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

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

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

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

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

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

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      Why the Queen of Christmas Refuses to Leave Battery Park City

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

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

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

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      25 Years After ‘Titanic,’ Quebec’s Love for Céline Dion Will Go On

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      The outpouring that greeted the singer’s announcement that she has a rare neurological condition showed how both Céline fandom, and ideas of national identity in her home province, have evolved.MONTREAL — It was a Friday night in Montreal, and hundreds of euphoric revelers were dancing and singing “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” at a sold-out Céline Dion tribute party. One young man vogued in a homemade version of the gold-tinted headpiece of singed peacock feathers that Dion wore at the Met Gala a few years ago. Another gawked at a mini-shrine of Dion-inspired wigs, showcasing her hairstyles through the decades.“In an era of arrogant stars, she is always authentic,” Simon Venne, the voguer, a 38-year-old stylist, gushed. “She is everything to us, a source of pride, our queen.”If there was ever a sense that Quebec, the French-speaking province of Dion’s birth, was conflicted about Dion’s rise to global superstardom with pop hits that she often sang in English, it has been dispelled. She now occupies an exalted space here, experiencing a cultural renaissance as Quebec’s younger generation has unabashedly embraced her: Radio Canada, the national French language broadcaster, parses her life on a podcast translated as “Céline—She’s The Boss!”; a recent docuseries called “It’s Cool to Like Céline Dion” explored her appeal to millennials, and Céline Dion drag competitions have been surging.Dion’s emotional announcement this month that she is suffering from a rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome, forcing her to postpone upcoming tour dates, was met with an extraordinary outpouring. Québécois politicians from across the political spectrum, including both Quebec’s premiere, François Legault, and the head of a party advocating Quebec’s independence from Canada, jockeyed to express sympathy for Dion, 54. Fans commiserated over social media. A headline in Le Devoir, an influential Quebec newspaper, called her “Céline, Queen of the Québécois.” Dion, the newspaper noted, had attained the status of untouchable icon after years of being panned by critics and mocked by others.“It’s like hearing your aunt is sick,” Venne, the feathered fan, said. “Céline is famous around the world, but here she is family.”A sold-out Céline Dion tribute party in Montreal drew fans who dressed like her, gawked at Dion-inspired wigs, and danced and sang along to her music. Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesThe intensity of the reaction here — 25 years after the premiere of the blockbuster film “Titanic,” which helped make Dion’s bombastically exuberant “My Heart Will Go On” ubiquitous — shows how much Céline fandom and ideas of Québécois identity have evolved over time as the province, like its most famous daughter, has come of age.The Unsinkable Celine DionThe Canadian superstar has won over fans with her octave-hopping renditions of songs like “Because You Loved Me” and “My Heart Will Go On.”Rare Disorder Diagnosis: Celine Dion announced that she had a neurological condition known as stiff person syndrome, which forced her to cancel and reschedule dates on her planned 2023 tour.A Consummate Professional: At a concert in Brooklyn in 2020, the pop diva was fully in command of her glorious voice — and the crowd gathered to bask in it.Adored by Fans: Dion can count on some of the most loyal supporters in the industry. In return, she gives all of herself to them.From the Archives: Dion achieved international stardom in the 1990s after charming audiences in French Canada and France. Here is what The Times wrote about her in 1997.During a recent visit to Céline Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, a soulless stretch of road in the gritty working-class town of about 6,000 on the outskirts of Montreal where Dion was born, a group of 20-somethings said it was no longer embarrassing to admit to liking her music.“Being stuck at home during the pandemic made people nostalgic for the past, and everything old and vintage is in fashion,” said Gabriel Guénette, 26, a university student and sometime Uber delivery man, explaining why he and his friends were singing “The Power of Love” during karaoke nights. Dion’s unbridled message of hope and optimism, he added, resonated during these uncertain times.Older residents in Charlemagne still refer to her as “notre petite Céline” — our little Céline — and recall her days as a shy teenager who performed French ballads with her 13 brothers and sisters at her family’s restaurant. Younger residents — including Meghan Arsenault, 15, who attends the same high school Dion did — grew up singing her songs.Across Quebec, a Francophone province of 8.5 million people that has been buffeted by centuries of subjugation and fears of being subsumed by the English language, Dion has at times been a polarizing figure. Even as many fans ardently embraced her, she was dismissed by some critics as the cultural equivalent of poutine, the Québécois snack of French fries and cheese curds drenched in gravy drunkenly and guiltily consumed at 3 a.m.Some elites balked at her success, seeing in her sprawling working class family, her garish outfits and her broken English an uncomfortable mirror of an old Quebec they preferred to forget. Some considered her quétaine, cheesy in Québécois argot.Céline Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, her hometown.