Music

At the Metropolitan Opera, Nina Stemme and Lise Davidsen are a blazing pair as sisters in a revival of Strauss’s work.Behind the glorious excess of Strauss’s “Elektra” — the libretto’s mythic setting, the score’s unsparing terror — is something smaller: a starkly framed family portrait, albeit one knocked off the wall and scratched up by shards of shattered glass.That has always been at the core of Patrice Chéreau’s production, which returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Friday night. But in this revival, you could home in even closer to just its two sisters, antipodal soprano roles sung by Nina Stemme and Lise Davidsen with floodlight luminosity and painfully human sensitivity.Chéreau’s staging, which premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2013 before coming to the Met six years ago, doesn’t seem to have aged a day. And it’s difficult to imagine that happening soon with a placeless production that suits the timelessness Sophocles’ classic tragedy — which Hugo von Hofmannsthal adapted into a play for the age of Freud, then into a libretto for Strauss’s opera.The set, by Richard Peduzzi, is the grand and severe courtyard of the vaguely Mediterranean home of a vaguely elite family in vaguely contemporary dress (designed by Caroline de Vivaise). Where the production gets more specific is in its departures from the libretto: its absence of caricature and villainy, its climactic dance of death instead a scene of stillness and life continuing in agony. Mostly bloodless where it could be a massacre, it is a study of a family irreparably fractured by trauma.This concept demands singers who can truly act. And Stemme rises to meet it, if not always in voice then in dramatic intensity, which has only grown since she sang the title role in the Chéreau production’s first outing at the Met. She is never at rest: rocking as she stares straight ahead, her eyes wide open with laser focus on avenging her father, Agamemnon.When Stemme sang of his death — a murder committed by Elektra’s mother, Klytämnestra, and her lover, Aegisth — her voice didn’t always cooperate, especially at the low end of her range. At times she visibly braced herself for the role’s most punishing outbursts. Yet she delivered them as if with dragon’s breath, matched only by passages of aching delicacy.Davidsen, as Elektra’s sister Chrysothemis, gave her best performance at the Met this season — able to show a fuller range than in Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” last fall, and more in control of her immense instrument than during a recent run of Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos” and a benefit concert for Ukraine, in which she sang that composer’s “Four Last Songs.” Typically a better actor through her voice than her physicality, here she carried as much character on her sorrowful face as Stemme did in her eyes.Relaying the news that her brother, Orest, had died, “thrown and trampled by his own horses,” Davidsen let out a chilling wail — not for the last time in the evening. Originally trained as a mezzo-soprano, she has a full-bodied lower range that is just as thrilling to witness as her candescent high notes, and a commanding softness in more conversational moments.She and Stemme were supported throughout by a Met Orchestra in excellent form under the baton of Donald Runnicles, whose reading of the score was sensitively aligned with that of Chéreau. The opera has sounded scarier and more chaotic — its blood bath met with bombast in many interpretations — but Runnicles insisted on the possibility of dramatic momentum at a more restrained scale. And the evening was no less exciting for it; if anything, it was riveting in its revelatory transparency, the layers of expressionistic color, sweetness and Wagnerian abundance stacking in counterpoint or weaving in and out of one another with grace.There were standouts elsewhere — Hei-Kyung Hong as an authoritative and rending Fifth Maid — but also lapses among the principals. Michaela Schuster’s Klytämnestra was one of obvious gestures and a strained voice, which she occasionally sought to salvage with near-Sprechstimme declamation. Chéreau’s production hinges on a sympathetic Klytämnestra; she didn’t quite achieve that. And men were shadows of their past appearances. Greer Grimsley’s resonant bass-baritone was here faded and effortful, and not always easy to follow. As Aegisth, Stefan Vinke was barely audible — an upsetting turn for a tenor who has sung roles like Siegfried, perhaps barking but at least with penetrating power.You couldn’t help but feel bad whenever they sang alongside one of the starring sisters. Which is always: Stemme never leaves the stage. It is, after all, her show — and, for this run, Davidsen’s, too.ElektraThrough April 20 at the Metropolitan Opera; metopera.org. More

