Music

With her first album in five years, the Mexican songwriter embraces a new sound, and sings bluntly about her struggles.The Mexican songwriter Carla Morrison had a thriving career in 2017. With her pure soprano, her unabashedly vulnerable songs and constant touring, she had steadily built an audience among Spanish-speaking listeners across the Americas and Europe. Her songs had won Latin Grammy Awards and her first two full-length albums, “Déjenme Llorar” (2012) and “Amor Supremo” (2015), were nominated for Grammys. Morrison was on the road, performing at theaters and festivals following the release of “Amor Supremo Desnudo,” an album of radically altered acoustic remakes of the songs from “Amor Supremo.” Concertgoers were singing along with every word. And she was miserable.“I was on tour and I was hating it,” she said. “And I wanted to make music and I was hating it. And I just had no songs to offer.”That’s why it has taken five years for Morrison to release a new album out Friday, “El Renacimiento,” which can be translated as “The Renaissance” or “The Rebirth.” In her new songs, Morrison, 35, reveals both her paralyzing anxiety and her newfound strength. The album’s opening song, “Hacia Dentro” (“To See Within”), begins with Morrison singing “One day I woke up numb/Without the desire to keep going.” And it concludes with the hymnlike, uplifting “Encontrarme” (“Finding Myself”), which vows, “Even if it hurts when I touch/I will heal with time.”Morrison was relaxed and smiling in a video call from her home in a suburb of Los Angeles, where she settled in 2021 after marrying her longtime boyfriend and co-producer, Alejandro Jiménez. The piano she writes songs on was just over her shoulder. But in 2017, she recalled, “I just was kind of like, ‘What am I?’ All those questions that we as human beings ask ourselves: ‘What am I here for? What was I born for? What’s my purpose?’ I was just so uninterested, and at some point a little bit suicidal as well,” she said.“I remember thinking that I just didn’t know my value whatsoever,” she continued. “I just felt like everybody just wanted a piece of me, but nobody really wanted to know me.”Morrison’s songs have never held back on emotion. Her first EP — the skeletal, self-produced “Aprendiendo a Aprender” (“Learning to Learn”) in 2009 — opened with “Lagrimas” (“Tears”), presaging a catalog of songs filled with loneliness, yearning, devotion and heartache.“In every one of my albums, I’ve always tried to be very honest and to give a space to people that feel like nobody understands them,” she said. “I have a feeling that if I hadn’t been a singer-songwriter, I’d probably have been a psychologist or a therapist.”Morrison was born in Tecate, Mexico, a border town in Baja California, and she grew up hearing both traditional Mexican rancheras and American and British pop and rock. She lived in Phoenix for part of her teens. “I do feel very Mexican in my core, but at the same time, I feel very gringa,” she said. “But all of my songs, if you sing them like rancheras, they would totally make sense. Rancheras always tell you a story. The lyrics are very, very honest. There’s no shame if you feel something or expose it.”In 2017, “I just had no songs to offer,” Morrison said. But after taking a break and studying jazz singing, she found her voice again.Carlos Jaramillo for The New York TimesMorrison’s early recordings presented her as a pop-folk singer-songwriter, relying on guitar and keyboards. Her first full-length album, the largely acoustic “Déjenme Llorar” (“Let Me Cry”), in 2012, went platinum in Mexico and won a Latin Grammy as best alternative music album. Just three years later, Morrison transfigured her sound with “Amor Supremo,” deploying hefty rock beats and reverberant keyboards for songs about obsessive love. It reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Latin Pop Albums chart. As Morrison promoted it, she agreed to perform acoustic versions of the songs for radio stations and webcasts; eventually, she decided to rework all of the songs, adding two new ones, for “Amor Supremo Desnudo.”But when her 2017 tour was over, Morrison upended everything. She dropped her Mexican management company and stopped touring for the first time since her debut. With Jiménez, she moved from Mexico to Paris in 2019. They passed auditions to enroll at a music conservatory in a Paris suburb, where Morrison studied jazz singing; it was her first formal music education after a decade as an award-winning songwriter. She immersed herself in Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday and, surrounded by fellow musicians, she also eased back into writing songs.“Carla was starting to feel much better,” Jiménez said in a separate interview. “I remember the day she wrote something and she showed the song to me and I was like, Wow! It had been such a long time since she had not only written something but was excited about music again. She had the same old Carla energy.”As the pandemic began in 2020, Morrison got an unexpected message: Ricky Martin was looking for songs. Morrison and Jiménez sent some possibilities; from the demos, Martin chose to collaborate on one and invited Morrison to share lead vocals and Jiménez to produce. The result is “Recuerdo,” which appeared on Martin’s 2020 quarantine EP, “Pausa,” and has been streamed 16 million times on YouTube alone.In Paris, working on songs during quarantine isolation, Morrison was ready to change her sound again. “For the longest time, I felt very pressured to keep my guitar close,” she said. “I felt very pressured to be this singer-songwriter, because I know people love that side of me. But I also was like, ‘No! I listen to Adele, to Sam Smith, to Billie Eilish, to Ariana Grande, to Dua Lipa.’ And I was like, ‘I really want to channel that. I just want to go pop. And I don’t want to be afraid.’”Where “Amor Supremo” used the gravity and spaciousness of rock, “El Renacimiento” has the surreal depths and computer-aided transparency of 21st-century pop, with close-up vocals, programmed beats and enveloping ambiences: the kind of music that could be concocted while working in isolation in Paris. “We had a whole different perspective,” Jiménez said. “We were not competing with anyone else — we were just trying to do our thing.”In September 2020, Morrison released the first single from “El Renacimiento”: “Ansiedad” (“Anxiety”). Over pulsing, hide-and-seek chords, she sings about panic attacks: “I want to speak and I can’t/I want to breathe and I can’t.”But the chord progression ascends and the beat is crisp and confident “I thought if I were to listen to the song, I would like for the beat to make me forget I’m having an anxiety attack,” Morrison said. “I would like for the beat to make me think, ‘OK, I’m getting out of this.’”Morrison weathered another bout of depression in 2021 after losing her father to Covid-19. She got treatment with ketamine infusions at a clinic in Los Angeles. “I had a ton of epiphanies,” she said. “The next day I woke up and I thought, ‘What’s missing? Something’s missing.