music

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love New Orleans Jazz

      by

      Many cities have rich jazz histories, but none goes back as far as New Orleans. We asked Wendell Pierce, Courtney Bryan and others what song they would play to get a friend to join the party.Over the past few months, The New York Times has asked experts to answer the question, What would you play a friend to make them fall in love with jazz? We’ve covered lots of artists, instruments and musical styles — but this time we’re tackling a whole city.The United States is full of cities with their own rich jazz histories, but none goes back as far as New Orleans. And the music remains very much a part of life there. To really discover the beauty of New Orleans jazz, the in-person experience is key. This is a participatory, effervescent music. But unless you’re about to book a trip, why not take five minutes to read and listen, and see if you get hooked?Jazz’s roots can be traced back to Congo Square, a plaza in central New Orleans that had been a gathering place for Native Americans before the arrival of Europeans. In the antebellum era, enslaved Africans often gathered there to play music and dance, using whatever instruments they had — bamboula drums, horns, bells, banjos — and carrying their cultural traditions forward. After emancipation, the country blues being played on plantations across the South blended with the music played by New Orleans society orchestras and other African diasporic styles blowing in from the Caribbean, creating the polyphonic improvised sound we now know as early jazz.In the 100-plus years since then, New Orleans has remained something of a cultural anomaly in the United States: rooted in its own traditions, and fortified against broader commercial trends. Music has been its strongest fortifier. Marching bands are heard at funerals and second-line parades on most weekends. On Mardi Gras and St. Joseph’s Day, culture-bearers in resplendent, feathery regalia march and perform in honor of the Native Americans who once sheltered fugitives fleeing slavery. And music is simply a way of life: Unless a storm is brewing, you won’t find a single night in New Orleans without multiple bands playing somewhere.While brass bands and traditional jazz lie at the core of this city’s traditions — and no conversation about them can ever go on too long without a mention (or three) of Louis Armstrong — New Orleans has also fostered greatness across the musical spectrum: from Black classical composers to post-bop royalty to avant-garde experimentalists. The songs below are just the tip of the iceberg. Find a playlist at the bottom of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.Wendell Pierce, actor“West End Blues” by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five“West End Blues” embodies the complexity of this music — which is what New Orleans is all about. It’s the American aesthetic of freedom within form: complex ideas that are also displayed in simple ways. We have technical proficiency, but at the same time uninhibited creative expression. The track starts off with one of the most famous clarion calls in music, one of the most famous licks in the world: Louis Armstrong, exhibiting pure genius and virtuosity, all alone for 12 seconds. Like a spiritual epiphany, this explosion of improvisation embodies the innate humanity of the music and foreshadows the brilliance of bebop yet to come. And then the band comes in and he goes into this simple, beautiful, languid, soulful encapsulation of what it’s like, for someone who’s never been to the West End of New Orleans, to sit out by Lake Pontchartrain on a Sunday afternoon. This is the “West End Blues.”Within the first 30 seconds of the song it gives you the best of what America can be, and what New Orleans is: that cacophony of all kinds of things, so many different influences becoming this one rich, complex dish. E pluribus unum. We are in America in New Orleans, but we are the northernmost Caribbean city, influenced by the French and the African, Germans and Native Americans. And it is the epitome of what America is supposed to be. That’s why jazz is the great American artistic form. A multitude of complexities, broken down into something so universally understood. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Ned Sublette, author and musician“Bouncing Around” by Piron’s New Orleans OrchestraI always go back to “Bouncing Around,” by A.J. Piron’s New Orleans Orchestra, a working New Orleans band, recorded 100 years ago in New York City. It’s jazz at an early stage: this is still the era of everyone-at-once polyphony. Every bit of the musical space is full of theme, counter-theme and rhythm, but we don’t have soloists yet. It’s clearly music for dancing, or at least for bouncing around. That word keeps coming back in New Orleans: bounce. I like the translated Spanish title, seen in parentheses on the 78: “Brincando Locamente” — bouncing madly. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Melissa A. Weber (a.k.a. Soul Sister), D.J. and scholar“Right Foot” by Rebirth Brass BandA special characteristic of New Orleans jazz is its function as dance music. It invites audience members to not spectate, but participate. In the New Orleans brass band jazz tradition, the pioneering Rebirth Brass Band has specialized in making people dance since the group formed 40 years ago, while its founding members were teenagers. In 2008, they rerecorded their original song “Put Your Right Foot Forward,” first released in the mid-1980s as a 45 on the local SYLA label. It’s a classic that other brass bands have added to their repertoires, whether on the stage or in the second-line streets. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Adonis Rose, drummer and bandleader“New Orleans” by Leroy JonesIt is very difficult to find songs that have the ability to transport the listener to a place or time, but I believe that “New Orleans,” written by Hoagy Carmichael, comes close. Although Carmichael was not a New Orleanian, the song melody and lyrics speak to the character and romanticism of the Crescent City. New Orleans is warm, culturally rich, diverse, charming and romantic. All of which is represented in this timeless classic.The song was not widely recorded, but there are a few versions of it that I really enjoy listening to. My favorite version is from the New Orleans jazz legend and trumpeter Leroy Jones, from his 1994 release “Mo’ Cream From the Crop.” This version of “New Orleans” is an original arrangement done by Leroy, and captures the beauty, intensity, creativeness, spontaneity and groove of what New Orleans is. Leroy interprets the song with deep passion and connection to the city. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Charlie Gabriel, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist“Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” by Louis ArmstrongThe words of this song tell you about the weather in the city, and the city itself. It just explains to you that New Orleans is such a beautiful place to be, especially with its culture. You have to come to New Orleans to really enjoy it — and this song explains why you should. When Pops, Louis Armstrong, does the song, he tells it in such a way that you can almost feel the words. I’ve been playing in New Orleans since I was 11 or 12 years old. What happens is, you bring that along with you: the feeling of the city, the personality, the city itself, the faces. You carry that within your music. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz critic“None of My Jelly Roll” by Sweet Emma BarrettThe self-taught pianist and vocalist Emma Barrett was born in 1897 and came of age performing in the speakeasies and early “jass” orchestras that birthed the genre. It wasn’t uncommon for women to hold piano duties in these early New Orleans bands — but it took a particular kind of grace and confidence to endure the condescension (and worse) that was routinely directed their way. Maybe that attitude is what earned her the name “Sweet Emma.” Maybe it just looked good on a chalkboard outside the club. Her less well-known, more descriptive nickname was “The Bell Gal,” because of the bells that she wore on her red garters; they would jangle in time as she patted her foot and roughed up the keys. On “None of My Jelly Roll,” from a 1963 recording, Barrett sings an old blues lyric full of playful double entendre and shows off her rolling barroom piano style. This approach — developed from ragtime and Caribbean dance music; replicating the work of a full brass band in just two hands — would evolve through later legends like Professor Longhair, James Booker and Dr. John, and remains a calling card for Crescent City pianists today. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Courtney Bryan, composer and pianist“River Niger” by the Improvisational Arts QuintetThe legendary musician, educator and patriarch Sir Edward (Kidd) Jordan (1935-2023) lived by improvisation, and his music reverberated with sounds of freedom throughout his 87 years. In 1975, Jordan formed the Improvisational Arts Quintet with like-minded creative musicians from Louisiana and Mississippi. Jordan composed “River Niger,” inspired by a trip to West Africa, and recorded it with I.A.Q. on an album series produced by Kalamu ya Salaam: “The New New Orleans Music: New Music Jazz” (Rounder Records, 1988). “River Niger” has an infectious and captivating energy, rooted on a rhythmic B-flat minor ostinato, yet open in form with each soloist leading us on a journey throughout the recording.Jordan taught his students “River Niger,” and regardless of level, beginner or advanced, each student had an important role — whether playing the pentatonic scale according to his conduction or taking solo or collective free improvisations. Listen to “River Niger” and you might levitate. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆P.J. Morton, musician“On the Sunny Side of the Street” by Louis ArmstrongThe melody of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” always immediately makes me smile, and the way the other horns are dancing in this version — recorded in 1956 for the Decca label, with Armstrong backed by a 10-piece band — always reminds me of home. And of course, Louis Armstrong is so important to the story of New Orleans and to the world. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Tarriona (Tank) Ball, vocalist and bandleader“Groove City” by Chocolate MilkThis song is so nostalgic for me! It gives me all the feels, and really makes me feel so lucky to be from such a unique place as New Orleans. It also makes me think of my dad for some reason! Maybe when I was a small child he would play the record, but it makes me feel close to home and even closer to him.Chocolate Milk is a band from New Orleans that was active in the 1970s and early 1980s. “Groove City” was released in 1977 and I’ve been hooked since I heard it. The moment it comes on all I see is family barbecues, being on the lake in New Orleans, and just freedom. It talks about how you can forget your cares; it reminds you to not worry about your clothes and that “all you gotta do is let down your hair and be free,/No special pattern to follow, be what you wanna be.”I remember being in Amsterdam for my birthday, listening to this song nonstop, and I felt so close to home and my family though I was so far away. That’s why I would share this song with others — because it’s almost as if the lyrics tell a story of where you can go to have a really special time here. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Marcus J. Moore, jazz writer“Guinnevere” by Chief Xian aTunde AdjuahI’m always taken by the unbridled force of Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah. I’ve seen plenty of his shows over the past decade; each time, he sizes up the microphone with his custom fluegelhorn, then attacks it with blistering chords, cutting through bar chatter and forks scraping porcelain plates. And he doesn’t mind challenging the audience: During one of his shows at the Blue Note last year, he made everyone get up from their seats — a rarity for that venue — and didn’t let us sit down until we danced and sang his lyrics back to him. It was done lovingly; his tapestry of Black music elicits a strong sense of community. When I think of his recorded work, I jump to the song “Guinnevere,” the almost 11-minute epic from his 2020 live album, “Axiom,” also performed at the Blue Note, but right at the start of the pandemic. It reimagines a Miles Davis song of the same name with quickened percussion and ascendant wails, brightening the “Bitches Brew”-era cut into a vigorous funk groove akin to the genre-bending compositions that epitomized jazz between the late ’60s and early ’70s. Adjuah’s intensity is palpable throughout, from the brief interplay with the percussionist Weedie Braimah shortly after the four-minute mark to the subtle, fluttering notes he plays near the end. At a time when the world didn’t know what to make of the air, Adjuah flipped uncertainty into something gorgeous. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆ More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      The New York Philharmonic’s Season of Mixed Boons

