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      Overlooked No More: Ruth Polsky, Who Shaped New York’s Music Scene

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      She booked concerts at influential nightclubs in the 1980s, bringing exposure to up-and-coming artists like the Smiths and New Order.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.In the late 1970s and early ’80s, New York City’s nightclub scene was vibrant and daring, attracting an eclectic mix of creative types like artists, writers and musicians. It was also predominantly run by men.A notable exception was Ruth Polsky, who arranged concerts for cutting-edge rock artists, like the Smiths and New Order, at the influential Manhattan clubs Hurrah and Danceteria, whose regulars included Madonna and Jean-Michel Basquiat.Polsky had a knack for finding young talent, and helped both clubs earn a reputation for debuting new artists. Early in their careers, British bands like the Cure and the Specials played American shows at Hurrah, and Madonna performed one of her first-ever live shows at Danceteria, in 1982.Polsky’s choice of artists was diverse. She booked guitar-driven bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, influential minimalists like Young Marble Giants and challenging genre-busters like Einstürzende Neubauten and the Birthday Party, fronted by Nick Cave.There were potent, female-led groups, including Au Pairs, a politically-fuelled band from Birmingham, England, and kitschy Pulsallama from New York. She was an early supporter of Ru Paul, who performed with bands in the 1980s. (Ru Paul was occasionally referred to by a friend as Ru Polsky.)Polsky also arranged the United States premieres of alternative rock bands, many from the United Kingdom, including New Order, the Psychedelic Furs and Simple Minds, whose music eventually became mainstream soundtracks of the 1980s.“This is the place where anything goes,” Polsky said about Danceteria in a British television interview in the mid-1980s, “from oompah bands to Diamanda Galás to the funkiest thing happening on the street.”Her inclusive approach welcomed a clientele from all over the city, one that was racially diverse and of varying socioeconomic backgrounds. She turned her clubs into a hub for nonconformists, some of whom, like the actress Debi Mazar and the Beastie Boys, became famous.“It was kind of weirdos unite,” said Cynthia Sley, a member of Bush Tetras, whom Polsky booked several times. “Everybody who was an outcast from regular society would converge down there.”Her interactions with musicians went well beyond a professional obligation.“She was good at her job, and she had people power,” Bernard Sumner, a member of the band New Order, said in an interview. “She could handle people and charm them over.”And her dealings with performers didn’t end when the shows were over; she often invited them to her West Houston Street apartment to mingle with other musicians.Danceteria in 1980. The nightclub was a vibrant, daring scene that attracted creative types like artists, writers and musicians.Allan Tannenbaum“It was like a writers’ salon, but for punk rockers,” said Hugo Burnham, a founding member of Gang of Four, a taut British band who played several shows that Polsky booked. “She was the punk rock Dorothy Parker.”Her style was enhanced by the sort of devotion a loyal friend would show. It was a “mixture of strength and a kind of sisterly, kind of motherly instinct,” said Johnny Marr, a former member of the Smiths, whose first American show was at Danceteria.“You could stay up until 4 o’clock in the morning with her,” he added, “but then she would make sure that you went out and had a decent breakfast and a warm coat.”Part of her drive came from frequently being the only woman in the room, interacting with managers, booking agents and club owners who were mostly men.“She wanted to show that she could make a difference as a woman in a very male-dominated world,” said Howard Thompson, a former record company executive and a friend of Polsky’s.Ruth Rachel Polsky was born on Dec. 5, 1954, in Toms River, N.J., to Louis and Bertha (Rudnick) Polsky. Her father was an egg distributor, her mother a homemaker. From a young age, Ruthie, as she was called, was an excellent student. By the time she was a teenager, her love of books and writing was matched only by an obsession with music. Her taste, even then, was precocious: In high school, she saw the Doors and Led Zeppelin play live.Polsky attended Clark University in Massachusetts, where she wrote about music for the school paper. She earned a degree in English literature in 1976 and began writing for Aquarian Weekly, an alternative newspaper in New Jersey, covering up-and-coming music as a contributing editor. She also worked at a magazine publishing company.In her writing, she championed innovative sounds and encouraged fans to support them.“Right now, people need to dance,” she wrote in Aquarian Weekly in 1979, “not the well-oiled, machine-like dancing of a bland, conformist half-decade, but the individualistic style of a crazy new era.”That year, she started booking bands at Hurrah, a club near Lincoln Center, alongside another well-known promoter, Jim Fouratt. Three years later, she moved to Danceteria, a multilevel space in the Flatiron district.Polsky, left, at a party 1982. After the club shows she had booked, she’d often invite the performers over to her Houston Street apartment to mingle with other musicians. “It was like a writers’ salon, but for punk rockers,” one musician said.Howard ThompsonBefore long her impact began reaching well beyond New York City. In 1981, Polsky took a handful of American bands, including Bush Tetras, to London to perform for the first time in England. The show was called “Taking Liberties From New York.”In the United States, bands were able to use the money they earned from the concerts Polsky had arranged to go on national tours, furthering their exposure and success.