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      Mitski, in and Out of the Spotlight

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher“Laurel Hell,” the new album by the beloved indie-rock singer-songwriter Mitski, continues her shift toward a focus on pop — a move that feels somewhat at odds with the general reluctance she displays in almost every other aspect of being a performer.Over the past several years, Mitski has been circumspect in regards to discussing her personal life in interviews. She avoids many trappings of emergent celebrity. And yet she has a fervent fan base for her emotionally raw songs, and she has become something of a meme, a vessel used by other people to feel deeply, or talk about feeling deeply. (This week, “Laurel Hell” debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart.)On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Mitski’s turn toward bigger sounds, her tug of war relationship with fame, and her relationship with her fans and the press.Guests:E. Alex Jung, features writer at New York magazine and VultureCat Zhang, assistant editor at PitchforkConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Review: In ‘Black No More,’ Race Is Skin Deep, but Racism Isn’t

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      A new musical imagines the invention of a decolorizing process. Will it save Black Americans from hatred or destroy them?The 1931 Afrofuturist novel from which the new musical “Black No More” takes its name is hardly subtle, starting with its subtitle: “Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, A.D. 1933-1940.” George S. Schuyler’s satire is basically a thought experiment in which a procedure that decolorizes Black people solves America’s race problem but creates a new one when there’s no one left for haters to hate.The New Group’s musical version, which opened on Tuesday at the Pershing Square Signature Center, makes the smart decision to borrow only the novel’s rudiments. It dumps most of the silly names (Ezekiel Whooper, Rufus Kretin), thin caricatures (of W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, among others) and weirdly jovial tone in favor of a more serious look at internalized racism and the conundrums of assimilation.The result, directed by Scott Elliott, is a gorgeous mess. Though it forefronts Schuyler’s central question — Is the goal of racial progress the ennoblement of Blackness or its disappearance into a “chromatic democracy”? — its tone is jumpy and its storytelling lumpy. The book by John Ridley, who wrote “12 Years a Slave,” makes only halfway repairs to the original, while introducing new problems that music and dance can’t solve.But oh, what music and dance! That the score is the work of many hands — lyrics by Tariq Trotter of the Roots; music by Trotter, Anthony Tidd, James Poyser and Daryl Waters — seems to have been an advantage here, helping to establish the show’s various moods and personalities.With nods to Kurt Weill, “Hamilton,” hip-hop, gospel, jazz, spoken word and Tin Pan Alley, among other aptly diverse inspirations and traditions, the songs reveal the characters’ yearnings and aversions, which often amount to the same thing. As well, under Waters’s musical supervision, they offer plenty of opportunities for phenomenal singing from the cast of 26, accompanied by a terrific band of seven.Lillias White, center, as a beauty impresario modeled on Madam C.J. Walker.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe choreography, by Bill T. Jones, is likewise thrilling, sometimes illustrating specific ideas (like the differences between Black and white social dancing) and other times expressing the overall conflict between racial pride and frustration. Because that conflict remains unresolved in the story, Jones often declines to resolve it in movement; numbers build from tension to frenzy without the overfamiliar Broadway-style climax.But the sung and danced elements of “Black No More” prove too exciting for its wobbly book to support. Making the inventor of the decolorizing process the narrator — his name, alas, is Dr. Junius Crookman — immediately sets the story on a strange footing; a neutral figure in the novel, he is here an amoral villain, and in Trotter’s uneven performance (excellent with the rapping, stiff with the acting) a bit too Dr. Evil. This immediately sidelines the actual central character, Max Disher, creating a blurry focus from which the show never fully recovers.Still, by the time Disher (Brandon Victor Dixon) becomes Crookman’s first patient, submitting to what looks like a dental procedure, “Black No More” has efficiently set up his reasons for choosing whiteness. Though he enjoys the “sporting life” he leads in Harlem, his safety there from the stings of overt racism comes at a cost. In “I Want It All,” his introductory song, he explains that he is never a whole man within his community’s confines, but merely “three-fifths” of one.For others, though, Harlem is “heaven’s gate” and “the Mecca