Music

Many favor shows about classical music, of course, but they also listen to shows about pop songs, “The Moth” and Conan O’Brien.“Aria Code” is an increasingly popular podcast. But what else do opera professionals listen to? Here are some recommendations. (Their comments, by email, have been edited and condensed.)Merrin Lazyan, co-creator and lead producer of “Aria Code”:I’ve enjoyed the podcasts produced by Glyndebourne Opera and LA Opera, as well as the new one from San Francisco Opera called “North Stage Door.” The Met’s other podcast, “In Focus,” is a great source of information about the history and context of various operas.Another music podcast that I enjoy, which features some opera but isn’t opera-specific, is “Soul Music” from the BBC. It’s a little like “Aria Code,” in that each episode includes several people talking about a single song and capturing its emotional resonance. But when I’m out for a run, there’s no Maria Callas or Marian Anderson, just Madonna and Michael Jackson.Sondra Radvanovsky, a co-host of the “Screaming Divas” podcast, performing in a recital in Spain in 2019.David Borrat/EPA, via ShutterstockKeri Alkema, Ms. Radvanovsky’s co-host on “Screaming Divas,” onstage in “Tosca” in London in 2016.Robbie Jack /Corbis, via Getty ImagesNicky Spence, tenor who will sing the role of Laca in “Jenufa” starting Tuesday at the Royal Opera House in London:Opera singers are often plagued with earworms of the music we’re in the midst of learning or performing, so I often take solace in the world of spoken-word podcasts. I’m a huge fan of Jess Gillam’s podcast “This Classical Life,” where she chats casually about classical music in a really accessible way with a fellow young musician. They don’t try to make classical music hip, but they are very cool with some great content. It’s the perfect gateway into the genre.Another lovely, informative podcast is “AA Opera!” headed by two young ladies — Ash and Avi — who manage to interview the starriest names in opera but make it sound like you’re just sitting at their kitchen table, which joyfully demystifies the concept of opera’s being grand.My guilty aural treat is “Screaming Divas” with opera royalty Sondra Radvanovsky and Keri Alkema. They take on my favorite folk in interview including Jamie Barton, Ben Heppner and Kate Lindsey as they pick through everything from popular culture, turning left at sex toys and of course, opera!Cori Ellison, an opera dramaturge who is a member of the Vocal Arts faculty at the Juilliard School and has appeared on “Aria Code” and other podcasts:“Aria Code” is absolutely top of the heap, intriguingly and beautifully curated, with high production values. “He Sang She Sang” is a slightly older but also terrific opera podcast by the radio station WQXR [co-hosted and produced by Ms. Lazyan]. Also very worthwhile are the “OperaHERE” podcasts by the Michigan Opera Theater and podcasts by the English National Opera; Opera North from Leeds, England; “The In-Tune A-Z of Opera” by the BBC; LA Opera; Seattle Opera; Minnesota Opera; and Glyndebourne in Sussex County, England.Charlie Harding, left, and Nate Sloan, co-hosts of “Switched on Pop.”Ellyn JamesonGillian Brierley, assistant general manager of marketing and communications at the Met:“Switched on Pop,” produced by Vulture, is a great music podcast that analyzes pop songs, interweaving musicological tidbits in a very approachable way. They had a great four-part mini-series with the New York Philharmonic called “The 5th” about Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday.“Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” is among the non-music podcasts favored by the soprano Amy Burton.Team Coco/Earwolf, via Associated PressAmy Burton, New York-based soprano who has sung at the Met and the White House and teaches at Juilliard and the Mannes School of Music:Opera can be intimidating to people who don’t speak foreign languages, or who are put off by the grandeur and scale of it all — the gigantic forces, the lengthy evenings, the audacity of the emotions expressed. “Aria Code” could really help people find their way into the art form. And for those who already love opera, it may provide a deeper understanding.However, my tendency after a day of teaching opera singers is to listen to podcasts about subjects other than music. By listening to poets, comedians, filmmakers and other artists, I feel it recharges my batteries creatively, both as a singer and a teacher. I wish I could recommend other music podcasts, but in my free time my focus is more on language — “The Writer’s Voice,” “The Plot Thickens,” “The Moth,” “Coffee Break French” — and “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” because I need laughter. More

An account by a former employee of the security team hired by Ms. Spears’s father created the most detailed portrait yet of the singer’s life under 13 years of conservatorship.Britney Spears’s father and the security firm he hired to protect her ran an intense surveillance apparatus that monitored her communications and secretly captured audio recordings from her bedroom, including her interactions and conversations with her boyfriend and children, according to a former employee of the security firm.Alex Vlasov, the employee, supported his claims with emails, text messages and audio recordings he was privy to in his nine years as an executive assistant and operations and cybersecurity manager for Black Box, the security firm. He came forward for a new documentary by The New York Times, “Controlling Britney Spears,” which was released on Friday.Recording conversations in a private place and mirroring text messages without the consent of both parties can be a violation of the law. It is unclear if the court overseeing Ms. Spears’s conservatorship was aware of or had approved the surveillance. Mr. Vlasov’s account, and his trove of materials, create the most detailed portrait yet of what Ms. Spears’s life has been like under the conservatorship for the past 13 years. Mr. Vlasov said the relentless surveillance operation had helped several people linked to the conservatorship — primarily her father, James P. Spears — control nearly every aspect of her life.