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      Frederick Swann, Master of the Pipe Organ, Is Dead at 91

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      He drew the best from complex instruments at Riverside Church in Manhattan, at countless recitals and on the “Hour of Power” TV show.Frederick Swann, who in churches on the East Coast and the West played some of the world’s grandest organs, performing classical and religious works on the complex instruments with sensitivity and technical skill, died on Nov. 13 at his home in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 91.The cause was cancer, said Karen McFarlane Holtkamp, who was Mr. Swann’s secretary in the 1960s and ’70s and then his concert manager.Mr. Swann was well known in New York as organist and music director at Riverside Church in Manhattan, where he began playing in the 1950s.In 1982 he reached a much wider audience when he moved to the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., home base of the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, the television evangelist. There he appeared each week on “Hour of Power,” one of the most widely watched religious programs in the country, with a viewership in the millions.Before retiring in 2001, he also served for three years as organist at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, which has one of the largest pipe organs in the world. He also played thousands of recitals all over the United States and beyond.That was no easy feat. Large pipe organs require much more than just keyboard dexterity, and each one is different. The acoustics in each church or hall also vary.“Fred was a genius at controlling and maximizing the potential of very large pipe organs,” the organist John Walker, who succeeded Mr. Swann as music director at Riverside, said in a phone interview. “Every organ is absolutely unique. They are custom-made works of art, and Fred was so uniquely skilled at uncovering the timbres in each instrument that he was regularly invited to give inaugural recitals” — that is, the first public performance on a new or rebuilt organ.Mr. Swann at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., home base of the television evangelist Robert H. Schuller, where he moved in 1982.Al Schaben/Los Angeles Times, via Getty ImagesHe filled that role in 2004 for the formidable organ at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, a 6,134-pipe instrument designed by Frank Gehry. His program that night included pieces by Bach, Mendelssohn and Josef Rheinberger.“In all three,” Mark Swed wrote in a review in The Los Angeles Times, “the stirring deep pedal tones produced a sonic weight that seemed to anchor the entire building, while the upper diapason notes were clear and warm. The delicate echo effects in the slow movement of Mendelssohn’s sonata spoke magically, as if coming from the garden outdoors.”Ms. Holtkamp noted that, at Riverside and other stops, Mr. Swann was choral director as well as organist; it was not uncommon to see him playing and conducting at the same time. His energy, she said, was boundless. She recalled one Sunday on which he played and directed the morning service at Riverside, played and conducted a portion of the Messiah at the church in the late afternoon, then headed to Lincoln Center to accompany the “Messiah Sing-In.”“How Fred did so much so well in one day still amazes me,” she said by email. “I was totally worn out and I was only the page-turner!”Mr. Walker said that Mr. Swann held four centuries’ worth of music in his head and generally played from memory. He played recitals of all kinds, sometimes as the featured attraction and sometimes accompanying a vocalist, and released numerous albums. Mr. Walker said his playing for religious services was particularly poignant.“In playing a hymn,” he said, “he would be able to express the meaning of an individual word in such a poignant way that I would just immediately tear up.”Frederick Lewis Swann was born on July 30, 1931, in Lewisburg, W.Va. His father, Theodore, was a Methodist minister, and his mother, Mary (Davis) Swann, was a homemaker.Mr. Swann said he pounded on the family piano so much as a toddler that his parents locked it.“Of course,” he told The Diapason, a publication about organs, in 2014, “any 3-year-old can figure out how to get into a piano if he really wants to, and I did.”When he was 5 his parents arranged for him to take piano lessons from the organist at a nearby church. One day he arrived for his lesson and the teacher wasn’t waiting at the piano; he found her at the organ console, practicing.“I was hypnotized watching things popping in and out,” he said. “Lights were flashing, her hands and feet were flying, and I thought, ‘Oh my, that looks like fun.’”His legs weren’t yet long enough to reach the pedals, but eventually she began teaching him the organ — which was lucky, because when he was 10 the organist at his father’s church died, and there was no one else to step in but young Fred.“It must have been simply awful,” he admitted, “but that’s how I got started at age 10, and I’ve just kept on.”He earned a bachelor’s degree in music at Northwestern University in Illinois in 1952 and two years later received a master’s degree in sacred music at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He first played the Riverside organ while still a student. He also played at other Manhattan churches — sometimes, he said, he would provide music at four different churches on the same Sunday.After two years in the Army, he began playing full time at Riverside in 1958. Eventually he became music director. A tribute on the Riverside website noted his role in helping to shape the sound of the church’s organ, a famed instrument.Mr. Swann in 2006 at Riverside Church for a 75th anniversary celebration. He began playing there in the 1950s and served as organist and music director.Nan Melville for The New York Times“Although the organ was originally commissioned under the direction of Virgil Fox, Fred Swann was also on staff at the time of the installation of the organ in the mid-1950s,” it said. “In the succeeding years as director of music he oversaw a complete redesign of the organ console and supervised the organ’s expansion and tonal development. As such, he and those he worked with are responsible for the renowned instrument we hear today.”Mr. Swann acknowledged that his departure from Riverside for the West Coast and the Schuller church in 1982 was viewed with disdain by some of his colleagues.