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      ‘Follies’ Was My First Broadway Show. 50 Years Later, I Remember It All.

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      On a thrilling trip to New York, a 16-year-old budding critic learned that the insistent optimism of musical theater was a beautiful lie.At long last, I was exactly where I had yearned to be for most of my young life. I had arrived in the holy land, which for me was a show palace in New York City, the world capital of my childhood fantasies. My very first Broadway musical, a form of entertainment I regarded as a religion, was about to begin.Then the lights went down in the cavernous Winter Garden Theater. It got dark, which I had expected. It stayed dark, which I hadn’t. The stage was flooded in shadow, and you had to squint to make out the people on it. Some were tall, spectral beauties from another era in glittering headdresses, and others were as ordinary as my parents, dressed up for a night out. None of them looked happy.The grand orchestral music seemed to be eroding as I listened, like some magnificent sand castle dissolving in the tide, as sweet notes slid into sourness. This was definitely not “Hello, Dolly!” or “Bye Bye Birdie” or “Funny Girl,” whose sunny, exclamation-pointed melodies I knew by heart from the original cast recordings.I didn’t know what had hit me. I certainly didn’t know that it would keep hitting me, in sharp and unexpected fragments of recollection, for the next 50 years.It was the spring of 1971. The show was“Follies,” a title that turned out to refer to both bygone Ziegfeld-style spectacles and the delusions of its main characters. It had a score by a rising composer named Stephen Sondheim and was directed by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett, names that didn’t mean much to me then. The cast included Yvonne De Carlo, Gene Nelson and the divine Alexis Smith, whom I knew from old movies on television.A ghostly showgirl in the original production of “Follies.”Martha Swope, Billy Rose Theatre Division/The New York Public LibrarySince the show was still in previews, there had been no reviews to cue my expectations. And word of mouth hadn’t reached Winston-Salem, N.C., where I was a 16-year-old public high school student.My parents had finally succumbed to my pleas to be taken to Manhattan, where my older sister lived. We were all side-by-side in orchestra seats, and I could feel my mom and dad basking in my excitement.That excitement was tinged with a thrill of illicit betrayal. Yes, “Follies” was undeniably a big Broadway musical, staged with an opulence that would be unthinkable today. But this tale of two unhappy couples, stalked by the ghosts of their younger selves during a showbiz reunion in the ruins of a once stately theater, was telling me that the optimistic promises of the musical comedies I had been weaned on were lies.In a cover story that came out a month later — its pictures would adorn my bedroom walls, along with posters of Humphrey Bogart and Vanessa Redgrave, until I left for college — Time magazine enthusiastically (and accurately) described “Follies” as anti-nostalgic, a modern corrective to the cheery, escapist camp of hit revivals like “No, No Nanette.”Time’s assessment was the opposite of that of the New York Times critics Clive Barnes and Walter Kerr, who didn’t like “Follies” at all. The plot, they wrote, was hackneyed and formulaic. As for the songs, with their homages to styles of showbiz past, Barnes called them a “non-hit parade of pastiche.”I couldn’t disagree about James Goldman’s book, which felt like a rehash of the best sellers about middle-aged disenchantment I borrowed from my parents. (I already suspected that my future was in criticism.) But the songs stuck with me, along with piercing images of aging performers clinging to a waning spotlight. And I had a vague sense that I would be destined to forever recall this odd and majestic show “like a movie in my head that plays and plays,” to borrow from its script.In some ways, “Follies” was a perfect match to my adolescent self. My parents had always encouraged me to understand that old people hadn’t always been old, to look for the layers of what they had been. (I was fascinated by the culture of my grandparents’ generation, which meant that references to Brenda Frazier and “Abie’s Irish Rose” didn’t go over my head.)And part of what I found so affecting about musicals were the differences between their exalted forms and the often ordinary lives they portrayed. (I would restage classic musicals in my head with my friends and family in the leading roles; it made me cry happily.)What I didn’t get then — and couldn’t have as a teenager — was how the music was the very sound of memory. It was the cleverness of Sondheim’s lyrics that attracted me in my youth. I loved quoting their sophisticated rhymes.But the older I got, and the more I listened, the more I appreciated the complexity of the pastiche songs, like “The Story of Lucy and Jessie,” “Broadway Baby” and the torchy “Losing My Mind” (which I confess to having sung, drunk, in a piano bar). These aren’t just facile imitations from another era; they’re inflected with the echoes and distortions of all the years that have passed since. As a memory musical, I came to realize, “Follies” approaches Proustian dimensions.When I hear anything from “Follies” now — or see a new production (I’ve written about seven incarnations for The New York Times) — it’s with the memory of watching that first cast of characters remembering. Every time what I’m listening to sounds deeper and richer, and sadder and funnier. And I recall, with a tightening of my chest, that 16-year-old boy staring at the stage in rapture and bewilderment. More

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      Freddie Redd, Jazz Pianist and Composer, Is Dead at 92