“It really reminded me of somebody that was in prison,” said Mr. Vlasov, 30. “And security was put in a position to be the prison guards essentially.”In response to detailed questions from The Times, a lawyer for Mr. Spears issued a statement: “All of his actions were well within the parameters of the authority conferred upon him by the court. His actions were done with the knowledge and consent of Britney, her court-appointed attorney, and/or the court. Jamie’s record as conservator — and the court’s approval of his actions — speak for themselves.”Alex Vlasov, a former employee of Black Box Security, decided to share his information after hearing Ms. Spears’s speech to the court in June. He said a surveillance operation had helped several people linked to the conservatorship control nearly every aspect of Ms. Spears’s life.Victor Tadashi SuarezEdan Yemini, the chief executive and founder of Black Box Security, also did not respond to detailed questions. In a statement, his lawyer said, “Mr. Yemini and Black Box have always conducted themselves within professional, ethical and legal bounds, and they are particularly proud of their work in keeping Ms. Spears safe for many years.”Ms. Spears’s lawyer, Mathew S. Rosengart, said in a statement: “Any unauthorized intercepting or monitoring of Britney’s communications — especially attorney-client communications, which are a sacrosanct part of the legal system — would represent a shameful violation of her privacy rights and a striking example of the deprivation of her civil liberties.”“Placing a listening device in Britney’s bedroom would be particularly inexcusable and disgraceful, and corroborates so much of her compelling, poignant testimony,” Mr. Rosengart said. “These actions must be fully and aggressively investigated.”Mr. Vlasov said his superiors had often told him that the severe surveillance measures were necessary to properly protect Ms. Spears and that she wanted to be in the conservatorship. He said he had felt compelled to share his information after hearing Ms. Spears’s comments to the court in June, when she excoriated the judicial system, her conservators and her managers. She called the arrangement abusive.Ms. Spears’s father, who is known as Jamie, was appointed conservator in 2008, shortly after Ms. Spears was twice taken to the hospital by ambulance for involuntary psychiatric evaluations amid a series of public struggles and concerns around her mental health and potential substance abuse. He was given broad control over her life and her estate, including the power to retain round-the-clock security for Ms. Spears.Mr. Spears and others involved in the conservatorship have insisted that it was a smooth-running operation that worked in the best interest of his daughter. But in the wake of Ms. Spears’s comments in court in June, the judge authorized her to choose her own lawyer, Mr. Rosengart, for the first time. Mr. Rosengart swiftly filed to remove Mr. Spears as the conservator of the singer’s estate. After consistently arguing that there were no grounds for his removal, Mr. Spears abruptly asked the court on Sept. 7 to consider whether to terminate the conservatorship entirely.Mr. Rosengart’s and Mr. Spears’s requests are expected to be considered at a hearing scheduled for Sept. 29.The security companyThe security team’s role has long been a mystery.Mr. Yemini, the Black Box Security founder, was born in Israel, and is described on a company website as having a background in the Israeli Special Forces. The Spears account helped Black Box grow from a tiny operation to a prominent player in the celebrity security industry. It counts the Kardashians, Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey among its clients.Mr. Vlasov joined Black Box in 2012 as a 21-year-old college student, excited by the opportunity to master the security industry. He started as Mr. Yemini’s assistant and grew into a role that encompassed wide responsibilities over operations and digital management. “I did everything from write his messages, write his emails, to be on all phone conversations in order to take notes for him,” Mr. Vlasov said. “I was the only person at Black Box that knew everything, really.”He generally worked at Black Box’s office in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles and seldom saw Ms. Spears in person, he said. But through the surveillance apparatus and his close work with Mr. Yemini and his colleagues, Mr. Vlasov said, he had a uniquely comprehensive view of her life.Edan Yemini with Ms. Spears in 2009. Mr. Yemini is the chief executive and founder of Black Box Security.AlamyMr. Vlasov said that Ms. Spears’s phone had been monitored using a clever tech setup: The iCloud account on her phone was mirrored on an iPad and later on an iPod. Mr. Yemini would have Mr. Vlasov encrypt Ms. Spears’s digital communications captured on the iPad and the iPod to send to Mr. Spears and Robin Greenhill, an employee of Tri Star Sports & Entertainment Group, the former business manager for the singer’s estate.This arrangement allowed them to monitor all text messages, FaceTime calls, notes, browser history and photographs.