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      New York’s Irish Arts Center Upgrades to a ‘Flagship Hub’

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      Irish Arts Center, a New York nonprofit devoted to championing the culture of Ireland and Irish Americans, is finally moving into a home as big as its aspirations.The organization, founded in the East Village in 1972, has been operating for decades out of a onetime tenement in Hell’s Kitchen. Now, wrapping up a pandemic-delayed construction project first set in motion 15 years ago, the center is moving just around the corner after converting a longtime tire shop into a state-of-the-art performance facility where it aims, starting in December, to present theater, dance, music, visual art and more.Ireland “still has these incredibly deep roots to its own artistic legacy, and it still fundamentally feels like a land of poets in its sensibility and its storytelling,” said Aidan Connolly, the center’s executive director. But, he added, “New Yorkers might not know how exciting the emerging contemporary dance scene in Ireland is; they might not know how Ireland’s cultural evolution in the last 20 years has yielded an exciting, dynamic, more diverse generation of musical artists, and on and on.”The centerpiece of the new building is a flexible theater space that can seat up to 199 people.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesFabric banners and black curtains can be used for acoustic purposes, modifying the way sound is heard in the theater.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe theater’s walls are covered in red oak plywood panels that have been stained and textured.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe four-story, 21,700-square-foot building on 11th Avenue, which retains its original brick repair shop facade, houses, at its center, a black box theater space that has 14 approved configurations, the largest of which will seat 199 people. The theater is a major technological upgrade for the center, with retractable seating, flexible lighting, sound, and set rigging, an overhead wire tension grid and the capacity for digital capture and streaming.On the ground floor, the building has a cafe, with blackened steel panels and a walnut bar, which will be run by Ardesia, a local wine bar. And above and below the theater are rooms that can be used for educational and community programs, as well as rehearsals and meetings.The $60 million building was designed by Davis Brody Bond, a New York-based architecture firm, in consultation with Ireland’s state architect. There are nods both to the industrial history of Hell’s Kitchen, and the Irish mission of the center — lots of brick and steel, and also lots of places to sit and talk, because the center sees hospitality as an Irish virtue.Irish Arts Center is led by the executive director Aidan Connolly, center, along with Rachael Gilkey, left, its programming director, and Pauline Turley, the vice chair.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThere are Irish touches throughout the building — most conspicuously, the main stairway will feature lines of Irish poetry on the risers, but also the signs throughout the building are in Irish as well as English, in a font created in collaboration with the Irish typographer Bobby Tannam. Much of the furniture is from an Irish craft furniture designer, Orior, which makes pieces “injected with Irish character.”The center plans to keep its offices in its existing building, on West 51st Street; at some point, it plans to redo that building and resume using its 99-seat auditorium for smaller-scale performances. Cybert Tire, which previously occupied the 11th Avenue site, by the way, still exists — founded in 1916, it claims to be the city’s oldest tire shop, and has simply moved around the corner, onto West 52nd Street.Irish Arts Center began its life as an Off Off Broadway theater that produced its own work, but over the last 15 years it has embraced a broader portfolio; Connolly often says he likes to think of the center’s programming as a hybrid of the 92nd Street Y and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Irish culture is represented in New York in any variety of ways — there are periodically Irish writers on Broadway, for example, and the Irish Repertory Theater presents often acclaimed productions of Irish drama, but Connolly argues that, until now, there has been “no flagship hub to celebrate and promote Irish culture in a way that is commensurate with its impact,” akin to institutions like the French Institute Alliance Française or Scandinavia House.The organization remains modestly sized, at least by the scale of New York City nonprofits, with an anticipated $7 million budget for its first year in the new building. But it has been growing at a steady clip — its operating budget was only $690,000 in 2006-07.Above the theater is a wire tension grid for lighting, sound and other technical equipment.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe lighting is meant to be easily adjustable.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe building also has infrastructure to allow video capture, broadcast and streaming.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesIn a demonstration of the expanded work made possible by the new theater, the center plans next summer to stage its first musical, an adaptation of the 2012 film “Good Vibrations,” about the Belfast punk rock scene. The first year will also include a production of “The Same,” a play by Enda Walsh about two women in a psychiatric institution, and “Chekhov’s First Play,” via Dead Centre, an Irish/English theater company.The center will open with a monthlong run by the Irish-French cabaret singer Camille O’Sullivan, who said she would fondly remember the old building, where she performed several times.“They’re family, and they’re friends,” O’Sullivan said, “and they’re very much giving a home to people like myself.”There will also be dance programs from Oona Doherty; Mufutau Yusuf; and Sean Curran with Darrah Carr. And there will be an array of music, poetry, readings and visual art.There are 31.5 million Americans of Irish ancestry, but the center has a broad view of Irishness, and although its donor base is made up primarily of Irish Americans, its audience is varied.The theater retained the brick facade of the tire shop that previously occupied the site. Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesMiranda Driscoll, an Irish curator, arranged an opening exhibition of visual art for the building.