Music

Hear tracks by Lizzo featuring Cardi B, Machine Gun Kelly, Brandee Younger 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 [email protected] and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, ‘Can’t Let Go’Robert Plant, Alison Krauss and the guitarist and producer T Bone Burnett, who released “Raising Sand” in 2007, have joined forces again for an album due in the fall called “Raise the Roof.” They’ve turned Lucinda Williams’s “Can’t Let Go” into a rockabilly rumba, singing close harmony and sharing the spotlight with a twangy lead guitar. The lyrics are about heartbreak and loneliness, but the performance flaunts camaraderie. JON PARELESJade Bird, ‘Candidate’No slow burn here: The English roots-rocker Jade Bird vents against every man who “takes me for a fool,” flailing at her acoustic guitar and quickly summoning a full electric band, counterattacking both her own past naïveté and everyone who’s ever exploited it. PARELESLadyhawke, ‘Think About You’The New Zealand musician Pip Brown has been releasing music as Ladyhawke since 2008, but the light, infectious “Think About You” proves she’s still got some fresh ideas up her sleeve. Buoyed by a disco-pop bass line and a Bowie-esque riff, the song is a dreamy ode to the timeless feeling of being crush-struck: “Try as I may I can’t seem to shake away this crazy feeling inside.” Don’t overthink it, commands the song’s breezy vibe. LINDSAY ZOLADZKaty B, ‘Under My Skin’Ten years ago, the British pop singer Katy B released her effervescent debut album “On a Mission,” which helped usher in an era of sleek dance-floor reveries from kindred spirits like Disclosure and Jessie Ware. She’s been relatively quiet for the past half decade, returning with a sultry mid-tempo affair that retains her voice’s soulful grit. “The beginning of the end, the moment that I let you in,” she sings, the ruefulness of this realization balanced out by her charismatic sass. ZOLADZBrandee Younger, ‘Spirit U Will’In a group setting, the harp can seem a separate element, becoming something like the air around an ensemble sound — proof of a higher atmosphere, or simply a foil. In Brandee Younger’s hands, and in the pieces that she writes and performs, the harp is something different: It’s the scaffolding, the very bones of the larger sound. On “Spirit U Will,” from her just-released Impulse! debut, “Somewhere Different,” Younger and the bassist Dezron Douglas build the foundation of a bobbing, West African-indebted beat, stenciled out by the drummer Allan Mednard’s muffled snare patterns and given lift by the soaring trumpet of Maurice Brown. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOLizzo featuring Cardi B, ‘Rumors’Here’s a natural alliance: two boisterous performers who know that all attention — admiring or disapproving, prurient or censorious — pays off. “All the rumors are true,” Lizzo boasts, stifling a giggle, as a cowbell thumps and horns punch a riff; Cardi B revels in her international fame — “They lie in a language I can’t even read” — and vows, “Last time I got freaky the FCC sued me/But I’mma keep doing what I’m gonna do.” Together they share the last laughs. PARELESNas featuring Ms. Lauryn Hill, ‘Nobody’Nas collaborated with Lauryn Hill (before she added the Ms.) 25 years ago on “If I Ruled the World (Imagine That).” Their reunion, from the new Nas album “King’s Disease II,” cruises on a mid-tempo beat and easygoing electric-piano chords. It’s an elder-generation complaint. Nas longs for privacy and recalls an era “Before the internet energy and social decline/Destroyed the vibe, foolin’ us with the headlines, keepin’ us blind.” Ms. Lauryn Hill bats away old complaints about her long absences from performing and her lack of careerism: “Now let me give it to you balanced and with clarity/I don’t need to turn myself into a parody.” They’re not defensive; they’re calmly proficient. PARELESKodak Black featuring Rod Wave, ‘Before I Go’Death and paranoia loom in multimillion-streaming hip-hop tracks like “Before I Go.” Two sing-rappers, Kodak Black and Rod Wave, trade verses over descending minor chords, hollow drum-machine beats and a quavery repeating keyboard line. Kodak Black confesses to problems, says he still listens to his mother and wonders, “I don’t know why but they be plotting to kill me.” Rod Wave details his safeguards but expects the worst. Neither one counts on a happy ending, even if Kodak insists, “Everybody gonna die before I go.” PARELESMachine Gun Kelly, ‘Papercuts’Machine Gun Kelly delivers the verses of his gloriously pummeling “Papercuts” in a classic pop-punk drawl, and the towering, crunchy guitars recall the heyday of ’90s alternative rock. (The distorted chords almost sound like a direct homage to Green Day’s “Brain Stew.”) The first single from his upcoming sixth album, “Born With Horns,” continues in the straight-ahead rock lane