“Her own phone and her own private conversations were used so often to control her,” Mr. Vlasov said.In response to questions about the surveillance operation, a lawyer for Tri Star Sports & Entertainment Group said: “These allegations are not true. Ms. Greenhill was only involved in Ms. Spears’ security to the extent Ms. Spears requested her involvement, as well as Tri Star’s role of issuing the payments to the security company.” The lawyer did not respond to follow-up questions specifically asking whether Ms. Greenhill had ever received copies of or reports on the contents of Ms. Spears’s text communications.Mr. Vlasov said the reason Mr. Yemini had given for monitoring Ms. Spears’s phone was to protect her from harm and bad influences. But Mr. Spears monitored his daughter’s text-message conversations with her mother, her boyfriend, her close friends and even her court-appointed lawyer, according to screenshots of messages provided to The Times.Mr. Vlasov’s accounts of how Ms. Spears’s life was controlled by the security team were confirmed by others with firsthand knowledge of the conservatorship who requested anonymity. They said Ms. Spears essentially could not leave her home without the presence of security personnel, who would inform Mr. Yemini, Mr. Spears and Ms. Greenhill of the singer’s movements via group chat.Ms. Spears with her father in 2013. As part of the conservatorship, Mr. Spears was given broad control over his daughter’s life and her estate, including the power to retain round-the-clock security.RS-Jack/X17online.comAs conservator of the estate, Mr. Spears controls his 39-year-old daughter’s nearly $60 million fortune and has the authority to employ workers for her.Mr. Vlasov said Mr. Yemini and another Black Box employee had once given him a portable USB drive and asked him to delete the audio recordings on it.“I had them tell me what was on it,” Mr. Vlasov said. “They seemed very nervous and said that it was extremely sensitive, that nobody can ever know about this and that’s why I need to delete everything on it, so there’s no record of it. That raised so many red flags with me and I did not want to be complicit in whatever they were involved in, so I kept a copy, because I don’t want to delete evidence.”The drive, he discovered, contained audio recordings from a device that was secretly placed in Ms. Spears’s bedroom — more than 180 hours of recordings. Mr. Vlasov said he had thought the timing was curious because some of the recordings were made around the time that a court investigator visited Ms. Spears to perform a periodic review in September 2016.The New York Times reviewed the recordings to confirm their authenticity.When asked why he had continued working with Black Box despite harboring so many concerns, Mr. Vlasov said he had feared the amount of power Mr. Yemini and others had, and the possibility that they could damage his job prospects in the industry.After Ms. Spears’s impassioned remarks to the court in June, Mr. Vlasov said, his mind-set changed.Choosing to leave Black Box in April was the best decision of his life, he said, and he believes going public is the right thing to do. “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but I’ve never regretted it,” he said.‘She did not want to be there’Ms. Spears spent time at a mental health treatment facility in 2019 — a stay that appears to have been a turning point in the conservatorship. Who exactly sent her there, for what reason and whether she went on her own volition are in dispute.Mr. Spears and others involved with the conservatorship have said that she consented to go to the facility and that she was aware that no one could force her to stay. Conservators are not allowed to force a conservatee into a mental health treatment facility against their will.“She did not want to be there,” Mr. Vlasov said. “I heard this from multiple people, including Robin and Jamie themselves when they would talk on the phone to Edan. I overheard multiple conversations where they knew Britney didn’t want to be there.”The Times obtained text messages that Ms. Spears had sent from the facility that said she felt she was there involuntarily and that she could not leave, noting that security personnel were at the door at all times. Ms. Spears told a judge later in 2019 that she had felt she was forced into the facility, according to a transcript of the closed-door hearing. She repeated that claim to the court publicly in June.Mr. Vlasov shared digital communication that showed how Ms. Spears, while in the facility, had tried to hire a new lawyer to replace her court-appointed lawyer — and that Mr. Spears and others had monitored that effort.Ms. Spears with Robin Greenhill, an employee of Tri Star Sports & Entertainment Group. Mr. Vlasov said that Ms. Spears’s phone had been monitored using a clever tech setup: The iCloud account on her phone was mirrored on an iPad and an iPod.AlamyThe prospective lawyer asked Ms. Spears if he could come talk to her. Ms. Spears responded that she didn’t think the security personnel would let her see him. “They will say no for sure to me seeing a new lawyer on my side,” she said, and proposed that he tell the security personnel that he was a plumber instead. The lawyer declined that plan. “You have to be approved by the court before I hire you, but I don’t understand how can I know I want to hire you unless I meet with you first?” Ms. Spears wrote.“Yes, it’s a Catch-22 situation,” the lawyer said.In a text message sent a week after the initial exchange with the lawyer, Ms. Spears said that Mr. Spears had taken away her phone after finding out that she had been talking to a lawyer.The lawyer confirmed to The Times that the correspondence provided by Mr. Vlasov was accurate.Mr. Vlasov recalled that “one of the biggest ‘aha,’ red-flag moments” in his tenure at Black Box had happened in August 2020, when Ms. Spears’s court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, sent an email to Mr. Spears’s lawyers and Mr. Yemini asking for written confirmation that Ms. Spears’s new phone was not being monitored.“Ethically, I need to get written confirmation that no one other than my client can access her calls, voice-mail messages or texts directly or indirectly,” Mr. Ingham wrote in the email, which was reviewed by The Times.Geraldine Wyle, a lawyer for Mr. Spears, responded: “Jamie confirms that he has no access to her calls, voice-mail messages, or texts.”Ms. Spears in Paris for her “Piece of Me” tour in 2018. The following year, the singer spent time at a mental health treatment facility — a stay that appears to have been a turning point in the conservatorship.Marc Piasecki/Getty ImagesIn response to questions from The Times about the exchange, Ms. Wyle said, “Mr. Spears’ actions have always been proper, and in strict conformity with the law, and the orders of the Los Angeles Superior Court.”Mr. Ingham did not respond to requests for comment.Mr. Spears was particularly interested in Ms. Spears’s boyfriends, Mr. Vlasov said. The security team tailed her boyfriends in a continuing effort to look for incriminating behavior or other evidence that they might be a bad influence on Ms. Spears, he said.