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      Why ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ the Album Has Always Rocked

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      When I discovered the record, it felt like the bizarre offspring of my deepest, dorkiest passions: theater and dad rock.I’m here to spread the good word of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the album.It’s a little odd that a record so rapturously received, at least in the United States in the early ’70s, is now mostly left off best album lists, and didn’t secure a lasting place in the rock music canon.Then again, perhaps it was inevitable that “Superstar” the album would end up eclipsed by “Superstar” the stage show, which followed a year later. It’s natural to think of the album as an artifact of the theatrical experience, rather than as a singular artistic vision in its own right, because that’s the way it usually works. It can be tough, for new listeners, to hear the music for the theater.Maybe it’s just that no serious rock connoisseur wants to admit to digging the guys who did “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”Excuse me, for a moment, if I come off as weirdly defensive about the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. The night my parents met, my mother, a former singer, was performing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” onstage. She has still never seen “Evita.”Revisiting the 1970 album via the recent release of the 50th anniversary edition, I’m as excited by it as I was when I was 15 and listened to it for the first time. My high school classmates were wallowing in their teenage angst listening to Limp Bizkit and Korn — this was around the turn of the millennium — and here I was, immersed in the bizarre offspring of my deepest, dorkiest passions: theater and dad rock.But for me, tuning into a Judas-centered retelling of the Passion of the Christ felt like a kind of rebellion too. I was obsessed with the song “Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say),” which epitomized emo before that musical term existed, and the electric-shock scream of Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan, in the role of Jesus, railing at an unresponsive God. (“Show me just a little of your omnipresent brain!”) While “Superstar” isn’t overtly anti-religious, the impertinence of it gave a young, questioning Catholic a lot to think about.Like a lot of music I loved, and still love from that era, it was kind of preposterous. The “Superstar” overture alone — surely one of the most unsettling rock record openers, let alone musical overtures — features harrowing electric guitar, synth, strings, boisterous brass, and a choir dropped in from a horror movie. The whole thing is more Roger Waters than Rodgers and Hammerstein. Indeed, those musical ingredients can be heard in Pink Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother,” released in the United Kingdom the same month as “Superstar.”The musical tracks for “Superstar,” Rice explained during a podcast, were laid down in a haze of marijuana smoke — at the same London studios where the Rolling Stones recorded “Sympathy for the Devil” — with each day’s session beginning with a half-hour jam session. Most of the musicians had played Woodstock behind Joe Cocker. Gillan recorded his vocals in three hours and played a gig with Deep Purple that night.It’s no wonder “Superstar” rocks.From the get-go, there’s “Heaven on Their Minds,” whose guitar riff has an evocative directness right up there with Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” It also has Murray Head as Judas screaming “Jesuuuus!” and sounding kind of blasphemous doing it. How often do you want to blast a showtune — the term seems inadequate here — as loudly as possible? How many classic musicals kick off with a sound and atmosphere worthy of heavy metal? (Not counting “Les Misérables,” whose opening number features the chain-gang clink of actual heavy metal.)On the other end of the spectrum is “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” a moment of tuneful introspection not miles away from Carole King’s “Tapestry,” which was the second-highest-selling album of 1971 behind “Superstar.”If one thinks of “Superstar” as a concept album, it’s that rare one that tells a compelling, coherent story, more narrative driven than Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” or The Who’s “Tommy,” with none of the vaporous verbiage of a lot of rock music at the time. The whole thing is built, as Lloyd Webber is fond of saying, “like a cast iron boat” — a rock radio play, or a stage show for the proscenium of the imagination. In music industry parlance, it’s all killer, no filler.Rice, the former aspiring pop star that he was, has always excelled in down-to-earth lyrics that make outsize characters thoroughly relatable. It’s partly why the lead vocal performances here hit you in the gut. When Yvonne Elliman’s Magdalene cries “He scares me so,” you believe her. When Murray Head’s Judas chokes out the same line, in his own anguished version of that song — Lloyd Webber, ever the skillful deployer of the poignant reprise — you believe him, too.When it comes to Lloyd Webber’s musical audacity, it can sometimes feel as if it’s not just rock snobs that underrate “Superstar,” but also self-professed musical theater lovers.Rice, left, and Lloyd Webber are now musical theater royalty. Yet some of their work remains underrated by musical fans.Again, it may seem strange to suggest that the composer of “The Phantom of the Opera,” sometimes considered to be one of the most successful pieces of entertainment, is underrated by musical fans. But it’s precisely because of that kind of commercial success that Lloyd Webber is taken for granted, dismissed as a populist composer of the kinds of hummable melodies that might, say, pacify a temperamental president.This is unfair to the composer who, on “Superstar,” was having his way with the kinds of time signatures that were dazzling fans of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Just listen to “The Temple,” its feverish 7/4 time signature is a nod to Prokofiev’s equally tumultuous seventh piano sonata, with nary a beat to take a breath. Even more impressive is “Everything’s Alright,” probably the catchiest tune ever written in 5/4. And I include Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” in that.That’s not to mention Lloyd Webber’s essential, monumental achievement here, of creating 90 minutes of music deftly combining orchestra, rock band and a small army of vocalists. Let’s just say that Stephen Sondheim, who happens to share a birthday with Lloyd Webber, doesn’t have a monopoly on musical complexity, psychological depth and conceptual ambition.Lloyd Webber and Rice became musical theater royalty. But before that, they were a couple of shaggy-haired youths who captured the disparate music of the era like few other musicals until “Hamilton.” There was nothing like it in 1970, and there’s not been a lot like it since. More

