Music

Talibah Safiya and Bertram Williams Jr. felt a spark while watching a play together in high school, 11 years before their first proper date.When Opera Memphis staged a production of “Porgy and Bess” at the city’s Orpheum Theater in the fall of 2006, there were at least two love stories playing out in the room. One centered on Gershwin’s titular opera characters; the other, two high-school students in the audience.Talibah Safiya and Bertram Williams Jr. were different types of teenagers. Growing up, Ms. Safiya, 30, a self-described “theater nerd,” would walk around her childhood home singing songs from “A Chorus Line,” “Hairspray,” “Chicago” and “Dreamgirls.”Mr. Williams, 32, was two class years ahead of Ms. Safiya at Overton High School, a creative and performing arts school in Memphis that he transferred to after struggling at a conventional school.“I was regularly dealing with truancy issues,” said Mr. Williams, who added that he had yet to develop an interest in creative pursuits when he arrived at Overton. “I was more concerned with keeping up with the latest Jordans, spending time at parties and trying to befriend as many young ladies as I could,” he said.Ms. Safiya said she first noticed Mr. Williams in the hallways. The two were later introduced by a mutual friend, and Ms. Safiya said she then started telling other students that she had a crush on Mr. Williams.“It was definitely a strategy,” Ms. Safiya said.That evening at the Orpheum, during a school trip to the theater, Mr. Williams asked Ms. Safiya to sit next to him.Some couples, recalling an early experience of seeing a film or a play together, might be expected to say something about being unable to focus on the stage or screen, so caught up were they in their budding romance. Not Ms. Safiya and Mr. Williams.For them, what made the “Porgy and Bess” experience special was not only sitting side by side in cramped theater seats, but being moved — and sensing each other be moved — by the performance they were watching.“There’s a song in ‘Porgy and Bess’ where she’s singing, ‘I love you, Porgy, don’t let him take me,’” Ms. Safiya said. She said the song, made her think “about how important feeling protected was as a woman,” and wonder if Mr. Williams “was a protector.’”“That play,” she said, “gave some direction for both of us about how we wanted to spend the rest of our lives.”Mr. Williams said that “there was a kind of triangulation happening” as they watched the performance.In the interest of sustainability, the bride and groom purchased outfits secondhand. He wore a vintage brown suit from the Lucky Exchange store in Atlanta; her yellow floral dress came from Stormy Normy Vintage, a shop on Etsy. Raphael BakerFrom there, the two developed a relationship that oscillated, in perhaps a typically teenage way, between friendship and romance. Mr. Williams had a girlfriend at another school; he and Ms. Safiya never formally dated during this period. But they both agreed they were more than friends. (The two shared a first kiss backstage in their high school theater, during a rehearsal for an adaptation of “Lilies of the Field” that starred Mr. Williams.)“We spent a lot of time talking on the phone and hanging out together in theater class, and skipping lunch to hang out,” Ms. Safiya said.Of their relationship back then, Mr. Williams added, “We were deeply interested in each other’s minds. We think of younger relationships being somewhat shallow, but I remember immediately being so impressed by how original in thought and fashion and existence she was.”In early 2007, while they were still in high school, they performed together in a production at the Hattiloo Theater, which had recently opened and has since become a major repertory house in Memphis. Ms. Safiya said she remembers getting into trouble during this period: She’d make entrances from the wrong side of the stage, having crossed backstage to spend time with Mr. Williams.After Mr. Williams graduated from high school, he enrolled at the University of Memphis, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in economics. He and Ms. Safiya kept in touch, though their relationship remained platonic. They acted together at a local summer theater program, Echoes of Truth, where their performances included a play in which their characters dated.Ms. Safiya and Mr. Williams insist that this was a coincidence. Nevertheless, it gave the two a preview of what officially being a couple might feel like.“We were just walking across the stage holding hands,” Mr. Williams said. “I remember being like, ‘Oh I could get used to this.’”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Then Ms. Safiya left town.After graduating from high school in 2009, she moved to Washington to attend Howard University, where she studied theater education. But they continued to keep in touch as friends.“We would even talk about our other romantic relationships and be able to give really honest advice and reflections to one another,” Ms. Safiya said. “One of the things that has maintained our relationship is that we are friends first.”They stayed in touch when Ms. Safiya left Howard in 2012 and moved to Brooklyn to pursue a career in music in New York, a choice that Mr. Williams said he admired.“I was so inspired by her willingness to go off to New York without a plan, in pursuit of the thing,” he said. “She was chasing her dreams.”After graduating from the University of Memphis, Mr. Williams spent time working for the city of Memphis’s Division of Housing & Community Development, then for an education program at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library. He also managed a local jazz club, the Dizzy Bird Lounge, and continued to perform in plays at the Hattiloo Theater.In 2013, when Ms. Safiya started releasing R&B music on Bandcamp and YouTube, Mr. Williams again became more than just her friend: He was also a fan who would seek out her work. From time to time, he would even invite Ms. Safiya to perform at the Dizzy Bird when she returned to Memphis to visit her family.“I’ve got to be honest,” he said. “I was stanning,”Ms. Safiya was surprised to discover that Mr. Williams had been so closely following her music from afar.