of the Black race.” Disher’s best friend — a man named Bunny in the novel but here a woman named Buni — can’t understand why anyone would leave a place “where a person knows what they’re in for.” (Buni is played by Tamika Lawrence, a stunning singer.) For Agamemnon (Ephraim Sykes), a character new to the story, Disher is simply a traitor, selling out the dream of Black excellence.From left: Dixon, Tamika Lawrence and Tariq Trotter in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBoth are especially unimpressed by Disher’s baser motivations: to make more money in a more exciting career (he’s an insurance salesman) and to hook up with the white woman from Atlanta he falls in love with one night in a club.That woman, Helen Givens — played by Jennifer Damiano in a Veronica Lake wig — is the musical’s most radically revamped character; she is much more complicated than the unreconstructed racist of the novel. Unfortunately, in their attempt to give her greater agency, the musical’s authors make her motives and choices almost incoherent.As the story begins to pile on plot — it feels too hasty even at a long two hours and 30 minutes — the problem spreads to everyone else. Especially after Disher and Givens marry in Georgia, and a baby of likely mixed race impends, the musical pushes too hard toward tragedy, winding up well short at melodrama.Jennifer Damiano, center left, with Dixon and other ensemble members.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd yet, melodrama can be effective, especially when sung; the “melo” part of the word, after all, means music. Except for Sykes, who gets a great gospel number (“Lord Willing if the Creek Don’t Rise”), the women are more successful than the men at pushing past the confusions of the plot. (Dixon, usually a riveting performer, seems strangely recessive here.) And do not ask why Madame Sisseretta Blandish, the beauty impresario modeled on Madam C.J. Walker, sings not only in her salon but also in a nightclub; when it’s Lillias White doing the singing, who cares? She makes even the gibberish of scat syllables piercingly specific.Though Disher is the one who undergoes the most dramatic change — he eventually becomes the “Grand Exalted Giraw” of a Klanlike organization — I found myself more interested in Madame Sisseretta. In part that’s because she’s not allegorical; she’s a practical businesswoman who understands that her vanishing trade in hair straighteners and skin lighteners is different only by degree from Crookman’s. In the song “Right Amount of White” — “Just a little pinch of French/Just a slight touch of Dutch/Just a little bit of Brit” — she establishes the show’s themes and relevance with humor and theatrical specificity that’s mostly absent elsewhere.As “Black No More” continues its development process, it will surely need to find more breathing space like that between the whimsy of the novel and its current chaotic gloom. (Except for Qween Jean’s sexy costumes, the design is almost punitively cold.) I hope the authors can do so without losing what’s already beautiful about this promising work — keeping in mind that beauty, if not (according to “Black No More”) Blackness, is only skin deep.Black No MoreThrough Feb. 27 at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Manhattan; thenewgroup.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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      Coachella Will Return Without Masks or Vaccines Required

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      When the Coachella outdoor music festival returns for the first time in two years this April, performers will be greeted by a sea of unmasked — and potentially unvaccinated — fans, as the struggling concert industry stirs back to life.On Tuesday, organizers said that attendees will not be required to wear masks or be vaccinated or tested for the coronavirus at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which drew up to 125,000 fans a day to Southern California and was one of the biggest music festivals of the pre-pandemic era.“There is no guarantee, express or implied, that those attending the festival will not be exposed to Covid-19,” Goldenvoice, a division of the global concert giant AEG Live, said on the Coachella website.Goldenvoice noted, however, that the festival’s Covid policies may change “in accordance with applicable public health conditions.”Goldenvoice also said that Stagecoach, a country music festival in Southern California, also said on Tuesday that there would be no requirements for guests to be masked, vaccinated or tested. The festival was set to run for three days at the end of April and the beginning of May.It has been a turbulent two years for the concert and touring industries, as a number of events were canceled because of the virus. In the last year, since the Covid vaccine became widely available, organizers have grappled with decisions over whether to hold the events at all and whether to require masks, vaccines and testing.Over four