Music

I was watching on my computer at home on Thursday afternoon as the Berlin Philharmonic finished a streamed performance of Luciano Berio’s “Sinfonia.” The cameras panned over rows of seats. No one was there. The musicians, dressed in their black-tie best, seemed not to know quite what to do. Finally, they began greeting each other cheerily, then stood and faced the empty hall.It was one of the most disorienting yet profound views of a performance I’ve ever had.Since the Metropolitan Opera began broadcasting performances over the radio in the 1930s, the ways in which music can be disseminated have grown far more sophisticated. But the goal has remained the same: to bring you — the listener, and more recently the viewer — into the opera house or concert hall, to make you feel you’re almost part of the “real” audience in the theater.On Thursday, however, those who tuned in to watch streams of operas, orchestral concerts and chamber music programs, from Berlin to Philadelphia, weren’t aping the live audience. They were the audience — the only audience.A wide range of institutions, responding to bans on large public gatherings aimed at combating the coronavirus pandemic, could have canceled their performances entirely. (Many did.) But some went ahead with their planned programs, playing to empty houses and streaming the results around the world.It was an odd, poignant spectacle: dedicated musicians donning costumes or tuxedos to perform for people at home. It felt like music had entered a new realm, with a new bond between artists and audiences — temporary, to be sure, but with implications for the future beyond the pandemic.In the past, I have praised radio transmissions and high-definition broadcasts as powerful tools for serving devotees of classical music, and perhaps for enticing newcomers. At the same time, I have emphasized that this is an art form that should ideally be experienced live — in halls with natural acoustics, the more intimate the better. More

Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Lil Yachty featuring Drake and DaBaby, ‘Oprah’s Bank Account’[embedded content]We’ll look back at Lil Yachty’s rap career as a means to an end. His new single “Oprah’s Bank Account” has a plinking charm, just like his breakthrough hits “1 Night” and “Minnesota.” Beats like these — soft shuffles with chirpy melodies — suit him the most neatly. But what he does best atop them isn’t anything specifically technical — he’s more character actor than rapper. Hence, this video, a nine-minute comedy sketch in which Yachty plays an Oprah-like talk show host giving Drake and DaBaby the third degree. That they’re game for the elaborate shtick means they hear something in Yachty, and that they see something more than can be heard. JON CARAMANICAAva Max, ‘Kings & Queens’It has been … checks watch … barely a dozen years since Lady Gaga restored shimmery disco 4.0 maximalism to pop music. Ava Max is in a hurry to revive the revival. “Kings & Queens” continues her brazen, loyal-little-monster updating of Gaga’s glitter. CARAMANICAMargo Price, ‘Twinkle Twinkle’Too often on Margo Price’s first two albums, her ambition was undercut by her production, which was faithful and often polite. Finally, “Twinkle Twinkle” — from her forthcoming third album, “That’s How Rumors Get Started,” produced by Sturgill Simpson — has a sound to complement the particular tang of her voice. Simpson assembled a band both ferocious and grimy: Matt Sweeney, Pino Palladino, James Gadson, Benmont Tench. They’re uproarious support for Price, whose singing is looser and tarter than ever. CARAMANICANatalia Lafourcade, ‘La Malquerida’Released on International Women’s Day, “Malquerida” (“Unloved Woman”) is a campfire singalong by the Mexican songwriter Natalia Lafourcade. She strums a Venezuelan cuatro, a small guitar, and sings a waltz about the age-old mistreatment of poor, hardworking women: “Without looking at my eyes they silenced my words.” Quietly, and then with resolve, the women and girls flanking her join in to sing, “Ay, que dolor”: “What sorrow.” JON PARELESThe Seshen, ‘Wander’“Wander” is the two-minute track that ends “Cyan,” the new album by the Seshen, a band from the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s less a song than a bit of slow-motion vertigo: a whorl of overlapping, interlocking instruments and Lalin St. Juste’s multilayered vocals, with a three-beat pulse and no clear boundaries between loops and improvisation. PARELESTones and I, ‘Bad Child’Tones and I — the Australian songwriter Toni Watson — conquered the world last year with “Dance Monkey,” and she follows it up with a variation on its music and attitude: plinking piano chords and her annoyed-child voice carry her from petulance to righteous pugnacity. This time, instead of singing about a rapacious audience, she’s confronting insecurities implanted by her family — ones she hasn’t entirely conquered. PARELESMara Rosenbloom, ‘Dream of a Common Language — Irruption’There’s a low-lying restlessness about Mara Rosenbloom’s piano playing: Each moment, for her, seems best understood as something to escape from. But with her new trio, Flyways, featuring the vocalist and percussionist Anaïs Maviel and the bassist Rashaan Carter, Rosenbloom leaves loads of empty space; she’s inviting you to relax inside her restlessness. The first thing — and ultimately, one of the only things — that you hear on “Dream of a Common Language — Irruption,” from Flyways’ debut album, is a repeated, five-note pattern in the left hand. Maviel and Carter soon join in, each taking things one note at a time. “No one lives in this room/Without confronting the whiteness of the wall,” Maviel sings, sounding cool but tender. Eventually, as the song continues, Rosenbloom starts to adorn that low pattern with chords in the right hand; eventually it disappears completely, as a cloud of electronics fills the air around her. The space feels finally welcoming as Maviel sings in long, slowly fading tones: “The true nature: the drive to connect.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLONoveller, ‘Effektology’[embedded content]With her electric guitar and an array of effects, Noveller (a.k.a. Sara Lipstate) summons the tones of bells, choirs, orchestras, calliopes and distant tsunamis. “Effektology” begins as a hazy, airborne, awe-struck reverie and adds just enough of a pulse to propel it toward its resolution. PARELESSam Gendel, ‘Saxofone Funeral’If Sam Gendel is playing his instrument into its own grave on “Saxofone Funeral,” then he should be pleased with what he’s found there. It’s more of a tomb than a grave, adorned for the afterlife with electronic accouterments, curved mirrors and history folding back upon itself. This piece comes from “Satin Doll,” an album of electronically warped jazz standards (like the title track) and originals (like this one). Together with the bassist Gabe Noel and the electronic percussionist Philippe Melanson, Gendel builds a rubbery sound-space out of the influences of U.K. jungle, ambient music, underground hip-hop and American Minimalism. RUSSONELLO More

