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      For Jean-Yves Thibaudet, a Detour From Classical Is Business as Usual

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      Jean-Yves Thibaudet is playing Messiaen’s “Turangalîla-Symphonie” this week. But before, he debuted a night of jazz standards with Michael Feinstein.PALM DESERT, Calif. — “Jean-Yves, when did you start playing the piano?” Michael Feinstein asked from the stage of the McCallum Theater here on a recent Friday night.“I started when I was 5 years old,” said the star pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, whose instrument was interlocked with Feinstein’s for their cabaret-style show, “Two Pianos: Who Could Ask for Anything More?”“Oh, me too,” Feinstein responded.“We both took a different path with our approach to the piano,” Thibaudet continued, reading from an iPad on his music stand. “I studied classical music——”“And I,” Feinstein said, facing the audience, “studied nothing.”There was laughter throughout the auditorium, while onstage, Thibaudet looked tickled. Speaking during a concert, beyond introducing an encore, was new for him. But he was warming up to it quickly.Even if he was dipping into the unfamiliar on that first of many “Two Pianos” performances to come (including next season at Carnegie Hall), that’s business as usual for Thibaudet, 61, an artist who has, unusually for a classical musician, made a career of doing whatever he wants.Feinstein, left, and Thibaudet preparing for the debut of “Two Pianos” in California. The show will travel to Carnegie Hall in December.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesBrazenly himself — openly gay before many of his colleagues, abandoning traditional concert attire for couture — he has long been an eminent interpreter of classical music, but also a prolific collaborator and a soloist on movie soundtracks like Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch.” Through it all his tastes have been eclectic; he’s as likely to take on lieder as he is the Great American Songbook and the jazz of Bill Evans. Characteristically, he is following “Two Pianos” with something like its opposite: Messiaen’s thorny, monumental “Turangalîla-Symphonie,” with the New York Philharmonic, beginning on Friday.“There are soloists who only play one or two concertos a season,” Thibaudet said during one of three interviews. “I couldn’t do that. I would stop practicing. I always want to try things.”THIBAUDET WAS BORN in Lyon, France, in an environment he described as “fortunate.” His parents were music lovers who supported him through the conservatory system — including studies at the storied Conservatoire de Paris — and didn’t make much of his coming out.At school, he learned a Mozart sonata, but would also experiment with something else if it interested him. That open-mindedness is reflected in his 2021 album “Carte Blanche,” which starts with a new suite from the “Pride and Prejudice” soundtrack and continues with works from the Baroque period through the 20th century. The recording’s program, Thibaudet said, was “like going to a restaurant and having all your favorite dishes in one meal — with a lot of desserts.”Such a broad scope, and a willingness to give almost anything a chance, is essential to Thibaudet’s artistry. “Obviously if I don’t like it I won’t do it again, but I at least tried it,” he said. “My life has been so enriched by all that. Your brain is like a computer — you’re constantly feeding it. So if I play some jazz and then some Chopin, the jazz gives the Chopin a certain freedom and relaxation.”Relaxation, yes, but Thibaudet is also a proud Virgo whose lack of tension in performance would be impossible without a perfectionist’s rigor. “He is an exquisitely gifted technician,” Feinstein said. “And yet it is always the overarching intelligence behind an interpretation that makes his playing for me so special. He understands how to make any kind of music living and breathing, and never clinical.”Thibaudet won competitions as a teenager, and early in his 20s signed a recording contract with Decca. Young artists often face pressure from varied competing interests: managers, administrators, label executives. Even then, though, Thibaudet insisted on making critical decisions himself.“Two Pianos” consists largely of new arrangements, by Tedd Firth, of music by Gershwin and his contemporaries.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesDuring rehearsals, both Feinstein, left, and Thibaudet have been nudged out of their comfort zones.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesEarlier in his career, Thibaudet faced criticism for his unconventional fashion choices on the concert stage.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesHe didn’t want his first concerto recording with Decca to be of French music — “It’s not your passport that makes your repertoire,” he said — so, he programmed Liszt. He traveled with his partner at the time, and declined dinner invitations abroad, no matter how prominent the company, if he couldn’t bring him. “I was thinking,” Thibaudet recalled, “if I had a wife, of course they would invite her.”Hiccups like that, though, were rare, and overall, Thibaudet said, being open about his sexuality has made him a happy, open person. Perhaps more remarked upon, back then, was Thibaudet’s fashion. “I decided more than 35 years ago that I was not going to wear tails,” he said. “That was a battle.”Thibaudet’s clothing collection — rivaled only by those of his fine wines and Champagnes — is rich with museum-quality pieces. He had a fruitful relationship with Gianni Versace, and an especially prolific one with Vivienne Westwood before her recent death. For many years, though, writers often couldn’t resist a disapproving comment about his outfits.That cooled over time. There was one critic — Thibaudet wouldn’t name names, saying only that the newspaper was from a major city — who, after reviewing his concerts for more than two decades, wrote something along the lines of: At the end of the day, if you’re playing so well, you can wear whatever you want. “And I was like, there you go,” Thibaudet said. “It took you 25 years. Finally.”ANOTHER PILLAR of Thibaudet’s career has been collaboration. In film, one partner has been Dario Marianelli, who featured him on his Academy Award-winning soundtrack for Joe Wright’s “Atonement” in 2007. More famous is their work together on Wright’s adaptation, two years earlier, of “Pride and Prejudice,” which opens with an elegant piano solo redolent of the Classical era, “Dawn.”“All over the world people know that score,” Thibaudet said. “Then they go to hear Chopin or Debussy, and they tell me, ‘This is my first classical concert.’ I could play ‘Turangalîla,’ but they still come. It’s great.”Some of Thibaudet’s most treasured partnerships have been with singers. “The human voice produces something that you cannot do with any instrument,” he said. “It touches your soul.”He has recorded with Renée Fleming, the superstar soprano, with whom he became fast friends in the 1990s. She recalled that when she bought an apartment in Paris, he offered to take her to Ikea to help her furnish it; what she didn’t know until he pulled up was that he drove a Maserati with no trunk.“Jean-Yves is an ideal collaborator,” Fleming said. “He has tremendous personality and charm, both on and offstage, that he brings to the music, but he’s also extremely flexible and sensitive.”Sensitive, but unwilling, she added, to “put something before the public unless it is prepared to the very highest standard.” That much has been evident in his project with Feinstein, the reigning, de facto keeper of the Great American Songbook. Thibaudet and Feinstein already knew each other’s work when they met a couple of decades ago as neighbors in Los Angeles. What started as dinner-party fun — Richard Rodgers waltzes at the piano, and some improvisation — became a formal program inspired by their mutual love for Gershwin and his contemporaries.“Two Pianos” started as dinner-party fun before Thibaudet and Feinstein assembled a formal program inspired by their mutual love for Gershwin and his contemporariesRoger Kisby for The New York TimesFeinstein already knew Thibaudet’s work when the two met a couple of decades ago as neighbors in Los Angeles.Roger Kisby for The New York TimesAs a model they also looked to Yehudi Menuhin and Stéphane Grappelli’s classical-meets-jazz collaborations, Feinstein said, in which Menuhin’s parts were precisely notated while Grappelli’s left room for improvisation. To pull off something similar with two pianos, Feinstein turned to his music director, Tedd Firth, who wrote most of the arrangements.