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      How Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Conquered the World

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      The pop star’s record-breaking, career-spanning show has dominated the summer, commanding attention and whipping up demand at a level thought unachievable in a fragmented age.As Taylor Swift rolled into Los Angeles this week, the frenzy surrounding her record-breaking Eras Tour was already in high gear.Headlines gushed that she had given $100,000 bonuses to her crew. Politicians asked her to postpone her concerts in solidarity with striking hotel workers. Scalped tickets were going for $3,000 and up. And there were way, way too many friendship bracelets to count.These days, the center of an otherwise splintered music world can only be Taylor Swift.The pop superstar’s tour, which is now finishing its initial North American leg with six nights at SoFi Stadium outside Los Angeles, has been a both a business and a cultural juggernaut. Swift’s catalog of generation-defining hits and canny marketing sense have helped her achieve a level of white-hot demand and media saturation not seen since the 1980s heyday of Michael Jackson and Madonna — a dominance that the entertainment business had largely accepted as impossible to replicate in the fragmented 21st century.“The only thing I can compare it to is the phenomenon of Beatlemania,” said Billy Joel, who attended Swift’s show in Tampa, Fla., with his wife and young daughters.In a summer of tours by stars like Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Morgan Wallen and Drake, Swift’s stands apart, in numbers and in media noise. Although Swift, 33, and her promoters do not publicly report box-office figures, the trade publication Pollstar estimated that she has been selling about $14 million in tickets each night. By the end of the full world tour, which is booked with 146 stadium dates well into 2024, Swift’s sales could reach $1.4 billion or more — exceeding Elton John’s $939 million for his multiyear farewell tour, the current record-holder.Swift has now had more No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 over the course of her career than any other woman, surpassing Barbra Streisand. With the tour lifting Swift’s entire body of work, she has placed 10 albums on that chart this year and is the first living artist since the trumpeter and bandleader Herb Alpert in 1966 to have four titles in the Top 10 at the same time.“It’s a pretty amazing feat,” Alpert, 88, said in a phone interview. “With the way radio is these days, and the way music is distributed, with streaming, I didn’t think anyone in this era could do it.”But how did a concert tour become so much more: fodder for gossip columns, the subject of weather reports, a boon for friendship-bracelet beads — the unofficial currency of Swiftie fandom — and the reason nobody could get a hotel room in Cincinnati at the end of June?“She is the best C.E.O., and best chief marketing officer, in the history of music,” said Nathan Hubbard, a longtime music and ticketing executive who co-hosts a Swift podcast. “She is following people like Bono, Jay-Z and Madonna, who were acutely aware of their brands. But of all of them, Taylor is the first one to be natively online.”Swift on the opening night of her Eras Tour in Glendale, Ariz., on March 17.Cassidy Araiza for The New York TimesSwifties have chronicled the stream of celebrity fans who have turned up each night: Julia Roberts, the New York Jets’ new quarterback Aaron Rodgers, even Flavor Flav of Public Enemy. But Swift has also made each show a news event by adding two “surprise songs,” often with headline-grabbing guests. On the July day that she put out a music video featuring Taylor Lautner, an ex-boyfriend, the actor backflipped across the stage in Kansas City, Mo., and paid Swift effusive tribute — “not just for the singer you are,” Lautner said, “but for the human you are.” The crowd registered its approval with an earsplitting roar.The Taylorpalooza extends to every level of the news media, which began the coverage cycle by chronicling Swift’s ticketing fiasco last November, when fans — and scalpers’ bots — crushed Ticketmaster’s systems, leading to a heated Senate Judiciary hearing. Since then, seemingly no nugget of Swift news has escaped coverage, from the stars in the stands to oddities like a Seattle concert that, according to one researcher, shook the ground with an intensity equivalent to a 2.3-magnitude earthquake.Music critics have portrayed the Eras Tour as showing Swift at the top of her game as a media-savvy, big-tent talent, a pop star with a knack for grand spectacle as well as the polished artistry of a classic songwriter.Shania Twain, the country-pop star whose career in some ways prefigured Swift’s, caught the Las Vegas stop of the Eras Tour, a 44-plus song production that goes as long as three and a half hours. She praised Swift’s “beautiful balance” of high-tech stagecraft and intimate performance segments. “I have to applaud her,” Twain said in a telephone interview. “As a performer, I know that work that goes into it.”The power of Swift’s fan army — and fear of crossing the star, or even appearing to — has kept nearly all of the press about the tour sunny. Though some fans (and parents) balked at the ticket prices and challenges of securing seats, most frustration was directed squarely at Ticketmaster, not Swift. After a few weeks of headlines romantically linking Swift with a frontman some fans considered to be problematic, reports spread in the celebrity pages that they had split. (Swift’s representatives declined to comment for this article.)For fans, the shows are a pilgrimage, and a rediscovery of the joys of mass gatherings. Flights are packed with Swifties, and travelers trade stories and compare outfits — drawn from looks associated with Swift “eras” — in stadium corridors and parking lots. In Kansas City, the comedian Nikki Glaser was attending her eighth show, a commitment that she estimated has cost her $25,000.“This year I decided not to freeze my eggs,” Glaser said. “I’m going to put that money toward the thing I love most in the world, which is Taylor Swift.”Swift’s fans buy tour merchandise outside the stadium before a show in New Jersey.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesBefore Eras, Swift hadn’t been on tour since 2018. And her catalog has grown by seven No. 1 albums since then, fueled in part by three rerecorded “Taylor’s Versions” of her first LPs — a project hailed by Swift’s fans as a crusade to regain control of her music, though it is also an act of revenge after the sale of Swift’s former record label, a move that, she said, “stripped me of my life’s work.”