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      The Weeknd’s Disco Fever, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Aventura and Bad Bunny, Guns N’ Roses, Aimee Mann and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.The Weeknd, ‘Take My Breath’What would Barry Gibb do? The disco thump, electric piano chords and call-and-response falsetto vocals in “Take My Breath” hark back to vintage Bee Gees by way of a Max Martin production. But leave it to the Weeknd to sketch a creepy bedroom scenario: “Baby says take my breath away/and make it last forever.” He seems to shy away from strangulation — “You’re way too young to end your life,” he warns — but the chorus keeps coming back. Maybe it’s a Covid-19 metaphor. JON PARELESAventura and Bad Bunny, ‘Volví’“Volví” is the kind of mythical collaboration first theorized in group chats and Twitter threads, written about in all caps. This is the world’s greatest bachata boy band and Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, after all. The dream comes to life with a bachata-reggaeton hybrid that bursts with late summer joy. But it also contains the slow-burning envy of bachata: familiar themes of jealousy and possession, the kind of toxic melodrama that makes the genre so addictive in the first place. ISABELIA HERRERAGuns N’ Roses, ‘Absurd’And to think you spent the last week theorizing about Limp Bizkit. Here is the real text to decode: “Absurd” is the first single from Guns N’ Roses in more than a decade. It’s amped-up and nervy, a lightly filtered version of the speedier mayhem that first made them famous. Axl Rose sounds a little bulbous, but all around him, things are moving exceptionally quickly. JON CARAMANICANelly featuring Breland and Blanco Brown, ‘High Horse’As surely as Nelly brought Midwest melody to hip-hop and seeded more than a decade of imitators, he did the same in country music, thanks to his “Cruise” remix with Florida Georgia Line. His Nashville inheritors have been rapper-singers, Black artists who are beginning to find success close to the center of the Nashville mainstream. Here, Nelly teams up with a couple of them, Breland and Blanco Brown, and all together, these three country performers — to varying degrees, but all sincere — somehow arrive at pristine disco-country. CARAMANICAIsabella Lovestory, ‘Vuelta’A pair of light-up platform stilettos and a bubble gun make appearances in Isabella Lovestory’s “Vuelta” video, helping turn a minimalist clip into a hyperpop dream. Lovestory’s lyrics are all singsong playground rhymes: “Baby, I’m lonely/Why don’t you hold me?/All I want to do tonight is dance.” The track is simple but coy, enough to remind you of the joy that Y2K girl groups like Dream and in-store soundtracks from Limited Too brought you back in the day. HERRERALakou Mizik and Joseph Ray, ‘Bade Zile’“Bade Zile” is a traditional Haitian voodoo song that calls to spirits. It gets an electronic update on “Leave the Bones,” an album-length collaboration by Lakou Mizik, a band from Haiti whose long-running project has been to preserve traditional songs by modernizing them, and the producer Joseph Ray, who shared a Grammy as part of the dance-music group Nero. Men and women toss the traditional chant back and forth, then unite and echo; hand-played percussion rides a four-on-the-floor beat, and the energy multiplies. PARELESRed 6xteen, ‘Armageddon’The Dominican drill artist Red 6xteen unleashes “Armageddon” with a cadence that lies low to the ground. But it doesn’t take long for her to stunt: Her voice mutates into squeaky, high-pitched taunts, only to transform into a breakneck dash. An orchestral outro finds her meditating on loyalty and her place in the game. The two-and-a-half minute track functions like an exhibition of Red’s potential, a promise to infuse Dominican hip-hop with the edge it needs. HERRERABrian Jackson, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge, ‘Baba Ibeji’In the American musical record, the composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Brian Jackson has been too easily overlooked. As the other half of Gil Scott-Heron’s musical brain throughout the 1970s, Jackson helped create some of the most lasting (and perpetually relevant) music of that era. But since he and Scott-Heron parted ways in the early ’80s, Jackson has rarely put out recordings of his own. When Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge started their Jazz Is Dead project, a series of collaborations with elder musicians, they sought out Jackson first. The fruits of that 2019 session have now been released as “JID008,” a short album of instrumental pieces, all composed collectively, carrying hints of Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew” and “Get Up With It” sessions, and of more recent work by the guitarist Jeff Parker. On the buoyant “Baba Ibeji,” whose name refers to a pair of holy twins in the Yoruba religion, Jackson’s Rhodes shines with the same quiet magnetism that defined it half a century ago. Nothing’s overstated; close listening is rewarded. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOAimee Mann, ‘Suicide Is Murder’The warmth of waltzing piano chords, supportive cellos and “ooh”-ing backup vocals accompanies Aimee Mann in “Suicide Is Murder.” But her lyrics are clinical and legalistic, considering the physical practicalities and weighing “motive, means and opportunity”; instead of proffering sympathy, she coolly reminds a listener that a suicide is a “heartless killing spree.” PARELESAmelia Meath and Blake Mills, ‘Neon Blue’Amelia Meath’s quietly confiding voice usually gets cleverly minimal electronic backup as half of Sylvan Esso. Working instead with the guitarist and producer Blake Mills, she’s backed by brushed drums and syncopated acoustic guitar, along with electronic underpinnings and what might be horns or simulations, in a waltz that conjures the elusive allure of a smoky bar crawl. It’s the cozily experimental first release from Psychic Hotline, a label run by Sylvan Esso with its manager. PARELES More

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      Famed Conductor, Citing Brain Tumor, Withdraws From Concerts

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      Michael Tilson Thomas, the former music director of the San Francisco Symphony, announced he would spend the next several months recovering from surgery.The renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas announced on Friday that he would withdraw from performances for the next several months as he recovers from surgery to treat a brain tumor.Thomas, 76, the former music director of the San Francisco Symphony, said in a statement that he would take a hiatus through October as he undergoes treatment. He said doctors recently discovered the tumor and advised he have surgery immediately. He described the surgery, which took place at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center, as successful.“I deeply regret missing projects that I was greatly anticipating,” Thomas said in the statement. “I look forward to seeing everyone again in November.”Thomas, an eminent figure in the music industry known by the nickname M.T.T., stepped down as the San Francisco Symphony’s music director last year. He had held the post since 1995 and was widely credited with transforming the ensemble into one of the best in the nation and championing works by modern American composers.Thomas said in the statement that he was canceling a starry concert with the National Symphony Orchestra in September to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Center, as well as appearances with the New World Symphony, a training orchestra for young artists in Miami that he helped found; the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, where he was to lead his “Agnegram” alongside works by Beethoven and Copland; and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. More

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      Aaliyah’s Music Will Finally Be Streaming. What Took So Long?