“I really wanted to focus on what they do best,” Firth said, adding, “I didn’t want to make Jean-Yves into a jazz player or Michael into a classical player, or water down either to create a neutral territory.”The result is a fantasia-like program of Lisztian virtuosity. Firth’s arrangements have orchestral heft, with the melodies of each piece flowing freely between the two pianos. Sometimes Feinstein sings; sometimes Thibaudet plays alone; always, the music has the energy and showiness of an encore.They rehearsed in Los Angeles before the McCallum Theater shows, putting in the hours of a full-time job in the days leading up to the premiere. During one of those sessions, Thibaudet behaved for a moment like a fan: He just wanted to hear Feinstein sing “Pure Imagination,” from “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.” When the two fell out of sync during a Gershwin medley, Thibaudet said to follow the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” because at roughly 120 beats per minute, it was nearly the same tempo. (“My whole life is in that piece,” he added.)By the sound check on opening night, both artists had been visibly nudged out of their comfort zones. But once the show started and the audience heard a familiar melody from Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” the auditorium resounded with applause. “That was the greatest gift that either of us could have,” Feinstein said. “It showed how excited they were to hear this music.” Feeling the energy of the house, Thibaudet said, he became “dangerously comfortable” with speaking onstage — even more so at the more assured performance the following night.“Two Pianos” seemingly has a long life ahead of it, with dates still being booked at least two seasons ahead. An orchestrated version will play this summer with the Boston Pops at Tanglewood, the Cleveland Orchestra at its Blossom Music Festival and elsewhere. But before that, its two stars will continue with their separate careers. Feinstein has a Judy Garland celebration at Zankel Hall in New York later this month. And Thibaudet, of course, has “Turangalîla.”“Maybe I need a week to readjust, but this is me,” Thibaudet said, adding with a giggle, “It’s perfectly normal for me.” More

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      Next Jazz at Lincoln Center Season Will Celebrate Wayne Shorter

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      As part of the performing arts center’s 2023-24 concert season, the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis will honor Shorter, the innovative saxophonist who died this month.Jazz at Lincoln Center announced a 2023-24 concert season on Tuesday that includes tribute concerts to the influential saxophonist Wayne Shorter and performances from both jazz world fixtures like Bobby Rush and Terence Blanchard and up-and-coming artists like the singer Samara Joy, who won a Grammy for best new artist this year.Wynton Marsalis, the composer and trumpeter who is the organization’s managing and artistic director, will be among the artists celebrating Shorter, who died this month, on March 8 and 9 of next year.Rush, the singer, guitarist and harmonica player who is considered one of the last remaining blues masters of his generation, will play early next year, the center announced. Next March, Blanchard, the film and opera composer best known for scoring Spike Lee films, is scheduled to perform a career retrospective with his band, the E-Collective, and the Turtle Island Quartet.And Joy, who won her first Grammy this year at 23, will headline her first show at the organization’s Rose Theater in October.Marsalis, who is the face of Jazz at Lincoln Center, is slated to play several other concerts this year and next. He and the rest of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will open the season on Sept. 21 with a “reimagining” of his small group compositions as big band orchestrations in a concert called “Beyond Black Codes,” a reference to his 1985 album “Black Codes (From the Underground).” In January, Marsalis will pay tribute to Max Roach, the drummer and a founder of modern jazz, in concerts that mark 100 years from Roach’s birth in 1924.Another pair of concerts in February will celebrate three other jazz architects: Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and Charles Mingus, with music direction by Vincent Gardner, the trombonist and composer. The other part of the concert includes the premiere of a new suite, called “Usonian Structures,” by the composer and saxophonist Andy Farber.Ellington will also be the focus of concerts in the spring, led by Marsalis, to celebrate what would have been his 125th birthday. There will also be performances paying tribute to the civil rights activist and singer Bayard Rustin, which will be presented by the drummer Bryan Carter, as well as concerts celebrating the singers Mahalia Jackson and Sarah Vaughan.Other performances include an annual Valentine’s Day concert from Dianne Reeves; concerts by the guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel; a set of shows by Catherine Russell, celebrating the genre of Hot Club jazz that emerged in 1930s Paris; and a two-night event by the ensemble Artemis. The saxophonist Sherman Irby will premiere a new commission, called “Musings of Cosmic Stuff.” More

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      ‘Rewind & Play’ Review: Thelonious Monk Dazzles Even When an Interview Falls Flat

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      Alain Gomis’s documentary uses rushes from a 1969 French TV interview to make a smart indictment of music industry bias and offer viewers a subtle tribute to Monk.The documentary “Rewind & Play” makes damning use of a 1969 interview Thelonious Monk did with Henri Renaud for the French television program “Jazz Portrait.” Monk’s European tour was set to end in Paris and the show was recorded shortly before. The interview took place nearly six years after Monk was featured on a Time magazine cover under the banner “Jazz: Bebop and Beyond” and one year before he stopped making music.Directed by the French-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis, this 65-minute, freighted documentary creates a portrait — or two — out of rushes and outtakes Gomis received from the National Audiovisual Institute while researching a fiction film about Monk. One is a study of an interview turned wincing for reasons of glib arrogance — racial but perhaps personal, too. The other is a more gleaming portrait of Monk at work.More film essay with critical chaser than straight-up documentary, the film suggests that Renaud — a jazz pianist turned record producer and later music executive — aimed for something revelatory, but also something that shined a spotlight on his own insightfulness. But Renaud is continuously dissatisfied with Monk’s answers to his questions: about not being understood by French audiences in the 1950s, about his wife Nellie’s role in his life, about being avant-garde. Renaud asks for take after take, unable to improvise when seemingly thwarted by Monk’s responses. (In the actual 30-minute show, Monk speaks eight words, according to Gomis.)The film is not merely playback or payback on behalf of one Black artist by another. “Rewind & Play” dazzles because it is and will remain a wonder to witness Monk seemingly discovering his compositions again and again, his fingers conjuring, his right foot etching rhythms.Rewind & PlayNot rated. In English and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 5 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Wayne Shorter: 9 Essential Songs

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      The saxophonist, who died on Thursday at 89, redefined jazz composition by embracing the unknown. Listen to nine of his recordings with Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Esperanza Spalding and more.In the last decade or so of his life, it had become a commonplace to call Wayne Shorter jazz’s greatest living composer. There was simply no ambiguity about it, he was the one.Now that the saxophonist has left the earthly realm, at the age of 89, does that distinction become eternal? It’s hard to think of another musician whose writing style worked its way so indelibly into the DNA of jazz: how the music is composed, how it’s played, how we think about it.Shorter wrote melodies at a slant, doing a lot with a little. He packed harmonies with so much tension, they relieved a lot of the pressure that had been put on the rhythm section in the bebop era — allowing it to loosen its grip on the groove without sacrificing suspense. When he joined the Miles Davis Quintet in 1964, after a lengthy stint as Art Blakey’s musical director, Shorter’s impact was succinct and immediate: The group stayed cool and steady, even as Shorter’s compositions lured its five members into a state of constant combustion.Like John Coltrane, his mentor and predecessor in Davis’s previous quintet, Shorter wasn’t flashy or spotlight-hungry. But his presence was commanding. Davis sometimes started concerts without him onstage; when Shorter came on, playing his way up to the microphone, it was an event.In the early ’70s, partly responding to the direction Davis’s music was taking, jazz steered toward a marriage with rock and funk. Shorter and the pianist Joe Zawinul teamed up to start Weather Report, arguably the quintessential band of the fusion era, and kept it going for 15 solid years. In that time, Shorter also made it into the studio with rock and Brazilian popular musicians, like Joni Mitchell, Santana and Milton Nascimento. Maybe Shorter’s mind