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    Jazz’s Year of Reckoning With Tradition

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    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicFor the last few years, jazz around the globe has been in a creative renaissance. Scenes in Chicago, London and Los Angeles have pushed the genre in novel creative directions, and reinvigorated the music as nightlife.But is it quietly radical to re-embrace the songbook? How much history does a musician have to imbibe to be properly heretical? In 2022, questions like these were addressed, implicitly and explicitly, by singers like Samara Joy and Cécile McLorin Salvant and instrumentalists like Immanuel Wilkins and Jaimie Branch.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about jazz’s rites of passage, the ways in which freedom is expressed even amid convention, and artists who are agitating against history.Guests:Harmony Holiday, a poet and essayist who writes about music for Frieze and othersGiovanni Russonello, who writes about jazz for The New York TimesConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      7 Songs We Nearly Missed in 2022

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      Hear tracks by Flo, Becky G and Karol G, Monster and Big Flock and more.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Flo, ‘Cardboard Box (Live Acoustic)’A stunning entry in the litany of to-the-left-to-the-left kiss-off anthems, Flo’s “Cardboard Box” is cheeky, confident, ever so slightly righteously rude. Flo — Jorja Douglas, Renée Downer and Stella Quaresma — is a vividly talented British R&B girl group that released several strong songs last year, but this was the most striking, full of arched-brow dismissals, self-love affirmations and, in this acoustic rendition, mellifluous harmonies that communicate bliss amid collapse: “You ain’t gonna change, boy/What’s the point in stringing me a-loh-ohngggg?” JON CARAMANICABecky G and Karol G, ‘Mamiii’This blockbuster 2022 hit — the inevitable collaboration between the two “real Gs,” Becky (the American granddaughter of Mexican immigrants) and Karol (from Colombia) — strives to be the ultimate kiss-off to a toxic ex. “I gave you my heart,” Becky G charges as the song begins, but she has definitely taken it back, changing her phone number and comparing the ex to a rat and a venereal disease. Over the bounce of a reggaeton beat, with sisterly harmonies, the breakup turns into a female-bonding experience: angry, amused, unforgiving. JON PARELESMonster and Big Flock, ‘Cappin’The most obvious retort to the recent uptick in using rap lyrics in court cases is this: Rappers — like all artists — lie. Of course they do. Rap is history and reportage and also embellishment and fancy. Placing an unreasonable truth value on a set of words perhaps based on actual experience that also happen to rhyme and have narrative coherence and are presented in an entertaining manner — that’s a fool’s game. Thus, “Cappin,” a song by the rappers Monster and Big Flock, a song made under the presumption of surveillance. Everything they rap about? Falsehoods, they insist. If you’re listening in search of evidence, look elsewhere. “Why you so serious?” Monster raps. “I can’t play?/I ain’t got no pistols, these props/I act like I be in the mix, but I’m not.” It’s a clever gimmick that serves as a reminder that what appears in a song isn’t necessarily true, and by extension, that plenty of true things never appear in any song. CARAMANICAFally Ipupa, ‘Formule 7’The Congolese songwriter, singer, guitarist and producer Fally Ipupa has delved into styles new and old, releasing an album a year since 2016. He celebrates decades of Congolese rumba on “Formule 7,” his seventh album, and its eight-minute title song is more like a highlight reel, cruising through multiple eras, configurations and rhythms of Congolese music. It spotlights six-beat drumming, intertwined guitars, synthesizer and accordion obbligatos, call-and-response vocals, singing and rapping, cheerfully claiming a whole continuum of ideas. PARELESEla Minus and DJ Python, ‘Kiss You’The ticks, glitches and muffled drumbeats of DJ Python’s production mirror the insistent longing Ela Minus sings about in “Kiss You.” She insists on a certain equilibrium — “I’m not holding on/I’m not letting go” — as sustained chords and twitchy electronic rhythms come and go. This is stasis as a taut balance of competing forces, all virtual, and all subject to change at any moment. PARELESManuel Turizo, ‘La Bachata’One of the year’s biggest bachata songs came not from the long-running genre kingpin Romeo Santos but instead from the Colombian singer Manuel Turizo. “La Bachata” is both folksy and ambitiously modern — Turizo has a relatively thin voice, but the lushness of the modern production bolsters him. Santos can sometimes sing with a coyness that feels impossibly dreamy, but Turizo, less bound by tradition, pushes hard into the beat, a restless interloper. CARAMANICAMabe Fratti, ‘Cada Músculo’Mabe Fratti, from Guatemala, brings maximal emotion to the Minimalist structures she builds from her vocals and the gutsy riffs she plays on cello. “Every muscle has a voice,” she insists in “Cada Músculo” (“Every Muscle”), as she layers her cello and electronics into her own orchestra. The tension — muscular and psychological — only grows. PARELES More

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      The Year of Bad Bunny

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicSaying that 2022 was the year of Bad Bunny somehow doesn’t quite do his success justice. His LP “Un Verano Sin Ti” was the most streamed album of the year, breaking several records along the way. He was the year’s top grossing touring act — including two sold-out shows at Yankee Stadium. “Un Verano Sin Ti” is the first release performed entirely in Spanish to be nominated for album of the year at the Grammys.The year was also the culmination of a creative arc that began with eccentric Latin trap, detoured through pop-punk and has now arrived at smooth, historically minded reggaeton maximalism, placing Bad Bunny at the center of Latin pop, or rather magnetically moving the center in his direction.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the historical Latin pop crossover that set the table for Bad Bunny’s success, the ways he’s embraced social and political causes in both direct and indirect fashion, and how his success has expanded the possibilities for Spanish-language musicians across genres and countries.Guests:Leila Cobo, chief content officer for Latin music at BillboardCarina del Valle Schorske, contributing writer at The New York Times MagazineConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      10 Things Our Critics Are Looking Forward to in 2023

