Music

Bill Withers, a onetime Navy aircraft mechanic who, after teaching himself to play the guitar, wrote some of the most memorable and often-covered songs of the 1970s, including “Lean on Me,” “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Use Me,” died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 81.His death, at a hospital, was announced by his family. His son, Todd, said Mr. Withers had had heart problems.Mr. Withers, who had an evocative, gritty R&B voice that could embody loss or hope, was in his 30s when he released his first album, “Just as I Am,” in 1971. It included “Ain’t No Sunshine,” a mournful lament (“Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone/And she’s always gone too long/Anytime she goes away”) that cracked the Billboard Top 10.Other hits followed, perhaps none better known than “Lean on Me,” an anthem of friendship and support that hit No. 1 in 1972 and has been repurposed countless times by a variety of artists.There were also “Use Me” (1972), “Lovely Day” (1977) and “Just the Two of Us” (1981), among other hits. But after the 1985 album “Watching You Watching Me,” frustrated with the music business, Mr. Withers stopped recording and performing.“I wouldn’t know a pop chart from a Pop-Tart,” he told Rolling Stone in 2015, when he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.“Bill was a mystical man,” Leo Sacks, who supervised the rerelease of Mr. Withers’s catalog for Sony Legacy Recordings, including a 2012 box that won a Grammy for best historical recording, said by email. “Like a Greek oracle. But he let the songs speak for themselves. He sang so conversationally and universally, like he was sitting next to you. His songs made every word count.”William Harrison Withers Jr. was born on July 4, 1938, in Slab Fork, W.Va., to William and Mattie (Galloway) Withers. His mother was a maid, and his father worked in the coal mines.At 17, eager to avoid a coal-mine career himself, Mr. Withers joined the Navy.“My first goal was, I didn’t want to be a cook or a steward,” he told Rolling Stone. “So I went to aircraft-mechanic school.”He spent nine years in the service, some of it stationed in Guam. He quit the Navy in 1965, while stationed in California, and eventually got a job at an airplane parts factory. A visit to a nightclub to see Lou Rawls perform was a catalyst for changing his life.“I was making $3 an hour, looking for friendly women, but nobody found me interesting,” he said. “Then Rawls walked in, and all these women are talking to him.”He bought a cheap guitar at a pawnshop, started learning to play it and writing songs, and eventually recorded a demo. Clarence Avant, a music executive who had just founded an independent label, Sussex, took note and set him up with the keyboardist Booker T. Jones, of Booker T. & the MG’s, to produce an album.“Bill came right from the factory and showed up in his old brogans and his old clunk of a car with a notebook full of songs,” Mr. Jones told Rolling Stone. “When he saw everyone in the studio, he asked to speak to me privately and said, ‘Booker, who is going to sing these songs?’ I said, ‘You are, Bill.’ He was expecting some other vocalist to show up.”Mr. Withers was laid off from his factory job a few months before “Just as I Am” came out. After the album’s release, he recalled, he received two letters on the same day. One was from his workplace asking him to return to work. The other was from “The Tonight Show,” where he appeared in November 1971.That “Ain’t No Sunshine” became a hit off that album was unexpected.“‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ was the B-side to ‘Harlem’,” he told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 2015, referring to another track from the album, “until the D.J.s turned it over.”The song, he said, had just come to him one day.“I was watching the movie ‘The Days of Wine and Roses,’ looked out the window and it crossed my mind,” he told The Plain Dealer. “Probably some girl had left me, but ego preservation has taught me to avoid inconvenient truths.”“Ain’t No Sunshine” won the Grammy Award for best rhythm and blues song. “Lean on Me” and “Just the Two of Us” (a collaboration with the saxophonist Grover Washington Jr., written with William Salter and Ralph MacDonald) won the same award.Mr. Withers released six other studio albums in the 1970s, for Sussex and then Columbia, and performed across the country and beyond. One memorable appearance was at the music festival in Zaire in 1974 that preceded the “Rumble in the Jungle,” the heavyweight fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali.But he also played clubs like the Bottom Line in Manhattan.“Mr. Withers’s lyrics are among the most thoughtful in all of pop music,” Robert Palmer wrote in The New York Times, reviewing a 1976 show there, “but his work also has its physical side. Many of his tunes simmer irresistibly, as if cooking over a low flame.”Mr. Withers chafed at Columbia, clashing with executives, and after the release of “Watching You Watching Me” in 1985, he was done with the music business. Years later he liked to tell stories about not being recognized in public. One such incident occurred at a Los Angeles restaurant.“Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles up on Pico,” he told NPR’s “Morning Edition” in 2015, “and these ladies looked like they had just come from church or something, and they were talking about this Bill Withers song. So I was going to have some fun with them. I said, ‘I’m Bill Withers,’ and this lady said: ‘You ain’t no Bill Withers. You too light-skinned to be Bill Withers.’”Mr. Withers’s brief marriage to the actress Denise Nicholas in the 1970s ended in divorce. In 1976 he married Marcia Johnson. She and their son survive him, along with their daughter, Kori, and a sister, Florence Mather.In 2015, in advance of a tribute concert in his honor at Carnegie Hall, Mr. Withers was interviewed at a restaurant by a reporter for The Times. The talk turned to how, with no music training, he had managed to fashion a career in music relatively late in life.“It was just something I decided to do,” he said. “If I decided to build one of these fountains” — he pointed to a decoration on the restaurant’s patio — “I could probably do it.”He could also probably have resumed his career at any time.“Late in life, he would tease us about recording again,” Mr. Sacks said. “But I think he was truly ambivalent. He said he didn’t think anyone was interested in what an ‘old man’ had to say. And that was Bill to a tee: wily, cunning, self-effacing. Utterly disingenuous.”Derrick Bryson Taylor contributed reporting. More

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The comedienne, who is known for her role as Nekeisha Williams on ‘The Carmichael Show’, has debuted the first promo for her rap debut song featuring Begetz and Mrs Begetz.
Apr 3, 2020
AceShowbiz – Tiffany Haddish is poking fun at her struggles to find Mr. Right. The comedienne, who is known for her role as Nekeisha Williams on “The Carmichael Show”, has dropped a music video her rap debut song, “Come & Get Your Baby Daddy”, which sees her going to a speed dating that doesn’t end up well.
Released on Friday, April 3, the promo is kicked off by the 40-year-old actress who declares, “[Expletive] if you don’t come and get your man out of my [expletive] face.” She goes on to rap, “Come and get your baby daddy/ He’s all on me/ Come and get your baby daddy/ Talking about he want to call me.”
The almost-five-minute visuals has Chris Robinson in the director’s seat, and features Begetz and Mrs Begetz as well as Haddish’s “Night School” co-star Bresha Webb. At some point in the video, the two ladies can be seen struggling to show off twerking skills and teaming up for a dance off against a group of men.
Other than Webb, Haddish’s music video also presents “Two Can Play That Game” actor Alex Thomas as one of her suitors. Donning a gold jacket and several gold necklaces, the “Mr. Box Office” star angered the “Like a Boss” actress when he throws a stack of money to her face.
In the music video, the “Girls Trip” actress also sits with a number of other guys who failed to impress her during their dates. Getting more and more frustrated, she raps, “This [expletive] got like 10 kids and no car/ talking about he’s a rap star/ Be in all the clubs looking bankrupt/ Tiff Tiff looking like she had the bank up.”
Prior to this music video release, Tiffany has talked about working on an album. Revealing she was inspired by her Grammy nomination for an audio book, she shared with Glamour, “I’m really excited about that and it really inspired me like, ‘wow if I can nominate for a Grammy for telling my truth, what can I get if I really just apply myself and my vocal skills?’ I’m going to see what happens. It might be really great, it might not but who cares, right? You’ve got to give it a shot.”

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Though left ‘gutted’ by the decision to reschedule his planned concerts, the One Direction member insists that ‘the health and safety of all of my fans and tour crew needs to come first’.
Apr 3, 2020
AceShowbiz – Louis Tomlinson has postponed two legs of his ongoing world tour due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The One Direction alumni was due to perform in Dubai, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and Japan later this month, before heading to South and Central America in May.
However, on Thursday (April 02) he announced that all his shows until June have been postponed, including concerts in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Mexico. Gigs in Russia and Ukraine that were the last remaining in a truncated European leg have also been pulled.
“Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, all of my tour dates for April & May 2020 are being rescheduled,” he wrote on Twitter and Instagram. “I’m really gutted but of course the health and safety of all of my fans and tour crew needs to come first. I’ll be announcing the new dates very soon. Stay safe, Louis x.”

The “Steal My Girl” hitmaker’s tour was his first as a solo artist, but was abruptly halted due to the escalating health crisis caused by the virus, Covid-19, after two shows in Spain. He subsequently rescheduled a string of European dates as the disease began to spread.