Trevor Noah, the comedian and face of “The Daily Show,” is returning to host the Grammy Awards for the second year in a row. For the 2021 show, Noah was front and center at an unconventional Grammys, with some performances pretaped and the bulk of the ceremony held outside the Staples Center (now known as the Crypto.com Arena) in Los Angeles. “On the whole, Noah made something that could have felt like several competing shows feel like one,” The New York Times pop music critic Jon Caramanica wrote.This year, for another pandemic-delayed show, the coronavirus is one of a few delicate topics Noah may broach in his monologue. In the weeks before the event, he had a highly publicized clash with Kanye West, who is up for five awards and until recently was slated to perform at Sunday night’s ceremony.Noah devoted a segment of his March 15 show to a nearly 10-minute long, reportedly unscripted monologue on what he characterized as West’s harassment of his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian. West had released a Claymation video in which he appeared to kidnap and bury a figure resembling Pete Davidson, the “Saturday Night Live” comedian who has been dating Kardashian.“What she’s going through is terrifying to watch, and it shines a spotlight on what so many women go through when they choose to leave,” Noah said in the segment, comparing West’s behavior to the abuse he witnessed as a child. (Noah said from when he was 9 to 16 he witnessed his stepfather mistreat his mother; he later shot her.)Days after Noah’s monologue, West posted an image of Noah on his Instagram alongside a racial slur. Meta, which owns Instagram, soon banned West — who had also been posting long videos criticizing Kardashian and others — for 24 hours. Then, just two weeks before West was set to perform at the awards, organizers informed his team that he would not be allowed to take the stage.Noah appeared to object to the ban. “I said counsel Kanye, not cancel Kanye,” he tweeted.Noah is a Grammy nominee himself. His standup special “Trevor Noah: Son of Patricia” was nominated for best comedy album at the 2020 Grammys. He lost to Dave Chappelle’s “Sticks and Stones.” More

The singer-songwriter, who has spoken in public infrequently since a 2015 aneurysm, will present an award live at the ceremony Sunday night in Las Vegas.Follow our live coverage of the 2022 Grammy Awards.When viewers tune in to the 64th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday night, they will see some familiar celebrities at the microphone as presenters, including Megan Thee Stallion, Questlove, Dua Lipa, Lenny Kravitz and Jared Leto.And one surprising one: Joni Mitchell.It will be a rare public appearance for Mitchell, 78, the revered singer and composer from Canada who was one of the defining figures of the singer-songwriter movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Never one for the limelight, Mitchell has kept a very low public profile since she had an aneurysm in 2015, and spent subsequent years in gradual recovery.The last year or two has brought a wave of recognition for Mitchell. Her 1971 album “Blue,” which had little commercial impact upon its release but was long a connoisseur’s favorite, was widely celebrated last year, upon its 50th anniversary. In December, she was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor, and a sampling of her songs, like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Both Sides Now,” were performed by Brandi Carlile, Brittany Howard and Norah Jones. In a speech during the White House reception for the event, she addressed her health, saying, “I’m hobbling along but I’m doing all right.” She even joked in an on-camera interview on the red carpet, “I’m old enough to have been honored before.”In a taped interview last year, for a virtual Grammy gala hosted by the music executive Clive Davis, she gave an overview of her career, saying that the folk music world of the mid-1960s was “territorial” about repertoire, and that she learned “the only way around this dilemma is to begin to write your own songs.” She also told Davis that she had only recently realized the breadth of her influence; for years, she said, “all I was aware of were bad reviews.”Mitchell last released an album of new songs in 2007. In January, she asked Spotify to remove her music after Neil Young did the same, as a protest against the streaming service over its role in giving a platform to Covid-19 vaccine misinformation.On Friday, Mitchell will also be the honoree in a gala for MusiCares, a Grammy-affiliated charity that helps needy musicians, with Cyndi Lauper, Stephen Stills, Herbie Hancock, Jon Batiste, Sara Bareilles, Beck, Carlile and others performing her music. More

