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      Mars Williams, 68, Saxophonist Who Straddled New Wave and Jazz, Dies

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      He made his name in the 1980s with the Waitresses and the Psychedelic Furs, but his roots were in the exploratory jazz of Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman.Weakened by surgery to remove a tumor near his pancreas in January, followed by six months of chemotherapy, the high-wattage saxophonist Mars Williams learned this past summer that his treatment options were nearly exhausted.But rather than resting an ailing body, he chose to return to the road. He joined the Psychedelic Furs, a band he had performed and recorded with since the 1980s, as it toured the United States.“Being on a grueling bus tour would be exhausting for anyone,” Dave Rempis, a friend and fellow saxophonist, said in a phone interview. “By the end, he was sitting in a dressing room with blankets and heaters all around him. He could barely move. But he would still go out onstage and play as hard as ever. He just wanted to be back onstage where he felt most alive.”Mr. Williams died at a hospice facility in Chicago on Nov. 20. He was 68. His brother, Paul R. Williams, said the cause was ampullary cancer.Mr. Williams was angling for a career in jazz in 1981 when the Waitresses, an idiosyncratic New York-based new wave band, came calling, dangling a newly minted record deal with Polydor. The band, marked by the deadpan vocal stylings of Patty Donahue, scored with the indelible cult hits “I Know What Boys Like” and “Christmas Wrapping,” as well as the theme song to the celebrated, if short-lived, 1980s high school sitcom “Square Pegs.”With his explosive horn lines and electric stage presence, Mr. Williams captured the spirit of the band — never mind that his grounding in the exploratory jazz of Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman made him an odd fit in the milieu of MTV in its early days, when acts could find overnight fame on the strength of cotton-candy haircuts and passable synthesizer skills.“He was a goofball, like a lot of reed players,” Chris Butler, the Waitresses’ founder and chief songwriter, said in a phone interview. “I think it has something to do with all that back pressure on their brains when they’re blowing into a brass tube, you know. But he had such massive chops. When we played live, he would improvise, solo, fill the arrangements with this magnificent stuff. And it was different every night.”No instrument, it seemed, was off limits to Mr. Williams, including bells, whistles, and pots and pans. “I had a lot of freedom,” he said in a 2019 interview with the jazz journalist Howard Mandel. “I’m up blowing Tibetan monk horn solos over their rhythms. I’m able to do all these different styles within this pop band.”From left, Tracy Wormworth, Patty Donahue, Dan Klayman and Mr. Williams of the Waitresses at the Peppermint Lounge in New York in 1981, the year Mr. Williams joined the band. Michael Macioce/Getty ImagesHe joined the Psychedelic Furs, a British post-punk band, after the Waitresses fragmented in 1983. His new group was then trading its early Velvet Underground-style rawness for a slicker brand of pop following the success of alternative hits like “Love My Way” (1982).Mr. Williams lent his wailing horn lines to the band’s 1984 album, “Mirror Moves,” although he was not featured on the album’s sleeve or in the heavily aired videos for its songs “Heaven” and “The Ghost in You.” He toured and recorded with the Psychedelic Furs until 1989. After a long hiatus, he rejoined them in 2005.Ever the musical explorer, Mr. Williams performed with many rock and pop acts, including the Killers, Billy Idol and Jerry Garcia, and earned acclaim with several Chicago jazz outfits, including his own long-running ensemble, Liquid Soul, which performed at inauguration festivities for President Bill Clinton in 1997 and earned a Grammy Award nomination for its 2000 album, “Here’s the Deal.”“Mars Williams is one of the true saxophone players — someone who takes pleasure in the sheer act of blowing the horn,” the avant-garde jazz saxophonist and composer John Zorn wrote in the liner notes to “Eftsoons,” Mr. Williams’s 1981 collaboration with the jazz composer and bandleader Hal Russell, “and there are not many saxophone players I can truthfully say this about.”Marc Charles Williams was born on May 29, 1955, in Elmhurst, Ill., the fifth of six children of Jack Williams, who owned several pharmacies and served as an Illinois state representative, and Hilda (Van Outrive) Williams, who managed the Cook County ethics department. He picked up his nickname from a mispronunciation of his first name by his baby brother, Paul.In addition to his brother, his survivors include his mother and two sisters, Michele Williams-Piotrowski and Suzy Williams. His sister Valerie Williams and his brother Jack died.A classically trained clarinetist as a youth, Mr. Williams switched to saxophone after graduating from Holy Cross High School in River Grove, Ill., in 1973 and briefly studied music theory at DePaul University in Chicago.His musical journey led him to New York City, where he worked as a bike messenger and played gigs with punk bands at the nightclub CBGB while trying to build a career in jazz before taking a detour into pop that would last until his final months.Once his pop career took off, life on the road came with familiar perils, including drug addiction, which he wrestled with for years. He spent his last two decades sober, he said in interviews, while counseling other musicians in their struggles.Mr. Rempis said he last saw Mr. Williams on Oct. 25.“He had gotten back from six weeks on the road with the Psychedelic Furs,” he said, “and ended up in the hospital for a few days. When he got out, he said, ‘You know, I might not be able to do these tours in December in Europe.’ That’s where his head was at: Where am I going now? What’s the next thing?” More