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m not scared, I’m not sad.’ I just felt at peace.”Fans have told Morrison they are grateful to hear songs about her struggles. “There aren’t many songs about mental health in Spanish,” Morrison said. “In the Latin community, we don’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable, because then you’re weak. Or if you think about mental health, you’re crazy — just drink a beer, calm down, relax. We don’t face these problems because we weren’t taught.”Morrison has made her way back to performing. Last year, she played a full-length livestream concert. And as a lead-up to the album release this spring, she has been performing at arenas in Mexico, opening for what she names as her “favorite band”: Coldplay.Onstage, on tour, with fans shouting along, Morrison felt joy again. “In the industry, I get this space where I am so honest, and so vulnerable, and very intense at times,” she said. “I feel like people get that from my music. I do feel like I’ve really tried to be that space of freedom. And as long as I’m honest, I’ll be happy.” More

“Everything’s couched with hard jokes, but it’s also vulnerable,” the comic said of “The Bedwetter,” her new musical comedy.When the comedian Sarah Silverman was maybe 8, her father gave her a joke book. This was no childhood compendium of riddles and rhymes. It was a collection of “tasteless” humor, and on the very first page, she recalled, it contained a zinger about Little Red Riding Hood getting it on with the Big Bad Wolf.As a child, Silverman was mystified by these punch lines. As an adult, she said, “I went, oh my God, what is wrong with my father?” And then she wrote the whole bit into “The Bedwetter,” the new Off Broadway musical based on her memoir of the same name. It’s one of many R-rated episodes that were inspired by her beloved dad, who taught her to swear when she was 3, unwittingly setting her on the path to becoming a comic.The family life she has memorialized onstage was short on boundaries and weighted with despair. “The Bedwetter,” which begins previews April 30 at the Linda Gross Theater, centers on a 10-year-old Silverman, who suffered from the embarrassing condition of the title. It deals frankly with divorce and depression — but it’s a raucous comedy.“Everything’s couched with hard jokes, but it’s also vulnerable, and sad,” she said. “I really hope people bring their kids.”Silverman and cast members in their Times Square rehearsal studio, preparing the show (again) after a two-year pandemic delay.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesAn Atlantic Theater Company production originally scheduled for the spring of 2020, the show lost one of its original creators, the musician and Emmy-winning TV and stage composer Adam Schlesinger, who died from complications of the coronavirus on April 1, 2020. His death and the two-year pandemic delay deepened the meaning of the production, its creators said, even as it sharpened the jokes. Seeing the show through became a mission for some of his collaborators.And it arrives as Silverman, 51, has reached an unexpectedly beneficent phase of her career, and a new level of maturity in her personal life. As the cultural lines around “appropriate” humor are repeatedly redrawn, she is one of the few performers who has, seemingly genuinely, all but renounced the early work that put her on the map.For decades a convulsive and taboo-busting top comic, she has transformed into a still bitingly funny and progressive feminist voice who advocates for earnest connection (even with Republicans). With a huge, cross-generational network of comedy friends and a pandemic-era podcast that doles out gentle advice, she’s become an unlikely moral center of the comedy community: a Gen X Mr. Rogers, with a topknot ponytail and a profane streak.“Sarah’s secret weapon is her big heart,” said the filmmaker Adam McKay, a friend and a producer of her 2017 Hulu series “I Love You, America.” Erin Simkin/Hulu“She’s able to take audiences into shadowy, tricky places because we all trust her and know she’s a force for good,” said the filmmaker Adam McKay, a friend and a producer of “I Love You, America,” the 2017 Hulu series that showcased her efforts at bridge-building humor. “Sarah’s secret weapon is her big heart.”Inside Sarah Silverman’s WorldThe convulsive and taboo-busting comic has transformed over time into a still bitingly funny and progressive feminist voice.‘The Bedwetter’: Sarah Silverman’s new musical, based on her 2010 memoir, deals with divorce and depression, but it’s a raucous comedy.Defining Moment: When A.O. Scott, our film critic, panned her comedy in 2005, it hit Silverman hard. Years later, they revisited that episode.Talking Politics: In her late-night talk show, “I Love You, America,” she experimented with the limits of political comedy in the Trump era.‘I Smile Back’: Silverman stretched in an unfamiliar direction by playing a suburban mom in the harrowing drama. Here is what she said of that role.The confluence of darkness, dark humor and love is the key to “The Bedwetter,” which began when Schlesinger, the witty Fountains of Wayne power pop bassist, read Silverman’s 2010 best-selling memoir, and decided that chapter headings like “My Nana Was Great but Now She’s Dead” and “Hymen, Goodbyemen,” were the seeds of great comic songs. Silverman and Schlesinger began working on the project a decade ago, becoming friends in the process. “We started going to this piano bar karaoke every other Friday,” she said, noting that she still can’t strike the standing get-together from her calendar.Some of the reference materials for the show in the rehearsal space.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesPhotographs of Silverman and her family from the ’70s and ’80s.