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      Dolly Parton, Eminem and A Tribe Called Quest Are Rock Hall Nominees

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      This year’s slate of 17 acts eligible for induction span rap, country, folk, pop and more.Dolly Parton, Eminem, A Tribe Called Quest and Beck are among the first-time nominees on the ballot for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year, the organization behind the museum and annual ceremony announced on Wednesday.Spanning rap, country, folk, pop and more, the list of 17 potential inductees includes seven acts appearing for the first time — Duran Duran, Lionel Richie and Carly Simon also among them — plus 10 repeat nominees who have not yet been voted in: Pat Benatar, Kate Bush, Devo, Eurythmics, Judas Priest, Fela Kuti, MC5, New York Dolls, Rage Against the Machine and Dionne Warwick.More than 1,000 artists, historians and music industry professionals will now vote to narrow the field, with a slate of inductees — typically between five and seven — to be announced in May. Artists become eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first commercial recording.Voters for the Rock Hall are asked to consider an act’s music influence and the “length and depth” of its career, in addition to “innovation and superiority in style and technique.” But the hall’s exact criteria and genre preferences have seemed to expand in recent years, in part in response to frequent criticisms regarding its treatment of female and Black musicians. In 2019, a look at the organization’s 888 inductees up to then found that just 7.7 percent were women.Among the recent boundary-pushers to be elected are Jay-Z, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, the Notorious B.I.G. and Janet Jackson.In a statement, John Sykes, the chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, called the latest nominees “a diverse group of incredible artists, each who has had a profound impact on the sound of youth culture.”But in a universe of snubs, surprises and also-rans, there is a cottage industry of music obsessives dedicated to parsing who is recognized when — and who continues to be overlooked.A Tribe Called Quest, the influential hip-hop group from Queens, has been eligible for nearly a decade, but just received its first nomination, while the white rapper Eminem, who is among the genre’s best-selling artists of all time, made the ballot in his first year of eligibility. Simon, the 1970s folk singer known for hits like “You’re So Vain” and “You Belong to Me,” is a first-time nominee more than a quarter-century after she qualified.Back from last year’s ballot are the Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, the rap-rock group Rage Against the Machine, the new wave band Devo, the early punk act New York Dolls, the experimental pop singer Kate Bush and the best-selling vocalist Dionne Warwick. Returning after some time off the ballot: Pat Benatar, Eurythmics, Judas Priest and MC5, now on its sixth nomination.This year’s induction ceremony is planned for the fall, with details about the date and venue to be announced at a later date, the hall said. More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Music for Dance

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      Reggae, house, step, ballet, tap, jazz: Listen to the sounds that have inspired great choreographers.In the past we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, piano, opera, cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, violin, Baroque music, sopranos, Beethoven, flute, string quartets, tenors, Brahms, choral music, percussion, symphonies, Stravinsky, trumpet, Maria Callas, Bach, the organ and mezzo-sopranos.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love music — of many different styles — made to be danced to. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Brian Seibert, Times writerI think I first heard it in a TV commercial for beef, but Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo” was written for ballet. A particularly American ballet — about a cowgirl! — choreographed by Agnes de Mille in 1942. Like Copland’s “Billy the Kid” and “Appalachian Spring,” written for Martha Graham, “Rodeo” forged a mythical sound of Americana that was taken up by pops concerts and advertisers. But this is dance music, as you can feel from the start, when the scene-setting of open spaces accelerates into a trot and then kicks into the broncobusting, heel-cracking main theme. That Justin Peck’s 2015 choreography for New York City Ballet successfully ditched the story and held onto the rhythms is a testament to their power.Copland’s “Rodeo”New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Camille A. Brown, choreographerWhen we did “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” this fall at the Metropolitan Opera, we included step dance, an African-American social dance form used in fraternities, sororities, H.B.C.U.s. I connect it to Juba dance; enslavers would sometimes take the drums away from the enslaved, who would continue to use their bodies as a way of communicating.It’s about the body being an instrument — using your hands and feet and body to create rhythms that are a musical composition. I tried to create a score, a rhythmic score, inside of Terence Blanchard’s opera score. This was the first time that step dance had been on the Met stage, and I tried to honor the ancestors and what this movement means as best I could.