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      For the Gloriously Over-the-Top Rina Sawayama, Less Is Less

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      The pop singer and songwriter’s first album was a master class in maximalism. Its follow-up, “Hold the Girl,” still carries weighty subjects, but largely without its chaotic edge.The British-Japanese musician Rina Sawayama’s kaleidoscopically eclectic debut, “Sawayama,” ranks among the best and most imaginative pop albums of this still-young decade. Gloriously excessive but intimately personal, “Sawayama” sounded like an internet browser with too many open tabs blasting away — perhaps a vintage Christina Aguilera hit, a black metal song and an episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” — that somehow overlapped in synergistic, mashed-up harmony.Though she was a pop outsider who’d self-funded her head-turning 2017 EP “Rina,” Sawayama’s album, which arrived in April 2020, garnered her A-list fans like Elton John, with whom she later rerecorded a version of her queer anthem “Chosen Family,” and Lady Gaga, who tapped Sawayama and her producer Clarence Clarity to remix — with their signature over-the-top flair — a track off “Chromatica.”But toward the end of Sawayama’s catharsis-chasing second album, “Hold the Girl,” out Friday, there’s a song so sparse and restrained, it almost sounds like the work of a different artist. “Send My Love to John” is a narrative-driven ballad, crooned over country-tinged, fingerpicked acoustic guitar, subtle enough to spotlight the pathos in Sawayama’s voice and the song’s lyrics.“Threw away my name/It’s easier when it sounds the same,” Sawayama sings, from the perspective of an immigrant mother who came to the States in the early 1970s. The titular John is her son’s partner; Sawayama wrote it for a friend whose mother had difficulty accepting their sexual identity. The song is, in some ways, a fantasy of compassion, understanding and acceptance. “He’s there for you,” Sawayama sings on the wrenching bridge, “in all the ways I never was.”The therapeutic practice of “reparenting” — or learning to meet, as an adult, the needs you were denied as a child — is a core idea running through “Hold the Girl.” “Reach inside and hold you close, I won’t leave you on your own,” Sawayama, 32, sings on the title track, a bracing torch song that eventually fragments into skittering electro-pop. On the theatrical “Phantom,” she once again addresses her inner child, but this time it’s her older self that needs comfort: “I was wrong to assume I would ever outgrow you/I need you now, I need you close.”If this sounds like heavy lifting for a four-minute pop song, know that Sawayama has never stuck to light, conventional subjects. Part of what made her previous album so fresh was the way it fit under-sung human experiences — the slow but painful erosion of a friendship (“Bad Friend”), feeling disconnected from one’s birth country (“Tokyo Love Hotel”) or even the familial lineage of depression (“Akasaka Sad”) — into the familiar grammar of catchy pop songs. The gleeful gear-shifting nature of Sawayama’s sound, though, still made the album feel like joyride.“Hold the Girl” continues to mine deep material — “Imagining” addresses a mental health crisis; the opener, “Minor Feelings,” takes its title from a Cathy Park Hong essay collection — but the protruding eccentricities that once made Sawayama’s music so distinct often sound sanded down. Previous Sawayama standouts like “XS” and “STFU!” paired blingy pop production and hip-hop swagger with crushingly aggro guitars; what elevated them beyond simple Y2K nostalgia was the way they sounded, simultaneously, like every single song playing across the radio dial in 1999.The songs that fall flat on “Hold the Girl” — like the Kelly Clarkson-lite “Catch Me in the Air”; or the MTV reality-show-theme-song-that-never-was “Hurricanes” — instead sound like a faithful and earnest homage to a single bygone aesthetic. The big-tent affirmation of the closer, “To Be Alive,” shares a surprising affinity with Christian pop, not necessarily a sin, except for the way it tones down Sawayama’s idiosyncrasies in favor of something more universal. In creating a soft place for herself and her inner child to land, Sawayama has blunted some of her music’s sharper edges.There is, however, a bold and satisfyingly angry stretch across the middle of the album with some of its strongest material. The antsy, strobe-lit hyperpop of “Imagining” effectively captures a loss of control, while the brash, earth-quaking “Your Age” proves again that Sawayama is the rare contemporary artist who’s managed to make effective use of nü-metal. That song, too, derives its force from a cleareyed reconsideration of the past. Sawayama might be again addressing a lack of parental compassion, but the lyrics are ambiguous enough (“Now that I’m your age, I just can’t imagine/Why did you do it, what the hell were you thinking?”) that it could also serve as a re-examination of a relationship with a large age gap, à la Demi Lovato’s recent “29.”When things risk getting too heavy, Sawayama still knows how to take flight. The album’s best single is the devilishly fun “This Hell,” which throws a breezy shrug at high-strung homophobia (“God hates us? All right then/Buckle up, at dawn we’re riding”) and gets down to the more pressing business of partying. The mid-tempo highlight “Forgiveness” strikes a perfect balance between naturalistic sincerity and lavish melodrama. “I’m looking for signs,” Sawayama belts in an ascending melody that keeps escalating to the stratosphere. For one ecstatic moment, she sounds not like her own parent or even her own therapist — just her own co-pilot, ready to navigate the uncharted skies ahead.Rina Sawayama“Hold the Girl”(Dirty Hit) More

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      ‘Moonage Daydream’ Review: David Bowie’s Sound and Vision

