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    Patrick Summers, Veteran Opera Conductor, to Step Down in Houston

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    Summers, who has helped introduce new operas into the American canon, will leave his role at Houston Grand Opera in 2026.Patrick Summers, a veteran conductor who over the past 26 years has helped turn Houston Grand Opera into one of most innovative companies in the United States, will leave his post in 2026, the company announced on Wednesday.Summers, 61, Houston Grand Opera’s artistic and music director, said he was eager for a change and felt he was leaving the organization in a strong position.“I love the company and the work that we’ve done here,” he said. “But I realized it’s time to make space for a new generation.”Summers has played an important role in introducing new operas into the American canon.He has premiered 11 works in Houston, including Jake Heggie’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” and Carlisle Floyd’s “Cold Sassy Tree.” He has recorded new and recent operas, including Daniel Catán’s “Florencia en el Amazonas.” And, as a guest conductor, he has led major premieres at other companies: He was on the podium, for example, when Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” had its debut at San Francisco Opera in 2000.The star soprano Renée Fleming called Summers a “consummate musician” and a “natural educator.”“His effect has been to maintain a high standard of quality and hire great singers and have wonderful productions,” she said. “The whole ecosystem has benefited from his long tenure there.”Summers joined Houston Grand Opera as music director in 1998. He was recruited by David Gockley, the company’s general director from 1972 to 2005, who made it a hub for experimentation, commissioning dozens of new works. Summers became artistic and music director in 2011.Khori Dastoor, Houston’s general director and chief executive since 2021, said Summers’s creative drive had transformed the company.“He lives in the future; he lives in commissions,” she said. “He lives in the support of talent at the beginning, when it’s most needed.”Dastoor said that the company had not yet begun searching for a successor but that she hoped there would not be a long gap between Summers and his replacement.“We’re united and ready to make an ambitious and bold choice when the time comes,” she said.For his next chapter, Summers said, he did not anticipate taking on another major director role, hoping to focus on performance. He will be given the title of music director emeritus at Houston Grand Opera and continue to appear there. This season, he is leading a new production of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and performances of Missy Mazzoli’s “Breaking the Waves.”Since the pandemic, Houston Grand Opera has been in a relatively strong position compared to its peers, with strong ticket sales and fund-raising.Summers said he was proud of the company. “We’re one of the real success stories in the arts in the United States,” he said. “How could I have any regrets?” More

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      Akili McDowell, Star of ‘David Makes Man,’ Is Charged With Murder

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      Mr. McDowell, 21, was being held on bond for the July shooting death of a man in the parking lot of a Houston apartment complex, the authorities said.Akili McDowell, an actor who starred in the television series “David Makes Man,” has been charged with murder in the July shooting death of a man in the parking lot of a Houston apartment complex, authorities said.Mr. McDowell, 21, was arrested and charged on Thursday with the murder of Cesar Peralta, 20, according to a criminal complaint.Mr. McDowell is being held on $400,000 bond at the Harris County jail and is scheduled to be arraigned on Oct. 9. A lawyer for Mr. McDowell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Jonell Whitt, Mr. McDowell’s manager, offered prayers to the victim’s family and to Mr. McDowell. She declined to comment further on Monday evening.Harris County sheriff deputies responded to reports of a shooting on July 20 in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Houston, according to the sheriff’s office.Deputies arrived to find an adult male, who has since been identified as Mr. Peralta, unresponsive from apparent gunshot wounds. Emergency medical workers pronounced him dead at the scene. The authorities said that deputies spoke with several witnesses who reported seeing the victim in a fight with an unidentified male, who fled on foot immediately after the shooting.“David Makes Man” follows David, played by Mr. McDowell, as he navigates life in a housing project in South Florida while trying to succeed as one of the few Black students at his magnet school. The show, which aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network, was tinged with magical realism and explored its characters’ inner lives. It was created and written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, known for his Tony-nominated play “Choir Boy” and as a writer of the Oscar-winning film “Moonlight.”According to the website IMDb, Mr. McDowell appeared this year in “The Waterboyz,” a film about two young men whose paths cross while trying to make it in Atlanta. He also appeared in the 2015 film “Criminal Activities,” a crime yarn starring John Travolta; and in the television shows “Billions” and “The Astronaut Wives Club.”Alain Delaquérière More

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      Mark James, ‘Suspicious Minds’ Songwriter, Is Dead at 83