“I didn’t know if anybody was listening to it — I was pretty sure nobody was, in fact,” she said. “But he would know the words.”About 50 guests, most of them family members, attended the wedding. Raphael BakerIn November 2015, Ms. Safiya returned to Memphis for several months to help her brother and her sister-in-law, who were expecting their first child. The trip gave her and Mr. Williams an opportunity to spend more in-person time together than they had in years, including at a baby shower for her sister-in-law that he hosted.At the time, she was single and he was getting over a breakup.It was on this trip to Memphis, Ms. Safiya said, when she realized she was ready to try something formal with Mr. Williams. But he needed more time. When she returned to New York, though, her mind remained in Memphis, with Mr. Williams.“I was ready to plant myself,” Ms. Safiya said.By the time she decided to leave New York for Memphis, in 2017, so was Mr. Williams.He picked her up at the airport when she moved back and, in the car, they talked about their mutual readiness to build a lasting romance. They made plans to go out on a date — their first proper one since they met.The pair had dinner outside at Ecco on Overton Park, a bistro in Memphis. Of the evening, Mr. Williams said, “There was this kind of chemistry brewing with us in that space that we hadn’t really given ourselves permission to consider or explore for years.”Ms. Safiya added, “It felt like we were clearly walking into a new chapter of our relationship.”They moved in to an apartment together a couple of weeks later, and about a year after that, into their current home in Memphis. Mr. Williams proposed in April 2021, while the couple was filming a music video for a song by Ms. Safiya, who is an independent singer-songwriter in Memphis. Mr. Williams works as an actor based in Memphis; his recent credits include a recurring role in the Starz drama “P-Valley.”The two were married Sept. 5, at Mound City, a former farm that has been converted into an events hall and rental property in Marion, Ark. The couple chose to get married at this location because of its history.“We chose it because it was on land known to be a grave site for Indigenous Americans, and then also some sharecropping and, presumably, slavery,” the bride said. “We knew that land deserved to watch some Black folks experience joy.”David Arnett, a baptist minister and an uncle of the bride, officiated at an outdoor ceremony in front of about 50 guests, most of them family members. It began with a libation ritual inviting the couple’s ancestors into the space and included several a capella performances by friends of the bride and groom, who, after saying their vows, jumped the broom. Masks were available for all guests.In the interest of sustainability, both Ms. Safiya and Mr. Williams purchased outfits secondhand. He wore a vintage brown suit from the Lucky Exchange store in Atlanta; her yellow floral dress came from Stormy Normy Vintage, a shop on Etsy. Both of their outfits incorporated cowboy boots, which the couple bought from the Clothing Warehouse, a boutique in Atlanta.Recently, Mr. Williams said he has noticed a shift in Ms. Safiya. As a performer, he said, she has always had a fierce stage presence — “a warrior queen or a drunken saloon owner cussing at the patrons” — while her offstage persona is marked by “tenderness and awareness and softness.” But in the last six months or so, he said, that line has blurred.“I’m watching those two ways of being really kind of meld into one,” Mr. Williams said.On This DayWhen Sept. 5, 2021Where Mound City in Marion, Ark.The Food The couple’s menu included fried catfish, cornbread dressing, watermelon salad, cabbage and macaroni and cheese.The Souvenirs Guests received little bottles of Tabasco sauce as a party favor.The Truck The day before the wedding, Mr. Williams bought an old, red Ford pickup truck, in keeping with the wedding’s farm theme. He tied Coca-Cola bottles to the back, a trick that he’d seen in movies. But offscreen, the bottles proved less romantic. “They didn’t make a sound,” he said. More

Her new double album, “Keys,” shows how thoroughly the production can transform her songs.“Keys,” Alicia Keys’s new album, is a high-concept experiment, the kind of self-conscious, introspective project that has been emerging during the pandemic. Like Keys’s decision to no longer wear makeup in public, the album is in part a pushback against phony, superficial perfection. “I used to live hidden in a disguise,” she sings in “Plentiful,” an affirmation of both religious faith and faith in herself that opens the album.“Keys” also exposes the options available to a 21st-century musician, the countless digital tweaks and variations. It’s a double album with 21 songs, eight of them appearing twice. It begins with “Originals,” tracks that Keys largely produced by herself, followed by “Unlocked”: alternate versions produced by Keys with the hitmaker Michael Williams II, who bills himself as Mike WiLL Made-It. Though the whole album is a studio production, “Originals” has a home-alone spirit, while “Unlocked” heads for the car and the club. Each half tells a different story about how songs move listeners, physically and emotionally.The songs themselves explore desire, love and loneliness. Throughout her career, Keys has mingled the personal and the political, often invoking a woman’s strength and determination. But for most of “Keys,” she plays a woman in thrall to her feelings, by turns connected, needy, amorous, giving, desolate, jealous, and, eventually, healing. Most of the songs vamp through a handful of chords as Keys gives her voice room to leap, to curl, to muse, to syncopate; she has rarely sounded so jazzy and improvisatory.The track list of “Keys” isn’t completely symmetrical. Each half of the album varies the sequence and includes unique songs. But anyone can now reshuffle an album, and “Keys” invites every listener to think like a producer, hearing the possibilities of timbre, propulsion, weight and context for every sound, while making clear how much those choices matter.The “Originals” half of the album promises intimacy. Unlike her 2020 album, “Alicia,” which involved dozens of collaborators, “Keys” usually brings in just a handful of musicians for each song. There’s still plenty of audio illusion in her “Originals” versions, with samples (like the Sade drumbeat in “Best of Me”), multitracked backup vocals and scratchy-vinyl sound effects. Yet those songs determinedly conjure small, private spaces as she sings her way through mixed emotions. In the tearful “Dead End Road” she’s desperately trying to save a failing relationship, hinting at Aretha Franklin in a gospel-style call-and-response with a choir that seems to be coming from inside her own head, still encouraging her to “try to make it.”In “Only You,” Keys declares, “I