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      Anne Parsons, Who Revived the Detroit Symphony, Dies at 64

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      She shepherded the orchestra through a bitter six-month strike and then worked to ensure that it flourished after what many considered a near-death moment.Anne Parsons, who as president and chief executive revitalized the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in the aftermath of a bitter strike, using education and technology to attract new audiences, died on March 28 in Detroit. She was 64.Her husband, Donald Dietz, said the cause was complications of lung cancer.Ms. Parsons, who led the Detroit Symphony from 2004 until December 2021, shepherded the orchestra through a six-month strike that began in 2010, one of its most challenging periods. She worked to ensure that the orchestra emerged from what many considered a near-death moment, reassuring donors and civic leaders as tensions between musicians and management escalated.Determined to avoid another labor dispute and eager to make the orchestra a pillar of Detroit’s civic revival, she spent the next decade rebuilding the ensemble, investing in live-streaming technology, expanding community programs and luring unconventional stars like Kid Rock to perform. At a time when many American orchestras were struggling amid declining ticket sales, the Detroit Symphony, digitally connected and agile, became a model modern ensemble.“They hit a financial wall and went through a very brutal strike,” said Mark Volpe, who was president and chief executive of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for 23 years. “Instead of conceding and leaving like others have done in that context, she had the stomach, the persistence, the tenacity and, frankly, the vision to do something very special.”Ms. Parsons in an undated photo. She initially pursued a career in finance but found herself drawn to the arts.Detroit Symphony OrchestraAnne Hyatt Parsons was born on Nov. 4, 1957, in Schenectady, N.Y., to Jane (Walter) Parsons, a schoolteacher, and Gerald Parsons, who worked in finance.She initially pursued a career in finance to please her father, working as a bank teller during her summers at Smith College.But Ms. Parsons, who began studying the flute as a child, found herself drawn to the arts. She became manager of the student orchestra at Smith, helping to keep it together during a time of discord about its role on campus.She graduated from Smith in 1980 with a degree in English, promising her father that she would return to banking if, within one year, her career in the arts did not work out. Before long she had begun to ascend in the arts industry.Ms. Parsons was among the first class of fellows chosen by the American Symphony Orchestra League (now known as the League of American Orchestras). As a young employee at the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, she was an aide to the cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, who was the music director at the time.She went on to hold a variety of prestigious posts, including orchestra manager of the Boston Symphony from 1983 to 1991; general manager of the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles from 1991 to 1998; and general manager of New York City Ballet from 1998 to 2004.When she arrived in Detroit in the summer of 2004, she faced immediate challenges, including a sharp decline in ticket sales and dwindling support from corporations. She worked to overhaul the orchestra’s offerings, and in 2008, in a coup, she lured Leonard Slatkin, then the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, to take the podium in Detroit.As Detroit’s economy worsened amid the Great Recession and the orchestra’s financial picture grew bleaker, tensions at the orchestra deepened. A strike erupted in October 2010 after the orchestra, citing the difficult economic environment, proposed steep reductions in pay and benefits. The musicians said the cuts would destroy the ensemble’s high caliber, and they led a spirited campaign to oppose them.Ms. Parsons with Kenneth Thompkins, the principal trombonist, and other members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2021.Detroit Symphony OrchestraMs. Parsons maintained a tough stance throughout the ordeal. “The board was telling her, ‘You’re going to be the bad guy,’” Mr. Slatkin said in an interview. “But that’s the role, that’s the job. And there were days when I don’t know how she managed it. It became very, very vicious. But she stuck it out and kept a positive attitude the whole time.”After six months of heated talks, a deal was reached. In the end, the players accepted large salary reductions but preserved their health insurance and pensions.In the aftermath of the strike, Ms. Parsons set out to find ways to elevate the orchestra’s profile and bring in more revenue. She began a streaming service, one of the first orchestras to do so, and organized tours abroad, including to China and Japan. Vowing to make the Detroit Symphony the “most accessible orchestra on the planet,” she also oversaw efforts to expand music education in the city, bringing orchestra players into public schools that served large numbers of poor families. And she increased the orchestra’s presence in the suburbs, where many of its patrons live, holding concerts in churches, high schools and community centers.Donations rose, and ticket sales began to bounce back. After running deficits for years, the orchestra reported operating surpluses from 2013 to 2021.“What I really felt was this incredible responsibility to find a way forward regardless of the challenge that was facing us,” Ms. Parsons told The Detroit News last year. “The alternative for an institution as storied as the D.S.O. was unacceptable to me.”Even some of the musicians who clashed with Ms. Parsons during the strike said she had been vital to the orchestra’s turnaround.“After the strike, she said: ‘We’re never going to do that again. We have to maintain the artistic quality of the organization,’” said Haden McKay, a former cellist in the orchestra who served on the negotiating committee during the strike. “It was a stake in the ground. It put the institution on good footing, both financially and psychologically.”Ms. Parsons called her move to Detroit with her family the “best decision we ever made.” In 2021, the city named a street just south of Orchestra Hall in her honor.In addition to her husband, a photographer, Ms. Parsons is survived by a brother, Lance Parsons, and a daughter, Cara Dietz.Ms. Parsons learned she had lung cancer in 2018, but despite her illness she kept a busy schedule. She stepped down two months after returning from an extended medical leave.“She wanted to be able to say she’d given everything she could give,” Mr. Dietz said. “And that’s what she said to me after she couldn’t do it anymore. She said, ‘I have nothing else to give.’”Ms. Parsons said last year that her illness had brought into focus the “fragility of our world.”“We just take for granted that we’re going to be healthy and one day we’re not,” she said in an interview last year with Crain’s Detroit Business. “We take for granted someone is going to be a strong leader. When that doesn’t happen, it causes you to wake up every day and be grateful for the positive things.” More