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      He was best known for writing the music for “The Connection,” an Off Broadway play that depicted the lives of heroin-addicted musicians in New York.The pianist Freddie Redd in a scene from the 1961 movie “The Connection.” He composed the music for the play it was based on, which was also used in the film, in addition to appearing in both.Alamy Stock PhotoFreddie Redd, a pianist and composer who released a pair of well-received albums for Blue Note Records in the early 1960s, then spent more than half a century bouncing through different cities as an ambassador of jazz’s golden age, died on March 17 at a care facility in Manhattan. He was 92.His grandson Leslie Clarke said he had died in his sleep, but did not give a cause.Mr. Redd is best known for writing the music for “The Connection” (1959), an Off Broadway play by Jack Gelber that depicted the lives of heroin-addicted musicians in New York, and that two years later became a renowned film directed by Shirley Clarke. Mr. Redd appeared in both.Largely self-taught, Mr. Redd was particularly known for his compositions and for his skill as an accompanist. Even when he was the one soloing, his left hand’s roving chords were often as rich as his right hand’s improvised lines.“The Music From ‘The Connection,’” released in 1960, was Mr. Redd’s first album for Blue Note; it was followed in 1961 by the similarly acclaimed “Shades of Redd,” which featured an all-star band: the alto saxophonist Jackie McLean (who was also in “The Connection”), the tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks, the bassist Paul Chambers and the drummer Louis Hayes.He recorded another album’s worth of material in 1961, but those tapes were shelved after Mr. Redd had a falling-out with one of Blue Note’s founders, Alfred Lion. It was finally released as “Redd’s Blues” in 1988. His studio career slowed down, and by the mid-1960s he had moved to Europe, where for audiences his presence became symbolic of a vanishing halcyon age in small-group jazz.A native New Yorker, Mr. Redd did the inverse of the pilgrimage made by most major jazz musicians: He started his career at the center of the jazz universe, then moved out. And moved, and moved again.From the mid-’60s on, he would spend stretches in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Guadalajara, Baltimore and Carrboro, N.C. In his 80s he returned to New York, where he recorded two albums for the SteepleChase label and spent his final years.Mr. Redd told The New York Times that his peripatetic career had provided him creative satisfaction,  if not always fair pay.“I like to move around,” he said in a 1991 interview. “It’s always refreshing because you don’t know the nuances, the tricks of the new place. Unfortunately, the price I’ve paid for being a maverick is living a lifestyle that hasn’t been particularly supportive. But I don’t have regrets. There’s a lot out there to find out about, and sometimes you can’t do it in a week or a month.”Mr. Redd in performance at Smalls Jazz Club in Manhattan in 2011.Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images/Getty ImagesFreddie Redd Jr. was born in Harlem on May 29, 1928, to Freddie and Helen (Snipes) Redd. His father was a porter who played the piano at home, and his mother was a homemaker. His father died when Freddie was 2, but he left behind the instrument on which Freddie would teach himself to play.In addition to his grandson Mr. Clarke, Mr. Redd is survived by a stepdaughter, Susan Redd; two other grandchildren; and two step-grandchildren. His wife, Valarie (Lyons) Redd, died before him, as did his children, Stephanie Redd and Freddie Redd III.Mr. Redd was drafted into the Army in 1946. He later remembered first hearing bebop while stationed in South Korea, on a record played by a fellow service member. He was hooked.After returning to New York in 1949, he started playing with leaders on the scene like Art Blakey, Gene Ammons, Sonny Rollins and Art Farmer; he recorded his first album, “Freddie Redd Trio,” for Prestige in 1955 and spent time in California performing with Charles Mingus.“During that period, we realized that we were a brotherhood; we were all after the same thing,” Mr. Redd told The Times, remembering his colleagues on the modern jazz scene in the 1950s. “We were drawn to the inspirational aspect of the music. It was a wonderful time.”After being arrested for marijuana possession, he lost his cabaret card, a document issued by law enforcement that was required of anyone performing in nightclubs. Unable to work in clubs, he moved into a loft in Greenwich Village and became part of a scene that included visual artists, poets and other musicians.There Mr. Redd met the actor Garry Goodrow, who had just been cast in “The Connection,” a new play at the Living Theater that put the lives of heroin-addicted musicians on intimate display. That led to an introduction to Mr. Gelber, who hired him to compose the music and perform as a member of the cast.“The Music From ‘The Connection’” was the first of three albums Mr. Redd recorded for Blue Note in the 1960s, although the third was not released until 1988.Blue NoteThough the film version of “The Connection” is now recognized as a classic of indie cinema, its raw and unflinching portrayal came into the cross hairs of censors in the United States, where it was hardly ever screened.A few years later, in one of his few pop studio dates, Mr. Redd was the organist on James Taylor’s debut single, “Carolina in My Mind.”In the liner notes to a Mosaic Records boxed set, “The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Freddie Redd” (1989), Jackie McLean reflected on Mr. Redd’s chimerical career. “You never know what town you’ll see” the pianist in, he wrote. “He’s always been itinerant. Freddie just appears from time to time, like some wonderful spirit.” More

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      ‘Listening Party’ Review: Can Songs Heal a Brotherly Divide?

