THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER11, 2021 7
OPPOSITE: MAGNUM; RIGHT: ILLUSTRATION BY ANGIE KANG
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MUSIC
Boys Noize: “+/-”
ELECTRONIC As Boys Noize, the German
electronic producer and d.j. Alex Ridha has
straddled the pop sphere and the club un-
derground since 2004. On the heels of his
Grammy win—for co-producing Lady Gaga
and Ariana Grande’s “Rain on Me”—his first
studio album in five years, “+/-,” steps off the
red carpet to focus, instead, on oddities of
dance music. This is a late-pandemic longing
for the sweet thrills of club life. With a host
of compelling characters in tow—the cellist
and singer Kelsey Lu, the polychromatic
rappers Rico Nasty and Tommy Cash, the
moody crooner Corbin, and the boisterous
pianist Chilly Gonzales—the album seems to
be gathering outsiders together to restore the
communal power of clubbing.—Sheldon Pearce
Carnegie Hall
CLASSICAL In the early weeks of the pandemic
lockdown, New Yorkers would throw open
their windows each day at 7 P.M. to clap, holler,
and bang on pots in a show of appreciation
for frontline workers. The composer Valerie
Coleman organizes that cacophony into a
noble chamber piece called “Seven O’Clock
Shout,” which Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the
Philadelphia Orchestra perform as a kick-
off to Carnegie Hall’s opening-night gala.
Filling out the concert are the overture to
Bernstein’s “Candide,” Iman Habibi’s “Jeder
Baum spricht,” Beethoven’s Symphony No.5,
and, with Yuja Wang, Shostakovich’s Piano
Concerto No. 2 (Oct. 6 at 7). Also playing:
Jonas Kaufmann (Oct. 9) and Lang Lang
(Oct.12) craft their Carnegie Hall recitals
around recent album releases, and the Met
Orchestra Chamber Ensemble commences a
six-part series at Weill Recital Hall (Oct. 10).
All programs run seventy to eighty minutes
with no intermissions.—Oussama Zahr
Joey DeFrancesco
JAZZ On his latest album, “More Music,” the
masterly organist Joey DeFrancesco embraces
the role of musical multitasker, taking on
the trumpet, the tenor saxophone, the piano,
and vocal spots in addition to his customary
keyboards. His tenor speaks with old-school
grit and his trumpet swaggers. The results
reflect his unshakable passion for the veri-
ties of chicken-shack funk—a passion firmly
established by his decades of fervent organ
playing, channelling the Hammond B-3 giants
of yore—but they stamp the greasy Phila-
delphia-born style as his own. DeFrancesco
brings his talents to Lincoln Center’s intimate
Dizzy’s Club.—Steve Futterman (Oct. 7-10.)
“Fire Shut Up in My Bones”
CLASSICAL Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up
in My Bones,” inspired by Charles M. Blow’s
memoir of the same name, is the first opera by
a Black composer that the Metropolitan Opera
has staged in its hundred-and-thirty-eight-
year history. Blanchard, both a trumpeter
and a film composer known for his scores for
Spike Lee joints, is a dab hand at creating
mood: he fluidly incorporates a gospel choir,
a college step team, and a Louisiana honky-
tonk into the sonic fabric of his “opera in jazz.”
But he never loses sight of Blow’s anguish as
a victim of sexual abuse who is haunted by
same-sex longing. The disjointed scenarios
of Kasi Lemmons’s libretto trip up James
Robinson and CamilleA. Brown’s swiftly
moving production, but the excellent leads
(Will Liverman, Latonia Moore, Angel Blue)
turn in daring and vulnerable performances.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music direc-
tor, conducts loudly (Oct. 8 at 7). (Will Liv-
erman also finds time for a concert of Ravel,
Rachmaninoff, and R. & B. at the Park Avenue
Armory, Oct. 10-11.)—O.Z.
Nao: “And Then Life
Was Beautiful”
R. & B. The English singer-songwriter Nao’s
subtly funky new album, “And Then Life
Was Beautiful,” is full of quietly self-as-
sured music about self-improvement. The
follow-up to “Saturn,” from 2018, this record
explores moments of transition, inspired by
both the pandemic and the birth of Nao’s
daughter, last spring. Many of the lessons
about personal growth come as conversa-
tions with lovers. She sings about learning
when to leave (“Messy Love”), learning
when to stay (“Wait”), and learning when
to move on (“Glad That You’re Gone”). But
on slow-chugging songs such as “Burn Out”
and “Nothing’s for Sure,” Nao looks within,
taking a beat to simply calm her mind and
embrace change as necessary.—S.P.
“Total 21”
ELECTRONIC The Cologne, Germany, techno
label Kompakt’s annual compilation series,
“Total,” began in 1999, but the label’s newest
edition is both its shortest and its most fo-
cussed in a while. The flat four-on-the-floor
rhythms, leavened with a hint of disco swing,
Music as medicine is an old notion, but
few artists are trying harder than the
multi-instrumentalist, singer, and com-
poser Esperanza Spalding to find its cu-
rative properties. The jazz fusionist has
spent her career experimenting, and her
latest project, Songwrights Apothecary
Lab, treats musicianship as wellness re-
search. The Lab sees sounds as ingredients
that, when arranged in particular ways,
can induce specific, wholesome results.
Spalding’s bracing and modal new album,
named for the space that produced it,
moves toward this utility, exploring how
songs can improve our material reality on
a case-by-case basis. The Lab imagines
music as signals sent to the brain, recal-
ibrating its chemistry. Almost like aural
feng-shui, the arrangements in Spalding’s
song cycle channel energy flow, opening
pathways to change.—Sheldon Pearce
JAZZ
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THETHEATRE
A Commercial Jingle for
Regina Comet
This show has a glitzy-sounding distinction:
it’s the first new musical to première in New
York City this year. Nonetheless, it’s a kind of
and the minimalist arrangements that have
long marked the imprint’s output are fin-
er-edged than usual; the tracks feel part of
one entity, not randomly flown in. Even so,
some moments do stand out, as when Jonathan
Kaspar smears the sounds of his instruments,
or when Michael Mayer, unusually, evokes
spaghetti Westerns.—Michaelangelo Matos
Brian Wilson
POP A baby-boomer drama plays out within
the ranks of the Beach Boys. On one side is
Mike Love, the singer who pilots the current
incarnation of the band—recent headliners
of casinos, a trophy-hunting convention,
and, as if on cue, a Trump benefit. Brian
Wilson, the chief architect of the songs that
his former band massacres nightly, is left
to perform as a solo act. Love’s concerts
are all bouncing balls and sing-alongs, but
even the Beach Boys’ most blissful moments
were never in the service of glee so much
as the solitude that lurks beneath the ve-
neer. “At My Piano,” Wilson’s forthcoming
album, which features spare renditions of
his songs, traffics in these moody waters.
This week, Wilson, joined by the simpatico
Beach Boy alumni Al Jardine and Blondie
Chaplin, plays the Capitol Theatre; Love’s
Beach Boys headline there in the spring,
performing the same beloved songs to less
haunted effect.—Jay Ruttenberg (Oct. 6.)
