Music

“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

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

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

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

Members of the Shchedryk Children’s Choir have emerged from conflict determined to sing, including at Carnegie Hall this weekend.When air-raid sirens sounded in Kyiv recently, the Shchedryk Children’s Choir, which was deep in rehearsal for a Christmas program, went into action.More than two dozen young singers, carrying sheet music and backpacks, rushed from the Palace of Children and Youth, their longtime practice space, to a nearby bomb shelter. There, using cellphones as flashlights, they resumed their singing, filling the cold, cramped space with folk songs and carols until the sirens faded.“I was scared, but I was also hopeful,” recalled Polina Fedorchenko, a 16-year-old member of the choir. “We knew that if we could get through this, we could get through anything.”The children of the Shchedryk choir, which will perform at Carnegie Hall on Sunday, have been hit hard by the war. They have lost friends and relatives in the fighting; watched as Russian bombs have devastated schools, churches and city streets; and grappled with the anxiety and trauma of war.But the choristers have also forged a determination to use music as a way to heal Ukraine and promote their culture around the world.At Carnegie, the choir’s 56 members — 51 girls and five boys, ages 11 to 25 — will perform traditional songs and carols alongside other Ukrainian artists in “Notes From Ukraine,” a program sponsored in part by the Ukrainian foreign ministry. Proceeds will go to United24, a government-run platform that is raising money to repair damaged infrastructure.Clockwise, from top left, members of the choir including: Anastasiia Rusina and Taisiia Poliakova; Bogdana Novikova; Polina Fedorchenko; and Kateryna Rohova.Lila Barth for The New York TimesThe concert will also celebrate the centennial of the North American premiere at Carnegie Hall of “Carol of the Bells,” by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych. (The name of the choir comes from the Ukrainian title for the music.)The choir hopes that the concert will help bring attention to Russia’s continuing attacks, including its recent efforts to damage Ukraine’s supply of electricity, heat and water, threatening a new kind of humanitarian crisis this winter.“It has been exhausting,” said Mykhailo Kostyna, a 16-year-old singer. “We’re just happy now that we can share Ukraine’s culture and spirit with the world.”The State of the WarA Pivotal Point: Ukraine is on the offensive, but with about one-fifth of its territory still occupied by Russian forces, there is still a long way to go, and the onset of winter will bring new difficulties.Ukraine’s Electric Grid: As many Ukrainians head into winter without power or water, Western officials say that rebuilding Ukraine’s battered energy infrastructure needs to be considered a second front in the war.A Bloody Vortex : Even as they have celebrated successes elsewhere, Ukrainian forces in the small eastern city of Bakhmut have endured relentless Russian attacks. And the struggle to hold it is only intensifying.Dnipro River: A volunteer Ukrainian special forces team has been conducting secret raids under the cover of darkness, traveling across the strategic waterway that has become the dividing line of the southern front.After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, many members of the choir scattered across the country. Some, seeking shelter and security, fled abroad.The choir, which has been a training ground for Ukrainian singers since its founding in 1971, held virtual rehearsals to keep the ensemble together. The choristers stayed in touch on social media, where they shared upbeat songs as well as clips of practice sessions, and checked in on one another.“The choir kept my connection to Ukraine alive,” said Taisiia Poliakova, 15, who fled to Germany shortly after the invasion. “It gave me a safe environment amid all the madness of war.”“These songs remind me of the pain,” one choir member said, “but they also help me somehow deal with the pain.”Lila Barth for The New York TimesLearning new songs at home was a challenge that provided an escape from the constant ringing of air-raid sirens. It also gave choir members an outlet for the intense emotions they were experiencing.Oleksandra Lutsak, 20, said the war had deeply affected her music. Now, when she sings, she said, she sees the faces of five friends who died in the war. Sometimes, she imagines the experience of a friend captured by Russian soldiers. When rehearsing folk songs, she envisions “destroyed homes with no roofs, collapsed walls, everything burned down — and people standing around who have nowhere to spend the winter.”