music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Unsuk Chin on the Violin Concerto She Swore She’d Never Write

      by

      Unsuk Chin was inspired by Leonidas Kavakos to return to the genre, and the result comes to Carnegie Hall on Monday.The 21st century has been a strong one for violin concertos. Think Jennifer Higdon, whose neo-Romantic showpiece for Hilary Hahn won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. And Esa-Pekka Salonen, Thomas Adès, Harrison Birtwistle, Jörg Widmann (twice) and John Adams (the same).And also Unsuk Chin, whose exceptionally difficult, alluringly colorful 2001 concerto brought her prominence and won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in 2004.That work, which still enchants, now has a successor, the Violin Concerto No. 2, “Scherben der Stille” (“Shards of Silence”). Despite the South Korean-born, Ligeti-taught Chin’s reluctance to write a second concerto for any instrument, she decided to make an exception for the violinist Leonidas Kavakos — who had met her but barely knew her music before she asked to write for him.After having its premiere delayed by the pandemic, the work was unveiled by the London Symphony Orchestra in January. It arrived in the United States last week for performances with another of its commissioners, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which joins Kavakos to perform the work under Andris Nelsons at Carnegie Hall on Monday, alongside Ives’s “The Unanswered Question” and Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique.” (That ensemble gives a concert performance of Berg’s “Wozzeck” at Carnegie the following night.)Pages from the manuscript of the new concerto, “Scherben der Stille” (“Shards of Silence”).Unsuk ChinHeard in Boston on March 4, Chin’s concerto is striking in the intensity of its demands on Kavakos and the novel breadth of the palette it invites the orchestra to play with, both of which are typical traits of her works. Also impressive is the sense of narrative it creates over half an hour as it builds out a motif of just five notes: a flourish of three harmonics that settles down to two more tones.It’s entirely different from Chin’s earlier violin concerto, but equally powerful, and another worthy addition to the growing list of contemporary contributions to its genre.Speaking by phone from Berlin, Chin spoke about the inspiration behind the work, and particularly about its opening page. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.Since your first violin concerto, you have written several concertos for other instruments. Has your thinking about the concerto as a genre changed at all, in these intervening two decades?Before my first violin concerto I wrote my piano concerto, which for me is also a very important work. They were not written for a certain soloist; they were very abstract, written for the instrument, rather than a person. Then I wrote my cello concerto for Alban Gerhardt and “Su,” my sheng concerto, for Wu Wei. I also wrote a clarinet concerto for Kari Kriikku.So my musical thinking changed a little bit because I became interested in musical personalities. Before that I didn’t have so much contact with musicians. I thought about my musical ideas in my mind in a very abstract way and then wrote the pieces.But this second violin concerto is again another turning point for me, because I was really enthusiastic about Leonidas’s playing, and it was something I’d never heard before. He plays music at an absolute level.How does what you admire in his playing translate into the concerto?I know all Leonidas’s repertoire, but especially his Beethoven concerto and all the sonatas. For me, it was a completely new kind of interpretation, really convincing and really strong. Through Leonidas’s playing, I rediscovered Beethoven’s music. Very often Beethoven’s materials and themes are banal, very simple, not very interesting, but he made huge artworks out of these small cells, small motifs. Then I thought, OK, I will take some very small material and try to go deeper.The music is quite different from all my other concertos. In my other pieces I have lots of ideas and a lot of colors and many movements, but this piece is just one movement, the longest one-movement piece I’ve written. The basic material is also extremely small.The first page of the published score of the concerto, which begins with a five-note motif for the solo violin, alone.Boosey & HawkesWe hear that material right at the start of the piece, for violin alone. Where does this motif go over the course of the work?The cell in total is five notes, but the first three notes are a kind of grace note; the main notes are the two after that. At the beginning they are the same note, but soon after, it changes. A semitone comes from the first cell.This small cell, or fragment, is permanently repeated through the whole piece, but every time with a different face. Sometimes it’s very melodic, Romantic; sometimes it sounds tragic; sometimes it sounds like abstract architecture. It is always the same thing, but in different layers, with different faces. It goes from beginning to end, but there is also abrupt change.A lot of concertos pit the orchestra against the soloist, but I didn’t get the sense that is what you were aiming for here.In this concerto the most important thing is the solo violin. The orchestra sometimes gives the violinist different colors, but it is mostly supporting the violin — except in one section near the middle, where everyone is doing their own thing and the soloist does not get any support from the orchestra. That is a huge fight between him and the orchestra.Previously you had banned yourself from writing more than one concerto for a given instrument. You have now broken that rule once; can we expect you to return to the piano or cello?I don’t think so. This is a very special, exceptional case. I don’t think I will be able to write a second piano concerto, even a second cello concerto. But you never know. Maybe in 20 years. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Traci Braxton, Television Personality and Singer, Dies at 50