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      “Succession” returns, the Spider-Verse spawns a sequel, Kelela hits the road and Michael B. Jordan makes his directing debut with “Creed III.”Miguel and Carlos CevallosMargaret LyonsThe Scheming Roys of “Succession” ReturnBrian Cox as Logan Roy in Season 4 of “Succession,” which returns to HBO in the spring.Macall Polay/HBOWhile there are no sure bets in television, and plenty of once-great shows have fallen into bland disarray, I am counting the days until “Succession” comes back for its fourth season. (HBO says it will air in the spring.) Oh, I can hear the jangly piano theme now, and just knowing that the bereft and broken Roys, their gorgeously cruel dialogue and endless, joyless quests for power will soon be back on my screen fills me with elation. God, I hope Kendall sings in front of an audience again, and Greg stammers his way into failing up somehow, and Gerri and Roman’s erotic entanglement deepens and Shiv continues her reign of ecru terror. Logan will be grumbly! Connor will be a dingus! Tom will be in hapless agony! And I will be so, so happy, reveling in the show’s mastery of tension, its push-pull of crumbling and coalescing.Maya PhillipsThe Spider-Verse Slings Into a SequelBefore Michelle Yeoh faced off against Jobu Tupaki and her everything bagel of oblivion in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” and before Doctor Strange fought bizarro Strange with weaponized music notation in “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness,” in 2018 “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” provided a much-needed shock to the multiverse concept in film. Though it introduced a whole gang of Spider-people, each with his or her own unique back story, universe and aesthetic, “Spider-Verse” made plenty of space for its protagonist, Miles Morales, a young Afro-Latino Spider-Man whose heartfelt, humorous character arc, along with the film’s stunning animation and killer soundtrack, wasn’t lost even amid the infinite vastness of the multiverse. In June the sequel, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” will offer a more mature Miles and a new cast of Spider-variants voiced by a stellar cast, including Issa Rae as an Afro-wearing Spider-Woman, Daniel Kaluuya as Spider-Punk and Oscar Isaac as Spider-Man 2099.Jon ParelesKelela Hits the Road With Her Avant-Garde R&BThe singer and songwriter Kelela has floated on the avant-garde fringe of R&B since she released her first mixtape, “Cut 4 Me,” in 2013. Working with some of the most innovative producers around, Kelela often places her voice within eerie electronic backdrops, creating unexpected intimacy in virtual realms. But she has been elusive. She released her only full-length album, “Take Me Apart,” in 2017, and re-emerged with a few singles in 2022, starting with the enigmatic “Washed Away” and moving toward dance music and pop with “Happy Ending” and “On the Run.” Those songs are previews of her second full-length album, “Raven,” which is due in February, followed by a club tour — titled “Rave:N”—- that brings her to Webster Hall in New York on March 17. Both should reveal her latest convolutions and innovations.Mike HaleTwo Spins on the Mystery of the WeekNatasha Lyonne plays the crime-solving heroine of Peacock’s “Poker Face,” created by Rian Johnson.Phillip Caruso/PeacockTwo new crime dramas are taking different approaches to a venerable format, the mystery of the week. Fox’s “Accused” (Jan. 22) is a pure anthology, with 15 self-contained episodes set in different locales and featuring different casts. This presumably expensive venture — a lot of actors, including Wendell Pierce, Margo Martindale, Michael Chiklis, Rhea Perlman and Malcolm-Jamal Warner, need to be paid — is a joint venture of Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa (“Homeland”) and David Shore (“House”). Peacock’s “Poker Face” (Jan. 26), on the other hand, achieves its episodic structure by putting its crime-solving heroine on the road, where she finds new mysteries to tackle each week. Created by Rian Johnson (“Knives Out”) and starring Natasha Lyonne, it also requires an extensive cast, which includes Adrien Brody, Cherry Jones, Chloë Sevigny, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nick Nolte and the busy Rhea Perlman.Jesse GreenA Rare Revival of a Hansberry DramaLorraine Hansberry, photographed in her apartment in 1959; her play “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” will be presented at BAM beginning in February.David Attie/Getty ImagesOnly two plays by Lorraine Hansberry were produced during her short lifetime. “A Raisin in the Sun,” in 1959, was the big deal: an instant classic, forever revivable. But “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” which opened on Broadway in 1964 and closed days before she died in 1965, has barely been seen again. Now it will be, in a starry production (Feb. 4 through March 19) directed by Anne Kauffman for the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan play a bohemian Village couple — much like Hansberry and her husband, Robert Nemiroff — struggling to align their racial, sexual and cultural positions within the treacherous crosscurrents of contemporary politics. In some ways a Black critique of white liberalism, it leaves no group unscathed in its portrait of do-gooders doing what, for Hansberry, they do best: making a mess with the best of intentions.Salamishah TilletMichael B. Jordan Gets Back in the RingShot on IMAX cameras, “Creed III” promises to get extremely close to the frenzied action of a boxing match. Michael B. Jordan, making his directorial debut, is back as the light heavyweight champion Adonis “Donnie” Creed, now a thriving family man with Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and their daughter (Mila Davis-Kent). While Sylvester Stallone doesn’t star in this installment of the franchise, Jonathan Majors plays Donnie’s childhood friend Damian, who leaves prison after nearly two decades and turns into his fiercest competitor. Both men are among the most charismatic, talented and nuanced actors of their generation and I expect they’ll deliver some powerful performances inside and outside the ring. Look for the movie on March 3.Zachary WoolfeA New Staging of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at the MetA design sketch for a new staging of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at the Metropolitan Opera, with Piotr Beczala in the title role.via Metropolitan OperaOf the core repertory, the 25 or 30 titles at the center of the Metropolitan Opera’s history, none has been absent from its stage longer than Wagner’s “Lohengrin.” This is strange, since “Lohengrin” is probably the most performed Wagner work worldwide; it’s done all the time. But the Met’s radically minimal, painstakingly still Robert Wilson production posed extreme demands on singers and technicians alike, and was last seen in 2006. So it’ll be a major event when, on Feb. 26, the opera finally returns to New York in a new staging, directed by François Girard, whose thoughtful “Parsifal,” set in a stylized present day, was a success. (His muddled “Der Fliegende Holländer” early in 2020, less so.) Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, conducts a cast that includes the plangent tenor Piotr Beczala in the title role, the budding Wagnerian Tamara Wilson as Elsa, Christine Goerke as the aggrieved Ortrud, Evgeny Nikitin and Günther Groissböck.Gia KourlasPina Bausch Takes a Trip to BrazilIn “Água” by the choreographer Pina Bausch, Tsai-Chin Yu, foreground, spins with Nicholas Losada behind her.Ursula KaufmannThe choreographer Pina Bausch found inspiration in places and in cultures in the latter part of her career, transforming those experiences into shimmering, visceral dances. While they don’t have the darkness and bite of her earlier works, they do have the potential to wash over you like a vacation — albeit one in the theater. This spring, from March 3 to 19, the Brooklyn Academy of Music will host one such trip to Brazil. In “Água,” created by Bausch during a 2001 residency, the radiance of the landscape is celebrated with voluptuous, exuberant dancing and sumptuous color. It’s been six years since Tanztheater Wuppertal, now under the artistic direction of Boris Charmatz, a French experimentalist, performed at the Academy. As usual with a Bausch work, the hair will flow, the dresses will shimmer and the soundtrack will be eclectic. This one includes music by PJ Harvey, St Germain and Tom Waits. Strap yourself in.Jason FaragoTangled Webs of Modern Invention at the GuggenheimGego installing “Reticulárea” at Museo de Bellas Artes de Caracas in 1969.Fundación Gego; Juan SantanaHer birth certificate read Gertrud Goldschmidt — but the German-born Venezuelan artist always preferred Gego, a shrinking of her first and last names that reverberated with an art of slender brilliance. Born to a Jewish family in Hamburg in 1912, she studied architecture before fleeing to Caracas in 1939, and only in her 40s did she begin gathering copper wires, aluminum rods and plastic dowels into striking yet splintery abstract clusters. Beguiling and forbidding by turns, her works could be suspended like a mobile, or stream from the ceiling, or else could propagate across a room like a massive spider’s web. On one point Gego was uncompromising: These metal assemblages were not sculptures, she insisted, but “drawings without paper” that took a very different route to abstraction than the clean geometries many other Latin American artists favored. (They’re also delightfully resistant to social media transmission, their finely interlaced wires beyond the ken of even the highest-resolution cameraphone.) “Gego: Measuring Infinity,” opening March 31 at the Guggenheim, will fill the museum’s white spiral with her spindly aggregations — and, amid extreme refugee crises in both Europe and Venezuela, her themes of fragility and enmeshment have lost none of their force.Jason ZinomanSara Schaefer Spoofs the Comedy WorldSpoofing the cult of comedy in the language of Scientology, the wry, incisive stand-up Sara Schaefer adopts the pose, jargon and microphone of a guru in her new solo show about how to make it in the stand-up business. “Going Up” (a riff on the Scientology term “Going Clear”), which has been performed a few times but will get a wider hearing in 2023, is ambitious and nimble, sneakily personal with enough inside-baseball jokes to make it a must-see for comedy nerds. The most impressive example of this, and the bit I am most looking forward to revisiting, is when Schaefer illustrates every kind of modern stand-up by doing the same genre of joke, over and over again, in a multitude of styles. It’s a feat of comedy as well as criticism that captures an entire scene in just a few minutes. Her show should be a staple of festivals, but early in the year, it will stop in, among other places, San Francisco, Austin and New York when she performs at Caveat on April 6. More

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      Year-End Listener Mailbag: Your 2022 Questions, Part 2

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicEach year, oodles of questions pour in from the Popcast faithful, and each year, the pop music staff of The New York Times tackles them with gusto.In part one of our mailbag, we answered questions about Taylor Swift and female pop aspirants. On this Popcast, heated conversation about nontraditional country music breakthroughs and the inevitability of the Morgan Wallen comeback, the state of music video, a possible Ethel Cain-SZA connection and more.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Year-End Listener Mailbag: Your 2022 Questions, Part 1

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicEach year, oodles of questions pour in from the Popcast faithful, and each year, the pop music staff of The New York Times tackles them with gusto.On this week’s Popcast, heated conversation about Olivia Rodrigo and strategic disappearance, Taylor Swift and intoxicants, Dua Lipa and other female pop superstar aspirants, the state of indie rock and more.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      in Television

      In 2022, TV Woke Up From the American Dream

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      How the TV of 2022 depicted the weird, warping pressures of work and ambition in a boom-and-bust economy.In the Peacock series “Killing It,” Brock (Scott MacArthur), an Everglades snake hunter and would-be YouTube influencer, gets shot in the face in an altercation over a sack of python eggs. It is the best thing that has ever happened to him.The shooting leaves Brock minus one eye. But it’s captured on video, and the upload gets millions of views, giving him the lucrative viral success he’s wanted for years.“American dream!” he says, beaming. “Getting shot in the face!”On TV, 2022 has been the year of the American dream — with a catch. For many of the hustlers, entrepreneurs and strugglers onscreen, that aspiration still exists. But as Brock experienced, it can cost you an important part of yourself.