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      When the Cellos Play, the Cows Come Home

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      A collaboration between a cattle farmer and a Danish music training program brings regular recitals to pampered livestock.LUND, Denmark — During a recent performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Pezzo Capriccioso,” a handful of audience members leaned forward attentively, their eyes bright, a few encouraging snuffles escaping from the otherwise hushed parterre. Though relative newcomers to classical music, they seemed closely attuned to the eight cellists onstage, raising their heads abruptly as the piece’s languid strains gave way to rapid-fire bow strokes.When it was over, amid the fervent applause and cries of “bravo,” there could be heard a single, appreciative moo.On Sunday, in Lund, a village about 50 miles south of Copenhagen, a group of elite cellists played two concerts for both some music-loving cows and their human counterparts. The culmination of a collaboration between two local cattle farmers, Mogens and Louise Haugaard, and Jacob Shaw, founder of the nearby Scandinavian Cello School, the concerts were meant to attract some attention to the school and the young musicians in residence there. But to judge by the response of both two- and four-legged attendees, it also demonstrated just how popular an initiative that brings cultural life to rural areas can be.Until a few years ago, Shaw, 32, who was born in Britain, had toured the world as a solo cellist, performing in hallowed venues including Carnegie Hall and the Guangzhou Opera House. When he moved to Stevns (the larger municipality to which Lund belongs) and opened the Scandinavian Cello School, he soon discovered that his neighbors the Haugaards, who raise Hereford cows, were also classical music lovers. In fact Mogens, who is also a former mayor of Stevns, sits on the board of the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra.Left to right: The cattle farmers Mogens and Louise Haugaard, and Jacob Shaw, who founded the Scandinavian Cello School.Carsten Snejbjerg for The New York TimesWhen the cellist, who had toured Japan, told the farmer about how the country’s famously pampered Wagyu cows were raised to produce tender beef, it didn’t take much convincing for Mogens to adopt one component of their upbringing for his own cattle.Beginning in November 2020, a boom box playing Mozart and other classical music in the Haugaard barn has serenaded the cows daily. About once a week, Shaw and any students in residence have come over for a live performance.Although it remains unclear whether their new listening habits have affected the quality of the cows’ meat, the farmer noted that the animals come running whenever the musicians show up, and get as close as possible while they play.“Classical music is very good for humans,” Haugaard said. “It helps us relax, and cows can tell whether we’re relaxed or not. It makes sense that it would make them feel good too.”It’s not always good for the people who perform it, however. Shaw said he founded the Scandinavian Cello School to help fledgling musicians prepare for the less glamorous demands of a professional career in an industry that can sometimes chew up young artists in the constant quest for the next big thing.While touring internationally as a self-managed artist, he found himself exhausted by the grind of negotiating contracts, promoting himself and relentless travel, he said in an interview. That experience — coupled with a stint as a professor at a prestigious music academy in Barcelona — made him realize there was a hole there that needed filling.The Scandinavian Cello School’s students, who come from all over the world to live in a former farmhouse in Stevn, Denmark, are mostly aged between 17 and 25.Carsten Snejbjerg for The New York Times“It’s actually nice playing for cows,” said Johannes Gray. “They really do come over to you. And they have preferences.”Carsten Snejbjerg for The New York Times“Classical music is very good for humans,” Mogens Haugaard said. “It helps us relax, and cows can tell whether we’re relaxed or not. It makes sense that it would make them feel good too.”Carsten Snejbjerg for The New York Times“I kept coming across fantastic young talents who simply weren’t being given the tools to get out there,” said Shaw. They might have excellent teachers to work with them on the music itself, but what was missing was “that extra bit of help,” he said, in the areas like booking concerts, preparing for competitions and handling social media.In its original incarnation, the Scandinavian Cello School was an itinerant organization — more a traveling boot camp than an academy. But in 2018, Shaw and his girlfriend, the violinist Karen Johanne Pedersen, bought a farmhouse in Stevns and turned it into a permanent base for the school. Its students, who come from all over the world and are mostly aged between 17 and 25, stay for short-term residencies at which they hone their musical as well as professional skills — including how to achieve a work-life balance.The location helps with that. Situated less than a half mile from the sea, the school also offers the visiting musicians the opportunity to help out in a vegetable garden, forage in the nearby forest, fish for dinner, or just relax in an area far from the city.That environment is part of what drew Johannes Gray, a 23-year-old American cellist, currently living in Paris, who won the prestigious Pablo Casals International Award in 2018. Gray initially visited the Scandinavian Cello School in 2019, and then returned for in the school’s first post-pandemic intake, attracted by both the career development opportunities and the leisure activities.“Jacob’s been giving me advice on how to create a program and basically package it to make it more interesting,” Gray said. “But we’re also both extreme foodies, and we love cooking, so after a long day of practicing, we can go out and fish, or plan this huge feast. It’s not just about the music.”As much as the musicians benefit from the environment, so this primarily agricultural region profits from the small influx of international artists. The school receives some financial support from local government and businesses. In return, the visiting musicians — seven have come for the current residency — perform at schools and care facilities in the region. And they play for the cows.An audience of 35 humans also attended two concerts by the school’s students on April 25.Carsten Snejbjerg for The New York Times“I hope it’s one of the lessons we take from corona, how much we all — even cows — miss being together,” said Joy Mogensen, Denmark’s culture minister.Carsten Snejbjerg for The New York TimesBecause of coronavirus restrictions, the two concerts on Sunday were held outdoors, and human attendance for each was limited to 35. (Both sold out.) Among the attendees, who had the opportunity to snack on burgers made by a local chef from the Haugaards’ beef, was Denmark’s minister of culture, Joy Mogensen, who noted that this was the first live concert she had attended in six months.“I’ve witnessed a lot of creativity these last months,” she said in an interview. “But digital just isn’t the same. I hope it’s one of the lessons we take from corona, how much we all — even cows — miss being together for cultural events.”Both species in attendance seemed to enjoy themselves. Before the concert, the cows had been scattered across the field, munching grass in the bright sunshine and nursing their newborn calves. But as the musicians, clad in formal wear, took their seats on the hay-strewn stage, and began the dramatic opening bars of the Danish composer Jacob Gade’s “Jalousie (Tango Tzigane),” the cows crowded over to the fence that separated them from the human audience, and jostled for position.After a program including an arrangement of Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody” and a crowd-pleasing encore of Édith Piaf’s “Hymne de l’Amour,” the musicians were as charmed by their livestock listeners as their human ones.“It’s actually nice playing for cows,” said Gray. “We saw it in rehearsal — they really do come over to you. And they have preferences. Did you see how they all left at one point? They’re not really Dvorak fans.”Carsten Snejbjerg for The New York Times More