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      Brett Morgen’s new documentary about the singer uses archival material, not talking heads. But the film is more séance than biography.The usual way of making a documentary about a famous, no-longer-living popular musician is to weave talking-head interviews (with colleagues, journalists and random celebrities with nothing better to do) around video clips of the star onstage and in the studio. The story tends to follow a standard script: early struggles followed by triumph, disaster and redemption. Movies like this clog the streaming platforms, catering to eager fans and nostalgic dads.Brett Morgen’s new film about David Bowie is something different. Titled “Moonage Daydream” after a semi-deep cut from Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars,” and showing in IMAX as well as other formats, it’s less a biography than a séance. Instead of plodding through the chronology of Bowie’s life and career, Morgen conjures the singer’s presence through an artful collage of concert footage and other archival material, including feature films and music videos. There are a lot of great songs, and thanks to Morgen’s dexterous editing, Bowie himself seems to provide the narration, a ghostly effect (he died in 2016) that resonates with some of his ideas about time, consciousness and the universe. He is not so much the subject of the film as its animating spirit.“Does it matter? Do I bother?” he asks at the beginning, musing on the transience of existence. For anyone who grew up following the iterations of his persona and the evolution of his music, the answer, at least as far as the movie is concerned, is emphatically yes.Morgen, who has made documentaries about the Chicago 7, Kurt Cobain, Jane Goodall and the Hollywood producer Robert Evans, subordinates the dry facts of history to the mysteries of personality. “Moonage Daydream” is interested in what it felt like to be David Bowie, and also, as a corollary, what it felt like, especially in the 1970s and ’80s, to be interested in him. Context and evaluation — the sources and influences of his music; its relation to what was happening in the wider world — are left to the viewer to supply or infer. The work, and the artist’s presence, are paramount.For the most part, this approach works. Though Morgen bends and twists the timeline when it suits him, he traces an arc from the early ’70s into the ’90s, beginning in the Ziggy Stardust years and immersing the audience in Bowie’s otherworldly charisma at that moment. His bright orange hair, his brilliantly inventive fashion sense, his frank bisexuality and his almost casual mastery of divergent musical idioms made him an irresistible puzzle for the media and an idol to the restless and curious young.Appearing onstage in dresses, flowing suits and shiny space gear, he undid gender conventions with insouciant ease. He changed his look and his sound from one album to the next, leading critics to question his authenticity and interviewers to wonder about his true self.That mystery seems more easily solved now than it might have back then, and “Moonage Daydream” explains some of Bowie’s process and a lot of his thinking. The combined effect of the present-tense voice-over and the earlier interviews is to emphasize Bowie’s essential sanity. Perhaps more than most of his peers, he seems to have approached even excesses and transgressions with a certain intellectual detachment, taking an Apollonian perspective on an essentially Dionysian form.His postwar childhood is dealt with quickly. He notes the coldness of his parents’ marriage, and the influence of his older half brother, Terry Burns, who introduced young David to jazz, outlaw literature and modern art. Mainly, though, “Moonage Daydream” tacks away from Bowie’s personal life, editing sex and drugs out of its version of rock n roll.His first marriage, to Angie Barnett, isn’t mentioned at all. His second, to Iman, marks a transition from restless solitude to contented middle age. The emphasis, in both the narration and the images, is on Bowie’s work. His explanations of changes in style and genre are illuminating, and illustrated by shrewd musical selections. You don’t hear all the obvious hits — where was “Young Americans”? — but you do get a sense of his range and inventiveness, and a taste of some less-well-remembered songs. I was glad to be reminded of the anthemic “Rock ’n’ Roll With Me.”The documentary mainly focuses on Bowie’s work, and tacks away from his personal life.NeonWatching Bowie move through the phases of his career, from the avant-garde to the unapologetically pop, it’s clear, at least in retrospect, that his creative life was a series of experiments in an impressive variety of media. Morgen devotes some time to Bowie’s painting and sculpture, and to his acting, in films like “The Man Who Fell to Earth” and “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” and in a Broadway production of “The Elephant Man.”Bowie was a pretty good actor, and also — this is shown rather than said — an exceptionally good dancer. His devotion to his work, and the pleasure he took in it, are the themes of “Moonage Daydream.” It’s a portrait of the artist as a thoughtful, lucky man. And perhaps surprisingly, given the mythology that surrounds so many of his contemporaries, a happy one.Moonage DaydreamRated PG-13. Rock ’n’ roll, the way it used to be. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. In theaters. More

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      5 Russian Bullets Dashed an Opera Singer’s Dreams. Then He Reclaimed His Voice.

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      While on a rescue mission in Ukraine, Sergiy Ivanchuk was shot in the lungs, apparently ending his chance at opera stardom. His recovery is a marvel of medicine, chance and his own spirit.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.ULM, Germany — It was the most pivotal performance of his 29 years. There were no costumes, no stage, no orchestra pit. Instead, a lone pianist hunched expectantly over her instrument. For an audience, a handful of doctors and nurses watched from a cool white hospital lobby.Sergiy Ivanchuk — his face patched with bandages, legs trembling beneath his trousers — began hesitantly. But as his deep baritone held, confidence grew. By the time he finished with a Ukrainian folk tune, his song soared with the passion of a man brought back from the dead, a man reveling in a voice reclaimed.

