Among the rarities on view at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair are also a 1555 treatise on tennis and Amy Winehouse’s personal library.The New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, which returns to the Park Avenue Armory this weekend after a two-year pandemic hiatus, is one of the world’s leading gatherings of the rare book tribe. For more casual visitors, it can also be an experience of dizzying information overload.Yes, there are the museum-like displays of fine bindings, illuminated manuscripts and historic documents, with dramatic lighting (and eye-popping prices). But the fair, which runs from Thursday evening to Sunday, also features booths stuffed with pulp paperbacks, old advertisements, zines, board games, maps, photographs and all manner of accessibly priced ephemera that challenges any hidebound notions of “rare books.”Here is a sampling of offerings at the more than 200 booths, from carefully curated libraries to jotted notes that speak to the power of pen and paper to stop time and conjure vanished worlds.Send in the SondheimPart of an archive of 70 letters and postcards written by Stephen Sondheim over four decades to his close friend Larry Miller.via Schubertiade MusicAfter Stephen Sondheim’s death last November, social media was awash with images of the notes he regularly sent to theater colleagues famous and not, offering praise and encouragement. Schubertiade Music is offering range of Sondheimiana, including a collection of 70 letters and postcards ($20,000) written over four decades to his close friend Larry Miller. In one, Sondheim describes a 1969 trip to Europe: “In Vienna we were treated with the doubtful pleasure of one act of ‘West Side Story’ in German. Funnier than the original, anyway, even if it is billed as ‘Bernstein’s West Side Story.’” Also on offer are autographed programs, scores and a mid-1930s class photograph ($1,000) showing a young Sondheim dressed as a clown.Remembering Stephen SondheimThe revered and influential composer-lyricist died Nov. 26, 2021. He was 91. Obituary: A titan of the American musical, Sondheim was the driving force behind some of Broadway’s most beloved shows. Final Interview: Days before he died, he sat down with The Times for his final major interview. His Legacy: As a mentor, a letter writer and an audience regular, Sondheim nurtured generations of theater makers. ‘West Side Story’: Does the musical, which features some of the artist’s best-known lyrics, deserve a new hearing? ‘Company’: The revival of his 1970 musical features a gender swap.Atomic DawnPapers from the Manhattan Project’s Medical Group were buried in military archives at Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado until the 1960s.via Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps and Boston Rare Maps“Ball or mushroom rose slowly & majestically & ponderously & brilliantly — bright red purple [with] blue rim for a few seconds. So it towered up with streamers falling vertically in the stem & out of the cap.”So wrote a member of the Manhattan Project’s Medical Group on July 16, 1945, after watching the world’s first detonation of a nuclear weapon, in the New Mexican desert, known as the Trinity Test. Boston Rare Maps and Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps are jointly offering a trove of 300 pages of little-seen handwritten diagrams, memos, maps and notes generated by the medical group, which was charged with monitoring health and safety. The documents ($1.5 million) — which include what the sellers say is the first written use of the term “mushroom cloud” — were buried in military archives at Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado until the 1960s, when they were declassified and then sold to a private collector during the base’s decommissioning. The material reflects the tensions between preserving secrecy while protecting populations downwind from nuclear fallout, as well as the tension between dispassionate scientific observation and sheer awe.A Pioneering Black ShakespeareanAn autographed lithograph, circa 1857, of Ira Aldridge, the first actor of African descent known to play Othello.via Maggs Bros Ltd.The London dealer Maggs Bros is offering an autographed lithograph, circa 1857, of Ira Aldridge, the first actor of African descent known to play Othello ($13,500). Born in 1807, Aldridge attended the African Free School of New York City and acted in William Brown’s African Theater before emigrating to England to seek better prospects. At first, he played African roles, sometimes written expressly for him. His turn as Othello came in 1832, when he stepped in after the renowned Edmund Kean collapsed onstage and died. Audiences loved it, but the critics were outraged. Management closed the theater after two performances, and Aldridge did not appear on the mainstream London stage again for decades. The portrait, created during one of his triumphant tours of the European continent, “acknowledges his work as an artist rather than a mere curiosity,” according to the listing.Tennis, Anyone?Antonio Scaino’s 1555 treatise on tennis.via Jonathan Hill BooksellerJonathan Hill Bookseller of New York is offering a rare first edition of Antonio Scaino’s 1555 treatise on tennis ($45,000), said to be the first book on the game. By the mid-16th century, tennis was already a popular pastime among kings and commoners alike, though bitter disputes often broke out over the rules (plus ça change?). Scaino, a philosopher, apparently wrote the book after a debate with his patron, the duke of Ferrara (and the owner of as many as six courts), over how to award a point. It’s not clear who won that one, but scholars today still debate the validity of Scaino’s arcane theory of the origins of the game’s odd scoring system.This Girl’s LifeTwo volumes of diaries, from 1831-2, by the precocious 11-year-old Emily Shore, a contemporary of Charlotte Brontë.via Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers of LondonOne of the stars of the fair is a miniature book created in 1829 by 13-year-old Charlotte Brontë ($1.25 million), which recently surfaced after being considered lost for nearly a century. But Brontë and her siblings were hardly the only word-mad British children of the era. Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers of London is offering two volumes of diaries, from 1831-2, by 11-year-old Emily Shore. The precocious Emily, who died at age 19, wrote three volumes of poetry, three novels and several histories, which went unpublished. She is known today through her diaries, which were published by her sisters in 1891 in heavily edited form. Today, only a handful of the dozen notebooks she filled her with tiny, meticulous handwriting are known to survive. The two on sale here offer an unfiltered window into the domestic life of a period where children, especially girls, were seen but rarely heard.End-of-the-World Library?A 1554 first edition in Italian of Aristotle’s “Meteorology,” the oldest comprehensive treatise on the subject.via Peter HarringtonThe London dealer Peter Harrington spent a decade building One Hundred Seconds to Midnight, a collection of 800 works tracking more than 2,000 years of climate science and environmentalism, from Aristotle’s “Meteorology” and 19th-century weather records to NASA’s iconic “Earthrise” photograph and contemporary “cli-fi” novels. The dealer’s booth will feature highlights from the collection ($2.5 million), which tracks “both our recording of data and also our emotional response to it,” as a video tour of the collection puts it. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the World Land Trust.Punk Lit!The safety-pin=pierced dustjacket of Sam Gideon’s “The Punk” (1977), said to be the first punk novel. It was supposedly written by a 14-year-old “closet punk” in London.via Type Punch MatrixType Punch Matrix, a Washington, D.C., bookseller that aims to make collecting more accessible and diverse, is known for edgy stock that pushes the boundaries of the rare books category. Their big-ticket offerings this year include a collection of more than 220 books that once belonged to the singer Amy Winehouse ($135,000), about 50 of which will be on display. (Among the sometimes heavily annotated titles is a marked-up script of “Little Shop of Horrors” from Winehouse’s theater-kid days, and a copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” described as looking “like it was dropped in the bath.”) On a tighter budget? The dealers are also offering a pristine copy of Gideon Sams’s “The Punk” (1977), often said to be first punk novel, written, the story goes, by a 14-year-old British “closet punk” as a school assignment, and published after his mother rescued it from the trash. It comes with the original dust jacket, featuring a real safety-pin piercing the nose of the image of Johnny Rotten ($500).New York International Antiquarian Book FairApril 21-24 at the Park Avenue Armory, Manhattan; nyantiquarianbookfair.com. More

Hear tracks by Vampire Weekend, Pearl Jam, Saya Gray and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes), and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Beyoncé, ‘16 Carriages’In a flex of genre-spanning musicianship that’s also a workaholic’s lament, Beyoncé announces her next realm to conquer — country, one of her birthrights as a Texan — while she recalls her past and doubles down on her ambition, singing, “Ain’t got time to waste, I got art to make.” The music is an arena-country crescendo, from acoustic-guitar strum to full-band impact topped by pedal-steel guitar, along with gospel-organ underpinnings and country quavers in Beyoncé’s vocal lines. At a moment when country music is being pushed to acknowledge Black roots and current Black musicians, Beyoncé is not only claiming an expanded demographic base. She’s also using her celebrity clout to force some doors open. JON PARELESVampire Weekend, ‘Capricorn’Vampire Weekend channels a generation’s exhaustion, disillusionment and overload in “Capricorn,” a stubbornly slow ballad about being “too old for dying young” and “sifting through centuries for moments of your own” from “Only God Was Above Us,” a new album due April 5. The music layers stately chamber-pop with heaving, squealing noise, then eases toward folky resignation. PARELESWaxahatchee, ‘Bored’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

The school’s chairman and biggest benefactor, Bruce Kovner, had wanted its president, Damian Woetzel, to leave after a negative evaluation. He marshaled support and stayed.When the charismatic former New York City Ballet star Damian Woetzel was named president of the prestigious Juilliard School in 2017, the school’s powerful chairman, Bruce Kovner, praised his “unusual mix” of intellectual and artistic qualities.But earlier this year Kovner told Woetzel that an internal evaluation had found a lack of confidence in his leadership and asked him to resign by the end of June, a year before the end of his contract, according to a letter Woetzel sent to the school’s trustees that was obtained by The New York Times.Woetzel fought back and succeeded in rallying support behind him, getting testimonials from several eminent artists including the trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis, who directs Juilliard’s jazz program, and the pianist Emanuel Ax, a leading member of the faculty. And he wrote in his letter to trustees that the performance review “was extraordinary and highly inconsistent with best practice in nonprofit governance — it was conceived, initiated and managed by our board chairman.”Things came to a head at a board meeting last month. The trustees were informed of the evaluation and Kovner’s recommendation that he leave, but declined to take steps to ease Woetzel out. Kovner, long the school’s biggest benefactor, is planning to step down this June after 22 years as its chairman, a move that one associate said had long been planned.Kovner declined to comment, and Juilliard provided a statement from the board to The New York Times in which it said that “at its most recent meeting, the board strongly reaffirmed its support for President Damian Woetzel” and