,” “For Lovin’ Me,” “Ribbon of Darkness” and “I’m Not Sayin’,” a hit record in Canada in 1963, the album was warmly received by the critics.Real commercial success came when he switched to Warner Brothers, initially recording for the company’s Reprise label. “By the time I changed over to Warner Brothers, round about 1970, I was reinventing myself,” he told the Georgia newspaper Savannah Connect in 2010. “Let’s say I was probably just advancing away from the folk era, and trying to find some direction whereby I might have some music that people would want to listen to.”Lightfoot with his 12-string guitar at the 2018 Stagecoach Festival in Indio, Calif.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for StagecoachMr. Lightfoot, accompanying himself on an acoustic 12-string guitar, in a voice that often trembled with emotion, gave spare, direct accounts of his material. He sang of loneliness, troubled relationships, the itch to roam and the majesty of the Canadian landscape. He was, as the Canadian writer Jack Batten put it, “journalist, poet, historian, humorist, short-story teller and folksy recollector of bygone days.”His popularity as a recording artist began to wane in the 1980s, but he maintained a busy touring schedule. In 1999 Rhino Records released “Songbook,” a four-disc survey of his career.Mr. Lightfoot, who lived in Toronto, is survived by his wife, Kim Hasse, six children — Fred, Ingrid, Miles, Meredith, Eric and Galen — and several grandchildren, according to Ms. Lord, his publicist. His first two marriages ended in divorce. His older sister, Beverley Eyers, died in 2017.In 2002, just before going onstage in Orillia, Mr. Lightfoot collapsed when an aneurysm in his abdominal aorta ruptured and left him near death. After two years spent recovering, he recorded an album, “Harmony,” and in 2005 he resumed his live performances with the Better Late Than Never Tour.“I want to be like Ralph Carter, Stompin’ Tom and Willie Nelson,” Mr. Lightfoot told the CBC in 2004. “Just do it for as long as humanly possible.”Vjosa Isai More

Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 folk ballad told the true story of a shipwreck on Lake Superior. One of his old friends called it “a documentarian’s song.”Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian folk singer who died on Monday at 84, had one hit in particular that famously defied Top 40 logic.“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” his 1976 folk ballad, was unusual partly because, at more than six minutes long, it was about twice as long as most pop hits. It also retold a real-life tragedy — the 1975 sinking on Lake Superior of a freighter with 29 crewmen aboard — with meticulous attention to detail.“It’s a documentarian’s song, when you think about it,” said Eric Greenberg, a longtime friend of the singer who interviewed Mr. Lightfoot as a student journalist in the late 1970s and later co-wrote a song with him.The plotline of a typical Top 40 hit usually consists of “boy meets girl, boy breaks up with girl, or come back, or you left me, or whatever,” Mr. Greenberg said, speaking by phone from New York City. “Not a five-, six-, seven-minute story — a factual story, in Gordon’s case, painstakingly checked to make sure that all the facts are right.”Here’s the true story that inspired “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” and a look at the song that kept its memory alive.A disappearing shipThe Edmund Fitzgerald was a 729-foot ore carrier and one of the largest freighters on the Great Lakes when it left Superior, Wis., on Nov. 9, 1975, carrying iron pellets bound for Detroit.The next day, the ship was caught in a storm with winds that averaged 60 to 65 miles an hour. Its captain reported 20- to 25-foot waves washing over the decks and water pouring in below deck through two broken air vents.That night, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank near the coasts of Ontario and Michigan, in water that was only about 50 degrees. A nearby ship reported seeing its lights disappear in the driving snow.The Coast Guard later found lifeboats, life rings and other debris from the ship. But the lifeboats were self-inflatable, so their discovery did not necessarily indicate that they had been used. None of the 29 crew members survived.An unlikely successThe morning after the Fitzgerald went down, the rector of Mariners’ Church of Detroit tolled its bell 29 times, once for each man lost. An Associated Press reporter knocked on the church’s door, interviewed the rector and filed an account that was published in newspapers.Mr. Lightfoot read the article. Soon afterward, he started singing a song about the wreck during a previously scheduled recording session. His band joined in, and the first version of the song that they recorded was later released, according to “Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind,” a 2020 documentary.There was no expectation that the song would become a hit single, because its length made it too long for airplay on the radio. But it would spend 21 weeks on the Billboard charts and peak at No. 2, one notch behind Mr. Lightfoot’s only No. 1 hit, “Sundown.” It also turned the tale of the sinking into a modern legend.Yet unlike songs that use a real-life story as the basis for embellishment, Mr. Lightfoot’s ballad hewed precisely to the real-life details. The weight of the ore, for example — “26,000 tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty” — was accurate. So was the number of times that the church bell chimed in Detroit.Decades later, Mr. Lightfoot changed the lyrics slightly after investigations into the accident revealed that waves, not crew error, had led to the shipwreck. In the new lyrics, he sang that it got dark at 7 that November night on Lake Superior — not that a main hatchway caved in.“That’s the kind of meticulous, looking-for-the-truth kind of guy that he was,” Mr. Greenberg said.An enduring legacy“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” like its creator, endured as a Canadian classic long after slipping off the Top 40 charts. The bluegrass guitarist Tony Rice (who also released an entire album of Lightfoot cover songs) and the rock bands Rheostatics and the Dandy Warhols were among those who sang covers over the years.“The melodies are so powerful and he’s such a good storyteller and such a beautiful lyricist,” the Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan said in the 2020 documentary. “And the combination of those things just really makes for a great song.”Mr. Lightfoot remained proud of it for decades, and he kept newspaper clippings and items given to him by the crew members’ surviving families in his home, Mr. Greenberg said.The song’s success had one downside: It turned the wreck, which lies in Canadian territory at a depth of about 500 feet, into a trophy for divers, upsetting the lost sailors’ families. In 2006, the government of Ontario adopted a law protecting the site. More

