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      100 Years Ago Recording Studios Got a New Tool: Microphones

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      On Feb. 25, 1925, Art Gillham’s session made history. The technology changed who was heard in recordings, how artists approach their music and how we hear it.One of the most significant innovations in recorded music took place a century ago in New York City. On Feb. 25, 1925, Art Gillham, a musician known as “the Whispering Pianist” for his gentle croon, entered Columbia Phonograph Company’s studio to test out a newly installed electrical system. Its totem was positioned in front of him, level with his mouth: a microphone.This was the moment when the record industry went electric. By the end of the year, a writer for the Washington, D.C. newspaper the Evening Star marveled at “the capitulation of the world’s leading musical artists to the power of the microphone.” (Hollywood’s sound revolution with “talkies” wasn’t far behind.) Today, a performer’s microphone technique can help define their sound. Yet no plaque marks the spot where Gillham made history with the first commercially released electrical recording.Archivists at the oldest label in the world, now owned by Sony Music, cannot confirm the studio’s exact location. The best guess is a site now occupied by the Rose Theater, the Jazz at Lincoln Center venue in Midtown Manhattan where Columbia’s offices once stood. The current building, a vast glass complex in Columbus Circle, is also home to the recording studio for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s in-house label, Blue Engine Records.Todd Whitelock, an award-winning engineer who runs the studio, called the advent of the microphone the most important technological development in recorded music. “It’s got to be the top of the pyramid,” he said in an interview from his home studio in Cranford, N.J.Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, and the period until 1925 is known as the acoustical era. A conical recording horn would capture the music being performed; sound waves caused a stylus to cut grooves into a rotating wax disc, marking it with audio information.Whitelock collects antique 78 rpm records, which he plays on a windup Victrola phonograph. “Acoustical recordings are magnificent, but there’s no dynamic range,” he said. “It all stays at the same volume. Be it pianissimo or mezzo piano or forte, it’s all one dynamic.”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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      Coming Soon to Trump’s Kennedy Center: A Celebration of Christ

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      President Trump took control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington only last week. But his administration is already making plans for reshaping the institution’s programming.Chief among them: a celebration of Christ planned for December. Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump named as the Kennedy Center’s new president, told a conservative gathering on Friday that the “big change” at the center would be that “we are doing a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas.”“How crazy is it to think that we’re going to celebrate Christ at Christmas with a big traditional production, to celebrate what we are all celebrating in the world during Christmastime, which is the birth of Christ?” Mr. Grenell said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md.The Kennedy Center has long held Christmas-themed events.Last December, the center hosted “A Candlelight Christmas” by the Washington Chorus; “A Family Christmas” by the Choral Arts Society of Washington; and “Go Tell It,” a Christmas celebration by the Alfred Street Baptist Church, a prominent Black church in Virginia. (On Sunday, the church said it would cancel its Christmas concert there this year because the Kennedy Center’s new leaders stood in opposition to the “longstanding tradition of honoring artistic expression across all backgrounds.”)Mr. Grenell’s comments were his first public remarks in which he discussed his plans as the Kennedy Center’s new leader. His appointment was part of a series of extraordinary actions Mr. Trump took to solidify control over the Kennedy Center, which has been a bipartisan institution throughout its 54-year history.Mr. Trump, who stayed away from the Kennedy Center Honors during his first term after some of the artists being honored criticized him, stunned the cultural world when he decided this month to purge the center’s board of all Biden appointees and install himself as chairman, ousting the financier David M. Rubenstein, the center’s largest donor. The new board fired Deborah F. Rutter, the center’s president for more than a decade, and the post was given to Mr. Grenell, a Trump loyalist who was ambassador to Germany during the president’s first term.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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      Review: Vikingur Olafsson and Yuja Wang, Side by Side