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe structure’s building materials are primarily wood, brick, glass and steel.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“They have a really inclusive way of thinking about the culture of the Irish diaspora,” said Georgiana Pickett, an arts consultant who staged several collaborations with the center when she was executive director of the Baryshnikov Arts Center. “They’ve done a lot to ensure that they’re linking the histories of the arts that come through Ireland to many other places in the world, and that’s allowed them to include Appalachian music, new immigrant communities in Ireland, people of Irish descent that collaborate with other cultures — it’s the Irish Arts Center, but has a really diverse definition of what that means.”The project is primarily funded by government largess in both the United States and Ireland — New York City, which has supported multiple arts institutions over time, set aside $37 million for the project.“This amazing building is so timely,” said Gonzalo Casals, the city’s cultural affairs commissioner, “because it brings down the barriers among disciplines, and offers an in-depth understanding of Irish culture.”The Irish government contributed $9 million, and the state of New York gave $5 million. Private donors contributed $15 million. That’s $66 million raised thus far — the money not spent on the new building will be used in part to support the operating budget.The Irish government continues to support the center through Culture Ireland, which promotes Irish culture around the world as part of an effort announced in 2018 to double the country’s global footprint. Irish Arts Center has been a significant beneficiary of that effort; Christine Sisk, the director of Culture Ireland, said her agency is making a “big investment” in the center.“New York is an amazing city for the arts, and we also see it as a gateway to the rest of the U.S.,” said Sisk, who said she expected that Irish artists whose work is presented at the center could then more easily tour the United States. “It’s a shop window, and a guaranteed space, to present Irish arts.” More

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      Fetty Wap Is Arrested on Federal Drug Charges at Citi Field

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      The rapper, who had been set to perform at the Rolling Loud music festival, was arraigned Friday on Long Island.The rapper Fetty Wap pleaded not guilty to federal drug charges on Friday, a day after he was arrested by F.B.I. agents at Citi Field, where he was scheduled to perform at the Rolling Loud music festival.The artist, whose legal name is Willie Junior Maxwell II, was arraigned at a federal court in Central Islip, N.Y. He and five co-defendants, including a former New Jersey corrections officer, were charged with one count of conspiring to distribute and possess controlled substances.Officials said the defendants distributed more than 100 kilograms of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and crack across Long Island and New Jersey over a yearlong period beginning in June 2019. The other five defendants, who were arraigned on various dates within the past month, were also charged with using firearms in connection with drug trafficking.“The pipeline of drugs in this investigation ran thousands of miles from the West Coast to the communities here in our area, contributing to the addiction and overdose epidemic we have seen time and time again tear people’s lives apart,” Michael J. Driscoll, an assistant director-in-charge in the F.B.I., said in a statement.Mr. Maxwell, 30, who is from Paterson, N.J., rose to fame in 2015 with his hit single “Trap Queen,” in which he sings and raps about cooking drugs with a partner. The New York Times once described it as “shimmering and yelping and borderline whimsical,” and the song was nominated for a Grammy in 2016. Mr. Maxwell released a new mixtape called “The Butterfly Effect” last week.Mr. Maxwell was scheduled to perform on the first day of Rolling Loud, a traveling hip-hop festival, at Citi Field. Bobby Shmurda, Jack Harlow and 50 Cent were among the artists on the bill. A law enforcement official with knowledge of the case, but who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Mr. Maxwell was taken into custody shortly after he arrived at Citi Field. He had been slotted to perform at 4:45 p.m., according to the festival’s website.Mr. Maxwell’s lawyer, Navarro W. Gray of Hackensack, N.J., said in a statement, “We pray that this is all a big misunderstanding.” Mr. Gray said he hoped that Mr. Maxwell would be released “so we can clear things up as soon as possible.”The rapper was represented by another lawyer, Elizabeth Macedonio, for his court appearance, which was conducted by video conference. He did not seek bail and was held in detention. The charge carries a minimum sentence of 10 years, and a maximum of life in prison.Ms. Macedonio did not immediately respond to a request for further comment; nor did Mr. Maxwell’s label, 300 Entertainment.Timothy D. Sini, the district attorney for Suffolk County, said the defendants had used eastern Long Island as the base for a multimillion-dollar drug ring.“They were wholesale drug dealers who pumped massive quantities of narcotics into our communities,” Mr. Sini said in a statement, adding, “The magnitude of this operation was enormous.”Three of the defendants had already been charged in connection with the case. In June 2020, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Mr. Sini’s office and other agencies announced charges against the former New Jersey corrections officer, Anthony Cyntje, now 23, of Passaic; Brian Sullivan, now 26, of Lake Grove, N.Y.; and Anthony Leonardi, now 47, of Coram, N.Y.The indictment unsealed Friday also included charges against Mr. Leonardi’s brother, Robert Leonardi, 26, of Levittown, Pa., as well as Kavaughn Wiggins, also 26, of Coram, N.Y.Prosecutors said the Leonardi brothers, Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Wiggins participated in the purchase and transport of drugs from the West Coast, while Mr. Maxwell was a “kilogram-level redistributor” and Mr. Cyntje transported cocaine to New Jersey.Patrick J. Brackley, a lawyer representing Mr. Cyntje, said that he was “alleged to have participated in only one day of the entire conspiracy” and that he had pleaded not guilty to the charges. Since his arrest on Oct. 13, Mr. Cyntje has been held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, Mr. Brackley said. He was being held in quarantine because of Covid-19 protocols.When the authorities announced the charges last year, they identified Mr. Sullivan and Anthony Leonardi’s son James Sosa, then 25, as ringleaders of the operation, charging both with working as major drug traffickers, among other counts.A lawyer for Mr. Sullivan, David H. Besso, said he was “a regular kid from Long Island” and had pleaded not guilty to the charges. He has been in custody at Yaphank Correctional Facility since his arrest last year, Mr. Besso said.The authorities said Friday that they recovered $1.5 million in cash, numerous fentanyl pills, 16 kilograms of cocaine, two kilograms of heroin, two 9-millimeter handguns, two other pistols, a rifle and ammunition in the course of the yearlong investigation. More

