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    Yunchan Lim’s Chopin, and Other Classical Albums to Hear Now

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    Yunchan Lim’s collection of Chopin piano études, a new recording of Terry Riley’s “In C” and works by Marc-André Hamelin are among the highlights.Chopin: ÉtudesYunchan Lim, piano (Decca)The pianist Yunchan Lim, who recently turned 20, debuted at Carnegie Hall in February with an old-school program: all 24 of Chopin’s études. His first album on the Decca label, playing those same 24 devilishly difficult pieces — 12 each in Op. 10 and 25 — is old-school, too. The cover photo, shot on film, has Lim nearly engulfed in moody shadow, an image that, along with the font, evokes classical music’s glamorous mid-20th century.The aim seems to be to position him as an heir to that era’s keyboard titans. It’s hardly a difficult task. After Lim’s Carnegie performance, and his dazzling winning rounds at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, it’s no surprise to find him in total command on this recording, balancing note-by-note clarity with long-phrase lyricism amid staggering technical demands. Even in fiery études, he is calm as he exposes the panoply of voices that emerge from just two hands. His rubato breathes naturally yet energetically; there’s a vitality and sense of forward motion even in slower pieces. And Lim’s soft playing is particularly sensitive, as in the pleading quality he brings to a tiny pianissimo quintuplet in Op. 10, No. 9. The album loses little of the excitement of a live concert while adding more control, transparency and polish. It’s a triumph. ZACHARY WOOLFE‘In C’Maya Beiser, cello (Islandia Music)For the 60th anniversary of “In C,” Terry Riley’s crusading, proto-minimalist work, the intrepid cellist Maya Beiser has reimagined the piece ingeniously. As written, “In C,” which consists of a series of 53 short musical motifs, can be played by any group of musicians on any instruments, and lasts as long as their individual decisions about how long to repeat those motifs. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Paramore Steps Into a New Era, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, Dram and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Paramore, ‘This Is Why’Paramore has regrouped after Hayley Williams’s 2020 and 2021 solo albums showed how far her music could stretch beyond punk-pop and new wave. On the title song of its first LP since 2017, “This Is Why” (due in February) Paramore goes for wiry syncopation, not punk drive and power chords. “If you have an opinion, maybe you should shove it,” Williams sings, with biting mock-sweetness, over a backbeat and a hopping bass line. Choppy, clenched guitar chords — with more than a hint of INXS — goad her as she sneers an irritated response to a sourly divided national mood: “This is why I don’t leave the house.” JON PARELESYeah Yeah Yeahs, ‘Fleez’For much of their smoldering new album, “Cool It Down,” the once hyperactive Yeah Yeah Yeahs effectively reinvent themselves as purveyors of lush, slow-burning art-rock (see: the apocalyptically gorgeous, almost “Disintegration”-like leadoff single “Spitting Off the Edge of the World”). “Fleez,” however, harkens back to the barbed sound of their 2003 debut, “Fever to Tell,” and to the glory days of the indie sleaze sound the New York trio helped pioneer. Ironically — or perhaps as a reminder of how indebted that aesthetic was to the echoes of downtown past — the Yeah Yeah Yeahs do this by interpolating the funky groove and titular refrain of the South Bronx greats ESG’s 1983 single “Moody.” “I make my transformation, and it feels ni-i-i-i-i-ce,” Karen O vamps atop a chunky Nick Zinner riff and a shuffling Brian Chase beat — still, after all these years, a chemistry experiment that produces singular sparks. LINDSAY ZOLADZLCD Soundsystem, ‘New Body Rhumba’LCD Soundsystem’s first new song since 2017, for the soundtrack of Noah Baumbach’s film of the Don DeLillo novel “White Noise,” is the band’s latest jaunty, motoric complaint about money and mortality. “I need a new love and I need a new body/to push away the end,” James Murphy proclaims. LCD Soundsystem digs in, once again, to the late-1970s moment when punk, minimalism and dance music found a common