Music

For arguably the most technically gifted trumpeter of his generation, a lot of Ambrose Akinmusire’s breakthroughs actually come from letting go of standards and structures.Take the moment about 10 years ago when, shortly after becoming friends with his lifelong creative idol, Joni Mitchell, Akinmusire found himself in a bathroom at her Los Angeles home, playing into a microphone. She’d suggested that he record trumpet for a new version of her song “Borderline,” and he was struggling to find a part that fit.“I wasn’t getting it right. And she was like, ‘I know what you need: You need an egg shaker,’” he said recently in a video interview, still a touch amazed to be telling this story. Mitchell started rattling the shakers wildly, way outside the time signature. His hopes darkened. “But I played the track with her doing that, and for some reason it locked it in for me,” Akinmusire said. Suddenly, “I was able to play.”And there was the time, just after the pandemic began, when Akinmusire decided to finally take the advice of Bennie Maupin — a multi-instrumentalist best known for his work with Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock — who had once told him to try improvising with only a drummer. “You can get to some new stuff if you just set up with a drummer and practice,” Maupin had told him. So in 2020, when life slowed to a standstill, Akinmusire started getting together with the young drummer Timothy Angulo at a grocery store parking lot near where he lived in Oakland, Calif. Five or six days a week for over a year, they would set a timer and improvise freely for a solid hour.“I don’t think I’ve ever grown more as a musician than in that time,” said Akinmusire, 41, speaking from a messily ordered room in the Berkeley home he now shares with his partner, the poet and novelist Shabnam Piryaei, and their young son.Lately Akinmusire has been making some of the most intimate, spellbinding music of his career. In June he self-released “Beauty Is Enough,” a solo trumpet album, gentle of breath and tender of phrase, recorded at a Paris cathedral. And in early December, Nonesuch Records will release “Owl Song,” an achingly spartan LP, on which Akinmusire leads a trio featuring the guitarist Bill Frisell and the drummer Herlin Riley through a handful of line-drawn original tunes.Frisell, a 72-year-old jazz eminence and a regular collaborator with Akinmusire, said he’s bowled over by the trumpeter’s restraint these days. “There’s this clarity in everything that he plays,” Frisell said recently. “The architecture of it has this incredible power.” Even in its simplicity, Akinmusire’s trumpet can feel almost dangerously tender: “like an exposed nerve,” Frisell said.If his style has grown increasingly spare, the same cannot be said of his workload. Akinmusire recently held down residencies at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and at SFJazz, where he convened the Riley-Frisell trio for the first time; he’s been writing the score for the Starz show “Blindspotting,” which is written by his old Berkeley High School classmate Daveed Diggs; he recently completed an hourlong electronic composition to accompany a dance piece by Aszure Barton; he is working on the music for a Will Smith-produced podcast on hip-hop; he is completing a commission for chamber orchestra; and he has two more albums already in the pipeline, due for release on Nonesuch next year.Starting this fall, all of that will have to fit around Akinmusire’s new role as artistic director of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance at U.C.L.A.A product of the academic age in jazz, Akinmusire’s creative life has been intertwined with the Hancock institute nearly from the start. He grew up nurtured by Oakland’s local jazz scene and the music of his family’s church and put in a formative early stint in the saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman’s band, then enrolled in the two-year program at what was known at the time as the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. He won its king-making trumpet competition in 2007, with a style so elliptical and distinct — glancing on Fats Navarro and Lee Morgan and Terence Blanchard, but not mimicking anyone — that it quickly changed the game for young trumpeters in New York.“Watching him develop over the years has been really exciting,” Herbie Hancock, the institute’s chairman, said in a statement when the appointment was announced in July.Akinmusire could represent a contemporary jazz ideal: the scholarly composer-improviser, working across media while keeping a number of small groups together, refining a personal inflection on his instrument all the while. But the closer he gets to institutional leadership, the more he tends to pull away from the passive role of ambassadorship. After a decade with Blue Note, jazz’s most iconic label, he said he wanted to enjoy not knowing exactly “what type of records I was going to make,” and the genre-blind Nonesuch seemed like a place to be agnostic.“Heart Emerges Glistening” was released in 2011 to wide acclaim, and Akinmusire became the No. 1 rising star artist in the DownBeat critics’ poll. And his life seemed to go a little screwy. “People are starting to interact with me a little weird, my friends are being strange,” he remembered thinking. “I don’t want any part of this.” So he moved to Los Angeles, where the jazz scene is smaller and more spread out, and did some hibernating. He stopped writing music for a while, leaned on Piryaei a bit. And he reconnected with Mitchell, whom he’d met, as it happens, via the institute.He first ran into her backstage after his winning performance at the trumpet competition. “I thought I was about to faint, because I thought I was seeing things,” he said. She told him she’d made everyone in the dressing room stop talking during his set; she’d loved his playing. Then she asked who his favorite artists were. “I was like: You,” Akinmusire said. “And she’s like, ‘Yeah, I thought so!’” Mitchell guessed the exact tracks of hers that he liked best, including his very favorite, “Jericho.” (She includes Akinmusire in an appendix titled “Stuff Joni Likes or Even Loves” in Michelle Mercer’s book “Will You Take Me as I Am: Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ Period.” He is near the top of the list, between “some Dylan” and Friedrich Nietzsche.)Soon after moving to Los Angeles, he reached out to her. They started spending afternoons together, taking rides in his Honda Civic to pick up Italian food or playing music at her place. Akinmusire began to see a future for himself that might exist both in and outside of jazz.As we spoke I noticed him using “creative music” more often than jazz. “Creative is one thing that it has to be for me. And the other thing is beautiful,” he said. “I really believe in creativity, I believe in innovation, I believe in submitting to something higher than yourself.”He has been thinking about how to bring this ethic into his teaching, especially at a titular jazz institute. “When we’re teaching jazz history, maybe we should start from current day,” he said, looking for anyone who’s “creating creative music.” This would mean taking jazz out of its historical packaging, and paying attention to where contemporary ears are at — while also challenging them.He envisioned a class that might invite students to hear Noname’s new album, “Sundial,” and dissect its component parts. “Starting from something like that, and walking it back to Louis Armstrong, really incrementally,” he said. “I think it would allow younger people to feel some type of ownership, like they can relate to this music.” More