Coronavirus-permitting, Louis tour is now scheduled to restart in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 9 June.

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YNW Melly to Request for Restricted Release After Testing Positive for Coronavirus in Jail

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The rapper Tekashi69 walked out of a federal prison on Thursday, four months short of his two-year term, thanks to a nationwide effort to stem coronavirus outbreak risks at jails and prisons, which health advocates fear might become a tinder box for infections.Tekashi69 (born Daniel Hernandez), 23, will finish the remainder of his sentence in home confinement, his lawyer, Lance Lazzaro, said.Last year, Mr. Hernandez — also known as 6ix9ine — pleaded guilty to a series of gang robberies and shootings, cooperating with authorities by testifying against his former associates in the gang Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. He has asthma, which his lawyer argued gave him a heightened vulnerability to the coronavirus.U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, who sentenced him, agreed, saying that the pandemic presented “extraordinary and compelling reasons” for a compassionate release of Mr. Hernandez, who, he wrote in his order on Thursday, “no longer will present a meaningful danger to the community if at liberty.”Last week, Judge Engelmayer wrote in a guidance to the Bureau of Prisons: “Had the Court known that sentencing Mr. Hernandez to serve the final four months of his term in a federal prison would have exposed him to a heightened health risk, the Court would have directed that these four months be served instead in home confinement.” More

The shelf life of a power-pop band is short. The Knack had an album and a half. Big Star had three. The Raspberries catalog could make for a fantastic first half of a CD.Fountains of Wayne, fronted by the songwriting and producing team of Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood, seemed to have silos full of hooks. Like Lennon and McCartney, they shared joint credit, even if only one of them wrote a song. In five studio albums and one compilation, they sang almost exclusively about 18 to 28-year-olds living on the East Coast. They had one huge hit, “Stacy’s Mom,” but wrote dozens of funny or sympathetic songs about Gen X misfits, like an earthbound Beach Boys serenading the suburbs rather than the sea.In addition to his main band, Schlesinger, who died on Wednesday of the coronavirus, formed several side groups and wrote for the TV show “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” as well as the stage. Here are 30 of his essential songs. (You can listen to the playlist on Spotify here.)Fountains of Wayne, ‘Radiation Vibe’ (1996)Sung to a girl who’s with the wrong guy, by a guy who thinks he’s the right guy. The first song on the first Fountains of Wayne album is lightly adorned power pop that became richer on subsequent albums, while keeping the downtrodden, slightly resentful tone. As in a Randy Newman song, the narrator has a bit too much confidence.Fountains of Wayne, ‘Sick Day’ (1996)Nothing important ever happens in a Fountains of Wayne song. That’s kind of the point: The band wrote about the big dreams and tiny victories of people who never get anywhere. “Sick Day” describes a “hell of a girl” who’s stuck in a crummy office job, and while Schlesinger and Collingwood treat her with tenderness, the best they can foresee is that she might take a sick day (pause) soon. (The timing of that pause shows a keen comic sense.) It’s a gorgeous acoustic ballad, with a winking reference to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” after the third chorus, and it sketches out some ideas that came to perfection later in “Troubled Times.”Fountains of Wayne, ‘Leave the Biker’ (1996)Fountains of Wayne recorded its first album in a week, for only $5,000, and at times, the low budget is not only obvious, it’s charming. “Leave the Biker” starts with a panned chicka-chicka guitar riff that sounds like a 10-year-old warming up at Guitar Center. Once again, our narrator is in love with someone who’s dating higher on the food chain — a biker with “crumbs in his beard from the seafood special.” And there’s, you guessed it, another winking Beatles rip at the end.Fountains of Wayne, ‘Please Don’t Rock Me Tonight’ (1996)People who don’t like FOW complain that all it made is cute meta-pop full of references to other bands, but — ehh, you know what, that’s not wrong. This fourth selection from the band’s debut not only inverts the classic AOR imperative of rocking all night, it rhymes “care to” and “hairdo.”The Wonders, ‘That Thing You Do’ (1996)Tom Hanks wrote, directed and appeared in “That Thing You Do!,” a 1996 movie about a mythical Erie, Pa. band who have one big hit in the mid-60s before it all falls apart on them. Crucially, the film needed a great retro song that a) sounded credibly like a British Invasion-styled song from, specifically, the summer of 1964; b) was great enough