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      Twenty years after one of the most celebrated stars of ’90s R&B died in a plane crash, her songs — like “Try Again” and “If Your Girl Only Knew” — will be widely available.For years, it has been one of music’s most conspicuous, and puzzling, absences: The majority of the catalog of Aaliyah, the groundbreaking R&B singer of the 1990s and early 2000s, has been absent from digital services — rendering the work of one of the most influential pop stars in recent decades largely invisible, and depriving her of a proper legacy. The singer, whose full name was Aaliyah Haughton, died in a plane crash in 2001 at age 22.But on Thursday came a surprise announcement that her music will soon arrive on streaming platforms, starting with her second album, “One in a Million” (1996), on Aug. 20.Fans, including Cardi B, celebrated online. But the return of Aaliyah’s music remains fraught, with a battle still playing out between her estate and the music impresario who signed her as a teenager and retains control of the bulk of her catalog. Here’s an overview of her long unavailability on the services that dominate music consumption today.What music is coming out now?Blackground Records, founded by the producer Barry Hankerson — Aaliyah’s uncle — said it would be rereleasing 17 albums from its catalog over the next two months, on streaming services as well as on CD and vinyl. They include the bulk of Aaliyah’s output — her studio albums “One in a Million” and “Aaliyah,” along with the “Romeo Must Die” soundtrack and two posthumous collections — plus albums by Timbaland, Toni Braxton, JoJo and Tank.The releases, being made through a distribution deal with the independent music company Empire, will introduce a new generation to Aaliyah’s work. In the 1990s, she stood out as a powerful voice in the emerging sound of hip-hop: a forthright young woman — she was just 15 when she released her first album, “Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number” (1994) — who sang like a street-smart angel over some of the most innovative backing tracks of the time.“Where most divas insist on being the center of the song,” Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times wrote in an appreciation in 2001, “she knew how to disappear into the music, how to match her voice to the bass line — it was sometimes difficult to tell one from the other.”Who is Barry Hankerson?Hankerson is an elusive, powerful and divisive figure in the music business. He was once married to Gladys Knight, and later discovered and managed R. Kelly. He built Blackground into one of the most successful Black music companies of its time, but clashed with artists. Braxton, JoJo and others have sued the label, with Braxton accusing Hankerson of “fraud, deception, and double-dealing,” according to a 2016 article on the music site Complex titled “The Inexplicable Online Absence of Aaliyah’s Best Music.”In 1991, Hankerson introduced his 12-year-old niece to Kelly, who was twice her age. Kelly, then an emerging singer, songwriter and producer, would become the primary force shaping Aaliyah’s early career, writing and producing much of her material and making Aaliyah part of his entourage.It later emerged that Kelly had secretly married Aaliyah in 1994, when she was 15 and he was 27. In the criminal case Kelly now faces in Brooklyn — which is set to begin jury selection next week — prosecutors have alleged that Kelly bribed an Illinois government employee at the time to obtain a fake ID for Aaliyah that gave her age as 18. Their marriage was annulled.After Hankerson moved the distribution of Blackground releases from the Jive label to Atlantic in the mid-90s, Aaliyah began working with two young songwriter-producers from Virginia: Timbaland and Missy Elliott. Their first collaboration, “One in a Million” (1996), went double platinum and spawned the hit singles “If Your Girl Only Knew” and “The One I Gave My Heart To.”Clockwise from top left: “Aaliyah,” “One in a Million,” “Ultimate Aaliyah” and “I Care 4 U,” albums that will be available in physical and digital versions.What happened to Aaliyah’s music?By the time Aaliyah died, she seemed well on her way to a major career. But as the music business evolved in the digital age, and Blackground’s output slowed down, her music largely disappeared.Aside from the album “Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number,” which remained part of the Jive catalog through Sony Music, and a handful of other tracks, most of Aaliyah’s songs have been unavailable for streaming. Used CDs and LPs of her work trade for eye-popping prices.Her influence has persisted, although sometimes it is more imagined than real. Last month, the singer Normani released a song, “Wild Side,” with Cardi B, that contained what many fans thought was a sample of an Aaliyah drum break. (Billboard said it is not, although Hankerson has said it would have his blessing anyway.) And interest in her story was spurred by the 2019 documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” which delved deeply into their relationship.Although the streaming catalog has nearly reached the “celestial jukebox” level of completion that has long been predicted, there are still some other notable absences. De La Soul’s early work, including its classic 1989 debut “3 Feet High and Rising,” is not online, apparently because of problems in clearing samples. (The new owners of that music have pledged to make it available, although no concrete plans have been revealed.)Why is the music becoming available now?Exactly what led to the current release of Aaliyah’s music is unclear.According to a new article in Billboard, Hankerson began seeking a new deal for her music about a year ago, after Aaliyah’s estate made a cryptic announcement that “communication has commenced” between the estate and “various record labels” about finally getting her music online. “More updates to come,” it said.But the estate does not control Aaliyah’s recordings; Hankerson does, through his ownership of the Blackground label. For months, fans have followed more mysterious statements from the estate, including one in January, around what would have been Aaliyah’s 42nd birthday, that “these matters are not within our control.”When Blackground announced its rerelease plans, the estate responded with yet another confusing statement, saying that for 20 years it has been “enduring shadowy tactics of deception in connection with unauthorized projects targeted to tarnish,” yet expressing “forgiveness” and a desire to move on.A more direct explanation of what has been going on behind the scenes came from a lawyer for the estate, Paul V. LiCalsi, who said: “For almost 20 years, Blackground has failed to account to the estate with any regularity in accordance with her recording contracts. In addition, the estate was not made aware of the impending release of the catalog until after the deal was complete and plans were in place.”Billboard quoted a representative for Blackground in response, saying that the estate “will receive everything that it is entitled to” and that a royalty payment had been made earlier this year.For fans, the behind-the-scenes battling may matter less than the music finally becoming available online.“Baby Girl is coming to Spotify,” the service announced on Twitter, with a picture of Aaliyah. “We’ve been waiting a long time for this.” More

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      How Do You Capture Four Decades of Hip-Hop? Very Broadly.

