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      Frank Wakefield, Who Expanded the Mandolin’s Range, Dies at 89

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      A bluegrass innovator, he recorded numerous albums as a leader, and his list of collaborators included both Leonard Bernstein and Jerry Garcia.Frank Wakefield, an innovative bluegrass mandolinist whose sweeping musicality led to collaborations with the New York Philharmonic and Jerry Garcia, and whose unique voicings and technique expanded the parameters of his instrument, died on Friday at his home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He was 89.Marsha Sprintz, his companion of 47 years, said the cause was complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.In a career that spanned seven decades, Mr. Wakefield played with a host of bluegrass luminaries, including Jimmy Martin and the Stanley Brothers.He first made his mark in the early 1950s after joining a band led by the singer and guitarist Red Allen as a vocalist and mandolin player. Working in Ohio and the Upper Midwest and, by 1960, the Baltimore-Washington area, the band developed a hard-driving, harmony-rich brand of bluegrass that inspired not only other musicians in the genre, but also bluegrass-inclined rock bands like New Riders of the Purple Sage.While still a teenager, Mr. Wakefield mastered the heavily syncopated “chop” chord of the bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, whom he met in 1961 and who immediately recognized Mr. Wakefield’s prowess as a mandolinist.Mr. Wakefield in 2010. Despite suffering from emphysema for years, he toured and recorded well into the 2000s.Michael G. Stewart“You can play like me as good — or near as good — as I can,” Mr. Wakefield, in a 2022 interview with the Hudson Valley Bluegrass Association, recalled Mr. Monroe saying at their initial meeting. “Now you’ve got to go out and find your own style.”Heeding Mr. Monroe’s advice, Mr. Wakefield did exactly that. He devised his own sound by alternating up and down strokes on his instrument with equal force to produce a clear, ringing tone and sustained rhythm, which he likened to a sledgehammer striking a steel rail in a 1998 interview with the bluegrass website Candlewater.com.At other times, plucking the strings with multiple fingers, he produced a richly textured effect suggestive of two or three mandolins playing together.David Grisman, a student of Mr. Wakefield’s and a mandolin virtuoso in his own right, said in an often quoted passage from Frets magazine that Mr. Wakefield had “split the bluegrass mandolin atom” by taking the instrument beyond where Mr. Monroe had.The 1964 album “Bluegrass,” which Mr. Wakefield recorded with the singer and guitarist Red Allen, pushed the boundaries of the genre.Folkways Records“Bluegrass,” the album that Mr. Wakefield made with Mr. Allen for Folkways Records in 1964 (and that a 19-year-old Mr. Grisman produced), proved ample confirmation of that claim: It featured versions of two of Mr. Wakefield’s most enduring originals, “New Camptown Races” and “Catnip,” both of which, with their developments in melody, tunings and chord changes, pushed the limits of what then constituted bluegrass.Mr. Wakefield’s innovations didn’t stop there, though. By the mid-1960s he had begun composing sonatas for the mandolin and arranging classical pieces for traditional bluegrass ensembles. He performed with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1967 and made a guest appearance with the Boston Pops orchestra the next year.The Greenbriar Boys (from left, Bob Yellin, Mr. Wakefield and John Herald) in performance at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. David Gahr/Getty ImagesMr. Wakefield’s forays outside bluegrass extended into pop territory as well, including a mid-1960s stint with the Greenbriar Boys, an urban folk revivalist group. During this period, he also performed with country bluesmen like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Son House and, later, rock acts like the Grateful Dead.Franklin Delano Roosevelt Wakefield was born on June 26, 1934, in the Emory Gap enclave of Harriman, Tenn., the 10th of 12 children of Simpson and Bertie (Isham) Wakefield. Growing up poor, he was forced to leave school after second grade to help work on the family farm.Enthralled by DeFord Bailey’s performances on “The Grand Ole Opry,” young Frank took up the harmonica at an early age and soon also became adept at playing the guitar.His father, who worked as a brakeman to supplement the family income, froze to death in a local railyard when Frank was 13. Several of his sisters moved 300 miles north to Dayton, Ohio, as part of a Depression-era migration. Frank and his brother, Ralph, were left to move between orphanages until Frank finally ran away to join his sisters in Dayton, where a brother-in-law introduced him to the mandolin.Billing themselves as the Wakefield Brothers, Frank and Ralph, who played guitar, made their first public appearances at house parties and on local radio in 1960. Two years later, Frank joined Red Allen’s band, and his path as a musician was set.However, his tenure with Mr. Allen was fraught with conflict, much of it brought on by Mr. Allen’s abusive behavior, especially when he was drinking. Nevertheless, apart from a period with the Detroit-based Chain Mountain Boys in the mid-1950s, Mr. Wakefield persevered with him until 1965, when he joined the Greenbriar Boys to replace Ralph Rinzler, who had left the band to become Bill Monroe’s manager.Mr. Wakefield in a New York recording studio in 1966, at around the time he embarked on a solo career.David Gahr/Getty ImagesAfter recovering from a near-fatal automobile accident in the late 1960s, Mr. Wakefield moved to Saratoga Springs and embarked on a solo career. Over the next five decades, he released albums for a variety of bluegrass-aligned record labels, including Takoma, Flying Fish and Patuxent Music. His 1972 Rounder album, called simply “Frank Wakefield” and featuring the New York bluegrass band Country Cooking, is widely regarded as a touchstone of the movement known as newgrass, which incorporated elements of rock, jazz and classical music into traditional bluegrass.Despite suffering from emphysema for years, Mr. Wakefield continued to tour nationally and to record well into the 2000s.Besides Ms. Sprintz, Mr. Wakefield’s survivors include a sister, Susie Norton; a son, Greg Wakefield; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.Despite his musically omnivorous appetites, Mr. Wakefield was unfamiliar with Mr. Garcia, who would later produce the 1976 album “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” a string-band collaboration between Mr. Wakefield and others, when they started playing shows together.“Whenever Garcia played with me and David,” Mr. Wakefield explained, referring to David Nelson of New Riders of the Purple Sage in a 2006 interview with candlewater.com, “we would always have a full house. I thought it was because of me.”“It took me a while,” he added, “to realize that people were coming to the shows because Jerry was playing with us.” More

