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      Review: A Blunt New ‘Lohengrin’ at the Met Stars a Shining Knight

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      The tenor Piotr Beczala sings with uncanny serenity and command in the title role of Wagner’s opera, directed by François Girard with little subtlety.Directors love Wagner’s operas, which infuse the suggestive sketchiness of parables into clearly conceived plots and characters. They offer both strong bones and flexibility.“Lohengrin,” about an anxious and divided society into which arrives a figure with magical powers and secrets, has recently been placed in settings as varied as a laboratory, a classroom and a neo-fascist town square.And, on Sunday at the Metropolitan Opera, in a dark, blunt mixture of pre-modern and post-apocalyptic elements. Directed by François Girard, the production suffers from a facile children’s-theater color scheme, but boasts a shining musical performance from the orchestra and the two leading singers.At the Met in 1998, Robert Wilson distilled “Lohengrin” into a vision of hovering bars of light and glacially shifting gestures. The opening night audience, used to hyper-naturalistic Wagner productions, rebelled with a storm of boos. But 25 years later, the Wilson staging seems like an ahead-of-its-time landmark, a harbinger of how the company’s dramatic range would broaden.Among the highlights of this new era has been Girard’s staging, from 2013, of Wagner’s “Parsifal.” Set on a stark hillside among a group of men in white button-ups and black pants, this was a take on the opera’s protectors of the Holy Grail as a contemporary cult over which planets loomed and orbited in projections.Those cosmic projections have returned in Girard’s “Lohengrin,” with a kind of catastrophic heavenly explosion depicted during the orchestral prelude. The action that follows begins under a blasted wall that hangs at an angle over the stage, a huge hole open to a view of morphing stars and galaxies.The people who enter are dressed in early medieval robes and heavy jewels; a pagan throne is formed from tree roots. But the wall is made of reinforced concrete, and Lohengrin, the mystical knight who soon arrives to avenge the honor of a woman accused of killing her brother, is wearing the spare modern-day outfit of the Grail defenders in Girard’s “Parsifal.”The connection makes some sense: As we learn at the end of “Lohengrin,” when its title character’s secrets are revealed, Lohengrin is Parsifal’s son. But Girard’s nod to his “Parsifal” doesn’t do his new production any favors. While that “Parsifal” was revelatory in imagining the opera’s climax as the integration of women into the Grail cult, this “Lohengrin” isn’t interested in fresh interpretations. No one will mistake it for a landmark in Met history.Instead, Girard’s “Lohengrin,” which brings the opera back to the company after 17 years, is an emphatic, serviceable, basically conservative framework for the piece. Thankfully, some superb singers fill the frame. Most important, almost floating through the staging with uncanny serenity and dignity, is Piotr Beczala in the title role.Beczala, who has appeared at the Met mostly in French and Italian classics, was an impressive Lohengrin.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThis square-jawed, always stylish tenor is best known at the Met for playing dashing men in French and Italian classics, like the Duke in “Rigoletto,” Rodolfo in “La Bohème” and, this winter, the ardent Loris in “Fedora.” But the clearest precursor to his melancholy Lohengrin is his Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” who sings with wintry loneliness as he prepares to duel and die.Beczala performs the Wagner role — pure, precise and often treacherously exposed — with total security and elegance. The soft passages have fairy-tale delicacy; his outpourings, a robust plangency reminiscent of his more extroverted roles. But this Lohengrin, even at his most passionate, has the proper coolness of an otherworldly figure. He is human, but not entirely.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.There is also an intriguing coolness when we meet Tamara Wilson’s unjustly accused Elsa, a glassy sheen to her tone as icy-blond as her hair. But while Beczala’s Lohengrin maintains his reserve, Wilson’s voice gradually warms, gently molten in their love duet and palpably angry in confrontation.Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, conducts this grand score with a sure sense for the elasticity of pace that makes Wagner’s scenes breathe. He led the orchestra on Sunday in broad expansions before focusing it back into tumbling momentum. The shimmering start of the prelude to Act I was fragile without being wispy, building with lyrical flow to a stirring climax.There are onstage trumpets in this opera, and extra brass forces in the balconies. But Nézet-Séguin kept the textures light; even at its mightiest, the sound was never stolid.Tamara Wilson as Elsa with Beczala.