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      in Music

      Book Review: ‘The Instrumentalist,’ by Harriet Constable

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      In her debut novel, “ The Instrumentalist,” Harriet Constable paints a vivid and nuanced portrait of the groundbreaking 18th-century violinist and conductor Anna Maria della Pietà.THE INSTRUMENTALIST, by Harriet ConstableThough plenty of talented women have performed and composed music in Europe over the last several centuries, few are enshrined in the classical canon. Why have their names and works disappeared from history?There are many explanations. Women were rarely allowed to perform in public; they lacked the kind of alone time, free of child care and housework, that enabled men to pursue their craft wholeheartedly; they had limited musical options, since women were prohibited from playing certain instruments, like the cello (lascivious) and the flute (unflattering); and in some cases, they were denied adequate recognition for their musical contributions, labeled “muses” to male artists rather than being credited as collaborators.In her debut novel, “The Instrumentalist,” Harriet Constable offers her own answers to this question through a complex and vivid portrait of Anna Maria della Pietà, an 18th-century Venetian violinist and conductor, and a favorite pupil of the composer Antonio Vivaldi.Born in Venice in 1696, della Pietà was handed over as an infant to the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage where girls were given a home and an education, including in music. There, she met Vivaldi, who led the Pietà’s widely celebrated orchestra, the figlie di coro. Centuries before major orchestras began hiring women, the orphans of the figlie di coro earned incomes, acquired jewels and commanded the adoration of kings and queens. Even among these stars, della Pietà shone, and eventually, she became the master of music at the orphanage.Beyond these details, little is known about della Pietà’s life. Though she was a renowned musician during her time, she was eventually forgotten. With “The Instrumentalist,” Constable fills in the gaps, giving this remarkable figure the kind of nuanced origin story that has rarely been afforded by history to female artists.The book opens with della Pietà as baby Anna Maria, and right away Constable sets up the first glimmers of her relentless character. In a harrowing scene, her teenage mother, a sex worker lost in a daze of postpartum anguish, attempts to drown herself and her child. The baby, Constable writes, “is a raging firestorm of a thing, and she cannot hold it back.” Anna Maria’s fervor causes her mother to change course and drop the baby off at an orphanage instead of killing her.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

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Book Review: ‘The Hypocrite,’ by Jo Hamya

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      In Jo Hamya’s second novel, “The Hypocrite,” a 20-something playwright puts her absent, aging writer dad on blast.THE HYPOCRITE, by Jo HamyaEven bad, absent daddies can set aside ego to appreciate the trappings of a classic. In “The Hypocrite,” Jo Hamya’s sharp and agile new novel, an unnamed, aging writer admits the brilliance of a nearly 10-minute sex scene to open his daughter’s latest play. It’s a shame the actor thrusting onstage is a venereal, self-regarding avatar of the writer himself, otherwise he’d tell his daughter how clever she was.We are in London, in the summer of 2020. The city is cautiously stirring to life after months of lockdown. The play has been warmly received by critics, and its 20-something playwright, Sophia, is unquestionably talented. Also: wounded, blinkered, petulant.Her father is a middle-aged novelist of moderate renown who is said to “offend people for a living,” and whose views aren’t quite prehistoric but are premodern enough that I’d prefer not to hear his feelings about women breastfeeding in public. At a glance, he resembles Martin Amis during a low moment. He saw Sophia only intermittently during her childhood, hasn’t published a book in years, hasn’t navigated the shifting cultural tides terribly well. Settling into his seat at the theater, he had no idea what he was in for.Their longest stretch of time together, a Sicilian vacation a decade earlier in which Sophia took dictation for his novel-in-progress, is the play’s subject. Her memory is ferociously loyal, but unsparing: She nails precise details of the dill-scented kitchen where they worked, his cherished purple shirt, the sexual encounters he thought he’d kept secret. Within moments, the humiliation sets in — he is reduced to a version of himself that had sex “like a pig and wrote like a dictator,” as the audience howls with laughter.Still, there are crumbs of mercy. Thank God Sophia hasn’t cast someone who can replicate the sputtering of his orgasms.And thankfully, nobody in this appropriately claustrophobic story emerges the clear hero. No one is that doomed L-word, likable. Hamya bats our sympathies between characters: Sophia, the neglected child who craves both her father’s approval and his artistic toppling; her father, who seems baffled by how quickly he’s encountered irrelevance; and Sophia’s mother, who is justifiably fed up after loving two self-engrossed yet profoundly un-self-aware writers.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

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      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

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Monet, Taylor Swift, ‘Moana’: What Got Readers Through Their Grief

