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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Jazz Piano

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      We asked Samara Joy, Hanif Abdurraqib, Vijay Iyer and others to share their favorite tracks showcasing what might be the most nuanced instrument in jazz.Over the past few months, The New York Times has asked all kinds of experts to answer the question, What would you play a friend to make them fall in love with Duke Ellington? How about Alice Coltrane? We’ve covered bebop, vocal jazz, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra and the music of the 21st century.This month, we’re focused on the piano, perhaps the most nuanced instrument in jazz. At the hands of an artist like Thelonious Monk or Shirley Scott, Herbie Hancock or Geri Allen, the piano captures a vast range of emotions — some easily identified; others more textured — while blurring the lines between jazz, ambient and classical. It’s an instrument so equally subtle and pronounced that even one of the most celebrated pianists in jazz still has trouble assessing it.“I’m trying to figure out what the black and white keys do after 86 years!” Ahmad Jamal said in a 2020 interview. “I first sat down at the piano when I was 3 years old, and I’m still trying to figure out what they do!” Indeed, there’s no other instrument that heightens and soothes like the piano, its melodic chords a worthy complement to stronger-sounding drums and horns.Below, we asked writers, critics, musicians and D.J.s to recommend their favorite jazz recordings that put the piano in the spotlight. Enjoy reading their commentary and listening to the excerpts, and find a playlist at the bottom of the article with full tracks. As always, be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Dan Tepfer, pianist and composerSome people are attracted to what they know, others to what they don’t know. If you’re the second kind of person, I think you’ll find the deep mystery of this track fascinating. There’s something about the exquisite density of the harmonies, about Thelonious Monk’s subtle variations in phrasing, about his overall attitude, that transforms the simple melody of the original song into a whole universe, one you could lose yourself in. Then, at 1:49, he does something seemingly impossible: He bends a piano note. Even though I know the trick to doing this, I’m always amazed at how effective it is in his hands. But what’s even more remarkable is Monk’s ability, throughout the track, to extract a sound out of the piano that’s like nothing else. It’s at once angular and approachable, bold and vulnerable, complex and childlike. Perhaps more than anyone, Monk embodied jazz’s highest calling: to sound radically like yourself.“Just a Gigolo”Thelonious Monk◆ ◆ ◆Samara Joy, vocalist“Father Flanagan,” a song composed and played by the great Barry Harris, is one of my favorite songs highlighting the piano. Although George Duvivier and Leroy Williams play on this tune as well, Barry starts the song in a rubato fashion with his deeply lyrical interpretation of the melody before bringing the band into time for the top of his solo on this beautiful walking ballad. A special element of this particular track that proves his superior sense of melodic playing is the fact that Barry sings as he’s soloing, which can be heard if you listen closely. He played with so much soul and melody, everything cohesive yet free flowing. From intro to ending, solo to comping, Barry Harris on this recording showcases an incredible command of the instrument and details exactly how the piano should be played.◆ ◆ ◆Hanif Abdurraqib, writerThe title track to “Money Jungle” is one of my favorite jazz piano moments. I love “Money Jungle” as an album, because it sounds, in a way, how it felt to make. Duke Ellington tossed Charles Mingus and Max Roach in a room for a day, and committed to making a recording, clashes of style be damned, the generational gap between he and the other two be damned. Mingus and Roach got into it constantly; at one point Mingus stormed out and had to be coaxed back into the session by Ellington. The title track works to me as a great piano song because of how unwavering Ellington’s playing is, even — or perhaps especially — in the moment in the middle of the song, where it seems Mingus grows impatient, his bass attempting to push its way into the brief silences between Ellington’s bursts of piano. I like players who aren’t afraid to live out the tensions of a session, of a day, of a life, within the music. Ellington was always, but especially by that point, a consummate professional. He steers the song into a perfect landing, even as Mingus’s bass fades, sounding entirely exhausted.“Money Jungle”Duke Ellington◆ ◆ ◆Vijay Iyer, pianist and composerGeri Allen showed up in the 1980s with powerful grooves, exuberant melodies and astonishing polyphonies between her anchoring left hand and her wry, fluidly inventive right. This composition, named for her friend Kabuya Pamela Bowens-Saffo, feels like a sturdy, splendid palace built entirely from the peculiar details of her musical language: the splayed intervals proliferating and surrounding you as ostinati; the asymmetric rhythms stacked in contrapuntal towers; the jagged, exploratory right-hand lines weaving around and across these patterns; all of her mercurial tendencies solidified and given full force. This was the music of Geri Allen: clear, ebullient, and resoundingly complete. Her premature passing in 2017 broke our hearts, and we are all still catching up to her artistry.“When Kabuya Dances”Geri Allen◆ ◆ ◆Keanna Faircloth, writer and podcast hostHip-hop is a half-century old this year and one artist that has provided a treasure trove of sample material for some of the most significant tracks in the rap canon is Ahmad Jamal. His compositions are a pot of gold. With the recent passing of David Jolicoeur (a.k.a. Trugoy the Dove or Plug Two) of De La Soul, I am reminded of how the title track from that group’s 1996 album, “Stakes Is High,” is anchored on a segment derived from Jamal’s “Swahililand,” composed over 20 years prior and released on the album “Jamal Plays Jamal.” The track’s haunting and percussive chord progressions provide a perfectly ominous backdrop for De La Soul’s reality-rooted lyrics. The song’s co-producer, J Dilla, was heavily influenced by jazz — not unlike his contemporaries Pete Rock, Q-Tip and others — and his contributions further solidified the genre as the mother of hip-hop.“Swahililand”Ahmad Jamal◆ ◆ ◆Marcus J. Moore, jazz writerIn 1964, one year into his post as the lead pianist in Miles Davis’s band, Herbie Hancock released the concept album “Empyrean Isles,” a tribute to an imagined world in the Great Eastern Sea. On “The Egg,” the LP’s improvised centerpiece, Hancock and the drummer Tony Williams open with a mesmerizing loop of keys and percussion, over which the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard blows triumphant wails, giving the song a pronounced majesty. But it isn’t until the midway point that Hancock’s genius shines through: A classical pianist, his notes pivot between light and dark, joy and melancholy, setting up the second half’s more traditional fare. Such ingenuity would typify Hancock throughout his career. To this day, he’s still a wandering soul embracing the youth movement, still bending genres while expanding the idea of what jazz can entail.