Music

This summer, three European productions, previously available to American audiences only online, were at last accessible in person.I should start with a confession: Rarely during the pandemic have I been able to watch an entire livestream through.Work is one thing: If I’m “attending” something for an assignment, I try to bring to it the focus of a before-times performance — phone off, sound system on, ideally in the dark. But nearly all my extracurricular experiences online have been nothing like my old days off. I would never walk in and out of Carnegie Hall during a recital or pull out my phone mid-Schubert to scroll through Instagram or write an email.Yet that’s exactly what the past year and a half has been like. Life and livestreams are inherently incompatible; there is always a dog to walk, a dinner to cook, a meeting to join. I have seen the greatest musical artists in the world in fragments from the seat of a Peloton; in a small window at the corner of a laptop screen; and, more times than I would like to admit, in bed.If anything has been likely to hold my attention from start to finish, it’s opera. That’s partly baked into the form; concerts, for all their recent engineering feats, generally can’t offer the multisensory experience of theater. And, miraculously, there have continued to be new productions during the pandemic — mostly in Europe, where they often premiered to small audiences or empty houses.Three of those — Dmitri Tcherniakov’s staging of Weber’s “Der Freischütz,” Marina Abramovic’s project “7 Deaths of Maria Callas” and a production of Strauss’s “Elektra” by Krzysztof Warlikowski — were at one point available only as online streams for Americans like me, barred from casually traveling to most of Europe.Ausrine Stundyte, front, in the title role of “Elektra” at the Salzburg Festival.Bernd Uhlig/Salzburg FestivalBut this summer, a halcyon time of reopened borders and the return of large-scale productions in full houses, I was able to see all three again, now in person: “Freischütz” and “7 Deaths” at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and “Elektra” at the Salzburg Festival in Austria.That juxtaposition — livestream and live performance — is worth reflecting on as a wave of opening nights heralds the arrival of a new season; as international travel becomes newly precarious; and as orchestras and opera houses consider whether to weave livestreams into their regular programming.Some projects, it should be said, have emerged independent of any live audience or presentation — even traditional ones, such as the Paris Opera’s new production of Verdi’s “Aida,” which was altered to look better online than in the house (where critics were invited to see it, and mostly panned it). One of the great treasures of the pandemic has been Opera Philadelphia’s digital shorts, with contributions from the likes of Angélica Negrón and Tyshawn Sorey. Boston Lyric Opera developed “Desert In” as a mini-series, bringing the art form into the Netflix era.The productions I saw both onscreen and onstage, though, were conceived for the opera house. Opera just isn’t a filmic medium, even if certain composers anticipated it — such as Richard Wagner, with the immersive theatrical experience he pioneered in Bayreuth, Germany.But not every composer is Wagner, and although the streamed productions I later saw live had flashes of revelation, those moments were few and far between in what was, on balance, limited by the medium: the subjective and inevitably narrow perspective of the camera, the engineered flattening of sound. Virtual opera, unless designed as such, is ultimately just a document.Tcherniakov’s “Freischütz” production splits the stage into two halves: the bottom a set for the actors, and the top a surface for projections.Wilfried HöslEspecially in a staging as acutely dramatic as Tcherniakov’s “Freischütz.” It abandons the work’s fantasy Romanticism, setting it in the corporate penthouse of Kuno, a chief executive who behaves like a Mafia boss.The other roles, too, bear little resemblance to any traditional production. To bridge the gap between libretto and concept, the stage is treated as a split screen, with the set occupying the bottom half and the top serving as a surface for projected text messages — and, during the overture, background information on each character in Tcherniakov’s treatment. (The camera mostly shows either the set or the projection, rarely both, which in the final scene makes for a confusing resolution that is easily legible in the house.)Crucially, the introductions reveal that Kaspar — in the libretto a jealous rival of the protagonist, Max, he wants to marry Kuno’s daughter, Agathe — suffers from a trauma that, we later learn, manifests as a kind of multiple personality disorder. (He also takes on the demonic role of Samiel.)As sung by the bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen, Kaspar is the opera’s horrifying black heart. In a crowd of excellent performances — including Golda Schultz’s heavenly Agathe and her character’s Sapphic subplot with Anna Prohaska’s Ännchen — it’s nearly impossible to take your eyes off the fierce and angular intensity of Ketelsen’s face.A viewer of the livestream wouldn’t necessarily get that. The score’s focus in its climax is on Max, and the camera follows, with a close-up of the tenor Pavel Cernoch’s fright and anguish. In the theater, however, I could see that Ketelsen’s scowl was more pronounced than ever — a sign that the opera’s traditionally happy ending would here be anything but.“7 Deaths of Maria Callas” features arias performed by sopranos including Adela Zaharia (bottom left) and campy videos starring Willem Dafoe and Marina Abramovic.Wilfried HöslAlso at the Bavarian State Opera, Abramovic’s “7 Deaths” — which pays homage to Callas through seven arias and a prolonged final scene that imagines that famed soprano’s final day — worked better as a livestream, because it worked so intermittently as a live performance. With in-person singers accompanying big-screen videos of Abramovic and Willem Dafoe artfully acting out death scenes inspired by the arias, the piece relegates opera to mere soundtrack.Abramovic is an undeniably electric presence. But the scale of the opera house — the vast distance it can put between a performer and audience member — negates much of the charged intimacy on which she has built her career as a performance artist. At least the livestream of the work’s premiere allowed for a proper zoom on every facial expression and gesture — while also reducing her to just an image on a screen, less powerful than she can be at her best.In Salzburg, Warlikowski’s “Elektra” — using the breadth of the unusually wide Felsenreitschule stage — was almost defiantly unfilmable, with multiple parts of the set in use nearly all the time. The opening credits of the streamed version doubled as a tour of the whole space: a pool (where Elektra’s father, Agamemnon, was murdered) and showers, as well as a glass box filled with luxurious furniture and the vast rock walls of the theater, a canvas for projections.Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, left, and Stundyte in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production of “Elektra.”Bernd Uhlig/Salzburg FestivalThese close-ups presage the limits of the filmed production, in which the camera tends to focus on only one thing at a time, with wide shots largely reserved for the eventually blood-splattered, fly-swarmed walls. The stream did catch chilling details I missed in the theater: Klytämnestra, for example, commanding as sung by Tanja Ariane Baumgartner but easy to miss in a silent moment of handling human organs in a bucket inside the glass box. Or Ausrine Stundyte’s Elektra, wide-eyed and wild-haired from the start, yet progressively more so each time she appears onscreen.But “Elektra” is a musically dense, busy opera that Warlikowski matches in his staging, while the camera lacks the restlessness of a spectator’s eye. The only perspective that would accurately reflect the production would be a wide, straight-on view of the stage — something you might find in the research archive of Broadway shows at the New York Library for the Performing Arts.That problem pales, though, in comparison with the sound of the streamed “Elektra.” I like to believe the story that, ahead of the opera’s 1909 premiere, Strauss told the conductor: “Louder, louder! I can still hear the singers!” Franz Welser-Möst led the Vienna Philharmonic in Salzburg as if that were true (if with a little more of a level head). At its best, this score overwhelms and terrifies. On a laptop, however, it was simply too balanced, with singers and instrumentalists favored equally; no one came out better for it.As Europe again considers whether to close its borders to Americans, and as live performances remain more of a delicate triumph than a given, new productions may return to the small screen. If that happens, I’ll tune in. But I’d rather see you at the opera house. Because this “Freischütz,” “7 Deaths” and “Elektra” affirmed what we already knew: Fundamentally, opera is theater. That couldn’t be more obvious, or more essential. More

