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      Elayne Jones, Pioneering Percussionist, Is Dead at 94

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      She challenged racial barriers when she joined the San Francisco Symphony in 1972. But she became embroiled in a legal battle when she was denied tenure two years later.Elayne Jones, a timpanist who was said to be the first Black principal player in a major American orchestra when she joined the San Francisco Symphony in 1972, and who mounted a legal battle over racial and sexual discrimination when she was denied tenure two years later, died on Saturday at her home in Walnut Creek, Calif. She was 94.Her daughter Cheryl Stanley said the cause was dementia.The charismatic, Juilliard-trained Ms. Jones was not only a rare woman among the orchestral percussionists of her time; she also helped lead a generation of Black musicians in confronting the pervasive — and enduring — racism of the classical music industry. Her appointment in San Francisco, under that ensemble’s modish music director, Seiji Ozawa, “projected a forward-looking vision of classical music,” the scholar Grace Wang has written.Admired for her lyricism and finesse, Ms. Jones was an instant hit in San Francisco. “Her playing is so outlandish in quality, one gets the titters just thinking of it,” the critic Heuwell Tircuit wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle of her debut. Arthur Bloomfield of The San Francisco Examiner wrote that her work in a seemingly straightforward passage of “Norma,” at the San Francisco Opera, was “so rounded and suave I just about fell out of my seat.”Once described in a headline as “the groovy tympanist,” Ms. Jones had seen the San Francisco auditions as a last chance to win a permanent post, a success that had been denied her during the two decades she spent toiling to challenge the color line as a freelancer in New York City.“I had to prove that music could be played by anyone who loves it,” she said in 1973. “It’s been a terrible burden because I always felt I had to do better, that I wouldn’t be allowed the lapses other musicians have. It’s true even now.”Orchestral musicians typically serve probationary periods before being granted tenure. Approval seemed a formality in Ms. Jones’s case, but a seven-man committee of the San Francisco players voted against her — and a bassoonist, Ryohei Nakagawa — in May 1974, despite Mr. Ozawa’s advice to the contrary; two rated her competence at 1 out of 100.As audience members launched pickets and petitions, many white critics portrayed the incident primarily as a challenge to Mr. Ozawa’s authority; though the conductor denied any link, he soon quit. Ms. Jones saw things differently.“I’ve had good vibes everywhere. Now I wonder what the hell is wrong and what do I do that’s so wrong?” she said that June, announcing her intention to sue the orchestra and the musicians’ union. “Was it because I was a woman or a Black? Or both?”Ms. Jones played on for a season while her lawsuit made its way through the courts. But when a judge ordered a second, supervised vote in August 1975, a new committee of players turned her down again, citing concerns about her intonation. Although she performed, tenured, in the pit of the San Francisco Opera until 1998, her effective firing at the symphony stayed with her.“It has been quite difficult,” she said in a television interview in 1977, “not only playing but trying to live through all this, and living with myself too, which is kind of hard because you begin to question, well, am I really a good performer, am I worthy person?”But, she went on, “I listen to other people, and I have more confidence in myself.”Ms. Jones looked on as the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the conductor Seiji Ozawa acknowledged the audience’s applause after a performance by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in 1973.Bruce Beron, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony ArchivesElayne Viola Jones was born on Jan. 30, 1928, in Harlem, the only child of immigrants from Barbados. Her father, Cecil, was a porter and then a subway conductor; her mother, Ometa, dreamed of becoming a professional pianist, but had to enter domestic service. They had a piano in their apartment, and Elayne used it to play along with the big-band jazz she heard on the radio. She was 6 when her mother introduced her to classical music.“At first, I thought it was strange to have music that people didn’t dance to, because we all loved dancing to swing music,” Ms. Jones wrote in her autobiography, “Little Lady With a Big Drum” (2019). “However, I didn’t reject this different kind of music and practiced it every day, growing to enjoy its irregularities.”She qualified for the High School of Music & Arts (now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts), and she hoped to add the violin to her studies on the piano; she was given drumsticks instead. “We all know that Negroes have rhythm,” she recalled a teacher saying.Ms. Jones was sufficiently talented to win a scholarship to the Juilliard School in 1945, under the sponsorship of Duke Ellington. Her tutor was Saul Goodman, the storied timpanist of the New York Philharmonic, and after she graduated, in 1949, he persuaded New York City Opera to hire her as its timpanist.But the City Opera season was limited, and she had to scrounge for jobs for much of the year; on tour with the company, she was forced to sleep in separate hotels from the other musicians, stopped at stage doors as white colleagues walked through, and told to perform hidden from view.Politically a leftist, Ms. Jones became an insistent activist. When the critic Howard Taubman wrote in The New York Times in 1956 that “if there are capable Negro musicians” they would deserve major-ensemble jobs, she visited him to demonstrate that such musicians did, in fact, exist. She worked on an Urban League report about racism in the music world; within weeks of its publication in 1958, she found herself filling in at the New York Philharmonic. Although the Philharmonic’s records of substitute players are sparse, archival documents name her as the first Black musician to perform as part of the orchestra.Ms. Jones left City Opera in 1960 at the request of her husband, the doctor and civil rights activist George Kaufman, who asked that she spend more evenings with him and their three children. But Leopold Stokowski, long a fan, quickly tapped her for his American Symphony Orchestra, for which she performed until 1972. She was one of the driving forces behind the founding of the integrated Symphony of the New World in 1965, and she joined other Black musicians to urge that the initial rounds of auditions be held blind, with the musicians behind a screen, to reduce bias. The San Francisco Symphony was an early adopter of that approach.“I wouldn’t have gotten the job if the screen wasn’t in play,” she later told Dr. Wang. “I’m the recipient of a thing that I worked on.”Ms. Jones’s marriage to Dr. Kaufman ended in divorce in 1964. In addition to her daughter Ms. Stanley, she is survived by her son, Stephen Kaufman, a violinist and performance artist also known as Thoth; another daughter, Harriet Kaufman Douglas; and three grandchildren.As a single mother, Ms. Jones often had to take her children to rehearsals, she told The Times in 1965. She hoped, she said, that she offered them an example.“All youngsters need an image to project to, Negro youngsters even more than white,” she said. “When they can see Negroes playing in the orchestra, they may feel that they can get there someday, too.” More

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      ‘Everyone Wants to Hear’ This One Chord in a Christmas Carol