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      “For three months, I thought I would die,” he told those assembled. “And now, I can sing again.”Not long before, Mr. Ivanchuk had believed he was on his deathbed, his lungs punctured by bullets, his body attached to a tangle of tubes.On March 10, Mr. Ivanchuk, an aspiring opera singer, had been working with humanitarian volunteers helping civilians flee the besieged Ukrainian city of Kharkiv when Russian forces attacked, and he was shot.Even if he managed to survive, he remembered thinking, surely his singing days were over.But a string of chance encounters, committed doctors and the love of a mother all led to that unexpected performance in a German military hospital this summer, giving Mr. Ivanchuk a chance to transform a tragedy into an opportunity to salvage his longtime dream of opera stardom.“So many different circumstances had to happen,” said Mr. Ivanchuk, wondering if science and his own spirit were the only factors in his recovery. “There is something. God or an angel saved me. There is something there.”“For three months, I thought I would die,” said Mr. Ivanchuk, shown in his room at a military hospital in Ulm, Germany.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesIn 2020, Mr. Ivanchuk was studying opera in Italy, and he had big ambitions: to perform on the stages of the Metropolitan in New York and La Scala in Milan.Then the pandemic closed borders around the globe. His music school was closed, and Mr. Ivanchuk was stuck in Ukraine, struggling with severe depression.Two years later, as the world began reopening, Russia invaded, and Mr. Ivanchuk found himself trapped in Ukraine once more: Men of fighting age were banned from leaving the country.His dream was rapidly fading — opera singers should complete their training by their early 30s. No one could guess when the war would end.The State of the WarDramatic Gains for Ukraine: After Ukraine’s offensive in its northeast drove Russian forces into a chaotic retreat, Ukrainian leaders face critical choices on how far to press the attack.How the Strategy Formed: The plan that allowed Ukraine’s recent gains began to take shape months ago during a series of intense conversations between Ukrainian and U.S. officials.Putin’s Struggles at Home: Russia’s setbacks in Ukraine have left President Vladimir V. Putin’s image weakened, his critics emboldened and his supporters looking for someone else to blame.Southern Counteroffensive: Military operations in the south have been a painstaking battle of river crossings, with pontoon bridges as prime targets for both sides. So far, it is Ukraine that has advanced.Yet like so many of his compatriots, Mr. Ivanchuk wanted to join the fight. Not on the front lines — “I’d be useless for that,” he joked — but by using his 30-year-old blue Lada sedan to drive civilians out of Kharkiv, the embattled city in eastern Ukraine, a few hours from his hometown, Poltava, where he had grown up in a musical family.It was a grueling routine. Every morning at 6, he drove to Kharkiv, laden with medicine and groceries for those still inside. Every night, he picked up residents fleeing the siege, who could not afford a taxi out. He slept a few hours at home with his parents, then started again.His mother, Olena Ivanchuk, awaited his return each night in silent torment. But on the morning of March 10, his mother had to speak: While dusting, she noticed the family’s religious icons had all fallen from the table, which she perceived as a dark omen.“When I told him, his face fell,” she said. “For the first time in my life, I told him: ‘My son, I fear maybe this time you won’t return.’”He left for Kharkiv anyway.Mr. Ivanchuk chose to aid the war effort by helping residents flee from Kharkiv. He was shot three weeks into the war.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesThat night, Mr. Ivanchuk and his passengers packed his Lada to the brim with suitcases and pets. It was pitch black as they made their way out of town. Through the darkness, bullets suddenly whizzed past.In a terrifying game of cat and mouse, Mr. Ivanchuk sped along, trying to find the protection of a Ukrainian military checkpoint. But the Russian forces soon found their mark: 30 bullets hit the car. Five hit Mr. Ivanchuk.“I felt each and every bullet. First it hit one leg, then the leg once more. Then I saw my fingers destroyed,” he said. “After that, I felt a bullet in my side and back.”Four people and two cats were inside the car. Yet only Mr. Ivanchuk had been shot.He likely would not have survived if not for one of his passengers, Viktoria Fostorina — a doctor. With the help of the others in the car, she bandaged the wounds on his chest and back, preventing a collapsed lung.“At first, I was the one saving them,” he said. “But as it turned out, in the end, they saved me.”Somehow, he managed to drive the car to a Ukrainian military checkpoint before collapsing.The war was three weeks old; Mr. Ivanchuk had already rescued 100 people. As he felt himself losing consciousness in the hospital later, he prayed to God, and prepared to die.“I was thinking, ‘You’re only 29, and you’re dying,” he said, recalling his thoughts. “‘I could have lived longer. But I tried to help people, so maybe it’s a good thing.’”After searching for Mr. Ivanchuk for nearly two days, his mother found him at the Kharkiv hospital, where doctors warned he might not survive. She forced back tears, entering the room of her unconscious son with a smile.“I said, ‘Please, son, open your eyes.’ I told him: ‘One hundred percent, you’ll survive. You will live.’ I told him that several times.”An X-ray showing Mr. Ivanchuk’s hand injuries.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesMr. Ivanchuk remembers awakening to her smiling face. But he couldn’t speak: Tubes were coming out of his mouth. His body was in such pain, he could communicate only by twitching one finger.Ms. Ivanchuk recalled her son’s crying from the pain of his early operations. Later, his tears came from his realization he might never perform again.But fate stepped in once more.Mr. Ivanchuk’s story spread on social media, and a prominent Ukrainian opera singer convinced a talented surgeon in the country to operate on him. His lungs and liver began to heal.Though his recovery had begun, a dark struggle was still ahead, one he almost lost.For weeks, he lay among shellshocked young soldiers who sometimes jumped out of bed at night, throwing imaginary grenades, screaming at comrades to take cover.Mr. Ivanchuk grew paranoid that Russian spies lurked behind every door. And he grappled with the idea that rescuing people had cost him his dream.“It was a marathon of pain and psychological torment,” he said.He faced down those thoughts, thanks in part by drawing on lessons from his past struggle with depression. Psychotherapy during the pandemic had taught him to see his thoughts as brain chemistry, not his inner self. And he began to accept that faith alone could not heal him: “I still believe in the Creator — but a lot depends on us.”Mr. Ivanchuk playing the organ in the church hospital. The movement helps exercise his injured fingers.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesKeeping his goals confined to his hospital room, Mr. Ivanchuk and his mother celebrated even the tiniest step toward recovery. Taking life day by day, and forgetting his big ambitions, he was surprised to discover he felt more content than before the attack.“I used to think that without a dream, it was impossible to be a happy person,” he said. “But now, I see that happiness is actually just to live.”Once stable enough for travel, Mr. Ivanchuk was sent to Ulm, Germany, for advanced surgeries at a German military hospital.As a musician, he wanted to restore as much dexterity as possible to his mutilated fingers — he has played the bandura, a Ukrainian stringed folk instrument, since childhood.He tried not to think about opera until one night, on his third week in Ulm, when he began to sing in the shower. He chose Valentin’s aria from “Faust” — and was astounded to hear his old voice.Mr. Ivanchuk soon realized that not only were his dreams still possible — but that, in a wholly unanticipated twist to his nearly fatal injury, he was now better placed to pursue them.If not for the attack, he would have remained stuck in Ukraine. Moreover, he had landed in Germany, the best place in the world for a budding opera singer. Thanks to its subsidies for the arts, Germany has over 80 full-time opera houses.By late June, he was well enough to perform for the hospital staff.Mr. Ivanchuk greeting the hospital staff after he performed for the first time since he was wounded.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesFirst, he sang “Ave Maria,” for its spirituality. Then, an aria from “The Magic Flute,” by Mozart, to honor his German caretakers. The third song could only be Ukrainian and a tribute to the woman devoted to his survival — “My Own Mother.”She cried as he began. “I did not expect he could sing that loudly,” she said. “It is because he was doing it with his heart.”That evening, he was discharged.“He was extremely positive, he didn’t complain at all about his situation,” said Dr. Benedikt Friemert, the head orthopedic surgeon at the hospital, describing his patient’s recovery. “Quite the opposite: He was convinced that what he had done was right. He was unlucky and got injured, but he said: ‘Never mind, I’ll get better so that I can do what’s important to me.’ In other words: singing.”Mr. Ivanchuk, with a slight limp, a missing finger and a body peppered with bullet fragments, still faces a difficult journey. He has more physiotherapy ahead.He now rents an apartment in Ulm with his mother, and he has started receiving lessons from a Ukrainian opera singer, Maryna Zubko, who works at the local theater. One day, they hope to sing together there.“He has a beautiful voice,” said Ms. Zubko, who first encountered her pupil when a heavily bandaged man threw flowers at her feet after a local performance.Her hope for Mr. Ivanchuk is to spend a year recovering with her help then use his talent, and his story, to earn a place at a prestigious program in Europe or the United States to finish his training.He is dreaming again of the Met and La Scala. “I think in five years, I could make it onto one of those stages,” Mr. Ivanchuk said. “As long as no one else shoots me.” More

