Music

The Metropolitan Opera’s revival boasts strong performances but raises difficult questions about race and American music.George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” is both easy and impossible to love.Its contradictions may have been captured best in Truman Capote’s “The Muses Are Heard,” his 1956 dispatch from a touring company’s historic stop in the Soviet Union. “Porgy,” he wrote, was like an allergen to Russian officials — its characters erotic, God-fearing and superstitious.But its reflection of America was a different story. “An exploited race at the mercy of Southern whites, poverty-pinched and segregated in the ghetto of Catfish Row,” Capote said, “could not be more agreeably imagined if the Ministry of Culture had assigned one of their own writers to the job.”“Porgy” — which returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Sunday after two years, its performances still exhilarating but its staging still blandly naturalistic — keeps raising questions over its three hours. And after a long pandemic closure, during which the Met, like the rest of the country, took a fresh look at racial inequities, those questions are increasingly difficult to sit with.Just a couple: Does “Porgy,” a leading contender for the Great American Opera, fulfill Antonin Dvorak’s prophecy that this country’s homegrown music would be founded on Black melodies? If so, did the work’s all-white creative team achieve that by exploiting stereotypes?Opera is rife with troubled histories and receptions. Of two works now playing at the Met, Puccini’s “Turandot” is set in a fairy-tale China out of late Romantic Orientalism; Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” ends with a startling paean to German nationalism. Classics like those tend to be defended with a logic that some have applied to “Porgy”: This is an art form that deals in broad strokes and the mythic. Who, then, are Porgy and Bess if not just another pair of star-crossed lovers?The soprano Angel Blue, left, as Bess and the bass-baritone Alfred Walker as a mighty and menacing Crown.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut that argument is on shakier ground with “Porgy” than “Turandot”; Gershwin’s work inevitably carries the baggage of American history. And its characters, mythic or not, can feel like cartoons of Black pain, violence and poverty. Black artists have had vastly divergent responses to the piece, but what James Baldwin called “a white man’s vision of Negro life” has remained ensconced in the repertory, held up by the same institutions that have long overlooked the work of Black composers.There’s no clear resolution to any of the problems that have dogged “Porgy” since its premiere, in 1935. But it is here to stay — a discomfort to be experienced, pondered and managed, not removed. It’s no coincidence that the Met accompanied this production’s debut two years ago with face-saving initiatives like talks, an album celebrating Black artists of its past and an exhibition to match, and the announcement that it would present its first opera by a Black composer. (That work, Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” opened the season in September.)If “Porgy” is the Great American Opera, it is more for its score — an innovative and seamless blend of grand opera, Broadway, and invented spirituals and folk melodies — than for its subject matter. (For that, we have the melting pot milieu of Kurt Weill’s “Street Scene,” the original sin of American greed in Marc Blitzstein’s “Regina” or stateside verismo in William Grant Still’s “Highway 1, U.S.A.,” to name just a few.)And at the Met, James Robinson’s production — a mostly timid, literal presentation of the libretto, by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin — undercuts the defense of “Porgy” as timelessly mythic with its realistic direction and designs (by Michael Yeargan and Catherine Zuber). Even the preshow curtain, a towering photograph of Catfish Row, suggests something documentary. At odds with all this is the stylized and thoroughly modern choreography of Camille A. Brown.Much of the 2019 cast remains intact, including, from left: Latonia Moore as Serena, Eric Owens as Porgy and Denyce Graves as Maria.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut in the pit, the conductor David Robertson made an argument for the triumphs of Gershwin’s score, with stylistic shifts fluid and distinctly articulated. “Porgy” is also one of the great operatic portraits of a community; as such, its true stars are the chorus singers, matching the instrumentalists with vigor and richly textured delivery.As Porgy, the bass-baritone Eric Owens sang with limited power, but imbued each line with dramatic consideration. The soprano Angel Blue’s Bess was one of tragic juxtapositions: luminous in “Oh, the train is at the station” and shattering in the conflicted Act III reprise of “Summertime.” (That standard was first heard, lush and stylishly ornamented, at the start of the opera, sung by Janai Brugger as Clara).Much of the cast remains intact from 2019: Denyce Graves’s caring and comical Maria; Ryan Speedo Green’s mighty Jake; Alfred Walker’s similarly mighty but menacing Crown; Frederick Ballentine’s flamboyant Sportin’ Life; and Latonia Moore’s Serena, this production’s finest pairing of artist and aria in the showstopping “My man’s gone now,” and a commanding comfort in the later “Oh, Doctor Jesus.”Moore, Green and Blue — all Met regulars — come to this revival fresh from “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” As recently as last year, the idea of two operas with exclusively Black ensembles running at the company in the same month would have been fantastical. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case.Porgy and BessThrough Dec. 12 at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. More