took to fusion not just out of aesthetic affinity, but because he was always a high-tech thinker and an alchemist; electronics never scared him, and authenticity felt relative. Synths? Amp stacks? Jaco Pastorius’s flanged-up electric bass taking the melody out of your hands? What was the harm?Growing up in downtown Newark, Shorter read and wrote comics about superheroes confronting threats from the cosmos, and he and his brother Alan, also a musician, caught every movie they could at the local theater. He listened on the radio to the newest sounds in bebop, Western classical and popular music. “As weird as Wayne” became a saying in the neighborhood, as the poet and critic Amiri Baraka famously remembered, and Shorter turned it into an honorific, dubbing himself “Mr. Weird.”Throughout his life, Shorter was a fierce and articulate defender of the right to stand alone — or better yet, to take risks in reliable company. Speaking in 2018 about his approach to playing with his quartet, Shorter was (as usual) both metaphorical and direct. “It’s a little thing we call trust and faith,” he said. “To me, the definition of faith is to fear nothing.”If there is one immortal distinction Shorter can certainly claim, it’s that of being jazz’s all-time greatest aphorist. That’s not an easily earned title, in a music community full of philosophers. Blakey, for one, famously said that jazz “washes away the dust of everyday life.” Davis reminded us that it’s about “the notes you don’t play.”But as he grew older, Shorter was a seemingly bottomless font of mystic wisdom. One of his favorite lines was: “Jazz means, I dare you.” The title of his longtime quartet’s 2013 album, “Without a Net,” was a reference to his description of how the band improvised. That band operated for close to 20 years without, he said, ever holding a rehearsal. “How do you rehearse the unknown?” he asked.Late in his career, Shorter developed a creative partnership with one of his biggest admirers, Esperanza Spalding. They performed often together, and over a period of years they took on his last herculean goal: composing a full-length opera, “Iphigenia,” which turned Euripides’s classic Greek tragedy upside-down and adorned it with a wildly expansive score. Frank Gehry, a longtime friend of Shorter’s, designed the set, with a looming, shimmery backdrop that seemed to harmonize with the saxophonist’s vaulted arrangements.“Iphigenia” premiered in late 2021, to a mix of rapturous raves and quizzical responses — both of which must have delighted Shorter. But the enormity of his achievements as a composer were just as apparent at a completely different opera, Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which had its debut at the Metropolitan Opera around the same time. With Shorter’s passing, Blanchard becomes a candidate to assume that mantle of “greatest living jazz composer.” But at “Fire,” it was clearer than ever that he wouldn’t have gotten there without the influence of Shorter; it was in the way his harmonies spread their wings out wide, hang gliding from beginning to end, asking you to ride along — daring you.Here are nine tracks that showcase the sly invention and dark poetics of Shorter’s compositions and saxophone sound.Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, “Sakeena’s Vision” (1960)“Sakeena’s Vision” is one of many tunes that Shorter wrote for Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, the group from which he launched his career. His later work was never as straightforwardly propulsive and blues-driven as the charts he gave to Blakey, but on “Sakeena’s Vision” you’ll hear some of his soon-to-be signatures. At the end of the melody, Shorter introduces a catchy fillip of a phrase, repeats it, then turns it over in a few different harmonic contexts. It’ll get stuck in your head — the melody, the rhythm of it, the bounce of it — but then it’ll slip away from you.Wayne Shorter, “House of Jade” (1965)For “Juju,” arguably the most indispensable album from Shorter’s golden period with Blue Note Records in the 1960s, he was joined by a rhythm section of Coltrane quartet veterans: McCoy Tyner on piano, Reggie Workman on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. “House of Jade” is the gentlest of the LP’s six Shorter originals, but Jones’s ever-propulsive beat and Workman’s staunch bass playing vest Shorter’s slow, elliptical melody with heavy, grinding force.Miles Davis Quintet, “Fall” (1968)Miles Davis’s so-called second great quintet — for which Shorter was the primary composer — quite distinctly falls into this composition, with the trumpeter acting as if he’s just remembered the melody as he goes along. The emotion of this piece, as in so many of Shorter’s tunes, is both stark and shrouded: Is it mournful? Longing? Simply dazed? Whatever that feeling is — nameable or not — you’ll find it exerts a pull.Wayne Shorter, “Beauty and the Beast” (1975)Somewhere between funk, jazz, MPB and a slow jam, “Beauty and the Beast” comes from “Native Dancer,” Shorter’s first album-length collaboration with the star Brazilian vocalist Milton Nascimento, and an undisputed classic in both musicians’ catalogs.Weather Report, “Palladium” (1977)In Weather Report, Shorter was actually the group’s secondary composer, after Joe Zawinul, but he still got in some good licks. “Palladium” is one of the group’s most fun tunes; just when you think it’s resolving, it keeps flying on, transposing up a key and ultimately finishing on a cliffhanger.Steely Dan, “Aja” (1977)Steely Dan was a rock band with jazzy aspirations — until the group made “Aja,” a milestone of the fusion years and their first encounter with Shorter’s slippery saxophone playing. After an impressive guitar solo by Denny Dias, Shorter’s unmistakable tenor sound comes barreling out of the darkness, like a black car emerging from a tunnel at night with its lights turned off; less than a minute later he’s finished, and the track is in a new ZIP code.Joni Mitchell, “Paprika Plains” (1977)Shorter joined up with Joni Mitchell for the first time in the late 1970s, and they remained lifelong friends and collaborators. On many tracks, he offers color and complement, but on “Paprika Plains” — Mitchell’s epic tribute to the Indigenous community near her Saskatchewan hometown — he doesn’t appear till almost 14 minutes in, ready to carry the song skyward to its close.Wayne Shorter Quartet, “Adventures Aboard the Golden Mean (live)” (2005)The quartet that Shorter assembled around the turn of the new millennium was his first attempt as a bandleader to revisit and expand upon the all-things-must-explode m.o. of Davis’s 1960s quintet. Alongside the drummer Brian Blade, the bassist John Patitucci and the pianist Danilo Pérez, Shorter leans heavily on the soprano saxophone (another nod to Coltrane’s influence), and on “Adventures Aboard the Golden Mean” he uses the band at once like a meditative space and a wild loom, spinning small, motif-like themes until they are frayed and stretched and fully unspooled.Wayne Shorter, Terri Lyne Carrington, Leo Genovese and Esperanza Spalding, “Endangered Species (live)” (2022)Esperanza Spalding and Terri Lyne Carrington have been among the most prominent advocates for Shorter’s legacy, and in 2017 they teamed up with him — and the pianist Leo Genovese — for a major performance at the Detroit Jazz Festival. “Endangered Species” is an ’80s-era gem from Shorter’s fusion catalog, written at the tail end of his time with Weather Report, built on the tonal toggling and crooked-angle grooves that he’d often worked out with Weather Report, but released on his 1985 solo album, “Atlantis.” In 2012 Spalding set it to words and did her own version. Their performance together in Detroit was released last year, and Shorter’s gusty, restrained solo on “Endangered Species” won him the 12th — and final — Grammy in an immortal career. More

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      Wayne Shorter, Innovator During an Era of Change in Jazz, Dies at 89

