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      Spotify Removes Neil Young's Music After Complaints About Joe Rogan

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      Neil Young wasn’t bluffing.Spotify said on Wednesday that it had begun removing the singer’s music from the streaming service, two days after he briefly posted a public letter calling on Spotify to choose between him and Joe Rogan, the star podcast host who has been accused of spreading misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.Young’s challenge to Spotify has become a high-profile, if unexpected, flash point in the battle over misinformation and free speech online. It also raised questions about the power of performing artists to control where their work is heard.In a statement posted to his website on Wednesday, Young called Spotify “the home of life threatening Covid misinformation.” He added: “Lies being sold for money.”His criticism of Rogan — a comedian and actor who has become Spotify’s most popular podcast host, sometimes speaking at great length with controversial figures — came after a group of hundreds of scientists, professors and public health experts asked Spotify to take down an episode of Rogan’s show from Dec. 31. That episode, featuring Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious-disease expert, promoted “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines,” according to the group’s public letter, which was issued on Jan. 10.Spotify said in a statement on Wednesday: “We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to Covid since the start of the pandemic.”“We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify,” the service added, “but hope to welcome him back soon.”Young’s most popular songs, like “Heart of Gold,” “Harvest Moon” and “Old Man,” have been radio staples for decades, and have attracted hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify. In his statement on Wednesday, Young said that Spotify represented 60 percent of the streams of his music around the world.Young’s music was expected to be fully removed from Spotify within hours. The news that the service was removing his songs was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal.In his original letter, which Young addressed to his label, Warner Records, and his manager, he said: “Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform. I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform.”He added: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”That letter was removed from Young’s website soon after it was posted, though it drew wide news media attention.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4Omicron in retreat. More

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      5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now

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      Recordings of Brahms, Haydn, Grieg, Nikolai Kapustin and George Walker are among recent highlights.‘Blueprint’: Piano Music by Nikolai Kapustin for Jazz TrioFrank Dupree, piano; Jakob Krupp, bass; Obi Jenne, drums (Capriccio)When I reported last year on the pianist Frank Dupree’s first album of works by Nikolai Kapustin, Dupree previewed things to come. For his follow-up engagement with Kapustin, a swing-influenced Russian composer, Dupree said he would release a series of solo piano works played by a traditional jazz trio.Now that the results are out, the wisdom of the idea is evident. Dupree could have recorded an enjoyable solo set, as his feel for Kapustin is as fluid as ever. But we currently have no lack of one-player recitals of this music — including from Marc-André Hamelin, Steven Osborne and Kapustin himself.The improvised element on “Blueprint” is subtle. Dupree plays the piano solos as they were notated, and the bassist Jakob Krupp follows his left hand. The album’s distinguishing element of improvisation is left to the percussionist Obi Jenne. And it’s his interventions that truly elevate this set. In a piece like the Op. 41 Variations, Kapustin moves briskly between different syncopated styles; Jenne’s mutable beat-juggling highlights each change. Perhaps not every item here needed the jazz combo treatment. But when the arrangements work — as on selections from the Eight Concert Études — this trio adds to the material a new jolt. SETH COLTER WALLSBrahms: Late Piano WorksPaul Lewis, piano (Harmonia Mundi)To listen to the pianist Paul Lewis’s new album of late Brahms, you would think these pieces had been written just after the last sonatas of Schubert, which Lewis has recorded with wrenching restraint. Splicing the gap between 1828 and the early 1890s, Lewis’s is a vision of Brahms as fully Classicist; these final four sets of solos are rendered with judicious tempos and a clean, calm touch — intelligent, sensitive readings.The pearly moderation that makes Lewis’s Schubert so movingly humble sometimes keeps his Brahms shy of grandeur and especially mystery. These are