Music

Danny Ray Thompson, who spent the better part of five decades as the baritone saxophonist and linchpin of Sun Ra’s Arkestra, one of the most idiosyncratic and influential ensembles in jazz, died on March 12 in Philadelphia. He was 72.The saxophonist Marshall Allen, the current leader of the Arkestra, confirmed the death, at a hospice center. He did not specify the cause but said that Mr. Thompson had been ill for some time.Mr. Thompson was barely 20 when Mr. Allen introduced him to Sun Ra in New York in 1967. His first assignment was to watch the band’s house on the Lower East Side every Monday night, while the Arkestra played its weekly gig at Slugs’ Saloon nearby. Eventually he was promoted to band driver, before finally joining the ensemble as a saxophonist and flutist.He went on to serve for many years as the Arkestra’s manager, responsible for everything from distributing its self-released albums to organizing tours.“Within a few years Thompson was to become one of the most trusted people in Sun Ra’s entourage, and, some even said, the heir apparent to the leader,” the music historian John Szwed wrote in “Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra” (1997).Mr. Thompson’s devotion to the group’s music — and its theatrically attired, cosmo-futurist performance ethic — sprang eternal. At one concert, Mr. Szwed related, Mr. Thompson was locked in a three-saxophone melee of free improvisation when two of the keys became dislodged from his baritone saxophone and shot off into the audience. He used his fingers to plug the open holes and kept playing, aggressively. All of a sudden his hand got stuck in the horn, and even after the other saxophonists had grown tired and dropped out, he kept going, not knowing what else to do.“You need to be creative like that,” Mr. Allen remembered Sun Ra telling him approvingly afterward. “He was so creative he tore the keys off; he was like that little Dutch boy and the dike!”Danny Ray Thompson was born on Oct. 1, 1947, in New York City, to Elgie and Oscar Leonard Thompson. When he was a child his family moved to Los Angeles, where he picked up the nickname Pico, for the boulevard near where he lived. His father, a research scientist, was the first black person to receive a degree from the University of Texas. His mother, an interior designer, encouraged Danny’s interest in both music and acting.He is survived by a half sister, Dawne Thompson; a son, Darrell Thompson; and two stepchildren, Loren and Gay Ojugbana, whom he helped raise after his marriage to their mother, Marilyn Ojugbana, ended in divorce.After high school, Mr. Thompson returned to New York and enrolled in night classes at Juilliard.He played in his first concert in 1966, with the Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji. Through Mr. Allen, another member of Olatunji’s band, he was soon introduced to Sun Ra.After working his way into the Sun Ra organization, Mr. Thompson made his first major appearance with the Arkestra at Carnegie Hall on April 12 and 13, 1968, just one week after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.At first his role was simply to play bass lines on the baritone saxophone, as the group had recently lost its bassist and already had a capable baritone player in Pat Patrick. But he eventually became the sonic foundation of the group, whose music could range from swing-era revivalism to blistering free jazz.Sun Ra and much of the band soon moved to Philadelphia, taking over a house owned by Mr. Allen’s father in the Germantown neighborhood. At one point, Mr. Thompson expanded beyond simply managing the band’s affairs; he and his mother opened a grocery store, Pharoah’s Den, which he sought to make not just a moneymaking venture but also a haven for Afrocentric art.Mr. Thompson left the Arkestra in the 1990s and worked for the Census Bureau and the Transportation Security Administration before moving to Texas for a time. But in the 2000s he returned to Philadelphia and rejoined the band, which had continued after Sun Ra died in 1993.In recent years it has experienced a resurgence in popularity, particularly around the 2013 centennial of Sun Ra’s birth. The band now performs dozens of shows each year, and still tours internationally.In his final months, Mr. Thompson was in failing health and in and out of the hospital. But he gathered the strength to participate in a concert at Town Hall in Manhattan on March 4. It was his final public performance. More