With new albums by Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Adele looming, the rapper’s “Certified Lover Boy” remains atop the Billboard chart.Before Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Adele make themselves known on the Billboard album chart, there is still Drake.In the absence of much competition, the rapper’s latest album, “Certified Lover Boy,” logged its fifth nonconsecutive week at No. 1 with the equivalent of 74,000 sales in the United States, including 100 million streams and fewer than 1,000 copies sold as a complete package in its eighth week out, according to MRC Data.But major releases loom this fall as formidable challengers: Sheeran’s new album, “=,” pronounced “equals,” was released on Friday and will make its chart debut next week, while Swift’s rerecorded version of “Red,” from 2012 — now called “Red (Taylor’s Version)” — is due out Nov. 12.Yet even those top-selling singer-songwriters should enjoy their likely spots at No. 1 while they last, as the new album from Adele, “30,” is scheduled for release on Nov. 19, and is shaping up to be another blockbuster.Drake’s five weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 so far this year with “Certified Lover Boy” match the stay of his previous album, “Scorpion,” in 2018, according to Billboard. And it ties his second-longest reign for a release, trailing the 13 weeks at No. 1 for his 2016 album, “Views.”“Certified Lover Boy” is followed on this week’s chart by some of the year’s most consistently popular releases, including “Dangerous: The Double Album” by Morgan Wallen at No. 2; “Planet Her” by Doja Cat at No. 3; “Sincerely, Kentrell” by YoungBoy Never Broke Again at No. 4; and “Sour” by Olivia Rodrigo at No. 5.New albums by Lana Del Rey (“Blue Banisters,” No. 8) and Elton John (the collaborative “The Lockdown Sessions,” No. 10) were the top debuts of the week. More

Around 9:15 on a recent Wednesday evening, the mood in the full but otherwise serene dining room of La Grenouille suddenly shifted.The lights brightened. A small band began to play loudly. Out of the kitchen emerged a man in sunglasses, sporting a Cheshire cat grin and hips that swayed like a palm tree in a storm. He burst into a rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon,” in a voice that combined the boom of a sportscaster with the swagger of an Elvis impersonator. For almost half an hour, he strutted around this French restaurant known for its towering floral displays and airy soufflés, perching on diners’ tables and even growling like a cat.Who was this brassy balladeer? None other than the restaurant’s majority owner, Philippe Masson.Some guests cheered. Others took photos. As Mr. Masson, 60, told how he once romanced Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a woman could be heard saying, “This is the last dying gasp of the patriarchy.”Mr. Masson and his house band perform the Gershwin tune “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesLa Grenouille, just off Fifth Avenue on East 52nd Street, is among the last old-school French restaurants left in New York City, a contemporary of lost gustatory temples like Lutèce, La Caravelle and La Côte Basque. Much of its reputation has rested on how little it changed during nearly 60 years in business.So the restaurant’s transformation into a raucous late-night jazz lounge has been jarring to some diners, thrilling to many others and surprising to almost everybody. (The performances, which take place on all four nights the restaurant is open each week, aren’t mentioned when you make a reservation online, though they are noted on the La Grenouille website.)“It was definitely like a caricature of Frank Sinatra,” said Caroline Askew, 37, a creative director of a Manhattan design studio, who ate at La Grenouille in July. “But it was fun. I don’t know, I think we needed that sense of humor.”It was one of the first times she’d dined indoors since the pandemic began. “It felt like, OK, this is why I live here,” she said. “I love the old New York-y characters.”To Mr. Masson, who has no formal musical training and who broke into song four times during a half-hour interview for this article, the musical gig feels like a fulfillment of a lifelong destiny. “I seem to move people — I can’t explain it,” he said.Some have been moved in less desirable ways.