“The Egg”Herbie Hancock◆ ◆ ◆Cosmo Baker, D.J.On “Maimoun,” Stanley Cowell (a jazz giant who hasn’t gotten his props) accompanies the great Clifford Jordan on his tour de force album, “Glass Bead Games,” released in 1973 on the Strata-East label. While this version isn’t a “piano song,” one cannot overlook the power and pulse of the instrument here. There’s an almost solemn feeling to the introduction, which quickly transforms to a melody filled with immense joy and restraint against Jordan’s towering sax. Though Cowell’s piano helps construct the magnificent cathedral Jordan is building, the true possibilities unfold once his role shifts. It’s leading Jordan’s tenor, then sparring with it, feigning, teasing, until the 2:16 mark when Cowell takes the reins and leads the listener to the very soul of the composition — that feeling of peace and nostalgia. With some art, the aim is to invite one into a place. On “Maimoun,” Cowell is letting the listener into a very magical place — tender, vulnerable and exquisitely gorgeous — through his keys. And keys open doors.“Maimoun”Clifford Jordan◆ ◆ ◆Atiyyah Khan, D.J. and arts journalistI first heard this track by Abdullah Ibrahim, formerly known as Dollar Brand, only a few months ago but was immediately hooked. What drew me to it was the title “Sathima,” a dedication to Ibrahim’s former partner, the late singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, who was an incredible artist in her own right. Funk is not the first association with Ibrahim, and yet this tune is incredibly funky, one that would work easily on dance floors. The groove chugs rhythmically and steadily forward toward freedom, but there is enough space left for those striking horn solos to come in, and Ibrahim’s piano flourishes situate it in the spiritual realm. It’s head music that moves the body, too.The tune appears on the 1975 album “African Herbs,” one year after Ibrahim’s hit “Mannenberg” was released; this composition follows with a similar sound — 11 minutes of uplifting joy. Though Ibrahim was predominantly based in the United States, this album was recorded in South Africa, giving it that signature sound thanks to the incredible musicians he gathered for this session.“Sathima”Dollar Brand◆ ◆ ◆Jacqueline Schneider, writerIf music were a meal, “Lonely Woman” would have Michelin stars. Despite its name, Horace Silver’s seven-minute composition leaves me feeling the opposite: quite attended to, emotionally full — even sentimental. The kind of song that transports you into a meditative state, its melodic chord pairings recall possibility, self-reflection and optimism. The piece progresses as a conversation in the language of piano — each key enunciated as its vibrations pan soulfully to distribute the sound. When I want to pay homage to an entire genre, I play this song. Silver, who started as a saxophonist, reinvented himself as a pianist with Stan Getz and went on to join Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers collective, representing, to me, legacy, hope and potential.“Lonely Woman”Horace Silver◆ ◆ ◆Ashley Kahn, writerThink soft, languid splashes on the mirrored surface of a pond at twilight. Minimal gesture, maximum effect: nearly seven minutes of lyrical serenity and hushed, harmonic stillness. It’s a deep cut — you won’t hear it played onstage — but also a landmark of modern jazz, one that defied the typical form and flow of chord changes, while echoing the guileless air of a Satie “Gnossienne,” or the insouciance of Chopin’s “Berceuse.” Bill Evans considered “Peace Piece” a one-time, impromptu moment, never revisiting it after recording it in 1958. Intending to deliver a take of “Some Other Time” from “On the Town,” he found himself entranced by the opening chords, which he looped into a meditative ostinato, layering sharp statements that grew in density and weight, the moody effect morphing into profound emotion. It still feels pristine and stands as a stellar example of at least three ideas: Evans’s brilliance at weaving together jazz piano with Romanticism and various 20th-century classical sources. The ascent of modal jazz — slow-moving harmony, pedal-point bass lines — that crystallized a year later with Evans’s participation on Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” (“Peace Piece” provided the foundation for “Flamenco Sketches”). And the covalent nature of jazz, eager to bond with worthy musical elements from all corners, edges, paths.“Peace Piece”Bill Evans◆ ◆ ◆Nduduzo Makhathini, pianist and improviser“Vukani, vukani madoda ilanga liphumile” — opening chantThrough the sun, as a metaphor, Bheki Mseleku invites the listener to awaken to a new consciousness. Symbolically, this record marked the dawn of democracy in South Africa, and its inherent rhetorics. The song title “Sulyman Salud” refers to the African American jazz pianist McCoy Tyner’s Islamic devotion name. Given Mseleku’s connection to modal music, one could read this offering as an expression of the continuities in the spiritual pursuits in Black arts across the Atlantic. It is also a nod to one of Mseleku’s greatest piano heroes.“You are the sun of the soil, Sulyman Salud” — chant before piano solo“Sulyman Salud” enables us to hear the sonic affinities over the Atlantic Ocean. It says to us: “The erasure project did not entirely succeed; some parts of our collective memory still hold intact.” Here, the listener is invited to hear how jazz, as a memory, reverberated back in the continent. In this sense, jazz not only inspired Africans here at home, it also reminded them of the inherent “jazziness” — it invoked community. Traces of such claims are found in this piece as it indexes a long lineage of pianism in Africa and its diasporas.“Sulyman Salud”Bheki Mseleku◆ ◆ ◆Martin Johnson, writerIn a jazz world that passionately reveres its pantheon, the great pianist Mal Waldron (1925-2002) is often overlooked. He has a compelling back story: tenure with Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy and Max Roach, an onstage nervous breakdown, and a series of magical collaborations with the saxophonist Steve Lacy. He’s a premiere interpreter of Thelonious Monk, and like that jazz great, he’s among the artists hailed in Matthew Shipp’s iconic essay on the Black Mystery School Pianists. Mal had a unique and compelling style. His left-hand playing was insistent and brooding; his tempo might best be described as unhurried. His approach suggested a man who had something profound to say and a disrupting urgency to say it. “Snake Out,” one of his signature compositions, showcases this intensity beautifully. It goes beyond the traditional tension and release and becomes incantation and ecstasy.“Snake Out”Mal Waldron◆ ◆ ◆Michael J. West, jazz writerYou can’t really bend notes on an acoustic piano; that’s just the physics of the instrument. Andrew Hill instead bends the principles of harmony and rhythm around the piano. On “East 9th Street,” from his 1975 album “Divine Revelation,” he starts while comping Jimmy Vass’s soprano saxophone solo. Hill falls out of key and so far behind the beat that he displaces it — as if he were on tape, being played back at slow speed. When it’s his turn to solo, he veers in wide curves around the harmony and seems to be fighting with the bassist Chris White and the drummer Art Lewis over where the syncopation should be. But he’s always in control: bending the music, but to his will. To top it off, Hill’s ebullient, Afro-Latin composition is terrific.“East 9th Street”Andrew Hill◆ ◆ ◆Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz criticStanding at the interchange between the stride piano he’d learned growing up in Pittsburgh, and the hot pot of bebop he landed in after moving to New York, Erroll Garner felt his way into a playing style that was as sharply subversive as it was irresistible. All that, without ever learning to read music. The mid-20th century was a good time for visionary subterfuge in American music; just because Garner conducted his revolutions gently doesn’t mean he wasn’t on the front lines. His left hand thrummed guitarlike chords, chased bass lines into the mud, leaped through harmonies like a stride pianist’s would. His right hand could zip and add bright dashes of color, or join the left in thick rhythmic smudges of harmony. Recording the old popular tune “I Don’t Know Why” in 1950, for his outstanding Columbia Records debut, Garner’s fingers lick at the keys and he drags the melody along, dandling it, relishing it. The song itself is unremarkable, but the playing amounts to unmitigated pleasure. White journalists liked to portray him as a simple-minded savant, but the real Garner was a fighter as well as a genius: He and his manager, Martha Glaser, would later sue Columbia for releasing an album without his permission, winning a first-of-its-kind decision and drawing a hard line for musicians’ rights.“I Don’t Know Why”Erroll Garner◆ ◆ ◆◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      Simeon ten Holt: The Minimalist Composer Who Keeps Getting Left Out