“There was an obsession with the men in Britney’s life,” Mr. Vlasov said.Her boyfriends were required to sign strict nondisclosure agreements, Mr. Vlasov said. An agreement signed in 2020 by her boyfriend at the time, Sam Asghari, who is now her fiancé, technically forbade him to post on social media about Ms. Spears without Mr. Spears’s prior written approval.In a confidential report by a court investigator that was obtained by The Times, the investigator wrote in 2016 that Ms. Spears had told her that she could not befriend people, especially men, without her father’s approval and that the men she wanted to date were “followed by private investigators to make sure their behaviors are acceptable to her father.”Mr. Vlasov said that Black Box Security had billed more than $100,000 in 2014 for investigating and surveilling Ms. Spears’s boyfriend at the time. The boyfriend, David Lucado, told The Times that he had been aware at the time that he was being followed by private investigators, and he said he had called 911 twice because of dangerous tailing situations. He said he believed he might have been more of a target because he was encouraging Ms. Spears to understand her legal rights under the conservatorship.‘Free Britney’ draws attentionAnother object of intense interest among those controlling Ms. Spears’s life, Mr. Vlasov said, was the so-called Free Britney movement, a growing cohort of fans that in recent years has brought heightened attention to the conservatorship case. Black Box Security sent investigators to infiltrate the group at a rally in April 2019 and to develop dossiers on some of the more active participants.“Undercover investigators were placed within the crowds to talk to fans to ID them, to document who they were,” Mr. Vlasov said. “It was all under the umbrella of ‘this is for Britney’s protection.’” He shared surveillance photographs with The Times that corresponded to photos posted by Free Britney participants that day.Megan Radford, a member of the so-called Free Britney movement, was classified as “a high risk due to her creation and sharing of information.”via Megan RadfordBlack Box prepared a “threat assessment report” dated July 2020 that included background information on several fans within the movement, including people who had popular podcasts and social media accounts like “Britney’s Gram,” “Eat, Pray, Britney,” “Lawyers for Britney” and Diet Prada. One activist, described as a young mother in Oklahoma, Megan Radford, was classified as “a high risk due to her creation and sharing of information.”An email from August 2020 sent by Mr. Yemini discussed the possibility of surveilling Kevin Wu, a fan who runs the prominent Twitter account Free Britney L.A.“They were extremely nervous, because they had zero control over the Free Britney movement and what’s going to come out of it,” Mr. Vlasov said.The fees for surveilling Ms. Spears’s boyfriend and the Free Britney participants, Mr. Vlasov said, were billed to Ms. Spears’s estate. More

The beloved music for this video game and others have been covered on YouTube for years. Now some are performed at classical music’s grandest venues.LONDON — At a recent concert here, the bows of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra rose and fell like the mighty sword of Sephiroth, the silver-haired villain of Final Fantasy VII. Onstage, a 32-person choir thundered the antagonist’s name: “Sephiroth!”The audience in the 19th-century theater burst into applause when it recognized the opening notes of “One-Winged Angel,” a battle theme from the game that merges Latin opera, influences from Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” and caustic rock music.Almost 6,000 people of all ages attended this Final Fantasy VII Remake concert at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday, which showcased the soundtrack to the seventh installment of the hugely popular Japanese video game.Aine McColgan dressed in cosplay for the concert.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesCharlotte Ball as the game’s protagonist, Cloud Strife.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesA group of concert goers dressed as Final Fantasy VII characters, including Rufus Shinra, Cloud Strife and Scarlet.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesAt the concert, the two worlds of gaming and classical music merged, and while some concertgoers wore suits and bow ties, others dressed in cosplay as their favorite characters from the game.Charlotte Ball, 27, attended the evening dressed as the game’s protagonist, Cloud Strife, an ex-soldier and mercenary. She spent hours laboriously researching and designing her costume, a sleeveless turtleneck with embroidered brown braces, one shoulder of armor made from foam, and a short-haired blond wig that could easily belong to a member of BTS.“Whenever I hear its music, it brings me back to when I was a kid,” Ball said of the game. “It’s a homage to my childhood.”The audience burst into applause when it recognized the opening notes of “One-Winged Angel,” a battle theme from Final Fantasy.