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      A Virtuoso Cellist’s Painstaking Path From Long Covid Back to the Stage

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      For over three years, long Covid has presented Joshua Roman with health challenges — and has indelibly shaped the music he makes.Since he began playing cello at 3, Joshua Roman’s talent has taken him from his hometown of Mustang, Okla., to concert halls all over the world.He was the youngest principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony, at 22, and has been a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and many other orchestras. His daily routine often included 10 hours of playing, along with a six-mile run.Then, on Jan. 9, 2021, in Jacksonville, Fla., the morning after performing Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto, a piece he loves for its “giant sections of flashy, virtuosic excitement,” everything changed. He woke up and found he couldn’t smell his toothpaste. Later that day, he tested positive for Covid.He was only 37 years old, but he felt extreme fatigue, as if “wearing a coat of weighted down metal inside my body.” It would be a month before he had enough energy to fly home to Manhattan. He was so weak that he got stuck on a staircase landing, crying until he managed to crawl up the rest of the steps.Eventually, most excruciating of all, he lost the stamina to play his cello for nearly three months.“I just let it sit literally collecting dust.”Mr. Roman described his fatigue as like “wearing a coat of weighted down metal inside my body.”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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      An Undersung and Unruly Woodstock in Pictures, 30 Years On

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      A new photography show celebrates the 30th anniversary of Woodstock 1994, middle child to the festivals of 1969 and 1999.Nestled between the instantly legendary festival in 1969 and the violence of the 1999 incarnation, Woodstock 1994 — a 25th anniversary celebration of the original — can be easy to overlook.That installment, in Saugerties, N.Y., was supposed to be a slightly more grown-up (or, depending who you ask, commercial) version. But, as in 1969, attendees saw severe traffic jams, fences that could not contain the crowd and rainy weather that turned the festival grounds into a muddy slog.Then, five years later, fires, rioting and reports of sexual assault at the 1999 festival made national headlines, and gave “Woodstock” a whole new meaning.Members of the band Green Day, at Woodstock 1994, in a photo by Danny Clinch.Danny ClinchNow, for the 30th anniversary of ’94, a photography exhibition places the middle child of the festivals at center stage. The show, at the Opus 40 gallery in Saugerties, opens on Friday and runs for three weeks. It features work from Albert Watson, Henry Diltz, Cheryl Dunn and Danny Clinch, who remember the festival as messy yet rewarding.That the show is taking place at all is thanks to Watson, who is known for black-and-white portraits of luminaries including Steve Jobs. The show was put together by Tyler Harte, a Manhattan property manager who moonlights as an organizer of concerts and skateboard events — and manages the building where Watson’s photography studio is. Harte realized that the anniversary was coming up and contacted Watson about potentially doing something with his 1994 photography.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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      Jack Russell, Great White Singer and Survivor of Nightclub Fire, Dies at 63

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      At a show in 2003 with his “Jack Russell’s Great White,” a pyrotechnics display ignited a fire that killed 100 people, including the band’s guitarist.Jack Russell, the singer who led the popular 1980s hard rock band Great White, as well as a spinoff group that set off one of the deadliest nightclub fires ever, has died. He was 63.The cause of death was lewy body dementia and multiple system atrophy, said K.L. Doty, the author of Mr. Russell’s autobiography. No other details were given.Mr. Russell’s death was announced in a post on his official Instagram profile on Thursday and confirmed by Ms. Doty. Great White also paid tribute to his death on its Instagram page.Mr. Russell co-founded Great White with guitarist Mark Kendall. The band, originally called Dante Fox, began playing in small clubs in Southern California in the early 1980s. It became Great White in 1984. The group’s first big hit, “Rock Me,” landed the No. 60 spot on the Billboard Top 100 Chart in 1987.Great White found success with its third album, which featured its biggest hit, “Once Bitten Twice Shy.” The song reached No. 5 in 1989 and earned the band a 1990 Grammy nomination.Mr. Russell briefly left Great White in 1996 to build a solo career but returned in 1999. By 2001, Great White had disbanded.In 2002, Mr. Russell and Mr. Kendall hired three new musicians and began touring as Jack Russell’s Great White, playing in small clubs. In February 2003, while performing at the Station Nightclub in West Warwick, R.I., the band’s pyrotechnics ignited a deadly fire that killed 100 people, including Great White’s guitarist, and left 230 injured. It was one of the worst club fires in U.S. history.The two brothers who owned the club, and installed the highly flammable soundproofing foam around its stage, and the band’s tour manager, who lit the blaze, were charged in connection with the fire.Mr. Russell was not charged, but members of the band agreed to pay a $1 million settlement.By 2005, Jack Russell’s Great White parted ways after “the stress from lawsuits, inner band turmoil, and Russell’s substance abuse problems, had taken its toll,” according to the All Music Guide.Great White reunited in 2007, but it was short-lived. Mr. Russell continued making music with Jack Russell’s Great White. He announced in an Instagram post in July that he was retiring because of his health problems.“I am unable to perform at the level I desire and at the level you deserve,” Mr. Russell wrote. “Words cannot express my gratitude for the many years of memories, love, and support.”Jack Patrick Russell was born on Dec. 5, 1960 in Montebello, Calif. He grew up in Whittier, Calif., and dropped out of high school to pursue music.He is survived by his wife, Heather Ann Russell, and his son, Matthew Hucko. More