“People in Columbus and Madison and Seattle and Minneapolis could see these bands that normally wouldn’t be able to tour America,” said Robert Vickers, a former member of the Go-Betweens, an Australian band that played several shows arranged by Polsky. “It made it possible for these cutting-edge bands, the post-punk bands, that Americans in these smaller cities would never have seen except for Ruth.”By the summer of 1986, Ms. Polsky had started her own company, S.U.S.S. — for Solid United States Support, a nod to a colloquial British term for astutely figuring something out — to help artists from abroad navigate their careers in America. She was managing bands, too, and writing a memoir about her nightlife adventures.Polsky died on Sept. 7, 1986, when she was hit by an out-of-control taxi outside the Limelight, a Manhattan club where she had arranged for one of her clients, Certain General, to play that evening. She was 31.“It just seemed like such an awful waste,” Mr. Sumner said, “because she was on an upward trajectory.”As alternative music was gaining in popularity, that path might well have included working directly with superstars, her ultimate goal.“She had the smarts, she had the passion, she had the good taste and she had the nurturing qualities,” said Mr. Marr of the Smiths. “She was tough and really ticked all the boxes to have been really successful with a band.” More

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      Review: A Surprise Conductor Makes a Superb Debut

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      Dima Slobodeniouk was an excellent fill-in with the New York Philharmonic in works by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky.After decades of attending orchestra concerts, I’m still impressed when a conductor is able not only to jump in on short notice, but also confidently to take on a program planned by others.Especially when — as with the New York Philharmonic on Wednesday at Alice Tully Hall — the works, though hardly rarities, are not often heard and pose technical and interpretive challenges: Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1 (“Winter Dreams”).Dima Slobodeniouk was the fill-in, making his Philharmonic debut leading a concert that had been devised by Semyon Bychkov, who withdrew a week ago. (The orchestra only said that Bychkov “will be unavailable to conduct.”)Slobodeniouk, the music director of the adventurous Galicia Symphony Orchestra in Spain and the former principal conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra in Finland, arrived in New York fresh from an appearance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I’m not surprised that his Boston engagement was praised: Slobodeniouk had one of the most auspicious Philharmonic debuts of recent years, leading the orchestra in a Shostakovich concerto played with glittering brightness and a stylish, colorful and exuberant account of the Tchaikovsky.Shostakovich composed this work in 1947 and ’48, a period when his stock with the Soviet authorities who policed culture had once again plummeted. Perhaps that accounts for the elusive nature of the first movement, which he called a Nocturne: music of pensive, brooding darkness unfolding at a moderate, inexorable tempo. The violin plays an elegiac, wayward melody that seems just eloquently melancholy.The soloist, Karen Gomyo, making her Philharmonic subscription series debut, conveyed with richly warm and textured sound the ruminative quality of a lyrical line that keeps trying to take clear shape; the orchestra supported — almost comforted — her with plush, wistful chords, rich with deep strings. Yet Gomyo pressed below the surface to suggest that this music was not simply sad, but truly grief-stricken.The Scherzo comes as a complete contrast: biting and frenetic music, in breathless perpetual motion, with an intensely difficult violin part that tussles with a rattling, boisterous orchestra, especially some ornery woodwinds. A noble yet still dark Passacaglia slow movement leads to a vehement cadenza, and then a Burlesque finale. Here the bitter, almost hostile, ironic Shostakovich seems to come through in episodes of blaring fanfares and faux-triumphant marches. The orchestra captured it with brilliant sharpness, and Gomyo was extraordinary, dispatching the tangle of technical challenges with fervor and command.Tchaikovsky was 26 when he completed his “Winter Dreams” Symphony. He struggled with writing it, and later expressed mixed feelings about it. (He revised it in 1874.) But whenever I hear it, especially in a performance as good as this one, I wish I could have told Tchaikovsky to go easier on his youthful self: It’s a spirited, well-crafted and beguiling piece.Slobodeniouk found an ideal balance between breezy tranquillity and jabs of somberness in the first movement, “Daydreams of a Winter Journey.” The lovely, lyrical slow movement; the restless Scherzo, with its Mendelssohnian lightness; and the episodic Finale, which builds to a driving coda — all were splendidly performed.New York PhilharmonicThis program is repeated through Friday at Alice Tully Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      ‘Jagged’ Review: The Painful Road to Era-Defining Success

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      This documentary from Alison Klayman catalogs the odds that Alanis Morissette overcame to make her 1995 hit album “Jagged Little Pill.”Alanis Morissette’s megaselling, epoch-defining 1995 album “Jagged Little Pill” sounds like an obvious centerpiece for a film. Until, that is, you consider the comparatively low number of documentaries about women in rock and pop, especially focusing on the creation of a record. Just look at how few female musicians are represented in the long-running documentary series “Classic Albums.”Kudos, then, to the director Alison Klayman for getting “Jagged” done in the first place.It kicks off with Morissette’s start as a teen sensation in the 1980s and tracks her transformation into a generation’s electrifying bard. Klayman (“The Brink”) is at her best illustrating Morissette’s candid, thoughtful reminiscences with period footage, and documenting the