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      As centenary events celebrate Simeon ten Holt’s work, music historians have questioned his omission from histories of Minimalism, and its focus on American greats.“Canto Ostinato,” a keyboard piece by the Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt made of overlapping layers and repeated patterns, has amassed a cult following — in the Netherlands, at least.In “About Canto,” a 2011 documentary directed by Ramón Gieling, people talk about the piece’s impact on their lives: a former D.J. who has some of the score tattooed on his shoulder, a woman who gave birth to her second child while “Canto” played and the brother of a man whose suicide note said that “his life was fulfilled” after hearing the piece in concert.“Canto Ostinato” is the most famous piece by ten Holt, who died in 2012, and it is still extremely popular in the Netherlands. But established histories and concert programs of Minimalism beyond that country tend to congregate around a core group of important American figures — like Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley and La Monte Young — and ten Holt’s name is routinely missing.There are clear similarities between ten Holt’s work and compositions by these more well-known figures. At the same time as celebrations mark ten Holt’s centenary —including a Dutch lecture-performance tour exploring his biography and important influences and many performances of “Canto” in the Netherlands and abroad — music historians have been asking if more (and more international) names need to be added to the canon of great Minimalist composers.“It really obscures the history — and the pervasiveness of attraction to the music — when we just think of Minimalism as a handful of figures,” said Kerry O’Brien, the co-editor of the forthcoming book “On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement,” which coincides with the release of Patrick Nickleson’s “Names of Minimalism: Authorship, Art Music and Historiography in Dispute.” Both books seek to dispute the written histories of Minimalism by widening its cast of characters.Simeon ten Holt’s birth 100 years ago is being marked by numerous celebrations in the Netherlands.Friso KeurisAfter hearing Glass perform in the Netherlands, ten Holt began writing “Canto” in 1976. That same year in New York, Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach” sold out two nights at the Metropolitan Opera, and Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” premiered. Both are widely considered seminal Minimalist projects.While the term Minimalism has often been contested by the musicians it’s been used to describe, by the early 1970s the term had gathered momentum as a shortcut for describing music made with long tones or drones, apparent stasis masking gradual change and an emphasis on repetition. The genre subsequently dispersed, feeding into other genres like pop, noise and ambient.“Canto” shares a lot of traits with Minimalism’s canonic multi-piano works — such as Reich’s “Piano Phase” or “Six Pianos” — and invites structural comparisons with the overlapping parts and type of group improvisation in Riley’s landmark composition “In C.”“Between a piece like ‘Music for 18 Musicians’ and ‘Canto Ostinato,’ I find there to be a through-thread of gratifying harmonic development,” said Erik Hall, a Michigan-based musician who followed his solo, multi-tracked Reich album with a similarly constructed “Canto” recording. He added that he found further comparisons in “the pacing, duration and endurance it takes to really sit with it and take it in.”The pianist Erik Hall in his home studio in Michigan.Nolis Anderson for The New York TimesHall has made a solo recording of ten Holt’s Minimalist piece “Canto Ostinato.”Nolis Anderson for The New York TimesTen Holt’s route to a Minimalist style was far removed from developments in America. He was born in Bergen, in the north of the Netherlands, into a family of artists, and ideas from visual art informed his particular route in minimal music.Before studying in Paris in 1949, ten Holt studied composition with Jakob van Domselaer, an associate of the painter Piet Mondrian and one of the first to transfer the principles of minimal abstraction and strict geometry of the art movement de Stijl into music, in his piece “Proeven van Stijlkunst” (Experiments in Artistic Style). “It’s from the 1910s, and it sounds like Minimalism, it’s absolutely fascinating,” said Maarten Beirens, a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam.Like many other European composers in his broad age group, by the late 1950s, ten Holt was incorporating serial procedures into his compositions, prioritizing dissonance over tonality and consonance. Later pieces like “Canto” saw ten Holt abandoning serialism, in a move he called “tonality after the death of tonality.”“There is no Minimalistic composer who has so much freedom” as ten Holt, said the pianist Jeroen van Veen, adding that ten Holt’s fluid compositions “gave back what had been lost in the classical tradition: being flexible onstage.” But in the wider historical schemes — of Minimalism, and of European classical music too — those characteristics do make him “an outsider,” van Veen said.The Dutch string quartet Matangi performing ten Holt’s “Canto Ostinato” in January 2020. Performers around the world have arranged the keyboard work for saxophone ensemble, cello octet, symphony orchestra and string quartet.Tessa Veldhorst/De SchaapjesfabriekAs does the lyrical Romantic pianism of “Canto,” which brings to mind Chopin or Rachmaninoff — and which connects to a longer history of European art music tradition.But ten Holt’s exclusion from the canon was because of more than just this traditional turn. He “wasn’t a composer with the kind of connections that many composers had,” Beirens said. Unlike his compatriot Louis Andriessen, Beirens added, “he did not have steady relationships with certain performers, with orchestras or with the music business until a later point in his career.”That change came with van Veen, who started the Simeon ten Holt Foundation in 2015 to promote his music to an international audience. Still, today the vast majority of ten Holt recordings and performances remain in the Netherlands.Language and location played a part in ten Holt being overlooked, too. “The history of Minimalism depends on where you are in the world,” O’Brien said, adding: “If you read a Dutch language history of Minimalism, a Minimalist classic like ‘Canto Ostinato’ would be, I think, front and center.” But such stories have yet to break into Anglophone-focused discussions of Minimalism.When it comes to understanding Minimalism, “we know how things ended up,” O’Brien said, “and then we look back to history to reinforce the lead-up to that.” And a composer like ten Holt — who bridged musical worlds without ever truly settling in any camp — quietly disrupts those narratives. More

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      36 Hours in Rio de Janeiro: Things to Do and See

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      1 p.m.