days last summer, the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago ran at full capacity, with its 400,000 attendees being required to show either proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test. According to data released by the city after the festival, infection rates among the concertgoers were very low.Coachella did not run in 2020 or 2021, and was canceled three times over the pandemic, including a rescheduled date in the fall of 2020.Before the pandemic, Coachella, which is widely seen as a bellwether for the multibillion-dollar touring business, had put on a show every year since 1999 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio. It typically runs over two weekends in April.The organizers of Coachella announced in January, after weeks of speculation, that the festival would be back this year. It is set to be headlined by Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Kanye West. More

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      Rap Takes Over Super Bowl Halftime, Balancing Celebration and Protest

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      Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige and 50 Cent asserted the power of hip-hop’s oldies generation on pop music’s most-watched stage.Leading up to Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show, much ado was made over the fact that this would be the first year that hip-hop occupied the center of the concert. It was marketing copy that overlooked the glaring lateness of the achievement — that rap was finally getting the spotlight in perhaps the 20-somethingth year of hip-hop occupying the center of American pop music. Does progress this delayed still count as a breakthrough?After several years of grappling with an assortment of racial controversies, the N.F.L. likely wanted credit for showcasing Black music — especially hip-hop, the lingua franca of American pop culture — this prominently. What would some of rap music’s generational superstars — Dr. Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar — titans with little fear for their reputations, do with this most visible of platforms?The stories told on the SoFi Stadium field Sunday night were multilayered, a dynamic performance sprawling atop a moat of potential political land mines. In the main, there was exuberant entertainment, a medley of hits so central to American pop that it practically warded off dissent.Dr. Dre opened up the performance behind a mock mixing board, a nod to the root of his celebrity: the ability to mastermind sound. For the next 12 minutes, vivid and thumping hits followed, including “The Next Episode,” a wiry collaboration between Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, wearing a blue bandanna-themed sweatsuit; “California Love” (mercifully, delivered without a hologram of Tupac Shakur, as some had rumored); Eminem’s stadium-shaking “Lose Yourself”; Lamar’s pugnacious and proud “Alright”; and a pair of songs from Mary J. Blige, the lone singer on the bill.50 Cent, hanging upside down from the ceiling of the set, was an unannounced guest, performing his breakout hit “In Da Club,” one of Dr. Dre’s seminal productions. (This was almost certainly the most bleeped halftime show ever.)Mary J. Blige, the lone singer on the bill, performed two songs including “No More Drama.”AJ Mast for The New York TimesThe performances were almost uniformly excellent. Lamar was stunning — ecstatically liquid in flow, moving his body with jagged vigor. Snoop Dogg was confident beyond measure, a veteran of high-pressure comfort. Eminem, insular as ever, still emanated robust tension. Blige was commanding, helping to bring the middle segment of the show into slow focus with a joyous “Family Affair” and “No More Drama,” rich with purple pain. And Dr. Dre beamed throughout, a maestro surveying the spoils of the decades he spent reorchestrating the shape and texture of pop.But the true battles of this halftime show were between enthusiasm and cynicism, censorship and protest, the amplification of Black performers on this stage and the stifling of Black voices in various stages of protest against the N.F.L. Just a couple of weeks ago, the N.F.L. was sued by the former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores who said he had faced discriminatory hiring practices.This halftime show, which scanned as an oasis of racial comity if not quite progressivism, was the third orchestrated as part of a partnership between the N.F.L. and Jay-Z’s entertainment and sports company, Roc Nation, that was struck in the wake of the kneeling protests spawned by Colin Kaepernick in 2016.