Music

In “The 33 ⅓ Podcast,” the acclaimed producer finds himself in some unexpected pairings to explore classic albums from Steely Dan, Janet Jackson and more.When the music producer Prince Paul received a call inquiring if he’d be game to host a podcast for Spotify, his immediate reaction was shock. Why, he wondered, would the company want him to host “The 33 ⅓ Podcast,” its new show exploring individual works of classic albums, based on the Bloomsbury book series?Never mind that Prince Paul is considered a music nerd’s music nerd, best known for his influential studio wizardry with the hip-hop trio De La Soul. His eclectic, seemingly haphazard, career trajectory may not have made him an obvious choice for the show. Though he’s produced albums for Vernon Reid and MC Paul Barman, assembled the horrorcore group Gravediggaz and released albums of his own like “A Prince Among Thieves,” his music credits over the past decade and a half had slowed to a trickle. One of his more-prominent roles during this time: serving as the co-host of “Ego Trip’s The (White) Rapper Show,” a short-lived reality competition program on VH1.Prince Paul, born Paul Huston, didn’t bother asking the Spotify emissaries why they chose him. He said he didn’t want to ruin the moment with too much probing. But the first episode of the show, which debuted in September, illuminates the company’s thinking. Prince Paul welcomed Posdnuos from De La Soul to chat about “Aja,” the 1977 album by Steely Dan, known for its meticulous, jazz-inflected rock compositions. What might seem at first like an odd pairing of host, guest and album is actually an inspired one.On “3 Feet High and Rising,” De La Soul’s debut album that Prince Paul produced, the band sampled the duo’s song “Peg,” not a particularly common, or welcome, move in the rap world in 1989. As the two men banter and reminisce, listeners get a sense of Steely Dan’s influence on De La Soul and how sampling “Peg” made perfect sense for the album they were creating.“What made you pick that song in particular, especially for our first album?” Prince Paul asked.“Just as a single it was a song that we heard and we felt, and it felt good, and it felt happy,” Posdnuos said, remembering how “Peg” just clicked for him when he first heard it as an 8-year-old in the Bronx. “But it was also very rhythmic, like the bass driving. It felt like an R&B record, to be quite honest. You could easily connect to it.”“Did it feel dated or anything at the time?” Prince Paul asked in a follow-up question.“Not at all,” Posdnuos said. “It felt like a classic joint; it’s timeless. I look at that song as a timeless record to now be applied to what we were doing. I didn’t look at it as an older record to now breathe some life into it.”“33 ⅓” is the latest music-focused production from Spotify, joining the likes of ““Black Girl Songbook” and “No Skips with Jinx and Shea” and fitting snugly into Spotify’s larger podcast ambitions. Other episodes in the 12-episode season feature an eclectic mix of albums and guests including Janet Jackson’s “Velvet Rope” and the singer-songwriter Victoria Monét, David Bowie’s “Low” and the rapper Danny Brown, and Metallica’s “Metallica” (best known as the Black Album) and the Hole drummer Patty Schemel.Deciding which albums to feature — there are more than 150 books in the Bloomsbury series — was not “super calculated,” said Yasi Salek, the show’s producer. Instead, the focus is on “what would be really fun to bring to life.” Choosing the guests, however, involved a more thoughtful process. Salek said she looked for guests who knew the artist, were involved in the making of the project or have talked about the album’s influence on them. In the “Velvet Rope” episode, Monét tells Prince Paul how Jackson was a role model for her. “I needed to see that as a young girl just to be able to look at her and see myself,” she said.In keeping with his uncalculated approach to his career, Prince Paul is hands off when it comes to the decision-making process, saying he’s open to whatever is sent his way. Which helps explain the riotous, and expletive-filled, exploration of Guns N’ Roses’ “Use Your Illusion” I & II with Sebastian Bach of Skid Row and Riki Rachtman, co-owner of the Hollywood nightclub The Cathouse (a magnet for heavy metal bands till its closing in 1993). It’s a record that doesn’t quite fall in Prince Paul’s wheelhouse — he opens the episode by letting the audience know that his “knowledge of metal and rock are limited” — but the choice underscores his willingness to be a student.Hosting the show, Prince Paul said, is “forcing me to learn classic records and appreciate music all over again.”That willingness to try something new seems to be the fuel that has propelled him to each juncture in his career — whether that’s producing comedy albums for Chris Rock or a hip-hop children’s concept album about kid dinosaurs, serving as one half of the genre-bending duo Handsome Boy Modeling School or composing the score for last year’s six-part documentary “Who Killed Malcolm X?”“Everybody wants to do whatever’s cool,” Prince Paul said. That’s not his style. “This is what I feel like doing,” he said. “And as unpopular as it is, as nerdy as I am, I’ll just be that, but I’ll be me dictating me. And that’s, I think, the most important thing.”“There’s something to be said about going out there and not knowing where this path will take you,” he added. More

