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      YoungBoy Never Broke Again Sentenced to 23 Months in Prison For Gun Possession

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      The rapper, whose real name is Kentrell Gaulden, admitted to possessing guns as a felon in Louisiana. He faced a maximum sentence of 25 years.YoungBoy Never Broke Again, one of the most-streamed hip-hop artists in the United States, has been sentenced to nearly two years in prison by a federal judge in Utah for possessing weapons as a felon.The rapper, whose real name is Kentrell D. Gaulden, was sentenced on Tuesday to 23 months in prison on gun charges related to a case in Louisiana. Mr. Gaulden, 25, was also sentenced to five years of probation and fined $200,000 for a gun charge in a separate Utah case.Federal law bars gun ownership by felons. In 2017, Mr. Gaulden was convicted of aggravated assault with a firearm, a felony, in a Louisiana court. Details of that case could not be independently confirmed early Wednesday.In a plea agreement filed in the United States District Court in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Mr. Gaulden said that he had been in possession of three guns since his earlier felony conviction.In the first instance, Mr. Gaulden admitted to possessing two guns while filming a music video in Baton Rouge, La., in September 2020. In the second, a semiautomatic pistol was found in the master bedroom of his Utah home during a search, according to the plea agreement.He faced a maximum prison sentence of 10 years in the Louisiana case and 15 years in the Utah case.“This has been a long road that involved extensive litigation and ultimately extensive negotiation,” Mr. Gaulden’s lawyers said in a statement on Wednesday night. “Kentrell’s defense team is very happy for Kentrell and we look forward to his many future successes.”Mr. Gaulden, who is best known as NBA YoungBoy, has legions of dedicated fans. Many of his songs receive hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify and YouTube.But he has a history of legal problems.In 2022, Mr. Gaulden was found not guilty in a similar gun possession case in California. Police in the Los Angeles area had found a pistol and ammunition in the car he was driving. His lawyers argued that he did not know that the weapon was in the car at the time, and that his fingerprints were not found on the gun. More

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      ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ Score, a Noisy Gem, Will Arrive at Last

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      Fifty-one years after the smash horror movie, its groundbreaking and unconventional music — long a “holy grail” — will arrive on vinyl.In 1996, years before helping to found the experimental rock institution Animal Collective, David Portner and Brian Weitz were Baltimore high school pals who diligently hunted for the soundtrack album that perfectly meshed their love of the unorthodox sound worlds of musique concrète and the thrills of horror movies: “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” “It wasn’t really till years later that I found out that it had never been released,” Portner said.“The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” changed the horror business when it splattered out in 1974, turning a spartan budget into a $30 million juggernaut and laying groundwork for the blood-soaked slasher genre that dominated the 1980s. Among its many innovations was its unconventional score, an abstract suite of bone-chilling scrapes, metallic clanks, ominous drones and mysterious stingers.This symphony of discordance, recorded by the film’s director Tobe Hooper and the sound man Wayne Bell, emerged three full years before the first commercially available industrial music from Throbbing Gristle. It anticipated the tape-traded noise music underground that flourished in places like Japan in the 1990s and the American Midwest in the ’00s. But with the master tapes ostensibly lost and Hooper seemingly uninterested in an official release, the “Chain Saw” score survived mostly as a bootleg, often just the entire 83-minute film dubbed to audio cassette from a VHS or Laserdisc.That half-century of tape hiss and YouTube rips will end in March with a vinyl release on the boutique soundtrack label Waxwork Records. (Pre-orders start this week.)The movie was created on a spartan budget but turned into a $30 million juggernaut.Bryanston Distributing“It was kind of like a holy grail. Was it even possible to do it?” said the Waxwork co-founder Kevin Bergeron, who had been doggedly pursuing the release for more than a decade. “Everyone has asked. Literally every label from Sony to Waxwork. Major labels to independents to randos living with their parents. Everyone wanted to release it. What would it take to make it happen? No one had any sort of intel, like what would it cost or what would it take.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Best Classical Performances of 2024

