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      Classical Music and Opera This Fall: Programs, Premieres and More

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      Osvaldo Golijov’s Lorca-inspired opera comes to New York, and the pianist Igor Levit plays with the Cleveland Orchestra, among other highlights.The Metropolitan Opera’s gamble on contemporary work continues. Celebrations of big anniversaries for two musical innovators, Charles Ives and Pierre Boulez, are worth seeking out. And Carnegie Hall will host world-class orchestras. But don’t expect Gustavo Dudamel, the New York Philharmonic’s next music director, to be a fixture yet; until 2026, he is dedicated to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which opens Carnegie’s season with a three-night residency. Here are highlights from this fall’s performance calendar. (Locations are in Manhattan unless otherwise specified; dates are subject to change.)SeptemberATLANTA OPERA Not quite 50 years old, this company is bucking the belt-tightening, season-shrinking trend in American opera. It is presenting “La Bohème” (updated to the Covid-19 pandemic) and “Rent,” the Broadway musical that transplanted Puccini’s classic to the AIDS era, both staged by Tomer Zvulun, its artistic director, and Vita Tzykun. (Sept. 18-Oct. 6; Pullman Yards, Atlanta)‘INDRA’S NET’ How about a hopeful perspective on our divided times? The invaluable Meredith Monk created and will perform in “Indra’s Net,” the conclusion to a trilogy of works about our relationship with the natural world and inspired by Buddhist and Hindu legends. (Sept. 23-Oct. 6; Park Avenue Armory)Meredith Monk’s “Indra’s Net,” performed here at the Holland Festival, is coming to the Park Avenue Armory in September.Ada Nieuwendijk‘THE LISTENERS’ Missy Mazzoli, who is working on an operatic adaptation of George Saunders’s “Lincoln in the Bardo,” first brings another work with literary inspiration to Opera Philadelphia: “The Listeners,” with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, based on Jordan Tannahill’s unsettling novel about the search for meaning and a cultish leader who claims to have answers. (Sept. 25-29; Academy of Music, Philadelphia)OctoberLOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC Gustavo Dudamel will be at the podium for three nights to start Carnegie Hall’s season: with Lang Lang in Rachmaninoff’s Second piano concerto; with Alisa Weilerstein in a new cello concerto by Gabriela Ortiz; and with the Mexican singer-songwriter Natalia Lafourcade. (Oct. 8-10; Carnegie Hall)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 Says a Serious Eye Infection Limited His Vision in One Eye

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      The entertainer said on social media that it would “take some time” before sight returned to his eye.Elton John said he was recuperating from a severe eye infection that limited his vision in one eye, but that he was optimistic about his recovery.“Over the summer, I’ve been dealing with a severe eye infection that has unfortunately left me with only limited vision in one eye,” the entertainer wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on Tuesday. “I am healing, but it’s an extremely slow process and it will take some time before sight returns to the impacted eye.”Thanking a team of nurses, doctors and family members who have cared for him, he added that he was “feeling positive about the progress I have made in my healing and recovery thus far.”John, 77, has faced other medical challenges recently.In January, he won an Emmy for outstanding variety special for his live streamed farewell concert at Dodger Stadium, making him the 19th person to secure an EGOT, or win all four prestigious entertainment awards: an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. But he was not present at the ceremony because of a knee operation.The “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour, billed as his last, stretched across 330 concert dates from its start in 2018 to 2023. Some of the tour dates were postponed while he underwent hip surgery after a fall and when he contracted the coronavirus.He decided to stop touring to spend more time with his husband and children, who live in Britain, his representatives have said.John, a longtime leader in gay rights activism, was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Joe Biden in 2022. More

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      Joaquin Phoenix and the Big Question at the ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Premiere