am nothing without you here” over reverberating piano chords, with the tempo fluctuating as if each line is occurring to her on the spot, though a band eventually joins her. And in “Is It Insane,” Keys is at the piano, leading a vintage-style jazz trio through complex chords as she sings about obsessing over an ex, deepening the grain of her voice like a latter-day Billie Holiday or Nina Simone while she begs, “Take away the pain.”The “Unlocked” productions put Keys back into the digital grid that often defines current pop. After a gauzy intro, the second version of “Only You” announces the changeover with a steady-thumping beat and digitally chopped-up bits of piano and lead vocal along with sound effects, including sirens and a gunshot. It’s a sign of what’s to come: heftier beats, vocal phrases crisped into hooks, guest appearances (like a nonchalant Lil Wayne spot on “Nat King Cole,” a song that challenges its hearer to become “unforgettable”).The “Unlocked” tracks have virtues of their own. They push Keys’s voice upfront, with a sharper focus. They give Keys a confident strut when she’s enjoying the romance in “Skydive” and “Love When You Call My Name,” and they shift “Old Memories,” a 1950s-tinged song about what music can trigger, from regret toward resilience. Mike Will also deploys little background interjections — a vocal snippet, a saxophone flourish, a handful of plucked guitar notes — as ingenious, near-subliminal attention-grabbers.But the “Unlocked” songs sound like public performances, neat and armored and solidly 4/4, more locked than unlocked. The “Originals” hint at freer, messier, closer, unresolved feelings, daringly unguarded — and thoroughly, openly human.Alicia Keys“Keys”(RCA) More

Classical music’s most storied annual event will return to prepandemic scale, with more than 200 events over six weeks.Austria went into lockdown recently to counter a record number of coronavirus cases. But in Salzburg, where the surge has been sharp, there are plans for a brighter future.On Friday the Salzburg Festival, classical music and opera’s most storied annual event, announced its 2022 summer season — back to prepandemic scale, with more than 200 events over six weeks beginning July 18.A double bill of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” and Orff’s rarely performed “De Temporum Fine Comoedia” will be staged by Romeo Castellucci and conducted by Teodor Currentzis. The soprano Asmik Grigorian will star in all three one-acts of Puccini’s “Il Trittico.” The director Barrie Kosky and the conductor Jakub Hrusa will collaborate on Janacek’s “Kat’a Kabanova.”Cecilia Bartoli will take the main role in Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” and Shirin Neshat’s 2017 production of Verdi’s “Aida” and Lydia Steier’s 2018 staging of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” will get return engagements. There is a rich lineup of spoken drama, orchestra concerts — many featuring the festival’s house band, the Vienna Philharmonic — and recitals, including the usual enviable array of pianists.The season will be the first under Kristina Hammer, the festival’s ne-w president, whose appointment was announced on Nov. 24. A marketing and communications specialist, Hammer follows Helga Rabl-Stadler’s quarter-century tenure, and she joins Markus Hinterhäuser, the artistic director, and Lukas Crepaz, the finance director, in a triumvirate that will continue to negotiate the pandemic, as well as oversee a major renovation of the festival’s theaters..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Hammer’s appointment “is a conscious step taken by the board in order to further internationalize the Salzburg Festival,” Wilfried Haslauer Jr., the region’s governor, said in a statement.Buoyed by government subsidies and sponsorship deals, Salzburg has been able to weather the pandemic, putting on a fairly robust season in 2020 for limited audiences and returning to something akin to normal in 2021. The commemoration of the centennial of the festival, which was established in 1920, ended up being spread over the past two years.The Overture Spirituelle, a week or so of events originally instituted to draw audiences in the quiet period before the operas are running in earnest, comes into its own next summer as truly “a festival in the festival,” Hinterhäuser said in an interview.Some distinguished Overture ensembles include Currentzis’s MusicAeterna; Klangforum Wien; John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists; the Tallis Scholars; and “Messiah” forces led by Jordi Savall. Their performances lead up to the premiere of “Bluebeard” and “De Temporum Fine Comoedia” — a grand, frantically apocalyptic oratorio unveiled at Salzburg in 1973 — and a concert version of Wolfgang Rihm’s 1979 chamber opera “Jakob Lenz.” (Among the other highlights: The actress Isabelle Huppert takes the meaty spoken title role in Honegger’s oratorio “Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher.”)Of the six staged operas, two are revivals, and a third (“Barbiere”) will have premiered in June at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, which Bartoli directs. This is an unusually high percentage of rehashes for a festival that prides itself on its ambitious slate of new productions. But Hinterhäuser insisted that both the “Aida” and “Die Zauberflöte” would be substantially rethought versions of shows that were not wholly successful in their original incarnations.“I’m convinced it is the right thing artistically, and from the economic side,” he said.Among the Vienna Philharmonic’s concerts is an ambitious juxtaposition, led by Daniel Barenboim, of the second acts of Saint-Saëns’s “Samson et Dalila” and Wagner’s “Parsifal,” with Elina Garanca, Brandon Jovanovich and Michael Volle singing in both. Amid a broad re-evaluation of touring as the pandemic wears on, the only American ensemble scheduled to appear is the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck, on the final day of the festival, Aug. 31. More

