Music

Our guide to the city’s best classical music and opera happening this weekend and in the week ahead.‘AGRIPPINA’ at the Metropolitan Opera (Feb. 6, 7:30 p.m.; through March 7). Handel’s early Venetian opera arrives at the Met in a production by David McVicar, and with an all-star cast. Joyce DiDonato takes the title role, with Kate Lindsey as Nerone, Iestyn Davies as Ottone, Matthew Rose as Claudio, Duncan Rock as Pallante and Brenda Rae as Poppea. Harry Bicket conducts.212-362-6000, metopera.orgAMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA at Carnegie Hall (Jan. 31, 8 p.m.). How many orchestras would come up with a Beethoven tribute concert without any works by Beethoven in it? Not many, but the American Symphony revels in being different. Leon Botstein conducts Spohr’s “Historical Symphony,” Reger’s “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Beethoven,” Liszt’s “Fantasy on Motifs From Beethoven’s Ruins of Athens” and Ustvolskaya’s Piano Concerto. Lucas Debargue is the soloist. And if you want some actual Beethoven, Botstein and his orchestra can walk you through the Symphony No. 5 at Symphony Space on Sunday at 4 p.m.212-247-7800, carnegiehall.org[embedded content]DORIC STRING QUARTET at Weill Recital Hall (Feb. 6, 7:30 p.m.). The Doric is one of the most accomplished young string quartets around, which is saying something at a time when we’re inundated with them. Alex Redington, Jonathan Stone, Hélène Clément and John Myerscough play works by two composers they have recorded to considerable acclaim — Haydn and Schubert — and give the United States premiere of Brett Dean’s String Quartet No. 3, “Hidden Agendas.”212-247-7800, carnegiehall.orgSUSAN GRAHAM at Alice Tully Hall (Feb. 4, 7:30 p.m.). With Malcolm Martineau at the keyboard, Graham weaves songs by Grieg, Strauss, Fauré, Mahler and many more composers through the eight songs of Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und -leben.” Be sure to hear that even if you somehow manage to find a ticket to the other big vocal recital, on Friday evening at Zankel Hall, in which Peter Mattei sings Schubert’s “Winterreise.” 212-721-6500, lincolncenter.org[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC at David Geffen Hall (Feb. 5-6, 7:30 p.m.; through Feb. 11). All power to the Philharmonic for its Project 19, a multiyear effort to commission new works from 19 women composers, in honor of the passage of the 19th Amendment. The first fruit is Nina C. Young’s “Tread Softly,” appearing here along with Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Mozart’s “Great” Mass. Carter Brey is the cello soloist, and the vocalists in the Mozart include Miah Persson and Nicholas Phan.212-875-5656, nyphil.orgORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S at Carnegie Hall (Feb. 6, 8 p.m.). Baroque music from this orchestra and its principal conductor, Bernard Labadie, who deliver two works by Handel and four by Vivaldi, including two settings of the “Salve Regina.” They are joined by the violinist Daniel Hope and the contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux.212-247-7800, carnegiehall.orgCAROLINE SHAW at Miller Theater (Feb. 6, 8 p.m.). Shaw’s music is plenty familiar now, so we might see this composer portrait as a celebration of her recent success. There’s a nod to the past with performances by the Attacca Quartet of three string quartets, “Punctum,” “Entr’acte” and “Blueprint,” two of which are featured on a widely heralded recording on New Amsterdam/Nonesuch. And there’s a nod to the future: In addition to joining So Percussion for her song cycle “Narrow Sea,” Shaw performs songs created with that quartet for a future recording project, “Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part.” 212-854-7799, millertheatre.com More

Our guide to pop and rock shows and the best of live jazz happening this weekend and in the week ahead.Pop & RockOVERCOATS at Webster Hall (Feb. 4-5, 9 p.m.). Though their close harmonies are rendered in a style associated with traditional country sibling groups, this Brooklyn-based duo is neither old-fashioned nor related. The singer-songwriters Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell layer their tightknit vocals into bright electronic soundscapes — a winning recipe that has earned them admiration from a fellow folktronica ambassador, Maggie Rogers, and an opening slot on Mitski’s “Be the Cowboy” tour. Overcoats have not released an album since “Young,” their 2017 debut, but a recently released EP suggests that the pair are hard at work in the studio. At Webster Hall, they’ll open for the Californian indie-rock group Cold War Kids.websterhall.comTAYLA PARX at Baby’s All Right (Feb. 6, 7 p.m.). Though not a household name, this Texan has already left her mark on pop music as a co-writer of numerous Hot 100 hits, including Ariana Grande’s record-smashing 2018 single, “Thank U, Next.” Now, like her fellow