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      Vikingur Olafsson and Yuja Wang appeared at Carnegie Hall with a unified approach to works by Schubert, John Adams, Rachmaninoff and more.When two pianists appear together in concert, the usual setup is for the curves of their instruments to hug in a yin-yang formation. The musicians face off across the expanse, some nine feet apart.But when Vikingur Olafsson and Yuja Wang brought their starry duo tour to Carnegie Hall on Wednesday evening, just inches separated them. They sat side by side, their pianos splayed out in opposite directions like the wings of a butterfly, with the players in the middle.Olafsson and Wang didn’t look at each other much during the performance, and Wang, who was closer to the audience throughout, did feel like the dominant presence and sound in this duet. But their physical closeness registered in a consistently unified approach to their richly enjoyable program.There was balanced transparency in even the most fiery moments of Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor. Olafsson and Wang’s rubato — their expressive flexibility with tempo — felt both spontaneously poetic and precisely shared in the passage when serenity takes over in the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances,” with the yearning melody that’s given to the alto saxophone in the work’s fully orchestrated version.Their styles were distinguishable, even if subtly. In sumptuously vibrating chords in the first movement of Schubert’s Fantasy, Olafsson’s touch was a little wetter and more muted, Wang’s percussive and as coolly etched as a polygraph. Cool, yes, but she could also be lyrical, as in the delicate beginning of Luciano Berio’s “Wasserklavier,” which opened the concert.Short, gentle, spare pieces by Berio, John Cage (the early “Experiences No. 1”) and Arvo Part (“Hymn to a Great City”) gave the program a meditative spine. Those were interspersed with three substantial anchors: the “Symphonic Dances,” which Rachmaninoff set for two pianos as he was writing the orchestral version; the Schubert Fantasy; and John Adams’s “Hallelujah Junction.”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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      Hear How a ‘Smash’ Song Got a Broadway Makeover

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      “Let Me Be Your Star,” which evokes an actor’s longing to shine, has come a long way from its TV days. Here’s how the song evolved on its way to the stage.On a recent morning at a rehearsal room on 42nd Street, the actress Robyn Hurder stood atop a pedestal, red lips parted, arms outstretched, blond curls vibrating as she sang the final notes of “Let Me Be Your Star.” Then she collapsed, breathless.“This number’s hard,” she said, her face glistening with sweat. “Who did this?”Well, plenty of people. “Let Me Be Your Star” was written over a dozen years ago for the pilot episode of NBC’s “Smash,” a backstage-set nighttime soap about the hectic creation of a Broadway musical, “Bombshell.” There were plans to bring “Bombshell,” a biomusical about Marilyn Monroe, to the real Broadway, but those plans never came to fruition. Neither did “Smash,” which was canceled after two seasons.But “Let Me Be Your Star,” a classic “I want” song that its composer and co-lyricist, Marc Shaiman, has described as a “neck-bursting showstopper,” endures. Originally sung at the close of the pilot by Megan Hilty and Katharine McPhee, the song, which was nominated for Grammy and Emmy Awards, has been covered by Andrew Rannells on “Girls,” by Jonathan Groff and Jeremy Jordan at MCC Theater’s Miscast benefit, by Ben Platt and Nicole Scherzinger in concert and by masses of fans (and the occasional Muppet, on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Ostensibly a song about Monroe’s life, it resonates for any actor — and really, anyone — who longs to shine.Now it’s been reimagined as the opening number of “Smash,” a new Broadway musical that riffs on the TV show. Hurder plays Ivy Lynn, a Broadway actress tasked with playing Marilyn in “Bombshell.” This opening version of “Let Me Be Your Star” is staged by the director Susan Stroman and the choreographer Joshua Bergasse (also a veteran of the TV “Smash”) as a Great White Way fever dream featuring elaborate harmonies, athletic dance and a brassy, big-band sound. The song recurs, in a very different style, at the end of the first act, though the producers are keeping those details secret. And it may return a third time.“It’s possible!” Stroman said.The stage version of “Smash” follows the backstage meltdown of a fictional show called “Bombshell” as it approaches opening night.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAt that morning rehearsal, Stroman had Hurder and the ensemble run the number again. There were flips, lifts, mambo moves, thrilling vocal frills. More

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      Paquita la del Barrio, Whose Songs Empowered Women, Dies at 77

