Music

“Our present reality seems to be completely out of joint with universal bonds and perspectives,” the festival’s artistic director said.With the pandemic still lingering and the war in Ukraine raging on, the Salzburg Festival in Austria announced plans on Friday for a summer season that would seek to offer space for reflection.The festival, classical music’s most storied annual event, will stage two operas based on works by William Shakespeare: “Macbeth” and “Falstaff,” both by Verdi. There are also plans for more offbeat repertoire, including Bohuslav Martinu’s “The Greek Passion,” which tells the story of a Greek village staging a Passion play, in a production led by the conductor Maxime Pascal.“Our present reality seems to be completely out of joint with universal bonds and perspectives,” Markus Hinterhäuser, the festival’s artistic director, said in an interview, quoting from “Hamlet.” “Therefore, we have constructed a festival giving artists the opportunity to address these issues directly and indirectly.”The festival will feature more than 200 events — a mix of operas, spoken drama, orchestra concerts and recitals — over six weeks beginning July 20.The festival’s house band, the Vienna Philharmonic, will perform several concerts, including “Ein Deutsches Requiem” (“A German Requiem”), an hourlong choral work by Brahms, under the conductor Christian Thielemann. Among other prominent orchestras making appearances are the Berlin Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.The mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli will star in Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice”; the conductor John Eliot Gardiner will lead a concert performance of Berlioz’s “Les Troyens,” featuring his ensemble, the Monteverdi Choir; and the soprano Renée Fleming and the pianist Evgeny Kissin team up for a recital of works by Schubert, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Duparc.Franz Welser-Möst, the music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and a Salzburg regular, will take the baton for “Macbeth,” which opens in July, in a production by Krzysztof Warlikowski. In August, Welser-Möst will lead the Vienna Philharmonic in a concert featuring works by Ligeti and Richard Strauss.The festival will again prominently feature the conductor Teodor Currentzis, who has faced scrutiny since the start of the war in Ukraine because of his ties to a state-owned bank in Russia. He will take the baton for a concert presentation of Henry Purcell’s opera “The Indian Queen” with his new ensemble, Utopia. Currentzis will also lead Utopia in performances of Mozart’s Mass in C minor.Currentzis announced the formation of Utopia, which is backed by European benefactors, in August, after he faced a wave of criticism for his longtime association with the Russian ensemble MusicAeterna, which is sponsored by VTB Bank, a state-owned institution that has been sanctioned by the United States and other countries. (Currentzis had been trying for several years to secure funding for Utopia.)While the pandemic has wreaked havoc across the performing arts, the Salzburg Festival, drawing on government subsidies and sponsorship deals, has managed to minimize the disruption.The festival never canceled a season during the pandemic. In 2020, it staged a robust program for limited audiences, before returning to relative normalcy in 2021.Even as turnout for many classical events around the world has been tepid since the return of live performance, the Salzburg Festival continues to attract an enthusiastic audience. Attendance was 96 percent last summer, the festival said. More

For a month now, politicians, newspapers and classical music stars have been arguing over the future of English National Opera. A funding cut could have repercussions far beyond Britain.LONDON — When Leigh Melrose, a rising British opera star, looked at his calendar recently, much of the next three years were blocked out for one company: English National Opera. He was signed up to sing multiple roles there, starting with the lustful dwarf Alberich in the company’s new “Ring” cycle, a coproduction with the Metropolitan Opera that was meant to head to New York.Melrose said that he’d had his wig fitting for that role, and that rehearsals for “The Rheingold,” the first installment in Wagner’s four-part epic, were scheduled to begin Dec. 28.But now, he said, all those plans seemed uncertain. Last month, Arts Council England, a body that distributes government arts funding here, announced it was shutting off a grant to English National Opera worth 12.4 million pounds a year, or about $15 million. The Arts Council instead gave the company a one-off grant to help it develop “a new business model,” including a potential move to Manchester, 178 miles north of its current home at the London Coliseum.On the same day, the Arts Council also slashed funding to other major opera companies including the Royal Opera House, by 10 percent, and Glyndebourne Productions, by over 30 percent.Melrose said those cuts came as a “total shock,” adding that the long-term future of the “Ring” in both London and New York did not look good. If the E.N.O., as English National Opera is known, had to move away from London, “How can it keep on doing the rest?” Melrose asked. “How can it carry on doing anything?”For the past month, the fate of the E.N.O. has made headlines here. Musicians, critics and politicians have been arguing over whether the decision to cut the company’s funding is a sensible response to a declining interest in opera, or an act of cultural vandalism. Concerns have spread beyond Britain, with companies in Europe and the United States warning that the global opera ecosystem may suffer, too.Protesters outside the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, a government ministry, in London, on Nov. 22.