writers-turned-singers Jessie J and Julia Michaels, Parx is attempting to harness her own star power and break down barriers between the studio and the stage. She formally introduced her solo project last spring with “We Need to Talk,” a debut record laden with playful pop melody and R&B swagger. After opening for Lizzo at Brooklyn Steel in May, Parx returns to New York for an intimate headlining show in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.718-599-5800, babysallright.comPOPPY at Brooklyn Steel (Feb. 6, 8 p.m.). The actor and singer Moriah Pereira is from Nashville, but Poppy, the eerily polished persona she adopts onstage and in popular videos, is, as she told NPR, “from the internet.” In 2017, Pereira leveraged her following on YouTube, where her performances have ranged from unnerving but innocuous to undeniably sinister, to secure a recording contract with Diplo’s Mad Decent label. Her first few releases leaned into the cloying sounds of bubblegum pop, but her latest effort, released this month, explores her darker side through industrial and nu-metal influences. Like the digital world whence Poppy emerged, the album, titled “I Disagree,” is hyper-stimulating.888-929-7849, bowerypresents.comGRACE POTTER at the Beacon Theater (Feb. 1, 8 p.m.). This singer earned her stripes as one of rock’s most reliable frontwomen: With the Nocturnals, Potter spent years working the festival circuit, lending her signature smoldering vocals to the band’s jammy, soul-infused roots rock. But her 2015 solo album and the band’s subsequent dissolution signaled new endeavors for Potter, both sonically and personally. These changes informed a new album, “Daylight,” which she released in October. When Potter performs at the Beacon, expect to hear emotional songs from that track list, documenting Potter’s recent life changes, including new love and motherhood, as well as Nocturnals-era stompers like “Paris (Ooh La La).”212-465-6000, msg.comRAPSODY at Elsewhere (Feb. 6, 8 p.m.). This North Carolina-based M.C.’s fascination with heritage — already evident on her Grammy-nominated record from 2017, which she titled “Laila’s Wisdom” after her grandmother — came to the fore last year with the release of her third album, “Eve.” Naming every one of its songs after a prominent black woman and using each one’s story as a scaffold for her own, Rapsody traced a powerful lineage spanning from Sojourner Truth to Nina Simone to Michelle Obama. The challenge of such an exercise is not getting lost in the shadows of such luminaries, but cunning lyricism and catchy hooks, which are sure to be on display when Rapsody performs at Elsewhere, affirm her own star power.elsewherebrooklyn.com[embedded content][Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]RODDY RICCH at Brooklyn Steel (Jan. 31, 9 p.m.). If you’ve opened TikTok lately, you’ve probably heard the screeching, two-note hook that defines this rapper’s biggest hit. The Compton, Calif., native has enjoyed an auspicious start to 2020, marked by the ascent of “The Box” — propelled, in part, by its popularity on the video-sharing app — to the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100. He also scored a Grammy for his performance on Nipsey Hussle’s “Racks in the Middle.” Currently on tour behind “Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial,” a grab bag of a debut that borrows from a variety of regional styles, Ricch is set to perform in Brooklyn on Friday night. The show is sold out, but tickets are available on the resale market.888-929-7849, bowerypresents.comOLIVIA HORNJazzRAFIQ BHATIA at National Sawdust (Feb. 5, 8 p.m.). It’s not enough to call Bhatia a guitarist and leave it at that, just like it’s insufficient to simply refer to his new EP, “Standards Vol. 1,” by its name. He treats his guitar, synthesizers, drum machines and electronic effects as architectural elements — sound becomes contour; music becomes something to step into rather than merely follow. So he has done more than retouch or reinterpret the four jazz standards and pseudo-standards that appear on this EP (including two from Duke Ellington). He has found certain elements in each tune to celebrate and center, and others to dump upside down. There’s something fascinatingly complete about each track — also something unnerving. Bhatia will perform the material here with a group that includes the guest vocalists Vuyo Sotashe and Nina Moffitt.646-779-8455, nationalsawdust.orgDEE DEE BRIDGEWATER at the Blue Note (Feb. 5-9, 8 and 10:30 p.m.). Among the most celebrated Renaissance women in jazz, this vocalist is a Grammy and a Tony winner, a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization goodwill ambassador and a spokeswoman for jazz across the world. She also has a boisterously personal style and can comfortably inhabit various aspects of the black-music tradition without losing her creative grounding. Her most recent albums have included