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      In “The Jackson C. Frank Listening Party w/ Special Guests,” the musician is simultaneously central and peripheral to the story.The title character of “The Jackson C. Frank Listening Party w/ Special Guests,” from the New Light Theater Project, is a musical footnote: A troubled artist, Frank recorded his only album when he was 22, in 1965, which Paul Simon produced. Frank died at 56 after a life marked by tragic accidents, mental illness and a stint of homelessness.I’d never heard of him — not realizing he had written the achingly beautiful “Blues Run the Game,” which has been covered by Sandy Denny, John Mayer and Counting Crows, among many others — and initially thought the playwright Michael Aguirre had made Frank up as a kind of theatrical answer to the fictional folk singer of the film “Inside Llewyn Davis.”But yes, Frank and his music are real, and we get to know a little more about them in this new streaming production, presented by 59E59 Theaters.“Listening Party” is not, however, a traditional bio-play, and Aguirre does not get into the weeds of Frank’s life and artistry. The musician is simultaneously central and peripheral in a show — which essentially takes place in the present day — that is more interested in how music can foster personal connections and, perhaps, a sense of community.For Allen (Aguirre), listening to albums was something he and his older brother, Rob (Sean Phillips), had ritualized growing up: They would buy a new CD every Friday, go home and play to the whole thing in order. Aguirre was largely inspired by his own childhood, as Allen recounts those days and how they helped him bond with Rob. Now he attempts to do the same with the audience as we all listen to Frank’s self-titled album at the same time.The show includes links to the music on various platforms, including Spotify and YouTube, and at regular intervals, Allen instructs us to press “play” on a specific song. We listen while watching him listen, and then it’s back to Allen’s reminiscences about growing up in Rob’s shadow. By the end, we’ve mainly learned that Allen is the white-bread straight man to Rob’s enigmatic free spirit, which is not all that much by way of insights.Bethany Geraghty plays the mother of Aguirre’s character, Allen.via New Light Theater ProjectAt one point, Allen mentions how Kanye West invited a select few to Wyoming in 2018 to bask in the glory of his album “Ye.” But that type of event was more promotional launch than listening party, creating a highly controlled environment in which information flowed only one way — as it does in this play, since Aguirre and the director Sarah Norris are at the helm, and we’re following their cues.Allen sketches out Frank’s life, with the special guests of the title — Paul Simon (William Phelps), the old hippie Grandma Woodstock (Dana Martin) and the brothers’ mother (Bethany Geraghty) — not adding anything of great import, especially since the portrayals are rather cartoonish. Aguirre is more interested in the old-fashioned concept of sharing music in a more organic, possibly gentler way than posting a playlist online.Allen likes to think those CDs sustained their brotherly complicity, so when Rob goes missing, Allen deals with it by reflecting on their old listening habits and perhaps, indirectly, on our current ones — when was the last time you sat down with an album in its entirety and in sequence?But did Allen and Rob know each other well? It looks increasingly as if they did not, at all, so Allen’s fixation on their listening parties feels like an exercise in solipsistic nostalgia — an issue Aguirre skirts, maybe because it would imply that sharing art does not shed any special light onto someone else.The Jackson C. Frank Listening Party w/ Special GuestsThrough April 11; newlighttheaterproject.com More

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      Is the Music Over at Mills College?

