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      In an Opera About Civil War Spies, Dancers Help Drive the Drama

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      Houston Grand Opera, known for innovation, unveils Jake Heggie’s “Intelligence,” directed by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and featuring Urban Bush Women.In a theater at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan one recent afternoon, a rehearsal for the coming opera “Intelligence,” about Civil War-era spies, was about to begin.But as the stage lights came on and the music blared, there were no singers in sight. Instead, six dancers from Urban Bush Women, a dance troupe in Brooklyn, were front and center, locking arms, jumping into the air and improvising movements inspired by African traditions.“I want to see if we can find that physical charge,” Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the founder of Urban Bush Women, who is directing and choreographing the opera, told the dancers. “Let it breathe. Let it flow.”“Intelligence,” which opens the season at Houston Grand Opera on Friday, tells the story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a member of an elite Confederate family, who operates a pro-Union spy ring with the help of Mary Jane Bowser, an enslaved woman in her household. The opera, with music by Jake Heggie and a libretto by Gene Scheer, offers a meditation on the legacy of slavery and the overlooked role of women in the war.“Intelligence,” more than eight years in the making, stands out for another reason. While dance is an afterthought or an embellishment in many operas, it drives this drama, with eight performers from Urban Bush Women sharing the stage with seven singers, including the mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton as Van Lew and the soprano Janai Brugger as Bowser. The dancers serve as a Greek chorus, falling like soldiers on a battlefield or passing secrets along a chain.“It’s a big story, and dancers are an integral part of the storytelling force,” Zollar said. “They’re not just coming in for their number or routine.”The dance-centered approach may be unusual, but it is a natural fit at Houston Grand Opera. For decades the company has been known for innovation, helping birth important 20th-century works like Leonard Bernstein’s “A Quiet Place” (1983) and John Adams’s “Nixon in China” (1987).Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is directing and choreographing “Intelligence” for Houston Grand Opera. “It’s a big story, and dancers are an integral part of the storytelling force,” she said.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesUnder David Gockley, Houston Grand Opera’s general director from 1972 to 2005, the company embarked on an ambitious effort to commission dozens of new works and garnered an international reputation for risk-taking. “Intelligence” is the company’s 75th premiere — and the fourth opera by Heggie to debut in Houston.Khori Dastoor, Houston’s general director and chief executive since 2021, said the company aimed to build on its legacy.“We can be an important opera company, but also maintain our nimbleness and spirit of innovation,” she said. “We aren’t having debates about whether change is good. We’re always thinking about what’s next.”Houston Grand Opera’s agility served it well during the pandemic. While many cultural organizations are still struggling to win back audiences, Houston is in a relatively strong position, with a budget this fiscal year of about $33 million, compared with about $24 million before the pandemic. Ticket sales were up about 8 percent last season, compared with the 2018-19 season, even as subscriptions fell. Donations have been robust; earlier this year, the company secured a $22 million gift, the largest in its history.And audiences remain enthusiastic. The company has been working to draw more Black, Latino and Asian residents by venturing outside the opera house more often. Last season, it partnered with 140 community groups and presented operas at 32 locations across Houston. On a night in late October, “Intelligence” will be performed before an audience of nearly 2,000 primarily low-income high school students.“Most of our audience at Houston Grand Opera does not experience us in the opera house; they experience us in their neighborhood or at a school,” said Patrick Summers, the company’s artistic and music director. “We let people in our own community tell us their stories.”The artistic focus is also shifting, even as classics like Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” and Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” remain staples of the repertoire.Last season the company premiered “Another City,” a chamber opera about homelessness in Houston that is based on interviews with residents, inside a nondenominational Christian church and service organization. And in 2021, the company staged the premiere of “The Snowy Day,” an opera based on the 1962 children’s book known as one of the first to prominently feature a Black protagonist.“Every opera company is really a reflection and expression of their city,” said Dastoor, the first woman to serve as general director. “I want our operas to look and feel and sound like Houston.”“Intelligence,” which was originally scheduled to premiere in 2021 but was delayed by the pandemic, highlights neglected voices, with themes that connect to modern-day social issues.Zollar rehearsing with Vincent Thomas, left, Johnson and Medina.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesHeggie got the idea from a docent who approached him during an event at the Smithsonian in Washington and suggested that he look into Van Lew and Bowser for his next opera.“I started Googling their names, and my jaw was just on the floor,” he said. “I had been looking for what the next story would be, and I knew it was right because I felt this fire and this shiver.”Heggie turned to Scheer, a frequent collaborator, for the libretto, and he approached Houston Grand Opera about commissioning the work, encouraged by its history of championing new music.“You can’t guarantee success with a new piece,” he said. “But Houston is willing to give it a chance.”Heggie said he was given a choice early on, based on budget considerations, to feature a dance company or a chorus. He had already written operas with prominent choruses and said he thought that the seven singers of “Intelligence” could together sound like a chorus.He thought dance would be a better fit, he said, a way to fill in some of the “question marks in the storytelling” arising from the limited records of Van Lew and Bowser’s intelligence-gathering operation.