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via ShutterstockDozens of senior opera figures — including Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, and Yuval Sharon, the artistic director of Detroit Opera — signed a recent letter to The Times of London, warning of a wider impact. “Everyone across the world has long looked to the United Kingdom as a center of artistic excellence,” the letter said. “We fear that this decision signals to the world that they — and we — must now look elsewhere.”Gelb said by phone that he had already pushed the Met’s run of the “Ring” cycle back a year, to the 2027/28 season, “for casting reasons.” But, he added, “if the E.N.O. doesn’t exist, we obviously can’t collaborate with it.”Christopher Koelsch, the chief executive of Los Angeles Opera, said that the E.N.O. had “historically been a crucible for creativity and experimentation,” noting that numerous stars including the conductor Edward Gardner, the composer Nico Muhly and the director Barrie Kosky had done early or important work at the company.Los Angeles Opera had been planning a new coproduction with the E.N.O. for its 2024/25 season, Koelsch said, though he declined to give further details and said he had not been in contact with the company since the funding cut was announced. “I think they’ve got other things to focus on,” he said.Newspaper coverage of opera in Britain is usually restricted to the arts pages, but the ferocity of debate here in recent weeks has propelled it to the front pages, and made it a major topic on social media.The company has been urging opera fans to pressure the government and the Arts Council to overturn the funding decision. More than 74,000 people have signed an online petition started by the singer Bryn Terfel.Performances at the London Coliseum have a relaxed atmosphere.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesGenerous policies that give free or discounted tickets to people under 35 have helped English National Opera draw in a younger crowd than the Royal Opera House.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesIn the last season, each ticket the company sold was propped up with about $168 of state funding.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesJohn Berry, who was the E.N.O.’s artistic director from 2005 to 2015, said that the company had coped with funding cuts before: In 2014, it lost a third of its government grant after failing to meet box office targets. But it would be “impossible,” he said, for the company to deal with a total loss of subsidy unless “a guardian angel” appeared. That was unlikely, given Britain lacked a culture of philanthropy, he added.Britain’s major opera companies have a unique funding model that is halfway between American companies’ reliance on philanthropy and European houses’ dependence on state funding. The E.N.O.’s Arts Council grant currently represents over a third of its income. In contrast, the Los Angeles Opera gets about 5 percent of its income from public grants; the Met, about 0.5 percent.English National Opera traces its history back to 1931, when Lilian Baylis, a theater owner, established the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company to bring the art form to popular audiences. That founding aim is still central to the company, which stages all its work in English. Those performances, at the London Coliseum, have a more relaxed atmosphere than the ones at the nearby Royal Opera House, with audience members often wearing jeans rather than tuxedos, and generous policies to give free or discounted tickets to people under 35.It made its global reputation in the 1980s when it became the first British opera company to tour the United States and debuted a host of major productions including Nicholas Hytner’s much-praised 1985 staging of Handel’s “Xerxes.” Under Berry’s leadership, the company also started to act as a test bed for productions heading to the Met, with productions of Philip Glass’s “Satyagraha,” Nico Muhly’s “Two Boys” and Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” among others, premiering in London before being tweaked and sent to New York.A scene from “Porgy and Bess,” which premiered at English National Opera in 2018. The production came to the Metropolitan Opera, in New York, in 2019.Tristram KentonDespite those triumphs, John Allison, the editor of Opera magazine, said in an interview that the company had recently been lurching from crisis to crisis with a string of high-profile resignations, financial difficulties and a declining number of works presented.Fewer performances meant that the Arts Council was subsidizing each E.N.O. ticket sold to a greater extent, and the company was often criticized for providing poor value for public money.A spokeswoman for the company said in an email that 90,000 people went to the