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      A hotbed of experimental sound for nearly a century, this school in Oakland, Calif., is preparing to close its doors.Even the concert hall at Mills College is different.Looming at the back of the stage is a huge, bright mural of a forest opening onto a deep blue lake. The ceiling is painted in geometric patterns and vivid colors. Frescos of Gregorian chant scores flank the stage.We are not in sedate, monochromatic Carnegie Hall. No, Littlefield Concert Hall at Mills, in Oakland, Calif., is a vibrant, even eccentric place, where it is clear from the surroundings that music outside the mainstream is not simply tolerated, but celebrated.“There was a real atmosphere of comfort and support for whatever it is that you wanted to do,” the composer David Rosenboom, who led the music program at Mills in the 1980s, said in an interview.Now that program and the electronics-focused Center for Contemporary Music, together among the most distinguished havens for experimental work in America over the past century, are facing possible closure. On March 17 the college, founded in 1852, announced that ongoing financial problems, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, would mean the end of its history as a degree-granting institution made up of an undergraduate women’s college and several coeducational graduate programs.Pending approval by its board of trustees, the school’s final degrees are likely to be conferred in 2023. The statement announcing the proposed closure alluded to plans for a “Mills Institute” on the 135-acre campus, but the focus of such an institute — and whether it would include the arts — is unclear.For composers and musicians, the potential loss of the Mills program has come as a startling blow, even if the college’s finances have been shaky for years. “I long feared this might be the worst-case scenario, but I am still devastated by the news,” said the harpist and composer Zeena Parkins, who teaches there.The pianist Dave Brubeck, who studied at Mills, performing there in 1988.Ariel Thomas, via Mills CollegeIt has been an astonishing run. The school’s faculty over the years has been practically an index of maverick artists, including Darius Milhaud, at Mills for three decades beginning during World War II; Luciano Berio, who came at Milhaud’s invitation; Lou Harrison, who built an American version of the Indonesian gamelan percussion orchestra; the “deep listening” pioneer Pauline Oliveros; Robert Ashley, an innovator in opera; Terry Riley, a progenitor of Minimalism; the influential composer and improviser Anthony Braxton; James Fei, a saxophonist and clarinetist who works with electronic sounds; and Maggi Payne, a longtime director of the Center for Contemporary Music, Mills’s laboratory for electronic work since the 1960s, when Oliveros was its first leader.Among the alumni are Dave Brubeck, Steve Reich, John Bischoff, William Winant and Laetitia Sonami; several former students ended up returning to teach after graduating.“What Mills College had was unique,” said Riley, who taught there from 1971 to 1981. “I have never in my travels encountered another institution like it.”Mills’s defining feature was its sense of community. Despite all the famous names involved, the overriding impression was that music is not created by lone geniuses, but by people working together.Fred Frith, whose career has included avant-garde rock and idiosyncratic improvisations and who retired from Mills in 2018 after many years there, said, “Music is essentially a collaborative activity, and if I’m going to teach improvisation or composition without real hands-on involvement, then we’re all going to miss out on something.”In the first half of the 20th century, when composers like John Cage became associated with the school, Mills developed a reputation for nonconformity. Performances ran the gamut from traditional instruments to obscure electronics to vacuum cleaners, clock coils and other found objects. Riley recounted an early performance of “In C,” his open-ended classic from 1964, at which the audience was dancing in the aisles. Laetitia Sonami recalled taking singing lessons with the master Indian vocalist Pandit Pran Nath, guru to Riley and others.At that time, the program was practically public access. “In the 1970s, Mills was still like a community group,” said the composer Chris Brown, a former director of the Center for Contemporary Music. “It still had the idea that community members could come and use the studios.”Robert Ashley, a guiding presence from 1969 to 1981, helped foster that spirit. Though the radically open sensibility faded as the years went by, Mills maintained a commitment to access through frequent performances in and around Oakland, many of them free.The composer Robert Ashley in 1970. Through the ’70s Ashley was a guiding presence at Mills.Tom F. Walters, via Mills College“One of the amazing things about Mills is the rich musical community that it creates through the entire Bay Area,” said the composer Sarah Davachi, who graduated in 2012.As the personal computer revolution was taking hold in the nearby Silicon Valley, experiments with home-brew electronics and microcomputers, like those of David Behrman, were common at Mills, where technology had long been at home through the Center for Contemporary Music. Serendipitous moments abounded: As a student in the ’70s, John Bischoff remembers running into David Tudor, renowned as a collaborator with John Cage, in the hallway and being asked to assist with recording Tudor’s work “Microphone.” William Winant said he found an original instrument built by the composer and inveterate inventor Harry Partch hidden under the stage in the concert hall.“It felt like utopia: an environment where students are encouraged, and given the support they need, to pursue any and all ideas that came to mind, free from the stifling pressures of capitalism,” said Seth Horvitz, an electronic composer who records under the name Rrose.Students built their own instruments and sound installations, exhilarated by the freedom to do what they wanted. “We commandeered every square inch of the music studio and surrounding areas,” said the composer Ben Bracken, “putting up rogue installations in the courtyards, hallways and hidden rooms, inviting friends to perform in inflatable bubbles, screening Kenneth Anger films in the amphitheater with live studio accompaniments, Moog studio late nights that bled into morning.”“What Mills College had was unique,” said Terry Riley, who taught there from 1971 to 1981. “I have never in my travels encountered another institution like it.”Diane Gilkerson, via Mills CollegeBut pressures on institutions of higher education around the country, which have intensified in recent decades, did not spare Mills. In 2017, as a cost-cutting measure, it began laying off some tenured faculty. The celebrated composer and multi-instrumentalist Roscoe Mitchell learned his contract was not being renewed — news that was met with an outcry from the experimental music community. (Mitchell’s contract was eventually extended, but he chose to retire.) In 2019, the college sold a rare copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio at auction for just under $10 million, and a Mozart manuscript for an undisclosed sum. But the losses continued — and then came the pandemic.Many musicians said they were concerned about the fate of Mills’s archives. Maggi Payne said it includes over 2,000 tapes of performances, lectures and interviews, along with scores, letters and synthesizers — and hundreds of percussion instruments owned by Lou Harrison.David Bernstein, the current chair of the music department, said the archives would be protected. “We have been working on this project for quite some time,” he said. “And yes, there are instruments at Mills of significant historical importance. We are very concerned about their fate. Most of all, they should not be stored but used by students interested in exploring new sounds and different musical cultures. And they should also be played by virtuoso performers, as they are now.”But if Mills’s future is unclear, Roscoe Mitchell said, its legacy is not. It will live on “much longer than you and I,” he said.“It’s history,” Mitchell said. “It’s not going to go away.” More

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      Lil Nas X, Clapback Champ