      by

      She was perhaps best known for her appearances on the reality show “Braxton Family Values” with her siblings and their families.Traci Braxton, a television personality and singer, died on Saturday. She was 50.One of Ms. Braxton’s sisters, the singer Toni Braxton, confirmed her death in a statement from the Braxton family on Instagram. A cause of her death was not immediately available.“Needless to say, she was a bright light, a wonderful daughter, an amazing sister, a loving mother, wife, grandmother and a respected performer,” the statement said.The Braxton sisters, Toni, Traci, Tamar, Towanda and Trina, in “Braxton Family Values.”Chris Ragazzo/WE TVTraci Braxton was perhaps best known for her appearances on the reality television show “Braxton Family Values” with her sisters Tamar, Toni, Towanda and Trina and her brother, Michael, and their families.Ms. Braxton was referred to as the Wild Card on the show, which premiered on the WE tv network in 2011 and ran until late 2020. Ms. Braxton also appeared on “Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars” with her husband, Kevin Surratt.Traci Renee Braxton was born on April 2, 1971, the third child of Michael and Evelyn.The Braxton children were raised in a religious household in Severn, Md. Their father was a part-time preacher who forbade the family to play secular music.A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.Ms. Braxton sang with her sisters as a teenager and a young adult, and the five together formed the Braxtons and released the single “Good Life” in 1990.Toni Braxton was plucked from the group to become a solo artist, and her debut album was met with acclaim when it was released in 1993.The other sisters continued as a group, except for Traci Braxton, who stepped away from the music industry in the 1990s to raise her son. She worked as a social worker before the sisters reunited for “Braxton Family Values.”On the show, she explored her decision to step away from music and the unresolved feelings she had about leaving it behind, setting her on a path to return to the industry. She released her solo debut album, “Crash & Burn,” in 2014, and a follow-up album, “On Earth,” in 2018.In February 2016, Ms. Braxton came forward as the voice behind a memorable moment in which a nameless person can be heard at a White House event yelling “Hey, Michelle,” at Michelle and Barack Obama.Mr. Obama responded, “We know it is Black History Month when you hear somebody say: ‘Hey, Michelle. Girl!’”Ms. Braxton acknowledged being the voice during an appearance on the talk show “The Real,” of which her sister, Tamar Braxton, was a host. More

    • 125 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      My Favorite Rap Songs Are All Fight and No Flight

      by

      Mitski moved to Nashville. She’s not quite sure why, because she didn’t really know anyone there, but she liked how specifically weird it was — a town with stories. A local businessman had recently died and left his substantial estate to his Border collie. Bachelorette parties were a surreal and ever-present cottage industry: “There’s always a woman crying on the street and five other women in matching T-shirts comforting her,” as Mitski put it to me. “It feels like such a good place to observe the human condition.” More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      BTS Performs Live in Seoul for First Time in Over 2 Years