“These songs remind me of the pain,” she said, “but they also help me somehow deal with the pain.”Other singers have struggled to look beyond the chaos of war. Polina Holtseva, 15, said she sometimes felt she was living in a constant state of fear. She was pained to see friends and relatives endure physical injuries and economic hardships because of the conflict.“I feel like I’ve suffered so many psychological traumas I can’t even speak of them,” she said. “My nervous system is all over the place. I feel like my whole world has been turned upside down.”Clockwise, from top left, the singers: Mykhailo Kostyna; Uliana Sukach-Kochetkova; the twin sisters Marharyta and Kira Kupchyk; and Varvara Avotynsh.Lila Barth for The New York TimesIn August, the Shchedryk choir reunited for a series of concerts in Copenhagen. Then, this fall, as it prepared for its Carnegie debut, the choir rehearsed in Kyiv for the first time since the start of the war.The recent Russian attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure brought new challenges. Rehearsals were often interrupted by sirens, and frequent power outages meant long stretches without light.“It was in those moments that we felt the most responsibility to keep practicing, because this was a testament to our dedication to our craft,” Fedorchenko said.Because of the war, the choir left Ukraine on Nov. 19 for Warsaw, where they were given rehearsal space inside the Chopin University of Music and obtained visas to travel to the United States.Marianna Sablina, the choir’s artistic director and chief conductor, whose mother founded the ensemble, said that the Carnegie concert, which was planned before the invasion, is now “even more momentous, given the struggles we are facing.”The choir is one of several Ukrainian ensembles to go abroad since the invasion, as part of efforts to highlight the country’s cultural identity. The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, an ensemble of refugees who fled the war and musicians who stayed behind, toured Europe and the United States in the summer. The Kyiv City Ballet performed in many American cities this fall.The Shchedryk choir arrived in New York this week with a mix of excitement and nervousness, uncertain whether the performance would resonate with an American audience. They brought Ukrainian flags, T-shirts and souvenirs to give to new friends.In New York, they have a busy schedule: rehearsals at local churches as well as visits to tourist destinations including Times Square and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On Wednesday, they gathered at Grand Central Terminal to sing “Carol of the Bells.”Marharyta and Kira Kupchyk, 14-year-old twins from Kyiv, said they felt relieved to have some distance from the war while in New York. But they said they were still growing accustomed to the enormity of the city.“In Kyiv, you can walk easier — you can even dance down the streets,” Marharyta said. “But in New York, it’s not like that.”In between rehearsals and sightseeing, the twins checked social media apps for news of the war and sent messages to family and friends in Ukraine. They said they worried about their father, who has been out of touch because he recently started military training in Kyiv.“I hope we can help make sure this war will end soon,” Kira said.Marianna Sablina, the artistic director of the Shchedryk choir, preparing the singers for their performance in New York.Lila Barth for The New York Times More

Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIt has been a transformational year in Atlanta, with its hip-hop scene suffering from a series of crises. Last month, Takeoff, of the influential trio Migos, was killed in Houston. In May, Young Thug and Gunna were arrested as part of a sweeping RICO investigation.These are some of the city’s biggest stylistic and artistic innovators, and their absence has left a hole in Atlanta’s chain of artistic continuity. Lil Baby remains the city’s biggest star, but all around him, there is instability.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the disruptive year in Atlanta’s rap circles, the speed with which the city’s sound evolves, and the artists hovering in the wings and waiting for the spotlight.Guest:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporter and author of “Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story”Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at [email protected]. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

