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      Beck and Phoenix’s Bouncy Synth-Pop Team-up, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Palehound, Jaimie Branch, Aphex Twin 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.Beck and Phoenix, ‘Odyssey’Double bill challenge: write a song with the act sharing the tour to prove compatibility. Beck and the French electro-pop band Phoenix, who will hit the road together this summer, have done just that. Their collaboration, “Odyssey,” finds common ground in synthesizer-centered 1980s pop, specifically Talking Heads’ 1980 “Once in a Lifetime” plus a lot of marimba or xylophone overdubs. Homer’s “Odyssey” was a long, brutal journey home. This “Odyssey” is much more comfortable. JON PARELESMaisie Peters, ‘Run’“If the man says that he wants you in his life forever — run!” That’s what the English songwriter Maisie Peters advises after a relationship with someone who was “too good to be true.” It’s a brisk, beat-driven battle-of-the-sexes song that could be a slogan. PARELESAphex Twin, ‘Blackbox Life Recorder 21f’Brooding synthesizer chords and dependable but ever-shifting drumbeats run through Aphex Twin’s first official release in five years, the inscrutably titled (as usual) “Blackbox Life Recorder 21f,” from an EP due July 28. Melodically, the track is a dirge, but until the rhythm drops away at the end, the percussion is there to party no matter how grim the surroundings. PARELESJaimie Branch, ‘Take Over the World’The trumpeter and bandleader Jaimie Branch, who was 39 when she died last year, left behind raucous, defiant recordings that will be released in August as a posthumous album, “Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((World War)).” Branch determinedly fused jazz, electronics and punk spirit, and in “Take Over the World” she starts out chanting “Gonna gonna take over the world/and give it back-back-back-back to the l-l-land,” whooping up high as she’s joined by pummeling, New Orleans-flavored drums and rhythmically droning cello and bass. She plays a taunting, growling trumpet solo; she puts her vocals through an electronic warp. Her fury gathers a fierce, joyful momentum. PARELESPalehound, ‘Independence Day’“We broke up on Independence Day, crying while the next door neighbors raged,” El Kempner begins on this single from indie-rockers Palehound’s forthcoming album “Eye on the Bat,” atop a chord progression that chugs wearily, like Wilco’s “Kamera.” That memorable line sets the scene for this bleary, blurred snapshot of a relationship’s end, full of wry humor and hard-won wisdom. “Even if I could, it would kill me to look back,” Kempner sings, musing on the sadness of the road not taken. “No, I don’t wanna see the other path.” LINDSAY ZOLADZAmanda Shires and Bobbie Nelson, ‘Waltz Across Texas’The country artists Amanda Shires and Bobbie Nelson recorded the generation-bridging album “Loving You” shortly before Nelson’s 2022 death at age 91, and the result is a testament to the collaborative spirit and light, intuitive touch as a pianist that she retained up until the very end of her life. The album’s opening number “Waltz Across Texas,” the Western swing classic made famous by Ernest Tubb, showcases their easy musical chemistry: Shires’s fluttery voice is playful but reverent to the source material, and Nelson’s notes are as elegantly spaced and glimmering as stars in a night sky. ZOLADZFaye Webster, ‘But Not Kiss’Faye Webster trades in deceptive nonchalance. She brings her sly, sleepy voice to “But Not Kiss,” singing about the wary, ambivalent beginnings of a relationship: “I want to see you in my dreams but then forget,” she sings, “We’re meant to be — but not yet.” Each quiet, folky declaration is answered by a rich burst of instruments: physical responses outpacing rational decisions. PARELESThe Smile, ‘Bending Hectic’What would it feel like to drive off a Mediterranean mountainside? Leave it to the Smile — Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead with the jazz drummer Tom Skinner — to consider that possibility in this nerve-racking eight-minute track. “Bending Hectic” moves from contemplating the view to getting suicidal on curvy Italian mountain roads, from quiet guitar picking and contemplation to disaster scored by Greenwood’s dissonant string arrangements. Takeaway: Choose that van driver carefully. PARELESAmbrose Akinmusire, ‘Cora Campbell’Ambrose Akinmusire recorded his newest album, “Beauty Is Enough,” at Paris’s towering Saint-Eustache cathedral, without an audience or a band — just his trumpet and the natural reverb of the hall. He approached the album, which is entirely improvised, as something of a rite of passage: So many of his horn-playing heroes had done solo albums at crucial career junctures, he’d known he would at some point too. Akinmusire has a huge knowledge of jazz history, but he pushes himself to avoid relaxing within it; you’ll never hear him falling back on references. Instead he’s built one of the most ineffable styles in jazz, full of smoldering feeling, but with a startling quietness at its core. (The LP’s cover art approximates this well: a faint, almost bodily shape, barely emerging from an all-black background.) On “Cora Campbell,” the last of the LP’s 16 tracks, you’ll hear him squeeze his notes tightly, letting them tremor and wriggle a bit. Seventy seconds in, he turns the notes he’s been toying with into a steady pattern, then challenges himself to splice higher pitches and glissandos into its gaps. It’s not overloaded, but he’s never at rest. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO More

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      Roaring Twenties Enthusiasts Gather in New York

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      Hundreds of time travelers in 1920s-era outfits took ferries to Governors Island earlier this month to attend the two-day Jazz Age Lawn Party, one of New York City’s most curious summer traditions.They wore flapper dresses with feather boas, pinstripe suits with black-and-white wingtips and lots of boater hats, cloche hats and bow ties. Gathered on picnic blankets in a grassy field, they passed the day sipping gin and tonics before dancing to hot jazz performed by the Dreamland Orchestra.A man wearing pink pants and suspenders drank beer from a Mason jar while his young son, also in suspenders, sat on his shoulders. Lines gathered outside a stand that sold newsboy caps and another that offered on-site tintype portraits. A pie contest included the category, “Hobo’s Choice,” which rewarded the confection most likely to be “stolen off a back porch.”The orchestra was conducted by the pencil-mustached bandleader Michael Arenella, who started the event in 2005. “We were pretty much the first event out here,” he said. “It was maybe 50 people then. People are drawn to the Roaring Twenties because there’s a youthfulness to the era. After the war, people were looking to have a good time, after their brush with mortality.”In the edited interviews below, re-enactors on the second day named their Jazz Age fashion heroes and pondered whether they would actually time travel back to the era.Cyrene ReneeModel and playwrightDesiree Rios for The New York TimesIf you could time travel back, would you? I’d go back. I’d