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      A New Venue Beckons Jazz Musicians and Beyond to Upstate New York

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      The Mill, an arts center with art galleries and a performance space in an old flour mill, opened over the weekend. Its owners hope it sparks a “ripple effect.”Fourteen years ago, Taylor Haskins, a veteran jazz trumpeter, and Catherine Ross Haskins, a visual artist, moved from Brooklyn to Westport, N.Y., a picture-book town on Lake Champlain, 275 miles north of Manhattan. It became “the place on Earth that we love,” Taylor said. “But sometimes it could use a little bit of an injection of the outside world.”So three years ago, they bought an abandoned, 11,000-square-foot flour mill on Main Street, gutted it and refashioned it as the Mill, a center for contemporary visual arts with a chapel-like performance space.The venue, which had its official opening on Saturday, is exhibiting and commissioning esteemed visual artists. And it is booking musicians — including the pianist Guillermo Klein, the slide trumpeter Steven Bernstein’s Sexmob and the violinist Sarah Neufeld of Arcade Fire — who don’t often drive up to the Adirondacks for a gig. (They’d typically perform at downtown Manhattan clubs like the Village Vanguard or Joe’s Pub.) The hope, Taylor said, is to create “a cultural oasis” that the community will embrace.The Haskinses, both 52, are financing the project with their own funds. During their years in New York City, they watched as empty industrial buildings were given new lives, too often as condos (they lived in one), but sometimes in creative ways. They thought they’d give it a try: “We could fail,” Catherine said. “But what are we even alive for if we don’t do something we believe in?”Visitors gather in one of the Mill’s five galleries.Sinjun Strom for The New York TimesPieces in Mayer’s Slumpies series installed in one of the Mill’s galleries.Sinjun Strom for The New York TimesSituated about 100 miles south of Montreal, the Mill isn’t yet on anyone’s performance circuit. At the same time, it is one node in a network of far-flung venues that operate largely under the media radar. “It reminds me of places I’ve encountered not in the U.S. — in Japan, in Poland, in France,” said the harpist Zeena Parkins, who performed at the opening on Saturday. “And it’s always the energy of one or two people that makes this incredible thing happen just because they love the music and they love the art, and they’ve developed a trust with their community.”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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      Monet, Taylor Swift, ‘Moana’: What Got Readers Through Their Grief

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      After our series on how artists have been affected by loss, we asked readers what helped them when they experienced it. These are 15 of their answers.Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, we published The Grief Project, a series of interviews with artists who discussed the ways that loss affected their work and creativity. We also asked readers about the art and culture — whether it was a book, a movie, a song or anything else — that helped them remember or cope with losing a loved one. Hundreds responded. Here is what some of them said.Music‘As’ by Stevie WonderLike Stevie Wonder, Nancy Hanks wrote, her mother “was soulful and full of spirit, enriching the lives of all she came in contact with.”Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesI’m not sure if it’s the melody or lyrics, but this song deeply captures the deep feelings of love and profound grief that I feel for the loss of my mother. Throughout the song Stevie Wonder professes all the ways and lengths that the depth of his love reaches. He notes “did you know true love asks for nothing / her acceptance is the way we pay.” I often am reminded of this. The grief that I carry is a tax on the lifetime of unconditional love I’ve experienced from my mother. Like Stevie, she was soulful and full of spirit, enriching the lives of all she came in contact with. We couldn’t have the proper celebration we wanted for her because of Covid, but I imagine if we did, we would have played this song along with so many more of her favorites and danced all night. I can’t hear the song anymore without feeling a deep sense of longing for her. I’m so grateful for her life and legacy, and I miss her terribly. —Nancy Hanks, AtlantaFilm‘School of Rock’It was less than a week after we lost our 4-year-old daughter Laila to cancer, in 2004. A neighboring couple, who had been supportive throughout Laila’s illness, brought over a VHS tape of “School of Rock.” In those very early days of bereavement, as far as I knew, I would never laugh again. But we popped in the videocassette, and before long I found myself laughing out loud, along with the family and friends gathered with us. Although my sadness filled my entire soul, there was somehow still room for humor. The wondrous physics of hope, in a lesson delivered by Jack Black with his electric guitar. As a family, we rewatch “School of Rock” every now and then, and it never fails to uplift. To me, it will always be a symbol of resilience. —Mary Janevic, Ann Arbor, Mich.SportsThe New York RangersWatching the Rangers “offered tremendous comfort to my family,” wrote Pam Poling, whose sister was a fellow fan.Joel Auerbach/Getty Images/Getty ImagesOur sister died in December after an incredibly brief illness. She was our go-to person for all things hockey, especially our beloved Rangers. Watching them skate so beautifully this season offered tremendous comfort to my family. Whether they win or lose, we often text each other, “Joanie would have loved this.” It really helps. —Pam Poling, Fairfield, Conn.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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      Mísia, Who Brought a Modern Flair to Fado Music, Dies at 69