company’s 63 performances last season, a figure that means each ticket was propped up with £137, or about $168, of state funding. The spokeswoman added that attendance was lower than usual that season, because of the pandemic, and that the opera reached many more people through other means, including television broadcasts seen by 2.2 million viewers.The Arts Council has defended its decision. Claire Mera-Nelson, the agency’s director of music, said in a blog post that she had seen “almost no growth in demand” for large-scale opera over the past five years, and had decided to prioritize funding for the art form “at different scales, reimagined in new ways” such as staging productions in parking lots, or pubs. Darren Henley, the Arts Council’s chief executive, wrote in The Guardian that “new ideas may seem heretic to traditionalists,” but that opera needed to reinvent itself to “remain exciting and meaningful to future generations.”On Thursday, Henley told British politicians he was having discussions with the E.N.O. over how it could keep showing work in London, as well as elsewhere in England, but added, “We can’t fund them in London.” (The Arts Council declined an interview request for this article.)While English National Opera’s future is hanging on officials’ whims, its audience seems hopeful that it will remain in London, somehow. At the Coliseum last week, before a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Yeomen of the Guard,” the atmosphere was relaxed and informal. Audience members in winter coats and bobble hats arrived on foot, rather than in sleek cars, and headed into the theater, where a merchandise stall was selling T-shirts with the slogans “Choose Opera” and “#loveENO.”Nick McConagh, 72, said he had been coming to the E.N.O. since the 1970s because its tickets were affordable. “It disproves the belief that opera is for the rich,” he said.Nearby, Hatti Simpson, 30, with pink hair and tattoos, said she fell in love with opera after taking advantage of the company’s cheap ticketing for young people. Cutting the E.N.O.’s funding and forcing it to move out of London would be “an absolute travesty,” she said.Two hours later, when the lights went down at the end of the show, the audience of nearly 2,000 applauded and cheered. After the cast had taken several bows, Neal Davies, a Welsh baritone, stepped forward and quietened the crowd for one final number. “I’m here to sing the praises of English National Op-er-a, who strive to make the medium both radical and pop-ul-ar,” he sang, to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General,”If the company did not exist “your life would be a dull-er one,” he added. That prospect, Davies bellowed, “was almost as unthinkable as Gilbert without Sul-liv-an.”The audience cheered loudly. But it was unclear if anyone outside the building was listening. More

The company’s computer systems have been down for more than three days. It will now use a Lincoln Center website to offer $50 general admission seats to some performances.Three days after a cyberattack first paralyzed its website and box office, the Metropolitan Opera on Friday announced that it would sell $50 tickets to some performances on a site run by Lincoln Center.The Met, in a brief note posted on social media, said it would offer the general admission tickets as it worked to fully restore its computer systems, which have been down since Tuesday morning. The company has proceeded with all of its performances, including of “Aida” and “The Hours,” but the Met has been unable to sell any new tickets, including in its last-minute rush ticket program.“We appreciate your patience through this difficult time as we work to resolve the issue and resume full operations,” the note said.The attack has wreaked havoc as the Met prepares for a string of holiday productions. At this time of year, the company’s ticketing systems typically handle about $200,000 in sales each day.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said it could be several more days before the Met’s ticketing site is fully restored. The attack has also sidelined the company’s internal networks, including its payroll system.“It takes time, because when you have been hacked, you have to be sure that whatever functions are going back online are not going to be compromised,” he said.Gelb said the Met was still investigating who had carried out the attack and assessing the damage.Separately, the Musikverein, a concert hall in Vienna, posted a message this week saying its website was unavailable. “We apologize for the inconvenience and hope to be able to provide our usual service as soon as possible,” the Musikverein said.The cyberattack comes at a difficult time for the Met, which is still working to recover from the turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic and lure back audiences. Attendance is well below prepandemic levels.“At a time when you’re trying to get more people interested in opera and attending your performances, it’s incredibly frustrating,” Gelb said. “We all want the same thing, which is to make it easier for people to attend performances, not more difficult.”The Met will offer $50 tickets for three upcoming performances of Verdi operas: “Rigoletto” on Sunday and Wednesday, and “Aida” on Tuesday. Since the Met cannot connect to its ticketing system to see which seats have already been sold, the $50 seats will be general admission. Customers who buy the tickets will be given empty seats in the orchestra section on a first-come, first-served basis immediately before curtain.Tickets are being sold on www.lincolncenter.org/metopera. More

