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      For Music, a Fall Deluge of Performances Is Beginning

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      Summer has been quiet, but the weekend brought some brilliant concerts. (Delta variant be damned.)The summertime classical calendar tends to be light even under normal circumstances — so during a lingering pandemic, it can seem almost nonexistent.But now comes the deluge, Delta variant be damned. Over the past few days, New York audiences had the chance to catch live sets from two well-regarded groups presenting fresh repertoire. And those sets had connections to even more worthy ensembles debuting new material.On Saturday the Attacca Quartet played a heavily amplified yet lovingly textured program for hundreds in Prospect Park, as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn festival. (The pop group San Fermin headlined the evening.) In a half-hour sprint that managed not to feel rushed, the group played excerpts from its July debut on the Sony Classical label: the dance music-suffused (but somehow not schticky) “Real Life.”Joined for some selections by the percussionist Shayna Dunkelman, Attacca performed propulsive arrangements of music by Flying Lotus, and an excerpt from Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 3 — featured on the group’s next Sony album, out in November. The set was balanced with tender movements from Caroline Shaw’s “Plan and Elevation,” which the quartet recorded for the Nonesuch and New Amsterdam labels in 2019.Sunday evening brought the New York City premiere of the composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey’s “For George Lewis,” performed by Alarm Will Sound on the final night of this year’s Time Spans festival, at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in Manhattan. The group’s recording of the work came out nearly simultaneously on the Cantaloupe label, so “For George Lewis” registered not only as a clear highlight of the concerts I caught during the final week of Time Spans, but also of the year in albums.The piece stands on its own, though here’s a bit of context. When Lewis, a composer, improviser and scholar, released the electroacoustic “Homage to Charles Parker” in 1979, his tribute didn’t waste any time imitating Parker’s quicksilver sound. With Lewis playing trombone, organ and electronics, his austere then emotive work managed to honor its dedicatee by generating new stylistic possibilities within an existing tradition — just as Parker had done.Now Sorey, long mentored by Lewis, has echoed the favor. Largely constructed from slowly but steadily alternating pools of close-harmony dissonance, “For George Lewis” doesn’t immediately recall Lewis’s recent wry, riotous music for orchestra and chamber ensembles. And though its overall arc moves gradually from grit to melodic flowering, Sorey’s aesthetic also remains distinct from Lewis’s Parker homage.Instead, as “Homage to Charles Parker” was true to Lewis, so “For George Lewis” is true to Sorey. The fully notated piece has close connections to the music that Sorey has composed for his own improvising trio, on albums like “Alloy.” The first minute and change of “For George Lewis” is dominated by sustained flute tones, and brooding piano figures redolent of somber ritual. But the subtle addition of a pair of vibraphonists quickly banishes any sense of things being on autopilot. Nearly (but not quite) synchronous hits from each mallet-wielding player give the still-quiet dynamics a crucial edge.

      For George Lewis | Autoschediasms by Alarm Will Sound & Tyshawn SoreyThese are the kinds of details that keep “For George Lewis” feeling urgent over its nearly hourlong duration. On Saturday, in the intimate room at the DiMenna Center, I savored evidence of Sorey’s catholic tastes. Pungently vibrating violins were reminiscent of early Minimalist pioneers like Tony Conrad; occasionally plunging complexity in the woodwinds had the dramatic verve of later Stockhausen; toward the end, lines for a mellow fluegelhorn recalled the Miles Davis of “Miles Ahead.” But the pacing — and the attentiveness to timbral blends — was pure Sorey.The rest of Alarm Will Sound’s new album is no less striking. A second disc is devoted to Sorey’s “Autoschediasms” pieces. Inspired by the “Conduction” system developed (and trademarked) by Butch Morris and the “language music” of Anthony Braxton, these improvisational pieces, cued by Sorey as conductor, need the right interpreters. And Alarm Will Sound has become, to my ear, one of his greatest partners for such exercises — whether live or over videoconferencing software.“Autoschediasms” wasn’t the only reminder of Butch Morris’s influence over the weekend. Before the Attacca Quartet’s set, I saw the veteran avant-rock, funk and jazz outfit Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber perform twice at the Brooklyn Museum, part of the opening celebration for the touring exhibition of Barack and Michelle Obama’s official portraits.The veteran avant-rock, funk and jazz outfit Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber performed at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday.Kolin MendezA group of 15 instrumentalists and vocalists were led by the group’s co-founder and conductor, Greg Tate, the pathbreaking cultural critic who cites Morris’s “Conduction” style as the glue that holds together Bunt Sugar’s post-everything aesthetic. Aspects of Sun Ra and Funkadelic commingled from one moment to the next, with Tate using Morris-inspired gestures to spur sudden deviations from the band’s recorded versions. During the final minutes of “Angels Over Oakanda,” the title track from the group’s coming Sept. 23 release, Tate sped up the already heated rendition into a new realm of fervid frenzy.Veterans of both the Time Spans festival and of Burnt Sugar’s past lineups appeared together on another album released over the weekend.The Wet Ink Ensemble cellist Mariel Roberts (who premiered a new piece at Time Spans) and the former Burnt Sugar violinist Mazz Swift have each contributed strong solo features to the composer and saxophonist Caroline Davis’s stirring new album “Portals Vol. 1: Mourning,” released by the Sunnyside imprint.Roberts’s scabrous then lyrical cello can be heard on “Hop On Hop Off,” while Swift’s improvisatory contributions help start the track “Left.” But as with both Sorey and Burnt Sugar, improvisation is only part of the draw. The rest comes from Davis’s supple compositional art — which mixes muscular dexterity with emotional vulnerability in a way that’s rare in both the contemporary chamber music and improvisational scenes.A version of the group heard on “Portals” — which incorporates a string quartet plus Davis’s regular improvising quintet — will appear at the Jazz Gallery on Sept. 10. But even for those who are not yet comfortable attending concerts, the album version is a sign among many that at-home listening, too, is gaining energy with the coming of fall. More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love the Trumpet

