Music

Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Bon Iver, ‘PDLIF’[embedded content]“Please don’t live in fear,” Justin Vernon pleads in this benefit single for Direct Relief, which supports medical workers; later, he promises, “There will be a better day.” It’s ultraslow and thickly layered, with voices and instruments coming and going and seemingly random sounds — even a crowd! — drifting in from a faraway outside world. A recurring, rising three-note saxophone sample keeps providing the will to go on. JON PARELESNorah Jones, ‘How I Weep’“How I Weep” speaks to the formless but pervasive sorrow of this moment. An imperturbably ticking metronome, a modest piano accompaniment and a handful of discreetly arranged strings accompany Norah Jones as she sings about “a loss that’s so deep/that it hardens and turns into stone.” PARELESAmerican Football, ‘Stay Home (2020 Reprise)’American Football first released “Stay Home” in 1999; it’s a sociophobe’s plaint that “empathy takes energy” and “that’s life, it’s so social.” So while other bands Google around for quarantine-appropriate songs — John Lennon’s “Isolation” already has at least one too many cover versions — American Football could simply revive “Stay Home,” layering separate home recordings, shorter and in a lower key than the original. Now as then, the song is calm, rippling, fingerpicking Minimalistic math-rock, sounding relieved not to interact in any way but musically. PARELESHaux, ‘Heavy’Haux makes unerringly pretty music about unerringly sad things. “Heavy,” the first single from his forthcoming debut album, “Violence in a Quiet Mind,” exists near the intersection of Bon Iver and quiet storm R&B. It’s bracing — weepy, pulsing, as still as when you close your eyes and can only hear the air funneling in and out of your nose. CARAMANICAThe Streets featuring Tame Impala, ‘Call My Phone Thinking I’m Doing Nothing Better’The Streets’s Mike Skinner returns, his deadpan speak-rapping not having aged a day. This excellent new song — from a forthcoming mixtape, “None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive” — is about the calm thrill of seeing an ex call relentlessly, and letting it go unanswered. “Whoever’s with my ex needs to do better/She’s still texting me at two ’til 10,” Skinner raps, though there’s self-loathing lurking just beneath the dart. Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, singing the hook, is both soothing and terse. CARAMANICAKelly Rowland, ‘Coffee’Here’s pop-R&B from the distant era — before last month? — of conjugal business as usual. Over a coolly plinking, pointillistic track — Syd from the Internet is among the producers — Kelly Rowland insists on starting the day with sex: “I know you need the stress relief,” she prescribes. PARELESPlayboi Carti, ‘@ MEH’Exuberant gobbledygook from Playboi Carti over a jubilant beat by jetsonmade. Like Alvin & the Chipmunks singing Madball lyrics over “Neo Geo”-era Ryuichi Sakamoto. Ferociously spartan and unanticipatedly cheerful. CARAMANICALila Iké, ‘I Spy’Lila Iké, a singer from central Jamaica whose star is on the rise, has no use for coyness. On “I Spy,” backed by a thick, syncopated bass line and a rhythm guitar flicking on every upbeat, she dares, “Why don’t you come over if you really feel it?” But the feathery, floating tone of her voice tells the other half of the story. She’s confident enough to make the move, but her talent lies in the ability to use a soft touch even as she’s calling the shots. You got the invitation, she’s saying; now it’s on you to show you deserve it. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOJames Brandon Lewis and Chad Taylor, ‘Twenty Four’In the mid-1960s, Albert Ayler and John Coltrane were the tenor saxophonists working hardest to yank jazz toward an ethos of transcendence, making it a vessel for a kind of nonverbal liberation theology. Some spirit seemed to course through their horns, erupting and dispersing. James Brandon Lewis is a bristling young New York saxophonist who has been heavily influenced by both of them, but in his playing, the spirit refuses to escape. Much of the sweat and passion in his music springs from a sense that he is still toiling to unloose what’s within; the listener is a party to that work. “Twenty Four” is Lewis’s mash-up of the Coltrane classics “Giant Steps” and “26-2,” both built on a tornado of harmonic changes. But on this tune — included on the newly released “Live in Willisau,” Lewis’s second duo album with the eminent drummer Chad Taylor — he spends a lot of time with his body planted around a simple motif, stating and restating it, wringing it for life, as if trying to chase it down and set it free in a single act. RUSSONELLO More