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesOlder residents in Charlemagne still call her “notre petite Céline” — our little Céline.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesAnd her singing in English has, at times, been an affront to hard-core Francophone nationalists. But when Dion thanked the audience with a “Merci!” at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 after singing “The Power of The Dream,” the single word reverberated across the province, an affirmation that French Canada had gone global.Martin Proulx, a producer who hosted the podcast, “Céline, She’s the Boss!” recalled that as a gay teenager in Montreal in the 1990s, he hid the fact that he was listening to her “Let’s Talk About Love” album on his Sony Walkman. “It wasn’t cool to love Céline when I was in high school — kids my age were listening to hip-hop and heavy rock and she was for soccer moms who watched Oprah,” he recalled.Now, he said, he could proudly proclaim his ardor, in part because a more confident Quebec has shed some of its past complexes. The younger generation of Québécois, he said, seems less hung up than their parents or grandparents on issues of language and identity, and more likely to embrace Dion’s global stardom, financial success and bilingualism as a template for their own international aspirations.“We used to roll our eyes — now we think she’s pure genius,” Mr. Proulx said. “She never changed. We did.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Quebec-born music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, said that his first memory of Dion was from 1984, when he was eight years old. Dion, who was 16, sang a song about a dove in front of Pope John Paul II and 60,000 people at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. Nézet-Séguin said he had surged with pride that she was a fellow Quebecer, and said that he sees Dion as a “diva” in the operatic sense of the word.“When I think about a diva, I think about personality, having something recognizable artistically, and one can’t deny the virtuosic aspect of Céline’s singing,” he said.Bennett’s Dion collection is extensive.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesHe even has a custom Dion sport coat.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesThe intense interest in Dion is hardly limited to Quebec. “Aline,” a highly unusual, fictionalized film drawn from her life, drew buzz at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. When a musical parody of “Titanic” called “Titanique” recently moved to a larger Off Broadway theater in New York, its producers promised “More shows. More seats. More Céline.” And Dion is set to appear alongside Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan in a romantic comedy called “Love Again” that is expected in theaters in North America in May.The fascination with Dion endures in part because her Cinderella story never grows old. The youngest of 14 children of an accordion-playing butcher and a homemaker from Charlemagne, Dion’s first bed as a child was a drawer. At the age of 12, she co-wrote her first song, “Ce n’était qu’un rêve,” with the help of her mother and her brother Jacques. Her brother Michel sent a cassette demo to the impresario René Angélil, who became her manager and, later, her husband.Dion had a complete makeover, disappearing for 18 months in 1986 to study English, cap her teeth, perm her hair, and take voice and dance lessons. A star was born.When Angélil died in 2016, two days before his 74th birthday, his two-day, meticulously choreographed funeral at Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica was televised by the CBC, the national broadcaster, and flags were lowered at half-mast across Quebec. Dion, veiled in black, stood by her husband’s open coffin for seven hours, greeting Quebec dignitaries and the public.Nearly every inch of Mario Bennett’s cramped basement apartment is decorated with Céline Dion memorabilia. Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesIn the years since, Dion recast her analog image for the Instagram era. A Vetements Titanic hoodie she wore in Paris in 2016 broke the internet. A few years later, she stole the show at the camp-themed Met Gala, in an Oscar de la Renta clinging champagne-colored bodysuit embellished with silvery sequins. Her zany, self-deprecating appearance on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke in 2019 from Las Vegas, during which she sang “My Heart Will Go On” in front of a replica of the Titanic’s bow at the Bellagio Hotel fountain, helped some people who had made fun of her realize that she was in on the joke.Now her fandom seems as strong as ever.Mario Bennett, 36, who works in a concert hall, began covering every inch of his cramped basement apartment with Céline Dion memorabilia at the start of the pandemic. He said that throughout his life, Ms. Dion’s powerful voice had been a clarion call to dream big. Among his prized possessions is an unauthorized collectible Céline doll, wearing a mini version of the midnight blue velvet gown that the singer wore to the Oscars in 1998.“She makes me feel that anything is possible,” he said.Guy Hermon, an Israeli drag queen who emigrated to Montreal a decade ago and absorbed Quebec culture — and the French language — by trying to embody Dion, said he had never been a fan of her music but invented his Dion alter ego, “Crystal Slippers” out of necessity on the Dion-obsessed Québécois drag circuit.After years of mimicking Ms. Dion, he said he had come to appreciate her. “She just wants everyone to be happy,” he said. More