tender, affecting interpretations more than pensive, let alone unsettling, ones; Lewis sometimes stints the softest dynamics, giving a slight sense of straightforwardness when you want intimations (at least) of the epic. The Intermezzo in E flat (Op. 117, No. 1) doesn’t seem to lose itself in the middle section — as it does in Radu Lupu’s benchmark 1987 recording — so the return to the theme is less than overwhelming.But a cleareyed Intermezzo in A (Op. 118, No. 2) is deeply satisfying; the Intermezzo in E Minor (Op. 119, No. 2) leavens lucidity with dreaminess. And Lewis’s sparkle in the middle of the Romanze in F (Op. 118, No. 5) gives the shift back to sober feeling at the end quietly immense power. ZACHARY WOOLFEGrieg: SongsLise Davidsen, soprano; Leif Ove Andsnes, piano (Decca)The recording industry has finally found a way to capture Lise Davidsen. A luminous soprano of remarkable range, equally capable of floodlight power and the piercing smallness of a laser pointer, she wasn’t well represented on her first two albums for Decca, which were documents of sensitive and intelligent interpretation more than versatility or resounding might.Now, after programs of Wagner, Strauss, Beethoven and Verdi, comes a much more intimate album of Grieg songs performed with the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes — a pairing of two excellent Norwegian musicians in works by their country’s most treasured composer. The scale of this program is better suited than Davidsen’s earlier albums at conveying the dexterity of her voice, and her gift for endearing levity; there are playful turns of phrase here that you just don’t get in “Tannhäuser.”Throughout the album — which begins with the eight-song cycle “The Mountain Maid” and continues with excerpts from other collections — Andsnes is an evocative tone painter, with dreamy glissandos in “Singing,” galloping festivity in “Midsummer Eve” and flowing momentum in “A Boat on the Waves Is Rocking.” And Davidsen is a nimble raconteur, lovingly warm in the opening cycle’s “Meeting,” then shattering in its Schubertian finale, “At the Gjaetle Brook,” and later bringing both folk lightness and Wagnerian heft to the six songs of Op. 48. To the credit of Grieg and these artists, you’ll never be so moved by a song called “Snail, Snail!” JOSHUA BARONEHaydn: SymphoniesAcademy of St. Martin in the Fields; Neville Marriner, conductor (Eloquence)It’s easy now to be a little sniffy about Neville Marriner’s achievements with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, a partnership renowned as the most recorded in history. With the success of the period-instrument movement, their hundreds of recordings on modern instruments have gained the reputation of being a bit staid — practical and reliable, to be sure, but nevertheless dusty relics of an era best forgotten.But this thoroughly enjoyable 15-disc set — which for the first time brings together 33 Haydn symphonies set down between 1970 and 1990 — is ample reminder that there were perfectly good artistic reasons Marriner and his chamber-orchestra forces were such a roaring commercial success.Conceiving their work initially as a crisp, stylish rejoinder to an older, stouter approach to the Baroque and Classical repertoire, they played this music with insatiable collective commitment — the slow movements singing gracefully, the outer movements sparkling in their drive and invention. If there is a little more zest in their accounts of Haydn’s earlier symphonies than his later ones, they are all brilliantly well judged, and full of life. DAVID ALLENGeorge Walker: Piano SonatasSteven Beck, piano (Bridge)In 2018, when the composer and pianist George Walker died at 96, there were plenty of accomplishments to memorialize, including his Pulitzer Prize — the first awarded to a Black composer. But there was also a dispiriting acknowledgment of a missed opportunity, given that so few elite classical institutions had seriously engaged with Walker’s work while he was alive.The inattention extended to recordings; there remains a notable dearth of sets devoted exclusively to Walker. Very partial redress comes in the form of this new album, in which Steven Beck takes on all five of Walker’s piano sonatas, written between 1953 and 2003.The first sonata, revised in 1991, offers some of the galloping energy seemingly required when suggesting Americana, but it also includes a rambunctious harmonic edge that bristles with maverick spirit. By the time of the Third Sonata, written in 1975 and revised in 1996, atonality had taken center stage. But Walker’s signature feel for contrast — including alternations between motifs that ring out and peremptory chordal bursts — is still evident. With playing that’s slashing and sensitive by turns, Beck’s recital accentuates the through lines in a protean artistic life. SETH COLTER WALLS More

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      A Killing Jolts Sweden’s Rap Scene

