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    ‘The Tuba Thieves’ Review: The Real Meaning of Listening

    In this film, the artist Alison O’Daniel uses the theft of tubas from Southern California high schools as a central hub in a wheel with many spokes.To hear a tuba is to feel it. The vibrations pulse through your body, and its giant bell is even designed to make the air shudder a bit. A tuba is also much harder for a thief to pilfer than, say, a piccolo, or even a trumpet. Yet from 2011 to 2013, tubas started disappearing from high schools in Southern California, for no obvious reason and with no explanation.The news of the tuba thefts formed a jumping-off point for the artist Alison O’Daniel, who used it as the central hub in a wheel with many spokes. The resulting film, “The Tuba Thieves,” is kind of a documentary — or at least, it has documentary elements. But there are re-creations and a dramatized story with fictionalized characters woven throughout as well, all exploring the role sound plays in our world, both for those who take it for granted and those to whom access is denied. O’Daniel, a visual artist who identifies as Deaf/Hard of Hearing, has a keen interest in sound as an integral element of human life, and “The Tuba Thieves” expands that query in many directions.The result, admittedly, is not particularly easy to follow. “The Tuba Thieves” is not very interested in explaining itself; its connective tissue is an idea, an exploration, and it’s designed to be more absorbed than understood. But for the patient audience, it’s richly illuminating. The film is open captioned, so no matter how you see it, you’ll see descriptive text onscreen. Sometimes that text interprets sign language — in fact, the title credits are signed by a character, Nyke (Nyeisha Prince), and much of the film’s dialogue is in ASL. Sometimes the text describes sounds. And sometimes it’s a little cheeky; “[ANIMALS GROWL],” one caption reads, and then is immediately replaced by “[MACHINES GROWL],” with images to match them both.Nyke, who is Deaf, is one of the film’s main recurring figures. Scenes with her father (Warren Snipe) and her partner, whom the film only calls Nature Boy (Russell Harvard), unpack her fears about becoming a parent — what if something happens to the baby, and she can’t hear it? — and the joy she takes in music. Another of the film’s characters is Geovanny (Geovanny Marroquin), a drum major at Centennial High School, from which tubas have been stolen; the theft affects the marching band’s performance as well as Geovanny’s life. Both Nyke and Geovanny are based on the actors’ lives, but you can clearly sense the truth coming through: that sound hearing is one thing, but listening is another.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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    9 Sunny Songs for Springing Ahead

    To celebrate the return of daylight saving time, here’s a playlist full of songs about sunshine and daylight.Harry Styles curses the sun on “Daylight.”The New York TimesDear listeners,Is it just me, or has this winter felt never-ending? Snow, cold rain, cloudy days when the sun sets before work ends — enough already!Thankfully, this weekend brought what I always consider the first harbinger of spring: The beginning of daylight saving time. As someone who reaches for the snooze button more often than I should, springing forward presents its own challenges. But I’ll gladly deal with them for an extra hour of sunlight in the evening.That bonus sunlight has inspired today’s playlist, full of songs about sunshine and daylight. Light takes on a spiritual quality in some of these tunes (including a modern standard by Hank Williams) while others bask in its meteorological reality (the bees and things and flowers name-checked by Roy Ayers Ubiquity). A few of these artists (the Velvet Underground; Harry Styles) claim not to care about the sun, but the incandescence of their music begs to differ.Am I jumping the gun a bit by celebrating sun songs in mid-March rather than during the dog days of summer? No way! Plus, by then we’ll probably be sick of them. Best to celebrate the sun’s welcome return, and especially on such a bright day here in New York. Here’s your soundtrack for strutting down the street in the short-sleeve outfit you’ve been waiting all winter to wear. (And then, you know, rushing back into the house to grab a light jacket, because it’s still only March.)Also, I’ll be out on Friday, but I’m leaving you in the very capable hands of a special guest playlister. Till then!People gotta synchronize to animal time,LindsayWe 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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    Meet George Collier, YouTube’s Star Music Transcriber