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      10 New Christmas Albums for 2023

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      Our critics on 10 new holiday albums from Cher, Robert Glasper, Sabrina Carpenter and more.There is no one correct way to celebrate the holiday season in song. For some, reverence is key. But often the best Yuletide numbers are the ones that fiddle around with tradition, taking the familiar components of joy and generosity and remixing them into something silly, salacious or downright odd.Adam Blackstone, ‘A Legacy Christmas’Adam Blackstone, who has been a bassist and musical director for Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Justin Timberlake as well as many television shows, revels in his jazz background on his own Legacy albums. “A Legacy Christmas” merges brassy, swinging big-band arrangements with electronically tweaked R&B, and it’s packed with guests: DJ Jazzy Jeff, Boyz II Men, Andra Day. There are glossy, muscular revamps of songs like “Lil Drummer Boy” (which has BJ the Chicago Kid singing alongside Blackstone’s melodic bass) and “Someday at Christmas” (with Robert Randolph’s slide guitar), as well as Blackstone’s own songs, including the neo-Motown “Christmas Kisses,” which has Blackstone rapping alongside Keke Palmer, who sings like she’s fronting the Jackson 5. JON PARELESBrandy, ‘Christmas With Brandy’Brandy leads with angst on her album “Christmas With Brandy,” which includes six songs she co-wrote including the opener, “Feels Different.” The moody, minor-key track leans into a deep post-breakup loneliness that “hurts the worst around Christmas,” even though “when I’m lovesick, you’re toxic.” But the rest of the album is cheerier and sultrier, like her upbeat, retro-styled “Christmas Everyday” and “Christmas Gift” (a duet with her daughter, Sy’rai) and the slow-motion come-on of “Christmas Party for Two.” The familiar songs play up Brandy’s misty tone and melismatic audacity. Her versions of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” Mel Tormé’s “The Christmas Song” and even “Deck the Halls” are gauzy and leisurely. And who but Brandy would, in “Jingle Bells,” make an 11-note flourish out of “way”? PARELESSabrina Carpenter, ‘Fruitcake’The rising pop singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter brings her charmingly conversational and occasionally humorous sensibility to the six-song EP “Fruitcake,” her first holiday-themed release. Though she indulges in a straightforward, breathily sung “White Christmas,” the EP’s highlights are its irreverent originals, like “A Nonsense Christmas” (a holiday remix of Carpenter’s 2022 hit), the sleek, sassy “Is It New Years Yet?” and “Cindy Lou Who,” a piano ballad that playfully imagines the sweetest girl in Whoville as a romantic rival: “The snow’s gonna fall and the tree’s gonna glisten,” Carpenter sings. “And I’m gonna puke at the thought of you kissin’.” LINDSAY ZOLADZCher, ‘Christmas’Cher’s economically titled new album “Christmas” is an eclectic mix of holiday standards (a rollicking “Run Rudolph Run,” an especially lustful “Santa Baby”) and upbeat, electro-pop originals tailor-made for the woman who sang “Believe” (the strobe-lit “DJ Play a Christmas Song,” the fist-pumping “Angels in the Snow”). The guest list is star-studded and wide-ranging: Stevie Wonder, Michael Bublé and Darlene Love all drop by to duet with Cher on their own holiday classics, while Cyndi Lauper provides an assist on “Put a Little Holiday in Your Heart,” a country-tinged Christmas tune first recorded by LeAnn Rimes. But the album’s most memorably bonkers moment is surely “Drop Top Sleigh Ride,” a campy party anthem featuring a pun-stuffed rap verse from Tyga. The holidays just aren’t the holidays until you’ve heard Cher sing, “Turn it up, it’s a vibe, it’s Christmas.” ZOLADZRobert Glasper, ‘In December’The keyboardist Robert Glasper is an expert in both abstruse jazz harmonies and sleek hip-hop grooves; he’s also a well-connected collaborator. He brings all those skills to Christmas songs on “In December,” a musicianly rumination on the season; it’s only available on Apple Music. Old carols get elaborate new chromatic convolutions and alternate melodies, while in their new songs, Glasper and his singers consider holiday tensions. In “Make It Home,” PJ Morton and Sevyn Streeter portray a couple wondering if they can possibly reconcile for Christmas; “December,” written by Glasper and Andra Day, cycles through a year of seasonal anxieties and longings. And in “Memories With Mama,” Tarriona Ball, who leads Tank and the Bangas, confides in deep-toned spoken words about how Christmas has changed since her childhood — she’s nostalgic, but realistic. PARELESClockwise from top left: Holiday albums from Gregory Porter, Adam Blackstone, Jon Pardi and Wheatus. Samara Joy, ‘A Joyful Holiday’The resonant, low-end power of Samara Joy’s voice really emerges on her version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Me.” A Motown-era number sung sweetly by the Supremes and Stevie Wonder, it’s comforting molasses in Joy’s hands; at one point, she lingers over “twinkle,” toggling back and forth — eee-yuh-eee-yuh-eee-yuh — a caress and a promise. That’s the highlight of “A Joyful Holiday,” the first seasonal release from this sometimes startling jazz vocalist, who won best new artist at this year’s Grammys. See also her take on “Warm in December,” once sung by Julie London, which she renders as the most refined, stately and wise of come-ons. JON CARAMANICAJon Pardi, ‘Merry Christmas From Jon Pardi’For the past decade Jon Pardi has been, quite successfully, a country singer mindful of how the country singers before him conducted themselves. He’s a lightly unruly traditionalist, with an ear that favors