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      Benjamin Britten’s ‘Peter Grimes’ Arrives in Paris

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      Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes,” directed by Deborah Warner in her Paris Opera debut, reintroduces a 20th-century composer to French audiences.The bitter and bloodthirsty townspeople who make up the chorus in Benjamin Britten’s 1945 opera “Peter Grimes” might feel like a sort of welcoming committee for the British director Deborah Warner, who is making her debut at the Paris Opera.She’s more than happy to be rejoining the cold and stern world of “Peter Grimes.” It was a privilege to bring Britten’s work “more into the French consciousness,” she said in an interview.This production, which she also directed in its debut at the Teatro Real in Madrid in 2021 and at the Royal Opera in London last year, is for Ms. Warner the consummate example of a modern British opera still being discovered beyond Britain — and particularly across the English Channel in France, where Britten has intrigued many operagoers.“Peter Grimes” tells the story of an outcast fisherman in a seaside English village who is accused of drowning his apprentice but is embraced by the sympathetic Ellen, who later begins to suspect that he may indeed be a villain. The townspeople turn on Grimes as the opera spirals toward its tragic climax. The production, with Ms. Warner again at the helm, has a slightly different cast but with the tenor Allan Clayton in the title role as before. It plays a total of nine performances at the Palais Garnier, Jan. 26 through Feb. 24. “One of the things I love about an opera revival is that it’s a way of developing the piece, and to get it there and take it further,” she said by phone during rehearsals in Paris. “You might have 75 to 125 performances in the theater, but in opera you have far less.”Her sense of rediscovery with “Peter Grimes” is what drives her passion for opera, which she admittedly came to after years of directing theater, often collaborating with the actress Fiona Shaw in a famous “Richard II” in the 1990s (in which Ms. Shaw played the lead) and “Medea,” “Mother Courage and Her Children” and others in the 2000s and after.Deborah Warner, the director of “Peter Grimes,” said it was a privilege to bring Benjamin Britten’s work “more into the French consciousness.”E. Bauer/Onp“I was part of a big generation that were brought from the theater to opera, for me kicking and screaming,” said Ms. Warner, 63. “My parents didn’t listen to opera. I had no exposure to it.”Mystery could also be at the core of Britten’s history in France, a country long known for its love of romantic opera. Britten had a certain amount of early success in France, as he did across the continent and the world, with “Peter Grimes” and “Billy Budd,” written in 1951.But the French “didn’t quite understand Britten, and he didn’t quite understand them,” said Paul Kildea, the author of “Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century” and the artistic director of Musica Viva Australia, in a phone interview from Melbourne. “There was always something dangerous about France.”“He felt very trapped in England,” Mr. Kildea added.France became an early influence for Britten in a way that many opera fans may not realize, Mr. Kildea said. He had his own sense of discovery as he began his creative life.“He spoke French and went there in the early ’30s, and then later with his mother,” he said. “But the amazing moment for him was in 1937 after his mother dies and he goes to Paris and searches for Oscar Wilde’s grave, unsuccessfully and traumatically visits a brothel and tries to come to terms with who he is as an adult and a musician.”Despite the mixed reception in England and France of the original “Peter Grimes” and “Billy Budd,” about a handsome and beloved sailor and the master-of-arms aboard an 18th-century British naval vessel who is determined to destroy him, the French understood something a bit more subtle.“I think the French got a lot of the gay subtext of ‘Billy Budd’ long before the English started writing about it,” he said.The subtlety and obscurity of Britten’s work keep it interesting for Ms. Warner. She has never been as drawn to directing the grand Italian and French operas. Her first real exposure to the largely atonal opera style was Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck,” about a soldier’s degradation and demise.Britten outside the Sadler’s Wells Theater in London, with his script for “Peter Grimes.” The opera premiered there on June 7, 1945.Popperfoto, via Getty Images“I only liked ‘Wozzeck’ because I had worked on the [Georg] Büchner play of the same title, so I had heard the music and loved it,” she said. “Some of the more contemporary operas are the calling cards to woo the new generation, in my opinion, because they’re incredibly immediate and visceral.”Coincidentally, Ms. Warner finds parallels between “Wozzeck” (which she will direct in a new production for the Royal Opera in London starting in May) and “Peter Grimes” (she also directed “Billy Budd” at the Royal Opera and has staged other Britten operas, including “Death in Venice” and “Turn of the Screw” around the world). She sees the chorus as a central and important character, and a dangerous and mistreated one at that.“With Britten the dramatic mastery and the music mastery are equal, and he was searching for the same dark world that Berg was,” Ms. Warner said. “There is a remarkable similarity to the brutalized community that makes ‘Grimes’ work. The terrible behavior of this monstrous chorus has to come from somewhere.”And that ever-present chorus presents its own set of challenges with mostly French singers delivering English words in the harsh and accusatory tones that Britten wrote for the townspeople’s descent on Grimes.“The challenge of Britten in France is the language, but I don’t think the music is harmonically or rhythmically difficult,” said Ching-Lien Wu, chorus master for the Paris Opera, in a recent phone interview from Paris. “You have to not overreact to the music. If you sing a romantic Italian piece, you can do that. You can’t do that with Britten.”A scene from a 1945 production of “Peter Grimes.”Alex Bender/Picture Post/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesOver the decades, Mr. Kildea said, Britten’s contribution to opera has gradually become more a part of the repertory in French opera houses.“It’s partly an aesthetic thing, because when they first took ‘Turn of the Screw’ to Paris in 1956, for example, it was just too far removed from the concept of grand opera,” he said.“Britten wasn’t part of the French virtuoso. A lot of my French friends talk about stumbling upon Britten. They wouldn’t have had that exposure in school or on the radio.”Ms. Warner sees the premiere of “Peter Grimes” at the Sadler’s Wells Theater in London on June 7, 1945, as a seminal moment in opera history.“It’s a miracle that ‘Grimes’ is such a success,” she said. “This opera happened right at the end of the war. There we are with the grumpiest fisherman on the planet, and it’s a deeply uncomfortable and vicious and nasty story.“The right people must have been in the audience that night,” she added. “We owe a debt of gratitude to those 800 people who were at Sadler’s Wells that night.” More