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      In unflinching ballads that spoke of the pain men can cause women, the Mexican singer often relied on what she learned in her own relationships.Paquita la del Barrio, the prolific Mexican vocalist and songwriter known for her powerful feminist ballads, died on Monday at her home in Veracruz. She was 77.Paquita’s social media accounts made the announcement on Monday, but did not list a cause of death.“With deep pain and sadness we confirm the sensitive passing of our beloved ‘Paquita la del Barrio,’” the statement said in Spanish. “She was a unique and unrepeatable artist who will leave an indelible mark in the hearts of all of us who knew her and enjoyed her music.”Paquita broke through in the Mexican ranchera genre, a field typically dominated by men, demonstrated through intense songs centering on love, revenge and nationalism. Songs like “Rata de dos Patas,” “Me Saludas a la Tuya” and “Tres Veces Te Engane” denounced male macho culture and became anthems.A 1999 article in The New York Times highlighted Paquita’s place in Mexico City, where she had begun her career as a local performer, describing her as “something of a patron saint” of a place where her songs resonated.Paquita’s passing caused an outpouring of grief among celebrities and fans on social media.Alejandro Sanz, a singer and composer, wrote in Spanish that her music was “capable of capturing a feeling and turning it into a song” and that she is a “part of the eternal culture.”Thalia, a popular singer and actress, shared a scene of the pair starring on “Maria Mercedes,” a soap opera that aired on the Mexican broadcaster Televisa in 1992. Initially, Thalia expressed nervousness about sharing a stage with Paquita.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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      Live Performance in New York City: Here’s What to See This Spring

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      Onstage, Denzel Washington is Othello, and Paul Mescal is Stanley Kowalski as stars illuminate the theater marquees. Plus: FKA twigs takes “Eusexua” on tour. Bang on a Can, Twyla Tharp, and much more.BroadwayOPERATION MINCEMEAT A sneaky compassion lies at the heart of this caper of a show, a deliciously eccentric London import that won the 2024 Olivier Award for best new musical. Starring the original West End cast, it’s a riff on a bizarre true story from World War II, when British Intelligence, keen to misdirect the Germans, dressed up a dead man as a Royal Marines major, planted a fake invasion plan on him and dropped him in the sea for the enemy to find. Through June 15 at the Golden Theater. (All theater listings by LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES)Mel Semé and Natalie Venetia Belcon in the musical “Buena Vista Social Club.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB This jukebox musical about the Cuban artists who made the Grammy Award-winning 1997 album of the title isn’t straight biography. Developed and directed by Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”), it uses real people and events as a jumping-off point for its storytelling. Rooted in the recording sessions, and choreographed by Patricia Delgado and the Tony winner Justin Peck (“Illinoise”), it was an Off Broadway hit last season for Atlantic Theater Company. Performances begin Feb. 21 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.OTHELLO Denzel Washington made a Broadway box-office hit out of “Julius Caesar” two decades ago. On the big screen, he has played Macbeth. Now he takes on Shakespeare’s Othello — the honorable general and smitten newlywed. Jake Gyllenhaal is his foil as the perfidious Iago, who goads Othello into unreasoning jealousy with lies about his beloved Desdemona (Molly Osborne). Directed by Kenny Leon, a Tony winner for his revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” which also starred Washington. Feb. 24-June 8 at the Barrymore Theater.PURPOSE Fresh off his Tony win for “Appropriate,” the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins returns with a new drama about the members of a famous, albeit fictional, Black political dynasty in Chicago, reckoning with history, morality and legacy as they gather for a celebration. Phylicia Rashad directs this Steppenwolf Theater production, whose ensemble cast includes Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis, Jon Michael Hill, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix and another 2024 Tony winner, Kara Young. Feb. 25-July 6 at the Helen Hayes Theater.GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS David Mamet’s luxuriantly crude, bare-knuckled real estate drama, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, gets its third Broadway revival. Kieran Culkin, last on Broadway a decade ago in “This Is Our Youth,” stars as Richard Roma — the Al Pacino role in the movie adaptation — opposite Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael McKean, Donald Webber Jr., Howard W. Overshown and John Pirruccello. Patrick Marber, a 2023 Tony winner for his production of “Leopoldstadt,” directs. How’s that for a lead? March 10-May 31 at the Palace Theater.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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      Lea Salonga Is Never Getting Tired of Sondheim