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      Art Rosenbaum, Painter and Preserver of Folk Music, Dies at 83

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      As an artist and exponent of American traditional songs, he sought to blur the lines between outsider and insider art, and became a guiding force in the Athens, Ga., scene.ATLANTA — Art Rosenbaum, a painter and folk musician acclaimed for a half-century of field recordings of American vernacular music, including old-time Appalachian fiddle tunes and ritual music imported from Africa by enslaved people, died on Sept. 4 at a hospital in Athens, Ga., his adopted hometown. He was 83.His son, Neil Rosenbaum, said the cause was complications of cancer.Art Rosenbaum’s passion for documenting a broad range of American musical traditions as they were passed down and performed at work camps, church gatherings and rural living rooms expanded upon the famous field recording work of the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. An important inspiration was Pete Seeger, another high-profile 20th-century champion of folk music. Mr. Rosenbaum wrote that Mr. Seeger had once told him, “Don’t learn from me, learn from the folks I learned from.”Mr. Rosenbaum called it “good advice, and the kick in the rear that got me going.”“Outside Carnesville,” oil on linen, 1983-84. Mr. Rosenbaum’s paintings often depicted the musicians he recorded, as he did here, with Mabel Cawthorn on the banjo.Art RosenbaumIn 2007, the Atlanta-based label Dust-to-Digital released the first of two box sets of compilations from Mr. Rosenbaum’s trove, “Art of Field Recording Volume I: Fifty Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum,” which won a Grammy Award for best historical album.The pop music website Pitchfork called the release “revelatory” and “an indispensable counterpoint to Harry Smith’s ‘Anthology of American Folk Music,’” a reference to the 1952 song compilation that remains a canonical touchstone for folk musicians.Like Mr. Smith, the bohemian polymath who compiled the “Anthology,” Mr. Rosenbaum was an accomplished visual artist. As an art teacher, he spent the bulk of his career at the University of Georgia, in Athens, where his energetic paintings, often depicting the musicians he recorded, and his ideas about the democratization of culture had an influence that resonated far beyond the classroom.Michael Stipe, the visual artist and singer with the Athens rock band R.E.M., who was a student of Mr. Rosenbaum’s in the early 1980s, said Mr. Rosenbaum’s goal “was to blur the lines between what is outsider and insider, and to bring together this untrained music and art with trained music and art, and acknowledge that each have immense power, and that they’re not that far apart.”A portrait of Michael Stipe, the R.E.M. singer, a student of Mr. Rosenbaum’s, as well as a subject of his paintings.Art Rosenbaum, Collection of the Peasant CorporationArthur Spark Rosenbaum was born on Dec. 6, 1938, in Ogdensburg, N.Y., in St. Lawrence County. His mother, Della Spark Rosenbaum, was a medical illustrator who encouraged her children’s artistic inclinations. His father, David Rosenbaum, was an Army pathologist who sometimes sang what his son described as “Northern street songs.” Arthur later recorded one of these songs, his father’s a cappella version of the ribald 18th-century Child ballad “Our Goodman,” and included it in the 2007 box set.The family eventually moved to Indianapolis, where Mr. Rosenbaum, entranced by traditional music, absorbed the Harry Smith anthology and the contemporary folk stars of the day. In high school he won an art contest at the Indiana State Fair and spent the $25 prize money on a five-string banjo. He went on to become a pre-eminent expert on traditional banjo playing and tunings and to record several albums.In the mid-1950s Mr. Rosenbaum moved to New York City, then the epicenter of the burgeoning folk revival, earning an undergraduate degree in art history and a master’s degree in fine arts from Columbia University. In the summers he worked at a resort hotel on Lake Michigan, where he began making recordings of nearby field workers from Mexico and the American South.In 1958, Mr. Rosenbaum tracked down and recorded in Indianapolis a musician named Scrapper Blackwell, whom he described as “one of the best and most influential blues guitarists of the 1920s and ’30s.” Back in New York, as Mr. Rosenbaum was fond of recalling, a fellow roots music obsessive named Bob Dylan would pester him for any details he could muster about Mr. Blackwell’s life and playing style.“Shady Grove,” 2009. Mr. Rosenbaum sought out traditional Black and white musicians, revealing a shared cultural history.Art RosenbaumIt was in New York that Mr. Rosenbaum met the artist Margo Newmark, who became his wife and lifelong collaborator. She survives him.In addition to her and his son, Neil, a filmmaker and musician, he is survived by a sister, Jenny Rosenbaum, a writer; and a brother, Victor Rosenbaum, a concert pianist.After eight years of teaching studio art at the University of Iowa, Mr. Rosenbaum in 1976 took a similar job at the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art. With Athens as a home base, he and Ms. Newmark Rosenbaum continued making field recordings, many of them in and around Georgia, and giving the musicians they met opportunities to play before new audiences.“As these traditional musicians were identified and then brought out,” said Judith McWillie, an emerita art professor at the university, “and as there were more festivals and opportunities for them to play, people began to envision an identity for Georgia that was somewhat different from the one that it had. This was the 1970s, and coming off some extremely difficult times in the South.”Folk music, she said, revealed a shared cultural history: “The musicians Art brought out were Black and white.”In 1984, Mr. Rosenbaum recorded an album of stories and songs by Howard Finster, the self-taught artist, preacher and self-proclaimed “man of visions” whose work has become indelibly associated with 20th-century Georgia after its use on album covers by R.E.M. and the band Talking Heads.Untitled Diptych, 2014. Many of Mr. Rosenbaum’s paintings are allegorical works in which the old and the new cohabitate, with traditional musicians sharing space with modern-day hipsters.Art RosenbaumHe also recorded the McIntosh County Shouters, an African American group from coastal Georgia who performed the “ring shout,” which Mr. Rosenbaum described as “an impressive fusion of call-and-response singing, polyrhythmic percussion and expressive and formalized dancelike movements.” The ring shout, he asserted, was “the oldest African American performance tradition on the North American continent.”Brenton Jordan, a member of the group, said of the Rosenbaums, “It’s their legwork that actually kind of introduced the McIntosh County Shouters to the world.” He noted that the ring shout, once on the verge of extinction, has in recent years been performed by his group in Washington at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.The Rosenbaums published a book on the ring shout in 1998. With drawings of the performers by Mr. Rosenbaum and photos of them by Ms. Newmark Rosenbaum, it depicts a place and a culture that seems beguilingly out of phase with modern life.Many of Mr. Rosenbaum’s other paintings and drawings are loose allegorical works in which the old and the new clash and cohabitate, with traditional musicians sharing space on the canvas with modern-day hipsters, skateboarders and documentarians (often Mr. Rosenbaum himself).As a painter, he was inspired by Cezanne and Max Beckmann, the German Expressionist. At times his work recalls the painting of Thomas Hart Benton, the American regionalist. Some of Mr. Rosenbaum’s works are large murals on historical themes.Pete Seeger once told Mr. Rosenbaum, “Don’t learn from me, learn from the folks I learned from.” That advice set him on a decades-long project of seeking out unrecorded musicians.via Rosenbaum familyBeginning in the late 1970s, Athens saw an explosion of forward-thinking rock musicians, many of whom, like Mr. Stipe, had ties to the Georgia art school. Mr. Rosenbaum’s passions always ran to traditional music, but he remained an inspiration for contemporary musicians.Lance Ledbetter, the founder and co-director of the Dust-to-Digital label, recalled Vic Chesnutt, the brilliant, idiosyncratic Athens-based songwriter who died in 2009, speaking of Mr. Rosenbaum, quoting him as saying:“When you move to Athens, and you hear about this guy who plays banjo and knows all of these songs, you just follow him around like a puppy dog. And I’m not the only one who did that.” More

