music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      Amid Orchestral Waves, the Sound of Cultures Conversing

      by

      “Natural History,” performed in Cincinnati, is a collaboration between the composer Michael Gordon and the Native American ensemble Steiger Butte Drum.Eleven members of Steiger Butte Drum sat in a circle around a large elk-hide drum at the front of the stage of Cincinnati’s Music Hall last Thursday. Washes of sound from the orchestra behind them built and receded in grand waves.The group was the concerto soloist, of a kind, in “Natural History” by Michael Gordon, one of the Bang on a Can composers who infused Minimalism with rough, rebellious energy in the 1980s. A few times over the course of the 25-minute piece, Steiger Butte Drum, a traditional percussion and vocal ensemble of the Klamath Tribes of Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, broke out in a ceremonial song, the members beating the drum in fast, dramatic unison as they made a piercing, tangily pitch-bending, wordlessly wailing chant.They were joined by a full chorus, placed in the first balcony: the men on one side of the hall, the women on the other. Percussion in the upper balcony evoked woodland animals; brasses, also up there, let out joyful, squealing bits of fanfare that seemed to tumble down and join lines coming from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra onstage — eventually rising to a powerful, churning finale, with all these sprawling forces, conducted by Teddy Abrams, going at once.Unsettled and unsettling, both celebratory and threatening, imposing and ultimately harmonious, this was the sound of a cultural conversation that is still, after centuries, in its nascent stages.Native American composers and performers are slowly gaining more visibility after having long been largely ignored by institutions associated with the Western classical tradition. Raven Chacon, a Diné composer and visual artist, won the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2022. In March, the New York Philharmonic premiered an orchestral version of the Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s “Pisachi.”And yet Native music, kaleidoscopically varied across the country and its many tribes and heritages, remains only rarely heard, and so only vaguely understood and appreciated, by non-Natives. This is hardly surprising, given the country’s more general neglect of a full, sustained reckoning with its history with — and its often stunningly cruel treatment of — Native Americans.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

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      A Celebration of Frank London’s Music Will Be Missing One Thing: Him

      by

      The trumpeter, composer and bandleader who helped revitalize klezmer is battling cancer. But his work hasn’t slowed, and his longtime associates are rallying around him.Frank London is one of those musicians who somehow seems to be everywhere, participating in a bit of everything. At 66, the trumpeter, composer, arranger and bandleader has collaborated with everyone from Mel Tormé to LL Cool J. A founding member of the Klezmatics, a band that helped to revitalize the klezmer style during the late ’80s, London has worked for decades at a fertile crossroads where Jewish music meets downtown jazz. With two new albums involving both styles arriving imminently, he arranged to throw a party, and invited dozens of friends and colleagues to play.The celebration, happening on Monday at the Brooklyn venue Roulette, features the Klezmatics alongside three of London’s bands: Conspiracy Brass, a buoyant, funky horns-and-percussion aggregation; the Elders, a soulful, hard-swinging quintet of seasoned jazzers; and Klezmer Brass Allstars, who meld traditional Yiddish and Hasidic music with electronic beats.The only thing missing will be London himself, now hospitalized for treatment of a rare cancer he became aware of four years ago. During unrelated medical testing in 2020, doctors detected signs of myelofibrosis, a chronic leukemia characterized by a buildup of scar tissue in the bone marrow. The median survival rate for the disease is six years.“I didn’t tell anyone much about it, because this is a very weird disease,” London said during an interview before his hospitalization, in the cozy East Village apartment he shares with his wife, Tine Kindermann, an artist and musician.“Some people die within a year,” he said. “Some people live with it for 30 years. I’m in this statistical norm where it’s like, after three to five years it starts to get worse. So for the last four years, I’ve just been leading my life.”For London, that meant taking care of business. In addition to wrapping up his two new albums, “Brass Conspiracy” by Conspiracy Brass and “Spirit Stronger Than Blood” by the Elders, he delivered a Klezmer Brass Allstars album, “Chronika,” last December. He wrote music for an independent film, completed a score for a forthcoming Karin Coonrod production of “King Lear,” and recorded a commissioned set of niggunim — Jewish spiritual melodies — with a starry ensemble of fellow iconoclasts.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