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      “The Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap,” a 129-song boxed set, has a very challenging (and maybe impossible) goal: pinning down a constantly evolving genre.In 1990, hip-hop was in the throes of an identity crisis. That summer, MC Hammer released “U Can’t Touch This,” his flashy, breakout single that, thanks to the flamboyant fashion and quick footwork in its video, became a pop music phenomenon. Hot on its heels a few months later was Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby,” which sampled “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie and became the first hip-hop single to top the Billboard Hot 100.While wildly popular in the pop mainstream, both songs were — in differing but related ways — derided in hip-hop, kept at arm’s length. Rap music, then still barely over a decade old, had only just begun to reckon with attention from outside the genre’s walls. These hits — including one from a white rapper, no less — were different, nigh unprecedented phenomena.And yet here they are, back to back in the middle of Disc 5 of “The Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap,” a 129-song collection and boxed set due out Aug. 20 that acts as a foundation, primer and master narrative of the genre’s growth from 1979 to 2013. They come right after “The Humpty Dance” by Digital Underground and “Me So Horny” by 2 Live Crew — different sorts of breakouts by bug-eyed humorists from opposite ends of the country — and just before Brand Nubian’s strident “All for One,” which arrives like a mean sentry striving to restore order.In 2021, with hip-hop the dominant musical force in popular culture globally, there’s little to debate: MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice’s blockbuster songs are eruptions and intrusions that in retrospect sound inevitable. Hip-hop long ago reconciled with its pop ambitions, and then became the very core of pop music itself. Along the way, it became a very wide tent.MC Hammer’s 1990 smash “U Can’t Touch This” was a conundrum for rap at the time of its release. Today, it has a place in hip-hop history.Tim Roney/Getty ImagesTo properly anthologize the genre in full is to reckon with its contradictions, its competing narratives and its inconsistencies. By this measure, the “Anthology” is an impressive work of scholarship, design and logistics. It is, of course, unavoidably flawed too, the point of departure for a shadow collection of exclusions, alternate histories and near-misses.Released on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the “Anthology” is part of the African American Legacy Recordings series, co-produced with the National Museum of African American History and Culture. To select the songs, an advisory committee of around 40 artists, industry figures, journalists and academics compiled an overarching list of approximately 900 options. From there, a 10-person executive committee met in November 2014 to winnow it down. Some adjustments were later made for logistical reasons. (In 2017, the Smithsonian raised around $370,000 via Kickstarter to help fund production, research and licensing for the box.)“I’m envious of what the rock world does,” said Chuck D of Public Enemy, a member of the executive committee, referring to how rock ’n’ roll consistently takes stock of, and celebrates, its own history. “I was interested and jump-started this idea because I got tired of us not being treated like the royalty that the genre is.” (Chuck D said he abstained from the actual final vote — “I ran out of the room.”)Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” and “Bring the Noise” are both included in the “Anthology.”Jack Mitchell; The National Museum of African American History and CultureDwandalyn R. Reece, the museum’s associate director for curatorial affairs and curator of music and performing arts, said she expects, but would love to avoid, the inevitable. “I know people will look at the anthology as a canon, but that was not our intention,” she said. “This is a story, not the definitive story. What I hope for the anthology is that it starts a dialogue.”Whether or not it constitutes a canon — “I eschew the concept of canon,” said Cheryl L. Keyes, the chair of U.C.L.A.’s department of African American Studies and a member of the executive committee — the collection is a tour led with intention through hip-hop’s many phases, regions and ideologies.The producer 9th Wonder, also a member of the executive committee, framed the conversation around selection in terms of standards, which is to say, “songs supposed to be known by the next generation coming up,” he explained. “We’re basically creating a foundation for something that doesn’t exist. It exists in barbershops, it exists in your house with your friends, but on paper and concrete, a lot of stuff really doesn’t exist.”Beginning in the late 1970s, “The Smithsonian Anthology” takes in hip-hop’s earliest recordings (Sugarhill Gang, the Treacherous Three, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, etc.). It covers party music (Sir Mix-A-Lot, Ludacris, Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz) and gangster rap (Geto Boys, Schoolly-D, Ice-T). There’s a sprinkling of white rappers — Beastie Boys, Vanilla Ice, House of Pain, Eminem, Macklemore.The “Anthology” does a sturdy job of capturing the history of women in hip-hop — too often in the past considered primarily in relationship to men — from the Sequence and Salt-N-Pepa to Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown all the way up to Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill and Nicki Minaj. “They are fully represented and represented in the most respectable way,” Keyes said. “They’re not there to tantalize the male fancy.”The “Anthology” gives space to the phenomenon that was Vanilla Ice.Mick Hutson/Redferns, via Getty ImagesAnd career artists like Lil’ Kim get their due.Gie Knaeps/Getty ImagesIt’s reassuring to see early tracks by the Port Arthur, Texas, duo UGK (“Pocket Full of Stones”) and the Memphis duo Eightball & MJG (“Comin’ Out Hard”) alongside their temporal peers from New York — too often the history of Southern rap has been told out of step with, and siloed off from, the rest of the genre. And it’s striking to reflect on how thoroughly some innovations, edgy in their day, are either forgotten, or so completely absorbed into the genre — take, say, the melodic lightness of Nelly on “Country Grammar (Hot [Expletive])” — as to be unremarkable.The collection stops in 2013 — the final song is