to have been a hit; and c) could stand up to being heard over and over in the movie. About 300 writers submitted songs for consideration, and Schlesinger’s song won. It was nominated for best original song at the Academy Awards and at the Golden Globes.Fountains of Wayne, ‘Utopia Parkway’ (1999)Second album, they’ve brought in a drummer and a lead guitarist to fatten the sound, and they’ve got a recording budget. “Utopia Parkway,” a midtempo harmony fest with a buzzing, distorted guitar line (they’ve also moved from Beatles references to nodding at the Cars), is narrated by a smug outer-borough wannabe with a custom van and a cover band who has never turned from boy to man and his baby doesn’t understand.Fountains of Wayne, ‘Red Dragon Tattoo’ (1999)A nice guy can only stand so much rejection from the fairer sex before he gets drunk, buys some Bactine and a .38 Special CD, takes the train to Coney Island and signs up for a fierce-looking tattoo. The singer does it only to court a girl, who, you can be sure, will not be moved by the gesture. “Red dragon tattoo is just about on me/I got it for you, so now do you want me?” the dim bulb pleads. The band’s first absolute power-pop masterpiece.Fountains of Wayne, ‘Troubled Times’ (1999)The elegant pre-chorus is another indication of songwriting growth, and Collingwood brings the right amount of pathos and empathy to a lyric about a boy pining for a girl and imagining it will work out. Bittersweet enough to soundtrack a season-ending, broken teen romance for a series on the CW Network, and that’s high praise.Fountains of Wayne, ‘Laser Show’ (1999)They’ve moved from the Beatles to Wings in this brief, chunky rocker about a great tristate ritual for stoned tristate teens: the laser show at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. Collingwood adds grainy excitement to his boyish voice as he sings, “We’re gonna sit back, relax, watch the stars/James and Jason, Kirk and Lars.” It’s not mockery, it’s not parody or irony, it’s a celebration of teenage thrills for kids from Bridgeport, Westport, Darien.Fountains of Wayne, ‘Prom Theme’ (1999)A new twist on songs about high school: It’s written from an older vantage of disappointment (“We’ll grow old and lose our hair/It’s all downhill from there”) but builds to a brave, innocent defiance in the chorus (“Tonight we’ll reach for the stars/We’ll rent expensive cars”). The arrangement is dominated by a dulcet string arrangement for two violins and a cello.Ivy, ‘Edge of the Ocean’ (2000)Schlesinger was part of a cosmopolitan pop trio fronted by Dominique Durand, a Frenchwoman who’d relocated to New York City. The highlight of its third full album is a shimmering ballad, focused on Durand’s soft-focus voice, which dives into contemporary trip-hop. Nearly as good, on the same album: “Lucy Doesn’t Love You.”Josie and the Pussycats, ‘Pretend to Be Nice’ (2001)Kay Hanley, who was the lead singing voice in the 2001 musical comedy film “Josie and the Pussycats,” wrote this on Twitter about Schlesinger, who penned the song: “His talent as a songwriter is so special, so enormous, it never overwhelms, only sweetens any airspace it inhabits.” Jabbing, on-the-beat guitar catapults this track, and the girl can’t figure out why the boy, who’s patently a shlub, won’t compliment her or laugh at her jokes.Fountains of Wayne, ‘Mexican Wine’ (2003)Fountains of Wayne commemorated the post-recession bubble with a deft third album about young office workers in the midst of quiet crises — often restless, usually unfocused and probably drunk. It’s part John Cheever, part John Hughes. This slow-building rocker cycles around a great description of someone stuck in place: “I tried to change, but I changed my mind/Think I’ll have another glass of Mexican wine.”Fountains of Wayne, ‘Stacy’s Mom’ (2003)Top 40 needed a song about hot moms, and this was the band to do it. Fountains of Wayne didn’t have a record deal when it wrote this (Schlesinger paid for the recording sessions), and the group shopped it to “just about everybody,” he said. Only S-Curve offered them a deal. The song hit No. 21 on the Billboard singles chart and earned a Grammy nomination.Fountains of Wayne, ‘Little Red Light’ (2003)When Ric Ocasek of the Cars heard “Stacy’s Mom,” he thought the band had sampled his own “Just What I Needed.” What could he have made of this, the most blatant, loving, skillful Cars rip-off in the band’s repertoire? The singer has a boring desk job and a girl who doesn’t love him, but at least he has his cordless phone. Hilarious, tragic.Fountains of Wayne, ‘All Kinds of Time’ (2003)The title is a cliché football announcers use when a quarterback isn’t being pressured by the defense, and Schlesinger gave the music a slow-motion tempo and arrangement, including lots of tremolo guitar effects. The narrator, who’s older than the self-assured quarterback, knows something the quarterback doesn’t: No one has all kinds of time.