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      Bruce Gaston, American Maestro of Thai Music, Dies at 75

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      A transplanted Californian and former conscientious objector, he infused Thai music with Western sounds as a prominent composer and performer based in Bangkok.Bruce Gaston, a transplanted Californian who helped revolutionize Thai classical music by injecting it with Western instruments and forms and who became one of Thailand’s leading performers and composers, died on Oct. 17 at his home in Bangkok. He was 75.The cause was liver cancer, his son, Theodore, said.Together with two Thai musicians, Mr. Gaston founded Fong Nam, which means “bubbles,” an ensemble that worked to revive forgotten Thai classical pieces as well as to create modern forms, performing in concerts and in recording studios. Mr. Gaston played a piano or an electronic synthesizer among the gongs and woodwinds of a piphat percussion orchestra.He was a prominent and respected figure in Thailand as a composer, performer and teacher. In 2009, he became the only foreigner to receive the Silpathorn Award, which honors artists who make notable contributions to Thai arts and culture.“I want to find a form that transcends this polarity between East and West, between the we’s and the they’s,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1987. “It’s silly to talk about East and West now. Technology has brought us all together.”Mr. Gaston argued that infusing traditional Thai music with new forms was vital to its health, but that those new elements “must grow out of that tradition, or you risk losing everything that reminds you of who you are and who you were.”Somtow Sucharitkul, a prominent Thai-American writer and musician, called Mr. Gaston’s music a “new fusion” in which “traditional Thai ideas and Western structures were fluid, and could blend back and forth and fuse and have a uniquely Thai sensibility.”Writing in The Bangkok Post, he said, “If anyone can lay claim to the title of ‘He who lit the revolutionary torch,’ it is Bruce Gaston.”Mr. Gaston developed a compositional language, informed by his training in Western classical and contemporary music, that “evoked but did not imitate Thai music,” said Kit Young, an American pianist, composer and artistic adviser who is the co-founder of Gitameit Music Institute in Myanmar and who lived in Thailand for many years.Bruce Gaston was born on March 11, 1946, in Los Angeles to Marcus and Evangelin Gaston. His mother was a schoolteacher, and his father was a pastor. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and earned a master’s degree in music in 1969. He received a draft deferment during the Vietnam War as a conscientious objector and was assigned to alternative service as a teacher overseas.Mr. Gaston traveled to Jamaica before moving to Thailand, where he became entranced by Thai music that was played during cremation ceremonies at a temple near his home, Theodore Gaston said. In 1971 he developed a curriculum in music at Payap College, in the northern city of Chiangmai.Mr. Gaston began experimenting with combining Thai and Western forms and wrote an opera on Buddhist themes called “Chu Chok” in 1976. It was performed at the Goethe Institute in Thailand and in Germany during 1977-1978. He studied in Bangkok with Boonyong Kaetkhong, a master of the ranat, which is similar to a xylophone.Mr. Gaston and another musician, Jirapan Ansvananda, founded Fong Nam in 1981.“If you want to have influences from the West, great,” his son said, “but better to use it as a flavor and not the main thing. That is the Fong Nam way. If you listen, you can tell that it’s pretty much Thai.”Fong Nam recorded a series of CDs of traditional music for the Nimbus, Celestial Harmonies and Marco Polo labels, said John Clewley, a Bangkok-based British professor of music who writes a column in The Bangkok Post called World Beat.Mr. Gaston became fluent in Thai and applied his talents widely, lecturing on music at Chulalongkorn University, composing for movies and theatrical shows and performing for years at a famous Bangkok beer hall, the Tawan Daeng Brewery.Early on he had a thriving business with other musicians writing jingles for Thai television commercials. “We sell banks, beer, all kinds of food, soft drinks, cars, perfumes, soaps and dishes,” he told The Times in 1984. “I’d say we have the majority of the market in Thailand.”He married Sarapi Areemitr in 1976. Along with his son, she survives him.Mr. Gaston said his music aimed to bridge gaps between generations as well as cultures.“Sometimes we can’t understand each other, the old and the young,” he said in 1987, when he was 41. He added: “In changing and discovering new forms, the old members of the orchestra have the hardest time. There are moments when the old boys play better than we ever will in the traditional style, and moments when they just can’t keep up with us.“But you just play together. — that’s the most important thing,” he said. “You don’t just say, ‘Forget it.’”Muktita Suhartono contributed reporting. More

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      Rose Lee Maphis, Early Star of Country Music TV, Dies at 98