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      In a Dark Time, This Music Will Make You Smile

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      Three albums by young British composers on the label NMC show a wide-ranging, antic experimentalism.Last fall, when the world was being told to expect a long, dark winter after what had already been a brutal year, I decided to search for some new, bracing orchestral music. It had been months since I’d been walloped by symphonic forces in a live setting. And if it was to be grim times ahead, I wanted at least some music that gestured toward that sense of scale.Thanks to the British label NMC Recordings, I quickly found what I was looking for in the Irish composer Ed Bennett’s “Freefalling,” the opening track from his October release “Psychedelia.”Ten minutes long, it is a testament to truth in titling: a frenetic ride that blends queasy glissandos with rousing exclamations fit for an action-movie montage. That same mixture of experimentalism and show business can be heard elsewhere on the album, like the multi-movement “Song of the Books.” I made a note to check in with NMC more frequently.In the half-year since, the label has continued to put out a string of winning recordings, including, this month, “Nature,” the first full-length collection of orchestral pieces by the English composer Tansy Davies. Like Bennett, Davies isn’t afraid of obvious debts to cinema; some of the high-flown motifs in the first movement of her “What Did We See?” might bring to mind John Williams’s “Star Wars” scores. But the rest of her four-piece suite has its own ruggedly lyrical identity. And the glinting, melodically fragmented Davies piano concerto that gives the album its title is another showstopper.When I heard “Nature” alongside “This Departing Landscape,” a lush February release from the Scottish composer Martin Suckling, it was clear that NMC entered the pandemic with a strong production schedule already in place. While the label has long balanced nurturing young (sometimes very young) talent with serving as a kind of house label for Britain’s established avant-garde, this recent spate of recordings has been noticeably light on veteran names. (Bennett and Davies are in their 40s; Suckling turns 40 later this year.)A sense of patient, spectral unease is alive in Suckling’s second track, “Release,” which sounds as if it’s incorporated some lessons from the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg.The liner notes for “This Departing Landscape” include an encomium from one the British scene’s elders, Julian Anderson. Anderson observes that Suckling has studied with the American composer Martin Bresnick, as well as with George Benjamin, who is British, but that his output resembles the work of none of his teachers.When praising Suckling’s “bewilderingly diverse” Piano Concerto, Anderson asks, “How can the hyperactive polyrhythms of the opening part belong in the same climate as the vast landscape of the central slow movement, or as the complex deployment of extended instrumental techniques in movement four?”His short answer to his own question is that this music is “rich, generous, exuberant and positive,” and that the “power of the contrasts” seems persuasive, even on a first listen.Suckling’s worldliness helps make those contrasts possible. In a recent interview for the website Presto Classical, he highlighted his interest in Morton Feldman (1926-87), whose meditative sensibility also informs contemporary American composers like Tyshawn Sorey. Discussing Feldman’s extraordinarily long later works, Suckling has said that “there’s a hugely touching intimacy in spite of the scale.” He’s after something similar in his Piano Concerto, underneath all that whirling variation.There are likewise diverse references in the works of the other younger composers on the NMC roster. Davies made her name with chamber works featuring funk-forward bouquets, including “Neon.” She has also described her “Grind Show” as “a superimposition of two scenes: the foreground in a bawdy dance hall, and the background a rainy landscape at night.”If this eclecticism feels familiar in British contemporary music, that’s perhaps thanks to composer Thomas Adès, 50, who made use of a four-to-the-floor techno rhythm in the third movement of “Asyla” (1997). His taste runs to antic juxtapositions like embedding a lullaby within the otherwise hyper-complicated score of his opera “The Exterminating Angel.”Younger artists have taken this as a kind of permission slip and run with it. Another artist with an April release on NMC makes his debt to multiple traditions clear. In Alex Paxton’s notes for his new album “Music for Bosch People,” he puts it this way: “minimal but loads more notes like video-games but with more song like jazz but much more gay like old music but more current like yummy sweet.” (It goes on like that for a while.)This is much more manic than Suckling’s music; it sounds like something that might come out on John Zorn’s Tzadik label. (As it happens, Paxton has been commissioned to write an essay for Zorn’s ongoing “Arcana” book series.) But Suckling is a supporter of Paxton’s contrast-heavy sound world, recently writing on Twitter, “This is the most joyous sound I’ve heard in ages!”However the alchemy is being achieved, the results currently coming out of the NMC laboratory are a boon for listeners. As pandemic restrictions (eventually) recede, and as American orchestras think about contemporary programming, they might follow the lead of some scattered groups like the Lost Dog New Music Ensemble in Queens, and begin bringing some of these composers’s large-ensemble works across the Atlantic. More