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      2022 Grammy Awards Winners: Updating List

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      The list of winners for the 64th annual Grammy Awards.Follow our live coverage of the 2022 Grammy Awards.The 64th annual Grammy Awards are back Sunday night after being delayed by the Omicron variant. The show is being held in Las Vegas for the first time at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, and Trevor Noah will return as the host. The ceremony has began and is airing on CBS and Paramount+. A majority of the awards were presented at the premiere ceremony, held before the telecast.Jon Batiste, the bandleader from “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” who received 11 nominations — the most of any artist — won four awards at the premiere ceremony. The 19-year-old pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo, who is nominated for the four top awards — album, record and song of the year, and best new artist — will be closely watched during the telecast. Rodrigo is up against Billie Eilish — who swept the four top awards in 2020 — in three of those categories.Rodrigo, BTS, Lil Nas X with Jack Harlow, Silk Sonic, Eilish, J Balvin, Carrie Underwood, John Legend and Lady Gaga are all scheduled to perform. The presenters include Megan Thee Stallion, Questlove and Dua Lipa, as well as Joni Mitchell, who will make a rare televised appearance. The show will feature an in memoriam segment with songs of Stephen Sondheim by Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr., Ben Platt and Rachel Zegler, as well as a moment of observation for the war in Ukraine.The planning for the show hasn’t been without complications. Kanye West was asked not to perform at the ceremony because of troubling online behavior. Foo Fighters were also set to perform but canceled after the sudden death of the band’s drummer, Taylor Hawkins. Check back here for live updates on all the winners throughout the night.Song of the Year“Leave the Door Open,” Brandon Anderson, Christopher Brody Brown, Dernst Emile Ii and Bruno Mars, songwriters (Silk Sonic)Best Pop Solo Performance“Drivers License,” Olivia RodrigoBest Traditional Pop Vocal Album“Love for Sale,” Tony Bennett and Lady GagaBest Dance/Electronic Recording“Alive,” Rüfüs Du SolBest Dance/Electronic Music Album“Subconsciously,” Black CoffeeBest Alternative Music Album“Daddy’s Home,” St. VincentBest Contemporary Instrumental Album“Tree Falls,” Taylor EigstiBest Rock Performance“Making a Fire,” Foo FightersBest Metal Performance“The Alien,” Dream TheaterBest Rock Song“Waiting on a War,” Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Rami Jaffee, Nate Mendel, Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear, songwriters (Foo Fighters)Best Rock Album“Medicine at Midnight,” Foo FightersBest R&B Performance“Leave the Door Open,” Silk Sonic“Pick Up Your Feelings,” Jazmine SullivanBest Traditional R&B Performance“Fight for You,” H.E.R.Best R&B Song“Leave the Door Open,” Brandon Anderson, Christopher Brody Brown, Dernst Emile II and Bruno Mars, songwriters (Silk Sonic)A Guide to the 2022 Grammy AwardsThe ceremony, originally scheduled for Jan. 31, was postponed for a second year in a row due to Covid and is now scheduled for April 3.Jon Batiste Leads the Way: The jazz pianist earned the most nominations with 11, including album and record of the year. Here’s his reaction.Performers: Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, BTS and Lil Nas X are among the first performers announced for the April 3 show, which will be available on CBS and Paramount+.Kanye West: The singer, who is nominated for five awards, was told he will not be allowed to perform during the ceremony due to his erratic public behavior. A Surprise Appearance: The Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, who suffered an aneurysm in 2015 and has spoken in public infrequently since, will present an award at the ceremony.Best Progressive R&B Album“Table for Two,” Lucky DayeBest Melodic Rap Performance“Hurricane,” Kanye West featuring the Weeknd and Lil BabyBest Rap Song“Jail,” Dwayne Abernathy, Jr., Shawn Carter, Raul Cubina, Michael Dean, Charles M. Njapa, Sean Solymar, Kanye West and Mark Williams, songwriters (Kanye West featuring Jay-Z)Best Rap Album“Call Me if You Get Lost,” Tyler, the CreatorBest Country Solo Performance“You Should Probably Leave,” Chris StapletonBest Country Duo/Group Performance“Younger Me,” Brothers OsborneBest Country Song“Cold,” Dave Cobb, J.T. Cure, Derek Mixon and Chris Stapleton, songwriters (Chris Stapleton)Best New Age Album“Divine Tides,” Stewart Copeland and Ricky KejBest Improvised Jazz Solo“Humpty Dumpty (Set 2),” Chick Corea, soloistBest Jazz Vocal Album“Songwrights Apothecary Lab,” Esperanza SpaldingBest Jazz Instrumental Album“Skyline,” Ron Carter, Jack DeJohnette and Gonzalo RubalcabaBest Large Jazz Ensemble Album“For Jimmy, Wes and Oliver,” Christian McBride Big BandBest Latin Jazz Album“Mirror Mirror,” Eliane Elias With Chick Corea and Chucho ValdésBest Gospel Performance/Song“Never Lost,” CeCe WinansBest Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song“Believe for It,” CeCe Winans; Dwan Hill, Kyle Lee, CeCe Winans and Mitch Wong, songwritersBest Gospel Album“Believe for It,” CeCe WinansBest Contemporary Christian Music Album“Old Church Basement,” Elevation Worship and Maverick City MusicBest Roots Gospel Album“My Savior,” Carrie UnderwoodBest Latin Pop Album“Mendó,” Alex CubaBest Música Urbana Album“El Último Tour Del Mundo,” Bad BunnyBest Latin Rock or Alternative Album“Origen,” JuanesBest Regional Mexican Music Album (Including Tejano)“A Mis 80’s,” Vicente FernándezBest Tropical Latin Album“Salswing!,” Rubén Blades y Roberto Delgado & OrquestaBest American Roots Performance“Cry,” Jon BatisteBest American Roots Song“Cry,” Jon Batiste and Steve McEwan, songwriters (Jon Batiste)Best Americana Album“Native Sons,” Los LobosBest Bluegrass Album“My Bluegrass Heart,” Béla FleckBest Traditional Blues Album“I Be Trying,” Cedric BurnsideBest Contemporary Blues Album“662,” Christone “Kingfish” IngramBest Folk Album“They’re Calling Me Home,” Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco TurrisiBest Regional Roots Music Album“Kau Ka Pe’a,” Kalani Pe’aBest Reggae Album“Beauty in the Silence,” SojaBest Engineered Album, Non-Classical“Love for Sale,” Dae Bennett, Josh Coleman and Billy Cumella, engineers; Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone, mastering engineers (Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga)Producer of the Year, Non-ClassicalJack AntonoffBest Remixed Recording“Passenger” (Mike Shinoda Remix); Mike Shinoda, remixer (Deftones); track from: “White Pony” (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)Best Global Music Performance“Mohabbat,” Arooj AftabBest Global Music Album“Mother Nature,” Angelique KidjoBest Children’s Music Album“A Colorful World,” FaluBest Spoken Word