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      Standouts included the soprano Lise Davidsen and the Berlin Philharmonic, a new opera by Missy Mazzoli and bits of old ones by Schubert.ZACHARY WOOLFEDeathless Classics and Unmissable New OperasThe joy of a music critic’s job is how wide the purview is. From revivals of centuries-old pieces to the premieres of brand-new works, the field I cover is an ecosystem that takes pride in both the past and the future. My favorite performances this year, in chronological order, spanned eras, but all were marriages of imaginative spontaneity and meticulous craft.Trinity Wall Street’s ‘Messiah’Even after the departure of Trinity’s visionary arts director, Julian Wachner, in 2022, this has remained the most urgent, vivid version of Handel’s classic oratorio that I know of — alternately bracing and joyous. (Ryan James Brandau conducted last December.) Much credit is due to the church’s vibrant period-instrument orchestra. And rather than hosting the usual quartet of aria soloists, this performance has almost 20 soloists emerge from the exceptional in-house choir, making it more a communal rite than a stale holiday pageant. (Read our review.)Yunchan LimYunchan Lim performed Chopin’s piano études at Carnegie Hall.Chris LeeChopin’s 24 études are only an hour of music, but that hour is one of the most storied and difficult in the piano repertoire. Yunchan Lim was just 19 when he ran this old-school gantlet at Carnegie Hall in February, yet he has a thoughtfulness and maturity that belie his years. At Carnegie, as on the recording he released in April, he was unfazed by the études’ staggering technical demands as he balanced note-by-note clarity with sensitive lyricism. (Read our reviews of the concert and the recording.)Lise DavidsenOne of the best singers of her generation, this Norwegian soprano has a huge, coolly powerful voice that sails easily through the long lines of Wagner and Strauss. Verdi tends to benefit from more vulnerability and velvety warmth, but Davidsen has become an artist you want to hear in everything. In February she lavished her generosity, finesse and visceral impact on the much-suffering Leonora in the Metropolitan Opera’s forcefully played new production of “La Forza del Destino,” stopping the show with her 11-o’clock number, “Pace, pace mio Dio.” (Read our review of “La Forza del Destino.”)Cleveland OrchestraIn May, Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” was cast with fresh, youthful voices and played with elegant transparency by one of the world’s great orchestras at Severance Hall. It was the 20th opera presentation of the conductor Franz Welser-Möst’s Cleveland tenure, which will end in 2027 after a quarter-century — astonishing longevity in today’s music world. The ensemble’s Carnegie Hall visit in January with Welser-Möst was also memorable, including lucid performances of Prokofiev’s second and fifth symphonies, which ingeniously sandwiched Webern’s experiment in that genre. (Read our reviews of “The Magic Flute” and the Carnegie concert.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Marvin Laird, Musical Presence on and Off Broadway, Dies at 85

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      He conducted Broadway shows and worked with Bernadette Peters. But he was probably best known for writing the music for the darkly comic “Ruthless!”Marvin Laird, a conductor for Broadway musicals and for performers like Bernadette Peters who also composed the music for “Ruthless!,” the campy, award-winning Off Broadway show about a girl who will do anything — including kill — to star in a school play, died in a hospital on Dec. 2 in Bridgeport, Conn. He was 85.His partner in marriage, Joel Paley, said his death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of an infection.Mr. Laird was the assistant musical director for a summer stock production of “Gypsy” in Lambertville, N.J., in 1961 when he met Ms. Peters, who was 13 and was playing two small roles.“He was just the most energetic, charismatic fellow you’d ever want to meet,” Ms. Peters said in a phone interview.He later conducted the orchestras for her concerts and for two Broadway revivals in which she starred: “Annie Get Your Gun” in 1999 and “Gypsy” in 2003. When Ms. Peters appeared in a revival of “Follies” in 2011, he was the associate conductor.“The orchestras loved him,” Ms. Peters said. “He had a great sense of humor and they respected his musicianship.” She added: “He knew what I was going to do before I did it. I don’t sing a song the same way twice; it’s whatever happens to the song. And Marvin could get the whole orchestra to breathe with him.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Angela Alvarez, Great-Grandmother Who Won a Latin Grammy, Dies at 97

