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      Bach’s Cello Suites, Now on Violin, With a Folksy Feel

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      With an ear for dance and a new five-string violin, Johnny Gandelsman set out to transform a towering classic.Bargemusic was rocking last Friday evening as rain fell heavily outside, casting the view of Lower Manhattan in gray.Inside, though, Bargemusic — the tiny concert hall docked in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge in Dumbo — was alight with the liveliness of belowdecks entertainment as a small audience rode out the storm to the fiddling sounds of Johnny Gandelsman’s violin. At times the performance had the improvisatory feel of folk music, but it was in fact a survey of Bach’s towering six cello suites — transformed, with foot-tapping joy, for a smaller string instrument.Gandelsman isn’t the only violinist to have tackled these classic works; Rachel Podger recorded them in 2019, a year before he released his own set. But his approach is singular: feather-light and rooted in dance and folk music. He treats the suites as six enclosed spaces, tracing long arcs through each one, the sections blurring as he plays them through without pausing.Gandelsman’s recording came out in February 2020, and he had a concert planned at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan that March. Like everything else, it was canceled. Bargemusic on Friday was his return; because of ongoing safety measures, it was a modest one, with a distanced crowd in an already small space, and the six suites spread over two evenings instead of his usual one.He’ll be back on the barge, June 24 and 25, with more Bach: the sonatas and partitas for solo violin. After that, he may return to this endlessly explorable composer, but his focus will be shifting to a new project: This Is America, a set of 22 new violin works commissioned from the likes of Angélica Negrón, Tyshawn Sorey and Tomeka Reid, with premieres rolling out starting this summer.But before that, he joined a video call after the Bargemusic concerts to discuss the cello suites, which he said he had been discouraged from recording.Gandelsman said that his interpretation of the suites aimed for the “sense of freedom” found in dance and folk music.Mary Inhea Kang for The New York Times“It was looked at as a novelty gimmick,” he said. “But there are at least three 19th-century editions of transcriptions, and they feel so good on the violin.”The project followed his recording of the sonatas and partitas. While the violin solos are most difficult in their fugues and implied counterpoint, he said, the cello works more or less keep multiple voices within the same line. The suites did, however, require idiosyncrasies like scordatura (alternative tuning) in the Fifth Suite and the use of a five-string violin in the Sixth — both common in folk music.That’s what he worked toward in his interpretation: a folk flavor. He avoided listening to recordings — though he said he had been inspired by Paolo Pandolfo’s viola da gamba rendering, “maybe the most radical in a way” — and tried to internalize the music to get at its dance-y “sense of freedom.”In the video call, he focused on three sections to discuss his approach. Here they are, with side-by-side comparisons of his recording and ones by Yo-Yo Ma, Pablo Casals and Anner Bylsma.Suite No. 1 in G: GigueThe First Suite, Gandelsman said, “has this just incredible sense of lightness, and also discovery” — a tone set immediately in the Prelude, airy and full of naïve wonder in his reading.“I don’t want to suggest that a viola or cello can’t do these things,” he said. “But there’s something about the way the violin resonates that just kind of propels everything forward.”He gives the sections the feel of “a real set of dances,” like something an Irish fiddler would play. Seen from that perspective, he said, the suite’s final movement, the Gigue, is a “party moment” — albeit a brief one. But that fleeting celebration, he added, is “pure joy.”“I think of the way my friend Martin Hayes” — a renowned fiddler — “might approach a gigue and vary inflections and articulations in a natural way,” Gandelsman said. “To bring a sense of joy and abandon and a sense of closing to these beautiful 15 minutes of discovery.”Suite No. 4 in E flat: PreludePlayed on a cello, this Prelude tends to take on what Gandelsman called a “majestic quality.” The phrases leap octaves, beginning at the lowest string and jumping to the highest — which, at an unhurried pace, creates a foundational resonance. “I quickly realized,” he recalled, “that that just does not work for me on the violin.”He couldn’t sustain the low-note resonance at a slow tempo and still articulate a long line. So he arrived, he said, at “an overall shift.” The score is in cut time, so he started by following that, speeding up the eighth notes and taking a wider view of the movement.“Suddenly everything kind of came together,” he said, “and created this incredible feeling where I felt like I was looking through a kaleidoscope.”The music was now perhaps less grand than on a cello, but the architecture had been revealed to Gandelsman in a new way. “The majestic quality can sound quite heavy,” he said, “and sometimes one can get lost in the beauty of each bar or each note and lose the sense of how the harmonies are shifting almost imperceptibly from bar to bar. Once I kind of let go of that majestic quality and went for something else, I saw an overall character of the entire suite that is incredibly light and funny and full of humor.”Suite No. 5 in C minor: SarabandeWhen Gandelsman started working on the Fifth Suite, he found himself “pulled into the world of the way that it sounds on the cello,” he said. “It’s very dramatic and in some ways the darkest of the suites.”The Sarabande, in particular, is despair in miniature — only a few lines in the score, made up of phrases seemingly cut short by low notes, a Sisyphean climb. Those depths, though, are impossible on the violin. And the character of the piece isn’t exactly a natural fit for the instrument’s bright high E string.Gandelsman took steps throughout the project to pre-empt any problems the violin’s upper register might pose: He used a gut E string, for instance, and recorded to tape to further soften its sound. On the violin, there is still a darkness to the Fifth Suite, Gandelsman said. But as he was working on it, “it started revealing a quality of loneliness, more so than gravitas.”“What I feel,” he added, “is the most inward kind of conversation with yourself.”The Fifth’s Sarabande is unique among the suites for not containing chords. “It is the most bare-naked, lonely line,” he said. Without multiple voices, and without a low C string, the violin is left with a fundamentally different, less resonant sound than the cello. But it’s no less affecting.“There’s a single voice, but there’s also incredible dissonance in this movement,” he said. “Not everywhere, but in specific places he chooses these minor-second inflections, which are so painful. I feel an incredible sense of loss when I’m playing it. I just try to embrace that and not try to compete with the fact that I don’t have low strings that can ring forever.” More