Texas and Bakersfield and the, um, funkier sides of honky-tonk Nashville. So naturally, his first holiday album is a collection of frisky covers and originals that add just the faintest tweak to the canon. His take on Buck Owens’s “Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy” is cheeky and loose, and “I’ve Been Bad, Santa” — sung a couple of years ago by the Australian pop star Peach PRC — is a flirtatious duet with Pillbox Patti. “Reindeer” is a slow-walk heartbreaker about getting left behind by someone you love during the jolly season: “Might be a white Christmas, but all this snow just feels like rain, dear.” And on the lighthearted “Beer for Santa,” he swaps out the milk and cookies under the tree for something harder, then avers, “I might stay up and have one with him, too.” CARAMANICAThe Philly Specials, ‘A Philly Special Christmas Special’Last year, three offensive linemen who play for the Philadelphia Eagles — Jason Kelce, Jordan Mailata and Lane Johnson — stunned the football world by putting out a surprisingly competent Christmas EP as the Philly Specials. This season, they’re upping the ante with a full album, featuring cameos from Philadelphia musical luminaries like Patti LaBelle, Amos Lee and Waxahatchee. Mailata — a 6-foot-8 left tackle who last year appeared as “Thingamabob” on “The Masked Singer” — is the star of the show, holding his own with LaBelle on a duet of “This Christmas” and nailing that high note at the end of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” but Johnson also impresses with his resonant country croon on a cover of Willie Nelson’s “Pretty Paper.” As for Kelce? Well, as Philly fans already know, he’s got a lot of heart. And, for a spirited reworking of the Pogues’ most famous song, here retitled “Fairytale of Philadelphia,” he recruits perhaps the most high-profile guest of them all, his brother Travis, who sings approximately as well as his girlfriend can play professional football. ZOLADZGregory Porter, ‘Christmas Wish’The jazz singer Gregory Porter brings his kindly baritone and a social conscience to his Christmas album. He reaches back to vintage Motown for the antiwar, pro-equality “Someday at Christmas,” and three songs of his own recognize troubles he wants to rise above for the season. In “Everything’s Not Lost,” he wills himself toward year-end optimism despite “all this misery” and “children in fear.” And with the surging gospel of “Christmas Wish,” he recalls the lessons in generosity his mother taught. Most of the backing uses genteel string arrangements, but in “Christmas Waltz,” with a jazz trio, he reminds listeners how he can swing. PARELESWheatus, ‘Just a Dirtbag Christmas’Skip the clever and fun and totally worthy originals on this EP: You’re here for “Christmas Dirtbag,” the Yuletide updating of “Teenage Dirtbag,” the 2000 debut single from the Long Island punk-pop band Wheatus. The original is somehow both a zeitgeist-definer and a curio. This updating morphs the main character into someone passed over by Santa, perhaps a fate more cruel than being ignored by the girl who mesmerizes him in the original. But here, in a holiday spirit, there’s a twist — it turns out Santa’s a dirtbag, too, and he’s bearing gifts after all: “I’ve got two tickets to AC/DC, baby/After-show party at CBGB.” CARAMANICA More

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      Nicki Minaj and Drake Reunite, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Tems, Idles, Adrianne Lenker 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.Nicki Minaj featuring Drake, ‘Needle’Thirteen years ago, on her debut studio album “Pink Friday,” Nicki Minaj recruited her Young Money labelmate and fellow rising star Drake for the galvanizing hit “Moment 4 Life.” They join forces once again on “Needle,” a noticeably more laid-back and atmospheric track from Minaj’s long-teased “Pink Friday 2,” which demonstrates how both of these rappers — and the sound of rap music itself — have changed in the intervening years. Drake calls back to the island cadences of his “Views” era, lilting a somewhat strained metaphor: “You’re like a needle, life’s a haystack.” Minaj raps as if on cruise control, characteristically dexterous (“Poppin’ out like a cork/duckin’ ’em like Björk”) if zoologically confused; Nicki, it was a swan dress! LINDSAY ZOLADZTems, ‘Not an Angel’Afrobeats turns inward in the Nigerian songwriter Tems’s “Not an Angel” — an emphatic good-riddance song with lines like, “I was alone when I was with you,” “All you did was give me nothing” and “Right now it’s going nowhere but the graveyard.” Programmed percussion and a moody guitar lick carry her rising resentment and self-realization: “I’m not an angel — I’m just a girl that knows the truth,” she sings, moving into sync with the beat as she pulls away from her ex. JON PARELESWishy, ‘Spinning’Can a band be classified as shoegaze if its head is in the clouds? Such is the delightful paradox posed by Wishy, a promising new group from Indiana releasing its debut EP “Paradise” next Friday. Echoing the spirit of millennial dream-pop acts like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and A Sunny Day in Glasgow, Wishy’s latest single “Spinning” layers textured guitar, a driving breakbeat and Nina Pitchkites’s airy vocals to create a sumptuous sound. “Spinning around on the kitchen floor,” she sings. “I don’t know what I’m dancing for.” Prepare to do the same. ZOLADZIdles, ‘Grace’The British band Idles generally play sinewy, irascible post-punk songs, but every so often the singer Joe Talbot confesses to vulnerability, as he does in “Grace.” It’s a secular prayer: “No God, no king/I said love is the thing,” Talbot sings. He both longs for and offers refuge and compassion; behind him, the band gnashes and clatters and eventually erupts, but his determined humility lingers. PARELESElephant Gym featuring Yile Lin, ‘Happy