Music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Making Room for Bach in Mozart’s Hometown

      by

      The Salzburg Festival’s idiosyncratic survey is focused on the timelessness and humanity of Bach’s secular works.SALZBURG, Austria — “For me the Chaconne is one of the most wonderful and most incomprehensible pieces of music that I know,” the composer Johannes Brahms once wrote about the famous final movement of Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin.“On a single stave and for a small instrument, the man creates a whole world of the deepest thoughts and the most powerful feelings,” he continued in an 1877 letter to the pianist and composer Clara Schumann.In 1926, the Chaconne became the very first work by Bach to be heard at the Salzburg Festival, in a performance by the violinist Johann Koncz. This summer, the piece was performed once again in the first of six musical programs devoted to the towering German composer.For the second consecutive year, and against formidable odds, the Salzburg Festival, one of classical music’s most important events, forged ahead despite the pandemic. Last summer’s offerings were greatly reduced; this year, the festival has come roaring back with a full program of over 100 events, including operas and concerts of every stripe.Prominent in the concert lineup is “Heavenwards — Time With Bach,” an idiosyncratic survey of the German composer in a festival that usually takes a greater interest in Salzburg’s favorite son, Mozart, and the works of Richard Strauss, who was among the event’s founders.The choice to go back to Bach’s music this summer, during the second of two installments that mark the festival’s centenary year, was in part a response to the coronavirus pandemic. According to Florian Wiegand, the Salzburg Festival’s director of concerts and media, “Bach provides us with an unbreakable order in his music, with a clear structure and direction” to counter the loss of balance during these unsettled times.The festival usually reserves the intimate format of the “Time With” series for 20th-century and contemporary figures, including Dmitri Shostakovich, Gérard Grisey and, earlier this month, the American composer Morton Feldman.“Now we’re focusing not on a contemporary composer, but on an entirely timeless composer,” Mr. Wiegand said, adding that “Bach’s music is permeated with deep humanity” perhaps more than any other artist’s body of work.Considering how vast and varied Bach’s output was — he is among the most prolific of all composers — there would have been infinite ways to construct the series.Speaking from a terrace above the festival complex, which abuts the Mönchsberg, a mountain on the edge of Salzburg’s Altstadt, or old town, Mr. Wiegand said the festival chose to sidestep the composer’s best-known sacred works, including his Masses and Passions, many of which have been performed during past installments. (The most recent program of Bach’s music at Salzburg was a 2018 concert of the B minor Mass.)Thomas Zehetmair performing at this year’s Salzburg Festival. In 1997 he made his festival debut at the age of 15.Marco Borrelli/SFInstead, the performances that make up the 2021 Bach program run the gamut from solo recitals to symphony concerts and even a dance production.“In this series we wanted to focus on Bach’s music that is not liturgically bound,” he explained, adding that even the secular works can provide solace during this “challenging and sometimes resigned situation for all of us.” Once the festival’s artistic leadership had settled on Bach, they reached out to leading musicians and artists to find out which works they considered most meaningful right now.The central production in “Heavenwards” is “In the Midst of Life,” a modern dance performance developed by the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker around the Six Cello Suites. Performances are scheduled for Aug. 20 and 21 at the SZENE Salzburg, an event space in a former cinema.The dance-concert, which was first performed in Germany in 2017 and traveled to New York last year, features one of today’s leading Bach interpreters, the French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras. As he makes his way through the seminal and virtuosic cycle, Ms. De Keersmaeker and four members of her company, Rosas, dance around Mr. Queyras and his instrument, creating an intimate dialogue between music and movement.With the exception of this Wednesday’s concert — the Six Brandenburg Concertos performed by Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, a leading period instrument ensemble — all of the “Heavenwards” programs aim for intimacy.A pair of recitals find master pianists of different generations confronting Bach’s keyboard works. Earlier this week, the Hungarian pianist Andras Schiff, 67, plunged into the complete partitas; in the final concert of the series, on Aug. 23, the Russian prodigy Daniil Trifonov, 30, will dedicate himself to “The Art of Fugue,” a work left incomplete at the time of Bach’s death.Mr. Trifonov performed the hourlong cycle at Alice Tully Hall in March 2020 in one of New York’s final concerts before lockdown. Reviewing the performance in The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini wrote that Mr. Trifonov “played with a focus and concentration that radiated throughout the hall. The performances abounded in scintillating grace, wondrous shadings, even touches of impetuousness.”For his Salzburg appearance, Mr. Trifonov will start the program with Brahms’s left-handed arrangement of the Chaconne from the D minor Partita.At the end of July, the Chaconne also featured in the opening concert of “Heavenwards”: a recital by the Austrian violinist Thomas Zehetmair performing the complete sonatas and partitas, which are considered the pinnacle of the solo violin repertoire. Alone on the stage of the Great Hall of the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation, where Mr. Koncz played 95 years ago, Mr. Zehetmair held the audience transfixed during the performance, which ran three and a half hours (with two intermissions).Of the musicians featured in the series, perhaps none has as deep a history with both this city and its signature musical event as Mr. Zehetmair, a Salzburg native who has been a familiar face at the festival since his 1977 debut here, at the age of 15.“It is ambitious,” he admitted in an interview before the concert. He had recorded the cycles twice but never before performed them in full in a single evening. “It’s quite a challenge for the audience as well,” he added.“The cycles are so fantastic in their whole conception,” he said, noting that he was excited about playing them in the order they appear in the catalog of Bach’s work. For instance, he said he relished the opportunity to finish the concert with the light and buoyant Partita No. 3 in E major.“It’s so wonderful to have a lighter end after the whole concentration of artistic and intellectual challenges,” he said. “The audience can go out on the street with a light feeling.”“There has never been a series dedicated to Bach like this,” Markus Hinterhäuser, the Salzburg Festival’s artistic director, said in a video introduction to the festival program, which runs through Aug. 30. By showcasing Bach during Salzburg’s anniversary, “Heavenwards” allows the festival to “connect to the original inspiration behind everything musical,” he continued.“It takes us straight to heaven even though they are earthly works,” Mr. Hinterhäuser said. In his words, one can hear an echo of a dictum by the 20th-century composer Mauricio Kagel. “It could well be that not all musicians believe in God,” he famously said, “but they all believe in Bach.” More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      How Jennifer Hudson Prepared to Play Aretha Franklin

