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      35 Pop and Jazz Albums, Shows and Festivals Coming This Fall

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      Buzzy debuts (Chappell Roan, Evian Christ) and anticipated follow-ups (Jorja Smith, yeule) are due this season.After a summer dominated by blockbuster tours by Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, this fall the music business gets back to the business of releasing albums. Longstanding acts are returning with new LPs (Dolly Parton, Wilco, Usher), and long-awaited follow-ups are arriving, too (the Streets, Sampha, Nicki Minaj). Dates and lineups are subject to change.SeptemberSAM RIVERS CENTENNIAL Amid the hardscrabble realities of 1970s New York, Studio Rivbea was a crucial crack in the pavement where creative life flourished. A downtown loft run by the esteemed saxophonist Sam Rivers and his wife, Beatrice, Rivbea — and its resident big band — gave musicians young and old a space to rehearse and perform on their own terms. Craig Harris, Joseph Daly and Steve Coleman all spent formative time there in the ’70s, and they’ve come together to organize a big-band performance in recognition of Rivers, who would have turned 100 this month. (Sep. 22; Mt. Morris Ascension Presbyterian Church) — Giovanni RussonelloSOUL REBELS One of New Orleans’s best-known exports, the Soul Rebels carry forward the classic brass-band tradition by infusing it with plenty of modern-day flavor across the spectrum of Black American music. Their upcoming four-night stand at the Blue Note includes guest appearances from the golden-age rap eminences Rakim and Big Daddy Kane (Sept. 21); Ja Rule (Sept. 22); G-Eazy (Sept. 23); and a potpourri of contemporary-jazz heavyweights, including James Carter and Elena Pinderhughes (Sept. 24). — RussonelloKYLIE MINOGUE For decades, Kylie Minogue has been making dance floor manna that pingpongs between curiosity and undeniability, This year, she released one of her best — “Padam Padam,” a gay nightclub anthem that spawned slang and memes and, over time, a pop crossover. Minogue’s new album, on its heels, is “Tension.” A Las Vegas residency will follow, starting in November. (Sept. 22; BMG) — Jon CaramanicaKylie Minogue got a boost from another club anthem this year, “Padam Padam.”Don Arnold/Getty ImagesCHAPPELL ROAN Over the past year, the pop singer Chappell Roan has been releasing a string of theatrically intimate singles that touch on relationship awkwardness with uncommon candor. The music on her debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” — which touches on wobbly ’80s new wave and ’90s singer-songwriter pop-rock and ’00s dance-pop — suggests a singer less beholden to style than to ensuring she says the exact thing she needs to say. (Sept. 22; Amusement/Island) — CaramanicaYEULE The songwriter, singer and producer yeule embraces extremes on “Softscars,” the follow-up to “Glitch Princess,” from 2022. Nothing is predictable on an album that holds guitar ballads, a piano waltz, bristling rock guitar riffs, gleaming electronics, hyperpop tweaks and bluntly distorted beats. The songs consider pain, love, technology and carnality, the experience of a 21st-century life that’s simultaneously physical and virtual. (Sept. 22; Ninja Tune) — Jon ParelesJOHN ZORN’S NEW MASADA QUARTET Opportunities are few to hear the saxophonist, composer and downtown jazz doyen John Zorn simply throwing down, in the company of improvisers that elevate him. That’s what happens when he gets together with the New Masada Quartet, which plays music from Zorn’s 613-piece “Masada” songbook (composed based on aspects of Jewish folklore and theology) and features the guitarist Julian Lage, the bassist Jorge Roeder and the drummer Kenny Wollesen. (Sept. 26 through Oct. 1; The Village Vanguard) — RussonelloCHERRY GLAZERR On the bluntly titled new album “I Don’t Want You Anymore,” Clementine Creevy, who leads the indie-rock band Cherry Glazerr, wrestles with a clearly toxic relationship. As the songs go style-hopping — explosive grunge, chugging synth-pop, hints of funk and jazz — the obsession persists. (Sept. 29; Secretly Canadian) — ParelesDARIUS JONES The avant-gardist Darius Jones has such a distinctive sound on the alto saxophone — widely dilated, yet so rough it could peel paint — he could make a living off his tone alone. But he also has a fiercely innovative streak as a composer. Now he returns with a wide-ranging new album showing off both sides of his talent, “Fluxkit Vancouver (Its Suite but Sacred),” with a string section in prickly repartee with Jones and the commanding drummer Gerald Cleaver. (Sept. 29; Northern Spy/We Jazz) — RussonelloONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER Daniel Lopatin has built a two-lane career: as a producer creating cavernous backdrops for hitmakers like the Weeknd, and recording on his own as Oneohtrix Point Never, exploring changeable, ambiguous soundscapes. His new Oneohtrix Point Never album, “Again,” is largely instrumental, incorporating orchestral arrangements, glitchy electronics, stray vocal samples, artificial intelligence and countless other elements that are subject to change at whim in dynamic, inscrutable tracks. Lopatin has described the music as “crescendo-core.” (Sept. 29; Warp) — ParelesJORJA SMITH “Falling or Flying” is only the second studio album by the English songwriter Jorja Smith, but she has been prolific as a collaborator with Kali Uchis, Burna Boy, Drake, FKA twigs and others. She’s fond of minor chords and lean, moody grooves that hint at soul, jazz and Nigerian Afrobeats; they suit her aching but supple voice, as it projects both sympathy and resilience. (Sept. 29; Famm) — ParelesJorja Smith has become a frequent collaborator in the gap between albums. Her second LP arrives in late September.Alex Pantling/Getty ImagesWILCO To make its 13th studio album, “Cousin,” Wilco brought in an outside producer for the first time since 2007: the Welsh songwriter Cate Le Bon, who opens folk-rock into electronica. She encouraged Wilco to extend the sonic experimentation it opened up on its 2002 album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.” As Jeff Tweedy sings about desolation, loss and obstinate hope, the music carries roots-rock into disorienting and illuminating territories but still sounds handmade. (Sept. 29; dBpm) — ParelesOctoberUSHER Some of the most viral performance clips of this past summer have belonged not to Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, but to Usher, whose Las Vegas residency has been a celebrity magnet and also a showcase for grown-folks-business R&B. His new music continues to delve into the sticky-situation soul that helped make him a superstar two decades ago. (October; mega/gamma.) — CaramanicaBUTCHER BROWN A spirit of generous communion runs through “Solar Music,” the latest album from the Richmond-based hip-hop-jazz fusion quintet Butcher Brown. The album features guest appearances by the saxophonist Braxton Cook, the M.C.’s Pink Siifu and Nappy Nina and the trumpeter Keyon Harrold, among others. Butcher Brown will toast “Solar Music” at a concert Oct. 18 at Le Poisson Rouge. (Oct. 6; Concord Jazz) — RussonelloSLAUSON MALONE 1 Slauson Malone 1 is the updated name for the recording project of Jasper Marsalis, a musician and artist who plays with myriad genres and styles, denaturing them well beyond their familiar contours. His new album, “Excelsior,” is deeply ambitious, engaging and full of winning eccentricities. (Oct. 6; Warp) — CaramanicaSUFJAN STEVENS Love — physical, divine, longed-for, embattled, cherished — is the subject on Sufjan Stevens’ new album, “Javelin.” Its songs usually start out folky, but they rarely stay that way; they expand and billow. Working alone at his home studio, Stevens orchestrated them all by himself, playing nearly every instrument. (Oct. 6; Asthmatic Kitty) — Pareles“BOSSA NOVA: THE GREATEST NIGHT” The United States was formally introduced to Brazil’s bossa nova, or “new style”— suave, understated, sophisticated — with a concert at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 21, 1962 that included Antonio Carlos Jobim, João Gilberto, Sergio Mendes, Luis Bonfá and others. It’s nearly a year late for a 60th anniversary, but a concert will bring together Brazilian stars including Seu Jorge and Carlinhos Brown along with Daniel Jobim — Antonio’s grandson — to revisit the now-classic bossa nova repertory. (Oct. 8; Carnegie Hall.) — ParelesROY HARGROVE By the time he died in 2018, at 49, Roy Hargrove had become the most impactful trumpeter of his generation. Back in 1993, he was still the new kid on the block when Jazz at Lincoln Center commissioned him to write and perform “Love Suite in Mahogany,” with a septet. That performance is being released on record for the first time and a series of shows at Dizzy’s Club will mark its release: The drummer Willie Jones III and the bassist Gerald Cannon will colead a sextet featuring alumni of Hargrove’s bands Oct. 11-13, and the Roy Hargrove Big Band will appear Oct. 14-16. (Oct. 13; Blue Engine) — RussonelloL’RAIN The songwriter Taja Cheek, who records as L’Rain, dissolves genre boundaries and explores mixed emotions on her third album, “I Killed Your Dog.” The songs are lush and immersive, layered with instrumental patterns and vocal harmonies; they’re also cryptic and open-ended, to be deciphered through repeated listening. (Oct. 13; Mexican Summer) — ParelesOFFSET Offset is the second Migos member to release a solo album in the wake of the killing of Takeoff, the group’s third member and creative heart. The first single from “Set It Off” is “Jealousy,” a collaboration with his wife, Cardi B, that suggests that the couple is willing to play their relationship and fame for laughs, and art. (Oct. 13; Motown) — CaramanicaOffset will release his first album since the death of Migos’s Takeoff in October.