He was best known for his jazz work. But he was also heard on Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” and with orchestras conducted by Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein.The bassist Richard Davis in 1989 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was a professor of music and music history from 1977 to 2016.Brent Nicastro, via University of Wisconsin-Madison ArchivesRichard Davis, an esteemed bassist who played not just with some of the biggest names in jazz but also with major figures in the classical, pop and rock worlds, died on Wednesday. He was 93.His death was announced by Persia Davis, his daughter. She did not say where he died but said he had been in hospice care for the past two years.Mr. Davis, who was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2014, appeared on more than 600 albums. A first-call player for some of the most important figures in jazz history, he had fruitful collaborations with the reed player Eric Dolphy (whose composition “Iron Man” was named for him) and the pianist Andrew Hill. He was a member of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, which performed every Monday night at the Village Vanguard in New York, from the ensemble’s debut in 1966 until 1972.His advanced technique, especially with the bow, led to work with classical orchestras under Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein. His adaptability resulted in sessions with Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Bonnie Raitt.Mr. Davis made 30 albums as a leader or co-leader from 1967 to 2007. He was named best bassist in the DownBeat magazine readers poll from 1968 to 1972.Reviewing a 1986 performance at Sweet Basil in Greenwich Village by a band led by Mr. Davis and featuring Freddie Waits on drums, the New York Times music critic Robert Palmer wrote: “The relaxed, slightly behind-the-beat swing typical of so many jazz rhythm sections is not for them. Their accents fall right up on top of the beat, and they vary their springy forward momentum with rhythmic whirlpools and rapids and an explosive sense of dynamics.”Mr. Davis performed at the Rose Theater in Manhattan in 2014 as part of a ceremony at which he received a Jazz Masters honor from the National Endowment for the Arts.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesRichard Davis was born on April 15, 1930, in Chicago. His mother died in childbirth, and he was adopted by Robert and Elmora Johnson. He was exposed to music through the records his mother had collected in her native New Orleans and the hymns Mr. Johnson would sing around the house.He attended DuSable High School in Chicago, where he studied music under Walter Dyett, who mentored many future jazz stars, and he started playing the bass at 15. As he recalled in a 2013 interview published in the American Federation of Musicians magazine Allegro: “I was just enthralled by the sound. The bass was always in the background and I was a shy kid. So I thought maybe I’d like to be in the background.”Mr. Davis credited Mr. Dyett with pushing him to play across styles, and during high school he also studied with Rudolf Fahsbender of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He would go on to receive a bachelor’s degree in music education from the VanderCook College of Music in Chicago in 1952.As a young player in Chicago, he was mentored by local bassists like Wilbur Ware and Eddie Calhoun. While still in college, he performed with the pianist and bandleader Sun Ra, who at the time was still billed as Sonny Blount.His first major gig was with the pianist Ahmad Jamal in 1952. He then went on the road with another pianist, Don Shirley (whose story was told in the movie “Green Book”); this led to his initial recordings and eventually to his move, in 1954, to New York, where he worked with the singer Sarah Vaughan from 1957 to 1962.In a 2005 interview for The New York City Jazz Record, Mr. Davis spoke of how he used aspects of his classical study and his time with Ms. Vaughan to create his particular bowing technique:“Some of the first bass players used the bow to play the walking bass line. And I heard all of that coming up as a kid. Therefore, when you start to study books of bass methods, you start out with the bow no matter what your intentions are, so there must be some intertwining of what I heard as a kid, what I heard working with Sarah Vaughan, wanting to imitate those vocal sounds.”After his time with Ms. Vaughan, Mr. Davis’s reputation began to grow rapidly, as did his discography. The year 1964 was an especially significant one; he played on Mr. Dolphy’s last studio recording, “Out to Lunch!”; Mr. Hill’s seminal “Point of Departure”; the drummer Tony Williams’s first album, “Life Time”; and the saxophonist Booker Ervin’s “The Song Book.”Mr. Davis’s first album under his own name was a collaboration with the drummer Elvin Jones.Impulse!Three years later, Mr. Davis made his first album under his own name, “Heavy Sounds,” on which he and the drummer Elvin Jones were co-leaders, released on the Impulse! label. Over the next several years, his work outside the jazz world expanded: His credits included acting as musical director for Mr. Morrison’s album “Astral Weeks” and providing the haunting bow work at the end of “The Angel,” on Mr. Springsteen’s album “Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.”Mr. Davis continued to release albums regularly through the new millennium. In the late 1960s and ’70s he was also a member of the New York Bass Violin Choir, led by his fellow bassist Bill Lee, playing alongside other luminaries of the instrument like Ron Carter, Milt Hinton and Sam Jones. In the late 1980s he was a founding member of New York Unit, a trio with the pianist John Hicks and the drummer Tatsuya Nakamura, which recorded eight albums for Japanese labels through 1998.In an email, Mr. Carter said Mr. Davis was “an incredible bassist, a great teacher and my dear friend.”In 1977, Mr. Davis left New York to take a position as a professor of music and music history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I got a call offering me a job at the university in Madison because they didn’t have a bass teacher on campus,” he told OnWisconsin, the university’s alumni magazine, in 2011. “I said, ‘Where’s Madison?’ I asked around if anyone had heard of the place because this school kept calling me. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about the importance of teaching others, and I had always wanted to teach young people. I thought maybe it was time.”Mr. Davis at his home in Wisconsin in 1978.Brent NicastroHe retired from teaching in 2016. In 2018, Richard Davis Lane in eastern Madison was named in his honor.Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.In addition to his recorded work and his influence on generations of students, Mr. Davis leaves behind two legacies — one musical, the other societal.The Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists, which he created in 1993, conducts an annual conference for young players to learn from professionals and perform with one another. And in 2000, Mr. Davis established the Madison chapter of the Center for the Healing of Racism, an outgrowth of his founding in 1998 of the Retention Action Project at the University of Wisconsin to improve graduation rates for students of color.His activism was connected to his earliest experiences trying to be a classical player., he said in the 2005 interview:“My environment with race issues started the day I was born. You’re born with dark skin, and that itself brings on attitudes of other people who are not dark-skinned to see you as someone to be oppressed and not to be given equal chances in society. So that is something that is permanent.“I was 18 years old and I could play any and all of the European classical music,” he continued, “but you weren’t allowed to participate in the symphony orchestra because there were racial issues and prejudices. They didn’t want to see you.”The bassist William Parker, who studied with Mr. Davis as young man in New York, said: “Richard Davis was a beautiful musician and human being. He reminded me of an African king, regal and strong. I praise him not because he could play both classical and jazz. I applaud him because the brother had a big, poetic sound full of freedom.”Mr. Davis, he added, “taught me some things about music, but his main message was ‘Be yourself.’” More

The final member of the xx to release a solo album reveals her love of the pop club music of her teenage years, and her wife, on “Mid Air.”As sheets of rain slammed a percussive beat on the skylights above her on a brisk April afternoon, Romy Madley Croft shook her head, smiling with the resignation of a seasoned professional wondering what kind of mess she’d gotten herself into.Listen to This ArticleFor more audio journalism and storytelling, More

Hear tracks by Allison Russell, Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion, Ashley McBryde 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 [email protected] 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.The Rolling Stones, ‘Angry’There’s no mistaking the time-tested Rolling Stones sound on “Angry,” the first single off “Hackney Diamonds,” the band’s first album of its own songs since 2005. The beat is blunt and brawny. The guitars riff and mesh, but also tangle and tease one another. And Mick Jagger unleashes full-throated indignation as he lets a lover — an angry one — know that they’re breaking up. He’s aggrieved, petulant, wounded and flippant, almost all at once. JON PARELESJoni Mitchell, ‘Like Veils Said Lorraine’This stunning, previously unreleased song from the forthcoming third installment of Joni Mitchell’s archive series (which will cover her early Asylum Records years, 1972 to 1975) begins with a quote about life from the titular character: “It’s veils you tear off one by one.” Another voice disagrees: “No, it’s walls we put up.” Accompanied by resonant, searching piano chords, Mitchell wrestles with these dueling perspectives and as ever, doesn’t settle on an easy compromise but finds the truth between extremes. Recorded as a demo sometime between Mitchell’s intimate 1971 masterpiece “Blue” and “For the Roses,” her labyrinthine 1972 meditation on the emptiness of fame, “Like Veils Said Lorraine” sounds like a bridge between those two eras of Mitchell’s rapidly developing artistry and serves as proof that her archives still contain untold riches. LINDSAY ZOLADZAllison Russell, ‘Eve Was Black’On her remarkable 2021 album, “Outside Child,” Allison Russell recalled childhood abuse and celebrated her survival. Her new one, “The Returner,” is just as strong, and it examines larger forces as well — most directly in “Eve Was Black,” which directly confronts racism and considers the African ancestors of all humans. “Do I remind you of what you lost/Do you hate or do you lust?” Russell sings. “Do you despise or do you yearn/To return, to return, to return back to the motherland?” What starts as a bluesy, folky, foot-stomping tune drifts toward jazz, then grows molten with rage as Russell sings about lynching. The track includes an epilogue; Russell, who grew up in Montreal, sings in French, over a banjo and fiddle, about a family uprooted from Africa to America. PARELESAshley McBryde, ‘Women Ain’t Whiskey’“You can’t just quit me/When you get lonely come pick me back up,” Ashley McBryde sings in “Women Ain’t Whiskey.” It’s a country-meets-U2 march that states the obvious; apparently it needs to be restated, loudly. At least it doesn’t have brand placements. PARELESGuppy, ‘Texting and Driving’J Lebow, of the Los Angeles band Guppy, talk-sings her way through the sinewy punk-pop of “Texting and Driving,” delivering lines like “Texting your dad a curated playlist/Texting God in my head — also known as praying” with sardonic glee. Produced by Sarah Tudzin (a.k.a. Illuminati Hotties), the track is laced with little sonic eruptions — bursts of dissonant guitar, out-of-nowhere backup vocals, outright screams — and there’s plenty of cowbell to kick it along. PARELESCardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion, ‘Bongos’The FCC’s least favorite duo, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, reunite on the unrelenting “Bongos,” their first collaboration since the 2020 succès de scandale “WAP.” Atop a clipped, appropriately percussive beat — bong, bong, bong — the two rappers trade boisterously braggadocious verses and winking, heavily stressed double entendre. “Bongos” feels more like a retread than a reinvention, though Megan — for once, more of a comic than Cardi — gets off a few hilariously memorable lines like “purse so big had to treat it like a person.” ZOLADZPeso Pluma, Jasiel Nuñez and Junior H, ‘Bipolar’Auto-Tune meets acoustic instruments in “Bipolar,” a very 21st-century regional Mexican collaboration