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      Garbage’s Shirley Manson Thrives on Unapologetic Heroines

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      The musician chats about weeping to Patti Smith, getting goose bumps from Yoko Ono and freeing her mind via Louise Bourgeois as her band releases its seventh album.Back in the ’90s, Shirley Manson never expected Garbage would still be making music together nearly 30 years later, and she suspects no one else did, either. “We’re outliers,” the fiery Scottish frontwoman said, referring to bandmates Butch Vig, Duke Erikson and Steve Marker. “We don’t fit into any hip scene. We’ve always done our own thing. I think that’s really rare.”The band’s seventh album, “No Gods No Masters” (out June 11), is its most socially conscious statement, a thrumming mix of goth and orchestral pop partially inspired by the racial justice movement, #MeToo revelations and escalating political divisions. “All these things that happened over the last few years caught my attention, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I just let that fly,” Manson said via phone from the Los Angeles home she shares with her husband, the Garbage engineer Billy Bush, and their elderly rescue dog, Veela. “I didn’t want to make a party record. I wanted to make something that matters.”Manson, 54, has also found a megaphone via her podcast “The Jump,” for which she interviews fellow musicians like Angel Olsen and George Clinton. “I’ve been so inspired at a time in my life when I needed inspiration,” she said. Although, she added, the particularly personal track “Uncomfortably Me” was aided by what the band calls Mind Erasers — a mezcal cocktail featuring chile liqueur. “You can only have one,” she warned. “That song was written after two.”Manson enthusiastically shared what else has sustained and influenced her throughout her long career. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. A Pocket-Size New Testament BibleIt’s one of my most cherished possessions, given to me on the day of my baptism by my father. It’s got this beautiful, glossy cover with a picture of Jesus and some other folks on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, I think. My dad, strangely enough, is having struggles with his faith now at 84, but he was a devout believer, and he brought all of his children up in the church. I really took my studies seriously and, year after year, I won the religious education prize at school. Then the hormones kicked in and I started to notice the hypocrisy of organized religion. The slow eradication of my own faith broke my heart. I turned from perfect student to raging adolescent. I think I was furious at being hoodwinked.2. Margot FonteynShe was the first figure in the world that I crushed on. When I was 8, my dad took me to meet her at a local bookshop. And then I saw her dance with Rudolf Nureyev at a gala performance in Edinburgh. The ballet taught me what it meant to be artists and be disciplined and be serious, and also to work in partnership. Something about achieving things together taught me about how we have to pull each other up.Being a ballerina is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do in my life. Everything else that’s ever happened to me, I didn’t necessarily desire. But I had a terrible accident at church when I was 11 and I twisted my ankle badly. I could no longer sustain pointe. Now, instead of counting sheep to get myself to sleep, I imagine ballerinas running down a spiral staircase.3. Nina SimoneMy mother was a great music lover. She had a red leather Dansette record player, and she introduced me to Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee and Nina Simone. Listening to the records now reminds me of dancing with her in the kitchen.Nina Simone is probably my all time favorite singer — the sound of her voice, her phrasing, her cadences. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything as shocking and heartbreaking as “Strange Fruit” or “I Loves You, Porgy,” which I didn’t understand as a kid. Now the profundity of it hits me so hard. I’m attracted to her courage and her willingness not to be liked. She could be fierce and intimidating. It’s unusual enough now, but back then that was revolutionary.4. The Beatles and Yoko OnoI was in music class the morning we all found out that John Lennon had been killed. I had an amazing music teacher and she allowed us to sit and cry, and she wept with us.I pored over the news regarding Yoko Ono and her grief as a widow. I’d always had a lack of interest in Yoko, because I bought into the ways that she had been sidelined by misogyny. That is the tragedy. But over the years, I’m astounded by what a pioneer she is, not just in art but in gender and environmental politics. I was so lucky to be invited by Gxrlschool L.A. to perform a tribute to her at the Disney Concert Hall, and I got to sing “What a Bastard the World Is.” At the end of the performance I got a note that Yoko wanted to meet me. I’m giving myself goose bumps just talking about it.5. Pris From “Blade Runner”I’m always chasing Pris — in my dreams, in my stage performances, in my fantasies. I grew up in the ’70s in Scotland. There were topless models in the newspapers. To see someone that I knew most men would find freaky when I found her alluring and androgynous just freed me from believing that I had to play a certain game. Pris formed a taste in me for something outside of the typical male gaze. Suddenly, I was like [expletive] it. I don’t want to be a boring woman.6. Louise BourgeoisI was in London. Garbage had just been dropped by Interscope Records. My career was in the toilet. I was creeping up on 40 in an industry that’s not kind to women who are over 25. I was hanging out with the video director Sophie Muller and her old art-school teacher said to us, “Go to the Tate and see the retrospective on Louise Bourgeois.” We became groupies. At the time, Louise Bourgeois was 95, and she was still painting. And standing in the middle of the Tate reading up on her, a darkness broke out of me. I was like, you know what? I may no longer have a successful career, but I can still be an artist. I was overtaken with a determination to engineer my own life.7. Ken Burns’s “Jazz”During quarantine, I had my whole brain exploded by this series. I had always thought of jazz as something fusty and sort of conservative — it’s always been a closed door to me. “Jazz” really shook me up. It gave me a phenomenal basis in understanding contemporary American music and an incredible perspective on systematic racism, colonialism and also great genius.8. “The Jump” PodcastI’m on my third season now and it causes me unbelievable amounts of stress. I feel like I’m not smart enough to be in the position that I’m in. However, it has been an extraordinarily rewarding experience. When you sit down with people for a couple of hours, you get their energy.I came away from the studio really loving on Liz Phair. My band was working on a track, and I wanted to write something that was a little scathing about the patriarchy, but I wanted it to be fun. And I went into the vocal booth and I deliberately pitched my voice low the way she does.9. Patrisse Cullors and Asha Bandele’s “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir”It was one of the first books I read a couple of years ago when I suddenly had this naïve realization that, gun to the head, I wouldn’t be able to name you 10 Black movie directors. Ten Black novelists. I feel embarrassed to say this. I really needed to educate myself about what’s going on in this country and around the globe. “When They Call You a Terrorist” just set me on a whole journey of belated understanding of the struggle of Black, brown and Indigenous people. I then watched “The 13th,” an incredible documentary by Ava DuVernay. It’s really difficult for white people to admit to our own prejudice, our own privilege, our own conditioning. But you can get over your embarrassment, because people are actually suffering.10. Patti SmithWhenever she speaks, I just start crying. I went to see her perform at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2005 and I started to weep because she looked so powerful, like some kind of vision. She didn’t even seem human. And then I saw her speak just before lockdown to promote her book “Year of the Monkey,” and I wept all the way through that, too. I always think my relationship to her is singular, but I went to the bathroom and all the other ladies in there were crying, too. It was like a Backstreet Boys concert. I’ve seen a lot of my heroes age, and you watch them lose their confidence as they move through the world. You start to see them apologize for aging. With Patti Smith, there is no apology, and it’s such a potent message. More