“Folklore” and “Evermore” expanded her palate into fantastical indie-folk and brought new collaborators into the fold: Aaron Dessner from the band the National and Justin Vernon, a.k.a. Bon Iver, rock-world figures who helped attract new listeners.The other major tour this year that is enticing fans to book transcontinental flights, and to show up costumed and in rapture, is also by a woman: Beyoncé, 41, whose Renaissance tour is a fantasia of disco and retrofuturism. Like Swift, she is also a trailblazing artist-entrepreneur, maintaining tight control over her career and fostering a rich connection with fans online. Together with Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” a critique of the patriarchy told in hot pink, they are signs of powerful women ruling the discourse of pop culture.But in music, at least, the scale and success of Swift’s tour is without equal. Later this month, after completing 53 shows in the United States, she will kick off an international itinerary of at least 78 more before returning to North America next fall. Beyoncé’s full tour has 56 dates; Springsteen’s, 90. (Recently, Harry Styles wrapped a 173-date tour in arenas and stadiums, grossing about $590 million.)Outside Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, fans posed for selfies and shared their ticketing ordeals. Esmeralda Tinoco and Sami Cytron, 24-year-old former sorority sisters, said they had paid $645 for two seats. A stone’s throw away, Karlee Patrick and Emily DeGruson, both 18 and dressed as a pair in angel/devil costumes after a line in Swift’s “Cruel Summer,” sat “Taylorgating” at the edge of the parking lot; they said they had paid $100 for parking but couldn’t afford tickets.As Swift’s opening acts finished, the crowd rushed in. Glaser, the comedian, later said that of the eight shows she had been to, her favorites were the ones where she had brought her mother — and converted her to Swiftie fandom.“Everyone is in love with her,” Glaser said her mom told her after one show in Texas. “Now I get it.” More

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      Anna Netrebko Sues Met Opera After Losing Work Over Support of Putin

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      Seeking at least $360,000, the singer accused the storied opera house of discrimination, defamation and breach of contract. The company disputed her claims.The star Russian soprano Anna Netrebko filed a lawsuit on Friday against the Metropolitan Opera, seeking at least $360,000 in compensation for work she lost when the company parted ways with her after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Netrebko was fired by the Met last year after refusing to denounce Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, whom she had publicly supported in the years before the invasion. In the complaint, she accuses the Met of discriminating against her because she is Russian; of issuing “defamatory” statements about her in the press; and of breaching contracts by not paying her for some lost work.The Met disputed her claims. “Ms. Netrebko’s lawsuit has no merit,” the company said in a statement.Netrebko has in recent months taken aim at the Met, filing a complaint last year through the American Guild of Musical Artists, the union representing opera performers.In February, an arbitrator in that dispute ordered the Met to pay her more than $200,000 for 13 canceled performances because of a contractual agreement known as “pay or play,” which requires institutions to pay performers even if they later decide not to engage them. The Met had argued that Ms. Netrebko was not entitled to payment because of her refusal to comply with the company’s demand that she denounce Mr. Putin, which the company said had violated its conduct clause.Still, the arbitrator refused Ms. Netrebko’s request for an additional $400,000 in fees for engagements in coming seasons that had been discussed but not formally agreed to, including leading roles in Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” and “Tosca,” as well as Verdi’s “Macbeth” and Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades.” Ms. Netrebko was earning the Met’s current fee for top artists of about $15,000 a performance.The complaint filed by Ms. Netrebko on Friday said that the Met still owed her most of those additional fees, as well as compensation for emotional distress and damage to her reputation. The complaint accuses the Met and its general manager, Peter Gelb, who has been critical of Ms. Netrebko in the news media, of leading a “defamatory crusade” against her.The suit notes that even after she publicly stated that she opposed the war, Mr. Gelb spoke with her on the phone and asked her to specifically denounce Mr. Putin. “Gelb indicated that if Netrebko issued such a statement, the Met would continue its relationship with her,” the suit said. “Netrebko responded that, as a Russian citizen, she could not make such a statement.”The complaint is the latest effort by Netrebko, a major star and box-office draw, to rehabilitate her image. Netrebko still has a busy international performing schedule, largely in Europe. But since the invasion, she has faced cancellations and protests elsewhere, including in the United States and parts of Asia.She has struggled to get beyond questions about her past support for Putin. She endorsed him for president in 2012, and has spoken glowingly about him over the years. And in 2014, when she donated to an opera house in Donetsk, a war-torn city in Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists, she was photographed holding a separatist flag.Since the invasion, Ms. Netrebko has sought to distance herself from Putin, saying they have only met a few times.Mr. Gelb has defended the Met’s decision to cut ties with Ms. Netrebko and other artists who have voiced support for Mr. Putin. “It’s more important than ever that our position does not change,” he said earlier this year, “until the war is won by Ukraine.”Kirsten Noyes contributed research. More

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      Leny Andrade, ‘First Lady of Brazilian Jazz,’ Dies at 80

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      With her soulful, cigarette-tinged contralto and emotive “bossa-jazz” stylings, she mesmerized audiences and critics alike.Leny Andrade, the Brazilian singer who earned an international following with her soulful fusion of samba, bossa nova and American jazz and whom Tony Bennett once called the Ella Fitzgerald of Brazil, died on July 24 in Rio de Janeiro. She was 80.Her death, in a hospital, from pneumonia, was confirmed in a statement by a Rio retirement home for artists where she was living. She had also been treated for Lewy body dementia.Often referred to as “the first lady of Brazilian jazz,” Ms. Andrade (pronounced ahn-DRAH-jay) rose from the clubs of Rio, where she performed as a teenager, to forge a six-decade career, recording more than 35 albums as a pioneer of what she came to call bossa-jazz.In 2007, Ms. Andrade won a Latin Grammy Award for “Ao Vivo,” a live album with the celebrated Brazilian pianist César Camargo Mariano.“Leny is one of the greatest improvisers in the world,” Mr. Bennett, who died last month, once said. “I love the way she sings. She is an original.”Singing largely in Portuguese, Ms. Andrade brought a richness and emotional depth to icily cool bossa nova tracks, pulse-quickening sambas and soulful ballads, which she infused with a world-weary sultriness.In a review of her American debut in 1983 at the Blue Note jazz club in New York, John S. Wilson of The New York Times praised the emotive power she brought to “Cantador,” a ballad in the intense Edith Piaf tradition. “Miss Andrade sings it in a darker, softer voice than Piaf’s,” he wrote, “with a dramatic effect that comes through even to a listener who doesn’t understand Portuguese.”Ms. Andrade’s career took off in the United States in 1993 after she moved to New York, where she became a popular draw, performing at Birdland and other clubs, sometimes with Mr. Bennett and Liza Minnelli in the audience. The following year, she played at Lincoln Center as well as the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.Her voice, a deep, woody contralto with a seen-it-all air, carried a hint of a rasp from her long love affair with cigarettes. The overall effect could be mesmerizing.