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      She and her husband, Joe (“Mr. and Mrs. Country Music”), helped give birth to a West Coast music scene later associated with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.NASHVILLE — Rose Lee Maphis, the singer and guitarist who, with her husband, Joe, was a mainstay of the early years of live country music television, died on Tuesday at her home here. She was 98.Her son Jody said the cause was kidney failure.Billed as “Mr. and Mrs. Country Music,” the Maphises rose to prominence in the 1950s as members of the cast of “Town Hall Party,” a pioneering TV barn dance seen on KTTV in Los Angeles. On the strength of Ms. Maphis’s exuberant stage presence and her husband’s dazzling guitar work, the couple — often in matching Western-wear suits — helped give birth to the unfettered West Coast country music scene later associated with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.The Maphises achieved early acclaim with “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music),” a twanging barroom lament released by Okeh Records in 1953.“Dim lights, thick smoke and loud, loud music/It’s the only kind of life you’ll ever understand,” Mr. Maphis (pronounced MAY-fiss) sang, admonishing the song’s wayward wife as Ms. Maphis added sympathetic harmonies on the chorus. “Dim lights, thick smoke and loud, loud music/You’ll never make a wife to a home-loving man.”“Dim Lights” became a honky-tonk standard and has been recorded by Conway Twitty, Flatt & Scruggs, the New Riders of the Purple Sage and others. Though credited as one of its writers, Ms. Maphis always insisted that the composition was solely her husband’s. He wrote the song, she said, while driving home one night from Bakersfield’s renowned — and notoriously smoky — Blackboard Cafe.The Maphises recorded throughout the 1950s and ’60s, but given their commitment to performing on regularly scheduled broadcasts, they never really had the chance to promote their releases at radio stations or in live venues across the country. Instead they concentrated on TV and radio work, appearing with country stalwarts like Tex Ritter and Merle Travis and rockabilly insurgents like Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson.The couple met when they were both appearing on the WRVA radio show “Old Dominion Barn Dance” in Richmond, Va., in 1948 and had been dating by the time they moved to California in 1951, at the urging of Mr. Travis. They married when Mr. Maphis’s divorce from his first wife became final in 1952.The Maphises later recorded with their son Dale. But they had more success on television than they did on records.Moving to the West Coast proved inspiring for them both. They were especially energized by the differences between the dance halls of California and the venues they had played in the East.“There was a real separation between the music on the West Coast and in Nashville,” Ms. Maphis said in a 1998 interview with Vintage Guitar magazine. “On the West Coast, people danced, and bands had drummers.”“All the people getting up and dancing while you were performing, that was strange to us,” she elaborated. “West of the Mississippi, people danced. East of the Mississippi, they watched and listened.”Doris Helen Schetrompf was born on Dec. 29, 1922, in Baltimore. Her parents, Stanley and Margaret (Schriever) Schetrompf, were farmers.Doris began playing the guitar at 15; two years later, she was hired to play on a local radio show in Hagerstown, Md., where she grew up. She acquired her nickname there, after the show’s announcer introduced her as “Rose of the Mountains” because of her habit of wearing flowers in her hair.After graduating from high school in 1941, she attended business college, worked various jobs and teamed up with three other young women to form the Saddle Sweethearts, a Western-style group that toured with Gene Autry and the Carter Family.Despite their relative success, the Sweethearts had all but called it quits when Ms. Maphis and another member of the group were invited to join “Old Dominion Barn Dance,” where Mr. Maphis was a founding member. Before long he and she had moved to the West Coast and joined its burgeoning live country music TV scene.Known as the “King of the Strings,” Mr. Maphis, who often played a double-neck Mosrite guitar (which he had helped design), also became a first-call session musician. He appeared on recordings by Rick Nelson and on the soundtracks of movies like “God’s Little Acre” and “Thunder Road,” both in 1958.The couple had three children between 1954 and 1957, beginning a period of domesticity that by 1968 would have them moving to Nashville, where they began performing at the Grand Ole Opry.By the early ’70s Ms. Maphis had all but dropped out of the music business. She eventually took a job as a seamstress at the theme park Opryland USA, where her youngest son, Dale, was working as a musician.Besides her son Jody, who is also a musician, Ms. Maphis is survived by her daughter, Lorrie Harris, and a granddaughter. Her son Dale died in 1989 in an automobile accident. Mr. Maphis died of lung cancer in 1986 at 65.In the early 2010s, after five decades out of the limelight, Ms. Maphis volunteered as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. Not long after she began, the museum mounted an exhibition on the Bakersfield Sound that she and her husband had helped shape, including a video of them singing “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke.”Few of the museum’s visitors made the connection between their host and the exhibit, which also included Ms. Maphis’s Martin D-18 guitar, until one female patron asked her about it.“She came back downstairs when she was through with her tour,” Ms. Maphis explained to The Hagerstown Herald-Mail. “She asked, ‘The guitar that’s up there, is that your guitar?’“She saw my name tag,” Ms. Maphis went on. “I told her ‘Yes.’ She was the only one who ever did that.” More

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      Ed Sheeran Sticks With a Familiar Formula on ‘=’

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      The British singer-songwriter’s fourth solo studio album reflects major shifts in his personal life that aren’t equally matched by musical growth.If first-dance songs at weddings counted extra toward streaming numbers, Ed Sheeran — the carrot-topped British troubadour behind such soft-rock swooners as “Thinking Out Loud” and “Perfect” — would have had a monopoly on the top of the charts for the better part of the last decade.Not that he needs much help in that department: The ubiquitous Sheeran was Spotify’s second-most-streamed artist of the 2010s (behind only Drake), and in 2017 — the year he released the blockbuster “÷” — he was the best-selling musician in the world. As a songwriter, Sheeran is something of a modern pop mathematician, gifted with an ability to reduce seemingly disparate genres (adult-contemporary pop, British hip-hop, Gaelic folk) down to their least common denominators.Since his 2011 debut, “+,” he has presented himself proudly as a hopeless romantic. “See I could do without a tan on my left hand, where my fourth finger meets my knuckle,” a then-21-year-old Sheeran sang on the sparse, unabashedly sentimental ballad “Wake Me Up.” In some sense, his fourth solo studio album, “=,” pronounced “equals” (one wonders what will happen when he soon runs out of arithmetic signs), has the potential to be the fullest realization of the Ed Sheeran ethos yet — the first since his December 2018 marriage to his childhood friend Cherry Seaborn. Honeymoon mode: Engage.