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      Esa-Pekka Salonen: A Conductor at the Top, and at a Crossroads

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      Salonen, who will soon be a free agent for the first time in decades, could do pretty much anything at this stage. What will it be?On a late afternoon in May, pop and classical music luminaries gathered in the neo-Gothic sanctuary of a 19th-century church-turned-Soho House in Stockholm. With drinks in hand, they listened as the media personality Cilla Benkö asked Esa-Pekka Salonen, “So what’s going on in your head at the moment?”“Well, I’m at a crossroads,” said Salonen, the composer and conductor, who is a year away from becoming a free agent for the first time in decades. “I’m kind of figuring out what to do, if anything.”Salonen is in a good position to choose what comes next. He is a conductor at the top of his field, and the kind of composer who can bring on not just one high-profile commissioner but several for each new piece he writes. The day after his interview with Benkö, he received the Polar Music Prize, an honor that has been called the Nobel Prize of music, directly from the hands of the Swedish king.Salonen, center, rehearsing with the San Francisco Symphony in 2022. The announcement that he would leave when his contract is up in 2025 came as a surprise.Ulysses Ortega for The New York TimesThe award is given to a classical and a pop artist annually; Salonen’s counterpart was Nile Rodgers, the mind behind songs like “We Are Family” and “Le Freak” and albums by Madonna, David Bowie and Beyoncé. Guests at the ceremony included the royal family, the megaproducer Max Martin and a member of ABBA, all gathered for a televised evening of tributes and black-tie diners dancing in the aisles to music related to the prize winners.With royalty grooving to Daft Punk but also listening attentively to Salonen’s “Concert Étude for Solo Horn,” it was a fitting celebration for Salonen, one of the most open-minded, open-eared and fundamentally cool artists in classical music, who at 66 is beloved and respected across the field.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Newly Translated Oral History Reveals Krautrock’s Antifascist Roots

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      Christoph Dallach’s book explores how Nazism, a postwar German identity crisis and anti-authoritarian youth movements spurred some of the most daring experiments of 1970s music.“We had to start from zero.” “We wanted to start over at zero.” “It wasn’t an intellectual approach, more an anarchic one: just starting over at zero.”Spoken by the saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, the composer Irmin Schmidt and the guitarist Lutz Ludwig Kramer, these assertions from the newly translated oral history “Neu Klang: The Definitive History of Krautrock” explain the high stakes driving Germany’s counterculture in the decades following World War II.After the unthinkable, Germany’s youth inherited a “country in ruins, and thus a ruined culture” (says Schmidt), a partition between the democratic West and the Soviet Union, a global fear of all things German, an identity crisis and a question: how to respond to the crimes of their parents?All easily forgotten when you’re listening to the buoyant and life-affirming music that generation produced in the 1970s. Kraftwerk, Can, Popol Vuh and their peers — a diverse movement often reductively called krautrock — raised the bar for electronic experiments and collaborative democracy in popular music, and helped set the stage for punk, industrial music and techno.But oral histories convince through mutual witness, and many of the 66 players and observers that Christoph Dallach interviewed for this book achieved their neu klang — their “new sound” — by fleeing Germany’s authoritarian past. First published in German in 2021, a translation of “Neu Klang” by Katy Derbyshire reveals to Anglophone listeners a generation of musicians wading through the legacy of fascism.“When I started school we still had to say ‘Heil Hitler’ for two days — and all of a sudden it turned into ‘Guten Morgen,’” says the pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach. For the drummer and electronic music pioneer Harald Grosskopf, whose father had been a Nazi officer, “My fight with him became the major conflict of my life” and “was probably what ended up taking me to krautrock.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sweden Drops Case Against Joost Klein, Disqualified Eurovision Entrant

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      Investigators could not prove that Joost Klein, the Dutch entrant, had behaved threateningly during an incident shortly before the event final.Swedish prosecutors said Monday that they were closing an investigation into Joost Klein, the Netherlands entry to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, whom organizers threw out of the singing competition hours before the final in May after an altercation with a camerawoman.Fredrik Jonsson, a Swedish prosecutor, said in a news release that he could not prove that a gesture Klein had made at the camerawoman during the incident “was capable of causing serious fear,” or that Klein had intended it to scare her.The brief statement added that although Klein had “made a movement” toward the crew member, and touched her camera, “the course of events was fast and was perceived differently by the witnesses of the incident.”The run-up to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest was unusually tense, with months of protests around Israel’s participation. In the days leading up to this year’s contest final, pro-Palestinian groups held several marches through the host city, Malmo, Sweden, and some Eurovision acts used social media to discuss their pro-Palestinian views.On the day of the final, Klein’s disqualification came as a last-minute curveball.The day before the final began, Klein, a well-known figure in Dutch pop music whose songs feature silly lyrics and very fast beats, did not appear at a rehearsal to perform his track, “Europapa.” Shortly afterward, the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the contest, said in a statement that it was investigating Klein because of “an incident” involving a member of the show’s production crew. The next day, just hours before the final, the union organizers said in a new statement that Swedish police were also investigating, and it would not have been appropriate for Klein to take part while a legal process was underway.Klein’s disqualification caused immediate uproar among Eurovision fans on social media. And in the days following the competition, many in the Netherlands rallied around the singer, with radio stations repeatedly airing Klein’s song. Some churches even rang their bells to its tune in protest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Happens Now in Young Thug’s YSL Trial?

