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      Plotting the Future of the Most Storied Studio in Jazz

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      ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. — Hidden along a commercial strip north of the George Washington Bridge, surrounded by car dealerships and characterless corporate offices, is hallowed ground for jazz.There, tucked in a one-acre wooded lot, sits a squat concrete-block structure built in 1959 by Rudy Van Gelder, the polymathic former optometrist who became the genre’s most influential recording engineer. On thousands of albums made at his studio there by the likes of John Coltrane, Horace Silver, Dexter Gordon and Bill Evans, Van Gelder developed ways to capture sound with renowned clarity and depth, earning the respect of musicians and the envy of other engineers.“History was made there,” Herbie Hancock, who recorded at Van Gelder’s studio numerous times, said in an interview. “History that defined what jazz was then and what jazz is now. The roots of it are from those records that were made at Rudy’s studio.”Yet after Van Gelder died in 2016, at age 91, the future of his studio — known to jazz fans everywhere from LP credits, but seen by few besides the musicians who recorded there — was left in doubt. Van Gelder willed the property to his longtime assistant, Maureen Sickler, but gave her no instructions about what to do with it. Sickler remembers only that her mentor had been devastated by the demolishment of his parents’ house in nearby Hackensack, where he began his recording career, capturing Miles Davis and others in the family living room.Van Gelder at his recording console in the late 1980s. The building housing his studio was designed by David Henken, an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright.James Estrin/The New York TimesAfter about five years of work to restore Van Gelder’s equipment and obtain historic-property status for the building, Sickler and her small team — including her trumpeter husband, Don, and Perry Margouleff, another audio engineer and studio owner — are now midway through a plan to make Van Gelder’s haven a full-service recording studio once again, and create a nonprofit organization that would assume ownership of the space and ensure its longevity.How that transition will work — and even whether the contemporary music industry will have use for a 63-year-old studio built for acoustic jazz — is an open question. In recent months, the Sicklers, with Margouleff’s help, have been busy booking sessions, tidying up the overgrown grounds and even getting the studio answering machine working again. But Sickler, 76, said she is determined to see it through.“I feel very strongly that musicians should have the opportunity to record in that incredible acoustic space, and to feel the history and the inspiration that lives there,” she said. “Musicians who come into the space are awed about who has recorded there. They need the opportunity to make their own history in that unique room.”INSIDE VAN GELDER’S studio, the sense of history can be almost overwhelming.The building was designed by David Henken, an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, and its wide, square main room has a cathedral-like ceiling of cedar planks, supported by four Douglas fir arches that meet at a 30-foot apex. Most recording studios are windowless caves; Van Gelder’s has calming views of trees in the backyard. One recent sunny afternoon, a Hammond C-3 organ that was played by Ray Charles and Jimmy Smith sat uncovered on one side of the live room. Inside an isolation booth was a 1950s Steinway grand, in what looked like perfect condition save for some marks gouged on its lid — by Thelonious Monk.The Van Gelder console today. In recent months, Maureen Sickler, who is overseeing the studio, and a small team have been busy booking sessions.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesUnusual among major studios, Van Gelder’s was purpose-built and not adapted from another space, like Abbey Road in London or Columbia Records’ former studio on East 30th Street in Manhattan, which had once been a church, the jazz historian Ashley Kahn said. It was also owned and operated by one man, and doubled as Van Gelder’s home, with a modest but spacious apartment just up a set of stairs from the studio floor.Many jazz fans would immediately recognize the studio interior from photos on albums released by labels like Blue Note and Impulse!, two of Van Gelder’s biggest clients. The cover of “A Love Supreme” pictures Coltrane in front of a railing just outside the studio door. The master saxophonist’s recording, captured on Dec. 9, 1964, is perhaps the most famous one made there.A visionary engineer who always sought out the most advanced microphones and other equipment, Van Gelder was also a persnickety character who forbade most musicians from touching anything. Hancock remembers the time, after years of recording there, when Van Gelder, speaking from behind glass in the control room, finally gave him permission to plug in his headphones.“I looked around at the other musicians; they were staring at me,” Hancock recalled. “‘Did Rudy say I could actually plug it in?’ ‘Yeah, we heard that, too.’ So I did. I was like, ‘Wow, I finally rose to the top!’”Van Gelder was secretive about how he achieved his sound; over the years that secrecy has become the audio equivalent of urban legend, with stories circulating that mingle fact and fiction. Did he really substitute “dummy” microphones when photographers came to shoot sessions? Probably not. Did he wear white gloves when handling equipment? Maybe, though the truth is unclear. “White gloves was an exaggeration,” Sickler said. “Reality is different.” She did not elaborate.From left: Maureen Sickler, her husband, Don, and the audio engineer Perry Margouleff. All three are working to restore Van Gelder’s haven as a full-service recording studio and create a nonprofit organization that would ensure its longevity.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesBefore Van Gelder brought on Sickler as his assistant in 1986, he had long run the studio entirely by himself, even setting up the musicians’ chairs. Sickler’s apprenticeship began modestly — “I got to set up chairs,” she said — but he soon showed her the ropes of all of the studio equipment. If anyone knows Van Gelder’s recording secrets, it is her.