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      Dottie Dodgion, a Standout Drummer in More Ways Than One, Dies at 91

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      At a time when a female jazz percussionist was a rarity, she played with Benny Goodman and went on to work with Marian McPartland and other big names.Dottie Dodgion, one of the very few high-profile female drummers in the male-dominated jazz world of the 1950s and ’60s, died on Sept. 17 in a hospice center in Pacific Grove, Calif. She was 91.The cause was a stroke, said her daughter and only immediate survivor, Deborah Dodgion.Ms. Dodgion, who was known for her steady and swinging but unobtrusive approach to the drums, worked for more than 60 years with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Benny Goodman, Marian McPartland and Ruby Braff. She also led her own combos. But she rarely recorded.“She didn’t get the exposure that she might have gotten through recording because of her gender,” said Wayne Enstice, who collaborated with her on her autobiography, “The Lady Swings: Memoirs of a Jazz Drummer” (2021). “She wasn’t taken as seriously as she should have been — not by other musicians, but by people on the business side.”Unlike some drummers, Ms. Dodgion was more concerned with keeping the beat than with calling attention to herself.“There’s no denying that many drummers love the spotlight,” she wrote in her autobiography. “That’s why I sometimes say I’m not a ‘real drummer.’”She rarely took solos, she wrote, and when she did solo her approach “came from being a singer.”“I’d hear the melody inside my head,” she added, “so the rhythms I laid down always followed the song form of whatever tune I played.”She continued to play until she was 90, with her own trio, on Thursday nights at the Inn at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach, near her home in Pacific Grove — a gig that lasted 14 years. After breaking a shoulder in 2019, she sang while another drummer, Andy Weis, filled in for her, until the coronavirus forced the hotel to shut down temporarily.Ms. Dodgion performing in Delaware Water Gap, Pa., in the 1980s with the pianist John Coates Jr. and the bassist DeWitt Kay. via Dottie Dodgion/University of Illinois Press“She swung hard — and that meant there was a lesson to be heard in watching her play,” Mr. Weis said by phone. “She knew exactly what tempo would swing the hardest.”The celebrated jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington recalled that she had begun playing drums at 7 and first saw Ms. Dodgion about two years later at a women’s jazz festival. As far as Ms. Carrington knew at the time, Ms. Dodgion was the only female drummer around.“She always had a beautiful time feel, which is the most important part of being a drummer,” Ms. Carrington said in a phone interview. “She was never the fanciest, trickiest drummer in the world who dazzled with solos, but she really captured the essence of being a drummer.”Dorothy Rosalie Giaimo was born on Sept. 23, 1929, in Brea, Calif. Her father, Charles, was a drummer. Her mother, Ada (Tipton) Giaimo, aspired to be a dancer but became a waitress after her husband left the family when Dottie was 2.One day, when she was 5, her father stopped by her grandparents’ house in Los Angeles, where she was living, and, as she said, “kidnapped” her, taking her on the road for two years to the hotels, road houses and strip joints where he led a band. Absorbing the sounds and rhythms of her father’s drumming was her introduction to show business, albeit against her will. She was 7 when she returned to her mother, who had remarried.Her stepfather, a chicken farmer, raped Dottie when she was 10; he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. After she and her mother moved to Berkeley, Calif., Dottie found peace in her weekend bus trips to San Francisco to see her father’s band at a strip club, Streets of Paris.