Music

Burning Man, the annual arts event that draws tens of thousands of people to Black Rock Desert and tens of millions of dollars to Northern Nevada’s economy, has joined the list of high-profile gatherings to fall prey to the coronavirus pandemic.Organizers of the event, which was to have been held from Aug. 30 to Sept. 7, announced Friday that they had made the difficult decision not to build Black Rock City, the “temporary metropolis” that is created each year for the event. “Given the painful reality of Covid-19, one of the greatest global challenges of our lifetimes, we believe this is the right thing to do,” organizers said on their website, The Burning Man Journal.Still, organizers said that they hoped to create an online version of Black Rock City this year — though details were sparse.“We’re not sure how it’s going to come out,” organizers said on their website. “It will likely be messy and awkward with mistakes. It will also likely be engaging, connective, and fun.”Later, they added that some sort of “ticket” would be necessary to cover costs. “We’re working out those details and will share them as soon as we can,” they said. Organizers said they were also working on a tool for refunds for people who had bought tickets to Burning Man 2020 at Black Rock City.“While we will not be building a temporary artists’ city of 80,000 in northern Nevada this year,” the organizers said in a statement, “we are going to create a virtual Black Rock City and we’re going to continue to support our year-round nonprofit programs including Burners Without Borders and Fly Ranch.”This will be the first year that the gathering, which began in San Francisco in 1986 and moved to the Black Rock Desert in 1990, will not be held on-site.Local communities will surely feel the impact. Organizers said the event “represents an annual injection of $75 million into the Northern Nevada economy.”But they added that they were “committed to our neighbors in Nevada and are working on some ideas for offsetting this development.” More

Andy González, one of the great bassists in Latin jazz, who in a career that stretched more than four decades played with numerous influential groups — notably the Fort Apache Band, which he formed with his brother Jerry — died on Thursday in the Bronx. He was 69.His sister, Eileen González-Altomari, said the causes were pneumonia and complications of diabetes.Mr. González was a versatile player, as well as an arranger, composer, music historian and producer of other musicians’ records. He embraced African, Cuban and Puerto Rican styles, various strains of jazz and other influences, often merging them into something fresh. The Boston Globe once called him “a modernist preoccupied with tradition.”He grew up in a musical household in the Bronx; he and Jerry, a trumpeter and percussionist who was 18 months older, would practice together in the basement. Their father, a vocalist in his own band in the 1950s and ’60s, was their earliest musical influence.Mr. González played with the bands of the percussionist Ray Barretto and the pianist Eddie Palmieri as he was establishing himself. In 1974 he and the timbale player Manny Oquendo formed Conjunto Libre (the name was later shortened to Libre), a band that, mixing salsa and jazz, explored “an immensely varied body of folk, popular and experimental music, without ever losing its New York Latin feel,” as Robert Palmer put it in The New York Times in 1984.Libre, with Mr. Gonzalez as musical director, remained an important part of the jazz scene for 35 years, releasing a dozen albums and advancing the careers of numerous players who passed through the group. Mr. Oquendo died in 2009.In about 1980, the González brothers formed another pivotal group, the Fort Apache Band (named after a nickname for a Bronx police precinct house). It had a freewheeling style that mixed jazz and Afro-Cuban music in “a disciplined bilingual inquisitiveness,” as The Times said in 1995.“This is New York music,” Jerry González told the newspaper. “We play music influenced by everything we’ve experienced here. We play Mongo Santamaria, John Coltrane and James Brown all at the same time.”A key part of that adventurousness was Andy González’s bass.“I can’t think of a more fluid, powerful, and amazing rhythm section,” the pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill told JazzTimes in 2019. “Those guys could stop on a dime and turn it around and do anything, float through space and gyrate and levitate. They really were the most important rhythm section in the history of Latin jazz.”Andrew González was born on Jan. 1, 1951, in Manhattan into a family of Puerto Rican descent. His father, Geraldo (known as Jerry, like his son), introduced his children to salsa and other types of music via his substantial record collection. His mother, Julia (Toyos) González, was a homemaker who also did secretarial work at New York University and, for a time, for the F.B.I.Mr. González was raised in the Bronx. In an interview with the website Herencia Latina in the early 2000s, he said he had played violin in his elementary school’s orchestra.