      by

      SEOUL — Elated fans of BTS gathered on Thursday for the K-pop group’s first live concert in South Korea in over two years, an event that was expected to draw as many as 15,000 people — despite Covid restrictions that barred cheering, screaming or singing.“It still feels like a dream,” said Park Hyunjun, 40, a freelance video producer from the city of Incheon, west of Seoul. Outside Seoul Olympic Stadium on Thursday, she held a poster bearing the concert’s slogan: “Of course, nothing has changed between us.”It was the first large-scale gathering of BTS fans in South Korea since the band’s last concert in their home country, in October 2019. The multibillion-dollar act performed live in Los Angeles in November, but for most of the pandemic it has been livestreaming instead.In 2020, the group set a Guinness world record for attracting the most viewers for a livestreamed music concert. The pandemic did not only pause the band’s live concerts: Five of BTS’s seven members have been infected with the coronavirus. They have since recovered from Covid-19.The concert Thursday, the largest approved by the South Korean government since the pandemic began, was taking place amid an Omicron wave that has driven caseloads in the country to unprecedented highs. On Thursday, the health authorities reported 327,549 new daily cases. But the government, which says the country must learn to live with the virus, has been loosening some restrictions.In and around the stadium on Thursday, 750 safety personnel were enforcing virus protocols, muting the festivities somewhat.“Please get moving once you’re done taking pictures,” fans taking group photos in front of the stadium’s entrance were told. “Please keep your distance to prevent the spread of Covid.”Fans’ temperatures were being taken before they entered the stadium. Rapid antigen kits were being made available for people with high temperatures, said the band’s agency, Hybe. And concertgoers had to enter through designated entrances, and during specific time slots, so they would not flow in all at once.Fans were also prohibited from cheering, screaming or singing along during the concert, and they had to keep their masks on, except to drink water. And attendance at the stadium, which can seat about 70,000 people, was being limited to 15,000.“I’m curious what kind of atmosphere there will be with everyone masked and no one screaming,” said Yu Haram, 17, who has followed the band for four years and was about to see them live for the first time.Throughout the pandemic, Ms. Yu said, she had followed the band online, sometimes gathering with her classmates to watch livestreams together. “I’m finally seeing them,” she said, “and I’m nervous.”The concert was the first of a three-day series, with more scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. It was being livestreamed for people who couldn’t attend in person.Yang Ji-woong, 15, said he had listened to the BTS song “Mikrokosmos” throughout the pandemic alone in his room and was looking forward to seeing it live.“I’m frankly a bit worried about Covid,” he said. “But I want to enjoy this moment as much as I can.” More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      How the ‘Encanto’ Soundtrack Became a Smash

