Echoes of Folly at Early Music Fringe Events

BOSTON - The theme of the Boston Early Music Festival this year is “Youth: Genius and Folly,” so it seemed a good idea to catch up with some young, rising stars in the field. A convenient opportunity presented itself on Friday afternoon with short concerts by Mylène Bélanger, a harpsichordist, and by the Sebastians, an instrumental group.

These were not official events of the festival but instead part of the Fringe festival that accompanies it. Ms. Bélanger, 31, was presented by the Harpsichord Clearing House of Rehoboth, Mass., in its large exhibition room at the Revere Hotel. She is part of Pallade Musica, a Montreal-based instrumental group, which won Early Music America’s first Baroque Performance Competition in New York last October.

The Harpsichord Clearing House discovered her, a spokesman said, when she traveled to Rehoboth to try out an instrument that she promptly bought. “We were astounded by her playing,” he added.

As well they might have been. Ms. Bélanger displayed a fluent, agile technique in Bach’s English Suite in G minor (BWV 808), then turned to increasingly virtuosic French works. Her performances of Rameau and Forqueray were rich and vital. But it was in her finale, Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer’s thickly textured showpiece “La Marches des Scythes” that she genuinely astounded, raising prodigies of sonority without the slightest muss or fuss.

The Sebastians, who average about 30 in age, also took part in that performance competition and won the audience appreciation prize. Presented here in Early Music America’s Young Performers Festival at the First Church Boston, they are Daniel S. Lee and Alexander Woods, violinists; Ezra Seltzer, cellist; and Jeffrey Grossman, keyboardist.

They take their name from Johann Sebastian Bach but played none of his music here, offering instead a trio sonata by Handel, a church sonata by Corelli and flashier works by other Italians: Dario Castello, Giuseppe Colombi and Vivaldi. The performances were everywhere sharp-edged and engaging.

But it was Vivaldi’s “Folia” that I had come to hear, still living with the memory of a blazing account by Reinhard Goebel and his Musica Antiqua Köln at the Metropolitan Museum some three decades ago. The Sebastians’ was the first performance I have heard to rival it in virtuosity and perhaps exceed it in its depiction of madness, within mere seconds veering between barely audible pianissimos and wild fortissimos. The Sebastians tout this as their signature rendition, and with good reason.

It was nice that both concerts, part of the official festival or not, could touch on another element of the festival theme: folly. In Ms. Bélanger’s case, it was “Jupiter,” the last movement of Antoine Forqueray’s Fifth Suite, that did the trick. There were those who thought Forqueray a bit crazy, Ms. Bélanger told the audience, and he did his best to prove it here.

An afternoon exceedingly well spent.

TimesTalks Luminato Festival Video: Liz Diller

The architect Liz Diller, of Diller Scofidio & Renfro, the award-winning architecture firm whose many projects include re-envisioning New York’s Lincoln Center and transforming the High Line into an urban oasis, talks with the Times culture reporter Robin Pogrebin.

TimesTalks Luminato Festival Video: Willem Dafoe and Robert Wilson

The film and stage actor Willem Dafoe and the avant-garde director Robert Wilson, whose staging of “The Life and Death of Marina Abramović” will have its North American premiere at the Luminato Festival, talk with the New York Times contributing culture writer and author John Rockwell.

‘True Blood\' Star Will Play Stanley in ‘Streetcar\'

John P. Johnson/HBO Joe Manganiello in “True Blood.”

Joe Manganiello, whose buff physique has been amply displayed as a werewolf on HBO's “True Blood” and as a stripper in the film “Magic Mike,” will wear (and take off?) the most famous T-shirt in American theater when he plays Stanley Kowalski in Yale Repertory Theater's production of “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

Portraying Blanche DuBois will be René Augesen, who has appeared at the Public and Lincoln Center Theaters. Mark Rucker is directing the production, which opens Yale Rep's season on Sept. 20 and is scheduled to run through Oct. 12.

The season, which had already been announced, also includes “These Paper Bullets,” an adaptation of Shakespeare's “Much Ado About Nothing,” with music by Billie Joe Armstrong of the band Green Day and plays by Caryl Churchill, Dario Fo, Marcus Gardley and Meg Miroshnik.