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      Marina’s Music Was Caught Between Worlds. Now She’s Making Her Own.

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      The musician’s albums reveal an intriguing if uneasy dialogue with her own pop persona. Her fifth LP, “Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land,” is a firm statement of self.LOS ANGELES — Marina Diamandis moved from London to Los Angeles during the pandemic fall, but she has already discovered some of the city’s trendiest literary emissaries. “Eve Babitz didn’t get her due,” she said recently, scanning the shelves at West Hollywood’s Book Soup for the author’s “Slow Days, Fast Company,” a cult favorite of California-set vignettes. “Joan Didion kind of eclipsed her.” With a wry smirk, she added, “There’s only ever room for one woman.”The 35-year-old singer known as Marina (formerly Marina & the Diamonds) is fed up with this myth of scarcity on her fifth album, “Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land,” due on June 11. “I don’t want to live in a man’s world anymore,” she proclaims in her sterling soprano on its first single, “Man’s World.” The accompanying video, directed by Alexandra Gavillet, features women of various ages, sizes and ethnicities standing like placid warriors in Technicolor tunics.The music business is its own kind of man’s world, and Diamandis has been navigating its waters since her 2010 debut, “The Family Jewels,” a boisterous collection of piano ballads, synth-pop and theatrical hip checks. “Along with British songwriters like Lily Allen and Kate Nash, she’s redefining songs about coming of age, and the aftermath, with bluntness and crafty intelligence,” The New York Times’s chief pop critic, Jon Pareles, wrote just ahead of its release.Three more albums followed between 2012 and 2019 that saw Diamandis wrestling with embracing and rejecting the mandates of the industry — striving for mainstream acceptance then pulling back, making music with the flavor of an indie artist in a major label ecosystem. The ambitious “Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land” is another kind of calibration. “The way that we treat people is linked to our connection to the planet,” she said while discussing its second single, the propulsive “Purge the Poison.” (It also has a remix featuring Pussy Riot.) “It’s all tied to a degrading of femininity. Across this album, there’s such a yearning for a focus on the feminine.”In 2019, Diamandis put out a call on social media looking for female collaborators. Sifting through recommendations from fans and friends, she formed a team that included Gavillet, the photographer Coughs and the producer Jennifer Decilveo, who has worked with Beth Ditto and Bat for Lashes. Decilveo and Diamandis, who teamed on those first two singles, wrote music together at Diamandis’s West Hollywood home over Sunbasket meal-kit dishes that she had prepared.“This is going to sound taboo, but I was drawn to the fact that Marina’s a woman, and I’m one of the only female producers in the business, and we spoke each other’s language,” Decilveo said in a phone interview. “She’s the real deal and, in this strange pop market, it’s refreshing to have somebody with lyrics that are going against the grain.”With a singsong rhythm punctuated by snare drums, Diamandis impersonates Mother Nature avenging human failures on “Purge the Poison,” including capitalism, racism, pollution, Harvey Weinstein and the treatment of her beloved Britney Spears. “On ‘Purge,’ I wasn’t trying to be nice,” Decilveo added. “I knew it needed to be a sock in the face.”The second half of “Ancient Dreams” is more inward-focused — a breakup album —  including “Highly Emotional People,” a delicate ballad interrogating male stoicism, and the plangent closer, “Goodbye.” During the pandemic, Diamandis split from her longtime boyfriend, Jack Patterson of the British electro-pop band Clean Bandit, with whom she shared a house and several cats.“On ‘Goodbye’ I was crying so hard as I was writing it that I actually couldn’t record the demo properly,” she said during a stroll near her home. Her candy-striped sundress accommodated the stifling April weather, and she covered her inky black hair with a straw hat. “Songwriting is the best cure,” she added.Growing up in a small town in Wales, Diamandis said she never demonstrated any aptitude for music, except for singing Oasis’s “Wonderwall” once when she was 9 “by the fireplace like a little Victorian child.” As a teenager, she moved to her father’s native Greece and recalled returning with “a burning, raging urge to be a singer.” She began writing and releasing music on Myspace.Over the years, Diamandis’s albums have revealed an intriguing if uneasy dialogue with her own pop persona, beginning with “The Family Jewels,” which showcased her impressive vocal range and heralded a confident, unpredictable new artist.“She was ahead of the curve,” said Derek Davies, her longtime friend and A&R representative, and a co-founder of Neon Gold Records, which released her first singles in the United States. “At the time, it was all about huge melodies and Max Martin. Marina was writing these deeply personal lyrics, which probably impeded her commercial radio viability.”“Across this album, there’s such a yearning for a focus on the feminine,” Diamandis said.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesFor her 2012 follow-up, “Electra Heart,” Diamandis said she felt pressured by her major label to work with au courant hitmakers like Diplo and Stargate. The experiment yielded the gold-certified single “Primadonna,” written with a team including Dr. Luke, which bore the influence of Diamandis’s tour dates opening for Katy Perry, but flattened her idiosyncratic style.“Post ‘Electra Heart,’ I felt kind of ashamed, like this isn’t really who I am,” Diamandis said. She pulled out her phone and unearthed a nasty review of that album that left a mark. But the intervening years have changed her mind: “Now I think it was a really cool, dark, subversive pop record that was using the American system to elevate myself as an artist. I wouldn’t do it again, but it kind of changed my life.”Diamandis wrested back songwriting control for her 2015 album, “Froot,” which became her highest-charting LP in the United States. “‘Froot’ mellowed that quite aggressive need for validation,” she said, but it raised a fresh concern: “Did that mean that I don’t have any ambition and I shouldn’t be an artist?” Diamandis was living in London with Patterson, but felt she had been more warmly embraced in America. She went on hiatus, pursuing everything from psychology to falconry. “That was probably the worst period of my adult life,” she said.Four years later, Diamandis dropped the Diamonds from her moniker, and returned with “Love + Fear.” She once again relied on cowriters, including OzGo (Pink) and Joel Little (Lorde, Taylor Swift), and as a result achieved “a more commercial sound,” she said. It armed her with both the confidence to finally leave her British management and switch to Atlantic’s U.S. division, and to revert to writing solo on “Ancient Dreams,” which she considers her best album.“It’s the closest cousin in the discography to that first record,” Davies said. “It’s her most indie, alternative record yet.”It’s also her strongest political statement, and for that she partly credits this strange and terrifying past year. “I would hope people don’t hear it as preaching,” she said. “The pandemic allowed a lot of us to step back and look at what kind of lives we’re living, and nothing feels sustainable.”Diamandis already noticed pushback online to some of her positions on current issues. “I like seeing comments like, ‘She used capitalism to get where she is,’ because it does make me think about my own place,” she continued. “But we’re all allowed to challenge the system that we’re in.” More

