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      Jean-Philippe Allard, Jazz Producer and Musicians’ Advocate, Dies at 67

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      He called himself a “professional listener,” and he tended to develop lifelong relationships with the artists he worked with.Jean-Philippe Allard, a French record executive and producer who helped revive the careers of jazz greats who had been all but forgotten in the United States, and who earned a reputation for uncommonly fierce advocacy on behalf of musicians, died on May 17 in Paris. He was 67.The music producer Brian Bacchus, a close friend and frequent collaborator, said Mr. Allard died in a hospital from cancer, which had returned after a long remission.Artists ranging from Abbey Lincoln to Juliette Gréco to Kenny Barron all said they had never worked with a more musician-friendly producer.“Regarding my work, I would always consider it as co-producing with the artist,” Mr. Allard told the music journalist Willard Jenkins in an interview in March. “Some producers are musicians or arrangers, like Teo Maceo or Larry Klein; others are engineers; some are professional listeners. I would fall in this last category: listening to the artist before the session, listening to the music during the session, and listening to the mixing engineer.”He tended to develop lifelong relationships with the artists he worked with. “His ear was always open to the artist, and he was always concerned about what was best for the artist,” the vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater said in an interview. “He saw me. He embraced me. He wasn’t afraid of me. He encouraged my independence. He encouraged me speaking out.”Mr. Allard, right, in the studio with the bassist Charlie Haden, one of the many prominent jazz musicians he worked with.Cheung Ching Ming, via PolyGram/UniversalWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Music Speaks to Some Deep Need Among Humans’

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      More from our inbox:Will Politicians Accept the Election Results?Honoring the DeadFear of CrimeA research team that comprised musicologists, psychologists, linguists, evolutionary biologists and professional musicians recorded songs in 55 languages to find that songs share certain features not found in speech.Album/AlamyTo the Editor:Re “Delving Into the Archaeology of Music” (Science Times, May 21):Virtually all our achievements as a species depend upon humans working together. One human alone, in a state of nature, is a medium-sized animal struggling for survival (and with no use for music). Working in tandem, we produce homes, towns, cities, factories and all the rest.Music is a vital part of that process. Most traditional music is highly functional. It’s used for religious ceremonies, community events, family gatherings, dancing, courtship and labor (keeping workers in sync). Sometimes, as in the case of the Scottish bagpipe, it plays a role in battle.Music is like an intangible thread tying us together. Anything that facilitates human cooperation confers a major survival advantage. It’s no wonder that music, like language, is universal among us.David GoldbergNew YorkTo the Editor:I was interested to read the latest research into music using big data, as your article reports. My late father, David Epstein, a conductor and a professor of music at M.I.T., did a lot of research into musical performance that pointed to how and why music taps into some fundamental human abilities, across cultures.His work focused on tempo/rhythm/pulse, and he uncovered some fascinating features of tempo that were of interest to scientists from many disciplines. One of his main findings (with the use of a stopwatch — not big data!) was that highly skilled musicians have such a fine-tuned sense of rhythm that they can play with the tempo in a piece, take a phrase and stretch it out here, and then speed up somewhere else, landing exactly where they might have if they had played a straight (and boring) metronome tempo through the whole piece. Audiences respond to the drama in that playful interpretation.I don’t think my father ever questioned that music speaks to some deep need among humans — for a language beyond words that allows us to tie our very heartbeats to one another.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Spark’: How Irish Kids Created the Song of Summer

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      Think you can stop what they do? I doubt it.It started with the beat, Heidi White said.On a March day at The Kabin Studio, an arts nonprofit in Cork, Ireland, Heidi, 11, and a group of other children were trying to write a rap with the help of Garry McCarthy, who is a music producer and Kabin Studio’s creative director. It was part of a weekly songwriting program.“It’s a safe space for young people in the community to come create music, hang out and just to make bangers,” Mr. McCarthy said.On this day, the group was trying to write an anthem for Cruinniú na nÓg, a government-sponsored day in Ireland devoted to children’s creativity, scheduled for June 15. Everyone was feeling a little shy and the ideas weren’t exactly flowing, Heidi said.“Then Garry had put on a drum-and-bass beat, and suddenly it was like a switch flipped and everyone started getting involved,” she said. “It was like magic.”That infectious beat has also captivated viewers around the world. The group’s song, “The Spark,” has become a sensation on social media, hailed by some on TikTok as an early contender for song of the summer. (This isn’t first time a tune made for social media tune has been praised as such. See here: A 2023 earworm about margaritas.)What could have easily sounded grating to adult ears — think Kidz Bop — is instead unrelentingly catchy. The song’s accompanying music video, which culminates in all of the kids rapping, loudly, in unison on the top deck of a bus, is utterly charming.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      No Ordinary Music Gig