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      Listen to Louis Armstrong’s sweetness, Miles Davis’s wild squall, Handel’s Baroque majesty and other favorites.In the past we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, piano, opera, cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, violin, Baroque music, sopranos, Beethoven, flute, string quartets, tenors, Brahms, choral music, percussion, symphonies and Stravinsky.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love the trumpet. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Javier C. Hernández, Times classical music and dance reporterThe musical term “intrada” suggests a fanfare, music to mark an entrance. This one, written in 1947 by the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, captures the many personalities of the trumpet: noble and bombastic, mischievous and meditative. Hakan Hardenberger seamlessly glides between these moods, driving the energy through the rollicking finale.Honegger’s Intrada in CRoland Pontinen, piano (Bis)◆ ◆ ◆Terence Blanchard, trumpeter and composerHere is my impassioned clarion call to understand the trumpet! See that exclamation point? That’s what a trumpet does. It punctuates emotions. My trumpet teacher Bill Fielder would always ask, “What is the trumpet?” I would ponder for a moment and offer an encyclopedic answer like “A metal instrument with … blah, blah, blah.” To that Mr. Fielder would say, “It is a mirror of your mind.”Ordinarily, I would invite you to listen to Miles Davis’s “Porgy and Bess,” a classic collaboration between Miles and Gil Evans. This album set the stage for people thinking differently about the orchestra and jazz. But as I write this, yesterday was the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. My song “Funeral Dirge,” from the album “A Tale of God’s Will,” originally composed for the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s first Katrina documentary, “When the Levees Broke,” still haunts me today. Actually, I don’t feel like I composed it. I feel like it was being screamed at me: my personal clarion call to hear and weep with my hometown, New Orleans.Dead bodies floating. Dead bodies on top of cars. Dead bodies in the grass. Dead bodies in places I knew. Dead bodies in neighborhoods I grew up in. I saw these bodies in the raw footage of Spike’s documentary. One dead body I didn’t see in the video was that of an old neighborhood friend who died trying to help people stay on their roofs while floodwaters raged beneath. I never cried so much, shedding tears for the many bodies I saw, and the many, many more I didn’t see. This dirge is my tribute to those brave, valiant, fallen heroes. God bless those souls from Katrina — and, today, those souls from Ida.Terence Blanchard’s “Funeral Dirge”(Blue Note)◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times writerConventional wisdom holds that Louis Armstrong’s peak came with his pathbreaking recordings of the late 1920s and early ’30s. Don’t believe it! He remained a potent creative force well into the middle of the century, and his 1947 Town Hall performance of “Dear Old Southland” shows how he continued to deepen his understanding of a tune.This duo rendition, with the pianist Dick Cary, starts out as a stiff-upper-lip confession; the opening trumpet lines suggest a speaker confiding some sadness in a suavely guarded manner. But eventually the attempt to keep up appearances dissolves, as Armstrong sends torrents of welled-up feeling bawling forth. The beaming assurance of his technique — bending notes, reaching for new climaxes — gives this unraveling unmistakable dignity. And the ending’s brief hint of a striding, sunnier future provides one more look at the malleability of a soul.Turner Layton’s “Dear Old Southland”(Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Joan Tower, composerThe best way to get to know an instrument is to write for it. It’s like getting to know somebody well; you learn their strengths, their weaknesses. The trumpet has a very limited range: Writing this four-trumpet piece was like being in prison, because the range is so small; it’s like four people in a little room. But inside those two and a half octaves it can really climb. If you go from an A to a C, it’s like you’re going from the basement to the sky.Joan Tower’s “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, No. 5”American Brass Quintet (Summit)◆ ◆ ◆Wadada Leo Smith, trumpeter and composerWho would have imagined that light touching light is connected to comprehension, that inspiration and creativity are bound together in the heart and soul of a true artist? Hearing Miles Davis’s “Calypso Frelimo” was for me an inspired moment of music as art.The piece begins at a shockingly intense level. First the trumpet solo, beautifully inspired music with long-and short-changing sonics, bellowing glissando multiphonics interspersed with nuanced micro-sonics: pure melodic development with a creative range matched by emotion, and just the right amount of space and silence perfectly arched across a vast, still environment mysteriously, without effort.Miles Davis’s “Calypso Frelimo”(Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Marie Speziale, Cincinnati Symphony trumpeter, 1964-96The first time I heard a recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, I was mesmerized by the metamorphosis of the sound of the trumpet to the eloquent, distant timbre of the post horn, emerging from offstage in the third movement. This was Leonard Bernstein’s version with the New York Philharmonic, with John Ware playing the solo, and as a very young trumpeter who had grown up steeped in commercial and Afro-Cuban music, I had never heard such a simple yet poignant melody. It was one of the listening experiences that had the most impact on my early career as a symphony orchestra musician.Mahler’s Third Symphony(Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Mark Stryker, critic and author of “Jazz From Detroit”Kenny Dorham (1924-72) did not command attention with Gabriel-like power and bravura technique. A favorite of jazz connoisseurs, he seduced listeners with the soulful warmth, colorful wit and understated wisdom of the hippest bon vivant on the scene. Everything about his approach to the trumpet and improvisation was expressive, relaxed and personal. The dappled smears of his crepuscular