Those of us who only heard Adrian Boult conduct at the very end of his long career in the 1970s, think of him predominantly as a superb interpreter of British music, as well as of some of the 19th-century symphonic repertory. But earlier in his career, as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1930 to 1950, he had been an ardent champion of European new music, giving UK premieres to works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Bartók among many others. Alban Berg was another of the composers Boult introduced, and in 1934 in the Queen’s Hall in London, he conducted the first British performance of Wozzeck, nine years after the opera’s premiere in Berlin.
Berg: Wozzeck; Stravinsky: Capriccio album cover. Photograph: SOMM Recordings
That concert performance was broadcast by the BBC, and one act of it (all that survives as a recording apparently) has been released on disc. But in 1949 Boult conducted Wozzeck again with the BBC SO, this time at the Proms, and that is the performance that has now been made available for the first time as part of this collection marking the 40th anniversary of the conductor’s death. Most of the roles are filled by British singers – the celebrated Wagnerian tenor Walter Widdop is the Drum Major, for instance – but two outstanding international artists from the years after the second world war, Heinrich Nillius and Suzanne Danco, are a fabulously secure Wozzeck and a rather tremulous Marie. Their voices sometimes have to battle against an over-prominent orchestra, but technically all the performances seem impressively accurate, often more so than in some of the studio-made Wozzeck recordings that would follow in the next couple of decades.
There’s space on these discs too for a pair of almost equally fascinating fill-ups. There’s a rather crackly but rhythmically razor-sharp BBC studio performance with the Australian pianist Noel Mewton-Wood of Stravinsky’s Capriccio for Piano and orchestra from 1948, and, on more familiar Boult territory, an account of Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony from 1965, in which he conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. If none of these performances could ever be recommended as a “library” version, then the set as a whole does throw fascinating new light on a conductor whose important role in British music in the middle decades of the last century is nowadays often rather undervalued.
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Blessed with one of the most plastic and fantastic flows in all hip-hop, capable of explosive streams of high-speed syllables, gently crooned choruses and everything in between, Busta Rhymes is one of the genre’s great icons – and will be joining us to answer your questions as he releases new album Blockbusta.
Born Trevor Smith Jr in Brooklyn to Jamaican parents in 1972, he parlayed his family background into his rap career, adding a ragga energy to the city’s rapidly efflorescing hip-hop scene in the late 1980s. His rep was first minted in his group Leaders of the New School, including a notable verse on A Tribe Called Quest’s hit Scenario, before going solo in considerable style with startling debut single Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check, a Top 10 hit in the US and UK in 1996.
It kicked off a run of astonishing rap hits, drawing on post-apocalyptic imagery and often paired with eye-popping videos by Hype Williams – the Psycho-sampling Gimme Some More, the Knight Rider-sampling Turn It Up/Fire It Up, the Seals and Crofts-sampling Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See. Janet Jackson collaboration What’s It Gonna Be?! successfully branched into pop-R&B (and had one of the most expensive music videos of all time), while I Know What You Want repeated the trick with Mariah Carey. Both reached the US Top 3, while rowdier cuts Pass the Courvoisier and Break Ya Neck also endure today.
In between his own music he appeared on dozens of other tracks with other artists – his headspinning contribution to Chris Brown’s Look at Me Now remains a high-water mark for lyrical technicality – including a string of reggae and dancehall tracks that reconnected with his heritage. He also cultivated a cadre of other rappers in the collective Flipmode Squad, co-produced his tracks as well as rapping on them, and had a parallel acting career in films such as the Samuel L Jackson remake of Shaft, Narc and Halloween: Resurrection.
After all-star 2020 comeback album Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God, there’s now Blockbusta, made with a triumvirate of blue-chip exec producers: Pharrell, Timbaland and Swizz Beatz. Ahead of its release on 24 November, Busta will answer your questions about his rich creative life – post them in the comments below by 3pm GMT on Monday 20 November.
André 3000 is back with a new sound 17 years after the release of his last record.
During an interview on NPR’s “All Songs Considered” on Tuesday, the acclaimed Atlanta rapper announced his long-awaited solo debut “New Blue Sun” is set for release on Friday.
Surprising many, André revealed the album is 87 minutes of experimental instrumental music, which features him playing the Contrabass flute, Mayan flutes, bamboo flutes, digital wind instruments and more.
“I’ve been interested in winds for a long time, so it was just a natural progression for me to go into flutes,” he said in a statement shared by People magazine.