      Lunch, then more samba
      There are two excellent lunch options on Rua do Senado, both from the same owner, that offer very different experiences. On the high end is Lilia, a suave two-floor lunch spot with a changing prix-fixe menu that is eclectic and focused on fresh ingredients (lunch for two, about 300 reais). If you prefer snacks at streetside tables, head a few doors down to Labuta Bar for torresmo (fried pork belly), croquettes, oysters and sandwiches, washed down with house-made iced mate or a cold beer (lunch for two, about 90 reais). A few steps away, catch live samba at one of the city’s oldest bars, Armazém Senado, founded in 1907. The business, which was once a market, still has its high shelves stocked with toilet paper and bleach — along with plenty of bottles of cachaça. More

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      For Two Broadway Stars, a Love Story Blossoms in a Honky-Tonk Bar

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      The new musical “The Lonely Few,” starring Lauren Patten and Ciara Renée, puts a romance between two women at its very heart.LOS ANGELES — During a rehearsal of “The Lonely Few” at the Geffen Playhouse, Lauren Patten, a Tony winner for her performance in “Jagged Little Pill,” was sharing a stage with Ciara Renée, whose Broadway credits include “Waitress” and “Frozen.” The performances were mesmerizing, and loud (drumsticks were broken; earplugs were provided), with Patten steam-rolling her way through a pair of headbangers about the joys of rock ’n’ roll and the desire to escape, and Renée filling the room with a heartbreaking ballad about unrequited love.“I would go see that band,” Zoe Sarnak, the show’s composer and lyricist, said during a break.The setting was about as far from a Broadway stage as one could imagine: a small rehearsal space in the Westwood neighborhood. And the actual performance space for the show, the Geffen’s Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, isn’t that much larger. The 114-seat theater has been reconfigured to resemble a dive bar in backwoods Kentucky, so audience members, sitting at tables and bar stools amid the players, will feel as if they’re at a neighborhood watering hole.“The minute you walk into the theater, you’re going to feel like you’re not at the Geffen,” said Ellenore Scott, who is sharing directing duties with Trip Cullman. “Performers will be walking right by you, or using your table, or doing an entire scene next to you.”For venues this size, Patten said, vocal adjustments need to be made. You’re still playing to the guy in the back row, she said, but with a care for the audience member sitting a few feet away. “I also think that with a show like this, with music like this,” she said, “it’s got to smack you in the face.”After five years of development, which included pandemic-related breaks, “The Lonely Few” is now having its world premiere, with preview performances scheduled to start Thursday and opening night set for March 9. In the musical, Patten plays Lila, a Save-A-Lot clerk who leads the Lonely Few, a preternaturally gifted band that plays Friday nights at Paul’s Joint, the local honky-tonk. Rounding out the band is Damon Daunno (“Oklahoma”), Helen J Shen (“Man of God”) and Thomas Silcott (“Birthday Candles”); Joshua Close (a star of the 2022 film “Monica”) portrays Lila’s brother Adam, the loving but troubled albatross around her neck.When Amy (Renée), an established musician, enters the club and offers Lila a chance to come on the road with her and open for her band, choices must be made, both practical and romantic.The new show has provided the two leads with a rare opportunity to create roles from the ground up. It’s a welcome change for Renée, who took over but didn’t originate the roles of Jenna in “Waitress” and Elsa in “Frozen,” both on Broadway.A recent rehearsal in Los Angeles. The show’s vibe is honky-tonk dive bar.JJ Geiger for The New York Times“I’ve done a lot in my career where I’ve been the Black woman who steps into a white role,” she said. “But this play doesn’t exist anywhere. It’s totally new. And there’s so much beauty in that.”“The Lonely Few” is also that rarest of shows: a musical that puts a love story between two women at its very heart.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.“Fun Home,” the musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s award-winning graphic novel, features the coming out narrative of an adolescent girl, as does “The Prom,” which opened on Broadway in 2018. But the romantic relationships in both of those musicals — though crucial to the stories — are largely secondary.“Those pieces are incredibly important to the canon, and I’m so thankful for them,” said Sarnak, whose previous shows include “A Crossing” for Barrington Stage Company. “But I can’t think of a show where the narrative center is a love story between two women who are out.”The first seeds of the show were planted in 2018, when Sarnak was talking with Rachel Bonds, who wrote the show’s book, about working together. They wanted to do a piece about two women with music in it, telling a story that could pull from their own experiences.For years, Sarnak had written songs about her life and past loves. “There are several relationships in my life that find their way into the show,” she said. “The first woman I ever dated, who I was with for four years, and then my marriage and divorce, and then relationships after that. It’s not any one relationship. There are pieces of anyone I’ve ever been with or been in love with.”For the play’s setting and people, Bonds drew from her childhood growing up in Sewanee, Tenn., home of the esteemed University of the South. “Sewanee is up on a mountain, and when you go down into the valley, it’s a whole different world,” she said. “There’s a real separation,” she added, “and I grew up very aware of that.”“Southerners are often portrayed as stupid or ignorant, and small-town folks are often portrayed as people without dreams or meaning in their lives,” Bonds continued. “I really wanted to fight against that.”Over time, the project morphed from “a play with music” to a full-blown book musical, a first for Bonds, whose plays include “Goodnight Nobody” and “Michael & Edie.” Many of Sarnak’s songs shaped the show’s plot about the star-crossed lovers Lila and Amy. “I think we both felt that these songs wanted to be a love story, this play had to be a love story,” Bonds said.Not long after, the two began considering possible leads. Sarnak had worked with Patten on readings and workshops, but never anything that had been produced.