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      At Rennie Harris’s Hip-Hop University, Teaching the Teachers

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      On a Friday morning in December the hip-hop choreographer Rennie Harris was in Boulder, Colo., teaching a master class. Rather than taking a post at the front of the studio and staying there, Harris moved among the students, weaving his way through the room and dancing along with them. He offered a few critiques, but more often he paused to share stories and historical tidbits, illuminating the lineage and theory behind the movements he was teaching.But this was more than just a master class. It was one of the final sessions in a yearlong program to train and certify hip-hop and street dance teachers. A few days later, most of these students became members of the first graduating class at the newly minted Rennie Harris University.Over the course of his decades-long career, Harris, who turns 59 this week, has been a guiding force, ushering hip-hop and street dance into new spaces and championing their history and legacy. He is perhaps most widely known for bringing these styles to the concert stage with his Philadelphia-based company Rennie Harris Puremovement. (The company will present its signature work, “Rome & Jewels,” a retelling of “Romeo and Juliet,” at the Joyce Theater in New York in February.) Rennie Harris University builds on the principles that have shaped its founder’s career, bringing them into the classroom.“No one’s teaching how to teach hip-hop, everyone’s just teaching people how to do it,” said Harris, here in Boulder for his program’s winter cypher session.Stephen Speranza“What’s special, I think, about the curriculum is the pedagogy piece,” Harris said in an interview. “Because no one’s teaching how to teach hip-hop, everyone’s just teaching people how to do it. It’s the assumption that because you can do it, then you can teach it, but everybody doesn’t know how to teach it.”Hip-hop teaching, he said, often focuses largely on learning choreography. Rennie Harris University aims to broaden the scope by giving educators a working knowledge not only of hip-hop technique, but also of its origins and culture. And because hip-hop and other street styles have historically been overlooked in academic settings that teach dance, a program like this one could help place qualified instructors in institutions where these styles have not been offered or prioritized.Farrah McAdam, a member of the first graduating class, said there were additional benefits: “I think this program helps quote, legitimize hip-hop, even though it’s legit as is, right? But we know in education or academic spaces, ballet and modern are seen as a higher priority or a higher foundation of dance than hip-hop or other cultural forms.”In dance programs across the United States, classical ballet and modern are typically part of the core curriculum, while genres like tap, hip-hop and other street styles are often offered as electives — if at all. And while faculty members, dancers and choreographers have grown more vocal about the need for change — especially after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, which brought renewed attention to racial bias in the arts — it has been slow in coming.Farrah McAdam and Tyreis Hunte in B-boy KO’s Popping Combo class in Boulder.Stephen SperanzaFor D. Sabela Grimes, a multidisciplinary artist and associate professor of practice at the Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at the University of Southern California, this phenomenon is part of what he calls the “ballet industrial complex.” Ballet, “at least in the American context, has created pathways for people to have careers as performers,” he said, “and then go into higher education.” But, he added, that has not been the case for hip-hop and street dance teachers.Grimes, an original “Rome & Jewels” cast member, said he was hopeful about the change he is seeing on an institutional level — and that programs like Harris’s would help with the momentum.“I think the program will be a resource,” he said, but “what I have learned working in higher education is that we’re going to need more. Times are changing, which is beautiful, but these institutions don’t move at the same pace that hip-hop culture in a really general sense moves and popular culture also moves.”Harris’s program may be the first of its kind at this level, but similar ones are in the works. Last fall, the British dance company ZooNation rolled out a slate of courses to train hip-hop teachers. And Moncell Durden, a dance scholar, hip-hop figure and a former member of Rennie Harris Puremovement, is developing a teacher certification program in Black American dance as part of his organization, Intangible Roots. It’s slated to begin in the fall, online and with in-person sessions in Los Angeles.The seeds for Rennie Harris University were planted more than 20 years ago, when Harris started Illadelph Legends, a dance festival that gathered hip-hop and street dance pioneers to teach classes and discuss the culture and the history of the forms. Harris said that Durden, who was also involved with the festival, had proposed a partnership with Unesco to create a certification program that would explore hip-hop as a form of traditional folklore. The idea didn’t come to fruition, Harris said, but he couldn’t get it out of his head.Harris presiding at the dance battle at the cypher session in Boulder.Stephen SperanzaHe got to work mining his connections across the dance world, he said, and “called some in favors.” Rennie Harris University welcomed its first pool of applicants in early 2021.The program is structured to allow students to take technique classes locally, with a list of qualified instructors near their homes provided by the school; students also meet virtually to take a rotating slate of courses online. Sessions cover hip-hop and street dance-specific injury prevention, pedagogy, theory and history; Harris’s contribution, a series called The Day Before Hip-Hop, traces the roots of the form back to the period of American slavery. The courses are taught by renowned dance scholars including Ayo Walker, Thomas DeFrantz, Charmaine Warren and Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, and hip-hop and street dance practitioners like Buddha Stretch, Pop Master Fabel and B-boy YNOT.“Most people think that dance is just dance,” said Stephanie Sanchez, a graduate of Rennie Harris University. “And it’s not, it’s so much more than that — it’s research, development, where this move comes from. And that’s exactly what Rennie is doing with this program.”On top of their course load, students attend multiday intensives called cypher sessions, with in-person dance classes and lectures. On the roster for the winter session, held in Boulder in December, were classes like Wake & Break, Tops & Rocks, Popping Combo and Can U Freestyle. (The spring session is in Miami; tuition covers the classes but students pay separate fees for travel, room and board.) The cypher sessions, named for an important hip-hop practice in which dancers (or rappers) gather to perform and cheer one another on — usually in a circle, taking turns in the center — bring students together in a community, a vital part of the Rennie Harris University experience and of hip-hop culture more broadly.To earn their certificates, students are required to pass an extensive slate of assessments. These include teaching a mock class, taking a written test and participating in the cypher-end dance battle, which welcomes dancers from the area and offers a $3,000 grand prize.Warming up before the dance battle.Stephen SperanzaPreparing to pull out their most impressive stunts, the students at the cypher session in December may have been feeling the pressure on the evening of the battle. But a strong sense of unity was the prevailing note. As the judges paused the competition to deliberate after the first round, the competitors fell into a cypher, dancing for — and with — one another as if they’d been dancing together for years.Many Rennie Harris University graduates have taken on Harris’s sense of mission. Tyreis Hunte, a senior at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., said they hoped to bring hip-hop and street dance into the academy in a deeper way, “to educate communities about the history and the integrity of street dance and street culture.”Some are already teaching dance, like McAdam, who works at Sonoma State University in California. She said her experience at Rennie Harris University had deepened her relationship to hip-hop. That it is not only about her teaching, she said, “but also just showing up to jams and battles and spaces, or opening doors for other people to come into the teaching space that might not usually have the access.”For Harris, too, the program is about opening doors. It’s an opportunity to share his knowledge, and also to widen hip-hop and street dance’s circle of influence and help reshape priorities.At Rennie Harris University, where the second cohort has already started classes, “we’re flipping the script,” he said. “Hip-hop dance is first. House dance is first. Street dance is first — that’s the focus, right? Anything else is secondary.” More