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherEinar, the Swedish rapper who in the last few years had become one of the most dominant performers in the country’s hip-hop scene, as well as a major pop figure, was shot and killed last October. The case remains unsolved.The crime shined a light on the intersection between Sweden’s rap industry and gangs, on rising gun violence in Sweden, and also government neglect of marginalized communities and neighborhoods.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the ripple effect of Einar’s murder, the evolution of hip-hop in Sweden and how the last three years have radically changed the country’s rap scene.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterPetter Hallen, a veteran rap journalist and D.J. who hosts a show on the Swedish public service radio station P3 Din GataAlex Marshall, The New York Times’s European culture reporterConnect 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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      Sweden’s Songwriters Look to K-Pop

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      When the Swedish songwriter Ellen Berg first heard a K-pop track, in 2013, her reaction was typical of many Western listeners: “What the hell is this?” she recalled thinking.Berg, 31, was studying at Musikmakarna — a songwriting academy about 330 miles north of Stockholm — and her class had been asked to write a Korean hit.To get the aspiring songwriters in the mood, the students listened to “I Got a Boy” by Girls’ Generation, a wildly popular K-pop girl group. “It’s one of the craziest K-pop songs ever,” Berg said recently by phone. The track includes raps, bursts of high-speed dance music and even a verse in the style of a rock ballad. “It’s really five different songs in one,” Berg said.The class was given a week to write something like it. “It didn’t go very well,” Berg said, with a laugh.BTS performing during the American Music Awards in November in Los Angeles.Kevin Winter/Getty Images For MrcEight years later, Berg has certainly improved her K-pop songwriting abilities: She is now one of dozens of Swedish musicians who make a living exclusively from writing tracks for the genre. She has contributed to a hit for the pop juggernaut BTS, as well as to wildly successful tracks by groups like Red Velvet and Itzy.While Swedes have long been go-to figures for American pop stars — with songwriters like Max Martin and Shellback producing or co-writing tracks for Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, the Weeknd and others — Swedish musicians are now becoming a force in K-pop, too.Berg is signed to EKKO, a Korea-based music publisher with studios in Stockholm, where Berg works alongside Moa Carlebecker, a sought-after K-pop songwriter better known by her stage name, Cazzi Opeia. The two musicians (who collaborate under the name Sunshine) also regularly write with another duo — Ludvig Evers and Jonatan Gusmark, who call themselves Moonshine — based in a studio next door. Seven other Swedish songwriters who work on K-pop tracks have studios in the same building.Berg, Carlebecker, Evers and Gusmark first worked together in 2017 on “Peek-a-Boo,” a Red Velvet track that Berg likened to an old “Scooby-Doo” episode or a trip to a haunted house. “Peek-a-Boo” has since been streamed more than 217 million times on YouTube.EKKO is not the only company pumping out K-pop in Stockholm. Cosmos, a publisher, has seven songwriters working full time on K-pop tracks, Peo Nylen, its creative director, said in an email. The Kennel, another songwriting company, employs 14 K-pop writers, said Iggy Strange-Dahl, one of its founders.K-pop may seem like a recent phenomenon to Western music fans who caught on with the rise of BTS, but Korean record labels have been seeking out European songwriters since the late 1990s in a bid for global success, said Michael Fuhr, a German academic who wrote a book about K-pop. “They had Max Martin productions in mind,” he said, adding that the first successful European K-pop writers were actually Finnish and Norwegian, not Swedish.Today, songwriters of many nationalities are trying to make K-pop hits, Fuhr said, attracted, in part, by the fact that Koreans still buy CDs, so there is a lot of money to be made. SM Entertainment, a Korean entertainment conglomerate, says on its website that it works with 864 songwriters worldwide, including 451 across Europe and 210 in North America.Fuhr said that many K-pop hits were written at songwriting “camps” organized by record labels or publishers who invite musicians from across the world. Over multiple days, songwriters work in teams to create new songs. (American pop songs are also commonly written this way.)Gusmark, left, and Evers working in the studio. They perform together as Moonshine.Felix Odell for The New York TimesCarlebecker said in a video interview that she became hooked on K-pop when she first heard it, in 2016. As a child, she loved the Spice Girls, she said — “I had all the posters, I had all the CDs” — so K-pop instantly felt familiar, with its multitude of girl and boy groups in which each member has a uniquely defined personality.She immediately grasped that K-pop tracks must have multiple sections so each group member has a chance to shine, she said, whether they want to rap, sing softly or belt out a chorus. Having so many sections provides a lot more opportunities to be creative than on a typical Western pop song, she added.