“They thought I had lost my mind because I had this beautiful Gothic cathedral, with a magnificent organ and a professional choir and really a lot of recognition as a church that set the standards in music,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1998.The Schuller services, in contrast, were known for their showiness and their hodgepodge of musical styles — a service might include a choral number and a country song. Mr. Swann elevated the musical content considerably, but he also broadened his own views.“I feel like we’ve all benefited,” he told The Orange County Register of California in 1987. The challenge of adjusting to a new type of service appealed to him, he said. It also helped that the Crystal Cathedral had an impressive organ.“It goes from barely audible to oh-my-gosh thunderous,” he told The Register in 2013.(The Crystal Cathedral was sold after Mr. Schuller’s ministry went bankrupt and reopened as a Roman Catholic church, Christ Cathedral, in 2019.)Mr. Swann was married briefly to Mina Belle Packer in the 1950s. He is survived by his partner of 64 years, George Dickey.Mr. Swann was active in the American Guild of Organists, serving as its president for six years beginning in 2002, and was a mentor to many younger players, including Mr. Walker.“Most of what I know about how to play a church service I learned from standing next to Fred,” Mr. Walker said.He was also known for his sense of humor, which was often on display in his chats with recital audiences. One time, Mr. Walker said, while giving the inaugural performance on an organ in Dallas, he was vexed by a “cipher” — a pipe that, because of a malfunction, refused to stop playing.“New organs are just like new babies,” he explained to the audience. “They behave just fine until you take them out in public.” More

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      Review: Dancing to Tears for Fears, Until They’re Worn Out

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      The Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat presents “LOVETRAIN2020,” a work set to hits by the British duo, for his company’s Brooklyn Academy of Music debut.It’s true that we are living in a very, very mad world, as the Tears for Fears song goes, surrounded by “worn-out places, worn-out faces.” It’s also true enough that the faces of the dancers in Emanuel Gat’s “LOVETRAIN2020,” set to songs by the British duo, are strangely worn away, too. What’s the difference? Their faded, washed-out expressions are not the result of stress and hardship, but by two enduring tricks of the theater: lights and fog.Sometimes a confluence of music and dance is the tonic you didn’t know you needed. When the show began — “Ideas as Opiates” flowing into “The Prisoner” and, a bit later, “Mad World” — what came with it was the sensation of a fresh surprise, a flamboyant dance in the form of an encouraging pick-me-up. Sadly, that feeling didn’t last long. Gat’s train started to stutter midway through, and by the end, even the dancers’ joyful twirls and smiles couldn’t disguise that it had conked out.For its Brooklyn Academy of Music debut on Thursday, Emanuel Gat Dance made for a striking sight initially as its 14 members, draped in Thomas Bradley’s textural costumes — voluminous and elegant, shape-shifting and fantastical — slowly took over the stage. They created a glittering community, a world in which it seemed like the past was facing its future.The stage, too, glowing in a chiaroscuro treatment of light and shadows, had a way of transporting the landscape into a painting, just as it transformed the dancers, dripping in fabric, from two-dimensional silhouettes — they entered from the back of a hazy stage through narrow panels and stood with their backs to us — into moving sculptures. Their skin was luminous, their taut muscles sinewy.Often, there was push and pull between the rhythm of the music and pace of the dancing; sometimes Gat rejected the beat, and in other moments, embraced it. In one scene, a soloist contorted his body ever-so-slowly at the front of the stage, while a row of dancers were planted behind him, shifting from side to side in a basic step touch while arranging their arms in unison positions: up in the air, one elbow bent, one hand behind the head. It had a certain groove.But gradually it became clear that there was little beneath the ornate mood-board appeal of “LOVETRAIN” to warrant its length. The dancers’ physicality was arresting as they torqued their backs and torsos, melting onto the floor and swooping back up again with a feverish vivacity. Yet as Gat’s groupings persisted — a trio here, a more concentrated cluster there, a lone dancer running into the center of it all to deliver a little wiggle — the repetitiveness of their high kicks, raveling and unraveling arms and speedy, purposeful walks on and off the stage started to blur together.The dusky lighting, so startling at first, became increasingly murky. And Gat’s frequent silent sections — initially giving the setting a kind of haunting, heartbreaking poignancy — turned ponderous. In those quiet moments, I yearned for another Tears for Fears song until I realized just how repetitive “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is. Don’t even get me started on “Shout.” Was this a missed opportunity, or is Tears for Fears music for the elliptical?But why did this dance happen in the first place? Gat, an Israeli choreographer who formed his company in Tel Aviv — it is now based in France — created it during the darker moments of the pandemic, when audiences needed a release. The world was crying. His musical choice made sense: Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, of Tears for Fears, met in Bath, England, when they were 13 and living in single-parent homes, according to a program note. They named their band after the concept of primal therapy, which focuses, in part, on repressed emotions from childhood: Tears are a replacement for fears.As the show progresses, emotions build through the songs’ lyrics and the dancers’ silky, sinuous power, but Gat’s choreographic frame is too tenuous. Dancers, full of finesse and drive but little urgency, travel up and down the same diagonal; they gesture toward the audience with outstretched, beckoning hands. They rarely seem to be dancing on a precipice.Doesn’t surviving — and dancing through a pandemic — take courage? “LOVETRAIN” is neither daring nor especially passionate. It’s a look. The lighting, by Gat with technical direction and supervision by Guillaume Février, is the show, and the choreography, trapped in a haze of lights and fabric, never rises above it.Emanuel Gat DanceThrough Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; bam.org More