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesShe was speaking over lunch recently at a bustling restaurant near Union Square. She’d arrived on foot and alone, looking not AARP age but like the early ’90s N.Y.U. student she once was, in jeans, a Santana ringer tee and a backpack. (“I always say, you should live well below your means — you don’t need a purse, get a backpack.”) Her conversation was generously detailed and inquisitive; she acted out her stories, but not enough to draw much attention in the room. Almost no personal detail was too embarrassing to share, anyway. “I learned disassociation at a very young age, as a bedwetter who had to go to sleepover camp,” she said.Having known that abject social terror — she wet the bed well into her teens — Silverman leans into compassion. She even had empathy for a guy at Comic-Con who, years back, suddenly punched her in the face while wearing a Hulk fist. “I could tell he just didn’t know what to do with all his feelings.”But she also knows how to cackle her way out of the depths. She mentioned a friend’s death. “Suicide, I think, is sometimes so — ” Silverman began, when she clocked the waitress dropping by our table.“So whimsical!” she concluded, in purposeful earshot. “I don’t know, it’s the one thing you really should put off till tomorrow, every time.”When the pandemic cut off her stand-up tours, she started a weekly podcast, and professed surprise about the number of callers in real need, with problems both personal (depression) and cultural. “Are we Jewish?” asked one woman, befuddled by her family history. “Being Jewish is a state of mind!” Silverman replied. (One of her three sisters is a rabbi, but Silverman herself is not religious.)Silverman in the Times Square rehearsal space. “Sincerely confronting one’s darkness in the same space as making light of it was a formative example for me,” the actress Ilana Glazer said of Silverman’s work.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York Times“I thought it would be silly and dumb, and then I’d talk politics,” she said of the podcast. “Then I get people so earnest, and — I’m my mother — I think I can help. But so much of the time I’m talking out of my ass; just the classic someone-who-does-a-lot-of-therapy thinking they’re a therapist.”Still, she added, there “are just things I’ve learned, because I’ve lived a long time, and I’m curious.”HER INFLUENCE IS WIDELY FELT. “I look up to Sarah,” the actress and writer Ilana Glazer (“Broad City”) wrote in an email. “She can hold the nuances of the big picture, socially, historically, personally — and process those complexities spontaneously” in her work. Silverman is not the only comic to reveal her struggles, but she may be the most honest. “The idea of sincerely confronting one’s darkness in the same space as making light of it,” Glazer wrote, “was a formative example for me.”Silverman has dipped into dramatic roles (she played a lesbian who died in childbirth on the Showtime series “Masters of Sex”) but mostly has a side career as the funny, smart friend in movies; she’ll next host “Stupid Pet Tricks,” a takeoff on the old Letterman bit, as a variety series for TBS. And after a decade of condo-tower living in Los Angeles, she just bought her first home, to the relief of friends like Chelsea Handler.“I ran over to take a look at it, concerned she bought a one-bedroom bungalow tucked underneath the Griffith Observatory,” Handler, the comedian and author, wrote in an email. “When I saw she had bought herself a big-girl house, I thought, well, there we go, she’s accepted adulthood.” Silverman’s boyfriend of nearly two years, Rory Albanese, the showrunner for Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” has moved in; the first time she’s cohabitated with a partner in over a decade, and the very first time on her own turf.For a musical about a bedwetter, you need a bed. It’s a central piece of the set for the show, which begins previews April 30 at the Linda Gross Theater.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesSilverman, who said she has been on Zoloft since 1994, is open about her mental health. She was clinically depressed as a kid and, back when doctor’s orders were rarely questioned, was prescribed a dosage of Xanax that would hobble a SoundCloud rapper. Also, her first psychiatrist hanged himself. It’s all in the musical, along with her mother’s debilitating depression which, in the show, leaves her largely bed-bound. (But remember, it’s a comedy!)The Covid shutdown and Schlesinger’s death came as the musical’s creators were in New York, ready to start rehearsals for their imminent run. Instead they began gathering on Zoom to check in. Eventually, they brought in as a creative consultant the musician and composer David Yazbek, a Tony winner for best original score for “The Band’s Visit” and a nominee for “Tootsie.”At that point, there was a surreal and palpable sense that someone was missing, Yazbek said. “Being able to laugh was not just sort of healing and important, but actually kind of vital — for us, I’m not even talking about any audiences.”That sentiment did go in the show, buoyed by Silverman’s own experience with loss. Her mother, Beth Ann, who recovered from depression and went on to become a successful theater director in New Hampshire, died in 2015; as did the 30-year-old writer Harris Wittels, who worked on “The Sarah Silverman Program,” her Comedy Central series; and Garry Shandling, the comedian and a mentor, in 2016.That year, Silverman suffered a near miss of her own, when she had a rare case of epiglottitis, a swollen abscess around her windpipe, and was rushed into emergency surgery. After her discharge, in withdrawal from pain meds, “I was chemically suicidal,” she said; she had not been given her anti-depressants during the hospital stay.“It will be familiar to so many people,” Silverman said about how the musical explores the emotions raised by divorce.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesGoing through these traumas and emerging laughing, “I don’t think a lot of people do that with such finesse,” said Anne Kauffman, the director of “The Bedwetter.”IN THEIR TIMES SQUARE rehearsal studio, there were inspo pictures of the Silverman family circa the ’70s and ’80s; Sarah inherited her eyebrows from her dad, Donald, who owned a discount clothing store. The cast, which includes Darren Goldstein and Caissie Levy as the Silvermans and Bebe Neuwirth as Nana, cycled through a kaleidoscope of anger, anxiety and silliness. It was very funny. Ganged up on by some fifth-grade mean girls, who taunt her with “You’re short and dark and strange and ooey,” Zoe Glick, who plays Silverman, is enthusiastically self-deprecating: “I couldn’t agree more!” she sings cheerfully. “I’m the type of kid that’s too Jewy to ignore.”The music is as sticky as the best pop song — Schlesinger’s touch. Both Yazbek and Henry Aronson, the musical director, said they tried to channel him as they finished the project. He worked in a Beatles pop tradition, Aronson said, “a certain deceptive simplicity, harmonically.”Silverman, taking