“To describe Ms. Andrade as both the Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald of bossa nova only goes so far in evoking a performer whose voice seems to contain the body and soul of Brazil,” Stephen Holden wrote when reviewing a 2008 New York club performance in The Times.“You may think you know ‘The Girl From Ipanema,’” he continued, but “you haven’t really absorbed it until you’ve heard Ms. Andrade sing it in Portuguese; disgorge might be a better word than sing, since, like everything else she performs, it seems to well up from the center of the earth.”For Ms. Andrade, singing brought sustenance. “My soul is everything I can offer the public,” she said in a 2013 interview with the Brazilian music site Esquina Musical. “When I open my mouth, any pain goes away. I sing without fear. My friends and enemies embrace me.”“When I sing,” she added, “I embark on a magic carpet out of here. I travel to Mars.”Leny de Andrade Lima was born in Rio on Jan. 26, 1943. Her father, Luiz de Oliveira Lima, and mother, Ruth Couto de Andrade, divorced when Leny was young. She grew up in Méier, a neighborhood in the city’s North Zone, a hotbed of samba.Mr. Andrade’s debut album, from 1961, drew from a moody samba sound of an earlier era. RCA VictorAt the urging of her mother, Ms. Andrade studied classical piano and singing starting at age 6. She earned a scholarship to the Brazilian Conservatory of Music. Beethoven and Brahms, however, were not her destiny.She became entranced with bossa nova (“new wave” in Portuguese), which fused traditional Brazilian rhythms with American jazz, as it emerged from the beaches of Brazil in the late 1950s. She was also influenced by the samba stylings of the popular Brazilian singer Dolores Durán.“I showed my piano diploma to my mother,” she said in a 2013 interview on Brazilian television, and told her, “‘Forget about opera, classical music. I will sing popular music — because of Dolores Durán.’”Her professional career began at 15, performing at dances with the bandleader Perminio Goncalves, chaperoned by her stepfather, Gustavo Paulo da Silva, since she was still a minor.She later sang with the Sérgio Mendes Trio, a jazz combo, before Mr. Mendes took his detour to international pop stardom with his band Brasil 66. “He said he hated samba; he didn’t play it,” Ms. Andrade told Esquina Musical. “And I said the same about jazz. But we ended up giving in and mixing the two.”She came to embrace jazz and its improvisational wordless singing style known as scat. (In his 1983 Times review, Mr. Wilson praised her scatting “agility that approaches Ella Fitzgerald.”)In 1961, Ms. Andrade released her first album, “A Sensação,” for RCA, moodily drawing from the samba of an earlier era. She hit her stride two years later, fusing bossa nova with traditional jazz on “A Arte Maior de Leny Andrade,” on Polydor.She was married briefly when she was younger and never had children. Information about survivors was not immediately available.As a jazz singer, Ms. Andrade never enjoyed roaring commercial success, but that fact did not disturb her. “I don’t make music for the masses,” she told Esquina Musical. “They don’t have the ability to understand my work. Bad stuff is not in my repertoire.”Flávia Milhorance contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro More

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      A (Sad) Playlist for the 2023 New York Mets

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      Fifteen songs that tell the tale of a rough season.It’s impossible for Mr. Met to look sad, but trust us, he would at this point in the season if he could.Frank Franklin Ii/Associated PressDear listeners,This week, there has been joy neither in Mudville nor in Queens — home of the New York Mets, a team enjoying a catastrophically disappointing 2023 season.The Mets began the year with high hopes for a deep postseason run and with an even higher payroll (somewhere near $350 million before luxury tax payments, making them the most expensive baseball team in history). But after Tuesday’s trade deadline, at which point the Mets had a 50-55 win-loss record, the organization all but gave up on 2023, trading away most of their best pitchers and a few sluggers to boot, in exchange for a bunch of admittedly exciting young prospects who will nonetheless probably not blossom until at least (gulp) 2025. The remaining Mets responded by losing three games in a row to the Kansas City Royals, currently one of the worst teams in M.L.B., but also — a little more salt in the wound, please — the very team to which they lost the World Series in 2015.Suffice to say, I’ve not been listening to a lot of happy music the past few days.In his highly entertaining 2021 book “So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin’ True Story of the New York Mets — The Best Worst Team in Sports,” the journalist Devin Gordon writes, “There is a difference between being bad and being gifted at losing, and this distinction holds the key to understanding the true magic of the New York Mets.” Yet again, the Mets have fulfilled that reputation and somehow found a novel way to fail, in the process inventing an entirely new flavor of pain to inflict upon its fan base. It’s honestly kind of impressive.As any librettist or opera composer knows, some tragedies are so grand that they must be expressed in music. And though I am but a humble newsletter writer, I know this, too. So here it is: a playlist for the 2023 Mets.You will not hear Timmy Trumpet (the man behind the triumphant entrance music for our closer, who was injured in freakish fashion in March) on this playlist. You will hear the Smiths, as the 2023 mood is closer to sumptuous anguish. You’ll also hear classics from the Who, David Bowie and Talking Heads, alongside newer songs from Palehound and the long-suffering Mets fans Yo La Tengo.You don’t need to root for the Mets, or even like baseball, to listen to this playlist. Actually, if you don’t, it will work as a primer to help you understand the complicated tale of woe that is the Mets’ 2023 season. But if it somehow compels you to devote yourself to the orange and blue, I offer you a hearty welcome. Misery loves company.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. The Smiths: “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”Though it is possible to describe the psyche of a Mets fan in a playlist comprised entirely of Smiths songs — “Panic,” “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want,” “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby” — the title of this jangly ditty from 1984 sums things up pretty succinctly. (Listen on YouTube)2. Peggy Lee: “Big Spender”When the billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen bought the Mets in 2020, he became the wealthiest owner in the M.L.B. Going into the 2023 season, he clearly wasn’t afraid to spend, or pay the luxury tax. As a result, he assembled the most expensive roster in baseball history. What could possibly go wrong? I’m sure Peggy Lee, in this snappy 1966 rendition of a showstopper from “Sweet Charity,” couldn’t possibly guess! (Listen on YouTube)3. The Magnetic Fields: “Come Back From San Francisco”“Come back from San Francisco, it can’t be all that pretty when all of New York City misses you,” Shirley Simms sings on this 1999 song by the Magnetic Fields — a sentiment shared by some New Yorkers earlier this season when former Mets and current Giants like Michael Conforto, J.D. Davis and Wilmer Flores all got off to hot starts just as the Mets’ bats started going cold. (It’s also a sentiment plenty of older New Yorkers still feel about the Giants organization itself.) (Listen