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressTROYE SIVAN It’s been five years since Troye Sivan has released an album. His re-emergence in recent months, however, suggests the time away has been emboldening. As an actor, he was one of the standouts on “The Idol,” the besieged HBO drama about the music business, and “Rush,” the lead single from “Something to Give Each Other,” his third album, is a remarkably confident assertion of carnal interest. (Oct. 13; Capitol) — CaramanicaJIHYE LEE ORCHESTRA The composer and bandleader Jihye Lee is becoming well-known for her fluid integration of Western classical and big-band jazz techniques, and for arrangements in which heavily loaded horn parts move with apparent ease. At a Brooklyn show, her 18-piece orchestra will debut “Infinite Connections,” a suite-length meditation on the bond Lee shares with her mother and grandmother. (Oct. 15; National Sawdust) — RussonelloJ.D. ALLEN A tenor saxophonist known for the hefty swing and raw intellect of his improvising, and the back-to-basics approach of his jazz trios, J.D. Allen has never before made an album featuring electronics. That will change this fall, when he releases “This,” with Alex Bonney’s dark and enveloping atmospherics wreathed around Allen’s high-velocity horn playing and the thundering drums of Gwilym Jones. (Oct. 20; Savant) — RussonelloEVIAN CHRIST A long-awaited debut album is finally arriving from the electronic music producer Evian Christ, who has been releasing shiver-inducing music for over a decade. The songs on “Revanchist” are chaotic and blissful, tactile and expansive — all in all, a physical experience as much as an aural one. (Oct. 20; Warp) — CaramanicaSAMPHA In the seven years between his own albums, the English songwriter Sampha has lent his richly melancholy voice to tracks by Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Frank Ocean and Alicia Keys. “Lahai” — named after his grandfather, who was from Sierra Leone — is an exploratory, ambitious album that contemplates time, love and transcendence with otherworldly electronics and thoughtful melodies. (Oct. 20; Young) — ParelesAfter a seven-year gap, Sampha will release “Lahai” in October.Alberto Pezzali/Invision, via Associated PressTHE STREETS British rap’s great literalist, the Streets (Mike Skinner) returns with “The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light,” a new album that nods to various stripes of U.K. club culture while adhering firm to Skinner’s keen-eyed storytelling. In conjunction with the album, the Streets will also release a clubland-themed murder mystery film of the same name. (Oct. 20; 679 Recordings/Warner Music UK Ltd) — CaramanicaTHE MOUNTAIN GOATS “All Hail West Texas,” a sparsely arranged but lyrically vivid 2002 album released when the Mountain Goats was still a moniker for the solo music of John Darnielle, remains one of the most beloved entries in the group’s vast discography. Now the band — featuring the bassist Peter Hughes, the drummer Jon Wurster and the multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas — will release a sequel, “Jenny From Thebes,” updating the fates of its characters and fleshing out its sound. (Oct. 27; Merge) — Lindsay ZoladzMIKE REED “The Separatist Party,” the forthcoming album from the drummer, composer and Chicago jazz instigator Mike Reed, is Part 1 of a forthcoming three-album cycle meditating on solitude, loneliness and the elusiveness of community (surprisingly, he was already working on this project before pandemic lockdowns). The irony, though, is how much fun he seems to be having in the company of the multi-instrumentalist Ben LaMar Gay, the poet Marvin Tate and the three members of Bitchin Bajas, his compatriots on this LP, who surge through grimy post-rock or drift into ethereal, odd-metered, electrified airspaces with whiffs of Ethio-jazz. (Oct. 27; Astral Spirits/We Jazz) — RussonelloDOJA CAT: THE SCARLET TOUR Though she’s wowed audiences with ambitious awards show performances, the rambunctious rapper and pop star Doja Cat has not yet embarked upon an arena tour. (Tonsil surgery forced her to pull out of a slot opening for the Weeknd last year.) The Scarlet Tour — which begins at San Francisco’s Chase Center on Oct. 31 and makes stops at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Nov. 29 and Newark’s Prudential Center on Nov. 30 — will give her a chance to command her largest stages yet and showcase music from her latest album, “Scarlet,” due Sept. 22. The rising rapper Doechii and of-the-moment it-girl Ice Spice will open. (Oct. 31 through Dec. 13) — ZoladzNovemberCAT POWER Last November, Cat Power (the stage name of the smoky-voiced crooner Chan Marshall) played a song-for-song reimagining of her hero Bob Dylan’s May 1966 Manchester concert — the one at which an audience member, disgruntled by Dylan’s departure from acoustic folk, infamously yelled out “Judas!” Now it is arriving as an album titled “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert.” Marshall, a gifted interpreter of other musicians’ material, structured the set to be half acoustic and half electric, just like Dylan’s; a muted “She Belongs to Me” contrasts with a rollicking, full-band “Ballad of a Thin Man.” (November; Domino) — ZoladzChan Marshall (a.k.a. Cat Power) will release her live concert covering Bob Dylan.Alberto Pezzali/Invision, via Alberto Pezzali, via Invision, via Associated PressCODY JOHNSON “The Painter,” the new song from Cody Johnson, one of mainstream country’s sturdiest performers, extends his streak of music that’s deeply earnest, unflashily produced, and a blend of emotionally stoic and trembling. It’s the lead single from “Leather,” his third studio album on a major label after a long and robust independent career. (Nov. 3; COJO Music/Warner Music Nashville) — CaramanicaMYRA MELFORD’S FIRE & WATER QUINTET The pianist and composer Myra Melford’s five-piece band of all-star creative improvisers is aptly named: There is something volatile and elemental about the music she makes with Ingrid Laubrock, the saxophonist; Mary Halvorson, the guitarist; Tomeka Reid, the cellist; and Lesley Mok, the percussionist. On “Hear the Light Singing,” the group’s second LP, Halvorson’s effects-laden guitar comes in splashes and jolts, and Reid’s cello moves in hurrying steps or generous waves. (Nov. 3; RogueArt) — RussonelloLIZ PHAIR: ‘EXILE IN GUYVILLE’ 30th ANNIVERSARY TOUR Liz Phair’s 1993 debut “Exile in Guyville” captured young adulthood in a wry, vivid voice and brought a refreshing female perspective to indie rock’s boys club. Thirty years later, it continues to inspire younger musicians, including Kate Bollinger and Sabrina Teitelbaum (who records searingly honest music under the name Blondshell), both openers for Phair when she plays “Guyville” in its glorious entirety on an anniversary tour. The show comes to Brooklyn’s Kings Theater on Nov. 24. (Nov. 3 through Dec. 9) — ZoladzCAMP FLOG GNAW CARNIVAL The annual festival helmed by Tyler, the Creator continues to be one of the most innovatively programmed, in any genre. He is a headliner this year, along with SZA and the Hillbillies (Kendrick Lamar and Baby Keem). The deep lineup includes the corridos tumbados stars Fuerza Regida, various generations of dream-pop from Willow, Toro y Moi and d4vd, accessibly tough rapping from Clipse and Ice Spice and much more. (Nov. 11-12; Dodger Stadium Grounds in Los Angeles) — CaramanicaNICKI MINAJ Reportedly, when Lil Uzi Vert was planning the release of his most recent album, “Pink Tape,” Nicki Minaj reached out to him to ask, in essence, how he could release a pink-themed album and not include her. (He obliged.) Now, Minaj returns with “Pink Friday 2,” her own album, on the heels of a pair of collaborations with Ice Spice, “Princess Diana” and “Barbie World,” that have given her new spark. (Nov. 17; Republic) — CaramanicaDOLLY PARTON Last year, when she was nominated for induction in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Dolly Parton initially declined because she did not consider herself a rock artist. (She was eventually inducted anyway.) “This has, however, inspired me to put out a hopefully great rock ’n’ roll album at some point in the future,” she said in a statement. That future has now arrived: Dolly Parton’s “Rockstar” is a sprawling, star-studded 30-track album that features originals (the stomping “World on Fire”), covers of rock classics (“Stairway to Heaven,” “Let It Be”), and an impressive list of guests that include Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Debbie Harry and more. (Nov. 17; Butterfly Records/Big Machine Records) — Zoladz More