notes at a table, popped up to sub for an absent actor, sweetly singing a jingle for “Crazy Donny’s Warehouse (for Your Messy Divorce).” If it was initially bizarre to watch her family’s emotional upheaval recreated — her parents split when she was around 7 — “I’m also so thrilled, because I feel like it will be familiar to so many people,” she said.Kauffman, the director, said Silverman has illuminated her history — “What was your mom like in this moment? Would your dad have cracked a joke?” — with what works dramaturgically. “She just has this incredible memory and ability to articulate exactly what she was experiencing, which is like a director’s dream. Her as a 10 year old is very viscerally present.”And she punches up the jokes. When Glick was doing a scene that involved making fart noises, Silverman advised her: “Point to your mouth, to really focus” on the body part it’s standing in for, she told her, in less PG language. “It will be funny.”Silverman has moved on from the incendiary language she used at the beginning of her career. “It’s so funny what a burden some people feel it is, to have to change,” she said.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesA word — OK, a paragraph — about farts (and also a sentence I never expected to write in The New York Times). If you thought Silverman might’ve outgrown her affinity for juvenile, scatological humor after a half-century, you’d be wrong. “She has an inability not to laugh if you fart,” Yazbek said. During rehearsal, I caught her giving Joshua Harmon (“Bad Jews,” “Prayer for the French Republic”), who wrote the book with her, a demo in fart noise technique, her hands cupped around her mouth.She has never not wanted to be a performer, said her sister Laura Silverman, who recalled that when she had friends over as a kid, Sarah would pop out of a closet, doing costumed characters, to entertain them.And her family was supportive in creative ways. “I would pick up the phone and call the operator and have her sing ‘Tomorrow,’ from ‘Annie,’” said Laura, an actor and writer. “I would say, I didn’t want her to be scared to sing or perform in front of anyone, at any time.” When Silverman, as a very young child, unleashed the string of curse words that her father taught her — a cherub with inky curtain bangs, working blue — “I would get this wild approval from adults, despite themselves,” she said. “It felt so good, made my arms itch with glee, and I became addicted to that.”Only when she wrote her memoir did she connect the dots between that feeling and her comedy: “So much of my standup, especially early on, was shock, shock, shock,” she said, “and totally trash.” She used racist epithets, misguidedly, to prove a point, which she now says she regrets — she’s gladly left that language behind. “It’s so funny what a burden some people feel it is, to have to change,” she said.The only word that Silverman whispered, in our three hour lunch, was “menopause.”When pressed — no, pleaded with — she said she would write about that topic, though she’s still working out the terms. (“There is not a female word for emasculating, but that’s what menopause is.”) But talking about her body and her needs, is “how I learned to be vulnerable and honest,” she said. “It’s an incredible revelation some people don’t even realize they can do. The truth! It’s really wild.” More

He hosted four radio shows that focused on the singer, who at one concert singled him out in the audience and said, “I love him.”Sid Mark, a longtime disc jockey in Philadelphia who made Frank Sinatra’s songs the center of his musical universe for more than six decades, died on April 18 in Bryn Mawr, Pa. He was 88.His daughter, Stacey Mark, confirmed the death, in a hospital, but did not cite the cause.Mr. Mark brought a warm, conversational style to his broadcasts. Between selections from his trove of vinyl albums and CDs, he offered bits of his aficionado’s knowledge, told stories about hanging out with Sinatra and played snippets of interviews with him.He hosted three shows on various Philadelphia radio stations: “Friday With Frank,” “Sunday With Sinatra” and the syndicated “The Sounds of Sinatra,” which has run for 43 years and at its height was heard on 100 stations. He also hosted a fourth, “Saturday With Sinatra,” on stations in New York.In 1966, Sinatra’s office invited Mr. Mark to Las Vegas to see him perform as a reward for helping to stoke sales in Philadelphia of the singer’s newly released live album, “Sinatra at the Sands,” by playing it nonstop for a week.While there, he dined with Sinatra and a group of other stars, including Jack Benny, Lucille Ball and Milton Berle. Afterward, Mr. Mark recalled, Sinatra told him, “I’ll see you at the show,” but Mr. Mark said that he and his wife, Loretta, did not have tickets.“He thought that was pretty funny, as did everyone at the table,” Mr. Mark told Vice.com in 2009, “and he gave me a little pinch on the cheek and said, ‘No, you’re sitting at our table.’ I walked in with all these celebrities and everyone knew who everyone was, but they had no idea who we were. Like ‘Who’s that with the pope?’”It was the start of a friendship that lasted until Sinatra’s death in 1998. Mr. Mark attended many of Sinatra’s performances and would sometimes visit him at his suite at the Waldorf Towers in Manhattan. At times, during a concert, Sinatra would single him out from the audience.“I love him, and I say that publicly, I love him,” Sinatra said in 1991 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. “He’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had in my life.”Mr. Mark in a recent photo hosting “Sunday With Sinatra,” which was on the air for more than 40 years.Family photoSidney Mark Fliegelman was born on May 30, 1933, in Camden, N.J. His father, Aaron, and his mother, Sylvia (Pfeffer) Fliegelman, owned a variety store in Camden. The family lived above the store, where Sid got his first taste of Sinatra’s music by listening to his sister Norma’s records. He hoped to one day get a job in radio.He entered the Army in 1953 and served at Camp Polk (now Fort Polk) in Louisiana. His admiration for Sinatra’s music swelled when he listened to his records on the radio at night in the barracks. “Somehow his voice got to me and I realized he knew exactly what he was singing about,” he told Vice. “If he was singing about lonely, he knew what lonely was. If he was singing about love, he knew what love was about.”Mr. Mark stopped using his surname early in his career but never changed it legally.After his discharge in 1955, Mr. Mark got a job at the Red Hill Inn, a jazz club in Pennsauken, N.J., as a talent coordinator. His responsibilities included driving artists like Count Basie and Duke Ellington to and from their hotels. They would often talk about Sinatra, further stoking Mr. Mark’s interest in his music. More important, he was hired around that time as a disc jockey at WHAT-AM, a jazz station in Philadelphia. He hosted a one-hour show called “Sounds in the Night.”One night in 1955, when the station’s overnight D.J. did not show up, Mr. Mark was asked to fill in.