be a showgirl at the Cotton Club and be the best dancer there. As much as I love the era, I don’t think life was better, though. There was segregation. Yet despite what we were going through as people of color, we created beautiful dance, music and art.Do you have a Jazz Age fashion hero? Josephine Baker, all day, every day. She was righteous and liberated in her beauty.Inez RobinsonEducatorDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back? I can’t romanticize that period, as a person of color, but I’m very drawn to the era’s fashion. As a Harlem native, I have an affinity for the Harlem Renaissance. African Americans were using fashion to carry themselves proudly every single day.Jazz Age fashion hero? Coco Chanel. Her designs introduced gender fluidity. She pioneered the idea you could go both ways.Skip DiatzRetired librarianDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you time travel back? People think of the 1920s as one big party, but it was just good for a few people of certain persuasions. It was also a time of intolerance and prejudice. I’d probably go back just for a weekend. However, this is only one time period I’m involved with as a re-enactor. I did a World War II event the other weekend, and I was at a Revolutionary War event recently in Mount Vernon.Your old-timey fashion hero? Douglas Fairbanks Jr. He was married to Joan Crawford and was the best dressed man in Hollywood.Michael ArenellaBandleaderDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back? I’d like to go back, because I relate to the simplicity of that time. Don’t get me wrong, it was a harder life, and lots obviously wasn’t good, but things were simpler then, and I feel we’ve gotten further from that.Jazz Age fashion hero? Gary Cooper. He was just starting out, and he had that elegant swagger. You don’t see elegant swagger in a man these days.LaVerne CameronRetired paralegalDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you time travel back? Yes, because I think people were happier then, though I’d want to arrive before the Great Depression. Women’s liberation was starting and so much of that fashion remains stylish today, from sequins to headbands.Old-timey fashion hero? Carole Lombard. She married Clark Gable and died in a plane crash. She started the blond hair trend.Jesse Rosen and Taylor DunstonScientist and Beauty sales executiveDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back?J. R.: I think there are aspects of me that wouldn’t fare so well then, but to experience those parties, I don’t know …. If I could come back, sure, but I’d stay here if it was a one-way ticket.Jazz Age fashion hero?T. D.: I can’t immediately think of one but I feel Tom Ford pulled heavily from this era. His suits are masculine yet use feminine color palettes. He loves a luxurious full lapel with strong shouldering, like the gangsters wore. You could argue the power suit was born in the 1920s and that Ford borrowed from it.Michael AsanteFlight attendantDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back? I’d be naïve to say any era was better, but in terms of fashion, I’d like it if everyone still dressed like this. The mobsters in particular, with their red ties and cigars, were really bringing it.Jazz Age fashion hero? I feel Karl Lagerfeld was channeling the Jazz Age. The gloves. The white collar. His white cat, Choupette, in a carrier basket.Charles AnnunziatoEvents coordinatorDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back? Probably not. The prohibition era was a time of hardship. Now we can get liquor whenever we want.Jazz Age fashion hero? Bonnie and Clyde. Because they did whatever the hell they wanted.Caroline Shaffer and Marissa KoorsGraphic designer and Book editorDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back?C.S.: Absolutely not. I like having the internet and rights as a woman.M.K.: Only with a return trip. I have rights in this era and so do my friends and allies. We also have medicine. I could have gotten the Spanish flu.Jazz Age fashion hero?C.S.: Jean Harlow. She played unremorseful characters, like women who got involved with married men, yet she played them in a surprisingly likable way.M.K.: Elsa Schiaparelli. She took from surrealism and said, ‘What if we put lobsters on our dresses?’ Wearing Schiaparelli was to wear art.Alvin and Marla NichterRetired electrical engineer and Retired fashion image consultantDesiree Rios for The New York TimesWould you go back?M.N.: I think I would have fit right in. It was a ladylike time. A time of gentleman. Girls were girls. Men were men. Wait, could I get in trouble for saying that? What I mean to say is it was a stylish feminine era, which I like.Jazz Age fashion hero?A.N.: My glamorous great-aunt. She was a fashion buyer for the top New York department stores back then. She’d go to Paris to bring back the latest fashions for New Yorkers. I’ve seen pictures of her. She was the bee’s knees. More

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      Meshell Ndegeocello’s Magnificent Mix, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Peggy Gou, Killer Mike, Sparklehorse 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.Meshell Ndegeocello featuring Jeff Parker, ‘ASR’The songs on Meshell Ndegeocello’s magnificent new album, “The Omnichord Real Book,” are always in flux. In its seven-and-half minutes, “ASR” hints at fusion jazz, Funkadelic, Ethiopian pop, reggae and psychedelia; the guitarist Jeff Parker, from Tortoise, teases the music forward. As the song accelerates, Ndegeocello sings about pain, heartbreak, healing and perseverance, and she vows, “We’re here to set the clock to here and now.” JON PARELESPeggy Gou, ‘(It Goes Like) Nanana’Peggy Gou is a South Korean-born, Berlin-based D.J. and producer with a penchant for dreamy house beats and a velvety touch. Her latest single “(It Goes Like) Nanana” plays out a bit like her own personal reworking of ATC’s ubiquitous 2000 hit “All Around the World,” but with a kinetic energy that’s distinctly her own. “I can’t explain,” Gou sings over a thumping beat and light piano riff, before deciding she can best express the feeling she wants to describe in nonsense words: “I guess it goes like na na na na na na.” LINDSAY ZOLADZDoja Cat, ‘Attention’Doja Cat returns with a vengeance on the menacing “Attention,” a statement record that puts her pop sensibility aside (at least for now) and leans into her ample skills as an M.C. “Look at me, look at me — you lookin’?” she begins, and for the next few minutes commands the floor with charismatic grit. “Baby, if you like it, just reach out and pet it,” she sings on a hook that recalls ’90s R&B, albeit filtered through Doja’s alien sensibility. The verses, though, are pure venom: “Y’all fall into beef, but that’s another conversation,” she spits with that signature fire in her throat. “I’m sorry, but we all find it really entertaining.” ZOLADZKiller Mike featuring Future, André 3000 and Eryn Allen Kane, ‘Scientists & Engineers’Ambition and achievement, electronics and exaltation all figure in “Scientists & Engineers” from “Michael,” Killer Mike’s first solo album since he formed Run the Jewels with El-P. “Scientists & Engineers” has five producers including James Blake and No I.D. The track pulsates with keyboard chords