Tabby Diamond, 66, was shot and killed Tuesday in Kingston, Jamaica. Bunny Diamond, 70, died three days later after a long illness.Two members of the Mighty Diamonds, a Jamaican trio that helped lead the wave of roots reggae arising from the streets of Kingston to international acclaim in the 1970s, have died within days of each other.Tabby Diamond, whose birth name was Donald Shaw, was shot and killed outside his home in Kingston on Tuesday. He was 66.Bunny Diamond, born Fitzroy Simpson, died on Friday at a hospital in the same city. He was 70.Marc-Antoine Chetata, the group’s longtime music publisher, confirmed the deaths. He said that the cause of Bunny Diamond’s death had not been determined but that he had been in declining health since having a stroke in 2015 and suffered from diabetes.The pair, who had first met in school, formed the Mighty Diamonds in 1969 with another former classmate, Lloyd Ferguson, who performed as Judge Diamond. With international hits like “Right Time” and “Pass the Kouchie,” and with more than a half-century of relentless recording and performing, they were by many estimates the longest-running reggae band in Jamaican history.Their deaths came as the group was preparing to record its 47th album and begin a tour.Tabby Diamond was shot late Tuesday night along with four other people, one of whom, Owen Beckford, was also killed. The shooting was first reported by the Jamaica newspaper The Gleaner.In a statement to The Gleaner, the Kingston police said that the shooting was most likely retaliation by a local gang against Mr. Shaw’s son JahMarley, whom the police later took into custody.The Mighty Diamonds were part of a wave of roots reggae acts that swept over Jamaica, North America and Europe in the 1970s, along with Bob Marley and the Wailers, Jimmy Cliff, Black Uhuru and others.The trio blended the classic one-drop beats of reggae with the tight harmonies of Motown; Tabby Diamond often cited the Temptations as one of his band’s inspirations, along with 1960s Jamaican artists like John Holt and Ken Boothe. Unlike several other top reggae acts of that era, the Mighty Diamonds typically eschewed overtly political themes in their lyrics, preferring a more general, spiritual message.From left, Bunny Diamond, Tabby Diamond and Judge Diamond in 1988. “Things change,” Tabby Diamond once said, “but we always write about what’s going on.”Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images“Things change, but we always write about what’s going on,” Tabby Diamond told The Santa Fe New Mexican in 2008. “We have some sweet romantic songs, but we’re very aware of things and the dangers and people not getting enough to eat. We need to focus on people loving each other.”Judge Diamond was the group’s primary lyricist, but it was the silky-voiced Tabby Diamond who gave the trio its subtle power, at once relaxed and vibrant, typically backed by a seven-piece band.“The Mighty Diamonds’ smooth harmonies and solid, workmanlike performance evoked a Jamaican version of the O’Jays,” Wayne Robins wrote in a concert review in Newsday in 1986.The band had several hits in Jamaica in the early 1970s, including “Girl You Are Too Young” and “Country Living,” before their first international success, “Right Time,” in 1975. They signed a deal soon afterward with Virgin Records. The next year it released an album, also called “Right Time,” which included that song and several of their earlier hits.They traveled to New Orleans to record their next album, “Ice on Fire,” produced by the celebrated R&B songwriter, pianist and singer Allen Toussaint and released in 1977. An attempt to open the band to more American fans by stripping out much of their reggae sound, the album fell flat, derided by Jamaican and American critics alike as bland and uninspired.“The Diamonds seem here more like a rather average North American close harmony soul group than the reggae beauties they were on the first LP,” Rolling Stone wrote.Chastened, they returned to Jamaica and Channel One, the famous Kingston studio where they had made some of their first records. A string of critical and commercial successes followed, including the albums “Stand Up to Your Judgment,” “Deeper Roots” and “Changes.”One of the group’s most recognizable songs, 1981’s “Pass the Kouchie” — the title was a reference to marijuana — was recorded a year later by the British reggae band Musical Youth as “Pass the Dutchie,” a sanitized version (a “dutchie” is a cooking pot) that became an even bigger hit, rising high on both the U.S. and British charts.Though they were a mainstay on the Jamaican music scene and had international success in the mid-1970s, the Mighty Diamonds never achieved the same level of global stardom as did some of the other reggae acts of their generation, like Mr. Cliff or Mr. Marley — the result, Tabby Diamond often said, of a string of bad managers early in their career.But the trio, all practicing Rastafarians, took it in stride, and they never seemed to mind missing out on the trappings of fame.