stomping ground. “New Body Rhumba” is brawny and discordant, juggling sarcasm and sincerity, taunts and yearnings. Its final stretch, tootling and pounding over an insistent drone, may be a deathbed revelation, as Murphy belts, “Go into the light!” PARELESCaitlin Rose, ‘Nobody’s Sweetheart’It’s been nearly 10 years since the country-influenced indie musician Caitlin Rose’s most recent album, the whip-smart 2013 release “The Stand-In.” Later this year, she’ll break that long silence with her third record, “Cazimi,” out Nov. 18. The latest single, the stomping, sassy “Nobody’s Sweetheart” finds the silver lining in the single life, with Rose musing in her knowing drawl, “When you’re nobody’s sweetheart, you make the rules.” Even better, she adds, you’re “nobody’s fool.” ZOLADZFrankie Cosmos, ‘F.O.O.F.’Robert Smith was in love on Friday, Rebecca Black had to get down on Friday and now Greta Kline — leader of the indie-pop project Frankie Cosmos — freaks out on Friday. That’s what the playful acronym “F.O.O.F.” stands for and, accordingly, the latest single from Frankie Cosmos’s forthcoming album “Inner World Peace” is alive with Kline’s signature wry, muted humor. “It’s still Wednesday, I have to wait two more sleeps ’til I can freak,” Kline sighs, while a mildly noodly guitar solo saves up its most raucous energy. That the brief song ends before that promised freakout is the point: Kline is more interested in capturing that hopeful, anticipatory feeling — usually a comforting fiction — that everything will be all right once the weekend comes. ZOLADZNisa, ‘Sever’“How many breaks will it take until we can’t fix it?” Nisa Lumaj sings in “Sever” from her new EP, “Exaggerate.” The modest, bedroom-pop-like production stays patient and contained until it isn’t. Nisa muses, at first just above a whisper, about a deteriorating relationship; her voice is cushioned by synthesizer chords while guitar lines poke at her like unwanted realizations. But when the distorted strumming starts, the explosive breakup is inevitable. PARELESDram, ‘Let Me See Your Phone’The digital era enabled countless new avenues for surveillance and jealousy, and the R&B songwriter Dram sings about one in “Let Me See Your Phone.” The track uses slow-rolling, vintage soul chords, and Dram switches between earnest soul tenor and falsetto as he details an accusation — “When I look in your eyes/they don’t shine as bright as they used to” — and demands a forensic investigation: “Type in your passcode so I can see inside your soul.” Cheaters, by now, should understand that they should keep certain communications offline. PARELESOren Ambarchi, ‘I’“I” is the first and most austere segment of the 35-minute composition (and album) “Shebang” by the guitarist, composer and digital manipulator Oren Ambarchi. Although he’s joined by other instruments in the rest of the piece, most of “Shebang I” is guitar alone: restless staccato picking that’s multitracked, looped and digitally edited, building hypnotic polyrhythms around an unchanging chordal root. In the last minute, cymbals and other sounds join him, only hinting at what the rest of the piece will become. PARELESBill Frisell, ‘Waltz for Hal Willner’The guitarist Bill Frisell’s tribute to a longtime friend, the high-concept producer Hal Willner, brings the lightest possible touch to an elegy; it’s from his new album, “Four.” The harmonies are a slow, transparent cascade of clusters from Gerald Clayton on piano, while the drummer Johnathan Blake scatters cymbal taps against the waltzing lilt. Frisell shares the melody with Clayton and Gregory Tardy on tenor saxophone; each of them departs from the tune in brief, conversational asides before returning to what sounds like a fond, shared reminiscence. PARELES More