by three of its stars: Peso Pluma, Jasiel Nuñez and Junior H. It’s an old-fashioned waltz about a newish situation: giving in to the temptation to check an ex’s social media, but then deciding “I’d rather make money than waste my time with mere stories.” PARELESResidente and Wos, ‘Problema Cabrón’The ever-provocative Puerto Rican rapper Residente harnesses an electric blues shuffle for “Problema Cabrón,” (“Problem Bastard”), a ferocious boast about being a perpetual troublemaker. “The day I die, you’re the ones who will be able to rest in peace,” he taunts in Spanish, over a track that keeps reconfiguring itself, from full band down to piano and finger snaps and back up. Like Residente’s other recent songs, the song arrives with a video; this one has him facing off with an authoritarian police force. The song itself is pure, apolitical insubordination. PARELESYussef Dayes featuring Shabaka Hutchings, ‘Raisins Under the Sun’The London-based drummer Yussef Dayes, the owner of one of the most distinctive backbeats in contemporary music — a taut but shrugging, hi-hat-heavy funk groove, lightly inflected with Afrobeat flavor but rooted in today — has spent years hanging out at the junction of jazz, hip-hop, garage and funk, awaiting his moment. Maybe it has arrived. His debut album, “Black Classical Music,” is both a sprawling declaration of his musical ambitions and a reminder that patience is his biggest virtue. Across 75 minutes, the focus is on catalyzing a vibe. On “Raisins Under the Sun,” he reunites with Shabaka Hutchings — they’ve known each other since childhood, and have collaborated intermittently — on a wafting, two-chord vamp, with Hutchings’s bass clarinet adding a misty layer but never forcing its way to the front. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOTirzah, ‘No Limit’“What’s your limit? What’s my limit?” repeats throughout “No Limit,” an evocatively low-fi track by the English songwriter and electronic producer Tirzah. That question runs alongside drum and piano loops, never to be fully answered; it’s a gateway to intimacy that recognizes all its dangers. PARELESMarika Hackman, ‘No Caffeine’In the verses, the English songwriter Marika Hackman dispenses random self-help advice: “Take a day off work, call your mum/Have a glass of wine, stay away from fun.” At first, there’s little more than a few piano notes chiming behind her. But as instruments assemble around her — double-time bass and drums, doleful strings — it’s clear her desperation is mounting, and the chorus is a reveal: “You got me good/And I feel so stupid.” PARELESLaufey, ‘California and Me’Is this the Samara Joy effect? If Joy’s best new artist win at the Grammys seemed like it could open the gates to a flood of young jazz singers who sound like they’ve leaped out of a reel-to-reel, then Laufey is at the crest of that wave. She’s a 24-year-old Chinese-Icelandic vocalist and multi-instrumentalist with a sepia croon and label support that’s helped her grab streaming listeners by the millions. Laufey’s tunes roll around in a plush, tear-stained bed, channeling the cool-jazz vocalists of the ’50s (think Chris Connor, but without the dangerous passion that haunts her music) by way of indie singers like Angel Olsen and Mitski at their most nostalgic. On “California and Me,” an original, she accepts heartbreak with an enthusiastic sigh, singing over London’s Philharmonia Orchestra: “Left me and the ocean for your old flame/Holding back my tears, I couldn’t make you stay.” RUSSONELLOJames Brandon Lewis, ‘Sparrow’James Brandon Lewis has a way of holding his tenor saxophone poised at the tipping point between a melody and a holler. That’s how Mahalia Jackson sang, too, when shaken by divine inspiration: moving from robust cascades of song to gravelly shouts. Lewis’s new album devoted to the singer, “For Mahalia, With Love,” turns his all-star Red Lily Quintet loose on nine gospel hymns. On its opening track, he combines the oft-covered “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” with an original, “Even the Sparrow.” Playing in unison with the cornetist Kirk Knuffke, Lewis keeps the focus on melodic clarity; it’s a moment of peace and meditation, before the album takes wing. RUSSONELLOVince Clarke, ‘The Lamentations of Jeremiah’Expect drones, not dance beats, from the new solo album by Vince Clarke, the synth-pop expert from Erasure and, before that, Depeche Mode and Yaz. In “Lamentations of Jeremiah,” an unswerving but subtly changing drone tone — with occasional distant-thunder eruptions — underlies the solo cello of the composer Reed Hays, which moves between moody, declarative melodic phrases and strenuous arpeggios, as if it’s wrestling with looming dread. PARELES More

“Emotions got the best of me and I was out of line in the things I said,” the singer-songwriter wrote on social media.The singer-songwriter Zach Bryan was arrested and briefly jailed in rural Oklahoma on Thursday, a few days after he reached a career milestone by landing both the No. 1 album and single for the first time.Mr. Bryan, 27, was arrested in Vinita, Okla., and charged with obstructing an officer, a misdemeanor, according to Oklahoma Highway Patrol, which made the arrest. On social media, Mr. Bryan said he was released later the same day. A mug shot of the singer, apparently taken at the Craig County Sheriff’s Office, where he was jailed, began circulating on social media shortly thereafter, though on Friday it was not available on the sheriff’s website.According to a probable cause affidavit released by the authorities, a highway patrol officer had pulled over a speeding driver on a road through Vinita, and then observed a black Ram pickup truck pull alongside it. This second driver — Mr. Bryan — stepped outside, asked what was taking so long, and ignored the officer’s admonition that he return to his vehicle or risk going to jail.“I’ll go to jail, let’s do it,” Mr. Bryan said, according to the document.In a post late Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter, Mr. Bryan apologized and said: “Today I had an incident with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Emotions got the best of me and I was out of line in the things I said. I support law enforcement as much as anyone can, I was just frustrated in the moment.”Later, in a series of videos posted on Instagram Stories, Mr. Bryan — who grew up in nearby Oologah, Okla. — gave an account of the incident that largely matched that of the police report. The driver of the first vehicle, he said, was his security guard, and the two of them were on a journey to Boston to see a football game. Mr. Bryan acknowledged being disrespectful to the officer, including interrupting him while he spoke.According to the affidavit, Mr. Bryan was “clearly aggravated and argumentative,” and the singer asked to be released from his handcuffs, saying: “If you don’t, this is going to be a mistake, sir. I promise.”On Instagram, Mr. Bryan added: “It was ridiculous, it was immature, and I just pray everyone knows that I don’t think I’m above the law. I was just being disrespectful and I shouldn’t have been, and it was my mistake.”A spokesman for Mr. Bryan did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.Mr. Bryan, whose work is variously classified as country, rock or Americana folk, drew acclaim for a series of self-released albums before putting out “American Heartbreak” last year on Warner Records, a major label. Last month he released his latest LP, “Zach Bryan,” which contains a hit duet with Kacey Musgraves, “I Remember Everything.” More