on YouTube)4. The Big Bopper: “Chantilly Lace”At least Pete Alonso was hitting some very big bops at an astounding pace — 20 home runs by the end of May. As the Big Bopper would say, “Hello, baaaaby!” (Listen on YouTube)5. David Bowie: “Boys Keep Swinging”Indeed they did — whether or not they were making contact with the ball. If only they were having as much fun as Bowie on this 1979 glam-pop gem. (Listen on YouTube)6. The Who: “The Kids Are Alright”An undeniable bright spot for the 2023 team has been the offensive prowess of a group of very young rookies who earned the nickname “The Baby Mets”: the 23-year-old infielders Mark Vientos and Brett Baty; and the 21-year-old catcher Francisco Álvarez, who at press time had hit more home runs this year than any other catcher in baseball. The kids are all right! (Listen on YouTube)7. Palehound: “Eye on the Bat”“Suckers will all tell you to keep watching for the ball, but we know better than that,” Palehound’s El Kempner sings. “Keep your eye on the bat.” Good song from a recently released album I’ve been enjoying; bad advice for the New York Mets. (Listen on YouTube)8. SZA featuring Ty Dolla Sign: “Hit Different”I began to wish they would. (Listen on YouTube)9. The Everly Brothers: “June Is as Cold as December”Brrr. The Mets won just seven games and lost 19 in June — a month so disastrous that The Athletic’s Tim Britton wrote an article asking, “Did the Mets just complete their worst month in franchise history?” This being the Mets, though, he found plenty of others, writing, “Note that this is a non-exhaustive list. There are other very bad months that did not make the cut.” (Listen on YouTube)10. Smokey Robinson & the Miracles: “A Fork in the Road”Another silver lining, though, was the 30-year-old Japanese pitcher Kodai Senga — making his M.L.B. debut this season with the Mets — and his elusive signature pitch, the “ghost fork,” named for the way it suddenly disappears from the strike zone. (Listen on YouTube)11. Yo La Tengo: “Fallout”It wouldn’t be a Mets playlist without some Yo La Tengo. The long-running New Jersey indie-rock band is named after a great, if possibly apocryphal, story involving the former Mets Richie Ashburn and Elio Chacón, and this year the band’s Ira Kaplan threw out the first pitch at a Mets game. The title of its latest album, which features the fuzzy single “Fallout,” also expresses a sentiment that is relatable to many Mets fans: “This Stupid World.” (Listen on YouTube)12. Ace Frehley: “New York Groove”The Mets play this stomping, irresistibly catchy glam-rock tune — written by the British producer Russ Ballard, but popularized by the native New Yorker Ace Frehley — after every home game that they win. So for a hopeful moment in July, when the team kicked off the month with a six-game winning streak, it was a song that actually got some play. (Listen on YouTube)13. Talking Heads: “Burning Down the House”But it wasn’t enough. As the trade deadline neared, the team began selling off some of its most valuable assets: First, the closer David Robertson and the starting pitcher Max Scherzer. Then, at the trade deadline on Tuesday, they just started burning down the house. Baseball’s most expensive roster ever had officially gone bust. Here’s your ticket; pack your bags. (Listen on YouTube)14. George Strait: “All My Ex’s Live in Texas”And now ours do, too: Scherzer has joined Jacob deGrom on the Texas Rangers, while Justin Verlander has returned to his former team, the Houston Astros. George Strait, I now know how you felt when you recorded this 1987 hit. (Listen on YouTube)15. Hot Chocolate: “You Sexy Thing”And yet … at least technically, the season is not over. Rooting for the Mets means ya gotta believe in miracles. (Listen on YouTube)All the fans are true to the orange and blue,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“A (Sad) Playlist for the 2023 New York Mets” track listTrack 1: The Smiths, “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”Track 2: Peggy Lee, “Big Spender”Track 3: The Magnetic Fields, “Come Back From San Francisco”Track 4: The Big Bopper, “Chantilly Lace”Track 5: David Bowie, “Boys Keep Swinging”Track 6: The Who, “The Kids Are Alright”Track 7: Palehound, “Eye on the Bat”Track 8: SZA featuring Ty Dolla Sign, “Hit Different”Track 9: The Everly Brothers, “June Is as Cold as December”Track 10: Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, “A Fork in the Road”Track 11: Yo La Tengo, “Fallout”Track 12: Ace Frehley, “New York Groove”Track 13: Talking Heads, “Burning Down the House”Track 14: George Strait, “All My Ex’s Live in Texas”Track 15: Hot Chocolate, “You Sexy Thing”Bonus tracksIf you are curious how I came to devote my life to the perpetual misery that is Mets fandom, you’re in luck — I wrote an essay on that very topic last year, for the briefly shuttered and soon-to-be-revived magazine Bookforum. Viva la Mets! Viva la Bookforum!Also, I mentioned Devin Gordon’s delightful Mets book, so I would be remiss if I did not also recommend Gordon’s equally delightful 2018 New York Times Magazine profile of the Mets announcers Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez, and Ron Darling, “the Magi of Mets Nation.”And if you’re looking for new music, this week’s Friday Playlist features tracks from Mitski, Wilco, Jorja Smith and many more. More

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      Mitski’s Beautifully Moody Meditation, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jorja Smith, Towa Bird, Wilco and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Mitski, ‘Bug Like an Angel’Mitski has a gift for singing serenely about troubled thoughts and finding large implications in small images. That’s what she does in “Bug Like an Angel,” a song from her next album, “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We,” due Sept. 15. That bug is stuck to the bottom of a glass — which makes her reflect, in turn, on drinking and a relationship gone stale. The song is subdued and moody, mostly just Mitski and four guitar chords. But when she gets to a life lesson, suddenly a choir appears, as if there’s a chance of redemption after all. JON PARELESTowa Bird, ‘This Isn’t Me’The singer, songwriter and guitarist Towa Bird evokes feelings of social alienation on “This Isn’t Me,” a single from her forthcoming debut album. Out of place at the sort of gathering where there’s “a special spoon for caviar,” she sings in a lilting melody, “Sycophants and luxury, everyone’s a somebody, and I wish you were here with me.” Her vocal delivery is breathy and muted, but beneath that, her nimble guitar playing expresses her inner rage. LINDSAY ZOLADZJorja Smith, ‘Go Go Go’“Go Go Go” isn’t a cheer — it’s a command, as an increasingly fed-up Jorja Smith decides, “I don’t know you that well/And I’m not trying to get to know you,” soon adding, “You gotta go.” Her voice ricochets off a backbeat that’s both pushy and lean, defined by a bare-bones, Police-like trio of drums, rhythm guitar and occasional bass, for a jumping, unapologetic heave-ho. PARELESPost Malone, ‘Joy’Post Malone — despite his face tattoos — has emerged as an old-fashioned rock songwriter, reaching for hooks. He’s also deeply committed to self-pity. “The harder I try/The more I become miserable/The higher I fly, the lower I go,” he sings in the ironically titled “Joy,” a bonus track added to his latest album, “Austin.” The beat pushes ahead, with a bass line that pulses like a 1980s Cure track, but Post Malone stays proudly mired. A choir arrives at the end to savor the word “miserable.” PARELESWilco, ‘Evicted’“Am I ever gonna