that suited him well on last year’s “Tickets to My Downfall,” and it arrives with a surreal music video directed by Cole Bennett. The clip features MGK strutting down the streets of Los Angeles in sequined pants and a tattooed bald cap, cutting a silhouette that’s a little bit Ziggy Stardust, a little bit Kurt Cobain. ZOLADZBig Thief, ‘Little Things’There’s a warm, feral energy to “Little Things,” the A-side of a new single from the Brooklyn folk-rockers Big Thief. Adrianne Lenker murmurs a string of nervous, vulnerable confessions — “Maybe I’m a little obsessed, maybe you do use me” — but the rest of her band creates a textured, woolly atmosphere that swaddles her like a blanket. By the middle of their rootsy jam session, she’s feeling both frustrated and free enough to let loose a cathartic primal scream. ZOLADZPRISM Quartet featuring Chris Potter and Ravi Coltrane, ‘Improvisations: Interlude 2’The PRISM Quartet is four saxophonists, anchored in Western classical, whose catholic interests have brought them into contact with European experimental composers, Afro-Latin innovators and jazz improvisers. On the group’s new album, “Heritage/Evolution, Volume 2,” the quartet is joined by Chris Potter, Ravi Coltrane and Joe Lovano, three of the leading saxophonists in jazz, each of whom contributes original material. Potter wrote his “Improvisations” suite by capturing himself extemporizing on saxophone, then turning some of those improvisations into a layered composition. Partway through the suite, on “Interlude 2,” he (on tenor sax) and Coltrane (on soprano) tangle and nip at each other, while the PRISM Quartet tunnels into a syncopated groove, not unlike something the World Saxophone Quartet might’ve played in the 1980s. RUSSONELLO More

For this rising artist, Chopin’s 21 nocturnes are “pieces I play for myself.” A new recording will bring them to an audience.The Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki started out as something of the Doogie Howser of classical music. He was signed by the august record label Deutsche Grammophon when he was just 15, and at 18 was named an unusually young Young Artist of the Year by Gramophone magazine.But Lisiecki’s technique was mature even then, and he won respect from critics and fellow musicians for his clarity and precision.“I appreciate a clean sound,” Lisiecki (pronounced lee-SHETS-kee), now 26 and still living with his Polish-born parents in Calgary, said in a recent interview. “Not too bombastic, not too virtuosic, not too audacious.”Lisiecki is poised and fairly inscrutable during concerts, his eyes often closed. In an interview, Annik LaFarge, the author of “Chasing Chopin,” said she regards his “unhistrionic” style as “extremely Chopinesque.”Chopin, as it happens, is a focus of his young discography. On Friday, Lisiecki released his new recording of that composer’s complete nocturnes, which he set down last October in Berlin for Deutsche Grammophon.Lisiecki (shown here performing last year) is poised and fairly inscrutable during concerts, his eyes often closed.Sven Lorenz/Klavier-Festival RuhrChopin’s 21 nocturnes, written over the course of nearly his whole composing life, are single-movement pieces of generally less than six minutes. Their allusion to the night refers not to gloom but to evening intimacies, the pianist and scholar Kenneth Hamilton said in an interview.Suggestive of music played for close friends, or even for a lover, the nocturnes get an even more intimate, meditative reinvention from Lisiecki, who said he regards them as pieces ideally to be played alone. His starkly slow tempos — with the works running, in some cases, a minute or longer than usual — give these nocturnes a Satie-like inwardness.Lisiecki spoke about the recording and his approach to music on a video call from his home in Calgary. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did you prepare for this new album of the nocturnes?I had dreamed of recording them for quite a while, but I knew that to do it well I would have to play them in concert first, to get the right emotion. They’re not technically difficult — you can approach them from an early age — but it is very difficult to make them sound good. I have been scheduling many of them in my recitals to get that experience of communicating them. The nocturnes make me feel like I’m at home at night and I have an emotion I want to express; they’re pieces I play for myself. To play them in front of people — to break that private bubble — has been the challenge.In recordings, the complete nocturnes are usually presented in chronological order. Why did you stick with that precedent?I’m very traditional. I’m the type of person who likes sending out postcards written in fountain pen, who uses a landline phone with a rotary dial. I am also traditional in how I listen to and present music. After I recorded the nocturnes, I