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      Review: J’Nai Bridges Brings Her Splendid Sound to an Eclectic Recital

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      The mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges performed at the 92nd Street Y, joined by the pianist Mark Markham and the Catalyst Quartet.Some singers simply have a voice built for the stage — an instrument whose particular blend of color, vibrancy and volume is best heard live. The mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges is one of them.When she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, as Nefertiti in the company premiere of Philip Glass’s “Akhnaten” in 2019, she loosed a luscious voice as opulent and seamless as the regal fabric of her costumes.Then, when the pandemic closed arts venues worldwide the following year, Bridges participated in the ad hoc streaming industry. Recorded audio, though, can flatten or harden some voices, and a rich sound like Bridges’s comes to life in a resonant auditorium.On Thursday, she gave a recital at the 92nd Street Y, with the pianist Mark Markham and the Catalyst Quartet. Her program, varied yet concise, drew from the work of Black and Hispanic composers — an eclectic repertoire that could not easily accommodate her splendid sound.She opened with a galvanizing spiritual, “Every Time I Feel the Spirit,” which set an affirming tone. The opening phrases emerged from a smoky contralto register, and her middle voice, warm and velvety, pealed forth with immediacy. Her switch into an operatic style for her high notes felt prim, an imperfect melding of different vocal techniques. She followed with Carlos Simon’s setting of the Langston Hughes poem “Prayer”; in a performance seething with irony yet propelled by earnestness, she urged the audience to embrace “the sick, the depraved, the desperate, the tired,” whom she gathered up herself with a lavish, generous tone.In the middle part of her program, Bridges sang Jimmy López Bellido’s “Airs for Mother,” a world premiere for voice and string quartet; an aria from López Bellido’s opera “Bel Canto,” which she has performed onstage in Chicago; and Manuel de Falla’s “Seven Popular Spanish Songs,” among the most well-known and beloved Spanish-language art songs.Her voice bursting with color but sometimes flagging in the middle or end of phrases, Bridges overwhelmed the dimensions of “Airs for Mother” and the Falla songs but also didn’t consistently commit to her choices.López Bellido wrote the text as well as the music of “Airs for Mother,” tracing a simple, impactful narrative from a child’s awe at her life to an adult’s devastation at her loss. Even though the piece felt quasi-operatic, with recitative, climactic high notes, dramatic flourishes and string tremolos, Bridges overwhelmed the quartet’s slender, glimmering sound with her plush, powerful singing.Bridges performed the López and Falla selections with a music stand, making her seem earthbound. And Markham, a warm collaborator at the piano, was more supportive than secure in his parts.But the evening snapped into focus with John Carter’s “Cantata,” a five-part suite that honors the tradition of spirituals by elaborating on several as contemporary art songs. Originally written for the majestic soprano Leontyne Price, it firmly occupies a classical idiom, with a bravura ending so obviously crafted for her shimmery upper register that it sounds like a plaster cast of her voice.Bridges, finding in “Cantata” a piece that suits her, gave an electrifying performance. There were no gear shifts in technique, and her voice sounded taut with intention. Flinging her arms wide, she took flight.J’Nai BridgesPerformed on Thursday at the 92nd Street Y, Manhattan. More

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      Review: A Shostakovich Symphony Finally Reaches the Philharmonic

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      The composer’s 12th, from 1961, is being played by the orchestra for the first time under the conductor Rafael Payare, also making his debut.When the stirring central tune of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 12 first emerges, a few minutes into the piece, it’s very soft in the cellos and basses. The model for this moment is clear: Very softly, in the cellos and basses, is how the “Ode to Joy” is introduced in Beethoven’s Ninth.Beethoven’s Ninth, of course, is at the center of the repertory, while Shostakovich’s 12th, “The Year 1917,” had never been played by the New York Philharmonic before Thursday, when it was a vehicle for the conductor Rafael Payare’s debut with the orchestra at David Geffen Hall.Why has this symphony been neglected? Shostakovich’s reputation in the West, even after the Cold War ended, was founded on a sense of him as a kind of dissident of the heart, his music covertly opposed to the Soviet regime he outwardly served — or at least attempted to make peace with.But it’s hard to find ambivalence or coded irony in the 12th, which tells a triumphal tale of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and is dedicated to that struggle’s hero, Lenin. It premiered in 1961, a year after its composer finally joined the Communist Party. (How willingly he joined is one of the many questions that persist, unanswerable, about his true beliefs, and so about the relationship between his music and the dangerous political situation he faced.)Unlike his 11th Symphony from a few years before, into which some read secret sympathies with the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary, there seems to be little in the 12th but positivity; even in quieter moments, blazing victory is never far away. I suppose the dark undercurrent that briefly pursues Lenin in his countryside hiding place outside St. Petersburg in the second movement could also suggest the fear Shostakovich might have felt. But here, that feels like a reach.The 12th wouldn’t, at this point, need to be disqualified from programs merely for being sincerely created propaganda — though I wouldn’t follow the program note’s glib assurance that we can forget the historical context, since “‘The