Jimmy Webb, the kindly, spindly-legged, leather-vested East Village fixture who was the longtime manager of Trash and Vaudeville, the rock ’n’ roll clothiers that once ruled St. Marks Place, died on Tuesday at his apartment in Manhattan. He was 62.The cause was cancer, said Heart Montalbano, a friend.With a rocker’s bleached-out shag, ropy arms vined with tattoos and jangly silver bracelets, and skintight jeans slashed by rips and rivets, Mr. Webb was a proudly resolute bearer of the punk-glam torch, even as the decades moved inexorably along.Stomping through the East Village like a visitor from another time and place, he barely missed a day as the manager of Trash and Vaudeville, where he worked from 2000 until a few years ago, when the store, which opened in 1975, moved around the corner.“A kind of Proust in streetwear” is how his idol, Iggy Pop, described Mr. Webb in a statement. He was, he added, “a relentlessly enthusiastic fan who enjoyed your fame and oddity so much he wants to be you, and why not?”Ada Calhoun, the author of “St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street,” said: “I thought of him like one of those Gettysburg re-enactors. He was in full punk regalia every day, and it wasn’t a costume.”Mr. Webb wasn’t a rocker himself, but he loved them. Mr. Pop, Debbie Harry, Slash of Guns and Roses and David Johansen of the New York Dolls were among his customers, and he showered them with gifts, not always to the benefit of the store’s bottom line.When Mr. Johansen took his teenage stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey, shopping at Trash and Vaudeville almost 20 years ago, Mr. Webb wept copiously. “He was just so moved to see David,” said Mara Hennessey, Leah’s mother. “For years, Leah said she made sure to walk on the other side of St. Marks Place to avoid running into Jimmy because the emotional level was just so high. She said she couldn’t always take the crying.”Stylists from MTV and Vogue relied on Mr. Webb for his punk sensibility. “If you needed 30 Beatle boots in all colors, he’d hook you up,” said Bill Mullen, a fashion stylist whose visual touchstones include Lou Reed, Patti Smith and the Ramones.But Mr. Webb was no snob. He helped generations of teenagers find their inner rock star, too. It was common to find gangs of girls in their school uniforms wriggling into peg-legged jeans in candy colors, encouraged by the antic patter of Mr. Webb, who ran the store like a heavy metal Auntie Mame.His fashion credo, as he told Alec Wilkinson of The New Yorker in 2007, was simple: “It’s not rock ’n’ roll if your pants don’t hurt.”“I once watched Liza Minnelli get ready for a show,” said the rock photographer Dustin Pittman, a longtime friend. “And Jimmy took longer.”James Kenneth Webb was born on Aug. 28, 1957, in Troy, N.Y., to William and Nancy Webb, and grew up in nearby Wynantskill. His father ran a gas station attached to the family home.When Jimmy arrived in New York City with his clothes in a pillowcase, he was just 16. For years he lived on and off the streets, chased by a heroin addiction, working as a bar back in a gay club, sometimes turning tricks, picking up odd jobs here and there, but always dressed to the nines in his signature regalia.He was clean by the late 1990s when he asked Ray Goodman, the owner of Trash and Vaudeville, for a job. He had been haunting the store for years.In 2017, a year after Trash and Vaudeville moved off St. Marks Place, Mr. Webb opened his own store on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side, I Need More. The store was named after an Iggy Pop song, and it was a shrine to his idols, whose photographs line the pink walls. It was also a new go-to spot for Schott motorcycle jackets and one-of-a-kind punk accouterments.Mr. Webb learned he had cancer two years ago and, with typical stoicism, kept it to himself, working through chemotherapy and radiation, Ms. Montalbano said.He is survived by a brother, Ronald. Another brother, Richard, died before him.It was his dream to make a punk version of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in front of his new store, featuring Mr. Pop’s and Ms. Harry’s hands in cement. In February, he organized a party for them to do so.It took reserves of strength “that I didn’t think he had,” said David Godlis, a street photographer. “But everyone pitched in, and everyone came. Debbie and Iggy and David Johansen. Henry Rollins and Jim Jarmusch.” “It was very crowded, and he was so excited,” Mr. Godlis said. “I think he thought everyone was there to to see Iggy and Debbie. But they were all there for him.”That was certainly true for Ms. Harry. “Jimmy lived and died for rock ’n’ roll,” she said. “And he put a lot of pants on a lot of people.” More

A New York lawmaker on Thursday expressed concern about consumer accusations that Ticketmaster had changed its refund policy in the midst of the pandemic, and asked the state attorney general to open a formal investigation into the company.A spokesman for the attorney general declined to discuss whether the office had started a formal investigation of the sort requested by State Senator James Skoufis, chairman of the Senate Investigations and Government Operations Committee. But, the spokesman said, “We are already looking into the matter.”The Attorney General’s office said it had also independently received several complaints from ticketholders about the ticketing industry and delays for refunds on live events hit by the pandemic.Ticketmaster has denied changing its refund policy, saying that it only clarified language on its website. And Ticketmaster maintains that it acts only on behalf of clients, like concert promoters and venues, that often have the final say about whether to refund tickets.In a statement this week, Ticketmaster — which is owned by the concert giant Live Nation — said that its clients had already authorized refunds for more than 11,000 concerts and sporting events, including 4,000 that had been postponed.That announcement came after consumers flooded social media with gripes over their difficulty securing refunds for postponed concerts from Ticketmaster and other big ticket vendors like StubHub, and portrayed those companies as being greedy at a time of need.AEG Presents, Live Nation’s biggest rival, plans to start a 30-day window on May 1 for fans to request refunds for shows that have been rescheduled. After May 1, they will get 30 days from the time new dates are announced. More