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      Tiffany Haddish Walks Away From One-Sided Love in Ty Dolla $ign's 'By Yourself' Remix Video

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      [embedded content]

      In the music video, the ‘Girls Trip’ actress joins the ‘Paranoid’ rapper to celebrate her freedom after not getting any love in return from her male love interest.

      Apr 29, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Tiffany Haddish has starred in a music video for Ty Dolla $Ign’s “By Yourself” remix featuring Jhene Aiko, Bryson Tiller and Mustard. In the visual of the track released on Wednesday, April 28, the “Girls Trip” actress portrays a woman who walks away from a one-sided relationship.

      Co-directed by the 39-year-old rapper and Alex Bittan, the music video starts with the sound of Tiffany’s angry voicemail that she sends to her selfish partner. Soon after leaving her partner, the comedienne joins the MC as she celebrates her freedom by dancing in front of a car.

      Jhene and Bryson both make appearances in the video as they rap their parts. In the third verse, Jhene spits, “Yeah, you know I do this s**t on my own/ Pockets long, I’m so grown, I’m so godly/ Even when alone, I’m never lonely/ Only call him up when I am horny/ Yeah, I’m that b***h and I know it (And I know it).”

      “And I don’t even need nobody else to notice/ I be ridin’ through the hood bumpin’ my own s**t/ Headed to the crib right by the ocean,” she goes on rhyming. “Yeah, I did it, I did it, I do it all by myself, yeah/ I get it, I get it, don’t need nobody else, ooh, woah.”

        See also…

      The footage ends with jump cuts between Ty, Bryan and Jhene spitting the last line, “You don’t need a man, you do it by yourself.” Tiffany, meanwhile, still gets her groove on as she flashes a wide smile to the camera.

      Produced by Mustard, “By Yourself” was one of the singles from Ty’s third album “Featuring Ty Dolla Sign”. The album itself featured guest appearances from Kanye West, Post Malone, Quavo, Nicki Minaj, Kid Cudi, Thundercat, Big Sean, Roddy Ricch, Kehlani, Future, Young Thug, Gunna and others.

      The remix version of “By Yourself” was originally dropped in mid-March. Announcing the release on Instagram at that time, Ty declared, “Remix out now!! @brysontiller @jheneaiko @mustard you did it by yourself !! featuringtydollasign.”

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      10 Classical Concerts to Stream in May