Year 1917’ was over a century ago, and the Soviet Union is gone.” Tell that to the current president of Russia.It was valuable to get a chance to hear this symphony live, but it does come off a bit repetitive and thin, however wearyingly loud and dense it gets. You will not want to hear that earworm central tune again.In 40 minutes — its four movements flowing together without pause, and revolutionary songs quoted liberally throughout — the piece depicts a Petersburg (then Petrograd) simmering with chaos and tension, ready for battle; then Lenin’s retreat to plan his next move; the thunderous beginning of the revolution; and “The Dawn of Humanity,” the fortissimo, major-key utopia of Soviet life.It’s not the fault of Payare, 42, the music director of the San Diego Symphony and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, that it’s difficult to build tension in those final 10 minutes or so, which manage to be both relentless and fitful.His neat, spirited rendition of the work didn’t stint the mellower second movement, in which successive solos — the bassoonist Judith LeClair, the clarinetist Anthony McGill, the trombonist Colin Williams — advanced an atmosphere of doleful meditation. The Philharmonic seems to be steadily acclimating to its newly renovated hall, though the brasses remain extremely bright-sounding at full force, sharpened rather than golden.As the orchestra’s music director, Jaap van Zweden, regularly shows, a conducting style that fits the punchy extremity of Shostakovich is not always right for Beethoven, whose Piano Concerto No. 2 was overemphatic and sluggish on Thursday, particularly in a plodding Adagio. The veteran soloist, Emanuel Ax, seemed to be searching for a middle ground between his pearly geniality and Payare’s starker phrasing, and the results sounded unsettled. Ax seemed more suavely at ease in his encore, Liszt’s arrangement of Schubert’s “Ständchen.”The concert opened with another Philharmonic premiere, William Grant Still’s brooding “Darker America” (1924), an ambiguous, 13-minute dreamscape of haziness, low-slung blues and a subdued conclusion.This was the first time the orchestra has put Still’s work on a subscription program in over 20 years, and it will be followed in March by his Symphony No. 2, “Song of a New Race.” To hear so much new to this ensemble — even Beethoven’s Second, while hardly a rarity, is probably the least played of his piano concertos — is a heartening sign of searching artistic leadership.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Doing It Again: Spears Songs and Fairy Tale Characters, Now for Broadway

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      “Once Upon a One More Time” plans to open on Broadway next summer.“Once Upon a One More Time,” a new musical combining songs popularized by Britney Spears with a revisionist take on classic fairy tales, plans to open on Broadway next summer.If the concept sounds familiar, that’s because some of its elements echo those of other Broadway shows: The new musical “& Juliet” is a revisionist take on Shakespeare that includes several songs popularized by Spears (“Oops! … I Did It Again” is featured in both shows); the musical “Into the Woods” posits new ways of seeing fairy tale characters (including Cinderella, who is in both shows); and giving new agency to famous female figures is at the heart of “Wicked,” “Six” and the upcoming “Bad Cinderella” (which, obviously, also features the slippery-slippered young woman).“Once Upon a One More Time” imagines a sort of book club of fairy tale women who read “The Feminine Mystique” (yes, the Betty Friedan feminist classic) and are inspired to rethink their happily-ever-afters.The show has been in development for years, backed by James L. Nederlander, the president of the Nederlander Organization, which owns or operates nine Broadway theaters. The show has had its share of turnover and tumult — several different directors have been attached over time, an announced out-of-town production in Chicago was delayed and then canceled, and a production last winter at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington was greeted by sold-out-audiences but unimpressed critics.Now, the show is ready for its next chapter.The producers of “Once Upon a One More Time” said Friday that the show will begin performances May 13 and open June 22 at the Nederlanders’ Marquis Theater. Those dates mean that the show will be part of the next theater season — not this one. (Summer openings are unusual but not unheard-of on Broadway: A musical adaptation of “Back to the Future” is also planning to open next summer.)“Once Upon a One More Time” is being directed by Keone and Mari Madrid, a married hip-hop dance team making their Broadway debuts, assisted by the British director David Leveaux, a five-time Tony nominee who is credited as a creative consultant. The show features a book by Jon Hartmere, who previously wrote the screenplay for “The Upside” and was one of the writers of the Off Broadway musical “Bare.”The musical is being produced by Nederlander and Hunter Arnold; it is being capitalized for $20 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Spears’s fan club is being given first access to tickets. More

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      A Drummer Showing the Way to ‘the Freest Musical Universe’

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      BUENOS AIRES — The crowd at a recent concert exploded into rapturous cries as the group’s frontman walked onto the stage and began setting a drum beat, launching his band on an improvised journey across musical genres that culminated an hour later in a standing ovation.Over a 30-year career, Miguel Tomasín has released more than 100 albums, helped turn his Argentine band into one of South America’s most influential underground acts, and helped hundreds of people with disabilities express their voices through music.Mr. Tomasín has achieved this in part because of a distinctive artistic vision that comes, his family, fellow musicians and friends said, from having been born with Down syndrome. His story, they say, shows how art can help someone overcome social barriers, and what can happen with an effort to elevate a person’s talents, rather than focusing on their limitations.