“Killing It,” created by Dan Goor and Luke Del Tredici of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” slipped under many TV watchers’ radar last spring, including, mea culpa, mine. In its first episode, it seems like a simple, wacky buddy comedy: Craig Foster (Craig Robinson), a Florida security guard with dreams of starting a prostate-supplement business, teams up with the ride-share driver Jillian Glopp (Claudia O’Doherty) in a contest to exterminate invasive pythons.But as the season goes on, it becomes a broad, big-swinging satire of an adversarial economy that can seem to be booming and busting at the same time. (Tim Heidecker has a boisterous turn as a testosterone-pumped motivational speaker who preaches the philosophy of “Dominine,” which is one more than “dominate.”)As Craig, Jillian and their opponents claw toward their prize, one foot of dead python at a time, they give us a tour of the hustler’s mirage, in which the promise of riches shimmers on the horizon, all yours if you only go to one more paid conference, pitch two more investors, take three more jobs.The work experience of Jillian, an Australian immigrant, is especially bleak-comic. She drives an Uber that tows a mobile billboard (which doubles as her home), gets a TaskRabbit stint helping a rich woman (D’Arcy Carden) perpetrate a tax-fraud scheme and takes a job murdering birds at an airport, all with a heartbreakingly cheerful spirit of optimism.The comedy is grotesque and blunt — Craig spends one episode with a dead snake nailed to his palm — but sneakily smart. In this hunt for the American dream, it says, every life form must find a lower life form to kill. And while the series is set in 2016, three years before the first stirrings of Covid, it feels pandemic-adjacent in its focus on the stratum of the work force for whom work is risky, physical and in-person. You cannot drive an Uber, or shoot a nail gun into a python’s skull, over Zoom.Nicco Annan and Brandee Evans in “P-Valley,” in which every dancer dreams of being something else.StarzThe pandemic plays explicitly in Season 2 of Starz’s strip-club melodrama “P-Valley,” about a line of work that is defined by in-person interaction. The proprietor of the Pynk nightclub, Uncle Clifford (a resplendent Nicco Annan), who is nonbinary and uses she/her pronouns, spends much of the season sporting a bejeweled mask, enforcing 2020-era Covid protocols while trying to keep her business afloat at 50 percent capacity.The Pynk is a magnet for dreams, and not only naughty ones. The “P-Valley” creator, the playwright Katori Hall, respects her pole dancers as artists and athletes, and she recognizes their work for what it is: a job that manifests the economy tangibly, translating desire into dollar bills flying in the air.And because dancers age out so quickly, the job also renders the pressures of the economy in time-lapse: You have just a few years to rise up the pole before your tiring muscles pull you back down.Every dancer enters the Pynk with an eye on something else — a showbiz life, a business career, or simply escape — but one of the most affecting journeys of Season 2 belongs to Mercedes (Brandee Evans), who comes to realize that she has reached retirement age without having figured out her next step. “You’re just going to have to learn how to dream new dreams,” Uncle Clifford tells her. That’s the price of dreaming: You can’t afford to wake up.The summer’s surprise buzz phenomenon, FX on Hulu’s “The Bear,” focused on the pressures of a different sort of service industry. Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), a high-end restaurant chef, comes home to run his family’s struggling Chicago sandwich joint after his drug-addicted brother’s suicide. The pandemic isn’t a factor in the story. But the show’s depiction of work as a kind of barely restrained combat (which sometimes boils over into actual combat) feels like a bespoke fit for the post-reopening economy of labor shortages and supply chain issues.The memorable, high-decibel work sequences make “The Bear” look and sound like a war story that happens to take place in a kitchen. Work here is furious, violent and relentless. Flames roar up the sides of pans, pots clatter like artillery, slabs of beef are dragged and hoisted like casualties. Hands are burned, fingers slashed; the pace of the prep rush turns the kitchen staff into sweating, shouting bodies, meat cooking meat.All the while, Carmy flashes back to memories of being mocked and belittled by his Michelin-starred boss in the restaurant where he used to work. At times, you wonder why he chooses to stick with this job that often makes him so unhappy. In the season finale, reminiscing about his brother at an Al-Anon meeting, he seems to hit on an answer: Sometimes our dreams are not ours alone, nor are they even our choice. “Me trying to fix the restaurant was me trying to fix whatever was happening with my brother,” he says. “And, I don’t know, maybe fix the whole family.”Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy Allen White in “The Bear,” which depicts work as a kind of combat.FXIn politics, “the American dream” has long been used aspirationally, to evoke family and home. But as my colleague Jazmine Ulloa detailed earlier this year, the phrase has also lately been used ominously, especially by conservative politicians, to describe a certain way of life in danger of being stolen by outsiders.The typical counterargument, both in politics and pop culture, has been that immigrants pursuing their ambitions help to strengthen all of America. (The Dream Act has its name for a reason.) But some recent stories have complicated this idea by questioning whether the dream itself — or, at least, defining that dream in mostly material terms — can be toxic.The third season of Hulu’s “Ramy,” starring the comedian Ramy Youssef as a rudderless young Muslim from an immigrant family, takes on the theme directly. The title character’s parents, Maysa (Hiam Abbass) and Farouk (Amr Waked), have found prosperity tantalizingly out of reach, signing up with ride-share and grocery-delivery apps in their middle age.Maysa has grown resigned, but Farouk remains in a poignant unrequited love affair with the dream. He chases real-estate deals; he gins up a hapless business selling ad space on takeout containers; he fantasizes about appearing on “Shark Tank.” (Ramy, meanwhile, has hit it big in the jewelry business, having partnered with some contacts in Israel, but finds himself more spiritually adrift than ever.)In the season’s final episode, Maysa and Farouk, having come across a stash of hallucinogenic mushrooms, reminisce about their early days in the country when they would feed Ramy and his sister hot dogs, not knowing they contained pork. Stoned, they make a run to buy convenience-store franks, bite into the seductive, non-halal treats and realize that they taste disgusting. “Why did we sell our souls?” Farouk asks. “We gave it all up for hot dogs.”Most recently, Hulu’s “Welcome to Chippendales” — about another kind of commercialized American meat — reconsiders the immigrant dream from the vantage of success. The story of Somen Banerjee (Kumail Nanjiani), the founder of the male-stripper empire, it is in many ways of a piece with this year’s glut of scam-and-scandal docudramas; it’s a rise-and-fall series in which the fall is less interesting and takes twice as long. (The creator, Robert Siegel, gave us the prosthetic fantasia “Pam & Tommy” earlier this year.)The series stands apart, though, for showing how Banerjee, born in India, uses a learned idea of American appetites to pursue a received idea of the American dream. In some ways, being an outsider makes his success possible — much in America is novel to him, so he’s receptive to new ideas (like seminude dancers in bow ties).