      by

      With its eighth week at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart, the LP featuring songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda is a lesson in how fans drive hits from social media to streaming services.The soundtrack to Disney’s “Encanto” had an inauspicious start on the Billboard 200 album chart, arriving at No. 197 after the animated film’s release in November, just below Bob Seger’s “Greatest Hits” and a Notorious B.I.G. reissue.But this week the soundtrack, featuring songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda and a score by Germaine Franco, notches its eighth week at No. 1 — one of only three albums with a run this long in the last five years — while Miranda’s song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” slipped to second place on the Hot 100 singles chart after five times at the top.What happened in between is an object lesson in how songs become hits now, with tracks elevated by fans through streaming and social media, and radio often lagging behind the curve.For “Encanto” and “Bruno,” the key factor was TikTok. Soon after the film became available for streaming on Disney+ on Christmas Eve, fans shared their reflections there and acted out scenes from the movie, about an extended family in Colombia that has been touched by magic.“The first instance on TikTok was people posting that these characters look like me and my family, that I’m seeing myself in this picture,” said Ken Bunt, president of the Disney Music Group. “Then it fairly quickly moved into another phase, where people were doing the dances and singing to it.”Explore the World of ‘Encanto’Disney’s new film, about a gifted family in Colombia, pairs stunning animation with spellbinding songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda.Review: “Encanto” charms with its focus on family dynamics, fantastic feats of wizardry and respect for Latino culture, writes our film critic.The Voice of Mirabel: Stephanie Beatriz, who won over fans with her role in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” discusses taking on the lead role in the film.An Enchanting Soundtrack: The film’s album of music recently climbed to the top of the Billboard 200, displacing Adele’s “30.”A Slice of His Homeland: A Times reporter watched “Encanto” with her Colombian father. Here’s what they thought.Once ignited on TikTok — where videos tagged #wedonttalkaboutbruno have been viewed 3.5 billion times — “Bruno” and other soundtrack songs, like “Surface Pressure,” began to dominate Spotify, Apple Music and other audio streaming outlets. The soundtrack ousted Adele’s “30” from No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart in early January and has since held that slot every week but one.Since its release, “Encanto” has had the equivalent of just under one million sales in the United States, according to MRC Data, the tracking service used in compiling Billboard’s charts. This week, “Encanto” tops the rapper Kodak Black’s new “Back for Everything” (No. 2) and albums by Morgan Wallen (No. 3), Gunna (No. 4) and the Weeknd (No. 5).On the singles chart, “Bruno” was replaced at No. 1 by Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves,” a song released nearly two years ago that was resuscitated as a TikTok meme and recently got a fresh boost on the radio.Even with the imprimatur of Miranda, the Tony-, Emmy- and Grammy-winning creator of “Hamilton,” “Encanto” might have seemed a long shot as a mainstream pop hit. The album is a pan-Latin fusion that draws on Colombian folk styles like vallenato and bambuco, with touches of salsa, Broadway bombast and rock en Español.In the past, Disney might have leaned on a Broadway-style ballad, with a globally recognized star singing in English, to propel one of its soundtracks. (Think Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from “The Lion King,” which went to No. 4 in 1994.)“Encanto” flips that playbook, showcasing Colombian stars like Carlos Vives and Sebastián Yatra. “Bruno,” a complex ensemble piece with a classic cha-cha beat, is credited to six of the film’s cast members. “Dos Oruguitas,” the first song Miranda wrote from start to finish in Spanish, is nominated for an Oscar.To record the album, producers brought in Colombian specialists to help bring authenticity to the rhythms and instrumental arrangements; most of the sessions, which took place last year, were conducted remotely.But even with its use of acoustic instruments like the cuatro and the tiple — two relatives of the guitar — the sound of “Encanto” is not as distant from the pop mainstream as it may seem. Mike Elizondo, one of the album’s producers, who has worked with Dr. Dre, Fiona Apple and the band Twenty One Pilots, pointed out the heavy bass that drives songs like “Bruno,” and the presence of synthesizers that would not be out of place on a rap hit.“When we were making the music to the soundtrack, Lin was very encouraging,” Elizondo said in an interview. “‘Let’s not try and water anything down,’” he recalled Miranda saying. “‘Let’s not feel like we have to follow any of the rules of prior soundtracks.’”Even so, “Bruno” was almost entirely absent from radio for most of its ascent. Disney did not begin promoting it to radio stations until late January, Bunt said. In recent weeks, “Bruno” has had fewer than 4,000 spins a week on radio stations. By comparison, in the week that Adele’s “Easy on Me” first reached No. 1, in October, American radio stations played it more than 18,000 times.Videos shared on social media helped contextualize the story behind “Bruno” in a way that radio play never could. TikTok clips show fans enacting the story, while a Disney clip on YouTube translates the lyrics into 21 languages, including Norwegian, Thai and Korean. The latest viral mutation in the success of “Bruno” is mash-ups with Doja Cat or Bruno Mars (get it?).In a sense, those videos capitalize on one of the advantages of any successful soundtrack, from the days of “Saturday Night Fever” to “Frozen,” Disney’s last comparable blockbuster: a story line that links the songs together and lets fans relive the film through its hits. That has become vital in the streaming age, when individual songs are increasingly disconnected from their albums.“They’re like potato chips: you can’t eat just one,” said Gary Trust, Billboard’s senior director of charts. “With ‘Encanto’ songs, you can’t just listen to one. You want to relive the whole story.” More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      DakhaBrakha, a Band From Kyiv, Saw a War Coming