tone and the flirty bounce he brings to the standard “I Had the Craziest Dream” in 1959 make a beeline for your heart. His improvised phrases, delivered with nonchalant charm, enchant you with clever melodic and rhythmic rhymes and piquant note choices. He’s telling a story, inviting you into his dream — where you not only fall in love with the trumpet, but also the man with the horn.Harry Warren’s “I Had the Craziest Dream”(New Jazz)◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerEvery year “Messiah” comes around, and every year, almost at the end, comes the moment to hold your breath. Many performances of Handel’s classic oratorio now take place on period instruments, and the Baroque trumpet is an unwieldy beast: long, straight and lacking the valves that allow players on modern trumpets to hit notes reliably. So while it hopefully doesn’t sound like it, the soaring, angelic, regal solo part that crowns this bass aria is a merciless test of skill, as the player announces the Day of Judgment — and endures his or her own.Handel’s “The trumpet shall sound”Chris Dicken, trumpet; Matthew Brook, bass; Dunedin Consort; John Butt, conductor (Linn)◆ ◆ ◆Leonard Slatkin, conductorIn 1958 my father, the conductor Felix Slatkin, commissioned the composer Leo Arnaud to create pieces that would demonstrate the then-new audio format of stereo. Utilizing various military fanfares as well as original tunes, “Bugler’s Dream” included what would become known as “The Olympic Fanfare.” The track was featured on a Capitol Records album called “Charge!” and has been reissued several times.With trumpets of all sizes and the musicians separated into two different studios, there was simply no better way to show off not only the new technology but also the incredible skill of the 26 players. If you do not love the trumpet after listening to this, I suggest the track that contains the 12 bagpipers.Leo Arnaud’s “Bugler’s Dream”The Military Band (Beulah)◆ ◆ ◆Nate Wooley, trumpeter and composerThe trumpet is an length of impossible plumbing — physically demanding and fickle — and playing it involves an act of illusory control. Trumpet players, at their best, give up some part of this deception, and their imperfection lets the listener in on a secret: the musician’s humanity. They strive toward something essential and the failure to reach it shows their true virtuosity. What Ron Miles achieves on “Witness” demands that he go beyond his prodigious technique, and the heart-rending sound that comes from his breaking of the illusion is the trumpet at its most essential: vulnerable, virtuosic and real.Ron Miles’s “Witness”(Capri)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music editorNo fewer than 14 trumpets (and 11 other brasses) blaze mightily through the fanfare finale of Janacek’s Sinfonietta. Written in 1926 for the opening of a mass gymnastics festival that was part fitness bonanza, part explosion of Czech national pride, the work was inspired by a military band its composer heard — and whose raw, brilliant sound and determined spirit he sought to capture. An armed forces paean sounds awful, but Janacek created something both local — a portrait of Brno, his hometown — and universal. The music reflects not reactionary jingoism, but wild liberation.Janacek’s SinfoniettaBavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Rafael Kubelik, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Steph Richards, trumpeter and composerJohnny Coles paints a spectrum of the trumpet’s timbre possibilities at their finest: soft blues, golden butter tones and brazen oranges that reveal a tender underside of the horn. He makes it easy to forget that the trumpet was born as an instrument of fanfare and war. But ultimately it’s the breadth of expression I love most here, the spaces left in order to bring these colors to light. And while Coles’s harmonic contours glide mostly inside the lines, the fleeting moments where the trumpet skates outside — smearing, curving, soaring — bring forward a purple-hued beauty, sounding the blues inside a feminine form.Gil Evans’s “Sunken Treasure”Gil Evans Orchestra (Verve)◆ ◆ ◆C.J. Camerieri, trumpeterIn this recording, I’m drawn to how the trumpet speaks the message of the song as clearly as the lyrics. In my career I’ve seen firsthand how the compositions of Gabriella Smith, the poetry of Paul Simon and the power of Justin Vernon’s voice can express a wide range of feelings so directly. If you think about music as the communication of complex human emotions from an artist to a listener through sound — and if you think about classical music more broadly in the American tradition — no one does it better than Louis Armstrong. What initially drew me to the trumpet, and keeps on drawing me, is how similar the sound is to the human voice, both in its expressive capabilities and its means of production: breath, vibration, projection.Fats Waller’s “Black and Blue”Live in New York, July 22, 1929◆ ◆ ◆Vanessa Rivera, Ohio State University Marching Band trumpeterAlessandro Ignazio Marcello’s Concerto in C minor was originally an oboe concerto, but has since been adapted to be played by other instruments, and one of its more popular recordings features Tine Thing Helseth on piccolo trumpet. The first time I heard this piece, I was in the sixth grade. I didn’t know what a piccolo trumpet was at the time, but I knew that eventually I wanted to get to a point in my career when I would be able to play a piece as rich and interesting as this one.Alessandro Marcello’s Concerto in C minorNorwegian Radio Orchestra; Andrew Manze, conductor◆ ◆ ◆Anthony Tommasini, Times chief classical music criticLeroy Anderson, the master of the light orchestral miniature, recalled that his 1949 piece “A Trumpeter’s Holiday” had its origins backstage during a Boston Pops concert. The great trumpeter Roger Voisin, then principal with the Pops, was complaining that trumpet works tended to be loud, martial, triumphant. Voisin suggested that Anderson try writing something different.The result was this mellow lullaby. Of course, it was still a trumpet piece, so Anderson couldn’t help letting jazzy bits slip in: The beguiling melody has a slightly jumpy repeated-note figure, even as the orchestra maintains a lulling mood in the background, and a middle section turns restless and syncopated in a moment of mischief.Leroy Anderson’s “A Trumpeter’s Lullaby”Susan Slaughter, trumpet; St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin, conductor (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Joshua Barone, Times editorAs a violin-playing child, I was slow to appreciate the trumpet, which seemed, like other brass instruments, temperamental and resistant to expressiveness — especially compared with strings. How wrong I was. Take the Thursday installment of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s seven-day opera cycle “Licht.” The drama of Act II, “Michaels Reise um die Erde” (“Michael’s Journey Around the Earth”), unfolds with the characters represented with instruments, not singing voices. In this excerpt, Michael (portrayed by a trumpet) and Eve (a basset horn) engage in a duet that’s flirtatious, funny and — contrary to what I once naïvely believed — full of humanity.Stockhausen’s “Michaels Reise um die Erde”Markus Stockhausen, trumpet; Suzanne Stephens, basset horn (ECM)◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      After 15 Years in Opera, Martha Prewitt Runs a Farm in Kentucky