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      Mr. James wrote hit songs recorded by Elvis Presley, Brenda Lee, Willie Nelson and other artists.Mark James, a genre-defying and Grammy Award-winning songwriter whose hits included “Suspicious Minds,” “Hooked on a Feeling” and “Always on My Mind,” died at his home in Nashville on Saturday. He was 83.His death was confirmed by his daughter, Sammie Zambon. The Houston Chronicle first reported the news of Mr. James’s death.Various stars, including Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson, lent their voices to Mr. James’s catalog of songs over the years.His career of powerhouse hits began in 1968 with “The Eyes of a New York Woman,” cut by the country and pop hitmaker B.J. Thomas. Mr. Thomas, a lifelong friend of Mr. James, then recorded “Hooked on a Feeling,” Mr. James’s 1968 song celebrating newfound love, which hit the top five that year. The song again made it to the top five in 1974, when the Swedish rock band Blue Swede released its version.Mr. James catapulted into a different stratosphere in 1969 when Elvis cut “Suspicious Minds,” a song Mr. James first recorded and released as a single, to little notice, the previous year. Elvis’s version reached No. 1 in 27 countries and became one of his biggest hits and his last No. 1 single. The song is included in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.“Always On My Mind,” which Mr. James co-wrote with Wayne Carson and Johnny Christopher, became one of his most decorated works. Brenda Lee recorded the first version in 1972 before Elvis released his take in 1973 and John Wesley Ryles made it a top 20 country hit in 1979, according to the Texas Heritage Songwriters Association.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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      Settlements Reached in Travis Scott Astroworld Concert Deaths

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      A trial had been set to hear evidence that organizers of a 2021 Travis Scott concert knew the crowd was too large and ignored pleas to stop it as 10 people were crushed.A lawyer for Live Nation, the concert company, said in court on Wednesday that settlements had been reached in all but one of the lawsuits over the deaths of 10 people who were fatally crushed during a performance by Travis Scott at the 2021 Astroworld festival in Houston.The disclosure came as lawyers were preparing for the first trial over the deaths. A lawyer for the plaintiffs in that case confirmed that a settlement had been reached with the defendants, including Mr. Scott, Live Nation and Apple, which live-streamed the event.The trial had been expected to present a jury with harrowing testimony about the chaotic conditions at the Nov. 5, 2021, concert and the warnings raised by some of those working there. The victims, including two teenagers and a 9-year-old boy, suffocated in the midst of the heaving crowd while Mr. Scott performed.For more than two years, details have slowly emerged in court filings and police reports, revealing the behind-the-scenes arguments and backstage wrangling that accompanied one of the worst concert disasters in the United States.Some of the organizers of the Astroworld festival knew that the space was too small, according to evidence uncovered during the preparations for trial. Mr. Scott kept performing as people were suffocating, it showed, signaling a plan to continue the show until after Drake had performed despite efforts to stop the show earlier. A police investigation pointed to what the plaintiffs identified as a potential reason: a $4.5 million contract with Apple requiring Mr. Scott to finish the show in order to get paid.Ten people were fatally crushed during a performance by Travis Scott during the 2021 Astroworld festival in Houston. Jamaal Ellis/Houston Chronicle, via Associated PressWe 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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      Most Wrongful Death Lawsuits Tied to Astroworld Festival Are Settled

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      The rapper Travis Scott and the concert promoter Live Nation faced 10 suits after the 2021 tragedy. One case from the family of a 9-year-old victim is pending.Nine of the 10 wrongful death lawsuits that were filed after a stampede at the Astroworld music festival in 2021 have been settled, a spokeswoman for Live Nation confirmed on Wednesday after a court hearing about the latest agreement.Ten people were killed and hundreds more injured as a result of a large crowd surge during a performance by the rapper Travis Scott in Houston on Nov. 5, 2021. The suits alleged that Scott, who was the headliner, the concert promoter Live Nation and other defendants had contributed to the deaths through negligent planning and a lack of safety measures.A lawsuit filed by the family of 23-year-old Madison Dubiski was set to go to trial this week. But a lawyer for Live Nation said in a civil district court in Harris County that the case had been settled along with eight others, according to The Associated Press.In its lawsuit, Ms. Dubiski’s family alleged that the defendants had caused her death by their failure to adequately plan, staff and supervise the concert. “While in attendance at the festival, Madison was trampled and crushed resulting in horrific injuries, pre-death pain and suffering, and her death,” the suit said.The terms of the settlements were confidential.The remaining pending lawsuit was filed by the family of 9-year-old Ezra Blount, the youngest person killed. Lawyers for his family did not respond to requests for comment.Last year, a grand jury declined to indict Scott and five others connected to the festival. A crowd of 50,000 people had gathered for the third iteration of Scott’s event, named after the 2018 album that helped make him a star.Ben Sisario More

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      Jorie Graham’s Poetry of the Earth and Humanity, Set to Music