Michigan Attorney General Says Detroit Museum Could Not Sell Art

In a detailed formal opinion, the Michigan attorney general said the art collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts is held in charitable trust for the people of Michigan and could not be sold by the city to help settle some of its billions of dollars in debts.

The attorney general, Bill Schuette, said in a statement released by his office on Thursday that he recognized the serious financial hardships that the city faces.

But, he said, “The art collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts is held by the city of Detroit in charitable trust for the people of Michigan, and no piece in the collection can thus be sold, conveyed or transferred to satisfy City debts or obligations.”

The statement was quoted in several Detroit media outlets and linked to by the mlive.com Web site.

The Detroit Free Press said the opinion did not settle the legal question of whether the art would ever be sold. But the attorney general's action could provide important protection for the museum's extensive collection if any decision were ever to go to court.

Detroit's emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, is exploring ways to restructure the city's $15 billion to $17 billion in debt. Mr. Orr has said he has no plans to sell the art, but nevertheless has a responsibility to work out what the city owns, including the museum's masterpieces. On Friday, Mr. Orr laid out his plan for tackling Detroit's staggering debt, asking some of the city's creditors to accept pennies on the dollar as he opened discussions that could determine whether the city is headed to bankruptcy court or not.

The Detroit Institute of Arts, founded in 1885, has a collection of more than 60,000 works, including an 1887 Van Gogh self-portrait; “The Wedding Dance” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder; and “Madonna and Child” by Giovanni Bellini.

“In Michigan, we not only appreciate our cultural treasures, we guard them zealously in charitable trust for all state residents, present and future,” Mr. Schuette said in the statement.

Starz Adds New Drama Series ‘Power,\' Produced by 50 Cent

1:31 p.m. | Updated

Alexei Hay Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, the rapper and and  executive producer of “Power.”

Judging solely from 50 Cent's hit song “In da Club,” one might think that nightclubs are places of pure frivolity, where shorties can always be found partying and sipping Bacardi like it was their birthdays. But, as a new television series that this rapper and actor will be producing for the Starz cable channel makes clear, clubs can have their dark sides too.

Starz said on Friday that it was picking up a new drama series called “Power,” which is set in the shadowy world of New York City night life and whose executive producers include 50 Cent (who is also known by his civilian name, Curtis Jackson).

“Power” is created by Courtney Kemp Agboh, a producer of “The Good Wife,” and chronicles a fictional nightclub owner named James St. Patrick, known as Ghost. But while he dreams of success, Ghost is living a double life: “When he is not in the club,” says a Starz news release, “he is the kingpin of the most lucrative drug network in New York for a very high-level clientele. His marriage, family and business all become unknowingly threatened as he is tempted to leave his criminal life behind and become the rags-to-riches businessman he wants to be most of all.”

Mr. Jackson, who grew up in Queens, N.Y., and worked as a drug dealer before pursuing his hip-hop career, said in a telephone interview that “Power” will continue to explore themes and ideas introduced on his breakthrough 2005 album “Get Rich or Die Tryin'.”

“I intentionally created a project that had all the dysfunctional behaviors that were around the environment I was from,” Mr. Jackson said of that album. “It was a representation of everything.”

“Power,” Mr. Jackson said, will “not shy away from what really goes on.” He added: “In the small print in the newspaper every day, there's a list of things that are happening, that are not actually being covered on the front page.”

Casting for “Power” was not immediately announced. But Mr. Jackson, who has also acted in films like “Home of the Brave,” “Righteous Kill” and a semi-autobiographical movie, also called “Get Rich or Die Tryin',” said he would like to play a character on the series that “takes me even further away from the things that I've done.”

Asked if he also planned to contribute music to “Power,” Mr. Jackson said, “I want to be all over it.”

Starz has continued to revamp its lineup of original programming as it has seen popular shows like “Spartacus” come to an end and canceled others like “Boss.” Among the series that it plans to introduce in the months ahead are “The White Queen,” a period drama based on the Philippa Gregory novel, and the pirate adventure “Black Sails.” Starz said that production on “Power” would begin later this year and that its first eight-episode season would be shown next year.