“There are no rules in K-pop — you can have three hooks, one after each other, if you feel like it,” Carlebecker said. “You can be crazy and colorful, and that’s what appealed the most.”Carlebecker, who is covered neck-to-toe in tattoos — a look that would be unlikely on an actual K-pop star — said she knew only two words of Korean: “annyeonghaseyo” (hello) and “gamsahabnida” (thank you).But that didn’t get in the way of her songwriting, she said: Carlebecker writes in English, and then Korean songwriters add new lyrics to her melodies, often keeping in a few random English words to help the track stand out.In interviews, Berg and Carlebecker offered multiple theories to explain why Swedes produce such good K-pop tracks, including the country’s strong songwriting tradition and comprehensive music education system. Sweden is cold, Berg noted, which meant that there was often “nothing better to do” than stay in and work on music.For some Koreans, the reason is actually quite simple: Swedes write melodies that are so catchy, fans want to sing them at packed stadium shows and at their local karaoke bars.“Swedes seem to have an emotional understanding of us Koreans,” Michelle Cho, a Korean songwriter who also scouts foreign songwriters for Korean record labels, said in a telephone interview. “They write melodies that seem to really hit our emotions.”Whatever the reason, as K-pop booms, competition among songwriters around the world is becoming fierce. Evers, of Moonshine, said that a few years ago, some songwriters in Sweden used to look down on his work as “a bit lame,” as though he’d failed to land gigs with American or European musicians and now had to ply his trade in Asia. Now, Evers said, those same people were coming up to him in bars saying, “We should write K-pop sometime!”Thanks to his success, he added, he was starting to get a tiny insight into the life of a K-pop idol. K-pop fans regularly contacted Moonshine on social media to praise the duo for its work, Evers said, and a popular K-pop YouTube channel has interviewed him.Swedish K-pop writers are getting noticed in Sweden, too. In November, Carlebecker was named “international success of the year” at Sweden’s annual songwriting awards, beating Max Martin (and Moonshine). Articles about the songwriters have appeared in the country’s major newspapers, and Berg and Carlebecker have been interviewed for TV news.Still, Evers said, not everyone has grasped just how significant K-pop is becoming for Sweden’s music industry.“My grandma still doesn’t understand what I do for a living,” Evers said. “She doesn’t think it’s real.” More

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      A Singer Brings His Authentic Self to the Philharmonic

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      Anthony Roth Costanzo, a restless countertenor with a vast network of collaborators, has planned a wide-reaching festival.Anthony Roth Costanzo was never just going to step onstage and sing.Instead, as the New York Philharmonic’s artist in residence, this countertenor is planning a series of events — beginning Thursday and continuing through the spring — that add up to a self-portrait of a musician who, among other things, is also a charismatic impresario, cross-discipline connector and community organizer.His festival, “Authentic Selves: The Beauty Within,” reaches from Lincoln Center to the Lower East Side, the Bronx and Queens; includes premieres as well as recastings of classic repertory; and brings the queer joy of “Only an Octave Apart,” his show with the cabaret artist Justin Vivian Bond, into the concert hall.It’s the product of a restless personality who believes there are too many hours in the day to be only a countertenor.“I sleep eight hours every night,” said Costanzo, who turns 40 in May and speaks with unflappable effervescence. “So I have 16 other hours. Singing more than two hours is not a great idea, because you’ll just kill your voice. I can probably handle two more hours of learning — doing ornaments, something musical. That then leaves me with 12 other hours. If I wanted four of those to live a life, then I’ve got a full workday left.”That feels like plenty of time, he added, but the schedule is certainly daunting. He’s also releasing the album version of “Only an Octave Apart” this week, preparing a revival of Handel’s “Rodelinda” at the Metropolitan Opera and returning there later this spring to repeat his star turn in Philip Glass’s “Akhnaten.”You can see why he hasn’t taken a vacation in a decade.