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      Review: A Conductor Surprises by Embracing the Ordinary

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      Esa-Pekka Salonen is known for unusual, ambitious projects. But at the New York Philharmonic this week, he succeeded with standard repertory works.The conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen tends to get noticed for his ambitious, even outlandish projects.Perfume cannons puffing out scent alongside the music. A rare performance of one of the piano’s most gargantuan concertos. Contemporary opera in the concert hall. A roboticist being included among his artistic collaborators. Ample helpings of his own works. (Salonen is the rare maestro who is also a successful composer.)But once all the perfume has dissipated, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Salonen, who led the New York Philharmonic on Wednesday at David Geffen Hall, is, at core, simply an excellent conductor.The Philharmonic program was unusual for him in that it was so, well, uncreative. No premieres, no stagings, no intriguing juxtapositions. Just two classic pieces — Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” — that, in the style of old-fashioned orchestra programming, seemed to have been thrown together arbitrarily. And yet it was a terrific concert, overseen by Salonen with his characteristic fiery clarity.Fiery clarity is a good way of describing his most recent career move, too. Classical music is, outwardly at least, meticulously polite. Few musicians leave positions amid publicly verbalized anger.But in March, when Salonen announced he wouldn’t renew his contract as the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, he told the truth — or at least his truth. He had made his decision, he said, “because I do not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors does.”By the industry’s standards, this was an expletive-ridden rant. It quickly became clear that the problem was money. The San Francisco Symphony has hobbled out of the pandemic even more deficit-laden than it was before; its expensive promises to Salonen — like that team of artistic collaborators, roboticist and all — were going to need to be curtailed.The funny thing about Wednesday’s concert in New York is that it was exactly the kind of program that would be his future had Salonen chosen to remain in San Francisco: meat and potatoes repertoire, without the fancy trimmings.But even without them, the Philharmonic played beautifully for him on Wednesday. The Shostakovich concerto was dotted with eerily mellow rips of brass near the start, a hushed dusk in the strings at the start of the second movement and characterful pierces from the winds in the final Allegro. Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the soloist, played with a rich yet focused tone, and he didn’t indulge in excessive emotion. This resulted in a performance that was modest, straight-faced and fundamentally serene — but also a little cool, a little efficient. The piece seemed to sail by briskly.It was hard to remember the concerto at all after the monster that is Berlioz’s “Symphonie.” Last year, I wrote that the Philharmonic’s rendition of this score under Herbert Blomstedt was “leisurely, mellow, thoroughly pastoral.” That could hardly have been further from Salonen’s neurotically unsettled, icy-hot take, which grabbed every opportunity to emphasize off-kilter rhythms and changeable textures.The opening “Reveries, Passions” section had a dewy freshness to the sound that could shift, in a moment, to intense fullness, and then back again. Salonen couldn’t keep the long central “Scene in the Fields” section from feeling like it lingers. But it had quietly been building tension, with an undercurrent of anxiety — an anticipation of the trembling violas a little later on — even in Ryan Roberts’s quiet, plangent English horn shepherd calls.Salonen embraced the sudden swerves and floodlit brashness of the “March to the Scaffold,” which was, as it is too rarely, genuinely scary. And the finale, “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath,” was raucous but never messy — a ferocious, fantastic party.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      2 Players Sue Philharmonic, Saying They Were Wrongfully Suspended