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Memo to Orchestras: Do More Opera

      by

      The Cleveland Orchestra’s staging of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” was a reminder that ensembles can help fill the gap as opera grows harder to find.It was that rarest of sights when I walked into the Cleveland Orchestra’s hall on Sunday afternoon: a dark curtain drawn across the stage.Rare, that is, in a concert hall. Orchestras don’t tend to have dramatic unveilings before they start to play. And while Cleveland has done near-annual opera presentations over the past two decades, the ensemble has almost always been onstage alongside the singers, as the stagings have worked around (and sometimes incorporated) the presence of dozens of players.But for Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” which ended a sold-out four-performance run at Severance Music Center on Sunday, the orchestra was lowered into an honest-to-goodness pit, and the curtain was closed at the start, just as it would have been in an opera house.It was a reminder that opera — expensive to put on and not to everyone’s taste, though with a passionate fan base — has been ever harder to find in American cities. And a reminder that orchestras can — and should! — summon the resources to fill even a bit of that gap.As the Cleveland Orchestra’s president and chief executive, André Gremillet, said in an interview, “This city doesn’t otherwise have world-class opera.” Cleveland Opera, a company that did present world-class offerings for several decades, faded away about 15 years ago, and a couple of companies left in its wake offer just a smattering of smaller-scale performances.And yet there is a hunger for the art form, and an opportunity for orchestras around the country to expand their audiences. “There are people who are not here every week,” Gremillet said, “who will come to the opera — and more than once.”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

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Richard Sherman, Songwriter of Many Spoonfuls of Sugar, Dies at 95

      by

      He and his brother, Robert, teamed up to write the songs for “Mary Poppins” and other Disney classics. They also gave the world “It’s a Small World (After All).”Richard M. Sherman, the younger brother in a songwriting team that won two Oscars and two Grammys, brought Disney movies to musical life and gave the world numbers like “A Spoonful of Sugar,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” and the ubiquitous, multiply translated “It’s a Small World (After All),” died on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 95.The death, in a hospital, was announced by the Walt Disney Company.The careers of the Shermans — Richard and Robert — were inextricably linked with Walt Disney. Their Academy Awards were for “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” a chimney sweep’s alternately cheerful and plaintive anthem from “Mary Poppins” (1964), and for the film’s score. Their Grammy Awards were for “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too,” shared in 1975 for best recording for children, and the “Mary Poppins” score.“It’s a Small World” was written for the Disney theme-park ride of the same name. The song plays as guests in boats pass among 240 dolls of many nations with identical faces — tiny can-can and folk dancers, mermaids and mariachi bands — plus Big Ben, the Taj Mahal and grinning farm animals.“People want to kiss us or kill us,” Richard Sherman said in a 2011 video interview about the song, which he said was “the biggest hit of the World’s Fair,” where it was introduced in 1964.The Shermans brought a musical-theater sensibility to movie songwriting. The question was never which came first, the music or the words; what came first was the idea.The framework of “Mary Poppins” did not exist until the Shermans got their hands on P.L. Travers’s beloved books about a magical nanny, a series of adventures in 1930s London with no discernible conflict or resolution. In the movie, the problem is the children’s behavior, brought on by a neglectful father. It also seemed like bad taste to employ live-in servants during hard economic times, so they moved the Banks family to the Edwardian era.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

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      10 Artists on Living and Creating Through Grief

      by

      Sigrid Nunez, authorConor Oberst, musicianBridget Everett, performerBen Kweller, musicianJesmyn Ward, authorJustin Hardiman, photographerJulie Otsuka, authorLila Avilés, filmmakerRichard E. Grant, actorLuke Lorentzen, filmmakerWhen Jesmyn Ward was writing her 2013 book, “Men We Reaped,” she could feel the presence of her brother, who had been killed years earlier by a drunk driver. She still talks to him, as well as to her partner, who died in 2020.“This may just be wishful thinking, but talking to them and being open to feeling them answer, that enables me to live in spite of their loss,” she told me.While filming the HBO series “Somebody Somewhere,” Bridget Everett, playing a woman mourning the loss of her sister, was grieving the loss of her own. Working on the show was a way to still live with her, in a way, she said: “There’s something that’s less scary about sharing time with my sister when it’s through art or through making the show or through a song.”One of the many things you learn after losing a loved one is that there are a lot of us grieving out there. Some people are not just living with loss but also trying to create or experience something meaningful, to counter the blunt force of the ache.We talked to 10 artists across music, writing, photography, film and comedy about the ways their work, in the wake of personal loss, has deepened their understanding of what it means to grieve and to create.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

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      The Emails at the Heart of the Government’s Ticketmaster Case