wild year that followed the release of “Jagged Little Pill,” when the newly minted star toured nonstop, backed by male bandmates who now semi-sheepishly confess to preying on the girls and young women flocking to the concerts. (Morissette has recently distanced herself from “Jagged,” accusing it of having a “salacious agenda” and offering a “reductive take.”)The film, which is fairly conventional aesthetically and narratively, follows the testosterone-laden “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage” in HBO’s Music Box series. Taken together, they paint an unsettling portrait of the structural and behavioral sexism pervasive in the music world — a former radio program director interviewed in “Jagged” remarks, for example, that “it was regarded as a no-no to play female artists back to back.”This makes the vision of Morissette reclaiming her life and art in great, powerful yelps while pacing arena stages in baggy T-shirts all the more thrilling: We know the cost.JaggedNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on HBO Max. More

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      The Meters’ Leo Nocentelli Gets a Solo Career, 50 Years Late

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      In the 1970s, Nocentelli recorded a folk album drastically different from his band’s funk music. Barely anyone heard it — until it ended up at a swap meet.Leo Nocentelli decided to record a solo album just once, in the early 1970s. Though he was the guitarist and primary songwriter of the Meters — the epochal house band of New Orleans funk — he had a different palette in mind for his own LP: James Taylor and Elton John. He made “Another Side,” what he has referred to as his “country-and-western album,” and then it disappeared.“I completely forgot about it,” Nocentelli, 75, said on a video call, wearing a newsboy cap and shades at his home in New Orleans, noting that he didn’t even have a copy of the record. “It was like a distant memory. I didn’t remember the songs.”The quarter-inch master tapes of “Another Side,” out Friday in various formats after a 50-year delay, sat unreleased in storage for decades at Allen Toussaint’s Sea-Saint Recording Studio in New Orleans. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Sea-Saint — which housed numerous landmark recordings — was destroyed by floodwater, and its archives were reasonably presumed to have perished along with it.But about a quarter of the tapes at the facility were spared. And eventually the surviving material made its way to Los Angeles, where Bill Valenziano, who bought Sea-Saint in 1995, had it put into storage. After some missed payments and an auction in 2018, 16 boxes of master tapes bearing the Sea-Saint name landed at a swap meet in Torrance, Calif. When they were brought out for sale, a collector and D.J. named Mike Nishita was called over to take a look, and his eyes widened at the sight of the names: the Meters, Dr. John, Irma Thomas.“I didn’t really know about that studio at all,” Nishita, a soft-spoken individual known by some as “Hawaiian Mike,” said in a recent interview. (His brother is “Money Mark” Nishita, a keyboardist often referred to as the unofficial fourth member of the Beastie Boys.) “I just Googled ‘Sea-Saint,’ and was like, ‘Holy [expletive].’” He bought the lot for $100 a box, and got out of there before the seller could change his mind. Sifting through the music, he quickly found his favorite reel of the bunch: Nocentelli’s lost solo album, which no one else in the world seemed to know existed.“I immediately wanted to shut it off — like, someone has to hear this besides me,” he said, remembering when he hit play for the first time. “It kind of wasn’t fair that I get to listen to it.”Clockwise from left: Zigaboo Modeliste, Art Neville, George Porter Jr. and Leo Nocentelli of the Meters, known as the house band of New Orleans funk.Gilles Petard/Redferns, via Getty ImagesNishita was well aware of Nocentelli — as a member of the Meters, a group that made its name with infectious semi-instrumentals like “Cissy Strut” and “Look-Ka Py Py,” seven of which charted on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1969 and 1970. With Art Neville on keyboard, George Porter Jr. on bass, Zigaboo Modeliste on drums and Nocentelli on guitar, the Meters were just as busy behind the scenes, regularly playing as session musicians on a variety of Toussaint productions, such as Dr. John’s “Right Place, Wrong Time” and Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade.”But according to Nocentelli, his path might very well have gone in a completely different direction. “The Meters kind of happened by accident,” he said, noting that, growing up in New Orleans, he was more interested in becoming a jazz guitarist in the vein of Wes Montgomery. That was before he found himself scooped into the world of R&B, playing on Lee Dorsey’s Top 10 hit “Ya Ya” when he was 15, and supporting Otis Redding on tour at 16.Just as quickly as the Meters took off, though, there were problems that threatened their future. What the group has described as an unfavorable publishing and managerial arrangement with Toussaint and his business partner, Marshall Sehorn, limited the band’s royalties, and in 1971, the group’s label, Josie Records, went out of business. Around that point, the Meters went on a hiatus — and at home in the Seventh Ward, Nocentelli began noodling around with a nylon-string guitar.He was inspired by the sounds and stories of James Taylor’s 1970 album, “Sweet Baby James,” and wanted to craft his own take on the style: Catchy songs like “Pretty Mittie,” about a farmer’s plans to move to the city, and “Riverfront,” a working-class anthem inspired by the real life of Aaron Neville, Art’s brother. There were also somber songs about love and loss — and about the question of what success really means in the entertainment industry. “Reaching high but not getting nowhere,” he sings on “Getting Nowhere,” his trademark propulsive riffing replaced with understated strumming. “I must have gotten on the wrong cloud.”Initially, Nocentelli didn’t have any intention to record his solo music, which he didn’t tell anyone about. But being around the elegant and confident Toussaint ultimately changed his mind. “I really admired him,” Nocentelli said, clearly sentimental about their long, complicated friendship. “He was a huge influence on me with recording aspects of the business.”Snagging any opening he could at Cosimo Matassa’s Jazz City, the pre-eminent New Orleans recording studio before Sea-Saint opened in 1973, Nocentelli began recording his album, tapping those around him to play supporting parts: Toussaint on piano, Porter on bass, Modeliste and the highly regarded jazz player James Black on drums. All said, Nocentelli laid down nine originals and a cover of the Elton John single “Your Song,” which had then just been released.