      by

      For the new biopic “Respect,” the singer researched the life of a yearslong friend and role model to better understand the circumstances that shaped her.Jennifer Hudson had plenty of time to think about how to portray Aretha Franklin onscreen. In 2007, soon after Hudson won the Academy Award for best supporting actress — for playing a girl-group singer in “Dreamgirls” — Franklin told Hudson she should play her in a biopic, starting a decade-long friendship filled with weekly conversations. Like Franklin, Hudson grew up singing in church, and she has poured gospel virtuosity into pop songs. And like Franklin, whose mother died at 34 of a heart attack, Hudson experienced sudden, devastating loss: her mother, brother and nephew were murdered in Chicago in 2008. In her career, Hudson has repeatedly paid tribute to Franklin, from using a Franklin song for her “American Idol” audition in 2004 to singing “Amazing Grace” at Franklin’s funeral in 2018. Now, Hudson is playing Franklin in the biopic “Respect” that comes to theaters this week.“Every artist, every musician, you’ve got to cross paths with Aretha, especially if you want to be great,” Hudson said in a video interview from Chicago, where she lives; her gray cat, Macavity, prowled in the background. “She’s always been present in my life in some form, even when I didn’t know it.”As Hudson explained the choices that went into her performance, she said that through the movie, she came to understand just how much of a “blueprint” Franklin was. “Our church music was based solely on her. The ‘Amazing Grace’ that I grew up singing in church came from her ‘Amazing Grace’ album. I didn’t realize that until we were doing research on the film.”Hudson, 39, is both the star and an executive producer of “Respect.” The film chronicles Franklin’s life from her childhood — as a vocal prodigy singing in church alongside her father, the eminent Reverend Clarence L. Franklin — through her pregnancy at 12, her frustrating years singing jazz standards at Columbia Records, her triumphant emergence as the Queen of Soul at Atlantic Records, and the pressures and drinking that threatened all she had achieved. Its story concludes in 1972 with Franklin reclaiming her church heritage to record her landmark live gospel album, “Amazing Grace.”Hudson as Aretha Franklin opposite Tituss Burgess in “Respect.”Quantrell D. Colbert/MGM“Respect” is the first film directed by Liesl Tommy, who was born in South Africa under apartheid and has worked extensively in theater, directing reconceptualized classics and politically charged new plays like “Eclipsed,” about women during the civil war in Liberia. (She was nominated for a best director Tony for that production.) To write the screenplay for “Respect,” Tommy brought in the playwright Tracey Scott Wilson, whose grandfather was a preacher.“When I pitched my idea of the film,” Tommy said by telephone from Los Angeles, “it was that it should start in the church and end in the church. The theme of the film was the woman with the greatest voice on earth, struggling to find her voice. I wanted to know how a person sings with such emotional intensity.“A lot of people have brilliant voices,” she continued, “but she’s the only one who delivers songs the way she does. I don’t think you become the Queen of Soul if you have an easy ride. There was a lived experience that allowed her to sing like that.”Franklin was celebrated anew after her death in 2018. The long-shelved concert film made when she recorded the “Amazing Grace” album was finally released that year. And National Geographic devoted a full season of its television series “Genius” to Franklin, with Cynthia Erivo in the title role. “Aretha Franklin lived a life where there’s room for many, many versions of many stories about her,” Tommy said. “She deserves that.”“Respect” juxtaposes the personal and political currents of Franklin’s career: forging a feminist anthem with “Respect” while grappling with an abusive husband, appearing regularly with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while supporting controversial figures like the Black Power activist Angela Davis. One of the rawest scenes involves Franklin singing at King’s funeral. “Imagine being Aretha Franklin in that era and Dr. King, whom she was so close to, being assassinated,” Hudson said. “Imagine the suffering and the pain she was going through. But in her position, she still had to be that person to be the light in such a dark time. That’s hard.”Though Hudson had spoken regularly with Franklin, she still had to conduct research: “Aretha wasn’t a person who verbalized too much unless it was through music.”Bethany Mollenkof for The New York TimesStill, Hudson and Tommy were determined to place Franklin’s music at the center of the film. “Everybody is, like, ‘We’ve never seen a biopic with this much music, where you get to hear the songs,’” Hudson said. “This is not a musical. It’s a biopic about artists, musicians. But I can’t think of any biopic or musical that has been done this way.”As executive producer, Hudson said, “I wanted to make sure the right songs were in the film. I wanted ‘Ain’t No Way.’ If I’m just an actor, I don’t really get a say, but with this, it’s like, ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t do this unless “Ain’t No Way” is a part of it.’”In an extended recording-studio sequence, Aretha’s sisters, Carolyn and Erma Franklin, sing all the backup vocals — not Cissy Houston, whose wordless soprano counterpoint transfigures the song. “That is part of artistic license,” Tommy said. “You can only have so many characters. You have to keep it focused.”To create immediacy, Hudson delivered Franklin’s onstage performances by singing live on camera — not lip-syncing, not dubbing in vocals afterward. “I wanted to experience it as she did in her life,” Hudson said. “Whatever we were re-enacting and recreating that she did in her life, if it was live, it’s like, ‘Well, let’s do it live.’ ‘Amazing Grace’ was live. ‘Ain’t No Way’ was live. ‘Natural Woman,’ we’re going to sing it live. So it could be authentic to what really was in her life.”Franklin was an accomplished gospel pianist as well as a singer, skills forged in her childhood in the church. Her early, commercially unsuccessful albums for Columbia backed her with celebrated jazz musicians and elaborate orchestral arrangements. It was elegant but in the 1960s, it was already old-fashioned.Hudson — with Marc Maron, left, and Marlon Wayans — learned to play piano for “Respect.” Quantrell D. Colbert/MGMHer return to the piano was one catalyst for her indelible Atlantic hits, defining the groove with churchy foundations and building a visceral call-and-response between her fingers and her voice. Hudson, after a career of working solely as a singer, set out to learn piano. “It was an actor’s choice to say ‘I cannot play Aretha Franklin without learning some element of the piano,’” Hudson said. “And now, when I’m learning music, I no longer just look at the top line, the melody line, the singing line. I’m considering it as an arranger. What key is that in? What is the progression?”Hudson also pondered how to reinterpret Franklin’s songs. Their voices are different: Hudson’s is higher and clearer, Franklin’s bluesier and grittier, and Hudson wanted to emulate Franklin without copying her. “I was using her approach, just allowing whatever that influence is that she’s had on me to come through, while using her inflections and different nuances,” Hudson said. “It was more about the feeling than matching the notes.”Despite their years of conversations, Hudson still had to research Franklin. “Aretha wasn’t a person who verbalized too much unless it was through music,” she said. “I know from my experiences of being around her, I used to be like, I can’t really tell where I stand. She didn’t give you much.” So Hudson set out to understand the era in which she grew up and other circumstances to get a sense of what it was like to be a woman then. “It wasn’t for me until literally in the middle of scenes that I realized, the things she had been saying to me, she was speaking from experience. Her greatest expression was through her music — and that was real.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Britney Spears's Father Says He Will Step Aside as Conservator

