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      At Praise Fest in New Orleans, Spreading the Gospel Through Song and Community

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      In a city facing wide-ranging challenges, the gospel music you hear at Praise Fest can be a balm for the collective spirit.On the final day of the 13th annual Praise Fest, the free gospel music festival that started after Hurricane Katrina to bring locals back to New Orleans, the skies above Bayou St. John turned gray. Then, around 2 on an afternoon in October, an eerily familiar sight appeared: torrential rainfall.Pools of water pocked the bayou grass as festivalgoers scrambled to their cars. Attendance for Praise Fest, the first one held in person since the pandemic began, was modest (though organizers said it was about what they expected) — the conditions may not have helped. Bishop Ryan Warner, president and chief executive of Versatile Entertainment, which runs Praise Fest, clomped around the grounds in his rain boots, directing traffic. The rain would pass, he insisted, and the festival would continue. That was the New Orleans way.Anchored by the sound of organs, pianos, tambourines, drums and melodic voices preaching the word of God, gospel music is a fixture in Black Christian churches across the United States, especially in the South. In a city facing so many challenges — whether hurricanes or housing insecurity — it can be a necessary balm for the collective spirit.“There’s so much craziness happening in the world today,” said Cordell Chambliss, a local pianist and retired music teacher. It was about 24 hours before the storm, and Mr. Chambliss sat on a bench wearing black sunglasses and a backward hat with the strap emblazoned with “Aloha.” “Gospel music is the good news,” he said. “And we need to spread the good news.”This article is part of Our City, a series focused on how people around the United States use public and shared spaces to build community.Once the sky had cleared up, about an hour after the rain began, Bishop Warner, 47, a laid-back man with a smooth voice, climbed atop the stage and, with a microphone in hand, declared that the festivities would carry on. “I will never question the Lord,” he said. The two dozen or so who remained dragged their chairs away from the massive tents and up to the stage where, they believed, God’s presence was clear.“God has been good to me,” Angela Lindsey, 60, said the day before. Ms. Lindsey, a New Orleans native, sat on her lawn chair behind the vendors hawking discount jewelry along the slow-moving bayou water, where ducks and birds cooled off. She sang gospel in church with her sisters growing up and moved to Mississippi after Katrina.Ms. Lindsey makes frequent trips home to help take care of her son, who sustained a brain injury in a car accident, and to attend Praise Fest. Most of her family remains in New Orleans, which proved difficult when she came down with colon cancer. When one of her sisters died, Ms. Lindsey was unable to attend the funeral because of emergency surgery. Still, she remains grateful.“I never was alone,” Ms. Lindsey said, over the sound of soaring vocals. She found comfort during her sickness in memories of singing with her sisters, and something else: “God was always there.”Ms. Lindsey and the rest in attendance were treated to a variety of different acts, from traditional gospel choirs to gospel-influenced R&B and hip-hop.“New Orleans, this is truly a gospel gumbo,” said Josh Kagler, who performed alongside Tyrone Jefferson. “Gospel music in the city of New Orleans is foundation. It’s family,” he said.Here are clips from some of the most memorable performances from the festival.Joanna Hale-McGillJoanna Hale-McGill, 38, was the first to take the stage after the rain. At the start of her set, a rainbow painted the sky. Ms. Hale-McGill, who hails from Meraux, just outside New Orleans, is an independent artist who blends hip-hop and gospel. A highlight was her performance of the 2008 song “God in Me” by the gospel duo Mary Mary featuring Kierra “Kiki” Sheard. Ms. Hale-McGill danced around the stage and flailed her arms in the air as she sang.“You’re so fly, you’re so high,Everybody around you trying to figure out why.You’re so cool, you win all the time,Everywhere you go, man, you get a lot of shine.”“The lyrics to the song describe me perfectly. I’m known around town as the girl that sparkles everywhere she goes,” Ms. Hale-McGill said in an interview later.Tyrone JeffersonMr. Jefferson, 49, performed alongside his choir from the Abundant Life Tabernacle in New Orleans, as did Mr. Kagler, 36, the choir director. As Mr. Jefferson got the crowd going with his vocals, Mr. Kagler shook his head and stomped his feet and waved his arms until his bright pink Yankees hat fell of his head. Among Mr. Jefferson’s performances, his rendition of Ricky Dillard’s “Search Me Lord” was memorable.“Sometimes we can be so stubborn, if you will, as it relates to us thinking we know everything,” Mr. Jefferson said in a later interview. “The song simply says, ‘Lord, you search me. Lord, you know whether I’m right or wrong.’”Mr. Jefferson also performed an original song, “Trouble in My Way,” a rousing track meant to be a reminder of Jesus’ healing abilities.