“I think I was closer to Rudy than I ever was to my own father,” Sickler said.After decades of running sessions almost daily, Van Gelder began to slow down in the mid-2000s, as his health deteriorated. Even then, his studio was little known outside music circles. “It was hiding in plain sight all these years,” said Jennifer Rothschild, a local historic preservation consultant.One Sunday afternoon in August 2016, Rothschild and other members of the Bergen County Historical Society met Van Gelder at his studio, after one jazz-loving member placed a cold call. They encouraged the engineer to apply for state and national status that would designate the property a historic building, but he wasn’t persuaded, Rothschild said, and the historians decided to return with a sharper pitch. Four days later, Van Gelder died in the apartment upstairs.By then, the studio was cluttered with medical equipment, and the custom Neve recording console that had been installed in 1972 was in rough shape — only six of its 24 channels were functioning properly. In 2018, Sickler met Margouleff, who was well versed in Van Gelderiana but had never set foot inside the studio. “Rudy wouldn’t let other engineers in the door,” said Don Sickler, who works with his wife in booking and running the space.During the pandemic, Margouleff, a Neve specialist, renovated the console piece by piece in his workshop. His dream, like that of the Sicklers, is for the facility to return to its former glory.“The idea is to make sure that this studio lives in perpetuity,” Margouleff said, “as a facility for people to continue to record music together in an ensemble fashion and in an acoustic environment.”Recently, the studio has had at least one recording session a week, Sickler said. In April, a few weeks after winning the Grammy Award for album of the year, Jon Batiste, the jazz pianist and bandleader, booked a one-day session at the Van Gelder studio, after learning that the place he had seen cited on countless records that had shaped him as a musician was finally available.“To visit and record there was a pilgrimage,” Batiste said in an interview. “There’s some sort of spiritual, metaphysical reality there that makes it feel like you’re stepping into a ritualistic space.”Instruments and equipment at Van Gelder’s studio.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesTHAT FEELING OF awe will certainly be the greatest calling card for the revitalized studio. But it may also be an obstacle, said Kahn, who, with Rothschild, helped write the studio’s applications for the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. (It was added to both listings this spring.)“The challenge for the Van Gelder studio now is how to deal with its history and also go forward as a commercial enterprise,” Kahn said. “You don’t want people to come in there only saying, ‘I want the studio where Coltrane recorded.’ You want it to be a studio that can meet present-day standards, and not marginalize it as just a historic shrine.”The building’s presence on the state and national registers does not protect it from being altered or even demolished by a future owner, Rothschild said. To gain that protection, Sickler has applied for a preservation easement, which would be attached to the property’s deed and involve periodic inspections. It also costs $10,000, and Sickler said that the studio’s recent recording work has raised only enough money to cover the property tax, which is nearly $40,000 a year.One decision facing Sickler and any future operators is whether to stick to jazz, or open the studio to other kinds of music. Jazz, of course, was Van Gelder’s great passion, and what the facility was designed for. But even at its peak, the space was also used for blues, folk music, polka and spoken word; the first recording session there, in July 1959, was with the West Point Cadet Glee Club.Don Sickler, who has been devoted to classic jazz repertory for decades, said he favored sticking with acoustic jazz, and gruffly dismissed the idea of recording Broadway cast albums or rock ’n’ roll. (For Weezer’s latest album, “OK Human,” released in early 2021, a string section was recorded at the Van Gelder studio.)Batiste also urged the Sicklers to hold fast to jazz. “Sticking to their guns of it being acoustic music, making it something that is an outlier in the culture, is what will actually be the right thing to do,” he said.Sickler is more open-minded about what the future of the Van Gelder studio might bring.“Of course, musicians familiar with the studio’s history, and with the work of Rudy Van Gelder, should have access,” she said. “But the live room loves all sounds.” More

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      Kodak Black Is Arrested on Drug Charges in Florida

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      The authorities said they found dozens of oxycodone tablets and $75,000 in cash while searching the rapper’s car after he was pulled over in Fort Lauderdale on Friday.The rapper Kodak Black was arrested on Friday in South Florida on felony drug charges, the authorities said. It was the latest in a long string of legal woes for Black, 25, who was serving prison time on weapons charges when President Donald J. Trump commuted his sentence on his last day in office last year.At about 4:30 p.m., Florida Highway Patrol troopers saw Black driving a purple Dodge Durango in Fort Lauderdale with tinted windows that appeared darker than allowed under state law.The troopers confirmed that the car’s registration was expired. After pulling Black over, they observed “a strong odor of marijuana” coming from inside the car, the Highway Patrol said in a statement. The troopers searched the car and found a clear bag containing 31 oxycodone tablets and nearly $75,000 in cash, the Highway Patrol said.Black, whose legal name is Bill Kapri, was arrested and taken to the Broward County jail in Fort Lauderdale. He was released on Saturday on a $75,000 bond, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said.Black was charged with one count of trafficking oxycodone and one count of possession of a controlled substance, according to the Broward County Clerk’s Office. He pleaded not guilty and requested a jury trial, court documents show.Bradford Cohen, Black’s lawyer, said on Twitter that there were “always additional facts and circumstances that give rise to a defense, especially in this case.” Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Black’s lawyers filed a motion on Sunday to “inspect, weigh and independently test” the tablets that the authorities have identified as oxycodone pills.Black, who is from Pompano Beach, Fla., topped the Billboard album charts in December 2018 with his album “Dying to Live.” But his career suffered as he has faced various drug, weapons, sexual assault and robbery charges over the years. Early Monday morning, he posted his mug shot on Instagram with the caption, “Not Again.”In 2019, Black pleaded guilty to federal weapons charges, admitting that he lied on background check forms while buying firearms earlier that year. Prosecutors said two of the guns were later found at crime scenes.Black had served about half of a 46-month prison term when Trump commuted his sentence in the final hours of his presidency.Shortly after his release, Black put out a song called “Last Day In,” expressing his hopes for the future: “This my first day out the joint, so that’s my last day in.” More