“His excellent time attracted all the best strippers,” she wrote.As a teenager, she sang at private parties and weddings, which led to work in the mid-1940s with bands led by the jazz guitarist Nick Esposito and the renowned bassist Charles Mingus. Singing eventually gave way to drumming, which she picked up by listening to her father, and through the 1950s she played in clubs in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Nevada. For a time, she was the house drummer at Jimbo’s Bop City in San Francisco.When the pianist Marian McPartland formed an all-female band in 1977, Ms. Dodgion was her drummer. From left, Mary Osborne, Vi Redd, Ms. Dodgion, Ms. McPartland and Lynn Milano.Marian McPartlandMeeting the bassist Eugene Wright, who would become an integral part of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, had a transformative effect on how she viewed her role in a band.“Eugene coached me on the nuances of playing in a rhythm section,” she wrote, “including the intangible insides on how to fit with the piano and the bass.”Ms. Dodgion’s first marriage, to Robert Bennett, was annulled; her marriages to Monty Budwig, a bassist, and Jerry Dodgion, a saxophonist, ended in divorce.With Mr. Dodgion, who was in Benny Goodman’s band, Ms. Dodgion moved to Manhattan in 1961. On their first day there, the band rehearsed for an engagement at Basin Street East. Ms. Dodgion dropped her husband off; when she returned at the end of the rehearsal, she was surprised when Goodman, who was looking for a new drummer, asked her to sit in with the band.“I thought it was just a jam session,” she told The New York Times in 1972. “Benny’d call out a number — ‘Gotta Be This or That’ — and I’d start looking for the music. But he’d say, ‘Don’t open the book.’ Every tune, it was the same — ‘Don’t open the book.’ At the end of the rehearsal, Benny said: ‘See you tonight, Jerry. You, too, Dottie.’ That was how I found out I was going to play with the band.”Ten days into the engagement at the club, Goodman forgot to introduce her when he name-checked some members of his 10-piece band. When the crowd demanded that he announce her name, he relented, and she received a standing ovation. But as she left the bandstand, she later recalled, Goodman’s manager whispered “’Bye” in her ear, indicating that she was being fired for getting more applause than her boss.Ms. Dodgion was not out of work for long. She quickly got a job with Tony Bennett at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Over the next 40 years, she played with Marian McPartland, Ruby Braff, Zoot Sims, Wild Bill Davison, Joe Venuti and others.“She could adapt from swing to bop, to Latin rhythms, all without calling attention to herself,” Mr. Enstice said. “She could fit in with anyone.”Ms. Dodgion worked with Ms. McPartland in 1964 and again 13 years later, when Ms. McPartland led an all-female band.“Dorothy had a natural sense of swing,” Ms. McPartland told The Sacramento Bee in 1989. “She keeps steady time and she swings — those are the most important things for a good drummer.” More

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      Taylor Swift Returns to No. 1 With Autographed ‘Fearless’ CDs