‘Music From the Motion Picture “Music and Lyrics,”’ ‘Way Back Into Love’ (2007)Another very specific challenge from Hollywood: if a washed-up 1980s superstar were trying to make a comeback two decades later, what would his songs sound like? There are no jokes or clever quips in this power ballad, just a skyborne melody that, in the film Music and Lyrics, brings Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore together, and later, back together.Fountains of Wayne, ‘’92 Subaru’ (2007)On Fountains of Wayne’s fourth album, it spent less time referencing the ’60s and ’70s bands it loved and more time seamlessly synthesizing them. “’92 Subaru” is an ecstatic rocker that evokes the Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove” and revisits the guy from “Red Dragon Tattoo,” who’s now fixing up his junker, on a budget, so he can win back a girl. Psst, it won’t work.Fountains of Wayne, ‘Michael and Heather at the Baggage Claim’ (2007)The melodies weren’t vanishing but the inspiration was, as people started writing off FOW as a one-hit wonder, which was besides the point. The songs were getting more adult, including this one, with brushed drums and layers of instrumental harmonies, about a couple who overcome the agonies of baggage claim. It was written and named for a record executive they’d worked with and his wife.Fountains of Wayne, “Strapped for Cash” (2007)No one ever called FOW the voice of a generation, but no group wrote more songs about the economic tribulations and uncertainty of Gen X. The arrangement is tight — quarter-note piano, clipped organ hook, a trumpet section — there’s a loving Billy Joel reference (“Heart attack-ack-ack”), and our hero avoids a beating from his loan shark, at least for now.Fountains of Wayne, ‘New Routine’ (2007)It starts with a couple of old codgers in a diner, sends their waitress off to live in Liechtenstein, sends her German boyfriend all the way to Kentucky, and returns to the codgers. Everyone’s moving, no one’s content. Why hasn’t this been turned into a movie?Tinted Windows, ‘Kind of a Girl’ (2009)Schlesinger was game for most anything, including a supergroup. He played bass in Tinted Windows and wrote most of the songs, James Iha of Smashing Pumpkins played guitar, Taylor Hanson of Hanson sang and Cheap Trick’s Bun E. Carlos manned the drums. This single from their lone album is like a term paper on the curative powers of whoa-whoa background vocals.Fountains of Wayne, ‘Richie and Ruben’ (2011)Their fifth and last album could’ve been called “More Songs About Tough Times and Bad Decisions.” Pals Richie and Ruben (rhymes with “don’t know what they’re doin’”) open a bar, it goes bust fast, and then we discover the narrator of this jazzy, bouncing song invested in that bar, and even gave them more money for a clothing line.Neil Patrick Harris, ‘It’s Not Just for Gays Anymore’ (2011)As host of the Tony Awards in 2011, the former Doogie Howser needed a big opening song. With “The Daily Show” writer David Javerbaum, Schlesinger devised this cheeky pitch for Broadway (“It’s no longer only for dudes who like dudes/Attention every breeder, you’re invited to the theater”) with a cleverness that never flags.‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,’ ‘Gettin’ Bi’ (2016)Over the course of four seasons, Schlesinger wrote or co-wrote 157 songs for this groundbreaking music comedy, an astoundingly fecund pace, in a huge variety of styles. The references in these songs were always clear within the first eight bars, and “Getting’ Bi,” a celebration of bisexuality from Season One, paid homage to Huey Lewis and the News (a bit of “Hip to be Square,” a smidgen of “The Power of Love”). “I Could if I Wanted To,” a loser’s self-deceiving lament from the same season, evokes second-level grunge ballads, and “What’ll It Be?” couldn’t love Billy Joel any more if it were married to him.From Season Two, “We Tapped That Ass” takes a vaudeville approach to a duet between two male characters who recollect all the places they had sex (“On the table, you were willing and able”) with the show’s conflicted main character, Rebecca. And “Where’s the Bathroom,” a musical theater patter song for Rebecca’s awful mom, played by Tovah Feldshuh, is history’s greatest catalog of passive-aggressive behavior (“I see your eczema is back”). “The Fiddler on the Roof” violin pushes it over the top.Robbie Fulks, ‘Fountains of Wayne Hotline’ (2005)Here’s a ringer: not a song by Schlesinger, but a hilarious song about him, by the alt-country loose cannon Robbie Fulks. The guitar intro and his upper-tenor voice mimic Fountains of Wayne; the narrator, who’s stymied by a song he’s trying, phones up a hotline that gives arrangement advice by recommending the tricks that repeat throughout Fountains of Wayne songs. It’s not snide — you can’t emulate a band this closely unless you love them. Enduring advice for songwriters: “Try a wider interval!” More

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The former One Direction member and the daughter of model Yolanda Hadid, who were first linked romantically to each other in 2015, went on and off before splitting for good in early 2019.