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      A Decidedly French “Hamlet” Returns to Paris

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      Starting in March, Ambroise Thomas’s version of the Shakespearean tragedy will be revived at the Opéra Bastille for the first time since 1938.Ambroise Thomas’s “Hamlet” had all the elements to become a blockbuster at the Paris Opera in the 19th century. With a gripping plot that unfolds over five acts, a leading baritone in the title role and innovative orchestration deploying newly invented instruments, the work had an enduring hold at the box office after its 1868 premiere.Like so many “grands opéras” that were born and bred for the company, “Hamlet” fell out of repertoire around the turn of the 20th century. Only since the 1980s has the work received a revival on stages worldwide. From March 11 to April 9, Thomas’s Shakespearean adaptation will return to the Paris Opera for the first time since 1938, in a new production directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski and starring Ludovic Tézier at the Opéra Bastille (a pre-opening for viewers under 28 takes place on March 8. Thomas Hengelbrock conducts).The company’s general director, Alexander Neef, has made it a goal to create a more specific identity for the Paris Opera by commissioning research and programming the French grand opera that once flourished there. Having experienced and admired a production of “Hamlet” at the Metropolitan Opera some 20 years ago, Mr. Neef said that the work “came up rather naturally” after his appointment.Mr. Tézier, whom he considers “not only the leading French baritone but maybe the leading baritone in his repertoire,” was also a natural choice. The singer, who is particularly coveted in the music of Verdi, in turn suggested Mr. Warlikowski as director following their collaboration on a 2017 production of Verdi’s “Don Carlos” at Opéra Bastille.For both lead performer and director, the production provides an opportunity to deepen their interpretation of a work that has played an important role in their respective careers. Mr. Tézier made debuts in both Toulouse, France, and Turin, Italy, in the title of role of Thomas’s “Hamlet” about two decades ago, while Mr. Warlikowski staged the original play by Shakespeare in Avignon, France in 2000 (he had first learned the drama as an apprentice of the late director Peter Brook in Paris).The director Krzysztof Warlikowski, who staged the original play by Shakespeare in 2000 in Avignon, France. “For me, the essential thing that clinches the drama is of course the apparition of the specter,” he said.Louisa Marie Summer for The New York TimesThis operatic version of “Hamlet” takes an unexpected turn before the curtain falls: The protagonist survives and is crowned king. The liberties taken by Thomas’s librettists, Michel Carré and Jules Barbier, met with criticism after the premiere; a Covent Garden version of the opera first mounted in 1869 restores the work’s original, more tragic ending.For Mr. Warlikowski, Thomas’s protagonist shares a great deal in common with the mythological figure of Orestes. “He also rebels against hypocrisy and the ills of this world,” he explained on a video call.The director will also hone in on the scenes in which the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears. “For me, the essential thing that clinches the drama is of course the apparition of the specter,” he said.Mr. Tézier noted that Thomas deployed some of his most dramatically effective music for the ghost by knowing how to pare down the orchestra. The baritone drew a parallel to another Shakespearean opera, Verdi’s “Macbeth,” and the title character’s hallucination of a dagger.“Thomas creates an atmosphere that is favorable to the text and the emotion of the moment,” he said by phone.The composer was exploring orchestral colors with new instruments by the musician and inventor Adolphe Sax at the same time as the composer Hector Berlioz, who held Thomas in great esteem. For example, the second-act banquet scene in which Hamlet accuses Claudius of murdering his father features a solo for alto saxophone. Thomas also wrote for bass saxhorn and six-keyed trombones.An ardent defender of French music against Germanic influence (specifically that of Wagner), Thomas in 1877 stated that every country “should stay faithful to its style and maintain its distinct character,” rather than submit “to the caprices of the time.” In a sign of his patriotism, he volunteered for the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War before assuming the directorship of the Paris Conservatory in 1871.His “Hamlet” has been noted for its specifically French qualities. In addition to mitigating tragedy by allowing the protagonist to survive and avenge the death of his father, romantic intrigue and sensuous instrumentation often set the tone.Ludovic Tézier has a long history with Thomas’s “Hamlet,” having made debuts in Toulouse, France, and Turin, Italy in the title role. He noted that the work “allows the audience to spend a night in the opera in a state of suspense and meditation.”Jeff Pachoud/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesParis was at the time the center of classical musical life, not just in Europe but worldwide. “Hamlet” premiered at Salle Le Peletier, the same theater that mounted such works as Giacomo Meyerbeer’s “Robert le Diable” and Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” before Palais Garnier opened in 1875.The baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure, who was at the height of his fame, was captured in portrait as Hamlet by none other than Manet. The role of Ophélie, whose fourth-act mad scene helped ensure the work’s popularity, has also been an important role for sopranos from Christina Nilsson to Mary Garden (the new production stars Lisette Oropesa and, starting in April, Brenda Rae).But by 1891, Wagner’s “music of the future” became something of a game changer. “Lohengrin,” “Die Walküre” and “Tannhäuser” remained in repertoire at the Paris Opera through 1910, while of Meyerbeer’s four major operas, only “Les Huguenots” persisted.Mr. Warlikowski expressed his wish to champion “Hamlet” by “provoking questions and creating a spiritual journey through this timeless story.”Mr. Tézier emphasized that the work was not “second-rate.”