Hear songs from her new LP in conversation with ones from the past.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesDear listeners,In May 2021, Olivia Rodrigo, then 18 years old, released her debut album, “Sour.” Earlier that year, the singer-songwriter had become an overnight sensation with her heart-tugging, piano-driven ballad “Drivers License,” but “Sour” proved that there was so much more to her than that: She could also pull off dreamy alt-rock (“Deja Vu”), spiky pop-punk (“Good 4 U”) and sharp social commentary (“Jealousy, Jealousy”). In a review I wrote at the time, I noted that “Rodrigo’s songs have lived-in details to spare, as though she had all this time been assembling a detailed dossier on the emotional minutiae of the teenage experience.”“Sour” felt as if it were signaling the sudden arrival of a major talent — and those are often the trickiest albums to follow up. As the Amplifier’s very own editor, Caryn Ganz, wrote in a recent profile of Rodrigo, “crafting the follow-up to a smash debut is music’s most daunting crucible, and Rodrigo felt the pressure to make a diamond.”Rodrigo’s sophomore album, “Guts,” is finally out today, and I am here to report some good news: It’s a diamond.Listening to “Guts” for the first time reminded me of when I initially heard Lorde’s great 2017 sophomore album, “Melodrama.” The albums don’t sound much alike — Rodrigo gravitates more toward rock aesthetics — but both feel like thrilling fulfillments of potential, two distinct artists staying true to what made them special while expanding the scope of their perspectives and ambitions. Both musicians are former teen phenoms who returned to the spotlight at age 20. And both, I can now say, made awesome second albums.Something particular I appreciate about Rodrigo’s music is the way it pulls from a lot of genres that have historically been male-dominated — pop-punk, emo, angsty alt-rock — and enlivens them with the vivid perspective of an idiosyncratic young woman. I cannot overstate how much I needed a voice like hers when I was a teenager, listening to rock music that blamed The Girl for everything, and that sometimes even indulged in violent revenge fantasies about her, always figuring her as the object and never the subject. I felt like I was supposed to be a specific sort of girl, the kind Rodrigo sketches and then obliterates on the opening track of “Guts,” when she sings in an exaggerated lilt, “I’m all right with the movies that make jokes ’bout senseless cruelty, that’s for sure.” Then she kicks the distortion pedal and says, so cathartically, the hell with that. She’s going to be herself — witty, a little awkward, convincingly weird — and write herself into the story.On both of her albums, Rodrigo mashes up genres and influences in a way that feels genuinely fresh. Which is why it was so disappointing when two of her stated idols, Taylor Swift and Paramore, suddenly received writing credits on two of the biggest hits from “Sour” after they were released. I prefer to think of it the way Elvis Costello did, when he responded to a tweet suggesting that the chord progression of Rodrigo’s song “Brutal” sounds similar to Costello’s 1978 hit with the Attractions, “Pump It Up.” “This is fine by me,” Costello wrote. “It’s how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make it a brand new toy. That’s what I did.” (He hashtagged the post with the titles of the Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry songs that had, in turn, inspired “Pump It Up.”)In that spirit, today’s playlist is a celebration of the many musical influences I hear on “Guts,” putting them in conversation with some of the album’s tracks to create new connections and pathways of inspiration. I limited myself to including only songs released before Rodrigo was alive, which was not difficult, as she was born in [deep sigh] 2003. Good 4 her.This is the rare playlist that features both Billy Joel and Bikini Kill; a track from Carole King’s 1971 album “Tapestry” and one off Saves the Day’s 2001 album “Stay What You Are.” Like the best of us, Olivia Rodrigo contains multitudes. And, of course, guts.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Olivia Rodrigo: “All-American Bitch”In the tradition of “Brutal,” which kicked off Rodrigo’s “Sour,” the propulsive “Guts” opener plays around with dynamics and stylistic contrasts to convey the impossible tension of being a young American girl. (She stumbled across the title phrase while reading Joan Didion’s essay collection “The White Album” — a young American girl rite of passage.) As the song progresses, it becomes clear that the eponymous perfect specimen of femininity is actually stifling fiction: “I don’t get angry when I’m pissed, I’m the eternal optimist,” an angsty Rodrigo shouts atop boisterously crunchy guitars, suggesting otherwise. (Listen on YouTube)2. Veruca Salt: “Volcano Girls”When I saw Rodrigo live last April at Radio City Music Hall, she played a cover that somehow felt both out-of-left-field and obvious: Veruca Salt’s 1994 alt-rock hit “Seether.” I hear a lot of Veruca Salt on “Guts,” particularly in Rodrigo’s penchant for caking buoyant pop melodies in grungy guitar distortion. “Seether” may have been the clearer choice, but I slightly prefer this even higher-octane single from the band’s 1996 album “Eight Arms to Hold You.” (Listen on YouTube)3. Olivia Rodrigo: “Bad Idea Right?”This spunky, self-deprecating second single from “Guts” has been stuck in my head approximately 80 percent of the time since it was released last month. And you know what? I’m OK with that. (Listen on YouTube)4. Toni Basil: “Mickey”Fun fact: When the choreographer, actress and occasional pop star Toni Basil released the video for her 1981 hit “Mickey,” she was in her late 30s. In a recent interview, Rodrigo, who is much closer in age to an actual high school cheerleader, named “Mickey” as a song she wishes she’d written herself. She definitely makes those cheerleader-chant vocals her own on “Bad Idea Right?” (Listen on YouTube)5. Olivia Rodrigo: “Vampire”There’s a precise moment in this song — the leadoff single from “Guts,” and her third