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      ‘Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story’ Review: An Event With Unique Flavor

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      Gumbo, fried oysters, po’ boy sandwiches. And then there’s the music. This documentary gives an overview.As has been demonstrated in films as wide-ranging as “Monterey Pop,” “Woodstock,” and “Summer of Soul,” music festivals can’t help but get part of their vibe from their settings. As musicians from all over the world testify in the documentary “Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story,” directed by Frank Marshall and Ryan Suffern, the Louisiana city’s annual jazz festival has an irreproducible flavor because it happens in the cradle of American music.The movie’s opening montage, featuring familiar famous faces ranging from Tom Jones to Pitbull, is — happily — a bit of a fake out. These big names and others get some play (and in what some might consider an unfortunate feature, Jimmy Buffett gets a lot of play) but the movie is conscientiously attentive to the festival’s homegrown eclecticism.Exploring the musical atmosphere of New Orleans itself, the film features experts laying out the distinctions between Cajun and Zydeco, for example. While both are dance music that trades in old melodies, the latter features electric guitar and washboard and comes at you “like a freight train.”The entrepreneur George Wein, who founded the Newport Jazz Festival, had a hand in Jazz Fest’s creation, sagely taking on the musician Ellis Marsalis (you may be familiar with the pianist’s work, or that of his sons, who include Wynton and Branford) as his New Orleans docent. The organizational work was soon handled by the young music enthusiast Quint Davis, who’s still in charge today.The ebullient history — which also cites on-site food tents as a mind-blowing component of the fest’s appeal — becomes tearful when Hurricane Katrina decimates New Orleans in 2005. But the music came back like a miracle, and the movie reports that after a two-year postponement because of Covid-19, the event is currently on the comeback trail again.Jazz Fest: A New Orleans StoryRated PG-13 for a little saucy language. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

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      At 85, the Jazz Bassist Ron Carter Still Seeks ‘A Better Order of Notes’

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      The famously curious musician and bandleader will celebrate his milestone birthday with a career-spanning Carnegie Hall concert.On a recent morning on the Upper West Side, the bassist and bandleader Ron Carter sat on the far end of a plush, rust-colored sofa in his spacious 10th floor apartment, an oak-hued space with ornate sculptures and panoramic views of the bustling neighborhood blocks below. In the background wafted a gentle melody from Antônio Carlos Jobim, the Brazilian multi-instrumentalist and a former collaborator. The place exuded a grandeur that describes the man, too. It’s no surprise that Carter — Mr. Carter, Maestro, a jazz legend — lives here.With over 60 albums as bandleader and countless others as a sideman, and more than 2,220 recording sessions to his credit, Carter has long let his music do the talking. During our conversation, he seemed guarded, resting his head in a balled-up right fist and looking away when answering questions. But on this April day, he had something specific to discuss: a career-spanning show at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday with his own trio, quartet and octet to celebrate his 85th birthday.“He’s as straight as an arrow,” said Herbie Hancock, the hallowed pianist who met Carter at Miles Davis’s house in 1963, in a phone interview. They were playing tunes in what would become the trumpeter’s Second Great Quintet. “Miles played a little bit, then he threw his horn down on the couch and went upstairs,” he added. “But before he did, he told Ron to take over. He targeted Ron to do that because he knew that Ron could. Ron is a no nonsense guy.”Carter grew up as something of a prodigy in the Midwest, in a family that played instruments, yet wasn’t musical, per se. “Most Black people in the ’40s and ’50s, the families had some kind of common bond in the house before TV and all the stuff took over,” he said. “It was always someone who played piano, you had this choir singing at the house, normal African American communal in-house music.”Carter turned to the bass in high school as a way to stand out in the orchestra.Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York TimesHe took up the cello at 11 when a teacher starting an orchestra laid out the instruments on the table and it “seemed to strike my fancy,” he said, and played it until he got to high school. But he noticed he didn’t get the same opportunities as white students, despite being told how talented he was. High school orchestra members were sometimes asked to play background music for dinners and P.T.A. meetings — everyone except the Black students. In 1954, Carter saw that the orchestra’s only bassist was graduating. He turned to the instrument as a way to stand out.Discrimination followed him to Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., where Carter played bass in the orchestra: The guest conductor Leopold Stokowski, then leading the Houston Symphony, said he liked Carter as a player and person, but Texas wasn’t progressive enough to have a Black musician in the orchestra. So Carter started playing at a local jazz club called the Ridge Crest Inn, working as the de facto bassist for touring musicians passing through town.“They said I played really good, and they thought that if I got to New York City, I could find work there,” Carter said. He moved to the city after graduating in 1959 and landed a spot playing in a band led by the drummer Chico Hamilton while also pursuing a master’s at the Manhattan School of Music. In 1961, he earned the advanced degree and released his debut album, “Where?,” which featured two other stalwarts — the alto saxophonist Eric Dolphy and the pianist Mal Waldron.“I wanted to paint a picture of what I could do,” Carter said of his first LP. Aside from Charles Mingus and Oscar Pettiford, bassists weren’t seen as bandleaders; being able to carry out his own vision was a rebellious act. “By and large, bass players were not getting the attention for those details that everyone else was getting,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is my chance to do what I think is my point of view.’ I took advantage of that.” Concurrently, his star rose in the New York scene; by 1963, he was perhaps the hottest young talent in the city. The coolest jazz purveyor in the area, and likely the world, soon came calling.Carter was working as a freelance musician with folk and blues singers, and was playing a club gig with the trumpeter Art Farmer, when Miles Davis asked him to play bass in the new quartet he was forming. Davis’s band was headed to California for a six-week tour, which meant Carter would have to quit Farmer’s group. Other musicians would have been likely to leave to play with the star trumpeter, but Carter — out of respect for Farmer — didn’t budge so easily.The saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis and Carter onstage in Rochester, N.Y.Paul Hoeffler/Redferns“I said, ‘Mr. Davis, I have a job already for the next two weeks with Mr. Farmer,’” Carter recalled. “If you will ask him to let me out of my gig, yes. If not, I’ll see you when it’s over.” Farmer let the young bassist tour with Davis. “Because I gave him the respect that he was due,” he continued. “I think it showed Miles that I was a man of my word, that I was an honorable person.”In Davis’s home and on the road, Hancock was taken by Carter’s tone and intuition. “He had the mind of someone that continued to explore and try new things,” he said. “His playing was clean and clear and definitive, and he was always right in the pocket at just the right place. He knew which way to go, to make it not just an exciting listening and playing experience but one that opened doors to new possibilities.”The group lasted five years, disbanding in 1968 when Davis sought an electric sound that merged rock, funk and ambient on albums like “In a Silent Way,” “Bitches Brew” and “On the Corner.” But you don’t get those records without the Second Great Quintet, and artists like Carter, Hancock, the tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter and the drummer Tony Williams pushing Davis’s music to uncomfortable places. “Every night was a chance to play some wonderful music with some lovely people,” Carter said. “I still look back in awe at what we were doing, not understanding what it was, but it worked for us night in and night out.”Carter kept evolving, even as the popularity of jazz gave way to funk as the dominant genre in Black music. He taught jazz at the City College of New York, worked as a sideman at the record labels Blue Note and CTI, and has credits with everyone from Roberta Flack and Gil Scott-Heron to Lena Horne and Archie Shepp. Carter also embraced hip-hop later in his career, and played on A Tribe Called Quest’s sophomore album “The Low End Theory.” (He hadn’t heard of the group, but one of his sons advised him to do the session.) The “surprise of the music” has kept him going, he said.The bassist Stanley Clarke met Carter as a teenager in 1970 and was enamored with Carter’s consistency on the instrument. “He’s kind of like the center of a concentric circle,” Clarke said in a phone interview. “He pretty much controls every band he’s in. On every record I’ve ever heard him play, the first thing you go to is the bass.”By 1963, Carter was one of the hottest young talents in New York City. Soon, Miles Davis came calling.Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York TimesCarter, he said, is the culmination of the great bassists before him — Mingus, Pettiford and Paul Chambers — who all pulled magnificent tones from the instrument, paving the way for someone like Carter to synthesize it into something more melodic and wistful. “It’s all directed and converged in this person,” Clarke said. “There isn’t a bass player that’s out here today that has any sense that is aware of the bass, that’s not influenced by Ron Carter.”While he’s willing to discuss the past, Carter can’t help but focus on the future: his upcoming concerts and making sure he’s always improving.“Can I find a better order of notes that I didn’t find last week?” he asked.His dedication to his bandmates is always top of mind. “Can I be responsible for the standard I’m setting for them?” he continued. “Can I make them see how responsible I am to the music that I’m presenting to them?”“I’m going to make sure that I let them know that I appreciate their love, their care,” he added reflectively, looking toward a window. “I’m still getting better at doing what I do right now.”“For the Love of Ron,” an 85th birthday celebration with Ron Carter and Friends, is at 8 p.m. on Tuesday at the Perelman Stage of Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium; carnegiehall.org. More

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      Sam Smith’s Ode to Self-Acceptance, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Regina Spektor, Tokischa, Wilco and others.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.Sam Smith, ‘Love Me More’“Every day I’m trying not to hate myself,” the pop crooner Sam Smith sings on a new single, “but lately it’s not hurting like it did before.” “Love Me More” is a simple but affecting ode to self-acceptance, and Smith delivers it with a breezy lightness that convincingly brings the message home. The arrangement keeps things airy and understated, so that even when a choir of backing singers enters in the middle, the effect is neither dolorous nor heavy-handed. The song, like Smith, keeps moving forward with a confident spring in its step. LINDSAY ZOLADZRegina Spektor, ‘Up the Mountain’Regina Spektor traces an ecological treasure hunt — ocean to mountain to forest to garden to flower to nectar — in “Up the Mountain,” seeking an answer in the taste of that nectar. It’s mystical and earthy, moving from tolling piano to implacable beat, with strings and horns ganging up behind her; whether or not she finds her answer, she’s thrown everything into the search. JON PARELESWilco, ‘Falling Apart (Right Now)’Wilco’s going country — or maybe it’s just going back. Jeff Tweedy has always had a complicated relationship with the genre: His work with Uncle Tupelo and the early Wilco records certainly flirted with it, but they also had the sort of punkish grit that generally earned them the “alt” prefix. There’s a straightforward sincerity to “Falling Apart (Right Now),” though, that makes the first single from the band’s forthcoming “Cruel Country” feel like fresh territory for a group 12 records and three decades into its run. “Baby, being blue, when it comes to me and you,” Tweedy sings, “it’s always on the menu.” His delivery has a playful, twangy warmth, but what really sells the song and its country bona fides is the nimble steel guitar playing of Nels Cline. ZOLADZMarshmello and Tokischa, ‘Estilazo’Plenty of artists in the Latin music industry have spent the last year dabbling in electronic textures. But the Dominican dembow rebel Tokischa has never been one to conform, so don’t consider her new collaboration with the EDM producer Marshmello trend-hopping. “Estilazo” is pure Toki: raunchy lyrics, coy moans and unabashed queer aesthetics. “Larga vida homosexual,” she says on the track — long live the gays. The video is a deliciously playful romp, too: Dennis Rodman, Nikita Dragun and La Demi preside over a drag competition, as dancers walk and vogue down the runway. RuPaul is shaking in his boots, and I’ll be screaming “ser perra está de moda” (“being a bad bitch is trendy”) at the club all summer. ISABELIA HERRERAI Am, ‘Omniscient (Mycelium)’I Am is a duo: Isaiah Collier on saxophone and Michael Shekwoaga Ode on drums. “Omniscient (Mycelium)” has a basic structure — a 4/4 beat and a mode — that gives them ample room to improvise and embellish. Collier touches down regularly on two low notes before he goes trampolining into upper-register