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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love the Organ

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      Listen to the biggest, loudest, most extravagant (yet incredibly subtle) instrument of them all.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 and Bach.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love the grandeur and colors of the organ — a full orchestra in a single instrument. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆James McVinnie, organistIf I had a time machine, I would go back to 1740 to hear Johann Sebastian Bach play the organ in Leipzig, Germany. Bach is the ultimate composer for this extraordinary, timeless instrument. Much of his organ music is intense, revealing its multilayered, life-affirming majesty slowly, through repeated listening. The opening to his 29th cantata, however, leaps and bounds with immediate joy. There is something visceral about hearing this music played live, on a great organ, in a vast cathedral space: The building shakes, the air shimmers and the music is as much felt as heard.Bach’s “Wir danken dir, Gott”Robert Quinney (Hyperion)◆ ◆ ◆Joy-Leilani Garbutt, organist and Boulanger Initiative co-founderThis piece stops me in my tracks every time I hear it, conjuring the phrases “tour de force” and “pièce de résistance.” In an incredible display of badassery, Demessieux unleashes the full spectrum of the organ’s capabilities, with all its sounds, timbres, colors and contrasts. Too often people associate this instrument with dirges or spooky music; this piece is energetic and exuberant.The middle section is like a slow jazz waltz sound bath, filled with luscious chords and featuring an inverted texture that places the solo in the pedals and the bass line on the keyboards. As a performer, it’s always a great adventure to tackle music written by a virtuoso composer to showcase her own instrument. Demessieux knows exactly what the organ can do, and she uses all of it.Jeanne Demessieux’s “Te Deum”Hampus Lindwall (Ligia)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music editorIt hardly gets grander than Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony, which he titled “with organ.” And yet, with the right musicians, this gigantic Romantic wedding cake of a piece is shining elegance, not overkill. After its first C-major blast in the finale, the organ is woven into the orchestra so lovingly that it never seems to be used for mere effect; the instrument is treated like a jewel, to be placed in one of the repertory’s most sumptuous, stirring settings. A delightful bonus in this finely detailed recording: a father-and-son pair of eminences as organist and conductor.Saint-Saëns’s Third SymphonyDaniel Roth; Les Siècles; François-Xavier Roth, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)◆ ◆ ◆Sarah Kirkland Snider, composerOne remarkable thing about the organ is its ability to generate acoustic sounds that seem electronic. The Scottish composer Claire M. Singer explores this to rapturous effect in “The Molendinar,” a slowly morphing, 25-minute journey that intricately builds beautiful, bending overtones over a simple ground bass through her manipulation of the organ’s mechanical stop action. The Molendinar is a hidden watercourse above which the city of Glasgow was founded in the sixth century, but the music’s grand, glacial build, and ghostly evanescence, remind me of the Breton legend of Ys, its mythological cathedral rising and then sinking back into the ocean.Claire M. Singer’s “The Molendinar”Claire M. Singer◆ ◆ ◆Cameron Carpenter, organistIf I’m introducing someone, I can only submit my most recent recording, since it is played on an instrument I designed whose very point is to demonstrate the possibilities of the modern organ. The transition of the instrument to the digital realm gives us a glimpse of the part of it that transcends moving parts. In pairing Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations with Howard Hanson‘s 1930 Symphony No. 2, “Romantic,” I wanted to contrast two masterpieces from outside the organ repertoire. I didn’t intrude on any organ works in which others are better versed, and the instrument’s clarity and color helps us to understand these well-loved pieces anew.Howard Hanson’s “Romantic” SymphonyCameron Carpenter (Decca Gold)◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerAlthough César Franck wrote relatively few works for the organ, he was still arguably the greatest composer for the instrument since Bach, and it was in Bach’s shadow that he composed three chorales in 1890, the year he died. What Franck called a chorale, though, bears little resemblance to Bach’s settings of hymn tunes; the three are vast, 15-minute ruminations on belief, none more spiritual than the second, a passacaglia that hypnotically winds its way to what the ear thinks is going to be an imposing declaration of faith, before it falls away to a quieter, more personal hope.Franck’s Chorale No. 2 in B minorJeanne Demessieux (Eloquence)◆ ◆ ◆Paul Jacobs, organistBeethoven considered organists “the greatest of all virtuosi.” But if making music with all four limbs isn’t hard enough, Lou Harrison also expects the soloist in his Concerto for Organ and Percussion to play clamorous clusters of keys with felt padded slabs — to match a full battery of percussion that includes Chinese crash cymbals, oxygen tank bells and gongs galore. While I’ve always prized the organ’s uncanny ability to arouse our numinous instincts, sometimes we just want to let our hair down. The irrepressible joy of the final movement will wake the dead and make them dance.Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Organ with Percussion OrchestraPaul Jacobs; San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor (SFS Media)◆ ◆ ◆Anthony Tommasini, Times chief classical music criticThe young Aaron Copland wrote his Symphony for Organ and Orchestra at the behest of his teacher, Nadia Boulanger, who played the solo part at the premiere, in 1925. Copland’s friend and colleague Virgil Thomson later described the symphony as “the voice of America in our generation.” He was right. While looking back at the European symphonic heritage, Copland’s ambitious piece is fresh, direct, unsentimental and sassy in a way that seems somehow American, especially the feisty, unabashedly dissonant finale. And I love the ruminative opening Andante, which glows and sighs in this live recording.Copland’s Organ SymphonyPaul Jacobs; San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor (SFS Media)◆ ◆ ◆Javier C. Hernández, Times classical music and dance reporterHandel is best known for his operas and oratorios. But his organ concertos contain some of his most lively and playful music. A gifted virtuoso on the instrument, he performed several of these pieces as entertainment for audiences between acts of his oratorios. The Organ Concerto in F, which premiered in 1739, goes by the nickname “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale” for its chirpy motifs. Marie-Claire Alain plays with precision and zeal, gliding through the many improvisatory sections.Handel’s Organ Concerto No. 13Marie-Claire Alain; Orchestra de Chambre Jean-François Paillard (Erato)◆ ◆ ◆Nico Muhly, composerThe organ in church can be like a piece of beautiful architecture, or a wonderful sermon: It is sometimes taken for granted. And there is a subtle art to playing with a choir; the organist must wrestle with the acoustics of the space to make sure everything aligns, as the player is oftentimes quite far from the singers, and the pipes can be practically miles away.One beautiful challenge is the “Jubilate” from Herbert Howells’s morning service for the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and the extraordinary and specific acoustics of the chapel there. Even when the organ is under the choir, Howells is masterly at doubling the voices and weaving in and out of them, foretelling little themes or echoing them after. The acoustics of the space turn the simple counterpoint into something intentionally blurry but somehow precise, like a house at night lit from within but seen from outside, with shapes flickering in and out of view.The beginning of the piece starts with the organ in its simplest incarnation, just holding an E-flat minor chord. In the last phrase, on the text “world without end, amen,” the choir sings in unison, and the organ, here the primary voice, unspools a long melody, crabwise but ultimately pointing downward toward a resolution in E-flat major.Herbert Howells’s “Jubilate”Peter Barley; King’s College Choir; Stephen Cleobury, conductor (Argo)◆ ◆ ◆Joshua Barone, Times editorYou can’t help but appreciate the too-muchness of the organ. Its extremity goes both ways: It can whisper, or shake the ground you stand on with the awe-inspiring sound of a full-voiced choir. Both ends of the spectrum coexist in Samuel Barber’s 1960 “Toccata Festiva.” About two-thirds into the piece, after an opening of Romantic excess and concerto-like flair, comes a cadenza that rises from foreboding depths to episodes that are by turns agile, luminous and borderline outrageous — but arriving at a mysterious peace. When the orchestra returns in a crowded dash to the ending, all of its might is necessary to meet the grandeur of what may be our most extravagant instrument.Barber’s “Toccata Festiva”Paul Jacobs; Lucerne Symphony Orchestra; James Gaffigan, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)◆ ◆ ◆Anna Lapwood, organistIt’s hard not to be impressed by the sheer power a pipe organ can produce, but it is also an instrument with an amazing capacity for beauty and sensitivity, characteristics that are often overlooked when talking about it. We hear this more subtle side in Robilliard’s transcription of Fauré’s “Sicilienne,” performed here by Thomas Ospital in the Church of St. Eustache in Paris. It’s in this kind of music that the building becomes integral to the success