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      Lincoln Center Chooses Hearst Chief as Next Board Chair

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      Steven R. Swartz, president and chief executive of Hearst, will replace Katherine G. Farley, the longtime chair, in June.Lincoln Center faces a series of challenges in the coming years: recovering from the pandemic, reaching new audiences and making its campus more welcoming to the public.Now it will have a new board chair to help tackle those priorities: Steven R. Swartz, president and chief executive of Hearst, whom the center announced on Thursday would replace Katherine G. Farley, the longtime chair, in June.Swartz, who has been a Lincoln Center board member since 2012, said in an interview that he would continue the vision of Farley and Henry Timms, the center’s president and chief executive, who have worked to broaden its appeal beyond classical music and ballet into genres like hip-hop, poetry and songwriting.“We’ve really done an amazing job of making our campus and our programming open and accessible and inclusive,” he said. “We just want to keep it going.”Farley, who took over as board chair in 2010, said in an interview that she thought it was time for a change after the $550 million renovation of David Geffen Hall, the home of the New York Philharmonic, which reopened last fall, a year and a half ahead of schedule.Farley was a major force behind the renovation, a project that had languished for years, working with the leadership of the New York Philharmonic, including its president and chief executive, Deborah Borda, and the chairmen of the Philharmonic’s board, Peter W. May and Oscar L. Tang. She secured a gift of $100 million from Geffen, the entertainment mogul, in 2015 to help kick-start the renovation. (Lincoln Center, the nation’s largest performing arts complex, owns the hall and is the Philharmonic’s landlord.)“The hall is finished, all the money’s been raised, our budget is balanced,” Farley said. “It just seemed like this was the right time to pass the baton.”During her tenure, she worked to bring more racial and gender diversity to Lincoln Center’s executive ranks, helping create a fellowship to build a pipeline of board members for the entire campus.She also faced criticism during her tenure, including during a turbulent time in the mid-2010s when the center endured leadership churn and financial woes.Swartz praised Farley, describing her tenure as an “extraordinary chairmanship.” She will remain on the board’s executive committee.He said that under his leadership the center would try to reach the broadest possible audience.“Now as the city looks to recover from the pandemic,” he said, “I think the arts give us hope and give us inspiration, and they give people across the city, from all walks of life, just much-needed entertainment.” More

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      What an ’80s Feeling: ‘Flashdance' Turns 40

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      The film helped bring breaking into the mainstream. Over the years, it also became famous for the subs and doubles of its star, Jennifer Beals.At the climax of a strip routine, a young woman in silhouette arches back across a chair and pulls a cord. A cascade of water drenches her flexed body.In a leotard and leg warmers, the same woman stretches and runs in place, her wet hair flinging moisture as she shakes and rolls her head.Still in the leotard and leg warmers, she faces a panel of judges at an audition— jog-skipping while pumping her arms high, turning and turning, diving into a somersault, spinning her on back.These and other moments from the 1983 movie “Flashdance” still circulate in cultural memory, loved and mocked and recognized, even by people who never saw the film. On Monday, in honor of its 40th anniversary, New Yorkers get a rare chance to watch it on a big screen, as the closing selection of this year’s Dance on Camera Festival at Film at Lincoln Center. Get ready to cheer or jeer.Jennifer Beals, the star of “Flashdance,” in the off-the-shoulder sweatshirt she made famous.Everett Collection“So many people hold it in a special place,” Michael Trusnovec, a curator of the festival, said, noting how the movie’s style permeated the Long Island dance studios that he grew up in. He also pointed to how “Flashdance” had affected fashion: the sweatshirts with the neck hole cut to fall off one shoulder. And he stressed how dancers, including those inspired by the brief appearance of B-boys, had gravitated to the movie, thinking: “That’s what I want to do. I want to be that.”Beyond dance, much of the movie’s staying power comes from the soundtrack, especially Michael Sembello’s “Maniac” and Giorgio Moroder’s “What a Feeling,” sung by Irene Cara. The songs support sequences that are essentially music videos, which is how those scenes (the jogging workout, the audition) became