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      Matthew Muckey and Liang Wang said they were sidelined without cause by the New York Philharmonic after a recent magazine article detailed allegations of misconduct against them.Two New York Philharmonic players sued the orchestra on Wednesday, saying they had been wrongfully suspended after a recent magazine article revived allegations of misconduct against them.The players, Matthew Muckey and Liang Wang, filed separate lawsuits in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The men claimed that the Philharmonic had removed them without cause and in violation of an arbitrator’s ruling, which had ordered the orchestra to reinstate them in 2020 after an earlier attempt to fire them. The players also sued their union, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, accusing the organization of failing to provide them fair representation.The Philharmonic, which recently said it would commission an outside investigation into the orchestra’s culture in response to the uproar over the article, said that it could not comment on active litigation. Local 802 declined to comment.The lawsuits came after a report last month in New York magazine detailed accusations of misconduct made in 2010 against Mr. Muckey, the associate principal trumpet, and Mr. Wang, the principal oboist. After the story’s publication the Philharmonic moved quickly to remove Mr. Muckey and Mr. Wang from rehearsals and performances and suspend the players with pay for an indefinite period.In the article Cara Kizer, a former Philharmonic horn player, came forward for the first time to publicly discuss an encounter that she said occurred while she was on tour with the Philharmonic in Vail, Colo., in 2010. She told the Vail Police Department at the time that she had been sexually assaulted after spending the evening with the two players and was given a drink she came to believe was drugged, according to police records. No charges were filed against the men, and both have denied wrongdoing. In 2018 the Philharmonic, under new leadership, commissioned an investigation and moved to dismiss Mr. Muckey and Mr. Wang. But the players’ union challenged their dismissals, and an independent arbitrator forced the orchestra to reinstate them in 2020.Mr. Muckey’s lawsuit accused the Philharmonic of backtracking on that agreement. The suit said that the orchestra had “violated an indisputably final and binding award which has determined that Mr. Muckey could not be removed based upon such allegations and specifically ordered his reinstatement with back pay and seniority.”Mr. Wang accused the Philharmonic of suspending him “without cause or explanation, and in clear violation of the terms of his employment, which expressly require that he be given opportunities to perform and excel as a musician.” His suit claims that a lawyer for the Philharmonic said in 2019 that the ensemble had not accused Mr. Wang of misconduct related to the incident in Colorado.Both men claimed that Local 802, which fought for their reinstatement in 2018, had failed to respond to their requests for assistance in contesting their new suspensions. The union has struck a different tone on the case since the publication of the article. Sara Cutler, Local 802’s new president and executive director, said last month that the decision to keep Mr. Wang and Mr. Muckey offstage “are good first steps, but they can’t be the last.” She also said that she was “horrified” by the accusations, “as a woman, a musician and a new union president.”Mr. Wang’s suit accused Ms. Cutler of making “duplicitous and injurious statements.” Mr. Muckey’s suit said that Local 802 had “failed and refused to perform its duty of fair representation.” Mr. Muckey and Mr. Wang, who are seeking an unspecified amount in damages, said that the Philharmonic’s decision to suspend them had harmed their careers. Mr. Muckey lost engagements with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and other ensembles. Mr. Wang was placed on leave from the Manhattan School of Music, where he teaches, and he lost work with the Taipei Music Academy and Festival and other groups. More