did think about the order. They were not written to be played together — they are very individual pieces — but the slight adjustments I could have made to improve the flow of the recording were not worth compromising the tradition.Why did you choose to record in the Meistersaal, an early-20th-century Berlin concert hall?We chose it because it was very practical during Covid. We could have it to ourselves; there was nobody in the office; there were no distractions. And it isn’t too cavernous, so I didn’t have the feeling I was playing for an empty hall. Also, there is natural light, which I really appreciate. And we could easily adjust the electric lights if I wanted a different ambience. In the end, it was just a very inspirational space.Even when he was first gaining notice, as a teenager, Lisiecki was respected by critics and fellow musicians for the clarity and precision of his playing.Amber Bracken for The New York TimesWhat kind of piano did you use?I didn’t get to select my piano, but I was lucky enough to be able to choose Daniel Brech, who lives in western Germany, as my piano technician. I have worked with him several times, and he and I have the same vision for how a piano should sound. We bonded when we first met in 2013, when I replaced Martha Argerich in an Orchestra Mozart concert with the late Claudio Abbado. For a solo piano recording, it’s very important what instrument you’re playing on — if it is not correct, there is very little you can do. He brought his own piano, a Steinway D, and I trusted him.Why do you play the nocturnes faster in concert than on your new recording?To keep an audience invested in a performance, that sort of slow tempo would be nearly impossible in a concert hall, where there are external factors, like hums or slight noises. Any small disturbance will break the spell, but in the studio I could keep that spell for much longer.Chopin’s early nocturne, Op. 9, No. 2, is one the best known pieces of classical music, regularly used in film soundtracks. How did you approach it?I pay careful attention to the left hand. The right hand — the melodic line — is what draws most of us to Chopin. But what makes that melody work or shine is the waltz-like left hand, which often suffers. If you forget about the structure, then you lose the logic of the piece, and then you lose the beauty.Why do you like to close your eyes when you’re playing in concert?After so many hours spent on the piano, I pretty much know where all the keys are. When you shut down one of your senses, you heighten the others. Generally there are no smells onstage, so I heighten my hearing and completely immerse myself in the music. In a concerto with an orchestra, I have to communicate visually, not only with the conductor, but also individually with the musicians. I know when I have to look, and I am very respectful — except for a few rare cases where I have not enjoyed working with a conductor and I played with my eyes closed the whole time.Some of your fellow young pianists have used their fame to speak out on political issues. You seem to avoid that.I am a pianist, and I have a lot of knowledge about the piano. I am interested in other matters, but that is not my profession. There are things that collide with my own personal views, but it doesn’t go as far as saying I won’t play with a certain conductor or won’t play in a certain country. Or I might make those choices, but on a quiet level, without making a statement about it.We are divided on every point these days, and all sorts of matters are very politicized. Vaccine, no vaccine; political left, political right; refugees, no refugees. A concert should welcome everybody and be a unifying force. We’re playing music, which doesn’t have a political standpoint. Of course, certain composers did, but the music itself does not. It’s apolitical — it’s just music, and it’s beautiful, and I hope it can remain that way.You and the gymnast Simone Biles are roughly the same age, and you have both been in the public eye since your early teens. Did her recent struggles at the Tokyo Olympics strike a chord with you?I did identify with her, especially with her so-called “twisties.” Playing the piano onstage is not nearly as high-risk; I can’t injure myself. But there certainly are days when I’ve done everything I can — when I have slept decently, and am completely prepared — and then I go out onstage, and I feel like there is a blank page in front of me, like I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t put it down to being nervous. It’s just one of those days when I’m not in my element — I’m just not. As a musician, I can get past it. I have practiced enough, and I can rely on my instincts. But I can understand where she is coming from. More