“Fire Shut Up in My Bones”Camille A. Brown, choreographer (Metropolitan Opera)◆ ◆ ◆Taylor Stanley, New York City Ballet principal dancer“Apollo” is full of nuance. After Apollo’s first solo, there is a musical shift when he’s introduced to the three muses. You can hear the delicacy of each muse, and there’s this coy energy as the god discovers himself through dancing with them. Stravinsky’s score is so layered and intricate; you hear melody on top of melody, just as Apollo supports all three women as a partner. And then those layered melodies culminate in a really lush, beautiful resolve. It’s the music that creates this image of openness and fills the space with density. It’s a moment of harmony that melts my heart.Stravinsky’s “Apollo”London Symphony Orchestra; Robert Craft, conductor (Naxos)◆ ◆ ◆Siobhan Burke, Times writerThe first time I saw “Grace,” Ronald K. Brown’s 1999 hit for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, I had to check the fine print in the program. What was that song? The one that had me itching to get up and move along with the dancers? Thus began my habit of listening on repeat to Roy Davis Jr.’s “Gabriel,” featuring Peven Everett. The 1996 British garage track — with its infectious house beat, luminous trumpet and mellow yet passionate vocals — was made to be danced to in contexts other than a theater. But in Brown’s hands, it’s equally at home onstage, where his intricate, cyclical movement slinks into the music’s subtler grooves and widens its spiritual dimensions.Roy Davis Jr. and Peven Everett’s “Gabriel”(XL)◆ ◆ ◆Joshua Barone, Times editorMany people’s first experience with live ballet is “The Nutcracker.” It was mine, too, and though I knew nothing about dance, I couldn’t get enough of Tchaikovsky’s score. I later loved the symphonic drama of his “Swan Lake” and then came to “The Sleeping Beauty,” immediately hooked by its famous Rose Adagio. A moment of stasis yet suspense, the fairy tale scene is set by a flowing harp, followed by Romantic strings and dignified brasses as Aurora receives and rejects a series of suitors. The ending, regal and rattlingly loud, is a triumph not only for the princess, but also for any ballerina who emerges unscathed.Tchaikovsky’s “The Sleeping Beauty”Vienna Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan, conductor (Decca)◆ ◆ ◆Phil Chan, Final Bow for Yellowface co-founderA good piece of dance music is an aural guide for the body to explore the freedom of movement. It changes directions. It grabs onto your heartbeat and pulses through your veins. It makes you tap your feet. One of my favorite pieces of dance music is for the Tinikling, the national folk dance of the Philippines, which emulates the swift footsteps of the tikling bird. The virtuoso melody provides variations on a theme, syncopated rhythms, changing tempos to build excitement and, finally, a crescendo release. Fair warning: Only the most musical dancers avoid the sore ankles that come with the closing snap of the bamboo poles.The TiniklingUCLA Samahang Pilipino Cultural Night, 2017◆ ◆ ◆Robert Battle, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater artistic directorThere is a mystery to “Reflections in D,” unlike many other songs by Duke Ellington, who called his compositions “American music” rather than jazz. Though abstract, the song suggests a poignant story behind the haunting, bittersweet melody. In 1962 Alvin Ailey was moved to create a dance to this music, so when we listen to it now, we see and hear the prowess and vulnerability of both these great artists. Though the piece is brief, it says everything needed, with nothing superfluous, something that can only be achieved by masters of their craft. Our own memories are freed by the tranquil poetry. “Reflections in D” is a meditation on being.Duke Ellington’s “Reflections in D”(Blue Note)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music editorTwyla Tharp’s 1986 masterpiece “In the Upper Room” has many moments of quiet intimacy. But as you can guess from the music alone, the final section is a relentless full-ensemble Olympics. In the score Tharp commissioned from Philip Glass, she got the sonic equivalent of her surging, athletic choreography, with the dancers (by this point dripping in sweat) soaring through the fog and shadows created by Jennifer Tipton’s lighting. Many, many people have set Glass to movement, never more exhilarating than this.Philip Glass’s “Dance IX”(Orange Mountain Music)◆ ◆ ◆Lauren Lovette, choreographerI respect and value “Trio per Uno” for the sheer genius behind the percussion syncopation, and its variety of color and mood. I have always been drawn to percussion for dancing because of its obvious physicality and the impulse to move from places internal. But I often find that single-movement percussion works fall too far into a single rhythm, making the dance one-dimensional. So when I came across this piece I was immediately taken by its changes in direction throughout, and how recklessly it ends. The duet I set to it is one of my favorite pieces of my choreography.Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic’s “Trio per Uno”Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic, Benjamin Toth, Fernando Meza, percussion (Bis)◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerGiven its premiere at the Paris Opera in 1931 as the successor to his “The Spider’s Feast,” Albert Roussel’s undeservedly overlooked “Bacchus et Ariane” is a magnificently symphonic kind of ballet — painted in bright, bold colors, graced with soaring lyricism and driven along with grinding, mechanistic rhythmic force. After Bacchus’s kiss leads into a gloriously rapt dance for Ariane, a pounding bacchanal cavorts out of control, before Ariane reaches her apotheosis and is crowned in stars. There are more graphic accounts of this music out there, but nobody matches Jean Martinon and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for finding the beauty in the carnage.Roussel’s “Bacchus et Ariane”Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Jean Martinon, conductor (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Justin Peck, choreographerWhat I love about dance music is that it can be anything. It can be a piece that inspires me to choreograph a ballet for the stage, or something that causes me to glide in synchronized rhythm around my kitchen as I prepare dinner. It’s all fair game. In the case of “Become a Mountain” by Dan Deacon, it’s all of the above: the centerpiece of a longer dance that I choreographed a few months ago for the Juilliard School Class of 2022, and also a stand-alone track that gets my blood pumping on these frigid winter days in New York.Dan Deacon’s “Become a Mountain”(Domino)◆ ◆ ◆Ayodele Casel, tap dancer and choreographerArturo O’Farrill is a musician with great love of and respect for the art of dance. Our collaborations have explored both the freedom of improvisation, composing music on the spot, and working with his vast catalog for choreographic inspiration. “The Sandbox” is one of our many improvisational moments, recorded for my show “Chasing Magic.” Playfully we flow through Latin, jazz, classical and blues music in five minutes. Our interaction reflects the freedom, tradition, stop-time, call-and-response nature of jazz and tap. We always surprise ourselves when our rhythm and cadence uncannily sync, like magic.Arturo O’Farrill and Ayodele Casel’s “The Sandbox”(Ayodele Casel)◆ ◆ ◆Benjamin Millepied, choreographerThe sabar is a dance form of the Wolof people, who mainly live in parts of Senegal and Gambia. The dancing is accompanied by a style of drumming with the same name. I grew up in Senegal, with this musician’s family as a neighbor. The sophisticated rhythmic language of sabar inspired me to begin dancing at an early age. It is a freeing way to approach dance, as individuality and improvisation are key elements, and the energetic, mathematical polyrhythms triggered a lifelong desire in me to choreograph my own variations on movement.Doudou N’Diaye Rose’s “Rose Rhythm”(Real World)◆ ◆ ◆Kyle Abraham, choreographerWith its slick grooves, percussion, guitar licks and beautiful vocals, “Betray My Heart,” by D’Angelo and the Vanguard, is one of the rarest love songs I know. I included it in my newest evening-length work, “An Untitled Love,” because it is so pure, honest and sincere that I’m given a glimpse into what the joys of love should feel like. There’s something in the song’s lyrics and arrangement that makes me want to cry, and then get up and dance with the biggest smile on my face. My backbone slips, my shoulders roll, my heart thumps, and my head bops in its declaration.D’Angelo’s “Betray My Heart”D’Angelo and the Vanguard (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Gia Kourlas, Times dance criticHindemith’s score for Balanchine’s “The Four Temperaments” — known in dancer shorthand as “Four T’s” — resulted in a groundbreaking merging of music and dance exploring the notion that in every person there are four humors, or temperaments. “Phlegmatic,” the third variation, evoking the unemotional, indifferent side of the psyche, starts out with strings that make the body droop and rise. The spare, strong notes of the piano part are like light cutting through mist to pave the way for a melody that builds and bounces, all the while conjuring physical sensations: gliding, floating, flying. The music’s spirit may belong to Balanchine, yet somehow it makes room for more — within it, there are so many dances waiting to be danced.Hindemith’s “The Four Temperaments”Los Angeles Philharmonic; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times writerNew York boasts plenty of places where you can check out improvising composers plying their craft — but not nearly so many spaces to dance while they play. That has made live concert interventions like the pianist Jason Moran’s “Fats Waller Dance Party” particularly inviting at venues like Harlem Stage. On Moran’s accompanying album, “All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller,” he keeps alive the social aspect of early jazz, with a contemporary twist. During a track like “Lulu’s Back in Town,” Moran injects rhythmic fillips that call to mind producers like J Dilla, while still doing honor to Waller’s rendition from the 1930s.Harry Warren and Al Dubin’s “Lulu’s Back in Town”Jason Moran, piano (Blue Note)◆ ◆ ◆Javier C. Hernández, Times classical music and dance reporterProkofiev’s ballet “Romeo and Juliet” has a tortured history. Its premiere was repeatedly delayed; the music was derided as impossible to dance to; and the score was subjected to Soviet censorship. But it has become one of his most beloved works — by turns fiery, lyrical and haunting. There are also moments of irreverence, such as in this carnival-like dance featuring the mandolin. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, under Marin Alsop, brings anguish and electricity to the score.Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet”Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop, conductor (Naxos)◆ ◆ ◆Charmaine Warren, dancer and teacherI am Jamaican, and I love reggae music. Chronixx, one of Jamaica’s celebrated young singers, known for his rapturous songs, invites listeners to hearken back to the Rasta skank of Bob Marley. In “Smile Jamaica,” he starts off by singing about a girl he’s met; they exchange names and sweetly, just when the beat drops, we find that her name is Jamaica. He sings: “And I said smile, girl, smile. Smile for me, Jamaica.” In Jamaica we say “di music sweet mi,” and so I can’t help but drop my head, drop deeper into my swaying hips, pump my bent arms, smile, and sing along with the chorus.Chronixx’s “Smile Jamaica”(Silly Walks Discotheque)◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      Review: An Opera Sings of a World on the Verge of Ending