André "3000" Benjamin, pictured in 2020, is releasing his first solo record on Friday. "New Blue Sun" is a collection of experimental instrumental tracks featuring a variety of flutes.
Tommaso Boddi via Getty Images
The “So Fresh, So Clean” artist hasn’t released an LP since OutKast split in 2006, but has had a few features and one-off releases in the years since.
He previously showcased his woodwind skills on the 2003 OutKast track “She Lives in My Lap” and on the 2019 James Blake collaboration “Where’s the Catch?”
While “New Blue Sun” isn’t a hip-hop record, the eight-track ode to the flute does feature a song titled “I Swear, I Really Wanted To Make a ‘Rap’ Album but This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time.”
“In my mind, I really would like to make a rap album,” André explained in another statement. “So maybe that happens one day, but I got to find a way to say what I want to say in an interesting way that’s appealing to me at this age.”
THE CAROLINA CHOCOLATE Drops and many others have now ensured that future generations can see themselves onstage but, once up there, such Black performers rarely see themselves in the crowd. Do Black artists need a Black audience? It’s a longstanding debate that sometimes pits the artistic against the sociopolitical functions of song. The writer Amiri Baraka once defined Black music as “American music expanded past the experience of the average American.” “It gets down,” he wrote. “It is about the life of the downed, yet its dignity is in the fantastic sophistication even at the moment of would-be, should-be humiliation and actual despair.” Giddens, who once described her music as “Black non-Black music” and now prefers to call it simply “American music,” understands this implicitly. “All the good things that come from American music [come from] mixture,” she says. “Hiding in plain sight in all the different types of American music is cross-cultural working-class collaboration. It’s people making music because that’s what they’ve got.”
The most powerful folk music has always addressed points of tension: between Black and white, rich and poor, sophistication and humiliation. Cannon’s 1927 song “Can You Blame the Colored Man?” tells the story of Booker T. Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Institute, dining with President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House in 1901, the year Washington’s best-selling autobiography, “Up From Slavery,” was published. “Could you blame the colored man for makin’ them goo-goo eyes?” Cannon sings, after describing in detail the lavish dinner at the president’s table. Likewise, today’s best folk music still confronts issues of race and class. In 2019 Amythyst Kiah, now 36, a guitarist and banjo player from Tennessee, joined Giddens, along with Leyla McCalla and Allison Russell, in a string-band collective called Our Native Daughters. They decided to excavate American history, going back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade to find inspiration for new songs. One of the songs that came of that process was the startling and soulful “Black Myself.”
I don’t pass the test of the paper bag ’Cause I’m Black myself I pick the banjo up and they sneer at me ’Cause I’m Black myself You better lock your doors when I walk by ’Cause I’m Black myself You look me in my eyes but you don’t see me ’Cause I’m Black myself
The brown paper bag test, as the literary scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. has written, was born out of colorism within the Black community, in nightclubs and house parties in New Orleans where anyone darker than the bag taped to the door would be denied entrance. In a song that confronts the experience of being shut out of traditionally white spaces — such as contemporary folk and country music — Kiah’s lyrics build toward resistance and joy: “I’ll stand my ground and smile in your face / ’Cause I’m Black myself.”
Addressing her race so explicitly in her music was a departure for Kiah. “I’ve always written songs in a way where anybody can put themselves in that position,” she says. Throughout her years of playing, she’s subscribed to the theory that the more specific and personal a song’s perspective, the more a listener — any listener — will relate to it. Just as Kiah, no poor white Southern girl from rural Kentucky, could relate to Loretta Lynn’s 1970 single “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” she says, so she hopes that listeners, whomever they may be, will relate to “Black Myself.”
ARMATRADING WAS BORN on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts in 1950, and moved to Birmingham, England, at age 7. There, her mother got a piano as a piece of living room furniture, and she was given free rein to start experimenting with writing songs. “I was just to my own devices,” she said, adding with a laugh: “I never involved anybody. I didn’t really ask anybody’s opinion, which is how I am still.”
Some of Armatrading’s earliest experiences with classical music came through movies. “As soon as the strings come in, the emotion really kicks in,” she said. “It seems to be like a punctuation mark that says, ‘This is what you’re supposed to do.’” She enjoyed “Brief Encounter,” with its use of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, and “West Side Story,” and developed an early appreciation for depth and weight. “If you have 18 strings or something, and they’re doing that thing, you’re gonna cry,” she said.