“It was a show called ‘Rock and Roll Kingdom,’ and I wasn’t going to do that,” he told The New Yorker in 2021. He asked his audience what they wanted to hear, and one fan suggested playing an hour of Sinatra’s music. “The all-night guy got fired for not coming in, and they kept me on.” Several months later, in 1956, the show formally began its run as “Friday With Frank.”By the early 1960s, Mr. Mark’s popularity in Philadelphia was growing. He was hosting “Friday With Frank” and a daily six-hour jazz show, “Mark of Jazz,” which would run for nearly two decades, on WHAT. He also had a weekly jazz program on local public television.Mr. Mark hosted “Friday With Frank” for 54 years, “Saturday With Sinatra” for about 17 and “Sunday With Sinatra” for more than 40. “The Sounds of Sinatra” will remain on the air and present archival shows, said his son Brian Mark, the executive producer.In addition to his daughter and his son Brian, Mr. Mark is survived by his wife, Judy (Avery) Mark; two other sons, Eric and Andy Fliegelman; and two grandchildren. His marriage to Loretta Katz ended in divorce.The playlists of Mr. Mark’s Sinatra shows did not consist entirely of solo recordings by Sinatra. He also played duets Sinatra recorded with singers like Liza Minnelli, Lena Horne and Sammy Davis Jr., as well as records by Dean Martin, Tony Bennett and Davis.There have been other Sinatra devotees on the radio over the years. William B. Williams emphasized Sinatra’s music on his “Make Believe Ballroom” on WNEW-AM in New York (and gave him his nickname Chairman of the Board). Jonathan Schwartz was known for his loyalty to Sinatra on several New York stations. But with four Sinatra shows, Mr. Mark was probably singular in his commitment.“D.J.s can often be disappointing in person, which was not the case with Sid,” James Kaplan, the author of a two-volume biography of Sinatra — “Frank: The Voice” (2010) and “Sinatra: The Chairman” (2015) — said in a phone interview. “He was physically impressive, a tall, striking-looking guy who had a real warmth. He didn’t have a phony atom in his body, and he had a true love of Sinatra and everything about Sinatra. His enthusiasm was real.” More

The band members Chadwick Stokes and Brad Corrigan said they hope that Russian soldiers will hear the antiwar song and discontinue their invasion.The roots rock band Dispatch on Tuesday rereleased its popular antiwar anthem, “The General,” after recording it in Russian in hopes, the band said, that Russian soldiers might hear the song and its message and “question their role” in the Ukrainian invasion.The song, originally released in 1998, tells the story of a “decorated general with a heart of gold” who has a dream about the opposing soldiers (and their affected mothers) on the eve of battle and wakes up to tell his men about a change of heart.“He said, ‘I have seen the others, and I have discovered that this fight is not worth fighting,’” the band sings in the chorus. “‘And I’ve seen their mothers, and I will no other to follow me where I’m going.’”“‘So take your shower, shine your shoes, you got no time to lose; you are young and you must be living,’” the original chorus continues. “‘Go now, you are forgiven.’”Chadwick Stokes and Brad Corrigan, two of the founding members of the band, said in a statement that they realized how relevant the lyrics were to the war in Ukraine. Stokes then recorded the whole song in Russian, working with Olga Berg, who acted as a translator and language coach.“I would say, ‘There’s too many syllables in this line; I just can’t fit it in,’” Stokes said in a video interview. “And in other places, I’d say, ‘I need more syllables for it to work.’ It was a lot of jigsaw puzzling.”The duo also tweaked much of the wording, as literary translations are rarely direct. “I’ve seen their mothers,” in English, for example, became “I’ve seen the eyes of their mothers.” In the second line, the “stories” that the general told were replaced with a Russian expression that roughly translates to “wealth of stories.”Berg, who was born in Zaporizhzhia in Southeastern Ukraine, is working with several nonprofit organizations to support Ukraine, including the Polish Institute for Emergency Medicine.“This song, it’s an effort toward unity, toward humanity,” Berg said in the same interview. “We all speak the same language, we all have mothers, we all have children, and we want them to stay alive.”All proceeds from streaming the song will go toward the Leleka Foundation, which provides first aid kits for fighters and emergency medical responders in Ukraine. Founded in 2014 after Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, the foundation says it has now raised almost $2 million since the war began in February.Dispatch, formed in 1996, has crafted eight studio albums and five live albums. On hiatus since 2002, the band reunited in 2011 for a national tour. This summer, Dispatch will tour North America with the rock band O.A.R.The idea for the Russian version came from social media comments, including one on a Ukrainian flag graphic that Dispatch posted to the band’s Instagram account.How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. More

The presenter is planning a return to full-scale programming for its 2022-23 season. Our critics and writers chose 15 highlights.After scaling back its current season as it grappled with disruptions brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, Carnegie Hall announced on Tuesday that it would return to full programming next season with a slate of more than 150 concerts.The 2022-23 season, which is scheduled to run from September to June, will feature the presenter’s typical variety of soloists and ensembles, but with an earnest focus on female musicians and composers.