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      The singer-songwriter’s “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” the rerecorded edition of her breakthrough 2008 LP, surged to the top of Billboard’s album chart.Streaming is everything in music today. But a pile of CDs, a marker and some elbow grease can still take you to No. 1 (at least if your name is Taylor Swift).This week, Swift’s “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” the rerecorded edition of her breakthrough 2008 LP, returned to No. 1 on Billboard’s chart — up from No. 157 last week — with the equivalent of 152,000 sales in the United States, thanks largely to a limited release of autographed CDs on Swift’s website and the availability of the album’s vinyl version.“Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” which opened at No. 1 in April, notched its second week at the top with just 8.7 million streams, the lowest streaming number for a No. 1 album since AC/DC’s “Power Up” last November. But Swift also moved 146,000 copies as a complete package, including 77,000 on CD, 67,000 on vinyl and about 1,000 each on cassette and digital download, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. Altogether, that pushed “Fearless” over the top in its 25th week out.Last month, Swift tweeted that she had signed so many CDs, “I may never write the same again, as my hand is now frozen in the permanent shape of a claw.”It is a tactic Swift has used before. Last year, she sent signed copies of “Folklore” — the first of her two quarantine LPs — to indie record stores, and later sold more autographed CDs on her website. “Folklore” held the No. 1 spot a total of eight weeks, more than any other album in 2020.Also this week, Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” is No. 2; the rapper Meek Mill’s new “Expensive Pain” opens at No. 3; YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s “Sincerely, Kentrell,” last week’s chart-topper, falls three spots to No. 4 in its second week out; and Lil Nas X’s “Montero” is in fifth place.“Love for Sale,” the album of Cole Porter songs by Lady Gaga and the 95-year-old Tony Bennett, opens at No. 8. More

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      Two Singers Reveal the Core of Art Song, on Stages Big and Small

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      This weekend, Jonas Kaufmann gave a recital at the vast Carnegie Hall, while Will Liverman appeared at the intimate Park Avenue Armory.Two recitals over the weekend in New York might have seemed, at first, to inhabit very different realms of art song.On Saturday evening at Carnegie Hall, Jonas Kaufmann, one of the world’s leading tenors, presented a program of songs in German. Then on Sunday afternoon at the Park Avenue Armory, the rising baritone Will Liverman, currently at the Metropolitan Opera in the lead role of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” gave a varied recital that included works by four Black composers he champions.The Armory’s recital space — the roughly 100-seat Board of Officers Room — is close to the salons and living rooms where Schubert and other composers of his time essentially created the lieder concert. Carnegie Hall, which sold out nearly all of its 2,800 seats for Kaufmann’s engagement, is massively bigger than anything the progenitors of lieder could have imagined.Yet at its core, art song is a genre in which music is put, sensitively and compellingly, at the service of poetic texts. And though the stages Kaufmann and Liverman performed from could not have been more different, both artists proved themselves singers who put words first.Kaufmann, who has been frustratingly elusive in New York in recent years, appeared with his regular recital partner, the fine pianist Helmut Deutsch. They began with nine works that can be heard on their recent recording of lieder by Liszt, whose roughly 90 songs remain somewhat overlooked. In “Vergiftet sind meine Lieder,” an impassioned setting of a Heine poem, Kaufmann was almost in Wagnerian mode, like a despairing Tristan, singing with burnished top notes, yet shaping aching phrases tenderly.Now and then, in the Liszt songs and elsewhere, his voice had its rough patches. (A week earlier, he had canceled some performances in Munich because of a tracheal infection.) But he mostly rallied, and sounded at his clarion-voiced best as the program went on. These Liszt works are marvelous, full of musical-poetic flights, alternately epic and ruminative. The piano parts, not surprisingly for this composer, are often elaborate, with daring chromatic harmonies and wondrous colorings. I was most impressed, however, when Kaufmann lifted melting phrases with focused and floating sound, like the pianissimo moments of “Die Loreley.”Helmut Deutsch, left, with Jonas Kaufmann at Carnegie Hall on Saturday.Jennifer TaylorHe then sang 13 songs by Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Zemlinsky and others, ending with Mahler’s profound “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (from “Rückert-Lieder”), in an effectively restrained performance. That was supposed to have ended the recital, after 75 minutes with no intermission. But the enthusiastic audience had other ideas, and Kaufmann complied, with six encores. During the last one, Strauss’s “Cäcilie,” Kaufmann, visibly annoyed, stopped after a couple phrases. “I do everything for you,” he told the audience, “but please respect the rules and don’t film!” People applauded in support, then he started over — and sang vibrantly.Though Liverman has been rightly praised for his wrenching performance in “Fire,” he did sometimes have trouble being heard over the orchestra at the Met. Yet at the Armory, joined by the excellent pianist Myra Huang, his sound almost overwhelmed the space. It was exciting to hear his fearsome account of Loewe’s “Erlkönig” (Goethe’s chilling poem, best known from Schubert’s setting). And he balanced forceful intensity with winningly intimate singing in songs by Strauss, Ravel and Rachmaninoff, all played with taste and flair by Huang.Then, turning to the works by Black composers, Liverman brought affecting directness to Margaret Bonds’s “Three Dream Portraits” (to texts by Langston Hughes), which can be heard on his recent album “Dreams of a New Day: Songs by Black Composers.” Songs by H. Leslie Adams and Damien Sneed were also special, coming across like an elegant stylistic meeting place between art song and American standards. I was moved, and impressed, when Liverman performed his own arrangement of a medley of music by Brian McKnight — a favorite R&B artist of his, he explained — singing with lovely casualness while accompanying himself deftly on the piano.Not many opera singers have that skill, let alone the courage. And along the way, he had explored an overlooked legacy of American artists whose work speaks to him personally. More