“Dancers can explore the emotional world of this — really where there aren’t words but there can be movement that might give us clues,” he said. He wrote a percussive score to match.Heggie reached out to Zollar, the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021, who founded Urban Bush Women in 1984 as a way to elevate the stories of women in the African diaspora. She was hesitant at first — she had never directed an opera — but started to see connections between opera and dance. It helped that she was a fan of Heggie’s first opera, “Dead Man Walking,” which premiered at San Francisco Opera in 2000 and opened the Metropolitan Opera season this fall.Heggie and Scheer visited Zollar in Tallahassee, Fla., where she teaches at Florida State University.“They were really interested in the points of view that I would bring to the story, not just as a name attached,” she said. “And the dance. They definitely wanted the dance.”The creative team for “Intelligence” includes the conductor Kwamé Ryan, the set designer Mimi Lien and the costume designer Carlos Soto.In preparation for the opera, Zollar and other members of the team visited the South for research. They toured the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va., visited the former site of the Van Lew mansion and walked the Richmond Slave Trail.Zollar said those visits offered a “spiritual grounding” for the opera and a reminder that the country was still grappling with the legacy of slavery. “It’s still vibrating,” she said. “It’s still with us in the air.”In choreographing the opera, she drew inspiration from a variety of sources, including the African writing system called Nsibidi, as well as the Kongo cosmogram, a symbol from the BaKongo belief system in West Central Africa.Zollar said she wanted her dancers to be a spiritual force in the opera: “They are what’s whispering in your ear, what’s around us that we cannot see.” From left, Cook, Gaskins, Medina, Johnson, Ware and Earle.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesZollar said she wanted the dancers of Urban Bush Women to be a spiritual force in the opera; she calls them the “is, was and will,” referring to their ability to speak to the present, past and future. They play with notions of entanglement and secrecy, echoing the themes of the opera.“They are what’s whispering in your ear,” she said, “what’s around us that we cannot see.”At the Guggenheim rehearsal, she encouraged the dancers to draw on their own influences — club dancing, jazz, Cuban music. She worked with Mikaila Ware, a member of Urban Bush Women, to refine a sequence of jumps and falls.“It’s so beautiful,” Zollar said. “Can you give me a little bit more suspension? Can you give me a little bit more air?”A central challenge for Zollar was adjusting to the scale of opera. She has been fine-tuning the dancers’ movements so they resonate at the Brown Theater in Houston, which has more than 2,400 seats.Having the backing of a prominent opera company, she said, allowed her to spend the time necessary to immerse herself in the work. She added she was feeling a mix of “sheer terror and excitement” ahead of the premiere.“Usually, I operate on prayers, spit and gaffer’s tape,” she said. “Now we can fully realize our vision. Now we can create something new.” More

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      In Debut, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla Gets the Philharmonic

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      The New York Philharmonic’s renovated hall is a proving ground for guests to balance the orchestra. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla did so with assurance.Welcome to Season 2 of the New York Philharmonic in its renovated David Geffen Hall. If there is one story line that has carried over from Season 1, it’s the sound.The new Geffen Hall’s acoustics are clearer, if chillier than before. Because every detail in the orchestral playing is more easily audible, so too is every choice about balance — making the hall a tough proving ground for conductors. Guests can find themselves neatly sifted into one of two categories: those who intuitively grasp how to steer the Philharmonic in this space, and those who don’t.Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, who made her Philharmonic debut on Wednesday night, gets it.This Lithuanian conductor led her first program at Geffen with assurance across varied styles — a feat that hasn’t been easily matched by some of her peers in the hall. Sometimes, modern or contemporary works can sound admirably chiseled, while 19th-century ones stint on warmth, and thus charm.The evening, which the Philharmonic dedicated “to those impacted by the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Israel and the Gaza Strip,” included music from a living composer, Raminta Serksnytė’s “De Profundis”; a repertory war horse, Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto; and a rarity from Sibelius, excerpts from the “Lemminkainen Suite.” But no era or style felt shortchanged on Wednesday. The strings in particular were hard-edged when they needed to be (in the Serksnyte), then icy and glinting (in the Sibelius).Schumann’s concerto was the lush highlight of the program. In the first movement, low strings and percussion had their forceful say, as expected. But subtler delicacies were plentiful: Winds collaborated on heavenly blends; trumpet notes came across as peppery without blaring; violins swooned alongside the soloist.That soloist was Daniil Trifonov, an artist constitutionally incapable of a wan take. He offered a personal, thrilling, at times idiosyncratic approach to Schumann’s famed binary of contrasting alter egos: Florestan and Eusebius. There was plenty of thrusting force in opening chords, representing Florestan and played with abandon reminiscent of Martha Argerich’s style in this concerto. Elsewhere, he delivered winning grace, embodying the moods of Eusebius.But Trifonov did more than run between those bases — he brought them into extended, unexpected dialogue. In quiet stretches, he practically halted his momentum, putting confrontational, 20th-century concepts of space and negation into the flow of the beautiful writing. Likewise, amid fierce tutti passages for piano and orchestra, the fine mechanisms of his playing reached a state of meditative delirium normally associated with Schumann’s dreamy, Eusebian side.Gražinytė-Tyla was alert to each new blend, and matched the orchestra to Trifonov’s prismatic turns. At the close of the first movement, she seemed to use the quick cutoff of Geffen’s acoustic to underline new rhythmic patterning in the score, helping familiar music feel sparkling and alive.Serksnyte’s “De Profundis,” an early work from 1998, opened with motivic boldness and some quickly roving ideas about rhythmic fragmentation, but spun its wheels a bit before a rousing-then-hissing finale. And the three sections of Sibelius’s suite had charm — including a mellow English horn solo from Ryan Roberts in “The Swan of Tuonela” — though it’s hardly material from this composer’s top drawer.And yet the orchestra, heard in its best form on Wednesday, found joy and merit throughout the program. For Gražinytė-Tyla, this was the kind of debut that immediately has you thinking about her future with the Philharmonic. She’s famously happy with freelancing. And, well, New York is a freelancer’s kind of town.