by Drake, in his way the harbinger of a new era. But it’s also a convenient moment to put a cap on reflection. Hip-hop is now almost fully decentralized; the genre is splintered sonically and thematically. Perhaps most tellingly, hip-hop is actually more tolerant now: more understanding of its intra-genre quarrels, more available to different participants, more open to sonic invention and revision. It’s hard to police a genre’s borders when the genre is the whole world.So the “Anthology” captures hip-hop in its period of birth, its myriad growth spurts, its tugs of war, and finally, its full expansion into pop music. To quarrel over whether hip-hop should be given institutional treatment now would be quaint — in just 40 years, it has become bedrock. A collection like this — a position statement like this — is a relic of an era in which hip-hop had to fight to be taken seriously by institutions, whether they were museums, political bodies, technology companies or other creative industries.Perhaps the most old-fashioned idea about the “Anthology” is its format — a heavy physical box, loaded with images and essays, and nine CDs in an era where CD players are increasingly rare. A less imaginative approach could have begun and ended with, say, a curated playlist on Spotify or Apple Music (in those environments, at least, no licensing fees would be required).To select the songs, an advisory committee of around 40 artists, industry figures, journalists and academics compiled an overarching list of approximately 900 options. A 10-person executive committee winnowed it down further.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesThe heft is intentional, though. “We want the next generation to learn about it, but we want them to learn about it the way we want them to learn about it,” 9th Wonder said.But it comes with liabilities, as well. Some songs picked by the committee weren’t able to be licensed for inclusion on the set. There are no songs with Jay-Z as the lead artist — he only appears as a guest on Foxy Brown’s “I’ll Be.” Gaps like that underscore the inherent incompleteness of any project of this scale, which triggers an endless shoulda-coulda exercise: Is the best representation of Lil Wayne truly his grotesque Robin Thicke collaboration “Tie My Hands”? Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Brain” over “How I Could Just Kill a Man”? Some artists (Nicki Minaj, Outkast, Eminem) are represented by their most pop-oriented successes, at times leaving more meaningful work behind.“When it comes to putting hip-hop in the canon, you’re damned if you’re do, you’re damned if you don’t,” 9th Wonder added.Proportionately, and perhaps inevitably, the “Anthology” is perhaps overindexed on the genre’s earliest years. Hip-hop grew widely in the 1990s and 2000s, making it harder to capture in a small sampling of songs. The ninth and most contemporary disc skews more issues-oriented than perhaps the genre itself was in that time span — of all the groupings, it feels the most prescriptive.The “Anthology” does a solid job of capturing the history of women in hip-hop — too often in the past considered primarily in relationship to men — including Missy Elliott.Myrna Suarez/ImageDirect, via Getty ImagesAnd there are the parts of hip-hop’s recorded legacy that fall outside of the scope of this project. There are no recordings of live jams or battles from the late 1970s or early 1980s, no tracks from the crucial mixtapes of the 1990s. That the project ends in the early 2010s means that it doesn’t have to reckon with a genre that has splintered widely across the internet, with plenty of micromovements leaving barely any physical trail at all.Finally, there is also the tricky dance of assembling history with the benefit of new knowledge. “Planet Rock,” by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force, is undoubtedly a foundational track of the genre. But in the mid-2010s, Bambaataa was accused of child sexual abuse by multiple men. The “Anthology” also includes “Get Like Me,” a David Banner song that features the singer Chris Brown, who in 2009 pleaded guilty to assaulting Rihanna.“We’re not the judge and the jury,” Keyes said. “There’s always personal drama in people’s lives, but it really has nothing to do with their art.”That tension underscores one still-developing difference between how historical narratives can be told by institutions with the benefit of temporal distance and a wide lens and how they are written online, in real time.For that reason, among others, the “Anthology” already feels ancient. The internet is both ahistoric and also full of looking-back lists. The assessments that take place there are finicky and ever-mutating. There is hardly ever a long view, and histories are never stable.Hip-hop thrives in this space. It moves quickly and nonlinearly. It can be made casually and on the cheap, and disseminated widely. It is iterative, taking elements established elsewhere and stacking its innovations atop them, rarely staying still for long. There are slivers of the genre that aren’t in conversation with each other, which might not even be recognizable as related if heard side by side.That’s a direct result, though, of the debates — now reconciled — captured on the “Anthology.” Pop ambition? Accepted. Melodic flexibility? Encouraged. Widespread regional participation? Demanded. Now that the quarreling is mostly settled, where the genre will go is boundless. Forty years from now, it will be bigger than any one box can hold. More

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      Britney Spears Asks for Quick Hearing to Oust Her Father as Conservator