Listen to Anna Netrebko’s new solo recording, Brahms clarinet and piano works, and Renaissance quartet arrangements.‘Amata dalle Tenebre’Anna Netrebko, soprano; Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala; Riccardo Chailly, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)The soprano Anna Netrebko has always been more satisfying in person — her voice blooms in the vast space of an opera house — than on recordings, where her super-wide vibrato feels, in close-up, less expressive than unsteady. On her new solo album she struggles to sustain the long, lush lines of “Es gibt ein Reich,” from “Ariadne auf Naxos”; soft phrases waver in “Ritorna vincitor” (“Aida”) and “When I am laid in earth” (“Dido and Aeneas”); “Un bel dì,” from “Madama Butterfly,” is shaky from start to finish; high notes are difficult throughout. She endures “Einsam in trüben Tagen” (“Lohengrin”) with steely determination, and the exuberant “Dich, teure Halle” (“Tannhäuser”) similarly seems to press her to her limits.But there is still time for Netrebko, 50, to do a staged “Queen of Spades,” excerpted with focused passion here. And the “Liebestod” from “Tristan und Isolde,” while audibly challenging for her, is movingly — and, at moments, ecstatically — negotiated. Given a meaty stretch to shine in the “Tristan” prelude, the orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala, under its music director, Riccardo Chailly, is otherwise mellow and very much in the background. “Sola, perduta, abbandonata” (“Manon Lescaut”) and especially “Tu che le vanità” (“Don Carlo”) convey, with generous, fiery, largely secure singing, the urgency of Netrebko’s best live performances. ZACHARY WOOLFEBach, HandelSabine Devieilhe, soprano; Pygmalion; Raphaël Pichon, conductor (Erato)Recorded in a Paris church days after a lockdown in France ended last December, this moving release of Bach cantatas and Handel arias is surely one of the most affecting albums to emerge from the pandemic. Opening with the soprano Sabine Devieilhe and the lutenist Thomas Dunford bewailing Christ’s agonies on the cross in the song “Mein Jesu! was vor Seelenweh,” and ending in a blaze of trumpet-topped praise with the “Alleluja” that concludes the cantata “Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen,” the album’s narrative arc — from sinfulness and repentance to faith and joy — is immensely satisfying.Much of that is because of the supreme detailing that Pichon (Devieilhe’s husband) draws from his starry ensemble Pygmalion, including the benediction that Dunford wraps around Cleopatra in “Piangerò,” the second of her laments from “Giulio Cesare”; Matthieu Boutineau’s feistily impulsive organ solo in the sinfonia from “Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal”; and the ethereal, almost cleansing violin of Sophie Gent in “Tu del Ciel ministro eletto,” the heart-stopping plea for mercy from “Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno.” Devieilhe is at the core of it all, wielding her voice with flashing sharpness one moment, crushing tenderness the next. DAVID ALLEN‘Here With You’Anthony McGill, clarinet; Gloria Chien, piano (Cedille)Brahms had all but decided to retire from composing when, in the early 1890s, he became friendly with the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld and was inspired to write a series of major works, including two clarinet sonatas that have long been mainstays of the repertory.Anthony McGill, the New York Philharmonic’s principal clarinet, and the splendid pianist Gloria Chien offer vibrant and insightful performances of the sonatas on their new album. These works, like much of late Brahms, can come across as weighty and thick-textured, but this duo brings wonderful transparency to the scores. Even in dark, stormy episodes, McGill and Chien play with unforced fervor and eloquence.Particularly impressive is the way they convey the coherence of the final movement of the second sonata, written as a theme and variations — music that often seems awkwardly intricate, with curious turns and twists. The album also includes a glowing account of Jessie Montgomery’s mellow “Peace,” as well as an ebullient, dazzling yet unshowy performance of Weber’s virtuosic Grand Duo Concertant, which here sounds aptly grand. ANTHONY TOMMASINI‘Of All Joys’Attacca Quartet (Sony Classical)The Attacca Quartet’s name comes from the musical term for playing without a pause. And the group seems to be taking that literally: Their new album, “Of All Joys,” is their second this year after releasing their Sony Classical debut, “Real Life,” in July.“Real Life” was a shot of adrenaline, an electronic dance record that remixed music by the likes of Flying Lotus and took a refreshingly broad view of the string quartet form. “Of All Joys” — a juxtaposition of Renaissance arrangements and contemporary works by Arvo Pärt and Philip Glass — couldn’t be more different, yet its conceptual swerve from “Real Life” is fitting for an ensemble equally comfortable in Haydn and Caroline Shaw.Glass’s “Mishima” Quartet is the only proper string quartet on the new album, which takes its title from a line in the John Dowland song “Flow My Tears.” The rest is adaptation — an insistence on the elasticity of music, borne out with rich, organ-like sonorities in pieces like the Dowland or John Bennet’s “Weep, O Mine Eyes.”With a teeming “Mishima” at its heart, the album is also a testament to how few ingredients are needed to inspire emotional intensity — as in the players’ sudden shifts, during that quartet’s final movement, between churning arpeggios and streaks of lyricism. At the end of Pärt’s frosty “Fratres,” you might find yourself trying to reconcile the album’s title with its solemn sound world. But perhaps joy is something beyond mood; it may simply lie in the making of, and listening to, music. JOSHUA BARONE‘Phoenix’Stewart Goodyear, piano (Bright Shiny Things)Not many artists would place Mussorgsky, Debussy, Jennifer Higdon and Anthony Davis on the same album. But the pianist Stewart Goodyear intriguingly locates in all of them — as well as in two pieces by Goodyear himself, inspired by his Trinidadian roots — the fundamental influence of Liszt.Goodyear’s playing here has both virtuosic flash and deeply considered feeling. When approaching Davis’s “Middle Passage” — after the poem of the same name by Robert Hayden — he handles the more improvisatory sections with a pugilistic force indebted to Davis’s own 1980s reading on the Gramavision label. But Goodyear also treats Davis with a meditative touch that calls to mind the lush rendition of “Middle Passage” recorded by Ursula Oppens, who commissioned the piece.The final line of Hayden’s poem, “Voyage through death to life upon these shores,” gives a sense of the emotional range of the rest of the album. Selections from Debussy gambol and ruminate; Higdon’s “Secret and Glass Gardens” moves from a guarded interiority to brash, attention-grabbing declarations. And Goodyear’s performance of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” likewise covers much ground, including a delightful “Ballet of Unhatched Chicks” and a stately “Great Gate of Kiev.” SETH COLTER WALLS More

Janet Rollé, general manager of Beyoncé’s entertainment firm, will lead the dance company as it works to recover from the pandemic.A leader of Beyoncé’s business empire will serve as the next chief executive of American Ballet Theater, the dance company announced on Tuesday.Janet Rollé, general manager of Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncé’s media and management company, will in January assume the role of chief executive and executive director of Ballet Theater, one of the nation’s most prestigious ballet companies. Rollé, 59, who is Black, will be the first person of color to lead the company.In a statement, she said she would seek to “preserve and extend the legacy of American Ballet Theater, and to ensure its future prosperity, cultural impact and relevance.”“To come full circle and be in a position to give back to the art that has given me so much is a source of unbridled and immense joy,” said Rollé, who has long had an interest in dance and was 8 when her mother, an immigrant from Jamaica, took her to her first class.Rollé will face several immediate challenges, including helping Ballet Theater recover from the turmoil of the pandemic, which resulted in the cancellation of two seasons and cost the company millions of dollars in anticipated ticket revenue and touring fees. The pandemic has brought fresh urgency to the company’s efforts to attract new audiences and expand its pool of donors.The company is also searching for an artistic director to replace Kevin McKenzie, who plans to leave next year after three decades in the position.Andrew Barth, chairman of Ballet Theater’s board, said Rollé’s experience in marketing and strategy would be an asset. She has spent most of her career in the media sector, holding senior positions at CNN, Black Entertainment Television and AOL. She also sits on the board of BuzzFeed.“She is brimming with ideas to lead A.B.T. into the next decade, all while respecting Ballet Theater’s history and legacy,” Barth said.Rollé succeeds Kara Medoff Barnett, who stepped down earlier this year to take a role at First Republic Bank. More

Elevator Repair Service will premiere a show inspired by Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” and the Classical Theater of Harlem’s hip-hop-infused “Seize the King” gets an encore.Numerous high-profile Shakespeare productions will fill New York stages next year.Among them will be “Seize the King,” Will Power’s contemporary spin on “Richard III” that was staged by the Classical Theater of Harlem in Marcus Garvey Park last summer, which is likely the only production that has a courting scene in a bathtub and that sprinkles in references to birth control and eating sushi with a fork.The 95-minute, hip-hop-infused reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s classic will return from March 3 to March 13, as part of New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts’s new season, which was announced on Tuesday. Carl Cofield, who directed the summer production, will return as director.In her review of last summer’s outdoor staging, the New York Times critic Laura Collins-Hughes deemed the show a Critic’s Pick, praising its humorous reimagining of the classic characters. The production “contained multitudes of beauty,” she wrote.Before “Seize the King,” the Skirball will kick off its season with the world premiere of Elevator Repair Service’s “Seagull,” inspired by Anton Chekhov’s classic drama “The Seagull” and directed by John Collins (Feb. 2-20). Elevator Repair Service, a veteran theater company known for its unconventional takes on classic literary texts, staged “Gatz,” an eight-hour reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” at the Skirball in 2019.“‘Seagull’ isn’t a marathon” like “Gatz,” Jay Wegman, Skirball’s director, said of the new production, which runs about two and a half hours. “But it’s going to be whacked out in a wonderful way.”The Skirball has also lined up the world premiere of an interactive online experience called “I Agree to the Terms” (March 25-April 3), created by the theater company Builders Association with input from “microworkers” who develop Amazon’s algorithms. Audiences will complete virtual training sessions with these workers — taking them inside a sprawling and largely unregulated industry of people who earn pennies per click while completing assignments that are repetitive, boring, maddening and sometimes disturbing.“They’ve done a few workshops, and it’s anxiety-provoking in these sessions,” said Wegman, who added that the show becomes a competition among audience members. “You’re constantly being watched and counted and manipulated by the algorithm, so it’s very timely.”Rounding out the Skirball’s season are a concert by the Spanish flamenco singer Miguel Poveda, who will make his New York City solo debut (April 7-8); the world premiere of David Dorfman Dance’s “(A)Way Out Of My Body” (April 22-23); the New York premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun’s “Zolle” and “A Cockroach’s Tarantella,” presented with International Contemporary Ensemble (April 29-30); and another New York premiere, the choreographer and MacArthur fellow Eiko Otake’s “The Duet Project: Distance is Malleable” (April 14-17).A full season lineup is available at nyuskirball.org. More