“It’s crazy that it took all of this time for us to be recognized,” Dr. Dre said at the game’s official news conference last week, underscoring that the N.F.L. essentially chose to wait until hip-hop had become oldies music — apart from Lamar, all the artists Sunday had their commercial and creative peaks more than a decade ago — in order to grant it full rein on its biggest stage.The N.F.L. is notoriously protective of its territory, and mishaps at the halftime show — Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, M.I.A.’s middle finger — have tended to cause outsized public brouhahas. Halftime may well be one of the last stages in this country where hip-hop still feels like outsider music, amplifying the sense that the interests of the league and of the performers might not have been fully aligned.Eminem concluded “Lose Yourself” on one knee.AJ Mast for The New York TimesThis year’s event also took place in Inglewood, just 20 minutes west of Compton, where Dr. Dre was a founder of N.W.A, one of the most important hip-hop groups of all time, godfathers of gangster rap and agit-pop legends. Compton was embedded into the stage setup: the buildings included signs for its various landmarks, including Tam’s Burgers, Dale’s Donuts, and the nightclub Eve After Dark, where Dr. Dre used to perform with his first group, World Class Wreckin’ Cru. The dances, from Crip-walking to krumping, were Los Angeles specific. Three vintage Chevrolet Impalas served as visual nods to lowrider culture. Lamar performed his segment atop a massive aerial photograph of the city.Understand the N.F.L.’s Recent ControversiesCard 1 of 5A wave of scrutiny. More

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      Judy Collins Is Picky About Audiobook Readers and Folk Singers

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      Voices are of primary importance to the 82-year-old musician, who is delivering her first album of original songs this month.It’s been nearly six decades since Leonard Cohen challenged Judy Collins to start writing her own songs. Now, at 82, the folk singer is finally delivering “Spellbound,” her first album of entirely original material. “I can’t tell you why it took me so long,” Collins said. “Probably because I didn’t have a pandemic to keep me at home.”Slowing down has never come naturally to Collins. She has been wildly prolific since emerging as a pre-eminent voice of the Greenwich Village folk scene with her beautiful cover versions of friends’ songs, including Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” in 1968. “Spellbound” (out Feb. 25) finds Collins reminiscing about old lovers, her Colorado childhood and, yes, that iconic era. The bygone romance on “So Alive” unfolds between downtown landmarks like the Bitter End and Jackson Square, summoned up in Collins’s signature crystalline soprano.“As an artist, you’re always in the midst of memory,” she said via phone from her Upper West Side apartment, which she shares with her husband, Louis Nelson, and their three Persian cats. “The older brain is capable of a lot of things. For instance, handling grief and creativity at the same time. That was a hard mountain to climb when I was younger. I don’t really find it hard anymore.”In 2016, Collins and the folk-pop musician Ari Hest were nominated for a Grammy for their album “Silver Skies Blue,” and Hest joins her here for “Hell on Wheels,” a rowdy rock track about a nearly tragic joy ride taken by an inebriated teenage Collins. “I became a wild child at 17,” she said. “That kicked off my drinking history.” Collins got sober in 1978, which she partially credits for her abundant energy: She devotes a third of her year to performing live, tries to walk 10,000 steps per day and just last year launched an Audible podcast, “Since You’ve Asked.” “I haven’t reached my peak yet,” she said, “but it’s coming.”Collins pulled out her journal to discuss the cultural inspirations and pastimes that have sustained her long career. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Yellowstone”My sister says, “Oh, it’s just a soap opera.” It is, but it’s very amusing. It’s set in Montana, so it gave me a chance to spend some time in the mountains during the pandemic. The mountains do it for me. And I love a mystery, so I want to know who did what. And I love Kevin Costner. He has made some awfully good movies. We watched “Dances With Wolves” again recently. He’s always done a good job in terms of Western history.2. Deng Ming-Dao’s “365 Tao: Daily Meditations”Carol, one of my best friends growing up in Denver, sent me “365 Tao,” and it is a resource that I treasure. It’s my Zen connection. Every day for about half an hour in the morning I try to read Thomas Merton, Emmet Fox, Marcus Aurelius and “365 Tao.” It has wonderful quotations. I’ve read it for years. Maybe I don’t have a good memory, but it always seems new.3. FlyingI love to fly. It doesn’t matter where I’m going. I went through a period in the ’60s and I was terrified. I was traveling with my old friend Eric Weissberg, the great banjo player from “Deliverance.” I bet I was jumping into his lap. He was like a pilot. He said, “Let me explain to you what happens when an airplane takes off, what happens in the air and what happens when the plane lands.” And my fear disappeared. Every day I pray for all the pilots, the mechanics, air traffic control, the