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      After our series on how artists have been affected by loss, we asked readers what helped them when they experienced it. These are 15 of their answers.Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, we published The Grief Project, a series of interviews with artists who discussed the ways that loss affected their work and creativity. We also asked readers about the art and culture — whether it was a book, a movie, a song or anything else — that helped them remember or cope with losing a loved one. Hundreds responded. Here is what some of them said.Music‘As’ by Stevie WonderLike Stevie Wonder, Nancy Hanks wrote, her mother “was soulful and full of spirit, enriching the lives of all she came in contact with.”Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesI’m not sure if it’s the melody or lyrics, but this song deeply captures the deep feelings of love and profound grief that I feel for the loss of my mother. Throughout the song Stevie Wonder professes all the ways and lengths that the depth of his love reaches. He notes “did you know true love asks for nothing / her acceptance is the way we pay.” I often am reminded of this. The grief that I carry is a tax on the lifetime of unconditional love I’ve experienced from my mother. Like Stevie, she was soulful and full of spirit, enriching the lives of all she came in contact with. We couldn’t have the proper celebration we wanted for her because of Covid, but I imagine if we did, we would have played this song along with so many more of her favorites and danced all night. I can’t hear the song anymore without feeling a deep sense of longing for her. I’m so grateful for her life and legacy, and I miss her terribly. —Nancy Hanks, AtlantaFilm‘School of Rock’It was less than a week after we lost our 4-year-old daughter Laila to cancer, in 2004. A neighboring couple, who had been supportive throughout Laila’s illness, brought over a VHS tape of “School of Rock.” In those very early days of bereavement, as far as I knew, I would never laugh again. But we popped in the videocassette, and before long I found myself laughing out loud, along with the family and friends gathered with us. Although my sadness filled my entire soul, there was somehow still room for humor. The wondrous physics of hope, in a lesson delivered by Jack Black with his electric guitar. As a family, we rewatch “School of Rock” every now and then, and it never fails to uplift. To me, it will always be a symbol of resilience. —Mary Janevic, Ann Arbor, Mich.SportsThe New York RangersWatching the Rangers “offered tremendous comfort to my family,” wrote Pam Poling, whose sister was a fellow fan.Joel Auerbach/Getty Images/Getty ImagesOur sister died in December after an incredibly brief illness. She was our go-to person for all things hockey, especially our beloved Rangers. Watching them skate so beautifully this season offered tremendous comfort to my family. Whether they win or lose, we often text each other, “Joanie would have loved this.” It really helps. —Pam Poling, Fairfield, Conn.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

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Overlooked No More: Renee Carroll, ‘World’s Most Famous Hatcheck Girl’

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      From the cloakroom at Sardi’s, she made her own mark on Broadway, hobnobbing with celebrity clients while safekeeping fedoras, bowlers, derbies and more.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.For 24 years, as the hatcheck girl at Sardi’s, the storied theater district restaurant on West 44th Street in Manhattan, Renee Carroll found fame from within the close confines of a cloakroom.From that post, she hobnobbed with celebrity clientele, fed insider gossip to newspaper columnists and wrote an immensely popular, chatty book that dished about which stage actress ate too much garlic (Katharine Cornell, if you must know) and how fading stars wistfully reacted when rising newcomers like Joan Crawford entered the dining room.Checking hats at a restaurant might seem like a menial job, and in fact the salary for safekeeping homburgs, fedoras, bowlers and derbies was measly, but Caroll saw the position as an opportunity to make her own mark on Broadway.With her wisecracking personality, she won over actors, writers and producers while earning dime or quarter tips. If someone checked a play script with her, she perused it and offered canny critiques, sometimes unsolicited, by the time the patron had finished lunch.Her approbation was considered such a good-luck charm that even hatless playwrights and producers were known to leave her money. Eugene O’Neill once entrusted her with his wristwatch when he had nothing else on hand to check.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

    • 163 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      6 Books Like ‘It Ends With Us’ by Colleen Hoover to Read Next

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      Whether the Blake Lively movie brought you to the Colleen Hoover universe or you’re a longtime CoHo fan looking for more emotional, spicy stories, these novels are for you.In the past few years, no writer has dominated the best-seller list quite like Colleen Hoover. The prolific author was one of the breakout stars of the self-publishing boom over a decade ago, and her global following has only grown with BookTok’s embrace of her novels. Now Hoover — CoHo to her fans — is setting her sights on the silver screen, with the release of “It Ends With Us,” the first film adaptation of one of her books; the movie, starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, opens in theaters Aug. 9.Hoover’s fans adore her books for their emotional intensity: The stories often revolve around themes of trauma, resilience and hope, and the characters’ tragic histories and passionate struggles provide a catharsis that readers describe as not merely heartbreaking, but heart-stomping-into-smithereens. While she is commonly billed as a romance writer, Hoover also mixes in Y.A., thriller and horror, always with plenty of spice and drama. You can see her influence in the ample selection of new books that aim to walk a similar line — or by glancing around your local bookstore, where you can spot many covers that have gotten the “CoHo treatment.”Whether you’re new to Hoover’s work and looking to see what all the fuss is about, or yearning for some more high drama and emotional intensity while you wait for her next book, all of these options will keep you reading way past your bedtime.Book vs. movie, let me be the judgeIt Ends With Us, by Colleen HooverIf you’ve heard of one of Hoover’s book, it’s probably this one, which has spent a whopping 165 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Lily, a florist, is initially dazzled by Ryle, an enigmatic neurosurgeon. But painful moments from Lily’s childhood begin to echo into her present as she slowly realizes that Ryle’s charm belies an explosive temper — and when Atlas, her first love and her last tie to a life she’d left behind, reappears.Take me deeper into the CoHo universeWe 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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      in Movies