“They lived the simplicity of the Rastafarians,” Mr. Chetata said in a phone interview.Donald Orlando Shaw was born on Oct. 7, 1955, in Kingston. His father, Ronald Shaw, was a furniture maker, and his mother, Gloria Shaw, worked in a hospital.He is survived by his wife, Evandey Henry; his daughters, Samantha Shaw, Josheina Shaw, Ishika Shaw, Dominique Martin, Naomi Campbell and Sapphire Campbell; his sons, Javion Shaw, JahMarley Shaw and Brad Campbell; and five grandchildren.Fitzroy Ogilvie Matthews Simpson was born on May 10, 1951, in Kingston. His father, Burnett Simpson, moved to England when Fitzroy was young. His mother, Monica Matthews, owned a shop.His wife, Sylvia Simpson, died in 2017. He is survived by his sister, Lorna Howell; his brother, Lloyd Howell; his daughters, Ronece Simpson and Rosemarie Simpson; his sons, Allan Simpson and Omar Simpson; and six grandchildren. Although the members of the Mighty Diamonds all knew one another in school, it was only later, as young men working in Kingston, that they came together as a group. They originally called themselves Limelight, but they changed the name, and adopted their stage names, after Tabby’s mother started calling them the Diamonds.“Bunny, he lived by my house,” Tabby Diamond said in the 2008 interview. “And we thought maybe we can do something together, so we starting singing together. Then, one night we were passing and Bunny was singing and Judge heard him and said, ‘I want to play the guitar to that.’ So we played a few songs together one night and we said, ‘Yes, things can work, things can work out.’”After 40 years of recording and touring, the Mighty Diamonds slowed down in the early 2010s, but they continued to record. They received the Order of Distinction from the Jamaican government, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors, in 2021.“Our music deals with one love, music wise and spiritual wise,” Tabby Diamond said in 2008. “We’re really still dealing with the same things from 20, 30, 40 years ago. But the music speaks for itself.”“We’re sending a good message to the people. That’s what we’re here for.” More

Mr. Fries, who performed under the stage name C.W. McCall, was an ad executive before he scored a hit with “Convoy,” a CB radio-inspired ode to renegade truckers.Bill Fries, the deep-voiced country singer known as C.W. McCall, who turned an ad campaign for an Iowa bread company into the outlaw trucker anthem, “Convoy,” which reached No. 1 on the charts in 1976 and inspired a Sam Peckinpah movie, died on Friday at his home in Ouray, Colo. He was 93.His death was confirmed by his son, Bill Fries III, who said his father had been in hospice care for about six months.Mr. Fries was working as an ad executive at Bozell & Jacobs in Omaha in the 1970s, when he helped to create a series of television commercials for Metz Baking Company about a trucker named C.W. McCall hauling Old Home bread in an eighteen-wheeler and a gum-snapping waitress named Mavis at the Old Home Filler-Up an’ Keep On A-Truckin’ Cafe.The ads — including one that ended with the tagline “Old Home is good buns” — became wildly popular and helped pump up Old Home bread sales as they told the story of a diesel-scented romance between Mavis and C.W., who spoke in a formidable twang voiced by Mr. Fries.“It was just amazing,” Mr. Fries once told Bozell. “Fan clubs were springing up and people were calling into TV and radio stations wanting to know when the spots were going to air.”In 1974, the ads were recognized by the Clio Awards as the nation’s best overall television advertising campaign.“When I accepted the award, I could see the shock and horror on the faces of all those New York advertising executives,” Mr. Fries told The Omaha World-Herald in 2001. “I remember saying, ‘I’ll bet y’all never thought something this good could come out of Omaha.’”Mr. Fries helped to spin the ads into a promotional record for Metz Baking Company, called “Old Home Filler-Up an’ Keep On A-Truckin’ Cafe,” which sold about 30,000 copies, according to Bozell. Before long, MGM Records in Nashville was calling.With a record deal from MGM, Mr. Fries spawned a cultural phenomenon with “Convoy,” an ode to renegade truckers driving across the country, written with Chip Davis, who had also written the music for the Old Home bread ads and who went on to found the group Mannheim Steamroller, known for its Christmas music.Crackling with CB radio lingo, the song tells the story of the truckers Rubber Duck and Pig Pen who are “puttin’ the hammer down” as they thumb their noses at speed limits, industry rules and law enforcement officers — “bears” and “smokies” in CB parlance. Along the way, they end up leading 1,000 trucks and “11 longhaired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus.”Originally recorded merely as an album filler, “Convoy” tapped into the surging popularity of trucker culture and CB radio, which truckers used to communicate during long, lonely hours on the open road. It was part of a boom in trucking-themed country songs like “Roll On Big Mama” by Joe Stampley and “Willin’” by Little Feat.“Convoy” spent six weeks at the top of the country charts and crossed into the top of the pop charts for a week, according to The World-Herald. More than 20 million copies of the single have been sold, according to Bozell. In 1978, Mr. Peckinpah turned the song into a movie, “Convoy,” starring Kris Kristofferson as Rubber Duck.