Apr 2, 2020
AceShowbiz – Zayn Malik seems to be left butt-hurt by his relationship with Gigi Hadid. On Monday, March 30, an unreleased song of the former One Direction member titled “Hurt” surfaced online, and it suggested that the Victoria’s Secret model has hurt him “the worst.”
In the leaked track, the 27-year-old singer can be heard singing, “You know me the best but you hurt me the worst/ Every single thing you know about me is every single thing you use to only hurt.” He continues, “I know I should let go now (but I know, but I know), no one else feels like home, yeah/ You know just what to say to make me stay, make me stay/ One more dose of the pain.”
The song itself was written in 2017, one year prior to the release of the “Pillowtalk” hitmaker’s album “Icarus Falls”. Fans were quick to voice their disapproval of its leak with one in particular noting, “This is the THIRD time someone has allowed one of Zayn’s track to be leaked. We stand by Zayn in all of this and know he deserves better from his team and from fans #WeLoveYouZayn.”
In the love department, Malik began dating Hadid in 2015, only months after his split from ex-fiancee and Little Mix member Perrie Edwards. The Sia Furler-collaborator for “Dusk Till Dawn”, however, split from the daughter of Yolanda Hadid broke up in March 2018. They got back together three months later before splitting for good in early 2019.
In November 2019, Malik and Hadid were reported to be back communicating with each other. “They went through a phase where they took time apart and weren’t communicating at all, but they have been in touch recently. She is supportive of him. They chat here and there but it’s been casual,” a source explained to E! News before adding that the model “has always had a soft spot for Zayn and they have a lot of history together.”

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This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.Bucky Pizzarelli, who after many years as a respected but relatively anonymous session guitarist became a mainstay of the New York jazz scene in the 1970s, died on Wednesday in Saddle River, N.J. He was 94.The guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli, his son and frequent musical associate, said the cause was the coronavirus.A master of the subtle art of rhythm guitar as well as a gifted soloist, Mr. Pizzarelli was sought after for recording sessions in the 1950s and ’60s and can be heard on hundreds of records in various genres, although he was often uncredited. He also toured with Benny Goodman and was a longtime member of the “Tonight Show” orchestra. But he was little known to all but the most knowledgeable jazz fans until he was in his 40s.When Johnny Carson moved “The Tonight Show” to California from New York in 1972, Mr. Pizzarelli stayed behind. He explained at the time that he did not want to uproot his four school-age children from their New Jersey home. Freed of the responsibilities of a regular job, he began performing more frequently in New York nightclubs.Among those clubs was a Midtown Manhattan spot appropriately named the Guitar, where he had already attracted attention in a duo with his fellow guitarist George Barnes in 1970. Reviewing one of their first performances, John S. Wilson of The New York Times wrote: “This is a brilliant and unique team. Mr. Barnes and Mr. Pizzarelli can be dazzling and they can be sensuously brooding. They sparkle with excitement, leap with joy or relax with a warm romantic glow.”After Mr. Pizzarelli and Mr. Barnes parted ways in 1972, Mr. Pizzarelli began performing and recording in a variety of high-profile settings: unaccompanied, as the leader of small groups, as a sideman with leading jazz musicians like the saxophonists Zoot Sims and Bud Freeman and the violinists Stéphane Grappelli and Joe Venuti.In 1980 he began performing with a new duo partner: his son John, 20 years old at the time, who went on to become a jazz star in his own right. “That’s where he got his baptism of fire,” Mr. Pizzarelli told an interviewer in 1997. “With me giving him dirty looks when he played a wrong chord.”The two Pizzarellis would perform and record together many times over the years, often joined by Mr. Pizzarelli’s other son, Martin, a bassist, and the vocalist Jessica Molaskey, John’s wife. John Pizzarelli once described them as “the von Trapp family on martinis.” As John’s star ascended, he frequently employed his father as a sideman.Mr. Pizzarelli’s sons survive him, as do his wife, Ruth (Litchult) Pizzarelli; two daughters, Anne Hymes and Mary Pizzarelli; and four grandchildren. More

