A Singer of Suffering, Resurrected From Illness, Reaffirms His Mettle

PHILADELPHIA, July 23 — It should be no big deal, right? A singer announces that he is canceling some tour dates while he tries to recover from a viral infection. Fans respond reasonably: they shrug it off, wish him well and wait until next time

Tim Shaffer for The New York Times

Morrissey performed a few Smiths songs in addition to ones from his solo albums at the Mann Center in Philadelphia on Monday night.

But then, Morrissey isn’t just any singer: he has become one of the defining rock stars of the past few decades by virtue of his grand voice, his grander songs and his charming habit of playing with melodrama.

And suffice it to say that his fans — like the proud but self-pitying characters in his songs — aren’t exactly known for their reasonableness. After the cancellations were announced, Morrissey message boards were lit up with salvos from the disgruntled (some of whom claimed slow ticket sales were the real culprit) and the still-fairly-gruntled. One fan called Morrissey “an unprofessional bore,” adding, “It’s over between us.” A typically understated response: “Instead of psychologically enhancing him, and trying to make him feel better, you sit here and utilize mind terrorism on him. Are you all republican.

Some of the concerts — including planned appearances at Madison Square Garden (June 30) and the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, N.J. (July 6) — haven’t been rescheduled. But on Monday night, Morrissey came to the Mann Center here, for a concert that had been postponed from June 29. His normally smooth voice sounded a little froggy, but he seemed to be in a great (even goofy) mood, which more than made up for the occasional rasp.

“You show great spirit in the face of chronic adversity,” he said, by way of tribute to those who hadn’t forsaken him. And even the finickiest fan must admit that there is simply nothing un-fun about watching a 48-year-old man rip off his shirt while crooning, “Then you open your eyes/And you see someone that you physically despise.”

Never mind what the ear, nose and throat specialist says: Morrissey, often lampooned as the most delicate of flowers, turns out to be sturdier than just about any of his contemporaries. His old band, the Smiths, was formed a quarter-century ago in Manchester, England, and though the group lasted only five years, Smiths songs remain staples of indie-rock playlists around the world. His eight solo albums haven’t all been equally successful, but they’re all worth hearing, and the best songs rank with any of the Smiths’ classics.

In short, he still drives his fans nuts, he still puts on a great show, and he still hasn’t become an oldies act. Back in the 1980s, who could have predicted that?

Monday’s concert included a handful of old favorites — “The Boy With the Thorn in His Side,” “Girlfriend in a Coma,” “How Soon Is Now?” — all of which sounded as ambiguous, and as funny, as they ever did. (In chronicling his sad-sack heroes, Morrissey usually finds a way to hint at both sympathy and mockery.) In “How Soon Is Now?,” soon after he sang, “I am human and I need to be loved/Just like everybody else does,” a beefy guy rushed the stage, planted a kiss on his hero’s neck and was promptly tackled by security. (It’s a Morrissey concert tradition.) “I am loved,” murmured the singer, unperturbed.

On his two most recent albums — “You Are the Quarry,” from 2004, and “Ringleader of the Tormentors,” from last year — he has embraced a brawny, heavy rock ’n’ roll sound. One guitarist added a swaggering hard-rock riff to “I Will See You in Far-Off Places,” a trudging song from the latter CD. Sometimes the new songs reflected his continuing sturdiness a bit too well: the band marched grimly ahead while he sang the (always witty) lyrics. But if that’s what keeps him going, it’s worth it.

One of his best recent songs is “First of the Gang to Die,” an ode to an antihero from “You Are the Quarry”; it has already become a fan favorite. On Monday night, he tweaked the lyrics, singing, “And he stole from the rich — which is you/And the poor — which is me.” And as he worked the crowd nonstop, grabbing hands and pausing to acknowledge screamed requests and fending off kissers, you could see what he meant: stardom is hard work, even (or especially) cult stardom.

Maybe he should be careful about all that human contact: isn’t that how someone catches a virus? Or maybe he likes to remind himself that his career, and his health, are at the mercy of fans who can be as gentle or as vicious as anyone else in love. This show felt like a triumph, but it also felt like a pleasant surprise, even though Morrissey has been doing this since the 1980s. “You feared the worst, as you should,” he said. “But occasionally. ...”

