Sophisti-pop
In 2005, when the singer Niia Bertino was seventeen, she was recognized as one of the top high-school jazz singers in the country. The granddaughter of an Italian opera singer, Bertino, known onstage as Niia, was soon discovered by Wyclef Jean and, in 2007, featured on his hit single “Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill).” What initially felt like a meteoric rise tapered off into a slow burn. She performed “James Bond” themes with an orchestra in 2011 before débuting, in 2014, with the EP “Generation Blue”; her first album arrived three years later. You can hear all of her accrued experience in five albums she has released since, easing through their elegant pop production with jazzy vocals.—Sheldon Pearce (Blue Note; April 28-29.)
Dance
Tiler Peck and Roman Mejia in Jerome Robbins’s “Opus 19/The Dreamer.”Photograph by Erin Baiano
For the past two decades, Tiler Peck has been one of New York City Ballet’s most dazzling dancers; more recently, she has revealed herself to be an agile choreographer as well. Her second ballet for her home company uses Édouard Lalo’s “Symphonie Espagnole,” a sweeping, melodic tour de force that doubles as a showcase for solo violin. (The virtuoso Hilary Hahn will perform on many dates.) The spring season also includes the company première of Christopher Wheeldon’s moody 2002 ballet “Continuum,” set to Ligeti piano pieces, and it closes with a week of performances of the comedic “Coppélia.” On May 24, that work’s plucky heroine will be danced for the last time by the equally plucky Megan Fairchild, who is retiring after twenty-five years with the company.—Marina Harss (David H. Koch Theatre; April 21-May 31.)
Movies
David Lowery, who directed “A Ghost Story,” returns with another ghost story, “Mother Mary,” with the feeling of a filmed play, starring Anne Hathaway as the titular pop star, who’s been offstage for a few years, and Michaela Coel as Sam, a fashion designer who used to make the singer’s costumes. Though they’re long estranged, Mary barges in on Sam to ask for a new dress for a concert comeback; their tense dialectical wrangle in Sam’s churchlike studio is the bulk of the film. Brief flashbacks to Mary’s earlier concerts are merely informational; another flashback, to a séance at which Mary yielded to self-harming mysticism, is far more consequential, leading to violence in Sam’s studio. The resulting catharsis—spiritual and sentimental—is both flimsy and fascinating.—Richard Brody (In wide release.)