“It went farther than I would have ever dreamed,” Mr. Fries told The World-Herald. “I’ve got a whole scrapbook full of articles people have written through the years about ‘Convoy’ and the ‘Old Home Filler-Up an’ Keep On A-Truckin’ Cafe.’”Billie Dale Fries was born on Nov. 15, 1928, in Audubon, Iowa, and later changed his name to William Dale Fries Jr. His father, Billie Fries, was a supervisor at a farm-equipment plant that manufactured hog pens. His mother, Margaret Fries, was a homemaker.After graduating from high school, Mr. Fries attended the University of Iowa for a year and then came back to Audubon and started a sign-painting business.In the late 1940s, he went to work for the NBC affiliate in Omaha as an art director, which led him into advertising and a job at Bozell & Jacobs.In addition to his son, Bill Fries III, he is survived by his wife of 70 years, Rena Fries, two other children, Mark Fries and Nancy Fries, four grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and a great-great-grandson.Mr. Fries said he got the idea for “Convoy” while sitting in his Jeep listening to CB radio chatter.“It sounds like a war going on out there,” he told Mr. Davis. “It might be an idea for the album.”Mr. Fries, who ultimately released nine albums, according to his son, retired to Ouray, a city about 300 miles southwest of Denver, in 1981. He was elected mayor in 1986 and served until 1992, his son said.Even after his country music career was over, Mr. Fries said the runaway success of “Convoy” remained an enduring source of pride.“It’s one of those things that can only happen in America,” he told The World-Herald. “CBs have all faded into the woodwork. Most young people won’t even know about CBs or truck convoys, but at the time it was the thing. That was pretty special.”Jack Begg More

A guide to everything you need to know for the 64th annual awards on Sunday night.It’s been a tumultuous few months for the Grammy Awards.First, at a meeting just 24 hours before the nominees were announced in November, the Recording Academy decided to expand the big four categories — album, record and song of the year, and best new artist — from eight to 10 slots, netting nominations for Taylor Swift and Kanye West. A few days later, Drake, without offering an explanation, dropped out of the two rap categories in which he was nominated.In mid-January, amid an uptick in coronavirus cases caused by the Omicron variant, the 64th annual Grammy Awards, originally scheduled for Jan. 31, were postponed and then moved to Las Vegas for the first time.Last month, Kanye West, who is up for five awards, was told he is no longer welcome to perform at the ceremony following troubling behavior on social media. Then, two of the seven members of the K-pop group BTS, which is up for best pop duo/group performance for the second straight year, tested positive for the coronavirus, leaving their performance status in limbo. And this week, Foo Fighters, who are up for three awards this year, also bowed out after their 50-year-old drummer, Taylor Hawkins, died on tour on March 25.While producers were juggling lineup changes, Covid protocols and the usual stresses of preparing three and a half hours of live network television, something else happened at the Oscars on Sunday night that likely got their attention.Obstacles aside, Sunday’s ceremony at the MGM Grand Garden Arena is a return to a large-scale production with a big audience following last year’s bare-bones, intimate, largely outdoor affair. The contenders include Tony Bennett, 95, who is nominated for his collaboration with Lady Gaga on the Cole Porter tribute album “Love for Sale,” and Olivia Rodrigo, 19, who is up for all four of the biggest trophies; Jon Batiste, perhaps best known as the bandleader for “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” leads all nominees with 11 nods.A Guide to the 2022 Grammy AwardsThe ceremony, originally scheduled for Jan. 31, was postponed for a second year in a row due to Covid and is now scheduled for April 3.Jon Batiste Leads the Way: The jazz pianist earned the most nominations with 11, including album and record of the year. Here’s his reaction.Performers: Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, BTS and Lil Nas X are among the first performers announced for the April 3 show, which will be available on CBS and Paramount+.Kanye West: The singer, who is nominated for five awards, was told he will not be allowed to perform during the ceremony due to his erratic public behavior. A Surprise Appearance: The Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, who suffered an aneurysm in 2015 and has spoken in public infrequently since, will present an award at the ceremony.Here’s how to watch — and what to expect at — Sunday’s ceremony.What time do the festivities start?The ceremony, which will air live on CBS and the streaming service Paramount+, will begin at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific. You