ubiquitous on MTV — and why they still circulate online. Cara’s voice connects “Flashdance” to “Fame,” the 1980 movie with her hit title song, just as the supporting actress Cynthia Rhodes connects it to “Dirty Dancing,” from 1987. It’s an ’80s dance-film node.Beals in the movie’s freak-out scene.Paramount Pictures, via Getty ImagesThere’s some fondness for the plot, too. Set in Pittsburgh, it’s a follow-your-dreams story and a Cinderella tale. Alex — Jennifer Beals in the role that made her a star — is a welder by day and dances in a burlesque club at night (occasioning not just the famous water-drenched number but also a freak-out in white Kabuki makeup amid strobe lights). Her dream is to be accepted into a prestigious dance conservatory. By the end, she gets in, and she gets the guy, her older boss at the steel mill.Over the years, the film has acquired a kind of notoriety, too, because Beals did so little of Alex’s dancing. Most was performed by a French dancer, Marine Jahan. And in the climactic audition scene, there were more doubles: the gymnast Sharon Shapiro for the dive into the roll; and for the backspin, the 16-year-old B-boy Richard Colon, better known as Crazy Legs.Richard Colon, better known as Crazy Legs, doubling for Beals.Paramount Pictures, via Getty ImagesInitially, Colon said in an interview, he was brought in to teach the other doubles — on the day before shooting. That wasn’t enough time, so the director, Adrian Lyne, asked him to perform the backspin himself, in a leotard and wig, after shaving his legs and his newly grown mustache.“I was this little arrogant Puerto Rican from the Bronx with all this machismo,” Colon said. “I put my hands up to Lyne’s face and rubbed my fingers together, like, ‘You gotta pay me.’”They paid enough, Colon said. And in the next decades, the residual checks “definitely came in handy,” he added, as did his joke about being the first in hip-hop to dress in drag.Colon was known to the filmmakers because he was already in the movie. He and a few other members of the pioneering B-boy group Rock Steady Crew appear in another scene, when Alex discovers them dancing with a boombox on the sidewalk.To the B-boy anthem “It’s Just Begun” by the Jimmy Castor Bunch, Normski pops and locks like a windup robot, Ken Swift and Crazy Legs spin on their backs and Mr. Freeze holds an umbrella while doing the backslide, just before Michael Jackson made that decades-old move famous as the Moonwalk. This one-minute sequence had an outsized impact.“It’s impossible to overestimate the significance of ‘Flashdance’ in the history of breaking,” said Joseph Schloss, the author of “Foundation: B-boys, B-girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York.” “That one scene pretty much single-handedly brought breaking into the mainstream.”Some members of Rock Steady were at first hesitant to be in the movie. “We didn’t practice with other groups,” Colon said, “because it was all about the element of surprise.” Marc Lemberger, better known as Mr. Freeze, said he was afraid that other dancers would “bite our moves”— steal them.A scene from “Flashdance.”Parmount PicturesAfter the movie’s release, the crew “became instant ghetto celebrities,” Colon said. “There was lots of love and lots of jealousy.” They got on the David Letterman show and into “Beat Street,” one of a few breaking-themed movies that came out the next year. “Flashdance” is connected to that part of the ’80s, too.The Hollywood interest was a quick fad, but breaking lived on. For decades, Colon said, he would meet people who sneaked into “Flashdance” just to see that one scene, people who saw themselves in the dance, many of them far from the Bronx.“When you talk to people in different hip-hop dance scenes around the world,” Schloss said, “almost inevitably they will say, ‘Well, the first time we saw it was in ‘Flashdance.’”In “Planet B-boy,” a 2008 documentary focused on the international B-boy competition Battle of the Year, dancers from Japan, Germany and France all testify to that effect. (And where did the director of the film, Benson Lee, get idea for the documentary? From rewatching “Flashdance” and wondering what had happened to the form.)The ripples from the scene can also be felt in “Top Nine,” a new documentary getting its world premiere at Dance on Camera just before “Flashdance.” It’s about the Russian B-boy crew Top 9, formed around 20 years ago.Its members tell their story of banding together, improving their skills and gaining global respect for Russian B-boys. They win Battle of Year in 2008, beating a dominant Korean crew. That glory doesn’t solve their money problems — this isn’t a “Flashdance” fairy tale — but they keep dancing.Through it all, they don’t mention “Flashdance,” but listen to the song they use to win in 2008: “It’s Just Begun.” And when some of them start a festival in St. Petersburg, which masters do they import? Ken Swift and Crazy Legs. More