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      Review: The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra Returns, With Gusto

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      The dynamic conductor Xian Zhang opened the symphony’s new season at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center on a balmy night in Newark.NEWARK, New Jersey — Since becoming the music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra in 2016, the dynamic conductor Xian Zhang has worked steadily to reflect diversity and inclusion through the institution’s programming, outreach initiatives and guest artists. This was crucial in a city where a majority of residents were Black and Latino; it also spoke to Zhang’s own experience as one of a small number of Asian female conductors leading major ensembles. These priorities were in evidence on Friday when, 557 days after its last full orchestra concert (because of the pandemic), the New Jersey Symphony opened its new season at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center on a balmy night in Newark.The program opened with the premiere of Michael Abels’s “Emerge.” Best known for his scores for the contemporary horror films “Get Out” and “Us,” Abels describes this eight-minute piece as suggesting a group of highly trained musicians getting back together after a long break, a scenario that speaks to the moment.It begins with an evocation of an orchestra tuning up. We hear the oboe playing a single pitch of A, which the other instruments pick up on. Soon the various players break off into short three-note melodic bits, quivering strings, fidgety rhythms and sustained sonorities that keep swelling and diminishing. During one episode the players seem almost to be in free-for-all, somewhat reminiscent of the way many orchestras warm up on the stage as the audience drifts in, creating a borderline-annoying mass of sounds. But the music here becomes as a restless aural collage pierced with flinty dissonance. Soon various players take off in bluesy solos, or engage in fleeting bits of counterpoint. Finally, the musicians team up in passages of mellow lyricism, skittish bursts, manic scales, all leading to a brassy, celebratory coda.Roumain fuses elements of hip-hop, jazz and classical contemporary styles in his work.Dan GrazianoNext up was the composer and violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain’s “Voodoo Violin Concerto,” a 25-minute work from 2002 that reflects his Haitian heritage but also fuses elements of hip-hop, jazz and classical contemporary styles. The solo part drives this work, and Roumain played commandingly on a violin that was amplified, including electronics with which he could eerily process certain sounds. In the first section, “Filter,” the violin jumps into orchestral atmospherics with perpetual-motion, repeated-note riffs. The instruments respond with pungent backup music for woodwinds, and jarring, jazzy full orchestra harmonies.There were extended episodes where Roumain improvised winding strands of frenzied yet lyrical lines over orchestra music that maintains a respectful distance. Though an unabashedly episodic work, with passages evoking call-and-response jazz styles and a bravura cadenza that tweaks the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the concerto still has compositional sweep that carries into “Prayer,” the mellow, elegiac second section, with the violin playing over a chorale-like piano music, and a funky, wailing “Tribe” finale.Though it’s hard to imagine that, as a music student at a traditional conservatory in Beijing, Zhang could have imagined performing a score alive with jazz, blues and improvisation, she led a confident and irrepressible account. Roumain, who has collaborated excitingly with Bill T. Jones, Savion Glover and other creators from outside classical music, this season begins an appointment as the orchestra’s Resident Artistic Catalyst, and the title says much about his ambitions in this role. After the concerto, he spoke to the audience about the responsibility we all have to love one another and be creative during what has been “a time of death and despair.”Zhang then led an elegant, rich-toned and spirited account of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The slow movement was especially fine, taken at a true Allegretto pace, steady yet never forceful, restrained yet coursing with inner intensity. It was a long-awaited and rewarding return for an essential orchestra. More