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      A Jury in Chicago Has Reached a Verdict in the R. Kelly Trial

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      CHICAGO — The jury has reached a verdict in the latest trial here against R. Kelly, the former R&B star who was accused of coercing minors into sex, producing child sexual abuse imagery and obstructing an earlier investigation, Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for the prosecution, said Wednesday.Mr. Kelly is already serving a 30-year prison sentence. He was convicted last year on racketeering and sex trafficking charges in federal court in Brooklyn, where a jury found him guilty of leading a decades-long scheme to recruit women and underage girls for sex.The Chicago trial focused in part on charges that Mr. Kelly had obstructed an earlier investigation into his relationship with a teenage girl — an investigation that led to his 2008 trial and acquittal of charges of producing child sexual abuse imagery. That verdict allowed Mr. Kelly to walk free until he was hit with a slew of federal and state charges in 2019 in New York and Illinois.The key evidence in the 2008 trial was a videotape that state prosecutors said showed the singer sexually abusing and urinating on a 14-year-old girl. The young woman said to be in that video did not testify in the 2008 trial, and told a grand jury years ago that it was not her in the tape. But in this trial, the woman, now 37, testified that it had been her in the video and said that Mr. Kelly sexually abused her hundreds of times when she was underage.In total, four women testified during the trial that Mr. Kelly sexually abused then when they were under 18; three of them described Mr. Kelly raping them.As in the Brooklyn case, in which he was convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking charges, Mr. Kelly did not testify. His lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, argued that the accusers and other witnesses for the prosecution were testifying because they sought financial gain or protection from the government against perjury and other charges.The 12-person jury will also announce verdicts on charges against two former employees of Mr. Kelly’s, who are accused of helping in his effort to cover up his crimes in the lead-up to the first Chicago trial. More

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      46 Years After His Death, the Producer Charles Stepney Shines Again