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesFinal Fantasy VII was released in 1997 on PlayStation, and has now been bought more than 11 million times across all major platforms. The enormous popularity of its electronically synthesized score by Nobuo Uematsu evidences the huge impact video game music can have.The Final Fantasy games have an interactive, role-player format, which immerses gamers in the journeys of its heroic protagonists. These journeys are interwoven with music throughout, like a film score. As a result, “you do not just watch a game. You play it, you feel it, you embody it,” said Melanie Fritsch, a professor in media and cultural studies at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany. “Sometimes, people start crying when there is a good moment in a game that’s nicely implemented with the music.”Because of this emotional connection, the influence of these scores extends far beyond the games themselves. Since 2007, there have been more than 200 official Final Fantasy concerts across 20 countries, according to Square Enix, the company behind the game.At the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony this summer, athletes marched to songs from popular games including Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Sonic the Hedgehog and Final Fantasy, music described by its organizers as “a quintessential part of Japanese culture that is loved around the world.”Uematsu, now 62, single-handedly composed the first nine installments of Final Fantasy scores, creating music that remains a nostalgic rabbit-hole for many fans. A self-described musical omnivore without formal musical training, Uematsu’s work draws on influences from an eclectic mix of progressive rock, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Celtic and classical music.But video game scores have often been dismissed by devotees of mainstream classical music. Even in Japan, the birthplace of modern video game music, “up until after the millennium, it was regarded as a lesser type of music,” said Junya Nakano, 50, the co-composer of the Final Fantasy X soundtrack.Yoko Shimomura, a prolific video game composer.Osamu NakamuraNobuo Uematsu, who single-handedly composed the first nine installments of Final Fantasy scores.David Wolff-Patrick/Redferns, via Getty Images“There are some melodies I composed almost 30 years ago I’ve almost forgotten,” the composer Junya Nakano said. “But fans are still playing them.”Kosuke Okahara for The New York TimesGrowing up as a video game fan who also had classical music training, Nakano aspired to join the early generation of game composers, like Uematsu and Koichi Sugiyama.For the tenth installment of Final Fantasy, Nakano worked with Uematsu on the game’s score. Released in 2001, it was the first game in the franchise to use voice actors for its characters. The challenge for Nakano was to compose the music, along with Uematsu and Masashi Hamauzu, with only a “very rough outline” of the narrative for each movie scene. “We really had to create music based on our imagination,” Nakano said. Along with its sequel, Final Fantasy X sold more than 14 million copies.Writing video game scores isn’t always respected by those in the classical music fields. After majoring in piano at the Osaka College of Music, Yoko Shimomura, 53, applied for a job as a video game composer, a career path that her professors discouraged, she said.“Adults in my generation back then had little awareness about game music,” Shimomura said in a video interview. “So they had no concept to compare it to whatsoever.”But Shimomura went on to become one of the most prolific female video game composers in the world. Her magnum opus is the eclectic score for Kingdom Hearts, first released in 2002, which combines her signature piano, opera and opening music sung by the Japanese American singer, Hikaru Utada.Outside of Japan, the “hegemonic thinking” that elevated classical music at the expense of video game compositions has also persisted, according to Fritsch, the media and cultural studies professor.“There is so much music out there in the world that is not composed by white males with wigs. And it’s good music,” said Fritsch, who also works in ludomusicology, a nascent field of academic research dedicated to the study of video game music.Since 2007, there have been more than 200 official Final Fantasy concerts across 20 countries.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesThe first installment of Final Fantasy, released in 1987, used technology that initially meant the music was limited to a handful of electronic sounds. As the technology of the game systems evolved, the music metamorphosed with it. The arrival of Final Fantasy VIII in 1999 allowed Uematsu to use recordings from a live orchestra and choir for the first time. “The fans were always aware of the quality of music,” Nakano said.Online, those fans are now giving the music new life. Previously, illegal MP3 downloads, expensive CD imports from Japan and sheet music were the only way video-game-music enthusiasts could replay their favorite songs. Now, a community of fans post videos to YouTube of covers, tutorials and their own compositions, providing a way into the often inaccessible world of classical music.“There are some melodies I composed almost 30 years ago I’ve almost forgotten,” Nakano said, “But fans are still playing them.”For 18 years, Kyle Landry has created piano arrangements of music from various anime, video games and movies on YouTube, gaining more than 700,000 followers. Shimomura’s music, and Uematsu’s in particular, have been gold mines of inspiration.“Nobuo Uematsu’s compositions have been touching my life since 2003, and contributed much inspiration for me over the years,” said Landry.Among the most prolific cover artists is the mysterious “Zohar002,” a Japanese pianist whose covers of music from Chrono Trigger — a 1995 RPG game considered the greatest of the 16-bit era — enticed a huge following on YouTube from 2007, until the account was mysteriously removed, sparking mournful odes to Zohar002’s brilliance, and rumors that they were in fact the game’s composer, Yasunori Mitsuda.“I never dreamed such a great variation would be created by so many fans,” Shimomura said of the online renditions, adding that some fan compositions were better than the originals. “It’s a really great honor for me to say that people love my music.”Hisako Ueno contributed reporting. More