“We would be in the studio recording, not knowing what or who we were recording for,” Porter, 73, said on the phone from New Orleans of how swamped with sessions the band was during those years. “When Leo was reminding me that I’m playing on this record, I said, ‘Really?’”“There’s a certain spirituality about this that I feel,” Nocentelli said. “Things like this are very rare. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”Akasha Rabut for The New York TimesThe pieces had started to come together, but the album never went further than the rough recordings, which Nocentelli essentially viewed as demos at the time. The way he remembers it, his money was drying up, and the Meters were soon back together and busier than ever after signing to Warner Bros., leaving “Another Side” to pick up cobwebs. But Porter has a less charitable view of why he and his bandmates weren’t encouraged to branch out on their own and how a record like this could be left behind: “My gut feeling was that Marshall Sehorn did not at all want us to become so big that we weren’t under his thumb,” he said. “So him sitting on that project and making that disappear is not a surprise.”Either way, the Meters carried on into their major-label period, subsequently embracing songs with more traditional singing parts. Yet Nocentelli almost never took lead vocals while in the band, despite having proven more than capable during his solo foray. “I was always the shy guy,” he said. If you look, it’s hard to even find pictures of Nocentelli by himself in the Meters’ original run.As time has gone on, the main narratives of this era of New Orleans music have solidified, and some of the chapters have started to close; Sehorn died in 2006, Matassa in 2014, Toussaint in 2015 and Art Neville in 2019. (The Meters broke up in 1977; since the late ’80s, they have reunited off and on in various forms.) But when a new wrinkle in the timeline opened at that swap meet in Torrance, it offered a sideways glimpse at an alternate reality in which Nocentelli became a star in his own right.“There’s a certain spirituality about this that I feel,” Nocentelli said. “Things like this are very rare. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”In terms of finally giving “Another Side” the industry attention it previously missed, it was not difficult to find an interested party. Nishita is close friends with Mario Caldato Jr., a producer and engineer who’s worked with the Beastie Boys and knows Matt Sullivan, the founder of Light in the Attic Records. Sullivan was one of the first people invited to check out the collection, and soon set up the Nocentelli release. Right place, right time.“Every time I listen to this record, it’s like, how was this never released?” Sullivan said, speaking from Austin, Texas. “This should have been on the radio in the ’70s.”There are still approximately 3,000 more hours of Sea-Saint-related music sitting in Nishita’s garage, which he says includes an unreleased Meters album from their early days. The prospect of that particular one ever being released is far more precarious from a legal perspective than Nocentelli’s solo album, but if all principal parties can get on board, it could happen.For now, Nocentelli is giving his new role a try, embracing a spotlight that had flickered near him for so long. He’s even beginning to accept the imperfections of “Another Side” that still stick out when he listens, 50 years later. “I was hearing much more than what was there,” he said, explaining that he planned for the album to have horns, as well as additional instrumentation. “But that doesn’t mean that what was there wasn’t sufficient. Evidently it was. And it is.” More

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      The Moment That Janet Jackson’s Career Stalled and Justin Timberlake’s Soared

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      Jackson was vilified after her 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, while Timberlake’s popularity seemed to take off. Our new documentary examines how the superstars were treated after their unforgettable wardrobe malfunction.Reuters//Gary Hershorn (United States Entertainment)‘Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson’Producer/Director Jodi GomesReporter/Senior Producer Rachel AbramsReporter Alan LightWatch our new documentary on Friday, Nov. 19, at 10 p.m. on FX and streaming on Hulu.The term “wardrobe malfunction” has been part of our vocabulary ever since Janet Jackson’s right breast made a surprise appearance at the end of the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.When Justin Timberlake tore off part of Jackson’s bustier in front of 70,000 people in Houston’s Reliant Stadium, over 140 million people watching on TV gasped — if they noticed.It happened so quickly (the moment lasted nine-sixteenths of one second) that even some of the halftime show’s producers missed it until their phones, and phones all over America, started ringing.“Did you see what just happened?” Jim Steeg, the National Football League’s director of special events, asked Salli Frattini, the MTV executive in charge of the halftime show. She had to rewind the tape to be sure.