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      At the Venice Film Festival with his co-star, Lady Gaga, would the actor answer questions about dropping out of a Todd Haynes movie?Joaquin Phoenix has never been eager to face the press. The 49-year-old actor grants few interviews, speaks with great reluctance about his process, and once walked out on a journalist when asked whether his film “Joker” might inspire copycat violence.Knowing all that, you could already expect tension at the Venice news conference for “Joker: Folie à Deux,” a sequel to the 2019 hit that has Phoenix reprising the comic-book role that won him the Oscar. Still, this meeting with the media was expected to be particularly fraught as Phoenix has not done any press since August, when he dropped out of a film from the director Todd Haynes just days before it was supposed to shoot, scuttling the production and exposing the star to potential legal action.Hollywood has been buzzing about Phoenix’s murky motivations for weeks, not least because the project — a sexually explicit gay romance co-starring the “Top Gun: Maverick” actor Danny Ramirez — was based on an original idea by Phoenix, who brought the project to Haynes and co-wrote it with the “May December” director.Would Phoenix be willing to shed any light on the situation while in Venice or would he skip the news conference entirely, as “Don’t Worry Darling” star Florence Pugh did two years ago amid rumors of a feud with that film’s director, Olivia Wilde? While waiting for the conference to begin on Wednesday afternoon, journalists placed bets on whether Phoenix would bail twice.They were surprised, then, when Phoenix bounded into the room smiling, followed by his director, Todd Phillips, and co-star Lady Gaga. “First of all, hi everyone!” he told the press. “It’s nice to see you.”Phoenix remained upbeat and unexpectedly willing to answer questions until several minutes into the news conference, when a journalist asked whether he would share his reason for leaving the Haynes film. The actor began to answer, then paused, thinking it over.“If I do, I would just be sharing my opinion from my perspective, and the other creatives aren’t here to share their piece,” Phoenix said, referring to Haynes and his partners.He continued: “It doesn’t feel like that would be right. I don’t think that would be helpful, so I just don’t think I will.”Then he added brightly, “Thank you!”Since Phoenix dropped out of the Haynes film, it’s been reported that the actor often gets cold feet and nearly bailed on making the first “Joker.” Phillips implied as much when he talked about how he convinced Phoenix to star in a sequel. “If we were really going to do it, it had to scare him in the way the first one did,” Phillips said.The director admitted to his own nerves in bringing “Folie à Deux” to Venice, since the first film won the festival’s prestigious Golden Lion. “It’s easier to come in as the insurgent instead of the incumbent,” Phillips said.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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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Big Band Jazz

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      Big bands were built in the 1920s and ’30s to blast young dancers with layers of rhythm, but creative composers seeking a larger canvas have kept the form alive. Hear 12 big selections.“Big band music” isn’t everybody’s first thought when they’re pondering what to punch into Spotify, we’ll grant you that. But if all big bands make you think of is “jazz hands” and flappers and early black-and-white films, let’s take five minutes to change that.Of course, the best way to experience a jazz orchestra is not on a streaming platform — it’s live. The format was first built in the 1920s and ’30s to satisfy Lindy hoppers and other young dancers across the country. The real point of getting more than a dozen horn players together with a rhythm section is to blast you with layers of rhythm: A big band is a sonic engine, with interlocking gears and heat and pulse.Still, with great writing, jazz orchestras can also be fun to hear up close on recordings. At this point, it’s been over half a century since most big bands made actual dance music, anyway. What has really kept the big band alive is its attractiveness to creative jazz composers seeking a larger canvas. The big band has been embraced over the years by jazz’s left wing (David Murray, Sam Rivers, Carla Bley, Horace Tapscott and of course Sun Ra), by innovators after something closer to a Third Stream fusing classical and jazz (Toshiko Akiyoshi and Maria Schneider), and recently by a veritable movement of under-50 composer-bandleaders like Darcy James Argue, Miho Hazama, Igmar Thomas and Anna Webber.For a primer on the big band canon, look no further than the 12 picks below, courtesy of musicians and writers who know the medium well. You can find a playlist at the end of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Ted Nash, saxophonist and composer“A Tone Parallel to Harlem” by Duke Ellington“Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.” Duke Ellington could say so much with very little. With “A Tone Parallel to Harlem,” a long-form piece that evokes vibrant neighborhoods in New York City, Duke, in just under 14 minutes, expresses everything I love about music: swing, grooves, simple themes, development, complex harmony, tension, release, expressive dynamics, featured soloists and the blues. Though it was originally commissioned by Arturo Toscanini in 1950, as part of a larger New York City-inspired orchestral suite, Toscanini never conducted it. In his memoirs, Duke describes composing “Harlem” on a sea voyage from Europe to the United States. I can’t help thinking about Duke’s reflections on returning to his home while composing this poignant masterpiece.In 1999, a year after I joined the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, we celebrated Duke’s centennial by playing exclusively his music for that whole year. As we started the season, I was skeptical — which exposed my ignorance. Over that year I learned not only about Duke Ellington but about music. When I first heard “Harlem,” it changed me. It allowed me to discover the power of musical expression. Through his music, Duke teaches us about being human. When we listen with our hearts, we have the opportunity to become better people.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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      How Laurie Anderson Conjured Amelia Earhart’s Final Flight