Book Review Podcast: The Science of Female Desire

Malika Favre

This week in The New York Times Book Review, Elaine Blair reviews Daniel Bergner's “What Do Women Want?” Ms. Blair writes:

Squeezed into these 200 pages are interviews with psychologists, psychiatrists and primatologists who have been “puzzling out the ways of eros in women”; a capsule history of ideas about female sexuality from biblical times to the present; the story of the so-far elusive hunt for a Viagra-type aphrodisiac for women; a discussion of the different types of female orgasm; and the personal accounts of a dozen or so ordinary women who talk about their sex lives and fantasies. The experiments and data Bergner writes about vary widely and don't all point in the same direction, but he sets this tour of contemporary sex research against one particular shibboleth: the notion that women are naturally less libidinous than men, “hard-wired” to want babies and emotional connection but not necessarily sex itself.

On this week's podcast, Mr. Bergner talks about the science of female desire; Philipp Meyer discusses his second novel, “The Son”; Margalit Fox talks about her new book, “The Riddle of the Labyrinth”; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.

New George Benjamin Opera Is Commissioned

The Royal Opera, in London, has commissioned the composer George Benjamin to write his third opera, which will have its premiere at Covent Garden in spring 2018. The as-yet-untitled work will have a libretto by the prolific playwright Martin Crimp.

Mr. Crimp also wrote the librettos for Mr. Benjamin's first two operas, “Into the Little Hill,” which had its premiere at the Festival d'Automne, in Paris, in 2006, and “Written on Skin,” which the Royal Opera co-commissioned with the Aix-en-Provence Festival and several other companies.  “Written on Skin” had its premiere at Aix-en-Provence in 2012; and has been performed at the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam; at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, France; and at the Royal Opera. It has a run this month at the Theater an der Wien, in Vienna; and will turn up in concert form at Tanglewood in August.

“As a part of our focus on new commissions on all scales over the next years,” said Kasper Holten, the Royal Opera's director of opera, “this will obviously be a key project.”

Mr. Holten said he expected that other companies would become partners in the commission, as was the case with “Written on Skin.”

The Sweet Spot: The Books of Summer

In this week's episode, A. O. Scott, David Carr and others talk about what they will be reading this summer. Have you heard about that book on cheese?

New Jersey Declares Clarence Clemons Day

Christof Stache/Associated Press Clarence Clemons and Bruce Springsteen performing in 2009.

Here's further proof that in New Jersey the members of Bruce Springsteen's band are folk heroes akin to knights of the round table: Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has signed a resolution declaring Jan. 11 to be Clarence Clemons Day, wire services reported. That day was Mr. Clemons's birthday.

Known as the Big Man, Mr. Clemons was an original member of Mr. Springsteen's E Street Band and perhaps its most charismatic member besides “the Boss” himself. He was a big-boned a rock ‘n' roll saxophonist with riveting stage presence and a tone that seemed to rip through the audiences.

Mr. Clemons died in 2011 from complications of a stroke. He was 69.

Though his politics are mostly to the right of Mr. Springsteen's, Governor Christie, a Republican, has attended more than 140 Springsteen concerts. The governor, at the time of Mr. Clemons's death, had ordered flags in the state to be lowered to half-staff as a sign of respect.

The Clarence Clemons Day resolution was proposed by State Senator Jennifer Beck, a Republican representing Monmouth County.

Graphic Books Best Sellers: A New Spin on the Hulk

There's plenty of activity on the graphic books hardcover best-seller list this week. Alan Moore appears twice, with an old classic (yet another collected edition of “Watchmen,” illustrated by Dave Gibbons, at No. 2) and something newer (the super-powered police procedural “Top 10,” with Gene Ha handling the art, at No. 3).