the 10-year strategic plan that the school created in 2019.The statement said that the board was “unwavering in its focus on the best interests of the students of the Juilliard School, and remains committed to supporting the school’s exceptional faculty, staff and management.”Some saw the conflict as a rare power struggle between two prominent figures in the cultural world, a showdown between old guard and new blood.Given Kovner’s immense influence as Juilliard’s biggest patron — and as an important figure at Lincoln Center, Juilliard’s home, where he serves on the board and has given large sums — some were surprised to see Woetzel prevail. One trustee likened it to a David and Goliath story.Woetzel, 54 — who earned a master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard while still dancing — has built a national reputation, having directed the Aspen Institute Arts Program and the Vail International Dance Festival and served on President Barack Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.Kovner, 75, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $6.2 billion, has been something of a permanent government at Juilliard, having served as chairman for an unusually long time. With his wife, Suzie, Kovner’s gifts have included $25 million toward a new wing and scholarships in 2005; a trove of precious music manuscripts in 2006; $20 million for the early music program in 2012; and $60 million for a new scholarship program in 2013.At Lincoln Center, Kovner was one of the biggest donors to the redevelopment of the performing arts complex, serves on the board of the Metropolitan Opera and was formerly a trustee of the New York Philharmonic.The standoff posed a challenge for the board and the school, given that Kovner’s ongoing support of Juilliard remains crucial.Bruce Kovner, the chairman of Juilliard, and his wife, Suzie, are the school’s biggest benefactors. He sought to ease Woetzel out after a negative evaluation. Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images For Lincoln CenterWoetzel’s evaluation was sent to 49 members of the faculty and staff — including every department head and 18 direct reports — 43 of whom responded to it anonymously. There are about 700 full-time and part-time members of Juilliard’s faculty and staff.The review was designed and conducted by Kovner and J. Christopher Kojima, a vice chairman, Woetzel’s letter to the board said. His letter said that it was “not conducted at an arm’s length distance by an independent party as is best practice for nonprofit institutions of our scale.”The responses included 143 comments, more than three-quarters of which were negative, according to someone privy to a summary of the report who was granted anonymity to describe this sensitive personnel matter.The feedback amounted to several key criticisms, according to the summary, which was described to The Times: that Woetzel focused on performance instead of education; had weak administrative leadership; failed to consult faculty members on key decisions; and created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.A question about confidence in Juilliard’s future met with a negative response from more than half of those who responded, according to the person familiar with the summary.On Jan. 27, Woetzel was asked to leave, according to his letter to the board.“Bruce Kovner communicated — on behalf of the Executive Committee — that my service as president would be terminated prior to the end of my contract, and that the decision was ‘irrevocable,’” Woetzel wrote in the letter to trustees.“Having communicated to me this intent to terminate,” the letter said, “Bruce then emailed me an offer of a severance package that would include a jointly crafted statement that would create a false narrative that I was resigning as of June 30th.”The letter gave Woetzel 96 hours to respond. He decided not to resign.On Feb. 4, Kovner sent the results of the evaluation to the full board, saying the findings were concerning and would be discussed at the regularly scheduled board meeting four days later.Woetzel marshaled support from a number of prominent artists and colleagues, who sent letters to the board in advance of the meeting.“Damian has a record of excellence in his leadership of the school, especially during two pandemic years and these deeply troubling social, political and financial times that have changed the social landscape of America,” Marsalis wrote in his letter, obtained by The Times. “He has been engaged with students, faculty and board in attempting to create a modern institution that is nimble and able to address the very real concerns of students and alumni around the world.”“I feel how we are going about this brings our ethics into question,” Marsalis continued. “This attempt to remove him seems to be poorly thought out, poorly executed, and it will place a stain on our institution that even our love of resources and fragile spirit will not easily remove.”Juilliard has had successes, but also problems, since Woetzel took charge.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThe trombone player Weston Sprott, who is the dean of Juilliard’s Preparatory Division, warned in an email to Ax, an influential faculty member, that “a decision to terminate Damian will be incredibly harmful to the institution.”