Lorenzo Viotti’s sporty social media posts don’t fit the image of an opera conductor. But they help classical music reach a new audience, he says.AMSTERDAM — Lorenzo Viotti stood before the orchestra, without a baton, conducting with both hands. As the music swelled, his arms swayed. Three fingers plucked the air, then he swept forward to guide the sound to a crescendo.The 31-year-old Swiss maestro, who recently became the chief conductor of both the Dutch National Opera and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, is a very physical conductor. But that would hardly come as a surprise to anyone who knows him from social media. He is also an avid boxer, tennis player and swimmer, who skateboards to work, it seems (though he has embraced Dutch bicycling culture as well).On Instagram, nearly 53,000 followers see images of Viotti looking dapper in bow tie and tails, as might be expected, but also shirtless, revealing a muscular torso. A recent post, taken from a spread in the Dutch edition of Men’s Health magazine, which honored him as August’s “man of the month,” shows Viotti chalking his hands before lifting himself up on gymnast’s rings.His action-man social media posts are part of a plan to shake up perceptions about people who enjoy classical music, Viotti said in an interview during a recent rehearsal break. “As a conductor today, it’s not just enough to focus just on the music,” he said.But he added quickly that he regards social media as merely “a tool,” to excite curiosity. “You can maybe be young, and do crazy sports,” he said, but without “a deep argument artistically, and maybe philosophically,” as to why classical music was interesting, opera companies and orchestras wouldn’t retain the new audiences they found.Viotti conducting the Dutch National Opera’s orchestra in rehearsal for Zemlinsky’s “Der Zwerg,” which premieres Saturday.Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York TimesLast week, in preparation for the opening of the Dutch National Opera’s new season, Viotti said, he was waking at dawn to spend an hour and a half working out before heading to the theater for rehearsals of two productions: Zemlinsky’s “Der Zwerg” (“The Dwarf”), based on a short story by Oscar Wilde, which will premiere Saturday; and a dramatic staging of Haydn’s “Missa in Tempore Belli,” (“Mass in Time of War”), opening two days later.Viotti will conduct both works until late September, before he leads the Philharmonic on Sept. 25 and 26 in a concert of works by Rossini and Richard Strauss, at the Concertgebouw here. In March 2022, he will return to the opera for Puccini’s “Tosca.”“We are like athletes here,” he said. “We don’t consider ourselves like that, but our discipline is like any champion state football player. I cannot go out the night before a rehearsal because I have to be sharp.”“We make sacrifices,” he added, “because what we do is a precious thing.”After nearly a year and a half of pandemic-mandated cancellations, Viotti wanted to start the new season in Amsterdam with a jolt, he said. The city has been his anticipating his arrival since the Dutch National Opera’s artistic director, Sophie de Lint, announced his appointment in 2019.“Lorenzo was very much in demand, so we had to be fast,” de Lint said in an interview. “He really is one of the most gifted conductors of today. On top of that, he is an unbelievable ambassador for opera, and classical music in general.”Viotti was born into a musical family in Lausanne, Switzerland. One of his sisters, Marina Viotti, is a mezzo-soprano, and the other, Milena, is a professional horn player, as is his brother, Alessandro. Their father, Marcello Viotti, was the chief conductor of the Munich Radio Orchestra and the music director of Teatro La Fenice in Venice when he died in 2005, at 50.Viotti was 14 at the time. “As a child, I don’t have a lot of memories of him at work, but I learned a lot from him as a man, as a dad,” he said. “We did scuba diving together, gardening together, playing football. Those to me are the most important memories. The conducting memories are not important.”As well as classical, Viotti was exposed to a wide range of musical styles growing up, he said, including hip-hop, rap, funk and soul. He tried his hand at many instruments, studying piano, viola and percussion, and singing in a choir.“My background as a classical percussionist as a rap lover, funk lover, helped me find the groove,” in Haydn’s music, he said. “This is what we miss in classical music.”Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times“My favorite was to play jazz and funk as a drummer,” said Viotti. “My sister, who is now an opera singer, was then in a death metal band, so I played with them. I wanted to have the biggest possible musical vocabulary possible.”He studied orchestral conducting at the University of Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna, as well as piano, voice and conducting at the Lyon Conservatory in France; in 2015, he completed a Master’s degree in conducting at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar, in Germany. In the seven years since his graduation, he has conducted renowned orchestras including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France and the Munich Philharmonic.Viotti’s Haydn interpretation will give audiences a sense of his interdisciplinary approach. The choral performance will include live electronic music, mixed by the Israeli composer and D.J. Janiv Oron. The stage direction is by Barbora Horakova, who has also inserted sequences of contemporary dance, choreographed by Juanjo Arqués. It will also feature video projections by Hervé Thiot and stage design by the digital artist Simon Hänggi.“It’s not just randomly adding a bit of rap, and this and that, because it looks cool,” Viotti said. “It has to serve a very strict purpose, which is the drama that we are creating onstage. My background as a classical percussionist as a rap lover, funk lover, helped me find the groove, the flow. This is what we miss in classical music.”The Haydn Mass doesn’t sound much like hip-hop, but its attraction for a percussionist is clear: The timpani part is so prominent that the work is sometimes nicknamed “Paukenmesse,” or “Kettle Drum Mass.” The piece needs to build throughout, to justify the heavy drum strokes of its dramatic finale, Viotti said. Before ending a rehearsal with the orchestra and chorus of the Dutch National Opera last week, he took the musicians back to the work’s lilting beginning.“Now, let’s slow it down,” he told the ensemble. “If you want to catch the attention of someone, you speak softer, but with more intensity.” More

Our critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually and in person in New York City.Art & MuseumsMoMA PS1’s Engaging CourtyardNiki de Saint Phalle’s “La femme et L’oiseau fontaine” (1967) will be on view in MoMA PS1’s courtyard until Monday.Niki Charitable Art Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris; MoMA PS1; Marissa AlperIn 1997, the courtyard at MoMA PS1 became the main venue for “Warm Up,” a summer event that mingled art, music and design in order to draw new audiences. But things change. “Warm Up” certainly hasn’t gone away, but last fall, the institution began “PS1 Courtyard: an experiment in creative ecologies,” a program testing out ways to use the outdoor space that encourage community engagement.The initiative’s projects include a fountain from Niki de Saint Phalle, part of a larger exhibition at PS1 that closes on Monday, and Rashid Johnson’s “Stage.” Visitors are welcome to get up on his installation’s large yellow platform and freely use its five live microphones of varying heights. By showing a microphone as a dynamic social tool, Johnson’s piece, which will be on view through the fall, indicates the many things a stage can represent: a site of protest, music making, solidarity and, most important, amplification of your voice.MELISSA SMITHFilm SeriesScenes From Every SeasonA scene from “A Summer’s Tale,” one of four features in Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons, all of which Film Forum will screen through Sept. 9.Janus FilmsThe maximalist moviegoing event of Labor Day weekend is “Lawrence of Arabia,” screening on Saturday and Sunday on 70-millimeter film at the Museum of the Moving Image. But for a minimalist alternative, try Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons — four features, each set at a different time of year, that Rohmer, the most conversation-oriented French New Wave director, turned out from the late 1980s through the late 1990s. (Together, the running times total roughly two showings of “Lawrence of Arabia.”) With the changing of the seasons, Film Forum is showing all the titles separately from Friday through Sept. 9.Watching them in tandem illustrates how Rohmer — superficially so consistent