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Riccardo Muti Takes a Victory Lap With the Chicago Symphony

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      The orchestra’s former conductor — now its music director emeritus for life — opened Carnegie Hall’s season with a two-night engagement.When Riccardo Muti stepped down from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last season, after 13 years as its conductor, the ensemble promptly turned around and named him music director emeritus for life.In a two-part season opener at Carnegie Hall this week, it was easy to hear why.Under Muti, the Chicago Symphony is all power and finesse with no unsightly edges. On Wednesday, in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” the orchestra’s playing, strong yet nimble, drew on reserves of unforced power and charm. The following night, in an Italian-themed collection of programmatic works by Mendelssohn, Strauss and Philip Glass, a certain politesse crept into an otherwise classy performance.There’s no better illustration of the orchestra’s might than the final movement of the Mussorgsky, “The Great Gate of Kyiv.” Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s delightful piano suite reaches its apotheosis here, and on Wednesday, Muti built a magnificent edifice out of it, with crashing cymbals, all-out brasses and majestic strings. Using an extreme economy of gesture, he barely had to move for the players to unleash torrents of stupendous, beautifully balanced sound.At the risk of cliché, the ensemble’s remarkable cohesion feels like a kind of Midwestern humility, focusing attention on the music instead of individual players. Tasteful instrumental solos, like that of the concertmaster Robert Chen in Strauss’s “Aus Italien,” didn’t disturb the musical fabric. Technical mastery emerged in what wasn’t there: The heavenly woodwinds were airborne without being breathy, and the guest principal harp, Julia Coronelli, conveyed beauty without pluck in the Strauss and in Glass’s “The Triumph of the Octagon.” Muti’s dynamic mapping avoided jolts or spikes; ardor and neatness coexisted.His “Pictures at an Exhibition” balanced theatricality and unity in the vividly drawn scenarios of Ravel’s orchestration. The first “Promenade,” in which Mussorgsky depicts himself wandering through the art show of his dearly departed friend, the painter Viktor Hartmann, had a gracious, wide-footed gait. Timothy McAllister’s satiny alto saxophone wafted like a mist through the wide stone halls of “The Old Castle.” “Tuileries” traded the unseemly lilt of whining children for a singsong quality. “The Hut on Hen’s Legs” lurched with delicious, brutal violence. Muti interpreted the score’s attacca markings (indicating that the movements should be played without pause) as seamless transitions instead of opportunities for surprise.Leonidas Kavakos, left, was the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto on Wednesday night.Todd RosenbergThe orchestra’s plush power in the Tchaikovsky evoked the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove, so it’s a shame that the evening’s soloist, Leonidas Kavakos, derailed the performance with curdled tone, sloppy passagework, cracked high notes and tuning issues. There were pretty turns of phrase in the second movement, and Kavakos could hide his unpolished sound in the guttural character of the third. For a performer of a normally high caliber, though, it was a shabby showing.Glass’s “The Triumph of the Octagon,” dedicated to Muti, opened the second night. It’s a 10-minute piece inspired by a photo of a 13th-century Italian castle that Glass saw hanging in the maestro’s studio at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, a memory from Muti’s childhood. The music gradually accumulated a mysterious timelessness with the shifting emphases of its time signatures and the delicate deployment of woodwind timbres.Muti avoided any inkling of stridency in the dashing opening of Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony, which rushed forward with grace and buoyancy. Melodies intertwined delicately in the Andante. The perpetual motion of the third movement felt unobstructed but also unhurried; the strings played all the way through phrases and left them hanging in the air, and the brasses were unafraid to assume a blanched color to maintain the movement’s particular tint.The elegant passion on display in the Mendelssohn hampered the players in the Strauss, his first tone poem, a piece that wraps together images of Italy with the swooning ecstasies they arouse. Still, some passages are recognizably pictorial, such as the third movement’s suggestion of the shores of Sorrento, with the dappling of the sun on the surface of the sea rendered in shimmery chromaticism. There, the orchestra was quite enchanting, but in the second movement, it lacked punch. Too often, Strauss’s impetuous reveries were flattened into a predictable sameness.A truer sense of romance and spontaneity could be found in the encores on both evenings. They were drawn from Italian opera, a specialty of Muti, who was the longtime music director of Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Following the adrenaline rush of “The Great Gate of Kyiv,” Muti struck up the intermezzo from Giordano’s “Fedora” with seductive vulnerability.On the second night, the overture to Verdi’s “Giovanna d’Arco” had everything the Strauss didn’t: crackling energy and a sense of reveling — not just in the music, but also in the ensemble itself. It provided a handsome, though still subtle, showcase for the winds to take a victory lap — and for Muti to do so too. More