“The beat brings you to church. It brings you right to church on a Sunday morning. Hand-clapping, foot-stomping,” he said. “We on a thousand, as we say here in New Orleans.”Arthur Clayton IV and Anointed for PurposeArthur Clayton IV, 45, hails from Marrero, La., fewer than 10 miles outside New Orleans. Alongside his choir, Anointed for Purpose, Mr. Clayton took delight in performing his friend VaShawn Mitchell’s song “Big.” When his choir sang the words, “There’s nothing my God cannot do,” Mr. Clayton followed with, “He’s a keeper, yes, he is.”“That reminds me of how we all were kept during that moment of Covid,” Mr. Clayton said in an interview. “Even after Covid, here in New Orleans we went through a hurricane, and we were kept in that moment.”Eric Waddell and the Abundant Life SingersMr. Waddell, 49, came from Baltimore with his choir, the Abundant Life Singers. He attended Praise Fest despite the death of his father fewer than two weeks earlier at age 91. His father had been in a gospel group, and when Mr. Waddell was a child, his father “put me on the chair and said ‘sing!’” Mr. Waddell said performing at Praise Fest was a way to honor his father. “He would’ve said, ‘Boy, you go and sing,’” Mr. Waddell said.Mr. Waddell brought some attendees to their feet with his moving original track “He Won’t Change.” The lyrics to his song “Yes, I Know Jesus” also resonated with a city that has worked through its share of obstacles.“Yes, I know JesusYes, I know JesusYes, I know Jesus for myself.Woke me up this morning,I saw a brand-new dawning.Feeds me when I’m hungry,Comforts me when I’m lonely.”Zacardi CortezThe sky was black by the time Zacardi Cortez, 37, the festival’s closing act, took center stage. Mr. Cortez, whose 2012 album “The Introduction” placed No. 2 on the Billboard magazine top gospel albums chart, shone under the stage’s bright lights. One of the songs he performed, an original called “Praise You,” was a funk tune inspired by two of his idols, Prince and James Brown. His set took a turn on “You’ve Been Good to Me,” a slow, tender tribute to his faith.Mr. Cortez wrote the song not long after spending time in jail. “God just had to deal with me. He had to sit me down for a little while and show me some things. And a lot of great things were birthed out of that,” Mr. Cortez said. “I’m so glad that I got to a place where I’ll never have to go through those situations again, because God has changed some things, turned some things around.”Bishop Warner, the organizer, watched from the side as Mr. Cortez closed the festival. Praise Fest had been a success, he said, attracting about 2,000 people. The goal every year is to bring New Orleans a little hope, no matter how dire the circumstances. That’s the meaning of gospel music, and it’s a special ingredient that keeps spirits up.“Let’s say in a couple years, we’re going to have another event like this,” Bishop Warner said, referring to Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people. “Man, you got to live life to the fullest, or you’ll be caught in this, thinking you was going to try to get out, and you die in the process.“You got to keep moving.” More

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      Matt Shultz, Cage the Elephant Singer, Arrested on Weapons Charges

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      Mr. Shultz, 39, was seen pulling a gun out of his pocket in a public restroom at a Manhattan hotel, the authorities said.Matt Shultz, the lead singer of the indie rock band Cage the Elephant, was arrested at a Manhattan hotel on Thursday on weapons charges, law enforcement officials said.Mr. Shultz, 39, was arrested on Thursday morning after a Bowery Hotel employee had seen him pull a gun from his pants pocket in one of the hotel’s public restrooms, according to a criminal complaint.Mr. Shultz, of Nashville, appeared intoxicated, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.Police officers responded to a 911 call, obtained a search warrant and found two loaded firearms — a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and a .45-caliber Sig Sauer pistol — in a bag in Mr. Shultz’s hotel room, according to court records and the prosecutor’s office.Officers also found 11 Polaroid photos of the guns, some showing a hand pointing to the firearms, and six handwritten notes, the prosecutor’s office said. A message on one of the notes read, in substance, “I will defend myself if I am attacked,” according to the prosecutor’s office.Mr. Shultz faces multiple counts of weapons possession charges, according to court records. He is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday. His lawyer, Sanford Talkin, declined to comment on Sunday. It was not immediately clear if Mr. Shultz had been released on bail, which was set at $30,000.Cage the Elephant, which was formed in 2006 in Bowling Green, Ky., is known for its psychedelic sound, distinct echoes of past rock eras and Mr. Shultz’s warbling, sometimes abrasive voice.The band released its first album in 2008, and has won the Grammy Award for best rock album twice, most recently in 2020 for “Social Cues.” It won its first Grammy in 2015 for its album “Tell Me I’m Pretty.”The band’s 2011 album, “Thank You Happy Birthday,” debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and the album’s lead single, “Shake Me Down,” was No. 1 on Billboard’s Rock Songs and Alternative Songs charts, according to the Grammy Awards.Before the band was established, Mr. Shultz had worked as a plumber and in a sandwich bar, according to the Grammy Awards. More

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      Movie Trailers Keep Tweaking Well-Known Songs. The Tactic Is Working.