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      The Chicago musician made his mark with Minnie Riperton and Earth, Wind & Fire at Chess Records. A new collection explores his previously unreleased solo work.Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Gratitude.” Terry Callier’s “Occasional Rain.” Minnie Riperton’s “Come to My Garden.” All three albums featured ornate sounds that fused elements of classical, psychedelic music and soul. All three nudged their creators in fresh creative directions. All three bore the hallmarks of a vibraphonist who turned into one of the most underappreciated producers of his era: Charles Stepney.Stepney is best known from his in-house production and arrangements for Chess Records, the Chicago label that highlighted blues musicians and paved early inroads to rock ’n’ roll. Working mostly behind the scenes in the 1960s and ’70s, with artists including Muddy Waters, Ramsey Lewis, Deniece Williams and the Dells, he wasn’t necessarily a household name. But those who knew, knew.“It was a sensitivity and creativity behind what he did,” Williams said in an interview. “He was very special in his sound and his deliverance. It wasn’t like anybody else.”Stepney’s career, however, was short: He died in 1976 at age 45, and while his music has lived on — and spread via samples by artists including A Tribe Called Quest, Kanye West and Solange — he hasn’t been the focus of a deep dive release, until now. Last Friday, the Chicago-based label International Anthem released “Step on Step,” a compilation of demos and experimental music Stepney crafted for himself. The set features anecdotes from his three daughters — Eibur, Charlene and Chanté — alongside sporadic studio chatter, offering a rare behind-the-scenes look into Stepney’s meticulous recording process.“When people are like, ‘Did your dad write that?’ We were like, ‘Yeah, he wrote it,’” Charlene said with a laugh in a recent video call. “Because we heard it about 50 times a day.”The Stepney sisters described their father as hard-working and stern yet fair, with a restless creative mind that never stopped taking in stimuli. They remembered the jokes he’d tell, and how — even though he was busy in the studio — they could come and hang out among the instruments in the basement, as long as they were quiet. “He didn’t always labor over one song,” Charlene said. “If he got stuck, he would put it up, label it, let it breathe, and then he’d come back to it later.”These tracks that Stepney worked on alone differ from the collaborations that helped make his name. “Gimme Some Sugar,” “Daddy’s Diddies” and “Gotta Dig It to Dig It” lean heavily into electronic funk, while “Imagination,” “That’s the Way of the World” and “On Your Face” — early versions of the noted Earth, Wind & Fire songs — feature spacey synths and canned drums, far removed from the band’s immense, brassy resonance. The six-minute “Look B4U Leap” blends rhythmic percussion and bright electric keys, and “Denim Groove” — a melodic mix of jazz and samba — sounds dialed in from the not-so-distant future, the beginnings of hip-hop culture in the early 1980s.Stepney got his start studying music theory at Wilson Junior College in Chicago and began his career playing piano and vibraphone in the mid-1950s. He almost quit the business when, flat broke and frustrated that the city’s North Side clubs were white and not booking jazz and the South Side venues weren’t paying decent wages, he nearly sold his vibraphone and got a regular job. “I was broke and convinced I would never make it in this field,” he told Downbeat in 1970. “Maybe I ought to try being a shoe salesman or bookkeeper or something.”On the day Stepney was going to drop off his large instrument to a potential buyer, Phil Wright, an arranger at Chess, called and asked him to play a recording session at the label’s studio. Stepney impressed them so much, he kept getting called back to work, and eventually became the label’s lead sheet writer. In 1967, Marshall Chess, the son of the label’s founder, tasked him with an ambitious project: helping to create the psychedelic soul group Rotary Connection, taking the bones of a white rock band and adding voices like the upstart Riperton (who had first joined the label as its receptionist) and the singer and songwriter Sidney Barnes.The group was an experiment, and Stepney its gleeful chemist, mixing gospel, strings and soulful grooves with unexpected, even jarring sounds and wordless, atmospheric interludes. Riperton, with her four-and-a-half-octave range, was the clear-cut star of the outfit, and three years later, Stepney produced and arranged her lush debut album.Williams was introduced to Stepney through Rotary Connection’s ambitious sound. “I was 16 and my neighbor rushed in with this LP,” she said, “and I saw his name in the credits. There was a feeling you got from his arrangements. You not only heard it, but you felt it.” She recalled how “Charles lifted the head of the piano and started strumming the strings with a guitar pick,” while working on “If You Don’t Believe,” from her 1976 debut. “I was there with my mouth open like, ‘Who else would think to do that?’”Stepney’s schedule was demanding, and his health suffered. He learned he was diabetic, then suffered a heart attack at the home of the record executive Clarence Avant. Eibur, his eldest daughter, said he had told her, “‘I’ve done everything I’ve ever wanted to do and accomplished, but what I really want to do is my own album.’” He was finishing Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Spirit” — completing charts while he was hospitalized, Charlene said — shortly before a second, fatal heart attack.Stepney left behind 90 reels of unreleased solo material, which sat with the sisters for decades before they finally got it transcribed, with help from the International Anthem co-founder Scottie McNiece. “Stepney’s story is so uniquely Chicagoan,” he wrote in an email. “He was an incredibly gifted artist who was more focused on the music than any sort of lifestyle or celebrity. He was just a true, craft-focused, working artist.”“Step on Step” traverses the vast scope of Stepney’s creative affinities in a 78-minute set. “It’s a legacy of love; it’s a legacy of passion,” his youngest daughter, Chanté, said. “He was underrated, under-known, but he was magnificent.” More

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      Ramsey Lewis, Jazz Pianist Who Became a Pop Star, Dies at 87