“Red (Taylor’s Version)” had the equivalent of 605,000 sales in the United States. On next week’s album chart, Adele’s “30” may reach one million sales.At the start of 2020, Taylor Swift’s itinerary for the near future looked simple enough.She planned to tour that summer to support her latest No. 1 album, “Lover.” And although Swift had said she would be rerecording her old albums after the sale of her former record company, she gave no indication of when. So there was little reason to expect any imminent new music from Swift, who had long stuck to a regimen of one studio album every few years.But 2020 and 2021 have seen a remarkable flurry of recording activity from Swift, and record-breaking chart success. Last year came two quarantine albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore,” and this year she has been focused on her rerecordings — meticulous re-creations of her earlier work, casting the act as empowering business move, retribution against the investors that now control some of her original recordings, and an opportunity to revisit youthful themes with a more mature eye.“Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” came in April, and now “Red (Taylor’s Version)” has become Swift’s fourth No. 1 album in 16 months, which Billboard says is the fastest run in the 65-year history of its album chart. Since “Folklore” came out in July 2020, Swift has held the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s album chart a total of 15 times.“Red (Taylor’s Version)” had the equivalent of 605,000 sales in the United States in its first week, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. That total includes 303 million streams and 369,000 copies sold as a complete package. It sold 114,000 copies on vinyl LP — which Swift released as a $50 set of four discs at 45 r.p.m. — which is the most that any album has sold on vinyl since at least 1991, when SoundScan, MRC’s predecessor, began reporting reliable data on record sales.Among the highlights of the new “Red” is a 10-minute version of her song “All Too Well,” with added lyrics that give more depth to the story of a failed romance. Swift made a short film of this long version, performed it on “Saturday Night Live” and released two additional recordings of it last week.The new “All Too Well” also becomes Swift’s eighth No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, with multiple new recordings of the song — but not its 2012 original — counting toward its total of 54 million streams, in addition to downloads and radio plays.Swift now has 10 LPs that have gone to No. 1, tying her with Elvis Presley, Eminem, Drake and Kanye West. The Beatles still rule that list with 19 chart-topping titles, followed by Jay-Z with 14 and Bruce Springsteen and Barbra Streisand with 11 each.The 605,000 sales of Swift’s new “Red” is the second-biggest opening for any album this year, after 613,000 for Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” in September. But both are expected to be dwarfed by the arrival of Adele’s “30” on next week’s chart, a ready-made blockbuster that may reach or even exceed one million sales in its opening week, something that no album has done since Swift’s “Reputation” four years ago.Little official data has been released about the initial success of “30,” which came out on Friday. But as a sign of Adele’s clout in the music industry, she announced over the weekend that, apparently at the singer’s request, Spotify had removed “shuffle” as the default playback mode for albums, making it easier for fans to hear an album from beginning to end, as the artist intended.“Thank you Spotify for listening,” Adele tweeted on Saturday, and the service responded: “Anything for you.”Also on this week’s chart, Silk Sonic, the retro-soul project of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, opens at No. 2 with “An Evening With Silk Sonic,” which had the equivalent of 104,000 sales, and the K-pop girl group Twice is at No. 3 with its new “Formula of Love: O+T= More

His images of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Queen and others helped define the 1970s. He was still shooting the stars decades later.Mick Rock, whose striking images of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Debbie Harry, as well as more recent stars like Theophilus London and Snoop Dogg, made him one of rock and pop’s most acclaimed photographers, died on Thursday at a hospital in Staten Island. He was 72.His family posted news of his death on his website. No cause was given.Mr. Rock was often called “the man who shot the ’70s” because of his photographs that captured the rock stars of that flamboyant decade, both in his native England and in New York. He lived the rock lifestyle as he was photographing it, becoming part of the scene inhabited by Mr. Bowie, Mr. Reed and the rest.“I was drawn to the good, the bad and the wicked,” he said in “Shot! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock,” a 2016 documentary about him directed by Barney Clay.“I’ve lived a very wild life because I’ve been hanging out with a lot of very wild people,” he added. “And the camera just kind of led me by the nose.”Mr. Rock in 2016 at an exhibition of his photographs in Toulouse, France.Remy Gabalda/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSome of his photographs adorned memorable album covers: the bleached-out shot of Mr. Reed on “Transformer” (1972); the eerily dark image of the members of Queen on “Queen II” (1974), later recreated in the much-viewed music video for “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Others captured stars in poses — Mr. Bowie looking androgynously enigmatic; Ms. Harry, of the group Blondie, looking like Marilyn Monroe. And still others caught performances or unguarded moments.