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      The appeal — and challenges — of being a military musician. Picture the brass section of a symphony orchestra.Now, instead of formal attire and a brightly lit concert hall, imagine the principal horn player wearing camouflage fatigues, crouching over a loaded rifle at a firing range. For the thousands of classical musicians employed by the U.S. military, this seemingly incongruous image is a reality.The military calls itself the nation’s largest employer of musicians, and its ranks include some of the country’s most coveted musical performance jobs. Seats in premier military bands are often as competitive as those in the top symphonies in the country, in part because of their stability, pay and benefits.There are aspects of the job that might require adjustment for a civilian musician, though. Band members must adhere to strict military standards — such as passing physical fitness tests, wearing a uniform during rehearsal and, most daunting of all, completing 10 to 12 weeks of boot camp with no access to their instruments.My latest story, which published this morning, explores how some musicians become service members. I spent more than eight months following the journey of one euphonium player, Ada Brooks, from her audition for the West Point Band through a freezing stint at boot camp in the Ozarks, to her first concert.In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain the unique role that military bands play in the classical music world and the intense demands that come with the job.Shipping outMusic and the military have long been intertwined. Drums were used to set the pace of marches, and fifes served as battlefield communication before there were radios. The country’s first military band, the United States Marine Band — known as “The President’s Own” — was formed by an act of Congress in 1798.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Richard Sherman, Songwriter of Many Spoonfuls of Sugar, Dies at 95

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      He and his brother, Robert, teamed up to write the songs for “Mary Poppins” and other Disney classics. They also gave the world “It’s a Small World (After All).”Richard M. Sherman, the younger brother in a songwriting team that won two Oscars and two Grammys, brought Disney movies to musical life and gave the world numbers like “A Spoonful of Sugar,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” and the ubiquitous, multiply translated “It’s a Small World (After All),” died on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 95.The death, in a hospital, was announced by the Walt Disney Company.The careers of the Shermans — Richard and Robert — were inextricably linked with Walt Disney. Their Academy Awards were for “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” a chimney sweep’s alternately cheerful and plaintive anthem from “Mary Poppins” (1964), and for the film’s score. Their Grammy Awards were for “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too,” shared in 1975 for best recording for children, and the “Mary Poppins” score.“It’s a Small World” was written for the Disney theme-park ride of the same name. The song plays as guests in boats pass among 240 dolls of many nations with identical faces — tiny can-can and folk dancers, mermaids and mariachi bands — plus Big Ben, the Taj Mahal and grinning farm animals.“People want to kiss us or kill us,” Richard Sherman said in a 2011 video interview about the song, which he said was “the biggest hit of the World’s Fair,” where it was introduced in 1964.The Shermans brought a musical-theater sensibility to movie songwriting. The question was never which came first, the music or the words; what came first was the idea.The framework of “Mary Poppins” did not exist until the Shermans got their hands on P.L. Travers’s beloved books about a magical nanny, a series of adventures in 1930s London with no discernible conflict or resolution. In the movie, the problem is the children’s behavior, brought on by a neglectful father. It also seemed like bad taste to employ live-in servants during hard economic times, so they moved the Banks family to the Edwardian era.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Sues to Break Up Ticketmaster Owner, Live Nation