“Welcome to Chippendales” on Hulu is based on the real-life origins of the famous male-stripper empire.Erin Simkin/HuluBut his embrace of Americanness (for instance, he goes by “Steve” rather than “Somen”) cuts two ways. He experiences racism before and after he hits it big, but he also uses discrimination as a business tactic, ending up in court because of a scheme to bar Black patrons (whom, he concludes from experience, will make white customers see his club as less “classy”).Banerjee has perhaps internalized the American dream too thoroughly. He gets his first intimation of this when he returns to India for his father’s funeral, his suitcase stuffed with gifts of electronics and Velveeta, hoping to be welcomed as a conquering success. Instead, his mother scolds him for leaving the family printing business to run a fleshpot. “We are middle-class people, Somen,” she says. “We did not need saving by America.”He leaves, weighed down with rejection and processed cheese. Beyond his mother’s personal disappointment is the verdict that he has stopped being himself, but in the process he has not really become a new person either. He is simply a reflection of another culture’s artifice, an imitation of an imitation.This is the danger of the American dream when you scale it down from the national to the individual level. You risk devoting your life to wanting something because it’s what you’ve been told you should want. Everybody loves a Cinderella story, but sometimes your dream, in reality, is just a wish somebody else’s heart made. More

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      The Artists We Lost in 2022, in Their Words

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      Music innovators who sang of coal country and “Great Balls of Fire.” An actress who made a signature role out of a devilish baker who meets a fiery end. The trailblazing heart of “In the Heat of the Night.”The creative people who died this year include many whose lives helped shape our own — through the art they made, and through the words they said. Here is a tribute to just some of them, in their own voices.Sidney Poitier.Sam Falk/The New York Times“Life offered no auditions for the many roles I had to play.”— Sidney Poitier, actor, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)“People in the past have done what we’re trying to do infinitely better. That’s why, for one’s own sanity, to keep one’s own sense of proportion, one must regularly go back to them.”— Peter Brook, director, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)Ronnie Spector.Art Zelin/Getty Images“Every song is a little piece of my life.”— Ronnie Spector, singer, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Yuriko.Jack Mitchell/Getty Images“Dance is living. Dance is, for me, it’s survival.”— Yuriko, dancer, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)Kirstie Alley.Vinnie Zuffante/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images“The question is, how do you create with what you have?”— Kirstie Alley, actress, born 1951 (Read the obituary.)Carmen Herrera.Todd Heisler/The New York Times“Every painting has been a fight between the painting and me. I tend to win. But you know how many paintings I threw in the garbage?”— Carmen Herrera, artist, born 1915 (Read the obituary.)“I decided that in every scene, you’re naked. If you’re dressed in a parka, what’s the difference if you’re dressed in nothing at all, if you’re exploring yourself?”— William Hurt, actor, born 1950 (Read the obituary.)Takeoff.Rich Fury/Getty Images For Global Citizen“You gotta have fun with a song, make somebody laugh. You gotta have character. A hard punchline can make you laugh, but you gotta know how to say it.”— Takeoff, rapper, born 1994 (Read the obituary.)“I love watching people get hit in the crotch. But only if they get back up.”— Bob Saget, comedian and actor, born 1956 (Read the obituary.)Olivia Newton-John.Las Vegas News Bureau/EPA, via Shutterstock“I do like to be alone at times, just to breathe.”— Olivia Newton-John, singer, born 1948 (Read the obituary.)“Movies are like clouds that sit over reality: If I do cinema well, I can uncover what is beneath, my friends, my allies, what I am, where I come from.”— Jean-Luc Godard, director, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Sam Gilliam.Anthony Barboza/Getty Images“The expressive act of making a mark and hanging it in space is always political.”— Sam Gilliam, artist, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“Everyone says that I was a role model. But I never thought of it when I was doing the music and when I was performing. I just wanted to make good music.”— Betty Davis, singer-songwriter, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)Nichelle Nichols.Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images“The next Einstein might have a Black face — and she’s female.”— Nichelle Nichols, actress, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)“If I could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, it would be with Albert Einstein at Panzanella.”— Judy Tenuta, comedian, born 1949 (Read the obituary.)“In time, writers learn that good fiction editors care as much about the story as the writer does, or almost, anyway. And you really often end up, the three of you — the writer, and the editor, and the story — working on this obdurate, beautiful thing, this brand-new creation.”— Roger Angell, writer and editor, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)Jennifer Bartlett.Susan Wood/Getty Images“I spent 30 years trying to convince people and myself that I was smart, that I was a good painter, that I was this or that. It’s not going to happen. The only person that it should happen for is me. This is what I was meant to do.”— Jennifer Bartlett, artist, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)Christine McVie.P. Floyd/Daily Express, via Hulton Archive and Getty Images“I didn’t aspire to be on the stage playing piano, let alone singing, because I never thought I had much of a voice. But my option was window-dresser or jump off the cliff and try this. So I jumped off the cliff.”— Christine McVie, musician and songwriter, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“Sometimes you have to put yourself on the edge. You go to the precipice and lean over it.”— Maria Ewing, opera singer, born 1950 (Read the obituary.)Taylor Hawkins.John Atashian/Getty Images“There’s so much in what I do that is beyond hard work — there’s luck and timing and just being in the right place at the right time with the right hairdo.”— Taylor Hawkins, drummer, born 1972 (Read the obituary.)“I was primarily an actress and not a pretty face.”— Angela Lansbury, actress, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)“I always try to improve upon what I’ve done. If something’s not working, I’ll change it to make it better. I’m an artist and a performer above all, and I don’t limit myself.”— Elza Soares, singer, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Leslie Jordan.Fred Prouser/Reuters“I’m always working, always. I got to keep the ship afloat.”