Hear tracks by Paramore, Sparklehorse, Lana Del Rey 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 [email protected] and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.SZA featuring Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Ghost in the Machine’​“I need humanity,” SZA sings in “Ghost in the Machine,” a largely computerized track from her new album, “SOS.” Even the voices behind her sound quantized. Phoebe Bridgers, breathily multitracked, arrives midway through the song — singing about liminal spaces like “an airport bar or hotel lobby” — but their organic, analog presence can’t deny what numbers can deliver. JON PARELESLana Del Rey, ‘Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’The name of Lana Del Rey’s new single — the title track from her forthcoming eighth album — may seem like a mouthful, but as she repeats it across this nearly five-minute ballad, it becomes a hypnotic incantation. “Ocean Blvd” continues in the pleasantly meandering, piano-driven style that has served Del Rey so well on her last few albums, spotlighting her lyrical musings and the swells of emotion in her vocals. She moves elegantly between the minute and the universal here, making an observation about a specific time stamp in a Harry Nilsson song one moment, and the next imploring, vulnerably, “Love me until I love myself.” ZOLADZCaroline Polachek, ‘Welcome to My Island’Caroline Polachek’s playful “Welcome to My Island” sounds like several different songs — from several different eras of pop — spliced together. There’s a bit of Blondie’s “Rapture”; a potent reminder why Polachek covering the Corrs’ “Breathless” was such a no-brainer; and a healthy dose of Olivia Rodrigo’s spoken-word angst on the bridge. (Rodrigo’s collaborator Dan Nigro was a producer on the track, alongside Danny L Harle, A.G. Cook and Jim E-Stack.) What brings it all together is an absolute monster of a chorus, on which Polachek sings the lyric from that gives her forthcoming second album its title, as if she’s shouting it off the peak of a mountain: “Desire, I want to turn into you.” ZOLADZParamore, ‘The News’“I worry and I give money and I feel useless behind this computer,” Hayley Williams sings on “The News,” a vertiginous exploration of modern information overload. The lyrics don’t necessarily offer a solution, but the pervasive anxiety evoked by Zac Farro’s skittish drumming and Taylor York’s dissonant riffs at least let Williams know that she’s not alone. ZOLADZSparklehorse, ‘It Will Never Stop’Mark Linkous, who recorded as Sparklehorse, died by suicide in 2010; his family discovered the previously unreleased “It Will Never Stop” among his recordings. It’s a noisy, low-fi stomp with just about everything distorted, vocals included, and it’s equally rowdy and desperate. “Please don’t vaporize into the sun,” Linkous sang, suddenly blasting louder as he added, “my love.” PARELESKate NV, ‘Oni (They)’Sparkling and kaleidoscopic, the Russian experimental musician Kate NV’s “Oni (They)” is an intricate, miniature world unto itself. Kate weaves a colorful tapestry of retro-futuristic synthesizer sounds and an elastic rhythm section, singing, in Japanese, lyrics written by the producer Takahide “Foodman” Higuchi. ZOLADZHarvey Mandel, ‘Moon Talk’The guitarist Harvey Mandel has been active since the 1960s, playing with Canned Heat at the 1969 Woodstock festival and straddling jazz, rock and blues with John Mayall. Now 77, he has made a freewheeling new instrumental album, “Who’s Calling.” “Moon Talk” is a funk track with echoes of Miles Davis’s “On the Corner” and a jabbing, wriggling, sliding, squealing guitar lead that’s anything but mellow with age. PARELESJackie Mendoza, ‘Pedacitos’Jackie Mendoza strives to restore someone’s sense of self-worth in “Pedacitos” (“Little Pieces”), insisting, “I can see your tears/You can throw them away.” Produced by Mendoza and Rusty Santos, who has worked with Animal Collective, the song is harmonically and spatially ambiguous, with harplike plucking, swooping electronics and vocals wafting in from all directions. Yet Mendoza makes her reassurance sound like everyday common sense. PARELESWeezer, ‘I Want a Dog’Some animal shelter should benefit from “I Want a Dog,” Weezer’s song about the pure support of a prospective pet. It’s from the band’s current project, “SZNZ,” a cycle of songs based on the seasons, headed now for winter. The track expands from acoustic vulnerability to multitracked, Queen-style, massed-harmony domination, all well within Weezer’s skill set. And the sentiment — loneliness searching desperately for loyal companionship — is eternal. PARELES More

Lit Trivia: Can You Identify These Music-Themed Novels? – The New York Times

Book Review|Lit Trivia: Can You Identify These Music-Themed Novels?https://nyti.ms/3uzZfCu More