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      Imagine — or perhaps remember — a time when the world seemed much larger, when air travel was novel and dangerous, when wireless communication could never be taken for granted.That’s the era Laurie Anderson conjures on her new album, “Amelia,” out Friday. In a fast-moving 36 minutes and 22 tracks, “Amelia” traces the doomed final flight of Amelia Earhart, who set out “to become the first woman to circumnavigate the Earth,” as Anderson narrates. Earhart took off from Oakland on May 20, 1937, and flew across the Americas, Africa and Asia before her plane disappeared over the Pacific on July 2.“I really fell in love with Amelia,” Anderson said in a video interview from her New York City studio, where she was surrounded by keyboards and mixing equipment, preparing for a tech rehearsal. “Amelia really was this badass person.”Amelia Earhart “was the original blogger,” Laurie Anderson said, noting her journey was very documented.Like nearly the entire body of work that Anderson has created since the 1980s, “Amelia” is an uncontainable hybrid. It unfolds as something between a song cycle, an oratorio and a vintage radio drama. Anderson deploys a string orchestra, electronics and a jazz-tinged rhythm section along with her gallery of singing and speaking voices. Parts of “Amelia” are matter-of-fact and diaristic, noting dates and places. But there are also stretches of heaving orchestral counterpoint that grow enveloping, even dizzying, evoking the vastness, and danger, of sky and ocean.Anderson describes “Amelia” as “a distant cousin” of music she composed for a concert series in 2000 by the American Composers Orchestra for the turn of the millennium. The conductor Dennis Russell Davies had called on Anderson, Philip Glass, Samuel Barber and others to write music about flight.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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      A Pianist Who’s Not Afraid to Improvise on Mozart

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      Robert Levin has long argued that Mozart would have made up new material while performing, and he follows the master in a series of dazzling recordings.Robert Levin playing an excerpt of Mozart, whose complete works for keyboard and orchestra he has recently finished releasing on disc.Cadenzas are a concerto soloist’s time to shine: the moments when the rest of the orchestra dramatically drops out and a single musician gets the chance to command the stage.For about half of Mozart’s piano concertos, cadenzas he wrote have been preserved, and those are what you usually hear in concerts and on recordings. Other composers later filled in the gaps with cadenzas that have also become traditional. Some performers write their own.But 250 years ago, when Mozart was a star pianist, he wouldn’t have performed prewritten cadenzas — even ones he had composed.“When Mozart wrote his concertos, they were a vehicle for his skills,” the pianist and scholar Robert Levin said by telephone from Salzburg, Austria — Mozart’s hometown — where he teaches at the Mozarteum University. “He was respected as a composer and lionized as a performer, but it was as an improviser that he was on top of the heap.”Levin, 76, has long argued that Mozart, as a player, made up new cadenzas and ornaments in the moment. And he has sought to revive that spirit of improvisation in a landmark cycle of the concertos on period instruments, a 13-album project begun more than 30 years ago with the Academy of Ancient Music, led by Christopher Hogwood.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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      Harold Meltzer, Composer of Impossible-to-Pigeonhole Works, Dies at 58