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      His career as an influential tenor saxophonist and composer reached across more than half a century, tracking jazz’s complex evolution during that span.Wayne Shorter, the enigmatic, intrepid saxophonist who shaped the color and contour of modern jazz as one of its most intensely admired composers, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 89.His publicist, Alisse Kingsley, confirmed his death, at a hospital. There was no immediate information on the cause.Mr. Shorter had a sly, confiding style on the tenor saxophone, instantly identifiable by his low-gloss tone and elliptical sense of phrase. His sound was brighter on soprano, an instrument on which he left an incalculable influence; he could be inquisitive, teasing or elusive, but always with a pinpoint intonation and clarity of attack.His career reached across more than half a century, largely inextricable from jazz’s complex evolution during that span. He emerged in the 1960s as a tenor saxophonist and in-house composer for pace-setting editions of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the Miles Davis Quintet, two of the most celebrated small groups in jazz history.He then helped pioneer fusion, with Davis and as a leader of Weather Report, which amassed a legion of fans. He also forged a bond with popular music in marquee collaborations with the singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, the guitarist Carlos Santana and the band Steely Dan, whose 1977 song “Aja” reaches a dynamic climax with his hide-and-seek tenor solo.Mr. Shorter wrote his share of compositions that became jazz standards, like “Footprints,” a coolly ethereal waltz, and “Black Nile,” a driving anthem. Beyond his book of tunes, he was revered for developing and endlessly refining a modern harmonic language. His compositions, sleek and insinuating, can convey elegant ambiguities of mood. They adhere to an internal logic even when they break the rules.His recorded output as a leader, especially during a feverishly productive stretch on Blue Note Records in the mid-1960s — when he made “Night Dreamer,” “JuJu,” “Speak No Evil” and several others, all post-bop classics — compares favorably to the best winning streaks in jazz.Mr. Shorter produced “Night Dreamer,” “JuJu,” “Speak No Evil” and several other post-bop classics in the mid-1960s.James Nieves/The New York TimesSince the turn of the 21st century, the Wayne Shorter Quartet — by far Mr. Shorter’s longest-running band, and the one most garlanded with acclaim — set an imposing standard for formal elasticity and cohesive volatility, bringing avant-garde practice into the heart of the jazz mainstream.Mr. Shorter often said he was drawn to music because it has “velocity and mystery.” A lifelong fan of comic books and science fiction, he kept a shelf crowded with action figures and wore T-shirts emblazoned with the Superman “S” logo. In his later years, he cut the figure of a sage with a twinkle in his eye, issuing cryptic or elliptical statements that inevitably came back to a sense of play.“Don’t throw away your childish dreams,” he said in 2012. “You have to be strong enough to protect them.”Throughout his career he refused to hew too closely to any tradition except that of fearless expedition. “The word ‘jazz,’ to me,” he liked to say, “only means ‘I dare you.’”‘The Newark Flash’Wayne Shorter was born in Newark on Aug. 25, 1933. His father, Joseph, worked as a welder for the Singer sewing machine company, and his mother, Louise, sewed for a furrier.Growing up in Newark’s industrial Ironbound district, Wayne and his older brother, Alan, devoured comic books, science fiction, radio serials and movie matinees at the Adams Theater. Wayne won a citywide art contest at age 12, which led to his attending Newark Arts High School, the first public high school in the country specializing in the visual and performing arts.There he encountered several teachers who cultivated his interest in music theory and composition. At the same time, bebop — an insurgent, often frenetic strain of modern jazz, typified by virtuosos like the alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and the pianist Bud Powell — was a source of endless fascination for him.Bebop had a strong foothold in Newark: Savoy Records, the label most committed to the young movement, was based there, and local radio carried live broadcasts across the Hudson River from clubs like Birdland and the Royal Roost. Mr. Shorter, who had been taking private lessons on clarinet, switched to the tenor saxophone. Along with his brother, a trumpeter, he joined a local bebop group led by a flashy singer named Jackie Bland.Onstage and off, the Shorter brothers took as much pride in bebop’s stance of iconoclastic rebellion as in the swerving intricacies of the music; they would perform in intentionally rumpled suits and rubber galoshes, propping newspapers on their stands instead of sheet music. The poet Amiri Baraka, a classmate, famously recalled that such outré behavior sparked a local shorthand: “as weird as Wayne.” Mr. Shorter wore that slight as a badge of honor, at one point painting the words “Mr. Weird” on his saxophone case.He acquired a more heroic nickname, the Newark Flash, around the jazz scene of the 1950s, while earning a degree in music education at New York University. After serving two years in the Army — at Fort Dix in New Jersey, where he distinguished himself as a sharpshooter — he re-entered the scene, making a strong impression as a member of Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, the shining exemplar for the down-to-earth yet combustible style known as hard bop.Mr. Shorter shared the band’s front line with a bravura young trumpeter, Lee Morgan, forming a musical kinship that soon extended to his own albums, and eventually to Morgan’s. But in addition to his saxophone playing, Mr. Shorter brought to the Jazz Messengers a new degree of compositional sophistication, writing tunes, like “Ping Pong” and “Children of the Night,” that spiked a familiar hard-bop formula with dark harmonic elixirs.Mr. Shorter performing with Miles Davis in London in 1967. Davis, in his autobiography, called Mr. Shorter “the conceptualizer of a whole lot of musical ideas we did.”David Redfern/Getty ImagesMr. Shorter joined the second Miles Davis Quintet in 1964, after deflecting Davis’s overtures for several years out of loyalty to Blakey. His arrival cinched a brilliant new edition of the band, with the pianist Herbie Hancock, the bassist Ron Carter and the drummer Tony Williams. Davis, in his autobiography, called Mr. Shorter “the conceptualizer of a whole lot of musical ideas we did.”Once he joined, Mr. Shorter contributed new compositions to every studio album made by the Miles Davis Quintet, beginning with the title track of “E.S.P.” in 1965. During an engagement at the Plugged Nickel in Chicago later that year, his tenor solos were marvels of invention, turning even a songbook standard like “On Green Dolphin Street” into a portal for shadowy intrigue.But on the scale of intrigue, there could be no topping “Nefertiti,” the title track of a Davis quintet album released in 1968. A 16-bar composition with a slithery melody and a shrewdly indeterminate harmonic path, it was so holistic in its effect that Davis decided to record it with no solos, just the melody line played over and over. In Michelle Mercer’s 2004 book “Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter,” Mr. Shorter described “Nefertiti” as “my most sprung-from-me-all-in-one-piece experience of music writing,” like someone recalling a trance.Most of Mr. Shorter’s storied output on Blue Note unfolded while he was working with Davis, often with some of the same musical partners. He chronicled some aspects of his life on these albums: “Speak No Evil,” recorded in 1964, featured his wife, Teruko Nakagami, known as Irene, on the cover, and contained a song (“Infant Eyes”) dedicated to their daughter, Miyako. The marriage ended in divorce in 1966; “Miyako” would be the name of another composition the next year.The Mysterious TravelerUnlike the other members of the Miles Davis Quintet, Mr. Shorter remained through Davis’s push into rock and funk — on the terse 1969 album “In A Silent Way,” featuring the Austrian keyboardist and composer Josef Zawinul, and on the epochal sprawl of “Bitches Brew.”Together with Mr. Zawinul and the Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous, Mr. Shorter then formed Weather Report, which released its debut album, called simply “Weather Report,” in 1971. Over the next 15 years, the band changed personnel several times, with Mr. Zawinul and Mr. Shorter as the only constants. Weather Report also changed styles, tacking away from chamberesque abstraction and toward danceable rhythms. Its most commercially successful edition, featuring the electric bass phenom Jaco Pastorius, became an arena attraction, and one of its albums, “Heavy Weather,” was certified gold (and later platinum).Mr. Shorter was the instrumental voice out front in Weather Report, and second only to Mr. Zawinul as an engine of original material. Among the enduring tunes he wrote for the band are “Tears,” a color-shifting tone poem; “Palladium,” a funk tune with Caribbean flair; and “Mysterious Traveler,” a rhythmic saga named after a popular radio show from his youth.Mr. Shorter and Josef Zawinul, the Austrian keyboardist and a central member of Weather Report, played at a jazz festival in France in 1984.Eric Gaillard/Agence France-PresseWhile in Weather Report, Mr. Shorter made precious few solo albums — but “Native Dancer,” a 1974 collaboration with the Brazilian troubadour Milton Nascimento, inspired more than one generation of admirers, notably the guitarist and composer Pat Metheny and the bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding, who in 2008 recorded a version of the album’s opening track, “Ponta de Areia.”The idea of working with Mr. Nascimento had come from Mr. Shorter’s second wife, Ana Maria (Patricio) Shorter, who spent her childhood in Angola under Portuguese rule. (Mr. Shorter noted her influence in the album notes, and included a wistful ballad called “Ana Maria.”)It took more than a decade for Mr. Shorter to release his next album, “Atlantis,” a complex sonic canvas that met with a tepid response, critically and commercially. One of its most vocal champions at the time was the critic Robert Palmer, who praised it in The New York Times as “an album of tunes in which everything — texture, color, mood, meter, tempo, instrumentation, density, you name it — seems to be in perpetual transformation.”Mr. Shorter held to a similar ideal after Weather Report disbanded in 1986. His next few albums featured a broad range of collaborators and a heavy quotient of synthetic timbres. The ambitious culmination was “High Life,” which met with scathing criticism on its release in 1995, notoriously from Peter Watrous in The Times, who declared it “a pastel failure.”Personal tragedy visited Mr. Shorter soon after, and not for the first time. Iska, his daughter with Ana Maria, had lived with brain damage before dying of a grand mal seizure in 1985 at age 14. The loss had led Wayne and Ana Maria to delve into Nichiren Buddhism. Then, in 1996, Ana Maria and the Shorters’ niece Dalila Lucien were among the 230 people killed when TWA Flight 800 crashed shortly after takeoff from Kennedy International Airport in New York.