En una bochornosa tarde de agosto en Randalls Island, me encontraba en un campo de Honda Odysseys y CR-Vs, carros equipados con filas de tweeters y subwoofers: altavoces especializados de altas frecuencias y de subgraves. Las bocinas estaban colocadas en los techos de los automóviles o alineados en los maleteros de los vehículos como artillería […] More

After opening its season at Alice Tully Hall, the orchestra found more congenial surroundings at the Rose Theater.Maybe it was the surge of adrenaline that the New York Philharmonic felt at finally returning to live concerts at Lincoln Center after a year and a half. Maybe sizing down symphonic power for a temporary venue — Alice Tully Hall, with just over a third of the seats of the orchestra’s usual theater across the street — was a work in progress on opening night.Whatever the reason, the Philharmonic’s clenched, loud performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 last week left me jangled and headachy. From my seat close to the action — maybe that was part of the problem, too — the performance seemed in line with the worst impulses of Jaap van Zweden, the orchestra’s music director, who announced just before the season that he would leave his post in 2024.That bullied, blatant Beethoven swept up even a normally suave soloist, Daniil Trifonov, who huffed and pounded. It didn’t bode well for the remainder of this season, much of which will be held at Tully as the Philharmonic’s home, David Geffen Hall, undergoes renovations.Not so fast. On Thursday — the orchestra’s nerves perhaps settled, and now at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, another temporary home much smaller than Geffen, but airier in feel than Tully — a different Beethoven piano concerto, the Third, was superb.Yes, I know: Another week, another Beethoven concerto. But it’s slightly easier to forgive unimaginative programming when the performance is as spirited and full-bodied as it was with Yefim Bronfman as soloist.Beloved by this orchestra, particularly in this composer, Bronfman built imperceptibly through the first movement to organ-like grandeur in his cadenza. Then his tone receded into pearly dreaminess before ending in a shivery trill. His serene poise at the start of the Largo (later recalled in his encore, Chopin’s Nocturne No. 8 in D flat) was matched by silky strings. The Rondo finale had dash all around, but Bronfman never seemed to be putting phrases in italics or boldface; this was easygoing playing, in the best sense.The concerto followed Hannah Kendall’s “Kanashibari” (2013), which has a few ethereal moments before falling into a long stretch of John Adams-esque chugging strings and brassy fanfares, with the odd slap of wood. But the orchestra played it with focus and polish.Opening with a contemporary work of seven or eight minutes that’s swamped by the subsequent hour of Beethoven and Haydn, the program was in the classic mode of an ensemble that’s profoundly cautious yet wants to appear progressive.A slight complication is that while Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto is frequent fodder for the Philharmonic, Haydn’s Symphony No. 92 in G (“Oxford”) isn’t. It’s standard repertory, sure, but not for this orchestra, which until trying it out this summer hadn’t played it in almost 20 years.Van Zweden leading Haydn’s Symphony No. 92 in G (“Oxford”).Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesIt made you, as performances of his symphonies often do, want to hear them all the time. Particularly when they gleam like the “Oxford” did on Thursday, the phrases at the start sculpted but not overly managed. Perhaps, going for crispness, van Zweden occasionally erred on the side of curtness, and the final movement sometimes tipped into feeling more driven than witty. But the playing was largely rich and good-humored: balanced and gentle in the second movement, then graceful and patient, and with even a hint of mystery, in the third.Based on first impressions, it seems that, of the Philharmonic’s two main residences this season, the intimate yet spacious Rose Theater might give the orchestra and its sound more room to breathe.New York PhilharmonicProgram repeats Friday and Saturday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

A new documentary by The New York Times features interviews with key insiders and people with firsthand information about how the conservatorship controlled the pop star’s life.The New York Times Presents/FX/Hulu‘Controlling Britney Spears’Producer/Director Samantha StarkSupervising Producer Liz DayWatch on Friday, Sept. 24, at 10 p.m. on FX or stream it on Hulu.Britney Spears expressed strong objections in June to the court-sanctioned conservatorship, which was largely led by her father, that controlled her life. But how the conservatorship worked had never been fully understood.Now, after her impassioned speech to a Los Angeles court over the summer, key insiders have come forward to talk publicly for the first time about what they saw. They provide the most detailed account yet of Spears’s life under the unusual legal arrangement that, for the past 13 years, stripped away many of her rights.A new documentary by The New York Times, “Controlling Britney Spears,” reveals a portrait of an intense surveillance apparatus that monitored every move the pop star made. This new film, by the makers of the Emmy-nominated “Framing Britney Spears,” features exclusive interviews with members of Spears’s inner circle who had intimate knowledge of her life under the conservatorship.“It really reminded me of somebody that was in prison,” said a former employee of the security firm hired by Spears’s father to protect her. “And security was put in a position to be the prison guards essentially.”Watch our documentary on Friday, Sept. 24, at 10 p.m. ET on FX or stream it on Hulu.Courtesy of Felicia CulottaSenior Producer Rachel AbramsProducer Timothy MoranDirector of Photography Victor Tadashi SuarezVideo Editors Lousine Shamamian, Pierre Takal, Diana DeCilio, Geoff O’Brien“The New York Times Presents” is a series of documentaries representing the unparalleled journalism and insight of The New York Times, bringing viewers close to the essential stories of our time. More