      by

      The orchestra’s renovated hall and Gustavo Dudamel, its next leader, have kept ticket sales robust, but cool acoustics curb the music’s impact.David Geffen Hall, the New York Philharmonic’s gut-renovated home at Lincoln Center, isn’t perfect.The decorating tends cheesy and clashing — even if seating that wraps around the stage has done wonders for intimacy. And the sound, for all its improvements on the old acoustics, leans coolly antiseptic.But for the orchestra, which ends its first season in what is essentially a new hall this weekend, Geffen has been a kind of talisman.Last fall, when performing arts groups around the country were blindsided by theaters half-full (and worse), the excitement of the hall’s reopening insulated the Philharmonic from a similar fate. Sales have been robust all season.In February, another talisman appeared: the star conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who was named the orchestra’s next music director. Though Dudamel won’t raise his baton at Geffen next season — and though classical music’s bizarrely stretched planning cycles mean he won’t officially start until 2026 — there was already a clear sense of his power as an audience draw in his three sold-out concerts in May.Dudamel is probably the only figure capable of putting such an exclamation point on the unveiling of the hall, a $550 million project. And an exclamation point on the season, as he conducted Mahler’s Ninth Symphony — an extreme and emotional, expansive yet focused piece particularly treasured by this orchestra, which its composer conducted for a brief but memorable stint just before his death in 1911.Gustavo Dudamel, who will succeed van Zweden as music director, conducted Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May.James Estrin/The New York TimesI attended all three performances, trying to get the fullest possible sense of what might come from the relationship of this maestro to this orchestra and this space. The message was mixed.The first performance, a Friday evening, sounded fine, the players poised. But poise is hardly the takeaway you want from Mahler’s harrowing Ninth; there was nothing intense or uncomfortable about this interpretation, nothing personal or inexorable.The first movement progressed with bland serenity. The middle movements danced pleasantly, without a hint of the manic. The Adagio finale, its own epic journey of agony and relief, was mild-mannered. The third performance, a Sunday matinee, was much the same.But the middle go, on Saturday night, offered a glimpse of a more vital alchemy. The quality of the playing remained high — and was now infused with some of Dudamel’s oft-mentioned but not always apparent vibrancy.Those inner movements had taken on menacing bite, whipping between contrasting sections; the Adagio was a deeper evocation of stillness and fragility. This was not profound or moving Mahler, but it had a spark.At these concerts, as throughout the season, there was a sense that Geffen Hall, rather than bringing together this mass of instruments in a blooming blend, was etching the sound, hard, in the air.While orchestras take a good, long time to fully adjust to new homes, after a full season it can be said: Geffen’s acoustics seem lucid and balanced, but also stiff and stark, the sonic equivalent of the blond-wood auditorium’s cold, harsh lighting, which makes you squint a bit as you enter and floods the stage during performances.These qualities make it better suited to certain repertoire — Romantic sumptuousness is particularly hard to come by — and the Philharmonic is going to have to work hard to build the richness of its sound if the hall isn’t going to help.Susanna Mälkki conducting Claire Chase (on flute) and Esperanza Spalding (singing, on bass) in Felipe Lara’s Double Concerto.Chris LeeWhat also isn’t going to help, unfortunately, is the Philharmonic’s current music director, Jaap van Zweden, who has seemed an overshadowed guest at his own party since Geffen’s reopening and Dudamel’s appointment. Van Zweden, who finishes his short tenure next season, has a tough, blunt style — a “Pines of Rome” of bludgeoning volume in October, a sludgy “Turangalîla-Symphonie” in March — that emphasizes the hall’s acoustic shortcomings rather than relieving them.The concerts at which those shortcomings were least noticeable were, by and large, led by guests. The conductor Hannu Lintu made his Philharmonic debut in November with a cogent, precise program of Stravinsky, Bartok (the rarely played Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion), Kaija Saariaho and Sibelius. At the end of that month, the hall’s acoustics were actually a boon, helping cut the fat in what could have been an overly indulgent program of French works, led by Stéphane Denève with a kaleidoscopic sleekness well suited to the space.Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted a raucous rendition of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony in February, a week before Thomas Adès’s superb 2008 piano concerto “In Seven Days” — which should be a repertory staple — returned to the Philharmonic for the first time in 12 years. Felipe Lara’s Double Concerto, an exuberant showcase for Claire Chase (on a battery of flutes) and Esperanza Spalding (singing and playing double bass), had a sensational New York premiere in March under Susanna Mälkki.Last month, a blistering program of Prokofiev’s Third Symphony and Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, with the dazzling, preternaturally mature 19-year-old Yunchan Lim as soloist, was as much a showcase for the gifted conductor James Gaffigan as it was for Lim. When will Gaffigan get an American orchestra?The conductor James Gaffigan and the teenage pianist Yunchan Lim joined for Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto in May.Chris LeeBut there was no more poignant and musically stimulating spectacle this season than the return to the podium in February of Herbert Blomstedt, who, at 95, guided with utter control Ingvar Lidholm’s sternly elegant “Poesis,” a work whose premiere Blomstedt presided over in 1963.Back in those days, the Philharmonic’s then-new hall was already being criticized for its acoustics. For decades there didn’t seem to be the will to fix it, and the current leaders of the orchestra and Lincoln Center deserve great praise for finally bringing the project over the finish line.The public areas are roomier now, and capacity has been cut; you still wait for the bathroom at intermission, but not nearly as long as you used to. In quiet, glistening music, like some of John Adams’s “My Father Knew Charles Ives” in October, Geffen offers a transparent sonic window.But in concertos by composers as varied as Mozart, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, whether for violinist or pianist, the soloists recede a bit too thoroughly into the orchestral textures. At top volume and density, there’s blare where there should be grandeur. And when real warmth is needed, as in the symphonies of Mahler or Florence Price, there’s the small but important lack of bloom and build, of resonance.The audiences and excitement are there in the hall. But the full impact of the music isn’t. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Birds Sing, but Are They Making Music? What Scientists Say.