of a performance; as we hear the individual flute stops dancing around the space, the acoustic bloom becomes an architectural sustaining pedal.Fauré’s “Sicilienne”Thomas Ospital◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times writerWhen the Los Angeles Philharmonic wanted to commission organ music from Terry Riley, they let him hang out all night playing on Hurricane Mama, the potent pipe instrument inside Walt Disney Concert Hall. Some of the material Riley improvised there made its way into his 2013 concerto “At the Royal Majestic.” One of his grandest late-career works, it’s punchy, mystical and gorgeous. (It’s also a reminder that his artistic development did not stop with the early Minimalist touchstone “In C.”)The close of the first movement — called “Negro Hall,” after a drawing by the fin-de-siècle Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli — occasionally seesaws between sugar-sweet orchestral motifs and gloomier exhalations from the organ. Riley presents such contrasts not with postmodern irony, but with tangible, genuine delight. Even after a climactic turn toward frenzied rhythmic patterns, his joyous sensibility is always perceptible, and the final chords are exhilarating.Terry Riley’s “At the Royal Majestic”Todd Wilson; Nashville Symphony; Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor (Naxos)◆ ◆ ◆Olivier Latry, an organist at Notre-DameApril 15, 2019: The whole world was horrified to discover the images of Notre-Dame on fire. A few weeks earlier, I was in the cathedral recording this “Little” Fugue in G minor for an album called “Bach to the Future.”“Little” — but it is nevertheless great Bach! In a few minutes, the cantor of Leipzig tells us such a story. I love the fragility that shines throughout this work, a fragility that brings us back to our human condition in front of current events: the fire of Notre-Dame, the health situation, climate change. May this music make us aware of our determining role in humanity.Bach’s Fugue in G minor, BWV 578Olivier Latry (La Prima Volta)◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      Alvin Lucier, Probing Composer of Soundscapes, Is Dead at 90

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      His experimental music was rooted in the physics of sound and might yield unpredictable results — in one instance a Beatles song emanating from a teapot.Alvin Lucier, an influential experimental composer whose works focused less on traditional musical elements like melody and harmony than on the scientific underpinnings of sound and of listeners’ perceptions, died on Wednesday at his home in Middletown, Conn., where he had taught for decades at Wesleyan University. He was 90.His daughter, Amanda Lucier, said the cause was complications after a fall.Unlike composers who have the goal of painting an aural picture, evoking particular emotions, creating a dramatic narrative or exploring carefully plotted rhythmic interactions, Mr. Lucier seemed to approach his works as experiments that might yield unpredictable soundscapes.A finished work could sound like howling feedback, electronic crackling or — in the case of his best-known piece, “I Am Sitting in a Room” (1969) — a spoken text that with repetition becomes increasingly distorted and overlaid with reverberation until it is transformed into a symphony of dancing overtones.And though his music was rooted in the physics of sound, variables like the size and shape of the performance space or the alpha wave patterns a performer generates made his pieces sound different from one performance to the next.Mr. Lucier began many of his projects by wondering what kinds of sounds would emerge from a specific process, like tapping a pair of pencils or detecting brain waves. He would then reduce the variables into a single focus.Mr. Lucier in 1967. He would sometimes employ high-tech gadgetry in composing.via Lucier family“My main activity composing is to eliminate many different possibilities in a piece,” he told the producers of “No Ideas but in Things,” a 2013 film portrait of him by Viola Rusche and Hauke Harder. “When I start, I have so many different ideas about how to put the piece together, and I have to work and think hard until I get to the point where only the essential components are there.”In “I Am Sitting in a Room,” Mr. Lucier began by quietly reading a short statement describing what he is doing. “I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now,” the text begins. “I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed.”The room’s acoustics, as well as audio distortions that occur when a tape is rerecorded over and over, yields a gradually changing sound in which, after 10 minutes, the spoken text is buried in reverberation and overtones, and unintelligible. During the final section, high-pitched overtones coalesce into eerie, slow-moving melodies.Other works are tempered by a wry sense of humor. In “Nothing Is Real” (1990), Mr. Lucier has a pianist play the melody of the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” scattering the song’s phrases throughout the piano’s range. The performance is recorded and immediately played back through a small speaker inside a teapot, which works as a sound-altering resonant chamber. Mr. Lucier then has the pianist open and close the teapot’s lid to further manipulate the tone of the recording.Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr., was born in Nashua, N.H., on May 14, 1931. His father was a lawyer who was elected mayor of Nashua when Alvin was 3. Alvin Sr. was also an amateur violinist who met his future wife, Kathryn E. Lemery, when he filled in with a dance band in which she was the pianist.The Luciers encouraged their son’s interest in music, but although he picked up the rudiments of piano playing from his mother, he refused to take lessons, preferring to play the drums. His principal interest at the time was jazz, but he became interested in contemporary classical music when he found a recording of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Serenade.”“I bought it and it was shocking,” Mr. Lucier said in a 2005 interview with NewMusicBox. “It didn’t make any sense, but there was something about it that kept my interest. At that point I decided I was interested in challenging things.”Mr. Lucier in 1997. His best-known work was “I Am Sitting in a Room,” a spoken text that, with repetition, becomes increasingly distorted and overlaid with reverberation until it is transformed into a symphony of dancing overtones.Joyce Dopkeen/The New York TimesHe studied composition and music theory at Yale University, where his teachers included Howard Boatwright and Quincy Porter. He received his bachelor’s degree there in 1954 and his master’s in 1960 at Brandeis University, where he studied with Arthur Berger and Harold Shapero. During those years he composed in a neo-Classical style, a preference reinforced by his studies at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts with Aaron Copland and Lukas Foss during the summers of 1958 and ’59.Mr. Lucier’s change of heart occurred during a two-year stay in Rome as a Fulbright scholar, from 1960 to 1962. Attending a 1960 concert by the composers John Cage and David Tudor and the choreographer Merce Cunningham at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Mr. Lucier was at first outraged by the chance processes that Cage and Tudor were exploring. But as he thought about the concert in the days that followed, he began to understand Cage’s and Tudor’s rejection of conventional musical formats as both important and necessary.“Something about it was so wonderful and exhilarating, I decided that I wanted to involve myself in that,” he told The New York Times in 1997. “I was literally exhausted by the neo-Classic style, and I had a couple of teachers that were at an impasse. They were getting bitter, and they were sort of losing their enthusiasm. And I was just at that age where I was ready for something new. But I didn’t know what to do.”He found an answer in 1965, when he met Edmond Dewan, a physicist who had invented a brain wave amplifier. Mr. Lucier was by then on the Brandeis faculty and had won considerable attention in new-music circles by presiding over programs, both at Brandeis and in New York, that included premieres by Cage, Earl Brown, Christian Wolff and Terry Riley. Dr. Dewan offered the use of his invention to Mr. Lucier, who explored its possibilities in what became the breakthrough work in his new style, “Music for Solo Performer” (1965).For that piece, the performer sits before an audience with sensors strapped around his forehead, closed eyes and a clear mind. The waves are amplified and sent to loudspeakers, the vibrating cones of which cause percussion instruments to sound.The brain wave amplifier gave way to other high-tech gadgetry. Mr. Lucier created “Vespers” (1968) using echolocation devices — pulse oscillators used by the blind and others to determine distances. He had the gear operated by blindfolded performers moving through a space, the devices clicking at different speeds and intensities as they approach walls and other objects.Mr. Lucier earlier this year. He taught composition at Wesleyan University from 1968 to 2011.Jillian Freyer for The New York TimesIn 1966, Mr. Lucier formed the Sonic Arts Union with a group of like-minded avant-gardists, among them the composers Robert Ashley, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma. The group toured in the United States and Europe, with each composer performing his own music, until 1976. They were joined at times by visual artists, including Mr. Lucier’s first wife, Mary Lucier. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1972.Mr. Lucier later married Wendy Stokes, a former dancer and a psychiatric advanced-practice registered nurse. She survives him along with their daughter, Amanda.. In addition to their Middletown home, Mr. Lucier and his wife owned a studio apartment in Manhattan.He joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1968 and taught composition there until his retirement in 2011. Starting in the mid-1980s, he devoted himself increasingly to instrumental and ensemble works. The Bang on a Can All-Stars, Alter Ego, Ensemble Pamplemousse and ICE are among the groups that commissioned works from him.“I don’t really enjoy listening to my own music,” Mr. Lucier told NewMusicBox. “But maybe it’s good because it keeps me thinking and it keeps me from getting complacent.”Maia Coleman contributed reporting. More