“It most of all allows the audience to spend a night in the opera in a state of suspense and meditation,” he said.He compared the infrequent programming of such neglected classics to the unpredictable sightings of the Loch Ness monster: “There is no real explanation. But with each appearance of the monster, you have to see it because it’s a rarity. From the beginning to the end, something really happens in the music.” More

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      A Paris Opera House’s History and the Phantom

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      The architecture and location of the Palais Garnier are intertwined with the history of France and Paris (and a famous phantom).Showcasing more than 400 performances of opera, dance and music each year, Charles Garnier’s Paris Opera, inaugurated in 1875, is a true cathedral of culture. A promenade through its rooms is a theatrical experience itself, revealing ornate marble columns, bronze statues, crystal chandeliers, and paintings and frescoes. But the Palais Garnier, as the building is known, also holds secrets, from design quirks to haunting tales. Here are some facts about the building.Charles Garnier, the architect, was the last one shortlisted for the project.  Emperor Napoleon III started a competition for an “Imperial Academy of Music and Dance” in December 1860. Five finalists were chosen from more than 170 proposals. They were ranked, and Garnier came in last. With little to lose, he changed his plans, creating a monumental structure layered with imposing arcades, colonnades and flanking pavilions, crowned with a dome and a pedimented tower. “He was using a classical language, but in an eclectic, much freer, and much more expressive way,” Christopher Mead, author of “Charles Garnier’s Paris Opera: Architectural Empathy and the Renaissance of French Classicism,” said in an interview. Garnier’s win shocked the establishment, Mr. Mead said, but worked with the emperor’s effort to cast himself as a reformer.Charles Garnier, second from right, circa 1865 with his partners during construction of the opera house, which became known as the Palais Garnier.adoc-photos/Corbis via Getty ImagesThere is a “lake” under the opera house.When digging the foundations, workers hit a hidden arm of the Seine, causing water to flood the site. It was impossible to remove all the water, so crews had to contain it with a massive concrete reservoir with a vaulted ceiling from which water is still pumped today. The so-called lake was dramatized by Gaston Leroux, author of “The Phantom of the Opera,” who made it the stomping grounds of the Phantom. Mr. Mead was mesmerized by a visit. “You can see why it inspired Leroux,” he said. “You could invent a whole world there.”The falling chandelier in “The Phantom of the Opera” was based on a real event.In 1896, during a performance of Étienne-Joseph Floquet’s opera “Hellé,” a short-circuit caused a counterweight from the chandelier to fall, killing a woman in the audience and injuring several more people. Reporting on the event was Leroux, then a journalist with a Paris newspaper. In “The Phantom of the Opera,” it is the Phantom who dislodges the chandelier from the ceiling. The current ceiling of the Palais Garnier, painted by Marc Chagall. The house’s chandelier, which was involved in a deadly accident in 1896, inspired a plot point in “The Phantom of the Opera.”Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSo was the Phantom (sort of).Leroux first published his novel as a serial in 1909 and 1910. In an interview, Isabelle Rachelle Casta, author of “The Work of ‘Obscure Clarity’ in ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ by Gaston Leroux,” said its characters and story were invented but drew from real-life elements in addition to the lake and the falling chandelier. The Phantom himself was inspired by a pianist who was disfigured after an 1873 fire at the Palais Garnier’s precursor, the Salle Le Peletier, and from an assistant to Garnier who disappeared during construction. “Leroux took all of these stories and he created one of the most important stories of the 20th century,” Ms. Casta said. An attack partly inspired the construction. In 1858, Napoleon III and his wife, Empress Eugènie, went to the Salle Le Peletier for a concert. As they arrived, three bomb blasts threw their carriage onto its side, hurled spectators into the street and blew out windows in the opera house and surrounding buildings. Eight people died, but the emperor and empress survived. The mastermind of the plot was Felice Orsini, an Italian revolutionary who had been critical of Napoleon III for not supporting his pro-republican cause. The emperor, already hoping to replace the Salle Le Peletier, decided to build a new opera house in a more open area with a secure entrance. But he never saw it completed: He died in 1873.Garnier requested that no trees be planted on the main road to the building.Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who oversaw Napoleon III’s transformation of Paris, lined all his Grands Boulevards with trees, except for one: the Avenue de l’Opéra, a half-mile stretch from the Louvre to the opera house. Garnier asked for this to maximize his building’s sense of monumentality and to not block views of it. “He wanted a building that announced itself to the public,” Mr. Mead said. “This was a building for them.” More