Album“Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation From John Lewis,” Don CheadleBest Comedy Album“Sincerely Louis C.K.,” Louis C.K.Best Musical Theater Album“The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” Emily Bear, producer; Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, composers/lyricists (Barlow & Bear)Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media“The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” Andra DayBest Score Soundtrack for Visual Media“The Queen’s Gambit,” Carlos Rafael Rivera, composer“Soul,” Jon Batiste, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, composersBest Song Written For Visual Media“All Eyes On Me [From Inside],” Bo Burnham, songwriter (Bo Burnham)Best Immersive Audio Album“Alicia,” George Massenburg and Eric Schilling, immersive mix engineers; Michael Romanowski, immersive mastering engineer; Ann Mincieli, immersive producer (Alicia Keys)Best Immersive Audio Album (for 63rd Grammy Awards)“Soundtrack of the American Soldier,” Leslie Ann Jones, immersive mix engineer; Michael Romanowski, immersive mastering engineer; Dan Merceruio, immersive producer (Jim R. Keene and the United States Army Field Band)Best Engineered Album, Classical“Chanticleer Sings Christmas,” Leslie Ann Jones, engineer (Chanticleer)Producer of the Year, ClassicalJudith ShermanBest Orchestral Performance“Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3,” Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor (Philadelphia Orchestra)Best Opera Recording“Glass: Akhnaten,” Karen Kamensek, conductor; J’Nai Bridges, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Zachary James and Dísella Lárusdóttir; David Frost, producer (The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra; The Metropolitan Opera Chorus)Best Choral Performance“Mahler: Symphony No. 8, ‘Symphony of a Thousand,’” Gustavo Dudamel, conductor; Grant Gershon, Robert Istad, Fernando Malvar-Ruiz and Luke McEndarfer, chorus masters (Leah Crocetto, Mihoko Fujimura, Ryan McKinny, Erin Morley, Tamara Mumford, Simon O’Neill, Morris Robinson and Tamara Wilson; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, Los Angeles Master Chorale, National Children’s Chorus and Pacific Chorale)Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance“Beethoven: Cello Sonatas – Hope Amid Tears,” Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel AxBest Classical Instrumental Solo“Alone Together,” Jennifer KohBest Classical Solo Vocal Album“Mythologies,” Sangeeta Kaur and Hila Plitmann (Virginie D’Avezac De Castera, Lili Haydn, Wouter Kellerman, Nadeem Majdalany, Eru Matsumoto and Emilio D. Miler)Best Classical Compendium“Women Warriors – The Voices of Change,” Amy Andersson, conductor; Amy Andersson, Mark Mattson and Lolita Ritmanis, producers.Best Contemporary Classical Composition“Shaw: Narrow Sea,” Caroline Shaw, composer (Dawn Upshaw, Gilbert Kalish and Sō Percussion)Best Instrumental Composition“Eberhard,” Lyle Mays, composer (Lyle Mays)Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella“Meta Knight’s Revenge (From ‘Kirby Superstar’),” Charlie Rosen and Jake Silverman, arrangers (The 8-Bit Big Band featuring Button Masher)Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals“To The Edge Of Longing (Edit Version),” Vince Mendoza, Arranger (Vince Mendoza, Czech National Symphony Orchestra and Julia Bullock)Best Recording Package“Pakelang,” Li Jheng Han and Yu, Wei, Art Directors (2nd Generation Falangao Singing Group and the Chairman Crossover Big Band)Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package“All Things Must Pass: 50th Anniversary Edition,” Darren Evans, Dhani Harrison and Olivia Harrison, art directors (George Harrison)Best Album Notes“The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia and RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-1966,” Ricky Riccardi, album notes writer (Louis Armstrong)Best Historical Album“Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 1: The Early Years (1963-1967),” Patrick Milligan and Joni Mitchell, compilation producers; Bernie Grundman, mastering engineer (Joni Mitchell)Best Music Video“Freedom,” (Jon Batiste); Alan Ferguson, video director; Alex P. Willson, video producer.Best Music Film“Summer of Soul,” (Various Artists); Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, video director; David Dinerstein, Robert Fyvolent and Joseph Patel, video producers. More

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      Review: Two Artists Arrive at the Philharmonic, Loudly

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      The conductor Anna Rakitina made her New York Philharmonic debut, while the pianist Haochen Zhang had his first subscription series appearance.When the New York Philharmonic performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 on Thursday, barely a month had passed since that piece was heard nearby at Carnegie Hall.The earlier concert, on Feb. 25, happened in the raw, confused early hours of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yannick Nézet-Séguin had jumped in at the last minute to lead the Vienna Philharmonic, joined by the pianist Seong-Jin Cho. The reason for the switch? The originally scheduled artists, the conductor Valery Gergiev and the pianist Denis Matsuev, had been dropped over their ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.As the war continued, the Russian conductor Tugan Sokhiev resigned from his posts at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and the Orchestre National du Capitole in Toulouse, France, because of pressure to denounce the invasion. Then, in a mutual decision with the Philharmonic, he withdrew from this week’s program, featuring the Rachmaninoff concerto. (He will be back next spring to lead Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony.)For his replacement, the Philharmonic followed a similar course as the Metropolitan Opera. That company replaced the Russian diva Anna Netrebko — once its reigning prima donna, now persona non grata despite a recent about-face in her affiliation with Putin — with the Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska for a revival of Puccini’s “Turandot.” And the Philharmonic turned on Thursday to Anna Rakitina, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s assistant conductor, who was born in Moscow to Russian and Ukrainian parents.With more lead time than last month at Carnegie, Thursday’s performance of the Rachmaninoff — at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center — at least had the luxury of proper rehearsal. And the focus was less on the war than what the evening meant for its artists: Rakitina’s Philharmonic debut and the pianist Haochen Zhang’s first subscription series concert, after his brief appearance at a Lunar New Year gala in early 2020.Their arrivals were announced loudly, even a bit indelicately: The concerto had clarity and crowd-pleasing excitement, but also lapses in sensitivity and shape.That mix of strengths and weaknesses was not only in the Rachmaninoff, but also in the work that preceded it, Lili Boulanger’s 1918 “D’un Matin de Printemps,” an agile, five-minute survey