“We practice in Buddhism that we’re able to have an eternal dialogue with the ones we lose temporarily,” Mr. Shorter told The Guardian several years later. “When my wife left, she was in a state of enlightenment.”In 1999 he married Carolina Dos Santos, a Brazilian dancer and actor whom he had met through Ana Maria. She survives him, along with his daughters, Miyako and Mariana Shorter, and a grandson. Alan Shorter died in 1987.The Rogue PhilosopherAs he entered a phase of late eminence, Mr. Shorter deepened his bond with Mr. Hancock, with whom he shared not only several decades of musical history but also a common foundation in Buddhist practice. Both artists served on the board of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, a nonprofit educational organization (now called the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz) that administers a series of programs, including a long-running international competition.Mr. Shorter and Mr. Hancock released an introspective duo album, “1+1,” in 1997; it won Mr. Shorter a Grammy for best instrumental composition for “Aung San Suu Kyi,” a heraldic theme dedicated to the activist and future leader of Myanmar, who was under house arrest at the time.In total, Mr. Shorter won 12 Grammy Awards, the last bestowed this year for best improvised jazz solo, for “Endangered Species,” a track, written with Ms. Spalding, from the album “Live at the Detroit Jazz Festival,” where he performed in a quartet with her, Terri Lyne Carrington and Leo Genovese.He also received a lifetime achievement honor from the Recording Academy in 2015. He was a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow and a 1998 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. He received the Polar Music Prize, an international honor recognizing both pop and classical music, in 2017. And he was among the recipients of the 2018 Kennedy Center Honors, in a class that also included the composer Philip Glass.Mr. Shorter ushered in a profound new stage of his career in 2000, when he formed an acoustic quartet with the pianist Danilo Pérez, the bassist John Patitucci and the drummer Brian Blade. These were broad-minded musicians capable of following his every twitch and prompt, and they came from the generation that had grown up with his tunes.The new Wayne Shorter Quartet started out playing versions of those tunes, like “Footprints” and “JuJu,” often modified or abstracted to the point of near unrecognizability. Jon Pareles, reviewing a concert for The Times in 2013, observed that Mr. Shorter “treats bass lines or single phrases as clues and implications, toying on the spot with tempo, crosscurrents, inflection and attack; anything can be up for grabs, yet the composition retains an identity.”Mr. Shorter’s own quartet started off playing versions of his old tunes before he eventually composed new music for the group, including “Scout” and “Pegasus.”Chad Batka for The New York TimesMr. Shorter eventually composed new music for the group, like “Scout,” which had its premiere in 2017, and “Pegasus,” for which he also orchestrated parts for the quintet Imani Winds. The Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned his “Gaia,” a symphonic tone poem that doubles as a concerto for Ms. Spalding and suggests a classical tradition deftly redrawn in Mr. Shorter’s hand.Together, Mr. Shorter and Ms. Spalding boldly expanded on this promise in “Iphigenia,” an opera loosely based on the Greek myth, featuring his music and her libretto, with set designs by the architect Frank Gehry. It had a series of performances in 2021 and 2022, notably at the Kennedy Center in Washington, with Mr. Shorter in the audience.He was still straining against preconceptions and aesthetic prescriptions when, at 85, he released “Emanon,” a suite that he recorded in two separate versions: one with his quartet and the other also featuring the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, with his soprano saxophone darting through. The album received broad critical acclaim, topping year-end lists in The Times and JazzTimes.Mr. Shorter, who created a hand-drawn 58-page comic book called Other Worlds as a teenager, also fulfilled a lifelong ambition with “Emanon.” The albums came with a comic that he wrote with Monica Sly, illustrated by Randy DuBurke. Set in a sci-fi dystopia, it hinges on the actions of Emanon, a “rogue philosopher” urging resistance to fear and oppression.“There are a myriad of realities in the multiverse,” reads the first panel, setting a familiar theme in a bold new key.Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Jazz Piano

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      We asked Samara Joy, Hanif Abdurraqib, Vijay Iyer and others to share their favorite tracks showcasing what might be the most nuanced instrument in jazz.Over the past few months, The New York Times has asked all kinds of experts to answer the question, What would you play a friend to make them fall in love with Duke Ellington? How about Alice Coltrane? We’ve covered bebop, vocal jazz, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra and the music of the 21st century.This month, we’re focused on the piano, perhaps the most nuanced instrument in jazz. At the hands of an artist like Thelonious Monk or Shirley Scott, Herbie Hancock or Geri Allen, the piano captures a vast range of emotions — some easily identified; others more textured — while blurring the lines between jazz, ambient and classical. It’s an instrument so equally subtle and pronounced that even one of the most celebrated pianists in jazz still has trouble assessing it.“I’m trying to figure out what the black and white keys do after 86 years!” Ahmad Jamal said in a 2020 interview. “I first sat down at the piano when I was 3 years old, and I’m still trying to figure out what they do!” Indeed, there’s no other instrument that heightens and soothes like the piano, its melodic chords a worthy complement to stronger-sounding drums and horns.Below, we asked writers, critics, musicians and D.J.s to recommend their favorite jazz recordings that put the piano in the spotlight. Enjoy reading their commentary and listening to the excerpts, and find a playlist at the bottom of the article with full tracks. As always, be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Dan Tepfer, pianist and composerSome people are attracted to what they know, others to what they don’t know. If you’re the second kind of person, I think you’ll find the deep mystery of this track fascinating. There’s something about the exquisite density of the harmonies, about Thelonious Monk’s subtle variations in phrasing, about his overall attitude, that transforms the simple melody of the original song into a whole universe, one you could lose yourself in. Then, at 1:49, he does something seemingly impossible: He bends a piano note. Even though I know the trick to doing this, I’m always amazed at how effective it is in his hands. But what’s even more remarkable is Monk’s ability, throughout the track, to extract a sound out of the piano that’s like nothing else. It’s at once angular and approachable, bold and vulnerable, complex and childlike. Perhaps more than anyone, Monk embodied jazz’s highest calling: to sound radically like yourself.“Just a Gigolo”Thelonious Monk◆ ◆ ◆Samara Joy, vocalist“Father Flanagan,” a song composed and played by the great Barry Harris, is one of my favorite songs highlighting the piano. Although George Duvivier and Leroy Williams play on this tune as well, Barry starts the song in a rubato fashion with his deeply lyrical interpretation of the melody before bringing the band into time for the top of his solo on this beautiful walking ballad. A special element of this particular track that proves his superior sense of melodic playing is the fact that Barry sings as he’s soloing, which can be heard if you listen closely. He played with so much soul and melody, everything cohesive yet free flowing. From intro to ending, solo to comping, Barry Harris on this recording showcases an incredible command of the instrument and details exactly how the piano should be played.