      by

      Lawyers for James P. Spears said he intended to work with the court to assure “an orderly transition to a new conservator,” while arguing that he should not be immediately removed.In an abrupt reversal after more than a year of fighting in court — and a much longer battle behind the scenes — Britney Spears’s father has agreed to eventually step aside from his long-running role overseeing the singer’s finances as part of the unique conservatorship that has governed her life since 2008.Ms. Spears has called the conservatorship abusive and said she is afraid of her father, James P. Spears, vowing not to perform as long as he remained in charge. A new lawyer for the singer recently filed in court to have Mr. Spears immediately suspended or removed from his position as conservator of her estate.Initially, Mr. Spears objected to the request and defended his work on behalf of his daughter. But in a new filing in Los Angeles probate court on Thursday, lawyers for Mr. Spears said that, while there were “no actual grounds for suspending or removing” Mr. Spears, he intended to work with the court to assure “an orderly transition to a new conservator.”The lawyers did not provide a timeline for the change, and they steadfastly maintained that Mr. Spears had “saved Ms. Spears from disaster, supported her when she needed it the most, protected her and her reputation from harm, and facilitated the restoration of her career.”“It is highly debatable whether a change in conservator at this time would be in Ms. Spears’ best interests,” the lawyers wrote. “Nevertheless, even as Mr. Spears is the unremitting target of unjustified attacks, he does not believe that a public battle with his daughter over his continuing service as her conservator would be in her best interests.”Mr. Spears’s lawyers said that there was “no urgent circumstances justifying Mr. Spears’ immediate suspension,” but that he would be in position to step aside after resolving outstanding matters including financial accounting for the conservatorship in recent years.The lawyers said that Mr. Spears had previously “been working on such a transition” with the singer’s court-appointed lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, who stepped down in July after representing Ms. Spears since the arrangement began.Mathew S. Rosengart, a former federal prosecutor and Hollywood lawyer who took over as Ms. Spears’s representative last month, said in a statement, “We are pleased that Mr. Spears and his lawyer have today conceded in a filing that he must be removed.”Mr. Rosengart added: “We look forward to continuing our vigorous investigation into the conduct of Mr. Spears, and others, over the past 13 years, while he reaped millions of dollars from his daughter’s estate, and I look forward to taking Mr. Spears’s sworn deposition in the near future.” The lawyer also reiterated his call for Mr. Spears to “step aside immediately.”Mr. Spears, 69, first petitioned the probate court for legal authority over his daughter’s personal life and finances in early 2008, citing concerns about her mental health and potential substance abuse. By the end of that year, the arrangement, typically reserved for people who cannot take care of themselves, was made permanent.Since then, Mr. Spears has controlled his daughter’s finances, including an estate worth around $60 million, sometimes with a professional co-conservator. Recently, a wealth-management firm that was set to join the arrangement as co-conservator with Mr. Spears requested to withdraw, citing Ms. Spears’s objections to the guardianship. Mr. Rosengart requested last month that a certified public accountant in California, Jason Rubin, be named conservator of Ms. Spears’s estate.Mr. Spears had also largely overseen Ms. Spears’s personal and medical care until a personal conservator, Jodi Montgomery, took over in September 2019 on an ongoing temporary basis.For years, Ms. Spears, 39, bristled behind the scenes at the strictures of the conservatorship, calling her father and his oversight over her oppressive and unnecessary given her continued success as a musician, according to confidential court records recently obtained by The New York Times. The singer also raised questions about the fitness of her father — who has struggled with alcoholism and faced accusations of physical and verbal abuse — as conservator, and she began officially seeking substantial changes to the arrangement in court last summer.But the urgency of Ms. Spears’s requests ratcheted up in June, when the singer publicly addressed the conservatorship in detail for the first time, calling in court for it to end and singling out her father as “the one who approved all of it.” The singer said that those in charge “should be in jail.”On Thursday, Mr. Spears said he would step down “when the time is right.” But in their largely defiant filing, his lawyers also criticized Mr. Rosengart for what they called his failure to “review the history of this conservatorship in order to understand factually what has actually occurred” or to “resolve matters cooperatively” in the weeks since he took over the case, noting that he had not yet been given full access to the court files.“If the public knew all the facts of Ms. Spears’ personal life,” lawyers for her father wrote, “not only her highs but also her lows, all of the addiction and mental health issues that she has struggled with, and all of the challenges of the Conservatorship, they would praise Mr. Spears for the job he has done, not vilify him. But the public does not know all the facts, and they have no right to know, so there will be no public redemption for Mr. Spears.”Mr. Spears also dedicated more than half of the 13-page filing to targeting his ex-wife and Ms. Spears’s mother, Lynne Spears, who has recently supported the singer in court after years outside the periphery of the conservatorship. Lawyers for Mr. Spears accused her of not accepting “the full extent to which Ms. Spears has had addiction and mental health issues or the level of care and treatment she needs.”“Instead of criticizing Mr. Spears, Lynne should be thanking him for ensuring Ms. Spears’ well-being and for persevering through the years-long tenure requiring his 365/24/7 attention, long days and sometimes late nights, to deal with day-to-day and emergency issues,” the lawyers wrote.Gladstone N. Jones, a lawyer for Lynne Spears, said on Thursday that the singer’s mother was “pleased Jamie has agreed to step down,” adding, “Lynne entered into this conservatorship to protect her daughter almost three years ago. She has accomplished what she set out to do.”Mr. Spears’s lawyers said that “regardless of his formal title, Mr. Spears will always be Ms. Spears’ father, he will always love her unconditionally, and he will always look out for her best interests.”The next status hearing in the case is scheduled for Sept. 29. More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Lorde’s Work Here Is Done. Now, She Vibes.