It’s no surprise, then, that some of her favorite composers are those known for tugging hardest on the heartstrings: Rachmaninoff and Purcell, as well as Tchaikovsky, whose Fifth Symphony is being paired with her First on the Chineke! program.
Armatrading is adamant that, in her Symphony, she just wanted to sound “like Joan,” but she’s also happy for listeners to bring their own associations. When I listened to the work, which will be recorded for Decca, I heard flashes of the verdant textures of Vaughan Williams, a bit of Elgarian pomp and some of Copland’s brightness.
This symphony is by no means the first case of a pop artist to engage in classical composition. But unlike other instances — such as Paul McCartney’s “Liverpool Oratorio” or Deep Purple’s “Concerto for Group and Orchestra” — Armatrading’s debut is a two-footed leap into a different musical world rather than an attempt to straddle styles.
The 12th and 21st centuries coalesced in this performance by the trio Voice, with music by the medieval mystic and saint Hildegard of Bingen interlaced with contemporary vocal works inspired by her. Central to the theatricality of their presentation were Chris Tomsett’s animated images screened as a background, so as to give a sense of the visions that characterised Hildegard’s own spirituality, visions which neurologists suggest may have been the sensory symptoms of migraines with aura.
Victoria Couper, Clemmie Franks and Emily Burn have a finely honed sound, pure and silvery, plus the occasional warmer bloom. Carrying candles as they processed into the darkened hall, opening with Hildegard’s antiphon O successores and the responsorium Favus distillans and then moving into Marcus Davidson’s Musical Harmony, they created an evocative atmosphere. Hildegard’s flowing monodic lines also prefaced works by Tim Lea Young, Stevie Wishart – who, as the editor of Hildegard’s works, her own affinity very clear – and Emily Levy. Mostly conceived in three parts, imbued with the spirit of Hildegard but with spikes of dissonance, these highlighted the contrast between past and present while, in the accompanying visuals, there was a similar differentiation between living images – leaves, trees and flowers – to identify Hildegard and more abstract patterning for the new music.
For composer Laura Moody the challenge was even more personal: herself a migraine sufferer, Moody chose to set seven extracts from translations of Hildegard’s letters so as to build a picture of a flesh-and-blood, feisty proto-feminist, a philosopher who argued that women and men were equal in the eyes of God. Threaded individually through the hour-long concert, each piece emerged vividly, with The Living Light giving the culminating climactic finale. They would surely be heard to greater effect again in unbroken sequence.
Voice’s graceful presence, their haunting delivery, the feat of memory involved, were all notable. Ultimately though, the possibility of being lulled into a suitably entranced state was countered by the psychedelic busyness of the images – distracting and, ironically, almost migraine-inducing.
The Beatles have broken UK chart records as they return to No 1 with their “final” song together, Now and Then – their 18th chart-topper in total.
Their 17th No 1 was The Ballad of John and Yoko in 1969, meaning they are now the artists with the longest gap between No 1 singles: 54 years, smashing the record set last year by Kate Bush when she reached the top with Running Up That Hill, 44 years after her No 1 with Wuthering Heights. Neither of the new songs the living members of the Beatles released in 1995 and 1996, Free as a Bird and Real Love, topped the charts.
Now and Then, a midtempo ballad written by John Lennon in the late 1970s, uses his original demo recording combined with guitar lines recorded by the late George Harrison in 1994, plus new parts recorded by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. McCartney said of the song’s chart-topping success: “It’s mind boggling. It’s blown my socks off. It’s also a very emotional moment for me. I love it!”
Now and Then’s chart supremacy has been powered in part by a series of physical editions, including CD, cassette, 12in vinyl and four different coloured 7in vinyl versions, with the three non-black versions retailing at £17.99 each.
Those unusually high prices were no deterrent for fans, many of whom queued at midnight on Friday last week to snap up copies. With 19,400 vinyl copies sold, it’s the fastest selling vinyl single of the century, and its total physical sales of 38,000 were the biggest single week of physical sales since 2014, when X Factor winner Ben Haenow reached Christmas No 1 with Something I Need.
Now and Then was also streamed more than 5 million times in the UK, by far the highest single week figure for any Beatles song. The Beatles’ return was so anticipated that Now and Then actually reached the charts last Friday after being on release for just 10 hours before that week’s cutoff, reaching No 42.