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      Composers are increasingly in demand for trailerization — reworking existing tracks by artists including Kate Bush, Nirvana and Kendrick Lamar to maximize their impact in film and TV previews.David James Rosen’s work has been streamed on YouTube hundreds of millions of times. He’s played a crucial role in some of pop culture’s biggest recent moments. But few people outside of the space where the entertainment and marketing industries overlap know his name.As a composer, Rosen is at the forefront of the trailerization movement: He’s in demand for his ability to rework existing songs to maximize their impact in trailers for films and TV shows.He married vocals and motifs from Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” to a thunderous version of the “Stranger Things” theme in the lead-up to the second volume of the show’s fourth season. He intertwined the Nigerian singer Tems’s cover of “No Woman No Cry” with Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” in the teaser for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” symbolizing the meeting of the franchise’s future and its legacy. He put a sinister singe on Taylor Swift’s “It’s Nice to Have a Friend” for the diabolical doll thriller “M3GAN.” He added cosmic drama to Elton John’s classic rock staple “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” for the upcoming “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”As potential viewers are inundated with an ever-growing number of options, studios have limited chances to build anticipation for their projects. At the same time, technological advances have made it easier than ever for products to stand out. “People want their film to have its own identity,” Rosen said in an interview at a Los Angeles coffee shop. “The genie’s out of the bottle as far as the limitless ability to customize something for your film. Clients, studios, agencies, whatever, they all know that and like to take advantage of it.”Rosen spent his 20s playing guitar in the New Jersey band the Parlor Mob. After moving to L.A. in 2014, he got a job as the in-house composer at a trailer house — the specialized production companies behind these promos. Three years later, he co-founded Totem, a music library that creates custom tracks for trailers. Much of Rosen’s output is original compositions, but the ones that get the most attention are his overhauls.“Almost never does a song just drop into a trailer and work,” he said. “Maybe it needs to feel more epic or more emotional, or maybe it needs to feel subtler with things pulled away.”“I view it as a new life for a lot of these artists’ songs,” Rosen said of his custom work for trailers.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesTrailerization is a relatively new term and the distinctions within it are malleable. There are reimaginations, which are usually instrumental covers by composers. There are overlays, where elements are added to a song in varying degrees. Then there are remixes, where the source material is distinctly altered, often to shift the context.Some distinguish between remixes and overlays by what the composer has to play with. If there’s a full set of stems — the separated digital parts that comprise a song — it’s a remix. If stems aren’t available, it’s an overlay.Occasionally composers will be asked to create “invisible overlays,” where they make adjustments that are imperceptible to most listeners but nudge a song toward a more wide-screen sound.The trailerization process is now so common that even when a trailer uses the film’s original score, it too will be adjusted. “Trailers are a mini version of the movie,” said Cato, the one-named composer whose credits include performing a system update on Vangelis for the “Blade Runner 2049” trailer and giving Guns N’ Roses an anguished-turned-pulverizing remix for Jason Momoa’s Netflix revenge film “Sweet Girl.”“You have to suck people into the theater and tell a story in two-and-a-half minutes,” Cato added. “That is so intense and builds so quickly that most music written for the actual movie will be way too long and drawn out.”IN THE PAST, trailers often relied on the scores of previously released films, but that practice has basically become verboten. Starting in the late 1970s, the composer John Beal pioneered original scores for trailers, but that required a recording studio full of musicians, making it a costly, resource-heavy endeavor. Today, with developments in software, it’s easier than ever to simulate those sounds.“I could sit at my computer at home and you wouldn’t know that there wasn’t a 100-piece orchestra there,” Rosen said. “You couldn’t do that 10 years ago.”Many point to the trailer for “The Social Network,” from 2010 — which featured a Belgian women’s choir singing Radiohead’s “Creep” — as the origin of what became the trailerization trend. Its success incited a deluge of trailers using slow and sad covers of well-known songs, usually featuring female vocalists. Recent examples include Liza Anne’s version of “Dreams” by the Cranberries for “Aftersun” and Bellsaint’s interpretation of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” for the second season of the “Chucky” TV series.Sanaz Lavaedian, the senior vice president of music for the trailer house Mocean, said that when she entered the industry in 2011, there was still a lot of resistance from artists who didn’t want their music used for commercial purposes. Covers provided a workaround. Now, as more musicians are struggling to make a living, they’re often more open to trailers not just using their music but modifying it.“There were so many bands that didn’t think licensing was cool, so they never let us do it,” Lavaedian said. “Now they’re like, ‘Oh, we’re going to make half a million dollars on this? Nevermind.’”Many high profile trailerizations are applied to songs that are decades old: Remixes and overlays allow the trailers to tap into the nostalgia evoked by the original. “If we were able to remix an Elton John song or a Beatles song, these are iconic artists,” Lavaedian said. “The second you hear their voice, you know who it is, and there’s a lot of weight in that. More weight than if it were a cover.”The composer Bryce Miller’s big breakthrough came in 2019 with the “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” trailer, which featured his custom orchestral rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” atop images of kaiju carnage. His subsequent credits include a modernization of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” for “House of Gucci,” an orchestral blend of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” and the “Addams Family Theme” for “Wednesday” and a haunting overlay for Nirvana’s “Something in the Way” in “The Batman” trailer.