“We looked at the close-up shot. We looked at the wide shot, and we all stood there in shock,” Frattini recalled in a new documentary by The New York Times.Was it an accident? Was it planned? Was it a stunt?The ensuing uproar — from the N.F.L., from the Federal Communications Commission, from politicians and their allies — was the peak of a national debate at the time over what’s acceptable on America’s airwaves, and who gets to decide.In our documentary, premiering Friday at 10 p.m. Eastern time on FX and Hulu, we hear from the former commissioner of the N.F.L., Paul Tagliabue, and the MTV executives who were in charge of producing the halftime show. And we talk to some of the politicians who seized on the moment to try to rein in content that they deemed inappropriate.We also look back at Jackson’s long career, which never seemed to recover, while Timberlake’s soared. And we consider how issues of race and sexism mixed to consume one superstar’s legacy and propel another’s career to the next level.Supervising Producer Liz DayProducers Fred Charleston, Jr., Anthony McLemore, Timothy MoranCo-Producer Melanie BencosmeDirector of Photography Asad FaruqiVideo Editor Geoff O’Brien“The New York Times Presents” is a series of documentaries representing the unparalleled journalism and insight of The New York Times, bringing viewers close to the essential stories of our time. More

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      1,200 Miles From Kabul, a Celebrated Music School Reunites

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      Students and teachers of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music and their families, almost 200 in the past week, have fled to Qatar to escape Taliban restrictions on music.The plane from Kabul touched down in Qatar around 6 p.m. on Tuesday. Two 13-year-old musicians — Zohra and Farida, a trumpet player and a violinist — disembarked and ran toward their teacher. Then, witnesses said, they began to cry.The girls were among the last students affiliated with the Afghanistan National Institute of Music — a renowned school that has been a target of the Taliban in the past in part for its efforts to promote the education of girls — to be evacuated from Kabul since the Taliban regained power in August.They joined 270 students, teachers and their relatives who, fearing that the Taliban might seek to punish them for their ties to music, have made the journey from Kabul to Doha, the capital of Qatar, with the first group leaving in early October. Most arrived in the past week, boarding four special flights arranged by the government of Qatar, after months of delays. They eventually plan to resettle in Portugal, where they expect to be granted asylum.“It’s such a huge relief,” Ahmad Naser Sarmast, the head of the school, said in a telephone interview on his way back from greeting the girls at the airport on Tuesday. “They can dream again. They can hope.”The musicians are among hundreds of artists — actors, writers, painters and photographers — who have fled Afghanistan in recent weeks. Many have left because they worry about their safety and see no way of earning money as the arts come under government scrutiny.The Taliban is wary of nonreligious music, which they prohibited outright when they led Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. While the new government has not issued an official ban, radio stations have stopped playing some songs, and musicians have taken to hiding their instruments. Some have reported being attacked or threatened for performing. A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in an interview with The New York Times in August that “music is forbidden in Islam” but that “we’re hoping that we can persuade people not to do such things, instead of pressuring them.”The Afghanistan National Institute of Music had long been a target of the Taliban. The school embraced change, adopting a coeducational model and devoting resources to studying both traditional Afghan music and Western music. The Taliban issued frequent threats against the school; Sarmast was wounded by a Taliban suicide bomber in 2014..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-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;}The school became known for supporting the education of girls, who make up about a third of the student body. The school’s all-female orchestra, Zohra, toured the world and was hailed as a symbol of a modern, more progressive Afghanistan.When the Taliban consolidated control over the country in the summer, the school was forced to shut down rapidly. Taliban officials began using the campus as a command center. Students and staff mostly stayed home, worried they would be attacked for going outside. Some stopped playing music and began learning other skills, such as weaving.In the final days of the American war in Afghanistan, the school’s supporters led a frantic attempt to evacuate students and staff. At one point, seven busloads of people trying to flee waited at the airport in Kabul for 17 hours, but were unable to board their plane when the gate was closed amid fears of a terrorist attack. After that, the school began evacuating people more slowly and in small groups. But difficulties in obtaining passports left some musicians stuck for months in Afghanistan.Understand the Taliban Takeover in AfghanistanCard 1 of 6Who are the Taliban? More

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      Dave Frishberg, Writer of Songs Sardonic and Nostalgic, Dies at 88