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      Review: New York Philharmonic Plays New Steve Reich Piece

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      In “Jacob’s Ladder,” which premiered at the New York Philharmonic on Thursday, Reich’s signature chugging rhythms returned.Thursday evening was a major moment for musical Minimalism.The Chicago Symphony Orchestra brought Philip Glass’s new piece, “The Triumph of the Octagon,” to Carnegie Hall. And further uptown, at David Geffen Hall, the New York Philharmonic gave the premiere of Steve Reich’s “Jacob’s Ladder.”It is no longer news that these composers, indelible faces of an era-defining movement, are eminences. Reich turned 87 on Tuesday, and Glass reaches the same age in January.But don’t forget: They were once downtown rebels, writing for their own ensembles rather than major symphonic forces. (In 1973, Reich’s “Four Organs” was nearly heckled off the Carnegie stage.) Imagine predicting, back then, that they would have new work presented on the same night by two of the country’s great orchestras, in the two temples of New York’s musical establishment.And that it would be cheered. At Geffen Hall, “Jacob’s Ladder” and Reich were warmly received at the center of an excellent concert that placed the premiere between a pair of repertory masterpieces, all conducted by the Philharmonic’s music director, Jaap van Zweden.“Jacob’s Ladder” is something of a return to form for Reich after a quietly daring departure. Since his breakthrough experiments of the late 1960s, his music has been defined by its chugging pulse.But in “Traveler’s Prayer” — begun before the pandemic, completed during lockdown and first performed in 2021 — the pulse was gone. That piece seems to float, with mellow vibraphone charting the calm, patient chant of four voices as a piano makes occasional, deep interjections — somehow questioning and affirming at once.Reich’s work for voices has long suggested the combination of purity and complexity in medieval polyphony; he has cited Pérotin as an important influence. But “Traveler’s Prayer” really felt medieval in its rapt yet free stillness.“When I began to write ‘Jacob’s Ladder,’ I had to ask myself, ‘To pulse or not to pulse?’” Reich says in an interview with his publisher. To pulse, he eventually decided. L’chaim!And from the start, the 20-minute new piece burbles with a steady, propulsive rush of vibraphone. The rhythms are far more tart than in “Traveler’s Prayer,” the melodies more brightly etched and stepwise — more ladderlike. The intimate forces are similar to those Reich used in his last work, with the vocal quartet, small circle of string players, piano and pair of vibes now joined by a handful of flutes, oboes and clarinets that add more lilting vividness.Like its predecessor, “Jacob’s Ladder” sets biblical text in the original Hebrew — in this case, the verse from Genesis in which Jacob dreams of a ladder to heaven, angels ascending and descending on it. But Reich means for the consonants to be smoothed, almost blurred, and on Thursday the four singers of Synergy Vocals managed the difficult task of sounding simultaneously precise and misty, with an antique nasal tang in the two male voices and cool freshness in the women.Swaths of the piece are just instrumental, and the Philharmonic musicians approached the whole thing with forthright gusto. Presumably Reich observed rehearsals and sanctioned the performance style, but the string players used an amount of vibrato that sometimes jarred with the straighter tone of the singers and other instruments; this premiere wasn’t ideally clear.The piece is not as plainly poignant as “Traveler’s Prayer”; the musical and emotional landscape of “Jacob’s Ladder” is more changeable, even flickering. Reich flashes — without lingering — on jeweled moments, and at one memorable point, briefly brightening harmonies in the strings are brought back to somber earth by just a few dark piano notes.Yet nothing is overstated; even the dissonances in this subtle work are softly luminous. Energetic while meditative, “Jacob’s Ladder” doesn’t feel insubstantial, but it does feel light, graceful, refreshing. Twenty minutes passed like a song.Programming the piece alongside Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto and Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony seemed less about drawing musical comparisons than about proving how easily Reich fits in with the classics. New works are sometimes doomed by juxtaposition with beloved standards, but “Jacob’s Ladder” plays serenely yet confidently with the big boys.The pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, returning to the Philharmonic for the first time since 2018, did the first movement of the Beethoven concerto with lucid authority and some superb textures, like downward runs that truly sounded as if they were sliding. His slow movement had poetry without indulgence, and the witty, visionary transition from that Adagio to the lively Rondo finale had an exciting sense of improvisation.Schubert’s “Unfinished” was a questionable choice, since the Philharmonic last played it just six months ago. Yet here, as in the Beethoven, van Zweden was strong but not hectoring, with depth and focus to the orchestra’s sound. In the second (and final completed) movement, passages of storminess and lyricism were both persuasive and vibrant.The orchestra played with polished precision. I’ve criticized van Zweden for overly manicured, pushy performances, but on Thursday, in both concerto and symphony, the phrasing felt sculpted with panache, the tension honestly built.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Russell Sherman, Poetic Interpreter at the Piano, Is Dead at 93