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      Looking Again at Amy Winehouse, 10 Years After Her Death

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      In “Amy: Beyond the Stage,” the Design Museum in London explores — and tries to somewhat reframe — the “Back to Black” singer’s life and legacy.LONDON — On the wall of a museum here hangs a handwritten page from Amy Winehouse’s teenage notebook, listing her “fame ambitions.” There are 14 goals, including “to be photographed by David LaChapelle” (the photographer who would later direct the music video for her song “Tears Dry on Their Own”) and “to do a movie where I look ugly.”A decade after her death at 27, the exhibition “Amy: Beyond the Stage” at the Design Museum displays both intimate items — like the goal list — and objects that point to the singer’s influences in an attempt to add new dimensions to how we understand Winehouse’s short career and legacy, both of which are often overshadowed by her struggles with addiction.Winehouse’s memory has been shaped, in part, by documentaries like “Amy” from 2015, which won an Oscar, and by artists who cite her as an influence — “I owe 90 percent of my career to her,” Adele said onstage in 2016.Speaking in an interview at the museum, Janis Winehouse, the singer’s mother, said that her daughter was “difficult” growing up. “We had a relationship: I would say, ‘Amy don’t,’ and she would take it as, ‘Amy carry on,’ and that’s how it worked,” she said.Winehouse’s stepfather, Richard Collins, added that the musician “was very strong, very charismatic, she was manipulative, she was loving, she was naughty, headstrong and she could sing — and it was obvious.”The idea for an exhibition that could touch on many of these facets was brought to the Design Museum by Naomi Parry, Winehouse’s friend and stylist, in the summer of 2020. After 10 years, Parry hoped that people would be receptive to thinking about Winehouse’s story in a different way.A wall of photographs in the exhibition depict the evolution of Winehouse’s style around the release of her first album, “Frank,” in 2003.Ed ReeveIn the years immediately after her death, “people weren’t ready to talk about anything but the tragedy, which I understood,” Parry, who is an adviser to the exhibition, said in a recent interview. But more recently, she has “needed the narrative to shift slightly to a more positive focus on her life because it was a real struggle constantly seeing books and stories and negative things about my friend.”There was also another motivation. Last month, there was an auction of a number of the singer’s belongings from her estate, which is administered by her father, Mitch Winehouse. . “It was kind of our last opportunity whilst we had things in our control to do this,” Parry said.The exhibition charts Winehouse’s evolution and influences, from her early years growing up in the Southgate suburb of north London to the Black artists who inspired her, as well as the clothes and hair that made up her distinctive aesthetic..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Here’s a look at some of the items on display, and what they reveal about the singer.Winehouse wore this yellow dress, second from left, to the BRIT Awards in 2007. She paired it with a black bra.Ed ReeveDress by PreenWinehouse wore a yellow dress from the designer Preen in 2007 at the BRIT Awards, an annual ceremony celebrating British popular music. That year, “Back to Black” was nominated for album of the year, and Winehouse took home the award for best British female artist.For Parry, the BRIT Awards marked a moment in which the singer’s signature vintage style — the beehive, short dresses and thick eyeliner — took shape.Winehouse customized the outfit by wearing a black bra underneath. “When we did the fitting, she tried it on without a bra, and I was like, ‘It looks incredible,’” Parry said. Before the event, however, Winehouse tried the dress on again over her bra and decided she preferred it that way.Parry said that Winehouse often personalized outfits: Before one performance, Parry had to cut off the bottom of a Dolce & Gabbana dress because Winehouse wanted it shorter. “It was always a conversation,” Parry said of the alterations. “But she would always win.”In one installation at the Design Museum, visitors may feel like they’re stepping into the London recording studio where parts of “Back to Black” were recorded. Ed Reeve‘In the Studio’ InstallationThis installation, created by Chiara Stephenson, a stage and costume designer, is inspired by Metropolis Studios, the London recording studio where parts of Winehouse’s 2006 album “Back to Black” were recorded and mixed. The constructed “booth” plays footage of Winehouse, her contemporaries and influences.“It kind of felt like it was overnight,” Parry said of Winehouse’s fame after the album’s release. “Suddenly she had paparazzi camped directly outside her house. For anybody, whether they had mental health issues or not, that is a lot.”A jacket from a 2008 collection that Karl Lagerfeld designed for Chanel.On the runway, models sported Winehouse-style beehives. Ed ReeveJacket From Chanel’s Métiers d’Art Pre-Fall CollectionThis piece is from Chanel’s 2008 Métiers d’Art collection, designed by Karl Lagerfeld. On the runway, many of the models sported beehives and heavy eyeliner, inspired by Winehouse.While Winehouse was confident in her abilities as a singer, Parry said, “I think it completely blew her mind when people, like Lagerfeld, knew who she was and were inspired by her.”Winehouse’s influence on high-fashion houses continued after her death — in 2012 Jean Paul Gaultier unveiled a line paying even more direct homage to the singer — as did her effect on street style more broadly.“In the wake of Amy’s death, there were women all over the streets of London, Paris, New York wearing beehives in all different forms,” said Priya Khanchandani, the show’s curator. “I think some people were doing it without necessarily realizing that it came from Amy.”After Winehouse’s death, fans wrote messages to her on the street signs outside her north London home.Ed ReeveCamden Square and Murray Street SignsFans and well-wishers wrote on these street signs outside Winehouse’s home in the aftermath of her death in July 2011. “The fans were in the square singing Amy’s songs and crying,” said Collins, Winehouse’s stepfather.The council had planned to take the signs down and replace them, Collins said, but Winehouse’s manager persuaded officials to hand them over to the family.Parry, who lived with Winehouse from January to May 2011, said of the public outpouring: “Looking back on it, it was such an amazing thing how many people felt like they experienced her to the point where they feel physical grief.”Fred Perry and Winehouse collaborated on a collection in 2010.Ed ReeveFred Perry CollectionThese selected items come from the 2010 collaboration between the clothing brand Fred Perry and Winehouse.Parry had conversations with Winehouse about starting a label together and thought that a collaboration with Fred Perry — a brand that Winehouse loved and that had strong connections to musical subcultures — would be a way for her to enter the fashion world.Remembering Winehouse’s excitement at the prospect of working with the brand, Parry described it as “like a child that was about to go into their favorite sweet shop.”Working on the collection was an escape for Winehouse, Parry said: “It was still doing something creative, but it wasn’t the pressure of music. It was something new and something she could get her teeth into.”During her lifetime, the media often fetishized Winehouse’s troubles or didn’t “treat them with the gravity that they should have,” said Priya Khanchandani, the show’s curator.Ed Reeve‘In the Limelight’ InstallationThese are a selection of articles written about Winehouse, many of which address her substance use.“The exhibition sets out to be celebratory of Amy and her legacy, but it would be impossible to do an exhibition about Amy and not talk about the struggles that she faced,” said Khanchandani, the show’s curator. At the time, the media often fetishized Winehouse’s troubles or didn’t “treat them with the gravity that they should have,” she said.Stories included here describe Winehouse as “a tortured soul” and “the nation’s high priestess of hedonism.”Khanchandani took care to properly frame this part of the exhibition, calling on experts who deal with addiction and body image to workshop the exhibit’s language. “I wanted to shift the discourse to approach these issues through a critical lens,” she said. More

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      Stephen Sondheim Discusses a Gender-Swapped ‘Company’