people who throw the bags around, the people who drive me to the airports. Anyone who whines and complains — well, I have to knock wood when I say this. I do fly first class.4. Jimmy WebbThe songs of Jimmy Webb drive me nuts. They’re so wonderful and I love singing them. Jimmy always says, “You take my hardest songs.” I recorded “Paul Gauguin in the South Seas” and it taught me more about singing than I had learned since I studied it. It’s like climbing without a rope. What Jimmy Webb does in “Gauguin” is the musical version of “Free Solo.”5. Agatha ChristieAgatha Christie is third in line behind Shakespeare and the Bible. I just finished 40 of her audiobooks, all of them read by the great Hugh Fraser. She was dynamic, she was particular, she was elegant. She described the buildings and the water and what was served at tea. I mean, sometimes she could go on and on until you got tangled in the web of language and scenario. She was a relentless writer. She was 80 when she wrote her last book.6. Audiobook ReadersWe have very strong opinions in my family about a lot of things: politics, literature and always the voice. I need to have a good reader or I can’t listen to an audiobook. Peter Grainger is a favorite writer of mine, and he has Gildart Jackson, who may be the best reader that I’ve ever heard, second only to Hugh Fraser. And I love listening to Robert Caro read his books. They are phenomenal. I remember his voice on television when he was talking about Robert Moses and what he did to the public landscape by tearing down communities to build the freeways. His books about Lyndon Johnson are read by another reader whom I cannot bear. But I can hear them in my own voice, so that’s fine.7. Monty PythonMonty Python were the first group of comedians that I got in touch with when I was in England in the ’60s, and they always had a way with humor. Nothing we can do quite matches it. There was the show “Beyond the Fringe” and then they made a movie, “Behind the Fridge,” and nobody else seems to have seen it. It was Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. They were hysterical. The humor is quite priceless. You see a reflection of it in “Downton Abbey.”8. Shawn ColvinI’m very picky about my singers, and I am crazy about Shawn Colvin. I’ve actually written a song about her, which I didn’t put on this album. I played it for her, though. She’s the best. She and I played together in the mid-’90s. The brilliant album that she made with John Leventhal, “Steady On,” is mysterious and extraordinary. We did an artist weekend for three days in Greece in 2016 and we had the best time. That’s where I basically fell in love with her singing, her writing, her spirit.9. PBSWe watch the “PBS NewsHour” and “Masterpiece,” anything. “Professor T” is a Belgian series, which is now on PBS. It was our lunchtime television watching. It’s very offbeat. That’s a fabulous show. I love “Endeavour.” And “Inspector Morse” and “Inspector Lewis.” Inspector Lewis is not as brilliant as Morse, but, you know, he’s good.10. CatsI’ve always had cats. My first cat was named Fluffy. She gave birth on my bed one morning. “Mommy!” I screamed. “Fluffy fell apart!” Now I have three cats. They’re all Persian longhairs. Rachmaninoff is a devotee of my husband. He follows him everywhere he goes. Coco Chanel is always busy. She purrs and purrs and wants to be petted. Tom Wolfe is so exquisitely beautiful and he knows it, so he poses a lot. He claimed the Christmas tree this year, because he knew that people would come and take his picture More

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      Ian McDonald, of the Bands King Crimson and Foreigner, Dies at 75

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      As a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter with King Crimson, he helped propel the progressive rock movement. He found more commercial success with Foreigner.Ian McDonald, a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter whose work with the British band King Crimson helped propel the progressive rock movement of the 1960s and ’70s, and who went on to help found the immensely popular group Foreigner, died on Feb. 9 at his home in New York City. He was 75.The cause was colon cancer, said his son, Maxwell, who is also a musician.Though Mr. McDonald’s work with Foreigner reaped far greater financial rewards than his efforts with King Crimson — his trio of albums with Foreigner sold a combined 17 million copies — his earlier band far outdistanced them in creativity and influence. Their debut album, “In the Court of the Crimson King” (1969), with its radical sound and structure, was a watershed work in the history of rock. It was the only release in the band’s wide catalog in which Mr. McDonald had full involvement.For the album, he was a co-writer of every song, played nine instruments and provided primary production.