      by

      “We can’t make any music,” the singer and cellist Nina Garenetska said. “This is our life now: An air raid siren goes off.”For years, the Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha has ended its shows chanting, “Stop Putin! No war!” What they had protested has now come to pass.DakhaBrakha, based in Kyiv, has long served as ambassadors for Ukrainian music and culture, at once preserving and transforming them. The group gives the polyphonic harmonies of Ukrainian traditional songs a contemporary, internationalist makeover, using African, Australian, Arabic, Indian and Russian instrumentation alongside punk, scatting, hip-hop, trance and dance influences. Their appearance has always been equally striking, especially for the three women in the quartet: towering fur hats, long matching dresses and wildly colorful Iris Apfel-style jewelry.“DhakhaBrakha often sings about love, heartbreak or the seasons, but as stand-in for bigger things — sometimes political things — and how they do it expands upon Ukrainian traditional music that uses metaphor in this way,” said Maria Sonevytsky, an associate professor of anthropology and music at Bard College, in New York, who devoted a chapter in a recent book to DakhaBrakha and gave a public lecture Wednesday on “Understanding the War on Ukraine Through Its Musical Culture.”The singer and cellist Nina Garenetska, the singer and multi-instrumentalist Marko Halanevych, the singer and multi-instrumentalist Iryna Kovalenko, and the singer and percussionist Olena Tsybulska came together in 2004 as a house band for the experimental theater company Dakh in Kyiv. The three women had studied as ethnomusicologists, and they had delved into Ukraine’s varied regional styles. About eight years ago, the band’s concerts began integrating videos of the violence near Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (“Independence Square”), when paramilitary police in Kyiv cracked down on people protesting after then-President Viktor Yanukovych broke a promise to sign political and free-trade agreements with the European Union, tilting his nation toward Russia instead. The Yanukovych government was ousted; later in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea.In the years since, as DakhaBrakha has gone on to tour the world many times over, the band has turned up the volume on its political messaging and activism.DakhaBrakha first performed in North America in 2013, in Toronto. It came to the United States a few months later, and has since performed at Globalfest in New York, Bonnaroo in Tennessee and twice as part of NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series. On Friday and Saturday, the San Francisco Jazz Festival will offer two free online broadcasts of the DakhaBrakha concert that was filmed at the SFJazz Center on July 18, 2018, and is encouraging viewers to donate to a fund to support the band.In a video chat on Tuesday, Halanevych and Garenetska spoke with The New York Times through translators alongside their longtime artistic manager, Iryna Gorban, about their last shows before the war began and their hopes for the future. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“The risk is that Ukrainians will disappear as a nation and that the Ukrainian culture will disappear,” the singer and multi-instrumentalist Marko Halanevych said.Carlos Gonzalez for The New York TimesMarko, I can see you are pulled over by the side of the road. Have you left Kyiv?HALANEVYCH Yes. It’s a total mess on the Ukrainian roads. I have with me my wife, also a musician, for Dakh Daughters, and two beautiful girls, 4 and 12. I am trying to save their lives by moving to a safer place near my relatives in the west — far from the border with Russia and Belarus. Not necessarily safe. My parents decided to stay. They said they would defend our house. [Laughs] I couldn’t persuade them. And I haven’t told my family yet, but I will be going back to Kyiv, to offer my help anywhere where it is needed, maybe in local defense.And you, Nina?GARENETSKA I am in our apartment with my son, who is a year and 10 months old, my husband and my mother, in Kyiv.How has it been, staying in Kyiv?GARENETSKA We can’t make any music. Because this is our life now: An air raid siren goes off — you go downstairs, you wait, you go back up. And this is nonstop. When it is too dangerous, we will run to the bomb shelter.Tell me about your last concert.GARENETSKA During our last concert, I was tearing up all the time with a weird mix: fear, love, but also hope and faith that everything will be OK. We had a small tour of five or six concerts in Europe — Ukraine, Slovenia, Prague, Oslo. From Oslo we flew to Zaporizhzhya [in southeastern Ukraine], and we came back to Kyiv literally for the day. The next day, we were going to continue touring, but we didn’t go because at 5 a.m. Thursday, the war started.And since then, what has DakhaBrakha heard from your fan base in Ukraine?GORBAN To share their emotions, many people here are posting on social media the last picture or video they took just before the war started. And we saw that many are from DakhaBrakha’s last concerts, where, as usual, DakhaBrakha says “Stop Putin!” and “No War!” and “Free Ukraine!” — and of course people are really in solidarity with this.How and when did DakhaBrakha decide to bring more overt statements about the conflict with Russia to your concerts?HALANEVYCH At a certain moment, we understood that this threat needed to be talked about more to send a stronger message to the world. And we started speaking out about how Ukraine had decided once and for all to leave Russia’s orbit and separate absolutely. We began saying “Stop Putin!” We showed the videos of the events at Maidan, we had posters, and since then, we say those mottos at every concert. But we were not heard.Musically, have your concerts addressed this conflict about Ukrainian sovereignty?GORBAN DakhaBrakha has produced songs from many different regions of Ukraine, and we tried to unite our country in this way, through music. At our concerts, during the last year, we played at each concert a song for people who defend our freedom. It is a very special moment for people; it makes them stand up and feel brave and confident. It makes you believe in our nation. We also have a special requiem devoted to those who gave their lives in this struggle. We almost never play this live, only very special occasions.What is at risk if this war lasts, culturally speaking?HALANEVYCH The risk is that Ukrainians will disappear as a nation and that the Ukrainian culture will disappear. For 300 years, Russia did everything for Ukrainian culture to disappear. Also, in recent years, the last 30 and especially the last eight, we Ukrainians feel what it is like to be a free people.How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 5Anna Netrebko. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Epic Games, Who's Behind Fortnite, Buys Bandcamp