Prince’Elephant Gym, a bass-guitar-drums trio from Taiwan, plays a nimble, jazzy kind of math-rock, paced by the hopscotching bass lines of KT Chang and the guitar counterpoint of her brother Tell Chang. “Happy Prince” is loosely based on a children’s story by Oscar Wilde. With bright-eyed guest vocals by Yile Lin, from the band Freckles, “Happy Prince” breezes along, shifting meters and taking chromatic turns; every so often, it explodes. PARELESNnamdi, ‘Going Crazy’A snippet of children singing “We’re all going crazy” led the Chicago pop experimentalist Nnamdi to come up with “Going Crazy.” It appears at assorted speeds, over assorted chords and drum-machine beats, as he croons in falsetto about how “I been up working harder every night” and “I just want to have a little fun” — a workaholic’s jovial complaints. PARELESUsher and H.E.R., ‘Risk It All’It hardly gets more old-school than “Risk It All,” a duet from Usher and H.E.R. — from the soundtrack to “The Color Purple” — that’s happy to risk vocal close-ups: call-and-response, tag-teaming, overlapping, sharing. Little more than piano chords accompany the duo, who sound like they were singing to each other in real time throughout the song, though they couldn’t resist overdubbing some extra harmony vocals. Even so, there’s an unadorned, intimate physicality to the romantic sentiments. PARELESAdrianne Lenker, ‘Ruined’This sparse, movingly fragile song from the Big Thief frontwoman Adrianne Lenker is a dispatch from the most devastating kind of obsession: “Can’t get enough of you,” Lenker sings in a warbled falsetto. “You come around, I’m ruined.” Accompanied by just a haunting piano and eerie, echoing effects, Lenker’s plain-spoken vulnerability becomes, by the end of the song, a kind of strength. ZOLADZEliza McLamb, ‘16’Eliza McLamb, a songwriter who’s also a podcaster, revisits a period of severe teenage trauma — her mother’s mental illness, her own self-destructive compulsions — in “16”; it’s from her album due in January, “Going Through It.” Deep, sustained synthesizer tones accompany her breathy voice, offering the stability — or numbness — she longs for. PARELESKaren Vogt, ‘We Coalesce’Layers of wordless, echoey vocal loops, with hints of modal melody, are the makings of “We Coalesce,” one of the eerie, undulating pieces Karen Vogt recorded while mourning her cat. PARELESVijay Iyer Trio, ‘Prelude: Orison’If Vijay Iyer’s music was big for you this year, it was probably thanks to “Love in Exile,” the much-beloved album he released with Arooj Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily. Though cool-blooded and almost ambient, that LP was swept by an undercurrent of disquiet — a feeling the pianist embraces even further in his other working trio, with the bassist Linda Oh and the drummer Tyshawn Sorey. Their 2021 debut, “Uneasy,” was an itchy and stimulating affair inspired, as Iyer said ahead of its release, by the awareness “that this thing Americans love to call freedom is not what it appears to be.” Well, wait. Is there some paradox lurking here? How is instrumental music that sounds so elevated and indirect supposed to upend our most basic assumptions? To which another question might provide the response: Processing the news these days, have you felt angry, frustrated or helpless? If that resonates, this trio’s music would like to help you make some sense of that sensation — and maybe even sidestep it, pushing toward some kind of confrontation. (“Uneasy” includes “Combat Breathing,” a rhythmic call-to-action inspired by Black Lives Matter organizers.) The new, tempo-slurring “Prelude: Orison,” is languid, diaphanous, harmonically canted. Whenever it briefly resolves, it starts the cycle over again. It’s as if this band wants to both seduce you and discomfit you, stripping you of everything but the ability to think and see for yourself. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO More

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      Best Jazz Albums of 2023

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      The year’s most thrilling albums were made by artists pushing beyond borders, teaming with new collaborators and making bold statements of their own.That thing we keep calling “jazz” refuses to stop overrunning its borders, reworking itself, showing up in new forms identifiable only by the most basic strands of their DNA. All of its subcultures churned out inspired work this year; many show up below.

      1. Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, ‘Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning’It’s fitting, in this moment, that the hardest-hitting album on this list would be a celebration of Indigenous identity, resilience and resistance. For Chief Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott), “Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning” is also his first hard break from jazz, a category he has been trying to slip his entire career. Here he sits with the other tradition that raised him: the “maroon” community of New Orleans’s Black masking Indians, commonly known as Mardi Gras Indians. This is Adjuah’s first LP without any trumpet. Instead he circles up with a group of family and longtime collaborators, revisiting classics from the call-and-response Black Indian repertoire and adding his own, newfangled rallying cries over plucked kora strings and charging drums.2. Jaimie Branch, ‘Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War))’Jaimie Branch had nearly finished mixing this album — the third studio record from her trumpet-cello-bass-drums quartet, Fly or Die — when she died suddenly in 2022. It would be hard to imagine a more rousing and generous parting gift. Branch (like Adjuah) was a declarative trumpeter who had only recently embraced her unrefined-but-rewarding singing voice. With it she entreats us to love, to agitate and to put ourselves on the line.