“We wanted to show that in every area of music, whether it’s jazz, classical or world music, there are truly extraordinary women who are recognized as such on the world platform,” Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director, said in an interview.The season’s lineup includes the eminent pianist Mitsuko Uchida and the singer-songwriter Rhiannon Giddens, who each will organize a series of Perspectives concerts; the flutist Claire Chase, as artist in residence; and appearances by conductors including Marin Alsop, who will lead the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra in its Carnegie debut, and Susanna Mälkki, who will lead the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, which is traveling to Carnegie for the first time in more than a half-century.The enterprising flute player Claire Chase will perform as Carnegie’s artist in residence.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesProgramming has also been inspired by the war in Ukraine. In February, the hall will host the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, whose performance will include Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, featuring the Ukrainian American pianist Stanislav Khristenko.“This is a turning point in history,” Gillinson said. “It’s really, really important that a dictator does not win. We felt we needed to very overtly support Ukraine.”Carnegie had originally planned to open the season with a three-concert engagement by the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, Gillinson said. But the hall abandoned those plans after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, when Gergiev, a longtime friend and supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, became the target of widespread condemnation.Instead, the Philadelphia Orchestra and its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will take the stage on opening night, Sept. 29, performing Ravel’s “La Valse”; Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Chasqui” from “Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout”; Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8; and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1, featuring the Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov. (The Philadelphians rescheduled their own opening night to accommodate Carnegie, in one of multiple appearances at the hall next season; it’s not the first time during the war in Ukraine that Nézet-Séguin has come to the hall’s rescue.)Gillinson said that he was optimistic about audiences turning out. Attendance since the hall reopened in October has been relatively strong, around 88 percent, compared with 91 percent before the pandemic, though there have been fewer concerts over all.Among the offerings, here are 15 highlights chosen by New York Times critics and writers.The pianist Maurizio Pollini at Carnegie in 2019.Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesMaurizio Pollini, Oct. 16Pollini turned 80 this year, so take what opportunity you can to hear this most stimulating of pianists, especially in the repertoire that he has made distinctive across the six decades of his career. He plays Schumann’s “Arabeske” and the Fantasy in C, before a second half of Chopin, including the Ballade No. 4 and the Scherzo No. 1. DAVID ALLENCity of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Oct. 22While this ensemble’s outgoing music director, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, doesn’t plan to take up the podium of another orchestra any time soon, she is at least taking up the baton for this tour stop that features Elgar’s Cello Concerto, with the charismatic Sheku Kanneh-Mason; Debussy’s “La Mer”; and, most notably, the New York premiere of Thomas Adès’s “The Exterminating Angel” Symphony. JOSHUA BARONELos Angeles Philharmonic, Oct. 25-26Absent from Carnegie for more than three decades, the Philharmonic has instead been more likely to perform at Lincoln Center. Now, the orchestra will give the New York premieres of Gabriela Ortiz’s “Kauyumari” and Violin Concerto, with María Dueñas as soloist, as well as Arturo Márquez’s “Fandango for Violin and Orchestra,” featuring Anne Akiko Meyers. JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZJean Rondeau, Oct. 27This harpsichordist’s recent recording of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations is meditative, sensuous even when sprightly, and, at an hour and 45 minutes, long. The variations become worlds to lose oneself in, less taut dramas than engulfing studies in texture and sound, an effect that may well be amplified when he plays the work in the intimate Weill Recital Hall. ZACHARY WOOLFEBeatrice Rana, Oct. 28Praise be to Beatrice Rana, a sensitive, perceptive pianist who is starting to do the hard work of challenging the biases of the inherited repertoire. She will play Clara Schumann’s youthful Piano Concerto with Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Rana returns for a comparatively traditional recital of Bach, Debussy and Beethoven on April 20. ALLENThe bass-baritone Davóne Tines at Carnegie last year.Jennifer TaylorDavóne Tines, Nov. 3His voice and presence both serene yet simmering, this bass-baritone, a creative programmer as well as a gifted singer, has been touring with his reinvention of the traditional Mass, which incorporates music past and present, including works by Caroline Shaw, Bach, Margaret Bonds and Julius Eastman, and spirituals reimagined by Moses Hogan and Tyshawn Sorey. WOOLFEBerlin Philharmonic, Nov. 10-12When this eminent orchestra last appeared at Carnegie, in 2016, it played Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Performing there for the first time under its current chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko, it brings back the Seventh, then does it again two nights later. In between is a program of Andrew Norman, Mozart and Korngold — the grand Symphony in F sharp, which Petrenko has lately championed. WOOLFECleveland Orchestra, Jan. 18America’s finest orchestra makes just a single appearance next season, but with a program that draws fascinating parallels between the two favorite composers of its music director, Franz Welser-Möst. Berg’s “Lyric Suite” weaves its way around Schubert’s darkly unfinished Symphony No. 8, before a rare performance of Schubert’s late, reflective Mass in E flat. ALLENThird Coast Percussion, Jan. 20In a collaboration with the dance organization Movement Art Is, this reliably innovative percussion quartet will continue to refresh its repertory. Already adept at works by John Cage, Steve Reich and Dev Hynes, at Carnegie the group will perform Tyondai Braxton’s “Sunny X,” Jlin’s “Perspective” and its own arrangements of selections from Philip Glass’s “Aguas da Amazonia.” SETH COLTER WALLSPhiladelphia Orchestra, Jan. 28One Rachmaninoff piano concerto is daunting. But all four of them in a single evening, and his “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini”? That herculean task has never been attempted at Carnegie, but Yuja Wang will take it up the