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      Bad Bunny Holds at No. 1, With Brent Faiyaz Close Behind

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      The Puerto Rican superstar earns his fifth week at the top, but “Wasteland,” an unexpected drop from the Maryland R&B singer, made a statement.The top album on the Billboard chart this week is Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti,” a streaming juggernaut that is notching its fifth time at No. 1.But just as notable is what lands at No. 2: “Wasteland” by Brent Faiyaz, an R&B singer from Maryland who eschewed the major-label route and has released his music independently, a path that usually means earning a bigger slice of a smaller pie. After putting out songs last year with guest spots by Drake and Tyler, the Creator, Faiyaz released “Wasteland” on July 8, with little advance notice. For the last week, the music industry has been focused on Faiyaz to see if he could not only topple Bad Bunny — one of the standard-bearers for streaming-driven superstardom — but also perform the rare feat of taking an entirely independent project to No. 1.“Wasteland” didn’t quite make it to the summit. But it got close enough to make a statement that will surely be heard by every new artist contemplating accepting a major-label deal. “Un Verano Sin Ti” had the equivalent of 105,000 sales in the United States, including 147 million streams, while “Wasteland” had 88,000 sales, including 107 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate. Weekly equivalent sales for “Un Verano” have never dipped below 100,000 since its release in May, and it has racked up a total of 2 billion streams in the U.S. alone.Even though many artists today control their recording rights, and may have labels or imprints of their own, the majority of high-charting albums still pass through the major-label system. Each of the three global music conglomerates — Universal, Sony and Warner — operate large distribution arms that specialize in releasing music by independent acts. Bad Bunny, for example, may be signed to Rimas Entertainment, a company controlled by his manager, but Rimas has a distribution deal with the Orchard, owned by Sony.To release “Wasteland,” Faiyaz went through Stem, one of several indie-distribution platforms. The last No. 1 album that bypassed the major-label infrastructure was “Skins” by the rapper XXXTentacion in late 2018, via the independent music company Empire.Also on the chart this week, Aespa, a four-woman K-pop group, opens at No. 3 with the mini-album “Girls,” which had 56,000 sales, mostly as CDs. Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” is No. 4 and Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” falls one spot to No. 5. More

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      Lend Me a Jukebox Opera. Yuks and Tenor Required.

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      “Let’s do a Rossini comedy that doesn’t exist yet,” the head of the Glimmerglass Festival said. Coming soon: Ken Ludwig’s “Tenor Overboard.”Comic operas tend to be crowd-pleasers: At last, a break from all the tragic deaths and doomed lovers. The problem is there aren’t that many to choose from. Opera companies can program “Così Fan Tutte,” “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” or “L’Elisir d’Amore” and a handful of others only so many times.So Francesca Zambello, the artistic and general director of the Glimmerglass Festival, came up with a novel idea. “I just said, ‘Let’s do a Rossini comedy that doesn’t exist yet,’” she said in a recent video conversation.In other words, a jukebox opera — “Tenor Overboard,” which is to have its premiere at the festival, in Cooperstown, N.Y., on Tuesday and run through Aug. 18.While the jukebox format is common enough on Broadway, it is much rarer in opera houses. Baroque opera lends itself to the genre better than most styles, from the “pasticcio” of yore, which recycled pre-existing works, to “The Enchanted Island” in 2011, a Metropolitan Opera commission in which the librettist Jeremy Sams inserted music by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau and others into a plot borrowed from Shakespeare plays.Undaunted by this relative dearth, or maybe stimulated by it, Zambello called the playwright Ken Ludwig last summer to ask if he would be interested in writing the libretto for the project. He was a good candidate on two counts: He wrote the book for “Crazy for You,” the Tony-winning Gershwin jukebox musical, and his most famous play, “Lend Me a Tenor,” is a farce involving an opera star in the 1930s. (His new “Lend Me a Soprano,” with lead female characters in the same basic plot, opens at the Alley Theater in Houston in September.)Ludwig, an opera buff, jumped on the opportunity to collaborate, sort of, with Rossini. He decided to set “Tenor Overboard” in the 1940s and to cram it with what he called “the great tropes of comic opera.”“Often they are stories about love that can’t be fulfilled because the older generation is trying to stand in the way of the sexual urges of the younger generation: ‘You can’t marry that boy,’” he said in a video chat. “I also wanted a storm — they often change the story, as they did in ‘Barber of Seville’ and ‘The Italian Girl in Algiers.’”Rossini “was such a comic genius,” Ludwig said. “And I’ve tried to write a libretto that is comic in the same way, and in the same way my plays normally have that sense of rhythm.”Adrianna Newell for The New York TimesLudwig cooked up a story involving two New York sisters, Gianna (Reilly Nelson) and Mimi (Jasmine Habersham), trying to escape their domineering father and an arranged marriage for Mimi. They end up joining — in cross-dressing disguise, a narrative device beloved by Shakespeare, opera and screwball comedy alike — an all-male quartet called the Singing Sicilians on a ship sailing to Sicily. Naturally, mayhem ensues.