The band extend their record as the British artist with the most No 1 singles, with Official Charts Company chief executive Martin Talbot saying: “If there were ever any doubts that the Beatles are the greatest band of all time, they have surely consigned them to history this week.”
They will need to find a fair bit more in the vaults if they want to beat Elvis Presley, who has 21 No 1s, though Peter Jackson, who directed Now and Then’s music video, has said it’s not beyond the realms of possibility. “We can take a performance from [Jackson’s documentary film] Get Back, separate John and George, and then have Paul and Ringo add a chorus or harmonies,” he told the Sunday Times this week. “You might end up with a decent song but I haven’t had conversations with Paul about that. It’s fanboy stuff but certainly conceivable.”
The album chart meanwhile hosted the return of other musical legends, with Cliff Richard scoring his 48th Top 10 album with Cliff With Strings – My Kinda Life at No 5, Johnny Marr getting a fifth solo Top 10 album with best-of compilation Spirit Power at No 7, and Van Morrison getting a 44th Top 40 album with Accentuate the Positive at No 39.
Bucking the trend for new albums to swiftly drop down the charts, the Rolling Stones earn a third week in the Top Five with Hackney Diamonds. Oasis are the highest new entry at No 2 with a reissue of B-sides compilation The Masterplan ahead of K-pop star Jung Kook at No 3, while Taylor Swift’s re-recorded version of 1989 remains at No 1 for a second week.
Swift was deposed by the Beatles in the singles chart, her song Is It Over Now dropping to No 3. Prada, a remix of D-Block Europe and Raye’s song Ferrari Horses made by producer Cassö on his Swansea University laptop, spends a ninth week in the Top 5 at No 2, while Tate McRae and Tyla each return to the Top 5.
Fans had worried when a tense-looking Judd joined country rapper Jelly Roll to open the show with his song “Need a Favor.”
Though the veteran singer’s voice soared, she barely inched away from center stage while holding on to Jelly Roll’s arm with a seemingly iron grip.
After the stilted performance, some online wondered if Judd was hiding health issues.
The recording artist had a much simpler explanation when she addressed the chatter Thursday in an Instagram video, however.
“They tell you, ‘Don’t read the comments’ — I read the comments!” Judd laughed. “I’m just going to come clean with y’all. I was so freaking nervous.”
Wynonna Judd (right) decided to "come clean" with fans after joining Jelly Roll for a performance at the CMA Awards on Wednesday.
Astrida Valigorsky via Getty Images
She added: “I got out there and I looked at Jelly Roll. I wanted it to be so good for him. I could cry right now, but I’m not going to because I’m such a fan of his. And he asked me to sing and I said, ‘Absolutely!’ I got out there and I was so nervous that I just held on for dear life. And that’s the bottom line.”
Judd, who recorded her message during a flight to Texas for her Back to Wy tour, assured fans that “all is well” before ending her clip.
Following the CMA Awards performance, the country music icon told Entertainment Tonight what supporting other artists means to her.
“I have to show up for people like people did me,” Judd said. “That’s my job now is to pass it on because people have been so generous with me and now it’s my turn to be generous with people like Jelly Roll and that’s what I’m doing.”
This article first appeared on the UC Davis College of Letters and Science website on Oct. 24, 2023.
In late September, the U.S. Department of State launched the Global Music Diplomacy Initiative to elevate music as a diplomatic tool to promote peace and exchange of ideas. In partnership with the music industry, the initiative includes a music mentorship program to bring artists from around the world to the U.S. for networking and training, a fellowship for scholars researching the intersection of arts and science, and using music as an English-language learning tool around the globe.
So, what’s the State Department doing in the music business? Actually, the State Department has a long music diplomacy history, and an expert on this is Carol A. Hess, a musicologist and distinguished professor of music in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis.
When Hess — who in 1994 became the first person to earn a doctorate in musicology at UC Davis — entered the field, scholars were paying scant attention to Latin American classical music and almost none to music of the 19th and 20th centuries in the region, let alone cultural diplomacy in Latin America.
“In the 1990s, several musicologists began working on the special challenges involved with music and cultural diplomacy,” said Hess, who returned to the UC Davis Department of Music as a professor in 2012. “Most of these scholars, however, worked on the East-West divide of the Cold War. I realized that the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world wasn’t getting much attention, so I decided to plunge into that.”