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      A fast-rising young conductor, a 90th birthday celebration and a starry trio are among the highlights.With in-person performances not yet quite widespread, here are 10 highlights from the flood of online music content coming in May. (Times listed are Eastern.)Diderot String QuartetMay 2 at 4 p.m.; mb1800.org; available through July 15.The invaluable New York concert series Music Before 1800 is back with a series of streams, including this period-instrument group’s program of music written for the court of Catherine the Great. One of the pieces may well be familiar: Haydn’s Quartet in E flat, “the Joke.” The other will be a rarity, by Anton Ferdinand Titz. (The harpsichordist Aya Hamada’s recital follows on May 23.) ZACHARY WOOLFEKarl LarsonMay 6 at 8 p.m.; roulette.org; available indefinitely.Roulette, in Brooklyn, one of the best places to hear music in New York, is allowing limited audiences into its space for performances this spring. But those shows will still be livestreamed, too. No matter how you attend, any gig featuring Karl Larson, known as the pianist of the trio Bearthoven, is worth it. Here, he celebrates “Dark Days,” his new solo recording of music by Scott Wollschleger. Wollschleger’s generally soft dynamics may lull you into thinking he’s primarily meditative, but part of the fun involves staying alert for the alterations of attack and twists of mood that Larson highlights. SETH COLTER WALLSPhiladelphia OrchestraMay 6 at 8 p.m.; philorch.org; available through May 13.This program, led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and featuring the bass-baritone Davóne Tines, opens with a triptych. First is the propulsive “Shake the Heavens,” from John Adams’s “El Niño,” followed by “Vigil,” a subdued and affecting song in memory of Breonna Taylor, by Igee Dieudonné and Tines. (You can stream that now, from Lincoln Center at Home.) Then Tines gives a preview of Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” which he will star in at Michigan Opera Theater next year. The second half of the concert features Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G minor, which fans of “Amadeus” will recognize immediately. JOSHUA BARONESusanna Malkki will conduct the Berlin Philharmonic in a streamed concert starting May 22.Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times92nd Street YMay 11 at 7:30 p.m.; 92y.org; available through May 18.Schubert’s “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen” (“The Shepherd on the Rock”), thought to be the last of his 600 songs, is an extraordinary piece for soprano, clarinet and piano. Susanna Phillips, a frequent presence at the Metropolitan Opera, will sing it in a recital livestreamed by the 92nd Street Y, joined by the clarinetist Anthony McGill and the pianist Myra Huang. The program also includes a premiere by James Lee III — a setting of a poem by Lou Ella Hickman written for this trio combination — a work by William Grant Still and Schubert’s popular “Arpeggione” Sonata, here adapted for clarinet and piano. ANTHONY TOMMASINIAlvin Lucier at 90May 13 at 8 p.m. through May 14 at midnight; issueprojectroom.org; available indefinitely.For the 90th birthday of this experimental-music icon, over seven dozen colleagues will join him for 28 hours of performances of “I Am Sitting in a Room,” his signature work, from 1969. The piece consists of a few sentences that are recorded as they’re spoken; the recording is then played and rerecorded, and the process continues as the clashing frequencies of the different recordings begin to dominate and the words become unintelligible. After a year of isolation, what could be a more poignant artistic celebration? ZACHARY WOOLFEConcertgebouw OrchestraMay 14 at 2 p.m.; concertgebouworkest.nl; available through May 21.The coronavirus pandemic has upended the orchestral world, including separating ensembles from their music directors, sometimes by thousands of miles. This has provided an opportunity for conductors closer to home to fill in, sometimes even multiple times. It’s a slightly different situation with this superb Amsterdam orchestra, which has been searching for a new podium leader for the past few years — but the opportunity is still there. After making his debut in September, Klaus Makela, a 25-year-old Finn recently appointed music director of the Orchestre de Paris, returned to the Concertgebouw in December and will now be back yet again, an almost unthinkable frequency in normal times. His program includes Messiaen’s “Les Offrandes Oubliées” and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, with its grandly brooding opening. ZACHARY WOOLFEA concert by the cellist Seth Parker Woods, second from right, will stream starting May 25.James Holt/Seattle SymphonyJoshua Bell, Steven Isserlis and Evgeny KissinMay 21 at 8 p.m.; washingtonperformingarts.org; available through May 27.When three star performers come together, it is often the occasion for canonical standards. This violin-cello-piano recital, though, goes a more idiosyncratic route, attempting to evoke Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the world wars. Works by Solomon Rosowsky and Ernest Bloch conjure that scene, as will Kissin’s recitation of Yiddish poetry. Then the cataclysm of the Holocaust will be represented by Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2, written in 1944. ZACHARY WOOLFE‘Albert Herring’May 22 at 1 a.m.; mnopera.org; available through June 5.Britten’s chamber opera “Albert Herring” is like a wistfully comic alternative to his “Peter Grimes”; it’s the story of an awkward, shy, innocent boy who doesn’t fit in with the expectations of the people in his small market town in England, but goes on to be improbably crowned the town’s May King. This Minnesota Opera production, directed by Doug Scholz-Carlson, features the tenor David Portillo as Albert, with the insightful conductor Jane Glover leading Britten’s subtly complex, whimsical score. ANTHONY TOMMASINIBerlin PhilharmonicMay 22 at 1 p.m.; digitalconcerthall.com; available indefinitely.What will come of the premieres that were canceled during the pandemic? Thankfully, two by the composer Kaija Saariaho are happening sooner rather than later. The Aix Festival in France is planning to present her new opera “Innocence” in July, conducted by Susanna Malkki. And the Berlin Philharmonic is livestreaming the belated premiere of Saariaho’s 25-minute “Vista” — also led by Malkki, to whom the piece is dedicated. Filling out the program is “Bluebeard’s Castle,” the chilling Bartok one-act, of which Malkki recently released a wonderfully textured recording with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. JOSHUA BARONESeth Parker WoodsMay 25 at 7 p.m.; kaufmanmusiccenter.org; available through June 1.This cellist burst onto the scene with a 2016 recording that featured his stellar acoustic playing, often in works that also incorporated electronics. He’ll play one of those pieces — Pierre Alexandre Tremblay’s “asinglewordisnotenough3 (invariant)” — in this virtual concert for the Ecstatic Music series. The rest of the program, including a composition by Nathalie Joachim, emerges from Woods’s solo show, “Difficult Grace,” inspired in part by the Great Migration. SETH COLTER WALLS More

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      The Renaissance’s Most Influential Composer, 500 Years Later