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      In a court filing on Thursday, a lawyer for the singer said that she would be harmed if her request to remove her father was left unheard until late September, as now scheduled.A lawyer for Britney Spears has asked the court to accelerate the hearing on her request to remove her father, or to immediately suspend him, from the conservatorship that has controlled the 39-year-old singer’s life and finances for the last 13 years.The petition filed in Los Angeles probate court on Thursday comes a week after Ms. Spears’s lawyer filed to remove Mr. Spears from the arrangement. The court is set to hear the request on Sept. 29, but the new filing seeks to have Mr. Spears removed before then, noting that “every day that passes is another day of avoidable harm and prejudice to Ms. Spears and the Estate.”The request continues an aggressive new approach since the singer’s court testimony in June, when she called the arrangement “abusive” and said her father and anyone else involved in the conservatorship should go to jail. The filing was made by Ms. Spears’s new lawyer, Mathew S. Rosengart, a former federal prosecutor who was approved last month to replace the court-appointed lawyer who began representing the singer in 2008, when the conservatorship was granted amid concerns over Ms. Spears’s mental health and potential substance use.The request to remove Mr. Spears cited a section of the probate code that gives the court broad discretion to remove a conservator if it is in “the best interests” of the conservatee and does not require there to be any finding of fault with a conservator.Ms. Spears’s medical team, her mother and her current personal conservator, Jodi Montgomery, have said that Mr. Spears’s removal is in Ms. Spears’s best interest, according to court papers.Since 2008, Mr. Spears has overseen his daughter’s finances, sometimes with a co-conservator. He had also largely controlled Ms. Spears’s personal and medical care until Ms. Montgomery took over in September 2019 on an ongoing temporary basis.The petition argues that Mr. Spears’s presence as conservator is harming Ms. Spears financially, as the singer declared she would not work again until he is gone. In the filing, Ms. Spears’s lawyer also criticized Mr. Spears’s management of the singer’s nearly $60 million estate.Lawyers for Mr. Spears did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but have previously defended his care of, and concern for, his daughter.Mr. Spears is paid $16,000 a month as conservator, which the petition claimed is $2,000 more a month than he has allotted to Ms. Spears. Mr. Spears also receives $2,000 a month for office expenses.Mr. Spears’s lawyers are also paid by Ms. Spears. The filing notes that one set of his lawyers recently billed Ms. Spears’s estate more than $1.3 million for roughly eight months of work, including more than $540,000 for “media matters” spent defending the conservatorship. The filing says that if Mr. Spears chooses to fight his removal, he could be liable for attorneys’ fees.In the filing, Mr. Rosengart said Mr. Spears had overpaid Ms. Spears’s former business manager, Tri Star Sports & Entertainment, more than $300,000 in 2019. Tri Star had been making a 5 percent commission of Ms. Spears’s work, but asked for a $500,000 payment from the estate as a “floor” when Ms. Spears went on an indefinite work hiatus. The filing reports Mr. Spears agreed to the payment rather than negotiate a more favorable agreement.In court last year, a lawyer for Mr. Spears called the fees reasonable.The filing says that, even as Mr. Spears spent Ms. Spears’s money on himself and others, he opposed her request in late July to take a brief vacation to Hawaii as “unnecessary.” The filing says Ms. Spears’s law firm ultimately obtained approval for the trip.Mr. Rosengart has requested that a certified public accountant in California, Jason Rubin, be named to replace Mr. Spears.“A conservatorship should be a last resort, designed to benefit the conservatee rather than a mechanism designed to serve as a tool for the enrichment of third parties,” the filing stated. “It is apparent that this conservatorship has allowed would-be influencers to take control of the Estate and exploit Ms. Spears, often for their own benefit. The suspension and ultimate removal of Mr. Spears will be the first step towards rectifying that abuse.” More

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      Baltimore Symphony Fires Flutist Who Shared Covid Conspiracy Theories

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      The musician, Emily Skala, who shared misinformation on social media, has vowed to challenge her dismissal.The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra said on Thursday that it had fired a musician who provoked controversy earlier this year when she shared Covid-19 conspiracy theories and other misinformation on social media.The musician, Emily Skala, 59, the orchestra’s principal flutist for more than three decades, shared posts casting doubt on the efficacy of vaccines and masks. Her posts drew criticism from musicians, audience members and donors in Baltimore and beyond.The orchestra said it was dismissing Skala because she had repeatedly violated its policies, though it did not offer details except to say that the problems went beyond social media posts. Skala said in an interview that the orchestra’s leaders had also accused her of breaching safety protocols by not submitting to coronavirus tests before visiting the Baltimore Symphony’s offices in the spring.“Unfortunately, she has repeated the conduct for which she had been previously disciplined, and dismissal was the necessary and appropriate reaction to this behavior,” Peter Kjome, the orchestra’s president and chief executive, said in a statement.The Baltimore Sun reported earlier on the orchestra’s decision to fire Skala.The dispute is unfolding amid a heated debate over the rights of individuals as local governments and businesses work to bring the pandemic under control by imposing mask mandates and requiring vaccines. There are also widespread concerns about the rapid spread of anti-vaccine messaging on social media platforms.Skala vowed to challenge her dismissal, saying the orchestra had created a hostile environment. She said she was being attacked for expressing unpopular views and that the orchestra’s leaders failed to protect her from harassment.“When you’re a target, every day is a trap,” Skala said in the interview. “They just punish me for being me.”Skala said she was working with the Musicians’ Association of Metropolitan Baltimore, the union that represents the orchestra’s players, to file a formal grievance. The union declined to comment.Orchestra players are often tenured, like university professors, and have strong protections against being fired. Last year, the New York Philharmonic, which had fired two players over allegations of unspecified sexual misconduct, was forced by an arbitrator to reinstate them.But businesses often have wide latitude to dismiss employees they consider to be troublesome, so long as they do so in accordance with collective bargaining agreements, legal experts say. “People can be fired if what they say or how they behave is disruptive to the purpose or the culture,” Kathleen Cahill, an employment lawyer in Maryland, said in an interview. “Employees often don’t have the ‘freedom’ and ‘First Amendment rights’ they think they do.”Amid the pandemic, employers will likely have even greater latitude to require employees to follow policies designed to keep workplaces safe, Cahill added.Skala shared false theories suggesting that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory in North Carolina; she also shared posts raising concerns about the safety of vaccines. In the interview, she said she suffered from autoimmune disorders and was distressed by efforts to mandate vaccines. She said she did not believe she was required to get tested for Covid-19 before visiting the orchestra’s offices to meet with staff there, since she had been suspended and was no longer performing.