— Leslie Jordan, actor, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)“The reward of the work has always been the work itself.”— David McCullough, historian and author, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“To me, sitting at a desk all day was not only a privilege but a duty: something I owed to all those people in my life, living and dead, who’d had so much more to say than anyone ever got to hear.”— Barbara Ehrenreich, author, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)James Caan.Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Passion is such an important thing to have in life because it ends so soon, and my passion was to grow up with my son.”— James Caan, actor, born 1940 (Read the obituary.)Tina Ramirez.Michael Falco for The New York Times“Words are unnecessary when movement and feeling and expression can say it all.”— Tina Ramirez, dancer and founder of Ballet Hispánico, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Claes Oldenburg.Tony Evans/Getty Images“I haven’t done anything on the subject of flies. It’s the sort of thing that could interest me. Anything could interest me, actually.”— Claes Oldenburg, artist, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“A skull is a beautiful thing.”— Lee Bontecou, artist, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)“I like to write strong characters who are no better or worse than anybody else on earth.”— Charles Fuller, playwright, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Ray Liotta.Aaron Rapoport/Corbis, via Getty Images“One review said I played a sleazy, heartless, cold person who you don’t really care about. Great! I love it; that’s what I played.”— Ray Liotta, actor, born around 1954 (Read the obituary.)Jerry Lee Lewis.Thomas S. England/Getty Images“There’s a difference between a phenomenon and a stylist. I’m a stylist, Elvis was the phenomenon, and don’t you forget it.”— Jerry Lee Lewis, musician, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)“All of us have something built into our ears that comes from the place where we grow up and where we were as children.”— George Crumb, composer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Anne Heche. SGranitz/WireImage, via Getty Images“People wonder why I am so forthcoming with the truths that have happened in my life, and it’s because the lies that I have been surrounded with and the denial that I was raised in, for better or worse, bore a child of truth and love.”— Anne Heche, actress, born 1969 (Read the obituary.)Louie Anderson.Gary Null/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images“That’s my goal every night: Hopefully at some point in my act, you have forgotten whatever trouble you had when you came in.”— Louie Anderson, comedian and actor, born 1953 (Read the obituary.)“Adult human beings live with the certainty of grief, which deepens us and opens us to other people, who have been there, too.”— Peter Straub, author, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Ned Rorem.Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times“I believe in the importance of the unimportant — in the quotidian pathos.”— Ned Rorem, composer, born 1923 (Read the obituary.)Gilbert Gottfried.Fred Hermansky/NBC, via Getty Images“I don’t always mean to offend. I only sometimes mean to offend.”— Gilbert Gottfried, comedian, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)“Merce Cunningham is quoted somewhere as saying he wanted a company that danced the way he danced. I kept doing the same thing. And I began to wonder why I was insisting that they be as limited as I am.”— David Gordon, choreographer, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)Hilary Mantel.Ellie Smith for The New York Times“The universe is not limited by what I can imagine.”— Hilary Mantel, author, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)“Getting the right people with a shared vision is three-quarters of the battle.”— Anne Parsons, arts administrator, born 1957 (Read the obituary.)Paula Rego.Rita Barros/Getty Images“My paintings are stories, but they are not narratives, in that they have no past and future.”— Paula Rego, artist, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Javier Marías.Quim Llenas/Getty Images“When you are addressing your fellow citizens, you have to give some hope sometimes, even if you want to say that everything is terrible, that we are governed by a bunch of gangsters. In a novel, you can be much more pessimistic. You are more savage, you are wilder, you are freer, you think truer, you think better.”— Javier Marías, author, born 1951 (Read the obituary.)“Art is not blameless. Art can inflict harm.”— Richard Taruskin, musicologist, born 1945 (Read the obituary.)“I am a worker who labors with songs, doing in my own way what I know best, like any other Cuban worker. I am faithful to my reality, to my revolution and the way in which I have been brought up.”— Pablo Milanés, musician, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)Peter Bogdanovich.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Success is very hard. Nobody prepares you for it. You think you’re infallible. You pretend you know more than you do.”— Peter Bogdanovich, director, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Loretta Lynn.CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images“I think the highest point of my career was in the late ’70s. I had No. 1 songs, a best-selling book and a movie made about my life. But I think it was also the lowest point for me as well. Life gets away from you so fast when you move fast.”— Loretta Lynn, singer-songwriter, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)Thich Nhat Hanh.Golding/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images“Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.”— Thich Nhat Hanh, monk and author, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)Photographs at top via CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images; Anthony Barboza/Getty Images; Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images; Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images. More

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      Best Classical Music of 2022