“We both felt that these songs wanted to be a love story, this play had to be a love story,” said Rachel Bonds, right, with Zoe Sarnak.JJ Geiger for The New York TimesGrowing up in Downers Grove, Ill., Patten was an early bloomer, staging home concerts in her living room when she was 3. “Apparently, the first song I sang was a Hank Williams song, ‘Long Gone Lonesome Blues,’ where he talks about drowning himself in a river because his woman left him,” she said. Commercials and theater roles soon followed.Patten made her Broadway debut in “Fun Home.” In 2021, she received a Tony for her role in “Jagged Little Pill,” but the show was criticized for changing Patten’s character, Jo, from seemingly nonbinary to gay and cisgender when the production moved from Boston to Broadway. In 2021, Patten released a mea culpa, in the form of a video conversation with the trans writer and activist Shakina Nayfack. “There’s a lot I wish was handled differently,” Patten said, looking back. “But I do feel grateful that even with something that was obviously a painful moment, I think it has a potential to move things forward in the industry.”Like Patten, Renée also began performing at an early age, winning singing competitions by the time she was 12. “I thought I was going to be a Christian music artist,” she said. In high school, however, she fell in love with the theater, and at 22, within three months of arriving in New York, she was offered roles in three Broadway shows. “I picked the flop,” she said of “Big Fish.”Then came a starring role in “Frozen,” though her run was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic. “Every night I’d see these little girls, Black girls, girls of color, wearing Elsa, Anna, Olaf,” she said. “They were just so excited about their favorite characters, and about getting to see the leads of a show being played by women of color. I know how impactful that is, because I know that, growing up, I never saw it.”AS INITIALLY WRITTEN, the character of Amy in “The Lonely Few” was racially nonspecific, but that soon changed, even more so after Renée came aboard. “This whole piece could be open casting,” Bonds said. “But then when we started to place it in the South, we were interested in the tensions they’re in, and we really started to nail down who these women were.”So was Amy created for Renée? “I think it’s certainly being heavily shifted by my presence,” Renée said with a laugh.“It’s a testament to Rachel and Zoe really caring about my story as a Black woman,” she added, “and about this Black character in the South being queer, that there are things that complicate that in a way that’s different than if this character were white.”The show’s creators made a point of the care they are taking with the love story, and they have hired an intimacy director to help. “I feel a lot of trust in the room with Ciara,” Patten said. “We’re both doing very intense, emotional, vulnerable things in the show, and I feel very safe to do that with her.”During a break in rehearsal, the directors gave notes. In Lila’s line about chewing gum, Cullman told Patten it sounded like she was saying “gun.”“Oh my god,” Patten said. “Gum. Guuum.”“I feel a lot of trust in the room with Ciara,” Patten said. “We’re both doing very intense, emotional, vulnerable things in the show, and I feel very safe to do that with her.”JJ Geiger for The New York TimesBoth directors offered suggestions to Renée and Patten about their first scene together, when the two lock eyes in Paul’s Joint and the rest of the world (and the rest of the band) fades away.Many of the tweaks made over the past days and months are intended to ensure the show is as truthful to the place and its people as possible. The creators are quick to point out that the love story is the focus, not any sort of hatred or violence a lesbian relationship might provoke in the community. “I’m just not interested in seeing women get brutalized anymore,” Bonds said.In many ways, the musical toys with several possible expectations theatergoers might have coming into the show. How will this interracial love story between two women play out in a Kentucky dive bar? And just what is a band this good doing in a Kentucky dive bar in the first place?“This setting, this little bar, has become a bit of an enclave for folks who might feel like outsiders or weirdos or misfits,” Bonds said. “I think the community where Lila comes from actually surprises you in the end.”Despite the show’s specificity, the creators believe “The Lonely Few” will have broad appeal. “In my heart of hearts, I hope we have an Off Broadway run in New York,” Bonds said. “And then I hope we have a Broadway run.”“This is a queer love story,” she continued. “It’s a love story between two women. But my hope is that anybody could watch it, and be moved by it, and see themselves in it.” More

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      Pharrell and Luxury Fashion’s Hip-Hop Obsession

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThe appointment of the storied hip-hop and pop producer Pharrell Williams to the creative director of men’s wear at Louis Vuitton marks a new phase of the union of hip-hop style and luxury clothing, two worlds that have been hurtling toward each other for more than two decades, but have lately become close kin.Williams steps into a role that had been fundamentally remade by Virgil Abloh, a protégé of Kanye West, who made Louis Vuitton a must-see and, for many, a must-wear during the years he was in charge (until his death in 2020). Williams comes to the role with a long history of pushing the boundaries of hip-hop style, a series of big brand collaborations and the mystique of global celebrity.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how hip-hop style has become a key part of men’s wear, how Williams has been central to connecting the dots between streetwear and luxury, and the potential directions Louis Vuitton might take under his direction.Guest:Aria Hughes, editorial creative director of ComplexConnect 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

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      Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ Still Reverberates

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      Pink Floyd’s enduring blockbuster merged grandeur and malaise. Very much a product of its era, it became one of the best-selling albums of all time.Glum, ponderous songs about madness, mortality and greed, punctuated with tense instrumentals. Was that a blueprint for a blockbuster? It hardly sounds like the makings of one of the best-selling albums of all time.But there’s no denying the popularity and tenacity of “The Dark Side of the Moon,” the indelible album that Pink Floyd released 50 years ago, on March 1, 1973. Looming like an inscrutable monolith, “Dark Side” spent nearly all of the next 14 years — through punk, disco, early hip-hop and the pop heyday of MTV — lodged in Billboard’s Top 200 album chart. It arrived during the analog, material days of record stores and vinyl LPs, when an album purchase was a commitment. And no matter how familiar “Dark Side” went on to become as an FM radio staple, people still wanted their own copy, or perhaps a new copy to replace a scratched-up one. In the digital era, “The Dark Side of the Moon” album returned to the charts on CD, selling and then streaming more millions.The success of “Dark Side” stoked the ambitions of Pink Floyd and its leader, Roger Waters, who has toured arenas and stadiums ever since; Waters, 79, is playing his “first ever farewell” dates this year. He conceived the “The Wall,” a narrative rock opera released in 1979, that would foreground his anti-authority reflexes, from schoolmasters to heads of state; he has performed it against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall. Decades later, Waters would go on to spout cranky, conspiracy-theory-minded, pro-Russia political statements that many former fans abhorred. When “Dark Side” appeared, all that was far in the future.There will, of course, be another deluxe edition for the latest “Dark Side” anniversary. Arriving March 24, the new boxed set has high-resolution and surround-sound remixes and other extras, though it’s largely redundant after the exhaustive “Immersion Edition” reissue in 2011. Both “Immersion” and the new set include a worthy 1974 concert performance of “Dark Side,” with brawny live sound and extended onstage jams.Waters has also announced his own full-length remake of “Dark Side,” that will have his own lead vocals — not the husky, doleful voice of Pink Floyd’s guitarist, David Gilmour — with Waters’s spoken words over the album’s instrumentals, along with “no rock ’n’ roll guitar solos.”Uh-oh.In 1973, “Dark Side” was an album that worked equally well to show off a new stereo — or, for