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      Review: From Lil Buck, History and a Chance to Flash Some Brilliance

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      “Memphis Jookin’: The Show,” which presents jookin “in the world it comes from,” is sincere entertainment, packed with talent and heart.“This is going to be very educational for a lot of y’all,” Lil Buck said at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater on Thursday.He was speaking before the New York premiere of “Memphis Jookin’: The Show,” which he conceived, produced, helped choreograph and stars in.Buck, also known as Charles Riley, is the biggest star of jookin, the Memphis-born street dance. He’s probably the only jookin specialist that most people have heard of. And because of how Buck became famous — dancing to classical music, collaborating with Yo-Yo Ma and ballet companies — many of those people might have misconceptions about the dance.Hence this show, which seeks, in Buck’s words, to present jookin “in the world it comes from.” And to do so in the form of a 90-minute, touring theatrical production, with a plot and dialogue. Such street-to-stage transpositions can, and usually do, go wrong in a hundred ways. With more skill and care than originality, “Memphis Jookin’” mainly avoids the pitfalls. It’s sincere entertainment, packed with talent and heart. And, yes, it’s educational, too.The story, serviceably if sometimes clunkily written by Ameenah Kaplan and Malcolm Barrett, follows JJ (the manic Dai’Vian Washington), a Memphis kid who decides to document the jookin scene with his dad’s camcorder. He goes to the Crystal Palace roller rink — an important location in jookin history and Buck’s biography — where his friend DJ Fly (Bradley Davis) is on the turntables. There we see a loosely staged scene of jookin in situ: little bursts of dancing that sometimes flare up into fights.This narrative setup also allows DJ Fly to give JJ (and us) a history lesson about the development of the underground hip-hop music that goes with jookin (ably supplied by Marshall and Parker Mulherin and Young Jai). As he explains how changing technology allowed DJs to play with speed and rhythm, the lessons are illustrated with dancing that enjoyably demonstrates parallel development.Throughout the show, the choreography (by Buck, Terran Noir Gary and Marico Flake) and the direction (by Amy Campion) work together to make points, flash some brilliance and keep things moving. A dance battle escalates into a generational confrontation when Buck arrives like a new-kid-in-town gunslinger to challenge the old-school champ Double OG (Flake, well known in urban dance circles as Dr. Rico).It’s a smart use of the always affable Buck, acknowledging that his dancing is on another level. The otherworldly gliding in sneakers, the toe-tip balances that splay riskily and recover: He effortlessly pushes everything a little further. Double OG (a gruffly witty dancer who seems to be gracefully scraping schmutz from his shoes) admits defeat by resorting to violence. JJ and DJ Fly have to restore the peace.Lil Buck in “Memphis Jookin,’” which he conceived, produced, helped choreograph and stars in.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesThis narrative turn is typical of the show’s dramaturgy, obvious but effective. JJ brings everyone together by showing them what he has recorded on his camera, scenes now danced by cast members as others pretend to watch the camcorder playback. What might have seemed like nothing much when we saw JJ filming the first Crystal Palace scene is now revealed, with some fast forwarding, to be quite wonderful: a trio of whiz kids, a boy-girl romance. We see Double OG teaching another cast member, Cameron Sykes, the basics of jookin, starting with the foundational gangsta walk, and Sykes manages the trick of pretending to be clumsy so he can transform into a marvel.Then JJ’s camera and the documentary premise pay off again, this time with interviews. On the rear wall, we see video of one of the dancers (well edited by Joe Mulherin), telling his or her story, while onstage that dancer expresses the story through jookin. Elise Landrum sweetly explains how dance is therapy, how it’s kept her sane. Dra’em Hines talks about learning to dance from his father and how the other cast members supported him when his father died.Buck tells some of his story, too, acting out his inspirations, including Crystal Palace dancers and Michael Jackson. The crux of his tale is a crisis, when a mentor told him that his dancing was “cool but not gangsta enough.” What he learned, he says, is that jookin wasn’t about skills and tricks; it was about expressing pain, love, joy, who you are.His aspiration, he adds, is for people to recognize jookin as a “fine art.” The dancing — not just his, but everyone’s — makes its own case: inventive, expressive, impressive, hard-won. But the narrative points to goals other than respect or prestige. At the end, JJ uploads his footage to YouTube and watches in astonished triumph as his views and subscribers rocket into the millions.During the post-show discussion, Flake was more frank about the show’s purpose — saying, in effect, that yes, jookin is art but artists need money. Landrum, in her interview segment, expressed delight in “getting paid to do what I like.” What these dancers need is a way to be professional without being Lil Buck. And this show that Lil Buck has made for and with them and taken on tour could be the answer.Memphis Jookin’: The ShowThrough Friday at the Rose Theater, Lincoln Center; lincolncenter.org. More