“I am not in the business of documenting or revealing personalities,” Mr. Rock wrote in a diary early in his career. “I am in the business of freezing shadows and bottling auras.”Befriending the stars of the day, which included taking the same drugs they were often taking, gave him the sort of access that most photographers can only dream of. As Mr. Reed put it in the introduction to one of Mr. Rock’s books, “Mick Rock was so much a part of things that it was quite natural to have him snapping away and think of him as invisible.”But Mr. Rock wasn’t limited to one era. He continued photographing rockers, rappers and other music personalities for the next 40 years, even after a heart attack in 1996 led him to embrace a quieter lifestyle. (“All I am is a retired degenerate,” he joked in a 2011 interview with The New York Times.) In recent decades he had photographed Snoop Dogg, Lady Gaga, Rufus Wainwright and many others.Bob Marley, photographed in 1975.Mick Rock“It was barely over a year ago I sat with you by the window listening to Bowie stories,” Miley Cyrus wrote on Twitter after learning of his death. “It was my honor.”Mr. Rock often said he was fated to have the career he had because of his name: He was born Michael David Rock on Nov. 21, 1948, in London to David and Joan (Gibbs) Rock.He graduated from Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied modern languages. While a student there, as he put it in the documentary, “photography wandered idly into my life.” He was hanging out in a friend’s room with a companion, and the friend had left a 35-milimeter camera lying about (which turned out to have no film in it, though Mr. Rock didn’t realize that).“I was with a young lady in a state of — I think chemical inebriation is probably the best way of putting it,” he told The Daily Telegraph of Britain in 2010, “when I started snapping away. I was just playing, but there was something about it that I really liked.”So he got himself his own camera, with film, and began taking pictures of friends and friends’ friends. One friend, whom he had met early in his time at Cambridge, was Syd Barrett of the band Pink Floyd. Through Mr. Barrett he came to know other musicians, and a few not only asked him to photograph them but also paid him.“I suddenly realized you could make money from this,” Mr. Rock wrote in “Classic Queen,” his 2007 book about his work with that band. “That was terrific: much better than getting a ‘real’ job.”Snoop Dogg in 2009. Mr. Rock continued photographing rockers, rappers and other music personalities well into the 21st century. Mick RockHe started writing for various publications and illustrating his articles with his own photographs. One musician he came to know was Mr. Bowie, and one particular picture he took, in 1972, was career-making. Onstage at the Oxford Town Hall, Mr. Bowie pantomimed performing fellatio on the guitar of one of his musicians, Mick Ronson, as he played. Mr. Rock’s photograph of the moment turned up in Melody Maker magazine.“This was that shot that put my name on the map,” Mr. Rock wrote in the Queen book. “Suddenly I was in demand, and my camera was clearly speaking louder than my words.”Famed shots of Mr. Reed and Iggy Pop came along about the same time.“I took those when Lou and Iggy were relatively unknown, unless you were really, really hip,” he told The Telegraph, “but somehow those shots seemed to have defined them forever.”Madonna in 1980.Mick RockSoon his reputation was such that Queen came calling.“I didn’t really know their music, but, when they played me their album, I said, ‘Wow! Ziggy Stardust meets Led Zeppelin!’ and that seemed to seal the deal,” he said.Mr. Rock moved to New York in 1977 and became immersed in the turbulent scene there that included Blondie, the Ramones and other performers.“I needed a new edge, and I found it in New York in spades,” he told The Sunday Herald of Scotland in 1995.“Over the years Mick Rock has made history with all the musicians and rock stars that he has immortalized,” Ms. Harry wrote in the introduction to Mr. Rock’s book “Debbie Harry and Blondie: Picture This” (2019). “A good photo session is sometimes as good as sex. You leave feeling well massaged, satisfied and a little bit outside yourself.”Debbie Harry in 1978. “Mick Rock,” she wrote, “has made history with all the musicians and rock stars that he has immortalized.”Mick RockMr. Rock’s marriage to the photographer Sheila Rock ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Pati Rock, whom he married in 1997; a daughter, Nathalie Rock; and five siblings, Carol, Jacqueline, Don, Angela and Laura.Mr. Rock’s work was featured in various exhibitions. In the Blondie book, he lamented that he’d made such an impact as a rock photographer that it restricted him in some ways.“Like a hit record to a rock ’n’ roller, the downside is that a great image, besides defining the subject, can limit what others call on the photographer to do,” he wrote. “I wouldn’t mind shooting the occasional politician or actor (or even a gangster or two), but that’s not how art directors or magazines view me.” More