‘The trick to crate digging is to simply go at it: Dive into the sections, flip through the jackets and trust your gut.’I was stuck trying to write in my Brooklyn apartment, overthinking a sentence as usual.In these moments I turn to my records.For inspiration, I tend to need music from some faraway place and time. Perhaps an underground spiritual jazz reissue from 1974 or an Afro-disco record from ’80. Something with noticeable ringwear and audible crackles. Maybe even a pop or two. I’ve learned that this is the music that people come back to decades later. These are the songs you hear in a bar or a film and try to Shazam before the final note fades.On this day I also needed some air, so that meant walking 15 minutes to Head Sounds Records in Fort Greene to plow through the stacks. I went right for the jazz section, and that’s when I saw it: Pharoah Sanders, “Live at the East,” released on Impulse! Records in 1972 — nine years before I was born. I had to snatch it before some other crate digger scooped it up.Pharoah did the trick. The hypnotic swing of the opening track, “Healing Song,” was the meditative balm I needed to quell my writer’s block.But it’s not just the music that heals; the practice of discovering it to begin with, especially when it’s on vinyl, works wonders, too. Whenever life gets heavy, I go to the record store.The fact that shops like Head Sounds and Academy Records Annex in Greenpoint have survived the pandemic and, in some cases, are even thriving, speaks to the heart of New York City, a place that accepted me with no strings attached.“A turntable is there for you to sample the work,” Mr. Moore writes. “But the trick to crate digging is to simply go at it.”Laila Stevens for The New York TimesI’m from Landover, Md., a small town outside Washington, which also counts the comedian Martin Lawrence, the boxing legend “Sugar” Ray Leonard and the basketball great Len Bias as natives. I grew up in a musical family with a mother who played all kinds of pop, funk and soul around the house; a grandmother who loved traditional gospel; and aunts, siblings and cousins who embraced everything: a homegrown strain of funk called go-go, rap groups that were new at the time like De La Soul and N.W.A., R&B luminaries like Al Green and Marvin Gaye, and pop superstars like Madonna and David Bowie.My cousin Eric, a D.J., had an ear for buzzing underground musicians. In the late 1980s, fresh off a trip to California, he told us about a guy named MC Hammer who was making noise in the Bay Area. Around 1994, he popped in a cassette of this rapper from Chicago named Common Sense. By the time he had shortened his name to Common, his star was rising in underground hip-hop.Indirectly, Eric and the rest of my family were teaching me the concept of crate digging. While it was fine to like what I heard on the radio, there was less-heralded talent that deserved the same attention. I walked that perspective through high school and into my career as a music journalist, author, editor and curator.Long before I moved here in 2016, I’d hop buses to New York City to dig for records. It seemed there weren’t that many shops to choose from. It was the mid-2000s, music streaming was starting its domination of the industry, and many mom-and-pops were being forced to close.“Record stores as we know them are dying,” Josh Madell, co-owner of Other Music in Downtown Manhattan, told The New York Times in 2008. “On the other hand, there is still a space in the culture for what a record store does, being a hub of the music community and a place to find out about new music.”Mr. Madell, whose store eventually closed in 2016, was onto something. Just as record stores were failing, vinyl also started to make a curious comeback. The Recording Industry Association of America found that the shipment of LPs jumped more than 36 percent between 2006 and 2007. There was no clear-cut answer for the resurgence. Fellow heads will tell you there’s nothing like analog sound. While digital music sounds cleaner, vinyl sounds warmer and fills the room. There’s also nothing like poring over the album jacket and diving into the liner notes. It’s a time capsule.When New York City became the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, local record store owners found themselves in familiar territory: Even though vinyl sales had surpassed CD sales last year for the first time since the ’80s, would the record shops, along with many of the city’s other indie storefronts, survive? Turntable Lab, a niche record shop in Manhattan’s East Village, closed its doors that year to focus on online sales. Other stores like Academy and Limited to One, also in the East Village, managed to keep their leases, but pivoted to online sales to make ends meet.Nowadays, crate digging is done as much online as it is off. A stroll through the virtual music emporium Bandcamp can unearth everything from South African boogie to forgotten ambient. But clicking around doesn’t replace the act of visiting your favorite record store and discovering a rare find that either you’d been looking for, or didn’t know you needed until you saw the cover. Every place is different: Where Head Sounds is in the back of a barber shop, Academy is a vast spot with a bit more dust on the album jackets.A new shop, Legacy Records, just opened on Water Street in Dumbo. I visited a few weeks back and landed an original copy of the Fugees’ 1996 album “The Score.”Store employees tend to let you do your thing. A turntable is there for you to sample the work, and of course they’re around to answer whatever questions arise. But the trick to crate digging is to simply go at it: Dive into the sections, flip through the jackets and trust your gut. More often than not, you can judge the music by its cover (if a band from the ’70s had the word “Ensemble” in its name, the album is probably great).In a time where we’re all trying to navigate space and distance (or just being in public again), the idea is to foster community around music, even if the spirit of competition is still there. I wanted to get the Pharoah album before anyone else got it. That I could be the one talking about it was an incentive.For me, crate digging is preservation. It takes me back to my childhood in Landover, to playing my cousin’s EPMD albums when he wasn’t looking, and dropping the needle on De La’s “3 Feet High and Rising” at my aunt’s house when heads were still trying to fathom the group’s psychedelic blend of hip-hop (they’re also the subject of my next book). Buying records to share with the world is what I’m supposed to do. I’m just paying it forward like my family taught me.Marcus J. Moore is the author of “The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America.” More