      by

      Epic Games is acquiring an online music platform that has been embraced by musicians for its eclectic offerings and a payment system that favors artists.The world of independent music got a jolt on Wednesday when Bandcamp, the platform that has been a haven for musicians during the pandemic, announced that it had been acquired by Epic Games, the company behind blockbuster online video games like Fortnite.Terms of the deal were not disclosed. In a statement, Epic said that Bandcamp “will play an important role in Epic’s vision to build out a creator marketplace ecosystem for content, technology, games, art, music and more.”While a small player compared to giants like Spotify, Apple or YouTube, Bandcamp has become a favorite outlet among musicians for letting them control how their music is shared and sold and giving artists the bulk of the income they receive from those transactions. According to Bandcamp, artists collect an average of 82 percent of every sale, and the company says that since it went online in 2008, its payments to artists and labels are “closing in on $1 billion.” By comparison, last year Spotify said it had paid out $5 billion to music rights holders in 2020 alone.For listeners, Bandcamp has also become a cherished smorgasbord, filled with obscure but wonderful music they may find nowhere else.But as streaming has become the dominant format for music, artists have begun complaining, loudly, that they are not receiving their fair share of the bounty. According to industry estimates, Spotify pays record labels, music publishers and other rights holders about one-third of a cent for every click of a song; what portion of that money makes its way into a musician’s pocket is determined by their deals with those labels and publishers.On Bandcamp, on the other hand, artists can upload their own work and set the pricing rules for downloads of their own work — pay-what-you-wish pricing is common. During the pandemic, Bandcamp has waived its fees once a month on “Bandcamp Fridays,” bringing the company waves of goodwill. Even more surprising, Bandcamp says it has been profitable since 2012. (Last year, Spotify had $10.7 billion in revenue and lost about $276 million, according to company reports.)Epic Games, which is based in Cary, N.C., and is privately owned, said little about its plans for music, and a company spokeswoman declined to answer further questions about the deal. But Epic’s statement on Wednesday indicated that it was interested in Bandcamp as a direct-to-consumer marketplace. “Epic and Bandcamp share a mission of building the most artist-friendly platform that enables creators to keep the majority of their hard-earned money,” the company wrote.Fortnite, Epic’s flagship game, has been one of the most innovative outlets for music in video games, allowing artists to appear virtually, often in elaborately produced segments In April 2020, the rapper Travis Scott made what was widely seen as a breakthrough appearance, drawing 28 million players to his virtual performance. For Halloween that year, the Latin pop star J Balvin gave a campy concert dressed as a green-haired Frankenstein’s monster, backed by dancers in costume as ghosts and zombie Cyclopes.Epic has also taken center stage in one of the most high-profile debates in current tech policy. The company sued Apple in 2020, saying that the terms of its App Store — which takes payment commissions of up to 30 percent — were unfair. Epic also fought the public-relations battle around that lawsuit with slick, meme-ready content like “Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite,” a parody of Apple’s famous “1984” TV ad that introduced its Mac computer as a joyful disrupter of gray tech monopolies.Last year, in a split decision, a federal judge ordered Apple to give app developers a way for their customers to pay for services that could bypass Apple’s system. Both Apple and Epic Games have appealed that decision.In a statement on Bandcamp’s website, Ethan Diamond, Bandcamp’s chief executive and co-founder, seemed to pre-emptively dispel worries about his platform’s future, and about its value to artists.“Bandcamp will keep operating as a stand-alone marketplace and music community, and I will continue to lead our team,” Diamond wrote, telling artists that “you’ll still have the same control over how you offer your music, Bandcamp Fridays will continue as planned, and the Daily will keep highlighting the diverse, amazing music on the site.” The deal with Epic Games, he said, would help Bandcamp expand internationally and “push development forward across Bandcamp.”As news of the deal spread, some independent artists sounded a note of cautious optimism. Tom Gray of the British band Gomez, who has been a leading critic of Spotify and of the streaming economy in general, tweeted a request for Epic Games: “Please think seriously and long,” he wrote, “about whatever you do with the one place independent artists can always rely on for direct income from recorded music.” More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Valery Gergiev and Anna Netrebko's Putin Ties Threaten Their Careers