“I’ve been misunderstood,” she said. “I feel I am standing in truth.”Earlier this year, Skala angered many of her colleagues for sharing posts questioning the results of the 2020 presidential election. She was also criticized for saying that Black families needed to do more to support their children’s classical music studies in emails to colleagues about efforts to increase diversity at the Baltimore Symphony. (The emails were later leaked and posted on Twitter.) She also described in one of the leaked messages feeling discrimination early in her career as “a female gentile in a flute section of middle- to old-aged Jewish men.”The orchestra did not mention those comments in dismissing Skala. But in February, when Skala’s remarks about the coronavirus and election fraud began to circulate, it issued a statement distancing itself. “Ms. Skala does not speak for the B.S.O., nor do her statements reflect our core values or code of conduct grounded in humanity and respect,” the orchestra said at the time.Skala’s critics said they were pleased with the orchestra’s decision to dismiss her. Melissa Wimbish, a soprano in Baltimore, posted the leaked emails on Twitter in February. Wimbish, who has performed with the orchestra, also organized an online petition calling for Skala to be punished, which gathered more than 1,000 signatures.“They have this responsibility to react to these statements and distance themselves,” Wimbish said in an interview, referring to the orchestra’s leaders. “It’s good to see there’s some justice.” More

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      ‘The Threepenny Opera,’ Without the ‘Cabaret’ Clichés

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      Don’t expect bowler hats and dirty negligees in a new production at the Berliner Ensemble, the theater Bertolt Brecht founded.BERLIN — This winter, after live performances had made a modest return in Germany, the coronavirus pandemic brought them to another halt.But at the Berliner Ensemble in January, preparations were underway for a highly anticipated new staging of “The Threepenny Opera.” That “play with music” by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill had its 1928 premiere in the company’s house, and became the city’s most famous music theater export — and perhaps the most iconic cultural artifact of Weimar-era Berlin.“I am working behind Bertolt Brecht’s wooden production desk!” said Barrie Kosky, the production’s Australian director, with some astonishment.Although the cast had been rehearsing for eight weeks, no one could say when opening night would be. “The only good thing for me, personally, that’s come out of corona is that I’ve had more time onstage than I’ve ever had to put on a show,” Kosky said.Seven months later, this “Threepenny Opera” is finally set for an Aug. 13 premiere; it will then enter the repertoire of the Berliner Ensemble, which was founded by Brecht and the actress Helene Weigel, his wife. But don’t expect Weimar-era clichés like bowler hats, dirty negligees and tableaus out of Otto Dix or George Grosz.“This piece cannot be ‘Cabaret’ with a little bit of intellectualism,” Kosky said.“We are beyond ‘Babylon Berlin,’” chimed in Oliver Reese, the Berliner Ensemble’s artistic director, who was sitting across from Kosky during the interview.Kosky, 54, is best known for his energetic productions at the nearby Komische Oper, the opera company where he has been the artistic director since 2012. Among his biggest hits there have been deliriously overstuffed, razzle-dazzle stagings of operettas and musicals, including many forgotten works of the Weimar Republic.But now that he’s directing that era’s defining piece, he’s taking a different approach.During a dress rehearsal in January, the actors sang and danced on an industrial set whose welded metal ladders and platforms resembled a treacherous labyrinth or adult jungle gym; there were no references to the decadence of 1920s Berlin. Instead, the sardonic, acid-laced tone of the piece came through in a dark and psychologically probing production that appeared abstract and timeless.Christina Drechsler and Stefan Kurt in Robert Wilson’s production of “The Threepenny Opera,” which the Berliner Ensemble performed more than 300 times.Lieberenz/ullstein bild, via Getty ImagesAlan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper in “The Threepenny Opera” at Studio 54 in New York, in 2006.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, which has been home to the Berliner Ensemble since 1949. Bertolt Brecht was the company’s first artistic director.Gordon Welters for The New York TimesThe Berliner Ensemble’s previous “Threepenny Opera” staging, by Robert Wilson, was a stylized tip of the hat to German Expressionism. It was one of the theater’s signature productions and ran for over a decade, with more than 300 performances. (It came to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York in 2011.) But it required many actors from outside the company, which made mounting it a challenge. Shortly after Reese arrived to lead the house in 2017, he approached Kosky about creating a new production cast exclusively with actors from the ensemble.It was an offer Kosky couldn’t turn down.“It was the same antenna that went out when Katharina Wagner rang me,’” Kosky said, referring Richard Wagner’s great-granddaughter and the director of the Bayreuth Festival, who invited him to stage “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” there in 2017.