under the elusive André 3000 (from Outkast), who insists, “Rebelling is like an itch.” The music switches to silky guitar chords for Future, who sings, “It’s better to be an outcast in a world of envious.” And a beat kicks in with trap drums and blipping synthesizers behind Killer Mike, who boasts in quick triplets: “I’m never chillin’, I gotta make millions.” A multitracked Eryn Allen Kane wafts choirlike harmonies — and gospel-tinged sentiments like “I’mma live forever” — while the rappers redefine themselves. PARELESFlesh Eater featuring Fiona Apple, ‘Komfortzone’None other than Fiona Apple decided to collaborate with Flesh Eater, a Nashville avant-pop group, on the mercurial seven-minute excursion “Komfortzone.” Over a low, sputtering programmed beat and outbursts of noise and electronics, Flesh Eater’s lead singer, Zwil AR, sings hopscotching melodies reminiscent of Dirty Projectors. Apple sprinkles in some piano and eventually adds vocal harmonies on refrains like “A field of sunflowers with their backs toward me/I’m on the train.” It’s as willful as it is arty. PARELESSparklehorse, ‘Evening Star Supercharger’Mark Linkous was making his fifth album as Sparklehorse when he died by suicide in 2010. Now his family and a handful of collaborators have completed it, due for a September release as “Bird Machine.” A preview single, “Evening Star Supercharger,” tops unhurried folk-rock with the tinkle of a toy piano, as Linkous cryptically but matter-of-factly considers mortality and depression: “Peace without pill, gun or needle or prayer appear/Never found sometimes near but too fleet to be clear.” In the sky, he calmly watches a star going nova: “Even though she’s dying, getting larger.” PARELESOmah Lay, ‘Reason’The Nigerian singer Omah Lay has split his songs between partying and self-doubt; he has also been featured by Justin Bieber. “Reason,” from the newly expanded version of his 2022 album, “Boy Alone,” has minor chords and grim scenarios: “I don’t know who to run to right now/Army is opening heavy fire.” The beat is buoyant, but the tone is fraught. PARELESDavid Virelles, ‘Uncommon Sense’A low-riding shuffle beat isn’t the Cuban-born pianist, composer and folklorist David Virelles’s most common environment. But “Carta,” Virelles’s new LP, puts him and his longtime first-call bassist, Ben Street, together with Eric McPherson, an innovator and tradition-bearer in today’s jazz drumming. This is the closest Virelles has come to making a standard-format jazz trio album, though it’s still not exactly that. On the opener, “Uncommon Sense,” McPherson’s shuffle kicks in after 25 seconds of solo piano, and Virelles has already led things down a tense path, changing keys capriciously while building up a foundation for the Cubist phrase at the center of the tune. McPherson’s elegantly splattered drum style, using traditional grip to roll his rhythms out as close to the ground as possible, gives solid support to Virelles while he toys with contemporary-side influences: the bodily elocution of Don Pullen’s piano playing, the harmonic splintering and superimpositions of Craig Taborn, the rhythmic restraint of a Gonzalo Rubalcaba. You wouldn’t need to be told this album was recorded at Van Gelder Studio to realize it’s speaking with jazz history — the antique, the modern and what’s barely come into shape. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBen van Gelder, ‘Spectrum’“Manifold,” a new album from the rising bandleader Ben van Gelder, celebrates the voice. The voice of his saxophone, the voice of the pipe organ, the human voice, the collective voice of an eight-piece band. Each has its own grain. The organ has its own prominent side-narrative in jazz history, but the Amsterdam-based van Gelder is culling from a different stream, closer to contemporary classical composers like Arvo Pärt and György Ligeti, using dissonance and space. The Veracruz-born vocalist Fuensanta sings no words on “Spectrum,” the album’s rangy centerpiece track; she joins the horns, sounding almost like another reed instrument. Beneath them, Kit Downes toggles between minimalism and high-rising waves on the pipe organ. RUSSONELLOElliott Sharp, ‘Rosette’The composer Elliott Sharp has been devising systems of pitch and structure since the 1970s. His latest album, “Steppe,” is inspired by geography. It’s music for six overdubbed vintage electric steel guitars, microtonally tuned and arrayed in stereo, exploring texture and resonance. “Rosette” is built from quick, cascading, staggered, overlapping little runs. It’s bell-toned and spiky, crumbling and reassembling. PARELES More

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      Horace Tapscott, a Force in L.A. Jazz, Is Celebrated in a New Set

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      “60 Years,” a compilation marking the 60th anniversary of his Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, spotlights the pianist and community organizer, who died in 1999.There’s a name engraved in the sidewalk along Degnan Boulevard in Los Angeles’ Leimert Park neighborhood: Horace Tapscott, the local pianist and organizer whose ensemble, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, gave many musicians their first gigs and helped heal a community impacted by racism.“He saved Los Angeles when it comes to progressive music,” said the vocalist Dwight Trible, a performer with the Arkestra since 1987, in a telephone interview. “Because if you were going to get involved in that, you had to come through Horace Tapscott.”Tapscott started the group in 1961 and maintained it until his death in 1999, at 64. Yet his name has never rung as loudly outside of L.A. He didn’t tour much and his albums of vigorous Afrocentric jazz weren’t released on mainstream record labels. A new compilation titled “60 Years,” out Friday, may change that.The double LP set collects unreleased songs from every decade of the Arkestra’s existence, up to its present-day iteration with the drummer Mekala Session at the helm. Through a mix of home and live recordings, along with written track-by-track breakdowns from past and present members in the album’s liner notes, “60 Years” offers perspective on a group that’s largely flown under the radar.Featuring Bill Madison on drums; David Bryant on bass; Lester Robertson on trombone; and Arthur Blythe, Jimmy Woods and Guido Sinclair on saxophone; the Arkestra started in Tapscott’s garage and grew dramatically over the following 17 years.Tapscott founded the band and the Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension, an artists’ collective, to provide more gigs for progressive jazz musicians living in L.A., and to get local children involved in the arts. His own journey in music began when he was young; his mother, Mary Lou Malone, was a stride pianist and tuba player and as a teen he played trombone locally before entering the Air Force.After a tour of the South with the vibraphonist Lionel Hampton’s band, he wasn’t enamored with life on the road. During a stop in L.A., where Tapscott had lived since he was 9, he hopped off Hampton’s tour bus for good. “No one discovered I was gone until they got to Arizona,” he said in a 1982 interview.