“We make music so that people enjoy it,” Mr. Tomasín said in an interview at his home in the windswept Argentine city of Rio Gallegos, near the country’s southern tip. Music is “the best, magical,” he added.Though his prolific output has not achieved commercial success, it has had a significant impact on how people with disabilities are perceived in Argentina and beyond.At a recent sold-out Reynols concert in Buenos Aires, Miguel Tomasín sang and played all the instruments on the stage in front of 600 fans.Video by Centro Cultural KirchnerIt has also inspired members of his band, Reynols, to establish long-running music workshops for people with disabilities. And other musicians they have worked with have started more bands whose members include those with developmental disabilities.“Thanks to Miguel, many people who had never interacted with a person with Down syndrome were able to become aware of their world through music,” said Patricio Conlazo, an occasional Reynols member who, after playing with Mr. Tomasín, started music projects for people with disabilities in southern Argentina.Reynols’s unconventional approach to music has also inspired established musicians.“I was reminded by him that you can play music as you like,” said Mitsuru Tabata, a veteran Japanese experimental musician who has recorded with Reynols.But the band’s freewheeling sound has its detractors, too.A prominent British music journalist, Ben Watson, called their music “annoying racket,” in his 2010 book “Honesty Is Explosive!” where he suggested that Mr. Tomasín’s presence in the band was a publicity stunt.The members of Reynols, from left; Alan Courtis, Patricio Conlazo, Mr. Tomasín and Roberto Conlazo in their dressing room before a concert in Buenos Aires.Mr. Tomasín playing the drums during the concert in Buenos Aires.In its first years, the band struggled to find venues and labels interested in their improvisational sound. A turning point came nearly a quarter century ago, in 1998, when they unexpectedly became a house band on an Argentine public television program, which exposed them to a new audience.The job made Mr. Tomasín the first Argentine with Down syndrome to be employed by a national broadcaster.“It was revolutionary, because people with these conditions were largely hidden from public view,” said Claudio Canali, who helped produce the program.A New York Times reporter and a photographer spent a week in Argentina to interview Mr. Tomasín and document his life, both in Buenos Aires and Rio Gallegos. Mr. Tomasín speaks in short phrases that are largely understandable to a Spanish speaker, but sometimes require an accompanying relative to put them in context.Mr. Tomasín is 58, though, like many other artists he lowers his age, insisting he is 54.He was born in Buenos Aires, the second of three children of middle-class parents. His father was a Navy captain, his mother a fine arts graduate who stayed home to raise the children.In the 1960s, most Argentine families sent children with Down syndrome to special boarding schools, which in practice were little more than asylums, according to his younger sister, Jorgelina Tomasín.After visiting several of them, his parents decided to raise Mr. Tomasín at home, where he was treated no differently than his siblings.Mr. Tomasín posing with a fan after the show in Buenos Aires.Mr. Tomasín improvising on the piano while wearing his favorite Reynols T-shirt.He started showing interest in sounds as a toddler, banging on kitchen pots and playing with a family piano, prompting his grandparents to buy him a toy drum kit.Later, after coming home from school, Mr. Tomasín would go straight to his room and play all three cassettes that he owned from beginning to end, making the crooners Julio Iglesias and Palito Ortega an inescapable house presence for years, Ms. Tomasín said.By the early 1990s, the close-knit household began to separate, as his siblings grew up and left home, leaving Mr. Tomasín, by then a young adult, feeling isolated.To fill the void, his parents decided to send him to a music school, but struggled to find one that would accept him.One day, in 1993, they tried an unassuming place they came across while shopping in their Buenos Aires neighborhood, the School for the Comprehensive Formation of Musicians, which was run by young avant-garde rockers who taught classes to subsidize their rehearsal space.“‘Hi, I’m Miguel, a great famous drummer,’” Roberto Conlazo, who ran the school with his brother Patricio, recalled Mr. Tomasín saying at their introduction, despite his having never, up to that point, touched a professional drum kit.Mr. Tomasín checking his drums.From left, Patricio Conlazo Mr. Tomasín and Roberto Conlazo during a rehearsal.The school became an unexpected artistic home for Mr. Tomasín. In a country that remains deeply divided by the legacy of a military dictatorship and a Marxist insurgency, it was rare for a military family to even associate with bohemian artists, let alone entrust a child with them.But Mr. Tomasín’s family and the artists ended up becoming lifelong friends, an early example of how his lack of social prejudices has influenced others to reconsider long-held assumptions. His spontaneity and lack of insecurities made Mr. Tomasín a natural improviser, and an ideal fit for the school’s goal to create music without preconceived ideas.“We were looking for the freest musical universe possible,” said Alan Courtis, who taught at the school. “Miguel became the alarm that woke up the dormant side of our brains.”Roberto Conlazo and Mr. Courtis had already been playing in a group that eventually would become Reynols, a name loosely inspired by Burt Reynolds.After giving Mr. Tomasín some drumming lessons, they decided to bring him into the band. Their collaboration, however, got off to an uncertain start.Mr. Tomasín in the dining room at his brother’s home in Rio Gallegos, Argentina.Mr. Tomasín with his brother, Juan Mario Tomasín, and a neighborhood dog on the banks of the Rio Gallegos River.During one of their first shows, in 1994, a crowd of high school students broke into a mosh pit, which Mr. Courtis and Roberto Conlazo stoked by spraying deodorant into the audience’s faces, pulling out guitar strings with pincers and emitting bloodcurdling noise from primitive loudspeakers.When Mr. Tomasín’s father, Jorge Tomasín, approached the band after the show, they were resigned to never seeing Miguel again, sure his father would disapprove.