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      A gifted jazz pianist and a singer with a limited range but a distinctive voice, he wrote mostly for grown-ups but reached his largest audience on “Schoolhouse Rock!”Dave Frishberg, the jazz songwriter whose sardonic wit as a lyricist and melodic cleverness as a composer placed him in the top echelon of his craft, died on Wednesday in Portland, Ore. He was 88.His wife, April Magnusson, confirmed the death.Mr. Frishberg, who also played piano and sang, was an anomaly, if not an anachronism, in American popular music: an accomplished, unregenerate jazz pianist who managed to outrun the eras of rock, soul, disco, punk and hip-hop by writing hyper-literate songs that harked back to Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer, by way of Stephen Sondheim.His songwriting wit was for grown-ups, yet he reached his widest audience with sharpshooting ditties for kids as a regular musical contributor to ABC-TV’s long-running Saturday morning animated show “Schoolhouse Rock!”Merely being aware of Dave Frishberg and his songs conveyed an in-the-know sophistication. He poked fun at this self-congratulatory hipness in his lyrics for “I’m Hip,” a classic of clueless with-it-ness that he wrote to a melody by his fellow jazz songwriter Bob Dorough:See, I’m hip. I’m no square.I’m alert, I’m awake, I’m aware.I am always on the scene.Making the rounds, digging the sounds.I read People magazine.‘Cuz I’m hip.Mr. Frishberg’s original lyric for “I’m Hip,” written in 1966, was “I read Playboy magazine,” but he later changed it.People magazine never did get around to profiling him (though it did briefly review one of his albums in the 1980s). But his niche in the niche-songwriting world of the cabaret smart set (when such a breed still existed) was lofty. Superb saloon singers came to be identified with the Frishberg tunes they sang. One of those singers was Blossom Dearie, whose rendition of his “Peel Me a Grape” was, in Mr. Frishberg’s view, definitive.Still, no one quite sang a Dave Frishberg song like Dave Frishberg, with his thin, reedy voice and compellingly constricted vocal range. Mr. Frishberg’s performance of his acerbic paean to “My Attorney Bernie” was unsurpassed, particularly his laconic crooning of the song’s refrain:Bernie tells me what to doBernie lays it on the lineBernie says we sue, we sueBernie says we sign, we sign.Mr. Frishberg’s songwriting gift extended well beyond the satirical jab. He composed some beautiful ballads, and he was an elegant nostalgist who wrote longingly (though also knowingly) about the mists of time and loss. There was the bittersweet Frishberg of “Do You Miss New York?,” the aching Frishberg of “Sweet Kentucky Ham” and the ingeniously eloquent Frishberg of “Van Lingle Mungo,” a touching wisp of a ballad constructed solely from the strung-together names of long-ago major league baseball players.Mr. Frishberg at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan in 2002. His niche in the cabaret songwriting world was lofty. Richard Termine for The New York TimesDavid Lee Frishberg was born on March 23, 1933, in St. Paul, Minn., the youngest of three sons of Harry and Sarah (Cohen) Frishberg. His father, who owned a clothing store, was an émigré from Poland; his mother was a native-born Minnesotan.He began sketching athletes from news photos when he was 7 and hoped to become a sports illustrator, but he also listened closely to music growing up and could sing the entire score of “The Mikado” and other Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. His brother Mort, a self-taught blues piano player, soon steered him toward jazz and blues records, and to the keyboard, where the teenage Mr. Frishberg replicated by ear the boogie-woogie styles of Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis before discovering the modernist pianism of bebop.“Jazz musicians were hip,” Mr. Frishberg wrote in his memoir, “My Dear Departed Past” (2017); “they were funny, they were sensitive, they were clannish, and they seemed to have the best girlfriends.”After graduating from St. Paul Central High School, Mr. Frishberg briefly attended Stanford University before returning home to enroll at the University of Minnesota. Though he was already a semiregular on the local jazz scene, his sight reading skills were too poor for a formal music degree. Instead he flirted with majoring in psychology before gravitating to journalism and securing his degree in 1955.He served two years in the Air Force as a recruiter, to fulfill his R.O.T.C. obligations, and then, in 1957, was hired by the New York radio station WNEW to write advertising scripts and other material for its disc jockeys and announcers. He quickly forsook WNEW to write catalog copy for RCA Victor Records, then finally stepped out as a working solo pianist with a late-night slot at the Duplex cabaret in Greenwich Village.Mr. Frishberg became an in-demand sideman at jazz spots like Birdland and the Village Vanguard for jazz luminaries including the saxophonists Ben Webster, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims and the drummer Gene Krupa. He also accompanied an array of great singers, including Carmen McRae, Anita O’Day and, for one dizzying night while backing Ms. O’Day at the Half Note, a timid Judy Garland, who tremulously sat in and sang “Over the Rainbow,” then asked Mr. Frishberg to become her musical director. He demurred.“I’m Just a Bill,” which Mr. Frishberg wrote for the animated children’s show “Schoolhouse Rock!,” brought him unexpected acclaim and long-lasting residuals for what he later ruefully acknowledged to be his “most well-known song.”Kari Rene Hall/Los Angeles Times via Getty ImagesIn the early 1960s, Mr. Frishberg began writing songs — “all kinds of songs,” as he recalled in “My Dear Departed Past.” When the singer Fran Jeffries asked if he could write her a bit of special material, something she could “slink around while singing,” he responded with “Peel Me a Grape”:Peel me a grapeCrush me some iceSkin me a peach, save the fuzz for my pillowStart me a smokeTalk to me niceYou gotta wine meAnd dine me.Written in 1962, “Peel Me a Grape” became Mr. Frishberg’s first published tune — though the publishing company that acquired it, Frank Music, owned by the illustrious Frank Loesser, did little with it. “As far as I knew, the song was a pretty confidential item,” Mr. Frishberg later wrote, “until Blossom Dearie’s version.” Still, it launched Mr. Frishberg as a songwriter.