◆ ◆ ◆Hanif Abdurraqib, writerThe title track to “Money Jungle” is one of my favorite jazz piano moments. I love “Money Jungle” as an album, because it sounds, in a way, how it felt to make. Duke Ellington tossed Charles Mingus and Max Roach in a room for a day, and committed to making a recording, clashes of style be damned, the generational gap between he and the other two be damned. Mingus and Roach got into it constantly; at one point Mingus stormed out and had to be coaxed back into the session by Ellington. The title track works to me as a great piano song because of how unwavering Ellington’s playing is, even — or perhaps especially — in the moment in the middle of the song, where it seems Mingus grows impatient, his bass attempting to push its way into the brief silences between Ellington’s bursts of piano. I like players who aren’t afraid to live out the tensions of a session, of a day, of a life, within the music. Ellington was always, but especially by that point, a consummate professional. He steers the song into a perfect landing, even as Mingus’s bass fades, sounding entirely exhausted.“Money Jungle”Duke Ellington◆ ◆ ◆Vijay Iyer, pianist and composerGeri Allen showed up in the 1980s with powerful grooves, exuberant melodies and astonishing polyphonies between her anchoring left hand and her wry, fluidly inventive right. This composition, named for her friend Kabuya Pamela Bowens-Saffo, feels like a sturdy, splendid palace built entirely from the peculiar details of her musical language: the splayed intervals proliferating and surrounding you as ostinati; the asymmetric rhythms stacked in contrapuntal towers; the jagged, exploratory right-hand lines weaving around and across these patterns; all of her mercurial tendencies solidified and given full force. This was the music of Geri Allen: clear, ebullient, and resoundingly complete. Her premature passing in 2017 broke our hearts, and we are all still catching up to her artistry.“When Kabuya Dances”Geri Allen◆ ◆ ◆Keanna Faircloth, writer and podcast hostHip-hop is a half-century old this year and one artist that has provided a treasure trove of sample material for some of the most significant tracks in the rap canon is Ahmad Jamal. His compositions are a pot of gold. With the recent passing of David Jolicoeur (a.k.a. Trugoy the Dove or Plug Two) of De La Soul, I am reminded of how the title track from that group’s 1996 album, “Stakes Is High,” is anchored on a segment derived from Jamal’s “Swahililand,” composed over 20 years prior and released on the album “Jamal Plays Jamal.” The track’s haunting and percussive chord progressions provide a perfectly ominous backdrop for De La Soul’s reality-rooted lyrics. The song’s co-producer, J Dilla, was heavily influenced by jazz — not unlike his contemporaries Pete Rock, Q-Tip and others — and his contributions further solidified the genre as the mother of hip-hop.“Swahililand”Ahmad Jamal◆ ◆ ◆Marcus J. Moore, jazz writerIn 1964, one year into his post as the lead pianist in Miles Davis’s band, Herbie Hancock released the concept album “Empyrean Isles,” a tribute to an imagined world in the Great Eastern Sea. On “The Egg,” the LP’s improvised centerpiece, Hancock and the drummer Tony Williams open with a mesmerizing loop of keys and percussion, over which the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard blows triumphant wails, giving the song a pronounced majesty. But it isn’t until the midway point that Hancock’s genius shines through: A classical pianist, his notes pivot between light and dark, joy and melancholy, setting up the second half’s more traditional fare. Such ingenuity would typify Hancock throughout his career. To this day, he’s still a wandering soul embracing the youth movement, still bending genres while expanding the idea of what jazz can entail.“The Egg”Herbie Hancock◆ ◆ ◆Cosmo Baker, D.J.On “Maimoun,” Stanley Cowell (a jazz giant who hasn’t gotten his props) accompanies the great Clifford Jordan on his tour de force album, “Glass Bead Games,” released in 1973 on the Strata-East label. While this version isn’t a “piano song,” one cannot overlook the power and pulse of the instrument here. There’s an almost solemn feeling to the introduction, which quickly transforms to a melody filled with immense joy and restraint against Jordan’s towering sax. Though Cowell’s piano helps construct the magnificent cathedral Jordan is building, the true possibilities unfold once his role shifts. It’s leading Jordan’s tenor, then sparring with it, feigning, teasing, until the 2:16 mark when Cowell takes the reins and leads the listener to the very soul of the composition — that feeling of peace and nostalgia. With some art, the aim is to invite one into a place. On “Maimoun,” Cowell is letting the listener into a very magical place — tender, vulnerable and exquisitely gorgeous — through his keys. And keys open doors.“Maimoun”Clifford Jordan◆ ◆ ◆Atiyyah Khan, D.J. and arts journalistI first heard this track by Abdullah Ibrahim, formerly known as Dollar Brand, only a few months ago but was immediately hooked. What drew me to it was the title “Sathima,” a dedication to Ibrahim’s former partner, the late singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, who was an incredible artist in her own right. Funk is not the first association with Ibrahim, and yet this tune is incredibly funky, one that would work easily on dance floors. The groove chugs rhythmically and steadily forward toward freedom, but there is enough space left for those striking horn solos to come in, and Ibrahim’s piano flourishes situate it in the spiritual realm. It’s head music that moves the body, too.The tune appears on the 1975 album “African Herbs,” one year after Ibrahim’s hit “Mannenberg” was released; this composition follows with a similar sound — 11 minutes of uplifting joy. Though Ibrahim was predominantly based in the United States, this album was recorded in South Africa, giving it that signature sound thanks to the incredible musicians he gathered for this session.“Sathima”Dollar Brand◆ ◆ ◆Jacqueline Schneider, writerIf music were a meal, “Lonely Woman” would have Michelin stars. Despite its name, Horace Silver’s seven-minute composition leaves me feeling the opposite: quite attended to, emotionally full — even sentimental. The kind of song that transports you into a meditative state, its melodic chord pairings recall possibility, self-reflection and optimism. The piece progresses as a conversation in the language of piano — each key enunciated as its vibrations pan soulfully to distribute the sound. When I want to pay homage to an entire genre, I play this song. Silver, who started as a saxophonist, reinvented himself as a pianist with Stan Getz and went on to join Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers collective, representing, to me, legacy, hope and potential.“Lonely Woman”Horace Silver◆ ◆ ◆Ashley Kahn, writerThink soft, languid splashes on the mirrored surface of a pond at twilight. Minimal gesture, maximum effect: nearly seven minutes of lyrical serenity and hushed, harmonic stillness. It’s a deep cut — you won’t hear it played onstage — but also a landmark of modern jazz, one that defied the typical form and flow of chord changes, while echoing the guileless air of a Satie “Gnossienne,” or the insouciance of Chopin’s “Berceuse.” Bill Evans considered “Peace Piece” a one-time, impromptu moment, never revisiting it after recording it in 1958. Intending to deliver a take of “Some Other Time” from “On the Town,” he found himself entranced by the opening chords, which he looped into a meditative ostinato, layering sharp statements that grew in density and weight, the moody effect morphing into profound emotion. It still feels pristine and stands as a stellar example of at least three ideas: Evans’s brilliance at weaving together jazz piano with Romanticism and various 20th-century classical sources. The ascent of modal jazz — slow-moving harmony, pedal-point bass lines — that crystallized a year later with Evans’s participation on Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” (“Peace Piece” provided the foundation for “Flamenco Sketches”). And the covalent nature of jazz, eager to bond with worthy musical elements from all corners, edges, paths.“Peace Piece”Bill Evans◆ ◆ ◆Nduduzo Makhathini, pianist and improviser“Vukani, vukani madoda ilanga liphumile” — opening chantThrough the sun, as a metaphor, Bheki Mseleku invites the listener to awaken to a new consciousness. Symbolically, this record marked the dawn of democracy in South Africa, and its inherent rhetorics. The song title “Sulyman Salud” refers to the African American jazz pianist McCoy Tyner’s Islamic devotion name. Given Mseleku’s connection to modal music, one could read this offering as an expression of the continuities in the spiritual pursuits in Black arts across the Atlantic. It is also a nod to one of Mseleku’s greatest piano heroes.