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      Dino Danelli, Whose Drums Drove the Rascals, Is Dead at 78

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      His percussion virtuosity was a key to the band’s many hits of the late 1960s, including the chart-topping “Good Lovin’,” “Groovin’” and “People Got to Be Free.”Dino Danelli, whose hard-charging, high-energy drumming powered the Rascals to a string of hits in the late 1960s, including the No. 1 records “Good Lovin’,” “Groovin’” and “People Got to Be Free,” died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 78.Joe Russo, a close friend and the band’s historian, confirmed the death, at a rehabilitation center. He said Mr. Danelli had been in declining health for several years.The Rascals (billed on their first three albums as the Young Rascals) were among the first American bands to emerge in response to the so-called British Invasion of 1964.Formed in New Jersey in 1965, the quartet — featuring Felix Cavaliere on organ and vocals, Eddie Brigati on vocals, Gene Cornish on guitar and Mr. Danelli on drums — drew on a range of influences, including doo-wop, jazz and soul.Mr. Danelli, a protégé of the great jazz drummers Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa, merged percussive virtuosity with a rock sensibility. Like Ringo Starr of the Beatles, he set the template for the rock drummer archetype: disciplined and precise, but with a flair that drew the crowd’s eye. He would twirl his sticks — a trick he learned from his sister, a cheerleader — and throw them in the air, before catching them without dropping the beat.Mr. Danelli was responsible for the band’s first big hit. He was a fan of obscure soul records, and one day at a record shop in Harlem, he found a single by the Olympics, “Good Lovin’,” written by Rudy Clark and Arthur Resnick, which reached No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1965.“We said, ‘Let’s try it, let’s put a new version to it,’” he said in a 2008 interview with the drummer Liberty DeVitto. “It was just a lucky find.”The Rascals played the song during a 1966 appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” It soon topped the charts and — with its opening shout of “One, two, three!” — became one of the best-known songs of the decade.Onstage, the band dressed in the sort of foppish outfits favored by several other white acts of the mid-1960s: knee-high socks, short ties, floppy collars. But it was the first white band signed by Atlantic Records, home of Ray Charles, and it was among the few American rock bands to be accepted by Black crowds.The members included a clause in their contracts stating that they would perform only if a Black act was on the bill with them — a fact that meant large swaths of the South remained off limits.As the Rascals evolved, their sound mellowed and they turned out summer-vibe classics like “Groovin’,” which hit No. 1 in 1967, and “A Beautiful Morning,” which reached No. 3 in 1968. That same year, shocked by the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, they released “People Got to Be Free,” a paean to racial harmony — written, like the earlier two songs, by Mr. Cavaliere and Mr. Brigati. It also reached No. 1.The Rascals dissolved in the early 1970s; Mr. Brigati left in 1970 and Mr. Cornish a year later. Mr. Cavaliere and Mr. Danelli stayed for two more albums before the band broke up.Mr. Danelli played in a series of bands through the 1970s, and in 1980 he joined Steven Van Zandt, the lead guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, in a side project called the Disciples of Soul.Mr. Van Zandt had grown up as a die-hard Rascals fan. In 1997 he delivered the speech inducting the band into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, calling Mr. Danelli “the greatest rock drummer of all time.”The Rascals, then known as the