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      Fresh takes on Mozart, Dvorak and Debussy, and newer works by Dewa Alit, Kate Soper and Caroline Shaw are among our favorite recordings this year.Dewa Alit: ‘Likad’“Chasing the Phantom”; Dewa Alit and Gamelan Salukat (Black Truffle)Dewa Alit: “Likad”Black TruffleThis Balinese composer combines two different gamelan scales in his latest project. Just as you start to grasp the harmonic implications, his ensemble begins navigating virtuoso rhythm changes. Recommended if you like innovative tunings, torrid riffing, blooming transitions of percussive color, or hip-hop beat-tapes. SETH COLTER WALLSAnonymous: ‘Orante Sancta Lucia’“Mother Sister Daughter”; Musica Secreta; Laurie Stras, director (Lucky Music)“Orante sancta Lucia”Lucky MusicMusica Secreta — its name inspired by the mystery still surrounding works written by and for Renaissance and Baroque women — is pressing into tantalizingly early repertoire from around the turn of the 16th century, including this “Vespers of St. Lucy” and other rare polyphonic settings of psalm antiphons (chants sung alongside psalm verses) believed to have originated in Italian convents. ZACHARY WOOLFEBach: ‘Erbarme dich’“Matthäus-Passion”; Lucile Richardot, mezzo-soprano; Pygmalion; Raphaël Pichon, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)Bach: “Erbarme dich”Harmonia MundiIt’s been a good year for Raphaël Pichon and his period ensemble Pygmalion: critically adored opera stagings and excellent recordings, including one for the pantheon of “St. Matthew Passion” accounts. Hear how, alongside precision, the purity of sound — in the strings, and in Lucile Richardot’s robust yet smooth tone — maintains rending beauty and a softly dancing lilt. JOSHUA BARONEBeethoven: Variation 24, Fughetta (Andante)Beethoven: “Diabelli” Variations; Mitsuko Uchida, piano (Decca)Beethoven: Variation 24, Fughetta (Andante)DeccaMitsuko Uchida playing Beethoven: It’s a self-recommending prospect, really. Still, it’s a mark of this pianist’s surpassing artistry that her “Diabellis” prove so unerringly fine. There is elegance, of course, and sensitivity; a wink or two of wit even breaks through, though Uchida is not exactly looking for laughs. What is so striking, rather, is how scrupulously she rethinks each variation, even as she ensures that each finds its rightful place in the whole. DAVID ALLENGeorges Bizet: ‘La fleur que tu m’avais jetée’“Arias”; Jonathan Tetelman, tenor; Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria; Karel Mark Chichon, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)Georges Bizet: “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée”Deutsche GrammophonOn his debut album, Jonathan Tetelman lavishes his sumptuous tenor and almost poetic attention on classic Romantic and verismo arias. For the “Flower Song” from “Carmen,” Tetelman cushions the contours of his phrases, hooks into high notes without breaking the musical line and nails the diminuendo on the high B flat. OUSSAMA ZAHRConnie Converse: ‘One by One’“Walking in the Dark”; Julia Bullock, soprano; Christian Reif, piano (Nonesuch)Connie Converse: “One by One”NonesuchAt last we have a solo album from Julia Bullock. As debuts go, it’s eclectic and understated, and astonishing for its intensity of feeling with such restraint — perhaps most so in “One by One.” This track, by the pioneering but elusive singer-songwriter Connie Converse, is here whispered and prayerful, with the intimacy and elegance of an Ivesian parlor song. JOSHUA BARONEAnthony Davis: ‘Shoot Your Shot!’“X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X”; Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Odyssey Opera Chorus; Gil Rose, Conductor (BMOP Sound)Anthony Davis: “Shoot Your Shot!”BMOP SoundIn which a young Malcolm Little — not yet surnamed X — receives a tour of Boston while listeners get a sense of what makes Davis one of today’s great opera composers: Simultaneous warmth and apprehension in lines for Malcolm’s sister Ella hint at both spirituals and Berg. Yet her warnings collide with a pool hall hustler’s even more compelling pitch, eloquent and brash in the manner of Mingus. SETH COLTER WALLSDebussy: ‘Pelléas part ce soir’“Pelléas et Mélisande”; Vannina Santoni, soprano; Alexandre Duhamel, baritone; Jean Teitgen, bass; Les Siècles; François-Xavier Roth, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)Debussy: “Pelléas part ce soir”Harmonia MundiCloser and closer to our own time stride François-Xavier Roth and the period-instrument players of Les Siècles, and on, too, toward ever more revealing interpretations. Supporting somewhat lighter voices than the norm, Les Siècles’ gut strings and piping winds give Debussy’s more delicate writing a glinting fragility, his outbursts of violence a raw savagery. This is “Pelléas” not as a mystery play, but as an unsparingly forceful drama. DAVID ALLENDvorak and PUBLIQuartet: Improvisations on String Quartet No. 12, Allegro ma non troppo“What Is American”; PUBLIQuartet (Bright Shiny Things)Dvorak and PUBLIQuartet: Improvisations on String Quartet No. 12, Allegro ma non troppoBright Shiny ThingsDvorak’s “American” quartet has elicited dozens of winning, faithful recordings. This one has other goals. As the performers improvise around the original material, they attain a communion with Dvorak’s love of Black American music that most other interpreters fail to achieve. SETH COLTER WALLSJulius Eastman: ‘Stay On It’“Julius Eastman, Vol. 2: Joy Boy”; Wild Up (New Amsterdam)Julius Eastman: “Stay On It”New AmsterdamThe Los Angeles ensemble Wild Up has embarked on a series of recordings of the once-forgotten music of Julius Eastman (1940-90). The second installment closes with the bright party of “Stay On It,” a paean to community that veers between precision and lush chaos: troubled by shadows but ultimately, patiently, quietly triumphant. ZACHARY WOOLFEMary Halvorson: ‘Side Effect’“Amaryllis”; Mary Halvorson Sextet; Mivos Quartet (Nonesuch)Mary Halvorson: “Side Effect”NonesuchAfter spending part of the pandemic studying up on string quartet writing, this guitarist and composer collaborated with the Mivos Quartet on two enjoyable albums released this year. For this exultant and meticulously patterned work, Halvorson invited the string quartet into her standing sextet of improvising players, creating her richest ensemble sound yet. SETH COLTER WALLSHenze: ‘Tristan’s Folly’“Tristan”; Igor Levit, piano; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Franz Welser-Möst, conductor (Sony)Henze: “Tristan’s Folly”SonyAnother astonishing recording from the pianist Igor Levit, “Tristan” is bookended by Liszt and includes dreamlike solo transcriptions of the Adagio from Mahler’s 10th Symphony and Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” Prelude. But the album centers on Hans Werner Henze’s postmodern “Tristan” (1973), which musters piano, tape and orchestra to reckon with the Germanic tradition, furthering Liszt, Wagner and Mahler’s bendings of time and harmony. ZACHARY WOOLFEKorngold: ‘The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex’ Overture“Hollywood Soundstage”; Sinfonia of London; John Wilson, conductor (Chandos)Korngold: “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” OvertureChandosIt would be easy to argue that a track from any of the five sensational recordings John Wilson and his elite Sinfonia of London have released this year should be on this list, but every time I play this Korngold, I find it hard to move on to anything else. The virtuosity Wilson lavishes on a composer he is determined to restore to stature is stunning, no matter how many times you hear it. DAVID ALLENAndrew McIntosh: ‘Little Jimmy at the End of