“You are the sun of the soil, Sulyman Salud” — chant before piano solo“Sulyman Salud” enables us to hear the sonic affinities over the Atlantic Ocean. It says to us: “The erasure project did not entirely succeed; some parts of our collective memory still hold intact.” Here, the listener is invited to hear how jazz, as a memory, reverberated back in the continent. In this sense, jazz not only inspired Africans here at home, it also reminded them of the inherent “jazziness” — it invoked community. Traces of such claims are found in this piece as it indexes a long lineage of pianism in Africa and its diasporas.“Sulyman Salud”Bheki Mseleku◆ ◆ ◆Martin Johnson, writerIn a jazz world that passionately reveres its pantheon, the great pianist Mal Waldron (1925-2002) is often overlooked. He has a compelling back story: tenure with Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy and Max Roach, an onstage nervous breakdown, and a series of magical collaborations with the saxophonist Steve Lacy. He’s a premiere interpreter of Thelonious Monk, and like that jazz great, he’s among the artists hailed in Matthew Shipp’s iconic essay on the Black Mystery School Pianists. Mal had a unique and compelling style. His left-hand playing was insistent and brooding; his tempo might best be described as unhurried. His approach suggested a man who had something profound to say and a disrupting urgency to say it. “Snake Out,” one of his signature compositions, showcases this intensity beautifully. It goes beyond the traditional tension and release and becomes incantation and ecstasy.“Snake Out”Mal Waldron◆ ◆ ◆Michael J. West, jazz writerYou can’t really bend notes on an acoustic piano; that’s just the physics of the instrument. Andrew Hill instead bends the principles of harmony and rhythm around the piano. On “East 9th Street,” from his 1975 album “Divine Revelation,” he starts while comping Jimmy Vass’s soprano saxophone solo. Hill falls out of key and so far behind the beat that he displaces it — as if he were on tape, being played back at slow speed. When it’s his turn to solo, he veers in wide curves around the harmony and seems to be fighting with the bassist Chris White and the drummer Art Lewis over where the syncopation should be. But he’s always in control: bending the music, but to his will. To top it off, Hill’s ebullient, Afro-Latin composition is terrific.“East 9th Street”Andrew Hill◆ ◆ ◆Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz criticStanding at the interchange between the stride piano he’d learned growing up in Pittsburgh, and the hot pot of bebop he landed in after moving to New York, Erroll Garner felt his way into a playing style that was as sharply subversive as it was irresistible. All that, without ever learning to read music. The mid-20th century was a good time for visionary subterfuge in American music; just because Garner conducted his revolutions gently doesn’t mean he wasn’t on the front lines. His left hand thrummed guitarlike chords, chased bass lines into the mud, leaped through harmonies like a stride pianist’s would. His right hand could zip and add bright dashes of color, or join the left in thick rhythmic smudges of harmony. Recording the old popular tune “I Don’t Know Why” in 1950, for his outstanding Columbia Records debut, Garner’s fingers lick at the keys and he drags the melody along, dandling it, relishing it. The song itself is unremarkable, but the playing amounts to unmitigated pleasure. White journalists liked to portray him as a simple-minded savant, but the real Garner was a fighter as well as a genius: He and his manager, Martha Glaser, would later sue Columbia for releasing an album without his permission, winning a first-of-its-kind decision and drawing a hard line for musicians’ rights.“I Don’t Know Why”Erroll Garner◆ ◆ ◆◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      A Dave Brubeck Cantata Boasts Star Soloists: His Sons

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      “The Gates of Justice,” a large-scale 1969 choral work about relations between Black and Jewish Americans, is being performed in Los Angeles.LOS ANGELES — “Want to give us a blast?” the bassist Chris Brubeck asked the young woman in a music studio at the University of California, Los Angeles, on Wednesday morning.Remy Ohara lifted a long, corkscrewing shofar to her lips and blew a resonant call. Brubeck had brought a few other shofars with him as options, but it was clear from the moment Ohara, a sophomore trumpet student, started playing that this one had what he was looking for.The call of a shofar, the ancient instrument usually made from a ram’s horn and best known for its use in Jewish worship, opens “The Gates of Justice,” a grand 1969 choral cantata by the eminent jazz musician Dave Brubeck, Chris’s father.On Sunday and Tuesday, U.C.L.A. will present the work — with Chris and two of his brothers, Darius and Dan, forming the central jazz trio — as the main offering of a series of events devoted to the intersection of music and social justice, and to finding common cause between Black and Jewish communities in America.“It’s something that Dave really believed in,” said Mark Kligman, a professor of Jewish music at U.C.L.A. and an organizer of the program. “He really believed in this type of communal opportunity for unity and conversation.”Searching for — and galvanizing — that common cause between Black and Jewish Americans was the motivation behind “The Gates of Justice.” Brubeck, famous for numbers like “Take Five” and for his pioneering use of unconventional rhythms in jazz, also wrote concert music that reflected his social conscience, particularly on issues of race.During the days of Jim Crow he refused to play tour dates if they were contingent on replacing Black players. His 1961 musical “The Real Ambassadors,” with lyrics by Iola Brubeck, his wife, starred Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae in a story about jazz, racism and the music business.As the 1960s progressed, Dave Brubeck — who was raised Protestant but joined the Catholic Church after writing a Mass setting in the late 1970s — was pained to see the unity among racial and religious groups earlier in the civil rights movement give way to tensions and suspicion. The assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 was the direct inspiration for “The Gates of Justice,” which quotes the Bible and liturgical texts alongside King’s writings.The shofar that was chosen to open “The Gates of Justice.”Alex Welsh for The New York TimesThe music is also an amalgam, taking in the influence of Jewish cantillation, traditional choral styles, gospel, mariachi, pop, blues and 12-tone music. (It shares its eclecticism with the 1971 “Mass” by Leonard Bernstein, who had collaborated with Brubeck on jazz-classical experiments.)In 2001, the Milken Archive of Jewish Music, founded by the businessman Lowell Milken, recorded the work for Naxos. And the U.C.L.A. performances — on Sunday at Royce Hall on campus and on Tuesday at Holman United Methodist Church, a Black congregation in the city — will take place under the auspices of the school’s recently opened Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience.Neal Stulberg will conduct a chorus consisting of the ensemble Tonality and members of Los Angeles church and synagogue choirs; a brass and percussion orchestra; and two vocal soloists. The keening tenor part will be sung by Azi Schwartz, a cantor at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York; and Phillip Bullock will take the baritone part, influenced by traditional Black styles.As the core jazz trio, which has improvising interludes, Chris Brubeck, on bass and trombone, will be joined by his brothers Darius, on piano, and Dan, on drums. (Another of Brubeck’s sons, Matthew, is a cellist; they had a sister, Catherine, who died last year, and a brother, Michael, who died in 2009.) Chris, Darius and Dan have played together often, but this is the first time they will collaborate on “The Gates of Justice” — and the first time they have been united since before the pandemic lockdown.Dave Brubeck’s roots were in swing, but he had classical chops. In an interview, Darius said that his father had a shelf full of music theory books, and kept the scores of Bach and Shostakovich preludes and fugues next to his piano for reference. After World War II, Dave studied at Mills College in California with the jazz-loving French composer Darius Milhaud, who had fled Europe during the war. Brubeck came to admire Milhaud so deeply that he named his first son after him.Dave Brubeck (at the piano in 1965 with, from left, Paul Desmond, Joe Morello and Gene Wright) turned toward classical forms and social themes at the end of the 1960s.Brubeck Collection, Wilton Library/Pictorial Press LtdIn the 1950s, Brubeck became a celebrated figure in jazz, featured on the cover of Time magazine — exposure that led to criticism, which dogged him, that he owed his fame, at least in part, to being a white man who appealed to a broader audience. His era-defining recording “Time Out” (1959) was the first jazz album to sell a million copies. But in the late ’60s, after his classic quartet disbanded, his work shifted, turning more toward classical forms and social issues.Brubeck’s first major choral work, “The Light in the Wilderness” (1968), adapted biblical texts to spread a message of hope amid that decade’s widespread questioning of faith and the lingering horrors of World War II. A few years after “The Gates of Justice,” he wrote another cantata, “Truth Is Fallen” (1972), in response to the killing of student protesters at Kent State University in 1970. He kept composing in this social-religious vein over the next decades, even as he returned to touring with small jazz groups almost until his death, in 2012, at 91.