As half of the duo Sly and Robbie, he performed or recorded with everyone from Peter Tosh and Grace Jones to Bob Dylan and Serge Gainsbourg.Robbie Shakespeare, a Jamaican bassist who, as half of the rhythm duo Sly and Robbie, played with and produced some of the biggest names in music while transforming reggae with bold infusions of rock, blues and jazz, died on Wednesday at a hospital in Miami. He was 68.Guillaume Bougard, a close friend and frequent collaborator, said the cause was complications of kidney and liver transplants.Starting in the mid-1970s, Sly and Robbie were among the most prolific musicians in the business, reggae or otherwise. Mr. Shakespeare once estimated that they had taken part in 200,000 recordings, either their own or as backup musicians or producers for other artists.Both men came up from the creative cauldron of 1970s Kingston, working as session musicians at the famed Channel One recording studio and playing with reggae superstars like Peter Tosh, including on his 1978 tour as an opening act for the Rolling Stones. That tour gave the duo their first international exposure.Their sound differed from the melody-rich music of Bob Marley, Jamaica’s biggest star, with a heavier emphasis on the beat and overt influences from rock and blues, qualities that prefigured new reggae styles, like dancehall, that emerged in the late 1970s and early ’80s.Their willingness to push reggae’s boundaries soon caught the attention of Chris Blackwell, the owner of Island Records, who saw the possibility of marrying their sound with North American and European pop acts.They provided the driving beats on Grace Jones’s hit 1981 album “Nightclubbing.” They were soon working with acts far from the Kingston sound of their youth, like Bob Dylan and Joe Cocker, and producing singers like Marianne Faithfull, Madonna and Sinead O’Connor.The duo were both hard-core reggae aesthetes and radical innovators, never afraid to break with tradition. Their work with rock musicians led them to fuse rock’s syncopation with reggae’s one-drop beat. And they were among the first musicians to make regular use of electronic drum machines.From left, Mr. Dunbar, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones and Mr. Shakespeare. Mr. Shakespeare and Mr. Dunbar got their first international exposure with Peter Tosh when he was as an opening act for the Stones in 1978.Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images“Their whole career has been geared toward creating new stuff, what no one else had done before,” said Mr. Bougard, who also licensed some of their work for release in Europe through his label, Tabou1.They were nominated for 13 Grammy Awards and won two: in 1985 for their production of the Black Uhuru album “Anthem,” and in 1999 for their own album “Friends.”That was an apt title, because beyond their musical talents, Mr. Dunbar and Mr. Shakespeare were known for their close personal bond. They were very different people — Mr. Dunbar relaxed and outgoing, Mr. Shakespeare quiet and cerebral — but their talents complemented each other’s, and they could often seem like two halves of a single person.“The longest we’ve been apart in the last 25 years is about three weeks,” Mr. Shakespeare told the British newspaper The Independent in 1997. “It’s very difficult to be apart for that amount of time. I’ll go on holiday with my family, and as soon as I reach the place I’m going to, I want to be back with Sly, playing music.”Robert Warren Dale Shakespeare was born on Sept. 27, 1953, in East Kingston, Jamaica. He grew up in a musical family, but his parents were strict and he left home at 13. He drifted at first, getting into trouble but also spending time around his older brother, Lloyd, who sang in a local band.It was during Lloyd’s practice sessions that Robbie began to learn the guitar — a homemade acoustic one at first. But a chance encounter with the bassist Aston Barrett, known as Family Man, led him to switch instruments.He begged Mr. Barrett to teach him to play bass. Mr. Barrett, who would later join Marley’s band, the Wailers, said yes, but only if he stayed out of trouble. Robbie did more than that; he went home and practiced all night, and the days and nights after, until his fingers bled. Decades later, he showed Mr. Bougard how the strings had worn down his fingerprints until they were practically illegible.Soon he was playing in a series of Kingston bands, often several at once. He would play as a session musician in studios during the day, then perform in clubs at night. It was while working in the clubs that he met Lowell Dunbar, known as Sly, already regarded as one of the best drummers in the city.“He was playing the drums just like how I would always tell the drummers I would play with to play,” Mr. Shakespeare told the website United Reggae in 2012. “He was just doing it and doing it easy and good.”After working for several years at Channel One, Mr. Shakespeare and Mr. Dunbar went off on their own, working for Mr. Dunbar’s Taxi label. They had immediate success producing “Showcase,” a 1979 album by the singer Gregory Isaacs, who at the time was one of the best-selling artists in Jamaica.That same year they played with the French singer Serge Gainsbourg on “Aux Armes et Cætera,” a reggae version of the French national anthem, which became one of Mr. Gainsbourg’s biggest hits. They released their first album, “Sly and Robbie Present Taxi,” in 1981.Mr. Shakespeare is survived by his wife, Marian, and a son, Mikiel. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.In 2020 Rolling Stone ranked Mr. Shakespeare 17th on its list of the greatest bassists of all time.The pair continued to make music into the 21st century, even as complications of diabetes left Mr. Shakespeare less able to get around. Their last album, “Rock Hills Road,” was released early this year.“If you’re chosen by music, I don’t think you get to say it’s time to retire,” Mr. Shakespeare told The Scotsman newspaper in 2009. “It’s a very gentle gift, and we’ve been trusted with it.” More

For decades, he performed, taught and toured with unflagging devotion. He also helped to lay the foundation for the widespread academic study of jazz.Barry Harris, a pianist and educator who was the resident scholar of the bebop movement — and ultimately, one of its last original ambassadors — died on Wednesday in North Bergen, N.J. He was 91.His death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of the coronavirus, which exacerbated a number of underlying health problems, said Howard Rees, his longtime business partner and collaborator.