Music

[RINGING] [MUSIC PLAYING] “Hey.” “Hey. How’s it going?” “Good. What’s going on?” “Not much. I’m eating Raisin Bran.” “The fact that you do everything for Grimes — you write. You perform. You record yourself. You produce, engineer. You make the art.” “I shouldn’t. I should probably stop doing all these things. It’s, like, insane.” [MUSIC – GRIMES, ‘DELETE FOREVER’] “(SINGING) I see everything. I see everything. Don’t you tell me now that I don’t want it.” “This album has been many years in the making. Where in the process did ‘Delete Forever’ start?” “That was, like, an early — one of the first songs. ’Cause I know I made most of it when Lil Peep died. I’ve had, like, a few of my very close friends die from opioid addiction- related problems. So when Lil Peep died, I was just super hardcore triggered. Like, I just had a mini breakdown. But then kind of just, like, went to work on music.” [GUITAR PLAYING] “You ever like go to a punk show or something and someone just plays an acoustic. Like, I love, like, sort of like violent acoustic punk music. The guitar is weirdly actually, like, from a sample pack that I, like, stretched and pitched a bunch. I just wanted it to sound really raw because I was just feeling really raw.” “There aren’t many Grimes songs that are based around acoustic guitar, right?” “No. I weirdly like acoustic guitar. I just can’t be that basic, like, from an ego perspective. Sorry. Oh, it’s nice and mushy now.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “I feel like there was, like, eight years where I just couldn’t get over my first friend who passed away, because I was, like, very, very close with her. Like, it was just really intense, like, when you’re that young to have, like, one of your best friends die in such a, like, disturbing way, I guess. I’ve never actually done heroin. But it is a little bit about being self-destructive and how [BLEEP] you feel being self-destructive after your friends [BLEEP] died. You’re just like [BLEEP] on your friend’s grave by just, like, dealing with the grief, by doing this thing that killed them basically. How do we emotionally deal with this stuff? Do you know, like, Jack Kirby’s ‘New Gods’? I just got really compelled by the title. I was like, yeah. I want to make new gods. I want to make up the goddess of climate change, or in this case, the goddess of opioid addiction. Some of the first great art that we see is, like, the personification of painful or beautiful abstract concepts as gods. So maybe that helps people cope better. And maybe that helps society come together better. It seems easier to digest certain things when they’re fictionalized. So this song is kind of — yes, kind of meant to be, like, sort of about the goddess of addiction, the demon of addiction, or something like that. The drums are kind of my favorite part.” “It sounds like a ’90s pop rock radio song or something.” “Yeah. I think that 808 at the chorus. The first chorus is slightly too strong now, but whatever.” [CHIMES] “I like it.” “You do like it? O.K. I can’t tell if it’s insane. Sometimes I’m like, whoa. Might’ve gone too far. Because the guitar is a loop, I was trying to make it artificially make it feel more organic. You know?” “Artificially make it feel more organic.” “Yeah. No, I was going through doing all these weird production things to make it sound like — just like little textures and things in there, like, so that it’s, like, you can barely hear them, but it just adds like a —” [SOUND EFFECTS] “So are there any real instruments on this track or is it all digital?” “No, there’s, like, a real banjo, real violin. I had just always dreamed of making music with a banjo. And it was sort of like this dream that was, like, cut short tragically. The first instrument, before I made ‘Visions,’ I bought a banjo. And it was like $126. I remember this whole thing. It was my first instrument. And I was like, oh, I love Dolly Parton. I’m going to make a country record and be like a country artist. Which was, like, so crazy. And then as I was bringing the banjo home — I got it on Craigslist — I was bringing it home and this guy [BLEEP] followed me off the bus and followed me into this, like, stairwell of my apartment building. I was, like, wait, is this guy going to attack me right now? So I just, like, turned around and just started screaming and beating him with the banjo. And I destroyed the banjo, but he left. Then I was like — like the craziest.” “So you paid $126 for a banjo, like, 10 years ago.” “Yeah.” “And then you beat a man with it in self-defense.” “Yeah.” [LAUGHING] “Yeah.” “OK. Wow.” [VIOLIN PLAYING] “And what is your skill like on the violin?” “Extremely poor, but I’m really good at comping and studio magic.” “So you’re just playing little bits at a time?” “Yeah. I’d be, like —” [VOCALIZING NOTES] “Tape it in. Tape it in. Like, I could put in 200 hours and be good at the violin, or I could put in, like, 45 minutes and make something really beautiful. And then, like, make more things.” “What if you hired a violin player?” “Or I could hire a violin player.” “But that doesn’t seem like it’s an option for you. Is there also like a D.I.Y. ethos?” “Yeah, I guess. It’s not so much an ethos, as a comfortable — like, I’m just so much more comfortable alone.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “So you get this done really fast, this version of it, and then what happens?” “I was super embarrassed of this song. Like, it’s so clean and the vocals are so high and, like, I’m still kind of embarrassed of singing, to be honest. It’s very naked. It’s like when things are cloaked in, like, cool sounds and stuff, it’s less vulnerable.” “It’s such a nice counterpoint from something like ‘4 A.M.’ ” [MUSIC – GRIMES, ‘4AEM’] Do you think this is the most vulnerable Grimes song?” “One of them, for certain, for sure. Can you say, ‘for sure-tain’?’ ” “And was it cathartic to finally write a song about it?” “I’ve been wanting to write a song about it for a long time. But I just also, like, felt [BLEEP] writing a song about it because, you know. Like if it was all streaming and I didn’t have to sell it on iTunes and it wasn’t on the vinyl, it would, like, make me feel better, because there’s something about, like, selling it that just makes me feel really uncomfortable.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “Are you making a video for this song?” “We’re recreating a scene from ‘Akira,’ the cover of Book Four. It’s sort of a Nero-type thing. It’s, like, an empress sitting in, like, a decaying city as it’s, like, being bombed to the ground. ‘ Akira’ is a perfect piece of art actually, pretty much. And it was all made by one [BLEEP] guy, Katsuhiro Otomo. It’s crazy.” “There you go, just like Grimes.” [MUSIC PLAYING] “Where did you make — are you feeling OK?” “Oh, yeah. No, I’m just [INAUDIBLE]. This is probably TMI, but I can’t burp. I have this burping issue.” “Is that a function of pregnancy? Or you could never burp?” “Never burped. I’ve burped two or three times in my whole life.” “Wow.” “(SINGING) I’ve got the horses in the back.” “Dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee.” “The debt I owe. Got to sell my soul because I can’t say no. No, I can’t say no.” “Ma’am, what’s the deal? Ma’am, I’m coming through. It’s your girl, Lizzo.” [SCREAMS] [LAUGHING] More

Doriot Anthony Dwyer, a renowned flutist who broke down gender barriers with her appointment as principal flute of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1952, a post she held for nearly four decades, died on Saturday in Lawrence, Kan., where she lived near her daughter. She was 98.Her death was announced by the Boston Symphony.Ms. Dwyer was only the second woman to win a principal chair with a major American orchestra, after Helen Kotas, the principal horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1941 until 1948.Ms. Dwyer was 30 when the vacancy in Boston was announced. After thorough training, she had accumulated extensive experience ranging from freelancing in an orchestra that went on tour with Frank Sinatra to playing with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington as second flute.At the time, she was second flute with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and during the summers played principal with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, directed by Bruno Walter, who had chosen her.Orchestras were dominated by men in those days, from the podium on through the string, wind and brass sections, and most orchestras had only a handful of women in their ranks.Charles Munch, the conductor of the Boston Symphony in 1952, was dissatisfied with the flutists who had tried out and asked the departing principal, Georges Laurent, if he had a student to suggest. Laurent mentioned Lois Schaefer, who was playing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.Ms. Dwyer had also come to Munch’s attention, recommended by Walter as well as by Isaac Stern. So Munch proposed a “ladies’ day,” and invited both women to audition.Ms. Dwyer practiced for two solid months, learning famous flute solos from orchestral scores by memory. To protect her job, she told the Los Angeles Philharmonic that she needed a week off for elective surgery. She then traveled to New York, and then to the Boston Symphony’s summer home at Tanglewood for the audition.Ms. Dwyer felt determined yet surprisingly free. As she told Kristen Elizabeth Kean, who wrote a 2007 dissertation about Ms. Dwyer’s career, “I had nothing to worry about, because I wasn’t going to get the job anyway.”The two women competed in a joint session for an hour. Then Ms. Dwyer was asked to play for two more hours. Munch and Laurent, among others hearing the audition, were impressed by her glowing sound (which became a Dwyer hallmark), elegant phrasing and technical skill.When they asked if she could return in two weeks for a follow-up audition, she told them no. She assumed that Munch had other men he wanted to hear first and did not want to make another trip for what seemed like a long shot.When the call came weeks later that she had been accepted, she asked for a salary that exceeded what she was receiving in Los Angeles. Though nonplused, the orchestra agreed. (Ms. Schaefer, who died in January, eventually became the orchestra’s piccolo player.)The Boston Symphony’s own news release about the appointment was rife with the casual sexism of the day. The orchestra had acquired a “superb first flute” it read, who was, “incidentally, young, with a dimpled chin, careful coiffure, smallish stature, and an absence of Domineering Female suggestion.”Ms. Dwyer’s first appearances with the orchestra — she was known as Doriot Anthony then — were heralded by local newspapers with sensationalized headlines. “Woman Crashes Boston Symphony: Eyebrows Lifted as Miss Anthony Sat at Famous Flutist’s Desk,” The Boston Globe reported.Looking back in a Globe interview, Ms. Dwyer said that during her early years she encountered more prejudice in the press than she did in the orchestra. “I was never harassed,” she said, “though of course the men played jokes on me.” One involved turning a live lobster free in her dressing room.Doriot Anthony was born on March 6, 1922, in Streator, Ill., the third of four children of William C. and Edith M. Anthony. Her mother was a gifted flutist who played with local ensembles. Her father, related to the suffragist Susan B. Anthony, was a mechanical