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesChanging shirts between the acts, from black to red to white, he also underlined the already obvious play with color that is all too central to the staging. The choristers manipulate complicated sets of magnets in their robes to reveal red, green or white linings, depending on the dramatic needs of the moment. (The sets and costumes were designed by Tim Yip, an Academy Award winner for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”; the gloomy lighting, by David Finn; the interstellar projections, by Peter Flaherty.)Green symbolizes King Heinrich, who has arrived in Brabant (around Antwerp in present-day Belgium) with his followers to rally the people there to join him in fighting off a coming invasion from the east. Red is the color of the native Brabantians, who are under the sinister influence of Friedrich von Telramund and his wife, the sorceress Ortrud. And white evokes the innocence and purity of Elsa, to whose aid Lohengrin has come.Fine, if rather on the nose. But the endless flashings of the different linings on the beat of musical flourishes — and the visible struggles that some choristers on Sunday had with the magnets — grew tiresome.And must every Met production now have bits of choreographed slinking and twirling? Here, credited to Serge Bennathan, were lightly dancing attendants with lanterns, heads-thrown-back courtiers, whirling nobles and laughably in-time marching. It was all of a piece with a production that’s straightforward to the point of eye-roll overstatement.As Ortrud, the soprano Christine Goerke was perhaps the performer closest to the mood of the staging: She’s unsubtle, if effective, constantly wringing her hands and gripping her necklaces. Girard strands her alone, making over-the-top witchy gestures, for almost the whole of the Act III prelude. We get it: She’s evil!Goerke’s voice has vigor, but rich phrases alternate with sour, snarled ones; some high notes shiver, while some just miss the mark. The bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin, an imposing presence, sounded weary and out of tune as Telramund. I found myself wishing that the baritone Brian Mulligan, who sang the Herald with unusually vivid intensity, had that larger part instead. The bass Günther Groissböck was a forceful Heinrich.Wilson and, top, Christine Goerke. The choristers manipulate their robes to reveal red, green or white linings, depending on the dramatic needs of the moment.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Met’s chorus, in one of the most difficult works in its repertory, was both stentorian and evocative: In the awe-struck passage after Lohengrin introduces himself, its ethereal singing was almost more felt than heard. Only in some of the most complex counterpoint could the sound have been crisper, the words sharper.Girard’s staging is more lucid than his murky take on Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Holländer,” which will be revived at the Met this spring. It does, at least, convey the urgency of the march toward war that gives the opera its stakes. And this production will always be an unintentional memorial to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Conceived as a co-production of the Bolshoi Theater and the Met, it premiered at the Bolshoi in Moscow on Feb. 24, 2022, the day of the invasion. Soon it became clear that sharing the production would be impossible, and that the sets would have to be rebuilt from scratch, adding over $1 million to the show’s cost.“Lohengrin” is an opera with war on its mind. But King Heinrich and his call to defend Germany against invaders don’t make for an easy parallel with the besieged Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky.That is because Heinrich’s story was taken up — by Wagner and, later, by the Nazis — as a symbol of pan-Germanic nationalism, with all its darkness and xenophobia. That is the context in which a few opera companies have changed a word in Lohengrin’s final line, when he declares, at the magical return of Elsa’s brother, that the people’s “Führer,” or leader, has arrived.To further avoid the associations of this savior figure with Hitler, many directors offer a comment in how they depict the brother. Is there something ominous about him? Something redemptive? Anything?Girard, though, has a very Aryan-looking, blond young man in flowing, angelic white come down the stairs, a final odd bit of naïveté in this “Lohengrin,” a production that ends up being too simplistic for a complex moment and a complex opera.LohengrinContinues through April 1 at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. More

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      SZA’s ‘SOS’ Is No. 1 for a 10th Time, as Morgan Wallen Waits on Deck

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      The R&B singer-songwriter matches chart runs by Adele and the country star Wallen, who is about to release his next album, “One Thing at a Time.”Can anything halt SZA’s reign over the Billboard album chart?For a 10th time, “SOS,” the second studio LP by SZA — the genre-blurring R&B singer and songwriter born Solána Imani Rowe — is the No. 1 album in the country. In the last 10 years, only six other releases have lasted as long at the top: Adele’s “25” (2015) and Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” (2021), also with 10 weeks apiece; Taylor Swift’s “1989” (2014), with 11; and the “Frozen” soundtrack (2013), Drake’s “Views” (2016) and Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” (2022), each with 13.Since it came out in early December, “SOS” has been a steady streaming hit, though its numbers have gradually slipped. For the current chart, the album logged the equivalent of 87,000 sales in the United States, including 118 