[Those We’ve Lost: Read about other people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic here.]Starting in his teens and continuing beyond his 90th year, Mr. Harris performed, taught and toured with unflagging devotion, evangelizing for bebop’s stature as a form of high American modernism and helping to lay the foundation for the widespread academic study of jazz. Yet throughout his career he remained an independent educator: He never joined the faculty of a major institution, instead choosing to embed himself within New York’s music community, reaching students of all ages.For almost half a century, Mr. Harris led a weekly series of low-cost classes in the city, while also playing at prominent clubs around town and jetting off to perform and teach overseas. He was known for his acerbic tongue and his demanding nature, evidence of his passion for teaching.Writing in 1986, the New York Times critic Robert Palmer described Mr. Harris as a “one-man jazz academy.”He came up in the late 1940s and ’50s in Detroit, where a thriving scene fostered some of the greatest improvisers in jazz. Many of the hometown musicians he grew up around — the vibraphonist Milt Jackson; the guitarist Kenny Burrell; the Jones brothers (the drummer Elvin, the pianist Hank and the trumpeter Thad); the saxophonist Yusef Lateef; the pianist Tommy Flanagan — would soon become leading figures, and their contributions would help define the hard-bop sound: a sizzling, blues-drenched style that boiled down some of bebop’s scattered intensity.But Mr. Harris never eschewed bebop’s high temperatures, clattering rhythms and dashing melodies. He remained an evangelist for what he considered the apex of American music making.“We believe in Bird, Diz, Bud. We believe in Art Tatum. We believe in Cole Hawkins,” Mr. Harris told his students later in life, name-checking bebop’s founding fathers. “These are the people we believe in. Nothing has swayed us.”Mr. Harris was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 1989. He received multiple honorary doctorates, and was often referred to by friends and students as “doctor.”Mr. Harris in performance in San Francisco in the early 1980s.Tom Copi/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesHe recorded more than two dozen albums, including a string of celebrated releases in the 1960s for the Prestige and Riverside labels. All those LPs featured him either in small ensembles or alone at the piano, demonstrating his wily, wandering harmonic sense and his unshakable feel for bebop rhythm.A stroke in 1993 slightly limited his mobility at the keyboard, but it did little to slow him down. As he aged, he developed a stooped posture, but when he sat at the piano, bent lovingly over the keys with a look of enamored study, his hunch became impossible to notice.He is survived by a daughter, Carol Geyer.Barry Doyle Harris was born on Dec. 15, 1929, in Detroit, the fourth of Melvin and Bessie Harris’s five children. His mother was the pianist at their Baptist church, and when he was 4, she began teaching him to play.As an adolescent, he set himself up at the elbow of some of the more experienced pianists around town. Almost immediately upon learning the fundamentals of bebop, he became a kind of junior scholar of the movement, building a pedagogy around the music that Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and their comrades had invented together in Harlem just a few years earlier.He started hosting informal lessons at his mother’s house, and musicians with considerably more experience often sought out his off-the-cuff symposiums, hoping to seep up what he called his “rules”: exercises and frameworks that could help them unpack the complex — but often unwritten — structures of bebop.“Trane took all my rules,” he told The Daily News of New York in 2012, referring to John Coltrane. “I made up rules for cats to practice.”His process as an instructor was just as improvisational as his performances. “To watch him in action is to witness the oral tradition at its most profound,” the critic Mark Stryker wrote of Mr. Harris in his book “Jazz From Detroit.”In demand as both a bandleader and a side musician throughout the 1950s, Mr. Harris backed some of the era’s leading musicians when they performed in Detroit, including Miles Davis. He sometimes sat in with Parker, bebop’s leading man, when he was in town.Mr. Harris went on tour with the pioneering drummer Max Roach in 1956, and began traveling to New York frequently to record with the likes of Thad Jones, the saxophonist Hank Mobley and the trumpeter Art Farmer. But he had started a family in Detroit and was happily ensconced as a pillar of the scene there.In 1960, at 30, he was finally persuaded by the saxophonist Cannonball Adderley to join the tide of Detroit musicians who had moved to New York. He continued living in the metropolitan area for the rest of his life, teaching and performing almost nonstop and appearing on albums like the trumpeter Lee Morgan’s 1964 hit “The Sidewinder.”Not long after arriving, he became friends with Pannonica de Koenigswarter, the heiress and musicians’ advocate known as the jazz baroness, and she invited him to take up residence at her sprawling home in Weehawken, N.J., overlooking Manhattan and teeming with scores of cats. (Ms. de Koenigswarter arranged for Mr. Harris to stay in the house after she died; he continued living there for the rest of his life.)In 1972, Thelonious Monk moved in, and he stayed until his death 10 years later. So Mr. Harris carried on at the elbow of a fellow master, trading information and further soaking up his language. The Monk songbook remained a pillar of Mr. Harris’s repertoire throughout his life; perhaps thanks in part to his time spent living with Monk, his playing grew both more lyrical and more tautly rhythmic as he got older.Starting in 1974, Mr. Harris held intensive weekly workshops in New York, open to adult students of all ages for a relatively low fee. Students could buy single-evening passes or pay for an entire year. He never stopped teaching the classes, continuing until the pandemic shut things down in March 2020, and then conducting them via Zoom into this year.Mr. Harris teaching a class in Midtown Manhattan in 2020. He held intensive weekly workshops from 1974 until the pandemic shut things down, then continued to teach via Zoom.Jonno Rattman for The New York TimesIn 1982, Mr. Harris opened the Jazz Cultural Theater, a multipurpose space in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, where he taught classes seven days a week and hosted performances at night. At some of those performances, he featured a choir made up of children from the neighborhood.Ms. de Koenigswarter helped to finance the establishment, but Mr. Harris declined to sell liquor, favoring a community orientation that would allow for children to be there at all times. As a result, he didn’t turn a steady profit.The theater closed after five years when the rent jumped, but Mr. Harris just