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      His 1965 recording of “The ‘In’ Crowd” brought him to a place few jazz musicians reached in that era: the Top 10.Ramsey Lewis, a jazz pianist who unexpectedly became a pop star when his recording of “The ‘In’ Crowd” reached the Top 10 in 1965 — and who remained musically active for more than a half century after that — died on Monday at his home in Chicago. He was 87.His death was announced on his website. No cause was given.Mr. Lewis, who had been leading his own group since 1956, had recorded with the revered drummer Max Roach and was well known in jazz circles but little known elsewhere when he and his trio (Eldee Young on bass and Redd Holt on drums) recorded a live album at the Bohemian Caverns in Washington in May 1965. The album included a version of “The ‘In’ Crowd,” which had been a hit for the R&B singer Dobie Gray just a few months earlier, and which was released as a single.Instrumental records were a rarity on the pop charts at the time, jazz records even more so. But its infectious groove, Mr. Lewis’s bluesy piano work and the ecstatic crowd reaction helped make the Ramsey Lewis Trio’s rendition of “The ‘In’ Crowd” a staple on radio stations and jukeboxes across the country. It reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 — eight points higher than the Dobie Gray original had reached.Two more singles in a similar vein quickly followed: covers of “Hang On Sloopy,” which had been a No. 1 hit for the McCoys in 1965, and the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night.” “The ‘In’ Crowd” won Mr. Lewis the first of his three Grammy Awards. (The others were for the 1966 album track “Hold It Right There” and a 1973 rerecording of “Hang On Sloopy.”)Mr. Young and Mr. Holt left in 1966 to form their own group and had hit singles of their own. Mr. Lewis carried on with Cleveland Eaton on bass and Maurice White, later a founder of Earth, Wind & Fire, on drums. That trio had a Top 40 hit in 1966 with a version of the spiritual “Wade in the Water.”That record proved to be the end of Mr. Lewis’s career as a purveyor of Top 40 singles, but it was far from the end of his career as a jazz musician. Over the years he would record scores of albums, in contexts ranging from trios to orchestras to collaborations with his fellow pianist Billy Taylor and the singer Nancy Wilson, and he was a constant presence on the Billboard jazz chart.There was always more to Mr. Lewis than his soulful hits suggested; he was a virtuoso with a thorough grasp of the harmonic complexity of modern jazz and a smooth touch reminiscent of earlier jazz pianists like Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson. But his success on the pop and R&B charts — where he returned in 1974 with “Sun Goddess,” an album partly written and produced by Mr. White and featuring members of Earth, Wind & Fire, on which Mr. Lewis played electric keyboards — led some jazz purists to view him with skepticism.That skepticism was long gone by 2007, when the National Endowment for the Arts named him a Jazz Master, the nation’s highest honor for a jazz musician.Mr. Lewis in an undated photo. He once said he had “always had a broad outlook. If it was good music, I could dig it.” Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesCommenting on the perceived conflict between “jazz as entertainment and jazz as art” in a 2007 interview with DownBeat magazine, Mr. Lewis noted, “Count Basie and Duke Ellington’s playing was for dancers, but something happened where jazz entertainment came to be looked down upon by musicians.” He himself, he said in another interview, had “always had a broad outlook. If it was good music, I could dig it.”In announcing his Jazz Master honor, the N.E.A. pointed to Mr. Lewis’s eclecticism, praising him for a style “that springs from his early gospel experience, his classical training and a deep love of jazz.” It also acknowledged him as “an ambassador for jazz,” citing his work both in academia (he had taught jazz studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago) and in the media: In the 1990s he began hosting a syndicated weekly radio program, “Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis,” and in 2006 he hosted a public television series of the same name, which featured live performances by Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Tony Bennett and many others.At around this time he also began composing large-scale orchestral works. His “Proclamation of Hope,” written to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, was commissioned by the Ravinia Festival in Illinois, where he was artistic director of the jazz series, and performed there by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2009.Mr. Lewis found the challenge of composing that work daunting, he told The Associated Press, until he “threw away the thought of Tchaikovsky and others and sat at the piano and started improvising.” As a result, he said, “I was able to compose from my spirit rather than from my intellect.”In 1995, Mr. Lewis formed Urban Knights, an all-star ensemble with an ever-changing lineup of musicians who, as he himself had long done, straddled the worlds of jazz and R&B. The group, whose lineup at various times included the saxophonists Grover Washington Jr., Gerald Albright and Dave Koz, released seven albums, the most recent in 2019.Ramsey Emmanuel Lewis Jr. was born on May 27, 1935, in Chicago, one of three children of Pauline and Ramsey Lewis. His father worked as a maintenance man.Ramsey began taking piano lessons when he was 4 — he recalled his teacher telling him, “Listen with your inner ear” and “Make the piano sing” — and was soon playing piano at the church where his father, who encouraged his interest in jazz, was choir director.He attended DePaul University in Chicago but did not graduate; his career as a professional musician had already begun before he enrolled. While still a student at Wells High School, he had joined a local seven-piece jazz band, the Clefs. When four members of the band were drafted, Mr. Lewis, Mr. Holt and Mr. Young became the Ramsey Lewis Trio.The trio signed with Argo Records, a subsidiary of the Chicago-based blues label Chess, and released their first album, “Ramsey Lewis and His Gentle-Men of Swing,” in 1956. The trio became a fixture on the Chicago nightclub scene, and many other albums followed, as did engagements at Birdland and the Village Vanguard in New York City and at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island. But the group remained relatively unheralded beyond Chicago.That changed with “The ‘In’ Crowd.”Mr. Lewis is survived by his wife, Janet; his daughters, Denise Jeffries and Dawn Allain; his sons, Kendall, Frayne and Bobby Lewis; 17 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. His sons Ramsey Lewis III and Kevyn Lewis died before him.During the pandemic, Mr. Lewis presented a monthly series of livestream performances. An album drawn from those performances, “The Beatles Songbook,” is slated for release in November.While in lockdown he also wrote a memoir, “Gentleman of Jazz,” in collaboration with Aaron Cohen. It is scheduled for publication next year. More

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      What Music to Expect at Queen Elizabeth II’s Funeral