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      A moment in “O Come, All Ye Faithful” is so popular, it’s printed on T-shirts. But it’s also symbolic, and important to music history.Of all the music heard around Christmas, few passages rival the awe and mystery of one chord, known as the “Word of the Father” chord.It’s a rare instance of powerful drama in holiday liturgical music, more akin to Edward Elgar’s depiction of God in “The Dream of Gerontius,” or the opening of the fifth door in the Bartok opera “Bluebeard’s Castle”: a moment of total release, embracing the unknown.In British choral circles, this moment is referred to simply as “The Chord.” It comes halfway through the final verse of the popular Christmas carol “O Come, All Ye Faithful” (or “Adeste Fideles”), in a mid-20th century arrangement by David Willcocks, an original editor of the widely used “Carols for Choirs” series and a former director of music at King’s College, Cambridge. Willcocks, following a rising figure full of anticipation, places an explosive, half-diminished seventh chord under the text “Word,” resolving it elaborately over the next few measures.“It’s a startling moment,” David Hill, the musical director of the Bach Choir, said in a telephone interview. “I remember being a boy of 10 playing it in my church in Carlisle, and loving every moment of it, thinking: ‘What is this? This is outrageous!’”There’s a youthful glee in the way the popularity of “The Chord” has grown; today, the discerning church musician can get it printed on pretty much anything, including T-shirts and tree ornaments. It’s a moment, Hill said, that “everyone wants to hear. It puts a great big smile on your face.”But “The Chord” is much more than just a crunchy harmonic moment: It carries a deep symbolic resonance for the Christian community, and represents a key moment in the creation of Britain’s carol industry.Willcocks’s arrangement of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” appeared in Carols for Choirs 1, published by Oxford University Press in 1961. The idea behind the anthology — conceived by the press’s head of music, Christopher Morris — was to create a practical, codified resource for choral societies at Christmas.But what followed was far from a utilitarian compilation, with a series of florid descants, and elaborate arrangements of traditional carols like “God Rest You, Merry Gentlemen,” and “The First Nowell.” “What were ordinary carols for people to sing up to this point were, by and large, very ordinary,” Hill said. With the new Carols for Choirs hymn arrangements, he added, “you had a whole new approach to carols, which was post-Holst and Vaughan Williams.”Estimates of how many copies were sold differ, but they are measured in the millions. A sixth volume, with a more international outlook, is due for publication in 2023, edited by Hill and a fellow choral director, Bob Chilcott. Of particular acclaim in the first volume was the arrangement of “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” but not necessarily because of “The Chord.” Instead, it was the descant of the sixth verse, with its swirling setting of “Glory to God” (borrowing from “Ding Dong Merrily on High”), that drew more attention.Other musicians have their own favorite corners: a juicy chord here, an archaic lyric there, or a moment in which standard congregational hymns can be spiced up with a touch of chromatic alteration. Dr. Martin Clarke, the head of music and a senior lecturer at the Open University, said, “There are interesting moments in Willcocks’s other arrangements too; towards the end of ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ is pretty satisfying to sing and play.” But that moment in “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” he said, “goes just a bit further.”The words set in the final verse refer to the prologue from the Gospel of John, a reading usually reserved for Christmas morning. The opening lines, “Yea, Lord we greet thee, born this happy morning,” confirm that; with some helpful amendments of tense, though, the verse has become more of a fixture at Advent services. Within its fleeting presence, “The Chord” nods to centuries of tradition: moments from Bach’s “St. John Passion,” the personal predilections of previous King’s College organists and the wider history of final-verse reharmonizations within the Anglican worship tradition.In addition, the progression that follows bears a striking resemblance to music by the English composer John Stainer, who used the same dramatic chord and elegant escape in his setting of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” — which concluded his Epiphany anthem “I Desired Wisdom,” published in 1876. But the crucial difference in Willcocks’s more famous setting is the matching of harmony with subject. Where Stainer opts to add a diminished chord to “Glory,” Willcocks instead chooses the more symbolically rich “Word.”The passage from John referenced in the final verse — “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God” — departs from the poetic images of angels, shepherds and Magi usually referenced at Christmastime. “John gets the greater sense of divine mystery and the complex significance of what he’s trying to communicate here,” Clarke said. “To line it up with that chord not just reinforces the mystery of the text; it grabs you, makes you concentrate, and makes you confront it.”“I don’t think the resonance of those words and what they refer to in the Christian tradition would really come across as strongly without that harmonization, without that chord,” he added. “It exemplifies confronting that mystery.”That power is compounded by Willcocks’s arrangement. Following the pageantry and grandeur of the sixth verse, the seventh follows in meaty unison. “It feels completely different,” Clarke said. “The great power comes from the feeling of difference that comes to everybody — not just the choristers, soloists, choir. Absolutely everybody in the congregation can get that feeling of being part of that sound. You’re right in the middle of that chord, whoever you are.” More

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      Christmas at Dollywood, With Streetmosphere and a Chicken Lady

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      Dolly Parton’s theme park gets into the holiday spirit in a way that rivals Radio City’s Rockettes — with fewer kicklines but far more fingerpicking.Parker Collins, 15, does a version of “Jingle Bells” on his banjo. “Usually I get excited, and I start playing fast,” he said.A family poses in front of the Dollywood Smoky Mountain Christmas sign at the entrance of the park.PIGEON FORGE, Tenn. — In June or July, Dollywood employees begin stringing more than six million twinkle lights across Dolly Parton’s namesake theme park, here in the Smoky Mountains.In a mad sprint just after Halloween, they add more than 650 evergreens, including a 50-footer that serves as a canvas for a light show about a polar bear. The steam train that whistles through the park is topped with a giant wreath; Santa stuffies appear as balloon pop prizes.By early November, Heidi Lou Parton, Dolly’s niece, is onstage, surrounded by glistening firs, harmonizing on “You Are My Christmas,” a song written for her father, Randy Parton. She was all of 4 when she made her debut at Dollywood, singing background vocals for Randy, one of Dolly Parton’s 11 siblings. Now 37, Heidi Lou has been performing at Dollywood ever since, including nearly a decade of Christmas shows, most of them alongside her father, aunts and cousins.All of her earliest memories are at Dollywood, she said one afternoon between gigs. “It’s an oasis for me.”Nearly 3 million people a year come to the theme park.Stacy Kranitz for The New York Times“Christmas in the Smokies” is Dollywood’s signature holiday show and has been running since 1990.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesYou don’t have to be a Parton to hold Dollywood close, especially during the holidays. Generations of families have made it an annual tradition to visit this 160-acre entertainment complex, 35 miles from Knoxville, which has transformed, over three decades, into a Christmas attraction to rival Radio City’s Rockettes — with fewer kicklines, but far more fingerpicking.