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      Bolshoi Performer Is Killed in Onstage Accident

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      The man, in his late 30s, was crushed during a scene change as the opera “Sadko” was performed before an audience, the theater said.A performer was killed during an opera at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow on Saturday when there was an accident during a scene change, the theater said.The man, in his late 30s, was working as an extra in a performance of the opera “Sadko,” by the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.Russian news reports said that the man had been crushed by a piece of scenery, and videos of the event that circulated online showed it happening as a backdrop descended to the stage. As the chorus kept singing and the orchestra continued to play, there was a sudden commotion onstage. Performers waved their arms and shouted “Stop!” The music ground to a halt, and most of the performers walked offstage while a few went to the rear of the stage to help the man. The curtains closed.The show was stopped immediately, the Bolshoi said in a statement, and the audience was asked to leave.“A tragic accident happened during the ‘Sadko’ production tonight,” the Bolshoi, one of Russia’s most prestigious theaters, said in a statement. The theater said it was assisting investigators as they sought to determine the circumstances of the man’s death.The man was identified as Yevgeny Kulesh. He worked as part of a 50-person group of Bolshoi employees who serve as onstage extras, supplementing singers and dancers.Russian news reports said that audience members had not initially seemed aware of the death and appeared to think that the panic onstage was part of the performance.The Bolshoi has a history of strange deaths and injuries. In 2013, the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet was severely injured when a masked man threw acid in his face. That same year, a violinist died after falling into the orchestra pit. More

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      Passing the Time With a Piano-Playing Pilot

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      As a pilot with United Airlines, Beau Brant flies North American routes. At every layover, he looks to play a mix of jazz, classical and more for his crew and strangers.It’s after midnight at the Palm Court in Cincinnati and staff is trying to close. Lights are dimmed as the last of the martini glasses and beer bottles are scooped up. But Beau Brant is still at the piano, playing for stragglers.Finally, a waitress gives him the “wrap-it-up” sign. Probably a good idea, since he has a flight to catch the next day, and he can’t be late.He’s the captain.Perhaps there are other piano-playing airline pilots, but how many have cut seven albums, performed for a U.S. president and had an original song used by Oprah Winfrey?Mr. Brant, 41, has been playing — and flying — most of his life. He started on the piano at age 3 and was flying by 12. A pilot with United Airlines for 17 years, Mr. Brant considers flying job number one. But with every layover, he looks for a place to play, just for the fun of it.A regular performer now at many of his layover hotels, Mr. Brant flies domestic routes from his homebase in Denver to the likes of Madison, Wis.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; and Jackson Hole, Wyo. He still has the occasional gig back home — his house piano is a Yamaha Grand — but gets most excited about playing on the road for his crew and strangers. And he’s fallen in love with the Bar at Palm Court, a soaring Art Deco venue in the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza: “The piano area reminds me of the Titanic’s ‘grand staircase.’ ”His sets are a rambling mix of jazz, blues, classical and show tunes. His style features a flashy right hand and plenty of bounce but no sheet music. And he loves talking about his two passions.The following are excerpts from conversations with Mr. Brant, edited for clarity.How did this fly-and-play routine come about?It started on a long-haul in 2005, New York to Frankfurt. We arrived early at the hotel, the rooms weren’t ready, and there was this beautiful piano in the lobby. I started playing for the crew and wound up playing happy hour.You used to play professionally?I grew up in Evergreen, just outside Denver, and played restaurants there when I was 12. Then hotels, weddings, birthdays — sometimes four or five nights a week. I wouldn’t be where I am today without music: Flight training is expensive.Beau Brant on the tarmac outside Jackson Hole Airport in Jackson, Wyo. “One of my favorite approaches anywhere,” the pilot said, is “landing next to the Grand Tetons.”Ryan RoweWhat are some of the most exotic places you’ve played?Paris, Zurich, Lisbon, Sydney, Shanghai. I flew international for much of my career. In 2019, I upgraded to captain on the Airbus 320 and now fly North American routes. But in the U.S., many hotels have retired their pianos, and they’re harder and harder to find.Your layover sets can last for hours — no charge?Sometimes I get food and drink, but that’s already covered by the airline. The tip jar can get anywhere from $20 to $200, but I use that to treat the crew to something. It’s definitely not about the money.What’s your drink of choice while playing?I enjoy a nice red wine, but there’s the 12-hour rule [the F.A.A. prohibits pilots from consuming alcohol 12 hours before work], and I’m very respectful of that. At the Plaza, it was soda water with lime.United knows about your double life, right?They used me in a social media commercial playing our theme song, “Rhapsody in Blue.” I play that at pretty much every performance.Are there similarities between flying and playing?There’s an art to music and an art to flying. Pilots have to operate under very strict procedures, but we can put our own touch on things — “finesse” the aircraft. With music, you can play a composition exactly like it’s written, but I like to take it and add my twist. I encourage my first officers to hand-fly — turn off all the automation. Hand-flying can be much smoother — small, gentle movements, like with music pieces.So, the president and Oprah Winfrey — how did those happen?I performed for President Ford in 1992 in Vail, Colo. In 1999, one of my songs was in a video presentation for a fund-raiser sponsored by Oprah, in Chicago, for her “Angel Network.”52 Places to Love in 2021We asked readers to tell us about the spots that have delighted, inspired and comforted them in a dark year. Here, 52 of the more than 2,000 suggestions we received, to remind us that the world still awaits.What’s flying been like since the pandemic?There’s still the masks, but we’re finally getting back to normal, bringing back food and drinks. I remember a flight last year when we had five crew and nine passengers.What would be your dream gig?I’d want to go back in time, to those Pan Am 747s that had a lounge with a piano. On the long-hauls, pilots get a break. I would have loved to play one of those lounges.Beau Brant’s music can be found on beaubrant.com.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places list for 2021. More