“I’m Hip” followed in 1966, leading to a swelling portfolio of songs. The demos that he cut to teach singers his songs began to tickle the insular jazz recording industry’s ear. Finally, Mr. Frishberg went into the studio himself to record an album, consisting of his own compositions. The record was released in 1970 on the recently formed CTI label under the title “Oklahoma Toad.”Mr. Frishberg decamped to Los Angeles in 1971, ostensibly to write material for “The Funny Side,” a new NBC variety show starring Gene Kelly. The show lasted only nine episodes, but work as a studio musician kept Mr. Frishberg afloat. He also began to perform his songs regularly in local clubs.In 1975, Mr. Dorough invited him to contribute to “Schoolhouse Rock!,” for which Mr. Dorough was the musical director and one of the writers. Mr. Frishberg’s first contribution, in the show’s third season, was “I’m Just a Bill,” an explanatory swinger about the legislative process sung by the jazz trumpeter and vocalist Jack Sheldon. It brought him unexpected acclaim and long-lasting residuals for what he later ruefully acknowledged to be his “most well-known song.”“The Dave Frishberg Songbook, Volume No. 1” earned Mr. Frishberg the first of his four Grammy Award nominations. “The Dave Frishberg Songbook, Volume No. 1” garnered a 1982 Grammy Award nomination for best male jazz vocal performance. The next year, “The Dave Frishberg Songbook, Volume No. 2” did the same. In support of that album, Mr. Frishberg appeared on “The Tonight Show.” Two more Frishberg albums were nominated for Grammys, “Live at Vine Street” in 1985 and “Can’t Take You Nowhere” in 1987.Mr. Frishberg’s marriage in 1959 to Stella Giammasi ended in divorce. He later married Cynthia Wagman.In 1986, he, his wife and their year-old son, Harry, moved to Portland, fleeing the freeway traffic and what he once referred to as the “malignant environment” of Los Angeles. He lived on in Portland, more or less contentedly, for the rest of his life, producing a second son, Max; divorcing for a second time; and, in 2000, marrying Ms. Magnusson. In addition to her, he is survived by his sons.In Portland, he collaborated regularly with the vocalist Rebecca Kilgore. As often as not, though, Mr. Frishberg reveled in playing solo piano in crowded hotel bars. When ill health overtook him late in life, he never stopped writing, just as he had mordantly predicted in 1981 in “My Swan Song”:Once I popped them out like wafflesThe good ones and the awfulsA new one every day. But nowI find I’m uninspired, my wig’s no longer wiredI’ve nothing left to say. …But I’ll say it anyway.Alex Traub More

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      Yoko Kanno composed the eclectic score for 'Cowboy Bebop'

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      Yoko Kanno has become one of Japan’s foremost composers since she created the eclectic score for the anime series “Cowboy Bebop.” She returned for Netflix’s live-action version.The anime series “Cowboy Bebop” debuted in Japan in 1998, combining futuristic space travel with Spaghetti Western grit and the slickness of film noir. In 2001, Cartoon Network aired an English dubbed version, introducing American audiences to the suave yet troubled bounty hunter Spike Spiegel and the ragtag crew of the spaceship Bebop.The animated import also acquainted U.S. viewers with the composer Yoko Kanno, whose swinging earworm of a theme song became among the most recognizable in anime. Her eclectic compositions — with their percolating jazz and doleful sax solos and languorous blues harmonica riffs — were an essential part of the cult hit, helping its director, Shinichiro Watanabe, set the mood for every botched payday, steely-eyed showdown, lovelorn flashback and fast-paced space chase. The show has since become internationally known as a top-tier anime, thanks in large part to her bold and brassy sound.In Netflix’s “Cowboy Bebop,” John Cho (bottom, with Alex Hassell) embodies the bounty hunter Spike.NetflixSo when the production teams at Tomorrow Studios and Midnight Radio decided in 2019 to create a live-action adaptation, the showrunner André Nemec believed it was “critical” to convince Kanno to return as composer, he said.“The fans of ‘Bebop’ know how important the sonic identity of the show is,” he said. “It’s a beloved anime, so there was a real effort to get that right.”The live-action series premiers Friday on Netflix, with Kanno once again overseeing the score. In the span of four months, she rerecorded key original tracks and crafted new pieces for the 10 hourlong episodes, which include Rat Pack-era jazz, Latin horns and even ’90s alt-rock. A soundtrack for the new series debuts on streaming platforms that same day.“She immediately started spinning her magic,” Nemec said of her return. “She really understands storytelling and she lived in those characters.”The original Spike, as seen in “Cowboy Bebop: The Movie.”Bandai Visual Co. Ltd.But it’s not as if Kanno was waiting idly by the phone. In the 20 years since the original show’s maiden voyage, she has become one of Japan’s foremost composers, creating the soundtrack for Watanabe’s acclaimed series “Kids on the Slope,” as well as music for other anime, video games and films, and album tracks for J-Pop stars. In 2019, she composed the piece “Ray of Water,” which was performed at the enthronement ceremony of Naruhito, the emperor of Japan. (She also conducted the orchestra’s performance.)Still, the decision to return to orbit with the Bebop gang was easy, she explained: “I’m a die-hard fan of the show.”On a video call from Tokyo, with the assistance of her translator, Kanehira Mitani, Kanno talked about reuniting with her band, Seatbelts, to rerecord tracks from the original series, and about engaging all five senses in order to create an interstellar soundscape. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What was your reaction when you were approached to score the new series?The first response was surprise. Since the original anime series was from 20 years ago, that they would be making this live-action version now — I was surprised at the courage they had.How would you compare working on the new show to your experience back then?In the anime version, I didn’t really get any direction from Mr. Watanabe. So what I did was just create all these pieces of music, and then the director and creative team would piece it together and put it into the anime. I’d heard that was the kind of approach that Ennio Morricone used back when he was working on western movies. But in the live-action, we actually had to look at the material and spot where to put the music in.How did that work in practice?I received the script three years ago. Then the first time I actually saw the visuals that were shot was around April this year. During the time in between, I would kind of imagine what the music would be like and gestate those ideas. Once I saw the actual footage, those ideas went away and I started all over again.What changed once you saw the footage?In the anime, the main image that you have is Spike Spiegel, who’s lost all his emotions due to his traumatic past. He’s going through the arc of putting himself back together as he goes on all these dangerous adventures. That was the image I had in the beginning, but when I actually saw John Cho in the footage, I saw more subtle tones in his acting. It was more like he has this weakness that he holds and is trying to reconcile. So that made me change the approach to the music as well.Kanno crafted new pieces for Netflix’s adaptation and also rerecorded tracks from the anime series with her old band, Seatbelts. “We got a more ‘mature’ version of the original music,” she said.Tracy Nguyen for The New York TimesYou worked in genres like ska and dub that weren’t featured in the original. What prompted you to add those sounds?In the anime, there’s not really much killing. So in the live-action, where there is more, I had extensive discussions with André about how to musically represent that. When those scenes did happen, I was very aware of trying to alleviate it, to make sure the killing doesn’t seem too graphic or to make it seem ironic or comedic.And you revisited some of the original songs, too. What was it like to team up with Seatbelts to rerecord those?We got a more “mature” version of the original music. It’s kind of a miracle to have the same artists who played 20 years ago still in their A-game and in great shape, performing again. It’s a very rare thing.Were the “Bebop” sounds familiar to you once you got started, or did you have to get reacquainted with them?Since the recording started in April, it was a really tight time frame. We’d have to finish the score for one episode in two weeks. It was a really hard sprint, so I didn’t have the luxury to take time and go back to think about what the [original] music was. That sort of intense, time-sensitive environment was similar to when I was doing the anime. I would run through it, not thinking too much, just kind of “in the zone.” Not too much good stuff comes out if you’re overthinking things. Spike has that personality, as well: “Don’t think, feel.”Did Covid precautions impact your recording sessions?What would’ve happened is I would fly to L.A. to attend all the recording sessions. But since the pandemic happened, I had to rethink my approach. I did try a couple of remote recording sessions, but inevitably, the time lag, even if it’s just a split second, would just be unbearable. If I’m playing something and I don’t get live feedback, my motivation drops really sharply.So I ended up doing recording sessions in Japan, where I could attend and actually see the whole thing. What turned out to be a benefit to the show was that musicians who would otherwise be too busy to attend the scoring sessions were able to because all their other gigs were gone due to the pandemic.Was your creative process affected by the pandemic, as well?Yes. In coming up with music, I usually get inspiration from smells, or tastes, or feelings, and not necessarily from audiovisual stimuli. If I wanted to express “the sea,” I would go to the sea, dive in and feel the waves and the overall atmosphere. The whole digital environment made that a challenge this time.So you weren’t able to go out and engage your senses the way you normally would when you’re composing?Exactly. Over the course of four and a half months of music production, Zoom meetings and exchanging demo pieces, I stayed almost entirely in a basement studio. Little by little, I would start feeling frustrated and unfulfilled, and then I knew that must be how the main characters are feeling. Feeling disconnected from Earth.So when composing for [the show’s] different locations, I would dive into my memory — from my experience being in the graffiti-filled dangerous areas in New York, or the atmosphere in Tijuana, Texas and Arizona, with the sandy feel, the smell of machine oil and the taste of food made of artificial ingredients.What other sensory ties to “Cowboy Bebop” characters and settings inspired you?It’s the food they’re having to fill their empty stomachs, as well as the cheap drinks. The ephemeral sense of not thinking much about the future. The sense of them treating their vehicles roughly, like when I used to drive a really old, ramshackle truck. Artificial light striking into the darkness of space, like arriving in Las Vegas from L.A. at night.In terms of how the world was built in the live-action version, it has a very steampunk usage of old materials, and you have a sense of grittiness. I was very conscious of the sense of rust that was present throughout the whole show. So I would use that secondhand kind of feel for the music, as well. I would do a recording in one take and then add these rusty, almost dirty sound effects.How did you feel when you saw the finished product?I was excited and super full of pride. I imagine a lot of fans are worried about how the creative team is going to handle this world that they’ve adored so much. To them, I’d say it’s the same thing, but different! And, really, it’s just fun to watch. I hope the show goes on and on. I want to see Faye [a bounty hunter in the show] grow up and become an old woman, still shooting her gun and being cocky, with her children running around. Yeah, I want to see that! More