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      He was known as a passionate, idiosyncratic performer in concerts and on recordings and admired as a longtime teacher at the New England Conservatory of Music.Russell Sherman, a pianist admired for his poetic and idiosyncratic interpretations of Schoenberg, Beethoven, Debussy, Liszt and others, died on Sept. 30 at his home in Lexington, Mass. A longtime music educator as well, he was 93.His death was confirmed by his wife, the pianist Wha Kyung Byun.Mr. Sherman, who gave his last recital at 88, made his name performing virtuoso works such as Franz Liszt’s daunting “Transcendental Études.” Referring to the composer’s reputation as a showman, Mr. Sherman told The New York Times in 1989 that he was engaged in a “lifelong battle to reconstitute Liszt as a serious composer.”He recorded the Études on cassette in 1974 and in 1990 for Albany Records. “The poetic idea is central,” he wrote in the liner notes for the second recording, “and the virtuoso elements become so many layers to orchestrate the poetic content.”Mr. Sherman was in many ways an anti-virtuoso; he devoted much of his time to other interests, like poetry, philosophy and photography. In the late 1950s, instead of becoming a touring concert pianist, he left New York to teach piano at Pomona College in California and the University of Arizona in Tucson.In 1967, he began a long tenure at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, hired by its president at the time, the composer Gunther Schuller. Mr. Schuller, who founded GM Recordings in 1981, produced a Beethoven album by Mr. Sherman, who became the first American pianist to record the complete Beethoven sonatas and piano concertos.On a GM Recording album, “Russell Sherman: Premieres and Commissions,” Mr. Sherman performed works composed for him in the 1990s by Mr. Schuller, Robert Helps, George Perle and Ralph Shapey. His recordings also include works by Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as Chopin Mazurkas, the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas and Bach’s English Suites.Mr. Sherman began giving public concerts again in the 1970s. He performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra as well as major European orchestras.His concerts drew devoted fans who admired his dramatic interpretations. In 2016, the critic Jeremy Eichler of The Boston Globe wrote that in works by Schoenberg, Beethoven, Debussy and Liszt, Mr. Sherman’s playing, “while still demonstrating a formidable athletic prowess, also conveyed his abiding gifts of fantasy and insight.”Mr. Sherman in 2005 at the Essex House in Manhattan. He had grown up at the hotel, where his neighbors included Rudolf Bing, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera; and the opera singers Lauritz Melchior and Lily Pons. He continued to stay there when in he was in town for a concert.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesHis idiosyncrasies were often noted. Reviewing a performance of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor and two Beethoven sonatas at Carnegie Hall in 1984, the Times critic Will Crutchfield wrote: “It is possible to feel that he distorts, infuses too much into little,” but added that it was “better instead to salute in Mr. Sherman’s concert an antidote to the many that are played week after week in which listeners are lucky if their interest is genuinely caught once or twice in the whole evening.”Some two decades later, Allan Kozinn wrote in The Times that Mr. Sherman’s “interpretive style, it should be said, is an acquired taste,” but that his “performances are usually illuminating alternatives to the standard view.”Mr. Sherman resented these accusations of eccentricity. “I think of myself as a compassionate conservative” who responded “radically to the score and nothing but the score,” he told The Times in 2000. He suggested that listeners who disliked his interpretations lacked imagination.Russell Sherman was born on March 25, 1930, in Manhattan and lived at the elegant Essex House hotel on Central Park South with his parents and three older brothers. Their neighbors included Rudolf Bing, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera; the opera singers Lauritz Melchior and Lily Pons; and the pianist Clifford Curzon.Mr. Sherman’s father, Moses Sherman, was a manufacturer of women’s raincoats, and his mother, Irene (Schwartz) Sherman, was a homemaker. Russell inherited his father’s love of fashion.He started piano lessons at age 6. At 11, he joined the studio of the Polish-born pianist and composer Eduard Steuermann, who had studied with Schoenberg and Ferruccio Busoni and who encouraged his students to take interpretive risks. This inspired Mr. Sherman’s own ethos that performers should strive for what he called “personal wildness and conviction” in their interpretations.Mr. Sherman when he was a youth at the Essex House. He made his concert debut at 15. Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesHe made his concert debut at 15, at Town Hall in Manhattan, and began undergraduate studies at Columbia University the same year. He graduated with a degree in the humanities in 1949 and later studied composition with the German composer Erich Itor Kahn.Mr. Sherman married Wha Kyung Byun, a Korean-born former student of his, in 1974; she began teaching at the New England conservatory in 1979. They sometimes celebrated their anniversaries by performing together.In a phone interview, she recalled soirees at their house, where students would read different roles in Shakespeare plays. Mr. Sherman, a passionate baseball fan, was also an avid photographer with an interest in light, shadows and trees. He often read science books, determined to master concepts he initially found challenging.While teaching at the New England Conservatory, he was also a visiting professor at Harvard University and at Juilliard in New York. He and his wife sometimes taught the same students, such as the pianist Minsoo Sohn, who joined the faculty in 2023. Other former students include the pianists HaeSun Paik, Christopher Taylor and Christopher O’Riley.In 1996, Mr. Sherman published “Piano Pieces,” a compilation of essays about teaching and performing. “Notes may be missed but not casually flubbed,” he wrote. “Phrases may be askew but not aimlessly drifting. Sonorities may be brazen but not barren. The player has to say something, with verve and style.”In addition to his wife, survivors include his sons Edward and Mark, from his marriage to the pianist Natasha Koval, which ended in divorce, and several grandchildren.“I think that musical performances should be free,” Mr. Sherman once said, and “should invite danger, should tell a story, should court the ‘madness of art,’ should in every way reveal the characteristics and visions of the composers.”Reviewing Mr. Sherman’s performance of Prokofiev and Beethoven at age 17, the reviewer noted that “how individual a pianist he is remains to be seen,” but that the “searching way” he interpreted music boded well.Mr. Sherman never abandoned that spirit of inquiry. According to his wife, when he was interviewed by the Nexus Institute in Amsterdam and asked what he wanted written on his tombstone, he replied: “A quest.” More

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      Tzadik’s Experimental Music Is Streaming. Start Here.