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      Her only album made her a media star after she had raised four children and worked as a house cleaner — proving, she said, that “it’s never too late.”Angela Alvarez, a Cuban-born singer and songwriter who, at age 95, became the oldest performer to win the Latin Grammy Award for best new artist, died on Friday in Baton Rouge, La., where she had settled after immigrating to the United States in the early 1960s. She was 97.Her death was confirmed by her grandson Carlos Jose Alvarez. Mr. Alvarez, a film composer, produced his grandmother’s first and only album, “Angela Alvarez,” released in 2021. Its 15 tracks echo the sounds of a Havana nightclub in the 1930s or ’40s — a jazzy fusion of Caribbean, African and European rhythms.Sitting with her grandson at the Latin Grammy Awards ceremony in 2022, Mrs. Alvarez was stunned when she heard her name. (The vote was actually a tie: She shared the award with the Mexican singer and songwriter Silvana Estrada, 70 years her junior.)“I looked at him, and I said, ‘Carlos, that’s me!’” she told the Baton Rouge lifestyle magazine inRegister. “I couldn’t believe it.”She became a media star, with English- and Spanish-language publications chronicling her long and improbable journey to the awards stage after raising four children and working as a house cleaner.“Although life is difficult, there is always a way out, and with faith and love you can achieve it, I promise you,” Mrs. Alvarez said as she accepted the award. “It’s never too late.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Taylor Swift, It’s the End of the ‘Eras’

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      Anyone with an ear tuned to the world of pop music knew the Eras Tour was going to be a big one.It was Taylor Swift’s first tour in almost five years, the longest gap of her career. And Swift, long the biggest star in pop music, had become even bigger, transcending the Top 40 to become a cultural phenomenon.Moreover, this tour would include extensive music, not just from her most recent album, “Midnights,” but from her entire career, from the country of “Fearless” to the pop of “1989” to the indie pop of “Folklore.”The first concert came in March 2023 in Glendale, Ariz., and it was even bigger than anyone imagined: three hours, 15 minutes without intermission and more than 40 songs.And the excitement just kept building, with frenzied anticipation in every city, attendance records broken and vast economic impacts in regions and even entire countries.Tickets vanished in seconds, then quickly popped up on the secondary market at 10 times the price. Fans who couldn’t obtain or afford tickets came to the venues anyway, content to commune with others like them and sing along with the amplified music coming from inside.Now, almost two years later, the tour is coming to an end on Sunday night in Vancouver, Canada.The atmosphere outside the concert venue on Saturday night was friendly and bubbly.Alana Paterson for The New York TimesHayley Pallin from Oregon came with her family to watch the concert.Alana Paterson for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Brazilian Jazz