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      SZA Matches Adele With Six Straight Weeks at No. 1

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      “SOS,” the latest album by the R&B singer, once again tops the Billboard album chart, matching the streak of Adele’s “30.”For the sixth consecutive week, “SOS,” the second album by the frank-talking R&B singer-songwriter SZA, tops the Billboard album chart, matching the streak of Adele’s latest release, “30,” in late 2021 and early 2022.Holding nearly steady in listener activity for the last three weeks — down only four percent week over week — “SOS” had the equivalent of 119,000 sales in the United States, including 160 million streams for its songs, according to the tracking service Luminate. Those numbers put the album just shy of one million in equivalent sales, which combine purchases and streams, in its first six weeks of release.The last album to achieve at least six straight weeks atop the Billboard 200 chart was the soundtrack to Disney’s “Encanto,” which notched eight in early 2022. But, according to Billboard, the only female artists to achieve at least six consecutive weeks at No. 1 in the last decade-plus are Adele and Taylor Swift, placing SZA, 33, in elite company. (The country singer Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” scored 10 straight weeks at No. 1 in 2021.)The reign of “SOS” also marks the longest run atop the album chart for an R&B release since Usher’s “Confessions” in 2004; Janet Jackson’s “Janet.” was the last R&B album by a woman to spend its first six weeks at No. 1, back in 1993, Billboard reported.“Midnights” by Swift holds at No. 2 this week with 73,000 equivalents, followed by Metro Boomin’s “Heroes & Villains” (No. 3 with 56,000); Drake and 21 Savage’s “Her Loss” (No. 4 with 47,000); and “The Highlights,” a compilation by the Weeknd, at No. 5 with 44,000.On the Hot 100 singles chart, a new song by Miley Cyrus titled “Flowers” could make its debut at No. 1, challenging Swift’s “Anti-Hero” (which has spent eight weeks on top), SZA’s “Kill Bill” and Bizarrap and Shakira’s “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53.”Spotify said “Flowers” became the most-streamed song in a single week in the service’s history, though Billboard would not announce its final Hot 100 chart until Tuesday, “due to data processing delays.” More

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      A Car Accident Couldn’t Halt the Saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin’s Rise