“I have grown up, I am a father now, everything has changed but I am still the same somehow,” Sheeran sings on the opener, “Tides,” in a flagrant display of telling rather than showing. Musically, though, “Tides” is one of the most effective songs on the album, a stomping, surging lite-rocker arranged around a neat formal trick. After verses that rush through a list of Sheeran’s fears and neuroses, the track suddenly seems to suspend itself in midair during the chorus, long enough for Sheeran to reveal to his loved ones, “Time stops to still, when you are in my arms it always will.” (Sheeran recycles the effect later in the album, on “Love in Slow Motion.”)More than any of his previous LPs, “=” finds Sheeran mining the slick, synthesized sounds of ’80s pop. While he works again with the writer and producer Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol, he adds a new collaborator on more than half the tracks: Fred again.., a British dance-music artist. But the retro aesthetic is most indebted to an album that is only a year and a half old, the Weeknd’s massively successful “After Hours.” His silhouette has lately cast a long shadow across his fellow male pop stars (Justin Bieber, the Kid Laroi), though it’s most apparent on Sheeran’s current hit, “Bad Habits,” a pulsating, strobe-lit lament in the tradition of a Weeknd song: “It started under neon lights and then it all got dark,” Sheeran sings, recounting another night of empty, bleary-eyed partying.Where the Weeknd’s music often revels in decadence and nihilism, Sheeran’s depictions of wild nights are often accompanied by a potent dose of morning-after guilt and the eventual possibility of redemption — usually a kind of quasi-religious salvation that can be attained through the love of a good woman. As he puts it on “The Joker and the Queen,” a music-box piano ditty on “=” that stretches a poker metaphor exhaustingly far, “When I fold, you see the best in me.”“=” is the kindest, gentlest Sheeran album, which is something of a shame. Each of his previous records had at least one song that complicated his image as a heart-on-his-sleeve nice guy, whether that was the surprisingly venomous music-industry sendup “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You” or “New Man,” his previous solo album’s sassy kiss-off to both a former flame and her subsequent boyfriend. The soulful grain that sometimes adds texture to his smooth croon is also seldom heard on this record. The driving conflict of “=” rarely strays from or goes deeper than a familiar, repeatedly stressed mantra: Life comes at you fast, but it slows to the tempo of a wedding waltz when you’re in love.An Ed Sheeran album wouldn’t be complete without a mawkish tear-jerker, and here it’s “Visiting Hours,” as in, he wishes heaven had them. Sheeran follows that indulgent weepie with a literal lullaby, the lilting, Jack Johnson-esque “Sandman.” He has grown up, he is a father now, in case you had somehow forgotten.At least the best song on the album is also the one that seems destined to be his next you’ll-hear-it-till-you’re-sick-of-it smash: “Overpass Graffiti,” a moody, synth-streaked ’80s throwback that sounds like a more melancholy update of Rod Stewart’s “Young Turks.” Here, Sheeran proves that even as a married man, he’s still able to tap into old heartbreak: “There are times when I can feel your ghost, just when I’m almost letting you go,” he sings, his voice convincingly weighted with nostalgia.Earlier, in that rush of insecurities that forms the verses of “Tides,” Sheeran admits that in the past he has been “too busy trying to chase the high and get the numbers up.” That confession might suggest that he’s ready to put algorithmic crowd-pleasing in the past, but it turns out to be an empty promise. Ultimately, “=” neither adds to nor subtracts from the trusty formula for success that he long ago worked out. It is the sleek sound of stasis.Ed Sheeran“=”(Atlantic) More

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      Alicia Keys’s Hypnotic Love Jam, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Anaïs Mitchell, Hurray for the Riff Raff, ASAP Rocky 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 theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Alicia Keys, ‘Best of Me’The steady, diligent beat is from Sade’s “Cherish the Day” by way of Raphael Saadiq; the promises of loyalty, honesty and absolute devotion are from Alicia Keys as she channels Sade’s utterly self-sacrificing love. “We could build a castle from tears,” Keys vows. The track is hypnotic and open-ended, fading rather than resolving, as if it could go on and on. It’s from a double album coming Dec. 10 featuring two versions of the songs: “Originals,” produced by Keys, and “Unlocked,” produced by Keys and Mike Will Made-It. JON PARELESHurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Rhododendron’The first single from Hurray for the Riff Raff’s forthcoming album “Life on Earth” is frisky and poetic, contrasting the wisdom of the natural world with the chaos of humanity. The New Orleans singer-songwriter Alynda Segarra (who uses they/she pronouns) is so enthralled with the wonders of plant life that they are able to extract lyricism from simply listing off some famous flora (“night blooming jasmine, deadly nightshade”) in a wonderfully Dylan-esque growl. The chorus, though, comes as a warning in the face of ecological destruction: “Don’t turn your back on the mainland.” LINDSAY ZOLADZKylie Minogue and Jessie Ware, ‘Kiss of Life’Following her excellent 2020 disco-revival record “What’s Your Pleasure?” (and this year’s Platinum Pleasure Edition, which contained enough top-tier bonus material to make an equally excellent EP) Jessie Ware gets the ultimate co-sign from the dancing queen herself, Kylie Minogue, on this playful duet. Their breathy vocals echo throughout the lush arrangement, as they trade whispered innuendo (“Cherry syrup on my tongue/how about a little fun?”) and eventually join together in