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      A Knockout Country-Rap Crossover, and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Nilüfer Yanya, Gayle, John Mellencamp and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Kidd G featuring YNW BSlime, ‘Left Me’There’s been an increasing amount of crossover between country and hip-hop in recent years, though often the relationship between the two influences can feel strained. But here’s a collaboration between two sing-rappers, both teenagers, that sounds utterly unforced: Kidd G, who’s making the kind of naturally syncretic music Nashville should be inching toward, and YNW BSlime, the younger brother of the incarcerated star YNW Melly. Kidd G taps into his Juice WRLD influences, with pitter-patter syllables and scraped-up singing, and YNW BSlime’s guest verse is chilling, and sung with disarming innocence: “Two years my brother’s been gone/And I’ve never/felt so alone.” It sounds like the No. 1 song of 2030. JON CARAMANICACharlie Puth, ‘Light Switch’A peppy song about romantic dyspepsia, “Light Switch” is a lightly manqué version of the sort of electric funk-pop that made Charlie Puth’s 2018 album “Voicenotes” so appealing. The singing is slightly less committed, and the lyric construction not buttoned quite as tight, and there’s a light hyperpop-esque treatment on the vocals that makes Puth sound like hes lamenting from the inside of the synthesizer. But the anxiety of the words is pointed, and the sugar-rush production scans as breathlessness. CARAMANICANilüfer Yanya, ‘Midnight Sun’Escalation suggests obsession in “Midnight Sun” from a new Nilüfer Yanya album, “Painless,” that’s due in March. “Maybe I can’t care too much/I can’t clean this up,” she sings. “Get me off this spinning wheel.” Both the acoustic guitar chords and the drumbeat feel looped, with more than a hint of Radiohead, but other sounds arrive — acoustic and electric guitars — sounding hand-played and offering possibilities of escape. It’s not clear whether she’ll use them. JON PARELESGayle, ‘Ur Just Horny’The quantum guitar-chord crescendo of grunge — quiet-loud-MUCH LOUDER — gets a full, furious workout in Gayle’s “Ur Just Horny,” the teenage songwriter’s follow-up to “Abcdefu.” As the stop-start guitars stack up, she spells things out: “You don’t wanna be my friend/You just wanna see me naked/Again.” PARELESEcco2K and Bladee, ‘Amygdala’Ecco2K and Bladee are members of the Drain Gang, a Swedish pop collective that has a sideline in fashion modeling. Their latest collaboration, produced by the German musician Mechatok, is a slice of pointillist hyperpop that treats voices and synthesizer tones alike as bits of blipping staccato counterpoint and computer-compressed nuggets of cosmic ambition: “Destroy and create, dreaming in the dream,” Bladee croons at the end, before the machines shut off. PARELESSofia Kourtesis featuring Manu Chao, ‘Estación Esperanza’Sofia Kourtesis makes songs that pulsate with the hope of a new day. “Estación Esperanza” is a master class in culling citations, opening with the chants of a Peruvian protest against homophobia before vocal samples of Manu Chao’s “Me Gustas Tu” glitch into focus, interspersed with vibrant bird calls and a steady horn. When Kourtesis’ own humming comes into focus, a single moment opens to infinity. ISABELIA HERRERAINVT, ‘Anaconda’The Miami duo INVT lets genres slip through their fingers on its latest track. A fever pitch dembow riddim lifted from Jamaican dancehall thumps to life. A vaporous echo and fleshy moan whisper under the production. There is the steady clang of a cowbell, the shake of a maraca. Is it reggaeton? Minimal techno? Does it even matter? HERRERAKey Glock, ‘Proud’Young Dolph, who was shot and killed in his Memphis hometown in November, had mentored and collaborated with his cousin, Key Glock. Key Glock’s tribute song, “Proud,” is the first single from the compilation “Paper Route Empire Presents: Long Live Dolph,” and it’s burly in presentation but the lyrics ache: “I can get it back in blood but still I can’t get back the time.” In the video, Key Glock raps his regrets at the site of the killing, a stark choice. CARAMANICAJohn Mellencamp, ‘I Am a Man That Worries’John Mellencamp stays grim and grizzled throughout his new album, “Strictly a One-Eyed Jack.” In “I Am a Man That Worries,” he’s worried about everything and belligerent about it: “You better get out of my way,” he growls. It’s a vintage-style blues stop with slide guitar and fiddle flanking his voice, and though he proclaims his bitter solitude, he has a crowd shouting alongside him by the end. PARELESDaniel Rossen, ‘Shadow in the Frame’Nervous energy courses through “Shadow in the Frame,” the first single from the solo album due in April from Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear. Rossen played every instrument except drums (by Grizzly Bear’s