“As soon as I can get rid of dated-sounding guitars and drums, I can build a more contemporary production that is pulling from more pop music sounds,” Miller said. “Older recordings sonically are a little thin and lack the heft that so many contemporary songs have.”Unique remixes began appearing in trailers going back to the mid-2010s, but it wasn’t until the one for Jordan Peele’s 2019 film “Us” that studios and audiences began to really take notice. In the fresh interpretation, with its piercing strings and moody atmospherics, a celebratory weed rap by the Oakland duo Luniz became deeply unsettling.“Every once in a while we get one of those game-changer trailers,” Lavaedian said. The “Us” trailer “is taking a song and deconstructing it down to its bones and then constructing it again to do what that film needed it to do. It was kind of groundbreaking.”MARK WOOLLEN, THE founder of the trailer house Mark Woollen & Associates, specializes in award-season films and was responsible for that transformative “Social Network” trailer. New York magazine once called him “the uncontested auteur of the trailer era.”In a phone interview, Woollen noted that in contemporary trailers, omniscient narration has largely disappeared (that means no more hackneyed “In a world …” setups) and there’s less dialogue from the film. Trailers “can be more impressionistic and elliptical in their storytelling,” he said. “It’s more about creating a feeling in a lot of the work.”As a result, the trailer’s soundtrack has become increasingly crucial. “Music is sometimes 80 to 90 percent of the process to us,” Woollen said. “It’s trying to cast that right piece of music that’s going to inspire and dictate rhythm and set tone and inform character and story, and hopefully make an impression.”For Amazon’s recent love triangle “My Policeman,” Woollen used Cat Power’s “Sea of Love,” which has become a romantic favorite among aging millennials. Though Cat Power’s original interpretation was stripped down to just the singer Chan Marshall’s voice and strums on an autoharp, Woollen had a composer overlay swelling strings as the drama became more fraught.Rosen with two of his semi-modular analog synths. “Almost never does a song just drop into a trailer and work,” he said.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesBeyond providing the vibes, a song is often selected for a trailer because the lyrics convey the film’s narrative themes. Woollen didn’t just select “Sea of Love” because it is mysterious and seductive. He was equally guided by the refrain “I want to tell you how much I love you” and the ambiguousness of who that “you” might be.In Marvel’s “The Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” trailer, as the heroes realize the size of the predicament they’ve gotten themselves into, the sound design emphasizes Elton John singing, “I should have stayed on the farm/I should have listened to my old man.”Deciding which song a trailer uses and how it’s employed can involve studio marketing executives, the filmmakers, the team at the trailer house and the composer. A trailer’s creation can take years and is often covered by restrictive nondisclosure agreements, preventing the people behind it from discussing the details of making it, even after it has been released.Because the material is so protected, the musicians rarely see the images that will be included in the trailer. Instead they have to rely on a music supervisor or creative director at a trailer house to guide them through inception and multiple rounds of revisions. “We’re literally dealing with billions of dollars in unreleased assets,” Lavaedian said of the footage from the films. “There’s no way we can send that to a composer.”UNLESS YOU KNOW where to look on the internet, the pieces made by trailer composers are largely uncredited, and sometimes contractually so. Trailerizations are created “to live exclusively in the trailer,” Rosen said. “They serve as a piece of marketing.”But that may be changing.When the agency Trailer Park approached Miller about doing a trailerization for the first volume of the fourth season of “Stranger Things,” he was told the general plot and tone of the episodes. He’d long wanted to do something with Journey’s “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” and it turned out the song was on the agency’s shortlist as well.After spending months on his ominous remix, it made it to the final stages of the approval process where the original musicians had to sign off. Steve Perry, the song’s singer, loved it and came to Miller’s studio to help construct an extended remix. Then he got Netflix to release both versions on the official soundtrack, with Miller’s name attached.Miller called Perry inspiring and a joy to work with. “He’s also like a runaway train. As soon as we finished ‘Stranger Things,’ he’s like, ‘What are we doing next?’” The pair collaborated again on a trailerization of Journey’s “Any Way You Want It” for the Hulu series “Welcome to Chippendales.”Where will trailerization at large head next? Recently, there’s been an interest in 1990s alternative rock hits, with remixes of Spacehog and the Toadies appearing in trailers for “Guardian of the Galaxy Volume 3” and “The Midnight Club.” In the promo for “Babylon,” the team of composers known as Superhuman created a Jazz Age-influenced interpretation of David Bowie’s “Fame” that’s almost as nutty as the film itself.With decades of material to work with, Rosen hopes the trend continues. “There’s more opportunity for creativity from me and other people,” he said. “I view it as a new life for a lot of these artists’ songs.” More

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      A Penetrating Cry in the Dark at the Prototype Festival