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      ‘The Whale’ Premiere in NYC Inspired Strong Reactions

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      More than 100 actors, singers and creative professionals attended the New York premiere of Darren Aronofsky’s new film at Alice Tully Hall this week. Some of them shared their thoughts.The carpet was blue. The poster was blue. The suits were blue.That is, until the actor Ty Simpkins arrived at the New York premiere of “The Whale” at Alice Tully Hall this week — in a magenta suit.“I want the summer weather back,” Mr. Simpkins, 21, explained of his choice to break with the otherwise muted palette of the film’s cast and creative team, who arrived on the red carpet — well, oceanic blue carpet — in navy suits and black dresses.The moment of levity was at odds with the character Mr. Simpkins plays in the director Darren Aronofsky’s somber new film, adapted from the play by Samuel D. Hunter and produced by A24. The movie centers on Charlie, played by Brendan Fraser, a reclusive, morbidly obese gay man trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter (Sadie Sink) after the death of his lover. (Mr. Simpkins plays a young evangelical missionary who tries to convert Charlie — and wrestles with some of his own demons in the process.)“The Whale” has received rapturous reviews at film festivals — including a six-minute standing ovation in Venice — and has been hailed as a comeback role for Mr. Fraser, whose career faltered in the years after his success in the “The Mummy” (1999). Though Fraser is regarded as a front-runner to win his first Oscar for his performance, and the film will most likely be nominated for best picture, it has also been criticized for Mr. Aronofsky’s decision to put Mr. Fraser in a so-called fat suit rather than cast an obese actor. The director has said that doing so would have been difficult.When asked about his choice to use a “fat suit,” Mr. Aronofsky objected to the phrasing. “I wouldn’t use that word,” he said. “It’s prosthetics and makeup.”The film’s makeup artists, he said, “were able to create this incredible illusion that not only works with the audience but I think helped Brendan inhabit his character and bring it to life.“That you can be transported into the life of someone who seems incredibly different than you and still learn something about yourself is why I love movies,” Mr. Aronofsky continued.On the carpet and at the after-party, the film’s cast and creative team discussed the themes the film tackles, the emotions it raises and what they hoped audiences would take away.The writer and playwright Samuel D. Hunter, left, with the actor Brendan Fraser and the director Darren Aronofsky at La Grande Boucherie after the New York premiere of “The Whale.”Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesMitch Bukhar, left, a talent agent, with Ty Simpkins, who played a young evangelical missionary in “The Whale.”Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesMr. Fraser gained weight for the role, in addition to wearing the prosthetics, which added as much as 300 additional pounds to his frame. He has said that he prepared for the part by speaking with people who have struggled with eating issues, asking about their diet and the impact of their weight on their relationships.“Very often people who live with severe obesity are disregarded and shut away and silenced,” said Mr. Fraser, 53, who attended the premiere with two of his sons, Holden Fraser, 18, and Leland Fraser, 16. “So it was my obligation — my duty — returning dignity and respect and authenticity.”He continued: “The creative choices we made — the makeup, the elaborate costuming that I wore — with the help of the Obesity Action Coalition, I’m pretty sure that we came really close to creating a film with a main character who hasn’t been seen in this way, as authentically before, and I’m proud of that.”The film, which shows Charlie inhaling whole buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and double-stacked slices of pizza — with ranch dressing added on top — and being subjected to relentless verbal abuse by his teenage daughter, can at times be hard to watch. But stories that push and challenge audiences remain essential, said Mr. Hunter, who wrote the film.“In academia, there’s kind of a push for no more trauma-based stories, and I struggle with that,” said Mr. Hunter, 41, after posing for photos next to his husband, the dramaturge John Baker, on the carpet. “Not only because that is discounting a broad swath of world literature — maybe the majority of it, certainly the Bible — but also because I think there’s utility in looking at dark things through the lens of fiction.”Mala Gaonkar and David Byrne at the after-party for “The Whale.”Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesBut Mr. Aronofsky wanted to be clear: The film is not meant to induce two straight hours of waterworks. “What’s surprising to many people is how funny it is,” he said. “I think when people see the heartfelt material, there’s a lot of laughs.”At an after-party at the heated outdoor atrium of the upscale French brasserie La Grande Boucherie on West 53rd Street, where sliders, artisanal cheeses and wine were served, David Byrne, the former Talking Heads frontman, said it wasn’t the humor that had surprised him, but the humanity.“It’s surprising, the amount of heart in it,” Mr. Byrne, 70, said.Over by a gleaming Christmas tree, the comedian Jim Gaffigan was still processing what he had just experienced.“A film that moves you that much, you want to give a standing ovation to,” Mr. Gaffigan, 56, said, clutching a glass of wine. “But I feel like the audience was so emotionally drained that we needed the walker.”“Darren always does that,” he continued. “He accesses emotions that are very credible, very personal. It’s going to take a while to process.”Quick Question is a collection of dispatches from red carpets, gala dinners and other events that coax celebrities out of hiding. More