Building Bridges, Championing Latin American Music
Aaron Copland is best known for his accessible compositions, often connected to celebratory narratives and vernacular music of the United States; the title of his Fanfare for the Common Man encapsulates his musical philosophy. Among his other popular works are the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Rodeo.
Despite a plethora of research on Copland, no scholar had ever explored his cultural diplomacy in Latin America. In Aaron Copland in Latin America, Hess documents Copland’s four State Department Latin American trips, which took place between 1943 and 1963. He conducted concerts (often programming his own music), gave talks and interviews, and sometimes traveled to rural areas with messages of cultural connectivity. Copland’s Latin American travels drew widespread attention in the media. He was a tireless promoter of the State Department programs, giving talks and writing about them for mainstream publications. Copland’s tours were so significant that they are mentioned prominently in the State Department’s recent announcement of the new music diplomacy initiative, along with tours by Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and others starting in the 1950s.
“It’s one thing to say Copland was a cultural diplomat, but when we actually become aware of what he did on a daily basis, it’s quite impressive,” Hess said.
Cover for Aaron Copland in Latin America: Music and Cultural Politics
“Other scholars have worked on cultural diplomacy in broad geopolitical terms — they’ve done essential work — but I wanted to address these big themes while also taking the reader behind the scenes a bit. How many meetings with composers, radio broadcasts, press interviews, or embassy receptions might be on his agenda? This angle of cultural diplomacy — the sheer amount of work involved and how it fits into the bigger picture — isn’t often explored.”
One of Copland’s most important achievements was drawing attention to Latin American composers.
“Copland’s Latin American colleagues resented being typecast as purveyors of cheery, folkloric, maracas-and-drums works that invite U.S. listeners to a ‘south of the border fiesta,’” said Hess, who has written extensively about the music of Latin America and Spain, including books about composers Manuel de Falla and Enrique Granados and dozens of scholarly articles.
Several Latin American composers did embrace a folkloric style, but others pushed the boundaries with avant-garde techniques. Having a complicated relationship to the avant-garde himself, Copland didn’t initially support the latter group’s efforts but eventually advocated for their music.
Like Copland, Hess is a champion of Latin American music with her students at UC Davis and many others through her 2018 textbook Experiencing Latin American Music, winner of the American Musicological Society’s Teaching Award.
“Many people worldwide know Latin American popular music but have no clue that Latin American classical music exists,” Hess said. “Students are usually intrigued when I inform them how pervasively Latin American classical music has been ignored.”
Cultural Diplomacy Cuts Across Political Divides
The period covered in the Copland book spans World War II and the early Cold War, a time of shifting priorities in U.S.-Latin America relations, already tarnished by a long history of U.S. interventionism. Cultural diplomacy programs with Latin America were part of the fight against European fascism before and during World War II, thanks to former President Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy. In the Cold War, when communism was seen as the great threat, the United States resumed interventionism or supported anticommunist dictators in Latin America. Many Latin Americans concluded that the Good Neighbor policy had been insincere.
“Copland did not have an easy assignment,” Hess said. “Yet he spoke glowingly about the State Department and its cultural diplomacy programs.”
Aaron Copland
The early Cold War wasn’t a great time to do that.
In the 1950s, the State Department came under intense scrutiny by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and others, who alleged communist infiltration. Because of his leftist political activities during the 1930s, along with his enthusiasm for the State Department, Copland was questioned by McCarthy and investigated by the FBI.
Overall, State Department arts programs have had wide-ranging support among those of various political stripes. The sponsor of what would become the State Department’s Fulbright Program was U.S. Representative J. William Fulbright, a Democrat from Arkansas with a mixed record on segregation but an opponent of McCarthy’s communist witch hunt.
Republican billionaire Nelson Rockefeller, who eventually served as governor of New York, U.S. assistant secretary of state, and vice president, was appointed by the Democratic Roosevelt administration as coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, in which cultural diplomacy was a major component.
This across-the-aisle support continues, even in today’s rancorous and sharply divided U.S. Congress.
The State Department’s new Global Music Diplomacy Initiative was made possible by the PEACE Through Music Diplomacy Act sponsored by U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, and U.S. senators Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, and Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.
“It’s interesting to see the range of politicians who support these programs,” Hess said.
U.S. cultural diplomacy initiatives have been criticized as “art washing” propaganda to promote U.S. political and economic interests and, in the case of tours by jazz giants in the 1950s, an attempt to show that the United States wasn’t a racist nation. Hess is well aware of such criticisms and acknowledges hypocrisy in cultural diplomacy, such as proclaiming solidarity with Latin America while supporting repressive regimes.