      by

      She was a teen phenom who followed her hit “Royals” with a critically acclaimed album. But now 24, the New Zealand musician isn’t chasing hits. She’s following the sun.Lorde’s third album, “Solar Power,” was made after a break during which the singer and songwriter simply lived.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesIt can be tempting, upon spending any extended amount of time around the musician Lorde, to wonder what is wrong with her.That is, where exactly does she hide the bad parts, the off-notes, the unflattering bits of any personality that poke out awkwardly, especially after experiencing a trajectory as strange as hers? No one, famous and feted at 16, could possibly be so well-adjusted. Right?It’s not even that the singer and songwriter born Ella Yelich-O’Connor, now 24, presents as especially perfect, or self-assured or immune to criticism. It’s not that she doesn’t suffer from second-guessing, insecurities, bouts of vanity, impatience or mindless cellphone scrolling.But Lorde — the human and the artist — can usually be found one step ahead, intuitively and emotionally, having thought through her reality from most angles: how something felt to her, how she might express that, how it will be received and how she might process how she was interpreted. This is a skill set that many people who become known like she did — as a gifted small-town teenager with an out-of-the-gate smash success — can feign pretty well. But few do it as convincingly.“I know enough to know that people in my position are symbols and archetypes and where we meet people, in the context of culture and current events, is sort of outside of our control, so I try not to fret too much,” Lorde said recently, with characteristic consideration and Zen, ahead of the release of her third album.“It’s a very funny position to be in,” she acknowledged. “It’s absurd.”But it’s this sense of perspective and self-awareness that has kept Lorde going in an often unforgiving industry. In fact, she made an entire album about finding balance.“Solar Power,” out Aug. 20, is what happens when a pop star outwits the system, swerves around its strange demands, stops trying to make hits and decides to whisper to her most devoted followers how she did it. For Lorde, the trick was having a life — a real life — far away from all of this. And also throwing her phone into the ocean. (A therapist didn’t hurt either.)After the reign of “Royals,” her first single — which spent nine weeks at No. 1 and won two Grammys — and her three-times platinum 2013 debut “Pure Heroine,” Lorde took four years to release a follow-up. Her second album, “Melodrama,” in 2017, paled in comparison commercially, but it realigned out-of-whack expectations, establishing the singer as a phenom-turned-auteur, earning her rave reviews and another Grammy nomination, this time for album of the year. Then she hoarded four more years for herself.Along the way, Lorde became an industry blueprint for a sort of world-building, precocious wallflower singer-songwriter, helping to usher in a generation including Halsey, Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo. But Lorde hasn’t really stuck around to see it.“I went back to living my life,” she said of her recent hiatus, identifying as “a hothouse flower, a delicate person and a massive introvert,” drained after a year-plus of promotion and touring for “Melodrama.” “It’s hard for people to understand that.”“The question I’ve gotten a lot recently is, ‘What have you been doing?’” she added. “I’m like, ‘Oh, no, no, no — this is a break from my life.’ I come back and perform these duties because I believe in the album.”Lorde vowed to never again reach for the heights of her breakout hit, “Royals.” “Can you imagine?” she said. “I’m under no illusion. That was a moonshot.”Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesEven now, with the obligations piling up ahead of “Solar Power,” Lorde scheduled a weeklong beach vacation with friends, and used a scheduled interview as an occasion to multitask, walking to buy a tote bag full of nice cheese for the trip.Most of the last four years, though, Lorde lived as Ella among the greenery and waterfront splendor where she was raised, in and around Auckland, New Zealand, working to figure out her boundaries.A friend from home, Francesca Hopkins, said, “That whole Lorde thing doesn’t and hasn’t really come up. I’ve probably said the word ‘Lorde’ maybe like — I can count it on one hand.”The singer also began the process of addressing her internet addiction, inspired by books like Jenny Odell’s “How to Do Nothing” and Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.”“I would see my screen-time go to like, 11 hours and I knew it was just looking at the Daily Mail,” Lorde said. “I remember sitting up in bed and realizing I could get to the end of my life and have done this every day. And it’s up to me to choose, right now. So I just sort of chose.”It ultimately took more than that: Lorde’s phone, set to grayscale, now has no internet browser; she is locked out of her social-media apps, with others handling the passwords; and a coder friend even made YouTube inaccessible on her laptop.“I haven’t made a Jack Antonoff record,” the singer said. “I’ve made a Lorde record and he’s helped me make it and very much deferred to me on production and arrangement.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesInstead, she cooked, baked, walked the dog, swam, gardened — chilled, in other words — while she waited to see “if anything else worth writing about happened.” But it turned out that it already had, especially when woven in with her current existence.On “The Path,” the shimmering opening track of “Solar Power” that she wrote early on as a sort of thesis statement for the album, Lorde describes herself as “raised in the tall grass,” but also a “teen millionaire having nightmares from the camera flash.” “If you’re looking for a savior,” she warns, “well that’s not me.” But she offers a heady alternative: the sun.“I’m aware of the way people look at me,” Lorde said. “I can feel the huge amount of love and devotion that people have for me — and for people in my position — and straightaway, I wanted to be like, ‘I’m not the one that’s worthy of your devotion. I’m essentially like you.’”She continued: “My kids — my community — they’re expecting spiritual transcendence from me, from these works. ‘I need Lorde to come back and tell me how to feel, tell me how to process this period in my life!’ I was like, oh, man, I don’t know if I can help you with that. But what I do know is that if we all look up here, it’s going to help you a lot!”Playing with the role of pop star as messiah, she embraced the character of cult leader in song, proselytizing about the natural world.But Lorde also knows that these fixes come from a place of privilege, overlapping as they do with some of the more obvious tenets of modern wellness culture (which she also skewers on the album): Go outside. Spend time with your family. Turn off your phone. Hang out with your friends.What keeps “Solar Power” from feeling didactic or oversimplified are lyrics in which she satirizes her own experiences, grounding it in gossipy bits of detail and cutting lofty takes with humor, like when she interrupts a fragile treatise on aging with the line, “Maybe I’m … just stoned at the nail salon.”“Melodrama” established Lorde as a phenom-turned-auteur.Chad Batka for The New York TimesThe artist who once sang dismissively and from a distance about celebrity culture now notes her “trunkful of Simone and Céline” and time spent in hotels, at the Met Gala, the Grammys and on jets. “I’ve got hundreds of gowns, I’ve got paintings in frames,” she sings on “The Man With the Axe.” “And a throat that fills with panic every festival day/dutifully falling apart for the princess of Norway.”But opting out, Lorde makes clear, just feels better. “Goodbye to all the bottles, all the models, bye to the kids in the lines for the new Supreme,” she adds on “California,” coming full circle back to her “Pure Heroine” ethos.Lorde knew she needed a proudly out-of-touch sound to match her subject matter and sense of disconnect. She found the “twinkly” aesthetic for “Solar Power” by combining ’60s and ’70s influences like the Mamas and the Papas and Bee Gees with often-maligned artists from her youth that represented what she called “turn-of-the-century beachside optimism”: All Saints, S Club 7, Natalie Imbruglia, Nelly Furtado.Once faithful to electronics and allergic to guitars, Lorde employs only a single 808 drum machine on the entirety of the album, in a section meant as a self-referential throwback. “There’s definitely not a smash,” she declared of her commercial prospects with a cackle. “It makes sense that there wouldn’t be a smash, because I don’t even know really what the smashes are now.”She vowed to never again reach for the heights of “Royals.” “What a lost cause,” she said. “Can you imagine? I’m under no illusion. That was a moonshot.”But she’s found an ally in experimentation and Billboard-agnosticism in the producer and songwriter Jack Antonoff, with whom she also wrote and produced “Melodrama.”“You make your first album with an amazing amount of joy because nothing exists,” Antonoff said. But he recalled the looming pressure that preceded the second Lorde LP, which resulted in the pair tucking themselves away to avoid the glare and resulted in the intimacy of “Melodrama.”“Solar Power,” he said, came from a renewed sense of freedom. “The third album is a great place to do it — to wake up and be like, ‘I really love this work and I’m so lucky to be here.’ You just sort of reconnect with it. There was a lot of that.”Lorde agreed. “I felt like I could just chill out and flex a little bit,” she said.“The question I’ve gotten a lot recently is, ‘What have you been doing?’” Lorde said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, no, no, no — this is a break from my life.’ I come back and perform these duties because I believe in the album.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesYet it’s in the context of Antonoff that Lorde expressed the closest thing to angst she could muster. Specifically, she took issue with a growing contingent of fans and critics who lump together the producer’s extensive work with other female pop artists — Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and Clairo among them — reducing Lorde to yet another mare in what she refers to, with some edge and more humor, as “Jack’s stable.”“I haven’t made a Jack Antonoff record,” the singer said. “I’ve made a Lorde record and he’s helped me make it and very much deferred to me on production and arrangement. Jack would agree with this. To give him that amount of credit is frankly insulting.” She called the narrative — which has also included speculation about the pair’s romantic and sexual life — “retro” and “sexist.”“I know that there are certain hallmarks of what Jack does and some of those things I really love and some of them I don’t like. And I beat them out of the work that we do together,” she added. “I say this with so much love and affection, but I feel like we’re doing up a house together and he’s like, ‘Look at this serviette that I fashioned into the shape of two swans! Look at this set of woven baskets!’ And I’m like, ‘Great — one per room.’”At a recent rehearsal for a late-night television performance, Lorde was clearly in charge and attuned to the details. Upon arriving, Antonoff warned that his guitar playing would be “pretty loose.”“How loose?” Lorde responded. Later, she paused singing to listen more closely to the arrangement. “My only thing would be to nail you a little bit more to the recording,” Lorde offered, with the bluntness afforded by a seasoned partnership.“Pretty, though!” she added.“No one who’s in a job that isn’t my job has a relationship like the one I have with Jack,” Lorde said later. “He’s like a partner to me. We’re in a relationship. It’s not a romantic relationship, but we’ve been in it for seven years, and it’s a really unique thing, so I don’t begrudge people maybe not being able to understand it.”She was trying to keep the same mindset for the release of “Solar Power,” she said, returning to the idea that she was “very, very reconciled and at ease with things like public perception. It’s just not rocking my boat these days.”“I would almost value people not understanding it at first,” she said of the album. “It sort of depresses me when an album comes out and I click through it really fast and I look at the Genius and read all the lyrics in three minutes and I realize I know exactly what it is and it isn’t going to grow.”“I think I’m still giving something that’s really digestible,” Lorde added with a smirk, “but it’s my pleasure to confound. I’m down to be that for people.” More