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      Centuries after his death, Josquin des Prez’s achievements as a musical “magician-mathematician” remain stunning.For the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, the classical music field pulled out all the stops last year, even in the midst of pandemic performance cancellations around the world. But while 2021 brings its own significant anniversary — in August it will be 500 years since the death of Josquin des Prez, the most influential composer of his age — few listeners will know it.At the center of his body of work are 18 grand, unaccompanied choral masses — exactly the kind of music that will be largely forbidden for some time yet for fear of aerosol transmission of the virus. Those masses are the major legacy of the man Peter Phillips, the founder and director of the renowned vocal ensemble the Tallis Scholars, called a “magician-mathematician” in a recent interview.Josquin indeed wedded the logic of math to the magic of melody, and his compositions feel like they unfold with both perfect clarity and atmospheric strangeness. Shining and austere, with the gentle radiance of a shaft of sunlight beaming through a window, Josquin’s music weeded out extraneous, extravagant ornamentation; he created textures of polyphonic complexity that are still smooth and free.His works feel unified because they are organized around small melodic fragments that gradually develop as they are passed from voice to voice. This might seem like a description of, well, all music. But the notion of carrying a melodic “cell” through a whole work was unknown before Josquin’s time, and he was one of the most gifted experimenters with the concept.Josquin des Prez, who died 500 years ago, was the first celebrity composer, and the first to be known widely through printed scores.Fine Art Images/Heritage Images, via Getty ImagesHe was also one of the first celebrity composers, and one of the first to be known by the wide dissemination of his scores — possible because of the newly developed technology of printing. The earliest surviving print of music by a single composer is a book of Josquin’s masses made in Venice in 1502.Little is known of his birth, which took place around the middle of the 15th century, somewhere near the modern-day border between France and Belgium. He eventually rose as a singer and composer, and by the late 1480s had made his way to Italy, where he worked for the Sforza family, formed his mature style and was for a period a member of the papal choir. (His only known signature is carved into the wood of the Sistine Chapel’s choir loft.)To discuss Josquin and his significance, Phillips, who has recorded a full cycle of the masses with the Tallis Scholars and will lead them in performing those works this summer at the Boulez Saal in Berlin, joined the composer Nico Muhly, whose work is deeply informed by the choral music of the Renaissance. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Part of Josquin’s “Missa Pange Lingua,” one of the 18 unaccompanied choral masses that are at the center of his achievement.Fine Art Images/Heritage Images, via Getty ImagesNICO MUHLY If someone asked you in the street, “Oh, you’re Peter Phillips, I’ve always wondered who Josquin is,” what’s your answer?PETER PHILLIPS He was the first superstar in the history of music. He was the first composer who was desired financially and artistically in the big places of the world at that time. He charged a lot, but people wanted him because he was the guy who had the reputation.And the reason for that was, he mastered all the techniques of his time, turned them into something better, and then passed them on to the next generation of composers, who were all influenced by him. It’s like Beethoven.MUHLY Was his stardom maintained for the last 500 years? Or did he go into obscurity before being rediscovered? I sang him as a boy chorister, but it was random motets scattered throughout the year, and he felt like more of a niche composer than a meat-and-potatoes figure.PHILLIPS He never completely disappeared. And he was extremely famous for the hundred years after he died. Nineteen years after his death, somebody said that Josquin had written more music since he died than while he was still alive, the point being that everyone claimed his music was theirs.One of the most surprising things I discovered recently is that on the Albert Memorial in London, opposite the Royal Albert Hall, there is a stone gallery of famous composers, the ones that a committee of English gentlemen in 1863 thought worth remembering. There are about 20 of them, and Josquin is there, next to Rossini. Schubert is not.MUHLY What does it mean if a composer, like Josquin, sets the exact same text 30 times over and over again? Because I write a lot of choral music, I’ve done almost a dozen settings of the Magnificat, but in the more traditional parts of contemporary music, you’re kind of encouraged, if not expected, to be in a state of constant innovation.PHILLIPS Well, that’s a very Romantic, 19th-century approach. We have to go back to what it was like in the 15th century. The words of the mass were extremely well known and Josquin set them 18 times; you can’t expect anyone to make much of every single word, every time, that often. And he didn’t; he took the words pretty well for granted.Modern performers find that terribly hard to accept. They think they’re missing out on the one absolutely crucial thing they ought to be concentrating on — the words — when what they really ought to be concentrating on is making a good sound, so the music can come alive as music. They shouldn’t spend hours discussing the meaning of “Kyrie eleison.” In the 15th century, everyone knew what that meant.MUHLY Something that compositionally I find so exciting about Josquin is that he is obsessively repetitive. Compared to other music of that time and in the centuries afterward, he doesn’t take a bit of music and then unspool it into this bigger thing that gets more and more ornate. It actually kind of curves back around itself, the exact same things happening.PHILLIPS There are a lot of passages where he keeps going back to the same note. And as you say, the music doesn’t seem to advance; it just goes around. And it’s sort of a fascinating circle. He keeps hitting that note. The Amen of the Creed of the “Missa Faysant Regretz” is where he goes constantly, so constantly, back to a D, that one gets completely mesmerized by it. I mean, you become sort of crazy.MUHLY I wonder if you could talk about what it means to have an entire body of work that’s based on previous ideas. Josquin was constantly referencing existing tunes — which, again, in the modern sense would register as being not particularly innovative.PHILLIPS There are various levels of taking an old thing and turning it into something new. My guess is that he was keen to show he could master all the techniques that were in currency when he started and take them to a higher level. One typically show-off example of this is in the Hosanna of the “Missa Mater Patris.” He takes a motif of five notes from his model, and proceeds to quote it in every measure of the final composition — 46 of them, at every modal pitch available to him. This sounds incredibly modern, even jazzy, and it’s terrific fun to sing.MUHLY Sometimes the original tune is, like, buried inside. So it’s less about transformation, and more about embedding, and kind of baking things into the cake.PHILLIPS He did take some very good tunes, that’s the first thing. So, in addition to his own good tunes, he was basing his music on very good past material. But then he felt it was his job to disguise the borrowing — embedding the original material in the counterpoint, which can make it quite hard or even impossible to hear. And sometimes he elongates the note lengths so, again, you can’t really follow them. And sometimes he writes wacky canons so that the material gets all jumbled up. I mean, he’s a mathematician at heart. A magician-mathematician.MUHLY We’re used to thinking about music of that time as being kind of austere and impenetrable. But you just peel one layer back and an enormous, enormous wealth of math turns into emotion.PHILLIPS And the mathematics produces atmosphere. I could go on about atmosphere, because I’ve done all these 18 masses, and they all have a different atmosphere. And it’s done not by expressing the text, which remains the same, but by very clever, purely musical means with the voices, how they interact and create mood. Perhaps the most perfect example of this is in the last movement of the “Missa L’Homme Armé Sexti Toni,” where three canons overlap — one involving the “Armed Man” melody. But forget the math, and enjoy the atmosphere all that cleverness creates.MUHLY Oftentimes people ask me, “Why do you write sacred music?” And the answer that I give is that it’s atmosphere, and that sacred music can and should be like sacred architecture, where it’s a space in which you are encouraged to look upward.PHILLIPS If you just close your eyes and let it come to you, without any preconceptions, you stop fussing about the mathematics; they’re in there, but they do their work subliminally. When Josquin is writing a clever canon or whatever, and he’s writing the tune inside out, or upside down; that’s my favorite, when the tune comes upside down — no one can possibly hear it. But somehow you sense it.MUHLY You can’t hear it, but I feel it’s like when you walk into a church, you can tell if someone has really thought about the structure in a very intense way, where the proportions are just so.Something that’s so great about the Tallis Scholars is that your technical commitment to the music of that time really shows both in the foreground and the background. You can tell that everyone singing is aware of what technical stuff is going on, and aware enough to almost forget it and make music confident in that hidden knowledge.PHILLIPS I’ve found it doesn’t need spoofing up. It doesn’t need to be sold. Just do it simply, straightforwardly, without dressing it up. No candles, no funny costumes. And let the composer speak directly. You don’t need anything else. You really don’t.MUHLY I’m not a big fan of gossiping about the dead, but I’m wondering if you could talk about Josquin as a kind of a competitive composer?PHILLIPS I think he was very keen to show off when he wanted to. He was the sort of personality who needed to say, “Look, I’m better than you. I’m the greatest.” The reports say he was a difficult man, but these days I feel we’ve rather come to admire difficult, outrageously talented people.He was compared with Heinrich Isaac, who was also a great composer of that period, but not quite as famous as Josquin. And one story has someone saying that you want to employ Isaac because he will write when you want him to — whereas Josquin will only write when he wants to, and costs twice as much. More