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      The composer Matthew Aucoin, Graham’s former student, and the director Peter Sellars have adapted her poems into the operatic “Music for New Bodies.”Peter Sellars wanted to know more.He was in San Francisco a few years ago, attending a performance of “The No One’s Rose,” a fascinatingly idiosyncratic work of music theater that featured some of his favorite artists, from the American Modern Opera Company, and a score by the young composer Matthew Aucoin.One section of the piece stood out: “Deep Water Trawling,” a setting of a poem by Jorie Graham that felt both human and not, both natural and spiritual. Most important, it seemed to have brought out something new, and special, in Aucoin’s writing.After the show Sellars, who at 66 has long been a reigning opera director, asked Aucoin, “What was that?”They decided to take the inspiration of Graham’s poetry further, starting without any specific commission. Now, having taken shape as the evening-length “Music for New Bodies,” their project is premiering in concert on Saturday in Houston, presented by Dacamera and the music school at Rice University, where it will be performed.The director Peter Sellers, center. “This is not just standard operating procedure,” he said. “The piece has this depth and this inner tranquillity, and warmth and intensity.”Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesIn five movements sprawling across 70 minutes, “New Bodies” sets poems by Graham about the earth and humanity that are told in shifting voices and registers, channeling natural forces and at times evoking the mind under anesthesia. Although its expansiveness and form recall Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde,” it is neither a song cycle nor a symphony. It is perhaps closest to opera, though mostly, it is what it is.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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      How Khruangbin’s Sound Became the New Mood Music

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      The Texan trio’s vibes have spawned countless imitators, but their magic isn’t so easy to replicate.I worry that the word “vibes” is overused, but in what follows it is unavoidable: The band Khruangbin, a trio from Houston, has become so popular that there now exists an entire subgenre of music broadly known as “Khruangbin vibes.” If you have walked into a relatively hip coffee shop in a major or even minor city lately, you have probably encountered Khruangbin vibes. They’re marked by low-key, reverb-heavy, often guitar-forward instrumentals — music that’s groovy and pleasant, bewitchingly exotic yet comfortingly familiar, inoffensive and instantly graspable as existing within a particular sonic space. A vibe, as it were.Listen to this article, read by MacLeod AndrewsOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.That such music has come to have a real toehold on the culture says as much about the way music is listened to today as the sound itself. Music now exists primarily within the stream, which is to say passively: We turn it on, like a faucet, and out pour songs representing some mood, or emotion, or any of the other words we used before we had “vibes.” Perhaps it’s an aura, like “chill.” Or a vague, evocative mind-set, like “always Sunday.” The tap turns and out pour songs we already liked, along with burbles of what is a little new and different yet fits in beautifully. This is the arrangement in which “Khruangbin vibes” excel. Such music is extremely slippery, genrewise. (Is it psychedelic lounge dub? Desert surf rock? The sound you hear inside a lava lamp?) As such, it pairs well with a huge span of music, across genres and eras; it has a kind of algorithmic inevitability to it. But this slipperiness also means that quite a lot of the bands now producing Khruangbin-vibesy music are entirely forgettable.Fortunately, being the three musicians who popularized a sound that so many others are chasing is not the same thing as chasing that sound yourself. To the members of Khruangbin — pronounced krung-bin, and featuring Laura Lee Ochoa on bass, Donald Johnson on drums and Mark Speer on guitar — that sound is not so much a goal as a result: It is what happens when they play music together. And while many others have tried, and are still trying, to identify and replicate what is so particular about Khruangbin’s sound, this is not really possible, because what happens among people when they play music together cannot really be quantified. Often, when it works, it is more — well, it’s more vibey than that.Khruangbin onstage in London in 2022.Jim Dyson/Getty ImagesSteve Christensen, Khruangbin’s longtime producer, explained it to me like this: Just about every day, he gets hit up on Instagram by folks asking how to achieve a particular Khruangbin sound. He responds, keeping no secrets, readily giving away everything, because Ochoa, Johnson and Speer have used pretty much the exact same setup for well over a decade now. Their gear and their instruments are simple and straightforward to the point of being borderline ascetic. (Ochoa, for example, has not changed the strings on her bass since 2010, when the group first formed.) When people write back to Christensen, which they often do, they will tell him that they now have all the same gear, and have learned all the songs perfectly, and still cannot get quite the same sound. “Well, I’m sorry,” he tells them, “but that’s just how they play.” Someone might copy Speer’s rig down to the last knob setting, and play his guitar melodies note for note, but without Ochoa and Johnson playing, too, the Khruangbin sound cannot be duplicated. “I know it sounds so simple,” Christensen says, “but if they’re not playing as a trio, it just doesn’t sound like KB.”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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      The Opera Star David Daniels’s Sexual Assault Trial: What to Know