No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — that sets Rodrigo apart from her bedroom-pop peers: that wrenching, elegantly escalating melodic climb in the chorus when she sings about “the way you sold me for parts as you sunk your teeth into me.” Restraint is key, but Rodrigo also knows exactly when, and how, to let it rip. (Listen on YouTube)6. Billy Joel: “You May Be Right”On the “Sour” single “Deja Vu,” Rodrigo shouted out the piano man himself, while mocking an ex’s predictable taste: “I bet that she knows Billy Joel ’cause you played her ‘Uptown Girl.’” Last summer, she joined Joel onstage at Madison Square Garden to play “Deja Vu” (“I couldn’t have written this next song without you,” she told him) and, of course, “Uptown Girl.” But there’s a subtler link to Joel in the verbose, musical-theater-like cadences of Rodrigo’s writing, too, that I hear on some of her piano-driven songs. (Listen on YouTube)7. Olivia Rodrigo: “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl”This deliriously catchy ode to social anxiety might be my favorite song on the record? But “Guts” has enough highlights that I’m sure that will change a few times, too. (Listen on YouTube)8. That Dog.: “Never Say Never”Another sweetly sour, underappreciated ’90s jam that I believe Rodrigo should cover on her next tour. (Listen on YouTube)9. Olivia Rodrigo: “Logical”Though “Guts” is full of upbeat pop-rock songs, this highlight proves Rodrigo can still pull off a heart-stopping piano ballad with the best of them. “If rain don’t pour and the sun don’t shine,” she sings with a lump in her throat, “then changing you is possible/No, love is never logical.” (Listen on YouTube)10. Carole King: “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”Speaking of ballads written by and about teenagers, Carole King — a Rodrigo fan who said in a recent Vogue interview that Rodrigo “begins by speaking for herself, but she speaks, in the end, for so many young women” — composed the music to this wistful 1960 Shirelles hit when she was a little younger than Rodrigo is now. She recorded it herself a decade later, for her classic album “Tapestry,” and brought a new maturity to words written by her ex-husband Gerry Goffin, proving, as Rodrigo often does, that songs about young love can have hidden wisdom and unexpected depths. (Listen on YouTube)11. Olivia Rodrigo: “Get Him Back!”Rodrigo finds out why lust rhymes with disgust on this playful, infectious and dryly hilarious singalong. “Do I love him, do I hate him? I guess it’s up and down,” Rodrigo deadpans, before choosing a double entendre that allows her to have it both ways: “If I had to choose, I would say right now, I want to get him back!” (Listen on YouTube)12. Saves the Day: “At Your Funeral”The icky, squirmy do-I-love-them-or-wish-they-were-dead quality of “Get Him Back!” is reminiscent of the early aughts emo exemplified by bands like Saves the Day, Taking Back Sunday and As Tall As Lions, the group that the songwriter and producer Daniel Nigro fronted before coming Rodrigo’s chief collaborator. Not all of these songs have aged particularly well, but I believe that “At Your Funeral” still very much goes. (Listen on YouTube)13. Olivia Rodrigo: “Love Is Embarrassing”Or is this my favorite song on “Guts”? It’s got some new wave, a little bit of riot grrrl and a whole lot of Rodrigo’s effervescent personality. (Listen on YouTube)14. Bikini Kill: “Reject All American”I hear some major Kathleen Hanna ’tude at the end of “Love Is Embarrassing.” (Hanna, in turn, confessed in Ganz’s profile to “sobbing in my car” the first time she heard Rodrigo’s “Drivers License.” Game recognize game.) (Listen on YouTube)15. Olivia Rodrigo, “Teenage Dream”Let’s let Rodrigo have the last word with this poignant closing track. “They all say that it gets better,” she sings atop a gradually building piano arrangement, laying her insecurities bare. “It get better, but what if I don’t?” I appreciate the way she lets the question hang in the air, even as the preceding album has proved that she does. (Listen on YouTube)Searching “how to start a conversation” on a website,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“A Deep Dive Into Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Guts’” track listTrack 1: Olivia Rodrigo, “All-American Bitch”Track 2: Veruca Salt, “Volcano Girls”Track 3: Olivia Rodrigo, “Bad Idea Right?”Track 4: Toni Basil, “Mickey”Track 5: Olivia Rodrigo, “Vampire”Track 6: Billy Joel, “You May Be Right”Track 7: Olivia Rodrigo, “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl”Track 8: That Dog., “Never Say Never”Track 9: Olivia Rodrigo, “Logical”Track 10: Carole King, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”Track 11: Olivia Rodrigo, “Get Him Back!”Track 12: Saves the Day, “At Your Funeral”Track 13: Olivia Rodrigo, “Love Is Embarrassing”Track 14: Bikini Kill, “Reject All American”Track 15: Olivia Rodrigo, “Teenage Dream”Bonus tracksYou don’t just have to take my word for it: Jon Caramanica named “Guts” a Critic’s Pick. Read his take on the album here.Plus, in this week’s new music Playlist, the Rolling Stones are back! Listen to their new single “Angry,” along with fresh tracks from Ashley McBryde, Allison Russell and more, here. More

On her second album, “Guts,” which flaunts rock brashness and singer-songwriter intimacy, the sudden pop star is showing just how fraught life is at the top.One of the fundamental conditions — or is it goals? — of pop stardom is hiding the work. You may see Beyoncé sweat, or note how Taylor Swift’s real-life travails inform her artistic choices, but the music created by the most famous performers in pop rarely refers back to the costs, literal and emotional, of making it.But what if you want to show the work?That’s the novel approach of Olivia Rodrigo, a modern and somewhat signature pop star. At the beginning of 2021, she released “Drivers License,” her first single outside the Disney ecosystem she was creatively raised in, and experienced the kind of supernova ascent that’s impossible to anticipate or recreate. Her jolting debut album, “Sour,” released a few months later, showed her to be a spiky, vivid writer and singer, but one who hadn’t quite seen the world.Two years later, on her poignantly fraught, spiritually and sonically agitated follow-up album “Guts,” Rodrigo has seen too much. “Guts” is an almost real-time reckoning with the maelstrom of new celebrity, the choices it forces upon you and the compromises you make along the way. As on “Sour,” Rodrigo, who is 20 now, toggles between bratty rock gestures and piano-driven melancholy. But regardless of musical mode, her emotional position is consistent throughout these dozen songs about betrayal, regret and self-flagellation.