see you again?” Jeff Tweedy wonders in “Evicted,” a low-key preview of Wilco’s album due Sept. 29, “Cousin.” Apparently not: “I’m evicted from your heart/I deserve it,” he confesses. With a new producer, Cate Le Bon, what starts as basic Wilco country-rock — steady-chugging piano, strummed acoustic guitar — gathers a shimmery psychedelic aura while the singer’s despair deepens. PARELESHalle, ‘Angel’Halle Bailey — half of the sister duo Chloe x Halle — contrasts celestial perfection with earthly travail in “Angel,” a somber but determined self-affirmation that fuses the church and R&B. “Won’t let the troubles of the world come weigh me down,” she vows. When she sings, “Some might hate and they wait on your fall/They don’t know there’s a grace for it all,” it could well be her dignified response to the racist backlash she received for starring as Ariel in the live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid.” Quasi-classical piano arpeggios roll through the song, and Halle’s tremulous voice leaps up to high soprano notes as she declares herself to be an angel, “perfectly a masterpiece” even with flaws and scars. PARELESNite Bjuti, ‘Singing Bones’Spirit, conjure, necromancy and memory seem to be some of the grounding ideas behind “Nite Bjuti,” the eponymous debut album from a new collective trio (pronounced “Night Beauty”) featuring the vocalist Candice Hoyes, the turntablist and percussionist Val Jeanty and the bassist Mimi Jones. They improvised all 11 tracks in the studio; by the last one, “Singing Bones,” Hoyes is inviting the dead to rise. Over a spare, electronic, six-beat rhythm from Jeanty and a plump, syncopated pattern from Jones’s electric bass, Hoyes almost whispers, then croons: “Rise up, singing bones/Shake yourself together.” Then the song is over, almost before it began. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLODamon Locks & Rob Mazurek, ‘Yes!’“New Future City Radio,” the first duo album from two longtime collaborators, the multidisciplinary artist Damon Locks and the trumpeter Rob Mazurek, was imagined as a pirate radio broadcast from the future. Or maybe from an alternate version of now, where a group of everyday anarchists might still have a fighting chance at repossessing a stray radio frequency. The music is about perception, not optimism. On “Yes!,” a slyly swinging drum loop clangs along beneath a cropped synth sample, until the music cuts out momentarily and Locks enunciates: “They got you where they want you: nowhere/Shrouded in confusion, grasping at straws.” The beat reappears. “When you’re living like this, you can’t envision/Blind to possibility, this is where the plan kicks in.” This album is supposed to make you long for another world, but like a good radio broadcast it also works well as background or ambience — putting questions in your head that you can’t articulate, without elbowing everything else out of your brain. RUSSONELLOKany García and Carin Leon, ‘Te Lo Agradezco’The Puerto Rican singer and songwriter Kany García has lately been dabbling in regional Mexican music; she had a hit 2022 duet, “El Siguiente,” with the Mexican singer Christian Nodal. Now she has another one: “Te Lo Agradezco” (“I Appreciate It”) with Carin Leon, a Mexican singer and songwriter who leans into the drama with tremolos and breaking notes. The song is a furious exchange of accusations, though they are sometimes shared in close harmony; apparently there were lies and betrayal on both sides. The arrangement stays elegant — with a sousaphone bass line, mariachi horns, a guitar obbligato and a hovering pedal steel guitar — while the singers battle. PARELESUsher, Summer Walker and 21 Savage, ‘Good Good’The world is full of scorched-earth breakup songs, but on “Good Good,” Usher, Summer Walker and 21 Savage team up for something considerably rarer: a song about staying on decent terms with an ex. “We ain’t good-good, but we still good,” Usher sings benevolently on the hook, while Walker echoes the sentiment, adding, “We’re happier apart than locked in.” But it’s 21 Savage who makes perhaps the most generous offer: “If you wanna open up a new salon,” he raps, “I’d still help pay for the wigs.” ZOLADZJonathan Suazo, ‘Don’t Take Kindly’Everything on the saxophonist and composer Jonathan Suazo’s new LP, “Ricano” — which finds him mining the intersections between his Puerto Rican and Dominican bloodlines — seems to be spilling energy out the top. This is richly built, effusively played Latin jazz, written from the heart and packed with complexity, always seeking the next level of altitude. On “Don’t Take Kindly,” as Tanicha López sings in billowy open vowel sounds and long, held tones, the ensemble’s three percussionists play around with a rhythm based in Puerto Rican bomba, while Suazo’s alto saxophone douses them in minor blues. RUSSONELLOKnoel Scott featuring Marshall Allen, ‘Les Funambules’The swing is righteously loose and steamy on “Les Funambules,” from “Celestial,” the debut studio album from Knoel Scott, a longtime saxophonist and flutist with the Sun Ra Arkestra. On “Celestial,” Scott’s acoustic quartet is augmented by a special guest: the explosive alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, 99, who has led the Arkestra since Ra’s death. “Les Funambules” means “the tightrope walkers,” but nobody walks a tightrope like this: going every direction at once, limbs kicking out. But the title fits. As Scott and Allen’s saxes trill in wild harmony, you can feel a sense of balance in motion, of poise and danger and control. RUSSONELLO More

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      The Opera Star David Daniels’s Sexual Assault Trial: What to Know

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      The countertenor and his husband, Scott Walters, each face a charge of aggravated sexual assault in Texas.Update: Just as the trial was set to begin on Friday, David Daniels and his husband, Scott Walters, pleaded guilty to sexual assault of an adult, a second-degree felony, after reaching a deal that will spare them jail time.The opera star David Daniels, one of the world’s leading countertenors, is expected to go on trial in Houston this week over charges that he sexually assaulted a young singer after a performance there in 2010.Mr. Daniels and his husband, Scott Walters, were arrested and charged with sexual assault in 2019 in connection to an incident in which the singer, Samuel Schultz, said he was drugged and assaulted by the couple, according to charging documents filed at the time by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in Texas. Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walters have denied the accusations, saying they had consensual sex with Mr. Schultz.Mr. Daniels is one of the most prominent classical stars to face criminal charges during the national #MeToo reckoning. His performing career has suffered since the arrest, and he was fired from his position as a tenured professor of voice at the University of Michigan in 2020.Opening arguments are scheduled to begin in Houston on Friday morning. Mr. Daniels, 57, and Mr. Walters, 40, each face one felony count of aggravated sexual assault.Here’s what you need to know.Who is David Daniels?Mr. Daniels rose to fame as a countertenor, singing high parts that were once the province of castratos or mezzo-sopranos. He appeared on many of the world’s leading stages, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Royal Opera House in London.He was featured on the cover of music magazines and released numerous recordings, and was known in particular for his performances of Handel, starring in productions of his operas “Rinaldo,” “Giulio Cesare,” “Rodelinda,” “Radamisto” and others. His success helped propel new interest in countertenors, and when he and Mr. Walters were married in 2014, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an avid opera fan, officiated.Who is Samuel Schultz?Mr. Schultz, a baritone who is now 36, was a 23-year-old graduate student at Rice University, in Houston, at the time of the encounter with Mr. Daniels. He went public with an accusation of rape in 2018 amid the #MeToo movement — first anonymously, in an online post, and then naming Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walters as his attackers in an interview with The New York Daily News.Mr. Schultz later became an officer at the American Guild of Musical Artists, the union representing American opera performers, but he resigned in 2020, citing concerns that the union had kept details of its sexual harassment investigation of the opera star Plácido Domingo confidential as part of negotiations for a $500,000 settlement from Domingo.What is Mr. Daniels accused of?Mr. Schultz has accused the two men of assaulting him in May 2010 after he went to hear Mr. Daniels in Handel’s “Xerxes” at Houston Grand Opera.Mr. Schultz has said he was introduced to Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walters by a friend. After attending the performance and cast party, Mr. Schultz has said he was invited to Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walters’s apartment. There, he said, he was given a drink that caused him to lose consciousness. He has said that he awoke alone, naked and bleeding from the rectum.What has each side said about the accusations?Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walters have repeatedly described the encounter as consensual. They say Mr. Schultz drove himself to their apartment after they attended several parties together.“David and Scott are innocent of any wrongdoing,” their lawyer, Matt Hennessy, said in a statement in 2019. “Sam Schultz is not a victim. He never would have gotten this much attention from his singing, and he knows and resents that fact. He waited eight years to complain about adult, consensual sex to ride the #MeToo movement to unearned celebrity. We will fight this.”Mr. Hennessy did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Schultz has said that he had been afraid to come forward with the accusations, worried it would hurt his career, and that he had told his family, his therapist and some friends about what happened at the time.“I am pleased that finally, after several lengthy delays, I will get my day in court and hope that justice will be served,” Mr. Schultz said in a statement this week. “I look forward to testifying and having a jury hear the evidence of the case.”What have the authorities said about the case?A Houston police officer, D.H. Escobar, wrote in the charging documents that he had found Mr. Schultz to be “credible and reliable.” The officer said that he had met with a therapist Mr. Schultz consulted in 2010, and that her notes were consistent with what Mr. Schultz had told the police. The officer said he had also reviewed medical records that showed that Mr. Schultz had sought medical attention “as a result of the sexual assault” on June 1, 2010.John Donnelly, a spokesman for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, declined to comment on the case.Dianna Wray contributed reporting from Houston. More

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      Japan’s High School Baseball Tournament is the Sound of Summer

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      Created 75 years ago for the country’s prestigious high school baseball tournament, Yuji Koseki’s “The Crown Will Shine on You” stirs memories as it inspires new ones.In addition to being a starting pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays, Yusei Kikuchi is an accomplished karaoke crooner who is proud of his spirited version of the fight song of his former team in Japan, the Seibu Lions. Asked if he knew the words of a more popular song, “Eikan ha Kimi ni Kagayaku,” or “The Crown Will Shine on You,” during on an off day between starts, the competitor in him took over.Standing in full uniform at the visitor’s dugout in Minnesota, he smiled broadly and began singing in Japanese (loosely translated):As clouds dissipate, sunlight fills the skyOn this day especially, the pure white ball flies highAnswer the jubilation around you, oh our youthWith your smiles of sportsmanshipThe crown will shine on youAs cherry blossoms are to spring, “The Crown Will Shine on You” is the melody of summer in Japan. It was composed by Yuji Koseki in 1948 for the wildly popular National High School Baseball Championship. And on Sunday, as they have for the last 75 years, players from the 49 prefectural champions will march into Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya to open the single-elimination summer tournament, lifting their knees high and marching to Koseki’s song.“It’s the sound of summer,” Kikuchi said. “For sure, the sound of summer baseball. You don’t just hear it if you’re fortunate enough to advance to Koshien Stadium for the national tournament, it’s played throughout the prefectural rounds as you’re trying to advance to the national stage as a way to motivate you to play your best.”Kikuchi marched into Koshien Stadium as a sophomore and senior. Kenta Maeda, a starting pitcher for the Minnesota Twins, marched in as a sophomore.“It’s a melody that stays in your head,” Maeda said. “I think every Japanese person thinks of the summer baseball tournament when they hear it. For me, it reminds me of my high school years and making it there that one summer, for sure.”Koseki was born in 1909 in Fukushima, a small city 180 miles north of Tokyo. He joined Nippon Columbia, the licensee for the American label Columbia Records, as a composer in 1930. Despite having minimal interest in sports, he dabbled in team fight songs because the marching element appealed to him.He probably did not imagine that his career would become intertwined with Japan’s most popular sporting event.The annual event, which was created in 1915 as the National Middle School Championship Baseball Tournament, was halted for four years during World War II. Play resumed in 1946, and under Allied occupation Japan underwent many social and economic reforms. Among them was a revision of its education system that created a new, three-year curriculum called high school.For the annual summer baseball extravaganza at Koshien, this meant an official name change, denoting it as the National High School Baseball Championship, beginning with the 30th edition in 1948. To celebrate the change, organizers sponsored a national competition for a theme song. Koseki, who was 38 at the time, won.The champions from 49 prefectures compete at the annual tournament.Kyodo News, via Getty ImagesIn his autobiography, Koseki wrote that he drew inspiration from the end of the war — continuation of the tournament meant a continuation of peace. The soothing sounds of batted balls and youthful exuberance would replace the tension of blaring air raid sirens that had become commonplace.He wanted an uplifting, forward-thinking song. He explained his process.