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      Ricky Ian Gordon’s “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” is set in a community of Italian Jews just before World War II.One of the many things that came to an end in the conflagration of World War II was the great Italian opera tradition. Puccini, its apotheosis, had died in 1924; in the conflict’s wake, modernism ruled European music, and a certain strand of lyric theater was over.Which adds a bit of poignancy to the fact that Ricky Ian Gordon’s paean to that tradition, his new opera “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” is set in Ferrara, Italy, on the cusp of the war, amid members of the city’s Jewish community who are largely blind to the tragedy that awaits them. Their coming destruction is mirrored by that of the emotive, melodic form being used to tell their story.Emotive and melodic, yes, but here also overdone and overlong. Based on Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 novel of the same name, which Vittorio De Sica adapted into a 1970 film, Gordon’s opera replaces its source’s poetic richness with stentorian earnestness that feels like it continues unabated for, with intermission, three hours.Presented by New York City Opera and the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan, the work is, because of pandemic delays, opening almost simultaneously with another Gordon opera, “Intimate Apparel,” at Lincoln Center Theater. Together, they are a substantial showcase for a composer best known for his artfully impassioned songs, and for his eclecticism and versatility. “Intimate Apparel,” set in 1905 New York, draws on Americana and ragtime; “Finzi-Continis,” italianità.But while Gordon is clearly aiming for Puccinian sumptuousness and extroversion, the score is not exactly tuneful; the 15-member orchestra, conducted by James Lowe, doesn’t offer hummable hits so much as a plush carpet and punctuation for the fervid singers. The vocal lines aren’t ear worms, either. They just keep surging forth in full-throttle monologues and ensembles.It’s a bellowing take on a story that’s not without whispers. Giorgio is a middle-class young man who gets caught up in the circle of the Finzi-Continis, aristocratic Jews living on their verdant estate in idyllic insulation from the increasingly unfriendly world. He falls madly in love with Micòl, the family’s daughter, as the Fascists take over Italy and antisemitism is codified in law.Ciaramitaro, right, plays Giorgio, a middle-class young man who enters the aristocratic circle of the Finzi-Continis.Alan ChinStraightforward enough, but in the opera, far too much incident is crowded into 19 scenes, not counting a prologue and epilogue — an uninterrupted trudge of exposition. Michael Korie’s libretto could have been significantly culled; among other things, the subplot of Micòl’s brother, a closeted gay man longing for his former roommate as his health fails, could have been easily excised. And Korie’s text, which often tips into rhyme, can tend risible: “A feeling I infer of anarchy astir.”As Giorgio, the tenor Anthony Ciaramitaro hardly stopped roaring at the performance on Sunday, but at least he did it indefatigably and with pure tone. The soprano Rachel Blaustein brought a sweetness to Micòl that persevered through her character’s capriciousness. Michael Capasso and Richard Stafford’s staging did its best to handle the flood of episodes, relying on a simple set illuminated by John Farrell’s evocative projections.The opera’s ending jarred surprisingly with the post-Holocaust imperative — doctrine at this point — to “never forget.” Standing after the war in the ruined synagogue of Ferrara, Giorgio addresses his memories, singing, “To live my life, I need to let you go.” It is an intriguing turn from tradition in a work that otherwise hews to it all too ceaselessly.The Garden of the Finzi-ContinisThrough Sunday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Manhattan; nycopera.com. More

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      Concert Drowns Out A.F.C. Halftime Analysis

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      As the “NFL on CBS” crew broke down the first half of the game, a performance by the country music singer Walker Hayes was so loud, it made the commentary all but inaudible.At halftime of the A.F.C. championship game on Sunday, Kansas City led the Cincinnati Bengals, 21-10. For the Bengals to win, they would need to make some adjustments.But those hoping to listen to some halftime analysis on the CBS broadcast were unlikely to hear any commentary. It was nearly inaudible.As the “NFL on CBS” crew, made up of James Brown, Boomer Esiason, Phil Simms, Bill Cowher and Nate Burleson, were breaking down the plays of the first half, the country music singer Walker Hayes was performing the halftime show at Arrowhead Stadium.Mr. Hayes’s music was so loud, it all but drowned out the halftime analysis.When Mr. Burleson explained what changes the Bengals would need to make, the music was so loud that his colleague beside him, Mr. Esiason, couldn’t help but laugh.