“It ruined the entire ambience and tenor of the evening,” said Carrie Cort, 77, who lives in Washington, D.C., and has been going to La Grenouille for 28 years. She and her husband recently celebrated his 80th birthday there, and felt the performance was more a disturbance than a delight. “If he wants to open up a nightclub, good, but that’s not what La Grenouille is.”Many guests are excited about the live music, the first in the restaurant’s nearly 60-year history. Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesLa Grenouille has been a Midtown oasis of tradition and tranquillity since Gisèle Masson and her husband, Charles Masson Sr., opened it in 1962. But the restaurant has also kicked up some public drama. In 2014, their son Charles Masson Jr. stepped down from his longtime role as general manager amid a bitter, longstanding dispute with Philippe, his younger brother, who then took over. (Asked for comment about the new musical act, Charles Masson Jr. said, “As much as I may have an opinion, I’d rather keep it to myself.”)Philippe Masson started performing casually for outdoor diners at La Grenouille in July 2020, as a tribute to the restaurant’s captain Bertrand Marteville, who had died of Covid-19. When indoor dining resumed two months later, Mr. Masson removed some tables and replaced them with a stage. He hired four jazz musicians and named them the Buster Frog Quartet, a nod to the restaurant’s name, which means “the frog.”Mr. Masson learned songs like “La Vie En Rose” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” The goal, he said, was to “bring back life to the city.”He soon realized that he had unlocked a passion. “People are saying, ‘Never mind the food or flowers — we are coming here to hear you sing, Philippe.’”Between sets of about 30 minutes, Mr. Masson still runs the kitchen, oversees the dining room and creates the restaurant’s signature flower arrangements. “Music is energizing,” he said. “It picks me up.”Mr. Masson started performing to honor an employee who died from Covid-19, and found a new passion in the process.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesHe knows that not everyone appreciates his act. “One out of 100 say, ‘Oh, Philippe, this is not La Grenouille,’” he said. “I say, it is fitting for me and it is fitting for most.”It’s good for business, too, he said. “In the past we didn’t have a third seating. I could give food away and it wouldn’t happen. Now we have something to create more income for that elusive late-night seating.” (A French singer, Naïma Pöhler, also performs three nights a week, and the singers Lucy Wijnands and Ashley Pezzotti take the stage on Saturdays.)The music has attracted a younger clientele. Liana Khatri, 30, worried that the restaurant would be too stuffy when she visited in August — until Mr. Masson came onstage. “You didn’t care if the guy’s voice was good,” she said. “That was not the point. It was more the experience.”“There are so many trendy restaurants in New York City,” she added. “There is something to be said for a place that is not trying to be cool.”Eventually, Mr. Masson wants to turn the private dining room upstairs into a jazz lounge, where he will keep performing.And what of the employees who hear his crooning night after night? One busboy simply shrugged and said, “You get used to it.”Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

Barack Obama (via video), Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift spoke on behalf of the inductees at a ceremony that also honored Tina Turner, the Go-Go’s and Todd Rundgren.CLEVELAND — Like many awards shows during the pandemic, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame hosted a virtual induction ceremony in 2020. On Saturday night at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, where the organization’s museum is based, the event returned with a powerful lineup to laud its 36th annual class: a former United States president, Taylor Swift and a Beatle.A video introduction for Jay-Z that flaunted the New York City rapper’s wide reach opened with a tribute from Barack Obama. “I’ve turned to Jay-Z’s words at different points in my life, whether I was brushing dirt off my shoulder on the campaign trail, or sampling his lyrics on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the 50th anniversary of the Selma march to Montgomery,” said Obama, who spoke in the package alongside Beyoncé, Chris Rock and LeBron James.The comedian Dave Chappelle, who delivered Jay-Z’s formal induction in the arena, opened with, “I would like to apologize …” — an apparent reference to the controversy surrounding his recent Netflix special, “The Closer” — before sticking to the subject at hand: Jay-Z’s eternal sense of calm and how he has stayed true to his community through the decades.