“Christmas in the Smokies,” its signature show, has been running since 1990, with a live orchestra and Appalachian storytelling, a flatfoot dancer and a fiddler. The park serves as the setting for “Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas,” the star’s latest NBC special, now streaming on Peacock, which gives a glimpse of several Dollywood musicians, like Addie Levy, a 20-year-old mandolin, guitar, fiddle and upright bass player.“There is something for everybody during all the four seasons,” Dolly Parton said in a video interview in September, already offset by candy-pink pines that matched her manicure. “And of course, Christmas is the highlight of it all.”“We make almost as much money now, from Thanksgiving to the first of the year, as we do the whole rest of the year,” she added (a bit of showbiz hyperbole, but the park does have some of its busiest days in that period).Parton, 76, has been a cultural force for decades, an empire-builder whose business ventures include baked goods and dog T-shirts (Doggywood, y’all!), and a rare social unifier whose philanthropic reach has markedly increased. Last month, Jeff Bezos gave her $100 million to add to her already robust charitable giving; among other endeavors, she founded the Imagination Library, which distributes free books to children. Early this year, Dollywood announced a new program in which the 4,000 employees across all its attractions — including part-time and seasonal workers; even a temporary Santa — could have 100 percent of their college tuition paid for by the company. They are eligible on their first day of work.While Dollywood is open most of the year, “Christmas is the highlight of it all,” Dolly Parton said.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesEach morning the national anthem plays just before Dollywood visitors enter.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesDollywood, which was founded in 1986, when Parton went into business with Herschend Family Entertainment to rebrand and then expand their existing amusement park, is the largest employer in its rural county. “We want people to have opportunities,” said Parton, whose title at the park is dreamer in chief. “The employees to feel proud to be working there. You don’t want them to feel like they’re just there to serve you. You also, in turn, want to be able to do some things to help make their lives better, and to serve them.”That’s in part why she wanted to do her Christmas special there — “to just show off who we are and what we have there at the park,” she said.“They’re good-looking people!” she added with a hoot.A few days spent there last month, darting among the topiaries of butterflies (Parton’s signature creature), revealed a crosscurrent of her fan base: retirees looking for a homey glimpse of yesteryear; church groups who appreciate the park’s roots in Christian culture; overstretched families looking for a more affordable theme park adventure; mother-daughter bonding outings, gay couples and girlfriend crews with spangly earrings and coordinating T-shirts. Add in reindeer antlers and kids in tinsel and pajamas, and it’s the holidays.Watching the string band, Linda Lay, 60, who runs a family farm business and sings bluegrass with her husband David Lay, leaped off her feet in a jig. “When the music’s good, I just get up and dance,” she said. “To us, there’s two kinds of music,” added David, 64, a mustachioed, overall-ed fourth-generation farmer, who harmonizes and plays guitar. “It’s either good, or it’s bad.”Dollywood’s business was long built on repeat visitors — season-pass holders that came from the region, screaming through the rides in the summer (there is also an adjacent water park), pumpkin-spotting at the harvest festival in the fall. But since the pandemic, Dollywood’s leaders found an uptick, sometimes even a majority, of single-ticket buyers in their nearly 3 million annual attendees. Now on pace for a record-breaking season, they have been working to sell the park to people like Carrie Shea, 23, from Satellite Beach, Fla., who was decked out in full Dolly regalia — fringed white boots, a pink-rimmed cowgirl hat — from the apparel shop Dolly’s Closet (tagline: “her style, your size”).Children gather for story time at DreamMore, a resort hotel affiliated with Dollywood.Stacy Kranitz for The New York Times“I’ve loved Dolly since I was a little girl,” said Shea, who works in retail. “Just being around everyone else who loves Dolly — Dolly has such a great moral code, she’s such a woman of empowerment. There’s just pure love walking through.”While you can get a flick of glitz by stepping onto her old tour bus, don’t expect over-the-top camp; there are no rhinestone-encrusted Dolly statues here. The star’s aura is represented more subtly, with a working chapel named for the doctor who delivered her, say, or a small plaque commemorating her uncle Bill’s work as a conservator of chestnut trees.Her music and influences, though, are easy to find. Dollywood entertainers are devoted practitioners of bluegrass, folk and other Americana musical styles not often heard in theme parks. Even if you don’t seek them out, you encounter them at the park, in outdoor trios and roaming banjo players like Parker Collins, a 15-year-old with a deep Southern twang and a virtuosic pluck.Come Christmas time, he does his own speeding rendition of “Jingle Bells,” dueling banjo-style. “Usually I get excited, and I start playing fast,” he explained.Betty Disney cradles her baby, Brooklyn, while sitting next to her daughter Blake in front of a nativity display at Dollywood.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesAs an institution, Dollywood stands alone in showcasing these heritage mountain sounds to vast audiences, said Roy Andrade, director of old-time music and a professor at East Tennessee State University, which operates the first Appalachian studies program in the country. “In providing a venue and supporting and encouraging young budding musicians, they are contributing to the health and survival of this music,” he said.Some of his students gig at Dollywood. “Our students like playing there because it pays well,” he said, “and it’s a bit grueling — you’re playing all day. You really get to work on your chops. After two or three hours of playing, you’re warmed up, anything can happen — it’s a nice creative space.”The community it offers, in and around artists, is also vital. “This music has always been learned knee to knee,” he said. “That’s the No. 1 way it’s transferred between people.”Addie Levy, the young musician, felt it, when she visited Dollywood as a child. “I used to tell my parents I would sell Dippin’ Dots if I could work here,” she said. She started performing there at age 12 in a bluegrass duo; now she plays at Dollywood and its affiliated resort hotel, DreamMore. Her debut solo album is out next year, including songs she wrote in the break room at the hotel, where a corridor is lined with images of Parton’s 50-plus studio albums.“I’ll walk through her album hallway and think wow, maybe one day I’ll have three of these,” Levy said. “You just get inspired when you see her looking over you. You’re like, look Dolly, I’m writing this song — I think you’d like it.”Members of the Jolly family at DreamMore.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesBirthday guests are given a special button to wear during their visit.Stacy Kranitz for The New York Times‘If someone doesn’t have a smile, give them yours’Dollywood emphasizes what’s called “streetmosphere,” especially the one-on-one interactions guests have as they meander through areas like Rivertown Junction, with a replica of the log cabin Parton grew up in, and Craftsman’s Valley, where they can buy a hand-tooled belt from a magnificently bearded artisan, or blow their own glass ornaments. Disney’s streetmosphere is more about a hug from a branded character, often hidden in a plush suit. But Dollywood prides itself on making its employees accessible to visitors — conversationally, temperamentally — whether they are costumed singers and dancers, or cashiers slinging cinnamon bread. (I was persuaded to buy a loaf and a roll, plus supplementary icing.)Those points of connection, whether with a person or a song, are what keep visitors coming back. “We call them ‘moments of truth,’” said Roger White, a longtime entertainment manager.Parton’s magic is that — beneath the wigs and plastic surgery, and the unshakable boob-joke persona she has honed over more than a half-century in show business — she still exudes authenticity. An average person might go mildly batty listening to piped-in Christmas tunes for 10 hours a day, five days a week, for two months, but among the theme park staff are genuine believers. “I put up 30 Christmas trees at my house,” said Chance Smith, a performer turned entertainment manager.Dollywood prides itself on making its employees accessible to visitors. Those points of connection, whether with a person or a song, are what keep visitors coming back.