can also watch on CBS.com or through the CBS app if you have a cable subscription.Cord cutters can watch the show on any live TV streaming service that offers CBS, including FuboTV, Hulu + Live TV, Paramount+, YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream, many of which are offering free trials. It will also be available on demand on Paramount+.If you want to pregame, you can check out the premiere ceremony, when about 76 of the 86 awards are handed out. That begins at 3:30 Eastern, 12:30 Pacific and will be available to watch on grammy.com and the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel. LeVar Burton will host, and Allison Russell, Jimmie Allen, Ledisi and Mon Laferte will perform.Is there a red carpet?Yes. E! will have red carpet coverage beginning at 4 p.m., and “Live From E!: Grammys” starts at 6 p.m. Arrivals will be streamed at grammy.com beginning at 6:30 p.m.Who will be hosting?Trevor Noah, of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, is back for a second year.How is the competition shaping up?Batiste leads the pack with 11 nominations, covering American roots music, classical, jazz and R&B. He’s followed by Doja Cat, H.E.R. and Justin Bieber, all with eight nods. Billie Eilish (“Happier Than Ever”) and Rodrigo (“Sour”) earned seven nominations apiece, including for record, album and song of the year. (Rodrigo is also up for best new artist.)Joining Rodrigo in the best new artist category are the Kid Laroi, whose ubiquitous pop radio single “Stay” features Bieber; Saweetie (“Best Friend” featuring Doja Cat); and Finneas, Eilish’s producer brother. (Learn about all the best new artist nominees here.)Can we talk about Bruno?We regret to inform you that once again, we cannot. The Grammys, which are voted on by more than 11,000 members of the Recording Academy, recognize music released from Sept. 1, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2021, meaning more recent smashes like Adele’s “30” or Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” will have to wait until next year.Who’s going to perform?The lineup includes J Balvin with Maria Becerra, Batiste, Brothers Osborne, Brandi Carlile, Eilish, Lady Gaga, H.E.R., John Legend, Lil Nas X with Jack Harlow, Rodrigo, Silk Sonic, Chris Stapleton and Carrie Underwood. As of now, whether BTS will take the stage is unclear. While Foo Fighters are no longer performing, producers have said they’re working on a way to honor Hawkins during the ceremony. Something else to look forward to, especially if you’re a musical theater fan: a tribute to the composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who died in November at 91, featuring Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr., Ben Platt and Rachel Zegler.Who will be presenting?Joni Mitchell — who was honored at the MusiCares Person of the Year tribute show, an annual pre-Grammys event, Friday night in Las Vegas — is making a rare public appearance on the Grammys stage. Other presenters include Dua Lipa, Megan Thee Stallion, Questlove, Bonnie Raitt, Keith Urban, Kelsea Ballerini, Lenny Kravitz, Billy Porter, Avril Lavigne and Ludacris, as well as Jared Leto and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez and the actor Anthony Mackie.What else is new this year?The expansion to 10 nominees in the big four categories isn’t the only change. The Grammys dropped nominating committees — expert panels that determined the ballot in many categories — after complaints from prominent artists, including the Weeknd, that they were unfair. The Grammys also removed the requirement for album of the year that writers play a role in at least a third of an LP to be recognized as contributors. Now, anyone who contributed to a single album, whether as a featured artist, engineer, producer or songwriter, is eligible — so if Bieber’s “Justice” wins, for instance, dozens of people will earn Grammys. There are also two new categories being awarded this year: best global music performance and best música urbana album.Who could make history?Rodrigo could become just the third artist, after Christopher Cross and Billie Eilish, to win all of the top four awards at a single ceremony. Taylor Swift could become the first artist to win album of the year four times, and BTS could become the first K-pop group to win a Grammy. Eilish, who won an Oscar with her brother, Finneas, for “No Time to Die” last week, could become the first person to win record of the year three times in a row.Who do we think will win?Our critics and pop music editor debated the 10 nominees up for record of the year … and didn’t come to much consensus. Grammys are famously hard to predict.Remind me again, what’s the difference between the record and song of the year categories?Record of the year, essentially the equivalent of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ best picture award and regarded as the top prize, recognizes the recording of a single track, focusing on both the artist’s performance and the efforts of audio engineers, mixers and producers. Song of the year also recognizes a single track, but it’s awarded solely for writing. (Think of it as the equivalent of the academy’s screenplay award.) More