      Costanzo didn’t even go on much of a break when the pandemic brought live performance to a halt in March 2020. Within a week of the first lockdown, he was writing an essay for Opera News about the effect mass cancellations might have on the industry. Then, over Zoom cocktails with Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s chief executive, he began to shape an idea that became Bandwagon: pop-up concerts from a pickup truck that doubled as community engagement programs and, leading up the presidential election, a voter-registration drive.Rest, such as it is, comes whenever Costanzo rides a bicycle or cooks a meal, which is often. (Among those who know him, he is famous as a host.) “I cannot have my phone or be checking email,” he said. “I have to be focused on just that.”Life has more or less always been like this for Costanzo, a former child actor. James Ivory, the director of films like “Howards End” and “A Room With a View,” recalled in an interview the pluck of a young Costanzo handing him a cassette recording of his singing after an audition.“The next day, I was driving and played the music,” Ivory said. “It was music that I very much like — Bach and Handel — and he sang it so beautifully.”Costanzo singing last summer from the bed of the pickup truck that was the Philharmonic’s venue for the first iteration of its Bandwagon project.Dina Litovsky for The New York TimesCostanzo got the part, and the two have been friends ever since; Ivory was even involved with Costanzo’s undergraduate thesis project at Princeton University. There, instead of writing the typical paper, the young singer marshaled a team of prestige artists, including the dance-maker Karole Armitage, to create a film imagining the life of an 18th-century castrato. Costanzo raised $35,000 from various academic departments, and eventually persuaded Princeton to provide roughly $100,000 more to produce a documentary about the project.After he graduated, in 2004, Armitage asked Costanzo to be the executive director of her company, Armitage Gone! Dance, where he raised about $3 million, planned a gala and continued to wrangle the support of celebrities — such as Christopher Walken, who filmed a commercial for the troupe. His “pretty gigantic network,” as the director Zack Winokur described it, has since been deployed in projects like “Glass Handel,” an interdisciplinary concert that incorporated choreography by Justin Peck, live art-making by the painter George Condo and costumes by Raf Simons.Bond joked that after walking offstage at the end of “Only an Octave Apart,” Costanzo could text 20 people and make a dinner reservation in the time it took Bond to pull out a single bobby pin. But Costanzo, a member of the enterprising collective American Modern Opera Company and the recent recipient of a $150,000 Mellon Foundation grant to support interdisciplinary collaboration, said he doesn’t network for its own sake.From a young age, Costanzo has marshaled a vast network of high-profile collaborators to pull off his ambitious projects.Erik Tanner for The New York Times“I’m not interested in any artist because of their fame,” he said. “My relationships are beyond that. Unless there’s a sense of community, you can accomplish nothing; without that, it’s so boring.”Borda, the Philharmonic’s leader, said that he “develops a rapport with everyone, and has that capability of relating to the guy driving the truck and the diva superstars of the Met.”In late summer 2020, Costanzo was at an entrance to Brooklyn Bridge Park, explaining what a countertenor is from the bed of the Bandwagon pickup truck. About a year later, he was just down the street, at St. Ann’s Warehouse, performing “Only an Octave Apart” with Bond.That St. Ann’s show, and the new album it’s based on, were inspired by Carol Burnett and Beverly Sills’s 1970s special of the same name, blending Bond’s gravelly pop with Costanzo’s classical repertory.“The dreaded word ‘crossover’ never even occurred to me because that’s not how I see this project,” Costanzo said. “Each thing amplifies the other and makes it more than what it is.”Winokur directed the show, which featured arrangements by Nico Muhly, music direction by Thomas Bartlett and costumes (at times blinding) by Jonathan Anderson. It had Bond’s trademark political fervor masquerading as frivolity, and laughs galore, but also, opening as performances cautiously returned indoors, a touch of melancholy.“It tethered us to ourselves throughout the pandemic,” Bond said, adding that with two artists, one transgender and the other a countertenor, whose voices routinely defy expectations based on appearances, “it was one of the most profoundly queer projects I’ve ever been involved in.”Costanzo, used to the rigor and precision of classical music, grew comfortable with a looser style. Bond, usually not needing more than a bare stage and a small band, developed an appreciation for the interlocking parts of a large production. Now they plan to take the project as far as possible.Justin Vivian Bond, left, and Costanzo in “Only an Octave Apart” at St. Ann’s Warehouse last fall.Nina Westervelt“What we say is that we should try to EGOT with this,” Costanzo said, referring to the rare artist who wins an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.At the very least, “Only an Octave Apart” will travel to the Philharmonic — where excerpts, arranged for orchestra by Muhly, close this week’s program. “I’m very aware of how queer this is in that space,” said Winokur, who is returning to direct the concert presentation. “But it doesn’t really have any choice to be any other way.”Bond said there will still be banter and gags: “I’m not just going to stand up there and be silent. That’s not the way I do it.”