“One of the bass players — there were two bass players — moved away, so there was a need for a bass player, and I was the tallest violinist,” he said. “I was playing in the second violin section. And so they asked me if I wanted to play the bass, and I said, ‘Sure, I’ll give it a try.’”A musicologist who lived in his neighborhood and had a vast record collection, Rene Lopez, furthered his education.“I was listening to Cuban music but did not know how deep it was until I went to his place,” Mr. González told The Globe in 1992.“Then I became a collector myself,” he added. “In those days, there were some record shops that had 78s and were dying to get rid of them, so they would sell them to me at 10 cents each.”Mr. González was playing bass in bands while still a teenager. He graduated from the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and tried Bronx Community College for a time, but he was already so immersed in the music scene that he gave up his pursuit of a degree for the life of a professional musician.That included not only performing but also recording — by 1995, The Times said, he had been a part of more than 700 sessions. He is credited on albums by Mr. Palmieri, Mr. Barretto, Tito Puente, Astor Piazzolla, Hilton Ruiz and countless others.His versatility as a musician was much admired. It was a trait he tried to impart to younger bassists, whom he sometimes found to be too inflexible and lacking in musical history.“They know one style, one way of playing, they play certain rhythms the right way,” he told The Globe. “But they don’t know the whole story.”Mr. González thought his playing career might be over in 2004, when health problems related to diabetes landed him in a hospital for two months. He played a recording session hours before being admitted.“I could play, but I was so weak I couldn’t even take the cover off the bass,” he told JazzTimes in 2007, “so I asked somebody in the studio to do it for me. So I played the session and then that night I called my friend to come and bring me straight to the hospital.”The toes on one foot had to be amputated.“It took me about six months to start playing again,” he said, “because so much antibiotics made my hands swell up like two ham hocks, and I couldn’t even bend my fingers.”But there was plenty of music to come.And in 2016, at the age of 65, he released his first album solely under his name, “Entre Colegas.” In a brief review in The New York Times, Ben Ratliff wrote, “It’s casual, modern, traditional, deliberately understated, stealthily gorgeous.”It was nominated for a Grammy Award for best Latin jazz album.Jerry González died in a fire in Madrid in 2018. In addition to his sister, Mr. González is survived by a brother, Arthur.In the 1995 interview with The Times, Mr. González talked about his and the Fort Apache Band’s determination not to be locked into one style.“Our music isn’t the product of a course, or a book,” he said. “It comes from a search, and you come to be aware of what you’re looking for. You have a revelation about how you feel music should go.” More

Life is just one playlist away from being perfectly soundtracked.For example, I want to go running, but of course I need the right music to propel me from start to finish. I’m planning a road trip, but the music needs to sound adventurous to hype me up. I’m under a deadline and need something to block out the world so I can focus.There are thousands of premade playlists that can fill those needs, but often they just aren’t personal enough. Even the playlists being automatically created for us each week by our music services sometimes aren’t quite right.So how do you nail the perfect mix of songs every time? How do you make a playlist that hits just right for that special occasion? We talked to four music lovers inside and outside the music industry, some of whom work at Spotify and Pandora, and here are their tips.Find a starting point“For me, it’s less about the linear steps and more, what’s the creative spark for the playlist, because there’s always one,” said Meg Tarquinio, head of curation strategy for Spotify. “I think the best playlists start from an eccentric and eclectic idea and go from there.”For some people, creating a playlist is like chasing down a story that’s hidden throughout different songs. It can feel like following clues that no one else heard the way you did. To get started, think about the reason you wanted to create a playlist in the first place, and then expand on that feeling.Scott Vener, the music supervisor for HBO’s “Ballers,” said something similar. “Know your audience and know the purpose of the playlist you’re making.” Mr. Vener was also the music supervisor for HBO’s “Entourage,” and he co-hosted the “OTHERtone” radio show with Pharrell Williams on Apple Music.