“‘Lads, I didn’t understand a lot of what you played,” Roberto Conlazo recalled the father saying, “‘but I saw Miguel very happy. So go right ahead.’”Those words were a green light for the ensuing three decades of creativity that has produced around 120 albums, American and European tours, and collaborations with some of the world’s most respected experimental musicians. Reynols splits proceeds from shows and music sales equally, making Mr. Tomasín one of the few professional musicians with Down syndrome in the world.The band first came to broad national attention with the afternoon TV gig. A popular host, Dr. Mario Socolinsky, had interviewed Reynols on his daytime program, “Good Afternoon Health,” in which he gave health tips. Impressed with Mr. Tomasín’s integration into the band, he invited them to be the show’s house musicians, giving Reynols an unlikely job of playing to a mainstream audience five times a week for a year.Reynols’s next break came in 2001, when Mr. Courtis and Roberto Conlazo went on the band’s first U.S. tour. Although Mr. Tomasín decided not to join them, the tour introduced his work to the global underground music network that has supported the band’s subsequent career.Mr. Tomasín playing guitar during a concert.Juan Mario Tomasín, left, Miguel’s brother, and his bandmate Patricio Conlazo after a rehearsal.In the following years, the band’s focus on improvisation drove its extraordinary output of albums. Because each jam session with Mr. Tomasín could result in a different sound, the band has released dozens of them as albums on small record labels in runs of a few hundred copies.After seeing Mr. Tomasín’s performance on TV, families across Argentina started contacting the band, asking them to teach music to their children with disabilities. That led Mr. Courtis and Roberto and Patricio Conlazo to create a collective, called Sol Mayor, which brought together people with various physical and developmental disabilities to play music.Their approach, they believe, puts a spotlight on the beauty of music that does not follow Western norms, like playing in an octave scale.Inspired by work with Reynols, other musicians have started bands for people with disabilities in Norway and France.“We make music so that people enjoy it,” Mr. Tomasín said. Music is “the best, magical,” he added.Mr. Tomasín in his bedroom at his brother’s family home in Rio Gallegos.Mr. Tomasín’s family say they were able to give him the support to develop his creativity thanks in part to their relatively well-off economic position, acknowledging the social inequalities that prevent many people with disabilities from reaching their potential.At a recent sold-out Reynols concert in Buenos Aires, Mr. Tomasín sang and played all the instruments on the stage in front of 600 fans, posing for selfies with admirers after the show.Earlier this year, Mr. Tomasín moved from Buenos Aires to Rio Gallegos to live with his brother Juan Mario, a former Army officer who now teaches English. In the afternoons, Mr. Tomasín dances to Argentine folk music, cooks and gardens at a local center for people with disabilities, often wearing his favorite Reynols T-shirt.Mr. Tomasín’s bandmates say one of his greatest gifts is helping people become better versions of themselves without even being aware of his influence.“He teaches without teaching, by simply enjoying his life,” Roberto Conlazo said.Mr. Tomasín’s big plan for the near future is to stage a concert in his new town, bringing his bandmates from Buenos Aires, 1,600 miles away, and inviting his new friends.“Let them come to my school,” he said, “so we can all play together.”Mr. Tomasín participating in a folk dance class at the René Vargas Day Center in Rio Gallegos.Hisako Ueno More

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      At 26, the Conductor Klaus Mäkelä’s Star Keeps Rising

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      Having assumed the podium of three major orchestras and appeared on the world’s prestigious stages, he debuts next at the New York Philharmonic.AMSTERDAM — It’s impossible for an artist to avoid making an entrance at the Concertgebouw, one of the world’s most storied spaces for classical music.Double doors behind the stage are flung open, making way for a soloist or conductor to descend a flight of steps leading to the spotlight. When Klaus Mäkelä, a sharply dressed young Finnish maestro, did so on a Friday night in August, he was greeted with the kind of applause typically reserved for the end of a concert. With each stride, the ovation became stronger until, as he stood at the podium, the audience let out a sustained cheer.“That was amazing,” Mäkelä said in an interview later. “It feels like an eternity, to walk down to the stage, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt the warmth of an audience in that way.”You could understand the enthusiasm. The house band, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, had been without a chief conductor since Daniele Gatti was abruptly dismissed over sexual assault allegations in 2018. After years of guest batons and speculation, the news had come at last in June that Mäkelä, just 26, would take the podium. This night was his first appearance since the announcement.Mäkelä, perhaps the fastest-rising conductor of his generation — beloved by players and administrators, if not always by critics — already leads two orchestras, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris. When he accepted the job here in Amsterdam, it was as “artistic partner,” a title he will hold until he officially becomes chief conductor in 2027, when his contracts with the other groups expire.Mäkelä conducting the Orchestre de Paris. “I haven’t found someone in the orchestra with something bad to say,” Nikola Nikolov, a violinist in the ensemble, said.Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut that is bureaucratic speak for what is effectively the beginning of his tenure, with a starting commitment of five weeks this season. That’s on top of guest appearances that will add to his résumé of prestigious ensembles like those in Berlin, Vienna, Chicago and Cleveland; next up is the New York Philharmonic, where Mäkelä makes his debut on Dec. 8, leading a contemporary work by Jimmy López Bellido and symphonies by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky.Again, he is 26.But age has virtually never been a barrier, neither to his ambition nor to the way older colleagues regard him. Christian van Eggelen, a first violin in the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the chair of the group’s artistic committee, described Mäkelä’s first visit to the hall as “love at first sight.”