Also on the list, at No. 9, is Volume 1 of “Indestructible Hulk,” written by Mark Waid and illustrated by Leinil Francis Yu. The story puts a new spin on Bruce Banner and the Hulk, who has gone through many changes: hunted monster, gray-hued, ruler of an alien world and more. These days, Banner is putting his brain to use for the betterment of the world (being slightly jealous of Tony Stark/Iron Man is part of the impetus) and forcing his menacing alter ego to do good. Banner has enlisted with S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel's law enforcement and espionage unit, and offered up the Hulk as a weapon of mass destruction. Mr. Waid makes good use of the rich tapestry of the Marvel universe to come up with threats that are worthy of the Hulk, and Mr. Yu handles those big moments like something out of a summer action-movie blockbuster. I enjoyed the quieter moments with Banner, his new home - an abandoned atomic testing facility - and the team of scientists he has assembled to help win him a Nobel Prize.

As always, the complete best-seller lists can be found here, along with an explanation of how they were assembled.

No Pritzker Prize for Denise Scott Brown

Ryan Collerd for The New York Times Denise Scott Brown

The Pritzker Prize jury will not revisit its decision to exclude the architect Denise Scott Brown from the 1991 prize given to her design partner and husband, Robert Venturi, with whom she worked side by side.

Two students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design had started an online petition calling for the panel that administers architecture's highest prize to reconsider that decision. The case has brought to the fore the status and recognition given to women in the field.

“Insofar as you have in mind a retroactive award of the prize to Ms. Scott Brown, the present jury cannot do so,” said Peter Palumbo, the Pritzker chairman, in a letter to the two students. “Pritzker juries, over time, are made up of different individuals, each of whom does his or her best to find the most highly qualified candidate. A later jury cannot reopen or second guess the work of an earlier jury, and none has ever done so.”

Ms. Scott Brown could not be reached for comment. It was her remarks that prompted the students, Arielle Assouline-Lichten and Caroline James, to start the petition in the first place. “They owe me not a Pritzker Prize but a Pritzker inclusion ceremony,” Ms. Scott Brown had said. “Let's salute the notion of joint creativity.”

Ms. Assouline-Lichten said in an interview on Friday, “It takes time for institutions to admit historical wrongs, so we're hopeful they'll continue to work with us and over time acknowledge that the Pritzker Prize will need to respond and adapt.”

Mr. Palumbo said in his letter that Ms. Scott Brown “remains eligible for the Pritzker award” and commended the students for raising awareness about women in architecture.

“We should like to thank you for calling directly to our attention a more general problem, namely that of assuring women a fair and equal place within the profession,” he wrote. “To provide that assurance is, of course, an obligation embraced by every part of the profession, from the schools that might first encourage students to enter the profession to the architectural firms that must facilitate the ability of women to fulfill their potential as architects.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 06/15/2013, on page C3 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Pritzker Decision Stands.

McCartney Plays to a Reverent Crowd at Bonnaroo

Wade Payne/Invision, via Associated Press Paul McCartney played a tight and polished headlining show Friday at the Bonnaroo festival.

MANCHESTER, Tenn. - I can't remember seeing a show - of music or really anything else - with so much privileged space and veneration around it as Paul McCartney's two-and-a-half-hour concert here, on the second night of the Bonnaroo festival.

He entered the concert site at around 6:30, during Wilco's set, by motorcade, in an SUV preceded by state troopers with their sirens on, which held everybody trying to exit or leave the grounds for about 20 minutes. (He rolled down his window and waved.) There were no other sets on the four other stages during his.

The show began with a D.J. set of reworked Beatles and McCartney songs, or covers thereof, while a visual montage of photos and paintings scrolled slowly up two screens on either side of the stage for a full 40 minutes; it portrayed him in all stages of his life and career.

And his set, closing with fireworks, worked through the same long time-frame, starting with “Eight Days A Week” and moving forward to some of the most recent songs he's written. He sounded strong and energized; this was much like his recent large-scale shows of the last 10 years or so -  same band, many of the same songs - but with some new ones, or new-old ones, songs he hasn't played live before until his current tour, including “Lovely Rita” and “Your Mother Should Know.”

And for “Your Mother Should Know,” the screen behind the stage showed various famous mothers with their children, including the spouses of heads of state: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Michelle Obama.

For practically anyone else, invoking presidential families might seem grandiose, but for Mr. McCartney's set the gesture was about right. It was a bit like a performance from a head of state, and the enormous crowd held its respect through nearly all of it: walking against the flow of faces, you saw a remarkable kind of quiet concentration.