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      The Philharmonic Tests Its New Home With the Classics

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      David Geffen Hall reopened with a month of concerts that sketched a possible future for the New York Philharmonic. Now it’s back to business.The new David Geffen Hall has opened — and opened, and opened.In 1962, one performance was enough to cut the ribbon on the New York Philharmonic’s home at Lincoln Center. Sixty years — and many tweaks later, big and small — it took four weeks of festivities to celebrate the acoustically and aesthetically troubled hall’s decades-in-the-making, $550 million gut renovation.A month of opening nights: Call it inflation.I was in the hall for nearly all of those nights. For a crowd-pleasing concert dedicated to the people who constructed it. For a sober jazz-meets-classical, multimedia exploration of the history of the neighborhood razed to build the center.For an evening with the folksy mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile, the coziness of which shocked anyone who had ever been to the drafty, dingy barn that was the hall pre-renovation. For the unveiling of three series in the glassed-in Sidewalk Studio. For the flashing lights, booming electronics and pitch-bending vocal octet of a slew of premieres.For not one but two fund-raising galas: first, a genial if never showstopping parade of Broadway stars like Bernadette Peters, Lin-Manuel Miranda and, the urbane highlight, Vanessa Williams; then, two days later, a brusque romp through Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (which PBS will air and stream on Friday).For an open house last weekend with aerialists rappelling down the building’s facade, and a test of the 50-foot screen that will simulcast concerts to those who wander into the lobby. (The quality of the video is already crisp; the sound is a work in progress.)Members of Bandaloop performed an aerialist act as part of Geffen Hall’s open house weekend. Richard Termine/Lincoln CenterBy Wednesday, the confetti had settled. And after all that, we were deposited back into the standard repertory.The Reopening of David Geffen HallThe New York Philharmonic’s notoriously jinxed auditorium at Lincoln Center has undergone a $550 million renovation.Reborn, Again: The renovation of the star-crossed hall aims to break its acoustic curse — and add a dash of glamour.Who Is David Geffen?: The entertainment magnate, who jump-started the renovation, has become avidly sought by culture and education leaders looking to finance a wave of new construction.San Juan Hill: Etienne Charles’s composition for the reopening of the hall honors the Afro-diasporic musical heritage of the neighborhood razed to build Lincoln Center.Expert Assessment: Right after the reopening our critic wrote that the renovation had a mightily improved sound. In the weeks that followed his feelings became more complicated.Because, for all of Geffen’s intended uses — as a community center and high school graduation spot, as a pop venue and corporate event rental — it is, first and foremost, a traditional orchestra hall. If Wednesday’s program, a Mozart piano concerto and a Bruckner symphony, didn’t work here, nothing else would matter — not the more spacious lobbies or the auditorium’s wraparound seating or the stylish restaurant.Beethoven’s Ninth had been a return to the wholly unamplified and wholly familiar, but in one-night-only, hastily rehearsed form. Wednesday was the back-to-business moment: the real opening night, a culmination of a month’s testing of the space, its acoustics and its house band.Weeks of performances under the Philharmonic’s music director, Jaap van Zweden, had begun to form a portrait of Geffen’s sound: clear, clean and adroitly balanced, but a little colorless and cool, even chilly. Soft passages glistened, solos popped, and there was a palpable sense of the bass frequencies that had struggled in earlier iterations of the hall. Reducing audience capacity by 500 and pulling the stage forward to let seating encircle it resulted in a far more engaging experience.But especially when the playing was loud and densely massed, the clarity muddied, and there was little sense of the enveloping richness that is one of the great joys of hearing an orchestra live. The music blared at your face when it should have surrounded you.There was appealing intimacy and considerable warmth on Wednesday, though, in an account of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 that featured Yefim Bronfman — a veteran too often taken for granted — playing with lucid, gentle eloquence. He was the first real, acoustic concerto soloist in the new space, and he was a gallant partner; the piano, properly, sounded somewhere both inside and in front of the orchestra. In the slow second movement, silky, misty strings made a poised counterpart to familial interplay in the winds.Van Zweden, as in his breakneck second movement in Beethoven’s Ninth, pressed the third-movement Allegro of the Mozart a few shades past comfort. You get the sense that he thinks this kind of breathlessness transmits excitement, but it comes off as harried rather than thrilling or witty.His briskness can bulldoze eddies of feeling. A few moments before the end of the Mozart, the rambunctious mood suddenly shifts for maybe 10 seconds of wistful sublimity. The passage is over before you know it, whisked back to a spirited rondo, but it epitomizes the piece’s — and its composer’s — mixing of the jovial and aching. Van Zweden zipped through it to the final bars.And in Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, his prioritization of lyrical flow — overall, a welcome sense of naturalness from a conductor better known for punchy climaxes — pressed the Adagio slightly too fast to allow for the building of what can be excruciating intensity. The Finale was, unusually, more moving, with its seesawing between peace and war; in van Zweden’s smooth, happy-minded rendition of the work, neither too heavy nor hectoring, it was no surprise which side eventually triumphed.The playing wasn’t flawless. There was a lack of depth in the mesmerizing unwinding lines for the violins in the Adagio, and some iffy intonation in the brasses. But there wasn’t the sense I had had in earlier concerts, particularly when I was sitting on the ground level, of distance or almost clinical detachment in the sound.Jaap van Zweden leading the Philharmonic in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22, featuring Yefim Bronfman as soloist.Fadi KheirOr of that blare. Even if the brasses sometimes felt overly bright at top volume, there was more transparency and better blend at those heights. The consistent problem since the opening remains the hard, strident sound that the violins take on at the top of their range and force.This may be the playing of an orchestra that tends aggressive — in other words, something that can be fixed — rather than a feature of the room itself. Or it might be a shortcoming of the hall, a slight but consequential lack of sufficient reverberation.Only time will tell: Such are the ambiguities of acoustics. But some of the concerns about the basic sound of the place that I’d had over the past few weeks were assuaged on Wednesday; the orchestra is, as expected, adapting to its new home, so impressions are evolving, too.This Mozart-Bruckner pairing signals a return to the classics after the showy progressivism of the opening month’s programming. That multimedia event early in October, Etienne Charles’s “San Juan Hill,” was essentially an 80-minute land acknowledgment, mustering narration, archival images, poetic filmed reconstructions of street life early in the 20th century, oral history, notation and improvisation to sketch a lost community.After the piece opened with a long set by a jazz ensemble, the Philharmonic awkwardly shuffled onstage in the wake of a section called “Destroyer”: interlopers invading an already vibrant culture. The self-castigating aspect felt very much of our moment. Then, of the two October subscription programs, the first was dominated by living composers. The second featured a half-hour premiere by Caroline Shaw and was anchored by a rediscovered symphony by Florence Price; in an inversion of the usual format, the opener was the standard — Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune” — rather than a new piece.This is all hardly the model for what is coming up. There are intriguing scores being performed: Bartok’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion gets a rare hearing in a couple of weeks, and the Philharmonic has never played Shostakovich’s 12th Symphony, which is scheduled for the beginning of December.But while there’s no shortage of contemporary pieces this season, living composers — or even unusual selections from the past — get that anchor slot at the end of the concert only a few times. October sketched a possible future for the Philharmonic; it didn’t describe the present.That future will be guided by a new music director; van Zweden, hardly a driving creative force even before the pandemic break separated him from the ensemble, is leaving after next season. Over the coming months both promising younger artists (the likes of Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Klaus Makela) and veterans (Marin Alsop, Gianandrea Noseda) make guest appearances. Gustavo Dudamel, the star maestro of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who returns in May, is the elephant in the room.Whoever ends up with the job will be a crucial part of the continuing adjustment to the new hall, a process that will not be over soon. The promise of the space is clear. The building is far more spacious and comfortable than it was, even if the public spaces evoke the mid-market casualness of an airport terminal — usable but disposable — more than an inspiring house of culture.Every aspect of the hall seems to have embraced this half-vulgar, half-lovable ethos. First I cringed, then I giggled, at one of the orchestra’s cellists, who has recorded the “please silence your cellphones” announcement that plays as the lights dim.“Now here,” she concludes with goofy, irresistible relish, like she’s channeling Ed McMahon, “comes the music!” More