sumptuous harmony. ZOLADZBaba Harare featuring Kae Chaps and Joseph Tivafire, ‘Vaccine’Baba Harare, from Zimbabwe, is a master of the genre called jiti: a speedy four-against-six beat that carries stuttering, syncopated guitars and deep gospel-tinged harmony vocals. In “Vaccine,” he’s joined by fellow Zimbabweans Kae Chaps and Joseph Tivafire, and between the hurtling beat and the call-and-response vocals, the song is pure joy. PARELESBitchin Bajas, ‘Outer Spaceways Incorporated’The latest project from the freewheeling ambient drone group Bitchin Bajas is boldly conceptual: a homage to one of the Chicago trio’s formative heroes, Sun Ra. As daunting as it may sound to reinterpret some of the cosmic jazz god’s most innovative compositions, Bitchin Bajas approach the challenge with a playful ingenuity. Take their cover of “Outer Spaceways Incorporated,” which in its original form is a loose, interstellar groove. Bitchin Bajas refract it instead through the lens of one of their other major influences, Wendy Carlos (hence the title “Switched on Ra”) and turn it into a kind of retro-futuristic waltz. The guest vocalist Jayve Montgomery uses an Electronic Wind Instrument to great effect, enlivening the song with an energy that’s both eerie and moving. ZOLADZASAP Rocky, ‘Sandman’ASAP Rocky has been featured on plenty of other artists’ tracks over the past few years, but “Sandman” — released to commemorate his breakthrough 2011 mixtape “Live.Love.ASAP” finally coming to streaming services — is his first new solo song since 2018. Produced by Kelvin Krash and ASAP fave Clams Casino, “Sandman” toggles between hazy atmospherics and sudden gearshifts into the more exacting side of Rocky’s flow. Plus, it gives him an opportunity to practice his French: “Merci beaucoup, just like Moulin Rouge/And I know I can, can.” Quelle surprise! ZOLADZCollectif Mali Kura, ‘L’Appel du Mali Kura’The project Collectif Mali Kura gathered 20 singers and rappers to share a call for hard work, civic responsibility (including paying taxes) and national unity in Mali. Sung in many languages, with bits of melody and instrumental flourishes that hint at multiple traditions, the song starts as a plaint and turns into an affirmation of possibility. PARELESJorge Drexler and C. Tangana, ‘Tocarte’“Tocarte” (“To Touch You”) is the second deceptively skeletal collaboration released by Jorge Drexler, from Uruguay, and C. Tangana, from Spain; the first, a tale of a showbiz has-been titled “Nominao,” has been nominated for a Latin Grammy as best alternative song. “Tocarte” is a pandemic-era track about longing for physical contact: It constructs a taut, ingenious phantom gallop of a beat out of plucked acoustic guitar notes, hand percussion and sampled voices, and neither Drexler nor Tangana raises his voice as they envision long-awaited embraces. PARELESHayes Carll, ‘Nice Things’In the twangy, foot-stomping, gravel-voiced, fiddle-topped country-rocker “Nice Things,” which opens his new album, “You Get It All,” the Texan songwriter Hayes Carll imagines a visit from God. She (yes, she) runs into pollution, over-policing and close-minded religion. “This is why I blessed you with compassion/This is why I said to love your neighbor,” she notes, before realizing, “This is why y’all can’t have nice things.” PARELESAnaïs Mitchell, ‘Bright Star’Before she wrote the beloved Tony-winning musical “Hadestown,” Anaïs Mitchell was best known as a gifted if perpetually underrated folk singer-songwriter with a knack for traditional storytelling. The stage success of “Hadestown” (which itself began life as a 2010 Mitchell album) forced her to put her career as a solo artist on hold, but early next year she’ll return with a self-titled album, her first solo release in a decade. Its leadoff single “Bright Star” is a worthy reintroduction to the openhearted luminosity of Mitchell’s voice and lyricism: “I have sailed in all directions, have followed your reflection to the farthest foreign shore,” she sings atop gently strummed acoustic chords, with all the contented warmth of someone who, after a long time away, has at last returned home. ZOLADZAoife O’Donovan featuring Allison Russell, ‘Prodigal Daughter’Aoife O’Donovan sings delicately about a reunion that could hardly be more fraught; after seven years, a daughter returns to her mother with a new baby, needing a home and knowing full well that “forgiveness won’t come easy.” O’Donovan reverses what would be a singer’s typical reflexes; as drama and tension rise, her voice grows quieter and clearer, while Allison Russell joins her with ghostly harmonies. As a tiptoeing string band backs O’Donovan’s pleas, Tim O’Brien plays echoes of Irish folk tunes on mandola, a musical hint at multigenerational bonds. PARELESMarissa Nadler, ‘Bessie, Did You Make It?’How about a chillingly beautiful modern murder ballad to cap off spooky season? The folk singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler’s new album “The Path of the Clouds,” (out Friday on, appropriately enough, Sacred Bones) was partially inspired by her quarantine binge-watch of choice: “Unsolved Mysteries.” The opening track “Bessie, Did You Make It?” creates a misty atmosphere of reverb-heavy piano and arpeggiated guitar, as Nadler tells a tale of a nearly century-old boat accident that was never quite explained. “Did you make it?” she asks her elusive subject, who seems to have perished that day along with her husband. Or: “Did you fake it, leave someone else’s bones?” ZOLADZArtifacts, ‘Song for Joseph Jarman’Artifacts features three of the leading creative improvisers on the Chicago scene: the flutist Nicole Mitchell, the cellist Tomeka Reid and the drummer Mike Reed. All are deeply entwined in the lineage of their home city, and on “Song for Joseph Jarman” — from Artifacts’ sophomore release, “ … and Then There’s This” — the trio pays homage to an influential ancestor with this slow, hushed, deeply attentive group improvisation. It’s not unlike something Jarman himself might have played. Reid and Mitchell hold long tones more than they move around, sounding as if they’re listening for a response from within each note. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO More

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      ‘Different Way of Fighting’: Lyrics Are the Weapons of All-Women Roma Band