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      The rapper’s new single, video and sneaker were merely the prelude to a brilliantly orchestrated main event: a virtuosic performance on Twitter.One after another, they came with venom for Lil Nas X. The basketball star Nick Young. The governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem. The rapper Joyner Lucas. Candace Owens and various right-wing Twitter personalities. Greg Locke, a Tennessee pastor. Fox News. Nike.They were clueless. Blissful, almost — lambs blind to the slaughter they were hurtling toward.Lil Nas X was waiting for them all, barbs at his fingertips. For the last four days — since the release of his new single, “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” its masterfully absurdist erotica video and then limited-edition sneakers called Satan Shoes — the 21-year-old rapper and digital prodigy has been using his Twitter account as a fly swatter, flattening one irritant after the next in a loud and uproarious display of internet-speed celebrity, executing a series of flawless pirouette dunks on the heads of his willing but bumbling antagonists.After Noem tweeted about his Satan Shoes, he groaned, “ur a whole governor and u on here tweeting about some damn shoes. do ur job!” Lucas suggested that the “Montero” video might not be appropriate for children, and Lil Nas X eye-rolled back, “i literally sing about lean & adultery in old town road. u decided to let your child listen. blame yourself.”In between target practice, Lil Nas X was reflective, too. “i spent my entire teenage years hating myself,” because of what Christianity taught about homosexuality, he wrote. “so i hope u are mad, stay mad, feel the same anger you teach us to have towards ourselves.”What “Montero” has caused — or rather, what Lil Nas X has engineered — is a good old-fashioned moral panic (or at least the performance of one), the sort of thing that had largely been left behind in the 1980s, but is tragically well-suited to the country’s current cultural discourse polarization. The song, the video, the shoes — they are bait.And “Montero” anticipates the kerfuffles it would cause. The true art here isn’t the music (that said, it’s one of Lil Nas X’s better songs) or the video (more on that below): it’s the effortlessness, the ease, the joy of his reactions to the reactions. It’s the sense that he is playing chess to everyone else’s lame checkers moves — he is simply faster, funnier and on firmer, more principled ground than his adversaries, who are at best, comically flimsy.No famous person is as adept as Lil Nas X at casually but thoroughly smacking down the ream of Twitter churls inevitably awakened by something like this — maybe Cardi B, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He is a grade-A internet manipulator and, provided all the tools and resources typically reserved for long-established pop superstars, he is perfectly suited to dominate the moment. “Montero” may or may not top the Billboard Hot 100 next week, but it will be unrivaled in conversations started.“Montero” is a frisky song about lust; Lil Nas X has said it was inspired by a man he met and fell for. The video, which pivots from pastel pastoral to CGI gothic, is a wild, kaleidoscope romp of sexual self-acceptance, in which Lil Nas X pole dances his way down to hell, where he gives Satan a lap dance before killing him, stealing his horns and claiming them for himself.It is knowing and camp, and knowing about its campiness, meshing the testing-the-format provocations of the late-1980s video era with the big-budget pop-machine clips of the early 2000s. That it has awakened culture warriors uncomfortable with displays of gay male desire, or with playful representations of sin, means the video has done what it was meant to do.The same is true of the Satan Shoes he released in partnership with the company MSCHF — a Nike Air Max 97 customized with some lightly provocative references to Satan, priced at $1,018 a pair in a nod to Luke 10:18, a Bible passage about the fall of Satan from heaven. The shoes include, allegedly, a drop of human blood in the liquid that fills the soles.Lil Nas partnered with MSCHF to release Satan Shoes — a Nike Air Max 97 customized with some lightly provocative references to Satan.MSCHFSatanic iconography is perhaps the lowest hanging fruit of transgression, especially in a consumer product. But here, again, this was chum in the water — the discourse started by the shoes has been far more important than the shoes themselves. Nike disavowed them, and sued MSCHF for trademark infringement (but notably not Lil Nas X, a celebrity it might end up one day actually wanting to collaborate with). A sneaker YouTuber who was provided a pair of the shoes filmed himself throwing them down the trash chute in his apartment building. Lil Nas X, meanwhile, was posting uproarious memes about pleading for Nike’s forgiveness.Twitter is a performance space like any other, with an almost limitless audience: stans, enthusiasts, haters, trolls, skeptics, newbies. Lil Nas X has something for all of them. In his pre-“Old Town Road” life, he was an active Nicki Minaj stan, which meant he was a maestro of steering online conversation.And though he is now one of the most successful new pop stars of the past few years, that fundamental skill set remains. In recent days, he’s taunted the fast food chain Chick-fil-A (which is owned by religious conservatives); poked fun at the campaign Justin Bieber attempted to boost streams of his single “Yummy”; posted endless memes about his flirtations with the dark side, mock apologies for his transgressions and even headfake statements of anxiety that end as reminders to stream “Montero.”All of it is memorable — not simply because of the expert skill on display, but because it’s clear that Lil Nas X is not simply the performer of “Montero,” nor simply the star of its video, nor simply the inspiration for a sneaker. He’s the conductor of a symphony of thousands, maybe even millions. It’s Lil Nas X’s conversation, we’re all just talking in it. More