AUSTIN, Texas — Even before this city, the state capital of Texas, reported its first cases of the coronavirus on Friday, it had been pummeled by the virus outbreak.Financial losses from the sudden cancellation of South by Southwest, the pop culture mega event that helped establish Austin’s funky hipster identity and had been scheduled to open on Friday, were anticipated to be enormous.“Just to put it in perspective — if I was a big-box store, this is shutting down Christmas,” said Chris Warndahl, the general manager of Miller Pro AVL, an event lighting, sound and video company in Austin that may have to let go some employees after losing about 35 percent of its annual income.The festival was ordered canceled last week, and by Friday, the first cases were announced — among them, the wife of the president of the University of Texas at Austin, the flagship state university whose burnt orange color and longhorn logo can be seen across town.“It is difficult for me to write this because the person who tested positive is my wife Carmel,” the university’s president, Gregory L. Fenves, wrote in a letter on Friday, announcing that he, his wife and another family member were in self-isolation.The university canceled classes on Friday, and with almost 50 cases statewide Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster across Texas.Yet even before the latest developments, Austin had gone into disaster-recovery mode with the cancellation of South by Southwest.At the Hotel Van Zandt downtown, the room cancellations could mean $1.2 million lost. A custom T-shirt producer, Oh Boy! Print Shop, expects a $40,000 hit. And the head bartender at Antone’s, a nightclub that helped start the careers of Stevie Ray Vaughan and other Texas musicians, says up to $4,000 in tips will vanish.“We’ve just gone from what is usually the busiest 10 days of the year to what is sort of this unknown,” said Will Bridges, the co-owner of Antone’s, which had been poised to host more than three dozen bands as an official music venue for the festival.“South By,” as Austin residents call it, has become a 10-day economic powerhouse, its effect on the local economy akin to hosting a Super Bowl, reaching $356 million last year, according to an analysis by a consulting firm, Greyhill Advisors. Nearly half a million people from around the world were expected to come, filling 55,000 room nights at hotels.But last week, before a single case of the virus had been reported in the city, the mayor of Austin, Steve Adler, announced a local state of emergency as the coronavirus emerged in the United States. His disaster declaration effectively canceled South by Southwest for the first time since the festival was founded in 1987. More