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      Days before he died, Stephen Sondheim and the director Marianne Elliott chatted about a Broadway revival of his 1970 musical. With a gender swap, it has a “different flavor,” he said.ROXBURY, Conn. — Had I known what was about to happen, I would have asked so many different questions. But I didn’t, and, presumably, neither did he.It was Nov. 21, a lovely fall Sunday, and I had driven to rural Connecticut to talk with one of the greatest figures in musical theater history, Stephen Sondheim, about a Broadway revival of his seminal concept musical, “Company.”We chatted about the show with its director, Marianne Elliott, who joined us for the interview. We talked too, about an unfinished musical he was hoping to complete (“Square One,” adapted from two Luis Buñuel films), his work habits (“I’m a procrastinator”) and his health (“Outside of my sprained ankle, OK”). And he showed us a few rooms in the house, which he had used for years as a weekend getaway, and where he had spent most of his time during the pandemic.Five days after our conversation, Sondheim died. He was 91.What stands out, as I think back on that afternoon? Every time I looked up, I saw a big, bold “Company” artwork, a multicolored print, by Deborah Kass, with the words “Being Alive” — the title of one of the show’s biggest songs.There was the black standard poodle that joined us in the kitchen as I was tested by a Covid concierge, and then stopped by to visit as we began the interview; Sondheim explained that he had had two, Willie and Addie, named after the brothers in his last finished musical, “Road Show,” but that Addie had recently died.The house was a treasure trove, jam-packed with artifacts: set pieces from “Sunday in the Park With George,” a suspended clock face rescued from a London synagogue, orreries and Japanese trick boxes, a portrait by Annie Leibovitz and posters from international productions of his shows. Then I spotted the Stephen Sondheim action figure. “That was sent to me,” he said, laughing. “I thought it was hilarious. At first I was horrified. Then I was flattered.”Larry Kert as Bobby and Susan Browning as April in the original Broadway production of “Company.” Friedman-Abeles/The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsGender flip: Katrina Lenk as Bobbie and Claybourne Elder as Andy in the revival of the show, now on Broadway.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Company,” with music and lyrics by Sondheim and a book by George Furth, first ran on Broadway in 1970 (and won the Tony for best musical the following year). The nonlinear show is about a single person, just turning 35, feeling pressure to settle down from paired-off friends.The current revival, which changes the gender of the protagonist (the male Bobby is now the female Bobbie), is now in previews and is scheduled to open on Dec. 9, following a lengthy pandemic delay. Over the course of 90 minutes, we mostly talked about the new revival, but he also offered flashes of insight about theater and theater-making.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Let’s talk about why you decided to revisit “Company.”STEPHEN SONDHEIM I revisited it because Marianne wanted to. I was a big fan of Marianne’s. I was skeptical. Then she did a workshop, and videoed it, and there was a young cameraman there who had never heard of the show. When Marianne told him about what the show was originally, he said, “You mean it worked with a guy?” And then I knew that we had a show.MARIANNE ELLIOTT I’d always loved “Company.” I’d never seen it actually, but I listened to it quite a lot. But if it was set now, it feels like it would have more potency if it was with a female Bobbie, because a male Bobby who is 35 now, who has clearly got a lovely life — lots of friends, lots of girlfriends, obviously doing quite well, an apartment in the city — nobody’s going to be pushing him into getting married. They’d probably just slap him on the back and say, “Have a great time.” But for a woman at 35, obviously, it’s quite a threshold. There’s going to be a lot of pressure on her from her friends to make a wish that she will actually “sort her life out” and settle down and get married and have a family, maybe.You had turned down a proposal for an all-male “Company” with a gay Bobby, directed by John Tiffany.SONDHEIM Yes. There were certain scenes that worked really well, and certain scenes that just seemed forced. Actually the scenes that worked best were what we call the girlfriend scenes. But the marriage scenes didn’t really work well.So why did you say yes to this one?SONDHEIM My feeling about the theater is the thing that makes it different from movies and television is that you can do it in different ways from generation to generation. Just as you can have many different actors play Hamlet, you can have many different ways of looking at a show without distorting it. And also, shows change their life according to what is going on in the world around them. “Assassins” now has an entirely different and ominous quality to it because of what’s going on with guns and violence. “Company” has a different flavor than it had before feminism really got a foothold.ELLIOTT I wish more people thought that way. Because theater is ephemeral. It is about the now. Even if you set it in another period, it should have something to say to the now.SONDHEIM What keeps theater alive is the chance always to do it differently, with not only fresh casts, but fresh viewpoints.Were there ways besides gender that you wanted to reset the piece?SONDHEIM It’s not just a matter of changing pronouns, but attitudes. Marianne went and looked through all of George Furth’s early drafts to find out if something was useful, and she did — there are short passages in the piece that are out of George’s notes, not out of the script he wrote.ELLIOTT We read everything he’d ever written, trying to get into his head. We were very keen that it had to be faithful to the original.SONDHEIM Getting into George’s head is quite a task for anybody. He had a really original head.What was the trickiest lyric to adapt?SONDHEIM There are words and little phrases here and there, but there are no big changes. I suppose the biggest change is in “Someone Is Waiting” where it’s a list of men instead of a list of girls.What about the music? One of the sounds that’s closely associated with the score is that of a busy signal.SONDHEIM It’s just a musical theme now — it doesn’t signify a busy signal. If you didn’t know, you’d just think it was a vamp. There was no point in throwing it out, because it’s integrated into the score, and it’s a wonderful sound to open the show with.ELLIOTT We use the clock quite a lot — the ticking clock through all of the transitions. In our head, we were thinking more of a clock than a busy signal.How did you think about the sexual situations — a man with three girlfriends versus a woman with three boyfriends?ELLIOTT I do think it might be tricky today for a man to be sleeping with a woman and not really wanting to hear what she has to say. But if you change it the other way around it’s less offensive.Lenk in a scene from the show. “The image of all of them crowding that small room,” Sondheim said, “gives a whole other meaning to the title, ‘Company,’ cause they’re smothering her.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYou also wrestled with how to handle an exchange between Bobbie and her friend Joanne. In the original, Joanne propositions Bobby; in this version, Joanne makes a different suggestion.SONDHEIM That was all Marianne’s idea. That was another thing I was skeptical of, but she really wanted to try it.ELLIOTT I suppose I was interested in who Joanne was, and her self-destructive behavior. She’s much more fragile than she shows herself to be. What’s the worst thing she could possibly do? How did the two of you collaborate?SONDHEIM We just went over it scene by scene. And I would change, and Marianne would, taking some of George’s lines. And she’d say, “We’ll, that’s OK, but I wish it were more this,” and I’d say, “That’s OK, but I don’t quite understand what she’s feeling.” That kind of thing.[One of the last decisions Elliott and Sondheim made was to change the gender of one of Bobbie’s friends, replacing an Amy with a Jamie, so there is now a same-sex couple in which one person is having wedding day jitters.]ELLIOTT When I was auditioning in London, I couldn’t find the person [to play Amy]. I also felt like this woman wasn’t now, wasn’t a very modern woman. So then I did a crazy thing — I asked a friend of mine, Jonathan Bailey, who was in the workshop playing P.J., “Would you mind just coming in and trying something for me? It’s a bit crazy.”SONDHEIM I didn’t know that.ELLIOTT We worked for maybe an hour and a half, and it wasn’t perfect, but I felt (gasp), this is exciting, there’s a potential here. So I then immediately got on the email to Steve, and I said, “Steve, you have to be sitting down. You have to be having a glass of wine in your hand. And take a deep breath, but I’m going to say something to you: I think possibly we should change Amy into a man.” And Steve’s reply sums him up, really, as a collaborator. He basically said, “Marianne, you need to be sitting down, you need to have a glass of wine in your hand, you need to take a deep breath: I think it’s a great idea.”Is there something about same-sex relationships that made that work?SONDHEIM: Well, it’s contemporary. This makes it so much “of today.” The whole cast takes it for granted. It’s just, “Oh, those two guys are married.” It’s what people would do today.ELLIOTT I don’t know whether this is modern or not, but there’s something about a woman saying to a gay guy, “Oh, God, we’re both getting older, let’s just you and I get married,” in a sort of flip way, that feels quite real, but then it becomes more serious.SONDHEIM The great key line — I’m going to paraphrase it — is “Just because we can get married, doesn’t mean we should,” and that sums up everything about the gay aspect of marriage. That’s such a prescient line.During the life of this show, you got married.SONDHEIM Yes, but not because of the show. Actually a good friend of mine was contemplating getting married back in 1970. He saw “Company,” and he said, all right, I’ll try it. He got divorced three months later. So I don’t send prospective grooms and brides to see “Company.”Does the change in gender change the way you see the show?SONDHEIM Not the way I see the show. The way I see what it’s about, sure.How does it change the way you see what it’s about?SONDHEIM It just tells me something about the way people live today, as opposed to the way that people lived in 1970.So many people have ideas about how to change or update classic shows. How do you decide what the limits are for you?SONDHEIM You’re asking a general question. I couldn’t possibly answer that. But most of the shows that I’ve written, if not all but “Company,” don’t require or ask for a change. Maybe to improve something, but not to change it because the world around it has changed. An awful lot of shows that I’ve written are period pieces anyway. You don’t have to change “Sweeney Todd” to fit the contemporary world, or even “Night Music.”Marianne, I wanted to ask you about directing a musical, because most of your career has been plays. This is your first big musical? ELLIOTT It’s my second — I did “The Light Princess,” that Tori Amos wrote.How is it different from a play? What are you learning?ELLIOTT It’s more collaborative. You can share running the room, which means that it’s not always about you running the minutiae of the moment. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to sit back and see it as a whole. It just enables you to think much more creatively, much more objectively, much more about the overall.SONDHEIM But isn’t the essential difference between directing a play and directing a musical that musicals are out front, they’re presentational, whereas a play is not presentational, it’s about the characters interacting.ELLIOTT Yes, that’s true. I suppose the thing about this particular musical though, as you’ve always said Steve, it was written for actors, so that helps me. I like music, but I’m not highly educated in terms of music. But I can say things like, “Why does she have a long note there, and why does she go up on the line there, and not keep to the melody? Why is it held?” And with Steve’s stuff, there’s always a psychological reason.SONDHEIM I always approach writing a song from the actor’s point of view. I try to get into the character the way an actor gets into the character, and then write from that point of view. So that means I pay attention to each consonant and each vowel, the way you would if you were writing a play.ELLIOTT It really does tell you something psychologically.SONDHEIM Music, of course, does that wonderful thing of suggesting an emotion. You don’t have to spell it out. It makes such an impact on an audience.“It’s fantastic to come back and do a show, in the year after the pandemic, to do a show that is absolutely the antithesis of being locked down,” Elliott said.Daniel Dorsa for The New York TimesThis production of “Company” began its life with a run in London. Was there anything you saw there that you decided to change for New York?ELLIOTT I wanted to make it really clear that it was all about the moment when, at her birthday party that she’s going to have, she’s going to have to blow the candles out on the cake. I also wanted to make it clear that in my head — I mean, this is not in my head, this is actually as it’s written — it’s all in her head as she’s waiting for this blinking surprise party to turn up. As she’s drinking, on the bourbon, she’s probably hiding under the stairs thinking, “What’s going to happen?” And she drifts from thought to thought to thought. So it’s not necessarily a narrative, but there’s logic from one thought to another thought to another thought, which then takes her to the place of “Being Alive.”SONDHEIM That’s why it’s not a revue. It has the form of a revue, but it’s not. It’s a play.ELLIOTT Yeah. And I wanted to make that clear. So the “Alice in Wonderland” features more heavily here than it did in London.SONDHEIM And also you wanted to restage “Another Hundred People.” That’s a complete restaging of what was in London.Why?ELLIOTT Well, I didn’t think it worked particularly well in London.SONDHEIM No, it didn’t. And of course, it wasn’t written to be a group number — it was written as a solo. And so Marianne had to invent something — I don’t know exactly why you wanted a group number, but it’s nice to have one there.ELLIOTT I wanted it to look like she was being taken through the streets and the alleys and the corners and the highs and the lows of New York, and also, through, possibly even, an app. So it has connotations of her walking, but also connotations of her going through a dating app.SONDHEIM This is New York’s solo.ELLIOTT That’s a great way of putting it: New York’s solo. Every single scene, New York is mentioned. They all have something to say about New York. And it’s fantastic to come back and do a show, in the year after the pandemic, to do a show that is absolutely the antithesis of being locked down, because everybody is crammed in her apartment — all her friends — and also to do a show that is about how fantastic New York is.SONDHEIM The image of all of them crowding that small room, at the beginning, gives the show an entirely different flavor than it’s ever had before. It gives a whole other meaning to the title, “Company,” cause they’re smothering her. That’s something it’s never had before. It’s all friendly, and full of love and warmth, and they’re smothering her.You had a few previews before the pandemic and shut down for a year and a half. How did that affect you and the show?SONDHEIM It made us so happy! What a great question! Never been happier to have a show close after a week!ELLIOTT (laughing) With a great advance!I have to say, it was pretty awful. I hated the pandemic. Absolutely hated it. I felt like I was kicking like a horse against the stable door: “Let me out!” But it was worrying as well, because we wanted to come back. We were a very strong company. We all really believed what we were doing. And suddenly we were totally scattered across the globe.SONDHEIM And like other shows, we were just getting the steam up, when the door slammed.ELLIOTT There’s quite a lot of post-traumatic stress going on, I think, and that will continue to go on in humans just generally, so coming back into rehearsal after having been isolated was quite a thing. It felt like everybody knew each other. There was a trust there, an understanding. And when you’re playing a married couple, you can’t buy that, you can’t direct it, you can’t act it. It’s either there or it isn’t there. SONDHEIM The appropriate word is, it was a company. More

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      Joanne Shenandoah, Leading Native American Musician, Dies at 64

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      Ms. Shenandoah was considered the matriarch of Indigenous music for revolutionizing its sound. She won a Grammy Award for her contributions to a 2005 album.Joanne Shenandoah, the most critically acclaimed and honored Native American musician of her generation, known for infusing ancestral melodies with the sound of contemporary instruments, died on Nov. 22 at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz. She was 64. Her husband, Douglas M. George-Kanentiio, said the cause was complications of liver failure.Ms. Shenandoah reshaped American Indigenous music by taking ancient songs and blending them with her own accompaniment on flute, piano, cello and guitar.She recorded 15 albums and numerous singles, and collaborated with many other musicians. She won a Grammy Award for Best Native American Music Album for two tracks on the 2005 album “Sacred Ground: A Tribute to Mother Earth”: “Seeking Light,” a solo track, and “Mother Earth,” which she performed with Rita Coolidge, also a Native American musician, and Ms. Coolidge’s trio, Walela.Her albums “Peacemaker’s Journey” (2000) and “Covenant” (2003) were nominated for the Grammy for Best Native American Music Album, a category that has since been discontinued to the frustration of many Native Americans.Ms. Shenandoah’s album “Peacemaker’s Journey” (2000) was one of 15 she recorded, and one of two that was nominated for a Grammy Award.Ms. Shenandoah, who was a member of the Wolf Clan of the Oneida Nation in central New York, also won 14 Native American Music Awards, the most ever awarded to a single artist.“She sang with deep roots from her ancestors and flawlessly incorporated her oral traditions into contemporary folk, country and Americana formats,” the Native American Music Awards & Association said in a statement.Earlier this year, Ms. Shenandoah released her last full-length recording, “Oh Shenandoah,” a collection of country-infused songs that included a dedication to missing murdered Indigenous women called “Missing You.”She dominated the Native American music scene for three decades, often singing with her daughter, Leah Shenandoah, and her sister Diane Shenandoah. Among her venues were Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden and the Smithsonian Institution.She performed with Willie Nelson and Neil Young and for the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela.“Joanne is to contemporary Native American music what Aretha Franklin, Etta James, or Billie Holiday are to their respective genres,” Ed Koban, a Native American Music Award nominee and Mohawk tribal member, told Native News Online. “A timeless and elegant voice that did not need vocal tricks or gymnastics, instead was gentle, soft and pure.”Ms. Shenandoah recorded a track for Robbie Robertson’s 1998 album “Contact From the Underworld of Redboy.” “She weaves you into a trance with her beautiful Iroquois chants,” Mr. Robertson said of her singing, “and wraps her voice around you like a warm blanket on a cool winter’s night.”With her music, along with the content of her lyrics, she sought to counter centuries of mistreatment and marginalization of Native Americans; she also pleaded for her listeners to protect the earth, and she hoped to offer solace to the soul.In “Prophecy Song,” she calls on her listeners to awaken: “We are now reminded to be aware of our place upon this earth,” she intones, “and to fulfill our obligations to ourselves, our families, nations, the natural world and to the Creator.”Joanne Lynn Shenandoah was born on June 23, 1957, in Syracuse, N.Y. Her mother, Maisie (Winder) Shenandoah, was an artist, and her father, Clifford Shenandoah, was an iron worker who raised the family on the Oneida Reservation, just east of Syracuse. Her ancestors included Chief Skenandoa (the spelling varies), an ally to George Washington during the American Revolution.Joanne may have been destined to be a singer from birth; her Oneida Wolf Clan name, Tekaliwakwha, means “she sings.” But as she grew into adulthood, she planned to become a businesswoman. For a time, she sang only informally, at weddings and funerals.She studied business administration, first at Andrews University in Michigan, then at Montgomery Community College in Maryland. She left one semester before graduating to start a computer consulting business in Bethesda, Md.Ms. Shenandoah in 2015. Her music “was meditative, healing and uplifted the spirit,” her niece said.AlamyOne day in 1990 she had a revelation, her husband said in an interview. While she was sitting in an office in Arlington, Va., staring out of the window, she saw a massive oak tree being taken down. It occurred to her, Mr. George-Kanentiio said, that just as the tree was being uprooted, she too had been uprooted, removed from her Native soil.