a tribute to Memphis soul, a collaboration with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and a Billie Holiday project.212-475-8592, bluenote.netRAVI COLTRANE at Jazz Standard (Feb. 4-9, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). Coltrane has released just one leadership album in the past decade, but he’s kept a busy and diverse itinerary as a bandleader in live scenarios. If recording devices have been running, there ought to be enough material by now for a boxed set of live recordings from his past 10 years, full of various bands and projects. The band this saxophonist will bring to New York in the coming week is new, and if the personnel is any indication it suggests an interest in tacking to the center of a certain musical tradition, with help from musicians whose hometowns all boast rich, nurturing jazz histories: the pianist Orrin Evans, from Philadelphia; the bassist Bob Hurst, from Detroit; and the drummer Jeff Watts, known as Tain, from Pittsburgh. (Allan Mednard, a New Yorker, will fill the drum chair from Tuesday to Feb. 6.)212-576-2232, jazzstandard.comGHIDORAH at the Jazz Gallery (Jan. 31-Feb. 1, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). Three of the leading tenor saxophonists in straight-ahead jazz come together here in a group named for the three-headed monster of postwar Japanese film lore. (The name is also a glancing reference to MF Doom, the underground hip-hop heavy, who has used Ghidorah as an alias.) The front line — J. D. Allen, Stacy Dillard and Marcus Strickland — is certainly qualified to lead a seminar in contemporary, tradition-rooted tenor improvising. They’ll be joined only by a bassist, Eric Wheeler, and a drummer, Rodney Green.646-494-3625, jazzgallery.nycSIGURD HOLE at Weill Recital Hall (Feb. 3, 8 p.m.). This bassist is about to release “Lys/Morke,” a ruminative and openhearted album on which his only accompaniment is the ambient sound he recorded on the Norwegian island of Fleinvaer. The swirl of wind or the rushing of water sometimes serve as a backdrop to Hole’s playing; elsewhere they close in around his quiet bowing, threatening to overwhelm him. He will perform music from the album at this show, his Carnegie Hall debut, which also features a brief performance and talk from David Rothenberg, a musician and philosopher who studies the interplay between music and nature.212-247-7800, carnegiehall.orgRENE MCLEAN at Zinc Bar (Jan. 31, 7 and 8:30 p.m.). McLean is an adroit alto saxophonist with a perfervid delivery who, despite a distinguished family line, has not enjoyed the kind of sustained critical attention that his peers might tell you he deserves. He appears here with a cohort of top-shelf collaborators: Josh Evans on trumpet, Hubert Eaves III on piano, Radu Ben Judah on bass, Neil Clarke on percussion and Darrell Green on drums. The trombonist Grachan Moncur III — who recorded often for Blue Note Records in the 1960s alongside McLean’s father, the eminent alto saxophonist Jackie McLean — will appear as a special guest.212-477-9462, zincjazz.com GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO More

AUSTIN CONSIDINE Friends: I know what I’m doing Sunday. I know what you’re doing Sunday. As full-time culture journalists, to ignore the Super Bowl would be a gross dereliction of duty. That’s because the Super Bowl isn’t just a game. It’s the halftime show; it’s the ads; it’s the chips and guac. It is sport but also music, dance, costumes, TV production and stage design — a pop culture event greater than the sum of its parts.Perhaps most important, it was watched last year by roughly 100 million people: In a world of on-demand entertainment, the Super Bowl is one of the last true vestiges of an era when we all watched the same things at the same time.But I, like a lot of sports fans, have struggled in recent years to reconcile what is beautiful about the game with what is ugly. First, there’s the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head hits — not only to concussions — which the N.F.L. actively worked to conceal. Then there are the league’s troubles with domestic abuse and race. We could unpack those for days, but let it suffice to note that Tyreek Hill still has a job and Colin Kaepernick does not.Some fans have learned to tolerate the cognitive dissonance, or to square their free enjoyment with the ostensible free will of the players. Others, like me, have trouble shouldering our complicity with football’s worst elements and have mostly stopped watching. But regardless, fans or not, we mostly show up for the Super Bowl. Why is that?WESLEY MORRIS Austin, I, too, have consumed less football in the last five years because the hits can be hard to watch, because the punitive, allegedly apolitical stances of the league are themselves paradoxically political. There are many amazing physical achievements in this sport. There’s endless ridiculousness. The choreographed end-zone