“He was way more interested in feeling and sounding like himself with his friends, who were also really unique,” Session said on a video call from Los Angeles. Still, Tapscott’s mission stretched beyond music. During the Watts riots in 1965, he had the band play in the middle of the road on a flatbed truck. (Police responded, with guns drawn.) They group would often perform in churches, community centers, prisons and hospitals for little to no money, and at benefits for Black Panther leaders, drawing attention from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.Though Tapscott released his first album, “The Giant Is Awakened,” with a separate quintet in 1969, his debut LP with the Arkestra didn’t arrive until “The Call,” a mix of bluesy ballads and orchestral arrangements with grand flourishes, in 1978. Along the way, noted musicians and vocalists like Nate Morgan, Kamau Daaood, Adele Sebastian and Phil Ranelin played in the band.Trible came across Tapscott in the late 1980s as a singer in another group who wanted to work with the Arkestra. Two weeks after they performed separately at a festival, Tapscott offered an invitation. “He said, ‘I want you to come to my house tomorrow at 3 o’clock,’ and he hung up the phone,” Trible remembered with a laugh. “And just about every concert that Horace played from that time on, I sang with him in some capacity.”Trible performed a fiery rendition of “Little Africa,” a rapturous gospel song, with the current version of the Arkestra at National Sawdust in Brooklyn earlier this month. The festive night of shouts and praise featured older and younger Arkestra members, and served as a showcase for Session, the band’s leader since 2018; Mekala is the son of the saxophonist Michael Session, who led the band before him.In an interview before the gig, Session recalled joining the band as a teen. “I’m 13 and my first gig with the Ark is with Azar Lawrence,” he exclaimed, referring to the noted saxophonist and sideman to Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner and Freddie Hubbard. “It’s actually a very humbling thing to be a medium, a conduit for the ancestors trying to spread this vibration as far and as hard as possible.”The idea for the compilation arose shortly after the band’s 50th anniversary, which came and went without much fanfare. The collective vowed to not let that happen for its 60th. “We were like, ‘We’re going to make a product that will introduce a bunch of people to this band in a way that’s comprehensive and concise,” Session said. “This is for us, by us. We wanted to present something to the people from the band that can directly pay the band and support the band, and then be turned into other projects. It’s the first time the Ark has been able to do that, really.”Renewed interest in Tapscott and the Arkestra dates back at least seven years, when a new crop of L.A. jazz musicians — including the bassist Thundercat, the saxophonist Kamasi Washington and the producer and multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin — helped the superstar rapper Kendrick Lamar create his avant jazz-rap opus “To Pimp a Butterfly,” shedding light on the city’s still-fertile jazz scene. Since then, various labels have reissued Tapscott’s work. But the music on “60 Years,” remastered from old cassettes and CDs, hasn’t been heard beyond the Arkestra.Six decades since Tapscott formed the band, Session said the group’s mission hasn’t changed, and he vowed to continue pushing forward. “I want to get weirder. I want to get back to how Horace did shows at prisons and high schools and colleges for free,” he said. “We could sell out Carnegie Hall and then come home and do the same set for 50, 60 cats. I want that balance. It sounds impossible, but we can do it.” More

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      Sono Fest! Freely Dips Into Jazz and Classical Music

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      In its opening days, Ethan Iverson’s Sono Fest! in Brooklyn was already showing promise.Update: Ethan Iverson announced on Monday that the rest of Sono Fest! would not proceed as scheduled because the owner of the Soapbox Gallery, responsible for running the theater, had tested positive for Covid-19.This past week, I did something with a classical music concert that I have often enjoyed at jazz clubs: I hung back to hear the same program again when it returned for a second set.It was opening night of the inaugural Sono Fest!, founded and programmed by the jazz pianist and composer Ethan Iverson, and running through June 23 at Soapbox Gallery in Brooklyn. (The space, in addition to hosting audiences in its 60-seat space, is also offering ticketed livestreams of the events.) Iverson was wrapping up a concert with the violinist Miranda Cuckson when he casually noted that anyone who wanted to hear the same pieces again could remain for the next gig.Their performance — of works for violin and piano by Peter Lieberson, Louise Talma and George Walker — had been among the best chamber music shows I’d heard all season. (Another delight: Iverson’s jaunty and lyrical Piano Sonata, which he’d performed alone.) Rapport between players sometimes develops as a night progresses, so why not stick around?That decision paid dividends quickly — particularly during Talma’s Sonata (1962), a choice rarity that pairs mid-20th-century harmonic modernism with forceful rhythmic drive. In the first set, Cuckson had devoted a range of expressive talents to the violin writing: carefully shading some drier moments of muted playing, and later deploying her silvery sound to underline the singing qualities embedded in an otherwise complex idiom.Cuckson and Iverson had been enviably coordinated during the furious passages in the earlier set — if sometimes a touch stiffly so. Later, though, they achieved a give and take that was something else: At select junctures, she powered slightly ahead of his beat, allowing an almost-rushed climactic phrase in the violin to decay dramatically over his rhythmically precise piano.Afterward, Iverson told the audience that they were experiencing “the deep set.” Those of us who had sat through knew just how right he was.“The truth of the matter is, I love it all,” Iverson said. “And I think we all should love it all. I’m really trying to dig deep.”Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesPermission to linger and experience multiple sets is just one aspect of Iverson’s merging of jazz and classical traditions at his new festival. Last Wednesday, as skies darkened in New York because of Canadian wildfires, he played mostly jazz standards — including, pointedly, Jerome Kern’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” — with Chris Potter, the storied tenor saxophone player. (I caught that performance the next day on video.)On Thursday, you can catch multiple sets by Aaron Diehl, a first-call jazz pianist who also plays the music of Gershwin with symphony orchestras (and the music of Philip Glass on recordings). Other nights trend more toward more traditional chamber fare. But rarely too traditional: On Tuesday, the vocalist Judith Berkson — who sings adaptations of Schumann as well as her own electroacoustic pieces — will bring her visionary practice to the Soapbox.In an interview between sets last week, Iverson said of his festival’s organizing principles: “The truth of the matter is, I love it all. And I think we all should love it all. I’m really trying to dig deep.”After mentioning that the composers represented on his program with Cuckson were all American, Iverson noted, “There’s syncopation in the Walker and the Talma,” adding that in the latter case, the extent of the rhythmic exuberance makes him think of Harlem Stride piano legend James P. Johnson.Johnson, as it happens, gets a tip of the hat in Iverson’s Piano Sonata, which he premiered last year at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he teaches.That piece is structured like a sonata in the model of Haydn and other classical forebears, but first-movement explosion of rhythm in the bass receives the indication “a la James P. Johnson” in the score. And it’s not the sonata’s only jazz-world nod: After a snatch of Mozartean melody in the second movement, Iverson revels in descending licks redolent of the soul jazz tradition, marked “a la Bobby Timmons.”This is no less referential than another charming classical piece of Iverson’s, “Concerto to Scale,” which he premiered with the American Composers Orchestra in 2018. But to its credit, the sonata is less jokey — and thus more secure — when dealing with its layered source materials. To my ear, that makes it a new advance in his engagement with fully notated writing.Playing the sonata last week, both times, Iverson dived right into his own crunchy, chromatic figures with a ferocity that was absent in video from the New England Conservatory premiere, in which he was “a little bit nervous,” he said.But at Soapbox, “I was certainly warmed up,” he said, having played the Talma piece before his sonata. Always, though, he has been confident in the work, which he has tinkered with and recorded for his next release on the Blue Note label, scheduled for 2024.In terms of the sonata’s spirit, he said: “I do think when people who don’t swim in the world every day hand in formal composition, they often are too serious. I’d actually rather be rambunctious.”“I feel James P. with me,” he added. “I feel Erroll Garner with me. And I feel Ralph Shapey.”The language Iverson uses when discussing his upcoming compositional premieres — including more sonatas, as well as orchestral arrangements of Ellington — enjoys a reprise whenever he discusses the balance of the Sono Fest! programming. In both cases, he is looking for new paths. And for Iverson, all routes move within what he calls “this very American phenomenon.”Before hopping back onstage for his second set last week, he observed: “It’s not happening in Germany or England. There’s still something I like so much about all of this: these are American composers I’m playing. Scott Joplin is part of it. And Henry Mancini is part of it. There’s a whole thing, there, that’s our language. If you really love it all, there’s incredible room still, to find a way.” More

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      Aja Monet’s Debut Album Blends Jazz and Poetry From a Place of Love

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      On her debut album, “When the Poems Do What They Do,” the writer and community organizer offers up a fluid mix of jazz and poetry that evokes the spirit of 1990s spoken-word scenes.A crowd that included musicians and actors filled the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue earlier this spring to hear the poet and community organizer Aja Monet speak about the subtleties of Black love, joy and uncertainty.But for Monet, there was only one celebrity in the room: Bonnie Phillips, her former college adviser, who sat rapt in the front row.“I remember her suggesting what schools to go to and it wasn’t Harvard, you know what I mean?” Monet said in a recent video interview from her home in California. Recalling her high school years in New York, Monet said she asked a lot of questions in class but didn’t have the best grades: “I think I was way more just opinionated and outspoken.”She remains both on her debut album, “When the Poems Do What They Do,” a fluid mix of jazz and poetry out Friday that evokes the spirit of 1990s spoken-word scenes. Featuring a who’s who of instrumentalists she’s known over the years — Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah on trumpet, Samora Pinderhughes on piano, Elena Pinderhughes on flute, Weedie Braimah on djembe and Marcus Gilmore on drums — the LP is a nuanced exploration of Blackness.“Joy is a song anywhere,” Monet declares on “Black Joy,” a sprightly, soulful track. “Joy is a six-block wheelie through traffic, with no handlebars, in the rain.”The poet Saul Williams, who has known Monet since she was 14, praised his longtime collaborator in an email. “Aja stands out because she stood up for poetry, for magic in language, for spell-casting and patriarchy-bashing,” he wrote. “She’s still standing.”Chatting from Los Angeles, where Monet, 35, has lived for almost three years, she roamed from room to room, showing off a few album covers (at least, the ones that could be seen through the still water and dhow ship that served as her artificial backdrop). “That’s my Zanzibar life,” she said, smiling. “It was a beautiful experience. It was the first trip I ever did fully by myself, not knowing anyone anywhere.”Monet grew up in East New York in Brooklyn and started writing poetry when she was 8 because she was “fascinated by typewriters and people who would sit at typewriters,” she said. “The first thing I ever asked my mother for Christmas was a typewriter,” she added, recalling an early interest in “stories and storytelling, and the ways that people tell stories.”An English teacher at Baruch College Campus High School in Manhattan was an early inspiration. “She would read and recite one foot from one desk to the next, and give us encouragement to really see what was happening in the language and what was going on in the stories,” Monet said.At home, she listened to a different kind of poetry: the R&B singers Sade, Whitney Houston and Mary J. Blige, and the rapper Tupac Shakur. She knew they were each saying something profound, even if she couldn’t fully process what it was yet. When she won the school talent show with a poem, “I just remember all my teachers in tears in the front.”Monet didn’t find much community for burgeoning poets like herself, though, so she created her own club: SABA, or Students Acknowledging Black Achievements, a space where others at her high school “with the weird obsession of poetry and art” could convene. After a classmate encouraged her to check out Urban Word NYC, a program that teaches creative writing to minority students, she attended her first poetry slam there and was hooked.“To this day it’s probably one of the most pivotal memories in my life,” Monet said. “Because it was the beginning of me being introduced to a whole world, legacy and tradition that I now found myself called to. It deeply felt like a home that I had been waiting to return to.”“Ultimately, everything I do is rooted in a deep place of love, an overwhelming obsession with love.”Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesThe poet Mahogany L. Browne remembered a 15-year-old Monet at Urban Word. “From that moment, I could see the power of her purpose,” Browne said in a telephone interview. She invited Monet to a poetry workshop at a group home for pregnant teens in Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood, which opened the young writer’s eyes to what poetry and community activism could accomplish. Later, as a freshman at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., Monet organized a poetry potluck to aid those affected by Hurricane Katrina.“I just remember feeling so powerless, away from the community of poets that I knew understood what that meant and what it felt like,” Monet recalled of her response to the storm. “It was just jarring to see Black people being killed literally by neglect of this country.”Those themes and concerns stayed with her, and inform “When the Poems Do What They Do.” The album blends poetry Monet has written over the years with vigorous live instrumentation. “The Devil You Know” pairs dark, psychedelic jazz with searing observations about America, and “Yemaya” centers upbeat, polyrhythmic percussion with words about the cleansing power of water.Monet uses a similar approach on an earlier stand-alone track titled “Give My Regards to Brooklyn.” Throughout the sprawling nine-minute cut about coming up in the borough, a mix of collaborators discuss their impressions of Monet. “Ever since I’ve known Aja,” a male voice says, “she’s been just this bold force reflecting back beauty in the world.”Monet is quick to pay homage to voices that came before her: Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka and the Last Poets, among many others. “She’s speaking with the guidance of her elders,” Browne said. “She’s never separating herself from the legacy of the work.”Making art as part of an ecosystem of music, writing and grass-roots activism remains central to Monet’s project. “I know that I’m a part of a collective of many people who are working every day in their own way to create a world that is more equitable and just for all,” she said. “So, ultimately, everything I do is rooted in a deep place of love, an overwhelming obsession with love.” More

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      Cisco Swank Puts His Spin on Jazz-Rap on ‘More Better’

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      The 23-year-old pianist, drummer and rapper puts a pandemic-era spin on jazz-rap on his debut, “More Better,” and he always keeps the faith.At a recent Sunday afternoon performance in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood, the pianist Francisco Haye sat behind a piano at Emmanuel Baptist Church, leading his quintet through a number of recognizable jazz standards. Yet they weren’t straight-ahead: Songs like “All the Things You Are,” “Little Sunflower” and “My Favorite Things” each had wrinkles — a bouncy backbeat or a near-frenetic breakdown — that made them feel fresh.It was the kind of set that might rankle those who prefer to hear Ella Fitzgerald, Freddie Hubbard and John Coltrane without frills, yet these listeners — made up of elders who have known Haye since he was a child growing up in the congregation there — seemed to embrace what he was trying to do.The goal, he told them, was to take “cliché jazz tunes and not make them boring.”Haye’s artistry is informed by artists like Robert Glasper and Roy Hargrove, both classically trained jazz musicians who have blended the genre with hip-hop, R&B and rock, aligning the music with alternative rap and the neo-soul movement that emerged in the late 1990s. Haye, performing under the name Cisco Swank, plays melodic piano chords over lush soul and trap-inspired drums and raps in a manner that recalls the weary lethargy of Mike and Earl Sweatshirt, but with the polish of a Village Vanguard headliner.Jazz-rap hybrids aren’t new, of course, but Haye, 23, without pandering to any audience, is tapping into a subset who dig lo-fi underground rap.Haye’s earliest musical memories involve playing drums and piano at the church, when he was only 3 or 4 years old. Lindsay Perryman for The New York Times“He’s sitting right in the center of a lot of points,” said the noted trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire in a telephone interview. “And it doesn’t seem like he’s trying to. It’s just who he is. He is Black music. All of it. It’s in every note.”Haye runs through the tapestry of jazz, R&B and rap on his recently released debut album, “More Better,” which at times ruminates on the pandemic but without wallowing in despair.“Teary-eyed still thinkin’ ’bout 2020/Quarantined, bro, the streets eerie,” he raps on “If You’re Out There.” “City full of dreams, concrete, but I see it when I look in the sky.” On “What Came From Above,” over a melancholic piano loop and stuttering electronic drums, Haye admits he is “renewed” back at home with his family. (He returned to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, from the Berklee College of Music, where he studied piano performance and contemporary writing and production when the pandemic took hold.) On “Over Now,” he laments the end of a romantic relationship with keen self-awareness. “I try to smile through it,” Haye raps with an exhausted tone. “I don’t really like fast moving/I try not to commit, bro, I’m last to it.” Even the LP’s title — thought of randomly during a rehearsal — is meant to convey perseverance in dark times.Haye, tall and skinny with long dreads and a boyish charm, peppers his conversation with affirmations like “facts” and “fire,” and speaks easily and expertly about a wide range of musicians — Beethoven and Bach, Kirk Franklin and Richard Smallwood. While growing up in Flatbush, he was exposed to all of this music by his mother, Adriane, who directed the youth choir at Emmanuel, and his father, Frank, who was the director of music there.Haye’s earliest musical memories involve playing drums and piano at the church, when he was only 3 or 4 years old. Seeing his father in action in front of large congregations sparked a real interest in music. “I feel like it played an important role in how I see people present music and how you interact with people,” he said during a lunch interview. “The whole idea of just music being more than just notes and harmony. It’s serving a bigger purpose, whether it’s bringing someone out of a wack week or bringing them closer to God.”Music can serve “a bigger purpose,” Haye said, “whether it’s bringing someone out of a wack week or bringing them closer to God.”Lindsay Perryman for The New York TimesAt home, he said, there were “mad musical instruments everywhere,” which made being an artist seem like the coolest job ever. He absorbed Baroque music, Stevie Wonder and other Motown soul, as well as old-school rap. (His mother grew up in the Bronx at the beginning of hip-hop culture and used to rhyme under the name Micki Dee.)Haye started thinking about blending genres during his freshman year at LaGuardia High School: His favorite rapper, Kendrick Lamar, merged rap and psychedelic jazz on his 2015 album “To Pimp a Butterfly,” and Glasper’s song “Portrait of an Angel” doubled as his alarm clock. “That really was the point where I was like, ‘I’m trying to do something very much like this,’” Haye said.He formed a jazz fusion band and started playing around the city. He began rapping as a student at Berklee, tinkering with the conversational cadences heard on “More Better” while releasing music on SoundCloud. “I was like, ‘Oh, maybe we should just play this song with the band but put a trap groove over it,’” Haye recalled. “Slowly, it just started merging into what it is today.”He met the Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist Luke Titus over social media at the start of lockdown in 2020 and started sharing audio files with him, which led to the collaborative album “Some Things Take Time,” released two years later. “The narrative was definitely about being patient during a time with so much uncertainty,” Titus said over the phone. “It was about not forcing things and allowing things to come when they come.” Those themes are also relayed on “More Better” in Haye’s singular voice.