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      “It’s Never Too Late” is a new series that tells the stories of people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms.Hear the one about the opera singer-turned farmer?There isn’t a punchline. There’s just the pre-dawn wake-up, and the baling, and the 150 heifers, and one with pink eye and the thousand other realities of Martha Prewitt’s new existence.This wasn’t the plan. Growing up on the family farm in Versailles, Ky., two centuries of Prewitt corn and hay and cattle bearing down, the plan was: leave.She did, following a passion for performance into 15 years of classical singing and opera, performing with the Knoxville Opera, Capitol Opera Richmond in Virginia and Charlottesville Opera in Virginia, and earning a Master’s degree in vocal performance along the way. But sometimes passions curdle, and sometimes barn doors blow back open.At 33, following the sudden death of her father last year, Ms. Prewitt came home again. It never seemed possible, doing what he’d done all those years. But there, under the wide Kentucky sky, she discovered that something had shifted. (The following interview has been edited and condensed.)By Morgan Hornsby For The New York TimesTell me about the opera life you’d been leading before this change?I got into opera through choir, in high school. The thrill of singing with an orchestra, the vibration in your bones, being totally in character and completely outside of yourself. There’s nothing else like it.But there are things about the industry that didn’t gel with me, politically and culturally. With a few exceptions, I thought the opera world was operating under an outdated, elitist business model. A few years ago I started to fall out of love.Had you ever considered farming?The farm’s been in the family since 1780 or so. My dad was a farmer from when he could walk. He could do anything: build a house, fix machines, tend to the soil’s pH level, plumbing and electrical work. Farming never seemed right for me, partly because I just didn’t think I could do it. I’m a woman, I’m 5’6” — that was a lot of it.After he passed away in June 2020, I was living at home again to be with my mom, and this little worm started to work its way through my brain: ‘Women can be farmers, too. Maybe you’re not strong now, but maybe throwing hay bales around will make you strong.’What was it that made you take that chance?I always knew I’d eventually inherit the farm, and it means a lot to me that it stays a farm. Who knows what developer would buy it and turn it into some subdivision or shopping center?I started thinking, if it means that much to me, why not take it on? Why not me? Soon I was researching things like regenerative agriculture, or how much chemical to put in the spray mix.Martha Prewitt with the farm manager Sherman Cole, who is showing her how to run the farm. It has been in her family for two centuries.Morgan Hornsby for The New York TimesMs. Prewitt, who had spent her career as an opera singer, working on the farm in Versailles, Ky. She took over the business after performing in operas around the world.Morgan Hornsby for The New York TimesNot the hands of an opera singer.Morgan Hornsby for The New York TimesHow did you get started?Those first few days, I began getting up early and going out with our farm manager, Sherman. At first we’d just feed the cattle together, and then I started working full days with him.I began to love it. If there’s any aspect of farming you don’t like, it’s not long before something different needs to get done. I got stronger. And I learned that I’m pretty optimistic, which is good, because a farmer has to be.How did you find the courage to take on this huge project?My dad once told me, “When things need to get done on a farm, you just have to get them done. There’s no choice.” It’s true, and I’ve learned that suits me. I’m still pretty terrified, but I’ve also started to think, maybe I can be good at this.How has this new life changed you?During lockdown, I didn’t go outside for six weeks. I didn’t even walk out to my car. Now I’m outside every day, for most of the day. I’ve hardly used my computer since moving back, and I don’t watch much TV. I have a much deeper appreciation for nature and the environment — its beauty and also its power.Do you still sing?A lot of what I do these days is driving a tractor. It’s great because I can sing as loud as I want. “Un bel dì vedremo,” from “Madama Butterfly” is one of my favorite arias, and I’ll start singing it in the middle of a field, surrounded by trees and birds and dirt. I’ve sung to cattle a few times. Sometimes bugs fly in my mouth.Ms. Prewitt pets the cattle, which she also sings to. “I’ve sung to cattle a few times,” she said.Morgan Hornsby for The New York Times“If there’s any aspect of farming you don’t like, it’s not long before something different needs to get done,” Ms. Prewitt said. “I got stronger. And I learned that I’m pretty optimistic, which is good, because a farmer has to be.”Morgan Hornsby for The New York TimesWhat would you tell other people who feel stuck and are looking to make a change?Everybody has a different path. In my case, just because all these other farmers have been doing it all their lives, it didn’t make my ability to farm any less.If you’re feeling stuck, being patient and not freaking out about it is so important. Everything you do gives you experience and skills and tools, wherever you go. I ended up finding something much more profound than I’d ever expected. It’s as if I’m working in all times, past, present and future, in the midst of my ancestors who were here before and future generations who will come after me.Anything you wish you’d done differently when you were younger?I wish I’d done 4H.What can people learn from your experience?People always say, “Follow your passion.” Well, I tried that. I sang opera. It ended up not being how I want to spend my life.I took, I don’t know how many, personality tests. Nothing ever said I should be a farmer, except this little nagging voice saying maybe I could.We’re looking for people who decide that it’s never too late to switch gears, change their life and pursue dreams. Should we talk to you or someone you know? Share your story here. More