    George Collier started his YouTube channel as a way to stay engaged with music during the pandemic. Now nearly a million followers tune in for his notations.For some budding musicians (and even old pros), the very sight of sheet music can elicit a fight-or-flight response, bringing up painful memories of strict piano teachers and high-pressure recitals. George Collier, a 20-year-old music transcriber, is doing his part to change that.Collier, a student at Warwick University in the United Kingdom, takes snippets of videos from live performances by well-known artists like Wynton Marsalis and Celine Dion, or bedroom musicians who’ve posted clips online, and adds detailed directions for what’s being played. Juggling harmony, melody and rhythm, he turns sounds into wildly detailed notations and shares the results with an audience of over 882,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, where his most popular videos have between 5 million and 18 million views.“Music can be a bit uptight, particularly in the whole music theory land,” Collier said during a break between lectures, as he video chatted from a light-filled campus building where the sounds of bustling university life swirled around him. In his videos, made with the help of a team of transcribers, he deciphers mesmerizing cadenzas, barbershop quartet arrangements, funk jams and jazz solos in an entertaining way that softens sheet music’s reputation as something academic and unforgiving.His video “When You Make the Trombone SING” takes on a soaring trombone solo by Frank Lacy from a performance in 1988 with the Art Blakey Big Band. Another clip, titled “She Practiced 40 Hours a Day for This,” captures a virtuosic Mozart piano cadenza by Mitsuko Uchida. While Collier specializes in jazz, he also showcases performances from the classical world, as well as everyday people with impressive talents. A clip titled “When Your Family Is Musically Competent” features a version of “Happy Birthday” that turns into improvised gospel-laden riffing. His video “Pro Musician Jams With Street Performer on Subway” notates a saxophonist on the London Underground as he spontaneously engages a guitarist in a version of Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”“The transcriptions are to understand the musical decisions made by performers,” Collier said. “It doesn’t really matter how famous you are. If you make good stuff, then people are going to want to listen.”Because he’s navigating full-time university student life, Collier works with transcribers from the United States, Germany and beyond to keep his channel uploading consistently.Alice Zoo for The New York TimesWe 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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    Eric Carmen, Raspberries Frontman and ‘All By Myself’ Singer, Dies at 74

    He sang on the power-pop pioneers’ 1972 breakout hit, “Go All the Way,” before launching a successful solo career as a soft rock crooner.Eric Carmen, whose plaintive vocals soared above the crunching guitars of the 1970s power-pop pioneers the Raspberries before his soft rock crooning made him a mainstay of 1980s music, has died. He was 74.His death was announced on his website by his wife, Amy Carmen. She did not give a cause and said only that he died “in his sleep, over the weekend.”The Raspberries, which formed in Cleveland, burst onto the American rock scene in 1972 with their self-titled debut album, featuring a raspberry-scented scratch-and-sniff sticker and their biggest hit: “Go All the Way,” a provocative song for its day, sung from the point of view of a young woman.Dave Swanson of the website Ultimate Classic Rock called it “the definitive power pop song of all time,” as the emerging style, known for grafting bright ’60s-era vocal harmonies onto the heavy guitar riffs of the ’70s, would come to be called.“The opening Who-like blast leads into a very Beatles-esque verse, before landing in some forgotten Beach Boys chorus,” he wrote. “Thus was the magic of the Raspberries song craft. They were able to take the best parts and ideas from the previous decade, and morph them into something new, yet familiar.”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 Ingrid Michaelson Made ‘The Notebook’ Into a Musical

    Family history is “wrapped up in these songs,” said the singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson, who is making the leap to Broadway with an adaptation of the popular romance novel.The stage manager’s office on the second floor of the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater in Times Square is about the size of a half bathroom and has the charm of a utility closet. It’s crowded and overlit, thanks to a high-wattage vanity mirror situated near a 1970s-era mini sink.Ingrid Michaelson surveyed the room where we were to begin our interview, and sighed. “It’s not glamorous at all — but it is,” she said. “There’s just a small, lucky group that gets to see these little rooms.”With the opening of “The Notebook” on Thursday, Michaelson will make the turn from a successful mid-list singer-songwriter to Broadway composer. Though other pop writers have made the same foray into musical theater — including Dolly Parton, Cyndi Lauper, and Michaelson’s friend Sara Bareilles — Michaelson was an unlikely choice, because “The Notebook” is a huge franchise and she isn’t a hitmaker. “Quirky” is a word that turns up in articles about her, and quirky is rarely a mass-market trait.Nicholas Sparks’s 1996 romance novel was a publishing phenomenon that has sold 14 million copies worldwide. In 2004, it was adapted into a film starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, and its feverishly passionate dialogue (“It wasn’t over. It still isn’t over!” Gosling shouts, in the middle of a rainstorm.) made it as beloved by fans as it was scorned by critics. Wielding a double-barreled shotgun in his review for The New York Times, the critic Stephen Holden dismissed Sparks’s book as “treacly” and called the film “a high-toned cinematic greeting card.”“I remember watching the movie with my friend — we rented it from Blockbuster,” Michaelson, 44, recalled. “I cried and cried and cried at the end.” She was dressed casually, in a gray knit cap, baggy flannel shirt and torn jeans. In conversation, she gravitated toward self-deprecation and the spilling-over candor of a lifelong New Yorker. She was droll and funny, but cried several times during our interview. At one point, on the topic of losing our parents, we both cried at the same time.“The Notebook” begins in an old age home, where Allie, who has Alzheimer’s disease, doesn’t recognize her husband, Noah. He reads to her from a notebook, which tells the story of how they met and fell in love in their late teens, only to be separated by a conniving parent. They meet again 10 years later, when Allie is engaged to someone else. Will her marital pledge hold firm in the face of true love? We know the answer, but the reward of their reunion is offset by the pain of seeing them both in distress.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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    Pankaj Udhas, Bollywood Singer and Maestro of the Ghazal, Dies at 72