“Ian brought musicality, an exceptional sense of the short and telling melodic line, and the ability to express that on a variety of instruments,” the band’s leader, Robert Fripp, wrote in the liner notes to a box set of King Crimson’s work released in 1997. In a recent email he said, “In 1969, I trusted Ian’s musical sense ahead of my own.”For the title track of “In the Court of the Crimson King,” Mr. McDonald wrote the music and provided a Mellotron hook that became one of the most recognizable uses of that instrument in rock history. Highly melodic, the sound provided a striking contrast to the fury of the album’s other most famous song, “21st Century Schizoid Man.” Fired by the combination of Mr. McDonald’s shrieking alto-saxophone and Mr. Fripp’s brutalist guitar, “21st Century Schizoid Man” both startled and thrilled listeners.Pete Townshend of the Who was so impressed, he wrote ad copy for the album in Rolling Stone magazine that read: “Twenty-first century schizoid man is everything multi-tracked a billion times, and when you listen you get a billion times the impact. Has to be the heaviest riff that has been middle-frequencied onto that black vinyl disc since Mahler’s 8th.”The album went gold in the United States and made the Top 5 in the band’s native Britain. At the end of a U.S. tour to promote the album, Mr. McDonald left the band, as did the drummer, Michael Giles. “I was probably not emotionally mature enough to handle it, and I just made a rather rash decision to leave without consulting anyone,” Mr. McDonald told Sid Smith in the 2001 book “In the Court of King Crimson.”In 1970, the two departed members released their own album, “McDonald and Giles,” which showcased Mr. McDonald’s vocal skills as well as his Beatle-esque sense of melody. That same year, several long songs he had helped write for King Crimson appeared on the group’s second album, “In the Wake of Poseidon.” In 1974, Mr. Fripp invited him back, and he played on two tracks of the band’s “Red” album, released that year. The band broke up shortly thereafter.King Crimson in 1969; from left, the leader and guitarist Robert Fripp, the drummer Michael Giles, the singer and guitarist Greg Lake, the multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald and the lyricist Peter Sinfield. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWhen work slowed for him in England in the mid-1970s, Mr. McDonald moved to New York, where he helped form Foreigner with another British transplant, Mick Jones.Foreigner’s debut album in 1977 made Billboard’s Top 5 list and sold more than five million copies. One song Mr. McDonald helped write, “Long, Long Way From Home,” became a Top 20 Billboard hit. He was a co-producer of all three albums that he recorded with Foreigner, including “Double Vision” (1978) and “Head Games” (1979).Ian Richard McDonald was born on June 25, 1946, in Osterley, Middlesex, England to Keith McDonald, an architect, and Ada (May) McDonald, a homemaker. His father played banjo and piano, and, in a house filled with music, Ian played guitar and piano.His multi-instrumental approach broadened at 15, when he left school and entered the British Army as a bandsman. “I was taught clarinet, and from there I taught myself flute and saxophone,” he told Big Bang Magazine in 1999. “I was exposed to a number of different musical styles.”After leaving the army and moving to London, he met Mr. Fripp, who had a whimsical group called Giles, Giles and Fripp, including Michael Giles and his brother Pete. Mr. McDonald recorded songs with them before they evolved into King Crimson, with the singer and bassist Greg Lake replacing Pete Giles.Almost immediately a buzz grew around them, leading to an invitation to perform at a Rolling Stones free concert in London in Hyde Park; the event was originally meant to introduce the Stones’ new guitarist, Mick Taylor, but it wound up doubling as a salute to the musician he had replaced, Brian Jones, who had died two days earlier. Audience estimates for the show range from 250,000 to 500,000. In 2013, The Guardian reported that “King Crimson nearly stole the show.”The trailer for a forthcoming documentary titled “In the Court of the Crimson King” shows Mr. McDonald apologizing to Mr. Fripp for leaving the band so soon after it began. His run with Foreigner also ended when he was fired by Mr. Jones, who, Mr. McDonald said, desired more control. (Mr. McDonald did play with the band for its 40th-anniversary tour in 2017.)In 2002, he formed a group with other ex-members of Crimson (without Mr. Fripp) called the 21st Century Schizoid Band, which toured and released several live albums. Mr. McDonald issued a solo album in 1999, “Driver’s Eyes,” and formed a new rock-oriented group, Honey West, which featured his son, Maxwell, on their album “Bad Old World” (2017).In addition to his son, Mr. McDonald is survived by his sister, Linda Rice.Throughout his life he remained proud of how King Crimson’s debut album had endured.“One thing I tried to do as the main producer was to have every moment be able to be listened to hundreds of times so that, hopefully, the album would stand the test of time,” he told the entertainment blog The Los Angeles Beat in 2019. “Here we are 50 years later, and people are still talking about it.” More