“I have no idea what you just said,” Mr. Esiason said after Mr. Burleson finished his comments. “I can’t hear a thing that anybody said.”The indiscernible commentary quickly drew attention online, with clips garnering tens of thousands of views on Twitter.Sarah Spain, a commentator on ESPN, said on Twitter that she couldn’t hear a word of the halftime broadcast.“Yikes, don’t think CBS realized how disruptive the Walker Hayes halftime show would be during *their* halftime show,” she wrote. Craig Miller, a sports radio host in Dallas, said on Twitter that the “halftime show audio disaster” was “highly entertaining.”CBS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday night.In a dramatic overtime finish, the Bengals defeated Kansas City, 27-24, with a game-winning field goal that will take them to the Super Bowl to face the Los Angeles Rams. Thankfully, for the “NFL on CBS” crew and those watching at home, there was no live musical performance to interrupt any postgame analysis. More

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      Why the ‘Euphoria’ Teens Listen to Sinead O’Connor, Tupac and Selena

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      The hit HBO show’s maximalist, era-jumping soundtrack is unconcerned with realism, packing in dozens of songs, from the underground to the instantly recognizable.A modern high schooler’s birthday party, chaperoned by an inebriated mother with no household rules except discretion, gets going to the sound of Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It,” that indelible 1990s relic. “I love this song!” the mom squeals, with an added profanity.At the same time, three teenagers in a beat-up ride are on their way to shoplift some alcohol. “Trademark USA” by Baby Keem, a rising rapper of the moment, blasts from the car speakers.Not long after, a troubled father skims a gay bar jukebox, looking for INXS’s “Kick” but finding Nicki Minaj’s “The Pinkprint” instead. He settles for a nostalgic slow dance to “Drink Before the War” by Sinead O’Connor, a devastating power ballad from 1987. Back at the birthday party, a wasted girl in a bathing suit melts down, belting along simultaneously to the same track, one released long before she was born.For some television shows, this would be an episode’s worth of big music moments. But on “Euphoria,” the maximalist hallucination of high school currently in its second season on HBO, it was but one stretch of carefully curated songs and references that, like the series itself, aimed for emotional resonance over superficial accuracy.Often cramming a couple of dozen tracks into a single hour — from the underground to the instantly recognizable, the 1950s to the 2020s — the show doesn’t do emphatic needle-drops so much as a TikTokian shuffle of aural and visual stimuli, bouncing between genres, eras and moods.In addition to O’Connor and Keem, Sunday’s episode featured a meta-montage of pop culture allusions set to Townes Van Zandt’s “I’ll Be Here in the Morning,” plus the premiere of a new song by Lana Del Rey and an onscreen, neo-gospel performance by the singer and producer Labrinth, who also handles the show’s score.Tasteful spareness has never been the objective. “We were not interested in playing by those rules,” said Julio Perez IV, the show’s lead editor, who recalled conceiving of their “own sonic galaxy” with the “Euphoria” creator, writer and director Sam Levinson. “We were interested in plenty of music — too much music for some. The show, in a sense, would be a musical.”A collage of flashbacks, daydreams, nightmares and rhythmic music video-esque sequences, “Euphoria” uses the interplay between its eclectic soundtrack and Labrinth’s recurring score to create a “wild fantasia that blends a raw naturalism with hyper-reality,” Perez said.Jen Malone, the show’s music supervisor, has also overseen the songs of “Atlanta” and “Yellowjackets,” where a strict sense of place and period guide the choices. “Euphoria” has no such boundaries.“If it works, it works,” she said in an interview, describing the show’s creative ethos and noting that Levinson writes to music, frequently including his song choices in the script. “The library of music that he has in his brain is endless,” Malone added.She and her team are then tasked with making Levinson’s vision a reality, making their own suggestions, seeking clearance from the music’s many rights holders and filling in gaps where necessary.In the show’s second season, episode prologues that tell characters’ back stories function as short films of their own, with distinct tones and time frames. One jumps from an Elvis Presley cover to Bo Diddley, Harry Nilsson, Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes, while another burns through tracks by INXS, Depeche Mode, Roxette, Erasure, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Cult, Lenny Kravitz and Dan Hartman, all in the span of 15 minutes.