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      In 2020, she released a lauded album exploring the Coltranes’ music. The next year, she broke her jaw in a crash and turned the harrowing experience into inspiration for a new LP, “Phoenix.”In mid-September 2021, the saxophonist and bandleader Lakecia Benjamin was driving home from a performance in Cleveland when her car slid off the highway, careened through a wooded area and flipped into a drainage ditch.“I woke up the first time to somebody pulling me out of the car, trying to break it open,” Benjamin, a bright light on the New York scene since the early 2010s, said through two masks on a recent Saturday morning at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. “Then I woke up in the hospital on a surgical table and them telling me, ‘You’re going to be OK.’ I didn’t know what happened or what was going on.”The accident left the Washington Heights native with three broken ribs, a fractured scapula, a perforated eardrum, a concussion, neurological damage and — worst of all — a broken jaw, a severe blow to any horn player, let alone one with her intensity. Undeterred, Benjamin went to Europe just three weeks later, somehow summoning the strength to play songs from her 2020 album, “Pursuance: The Coltranes,” a project dedicated to the astral jazz of the creative soul mates John and Alice.How did she get through it? “A little bit from the Heights,” she said, alluding to her toughness. “A little bit of clamping down and staying clamped on the mouthpiece. And I really think I was lucky that I was playing the Coltrane music. That energy, and that message; that was what I was supposed to be doing.”Though Benjamin has been a rising star in jazz for more than a decade, she reached a new gear in 2020 following the release of “Pursuance: The Coltranes,” an album lauded for its refreshing take on bebop and spiritual jazz. The car accident couldn’t dim her determination. Hustle and ingenuity have defined Benjamin’s career, and her strong will, warmth and down-to-earth persona come through in the music. Equally melodic and assertive, her sound feels rooted in tradition, yet broad enough to encompass R&B and Latin music; its pronounced funk suggests allegiances to hip-hop and dance.The trauma of Benjamin’s crash anchors her new album, “Phoenix,” out Friday, a vast, labyrinthine set of arrangements that opens with “Amerikkan Skin,” a propulsive song that features the wail of emergency vehicle sirens. “Instead of starting musically only, I’m trying to put the audience in a state of mind, of the type of frenzy and frantic, the hecticness I felt getting out of the car,” she explained.By incorporating sampled gunfire into the mix, the song also recollects wider tensions of recent years. “Black people are going through it,” Benjamin said. “Lower class people are going through it. Everyone is going through something.”Featuring the civil rights activist Angela Davis, the poet Sonia Sanchez, the pianist and R&B singer Patrice Rushen and the saxophonist Wayne Shorter, the album both examines the nuances of Blackness and emphasizes the contributions of women to American culture. “Revolutionary hope resides precisely among those women who have been abandoned by history,” Davis declares on “Amerikkan Skin.” “I truly believe, and men should applaud this, that this is the era of women.”Benjamin started her own journey in jazz, long a male-dominated form, when she told an art teacher at her elementary school that she wanted to play alto sax before she even knew what it was. Actually getting her hands on the instrument involved persuading a classmate to switch from sax to art. “I think I negotiated a couple Oreos or something,” Benjamin deadpanned.She attended the Harlem School of the Arts, then the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, where she studied saxophone under the multi-reedist Patience Higgins. Later, as a student at the New School, she went to concerts after class and saw players like Gary Bartz whenever they were in town. Benjamin said she talked Bartz into giving her “one little lesson,” which led to his teaching her how to play classical music. From there, she studied under other noted saxophonists — Vincent Herring, Bruce Williams, Jerome Richardson and Steve Wilson — and tried to absorb everything she could about the instrument: “I was calling Kenny Garrett, everybody, ‘Hey, can you teach me?’”The drummer Terri Lyne Carrington met Benjamin around 2010, when she was touring to support her album “The Mosaic Project,” and Benjamin joined to play a few shows. “She came in and I was like, ‘Wow, this is really electrifying,’” Carrington said in a telephone interview. “I could hear her spirit, her soul, everything was right there on the line.” She commended Benjamin for playing with emotion without losing the technical aspects of playing the blues.“We all have to heal from the pandemic,” Benjamin said. “We all have to rise from these ashes.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York Times“We as jazz musicians can be musically intellectual and worried about playing hip and all those things,” Carrington said. “I was so happy to hear someone of her generation connect to the blues and to the origins of jazz in the way that she did.”Carrington produced Benjamin’s new album, tweaking compositions while adhering to the saxophonist’s own vision for the LP. “She wanted to involve people that she has called elders in some ways,” Carrington said. “I think that’s really an important element with young musicians to recognize or not recognize: to want to exchange. All of us have to, including her, pass on what we know to the people that are coming up behind us. That’s the only way the music survives.”The song “Basquiat” — a scorching arrangement dedicated to that artist — has a shape-shifting rhythm that pivots between calm and tranquillity. And the rapper, singer and producer Georgia Anne Muldrow appears on the title track, offering celestial coos for its spiritual-minded intro. The slow-rising arrangement purposefully depicts Benjamin’s resurgence in the wake of her accident.“I’ve seen her transform,” Muldrow said over the telephone. “The most beautiful thing about ’Kecia is that she is just more of herself. She’s more open with sharing the ideas that are within her. She’s become absolutely fearless in what it is — a compositional value, performance value, all these things. If you know ’Kecia, she ain’t gonna tell you nothing but the truth. She ain’t gonna give you nothing but what’s on her mind.”Benjamin said the perseverance she’s put into her career, and into recovering from her accident, are the backbone of “Phoenix,” which she hopes shows others “that anything is possible.”“I think I’m starting to see that I can accomplish more with the help of God than I thought I could,” she said. “I keep thinking this is the ceiling for me. And then I keep pressing it and pushing it. I’m growing; I feel like a phoenix. But I also feel we’re all out here the same way. We all have to heal from the pandemic. We all have to rise from these ashes.” More

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      He Quit Singing Because of Body Shaming. Now He’s Making a Comeback.