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      How Flock of Dimes Found Herself (With a Little Help From Her Friends)

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      Jenn Wasner has tended to let thoughts rather than feelings guide her songwriting. For her second solo album, “Head of Roses,” she did the opposite.In 2016, when the wildly prolific multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Jenn Wasner released her first solo album as Flock of Dimes, she felt she had something to prove.“I had internalized a lot of the assumptions that people make about women in music,” said Wasner, then best known as one-half of the indie-rock duo Wye Oak. “I felt a lot of resentment about not getting the benefit of the doubt of my own artistry.” So she doubled down on that time-tested indie ethos of Do It Yourself — writing, producing and playing just about every instrument on “If You See Me, Say Yes.”“As it turns out,” Wasner, 34, recalled in a recent video chat from her home near Durham, N.C., “that’s not always what makes the best record.”“If You See Me” is full of dazzling sounds and bright melodic ideas, but it stimulates the mind more frequently than it pierces the heart. “As someone who is very obsessed with language, I think sometimes it can actually be a barrier to feeling,” Wasner added, lounging on a sage-green sofa that — she suddenly realized, catching a glimpse of her digital reflection in the Zoom screen — was the same color as the cozy sweatshirt she was wearing. “I think that record, and pretty much any record you could point to would be better with some form of collaborative expression.”“Head of Roses,” the second Flock of Dimes full-length, out Friday, is that better record — one of the highlights of Wasner’s long, winding career. It’s also the project that revealed a creative paradox: Sometimes what an artist needs to become even more of herself is a little help from her friends.“I got the impression she was trying to get out of her head,” said Nick Sanborn, half of the electro-pop band Sylvan Esso, who co-produced “Head of Roses” with Wasner. “Being her friend, it’s obvious that her range is so broad and encompasses so many different things.”A respected veteran of the underground music scene, Wasner is multifaceted almost to a fault, in a music industry obsessed with elevator pitches and genre-based pigeonholing. “Because I’m drawn to experimenting with so many different kinds of aesthetic choices,” she said, “people are often like, ‘I don’t really know what you do. We don’t know where to put you.’”“But that’s just a big part of who I am, and not something I want to change about myself,” she added. “It’s a source of joy.”Even in Wye Oak, formed in 2006, Wasner and her bandmate, Andy Stack, seem allergic to repeating themselves. After garnering acclaim for “Civilian,” a breakout 2011 album full of off-kilter rhythms and Wasner’s inventive guitar playing, they followed it with a record centered around synthesizers, “Shriek,” in 2014. Their most recent EP, “No Horizon” from 2020, prominently featured choral arrangements sung by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.Wasner and Stack are both Baltimore natives who met in high school. They were in “one of those bands where everybody writes songs,” Stack recalled over the phone, though when the 16-year-old Wasner brought hers to practice, it was clear her compositions were a cut above the standard battle-of-the-bands fare. “She was a real good songwriter from the beginning,” he said.“Everything I’ve learned this year about trauma and healing supports the idea that music is important,” Wasner said.Jeremy M. Lange for The New York TimesWasner and Stack have now been playing music together for more than half their lives. The key to Wye Oak’s longevity, Stack said, has been allowing each other to pursue other musical projects in their spare time. (They have also been writing new material in quarantine.)Over the past decade, Wasner has formed multiple side projects and played in the touring bands of artists like Sylvan Esso and Dirty Projectors; in 2019, she joined Justin Vernon’s Bon Iver. “I think the way the industry is set up, in order to release as much music as I would like, I have to kind of trick people into letting me do it by inventing different names for myself,” she said.But, she reflected, “I had created this world of constant busyness and work that pretty much prevented me from spending any time sitting with myself and examining my inner world.” So “Head of Roses” is the answer to a particular riddle: What happens when one of the hardest-working musicians in indie rock suddenly has to sit still for a year?Wasner’s most recent romantic relationship ended just before the pandemic began. (When I mention that not every musician was able to stay creatively inspired over the past year, she laughed: “I would recommend to those people to try being completely eviscerated by heartbreak!”) For the first time in her adult life, Wasner found herself without her usual distractions — no tour to embark upon, no new band to join. “There was nothing to do but sit with my pain and myself,” she said. “I was so grateful to be able to turn to making music, because it was one of the last remaining things available, as a source of comfort for me.”Or, as she sings on a spacious, twangy new song, “Walking,” sounding more contented than aggrieved, “Alone again, alone again, my time it is my own again.”Over the past year Wasner wrote songs constantly, deepened her yoga practice and taught herself how to cook — something she’d never taken the time to do, in half a life spent on tour. (“No one’s going to be thrilled at a home-cooked meal from me, but it’s certainly better than it was before this whole thing started.”)Wasner’s “Head of Roses” is the answer to a particular riddle: What happens when one of the hardest-working musicians in indie rock suddenly has to sit still for a year?Jeremy M. Lange for The New York TimesIn July, she assembled a small pod of trusted collaborators in a nearby studio. Sanborn sometimes joked that she should call the album “The Many Faces of Was.” More than anything she’s released before, “Head of Roses” makes room for the multiplicity of Wasner’s artistic voice. None of the singles sound anything alike — not the springy, off-kilter pop of “Two” nor the slow-burning, psych-rock of “Price of Blue” — and none of them quite prepare the listener for the gorgeously subdued second half of the album, which features several of the most stirring ballads Wasner has ever recorded. The common element holding all of these disparate parts together is her luminous, jewel-toned voice.“I feel a lot more secure in myself than I ever have before, which makes it easier to make choices without worrying so much about what I’m trying to prove,” Wasner said. Delegating some technical tasks to Sanborn or the engineer Bella Blasko helped her focus on her larger vision. That all her collaborators were also friends made it easier to tap into her vulnerability in the studio, too: “It was such a joy to feel really held by all the people in my musical community at a time when I was at my most gutted, personally.”This was a relatively new experience. “For a lot of the music I’ve written in the past, I would reverse-engineer a feeling — I would think about a concept or idea I wanted to expound upon, then I would create that,” Wasner said. “All of a sudden, with this record, it came up from this other place.”Which is not to say that Wasner has abandoned her avowed penchant for challenging arrangements or nontraditional time signatures. “Watching her do some of these songs solo,” said Wasner’s friend Meg Duffy, a guitarist who played on the album and records as Hand Habits, “I’m like, how do you even do that? It seems like doing algebra while doing ballet.”’But now, Wasner wants the more cerebral elements of her music to work, first and foremost, in service of a feeling.“Everything I’ve learned this year about trauma and healing supports the idea that music is important,” Wasner said. “It can subvert a lot of the defenses we enact around the softer parts of ourselves — the parts that may need to be seen and healed the most. Those defenses are very hard to get past. But music might be the art form that is best able to get around those barriers and reach us where we need to be healed.” More