      ‘It Ends With Us’ Review: For Blake Lively, Love Hurts and Even Bruises

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      Blake Lively plays Lily Bloom, a flower lover with a thorny personal garden, in this gauzy adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel.Buried under the gauzy romanticism of “It Ends With Us” — under the softly diffused visuals, the endless montage sequences, the sensitive mewling on the soundtrack and the luxuriously coifed thickets of Blake Lively’s sunset-on-Malibu-Beach dyed-red hair — is a tough little movie about women, bad choices, worse men and decisions that doesn’t fit into a tidy box.Lively stars as the improbably named Lily Blossom Bloom, a beauty with a traumatic history, a soulful ex and a passion for gardening. Over the course of the movie, she falls in love with a neurosurgeon who looks like he stepped out of a Calvin Klein ad. She also befriends a wisecracking sidekick, opens a whimsical floral shop, endures heartache and, after much reflection and many plot complications, finds herself. It’s hard going, but Lily takes whatever life throws at her with her meticulously styled head up and a neo-bohemian influencer vibe. She’s a dream of a woman, an aspirational ideal, an Instagram-era Mildred Pierce.You may know Mildred from Turner Classic Movies as the pie-baking survivor played by Joan Crawford in the 1945 noir “Mildred Pierce.” Mildred walks into that classic wearing a mink coat with linebacker shoulder-pads and the kind of stricken look that clouds a woman’s face when she discovers that her no-good second husband is sleeping with her no-good teenage daughter, and the brat has just offed the creep. It’s no wonder that when Mildred stares into the nighttime waters of the Pacific, she seems to be mulling her equally dark past and future, much as Lily does one evening on a Boston rooftop early on in “It Ends With Us.”Lily doesn’t have long to consider her existential options because her rooftop reveries are soon interrupted by the neurosurgeon, Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who directed the movie). A brooding hunk with soft eyes, hard muscles and miraculously unchanging three-day stubble, Ryle has a touch of menace and a gift for cornball lines, and before long he and Lily are flirtatiously circling each other. Love buds and, yes, blooms, and Lily settles down with Ryle. He seems like a ready-made catch (Baldoni gives himself plenty of close-ups), although anyone at all familiar with the conventions of romantic fiction will wonder about the intensity of his attentions. A picture-perfect guy doesn’t necessarily make a picture-perfect life, dig?Adapted from Colleen Hoover’s best seller by Christy Hall, “It Ends With Us” is fitfully diverting, at times touching, often ridiculous and, at 2 hours and 10 minutes, almost offensively long. It’s visually and narratively overbusy, stuffed with flashbacks of Lily as an adolescent (Isabela Ferrer) that create two parallel lines of action. As the adult Lily moves forward with Ryle and opens her store — she gets help from a nattering assistant, Allysa (Jenny Slate), who enters with her luxury bag swinging and motormouth running — images of the past fill in Lily’s history and her high-school romance with another student, Atlas. (Alex Neustaedter plays him as a teen, while Brandon Sklenar steps into the grown-up role.)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

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ Review: He’s a Big Kid Now

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      Harold is an adult on a quest in this tale based on the beloved children’s book by Crockett Johnson.People have been threatening to make a movie out of the beloved children’s book “Harold and the Purple Crayon” for decades. When a visionary director like Spike Jonze was attached to a live-action screen adaptation of Crockett Johnson’s volume, the movie did sound more promising than threatening. (Jonze later left the project.)In any event, they’ve done it, and now “they” — the writers David Guion and Michael Handelman, and the director Carlos Saldanha — have gone and changed Harold from a cute baby into a cutesy adult. Or rather a child in adult form, played by Zachary Levi, whose Harold has two notes: a plucky grin and a furrowed brow.First, a narrated and animated prologue walks us through how the movie will shrug off the book. Then, the movie plods around awkwardly, trying to leech whatever charm it can from the remaining elements of the original (like that crayon): In Harold’s real-world quest for his “old man” — whose narration is cut off abruptly in the prologue — the old man does, indeed, turn out to be Johnson. (Johnson died in 1975 and his estate presumably and implausibly cooperated with this venture.) Along the way, Harold meets a family in need. There’s a standard-issue single mom (Zooey Deschanel, whose visible exhaustion here is actually a little too credible) and her boy, Mel (Benjamin Bottani), whose life is in need of wonder.This wonder will arrive through a tool of “pure imagination” (they really say that!). That is, Harold’s purple crayon, whose concoctions add some not-insubstantial visual interest to the proceedings. One scene in a department store, in which an actual puma and a too-functional kid’s helicopter ride contribute some anarchic slapstick, is a keeper. But it might have been better still as contrived by Terry Gilliam. Or Edgar Wright. Or Spike Jonze.Harold and the Purple CrayonRated PG for mild action and thematic elements. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More