Christopher Bear) in the intricate arrangement, including strings and woodwinds. The song is a meditation on ephemerality and catastrophe — “You will watch us flash and fade and get torn apart,” he sings — carried by a restless, circling phrase that migrates among guitars and vocals, changing contour but never resolving, hinting at hope that keeps moving out of reach. PARELESUwade, ‘Do You See the Light Around Me?’The songwriter Uwade explores infatuation in “Do You See the Light Around Me?” It’s a single on Sylvan Esso’s label, Psychic Hotline, and as it cycles through four chords with voices and instruments arriving and disappearing, it echoes that group’s mixture of sparse electronic beats and human warmth. But Uwade brings her own personality, at once uncertain and embracing. PARELESJana Horn, ‘Jordan’The Austin-based songwriter Jana Horn keeps her voice small and whispery throughout “Optimism,” the debut album she releases this week. “Jordan” is the album’s eeriest, most exploratory, most determined song: a steady-pulsing march with electronics at the fringes, an enigmatic biblical narrative about a quest, an ordeal, a dilemma, a revelation. PARELESGui Duvignau, featuring Bill Frisell, ‘Tristeza e Solidão’The bassist Gui Duvignau begins his take on “Tristeza e Solidão” — a torch song by the Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell and the poet Vinícius de Moraes — unaccompanied, sounding plangent and contemplative as he lets low notes resound. The guitarist Bill Frisell, featured as a special guest, enters with the drummer Jeff Hirschfield, and trades the song’s somber melody back and forth with Duvignau. The track is overcast and melancholy and slow, lacking the quiet, motor-like samba groove of Powell’s and de Moraes’s original version but sounding just as haunted. This performance comes from Duvignau’s latest album, “Baden,” a tribute to the influential guitarist, who died in 2000. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKiko Villamizar, ‘Sembrá El Maíz’Cumbia rhythms, carried on drums stroked by hands and mallets, lift up a reverb-shaken guitar and the sleepy-eyed voice of Kiko Villamizar. “Sembrá El Maíz” (“Plant the Corn”) is an original urging hard work and patience, even in the face of climate catastrophe. By the end he’s full-throated, trading call-and-response vocals with the band. A musician, educator and organizer now based in Austin, Villamizar grew up primarily on a coffee farm in Colombia and later traveled the country collecting songs. When Los Destellos and Los Wemblers de Iquitos started making Peruvian jungle-surf like this in the 1960s, it rang cosmopolitan; today, writing similar songs, a younger musician from the Colombian side is building on what’s become a tradition of its own. RUSSONELLO More

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      Ron Miles Headlines the Village Vanguard, at Last, as the Club Reopens

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      The cornetist led a quintet featuring Jason Moran, Bill Frisell, Thomas Morgan and Brian Blade as the 86-year-old establishment came back to life after its pandemic shutdown.Ron Miles has a dusty and unvarnished sound on cornet that hints at his Rocky Mountain roots, and unlike your typical high-brass improviser, he hardly ever resorts to flash or big pronouncements. Onstage he’s unhurried, low-key and playing for the audience, yes, but not directly to it.All of which helped make his quintet’s early set at the Village Vanguard on Saturday night feel comfortable, even familiar, despite it being Miles’s first week leading a band at the storied club — and his shows being the Vanguard’s first after 18 months of lockdown.There was an air of celebration as the 86-year-old establishment came back to life, but the way to engage with it was seemingly to pick up right where things left off, letting the music do its work.Patrons returning to the club found it largely unchanged after the long pause.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesThe tiny white bistro tables and wooden chairs were just as before, knocked closely together between the venue’s obtusely angled walls, all lined with leather benches. The simple laminated drink menus were unchanged, except for a sticker on each one with a handwritten “Modelo” replacing the Stella Artois.But a big part of the night’s easy, familial feeling came from the fact that the members of Miles’s all-star quintet were all Vanguard regulars. Everyone but the band’s leader had previously headlined at the club in his own right: the pianist Jason Moran, the guitarist Bill Frisell, the bassist Thomas Morgan and the drummer Brian Blade.