This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.Lee Konitz, a prolific and idiosyncratic saxophonist who was one of the earliest and most admired exponents of the style known as cool jazz, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 92. His niece Linda Konitz said the cause was complications of the coronavirus. She said he also had pneumonia.Mr. Konitz initially attracted attention as much for the way he didn’t play as for the way he did. Like most of his jazz contemporaries, he adopted the expanded harmonic vocabulary of his fellow alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, the leading figure in modern jazz. But his approach departed from Parker’s in significant ways, and he quickly emerged as a role model for musicians seeking an alternative to Parker’s pervasive influence.Where modern jazz in the Parker mold, better known as bebop, tended to be passionate and virtuosic, Mr. Konitz’s improvisations were measured and understated, more thoughtful than heated.“I knew and loved Charlie Parker and copied his bebop solos like everyone else,” Mr. Konitz told The Wall Street Journal in 2013. “But I didn’t want to sound like him. So I used almost no vibrato and played mostly in the higher register. That’s the heart of my sound.”Although some musicians and critics dismissed Mr. Konitz’s style as overly cerebral and lacking in emotion, it proved influential in the development of the so-called cool school. But while cool jazz, essentially a less heated variation on bebop, was popular for several years — and some of its exponents, notably the baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan and the trumpeter and singer Chet Baker, both of whom he sometimes worked with, became stars — Mr. Konitz for most of his career was a musician’s musician, admired by his peers and jazz aficionados but little known to the general public.This was in part because of his personality: An introvert by nature, he was never entirely comfortable in the spotlight. And it was in part because of his musical philosophy, which valued spontaneity above all else and often led him to pursue daring improvisational tangents that could leave his less adventurous listeners feeling a little lost. (His way of preparing for a performance, he once said, was “to not be prepared.”)“My playing was about making a personal statement — getting audiences to pay attention to what I was saying musically rather than giving them what they wanted to hear, which is entertainment,” he said in the 2013 interview, referring to his early struggles to find an audience. “I wanted to play original music.”His willingness to take chances was admired by advocates of so-called free jazz, which, beginning in the late 1950s, defied established rules of harmony and rhythm. But ultimately no label, not even “cool,” really fit Mr. Konitz; he was best characterized as sui generis.Reviewing a performance in 2000 for The New York Times, Ben Ratliff called Mr. Konitz “as original a player as there is in jazz” and praised the “boiled-down wisdom” of his playing, noting that “even when he is in the heat of improvisation, it sounds like someone whistling a tune he has known all his life.” Leon Konitz was born in Chicago on Oct. 13, 1927, the youngest of three sons of Jewish immigrants. His father, Abraham, who owned a laundry, was from Austria; his mother, Anna (Getlin) Konitz, was from Russia.Inspired by Benny Goodman, he persuaded his parents to buy him a clarinet when he was 11. He later switched to saxophone, and in 1945, with the ranks of the nation’s dance bands depleted by the draft and opportunities for young musicians plentiful, he began his professional career with the Chicago-based band of Jerry Wald.His first big break came in 1947 when he joined the Claude Thornhill orchestra, whose soft sound and pastel colors meshed well with his playing style. A subsequent stint with the more dynamic and aggressive Stan Kenton ensemble proved an uneasy musical mix but helped spread his name in the jazz world.The recordings that did the most to establish Mr. Konitz’s reputation were made in the late 1940s and early ’50s, after he had moved to New York, under the leadership of two of the most distinctive artists in modern jazz: the pianist and composer Lennie Tristano, with whom he studied for several years and whose unorthodox approach to improvisation helped shape his own; and the trumpeter Miles Davis, whose short-lived but influential nine-piece band sought to adapt the ethereal Thornhill sound to a bebop context.Those recordings, and others Mr. Konitz made as a leader in the 1950s, were widely admired by other musicians. But that admiration did not translate into work, and he struggled to find bookings; for a brief period in the ’60s he stopped performing altogether.He did not find steady employment as a musician again until the mid-’70s, when New York City experienced a small jazz renaissance. He attracted a loyal audience for his work both with small groups and with a nonet that, despite its ambitious repertoire and