“When he said this is Jay everyday. When he told us he’d never change. You heard this and you probably said as a white person, ‘Well, maybe this guy should focus on his development,’” Chappelle said. “But what we heard is that he’ll never forget us. He will always remember us. And we are his point of reference. That he is going to show us how far we can go if we just get hold of the opportunity.”A tuxedo-clad Jay-Z, who did not perform, followed with a charming, sometimes meandering 10-minute speech in which he referred to the mentors and peers who guided him: LL Cool J (who received a musical excellence award on Saturday after he wasn’t voted in on his sixth nomination), KRS-One, Rakim and Chuck D, among others. “Growing up, we didn’t think we could be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” Jay-Z said. “We were told that hip-hop was a fad. Much like punk rock, it gave us this anti-culture, this subgenre, and there were heroes in it.” Hopefully, he added at the end of his remarks, he is showing the “next generation that anything is possible.”The actress Angela Bassett inducted the singer Tina Turner, who did not attend the event.Michael Loccisano/Getty ImagesThe actress Drew Barrymore, center, with the Go-Go’s. David Richard/Associated PressJay-Z joined one of the more diverse recent Rock Hall classes: Carole King, the singer and songwriter who was honored by the organization in 1990 with her songwriting partner and former husband Gerry Goffin; the arena rockers Foo Fighters, whose frontman, Dave Grohl, traced the band’s longevity to the familial bond developed between the musicians; the indefatigable powerhouse singer Tina Turner, finally inducted as a solo performer after gaining entry as part of Ike and Tina Turner in 1991; the 1980s power-pop band the Go-Go’s, hailed as the sound of “pure possibility” in a big-hearted introduction by Drew Barrymore; and the classic rock auteur Todd Rundgren, who recently told TMZ that he “never cared much about the Hall of Fame” and stayed true to his word, skipping the event to perform a solo set in Cincinnati. HBO will present highlights from the ceremony on Nov. 20.Jay-Z’s speech, filled with asides and memories, well demonstrated how despite the multitude of big personalities packed into one of Cleveland’s biggest venues, the event often centered on more intimate moments.Swift helped set the more personal tone, recalling in her induction speech for King how at age 7 she used to dance throughout her house in socked feet while listening to the musician’s records. “I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know Carole King’s music,” said Swift, who went on to describe the seemingly magical way that King’s songs could be introduced by an outsider — a parent, a sibling, a lover — only to become an integral part of a person’s own internal world.“I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know Carole King’s music,” said the singer Taylor Swift, left, with King.Gaelen Morse/ReutersSwift embodied this idea in her show-opening performance, gliding through “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” which Swift reinvented as a gently pulsating synth-pop ballad that wouldn’t feel out of place in her own discography. King, who could be seen onscreen in the venue wiping away tears as Swift finished the song, thanked the pop star for “carrying the torch forward” in her own speech.“I keep hearing it, so I guess I’m going to have to try to own it, that today’s female singers and songwriters stand on my shoulders,” said King, who was quick to extend the spotlight to her own forebears. “Let it not be forgotten that they also stand on the shoulders of the first woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. May she rest in power, Miss Aretha Franklin!”In his speech for the Foo Fighters, Paul McCartney joking pointed out how Dave Grohl followed in his own footsteps. Both were swept up by music at a young age, McCartney said, landing in popular groups that came to an untimely end. Both rebounded by making albums and playing all the musical parts (Grohl with Foo Fighters’ self-titled 1995 debut; McCartney with his 1970 solo album). “Do you think this guy’s stalking me?” the Beatle cracked.Onstage, Grohl, born roughly 60 miles east of the Rock Hall in Warren, Ohio, praised the influence of the Beatles and in particular McCartney, describing him as “my music teacher.” After the Foo Fighters muscled through a trio of battle-tested rock singalongs — “The Best of You,” “My Hero” and “Everlong” — McCartney repaid the favor, joining the band for a galloping cover of the Beatles’ “Get Back.”The singer Paul McCartney, right, inducted the Foo Fighters. He joined the band for a galloping cover of the Beatles’ “Get Back.”Michael Loccisano/Getty Images H.E.R. and Keith Urban paid tribute to Turner.Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty ImagesIn other performances, H.E.R., Christina Aguilera, Mickey Guyton and Keith Urban combined to pay tribute to Tina Turner, who did not attend the event. During the in memoriam segment, Brandi Carlile joined her bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth for an understated take on the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream” to honor Don Everly, who died in August.The Go-Go’s captured all of the sunny, sneering urgency of their 1981 debut “Beauty and the Beat,” the first and only album from an all-woman band to score the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s chart, opening with “Vacation,” pogo-ing into “Our Lips Are Sealed” and closing with a bounding, bass-heavy “We Got the Beat.”In Janet Jackson’s 2019 induction speech, she spoke of the Rock Hall’s well-documented gender imbalance, asking voters to “please induct more women.” The Go-Go’s bassist Kathy Valentine echoed these comments during the band’s own time onstage.While Valentine credited the Rock Hall for making progress, she also prodded the organization to do more. “By honoring our historical contribution, the doors to this establishment have opened wider,” she said. “Because here is the thing, there would not be less of us if more of us were visible.” More