While other N.F.L. owners sail on their yachts far from prying eyes, Jim Irsay roams the country showing his museum-quality memorabilia and jamming with rock legends.Jim Irsay is not your typical team owner, especially in the buttoned-up National Football League.Last month, Irsay, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, replaced his head coach with a former player whose only coaching experience was leading a high school team. A few weeks earlier, Irsay called for a scandal-plagued owner to be removed despite his own very public troubles. And he continues to use his Twitter account to mourn the loss of beloved rock stars and football players and post videos of himself singing classic Bob Dylan songs in his raspy smoker’s voice.Irsay’s hobby also speaks to his singularity. While other owners splurge on art work, beachfront property and European soccer teams, Irsay has spent $100 million building a collection of music, sports and other pop culture memorabilia. He paid $4.9 million for the guitar Kurt Cobain used in the music video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” He acquired one of Ringo Starr’s vintage drum sets for more than $4 million. And this past summer, he paid $6.5 million for one of Muhammad Ali’s championship belts.Rather than stuff these items in a mansion or museum, Irsay, 63, shows them off during free, one-night-only events around the country, accompanied by an all-star rock band. Since September 2021, his collection has traveled to seven cities including Nashville, Austin, Los Angeles and Indianapolis. This Saturday, a sampling of his 1,000-plus-piece collection will make its way to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, where some of the items will lean into the city’s role in rock history and the blues legend Buddy Guy will be joined onstage by Ann Wilson, John Fogerty and Stephen Stills.“For me, I’d rather do this than be floating around on a $200 million yacht,” Irsay said before one of his shows this summer in Chicago. “If I float on that, I’m going to say, ‘I’m bored. Why am I here? Like, what am I doing here?’”Irsay has a particular love for the guitars of iconic musicians, including the one Kurt Cobain used in Nirvana’s music video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”Joshua Mellin for The New York TimesIrsay’s passion project is an unusually personal form of philanthropy and even therapy. The artifacts speak not just to his love of music, sports and history but also to the turbulence in his life, including the loss of his sister, who died in a car accident, and the alcoholism of both his father and grandfather. Irsay, too, has had battles with substance abuse. He was also suspended for six games by the N.F.L. in 2014 after he pleaded guilty to driving while under the influence of painkillers.Irsay’s willingness to embrace his foibles make him something of an oddity in one of the country’s most exclusive clubs. He talks openly about his struggles with addiction and started a charity that raises awareness of mental health disorders. After getting injured playing football in college, he took up competitive power lifting, once squatting 725 pounds. Then he lost 55 pounds and started running marathons. Irsay still hits the gym despite having undergone 20 surgeries.Plenty of sports team owners are philanthropic, and some even live out their rock ‘n’ roll fantasies. For example, Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft and owner of the Seattle Seahawks who died in 2018, built a museum in Seattle to house his guitar collection, and James L. Dolan, the owner of the New York Knicks and New York Rangers, performs as the frontman with his blues band, J.D. and the Straight Shot. But unlike those famously private owners, Irsay has been uniquely unguarded about his life and his collecting.“Jim is sui generis, a one-off with no duplicate,” said Douglas Brinkley, who teaches history at Rice University and advises Irsay on his purchases. “He marches to the beat of his own drum and honors his own passions and believes there’s an audience for it.”Items in the collection include, clockwise from top left, a cape worn by James Brown, the original, hand-written script for “Rocky,” Hunter S. Thompson’s “Red Shark” convertible, and one of Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight championship belts.Joshua Mellin for The New York TimesIrsay first got hooked on baseball cards, though with less than altruistic motives. Growing up on the north shore of Chicago, he rode his bicycle to the local drugstore on Monday mornings and bought entire boxes of baseball cards before other boys could get there. He funded the purchases by selling bubble gum at a markup at school.“I guess I was an illegitimate dealer in grade school,” he joked.Irsay said he wanted to begin collecting after college, but his father, Robert, who used the fortune he made in the air conditioning business to buy the Colts, paid him a $100,000 salary. With a mortgage and three children, there was not much left to bid on prized objects, he said.But 25 years ago, when Irsay inherited the team, he also gained the wherewithal to bid for top shelf items. His first big foray into collecting came in 2001 when he paid $2.4 million for the 120-foot-long scroll that contained the original manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road.” It was the only time Irsay showed up, paddle in hand, to bid for an item.