engineer. He was also a music-lover who encouraged his children’s musical interests, though his attitude was patriarchal, Ms. Dwyer recalled. She was “always a woman, something different,” she said.In her mother she found both a role model and her first teacher, from whom Ms. Dwyer learned the essentials of rich sound and flexible technique.Listening to the radio broadcasts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, she was inspired by the principal flutist Ernest Liegl. She began studying with him at age 12, taking a four-hour train ride to Chicago every other week. The lessons continued for five years.She was accepted by the Eastman School of Music in 1939 and auditioned four times to be principal of its orchestra, facing rejection each time. After graduating in 1943, in the midst of World War II, when various positions at orchestras had been left temporarily vacant by men who had been called into military service, Ms. Dwyer moved to Washington to play with the National Symphony. She took lessons with William Kincaid, principal flute of the Philadelphia Orchestra.She moved to New York in 1945, becoming a busy freelancer and playing in several ensembles that embraced new music. She joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic a year later.Many classic Boston Symphony recordings made during the tenures of Munch, Erich Leinsdorf, William Steinberg and Seiji Ozawa, the music directors under whom Ms. Dwyer served, featured her luminous solo playing. She took part in concerts by the BSO Chamber Players, and for many years she was the only woman among the group of core artists.She introduced works large and small that were written for her by composers like Walter Piston, William Bergsma, Leonard Bernstein and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, who was commissioned by the Boston Symphony to write a concerto in honor of Ms. Dwyer’s retirement in 1990.Ms. Dwyer married Dr. Thomas Dwyer in 1954, and they divorced in 1964. She is survived by their daughter, Arienne Dwyer, and a granddaughter.Though praised by critics for her playing, and especially for her beautiful sound, Ms. Dwyer said she was gratified to have played a pioneering role in the advancement of women in classical music“Women never had much chance to play in principal positions,” she said in an interview with The New York Times in 1979. “This has changed, but it could change even more. I think it will.”Nowadays, women make up roughly half of most orchestra musicians, but it remains the case that relatively few are principals. Women make up about one third of the Boston Symphony, but along with the harpist and acting concertmaster, it has only one other female principal: Elizabeth Rowe, the principal flute. More

The Metropolitan Opera, the nation’s largest performing arts organization, announced on Thursday that it would cancel the rest of its season because of the coronavirus pandemic and begin an emergency fund-raising effort aimed at covering an anticipated loss of up to $60 million.The move, a day after the Metropolitan Museum of Art said that it would stay closed at least until July and expected a nearly $100 million shortfall, is another stark sign that even the country’s richest cultural institutions face a profound threat from the outbreak. The opera company’s orchestra, chorus and stagehands will not be paid past March, though they will retain their health benefits.“We’re doing the best we can under a horrendously difficult situation,” Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, said in an interview. “As far as our union employees are concerned, we are trying to do the best we can by them, given the financial constraints that we have.”Leonard Egert, the national executive director of the American Guild of Musical Artists, the union representing the Met’s chorus, soloists, stage directors and others at the opera house, said: “We recognize it’s unprecedented times. We appreciate the Met keeping health insurance coverage for full-time artists. But it’s a devastating mental and financial toll on our artists.”“If I had to sum it up,” he added, “the consensus is: We’re disappointed, we’re upset, but we understand.”While some losses of ticket and fund-raising revenue will be mitigated by lower operating expenses, Mr. Gelb said that the decision to scrap the season, originally scheduled to end on May 9, would expose the Met to a net shortfall of $50 million to $60 million. The company announced an emergency effort aimed at raising that amount, with initial pledges from board members of $11 million. More

The global spread of the coronavirus has been seismic, overburdening health care systems, torpedoing stock markets and requiring millions of people to submit to severe restrictions on their personal movement. The world has changed drastically in the last few weeks, and will continue to be disrupted for some time.It has been painful for the live music business as well — festivals, including Coachella, Glastonbury and South by Southwest, have been canceled or postponed; live tours from huge acts down to tiny indie artists have been forced to reschedule, creating devastating consequences for the musicians and those who work behind the scenes on the road.On this week’s Popcast — recorded from various home offices, connected virtually — a conversation about how the coronavirus has already reshaped the year in pop music, and the dominoes that yet may fall. Also, a chat about how pop stars have rallied around global crises in the past, and what a response like that might look like in the social media age.Guests:Ben Sisario, The New York Times’s music industry reporterJon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music critic More