A two-hour celebration for the milestone broadcast captured the shifts and strides in country music that played out over the past century on the Opry stage.NASHVILLE — The survival of the Grand Ole Opry was anything but guaranteed when Bill Anderson started performing in it six decades ago. Rock ’n’ roll was luring away fans. Radio stations were abandoning barn dance-style programs. There were nights, he said, when musicians could look out from the Opry stage and see empty seats.But on Saturday night, as the curtain went up and he started singing “Wabash Cannonball,” the house was packed, his music beaming out live on WSM, the Nashville station that has carried the Opry since the fledgling days of radio, and streaming online to viewers around the world.The show on Saturday was the 5,000th broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry, a constant accompanying American life through generations of turmoil and transformation, through the Depression and recessions, wars, cultural upheaval and, most recently, a pandemic.The milestone — adding up to roughly 96 years worth of weekly shows, an unparalleled achievement in broadcasting — was a testament to the durability of the Opry as a radio program but also as a Nashville institution that has inducted well over 200 performers as members.“The Opry is bigger than any one artist,” Anderson, one of the longest-serving members of the Opry cast, said in an interview. “As times change and things evolve, somehow, the Opry has been able to remain the star of the show.”The Nashville crowd heard staples like Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”Kyle Dean Reinford for The New York TimesDustin Lynch, one of the Opry’s younger stars, prepared to go onstage Saturday night.Kyle Dean Reinford for The New York TimesThe singer-songwriter Connie Smith performing at the Opry’s 5,000th broadcast.Kyle Dean Reinford for The New York TimesIt was an evolution that was reflected in the two-hour show on Saturday, with an array of performances capturing the shifts and strides in country music that all played out over the past century on the Opry stage.Throughout the night, there were plenty of nods to the past. But there were just as many contemporary songs, a recognition that nostalgia alone was not enough to sustain the Opry.The show included staples like Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Hank Williams’s “Jambalaya,” and “Can the Circle Be Unbroken,” a song first released in 1935. Anderson joined Jeannie Seely, an Opry member since 1967, in a duet of “When Two Worlds Collide.”Then, Seely introduced Chris Janson, the singer-songwriter who was inducted in 2018, describing him as the “one we call the family wild child” as he bounded onstage to perform one of his hits, “Buy Me a Boat.”“It is the show,” said the singer-songwriter Darius Rucker, who performed on Saturday — along with Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood and Vince Gill, among others — and was inducted into the Opry in 2012. “I hope it keeps getting more diverse and that people keep coming to see it and that it remains the show in country music.”As the Opry gained traction, covering a lot of ground with WSM’s 50,000-watt signal and then NBC Radio picking it up nationally in 1939, it emerged as a defining force in country music. The show minted stars and established Nashville as the heart of the industry. (The signs welcoming motorists into Nashville remind them it is the “Home of the Grand Ole Opry.”)The singers Jeannie Seely and Bill Anderson. “As times change and things evolve, somehow, the Opry has been able to remain the star of the show,” Anderson said.Kyle Dean Reinford for The New York Times“It appeals to mostly rural hearts,” said Les Leverett, the longtime behind-the-scenes photographer of the Opry.He recalled his childhood in Perdido, Ala., where his family was “as poor as Job’s turkey,” yet his father scrounged together the money for a radio. Every Saturday night, they would huddle around it, listening to the Opry for as long as the device’s puny battery would allow.“People all over the country were doing that,” Leverett added. “It just has an attraction. You can’t wait to see who the next entertainer is going to be. It just freezes itself in your mind.”The Opry has endured as a vital element in the country music ecosystem by being nimble, according to performers, producers and country music historians. The show has balanced an embrace of tradition with striving to appeal to the taste of younger listeners.