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      Lee (Scratch) Perry, Bob Marley Mentor and Reggae Innovator, Dies at 85

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      With a four-track tape recorder in his Jamaican home studio, he opened surreal sonic vistas and cultivated the image of a mad genius.Lee (Scratch) Perry, the innovative Jamaican producer who mentored Bob Marley and pushed reggae into the sonic avant-garde with his dub productions, died on Sunday in Lucca, Jamaica. He was 85.His death, at a hospital, was reported by Jamaican Observer and other Jamaican media; no cause was given. Prime Minister Andrew Holness of Jamaica tweeted condolences and praised Mr. Perry’s “sterling contribution to the musical fraternity.”Mr. Perry wrote songs, led the studio session band the Upsetters and produced leading Jamaican acts in the 1960s and ’70s. He went on to collaborate internationally with the Clash, Paul and Linda McCartney, the Beastie Boys and many others. George Clinton and Keith Richards were guests on his albums.Mr. Perry recorded dozens of albums under his own name and with the Upsetters; he also produced hundreds of songs for other performers. “All my records are angels,” he told Uncut magazine in 2018. “They are not flesh and blood, they are spirits.”As a singer and frontman, he reveled in the image of a mad genius. He gave himself numerous nicknames — the Upsetter, the Super-Ape, Inspector Gadget, the Firmament Computer — and spoke about blowing marijuana smoke on his master tapes to improve their sound, or dousing them with blood or whiskey. He once boasted, “I am the creator of the alien race globally.”In a 2010 interview with Rolling Stone, he said: “Being a madman is good thing! It keeps people away. When they think you are crazy, they don’t come around and take your energy.”Mr. Perry vastly expanded the possibilities of dub reggae in the 1970s, creating radical remixes that stripped songs down to their rhythm tracks and rebuilt them with samples (animal sounds, breaking glass, explosions) along with surreal echo and phasing effects to create hallucinatory aural spaces.Albums like the Upsetters’ “Blackboard Jungle Dub” (1973) and “Super Ape” (1976) were as dizzying as they were danceable. One of Mr. Perry’s most exploratory albums, “Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread,” released in 1978, was rejected by his international distributor at the time, Island Records, leading to a lasting rift.Mr. Perry’s album “Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread,” from 1978, was his most exploratory..Mr. Perry brought his dub techniques to the production of new songs on albums that would become reggae milestones. The recordings he concocted using minimal equipment — a four-track Teac tape recorder — would decisively influence hip-hop, post-punk, electronica and all sorts of other studio-tweaked music.“The studio must be like a living thing, a life itself,” he once explained. “The machine must be live and intelligent. Then I put my mind into the machine and the machine perform reality. Invisible thought waves — you put them into the machine by sending them through the controls.”Rainford Hugh Perry was born on March 20, 1936, in Kendal, in rural western Jamaica. His parents, Hugh Perry and Ina Davis, were laborers, and one of Lee’s early jobs was driving a tractor in the building of a road that would bring tourists to the western seaside town of Negril. He moved to Kingston, the capital, and started working for the producer and sound system owner Clement (Coxsone) Dodd in 1961, first as a gofer and record vendor and eventually as a talent scout, engineer and producer for Dodd’s Studio One, a Jamaican hit factory in the early 1960s.Feeling exploited by Mr. Dodd, Mr. Perry joined a competitor, Joe Gibbs, at Amalgamated Records. He released “I Am the Upsetter,” a complaint aimed at Mr. Dodd, and continued to produce Jamaican hits. But he broke away from Mr. Gibbs as well.Mr. Perry started his own label, Upset Records (soon renamed Upsetter), and its first release, in 1968, was a song attacking Mr. Gibbs, “People Funny Boy.” It became a hit in Jamaica and Great Britain. Presaging Mr. Perry’s later productions, it also featured the sound of a crying baby, and it was an early example of the midtempo rhythm that would soon define roots reggae.Bob Marley and the Wailers had recorded with Mr. Dodd but went to work with Upsetter Records and Mr. Perry to make the albums “Soul Rebels” (1970) and “Soul Revolution” (1971). Mr. Perry encouraged Mr. Marley to explore spiritual and political themes, and songs like “Small Axe,” “Kaya” and “Duppy Conqueror” established the direction that would make Mr. Marley an international star.But there were disputes over money. Mr. Perry sold rights to the Wailers albums to an English label, and Mr. Marley and the Wailers accused Mr. Perry of withholding royalties. “I pirated their music to expose them,” Mr. Perry claimed in a 2008 documentary, “The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry.” In 2010, the percussionist and singer-songwriter Bunny Wailer, a member of the band, told Rolling Stone: “He screwed us. We never saw a dime from those albums we did with him.”Mr. Perry in 2001 outside the studio he built in his backyard in Kingston, Jamaica. He called it the Black Ark. Echoes/Redferns, via Getty ImagesMr. Marley hired the Upsetters’ rhythm section, the brothers Aston and Carlton Barrett on bass and drums, and they became the foundation of the Wailers’ live band. Yet Mr. Marley and Mr. Perry didn’t stay estranged; in 1977, Mr. Marley enlisted him to produce the single “Punky Reggae Party.”Living in the Washington Gardens neighborhood of Kingston, Mr. Perry built his own small studio, the Black Ark, in his backyard in 1973. He named it after the Ark of the Covenant and considered it a spiritual place. There he could record at any time and in any way he chose.“Scratch dances with the board while he produces,” Vivien Goldman wrote in 1976 for the magazine Sounds. “Flicking switches with a twist of the hips, after a particularly elaborate movement he might spin round twice and clap his hands and be back in position for the next pull of a slide control. He’s aware of his studio audience, but dances in spite, not because of them.”At the Black Ark, Mr. Perry stacked up layers of sound with multiple overdubs on each track of his four-track recorder; tape hiss only added depth and mystery to his mixes.