The Brooklyn rapper, fresh off nearly seven years in prison on gang conspiracy charges, is plotting his dance-heavy comeback — slowly.Bobby Shmurda just can’t sit still.Since being released from prison in February after nearly seven years, the high-energy, loose-hipped Brooklyn rapper born Ackquille Pollard, 27, has made dancing a priority, busting out his trademark shimmies and thrusts anywhere he turns up.In clips that have lit up social media, Shmurda has jerked and rolled at clubs, exclusive parties and onstage last month at the Rolling Loud festival in Miami, his first concert appearance as a free man. At the studio in New York recently, he showed off a video of himself engaging in a dance battle with an Instagram influencer, but it was nearly impossible to see, because he was wiggling along in real time, shaking his cellphone.Later, as the rapper’s new songs played over the industrial-grade speakers, he kept rollicking, like Elvis in an office chair, an itch he attributed to his Jamaican heritage.What Shmurda, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and weapons charges in 2016, hasn’t done in the nearly six months he’s been out is release any new music of his own. This slow, deliberate game plan stands in stark contrast to the prevalence of the “first day out” song in hip-hop, with artists and labels alike typically wanting to take advantage of a surge in interest around a finished prison sentence.“Instead of saying, boom, ‘I want to go in the streets and cause hell,’ I’m saying, ‘I want to go in the streets and give back,’” Shmurda said. “I feel like that’s gangster.”Rose Marie Cromwell for The New York Times“I just knew I had to get my business together,” Shmurda said in late June about the delay. “You can’t be walking around outside and your kitchen stinks.”But with a freshened-up record deal and a new, top-shelf management team — including the Roc Nation professionals who helped reinvent Meek Mill, post-prison, as an A-lister and activist — Shmurda is about ready to get going. He recently appeared with J Balvin and Daddy Yankee on a mostly Spanish-language drill remix, and he’s been working on a pile of his own singles and videos in an attempt to capture some late-summer momentum.At the mostly empty offices of Roc Nation, Jay-Z’s all-purpose talent company, Shmurda was hyperactive yet solicitous, offering around his own water bottle one sweaty evening. In the coming weeks, the rapper will perform at Summer Jam in New York and the Made in America Festival in Philadelphia.In preparation, Shmurda has recorded with artists like Swae Lee, DaBaby and Migos, but the common denominator is rhythm and movement. “We’re going to be dancing 24/7,” Shmurda said. “When I dance, it’s to show you that I came through the struggle, but I overcame it and we’re still overcoming it.”The intricacies of the rapper’s life story — and his boundless charisma — made him something of a hip-hop folk hero in absentia. Regarded as part meme, part cautionary tale, part political prisoner, Shmurda saw his legend grow in line with those of once-incarcerated rappers like Gucci Mane, despite the fact that he had released just five songs (plus a smattering of guest appearances) before he got locked up.Already, Roc Nation is fielding offers from distribution platforms for a documentary or a feature film about Shmurda’s saga.Shmurda pleaded guilty to conspiracy and weapons charges in 2016 and served nearly seven years.Kevin Hagen for The New York Times“Hip-hop loves an underdog story and a hero’s journey,” said Sidney Madden, an NPR Music reporter and podcaster whose series about rap and the criminal justice system, “Louder Than a Riot” (co-hosted with Rodney Carmichael), dedicated three episodes to Shmurda’s case. “His rise and fall felt so rapid and a little bit Shakespearean. It really left people wanting more because of the way he got jammed up.”“It felt like he was ripped away from the hip-hop world and the community that made him,” Madden added, noting Shmurda’s obvious showmanship, which was apparent even when she and Carmichael interviewed him in prison. “I truly hope whoever’s around him now can harness that energy.”Shmurda’s current position has been hard-earned. Raised in the working-class immigrant community of East Flatbush, his father incarcerated for life on a murder charge from the year after he was born, Shmurda opted for gang life. In and out of juvenile detention as a teenager, he returned from an upstate facility in 2012, hoping to find an off-ramp.“I was young, wild, bad,” Shmurda said. “When I came home that year, they was investigating us, so I started rapping, trying to get out.” He recalled detectives who would “pull up on the block, call us by name, take pictures.” That’s when he started taking music seriously.It almost worked.When Shmurda hears his early music now, he experiences “love, pain, everything — a bunch of mixed emotions knowing where it took me, where it got me,” he said. Rose Marie Cromwell for The New York TimesIn the summer of 2014, Shmurda released a music video, “Hot Boy” in its edited form, that was equally grimy and catchy, threatening violence even as he rocked those hips and grinned big with his neighborhood friends. One clip, isolated and looped, showed the rapper throwing his fitted cap in the air and doing his trademark Shmoney Dance. It went viral on Vine, and then everywhere. Even Beyoncé mimicked the move.