a few early adopters, a quadraphonic system — or to be contemplated in private communion with headphones and a joint. The ticking clocks, alarms and chimes that open “Time” are startlingly realistic even when they’re no longer a surprise, and the perpetual-motion synthesizers and desperate footfalls of “On the Run” are eternally dizzying.Stately tempos, cavernous tones and solemn framing announce the high seriousness of “Dark Side,” which begins and ends with the sound of a heartbeat. The album juxtaposes overarching sonics and grand pronouncements with human-scale experience. Its tracks are punctuated with voices from Pink Floyd’s road crew and friends, dispensing loop-ready tidbits like “I’ve always been mad” in working-class accents.Like other overwhelming best sellers of the 1970s and 1980s — Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” — “Dark Side” deals with disillusionment, fear and resentment despite the polish of its production. It’s troubled and obsessive at heart, not tidy. Countless bands and producers would learn from Pink Floyd how to fuse grandeur and malaise, how a few well-placed sounds can say far more than a showy display of virtuosity.“Dark Side” was very much a product of its era. The early 1970s were prog-rock’s heyday, particularly in Britain, where bands like Genesis, King Crimson and Yes were constructing suite-length songs and unveiling elaborate conceits. But the early 1970s were also a time when the utopian promises of the hippie era were fading, pushed back by entrenched interests and corporate co-optation. “Dark Side” captures naïve hopes falling away.It was Pink Floyd’s eighth album, the continuation of a cult career that had been synonymous with psychedelia and progressive rock: with extended structures and open-ended jams, with verbal conundrums and with an oh-wow appreciation of reverberant textures and spatial effects.Pink Floyd’s founding songwriter, Syd Barrett, left the band in 1968 with mental health problems, taking its sense of whimsy with him. Waters emerged as its new, more saturnine leader. But it took a string of uneven albums, full of amorphous studio jams, before the relative concision and clarity of “Dark Side” came into focus. While the album unfolds as a 42-minute prog-rock suite — despite the necessity, in 1973, of flipping over an LP — it also features clearly delineated verse-chorus-verse songs that radio stations could play. Waters deliberately made his lyrics blunter and more down-to-earth than he had before: “Money, it’s a gas/Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.”Waters tackled big topics: “Time,” “Money,” war, the inevitability of death, the triviality of daily life, the importance of seizing the moment. His perspective is dour. In “Breathe (in the Air),” he describes life as a “race towards an early grave”; in “Time, he observes that every sunrise brings you “One day closer to death.” But the reason “Dark Side” became a blockbuster is that Pink Floyd’s music — the full band, with Richard Wright’s self-effacing but fundamental keyboards, Waters on bass, Nick Mason’s steadfast drumming and Gilmour’s probing, slashing, keening guitar — defies all that miserabilism.The album builds dramatically and inexorably toward the songs that close each side of the LP. “The Great Gig in the Sky,” which ends Side 1, is a progression of tolling, processional keyboard chords from Wright, topped by spoken words denying fear of death — “You’ve got to go sometime” — followed by Clare Torry’s leaping, soaring, riveting vocal improvisation. She’s a pure life force, with pain and freedom and determination in her voice, refusing to accept oblivion. (Torry only received composer credit for her top line in 2005, along with an undisclosed settlement, after suing the band.)The album’s conclusion — “Brain Damage” seguing into “Eclipse,” both written by Waters — reads as bleak but feels like transcendence. In “Brain Damage,” the singer feels himself succumbing to mental illness. “The lunatic is in my head,” he warns, answered by a snippet of maniacal laughter; in the chorus, he sings, “If your head explodes with dark forebodings too/I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.”Then, in “Eclipse,” he makes his way toward a revelatory oneness — “All that is now and all that is gone/And all that’s to come and everything under the sun is in tune” — only to see it swallowed by darkness as “the sun is eclipsed by the moon.” But in both songs, the music swells behind him, with churchy organ and robust major chords, pealing guitar and gospelly choir harmonies. As the album ends, tidings of catastrophe sound like triumph; it’s a fist-pumping arena-rock finale.In recent interviews, Waters has described the message of the album more positively. “What is really important is the connection between us as human beings, the whole human community,” he told Berliner Zeitung in February. That’s revisionist; “Dark Side” luxuriates in alienation, futility and desperation. Its persistence reveals just how many listeners feel the same. More

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      Carnegie Hall Announces Its 2023-24 Season

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      We choose highlights from events featuring Mitsuko Uchida and Franz Welser-Möst as Perspectives artists, and the composer Tania León in residence.The threats facing democracy will be a central focus of Carnegie Hall’s coming season, the presenter announced on Tuesday, with a festival devoted to the flourishing cultural scene in Germany between the two world wars.From January to May, Carnegie will host “Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice,” an exploration of creative expression during the fragile democracy in Germany from 1919 to 1933. The festival will feature ensembles such as the Vienna Philharmonic and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s performing works by composers of the time, including Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill.“We’re seeing the challenges to democracy more and more clearly, and it’s all the more reason we have to treasure it,” Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director, said in an interview. “We want people to ask questions and contemplate why democracy matters, and what the threats are in our day.”The 2023-24 season, which begins in October, will feature some 170 performances, beginning with two concerts by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of its outgoing music director, Riccardo Muti. The pianist Mitsuko Uchida and the conductor Franz Welser-Möst, the music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, will each organize a series of Perspectives concerts.The composer Tania León, who won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2021, will lead a season-long residency; in January, the Boston Symphony Orchestra will offer the New York premiere of a new piece by her.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.Here are a dozen highlights of the coming season, chosen by critics for The New York Times. JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZEnglish Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir, Oct. 25You can safely bet on a few things whenever the conductor John Eliot Gardiner comes to town: agile, historically informed performance; obsessively precise articulation; and virtually ideal readings of beloved repertoire. In early 2020, he led his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in just about as good a Beethoven symphony cycle as you could imagine. And now he brings the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir to Carnegie for Bach’s Mass in B minor and, on Oct. 26, Handel’s “L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.” JOSHUA BARONEThe mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre will appear at Weill Recital Hall with the lutenist Thomas Dunford.Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLea Desandre and Thomas Dunford, Nov. 2These two artists — Desandre, a clarinet-mellow mezzo-soprano who can burst with bright agility, and Dunford, an eloquent lutenist — are among the brightest lights of a young generation of early-music specialists. They join in Weill Recital Hall, ideally intimate for this repertory, for “Lettera Amorosa,” a program of love-focused Baroque works by Monteverdi, Frescobaldi and Handel, alongside names like Tarquinio Merula (his songs exquisite) and Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger (a specialist in music for lute). ZACHARY WOOLFEAmerican Composers Orchestra, Nov. 9This essential organization has brought music by George Lewis to Carnegie’s various spaces before — the most notable instance being his Virtual Concerto (for a “computer-driven” piano soloist) back in 2004. The orchestra will continue its productive relationship with the composer to perform one of his latest orchestral works. No title for the piece is available yet; the same goes for a few other new works on the bill (including those from the likes of Guillermo Klein and Augusta Read Thomas). We do have one title: “Out of whose womb came the ice,” by the up-and-coming composer Nina C. Young, whose premiere was co-commissioned by Carnegie. SETH COLTER WALLSStaatskapelle Berlin, Nov. 30When the Staatskapelle Berlin and its longtime music director, Daniel Barenboim, last appeared at Carnegie, in 2017, it was an epic nine-performance stand that paired Mozart piano concertos and Bruckner symphonies. A lot has happened since then; most recently, in January, Barenboim stepped down from the orchestra’s podium because of health problems. So their return will be poignant: just two nights, and the four symphonies of Brahms, a composer Barenboim performed as a pianist in this space in 1962. ZACHARY WOOLFEEnglish Concert, Dec. 10The British soprano Lucy Crowe’s expertise and imagination in Baroque music gives her the freedom to turn da capo arias into feats of feeling. That exhilarating sense of spontaneity uplifted the English Concert’s performance of Handel’s “Serse” at Carnegie last year, and it will be exciting to hear Crowe apply her gifts to more dramatic material when she takes the title role in “Rodelinda.” OUSSAMA ZAHRThe pianist Daniil Trifonov will appear on Carnegie’s main stage to perform Beethoven’s mighty “Hammerklavier” Sonata.Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesDaniil Trifonov, Dec. 12Arguably the mightiest of the under-40 generation of superstar pianists meets the mightiest of repertoire in this recital, as Daniil Trifonov takes on Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata. It’s a banner year for youngish soloists in ambitious repertoire, in fact: Vikingur Olafsson plays the “Goldberg” Variations (Feb. 7); Beatrice Rana does the Liszt Sonata (Feb. 28); and Seong-Jin Cho journeys through the second book of the same composer’s “Années de Pèlerinage” (May 17). DAVID ALLENMet Orchestra, Feb. 1Yannick Nézet-Séguin has decided not to share next season. Rather than engage a guest conductor, he helms all three of the Met Orchestra’s concerts himself, embracing opportunities to bask in the tonal floodgates of Lise Davidsen’s soprano in Wagner’s “Wesendonck Lieder” and, later, the heavenliness of Lisette Oropesa’s Mozart arias (June 11), and the intense standoff of Bartók’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” with Elina Garanca and Christian Van Horn (June 14). OUSSAMA ZAHRYunchan Lim, Feb. 21This precociously mature pianist, still in his teens, played Liszt’s deliriously difficult “Transcendental Études” on the way to becoming the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition last year. He’ll reprise the Liszt as part of his recital introduction on Carnegie’s main stage. By this point, another pianist, the spectacularly creative Igor Levit, needs no introduction at this point to this hall’s audience; on Jan. 20, he’ll play two symphony transcriptions (Liszt’s of Beethoven’s Third and Ronald Stevenson’s of Mahler’s 10th) alongside Hindemith’s Suite “1922,” raucous and very Roaring Twenties. ZACHARY WOOLFEVienna Philharmonic, March 1Most of the five concerts in Welser-Möst’s Perspectives series — Jan. 20 and 21 with the Cleveland Orchestra, March 1-3 with Vienna — are emblematic of his thoughtful, idiosyncratic, ultimately endearing approach to programming, but the March 1 performance looks especially constructive, full of connections and contrasts to draw: Hindemith’s Konzertmusik for Wind Orchestra, Strauss’s Symphonic Fantasy from “Die Frau Ohne Schatten,” Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra and, as if to bid farewell to a whole world of music, Ravel’s “La Valse.” DAVID ALLENJason Moran will return to Carnegie with a tribute to the pioneering jazz musician James Reese Europe.Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesJason Moran, March 9In addition to being an elite improvising pianist, Jason Moran is a keen programmer; his Carnegie survey of Black American music from the Great Migration was a well-attended success. You can all but bank on the same when Moran brings his latest concert concept to Zankel Hall. This time, the focus will be on the music of the early 20th-century American original James Reese Europe. You might expect some of the same expert arrangements heard on Moran’s latest album, “From the Dancehall to the Battlefield.” But prepare also for some surprises; this restless innovator rarely does anything the same way twice. SETH COLTER WALLSEnsemble Modern, April 12Much of the festival “Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice” is more confusing than informative. This period in history produced so much excellent and overlooked music; why are we seeing Beethoven, Wagner and Mahler (among other head-scratchers)? At least there are engagements like that of Ensemble Modern, which will perform works including a lithe but still barbed smaller arrangement of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “The Seven Deadly Sins,” led by HK Gruber, one of our greatest living Weill interpreters. The group returns April 13 as part of León’s residency, playing her “Indígena” and “Rítmicas” alongside pieces by Conlon Nancarrow and others. JOSHUA BARONEDanish String Quartet, April 18A highlight of Carnegie’s spring months in recent seasons has been the Danish String Quartet’s Doppelgänger project, which juxtaposes Schubert quartets with premieres. Coming this April: a new work by Anna Thorvaldsdottir. And, for the fourth installment next year, the group is adding the cellist Johannes Rostamo to perform Schubert’s endlessly moving, even sublime String Quintet in C, paired with a commission from Thomas Adès. JOSHUA BARONE More

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      An Unlikely Fiddler’s Dream