“I’ve always been mostly attracted to great writers,” he said. “The scroll became a writer’s Holy Grail.”Collecting at this level is unpredictable, but Irsay seems to revel in the chase. He consults with Brinkley and other experts as well as with his curator, Larry Hall, whom Irsay texts and calls at all hours to talk about items he covets. He will relay his bids by phone, which he did from Hawaii when Cobain’s guitar was auctioned. He gave Hall a top bid of $2.2 million, then dropped out after it passed $2.4 million. But on a hunch, he raised his top bid to $3.6 million and went to bed. When he awoke, he discovered he got the guitar for almost precisely his maximum. (With fees and taxes, the total price hit $4.9 million.)Irsay acquired one of Ringo Starr’s vintage drum sets for more than $4 million. Joshua Mellin for The New York TimesIrsay’s interests range across American and film history as well. The oldest item in his collection is a lottery ticket from 1765, sold to raise money for Faneuil Hall in Boston, that was signed by John Hancock. He spent nearly $600,000 on the rocking chair John F. Kennedy used in the White House, and another $550,000 for one of Abraham Lincoln’s pocket knifes. Sylvester Stallone’s original, handwritten script for the movie, “Rocky,” cost Irsay $500,000.Irsay has never sold pieces in his collection, despite the explosion of the memorabilia market in recent years. And though he has toyed with the idea of building a museum for his acquisitions, for now he is committed to taking them on tour.“He gets so attached to the items because he knows the joy they bring when he shows them,” said Hall, who verifies the quality of the items that Irsay brings to him. “That’s why he never charges a penny to share his collection.”Irsay said the rush of acquiring these items and planning to show them can mirror the adrenaline rush of how football teams get ready on game days. Sometimes, he said, his football brain might take over at his events.“I admit it’s a little bit of a different hat,” Irsay said. “When it comes to professional football, the intensity above the goals of winning and all those sorts of things, sometimes that comes out in organizing this thing. So all of a sudden you find yourself talking like the general manager or head coach, and people onstage are like, what?”Irsay was the center of attention in Chicago, where he showed off his collection at the AON Grand Ballroom in early August. Friends and fans stopped him so often that he was late to his own news conference to kick off the event. Standing between Muhammad Ali’s title belt and the founding document of Alcoholics Anonymous, known to adherents as the “Big Book,” Irsay introduced Jim Brown, the former Cleveland Browns star and Hollywood actor whom Irsay flew in from California.“It’s an eclectic collection, but really it’s about spirituality, it’s about human beings being as great as they can, and changing the world with love and strength,” Irsay said.“I want the best of the best,” Irsay added when describing why he bought Neil Armstrong’s items from the Apollo 11 mission. “Nothing against Buzz Aldrin,” referring to the second man to walk on the moon.At the concert in Chicago this past August, Buddy Guy was one of the main attractions.Joshua Mellin for The New York TimesThen Irsay marched back to the green room where he nursed a bottle of Hawaiian Punch and waved off minders trying to keep him on schedule. Buddy Guy walked in and Irsay was distracted all over again, peppering him with questions about Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker and other blues greats.The two-hour concert began around 8:30 p.m. with Irsay sitting onstage and singing Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” After Irsay left, the band, led by Mike Mills of R.E.M., ripped through blues and rock classics. Guy — a hometown favorite — came on to a big ovation, as did Ann Wilson from Heart.At times, the concert and the collection blurred. Midway through the show, Irsay came back onstage with Edgerrin James, the former Colts running back who threw a dozen signed footballs into the crowd. Fans wandered between the stage and the back of the venue to look at the artifacts, including the guitar Dylan used when he “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Hunter S. Thompson’s Chevrolet Caprice convertible (known as the “Red Shark”), or the hat that Harry S. Truman wore at his inauguration.Irsay returned to sing the last three songs — “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails, “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” by Neil Young and “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones — before the lights popped on. Several Colts cheerleaders in white outfits and blue pompoms ushered the crowd out. For another night, Irsay had turned the threads of his life into a shared spectacle, one that helps him keep the demons at bay.“Many a man has tried to manage the opiates, you know, for millenniums, whether it’s Jerry Garcia or Tom Petty or Prince or Elvis,” Irsay said. “The pursuit can get really bungled and mismanaged. So, it’s really a thrill in life as we get older to try to have more experience and know what’s always the light and not the dark, because sometimes the shadows can fool you.” More