The conductor Anna Rakitina made her New York Philharmonic debut, while the pianist Haochen Zhang had his first subscription series appearance.When the New York Philharmonic performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 on Thursday, barely a month had passed since that piece was heard nearby at Carnegie Hall.The earlier concert, on Feb. 25, happened in the raw, confused early hours of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yannick Nézet-Séguin had jumped in at the last minute to lead the Vienna Philharmonic, joined by the pianist Seong-Jin Cho. The reason for the switch? The originally scheduled artists, the conductor Valery Gergiev and the pianist Denis Matsuev, had been dropped over their ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.As the war continued, the Russian conductor Tugan Sokhiev resigned from his posts at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and the Orchestre National du Capitole in Toulouse, France, because of pressure to denounce the invasion. Then, in a mutual decision with the Philharmonic, he withdrew from this week’s program, featuring the Rachmaninoff concerto. (He will be back next spring to lead Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony.)For his replacement, the Philharmonic followed a similar course as the Metropolitan Opera. That company replaced the Russian diva Anna Netrebko — once its reigning prima donna, now persona non grata despite a recent about-face in her affiliation with Putin — with the Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska for a revival of Puccini’s “Turandot.” And the Philharmonic turned on Thursday to Anna Rakitina, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s assistant conductor, who was born in Moscow to Russian and Ukrainian parents.With more lead time than last month at Carnegie, Thursday’s performance of the Rachmaninoff — at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center — at least had the luxury of proper rehearsal. And the focus was less on the war than what the evening meant for its artists: Rakitina’s Philharmonic debut and the pianist Haochen Zhang’s first subscription series concert, after his brief appearance at a Lunar New Year gala in early 2020.Their arrivals were announced loudly, even a bit indelicately: The concerto had clarity and crowd-pleasing excitement, but also lapses in sensitivity and shape.That mix of strengths and weaknesses was not only in the Rachmaninoff, but also in the work that preceded it, Lili Boulanger’s 1918 “D’un Matin de Printemps,” an agile, five-minute survey of Technicolor images that, with a martial touch here, felt less connected to Debussy than to the Russian works to come on the program.Boulanger’s piece could hardly register alongside a towering piano concerto and a yet more towering symphony, Prokofiev’s Fifth. While Rakitina’s presence at the podium was a reminder of the strides the Philharmonic has made in gender representation among its guest conductors this season, its track record with female composers remains mixed at best.Rakitina and, at the piano, Haochen Zhang, who made his first Philharmonic subscription series appearance.Chris LeeOrchestrated with the forces of maximal Romantic grandeur, the Rachmaninoff concerto tends to overpower soloists — who, denied a traditional cadenza in the first movement, must often settle for hand-cramping virtuosity that hardly anyone can hear. Not so on Thursday: After the start, with Zhang alone building tension through a slow succession of chords in crescendo, he was a constant presence.That seemed to come easily to him, as he played with unshowy coolness while revealing the full architecture of his part, all its thick pillars of chords and buttressing runs. In doing so, he occasionally lost his sense of elegance and melodic line; he may have been heard above the strings, but he couldn’t match their sweeping lyricism. Nor did he aim for that sentimentality in his encore, the third movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 12 in A flat: a heroic funeral march, here more dignified than mournful.There is a funeral march, too, in Prokofiev’s World War II-era Fifth Symphony, albeit a passing one. This work has other preoccupations. Depending on when he was asked, its composer said it was about “the triumph of the human spirit,” “the greatness of the human spirit” and “the spirit of man, his soul or something like that.” (Simon Morrison, in his book “The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years,” suggests that the comments are not so much glib as, perhaps, signs of a creative outlook changing from “divine inspiration” to “human potential.”)Rakitina’s interpretation was one of ambivalent optimism, matched by her contrasting gestures at the podium: an emotively