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Jazz Flute

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      The flute is one of the more overlooked instruments in jazz, but it’s been making an impact on improvised music for more than 50 years. Let 10 experts take you on a guided tour.We’ve taken you through the great jazz pianists, the vocalists, the careers of Alice Coltrane and Ornette Coleman and Mary Lou Williams. This month, we thought we’d go down a less-trodden path, taking a look at one of the more overlooked instruments in jazz: the flute.Sure, we were prepared for a few Will Ferrell jokes to crop up in the comments (or maybe jump up on the table?), but we had no idea that this piece would land in the biggest cultural moment the instrument had seen in years. Then André 3000 dropped his flute-laden album, “New Blue Sun,” and our timing became all too perfect.The flute doesn’t have the gravitas or the boisterous sound of a saxophone or a trumpet, and it didn’t fully infiltrate the realm of improvised music until the 1960s, with the likes of Yusef Lateef, Eric Dolphy, Herbie Mann and Hubert Laws — not to mention the salsa and pachanga scene in New York, where the flutist, bandleader and record executive Johnny Pacheco was a major presence.Since then, as you’ll see below, the instrument has found a home everywhere from the avant-garde to fusion to straight-ahead. Read on for a guided tour of the flute’s role in jazz, brought to you by 10 writers, musicians and educators. You’ll find a playlist at the bottom of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Melanie Charles, flutist and vocalist“Land of Passion” by Hubert LawsWhen I think of incredible flute playing, I think of the great Hubert Laws, and specifically his playing on his original composition “Land of Passion,” released in 1979. The song grooves very hard with a modern drum feel and a sparse yet precise vocal melody. You wonder where the flute will fit in all of this sauce. After the opening verse, the way is cleared for Hubert to “sing.” His playing begins conversational, showing off his round sound and in-the-pocket phrasing. As the solo continues, however, he opens up the portal with what every flute lover craves: complex trills and runs that display his dexterity and crazy classical chops. Laws’s playing on this tune is a beautiful example of what happens when you combine a warm tone, unmatched technique, an undeniable groove and swag. Many of my fave artists such as Mndsgn and Ari Lennox have sampled this piece as it’s a specimen of all the best elements of Black American music.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Nicole Mitchell, flutist and composer“Sophisticated Lady” by James NewtonCan the flute pour out gut-wrenching blues, penetrate with sonic sunlight, sing multi-phonics and then dart from Buddy Collette’s swag to Eric Dolphy’s virtuosity? My main flute inspiration, James Newton, makes it happen. His flute artistry is charismatically innovative and timeless. So, if you take the winding path from André 3000’s and Shabaka’s meditative multi-flute excursions down the way through Lizzo’s trills, from there, at the edge of Douglas Ewart’s wondrous bamboo forest is Newton’s magical echo canyon of endless possibilities. His breathtaking solo tribute to Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” says it all. Sound truth and power.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Ron Scott, jazz critic“Yesterdays” by Yusef LateefThe first time I heard Yusef Lateef’s rendition of “Yesterdays” on flute, it took my breath away. His tonal fluctuations reflect the haunting notes of a lonely soprano voice in the wind, or a soothing tenor falsetto sighing of lost love in an empty tenement hallway. “Yesterdays” is an emotional state of rhythmic swing, it’s the blues, a peep of Africa at sunrise — all that jazz. It is by no means a sad song. But haunting? Yes. The tune drifts quietly through the ear canal, tingling your entire body right down to the “souls” of your feet. The flute is a mesmerizing instrument, a serene babbling brook of beautiful infinite tones — highs, lows and many in between. Lateef’s exquisite playing is only enhanced by the tapestry of delightful romps by the pianist Kenny Barron, the melodic lyricism of the bassist Bob Cunningham and the dusting brushes of the drummer Albert Heath.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Jamie Baum, flutist and composer“You Don’t Know What Love Is” by Eric DolphyEric Dolphy recorded “Last Date” in 1964, for a radio program in Hilversum, the Netherlands, and many believe it was his actual last, as he died shortly thereafter. His performance of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” shows clearly his singular style on the flute. With only the acoustic bass accompanying him, there’s plenty of space to hear his very personal and expressive sound. He starts off interpreting the melody, embellishing it and the chord changes with his “in-and-out” chromatic approach, while making use of the entire range of the flute. He continues this when the piano and drums enter on the bridge, taking advantage of a cadenza at the end to express his ideas even further.At that time there were relatively few “dedicated” jazz flutists (those who specialized on flute), including Herbie Mann and Hubert Laws, though both had initially also played sax (Hubert even recorded with Mongo Santamaria on tenor); almost all recorded jazz flutists were sax players who “doubled” on flute. While there were several who took the flute seriously and played well, most did not master the entire range in sound and variety of articulation, or use the advanced harmonic approach, that Eric Dolphy did. He continues to be an influence in the trajectory of modern jazz flute playing.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Marcus J. Moore, jazz writer“Just a Love Child” by Bobbi Humphrey“Love child, falling off your cloud, for just a minute. Running around love, and then you’re in it.” I keep coming back to this line as a reset for life in general: The first half contextualizes our existence. We’re all here, floating around and doing stuff for a little while. Now take the whole bar: You’re so focused on said stuff that love sneaks up on you, reshaping your focus. I’ve always loved this song because it exemplifies the tenderness that Bobbi Humphrey must’ve felt in the moment. The way it morphs and slowly ascends, building utopia. While Humphrey was a flutist, the song conveyed her aptitude as a singer and arranger, and introduced her as a well-rounded musician, not just an instrumentalist. That’s not to deny the flute solo here: Around the song’s midpoint, Humphrey arises with upper-register chords that bend around the track, almost nudging the piano and percussion to intensify. A great song on an excellent album, “Just a Love Child” is a master class of entry points and emotions. Not quite soul, not quite funk and not quite jazz, it synthesizes all these genres while accentuating Humphrey’s singular voice.