“For inspiration, I went to Koshien when it was completely empty and stood atop the mound,” Koseki wrote. “As I imagined what it would be like to be thrust into the emotions of fierce competition, the melody of the song sprung naturally into my mind. Standing on that mound was absolutely the right way to grasp it.”Koseki’s influence at Koshien Stadium goes beyond the tournament as well, because he also composed “Rokko Oroshi,” a fight song for the stadium’s home team, the Hanshin Tigers.Koseki was commissioned to compose the song when a professional league formed in 1936. Originally titled “Song of the Osaka Tigers,” the march has thrived as the longest continuing team fight song in Nippon Professional Baseball and is as synonymous with the Tigers as the team’s black-and-gold pinstriped uniform.“For inspiration, I went to Koshien when it was completely empty and stood atop the mound,” Yuji Koseki said of his inspiration to write “The Crown Will Shine on You.”The Asahi Shimbun, via Getty ImagesThe song has even developed a cultish following akin to Harry Caray’s rendition of “Take Me Out To The Ball Game,” which still has the Wrigley Field faithful clamoring for celebrity renditions during the seventh inning stretch 25 years after Caray’s passing.Countless musicians and celebrities have recorded versions of “Rokko Oroshi,” but perhaps the most famous came from one of Hanshin’s players. Tom O’Malley, a former Mets infielder, spent four years with Hanshin, hitting over .300 each season, but his most lasting impression came off the field.He recorded a version of “Rokko Oroshi” in Japanese and English in 1994. True to Caray, it appealed to the masses for being endearingly off-key. The original recording sold more than 100,000 copies and a remastered digital version was released in 2014, 18 years after O’Malley’s career in Japan ended.Koseki was inducted posthumously into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame last month for his musical contributions to both professional and amateur baseball. Twenty years earlier, he had received a far more surprising endorsement from Sadaharu Oh, who is Japan’s home run king and played for the rival Yomiuri Giants. Before the 2003 Japan Series, Oh, then managing the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks, was asked about the song he would once again be forced to hear as an opponent.“‘Rokko Oroshi’ actually has quite a nice rhythm and is a likable song,” Oh told reporters. “Even though it’s the opposition’s fight song, the truth is it inspires all of us. The fight songs Mr. Koseki composed have a way of uplifting all those who play sports.” More

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      Satchmo’s Wonderful World: Louis Armstrong Center Amplifies An Artist’s Vision

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      New jazz and exhibition spaces, and an inaugural show curated by Jason Moran, feature the trumpeter’s history, collaged onto the walls.You can find anything in Queens. And yet for decades, the Louis Armstrong House Museum has been a well-kept secret on a quiet street in Corona. The longtime residence of the famed jazz trumpeter, singer and bandleader, it is a midcentury interior design treasure hidden behind a modest brick exterior.The museum’s new extension, the 14,000 square foot Louis Armstrong Center, blends in a little less. It looks, in fact, a bit like a 1960s spaceship landed in the middle of a residential block. By design, it doesn’t tower over its neighboring vinyl-sided houses but, with its curvilinear roof, it does seem to want to envelop them. And behind its rippling brass facade lie some ambitious goals: to connect Armstrong as a cultural figure to fans, artists, historians and his beloved Queens community; to extend his civic and creative values to generations that don’t know how much his vision, and his very being, changed things. It wants, above all, to invite more people in.“The house is relatively small,” said Regina Bain, executive director of the House Museum and Center, speaking of the two-story dwelling where Armstrong lived with his wife, Lucille, from 1943 until his death in 1971. “But his legacy is humongous. And this is the building that will help us to launch that.”The Center, 25 years in development, includes exhibition, research and education areas, and, for events, a 75-seat performance space whose blond wood and intimacy recall Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, the Jazz at Lincoln Center venue.“I think that this will do something that we haven’t quite seen in a jazz space,” said Jason Moran, the jazz pianist and composer, who was the Center’s inaugural exhibition curator. “That’s also something that my community needs to witness, too. It needs to watch, how can we take care of an artist’s history? And what else can it unleash in a community that might not even care about the art, but might care about something else related to it? Armstrong gives us all those opportunities to do that.”The new Louis Armstrong Center in Corona, Queens, designed by Caples Jefferson Architects, whose roof recalls a grand piano. The architects wanted to give their blueprint the sense of joy that Armstrong brings in his voice and music.Albert Vercerka/EstoThe longtime residence of the jazz trumpeter, singer and bandleader Louis Armstrong is a midcentury interior design treasure hidden behind a modest brick exterior.Ike Edeani for The New York TimesFor the architects, Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson, the project was a puzzle in how to link two structures — the Center is across the street from the Armstrong House Museum — with the spirit of a musical legend. Their inspiration came by going back to the music, and to Armstrong’s street-level roots. “That kind of neighborhood that jazz actually emerged from — that wasn’t an elite creation, it was a popular creation,” Caples said. “And yet it was the music that revolutionized how we think, how we listen, how we think about nonmusical things, even.” They rounded the front of the Center to nod to the Armstrong house; its brass curtain echoes the color of his horn, and — the musically fluent may notice — the staggered hoop-shapes and columns in the entryway map out the notes of his most celebrated songs, like “What a Wonderful World” and “Dinah.”They also wanted to give their blueprint the sense of joy that Armstrong brings, the smile that you can feel in his singing voice. When they started the project, Jefferson called an uncle who’s a jazz saxophonist to ask — really, what made Armstrong so special? “And he said, you know, when you hear his music, you feel like dancing down the street,” Jefferson said.At the ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this summer, trumpeters performed on the Armstrong house balcony and, across the road, on the upper deck of the Center, a fanfare that started with the opening bars of “West End Blues” and ended with “It’s a Wonderful World.” “It was an incredible moment — the building participated as a reflector of sound back to the street,” Caples said. Afterward, schoolchildren were invited in to plonk around on a Steinway.Visitors in the interior of the Louis Armstrong Center, 25 years in development, includes exhibition, research and education areas and a performance space.Ike Edeani for The New York TimesOn display is Armstrong’s Selmer Trumpet, engraved mouthpiece and monogrammed handkerchief. The gold-plated trumpet was a gift from King George V.Ike Edeani for The New York TimesIke Edeani for The New York TimesBuilt on the site of a former parking lot, with $26 million in mostly state and local funding, the new Center encompasses Armstrong’s 60,000-piece archive, including 700 tapes that were once housed miles away at Queens College. From that collection, Moran has curated the first permanent exhibition, “Here to Stay,” with a multimedia, interactive centerpiece of