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      DJ Khaled Gushes Jay-Z and Nas 'Blessed' His New Album With Their Collaboration

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      Instagram

      Unveiling the star-studded tracklist of his upcoming studio album ‘Khaled Khaled’, the ‘I’m the One’ hitmaker brags about ‘making history’ by reuniting two of the biggest hip-hop stars for his record.

      Apr 29, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      DJ Khaled is reuniting Jay-Z and Nas for his new album. The We the Best Music Group founder has unveiled the tracklist for his upcoming twelfth studio album titled “Khaled Khaled”, which will include a collaboration between Jay-Z and Nas.

      Teasing fans, the 45-year-old shared on his Instagram page on Wednesday, April 28 a preview of the song titled “Sorry Not Sorry”. He wrote in the caption, “DJ Khaled feat. Nas, JAY-Z & James Fauntleroy and Harmonies by The Hive.”

      In the snippet, Fauntleroy shows his smooth vocal as he sings in the chorus, “Sorry, not sorry/ Don’t mind me, I’m livin’ a dream, livin’ a dream, yeah/ Came from nothing/ Whoever thought that we would be/ Livin’ a dream, livin’ a dream?”

      It’s unclear if the clip is taken from a cut of a supposed music video for the song, but it shows Khaled, Jay-Z and Nas all suiting up while sitting in a table with the backdrop of what looks like a casino.

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      Khaled went on sharing in the accompanying caption, “JAY-Z said: Khaled GOD LOVE YOU. I said: I LOVE GOD! GOD BLESSED MY ALBUM. MY FAMILY BLESSED MY ALBUM. JAY-Z BLESS MY ALBUM. NAS BLESSED MY ALBUM. THE HIVE BLESSED MY ALBUM. #KHALEDKHALED THIS FRIDAY APRIL 30 TH !” He further gushed, “WE MAKING HISTORY! THEY SAID IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE SO GOD MADE POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

      Jay-Z and Nas previously worked together on Nas’ track “Black Republicans” (2006), Jay-Z’s “American Gangster” song “Success” (2007) and Ludacris’ “I Do It for Hip Hop” (2008).

      Khaled’s star-studded album also features guest appearances from DaBaby, Lil Baby, Lil Durk, Lil Wayne, Post Malone, Megan Thee Stallion, Justin Bieber, H.E.R., Justin Timberlake and many more. Of Bieber and Timberlake’s involvement in the album, he said, “My brothers I’m gonna call you back! @justinbieber I just got done with the mix a few days ago and @jtimberlake I just sent the record we did together of to mix.”