“If you’re going to do ‘Meistersinger,’ then where else do you do it but Bayreuth? And if you’re going to do ‘Dreigroschenoper,’ where else do you do it except the Berliner Ensemble?” Kosky said, using the German title of “Threepenny.”With its uneasy blend of genres and source materials — it is based on an 18th-century British popular opera, and Brecht also incorporated lyrics from other poets into the text — “Threepenny” is a tricky work to pull off convincingly. The most recent Broadway production, from 2006, was a coke-fueled 1980s bacchanal starring Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper that was a critical flop.A rehearsal for “The Threepenny Opera” at the Berliner Ensemble with, from left: the actors Kathrin Wehlisch and Denis Riffel; Adam Benzwi, the production’s music director; and Barrie Kosky.Joerg Brueggemann/OstkreuzMuch of what makes “Threepenny” unique, and uniquely challenging for a director, can be traced back its origins. Brecht and Weill spent 10 days in the south of France hashing it out, working with a German translation of John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera” by Elisabeth Hauptmann — a collaborator and mistress of Brecht’s who, according to the Brecht scholar John Fuegi, was ultimately responsible for 80 percent of the “Threepenny” text.The creators, Kosky said, “didn’t even know exactly what they were writing, because it was written very quickly.” Although Weill later claimed that they had been trying all along to create a “new genre,” both Kosky and Reese felt that much of the show was the result of trial and error. The rushed nature of the collaboration, they said, resulted in something that doesn’t fit any one style.“It is a kind of bastard,” Reese said.“A schizophrenic bastard,” Kosky added. “But that’s the joy of it. It’s a tap dance through theatrical styles.”The rehearsal period for the premiere of “The Threepenny Opera” is the stuff of theatrical legend: calamities worthy of a screwball comedy. But after a month of cast illnesses and walkouts, and faulty sets and props — the barrel organ used for “Mack the Knife,” malfunctioned on opening night — the show opened, and was an immediate hit. All of Berlin was whistling Weill’s melodies, and lines for tickets wound around the block.But despite the fame the play has enjoyed in the 93 years since, Kosky called it a “problematic masterpiece” whose meaning is far from clear. Much of the ambiguity stems from the curious, even lopsided, interplay between the libretto and the score, he said.“Is it a farce with music, as Weill maintained?” Kosky asked. “Or is it a biting anticapitalist satire, as Brecht retrospectively claimed? And what is chief, the text or the music?”Every production of “Threepenny,” he added, “tries to do the impossible: to work out what the conundrum with this piece is, and the contradictions within the text, music and content.”Adam Benzwi, the American conductor who is the production’s music director, said he felt a definite tension between the critical distance that Brecht’s text invites and the emotional immediacy of Weill’s songs. The music, he said, must remain beautiful despite the harshness of the lyrics.“Weill’s music is unique because you immediately feel the pain, excitement and sexiness of urban life,” Benzwi said in a recent phone interview, pointing to the composer’s “melodies that want to be warm in a place that doesn’t allow that, rhythms that want to be happy when describing something terrible.”In January, Kosky said, “If Bertolt Brecht had asked another composer to do the music, we would probably have a much drier, easier piece to understand.”“But,” he added, “Weill opened up an emotional landscape where suddenly you are contradicting virtually everything that Brecht wants, or believes in, in theater.” (It’s a tension that would ultimately lead the dissolution of Brecht and Weill’s partnership in 1931, though they did reunite for “The Seven Deadly Sins” a couple of years later.)Cynthia Micas, as Polly Peacham, and Holonics.JR Berliner EnsembleUnder previous artistic directors, the Berliner Ensemble had developed a reputation for traditional, even worshipful, presentations of Brecht’s plays. Kosky is the latest in a series of innovative directors that Reese has invited to put their own spin on the works of the theater’s genius loci.“We’re trying to establish a new Brecht tradition at this house,” Reese said.“I think you don’t have to stick to the theory anymore,” he added, referring to Brecht’s stage philosophy, which despite its influence on 20th century theater is now approaching 100 years old. Brecht’s most famous technique, the alienation effect, is a push and pull between emotional involvement and critical reflection that is often achieved through ironic or metatheatrical means.Although Kosky is steering clear of Weimar-era imagery for his “Threepenny Opera,” he said he had been inspired by one of the period’s great comic filmmakers, Ernst Lubitsch — but also, perhaps more surprisingly, the much-darker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the enfant terrible of New German Cinema.Kosky said he was trying to bring together “the loneliness and melancholy of those isolated characters in Fassbinder’s films” with the “wonderful, naughty, Lubitsch quickness, irony and lightness.”“It’s a weird combination,” he admitted, adding he was aware that his artistic choices might not please everyone. But he doesn’t mind a bit of controversy.“I’m sure some people will say that I have ignored the savage social satire,” Kosky said, but insisted his production would be “political in a different way,” adding: “This is a piece about love in capitalism, and how love is for sale. It’s about the triumph of bourgeois hypocrisy.”For many, Weill’s score remains the soundtrack of its era, while Brecht’s portrait of a corrupt society captures the spirit of Berlin on the edge of an abyss. Even so, Kosky wants to roll back the show’s local associations in favor of something with broader resonance.“I think people will think my production smells like Berlin,” he said, “but the images that you see could be anywhere in the world.” More

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      Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, Rock Journalist, Dies at 75

