Susan Alcorn, an experimental composer and musician who pushed the pedal steel guitar, an instrument more often associated with the country music roadhouse, into the avant-garde, died on Friday in Baltimore. She was 71.Her husband, David Lobato, said...
To lifelong rap fans, even considering these questions borders on the baffling — akin to imagining past vitriolic, subterranean classics like Ice Cube’s “No Vaseline,” Tupac’s “Hit ’Em Up” or Nas’s “Ether” as inescapable, mainstream hits.“It’s by far...
Kendrick Lamar performs like someone parceling out a secret. On the 2015 single “King Kunta,” he stage-whispers, “I swore I wouldn’t tell,” and then proceeds to flaunt industry gossip without naming names. Though the Grammy-hoarding, Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper...
Irv Gotti, a music executive who founded Murder Inc. Records with his brother and built a hip-hop empire that produced some of the biggest rap and R&B albums of the early 21st century, has died at 54.Mr. Gotti’s...
Best Spoken Word Poetry Album“The Heart, the Mind, the Soul,” Tank and the BangasBest Jazz Performance“Twinkle Twinkle Little Me,” Samara Joy featuring Sullivan FortnerBest Jazz Vocal Album“A Joyful Holiday,” Samara JoyBest Jazz Instrumental Album“Remembrance,” Chick Corea and Béla...
Merle Louise Simon, an award-winning stage actor and the only person to play roles in the original Broadway productions of four Stephen Sondheim musicals, died on Jan. 11 in Lake Katrine, N.Y., in Ulster County. She was 90.Her...
Long before Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones and Rihanna, there was Freddie Colston.Colston was just a 20-year-old student from tiny Fairbanks, La., when he traveled to Los Angeles in January 1967. He had grown up in a home...
She was a figure out of fiction, right down to her Jane Austen name. The daughter of a baroness and a British major (a spy during World War II), Marianne Faithfull — who died this week at 78...
You don’t expect to see security guards roaming the foyer of the Hannover State Opera, a well-regarded, midsize opera house in a midsize central German city.But before the Saturday premiere of “Echo 72: Israel in Munich,” a new...
Billie Eilish and Green Day kicked off the show with a duet. Joni Mitchell made a rare public appearance. Katy Perry pranced around the stage waving a state flag as she belted the 2010 banger, “California Gurls.”Over almost...