moved his operation elsewhere and kept on teaching: at public schools, community centers and abroad.He never really stopped performing either, gigging regularly at venues around New York into his 90s, including a more-or-less annual run at the Village Vanguard.His last performance was in November, in a concert featuring recipients of the Jazz Masters award. He did not play the piano, but he sang a rendition of his own ballad, “The Bird of Red and Gold,” a tale of inspiration and triumph he had first recorded, in a rare vocal performance, in 1979.Over time, Mr. Harris’s students fanned back out across the globe and committed to carrying on his work. With his blessing, one former student set up a venue in Spain called the Jazz Cultural Theater of Bilbao.Interviewed by The Times shortly before the pandemic, Mr. Harris had lost none of his passion for teaching. Contemplating the experience of hearing a student improve, he said, “It’s the most beautiful thing you want to hear in your life.” More

The Jim Henson TV special was a hit in 1978. Now its furry creatures return in a new theatrical production in Manhattan, just in time for the holiday season.Paul Williams — yes, that Paul Williams, the rare singer-songwriter to have collaborated with Barbra Streisand, Brian De Palma and Daft Punk — only had a few tips during a rehearsal back in November, but when he spoke, everybody listened. The squirrels, who had been quite rambunctious seconds earlier, focused. George and Melissa Rabbit were all ears.After all, when the guy who wrote the score gives out notes, even woodland animals pay attention.Williams, spry and impish at 81, had dropped by the New Victory Theater in Manhattan to check on the early stages of “Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas,” which boasts an onstage menagerie of puppets from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.Paul Williams composed the score of the original TV special from 1977, with echoes of Randy Newman, Alice Cooper and the Carpenters.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWilliams and Henson went way back, of course: In 1976, the musician was a guest on the eighth episode of “The Muppet Show,” and a few years later he wrote or co-wrote the songs for “The Muppet Movie,” including the Academy Award-nominated “Rainbow Connection.”In between these two projects, Henson asked him to come up with the score for “Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas,” an hourlong TV special that aired in America on HBO in 1978.“I was just thrilled to work with Jim,” Williams said. “He sent me the script and the book, and I just sat there and wrote. I think I was kind of being auditioned for ‘The Muppet Movie,’ which was a huge risk for them at the time.”A scene from the 1977 TV special, which employed the kind of madcap wit that had made “The Muppets” so popular.The Jim Henson CompanyBased on an illustrated children’s book by Lillian and Russell Hoban, “Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas” starts off with the title character and his mother barely making ends meet by doing small jobs by the river in Frogtown Hollow. So when they hear of a talent show with a $50 cash prize, they separately decide to enter. Emmet plays the washtub bass in a group with his furry friends, and Ma sings, but they face stiff competition, especially from the naughty Riverbottom Nightmare Band, whose members include a stoat, a snake and a weasel. The 75-minute musical production runs Dec. 11-Jan. 2 at the New Victory, with streaming available Dec. 17-Jan. 2.Ma and Emmet Otter from the new production. In the story, they hear of a talent show with a $50 cash prize, and they separately decide to enter.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe puppeteer Jordan Brownlee with Doc Bullfrog.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesYancy Woodchuck with the puppeteer Matt Furtado.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“What I love about the show, and really appreciate more now that I’m older, is that it has so much heart,” said Christopher Gattelli, who is directing and wrote the book with Timothy Allen McDonald. “At the same time it has that great Muppet madcap wit, those zingers and those really fast takes, and those 30-second acts that are just hilarious. It’s like a ‘Muppet Show’ with a story.”Gattelli and McDonald worked on a first adaptation for Connecticut’s Goodspeed Musicals in 2008, but they went back to the drawing board for this one, which features four puppeteers and eight actors. “There’s more puppet business going on, and that’s music to my ear,” said Cheryl Henson, Jim’s daughter and an investor in the new show. (John Tartaglia, a Tony nominee for “Avenue Q,” is credited for puppet direction.)While Goodspeed used some original figures from the special, they are now in museums and had to be rebuilt for the New Victory..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“But of course they don’t make the same fur anymore,” said Rollie Krewson, who built Wendell Porcupine and Charlie Beaver for the TV show; she is now a master puppet designer and builder at the Creature Shop. “I had to find furs that mimic more what the Emmet actor is wearing. They also wanted a new Ma, and we built a Pa Otter — there had never been one.”Williams at a rehearsal in Long Island City in November. “There are all these little touches in the script, amazing little clues to who the characters are,” he said.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesVincent Tullo for The New York TimesVincent Tullo for The New York TimesDuring that rehearsal in Long Island City, the felt cast often behaved as if it had a life of its own in between scenes. “I consider it a good run if I forget they’re puppets,” Colin Trudell, who plays Emmet, said of his co-stars. “The puppeteers are also improv masters — the things that come out of their mouths in rehearsal really bring the characters alive.”Trudell, who graduated from Texas State University in May, had not seen the TV show when he auditioned for the stage version, and he watched it for the first time before his callback. You can’t blame him for missing out: “Emmet Otter” stayed under the radar for a long time (it is now available for streaming on Amazon and other platforms); and a proper soundtrack did not come out until 2018, so it does not have the following of more famous Henson properties.Its fans, however, are dedicated and loyal, often passing on the “Emmet Otter” tradition from one generation to the next, as happened in Gattelli’s