Schele Williams will direct and JaQuel Knight is choreographing a new production of the show, with additional material by Amber Ruffin. It will start its tour in Baltimore.The Tony Award-winning musical “The Wiz” will be landing on Broadway for a limited run in the spring of 2024, after a national tour next year, producers announced on Thursday. The tour will start in Baltimore, where the musical made its original debut.“The Wiz,” inspired by L. Frank Baum’s children’s book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” had an all-Black cast, and premiered on Broadway in 1975. It netted seven Tonys, including best musical.For the director of this reimagined “The Wiz,” Schele Williams, the work is personal. “I wouldn’t be on Broadway if it wasn’t for ‘The Wiz,’” Williams said in a statement, adding, “Seeing that show changed my life.”Williams is a founding member of Black Theater United and serves on the board of trustees for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. This will be the first time she has directed a show on Broadway; she previously served as an associate director on the Broadway production of “Motown: The Musical,” and she performed on Broadway in “Aida” and “Rent.”This version of the musical is choreographed by JaQuel Knight and contains musical arrangements, music supervision and orchestrations by Joseph Joubert. It will also feature additional material by Amber Ruffin, and the original Tony-winning score by Charlie Smalls. The original show ran for four years and had 1,672 performances on Broadway. In 1978, a film adaptation included stars like Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Ted Ross, Mabel King, Richard Pryor and Lena Horne. More

As a singer, songwriter and keyboardist, she was a prolific force behind one of the most popular rock bands of the last 50 years.Christine McVie, the singer, songwriter and keyboardist who became the biggest hitmaker for Fleetwood Mac, one of music’s most popular bands, died on Wednesday. She was 79.Her family announced her death on Facebook. The statement said she died at a hospital but did not specify its location or give the cause of death. In June, Ms. McVie told Rolling Stone that she was in “quite bad health” and that she had endured debilitating problems with her back.Ms. McVie’s commercial potency, which hit a high point in the 1970s and ’80s, was on full display on Fleetwood Mac’s “Greatest Hits” anthology, released in 1988, which sold more than eight million copies: She either wrote or co-wrote half of its 16 tracks. Her tally doubled that of the next most prolific member of the band’s trio of singer-songwriters, Stevie Nicks. (The third, Lindsey Buckingham, scored three major Billboard chart-makers on that collection.)The most popular songs Ms. McVie wrote favored bouncing beats and lively melodies, numbers like “Say You Love Me” (which grazed Billboard’s Top 10), “You Make Loving Fun” (which just broke it), “Hold Me” (No. 4) and “Don’t Stop” (her top smash, which crested at No. 3). But she could also connect with elegant ballads, like “Over My Head” (No. 20) and “Little Lies” (which cracked the publication’s Top Five in 1987).All those songs had cleanly defined, easily sung melodies, with hints of soul and blues at the core. Her compositions had a simplicity that mirrored their construction. “I don’t struggle over my songs,” Ms. McVie (pronounced mc-VEE) told Rolling Stone in 1977. “I write them quickly.”Fleetwood Mac in concert in 1980, from left: John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Ms. McVie and Stevie Nicks. (Mick Fleetwood is partly visible at the far left.)Pete Still/Redferns, via Getty ImagesIn just half an hour, she wrote one of the band’s most beloved songs, “Songbird,” a sensitive ballad that for years served as the band’s closing encore in concert. In 2019, the band’s leader, Mick Fleetwood, told New Musical Express that “Songbird” is the piece he wanted played at his funeral, “to send me off fluttering.”Ms. McVie’s lyrics often captured the more intoxicating aspects of romance. “I’m definitely not a pessimist,” she told Bob Brunning, the author of the 2004 book “The Fleetwood Mac Story: Rumours and Lies.” “I’m basically a love song writer.”At the same time, her words accounted for the yearning and disappointments that can lurk below an exciting surface. “I’m good at pathos,” she told Mojo magazine in 2017. “I write about romantic despair a lot, but with a positive spin.”‘That Chemistry’Ms. McVie’s vocals communicated just as nuanced a range of feeling. Her soulful contralto could sound by turns maternally wise and sexually alive. Her tawny tone had the heady effect of a bourbon with a rich bouquet and a smooth finish. It found a graceful place in harmony with the voices of Ms. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham, together forming a signature Fleetwood Mac sound.