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.Dirty Projectors, ‘Isolation’[embedded content]As the coronavirus takes its toll, a lot of musicians are going to be sequestered with their home studios. “Produced, performed and mixed” by Dirty Projectors’ songwriter, David Longstreth, this track sounds like one of the results. Longstreth dug out an appropriate song — “Isolation” — from John Lennon’s 1970 album, with sentiments like “People say we’ve got it made/Don’t they know we’re so afraid?” (Another, less successful Lennon cover is also out on social media.) He trades Lennon’s piano and studio band for an electronic beat and sustained synthesizer chords that make him sound thoroughly solitary and forlorn. It’s exclusively on Bandcamp, which on Friday is supporting musicians by giving up its commission on all the music and merchandise sold on the site. JON PARELESHolly Humberstone, ‘Falling Asleep at the Wheel’Here is a reminder of how expertly crafted pop works. “Falling Asleep at the Wheel” is the second single from the young British singer Holly Humberstone, who has studied her Lorde and her Eilish, but also the peculiar optimism of the dance-friendly British pop of the last two decades. This song evolves in chunks, beginning as quickstep indie-pop, then shifting to pop-soul, then unfurling into dance floor bliss and finally opening up for a kind of post-genre ecstasy. All this while telling a story about letting someone down, the resiliency of her vocals tugging against the restless euphoria of the production. And while that production is deft, it’s only complementing what’s already there — in this keyboard-only version of the song from last summer, Humberstone is unvarnished, and resplendent. JON CARAMANICAPerfume Genius, ‘On the Floor’Perfume Genius — Mike Hadreas — succumbs to passion in “On the Floor,” carried by an upbeat soul groove of rolling triplets. As the vocals savor pleasures like “the rise and fall of his chest on me,” there’s a simultaneous mesh in the music: the way two rhythm guitars, in left and right channels, continually converse and syncopate, ending up in their own shared, rippling bliss. PARELESThe Pretenders, ‘The Buzz’It’s the early 1980s again in “The Buzz,” which harks directly back to vintage Pretenders songs like “Back on the Chain Gang.” It tops the band’s neatly layered folk-rock — twang below, peal above — with Chrissie Hynde’s unmistakable blend of tension, nonchalance and tremulous openness. She’s depicting love as an irresistible addiction, one she’s not necessarily willing to resist. PARELESKelsea Ballerini featuring Kenny Chesney, ‘Half of My Hometown’In this particular moment of global restriction on movement, here’s a lovely song that’s a reminder that plenty of people were frozen in place, physically and psychologically, long before the virus came, and will be that way long after the crisis dissipates. CARAMANICAControl Top, ‘One Good Day’The Philly trio Control Top take aim at someone in need of a “Man in the Mirror” moment on its latest punky single: “You have to face yourself/To become someone else,” Ali Carter sings over a slashing guitar riff before a sampler pixilates her vocals into a stuttering haze. But the line that gives the track its title resonates most at the moment: “We’re all fighting for one good day.” CARYN GANZsomegirlnamedanna, ‘Hello I Am’The singer and songwriter Anna Balfany, who is clearly no fan of uppercase or the space bar — introduces herself with a personal-brand statement in Auto-Tune-cappella, all vocals. She assembles the phrase “Hello I am” word by word, harmonizes it, then describes herself in fragments of melody, speech and laughter. “You’ll never know that I’m emotional/’cause I’ll always make you laugh even when I’m miserable/But really I’m OK,” she asserts. “I’m just some girl named Anna,” the track concludes, though it’s clear she’s just getting started. PARELESLapsley, ‘Speaking of the End’Impermanence and transparency suffuse “Speaking of the End” by the English songwriter Lapsley. The barest minimum of piano chords join her voice as she sings, in splintered images, about separation and new companionship. “Oh the fragility my valentine,” she sings, but by the end, added voices arrive to suggest hope. PARELESArt Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, ‘Quick Trick’The Jazz Messengers were the quintessential outfit of the hard-bop era, but as a finishing school for young jazz musicians on their way to illustrious careers, the band had no fixed membership. One historic formation that existed only briefly (in 1959, jazz’s banner year) put the tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley alongside the trumpeter Lee Morgan on the band’s front line. No studio album has been released featuring this particular crew but enough material was recorded for one, at a session 61 years ago this month. That music will see the light of day in April, when Blue Note releases “Just Coolin’,” featuring six tracks from that session. They include two tunes that had never been released in any form — including “Quick Trick,” a sauntering ditty composed by the pianist Bobby Timmons (the author of “Moanin’,” the Messengers’ de facto theme song). Both Morgan and Mobley get brief star turns, the younger trumpeter blasting away first and the saxophonist rising to match his energy. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOAruán Ortíz, ‘Inside Rhythmic Falls, Part II (Echoes)’Before making “Inside Rhythmic Falls,” his latest album, the pianist Aruán Ortíz traveled back to his native Oriente, Cuba, to attend local ceremonies and reimmerse himself in the culture of his youth — specifically the old guitar-and-drum music known as changüi. You won’t hear many direct references to that tradition in this music; Ortíz is an experimentalist and a tonal provocateur, influenced by European modernism and contemporary jazz as much as by Afro-Cuban tradition. But with help from the Cuban percussionist Mauricio Herrera and the Haitian-American drum eminence Andrew Cyrille, Ortíz renders his own kind of sonic hypnosis, particularly on “Inside Rhythmic Falls, Part II (Echoes).” He moves in and out of restless, repeated patterns, sometimes in sync with the drummers and sometimes holding firm even as their cadence tumbles apart. RUSSONELLOEileen Ivers, ‘Gratitude’Social distancing made this year’s St. Patrick’s Day a deeply subdued one, but here’s a lovely contemplative postscript from Eileen Ivers, the Irish-American fiddler who has won multiple All-Ireland fiddle championships and was a founding member of Cherish the Ladies. It’s a modest but optimistic two-part melody, ambling homeward above a glinting string-band backdrop. PARELES More

You might say that every crisis gets the multi-celebrity car-crash pop anthem it deserves, but truly no crisis — certainly not one as vast and unsettling as the current one — deserves this.The actress Gal Gadot, on her sixth day of precautionary coronavirus self-isolation, orchestrated a line-for-line baton pass of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” a song that, over five decades, has been sturdy enough to hold up to Pentatonix, Corey Feldman, the cast of “Glee” and Blake Lewis on “American Idol.” (He didn’t beatbox, thankfully.)In this clusterclump of hyperfamous people with five seconds’ too much time on their hands, however, “Imagine” may have met its match. By the end, it has been pummeled and stabbed, disaggregated, stripped for parts and left for trash collection by the side of the highway. It is proof that even if no one meets up in person, horribleness can spread.[embedded content]The performance is two minutes long, but watching from front to back requires about 20, with breaks for snarfing, ear-canal cleansing and bursts of who-the-hell-is-this? It begins after a brief, platitudinous monologue from Gadot, who may be on lockdown, but whose mind has been freed, bro.When she sings the opening line — “Imagine there’s no heaven” — she grins at the camera as if she’s about to pick your pocket. Or like a joyfully masochistic nurse about to administer a gruesome shot. It feels oily. Distressing. Up next, Kristen Wiig, out in nature wearing a wide-brimmed hat, looks dour, as if her ramble had been interrupted.This misadventure turns to true chaos, though, when Jamie Dornan arrives, his hair wet-like and his voice a hollow rasp. “No hell below us,” he … I guess, sings? More like woofs. Expectorates. Dornan is not on Instagram, so perhaps he is unaware he looks like he’s reluctantly filming a hostage video, and can’t decide if he even wants to be rescued. More

Jenna Camille Henderson, a singer-songwriter in Washington, D.C., didn’t have just one job. Instead, like many other musicians and creative workers in the United States, she pieced together a living from multiple sources.This delicate process, known dryly as the freelance hustle, can be exasperating, but it can also provide a special kind of freedom and independence. It can even be reassuring to know that your economic fortunes aren’t tied to a single company or field.Until a global pandemic hits, and all the places where you work are affected.At the beginning of March, she was making steady money thanks to three jobs: working security at the 9:30 Club, one of the city’s most beloved music venues; providing paraprofessional support at a charter school; and playing a weekly gig at a local club. In less than a week, each one of those had been canceled or put on hold, because of measures to try to halt the spread of the new coronavirus.Ms. Henderson, 29, who does not have health insurance, has no source of income for the foreseeable future. As freelancers, she said, “I think we take for granted that there’s always going to be something to do.”“I never thought, maybe I should consider doing something more permanent in case something like this happens,” she added, “because how many times does something like this happen?”This is how it all fell apart, as recounted by Ms. Henderson and in screenshots of texts and emails from her phone.The first notice came on March 11 from the 9:30 Club, emailing to say that all shows through the end of the month were off. (More have since been canceled.)That eliminated Ms. Henderson’s job of ushering people at the door and managing crowds. She wasn’t too worried yet, though; she had only had a couple of shifts a month.Ms. Henderson has been making music in some form since she was 6 years old. Growing up in Accokeek, Md., just south of Washington she started learning by ear and then took up classical piano and jazz. Her talents led her to the renowned Duke Ellington School of the Arts and on to study jazz in college. More