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      Mike Birbiglia Can’t Get ‘Hadestown’ Out of His Head

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      The comedian, 44, discussed his one-man Broadway show that opens this month, his love for Taylor Swift and why he doesn’t actually hate the Y.M.C.A.Mike Birbiglia has found that he can make a living off a personal crisis. Since 2008, Birbiglia, a longtime comedian and more recently an indie film director and star, has performed stand-up comedy shows on and off Broadway about his struggles with sleepwalking, his recovery from bladder cancer and his path toward fatherhood. But his latest, “The Old Man & the Pool,” a monologue about confronting his own mortality, might be among his most candid. (The show opens on Broadway Nov. 13 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center.)“I think I’m inclined toward autobiography because so much is based on passion,” Birbiglia, 44, said in a recent call from his home in Brooklyn. “I’m interested in paying tribute to the bizarre litany of things that have almost killed me.”The idea for the new show, which Birbiglia has been developing since 2018, sprang from an annual medical checkup in 2017, when his results on a breathing test were so weak that his doctor thought he might be experiencing a heart attack right there in the examination room. Birbiglia, whose father and grandfather had heart attacks at 56, was pushed to improve his health; the show details trips to the Y.M.C.A. pool as well as an encounter with an unclothed older man in the locker room when he was 7. “I’m in much better shape now,” said Birbiglia, who is also set to appear alongside Tom Hanks in the upcoming comedy-drama “A Man Called Otto,” in theaters Dec. 25. “I do cardio five days a week. I’m experimenting with the idea of riding a bike from my apartment in Brooklyn to Lincoln Center every day for work.”In an interview last month, Birbiglia discussed what turned him on to Taylor Swift, how reading poetry helps his joke writing, and why he doesn’t actually hate the Y.M.C.A. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel” Jerrod is a performer who’s not filtering what he’s saying to please you — he’s not holding back from what his truth is. A lot of art will stick with me a week after, but the things I most cherish stick with me a month after, years after. “Rothaniel” had that effect. It feels like “Hadestown” — I saw it a few years ago and still play the cast album all the time.2. Deep Dives This is something my wife, Jenny, and I like to do together — start from a certain point and then follow where it leads you, through various streaming and YouTube rabbit holes. One of my favorite finds is this three-part British documentary series called “Unknown Chaplin” that shows the outtakes of Charlie Chaplin’s movies. He did hundreds of takes of some of his shots! It’s one of those moments when there’s a massive upside to streaming — I don’t think I’d be able to find stuff like this if it weren’t for all the streaming services.3. “Little Astronaut” by J. Hope Stein This is a gorgeous book of poems by my wife about her experience being pregnant and having a child. Jen’s really gotten me into poetry — she’s introduced me to Paul Muldoon, Ada Limón, Paige Lewis. I learn so much from reading poetry that’s helpful when I’m writing films, standup and solo shows. There’s a real focus on the economy of words.4. “Kitbull” My daughter is 7 and not in the head space of wanting to engage with full-on Pixar feature films yet, but there are all these incredible shorts on Disney+. Some of our favorites are “Forky Asks a Question,” “Purl” and Rosana Sullivan’s “Kitbull,” about a kid and a pit bull becoming friends — if you don’t cry during “Kitbull,” I don’t think you’re a human being.5. Sarah Sherman on “S.N.L.” Sarah is an absolutely original voice in comedy. I worked alongside her at the Comedy Cellar, and even as a live performer she’s astonishingly alive and present and goes where the audience takes her. She has a series of guest segments with Colin Jost on “S.N.L.” that are all just excuses for her to roast him. She basically decontextualizes everything he says, then he’ll defend himself and she’ll put up a fake headline that says like “Hamptons Homeowner Colin Jost Mocks Comedian” with a picture of what’s supposed to be his mansion. They’re phenomenal.6. The Comedy Cellar For my money, the Comedy Cellar is the best club in the world. There’s the Olive Tree upstairs, which has phenomenal Middle Eastern food — great hummus and kebabs, a fantastic bar. Then downstairs is an intimate 150-seat club — the other night I was there, and Ray Romano dropped in. You have to make reservations weeks in advance, but it’s worth it.7. Improv is Life The principles of “Yes, and” apply to everything I do: directing movies, making solo shows and working with a director, collaborating with a designer, working on a family trip to Iceland. That spirit of things is what I find to be on a daily basis the most helpful piece of education I’ve ever had.8. rev’pod I talk a lot about my sleepwalking in my shows — I jumped through a second-story window many years ago — and people always ask what I do about the issue. At first my doctor said to sleep in a sleeping bag, and I did that for a while, but then I found this thing! The idea is for a cozier sleep; it’s kind of like a cocoon cloth experience. They recommend it for flying on an airplane to avoid germs. It’s not foolproof, but I find it to be a pretty good solution.9. No More Art Snobbery In my 40s, I’ve vowed not to be snobby about art that’s popular — there are certain things I’ve just missed out on because they were and I didn’t think they could be good. With early Taylor Swift, I was kind of like, “Oh, that’s pop music, that’s maybe not for me.” But her music is wildly personal and evocative and exciting in a way that even if she weren’t the massive pop star that she was, I think she’d have a massive cult following that she would tour from.10. Y.M.C.A. I make fun of it mercilessly in my show — there’s too much chlorine, a lot of cringey nudity in the locker rooms, the towels are too small. But a bunch of the New York Y.M.C.A. administrators ended up coming to the workshop shows a few years ago at Cherry Lane, and they were fans of it! I do a thing on my podcast called “Working It Out for a Cause,” and I’ve given to the Y.M.C.A. a handful of times. Part of it is because the more I researched the Y.M.C.A., the more I realized not only are they a rec facility, they do an extraordinary amount of community outreach and great nonprofit work. I’m very impressed by them; I make fun because I love. More

