Music

Born in Upper Austria as Franz Leopold Maria Möst — the stage name came later, with “Welser” taken from his hometown, Wels — he got his start in music by learning violin...

Elton John is downsizing — and the superstar’s former penthouse residence in Atlanta has been emptied for a series of auctions at Christie’s starting on Feb. 21. The items are expected to...

It was a different kind of practice: thoughtful, free and natural. Hutchings was living in Kingston, in southwest London, close to the expanses of Richmond Park. Like Sonny Rollins, who would play...

Alice Parker, whose arrangements of hymns, folk songs, and spirituals were used in concert halls and churches across America, and who composed 11 song cycles and four operas, died on Dec. 24...

To understand the role of the Broadway orchestrator, seek out the composer Stephen Sondheim’s piano demo for the song “Losing My Mind” from the musical “Follies” and then compare it to the...

Dear listeners,Over the weekend, I finally watched “Saltburn,” the provocative, polarizing and occasionally downright icky coming-of-age thriller that no one can stop talking about right now.The movie, written and directed by the...

In high school, I joined Rebel Yell, an a cappella group named after the Billy Idol song. I mostly beatboxed or sang background vocals. But one year, my chorus teacher gave me...

Klee Benally, a dynamic Navajo activist, artist and punk-rock musician who championed Native American and environmental causes, died on Dec. 30 in Phoenix. He was 48.His death, in a hospital after a...

6Feminist LiteratureIn the late ’80s and early ’90s, I started reading Audre Lorde and Alice Walker and Judy Grahn and bell hooks and Adrienne Rich and Lucille Clifton. These poets and philosophers...

In 1977, the year after releasing his debut album, he shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with the lachrymose ballad “Don’t Give Up on Us.” Many years later, Owen...