“Most of the playlists I make are for passionate music fans who have an appetite that leans toward discovery rather than songs they already know,” Mr. Vener continued. “However, this seems to backfire on me a lot with casual music fans. They want the hits. If you’re trying to make a playlist for everyone, I subscribe to something I heard from George Clooney on how he chooses which movies to make: ‘Two for them (his fans), one for you.’”On starting a playlist, Maisey Boldt, a high school freshman who constantly shares playlists with her friends, said, “Sometimes I’ll find an already made playlist on Apple Music to use as a starting point. I’ll copy it to my own library as a new playlist so I can remove or add other ones I like better.”For Oscar Celma, vice president of data science and machine learning at Pandora/SiriusXM, the act of creating a playlist can be more of a two-way street. “Sometimes when I create a playlist, I add songs for a particular context or style, and then I use Pandora’s ‘Add similar songs’ button to find more.“It’s a good way for me to discover songs or even challenge the system on how well it understands me. I may remove a song or two and add more of my own and then ask it to add five more. It’s more of a back and forth, conversational way of making a playlist.”Consider the track list (and whether you’ll use shuffle)How important is the track order in a playlist? Playlist sequencing is important if each song tells a slice of the story you’re trying to convey. But using the shuffle button is less egregious if each song is telling the same story in a different way.The consensus among those I talked to was that the longer the playlist, the more likely it is to get shuffled. If the playlist is a bucket to collect certain types of songs released over the course of years, the order matters very little.Succinctly, Mr. Vener said: “My advice is don’t overthink it.”Experiment with friends and try similar soundsBottom line? It’s OK to experiment and have fun. Try something new and different, if the option is available to you.“Spotify has a collaborative playlist feature, so I make a lot of playlists with my friends,” Ms. Tarquinio said. “With my high school friends, we’ll add songs from high school that maybe others have forgotten about, with the next person adding a song that the first one made them think about.”Ms. Tarquinio added that another thing she liked to do was to “sequence songs with a really strong musical connection between the tracks.”“A lot of songs have similar arpeggios, or they might start on the same chord,” she said, “but that’s just a personal thing I love.”Many of us use playlists for music organization, whether to save songs from internet radio or to create bucket collections.“I have a playlist for each year, like 2019 and 2018 and so on, which are all the songs I liked and discovered from those times that I’m collecting in playlists,” said Pandora’s Mr. Celma. “It’s really cool to go back to the playlists from different years and reminisce and trigger the memories from when I heard these songs.”Creating a smart playlist in iTunes or Apple Music (in the desktop app), as well as using other automation tools, can also accomplish a similar goal by automatically adding certain songs to a playlist based on options you set.Also, using a playlist to study can help block out distractions.“I made a playlist before of only Shakira’s Spanish songs, because at the time I didn’t know what she was saying,” said Ms. Boldt. “It was to help me focus when I was doing my homework, so I could concentrate on that instead of being distracted by a song’s lyrics.”The future of the playlistThere are days when playlist inspiration just won’t come — no matter the number of tips or tricks. In that case, algorithms will be there to help us make the best playlists possible, continually seeping into our music players of choice.The biggest music enthusiasts may begrudge the invisible hand of automation in favor of their own brute force discovery skills, but it has its benefits.Ultimately, as Ms. Tarquinio points out, it all melds into a single effort. “‘Discover Weekly’ is an algorithm that only functions because of the social community around us crowdsourcing what other people are listening to, who listen to things that are similar to you,” she said. “So yes, it’s an algorithmic playlist, but it’s based in music culture and crowdsourced music recommendations.”But Mr. Vener lamented that playlists had replaced his favorite music blogs. “I miss reading passionate music fans’ take on each song they posted,” he said.In keeping with the subject matter, I made a playlist for this story. The songs below are the soundtrack to these words. The feel, the order and your potential new music discoveries were all carefully considered. You can add it on Spotify here, or Apple Music here. More