“I used to think I was smart/But you made me look so naïve,” she howls on the lead single “Vampire” — she’s referring to a toxic ex, but she may as well be singing about the spotlight itself. Or as she puts it on “Making the Bed,” “I got the things I wanted/It’s just not what I imagined.”Rodrigo is a songwriter of rather astonishing purity — even in her most stylized lyrics, she never wanders far from the unformed gut-kick of a feeling. Sometimes on this album, she triples down. “I loved you truly/Gotta laugh at the stupidity,” she chuckles on “Vampire.” “I look so stupid thinking/Two plus two equals five/and I’m the love of your life,” she croons on “Logical.” “My God, how could I be so stupid,” she sighs on “Love Is Embarrassing.”Don’t mistake Rodrigo’s weakness for weakness, though. Her self-doubt is a powerful animating force. Throughout this album, she kiln-fires her anxieties into lyrics that cut deep. “Pretty Isn’t Pretty” is about the existential struggle of self-love, particularly under an unrelenting public eye. The impudent “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” captures the essence of outsider awkwardness.The dreamy — and perhaps “Folklore”-esque — “Lacy” is about being robbed of your illusions: “I despise my rotten mind/and how much it worships you,” Rodrigo sings. From a young star who’s had what appears to be frosty relations with Swift, an idol who was retroactively granted songwriting credit on Rodrigo’s first album, it reads like the bruise from a door slammed shut in her face.Several other songs are about being on the wrong side of a manipulative relationship. “Logical” and “The Grudge” tackle it via self-serious angst. But Rodrigo has more spark when she’s playfully ambivalent about how, or if, to break free. “Bad Idea Right?,” driven by throbbing bass and drizzled with layered, saccharine chanting, is about how holding on can be more fun than letting go. And “Get Him Back!” is a revenge fantasy — “I wanna meet his mom/Just to tell her her son sucks” — that’s maybe, just maybe, leaning in to double entendre.The real casualties documented in these songs are the relationships Rodrigo has, or had, with her actual friends. On “Get Him Back!” she imagines their disappointment as she sends a note to that risible ex. On “Love Is Embarrassing” she recounts telling them breathlessly about her new obsession, only to have him let her down immediately thereafter. It’s not that her old life is sitting in judgment of her new one, but rather that she’s lost touch with the anchors that grounded her, and she’s floating into a grotesque unknown. “Getting drunk at a club with my fair-weather friends,” she laments on “Making the Bed.”All of those songs are, in one way or another, about the perils of being wide-eyed. But Rodrigo is also beginning to harden her shell. On “All-American Bitch,” which opens the album, she details the impossible standard for young women in the public eye: “I’m grateful all the time/I’m sexy and I’m kind/I’m pretty when I cry.”And she sings with breezy confidence about physical intimacy in a way more akin to hyperstylized dance floor-focused pop stars who use sexuality as performance. On “Logical,” she replays how an ex belittled her: “Said I was too young, I was too soft/Can’t take a joke, can’t get you off.” The moody “Making the Bed,” uses the titular phrase as a recurring motif of restoration, or perhaps of papering over misspent nights with fresh sheets.Rodrigo writes her own lyrics, and “Guts” is produced by Daniel Nigro, who was also her creative partner on “Sour.” That small circle frees her from the committee-tested gleam of most mainstream pop. Her sudden success means she has not (yet?) needed to subject herself to the homogenization of the Max Martins of the world — she has succeeded by rendering her intimacies on a grand stage. That’s part of why “Guts” leans heavily into rock — pop-punk (“All-American Bitch,” “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl”), a little new wave (“Love Is Embarrassing”), theatrical folk (“Lacy”) — which gives her songs thickness and a little bit of rowdiness, too. But some of this album’s most punk moments, as it were, come when Rodrigo unleashes holy hell while Nigro simply plays the piano.On her debut album, Rodrigo made semi-subtle nods to earlier female pop stars — there can still sometimes be the sense that she is constructing her songs of pre-existing parts, whether from Swift or Alanis Morissette or Avril Lavigne or Veruca Salt. The winks come in the song titles — “Love Is Embarrassing” nods to Sky Ferreira, a parallel-universe meta-pop star of a decade ago who also trafficked in seen-it-all realness. And then there’s the album closer, “Teenage Dream,” which invokes Katy Perry, the archetypically glossy 21st century pop princess.Perry’s “Teenage Dream” is a naïve cupcake, an exhortation to live, laugh, love. Rodrigo’s is a morbid piano plaint about the falsity beneath all that. The dream is a mirage, and Rodrigo is pulling back the curtain on it: “I fear that they already got all the best parts of me/And I’m sorry that I couldn’t always be your teenage dream.”Here, and in the most potent moments on “Guts,” Rodrigo’s music pulses with the verve of someone who’s been buttoned tight beginning to come loose. Unraveling is messy business, but it is also freedom.Olivia Rodrigo“Guts”(Geffen) More

A pair of new recordings bring holy grail artifacts by the composer-pianists James P. Johnson and Mary Lou Williams into the light.This September, audiences will at last possess a more dynamic, more elegant — and just plain improved — sense of how New York City’s jazz and classical scenes converged in the 1940s.Was eight decades a galling length of time to have waited? Naturally. But better late than never.The belated occasion is because of a pair of new recordings. Each one has located and dusted off a holy grail artifact, dating from an era when Black composers with sway in jazz circles dared to pursue hybrid musical styles, all while meeting various forms of resistance or disrespect. Their classical works were discussed as they premiered, yet were rarely programmed twice. Nor were they properly documented on recordings.That last bit of the story is what’s changing, starting this week. One CD, out Friday from the Naxos label, brings the world premiere recording of “De Organizer”: a one-act opera on labor politics jointly conceived by the composer-pianist James P. Johnson and the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes.James P. Johnson, shown, jointly conceived the one-act opera “De Organizer” with Langston Hughes.Gilles Petard/Redferns, via Getty ImagesMary Lou Williams’s “Zodiac Suite” has long been popular in its jazz-trio form, but its chamber orchestra version had never been properly documented on a studio recording.Graphic House/Archive Photos, via Getty ImagesOne week after that, the chamber orchestra version of Mary Lou Williams’s “Zodiac Suite” will enjoy its