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      The tenor Limmie Pulliam, who made his debut at Carnegie Hall on Friday, hopes to break barriers for larger artists.As a rising young tenor in the 1990s, Limmie Pulliam dreamed of a career that would take him to the world’s top stages. But Pulliam, who has struggled with excessive weight for much of his life, quit singing in his early 20s because of concerns about body shaming in the music industry, finding work instead as a debt collector and a security guard.Now, after spending much of the past decade rebuilding his voice and career, Pulliam, 47, is finally realizing his dream. He made his debut at Carnegie Hall on Friday with the Oberlin Orchestra, singing the title role in R. Nathaniel Dett’s “The Ordering of Moses.” And last month, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in the role of Radamès in Verdi’s “Aida,” filling in for a tenor who had canceled his appearance — making Pulliam the first Black singer to perform that role in the Met’s history.His solemn performance received a warm ovation at Carnegie.“To hear Limmie succeed in this moment so beautifully, and at this point in his life, was personally satisfying for me,” said Timothy LeFebvre, the chair of the voice department at Oberlin. “We always cheer on our colleagues when they reach these notable achievements, but even more so when it is so hard fought.”In an interview, Pulliam reflected on his 12-year break from singing and the challenges facing larger artists, who once were common in the industry but have faced pressure in recent years to slim down. He also talked about how a chance to perform the national anthem while working as a field organizer in Missouri for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign allowed him to rediscover his voice. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.After you attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, you seemed destined for a career in opera. Then you quit. What happened?There was a lot of pressure on artists in terms of appearance. The industry cared about things that really had nothing to do with the voice, but with physicality, and that made it difficult for singers of size. It made it easy for me to walk away. I made myself a promise that if it ever stopped being fun, I would do something else. And so I did.What was it like at the time for singers struggling with concerns about their weight?People within the industry were able to make comments regarding someone’s physical look with impunity. In other industries, that would not be accepted, but it was almost widely accepted within the classical music world. It felt like it was OK to make fun of people of size and that we weren’t worthy of careers. It was a very difficult time, and it’s still a very difficult time.What would people say to you?I’ve had general directors send me email messages complimenting me on my voice and then saying, “Well, when you lose 50 pounds, get in touch with me again, and I’ll give you a live audition.”How did it feel to hear those comments?I began to look at rejection in a different way. I used to get a bit down when I received a note like that or just a flat-out refusal about an audition. But I began to use that as fuel to make me want to work even harder — to be an even better vocalist. I thought, “They may not want me right now, but they will need me at some point.”During your break from classical music, you worked a variety of jobs, eventually starting your own security firm. Did you sing at all, even for your own pleasure — at home, in the shower, at church?Not really. I was deliberately making the decision not to sing. I just didn’t have the desire. I wasn’t singing that much in church, and I rarely listened to the radio in the car. There wasn’t much going on musically for me during that time. I was just concentrating on this new life that I was trying to build and trying to move forward.And then, in 2007, when you were 31 and working as a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Missouri, your home state, you got an unexpected chance to perform the national anthem.We had invited someone to sing the national anthem. And they got cold feet at the last minute and decided they didn’t want to do it. And it happened to be an event that I had invited my boss to attend. And he immediately said, “I remember seeing on your résumé that you used to be an opera singer. Why don’t you sing it?” And I said, “Well, you know, I haven’t sung for a number of years. And the national anthem is not an easy song to sing. I’m not sure I can pull it off.” It was terrifying; it was not something I had practiced or prepared. I did not know what was going to come out.But he convinced me to do it. And I sang at the event and ended up singing at several other events. And in doing so, I noticed some very interesting changes in my voice. It had taken on a more mature, burnished quality. And it had grown substantially in size. And it really piqued my interest as to the type of repertoire I could possibly sing with this new instrument.Your returned to the stage five years later, when you were 36, at the National Opera Association’s vocal competition. How did you prepare?I pulled out my old lesson tapes from the conservatory and began working with those lesson tapes and polishing things, just out of interest to see what the voice could do. And I eventually reached out to a voice teacher in Memphis, Tenn., and began working with her. We realized that we had something that was special — that there wasn’t anyone like me as an artist out there. We were working to rekindle the voice. That’s when I found the joy again in singing.Was it easy to get back into the business?It took a good three years or so before that first staged operatic engagement came, and it came because I was posting clips of my singing on YouTube and other platforms and just sharing wherever I could, and reaching out to friends who were still in the industry and letting them know I was back and basically trying to sing for anyone who would hear me.A friend saw a clip of me singing “Ch’ella mi creda libero e lontano” from Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West” with my former high school choir director playing the piano. She shared it with her husband, who happened to be the music director of a small opera company in the Seattle area. They invited me to to sing the role of Canio in “Pagliacci.”You were the first Black singer to perform the role of Radamès at the Met. Do you feel that classical music is doing enough to address racial and ethnic disparities?As a Black man, I’m usually the only one who looks like me in a rehearsal setting. So there always is a sense of isolation, of not fitting in. You have to learn to work through that and do your job to the best of your ability.We always seem to have had celebrated Black female voices in the industry, like Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Grace Bumbry and Shirley Verrett. But the list of Black men has always been quite short. There are some in the industry who have difficulty in seeing Black males in romantic leads. We’ve made progress, and we just have to keep pushing forward and breaking down some of these walls.How did it feel to make your debut at Carnegie Hall?It was very difficult for me to enjoy it fully. It has been a challenging year for me personally. On May 8, my father passed away. And the following week, after the funeral, I left to get on a plane to prepare for my debut with the Cleveland Orchestra singing the role of Otello. I arrived in New York on Nov. 10 to begin my cover contract with the Met for “Aida.” On Nov. 14, my eldest sister passed away.It has been an emotional roller coaster for me. One never knows how grief will manifest itself. And grief is a very sneaky thing. And it pops up on you at very odd times, and you never know what’s going to trigger it. I was able to make it through because of the strength of my faith and knowing that my loved ones were in complete support of me and my career and would have wanted me to be where I was.What did your family say to you after the performance?My mother walked up to me and gave me a hug and a kiss and said: “God bless you. I’m extremely proud of you.” My oldest brother, whenever I go to perform, he always reminds me to make the family proud. And his response on Friday night was, “That’s how you make us proud.” More