and serene — subtly toys with structure and variation, recombining types of characters in friendships and romances that rarely develop as expected. The most summery is, naturally, “A Summer’s Tale.” Melvil Poupaud plays a commitment-phobe vacationing in Brittany who somehow winds up juggling a surfeit of commitments to women.BEN KENIGSBERGJazzCelebrating a Visionary Record LabelCharles Tolliver at the 50th anniversary of Another Earth in 2019. Through Saturday, he will be celebrating another 50th anniversary at Birdland — that of the record label he started with Stanley Cowell, Strata-East.Lev Radin/Pacific Press, via Getty ImagesIn 1971, seeking refuge from an exploitive, increasingly commercialized jazz industry, the trumpeter Charles Tolliver and the pianist Stanley Cowell founded Strata-East, a record label offering artists creative freedom and relative commercial control. Though short-lived, Strata-East inspired Black musicians in other cities to undertake similar efforts. And it captured a moment in time: Nearly every Strata-East album simmers with the heat and tension of the Black Power era, delivering terse, syncopated rhythms and pushing jazz linguistics into a more spare, confrontational zone.Cowell died last year after a prolific career, but Tolliver, 79, continues to perform. At Birdland through Saturday, he is celebrating the label’s 50th anniversary with an ensemble of all-stars, including some who recorded on Strata-East in the 1970s: the tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, the pianist George Cables, the bassist Buster Williams and the drummer Lenny White. Sets are at 7 and 9:30 p.m. The late show on Saturday, which will also be livestreamed at dreamstage.live, will feature a guest appearance by the storied bassist Cecil McBee and will be hosted by the actor Danny Glover.GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOComedyNo Labor for These LaughsErik Griffin in his Showtime special “AmeERIKan Warrior.” He is headlining at Carolines on Broadway through Saturday.ShowtimeEven workaholics know they should take it easy this weekend, and fans of “Workaholics” will recognize the headliner at Carolines on Broadway through Saturday: Erik Griffin, who played Montez Walker on that Comedy Central sitcom. Griffin also portrayed a stand-up in “I’m Dying Up Here,” a dramedy about comedy in the 1970s on Showtime, where you can find two of Griffin’s comedy specials. At Carolines, he will perform one set at 7 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and two sets at 7 and 9:30 on Saturday. Tickets start at $31.25.On Sunday at 7 and 9:30, Carolines will welcome Rosebud Baker, who released her debut special, “Whiskey Fists,” in August on the Comedy Central Stand-Up YouTube channel. Tickets are $27.25 and up.There will be a two-drink minimum at each show.SEAN McCARTHYKIDSThis Is How They RollA child at an NYC Unicycle Festival event in 2019. The 12th edition of the annual celebration takes place throughout the boroughs this weekend.Kenneth SpringleIn New York, casual basketball games are about as common as strutting pigeons. But the contest scheduled on Saturday at 11 a.m. in the Bronx should result in a lot of head-turning, not to mention wheel-turning.That’s when the King Charles Unicycle Troupe will play — while riding its favorite vehicles — at the basketball court in Clinton Playground in Crotona Park. (Enter at Clinton Avenue and Crotona Park South.) A beloved local circus act, these guys can double-Dutch jump rope on one wheel, too.Their show is a highlight of the 12th annual NYC Unicycle Festival, a free outdoor celebration presented by the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. The festivities also include long-distance group rides on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, which proficient young unicyclists can join if they’re accompanied by an adult. (Details are on the festival’s website.) Experienced riders can participate in a post-performance pickup game with the King Charles players on Saturday, too, along with a free-throw basketball contest and a unicycle obstacle course.Neophytes, however, can do more than watch. On Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m., at Grant’s tomb in Morningside Heights, the festival’s conclusion will offer instruction and youth-size equipment for children who want to give unicycling a whirl.LAUREL GRAEBER More

He waged a war of words and music against a military junta that banned his work and imprisoned him during its rule of Greece, from 1967 to 1974.Mikis Theodorakis, the renowned Greek composer and Marxist firebrand who waged a war of words and music against an infamous military junta that imprisoned and exiled him as a revolutionary and banned his work a half century ago, died on Thursday. He was 96.The cause was cardiopulmonary arrest, according to a statement on his website. News reports in Greece said he died at his home in central Athens.Mr. Theodorakis was best known internationally for his scores for the films “Zorba the Greek” (1964), in which Anthony Quinn starred as an essence of tumultuous Greek ethnicity; “Z” (1969), Costa-Gavras’s dark satire on the Greek junta; and “Serpico” (1973), Sidney Lumet’s thriller starring Al Pacino as a New York City cop who goes undercover to expose police corruption.Alan Bates, left, and Anthony Quinn in the title role in “Zorba the Greek,” for which Mr. Theodorakis wrote the music.Moviestore Collection Ltd./Alamy Stock PhotoIn the early 1970s, Greek exiles were fond of sharing a story about an Athens policeman who walks his beat humming a banned Theodorakis song. Hearing it, a passer-by stops the policeman and says, “Officer, I’m surprised that you are humming Theodorakis.” Whereupon the officer arrests the man on a charge of listening to Theodorakis’s music.Contradictions were a way of life in Greece in the era of a junta that repressed thousands of political opponents during its rule, from 1967 to 1974. But to many Greeks, Mr. Theodorakis (pronounced thay-uh-doe-RAHK-is) was a metronome of resistance. While he was put away for his ideals, his forbidden rebellious music was a reminder to his people of freedoms that had been lost.“Always I have lived with two sounds — one political, one musical,” Mr. Theodorakis told The New York Times in 1970.After he was released from prison into exile in 1968, he began an international campaign of concerts and contacts with world leaders that helped topple the regime in Athens four years later. It was a turning point for democracy, with a new constitution and a membership in the European Economic Community, which later became the European Union.Mr. Theodorakis arriving in France in 1968 after being freed from prison. He began an international campaign of concerts and contacts with world leaders that helped topple the regime in Athens. Associated PressAs Greece’s most illustrious composer, Mr. Theodorakis wrote symphonies, operas, ballets, film scores, music for the stage, marches for protests and songs without borders — an oeuvre of hundreds of classical and popular pieces that poured from his pen in good times and bad, even in the confines of drafty prison cells, squalid concentration camps and years of exile in a remote mountain hamlet.He also wrote anthems of wartime resistance and socialist tone poems about the plight of workers and oppressed peoples. His most famous work on political persecution was the haunting “Mauthausen Trilogy,” named for a World War II Nazi concentration camp used mainly to exterminate the intelligentsia of Europe’s conquered lands. It has been described as the most beautiful music ever written on the Holocaust.Mr. Theodorakis’s music made him a wealthy Communist. Having paid his dues to society, he did not apologize for his privileged life as a member of Parliament, with homes in Paris, Athens and the Greek Peloponnesus; for being feted at premieres of his work in New York, London and Berlin; or for counting cultural and political leaders in Europe, America and the Middle East as friends.During World War II, Mr. Theodorakis joined a Communist youth group that fought fascist occupation forces in Greece. After the war, his name appeared on a police list of wartime resisters, and he was rounded up with thousands of suspected Communists and sent for three years to the island of Makronisos, the site of a notorious prison camp. There he contracted tuberculosis, and he was tortured and subjected to mock executions by being buried alive.He studied at music conservatories in Athens and Paris in the 1950s, writing symphonies, chamber music, ballets and assorted rhapsodies, marches and adagios. He set to music the verses of eminent Greek poets, many of them Communists. He also deepened his ties to Communism: When Greece became a Cold War battleground, he blamed not Stalin but the C.I.A.Mr. Theodorakis was profoundly affected by the assassination in 1963 of Grigoris Lambrakis, a prominent antiwar activist who was run down by right-wing zealots on a motorcycle at a peace rally in