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      Michael Cleveland was born blind and mostly deaf. That was only the beginning of his journey to become one of modern bluegrass’s most compelling musicians.Michael Cleveland had been 13 for five days the first time he picked with the bluegrass demigod Doc Watson — in a backstage bathroom, no less, at an awards show in Kentucky.It was September 1993. Peter Wernick, the first president of the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), had assembled a band of young hotshots to provide a pointed rebuttal to a Washington Post feature that argued kids didn’t care about antiquated mountain music. The teenage quintet electrified its audience, sprinting through a Bill Monroe standard with verve that suggested these sounds were vital to fresh generations.After the triumphant ceremony, John Cleveland ushered his son — born blind, with one eye; almost deaf in his left ear and partly deaf in his right — to the bathroom. They found Watson, Wernick and a cadre of other genre giants laughing and jamming there, as though the lavatory were a back porch, and the teenage Michael joined for an hour.“I had no shame, no fear, nothing,” Cleveland, 42, remembered with a hoot by phone from the Indiana home he shares with his father. “I thought, ‘This may be the only opportunity I ever have to hear this person play, to be near them.’ That was pretty much all I wanted to do — raw, high-energy bluegrass.”The nascent teenager didn’t consider how Watson, who had lost his eyesight seven decades earlier at the age of 1, was the counterargument he needed: Teachers had warned Cleveland for years that career prospects for a blind bluegrass fiddler were grim, but he played on.In the three decades since, Cleveland has become a bluegrass star himself, winning 29 IBMA awards and becoming the organization’s most decorated fiddler. He is one of the world’s most in-demand and distinctive players, with collaborators that include Béla Fleck, Billy Strings and Vince Gill. “He plays with such ferocity,” Gill said by phone. “But the amount of emotion he pulls out of that instrument is way more appealing than the amount of notes.”Cleveland has only just begun to funnel his full story into records, documenting the hardships and joys of a difficult life devoted to bluegrass. Alternately woebegone and hopeful, his star-studded “Lovin’ of the Game,” out Friday, is an ecstatic document of what the fiddle has meant to his story — and what he hopes to mean to its history.“For a long time, Michael didn’t want to talk about being blind. He never wanted to be the little blind boy that played fiddle, for people to like his music because he was handicapped,” his father said. “He’s past that, and I’m glad — he might open up this music for somebody, to inspire them.”Cleveland was a boyhood bluegrass zealot, not a prodigy. When he was six weeks old, his parents began toting him to bimonthly Saturday concerts his grandparents hosted at an American Legion in Henryville, Ind. In his stroller, friends remembered, he would bounce to the music in perfect time. As a toddler, he became so obsessed with the staple “Rocky Top” that his parents drove him to Tennessee to meet the couple who had written it; even now, he keeps the cassette they gave him, an hourlong compendium of assorted versions.Still, Cleveland couldn’t play. A nearby fiddler struggled to show his first blind student how to hold the bow or the instrument. Teachers at the Kentucky School for the Blind fared better with a contraption that kept the bow at the proper position, but they were more interested in the Suzuki method and classical music than Flatt & Scruggs. “On the first day, they asked me what I knew about violin,” Cleveland said, catching his breath from laughter before offering his reply. “‘Well, I don’t know much about the violin,’ I said, ‘but I know a lot about the fiddle.’”Those first few years remained a struggle. One night, though, Cleveland dreamed about playing “Soldier’s Joy,” a mirthful fiddle number about payday he’d heard countless times. When he reached for his instrument the next morning, the tune was there.Though he balked his first fiddle contest, he kept trying, even joining Monroe, the bluegrass fountainhead, onstage at age 9. Soon after he delighted that awards-show crowd in Kentucky, he made his Grand Ole Opry debut with Alison Krauss. But it wasn’t Cleveland’s back story that people found compelling, like some cloying “American Idol” package.“You can feel his timing and pulse so well, like the drive of a banjo player,” the multi-instrumentalist Sam Bush said in an interview, listing Cleveland as one of perhaps three bluegrass fiddlers ever to have that quality. (The others? Benny Martin and Paul Warren.) “Then he adds finesse, and he will surprise you.”As a child, Cleveland was obsessed with fiddle music.Andrew Cenci for The New York TimesAs Cleveland’s fiddle prowess ballooned, the rest of his life deflated. Though the young musician felt welcome and encouraged in bluegrass, he understood he was different. By 12, he’d endured 30 separate surgeries to correct a cleft palate and lip, to insert a prosthetic eye and to reroute a blood vessel in his brain. He suffered serial bouts of spinal meningitis, and his eardrums were permanently perforated. His parents were then in the middle of an acrimonious divorce that would alienate him from his mother for decades.“Bill Monroe lost his mother at 10, his father at 16. There are similarities there with Michael you can feel,” said Ronnie McCoury, who began playing with his own father, the bluegrass pizazz magnate Del, at 14. “Michael’s life has been hard. Those feelings come out on his fiddle.”Cleveland forwent college, hitting the road soon after his high school graduation in 1999, and emerged as an exciting sideman, passionate about bluegrass’s history and quick-witted, too — “a good hang,” as Gill put it. He made several solo records and assembled a band, Flamekeeper. The group kindled unapologetic traditionalism, its intensity making it a fast favorite within staunch bluegrass circles.But six years ago, while enjoying one of Sam Bush’s freewheeling shows, Cleveland considered how bluegrass crowds were aging and shrinking, and how he might do well to adapt, like Bush or Fleck. His subsequent album, “Tall Fiddler” from 2019, flirted with spirited jazz and hardscrabble balladry. With Bush singing about running from the law, he even dipped into rockabilly.“Lovin’ of the Game” reinforces that openness. There’s a playful romp about high-stakes love alongside Billy Strings, and a country lamentation for small-town settling with Charlie Starr, of the Southern rock band Blackberry Smoke. The most vulnerable moment in Cleveland’s catalog comes with “Temperance Reel,” a centuries-old tune updated with lyrics about a musician struggling with alcoholism, as Cleveland did for many years. His strings sing with unbridled joy, as if animated by possibility.“There’s no mistaking I’m a bluegrass player. That’s the biggest part of what I do,” Cleveland said. “But these are ways to push the envelope that, 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have been into.”After 40 years of bluegrass fixation, Cleveland has become a de facto archivist. Not long before his parents split, an area aficionado handed him a box of 20 mixtapes of great fiddle performances — each dutifully labeled in Braille, with introductory listening instructions. They form the core of his vast basement tape trove. Cleveland has a recording of that bathroom jam with Watson, too, though he will never listen. He was, as he likes to say, “wearing it out,” playing every lick he knew as hard as he could to prove his worth. The youngest inductee into the National Fiddler Hall of Fame, he’s done that.He’s now focused on what’s next. He tracks fiddle parts for most anyone who asks through the online service AirGigs; John will often hear him alone in the basement, playing through dinner for 10 hours at a time, dabbling in pop and jazz. And, at Fleck’s request, he’s even learning some Bach for their first duo record.“Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 3 in C major,” he sighed, chuckling at the irony of how being the best bluegrass fiddler brought him back to the classical violin he’d quit. “I know just enough to be dangerous. But yeah, I thought, I can do that.” More