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      Doja Cat Goes Horror Rap on ‘Demons,’ and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Peter Gabriel, Lauren Mayberry, Oneohtrix Point Never and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Doja Cat, ‘Demons’A brash, blown-speaker quality animates “Demons,” the latest single from Doja Cat’s upcoming album, “Scarlet.” “How my demons look now that my pockets full?” she shouts with a defiant rasp, before switching to a lighter and more viciously humorous register on the verses. (“Who are you, and what are those? You are gross!”) “Demons” also features a horror movie-inspired video, which stars Christina Ricci and features a very creepy Doja slithering around like a red-eyed monster. Other pop stars merely tune out their haters; Doja exorcises them. LINDSAY ZOLADZNicki Minaj, ‘Last Time I Saw You’Nicki Minaj doesn’t usually admit to any regrets or second thoughts. But she does in “Last Time I Saw You,” a song that seesaws between guitar-flecked ballad and rueful rapping. “I wish I remembered to say I’d do anything for you/Maybe I pushed you away because I thought that I’d bore you,” she sings, confessing that she was the one in the wrong. JON PARELESTeezo Touchdown featuring Janelle Monáe, ‘You Thought’Misjudgments pile up in “You Thought,” which transforms from percussive, triplet-driven rock to ballad with brisk hip-hop wordplay. Teezo Touchdown moves between rapping and singing; Monáe is melodic, singing, “I thought we were better.” The song details a breakup from both sides: missed opportunities, misunderstandings, unfulfilled needs, all compressed into pop. PARELESBlankfor.ms, Jason Moran and Marcus Gilmore, ‘Eighth Pose’Tyler Gilmore — the New York-based composer and musician known as Blankfor.ms — makes music using degraded tape loops, analog synthesizers and an old spinet piano. He was approached recently by the producer Sun Chung about doing an album with jazz improvisers, and his first call was to the pianist and composer Jason Moran, his former teacher at the New England Conservatory. His second was to the drummer Marcus Gilmore. Those two are among the finest improvisers alive: It is an impressive team for a first foray. On “Refract,” their new album, the trio works across medium and style, with composed elements and prepared loops by Blankfor.ms sparking improvisations from his collaborators. “Eighth Pose” turns on a twitchy, coiled synth phrase, like a keyed-up Aphex Twin track; Moran picks it up on the piano, toying with it, while Gilmore adds a nervy drumbeat, passed through compressed effects. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKenya Grace, ‘Strangers’Speedy breakbeats equate with dating jitters in “Strangers,” Kenya Grace’s whispery complaint about how 21st-century romance too often ends in ghosting. She’s the singer, songwriter and producer on the track. “One random night when everything changes/you won’t reply and we’ll go back to strangers.” Synthesizers hum as the percussion races ahead, while she sings about feeling like “Everyone’s disposable.” PARELESJeff Rosenstock, ‘Will U Still U’The Long Island-born punk lifer Jeff Rosenstock tests the limits of love on “Will U Still U,” the jet-propelled opening track off his new album “Hellmode.” “Will you still love me” after I’ve messed up, he asks (with an expletive) in a catchy, incongruously cheery melody, before unleashing a rapid-fire rundown of his relationship worries. In the song’s cathartic finale he’s joined by a chorus of voices shouting that refrain at the top of their lungs and fist-pumping in anxious solidarity. ZOLADZOneohtrix Point Never, ‘A Barely Lit Path’Oneohtrix Point Never is the composer and mastermind Daniel Lopatin, who has been the Weeknd’s producer and created the nervy soundtrack for “Uncut Gems,” along with making his own albums. “A Barely Lit Path” begins as a reverent, electronics-edged dirge with processed vocals imagining “a barely lit path from your house to mine.” Then it goes through a multiverse of wordless transformations: pulsing synthesizers, a stately quasi-Baroque string orchestra, a choir accompanied by synthesizer arpeggios and a gradual, virtual decrescendo. Absolutely anything can happen as long as it’s in the same key. PARELESPeter Gabriel, ‘Love Can Heal (Bright-Side Mix)’An expansive sound design — with bell-toned ostinatos, throaty cellos and multidirectional echoes — underlines Peter Gabriel’s troubled but determined optimism in “Love Can Heal,” a new track from his gradually accruing album “I/O.” His vocal sets aside his usual grizzled hoarseness for a modest tenor; a choir joins him, yet the song stays fragile. PARELESJason Hawk Harris, ‘Jordan and the Nile’There’s an Appalachian feeling to the melody of Jason Hawk Harris’s rootsy incantation “Jordan and the Nile,” a leisurely, mystical song about rivers and generations. An organ and a string section provide droning chords as he sings about determined optimism informed by biblical imagery: “I’m feeling heavy but I see the light/A world is dark but my abyss is bright,” he promises. PARELESLauren Mayberry, ‘Are You Awake?’The debut solo single from Lauren Mayberry — the lead singer of the Scottish electro-pop group Chvrches — is a sparse, plaintive piano ballad written with Tobias Jesso Jr., chronicling nocturnal anxieties and open-ended questions. “Are you awake? I feel a sadness in my skin,” Mayberry sings, her voice melancholy but chiming with the faintest hint of hope that her message will be answered. ZOLADZMaria BC, ‘Amber’ and ‘Watcher’Glimmering electronics, tolling guitars and hovering vocal harmonies gather in “Amber” and “Watcher,” two segued songs that meditate on closeness: “Your scent is on me now/Your senses draw me out,” Maria BC sings. “There is no place to hide and no wrong.” It’s blissfully enveloping and humbly awe-struck. PARELESKris Davis, ‘Dolores’ (Take 1)“Dolores” is easily one of the most infectious melodies Wayne Shorter wrote during his stint as musical director for the Miles Davis Quintet. But it’s not one of the (many) Shorter tunes you’re likely to hear called at a jam session or covered at a straight-ahead gig. Maybe there is something intimidating about the balled up, stop-and-start melody; the centerlessness of its structure; or how perfectly the quintet plays it on the classic 1966 recording. Well, none of this scares the pianist and composer Kris Davis. Strong-but-bendable rhythm, splintered melodic lines and rough-and-tumble interplay are par for the course for (this) Davis, especially with her Diatom Ribbons project. On a new album, recorded live at the Village Vanguard with a five-member version of that ensemble, the group takes its time getting to the theme: The bassist Trevor Dunn makes some references to it, the drummer Terri Lyne Carrington establishes a heavy groove, and finally Julian Lage’s guitar comes together with Davis’s piano to grapple with the melody. When Lage departs from it on his solo, he travels far — and the band comes with him. RUSSONELLO More

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      Jaimie Branch Adds to a Brilliant Legacy With Fly or Die’s Final LP