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆T.K. Blue, flutist“Cherokee” by James MoodyI started playing flute as a student in high school on Long Island, and under the guidance of Eddie Jefferson (a close friend of my mentor, the tap dancer Little Buck) I was instructed to travel to New York City for my first “jazz” flute lesson. When I arrived at a hotel in Midtown, I was greeted by none other than Master James Moody! Having an obeisant attitude toward my elders I listened quite ebulliently as Moody spoke with encyclopedic erudition of jazz performance and all its major innovators. Though he was quite prosaic in his approach, he shared tremendous insight regarding flute improvisational technique. This experience changed my life forever! Please check out Moody’s rendition of the standard “Cherokee” from 1968. It’s nothing short of splendiferous! Moody’s warm tone, impeccable articulation with execution, creative ideas, high velocity, and dexterity on the flute puts him on Mount Rushmore! Not to mention he was the very first I heard use the circular breathing technique on flute, which is a herculean task indeed!Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Gabrielle Garo, flutist“Obsession” by Dave Valentin and Herbie MannThe flute is a diverse voice, in my eyes. Through various genres and settings, the flute can be utilized in any capacity. It can paint pictures in classical, jazz and Latin jazz, for example. And that’s what Dave Valentin has done. He has managed to draw a connection between melody and percussion through his expressive approach and soft tone. From quite literally singing into the flute, to his piercing notes that cut through the octave, to his crisp flutter-tongue technique — Valentin’s ideas have been endless, always reshaping the perception of how a flute can be played. These concepts can be heard in this rendition of “Obsession” from the duo album “Two Amigos” of Valentin and another wonderful flutist, Herbie Mann.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz critic“Winter in America” by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian JacksonAs half of one of the most meaningful musical duos of the 1970s, the flutist, pianist and composer Brian Jackson co-wrote many of Gil Scott-Heron’s famous songs of social awareness and resistance. Not “Winter in America” — the poet-singer penned this one himself, in spring 1974, as the Watergate scandal dragged toward a close and major American cities went bankrupt — but Jackson still made it complete: with a somber-yet-graceful arrangement, coasting on a pair of quivering flutes. Jackson’s and Bilal Sunni-Ali’s trills become “the robins perched on barren treetops,” or maybe that “noble piece of paper,” the Constitution, fluttering in the wind as it “died in vain.” After Scott-Heron sings his devastating chorus for the second time (“Ain’t nobody fighting/’Cause nobody knows what to save”), Jackson’s flute solo emerges, dug into the groove but rising, tracing a strand of hope through the bleak panorama.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Amber Navran, vocalist and flutist“As You Are” by Taylor McFerrin featuring Elena PinderhughesAnything Elena Pinderhughes touches turns to golden velvet! You can hear her play with fellow greats from jazz, hip-hop and R&B like Common, Terrace Martin, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, Terri Lyne Carrington, and this track’s collaborator, Taylor McFerrin. Pinderhughes’s sound, melodic sense, phrasing and feel are perfection over every and any blend of Black American music. Although her flute flourishes are often in the background behind vocals, a la Erykah Badu and Dwayne Kerr, this track features her front and center over a lush bed of warm, enveloping synth sounds and delicious, grooving drums. I especially love the moments where it breaks down to drums and flute, giving her velvet tone and rhythmic melodies a chance to shine.This song is a gorgeous display of everything I love about both Elena Pinderhughes and Taylor McFerrin. They are a dream team for your day dreaming! I could listen to it on repeat no matter what the vibe — soaking up the sun shining through the leaves on a nature walk, sipping drinks and swaying to the beat in a dimly lit bar, or sitting down with a fresh notebook and a hot coffee to dream and scheme for the future.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Fernando Brandao, flutist and professor“Mai Pinheiros!” by Maiara Moraes with Teco CardosoThis captivating recording captures the magic of Maiara Moraes’s live concert, featuring Teco Cardoso as a guest, so it’s really a two-in-one flute experience. Jazz improvisation in Brazilian music is mostly associated with the bossa nova genre. This particular piece spotlights a genre less known to the American audience: frevo, a traditional vibrant dance and rhythm from the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, brought to life here with fervor and expertise. A fusion of European and African musical influences, frevo has its dance roots in the Brazilian martial art capoeira. This genre, whether presented vocally or instrumentally, demands a remarkable level of technical skill. Similar to choro and samba, frevo serves as an artistic school for young musicians. It’s not just music; it’s a celebration of cultural richness and artistic prowess.Maiara Moraes and Teco Cardoso close this concert with a high-energy, intricately arranged composition where jazz meets street carnival music. Maiara improvises on flute and Teco on piccolo. Both players masterfully and creatively display the frevo phrasing and style combining developing motifs with through-composed passages. The culmination sees the theme brought back with the two playing dueling piccolos, evoking the frenzied energy of a celebrative Brazilian carnival, and creating a memorable and immersive musical experience for the audience.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      Cobi Narita, Tireless Jazz Promoter and Benefactor, Dies at 97

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      She produced concerts, helped musicians find work and started a women’s jazz festival. “Jazz in New York would not have been the same without Cobi,” one musician said.Cobi Narita, an indefatigable jazz impresario who for more than 40 years in New York City produced concerts, celebrated female artists in an annual festival and ran performance spaces, died on Nov. 8 in Los Angeles. She was 97.Her death, at the home of a granddaughter, was confirmed by her son Robert Narita.Ms. Narita — who grew up in California, spent most of World War II with her family in an Arizona internment camp for Japanese Americans, and moved to New York in her early 40s — was a unifying force in local jazz circles.“Jazz in New York would not have been the same without Cobi,” the saxophonist Jimmy Heath told the website All About Jazz in 2006.Loren Schoenberg, the founding director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, called Ms. Narita a respected benefactor who provided much-needed opportunities for performers in New York — a role that was later more formally adopted, at least in part, by Jazz at Lincoln Center.