“In the midst of managing the bumps and bruises that could be expected in navigating the national reckoning regarding racial injustice,” Sprott continued, “Damian has put together perhaps the most diverse, inclusive and successful leadership team in our industry — one that is respected by students and faculty and is the envy of its competitors.”Kovner and the executive committee expect Woetzel to address the problems raised in the evaluation with outside coaches and under the guidance of the trustee Reginald Van Lee, a former management consultant, according to the person familiar with the summary. But one trustee said no such course of action has been decided by the full board.Woetzel started out as an unconventional choice for Juilliard, having never worked in academic administration, let alone at one of the world’s leading performing arts schools, which at the time of his appointment had a $110 million annual budget, a $1 billion endowment, and more than 800 students.At Juilliard, Woetzel has made several noteworthy advances, securing a $50 million gift to expand the school’s weekend training program aimed largely at Black and Latino schoolchildren; filling several key positions; and guiding the school through the challenging two years of the pandemic.But he has also had bumps along the way. After a drama workshop at the school involving the re-enactment of a slave auction prompted an outcry, Woetzel issued a “heartfelt apology” in a note to the community.Last June, students protested a planned tuition increase, occupying parts of Juilliard’s Lincoln Center campus and holding street demonstrations. (Several other leading music and drama schools offer free tuition.)Kovner, who made his fortune as a hedge fund manager, has contributed extensively to conservative causes and has served on the boards of the American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute, both right-leaning think tanks. Last May, City Journal, which is published by the Manhattan Institute, criticized what it described as the school’s “growing cadre of diversity bureaucrats” in an article headlined “The Revolution Comes to Juilliard: Racial hysteria is consuming the school; unchecked, it will consume the arts.”Kovner has also supported left-leaning organizations, including the Innocence Project, which aims to free the wrongfully convicted; and Lambda Legal, devoted to civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.Now Juilliard is preparing for the next chapter. This week the school’s Duke Ellington Ensemble was scheduled to perform a celebration of the 20th anniversary of Juilliard Jazz at the Chelsea Factory, a new arts space. More

The most effective artists of the year weren’t afraid to root around deep inside and boldly share the messiness, the complexities and the beauty of their discoveries.Jon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay ZoladzJon ParelesA Cornucopia of IdeasIf there’s one thing that unites my favorite albums of 2022, it’s a sense of creative abundance: of ideas spilling out so fast that songs can barely contain them, and of artists ready to follow their impulses toward revelatory extremes. No need to hold back: In 2022, more was more.1. Beyoncé, ‘Renaissance’A disco revival gathered momentum during the pandemic years, as musicians and listeners found themselves yearning for the joys of sweaty, uninhibited communal gatherings. Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” also looks back to dance floor styles, but it goes much further. It’s not merely a nostalgic re-creation of a fondly remembered era. With leathery vocals and visceral but multileveled beats, it’s an excursion through layers of club culture, connecting with pride, pleasure and self-definition and taking no guff from anyone.Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” is a tour through decades of dance music.Mason Poole/A.M.P.A.S. via Getty Images2. Rosalía, ‘Motomami’“I transform myself,” Rosalía declares in the first song on “Motomami,” and throughout the album she does just that: playfully, impulsively and very purposefully smashing together musical styles and verbal tactics. Every track morphs as it unfolds, hopping across the Americas and back to Spain, rarely giving away where it’s headed. Along the way, Rosalía presents herself as fragile at one moment and invincible the next.3. Beth Orton, ‘Weather Alive’Over ghostly, circling piano motifs, the songs on “Weather Alive” meditate on longing and memory, connection and solitude, nature and time. Beth Orton’s voice stays unguarded in both its delicacy and its flaws, while her production cradles it in patiently undulating arrangements, floating acoustic instruments in electronic spaces; the songs linger until they become hypnotic.4. Sudan Archives, ‘Natural Brown Prom Queen’Sudan Archives — the songwriter, singer and violinist Brittney Denise Parks — juggles the many conflicting pressures and aspirations of being young, Black, female, artistic, carnal, career-minded and social on “Natural Brown Prom Queen.” The music is kaleidoscopic, deploying funk, electronics, hip-hop beats, jazz, chamber-music arrangements and the African fiddle riffs that inspired Sudan Archives’ name, barely keeping up with her ambitions.5. iLe, ‘Nacarile’Vulnerability and courage are never far apart on “Nacarile,” which is Puerto Rican slang for “No way!” The songwriter Ileana Cabra, who records as iLe, sings about political and feminist self-assertion alongside songs about toxic and tempting romances. Each of the 11 songs conjures its own sound — acoustic bolero, orchestral ballad, Afro-Caribbean drums, gravity-defying electronics — for music that’s richly rooted but never constrained.6. Sylvan Esso, ‘No Rules Sandy’Sylvan Esso’s electronic pop goes gleefully haywire on “No Rules Sandy,” the fourth studio album by the duo of Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn. In songs that leap between the everyday and the metaphysical, they maintain the transparency that has always defined their music, but skew and tweak the details: moving vocals off the beat, slipping in hints of cross rhythms, always keeping serious ideas lighter than air.Sudan Archives’ “Natural Brown Prom Queen” reflects the vastness of her aspirations and influences.Frank Hoensch/Redferns, via Getty Images7. black midi, ‘Hellfire’The human condition is nasty, brutish and ferociously virtuosic on the third album by the British band black midi. In songs that flaunt the complexity and dissonance of prog-rock and the bitter angularity of post-punk — while stirring in ideas from jazz, classical music, funk, salsa and flamenco — loathsome characters do odious things. But the music turns grotesquerie into exhilaration.8. Björk, ‘Fossora’Forget pop comforts: Björk has other plans on “Fossora,” leaning toward chamber music at one moment and blunt impact the next. Her new songs