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate. In its 11 weeks out, “SOS” has racked up nearly two billion streams.Also this week, “Trustfall,” the latest by Pink, opens at No. 2 with the equivalent of 74,500 sales. That total includes 59,000 copies sold as a complete package and 17 million streams. Swift’s “Midnights” holds at No. 3 and Metro Boomin’s “Heroes & Villains” is No. 4.How much longer can SZA dominate? A few just-released titles could challenge “SOS” on next week’s chart, including “AfterLyfe,” by the rapper Yeat, and “Mañana Será Bonito,” by the neon-haired Colombian star Karol G.But SZA still has a few levers left to pull. Last week she embarked on her first arena tour, and any day now she is expected to release an expanded version of “SOS” with as many as 10 additional songs, which could give the LP a second wind on the chart.If any artist is capable of displacing SZA, it is surely Wallen, who on Friday will release “One Thing at a Time,” his third studio album and the follow-up to “Dangerous,” which has had an astounding chart run. This week, “Dangerous” is No. 5, notching its 108th time in the Top 10 — more than any LP except the soundtrack to “The Sound of Music” and the “My Fair Lady” cast recording. More

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      Review: Mitsuko Uchida Revisits Beethoven’s Final Sonatas

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      One of our wisest pianists appeared at Carnegie Hall with some of the wisest music written for her instrument.One thing die-hard classical music fans like to do during a concert’s intermission is compare notes — about the performance at hand, about what else has been going on around town and about what’s coming up.It was during one of those conversations recently that I asked a friend whether he was planning to see the pianist Mitsuko Uchida’s recital of late Beethoven sonatas at Carnegie Hall. He said no, he didn’t need to hear her in that repertoire.Understandable, to a point. She has toured this music before, and recorded it, marvelously, in 2006. But Uchida, 74, is an artist who returns to the familiar, especially the works of Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven, as part of a lifelong argument for the benefits of repeated examination. “The great composers always change,” she once said in an interview. “And as you change, they change.”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.At Carnegie on Friday, in her recital of Beethoven’s final three piano sonatas, Uchida did behave like a different artist from the one who recorded these works nearly two decades ago. I don’t believe that age is inherently necessary or helpful in music — Igor Levit had a handle on Beethoven’s late style in his 20s — but what was reflected onstage was the unaffected wisdom and clarity that comes with decades of interpretive rigor and commitment.Uchida’s recording of these pieces is insistently lyrical, borderline Schubertian. The sonatas were, in her reading at the time, intimate, private musings that were made public but didn’t seem as if they needed to be. On Friday, however, her sound was often comparatively bright and extreme — the sforzandos true explosions, the pianissimos exquisitely soft-spoken. Each sonata unfurled with improvisatory freedom, absolutely alive, its heart showing more than its head. Yet because of Uchida’s technique, her pedalwork and precision, the scores were also transparently multidimensional. You could hear, with awe-inspiring ease, every line threaded through the fugue of the Op. 110’s finale. Then and now, her playing was persuasive; Beethoven’s music can withstand, even demand, both approaches.In her Op. 109, the Sonata No. 30 in E, the lilting vivace opening crested and fell in force — more a wave than a ripple, but, in its alluringly long line, still beating from the same source. This work, and the two others on the program, can be difficult to voice, to tease a melody from tangled rhythms and tricky fingerings; on Friday, Uchida lent just the right amount of weight to each finger to emphasize the counterpoint, revealing the architecture of the score, without distracting from the singing melodies it supports.At times, particularly in the Op. 110 Sonata in A flat, her sound approached that of lieder by Schubert, who seemed to trade places with Bach as the arioso alternated with an intricate, three-part fugue. In Uchida’s hands, that finale — in Beethovenian fashion, a journey from profound despair to euphoric heights — achieved a kind of holy grandeur.She reached even higher in her account of the Op. 111 in C minor. In the closing Arietta — after the straightforward theme and the initial variations on it, including one that famously swings like a glimpse of music’s jazzier future — with a lot of score left to go, she seemed to depart from everything that had come before. Her trills twinkling, her playing more personal than performative, she followed Beethoven’s leap to the cosmos and remained with him to the whispered final measure.Afterward, Uchida repeatedly returned to the stage to bow but never to encore; how could she? In her trademark way, every time she faced the audience she looked a bit surprised, then grateful — as if, after sharing all she had, she was the one who should be thanking us.Mitsuko UchidaPerformed on Friday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. Uchida returns there for a master class on Wednesday and a concert with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra on March 9. More