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesMiles, 58, has spent most of his life in Denver and has only recently begun to garner the heavy national attention he was due, and it’s come thanks to this band. He had booked this engagement with the club’s management far in advance, after the quintet had released its debut album but before last year’s equally spellbinding release, “Rainbow Sign.” When the Vanguard decided to align its reopening with Broadway’s, in mid-September, Miles’s became the first date on the schedule that stood.The cornetist first convened the quintet in 2016 as an extension of a trio that he had long maintained with Blade and Frisell. Everyone in the group spent at least his adolescent years west of the Mississippi River — Louisiana, Texas, Colorado, California — and Miles’s slyly swinging compositions are built perfectly to find the natural simpatico between these musicians. Steeped in American roots music, 1950s cool jazz and the musical openness of Don Cherry, it never feels settled but almost always seems centered on a search for shared comfort.Appearing onstage with the band just after 8 p.m., Miles allowed a pregnant silence to build before beaming out one evenly held note; Moran responded with a low and cloudy chord, striking it just half a moment behind Miles. Frisell’s guitar, run through reversed effects and sudden loops, added an electric charge to their earth tones.It was Morgan who started, finally, to set a firm pulse, though he built it in response to Blade’s scattered strokes on the snare and bass drums, which implied a flow. The tune became slowly recognizable as “Like Those Who Dream,” the opener from “Rainbow Sign.” The musicians bent in and out of blues form as they moved into a steady three-beat pattern, and solos folded neatly into composed sections.The drummer Brian Blade and the guitarist Bill Frisell on the Vanguard stage.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesThe set started with long, expansive renditions of original compositions, and ended with a diptych of short, pithy pieces: a quick-hit take on Lee Konitz’s cool-jazz classic “Subconscious-Lee” and a short version of “The Rumor,” a pool of harmony and tone that serves as the centerpiece of the new album.Miles knows about fitting his voice into another musician’s band; most of his higher-profile work had been as a side musician, and he makes himself indispensable by paying attention to a group’s entire sound, in the way that a bassist or a pianist might.He encouraged the same approach from his bandmates here by not only writing to their natural strengths but by presenting each member with a score that shows the entire band’s parts, rather than just their own.Miles’s skills as an accompanist were in evidence too on Saturday. On “Queen of the South,” another original from the new album with a memorable, folklike melody, after the solo section ended and the band reclined back into the melody, Miles capered happily around it, adding bright coloration and cross-swipes of rhythm.He followed with “Let’s,” an up-tempo tune by Thad Jones, the trumpeter and Vanguard icon, hoisting up the energy and the tempo but not the volume. Moran stayed out as Frisell improvised, starting with spare gestures and getting more creative, treating his solo like an engine being rebuilt one part at a time. Miles took his own solo quickly off the harmonic map, tugging against whatever structure had set in with the swing feel.After “Let’s,” Miles took the microphone off its stand for the first and only time that set, and spoke as if this was just a normal night of music in a highly special place. “We are blessed to be here and blessed to be in this hallowed space,” he said. “We’re going to play some more music for you.”There was an air of celebration as the club came back to life.An Rong Xu for The New York Times More

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      Renée Fleming Was Back Onstage. Here’s What Happened First.