The tight and polished Paul McCartney show, into a slow and greasy (and pretty magnificent, though late-starting) one by ZZ Top, into a strobing and episodic one by Animal Collective, ending at 4 a.m. -  with a shorter detour through the churchlike minimalist pop of the XX - may have been the strangest and strongest sequence of sets I've heard at Bonnaroo, a pop festival that gets broader every year, and harder to contain with any sort of narrative.

Otherwise, on Friday, I spent a lot of time listening to live rhythm sections and thinking about drummers. An idea I've heard attributed to the improviser, composer and educator Karl Berger is that drummers either play up or play down - which is to say they either pull the beats out of their instrument and release them into the audience, or hold them back and contain them within the composition or the arrangement.

To play to tens of thousands of people in an outdoor festival you almost have to play down, for the sake of power and evenness. But a few drummers - including Jean-Alain Hohy, who played an afternoon set with the Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara, and Glenn Kotche, who played with Wilco - were playing up, hitting lightly and finding a greater range of dynamics, making their rhythms bubble.

In a scene where music from different stages is always competing in the air, sometimes aggressively, your ear gravitates toward these kinds of musicians, who seem to be giving you something rather than selling it.

McCartney Plays to a Reverent Crowd at Bonnaroo

MANCHESTER, Tenn. â€" I can’t remember seeing a show â€" of music or really anything else â€" with so much privileged space and veneration around it as Paul McCartney’s two-and-a-half-hour concert here, on the second night of the Bonnaroo festival.

He entered the concert site at around 6:30, during Wilco’s set, by motorcade, in an SUV preceded by state troopers with their sirens on, which held everybody trying to exit or leave the grounds for about 20 minutes. (He rolled down his window and waved.) There were no other sets on the four other stages during his.

The show began with a D.J. set of reworked Beatles and McCartney songs, or covers thereof, while a visual montage of photos and paintings scrolled slowly up two screens on either side of the stage for a full 40 minutes; it portrayed him in all stages of his life and career.

And his set, closing with fireworks, worked through the same long time-frame, starting with “Eight Days A Week” and moving forward to some of the most recent songs he’s written. He sounded strong and energized; this was much like his recent large-scale shows of the last 10 years or so â€"  same band, many of the same songs â€" but with some new ones, or new-old ones, songs he hasn’t played live before until his current tour, including “Lovely Rita” and “Your Mother Should Know.”

And for “Your Mother Should Know,” the screen behind the stage showed various famous mothers with their children, including the spouses of heads of state: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Michelle Obama.

For practically anyone else, invoking presidential families might seem grandiose, but for Mr. McCartney’s set the gesture was about right. It was a bit like a performance from a head of state, and the enormous crowd held its respect through nearly all of it: walking against the flow of faces, you saw a remarkable kind of quiet concentration.

The tight and polished Paul McCartney show, into a slow and greasy (and pretty magnificent, though late-starting) one by ZZ Top, into a strobing and episodic one by Animal Collective, ending at 4 a.m. â€"  with a shorter detour through the churchlike minimalist pop of the XX â€" may have been the strangest and strongest sequence of sets I’ve heard at Bonnaroo, a pop festival that gets broader every year, and harder to contain with any sort of narrative.

Otherwise, on Friday, I spent a lot of time listening to live rhythm sections and thinking about drummers. An idea I’ve heard attributed to the improviser, composer, and educator Karl Berger is that drummers either play up or play down â€" which is to say they either pull the beats out of their instrument and release them into the audience, or hold them back and contain them within the composition or the arrangement.

To play to tens of thousands of people in an outdoor festival you almost have to play down, for the sake of power and evenness. But a few drummers â€" including Jean-Alain Hohy, who played an afternoon set with the Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara, and Glenn Kotche, who played with Wilco â€" were playing up, hitting lightly and finding a greater range of dynamics, making their rhythms bubble.

In a scene where music from different stages are always competing in the air, sometimes aggressively, your ear gravitates toward these kinds of musicians, who seem to be giving you something rather than selling it.