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      Tom Whitlock, Co-Writer of ‘Top Gun’ Anthem ‘Danger Zone,’ Dies at 68

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      Mr. Whitlock wrote the words for that song and the chart-topping “Take My Breath Away,” central elements in the success of the hit 1986 movie.Tom Whitlock, who co-wrote two songs that helped elevate the 1986 movie “Top Gun” into a pop-culture phenomenon, died on Saturday in Gallatin, Tenn. He was 68.His death was confirmed by Gorman-Scharpf Funeral Home, which did not cite a cause.The “Top Gun” songs “Danger Zone” and “Take My Breath Away,” with words by Mr. Whitlock and music by Giorgio Moroder, were just two of the more than 100 songwriting credits he accrued over his career. Songs he helped write were performed and recorded by Bonnie Tyler, Ray Charles, Graham Nash and others. But the work he did with Mr. Moroder for “Top Gun,” the hit Tom Cruise movie about fighter jets and machismo, has especially endured.Mr. Whitlock worked frequently with Mr. Moroder. Together they wrote five songs for the movie, but two in particular achieved widespread acclaim.“Danger Zone,” performed by Kenny Loggins, served as the guitar-heavy, energetic scene setter for the movie’s opening moments, as fighter jets roared off into the sky. The lyrics spoke for an unapologetic thrill seeker, culminating in the oft-repeated line “Highway to the danger zone.” The song reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. It was also featured on the soundtrack of the hit 2022 sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick.”Even more successful was “Take My Breath Away,” the soulful ballad performed by the group Berlin that was heard in a love scene. It topped the Billboard charts on Sept. 13, 1986, and won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for best original song.Thomas Ross Whitlock was born on Feb. 20, 1954, in Springfield, Mo., to Ross and Peg Whitlock. He started playing the drums when he was 11 years old, he said in a 2014 interview archived on the website rediscoverthe80s.com, and was soon working professionally.After attending Drury University in Springfield and playing in a short-lived band, he moved to Los Angeles. He was helping a friend at a sound studio there when Mr. Moroder, an already accomplished musician who had just bought the studio, said he was having issues with the brakes on his Ferrari, Mr. Whitlock said in the interview. Mr. Whitlock bought some brake fluid, used his own tools and fixed the issue. A few weeks later, he was hired to do odd jobs in the studio.After other people had left the studio for the day, he would stay and work on his own songs. And when other songwriters weren’t around, he recalled, Mr. Moroder turned to Mr. Whitlock for help on the “Top Gun” lyrics.He also wrote lyrics for the theme songs for the 1988 Summer Olympics and the 1990 FIFA World Cup.His marriage to Hollie Whitlock ended in divorce. Survivors include his sister, Mary Whitlock Schweitzer. More

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      A Dave Brubeck Cantata Boasts Star Soloists: His Sons

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      “The Gates of Justice,” a large-scale 1969 choral work about relations between Black and Jewish Americans, is being performed in Los Angeles.LOS ANGELES — “Want to give us a blast?” the bassist Chris Brubeck asked the young woman in a music studio at the University of California, Los Angeles, on Wednesday morning.Remy Ohara lifted a long, corkscrewing shofar to her lips and blew a resonant call. Brubeck had brought a few other shofars with him as options, but it was clear from the moment Ohara, a sophomore trumpet student, started playing that this one had what he was looking for.The call of a shofar, the ancient instrument usually made from a ram’s horn and best known for its use in Jewish worship, opens “The Gates of Justice,” a grand 1969 choral cantata by the eminent jazz musician Dave Brubeck, Chris’s father.On Sunday and Tuesday, U.C.L.A. will present the work — with Chris and two of his brothers, Darius and Dan, forming the central jazz trio — as the main offering of a series of events devoted to the intersection of music and social justice, and to finding common cause between Black and Jewish communities in America.“It’s something that Dave really believed in,” said Mark Kligman, a professor of Jewish music at U.C.L.A. and an organizer of the program. “He really believed in this type of communal opportunity for unity and conversation.”Searching for — and galvanizing — that common cause between Black and Jewish Americans was the motivation behind “The Gates of Justice.” Brubeck, famous for numbers like “Take Five” and for his pioneering use of unconventional rhythms in jazz, also wrote concert music that reflected his social conscience, particularly on issues of race.During the days of Jim Crow he refused to play tour dates if they were contingent on replacing Black players. His 1961 musical “The Real Ambassadors,” with lyrics by Iola Brubeck, his wife, starred Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae in a story about jazz, racism and the music business.As the 1960s progressed, Dave Brubeck — who was raised Protestant but joined the Catholic Church after writing a Mass setting in the late 1970s — was pained to see the unity among racial and religious groups earlier in the civil rights movement give way to tensions and suspicion. The assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 was the direct inspiration for “The Gates of Justice,” which quotes the Bible and liturgical texts alongside King’s writings.The shofar that was chosen to open “The Gates of Justice.”Alex Welsh for The New York TimesThe music is also an amalgam, taking in the influence of Jewish cantillation, traditional choral styles, gospel, mariachi, pop, blues and 12-tone music. (It shares its eclecticism with the 1971 “Mass” by Leonard Bernstein, who had collaborated with Brubeck on jazz-classical experiments.)In 2001, the Milken Archive of Jewish Music, founded by the businessman Lowell Milken, recorded the work for Naxos. And the U.C.L.A. performances — on Sunday at Royce Hall on campus and on Tuesday at Holman United Methodist Church, a Black congregation in the city — will take place under the auspices of the school’s recently opened Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience.Neal Stulberg will conduct a chorus consisting of the ensemble Tonality and members of Los Angeles church and synagogue choirs; a brass and percussion orchestra; and two vocal soloists. The keening tenor part will be sung by Azi Schwartz, a cantor at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York; and Phillip Bullock will take the baritone part, influenced by traditional Black styles.As the core jazz trio, which has improvising interludes, Chris Brubeck, on bass and trombone, will be joined by his brothers Darius, on piano, and Dan, on drums. (Another of Brubeck’s sons, Matthew, is a cellist; they had a sister, Catherine, who died last year, and a brother, Michael, who died in 2009.) Chris, Darius and Dan have played together often, but this is the first time they will collaborate on “The Gates of Justice” — and the first time they have been united since before the pandemic lockdown.Dave Brubeck’s roots were in swing, but he had classical chops. In an interview, Darius said that his father had a shelf full of music theory books, and kept the scores of Bach and Shostakovich preludes and fugues next to his piano for reference. After World War II, Dave studied at Mills College in California with the jazz-loving French composer Darius Milhaud, who had fled Europe during the war. Brubeck came to admire Milhaud so deeply that he named his first son after him.Dave Brubeck (at the piano in 1965 with, from left, Paul Desmond, Joe Morello and Gene Wright) turned toward classical forms and social themes at the end of the 1960s.Brubeck Collection, Wilton Library/Pictorial Press LtdIn the 1950s, Brubeck became a celebrated figure in jazz, featured on the cover of Time magazine — exposure that led to criticism, which dogged him, that he owed his fame, at least in part, to being a white man who appealed to a broader audience. His era-defining recording “Time Out” (1959) was the first jazz album to sell a million copies. But in the late ’60s, after his classic quartet disbanded, his work shifted, turning more toward classical forms and social issues.Brubeck’s first major choral work, “The Light in the Wilderness” (1968), adapted biblical texts to spread a message of hope amid that decade’s widespread questioning of faith and the lingering horrors of World War II. A few years after “The Gates of Justice,” he wrote another cantata, “Truth Is Fallen” (1972), in response to the killing of student protesters at Kent State University in 1970. He kept composing in this social-religious vein over the next decades, even as he returned to touring with small jazz groups almost until his death, in 2012, at 91.“The essential message of ‘The Gates of Justice’ is the brotherhood of man,” he wrote in the liner notes for Decca’s recording of the work, now out of print. Brubeck wasn’t an expert in Jewish music, but he had open ears and curiosity; the shofars Chris Brubeck brought to U.C.L.A. as alternatives were ones he had found in his father’s house and presumed were research materials for the cantata.“He seemed to have an affinity for the right cantorial, modal stuff to do,” Chris said.Playing through those modal, klezmer-style scales on the piano during the interview, Darius said, “Those traditional scales fit everywhere in the piece, in different movements, in different moods.” Darius then added a missing note to the scale to form, like magic, a classic blues scale. Even on a fundamental musical level, then, Black and Jewish styles blend into each other in the score.Remy Ohara, left, with Jens Lindemann, center, and Chris Brubeck.Alex Welsh for The New York Times“They were both enslaved, uprooted from their homelands and wandered in the diaspora,” Dave Brubeck said in 1997 of the similarities between the Black and Jewish experiences. “When I began exploring the music, I was thrilled to hear the similarities among Hebraic chant and spirituals and blues.”The work has its raucous moments, as in a climactic section, “The Lord Is Good,” in which grandeur melts into a smoothly integrated succession of references to mariachi melodies, pop songs and Chopin. But even when the piece swings, it has a solemn, even melancholy cast — prayerful more than hopeful.The tenor and baritone solos are impassioned and soulful, with a shining duet on King’s word’s “Free at last”; the choruses are sometimes serene and sometimes emphatic, with stentorian demands to “open the gates” and “clear the way.” The sober prayer of “Lord, Lord” is punctuated in the score by shouted racial slurs that will be rendered at U.C.L.A. as a cacophony.Like Dave Brubeck’s other large-scale pieces, “The Gates of Justice” is not unknown, but it’s hardly a standard, either. As with many artists who ranged between pop and classical styles — Bernstein, Gershwin and André Previn among them — Brubeck had trouble maintaining an audience for the full scope of his output.