contemplate earthy fertility and the continuity of generations, using rugged electronic sounds, families of acoustic instruments and the very human passion of her voice. As Björk looks all the way back to a primordial “Ancestress,” she’s also determined for her music to move ahead.9. Billy Woods, ‘Aethiopes’In hip-hop that’s simultaneously grimy and cerebral, upholding a New York City legacy, the prolific Billy Woods raps about colonialism, poverty, personal memories and ruthless historical forces. The unsettling productions, by Preservation, draw on Ethiopian music (of course) as well as funk, jazz, reggae, soundtracks, Balinese gamelan and many murkier sources, and Woods is joined by equally determined guest rappers. The tracks are dense, and well worth decoding.10. Porridge Radio, ‘Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky’Catharsis is the agenda for Porridge Radio, the British band led by Dana Margolin. In songs that wrestle with connection and autonomy, her vocals declaim, sob and gasp; her lyrics blurt out dilemmas and demand responses that may not arrive. The arrangements sound live and jammy, harnessing post-punk and psychedelia for emotional crescendos.And 15 more, alphabetically:Rauw Alejandro, “Saturno”Bad Bunny, “Un Verano Sin Ti”Congotronics International, “Where’s the One?”Jorge Drexler, “Tinto y Tiempo”Ethel Cain, “Preacher’s Daughter”FKA twigs, “Caprisongs”Horsegirl, “Versions of Modern Performance”Jenny Hval, “Classic Objects”Rokia Koné & Jacknife Lee, “Bamanan”Kendrick Lamar, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers”Makaya McCraven, “In These Times”Mitski, “Laurel Hell”Bonnie Raitt, “Just Like That…”Soul Glo, “Diaspora Problems”Soccer Mommy, “Sometimes, Forever”Jon CaramanicaLetting It All GoJudging by these albums, it was a year of release: superstars opting to get physical, neat songs spilling over with unruly emotions, artists relinquishing familiar beliefs, singing and rapping teetering on the edge of control. Disruption is in the air — being contentedly static is no longer enough.1. Zach Bryan, ‘American Heartbreak’An astonishing feat of emotionally acute songwriting and shredded-artery sentiment, Zach Bryan’s mainstream breakthrough is a heavy lift, in all senses: 34 songs, and 10 times as many small details that kick you in the sternum. “Summertime Blues,” the EP he released two months later, is maybe even better — bare bones and almost harried, it’s even more evidence of a faucet that simply won’t stop spilling.2. Rosalía, ‘Motomami’When Rosalía first broke through, she was engaged in a tug of war between tradition and modernity. But the dissonance she’s navigating on “Motomami” is more profound: cultivating a futurist aesthetic that spans multiple genres, eras and philosophies, making for an album as radical and syncretic as any released by a global superstar in the last few years.Zach Bryan’s “American Heartbreak” is a lengthy album that probes raw emotions.Kristin Braga Wright for The New York Times3. Drake, ‘Honestly, Nevermind’The better of the two Drake albums this year was the less expected one: a collection of earthen, sensual, soulful house music. In a career defined by blurring borders, this was less a plot twist than a quick spotlight on an underappreciated character: body music that keeps the heart palpitating.4. Priscilla Block, ‘Welcome to the Block Party’The most promising Nashville debut of the year belonged to Priscilla Block, a pop-friendly singer-songwriter with a robust grasp of country tradition. Her first album includes a few rowdy bridge-burners and a gaggle of torch songs sung in a sweet but unshakable voice.5. Beyoncé, ‘Renaissance’“Renaissance” is a few things that Beyoncé’s music hasn’t always been: chaotic, breathy, unrelentingly sweaty, appealingly frayed. A titanic collection of club music, it has an almost gravitational urgency, emphasizing the primal pull of the dance floor, where putting on airs is not an option.6. Bartees Strange, ‘Farm to Table’Bartees Strange has quite a voice, or perhaps voices. He sings with huskiness and nimbleness, plangency and viscosity — sometimes all of these at once. On his eruptive second album, he writes about growth and self-doubt, Phoebe Bridgers and George Floyd, all unified by singing that’s brimming with heart and pluck and can pivot on a dime.7. Gulch’s final show, Sound & Fury Festival, July 31, 2022Not an album per se, but the video of this 34-minute concert — on the StayThicc YouTube channel — is a hair-raising document of this San Jose, Calif., hardcore band at its punishing peak, the fan fervor it inspired, and the ridiculous, anticlimactic conclusion in which power to the stage was abruptly turned off.8. 42 Dugg & EST Gee, ‘Last Ones Left’These two, stars in their own right, have all the makings of a great rap duo — EST Gee, from Louisville, Ky., is steely and narratively vivid, his verses square-cornered and bleak. 42 Dugg, from Detroit, delivers nasal, curvy passages flecked with scars of having seen too much.9. Asake, ‘Mr. Money With the Vibe’The debut album from the rising Nigerian star Asake is both appealingly grounded and aiming for an astral plane. Taking in Afrobeats, fuji and amapiano, but also flickers of jazz fusion and even gospel, Asake’s music is enveloping and inspirational, mellow but assured.10. Bad Boy Chiller Crew, ‘Disrespectful’There’s an inherent silliness to bouncy club music, songs designed to trigger full-scale abandon. Bad Boy Chiller Crew — effectively a comedy troupe wearing the costume of a music collective — amplifies and underscores that tendency on its second album. The songs — faithful bassline and garage tunes that sound like shout-rapping over a D.J. mix — are absurd and uncanny, an invitation to dance and a metacommentary on letting loose.11. Bad Bunny, ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’The defining pop star of 2022, Bad Bunny is fully untethered from expectations. His fourth solo album is a sunshine beam, taking reggaeton and Latin trap as starting points and embracing styles from across the Caribbean, from mambo to dembow.Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” has dominated the charts in 2022.Gladys Vega/Getty Images12. Bandmanrill, ‘Club Godfather’Bandmanrill emerged last year from the Jersey drill scene, which takes the drill template of immediate, punchy rapping and matches it with up-tempo Jersey club music. In short order, he became one of drill’s premier songwriters, but his debut, “Club Godfather,” already shows him stretching beyond the genre’s boundaries.13. Special Interest, ‘Endure’The ecstatically erratic third album from the New Orleans band Special Interest is full of politically minded punk-funk. It is a howling good time, but also nervous and tense, with songs that are agitated, but more crucially, agitating.And 16 more, alphabetically:The 1975, “Being Funny in a Foreign Language”Cash Cobain & Chow Lee, “2 Slizzy 2 Sexy (Deluxe)”Tyler Childers, “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?”Fred again.., “Actual Life 3 (January 1 — September 9, 2022)”Giveon, “Give or Take”Lil Durk, “7220”Mavi, “Laughing So Hard, It Hurts”Tate McRae, “I Used to Think I Could Fly”Rachika Nayar, “Heaven Come Crashing”Harry Styles, “Harry’s House”Earl Sweatshirt, “Sick!”Rod Wave, “Beautiful Mind”The Weeknd, “Dawn FM”Willow, “”YoungBoy Never Broke Again, “Colors”Honorary late 2021 release: Kay Flock, “The D.O.A. Tape”Lindsay ZoladzInner Lives, Shared WideThis year I found myself drawn to records that created their own immersive worlds that reflected the bold, distinct perspective of their creators — a trick that quite a few big-budget pop albums pulled off, sure, but plenty of smaller indie records did, too, with just as much personality and flair.1. Grace Ives, ‘Janky Star’Small, quirky pop albums are a dime a dozen these days, but they rarely come with the wit, vision and lyrical personality of this one by Grace Ives. For the last half year, the Brooklyn musician’s sharp, frequently hilarious observations have stuck in my mind as often as her infectious, synth-driven melodies: the overdraft fee from a $100 A.T.M. withdrawal on “Loose”; the flirty way she co-opts business jargon like “circle back” on “Angel of Business.” Or how about this deadpan punchline on the jangly, crush-struck “Shelley”: “I wonder what she wants for dinner/She’s really got me looking inward.” Ives’s voice across these 10 tracks is weighty but nimble, her ear for melody idiosyncratic but always immediate and true. By the end of “Janky Star,” it’s hard not to be charmed by the warm interiority of her sound and her peculiar, canted vision of the world.Grace Ives’s “Janky Star” is laced with small details and personal touches.Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images2. Beyoncé, ‘Renaissance’Along this dazzling and immaculately sequenced joyride through the history of dance music, Beyoncé celebrates her own uniqueness while also decentering herself, refracting the disco ball’s spotlight so it illuminates a long line of forebears: Grace Jones, Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, Robin S., Moi Renee, Nile Rodgers, Big Freedia and of course her very own Uncle Jonny. Bless whoever dosed the lemonade at this party: “Renaissance” is Queen Bey at her loosest, funniest, sweatiest and — as she testifies on the sublime “Church Girl” — her most transcendently free.3. Rosalía, ‘Motomami’On the singular “Motomami,” one of the coolest pop stars on the planet mashes up innumerable genres and cultural influences to create her own sonic world. Rosalía combines the braggadocio of your favorite rapper (“Rosa! Sin tarjeta!”) with the emotional intensity of the flamenco legend Carmen Amaya (“G3 N15”), effortlessly pivoting between stylistic extremes that would give a less innovative talent whiplash.4. Alex G, ‘God Save the Animals’The Philly indie-rock everydude Alex Giannascoli reimagines the New Testament as a fanzine, sort of (“God is my designer, Jesus is my lawyer”), and the miracle is how well it actually works. The sudden jolts of sonic abrasion — a hyperpop breakdown in the middle of an acoustic ballad about the innocence of children, say — and the unbroken through line of weirdness do not diminish the radical empathy and poignant sincerity that is this record’s beating heart.5. Florence + the Machine, ‘Dance Fever’On her fifth, and best, studio album with her trusty Machine, Florence Welch’s imperial goddess persona comes crashing down to earth, or maybe somewhere even less dignified: “The bathroom tiles were cool against my head, I pressed my forehead to the floor and prayed for a trap door,” she sings on the gut-wrenching closer “Morning Elvis,” a painstakingly detailed depiction of a breakdown. Welch has never been sadder (“Back in Town”), more provocative (“King,” “Girls Against God”), or funnier (“And it’s good to be alive, crying into cereal at midnight”) than she is on the kaleidoscopic “Dance Fever,” an album that constantly, seamlessly moves between the macro and the micro, from an inquisitive exploration of gender and power to a blown-open window in the heart.6. Nilüfer Yanya, ‘Painless’London’s Nilüfer Yanya harnesses the antsy buzz of modern anxiety and transforms it into something not just manageable but actually beautiful, thanks to her elegant melodies and the lavender calm of her voice. The magnificent “Painless” is so well paced that one of the peak musical moments of the year comes at its direct center: that beat when the hitherto coiled “Midnight Sun” suddenly blooms into a reverie of guitar distortion.Florence Welch has never been sadder or funnier than she is on her latest album, “Dance Fever.”Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated Press7. Alvvays, ‘Blue Rev’This Toronto five-piece makes — and on its third album, “Blue Rev,” perfects — a kind of inverted shoegaze: big-hearted, smeary dream-pop oriented toward the sky. Molly Rankin’s achingly sweet voice cuts through the woolly squall of distortion as she sings of the thwarted expectations and indistinguishable hope of early adulthood: “I find myself paralyzed/Knowing all too well, terrified/But I’ll find my way.”8. Sudan Archives, ‘Natural Brown Prom Queen’Get comfy when Sudan Archives welcomes you into her domicile on the mood-setting opener “Home Maker” — you’re going to want to stay awhile. The prismatic songwriter born Brittney Denise Parks showcases the many facets of her musical personality — singing, rapping, playing violin — on the immersive, genre-hopping “Natural Brown Prom Queen,” an 18-track song-of-self filled to the brim with smart, sensual and continuously adventurous ideas.9. Angel Olsen, ‘Big Time’To address some radical changes in her life — coming out as queer just before both her parents died — the indie star Angel Olsen turns, incongruously, to the traditionally minded sounds of vintage country and torch-song pop. Turns out they suit the wailing grandeur of her voice perfectly, though, and she can’t help but make them her own thanks to the fiery force of her musical personality.10. Miranda Lambert, ‘Palomino’Miranda Lambert’s wandering spirit is given plenty of room to roam on the majestic “Palomino,” a travelogue across not just the interstate highway system but the many musical stylings Lambert can command: honky-tonk country (“Geraldene”), Petty-esque Southern rock (“Strange”) and even some heartstring-tugging folk balladry (“Carousel”). Mamas, this is what it sounds like when you let your daughters grow up to be cowboys.11. Amanda Shires, ‘Take It Like a Man’Here’s the spirit of outlaw country in 2022: a fearless woman gathering all her strength and belting out her truths with a poet’s diction and a bird of prey’s voice. “Come on, I dare you, make me feel something again,” the singer/songwriter/fiddle player Amanda Shires trills at the beginning of “Take It Like a Man,” and then she spends the next 40 minutes rising to her own challenge.12. The Weeknd, ‘Dawn FM’If you’ve ever wondered what the finale of “All That Jazz” would sound like had it been scored by Oneohtrix Point Never, have I got the record for you. The Weeknd follows the huge success of “After Hours” with some high-concept and deeply stirring experimentation on the probing “Dawn FM,” reimagining the pop album as a kind of death dream without sacrificing the hooks.13. Aldous Harding, ‘Warm Chris’The New Zealand eccentric Aldous Harding is a folk-rock harlequin, clowning and mugging her way through beguilingly catchy tunes. In the weird world of her fourth album, “Warm Chris,” there’s not a lot of because, just a lot of deadpan, and glorious, is.And 12 more very good records worth mentioning:The 1975, “Being Funny in a Foreign Language”Bad Bunny, “Un Verano Sin Ti”Yaya Bey, “Remember Your North Star”Kendrick Lamar, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers”Julianna Riolino, “All Blue”Sasami, “Squeeze”Syd, “Broken Hearts Club”Sharon Van Etten, “We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong”The Weather Station, “How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars”Weyes Blood, “And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow”Wet Leg, “Wet Leg”Wilco, “Cruel Country” More

Traveling the nation to discover little-known performers for the Arhoolie label, which he founded in 1960, he earned a nickname: El Fanático.Chris Strachwitz, who traveled in search of the roots of American music with the eagerness of a pilgrim, discovered traditional musicians with the skill of a detective, promoted their careers with the zeal of an ideologue and guarded their work with the care of a historian, died on Friday at an assisted living facility in San Rafael, Calif. He was 91.The cause was congestive heart failure, his brother, Hubert, said.Mr. Strachwitz (pronounced STRACK-wits) specialized in music passed down over generations — cotton-field music, orange-orchard music, mountain music, bayou music, barroom music, porch music. The songs came not only from before the era of the music industry but even from before the existence of mass culture itself.Like other leading musical folklorists of the modern recording era — among them Moses Asch, Alan Lomax and Harry Smith — Mr. Strachwitz rescued parts of that history before they vanished.But the extent of his devotion and the idiosyncrasy of his passions defy comparison.Mr. Strachwitz was the founder of Arhoolie Records (the name comes from a term for field hollers). In addition to recruiting his own artists, he did his own field recordings, music editing, production, liner notes, advertising and sales. In the company’s early years, he affixed the labels to the records and mailed them himself.He was a lifelong bachelor who said that having a family would have thwarted his career. On his journeys around the country to record new music, he had for company a manually operated orange juicer and 20-pound bags of oranges. The targets of his search included a highway grass cutter, a gravedigger and a janitor, all of whose musical talents were at the time basically unknown.He emigrated from Germany after growing up as a teenage count under Nazi rule and went on to explore the fullest reaches of American pluralism. He took an interest not just in the standard roots repertory of folk and blues, but also in norteño, Cajun, zydeco, klezmer, Hawaiian steel guitar, Ukrainian fiddle, Czech polka and Irish dance music, among countless other genres.To account for what united his passions, Mr. Strachwitz said he liked music that was “pure,” “hard-core” and “old-timey,” particularly if one of the musicians had a “spark.” His language grew more colorful when he defined his type of music negatively.