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      Already the longest in Georgia history, the star rapper’s trial has been turned upside down. Here’s the latest as the case resumes after an eight-week delay.More than two years since the arrest of the star Atlanta rapper Young Thug on racketeering, gang conspiracy and weapons charges, his trial alongside five co-defendants is already the longest in Georgia’s history. And it is nowhere near finished.On Monday, some 19 months after the start of jury selection and nine months following opening statements, the jury will return to the courtroom to hear testimony for the first time since June 17.They will do so in a changed landscape: Judge Ural Glanville, who had been presiding over the case since the start, was instructed to step down last month and was replaced by Judge Paige Reese Whitaker following a series of heated back-and-forths and motions from the defense about the handling of an uncooperative witness for the prosecution.About 75 witnesses have testified so far, and prosecutors have told Judge Whitaker that they plan to call some 105 more; estimates backed by the new judge predict the trial will likely last through the first quarter of 2025.But the appointment of Judge Whitaker — actually the case’s third judge, because of another typically dramatic twist — is in some ways a fresh start, as she attempts to put a runaway train of a trial back on track.“This has been a long-running and multifaceted proceeding,” Judge Whitaker wrote in one of many decisions she had to make before the case could resume. “Challenges have been myriad and formidable. Frustrations may have been mounting while fortitude was waning.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Shelby Lynne Meets Her Moment, Again

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      Twenty-five years after the album that reshaped her career, the singer and songwriter unlocked a new creative groove, with the help of an all-female team in Nashville.Shelby Lynne left Nashville both physically and metaphorically behind two and a half decades ago.In 2000, she released “I Am Shelby Lynne,” a genre-defying declaration of self that helped land her first Grammy, for best new artist. She’d spent a decade in Nashville, putting out five albums that never quite harnessed her sweltering Southern soul, then moved to Palm Springs, Calif., and jettisoned country music. While she found success with the bluesy rock and retro pop of “I Am,” produced by Bill Bottrell (Sheryl Crow’s “Tuesday Night Music Club”), she floundered in a life of her own intractable artistic standards, bad decisions and drinking.Back in Tennessee, sitting on the patio of Soho House, the Nashville outpost of the British social club, in rust-colored Dickies overalls over a crisp white dress shirt and tailored black jacket, she laughed, a slow-rolling molasses tumble, looking back at it all.“I’d come back here to be near Sissy,” Lynne, 55, explained in a slow, vowels-extended drawl, referring to her younger sister, the singer and songwriter Allison Moorer. “I was always kind of making records in California, but I thought that part of my life was over. I just wanted to write some songs, maybe get a publishing deal, which I never had.”Nashville being Nashville, the creative hive often rises to meet legacy talent. With the 25th anniversary of “I Am” on the horizon, Katie McCartney of Monument Records offered to reissue it. But Lynne also had new songs on her mind, which she was starting to realize with help from the country stalwart Ashley Monroe, whose introductions led to female collaborations that proved to be wildly different from anything Lynne had experienced. The result is “Consequences of the Crown,” her 17th studio album, due Friday.Lynne’s all-woman core creative team for the LP includes Monroe, Karen Fairchild of Little Big Town and the producer and engineer Gena Johnson. Lynne, in the midst of heartbreak, poured her emotions into songs, often live in the studio surrounded by this supportive tribe.“This is maybe the record everybody wanted after I made ‘I Am,’” she said. “Maybe all that time between was getting ready for this one, you know?”Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Travis Scott Released From Custody After Confrontation at a Paris Hotel