“Authentic Selves” also includes premieres by Joel Thompson and Gregory Spears, both settings of commissioned texts by the poet Tracy K. Smith; an unconventional take on Berlioz’s “Les Nuits d’Été,” which is virtually never sung by a countertenor; the Philharmonic’s first performances of work by the posthumously rediscovered composer Julius Eastman; and a series of talks and community events.“I’m an artist first,” Costanzo said, “but my brain exists in a world of engagement, marketing, education, press, leadership, fund-raising, collaboration, curation — all of those things.”Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s chief executive, said that Costanzo “should be running an opera company or an orchestra.”Erik Tanner for The New York TimesHe often sounds like an administrator in the making. Opera singers, like ballet dancers and professional athletes, all face expiration dates. Borda said that, while Costanzo should stay onstage as long as it’s comfortable, “when I see a talent like that, he should be running an opera company or an orchestra.”Bond said that it was just a matter of what he wanted to do: “He could limit himself to something as small as running the Met, but I can see him doing more than that.”The future, Costanzo said, is “always” on his mind.“I feel like my identity is and always will be as a singer, but I’m most interested in where I can have impact,” he added. “So far that’s as a combination of being a singer and sometimes being a producer and creator and leader. If at some point the impact looks like it’s going to be in the direction of not singing, that doesn’t really faze me.” More

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      In 'Black No More,' the Evolution of Black Music, and a Man’s Soul

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      The new show “Black No More,” inspired by a 1931 satirical novel about race relations, has “the point of view of people who are very much products of now.”A Black man in New York City, during the Harlem Renaissance, is hoping for a life without bigotry. This is Harlem after all, a Black enclave, the epicenter of culture and creativity. Here, he’d have an easier time in getting along.Or so he thought. He soon learns that utopia is an illusion, that racism prevails no matter the location. In the North, he discovers, the racism is subtle: He’s somehow not the right fit for his job, though his supervisor, a white man, says he’s doing well. Others think he’s too uppity, so he is let go.Distraught, he undergoes a procedure to turn himself white and retreats to Atlanta. There he sees how prejudiced whites speak of Black people when they aren’t in the room: The “n” word is tossed around with the hard “-er.” He soon realizes that his new skin tone can’t save him, either. The life he wants means nothing if he loses his soul along the way.This is the plot of “Black No More,” a new musical presented by the New Group and inspired by George S. Schuyler’s 1931 novel of the same name. The show, an expansive, Afrofuturistic take on race relations in America now in previews at the Pershing Square Signature Center in Manhattan, is set against an equally vast arrangement of jazz, gospel, R&B, hip-hop and reggae meant to connect the past and present. By using older and newer styles of music, coupled with the protagonist’s struggles to rise above the same discrimination endured today, the show explores how little race relations have progressed.Jones, far right, working on the show’s choreography with cast members, including Lillias White, center.Douglas Segars for The New York TimesAnd it almost didn’t see the light of day.The screenwriter John Ridley, who wrote the show’s book, was inspired to adapt the story after reading Schuyler’s novel over a decade ago, before he’d written his Oscar-winning adaptation of “12 Years a Slave.” “I read it and was really taken with the wit and unbridled satire,” he said. “So much of the writing was timely and timeless and painful and painless.”He initially wrote it as a screenplay in 2013, but couldn’t get financing for a sci-fi-inspired film about Black existence. Someone suggested trying to have it produced as a play, but that also proved to be a tough road. Of the stage directors he reached out to, Ridley said that Scott Elliott, the artistic director of the New Group, was the only one who expressed interest. He read the novel and thought it would work best as a musical. “It had the possibility to be an amazing theatrical satire, but with humanity in it, with real people, not like ‘wink-wink satire,’” Elliott said.There was just one problem: Ridley didn’t like musicals. “I was like, ‘Well, yeah, but that’s OK,” Elliott said. “Let’s go on this journey together and see what happens.” Ridley’s view on musicals changed after meeting with Tariq Trotter, better known as Black Thought of the Roots, and seeing “Hamilton.” He said that show convinced him that musicals can be vehicles for sending a strong message.They enlisted