“She started at a time when there was no organized world of jazz institutions to give financial aid to musicians,” Mr. Schoenberg said by phone. “Everybody was out in the ocean doing their own little projects. But Cobi had all these things going, and she handed out money to support people.”He added, “Her affect was low-key, but she had charisma and a gravitational field around her.”In 1976, Ms. Narita started the nonprofit Universal Jazz Coalition, an umbrella organization that for about 10 years helped musicians manage their careers, promoted and produced concerts, and distributed a newsletter about local jazz events.Seven years later, she opened the Jazz Center of New York in a rented loft in Lower Manhattan, on Lafayette Street, where famous musicians like Dizzy Gillespie as well as up-and-comers performed. In 2002, she opened Cobi’s Place, on West 48th Street near Seventh Avenue, as a venue for singers, instrumentalists and dancers.Cobi’s Place stayed in business for about a decade. The Jazz Center of New York closed recently but she had retired during the pandemic.Over the years, Ms. Narita produced concerts and performances by, among others, the singers Abbey Lincoln and Dakota Staton, the saxophonist Henry Threadgill and the trumpeter Clark Terry.“Without producers like Cobi,” Ms. Lincoln told The Daily News of New York in 1993, “musicians like me would have a hard time having careers.”In 1978, Ms. Narita organized the four-day Salute to Women in Jazz, which was renamed the New York Women’s Jazz Festival the next year and ran for more than 10 years. The event was held at the disco Casablanca 2, on the original site of the jazz club Birdland, on Broadway between 52nd and 53rd Streets. The event made news when Robert Tirado, the disco’s owner, abruptly increased the rent after two successful nights. Ms. Narita could not meet his demand, and he locked the festival out.Ms. Narita quickly regrouped. The musicians played outdoors near the club for the third and fourth nights, using electricity from a nearby parking lot, instruments and a public address system from the Sam Ash Musical Instruments store a few blocks away, and chairs from the Roseland Ballroom. The pianist Mary Lou Williams and the singer Helen Merrill were among those who performed.“A thousand people had to have lined up on the street,” Ms. Narita told All About Jazz. “It was amazing.”George Wein, the producer of the Newport Jazz Festival, happened to be walking by and was stunned when he came upon the unscheduled street concert. He paid for Ms. Narita to use Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) for a bonus fifth night.Ms. Narita’s financial backer in most of her ventures was Paul Ash, whose family owns the Sam Ash chain of musical instrument stores; Cobi’s Place was located above Manny’s Music, which was owned by Sam Ash. Ms. Narita and Mr. Ash met in 1973 and married in 1989. He died in 2014.“They were like magnets, man, from the start,” her son Robert said. “Soul mates.”Nobuko Emoto was born on March 3, 1926, in San Pedro, Calif. Her father, Kazumasa Emoto, was a farmer who brought fresh vegetables to Los Angeles markets. Her mother, Kimiko (Hamamoto) Emoto, was a homemaker.Nobuko, her parents, her two sisters and her two brothers were among the estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans forcibly relocated during World War II to internment camps, mostly in Western states. Mr. Emoto lost his trucks, his equipment and his land.During her incarceration at the Gila River Relocation Center in Arizona, Nobuko wrote a newsletter about goings-on at the camp.She and her family were released in 1945, and she finished high school. She soon married Masao Narita, with whom she would have seven children. She entered Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania in 1948 and studied theater there, but left after one year.After Ms. Narita and her husband divorced in the mid-1950s, she worked in various jobs in the Long Beach, Calif., area. Looking for a better career opportunity, she left for New York City in 1969, taking a job with the International Council of Shopping Centers.Soon after her move, she was walking in Central Park when she heard jazz being played. One of the musicians, the bassist Gene Taylor, urged her to volunteer for the renowned jazz ministry at St. Peter’s Church, on Lexington Avenue near East 54th Street. (In later years the church would be the site of her annual birthday party, which featured live jazz.)In 1972, Ms. Narita was hired as the executive director of Collective Black Artists, a repertory orchestra and support group for needy musicians. But after two and a half years, after raising more than $100,000 for the organization’s projects, she was fired — because, she said, she was not Black.“They really thought a male Black person should be in that job; it just looked better than an Asian woman,” she was quoted as saying in a profile of her on the Library of Congress website.She recovered from that setback by studying corporate organization on a fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That program built her skills in time to start the Universal Jazz Coalition.In addition to her son Robert, Ms. Narita is survived by her daughters, Susan Narita-Law and Judith, Charlene, Jude, Lisa and Patricia Narita; another son, Richard; 13 grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and a sister, Therese Nakagawa.Ms. Narita said that one of her lasting goals was to help lesser-known women and budding young artists build jazz careers.“There were a thousand struggling musicians who never got concerts or promotional help so they could build their own names,” she told The Daily News in 1982. “All these young people who seem to have come to a stopping point after going to school: Where do they play?” More

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      Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ Movie Bonus, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Hurray for the Riff Raff, Tyla, Lana Del Rey 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.Beyoncé, ‘My House’Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour film opens in theaters on Friday, and a brand-new song plays over the closing credits: the bold, brassy and bass-heavy “My House.” Fusing ’90s house music with more hard-edge, futuristic sounds, the track draws from several of the different eras of dance music Beyoncé honored on her kaleidoscopic 2022 album “Renaissance,” with a little of the marching band flair of “Homecoming” thrown in for good measure. “Don’t make me get up out of my seat,” Bey growls with an extra curl in her lip. “Don’t make me come up off of this beat.” You heard her! LINDSAY ZOLADZTyla, ‘Truth or Dare’Tyla, from South Africa, is courting global audiences by bringing the breathy tunefulness of R&B singers like Aaliyah to songs that fuse sleek electronic 1990s R&B with current African beats. She’s nominated for a Grammy for her international hit, “Water.” In her new song, “Truth or Dare,” she glides above an amapiano groove to address an on-again, off-again affair that’s complicated by past disappearances and her newfound success: “Would you still want me if I didn’t have it all?” Singing “care” and “dare” as two-syllable words are just one of the hooks. JON PARELESOxlade, ‘Katigori’The Nigerian hitmaker Oxlade presents his success as a higher mission in his new single “Katigori,” gently crooning, “So many mysteries I gots to unfold/The music legacy I gots to uphold.” He goes on to dismiss imitators and backbiters, but Afrobeats syncopations, three rising chords and a panoply of vocal harmonies keep him sounding more sincere than smug. PARELESHurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Alibi’Alynda