Thessaloniki. His murder — a pivotal event in modern Greek history that was portrayed in thinly fictionalized form in the Costa-Gavras film as the work of leaders of the subsequent junta — provoked mass protests and a national political crisis.Mr. Theodorakis founded a youth organization in Mr. Lambrakis’s name that staged political protests across Greece and helped elect him to Parliament in 1964 on a ticket affiliated with the Communists.As Greece plunged into political and economic turmoil in 1967, Col. George Papadopoulos led a military coup that seized power, suspended civil liberties, abolished political parties and established special courts. Thousands of political opponents were imprisoned or exiled.Mr. Theodorakis, who had recently visited President Fidel Castro of Cuba, went into hiding. An arrest warrant was issued, and a military court sentenced him in absentia to five months in prison. Bans were decreed on playing, selling or even listening to his music.Months later, Mr. Theodorakis was arrested and jailed in Athens. He continued composing music in his cell. Five months later, Mr. Theodorakis, his wife and their two children were banished to Zatouna, a mountain village in the Peloponnesus, where they remained for three years.Mr. Theodorakis with his daughter, Margarita, his son, George, and his wife, Myrto, in 1968.Associated PressLeonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, Harry Belafonte and the composer Dmitri Shostakovich led calls for Mr. Theodorakis’s release, to no avail. For the last months of his detention in 1970, he was moved to a prison camp at Oropos, north of Athens. He was coughing up blood and running a fever. To stifle rumors that he had been beaten to death, the junta showed him to foreign reporters.The European government told Greece it was violating its treaty on human rights and called on the junta to end torture, release political prisoners and hold free elections. The colonels rejected the appeal, but they released Mr. Theodorakis and sent him and his family into exile in Paris, where he was hospitalized and treated for tuberculosis.Three months later, he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in his triumphant “March of the Spirit.” The crowd’s emotions spilled over. “It was as if Zorba himself were conducting,” Newsweek wrote at the time. “When it ended, the audience wouldn’t let him leave; prolonged applause, cheers, stamping feet and rhythmic cries of ‘Theodorakis! Theodorakis!’ brought him back five times.”The concert began Mr. Theodorakis’s four-year campaign for a peaceful overthrow of the junta. Touring the world, he gave concerts on every continent to raise funds for the cause of Greek democracy. He won support from cultural and political leaders. In Chile, he met the country’s Marxist president, Salvador Allende, and the poet Pablo Neruda. He later composed movements to Neruda’s “Canto General,” his history of the New World from a Hispanic perspective.He was received by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia, the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and President François Mitterrand of France. The Swedish leader Olof Palme, the West German chancellor Willy Brandt and his old friend Melina Mercouri, the actress who had become the Greek minister of culture, pledged help. Artists and writers around the world became his allies.By 1973, facing international pressure and a restless civilian population, the junta’s hold was shaky. A student uprising in Athens escalated into open revolt. Hundreds of civilians were injured, some fatally, in clashes with troops. Colonel Papadopoulos was ousted, and martial law was imposed by a new hard-liner. In 1974, the junta collapsed when senior military officers withdrew their support.Within days, Mr. Theodorakis returned home in triumph, welcomed by large crowds, his music playing constantly on the radio. “My joy now is the same that I felt waiting in a cell to be tortured,” he said. “It was all part of the same struggle.”Former Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis also returned from exile and formed a national unity government. Greece’s monarchy was abolished, a new constitution was adopted and, in 1981, Greece joined the European Economic CommunityMichael George Theodorakis was born on the Aegean island of Chios on July 29, 1925, the older of two sons of Georgios and Aspasia (Poulakis) Theodorakis. He and his brother, Yannis, were raised in provincial cities. Their father was a lawyer. Their mother, an ethnic Greek from what is now Turkey, taught her sons Greek folk music and Byzantine liturgy.Yannis became a poet and songwriter. Mikis wrote his first songs without musical instruments and gave his first concert at 17.In 1953, he married Myrto Altinoglou. They had two children, Margarita and George. After his return from exile in 1974, Mr. Theodorakis resumed concert tours and became musical director of the symphony orchestra of Hellenic Radio and Television. He also returned to politics, serving in Parliament in the 1980s and ’90s.Mr. Theodorakis conducting the orchestra at the Herodes Atticus theater in Athens in 2005.Louisa Gouliamaki/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 1988, he quit the Communist Party and sided with conservatives who deplored scandals in the Andreas Papandreou government and bombings attributed to left-wing terrorists. But in 1992 he resigned as a conservative government minister and returned to the Socialists.Mr. Theodorakis, who was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1983, wrote books on music and political affairs, as well as a five-volume autobiography, “The Ways of the Archangel.” In retirement, he condemned America’s war in Iraq and Israel’s conservative policies. Even in his 80s, with his shaggy mane of gray and penetrating eyes, he had the ferocious look of a rebel or a prophet.In 1973, during his exile, Mr. Theodorakis presented a sweeping survey of his work at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, including a trilogy based on the poems of Neruda.“The elements behind Mr. Theodorakis’s music are simple enough,” John Rockwell wrote in a review for The Times: “stirring tunes, infectious dance rhythms and the ever‐present exotic color of the bouzoukis.” But while Mr. Theodorakis “makes brilliant, inventive use of his popular materials,” Mr. Rockwell noted, “he quickly transcends them.”“Ultimately, one can’t separate Mr. Theodorakis’s politics from his music,” he added. “One can easily understand why this is the sort of music some people feel they must ban.”Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting. More

The British rapper’s laser focus has been trained on fame since she was a child. Now, she’s ready to take it to the next level.LONDON — Long before she was famous here as the rapper Little Simz, Simbiatu Abisola Abiola Ajikawo, known as Simbi, made her debut performance at a local youth club showcase. Ten years old and wearing a red Ecko tracksuit, her hair parted in two bunches, she lunged to the edge of the stage, almost collapsing into her classmates in the front row, and rapped: “In 10 years, I want to be a performer that can entertain, and still remain, to do good things in life.”More than a decade has passed, and Little Simz, now 27, is living up to her ambitions. Her fourth album, “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert,” is due on Sept. 3. As an actor, she has starred in British TV shows, including Ronan Bennet’s breakout hit, “Top Boy.” She is an active member of her community in Islington, North London, doing good through charitable acts she “doesn’t feel the need to be loud about,” she said.A master storyteller who raps with wisdom and heart, Little Simz has a narrative style that’s been likened to Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, both fans of her work. Where she was once just “your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper,” she is becoming a household name here in her own right.In 2019, the grime star Stormzy shouted out Little Simz as an up-and-comer to watch during his headlining set at the Glastonbury Festival. That same year, her third studio LP, “Grey Area,” a grooving and eclectic rumination on her early 20s, was named best British album at the NME Awards.But now, poised to release her latest album, she feels on the cusp of something really big, she said in a recent interview, as she lounged gracefully on a restaurant sofa in King’s Cross, London, as though it were her own. “Everyone has their moment,” she said, “and I think ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’ will be mine.”