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      Willie Nelson Sings 'I'll Be Seeing You' to Encourage People to Get Vaccinated for COVID-19

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      WENN/Nikki Nelson

      Collaborating with Ad Council and COVID Collaborative for the public safety campaign, the country icon hopes that people will be as confident as him when taking their coronavirus shot.

      Mar 30, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Willie Nelson has re-recorded Irving Kahal and Sammy Fain’s Broadway standard “I’ll Be Seeing You” for a new Ad Council and COVID Collaborative public safety campaign to encourage people to get vaccinated.

      The country icon included the 1930s tune on his 1994 studio album, “Healing Hands of Time”, and now he’s revisiting the song from the musical “Right This Way” to serve as the soundtrack for a new ad featuring a montage of unforgettable sports moments and crowd reactions, reminding viewers what the world was like before the COVID lockdown.

      In the background, Nelson sings, “I’ll be seeing you… In all the old familiar places…That this heart of mine embraces… All day through.” He continues, “In that small cafe… The park across the way… The children’s carousel… The chestnut trees… The wishin’ well…”

        See also…

      In order to bring sporting events and other aspects of everyday life before coronavirus pandemic back as quickly as possible, a simple message to urge people in getting their COVID-19 shot when it’s their turn flashed across the screen at the end of the clip. “The COVID-19 vaccines are here. We’ll see you soon,” it read.

      “I’m happy to be part of this new campaign with the Ad Council, COVID Collaborative and these sports organizations to empower millions more to get the answers they need and feel confident in getting vaccinated, like I did,” Nelson says in a statement.

      Willie, 87, got his dose of the vaccine in January and posed for a series of pictures in his car at a drive-through site. “Getting your COVID vaccine is Willie cool!” he said at the time.

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      Members of the Paris Opera Take Their Talents to a Different Stage