Segarra, who makes music as Hurray for the Riff Raff, recorded the forthcoming album “The Past Is Still Alive” shortly after the death of their father. “Alibi,” the opening track and first single, takes a unique, ultimately poignant approach to grief: “You don’t have to die if you don’t want to die,” Segarra sings in a tough-talking voice that always threatens to break, caught halfway between denial and bargaining. The tempo is stomping and insistent, like the too-quick march of time. ZOLADZLana Del Rey, ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’On “The Grants,” the opening song off Lana Del Rey’s last album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” the (other) elusive chanteuse pays tribute to “‘Rocky Mountain High,’ the way John Denver sang.” She’s now released another tribute to Denver: a cover of “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Leave it to Del Rey to take a ubiquitous piece of Americana and make it seem hauntingly new. She slightly slows Denver’s jaunty pace, swapping out acoustic guitar for melancholy piano. But just when you think she’s made this anthem too much of a downer for a singalong to break out, a warm chorus of other voices joins in and leads her home. ZOLADZEnglish Teacher, ‘Mastermind Specialism’English Teacher, a indie-rock band from Leeds, often spins terse little contrapuntal patterns that can grow into a post-punk blare. But on its new single, “Mastermind Specialism,” it stays fairly restrained and folky. The song is a waltz, with its patterns picked at first on acoustic guitars, while Lily Fontaine sings about the difficulty of making choices: “Bittersweet and less is more/Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” The song swells but stays appropriately inconclusive. PARELESOscar Peterson, ‘My One and Only Love’Oscar Peterson and his classic, airtight trio — with Ray Brown on bass and Ed Thigpen on drums — were more than five years into their life as a group when they performed in Lugano, Switzerland, in 1964. A recording of that concert recently resurfaced, and was released last week for the first time as an LP, “Con Alma.” Peterson plays the standard ballad “My One and Only Love” with his usual flair, splicing in moments of fond hesitation with lightning-speed dashes down the keyboard, wedging in an extended Gershwin reference (at 3:40) and ending with a quote from Bach. You get the idea: If it could be done on the keyboard, he could do it. And it was never anything but a marvel to hear him go. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOLea Bertucci featuring Quartetto Maurice, ‘Vapours (Radio Edit)’The saxophonist, clarinetist and experimental sound artist Lea Bertucci uses musical systems both avant-garde and ancient to make music that leaves notions of harmony, rhythm and melody outside the door. Instead she’s focused on the resonance and slow disappearance of sound, in a moment when so much of our digital existence feels both immaterial and overwhelming. On “Vapours,” from her new album “Of Shadow and Substance,” she works with Quartetto Maurice, an Italian string quartet, using a semi-composed, semi-improvised compositional method to create a sense of pressure and release. The song’s title is a reference to the “pseudo-scientific term” that was once used “to diagnose types of hysteria in women,” as Bertucci writes in the album notes. In the spirit of modernists like Morton Feldman or minimalists like Éliane Radigue, she has developed a powerfully patient musical language, paying homage and also bidding good riddance to a world in decay. Call it music to let go by. RUSSONELLOAndré 3000, ‘That Night in Hawaii When I Turned Into a Panther and Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn’t Control … Sh¥t Was Wild’A wordless album from a great rapper? That’s what André 3000, from Outkast, decided to release with “New Blue Sun,” an 87-minute instrumental-verging-on-ambient album featuring acoustic and electronic breath-powered instruments. The 10-minute “That Night in Hawaii …” hints at Native American music with a muffled six-beat drum pulse, assorted percussion and slowly unfolding flute improvisations, at once deliberate and open-ended. PARELESO., ‘ATM’O. is a raucous jazz-rock-psychedelic-noise duo that goes by first names only: Joe on saxophone and Tash on drums, bolstered by electronics and effects. In “ATM,” Joe’s baritone saxophone moves among squalls, barks, trills and shrieks when it’s not touching down in a low, brawny riff. Tash maintains a brisk, galloping beat — sometimes tapping, sometimes bashing — until the last full minute of the track, a slow meltdown that’s engulfed in electronic entropy. PARELES More

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      ‘American Symphony’ Review: Intimate Harmony

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      This portrait of the musician Jon Batiste and the author Suleika Jaouad follows an artistic couple through ambition and adversity.Partway through “American Symphony,” the musician Jon Batiste pokes gentle fun at the coverage he received in advance of the 2022 Grammys. The breadth of his 11 nominations, which bridged pop, jazz and classical categories, made him tough to label. He ultimately fended off Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish to win album of the year.This documentary, directed by Matthew Heineman, is likewise deceptively tricky to peg. In the broad strokes, it is a process film, following Batiste, who grew up in the New Orleans area and trained at Juilliard, as he prepares a wildly original symphony that shares a title with the movie. “My ambition for composing this symphony is massive,” he says. “I’m trying to expand the canon of symphonic music, break through long-gatekept spaces.”(Ben Sisario, writing in The New York Times, described the piece, which premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2022, as a “Whitmanesque canvas of funk, Dixieland jazz, operatic vocals and Native American drums.”)But this is also a movie about two artists, their love, their creative attitudes and how, as a couple, they approach living a “life of contrasts.” That description comes from the writer Suleika Jaouad, Batiste’s partner (they marry during the film), whose best-selling memoir, “Between Two Kingdoms,” was published in 2021 and who, before college, studied at Juilliard herself, with a specialization in double bass.As Batiste gets ready for his Grammy and Carnegie Hall coups, Jaouad undergoes a bone marrow transplant after a recurrence of cancer. (She received her first leukemia diagnosis at 22, and from 2012 to 2015 wrote in The Times about her experiences.)While some of the backstage material has an official feel (Batiste and Jaouad are listed among the many executive producers, along with Barack and Michelle Obama), the documentary does not shy from showing private moments. It captures Batiste hiding his head under a pillow as he talks on the phone with his therapist and sits in with the couple as a doctor discusses the open-ended course of chemotherapy he is recommending. When it comes to the music, too, the film is unafraid to dwell on a drawn-out silence or phrase.American SymphonyRated PG-13 Potentially upsetting medical scenes. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More