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      One More Project for David Geffen: Building His Legacy

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      In Los Angeles, you can wander through Judy Baca murals at the cavernous Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, view “Beetlejuice” at the sphere-like David Geffen Theater at the Academy Museum, watch “The Inheritance” at the Geffen Playhouse, and follow the progress of the new David Geffen Galleries, a striking work of architecture that will span Wilshire Boulevard, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.New York now has not one but two David Geffen Halls: an academic building at Columbia Business School and the remake of the Lincoln Center home of the New York Philharmonic, which reopened this month after a $550 million renovation that he jump-started with a $100 million gift.At 79, Geffen, the entertainment magnate, has planted himself into the pantheon of leading American philanthropists. He has handed out $1.2 billion over the past 25 years to museums, theaters, concert halls, universities and medical centers, according to the Geffen Foundation, and pledged to “give every nickel away” of a fortune estimated to be $7.7 billion. As a result, Geffen has become avidly sought by culture and education leaders looking to finance a wave of new construction that is enlivening cities as the nation emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.“When you need a gift of this scale, there aren’t many people who are doing what David is doing, which is investing big-time in the cultural infrastructure of major cities — New York, Los Angeles,” said Michael Govan, the head of LACMA, who spent a year convincing Geffen to give $150 million toward the galleries there that will bear his name.Geffen’s gifts are often contingent upon naming rights. When Avery Fisher Hall was renamed for him in 2015, 61 signs and maps around Lincoln Center were changed. Brian Harkin for The New York TimesGeffen is hardly some modern-day version of Andrew Carnegie, who made his fortune from steel and financed one of the great waves of philanthropy in the nation’s history. He is an openly gay entertainment mogul whose life, romances, yacht, mansions, art acquisitions, business deals, celebrity adventures and political engagement with, in particular, the Clintons and Barack Obama make him as engrossing a character as anyone in Hollywood.It’s hard to imagine, for instance, Carnegie dating Cher or Marlo Thomas when he was young, which Geffen did; comforting Yoko Ono at the hospital the night that John Lennon was assassinated, which Geffen did; watching Joni Mitchell in his apartment when she wrote “Woodstock,” which Geffen did; or working with Janis Joplin, the Doors and Peter, Paul and Mary, which Geffen did.The Reopening of David Geffen HallThe New York Philharmonic’s notoriously jinxed auditorium at Lincoln Center has undergone a $550 million renovation.Reborn, Again: The renovation of the star-crossed hall aims to break its acoustic curse — and add a dash of glamour.Who Is David Geffen?: The entertainment magnate, who jump-started the renovation, has become avidly sought by culture and education leaders looking to finance a wave of new construction.San Juan Hill: Etienne Charles’s composition for the reopening of the hall honors the Afro-diasporic musical heritage of the neighborhood razed to build Lincoln Center.Expert Assessment: Right after the reopening our critic wrote that the renovation had a mightily improved sound. In the weeks that followed his feelings became more complicated.His skill at spotting up-and-coming musical talent (Jackson Browne; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Guns N’ Roses), producing hit movies (“Risky Business” and “Beetlejuice”) and backing Broadway shows (“Dreamgirls” and “Cats”), and his work building record labels and movie studios has made him one of the wealthiest people in America. He has homes in New York, Los Angeles and East Hampton for when he is not entertaining boldfaced friends (think Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey) on his yacht, the Rising Sun. He once startled a dinner of journalists in Washington by disclosing that he had not flown on a commercial airplane since the late 1970s; that night he took a private jet back to Beverly Hills.Geffen is hardly shy about his philanthropy, as can be seen by the growing list of institutions bearing his name, including the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, which his gift made tuition-free. (“I don’t agree that the best giving is anonymous,” Geffen once told Fortune. “We should be examples to our friends and communities. I should be an example to young, gay kids.”) But he is, in his own way, low key about it — he declined an invitation to speak at the gala celebrating the opening of Geffen Hall this past week, and seemed reluctant to stand when he was acknowledged from the stage.The lobby of the revamped hall.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesAnd he is not like other wealthy donors, who can range from hands-on to micromanaging when it comes to projects bearing their names. “They want to check the carpet designs,” said Deborah Borda, the head of the New York Philharmonic. By contrast, the gala was the first time Geffen saw the redone hall bearing his name; he never joined the hard-hat construction tours that Lincoln Center gave to dignitaries over these past two years.“David said, ‘I want to leave this in your hands: I don’t need any input on the selection of the architect and driving the design,’” said Katherine G. Farley, the chair of the board of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, recounting her conversation with Geffen when she asked him for money to rebuild what was then called Avery Fisher Hall. “He kept repeating, ‘Make sure you do something great.’”Geffen, who declined a request for an interview, looks for transformative cultural projects that are struggling for credibility and financing, according to friends and associates. His contributions cover just a portion of the total cost — $100 million toward the $550 million Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center; $150 million toward the $750 million Geffen Galleries at LACMA — and are designed to goad other donors, while establishing Geffen as the primary patron.“He’s making big bets,” said Marie-Josée Kravis, the chairwoman of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to which he donated $100 million toward a three-floor David Geffen Wing in 2016. “They’re transformative. It’s not incremental.”His gifts are usually contingent on naming rights. Lincoln Center agreed to a $15 million payment to the Fisher family to relinquish its naming rights so the center could promise Geffen that his name would remain on the hall in perpetuity. Although some argued that the naming rights should have commanded a higher price, Farley said, “Without his gift, there is no question that would not have happened.”By contrast, when David H. Koch, the oil-and-gas billionaire, gave $100 million in 2008 to renovate what had been called the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, it came with the provision that the theater could be renamed for a new donor after 50 years.Arianna Huffington, the founder of The Huffington Post and a longtime friend of Geffen’s, said that “the arts have basically dominated his life,” and that they are what motivated his philanthropy.“I personally have very little patience for people who question why anybody gives — as long as they give,” she said.Geffen took a hands-off approach to the renovation, and never stopped by for a hard-hat tour when it was a construction site.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesGeffen has become more reclusive in recent years, first visiting the Geffen Theater at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles this month — a year after its red-carpet opening. He temporarily shut down his Instagram account at the start of the pandemic after he came under fire for posting a photo of his yacht floating in safe seclusion. “Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus,” he wrote. “I’m hoping everybody is staying safe.”Geffen is a college dropout who grew up in Brooklyn, where he attended New Utrecht High School. After creating Asylum Records — where he signed Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan — in 1971, he sold it two years later to Warner Communications for $7 million. He founded Geffen Records in 1980; he would sell that a decade later to MCA for $550 million in stock, which increased in value significantly when Matsushita then bought MCA. He co-founded, with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks SKG in 1994, and left the company in 2008.Geffen can be combative in his business dealings, and he lamented the “shameful” lack of support by New York donors in 2017 when Lincoln Center and the Philharmonic went back to the drawing board with plans to rebuild the hall, in part because it was growing too costly. Just after the move to rethink the New York project was announced, LACMA announced Geffen’s $150 million gift — timing that appeared to send a message, though officials said the gift had long been in the works.Associates said that Geffen’s background in business and culture, and particularly music, drives his philanthropic choices.“He comes from the music business,” said David Bohnett, another philanthropist based in New York and Los Angeles. “You grow up around music, you grow up around entertainment, it just seems logical that you are going to put your name on theaters and music halls and museums.”Some say it helps explain his hands-off approach to the projects he supports. “He’s made a career out of respecting artists and understanding what artists need,” said Henry Timms, the president of Lincoln Center. “And I think that’s the same context for this — he’s not assuming he can do this job better than the architects.”Geffen is intimately involved in deciding what projects to support. “He is a very engaged philanthropist and is involved in every funding decision made at the foundation,” said Dallas Dishman, the executive director of the Geffen Foundation, to which Geffen is the sole contributor.As he approaches his 80th birthday, and with over $7 billion left, Geffen is contemplating his mortality and his legacy, his friends say. Yet on Wednesday night in New York, when he finally rose from his chair at the gala marking the opening of the latest building bearing his name, he seemed taken aback by the intensity of the applause. He just smiled slightly and sat down, without saying a word.“He doesn’t reveal himself very much,” said Kravis, of the Museum of Modern Art. “He just gives. I respect his search for privacy and I’ve never pushed him on it.” More

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      Music, Science and Healing Intersect in an A.I. Opera