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      Listen to 15 streaming highlights from the vast catalog of Tzadik, the imprint founded by John Zorn.John Zorn started the Tzadik label with Kazunori Sugiyama in 1995. Since then, this imprint has amassed a vast catalog of experimental music from the worlds of classical, jazz, rock and beyond.It has also resisted the streaming economy — that is, until last week. As Zorn was celebrating his 70th birthday with concerts, most of Tzadik’s offerings began popping up on Spotify and other platforms.The range of offerings — from over 800 releases — is astonishing. To get an idea, start with these 15 albums.Electric Masada: ‘At the Mountains of Madness’The large-group setting here offers extraordinary, maximalist power in the Jewish folk themes that Zorn wrote for his first Masada Quartet. (Later, he presented them in new arrangements that reflected his interest in chamber music and metal.)Lee Hyla: ‘My Life on the Plains’Tzadik’s Composer Series line has spotlighted artists whose works deliver a synthesis of concert music and jazz or rock energies. In “Polish Folk Songs,” Hyla combines gorgeous string writing with percussive explosions and clarinet riffs.Shelley Hirsch: ‘The Far In, Far Out Worlds of Shelley Hirsch’Excerpts from radio dramas and live shows populate this multifaceted vocalist’s album. Even during a miniature like “So Tender,” Hirsch can create drama by deploying tensile torch-song vibrato, lip smooches and born-in-Brooklyn Jewish accents.John Zorn: ‘Myth And Mythopoeia’In one of Zorn’s most ravishing classical collections, boisterous items like “Hexentarot” elicit hot playing from select members of the JACK Quartet. “Missa Sine Voces” makes dreamy then abstract use of harp and vibes, and the soprano-and-strings “Pandora’s Box” packs plenty of drama into 14 minutes.Keiji Haino & Tatsuya Yoshida: “New Rap”In the late 1990s, Tzadik was the best-distributed source for Japanese experimental rock in America. This 2006 set from its “New Japan” series is among the most unhinged, and most sublime. Credit the relentless energy of Yoshida, the Ruins drummer, as well as Haino’s textured yelping and guitar playing.Julius Hemphill: ‘One Atmosphere’This saxophonist and bandleader was also active as a chamber music composer — one to whom the classical mainstream paid scant attention, but for whom Tzadik rolled out the red carpet. On the title track, spare material alternates with jolting motivic activity, with Hemphill’s partner, Ursula Oppens, at the piano.Annie Gosfield: ‘Almost Truths and Open Deceptions’This composer’s 2012 set reflects her vast talent: Percussion, piano and cello take their at-bats during “Wild Pitch”; a sampling keyboard and Roger Kleier’s electric guitar power an excerpt from “Daughters of the Industrial Revolution”; “Phantom Shakedown” offers Cagean meditation; and the title work is a thrilling cello concerto.John Zorn: ‘Godard/Spillane’Zorn’s famed “file card” pieces advertised a quick-cutting, cinematic experience for the ears. “Godard,” a mid-1980s entry, was reissued by Tzadik in 1999. And it does evoke the French New Wave works of Jean-Luc Godard, particularly “Alphaville.” It also offers a look at a distinguished Zorn collaborator, the turntablist Christian Marclay.George E. Lewis: ‘Endless Shout’This release presents a wide-angle Lewis portrait. “North Star Boogaloo” is a kinetic work for samples and the solo percussionist Steven Schick. “Smashing Clusters” reinterprets the legacy of Harlem stride piano legends. And in “Voyager” Lewis plays trombone against orchestral backing realized by his improvising software program of the same name.Craig Taborn and Ikue Mori: ‘Highsmith’Mori’s solo-electronics sets have been important to Tzadik, but her skill as a collaborator is just as crucial. Here, she teams up with Craig Taborn, a jazz-world star, for a set of improvisations that cavort and splinter with indefatigable invention.Naked City: ‘Naked City Live Vol. 1: Knitting Factory 1989’This concert date doesn’t benefit from the wild contributions of the ensemble’s regular vocalist Yamataka Eye. Even so, Zorn’s early rock group — capable of delivering grindcore in one minute and the “Batman” TV theme the next — puts on quite the show.Wadada Leo Smith: ‘Golden Quartet’Tzadik championed Smith, reissuing his early albums and putting out new sets. There’s a great band on this one, with the composer on trumpet, Jack DeJohnette on drums and Malachi Favors Magoustous on bass, as well as Anthony Davis on piano.Derek Bailey: ‘Ballads’Bailey, a giant of the free-improvisation scene, enjoyed a fine late-career run on Tzadik, including this at-first-glance quizzical approach to jazz’s core songbook. But the precise use of extended techniques lends an idiosyncratic grace to the chords that you can barely glimpse when Bailey plays “Stella by Starlight.”Alvin Singleton: ‘Somehow We Can’This American artist was recently celebrated at the Darmstadt Summer Course in Germany. Yet he rarely receives the kind of attention he deserves at home. On Tzadik, he does: Here, there is variety, including a duo for Wadada Leo Smith and Anthony Davis, as well as the chamber orchestral highlight “Again.”John Zorn: ‘Spinoza’Simulacrum is one of Zorn’s best groups: a fine-tuned metal band and a smoking jazz-organ trio. Typically, he doesn’t play with the ensemble, but on this 2022 set, he pulls out his sax for the second suite. Both of the album’s long tracks are protean in style, yet unmistakably driven. Very Tzadik. More

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      James Jorden, Parterre Box Opera Blog Creator, Dies at 69