“He could not really, totally break through and have people understand that he did both things,” Chris said. “As far as I’m concerned, the most important thing is this piece not be forgotten, and that it still speak to people in some way.”As part of the effort to show the work’s continuing relevance, it will be performed on the U.C.L.A. programs alongside newer pieces, including premieres by Arturo O’Farrill and Diane White-Clayton. And the brothers spent the rehearsal tinkering with the score and its possibilities, seeking to heighten its rally-like forcefulness and its harmonic contrasts.“It’s a living piece,” Darius said. More

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      U.S. Girls’ Luxuriously Absurd Disco, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Gracie Abrams, Ashley McBryde and Skrillex.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.U.S. Girls, ‘Tux (Your Body Fills Me, Boo)’I am willing to bet that this new U.S. Girls song is the first in the history of popular music to be written from the perspective of a tuxedo. (Seriously: “I was born to be worn,” Meg Remy sings in a buttery croon, “custom fit to make you feel legit.”) But the infectious, full-bodied groove helps the track transcend its admittedly ridiculous premise and become a highlight of the latest U.S. Girls album, the upbeat and provocative “Bless This Mess,” which is out on Friday. A thumping beat and elastic bass line give the song a sleek disco sheen, but it’s Remy’s absurdist sense of humor that makes it unique. LINDSAY ZOLADZSkrillex and Bibi Bourelly, ‘Painting Rainbows’Skrillex’s ambitious new pair of albums “Quest for Fire” and “Don’t Get Too Close” overflow with impressive guest appearances (Missy Elliott! Justin Bieber! PinkPantheress!), but perhaps his most simpatico collaborator turns out to be Bibi Bourelly, the German-born musician who is best known as a songwriter for the likes of Rihanna, Demi Lovato and Usher. Bourelly lends her vocals to three tracks, and it feels significant that Skrillex gives her the last word on “Don’t Get Too Close,” shining the spotlight on her expansive personality on its closing track, “Painting Rainbows.” “We still hear when they thought we would die,” Bourelly raps with a growly defiance and unabashed positivity. Her voice is at once cartoonish and deeply sincere, which means it pairs perfectly with Skrillex’s sound. ZOLADZHannah Jadagu, ‘What You Did’The latest single from the 20-year-old indie-pop singer-songwriter Hannah Jadagu is suffused with a dreamy atmosphere, but her lyrics pierce right through the haze: “I know what you did,” she sings, repeatedly, to the object of her disappointment. Taken from her forthcoming debut “Aperture,” which comes out May 19, “What You Did” showcases Jadagu’s easy aptitude with lilting melodies and her love of deliciously crunchy texture. ZOLADZFishbone, ‘All We Have Is Now’The ever-peppy ska-punk-funk-rock band Fishbone has persevered since 1979, and most of its original lineup has regrouped for a coming album produced by an admirer, Fat Mike of the punk band NOFX. “All We Have Is Now” is a philosophical pronouncement — “The universe may only consist of a here and now” — briskly delivered in ska form. One thing to enjoy in the moment is the way organ and horns each play just a few notes, placing them exactly where they’re needed. JON PARELESAshley McBryde, ‘Light on in the Kitchen’Ashley McBryde maintains her position as country’s most down-to-earth songwriter with “Light on in the Kitchen,” a compendium of kindly advice punctuated by a down-home dialogue between mandolin and electric guitar. “Your freckles make you pretty/There’s more to life than being skinny,” she sings, going on to say, “Trust yourself, laugh at yourself/If something tries to hold you back, get up and give it hell.” No one should argue. PARELESGracie Abrams, ‘I Know It Won’t Work’“Part of me wants you back,” Gracie Abrams admits on a song from her pointedly titled debut album, “Good Riddance.” Obviously, she knows better. Her voice is whispery, as it is throughout the album, and her backup puts an acoustic veneer on an electronic foundation; two chords pull her back and forth as she weighs her options. Her best choice is clear, but getting there is more complicated. PARELESBernice, ‘Underneath My Toe’The crystalline “Underneath My Toe,” from the Toronto group Bernice, has the tender, first-name-basis intimacy of a letter to a friend: “So, I really wanna know,” Robin Dann sings, “how did Tim’s birthday go?” The song keeps shifting shape unexpectedly — at one point, a funky, new-age keyboard riff enters without warning and disappears just as quickly — but the gentle melancholy and clarion beauty of Dann’s voice is the glue holding it all together. ZOLADZArooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, Shahzad Ismaily, ‘To Remain/To Return’The somberly immersive “To Remain/To