“I’m still young, innit?” she added. “But I know that’s where I’m heading.”Kadeem Clarke, a frequent collaborator who directs Little Simz’s live performances, said her determination was unshakable. “She has a vision, and we don’t even know where it comes from, or how it’s going to get done, but she does it,” he said. “She will not take her eye off it.”That laser focus has been a hallmark since Little Simz’s North London childhood. Her house was crowded, noisy and alive, she recalled: Her mother played Afrobeats and reggae, her sisters garage and grime, her brothers rap and hip-hop.In her bedroom, Little Simz listened to Busta Rhymes, Nas and Biggie Smalls, and dreamed of being like them, she said: a rap legend who spoke to their listener, not at them. She wrote their lyrics out in notebooks, trying to work out how the artists turned stubborn words into something slick and percussive. The natural and chatty approach of Biggie Smalls, in particular, drew her in: “If you took away his flow and instrumental, he could just be talking to you.”She said that she had “struggled to articulate myself in conversation,” but that her own rapping, which she thought of as a dialogue with herself, helped make sense of her thoughts. “And then, I even question it — like, why do I think that?”In rapping, she said, she found the thing that set her apart from her peers. “Everyone knew me as that girl who rapped,” she explained. “I’m the youngest of four, and my older siblings knew everyone, so I was always, ‘T’s little sister,’ or ‘Fem’s little sister.’ Then other people would find out that I did music, and it’d be another layer, like, ‘Aw, you know T’s sister raps?’”Claire Hough and Little Simz shooting the video for her new song “Introvert.”Tamiym CaderAt 14, Little Simz began making sacrifices for the hobby she was determined to turn into a career: She stayed in when her friends went out together on weekends, saving her pocket money for studio equipment. Her bedroom became a shrine to her musical idols, with posters of Lauryn Hill, Nas and Jay-Z, and a photo of herself placed above them. On a piece of cardboard, she wrote an affirmation in all caps: “Dream big! Family is everything! God is love! Be great!”That same year, she landed an acting role on a BBC children’s adventure show, “Spirit Warriors.” Later, at 17, Little Simz was cast in “Youngers,” a children’s drama depicting a group of London teenagers hoping to make it big in music. Life began to imitate art when she formed a group called Space Age with other young musicians and artists she met at EC1 Music Project, another London community program. The crew became a kind of extended family, Little Simz said, playing instruments, adding vocals and producing visual art for the mixtapes she began recording.Tilla Arcé, a close friend who also rapped in Space Age, said, “Simz always surrounded herself with real people,” but noted she was more inclined to open up in her music than in social settings. “When she’s performing, it’s her space to let go and be immersed in pure emotion and expression,” he said. “Simbi the person is a lot more to herself, but because I’ve known her as a virtuoso, I understand the moments she taps into Little Simz.”Space Age’s members joined in on Little Simz’s debut album “A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons,” which she released when she was 20: Arcé recorded additional vocals, and his brother, Josh, helmed the production on several tracks. The album is a reflection on fame and its effects on the human spirit, with Little Simz adopting new personas on different songs, each one a character at a different stage of their journey to celebrity. How about that as a statement of intent?With the release of “Sometimes I Might Be Introvert,” Little Simz said she was ready to move to the next level: “There’s just something in the air.” Featuring interludes voiced by Emma Corrin, who played Princess Diana in “The Crown,” the 19-track album is an odyssey through Little Simz’s inner conflicts and joys. Bringing together influences including lackadaisical neo-soul and ’80s electro funk, it has the scope and spectacle of a West End production.Little Simz recorded the album in Los Angeles, working with Dean Josiah Cover, 33, who produces under the name InFlo. He is, like the members of Space Age, both a childhood friend and a persistent influence on her music. The two have been collaborating since Little Simz was a dream-driven teen, in 2008.“When I listen to the stuff we made back then, it sounds almost like ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert,’” she said. Both artists’ tastes and sound palettes are far-ranging, taking in hip-hop, jazz, R&B, punk and soul. “We literally have a brother-sister relationship,” Little Simz said. “I annoy him, he annoys me. But we make great music together,” she said, describing their creative process as a safe space: “Whatever you feel, it’s between these four walls, and if it goes on the record then it does, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Shout, scream, cry, whatever it is.”With all that space for self-examination, Little Simz’s ambitions didn’t go without self- scrutiny: “Why the desperate need to be remembered? Everybody knowing what you’ve done, how far you’ve come?” Little Simz raps on “Standing Ovation,” one of the new album’s tracks.In the interview, she said she was willing to sacrifice a lot for the big time she saw coming, not least her privacy. “If I didn’t do music, no one would know who I am,” she said. The comfort of invisibility appealed to her introverted side, but she has struck a bargain: “I’m not going to be nameless. I want my music to be known, I want my music to be heard, I want to tell my story.”But fame isn’t the be-all and end-all, Little Simz added. “I’m trying to be my greatest self in all aspects of my life, and not just music,” she said. Echoing the song she performed as a 10-year-old, she reiterated her purpose: “Not only am I trying to be a great artist and performer, I’m trying to be a great sister, friend, daughter, auntie.” More

Summer has been quiet, but the weekend brought some brilliant concerts. (Delta variant be damned.)The summertime classical calendar tends to be light even under normal circumstances — so during a lingering pandemic, it can seem almost nonexistent.But now comes the deluge, Delta variant be damned. Over the past few days, New York audiences had the chance to catch live sets from two well-regarded groups presenting fresh repertoire. And those sets had connections to even more worthy ensembles debuting new material.On Saturday the Attacca Quartet played a heavily amplified yet lovingly textured program for hundreds in Prospect Park, as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn festival. (The pop group San Fermin headlined the evening.) In a half-hour sprint that managed not to feel rushed, the group played excerpts from its July debut on the Sony Classical label: the dance music-suffused (but somehow not schticky) “Real Life.”Joined for some selections by the percussionist Shayna Dunkelman, Attacca performed propulsive arrangements of music by Flying Lotus, and an excerpt from Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 3 — featured on the group’s next Sony album, out in November. The set was balanced with tender movements from Caroline Shaw’s “Plan and Elevation,” which the quartet recorded for the Nonesuch and New Amsterdam labels in 2019.Sunday evening brought the New York City premiere of the composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey’s “For George Lewis,” performed by Alarm Will Sound on the final night of this year’s Time Spans festival, at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in Manhattan. The group’s recording of the work came out nearly simultaneously on the Cantaloupe label, so “For George Lewis” registered not only as a clear highlight of the concerts I caught during the final week of Time Spans, but also of the year in albums.The piece stands on its own, though here’s a bit of context. When Lewis, a composer, improviser and scholar, released the electroacoustic “Homage to Charles Parker” in 1979, his tribute didn’t waste any time imitating Parker’s quicksilver sound. With Lewis playing trombone, organ and electronics, his austere then emotive work managed to honor its dedicatee by generating new stylistic possibilities within an existing tradition — just as Parker had done.Now Sorey, long mentored by Lewis, has echoed the favor. Largely constructed from slowly but steadily alternating pools of close-harmony dissonance, “For George Lewis” doesn’t immediately recall Lewis’s recent wry, riotous music for orchestra and chamber ensembles. And though its overall arc moves gradually from grit to melodic flowering, Sorey’s aesthetic also remains distinct from Lewis’s Parker homage.Instead, as “Homage to Charles Parker” was true to Lewis, so “For George Lewis” is true to Sorey. The fully notated piece has close connections to the music that Sorey has composed for his own improvising trio, on albums like “Alloy.” The first minute and change of “For George Lewis” is dominated by sustained flute tones, and brooding piano figures redolent of somber ritual. But the subtle addition of a pair of vibraphonists quickly banishes any sense of things being on autopilot. Nearly (but not quite) synchronous hits from each mallet-wielding player give the still-quiet dynamics a crucial edge.