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      An Exhilarating Set of Cecil Taylor’s Jazz Arrives, 49 Years Later

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      A performance recorded at Town Hall in 1973 went unreleased, partly because of its length. A digital-only release this week includes the 88-minute track “Autumn/Parade.”Creative jazz at its best is a music of discovery: improvisers caught up together in a moment that’s passing even as they conjure it, with the next already materializing between them.The jazz business, meanwhile, is often about rediscovery, as newly issued recordings from canonized greats frequently outsell and out-stream the releases of contemporary musicians, even those certain to be canonized themselves someday.This Tuesday’s digital-only arrival of a mostly lost concert from the innovative pianist Cecil Taylor exemplifies both points. Recorded at the Town Hall in New York on Nov. 4, 1973, the music gushes as if it were an uncapped fireplug. Previously unreleased, the relentless 88-minute track “Autumn/Parade” catches the inexhaustible Cecil Taylor Unit in the grip of one revelation after another, playing free jazz, a style of improvisation, in the purest definition of free.Unburdened by the boundaries of keys, structures, time signatures and the dictates of each piece’s composer, Taylor, Andrew Cyrille (percussion), Jimmy Lyons (alto saxophone), and Sirone (bass) formed an organic whole, making — discovering — one torrent of sound together.“He never told me what to play,” Cyrille, now 82, said of Taylor last week. “He would say, ‘Play what you hear. Play what you want.’”Or, as Cyrille put it at a 2020 Village Vanguard performance, such in-the-moment musical freedom is “playing life.”Free jazz liberated rhythm sections from the traditional role of keeping time in favor of making sound, as Cyrille does throughout “Autumn/Parade.” Taylor, who died in 2018, famously hit his keys with a percussionist’s force, and for all the considerable harmonic excitement of his runs, what’s most immediately striking on the new release is the Unit’s restless, driving polyrhythms, pulsing clots of tones and beats.Taylor’s Town Hall quartet included the percussionist Andrew Cyrille, the alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons and the bassist Sirone.“No other pianist I know plays with such physicality at the piano,” Kris Davis, a singular improvising pianist and composer in her own right, said in an interview. “Every idea, whether gestural, melodic or harmonic, is expressed through rhythm.”Davis noted that Taylor’s technique of composing fragments of notes in “cells” that he then would “develop, expand and turn upside down” at times appealed more to classical musicians than to jazz musicians, though today his influence is heard widely among improvising pianists. (She cited an expansive list, among them Marilyn Crispell, Jason Moran, Craig Taborn, Myra Melford, Alexander Hawkins, Angelica Sanchez and Vijay Iyer.)But on the nightclub scene of the ’60s and ’70s, genius didn’t always mean drink sales, and being in the vanguard of a new approach meant it could be a challenge finding suitable collaborators. Oblivion, the label putting out this release, has called it “The Return Concert” because in ’73, Taylor, then 44, had been mostly absent from recording and being in the New York scene for five years as he pioneered another aspect of avant-garde jazz life: turning to academia. (He taught at Antioch College and the University of Wisconsin, not without controversy.)The taping of the Town Hall concert was another feat of improvisation. Taylor had recorded significant LPs (“Conquistador!,” “Unit Structures”) for Blue Note in the late 1960s, but, at this point, was independent. Planning a release for Taylor’s nascent Unit Core label, his sort-of manager, David Laura, turned to an unlikely source: a Columbia student, Fred Seibert, who had recorded concerts for the university radio station and released several blues LPs on the independent Oblivion label with cohorts from a Long Island record store.With borrowed equipment and much youthful confidence, Seibert took the gig — and faced a torrent of music. “I felt like I was under Niagara Falls with every sound coming at me from 360 degrees and fighting for space in my head,” said Seibert, who would go on to engineer and produce records for Muse Records before leaving the music industry at the dawn of the 1980s for Hollywood, where he became a storied producer of animated television. (Series launched under his aegis include “Dexter’s Laboratory,” “Powerpuff Girls” and “Adventure Time.”)For Taylor, “free” also meant freedom from the restraints of the commercial music industry. Releasing the first set would have demanded making a double LP and fading down the music at the end of each side, which Seibert considered contrary to its spirit. A shorter second set proved a better fit: Split between a 16-minute solo Taylor piece and a side-length band workout, the encore performance had a limited 1974 release as “Spring of Two Blue J’s.” One of the 2,000 copies made it to the critic Gary Giddins at The Village Voice; he called it “probably my favorite album made in the last year.”