Return” previews “Love in Exile,” an album of collective improvisations due March 24 from three musicians with South Asian roots and jazz and rock experience: Arooj Aftab on vocals, Vijay Iyer on piano and electronics and Shahzad Ismaily on bass and synthesizer. The music is unanimous in its restraint. Iyer gradually forms rising, modal five-note patterns on piano. Ismaily leans into a drone that evolves from slow tolling to a throbbing pulse. And Aftab sings pensive, hovering phrases in Urdu. In the full nine-minute version, the music wafts up out of near-silence and sustained electronics; a three-minute excerpt gets to Aftab’s melodies, and a beat, much sooner. PARELESZoon, ‘Manitou’In “Manitou,” orchestral and electronic blurs envelop the voice of Daniel Monkman, who leads the Canadian band Zoon. “Manitou” is about memories and mortality: “One foot in the dirt, and one foot in the grave,” he reflects. The music arrives in dusty, amorphous gusts of sound — sometimes revealing a strummed acoustic guitar, sometimes swelling with tremolo strings, sometimes surrounding Monkman with high, delayed vocals — that make every perception sound fragile and precious. PARELESIzangoMa, ‘Ngo Ma’IzangoMa, from South Africa, pours everything it has learned from two hemispheres into “Ngo Ma.” This 10-minute track, with most of its lyrics in English, sprints forward with a mixture of electronics and a band. The lyrics detail hard lives, commemorated in long verses; the music rushes ahead, scrambling electronics and hand-played instruments, insisting that a beat can heal everything — but only eventually. PARELES More

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      R. Kelly Sentenced to 20 Years for Child Sex Crimes

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      The singer will serve most of the sentence in federal prison at the same time as a 30-year term for racketeering and sex trafficking.CHICAGO — A federal judge on Thursday sentenced R. Kelly to 20 years in prison for child sex crimes, after a jury found that he had produced three videos of himself sexually abusing his 14-year-old goddaughter.In a victory for the defense, the judge ruled that all but one year of the prison sentence would be served at the same time as a previous 30-year sentence that Mr. Kelly received after a jury in Brooklyn convicted him of racketeering and sex trafficking charges.The jury in Chicago convicted Mr. Kelly of six of the 13 charges brought against him in connection with sexual abuse during the 1990s, including counts of coercing three minors into sexual activity and three of producing sex tapes involving a minor. He was acquitted of a charge that he had attempted to obstruct an earlier investigation into his abuse of the goddaughter, and two other counts of enticing minors to have sex.Federal prosecutors had argued that Mr. Kelly, 56, deserved 25 years in prison on top of his earlier sentence, citing the singer’s “lack of remorse” as a reason he would pose a danger to society if released.“The only way to ensure he will not reoffend is to impose a sentence that will keep him in prison for the rest of his life,” Jeannice Williams Appenteng, one of the prosecutors, said in court on Thursday.A lawyer for Mr. Kelly, Jennifer Bonjean, argued that her client was “likely to die in prison either way,” but that if he did not, he would not pose a threat in old age.Judge Harry D. Leinenweber agreed, saying in court that he did not think Mr. Kelly would be likely to commit the same kind of crimes in his 80s. The judge acknowledged that he would have dealt a heftier sentence if the Chicago trial had come first.As in the trial, Mr. Kelly remained mostly silent during the sentencing hearing, declining to speak on his own behalf. Taking into account a possible early release because of good behavior, Mr. Kelly could walk out of prison in his late 70s.The ruling caps a lengthy legal battle in Chicago, where Mr. Kelly was once widely viewed with pride as a product of the city’s South Side. In 2008, he was acquitted on charges of producing child sexual abuse imagery of his goddaughter, with some jurors telling reporters that they had been influenced by the lack of testimony from the young woman. She had denied to a grand jury that she was the person in an infamous tape that prosecutors said showed Mr. Kelly sexually abusing and urinating on her.But in last year’s federal trial, which followed a resurgence of scrutiny over Mr. Kelly’s treatment of girls and young women in response to the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” the woman took the stand, identifying herself as the underage girl being abused in three videos, snippets of which were shown to the jury.In Thursday’s hearing, a lawyer for the woman — identified in court as Jane — read a statement about how the repeated sexual abuse affected her life, asking that Mr. Kelly be put in jail for “as long as the law allows.”