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesHe’s outshone by Parton herself, whose home in suburban Nashville features a Christmas tree in nearly every corner, according to Steve Summers, her longtime creative director. “It’s like a theme park inside,” he said, with colors and ornaments to match each room’s décor. (Think parakeets and vintage cars; the kitchen tree is hot pink.)Summers is a graduate of Dollywood, too: a tall Ken doll of man, he started there as a singer and dancer, duetting with Parton regularly, before she plucked him out to oversee her costumes (300 looks a year) and aesthetics. “If you do know Dolly, you know that behind the scenes, she is a force. And I appreciated that,” he said in an interview in Parton’s Nashville production offices, where the lyrics for her hit “9 to 5,” handwritten in her neat cursive on a yellow legal pad, hang framed by the door.“He’s just been the best thing that ever happened to me,” Parton said.The Dollywood Express train, which is coal-powered, travels through the park.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesOver the years, Dollywood acts have gone on to “American Idol” and Broadway. The country star Carly Pearce debuted there as a teenager. But some artists are content to stay at the park.Take the Chicken Lady.In rainbow glasses and a headset mic, some rubber poultry — “my emotional support chicken” — in her apron pocket, Miss Lillian, as her character is formally known, is a local favorite. With a sprig of holly in her hat, she improvises songs on her ukulele. (“What’s your name?” she asked a tween who sought her out one rainy day. “Grace? Oh, we have Grace in this place!”)“I’ve been here almost 20 years,” said the Chicken Lady, whose civilian name is Connie Freeman Prince. “I’ve seen a lot of children grow up.”“I’m in a point in my life when I say, ‘Dear God, just put me where I can be a light,’” Connie Freeman Prince, also known as the Chicken Lady, said.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesMariam Ali, a game attendant at Dollywood.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesCaleb Brown, one of the park’s performers, won a Brass Ring award in 2021.Stacy Kranitz for The New York Times“If you do a show 200 times in two months, every now and then you might trip on your own mouse tail,” Kelsey Lane Dies said. “You just have to let it go, because you have to get back onstage so quickly.”Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesLike many Dollywood performers, Freeman Prince has serious credentials — a B.F.A. in theater; TV, movie and voice-over roles. She does a mean Judy Garland impression and once worked as a Dolly impersonator. She met her husband, a sound designer, and got engaged “on park,” as employees call the grounds. “A lot of people get engaged here,” she said. “A lot of people have different parts of their lives shared here. And I’m in a point in my life when I say, ‘Dear God, just put me where I can be a light.’”In more than a dozen interviews at the park, there was one mantra from the boss that I heard repeated over and over: “Dolly always says, ‘If someone doesn’t have a smile, give them yours.’”“The littlest thing you do can change someone’s day,” said Nathan Forshey, a performer for 17 years, whose latest role is the town crier. “What you do matters. That’s what this place has taught me.”The Dollywood Emporium sells, among other things, Parton’s perfume.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesScenes from the all-you-can-eat dinner at Aunt Granny’s Restaurant inside Dollywood.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesA replica of Dolly Parton’s childhood home is furnished with some of her family’s heirlooms.Stacy Kranitz for The New York Times‘If she’s still asleep at 3 a.m., it’s a miracle’For all its good-heartedness, Dollywood can be notably lacking in diversity, especially onstage.When Caleb Brown started in 2018, he noticed he was one of only two performers of color, among dozens of cast members. Though he felt supported himself, it was something he brought up immediately, first with the other actor — who said “that it was also a concern for him” — and then with management, he said, in an effort to dispel any sense that Dollywood’s appeal was limited to white country fans.“I think there’s a lot of people like me who would benefit from this place so much,” Brown, 27, said. In 2021 he won a Brass Ring award — the Oscars of the international attractions industry — for best performer.Some visitors felt alienated by the park’s traditionalist choices: the holiday shows center on straight family stories, with mostly white actors. “When people celebrate Christmas, they can celebrate in different ways, and families can look very different,” said Zaki Baker, a mother who came often with her young children. “It seems like they have a narrow perspective.”Park leadership said they make tweaks every season, including to popular shows; they recently added a new song to “Christmas in the Smokies.” In a statement, Tim Berry, Dollywood’s vice president of human resources, said the company believes that “a diverse work force makes us more creative, flexible, productive and competitive,” adding that “our diversity encompasses differences in ethnicity, gender, language, age, religion, socioeconomic status, physical and mental ability, thinking styles, experience and education.”For years, Parton’s brand has been about inclusivity and acceptance; lately she has come out more forcefully in support of the gay community and movements like Black Lives Matter; in 2018, she changed a separate attraction known as the “Dixie Stampede” to the Dolly Parton Stampede.To stans like Shea, the Florida visitor, every section of the park seemed imbued with Parton’s spirit, including an aviary showcase for birds of prey, created by the American Eagle Foundation. (“I was like, oh my God, Dolly cares about the eagles!”) But behind the scenes, John Owens Dietrich, a former choreographer and director for the Rockettes, who teaches at N.Y.U., has also had an outsize influence in creating movement and songs for the park, and coaching performers through a grueling schedule of as many as six shows a day.Generations of families have made it a tradition to visit this 160-acre entertainment complex.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesDreamMore workers keep the guests entertained.Stacy Kranitz for The New York TimesIt was intimidating at first. “If you do a show 200 times in two months, every now and then you might trip on your own mouse tail,” said Kelsey Lane Dies, who plays a mischievous rodent in a child-oriented Christmas production. “You just have to let it go, because you have to get back onstage so quickly.”Dies, 28, who trained at a theater conservatory in New York, was one of the first employees to take advantage of the college tuition program. She’s studying organizational leadership, with an eye toward eventually moving off the stage. “Had this program not existed, I very likely would never have gone back to college, unless I won the lottery,” she said.The industriousness and quality control at the park comes from Parton herself. She’s sat in on auditions; she wrote the material for the autobiographical shows her family members long performed; she’s there on opening day every year, and at the introduction of new rides (though she doesn’t partake herself — she gets motion sickness). The park is now building another resort: she’s in the meetings to select the drapery.“You can’t outwork Dolly Parton,” Summers said. “Nobody can. If she’s still asleep at 3 a.m., it’s a miracle.”Perhaps as a counterpoint to all the evident busyness — and to the sensory onslaught of most theme parks — Dollywood invites visitors to pause and listen: to the strum of an instrument, and a sweet Christmas bell. To the squawk in the bird sanctuary and the burbling creek by the old mill. To each other, and to their surroundings.“That’s why I love this place,” Heidi Lou Parton said. “There are secret places you can go to, and you can hear the mountains.”Dolly’s voice lingers, too. A cursive-print sign at the park’s exit bears her all-embracing message: “I will always love you.”Some of the millions of Christmas lights around Dollywood this time of year.Stacy Kranitz for The New York Times More