“One of his phrases was, ‘He had four tracks on the board and eight tracks in his head,’ ” Max Romeo, one of the singers Mr. Perry produced, told Mojo magazine in 2019. Among the enduring reggae albums that Mr. Perry made at the Black Ark were the Congos’ “Heart of the Congos,” Max Romeo’s “War Ina Babylon,” the Heptones’ “Party Time” and Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves”— albums suffused with righteousness, compassion, determination and experimentation.In the early days of English punk-rock, the Clash remade “Police and Thieves,” and when Mr. Perry visited England in 1977, he produced a Clash single, “Complete Control.” Paul and Linda McCartney built two songs on Mr. Perry’s tracks for Linda McCartney’s solo debut album.But under the strains of constant recording, his marijuana and alcohol use, gang violence and political turmoil in Jamaica as well as extortion threats and his divorce from his first wife, Pauline Morrison, in 1979, Mr. Perry’s mental state grew troubled. In 1983, the Black Ark burned down.There were various explanations, including faulty wiring. But to Mr. Perry “the studio had been polluted with unholy spirits,” as he put it in “The Upsetter” documentary.“I was mixing good and evil spirits together in the Ark,” he said, “and then I had to burn it down to get rid of what I created.”Mr. Perry in 2018. Over the years he was nominated for five Grammy Awards for best reggae album and won one for “Jamaican E.T.,” released in 2002.John Palmer, via Associated PressHe moved to London in 1984 and resumed a copious, scattershot recording and performing career. Onstage, leading assorted lineups of the Upsetters and interspersing songs with free-associative speechifying, he stepped forward as a gaudily costumed wizard-jester-sage-extraterrestrial figure, like Sun Ra or George Clinton.In the studio, he collaborated with producers who had been inspired by his 1970s dubs, making albums with Adrian Sherwood, Bill Laswell and, extensively, the British-Guyanese producer Mad Professor. On Sunday, Mad Professor posted on Facebook that they had enough material recorded for 20 more albums together and added: “What a character! Totally ageless! Extremely creative, with a memory as sharp as a tape machine! A brain as accurate as a computer!”In 1989 Mr. Perry married Mireille Rüegg, a record-store owner who became his manager, and moved with her to Switzerland, where they lived until relocating to Jamaica in 2020. In addition to her, his survivors include their two children, Gabriel and Shiva, and four children from his first marriage: Cleopatra, Marsha, Omar and Marvin (Sean) Perry.Recognition continued to grow for Mr. Perry through the decades. In 1998, the Beastie Boys featured him on their album “Hello Nasty,” employing his vocals and lyrics on “Dr. Lee, PhD.”Mr. Perry was nominated five times for a Grammy Award for best reggae album. His album “Jamaican E.T.” (2002) won the award.In 2018, he told Uncut magazine: “The reality is, all that craziness, all that madness, I made it work, because it’s nature. It’s natural grace. In nature we have the big space overhead, the big sky, the orbit. Nature is crazy! I want my records to sound as crazy as nature.” More

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      Kenny Malone, Premier Drummer for Top Nashville Names, Dies at 83

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      He propelled hits by stars in country, folk and pop, including Dolly Parton, Crystal Gayle, Ray Charles, Waylon Jennings, Kenny Rogers and Bela Fleck.NASHVILLE — Kenny Malone, a prolific Nashville session drummer whose skittering snare rhythms haunted Dolly Parton’s No. 1 country hit “Jolene” in 1973 and whose cocktail-jazz groove anchored Crystal Gayle’s crossover smash “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” in 1977, died at a hospital here on Thursday. He was 83.A friend and collaborator, Dave Pomeroy, said the cause was Covid-19.A versatile and imaginative percussionist, Mr. Malone played on recordings by scores of country, folk, pop and rock artists, including John Prine and Charley Pride (both of whom also died of complications of Covid-19 during the pandemic) as well as Alison Krauss, Guy Clark, Kenny Rogers, Ray Charles, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings and Bela Fleck, among many others.His impeccably timed cymbal work and rimshots particularly propelled Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away,” a Top 10 pop hit in 1973. And the stylistic reach he commanded was impressive, from the down-home atmospherics of Ms. Parton’s “Jolene” to the countrypolitan sophistication of Ms. Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.”“I need versatility and the opportunity to play many different styles,” Mr. Malone said in a 1985 interview with Modern Drummer magazine. “In recording, if I’m not careful, I start to feel stale, or I feel that there isn’t much room for expansion and growth.”On two occasions, he said, he briefly stopped doing session work and played only live with a jazz quartet. (With Mr. Pomeroy, a bassist, he later established the quintet Tone Patrol, a respected Nashville ensemble that mixed jazz and world music.)To keep his approach fresh when he returned to the studio for good, Mr. Malone immersed himself in painting and began working no more than two recording sessions a day, as opposed to the usual three or four.He also devised a Conga-derived hand-drumming technique and invented a clay drum called an “og” and a hand-held shaker consisting of metal and wood.Something of a mystic, Mr. Malone heard music everywhere, and exulted in it. “Music is in everything, not just the instruments we play,” he told Modern Drummer. “The way that chords, melody and rhythm work together mirrors our emotions. Everything we hear forms a visual image or an attitude of a place, a time or an environment.”In a biography of Mr. Malone for allmusic.com, the musician Eugene Chadbourne elaborated on this philosophy, writing, “He is the drummer who, upon hearing that a song’s lyrics described a woman slitting a man’s throat, told the producer to hang tough a moment while he fetched a different cymbal from his van, one that had just the right ‘scream’ for the job.”Kenneth Morton Malone was born on Aug. 4, 1938, in Denver. His parents, Harry and Minnie (Springstun) Malone, owned a flower shop.Mr. Malone started playing the drums at age 5. “The day I decided I wanted to be a drummer was the day I heard Dixieland music,” he said in “Rhythm Makers: The Drumming Legends of Nashville in Their Own Words” (2005), by Tony Artimisi. “I think it was the Firehouse Five back in, like, 1943. My mom and dad got me a drum for Christmas. That started everything.”Four years later he was playing with a marching band sponsored by the police department and becoming conversant in jazz and classical music.