In an emotional Instagram video, the pop superstar explained she had stiff person syndrome and is postponing shows to rebuild her strength “and ability to perform again.”In an emotional Instagram video on Thursday, the Canadian pop superstar Celine Dion announced that a severe neurological disorder had forced her to cancel and reschedule dates on her planned 2023 tour.In the five-minute-plus video, Dion said she had been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a rare autoimmune and neurological disease that is the cause of the spasms she said she had been suffering.“Unfortunately, these spasms affect every aspect of my daily life, sometimes causing difficulties when I walk and not allowing me to use my vocal cords to sing the way I am used to,” she said.“It hurts me to tell you today,” she continued, as her voice cracked, “this means I won’t be ready to restart my tour in Europe in February.” She said she was working with doctors and therapists to rebuild her strength “and ability to perform again.”Dion, a theatrical and powerful singer best known for her octave-busting renditions of songs like “Because You Loved Me” and “My Heart Will Go On,” had earlier postponed her most recent Las Vegas residency and European tour while canceling North American tour dates because of health issues. Thursday’s announcement will push her spring 2023 shows to the following year while canceling eight of her summer 2023 performances.“All I know is singing,” she said. “It’s what I’ve done all my life, and it’s what I love to do the most. I miss you so much, I miss seeing all of you, being on the stage, performing for you. I always give 100 percent when I do my shows, but my condition is not allowing me to give you that right now.”“I love you guys so much, and I really hope I can see you again real soon,” she added. More

His background was in country music. But Stax, the label he founded with his sister, achieved a level of success with Black artists that rivaled Motown’s.Jim Stewart, who with his sister founded Stax Records, home to R&B luminaries like Otis Redding and Sam & Dave — and, after Motown, the best-selling soul music label of the 1960s and ’70s — died on Monday in Memphis. He was 92.His death, at a hospital after a brief illness, was confirmed by Tim Sampson, communications director for the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis.A former banker, Mr. Stewart first ventured into the music business in 1957, when he and his sister Estelle Axton established Satellite Records in a relative’s garage. Intending to release recordings of country and rockabilly music, Mr. Stewart and his sister, who died in 2004, never suspected that three years later their label would be producing some of the most enduring Black popular music of the era.“I had scarcely seen a Black person till I was grown,” Mr. Stewart, who grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry on a farm in rural West Tennessee, was quoted as saying in Peter Guralnick’s “Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom” (1986).“When I started, I didn’t know there was such a thing as Atlantic Records; I didn’t know there was a Chess Records or Imperial,” he continued, referring to record companies that promoted Black vernacular music. “I had no dream of anything like that.”His remote upbringing notwithstanding, Stax placed more than 100 singles on the pop chart during Mr. Stewart’s tenure at the label, among them Eddie Floyd’s “Knock on Wood” and Isaac Hayes’s theme from the movie “Shaft.” The influence of its catalog on generations of performers has proved wide and deep, extending to Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones as well as to the many hip-hop and R&B artists who have sampled Stax recordings.In a 2013 interview with The Associated Press, Mr. Stewart attributed his decision to start recording Black music to a single epiphany: hearing Ray Charles sing “What’d I Say.”“I was converted immediately,” he said. “I had never heard anything like that before. It allowed me to expand from country to R&B, into jazz, into gospel, wrapped all in one. That’s what Stax is.”Mr. Stewart was the audio engineer, and often the credited producer, on many records made at Stax, including Mr. Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” and Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour.”The label began to make its mark in 1960, shortly after Mr. Stewart and his sister moved their operations to the former Capitol Theater at 926 McLemore Avenue in South Memphis. One day the popular singer and local disc jockey Rufus Thomas walked into the record shop that Mr. Stewart and Ms. Axton operated at the front of the building and announced that he wanted to record a duet with his daughter Carla.The record in question, “’Cause I Love You,” was only a regional hit, but “Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes),” a dreamy ballad released the same year, reached both the R&B and pop Top 10 for Ms. Thomas in 1961. The same was true of 1961’s “Last Night,” a slinky saxophone-driven instrumental by the Mar-Keys, the R&B combo that evolved into Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Stax’s storied house band.Mr. Stewart and Ms. Axton in an undated photo. Mr. Stewart’s decision to start a record company would not have been possible had Ms. Axton not taken out a second mortgage on her home to buy him recording equipment.Charlie Gillett Collection/RedfernsThe success of “Gee Whiz” and “Last Night” changed the artistic and commercial direction of Satellite Records. It also acquired a new name, combining