acrobatics; the drumming grows ever more hyperactive to match him, and the track fades out before they peak. PARELESAdrian Quesada featuring Gabriel Garzón-Montano, ‘El Paraguas’It is difficult to recreate the magic of a balada, a song of longing popular in the 1970s that defined a generation in Latin America. The Black Pumas guitarist and producer Adrián Quesada manages to harness the genre’s power on a forthcoming album called “Boleros Psicodelicos.” “El Paraguas,” with the Colombian artist Gabriel Garzón-Montano, exemplifies the raw, full-throated vocal drama of the record; Montano unleashes a torrent of verve and anguish that glides over the woozy production. A vintage organ helps conjure a spaced-out, nostalgic haze. HERRERAFlora Purim, ‘500 Miles High’The Brazilian vocalist Flora Purim has never sung like a jazz crooner, nor like your average bossa nova whisperer. When she burst onto the scene in the 1970s, she had something unique: an ingenuous, gossamer voice that became immediately recognizable, and fit perfectly into the fast-opening landscape of jazz fusion. On her latest album, “If You Will,” Purim pays tribute to Chick Corea, whose Return to Forever was her first major gig; the pianist died last year. Here she presents a version of “500 Miles High,” their most famous collaboration from the Return to Forever years. She sounds remarkably undiminished at 80, as her band takes a high-energy run through the tune, driven by Endrigo Bettega’s hotfooted drumming. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOMaria de Fátima, ‘Vocé’Maria de Fátima, from Rio de Janeiro, spent much of her career singing backup for leading Brazilian songwriters and singers: Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, Flora Purim. But in 1981, when she was living in Uruguay — it’s a long story — she seized her chance to record a solo album, “Bahia Com H,” rereleased today. The album mingled her Brazilian spirit with her Uruguayan backup; she sang acclaimed Brazilian songs alongside her own, among them “Vocé,” which envisions lovers united like the sun and moon. Syncopated acoustic guitars and hand percussion in an odd meter — ⅞ — carry her through a melody that hops around and keeps landing on expressive dissonances; imagine if Joni Mitchell were born in Brazil. PARELESMiles Okazaki, ‘In Some Far Off Place’The guitarist Miles Okazaki and his longstanding quartet, Trickster, have never sounded as unbounded as they do on their newest album, “Thisness.” Trickster’s normal signatures are its elaborately stitched, lopsided grooves and its affinity for lunging misdirection, following the lead of Okazaki’s chunky single-note playing. But that’s all submerged here in a blend of thrummed acoustic guitar, wobbly bass from Anthony Tidd, and distant sonic elements that rise and fade (you may hear voices lurking behind the instrumentals, but only faintly, and only for brief moments). At first, it recalls the aesthetic of 1970s ECM albums by Eberhard Weber, Gary Burton and Ralph Towner. By the end something closer to Trickster’s usual brand of woozy kinetics has kicked in, but the new sense of mystery hasn’t been dispelled. RUSSONELLOGiveon, ‘Lie Again’Giveon’s voice floats in a jealous limbo in “Lie Again,” a new take on the age-old lover’s plight of trying and failing not to think about a partner’s past. “Lie so sweet until I believe/that it’s only been me to touch you,” he implores aching smoothness. The track eases along on a vintage soul chord progression, but the production summons ghostly voices and furtive instruments, like all the facts the singer wishes he could avoid. PARELESSkylar Grey, ‘Runaway’Emerging from marital and legal entanglements with her first album in six years — self-titled as a declaration of sincerity — Skylar Grey whisper-croons about desperation for a second chance in “Runaway.” She’s barely accompanied as she sings, “I need a place where I can be alone”; strings cradle her as she hopes to “start the whole thing over.” The music builds patiently as she hopes for the best. PARELES More

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      Composers Give New Shape to Ornette Coleman’s Jazz