“The essential message of ‘The Gates of Justice’ is the brotherhood of man,” he wrote in the liner notes for Decca’s recording of the work, now out of print. Brubeck wasn’t an expert in Jewish music, but he had open ears and curiosity; the shofars Chris Brubeck brought to U.C.L.A. as alternatives were ones he had found in his father’s house and presumed were research materials for the cantata.“He seemed to have an affinity for the right cantorial, modal stuff to do,” Chris said.Playing through those modal, klezmer-style scales on the piano during the interview, Darius said, “Those traditional scales fit everywhere in the piece, in different movements, in different moods.” Darius then added a missing note to the scale to form, like magic, a classic blues scale. Even on a fundamental musical level, then, Black and Jewish styles blend into each other in the score.Remy Ohara, left, with Jens Lindemann, center, and Chris Brubeck.Alex Welsh for The New York Times“They were both enslaved, uprooted from their homelands and wandered in the diaspora,” Dave Brubeck said in 1997 of the similarities between the Black and Jewish experiences. “When I began exploring the music, I was thrilled to hear the similarities among Hebraic chant and spirituals and blues.”The work has its raucous moments, as in a climactic section, “The Lord Is Good,” in which grandeur melts into a smoothly integrated succession of references to mariachi melodies, pop songs and Chopin. But even when the piece swings, it has a solemn, even melancholy cast — prayerful more than hopeful.The tenor and baritone solos are impassioned and soulful, with a shining duet on King’s word’s “Free at last”; the choruses are sometimes serene and sometimes emphatic, with stentorian demands to “open the gates” and “clear the way.” The sober prayer of “Lord, Lord” is punctuated in the score by shouted racial slurs that will be rendered at U.C.L.A. as a cacophony.Like Dave Brubeck’s other large-scale pieces, “The Gates of Justice” is not unknown, but it’s hardly a standard, either. As with many artists who ranged between pop and classical styles — Bernstein, Gershwin and André Previn among them — Brubeck had trouble maintaining an audience for the full scope of his output.“He could not really, totally break through and have people understand that he did both things,” Chris said. “As far as I’m concerned, the most important thing is this piece not be forgotten, and that it still speak to people in some way.”As part of the effort to show the work’s continuing relevance, it will be performed on the U.C.L.A. programs alongside newer pieces, including premieres by Arturo O’Farrill and Diane White-Clayton. And the brothers spent the rehearsal tinkering with the score and its possibilities, seeking to heighten its rally-like forcefulness and its harmonic contrasts.“It’s a living piece,” Darius said. More

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      U.S. Girls’ Luxuriously Absurd Disco, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Gracie Abrams, Ashley McBryde and Skrillex.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.U.S. Girls, ‘Tux (Your Body Fills Me, Boo)’I am willing to bet that this new U.S. Girls song is the first in the history of popular music to be written from the perspective of a tuxedo. (Seriously: “I was born to be worn,” Meg Remy sings in a buttery croon, “custom fit to make you feel legit.”) But the infectious, full-bodied groove helps the track transcend its admittedly ridiculous premise and become a highlight of the latest U.S. Girls album, the upbeat and provocative “Bless This Mess,” which is out on Friday. A thumping beat and elastic bass line give the song a sleek disco sheen, but it’s Remy’s absurdist sense of humor that makes it unique. LINDSAY ZOLADZSkrillex and Bibi Bourelly, ‘Painting Rainbows’Skrillex’s ambitious new pair of albums “Quest for Fire” and “Don’t Get Too Close” overflow with impressive guest appearances (Missy Elliott! Justin Bieber! PinkPantheress!), but perhaps his most simpatico collaborator turns out to be Bibi Bourelly, the German-born musician who is best known as a songwriter for the likes of Rihanna, Demi Lovato and Usher. Bourelly lends her vocals to three tracks, and it feels significant that Skrillex gives her the last word on “Don’t Get Too Close,” shining the spotlight on her expansive personality on its closing track, “Painting Rainbows.” “We still hear when they thought we would die,” Bourelly raps with a growly defiance and unabashed positivity. Her voice is at once cartoonish and deeply sincere, which means it pairs perfectly with Skrillex’s sound. ZOLADZHannah Jadagu, ‘What You Did’The latest single from the 20-year-old indie-pop singer-songwriter Hannah Jadagu is suffused with a dreamy atmosphere, but her lyrics pierce right through the haze: “I know what you did,” she sings, repeatedly, to the object of her disappointment. Taken from her forthcoming debut “Aperture,” which comes out May 19, “What You Did” showcases Jadagu’s easy aptitude with lilting melodies and her love of deliciously crunchy texture. ZOLADZFishbone, ‘All We Have Is Now’The ever-peppy ska-punk-funk-rock band Fishbone has persevered since 1979, and most of its original lineup has regrouped for a coming album produced by an admirer, Fat Mike of the punk band NOFX. “All We Have Is Now” is a philosophical pronouncement — “The universe may only consist of a here and now” — briskly delivered in ska form. One thing to enjoy in the moment is the way organ and horns each play just a few notes, placing them exactly where they’re needed. JON PARELESAshley McBryde, ‘Light on in the Kitchen’Ashley McBryde maintains her position as country’s most down-to-earth songwriter with “Light on in the Kitchen,” a compendium of kindly advice punctuated by a down-home dialogue between mandolin and electric guitar. “Your freckles make you pretty/There’s more to life than being skinny,” she sings, going on to say, “Trust yourself, laugh at yourself/If something tries to hold you back, get up and give it hell.” No one should argue. PARELESGracie Abrams, ‘I Know It Won’t Work’“Part of me wants you back,” Gracie Abrams admits on a song from her pointedly titled debut album, “Good Riddance.” Obviously, she knows better. Her voice is whispery, as it is throughout the album, and her backup puts an acoustic veneer on an electronic foundation; two chords pull her back and forth as she weighs her options. Her best choice is clear, but getting there is more complicated. PARELESBernice, ‘Underneath My Toe’The crystalline “Underneath My Toe,” from the Toronto group Bernice, has the tender, first-name-basis intimacy of a letter to a friend: “So, I really wanna know,” Robin Dann sings, “how did Tim’s birthday go?” The song keeps shifting shape unexpectedly — at one point, a funky, new-age keyboard riff enters without warning and disappears just as quickly — but the gentle melancholy and clarion beauty of Dann’s voice is the glue holding it all together. ZOLADZArooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, Shahzad Ismaily, ‘To Remain/To Return’The somberly immersive “To Remain/To Return” previews “Love in Exile,” an album of collective improvisations due March 24 from three musicians with South Asian roots and jazz and rock experience: Arooj Aftab on vocals, Vijay Iyer on piano and electronics and Shahzad Ismaily on bass and synthesizer. The music is unanimous in its restraint. Iyer gradually forms rising, modal five-note patterns on piano. Ismaily leans into a drone that evolves from slow tolling to a throbbing pulse. And Aftab sings pensive, hovering phrases in Urdu. In the full nine-minute version, the music wafts up out of near-silence and sustained electronics; a three-minute excerpt gets to Aftab’s melodies, and a beat, much sooner. PARELESZoon, ‘Manitou’In “Manitou,” orchestral and electronic blurs envelop the voice of Daniel Monkman, who leads the Canadian band Zoon. “Manitou” is about memories and mortality: “One foot in the dirt, and one foot in the grave,” he reflects. The music arrives in dusty, amorphous gusts of sound — sometimes revealing a strummed acoustic guitar, sometimes swelling with tremolo strings, sometimes surrounding Monkman with high, delayed vocals — that make every perception sound fragile and precious. PARELESIzangoMa, ‘Ngo Ma’IzangoMa, from South Africa, pours everything it has learned from two hemispheres into “Ngo Ma.” This 10-minute track, with most of its lyrics in English, sprints forward with a mixture of electronics and a band. The lyrics detail hard lives, commemorated in long verses; the music rushes ahead, scrambling electronics and hand-played instruments, insisting that a beat can heal everything — but only eventually. PARELES More