“Tenor Overboard” relies more on theatrical dialogue than on the usual operatic recitative, so Ludwig’s libretto had to be fairly extensive — and funny. “Rossini has given you moments that clearly land comically because he was such a comic genius,” Ludwig said he told the singers. “And I’ve tried to write a libretto that is comic in the same way, and in the same way my plays normally have that sense of rhythm.”Ludwig also retooled the supertitles that accompany the arias, which are sung in Italian, trying to give some of them “rhyme and rhythm,” as he put it. “Opera supertitles do need to convey to people something and you want people to be looking at the stage,” said Zambello, who is directing the production with Brenna Corner, “but these also have a little bit of extra Ludwig humor.”From left, Matt Grady and Gavin Grady, with Stefano de Peppo. “Tenor Overboard” was hatched in about a year. “Rossini wrote his operas sometimes in a month so why shouldn’t we?” Francesca Zambello said.Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass FestivalAfter a general synopsis had been agreed upon, the hardest part was still to come: It had to be filled with music — which, in the end, came from 15 different sources.“We wanted to be absolutely sure that we weren’t just rehashing famous arias of Rossini,” Joseph Colaneri, Glimmerglass’s music director, said on Zoom. “Yes, we have the ‘Barbiere’ duet, but we wanted this piece to also represent lesser-known music by Rossini.”Colaneri became part detective, tracking down obscure versions of obscure operas online and in libraries, and part MacGyver, adapting some vocal scores to make them work in their new context. The text of the “Barbiere” duet, “Dunque io son,” that Colaneri referred to, for example, was slightly adjusted to make sense in the story. And because Ludwig’s main couple is made up of a mezzo and a baritone (a nod to “Dunque io son”), some transposing was required — Rossini tended to pair a tenor and a soprano for the love duets of his comic operas.Another challenge was the scene introducing the Singing Sicilians, whom we first meet at a Y.M.C.A. — because why not? Colaneri looked at male quartets in Rossini operas but couldn’t find anything suitable. So he turned his attention to short pieces the composer wrote for “soirées musicales” after he stopped writing operas, and spotted the patter song “La Danza” (recorded by Luciano Pavarotti, among others).Colaneri had to write a vocal arrangement for two tenors, a baritone and a bass — and more. “It has to work again in the second act because two of the men are replaced by the two women who are in disguise as men,” he said. “They’re singing in the female range, but I designed the piece so that it could work with mixed vocal styles.”“Some people would say, ‘How can you transpose Rossini?’” Colaneri said. “But Rossini did this himself all the time.”For Act 2, Colaneri had to find a basso buffo aria for the sisters’ father, Petronio (Stefano de Peppo). Instead of the popular “A un dottor della mia sorte,” from “Il Barbiere,” he chose “Io, Don Profondo” from “Il Viaggio a Reims” (an opera Rossini himself had harvested for parts, reusing some of it in “Le Comte Ory”). “To me, it’s the greatest of these buffo arias,” Colaneri said. “Rossini kind of went over the top with it. We knew we were going to have Stefano and that he would be able to pull it off.”Contreras and Reilly Nelson in this jukebox opera.Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass FestivalColaneri and his cast also had to deal with the vocal embellishments and ornamentation that are part of performing Rossini. The conductor suggested that the singers listen to Ella Fitzgerald’s live version of “How High the Moon” for an example of masterful improvisation, which he described as “harmonically off the charts.” He also worked closely with them to come up with ornamentations that fit their register and roles. “You can’t write ornamentation for someone until you hear what they can do,” Colaneri said. “You have to kind of suss that out.”As with most comedies, speed and timing are of the essence onstage and even off — “Tenor Overboard” was hatched in about a year. “Rossini wrote his operas sometimes in a month so why shouldn’t we?” Zambello said.Fans should be reassured that they will laugh with Rossini, not at him. “We are seeking to perform these pieces with all the musical integrity necessary to make them come off,” Colaneri said. “We’re taking it all musically very seriously, and putting a spin on it.”Still, it’s clear that Zambello wants this work, part of her last season as the head of the Glimmerglass Festival (she remains the artistic director of the Washington National Opera), to be unabashedly festive. “It’s Italy, Sicily, food — things that people love.”When asked if she was willing to embrace Ludwig’s love of farcical shenanigans and have someone hurl a plate of spaghetti for a laugh, Zambello smiled. “I’m resisting that,” she said. “But I think it’s going to work its way in.” More

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      David Dalton, Rock Writer Who Lived the Scene, Dies at 80

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      An early writer for Rolling Stone, he traveled in the same circles as the Beatles, Janis Joplin and other stars, witnessing and documenting a time of cultural transformation.David Dalton, who chronicled the rock scene as an early writer for Rolling Stone and brought firsthand knowledge to his biographies of rock stars from having lived the wild life alongside them, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 80.His son, Toby Dalton, said the cause was cancer.Beginning in the 1960s, Mr. Dalton showed a knack for being where cultural moments and evolutions were happening. Before he was 20 he was hanging out with Andy Warhol. In the mid-1960s he photographed the Yardbirds, the Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits and other rock groups that were part of the British Invasion. He was backstage at the Rolling Stones’ infamous 1969 concert at Altamont Speedway in California. He was hired, along with Jonathan Cott, to write a book to accompany a boxed-set release of the Beatles’ 1970 album, “Let It Be.” He traveled with Janis Joplin and James Brown and talked about Charles Manson with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys.As his career advanced, he gravitated toward writing biographies and helping celebrities write their autobiographies. His books included “Janis” (1972), about Joplin, revised and updated