The opera house’s new streaming service provides live and on-demand performances, as well as extras like backstage glimpses and educational programs.La Scala’s audience can now be anywhere.The opera house in Milan is sharing select performances online through LaScalaTv, a platform that started streaming in February. Its first live offering was a broadcast of Verdi’s opera “I Vespri siciliani,” conducted by Fabio Luisi and featuring such soloists as Marina Rebeka and Luca Micheletti.The program also includes concerts and ballets. On May 11, Alberto Malazzi conducts “Petite Messe Solennelle” by Rossini, to commemorate the anniversary of La Scala’s restoration and reopening after World War II. The ballet “Romeo and Juliet” by Sergei Prokofiev takes the screen to choreography by Kenneth MacMillan on June 28.The on-demand library also includes performances for children, starting with a staged concert based on carnival celebrations called “Lalla & Skali and … the Enchanted Mask.”The platform is part of a wider effort to modernize La Scala’s infrastructure, including an extensive educational outreach program using the technology and plans for subtitles on seat backs.Mirjam Schiavello, left, and Matteo Sala in a performance of “Lalla and Skali and … the Enchanted Mask” at La Scala, part of the house’s on-demand offerings for children.Brescia and Amisano/Teatro alla ScalaDominique Meyer, the theater’s current artistic director and chief executive, said that technological advances in recent years had made it easier for an opera house to widen its reach.“It is a real leap,” he said, recalling the difficulties he faced in 2013 when starting a platform for the Vienna State Opera during his tenure there. “Most people have a faster internet connection, which is extremely important when viewers want to watch a stream in 4K.”The equipment available for in-house operations has also advanced rapidly. Small, robotic cameras can capture performances in the dark without necessitating changes of light, leaving on-site viewers undisturbed. And microphones can easily transmit quality sound.Performances on LaScalaTv are available in either ultra high definition or high definition. The most expensive offering, a live program at the highest resolution, costs 11.90 euros (about $13), while a children’s program at the lower resolution costs €2.90. The audio track is uniformly transmitted in AAC, a compression format of a higher grade than MP3.Mr. Meyer has prioritized a wide view of the stage. “It was important to me to respect a certain distance,” he said. “One doesn’t need close-ups that show the sweat on the face of Gilda at the end of ‘Rigoletto.’”He also wants to capture dance performances at a healthy distance. “If you come too close, it looks like the dancer’s head is about to hit the top of the screen,” he said. “A principle of the whole project was that there would not be too many cuts, and that the viewer would have the liberty to focus where he or she pleases.”Cameras at La Scala can capture performances for online audiences without disturbing viewers in the opera house itself. Brescia and Amisano/Teatro alla ScallaIntermissions provide glimpses backstage and facts about La Scala’s history. Recent offerings have included a tour of the theater’s museum, home to such treasures as a manuscript page from Verdi’s “Nabucco” and a portrait of the soprano Maria Callas.Mr. Meyer said that the house had just scratched the surface of the possibilities and that “there was a lot to tell,” citing “the rehearsals, what happens behind the scenes, the [costume and set] workshops.”Of central importance is bringing some of these stories to younger viewers. The theater has started by creating a network of 200 schools in Italy to bring students into contact with opera.For example, a live rehearsal of Puccini’s “La Bohème” was recently followed by a livestream of the performance itself. A documentary about Bellini’s “I Capuleti e i Montecchi” was combined with an on-demand viewing of the opera itself. This September will bring the first ballet program, revolving around Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.”The house is also teaming up with RAI, Italy’s state broadcaster, to share footage from the 1970s and ’80s, including performances under the conductors Claudio Abbado and Riccardo Muti. The main sponsor of LaScalaTv is the bank Intesa Sanpaolo, and the Cariplo Foundation is supporting the dissemination of content to schools.A scene from “La Bohème” at La Scala. A recent stream of a rehearsal for that opera was followed by a livestream of the performance itself.Brescia and Amisano/Teatro alla Scalla“We brought in about €40.5 million in sponsorship revenue last season,” Mr. Meyer said. “That is huge in Europe. All these projects are being financed.”In the theater, subtitles will be installed this summer on the backs of chairs with translations in Italian, English, French, German and Spanish, using the same software as the streaming platform (eventually there will be eight languages). On May 29, La Scala unveils its new website — which includes a digital magazine — coinciding with its presentation of the 2023-24 season.Italian viewers thus far make up half the streaming service’s audience. Another fourth comes from other European countries. Outside Europe, the highest numbers are currently in the United States and Russia.In-house, Mr. Meyer said, La Scala has regularly sold out this season. “We of course can’t create more seats,” he said. “This technology allows us to expand our audience, also to children.” More