Young Rascals, appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in March 1966. From left: Mr. Danelli, Eddie Brigati, Ed Sullivan, Gene Cornish and Felix Cavaliere.CBS, via Getty ImagesDino Danelli was born on July 23, 1944, in Jersey City, N.J., the son of Robert Danelli and Teresa Bottinelli.He is survived by his sister, Diane Severino.He began playing drums at an early age and, after dropping out of high school, moved to Manhattan, intent on pursuing a music career. He picked up gigs in the jazz clubs of Greenwich Village, finagled a room at the Metropole Hotel in Times Square and met Mr. Rich and Mr. Krupa, who both took him under their wing.He traveled to California, Las Vegas and New Orleans for work, including a stint with the jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, before returning to New York. He met his future bandmates at a venue in Garfield, N.J., called the Choo Choo Club, and after playing together in another band, they formed the Young Rascals.The band got back together for a few reunion shows in the 1980s, and then in the 1990s, minus Mr. Brigati, performed under the name the New Rascals. At Mr. Van Zandt’s urging, the four original members played a 2010 charity show together, and in 2012 Mr. Van Zandt wrote and produced a “bioconcert” called “The Rascals: Once Upon a Dream” — a multimedia show featuring performances by the band and clips from its 1960s heyday.It ran for 15 shows on Broadway, then toured the country for several months. 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      The Weeknd’s ‘Avatar’ Anthem, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Rosalía and Cardi B, Saint Levant & Playyard, Little Simz and others.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.The Weeknd, ‘Nothing Is Lost (You Give Me Strength)’The mournful-yet-heroic tone of so many blockbuster soundtrack themes perfectly suits the Weeknd, who has made it his signature to merge pride, weakness, repentance and persistence. “I thought I could protect you from paying for my sins,” he sings, with quivering sincerity, in this song from “Avatar: The Way of Water.” He’s buttressed by a galloping, crashing, trance-adjacent beat and pulsing synthesizers from Swedish House Mafia, along with urgent strings and Balkan-tinged choral harmonies that are probably from the soundtrack’s composer, Simon Franglen. The song makes war, death, loyalty and love converge: “My love for you is greater than their armies and their powers from above,” the Weeknd vows. JON PARELESRosalía featuring Cardi B, ‘Despechá Rmx’Cardi B closes out her year of exuberant guest appearances with one final victory lap. As she did on GloRilla’s “Tomorrow 2” and Kay Flock’s “Shake It,” Cardi plays chameleon on this remix of Rosalía’s breezy “Despechá,” blending in with her surroundings while at the same time showing off her ample stylistic range. She sounds particularly unfettered on the second verse — “Don’t need your drama, don’t need your stress” — shifting into a weightless, breathy register to meet Rosalía’s soft touch. Cardi B saying “motomamis” does not quite top Cardi B saying “coronavirus,” but it comes close! LINDSAY ZOLADZDecisive Pink, ‘Haffmilch Holiday’Angel Deradoorian and Kate NV — two solo artists with a new collaborative project they call Decisive Pink — create a substantive, thoroughly hypnotic track out of what easily could have been a throwaway concept: an ode to their preferred German coffee shop order, the haffmilch. (“I don’t want a Frappuccino drowning in a caramel swirl,” Deradoorian insists; “Neither do I,” NV agrees.) Built on an insistent drum machine beat and prismatic layers of modular synths, the song gradually becomes something more expansive. “I just want silence, I want to play,” the two sing together on the chorus, as if setting a morning intention to cultivate creative exploration and independence