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      Stanley Drucker, Ageless Clarinetist of the N.Y. Philharmonic, Dies at 93

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      He played in the orchestra for 60 years, performing under the baton of five music directors. He personified the orchestra’s brilliant, even brash, character.Stanley Drucker, who was known as the dean of American orchestral clarinets during a 60-year career with the New York Philharmonic, putting his mark on countless performances and recordings under a legion of celebrated conductors, died on Monday in Vista, Calif., outside San Diego. He was 93.His death, at the home of his daughter, Rosanne Drucker, was confirmed by his son, Lee.Mr. Drucker, who retired in 2009, was only the fourth principal clarinetist of the Philharmonic since 1920 when he took up the post. Few wind players at any of the great American orchestras served as long.He played for the Philharmonic music directors Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur and Lorin Maazel, presenting a style and sound that typified the Philharmonic’s character — soloistic, technically and sonically brilliant, flamboyant and on the verge of brash.Mr. Drucker combined shapely phrasing with impeccable fingerwork. With his iron-gray hair and a slightly crooked front tooth, he was known for his youthful look and energy well into his 70s. His nickname in the orchestra was “Stanley Steamer,” a reflection of his swift marches offstage to make the commute to his home on Long Island, in Massapequa. “That’s my exercise,” he often said, “running for the train.”Such a long tenure naturally meant that he encountered the same pieces over and over again, and he greeted them like “old friends,” he said. The different perspectives that various conductors would bring to the music, he added, kept things fresh.“You absorb the personality and talent of whoever’s up on the podium,” he said.Just as much, those maestri would defer to Mr. Drucker’s interpretations of clarinet solos. Such was his influence that when a clarinet-playing New York Times reporter put in a request to perform with the orchestra for an article in 2004, the final say rested not with the music director, Mr. Maazel, not the orchestra president, Zarin Mehta, not even the powerful personnel manager, Carl Schiebler, but with Mr. Drucker.Mr. Drucker’s longevity with the Philharmonic gave rise to impressive statistics: 10,200 concerts with the orchestra, including 191 solo appearances, and performances of nearly every major clarinet concerto and soloist on more than a dozen recordings. He also recorded most of the standard clarinet chamber music works.Mr. Drucker with Leonard Bernstein in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in about 1967. Mr. Bernstein was just one of the Philharmonic’s renowned music directors for whom Mr. Drucker played.Bert Bial/New York Philharmonic ArchivesHe was nominated twice for a Grammy — for recordings of the Aaron Copland Concerto for Clarinet, Strings, Harp and Piano, with Leonard Bernstein conducting, and of John Corigliano’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, with Zubin Mehta conducting. The Philharmonic commissioned the Corigliano for Mr. Drucker.The publication Musical America named him instrumentalist of the year in 1998, and he was one of the few living orchestral musicians with an entry in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.A measure for any clarinetist is the great Mozart concerto, one of the composer’s last works. Of a 2001 performance, Allan Kozinn wrote in The Times that Mr. Drucker gave a “lively, thoughtfully shaped reading” of the opening movement and “tapped all the aching beauty in the Andante.”“But it was in the finale that he really let loose,” Mr. Kozinn added, “both with phrasing turns that pushed against the constraints of the line and by conveying a sense of heightened dialogue between his instrument and the rest of the orchestra.”Mr. Drucker’s conceived of an orchestral wind section as one organism.“You give and take; you don’t only take,” he said in a 2004 interview with The Times. “It’s a chamber music situation. You play to enhance.” He urged orchestral players to become deeply familiar with an entire work and express “what you have inside, what your sensitivity is.”Stanley Drucker was born on Feb. 4, 1929, in Brooklyn to immigrants from Galicia, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when they had left it 20 years earlier. He grew up in the Brownsville and Park Slope neighborhoods. His father, Joseph, had a custom tailor shop. His mother, Rose (Oberlander) Drucker, was a homemaker.Like so many clarinetists of the era, Mr. Drucker was inspired by Benny Goodman. His parents, seized by the Goodman craze of the time, bought him a clarinet for his 10th birthday. “They figured it was better than being a tailor,” Mr. Drucker said.His main teacher was Leon Russianoff, a leading clarinet pedagogue of the latter half of the 20th century, after whom Mr. Drucker would name his son. Mr. Drucker attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.Astonishingly, he entered the Indianapolis Symphony at age 16. “The object was to play, and get out into the real world,” he said. “I thought I knew everything, but found out quickly I didn’t.” During the summers he would return to New York for lessons with Russianoff.Mr. Drucker’s first formal photo with the New York Philharmonic, in about 1948. New York Philharmonic ArchivesMr. Drucker spent a year touring with the Adolf Busch Chamber Players, a conductor-less ensemble led by Mr. Busch, a violinist, and then joined the Buffalo Philharmonic. By 19 he had joined the New York Philharmonic as assistant principal, after Mr. Busch suggested that the Philharmonic invite him to audition. His getting the post, in 1948, was front page news in The Brooklyn Eagle. “My parents thought I was Joe Louis,” he said.Despite his youth, Mr. Drucker caught up quickly, learning on the job. “It was a master class every day,” he said.Bernstein, the Philharmonic’s music director, appointed him to the principal clarinet position in 1960.In 1998, the Philharmonic commemorated Mr. Drucker’s 50th anniversary during the final subscription program of the season by featuring him playing the Copland concerto. At the time, he pointed out that he was not the oldest player there.“I’ve been there the longest, because I started so young,” he told The Times. “But time compresses, you know? Fifty years doesn’t really seem so long.”Mr. Drucker married Naomi Lewis, a clarinetist who has had a fruitful career in her own right, in 1956. Their son, Leon, who goes by Lee, is a bassist with the rockabilly band Stray Cats, performing under the name Lee Rocker. Their daughter, Rosanne, is an alt-country singer-songwriter.In addition to his wife and children, Ms. Drucker is survived by two grandchildren. He lived for most of his adult life in Massapequa.Mr. Drucker, right, with his son, Lee, a bassist with the rockabilly band Stray Cats, and Mr. Drucker’s wife, the clarinetist Naomi Lewis, in 2006.Richard Perry/The New York TimesAlong with the clarinet, Mr. Drucker and his wife had a passion for their 30-foot-long fly bridge cabin cruiser, which they christened the Noni, for Ms. Drucker’s childhood nickname. They would take it for a monthlong cruise every summer.Mr. Drucker edited numerous volumes of studies, solo works and orchestral excerpts for clarinet for the International Music Co. He taught at the Juilliard School from 1968-98.But he was not given to high-flown pronouncements about artistry or musicianship.“You learn all of this stuff,” he once said. “And after a point, somebody has to tell you, ‘Forget it all, just go out and play.’”Alex Traub More