“I’ll never be able to unsee the child pornography,” she said in the statement, which was read by her lawyer, Christopher Brown. “No amount of therapy will make me normal.”Ms. Bonjean, who said she was appealing the convictions in both Brooklyn and Chicago, had lobbied for the minimum 10-year prison sentence, arguing that Mr. Kelly had suffered his own history of sexual abuse as a child and that he had intellectual disabilities that “shed some light on why he engaged in inappropriate relationships.”The additional sentence reduces the chance that Mr. Kelly would get out of prison even if his defense team wins its appeal of the Brooklyn conviction. He still faces sex crimes charges in Minnesota, which have been on hold during the federal trials. State prosecutors in Illinois recently dropped sexual abuse charges against him, citing the previous convictions.Judge Leinenweber also ordered Mr. Kelly to pay one of the sexual abuse victims $42,000 in restitution for therapy bills, denying it to the goddaughter and the third woman whose account led to a conviction. The woman who was ordered to receive the money — referred to in court as Pauline — had testified that Mr. Kelly sexually abused her repeatedly when she was a teenager, sometimes at the same time as the goddaughter.The third woman, referred to as Nia during the trial, addressed Mr. Kelly directly in the courtroom on Thursday, recounting how she met him as a “star-struck teenager” asking for an autograph in a mall but ended up “completely damaged” after the sexual abuse.“I’m not a vengeful or hateful person,” the woman said in court, “but I highly suggest you spend your time in prison reflecting.” More

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      Review: At the Philharmonic, a Guest Challenges Common Wisdom

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      The conductor Nathalie Stutzmann surrounded a showcase for cellist Alisa Weilerstein with idiosyncratic readings of repertory staples.The conductor Nathalie Stutzmann, who made a hotly anticipated debut with the New York Philharmonic on Wednesday, has had a skyrocketing career. Most notably, she started this season as the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra — making her, regrettably, the lone female conductor among the 25 largest American orchestras. Women comprise about half of all orchestral players nationally and even outnumber men in the playing ranks of the Philharmonic.Many orchestra musicians reportedly love Stutzmann — who first made her name as a contralto and has recorded as a singer — for her deeply felt opinions and direct communication style. At the Philharmonic, she laid out her bona fides by beginning her program with Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” overture. (She will be making her debut at the Bayreuth Festival in August with this opera, so Wednesday’s performance felt like a bit of a preview.) She led it with a singer’s innate sense of phrasing and generous expanse; the orchestra seemed happy to luxuriate with her across every small hill and valley of the score.The most arresting work on the program was Prokofiev’s sprawling Sinfonia Concertante, a piece of constantly shifting moods that demands only the most virtuosic of soloists: It’s considered one of the most technically challenging, and exhausting, works written for cello.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.Fosse Dancers: The thrill of “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’,” a revival of the 1978 musical is, aptly, its dancers. All are principals. No two are alike, not even a tiny bit. And that’s the way Fosse wanted it.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.The Sinfonia Concertante has never quite found a home in the repertory, though Prokofiev revised it extensively for his friend Mstislav Rostropovich. Before Wednesday, it had not been performed by the Philharmonic in two decades; the last time was with Rostropovich at the podium.But the piece has a profound champion in Alisa Weilerstein, the soloist this week. She is an artist who adroitly channels fierce work with her penetrating, brilliant sound — her performances of works by Kodaly and Shostakovich provide ample proof — and she made a compelling case for the Prokofiev. She dispatched every technical test with astonishing ease and visceral joy, and took obvious pleasure in the music’s often sardonic humor.It wasn’t such an easy match for Stutzmann, however, who emphasized pleasant piquancy over pointed commentary, and carefully burnished the work’s rough-hewn edges. The final movement has plenty of snarl and grit, and ends with a triumphant chord that is more frequently interpreted as thumb-your-nose sneering than exultant exclamation; instead, Stutzmann had the Philharmonic musicians land on it as delicately as a troupe of ballerinas.The orchestra was on more familiar terrain in Dvorak’s “New World”; this is, after all, the orchestra that premiered the extremely familiar work. And Stutzmann was a charming guide. She slowed down to let the audience appreciate minute, inner-voice details that they may well have otherwise missed, but she also hustled by some cherished landmark melodies. At other points, she took an overly literal interpretation of the score. I don’t recall ever hearing such a foursquare interpretation of the Largo theme, a tune meant to evoke Black spirituals that became more familiar as the melody of “Goin’ Home.”Stutzmann’s idiosyncrasies occasionally veered close to affectations. Who knew that the string chords that punctuate the brasses’ introduction to the theme at the beginning of the fourth movement were more important than the theme itself? On the other hand, Stutzmann is a conductor who certainly knows how to challenge common wisdom, making for an intensely absorbing evening.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Friday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More