“Hot Boy” — with lines like, “I’ve been selling crack since like the fifth grade” — would go on to score Shmurda a seven-figure record deal with Epic, along with agreements for some of his East Flatbush associates, and the song reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. But its success was too late and, according to the authorities, had not stemmed the violence that continued to surround the rapper.That December, New York gang prosecutors conducted a sweep, arresting Shmurda at a Manhattan studio and eventually locking up more than a dozen others they said were part of GS9, an offshoot of the Crips. Though Shmurda was not accused of committing the most serious acts himself, prosecutors used racketeering statutes to argue that he was “the driving force” and “organizing figure within this conspiracy,” which they said was responsible for multiple shootings and at least one murder.Nearly two years later, at 22, Shmurda pleaded guilty to two counts — six others filed against him were dropped — and he was sentenced to seven years in prison. While incarcerated, Shmurda was disciplined for violations including fighting and possessing contraband in the form of a shiv, which he later told a parole board was for self-defense, calling Rikers Island “just a crazy place.”When Shmurda hears his early music now, he experiences “love, pain, everything — a bunch of mixed emotions knowing where it took me, where it got me,” he said. “You feel all the times that you thought about the brothers who aren’t here or who are locked up.”Shmurda has been working on singles and videos of his own in an attempt to capture some late-summer momentum.Corey Jermaine Chalumeau for The New York TimesBut he wears little of that angst in public, swearing that his relationship with his parole officer is great — even if he can’t yet get a passport because of the terms of his release — and that his prison sentence saved him. The current restrictions on his life, Shmurda said, are “not holding me back from nothing — they’re keeping me out of jail.”“I ain’t mad about going to jail, because my mind-state now versus my mind-state before — I probably would’ve been in jail for life before,” he added. “The stuff that’s going to get you in trouble or put you in that situation, you can see that from miles away.”“When I was young, I used to run towards it,” he continued. “I was a full animal. So I feel like being locked up, it made me smarter. It made me stronger. And it made me badder, but in a good way. Instead of saying, boom, ‘I want to go in the streets and cause hell,’ I’m saying, ‘I want to go in the streets and give back.’ I feel like that’s gangster.”Mike Brinkley, a senior vice president of artist management at Roc Nation, said that Shmurda has been a curious and active participant in plotting his comeback. “He’ll ask questions and not just ask but actually comprehend,” the manager said. “Meeting him for the first time, you can’t even fathom what he went through because he doesn’t wear it. He’s like, ‘I’m here to work, what do you need me to do?’”Recently, Shmurda had to be caught up on the glut of streaming services and social networks that bloomed while he was gone. “My godkids got me TikToking!” he said.But he is still finding his voice — which has deepened — and his place in the current rap landscape, with “Hot Boy” having given way to Brooklyn drill and New York stars like Cardi B and Pop Smoke, who was killed last year. Shmurda is even teaching himself how to produce beats, wanting a hand in all parts of his debut album.The rapper described his day-to-day life, post-prison, as “music, girls, family, music, girls, more girls,” but he now only pops over to East Flatbush for brief visits. “Anybody in the streets is looking over their shoulder 24/7,” Shmurda said. “And they’re also taking a risk. That risk ain’t worth it.”But at the studio in Manhattan, an old friend came with a piece of home in hand — jerk chicken from one of Shmurda’s former go-to spots. The rapper was instantly transported, and he insisted everybody try a bite. More