      by

      When a bird sings, you may think you’re hearing music. But are the melodies it’s making really music? Or is what we’re hearing merely a string of lilting calls that appeals to the human ear?Birdsong has inspired musicians from Bob Marley to Mozart and perhaps as far back as the first hunter-gatherers who banged out a beat. And a growing body of research is showing that the affinity human musicians feel toward birdsong has a strong scientific basis. Scientists are understanding more about avian species’ ability to learn, interpret and produce songs much like our own.Just like humans, birds learn songs from each other and practice to perfect them. And just as human speech is distinct from human music, bird calls, which serve as warnings and other forms of direct communication, differ from birdsong.While researchers are still debating the functions of birdsong, studies show that it is structurally similar to our own tunes. So, are birds making music? That depends on what you mean.“I’m not sure we can or want to define music,” said Ofer Tchernichovski, a zoologist and psychologist at the City University of New York who studies birdsong.Where you draw the line between music and mere noise is arbitrary, said Emily Doolittle, a zoomusicologist and composer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. The difference between a human baby’s babbling versus a toddler’s humming might seem more distinct than that of a hatchling’s cry for food and a maturing bird’s practicing of a melody, she added.Wherever we draw the line, birdsong and human song share striking similarities.How birds build songsExisting research points to one main conclusion: Birdsong is structured like human music. Songbirds change their tempo (speed), pitch (how high or low they sing) and timbre (tone) to sing tunes that resemble our own melodies.The Tempo of BirdsongA northern mockingbird stretches its tempo. Recording by David Rothenberg.The Pitch of BirdsongA northern mockingbird adjusting its pitch from one phrase to the next. Recording by David Rothenberg.The Timbre of BirdsongA northern mockingbird shifting its tonal quality across phrases. Recording by David Rothenberg.Other features, like cadence and tension, are also used in both birdsong and human music, said Tina Roeske, a behavioral neurobiologist who specializes in birdsong. Just as the familiar tune “In the Hall of the Mountain King” gradually builds speed “accelerando,” as the compositional notation is known, some birdsong does too, like that of the nightingale.While earlier studies focused on syntax, or how notes were ordered, newer research is integrating rhythm, too, by analyzing how notes are timed. In human music, rhythm is often thought of as a constant beat, like the one that opens “We Will Rock You” by Queen. But in birdsong, rhythm refers to patterns of notes, regardless of whether they are repeated.To humans, birdsong may appear to have “a random structure,” Dr. Roeske said. Because of the speed at which birds sing — up to four times as fast as most human music — that rhythm is “hard for us to grasp and appreciate,” she added.Dr. Roeske and her co-author Dr. Tchernichovski researched birds’ musical structure and found that birdsong rhythms fell into three general categories. The first is isochronous, in which intervals between notes are equidistant.Isochronous RhythmA thrush nightingale sings with equidistant intervals between notes. Recording by Tina Roeske.Alternating, in which a note is longer than the previous one.Alternating RhythmA thrush nightingale alternates its notes. Recording by Tina Roeske.And ornament, an exaggerated form of the alternating pattern.Ornament RhythmA thrush nightingale exaggerates its alternating rhythm. Recording by Tina Roeske.Human music contains these rhythmic patterns, too.In their 2020 study, Dr. Roeske and Dr. Tchernikovski compared recordings of thrush nightingales across Europe with examples from musical genres all over the world, including Western classical piano, Persian drumming and Tunisian stambeli. They found that birdsong and global music forms had the same types of timing components, integer ratios, which form the foundation of most melodies.In music, these ratios are the amount of time between notes. A 1-to-1 ratio means notes are evenly spaced, like in “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” but a 1-to-2 ratio means the time from one note to the next is uneven, like in “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” Dr. Roeske explained.When they charted integer ratios from birdsong and human music, the plots all produced a similar shape resembling a long-stemmed flower. This indicates that some birds build songs using patterns similar to those found in human music.Other researchers are gaining insights by focusing on birdsong rhythm.“We found that rhythm and syntax have a relationship that nobody has really thought about before,” said Jeffrey Xing, a graduate student in psychology at the University of California, San Diego, and an author of a September 2022 paper analyzing the song structure of the Australian pied butcherbird.Pied butcherbirds “seem to prefer some song rhythms over others,” such as isochronous rhythm, Mr. Xing said. In some ways, these rhythmic patterns follow rules like forms of poetry that have strict meter. A good example is a sonnet.“It’s a very rigid rhythmic structure that you have to follow, and somehow the syntax of the words you use has to conform to that,” he said.Human brains and bird brainsHollis Taylor has dedicated her life’s work as a violinist and ornithologist to the pied butcherbird, a species she deems a fellow musician.Ms. Taylor, who analyzed the bird’s rhythmic structures with Mr. Xing, records the birds’ songs in Australian deserts and savannas in the middle of the night. Then, she transcribes their notes into musical notation.“The musician in me recognizes the musician in them,” Ms. Taylor said.Pied Butcherbird DuetsThree examples of pied butcherbirds singing duets. Recording by Hollis Taylor.She has observed what appear to be warm-up sessions, rehearsals and singing contests. Other than humans, there’s only a “small club” of species with an observed capacity to learn songs and vocal patterns, Ms. Taylor said, including songbirds, parrots, hummingbirds, bats, elephants and some marine mammals.Ms. Taylor has performed her birdsong-like compositions with orchestras around the world. She draws inspiration from the French composer Olivier Messiaen, who also transcribed birdsong into musical notation.Musicians’ fascination with birdsong has deep roots. Mozart, historians recount, kept a European starling in his Vienna apartment for three years. In a letter to his father, Mozart remarked at the “lovely” and precise way in which the starling learned and repeated one of his concertos.Fiona CarswellWhile there is no concrete evidence that Mozart’s starling influenced his compositions, the idea that birds affect the work of composers endures.The French composer François-Bernard Mâche, a founder of zoomusicology, speculates that birds may have influenced Igor Stravinsky’s compositions during summertime stays in what is now Ukraine. According to Dr. Doolittle’s research, the song patterns of Eurasian blackbirds found in that region resemble Stravinsky’s compositional style.Neuroscience research points to the idea that this affinity between birds and humans is not so unusual. In terms of musical ability, we are more like birds than we are like our primate cousins or other mammals, said Johan Bolhuis, a zoologist who specializes in the cognitive neurobiology of birds and humans.Our brains and songbirds’ brains have a similar way of learning musicality. But the brains of monkeys and non-songbirds, like gulls, are organized in a different way, Dr. Bolhuis said. It could be a sign of shared creative abilities: Like humans, some songbird species seem to improvise based on the song patterns they have learned.For example, both humans and birds can produce smash hits that evoke feelings in their listeners, the psychologist Dr. Tchernichovski explained.“When you hear music, what do you feel? Well, it depends on the music,” he said.For instance, listening to a funeral march might make you sad even if you’re vacationing on the beach, and a romantic song might fill you with love even if you’re working on your taxes. Birdsong can affect the behavior of other birds by luring in a mate or scaring off an unwanted foe, similar to how we might turn up the volume when we hear our favorite song or skip to the next track if the vibe is off.“This is the magic in music,” Dr. Tchernichovski said. “Bird songs seem to have some of this magic, too.”But there’s no evidence that their songs have meaning, Dr. Bolhuis said.“In the mind of the great composers, they actually meant something” with music, he said. “It’s not so much the case in birdsong.”Also, birds have a limited repertoire, whereas with only a limited number of items, the human mind “can be infinitely creative,” Dr. Bolhuis said.Researchers agree, however, that birdsong can communicate identity. “They can recognize individuals just the way you and I can recognize each other by our voices,” said Mike Webster, director of the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.When birds from a certain area hear a familiar bird singing, he explained, it’s no big deal. But if the same bird moves to a new area, the birds there “go bananas” in a territorial uproar. In this sense, singing is like a way for birds to identify themselves — but there may be more to it than that.Why do birds sing?While scientists have studied birdsong for decades, they know little about why and how birds select specific tunes and what counts as deliberate communication versus meaningless song.Through brain-imaging studies, neuroscientists have found that the human brain responds to music most strongly along a particular neural circuit that is activated when a person listens to a song perceived as pleasant. Studies have shown that birdsong elicits the same response in female birds, possibly as an evolutionary mechanism for mate attraction. But scientists still wonder whether birds sing for entertainment in addition to mating.“What’s going on in the bird’s head when it’s singing? Is it happy?” Dr. Webster said. Humans often sing when they are emotional — happy and heartbroken alike — but scientists do not know if birds have such an emotional range.Dr. Webster, who studies bird behavior and communication, added another unknown: If birdsong’s main purpose in some species is for males to attract females, then why do some females also sing? “Female song actually arose very early in songbird evolution,” he said. “In species where females don’t sing, it’s because they’ve lost the ability to sing rather than it being gained.” This indicates that it may have once been evolutionarily beneficial for females to sing — and scientists can’t say why.There are other mysteries. Ornithologists have observed “bird chatter” in parrots, when two birds appear to be whispering to each other. There are also nonvocal sounds, Dr. Webster said: Some birds snap their wings, some drum on trees and others rub their feathers together as if playing the violin. The purpose of these sounds — whether communicative, musical or both — sits on the next frontier of ornithology research.“We’ve just scratched the surface,” Dr. Webster said. “Birds are constantly making sound, and I think most of the time we don’t really know why, and we don’t really know what they’re saying to each other.” More