“That’s the moment she decided to return to Oneida,” he said. “She was very successful, making a lot of money, but she wanted to make music full-time, and so she left, without a safety net.”She had already recorded a solo CD in 1989, “Joanne Shenandoah,” and after she moved back to Oneida in 1990, other gigs and albums followed. She gained national attention when she was included on the soundtrack for “Northern Exposure,” an early 1990s television show set in Alaska, which showcased her song “I May Want a Man.”It was during this time that she met Mr. George-Kanentiio on a blind date arranged by a friend. He was the editor of a Native American newspaper, Akwesasne Notes, on the Mohawk Territory in Northern New York. They were married nine months later, in 1991. He worked as a writer and became her road manager as they traveled all over the world.In addition to her husband, daughter and sister Diane, she is survived by a grandson and three other sisters, Wanda Wood and Victoria and Danielle Shenandoah.She performed at both of President Bill Clinton’s inaugurations. And at the invitation of Hillary Clinton, then the first lady, Ms. Shenandoah composed music for the unveiling of the Sacagawea dollar coin at the White House in 1999. In 2012, she traveled to the Vatican for the canonization of the first Native American saint, Kateri Tekakwitha.“Joanne’s music was meditative, healing and uplifted the spirit,” Michelle Schenandoah, her niece (she spells her surname differently) and the founder of Rematriation Magazine & Media, wrote in a recent tribute. “Her lyrics helped comfort those suffering from grief, healing from physical ailments and is often used in the delivery of babies, surgeries and played for those transitioning to the spirit realm.” More

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      Stephen Sondheim, as Great a Composer as He Was a Lyricist

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      Our chief classical music critic remembers playing and teaching the unforgettable scores of “Sweeney Todd,” “Sunday in the Park With George” and other shows.“Sweeney Todd” had been open for a few months on Broadway when, one Saturday afternoon in June 1979, I passed by the theater where it was playing. I assumed that Stephen Sondheim’s latest musical was sold out, but I decided to take a chance and see if I could get a ticket to the matinee.Amazingly, there was a great one available — fourth row center. I was unshaven, in jeans and a T-shirt, carrying a stuffed backpack. I didn’t care. Elated, I took my seat.Then who walks in and sits directly in front of me? John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Would I be distracted by their presence?Not a bit. Even two cultural gods faded before the engulfing beginning of “Sweeney.”Sondheim, who died on Friday at 91, establishes the work’s dark, gothic mood in strange, chromatically wandering organ music right at the start. Then the deafening blast of a factory whistle breaks in, and the orchestra starts the prologue, a subdued, murmuring minor-mode riff over which the hushed chorus sings: “Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd.”I was immediately riveted by the grim, suspenseful drama of the music. Even in those opening moments, the musician in me wanted to know more. What were those harmonies, the chords that the rippling figure was tracing? What were those notes that seemed to escape from the orchestra and jab me with touches of dissonance? When the bass line that grounds the music took a sudden low plunge, it seemed, briefly, like the harmonic floor had opened a chasm. I had to get the score, to study the music, to see if I could figure out what was going on.Twenty-two years later, by then the chief classical music critic for The New York Times, I found myself seated at a piano, playing that opening music to “Sweeney” in front of its composer and asking Sondheim questions about it. During that Times Talks event in 2001, I also played other extraordinary passages from the show — like the moment early on when Sweeney, obliquely telling the young sailor Anthony the story of his tragic life, sings, in understated phrases, “There was a barber and his wife,” over a slow accompaniment that echoes the prologue.Then, Sweeney adds, “And she was beautiful.” At that final word — “beautiful” — the chord below, which repeats three times, is piercingly, hauntingly dissonant. A graduate seminar in music theory could devote considerable time to deciphering the elusive harmony. It has always struck me as a counterintuitive touch. Shouldn’t the wife’s beauty be conveyed through something more melting, more radiant?Yet, as we learn, it was this young woman’s beauty that made her the prey of the lecherous, powerful Judge Turpin. In our interview, Sondheim acknowledged that the moment had this subtext, yet denied that he had calibrated the effect; he said he had just followed his musical instincts.I also played excerpts from “Merrily We Roll Along,” never his most popular but perhaps my desert-island Sondheim musical, and one of his most appealing, ingeniously intricate and moving scores. All the songs are “interconnected through chunks of melody, rhythm and accompaniment,” as he put it in the liner notes for the original cast recording.I tried to show the audience how those chunks break down and fit together. Sondheim mostly just smiled and listened, nodding and saying, basically, “Yep, that’s it.” He never liked to discuss the inner workings of his music in front of the public. This was his business, he felt.He did offer detailed analyses of several of his works in a series of interviews in 1997 with Mark Eden Horowitz, a music specialist from the Library of Congress, later published as an essential book, “Sondheim on Music.”If you want specifics, this is your source. Of a passage in “Passion,” Sondheim says that two chords “represent the entire progression” of the sequence.“I write long-line stuff in either whole notes or half notes,” he added. “A whole note could represent four bars, eight bars, 12 bars, 16 bars,” but the “glue has to be harmonic” — “has to be spinning out the triad and spinning out the harmony.”Between my first time seeing “Sweeney” — I went back twice! — and getting to know him personally in the late 1990s, Sondheim was a singular presence in my life and work. When I taught music theory at Emerson College in Boston, I used Sondheim songs like “The Miller’s Son” (from “A Little Night Music”) and “Barcelona” (from “Company”) as illustrations of how he, while hewing to a tonal musical language, activated harmonies and folded elements of jazz and Impressionist styles in his own distinctive, exhilarating voice.In the early ’90s, at several memorial services for friends who had died of AIDS, I played “Good Thing Going,” a wistful song about recalling imperfect but cherished relationships. “Marry Me a Little,” cut from the original production of “Company” but beloved in later revivals as the protagonist’s statement of determination and despair, was another piece I relished performing; I still use the demanding perpetual-motion piano part as an exercise to keep my finger technique limber.In 2010, I made an 80th birthday tribute video to him for the Times website, in which, among other excerpts, I played and analyzed the wondrous chords at the start of “Sunday in the Park with George.” Here, the hero, Georges Seurat, speaking to the audience, explains the elements of painting, how the artist must bring “order to the whole” through design, composition, balance, light — and, finally, harmony. Each word is accompanied, almost musically illustrated, by a variant of a five-note arpeggio figure that uncannily embodies each concept. The chord for light is so piercing and bright you almost want to squint.In 2016, I posed to Sondheim the question of why such a master composer so seldom wrote a purely instrumental work. Yes, he was one of the greatest lyricists in the history of musical theater. But wasn’t he tempted to put words aside now and then, and just compose, say, a piano sonata?He answered that it wasn’t really the words that generated his musical ideas. “I express the character,” he said. “Let’s see what happens to him. I express it musically.” He was endlessly fascinated by the “puzzle of music,” he added. But when he gets solely into music, the “puzzle takes over.”I’ve been thinking since his death about a trip to the Bronx Zoo my husband and I took in the spring of 2019 with Sondheim and his husband, Jeff Romley. They were passionate animal lovers, and my cousin Kathleen LaMattina works and lives there with her husband, Jim Breheny, the zoo’s director. In a special room, these honored guests could pet sloths and penguins, and even get close to a cheetah, under a staff member’s calm control. I have pictures of Sondheim feeding leafy tree branches to a giraffe.I’m looking as I write this at the piano-vocal score to “Sweeney Todd” Sondheim signed for me the first time he came to dinner, in 1997.“To Tony,” his inscription reads. “With thanks for the enthusiasm.”That enthusiasm will never diminish, and the thanks will always go the other way. More