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      The trumpeter, who died a year ago at 39, recorded “Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War))” with her quartet in April 2022.Jaimie Branch was a real one. That’s the consensus among anyone who really knew her, and it’s what the record shows. The Guardian once quoted her as saying that “playing the trumpet is like singing your soul,” and somehow her music backs that up completely.A year ago this week, Branch died unexpectedly, at 39; the tragedy took the air out of creative music communities in Brooklyn, Chicago and well beyond. Branch hadn’t released her first LP as a bandleader until 2017, but she’d made up for lost time. With her two groups — Fly or Die, an unorthodox trumpet-cello-bass-drums quartet, and Anteloper, an analog-synth-splashed duo with the drummer Jason Nazary — she put out five albums in as many years. It’s an uncommonly good and unruly set of records: Each is devilishly fun but also musically serious and, as time went on, increasingly razor-sharp politically.Beyond its odd instrumental lineup, what immediately distinguished Fly or Die was the clarity of the melodies Branch was writing, and the pummeling force the band could build around them. Her trumpet lines — both written and improvised — had an irresistible terseness, with the direct power of mariachi trumpeting infused into ideas taken from Midwestern free-jazz players like Baikida Carroll and Lester Bowie, and from electric-era Miles Davis. She delivered it all via extended trumpet techniques borrowed from Axel Dörner, a German avant-gardist, and wreathed that crisp, purposeful sound in the quartet’s earthy timbres: bass, cello and the drummer Chad Taylor’s low, skulking beats, encompassing the samba-adjacent and odd-metered jazz funk.In the wake of her passing, those Fly or Die albums now represent Branch’s biggest legacy — and something of a challenge to the rest of the jazz world. Who else is here to sing their soul, in her absence? Who are the real ones that remain? Who else wants to fly?As it turns out, Branch had one last gauntlet to throw down. On Friday, International Anthem will release “Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War)),” the quartet’s third and final studio LP, recorded in April 2022 during her residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha. It is just as electrifying as the group’s first two LPs, but with a wider sonic horizon and more parts in motion. And there’s a triumphant streak running through it that only heightens the pain of Branch’s demise. She was moving fast and riding high when we lost her.Synths, mixed percussion, guest horn players and extra vocalists flood in at the edges. The nine-minute centerpiece “Baba Louie” starts out as a spiked punch of Caribbean carnival rhythm and South African-inflected horns, introduces a short flirtation between marimba and flute, blossoms into an anthemic trumpet solo section, and finally veers into a dragging, almost dublike stretch of groove.There is more space on “((World War))” than any previous album for Branch’s disarming, half-sung vocals, which she had started using on “Fly or Die II: Bird Dogs of Paradise” from 2019. “We’re gonna gonna gonna take over the world, and give it give it back back back back to the la-la-la-land,” she chants on “Take Over the World,” from the new album, stuttering rhythmically over Taylor’s deceptively complex drum beat, Jason Ajemian’s centering acoustic bass and Lester St. Louis’s furious scrub on cello.Stripped down to just two voices and a bass, she and Ajemian harmonize on a cover of the Meat Puppets’ “Comin’ Down,” a satirical inspirational country ditty, here retitled “The Mountain.” On the closer, “World War ((Reprise)),” she jangles a Fisher-Price musical toy and sings in an even, intimate tone, almost like Patty Waters:Publicize, televise, capitalizeon revolution’s eyesWhat the world could beIf only you could seeTheir wings are false flagsOn our wings, they all rise.Branch began her career on the Chicago scene, internalizing the city’s pulpy, blues-based brand of free jazz. She made her way to music school in Boston and Baltimore, then on to New York, where many of the musicians she played with (including all of Fly or Die’s original members) were Chicago transplants. Part of what delayed her in stepping forward as a bandleader was, sadly, an addiction that she would battle off and on for over a decade.But during periods of recovery, she found that she could get a natural high from “putting it all out on the table” as a performer, she told the audio journal Aquarium Drunkard in 2019. “Playing a simple melody is probably not something I would have done in 2007 or 2008,” she said, but the “vulnerability” of making a strong, clear statement gave Branch the “chemical reaction that I wanted.”She puts a lot on the line on “Burning Grey,” from the new album. Entreating the listener to stay vigilant, she sings: “Believe me/The future lives inside us/Don’t forget to fight.”If we’re lucky, Branch’s impact will be felt for years. Not just in the sound of improvised music, but in the fervor and hope — the all-on-the-table abandon — that improvisers put into attacking their craft.Jaimie Branch“Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War))”(International Anthem) More

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      Bob Jones, Behind-the-Stage Force at Newport Festivals, Dies at 86

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      For decades he helped shape Rhode Island’s venerable folk and jazz events, presenting stars and unknowns alike. One colleague called him a “test pilot of jazz.”Bob Jones, who began as a volunteer at the Newport Folk Festival in the early 1960s before rapidly gaining the trust of its impresario, George Wein, and going on to produce the event over two decades, died on Aug. 14 in hospice care in Danbury, Conn. He was 86.His daughter Radhika Jones said the cause was complications of dementia.Mr. Jones spent a half-century with the folk festival, held every summer in Rhode Island, as well as with its companion, the Newport Jazz Festival, and other events produced by Mr. Wein. He was there when Bob Dylan outraged purists by going electric at the 1965 folk festival, and he helped persuade Mr. Wein to resurrect the festival in 1985 after a 16-year hiatus.In his autobiography, “Myself Among Others: A Life in Music” (with Nate Chinen, 2003), Mr. Wein, who started the jazz festival in 1954 and the folk version in 1959, called Mr. Jones “an indispensable member of the hierarchy of Festival Productions,” his company.Mr. Jones in 1995 with George Wein, the producer of the Newport festivals. Mr. Wein called Mr. Jones “an indispensable member of the hierarchy of Festival Productions.”Collection of George WeinLike many of the people who worked for Mr. Wein, who died in 2021, Mr. Jones performed a variety of tasks for the folk and jazz festivals. Early on, he was in charge of arranging housing for performers and getting them to the stage on time.“Our closest call this year was Miles Davis,” he told The Newport Daily News in 1966. “He arrived at the field less than 10 minutes before he was to appear onstage.”For two years in the 1960s, Mr. Jones traveled around the South and Canada in search of new talent for the folk festival with the folklorist and mandolin player Ralph Rinzler.“They found these people who weren’t in the music business, who were playing on back porches and at house parties,” said Rick Massimo, author of “I Got a Song: A History of the Newport Folk Festival” (2017). “What still reverberates today is how they helped rediscover Cajun music, which wasn’t well known or appreciated outside Louisiana.”Mr. Jones and Mr. Rinzler’s roadwork led to an infusion of artists at the 1964 folk festival, including the singer and songwriter Jimmy Driftwood, the banjo player Frank Proffitt, the balladeer Almeda Riddle, the bottleneck guitarist and blues singer Mississippi Fred McDowell and the fiddler and singer Glen Ohrlin.Mr. Jones was also the road manager for international tours, arranged by Mr. Wein, that featured Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington in the 1960s and ’70s and Sarah Vaughan in the ‘80s.“Bob was an intelligent and low-key person who was unfazed by chaos and worked really well with artists,” Mr. Chinen, the editorial director of the public radio station WRTI in Philadelphia, said in a phone interview. “So you can imagine he was the right type of person to take Monk around the world.”Robert Leslie Jones was born on May 11, 1937, in Boston. His father, Edward, was an electrician, and his mother, Florence (Foss) Jones, was a homemaker.He entered Boston University’s junior college in 1956 and received his associate arts degree two years later, around the time he moved with his sister Helen into an apartment above Cafe Yana, one of the coffeehouses at the heart of the Boston-Cambridge area’s folk music scene.He was intrigued by the music, and, having some talent, began performing, favoring Woody Guthrie songs like “Do Re Mi.” He also took on the background role of organizing hootenannies, and found he enjoyed it.He withdrew from Boston University’s bachelor’s degree program in 1960 and was soon drafted into the Army; a conscientious objector, he served stateside as an Army medic. After his discharge, he continued to play music in the Boston area.In 1964, he was featured, along with Phil Ochs, Lisa Kindred and Eric Anderson, on an album, “New Folks, Vol. 2,” released on the Vanguard label. Mr. Jones in performance at Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass., in 1968. He was a folk singer before he began his long career behind the scenes.Charlie FrizzellOnce he joined Mr. Wein’s staff in about 1965, Mr. Jones became involved in nearly everything in the Wein empire, including the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France, and the Kool Jazz Festivals — stadium shows around the country that he ran from 1976 to 1985 as technical producer from a base in Cincinnati.In 1985, Mr. Jones became the top producer of the Newport Folk Festival, which had been dormant since 1969, following the gate-crashing that had disrupted that year’s jazz festival, when rock acts like Led Zeppelin and Sly and the Family Stone joined the bill. The jazz festival moved to New York City in 1972, where it continued under various names for three decades. (Mr. Wein brought jazz back to Newport in 1981, but the folk festival did not revive as quickly.)In his book, Mr. Wein credited Mr. Jones — with part-time help from his daughters, Radhika and Nalini — with helping to restore the folk festival to life. Asked what she and her sister, both teenagers at the time, had done, Radhika Jones, the editor in chief of Vanity Fair, said, “My guess is that George saw that a younger generation was enthused by it, which gave him a sense that this was something that would draw an audience.”The festival lineup that year included Joan Baez, Bonnie Raitt, Judy Collins, Dave Van Ronk, Doc and Merle Watson, Arlo Guthrie, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. A year later, the festival became a platform for a future star: the bluegrass singer and fiddler Alison Kraus, who was 15.Mr. Jones was long immersed in the jazz festival, as a producer and production manager, with Mr. Wein retaining the title of lead producer. He was also involved in the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, known as Jazz Fest, which Mr. Wein also produced.“Bob was like a test pilot of jazz, always smooth and calm,” Quint Davis, the current producer and director of Jazz Fest, said. “His brain was like a Univac. He had all the knowledge to make a show work.”Mr. Jones’s active involvement in production ended in early 2004 with a diagnosis of Guillain-Barre syndrome, which left him mostly paralyzed and breathing through a ventilator. He recovered enough to stay on as an adviser and mentor through 2009; his daughter Nalini, who had been his assistant, became an associate producer and helped run the folk festival from 2004 to 2009.When Mr. Jones was able to return to the Newport site in August 2004, he was carried onto the stage by a forklift.“He loved logistics,” Nalini Jones said, “and he looked delighted.”Mr. Jones at Newport in 2015. His active involvement in production ended in 2004 with a diagnosis of Guillain-Barre syndrome.Alan NahigianIn addition to his daughters, he is survived by his wife, Marguerite (Suares) Jones; his son, Christopher; three grandchildren; and his sisters, Helen von Schmidt and Marcia McCarthy.In 1984, Mr. Jones sang at Symphony Hall in Boston at a reunion concert of performers who had worked at the storied folk music venue Club 47. Billed as Robert L. Jones, he was on a program with Richie Havens, Tom Rush and others.“We were stunned,” Radhika Jones said. “I was 12 at the time, but we really didn’t realize he’d been a performer. He’d sung to us, and we listened to folk music at home.“It was really special to see him onstage. This was a part of him we started to discover.” More

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      Dolly Parton Reunites Two Beatles, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by aespa, Guns N’ Roses, Cautious Clay and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Dolly Parton featuring Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, ‘Let It Be’Leave it to Dolly Parton to reunite the Beatles — or at least the surviving members, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr — for a rousing rendition of “Let It Be,” which will appear on her star-studded November album “Rockstar.” Accompanied by Peter Frampton on guitar and Mick Fleetwood on drums, Parton dives headfirst into the song’s reverent spiritualism, as she did on her great 2001 cover of Collective Soul’s “Shine.” Her “Let It Be” hews closer to the original arrangement, as McCartney leads the way with his memorable piano progression and Frampton lets a mid-song solo rip. Were it done with anything less than absolute conviction, the whole thing would feel like a superfluous rock star indulgence. But the earnest, serene warmth of Parton’s voice makes it work, as she enlivens one of the most familiar songs in rock history with her own particular glow. LINDSAY ZOLADZJoni Mitchell, ‘Help Me (Demo)’“Help Me” from the sleek 1974 Los Angeles pop album “Court and Spark” was Joni Mitchell’s commercial pop pinnacle — not that making hit records was ever her priority. Now, a demo from her new collection, “Archives, Vol. 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975)” proves that the song’s wildly leaping, sliding, syncopated melody and insistent emotional argument were already clear even when her only accompaniment was her guitar. A few lyric changes, a studio band and a horn arrangement were only embellishments. JON PARELESGuns N’ Roses, ‘Perhaps’Now that Slash and Duff McKagan have rejoined Guns N’ Roses (who are currently on a North American stadium tour), fans are hoping that a new album will arrive faster than “Chinese Democracy” did. At the very least, they have a new single: the mid-tempo, piano-driven rocker “Perhaps.” “Perhaps I was wrong,” Axl Rose growls with uncharacteristic contrition, later adding, “My sense of rejection is no excuse for my behavior.” Is it about the band members themselves mending fences? Perhaps. But the song transcends such earthbound concerns as lyrical content once it finds its footing and crescendos into the stratosphere with a vintage Slash solo. ZOLADZKyle Gordon featuring DJ Crazy Times and Ms. Biljana Electronica, ‘Planet of the Bass’Big beats and fractured English helped 1990s Eurodance songs scale the charts. A savvy parody, “Planet of the Bass,” by the comedian Kyle Gordon (a.k.a. DJ Crazy Times) with many collaborators, is now a full-length song after conquering TikTok. Who could argue with — or even rationally process — thoughts like, “When the rhythm is glad/there is nothing to be sad” or “Women are my favorite guy”? It’s all about momentum, so put on those sunglasses and pump up the synthesizers. Is every hit now just a joke on mass culture nostalgia? PARELESaespa, ‘Better Things’The K-pop group aespa has an elaborate marketing mythos involving A.I. avatars in the metaverse — none of which matters to the computer-tooled, syncopated pleasures of “Better Things.” It’s a kiss-off that demotes an ex back to being a “No. 1 fan/now you can only see me at a sold-out show.” The track runs on two chords, brisk Caribbean-tinged percussion and ever-changing top-line strategies: cooing melodies, stacked-up harmonies, a smidgen of rap, a little a cappella, all pushing forward. PARELESKarol G, ‘Mi Ex Tenía Razón’The Colombian songwriter Karol G released “Mañana Será Bonito” (“Tomorrow Will Be Pretty”), an album filled with songs about breaking up and healing, in February. Her follow-up is a sassier 10-song mixtape, “Mañana Será Bonito (Bichota Season),” that includes “Mi Ex Tenía Razón”: “My Ex Was Right.” Not exactly. She sings that he was right that she’d never find someone like him — instead, she found somebody better. She delivers her taunt sweetly, in a breezy, unhurried cumbia; clearly, she has moved on. PARELESCherry Glazerr, ‘Ready for You’In “Ready for You,” a desperate introvert testifies to how her shyness and xenophobia battle her longing for company. “Wish I could meet you with my eyes/I’m sick inside my twisted mind,” Clementine Creevy sings, in a track that uses the distorted guitars and soft-loud dynamics of grunge to capture the stress of a simple encounter. PARELESGuillermo Klein Quinteto, ‘Criolla’The Argentine-born, New York-based composer and pianist Guillermo Klein is best known for the rhythmically propulsive, richly woven compositions that he writes for Los Guachos, his 11-piece big band. On his newest album, “Telmo’s Tune,” Klein applies his tool kit to a series of compositions for a smaller band, working with just the saxophonist Chris Cheek, the bassist Matt Pavolka, the drummer Alan Mednard and the pianist Leo Genovese, who doubles with Klein on keyboards. Cheek’s soprano sax soars on the opening track, “Criolla,” as the rest of the band plays around with a polyrhythmic foundation that’s never more dicey than it is satisfying. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOQuavo, ‘Hold Me’“Hold Me” is a plea for comfort that’s rapped and sung by Quavo from Migos, whose nephew and Migos member, Takeoff, was shot dead in 2022. With phantom voices harmonizing over minor chords, it calls for divine and earthly solace, never sure if they will materialize. PARELESCautious Clay, ‘Moments Stolen’On “Karpeh,” the Blue Note Records debut of Cautious Clay, the Cleveland-born singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist uses a jazz musician’s tools in service of self-interrogating pop balladry, singing restless songs of half-exposed emotions and frustrated romance that land somewhere in the vicinity of Steve Lacy’s recent work. On “Moments Stolen” (its title a winking jazz reference), Cautious Clay — nee Joshua Karpeh — admits that he has lost faith in a relationship that he might not have ever wanted to work out in the first place. RUSSONELLOK.D. Lang, ‘Because of You’In a Guardian article published on Thursday, K.D. Lang celebrates Tony Bennett, her friend and collaborator, who died last month at 96. “He loved to sing for everybody,” Lang said, marveling at his well-documented blend of character, humility and devotion to the democratic power of song. Bennett and Lang recorded and performed together at various times over the past three decades, starting after she had recently come out as queer, and she remembered feeling “aware that our duet was radical.” This week she released a new version of “Because of You,” the ballad that gave Bennett his first No. 1 hit in 1951, which they reprised on his Grammy-winning 2006 album, “Duets: An American Classic.” Lang sings here with the casual, unrefined grace that she and Bennett have in common, over pillowy piano chords and an upright bass. Proceeds will go toward Exploring the Arts, the nonprofit that Bennett founded with his wife, Susan Benedetto. RUSSONELLOSufjan Stevens, ‘So You Are Tired’Sufjan Stevens returns to his folky side in “So You Are Tired,” a gentle, doleful, quietly resentful parting song from an album due this fall. “I was the man still in love with you/when I already knew it was done,” he sings, in a waltz carried by rippling, fragmented patterns of piano and guitar, joined by voices harmonizing oohs and ahs, seeking serenity after the bitterness. PARELESEmber, ‘Snake Tune’A feeling of momentum develops gradually and a bit unstably on “Snake Tune,” which slowly coalesces around the pulpy, thrummed harmonies of Noah Garabedian’s bass and the lazy precision of Vinnie Sperrazza’s cymbal strokes. Caleb Wheeler Curtis alternates between alto saxophone and trumpet, sounding neither in a hurry nor willing to be held back in any way. The track comes from “August in March,” the newest album from the improvising trio known as Ember. RUSSONELLO More

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      Clarence Avant, Mighty Engine Behind Black Superstars, Dies at 92

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      Behind the scenes, he furthered the careers of numerous entertainers, as well as some athletes and politicians.Clarence Avant, a record executive who shaped the careers not only of Bill Withers, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson and other Black singers, but also of politicians, actors and sports figures — exerting so much influence that a 2019 documentary about him was called simply “The Black Godfather” — died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 92.His family announced his death in a statement.Mr. Avant (pronounced AY-vant), born in a segregated hospital in North Carolina and educated only through the ninth grade, moved easily in the high-powered world of entertainment, helping to establish the idea that Black culture and consumers were forces to be reckoned with.He started out managing a nightclub in Newark in the late 1950s and moved on to representing some of the artists he met there. Joe Glaser, a high-powered agent who handled Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and many other top acts, took Mr. Avant under his wing; perhaps, the documentary suggested, Mr. Glaser, who was white, thought it would be advantageous to have a Black man representing some of his Black clients.In any case, Mr. Avant was soon handling artists including the jazz organist Jimmy Smith and traveling in rarefied circles. Not all his clients were Black; he said Mr. Glaser sent him to Los Angeles in 1964 with the Argentine pianist Lalo Schifrin, who was then working with Dizzy Gillespie, to try to get Mr. Schifrin started on a career composing for film and television. Though he knew nothing about the movie business, Mr. Avant worked his brand of magic on the West Coast: Mr. Schifrin has to date been nominated for six Oscars.In 1960 Mr. Avant formed Sussex Records — he said the name was his combination of the two things people want more than anything else, success and sex — which lasted only about half a decade but released, among other records, Mr. Withers’s early albums.“Clarence made some great choices musically,” Mr. Withers, who died in 2020, said in the documentary. “‘Lean on Me’” — Mr. Withers’s only Billboard No. 1 hit — “was not my choice for a single.”Later in the 1970s Mr. Avant founded Tabu Records, and for a time in the 1990s he was chairman of Motown. He also helped Jim Brown, the football player, build an acting career and negotiated an endorsement deal for Hank Aaron, the Hall of Fame baseball player, as well as supporting the political careers of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.“One of the things he understands is, there are different kinds of power,” Mr. Obama said in the documentary. “There’s the power that needs the spotlight, but there’s also the power that comes from being behind the scenes.”In 2013, accepting the entrepreneur award at the BET Honors, one of many he received in his career, Mr. Avant summed himself up.“I can’t make speeches,” he told the crowd while clutching his trophy. “That’s not my life. I make deals.”Clarence Alexander Avant was born on Feb. 25, 1931, in Greensboro, N.C., to Gertrude Avant Woods, a domestic worker. In the documentary, he said his mother was not married to his father, Phoenix Jarrell, whom he barely knew.Mr. Avant with Quincy Jones and Whitney Houston.NetflixHe grew up in Climax, N.C., in difficult circumstances and stayed in school only through ninth grade.“We were poor,” he said in the film. “I’m talking about poor, poor, poor. We had chicken-feet soup.”Racism was omnipresent, and the Ku Klux Klan loomed large.“My mother would just tell us, if you hear a car coming, run and hide; lay down flat,” he said.He grew up with a stepfather, Eddie Woods, who was abusive, and he said he left home when he was a teenager after his attempt to kill the man by putting rat poison in his food failed. He went to live with an aunt in Summit, N.J.For a time he held a low-level job at Martindale-Hubbell, publisher of a law directory. In his 20s he started working at a Newark nightclub that featured Black musicians. That was his introduction to the entertainment business, and he proved a natural.“I think Clarence exemplifies a certain cool,” Mr. Obama said in the documentary, “a certain level of street smarts and savvy that allowed him to move into worlds that nobody had prepared him for and say, ‘I can figure this out.’”As his career representing entertainers began to flourish, Mr. Avant met Jacqueline Gray, a model. They married in 1967, and as the couple prospered Ms. Avant became noted for her philanthropic work.In December 2021 a man burglarizing the Avants’ home, Aariel Maynor, shot and killed her. He pleaded guilty to multiple charges the next year and was sentenced to life in prison.In the documentary, friends remarked on their long marriage, somewhat unusual in the entertainment world.“They still look like they’ve got wedding cake on their feet,” the actor Jamie Foxx said, “like they just walked off a soul wedding cake.”Mr. Avant’s daughter, Nicole Avant, said in a phone interview that after the tragedy, her father made a conscious effort to press on.In 2013, Mr. Avant was presented with the entrepreneur award by the producers Jimmy Jam, center, and Terry Lewis at the BET Honors in Washington.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters“Music was, I think, the lifesaving force for him,” she said, especially that of Ellington, Frank Sinatra and other artists from his youth. “His mood changed when the music came on.”At about the time he was getting ready to marry Jacqueline, Mr. Avant was growing more vocal about racial matters. A 1967 article in The Pittsburgh Courier quoted a strongly worded letter he had written to the management of WLIB, a radio station in New York that was aimed at a Black audience but at the time was white-owned.“Is your station managed by Negroes,” he wrote, “and I am not referring to Negro disc jockeys?”