first-ever studio recording on the Mack Avenue label.When news releases for both albums hit my inbox nearly simultaneously, toward the end of the summer, my mouth hung open. Both Johnson and Williams were era-defining composers and improvising pianists: Johnson was an exemplar of Harlem stride and the author of the “Charleston”; Williams matured as a composer and player in the crucible of Kansas City’s boogie-woogie style, before arranging for Ellington and tutoring lions of bebop in New York. Why shouldn’t we have access to their ambitious classical works?Johnson and Hughes’s “De Organizer” had its lone stretch onstage in 1940, at a convention hosted by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. And then Johnson’s score promptly disappeared from public view until it was (mostly) recovered, and a restoration by the scholar-pianist James Dapogny premiered in 2002.After discovering a copy of every sung note in the opera, Dapogny was also given details on the original orchestration by Johnson’s foundation. The new Naxos CD documents the scholar’s edition, recorded by the conductor Kenneth Kiesler and the University of Michigan Opera Theater and Symphony Orchestra in a 2006 performance. (It also offers excerpts from another Johnson opera, “The Dreamy Kid,” based on the Eugene O’Neill play.)In “Organizer,” the result is a chameleonic work that melds the vibrato of operatic singing with select stylistic attributes of Black spirituals and the blues; its orchestral heft also has a place for touches of the Harlem stride style that Johnson pioneered. (Dapogny is the pianist in this performance.)The libretto — previously published in Susan Duffy’s book “The Political Plays of Langston Hughes” — can seem sleek to a point of slightness, on the page. But Hughes’s narrative and rhetorical designs hit in a new way when heard in tandem with Johnson’s ebullient, inventive music; his plot feeds Johnson’s capaciousness as a composer, making space for choral meditations and grand solo entrances, even as it presses forward with clear narrative drive and a sense of high spirits.When a local overseer crashes a meeting of Black sharecroppers to discourage their unionizing, Hughes’s text indicates that the rhythm involved should evoke the song “Mamma Don’t ’Low No Piano Playin’ Here” (a folk tune that has enjoyed a great number of variations over the decades) — signaling that one authority’s wishes will not present a major obstacle for the community that can sing out together.The new “Zodiac Suite,” on LP. Diehl credited the Knights’ artistic director and conductor for his ability to “translate” the piece’s jazz-ensemble aspects to the full chamber orchestra.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWith an all-Black creative team pushing for a progressive vision of labor solidarity, perhaps it’s no great mystery as to why the classical industry of the time did not promote the opera (or invest in its preservation). However the erasure of “Organizer” came about, Dapogny’s devotion to his restoration of the score, right up until his death in 2019, amounts to its own kind of artistic activism.A similar interventionist spirit was required when producing a new take of Williams’s “Zodiac Suite.” With its 12 movements — one for each astrological sign — the composer created affectionate portraits of admired artists and friends. While that composition has long been popular in its jazz-trio form, Williams was eager to adapt it for both chamber orchestra and a full orchestra. A document exists of the chamber version, capturing a live 1945 performance at Town Hall in New York, though that take’s lack of proper rehearsal time is audible in the final, muddled result.So her chamber version was also in need of a contemporary champion. It has found one in Aaron Diehl — a pianist widely admired in both jazz and classical circles.During the lockdown portion of the pandemic, he was joined by the New York Philharmonic as he played excerpts from the chamber “Zodiac” for the orchestra’s streaming channel. Yet on the new Mack Avenue recording, he’s joined not by the Philharmonic, but by the adventurous chamber orchestra the Knights, which is staffed by some of the brightest younger players on the classical scene. And they’ve clearly invested time in all 12 parts of Williams’s suite.The Knights as a whole balance lightness of touch with a forward sense of swing in the opening “Aries,” and in the regal flourishes that Williams deployed in movements like “Taurus” and “Leo.” Strings in particular seem to revel in the bluesy sliding tones of “Cancer,” which also includes the guest tenor saxophonist Nicole Glover’s elegant soloing (in a spot originally conceived by Williams for Ben Webster).The Knights flutist Alex Sopp emerges as a key figure as the suite progresses — including when she soars dreamily atop the rhythmic patterns of “Scorpio” for significant, exposed stretches. Diehl, the bassist David Wong and the drummer Aaron Kimmel are a consistent delight — as when providing authoritative piano-trio swing during “Virgo.”In an interview, Diehl lavished praise on the chamber orchestra. “It’s hard enough — even in a small jazz ensemble, five or six people — to agree on the eighth-note triplet,” he said. “When you have multiples of that — 25 or 30 people — that always makes it more difficult. It’s always about negotiating how you’re going to play, how you’re going to phrase.”Diehl credited the Knights’ artistic director and conductor, Eric Jacobsen, for his ability to “translate” the jazz-ensemble aspects of the “Zodiac Suite” to his full chamber orchestra.In a separate interview, Kiesler, the conductor of “De Organizer,” described how the Michigan performance of Johnson’s operatic music required a similar sense of open investigation regarding orchestral swing. He said he learned from Dapogny that, when it comes to swing, “the style is not always about the rhythm, but the weight — it’s about emphasis in places that we might not have it in so-called ‘classical’ music.”The interpretive insights on both new recordings are so strong, they stand alongside other recent triumphs in the American repertoire. The just-right balance of orchestral weight and lithe swing is also in evidence in a recent recording of Wynton Marsalis’s Symphony No. 4. And the engaged political elements of Johnson and Hughes’s one-act opera have a connection with the contemporary operas of the saxophonist and composer Anthony Braxton, whose “Trillium X” premiered in Prague this summer.So: More evidence of the true breadth and nature of the American repertoire is steadily coming into view. What major orchestras and opera companies do with that information may be up to their donor bases. But in the meantime, both of these new recordings are capable of dishing out American art music ambrosia — and to a broad community of listeners. More