“My first idol was Gene Krupa,” he said in “Rhythm Makers.” “I saw Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich do a drum battle in Denver with Jazz at the Philharmonic with Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz and all these wonderful players. I was just hooked forever.”Mr. Malone enlisted in the Navy at 17 and toured with bands there, eventually becoming director of the percussion department of the Naval School of Music in Virginia Beach, Va.He spent 14 years in the Navy before deciding to move to Nashville with his family in 1970 to make a go of it as a studio musician. His first recording session was with the rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins.Mr. Malone married Corena Quillen, who is known as Janie, in 1958. In addition to her, he is survived by two daughters, Teresa Rich and Karen Powers; a sister, Jeanette Scarpello; five grandsons; four granddaughters; and many great-grandchildren. (Another daughter, Laura Pugh, died in 2009, and a son, Kenneth Jr., died in 2018.)His musical gifts notwithstanding, Mr. Malone at first had to adjust to Nashville’s recording methods.“I was back there playing away, and the producer said, ‘What in the hell are you doing?’” he told Modern Drummer. “I didn’t know you could overdub, so I was playing all of it at once — tambourines, you name it. I literally had to come down to one hand and one foot. I had to unlearn everything as far as technical stuff. There was a whole different feel in recording.” More

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      Lorde Steals Her Sunshine Back

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      Lorde’s new album “Solar Power” marks a pivot for the New Zealand singer-songwriter, away from the insular and intimate relationship tension captured on her last album, “Melodrama” from 2017, into a brighter palette and songs about embracing wellness and posi vibes.This is something that can happen when you grow up in public — a rejection of the fixed gaze that stardom imposes on you. For Lorde, it’s meant a long retreat from the spotlight, and an insistence on making music that hews to no fixed idea about what a “Lorde sound” should be.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about this sunny phase of Lorde’s career, the ways pop stardom can dull a creative person’s edges and what it means to choose to move away from the expectations of superstardom.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterLindsay Zoladz, who writes about music for The New York Times and others More

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      Aaliyah’s ‘One in a Million’ Finally Cracks the Billboard Top 10

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      Music from the R&B singer, who died in 2001, started to arrive on streaming services, helping her 1996 album, “One in a Million,” reach No. 10 for the first time.Vinyl helped Olivia Rodrigo reclaim the No. 1 spot on the Billboard album chart this week, while a long-delayed arrival on streaming brought a 25-year-old album by Aaliyah to the Top 10 for the first time.Rodrigo’s “Sour” notches a fifth week at No. 1 with the equivalent of 133,000 sales in the United States, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking service. It had 70 million streams, very good for a three-month-old album. But it was the album’s release on vinyl that sent “Sour” back to the top. It sold 76,000 copies on LP, the second-best weekly number for a vinyl album in at least 30 years, after Taylor Swift sold 102,000 copies of “Evermore” in June. Just a few weeks ago, Billie Eilish sold 73,000 of her latest, “Happier Than Ever.”The success of these albums reflects the rising popularity of vinyl records, which last year in the United States generated greater retail revenue than CDs for the first time since 1986. But the releases have also benefited from a Billboard chart rule that went into effect last October. Before then, many vinyl sales were counted when fans first placed their order; even if the record wasn’t ready yet, fans often received a downloadable copy while they waited. Now, those sales count once the record is shipped to a customer — allowing many artists to rack up weeks’ or months’ worth of advance sales.Also this week, the rapper Trippie Redd opens at No. 2 with “Trip at Knight,” and Lorde’s new “Solar Power” makes its debut at No. 5. Rod Wave’s five-month-old “SoulFly” lands at No. 3 after a deluxe reissue, and Doja Cat’s recent “Planet Her” is No. 4.“One in a Million,” the second album by the R&B singer Aaliyah, who died in 2001 at age 22, has long been absent from the market. But a recent deal made by the company that controls her catalog — run by a man who happens to be her uncle — brought it back in print and finally began releasing Aaliyah’s music on streaming services.This week, “One in a Million,” which had stalled at No. 18 when released in 1996, lands at No. 10. It was not Aaliyah’s first time ever in the Top 10, however. Her third album, “Aaliyah” (2001), went to No. 1, and a posthumous collection, “I Care 4 U” (2002), reached No. 3. More

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      When Charlie Watts Finally Made It to New York City

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      While his bandmates hit the Apollo, the reserved, jazz-loving drummer for the Stones could be found at Birdland.In 1960, while working as an artist and graphic designer, and some years before the Rolling Stones were born, Charlie Watts began work on “Ode to a High-Flying Bird,” a captivating children’s book about his hero, the jazz great Charlie Parker. The book featured charming drawings of a bird named Charlie who realized he didn’t sound like most of the other birds, and who left home to fly to New York City, where he played “from his heart” and made a new nest for himself in “Birdland.”Charlie Parker made a 14-year-old Charlie Watts dream the impossible dream of visiting New York and playing at a jazz club. And while he thought at the time that “the only way to get to New York was in a band on a cruise ship,” he would actually get there in 1964 with the Rolling Stones. While Keith Richards and Mick Jagger hung out at the Apollo, where James Brown was doing five — five! — shows a day, Mr. Watts spent his free time haunting the jazz clubs he’d dreamed about as a boy: He saw Charles Mingus at Birdland, Gene Krupa at the Metropole, and Sonny Rollins, Earl Hines and Miles Davis.Many decades later, Mr. Watts would achieve his jazz dreams, when he brought his jazz combo to play at the Blue Note, but his day job for almost six decades, of course, was with the Rolling Stones. He was their indispensable drummer, whose loose, jazz-inflected playing and improvisational ardor were the not-so-secret sauce that helped make the Stones such a singular and enduring band.