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra returned to indoor performance with “Wynton at 60,” a program featuring Marsalis originals and a quartet of up-and-coming trumpeters.The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra was amused as four trumpet players, all but one under the age of 30, took their position in the rehearsal room late Tuesday morning.“It’s the Young Lions!” called out the baritone saxophone player Paul Nedzela, referring to the coterie of sharp-dressed, tradition-minded bop up-and-comers who rose during the Reagan and Clinton administrations while edging jazz toward a concert art with a classical-music-style repertoire.That got a laugh.“We tried that in the ’90s,” said the bassist Carlos Henriquez.Another laugh.Soon, Wynton Marsalis, once the pride of those young lions, called the band to order from his perch in the trumpet section and the orchestra lit into “Windjammers,” a Marsalis cooker arranged to showcase the quartet of guest trumpeters, some of them students. The four swapped bars, breaks and occasionally expressions of wonderment, like they couldn’t believe they were — to borrow a title from Marsalis’s own repertoire — in this house, on this morning.The occasion: the kickoff to Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 34th concert season — and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s first indoor New York City performance since the Covid-19 shutdowns. The season will include a tribute to Chick Corea, who died in February; a celebration of the centennial of Charles Mingus; and three concerts showcasing extraordinary women singers, Dianne Reeves, Catherine Russell and Cécile McLorin Salvant.Excitement about the reopening pulsed through the band. “To look at and see our audience, and to feel that energy, I’m going to be overwhelmed,” said Ted Nash, a saxophonist and composer. “We’ve been doing all this virtual stuff, but to create together a sound field and an energy field in person, where all the sounds meld together — this is why I do this.”From left: Carlos Henriquez, Obed Calvaire and Marsalis rehearsing earlier this week.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesMarsalis was quick to say he didn’t name this weekend’s concerts — “Wynton at 60” — which celebrate his new status as a sexagenarian with a program of his originals from four decades.Still, despite a warm, even gentle demeanor, there was no doubt he was in charge, announcing the order of soloists at rehearsal, or small tweaks to the charts. But when a soloist occasionally asked how to approach a section, he replied, “Just do what you all want.” Or, “It’s you playing it.”Freedom within a structure, of course, separates Jazz at Lincoln Center from other major performing arts institutions with a repertoire. So does Marsalis’s tradition of inviting young musicians to play on its biggest stage, the Rose Theater in the Columbus Circle complex.“It shows the generations working together,” he said. “When we started the orchestra, surviving members of Duke Ellington’s orchestra played. Marcus Belgrave played with Ray Charles. Sir Roland Hanna played with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. Jerry Dodgion and Frank Wess played with Basie. They passed on a lot of the feeling of the music and its identity and meaning to us. So, this is a continuation.”Chris Crenshaw, a trombonist, composer and arranger who has been in the orchestra since 2006, said, “We have a charge to keep. We have a responsibility. There’s so many things in all traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation orally or with music.”The responsibilities that come with serving as the artistic director and public face of a major arts organization has meant that, for Marsalis, the shutdown was never truly a shutdown. He pulled out his phone and thumbed through dozens of photos of score pages for upcoming projects (a tuba concerto, a bassoon piece).Versions of the band have toured the United States and the world, taking endless Covid-19 tests and often playing music from his politically engaged “The Democracy! Suite,” which boasts song titles like “Sloganize, Patronize, Realize, Revolutionize (Black Lives Matters).” Streaming concerts, from the vault and some fresh, have abounded and will continue — this season, any concert can be streamed for a donation of $10.The work helps distract from the losses that have mounted since March 2020, including Marsalis’s musician father, Ellis, and his friend and mentor, the critic Stanley Crouch, in addition to more musicians than any institution could fully memorialize. “I tend not to dwell,” he said. “My dad, he said ‘Everybody’s losing people. And when you focus too much on yours …’” He let that thought drift away and then recalled something the pianist John Lewis once said to him. “‘To focus too much on even something negative is a form of deep ego.’”“You got to keep moving forward, keep being productive and trying to create the world you envision,” Marsalis added.The saxophonist Walter Blanding with Marsalis as the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra prepared for its return to indoor performances.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesAt 60, Marsalis, who won a Pulitzer in 1997 for “Blood on the Fields,” his oratorio about slavery, sees a world in which democracy itself is imperiled, and “the intellectual class still always wants the Black man to be a fool on all levels.” His humanism, though, buoys him. “You can subvert the Constitution and make it harder for people to vote, make it more difficult for government to work,” he said. “But there’s always voices that defend the integrity of the document, which is changeable — it’s not set in stone.”He shifted quickly back to the subject upon which he has most often stirred controversy. “Music is the same. You can be glib enough to undermine the integrity of it and be successful. But there’s always just enough voices who believe in the integrity of it.”Those young trumpeters, in his estimation, count among those voices. Jazz at Lincoln Center’s mission has always focused on jazz education and advocacy, and the guest artists at “Wynton at 60” — Summer Camargo, Giveton Gelin, Tatum Greenblatt and Anthony Hervey — demonstrate the power of that outreach.Camargo caught Marsalis’s attention when her South Florida high school placed in the institution’s annual “Essentially Ellington” contest, which invites school bands to record themselves playing free Duke Ellington charts and then brings the finalists to New York City to perform. Now a Juilliard student, Camargo said she never would have attempted composition without the impetus of the contest, where, in 2018, she won awards for composing as well as for soloing.