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      20 Stephen Sondheim Songs to Listen to Right Now

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      The lyricist and composer, who died on Friday, wrote dozens of piercing tunes for Broadway. Here is a selection of his most brilliant and surprising.The career of Stephen Sondheim, the celebrated Broadway songwriter who died on Friday at the age of 91, spanned decades and included 20 major productions, including forays into television and film. Here is one song from each of those 20 in chronological order, highlighting a genius that was evident from a jarringly early age (even if critics took a while to catch on) for mixing longing and ambivalence into clever, spiky, dependably unexpected lyrics.‘What More Do I Need?’From “Saturday Night,” 1954Dyspepsia lurks way in the background of “Saturday Night,” his first complete musical (which wouldn’t see a New York stage until almost a half-century later). But in this song, performed here by Liz Callaway, Sondheim depicts a level of dewy-eyed optimism — “Why, I can see half a tree/And what more do I need?” — that will become rare in his later musicals, which tended to pull the rug out on his clearly deluded dreamers. Here is the work of someone barely out of college who can’t believe he is already creating would-be standards.‘Something’s Coming’From “West Side Story,” 1957If this were a list of Leonard Bernstein songs, “Maria” or “Tonight” or “Somewhere” might easily take this spot. But it fell upon Sondheim to depict the inchoate yearnings of a street youth, played by Larry Kert, and offer a plausible glimpse into a mind barely able to glimpse it himself. Sondheim spent the next 60-plus years grumbling about the quality of his “West Side Story” lyrics: the unintelligible passages, the too-clever-by-half internal rhymes. We should all be so flawed.‘Rose’s Turn’From “Gypsy,” 1959How to pick just one song from what many consider is the greatest musical ever? None other than Cole Porter gasped at one of Sondheim’s lyrics in “Together, Wherever We Go,” and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” earned the 29-year-old a spot in Bartlett’s book of quotations. But it is Ethel Merman’s absolute tour de force — one that, owing to the composer Jule Styne’s previous engagement one fateful night, Sondheim largely willed into being at a rehearsal piano — that gave the clearest example of what lay ahead.‘Comedy Tonight’From “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” 1962The galumphing opening chords marked the first time Broadway audiences heard Sondheim’s music as well as lyrics. And they were this close to instead hearing an opening number called “Love Is in the Air,” which is sprightly and charming and the absolute wrong way to kick off an evening of vaudeville turns and eunuch jokes. Luckily, Jerome Robbins caught an out-of-town performance just before its New York transfer and mentioned this to Sondheim, who wrote that weekend the no less hummable “Comedy Tonight,” sung here by Jason Alexander. As exacting as he was with his notes and his words, Sondheim did what he had to do in order to make a show work.‘Anyone Can Whistle’From “Anyone Can Whistle,” 1964There is a frequently cited notion (one that Sondheim just as frequently refuted) that the show’s title song represents the purest, most unadulterated look into his own emotionally stunted psyche. Leaving that aside, the song — performed on the original cast recording by Lee Remick — is a bittersweet oasis in a show stuffed with ideas and set pieces and pastiche numbers and the sorts of Big Ideas that Sondheim would soon learn to convey more adroitly. It’s not all so simple, not by a long shot.‘We’re Gonna Be All Right’From “Do I Hear a Waltz?,” 1965Sondheim didn’t want to go back to solely writing lyrics, and he quickly regretted teaming up with Richard Rodgers, the longtime writing partner of Sondheim’s mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II. One of the collaboration’s many skirmishes involved this song, a wry evisceration of an unhappy marriage that apparently sounded an awful lot like Rodgers’s own. The version that made it to opening night is clever; the one that got tossed, later resurrected and sung here by Jason Danieley and Marin Mazzie, is brilliant.‘I Remember’From “Evening Primrose,” 1966Not even the “I want” song remained intact in Sondheim’s visionary hands. This quirky made-for-TV romance, in which the female lead ruminates on the years she has lived inside a department store and pines to see the sky again, had all but disappeared until Mandy Patinkin invited his “Sunday in the Park With George” co-star Bernadette Peters to record the score with him on a 1990 album. With its trees like broken umbrellas and ice like vinyl, the song is more than a little bit creepy and altogether marvelous.‘Getting Married Today’From “Company,” 1970Possibly the greatest artistic hot streak of the 20th century (take note of the dates on this and the next two entries) began with this quasi-Brechtian look at marriage through the eyes of 35-year-old Bobby, who — maybe, sort of, kind of — wants no part of it. This anxiety-drenched patter song from one of his friends, sung on the original cast album by Beth Howland, doesn’t do much to allay Bobby’s fears. In the process, the already high-bar of Sondheim’s lyrical virtuosity vaulted several notes higher.‘The Road You Didn’t Take’From “Follies,” 1971The word “ambivalence” typically surfaces in a discussion of Sondheim and his themes, with “Company” as Exhibit A. (That score includes the song “Sorry-Grateful.”) But while the “Follies” score is chockablock with such barn burners as “Broadway Baby” and “I’m Still Here,” along with the piercing “Losing My Mind,” this character study, sung on the original cast album by John McMartin, sublimely lays the groundwork for the misgivings to come. And its final two lines — “The Ben I’ll never be/Who remembers him?” — should hang in a museum.‘Send in the Clowns’From “A Little Night Music,” 1973The haunting “Every Day a Little Death” and the virtuosic triptych of lust that is “Now/Soon/Later” would be career-defining works for just about anyone else. But any time Sarah Vaughan, as heard here, and Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins and Barbra Streisand and Judi Dench and Krusty the Clown of “The Simpsons” can agree on anything, let alone a bittersweet rumination on lost love with an oscillating time signature, the choice is obvious.‘Fear No More’From “The Frogs,” 1974As reluctant as Sondheim was to write lyrics for other composers, it was almost unheard of for him to write music for other people’s lyrics. But he made an exception for William Shakespeare (as one tends to do) in this curiosity that debuted in a Yale University swimming pool and reached Broadway 30 years later. In this adaptation of an Aristophanes comedy, Shakespeare squares off against George Bernard Shaw in an agon, the high-stakes debate that was common in ancient Greek comedies; Sondheim’s gossamer arrangement of this soliloquy from “Cymbeline,” sung here by George Hearn, helps earn the Bard a ticket out of the underworld.‘Someone in a Tree’From “Pacific Overtures,” 1976Sondheim described the frequent request to name a favorite of his own songs as “understandable but unanswerable.” Still, he repeatedly answered it anyway by suggesting this prismatic song, in which an eyewitness and an earwitness give markedly different accounts of a meeting (accounts that are muddied further by the re-recollections of the eyewitness as an old man). Perhaps it was his wish to essentially elevate his audiences to collaborators: Whether high up in a branch or seated in a Broadway theater, the very act of experiencing something makes that thing real (“Without someone in a tree/Nothing happened here”).‘A Little Priest’From “Sweeney Todd,” 1979Seconds before this song, the titular “Demon Barber of Fleet Street” has morphed from a revenge seeker into an indiscriminate psychopath in the bruising aria “Epiphany.” Only one song remains before intermission. How could the tension possibly heighten even further? It can’t, and so Sondheim (and book writer Hugh Wheeler) instead puncture it with an uproarious one-liner from Sweeney’s murderous counterpart, Mrs. Lovett, followed by a ghoulish list song — possibly the greatest of Act I finales — in which the two, here Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou on the original cast album, make macabre sport of listing the various individuals they plan to grind into meat pies.‘Good Thing Going’From “Merrily We Roll Along,” 1981What do you call a recapitulation whose narrative unspools backward? A precapitulation? The DNA of this sadder-but-wiser lament can be found throughout the show, including in an earlier (or later, by the show’s logic) up-tempo iteration and in the evening’s very first (which makes it the very last) piece of music, a high school commencement song. But the third (first?) time is the charm, complete with a devastating and just-flashy-enough final line that helped turn it into a crossover hit for Sinatra, heard here.‘Finishing the Hat’From “Sunday in the Park With George,” 1984Seeing as Sondheim named not one but two books after this song (the second edition is called “Look, I Made a Hat,” and both are essential reading), it clearly had significance for him. As a teenager, I thought this depiction of creation — and the combination of rigor and abandon that it requires — ended on a note that was equal parts proud and rueful. How wrong I was about the rueful part. And the immensity of “What you feel like, planning a sky,” sung here by Mandy Patinkin, will never dissipate.