celebration, for instance, has gleefully migrated to other sports. And the league, in spite of itself, has a muscular charitable wing.This is to say that loving the N.F.L. means putting up with a lot. But its outsize popularity also seems a partial answer to the moral riddle that’s so openly vexed us these past two or three years. How do we enjoy the work of bad, unpleasant, corrupt people and institutions? Of criminals? Does opting into the Super Bowl experience then condone the problems of football? Can spectatorship be anything but an endorsement? It’s the conundrum of a capitalist society to the extent that it’s truly a conundrum at all.CARYN GANZ Football is the quintessential problematic fave. And like Michael Jackson, it’s too challenging to cancel, too big to fail, too embedded in the fabric of American leisure to rip out. (For now, at least.) The Super Bowl is drama, emotion, identity, catharsis, spectacle, skill, power: It’s nearly impossible to find a viewer beyond its scope. It’s no longer possible to keep up with everything happening in television, movies, music and digital media, but the Super Bowl is one of the last gasps of the monoculture. It’s a given and a gimme: It has almost no barrier for entry — one network channel, one block of time when nobody is expected to be doing anything other than watching the Super Bowl.And as for the ethical conundrum, ethics are under siege in every corner of our society: on social media, in Washington, in college admissions, on the music charts. In an era of “LOL nothing matters,” where does football rank on the scale of horrors? Even if your answer is “quite high,” there are 100 million other viewers willing to share the shame.CONSIDINE Still, let’s be cleareyed: If you watch the Super Bowl, you are financially and ethically supporting the N.F.L. And yet, I rarely hear these issues surface when we talk about the Super Bowl as pop culture. I wonder why we’re so deferential? Has any Super Bowl happening or halftime show made a truly lasting cultural impact?GANZ Oh yes, they have. Part of the power of the halftime show is its sheer reach. Music (like sports) is a powerful uniter, but so much of the way we experience it now is in isolation: via playlists shaped by our personal listening habits that are beamed directly into our headphones. A live stadium show allows 100,000 people to share an experience; the Grammys attracted 18.7 million viewers to its live broadcast. With the exception of the Eurovision song contest (which was watched by 182 million people last year), the Super Bowl is as big as it gets now for live music.Few people (other than me) may recall which songs Madonna played during her set in 2012, but her halftime yielded a landmark pop culture moment: M.I.A. extending her middle finger on national TV. In the past decade, halftime’s meme-able mini-events have become almost as memorable as who won the game: Adam Levine’s bare torso (2019), Lady Gaga’s leap (2017), Beyoncé’s fierce “Formation” (2016), Left Shark (2015), even Bruce Springsteen’s crotch slide (2009). And we could talk about Prince’s Super Bowl all day long.MORRIS Caryn, don’t play. You know I know Madonna’s set list from that night.I also remember how the emotional properties of the Boston bar where I watched that game completely changed as her halftime show began. The Patriots were about to lose another Super Bowl to the Giants, and even though they were up (by a point) going into the second half, that woman and her friends seemed to lighten the mood. Men were mouthing along to “Open Your Heart.” But they were also happy to partake in the spectacle of a 53-year-old imposing her sexual-identity gender circus (a phalanx of beefcake transported her to the stage) upon a sport whose stated orientation points, non-negotiably, one way.This is to say that the halftime show can be received multiple ways at once. It’s an event complicit in all that dismays us about American football as a whole and the N.F.L. especially: players’ physical and mental health; compensation and exploitation; the sanctioned conflation with the league and our military; the names. Kansas City’s excellent Super Bowl team is the Chiefs; and when fans are feeling confidently vicious, half the arms in the stadium begin to tomahawk chop. (They’re not the so-called Redskins, and yet the team brings with it many centuries of terrible history anytime it plays — anytime its “merch” is sold.)But the halftime show is also an event wholly outside the problems of the sport. Its stars have been imported and occasionally seem eager to practice subversion, as Madonna and Beyoncé have; to practice an exuberant nothing, as Katy Perry has. It is what its stars fight for it to be. I’m enormously excited to see what J. Lo and Shakira have fought for.We are, though, at a really fascinating place now. An aspect of the culture is asking these entertainers to consider what it means to partake in an event