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      Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Sour’ Scores the Biggest Debut of the Year

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      The teen pop phenomenon’s first album opened with the equivalent of 295,000 sales in the United States, including the second-best streaming total of 2021 so far.A year ago, the name Olivia Rodrigo barely registered in the music business. Back then, she was a teenage Disney actress who had moderate success contributing to the soundtrack of her show “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.”What a difference a year makes — or even just five months, since her song “Drivers License” exploded in January.Rodrigo, 18, is now a pop superstar with two No. 1 singles and a blockbuster No. 1 album — a social-media phenomenon following in the footsteps of her idol Taylor Swift, who performs at major awards shows and speaks confidently about her lineage as a songwriter. The Grammy buzz is brewing. (She’s already playing the celebrity-swag-box game.)Rodrigo’s debut album, “Sour,” opens at the top of the latest Billboard chart with the equivalent of 295,000 sales in the United States, the biggest opening so far this year, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. That total includes 301 million streams, the second-best streaming number for any album this year, behind J. Cole’s “The Off-Season,” which topped last week’s chart. “Sour” is also No. 1 in Britain, Canada, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere around the world, according to Rodrigo’s label, Geffen.In an era when new albums are typically stuffed with content to maximize their streaming yield, Rodrigo’s and Cole’s albums are unusual: “Sour” has just 11 tracks, and “The Off-Season” 12. By comparison, Morgan Wallen’s country blockbuster “Dangerous: The Double Album” has 30 songs in its standard edition, and it opened with 240 million clicks in January.Among the other chart factoids for “Sour”: Rodrigo is only the second artist named Olivia to score a No. 1 album in the six-decade history of the Billboard 200, after two in the 1970s by Olivia Newton-John — “If You Love Me, Let Me Know” (1974) and “Have You Never Been Mellow” (1975).Cole’s “The Off-Season” falls to No. 2 in its second week out, while “Scaled and Icy,” the new album by the alt-pop duo Twenty One Pilots, opens at No. 3 with the equivalent of 75,000 sales, including 33 million streams. Wallen’s “Dangerous,” still a steady hit after 20 weeks, holds at No. 4, and the Memphis rapper Moneybagg Yo is in fifth place with “A Gangsta’s Pain.” More

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      B.J. Thomas, ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’ Singer, Dies at 78