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      To pull together a 85-minute indoor concert at the Shed with the opera star and three musicians, everything had to go according to plan.The soprano Renée Fleming sauntered onstage in a shimmering long-sleeve gown, perched on a chair and started to sing.For a renowned performer decades into her career, it might have been an uneventful Wednesday evening at the Shed, the expansive performance space in Hudson Yards. But after 13 months in a pandemic, a sea of faces was a novel sight for the opera star and the trio accompanying her.“Wow, applause!” she remarked after finishing the meditative opening number. “Very exciting.”Exciting, indeed — and no mean feat to pull off.After the Shed and other flexible New York performance spaces lobbied to let audiences in, it got the go-ahead to open its doors for a live event on April 2, after 386 days of shutdown. Fleming’s April 21 show there, before a limited audience, was the fourth performance in a series co-sponsored by NY PopsUp, a public-private program aimed at reviving the arts.While the 85-minute show — a mix of classical, jazz and popular music — went off without a hitch, it demonstrated that mounting indoor events in New York at this stage of the pandemic will still be time-consuming, unpredictable and expensive.To get Fleming and the musicians onstage involved dozens of hours of careful planning; hundreds of dollars in safety equipment like plastic face shields and hand sanitizer; and nearly $2,500 in coronavirus tests. All this for drastically reduced ticket revenue.And while she may have been the headliner, pulling the show off took a large cast of behind-the-scenes figures, some of whom hadn’t worked regularly in the building for months.Monday: Two days to showtimeIn normal times, the staff in a preshow morning production meeting might be discussing last-minute program changes or the status of ticket sales.On April 19, it was where and when Renée Fleming would get her rapid Covid tests.She would arrive to rehearse at 1:30 p.m. the next day, the staff was told, and head to the sixth floor to the smaller Kenneth C. Griffin Theater, where her dressing room was located. There, she would meet a medical technician who would administer a nasal swab.There would be no servers bringing the talent tea, coffee or food, per health department edict.“We do the barest minimum,” said Laura Aswad, the Shed’s producer, noting that Fleming, who had acted in a play during the Shed’s opening season, wouldn’t be left completely untended: Bottled water, tea bags and a kettle would be in her dressing room.Alex Poots, the Shed’s chief executive, had one big announcement to share with the staff. The venue had not received state permission to expand the size of the audience. In the days leading up to the concert, the Shed had asked to double capacity from 150 to 300, which would still only be a fraction of the roughly 1,200 people the McCourt, its largest performance space, can seat.But the state had essentially told them: Not so fast.The concert had sold out in two hours. Audience members who did secure tickets had already received the first of four emails explaining the coronavirus protocols they would need to follow.Gone was the chance to rush to a concert after work and plop down into your seat as the curtain rose. Before they entered the Shed, concertgoers would need to check one of three boxes: show proof of full vaccination; demonstrate a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours of the event; or have taken a rapid antigen test, which is less reliable, within six hours of showtime.This was such a jumble of rules and dates that the front-of-house staff would be provided printed cheat sheets for the day of the show.Shed employees check vaccination certificates from audience members before admitting them to the show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTuesday: One day to showtimeThe guitarist Bill Frisell was surrounded by piles of sheet music — some Handel, some Stephen Foster — laid out on the dining room table and the living room floor of his Brooklyn home. He was writing out his parts in pencil, referencing a list of songs that Fleming had sent to him, the bassist Christian McBride, and the pianist Dan Tepfer.Pandemic restrictions meant only one in-person rehearsal before the day of the show, and Frisell was in study mode. He had played alongside Fleming before — they had recorded an album in 2005 — but never alongside Tepfer or McBride.“It adds a level of stress to the event, no question,” Fleming said. “We still have a lot to figure out in terms of how we’re arranging everything.”As Frisell was reviewing the sheet music to Cole Porter’s “Down in the Depths (on the Ninetieth Floor),” Fleming was up on East 57th Street, visiting her longtime hair stylist, Michael Stinchcomb, at Vartali Salon.Stinchcomb has been an avid fan since the 1990s and first met Fleming backstage at Carnegie Hall. He’s been doing her hair for more than two decades, often traveling around the world when she performs.But last winter Fleming moved from New York to Virginia, and the pandemic had prevented her from visiting Stinchcomb until the day before her Shed performance.“She was so happy to come in,” Stinchcomb said. “She’s a woman who likes to look good.”Later that afternoon, Fleming arrived at the Shed for a three-hour rehearsal, where she and the musicians discussed harmonies, tempos and spots for improvised solos.