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      With Parterre Box, he brought together high culture, punk aesthetics and gleeful camp in an irreverent source for news, criticism and gossip.James Jorden, a feisty, influential writer and editor who brought together high culture, punk aesthetics and gleeful camp in his opera zine-turned-website Parterre Box, was found dead on Monday at his home in Sunnyside, Queens. He was 69.The police, asked by a friend in a 911 call to check on Mr. Jorden, discovered his body, but it was unclear when he died, according to the New York Police Department. The medical examiner was to determine the cause of death.In the early 1990s, Mr. Jorden was struggling to find work as a stage director in New York when he got the advice to try writing about opera rather than producing it.The East Village at the time was “a little past the peak of punk music zines, fan zines,” he recalled in a 2009 interview. “And I really liked the aesthetic, even though I had no idea what it was they were talking about.”Issues of Parterre Box in its zine form, based on the punk zines Mr. Jorden saw around the East Village.Mimicking those DIY projects, Mr. Jorden played around at home with some text, photographs cut from magazines and a glue stick. Parterre Box — which would go on to become an irreverent, essential source of news, criticism, rabid discussion and archival recordings — was born.With a four-page inaugural issue published in December 1993, it was likely the world’s first “queer opera zine,” as it described itself. Parterre Box embraced both the sublime and ridiculous aspects of the art form with a breathless, over-the-top tone familiar to the gay fans who kibitzed during intermissions at the Metropolitan Opera.Maria Callas was on the cover of that first issue (and, as Medea, graced the back of Mr. Jorden’s left shoulder in tattoo form). The contents included intense poetry; parodied the columns in more strait-laced publications like Opera News; imagined Cecilia Bartoli starring as the Long Island temptress Amy Fisher in “Cavalleria Suburbiana,” a takeoff on “Cavalleria Rusticana”; and made cutting observations about less-favored divas.“Parterre Box,” Mr. Jorden wrote on the second page, “is about remembering when opera was queer and dangerous and exciting and making it that way again.”At first, Mr. Jorden distributed copies of the zine at the Tower Records store near Lincoln Center and at the Met — tucking them into brochures in racks in the lobby and leaving them in bathroom stalls. On one occasion, caught stuffing the racks before a performance of “Salome,” he was ejected from the theater by security guards.That pugnacious, underground spirit fit the era. “It was a very activist time in the gay community, in terms of fighting back against AIDS,” Richard Lynn, a longtime contributor, told The New York Times in 2018. “And I view Parterre Box as part of that bigger cultural trend. It wasn’t afraid to be in your face or confrontational or angry. I felt it was therapeutic.”James Glen Jorden was born on Aug. 6, 1954, in Opelousas, La. His father, Billy Wayne Jorden, worked for the Louisiana State Highway Department, and his mother, Glenora (Jory) Jorden, was a high school teacher as well as a local theater director and actress. (He is survived by two brothers, John and Justin Jorden.)Mr. Jorden got his start in opera modestly, costuming a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore” when he was in a gifted-and-talented program in his teens; his co-designer was a young Tony Kushner. After Mr. Jorden’s mother grew tired of his constantly playing his recording of “Pinafore,” she bought him “Carmen,” and his obsession turned to opera in general.In 1976, while attending Louisiana State University, he hitchhiked to Dallas to hear the Met on tour and saw the soprano Renata Scotto in the three leading roles of Puccini’s triptych “Il Trittico.”“That turned me around,” Mr. Jorden said in the 2009 interview. “I saw what the possibility was. And I actually choose that date as the birthday of La Cieca” — his draggy Parterre Box alter ego, named after the blind mother in Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda.”After finishing college and remaining for a time in Louisiana, he moved to New York — all the while teaching, coaching, directing, acting and working day jobs, all of which continued even after Parterre Box was founded.The zine’s length, sophistication and readership gradually grew; professionals in the field began to feed Mr. Jorden valuable bits of inside information and casting news. In the voice of La Cieca — and informed by a capacious knowledge of classic theater, music and film — he skewered Met productions, aired rumors about its administration and star singers, and took other writers to task for their vocabulary quirks and for doing boosterism instead of real criticism.“I know that his blog was often very critical of the Met and me,” Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, said in an interview. “But ultimately, he was on the side of opera, and I always respected him for that.”With a deep love of the art form lying just under the barbs, the obsessively informed, fiercely opinionated, often hilarious tone of the zine translated well to the budding blogosphere when Mr. Jorden added a web version in 1996. Parterre.com’s blind items, fervent cast of regular contributors and often irascible commentariat of readers anticipated the influential internet style that would emerge in the early 2000s.Parterre Box, both as a zine and a website, became an irreverent, essential source of news, criticism, rabid discussion and archival recordings.Mr. Jorden always tried to stay ahead of the technological curve: His podcast, started on a whim in 2005, long before the medium took off, became one of the great online resources for live opera recordings. La Cieca, the host, would announce Parterre Box’s motto in an over-enunciated blue-blood accent: “Where opera is king, and you, the readers, are queens.”Parterre Box’s print version ended in 2001, but Mr. Jorden continued to run the website, in addition to writing criticism and features for other publications, including Gay City News, The New York Post, The New York Observer and The Times.As its founder and editor gained more mainstream affiliations and respectability, Parterre Box mellowed a bit. Its reviews — from a lineup of critics around the country and world — grew more measured. (The comment sections, though, could still be bracing.)At the Met, from which Mr. Jorden was once thrown out for distributing the zine, Parterre Box now has press seats. When one of its critics was granted a ticket for opening night of the company’s 2015-16 season, the moment was “a total game changer,” Mr. Jorden said. “It felt like being an adult.” More

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      Jaap van Zweden’s Final Season