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      When the term “Brazilian jazz” arises, one might think of bossa nova, or Sergio Mendes (its most popular purveyor), and stop there. But there’s a world beyond those sunny instrumentals and bright vocals, where artists like Hermeto Pascoal, João Donato and Leny Andrade show that Brazilian jazz can be funky, soulful and esoteric. This type of jazz had deeper resonance beyond the oceanfront views it conjured.The origins of Brazilian jazz are often traced to the late 1950s, to the advent of bossa nova by the composers Donato and Antônio Carlos Jobim. Blending samba (a style of music born out of the Afro-Brazilian communities in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia) with American jazz, bossa nova — which means “new wave” — reached its apex in 1964 when “The Girl From Ipanema,” sung by the Brazilian vocalist Astrud Gilberto, hit the U.S. singles chart, and won the Grammy for record of the year in 1965. Yet before the song’s success, American composers like Quincy Jones, Herbie Mann and Dave Brubeck recorded bossa nova albums, which stoked the curiosity of U.S. listeners.Thanks to the contributors below, a mix of musicians, writers and scholars, we get to hear Brazilian jazz beyond the gravitational pull of bossa nova and samba, from its height in the ’60s to the present day. And while you’ll see familiar names pop up more than once, they’re often in conversation with others from the broad space of the genre. Traces of bossa nova and samba emerge, but these selections also take fusion, ambient and psychedelia into account. You can find a playlist at the end of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Jeff Caltabiano, writer and historianSão Paulo Underground, “Jagoda’s Dream”Brazil, a country rich with Indigenous musical traditions, has had an ongoing dialogue with the (North) American jazz tradition since the 1950s. That dialogue has broadened well beyond the breezy straightjacket of bossa nova. The visionary American composer and cornetist Rob Mazurek spent eight years living in Brazil, and has been in musical conversation with the São Paulo-born musicians M. Takara and Guilherme Granado for two decades, with the group São Paulo Underground. Takara and Granado go back even further, having met as teenagers in the city’s punk scene. Granado’s hazy keyboards open up “Jagoda’s Dream,” from the band’s third album, “Três Cabeças Loucuras” (“Three crazy heads”), from 2011. The song was written for their friend’s daughter, with a melody and harmony by Mazurek and an infectious cavaquinho rhythm pattern by Takara. The cavaquinho, a miniature guitar with a bright sound, is prominent throughout. During the recording, Takara played cavaquinho with his hands while playing the drums with his feet. Richard Ribeiro played second drums. The song is a firecracker that represents São Paulo’s creative music scene and its hybrid of sounds. A chorus of voices takes us out, wordlessly repeating the rhythm pattern, about to wake from Jagoda’s magnificent dream.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Joyce Moreno, singer and composerTenório Jr., “Embalo”In the early 1960s, bossa nova was at its peak in Brazil and was also growing worldwide. Some Brazilian musicians who were fluent with both bossa nova and jazz began to organize themselves into instrumental groups, mostly trios, but adding horns on occasion. They created music — samba-jazz they called it — with inventive improvisation, sultry rhythms and creative harmonies. One of the most brilliant pianists to emerge from the samba-jazz movement was Tenório Jr. In 1964, at 23, he recorded his one and only album as a leader, “Embalo,” which is now widely acknowledged a classic of the genre. On the title track, a composition by Tenório arranged by the alto saxophonist Paulo Moura, Tenório’s solo is a gorgeous example of the heights that made-in-Brazil jazz could achieve. Unfortunately, that recording is the only taste of Tenório’s genius we still have. In Buenos Aires in 1976, while on tour as a sideman for the Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes, Tenório mysteriously “disappeared” in Argentina on the eve of that country’s military coup (a story told in the excellent animated film “They Shot the Piano Player” by the Spanish filmmakers Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal). Tenório’s music, however, lives on forever.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elton John, After Eye Infection, Says He Couldn’t See His Own Musical

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      After a performance of “The Devil Wears Prada” in London, John told the crowd that the effects of an eye infection were continuing to limit his eyesight.Elton John’s eyesight problems have persisted to the point where he could not see a performance of his own musical in London on Sunday night, he told the crowd after the show.John, 77, appeared onstage after a charity performance of the musical “The Devil Wears Prada,” for which he wrote the score, at the Dominion Theatre.“I haven’t been able to come to many of the previews, because as you know I’ve lost my eyesight, so it’s hard for me to see it,” he said, wearing bright red sunglasses. “But I love to hear it.”John announced in a social media post in September that an eye infection this summer had left him “with only limited vision in one eye.”“I am healing, but it’s an extremely slow process and it will take some time before sight returns to the impacted eye,” he added. “I have been quietly spending the summer recuperating at home, and I am feeling positive about the progress I have made in my healing and recovery thus far.”He provided an update on “Good Morning America” late last month. “I unfortunately lost my eyesight in my right eye in July,” he said. “It’s been four months now since I haven’t been able to see, and my left eye’s not the greatest. There’s hope and encouragement that it should be OK.”Asked about a possible new album, he replied: “Going into the studio and recording, I don’t know, because I can’t see a lyric for a start. I can’t see anything, I can’t read anything, I can’t watch anything.”John did not respond to requests for comment on Monday sent through his talent agencies.When “The Devil Wears Prada” opened in Chicago in 2022 with a different cast, The New York Times said in a review, “The songs unfold pleasantly enough, with flashes of glam and morsels of wit, but they tend to feel last-season.”The musical is based on the 2006 film and the 2003 best-selling semi-autobiographical novel by Lauren Weisberger. The London production stars Vanessa Williams.John also wrote the score for “Tammy Faye,” which is set to close on Broadway this week after only 29 regular performances. He has also written the score for some hits, including “Billy Elliot” and the long-running “The Lion King.”In January, John picked up an Emmy, giving him a lifetime sweep of the major American awards, an accolade known as an EGOT — an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. But he was not present at the ceremony to receive the Emmy because of a knee operation. More