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      For centuries, the format of British royal funerals has largely stayed the same, with a history that tells the story of both the monarchy and music.What is the sound of a monarch’s death — the music and noise that commemorates the end of one regal life in preparation for the one to come?Music plays an enormous role in British royal ceremonies, particularly funerals, like Queen Elizabeth II’s on Sept. 19, which function as both state and religious rituals. Because the British monarch is also head of the Church of England, the sounds of these events are often tied to the Anglican musical tradition, springing out of the post-English Reformation Church.Since 1603, much of the royal funeral’s format has stayed the same, while some aspects shift to reflect the time and the monarch. The result is a striking combination of diverse works that tell both the story of the British monarchy and British music.The rites performed in the Church of England service come from the Order of the Burial of the Dead from the Book of Common Prayer. First published in 1549, it provided services and ways of daily worship in Anglican churches. The musical portions of the liturgy offered the text that has been set by composers for funerals — royal and otherwise.Those texts are called Funeral Sentences, collectively called the Burial Service, and are broken up into three parts: Opening Sentences, sung when the priests meet the body at the church; Graveside Sentences, for when the body is buried or interred; and the Last Sentence, sung after the priest throws earth onto the body.During the funeral, Sentences are separated by psalms, which are read or sung, and anthems (choral works accompanied by instruments, another musical element of the Book of Common Prayer’s liturgy). In addition, royal funerals have featured outdoor processions, including wind, brass and percussion instruments in the 17th century and, in the 20th, imperial military bands.Here is an overview of significant moments in the history of such music, from Elizabeth I to Princess Diana and the present.Elton John played a version of his song “Candle in the Wind” at Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997.Paul Hackett/Associated PressElizabeth I, 1603Elizabeth I’s funeral, at Westminster Abbey, began the tradition of grand royal services. It was the first such ceremony to use the Anglican rites and feature its associated musical liturgy. While we do not know conclusively what was performed, illustrations and surviving accounts from musicians mention the outdoor procession featuring trumpeters and the combined choirs of the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey. The setting most likely used for the burial service is by Thomas Morley (1557-1602), possibly written in anticipation of the occasion and often considered the first of its kind. Morley’s setting reflects the solemnity of both the text and the occasion, and it became standard for royal funerals until the 18th century.Mary II, 1695Musical innovations made to the royal funeral began with Mary II and the inclusion of new music by Henry Purcell (1659-95), including one Graveside Sentence: “Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts.” Referred to as “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary” (Z. 860), including the march and canzona also performed, Purcell’s setting of “Thou knowest, Lord” might have been composed to match Morley’s Sentences, accompanied by “flatt, mournful Trumpets” mirroring the vocal parts. Purcell’s “Funeral March” was a new, thunderous addition, opening with deep, heavy drums before the trumpets enter, both mournful and heraldic.Anne, 1714Anne’s funeral, at Westminster Abbey, showcases the royal funeral integrating new music into already existing settings of the Burial Service. Alongside Morley’s Opening Sentences were Funeral Sentences from the Chapel Royal organist William Croft (1678-1727). Croft’s Burial Service became the choice for royal funerals to come, and though it was written for Anne’s funeral, it was most likely not completed until 1722. He would use Purcell’s “Thou knowest, Lord” as one of the Sentences within his Burial Service, writing in his “Musica Sacra” (1724) that he “endeavoured, as near as possibly I could, to imitate that great Master and celebrated Composer.” Anne’s funeral also included a new anthem by Croft, “The Souls of the Righteous.”Caroline, 1737The death of Caroline, the wife of George II, brought about a musical addition to the royal funeral befitting the Hanoverian queen. George commissioned a funeral anthem from George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) who had known Caroline as a child. Handel’s anthem, “The Ways of Zion Do Mourn” (HWV 264), is a monumental work that at the Westminster Abbey funeral “took up three quarter of an hour of the time,” The Grub-Street Journal described, and employed almost 200 performers. While an anthem, the various parts of the work recall the Lutheranism of Caroline and Handel, featuring quotations of that faith’s music. Notably, Mozart would use the melody of the anthem’s first chorus for his Requiem (1791).Victoria, 1901Like so much about Victoria’s reign, her funeral was exceptionally different from that of her predecessors. Unlike previous monarchs, she requested a royal public funeral at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and a private burial next to Prince Albert at Frogmore House, near Windsor. Because the public service prioritized the funeral as state function over the utility of burial, Croft’s Burial Service here is more an appeal to tradition rather than a liturgical and religious need. Accordingly, Purcell’s “Thou knowest, Lord” and “Man that is born of woman,” by S.S. Wesley (1810-1876), are referred to as anthems instead of Funeral Sentences, rationalizing their inclusion in the service. The end of the ceremony featured music by Gounod, Tchaikovsky, Spohr and Beethoven, wresting the funeral music from the hands of British composers.RECENT ROYAL FUNERALS may offer insight into this tradition’s future. Princess Diana’s funeral, in 1997, featured Croft, but the anthem and procession choices embodied Diana the person: John Tavener’s “Song for Athene,” Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,” and the second half of the “Libera me, Domine” from Verdi’s Requiem. With Tavener and Verdi, non-Protestant music and liturgy were included for the first time in a royal or state funeral; and all three works evoke a solemnity and majesty both timely and timeless.Similarly, Prince Philip’s participation in his own funeral’s planning shows through in his choice of musical selections. Along with Croft were the hymn “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” a nod to his naval roots, and two pieces commissioned by him: Benjamin Britten’s “Jubilate Deo,” written for St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and a setting of Psalm 104 by William Lovelady, arranged for four voices and organ. This musical flexibility shows another shift in the royal funeral tradition as it continues into the 21st century.So, what can we expect for Elizabeth II? It has been 70 years since Britain has witnessed the sovereign’s funeral, and so much has changed in that time. Britain has entered a new era, post-Brexit, in which there may be a call to return to the music of old. But many composers have thrived in the second Elizabethan Age — as wide-ranging as Britten and Errollyn Wallen — with her coronation as a testament to musical innovation similar to Elizabeth I.Britain’s future is unknown, and the end of Elizabeth II’s reign may be a turning point. Her funeral will sound like so many that came before. But it may also sound like the music of a new age.Imani Danielle Mosley is an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Florida. She specializes in the music and culture of postwar Britain, Benjamin Britten, English modernism and 20th-century opera. More