of Technicolor images that, with a martial touch here, felt less connected to Debussy than to the Russian works to come on the program.Boulanger’s piece could hardly register alongside a towering piano concerto and a yet more towering symphony, Prokofiev’s Fifth. While Rakitina’s presence at the podium was a reminder of the strides the Philharmonic has made in gender representation among its guest conductors this season, its track record with female composers remains mixed at best.Rakitina and, at the piano, Haochen Zhang, who made his first Philharmonic subscription series appearance.Chris LeeOrchestrated with the forces of maximal Romantic grandeur, the Rachmaninoff concerto tends to overpower soloists — who, denied a traditional cadenza in the first movement, must often settle for hand-cramping virtuosity that hardly anyone can hear. Not so on Thursday: After the start, with Zhang alone building tension through a slow succession of chords in crescendo, he was a constant presence.That seemed to come easily to him, as he played with unshowy coolness while revealing the full architecture of his part, all its thick pillars of chords and buttressing runs. In doing so, he occasionally lost his sense of elegance and melodic line; he may have been heard above the strings, but he couldn’t match their sweeping lyricism. Nor did he aim for that sentimentality in his encore, the third movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 12 in A flat: a heroic funeral march, here more dignified than mournful.There is a funeral march, too, in Prokofiev’s World War II-era Fifth Symphony, albeit a passing one. This work has other preoccupations. Depending on when he was asked, its composer said it was about “the triumph of the human spirit,” “the greatness of the human spirit” and “the spirit of man, his soul or something like that.” (Simon Morrison, in his book “The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years,” suggests that the comments are not so much glib as, perhaps, signs of a creative outlook changing from “divine inspiration” to “human potential.”)Rakitina’s interpretation was one of ambivalent optimism, matched by her contrasting gestures at the podium: an emotively outstretched hand in one moment, a hammering beat in another. As throughout the evening, she favored fast tempos and booming dynamics, keeping the audience from truly being seduced by the arioso passages of the first movement. The Scherzo, a visit from the sound world of Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” ballet, seemed to be on the panicked end of a chase — but a stylized one, with Anthony McGill’s clarinet solos swerving playfully, like a dancer through the streets of “West Side Story.”Prokofiev again borrowed from previous material in the third movement, which begins with a waltz written for an unrealized film adaptation of Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades.” Coming after the breathless Scherzo, on Thursday it struggled to find its footing, but eventually did, building toward a keening climax of shrieks and downward runs. That haunted the finale, in which Rakitina brought out the orchestra’s lowest voices to darken the festive conclusion. Here, at last, was a glimpse of this conductor’s potential for undergirding surface-level thrills with deeper meaning.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Saturday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Ukrainians Fill Streets With Music, Echoing Past War Zones

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      When bombs began falling on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv late last month, forcing Vera Lytovchenko to shelter in the basement of her apartment building, she took her violin with her, hoping it might bring comfort.In the weeks since, Lytovchenko, a violinist for the Kharkiv Theater of Opera and Ballet, has given impromptu concerts almost every day for a group of 11 neighbors. In the cold, cramped basement, with nothing in the way of decoration except candles and yellow tulips, she has performed Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky and Ukrainian folk songs.“My music can show that we are still human,” she said in an interview. “We need not just food or water. We need our culture. We are not like animals now. We still have our music, and we still have our hope.”As their cities have come under siege by Russian forces, Ukrainian artists have turned to music for comfort and connection, filling streets, apartment buildings and train stations with the sounds of Beethoven and Mozart.A cellist performed Bach in the center of a deserted street in Kharkiv, with the blown-out windows of the regional police headquarters behind him. A trumpeter played the Ukrainian national anthem in a subway station being used as a bomb shelter. A pianist played a Chopin étude in her apartment, surrounded by ashes and debris left by Russian shelling.Impromptu performances by ordinary citizens have been a feature of many modern conflicts, in the Balkans, Syria and elsewhere. In the social media age, they have become an important way for artists in war zones to build a sense of community and bring attention to suffering. Here are several notable examples.The Pianist of YarmoukAeham Ahmad became a YouTube star by playing piano in the ruins of a Damascus, Syria, neighborhood. This video follows his journey to Europe through a single song, starting in Syria and ending at a performance in a Berlin.Photos by Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York TimesAeham Ahmad gained attention in 2013 when he began posting videos showing him playing piano in the ruins of Yarmouk, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, that was gutted amid his country’s civil war. Sometimes friends and neighbors sang along. The news media began calling Ahmad the “pianist of Yarmouk.”At the time, government troops kept his neighborhood cordoned off, hitting it with artillery and sometimes airstrikes, as insurgent groups fought for control. Many people suffered from a lack of access to food and medicine; some died.“I want to give them a beautiful dream,” Ahmad told The New York Times in 2013. “To change this black color at least into gray.”Musicians have long played a role in helping people cope with the physical and psychological devastation of war.“They’re trying to recreate community, which has been fractured by war,” said Abby Anderton, an associate professor of music at Baruch College who has studied music in the aftermath of war. “People have a real desire to create normalcy, even if everything around them seems to be disintegrating.”The Cellist of SarajevoDuring the Bosnian war in 1992, Vedran Smailovic became known as the “cellist of Sarajevo” after he commemorated the dead by playing Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor every day at 4 p.m. in the ruins of a downtown square in Sarajevo. He kept playing even as 155-millimeter howitzer shells whistled down on the city.“Many, like Mr. Smailovic, who played the cello for the Sarajevo Opera, reach for an anchor amid the chaos by doing something, however small, that carries them back to the stable, reasoned life they led before,” The Times reported then.“My mother is a Muslim and my father is a Muslim, but I don’t care,” Smailovic said at the time. “I am a Sarajevan, I am a cosmopolitan, I am a pacifist.” He added: “I am nothing special, I am a musician, I am part of the town. Like everyone else, I do what I can.”A Russian Orchestra in a War ZoneThe Mariinsky Theater Orchestra of Russia held a special concert in the historic city of Palmyra, Syria.While ordinary citizens have risen to fame for wartime performances, governments have also sought to promote nationalism in wartime by staging concerts of their own.How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 8Olga Smirnova. More