Trotter, who wrote the lyrics and developed the music with Anthony Tidd, James Poyser and Daryl Waters, and the Tony-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones. Jeffrey Seller, the lead producer of “Hamilton,” owns the commercial rights. And with all the star power (Broadway veterans, including Brandon Victor Dixon, Lillias White and Ephraim Sykes), it seems “Black No More” could very well be destined for Broadway.John Ridley with the show’s associate director Monet during a recent rehearsal. Marc. J. FranklinAmong other themes, the show holds up a mirror to those in the Black community who aspire to whiteness. The protagonist, Max Disher (played by Dixon), decides to lighten his skin after meeting a white woman, Helen Givens (Jennifer Damiano), in the Savoy Ballroom during a night out. That he’d be willing to sacrifice his identity after a chance encounter with the woman is a longstanding critique of some Black men: No matter how much they’re supported by Black women, they still see dating white women as the ultimate societal prize.The musical also delves into the internal baggage that comes with Blackness, the weight of external pressure applied by those who look like you but don’t know your circumstances. How do you stay true to yourself without disappointing your peers? And what does it mean to be real Black anyway?“For me, the lesson to be learned is that there is a cost,” Dixon said. “There is a cost to the choices we force each other to make to become happy, accepted members of society. It’s time for us to re-examine those costs. Is this the construct in which we can really rise and grow and evolve as a human population?”“Black No More” begins amicably, with a flurry of Black and white ensemble dancers gliding in unison across the stage, surrounding a barber’s chair used for the skin-altering experiment. Out walks Trotter, who plays Junius Crookman, the doctor performing the procedure. He paints Harlem as a deceptive place where dreams don’t always come true. “You’ll find all things … both high and low,” he says in his opening monologue. “Here where every Black baby must try to grow.”The music of “Black No More” largely fits this era, smoothly transitioning from swing jazz to big band to soul. Some of the verses have a rap lilt to them — Trotter, after all, is the lead vocalist of the Roots — but his writing here explores a broad range of musical textures, conjuring old Harlem while conveying music’s full spectrum. After Max becomes white, the music becomes softer and more delicate, sounding almost like bluegrass or folkish in a way. Near the end of the show, two white women sing over what sounds like an R&B track, a genre typically associated with Black women. “Black No More” is full of this sort of cross-pollination.“I’ve always been very big on allowing the universe to sort of write the songs, allowing the material to work itself out,” Trotter said. “These songs represent the different elements of Black music. What we arrived at is something that feels like an education in the evolution of Black music, which, at its core, would be the evolution of American music.”Tamika Lawrence and Brandon Victor Dixon during a dress rehearsal.Douglas Segars for The New York TimesThe Harlem Renaissance is widely seen as an artistic movement in which Black creators like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Duke Ellington made landmark work. Indeed, the Renaissance helped change how Black people were viewed culturally; from it came a new, fearless creative generation. Yet the Renaissance had its detractors. Some said the literature only catered to whites and the Black middle-class. Even one of Harlem’s most famous establishments — the Cotton Club — was only for whites. “Black No More” demystifies Harlem as a mecca by wrapping its arms around it, wiping off the glitter while celebrating its charm.“The show, in my mind, is a critique of a critique,” said Jones, who is also choreographing the new Broadway musical “Paradise Square.” “We’re trying to make a musical about a historical novel, but with the point of view of people who are very much products of now. For God’s sake, we are post-George Floyd.”“Black No More” was originally slated to premiere in October 2020. But then the pandemic shut down theaters, forcing shows to postpone or cancel their runs. And in May 2020, Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by the police officer Derek Chauvin. Protests ensued. Coupled with outcries over the deaths of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, these rebellions felt different. The precinct in which Chauvin worked was burned. In New York City, protesters and law enforcement regularly clashed, intensifying the already-strained relationship between certain residents and the police.Near the end of “Black No More,” over an aggressive rap beat, a white antagonist asserts that Black lives don’t matter, a perceived reference to the modern-day Black Lives Matter movement. Within the context of the musical, he’s upset that his sister got involved with a Black man. Yet the subtle nod acknowledges the cloud of George Floyd hanging over this musical.