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      Many Roma women face pressures to marry young and take on traditional gender roles. Pretty Loud, a hip-hop group from Serbia, wants girls to decide for themselves.Laetitia Vancon and BELGRADE, Serbia — The members of Pretty Loud, possibly the world’s first all-Roma female hip-hop group, don’t write saccharine love songs.Their lyrics focus instead on the pains Roma women experience: marrying and having children too young, feeling like second-class citizens and not finishing high school.“Don’t force me, Dad, I’m too young for marriage,” the six members, who hail from Serbia and are in their midteens to late 20s, sing in one song. “Please understand me, or should I be quiet?” they rap in another. “No one hears when I use my Roma girl’s voice.”Persecuted for centuries, many Roma people in Europe — the continent’s largest ethnic minority — live in segregated communities with limited access to amenities and health care. Women and girls also face gender expectations like being wives and mothers at a young age, which some say cause stress and isolation.The six members of Pretty Loud are in their midteens to late-20s.The group’s youngest members, Elma Dalipi and Selma Dalipi, 15, who are twins, are still finishing high school.“They are taught when they grow up that they will get married, cook and raise kids, but we want to change this,” Silvia Sinani, 24, said of Roma girls, adding that such expectations made it hard for women and girls to finish their educations.One of the band’s goals is to show there is another way. “We want every girl to decide for herself,” Ms. Sinani said.The women of Pretty Loud are hoping their music, authenticity and visibility as performers — already rewriting social conventions in their community in Belgrade, the Serbian capital — can help women and girls elsewhere find their own voices. Formed in 2014, Pretty Loud has danced, sung and rapped on stages across Europe.“It is a different way of fighting,” said Zivka Ferhatovic, 20. “We fight through the music and songs.” Zivka Ferhatovic, left, and Dijana Ferhatovic, members of Pretty Loud, in their house in the Belgrade neighborhood of Zemun.“It is a different way of fighting,” Zivka Ferhatovic, 20, a band member, said of her activism. “We fight through the music and songs.”She added that the group wanted its fusion of traditional Roma music and Balkan hip-hop to confront the everyday realities of many Roma women — be it domestic abuse, sexism or racial discrimination. In one song, they warned that marrying someone abusive would not bring happiness. In another, they addressed their experiences of discrimination. Music was an obvious medium for the band’s members to express themselves and to continue celebrating the signature sound of Roma music.“We grow up with music for when we feel bad and when we feel happy,” said Zlata Ristic, 28. “I sleep with music. I can’t live my life without music.”When she’s performing, Ms. Ristic, said, “I feel like the strongest woman in the world.”Pretty Loud began as a project of GRUBB, an organization running educational and artistic programs for Roma youth in Serbia. On a summer afternoon, they rehearsed for a performance in front of the distorted mirrors at GRUBB’s center in Zemun, a neighborhood in Belgrade where many of the city’s Roma people reside.Pretty Loud began as a project of GRUBB, a center in Zemun, a neighborhood in Belgrade where many of the city’s Roma people live.“We grow up with music for when we feel bad and when we feel happy,” said Zlata Ristic, 28, “I sleep with music. I can’t live my life without music.”Fearing social stigma, the band’s members were initially reluctant to write songs and perform. But others involved with GRUBB helped them to focus their writing and performance on personal experiences.Over time, they grew more comfortable with the idea of melding the personal with the artistic. One performance used a silk sheet with a red spot to theatrically recreate the ritual of inspecting sheets after a wedding as a way of “proving” the bride’s virginity.“It became very poetic,” said Serge Denoncourt, a professional artistic director and longtime volunteer who said he encouraged them to explore the power of art. “They understand there you can talk about anything if you have a way to talk about it.”Now, Pretty Loud’s songs signal a unified hope: to represent Roma women in a modern world free of racism and sexism.A tourist in the Zemun area of Belgrade asking a group of Roma musicians to play for him. Raising her son was like having a “baby doll,” Ms. Ristic said. “We grew up together.” “The whole point of the music is to help them use their voice, not to speak for them,” said Caroline Roboh, a founder of GRUBB. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Pretty Loud’s own community, where members have become role models, a point of pride for them.“Little girls, they come to me and say: ‘Bravo, I want to be like you one day,’” Ms. Sinani said.Even outside their circles, they are amassing supporters who say the group is sending a modern message that Serbia needs to get behind.“Their energy breaks through the walls and spreads love,” said Joana Knezevic, a Serbian actress who watched a recent Pretty Loud performance. “They are women who have something to say.”It is a message that Ms. Ristic, who brings a cheerful energy to the group’s dynamic, learned early on. At 16, she got married and, soon after, pregnant. When the union broke down and she confronted being a single mother, Ms. Ristic became depressed. Raising her son, who is now 11, was like having a “baby doll,” she said. “We grew up together.”Zivka Fahratovic on a youth program on TV Pink in Belgrade. Outside their circles, members of Pretty Loud are amassing supporters who say the group is sending a modern message that Serbia needs to get behind.When Zivka is not studying or helping her grandmother at home, she is a teacher at GRUBB. The organization runs education and artistic programs, working predominantly in Serbia with Roma children and young people.Now, she wants to set an example for women who are unhappy in their marriages, even if they fear raising children alone.“I know when they are divorced, they think their lives stop,” Ms. Ristic said of women. “But I want to show they can continue with their dreams.”It is sometimes a difficult balancing act for members of Pretty Loud, who are trying to live the messages they preach. Some work at Grubb while holding other jobs; others, like the group’s youngest members, Elma Dalipi and Selma Dalipi, 15, are still finishing high school.