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      Review: An Orchestra Manages to Capture That Ellington Swing

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      At Carnegie Hall, the American Symphony Orchestra and Leon Botstein made a case for Duke Ellington works still rarely heard from classical ensembles.What should America’s major orchestras do with the genius of Duke Ellington? Should they program his music in pops concerts, or on their main classical series?And when they play him, which of the messy labyrinth of editions of his symphonic pieces should they use? Will they need to hire ringers from the jazz world to take on solo parts?Many big ensembles dodge Ellington entirely, or marginalize him: The New York Philharmonic, for example, tends to play his works at community events or Young People’s Concerts, but only occasionally as part of its subscription season.Even if Ellington’s legacy hasn’t really suffered for this, given his extensive catalog of recordings and worthy interpretations by jazz groups past and present, there’s still ambiguity about how his orchestral music — a body of work he created alongside his compositions for jazz band — should sound and be presented.So give the conductor Leon Botstein and his American Symphony Orchestra credit for bravery as he and his players offered a concert of Ellington at Carnegie Hall on Thursday.The program wasn’t much of a surprise: essentially a mix of selections from the 1960s album “The Symphonic Ellington” and pieces from the conductor and arranger Maurice Peress’s later recording with the American Composers Orchestra. (While Ellington’s best music fulfills his own ambitions of being “beyond category,” the Peress arrangements can sound more syrupy, with a mid-20th-century “pops” orchestral sound.)But in a smart move, Botstein also engaged the pianist Marcus Roberts’s trio for the second half, which gave the evening a sense of occasion — and, at times, fresh insight.Was it faultless, judged next to recordings that included Ellington as a participant? No, though that’s a high bar. The performance of the first movement of “Black, Brown and Beige” (in Peress’s arrangement) was full-throated but not ideally balanced — the strings sodden in a way that dampened the blues feeling, particularly during the rousing, complex finish.I remain convinced that orchestras should learn and play something closer to the original version of “Beige” that Ellington premiered with his leaner orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1943. (This notion isn’t so far-fetched at a time when conservatory graduates move between jazz and classical styles with greater ease than ever before.)A similarly string-heavy ensemble at first threatened to bog down Thursday’s performance of “Harlem” (in Peress’s arrangement with Luther Henderson). But midway through, some graceful descending patterns in the winds aided soulful, delicate interplay between a pair of exposed clarinets. Later, when the strings came back in force, they enhanced the glow, instead of washing out the color.It was a turning point for the concert, which got stronger as it went on. Before intermission, the take on “Night Creature” — once again in Peress’s arrangement — exuded brassy confidence. (A recording of Ellington’s 1955 premiere of the piece at Carnegie, with the Symphony of the Air Orchestra, can be found online.)Russell also joined, from left, the drummer Jason Marsalis, the bassist Rodney Jordan and the pianist Marcus Roberts for a set of Ellington songs without orchestra.Matt DineAfter intermission, Roberts, the pianist, took the stage with the bassist Rodney Jordan and the drummer Jason Marsalis. The trio played a short, vivacious set of Ellington tunes — without orchestra but with the vocalist Catherine Russell, who had been already heard with the American Symphony in a somewhat muted take on “Satin Doll.”Speaking from the stage, Roberts encouraged the audience to listen to the music as though it were written “last week.” A tempo-switching take on “Mood Indigo” brought that point home nicely. Russell was properly featured during the set; her improvisatory exclamations at the close of “It Don’t Mean a Thing (if It Ain’t Got that Swing)” inspired a mighty, deserving ovation.When the orchestra returned to join Roberts’s trio, it seemed swept up by the energy. Crucially, both “New World A-Comin’” (arranged by Peress) and “Three Black Kings” (completed by Mercer Ellington and arranged by Henderson) featured new piano solos arranged by Roberts. His playing — often denser than Ellington’s own — helped to establish a new way of hearing this music, outside its creator’s looming shadow. The drumming by Marsalis was likewise individual in character, particularly during “Three Black Kings.” (At one point, he made a simple-sounding pattern progressively complex in its syncopations, until he stirred the crowd to applause.)The commitment from Botstein and his players was gratifying. And as usual with this conductor, there was a pedagogical aspect to the proceedings. A question hung in the air: Why is Ellington still a relative symphonic rarity?In some places, he’s not. One of the best streaming concerts I have seen during the pandemic came from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, which played a joyous version of Ellington’s “Night Creature” (David Berger’s transcription) on a program that also featured music by Copland and Gabriella Smith and a premiere by Christopher Cerrone. I also have fond memories of a Schoenberg Ensemble album that featured John Adams conducting Ellington’s spellbinding, through-composed “The Tattooed Bride” alongside his own “Scratchband.”So putting Ellington into his proper place, at the heart of the American classical music canon, can be done successfully. Other groups coming to Carnegie would do well to remember that.American Symphony OrchestraPerformed on Thursday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

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      Review: The Philharmonic’s Conductor Returns to His Perch