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      The countertenor and his husband, Scott Walters, each face a charge of aggravated sexual assault in Texas.Update: Just as the trial was set to begin on Friday, David Daniels and his husband, Scott Walters, pleaded guilty to sexual assault of an adult, a second-degree felony, after reaching a deal that will spare them jail time.The opera star David Daniels, one of the world’s leading countertenors, is expected to go on trial in Houston this week over charges that he sexually assaulted a young singer after a performance there in 2010.Mr. Daniels and his husband, Scott Walters, were arrested and charged with sexual assault in 2019 in connection to an incident in which the singer, Samuel Schultz, said he was drugged and assaulted by the couple, according to charging documents filed at the time by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in Texas. Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walters have denied the accusations, saying they had consensual sex with Mr. Schultz.Mr. Daniels is one of the most prominent classical stars to face criminal charges during the national #MeToo reckoning. His performing career has suffered since the arrest, and he was fired from his position as a tenured professor of voice at the University of Michigan in 2020.Opening arguments are scheduled to begin in Houston on Friday morning. Mr. Daniels, 57, and Mr. Walters, 40, each face one felony count of aggravated sexual assault.Here’s what you need to know.Who is David Daniels?Mr. Daniels rose to fame as a countertenor, singing high parts that were once the province of castratos or mezzo-sopranos. He appeared on many of the world’s leading stages, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Royal Opera House in London.He was featured on the cover of music magazines and released numerous recordings, and was known in particular for his performances of Handel, starring in productions of his operas “Rinaldo,” “Giulio Cesare,” “Rodelinda,” “Radamisto” and others. His success helped propel new interest in countertenors, and when he and Mr. Walters were married in 2014, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an avid opera fan, officiated.Who is Samuel Schultz?Mr. Schultz, a baritone who is now 36, was a 23-year-old graduate student at Rice University, in Houston, at the time of the encounter with Mr. Daniels. He went public with an accusation of rape in 2018 amid the #MeToo movement — first anonymously, in an online post, and then naming Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walters as his attackers in an interview with The New York Daily News.Mr. Schultz later became an officer at the American Guild of Musical Artists, the union representing American opera performers, but he resigned in 2020, citing concerns that the union had kept details of its sexual harassment investigation of the opera star Plácido Domingo confidential as part of negotiations for a $500,000 settlement from Domingo.What is Mr. Daniels accused of?Mr. Schultz has accused the two men of assaulting him in May 2010 after he went to hear Mr. Daniels in Handel’s “Xerxes” at Houston Grand Opera.Mr. Schultz has said he was introduced to Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walters by a friend. After attending the performance and cast party, Mr. Schultz has said he was invited to Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walters’s apartment. There, he said, he was given a drink that caused him to lose consciousness. He has said that he awoke alone, naked and bleeding from the rectum.What has each side said about the accusations?Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walters have repeatedly described the encounter as consensual. They say Mr. Schultz drove himself to their apartment after they attended several parties together.“David and Scott are innocent of any wrongdoing,” their lawyer, Matt Hennessy, said in a statement in 2019. “Sam Schultz is not a victim. He never would have gotten this much attention from his singing, and he knows and resents that fact. He waited eight years to complain about adult, consensual sex to ride the #MeToo movement to unearned celebrity. We will fight this.”Mr. Hennessy did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Schultz has said that he had been afraid to come forward with the accusations, worried it would hurt his career, and that he had told his family, his therapist and some friends about what happened at the time.“I am pleased that finally, after several lengthy delays, I will get my day in court and hope that justice will be served,” Mr. Schultz said in a statement this week. “I look forward to testifying and having a jury hear the evidence of the case.”What have the authorities said about the case?A Houston police officer, D.H. Escobar, wrote in the charging documents that he had found Mr. Schultz to be “credible and reliable.” The officer said that he had met with a therapist Mr. Schultz consulted in 2010, and that her notes were consistent with what Mr. Schultz had told the police. The officer said he had also reviewed medical records that showed that Mr. Schultz had sought medical attention “as a result of the sexual assault” on June 1, 2010.John Donnelly, a spokesman for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, declined to comment on the case.Dianna Wray contributed reporting from Houston. More

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      Marcos Witt, the Pop Star Bringing Latino Evangelicals to the Pews

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      The sanctuary of Northside church in Charlotte, N.C., is built for joyous adoration. Enormous speakers hang from its domed ceiling, along with an elaborate system of colored lights. Its semicircular stage has wide, carpeted steps that lead down on all sides to rows and rows of wine red pews, which hold about 2,700 people. The evening I visited last February, they filled to capacity with Latino families who had come to see the evangelical superstar Marcos Witt.Listen to This ArticleFor more audio journalism and storytelling, More