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      The singers, dancers and musicians played on, serenading their phones, pirouetting in masks and performing, faceless, on the radio.PARIS — For the past year, opera lovers worldwide have had little choice but to revisit favorite productions and performances via their screens at home, but the singers, musicians and dancers at the Paris Opera have continued, all while making their peace with pandemic life. Three members of the company described their experiences.The Chorus MasterFor José Luis Basso, chorus master at the Paris Opera since 2014, not even France’s penchant for strikes had prepared him for the government-ordered lockdown imposed here on March 17 last year.“From one day to the next, we found ourselves stuck at home,” he recalled in a telephone conversation. “It was dramatic. A singer needs to practice and vocalize every day, and that’s not so easy in a city like Paris where you have neighbors and building rules. So out of a certain despair, they did these little videos as a way of expressing their anguish about being without work.”For the most ambitious video, Mr. Basso, who rehearses and sometimes directs the group, brought together 52 of the chorus’s 110 members to record individual videos of “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s “Turandot.” The performances were spliced together, renamed “To Say Thank You” and dedicated to health and other frontline workers. Then, in September, following a temporary reduction of infections in France, the chorus was called back to the company’s two theaters, the Palais Garnier and the Opéra Bastille.“At first there was real fear, almost hysteria, about passing on the virus,” Mr. Basso said, “but people are more relaxed now. No operas were programmed in the fall, so we began preparing for the new productions of ‘Aïda’ and ‘Faust,’ which involved a lot of work since the chorus plays a big role in both operas.”Despite a second wave of infections, which began in the fall and continues, “Aïda” and “Faust” have now been staged and streamed, with all but the lead singers wearing masks. “At first we didn’t know what masks to use,” Mr. Basso said, “but eventually we opted for two — one for walking around the theater and another for singing that allows projection of the voice and understanding of words.”Yet, with some medical experts saying that we must learn to live with Covid, even when “normal” opera performances resume, masks onstage and in the orchestra pit may not be disappearing soon. “I’ve asked myself,” said Mr. Basso, 55, who in June returns to the San Carlo opera house in Naples, Italy, to become chorus master, “in the future will our choral work have to be like this?”l’Opéra de ParisValentine Colasante, a prima ballerina at the Paris Opera Ballet, performing a passage from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” in her kitchen. The dance became part of a video to thank frontline workers.l’Opéra de ParisThe BallerinaValentine Colasante, 32, a prima ballerina at the Paris Opera Ballet, was greatly relieved when lessons from her usual teachers resumed, albeit online, as soon as the lockdown began. “This enabled us to keep up our routines,” she explained in a telephone interview, “with morning classes for coaching, dancing, muscle strengthening, and in the afternoon more specific exercises. This also meant we were in good physical condition when we could resume work.”That came in September when the ballet corps returned to its home at the Palais Garnier, although it is still not allowed to perform before a full house. Rather, as with opera productions, performances of “La Bayadère” in December, the annual gala in January and “Le Parc” this month were recorded for rebroadcast. “One is very aware that there’s no one there,” Ms. Colasante said, “But you try to adapt like everyone else who’s having to work online.”Covid precautions have also required wearing masks for rehearsals and for the gala’s “Ballet Parade.” “It’s the only solution we have if we want to keep on training,” she said. “When some very intense effort is called for, we can remove the mask, but we keep them on most of the time. It’s restricting, but it means we can return to the Palais Garnier to train. We are artists and we have to be ready when things return to normal.”Like members of the Paris Opera chorus and orchestra, the ballet company found its own way of saying “merci” to health and other frontline workers. In this case, some 60 dancers were invited to improvise at home — in kitchens, halls or gardens — to a passage from Prokofiev’s ballet “Romeo and Juliet.” Using smartphones, they recorded themselves or, as in Ms. Colasante’s case, were recorded by a partner. The movie director Cédric Klapisch then edited their moves into a charming four-minute, 39-second video.“Everyone was very enthusiastic about doing this as a sincere homage to health workers,” said Ms. Colasante, who appears briefly in a red dressing gown. “I think we all wanted to convey our emotions, to share what we were living through, to tell a story with our bodies. And I have my own four minutes as a permanent record for myself.”Members of the Paris Opera orchestra performing “After the Storm.” The final video that was created included images of nurses, doctors, hospital wards and ambulances. l’Opéra national de ParisThe MusicianWith last March’s lockdown coming soon after a lengthy strike at the Paris Opera, “we were already spending too much time at home,” Nicolas Chatenet recalled. Still, resigned to a new stoppage of perhaps three months, as the opera’s first solo trumpeter he decided to make good use of the time “to do what I couldn’t do when I was in the orchestra.”So when orchestra members decided that they, too, would make a video dedicated to health workers, he was eager to participate. “We wanted to do something that would convey musically and emotionally how we at home were feeling about those who were working,” Mr. Chatenet, 35, explained.The question of what to play was resolved when the orchestra welcomed a short piece called “Storm” that Mr. Chatenet had composed in 2014 for a brass ensemble. After a colleague orchestrated and trimmed the score, there came the challenge of recording 71 instrumentalists live on smartphones.“I thought we’d have to help the sound, but we were astonished that it sounded really good,” he said. Images of nurses, doctors, hospital wards and ambulances were then spliced into the final video called “After the Storm.”In the summer, restrictions on movements were relaxed, and Mr. Chatenet joined the opera orchestra for a live Bach concert in September and two concerts of Richard Strauss and Schönberg in October before a limited audience and under the baton of the company’s outgoing music director, Philippe Jordan.The orchestra’s main scheduled event for the 2020-21 season, however, was Wagner’s “Ring” cycle. When a planned stage production directed by Calixto Bieito was canceled by Covid, the cycle was broadcast on the radio, again conducted by Mr. Jordan. Mr. Chatenet’s bad luck was to catch the virus at the music conservatory where he teaches, and he was forced into isolation just when his trumpet should have been sounding the “Ride of the Valkyries.”His chance to rejoin his orchestra came last month with “Aïda.” “It was strange to be together again,” he said, “to recapture the feeling that we had when we played together every week.” But even though Mr. Chatenet never stopped practicing, the break brought an unexpected plus. “We have a 7-month-old baby,” he said, “so it’s given me a lot of time to get to know her. I was pretty lucky about that.” More