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      With her smoky voice and her high-fashion look, the self-proclaimed “punk of fado” found stardom by shaking up a venerable Portuguese genre.Mísia, an acclaimed singer who helped modernize fado, a traditional Portuguese music known for wistful songs of fate, loss and regret, with a runway-ready style sense and an eclectic approach that earned her the label “anarchist of fado,” died on July 27 in Lisbon. She was 69.Her death was announced by Dalila Rodrigues, Portugal’s minister of culture, who called Mísia “a fundamental voice in the renewal of fado.” News reports said the cause was cancer.Fado — the name is derived from the Latin word fatum, meaning fate — is an urban folk music spiced with Arabic and other global influences that arose in the 19th century in the grittiest quarters of Lisbon. Marked by a minor-key plaintiveness, the music is rich with feelings of longing and resignation.Like the American blues, fado long functioned as the song of the disenfranchised, a search for transcendence amid struggle. “It was sung in the taverns and the houses of prostitution,” Mísia said in a 2000 interview with the American arts magazine Bomb, “where a lot of sailors and rough people, people who had a hard life, went to hear the music.” Fado, she added, “was the shouting of the people with no power.”Fado is also known for its theatrical, if spare, presentation: stylized, almost ritualistic performances by vocalists typically dressed in black, accompanied by traditional instruments like the Portuguese guitarra, a 12-string guitar dating to the 13th century.Her ascent to global success began with the release of her critically acclaimed debut album, called simply “Mísia,” in 1991; she eventually performed in the esteemed music halls of New York, London and Tokyo and attracted a particularly avid following in France.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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      John Mayer on Being the Watch World’s Celebrity ‘Go-To Guy’

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      When the guitarist John Mayer takes the stage this week in Las Vegas, to cap Dead & Company’s 10-week residence at the Sphere arena, his wristwatch is bound to loom large on the venue’s massive LED screen.“I happen to have a job where my wrist is naturally looked at,” Mr. Mayer, 46, said last month on a video call from his home in Los Angeles.That suits the longtime watch collector (and downright watch nerd) just fine.“The number of people who come up to me and ask me what I’m wearing is far greater than the number of people who come up to me and say, ‘Love your music, or how’d you write that song?’” he said. “People want to know about watches more than anything. They’ll say, ‘Gotta ask: What do you have on?’ It’s such a great entree to conversation.”One of Mr. Mayer’s favorite talking points is his new collaboration with the Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet (A.P.). After three years of development, in March the brand introduced a Royal Oak perpetual calendar wristwatch designed by Mr. Mayer.Limited to 200 pieces, the $180,700 timepiece, encased in 18-karat white gold, featured a blue metallic dial inspired by the night sky as well as some subtle aesthetic details that Mr. Mayer conceived.“When you look at this perpetual calendar, the first thing you should see is the time,” he said. “You shouldn’t see the vastness of the universe when it comes to timekeeping if you’ve got 15 minutes to get to a meeting.”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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      Blondie’s Debbie Harry Taps Personal Style for Wildfang Collection

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      For a new collection with the brand Wildfang, the Blondie singer took inspiration from a personal wardrobe she cultivated by dressing “as daring as you could.”A designer lives inside Debbie Harry. She’ll tell you so herself.As the lead signer of the pop-punk band Blondie, iterations of which have been performing for six decades, Ms. Harry has assembled her own stage wardrobe, a rough-hewn bricolage of shredded prom dresses, spandex bodysuits, fishnet arm warmers and skin-baring vintage castoffs.“I’ve always fiddled around and tried to make statements out of combining things that normally would not be looked at,” she said. “That was the fun — to make it as rock ‘n’ roll and as daring as you could. It was part of the expression of breaking out.”Since forming Blondie in the 1970s with the guitarist Chris Stein, her onetime boyfriend, Ms. Harry has rarely drifted out of public consciousness. In recent years, she has released a memoir and, with her band, albums featuring new music as well as classic songs like “Heart of Glass,” the disco track that helped make Blondie a household name. It has been covered by younger performers like Miley Cyrus, who, in a 2020 interview with Rolling Stone, credited Ms. Harry with blazing a path for new generations of artists.To some, Ms. Harry’s image as the Blondie front woman has been as influential as the band’s music. Her rocker style was the basis for a new collaboration with Wildfang, a brand in Portland, Ore., which this month released a small collection inspired by pieces that the 79-year-old singer pulled from her closet.Pieces in Ms. Harry’s Wildfang line are inspired by items from her own closet.Nicholas O’Donnell/WildfangThe collection includes a suit jacket and trousers, two shirts and a sweatshirt. Those items, priced from about $45 to $200, make liberal reference to Ms. Harry’s familiar wardrobe staples — and to her raw, tear-down-the-barricades sensibility.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