For George Lewis | Autoschediasms by Alarm Will Sound & Tyshawn SoreyThese are the kinds of details that keep “For George Lewis” feeling urgent over its nearly hourlong duration. On Saturday, in the intimate room at the DiMenna Center, I savored evidence of Sorey’s catholic tastes. Pungently vibrating violins were reminiscent of early Minimalist pioneers like Tony Conrad; occasionally plunging complexity in the woodwinds had the dramatic verve of later Stockhausen; toward the end, lines for a mellow fluegelhorn recalled the Miles Davis of “Miles Ahead.” But the pacing — and the attentiveness to timbral blends — was pure Sorey.The rest of Alarm Will Sound’s new album is no less striking. A second disc is devoted to Sorey’s “Autoschediasms” pieces. Inspired by the “Conduction” system developed (and trademarked) by Butch Morris and the “language music” of Anthony Braxton, these improvisational pieces, cued by Sorey as conductor, need the right interpreters. And Alarm Will Sound has become, to my ear, one of his greatest partners for such exercises — whether live or over videoconferencing software.“Autoschediasms” wasn’t the only reminder of Butch Morris’s influence over the weekend. Before the Attacca Quartet’s set, I saw the veteran avant-rock, funk and jazz outfit Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber perform twice at the Brooklyn Museum, part of the opening celebration for the touring exhibition of Barack and Michelle Obama’s official portraits.The veteran avant-rock, funk and jazz outfit Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber performed at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday.Kolin MendezA group of 15 instrumentalists and vocalists were led by the group’s co-founder and conductor, Greg Tate, the pathbreaking cultural critic who cites Morris’s “Conduction” style as the glue that holds together Bunt Sugar’s post-everything aesthetic. Aspects of Sun Ra and Funkadelic commingled from one moment to the next, with Tate using Morris-inspired gestures to spur sudden deviations from the band’s recorded versions. During the final minutes of “Angels Over Oakanda,” the title track from the group’s coming Sept. 23 release, Tate sped up the already heated rendition into a new realm of fervid frenzy.Veterans of both the Time Spans festival and of Burnt Sugar’s past lineups appeared together on another album released over the weekend.The Wet Ink Ensemble cellist Mariel Roberts (who premiered a new piece at Time Spans) and the former Burnt Sugar violinist Mazz Swift have each contributed strong solo features to the composer and saxophonist Caroline Davis’s stirring new album “Portals Vol. 1: Mourning,” released by the Sunnyside imprint.Roberts’s scabrous then lyrical cello can be heard on “Hop On Hop Off,” while Swift’s improvisatory contributions help start the track “Left.” But as with both Sorey and Burnt Sugar, improvisation is only part of the draw. The rest comes from Davis’s supple compositional art — which mixes muscular dexterity with emotional vulnerability in a way that’s rare in both the contemporary chamber music and improvisational scenes.A version of the group heard on “Portals” — which incorporates a string quartet plus Davis’s regular improvising quintet — will appear at the Jazz Gallery on Sept. 10. But even for those who are not yet comfortable attending concerts, the album version is a sign among many that at-home listening, too, is gaining energy with the coming of fall. More

Listen to Louis Armstrong’s sweetness, Miles Davis’s wild squall, Handel’s Baroque majesty and other favorites.In the past we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, piano, opera, cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, violin, Baroque music, sopranos, Beethoven, flute, string quartets, tenors, Brahms, choral music, percussion, symphonies and Stravinsky.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love the trumpet. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Javier C. Hernández, Times classical music and dance reporterThe musical term “intrada” suggests a fanfare, music to mark an entrance. This one, written in 1947 by the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, captures the many personalities of the trumpet: noble and bombastic, mischievous and meditative. Hakan Hardenberger seamlessly glides between these moods, driving the energy through the rollicking finale.Honegger’s Intrada in CRoland Pontinen, piano (Bis)◆ ◆ ◆Terence Blanchard, trumpeter and composerHere is my impassioned clarion call to understand the trumpet! See that exclamation point? That’s what a trumpet does. It punctuates emotions. My trumpet teacher Bill Fielder would always ask, “What is the trumpet?” I would ponder for a moment and offer an encyclopedic answer like “A metal instrument with … blah, blah, blah.” To that Mr. Fielder would say, “It is a mirror of your mind.”Ordinarily, I would invite you to listen to Miles Davis’s “Porgy and Bess,” a classic collaboration between Miles and Gil Evans. This album set the stage for people thinking differently about the orchestra and jazz. But as I write this, yesterday was the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. My song “Funeral Dirge,” from the album “A Tale of God’s Will,” originally composed for the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s first Katrina documentary, “When the Levees Broke,” still haunts me today. Actually, I don’t feel like I composed it. I feel like it was being screamed at me: my personal clarion call to hear and weep with my hometown, New Orleans.Dead bodies floating. Dead bodies on top of cars. Dead bodies in the grass. Dead bodies in places I knew. Dead bodies in neighborhoods I grew up in. I saw these bodies in the raw footage of Spike’s documentary. One dead body I didn’t see in the video was that of an old neighborhood friend who died trying to help people stay on their roofs while floodwaters raged beneath. I never cried so much, shedding tears for the many bodies I saw, and the many, many more I didn’t see. This dirge is my tribute to those brave, valiant, fallen heroes. God bless those souls from Katrina — and, today, those souls from Ida.Terence Blanchard’s “Funeral Dirge”(Blue Note)◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times writerConventional wisdom holds that Louis Armstrong’s peak came with his pathbreaking recordings of the late 1920s and early ’30s. Don’t believe it! He remained a potent creative force well into the middle of the century, and his 1947 Town Hall performance of “Dear Old Southland” shows how he continued to deepen his understanding of a tune.This duo rendition, with the pianist Dick Cary, starts out as a stiff-upper-lip confession; the opening trumpet lines suggest a speaker confiding some sadness in a suavely guarded manner. But eventually the attempt to keep up appearances dissolves, as Armstrong sends torrents of welled-up feeling bawling forth. The beaming assurance of his technique — bending notes, reaching for new climaxes — gives this unraveling unmistakable dignity. And the ending’s brief hint of a striding, sunnier future provides one more look at the malleability of a soul.Turner Layton’s “Dear Old Southland”(Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Joan Tower, composerThe best way to get to know an instrument is to write for it. It’s like getting to know somebody well; you learn their strengths, their weaknesses. The trumpet has a very limited range: Writing this four-trumpet piece was like being in prison, because the range is so small; it’s like four people in a little room. But inside those two and a half octaves it can really climb. If you go from an A to a C, it’s like you’re going from the basement to the sky.Joan Tower’s “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, No. 