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      Student Orchestra Shouts ‘Mambo!’ and Meets Gustavo Dudamel

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      Our photographer followed 95 young musicians for six days as they prepared to perform with Dudamel, the next music director of the New York Philharmonic.The student musicians, dressed in jeans, T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts, were rehearsing an excerpt from “West Side Story” in a high school auditorium one recent afternoon. Then, as the trumpets blared and the timpani went wild, a voice broke out from the conductor’s podium.“Oy yo yo yo yo yo yo,” said the superstar maestro Gustavo Dudamel, who was leading the rehearsal. “You are not dancing together.”Dudamel, the New York Philharmonic’s next music director, paused for a moment, telling the students they needed a more precise rhythm and sound. Then he put his hands in his pockets and swaggered around the stage.Dudamel, the next music director of the New York Philharmonic, guided the youth ensemble, telling the students they needed a more precise rhythm and sound.James Estrin/The New York Times“This is cool, really cool music,” he said, eliciting laughter from the students. “We need something that goes with the nature of the body.”The students, part of a 95-member youth ensemble nominated by schools and arts programs and assembled by the New York Philharmonic, were at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan for six days last week. They were preparing for a concert on Friday with Dudamel, who has vowed to expand the Philharmonic’s presence in schools and in the community when he takes over in 2026.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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      Review: Gustavo Dudamel Saves the Day at the Philharmonic

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      Dudamel, the New York Philharmonic’s incoming music and artistic director, stepped in after a guest conductor fell ill.It was lucky that Gustavo Dudamel was in town.On April 20, the New York Philharmonic announced that Juanjo Mena, who was scheduled to conduct the orchestra in three sold-out concerts starting on Thursday, had fallen ill. Dudamel, the ensemble’s incoming music and artistic director, was already expecting to be around to lead the spring gala on Wednesday.And so he saved the day. Stepping in for Mena, Dudamel, who assumes his Philharmonic post in 2026, led, in his only subscription concert appearances this season, a dichotomous program of dazzling crowd-pleasers and a thorny modernist work with utmost finesse. Pieces by Ravel and Pablo de Sarasate shone as they should, and the evening’s unlikely centerpiece, Ginastera’s Violin Concerto, was a 30-minute fever dream of serialist fancies and ferocities. (“Ibéria,” from Debussy’s “Images for Orchestra,” was cut after Mena bowed out.)An evening built from Spanish-tinged French pieces could have slipped into fiery and fragrant clichés, but instead it demonstrated the musical values that the Philharmonic’s audience can expect from Dudamel, including snappy rhythms, neatly managed transitions and fortes so punchy, they could leave a mark on your cheek. Orchestral tuttis had clarity and body from top to bottom.Dudamel used Ravel’s exquisite interplay of instrumental timbres to enliven the moods of “Rapsodie Espagnole,” which opened the concert. Sharply vivid rather than suggestively chimerical, the scenes and dances had a trim, finely honed character. Dudamel’s clockwork sophistication was better suited to the concert’s closer, Ravel’s beloved “Boléro,” in which he methodically developed tonal richness, sculpted the sound and dialed up the intensity over the piece’s 15-minute span. The sudden, layered climax had the effect of a tsunami: hitting and washing over the auditorium at the same time.The Philharmonic, which Dudamel will lead more frequently next season before officially undertaking his duties, is already showing signs of his influence. And he collaborated seamlessly with the evening’s soloist, the violinist Hilary Hahn, the orchestra’s artist in residence.A musician of poise and rounded tone, Hahn proved in the Ginastera that she can make just about anything sound beautiful. In her interpretation, the piece shed its acrid angularity. She folded trills, stops and sweet harmonics into unbroken lines, and when she harmonized with herself, she utilized the plushness and patience familiar from her Bach recordings.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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      NY Party Fashion: Jon Bon Jovi Screening and Dudamel at Philharmonic Gala