For 16 years Jennifer Pascual, the music director for St. Patrick’s Cathedral, has arrived early on Easter Sunday, often at 6:30 a.m., just after sunrise, when she could still manage to find parking on East 51st Street.At 9 a.m., she would try to squeeze in one more rehearsal with the choir. By 10:15, with more than 2,000 worshipers filling the church, she would lead the singers, the organist, a brass quintet, a percussionist, musicians on the harp and the flute in an exultant liturgical performance that is the musical pinnacle of the cathedral’s year.But not this year.The doors of St. Patrick’s are now locked to the public. The coronavirus pandemic means that this Easter Sunday there will be no congregants in the pews, no choristers to conduct, no sharp retorts from the brass to herald the New Testament’s recounting of the resurrection of Christ.This year, the roster of musicians is now down to two — a cantor and an organist — and there will only be two Masses on Sunday, not the usual eight or nine. But the 10 a.m. Mass, to be led by the Cardinal Timothy Dolan, will be televised and streamed live, a broadcast that is likely to draw a significant audience. Fewer than 600 people would tune in to watch the cathedral’s Sunday Mass streams before the pandemic, said Joe Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York — and that number was up to more than 100,000 on Palm Sunday.“We are doing it for broadcast, yes, but we do miss the people in the pews,” said Dr. Pascual, who came to St. Patrick’s in 2003 as its first female music director. “It’s kind of odd to be doing Mass and doing it to an empty cathedral. You look out there and there’s nobody there.”Even Dr. Pascual may just stay home on Sunday, as her two associate organists will be on hand to lead “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today” and other traditional hymns and ancient chants.It will be that kind of Easter for congregations and their music directors across the country. In South Carolina, a Presbyterian choir in Columbia is planning to keep only a few members on hand, all spaced apart for appropriate social distancing, The Post and Courier reported. And in Georgia, a pastor is planning to hold an in-person service — drive-in style, with churchgoers staying inside their parked cars.At St. Patrick’s, a historic landmark that attracts more than five million visitors a year, the preparations for Easter begin months ahead, and involve music for several liturgies.On Holy Thursday, the music is a bit quieter and more introspective, said Jeanne Holcomb, a member of the choir for 17 years. On Good Friday, she said, they move on to Joseph Haydn’s “The Seven Last Words of Christ.” By Saturday and Sunday: “Lots of hallelujahs,” she said. “It’s really, really fun to sing. You really let it all loose after those solemn services.” More

Were the pop world — nay the world world — still spinning on its usual axis, Friday would have seen the release of Lady Gaga’s highly anticipated sixth album, “Chromatica.” Like many other musicians, she decided to push back her record because of the coronavirus pandemic. Unlike many other musicians, she has toggled between the roles of global pop star and world health advocate quite gracefully.Just one day after unveiling the riotous cover art for “Chromatica” — a shocking pink cyberpunk-y image that answers the unprompted question “what if Grimes had directed ‘Blade Runner 2049’?” — Lady Gaga appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s home-recorded “Tonight Show” in a nude lip, turtle neck and blazer, and black-rimmed glasses to discuss her efforts raising $35 million for the World Health Organization. In a blink, she was far from the shallow.But understated, business-casual Gaga was a role she was moving away from with the release of “Chromatica,” a record that — after the stripped-down solemnity of “Joanne” and a stint in awards-season finery promoting “A Star Is Born” — promised to return to the early dance-pop sound and its monstrous, Alexander McQueen-reverent silhouettes that originally made her a star. The world had other plans.So, in its honor, let’s celebrate another over-the-top pop milestone that, back in mid-March, got lost in the darkness of a global crisis: the 10th anniversary of the nearly 10-minute neon-brite music video for Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s “Telephone.”Originally written by Lady Gaga and several collaborators for Britney Spears — a what-if demo of Spears singing the song later leaked — “Telephone” appeared on “The Fame Monster,” a more adventurous coda to Gaga’s debut album, “The Fame.” Though Spears was reportedly considered again as a potential guest star, the featured artist ended up being the woman Gaga joined on the 2007 track “Video Phone (Remix)”: Beyoncé.Continuing the plotline of the “Paparazzi” video, which ended with Lady Gaga killing an abusive lover played by Alexander Skarksgard (seven years before “Big Little Lies”!), “Telephone” begins with the singer behind bars in a rather permissive women’s prison (three years before “Orange Is the New Black”!) Beyoncé bails her out, chides her for being a bad girl, and then together, for reasons never quite explained, they poison an entire diner full of people. There’s also egregious product placement (Wonder Bread, Beats by Dre), an interlude about making sandwiches, and an ending shot that conjures a millennial “Thelma & Louise.” It was, purposefully, a lot. More