in 1984 as “Piece of My Heart”; “James Dean: The Mutant King” (1975); and “Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan” (2012). Autobiographies that he helped their subjects write included Marianne Faithfull’s “Faithfull: An Autobiography” (1994), “Meat Loaf: To Hell and Back” (1999), Steven Tyler’s “Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?” (2011) and Paul Anka’s “My Way” (2013). He collaborated with Tony Scherman on “Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol” (2009).Lenny Kaye, the guitarist in the Patti Smith Group and a writer who collaborated with Mr. Dalton on the 1977 book “Rock 100,” said Mr. Dalton, early in his career, was among a group of writers who took a new approach to covering the music scene.From left, the actress Edie Sedgwick, the poet and photographer Gerard Malanga, Andy Warhol, Mr. Dalton, the artist Marisol and an unidentified man in 1965. Mr. Dalton was hanging out with Andy Warhol before he was 20.David McCabe“In those days of rock journalism, there was not a lot of separation between writers and artists,” he said in a phone interview. “The writers aspired to create the same kind of artistic illumination as those they wrote about.”“David got to be very friendly with many people,” Mr. Kaye added, “and I believe that helped enhance his writing style. He had a way of assuming the persona of the person he was writing about.”Mr. Dalton’s wife of 44, years, Coco Pekelis, a painter and performance artist, said Mr. Dalton fell into writing almost by accident. He had read that Jann Wenner was starting a new music magazine, Rolling Stone, in 1967 and began sending in some of the pictures of bands that he had been taking.“He was taking photographs of groups like the Shangri-Las, and Jann wanted captions,” Ms. Pekelis said by email. “So David started writing. And wrote and wrote and wrote. I asked him the other day when he knew he was a writer, and he said, when his captions got longer and longer.”Mr. Dalton assessed his voluminous output in an unpublished autobiographical sketch, explaining how his work had changed over the decades.“When I wrote rock journalism I was younger,” he noted. “I was involved in the scene as it was happening, evolving. I went anywhere at the drop of a hat. When I got into my 30s I began writing about the past and have lived there ever since.”Janis Joplin was among the many people whose biographies Mr. Dalton wrote. He also helped celebrities like Meat Loaf and Marianne Faithfull write their autobiographies.John David Dalton was born on Jan. 15, 1942, in wartime London. His father, John, was a doctor, and his mother, Kathleen Tremaine, was an actress. His sister, Sarah Legon, said that during German air raids, David and a cousin, who grew up to be the actress Joanna Pettet, would be put in baskets and sheltered under a staircase or taken into the Underground, the London subway system, for protection.David grew up in London and in British Columbia — his father was Canadian — and attended the King’s School in Canterbury, England. He then joined his parents in New York, where they had moved, and he and his sister became assistants to Warhol, Ms. Legon said, helping him edit an early film, “Sleep.” In 1966, Mr. Dalton helped Warhol design an issue of Aspen, the multimedia magazine that came in a box or folder with assorted trappings.“Coming from England at the beginning of the sixties,” Mr. Dalton wrote in “Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol,” “I encountered Pop Art with the same jolt of excitement and joy I’d experienced on first hearing the blues. I was fortunate enough to meet Andy Warhol at the beginning of his career, and through his X-ray specs I saw America’s brash, bizarre and manic underworld of ads, supermarket products, comics and kitsch brought to garish, teeming, jumping-out-of-its-skin life.”In the middle and late 1960s and the early ’70s, Mr. Dalton spent time on the East Coast, on the West Coast and in England, rubbing elbows with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and more. In California, he spent time with Dennis Wilson, who, he said, once expressed admiration for Charles Manson.After Manson had been charged in some brutal 1969 murders, Mr. Dalton began looking into the case for Rolling Stone with another writer, David Felton.“Like most of my hippie peers,” he wrote in an unpublished essay, “I thought Manson was innocent and had been railroaded by the L.A.P.D. It was a scary awakening for me to find out that not every longhaired, dope-smoking freak was a peace-and-love hippie.”His thinking turned when someone in the district attorney’s office showed him photographs of victims of Manson’s followers and the messages written in blood at the crime scenes.“It must have been the most horrifying moment of my life,” Mr. Dalton is quoted as saying in “Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine” (2017), by Joe Hagan. “It was the end of the whole hippie culture.”For Rolling Stone, Mr. Dalton also wrote about Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Little Richard and others. By the mid-1970s he had moved on and was focusing on books, though still applying his full-immersion approach. For “El Sid: Saint Vicious,” his 1997 book about Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, who died of an overdose in 1979, “I actually started to hear Sid’s voice talking to me,” he wrote. David Nicholson, reviewing the book in The Washington Post, found it compelling.“There is a certain hypnotic quality to the story that is akin to watching someone standing in the path of an onrushing train,” he wrote. “The writing throughout is graceful and intelligent, even when it is in your face.”Mr. Dalton once described his biography technique this way:“Essentially you distill your subject into a literary solution and get high on them, so to speak. Afterwards, one needs brain detergent and has to have one’s brain rewired.”Mr. Dalton lived in Andes, N.Y. His wife, son and sister are his only immediate survivors.Mr. Kaye said Mr. Dalton had been both present for a sea change and part of it.“It was a fascinating time,” he said, “and David was one of our most important cultural spokespersons.” More

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      Angel Blue Withdraws From Opera, Citing ‘Blackface’ in Netrebko’s ‘Aida’