family.A big reason for the show’s cult following is its rare humor and warmth. Without getting preachy, it’s an ode to friendship and family bonds, as well as the idea of community. Sure, you won’t be able to get the song’s riff from your head after hearing the Riverbottom Nightmare Band snarl, “We take what we want/We do anything that we wish/We got no respect/For animal, birdy or fish.”But it’s Ma Otter’s words you’ll remember: “Some say our world is getting too small,” she sings, “I say, with kindness,/There’s room for us all.”Wendell PorcupineVincent Tullo for The New York TimesLady PossumVincent Tullo for The New York TimesWilliams’s numbers for the original show offer an uncanny mélange of 1970s styles, with echoes of Randy Newman, Alice Cooper and the Carpenters. Except when the rollicking Nightmare Band pipes up, the music is filtered through a rootsy Americana vibe that transcends the decades, and was beautifully captured by My Morning Jacket in an aching cover of “Brothers in Our World” on the tribute “Muppets: The Green Album.”“To me, the music is the heart and the soul of this piece,” Henson said. “What works so well is that it’s delivered by these characters that are creatures — it’s a living storybook.”For Williams, those creatures made the assignment feel effortless: He just got the show’s furry (or scaly, as the case may be) subjects.“There are all these little touches in the script, amazing little clues to who the characters are,” he said. “My wife and I use the line all the time when the Riverbottom Nightmare Band has just been totally rude to all the guys in the tree house, and Charlie says, ‘They seem nice.’ It’s that human element that speaks to me,” he continued, “and it speaks to me at a level where it’s the easiest writing I ever get to do.”One thing that did not fit, though, is a conventional, “Jingle Bells”-type number. Though the story takes place around Christmas, there’s no song specifically about the holiday. Williams just did not see a need for it in “Emmet Otter.”“There are two tasks in writing songs for a film or a stage play or whatever,” he said. “One is to illustrate the inner life of the character, and the other one is to advance the story. When you’re done, you go, ‘What’s missing?’ And it never felt like anything was missing.” More

Rolando Villazón, a onetime star plagued by vocal issues, is returning to the house after eight years for “The Magic Flute.”It was deep into Julie Taymor’s playful production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at the Metropolitan Opera. Darkness had fallen onstage; the hero, Prince Tamino, and Papageno, the cheeky bird catcher, were lost.“Papageno,” Matthew Polenzani, who sings Tamino in the abridged, English-language, family-friendly “Flute” that opens the holiday season at the Met on Friday, called out at a recent rehearsal. “Are you still with me?”As he rotated past on a set piece, the tenor Rolando Villazón, wearing Papageno’s lime-green long johns and backward baseball cap, answered in accented English, “I’m right here.”Coming from Villazón, there was a note of defiance in saying that on the Met’s mighty stage. Though he was once one of the company’s brightest young stars, Friday marks his first performance there in eight years. Many — him included — assumed he would never appear at the Met again.Villazón, 49, in rehearsal for “The Magic Flute.” In the mid-2000s he was one of the Met’s brightest rising stars.Jonathan Tichler/Met Opera“We can call it a roller coaster,” Villazón, 49, said in an interview. “A very bumpy career.”Plagued for much of the past 15 years by vocal problems and mental fears, Villazón lost his consistency and his nerve. “Everything fell apart for him,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. “At least at the Met. He had some vocal setbacks and disappeared from our radar.”Villazón had reconciled himself to the end of his career, but during the pandemic he stumbled across a new approach to singing — and now believes he isn’t yet finished. Returning to the Met as Papageno, a role almost always sung by a lower voice, might still appear to be an admission of weakness: a tenor losing his high notes and scrambling to the safety of baritone territory.Not so fast.“I’m not a baritone,” Villazón said, noting that Mozart wrote the part for Emanuel Schikaneder, the “Flute” librettist, who was a famed actor and impresario but far from a traditional opera singer. “There are some low notes that aren’t really for a tenor, like B flat. But they’re mostly in the harmony. The lowest when he sings alone is a C, which is very central.”“Everything fell apart for him,” said Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager. “At least at the Met.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesIt’s true, though: When Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, asked him to sing Papageno for a recording in 2018, Villazón at first demurred. “I mean, in terms of the character, I love the character,” he said, “But, of course, baritone role, ta ta ta. …”In other words, people might take his casting as an admission that the voice that had brought him celebrity was in permanent retreat. It was a fear he soon got over.“To be honest,” he said, “it’s been a long time since I am worried about what people think.”This is still a course few would have predicted when he rose, in the early 2000s, as a lyric tenor, boyish and ardent in “La Bohème,” “Rigoletto,” “La Traviata” and “L’Elisir d’Amore” — even if there was always a duskiness to his tone, allowing him to be convincing in, for example, the heavier title role of Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann.” A 2005 profile in The New York Times observed that Villazón was being compared to Plácido Domingo, at whose Operalia competition Villazón got his big break in 1999.“The voice, at this early stage,” the Times profile said, “weighs in on the light side but is tinged like Mr. Domingo’s with the dark shading of a baritone.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}That summer, Villazón and Anna Netrebko, also fast-rising at the time, created a sensation in Willy Decker’s spare, vivid staging of “La Traviata” at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, and were swiftly anointed opera’s next onstage power couple.