“It ain’t wimpy, that’s for sure,” he said in a 2014 documentary about him. The movie took its title from Mr. Strachwitz’s ultimate insult, which he used to refer to anything that he considered commercial, artificial and soulless: “This Ain’t No Mouse Music!”The first Arhoolie album, released in 1960, was “Texas Sharecropper and Songster,” by the blues singer Mance Lipscomb. It vaulted Mr. Lipscomb into prominence during the 1960s folk revival.The first Arhoolie record, released in 1960, was “Texas Sharecropper and Songster,” by the blues singer Mance Lipscomb. Mr. Lipscomb’s music had never been recorded, and the new release vaulted him into prominence during the 1960s folk revival. Mr. Strachwitz went on to help revive the careers of other blues singers, including Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Big Mama Thornton.As both a record executive and a record collector, he made a particularly profound historical contribution to norteño, music from the Texas-Mexico border. The Smithsonian Institution last year called his archive of Mexican and Mexican American music “the largest collection of commercially produced vernacular recordings of its kind in existence,” noting that it contained many records that are “irreplaceable.”It was the result of about 60 years of collecting — yet Mr. Strachwitz never learned to speak Spanish. Norteño musicians nicknamed him El Fanático.Mr. Strachwitz might have been considered a preservationist, but he also shaped the worlds that he documented. That was particularly true of his recordings of Cajun musicians In 2000, the rock historian Ed Ward wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Strachwitz “helped prod the culture into what is now a full-blown renaissance.”Perhaps his most notable discovery in Louisiana was Clifton Chenier, who became known as the leading exponent of the mix of rhythm and blues, soul and Cajun music known as zydeco. During a visit to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival as an older man, Mr. Chenier discussed his frustrations with the record industry.“They wanted you to do what they wanted you to do, and I didn’t like that,” Mr. Chenier said. “Then I met Chris.”Mr. Strachwitz with Clifton Chenier, who was known as the king of zydeco. Other record companies “wanted you to do what they wanted you to do, and I didn’t like that,” Mr. Chenier said. “Then I met Chris.”via Arhoolie FoundationMainstream musicians also saw something exceptional in Mr. Strachwitz. In a 2010 profile of Mr. Strachwitz in The Times, the guitarist Ry Cooder said that Arhoolie’s second release, “Tough Times,” an LP by the blues musician Big Joe Williams, “started me on a path of living, the path I am still on.”Christian Alexander Maria Strachwitz was born on July 1, 1931, in Berlin. He grew up on a country estate called Gross Reichenau, located in what was then the Lower Silesia region of Germany (it is now a village called Bogaczow in southwest Poland). His father, Alexander Graf Strachwitz, and his mother, Friederike (von Bredow) Strachwitz, ran a vegetable and grain farm of about a couple hundred acres. The men of the family had the royal title of count.The family lived in a manor originally built during the time of Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia. The Nazis appointed Chris’s father a local game warden, and during World War II he joined the military and attained the rank of captain, though Hubert Strachwitz said his service was limited to escorting troop transports bound for Italy. On the family’s bucolic ancestral property, the war seemed far away to young Chris.That changed in February 1945. The family fled as the Russians invaded the estate. Chris and two of his sisters had left shortly beforehand on a train; his father escaped in a horse and buggy; Hubert, Chris’s other two sisters and his mother left on a tractor-trailer. Thanks to a wealthy relative in the United States, the family was able to reunite in Reno, Nev., by 1947.Chris served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956. Soon after being honorably discharged, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He taught high school German in the suburbs of San Jose for several years.In his free time, Mr. Strachwitz collected records, and he developed a particular interest in Lightnin’ Hopkins, whom he struggled to learn more about. There was no public information about whether Mr. Hopkins was even still alive.Mr. Strachwitz going through the Arhoolie archives in El Cerrito, Calif., in 2010.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn 1959, a fellow music enthusiast told Mr. Strachwitz that he had found the bluesman in Houston. When the school year ended, Mr. Strachwitz went on a road trip.He later recalled that he found Mr. Hopkins playing in “a little beer joint” — improvising songs in a conversational style, telling a woman in the crowd to quiet down, wondering in song about the man from California who had traveled all the way to Texas “to hear poor Lightnin’ sing.”Mr. Strachwitz believed that nobody had ever recorded a scene like that live. Following a tip from one of Mr. Hopkins’s songs, he returned to Texas the next year and found Mr. Lipscomb. This time, he brought a recorder.Meeting musicians where they lived and recording them where they liked to play, rather than in a studio, became Mr. Strachwitz’s signature style.He found unexpected commercial success when Country Joe and the Fish performed their “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” at Woodstock in 1969. Joe McDonald, the band’s lead singer and principal songwriter, had used Mr. Strachwitz’s equipment to record the song back in 1965 and given him publishing rights in exchange. With his share of the royalties, Mr. Strachwitz put a down payment on a building in El Cerrito, Calif., near Berkeley, that became the home of Arhoolie and a record outlet he called the Down Home Music Store.Aside from recording music, he drew attention to the artists he loved by collaborating with the filmmaker Les Blank on several music documentaries.As the record industry declined, Mr. Strachwitz focused on a nonprofit arm of Arhoolie that digitizes and exhibits his singular record collection. In 2016, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the nonprofit label of the Smithsonian Institution, acquired the Arhoolie catalog.In addition to his brother, Mr. Strachwitz is survived by three sisters, Rosy Schlueter, Barbara Steward and Frances Strachwitz.There was one word Mr. Strachwitz often used to describe success in his field. When he found an aged master of traditional music playing a song at a resonant time and place, he called it, as if he were hunting butterflies, a “catch.” More