Winter’“Little Jimmy”; Yarn/Wire (Kairos)Andrew McIntosh: “Little Jimmy at the End of Winter”KairosNamed for a campsite in California where Andrew McIntosh made field recordings a few months before it was devastated by a fire, “Little Jimmy” (2020) folds those recordings of birds and wind into alternately shimmering and chalk-hard music for piano-percussion quartet. The natural world is wondrous, McIntosh suggests, but also stark, lonely and fragile, even threatening. ZACHARY WOOLFEMendelssohn: String Quartet No. 1, Andante espressivoMendelssohn: Complete String Quartets, Vol. 1; Quatuor Van Kuijk (Alpha Classics)Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 1, Andante espressivoAlpha ClassicsThe latest Quatuor Van Kuijk recording, the first in a promised survey of Mendelssohn’s string quartets, is, like the group’s previous outings, vigorously and precisely executed, and — without cluttering affect — expressed with refreshing, sometimes revelatory, straightforwardness. Particularly in the slow movement of the Op. 12 Quartet in E flat, whose direct phrasing has an irresistibly simple, moving sweetness. JOSHUA BARONEMozart: Piano Sonata No. 16 in C, AndanteMozart: The Piano Sonatas; Robert Levin, fortepiano (ECM)Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 16 in C, AndanteECMAn impossible challenge: Choose a single track from the dozens in Robert Levin’s tirelessly lively, eloquent collection of Mozart’s piano sonatas, recorded on their composer’s own fortepiano. But, to pick almost at random, the slow movement from the “Sonata Facile” (K. 545) demonstrates the sensitivity, sustained legato and dashing embellishments that characterize Levin’s whole, sprawling set. ZACHARY WOOLFEMozart and Vikingur Ólafsson: ‘Laudate Dominum’“From Afar”; Vikingur Ólafsson, piano (Deutsche Grammophon)Mozart and Vikingur Ólafsson: “Laudate Dominum”Deutsche GrammophonVikingur Ólafsson has emerged in his recordings as not only one of the most thoughtful pianists of our time, but also one of the finest arrangers. Something of anti-Liszt, he humbly translates the essence of each work, such as in his treatment of Mozart’s “Laudate Dominum,” whose flowing melody over an arpeggiated accompaniment could pass for one of the composer’s delicate sonatas. JOSHUA BARONEPejacevic: Symphony in F Sharp Minor, FinaleDora Pejacevic: Piano Concerto and Symphony in F Sharp Minor; BBC Symphony Orchestra; Sakari Oramo, conductor (Chandos)Pejacevic: Symphony in F Sharp Minor, FinaleChandosSakari Oramo has long been a friend to the hardly heard, and it is to his credit that he is now lending his persuasive skills to the effort to bring female composers to greater prominence. His righteous advocacy certainly blazes for the Croatian Dora Pejacevic, who died in 1923 at just 37; her bold symphony, finished in 1920, might be in the Dvorakian tradition, but Oramo leaves you in no doubt of its fundamentally adventurous spirit. DAVID ALLENRossini: ‘Céleste providence’“French Bel Canto Arias”; Lisette Oropesa, soprano; Saxon State Opera Chorus Dresden; Dresden Philharmonic; Corrado Rovaris, conductor (Pentatone)Rossini: “Céleste providence”PentatoneA peerless bel canto interpreter, the soprano Lisette Oropesa combed through her bread-and-butter repertoire to come up with an album’s worth of material in French, her favorite language to sing. In this showstopper from Rossini’s elegant comic opera “Le Comte Ory,” Oropesa’s classy singing sneaks subtle flecks of color into fiendish runs taken at the speed of light. OUSSAMA ZAHROthmar Schoeck: ‘Liebesfrühling’“Elegie”; Christian Gerhaher, baritone; Basel Chamber Orchestra; Heinz Holliger, conductor (Sony Classical)Othmar Schoeck: “Liebesfrühling”Sony ClassicalThe baritone Christian Gerhaher mumbles, sighs and occasionally sings full out amid the stark, transfixing musical landscapes of Othmar Schoeck’s orchestral song cycle “Elegie.” “Liebesfrühling” turns the metaphor of spring inside out, locating in its verdancy memories that cause anguish, as Gerhaher’s voice rises to a pained pitch suffused with light. OUSSAMA ZAHRSchubert, arranged by Liszt: ‘Der Doppelgänger’“Mein Traum”; Stéphane Degout, baritone; Pygmalion; Raphaël Pichon, conductor (Harmonia Mundi)Schubert, arranged by Liszt: “Der Doppelgänger”Harmonia MundiThe conductor Raphaël Pichon’s brilliantly curated album with Pygmalion and the baritone Stéphane Degout, “Mein Traum,” is a marvel of sustained tension in melancholy hues. “Der Doppelgänger” exemplifies their shared purpose: Singer and orchestra, breathing as one, crescendo ever so slowly into a climax of uncanny horror. OUSSAMA ZAHRCaroline Shaw: ‘How Do I Find You’“How Do I Find You”; Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano; Kirill Kuzmin, piano (Pentatone)Caroline Shaw: “How Do I Find You”PentatoneThe mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke kicks off her album about the pandemic with the emotional wreckage of the title track by Caroline Shaw. Over a simple sequence of diatonic chords, played with compassion by the pianist Kirill Kuzmin, Cooke describes a couple circling their feelings with an amber-toned voice suspended between tears and solace. OUSSAMA ZAHRKate Soper: ‘The Understanding of All Things’“The Understanding of All Things”; Kate Soper and Sam Pluta (New Focus)Kate Soper: “The Understanding of All Things”New FocusIn Kate Soper’s playfully searching album, she doesn’t reach some universal understanding. Instead, her title track’s fragmented telling of a Kafka story, recounted through vocalise and Laurie Anderson-like elevated speech over the sound of a spinning top, seems to make a statement, but with the syntax of a question. Figuring out what to make of that is part of the fun. JOSHUA BARONEStrauss: ‘Macbeth’“Richard Strauss: Three Tone Poems”; Cleveland Orchestra; Franz Welser-Möst, conductor (Cleveland Orchestra)Strauss: “Macbeth”Cleveland OrchestraThere is no more glorious demonstration than this of what makes the partnership between the Cleveland Orchestra and its music director so special. Listen closely to any section of the orchestra, and you will hear playing that is little short of immaculate; draw back to listen to the whole, and you will find Welser-Möst, at his most direct, turn a Strauss piece that most conductors ignore into a minor masterpiece. It’s exhilarating. DAVID ALLENZimmermann: ‘Alagoana,’ IV. Caboclo“Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Recomposed”; WDR Sinfonieorchester; Heinz Holliger, conductor (Wergo)Zimmermann: “Alagoana,” IV. CabocloWergoAfter World War II, the modernist composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann produced orchestral arrangements of French chansons and Villa-Lobos for West German radio. The conductor (and oboist) Holliger has rescued those sparkling adaptations from oblivion. Crucially, he also provides fresh looks at Zimmermann originals like “Alagoana,” with its funhouse-mirror reflections of Villa-Lobos (and Milhaud). SETH COLTER WALLS More