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      The American soprano Angel Blue said she would not appear at the Arena di Verona after the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko and other performers wore dark makeup in its production of “Aida.”A leading American soprano, Angel Blue, announced this week that she was withdrawing from her planned debut at the Arena di Verona in Italy to protest its use of “blackface makeup” in a production of Verdi’s “Aida” that starred the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko.“The use of blackface under any circumstances, artistic or otherwise, is a deeply misguided practice based on archaic theatrical traditions which have no place in modern society,” Blue, a Black soprano with a growing international career, said in a statement on social media, adding that she would withdraw from her upcoming performances in “La Traviata,” another Verdi opera. “It is offensive, humiliating and outright racist. Full stop.”Many leading opera companies, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, have only recently stopped the practice of having white singers darken their skin with stage makeup to perform the title roles in “Aida” and “Otello,” long after minstrel shows, blackface roles and other types of performances that rely on makeup that echoes racist caricatures disappeared from many stages. But the practice is still common in parts of Europe and Russia, and Netrebko has been a vocal proponent of wearing dark makeup.In an interview on Friday, Blue said she was disturbed when she saw photos of the production, including some that showed dancers and singers in dark makeup, circulating on social media on Monday evening while she was in Paris for another performance.“I was shocked; I just felt really weird in my spirit,” she said. “I just felt like I couldn’t go and sing and associate myself with this tradition.”Netrebko, who is trying to rebuild her career after losing a number of engagements following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because of her history of support for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, posted photos on her Instagram this week showing her in extremely dark makeup and braids as she sang the role of Aida, an Ethiopian princess, in Verona.One of the photos the soprano Anna Netrebko shared on Instagram of the makeup she wore in a production of “Aida” at the Arena di Verona in Italy.Soon, Netrebko’s Instagram page was flooded with more than 1,000 comments, with many people denouncing her for using makeup that they said was racist and recalled blackface. She was not the only one in “Aida” who had darkened her skin: Some of her co-stars performed in the dark makeup, as did a different cast that appeared in the opera when it opened last month.A spokesman for Netrebko did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. Netrebko has been a vocal defender of the practice, arguing that it helps maintain the authenticity of centuries-old works. When the Met tried to stop her from using makeup to darken her skin during a production of “Aida” in 2018, she went to a tanning salon instead. In 2019, appearing with dark makeup in a production of “Aida” at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, she wrote on Instagram, “Black Face and Black Body for Ethiopian princess, for Verdi greatest opera! YES!”The Arena di Verona noted in a statement that it had been performing this production of “Aida” for two decades, and that it was well known when Blue agreed to appear this summer.“Every country has different roots, and their cultural and social structures developed along different historical and cultural paths,” it said in a statement. “Sensibilities and approaches on the same subject might widely vary in different parts of the world.”It added: “We have no reason nor intent whatsoever to offend and disturb anyone’s sensibility.”While Netrebko has not addressed the recent controversy, her husband, the tenor Yusif Eyvazov, who also appeared in the production of “Aida” in Verona, lashed out at Blue. In a social media post, he called Blue’s decision “disgusting,” and questioned why she had not withdrawn last month when “Aida” opened, with a different cast that also used dark makeup. (That cast included the Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska as “Aida.”)Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met, where Eyvazov is a regular performer, sent a letter to Eyvazov on Friday calling his remarks “hateful,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The New York Times.“There is no room at the Met for artists who are so meanspirited in their thinking,” Gelb wrote in the letter.Gelb, who cut ties with Netrebko this year because of her previous support for Putin, said in an interview that he had not yet decided whether he would penalize Eyvazov. “We’re considering what steps we might take,” he said.Blue said her decision was not personal, and that she was not targeting Netrebko or her husband.“My decision doesn’t have anything to do with them,” she said in the interview. “My decision has to do with my convictions,” she added, saying that she had felt moved to take a stand against “something that is hurtful to people who look like me.”Blue said she hoped that more opera houses would eliminate blackface as they work to bring diversity to the stage.“In order to keep opera relevant in today’s society, there’s no place for blackface,” she said. “I felt hurt by what I saw because I feel like that’s a tradition that they’re trying to hold onto that hurts people.”Eyvazov’s manager said he was unavailable for comment on Friday.The decision by Blue, who has become a favorite at the Met Opera in recent seasons and who appeared this summer at the Paris Opera in Gounod’s “Faust,” was praised by many fellow singers and American opera executives.The revival of “Aida” in Verona is among Netrebko’s first staged opera engagements since her return to performing in late April as she tried to repair her career after being shunned in the United States and parts of Europe for her ties to Putin. 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      YoungBoy Never Broke Again Found Not Guilty in Federal Gun Case