“He seemed,” Gelb said, “to be the most exciting tenor in 2005, ’06.” In 2007, Villazón and Netrebko were the stars of a gala celebration of the Met’s 40th anniversary at Lincoln Center.George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York TimesBut while Netrebko’s career continued to skyrocket, calamity struck Villazón: He began to crack on some high notes, a tenor’s lifeblood. Cancellations piled up, including a Live in HD broadcast of “Lucia di Lammermoor” from the Met alongside Netrebko.A cyst was eventually discovered inside his vocal cords; after a delicate operation in 2009, he couldn’t speak for some time, let alone sing. He gingerly re-emerged on opera and concert stages, including a Met run of “Eugene Onegin” in 2013. (“Despite some initial cautiousness in the first act, in which he sometimes sounded underpowered,” the Times review said, “he sang with confidence and poise.”)“It was for me very important to reestablish myself, to reposition as a tenor,” Villazón said. But the long period of uncertainty and tweaks to his technique had left their mark, and he began to lose confidence in himself and his instrument.“Around 2015, 2016, that’s when I started to develop stage fright, because I was afraid of getting something else,” he said. “I was hitting nine out of 10 high notes. When you are in this business, and at this level, you hit 10 out of 10. They might not be all beautiful, but you hit all of them. If you’re not hitting one of those 10, you start thinking, Is this the one? And then you start hitting eight out of 10, and seven out of 10.”He worked with sports coaches, and tried taking a small amount of anti-anxiety medication before performances. That helped with his fear, but took away the internal fire that he felt fueled his best work.“How do I stop it being hell to go on and perform?” he recalled thinking. He re-embraced the Baroque repertory that he had done earlier in his career under the conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, moving away from the high notes that had turned perilously unreliable. Then he developed what he called “uncomfortable sensations,” even in the middle of his voice.With a breakthrough during the pandemic, Villazón believes he has mastered some of the vocal problems that have plagued him.George Etheredge for The New York TimesIn 2017, 10 years after headlining the Met’s 40th-anniversary gala, Villazón dropped out a few days before his appearance at its 50th. He felt basically done: “I thought, Let me reach 50 and I can call it quits as a singer.”It helped that singing wasn’t all he was doing by that point. He had some success as a television personality, was directing productions and had been named the artistic leader of the Mozartwoche festival in Salzburg. He had even started writing novels.But he wasn’t yet ready to give up performing entirely, and discovered that acid reflux was causing his new round of problems. He had another operation, at the end of 2018, and slowly his vocal steadiness, though not his high notes, came back.Then, practicing during the pandemic, he hit a note — an F — and immediately knew something had shifted in the way he produced sound. Working with coaches, he revised his approach to his voice; even some of his older, higher-flying roles felt possible again.“The way it feels, I’m entering the greatest moment of my career,” he said. “I have no ambitions. I don’t need to achieve, professionally, anything else. It’s all artistic achievements.”So his coming seasons will include Mozart’s Tito and Idomeneo; Edgardo in “Lucia”; even Loge, the trickster fire god in Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” which Villazón was working on when he had his pandemic breakthrough.“I certainly plan to sit with him and discuss other roles with him,” Gelb said. “I don’t want this to be a drive-by appearance. But it’s up to him, and what he feels comfortable with.”Papageno, then, is hopefully not the beginning of the end for Villazón, but a delightful lark — a part for which he doesn’t feel the need to apologize, and on which he can lavish his fascination with the figure of the clown.“They never lose, they never die, and they never quit,” he said. “The clown goes on.” More

The Department of Cultural Affairs is awarding $51.4 million in grants to more than 1,000 nonprofit arts and cultural groups that are seeking to rebound from the pandemic.As New York City’s arts and culture sector seeks to rebound from the economic devastation wrought by the pandemic, the Department of Cultural Affairs announced on Thursday that it would award $51.4 million in grants to more than 1,000 nonprofit arts organizations.The grants, for the 2022 fiscal year, represent the largest-ever allocation for what is known as the Cultural Development Fund. Some of the grants will broadly increase funding for organizations that need a financial shot in the arm; other grants will offer more targeted support of disability arts, language access, arts education and more.Officials also said that a chunk of the money — about $5.1 million — is being sent to more than 650 groups working in underserved communities that were hard hit by the pandemic.“This improved funding will encourage artists, creators and producers across the city to continue to express their insights and stories on their own terms,” Vicki Been, the deputy mayor for housing and economic development, said in a statement.A survey of the effects of the coronavirus commissioned by the Department of Cultural Affairs in the spring of 2020 found that overall, about one in 10 arts organizations thought they would not survive the pandemic. Smaller organizations in particular were some of the hardest hit, according to the survey.Some of the grants, of less than $10,000, have been awarded to small theater companies, choirs and museums. And to further help ensure that modestly sized groups and even individual artists receive a share of the funding, almost $3 million will be given to five local arts councils serving each borough. Those councils, in turn, will distribute the money to local constituents, city officials said.But large organizations will also benefit. Some of the city’s most recognizable arts institutions like the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the 92nd Street Y are among the organizations that will receive some of the largest grants, in excess of $100,000 each.The grants — $45.5 million in mayoral funds and $5.9 million in City Council member items — are part of what officials said was a roughly $230 million annual budget for the Department of Cultural Affairs.“Culture is essential to healthy, vibrant neighborhoods, and there is no recovery for New York City without our cultural community,” Gonzalo Casals, the city’s cultural affairs commissioner, said.Sarah Bahr More