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      This year’s iteration marks a joyous return to theaters for the festival, which was canceled last year.A cry in the dark, gentle yet penetrating.At some moment in time immemorial, emerging from some creature, that sound must have been made: A voice was being used to make drama, and — eons before 16th-century Italy — opera was truly born.So it feels like a connection to the very roots of the art form when “mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mourning],” Gelsey Bell’s wonderful, uncategorizable guide to what might unfold on Earth in the millions and billions of years after human history, begins with exactly such a gentle, penetrating cry in the dark; a slippery hum from singers, the barest shuffle of clapping, then lights.Presented by the bold, invaluable Prototype festival of new music-theater at HERE Arts Center in SoHo, “mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mourning]” is an intimate storytelling ritual, a kind of campfire tale that offers a look far beyond the future as we generally perceive it.Dressed in commune-style thrift-store pattern clashes on a barely adorned cork stage in front of just over 100 people, Bell and four other performers sing and play modest instruments and objects including drizzles of water and marbles swirling in bowls; simple synthesizers; a hand-held Celtic harp and a bowed wooden daxophone.The group doesn’t ever make clear the catastrophe that has wiped out human existence. (“Within the first few hours,” we are told for a start, “millions of dogs have peed in places they’d rather not.”) But in song and speech, Bell, Ashley Pérez Flanagan, Justin Hicks, Aviva Jaye and Paul Pinto describe — poetically, prosaically, funnily, heartbreakingly — the stages of rewilding, decomposition and evolution to come.Obviously ominous but ultimately sly and sweet, wistful and winsome and altogether lovable, the 90-minute show, directed by Tara Ahmadinejad, recalls the wordless collective solemnity of Meredith Monk, the enigmatic texts and yarn-spinning ability of Laurie Anderson, and the folksy keening, shading into luminous pop sweetness, of the Duncan Sheik of “Spring Awakening.” Bell is also an experienced performer in Robert Ashley’s pathbreaking operas, to which she nods here with the use of wry, matter-of-fact speaking (sometimes in airily musical cadences) over gently woozy drones.Prototype began presenting small-scale but high-impact, carefully considered and often exciting work 10 years ago. Organized by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE, it filled a niche for experimental yet professionally produced opera, much of it staged in intimate black-box-style venues, and its record of accomplishment has grown distinguished: Two Prototype shows, Du Yun and Royce Vavrek’s “Angel’s Bone” and Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins’s “Prism,” have won the Pulitzer Prize for Music.This year’s iteration, which runs through Jan. 15, marks a joyous return to theaters for the festival, which was almost entirely virtual in 2021 and was canceled last year because of the Omicron wave. The loss of Prototype 2022 felt especially sharp because classical music and its stylistic descendants were otherwise largely spared in an outbreak that wreaked more havoc on dance and theater.Emma O’Halloran’s “Mary Motorhead” is a monodrama featuring Naomi Louisa O’Connell in the raconteur title role.Maria BaranovaThe work Prototype has presented has ranged widely, but over a decade a kind of house style (or at least stereotype) has emerged. The subject matter leans toward the politically charged and emotionally brutal, extreme even by operatic standards of suffering. Electronics are often in the mix, as is amplification even in tiny theaters, and the music tends rock-inflected and intense — and often just plain loud, with a shouting-in-your-face urgency that can be thrilling from some artists, wearying from others.Despite a couple of crashing moments, though, the three premieres over this year’s first weekend kept the volume fairly moderate. (Silvana Estrada’s “Marchita” and David Lang’s “note to a friend” open later this week, and the animated opera “Undine” is streaming.)Even without (too much) screaming, the intensity rarely flags in Emma O’Halloran’s two-hour double bill about the down and out and desperate for connection, “Trade/Mary Motorhead” — to librettos by her uncle, the actor and writer Mark O’Halloran — at Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side.Directed by Tom Creed, both operas offer virtuosic showcases for daring singing actors. “Mary Motorhead” is a monodrama featuring the vivid, charismatic Naomi Louisa O’Connell in the raconteur title role of a woman in prison for killing her husband. In “Trade,” set in a hotel room where two men — one older, one younger — are meeting for sex, the Broadway veteran Marc Kudisch and the tenor Kyle Bielfield are fiercely committed as they toggle between aggression and tenderness.With Elaine Kelly conducting the ensemble NOVUS NY, O’Halloran shapes lucid, communicative vocal lines; the text always sings out. “Mary Motorhead” finds its protagonist sometimes angry, sometimes exhausted; “Trade” has the relentlessly, effectively weepy emotionalism of Kevin Puts’s “The Hours,” which recently played at the Metropolitan Opera, but is more affecting without the Met work’s overblown trappings.O’Halloran rides these stories’ waves of feeling with some squealing electric guitar riffs, but Du Yun’s “In Our Daughter’s Eyes” — a collaboration with the librettist and director Michael Joseph McQuilken and the baritone Nathan Gunn at Baruch Performing Arts Center in Kips Bay — has more of the chamber-metal spirit that is a Prototype trademark.Structured as a series of diary entries written by an expectant father who struggles to avoid falling off the wagon after learning that his unborn child has catastrophic health problems, the work (and Maruti Evans’s set) has a naturalistic core but also dreamlike flights. Gunn, once a hunky star in Mozart and Britten, is now in his early 50s and the physical and temperamental embodiment of the earnest American dad. He’s masculinity incarnate, in all its confidence and anxieties — direct, sonorous and conversational even as the tragedy builds.The score is intriguingly varied and eccentric: sometimes spare yet warm, as in a clever passage bringing together cello and muted trumpet; sometimes noirish Badalamenti-style cool vamping; sometimes chilly instrumental squiggles and shards; and sometimes exploding in raucous, frantic energy.Du Yun’s “In Our Daughter’s Eyes” is a collaboration with the librettist and director Michael Joseph McQuilken and the baritone Nathan Gunn at Baruch Performing Arts Center.Maria BaranovaThe more blaringly rock passages have much in common with “Black Lodge,” McQuilken’s recent, wailing collaboration with the composer David T. Little, which premiered in Philadelphia