keyboard, with Nézet-Séguin conducting, in a program to celebrate the composer’s 150th birthday. HERNÁNDEZYannick Nézet-Séguin leading the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie earlier this year.Chris LeeLviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, Feb. 15Since the Russian invasion, many members of the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine have been separated — some staying in the country, others fleeing as refugees. At Carnegie, they will be united to play Brahms’s “Tragic Overture,” the Tchaikovsky concerto with Khristenko and Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, as part of a tour led by the Ukrainian American conductor Theodore Kuchar. HERNÁNDEZMitsuko Uchida, Feb. 24The most recent Carnegie appearances by Uchida, one of our reigning and most sensitive pianists, have been in works by Schubert and Mozart, two composers on which she built her reputation. More underrated, but no less accomplished, are her Beethoven interpretations, a sampling of which comes in a program of his cosmic final piano sonatas. BARONEEnsemble Intercontemporain, March 25This group’s music director, Matthias Pintscher, will lead Schoenberg’s Five Pieces, Op. 16, and Pintscher’s “Sonic Eclipse.” But the real succulent on offer is “Derive 2,” a grand (and long-revised) work by Pierre Boulez, the avant-gardist who founded Ensemble Intercontemporain. WALLSPhiladelphia Orchestra, March 31As in recent months, Nézet-Séguin and this ensemble — one of the three he leads, including the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, another Carnegie fixture — are virtually in residency next season. Their most intriguing program is this contrast between John Luther Adams’s climate meditation “The Vespers of the Blessed Earth,” featuring the choral group the Crossing, and Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” WALLSClaire Chase, May 25Chase’s “Density 2036” — a multi-decade initiative to commission a new flute repertory leading to the centennial of Varèse’s “Density 21.5” — has thus far not been fare for the Carnegie crowd. But the project is moving uptown from the Kitchen, with Parts I and II on May 18, followed a week later by Part X: a world premiere by Anna Thorvaldsdottir. BARONE More

He and the Saints introduced the country (and later the world) to their own raw sound just as the Sex Pistols were emerging in London and the Ramones in New York.Chris Bailey, an Australian singer who with his band, the Saints, introduced their country to the raw, fast-tempo sounds of punk rock in the mid-1970s, just as the Sex Pistols were spiking their hair in London and the Ramones were donning their leather jackets in New York City, died on April 9 in Haarlem, the Netherlands. He was 65.His wife, Elisabet Corlin, confirmed the death, of natural causes, but did not provide details.Mr. Bailey and the Saints did not borrow from the sounds emanating out of Britain and the United States. Rather, in a case of parallel evolution, they emerged simultaneously, shaped in their native Brisbane by some of the same forces at work in the Northern Hemisphere: high unemployment, stifling social conservatism and grungy political radicalism.They released their first hit, “(I’m) Stranded,” in September 1976, two months before the Sex Pistols debuted with “Anarchy in the U.K.” and one month before the Damned released “New Rose,” widely considered Britain’s first punk single.“(I’m) Stranded,” which the Saints produced themselves, is as pure a punk anthem as one can find, with buzz saw guitar and driving rhythms punctuating Mr. Bailey’s fast-paced snarl of a voice, singing about youthful ennui and failed romance.That single shot the Saints to national and then global attention among the underground cognoscenti, even though it caused only the shallowest ripple in the charts. Until then, no label was interested in the stringy-haired foursome from Queensland; suddenly, everyone was.The Saints — with Mr. Bailey on vocals, Ed Kuepper on guitar, Ivor Hay on drums and Kym Bradshaw on bass — signed with EMI and moved to London in 1977, just as punk was hitting its stride.They were a part of the scene there and separate from it, both sonically — they incorporated horns, for one thing — and ideologically: To them, punk, ostensibly a cri de coeur against consumer society, was already a commodified part of it. Mr. Bailey called it a “marketing gimmick.”Unlike the typical pointy-haired British punks, the Saints kept their look low-key, more like a 1990s American grunge band (and, not coincidentally, many a latter-day Seattle band noted the Saints as an inspiration).Nevertheless, they thrived. Their single “This Perfect Day” reached No. 34 on the U.K. charts, and their first two albums, “(I’m) Stranded” (1977) and “Eternally Yours” (1978), are considered punk classics. The second album included “Know Your Product,” an anti-consumer, anti-punk song that sent fans raving.But like punk itself, the Saints had a short shelf life, though by their third album, the R&B-spiked “Prehistoric Sounds,” they were starting to transcend the genre. Released in late 1978, it fizzled, EMI dropped them and a few months later Mr. Kuepper and Mr. Hay left the band.The Saints’ legacy cannot be measured by record sales; they influenced generations of Australian rockers, as well as bands emerging from the early 1980s metal scene along the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, like Guns N’ Roses.Nick Cave, another Australian musician who came up in the punkish underground of the 1970s, said in a memorial statement on the website Red Hand Files, “I can only simply repeat, for the record, that, in my opinion, the Saints were Australia’s greatest band, and that Chris Bailey was my favorite singer.”Christopher James Mannix Bailey was born on Nov. 29, 1956, in Nanyuki, Kenya, where his father, Robert Bailey, was stationed with the British Army. His mother, Bridget (O’Hare) Bailey, was a homemaker.The family returned to the Baileys’ native Belfast, Northern Ireland, when Christopher was young. But with political unrest brewing and Australia opening its doors to immigrants, the family soon moved to Brisbane, where Robert found work as a night watchman in a factory.Along with his wife, Mr. Bailey is survived by his brother, Michael, and his sisters, Mary, Carol and Margaret Bailey and Maureen Schull.Mr. Bailey onstage during the 2012 Homebake Music Festival in Sydney.Don Arnold/WireImageAfter the Saints’ original lineup split up, Mr. Bailey reconstituted the band and recorded a series of albums under the same name and later as a solo act. He moved away from punk toward roots-driven rock, folk and austere instrumentation that showed off his room-filling rich voice.He moved to Sweden in the 1990s, and then to the Netherlands in 1994, where he continued to write and record. Bruce Springsteen covered one of his songs, “Just Like Fire Would,” on his 2014 album “High Hopes.”While the musician Bob Geldof reportedly said that “rock music of the ’70s was changed by three bands: the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the Saints,” Mr. Bailey was unbothered by the Saints’ name recognition relative to those others.“This is the world in which we live,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1998. “Bitter and twisted is something I don’t see any advantage in being.” More