A new portfolio from Opinion and the newsroom will expand our ambitions in an age-old medium.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Newsletters have a history even longer than newspapers, and email is several decades older than the web. Despite this lengthy pedigree, email newsletters are having a very buzzy moment — and here at The New York Times, we’re striving to bring even more depth, ambition and scale to our lineup.This summer marks 20 years since The Times published its first newsletters. We started off in 2001 covering technology, books and finance, among other topics. Some of those newsletters are still thriving, in various incarnations, as part of a portfolio that reaches some 15 million people every week — a number that has surged over the last two years. Flagships such as The Morning and DealBook serve as a destination for readers and a crucial gateway and guide to our journalism, while offering original reporting and analysis.As the editorial director of Times newsletters, I’ve been thinking with my colleagues about what comes next. How can we break new ground in the inbox and deliver sophisticated coverage of the topics that our readers care about most? Newsletters are already a core part of our subscriber experience: Nearly half of our subscribers engage with a newsletter every week. This week, we’re pulling back the curtain on a new kind of Times journalism: more than 15 newsletters that will be available only to our subscribers. The goal is to continue developing the inbox as a destination for our journalism, and to add value to a Times subscription.The first batch focuses on topics that our readers are passionate about, is staffed by journalists with deep expertise and features exciting, diverse new voices. It includes newsroom favorites Well, On Tech, At Home and Away, On Soccer and Watching, and columnists like Paul Krugman and Jamelle Bouie.It also features a new set of newsletters in Opinion (which remains a completely separate, independent entity, apart from our news operation):John McWhorter, a Columbia University linguist, will explore how race and language shape our politics and culture.Kara Swisher, host of the “Sway” podcast, will open her notebook to track the changing power dynamics in tech and media.Tressie McMillan Cottom, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will offer a sociologist’s perspective on culture, politics and the economics of our everyday lives.Tish Harrison Warren, an Anglican priest, will reflect on matters of faith in private life and public discourse.Peter Coy, a veteran business and economics journalist, will use his decades of expertise to unpack the biggest headlines.Jay Caspian Kang, a wide-ranging cultural critic and New York Times Magazine contributor, will tackle thorny questions about politics, culture and the economy.Jane Coaston, host of “The Argument” podcast, will offer context to and analysis on the biggest debates in sports, politics and history.All of these subscriber-only newsletters represent a unique collection of talent and expertise in Opinion and the newsroom, assisted by editors, designers, developers, product managers and other specialists.We’ve spent most of the last year working toward this launch, and more new and revamped newsletters — including a new version of On Politics and a revamped Smarter Living focused on back-to-work issues — will join this initial batch in the coming months.You can subscribe to Times newsletters here. More

Evgeny Kissin, who has made a career of performing, was surprised to find himself drawn once more to composing.For the pianist Evgeny Kissin, it was a love story that provided the inspiration to write his own music again. After being reunited with a childhood friend — now his wife — he woke up in the middle of the night and jotted down a “Meditation” that would become the first of his Four Piano Pieces Op. 1.Mr. Kissin is best known as a soloist who began his career as a child prodigy. By age 12 he had performed both Chopin concertos in his native Russia and by 19 he had made headlines with the Berlin Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic.He remains one of today’s most highly regarded pianists for the intensity and sensitivity of his interpretations. He also began writing music as a child, as soon as he had learned notation, but stopped at about age 14, not resuming until just shy of a decade ago.As he approaches his 50th birthday in October, Mr. Kissin maintains an insatiable intellectual curiosity. His solo recital Saturday at the Salzburg Festival features works by Chopin, Gershwin, Alban Berg and Tichon N. Chrennikow (as a child, Mr. Kissin performed works, including ones he had written himself, for this Russian composer).The fall brings a busy concert schedule, in cities as varied as Jerusalem, Seoul and Kaohsiung, Taiwan. At the same time, he is steadily growing his catalog, most recently with “Thanatopsis,” a setting of the William Cullen Bryant poem, for female voice and piano.