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      Jaap van Zweden led the orchestra after seven weeks away in works by Julia Perry, Shostakovich and Beethoven.He’s back: After six weeks of guest conductors — including some prominent contenders to succeed him as music director when he leaves in two years — Jaap van Zweden returned to the New York Philharmonic on Thursday.And he’s back, too: A month after swooping into Carnegie Hall as a last-minute replacement for an artist with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the pianist Seong-Jin Cho was once again in Manhattan.They joined at Alice Tully Hall for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” its opening orchestral chord full and rounded; the balances between the strings and the winds, which had heavily favored the violins at Tully earlier this season, equitable; the tempos judicious.Cho, who played a tour date with the Philharmonic in 2019 but on Thursday made his subscription series debut, was most memorable when most delicate: his silvery playing under the horn just after his cadenza in the first movement; his gentleness in the questioning chords wandering from the second movement to the third; his shimmering trills at the end of the piece.His forcefulness in his right hand sometimes tipped into rawness — which, in passages of worried repetition, added an intriguing note of obsessiveness but otherwise felt too steely for such an intimate space. In the Rondo finale, though, he and the orchestra shared a graceful mixture of lightness and weight.In 1965, the Philharmonic premiered the final version of Julia Perry’s “Study for Orchestra,” but hadn’t reprised it until a one-off last year. Also known by an earlier title, “A Short Piece for Orchestra,” it is certainly that: Barely seven minutes long, it opens punchily, with heated strings and sardonic brasses, then enters a slower section of poetic winds and quietly suspended harmonies. The music turns blocky and dramatic again, with the vehemence of a Bernard Herrmann film score, before a softening ensemble, with touches of celesta and piano, is surprised by a brief, fierce coda.Perry’s “Study” felt connected — across the Beethoven concerto and the intermission that followed — to Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony, another work whose swaths of high spirits are tinged with a bit too much aggression, a clenched grin. And both pieces relax into melancholy passages of seeming sincerity, haunted by eerie mists.Shostakovich wrote it as World War II came to an end, and originally planned something huge and triumphant, akin to Beethoven’s full-chorus Ninth. When he delivered a slighter, merrier piece, less than half an hour long, some were charmed, while others — including, dangerously, officials in Stalin’s government — felt he had failed to meet the historic moment.The degree to which the music is ironic — its bubbly passages even politically subversive — is unclear, a familiar ambiguity from a composer adept at playing all the angles. Its sprightliness in a sober time recalls Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony, written three decades earlier, which the Philharmonic played under van Zweden in February.Sharp, precise performances of this kind of repertory are the main reason van Zweden — known in past positions as a martinet of polish — was hired, and the orchestra played on Thursday with pep and something close to unity. The slower sections were particularly impressive, with icy waves of violin, brasses ominously smoldering, Anthony McGill’s clarinet aching and Judith LeClair’s bassoon offering eloquent humanity, without schmaltz.What are the piece’s politics? The jury is, and always will be, out.But playing the work makes its own political statement as Putin went on television on Friday to decry what he called instances of the West canceling Russian composers like Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff to protest his invasion of Ukraine. This is, of course, largely his fantasy, a message of division meant to rally his people against phantoms he imagines to be demeaning and destroying Russia’s cultural heritage.For the Philharmonic to play this Ninth Symphony — and, next week, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev — is a gesture, however small, against that message.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Saturday at Alice Tully Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Music for the Dark at an Experimental Festival

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      British fans gathered to enjoy an overnight program of alternative classical music — a loose, soothing genre that many have discovered during the pandemic.GATESHEAD, England — Early on Saturday evening, the final strains of Gavin Bryars’s looping “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet” faded into silence at a vast concert hall here. After some polite applause, several hundred audience members prized themselves out of chunky beanbag chairs and headed off to find their next listening experience.Ambling across the arts complex attached to the hall would have brought them to Kinbrae’s nature-themed synth landscapes. On an expansive concourse, they could have chilled out to Echo Juliet’s gently probing D.J. set, or held on for a sonic barrage from the electro duo Darkstar.All were on offer at the inaugural After Dark Festival, organized by the BBC’s classical music station, Radio 3, in Sage Gateshead, a shiny, undulating arts venue on the banks of the River Tyne in northeast England. The festival’s diverse lineup of music evades an easy collective term: Neo-classical? Experimental? Crossover? Alternative classical?Echo Juliet’s gently probing D.J. set was one of the more chilled out musical experiences at the festival. Mary Turner for The New York TimesDescribing it is a simpler task: United by its commitment to cross-pollination, the program combined approaches from improvisation, pop, jazz, spoken word and electronic music with a variety of traditional classical music signifiers. As well as slower rates of changes, it preferred curves over edges, minimal over maximal. Electronic elements frequently cropped up, as did multimedia collaboration, evident in the evening’s selection of tableaus, projections and animations.This loose genre has offered stress relief and calm to increasing numbers of British music fans during the coronavirus pandemic. Coinciding with the spring equinox, After Dark was also an all-night affair, a continuous thread of sound flowing from Chelsea Carmichael’s fluttering sax lines at dusk to the sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun’s set at daybreak. The overall effect was of one unbroken sound installation, with washes of sound always surreptitiously present.Elizabeth Alker, whose Radio 3 show “Unclassified” gives a platform to new composers and performers, said that the appeal of such music can be the portal it offers to less turbulent worlds. It has “a lot of space you can naturally escape into, particularly at a time when we don’t have much space in our daily lives — both head space and, during lockdown, physical space,” she said in a telephone interview.Alan Davey, who runs Radio 3, echoed this. “This music has really come into its own during the pandemic,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s possibly an escape inward, but it’s definitely an escape.”Jasdeep Singh Degun closes the festival with a traditional Indian raag, associated with the morning and played on a sitar. Mary Turner for