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      Accused of violating antitrust laws, Live Nation Entertainment faces a fight that could reshape the multibillion-dollar live music industry.The Justice Department on Thursday sued Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, asking a court to break up the company over claims it illegally maintained a monopoly in the live entertainment industry.In the lawsuit, which is joined by 29 states and the District of Columbia, the government accuses Live Nation of dominating the industry by locking venues into exclusive ticketing contracts, pressuring artists to use its services and threatening its rivals with financial retribution.Those tactics, the government argues, have resulted in higher ticket prices for consumers and have stifled innovation and competition throughout the industry.“It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” Merrick Garland, the attorney general, said in a statement announcing the suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit asks the court to order “the divestiture of, at minimum, Ticketmaster,” and to prevent Live Nation from engaging in anticompetitive practices.The lawsuit is a direct challenge to the business of Live Nation, a colossus of the entertainment industry and a force in the lives of musicians and fans alike. The case, filed 14 years after the government approved Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster, has the potential to transform the multibillion-dollar concert industry.Live Nation’s scale and reach far exceed those of any competitor, encompassing concert promotion, ticketing, artist management and the operation of hundreds of venues and festivals around the world.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      DOJ to Sue Live Nation, Accusing It of Defending a Monopoly

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      Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, faces a fight that could reshape the multibillion-dollar live music industry.The Justice Department and a group of states plan to sue Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, as soon as Thursday, accusing it of illegally maintaining a monopoly in the live entertainment industry, said three people familiar with the matter.The government plans to argue in a lawsuit that Live Nation shored up its power through Ticketmaster’s exclusive ticketing contracts with concert venues, as well as the company’s dominance over concert tours and other businesses like venue management, said two of the people, who declined to be named because the lawsuit was still private. That helped the company maintain a monopoly, raising prices and fees for consumers, limiting innovation in the ticket industry and hurting competition, the people said.The government will argue that tours promoted by the company were more likely to play venues where Ticketmaster was the exclusive ticket service, one of the people said, and that Live Nation’s artists played venues that it owns.Live Nation is a colossus of the concert world and a force in the lives of musicians and fans alike. Its scale and reach far exceed those of any competitor, encompassing concert promotion, ticketing, artist management and the operation of hundreds of venues and festivals around the world.The Ticketmaster division alone sells 600 million tickets a year to events around the world. According to some estimates, it handles ticketing for 70 percent to 80 percent of major concert venues in the United States.Lawmakers, fans and competitors have accused the company of engaging in practices that harm rivals and drive up ticket prices and fees. At a congressional hearing early last year, prompted by a Taylor Swift tour presale on Ticketmaster that left millions of people unable to buy tickets, senators from both parties called Live Nation a monopoly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler Headline Broadway ‘Romeo and Juliet’

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      A production featuring the screen stars, with music by Jack Antonoff, will open in October at Circle in the Square.Kit Connor, known for “Heartstopper,” is coming to Broadway in “Romeo and Juliet.”Gareth Cattermole/Getty ImagesRachel Zegler, who was in the movie adaptation of “West Side Story,” will also star in “Romeo and Juliet.”Dia Dipasupil/Getty ImagesRachel Zegler has already played a Juliet-inspired figure, starring as Maria in the 2021 film adaptation of “West Side Story.” And Kit Connor has played a Romeo of sorts, starring as a yearning adolescent in the boy-meets-boy television series “Heartstopper.”Now the two actors are bringing a new production of “Romeo and Juliet” to Broadway. Their version, which seems to be leaning into the alienation of youth in a world of violent adults, is to begin performances Sept. 26 and to open Oct. 24 at Circle in the Square Theater.The production, which announced its timing and location on Wednesday, has said little about its concept, but there are indications it will be influenced by contemporary ideas: The show is to feature music by Jack Antonoff, the Grammy-winning producer best known for his successful collaborations with Taylor Swift, and it is being marketed with a vulgarity about the plight of young people. On Wednesday, the show released a video of Zegler and Connor, in contemporary clothing and setting, flirting and dancing to a song from Bleachers, which is Antonoff’s band.“Romeo and Juliet” is one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, and this will be its 37th production on Broadway, according to the Internet Broadway Database. This production is to be directed by Sam Gold, a Tony winner for “Fun Home” who has previously directed Broadway productions of “Macbeth” and “King Lear” and who is directing this season’s revival of “An Enemy of the People.” Sonya Tayeh, the Tony-winning choreographer of “Moulin Rouge!”, will add a dancer’s sensibility to the production; she is being credited with “movement.”This revival, first announced last month, is being produced by Seaview, an increasingly prolific production company founded by Greg Nobile and Jana Shea and partially owned by Sony Music Masterworks. More