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      The star rapper had been accused on Friday of assaulting a security guard at a luxury hotel in Paris. No charges were filed against him, according to prosecutors.The rapper Travis Scott was released from police custody on Saturday, a day after he was detained following a confrontation with a security guard at a Paris hotel, prosecutors said.Scott, 33, whose birth name is Jacques Bermon Webster II, had been detained on Friday after prosecutors said he had assaulted a security guard at the George V, a luxury hotel in the city’s Eighth Arrondissement. No charges were filed against him, according to the prosecutor’s office.The office said in a statement on Saturday that “the case opened on the grounds of assault was dropped as the offense was not sufficiently substantiated.”Scott, a multiplatinum rapper, was visiting the city for the Summer Olympics when the confrontation took place.The prosecutor’s office said, “The security guard had intervened to separate the rapper from his bodyguard.” Additional details about the confrontation were unavailable.Scott had posted photos on social media from the crowd of the men’s U.S. basketball team during their game against Serbia on Thursday.In June, Scott was arrested in Miami Beach, Fla., after causing a disturbance on a docked yacht, according to the police. He was released after paying a $650 bond for charges of trespassing and disorderly intoxication after the police responded to reports of people fighting on the vessel.Hours later, Scott began selling T-shirts that featured his mug shot, with a caption that read “It’s Miami,” which he was quoted as saying in the police report.The future of Scott’s career was cast in doubt after 10 of his fans died and hundreds were injured during a crowd crush at the rapper’s concert, which was part of the Astroworld music festival in Houston in 2021.A grand jury later declined to indict Scott and settlements were reached in multiple lawsuits stemming from the deaths.Aurelien Breeden More

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      Mísia, Who Brought a Modern Flair to Fado Music, Dies at 69

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      With her smoky voice and her high-fashion look, the self-proclaimed “punk of fado” found stardom by shaking up a venerable Portuguese genre.Mísia, an acclaimed singer who helped modernize fado, a traditional Portuguese music known for wistful songs of fate, loss and regret, with a runway-ready style sense and an eclectic approach that earned her the label “anarchist of fado,” died on July 27 in Lisbon. She was 69.Her death was announced by Dalila Rodrigues, Portugal’s minister of culture, who called Mísia “a fundamental voice in the renewal of fado.” News reports said the cause was cancer.Fado — the name is derived from the Latin word fatum, meaning fate — is an urban folk music spiced with Arabic and other global influences that arose in the 19th century in the grittiest quarters of Lisbon. Marked by a minor-key plaintiveness, the music is rich with feelings of longing and resignation.Like the American blues, fado long functioned as the song of the disenfranchised, a search for transcendence amid struggle. “It was sung in the taverns and the houses of prostitution,” Mísia said in a 2000 interview with the American arts magazine Bomb, “where a lot of sailors and rough people, people who had a hard life, went to hear the music.” Fado, she added, “was the shouting of the people with no power.”Fado is also known for its theatrical, if spare, presentation: stylized, almost ritualistic performances by vocalists typically dressed in black, accompanied by traditional instruments like the Portuguese guitarra, a 12-string guitar dating to the 13th century.Her ascent to global success began with the release of her critically acclaimed debut album, called simply “Mísia,” in 1991; she eventually performed in the esteemed music halls of New York, London and Tokyo and attracted a particularly avid following in France.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tim Walz’s Jam: Dylan, Prince, the Replacements and Hüsker Dü

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      Kamala Harris’s running mate is a rock fan with an affinity for Minnesota artists including Bob Dylan, Prince, the Replacements and Hüsker Dü.When Beto O’Rourke and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota served in Congress together in the 2010s, they would go on early morning jogs and talk about their shared love of music from Minnesota, from icons like Bob Dylan and Prince to the indie rock ferment the Twin Cities produced in the 1980s, including the Replacements and Hüsker Dü.“Music would come up a lot,” Mr. O’Rourke recalled of those runs when they were both serving on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. (He also said that Mr. Walz, a native Nebraskan, seemed impervious to Washington winters, wearing T-shirts and shorts.)Mr. Walz’s affinity for rock comes up often enough, vouched for by enough sources, to appear deep-seated. By all appearances, the governor, whom Vice President Kamala Harris selected on Tuesday as her running mate, truly loves his dad rock.Three years ago Mr. Walz wished Bob Dylan — born in Duluth, raised in Hibbing — a happy 80th birthday on social media, identifying “Forever Young” as a favorite Dylan tune (Walz posted the slow version, not the up-tempo one). Last year Mr. Walz used purple ink to sign a law honoring the Minneapolis native Prince, the artist behind the 1984 album and movie “Purple Rain,” by renaming a stretch of Highway 5 the “Prince Rogers Nelson Memorial Highway.”Mr. Walz periodically texts about upcoming rock concerts in the Twin Cities or Mr. O’Rourke’s hometown, El Paso. “I love that he has got one of the most intense jobs in the world, all these things on his plate, but he finds time to reach out, to listen to music, to go to concerts,” Mr. O’Rourke, a onetime presidential hopeful, said in an interview.Mr. Walz, 60, is also a fan of Bruce Springsteen. Patrick Murphy, a former Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania who at one point was Mr. Walz’s roommate in Washington, recalled how Mr. Walz urged him to delve deeper into the Springsteen catalog.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More