    • 75 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      The Music That Inspires the Watchmakers

      by

      Lots of artisans rely on music for inspiration, distraction and just a bit of fun.Music and watchmaking have a deep connection. Consider the “tick tock” of traditional timepieces, the minute repeater complication (a function besides the telling of time) that chimes the time on demand and the tunes played by many a pocket watch.Some watchmakers, though, say music also plays an important role in their ateliers — as inspiration, distraction and sometimes just for fun.Below, six industry professionals talk about what’s on their playlists.UrwerkFelix BaumgartnerWatchmaker at Urwerk, in GenevaThe Rolling Stones have played an important role at Urwerk since its founding in 1997, uniting Martin Frei, who designs the wildly futuristic watches, and Mr. Baumgartner, who makes them.For example, Mr. Baumgartner wrote in a email, in 2002, “we had finished the design of our new watch, the UR-103, but had barely enough money to put it into production.“We had to make a decision. Urwerk was clinically dead. It made no sense to continue,” the 46-year-old watchmaker added. “We took a break, turned on the music, the famous ‘Time Is On My Side,’ on maximum volume. We looked at each other and we knew. We found faith. We had to go to the end.”Ulysse CamusDenis FlageolletWatchmaker at De Bethune, in L’Auberson, SwitzerlandMr. Flageollet’s exposure to music began long before 2002, when he co-founded De Bethune, a brand dedicated to combining watchmaking’s heritage with new technologies.He was 7 in 1969, when Woodstock captured the world’s attention. “I couldn’t understand what was going on but I heard so much about it that I knew it was something big,” Mr. Flageollet, now 59, wrote in an email. “My elders introduced me to Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Who and their music never left me.”Later, he added, “I discovered the Montreux Jazz Festival, which introduced me to many artists with very different styles such as Leonard Cohen, Miles Davis, Prince, David Bowie.”Kross StudioMarco TedeschiWatch designer at Kross Studio, in Gland, SwitzerlandNot all creative types in the watch world lean toward rock, though. Recently the founder and chief executive of Kross Studio has been listening to the music from the 1996 movie “Space Jam.”The reason: He is creating a tourbillon watch housed in a sculptural wood and aluminum basketball — a homage to LeBron James, star of the new movie “Space Jam: A New Legacy.”It is just one of the projects that Kross has undertaken since Mr. Tedeschi, formerly with Hublot, established the business a year ago and signed partnerships with Warner Bros. (which produced and released both “Space Jam” movies) and Lucasfilms (its visual effects division worked on “A New Legacy”) to create themed collector sets that retail for five to six figures.“I played the soundtrack through again and again,” he said, referring to the original movie.As for his own taste, Mr. Tedeschi, 36, has an iTunes library of more than 30,000 listings: “I like French music from the ’80s, George Clinton, Motown singers — that type of music is the base of my musical culture. My father played Otis Redding a lot as I was growing up.”via ZenithAlexandra MouginWatch analyst at Zenith, in Le Locle, SwitzerlandMs. Mougin, 44, repairs some of Zenith’s most complicated watches.“When I’m setting the hammers of my minute repeater,” she wrote, referring to the watch complication that strikes the hours, quarters and minutes on request, “I have to listen to the ‘music’ played by the gongs of this watch. My mind is silent, and I’m totally concentrated, with only the music played by my watch piercing this silence.”And when she is starting a restoration, she wrote, “My mind has to be clear, not clogged up with worries or questions. That’s when I mentally conjure up ‘The Funeral’ by Ennio Morricone. Admittedly it’s quite sad, but so powerful. It helps me reconnect with essentials.”She also will imagine the New Orleans classic “Iko Iko”; “Elle est d’ailleurs,” sung by Pierre Bachelet; and “Ça va ça va,” performed by Claudio Capéo.via Kari VoutilainenKari VoutilainenWatchmaker at Voutilainen, in St.-Sulpice, SwitzerlandA variety of music entertains Mr. Voutilainen, 59, and his 10-member workshop team. They tune into local radio stations in Switzerland’s Val de Travers that might be playing “jazz, classical, popular music,” the independent watchmaker said. “It’s background music, creating a relaxing mood.”And when it’s not so relaxing? “It’s a common decision when it’s time to change the station,” Mr. Voutilainen said.Personally, “I listen to everything, to classical, to jazz, to Louis Armstrong. I’m not difficult,” he said, adding that he also likes “Italian pop music, like Zucchero. I do also like the Canadian singer Garou; you can hear the passion when he’s singing.”Johann SautyEric GiroudWatch designer at Through the Looking Glass, in Confignon, SwitzerlandDifferent music fits different projects, Mr. Giroud, 59, wrote in an email. “In the research of ideas or concept I will listen to soft and introspective music,” like Debussy’s piano concertos or Nils Frahm, he wrote. “When sketching I listen to music more rhythmic and almost disturbing in order to leave my zone of comfort (Nick Drake, Isaac Hayes, etc.)”And creating 2-D or 3-D drawings? “Titles arranged by Claus Ogerman, for example, or Kruder & Dorfmeister,” he said, referring to the German arranger and composer and the modern Austrian remix specialists.Music is so important to his creations that “every year I make a compilation of the music that had accompanied me during the year in the form of a CD that serves as a greeting card,” he wrote.Just this creative watchmaker’s way of spreading the inspiration of music. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Mirror, a Hong Kong Boy Band, Cheers the Gloomy Chinese City