that could feature any number of problematic figures. (Tyreek Hill is a star Chief.) And on Madonna’s night, in 2012, Aaron Hernandez scored one of the Patriots’ touchdowns. Six months later, he shot and killed two men.GANZ Halftime may hover in a space outside the problems of the sport, but it has its own crises related to football’s troubled racial and gender dynamics. Consider how the Super Bowl completely reshaped Janet Jackson’s career. Jackson had five No. 1 albums and was known as one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, but less than three seconds in 2004 — so-called “Nipplegate,” when her bare breast was exposed by Justin Timberlake during the last moments of their performance — rewrote her entire history, plunging her into years of purgatory. It only briefly affected Timberlake’s, since he has the luxury of being white and male. (Remember, he returned to headline halftime in 2018.)CONSIDINE Does making Jennifer Lopez and Shakira the halftime show headliners — a first for Latinas — feel like a transparent scramble by the N.F.L. to virtue-signal? To be more charitable, it makes sense that the league might simply want to pay tribute to the Hispanic heritage of this year’s host city, Miami. But wasn’t the N.F.L. probably compelled to do something extra after the outspoken way in which multiple artists last year turned down the opportunity in support of Colin Kaepernick? And after Rihanna did the same this season?GANZ Sports and music are two arenas in which the stars are mostly young and black but work in a structure still largely controlled by older white men. The idea that some of the most powerful players in the music industry shunned halftime last year is a compelling one. (Maroon 5 agreed to perform and paid some sort of karmic tax.) This year is the first under the partnership between Jay-Z’s Roc Nation and the league, an attempt to smooth over tensions and bring a crumb of social-justice work to the game. And it’s interesting that this year’s headliners are both Latin pop stars, and neither black nor rappers. The halftime show hasn’t had a black headliner since Beyoncé in 2013; the closest it’s come to a hip-hop headliner is the Black Eyed Peas. If football fans are perceived to be so conservative they’d switch the channel rather than watch rappers, why hasn’t country music ever been very welcome at halftime? Its last appearance came 17 years ago with Shania Twain.CONSIDINE The dearth of country music at halftime is interesting when you consider that the singer most associated with the N.F.L. in recent years has been Carrie Underwood — and before that, Hank Williams Jr. For that reason, I suspect that country music wouldn’t actually be unwelcome by most football fans at halftime. I’m also interested in a reverse question: Why has non-country music always been welcome?My guess is that with the exception of one Trump-fueled moment in which some conservative fans skipped a game or two, the league knows it has that demographic locked down, no matter who performs at halftime. The billing, then, is a chance for the N.F.L. to snag some extra eyeballs, and pop is a surefire way to do it.In racial or political terms, I’ll wager many of those fans who objected to Kaepernick’s knee-taking fancy themselves quite open-minded — or at least magnanimously indifferent — regarding the race or style of the performers, same as with the players. If I’m right, then the N.F.L. risks little in ignoring those fans’ musical preferences for 15 minutes. Intolerant people make low-stakes claims to tolerance all the time. But that tolerance reveals its limits when, say, a black man takes a knee.MORRIS Colin Kaepernick and Michael Bennett and their fellow protesting players knelt for ideals that I, too, believe in. Pleas for justice and equality are controversial coming only from black athletes expected — hired — to run, throw, catch and dunk. But the culture has moved past the protests. Kaepernick still has a sports job of sorts. He works for Nike. Meanwhile, the Super Bowl remains this idyllic vestige of who we thought we were. It’s Americana that like lots of Americana is built on a cemetery of sorts. We flock to it as we do because it’s a spectatorship department store — sports, ads, music.A lot of us remember the alleged simpler times when it was easier to pretend that entertainment was all it was. On one Sunday, we can pause Everything Else and just enjoy a miraculous helmet catch or a commercial for a job-finding company. It’s also a stable structure. We all know it. We know it will never change and therefore never challenge most people to confront more than their losing team. There’s no M.C. to be urbane or smug or real. Setting aside the violence at its center, it’s safe, a haven from so much. History in the making but also passionately ahistorical. Americana on the one hand, sure. But also just America. More

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