outstretched hand in one moment, a hammering beat in another. As throughout the evening, she favored fast tempos and booming dynamics, keeping the audience from truly being seduced by the arioso passages of the first movement. The Scherzo, a visit from the sound world of Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” ballet, seemed to be on the panicked end of a chase — but a stylized one, with Anthony McGill’s clarinet solos swerving playfully, like a dancer through the streets of “West Side Story.”Prokofiev again borrowed from previous material in the third movement, which begins with a waltz written for an unrealized film adaptation of Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades.” Coming after the breathless Scherzo, on Thursday it struggled to find its footing, but eventually did, building toward a keening climax of shrieks and downward runs. That haunted the finale, in which Rakitina brought out the orchestra’s lowest voices to darken the festive conclusion. Here, at last, was a glimpse of this conductor’s potential for undergirding surface-level thrills with deeper meaning.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Saturday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

The star soprano Anna Netrebko lost work in the West over her ties to the Russian president. Now, following an about-face, she has been called a traitor at home.The Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, one of opera’s biggest stars, faced backlash on Friday in her home country after she tried to distance herself from President Vladimir V. Putin amid his invasion of Ukraine.Ms. Netrebko issued a statement on Wednesday that appeared to be an attempt to revive her international career, which has crumbled recently because of her past support for Mr. Putin. In the statement, she condemned the war and said she was not allied with him.In Russia, where Ms. Netrebko has a large fan base, her words were met with criticism. She was denounced on Friday as a traitor by Vyacheslav Volodin, a senior lawmaker who has been an outspoken critic of artists who oppose the war.“You can’t call it anything other than betrayal,” Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel. “There is a voice, but no conscience. The thirst for enrichment and glory outweighed the love for the motherland.”And the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater in Siberia canceled a coming appearance by Ms. Netrebko, saying she seemed more interested in her global career than “the fate of the motherland.”“Today is not the time to sacrifice principles for more comfortable living conditions,” the house said in a statement on its website. “Now is the time to make a choice.”Ms. Netrebko could not immediately be reached for comment.Since the war started, Ms. Netrebko has faced a wave of cancellations around the world because of her ties to Mr. Putin. Her performances at the Metropolitan Opera — where she had sung for 20 years and become its prima donna — have been canceled indefinitely. Other leading opera houses, including in Munich and in Zurich, have also scrapped coming engagements.In her statement this week, Ms. Netrebko sought to distance herself from Mr. Putin, saying that they had met only a few times. “I am not a member of any political party nor am I allied with any leader of Russia,” she said, describing herself as a taxpayer in Austria, where she now resides.While she condemned the war in Ukraine, she did not explicitly criticize Mr. Putin, and did not directly address her record of support for him.It remains unclear whether she will succeed in reviving her career. The day she issued her statement, the Paris Opera announced that she would star in a production of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” this fall. (Alexander Neef, that house’s director, said in a statement on Wednesday that the company was evaluating the situation.) The Met responded by saying it was not prepared to change its position; Peter Gelb, its general manager, said, “If Anna demonstrates that she has truly and completely disassociated herself from Putin over the long term, I would be willing to have a conversation.”Ms. Netrebko once endorsed Mr. Putin’s re-election and has over the years offered support for his leadership. In 2014, she was photographed holding a flag used by Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine. In her statement this week, she said, “I acknowledge and regret that past actions or statements of mine could have been misinterpreted.”Now, she risks becoming persona non grata in her homeland and abroad.“She’s damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t,” said Simon Morrison, a professor of music at Princeton University who studies Russia. “She’s canceled for her years of pro-Putinism, then she critiques the war to save her international career, and then gets castigated at home for caring more about her gigs than ‘the fate of Russia.’”Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting. More