      by

      The popularity of the group, called Mirror, has offered the city a rare burst of unity and pleasure after years of political upheaval.HONG KONG — They swarm public squares, crowd shopping malls and form lines that stretch several city blocks. They lean over barricades that strain to hold them and ignore police officers who try to corral them.The crowds filling Hong Kong in recent weeks aren’t protesters fighting for democracy. They are devotees of the city’s hottest boy band.For more than two years, Hong Kong has badly needed a source of uplift. First there were the mass protests of 2019, then the coronavirus pandemic, then a sweeping national security law. The city has been politically polarized and economically battered.Enter Mirror, a group of 12 singing and dancing young men who seemingly overnight have taken over the city — and, in doing so, infused it with a burst of joy.Their faces are plastered on billboards, buses and subway ads for everything from granola to air-conditioners to probiotic supplements. They have sold out concert halls, accounting for some of the city’s only large-scale events during the pandemic. Hardly a weekend goes by without one of the band’s (many) fan clubs devising a flashy new form of tribute: renting an enormous LED screen to celebrate one member, decking out a cruise ship for another.The whole city has been swept up in the craze — if not participating in the infatuation, then lamenting its ubiquity, as on a 300,000-member Facebook group called “My Wife Married Mirror and Left My Marriage In Ruins.”The group has sold out concert halls, accounting for some of the city’s only large-scale events during the pandemic.VCG, via Getty ImagesAs far as pop idols go, the band is familiar fare. Its lyrics hew to declarations of love and I-can-do-anything affirmations. K-pop’s influence is apparent in its tightly choreographed music videos and highly stylized coifs. Think BTS singing in Cantonese.Little about the group reflects the political upheaval in its hometown. But Mirror, perhaps precisely because it offers an escape with a catchy beat, has provided a musical balm to an anxious city at an uncertain time.“In the past two years, Hong Kong’s social environment has made many people, especially young people, feel very discouraged,” said Lim Wong, a 30-something finance worker as she lined up to take photographs by a fan-sponsored pink truck with the face of Anson Lo, a band member.“They work for their dreams, and that kind of energy really fits Hong Kong at this moment.”Though the group formed in 2018, through a reality show designed to manufacture a hit boy band, its popularity exploded this year. Fans cite a number of reasons: a strong showing at an awards show in January; the release of the group’s first full-length album; the pandemic, which left many Hong Kongers starved for entertainment.Mirror’s ascent has also coincided with a new, more intense stage of the Chinese government’s pressure on the city. For people of all political persuasions, the band has become a sort of ideological canvas.Some have claimed the band’s rousing beats for the battered pro-democracy movement. Gwyneth Ho, a 30-year-old opposition politician who was arrested after running in an informal primary election, has made her love for Mirror a motif in letters from jail. She said the first time she cried after her arrest was upon hearing “Warrior,” an anthem about perseverance.“The worst that could happen is death, and I won’t avoid it,” Ms. Ho quoted from the lyrics.Some also see Mirror as an emblem of Hong Kong identity, at a time when many fear that identity will be erased by Beijing.Cantopop — pop sung in Cantonese, the local Chinese language — was once a major cultural export. Unabashedly commercial but also distinctly local in character, it ranged from sappy power ballads to pulsing dance tunes, folding in covers of Western hits and nods to social issues.But interest flagged over the past two decades as the entertainment industries in South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China boomed. Many Hong Kong stars shifted their attention to the mainland.Now Mirror is driving a resurgence of enthusiasm for Cantopop — and, with it, a broader hometown pride.Gwyneth Ho, a pro-democracy politician, in her office a year ago. She has found comfort from the group’s songs in jail after her arrest earlier this year.Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“It’s because of Anson Lo and Mirror that I’ve become totally newly acquainted with Hong Kong local songs and artists,” said Henry Tong, a banker in his 20s visiting the pink truck. “It’s not just songs — there are also Hong Kong television shows and other productions.”The band has also become entangled in attacks by government supporters. On social media, some mainland users have, without evidence, accused members of supporting Hong Kong independence. A pro-Beijing lawmaker recently suggested that a television drama starring two band members might run afoul of the national security law because it depicted homosexuality. (The group’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.)Other performers have become political targets. This month, officials arrested Anthony Wong Yiu-ming, a Cantopop star, for singing at a rally for a pro-democracy legislative candidate.Some fans have parsed the band’s statements for signs of political leanings, pointing to an interview one member gave saying he was glad “Warrior” could cheer up Ms. Ho, the politician.But Mirror has avoided explicit declarations. It has partnered with the Hong Kong government to promote the local economy.Even those who invoked politics in explaining Mirror’s popularity emphasized a fierce desire to insulate it from those forces.Fans of Mirror member Keung To at an event in Hong Kong last month. The most striking effect of the band’s takeover of Hong Kong has been its ability to unify a divided city. Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesAnnie Yuen, who leads the fan club that organized the Anson Lo truck — as well as the cruise ship, several billboards and the sale of thousands of “Little Anson” dolls — said Mirror was a rebuttal to those who had cast Hong Kong’s protesting youth as rioters or malcontents.“They were saying that Hong Kong youngsters have no contribution,” Ms. Yuen, who is in her 30s, said. Mirror showed that “Hong Kong young people could bring success.”Still, Ms. Yuen emphasized that was not her main draw to Mirror.“We want to just temporarily forget about the politics,” she said, “and just enjoy what they bring to us.”Enjoy is an understatement. Spend five minutes talking to a Mirror fan, and the takeaway is not about Hong Kong’s social situation. It’s of pure, wholesome delight.Mr. Lo, 26, is the heartthrob — but fans also moon over his work ethic and manners. Ian Chan, 28, is lovingly teased as a bookworm. Another member, Keung To, 22, won over many by discussing his experiences with childhood obesity and bullying.The band has leaned into its hometown hero image, promoting a food drive and cheering on Hong Kong’s Olympic athletes. In interviews, members exude family-friendly goofiness, talking over themselves and ruffling one another’s hair.Fans posing for photographs with cut-outs of Mr. Keung at an event for the anniversary of his fan club in Hong Kong last month.Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesChristy Siu said she was enthralled by their singing, dancing and acting. She was especially proud of their performance at the January awards show, when the band, in sleek suits draped with silver chains, slinked and popped across the stage.Ms. Siu, who is in her 20s, said she spends around $250 each month on products advertised by band members. She recently bought dozens of Mirror-endorsed toothbrushes.In a way, the band is allowing young people to reclaim an innocence, said Anthony Fung, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studies pop culture.“Suddenly, they’ve realized that they could put down all these so-called big social things,” he said. “There is something more joyful, playful, that draws them away from the political impasse of their youth.”The most striking effect of Mirror’s takeover of Hong Kong has been its ability to unify a divided city. Many fans said they wanted the band to reach as many listeners as possible, regardless of gender, age or political background.The band seems aware of those hopes. At the end of a sold-out concert series in May, the members lined up onstage to thank their parents and fans. A few offered advice.“This world is really complicated,” Mr. Chan said. “I hope that everyone here can remain simple and pure.”The crowd erupted. More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      Watches and Music: A Harmonious Match