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      Mr. Thomas, who won five Grammys, helped introduce a smooth, down-home sensibility to the AM radio airwaves in the 1960s and ’70s.B.J. Thomas, a country and pop hitmaker and five-time Grammy winner who contributed to the Southernization of popular music in the 1960s and ’70s, died on Saturday at his home in Arlington, Texas. He was 78.The cause was complications of lung cancer, said a spokesman, Jeremy Westby of 2911 Media.Mr. Thomas’s biggest hit was “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” which was originally featured in the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and spent four weeks at the top of the pop chart in early 1970. Written and produced by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, “Raindrops” — a cheery ditty about surmounting life’s obstacles — won the Academy Award for best original song later that year. Mr. Thomas’s recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2014.Mr. Thomas placed 15 singles in the pop Top 40 from 1966 to 1977. “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song,” a monument to heartache sung in a bruised, melodic baritone, reached No. 1 on both the country and pop charts in 1975. “Hooked on a Feeling,” an exultant expression of newfound love from 1968, also reached the pop Top 10. (Augmented by an atavistic chant of “Ooga-chaka-ooga-ooga,” the song became a No. 1 pop hit as recorded by the Swedish rock band Blue Swede in 1974.)Mr. Thomas’s records helped introduce a smooth, down-home sensibility to the AM airwaves, an approach shaped by the fusion of country, gospel, rock and R&B in the music of Elvis Presley. Also recognizable in hits by singers with similarly expressive voices like Brook Benton and Conway Twitty, this uniquely Southern mix of styles became common currency on radio playlists across the nation.Mr. Thomas’s biggest hit single,“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2014.J.P. Roth Collection“I try to give the soft pop sound a natural relaxed feeling,” Mr. Thomas said in “Home Where I Belong,” a memoir written with Jerry B. Jenkins. “I guess that’s why my records always cross over and are good sellers on the pop and rock charts, as well as country.”His debt to Presley’s romantic crooning notwithstanding, Mr. Thomas cited the music of Black R&B singers like Little Richard and Jackie Wilson as his greatest vocal inspiration.“We all loved Elvis and Hank Williams, but I think Wilson had the biggest influence on me,” he said in his memoir. “I couldn’t believe what he could do with his voice. I’ve always tried to do more with a note than just hit it, because I remembered how he could sing so high and so right, really putting something into it.”Mr. Wilson’s stamp is certainly evident on “Mighty Clouds of Joy,” a rapturous, gospel-steeped anthem that reached the pop Top 40 for Mr. Thomas in 1971. His command of musical dynamics is especially impressive on the chorus, where, lifting his voice heavenward, he goes from a hushed whisper to a flurry of ecstatic wailing before bringing his vocals back down to a murmur for the next verse.Mr. Thomas came by his sense of redemption the hard way: He struggled for the better part of 10 years with a dependence on drugs and alcohol that almost destroyed his marriage and his life. After getting clean in the mid-’70s, he enjoyed parallel careers as a country and gospel singer, releasing three No. 1 country singles over the ensuing decade and winning five Grammy Awards in various gospel categories.Mr. Thomas had 15 singles in the pop Top 40 from 1966 to 1977.Reed Saxon/Associated PressBilly Joe Thomas was born on Aug. 7, 1942, in Hugo, Okla., the second of three children of Vernon and Geneva Thomas, and raised in Rosenberg, Texas, some 40 miles southwest of Houston. The family was poor, a condition exacerbated by his father’s violent temper and drinking. As an adolescent, Mr. Thomas began singing in the Baptist church his family attended.He and his older brother, Jerry, joined the Triumphs, a local pop combo, while in high school, with Mr. Thomas singing lead. In 1966, after three years of playing at area dances and American Legion halls, the band had its first hit with a rendition of Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” that reached the pop Top 10.Credited to B.J. Thomas and the Triumphs and issued on the small Pacemaker label, the record was eventually picked up for distribution by the New York-based Scepter Records, home to major pop artists of the day like Dionne Warwick and the Shirelles. With sales of more than a million copies, it secured Mr. Thomas a place on the bill of a traveling rock ’n’ roll revue hosted by Dick Clark, the “American Bandstand” host and producer.Despite the persistence and severity of his alcohol and drug use, Mr. Thomas’s recordings remained a constant on the pop chart for the next decade. “Rock and Roll Lullaby,” a Top 40 hit in 1972, featured Duane Eddy on guitar and backing vocals from Darlene Love and the Crystals. Three years earlier, Mr. Thomas had enjoyed an extended run at the Copacabana in New York, brought about by the runaway success of “Hooked on a Feeling.”Mr. Thomas started on the path to recovery after converting to Christianity in the mid-’70s, a period in which he also reconciled with his wife, Gloria, after repeated separations. In 1977, following a year or so in recovery, he sang at the memorial service for Presley, whose death that year was due largely to his excessive use of prescription medications.Mr. Thomas continued to make albums and tour into the 2000s. Over the years, he also sang and testified at the crusades of the evangelist Billy Graham and at other large religious gatherings.He is survived by Gloria Richardson Thomas, his wife of 53 years; three daughters, Paige Thomas, Nora Cloud and Erin Moore; and four grandchildren.At its smoothest and most over-the-top, Mr. Thomas’s music could border on schmaltz. But at its most transcendent, as on the stirring likes of “Mighty Clouds of Joy,” he inhabited the junction of spirituality and sentiment with imagination and aplomb, making records that invariably had listeners singing along.“The greatest compliment a person could pay my music is to listen and sing along with it and think that he can sing just as good as me,” he said in his memoir, alluding to the accessibility of his performances. “He probably can’t, of course, or he’d be in the business, but I want it to sound that way anyway.” More

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      Chi Modu, Photographer Who Defined 1990s Hip-Hop, Dies at 54