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      Lawyers for the rapper argued that he did not know the weapon was in his car when he was pulled over and arrested on a separate warrant in California last year.The chart-topping 22-year-old rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again, born Kentrell D. Gaulden, was found not guilty on Friday of possessing a firearm and ammunition as a felon, concluding one of the two federal gun trials he had been facing.A jury in Los Angeles reached its verdict after about two hours on its second day of deliberations. Mr. Gaulden, who is known to fans as NBA YoungBoy or YB, faced up to 10 years in prison in the case.The gun possession charge in California stemmed from YoungBoy’s March 2021 arrest in the Los Angeles area on a separate federal gun possession warrant from an earlier incident in the rapper’s home state of Louisiana. In September 2020, YoungBoy was among 16 people accused of possessing guns and drugs at a video shoot in Baton Rouge. His lawyers have said none of the contraband was in his possession.Prosecutors in the Central District of California said that upon attempting to execute the warrant in that case, YoungBoy initially seemed to cooperate, pulling over his Mercedes Maybach before taking off again and leading officers on a “high-speed chase.” After the rapper fled on foot, police found an FNX .45 caliber pistol and ammunition behind the front passenger’s seat, along with cash and jewelry.Lawyers for YoungBoy argued that the rapper was unaware of his outstanding federal warrant at the time and panicked when armed officers approached his vehicle, leading him to take off. He did not know the weapon was in the car, they said, and no usable fingerprints or DNA tied YoungBoy to the gun.Prosecutors had sought to link the rapper to the weapon using a photo and video from social media of YoungBoy handling “a gold and tan gun that appeared identical to the firearm recovered from his car,” according to court records. The photo was taken at the same Philadelphia shop that had sold YoungBoy the jewelry also found in the car, they argued. Lawyers for the rapper said the gun was identical to an airsoft replica and could not be confirmed to be the same weapon.“We believe the evidence presented in this case supported the charges brought by the grand jury,” Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, said in a statement. “While we are disappointed with the verdict, we respect the jury’s decision.”As the trial started on Tuesday, the judge in the case, R. Gary Klausner, ruled to exclude lyrics from three YoungBoy songs from being used in court. Prosecutors had said that the tracks — “Gunsmoke,” “Life Support” and “Lonely Child” — referred “to an individual connected to the purchaser of the gun, the gun model found in his car, and the jewelry maker of the jewelry found next to the gun.”But lawyers for the rapper successfully argued that the “hardcore” and “highly inflammatory” rap lyrics would be prejudicial and were not directly relevant, noting that the song mentioning an FN pistol was released before the FN gun seized from the Maybach was purchased.“It’s for entertainment,” they wrote in a court filing. “It is not an admission of other bad acts but it does paint the rappers in a bad light and the jury may infer from the song that Mr. Gaulden is a violent person and take those feelings with them into the deliberation room.”The rapper’s lawyers added: “The real issues are: 1) whether he knew the gun was inside of the car and 2) whether he intended to possess it. It’s a relatively simple case.”Known for his raw reality rap, prolific output and obsessive online fan base, YoungBoy is among the most-streamed artists in the United States so far this year, competing with the likes of Drake and Taylor Swift. Since signing a $2 million deal with Atlantic Records in 2016, he has frequently topped the Billboard album chart — hitting No. 1 with four releases in less than two years — but continues to exist largely outside the mainstream entertainment business, owing in part to his ongoing legal issues.In 2017, YoungBoy pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a firearm and received a suspended 10-year prison sentence, plus probation, stemming from his role in a nonfatal drive-by shooting for which he was originally charged with attempted first-degree murder. In 2019, following subsequent arrests, including for a domestic violence incident in which he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery, the rapper was sentenced to 90 days in jail.Since October, when he was granted a $500,000 bond in the federal gun cases, YoungBoy has lived under home confinement in Utah, where he has continued to record and release music.YoungBoy’s additional federal gun case in Louisiana is ongoing. His lawyers have argued that he was unfairly targeted, highlighting law enforcement’s name for one of its operations: Never Free Again, “an obvious take off on Gaulden’s highly successful music and marketing brand.” The rapper’s legal team has successfully suppressed video evidence in the case that it said was unconstitutionally obtained.The rapper’s arrest in Los Angeles last year, his lawyers said, was a “massive and wildly unnecessary militaristic display of force and intimidation.” More

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      After 350 Years of Tradition, a Boys’ Choir Now Admits Girls

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      The Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge, is the latest English choir to start including female singers, a move some fear will reduce opportunities for boys.CAMBRIDGE, England — At 8 a.m. one recent Thursday, the boys of the Choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge, stifled yawns as they began their first rehearsal of the day with some vocal exercises. Soon, the room was filled with a host of “Ooo” and “Zah” sounds.Once the choir was warmed up, Andrew Nethsingha, its music director, called upon boy after boy to sing a couple of lines of a psalm solo.Then, the director did something none of his predecessors had, in the choir’s entire 350-year history: He called upon a girl to sing. Amelia Crichton-Stuart, 10, quickly pushed her glasses up her nose and sang, high and pure, two lines about how God’s “right hand is full of righteousness.”“Very good,” Nethsingha said, with a smile. After one of the other choristers pointed out that Crichton-Stuart had sung one word incorrectly, not lengthening it as in the notation, Nethsingha said he preferred what she had sung. “We’re going to change the choir to do your version!” he told Crichton-Stuart, who beamed with joy.For centuries, British choral music has been a largely male space, with the country’s cathedrals and chapels filled with the angelic voices of boy choristers, who perform daily services with male singers supplying the bass parts.The choir arrives at St John’s College Chapel for an evensong service earlier this month. Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesAmelia Crichton-Stuart said the boys had been “really welcoming.”Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesFor centuries, British choral music has been a largely male space.