Interpol launch record in LA with eclectic DJ set

Interpol marked the release of their new album, 'Our Love To Admire' with an eclectic DJ set at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History last night (July 13).Singer Paul Banks and drummer Sam Fogarino spun a diverse mix of soul, rock, hip-hop and funk for the enthusiastic capacity crowd at the unique venue.Hundreds of fans were turned away from the exclusive Filter Magazine Presents The Interpol Record Release Party, where the New York band's rumoured live performance never materialised. Fogarino looked sharp in a dark jacket, red shirt and tie, while Banks was casual in a blue buttoned-down shirt and baseball cap embroidered with the words 'I Love Jesus'.At one point, technical difficulties threatened to mar the evening, but Banks and Fogarino were able to set things right by toying with the mixer and were soon back up and running. Interpol are set to kick off a US tour in support of the new album on July 19. They're also scheduled to play several UK and European festivals later this summer including The Carling Weekend: Reading and Leeds festivals, as previously reported

Dark Colors on a Humid Day, Far From the Madding Park

Events like the Washington Square Music Festival have a lot to put up with. Removal from the frenzy of city life to a relatively bucolic calm is a principle of festivals in general and one that goes back to the ancient Greeks. But planting open-air music in the middle of a public park means scuffling for attention.
This annual series began its 49th season on Tuesday night. (The first was in 1953; if the numbers don’t add up, there have been a few bumps along the road.) The usual subversives during these concerts have been casual passers-by, competing music makers or the whispered counterpoint of “Smoke, smoke” issuing from stealthy operatives along the park’s leafy pathways. But the most effective enemy remains the open sky, which, having no roof with which to bounce sound back to the audience, invites it to float away, incompletely heard.
This particular concert had a different set of adversaries, namely the extreme heat and the threat of thunderstorms. New York University offered its Loewe Theater around the corner on West Fourth Street, and in the interests of prudence the festival and its relatively large audience, a mix of young and old, relocated to air-conditioned comfort and a more controlled environment.
The only shame was that a program nicely calculated to the out-of-doors was now suddenly out of place. Four trombones are as good a way as any to get the attention of a distracted citizenship. Here they played arrangements from the Baroque ranging from Albinoni to Bach. Following was a quartet of horns in movements from Jean Francaix’s ”Notturno e Divertimento” and Michael Tippett’s Sonata for Four Horns.
The music arrived in fours and in dark colors. After intermission it was a Suite for Four Cellos and the Impromptu (Op. 30), both sweet and inconsequential and written by the late-19th and early-20th-century composer Julius Klengel.
Then it was time for a general merger: first David Taylor’s version of Schubert’s “Doppelgänger” for bass trombone and ensemble, and the weird sounds of Mahler’s Adagietto movement from the Fifth Symphony arranged for all of the instruments listed above. In the Schubert (or sort of Schubert), Mr. Taylor recited, sang and offered wildly flamboyant trombone solos in an engaging improvisatory style. Lutz Rath, who elsewhere had a shaky evening as a cellist, conducted both pieces.

Stories of Eunuchs, Consorts and Emperors

In 1992 Wei Hai-ming gave a performance of the classic Chinese opera episode “The Tipsy Concubine” that was stunning in its understated elegance. Ms. Wei, depicting the eighth-century consort Yang Yu-huan attended by eunuchs and drowning her sorrows after a snub from her emperor, Xuan-zong, was exquisite in her subtle bobbing and weaving, with vocal modulations to match. The scene drew added intimacy from its setting, the wee, now defunct Taipei Theater deep in the basement of the McGraw-Hill Building.
Ms. Wei returned to New York as Yang, the Precious Consort, on Tuesday with the Contemporary Legend Theater of Taiwan as part of the opening night of the Lincoln Center Festival. The hourlong production was grander than the remembered one, with extras in attendance and a sizable set built into the stage of the Rose Theater. Some of the intimacy was lost in the larger space, and the strokes were necessarily bolder, the gestures generally broader.
But all this is churlish. Ms. Wei is an utterly compelling stage presence, and she played deftly here to the larger scale. The wooden stage set was attractive and uncluttered, with columns, lanterns and a translucent flowery screen, and the costumes were colorful and gorgeous.
Ms. Wei is a pillar of this Taipei company, along with its artistic director, Wu Hsing-kuo, who conceived the production. They worked together in the second half of the program in another standard of the Chinese repertory, “Farewell My Concubine.”
The title, if not the work itself, gained familiarity in the West through Chen Kaige’s acclaimed 1993 film, loosely constructed around the opera. The historical context here goes back to the third century B.C., when, in a battle for control of the newly unified China, the valiant but rash Chu king Xiang Yu found himself and his troops hopelessly surrounded by Han forces.
Concubine Yu, trying to comfort her king and finding him inconsolable, decides to take herself out of the picture by slitting her throat with his sword. In this production, which frames this private scene with brief battle pieces, Xiang Yu ultimately does likewise.
“The king’s really irrelevant,” declares a character in the film, who obviously had not seen the imposing Wu Hsing-kuo in the role. But it is true that the role of the concubine (played by a man in the film, in keeping with a time-honored tradition of cross-dressing in Chinese opera) is central.
Wei Hai-ming also showed her command of this role at the Taipei Theater, in 1995, creating a figure almost as memorable as her Precious Consort. The action includes a famous sword dance, with which Concubine Yu tries to distract the king. The acrobatics so characteristic of Chinese opera are generally the work of lesser characters, but Ms. Wei showed her endless versatility here in some harrowing work with two swords, not quite baton twirling, not quite juggling.
In addition to its productions of traditional Chinese fare, the Contemporary Legend Theater is known for its Chinese opera versions of classic Western dramas. It presented a gripping adaptation of “Macbeth” at the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. two years ago, with Ms. Wei in a radically different mode and Mr. Wu in the title role. Tonight Mr. Wu will perform his one-man interpretation of “King Lear” at the Rose Theater, female roles as well as male.