a few months ago. As in that piece, the music here is rather more interesting than the text, which could use a little more subtlety. And the 75-minute length is palpable in a one-man show; “Mary Motorhead,” by comparison, lasts a compact 30.Despite a bit of lag toward the end, “mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mourning],” felt considerably tighter, without losing its charmingly patient way of unfolding. One of its most memorable scenes is a wittily nostalgic look back at humans and their habits, once the Anthropocene has been left far behind: “I liked their sustaining fealty to two-dimensional imagery in rectangle frames,” one line goes.The quiet climax of the piece is a song that relishes the moral that “nothing lasts forever.” Climate change is the work’s unspoken context, of course, and Bell offers a considerably more accepting (indeed, Zen-ly optimistic) vision of its deadly consequences than the current liberal consensus — something closer to that early-pandemic fantasy that “nature is healing.” Disaster is a fait accompli, Bell seems to be saying, so why not embrace what’s to come?But is the piece’s implication that control over our destiny is an illusion and resistance is (at best) futile complicit in climate denialism? I’m not sure, and that question is why “mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mourning]” left me smiling yet unsettled. And wanting to hear it again: Bring out a recording, please. 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      Daniel Barenboim, Titan of Conducting, to Step Down in Berlin

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      The 80-year-old conductor, citing poor health, said he would resign as general music director of the Berlin State Opera after three decades.Daniel Barenboim, a towering conductor and pianist who as general music director of the Berlin State Opera over the past three decades built an artistic empire without rival and helped define German culture in the aftermath of reunification, will resign his post this month because of health problems, the opera house announced on Friday.Barenboim, 80, who was diagnosed last year with a serious neurological condition, said in a statement that his illness made it impossible for him to carry out his duties.“Unfortunately, my health has deteriorated significantly over the past year,” he said. “I can no longer provide the level of performance that is rightly demanded of a general music director.” His resignation is effective Jan. 31.Barenboim, one of classical music’s biggest stars, had hoped to return to his famously frenzied schedule this year. But the ongoing uncertainty of his condition placed strains on the State Opera — the company was left scrambling to find substitutes, including for a highly anticipated new production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle last fall — and made it difficult to find a path forward.Matthias Schulz, the State Opera’s director, said that the company was grateful to Barenboim, who turned the Staatskapelle Berlin (the pit orchestra of the State Opera) into one of the world’s most revered ensembles.But, Schulz said, it had become increasingly clear that Barenboim could not be the stable figure the musicians needed, noting that he appeared with the company less than 10 times in 2022, compared with more than 50 times in previous years.“He took responsibility for the fact that he just cannot be sure what he really can fulfill,” Schulz said in an interview.Barenboim was unavailable for comment, a spokeswoman for the opera house said.Born to Jewish parents in Argentina, Barenboim has been a fixture in the German artistic and political scene for decades and has helped define the country’s modern culture since the reunification of East and West Germany. In 1989, three days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he led the Berlin Philharmonic in a concert dedicated to the citizens of East Germany.He has become an influential public figure in Germany and beyond. In 1999, along with the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. he created the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, providing a forum for young Arab and Israeli musicians to play together.Klaus Lederer, Berlin’s senator for culture, called Barenboim “an artist of the century and one of the most remarkable personalities working in Berlin.” He said in a statement that stepping down was the right choice, even though it was not easy for Barenboim.“His decision was made in a reflective manner; it puts the well-being of the State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin in the foreground,” Lederer said. “All of this deserves the greatest respect.”During his tenure in Berlin, Barenboim brought the Staatskapelle to new heights, frequently leading international tours and securing hundreds of millions of euros in government grants to finance his ambitions. He co-founded a music conservatory, the Barenboim-Said Akademie, which opened in 2016. He persuaded officials to build the Pierre Boulez Saal, a Frank Gehry-designed hall housed in the same building as the conservatory, which opened in 2017. And he pushed a costly renovation of the opera house’s main theater, which was finished that same year. The State Opera now has 587 employees and a budget of more than 81.4 million euros ($86.6 million).There have been troubles along the way, but Barenboim maintained his grip on power. In 2019, members of the Staatskapelle accused him of bullying; later that year, though, the opera house, saying that it could not verify the accusations, extended his contract through 2027.He seemed set to reign indefinitely in Berlin, but health woes forced him to cancel performances last spring and summer as he recovered from surgery and grappled with circulatory issues. In October, having disclosed his neurological condition, he said he was taking time off to “focus on my physical well-being as much as possible.” He canceled his participation in the new “Ring,” a herculean undertaking seven years in the making that had been built around him, as well as a planned tour in Asia with the Staatskapelle and a concert in Berlin in November to celebrate his 80th birthday.As he rested at home, he initially resisted resigning his post and told friends and family that he planned to return to the podium. But even as he kept up some appearances, attending rehearsals and teaching classes in Berlin, his ability to lead the opera house full time grew increasingly uncertain.On New Year’s Eve, he appeared to be making steps toward recovery when he conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Berlin while sitting down. But critics noted that he at times seemed unsteady and did not deliver remarks to the audience, as he sometimes does on such occasions.His future activity at the podium is uncertain, but this week, he is scheduled to conduct three concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic and the pianist Martha Argerich, a childhood friend, though in an altered, less physically demanding program. It is unclear whether he will reduce his commitments at the Divan Orchestra, the conservatory or the Pierre Boulez Saal.Barenboim’s resignation will mark the end of an era at the State Opera. Schulz said it was too early to know when the company might name a successor.