“Still, I get irritated by those who say the whole thing is just an imperialist ploy,” Hess said. “Yes, imperialism guided many unfortunate policy decisions. But it’s important to remember that in the cultural realm, affective bonds were forged by individuals — by people like Copland. Copland treated the composers he met with respect, and he remained an advocate and a friend to many for years after the tours ended. These benefits of cultural diplomacy can’t be measured in spreadsheets or cost-benefit analyses. Yet they run deep and, in Copland’s case, are fondly remembered today.”
Yet, there is one thing that Manilow has always pined for and now inspires some irrational fears: a Broadway show.
For nearly 30 years, that goal has proved tantalizingly out of reach despite a labor of love: “Harmony,” a musical he composed with his longtime collaborator Bruce Sussman, the lyricist who also wrote the show’s book.
“Harmony,” which follows the unlikely story of a sextet of 1930s singing and vaudevillian stars — the Comedian Harmonists, torn apart by the rise of Nazism and World War II — is now scheduled to open on Monday at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. Barring, of course, some cosmic catastrophe that both Manilow and Sussman joke about.
Sort of.
“We keep thinking the theater is going to get hit by a tornado,” Manilow joked over lunch in Midtown in September after their first day of rehearsal.
Sussman, 74, laughed along: “It’s got to be something.”
Not to jinx the opening, both men offer a “kinahora” — a Yiddish locution meaning “no evil eye.” It’s a dash of dark humor that is not completely unfounded, considering the tortuous route that “Harmony” has taken from page to the Barrymore’s stage. Sussman first conceived of the show in the early 1990s after seeing Eberhard Fechner’s 1977 documentary about the Harmonists in New York.
“I came out of there and went to a phone booth on Lafayette Street, and I called him and I started babbling away,” Sussman recalled. “And he said, ‘I’m in.’”
Both men were immediately intrigued by the story of a popular singing group (they had played Carnegie Hall, for instance, in 1933) that was destroyed by — and lost to — history. Half of the group was of Jewish descent, and the Nazi takeover of Germany would eventually silence them.
But the urge to compose a musical was also deeply seated in Manilow, who says he was never interested in pop music as a child in Brooklyn, when he was already a precocious musician, playing accordion and piano.
“It wasn’t interesting enough for me,” Manilow recalled, of pop. “I didn’t know what was on the Top 40. I was into jazz and Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. I was into classical music. And I was into Broadway scores.”
He added: “And I memorized every note from every one of those albums. And that started it off.”
Manilow played piano in bars, worked in the CBS mailroom and wrote a raft of jingles, something he says that taught him to write a “catchy melody in 15 seconds.” (He and Sussman, both of whom are Jewish, met in New York in the early 1970s.)
Still, Manilow says that it was his sudden pop stardom — beginning with ballads like “Mandy” and continuing with later earworm hits like “Copacabana (at the Copa),” which Sussman helped write — that somewhat sidetracked his desire to write for the stage, though Manilow did do a series of Broadway concerts over the years.
“You can either write, ‘I love you’ or ‘I miss you,’” Manilow said of his masterful Top 40 songcraft. “You go any further than that, you’re writing a Broadway song.”
Despite that superstardom — and yes, probably because of it — “Harmony” did debut at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego in 1997, but got mixed reviews and failed to transfer. Still, interest in the show continued to percolate, including in 2003, when an out-of-town tryout in Philadelphia — before a planned Broadway run — suddenly evaporated when financial backing disintegrated.
More iterations followed: In 2013 and 2014, the show had runs in Atlanta and Los Angeles, where the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle recognized the two men for their score. Again, producers expressed interest in Broadway, but deals fell apart, something Sussman seems remarkably measured about.
“The gantlet that a new musical goes through, every step can be the end,” he said. “You do a reading, it’s over. You survive the reading, you do a workshop, it’s over. You survive the reading and you go to a regional and it’s over. And we all know shows that I’ve done that have died at one of those steps. We never did.”
Manilow was a little less sanguine about the process. “I put it in the drawer many times,” he recalled. “It was so heartbreaking every time it didn’t make it.”