“I think radio stations whose programs are supposed to appeal to the so-called Negro market,” he added, “should at least be staffed by Negro personnel.”He was also becoming active politically. He supported the early campaigns of Andrew Young, who made an unsuccessful run for a Georgia congressional seat in 1970 and a successful one two years later. It was Mr. Young who connected Mr. Avant to Hank Aaron when he was about to break Babe Ruth’s career home run record in 1974.“Clarence called me up and said, ‘Andy, do you know Hank Aaron?’” Mr. Young recalled in the documentary, which was directed by Reginald Hudlin. “I said, ‘Yeah, he lives around the corner.’ He said, ‘If he’s about to break Babe Ruth’s record, he’s supposed to make some money.’”Mr. Avant wanted to help Mr. Aaron secure some endorsement deals.“Will you tell him that I’m not crazy and I’m going to call him?” Mr. Avant asked Mr. Young.“I said, ‘Well, I can’t vouch for you not being crazy,’” Mr. Young said, “‘but I’ll tell him that you’ve been very helpful to me.’”It was fraught territory — Mr. Aaron was receiving death threats over the prospect that he would break a hallowed record set by a white player. Mr. Avant, though, according to the documentary, marched into the office of the president of Coca-Cola and told him, in unprintably blunt language, that Black people drink Coke.Mr. Avant’s guidance helped Mr. Aaron secure a substantial deal from Coke and otherwise market himself, which fueled his later charitable endeavors.“Henry Aaron would not be Henry Aaron if it were not for Clarence Avant,” Mr. Aaron, who died in 2021, said in the film.Mr. Avant also helped other athletes, including Jim Brown as he transitioned from football into acting in the 1960s. Interviewed for the documentary, Mr. Brown, one of the biggest Black stars of the 1960s and ’70s, had a hard time pinning down what Mr. Avant did — not an uncommon thing among those who knew and worked with Mr. Avant.“You have this guy called Clarence Avant that everybody’s talking about, but nobody seems to understand just what his official title was,” Mr. Brown, who died in May, said, recalling their early meetings. “I couldn’t tell you now exactly what he — was he an agent, a manager, a lawyer? — what he was.”Mr. Avant had rocky times in the mid-1970s, when the Sussex label went bankrupt and KAGB-FM, a radio station he had bought (making it one of the first Black-owned stations in the Los Angeles area), floundered. But, he said, friends were always his most important asset, and some of them helped him get back on his feet.Tabu Records, which Mr. Avant founded in 1975, released records by the S.O.S. Band, Cherrelle and others.In addition to his daughter, who was a producer of “The Black Godfather,” Mr. Avant is survived by a son, Alexander, and a sister, Anne Woods.The Avant home was always abuzz with A-list visitors. Nicole Avant recalled a day, when she was 12, that she and a friend got into trouble at school. The friend’s mother, driving Nicole home, was fuming — until she saw Harry Belafonte walking out of the Avants’ house.“Is that Harry Belafonte?” the woman asked her.”I said, ‘Yeah, how do you know Harry Belafonte?” — not realizing he was anyone other than a friend who would come around to visit her parents from time to time.Ms. Avant, who served as ambassador to the Bahamas during the Obama administration, said that Mr. Belafonte and others who would gather at the Avant home were serious about breaking down racial barriers, in the entertainment world and in society in general.“They knew that they were on a mission,” she said.The flood of tributes offered to Mr. Avant on Monday included many from younger performers who appreciated his legacy.“He is the ultimate example of what change looks like, what architecting change looks like, and what the success of change looks like,” the rapper and producer Pharrell said in a statement. “He stared adversity in the face in climates and conditions that weren’t welcoming to people that looked like him. But through his talent and relentless spirit in the pursuit to be the best of the best, he garnered the support and friendship of people who otherwise wouldn’t look in our direction.” More

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      Jon Batiste Has Got the Whole Wide Music World in His Hands

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      Nothing is simple when it comes to Jon Batiste, the pianist, television personality, New Orleans musical scion and jazz-R&B-classical savant.He spent seven years as the smiling, melodica-toting TV bandleader on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” yet found some of his widest acclaim for solemn protest performances in Brooklyn after the murder of George Floyd.He beat Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish for album of the year at the Grammys in 2022, despite his “We Are” having just a fraction of their sales — and then presented “American Symphony,” a Whitmanesque canvas of funk, Dixieland jazz, operatic vocals and Native American drums at Carnegie Hall.Now comes Batiste’s most commercial project yet: “World Music Radio,” an album with guest appearances by Lana Del Rey, Lil Wayne and the K-pop girl group NewJeans, made with a team of producers behind hits for artists like Justin Bieber and Drake, with tightly woven hooks that were engineered to fit on any Top 40-style streaming playlist.But of course “World Music Radio,” which comes out Aug. 18, is no standard pop release. It’s also a fantastical concept album that challenges music’s provincial genre borders, with a message of open-armed inclusivity for a fractured political era. The album’s central character, a timeless interstellar being named Billy Bob Bo Bob, curates a potpourri of the far-flung musical languages of Earth and transmits it to the cosmos with chuckling, Daddy-O commentary, like Doctor Who crossed with Wolfman Jack.“He’s a D.J., he’s a griot, he’s a storyteller, he’s a unifier, he’s a rebel,” Batiste told me, describing the character of Billy Bob Bo Bob. “He’s a disrupter.”That’s also as good an encapsulation as any of the 36-year-old Batiste himself, who can’t easily be pinned down to any single role, or genre, or corner of the music market.Batiste wrote most of the album in Rick Rubin’s beachside studio in Malibu, Calif., generating kernels of upward of 125 songs.Andre D. Wagner for The New York TimesIn his own eccentric way, “World Music Radio” is Batiste’s interpretation of what mainstream pop is or should be, in which high-energy electronic dance beats coexist with reggae, Afropop and old-fashioned piano torch ballads. “Be Who You Are,” the first single, has lyrics in English, Spanish and Korean, and its high-tech, partially animated music video, produced through a brand deal with Coke, features Batiste, the Latin pop star Camilo, the rapper JID and the members of NewJeans all vibing alongside each other.Yet in discussing the album, Batiste was almost totally cerebral, speaking in long, eloquent, practically unsummarizable paragraphs about his mental and creative processes. The album’s origin, he said, was partly philosophical, as he mused on the connections and divergences between “the horrendous idea of what we call ‘world music’” — local traditions viewed through a condescending Western lens — “and the narrow diameter of what’s considered popular music.”“So then, world music,” Batiste added, shifting professorially on the living room sofa of his airy and immaculate Brooklyn brownstone. “What if we could reimagine that term? What if we could reinvent? What if we could use it as a prompt to expand the diameter of popular music?”In conversation, he mentioned influences that included some of the most popular cultural productions of modern times, like Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” and the “Godfather” films. Jamie Krents, the president of his label, Verve, said that Batiste had cited Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” as another reference point.“He wanted to make music that was approachable to the largest possible audience without compromising,” Krents said.Still, it is hard to imagine Jackson summarizing his goals for “Billie Jean” or “Beat It” in quite the same way that Batiste does for “World Music Radio”: “By listening to it and experiencing it,” he explained, “you have a realization about self, about community, about humanism, that leaves you in a state of bliss and a hyper-consciousness.”AS BATISTE SEES IT, “World Music Radio” is the culmination of a career that has long snaked through supposedly disparate traditions and audiences.Batiste grew up in Kenner, La., part of a family with deep musical roots in New Orleans, and he spent his teenage years playing late-night gigs in the French Quarter with his friend Trombone Shorty, then rushing to high school classes in the morning. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard and became a fixture around New York with his band Stay Human, especially for what he called “love riots”: spontaneous, Pied Piper-like performances of “You Are My Sunshine” or Lady Gaga songs that took place on the street or in the subway, interrupting the daily grind with flashes of joy.At the same time, with his 2013 album “Social Music,” he began to develop a brand of activism that emphasized music’s power to find common ground amid ever-widening political polarization.“Inclusive is not even the right word,” Batiste said of his approach. “It’s more, OK, we’re coexisting as human beings on Earth. We’re not a monolith. But underneath it all, we’re the same. That’s not something that can be interpreted in the binary climate that we’re in now.”In 2015, Batiste and Stay Human became the house band on Colbert’s new CBS show, where Batiste performed comedic musical skits but had little outlet to express his broader political or social views. And, with over 200 shows a year, he also couldn’t tour — something that, incredibly, Batiste has never done as a headlining act.“We Are,” which was begun in late 2019 and completed the following year at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, became Batiste’s vehicle for protest and for communicating the wider social ambitions of his music. Although the album had barely registered in the marketplace, Batiste became the surprise top nominee for the 64th annual Grammy Awards, getting eight nods for “We Are” and three more for the movie soundtrack “Soul.” (The score for “Soul” also won Batiste, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross an Oscar.)At the same time, Batiste’s longtime partner, Suleika Jaouad, had spent years struggling with cancer and writing about it in The New York Times. The day the Grammy nominations were announced, Jaouad began a round of chemotherapy. “At certain points of her treatment,” Batiste said, “her immune system was so compromised that we couldn’t be in the same room.”Batiste onstage at the Newport Folk Festival in July. Because of other obligations, he has not yet toured as a headlining act.Douglas Mason/Getty ImagesThey married last year, and after a bone-marrow transplant, Jaouad’s health has improved enough that they recently took a vacation in Europe. “A major, major milestone,” Batiste said.When “We Are” took album of the year, Batiste became the latest piñata for critics of the entire Grammy system, who pointed to his victory as a sign of an insider-controlled process out of touch with music’s dominant trends. Yet it also represented a necessary tension between artistic excellence, as judged by fellow musicians, and the pressure to reward commercial success. For another example, just look at the last Black man before Batiste to take the top prize: Herbie Hancock, back in 2008.After his Grammy and Oscar wins, Batiste decided to leave Colbert’s show. Freed of that work, he now describes “World Music Radio” as his return to the concepts he explored a decade ago on “Social Music” — and imagined himself as Odysseus from Homer’s “Odyssey.”“It’s the hero’s journey we always talk about,” Batiste said. “It feels kind of like, wow, I came back to where I was 10 years before, but now everything’s different, even though I’m in the same place that I was. I’m home, so to speak. But everything’s different.”Colbert, in an interview, said that when Batiste approached him about leaving, “he didn’t have to tell me why.”“But I did say I can understand why you would want to take this opportunity at this moment and go full-bore,” Colbert added. “I know that feeling very well: Give me the ball and see how fast I can run.”THE MUSIC ON “World Music Radio” had its genesis, Batiste said, when he crossed paths with the producer Rick Rubin in Italy a few months after the Grammys. Rubin offered him use of Shangri-La, his beachside studio in Malibu, Calif., and Batiste headed there in August 2022 for a month of immersive work with a crew of producers and artists who came and went, generating what Batiste said were the kernels of upward of 125 songs.Among Batiste’s collaborators there was Del Rey, who worked with Batiste on “Candy Necklace,” from her latest album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” and she joins him on “Life Lesson,” a melancholy duet on “World Music Radio.”The producer Rogét Chahayed, who has worked with Doja Cat, Drake and others, said he headed to Shangri-La after getting a surprise invitation from Batiste via Instagram. The sessions, he said, were spontaneous and fruitful, with Batiste sometimes kicking off hours of improvisatory jams after simply being inspired by a synthesizer tone.“It was just like magic in the room,” Chahayed recalled. “It was right around evening time, the sun was setting over the ocean. I was like, this doesn’t happen often, in the kind of sessions that we usually have in these freezing cold studios with no windows.”After those sessions, Jon Bellion, a pop performer and producer who has worked with Maroon 5 and the Jonas Brothers, collaborated with Batiste on a process he dubs “Batistifying” the material — combing through piles of half-finished material and whittling it down to a finished, coherent product.With a deadline from his label looming, Batiste said, he felt that the album was not coming together until he sat in his basement studio in Brooklyn and listened to a vocal track sent by a Spanish singer, Rita Payés. She contributes to “My Heart,” a sepia-toned Latin ballad in waltz time on which Batiste channels Ibrahim Ferrer of the Buena Vista Social Club. Hearing Payés’s voice transmitted over a speaker, Batiste said, instantly suggested the album’s concept.The album’s origin, Batiste said, was partly philosophical, as he mused on the connections and divergences between pop music and “the horrendous idea of what we call ‘world music’.” Andre D. Wagner for The New York Times“It sounds like it’s coming out of a radio that’s sitting on top of the bar at a cafe in Catalonia, Spain,” Batiste said. “The working title up until that point was ‘World Music.’ And it was like, ohhh, ‘World Music Radio.’” He worked through the night to put together a rough version of the album, dreaming up Billy Bob Bo Bob as a narrator who segues between tracks and sometimes chirps in with an approving voice-over.Another collaborator that Batiste pursued was the smooth-jazz saxman Kenny G. Batiste described him with a certain detached curiosity as a fellow artist who has one foot in jazz and another in pop, who has carved out a hugely successful niche but faced unending waves of critical vitriol.“Anybody who’s talked about with that kind of extreme disdain,” Batiste said, “I always want to study.”On the track “Clair de Lune,” which opens with an obscure sample from an old French folk album, Kenny G contributes a minute-long solo that is busier and more harmonically dense than his usual hooks, but with a singing tone that is instantly recognizable.In an interview, Kenny G said that Batiste had asked him about the polarized reactions to his work.“You’ve got to play what sounds good to you, and feels good to you,” Kenny G recalled telling him. “Lucky for you, there’s a big audience that seems to like what you do. Then you really don’t have to apologize for that.”WHEN ASKED ABOUT his commercial hopes for “World Music Radio,” Batiste was typically circuitous and nuanced, saying that on one hand, he wants to compete with stars like Taylor Swift for top chart positions, but he also recognizes that his take on popular culture is more conceptual and abstract. He was most straightforward in saying he couldn’t wait to head out on tour.He seems most prepared for any reaction to his social commentary on the album. “Love Black folks and white folks,” Batiste sings on “Be Who You Are.” “My Asians, my Africans, my Afro-Eurasian, Republican or Democrat.”Even that simple message of openness and acceptance is relatively rare in an era when many pop stars shrink away from any social commentary at all, out of fear of alienating part of their audience and sacrificing clicks. It’s a risk Batiste is determined to take.“To say I love everybody, including Republicans — as a Black guy, I don’t know how that could go,” he said. “That shouldn’t be something that’s frowned upon or looked at in a way that probably to some seems like, ‘Oh, he’s not really clear on what’s important.’”“It’s radical today to love everybody,” he added. “We are in a time that there’s more of a pressure to make people into the other, and to dehumanize them in the process. But the act of removing a certain baseline of humanity in how we approach living amongst each other, that should be radical. That should be the thing that is disruptive.” More

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

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