    His soulful renditions of ghazals, or traditional love poems, were featured on the soundtracks of hit Bollywood movies and moved generations of Indians.Pankaj Udhas, a singer from India whose soulful renditions of ghazals, or lyric love songs, were a cornerstone of many Bollywood films over his decades-long career, died in Mumbai on Monday. He was 72.His death was announced on social media by his daughter Nayaab Udhas. She did not specify the cause, saying only that he had died after a prolonged illness.Mr. Udhas moved generations of people in India and the Indian diaspora by singing ghazals, the lyric poems that have been written for centuries in Persian, Hindi, Urdu, Turkish and other languages. He also worked as a playback singer, the term for a vocalist who recorded tracks offscreen for actors to lip-sync over.Mr. Udhas became a stalwart in the Indian music industry through both his discography of more than 50 albums and the enormous success of the movies in which he sang.But his true passion, he said in a 2018 talk organized by Google, was the ancient lyric form.“My heart was always with ghazals,” he said. “Cinema, though it was an attraction,” he added, “it was never the first choice.”Padmashri Pankaj Udhas was born on May 17, 1951, in Jetpur, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat, several Indian news media outlets reported. His father, Keshubhai Udhas, played the dilruba, a traditional Indian stringed instrument. His mother, Jeetuben Udhas, sang. And both of his brothers, Manhar and Nirmal, became professional singers.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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    ‘Peetah’ Morgan of Reggae Band Morgan Heritage Dies at 46

    Known as “Peetah,” he and other children of the singer Denroy Morgan formed the group Morgan Heritage in the 1990s.Peter Anthony Morgan, the lead singer of the reggae band Morgan Heritage, a Grammy Award-winning group that was formed by children of the singer Denroy Morgan and came to be known for its varied influences and tight vocal harmonies, died on Sunday.He was 46, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Morgan’s family confirmed his death in a statement on the band’s social media platforms. The statement did not mention his age or provide a cause of death.Mr. Morgan, known as “Peetah,” started Morgan Heritage with seven of his siblings in the 1994. The band later became a quintet.For some early albums, including “Protect Us Jah” (1997) and “Don’t Haffi Dread” (1999), Morgan Heritage worked with Bobby Digital, one of Jamaica’s most influential producers. Before a show at New York City’s Irving Plaza in 1999, a New York Times music critic wrote that the band “holds on to the 1970s reggae traditions of harmony singing and thoughtful messages.”But Morgan Heritage was more than a throwback to an older era of reggae. AllMusic.com described its sound as a blend of “elements of roots reggae, lovers rock, soul, R&B, calypso, gospel, dub, and on occasion, funk and dancehall.”Several Morgan Heritage albums had deep runs on the Billboard reggae charts. One of them, “Strictly Roots” won for best reggae album of the year at the 2015 Grammy Awards. The band’s album “Avrakedabra” was up for the same award two years later, but lost out to “Stony Hill” by Damian Marley, a son of Bob Marley.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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    Lee Hoyang, Prolific K-Pop Producer and Songwriter, Dies at 40

    Professionally known as Shinsadong Tiger, he created the upbeat, catchy and danceable musical style that defined K-pop in the early 2010s.Lee Hoyang, a prolific producer and songwriter of South Korean pop music who was professionally known as Shinsadong Tiger and who helped create some of the biggest K-pop hits of the 2010s, died in Seoul on Friday. He was 40.His management agency confirmed his death in a statement. It did not mention the cause of death, but said that a private funeral was being held in Seoul. The agency, TR Entertainment, did not respond to an emailed request for comment. A police detective in Seoul also confirmed Mr. Lee’s death, but would not disclose further details. Mr. Lee was often credited with shaping the musical style that defined K-pop in the early 2010s: catchy, upbeat and repetitive with a strong hook. He produced many commercially successful songs throughout the decade, mostly for young female artists. Among the hits were “Roly-Poly” and “Bo Peep Bo Peep,” both by T-ara; “NoNoNo” by Apink; and “Bubble Pop!” by HyunA.“He created an exciting, funky, beat-driven K-pop style that continues to be repeated over and over again,” said Do Heon Kim, a pop music critic in South Korea. “There is no place where his influence hasn’t been felt.”Mr. Lee was born on June 3, 1983, in Pohang, a city on South Korea’s southeastern coast. With no formal music education, he immersed himself in music starting in middle school, when he played in a band and remixed songs with his friends, he said in an interview in 2011.He debuted as a songwriter in 2004, when he produced a song called “Man and Woman” for the South Korean pop band the Jadu, he said. The song, which had a pulse of Brazilian bossa nova, was released in 2005.Mr. Lee’s career took a downturn in the late 2010s as his music came to be increasingly regarded as repetitive and he was faced with plagiarism accusations, which he denied, Mr. Kim said. The songwriter focused more of his energy on producing and helped form the girl groups EXID, which debuted in 2012, and Tri.be, which debuted in 2021.Jin Yu Young More