During the coronavirus pandemic, however, Sussman and Manilow started to “kick the tires” on the show again with Warren Carlyle, the British director and choreographer who won a Tony Award in 2014 for his work on “After Midnight” and was nominated for Tonys for his work on the revivals of “Hello, Dolly!” (2017) and “The Music Man” (2022).
One possible turning point in the show’s luck, Carlyle said, was the addition of a narrator character — an older rabbi played by Chip Zien — who walks the audience through the various eras of the show.
“It was massive,” he said. “For me as director, it unlocks the whole show because previously it was kind of a six-headed dragon. You know there were these six guys: They all have wonderful stories. They all have rich lives. And I just didn’t know who to follow and I didn’t know how to focus the show.”
To solve the problem, Sussman suggested splitting the existing role of one of the Harmonists in two. In addition to his younger self the show would also include his older self, a rabbi, serving as a narrator. “And suddenly for me, it was like, now the story has a point of view,” Carlyle said.
Following that work, the show was staged in 2022 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, where audiences — and critics — seemed to respond in ways that they hadn’t before. Writing in The New York Times, Elisabeth Vincentelli praised the songs “crafted in a defiantly classic mold,” which steer the show back to “solid emotional ground.”
She also noted the creative team’s ability in “balancing the shifting moods, which is no easy feat because they must shuffle broad humor and, well, Nazis.”
Zalmen Mlotek, the artistic director of the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene, which presented “Harmony” at the museum, said that he had heard about “Harmony” after a recommendation from the developer Bruce Ratner, the chairman of the museum.
“When I heard that Manilow and Sussman had written a piece about the Holocaust, I looked at it, the idea of the Comedians, this singing group, had had their careers destroyed, it was just very compelling to me,” he said.
Sussman and Manilow also said they were aware of a different relevance to their decades-old show when watching it last year at the museum, amid a rising number of antisemitic incidents in the country. That disturbing trend has only been amplified in recent weeks as war broke out in Israel and the Gaza Strip.
During the Folksbiene run, Sussman said, “I would sit in the back of the house and there’d be audible responses from the audience and certain lines, and I started getting nervous that people would think I was writing into the headlines. But some of those lines are 15, 20 years old.”
Most of the major cast members from the Folksbiene production have transferred to Broadway, though most are lesser-known performers, something that may make marketing the show difficult. And while Manilow knows he’s a draw — see all those years in Vegas — he’s also not performing, of course.
“I hope the show is strong enough to stand on its own,” he said.
Still rail thin and apparently indefatigable, he has been commuting from the West Coast, where he is still doing three shows a week at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino. (He just passed Elvis for the most shows ever at that resort.)
A onetime heavy smoker, Manilow is now a vaper, who — unlike his booming singing voice — is a quiet speaker. (Sussman still recalls seeing burn marks on Manilow’s piano keys where his Pall Malls would burn down as he composed.)
Sometimes standing to vape, he also conveys a nervous energy about watching a show from the audience for a change. “It’s a terrible, terrible thing: I see all the flaws and faults,” he said with a chuckle.
Still, he and Sussman said they hope to avoid any bad luck — theatrical, critical or otherwise — this time around.
“People say, you know, ‘Oh, you must be so excited?’” Manilow said. “I don’t know what I am, really. We’ve been just waiting for this moment for so many years.”
In a week of yet more bad news at English National Opera, the long-awaited UK premiere of 7 Deaths of Maria Callas was a reminder of just how ambitious and outward-facing the company can be. Billed as “an opera project by Marina Abramović”, the piece is a co-production from six of Europe’s operatic big-hitters (ENO among them) and has been gradually doing the rounds since its world premiere in Munich in September 2020.
Its arrival in London – last stop on the circuit – attracted a large, confident crowd. “It’s one of those events”, murmured one older punter to her companion as they squeezed past me before curtain-up, hunting for somewhere to perch amid the sea of extravagant outfits and air-kissing. As the programme points out, Abramović is “the mother of performance art”.
Now 76 and the first female artist to be the subject of a major solo retrospective at the Royal Academy in London, Abramović’s work has consistently brought discomfort (her own and her audiences’) and danger (to herself). Be warned: anyone familiar with her loss-of-consciousness pieces or those deploying knives or bow and arrow might find her presence in 7 Deaths of Maria Callas tame.