    • 63 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Kaija Saariaho: 11 Essential Works

      by

      This poetic composer, who died on Friday, wrote indelible, simmering operas, concertos, orchestral explosions, choral meditations and solos.Kaija Saariaho, the poetic and powerful composer who died on Friday at 70, was also subtle and suggestive with words.“Dazzling, different surfaces, tissues, textures,” she wrote of an early work, in language that could describe her style over 40 years. “Weights, gravity. To be blinded. Interpolations. Reflections. Death. The sum of independent worlds. Shading, refracting the color.”Her music shivers and glimmers but never lacks forcefulness; lush and often ominous, veiled in dark mystery, her pieces evolve with the muscular sinuousness of snakes. Her scores can evoke the glint and glare of staring at the sun — its beauty, its harshness, its burning afterimage — but also the slowly dizzying churn of the depths of the sea.Saariaho’s preoccupations were clear almost from the beginning of her career until its far too early end: guiding electronic and acoustic instruments into fresh alchemies of color, light and mass; the creation of seething stillness; the swiftness with which seeming solidity collapses into nothingness. Here are 11 works that offer an introduction to her seductive, if sometimes forbidding, world.‘Verblendungen’ (1984)Trained as a strict serialist, Saariaho was exposed in the early 1980s to the sonic haze of spectralist composers like Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey. This, coupled with her time at Ircam, the French institute of electronic music, pulled her from her early musical path toward an exploration of the relationship between acoustic instruments and electronic sounds, sometimes taped and sometimes produced live. In “Verblendungen” (a complex word that means, among other things, “delusions”), taped sounds and a live ensemble together take a journey of gradual dissolution from crushing density to spare, quivering particles.‘Du Cristal’ (1989)Half of a linked pair of pieces (with “ … à la Fumée”) for large orchestra — her entry into composing for grand symphonic forces — “Du Cristal” also has a crucial part for synthesizer, though Saariaho integrates the electronic and the acoustic into a single, shifting, dangerous mass. Strands of solo instruments emerge from a billowing cloud of sound, poised between meditation and violence.‘Graal Théâtre’ (1994)The rare Saariaho work not to include an electronic component, “Graal Théâtre” (“Grail Theater”) is a haunting violin concerto in an exuberantly virtuosic mode — its calligraphic solo line darting, at the start, amid bells and soft droning that shifts in and out of focus. Near the end, the accompaniment explodes before leaving the violinist alone in the final moments.‘Miranda’s Lament’ (1997)Before her first opera, Saariaho ventured into writing for voice, including setting texts from “The Tempest” — among them Miranda’s plea to her father, Prospero, to calm the storm he has created. The chamber instrumentation is intimate and graceful, and the soprano’s line is both expressively pained and plainly lovely, with a combination that long fascinated this composer: contemporary colors mixed with the deceptively simple formality of medieval and Renaissance song.‘Oltra Mar’ (1999)As sensual as Saariaho’s music gets, the chorus’s sound in this seven-part, 22-minute work hovers like bars of light, the edges smokily blurred. The mood is otherworldly; the subject is journeys, which feel more existential than physical. Electronic sounds rumble in “Memory of Waves”; death, the theme of the penultimate section, is followed by the hypnotic unfolding of “Arrival.”‘L’Amour de Loin’ (2000)For her first opera, Saariaho, working with the writer Amin Maalouf, created a stylized vision of the life of the 12th-century troubadour Jaufré Rudel, who falls in love with a countess he’s never met. Luxuriant contemplation reigns; there is little plot, but passion surges in the restraint, with tastes of medieval harmonies and North African rhythms.‘Sept Papillons’ (2000)For all her skill at handling large ensembles, Saariaho’s solos — including this set of miniatures for cello — have a special focus and freedom, a human rather than mythic scale. And, as with Bach’s cello music, almost ceaseless motion here has the uncanny, unexpected effect of encouraging reflection.‘Aile du Songe’ (2001)

      Few contemporary composers have devoted as much energy as Saariaho did to writing for the flute, which she mined for its keening eloquence, its reverberations of the primitive and its human connection: the ever-audible breath. This concerto wanders, dreamlike, fluttering and — in the second part — dancing, its energy infectious.‘Orion’ (2002)A majestic use of a sprawling orchestra, complete with organ, this piece — inspired by the hunter of Greek mythology and the constellation that shares his name — begins as a moody nocturne before boiling over into pummeling fury. “Winter Sky,” the second part, is as expansive as its title, with the trembling of infinite stars; and “Hunter,” the finale, is a ferocious dash.‘D’om le Vrai Sens’ (2010)Saariaho was inspired by a cycle of medieval tapestries to write a clarinet concerto — one that asks its soloist to move around the performance space — structured enigmatically according to the five senses: the kaleidoscopic colors of “Hearing”; “Sight” woozy and wailing; “Smell” simmering; “Touch” alert and as bright as Saariaho’s music gets; “Taste” unsettled and grumbling. The sixth section, the title of which translates roughly to “According to my desire alone,” is one of the spookiest and most beautiful pieces in her body of work, a quietly disorienting cave full of otherworldly calls and responses.‘Innocence’ (2018)Written before the pandemic, which caused its premiere to be delayed until 2021, “Innocence” is as densely plotted as “L’Amour de Loin” was spare. The stark yet sensitive story of a shooting at an international school, and its echoes years later, the score is Saariaho’s masterpiece, confidently guiding the desperate mood in a mixture of singing, speaking (in seven languages) and eerie Finnish folk chant. All these disparate vocal worlds are linked by the orchestra, which wraps around the singers lightly and sleekly — never explicitly underlining them, never competing. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      The North to Shore Festival Comes to New Jersey