      The Canadian pop star will appear on the track “Just Be”, while the former NSYNC member will assist Khaled on “Let It Go”.

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      Tiffany Haddish Walks Away From One-Sided Love in Ty Dolla $ign’s ‘By Yourself’ Remix Video

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      Lana Del Rey Clowned Over Bad Album Cover

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      WENN/Avalon

      When announcing the release date for her new album ‘Blue Banisters’, the ‘Born to Die’ singer posts the cover art that features a heavily-edited version of her previously-released selfie.

      Apr 29, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Lana Del Rey may be a great musician, but her fans are questioning her sense of graphic art. The six-time Grammy nominated artist has become the butt of a joke after unveiling the cover of her upcoming new album.

      On Tuesday, April 27, the “Blue Jeans” hitmaker made use of her Instagram account to announce that her new album titled “Blue Bannisters” will be released on July 4. Along with it, she shared the cover art, which is a heavily-edited version of her selfie which she previously posted in August 2020.

      The cover art features her photo with a sepia-toned filter and inelegant white frame. Her freckles are on full display and her frizzy hair stands out as the album’s title is written in a curly blue font at the bottom of the image.

        See also…

      The apparent amateur level of the image has led people to dub it a “PicsArt cover,” as Lana herself has been accused of being a PicsArt enthusiast in the past. PicsArt is a photo-editing app that is known for its amateur-friendly features, simple effects and cutesy stickers.

      Due to the questionable aesthetic of the album cover, fans quickly took to Twitter to post their reactions, making the word “picsart” trending on the blue bird app. “YOU GUYS REALLY DONT LIKE THAT ALBUM LMFAO NOW PICSART IS TRENDING..,” one person pointed out.

      A disappointed fan admitted, “it’s so tiring being a lana stan these days i cannot keep defending her. the picsart cover…” Another posted a meme of “lana del rey logging into picsart to make her new cover art.”

      Some even went as far as creating an online petition to “ban Lana from PicsArt.” The petition creator wrote, “Lana had terrorized [us] just way too long with these edits, we need to stop her. Sign this for a future of quality album covers from Lana again.”

      The petition has gained over 3,000 signatures out of its goal of 5,000. One person who signed the petition wrote, “I’m signing because I’m a proud Lana stan, she is my religion, the almighty queen of cocaine and Coney island. But the cover for Blue Banisters is the ugliest thing I’ve seen her make.”

      “The Lana subreddit has better fan-made covers,” another claimed. Someone else demanded that Lana remove the bad cover, writing, “Lana baby if ur reading this we love you but these god awful album covers need to cease.”

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      Paul Kellogg, New York City Opera Impresario, Dies at 84