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      Nobody doubted that Lea Salonga could sing.She had won a Tony Award at the age of 20 for her breakout role as the besotted Vietnamese teen Kim in “Miss Saigon,” and sung her heart out as Éponine, and later Fantine, in Broadway productions of “Les Misérables.” She provided the crystalline vocals of not one but two Disney princesses: the warrior heroine of 1998’s “Mulan” and the magic carpet-riding Princess Jasmine in 1992’s “Aladdin.”But could the singer handle Sondheim — a composer heralded for creating some of the most challenging, idiosyncratic work seen on the American stage — on Broadway? Could she inhabit a character like Momma Rose, the monstrous, pathologically ambitious stage mother from “Gypsy”? Or Mrs. Lovett from “Sweeney Todd,” the butcher/baker who breaks down the marketing challenges of hawking pies filled with human meat, in a Cockney accent, no less?“Some of it’s hard,” Salonga admitted.But she is doing all that and more in “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends,” currently playing at the Ahmanson Theater here in Los Angeles after a 16-week run in London’s West End. Scheduled to begin previews on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater next month, the show features more than three dozen songs from some of Sondheim’s biggest musicals, including “West Side Story,” “Gypsy,” “A Little Night Music” and “Into the Woods.” The tribute revue also stars Bernadette Peters, who, no stranger to Sondheim, put her own indelible stamp on the character of Momma Rose in 2003.Salonga, center, stars in “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” with, from left, Jasmine Forsberg, Beth Leavel, Bernadette Peters, Kate Jennings Grant, Bonnie Langford, Maria Wirries and Joanna Riding.Matthew MurphySalonga, Peters said, “has one of the great Broadway voices, and she just brings down the house.”For Salonga, “I’m getting the chance to sing some of the most incredible lyrics ever written. I’m getting to dip, not just a toe, but my entire body, into this incredible work.”“Nobody was surprised how terrific she was as a performer,” said the show’s producer Cameron Mackintosh, who also cast Salonga in “Miss Saigon” and “Les Misérables.”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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      Review: Karina Canellakis Hushes the New York Philharmonic

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      Some of the most memorable moments in the orchestra’s program this week, led by Karina Canellakis, were extremely soft.The New York Philharmonic is capable of playing quietly; the orchestra just hasn’t always seemed to enjoy it. Particularly under their last music director, Jaap van Zweden, the musicians tended to approach soft dynamics unwillingly, as if they were waiting impatiently for the next explosion.So it was noteworthy that some of the most memorable passages in the Philharmonic’s excellent concert on Thursday evening at David Geffen Hall, conducted by Karina Canellakis, were the most delicate ones.There was the spooky haze at the start of Kaija Saariaho’s “Lumière et Pesanteur.” The somberly gentle woodwinds echoing the tune of a Bach chorale in Berg’s Violin Concerto. The hovering transcendence of the strings drawing to a nearly inaudible hush at the end of Messiaen’s “Les Offrandes Oubliées.” The haunting melody in a duo of flute and oboe that emerges from a mist in the third section of Debussy’s “La Mer.”The players didn’t seem like they wanted these moments to end as soon as possible; they reveled in them. That attests, of course, to the musicians themselves — and, perhaps, to their continued acclimation to the renovated Geffen Hall, in which even the most fragile sounds register clearly.But it also speaks to Canellakis’s leadership on the podium. Throughout the concert, she elicited playing of poise and patience, inspiring the ensemble to relax into phrases — which gave the music more organic energy than pressing relentlessly forward would have.For all the bits of breathtaking stillness in the performance, there were also forceful climaxes, but Canellakis arrived at them with naturalness. At the end of the first section of “La Mer,” the volume swiftly swells from pianissimo to fortissimo. While some performances land flat on the loudness, she drew out the speed ever so slightly, making the rise in dynamics feel like a thrilling wave rather than an abrupt boom.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