      by

      A new arts festival featuring local and marquee-name talent is coming to the Garden State.Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, along with the first lady, Tammy Murphy, had a vision: A new performance festival in their home state that could rival South by Southwest in Texas or Bonnaroo in Tennessee. And they had a plan to distinguish it.“Austin and Nashville are great towns,” the governor said, referring to two famous arts hubs that are connected to notable festivals. “But if you stop to consider the cultural priorities of the states that govern them, you say, ‘Wait a minute.’ You’re hoodwinked if you get taken by the coolness.”A festival in New Jersey, they argued, would be produced in a state whose values align with issues like gun safety and reproductive rights, a bragging right difficult to come by in the south. But what organizers are really touting with the event, which is being produced for the first time this summer, is the mix of homegrown talent and national acts (Halsey, Santana, Jazmine Sullivan) performing across three different cities, from the state’s largest city to the coast.The North to Shore Festival will roam from Atlantic City to Asbury Park to Newark throughout the month. Its inaugural run will feature more than 220 acts — including music, comedy, dance and film — in 115 venues. “When you combine all the talent we have in New Jersey with the fact that our values are on the right side of history, we thought, there’s no reason we couldn’t give this a shot,” Mr. Murphy said.In May, the festival doubled in size, in part because of a commitment to local talent. Grants of up to $5,000 were handed out to 58 New Jersey-based artists.“What I love about it is that it’s a combination of the biggest names in entertainment and comedy and film,” said John Schreiber, president and chief executive of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, which is producing the festival, “but it’s also a chance to turn up the volume on the local folks I call the local heroes — the artists, the creators, the presenters, the producers — who work in these cities 365 days a year.”One example of this kind of artistic convergence is “You Got VERRRSED: NJ Poets vs. New York Poets,” which will take place in Newark on June 24, the day after Marisa Monte, a Grammy Award winner, performs there.In each host city, venues stretch beyond the familiar. Newark, for example, will host “Jersey Club 101,” a combination dance lesson and party, at Ariya Plaza Hall, a local dance club known for hosting private events and the occasional concert, on June 24.On June 9 in Atlantic City, a brewery, The Seed: A Living Beer Project, will host a multidisciplinary event, “From Earth to Cup,” with live music, pottery making and samples of its craft beers. The following afternoon at Sovereign Avenue Field, a popular skatepark, local hardcore and punk bands will play free shows in the “Back Sov Bullies Concert.”While Asbury Park’s famous rock club, the Stone Pony, will see its share of action — with Eric B. & Rakim, Brian Fallon, Demi Lovato and the B-52’s all scheduled to perform — stages at the lesser-known Watermark, down the street, will also be in heavy rotation and can expect to see more traffic than usual.Alexander Simone and his seven-piece band, the Whodat? Live Crew, will play there on June 14. Mr. Simone, 34, who is from the area and the grandson of Nina Simone, won a grant to take part in North to Shore with the band, which leans toward funk and R&B, after being nominated by local fans. The recognition confirmed something he already knew: “I am definitely one of the most known bands in this community,” he said.Now he hopes that other parts of the country will pay more attention to his music. “Artists are coming this way, to Jersey, and bringing people with them the way South by Southwest brings people to Texas,” he said. “They’re coming to see what we have to offer on this end.”Billboards along the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike are promoting the festival. Mr. Schreiber said he expects more than 350,000 people to attend. The overall windfall for New Jersey’s economy, he added, could be $100 million. “We’re betting the economic impact in all three of these communities will far outweigh any of the investment we have to make,” Mr. Murphy said.Amanda Towers, a founder of the Seed, a Living Beer Project, which will host a multidisciplinary event with music, pottery and beer in Atlantic City.Jennifer Pottheiser for The New York TimesNatalie Merchant, accompanied by New York City’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s, will perform in Newark on June 25. “I think it’s really ambitious and impressive,” she said of the idea behind the festival.But her decision to participate did not have much to do with performing in a liberal-leaning state, Ms. Merchant said. “I tend to not penalize my fans in states with political conditions like abortion restrictions.” Instead, “I talk about them onstage.”The North to Shore Festival will take place June 4-11 in Atlantic City, June 14-18 in Asbury Park and June 21-25 in Newark. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Juan Carlos Formell, Buoyant Heir of Cuban Musical Legacy, Dies at 59