“There’s no need to rush it,” Schulz said. “It’s more important that this institution makes the right decision for the future, and it’s absolutely possible to take time for that.”But it may prove challenging to find a figure of Barenboim’s stature. The Staatskapelle’s musicians have likened their three-decade relationship with him to a marriage.“There are not so many people at the moment who can run an opera house of this size and reputation coming out of the era of Barenboim,” said Manuel Brug, a cultural critic in Germany. “It’s unique that somebody stayed for 30 years and had the possibility to form something like this. It will be hard to follow.”Barenboim said in his statement on Friday that his time at the opera house had inspired him “musically and personally in every respect.” He hoped to continue conducting at the State Opera, he added. He will retain the honorary title of principal conductor for life, conferred on him by the musicians.“Of course, I will remain closely connected to music,” he said, “as long as I live.” More

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      Review: A Philharmonic Contender Returns to the Podium

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      With a change of the guard imminent at the New York Philharmonic, Santtu-Matias Rouvali is the only guest conductor leading two programs this season.A changing of the guard on the world’s great orchestral podiums was in the air on Friday. Daniel Barenboim, 80, the longtime music director of the Berlin State Opera, had just announced he would step down at the end of the month because of his declining health.A potential generational shift was looming at the New York Philharmonic, too. The evening before, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, 37, had conducted that ensemble with crisply elfin spirit as one of the leading candidates to take over when Jaap van Zweden, 62, leaves at the end of next season.Rouvali faces steep competition — not least from Gustavo Dudamel, 41, who is widely considered the favorite for the position and who arrives in New York this spring for Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, a classic music director showcase.But it is no accident that Rouvali is the only Philharmonic guest conductor this season to get two weeks of concerts. After the current program of works by Rossini, Magnus Lindberg and Beethoven, he leads music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Prokofiev and — like the Mahler, a prime assignment — Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” starting next Thursday.It is an added sign of trust in and respect for Rouvali, the principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, that each of those programs includes a new work co-commissioned by the Philharmonic: Thorvaldsdottir’s “Catamorphosis” and Lindberg’s Piano Concerto No. 3 — bless him for being one of the few contemporary composers who favor plain, simple concerto titles — with the calmly formidable Yuja Wang as soloist.Yuja Wang, front, was the soloist in Magnus Lindberg’s Piano Concerto No. 3.Chris LeeOn Thursday at David Geffen Hall, Rouvali, too, was a calm and lucid guide through the piece — which came off, however, as billowy and somewhat baggy. The score’s meter markings are precisely gauged for shifts of pulse that don’t come across audibly as slow-fast contrasts of tempo; this may be why Lindberg has cheekily described the work as a concerto in three concertos, rather than three movements.But while that is an impressive technical achievement, the whole thing ends up registering for the listener as a bit homogeneous, a roughly half-hour foray into richly chromatic nostalgia, swaths of it reminiscent of golden-age film music à la Korngold. (A modernist sheen over a late-Romantic spirit has become a trademark Lindberg move.) Like the Groundhog Day spectacle of votes for a House speaker this week, the performance gave the sense of hearing the same concerto again and again.If this repetitiveness yielded little urgency, the piece wasn’t exactly sluggish, either. Moment by moment, passage by passage, the music doesn’t feel heavy. Lindberg keeps the orchestra airy, often adding complexity by dividing the strings into ever-ampler harmonies rather than using denser instrumentation or greater volume. And the daunting solo part emerges — particularly in Wang’s cool hands — as quicksilver and subtle, integrated into the general textures and restrained even in the fevered portions of the cadenza near the end of the first movement.Lindberg is never less than artful, as in how that cadenza seems to silkily melt out of softly plush strings, which just as quietly and cleverly rejoin the pianist a minute or so later. The shadows at the start of the second movement organically grow into an expansive, grave grandeur reminiscent of Debussy’s “La Mer,” with passages of candied glockenspiel woven beautifully into the golden wire of a tiny group of violins. The third movement has bits of sumptuous playfulness, punctuated by yelps of brass.But overall the work’s impact is muted and breezy, which is striking given the broad, Rachmaninoff-esque sweep of Lindberg’s musical gestures.Rouvali, one of a full lineup of conductors accompanying Wang in the coming months as she tours with the work, which premiered in San Francisco in October, matches her clean, objective style. There is a conscientiousness to Rouvali that can tip into squareness, as I felt when he led the Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony a year ago. And Rossini’s “Semiramide” Overture on Thursday lacked the steadily accumulating propulsion, even through lyrical passages, that is the piece’s reason for being; the soufflé never really rose.But in Beethoven’s Second Symphony — a classic that is still somehow underrated — he was superb, with his deliberate, even careful conducting yielding a graceful, stylish interpretation. I have rarely been more clearly yet delicately aware of Beethoven’s most visionary passages here: the orchestra mistily reconstituting itself near the end of the first movement, the amorphous clouds of harmonies in the finale.Under Rouvali, the second movement was intimate and sober, but it gradually relaxed, even to a charming daintiness; the third, never rushing the eager rhythms, reached elegance. This conductor doesn’t do breathlessness, and he could probably do with a little more liveliness. But when he avoids plainness, his judiciousness can seem very like maturity.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Tuesday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      7 Songs We Nearly Missed in 2022