5”American Brass Quintet (Summit)◆ ◆ ◆Wadada Leo Smith, trumpeter and composerWho would have imagined that light touching light is connected to comprehension, that inspiration and creativity are bound together in the heart and soul of a true artist? Hearing Miles Davis’s “Calypso Frelimo” was for me an inspired moment of music as art.The piece begins at a shockingly intense level. First the trumpet solo, beautifully inspired music with long-and short-changing sonics, bellowing glissando multiphonics interspersed with nuanced micro-sonics: pure melodic development with a creative range matched by emotion, and just the right amount of space and silence perfectly arched across a vast, still environment mysteriously, without effort.Miles Davis’s “Calypso Frelimo”(Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Marie Speziale, Cincinnati Symphony trumpeter, 1964-96The first time I heard a recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, I was mesmerized by the metamorphosis of the sound of the trumpet to the eloquent, distant timbre of the post horn, emerging from offstage in the third movement. This was Leonard Bernstein’s version with the New York Philharmonic, with John Ware playing the solo, and as a very young trumpeter who had grown up steeped in commercial and Afro-Cuban music, I had never heard such a simple yet poignant melody. It was one of the listening experiences that had the most impact on my early career as a symphony orchestra musician.Mahler’s Third Symphony(Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Mark Stryker, critic and author of “Jazz From Detroit”Kenny Dorham (1924-72) did not command attention with Gabriel-like power and bravura technique. A favorite of jazz connoisseurs, he seduced listeners with the soulful warmth, colorful wit and understated wisdom of the hippest bon vivant on the scene. Everything about his approach to the trumpet and improvisation was expressive, relaxed and personal. The dappled smears of his crepuscular tone and the flirty bounce he brings to the standard “I Had the Craziest Dream” in 1959 make a beeline for your heart. His improvised phrases, delivered with nonchalant charm, enchant you with clever melodic and rhythmic rhymes and piquant note choices. He’s telling a story, inviting you into his dream — where you not only fall in love with the trumpet, but also the man with the horn.Harry Warren’s “I Had the Craziest Dream”(New Jazz)◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerEvery year “Messiah” comes around, and every year, almost at the end, comes the moment to hold your breath. Many performances of Handel’s classic oratorio now take place on period instruments, and the Baroque trumpet is an unwieldy beast: long, straight and lacking the valves that allow players on modern trumpets to hit notes reliably. So while it hopefully doesn’t sound like it, the soaring, angelic, regal solo part that crowns this bass aria is a merciless test of skill, as the player announces the Day of Judgment — and endures his or her own.Handel’s “The trumpet shall sound”Chris Dicken, trumpet; Matthew Brook, bass; Dunedin Consort; John Butt, conductor (Linn)◆ ◆ ◆Leonard Slatkin, conductorIn 1958 my father, the conductor Felix Slatkin, commissioned the composer Leo Arnaud to create pieces that would demonstrate the then-new audio format of stereo. Utilizing various military fanfares as well as original tunes, “Bugler’s Dream” included what would become known as “The Olympic Fanfare.” The track was featured on a Capitol Records album called “Charge!” and has been reissued several times.With trumpets of all sizes and the musicians separated into two different studios, there was simply no better way to show off not only the new technology but also the incredible skill of the 26 players. If you do not love the trumpet after listening to this, I suggest the track that contains the 12 bagpipers.Leo Arnaud’s “Bugler’s Dream”The Military Band (Beulah)◆ ◆ ◆Nate Wooley, trumpeter and composerThe trumpet is an length of impossible plumbing — physically demanding and fickle — and playing it involves an act of illusory control. Trumpet players, at their best, give up some part of this deception, and their imperfection lets the listener in on a secret: the musician’s humanity. They strive toward something essential and the failure to reach it shows their true virtuosity. What Ron Miles achieves on “Witness” demands that he go beyond his prodigious technique, and the heart-rending sound that comes from his breaking of the illusion is the trumpet at its most essential: vulnerable, virtuosic and real.Ron Miles’s “Witness”(Capri)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music editorNo fewer than 14 trumpets (and 11 other brasses) blaze mightily through the fanfare finale of Janacek’s Sinfonietta. Written in 1926 for the opening of a mass gymnastics festival that was part fitness bonanza, part explosion of Czech national pride, the work was inspired by a military band its composer heard — and whose raw, brilliant sound and determined spirit he sought to capture. An armed forces paean sounds awful, but Janacek created something both local — a portrait of Brno, his hometown — and universal. The music reflects not reactionary jingoism, but wild liberation.Janacek’s SinfoniettaBavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Rafael Kubelik, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Steph Richards, trumpeter and composerJohnny Coles paints a spectrum of the trumpet’s timbre possibilities at their finest: soft blues, golden butter tones and brazen oranges that reveal a tender underside of the horn. He makes it easy to forget that the trumpet was born as an instrument of fanfare and war. But ultimately it’s the breadth of expression I love most here, the spaces left in order to bring these colors to light. And while Coles’s harmonic contours glide mostly inside the lines, the fleeting moments where the trumpet skates outside — smearing, curving, soaring — bring forward a purple-hued beauty, sounding the blues inside a feminine form.Gil Evans’s “Sunken Treasure”Gil Evans Orchestra (Verve)◆ ◆ ◆C.J. Camerieri, trumpeterIn this recording, I’m drawn to how the trumpet speaks the message of the song as clearly as the lyrics. In my career I’ve seen firsthand how the compositions of Gabriella Smith, the poetry of Paul Simon and the power of Justin Vernon’s voice can express a wide range of feelings so directly. If you think about music as the communication of complex human emotions from an artist to a listener through sound — and if you think about classical music more broadly in the American tradition — no one does it better than Louis Armstrong. What initially drew me to the trumpet, and keeps on drawing me, is how similar the sound is to the human voice, both in its expressive capabilities and its means of production: breath, vibration, projection.Fats Waller’s “Black and Blue”Live in New York, July 22, 1929◆ ◆ ◆Vanessa Rivera, Ohio State University Marching Band trumpeterAlessandro Ignazio Marcello’s Concerto in C minor was originally an oboe concerto, but has since been adapted to be played by other instruments, and one of its more popular recordings features Tine Thing Helseth on piccolo trumpet. The first time I heard this piece, I was in the sixth grade. I didn’t know what a piccolo trumpet was at the time, but I knew that eventually I wanted to get to a point in my career when I would be able to play a piece as rich and interesting as this one.Alessandro Marcello’s Concerto in C minorNorwegian Radio Orchestra; Andrew Manze, conductor◆ ◆ ◆Anthony Tommasini, Times chief classical music criticLeroy Anderson, the master of the light orchestral miniature, recalled that his 1949 piece “A Trumpeter’s Holiday” had its