For most performing artists, the daily routine is roughly the same: rehearse, perform, rinse and repeat.But with the coronavirus shuttering live shows around the world, musicians, dancers, actors and others have had to adapt to a new reality — without an audience to prepare for. We talked to some about how they’re staying in shape and honing their craft while working from home.‘You can’t sit still for long.’Constance Stamatiou, dancer, Alvin Ailey American Dance TheaterVideoConstance Stamatiou’s workday as an Alvin Ailey dancer would sometimes stretch 12 hours, between morning ballet classes, seven-hour rehearsals and evening performances. More recently, Ms. Stamatiou has had to find new spaces for dance, in and around her New Jersey home — the parking lot outside, her daughters’ playroom, the kitchen — where she can improvise new pieces and follow along with virtual ballet classes broadcast on Instagram. A high-top table in the kitchen has become a home ballet barre; a broomstick and water jugs, a new way to lift weights. Ms. Stamatiou is also learning new choreography with her daughters on TikTok. (She has yet to master the Renegade, which she finds a bit intimidating.)‘My relationship with the instrument can really go back to square one.’Max Zeugner, associate principal bass, New York PhilharmonicVideoBefore the New York Philharmonic canceled its season, Max Zeugner’s practice time was filled with short-term scrambles to learn the right notes for the next concert. Now, he’s found a silver lining in getting to do something he hasn’t done since high school: playing music just for fun. Mr. Zeugner has opted for warming up with Bach phrases rather than scales or arpeggios — a meditative routine, he said, that comes close to prayer. (And the nine-person Philharmonic bass section now has a group chat: “Just trying to keep it light for the end of the world. A few jokes here and there. I’ll leave it at that.”)‘I’m using this time to get back to singing just for fun.’Lauren Patten, actor, ‘Jagged Little Pill’ on BroadwayLauren Patten has heard complaints about singing too loud in her New York apartment. After all, she’s had to practice the heavy rock score of Alanis Morissette’s music in “Jagged Little Pill.” But after Broadway shut down, Ms. Patten retreated to an Airbnb in a small Vermont town surrounded by farmland — with plenty of open space and distance from neighbors. She is taking the time away from the city to sing for fun and keep her repertoire diverse with “more legit musical theater stuff.”‘This is one time where I do get to just say, “Hey, you know what? I don’t want to practice today.”’Angel Blue, opera singerVideoAngel Blue usually rehearses in transit from one performance to another: She learned her title role in “Porgy and Bess” on an airplane, flying home from a concert in Kazakhstan, and “Faust” en route from Singapore. With her performances across the country canceled, she has time to learn two new Verdi roles at home in New Jersey, at her own pace: Leonora in “Il Trovatore” and the title character in “Aida.” At home, she’s equipped with a thick sound-absorbing rug and a piano — and her family has space downstairs to retreat.‘If a miracle were to happen, I want to make sure that I’m ready to go.’Zachary Noah Piser, actor, ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ on BroadwayVideoZachary Noah Piser learned his lesson the hard way. In the three-month hiatus he had between performing in an international production of “Dear Evan Hansen” and joining the show’s Broadway cast, he figured he would remember Evan’s extensive dialogue without having to run lines on his break. But with this unexpectedly large gap in performances, Mr. Piser is reciting his lines to himself on (social-distanced) runs and walks outdoors, and on video chats with other cast members. He is also trying to stick to his usual warm-up regimen in his apartment by using a vocal steamer, doing exercises at his piano and singing through a song or two from the show.‘I like to fall back on just the basics.’Judith LeClair, principal bassoon, New York PhilharmonicFor Judith LeClair, “just playing orchestral works isn’t going to do it.” She’s returning to the fundamentals in her time away from performing, playing 10 études a day in her home studio. But bassoonists also need to devote at least half their time to the tedious process of making their own reeds from raw cane. In addition to making her own, Ms. LeClair is using this period to make reeds for her Juilliard School students who don’t have their own equipment at home. More