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      A Polish Rapper Goes From Scandal to Superstar

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      Michal Matczak, better known as Mata, has been called the voice of Polish youth for songs about teen struggles that have grabbed the attention of his politically divided country.WARSAW — The vast fields of Warsaw’s Bemowo airport have hosted concerts by some of the world’s biggest stars. Michael Jackson played there. So did Madonna. Metallica, too.But last Saturday more than 30,000 people — many young teenagers, with their parents acting as chaperones — crowded together next to the runway waiting for a new star to get onstage: Michal Matczak, a 21-year-old rapper with bleached-blond hair and a constant grin, better known as Mata.“He’s like the representative of our generation,” said Joseph Altass, 20, a student who’d traveled from Gdynia, more than 200 miles north of Warsaw, for the concert.Zuzia Waskiewicz, 19, sharing a bottle of flavored vodka with a friend, agreed: “He’s the first person talking about real things about us.”More than 30,000 people wait for Mata to take the stage at Warsaw’s Bemowo airport. Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesMata staged the show with the help of a theater director. Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesWhen Mata appeared at 8 p.m., it was clear he was speaking to the younger generation in the audience: One of the night’s first tracks, “Blok,” was about moving out from his parents’ home and annoying his new neighbors by partying. Then Mata played an ode to marijuana, followed by a tune about drinking on the concrete steps that line the Vistula River in Warsaw. The crowd rapped along to every word.Mata’s impact in Poland has been inescapable. Earlier this year, one of his tracks, “Kiss Cam,” was streamed so frequently, it appeared on one of Billboard’s global charts — a first for a Polish act. When last Friday he released “Mlody Matczak” (“Young Matczak”), his second album focused on his early adulthood, it instantly topped the country’s Spotify chart. Several of his songs have over 50 million views on YouTube.But one specific track marked Mata’s explosive entrance into Polish cultural life two years ago: “Patointeligencja” (an amalgam of the Polish words for pathology, and intelligentsia). Over spare production, Mata paints a picture of life as a student at Batory, an elite high school in Warsaw where many students are expected to push for admission to the world’s best universities. In his telling, few of the students are quietly studying for their final exams. Instead, they’re using drugs, alcohol and sex to deal with the pressure. “My friend wanted to spend his father’s whole salary on drugs,” Mata raps, “but his old man was making so much he would have killed himself trying.”“Patointeligencja” was a sensation almost as soon as it appeared on YouTube in December 2019. Cyryl Rozwadowski, an editor at Newonce, a popular Polish-language culture website, said “it was such a groundbreaking event, I hardly think of it as a song anymore.”Newspapers and TV shows started using the track to debate both the pressures on Polish youth and issues of privilege, like whether an apparently rich kid like Mata should be rapping at all. Their takes often reflected political divides in the country. Poland has for years been in a culture war, with liberals on one side and the ruling populist Law and Justice Party and its conservative supporters on the other, facing off over issues like gay rights, abortion and even the rule of law.Some conservative sections of the media, including the country’s main government-run TV station, presented Mata’s track as showing the dysfunctions of the liberal elite. They regularly pointed out that Mata’s father is Marcin Matczak, a lawyer and academic known for his fierce opposition to the ruling party’s policies.On his new album, Mata has a tribute to him called “Papuga,” or “Parrot,” slang for lawyer in Poland. His father has welcomed the association, this year releasing a book called “How to Raise a Rapper.”Mata said he was enjoying fame in Poland, but hoped to find success outside the country, too.Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesA few hours before the airport concert, Mata said in an interview at his record label’s plush office that he liked causing scandal. “I’m a bit addicted to adrenaline,” he said, adding that as an only child he craved attention. Sometimes, he feels “like an internet troll more than a rapper,” he said.But he insisted he hadn’t written “Patointeligencja” when he was 18 to cause a stir. He typed it on his phone during his final year at Batory when he’d “just had a big breakdown.” A three-year relationship had ended, he said, and he was overwhelmed with stress about exams and his teachers saying he was heading for failure.One day, he skipped class and went to a Caffe Nero, where he poured alcohol into a coffee while searching for a beat on YouTube. When he found the music for “Patointeligencja,” the lyrics angrily spilled out of him. “It was just stream of consciousness, all these bad emotions coming out of me,” he said. “Even now, I’m excited when I think about that moment. I felt alive.”When his father picked him up later, Mata rapped the tune to him. He said the song was like “the cure” for his breakdown. Soon he was writing his debut album, “100 Dni Do Matury” (“100 Days to Finals”), which reviewers later called a farewell to his childhood. He managed to graduate.“Mlody Matczak” — released last Friday — is mainly about his new life as an adult, he said, but it also includes a track cursing Polish political figures who’d criticized him and his father. There’s a song about his grandfathers, who both died this year, one of complications from Covid-19. At one of their funerals, Mata got up to sing, and the piano player asked for his autograph, he said.The crowd — many of whom were teenagers with their parents as chaperones — rapped along to Mata’s songs. Anna Liminowicz for The New York Times“I want to go global,” Mata said, “but I believe it’s easier to do this by getting inspirations from my own culture than trying to fit into global pop.”Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesCritics in Poland are talking about his new album as being far more than scandal mongering. Bart Strowski, the co-author of a series of books on Polish rap, said he liked Mata’s duality. On one hand, he “is an angry young rapper filled with booze and weed.” On the other, Strowski said, he’s “a soulful and sensitive kid” writing unusual songs filled with “incredible sociological detail.”Mata said he was enjoying fame in Poland, but hoped to find success outside the country, too. He’d been thinking about whether to try rapping in English, he said, but if he did, would keep a “hard Polish accent” to stand out.At the concert on Saturday, Mata’s ambition was clear, with the show staged with the help of a theater director. During one song, he was joined by about 20 dancers in Polish folk costumes and red balaclavas. For another about submissive sex, he stood in the middle of a huge block of lights while a group of dancers took his top off and sprayed him with cream.After almost two hours, it seemed there was little spectacle left, and the only hit left to play was “Patointeligencja.” But instead of performing the song, Mata ran offstage, jumped into a blue helicopter and flew away. The crowd waited around for 10 minutes, asking whether he’d really gone, but Mata had left to find his next controversy. More