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      His images of the Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre and many more helped shape rap music’s visual identity.The Notorious B.I.G., stoic and resplendent in front of the twin towers. Tupac Shakur, eyes closed and arms in the air, tendrils of smoke wafting up from his lips. Eazy-E, perched atop his lowrider, using it as a throne. Mobb Deep, huddled with friends on the rooftop of a Queensbridge housing project. Nas, reflective in his childhood bedroom. Members of the Wu-Tang Clan, gathered in a circle and staring down at the camera, sharpness in their eyes.For the essential rap stars of the 1990s, odds are that their defining images — the ones imprinted for decades on the popular consciousness — were all taken by one person: Chi Modu.In the early and mid-1990s, working primarily for The Source magazine, at the time the definitive digest of hip-hop’s commercial and creative ascendance, Mr. Modu was the go-to photographer. An empathetic documentarian with a talent for capturing easeful moments in often extraordinary circumstances, he helped set the visual template for dozens of hip-hop stars. The Source was minting a new generation of superheroes, and Mr. Modu was capturing them as they took flight.Mr. Modu died on May 19 in Summit, N.J. He was 54. His wife, Sophia, said the cause was cancer.A portrait of Tupac Shakur taken by Mr. Modu in Atlanta in 1994. The two  had a special rapport, which spanned several years and photo shoots.Chi ModuWhen hip-hop was still gaining its footing in pop culture and the mainstream media hadn’t quite caught up, The Source stepped into that void. So did Mr. Modu, who was frequently the first professional photojournalist his subjects encountered.“My focus coming up,” Mr. Modu told BBC Africa in 2018, “was to make sure someone from the hip-hop community was the one responsible for documenting hip-hop artists.”His photos appeared on the cover of over 30 issues of the magazine. He also photographed the cover of Mobb Deep’s breakthrough 1995 album, “The Infamous…,” and “Doggystyle,” the 1993 debut album from Snoop Doggy Dogg (now Snoop Dogg), as well as Bad Boy Records’ “B.I.G. Mack” promotional campaign, which introduced the rappers the Notorious B.I.G. and Craig Mack.“We were pretty primitive in our look at that time, and we needed someone like him,” Jonathan Shecter, one of the founders of The Source, said.Mr. Modu’s personality, he added, was “super cool, no stress, no pressure. He’d just be a cool dude hanging out with the crew. A lot of rappers felt he was someone they could hang around with.”Mr. Modu’s signature approach was crisp and intimate — he rendered his subjects as heroes, but with an up-close humility. As that generation of emerging stars was learning how to present themselves visually, he helped refine their images. (He had a special rapport with Tupac Shakur, which spanned several years and shoots.)“When you bring that high level of skill to an arena that didn’t have a high level of skill, you can actually create really important work,” he told Pulse, a Nigerian publication, in 2018.For Mobb Deep’s album cover, he scheduled time in a photo studio, which yielded the indelibly ice-cold cover portrait of the duo. “A huge part of our success was that cover — he captured a vibe that encapsulated the album,” Mobb Deep’s Havoc said. “To see a young Black brother taking photos of that nature was inspiring.”But Mr. Modu also spent a day with the duo in Queensbridge, the neighborhood they hailed from, taking photos of them on the subway, by the Queensboro Bridge, on the roof of the housing project building Havoc lived in. “Twenty-five years later they feel almost more important,” Havoc said. “They give you a window into that time.”Mr. Modu in 2011 with his fellow hip-hop photographer Ricky Powell, who also died this year.Brian Ach/Getty ImagesIn addition to being a nimble photographer — sometimes he shot his images on slide film, with its low margin for error — Mr. Modu was a deft amateur psychologist. “He could flow from New York to Los Angeles and go into every ’hood. There was never a problem, never an issue,” Mr. Shecter said. His wife remembered Mr. Modu leaving a Jamaican vacation to photograph Mike Tyson, only to arrive and learn Mr. Tyson didn’t want to shoot; by the end of the day, via charm and cajoling, Mr. Modu had his shots.Mr. Modu was also a careful student of the dynamic balance between photographer and subject — the celebrity was the raison d’être for the shoot, but the photographer was the shaper of the image. “The reason I am able to take control is that I am here trying to help you go where you are trying to go,” Mr. Modu told Pulse. “I’m on your team. I’m the one looking at you. You may think you are cool but I have to see you as cool to press my shutter.”Jonathan Mannion, a friend of Mr. Modu’s and a hip-hop portraitist of the following generation, said Mr. Modu played a crucial role in establishing the presence of sophisticated photography in hip-hop. “He kicked a lot of doors off their hinges for us to walk through,” Mr. Mannion said.Christopher Chijioke Modu was born on July 7, 1966, in Arondizuogu, Nigeria, to Christopher and Clarice Modu. His father was a measurement statistician, and his mother worked in accounting and computer systems processing. His family emigrated to the United States in 1969, during the Biafran war.His parents later returned to Nigeria, but Mr. Modu stayed behind and graduated from the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and received a bachelor’s degree in agribusiness economics from Rutgers University’s Cook College in 1989. He began taking photographs in college — using a camera bought for him as a birthday gift by Sophia Smith, whom he began dating in 1986 and would marry in 2008 — and received a certificate in photojournalism and documentary photography from the International Center of Photography in 1992.Getty ImagesHe shot for The Amsterdam News, the Harlem-based newspaper, and became a staff photographer at The Source in 1992 and later the magazine’s director of photography.After leaving The Source, he consulted on diversity initiatives for advertising and marketing companies and was a founder of a photo sharing website. And he continued to take photos around the world, capturing life in Yemen, Morocco, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and elsewhere.Is addition to his wife, Mr. Modu, who lived in Jersey City, is survived by his mother; three sisters, Ijeoma, Anaezi and Enechi; a brother, Emmanuel; and a son and daughter. In the early 2010s, Mr. Modu began efforts to reignite interest in his 1990s hip-hop photography, initially by partnering with a New York billboard company to display his work.“He felt there were certain gatekeepers, especially in the art world,” Ms. Modu said. “He always said the people are the ones that appreciate the art and want the art that he had. And with the billboard thing, he was taking the art to the people.”The billboard project, called “Uncategorized,” led to exhibitions in several cities around the world. In 2014 he had a solo show at the Pori Art Museum in Finland. In 2016 he released “Tupac Shakur: Uncategorized,” a book compiling photographs from multiple shoots with the rapper.Working in an era when the conditions of celebrity photo shoots were far less constrained than they are now, he retained the rights to his photographs. He sold posters and prints of his work, and licensed his photos for collaborations with apparel and action-sports companies. Last year, some of his photos were included in Sotheby’s first hip-hop auction.Years after his hip-hop picture-taking heyday, Mr. Modu still left an impression on his subjects. DJ Premier of Gang Starr — a duo Mr. Modu photographed for the cover of The Source in 1994 — recalled taking part in a European tour of hip-hop veterans in 2019. During a stop in Berlin, he heard from Mr. Modu, who was in town, and arranged backstage passes for him.When Mr. Modu arrived, he approached a room where the members of the Wu-Tang Clan were all gathered. DJ Premier recalled the rapturous reception: “As soon as he walked it in, it was almost like a cheer — ‘Chiiiiiiiiiiiiii!’” More