The New York TimesChunky beanbags offer festivalgoers a comfy listening experience.Mary Turner for The New York TimesAndrew Hayes, left, and Matt Brown perform thrashing improvisations as Run Logan Run.Mary Turner for The New York TimesOver the course of the pandemic, a number of long-form performances have offered such escapism. In 2020, Max Richter’s eight-hour “Sleep” was simultaneously broadcast on radio stations across Europe, the United States and Canada during the Easter weekend. Later that year, the pianist Igor Levit streamed a 20-hour rendition of Erik Satie’s beguiling composition “Vexations.” Then this past January, the London Contemporary Orchestra presented a 24-hour program at the Barbican Center, featuring some of the longest pieces ever written.Staging the Gateshead festival’s 12-hour program overnight made sense, Davey said, since this kind of music has a “late-night vibe — it’s music in the dark, for when everything around is quiet.” But as the evening wore on, exiting one performance for another created a series of exciting jolts between worlds: leaving the BBC newsreader Viji Alles’s unnervingly chilled renditions of stormy Shipping Forecasts and meeting Darkstar’s set head-on; popping out of Christian Löffler’s atmospheric techno remixes and into the Bristol duo Run Logan Run’s thrashing improvisations; finding Arnold Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht” being piped into a deserted cafe area at 4 a.m.A plurality of experience also existed among the festivalgoers. At 7 a.m., a group of bleary-eyed friends who’d used the second half of the night as an extended after-party to their own event explained the music’s appeal.“It’s the kind of stuff I listen to when I’m overwhelmed,” Kate Bradley, 25 and a visual artist, said of Degun’s sunrise sitar set. Clara Hancock, 25, instead uses ambient and lo-fi music as background sound for work, and prefers to decompress to “super-fast happy music.”Tilly Pitt, 20, a student at nearby Durham University, said she discovered the genre as an escape from studying. “During lockdown, I spent so much time staring at the screen, so it was nice to focus on something else for a while,” Pitt said.And while some listeners plied themselves with coffee, intent on an evening’s hard concentration, others settled in for the night, nestling in sleeping bags and seeking opportunities for a tactical snooze.The Royal Northern Sinfonia, an orchestra local to Gateshead, performs a series of contemporary classical pieces as part of the festival. Mary Turner for The New York TimesHowever listeners approach it, the music’s extended duration actively encourages the mind to wander. During the pandemic, people listened to Radio 3 “for longer, and they were appreciating that chance to reflect,” Davey said. “For me, music is an abstract art form, but it does help you use the space to think and reconsider, and I think ambient classical music is that writ large,” he added.Some of the music at After Dark fits the ambient description, but experimentation also abounds, as it does on Corey Mwamba’s improvisation-focused Radio 3 show “Freeness,” which also hosted artists at the festival. It’s noticeable that, although there’s a growing audience in Britain for this music, its creators often come from places without a dominant classical tradition, like Scotland, Canada and Scandinavian countries. Alker’s Radio 3 show was born after she witnessed groups of talented classical musicians branch out into other disciplines.“There’s a generation of musicians who had this classical training, and they wanted to hold on to making music in a classical idiom, but socially and culturally, they have the same experiences as everybody else, going to clubs and karaoke bars,” Alker said. She cites Nils Frahm and the recent work of Jonny Greenwood, formerly of Radiohead, as examples of music which is, in its essence, classical, and yet stands slightly removed from the usual traditions.Despite the relaxation their music may have brought through lockdowns, it’s been a different story for artists. “During the pandemic, I was just trying to keep things together,” said Degun, the sitarist, in a telephone interview a few days before his performance at the festival. “Music for me during the pandemic was quite stressful,” as he had to adapt quickly to new ways of performing, recording and working.Many fans discovered the escapism of experimental, soothing classical music during the pandemic.Mary Turner for The New York TimesIndependent music-making can be precarious work, and the music on the program at After Dark was made by composers and performers without consistent institutional backing. One of the twins who make up Kinbrae made this point as they began their final track. “There were times when we felt we were never going to be able to do this again,” he told the crowd.Like Kinbrae, Degun relished the return to appreciative audiences, but decided on a more traditional set than the cross-genre compositions for which he’s known. “When Radio 3 contacted me and said they wanted me to play at sunrise, I really wanted to just play Indian classical music,” he said. He rarely gets the opportunity to perform raags — a particular melodic mode linked to times of the day — associated with the morning, he said, since “usually all our concerts are in the evening.”For Davey, the festival’s aim is both to celebrate alternative classical’s existing, late-night audience and to introduce a wider group of listeners to the genre’s soothing affects. As the sun rose slowly over the Newcastle skyline, and the sound of Degun’s expansive raag closed the festival, there was certainly ample space to think. More

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      Richness in Stasis: La Monte Young Finally Releases ‘Trio’

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      The breakthrough Minimalist, not known for making albums, has at last put out an authorized recording of his 64-year-old “Trio for Strings.”La Monte Young, now 86, has released a lot of music in the past few years.In 2018, this composer and multi-instrumentalist, famed as a progenitor of Minimalism, reissued a six-hour, 24-minute take on his mammoth work “The Well-Tuned Piano.” Last year, a significant portion of his slender back catalog, some of it long out of print on CD, reached the digital platform Bandcamp.Most recently, Young has at last released a recording of his breakthrough composition, “Trio for Strings,” which he originally wrote in 1958, as he was beginning a period of study at the University of California at Berkeley.All this activity is a bit of a surprise, because the student composer who shocked colleagues with “Trio” — a nearly hourlong piece that almost exclusively used long, sustained tones — has been famous for not putting out albums. For decades, you had to hunt down a bootleg of the piece to experience it.Its streak of official unavailability finally ended late last year, when the Dia Art Foundation released a four-LP boxed set of a 182-minute live performance of “Trio” that was recorded during a concert series in 2015.Over the decades, Young wasn’t merely sitting on the material; he was continually working on it, even designing a new tuning in just intonation, to better express some of its harmonic content. Speaking to William Robin for The New York Times ahead of the live performance captured on the new release, Young said of the newly tuned and lengthened version, “It’s the way it really should have been, and can be, and will be.”By then, “Trio” was devised for an augmented string quartet including two cellists, to prevent the need to hold double-stops in tune for impractically long stretches. The new boxed set lists the dates of composition as “1958-1984-1998-2001-2005-2015,” a 57-year gestation.Young (in 2015) originally wrote “Trio for Strings” in 1958, as he was beginning a period of study at the University of California at Berkeley.