      by

      As the former lead guitarist for Anthrax, Daniel A. Spitz understands the fundamental link between music and timekeeping, something Swiss brands also have embraced.In the late 1990s, when Daniel A. Spitz was a student at the Watchmakers of Switzerland Training and Educational Program (better known as WOSTEP) in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, he visited the Audemars Piguet factory in nearby Le Brassus.“I was trying to explain to them, ‘Do you have any idea how much disposable income and how many watch collectors there are in music?’” Mr. Spitz said on a recent video call from his home in Gun Barrel City, Texas, about an hour’s drive southeast of Dallas. “‘If you collaborated with musicians, how many more people would have an awareness of what a really good timepiece is?’ They just looked at me as if I was nuts.”Oh, how times (and tunes) have changed!Over the past few years, many Swiss watchmakers, including Audemars Piguet, have struck partnerships with artists, D.J.s, award shows, music festivals and even recording studios that underscore the fundamental link between music and timekeeping. (Let’s not forget the Italian word “tempo” comes from the Latin “tempus,” meaning time.)It’s a topic Mr. Spitz is particularly qualified to address. A former lead guitarist for the pioneering thrash metal band Anthrax, he left the group in 1995 to become a watchmaker, a passion he attributes to a childhood spent tinkering with Swiss timepieces at his grandfather’s watch and jewelry store in New York’s Catskills region.Mr. Spitz performing with Anthrax in 1991. He left the band four years later.Lisa Lake/Getty Images(He did return to Anthrax from 2005 to 2008 for a reunion cycle, then quit music for good. “My carpal tunnel syndrome inhibits me from playing for long periods of time,” he said.)The carpal tunnel syndrome has not stopped Mr. Spitz from designing and building about three custom wristwatches a year, with prices starting at $128,000, and a waiting list approaching two years. Making one complete watch at a time has allowed him to avoid making repetitive tasks with his hands, he said, but when there was a problem he would just stop and work on something else.As he riffed on the intrinsic link between music — particularly his brand of heavy metal — and high-end mechanical watchmaking, he emphasized the focus, precision and ambition that both fields require. “When you want to become one of the best guitar players on the planet, you lock yourself up in your room for years and you play and you play and you play — you have to figure it out,” Mr. Spitz said. “It’s the same in watchmaking.”As for the Swiss, the connections have struck a chord — look to just a few recent sponsorships, themed collections and even product collaborations.In 2019, Audemars Piguet became a global partner of the Montreux Jazz Festival (a role formerly filled by the Swiss brand Parmigiani Fleurier). That same year, the watchmaker introduced a music program to support rising music artists and to create music experiences for audiences around the world.Before the festival’s 55th edition concluded on July 17, the brand continued that mission by presenting a live performance by the Montreal-based hip-hop duo the Lyonz, staged in the foothills of the Swiss Alps around Montreux.The American watchmaker Bulova, owned by Citizen Watch, staked its claim on the mainstream music industry in 2016, when it signed agreements with the Recording Academy and the Latin Recording Academy to create and distribute watch collections featuring the logos of the Grammys and the Latin Grammys.Bulova sponsored the Grammy Brunch in 2020, which featured a performance by Cari Fletcher.Charley Gallay/Getty ImagesIt even has made special-edition Grammy watches for first-time winners featuring dials made of the same custom alloy used for the ceremony’s gramophone-shaped award, a substance called Grammium.“It’s not just about selling a watch,” Jeffrey Cohen, Bulova’s chief executive, said. “It’s about selling a vibe or a feeling.”Even though the pandemic generally made it impossible to enjoy that vibe at live events, plenty of brands created virtual music experiences throughout 2020 and the first half of 2021. Bulova, for one, continued its three-year-old “Tune of Time” video series spotlighting emerging musicians, established in partnership with the Universal Music Group. And Zenith teamed with the electronic music D.J. Carl Cox last fall to organize a private D.J. set on Zoom for about 50 clients in Mexico.“Clearly, you’re not getting the same outcome when you’re doing it online,” said Julien Tornare, Zenith’s chief executive, on a recent phone call. “You miss the atmosphere, you miss the real sound, you miss the interaction with the artists. But between doing nothing and this, we went with this.”The inner workings of one of Mr. Spitz’s watches.JerSean Golatt for The New York TimesFor the Geneva watchmaker Vacheron Constantin, which in 2018 signed a long-term agreement with Abbey Road Studios, the London recording site made famous by the Beatles, the pandemic was trickier to navigate. “It definitely put a hold on client experiences,” said Laurent Perves, the brand’s international commercial director and chief marketing officer.Before the pandemic, Vacheron Constantin used the recording complex as an event space (like celebrating the debut of its Fiftysix collection in 2018). More intriguing, however, was what the brand did with its La Musique Du Temps collection of chiming watches introduced in 2019: Vacheron arranged for the sound engineers at Abbey Road to record each timepiece’s unique sonic print, “so if one day clients want to have their watches serviced, we can reproduce the exact sound,” Mr. Perves said.That kind of project is a more sophisticated endeavor than just a sponsorship to raise a brand’s profile, said Silvia Belleza, the Gantcher associate professor of business at the Columbia Business School in New York, where she studies how consumers indicate status to one another. “If you can show why there’s a connection between the measurement of time and the music or sound,” she said, “it’s not only placing the brand name close to an event or cultural activity, you’re actually creating a story.”But, do any of these collaborations actually sell watches?“The objective here is to bring something additional to our clients in terms of experience, content, access and storytelling,” Mr. Perves said. “Spreading the message and educating people on what we do is important to us.”(The executives may not be saying it, but of course that kind of community building is a pillar of the industry’s modern sales strategy.)Although if watchmakers wanted to determine the return on their investment, it’s doubtful they could.“I’m not going to lie — it’s very difficult to quantify,” Ms. Belleza said. “It’s not like you have a shop at the music event and you can count how many watches you are selling. The return is more about awareness, visibility, connection with high-end activities — not the number of watches sold in the short term.”Mr. Spitz designs and builds about three custom wristwatches a year.JerSean Golatt for The New York TimesInstead, watchmakers who create sensory experiences powered by music — even, or especially, when the music doesn’t match the brand’s image (cue Mr. Spitz’s Anthrax hits, like “I’m the Man” from 1987) — may form long-term connections with existing clients and pick up new customers along the way.Take it from Lee Garfinkel, an advertising creative director who has used music throughout his career, often unexpectedly.In 1995, he created a television commercial for Mercedes-Benz with Janis Joplin singing “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz” on the soundtrack.“At first, the dealer group went crazy,” Mr. Garfinkel said on a recent phone call. “‘Why are you using this screeching woman singing about my cars?’ But in my mind, it was a great way to help people wake up and realize there was something new and different happening.” More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Dolly Parton and James Patterson Are Working On a Novel, 'Run, Rose, Run'

      by

      “Run, Rose, Run” is set for publication in 2022, along with a Parton album whose 12 new songs were inspired by the book.In February 2020, James Patterson flew to Nashville to visit Dolly Parton.She was a fan of his “Alex Cross” thrillers, and he had a proposal for her: Would she work with him on a novel about an aspiring country singer who goes to Nashville to seek her fortune and escape her past? More