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      Kim Simmonds, a Key Figure in the British Blues Movement, Dies at 75

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      His band, Savoy Brown, never had a hit single, but it showcased his skills as a guitarist and songwriter and remained active for more than 50 years.Kim Simmonds, a fleet and commanding guitarist who for over 50 years led one of Britain’s seminal blues bands, Savoy Brown, died on Dec. 13 in Syracuse, N.Y. He was 75.His wife and manager, Debbie (Lyons) Simmonds, confirmed the death, in a hospital. Mr. Simmonds, who lived in nearby Oswego, had announced in August that he had Stage 4 signet ring cell carcinoma, a rare form of colon cancer that is seldom detected early enough to be treated successfully.Though Savoy Brown never had a hit single, and though only two albums from the group’s vast catalog broke Billboard’s Top 40, it held an important place in the British blues movement of the 1960s alongside bands like John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Ten Years After and the early Fleetwood Mac.Mr. Simmonds changed the band’s lineup often, bringing to mind a subway turnstile at rush hour, making it difficult to build an audience. The most notable firing happened in 1970, when he got rid of all the other members — who then went on to form a far more commercially successful band, Foghat. In all, more than 60 musicians played under the Savoy Brown banner.“I don’t want to stand still,” Mr. Simmonds told the website Music Aficionado in 2017. “Once I’ve climbed a mountain, I want to climb another. If a band weren’t willing to do that, I would get another band.”Throughout all the personnel changes, he maintained a musical vision anchored in the skill of his guitar work, the melodicism of his songwriting and his commitment to American blues.As a guitarist, he could be stinging or sweet, lithe or robust. He also drew attention for the speed of his playing, and for his ability to spin long solos without losing the melodic thread or breaking a song’s momentum. In addition to the blues, his music drew from jazz and — most notably on Savoy Brown’s highest-charting album (it reached No. 34 in Billboard), “Hellbound Train” (1972) — R&B.Savoy Brown at a festival in Sussex, England, in 1970. From left: Roger Earl, Dave Peverett, Mr. Simmonds and Tony Stevens. The band changed personnel frequently over the years, with Mr. Simmonds the only constant.Michael Putland/Getty ImagesKim Maiden Simmonds was born on Dec. 5, 1947, in Caerphilly, Wales, to Henry Simmonds, an electrician, and Phyllis (Davies) Simmonds, a homemaker. As a child, he was drawn to the early rock ’n’ roll albums owned by his older brother, Harry, who later worked for Bill Haley’s British fan club.“My brother took me to see all the rock ’n’ roll movies,” Mr. Simmonds told the magazine Record Collector in 2017. “I grew up with all that: Little Richard, Bill Haley and, of course, Elvis.”By age 10 he had moved with his family to London, where his brother took him to jazz record stores that sold blues albums. The singer and pianist Memphis Slim — “one of the sophisticated blues guys that could keep one foot in the jazz world and one foot in the blues world,” he told Record Collector — became a favorite.He bought his first guitar at 13 and began imitating the blues licks on the records he loved. So intent was he on a music career that he never completed high school.A chance meeting at a record shop in 1965 with the harmonica player John O’Leary led to the formation of what was initially called the Savoy Brown Blues Band. (The first word in the name echoed the name of an important American jazz and R&B label.) The group’s initial lineup featured six players, two of them Black — the singer Brice Portius and the drummer Leo Manning — making them one of the few multiracial bands on the British rock scene of the 1960s.While playing gigs with Cream and John Lee Hooker, the band developed a reputation for its intense live performances, leading to a contract with Decca Records in 1967. The band’s debut album, “Shake Down,” consisted almost entirely of blues covers. By its second album, “Getting to the Point,” issued in 1968, most of the lineup had changed. The most significant additions were the soulful singer Chris Youlden (who also wrote memorable original songs, often with Mr. Simmonds) and the forceful rhythm guitarist and singer Dave Peverett.Mr. Simmonds in performance in Nashville in 2017.Rick Diamond/Getty Images for IEBAHalf of the band’s third album, “Blue Matter,” issued in 1969, was recorded live, highlighted by a revved-up version of Muddy Waters’s “Louisiana Blues,” which became a signature piece. Its 1970 album, “Raw Sienna,” forged a dynamic new direction that reflected the emerging jazz-rock movement, best evidenced by Mr. Simmonds’s Dave Brubeck-like instrumental, “Master Hare.” When Mr. Youlden elected to leave for a solo career, Mr. Peverett stepped up impressively to sing lead on the band’s “Lookin’ In” album later that year.Mr. Simmonds’s desire to add more R&B influences led to the firings that paved the way for Foghat. The resulting sound on the album “Street Corner Talkin’,” released in 1971, earned heavy play on FM radio in the U.S., where the band enjoyed a larger following than in its native country.Though Savoy Brown’s subsequent albums weren’t as commercially successful, Mr. Simmonds kept producing them at a steady clip, resulting in a catalog of more than 40. His last releases, both in 2020, were a studio album, “Ain’t Done Yet,” and a set of live performances from the 1990s, “Taking the Blues Back Home.” He also released six solo albums.In addition to his wife, his survivors include their daughter, Eve Simmonds, and two children from a previous marriage, Tabatha and Justin Simmonds.Addressing his dedication to Savoy Brown in whatever form it took, Mr. Simmons told Music Aficionado: “A famous poet once said, ‘The deed can never be done without need.’ There’s something in me that’s gotta come out.”He added: “Throughout it all — the changes, the music, the 50 years — the one tie-in is my guitar playing. That’s what keeps it all going.” More

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      SZA Lands First No. 1 With Long-Awaited Album, ‘SOS’

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      The R&B singer and songwriter made a big splash on the Billboard 200, while holiday songs continue to dominate the singles chart.SZA, a singer and songwriter who for a decade has been one of the brightest lights in R&B, lands her first No. 1 on the Billboard album chart this week, while Christmas music keeps its icy grip on the singles chart.After early singles and EPs, SZA — born Solána Rowe in St. Louis, and raised in New Jersey — made a splash with her debut album, “Ctrl” (2017), which brought her a best new artist nomination at the Grammys. She has been teasing the follow-up for two years, and this month finally released “SOS,” which features guest appearances by Travis Scott, Phoebe Bridgers and Don Toliver, along with an unearthed vocal track by Ol’ Dirty Bastard of the Wu-Tang Clan, who died in 2004.In its first week out, “SOS” had the equivalent of 318,000 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. That total includes 405 million streams, which Billboard said is a weekly record for an R&B album.Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” holds at No. 2 in its eighth week out, and Metro Boomin’s “Heroes & Villains,” last week’s top seller, falls to No. 3. Drake and 21 Savage’s “Her Loss” falls one spot to fourth place and Michael Bublé’s 11-year-old holiday LP, “Christmas,” holds at No. 5. Other than SZA’s album, the only other new entry in the Top 10 is “Me vs. Myself” by the Bronx-born rapper A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, which lands at No. 6.Most of the top spots on the Hot 100 singles chart are decades-old Christmas chestnuts: Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” holds at No. 1, while Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” is No. 2, Bobby Helms’s “Jingle Bell Rock” is No. 4 and Burl Ives’s “A Holly Jolly Christmas” is No. 5. SZA’s new “Kill Bill” arrives at No. 3. More