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      A group of artists are reimagining the 1959 album “The Shape of Jazz to Come” for Bang on a Can’s Long Play festival.Bang on a Can had big plans for 2020.Before the pandemic started, this classical music collective was busy planning its most ambitious festival yet in New York City: a three-day event called “Long Play,” with acts stretched across multiple venues in Brooklyn.In moving beyond their storied, single-day marathons, Bang on a Can was signaling new ambitions, and was going toe-to-toe with other major avant-garde bashes like the Big Ears Festival in Tennessee.Of course, those designs were plowed under. So Bang on a Can reacted nimbly and quickly by commissioning artists from those scuttled dates to write solo pieces that were premiered online. Those “pandemic solos,” as they have been called, became a tradition of their own. (Some of them showed up as programming last year at the collective’s summer festival.)Still, there was a sense of something lost.“We had this gigantic idea of how to expand the marathon into Long Play,” David Lang, the composer and Bang on a Can co-founder, told The New York Times in April 2020. “I’m sure we’ll do that again, should the world ever get back to normal.”Now, it’s normal — enough — for another go at it. Long Play comes to New York City this weekend at seven venues in Downtown Brooklyn, from Friday afternoon through Sunday evening. There are familiar names on the lineup, but also ones that suggest Bang on a Can has its ears open to the work of younger artists. (Friday night’s sets by Jeff Tobias and the Dither guitar quartet offer some of that generational variety.)The festival won’t be a retread of the 2020 program. “Mostly, this is new stuff,” Lang said in an interview. And a sparkling highlight comes at the close, on Sunday night: a thorough, multilayered reimagining of the saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman’s 1959 album “The Shape of Jazz to Come.” The performance will feature a band led by Coleman’s son, Denardo, who held the drum chair in his father’s groups over several decades (including in “Haven’t Been Where I Left,” a piece the elder Coleman, who died in 2015, wrote and sometimes performed with the Bang on a Can All-Stars).Denardo Coleman, left, and Tacuma during a recent rehearsal.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThis weekend’s take on “Shape” will also include a 20-person ensemble, conducted by Awadagin Pratt and playing new arrangements of all six compositions from the album. These have been written by a dizzyingly varied roster of artists — including the vocalist and electronics virtuoso Pamela Z (who arranged “Lonely Woman”) and the orchestral and big band composer David Sanford (who took on the boppish “Chronology”).“There are all these threads that go through the festival,” Lang said. “Threads of young composers, and threads of dead composers. And threads of modernist music and threads of free jazz.”The idea is for audiences to be able to follow their own stylistic predilections. “But all of these threads lead to this piece, and to this concert,” Lang noted. “We designed some of the concerts to interfere with other concerts; nothing interferes with this concert.”To prepare for this festival climax, Denardo Coleman has been rehearsing his own core group of players on a weekly basis. On a recent afternoon, in a modishly designed living and rehearsal space near Penn Station in Manhattan, he drilled the group, now called Ornette Expressions, through the album’s six tunes, twice.The performers come from different generations: Ulmer, left, played wth Ornette Coleman in the 1970s, while Moran didn’t get to know him until the 2000s.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesAlthough the music comes from “Shape,” the musicians come from different generations. The guitarist James Blood Ulmer and the bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma both played with Coleman’s father in the 1970s. In an interview after a rehearsal, Coleman said that the ensemble’s pianist, Jason Moran, hadn’t made his way to Ornette Coleman’s home until the early 2000s; he was already a leading light in the contemporary jazz scene, and quickly built a rapport with one of the great melodists of the field’s avant-garde.Filling out the ensemble are two up-and-coming musicians: the saxophonist Lee Odom and the trumpeter Wallace Roney Jr. The first time they all played one of the compositions, “Peace,” they hewed somewhat closely to the original, an emotionally complex work that manages to be at once mournful and finger-snapping.After a break — and after Moran had to leave — the tune took a turn, with Roney plugging his trumpet into a wah-wah pedal. This time, his electric trumpet lines wove around Odom’s acoustic, prayerful alto sax playing: even more searching and heated.Roney, on trumpet.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times“We’re doing our arrangement right now,” Denardo Coleman said after the take was over, though he added that “it may not be that way” at the concert on Sunday. It’s likely to turn out different because the day of that rehearsal, he had only just received the finished arrangement. And much of the balance between his group and the sinfonietta was yet to be hashed out.In a phone interview, Z said “everybody was asked to write for this sinfonietta.” There was “a little side note,” she added, saying to “also please leave space for Denardo’s ensemble to jump in, here and there.”When arranging “Lonely Woman” — perhaps Ornette Coleman’s most famous melody — she brought the work in line with her own electronic music. “I played with the music the same way that I play with sampled sound. I really stretched it out, and I compressed it.”Odom on saxophone.