“When people ask me what was one of the best days of your life, I always go back to that moment,” she said. “Wynton took me backstage and gave me compliments and advice. He doesn’t sugarcoat it — he tells you what you need to do to get better.”Gelin, a recent Juilliard graduate who self-released his debut album, also praised Marsalis’s generosity as a mentor — and his practical advice. Visiting New York from the Bahamas during his high school years, Gelin attended a free Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra concert in Queens and afterward worked his way through the line to meet Marsalis. The next day, Gelin played for him at his home and was surprised that so famous a figure invested such energy in urging a kid to dig deeper into developing his own voice.“I spent a lot of time in the Haitian church,” Gelin said. “One of the first things Wynton said to me was to listen closely to the singers there and how their vocal qualities reflect where they’re from.”Marsalis nodded when reminded of this encounter. “Your sound will be organic when who you are doesn’t fight with who you want to be,” he said.“To create together a sound field and an energy field in person, where all the sounds meld together — this is why I do this,” said the saxophonist Ted Nash.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesOn opening night Thursday, the four up-and-comers got their shot onstage. The orchestra’s 90-minute set surveyed some of Marsalis’s most crowd-pleasing compositions, including big-band stompers, ballads and percolating curios marked by his fondness for musical onomatopoeia, with muted horns aping the buzz of bees and the keening of train whistles.The 15-member ensemble tackled “The Holy Ghost,” from Marsalis’s “Abyssinian Mass,” and he delivered a bracing, unamplified solo on a quartet treatment of Gordon Jenkins’s “Goodbye” that he dedicated “to all the people who have lost someone and didn’t get to tell them goodbye.”But the most boisterous crowd response came soon after those young trumpeters took the stage. Camargo’s gutsy opening solo brought patrons to their feet and inspired Marsalis — her hero — to muse afterward, “She ain’t playing around at all.”The four ringers’ joyous clamor brought the house down. Marsalis called their presence “a birthday present to myself,” but their performances suggested it’s not just a gift for him. More

Hear tracks by FKA twigs, Makaya McCraven, Hazel English and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at [email protected] and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Earl Sweatshirt, ‘2010’In 2010, Earl Sweatshirt released his debut mixtape, “Earl,” and his new song titled for that moment in time shows how much he’s evolved while still retaining his sagely iconoclastic spirit. Earl’s more recent releases — “Some Rap Songs” from 2018; “Feet of Clay” from 2019 — have represented his music at its most avant-garde, moving through murky, collagelike atmospheres in a constant state of transformation. “2010,” though, is more straightforward and sustained, with an understated beat from the producer Black Noise that allows Earl to lock into a hypnotic flow. The succinctly poetic imagery (“crescent moon wink, when I blinked it was gone”) and strangely satisfying plain-spoken admissions (“walked outside, it was still gorgeous”) pour out of him as steadily as water from a tap. LINDSAY ZOLADZFKA twigs featuring Central Cee, ‘Measure of a Man’This song’s distinctive descending chord progression, dramatic swells and even its lyrics — “the measure of a hero is the measure of a man” — could make it a James Bond theme. That’s a sign of FKA twigs’s overarching ambitions, her willingness to engage carnality and idealism, and how carefully she gauges the gradations of her voice in every phrase. JON PARELESHazel English, ‘Nine Stories’Call it a meet twee: “You lent me ‘Nine Stories,’ while you starred in mine,” the Australian-born, California-based musician Hazel English sings at the beginning of her ode to every artsy teen’s favorite J.D. Salinger book. The track is a three-minute dream-pop reverie, obscuring lyrics wryly bookish enough for a Belle & Sebastian song beneath a swirl of jangly guitars and shyly murmured vocals. It’s also something of an act of nostalgia, finding the 30-year-old conjuring the sounds and memories of her high school days: “Now that I’m falling, I can’t ignore it,” she sings sweetly, sounding as blissfully crush-struck as a teenager. ZOLADZHorsegirl, ‘Billy’The young Chicago trio Horsegirl is proof that the shaggy-dog spirit of Gen X indie rock is alive and well within a certain subset of Gen Z. Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein’s overlapping vocals are buried beneath a dissonant avalanche of “Daydream Nation”-esque guitars, but enough lyrical imagery comes to the surface to create a strangely poetic impression of their titular character on this stand-alone single, their first release since signing to Matador Records. “He washes off his robes in preparation to be crucified,” Cheng intones, while Lowenstein’s more melodic vocal line adds additional texture to the song’s enveloping, shoegaze-y atmosphere. ZOLADZBen LaMar Gay featuring Ayanna Woods, ‘Touch. Don’t Scroll’On “Touch. Don’t Scroll,” Ben LaMar Gay and Ayanna Woods, two musical polymaths from Chicago, sing about trying to stay connected to each other in an overcorrected world. “Now, baby, I will never leave you ’lone/Oh, can you hear me or are you on your phone?” they drone in unison, an octave apart, over a syncopated beat and lightly twinkling electronics. The track is nestled deep within “Open Arms to Open Us,” Gay’s latest album and probably his most broadly appealing, pulling together influences from country blues, Afro-Brazilian percussion, puckish Chicago free jazz and 2000s indie-rock. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOCardi B, ‘Bet It’“Bet It,” from the soundtrack to Halle Berry’s directorial debut “Bruised,” is only the second solo single Cardi B has released this year. And while it’s nowhere near as fun or inspired than that previous hit, “Up,” “Bet It” is more like a braggadocios status update on Cardi’s recent past, taking in her Grammy wins and her memorable Met Gala appearance in a dress with a “tail so long it drag 30 minutes after.” ZOLADZMorray featuring Benny the Butcher, ‘Never Fail’An impressively feverish turn from Morray, whose 2020 breakout single “Quicksand” leaned toward the spiritual. Here, though, he’s ferocious, rapping with a scratchy yelp and a sense of defiance. He’s accompanied by Benny the Butcher, who is among the calmest-sounding boasters in hip-hop. An unexpected and unexpectedly effective pairing. JON CARAMANICAFrank Dukes, ‘Likkle Prince’The producer Frank Dukes — who’s made understated, hauntingly melodic work with Frank Ocean, the Weeknd, Rihanna and many others — is releasing “The Way of Ging,” his first project under his own name. It’s an album of beats — a beat tape, as they used to say — that’s available for a limited time online, and will eventually be removed from the internet and available only as a set of NFTs. “Likkle Prince” channels early ’80s electro along with some squelched disco majesty. It’s spooky and propulsive. CARAMANICAunderscores, ‘Everybody’s Dead!’A rousing and trippy burst of hyperpop mayhem, “Everybody’s Dead!” is a new single from underscores, who earlier this year released “Fishmonger,” an excellent, scrappy, and puckish debut album. CARAMANICAMicrohm, ‘Spooky Actions’The Mexico City sound artist Microhm, born Leslie Garcia, produced “Spooky Actions” and its accompanying EP using only modular synths. The result feels like hurtling through a Black Hole, where sound and time warp into quantum dislocation. Ambient textures swirl over the lurch of steady drum kicks, as the moments drip into oblivion. ISABELIA HERRERALeon Bridges featuring Jazmine Sullivan, ‘Summer Rain’Leon Bridges looks back to Sam Cooke’s soul; Jazmine Sullivan can go back to the scat-singing of bebop. They trade verses over a slow-motion beat and rhythm guitar in “Summer Rain” to evoke endless conjugal bliss, urging each other “don’t stop now,” for less under minutes of suspended time meant to play on repeat. PARELESIbeyi featuring Pa Salieu, ‘Made of Gold’Ibeyi’s music has always harnessed a sense of ancestral knowledge: The Afro-Cuban French twins grew up listening to Yoruba folk songs that channel the spirit of enslaved people brought to the Caribbean over the middle passage. But their new single, “Made of Gold,” featuring the Ghanian British rapper Pa Salieu, trades the simple but potent piano and cajón for a celestial, spectral otherworldliness. Culling references to the Yoruba deities Shango and Yemaya, as well as Frida Kahlo and the ancient Egyptian “Book of the Dead,” the duo summons power from intergenerational sources to shield them. “Oh you with a spine, who would work your mouth against this Magic of mine,” they intone. “It has been handed down in an unbroken line.” HERRERASting, ‘Loving You’Sting’s new album, “The Bridge,” often harks back to the jazz-folk-Celtic-pop hybrids he forged on his first solo albums in the 1980s; one song, “Harmony Road,” even features a saxophone solo from Branford Marsalis, who was central to “The Dream of the Blue Turtles” in 1985. Many of the new songs lean toward parable and metaphor, but not “Loving You,” a husband’s confrontation with the cheating wife he still loves: “We made vows inside the church to forgive each others’ sins,” he sings. “But there are things I have to endure like the smell of another man’s skin.” Written with the British electronic musician Maya Jane Coles, the track confines itself to two chords and a brittle beat, punctuated by faraway arpeggios and tones that emerge like unwanted memories; it’s memorably bleak. PARELESSingle Girl, Married Girl, ‘Scared to Move’With patient arpeggios and soothing bass notes, the harpist and composer Mary Lattimore builds a grandly meditative edifice behind Chelsey Coy, the songwriter and singer at the core of Single Girl, Married Girl, in “Scared to Move.” It’s from the new album “Three Generations of Leaving.” Cale’s multitracked harmonies promise, “In a strange new half-light, I will be your guide” as Lattimore’s harp patterns construct a glimmering path forward. PARELESMakaya McCraven, ‘Tranquillity’“Deciphering the Message,” Makaya McCraven’s first LP for Blue Note Records, could easily get you thinking of “Shades of Blue,” Madlib’s classic 2003 album remixing old tracks from that label’s jazz archive. On “Deciphering,” McCraven — a drummer, producer and beat dissector — digs through 13 tracks from the label’s catalog and attacks them through his personal method of remixing and pastiche. “Deciphering” crackles with McCraven’s sonic signatures: viscid ambience, restlessly energetic drumming, the recognizable sounds of his longtime collaborators (Marquis Hill on trumpet, Matt Gold on guitar, Joel Ross on vibraphone, et al). “Tranquillity” stems from a track by the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, from his 1966 album “Components,” and McCraven’s intervention is two-pronged: He doubles down on the original’s curved-glass effect, adding whispery trumpet and fluttering flute atop the original track, but his own drums — kinetic, unrelenting — keep the energy at a rolling boil. RUSSONELLO More