audio, video, interviews and songs. There’s Armstrong’s gold-plated trumpet — a gift from King George V — complete with his favorite imported German lip balm and the mouthpiece inscribed “Satchmo,” his nickname — and his collage art. (He made hundreds of pieces, paper cutouts on tape cases.) His first and last passports, among the ephemera, show his evolution from New Orleans-born youth player to a global icon in a tuxedo and an irrepressible grin.Armstrong was himself a documentarian, traveling with cameras and recording equipment and turning the mic on himself, his friends and loved ones in private moments — telling jokes backstage, opining at home. As a Black artist with an elementary school education, who was born into segregation, he went on to hobnob with presidents and royalty and to meet the pope. “He really marks a way of being a public figure,” Moran said. “And he has to weigh how he does that. If he’s getting a chance not only to tell his story with his trumpet in his mouth but through these microphones, then what are the stories he wants to tell, not in public? Those become important.”Jason Moran, the jazz musician, curated the opening exhibition, “Here to Stay” at the new Louis Armstrong Center in Corona.Ike Edeani for The New York TimesOne place his vision is most evident is in his reel-to-reel tape box collages, rarely displayed publicly until now. Armstrong used them as an outlet for years.“If he has a press clipping, maybe it wasn’t favorable, he could cut it up and make a collage,” Moran said. A photo in the exhibition shows him, after a trip to Italy, pasting his art work on the ceiling of his den, fresco-style. (Lucille Armstrong, a former Cotton Club dancer who was his fourth wife, put a stop to that.)Moran recalled that when Armstrong talked about his process and why he liked making collages, he explained that with just the push-pull of material on a small canvas, you can change “the story that you were given.” It echoed his expertise as a musician, Moran said, learning how to play background, on the cornet, with King Oliver, his early mentor, or foreground as he redefined what it meant to be a soloist, upending his destiny along the way.The exhibition also has the artist Lorna Simpson in a video reflecting on Armstrong’s collages and how they compartmentalized an enormous and complex life into the manageable and portable square of a tape case. “Armstrong archives and recontextualizes his public life by hand, to be layered and collaged onto the walls of his private life,” she said.Most of Armstrong’s collages were made in the den of his Corona, Queens home, from reel-to-reel tape boxes. In the 1950s, his love of collage spilled onto the walls of his den, which he adorned with photographs, newspaper clippings, and anything else he had at hand, eventually covering portions of his ceiling.Ike Edeani for The New York TimesLouis Armstrong created over 500 collages as covers of his tape collection, generating a priceless art and music catalog. Left: The box for Reel 27 features a German publicity photo of the musician, a snapshot of an unidentified man and “Gems from Buenos Aires.” Center: Reel 18, a photograph of Armstrong preparing to dine and Bing Crosby’s Musical Autobiography album on Decca. Right: Reel 68, with a reproduction of a photo of him with his mother and sister in New Orleans.Ike Edeani for The New York TimesThe gallery display (by C & G Partners) is full of circular motifs, reminiscent of musical notes or records. In determining the palette for the Center, Jefferson and Caples, the architects, looked at Armstrong’s art and his wardrobe; his home, with rooms in shades of electric blue or creamy peach, was mostly styled by Lucille. But he loved it — especially the spaces with gilded or reflective surfaces. “So it gave us the cue that we should not be too mousy,” Caples said, “and that this was a public building where there could be some expansiveness.” The club space at the Center, which recently hosted a rehearsal of trumpeters for the Newport Jazz Festival’s Armstrong tribute — taking place this weekend in Rhode Island — is a vibrant red.Moran made sure there was a book from the Armstrongs’ vast collection in every vitrine. “They had that kind of political library that was investigating their role in society,” he said. (They also were creatures of their era: The full archives include Playboy anthologies and vintage diet recipes; a guide called “Lose Weight the Satchmo Way” — heavy on the lamb chops — is displayed in the exhibition.)Lucille and Louis Armstrong traveled the world with customized luggage. Left: Armstrong’s passport for his first tour of England in 1932. Under occupation, Armstrong listed himself as an “Actor and Musician.” Right: Armstrong’s final passport in 1967, after years of being “America’s Ambassador of Goodwill.”Ike Edeani for The New York TimesEven a longtime Armstrong devotee like Marquis Hill, one of the Newport trumpeters, was moved by these personal mementos. (He snapped a picture of the handwritten recipe for Armstrong’s favorite dish, red beans and rice.) A half-century-old recording of Armstrong discussing how important it was to listen to all kinds of music inspired a Hill composition for Newport, commissioned by the Center. Its jazz club, he said, is “going to be a new space for what Louis Armstrong wanted, to keep pushing the music forward.”As part of an artist in residence program this fall, the Grammy winning bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding will present her project with the choreographer Antonio Brown that explores the era when people danced to jazz. Rooting herself in Armstrong’s history, and expanding his vision, Spalding said in an email, would “develop ways to re-merge and re-awaken the dialogue between these essential modalities of human expression — the improvising body and the improvising musician.”Under Bain, the executive director,the Center is also hosting new programming, including dance and yoga classes, trumpet lessons and events that engage the mostly Spanish-speaking community, whether through music or social activism.“Louis and Lucille were two Black artists who owned their own home in the ’40s,” Bain said. “Why can’t we have a workshop here about homeownership for our neighbors? If it’s in the legacy of Louis and Lucille — that’s what this space can also be.”Since it opened on July 6, the Center has exceeded visitor estimates and is adding more hours and drawing fans from across the country. “He was one of the heroes I was taught about,” said Jenne Dumay, 32, a social worker from Atlanta who plans music-oriented trips with friends, focusing on Black history. “This museum gives me insight that I didn’t learn in my textbooks.”Among the final work Armstrong created, after a lengthy hospital stay in 1971, was a six-page handwritten ode to Corona, and his happy, quotidian life there. In looping script, he extols the virtues of his Schnauzers as watch dogs (“When the two start barking together — oh boy, what a duet”), and his favoriteChinese restaurant.It is one of the treasures that Moran — who said Armstrong’s spirit-lifting music helped him through the pandemic — cherishes most. Armstrong’s handwriting, he noted, slants upward on every page. “The text is just so inherently aspirational,” Moran said. “It’s in line with how he holds his trumpet” — pointing up to the sky — “how his eyes look when he plays. It’s a slight thing, but it tells us: this is how he thinks about life.”Additional reporting by Chris Kuo.The Louis Armstrong Center34-56 107th Street, Queens, N.Y.; 718-478-8271; louisarmstronghouse.org. More