“He was 24, and the second-youngest person onstage,” van Eggelen added. “Yet after three minutes, it was very clear that we were dealing with the most precocious conducting talent that we’ve seen in the past 50 or 75 years.”MÄKELÄ WAS BORN in Helsinki to music teacher parents — his father, cello, and his mother, piano. They both had students who attended a local German school, and decided to enroll Klaus there as well.“Everyone who went there was very efficient,” Mäkelä said, as he often does, with a wide smile but soft tone. “So they must have thought the same would happen to me.”The school might have taught discipline, but Mäkelä was already, in his words, a very nerdy child. He listened to the works of specific composers obsessively like immersive projects, and happily practiced his cello and sang in choruses, including in “Carmen” at the Finnish National Opera. It was there, backstage and watching the conductor on the monitor, that he first had the urge to pick up a baton.“I remember that we all had free ice cream,” he recalled. “But I also remember that I was completely mesmerized. I think it was the music, but also that the conductor was able to play all of this, which is a kind of instrument on a large scale.”His primary focus, though, was still the cello, which brought him to the famed Sibelius Academy’s youth department. While there, he made it into a conducting class with Jorma Panula, the teacher of luminaries like Susanna Mälkki, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Osmo Vänskä.“He had a very specific taste, which is that less is more,” Mäkelä said of Panula. “We all had to be able to conduct without moving at all. And then after that, we could do whatever we wanted. Conducting isn’t very difficult; one can learn it very quickly. But we never learned that. He never lectured, but instead felt us out. I think that was just his way of being: asking questions and always searching.”When the time came to attend the Sibelius Academy proper, Mäkelä continued with cello — though he never graduated — and played in the Helsinki Philharmonic, under conductors including Mälkki. That orchestra, no minor ensemble, was the first to ask him to conduct. From there, the invitations flooded in.By 20 — a time he refers to in conversation as “when I was younger” — he had an agent, the classical music power broker Jasper Parrott, and began to put a personal stamp on the programs he conducted. His championed the works of Jimmy López Bellido, whose name continues to dot Mäkelä’s concert calendar.A breakthrough came when he took the podium of the Oslo Philharmonic, in 2020. That orchestra, Mäkelä said, “feels like my baby.” The ensemble had offered him the job of chief conductor after only one visit; it’s a relationship, he added, that “started with this crazy trust, but has been one of the most fruitful things of my life.”Principally, it has led to an ambitious recording project of Sibelius’s complete symphonies, released this year on Decca. (Mäkelä is only the third conductor in the label’s history to have an exclusive contract.) The cycle reveals a lot about the strengths and shortcomings of Mäkelä’s career so far. Reviewers found it to be an uneven account, both glorious and forgettable, with what David Allen in The New York Times called “ups and downs” that were “sensationally played throughout.”That last part is essential to characterizing Mäkelä’s style. He elicits clean, skillful playing. And he falls somewhere between those conductors known for unfamiliar, occasionally counterintuitive readings of repertory classics — like Teodor Currentzis or Santtu-Matias Rouvali — and those who prioritize composer intentions with little need for additional insight. His performances are rarely sensational, nor do they seem to strive for novel arguments; yet they are unwaveringly honest and deferential to the score.“Maybe that’s the only moment where one could say, maybe, he is young,” van Eggelen said. “He doesn’t turn a score around and search for things to prove himself. What is noticeable is that there is this search for colors and the meaning of these different colors. Nothing’s dogmatic, though. It is, simply put, extremely pleasurable to work with him.”That was the feeling, too, at the Orchestra de Paris, which hired Mäkelä in 2020. (Together, they will be in residence at the Aix-en-Provence Festival next summer, with a triptych of Stravinsky scores for the Ballets Russes, and in a coming season as the pit orchestra in a new “Frau Ohne Schatten” directed by Barrie Kosky.) Nikola Nikolov, a violinist in the ensemble, said in an interview translated from French that although the players initially had doubts about him because of his age, they were quickly won over. Mäkelä, he added, doesn’t make aggressively distinct choices but comes with a clear interpretation and executes it with exactitude.“I haven’t found someone in the orchestra with something bad to say,” Nikolov said. “Klaus has confidence in people, and in this way he is a good conductor.”Mäkelä is also, players have said, remarkably efficient in rehearsals. His phrasing is direct without being dictatorial, and he doesn’t leave musicians waiting. “There are conductors who flip through pages when we are done,” Nikolov said. “Him, never. He always knows what he wants to talk about, and what he wants to say. That’s magic.”That is one reason Mäkelä attracts admirers among musicians in both Europe and the United States, where he first played with the Minnesota Orchestra but has developed steadier relationships with the Chicago Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra. In Cleveland, he debuted at a summer Blossom Music Festival concert but made a more spectacular impression filling in last minute for Jaap van Zweden in a program that culminated with Beethoven’s Seventh.Mäkelä isn’t sure what he will do when his contracts expire in Oslo and Paris. “I love them both to death,” he said, “and they’ve been teaching me so much.”Melissa Schriek for The New York TimesThe Clevelanders, musicians who are not easily impressed, took a quick liking to him. So did the local press; The Plain Dealer’s review of the Beethoven performance began, “Let there be a substitute every week, if every substitute can be like conductor Klaus Mäkelä.” He is the only guest with a two-week engagement there this season.Speculators may already be wondering whether there’s more of a future in Cleveland for Mäkelä if that orchestra’s