“It’s just insane the amount of music in this show,” Malone said.Complicating her job further is the fact that “Euphoria” revolves around lurid transgression — lust, substance abuse and violence, in particular — and scenes must be described in detail during the music approval process. “We do have to get clever with how we word certain things, but sometimes there’s just no way around it,” Malone said.The sequence ultimately set to an Elvis cover that opened this season featured nudity, drugs, guns and gore — “all the red flags you could possibly think of” — leading to a few denials before the show settled on Billy Swan’s rendition of “Don’t Be Cruel,” following appeals to the music’s publisher and the Presley estate.In securing use of O’Connor’s “Drink Before the War,” the “Euphoria” staff had to confirm that it would not be played over any sexual violence, “because I think she knew the show,” Malone added.Flashbacks in the second season detail character back stories to tracks like Billy Swan’s “Don’t Be Cruel.”HBO MaxHBO MaxBut labels and artists have been pleased to see the surge in interest that a placement on “Euphoria” can trigger, whether for an emerging act like Laura Les, whose track “Haunted” plays in a recent episode, or an established one like Tupac Shakur, whose caustic “Hit ’Em Up,” from 1996, is rapped along to by a teenage drug addict. Featured tracks by Gerry Rafferty and Steely Dan have even started popping up on TikTok.Whether or not the show’s Gen Z characters would actually be listening to this music has sparked some debate and eye-rolling. (“The Euphoria Teens’ Taste in Rap Is Ridiculous,” Pitchfork ruled.) But as with their designer wardrobes, verisimilitude is beside the point.“Realism is secondary,” said Perez, the editor. “There’s a certain amount of romanticism to the approach,” with “the psychological intricacies of inner worlds” taking precedence.A song choice can signal something, as when Selena’s “Como La Flor” plays faintly in a scene featuring a character whose Mexican American heritage is alluded to, but not explored. Or it can just simply sound good.In the playlist era, “Cool kids are into loads of stuff,” said Labrinth, who mirrors the show’s range in his “limitless” original music for the show, which fuses hip-hop, rock, funk and electronic sounds. He compared Levinson to a crate-digging D.J. as likely to reference an ’80s punk band as an obscure Italian composer.For those not already in the know, “Euphoria” can also function as a recommendation engine for a new generation, like the films of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino that it’s constantly nodding to.“Knowing that our audience is very much Gen Z, it’s almost like, ‘Hey guys, listen to some of this,’” Malone said, noting that a party scene where Juvenile and DMX songs are played also included more recent, little-known tracks by artists like Blaq Tuxedo and G.L.A.M.“‘Oh, you like all of this that’s out now? Listen to this!’” she added. “We’re giving them the mixtape that I got when I was in high school.” More

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      Joni Mitchell Plans to Follow Neil Young Off Spotify, Citing ‘Lies’

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      Joni Mitchell said Friday that she would remove her music from Spotify, joining Neil Young in his protest against the streaming service over its role in giving a platform to Covid-19 vaccine misinformation.Mitchell, an esteemed singer-songwriter of songs like “Big Yellow Taxi,” and whose landmark album “Blue” just had its 50th anniversary, posted a brief statement on her website Friday saying that she would remove her music from the streaming service. “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” she wrote. “I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”Her statement adds fuel to a small but growing revolt over Spotify, with few major artists speaking out but fans commenting widely on social media. The debate has also brought into relief questions about how much power artists wield to control distribution of their work, and the perennially thorny issue of free speech online.Spotify took Young’s music down on Wednesday, two days after he posted an open letter calling for its removal as a protest against “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Spotify’s most popular podcast, which has been criticized for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.He did so after a group of hundreds of scientists, professors and public health experts had asked Spotify to take down an episode of Rogan’s show from Dec. 31 that had featured Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious-disease expert. The scientists wrote in a public letter that the program promoted “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines.”Mitchell is the first major artist to follow Young, after a couple of days of speculation and rumors on social media.Young and Mitchell have a deep history together. Both are Canadians who helped lead the singer-songwriter revolution in Southern California in the late 1960s and 1970s.On Spotify, Mitchell is listed as having 3.7 million monthly listeners, with two of her songs — “Big Yellow Taxi” and “A Case of You” — getting over 100 million streams.While few other major artists have spoken out so far, Young’s stance has resonated widely with fans. Twitter was dotted with the announcements of listeners saying they were canceling their subscriptions, and screenshots from Spotify’s app showed a message from its customer support team saying that it was “getting a lot of contacts so may be slow to respond.” Spotify has not said how many customers canceled their subscriptions.Tech rivals have also pounced on the controversy, with SiriusXM restarting a Neil Young channel and Apple Music calling itself “the home of Neil Young.”In a statement on his website on Friday, Young reiterated his objections to Rogan’s podcast and took a swipe at Spotify’s sound quality. He also said he supported free speech.“I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship,” it said. “Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information.” More

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      Tito Matos, Virtuoso of a Puerto Rican Sound, Dies at 53