“Everybody thinks Mick and Keith are the Rolling Stones,” Mr. Richards once observed. “If Charlie wasn’t doing what he’s doing on drums, that wouldn’t be true at all. You’d find out that Charlie Watts is the Stones.” Charlie Watts, Mr. Richards added in his 2010 memoir, “Life,” “has always been the bed that I lie on musically.”Charlie Watts during a rehearsal in New York, in 1978. Michael Putland/Getty Images“The engine” was a favorite phrase musicians used to describe Mr. Watts’s role in the band. Also: its motor, its backbone, its heartbeat, its scaffolding, its glue. The soft-spoken Mr. Watts, who died last Tuesday, was more modest, saying he was “brought up under the theory the drummer was an accompanist.” His job, he said, was “to keep the time and help everyone else do what they do,” to lend the music a little “swing and bounce” that would make people get up and dance.When other drummers started going for bigger and fancier kits, adorned with all sorts of chimes and gongs, Mr. Watts stuck with a small four-piece drum set from 1957 and, unlike Keith Moon and Ginger Baker, he never went in for flash pyrotechnics or showy solos. He loved playing onstage with his mates, but he hated life on the road, hated leaving home, hated the cringe-making trappings of rock ’n’ roll — the parties, the press, the screaming girls. While his bandmates were out late at night, getting into trouble, Mr. Watts was often in his hotel room, sketching pictures of the bed: He told interviewers that he’d drawn every bed he’d slept in on tour since 1967; by 2001, he said, he’d filled 12 to 15 diaries.For that matter, Mr. Watts said he felt out of place in the whole rock ’n’ roll scene — “I live in TCM world, Turner Classic Movies,” he told a BBC radio show, explaining that he’d inherited his father’s love for 1940s-style tailor-made suits, and regarded Fred Astaire as “the ultimate in what you should be if you’re a professional.”Indeed, Mr. Watts was a man of contradictions — a jazzman in the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band, an old-fashioned gentleman among pirates and bad boys, a homebody who spent much of his work life on the road. It was also his contradictions — his loose, swinging style combined with his love of precision; his idiosyncratic technique combined with his remarkable versatility — that made him such an exceptional drummer, and the perfect musical partner for Keith Richards in forging the Stones’s signature sound.As the band’s former bass player Bill Wyman recalled: “Every band follows the drummer. We don’t follow Charlie. Charlie follows Keith. So the drums are very slightly behind Keith. It’s only fractional. Seconds. Minuscule.” But it makes the Stones impossible to copy.The propulsive drive of “Get Off My Cloud”; the manic, percussive beat of “19th Nervous Breakdown”; the gathering sense of menace in “Gimme Shelter”; the jazzy syncopation of “Start Me Up”; the lovely, laconic swing of “Beast of Burden” — all were testaments to Mr. Watts’s gift for modulating the mood of a track to create a musical conversation with Mr. Richards’s galvanic guitar and punctuate Mr. Jagger’s vocals and performance. The drummer had a minimalist’s instinct for how to make the most emotional impact with the most economical of licks, when to withhold and when to step on the gas, and how to effortlessly shift gears between the languid and the urgent, between savage immediacy and elegant formality.The Rolling Stones on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesI became a die-hard Stones fan the moment I saw them perform “Time Is on My Side” (in black and white) on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. They all wore suits or vests, I recall, except for Mr. Jagger, who wore a preppy crew-neck sweater. That weekend, I persuaded my father to drive me down to Cutler’s record shop in New Haven, Conn., where I bought “England’s Newest Hitmakers.” It was followed, not long after, by “Out of Our Heads” and “Between the Buttons” (which featured an enigmatic comic strip by Mr. Watts), and, in time, every other album the band released, even as vinyl gave way to CDs and CDs to digital downloads.I made mix tapes of my favorite Stones tracks, and over the years, waited in lines in New York and Chicago and Paris to buy Stones tickets. The Stones were — and remain — a great live band, and no show (or song) was ever the same: “Midnight Rambler” not only waxed and waned in length — from nine to 15 minutes or so — but sometimes felt like old-school Chicago blues, sometimes more like a rock opera or improvisatory jazz. Some renditions of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” seemed to set new land speed records, while versions of “Slipping Away” and “Wild Horses” took on affecting new layers of emotional nuance.This is why the Rolling Stones have endured — why Charlie Watts, who initially thought the band might last three months, gave up counting after three years. They endured because of the depth and complexity of their music, which wasn’t just about “love and hope and sex and dreams,” but also about loss and time and mortality. They endured because of their connection with their audiences, and because, like the blues and jazz greats they grew up idolizing, they continually made their music new.In his 2019 book “Sympathy for the Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters,” the writer and musician Mike Edison wrote: “In many ways, the Rolling Stones at their best were a more intense jazz band than Charlie’s actual jazz bands — when the Stones were cooking, not a lot got played the same way twice. There was more group improvisation.”“Charlie played more aggressive, out-there jazz in the first four bars of ‘All Down the Line’ and the breakdowns of ‘Rip This Joint’ than with any of his jazz combos. There was more improvising and flashing of chops in ‘Midnight Rambler,’ when things were going right and Keith and Charlie were doing that thing, changing tempos and mashing up crazy shuffle stops, than there were on any quintet session.”In such moments, Mr. Watts’s usually stoic onstage demeanor — focused, intense, in the zone — would crack into a radiant, boyish grin. “Charlie Watts playing the drums,” his biographer wrote, “is the sound of happiness, the aural equivalent of Snoopy doing his dance of joy.”Michiko Kakutani is the author of the book “Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Re-Read.”Follow her on Twitter: @michikokakutani and on Instagram: michi_kakutani More