The newly formed Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra will perform in Europe and the United States this summer, using music to oppose the Russian invasion.The Russian invasion has devastated cultural life in Ukraine, forcing renowned musical ensembles to disband and leading to an exodus of conductors, composers and players.Now some of Ukraine’s leading artists, with the help of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Polish National Opera in Warsaw, are uniting to use music to express opposition to Russia’s continuing attacks. They will form a new ensemble, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, and make an 11-city tour of Europe and the United States in July and August, the orchestra announced on Monday.“This is something we can do for our country and for our people,” Marko Komonko, a Ukrainian violinist who will serve as the orchestra’s concertmaster, said in an interview. “It’s not much, but this is our job.”The 75-member orchestra, which will be made up of Ukrainian refugees as well as musicians still in the country, will appear at several European festivals, including the BBC Proms in London for a televised performance on July 31. It will make stops in Germany, France, Scotland and the Netherlands, before heading to the United States to perform at Lincoln Center and at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Proceeds from the concerts will benefit Ukrainian artists.The orchestra will be led by the Canadian Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, who came up with the idea for the ensemble, eager to find a way to help musicians and others in Ukraine.“We want to show the embattled citizens of Ukraine that a free and democratic world supports them,” Wilson said in an interview. “We are fighting as artistic soldiers, soldiers of music. This gives the musicians a voice and the emotional strength to get through this.”Marko Komonko, the orchestra’s concertmaster, said: “This is something we can do for our country and for our people. It’s not much, but this is our job.”via Marko KomonkoWilson pitched the idea to her husband, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, who offered the company’s support and persuaded the Polish National Opera to assist as well. The orchestra will assemble in mid-July in Warsaw for rehearsals and hold an opening concert at the Wielki Theater, home to the Polish National Opera.Gelb said it was important that artistic groups spoke out against the Russian invasion. Shortly after the invasion began, the Met announced it would not engage performers or institutions that supported President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Last month, the Met staged a concert in support of Ukraine; banners forming the Ukrainian flag stretched across the exterior of the theater, bathed in blue and yellow floodlights.“This is a world situation that is far beyond politics,” Gelb said in an interview. “It’s about saving humanity. The Met, as the largest performing arts company in the United States and one of the leading companies in the world, clearly has a role to play and we’ve been playing it.”The Freedom Orchestra will perform a variety of works, including the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s Seventh Symphony; Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, featuring the Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova; Brahms’s Fourth Symphony; and Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony.How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 6Gavriel Heine. More

The long-delayed arrival of “Call Me if You Get Lost” on vinyl sold 49,500 copies, bringing the rapper back to the top of the Billboard 200.Forty-three weeks ago, in June 2021, the rapper, singer and Baudelaire-referencing cultural omnivore Tyler, the Creator released “Call Me if You Get Lost,” his sixth studio album.Critics were fascinated by its high-concept throwback to the style of mid-2000s mixtapes, and fans embraced Tyler’s return to straight-up rap after a detour into neo-soul on “Igor,” his previous album. “Call Me” opened at No. 1, appeared on numerous year-end critics’ lists, and this month took home the Grammy Award for best rap album — just as “Igor” did two years ago.But something had been missing since the initial rollout of “Call Me”: its vinyl edition. As early as August of last year, Tyler had hinted at his frustration with the delay. “Call Me,” like so many other pandemic-era albums, had seen its vinyl version pushed back by many months. The reason for Tyler’s delay was unclear, but many other artists found their LPs held up by supply-chain chokeholds and the limited production capacity of the overtaxed vinyl industrial complex.Now “Call Me” has finally been released on vinyl — and returned to No. 1.The album tops the latest Billboard album chart with the equivalent of 59,000 sales in the United States. Of those, 49,500 were for the vinyl version of “Call Me” — on two LPs — which were sold only through Tyler’s website. It is the biggest week for a hip-hop album on vinyl since 1991, when reliable data used to track music sales began by SoundScan, a predecessor of Luminate, the name of the data service that now powers Billboard’s charts.The total sales figure for “Call Me” also incorporates 11.5 million streams and about 1,500 other sales of CDs, cassettes and album downloads, according to Luminate.Also this week, Morgan Wallen holds at No. 2 with “Dangerous: The Double Album,” while Lil Durk’s “7220,” last week’s chart-topper, falls to No. 3. The “Encanto” soundtrack is No. 4 and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 5.Album sales have been slow lately, with “7220” last week notching the lowest sales for a No. 1 album in three years. But that may change soon, with a string of high-profile new releases expected in coming weeks by Jack Harlow (due May 6), Kendrick Lamar (May 13), Harry Styles (May 20) and BTS (June 10). More