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      A lifelong champion of the plena genre, he helped rejuvenate it for a new generation both in Puerto Rico and in New York.Tito Matos, a master percussionist, revered educator and lifelong champion of the Puerto Rican style of music known as plena, died on Jan. 18 in San Juan, P.R. He was 53.His wife, Mariana Reyes Angleró, said the cause was a heart attack.Mr. Matos was a virtuoso of the requinto, the smallest and highest-pitched hand-held drum, or pandereta, used in plena. Rooted in African song traditions, plena emerged in the early 20th century on the southern coast of Puerto Rico and came to be known as “el periódico cantado,” or “the sung newspaper.” In street-corner style, it narrated stories, some gossipy, about love and the concerns of everyday working-class and Black Puerto Ricans. In its early years, wealthy elites maligned the genre.Mr. Matos was a member of multiple plena groups but first gained wide recognition with the band Viento de Agua, founded in New York in 1996. It reimagined plena and bomba, another Afro-Puerto Rican style of music and dance, by infusing them with jazz textures, exuberant horn sections and Cuban batá rhythms.For Mr. Matos, the band’s first album, “De Puerto Rico al Mundo” (1998), opened the door to a dynamic career that transformed him into one of the foremost plena practitioners of his generation.Héctor René Matos Otero was born on June 15, 1968, in the Río Piedras district of San Juan, one of three children of Héctor Matos Gámbaro and Hilda I. Otero Maldonado. His father was an accountant and a salsa enthusiast; his mother is a homemaker.Raised in Villa Palmeras, a barrio of the Santurce section that is considered a nexus of bomba and plena, Héctor embraced plena as an 8-year-old when his grandfather gave him his first pandereta, for the Three Kings Day holiday. Héctor had no formal musical training and could not read sheet music, but his love for plena was planted.He moved to New York in 1994 and eventually completed a degree in landscape architecture at City College. He entered a new diasporic community of musicians, joining Los Pleneros de la 21, an intergenerational East Harlem ensemble, and learning from plena masters who had migrated to New York in the 1940s and ’50s.Mr. Matos, third from left, playing the pandereta in 2014. “He got a lot of young people to just pick up a pandereta,” a friend said, “who were not necessarily interested in plena.”Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesIn New York, he met Ricardo Pons and Alberto Toro, two saxophonist-arrangers. “Tito was addicted to plena,” Mr. Pons said in a phone interview. “Un fiebrú,” he added, laughing, “like he had a fever.”Historically, only certain families were custodians of plena, charged with keeping its traditions and rhythms alive. “It was a problem, because they were very restrictive,” Mr. Matos said in an interview in 2010.Instead, Viento de Agua sought innovation. “It was not about conserving plena or bomba,” Mr. Pons said; “it was about doing whatever we wanted with it.”The group’s album “De Puerto Rico al Mundo” was infused with an irreverent, imaginative spirit. Writing in The New York Times, Peter Watrous praised it as “exuberant and raucous.”The group performed in Mexico, Cuba and across the United States, sometimes accompanied by a full jazz band.“Tito was super, super gregarious and charismatic,” Ed Morales, a journalist, author and friend of Mr. Matos, said in a phone interview. Mr. Matos, he added, had a special ability to reach Puerto Ricans both on the island and in the diaspora and instill in them a sense of communion — particularly when he performed at a biennial concert at Hostos Community College in the Bronx.“You really got to feel the connection between people in Puerto Rico and people in New York more than almost any other place,” Mr. Morales said.In the early 2000s Mr. Matos returned to Puerto Rico, where he became an educator and cultural advocate. He co-founded Plenazos Callejeros, a monthly initiative that gathered musicians across Puerto Rico for spontaneous plena performances on street corners.“He got a lot of young people to just pick up a pandereta,” Mr. Morales said — “people who were not necessarily interested in plena, because maybe they thought it sounded corny or something, or it wasn’t like salsa or hip-hop or reggaeton.”Today, plena is undergoing a cultural renaissance; in recent years it has played a central role in progressive political gatherings and protests in Puerto Rico, including those in the summer of 2019 that led to the resignation of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló.Subsequent projects led Mr. Matos to collaborate with stars like Eddie Palmieri, Ricky Martin and the jazz saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón. Mr. Matos later founded the band La Máquina Insular, which focused on returning plena back to its roots.In 2015, he and his wife founded La Junta, a bar and performance space in Santurce, where they hosted live music and plena workshops. Hurricane Maria destroyed the space in 2017, but its spirit was revived in “La Casa de la Plena,” a historical exhibition, curated by the couple, that opened in May 2021 at the Taller Comunidad La Goyco, a community center they established in an abandoned Santurce school building they had renovated.In addition to his mother and his wife, whom he married in 2013, Mr. Matos is survived by their son, Marcelo; two children from previous marriages that ended in divorce, Celiana and Héctor; a brother, Yan Matos Otero; and a sister, Glennis Matos Otero.A procession this month honoring Mr. Matos in San Juan drew hundreds.Taller Comunidad – La GoycoOn Jan. 21, Mr. Matos was honored with an immense procession in Santurce. Friends, family members and dozens of fans walked the streets, drumming on panderetas and singing words of gratitude. “Muchas gracias, te amamos,” they chanted — “Thank you very much. We love you.” More