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesThe Rev. Dr. Mark Oakley gives the new choristers their white surplices, as they end their probationary period and join the choir.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesThe choirs have become an iconic part of British musical life, with the boys usually living and studying for free at schools linked to the choirs (the children of the St. John’s choir attend a school founded in the 17th century for the education of the choristers).In the 1990s, a host of cathedrals in Britain set up separate girls’ choirs to perform services, too, but the recent move by the Choir of St. John’s — generally considered one of England’s best — to mix genders has been greeted by choral insiders as groundbreaking. Some have celebrated it as a long overdue step toward equality, and others have agonized that it may herald the demise of boys-only choirs.Shortly after Nethsingha announced the change last October, three other choirs said they would be mixing girls and boys too, including St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle (a place of such tradition it has hosted numerous royal weddings, including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s in 2018).Nethsingha said in an interview that he knew the move was bold, but he also felt “rather late to the party,” since a couple of less prominent choirs, including the Choir of St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, mixed their choristers in the 1970s. Nethsingha received some complaints about the decision, he added, mostly on the college’s Facebook page.Other choirs who have decided to mix boys and girls said they had similarly received a few negative reactions. Charles Harrison, the choir master at Chichester Cathedral, said he was sent “half a dozen” letters of complaint, including one from a regular donor who announced they were withdrawing their support.The choir’s new members have also begun boarding at the choir’s associated school, just like the boys.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesBut Nethsingha said he didn’t regret the move. In April, he admitted Crichton-Stuart, alongside Martha Gritten, 9, and Ingrid B., also 9 (Ingrid’s parents did not want her surname included in this article for reasons of privacy). The girls began boarding at the choir’s associated school just like the boys. In the same month, Nina Vinther, 24, joined the choir’s adult ranks.Britain is not the only country whose choral world is agonizing over whether to include girls. In 2019, a German court blocked a 9-year-old girl’s attempt to join one of Berlin’s oldest choirs on the grounds that artistic freedom was more important than equal treatment — despite studies having shown that differences between young girls’ and boys’ voices are slight, and even professional singers can’t always tell the difference.Opponents of mixing choirs insist there are many good reasons to exclude girls. Alan Thurlow, a retired choral director and a vice president of the Traditional Cathedral Choir Association, which offers grants to men’s and boys’ choirs, said in a telephone interview that he worried if choirs admitted girls, it would mean fewer boys would be able, or want, to join.“You’re not making the choir bigger, you’re reducing the opportunity for boys,” he said, adding that boys can only sing high vocal parts for a few years before their voices change. A drop in the number of boys trained would also mean fewer bass and tenor singers for adult choirs, he added.Nethsingha said his choir was increasing the number of choristers from 20 to 25 to avoid reducing opportunities for boys. He hoped separate girls’ and boys’ choirs would continue to exist, he added. “I don’t want to be remembered in 100 years time as the chief destroyer of boys’ choirs,” he said, with a nervous laugh.During evensong, the choir stood in the chapel’s stalls, their voices soaring and echoing around the vast space.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesAt least one part of the choral world isn’t deliberating the implications of mixing: the children doing the singing. Last year, when Nethsingha told his boys that girls would be joining them, he said he braced himself for a “barrage of complaints.” Instead, the boys asked just four practical questions — including one about whether they had sufficient toilets for new joiners — then “went bouncing off to their lessons,” Nethsingha said.“They didn’t have any of the baggage that adults have,” he added.In an interview after the recent rehearsal, the girls seemed equally undaunted by joining a famed choir, with daily performances, international tours and recordings. Asked if they felt like pioneers, Gritten said, “Sort of, but sort of not!” She then looked at her fellow choristers and giggled.Crichton-Stuart said the boys had been “really welcoming,” and they played together in their dormitories. The best part of choir life so far, Gritten said, had been Ascension Day — commemorating Jesus’s rise to heaven — where the entire choir climbed up to the top of the college’s chapel, via a spiral staircase, and sung from its roof.Many major choirs here have made it clear they will not be mixing choirs on a daily basis. In May, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London announced that it would introduce a separate girls choir from 2025. Andrew Carwood, its music director, said in a telephone interview that the cathedral needed to raise 7.5 million pounds, nearly $9 million, to pay for choristers’ school fees and make changes to buildings to accommodate 30 new female singers. Boys and girls would likely sing together for major services, he added.The choir’s music director, Andrew Nethsingha, right, said he felt “rather late to the party,” just this year opening the choir to girls.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesAt St. John’s, the girls were already fully involved in all services. About eight hours after their morning rehearsal, 18 of the choir’s child members and 13 adult choral scholars walked into the college’s grand chapel, to sing that day’s traditional evensong service. Stood in the stalls, their voices soared and echoed around the vast space.At one point, the choir walked to the front of the chapel and performed an experimental piece involving an electronic backing of whale sounds, the girls’ red outfits standing out among the boys’ white robes. But many of the 60 worshipers in the chapel had their eyes closed, so absorbed in the music bouncing around them, they weren’t looking at who was making it. More