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      Hear tracks by Flo, Becky G and Karol G, Monster and Big Flock and more.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Flo, ‘Cardboard Box (Live Acoustic)’A stunning entry in the litany of to-the-left-to-the-left kiss-off anthems, Flo’s “Cardboard Box” is cheeky, confident, ever so slightly righteously rude. Flo — Jorja Douglas, Renée Downer and Stella Quaresma — is a vividly talented British R&B girl group that released several strong songs last year, but this was the most striking, full of arched-brow dismissals, self-love affirmations and, in this acoustic rendition, mellifluous harmonies that communicate bliss amid collapse: “You ain’t gonna change, boy/What’s the point in stringing me a-loh-ohngggg?” JON CARAMANICABecky G and Karol G, ‘Mamiii’This blockbuster 2022 hit — the inevitable collaboration between the two “real Gs,” Becky (the American granddaughter of Mexican immigrants) and Karol (from Colombia) — strives to be the ultimate kiss-off to a toxic ex. “I gave you my heart,” Becky G charges as the song begins, but she has definitely taken it back, changing her phone number and comparing the ex to a rat and a venereal disease. Over the bounce of a reggaeton beat, with sisterly harmonies, the breakup turns into a female-bonding experience: angry, amused, unforgiving. JON PARELESMonster and Big Flock, ‘Cappin’The most obvious retort to the recent uptick in using rap lyrics in court cases is this: Rappers — like all artists — lie. Of course they do. Rap is history and reportage and also embellishment and fancy. Placing an unreasonable truth value on a set of words perhaps based on actual experience that also happen to rhyme and have narrative coherence and are presented in an entertaining manner — that’s a fool’s game. Thus, “Cappin,” a song by the rappers Monster and Big Flock, a song made under the presumption of surveillance. Everything they rap about? Falsehoods, they insist. If you’re listening in search of evidence, look elsewhere. “Why you so serious?” Monster raps. “I can’t play?/I ain’t got no pistols, these props/I act like I be in the mix, but I’m not.” It’s a clever gimmick that serves as a reminder that what appears in a song isn’t necessarily true, and by extension, that plenty of true things never appear in any song. CARAMANICAFally Ipupa, ‘Formule 7’The Congolese songwriter, singer, guitarist and producer Fally Ipupa has delved into styles new and old, releasing an album a year since 2016. He celebrates decades of Congolese rumba on “Formule 7,” his seventh album, and its eight-minute title song is more like a highlight reel, cruising through multiple eras, configurations and rhythms of Congolese music. It spotlights six-beat drumming, intertwined guitars, synthesizer and accordion obbligatos, call-and-response vocals, singing and rapping, cheerfully claiming a whole continuum of ideas. PARELESEla Minus and DJ Python, ‘Kiss You’The ticks, glitches and muffled drumbeats of DJ Python’s production mirror the insistent longing Ela Minus sings about in “Kiss You.” She insists on a certain equilibrium — “I’m not holding on/I’m not letting go” — as sustained chords and twitchy electronic rhythms come and go. This is stasis as a taut balance of competing forces, all virtual, and all subject to change at any moment. PARELESManuel Turizo, ‘La Bachata’One of the year’s biggest bachata songs came not from the long-running genre kingpin Romeo Santos but instead from the Colombian singer Manuel Turizo. “La Bachata” is both folksy and ambitiously modern — Turizo has a relatively thin voice, but the lushness of the modern production bolsters him. Santos can sometimes sing with a coyness that feels impossibly dreamy, but Turizo, less bound by tradition, pushes hard into the beat, a restless interloper. CARAMANICAMabe Fratti, ‘Cada Músculo’Mabe Fratti, from Guatemala, brings maximal emotion to the Minimalist structures she builds from her vocals and the gutsy riffs she plays on cello. “Every muscle has a voice,” she insists in “Cada Músculo” (“Every Muscle”), as she layers her cello and electronics into her own orchestra. The tension — muscular and psychological — only grows. PARELES More

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      The Year of Bad Bunny

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicSaying that 2022 was the year of Bad Bunny somehow doesn’t quite do his success justice. His LP “Un Verano Sin Ti” was the most streamed album of the year, breaking several records along the way. He was the year’s top grossing touring act — including two sold-out shows at Yankee Stadium. “Un Verano Sin Ti” is the first release performed entirely in Spanish to be nominated for album of the year at the Grammys.The year was also the culmination of a creative arc that began with eccentric Latin trap, detoured through pop-punk and has now arrived at smooth, historically minded reggaeton maximalism, placing Bad Bunny at the center of Latin pop, or rather magnetically moving the center in his direction.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the historical Latin pop crossover that set the table for Bad Bunny’s success, the ways he’s embraced social and political causes in both direct and indirect fashion, and how his success has expanded the possibilities for Spanish-language musicians across genres and countries.Guests:Leila Cobo, chief content officer for Latin music at BillboardCarina del Valle Schorske, contributing writer at The New York Times MagazineConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More