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      “This is what your brain was doing!” a Lincoln Center staffer said to Shanta Thake, the performing arts complex’s artistic director, while swiping through some freshly taken photos.It was the end of a recent rehearsal at Alice Tully Hall for “Song of the Ambassadors,” a work-in-progress that fuses elements of traditional opera with artificial intelligence and neuroscience, and the photos did appear to show Thake’s brain doing something remarkable: generating images of flowers. Bright, colorful, fantastical flowers of no known species or genus, morphing continuously in size, color and shape, as if botany and fluid dynamics had somehow merged.“Song of the Ambassadors,” which was presented to the public at Tully on Tuesday evening, was created by K Allado-McDowell, who leads the Artists and Machine Intelligence initiative at Google, with the A.I. program GPT-3; the composer Derrick Skye, who integrates electronics and non-Western motifs into his work; and the data artist Refik Anadol, who contributed A.I.-generated visualizations. There were three singers — “ambassadors” to the sun, space and life — as well as a percussionist, a violinist and a flute player. Thake, sitting silently to one side of the stage with a simple, inexpensive EEG monitor on her head, was the “brainist,” feeding brain waves into Anadol’s A.I. algorithm to generate the otherworldly patterns.“I’m using my brain as a prop,” she said in an interview.The “ambassadors” included, from left, Debi Wong, Laurel Semerdjian and Andrew Turner.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesDigital art by Refik Anadol was projected above the Tully stage.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesJust to the side of the stage, level with the musicians, sat a pair of neuroscientists, Ying Choon Wu and Alex Khalil, who had been monitoring the brain waves of two audience volunteers sitting nearby, with their heads encased in research-grade headsets from a company called Cognionics.Wu, a scientist at the University of California, San Diego, investigates the effects of works of art on the brain; in another study, she’s observing the brain waves of people viewing paintings at the San Diego Museum of Art. Khalil, a former U.C. San Diego researcher who now teaches ethnomusicology at University College Cork in Ireland, focuses on how music gets people to synchronize their behavior. Both aim to integrate art and science.Read More on Artificial IntelligencePublic Defenders: Clearview AI’s facial recognition software has been largely restricted to law enforcement. Now, the company plans to offer access to defense lawyers.Creating Art: Artwork made with artificial intelligence won a prize at the Colorado State Fair’s art competition — and set off fierce backlash about how art is generated.Generative A.I.: Apps like Stable Fusion use artificial intelligence to create images. Some say it is the key to unlock creativity, but critics abound.Are These People Real?: We created our own artificial-technology system to understand how easy it is for a computer to generate fake faces.Which makes them a good match for Allado-McDowell, who first pitched “Song of the Ambassadors” in January 2021 as a participant in the Collider, a Lincoln Center fellowship program supported by the Mellon Foundation. “My proposal was to think about the concert hall as a place where healing could happen,” said Allado-McDowell, 45, who uses the gender-neutral pronouns “they” and “them.”Healing has long preoccupied them. They suffered from severe migraines for years; then, as a student at San Francisco State University, they signed up for a yoga class that took an unexpected turn. “I was besieged by rainbows,” they recalled in a forthcoming memoir. “Orbs of light flickered in my vision. Panting shallow breaths, I broke out of the teacher’s hypnotic groove and escaped to the hall outside. As I knelt on the carpet, cool liquid uncoiled in my lower back … as a glowing purple sphere pulsed gold and green in my inner vision.”This, they were told, was a relatively mild form of kundalini awakening — kundalini being, in Hindu mythology, the serpent that is coiled at the base of the spine, a powerful energy that generally emerges from its dormant state only after extensive meditation and chanting. Others might simply have dropped yoga. “For me, it was an indication that I didn’t understand reality,” Allado-McDowell said. “It showed me that I didn’t have a functional cosmology.”Audience volunteers were outfitted with research-grade headsets from a company called Cognionics.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWhat followed was a yearslong quest to get one. Along the way, they picked up a master’s degree in art and went to work for a Taiwanese tech company in Seattle. At one point, while sitting in a clearing in the Amazon rainforest, they had a thought: “A.I.s are the children of humanity. They need to learn to love and to be loved. Otherwise they will become psychopaths and kill everyone.”Later, in 2014, Allado-McDowell joined a nascent A.I. research team at Google. When the leader suggested collaborations with artists, they volunteered to lead the initiative. Artists and Machine Intelligence was launched in February 2016 — 50 years after “9 Evenings: Theater and Engineering,” the pioneering union of art and technology led by Robert Rauschenberg and the AT&T Bell Labs engineer Billy Kluver. The connection was not lost on Allado-McDowell.One of the earliest partnerships they established was with Anadol: first for “Archive Dreaming,” a project inspired by the Borges story “The Library of Babel,” then for “WDCH Dreams,” Anadol’s A.I.-driven projection onto the billowing steel superstructure of the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. For “Song of the Ambassadors,” Anadol said, “we are transforming brain activities in real time into an ever-changing color space.”Anadol’s artwork also responds to Skye’s music, which alternates between periods of activity and repose. “We wanted to bring people in and out of a space of meditation,” Skye said. “I carved out these long gaps where all we’re doing is environmental sounds. Then we slowly bring them out.”All this is tied to Allado-McDowell’s goal of testing the therapeutic powers of music in a performance setting. “Might there be policy implications?” they asked. “Might there be a role that institutions could play if we know that sound and music is healing? Can that open up new possibilities for arts funding, for policy, for what is considered a therapeutic experience or an artistic experience?”The jury is still out.“We know that listening to music has an immediate impact for things like mood, attention, focus,” said Lori Gooding, an associate professor of music therapy at Florida State University and president of the American Music Therapy Association. Positive results have been found for people who have suffered a stroke, for example — but that’s after individualized therapy in a medical or professional setting. The approach in “Song of the Ambassadors,” she said, is different because of “the public aspect of it.”Derrick Skye’s score was performed by musicians including the violinist Joshua Henderson.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesOne goal of the project is to turn a hall like Tully into a public healing space.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWu and Khalil, the neuroscientists involved with the production, have yet to analyze their data. But at a panel discussion preceding Tuesday’s performance — and yes, this opera did come with a panel discussion — Khalil made a prediction that left the audience cheering.“We’ve started to understand that cognition — that is, the working of the mind — exists far outside our head,” he said. “We used to imagine that the brain is a processor and that cognition happened there. But actually, we think our minds extend throughout our bodies and beyond our bodies into the world.”With music, he continued, these extended minds can lock onto rhythms, and through the rhythms onto other minds, and then onto yet more. As for the spaces where that happens, Khalil said, “You can start to think of them as healing places.” More