Gwen McCrae, whose gospel-infused R&B hits of the early 1970s like “Lead Me On” and “Rockin’ Chair” featured bouncing, dance-floor-friendly grooves that helped open the door to disco, died on Feb. 21 in Miami. She was 81.Her former...
Near the end of the lullaby that gives way to the blazing finale of Stravinsky’s “Firebird” Suite, the music slows and thins to a whisper.In the ballet, this is the moment when an evil sorcerer and his minions...
Roy Ayers, a vibraphonist who in the 1970s helped pioneer a new, funkier strain of jazz, becoming a touchstone for many artists who followed and one of the most sampled musicians by hip-hop artists, died on Tuesday in...
The other tenor role is more herculean: Florestan, sung at the Met by David Butt Philip with ardent tirelessness matched only by his dramatic bravery. He enters with a high G, exposed once the orchestra drops out after...
The opening line of Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” is one of the most famous in literature. But Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer, whose moody, monochromatic 2010 adaptation arrived at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday, conspicuously avoid placing those classic...
“Is it true that all of you, except me, have never played there?” Rosnes asked her bandmates when they gathered for a video interview in late January.Excited chatter ensued. Several have taken the stage as side players or...
Angie Stone, a hip-hop pioneer in the late 1970s with the Sequence, one of the first all-female rap groups, who later switched gears as a solo R&B star with hits like “No More Rain (In This Cloud)” and...
David Johansen, the singer and songwriter who was at the vanguard of glam rock and punk as the frontman of the New York Dolls, died yesterday at his home on Staten Island. He was 75.His death was confirmed...
The singer and songwriter Katy Perry and the broadcast journalist and show host Gayle King will be among the all-female crew on the next mission of New Shepard, the space tourism rocket that is operated by Jeff Bezos’...
Last fall, after an especially blistering concert overseas, the veteran rocker Bob Mould walked offstage and realized he couldn’t breathe. “I’d thrown myself so hard into the physicality of the show that I hyperventilated for about 15 minutes,”...