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      Why the Queen of Christmas Refuses to Leave Battery Park City

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      Home is important to Elizabeth Chan: “Every Christmas song I’ve written has been written here.”Elizabeth Chan is very clear on the matter: Christmas is not a competition.“You can love whatever you want about it as much as you want,” Ms. Chan, 42, said. “It’s how much it fills you with joy, and everybody has different levels of joy in their heart. But that doesn’t mean one way of being is better than another.”These are all very reasonable points. Very gracious, too. But there is no altering the fact that Ms. Chan wins Christmas. Hands down. Game, set and match.It is not because she named her daughters Noelle and Eva (for Christmas Eve). Or because the palette of her apartment in Lower Manhattan tilts toward a rich dark red and celadon green. Or because she has half a dozen Advent calendars in heavy rotation. Or even because the fragrance of the liquid hand soap in her kitchen and bathrooms is generally limited to gingerbread, peppermint, pine fir and such. (Ms. Chan stocks up when the holidays are over and everyone else has moved on from spiced plum and winterberry.)“My goal when I write Christmas music is to inspire thoughts of love, family and home to anyone who listens,” said Elizabeth Chan, who lives with her family in a two-bedroom rental in Battery Park City.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesElizabeth Chan, 42Occupation: Composer and performer of Christmas songsA new perspective: “When I became a mother, my music changed immediately, because suddenly the story of the birth of Jesus and the story of trying to find a place for the baby became very relatable.”It’s because of this: Since leaving her job as a marketing executive a decade ago for what, at the time, seemed like a quixotic pursuit, Ms. Chan has written more than 1,000 Christmas songs (she stopped counting at 1,200) in assorted genres — pop, jazz, disco, electronic, you name it — and recorded 12 albums of her holiday-themed compositions. Some have turned up on Billboard’s adult contemporary and holiday charts. She also ghostwrites Christmas songs for performers who need a Santa’s helper.Like its predecessors, her latest collection, “12 Months of Christmas,” released in October, plays around the country in malls and stores like Walmart, Ikea, Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma, providing Ms. Chan with an annual income that she says is in the high six figures — there’s no business like Ho-Ho-Ho business — and prompting some in the industry to refer to her as the Queen of Christmas. (Last year, when Mariah Carey, she of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” filed an application through her company to trademark the phrase “Queen of Christmas” for future use on products like music, perfume, sunglasses and even coconut milk, Ms. Chan opposed the registration, believing that no one should have exclusive and permanents rights to the title. Ultimately, she prevailed.)Ms. Chan’s office, two floors down from the family home, is perennially decked out for Christmas.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesCreatively and fiscally, Ms. Chan has gone far. Geographically, it’s a different story. She grew up in Battery Park City and has remained there even after 9/11 caused many, including her traumatized parents, to relocate.“I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go,” said Ms. Chan, who found a one-bedroom rental blocks away from her childhood apartment. “I thought it was going to be temporary. I think I’ve stayed because every Christmas song I’ve written has been written here.”When Ms. Chan married 13 years ago, her husband, Andy Fraley, who designed her website and also designs her album covers, joined her in the apartment. And when she decided to ditch corporate life and become a struggling artist, the couple stayed put, although it meant making room for six keyboards, three guitars, a ukulele, a Chinese stringed instrument called a gu zheng, speakers and then, eventually, their first child, Noelle, now 5, and the attendant baby paraphernalia. Oh, and did we mention the dog?Four years ago, through a local mothers’ group, Ms. Chan learned that a family in the building was moving to New Jersey and was hoping to find someone to take over their two-bedroom apartment.“My husband went to look at it, and things were in a crazy state of affairs,” Ms. Chan recalled. “There were crayon and magic-marker marks on every wall, and he said, ‘We’ll take it.’ He knew I was never going to leave the neighborhood — that I was never going to leave the building — because it’s home.”Shelves have been stripped of books to make space to display a Lego Christmas Village scene.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesMs. Chan puts a heavy emphasis and great value on home. Many of her songs have the word “home” in the title or the lyrics. Home frequently figures in conversations with her. Dilating on the topic, she gets unapologetically weepy.Even though the family has settled fully into the more spacious apartment — their numbers now include Eva, 2 — Ms. Chan clings to the other space because that, too, is her home. It’s easily identified by the sleigh bell-encrusted Christmas wreath.“In the way you walk into your house and it smells familiar — that’s this place, for me,” she said.There she wraps and hides her children’s Christmas presents, writes songs, does business Zoom calls and records promos for the radio stations that play her music. Ms. Chan gets inspiration from the fully decorated artificial Christmas tree that, like the wreath, remains in place year-round; from the decorative holiday pillows, of which there are many; and from a photo of her maternal grandmother presiding over a Christmas pageant in her village in the Philippines. “She taught me what matters,” Ms. Chan said.“I usually take January off and start writing Christmas songs again in February,” Ms. Chan said.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesOn a Friday morning in early December, the holiday spirit was ascendant two floors up, in the family quarters. The bookshelves had been given over to displays of Lego Christmas Village scenes and a Fisher-Price Little People Nativity set. Red stockings were hung with care over the red-painted wood console. A “Santa Stop Here” tree-topper was ready to be put in place, and the marble-topped dining table where Ms. Chan sat, a decade ago, to map out her business, had been cleared off to make room for a gingerbread house or two.“This is what Christmas looks like to me,” she said, gazing around the living room. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable living anywhere else. Since my songs are focused on love and family and home, uprooting would affect my music.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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      Getting Close to Sondheim: New Books Try to Capture His Essence