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      His music, which was performed by many prominent ensembles, mixed melodic themes and rich textures with the sharp-edged angularity of modernism.Harold Meltzer, a composer who set aside a career as a lawyer to create a highly regarded body of energetic, colorful chamber, vocal and orchestral scores that mixed accessibly melodic themes and rich ensemble textures with the sharp-edged angularity of modernism, died on Aug. 12 in Manhattan. He was 58.Hilary Meltzer, his wife, said that his death, in a hospital, was caused by respiratory failure, a complication of a variety of medical problems he had withstood since having a stroke in 2019.Mr. Meltzer, who was also a director (first with David Amato, later with Sara Laimon) of Sequitur, a new-music ensemble, cut an imposing figure at contemporary music concerts in the 1990s and 2000s.Bespectacled, with wavy hair, he invariably entertained friends during intermissions with wry observations about the music world in general, or the events of the day. Even after his stroke, when he began using a wheelchair, he was determined to maintain something approximating his earlier level of activity, and after only two months of therapy, he appeared as the narrator for his theater work “Sindbad,” a humorous 2005 setting of a Donald Barthelme story that was one of his most frequently performed works.His music was impossible to pigeonhole, mainly because each work was his response to a different set of challenges. In “Virginal” (2002), for harpsichord and 15 other instruments, he wanted to pay tribute to William Byrd, John Bull and other Elizabethan composers whose works were included in the “Fitzwilliam Virginal Book,” a collection of English Renaissance keyboard pieces. To avoid creating a pastiche, he did not quote from any of their music, focusing instead on the structures and processes (repeating figuration., for example) that made their music distinct.If there was one element that connected many of Mr. Meltzer’s works, it was an imaginative use of tone color. Metalli Studio, via the Civitella Ranieri FoundationWe 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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      ‘The Interview’: Jelly Roll Cannot Believe How His Life Turned Out

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      We’ve all had the experience of being in a bad emotional place and, in response, putting on a song. We know that song isn’t going to fix the problem, whatever it may be, or even change the feeling. But the music we turn to when we’re struggling can be like a hand on our shoulder. For a legion of Americans today, the music that does that is by Jelly Roll.Listen to the Conversation With Jelly RollFrom jail and addiction to music stardom — the singer tells David Marchese he’s living a “modern American fairy tale.”Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppJelly’s real name is Jason DeFord, and he’s from Antioch, Tenn. He’s 39-years-old, burly (though he’s trying to lose weight), with a face covered in tattoos. In a sign of the breadth of his audience, he has been able to score on the country, rock and pop charts with hit singles like “Need a Favor” and albums like 2023’s “Whitsitt Chapel.” His southern-rock and hip-hop-inflected country songs are almost all about clawing toward some semblance of stability, which is an experience that informs a lot of his music, because it’s one he knows well. Jelly was in and out of prison starting as a teenager and into his mid-20s. He has dealt with personal loss and substance-abuse issues — both his own and that of his teenage daughter’s mother. He has also dealt with the professional despair of a long run to nowhere as an aspiring rapper. But that’s before he switched to singing and, beginning in 2021, started to hit it big.The musician — one half of a down-home power couple with his wife, Bunnie Xo, who hosts the popular Dumb Blonde podcast — will set off on a cross-country headlining arena tour later this month. He also has a new, highly-anticipated album, “Beautifully Broken,” scheduled for release this fall. He is, by any measure, a star — and still figuring out just what that means.Can you share some of the things that fans come up and tell you? I’ve heard it all, Bubba. I’ve heard everything from “Your music was played at my daughter’s funeral; she had an accidental overdose” to “Your song helped me get through rehab; I listened to ‘Save Me’ on repeat for 30 days straight.” Or “It was our morning song before we did our gratitude list.” Yeah, everything from funerals to hospitals to recovery centers. I’ve heard the good stories, too: “I got sober.” It’s crazy, the range of emotions.Is it ever hard for you to be the recipient of that? Nah, I feel honored that I have a purpose. I spent so much of my life being counterproductive to society that to be in a place where I’m able to help people has completely changed my mentality. More