For much of the work, Abramović lies in bed, eyes shut. She is Callas, dreaming on her deathbed of celebrated operatic deaths, all roles with which she was to some extent associated. As an aria from each is performed on stage by a singer, video projections – often slow-motion, all exquisitely shot – show an imagined scene starring Abramović as Callas, with disturbing murderous cameos by Willem Dafoe. In between, music by Serbian composer Marko Nikodijević provides atmospheric soundscapery – low rumbling, whistles, pulsing synth chords – as we hear a recording of Abramović’s voice. (Whether she’s speaking as Callas or the operatic character is sometimes hard to say, which is presumably the point.)
New brooms … a scene from 7 Deaths of Maria Callas. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Finally, we move to the Paris hotel room where Callas died in 1977. Abramović is still in bed, now surrounded by Louis XIV furniture and oil paintings, electric lamps and plug sockets. She’s roused by a commanding voiceover (Abramović again), stands, walks, smashes a vase and leaves. The seven singers return as cleaners to clear up. The show ends with a recording of Callas herself singing Casta Diva, to which Abramović mimes.
And there’s the rub. The singers largely gave decent performances of their greatest-hits arias: the superb Aigul Akhmetshina’s turn as Carmen was a highlight, while Elbenita Kajtazi’s Vissi d’Arte was lush and Eri Nakamura’s Addio, del Passato creamy and generous. But none, inevitably, were Callas. Hearing the Greek soprano’s own unmistakeable voice – its gloriously weird patina; its vulnerability up high; its covered richness lower down – made only too clear the absence at the work’s centre.
With the three eldest members of K-pop boyband phenomenon BTS currently on military service in South Korea, their youngest recruit, 26-year-old Jung Kook, is free to continue finessing his solo career. Things are off to a good start: this debut album features one US chart-topping single – the excellent, UK garage-esque sex diary Seven – and a top 5 hit in the shape of the glossy, sun-kissed 3D, which recalls prime Justin Timberlake.
Those early nods to Craig David and Timberlake, however, highlight Jung Kook’s struggle to find his own sound and identity. So the objectively fine mid-tempo Yes or No, co-written by Ed Sheeran, sounds a lot like Ed Sheeran, while the drippy ballad Hate You, co-written by Shawn Mendes, sounds a lot like… you get the idea. The litany of high-profile producers doesn’t help matters either, with Major Lazer phoning things in on Closer to You.
The album takes off when Jung Kook can focus on his honeyed falsetto, as on the supple disco glide of Standing Next to You, or on 3D’s exhilarating chorus. Golden is full of bright spots, but only fully shines on occasion.
Megan Thee Stallion’s fans are rallying behind her after the release of her new song, “Cobra,” which hinted that an ex-boyfriend was unfaithful to her.
In “Cobra,” which released on Friday, the Houston artist raps about the deaths of her parents and experiencing anxiety, before she hints that she was cheated on: “Pulled up, caught him cheating / getting his d**k sucked in the spot I’m sleeping.”
The rapper did not name her ex in the song, but fans immediately assumed she was referencing her ex-boyfriend, musician Pardison Fontaine, whose real name is Jordan Thorpe.
Fontaine has yet to publicly respond to the new song — though he did share two interesting posts on his Instagram story on Friday.
The singer/songwriter shared posts that featured rapper Future and NBA player Tristan Thompson — two celebrities who have been widely criticizedfor cheating scandals.
Elsewhere in the new song, Megan discusses dealing with depression, suicidal ideation and comments surrounding self-harm.
The rapper also references some of the scrutiny she faced from her peers in the music industry after she testified during a trial last year that rapper Tory Lanez wounded her when he shot her in the feet several times in the summer of 2020.
“Why is you speaking on me at my lowest / when you acted like you ain’t noticed?” she raps.
Last year, rappers Drake and 21 Savage released a song titled “Circo Loco,” in which the former appeared to accuse Megan of lying about the shooting incident in one of his verses.
The Houston rapper slammed Drake and 21 Savage at the time, accusing them of spreading “conspiracy theories.”
On Friday, many of her supporters took to X, formerly Twitter, to focus their attention on Fontaine:
I actually respected Pardi and bought his whole feminist schtick. But, he’s dead to me.
It’s obvious he cheated on her in her own house because Megan Thee Stallion has the rap career he wishes he had. That’s why he’s relegated to being a ghostwriter with flop albums.
I just want to put something in perspective for you all.
In the last 5 years Meg has:
Lost her Great-Grandmother Lost her mother Been shot at Been betrayed by her best friend Went through a public criminal court case Attacked by the whole entertainment industry