      by

      Live Nation Entertainment, which owns Ticketmaster, is accused of violating antitrust laws. The Justice Department drew on the concert behemoth’s internal communications in its lawsuit.In its lawsuit accusing Live Nation Entertainment, the concert behemoth that owns Ticketmaster, of being an illegal monopoly, the Justice Department drew on a raft of internal communications that offered a rare behind-the-scenes look at the industry.The Justice Department argued in an extensive complaint filed on Thursday that the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which went through in 2010, had hurt competition, hindered innovation and resulted in higher ticket prices and fees for consumers. It called for the company to be broken up.In response, Live Nation, which is also the world’s largest concert promoter, has said that it is not a monopoly, and denied that it has the unilateral power to raise prices. Contrary to the government’s argument about its great power, Live Nation says it now faces more competition than ever, and that the Justice Department’s suit “won’t reduce ticket prices or service fees.”Detailing its allegations, the government relied on eye-opening emails that it says were written by Live Nation’s chief executive, Michael Rapino, and other high-powered figures in the concert world.Here are a few of those accusations.A potential rival’s Kanye West concertOne episode from 2021 goes to the heart of the Justice Department’s allegations that Live Nation went to extreme lengths to protect its competitive edge.Late that year, the government says, Live Nation “threatened commercial retaliation” against the private equity firm Silver Lake, which had an investment in TEG, an Australian ticketing and promotions company that was involved in a highly anticipated benefit show by Kanye West and Drake at the L.A. Coliseum. Silver Lake had also invested in Oak View Group, a venue management company with close ties to Live Nation.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

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      Gamelan Dharma Swara Finds Its Authentic Self

      by

      The ensemble, which plays traditional and contemporary Balinese music, nearly dissolved during the pandemic. Reborn, it will perform a piece created for its members.On Mother’s Day in the main hall of the Ridgewood Presbyterian Church in Queens, a handful of members of Gamelan Dharma Swara, an ensemble that plays traditional and contemporary Balinese music, practiced its new piece, “Pagar Ayu.” It was a joyous cacophony — a melding of metallophones, other percussive instruments and flute — though it was still in need of refinement.“You’re giving away some part of yourself to the people,” Victoria Lo Mellin, Dharma Swara’s president, directed the musicians. Lo Mellin, 38, who has been with the ensemble since 2007, tried to communicate a sense of urgency. The world premiere of “Pagar Ayu” — a moment to celebrate the group’s rebirth in the wake of the pandemic with a work created expressly for its members — was less than two weeks away.There are more than 100 gamelan groups in the United States. Some perform the music and dance styles that developed on the Indonesian island on Bali; others take up those from the nearby islands of Java or Sunda. Some hew closely to the traditions rooted in gamelan’s 1,300-year history; others mix in, either subtly or liberally, Western and modern influences.Dharma Swara is firmly situated in the Balinese branch of the music, which has a generally faster tempo — think wind chimes more often caught up in a glorious gale than riding a contemplative breeze — and uses fewer gongs and more gangsa, a type of ornate bamboo-and-brass metallophone with keys that are suspended above the instrument’s body. But as much as the members embrace gamelan and its origins, they are also mindful of their own.“We have a personality that’s uniquely American. It’s innately American,” Lo Mellin said.To prepare for the debut of “Pagar Ayu,” the members took part in a three-day retreat at Chautauqua to bond, practice and learn more about Balinese culture. Tara Bryan for The New York TimesEstablishing an identity that is distinct, authentic and respectful has been Dharma Swara’s ongoing quest for more than a decade. After preparing for and performing at the 2010 Bali Arts Festival, the first time a Western ensemble had been invited to Indonesia to participate in the yearly celebration of Balinese culture, members started to ask themselves what else they could achieve.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

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler Headline Broadway ‘Romeo and Juliet’

      by

      A production featuring the screen stars, with music by Jack Antonoff, will open in October at Circle in the Square.Rachel Zegler has already played a Juliet-inspired figure, starring as Maria in the 2021 film adaptation of “West Side Story.” And Kit Connor has played a Romeo of sorts, starring as a yearning adolescent in the boy-meets-boy television series “Heartstopper.”Now the two actors are bringing a new production of “Romeo and Juliet” to Broadway. Their version, which seems to be leaning into the alienation of youth in a world of violent adults, is to begin performances Sept. 26 and to open Oct. 24 at Circle in the Square Theater.The production, which announced its timing and location on Wednesday, has said little about its concept, but there are indications it will be influenced by contemporary ideas: The show is to feature music by Jack Antonoff, the Grammy-winning producer best known for his successful collaborations with Taylor Swift, and it is being marketed with a vulgarity about the plight of young people. On Wednesday, the show released a video of Zegler and Connor, in contemporary clothing and setting, flirting and dancing to a song from Bleachers, which is Antonoff’s band.“Romeo and Juliet” is one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, and this will be its 37th production on Broadway, according to the Internet Broadway Database. This production is to be directed by Sam Gold, a Tony winner for “Fun Home” who has previously directed Broadway productions of “Macbeth” and “King Lear” and who is directing this season’s revival of “An Enemy of the People.” Sonya Tayeh, the Tony-winning choreographer of “Moulin Rouge!”, will add a dancer’s sensibility to the production; she is being credited with “movement.”This revival, first announced last month, is being produced by Seaview, an increasingly prolific production company founded by Greg Nobile and Jana Shea and partially owned by Sony Music Masterworks. More