“It was that chemistry,” she told Mojo. “The two of them just chirped into the perfect three-way harmony. I just remember thinking, ‘This is it!’”Ms. McVie in performance in 1979.Michael Putland/Getty ImagesA sturdy instrumentalist, Ms. McVie played a range of keyboards, often leaning toward the soulful sound of a Hammond B3 organ and the formality of a Yamaha grand piano.With Fleetwood Mac, she earned five gold, one platinum and seven multiplatinum albums. The band’s biggest success, “Rumours,” released in 1977, was one of the mightiest movers in pop history: It was certified double diamond, representing sales of over 20 million copies.In 1998, Ms. McVie was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with various lineups of Fleetwood Mac, reflecting the frequent (and dramatic) personnel shifts the band experienced throughout its labyrinthine history. Ms. McVie served in incarnations that dated to 1971, but she also had uncredited roles playing keyboards and singing backup as far back as the band’s second album, released in 1968. Before joining Fleetwood Mac, she scored a No. 14 British hit with the blues band Chicken Shack on a cover of Etta James’s “I’d Rather Go Blind” for which she sang lead.Christine Anne Perfect was born on July 12, 1943, in the Lake District of England to Cyril Perfect, a classical violinist and college music professor and Beatrice (Reece) Perfect, a psychic.Her father encouraged her to start taking classical piano lessons when she was 11. Her focus changed radically four years later when she came across some sheet music for Fats Domino songs. At that moment, she told Rolling Stone in 1984, “It was goodbye Chopin.”“I started playing the boogie bass,” she told Mojo. “I got hooked on the blues. Even today, the songs I write use that left hand. It’s rooted in the blues.”Ms. McVie in 1969, the year she joined Fleetwood Mac.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesMs. McVie studied sculpture at Birmingham Art College and for a while considered becoming an art teacher. At the same time, she briefly played in a duo with Spencer Davis, who, along with a teenage Steve Winwood, would later find fame in the Spencer Davis Group. She helped form a band named Shades of Blue with several future members of Chicken Shack.After graduating from college in 1966, Ms. McVie moved to London and became a window dresser for a department store. One year later, she was asked to join the already formed Chicken Shack as keyboardist and sometime singer. She wrote two songs for the band’s debut album, “40 Blue Fingers, Freshly Packed and Ready to Serve.”She was twice voted best female vocalist in a Melody Maker readers’ poll, but she left the band in 1969 after marrying John McVie, the bassist in Fleetwood Mac, which had been formed in 1967 and had already recorded three albums. That same year, she recorded a solo album, “The Legendary Christine Perfect Album,” which she later described to Rolling Stone as “so wimpy.”“I just hate to listen to it,” she said.Ms. McVie in the recording studio in an undated photo.Fin Costello/Redferns, via Getty ImagesJoining the BandHer disappointment in that record, combined with her reluctance to perform, caused Ms. McVie to put music aside for a time. But, in 1970, when Fleetwood Mac’s main draw, the guitarist Peter Green, suddenly quit the band after a ruinous acid trip, Mick Fleetwood invited her to fill out their ranks.Initially, she found the invitation to join her favorite band “a nerve-racking experience,” she told Rolling Stone. But she rose to the occasion by writing two of the catchiest songs on her first official release with the band, “Future Games” (1971). That release found the band leaning away from British blues and toward progressive Southern Californian folk-rock, aided by the addition of an American player, the singer, songwriter and guitarist Bob Welch.The band fine-tuned that sound on its 1972 set “Bare Trees,” which sold better and featured one of Ms. McVie’s most soulful songs, “Spare Me a Little of Your Love.” The band’s 1973 release, “Penguin,” went gold. The next collection, “Heroes Are Hard to Find,” was the band’s first to crack the U.S. Top 40. But it was only after the departure of Mr. Welch and the hiring of the romantically involved team of Ms. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham, for the 1975 album simply called “Fleetwood Mac,” that the band began to show its full commercial brio.Ms. McVie‘s song “Over My Head” began the groundswell by entering Billboard’s Top 20; her “Say You Love Me,” reached No. 11. After a slow buildup, the “Fleetwood Mac” album eventually hit Billboard’s summit.Just over a year and a half later, the group released “Rumours,” which generated outsize interest not only for its four Top 10 hits (two of them written by Ms. McVie) but also for several highly dramatic behind-the-scenes events within the band’s ranks, which they aired out in the lyrics and openly discussed in the press.During the creation of the album, the two couples in the band — Ms. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham and the married McVies — broke up. Ms. McVie’s song “You Make Loving Fun” celebrated an affair she was then having with the band’s lighting director. (At first, she told Mr. McVie that the song was about her dog.) The optimistic-sounding “Don’t Stop” was intended to point her ex-husband toward a new life without her.“We wrote those songs despite ourselves,” Ms. McVie told Mojo. “It was a therapeutic move. The only way we could get this stuff out was to say it, and it came out in a way that was difficult. Imagine trying to sing those songs onstage with the people you’re singing them about.”It helped dull the pain, she told Mojo, that “we were all very high,” adding, “I don’t think there was a sober day.” And the album’s megasuccess gave the members a different high. “The buzz of realizing you’ve written one of the best albums ever written; it was such a phenomenal time,” Ms. McVie told Attitude magazine in 2019.Ms. McVie, center, and the other members of Fleetwood Mac in 1978 after winning honors at the American Music Awards in Santa Monica, Calif. From left: Mr. Fleetwood, Ms. Nicks, Mr. McVie and Mr. Buckingham. Nick Ut/Associated PressBut the group yearned to stretch creatively. The result was the less commercial sound of the double-album follow-up, “Tusk,” released in 1979. Though not a success on anything near the scale of “Rumours,” it sold more than two million copies and produced three hits, including Ms. McVie’s “Think About Me.”Into the ’80sThe group moved smoothly into the new decade with the 1982 release “Mirage,” which hit No. 1 aided by Ms. McVie’s “Hold Me,” a Top Five hit that was inspired by her tumultuous relationship with the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson. Two years later, Ms. McVie issued a solo album that made the Top 30, while its strongest single, “Got a Hold on Me,” broke the Top 10.In 1987, the reconvened Fleetwood Mac issued “Tango in the Night,” which featured two hits written by Ms. McVie, “Everywhere” and “Little Lies.” (“Little Lies” was written with the Portuguese musician and songwriter Eddie Quintela, whom she had wed the year before. They would divorce in 2003.) Mr. Buckingham left the group shortly afterward, shaking the dynamic that had made their recordings stellar. The 1990 album “Behind the Mask” barely went gold, producing just one Top 40 single (“Save Me,” written by Ms. McVie), while “Time,” issued five years later, was the band’s first unsuccessful album in two decades.Ms. McVie didn’t tour with the band to support “Time.” But the early 1990s brought broad new attention to her hit “Don’t Stop” when it became the theme song for Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign. In 1993, Mr. Clinton persuaded the five musicians who played on that hit to reunite to perform it at an Inaugural ball.They came together again in 1997 for a tour, which produced the live album “The Dance,” one of the top-selling concert recordings of all time. Yet by the next year a growing fear of flying, and a desire to return to England from the band’s adopted home of Los Angeles, inspired Ms. McVie to retire to the English countryside.Five years later, she agreed to add some keyboard parts and backing vocals to a largely ignored Fleetwood Mac album, “Say You Will,” and in 2006 she produced a little-heard solo album, “In the Meantime,” which she recorded and wrote with her guitarist nephew Dan Perfect.Finally, in 2014, driven by boredom and a growing sense of isolation, she reunited with the prime Mac lineup for the massive “On With The Show” tour. In its wake, Ms. McVie began to write lots of new material, as did Mr. Buckingham, resulting in an album under both their names in 2017, as well as a joint tour. The full band also played shows that year; even though Mr. Buckingham was fired in 2018, Ms. McVie continued to tour with the group in a lineup that included Neil Finn of Crowded House and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. In 2021, Ms. McVie sold publishing rights to her entire 115-song catalog for an undisclosed sum.Information on her survivors was not immediately available.Ms. McVie in 1980. Two years later she had a Top Five hit with “Hold Me,” inspired by her tumultuous relationship with the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson. Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesThroughout her career, Ms. McVie took pride in never being categorized by her gender. “I kind of became one of the guys,” she told the British newspaper The Independent in 2019. “I was always treated with great respect.”While she always acknowledged the special chemistry of Fleetwood Mac’s most successful lineup, she believed her role transcended it.“Band members leave and other people take their place,” she told Rolling Stone, “but there was always that space where the piano should be.” More