History music

The history of music predates the written word and is tied to the development of each unique human culture. Although the earliest records of musical expression are to be found in the Sama Veda of India and in 4,000 year old cuneiform from Ur, most of our written records and studies deal with the history of music in Western civilization[citation needed]. This includes musical periods such as medieval, renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, and 20th century era music. The history of music in other cultures has also been documented to some degree, and the knowledge of "world music" (or the field of "ethnomusicology") has become more and more sought after in academic circles. This includes the documented classical traditions of Asian countries outside the influence of western Europe, as well as the folk or indigenous music of various other cultures. (The term world music has been applied to a wide range of music made outside of Europe and European influence, although its initial application, in the context of the World Music Program at Wesleyan University, was as a term including all possible music genres, including European traditions. In academic circles, the original term for the study of world music, "comparative musicology", was replaced in the middle of the twentieth century by "ethnomusicology.")Popular styles of music varied widely from culture to culture, and from period to period. Different cultures emphasized different instruments, or techniques, or uses for music. Music has been used not only for entertainment, for ceremonies, and for practical & artistic communication, but also extensively for propaganda.As world cultures have come into greater contact, their indigenous musical styles have often merged into new styles. For example, the United States bluegrass style contains elements from Anglo-Irish, Scottish, Irish, German and some African-American instrumental and vocal traditions, which were able to fuse in the US' multi-ethnic "melting pot" society.There is a host of music classifications, many of which are caught up in the argument over the definition of music. Among the largest of these is the division between classical music (or "art" music), and popular music (or commercial music - including rock and roll, country music, and pop music). Some genres don't fit neatly into one of these "big two" classifications, (such as folk music, world music, or jazz music).Genres of music are determined as much by tradition and presentation as by the actual music. While most classical music is acoustic and meant to be performed by individuals or groups, many works described as "classical" include samples or tape, or are mechanical. Some works, like Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, are claimed by both jazz and classical music. Many current music festivals celebrate a particular musical genre.There is often disagreement over what constitutes "real" music: late-period Beethoven string quartets, Stravinsky ballet scores, serialism, bebop-era jazz, hip hop, punk rock, and electronica have all been considered non-music by some critics when they were first introduced.

Reception and audition

The field of music cognition involves the study of many aspects of music including how it is processed by listeners.Music is experienced by individuals in a range of social settings ranging from being alone to attending a large concert. Musical performances take different forms in different cultures and socioeconomic milieus. In Europe and North America, there is often a divide between what types of music are viewed as a "high culture" and "low culture." "High culture" types of music typically include Western art music such as Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and modern-era symphonies, concertos, and solo works, and are typically heard in formal concerts in concert halls and churches, with the audience sitting quietly in seats.On the other hand, other types of music such as jazz, blues, soul, and country are often performed in bars, nightclubs, and theatres, where the audience may be able to drink, dance, and express themselves by cheering. Until the later 20th century, the division between "high" and "low" musical forms was widely accepted as a valid distinction that separated out better quality, more advanced "art music" from the popular styles of music heard in bars and dance halls.However, in the 1980s and 1990s, musicologists studying this perceived divide between "high" and "low" musical genres argued that this distinction is not based on the musical value or quality of the different types of music. Rather, they argued that this distinction was based largely on the socioeconomic standing or social class of the performers or audience of the different types of music.For example, whereas the audience for Classical symphony concerts typically have above-average incomes, the audience for a hip-hop concert in an inner-city area may have below-average incomes. Even though the performers, audience, or venue where non-"art" music is performed may have a lower socioeconomic status, the music that is performed, such as blues, hip-hop, punk, funk, or ska may be very complex and sophisticated.Deaf people can experience music by feeling the vibrations in their body, a process which can be enhanced if the individual holds a resonant, hollow object. A well-known deaf musician is the composer Ludwig van Beethoven, who composed many famous works even after he had completely lost his hearing. Recent examples of deaf musicians include Evelyn Glennie, a highly acclaimed percussionist who has been deaf since the age of twelve, and Chris Buck, a virtuoso violinist who has lost his hearing.