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      She took the music seriously at a time when not many writers did. Among her books was a memoir of her life with one of its biggest stars, Jim Morrison.Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, who wrote about rock when music journalists were just beginning to take it seriously, and through her work met Jim Morrison, frontman of the Doors, with whom she said she had a marriage of sorts, died on July 23. She was 75.Her death was announced on the Facebook page of Lizard Queen Press, a publishing enterprise that she founded and that published her recent books. The announcement did not give a cause or say where she died.In the late 1960s, originally as Patricia Kennely (she later changed the spelling of her last name and, in 1979, added “Morrison”), she was a writer for and then editor of Jazz & Pop, a small but well-regarded magazine. She interviewed Morrison in 1969, and when they shook hands there was “a visible shower of bright blue sparks flying in all directions,” she wrote in a 1992 memoir, “Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison.” They soon became romantically involved.Ms. Kennealy-Morrison practiced Celtic paganism; on her Facebook page she described herself as “Author, ex-rock critic, Dame Templar, Celtic witch, ex-go-go dancer, Lizard Queen. Not in that order.” (“Lizard Queen” was a reference to a line from a Jim Morrison poem, in which he wrote, “I am the Lizard King.”) In 1970 she and Morrison exchanged vows in a “handfasting ceremony” that involved drops of their own blood.She said her book “Strange Days” (also the title of the Doors’ second album, from 1967) was a response to the 1991 movie “The Doors.” Oliver Stone, who directed the film, had consulted her on it, and she even played the Wicca priestess who presides over the handfasting. (Val Kilmer played Morrison; Kathleen Quinlan played Ms. Kennealy-Morrison.) But she said she was outraged by the film when she saw it at a screening, feeling that it trivialized the ceremony, did not give enough prominence to her relationship with Morrison, and misrepresented him.Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison and Kathleen Quinlan as Ms. Kennealy-Morrison in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” (1991). Ms. Kennealy was not a fan of the film.Alamy“If Oliver had been at that screening, we would never have had to worry about his movie ‘JFK,’” she told The Daily Mail of London in 1992, referring to Mr. Stone’s next film. “I would have killed him.”Critics said the book was just an attempt to gain attention and usurp the place in the Morrison mythos of Pamela Courson, another of his love interests, who called herself his common-law wife. Morrison died in 1971 in Paris at 27; Ms. Courson, who was with him at the time, died a few years later, also at 27. Drugs were suspected in both deaths.In her book, Ms. Kennealy-Morrison blamed Ms. Courson for Morrison’s death, in a bathtub in his apartment. “She fed heroin to the man she claimed to love, leaving him dying while she nodded out,” she wrote.In late October 2010, on the eve of Samhain, a Celtic religious festival that inspired Halloween, Ms. Kennealy-Morrison spoke to The Daily News in New York about her plans for marking the occasion.“I will place a light in the window to guide the souls in the night,” she said. “I will have food, pork and apples in Celtic tradition for the ancestors from the other world. I will talk to my beloved dead, including my father and grandmother. It will be a joyful and deeply holy occasion. Jim usually shows up. And when he does, I will celebrate Samhain, the new Celtic year, with my husband.”Patricia Kennely was born on March 4, 1946, in Brooklyn and grew up on Long Island. In 1963 she enrolled at St. Bonaventure University, a Franciscan institution in Allegany, N.Y., to study journalism. That’s where she discovered the Celtic religion.“They had an amazing library on the subject at St. Bonaventure’s, I guess operating on the principle of ‘Know thy enemy,’” she told The Daily News.She transferred to Harpur College in Binghamton, N.Y., after two years and earned an English degree in 1967. While there she discovered the political activism that was brewing on campuses across the nation. She also discovered rock music, and one 1966 album in particular.“It was called ‘Jefferson Airplane Takes Off,’” she wrote in “Rock Chick: A Girl and Her Music,” a 2013 compilation of her Jazz & Pop writings. “And so did I.”While in college she earned extra money as a go-go dancer at nightclubs.“Scorning the white boots and pastel-microdress go-go-girl template that was prevalent across the land, I went Dark Side,” she wrote, “wearing a black leather-look fringed bikini, black fishnets and black knee-high boots.”“I looked like Zorro’s kinky girlfriend,” she added.Ms. Kennealy-Morrison said her book “Strange Days” was a response to Oliver Stone’s movie. Critics said it was an attempt to gain attention and usurp another love interest’s place in the Morrison mythos.After graduating, she landed a job as an editorial assistant at Crowell-Collier & Macmillan Publishing in Manhattan. She saw the first cover of Jazz & Pop magazine on a newsstand in 1967 (it had been founded as Jazz magazine in 1962 by Pauline Rivelli, who in 1967 broadened it into rock coverage and renamed it) and began lobbying for a job there. She was hired as an editorial assistant in early 1968. By the end of that year she had been named editor. The magazine was one of several that came along about the same time that took the music more seriously than the fanzines of the era. (Rolling Stone was founded in 1967.)Ms. Kennealy-Morrison’s pieces set the tone for Jazz & Pop. In the April 1970 issue, she wrote about the influence that religions of various kinds were having on music. She thought, for instance, that the band Coven was invoking black magic in dangerous ways. “Black magic is NOT merely an interesting new wrinkle for the PR crowd to play with, or a hot new ad copy slant,” she cautioned.Three months later she blasted rock fans as not being selective enough and not applying their intellects to what they were hearing.“How many excruciating guitar solos, how many organ solos that were so boring your legs started to hurt, how many meaningless vocal improvisations, have we all sat through?” she wrote. “And at the conclusions of all of these various monuments to rock ego, how many standing ovations have we bestowed?”Steve Hochman, a music journalist who was also a friend, wrote of her influence in a Facebook post noting her death.“As a writer and editor of Jazz & Pop magazine,” he wrote, “she helped establish the then-embryonic realm at a time when few thought of pop music as worthy of such critical attention.”Jazz & Pop went out of business in 1971.Ms. Kennealy-Morrison’s survivors include two brothers, Kevin and Timothy Kennely. A sister, Regina Kennely, died in March.Beginning in the mid-1980s, Ms. Kennealy-Morrison wrote a series of fantasy novels, collectively known as “The Keltiad,” which drew on Celtic legends and mythology. More recently, under the name Patricia Morrison, she wrote mysteries with musical themes, drawing on her time in the rock world. Among the titles are “Scareway to Heaven: Murder at the Fillmore East” and “Daydream Bereaver: Murder on the Good Ship Rock & Roll.” More