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesThe new release is undeniably pricey, at $196. Aside from the four LPs, the box also includes a download code for a single-track, CD-quality file of the three-hour work, via Bandcamp. (Young’s other digital albums on Bandcamp range between $14 and $49 — the most expensive being the price for an audio version of that six-hour-plus performance of “The Well-Tuned Piano.”)Is this “Trio” worth it? I got my copy for free — but as someone who paid secondhand prices for Young bootlegs and out-of-print discs in my pre-critic days, I can’t imagine not saving up to buy it if I had to.The trip begins with a 33-minute exposition section, in which Young’s organizing 12-tone row is enumerated, very gradually. Compared with the recapitulation of these notes around the two-hour, nine-minute mark, the entry of certain notes during the exposition hits more harshly.But the players — Charles Curtis and Reynard Rott on cellos, with Erik Carlson and Christopher Otto both doubling on viola and violin — have such a precise feel for intonation that the material maintains its blissfully harmonious profile. That’s true even during the exposition’s most hot-to-the-touch passage, a high-flown tetrachord of B, F sharp, F and E that emerges in the 16th minute. (The lack of any discordant acoustic beating is thanks to the just intonation tuning and to these players’ precision.)Approximately two hours later — after the serial-style transformations of the exposition have run their course — this same chord comes back during the recapitulation. But it’s now beautiful in a different way, thanks to changes in voicing.Otto, the violinist, wrote in an email that this is his favorite passage in the performance, citing “how the whole sonority fuses and resonates” and adding, “We also stagger the bow changes in a particular way that becomes a beautifully meditative ritual.”The original score for “Trio,” a nearly hourlong piece that almost exclusively used long, sustained tones.La Monte YoungThis recording of “Trio” is essential in helping us understand not just Young’s growth but also that of Minimalism. Otto, a composer himself, has taken insights gleaned from Young and used them in his own writing practice, as on the recent release on the Greyfade label “rag′sma” and in his vertiginously beating drone composition “Violin Octet.”“I had been interested in just intonation and making connections with mathematical structures, influenced especially by Babbitt and Xenakis,” Otto said, “and Young’s music really made me aware of the richness within apparent stasis.”Let that be a word of warning to anyone impatient. If you try to skip ahead to a supposedly dramatic climax, it won’t pay off. In Young’s work, you can’t feel the peaks of intensity without taking in the whole.And besides, you’ll miss much else that transports. During the long development section of “Trio,” I adore a few briefer groupings of notes that reflect Young’s early enthusiasm for the Second Viennese School — particularly Webern’s epigrammatic style. That you can also hear bluesy Americana in some harmonies speaks to the world’s broad stylistic synthesis.An essay by Young in the accompanying booklet, though, lays out his thoughts on the limitations of serialism. “Composers such as Webern, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote little points distributed in time,” he writes. “The tonal aspects of the system were underplayed and the democratic aspects of the system were emphasized, probably because, within the system of equal temperament, it was so inharmonious to sustain the tones for a long time.”That’s a sharply observed insight about 20th-century music. But while processing this extended new recording of “Trio,” I also found myself thinking about recent long duration works in the world of film. After watching Paul Schrader’s latest movie, “The Card Counter” — a hypnotic slow burner starring Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish — I picked up Schrader’s book “Transcendental Style in Film.”This early 1970s text gives Schrader’s thoughts on directors who move slowly and decisively, yet unpredictably. Even more intriguing is a new preface that he wrote for the book’s latest edition, in 2018. Here Schrader distinguishes the “transcendental” style of Ozu and others from what came afterward, namely, the “slow cinema” movement — think of directors like Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Hou Hsiao-hsien — that is by now familiar to film festival attendees.“They push the viewer away from the ‘experience,’ that is, from immediate emotional involvement,” Schrader writes of slow cinema, adding, “This is different from modernistic distancing devices in the other arts to the same degree that cinema is different from earlier art forms.”I underlined my copy and made a note: “Paul Schrader needs to hear ‘Trio for Strings.’”With this latest just intonation version of “Trio,” Young has perfected his response to the serial tradition. And in doing so, the composer has taken an inverted route from the one Schrader has witnessed in the world of film: Young started out with works that confronted audiences with slow, conceptual provocations, and has since steadily turned his insights toward even more expressive, transcendental ends — whether in his final performance of “The Well-Tuned Piano,” in his droning blues-rock album “Just Stompin’” or in this new “Trio.”Or at least that’s my take. The composer might hold a different analysis. But now that more of Young’s music is in wider circulation, a broader community of listeners can begin comparing our own notes. Now, as I experience the final dyad of G and C in the cellos, I hear an even broader sense of emotional distance traveled over the course of the work. (This conclusion could even work as an alternate soundtrack for the final shot of “The Card Counter.”)La Monte Young’s “Trio for Strings Original Full Length Version” (1958–1998–2015)An excerpt from the composer’s 2015 performance at the “Dia 15 VI 13 545 West 22 Street Dream House” in New York City.To my ear, Young has revisited his student exercise — the original Minimalist big bang when it comes to sustained tones — and made space for greater feeling, and more emotional release. That he’s done this while stretching its length to a newly demanding scope makes his achievement all the more noteworthy. More