“We’ve had numerous offers for marriage, but we never accepted any,” said Zivka Ferhatovic of her and her sister, Dijana Ferhatovic, 19. Their determination to finish school is supported by their grandparents and has a personal motivation — they believe their mother, who had her children young, ultimately left the family, in part, because she married too early.“We know the pain,” Zivka Ferhatovic said.After one of Pretty Loud’s most recent performance, the cheers made Dijana Ferhatovic’s chest tighten, she said. “We’re really doing something,” she added, though she called it a small step.Her sister disagreed. “How can you say it’s small?” Zivka Ferhatovic said.The coronavirus pandemic has slowed the band’s activity, and existing inequalities left Roma people in Europe particularly vulnerable to it. (Many of Pretty Loud’s members contracted Covid-19.)Over the summer, as borders reopened in Europe, Pretty Loud again took to stages: to cheers at a United Nations event celebrating refugees, under blue lights in Slovenia, at an audition for a Croatian talent show. And the bandmates have more dreams: of making a real demo for an album, performing in Times Square, writing a book about their lives — perhaps even entering politics.Though not yet household names or able to make a living solely from their music, the band is beginning to attract wider European attention. Earlier this month, a video of their successful audition for that Croatian talent show drew 120,000 views.Ms. Ristic, now a dance teacher at GRUBB, wants to grow her followings on TikTok and Instagram, where she posts Pretty Loud performances. Though it has exposed her to racist and sexist comments, she won’t stop posting, she said.“I don’t delete them because it’s not my shame,” she said, adding: “This is how people treat us. I want to show why we fight.”Pretty Loud members watching a recording of their performance after a show in June in Belgrade. Their songs signal a unified hope: to represent Roma women in a modern world free of racism and sexism.Most of the members of Pretty Loud said there was still room for romantic love, children and marriage in the future — so long as they get to choose when.In the future, Ms. Ristic wants to try just about everything: getting her license and then driving a truck while smoking a cigarette, making music with Serbian artists and raising her son, she said, with strong Roma role models so he grows up respecting women.Most of the members of Pretty Loud say there is still room for romantic love, children and marriage in the future — so long as they get to choose when. But after one marriage, Ms. Ristic has seen enough.“I make my own way forward for me, alone. It’s very hard, but I will try,” she said. “I don’t need husband. I want only fun.”Formed in 2014, the group has danced, sung and rapped its way from rookie status to being featured at events across Europe.Laetitia Vancon More

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      Review: Two Tenors. Many, Many High Notes.

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      Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres came together for a sky-scraping Rossini concert at the 92nd Street Y.Fans of N.F.L. RedZone — the TV channel that whips around the country each Sunday during football season to show you, it promises, “every touchdown from every game” — will have felt a familiar sensation on Wednesday at the 92nd Street Y.There, with the tenors Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres belting out Rossini as if their lives depended on it, the audience got what Brownlee called from the stage the “barnstormers” of the bel canto repertory — and only the barnstormers. Out the window were the plots, the characters, the sets. What was left was an operatic RedZone: the highest stakes, the highest notes — we’re talking up to E flat or F over C — over and over, in dizzying profusion.This was a lot of fun, particularly because Brownlee and Spyres are two of the finest, most sky-scraping bel canto tenors in the world today — though, while Brownlee has long been a Metropolitan Opera star, the astonishing Spyres has just occasionally appeared in New York.Their rousing recent duo album, “Amici e Rivali,” from which the Y program was adapted, posits them as the inheritors of two distinct Rossinian traditions. Brownlee, his tone slender and silvery, sounds (we imagine) something like Giovanni David; Spyres, with a voice beefier and more baritonal, though no less agile, evokes Andrea Nozzari, with whom David often faced off onstage in the early 19th century. (Having multiple leading tenor roles in a single opera was commonplace with this composer.)In concert as on the album, the main joys were the rarities, from the likes of the Crusades drama “Ricciardo e Zoraide” and the Tudor potboiler “Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra.” The duet “Donala a questo core” from “Ricciardo” was a thrilling combination of slow-burning lyrical verses and fiery shared coloratura.I wish that the Y program had followed “Amici e Rivali” and included more from “Ricciardo” and less from “The Barber of Seville.” The concert’s long opening sequence from that chestnut did prove that Spyres could handle the baritone role of Figaro, and his famous “Largo al factotum,” with tongue-twisting, very-low-to-very-high aplomb; not for nothing is his new solo album called “Baritenor.”But Brownlee wasn’t showed off best in Count Almaviva’s thanklessly glittering “Cessa di più resistere,” while a six-hand piano transcription of the “Barber” overture — with the evening’s game accompanist, Myra Huang, joined by Thomas Lausmann and Bryan Wagorn — seemed more fun for the players than the audience. (And other than to give these poor guys and their cords a rest, and to burden Huang still more, no one needed another overture transcription, of the one from “Guillaume Tell,” later on.)The two singers each got a stand-alone number from Rossini’s delightful song repertory, with Spyres particularly melting and burnished in the passionate “L’Esule.” And a closing suite from “Otello” — very different than Verdi’s version — found both in rich, fluent voice in the arias “Che ascolto?” (Brownlee) and “Ah! sì, per voi gia sento” (Spyres) and the explosive duet “Ah! vieni, nel tuo sangue.”I wish we had gotten a taste of the French Rossini, provided on the album through “Le Siège de Corinthe.” But that language did arrive in the form of an encore interloper by Donizetti: the unavoidable showpiece “Ah! mes amis” from “La Fille du Régiment,” with Brownlee and Spyres gleefully trading off the notorious, numerous high C’s.Lawrence Brownlee and Michael SpyresPerformed on Wednesday at the 92nd Street Y, Manhattan. More