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      Ginny Redington Dawes, Composer of Memorable Ad Jingles, Dies at 77

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      She collaborated on the melodies for signature commercials that sang the praises of McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and other brands.Ginny Redington Dawes, a songwriter whose compositions included memorable advertising jingles like the chipper McDonald’s declaration “You, You’re the One” and Coca-Cola’s boast that “Coke Is It,” died on Dec. 31 in Manhattan. She was 77.Her companion and only immediate survivor, James McCullar, said the cause was complications of hepatic cirrhosis.Ms. Dawes never became well known herself, but she helped maintain or boost the popularity of the products she promoted. And she insinuated infectious tunes into the nation’s repertoire that Americans whistled and hummed as much as the songs played on Top 40 radio.She hooked listeners with melodically and rhythmically catchy jingles that accompanied slogans for everything from Tide detergent to Hartz’s tick and flea-fighting pet collars, Kit Kat candy bars and Johnson’s baby powder.“When I’ve got a really great lyric,” she told Charles Osgood of CBS in a 1977 television interview, “I put a very simple melody to it.”Ms. Dawes started writing the music and lyrics for commercials in 1975 after the firm of Sidney E. Woloshin — who composed the original McDonald’s “You Deserve a Break Today” jingle in 1971 — was commissioned to do one for the chain’s new “You, You’re the One” advertising campaign.Mr. Woloshin invited about 20 jingle writers to submit proposals. Ms. Dawes produced the winning tune. Adopted by the ad agency Needham, Harper & Steers, it was suddenly everywhere.In 1979, she married a jingle-writing competitor, Thomas W. Dawes, whose credits included Alka-Seltzer’s “Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz” and “7Up, the Uncola.”They later collaborated on the music for, among other campaigns, American Airlines’ “Something Special in the Air” and the familiar “Coke Is It.” Mr. Dawes died in 2007.The jingle that underscored Coke’s claim to be “It,” introduced in 1982, was described as a “piece of dynamite” by John F. Bergin, the worldwide director of the Coke account at the McCann-Erickson agency.While David Ogilvy, a founder of the Ogilvy & Mather agency, was credited with the credo “If you don’t have anything to say, sing it,” Mr. Bergin argued that the musical accompaniment to the Coke commercial was anything but an afterthought. If soda drinkers paused to parse the ambiguity of what “It” was, the tune was intended to define the term and embellish it.“It’s like a football fight song,” Mr. Bergin told The New York Times. “Usually you get a languid ballad. We were looking for a big, bold sound, and a big, bold statement. This isn’t an ipsy-pipsy drink, and the music says that loud and clear.”The song, composed by Ms. Dawes and arranged by her husband, was one of 18 jingles and 36 proposed slogans presented to Coca-Cola executives to succeed “Have a Coke and a Smile.”The music and copy were tested separately in consumer focus groups and individual interviews until the agency and company reached a consensus that “Coke is it” was, indeed, it.Ms. Dawes also wrote pop songs, including “Hurtin’ Song,” recorded by Eddy Arnold, and “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” (written with Rose Marie McCoy), recorded by Sarah Vaughan.She began her musical career as a singer, to glowing reviews.When she appeared in 1975 at the Coriander, a restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, John S. Wilson of The Times called her a “startling performer” who sang “in a deep, strong, beautifully controlled voice that is filled with vivid colors, as she moves from low, sexy passages to an open, lusty shout.”Virginia Mary Redington was born on May 13, 1945, in Brooklyn and raised in the Bay Ridge section of the borough. Her father, Joseph, was a naval architect. Her mother, May (O’Brien) Redington, was a teacher.Virginia attended Fontbonne Hall Academy in Brooklyn and graduated from St. Josephs College, also in Brooklyn, with a degree in English in 1966.She and Mr. Dawes — a founder of the folk-pop group the Cyrkle, best known for its 1966 hit single “Red Rubber Ball,” written by Paul Simon and Bruce Woodley of the Seekers — married in 1979 and, merging their talents, formed TwinStar Music to produce jinglesThe couple also wrote the book, music and lyrics for “The Talk of the Town,” a show about the fabled literary round table at the Algonquin Hotel, whose members included Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and George S. Kaufman. First produced in 2004, it ran nearly two years at the Bank Street Theater before it moved as a cabaret show to the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room.Reviewing the show for Bloomberg News, John Simon wrote that its music and wit matched “the infectious energy and sophistication of the real-life luminaries it is based on.”Ms. Dawes was also a collector of antique jewelry and the author, with her husband (who took the photographs) and others, of several books on the subject, including “The Bakelite Jewelry Book” (1988), with Corinne Davidov, and “Georgian Jewellery 1714-1830” (2007), with Ms. Dawes’s fellow collector Olivia Collings. More