“We just happen to be in a space where certain audiences are ready to receive what we’re trying to say, as opposed to pre-2020,” said Tamika Lawrence, who plays Buni Brown, Max Disher’s best friend. “There are certain cultures in America — white cultures, specifically — that I think are now ready to have tough conversations and ready to see this kind of art.”Trotter concurred. “I think some people may take offense,” he said. “Some people may be appalled, some may take it as a challenge to widen their scope, to tear some of the bandages off these bullet wounds that we deal with as a society.”“Black No More” is presented with the hope that Black and white people can find common ground somewhere. That we can at least see one another’s differences and be respectful of them.Just don’t do something drastic like change your skin color. As the musical teaches us, the grass isn’t greener.“What it says is, ‘Look at yourself, take a look at where we are, take a look at where we’ve come from, how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go,” Trotter said of the show. “It speaks to a commonality that we all share as humans, as people, as inhabitants of this planet. I don’t think we’re ever going to exist in perfect harmony, but I think there’s a possibility for us to coexist in peace.” More

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      Cardi B Awarded $1.25 Million in Libel Lawsuit Against Blogger Tasha K

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      A federal jury awarded the rapper Cardi B around $4 million in a libel lawsuit against a celebrity gossip blogger who had posted videos in 2018 claiming that she was a prostitute who had contracted sexually transmitted infections and used cocaine.Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, had sued the celebrity gossiper, known as Tasha K, in 2019 for posting more than 20 videos that spread “malicious rumors” about the rapper, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, where Tasha K lives.The jury found Tasha K, whose real name is Latasha Kebe, liable on two counts of slander and one count each of libel and invasion of privacy, according to a verdict filed on Monday.The jury awarded Ms. Almanzar $1.25 million on Monday and an additional $2.8 million on Tuesday, according to separate verdicts filed on Monday and Tuesday. The award includes $25,000 for medical expenses and around $1.3 million to cover the rapper’s legal fees.Ms. Kebe had also posted in 2018 that Ms. Almanzar had herpes outbreaks in her mouth and that she would give birth to a child with intellectual disabilities.Ms. Almanzar, 29, testified in court this month that she “felt extremely suicidal” after Ms. Kebe posted the videos, adding that “only an evil person could do that,” Lisa Moore, a lawyer for Ms. Almanzar, said on Monday.In the lawsuit, the rapper’s lawyers said that the content would damage her reputation with her fans and affect her business prospects. Cardi B, a Grammy-winning rapper from the Bronx, found fame in 2017 with her song “Bodak Yellow,” which immortalized her propensity for making “money moves.”Ms. Kebe’s claims have helped her amass millions of views on Twitter, Instagram and her YouTube channel, unWinewithTashaK. Most of the content can still be viewed online, even though the rapper sent Ms. Kebe a cease-and-desist letter a few months after Ms. Kebe first posted about her in 2018, according to the lawsuit.Ms. Almanzar’s lawyers said Ms. Kebe was “obsessed with slandering” the rapper, and that she posted the content because it got more views than her other posts, according to the lawsuit. Ms. Almanzar’s lawyers said that the rapper was not a prostitute, had never had herpes and had never used cocaine.In a statement on Tuesday, Ms. Kebe’s lawyers, Olga Izmaylova and Sadeer Sabbak, said they disagreed with the verdict and planned to appeal it.On Monday afternoon, Ms. Kebe said on Twitter that “My Husband, Attorney’s, & I fought really hard,” adding, “it’s only up from here.”Ms. Almanzar had filed the lawsuit against both Ms. Kebe and Starmarie Ebony Jones, a guest on Ms. Kebe’s YouTube channel who had claimed to be a former friend of the rapper.Ms. Jones was not included in the verdict on Monday because she moved to New York after Ms. Almanzar sued her, the rapper’s lawyers said. The lawyers filed another lawsuit against her in New York, where she was found liable last year on counts of libel, slander and invasion of privacy. A lawyer for Ms. Jones could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday night.This case was not the first time the rapper found herself in court. She was indicted in Queens in 2019 in connection with a fight in a strip club the year before. The case is still ongoing. More

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      Elton John Shows Postponed After He Tests Positive for the Coronavirus

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      The American Airlines Center in Dallas announced Tuesday afternoon that a pair of Elton John concerts at the venue have been postponed because the singer recently tested positive for the coronavirus.The announcement came just hours before the planned start of a show, which was to begin at 8 p.m. on Tuesday. The second concert had been scheduled for Wednesday.In a brief statement on its website, the American Airlines Center said, “Elton is fully vaccinated and boosted, and is experiencing only mild symptoms.”The shows are part of his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour. The American Airlines Center did not give new dates for the concerts. More