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      This week, fans turned out for a new documentary about Jon Bon Jovi and took in a performance led by Gustavo Dudamel at the New York Philharmonic’s spring gala.Out & About is a column that covers the events where notable, powerful and influential figures gather — and their outfits. This week: We attended a screening of “Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story” and the New York Philharmonic’s spring gala.A Rocker Greets His FansJon Bon Jovi stood blinking, rubbing his eyes, temporarily blinded on Thursday night by the lights from a row of photographers.Recovering, the musician said, “OK, I’m here now,” and then “Hi, love,” his eyes wide as he flashed a very white smile.He was standing just inside a movie theater at the South Street Seaport for a special screening of a new documentary series, “Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story.” He approached the event, hosted by the Cinema Society and Hulu, with the same charming grit that helped make him famous.The show, now on Hulu, traces the musician’s path from his teenage years playing covers in Asbury Park, N.J., to mega-stardom with his band Bon Jovi, packing arenas with rock anthems. It also touches on his recent vocal cord trouble that led to surgery.“I’m wonderful,” said Bon Jovi, 62, dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, with a full, feathery head of gray hair. “What you see in the film was a year and two years ago. It’s a work in progress. But it is really far down the road of recovery at this point.”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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      Philharmonic Opens Inquiry After Misconduct Allegations Are Revived

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      The New York Philharmonic commissioned an outside investigation into its culture after a magazine article explored how it handled an accusation of sexual assault in 2010.The New York Philharmonic, which has been facing an uproar since a recent magazine article detailed allegations of misconduct against two players it tried and failed to fire in 2018, said on Thursday that it was commissioning an outside investigation into its culture.Gary Ginstling, the Philharmonic’s president and chief executive, said in a letter to musicians, staff members and board members that the organization had hired an outside lawyer, Katya Jestin, a managing partner of the law firm Jenner & Block, to “launch an independent investigation into the culture of the New York Philharmonic in recent years.”“I am empowering Katya to look at everything and to leave no stone unturned, including any new allegations as they are reported,” Mr. Ginstling wrote. The decision came after a report last week in New York magazine detailed accusations of misconduct made in 2010 against the players, the associate principal trumpet, Matthew Muckey, and the principal oboist, Liang Wang.In the article Cara Kizer, a former Philharmonic horn player, came forward for the first time to publicly discuss an encounter that she said occurred while she was on tour with the Philharmonic in Vail, Colo., in 2010. She told the Vail Police Department at the time that she had been sexually assaulted after spending the evening with the two players and was given a drink she came to believe was drugged, according to police records.No charges were filed against the men and both have denied wrongdoing.In 2018 the Philharmonic, under new leadership, commissioned an investigation and moved to dismiss Mr. Muckey and Mr. Wang. But the players’ union, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, challenged their dismissals, and an independent arbitrator forced the orchestra to reinstate them in 2020.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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      Philharmonic Sidelines 2 Players It Tried to Fire for Misconduct

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      The New York Philharmonic said the musicians would not perform for now, after a magazine article brought new attention to allegations of misconduct. They have denied wrongdoing.The New York Philharmonic said on Monday that two players it had tried to fire in 2018 — but was forced to rehire after the musicians’ union challenged their dismissal — would not take part in rehearsals or performances for the time being after a magazine article detailed the allegations of misconduct that had been made against them.The Philharmonic said that the players — the principal oboist, Liang Wang, and the associate principal trumpet, Matthew Muckey — would not appear as the orchestra deals with the fallout from a New York magazine article published on Friday.In the article Cara Kizer, a former Philharmonic horn player, came forward for the first time to publicly discuss an encounter that occurred when she was on tour with the Philharmonic in Vail, Colo., in 2010. She told the Vail Police Department then that she had been sexually assaulted after spending the evening with the two players and was given a drink she came to believe was drugged, according to police records.No charges were filed against the men and both have denied wrongdoing; their lawyers said they expect to return to the ensemble soon.In 2018 the Philharmonic moved to dismiss Mr. Wang and Mr. Muckey, who both joined the orchestra in 2006. It said at the time that it had received reports that the two players had “engaged in misconduct,” which it declined to describe, and that it had decided to fire them after commissioning an investigation. But the players’ union, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, challenged their dismissals.The orchestra was forced to reinstate them in 2020 after an independent arbitrator found that they had been terminated without just cause.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