      by

      The son of Juan Formell, a giant of Cuban music, he found his own voice as a singer-songwriter. He died during a performance in New York.Juan Carlos Formell, an acclaimed singer-songwriter who settled in New York after defecting from Cuba and eventually took over as bassist for his famous father, Juan Formell, in Los Van Van, one of the most influential bands of post-Revolutionary Cuba, died on Saturday during a performance in New York City. He was 59.His death, from a heart attack he suffered onstage at the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts in the Bronx, was confirmed by his romantic and musical partner, Danae Blanco. Mr. Formell, she said, had hypertension and arteriosclerosis.Since fleeing Cuba for New York City in 1993, Mr. Formell had charted his own musical course, releasing five solo albums and earning a Grammy nomination in 2000 for best traditional tropical Latin performance for his debut album, “Songs from a Little Blue House.”When his father died in 2014, Mr. Formell agreed to carry on his legacy as the bassist for Los Van Van, the Afro-Cuban dance band co-founded by his father. The band’s current lineup also includes his brother Samuel on drums and his sister Vanessa Formell Medina on vocals.The band was just a few numbers into an energetic set at the Lehman Center when Mr. Formell wandered away from his upright bass, doubled over as if to catch his breath, then lumbered toward the rear of the stage. As the band played on, Abdel Rasalps Sotolongo, the Van Van singer known as Lele, and Javier León Peña, a sound engineer, were helping him offstage when he collapsed near the curtain.After a brief announcement that Mr. Formell was having a health problem, the band took a break of more than a half hour, then returned to finish the set, playing for nearly an hour in an apparent tribute to Mr. Formell, a friend, the musician Ned Sublette, who was present, said in a phone interview.Mr. Formell’s debut album, “Songs from a Little Blue House,” was nominated for a Grammy in 2000 for best traditional tropical Latin performance.Mr. Formell was a fourth-generation member of one of Cuba’s most famous musical families. His great-grandfather, Juan Francisco, was a popular bandleader. His grandfather, Francisco Formell, was a conductor of the Havana Philharmonic and the arranger for the Lecuona Cuban Boys, a popular big band starting in the 1930s.His father, Juan Formell, along with fellow giants of Cuban music, César Pedroso, known as Pupy, and José Luis Quintana, known as Changuito, founded Los Van Van in 1969, fusing traditional Afro-Cuban genres like son cubano with elements of rock, soul and disco.With the blessing of the Cuban government, the band toured the world for decades, developing a global following. It won a Grammy Award in 2000 for best salsa performance for their album “Llego…Van Van/Van Van is Here.”)Despite his family name, Mr. Formell’s path to musical success was not easy.Juan Carlos Formell was born in Havana on Feb. 18, 1964, the eldest of three children of Juan Formell and the cabaret singer Natalia Alfonso.When he was three weeks old, his parents sent him to live on the outskirts of Havana with his paternal grandparents. His grandfather, the conductor, had been ostracized by the Castro government for being part of the old guard. Mr. Formell told The Los Angeles Times in 2000 that he had been teased by other children for having holes in his shoes.Even so, he set his course toward music, studying at the Alejandro García Caturla and Amadeo Roldán conservatories in Havana, and later at Cuba’s National Art School.Influenced by Afrocubanismo, the Cuban artistic movement focused on Black identity, as well as the negrista movement in poetry, particularly the work of Nicolás Guillén, Mr. Formell was already composing by his teens and studying bass with Andres Escalona of the Havana Symphony Orchestra. He went on to play bass with the jazz pianist Emiliano Salvador.He was also a talented guitarist and hoped to carve out a career as a singer-songwriter, but felt unable to express himself freely under the restrictions of the government-controlled Cuban music industry, his former wife, Dita Sullivan, said in a phone interview.“While still in my 20s, at a time when most musicians are full of hope,” he once said, “I was resigned to a future of marginalization.”In 1993, while on tour with the dance band Rumbavana in Mexico, he defected, crossing the Rio Grande near Laredo, Texas, and eventually settling in New York City. The transition was not easy.Los Van Van performing in New York in 2010. Mr. Formell joined the band in 2014, after his father, the band’s bassist and co-founder, died.Brian Harkin for The New York Times“When you leave Cuba, you don’t exist,” Mr. Formell said in a 2005 interview with The Chicago Sun-Times. “You come here, you’re invisible. You come here and no one cares. If you want to defect, you’d better have a support system.”Even so, he built a career performing solo and with various ensembles at New York jazz clubs like the Blue Note and Birdland before releasing his Grammy-nominated debut. Mr. Formell followed with “Las Calles del Paraíso” (“The Streets of Paradise”) in 2002 and “Cemeteries of Desire,” a 2005 rumination on the Latin musical flavorings of New Orleans, along with “Son Radical” (2006) and “Johnny’s Dream Club” (2008), which a Village Voice review said wove “an unforgettable spell.”His music, rooted in filin, a romantic, jazz-inflected genre of Cuban popular music, as well as son cubano, a traditional style mixing Spanish and African influences, celebrated the natural beauty of his homeland as well as its complicated history, including of slavery and revolution.“Although my songs don’t specifically talk about politics,” he said in a 1996 interview, “they reflect the reality of Cuba from my perspective and not from the perspective of the system.”In addition to Samuel and Vanessa, his survivors include his other sisters, Elisa Formell Alfonso and Paloma Formell Delgado, and another brother, Lorenzo Formell González. He and Ms. Sullivan separated in 2012 and divorced in 2021.In a Facebook post announcing his death, Los Van Van said it would continue its tour of the United States, “paying tribute to Juan Carlos in every performance, every musical note, in every Vanvanero choice as Juanca would have wanted.” More

    • 125 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      For Freeman Vines, Guitar Making Is a Way of Life

      by

      Art of Craft is a series about specialists whose work rises to the level of art.Freeman Vines was chasing a sound.He couldn’t remember where he’d heard it, but it reverberated in his mind. His attempts to replicate it on mass-produced guitars were fruitless, so Mr. Vines took matters into his own hands: In 1958, he started to make guitars.“I didn’t care how the guitar looked. I didn’t care what color the guitar was,” Mr. Vines said in a 2020 documentary called “Hanging Tree Guitars: the Art of Freeman Vines,” produced by Music Maker Foundation, a nonprofit that supports Southern artists like Mr. Vines. “I was looking for a tone.”Freeman Vines in his store, with some of his creations. Mr. Vines, now 80, never did replicate the sound, but along the way he crafted dozens of unique guitars, using wood from barns, troughs and other unexpected — and meaningful — sources. A series of his guitars featured in a traveling exhibition (currently at the Maria V. Howard Arts Center at the Imperial Centre in Rocky Mount, N.C.) came from wood extracted from a tree that had been used to lynch Black people.Mr. Vines, who now works out of a storefront in Fountain, N.C., grew up on a plantation in nearby Greene County during the Jim Crow era, working alongside his mother in the fields for meager wages. When he got older, he toured for a bit as a jazz musician. But the quest to recreate that one sound proved to be the animating force of his life. He carved guitars in different shapes, with specific designs and electronic configurations. Some are crafted to look like traditional African masks.“These guitars here got a character and a sound of their own,” Mr. Vines said in a video accompanying his exhibition. “To somebody else, it’s just some wood glued together. To me, it’s something else.”Chris Bergson, a musician and associate professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, said there had been a big jump in independent guitar-making in recent years. “You’re going to get something really special and unique, like the opposite of a guitar you just buy off the rack.”Mr. Vines has multiple myeloma but hasn’t slowed down. “He cat naps a little bit and just keeps working, keeps creating,” said Timothy Duffy, founder of Music Maker Relief Foundation.Mr. Vines was recently discharged from a rehab facility after a stint in a cancer ward. “They really wanted him to stay there,” Mr. Duffy recalled. “He said, ‘Look, I can sit here and be bored. Or I can go back to my shop and tinker around. They say I’m dying, but you could be dead in three minutes. I’m living now.’”Mr. Vines said it’s important to “let the saw do the work” in shaping guitars.“It’s just like making biscuits. Ain’t no two biscuits look alike.”The wood used to make the “hanging tree guitars” has a “characteristic of its own,” Mr. Vines said. “All that stuff in there, people thought I carved and put in there — I didn’t do it. It was in there.”Mr. Vines’s storefront in Fountain, N.C.His sketchbook. On the right is his vision for an unusually shaped lap steel guitar.A photo of Mr. Vines, circa 1960.“Wood talks to me,” Mr. Vines is quoted as saying in the book “Hanging Tree Guitars.” “Wood has a character.”“There’s spirits in each one of these woods,” Mr. Duffy said of Mr. Vines’s philosophy.One of Mr. Vines’s creations.Mr. Vines, in his wheelchair. He toured as a jazz musician when he was younger.A wooded pond near Mr. Vines’s storefront. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Alan Menken on ‘The Little Mermaid,’ New Songs and Revised Lyrics