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      Review: Philip Glass and the Bangles, Mashed at the Symphony

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      Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond brought their gleeful opera-cabaret show “Only an Octave Apart” to the New York Philharmonic.It’s not like the New York Philharmonic hasn’t been queer before. I can’t have been the only boy for whom Jessye Norman’s hair, when she sang Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene with the orchestra on national television in 1995, was a turning point. The ensemble backed Mariah Carey in Central Park, and Elaine Stritch for Sondheim’s 80th. It once paired Lou Harrison and Bruckner.But it’s safe to say it hasn’t presented anything quite like Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond’s Philharmonic debut as a duo on Thursday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Performing a rich helping of their recent show “Only an Octave Apart,” they cracked jokes about G spots and traveling for sex, mashed up Purcell’s Dido with Dido’s “White Flag,” layered Philip Glass over the Bangles, and generally camped up the joint.When “Only an Octave Apart” played at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn last fall, it was a riff on Beverly Sills and Carol Burnett’s high-low 1976 special of the same name, bringing together Costanzo, an operatic countertenor, and Bond, the gleefully savage cabaret diva. I went in with a little trepidation — a fan of both performers, but not quite sure whether the experiment would go off. Would it be too stiff? Too silly? Too talky? Too self-indulgent?It was sublime.By turns hilarious and tender — those dual Didos are very much not played for laughs — the show was a small miracle of careful craft and improvisatory looseness, of arch personae and moving sincerity. Costanzo was a superb, well, straight man to Bond’s battiness, and their voices — one slender and pure, the other husky and vibrato-heavy — improbably blended. The return to live performance after a year and a half of lockdowns only increased the poignancy and delight of their obvious mutual love and respect. It was a confection that nourished.It still is. Alongside the release of an album version, the show is an apt opener for the festival “Authentic Selves: The Beauty Within,” organized by Costanzo as part of his Philharmonic residency. Focused on marginalized identities and (forgive the self-helpism) being yourself, the festival’s programs include a pair of premieres sung by Costanzo, as well as a rare countertenor take on Berlioz’s song cycle “Les Nuits d’Été.”On Thursday I missed Zack Winokur’s daffy yet elegant full staging of “Only an Octave Apart,” especially Jonathan Anderson’s delirious gowns. But the 90-minute show compressed nicely into a 50-minute concert half, the union between classical and cabaret smoothed by Nico Muhly’s lush yet subtle orchestrations.Costanzo also joined the orchestra and its music director, Jaap van Zweden, in the premiere of Joel Thompson and Tracy K. Smith’s “The Places We Leave.”Chris LeeSome moody Nelson Riddle-style string arrangements — like the scoring of a Douglas Sirk melodrama — nodded to what came before intermission: the premiere of Joel Thompson’s “The Places We Leave.” Setting a new text by the poet Tracy K. Smith, Thompson also reveled in sumptuous, worried strings, and gave Costanzo mellow, narrative vocal lines that surge into piercing climaxes. There was even a patch of exhausting Handelian coloratura, a wink at the text’s account of a lover who “left me breathless,” and at a Costanzo specialty. (He appears in “Rodelinda” at the Metropolitan Opera in March.)The concert opened with Joan Tower’s stout “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” No. 1, and also included Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, “Classical.” What was this chestnut doing here? Particularly as conducted by Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic’s music director — who was otherwise a sensitive leader — with his all-too-characteristic clenched, unwitty approach to the standard repertory.But an aspect of the choice resonated. Like “Only an Octave Apart,” Prokofiev’s First was created in a time of crisis, the violence of the February Revolution in Russia, but has little hint of that darkness in a work of sparkling energy and grace.Is making joyful music in grim times escapist, even reactionary? Sometimes the opposite: The “Classical” looked, as does “Only an Octave Apart,” to the past with a fresh spirit, a kind of progressive nostalgia. And like Costanzo and Bond in their show, Prokofiev used the work not to rest on his laurels but to spur himself to develop; the symphony was the first big piece he wrote without leaning on his beloved piano as a composition tool. It made his future possible.As unlikely yet satisfying a pairing as Costanzo and Bond, then, these two works — bridging an intermission and a century — are a reminder that what emerges and survives from our distressing era may not be what we expect. All we can do is give artists the space to create, and keep our ears open.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More