“He never told me what to play,” Cyrille said of Taylor. “He would say, ‘Play what you hear. Play what you want.’”Fred W. McDarrah/Getty ImagesThe other 88 minutes of music remained on Seibert’s tapes, though he always hoped to put them out in the world. Now, taking advantage of digital music’s lack of physical limitations, he’s unleashing “The Complete, Legendary, Live Return Concert” on the newly reconstituted Oblivion Records. Seibert’s conviction not to fade or shorten the first set, “April/Parade,” and his disinterest in taking on the hassle of traditional distribution has led him to rule out the deluxe CD or vinyl package that such rediscoveries typically enjoy.Critics and fans often view jazz history as a succession of giants making artistic breakthroughs, as the music itself changes in their wake. That accounts for some of the trepidation and revulsion that, decades ago, some critics expressed toward free jazz in general and Taylor in particular — was this the direction it all would go? It perhaps also explains the tendency of some of Taylor’s champions to emphasize what was new in his music (especially techniques inspired by classical composition) to the detriment of its roots in Black American jazz.“He didn’t just come out of the blue and say, ‘I’m Cecil Taylor. I’m doing what I do, and it’s always been this,’” Cyrille said. “He learned from a lot of other people. He played with Johnny Hodges and Hot Lips Page. He observed Thelonious Monk. Now, the concepts were different, but all of those musicians before him played who they were, too — they played their freedom.”Almost 50 years after that Town Hall concert, Cyrille is still doing the same. At Dizzy’s Club on Feb. 5, his longstanding group Trio 3 — with the bassist Reggie Workman and the alto saxophonist Oliver Lake — played its last-ever concerts, with guest appearances from Iyer and the altoist Bruce Williams. Cyrille, though, will continue playing live and recording, and he has performances scheduled at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tenn., in March.Cyrille calls playing “therapeutic” and refers to the music he has made with Taylor and so many others throughout a 60-plus year career as “democratic.” Whether in the ’70s with Taylor or with his own groups today, “It’s about self expression,” he said, “and the spiritual signature of the players.”He recalled the Taylor of the Town Hall era, hearing the other players’ discoveries, which then fed his own. “Whatever the rest of us played, he used it,” he said. “He absorbed music. And in his playing, you hear how he would deal with it as it entered his body, and how he felt about what was being offered to him. It all came out through the piano.” More

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      ‘Encanto’ Soundtrack Tops Billboard Chart for Fifth Week

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      Propelled by streams of the hit “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the album notched the most weeks at No. 1 for a soundtrack since Disney’s “Frozen.”Another week, another No. 1 for Disney’s “Encanto” soundtrack.The album, with songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, continues its blockbuster run on Billboard’s chart by notching its fifth week at No. 1, beating out new releases by Yo Gotti and Mitski.Propelled by the song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” which remains the most-streamed song in the United States on Spotify — as well as a popular TikTok meme — the “Encanto” soundtrack had the equivalent of 110,000 sales last week. That was down just 2 percent from the week before, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm.“Encanto,” released nearly three months ago, has held the top spot every week this year except one, and posted steady numbers. Its total this week includes 135 million streams — last week it was 140 million; the week before, 139 million — and 17,000 copies sold as a complete package. It is the first soundtrack to earn at least five weeks at No. 1 since Disney’s “Frozen,” which enjoyed 13 times at the top in 2014.This week, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is also No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart for a third time.Also this week, “DS4Ever” by the Atlanta rapper Gunna rises one spot to No. 2 on the album chart, while the veteran Memphis rapper Yo Gotti opens at No. 3 with “CM10: Free Game,” his highest chart position.Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album,” a chart mainstay for more than a year now, holds at No. 4, and “Laurel Hell” by Mitski, a star indie singer-songwriter, opens at No. 5, a career high. More