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      The final season of Jaap van Zweden’s brief tenure as music director in New York began with a new suite for the star violinist Joshua Bell.The elements came out for “The Elements.”A clever friend made that observation at the New York Philharmonic’s concert on Friday evening, as the city emerged from a deluge that broke records and inundated subways. The weather was probably a large part of the reason that David Geffen Hall was pocked with an unusual number of empty seats for a performance featuring the star violinist Joshua Bell.Bell was the soloist in — and instigator of — “The Elements,” a new suite of short concerto-esque pieces inspired by the natural world, with five composers as contributors. He was the focus on Friday, just as Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s admired, just-departed chief executive, was on Wednesday at the orchestra’s season-opening gala.On neither occasion was full attention turned to the man on the podium, the season’s ostensible honoree: Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic’s music director, who is leaving in the spring after a brief, pandemic-interrupted tenure, before Gustavo Dudamel arrives in 2026.“Celebrate Jaap!” the orchestra’s marketing orders us (with an implied whisper of “…or else”). But the feeling is one of saying goodbye before we’ve really gotten to know van Zweden — and of a man who’s been a participant in the Philharmonic’s recent history rather than its leader.The period since he started, in 2018, will almost certainly be remembered for the ensemble’s survival through the long pandemic shutdown, for the fast-tracked renovation of Geffen Hall and for an influx of contemporary music, especially by women and composers of color. In these achievements, it was more Borda’s Philharmonic than van Zweden’s.His personality hasn’t come through in his choice of works. Even in the kind of pieces for which he was primarily hired — his predecessor, Alan Gilbert, was perceived as less of a polished taskmaster in the likes of Beethoven and Brahms — van Zweden has largely stuck to the most standard of the standards. When the little-done 12th Symphony of Shostakovich, a composer he conducts effectively, was played by the Philharmonic for the first time last season, it was under the baton of Rafael Payare.So van Zweden’s time in New York feels a little faceless, and so short that Steve Reich, whose “Jacob’s Ladder” premieres this week, was mentioned in Friday’s program as a composer van Zweden has “championed” — apparently by leading a single Reich piece, four years ago. There’s the sense of the orchestra’s trying to manufacture an identity for a conductor who hasn’t been around long enough to develop one organically.This final season brings some firsts for him at the Philharmonic in core repertory: his first Schubert symphony, first Mendelssohn symphony, first Mozart Requiem. There’s more Shostakovich and Brahms; yet another Beethoven’s Fifth; Sofia Gubaidulina’s brooding, ferocious Viola Concerto, from 1996; and a handful of newer pieces.His finale, in June, will be Mahler’s grand, choral Second Symphony, an all-purpose Philharmonic favorite for occasions both reflective (the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks) and triumphant (Leonard Bernstein’s 1,000th concert with the orchestra). In all this, there’s not much personal taste to be gleaned.Yo-Yo Ma was the soloist at the opening gala on Wednesday as van Zweden started his final season with the Philharmonic. Chris LeeIf van Zweden hasn’t had an idiosyncratic vision in his choices of music, though, he has shown a consistent, characteristic style in the works he’s conducted. The typical Jaap-led symphony is tense, tight, punchy. He makes the Philharmonic’s sound glint and glare, especially in the live-wire acoustics of the new Geffen Hall, which can tip into harshness rather than encouraging rounded, blended warmth.You get the impression that he’s been attempting an evocation of the flashy, blazing, sometimes blaring reign of Georg Solti at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the 1970s and ’80s, captured in influential recordings. But while the Philharmonic is a very high-quality ensemble, it is not quite at the same level of flawlessly brilliant precision as Solti’s Chicagoans.So you get the overbearing control and aggressive forcefulness without the climactic grandeur or dumbfounding shine. I had never heard Copland’s Third Symphony, which the Philharmonic played on Friday after “The Elements,” sound so un-pastoral. This can sometimes be a baggy work, but van Zweden made it taut — and arid.A sharp edge in the first movement kept the music moving, and avoided sentimentality. Van Zweden brought out the second movement’s machinelike motion, and the eerie transparency of the slow third, before a finale — showcasing the classic “Fanfare for the Common Man” — of lean focus. This was a Third without much sweetness or sumptuousness.It was almost interesting, such a tough, grimly logical progress through the work — as if a reflection on a different United States than the one Copland was commemorating at the victorious close of World War II. And after years of the old hall’s undervaluing bass frequencies, it remains wonderful to feel them so viscerally now; the clarity of solos, particularly in the winds, is impressive.Perhaps surprisingly, given van Zweden’s base in older repertory and firm hand in symphonies, he’s been a game and sensitive leader of a broad swath of contemporary music, and a considerate, never domineering concerto accompanist. On Wednesday, he was polite even as Yo-Yo Ma was too light-textured to make a strong impact in Dvorak’s evergreen Cello Concerto.And on Friday, van Zweden guided the orchestra eloquently and smoothly around Bell in “The Elements.” But this 40-minute suite, an attempt to recast Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” for our time, is basically syrupy schlock.Kevin Puts’s “Earth,” which begins and ends the work, has a sleepily saccharine section plainly borrowed from Copland, and some madcap, off-kilter propulsion plainly borrowed from John Adams. Jake Heggie’s “Fire” sets off bursts of orchestral “sparks” and racing whimsy, trimmed with celesta. Jennifer Higdon’s “Air” is blooming, not particularly airy; Jessie Montgomery’s “Space,” yet another romance-then-romp structure.All of this was practically begging for film to accompany it and fill out its vagueness — with a uniformity of style, texture and color that made the pieces practically interchangeable manifestations of Bell’s warm, genially bland playing.And Edgar Meyer’s tame “Water,” with its undulating winds and trickles of violin, was certainly no match for what had been going on outside. More