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      He had no opera experience when he was chosen to run the Glimmerglass Opera in upstate New York; 17 years later, he took on City Opera during a difficult period.Paul Kellogg, an innovative impresario who led the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, N.Y., and later, during a dynamic and financially precarious period, also led the New York City Opera, died on Wednesday at a hospital in Cooperstown. He was 84.His death was announced by the Glimmerglass Festival, as the company is now called. No cause was given.Mr. Kellogg was living on the outskirts of Cooperstown and trying to write a novel when in 1979 he was the unexpected choice to become the executive manager of the four-year-old Glimmerglass Opera, which presented productions in the cramped, acoustically dry auditorium of Cooperstown High School. Though an opera lover, he had no real training in music and scant managerial experience. Yet he immediately envisioned what this fledgling summer festival could become.“A summer festival is not only what it does artistically, it’s what it provides people in the way of a full experience,” he said in a 1993 interview with The Christian Science Monitor.He courted local patrons and found support to boost the programming from one or two productions every summer to, eventually, four. He took on increasing executive and artistic leadership as his title expanded over the years. From the start, along with staples, he presented unusual fare like Bernstein’s “Trouble in Tahiti” and Mozart’s “The Impresario.” Believing in opera as a form of engrossing contemporary theater, he engaged important directors, including Jonathan Miller, Mark Lamos, Leon Major, Martha Clarke and Simon Callow.Most important, he oversaw the construction of a near-ideal house: the acoustically vibrant 914-seat Alice Busch Opera Theater, which opened in 1987 and boasted a large stage, ample backstage area and a proper orchestra pit. The theater, designed by the architect Hugh Handy, was perched in the middle of 43 acres of former farmland near Otsego Lake, about eight miles north of Cooperstown. And the side walls had screens that let the breeze inside, though sliding wood panels were closed over them when the music started. The bucolic setting and the splendid house became a magnet for audiences.Mr. Kellogg oversaw the construction of an intimate, welcoming opera theater in Cooperstown, N.Y., for Glimmerglass’s summer seasons.via GlimmerglassIn a surprising move, the New York City Opera in 1996 announced that Mr. Kellogg would become its general and artistic director — succeeding Christopher Keene, a beloved conductor, who had died the previous year — while remaining with Glimmerglass.The companies were very different operations. At Glimmerglass, which was essentially a nonunion house that relied heavily on interns, the budget for four productions during the 1995 season was about $3.5 million. City Opera during the 1995-96 season was presenting 114 performances of 15 productions, on a budget of about $24 million.Mr. Kellogg made the companies creative partners. New productions were introduced at Glimmerglass, where rehearsals took place in festival conditions, and then later presented at City Opera with the same or similar casts. Both institutions had demonstrated commitment to innovative contemporary productions, offbeat repertory and overlooked 20th-century works, and both had cultivated emerging singers who, while they might not have been stars, had fresh voices and often looked like the youthful characters they portrayed.From left, Nancy Allen Lundy, Anthony Dean Griffey and Rod Nelman in a scene from Carlisle Floyd’s “Of Mice and Men” at City Opera in 2003.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFor a while City Opera prospered under this arrangement. Mr. Kellogg presented 62 new productions there, about half of which had originated in Cooperstown. Among them were Carlisle Floyd’s “Of Mice and Men,” with the tenor Anthony Dean Griffey in a career-making performance as the slow-witted Lennie, and the director Francesca Zambello’s compellingly updated, emotionally penetrating staging of Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride,” starring Christine Goerke in the title role.Still, City Opera was encumbered by the spotty, dull acoustics of the 2,700-seat New York State Theater (now the David H. Koch Theater), which had been designed to meet the needs of the New York City Ballet. In 1999 Mr. Kellogg, in a controversial move, announced that a subtle sound enhancement system was being installed at the theater to enliven the acoustics.Opera was an art form that had gloried in natural voices for centuries, and many felt the company had started down a slippery slope. Even Beverly Sills, once City Opera’s greatest star and a former general director, went public with her dismay.Mr. Kellogg, like City Opera leaders before him, argued that the house was not a second-tier company in the shadow of the Metropolitan Opera but a vibrant institution with a distinctive mission and repertory. He came to view relocating to either a renovated or new house as the only way to fulfill that mission.Yet, in explaining the deficiencies of the company’s home to lure financial backing for his dream, he inevitably undermined outreach to audiences: Why should people attend performances in an inadequate opera house?Several plans were considered and abandoned as financially impossible. Mr. Kellogg pledged to keep searching. It was not to be, and in the end, partly because of Mr. Kellogg’s heavy spending, City Opera spiraled into deeper trouble after he stepped down.City Opera’s home, the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, now the David H. Koch Theater. The hall, designed for ballet performances, was not ideally suited to opera.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPaul Edward Kellogg was born in Los Angeles on March 11, 1937. His father, Harold, who had studied singing with the great tenor Jean de Reszke, worked at 20th Century Fox teaching voice projection and diction. His mother, Maxine (Valentine) Kellogg, was an accomplished pianist.After his family moved to Texas in the late 1940s, Paul majored in comparative literature at the University of Texas in Austin, then continued his studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Columbia University in New York. In 1967 he was hired as a French teacher by the Allen-Stevenson School in Manhattan. He went on to become the school’s assistant headmaster.After Mr. Kellogg moved to Cooperstown in 1975, his partner (and later husband), Raymond Han, a noted sculptor and painter, was recruited to work on sets for a few Glimmerglass productions. Mr. Kellogg volunteered to handle props. Company officials came calling in 1979 with a bigger job.Mr. Han died in 2017. Mr. Kellogg leaves no immediate survivors.Under Mr. Kellogg’s leadership, Glimmerglass took its place among the leading summer opera festivals. He started a young-artists program so emerging singers could receive expert coaching and gain experience onstage. Between Glimmerglass and City Opera he had a solid record of fostering news works, among them operas by William Schuman, Stephen Hartke, Robert Beaser, Deborah Drattell and Charles Wuorinen.He made a crucial contribution to the development of new operas through Vox: Showcasing American Composers, an annual program begun in 1999 that presented free readings with top singers and the City Opera orchestra of excerpts from operas that were in progress or unperformed. These invaluable readings led to dozens of premieres elsewhere.But City Opera’s acclaimed work kept draining the budget and punishing the endowment. After widely reported problems with deficits and declining attendance at City Opera during Mr. Kellogg’s final years, he retired from both companies in 2006. City Opera collapsed in 2013. (A new team under the City Opera name has been presenting productions and attempting to resurrect it.) Glimmerglass continues to thrive under the leadership of Ms. Zambello.Mr. Kellogg addressed the audience, with almost every member of the company behind him, on Sept. 15, 2001, the opening of the City Opera season, which had been delayed after the attack on the World Trade Center.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times The defining moment of Mr. Kellogg’s career came just four days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. City Opera had been scheduled to open its fall season on the evening of Sept. 11 with a grim new production of Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman.” At the behest of city officials, the company opened with a matinee performance of the Wagner on the 15th instead.Nervous audience members wondered whether it was even appropriate to be at the opera. Then the curtain rose to reveal a large American flag hanging above the stage and, standing closely together, almost every member of the company: singers in costumes, administrators in business attire, stagehands in dusty jeans and T-shirts, and Mr. Kellogg, in the middle. The performing arts, he said in a quavering voice, have many functions: “catharsis, consolation, shared experience, reaffirmation of civilized values, distraction.” So, he added, “We’re back.” Everyone in the house joined in singing the national anthem. Then Mr. Kellogg, engulfed in hugs, led the City Opera family offstage and the performance began.Suddenly, thoughts of budget deficits, declining patronage and an inadequate house were pushed aside. That performance that day, under that leader, truly mattered. More