“The very fact that I started composing again came to me as a surprise,” he admitted in a video call earlier this month from his home in Prague, citing a “hidden potential” that was awakened by his romance with that childhood friend, Karina Arzumanova, whom he married in 2017.In his 2017 autobiography “Memoirs and Reflections,” Mr. Kissin wrote that music “stopped sounding in my head” as his concert career gained momentum. Since 2012, ideas have been flowing back, and he continues in a noncompetitive manner: “Let us see what comes of it,” he wrote, “and how audiences will respond to my music.”Mr. Kissin’s music displays a range of extreme emotions.Milan Bures for The New York TimesThe works that have been published so far reveal the sharp intellect and natural artistry that also characterize his performances. The last of the Four Piano Pieces, the Toccata, revolves around a jazzy, Gershwin-like motif, at first distorted by harsh dissonance, while running across the keyboard with virtuosic arpeggiated textures.His one-movement cello sonata, meanwhile, is lyrical and introspective, with a theme that sounds as if it is based on a 12-tone system but in fact is derived from only eight notes.Mr. Kissin has received the support of Arvo Part, one of the most widely performed contemporary composers, and leading musicians. His String Quartet was recorded by the Kopelman Quartet in 2016, and the cello piece has been championed by the international soloists Steven Isserlis, David Geringas and Renaud Capuçon.In a phone interview from London, Mr. Isserlis noted the range of styles that Mr. Kissin has managed to express in only a handful of works. “He’s such an intense person, and musician,” he said. “He has a very serious view of the world, although he’s not without humor.”Mr. Isserlis placed the “extreme emotions” of Mr. Kissin’s music in a line of pianist-composers ranging from Schuman to Rachmaninoff but also noted a specifically Russian-Jewish tradition. “There’s a darkness,” he said. “But there’s also a love of beauty. It has its roots in the past, like all good music.”Mr. Kissin, who in 2013 became an Israeli citizen, qualified any strict categorization by saying that he identifies with “a small minority of the Russian population, namely, the liberal Russian intelligentsia — a significant part of which consists of Jews like me.”For many years he has recited Yiddish poetry onstage and is himself a poet and writer, with work published in the Yiddish edition of The Forward and in a 2019 book, “A Yiddisher Sheygets.”Mr. Kissin at his home in Prague.Milan Bures for The New York TimesThe pianist is passionate about raising awareness toward the historic and aesthetic value of Yiddish, a Germanic language spoken by Ashkenazi Jews since the ninth century.Yiddish, Mr. Kissin writes in his memoir, belongs “to the highest achievements of world culture.” He notes its “rich and expressive” quality and an “inner strength” that “is capable of conveying the subtlest thoughts and feelings.”He and the writer and editor Boris Sandler joined forces for the Yiddish-language musical “The Bird Alef From the Old Gramophone,” which was performed two years ago in Birobidzhan, the center of the Jewish Autonomous Region in Eastern Russia. Although Jews account for less than 2 percent of the region’s population, Yiddish is still the official language.The musical’s creators hope to have it staged in Moscow next summer to mark the 70th anniversary of the Night of the Murdered Poets, when 13 Jewish intellectuals — including Yiddish poets — were executed by firing squads under orders from Stalin.Mr. Kissin is also working on a vocal cycle for baritone and piano based on the work of the Russian poet Alexander Blok. Ideas for the work emerged as early as 1986, he said, but he began writing down the music only in recent years.Mr. Kissin again emphasized that “it’s a matter of inspiration. And of course also of time. I only compose sporadically because it requires blocks of concentration,” he said, “which my main occupation as concert pianist allows very seldom.”Asked what repertoire he would like to explore in coming years, he rattled off a list of solo and chamber work with encyclopedic precision: the solo works of Bach and Shostakovich, which he has never played in public; Brahms’s Third Violin Sonata, one of his “favorite pieces of music ever written,” which he has played only once; Haydn, Mozart, Ravel, Scriabin.But he will also return to Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, which he has not played since 1996, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 2023. Also that year, he plans to take on the Piano Concerto of Rimsky-Korsakov.Despite his renewed activities as a composer, Mr. Kissin remains humble: “I would never dare to compose myself knowing that I would never be able to write something approaching the level of the great music already written.“Playing music,” he continued, “is how I can express myself best.” More

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

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

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