      by

      The Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and the diva Anna Netrebko have lost engagements because of their ties to Putin, as geopolitics and music collide once again.A conductor, perceived to be aligned with the opposition in wartime, pushed from his podium in disgrace.Another, two decades later, offered a prestigious position, only to withdraw under pressure after protests of his ties to a despised foreign regime.The first, Karl Muck, a German-Swiss maestro, led the Boston Symphony Orchestra until he was arrested and interned, in what is now widely viewed as a shameful example of anti-German hysteria at the start of World War I.The profound musical legacy of the second — Wilhelm Furtwängler, who never joined the Nazi Party but was essentially its court conductor, dooming his appointment to the New York Philharmonic — still struggles to emerge from his association with Hitler.How will we think of Valery Gergiev a century from now?One of the world’s leading conductors, he has in just the last week lost a series of engagements and positions, including as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, for not disavowing the war in Ukraine being waged by his longtime friend and ally, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.The swift unraveling of his international career — and the decision of Anna Netrebko, a Russian diva who is one of the biggest stars in opera, to withdraw from performances amid renewed attention to her own ties to Mr. Putin — raises a host of difficult questions.What is the point at which cultural exchange — always a blur between being a humanizing balm and a tool of propaganda, a co-opting of music’s supposed neutrality — becomes unbearable? What is sufficient distance from authoritarian leadership?And what is sufficient disavowal, particularly in a context when speaking up could threaten the safety of artists or their families?Mr. Gergiev, with his quasi-governmental role as general and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, is closer to Furtwängler than to Muck. He has endorsed Mr. Putin in the past and promoted his policies with concerts in Russia and abroad. But when he has spoken — he has remained silent through this latest firestorm — he has tended to sound like Furtwängler, who longed to focus only on scores and said, “My job is music.”The legacy of the great conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler has been tainted by his association with Hitler.Teldec“Am not politician, but exponent of German music, which belongs to all humanity regardless of politics,” Furtwängler wrote in 1936, in clipped telegram style, withdrawing under pressure from the New York Philharmonic post.Classical music likes to think of itself this way: floating serenely above politics, in a realm of beauty and unity. Its repertory — so much of it composed in the distant past — seems insulated from present-day conflicts. What can Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony do except good?But politics and music — a field in which Russian performers have long been stars — have swiftly collided since the invasion of Ukraine. The Mariinsky Orchestra’s tours have been canceled. On Sunday, the Metropolitan Opera announced that it would no longer engage with performers or other organizations that have voiced support for Mr. Putin. Presenters in the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands have announced the cancellations of performances by some artists who support Mr. Putin.Ms. Netrebko had engagements at the Bavarian State Opera canceled, and then announced that she planned to “step back from performing for the time being,” withdrawing from her upcoming dates at the Zurich Opera.The Russian diva Anna Netrebko and Mr. Gergiev appeared together with the Vienna Philharmonic in 2018.Lisi Niesner/ReutersThe artistic director in Zurich, Andreas Homoki, noted some of the complexities, welcoming a statement that Ms. Netrebko made opposing the war but suggesting that her failure to condemn Mr. Putin put her at odds with the opera house’s position. But Mr. Homoki took pains to note that his company did not “consider it appropriate to judge the decisions and actions of citizens of repressive regimes based on the perspective of those living in a Western European democracy.”In her first public statement on the war, in an Instagram post Saturday morning, Ms. Netrebko — who has long been criticized for her ties to Mr. Putin, and was photographed in 2014 holding a flag used by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine — initially seemed to be issuing the kind of statement that had been lacking from Mr. Gergiev.