      by

      The composer talked revisiting “The Little Mermaid” after nearly 35 years and the similarities between working with Howard Ashman and Lin-Manuel Miranda.Alan Menken composed the musical versions of “Little Shop of Horrors” and “A Bronx Tale,” but he is at peace with being known as a Disney composer.Mostly.“One of the areas where it got to me — you go to the Alan Menken Pandora station, and it’s all these little Disney tunes, and I go, ‘What is that?’” Menken said. Listeners could probably answer him: after all, he’s best known for the scores for beloved Disney animated films like “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast” and of course “The Little Mermaid.”Menken was speaking by video on a recent morning from his sunlit studio at his home in North Salem, N.Y. At 73, he is an EGOT winner with eight Oscars, 11 Grammys, an Emmy and a Tony prominently displayed in a glass case behind him. It was a few weeks before the release of the live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid” and as with Disney’s other live-action and stage adaptations of the classic animated films he scored with the lyricist Howard Ashman, he collaborated with a new partner — in this case the “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda — to add a few more numbers to his original Oscar-winning tunes.In some ways, Menken said, working with Miranda reminded him of his decade-long partnership with Ashman, who died from AIDS in 1991 at age 40.“Sometimes your collaborator goes, ‘Oh, that’s the problem, because this is doing this and it’s overstepping emotionally here,’” Menken said. “It’s something that Howard had. I have those same moments with Lin where I go, ‘He knows.’”(The remake also includes a few adjustments to old songs. A verse in “Poor Unfortunate Souls” urging Ariel to keep quiet was dropped and a line in “Kiss the Girl” suggesting Prince Eric kiss her without asking was changed. Menken has said elsewhere that the filmmakers wanted to avoid suggesting both that the prince “would, in any way, force himself” on Ariel and that young girls might feel they shouldn’t use their voices.)In a recent interview, Menken discussed what it was like to revisit a score he wrote nearly 35 years ago, his experience working with Miranda on new songs and how he learned to embrace being known as a Disney composer. These are edited excerpts from our conversation.DisneyYou have approximately 10 million projects in development, among them “Animal Farm,” “Hercules,” “Nancy Drew” and “Night at the Museum” stage musicals; the live-action adaptation of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”; and a new animated musical film, “Spellbound.” Do you just have a spreadsheet?Yeah, kind of. [Laughs] After a while, you feel like a workaholic.Do you enjoy revisiting your older work, or do you do so more out of a sense of protectiveness?A little of both. These are my babies — I don’t want to walk away from them. Sometimes I’ll think, “What more do we have to say in the telling of this story?” And then it will be incumbent upon me to get to know the director, the book writer, and talk to them about the things they want to add. That’s where it becomes fun for me.What was it like working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on new songs for “The Little Mermaid”?It was a lot of fun — I knew about him because he went to the [Hunter College Elementary School] with my niece, and I would always hear about this little boy, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and how he was obsessed with “The Little Mermaid.”Of the three songs we did together, one is more in my and Howard’s wheelhouse, “Wild Uncharted Waters.” It’s a ballad sung by Prince Eric, and it’s the roiling inside him — it’s very emotional. “For the First Time,” which Ariel sings when she gets legs about all the things she’s noticing for the first time, is a real combination of our styles. I had given Lin a fragment from the score from the original animated movie, and he said, “Wait, can we put a 2 against the 3?” [referring to the tempo], and so it got that real rhythmic rub to it. And the one that was much more in Lin’s wheelhouse was “The Scuttlebutt,” which is sung by Scuttle and Sebastian [played by Awkwafina and Daveed Diggs]. I gave him a little Caribbean tune thinking he would lyricize that, and in fact, he rapped over it! It was just one of those moments where you sense somebody’s brilliance.In 1997, David Horn, now the executive producer of PBS’s “Great Performances” series, told The New York Times, “When there’s a Sondheim musical, everyone refers to it as a Sondheim musical. When it’s something Alan has done, they refer to it as a Disney musical.” Do you still mind your shows being known as Disney musicals?I sometimes would have a little resistance to simply being characterized as “Disney composer Alan Menken” because I already had a huge hit with “Little Shop of Horrors” before I went to Disney. And while I was at Disney, I wrote so many other outside projects — the “Christmas Carol” that was at Madison Square Garden for [nearly] 10 years with Lynn Ahrens, [stage shows] “Sister Act,” “A Bronx Tale,” “Leap of Faith,” [the series] “Galavant” — but there is no musical opportunity that is at the level of writing a musical for Disney. If you do your work right, you will have an experience that nothing else can match.What’s your favorite musical of all time?I remember when I saw the original “Chorus Line” — Blew. My. Mind. It pulled back the curtain in terms of the back story of people who work in theater, especially dancers and the ensemble. It was so powerful, and that was the stagecraft as much as anything else. Michael Bennett [the show’s creator] was such a genius.What dream project is still on your bucket list?Howard, before he died, wanted to do a musical based on a Damon Runyon story — [adapted for a] movie called “The Big Street” — and I took a number of cracks at writing it. The problem is, it has an unlikable central character. It’s challenging, and I still want to do it — maybe it should be an opera. I wrote, I think, a brilliant musical with David Spencer, “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” [previously a novel and a movie]. But it’s very hard to get that musical on — it’s thorny and challenging, but I don’t shy away from those. I just have to go with what happens. More