the first two letters of the owners’ last names to form the portmanteau Stax, after Mr. Stewart and Ms. Axton learned that another label owned the rights to Satellite.In 1962, “Green Onions,” by Booker T. & the M.G.’s, further cemented the label’s credibility on the emergent soul music scene, climbing to the pop Top 10 (and No. 1 on the R&B chart). A gutbucket instrumental, “Green Onions” served as a prototype for the groove-steeped, blues- and gospel-bred music that became synonymous with Stax — a sound as lean and funky as Motown’s was lush and refined.Just as inspiring as the music made at Stax was the social climate Mr. Stewart cultivated there. Known for its laid-back and inclusive vibe, the label was guided by a spirit of good will — almost all the recording artists were Black, the house musicians both Black and white — that bore witness to possibilities for racial harmony at a time when segregation prohibited Black and white people from sharing public spaces.“There was so much talent here, under circumstances that were almost considered impossible in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1960, with the racial situation here,” Mr. Stewart told The Associated Press in 2013, reflecting on the spirit of camaraderie that he helped foster at Stax. “It was a sanctuary for all of us.”James Frank Stewart was born in Middleton, Tenn., on July 29, 1930, one of three children of Dexter and Olivia (Cole) Stewart. His parents were farmers, and his father supplemented the family income with work as a bricklayer.Young Jim grew up playing gospel music at home on the fiddle with his father, uncle and two sisters. After graduating from high school, he moved to Memphis, where he worked at a local bank for several years before being drafted into the Army.In 1953, after completing two years of service, he returned to Memphis and resumed working as a bank clerk while playing fiddle in local country dance bands. He earned a degree in business from the University of Memphis.Mr. Stewart’s decision to launch Satellite Records in 1957 would not have been possible had his sister not taken out a second mortgage on her home to buy him recording equipment.A distribution deal with Atlantic Records further opened doors for Mr. Stewart’s fledgling label, especially after the success of “Gee Whiz” and “Last Night.” A few years later, Mr. Stewart hired the songwriting and production team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter, enabling Stax to expand its capacity to develop artists and repertoire and, ultimately, its roster.The arrival of Al Bell as national sales director in 1965 further strengthened the label’s capacity, lending it the promotional muscle needed to market its artists beyond Memphis and the South. But tragedy eclipsed this flush of prosperity when Mr. Redding and four members of his band, the Bar-Kays, died in a plane crash in 1967.Mr. Stewart in 1969 with Al Bell, left, who joined Stax as national sales director in 1965, and Isaac Hayes, who was a songwriter and producer at Stax in partnership with David Porter and also had hit records as a performer. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesAround the same time, Stax dissolved its distribution deal with Atlantic, a settlement that, because of a contractual loophole, cost the label the rights to virtually its entire catalog.The assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis in April 1968 cast even more of a pall over conditions at Stax, threatening the racial amity that had prevailed up to that point. Later that year Mr. Stewart, Ms. Axton and Mr. Bell, by then also an owner, sold Stax to Gulf & Western in exchange for stock in the company.Ms. Axton sold her stock in the label to Mr. Bell in 1970, and Mr. Stewart eventually followed suit.In 1975, following a revival of good fortune under Mr. Bell’s leadership, including the signing of the Staple Singers and others, creditors forced Stax into bankruptcy, leaving behind a legacy of some 800 singles and 300 albums.Stax’s foreclosure was a hardship for Mr. Stewart, who had invested much of his personal wealth trying to satisfy the creditors. He resurfaced in the early 1980s, occasionally supervising projects for former Stax artists, but soon retired from the business except for occasional appearances at the Stax Museum and Stax Music Academy. The label has since changed hands a few times.In 2002, after decades out of the public eye, Mr. Stewart was elected to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the nonperformer category for his contributions to the creation and evolution of Southern soul music.Album covers on display at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis.Adrian Sainz/Associated PressHe is survived by his son, Jeff; two daughters, Lori Stewart and Shannon Stewart; and two grandchildren. Evelyn (White) Stewart, his wife of more than 50 years, died in 2020. Another sister, Mary Louise McAlpin, died in 2017.“Mr. Stewart was the unpretentious soft-spoken diminutive white guy with a Brylcreem-lathered hair part and fat-rim glasses that I met in 1962,” Deanie Parker, Stax’s longtime publicist, told The Memphis Commercial Appeal after Mr. Stewart’s death.“He gave us opportunities denied to most Blacks in America and we gifted him with an indelible Memphis Sound that, together, we created at Stax Records.” More