music director, Franz Welser-Möst, departs at the end of his contract in 2027, after what will have been 25 years with the ensemble. But for now, Mäkelä would prefer to keep his attention on the orchestras he already has.HIS CONCERTGEBOUW DEBUT took place in an empty hall during the pandemic. Van Eggelen recalled that the orchestra had braced itself for Mäkelä’s arrival, being told to “watch out, apparently he’s amazing.” Mostly, van Eggelen said, the first rehearsal felt more like a homecoming than a visit from a star. “It was a way of working which we recognized, which brought us back to how wanted to be,” he said. “He was meticulous and at the same time let things go and let us make music. This combination of precision, which you need in our hall, and freedom — that was something that shook the whole orchestra up.”Chief conductors at the Concertgebouw Orchestra are elected by the players, who were in no rush to make a decision until they found what felt like a right fit. Other names had been in circulation, but a vote came quickly for Mäkelä because, as van Eggelen said, “there was an absolute, North Korean majority preference for Klaus.” They only had to offer him the post.That happened during the lockdown days of early 2021 in Paris. Mäkelä was preparing a concert there, keeping to himself because of a curfew. With only a small window of opportunity, a delegation from the Concertgebouw Orchestra went to Paris and had dinner with him. Afterward, back at the hotel, they emptied their minibars and knocked on Mäkelä’s door. Inside, they asked whether he would take the job.Thus began, Mäkelä said, a nearly year-and-a-half-long negotiation over how to keep his two orchestras while taking on Amsterdam. Eventually, they arrived at the plan to spend five years with him as artistic partner until 2027, with a commitment of five seasons as chief conductor to follow. Mäkelä had yet to play before a live audience at the Concertgebouw, but the orchestra had invested in a decade with him.The audience did finally come, that night in August, for a meaty program of Kaija Saariaho’s “Orion” and Mahler’s 80-minute Sixth Symphony. The rehearsals hadn’t been perfect, and the players were just returning from a summer holiday, but Mäkelä wasn’t worried. “They are concert animals,” he said. And he had felt as though he had been studying the Mahler, in some way, his whole life.Lifting his baton, Mäkelä said, he didn’t feel like the “cool cucumber” he appeared to be from the audience. But he relaxed the moment the Saariaho began. The evening was typical of his performances: accomplished without being overly assertive; legible and restrained with an eye toward explosive climaxes. By the end of the Mahler, the audience was even more enthusiastic than at the start. His Amsterdam era began.Mäkelä doesn’t yet know what he will do when the Paris and Oslo contracts expire in 2027. “I love them both to death,” he said, “and they’ve been teaching me so much.” But three music directorships won’t be possible, and with effectively all of them filling out his calendar now, he can feel the jet-setting, rising-star lifestyle of his early 20s begin to calm down.“That’s a conscious decision,” he said. “In a way, I’m trying to concentrate more. Guest conducting is fun, but a deep connection with the musicians — in Oslo, in Paris and now with the Concertgebouw — that’s my next big thing, to get to know them really well.” More

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      DJ HoneyLuv Remixes Lizzo’s ‘Everybody's Gay’

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      Name: HoneyLuvAge: 28Hometown: ClevelandNow Lives: In a two-bedroom apartment in Downtown Los Angeles.Claim to Fame: HoneyLuv (whose legal name is Taylor Character) is a house D.J. and producer who is part of a new generation of Black artists shaping dance music — blending R&B, Reggaeton, Afrobeats, house and techno into her signature sound. She has toured with Kaytranada, MK, Kevin Saunderson and other electronic music artists, and has remixed songs for Diplo and Annie Mac. Her vision, she said, is “to provide music that empowers people to be who they want to be and to be free on that dance floor with no worries of tomorrow.”Big Break: In 2018, while serving as a drone operator in the Navy to pay for college, HoneyLuv taught herself to D.J. while stationed at Point Mugu near Malibu, Calif. She decided to pursue D.J.-ing when she left the military last year, and booked her own gig at the Flamingo Deck, a popular restaurant and lounge in San Diego. Her set of “funky deep grooves,” she said, caught the attention of a patron, Hamilton Wright, who happened to be a former agent at the United Talent Agency who represented D.J.s. With his help, she played the following week at the Day Trip Festival, a two-day house music gathering in Los Angeles.Her latest tech-house single, “Thr33 6ix 5ive,” has been streamed more than five million times on Spotify.Maiwenn Raoult for The New York TimesLatest Project: In July, HoneyLuv released her latest single “Thr33 6ix 5ive,” an up-tempo tech-house track on Black Book Records that has been streamed more than five million times on Spotify and was chosen as a BBC “Hottest Record.” HoneyLuv is also passionate about fashion and was tapped last month to be a brand ambassador for Armani Exchange. “I expect a runway one day,” she said. “They always have artists and actors doing it, so I believe D.J.s can do it, too.”Next Thing: HoneyLuv is set to release a ’90s-style house remix of Lizzo’s “Everybody’s Gay” soon. Describing it as “an honor,” she said, “I’m a huge Lizzo fan, just for what she stands for,.” She is also releasing at least two singles in the coming months, including “Sway,” a house track featuring Dope Earth Alien on Insomniac Records, and hopes to collaborate with house music pioneers Harry Romero and Roland Clark next year.Diversity in Dance: When HoneyLuv performed at the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas last year, she was the only Black female artist on the lineup. There have been very few in recent years and she is pushing for more inclusivity. “This music started with us, and to have a new generation of young, Black artists like myself finding their love for house music and wanting to put our mark on it has been such a beautiful experience,” she said. “It’s up to us to continue the legacy in hopes we can inspire more and more people to join this community and enjoy the music.” More