“One lyric in one of my favorite songs asks the question: Are you more amazed at how things change or how they stay the same? My answer is both,” said Dan Rogers, the Opry’s executive producer.“Those black-and-white images of a man sitting down and playing a fiddle,” he added, “have evolved into this show that is about so much more than a man sitting down and playing a fiddle. But if someone came out and played ‘Tennessee Wagoner’ — the song that started the Grand Ole Opry — it will still feel right at home on our stage.”The Opry had been in danger of becoming encased in amber, a museum piece that was treasured but no longer relevant. For a long spell, particularly in the 1960s and ’70s, it had become “a little hidebound, a little bit stuck in its ways,” said Robert K. Oermann, the country music historian and a longtime contributor to Music Row magazine.“You listened to the Opry to hear your old favorites,” he added. “To hear the old-timers do their thing.”Anderson backstage at the Opry anniversary show.Kyle Dean Reinford for The New York TimesIn 1925, the Grand Ole Opry was born as George D. Hay’s “WSM Barn Dance.”Kyle Dean Reinford for The New York TimesThe singer John Conlee performs with the Isaacs, who were inducted into the Opry last month.Kyle Dean Reinford for The New York TimesBut over time, the Opry was reinvigorated, fueled by country music’s resurgent popularity, welcoming new performers and using technology to expand its reach. In 2019, the Opry began broadcasting on Circle, a digital television outlet named for the slice of wooden floor at the center of the Opry House stage, brought over with the move from the Ryman Auditorium, the Opry’s home until 1974.“We are really trying to put the Grand Ole Opry left, right and center before consumers all across this planet,” said Colin V. Reed, the chairman and chief executive of Ryman Hospitality Properties, which owns the Opry.The 5,000 tally started with a broadcast on Dec. 26, 1925, when George D. Hay’s “WSM Barn Dance” earned a regular spot on the station’s schedule, just about two months after WSM went on the air.The show was broadcast every week with few exceptions, like the day of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in 1945 and in 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., when the authorities imposed a curfew in Nashville. In 2010, the stage was submerged in a flood that swept through Nashville, but the show was staged elsewhere while the Opry House was renovated. (In the green room, a waist-high marker indicated how high the water reached.)Just as the Opry became a reliable presence in the lives of listeners, it offered the same to performers, where they found community in a tough business. “You have this home base,” Anderson said, noting that for itinerant artists always on the road, it was the place where they could hear about good places to eat in Omaha or be warned about a promoter in Ohio writing bad checks.Janson was introduced as the “one we call the family wild child” before he performed one of his hits, “Buy Me a Boat.”Kyle Dean Reinford for The New York TimesOn Saturday night, the performers were doing two back-to-back shows. Backstage is a maze of dressing rooms, each one with a theme (“Stars and Stripes,” “Honky Tonk Angels”) or named for a longtime Opry performer (Roy Acuff, Little Jimmy Dickens).Seely stepped out of the dressing room dedicated to Minnie Pearl, the character the comedian Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon portrayed on the Opry for more than 50 years, and pointed to the long hallway of rooms, calling it “testosterone alley.” Seely preferred the nook where the walls were lined with photographs of women who had been fixtures of the Opry. “I just think it shows the sisterhood as well as it can be shown,” she said.Later, the Isaacs piled into “Welcome to the Family,” a dressing room set aside for newly inducted members. In recent years, the Opry has added to its ranks, bringing in younger stars like Carly Pearce and Dustin Lynch.The Isaacs, a family bluegrass gospel group, were certainly not newcomers, having made their debut Opry performance nearly 30 years ago. But they were inducted as members just last month.“We were engaged, and we got married,” said Becky Isaacs Bowman, joking about the long wait to be inducted.“We’ve been dating a long, long time,” her sister, Sonya Isaacs Yeary, added.“This place feels like home,” said Lily Isaacs, the vocalist and matriarch of the group.Recently, the hallways had been quieter than usual, as coronavirus precautions have led producers to limit who was allowed backstage. But on Saturday, it was more like it used to be.As Brooks and Yearwood electrified the audience with a medley of their hits, the Isaacs crowded into Vince Gill’s dressing room with their instruments — Sonya had her mandolin, Becky had her guitar and Ben Isaacs had his bass. They played and sang, jamming for their own entertainment until they had to go back onstage for the second show. More

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

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

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