“A full rehearsal the day before a show?” McBride said. “That’s a lot in the jazz world.”José Rivera, left, and Steven Quinones place clusters of seats more than 6 feet apart.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWednesday: 11 hours to showtimeJosé Rivera pointed at the space between two clusters of seats. “From here to here, it’s 6-foot 4,” he announced, bending to scrutinize his yellow tape measure. “From here to here is 6-foot 1.”That made the grade: According to state rules, the distance between audience members had to be over six feet.He and another facilities employee, Steven Quinones, had been arranging the chairs for some two hours, ensuring that the setup matched a detailed paper diagram.“And see, this is the big aisle that people walk through, so it’s 9 feet, 5 inches,” Rivera continued, raising his voice to be heard over the whirring of a third colleague zooming around the room on an industrial floor scrubber.Five floors up, Josh Phagoo, an operations engineer, checked up on one of the Shed’s most important technologies for Covid safety: the HVAC system. Massive air handlers and chillers in the building’s engine room whirred constantly as Phagoo made sure the machines that keep the air at roughly 70 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity at 50 percent were functional.On the stage itself, the first piano notes of the day were vibrating through the air, up to the McCourt’s 115-foot ceiling.Stephen Eriksson had arrived at 11 a.m. to tune the gleaming Steinway grand piano. While he said his business had disappeared for the first four months of the pandemic, now he is busier than ever.For nearly 30 minutes, he used a tuning wrench to make sure that the piano was concert ready. Afterward, he played a bit of Debussy and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”“That’s a bit of pure indulgence,” he said.Stephen Eriksson tuning the grand piano on the day of the performance.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWednesday: Three hours to showtimeWithin 15 minutes after arriving at the Shed, Fleming — who was scheduled for her second vaccine in New York the morning after the show — got the rapid Covid test in her dressing room. Negative.Afterward, she rehearsed onstage with the musicians, their instruments positioned more than six feet apart from one another, while an audio crew member in a mask and a face shield flitted around them, making sure everything was working properly.The six-person crew working the show was slightly smaller than usual, according to Pope Jackson, the Shed’s production manager. Everywhere they went, they brought along what Jackson referred to as a “Covid cart,” which contained a stock of masks, gloves, sanitation supplies and brown paper bags, which the musicians’ union requires so that players have a clean place to put their masks while they perform.Downstairs, a staff of eight security guards had their nostrils swabbed to make sure that they tested negative.Richard Reid, who works security, getting a rapid Covid test before the show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFleming and the musicians had been doing virtual and outdoor concerts throughout the pandemic, but the security staff was filled with people whose careers had been even more upended.Allen Pestana, 21, has been unemployed for more than a year after being let go from working security at Yankee Stadium; Duwanna Alford, 53, saw her hours cut at a church in Morningside Heights; Richard Reid, 33, had worked in April 2020 as a security guard at a field hospital in Manhattan, where he had tried to forget his health fears and focus on the hazard pay he was receiving.This was the moment before a concert where the theater was alive with preparation and nerves — a bustle missing in the city during the first year of the pandemic.“It’s like doing the electric slide, the moonwalk and the bachata all at once,” Jackson said of the minutes before showtime. “But when the lights go up, it all fades away.”The masked audience applauding at the end of the 85-minute concert.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesShowtimeThe front-of-house staff had only 20 minutes to review the audience members’ IDs and Covid-related documents; take their temperatures; and show them to their seats.Icy gusts of wind just outside the doors weren’t making things any easier.But by 8:05 p.m., 150 people had settled into their precisely placed seats, able to snap a photo of the QR code on the arms of the chairs to see the concert program.In between performances of the jazz classic “Donna Lee” and “Touch the Hand of Love,” which Fleming had once recorded with Yo-Yo Ma, the artists chatted onstage about what they’d been doing with their lives for the past 13 months.“Wishing this pandemic would be over,” McBride said.Tepfer said he had been improving a technological tool that made it easier for musicians to play in unison over the internet — a tool that he and Fleming had used to rehearse together virtually.Frisell had not performed for an indoor audience since the beginning of the pandemic. “This is such a blessing,” he said.The show ended with a standing ovation, and then the musicians played an encore: “Hard Times” by Stephen Foster, which Fleming described as a song that tends to resonate in times of crisis.“Hard times,” she sang, “come again no more.” More