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesUlmer on guitar.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesStill, her contribution is entirely acoustic — unlike many of her solo sets. “It starts out with really high harmonics on the strings and bowed vibes,” Z said. “And the first time you hear the melody, it’s played a quarter of the speed that it’s supposed to go, being played on a tuba. So I just had a lot of fun, playing with time in it.”That’s exactly what Denardo Coleman was hoping for. “The way my father would have approached it would have been that everybody had equal participation,” he said. “Meaning he wasn’t just the leader and everybody was there to make him sound good. If you had an idea, you could take it.”Hence, Coleman said, each arranger’s freedom in working with the original tunes.“It wasn’t as if we said ‘OK, just orchestrate the song the way it is,’” he said. “They may reconstruct, deconstruct, turn it inside out, something else. The tune — the composition — is just a starting point. That just leads you into some other territory. And that other territory is what it’s really about.” More

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      Sid Mark, Disc Jockey Devoted to Sinatra for Six Decades, Dies at 88

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      He hosted four radio shows that focused on the singer, who at one concert singled him out in the audience and said, “I love him.”Sid Mark, a longtime disc jockey in Philadelphia who made Frank Sinatra’s songs the center of his musical universe for more than six decades, died on April 18 in Bryn Mawr, Pa. He was 88.His daughter, Stacey Mark, confirmed the death, in a hospital, but did not cite the cause.Mr. Mark brought a warm, conversational style to his broadcasts. Between selections from his trove of vinyl albums and CDs, he offered bits of his aficionado’s knowledge, told stories about hanging out with Sinatra and played snippets of interviews with him.He hosted three shows on various Philadelphia radio stations: “Friday With Frank,” “Sunday With Sinatra” and the syndicated “The Sounds of Sinatra,” which has run for 43 years and at its height was heard on 100 stations. He also hosted a fourth, “Saturday With Sinatra,” on stations in New York.In 1966, Sinatra’s office invited Mr. Mark to Las Vegas to see him perform as a reward for helping to stoke sales in Philadelphia of the singer’s newly released live album, “Sinatra at the Sands,” by playing it nonstop for a week.While there, he dined with Sinatra and a group of other stars, including Jack Benny, Lucille Ball and Milton Berle. Afterward, Mr. Mark recalled, Sinatra told him, “I’ll see you at the show,” but Mr. Mark said that he and his wife, Loretta, did not have tickets.“He thought that was pretty funny, as did everyone at the table,” Mr. Mark told Vice.com in 2009, “and he gave me a little pinch on the cheek and said, ‘No, you’re sitting at our table.’ I walked in with all these celebrities and everyone knew who everyone was, but they had no idea who we were. Like ‘Who’s that with the pope?’”It was the start of a friendship that lasted until Sinatra’s death in 1998. Mr. Mark attended many of Sinatra’s performances and would sometimes visit him at his suite at the Waldorf Towers in Manhattan. At times, during a concert, Sinatra would single him out from the audience.“I love him, and I say that publicly, I love him,” Sinatra said in 1991 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. “He’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had in my life.”Mr. Mark in a recent photo hosting “Sunday With Sinatra,” which was on the air for more than 40 years.Family photoSidney Mark Fliegelman was born on May 30, 1933, in Camden, N.J. His father, Aaron, and his mother, Sylvia (Pfeffer) Fliegelman, owned a variety store in Camden. The family lived above the store, where Sid got his first taste of Sinatra’s music by listening to his sister Norma’s records. He hoped to one day get a job in radio.He entered the Army in 1953 and served at Camp Polk (now Fort Polk) in Louisiana. His admiration for Sinatra’s music swelled when he listened to his records on the radio at night in the barracks. “Somehow his voice got to me and I realized he knew exactly what he was singing about,” he told Vice. “If he was singing about lonely, he knew