LOS ANGELES — “Are you afraid of snakes?” asked Brittney Parks, the songwriter and violinist who records as Sudan Archives. In an interview at her home, where her bedroom often doubles as her recording studio, she was introducing me to Goldie, her ball python, as he languorously wrapped his gold-patterned body around her tattooed forearm.
Ric Ocasek, the songwriter and lead singer for the Cars, was found dead Sunday afternoon at his town house in Manhattan, according to the New York Police Department. No cause of death was available on Sunday night.
NEW YORK — Self-pity, self-mockery, self-righteousness, self-loathing, self-defense — long before the era of the selfie, Morrissey was writing songs that turned constant self-absorption into a blood sport. “This is my life to destroy my own way,” he proclaimed in “Alma Matters” at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater on Thursday night, beginning a Broadway run that continues through May 11.
Joseph Henry Burnett, known as T Bone, has spent most of his long career in music behind the scenes. He has won 13 Grammy Awards as a producer, music supervisor and songwriter for albums including “Raising Sand” by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss and soundtracks for “O Brother, Where Are Thou?,” “Walk the Line,” “The Hunger Games” and “Crazy Heart,” which also brought him an Oscar for collaborating on the best original song. Lately his projects have included producing Sara Bareilles’ new album...
One way for a songwriter to invigorate a long career is to keep breaking routines, to change up methods and parameters and solve different puzzles with every album. It’s a modus operandi that has carried Bruce Hornsby from radio hits in the 1980s through bluegrass, jazz, a stint in the Grateful Dead and, lately, collaborations with a younger-generation fan, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. “Absolute Zero,” his 21st album, is one more daring, rewarding turn in his catalog: 10 knotty, thoughtful yet ...
Gary Clark Jr. was born in the wrong era. In the 1960s or ‘70s, he could easily have forged a career as a first-rank guitar hero: a Texan blues-rocker who can step on any stage and bring the place down with a searing guitar solo.
(Hudson yards): NEW YORK — On opening night at Lincoln Center, in 1962, Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, joined by opera singers and a choir, performed music by Beethoven, Mahler, Copland and Vaughan Williams for an audience in tuxedos and gowns.
(Critic’s Notebook): KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The Big Ears Festival started 10 years ago, disappeared, returned, reorganized as a nonprofit and has quietly grown year by year, filling theaters, clubs and galleries in downtown Knoxville.