throughout the coming day. “Dancing outside on the grass, my own holiday.” ZOLADZBarrie, ‘Doesn’t Really Matter’Barrie asks, politely but pointedly, “Won’t you take your hand off of my back?” as she begins “Doesn’t Really Matter.” Without a drumbeat — just guitars, bass, keyboards and stacked vocal harmonies that look back to the Beach Boys — Barrie pushes away unwanted advances with far more sweetness than they deserve. PARELESSaint Levant & Playyard, ‘I Guess’It’s one thing to go viral. Another thing to set out to go viral. Another thing to desire to go viral. And a whole other thing to make art predicated upon the very concept of virality, that seems to take the essence of shocking shareability as its raison d’être. Such was the case with Saint Levant’s “Very Few Friends” — or, rather, with the 10 or so seconds of it that became a TikTok sensation last month. Here’s Saint Levant sitting in a chair wearing a tank top, looking rakish and unhurried. Flowers (dead?) next to him. Pants tight, necklace dangling. Black Birkenstocks so you know he’s not pressed. His rapping, such as it is — very much in the mold of the Streets, or after-hours Drake, or Barry White intros — is almost comically erotic: intense eye contact, gratuitous detail, oily and damp. Twelve million TikTok views and counting: It did what it was meant to do. (The whole song, rapped in English, French and Arabic, works, too.)“I Guess” is Saint Levant’s follow-up, and he’s doubling down. Joined by Playyard, who rounds out the song with rangy, lithe R&B, Saint Levant remains committed to the bit. In the video, he stares so hard that the camera blushes. “Said I like the way that you talk to me/I like the way you go far for me,” he raps. “I like the way that you look in my eyes and say you wanna get on top of me.” The very light vocal wah-wahs in the background recall the gentleness of the Boyz II Men parts on LL Cool J’s “Hey Lover.” At every turn, there’s a caress waiting, even if it’s a gambit for affection: “I got a lot on my mind, and I gotta share the pain,” Saint Levant avers. The overall effect is viscous, heart-palpitating, spent. JON CARAMANICAFlorence + the Machine featuring Ethel Cain, ‘Morning Elvis’A live recording of the Florence song featuring Ethel Cain, who underscores and amplifies its gothic underbelly. Florence Welch’s singing is slightly more woozy on this version, but Cain moves the song from the realm of theater to the preserve of dreams. CARAMANICACentral Cee, ‘Let Go’The latest entry in the Year of Very Obvious Samples (or Interpolations) is the latest from Central Cee, already a contestant for his clever flip of “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” on “Doja.” “Let Go” doesn’t try quite as hard — it plays on the melancholy Passenger ballad “Let Her Go.” But the lyrics, about failing to get over a woman, are both vividly raunchy and also uncommonly wounded: “I don’t even take my socks off/And I don’t even know why I did it/As soon as I’m finished, I’m gettin’ them dropped off.” CARAMANICALittle Simz, ‘Gorilla’Words are weapons for the English rapper Little Simz, who has just surprise-released an album, “No Thank You.” In “Gorilla,” her delivery — as usual — is utterly deadpan and matter-of-fact, over a track that starts with a horn fanfare, narrows down to a bass-and-drums vamp and brings in a pushy string section, as she calmly asserts her dominance: “My art will be timeless/I don’t do limits.” PARELESAndy Shauf, ‘Catch Your Eye’A dreamlike serenity is undercut with unsettling desperation in “Catch Your Eye,” the latest single from the Canadian singer-songwriter Andy Shauf’s forthcoming album, “Norm.” “Words under my breath float through the ceiling,” he sings softly to an object of unrequited affection, as an airy synthesizer riff evaporates like smoke. “I need to meet you/I need to catch your eye.” ZOLADZ More