“Yes Sir, I Can Boogie,” which she and a fellow ballet dancer recorded under the name Baccara, became one of the disco anthems of the 1970s.MADRID — María Mendiola, a member of the Spanish duo Baccara, whose “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie” became one of the disco anthems of the 1970s, died here on Sept. 11. She was 69.Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by her family. They did not give the exact cause, but said that she had been dealing with a blood deficiency for two decades.Baccara, the duo of Ms. Mendiola and Mayte Mateos, achieved instant fame with “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie,” the first song they ever recorded, which was released in 1977 and went on to become the most successful disco song by a female duo. It sold about 18 million copies worldwide and topped the charts in Britain, Japan and several other countries.Ms. Mendiola and Ms. Mateos were dancers with the company of Spain’s national television broadcaster when they met. At the suggestion of Ms. Mendiola, who thought that their careers would last longer if they switched to singing, they left to form their own act, originally called Venus, which began performing in 1976. Their debut, at a club in Zaragoza, was short-lived: The management fired them for being “too elegant” — another way of saying that they refused to do lap dances for the club’s patrons.The duo appeared for the first time on television in 1977. Their breakthrough came that same year following a chance encounter with Leon Deane of RCA Records, who saw them perform in a hotel while he was on vacation in the Canary Islands and suggested that they visit RCA’s recording studios in Hamburg.RCA agreed to produce Baccara’s first album and included “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie,” an English-language song whose rights the label already owned, although it had not yet assigned it to any of its artists.Baccara spent four years with RCA and released four albums, including several other songs that ranked high on the international charts, although none matched the success of their first hit. The duo also toured worldwide, including in the Soviet Union. In performance, Ms. Mendiola always dressed in white and Ms. Mateos in black.But the two singers had a major fallout in 1980 over who should be the lead voice on their song “Sleepy Time Toy.” Ms. Mendiola filed a lawsuit to block the song, which had just been released and had to be withdrawn from the market.The singers continued their feud and stopped talking to each other, and the composer of most of their songs, Rolf Soja, decided to quit working with them. In 1981, Baccara released their final album with RCA, “Bad Boys”; coming at a time when the popularity of disco music was starting to wane, it was not a big success. RCA did not renew Baccara’s recording contract, and the two singers formalized their split.María Eugenia Martínez Mendiola was born on April 4, 1952, in Madrid. Her mother, Lola Mendiola, was a homemaker; her father, Emilio Martínez, was a police official at the Madrid airport.Ms. Mendiola studied at an Italian school in Madrid and trained to be a ballet dancer at the national school there before joining the Spanish state broadcaster’s dance troupe.Even though both singers were Spanish, Baccara represented Luxembourg in the 1978 Eurovision song contest, with a song about a holiday romance called “Parlez-Vous Français?” (Ms. Mendiola spoke five languages, including French.) Luxembourg’s entry finished seventh in the competition.After Baccara broke up, the two singers pursued separate careers. In 1981, Ms. Mendiola formed another duo, New Baccara, with another former ballet dancer, Marisa Pérez. While they never came close to matching the fame of the original Baccara, one of their songs, “Call Me Up,” was a hit in Spain in 1987 and also did well in Germany.Ms. Pérez ended her career in 2008 because of an illness, and a niece, Laura Mendiola, replaced her as Ms. Mendiola’s partner. In 2010, Ms. Mendiola formed a final partnership — Baccara Featuring María Mendiola — with another singer, Cristina Sevilla, who had previously collaborated for six years with Ms. Mateos. Their most recent single, “Gimme Your Love,” was released in 2018.Ms. Sevilla said that she had planned to continue with Ms. Mendiola, but that the pandemic had put their most recent concert projects on hold.“María was a powerful woman, who was always laughing even in the difficult moments,” Ms. Sevilla said. “Apart from being my partner, she was my real friend.”Ms. Mendiola is survived by a son, Jimmy Lim, and three grandchildren.“Yes Sir, I Can Boogie” had an unexpected revival, thanks to a Scottish soccer player, Andrew Considine, who had danced to the song at his bachelor party. Last year, a video of him and other players dancing to the song went viral, which inspired a cover version of the song by a Glasgow rock band, the Fratellis. The song also became an unofficial soccer anthem in Scotland, belted out by fans in the stadium during the recent European championships.While Scotland and soccer put Baccara back in the spotlight, Ms. Mendiola told the British news media that she wasn’t impressed by the Scottish version of the chart-topping song. It was, she said, “not my cup of tea.” More