arrangements, ultimately did not last much longer than the Miles Davis ensemble on which it was partly modeled.He had a bigger following in Europe, where for the last several decades of his life he spent much of his time and did most of his recording. His European discography ranged in style and format from “Lone-Lee” (1974), on which he played unaccompanied, to “Saxophone Dreams” (1997), on which he was supported by a 61-piece orchestra.While Mr. Konitz rarely maintained a working group for more than a few months, he performed and recorded as both leader and sideman with an impressive array of top-rank musicians, ranging from the pianist Dave Brubeck (on Mr. Brubeck’s 1976 album “All the Things We Are,” which also featured the avant-garde saxophonist Anthony Braxton) and the drummer Elvin Jones (on Mr. Konitz’s influential 1961 album “Motion,” an experiment in spontaneity recorded without planning or rehearsal) to, in more recent years, the pianist Brad Mehldau and the guitarist Bill Frisell. In 2003, in a rare foray outside the jazz world, he played on Elvis Costello’s album “North.”Despite health problems, Mr. Konitz continued to perform into his 90s. In recent years he would often stop playing in mid-solo and continue improvising vocally.Mr. Konitz was married three times. He is survived by two sons, Josh and Paul; three daughters, Rebecca Pita, Stephanie Stonefifer and Karen Kaley; three grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter.Like many jazz musicians, Mr. Konitz often found himself plying his trade in bars and nightclubs where the audiences were less than completely attentive. He professed not to mind.“Wherever I’m at, I’m happy to have a chance to play,” he told the British jazz writer Les Tompkins in 1976. “People come in and say, ‘How can you work in this noisy little joint?’ I say: ‘Very easy. I take the horn out of the bag, and I put it in my mouth.’ I appreciate the opportunity.”Julia Carmel contributed reporting. More

Here are a few of the best events happening Thursday and how to tune in (all times are Eastern Standard). Updated daily.LOL With Second City9 p.m. on FacebookThe enduring improv troupe Second City is joining forces with Topic, First Look Media’s streaming service, for a limited series that promises a mash-up of original sketches, musical performances, animation and rare footage from the sketch-comedy group’s vaults. The show — called “The Second City Presents: The Last Show Left on Earth” — premieres Thursday night, and the first episode will be hosted by Jack McBrayer (“30 Rock”), with musical guest Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and special guest Kelci Saffery from Netflix’s “Tiger King.” The instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Andrew Bird will compose and perform an original theme song. More half-hour episodes, starring Second City alumni and famous friends, will roll out weekly over the next three weeks.When: 9 p.m. on Second City’s and Topic’s social channels, where it will be available worldwide for 24 hours. After that, the episode will stream exclusively on Topic in North America for one week.Where: Second City’s Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter; and Topic’s YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.Theater for Your Ears9:30 a.m. on SpotifyWorld premieres from world-class playwrights — including Robert O’Hara, Heather Christian, Lucas Hnath and Jeremy O. Harris — without having to leave your home. Oh, and they’re free. That’s what you’ll get with Soundstage, a new podcast series from Playwrights Horizons, that has been in the works for about two years. Originally planned for this summer, the anthology’s release date was moved up to this month after social-isolation measures started. The plays were written to be heard and were recorded specifically for the format. Robert O’Hara’s “Gather,” about a series of mysterious disappearances, will drop Thursday.When: 9:30 a.m.Where: The Soundstage feed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts and other platforms.Digital Debut of ‘Lazarus’7 p.m. on YouTubeThe Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will stream “Lazarus,” from the hip-hop choreographer Rennie Harris, for the first time Thursday night. “Lazarus,” the company’s first two-act ballet, is inspired by the life and times of Ailey. The show was a New York Times Critic’s Pick in 2018, and the performance that will be broadcast is from the first time “Lazarus” was danced. Want more? Tune in at 10 a.m. for an interview with Harris moderated by the longtime Ailey dancer Hope Boykin. When: 7 p.m., and it will remain available to stream for at least 72 hours.Where: The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.Q. & A. With Clément Cogitore5 p.m. on ZoomThe French Institute Alliance Française and Le Cinéma Club will host a question-and-answer session with the French artist and director Clément Cogitore, who will discuss his 2017 documentary “Braguino,” a tale of family rivalry and failed utopia in the Siberian taiga (a sprawling region of subarctic forest). You can also stream the movie for free on Le Cinéma Club through Thursday. Last year, Cogitore’s French Baroque opera “Les Indes Galantes” was selected by The New York Times as one of the best opera productions of 2019.When: 5 p.m.Where: Live on Zoom (R.S.V.P. here) and streamed to FIAF’s Facebook.Peter Libbey contributed reporting. More