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      Memoirs by his collaborators are among the works available now, and several others are on the horizon.Roughly a decade before Stephen Sondheim died in November 2021, he added a surprising new occupation to his multi-hyphenate career: autobiographer. His two memoirs-through-lyrics, “Finishing the Hat” and “Look, I Made a Hat,” offered beguiling insights into the life of a man who had long cultivated a reputation for sphinx-like reticence. The year since his death has seen bookshelves sag with an array of books offering further glimpses; D.T. Max’s “Finale: Late Conversations With Stephen Sondheim” is the most recent, with several more on the horizon. Here is a look at some of those titles.Available nowMany of the current crop of works can be classified as either “I worked with Steve” books or “I had an ongoing professional and intermittently contentious correspondence with Steve” books. (There’s also an “I was sort of married to Steve for a year” book. More on that soon.)Accounts from two of Sondheim’s longtime collaborators, the musical director Paul Gemignani and the pianist Paul Ford, were both in the works well before 2021. Gemignani had put off writing his memoirs for years, and it wasn’t until the Covid pandemic shut down live theater that he had the time to work on “Gemignani: Life and Lessons From Broadway and Beyond.” The book’s extensive quotes from Sondheim include one that Gemignani’s co-author, Margaret Hall, agreed not to use until after his death. In it, Sondheim described their decades-long working relationship: “It can’t be expressed. It’s like trying to explain why you’re in love with somebody. There’s no explanation; it just is.”His involvement with Ford’s “Lord Knows, at Least I Was There: Working With Stephen Sondheim” was less harmonious. Ford, who played piano on the original productions of four different Sondheim shows and what he described as “about 50,000 birthday celebrations,” had plugged away on his memoirs for years and gotten permission to use Sondheim’s name in the title — until Sondheim took a look at the manuscript in 2017.“An advance copy was sent to Steve in the morning,” Ford recalled, “and by the afternoon a scathing series of emails came back saying, ‘I skimmed through it, but it’s just a memoir. Take my name off this book.’ So that was it for a while.” Until this March, to be precise.Such exchanges were not unknown to Paul Salsini, who includes many of them in “Sondheim & Me: Revealing a Musical Genius,” which came out in October. As the longtime editor of the Sondheim Review magazine (for which I worked for several years), Salsini heard from Sondheim often. “He was so protective about making sure everything was accurate,” Salsini said.Remembering Stephen SondheimThe revered and influential composer-lyricist died Nov. 26, 2021. He was 91.Obituary: A titan of the American musical, Sondheim was the driving force behind some of Broadway’s most beloved shows.Final Interview: Days before he died, he sat down with The Times for his final major interview.His Legacy: As a mentor, a letter writer and an audience regular, Sondheim nurtured generations of theater makers.‘West Side Story’: Does the musical, which features some of the artist’s best-known lyrics, deserve a new hearing?‘Company’: The revival of his 1970 musical features a gender swap.A low point in the relationship came after a 1996 review in the publication of the London premiere of “Passion.” The review compared it unfavorably to the original Broadway production, and called it “just a little too blatant,” which triggered a barrage of irate responses both by telephone and through the mail.“It was a good, balanced review, and I have no idea why he was so upset,” said Salsini, who believes the written note could have opened Sondheim up for libel if it had run in the magazine, as Sondheim had intended. And then the protests stopped. “And to this day,” he said, “I don’t know why.”D.T. Max’s involvement with Sondheim was not quite as heated or as lengthy: “Finale: Late Conversations With Stephen Sondheim” is based on five interactions between 2016 and 2019. Initially the intent was to produce a profile for The New Yorker to coincide with a new musical, a pair of one-acts adapted from two Luis Buñuel films, that was left unfinished at the time of Sondheim’s death. They discussed everything from “Vertigo” to the poetry of William Carlos Williams to the Beatles. (Sondheim only liked two of those three things.)“I was not so arrogant as to think I would get to the mystery of Stephen Sondheim’s creative genius,” Max said, “but I did hope to get close to it.”A question about whether he had learned anything from Andrew Lloyd Webber fell on clearly unsympathetic ears, however, and as the new work fizzled away, so did the profile. (“Sondheim broke up with me over that question,” as Max put it, alluding to an email after that interview in which Sondheim begged off participating for the profile.) “Finale” is essentially the paper trail of this long, ultimately fruitless (or was it?) pas de deux between interviewer and interviewee.“Sondheim was a complicated guy to sit with,” said Max, who tagged along with Sondheim and Meryl Streep at a gala for one of the five interviews. “There was a sense of intimacy that wasn’t entirely real and wasn’t entirely fake.”And then there’s that trial marriage. “Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers,” which the Broadway composer Rodgers (“Once Upon a Mattress”) co-wrote with the New York Times chief theater critic, Jesse Green, covers a lot of ground in a career that included far more than her interactions with Sondheim. But those interactions came to a head in 1960, when Sondheim and the recently divorced Rodgers “would get into the same bed, side by side, frozen with fear,” for roughly a year on and off. It didn’t last.Coming soonThe seemingly eternal question mark involves David Benedict’s authorized Sondheim biography, which was announced in 2014 complete with a first draft to be submitted in 2017. But while we wait for that, two new titles are (presumably) more imminent.A revival of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical “Merrily We Roll Along,” currently at the New York Theater Workshop, is heading to Broadway next fall. It stars, from left: Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe.Sara KrulwichMarch will see the release of “Careful the Spell You Cast: How Stephen Sondheim Extended the Range of the American Musical.” In it, Ben Francis takes aim at the prevalent view of Sondheim as the eternal cynic. Instead, he suggests, Sondheim’s reminder that “dreams take time” (to quote from “Merrily We Roll Along,” a revival of which is heading to Broadway next fall) positions him as a successor to his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, as an unlikely romantic.And in “Sondheim: His Life, His Shows, His Legacy,” slated for release next October, Stephen M. Silverman supplements interviews with what the promotional copy describes as Sondheim’s “collaborators, mentors and fans,” along with illustrated transcripts, letters and more.On the horizonSondheim was a gifted puzzle maker and creator of cryptic scavenger hunts. (Rian Johnson, the screenwriter and director of “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” has credited the 1973 mystery film “The Last of Sheila,” co-written by Sondheim, as an inspiration.) Barry Joseph decided to plumb this relatively under-discussed aspect of his life in “Matching Minds With Sondheim: The Puzzles and Games of the Master Lyricist.”“This is seeing his mind and brilliance in a whole new way,” said Joseph, who hopes to release the book in 2024. “When you’re trying to solve someone’s puzzle, you’re getting into their head.”The following year should see the publication of Dan Okrent’s own biography as part of the Yale Jewish Lives series, or what he calls “little books about big Jews.”Although Sondheim didn’t set foot in a synagogue until he was 19, Okrent said, he spent much of his career on Broadway and grew up with a father in the garment business, two industries in which Jews were strongly represented at the time. Okrent’s book will look at Sondheim and his work through this lens.“My goal is not to uncover things that people didn’t know,” he said. “It is to put what people do know into context.” More