Media and Technology

The music that composers make can be heard through several media; the most traditional way is to hear it live, in the presence, or as one of the musicians. Live music can also be broadcast over the radio, television or the internet. Some musical styles focus on producing a sound for a performance, while others focus on producing a recording which mixes together sounds which were never played "live". Recording, even of styles which are essentially live, often uses the ability to edit and splice to produce recordings which are considered better than the actual performance.As talking pictures emerged in the early 20th century, with their prerecorded musical tracks, an increasing number of moviehouse orchestra musicians found themselves out of work.[4] More than just their position as film accompanists was usurped; according to historian Preston J. Hubbard, "During the 1920s live musical performances at first-run theaters became an exceedingly important aspect of the American cinema."[5] With the coming of the talkies, those featured performances—usually staged as preludes—were largely eliminated as well. The American Federation of Musicians took out newspaper advertisements protesting the replacement of live musicians with mechanical playing devices. One 1929 ad that appeared in the Pittsburgh Press features an image of a can labeled "Canned Music / Big Noise Brand / Guaranteed to Produce No Intellectual or Emotional Reaction Whatever" and reads in part:Canned Music on TrialThis is the case of Art vs. Mechanical Music in theatres. The defendant stands accused in front of the American people of attempted corruption of musical appreciation and discouragement of musical education. Theatres in many cities are offering synchronised mechanical music as a substitute for Real Music. If the theatre-going public accepts this vitiation of its entertainment program a deplorable decline in the Art of Music is inevitable. Musical authorities know that the soul of the Art is lost in mechanisation. It cannot be otherwise because the quality of music is dependent on the mood of the artist, upon the human contact, without which the essence of intellectual stimulation and emotional rapture is lost.[6]Since legislation introduced to help protect performers, composers, publishers and producers, including the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 in the United States, and the 1979 revised Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in the United Kingdom, recordings and live performances have also become more accessible through computers, devices and internet in a form that is commonly known as music-on-demand.In many cultures, there is less distinction between performing and listening to music, as virtually everyone is involved in some sort of musical activity, often communal. In industrialized countries, listening to music through a recorded form, such as sound recording or watching a music video, became more common than experiencing live performance, roughly in the middle of the 20th century.Sometimes, live performances incorporate prerecorded sounds. For example, a DJ uses disc records for scratching, and some 20th-century works have a solo for an instrument or voice that is performed along with music that is prerecorded onto a tape. Computers and many keyboards can be programmed to produce and play MIDI music. Audiences can also become performers by participating in Karaoke, an activity of Japanese origin which centres around a device that plays voice-eliminated versions of well-known songs. Most karaoke machines also have video screens that show lyrics to songs being performed; performers can follow the lyrics as they sing over the instrumental tracks.