“First of all: I am opposed to this war.” So far, so good.“I am Russian and I love my country,” Ms. Netrebko went on, “but I have many friends in Ukraine and the pain and suffering right now breaks my heart. I want this war to end and for people to be able to live in peace.”Though she conspicuously didn’t mention Mr. Putin, Ms. Netrebko’s words were simple and tender, a needle — love of her country and empathy for another — seemingly threaded.But unfortunately for those of us who have cherished her as a performer, there was more. In the next slide, she added that “forcing artists, or any public figure, to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland is not right.”“I am not a political person,” she wrote, echoing the Furtwängler perspective. “I am not an expert in politics. I am an artist and my purpose is to unite people across political divides.”She then added to her Instagram story, alongside heart and praying-hands emojis, a text that used an expletive in reference to her Western critics, and said they were “as evil as blind aggressors.”So much for threading the needle. And a series of posts over the following days, which were later deleted, only muddied the waters further.What could have smoothed over criticism instead inflamed it. The politically outspoken pianist Igor Levit, who was born in Russia, did not mention Ms. Netrebko by name in his own Instagram post on Sunday morning, but wrote, “Being a musician does not free you from being a citizen, from taking responsibility, from being a grown-up.”“PS,” he added: “And never, never bring up music and your being a musician as an excuse. Do not insult art.”Ms. Netrebko performs at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in 2014.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe Met, where Ms. Netrebko is scheduled to star in Puccini’s “Turandot” this spring, seemed to have her in mind — along with a producing partnership with the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow — when it made its announcement on Sunday.“While we believe strongly in the warm friendship and cultural exchange that has long existed between the artists and artistic institutions of Russia and the United States,” the company’s general manager, Peter Gelb, said in a video statement, “we can no longer engage with artists or institutions that support Putin or are supported by him.”It’s true: Ms. Netrebko is not a politician, expert or otherwise. In this she is unlike Mr. Gergiev, who has repeatedly and explicitly worked as a government propagandist, leading battlefield concerts in South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia, in 2008, and in Palmyra after that Syrian site was retaken by Syrian and Russian forces in 2016. In Ossetia, he even led Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony, completed during the German siege of that city in World War II and as charged a musical memorial as there is to Russian suffering.Mr. Gergiev conducting in Palmyra, after the ancient city was retaken by Syrian and Russian forces in 2016.Olga Balashova/Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, via Associated PressBut Ms. Netrebko is certainly a political actor — the kind of “political person” she denies being. Again and again in the past, she has voiced her political opinions, publicly if vaguely. (She said that she had been caught off-guard when she was handed the separatist flag in that 2014 photograph with a separatist leader, which was taken after she gave him a donation for a theater in a region controlled by separatists; that donation, she claimed at the time, was “not about politics.”)Ms. Netrebko can hold whichever flag she wants, of course. But she should not be surprised that there are consequences. In January 2015, after her Met performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta” under Mr. Gergiev’s baton, a protester climbed onto the stage during her curtain call and unfurled a banner that called them “active contributors to Putin’s war against Ukraine.”The Met, which opened a performance this week with the Ukrainian national anthem, has left vague the way it intends to police its new test. But I hope the company will look at the existing record rather than requiring new, public words from artists who may have legitimate reasons of safety to remain silent about Mr. Putin and his actions. Eliciting — coercing, some might say — affirmative statements hardly seems the right way to oppose authoritarianism.Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4A city is captured. More