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      John Davis, a Voice Behind Milli Vanilli, Dies at 66

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      The singer was one of the voices behind the pop duo Milli Vanilli, fronted by Fabrice Morvan and Rob Pilatus, who later admitted that they did not sing on their albums or in concert.This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.John Davis, one of the real voices behind the lip-syncing duo Milli Vanilli, died in Nuremberg, Germany, on Monday. He was 66.His daughter, Jasmin Davis, who confirmed the news of his death on Facebook, said he had Covid-19.While living in Germany, Mr. Davis started unknowingly singing for Milli Vanilli in the 1980s after he met Frank Farian, a German music producer. Mr. Farian asked Mr. Davis to work on a project, but he did not disclose that his voice would be used for others to lip-sync, Mr. Davis told The Hustle podcast on an episode posted in April.Only later would he discover that his voice was being used by Fabrice Morvan, one-half of the pop duo Milli Vanilli, with Rob Pilatus.“The truth is, I signed a contract with Frank Farian before I even knew who Milli Vanilli was,” Mr. Davis said. “One evening, I was sitting at home watching my TV, and I saw Fab singing ‘Girl I’m Gonna Miss You.’”Milli Vanilli was best known for hits like “I’m Gonna Miss You” and “Girl You Know It’s True,” and won the Grammy for best new artist in 1989.By 1990, Milli Vanilli’s work had sold more than seven million copies, but after Mr. Morvan and Mr. Pilatus admitted that they did not actually sing on Milli Vanilli’s albums or in concerts, they were stripped of the award.Mr. Morvan and Mr. Pilatus then told The Los Angeles Times that they wanted to give the award to those who actually voiced their work, including Mr. Davis, Brad Howell and Charles Shaw.“I didn’t want the Grammy because it was their faces and our voices,” Mr. Davis said. “I was mad.”Mr. Pilatus died in 1998, but Mr. Davis and Mr. Morvan later had an amicable relationship and even performed together.On Friday, Mr. Morvan shared a video with pictures of him performing with Mr. Davis.“Your golden voice will continue to be heard, you best believe that those classic records will live just like you eternally,” Mr. Morvan said on Twitter.Additional details about survivors were not immediately available on Saturday.Mr. Davis, who was born on Aug. 31, 1954, in Anderson, S.C., was stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army and stayed there for much of his life, he told The Hustle podcast.In Germany, Mr. Davis found many opportunities to play in Army clubs in the 1970s, he told the podcast.Mr. Davis said he learned how to play music from his father, a choir director who played piano and guitar.“My one mission I had on this earth was to become a musician and to play music,” Mr. Davis said.Those We’ve LostThe coronavirus pandemic has taken an incalculable death toll. This series is designed to put names and faces to the numbers. More

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      J. Cole, Triumphant (at His Own Pace)

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      Of hip-hop’s current superstar elite, no one has had a path to the top as curious or unexpected as J. Cole. A decade ago, he had his eye on becoming one of rap’s biggest stars in the mold of Jay-Z and Nas. But when he found the path to the top riddled with compromises, he peeled off to follow his own happiness, resulting in some of the most popular and successful music of his career. He just released his sixth album, “The Off-Season,” which debuted at the top of the Billboard album chart, just like the five that preceded it.And where is Cole now that he’s No. 1? Playing in the Basketball Africa League, for the Rwanda Patriots. Once more, he is following an unconventional muse, choosing a route that prioritizes internal fulfillment over immediate gain and acclaim.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Cole’s music career, from aspirant to confused victor to triumphant cult hero. Plus, an analysis of his basketball sojourn, and the long and curious exchange between hip-hop and basketball — rappers with hoop dreams and players with rap ambitions alike.Guests:Elena Bergeron, The New York Times’s assistant sports editorYoh Phillips, who writes about music for Complex and others, and a founder of Rap Portraits More