‘On the Steps of the Palace’From “Into the Woods,” 1987So many of the most astonishing moments in Sondheim’s lyrics come from decisions made then and there: young Gypsy Rose Lee finding her voice mid-striptease, Bobby in “Company” resolving to be alive by not being alone, Sweeney Todd settling on the idea of mass slaughter. Perhaps the most beguiling is this number, in which Cinderella, played here by Kim Crosby, turns the act of leaving her glass slipper behind into a conscious choice. Sondheim credited his “Woods” book writer, James Lapine, for the idea, but the sparkling execution is his alone.‘The Ballad of Booth’From “Assassins,” 1990More than 30 years into a convention-shattering career, Sondheim still raised eyebrows when he announced he was about to musicalize the likes of John Hinckley Jr. and John Wilkes Booth. Some of those eyebrows never totally lowered: A Broadway revival was postponed in the wake of 9/11. But this early set-piece, in which Booth (Victor Garber, joined by Patrick Cassidy as the Balladeer) mashes up grandiose poetry, self-pity, cogent criticism and vile racism in a plaintive cri de coeur, went a long way toward reminding audiences that they were in very good and very frightening hands.‘What Can You Lose?’From “Dick Tracy,” 1990Madonna’s slinky “Sooner or Later” may have won the Academy Award, and “More” may be more chockablock with musical theater Easter eggs. But it’s this Harold Arlen-inspired song of unrequited love that gives Warren Beatty’s rather cluttered film the closest thing to a heartbeat. Sondheim’s original duet has become a heart-rending solo for the likes of Audra McDonald, Gavin Creel and, from his virtual 90th-birthday celebration, Judy Kuhn.‘Loving You’From “Passion,” 1994“Passion” was the first musical I saw (and saw again and again) in its original run. And those initial audiences hated Fosca, the grasping, manipulative, unprepossessing third point of the show’s love triangle. This song comes late in the piece, just as she reappeared in a way that had people around me snickering and groaning at the mere sight of her. These 135 seconds — one of Sondheim’s simpler melodies — changed pretty much everything. Fosca, played here by Donna Murphy, was every bit as suffocating as before, and maybe even more baffling. She was also a heroine.‘Isn’t He Something!’From “Road Show,” 2008This show — which started as “Wise Guys” and then became “Bounce” before settling as “Road Show,” each time with a starry new director and a commensurate lurch in direction — went through very public growing pains, including an ill-fated reunion with Hal Prince and lawsuits with Scott Rudin. This melancholy charmer, sung by a doting mother (here, Alma Cuervo) about her ne’er-do-well son, entered the show’s ever-changing song stack fairly early on and remained a high point each step of the way. More

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      Jennifer Nettles Had Sung ‘She Used to Be Mine.’ But Not While Crying.

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      The country singer and musical-theater fan was grateful to play the intense title role in “Waitress” not long after her Broadway-themed album came out.Sara Bareilles and Jennifer Nettles have been friends for over a decade, and Nettles had long been itching to step into Bareilles’s musical “Waitress.”“For years we kept trying to make it happen but it never worked on the logistics side,” she said in a recent video call.Everything finally fell into place this fall, and on Wednesday Nettles, who is most famous as half of the Grammy-winning country duo Sugarland, wrapped up a five-week run playing Jenna, a pie-making wiz dealing with an unexpected pregnancy, in the show, as it returned along with Broadway itself.“It’s a beautiful, sacred space, and Broadway is such a community,” Nettles, 47, said of finally getting to tie on Jenna’s apron. “It was very poignant to be in this show for this reopening.”Bareilles was happy to see Nettles connect with her show as well, and with the song “She Used to Be Mine.”“Jennifer so clearly knows who Jenna really is,” she said by email. “I watch my friend disappear onstage and I see only Jenna’s complexity. Her final moments in ‘She Used to Be Mine’ are some of my favorite of all time. She digs down deep and does not come up for air, connecting the musical phrases as her character finds her strength.”Nettles in her dressing room, preparing for her final performance in “Waitress.”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesSeeing Nettles thrive on Broadway may surprise those who only know the singer-songwriter from Sugarland or her thriving solo career. But “Waitress” wasn’t Nettles’s first show-tune rodeo. She played Roxie Hart in “Chicago” in 2015 and Donna Sheridan in “Mamma Mia!” at the Hollywood Bowl two years later. In June she released a collection of musical-theater numbers titled “Always Like New.”She also has a burgeoning screen career with roles in the movie “Harriet” and as the matriarch of a televangelist family in the HBO comedy “The Righteous Gemstones.”The effervescent Nettles spoke about becoming a mom, sensible shoes and, er, poison from her dressing room at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, shortly before one of her last performances in “Waitress.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.You’ve loved musicals since you were a kid. Why did you end up choosing country music?All the way through high school and college I was able to do both because there were programs and community theater. I started having traction in music in college and had that fork-in-the-road moment, and I thought, “Music has some momentum, I’m going to go over here.” But I always longed to be able to do both, and I was just one person [laughs].“I wish it could have been longer but in some ways it’s just the right-size bite, you know?” said Nettles (signing programs and photographs for fans) of the five-week run.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesWhen did you start planting the seeds for a turn to musical theater?Around 12 years ago, I was going to do Elphaba in “Wicked” on tour and then make my way to Broadway. But I was dealing with a ton of acid reflux at the time, before we really knew that was such a thing for singers. I was really, really stressed and I pulled out because I didn’t know what was going on with my instrument. The right thing always happens at the right time, you know, and in 2015 I was able to enjoy going right to the Broadway stage in “Chicago.”Between the new album and Broadway reopening, did it feel like musical-theater serendipity for you?I had been recording “Always Like New” over the course of 2019 and we recorded the last note of the last song on March 12, 2020. I walked out of the vocal booth and our phones started lighting up, saying Broadway was closing. I put the record out in June and that felt sort of like waving this flag of, “OK, we’re coming back,” because we knew of the plans of hopeful September reopening. So to move from an album I’ve always wanted to make to stepping on to the very stages that inspired it — artistically that felt like this is how it’s supposed to be.What’s your take on Jenna?The journey of motherhood, for me as it is for some women, was such a confluence — I have jokingly called it a bludgeoning of identity. I was never one of those women who thought she always wanted to have kids. I was open to it and I love children, but I already had another purpose. The loss that happens to everybody but specifically to mothers who have a pre-existing job purpose outside of family — the loss was extreme. The gains were beautiful, too, don’t get me wrong, but both of your hands are full in motherhood: There is sacrifice and loss and death, and there is birth and beauty and fullness. I relate to Jenna as a woman, as being Southern, but that transformation where she’s just like, “Wow, what is happening to my life? Who am I? What do I want?” is so accessible to me.You have done Jenna’s showstopper, “She Used to Be Mine,” in concert. What was it like singing it in the show?It’s so different. In concert you’re just doing it as a piece of music. To do it within the character and within the arc, and that being her 11 o’clock moment. Performing while crying is its own animal.Did you look forward to the number or did you dread it?Once I figured out how to sing it and act it and cry it and scream it all at the same time, I actually did look forward to it. So much tension has been building for her this whole time that to allow for that release is very cathartic every time I do it.Fellow cast members surround Nettles at the final curtain call.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAt least you got to do it in sensible shoes.Thank you, Lord! I’m glad she is a waitress and able to wear those shoes, that’s for sure.What’s going through your mind as you are wrapping up with the show?I wish it could have been longer but in some ways it’s just the right-size bite, you know? I would rather leave still a little bit hungry than over-full and like, “Get me out of here!”You’re writing the score for a new musical inspired by Giulia Tofana. What can you tell us about her?She was a slow poisoner in the 17th century. She’s attributed with what they call the first Italian divorce, where she helped women get out of their marriages by killing their husbands [laughs]. Which just makes it fun.It’s definitely a different career path from pie or country music.And to be able to tell a story of a woman who isn’t this 20-year-old ingénue! I have gone into way darker transformative caves as a woman in my 40s than I ever did in my 20s. The stakes are higher. This isn’t some budding hero’s journey — this is a blossoming warrior’s journey. Very different. It is also a warning that we still have very far to go where women are concerned. Sexism has been so delicately woven in that, oftentimes, we don’t see it and we think, like, “Oh, we’ve come so far.” Have we? So I am excited to tell this story — to celebrate her, to offer conversation, provocation. More