Musical notation

Music is often preserved in memory and performance only, handed down orally, or aurally ("by ear"). When the composer of music is no longer known, this music is often classified as "traditional". Different musical traditions have different attitudes towards how and where to make changes to the original source material, from quite strict, to those which demand improvisation or modification to the music. In the Gambia, West Africa, the history of the country is passed aurally through song.When music is written down, it is generally notated so that there are instructions regarding what should be heard by listeners, and what the musician should do to perform the music. This is referred to as musical notation, and the study of how to read notation involves music theory, harmony, the study of performance practice, and in some cases an understanding of historical performance methods.Written notation varies with style and period of music. In Western Art music, the most common types of written notation are scores, which include all the music parts of an ensemble piece, and parts, which are the music notation for the individual performers or singers. In popular music, jazz, and blues, the standard musical notation is the lead sheet, which notates the melody, chords, lyrics (if it is a vocal piece), and structure of the music. Nonetheless, scores and parts are also used in popular music and jazz, particularly in large ensembles such as jazz "big bands."In popular music, guitarists and electric bass players often read music notated in tablature, which indicates the location of the notes to be played on the instrument using a diagram of the guitar or bass fingerboard, as on such instruments there are typically more than one possible voicing of a chord/note. Tabulature was also used in the Baroque era to notate music for the lute, a stringed, fretted instrument.Generally music which is to be performed is produced as sheet music. To perform music from notation requires an understanding of both the musical style and the performance practice that is associated with a piece of music or genre. The detail included explicitly in the music notation varies between genres and historical periods. In general, art music notation from the 17th through to the 19th century required performers to have a great deal of contextual knowledge about performing styles.For example, in the 17th and 18th century, music notated for solo performers typically indicated a simple, unornamented melody. However, it was expected that performers would know how to add stylistically-appropriate ornaments such as trills and turns.In the 19th century, art music for solo performers may give a general instruction such as to perform the music expressively, without describing in detail how the performer should do this. It was expected that the performer would know how to use tempo changes, accentuation, and pauses (among other devices) to obtain this "expressive" performance style.In the 20th century, art music notation often became more explicit, and used a range of markings and annotations to indicate to performers how they should play or sing the piece. In popular music and jazz, music notation almost always indicates only the basic framework of the melody, harmony, or performance approach; musicians and singers are expected to know the performance conventions and styles associated with specific genres and pieces.For example, the "lead sheet" for a jazz tune may only indicate the melody and the chord changes. The performers in the jazz ensemble are expected to know how to "flesh out" this basic structure by adding ornaments, improvised music, and chordal accompaniment.[edit]Improvisation, interpretation, compositionMain articles: Musical composition, Musical improvisation, and Free improvisationMost cultures use at least part of the concept of preconceiving musical material, or composition, as held in western classical music. Even when music is notated precisely, there are still many decisions that a performer has to make. The process of a performer deciding how to perform music that has been previously composed and notated is termed interpretation.Different performers' interpretations of the same music can vary widely. Composers and song writers who present their own music are interpreting, just as much as those who perform the music of others or folk music. The standard body of choices and techniques present at a given time and a given place is referred to as performance practice, where as interpretation is generally used to mean either individual choices of a performer, or an aspect of music which is not clear, and therefore has a "standard" interpretation.In some musical genres, such as jazz and blues, even more freedom is given to the performer to engage in improvisation on a basic melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic framework. The greatest latitude is given to the performer in a style of performing called free improvisation, which is material that is spontaneously "thought of" (imagined) while being performed, not preconceived. According to the analysis of Georgiana Costescu, improvised music usually follows stylistic or genre conventions and even "fully composed" includes some freely chosen material (see precompositional). Composition does not always mean the use of notation, or the known sole authorship of one individual.Music can also be determined by describing a "process" which may create musical sounds, examples of this range from wind chimes, through computer programs which select sounds. Music which contains elements selected by chance is called Aleatoric music, and is often associated with John Cage, Witold Lutosławski, and Steve Reich.[edit]CompositionMusical composition is a term that describes the composition of a piece of music. Methods of composition vary widely from one composer to another, however in analysing music all forms -- spontaneous, trained, or untrained -- are built from elements comprising a musical piece. Music can be composed for repeated performance or it can be improvised; composed on the spot. The music can be performed entirely from memory, from a written system of musical notation, or some combination of both. Study of composition has traditionally been dominated by examination of methods and practice of Western classical music, but the definition of composition is broad enough to include spontaneously improvised works like those of free jazz performers and African drummers.What is important in understanding the composition of a piece is singling out its elements. An understanding of music's formal elements can be helpful in deciphering exactly how a piece is constructed. A universal element of music is how sounds occur in time, which is referred to as the rhythm of a piece of music.When a piece appears to have a changing time-feel, it is considered to be in rubato time, an Italian expression that indicates that the tempo of the piece changes to suit the expressive intent of the performer. Even random placement of random sounds, which occurs in musical montage, occurs within some kind of time, and thus employs time as a musical element.

Production

Music is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace. Amateur musicians compose and perform music for their own pleasure, and they do not attempt to derive their income from music. Professional musicians are employed by a range of institutions and organizations, including armed forces, churches and synagogues, symphony orchestras, broadcasting or film production companies, and music schools. As well, professional musicians work as freelancers, seeking contracts and engagements in a variety of settings.Although amateur musicians differ from professional musicians in that amateur musicians have a non-musical source of income, there are often many links between amateur and professional musicians. Beginning amateur musicians take lessons with professional musicians. In community settings, advanced amateur musicians perform with professional musicians in a variety of ensembles and orchestras. In some rare cases, amateur musicians attain a professional level of competence, and they are able to perform in professional performance settings.A distinction is often made between music performed for the benefit of a live audience and music that is performed for the purpose of being recorded and distributed through the music retail system or the broadcasting system. However, there are also many cases where a live performance in front of an audience is recorded and distributed (or broadcast).