“He draws from so much influence of being from New York,” Titus added, pointing to the city’s renowned jazz and rap scenes. “He might have all these jazz chops, but he’ll pick the simple melody and play what needs to be there in a very lyrical way.” He added, “He’s one of those rare guys who doesn’t overthink things too much.”Haye noted that while his album was born of the pandemic, it’s rooted in a sense of uplift rather than resignation. “It’s just like seeing the clouds in the distance, like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “It’s being able to say, ‘Oh, I can make it as long as I have faith.’ Even if it’s not a spiritual faith, if it’s just faith that things will get better, it will work out.” More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love New Orleans Jazz

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      Many cities have rich jazz histories, but none goes back as far as New Orleans. We asked Wendell Pierce, Courtney Bryan and others what song they would play to get a friend to join the party.Over the past few months, The New York Times has asked experts to answer the question, What would you play a friend to make them fall in love with jazz? We’ve covered lots of artists, instruments and musical styles — but this time we’re tackling a whole city.The United States is full of cities with their own rich jazz histories, but none goes back as far as New Orleans. And the music remains very much a part of life there. To really discover the beauty of New Orleans jazz, the in-person experience is key. This is a participatory, effervescent music. But unless you’re about to book a trip, why not take five minutes to read and listen, and see if you get hooked?Jazz’s roots can be traced back to Congo Square, a plaza in central New Orleans that had been a gathering place for Native Americans before the arrival of Europeans. In the antebellum era, enslaved Africans often gathered there to play music and dance, using whatever instruments they had — bamboula drums, horns, bells, banjos — and carrying their cultural traditions forward. After emancipation, the country blues being played on plantations across the South blended with the music played by New Orleans society orchestras and other African diasporic styles blowing in from the Caribbean, creating the polyphonic improvised sound we now know as early jazz.In the 100-plus years since then, New Orleans has remained something of a cultural anomaly in the United States: rooted in its own traditions, and fortified against broader commercial trends. Music has been its strongest fortifier. Marching bands are heard at funerals and second-line parades on most weekends. On Mardi Gras and St. Joseph’s Day, culture-bearers in resplendent, feathery regalia march and perform in honor of the Native Americans who once sheltered fugitives fleeing slavery. And music is simply a way of life: Unless a storm is brewing, you won’t find a single night in New Orleans without multiple bands playing somewhere.While brass bands and traditional jazz lie at the core of this city’s traditions — and no conversation about them can ever go on too long without a mention (or three) of Louis Armstrong — New Orleans has also fostered greatness across the musical spectrum: from Black classical composers to post-bop royalty to avant-garde experimentalists. The songs below are just the tip of the iceberg. Find a playlist at the bottom of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.Wendell Pierce, actor“West End Blues” by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five“West End Blues” embodies the complexity of this music — which is what New Orleans is all about. It’s the American aesthetic of freedom within form: complex ideas that are also displayed in simple ways. We have technical proficiency, but at the same time uninhibited creative expression. The track starts off with one of the most famous clarion calls in music, one of the most famous licks in the world: Louis Armstrong, exhibiting pure genius and virtuosity, all alone for 12 seconds. Like a spiritual epiphany, this explosion of improvisation embodies the innate humanity of the music and foreshadows the brilliance of bebop yet to come. And then the band comes in and he goes into this simple, beautiful, languid, soulful encapsulation of what it’s like, for someone who’s never been to the West End of New Orleans, to sit out by Lake Pontchartrain on a Sunday afternoon. This is the “West End Blues.”Within the first 30 seconds of the song it gives you the best of what America can be, and what New Orleans is: that cacophony of all kinds of things, so many different influences becoming this one rich, complex dish. E pluribus unum. We are in America in New Orleans, but we are the northernmost Caribbean city, influenced by the French and the African, Germans and Native Americans. And it is the epitome of what America is supposed to be. That’s why jazz is the great American artistic form. A multitude of complexities, broken down into something so universally understood. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Ned Sublette, author and musician“Bouncing Around” by Piron’s New Orleans OrchestraI always go back to “Bouncing Around,” by A.J. Piron’s New Orleans Orchestra, a working New Orleans band, recorded 100 years ago in New York City. It’s jazz at an early stage: this is still the era of everyone-at-once polyphony. Every bit of the musical space is full of theme, counter-theme and rhythm, but we don’t have soloists yet. It’s clearly music for dancing, or at least for bouncing around. That word keeps coming back in New Orleans: bounce. I like the translated Spanish title, seen in parentheses on the 78: “Brincando Locamente” — bouncing madly. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Melissa A. Weber (a.k.a. Soul Sister), D.J. and scholar“Right Foot” by Rebirth Brass BandA special characteristic of New Orleans jazz is its function as dance music. It invites audience members to not spectate, but participate. In the New Orleans brass band jazz tradition, the pioneering Rebirth Brass Band has specialized in making people dance since the group formed 40 years ago, while its founding members were teenagers. In 2008, they rerecorded their original song “Put Your Right Foot Forward,” first released in the mid-1980s as a 45 on the local SYLA label. It’s a classic that other brass bands have added to their repertoires, whether on the stage or in the second-line streets. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Adonis Rose, drummer and bandleader“New Orleans” by Leroy JonesIt is very difficult to find songs that have the ability to transport the listener to a place or time, but I believe that “New Orleans,” written by Hoagy Carmichael, comes close. Although Carmichael was not a New Orleanian, the song melody and lyrics speak to the character and romanticism of the Crescent City. New Orleans is warm, culturally rich, diverse, charming and romantic. All of which is represented in this timeless classic.The song was not widely recorded, but there are a few versions of it that I really enjoy listening to. My favorite version is from the New Orleans jazz legend and trumpeter Leroy Jones, from his 1994 release “Mo’ Cream From the Crop.” This version of “New Orleans” is an original arrangement done by Leroy, and captures the beauty, intensity, creativeness, spontaneity and groove of what New Orleans is. Leroy interprets the song with deep passion and connection to the city. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Charlie Gabriel, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist“Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” by Louis ArmstrongThe words of this song tell you about the weather in the city, and the city itself. It just explains to you that New Orleans is such a beautiful place to be, especially with its culture. You have to come to New Orleans to really enjoy it — and this song explains why you should. When Pops, Louis Armstrong, does the song, he tells it in such a way that you can almost feel the words. I’ve been playing in New Orleans since I was 11 or 12 years old. What happens is, you bring that along with you: the feeling of the city, the personality, the city itself, the faces. You carry that within your music. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz critic“None of My Jelly Roll” by Sweet Emma BarrettThe self-taught pianist and vocalist Emma Barrett was born in 1897 and came of age performing in the speakeasies and early “jass” orchestras that birthed the genre. It wasn’t uncommon for women to hold piano duties in these early New Orleans bands — but it took a particular kind of grace and confidence to endure the condescension (and worse) that was routinely directed their way. Maybe that attitude is what earned her the name “Sweet Emma.” Maybe it just looked good on a chalkboard outside the club. Her less well-known, more descriptive nickname was “The Bell Gal,” because of the bells that she wore on her red garters; they would jangle in time as she patted her foot and roughed up the keys. On “None of My Jelly Roll,” from a 1963 recording, Barrett sings an old blues lyric full of playful double entendre and shows off her rolling barroom piano style. This approach — developed from ragtime and Caribbean dance music; replicating the work of a full brass band in just two hands — would evolve through later legends like Professor Longhair, James Booker and Dr. John, and remains a calling card for Crescent City pianists today. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Courtney Bryan, composer and pianist“River Niger” by the Improvisational Arts QuintetThe legendary musician, educator and patriarch Sir Edward (Kidd) Jordan (1935-2023) lived by improvisation, and his music reverberated with sounds of freedom throughout his 87 years. In 1975, Jordan formed the Improvisational Arts Quintet with like-minded creative musicians from Louisiana and Mississippi. Jordan composed “River Niger,” inspired by a trip to West Africa, and recorded it with I.A.Q. on an album series produced by Kalamu ya Salaam: “The New New Orleans Music: New Music Jazz” (Rounder Records, 1988). “River Niger” has an infectious and captivating energy, rooted on a rhythmic B-flat minor ostinato, yet open in form with each soloist leading us on a journey throughout the recording.Jordan taught his students “River Niger,” and regardless of level, beginner or advanced, each student had an important role — whether playing the pentatonic scale according to his conduction or taking solo or collective free improvisations. Listen to “River Niger” and you might levitate. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆P.J. Morton, musician“On the Sunny Side of the Street” by Louis ArmstrongThe melody of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” always immediately makes me smile, and the way the other horns are dancing in this version — recorded in 1956 for the Decca label, with Armstrong backed by a 10-piece band — always reminds me of home. And of course, Louis Armstrong is so important to the story of New Orleans and to the world. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Tarriona (Tank) Ball, vocalist and bandleader“Groove City” by Chocolate MilkThis song is so nostalgic for me! It gives me all the feels, and really makes me feel so lucky to be from such a unique place as New Orleans. It also makes me think of my dad for some reason! Maybe when I was a small child he would play the record, but it makes me feel close to home and even closer to him.Chocolate Milk is a band from New Orleans that was active in the 1970s and early 1980s. “Groove City” was released in 1977 and I’ve been hooked since I heard it. The moment it comes on all I see is family barbecues, being on the lake in New Orleans, and just freedom. It talks about how you can forget your cares; it reminds you to not worry about your clothes and that “all you gotta do is let down your hair and be free,/No special pattern to follow, be what you wanna be.”I remember being in Amsterdam for my birthday, listening to this song nonstop, and I felt so close to home and my family though I was so far away. That’s why I would share this song with others — because it’s almost as if the lyrics tell a story of where you can go to have a really special time here. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆Marcus J. Moore, jazz writer“Guinnevere” by Chief Xian aTunde AdjuahI’m always taken by the unbridled force of Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah. I’ve seen plenty of his shows over the past decade; each time, he sizes up the microphone with his custom fluegelhorn, then attacks it with blistering chords, cutting through bar chatter and forks scraping porcelain plates. And he doesn’t mind challenging the audience: During one of his shows at the Blue Note last year, he made everyone get up from their seats — a rarity for that venue — and didn’t let us sit down until we danced and sang his lyrics back to him. It was done lovingly; his tapestry of Black music elicits a strong sense of community. When I think of his recorded work, I jump to the song “Guinnevere,” the almost 11-minute epic from his 2020 live album, “Axiom,” also performed at the Blue Note, but right at the start of the pandemic. It reimagines a Miles Davis song of the same name with quickened percussion and ascendant wails, brightening the “Bitches Brew”-era cut into a vigorous funk groove akin to the genre-bending compositions that epitomized jazz between the late ’60s and early ’70s. Adjuah’s intensity is palpable throughout, from the brief interplay with the percussionist Weedie Braimah shortly after the four-minute mark to the subtle, fluttering notes he plays near the end. At a time when the world didn’t know what to make of the air, Adjuah flipped uncertainty into something gorgeous. (Listen on YouTube)◆ ◆ ◆ More