origins backstage during a Boston Pops concert. The great trumpeter Roger Voisin, then principal with the Pops, was complaining that trumpet works tended to be loud, martial, triumphant. Voisin suggested that Anderson try writing something different.The result was this mellow lullaby. Of course, it was still a trumpet piece, so Anderson couldn’t help letting jazzy bits slip in: The beguiling melody has a slightly jumpy repeated-note figure, even as the orchestra maintains a lulling mood in the background, and a middle section turns restless and syncopated in a moment of mischief.Leroy Anderson’s “A Trumpeter’s Lullaby”Susan Slaughter, trumpet; St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, conductor (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Joshua Barone, Times editorAs a violin-playing child, I was slow to appreciate the trumpet, which seemed, like other brass instruments, temperamental and resistant to expressiveness — especially compared with strings. How wrong I was. Take the Thursday installment of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s seven-day opera cycle “Licht.” The drama of Act II, “Michaels Reise um die Erde” (“Michael’s Journey Around the Earth”), unfolds with the characters represented with instruments, not singing voices. In this excerpt, Michael (portrayed by a trumpet) and Eve (a basset horn) engage in a duet that’s flirtatious, funny and — contrary to what I once naïvely believed — full of humanity.Stockhausen’s “Michaels Reise um die Erde”Markus Stockhausen, trumpet; Suzanne Stephens, basset horn (ECM)◆ ◆ ◆ More

“It’s Never Too Late” is a new series that tells the stories of people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms.Hear the one about the opera singer-turned farmer?There isn’t a punchline. There’s just the pre-dawn wake-up, and the baling, and the 150 heifers, and one with pink eye and the thousand other realities of Martha Prewitt’s new existence.This wasn’t the plan. Growing up on the family farm in Versailles, Ky., two centuries of Prewitt corn and hay and cattle bearing down, the plan was: leave.She did, following a passion for performance into 15 years of classical singing and opera, performing with the Knoxville Opera, Capitol Opera Richmond in Virginia and Charlottesville Opera in Virginia, and earning a Master’s degree in vocal performance along the way. But sometimes passions curdle, and sometimes barn doors blow back open.At 33, following the sudden death of her father last year, Ms. Prewitt came home again. It never seemed possible, doing what he’d done all those years. But there, under the wide Kentucky sky, she discovered that something had shifted. (The following interview has been edited and condensed.)By Morgan Hornsby For The New York TimesTell me about the opera life you’d been leading before this change?I got into opera through choir, in high school. The thrill of singing with an orchestra, the vibration in your bones, being totally in character and completely outside of yourself. There’s nothing else like it.But there are things about the industry that didn’t gel with me, politically and culturally. With a few exceptions, I thought the opera world was operating under an outdated, elitist business model. A few years ago I started to fall out of love.Had you ever considered farming?The farm’s been in the family since 1780 or so. My dad was a farmer from when he could walk. He could do anything: build a house, fix machines, tend to the soil’s pH level, plumbing and electrical work. Farming never seemed right for me, partly because I just didn’t think I could do it. I’m a woman, I’m 5’6” — that was a lot of it.After he passed away in June 2020, I was living at home again to be with my mom, and this little worm started to work its way through my brain: ‘Women can be farmers, too. Maybe you’re not strong now, but maybe throwing hay bales around will make you strong.’What was it that made you take that chance?I always knew I’d eventually inherit the farm, and it means a lot to me that it stays a farm. Who knows what developer would buy it and turn it into some subdivision or shopping center?I started thinking, if it means that much to me, why not take it on? Why not me? Soon I was researching things like regenerative agriculture, or how much chemical to put in the spray mix.Martha Prewitt with the farm manager Sherman Cole, who is showing her how to run the farm. It has been in her family for two centuries.Morgan Hornsby for The New York TimesMs. Prewitt, who had spent her career as an opera singer, working on the farm in Versailles, Ky. She took over the business after performing in operas around the world.Morgan Hornsby for The New York TimesNot the hands of an opera singer.Morgan Hornsby for The New York TimesHow did you get started?Those first few days, I began getting up early and going out with our farm manager, Sherman. At first we’d just feed the cattle together, and then I started working full days with him.I began to love it. If there’s any aspect of farming you don’t like, it’s not long before something different needs to get done. I got stronger. And I learned that I’m pretty optimistic, which is good, because a farmer has to be.How did you find the courage to take on this huge project?My dad once told me, “When things need to get done on a farm, you just have to get them done. There’s no choice.” It’s true, and I’ve learned that suits me. I’m still pretty terrified, but I’ve also started to think, maybe I can be good at this.How has this new life changed you?During lockdown, I didn’t go outside for six weeks. I didn’t even walk out to my car. Now I’m outside every day, for most of the day. I’ve hardly used my computer since moving back, and I don’t watch much TV. I have a much deeper appreciation for nature and the environment — its beauty and also its power.Do you still sing?A lot of what I do these days is driving a tractor. It’s great because I can sing as loud as I want. “Un bel dì vedremo,” from “Madama Butterfly” is one of my favorite arias, and I’ll start singing it in the middle of a field, surrounded by trees and birds and dirt. I’ve sung to cattle a few times. Sometimes bugs fly in my mouth.Ms. Prewitt pets the cattle, which she also sings to. “I’ve sung to cattle a few times,” she said.Morgan Hornsby for The New York Times“If there’s any aspect of farming you don’t like, it’s not long before something different needs to get done,” Ms. Prewitt said. “I got stronger. And I learned that I’m pretty optimistic, which is good, because a farmer has to be.”Morgan Hornsby for The New York TimesWhat would you tell other people who feel stuck and are looking to make a change?Everybody has a different path. In my case, just because all these other farmers have been doing it all their lives, it didn’t make my ability to farm any less.If you’re feeling stuck, being patient and not freaking out about it is so important. Everything you do gives you experience and skills and tools, wherever you go. I ended up finding something much more profound than I’d ever expected. It’s as if I’m working in all times, past, present and future, in the midst of my ancestors who were here before and future generations who will come after me.Anything you wish you’d done differently when you were younger?I wish I’d done 4H.What can people learn from your experience?People always say, “Follow your passion.” Well, I tried that. I sang opera. It ended up not being how I want to spend my life.I took, I don’t know how many, personality tests. Nothing ever said I should be a farmer, except this little nagging voice saying maybe I could.We’re looking for people who decide that it’s never too late to switch gears, change their life and pursue dreams. Should we talk to you or someone you know? Share your story here. More