what lonely was. If he was singing about love, he knew what love was about.”Mr. Mark stopped using his surname early in his career but never changed it legally.After his discharge in 1955, Mr. Mark got a job at the Red Hill Inn, a jazz club in Pennsauken, N.J., as a talent coordinator. His responsibilities included driving artists like Count Basie and Duke Ellington to and from their hotels. They would often talk about Sinatra, further stoking Mr. Mark’s interest in his music. More important, he was hired around that time as a disc jockey at WHAT-AM, a jazz station in Philadelphia. He hosted a one-hour show called “Sounds in the Night.”One night in 1955, when the station’s overnight D.J. did not show up, Mr. Mark was asked to fill in.“It was a show called ‘Rock and Roll Kingdom,’ and I wasn’t going to do that,” he told The New Yorker in 2021. He asked his audience what they wanted to hear, and one fan suggested playing an hour of Sinatra’s music. “The all-night guy got fired for not coming in, and they kept me on.” Several months later, in 1956, the show formally began its run as “Friday With Frank.”By the early 1960s, Mr. Mark’s popularity in Philadelphia was growing. He was hosting “Friday With Frank” and a daily six-hour jazz show, “Mark of Jazz,” which would run for nearly two decades, on WHAT. He also had a weekly jazz program on local public television.Mr. Mark hosted “Friday With Frank” for 54 years, “Saturday With Sinatra” for about 17 and “Sunday With Sinatra” for more than 40. “The Sounds of Sinatra” will remain on the air and present archival shows, said his son Brian Mark, the executive producer.In addition to his daughter and his son Brian, Mr. Mark is survived by his wife, Judy (Avery) Mark; two other sons, Eric and Andy Fliegelman; and two grandchildren. His marriage to Loretta Katz ended in divorce.The playlists of Mr. Mark’s Sinatra shows did not consist entirely of solo recordings by Sinatra. He also played duets Sinatra recorded with singers like Liza Minnelli, Lena Horne and Sammy Davis Jr., as well as records by Dean Martin, Tony Bennett and Davis.There have been other Sinatra devotees on the radio over the years. William B. Williams emphasized Sinatra’s music on his “Make Believe Ballroom” on WNEW-AM in New York (and gave him his nickname Chairman of the Board). Jonathan Schwartz was known for his loyalty to Sinatra on several New York stations. But with four Sinatra shows, Mr. Mark was probably singular in his commitment.“D.J.s can often be disappointing in person, which was not the case with Sid,” James Kaplan, the author of a two-volume biography of Sinatra — “Frank: The Voice” (2010) and “Sinatra: The Chairman” (2015) — said in a phone interview. “He was physically impressive, a tall, striking-looking guy who had a real warmth. He didn’t have a phony atom in his body, and he had a true love of Sinatra and everything about Sinatra. His enthusiasm was real.” More

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      Mavis Staples and Levon Helm’s Last Show, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Pusha T, Laura Veirs, Helado Negro and others.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.Mavis Staples and Levon Helm, ‘You Got to Move’Back in 2011, Mavis Staples and her band visited Woodstock, N.Y., to perform at the barn-studio-theater of the Band’s drummer Levon Helm; they had appeared together at the Band’s “The Last Waltz,” in 1976. Helm’s band joined hers, which included her sister Yvonne Staples on backup vocals, and they recorded the show. More than a decade later, an album, “Carry Me Home,” is due May 20. Staples gave “You Got to Move,” a gospel standard, her full contralto commitment; the guitarists Rick Holmstrom and Larry Campbell traded blues twang and bluegrassy runs. It was just another good-timey show in two long careers, but it would be their last together; Helm died in 2012. JON PARELESPusha T featuring Ye, ‘Dreamin of the Past’Nostalgia is not a concept often associated with Pusha T; even when he’s mining his coke-dealing past for material (and best believe, he usually is), his rhymes have the vivid immediacy of the present tense. But the classic, Old-Kanye production heard on “Dreamin of the Past” — revolving around a sped-up sample of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” — gives the song a halcyon glow that’s playfully at odds with his unrepentant flow. As ever, on this highlight from his latest solo album “It’s Almost Dry,” Push’s lyrics pop with poetic detail (“We hollowed the walls in back of bodegas”) and riotous cleverness: At one point, he boasts of keeping people “on the bikes like Amblin.” LINDSAY ZOLADZShakira and Rauw Alejandro, ‘Te Felicito’​​Robot love, funky bass lines, Rauw Alejandro’s head in a refrigerator: Welcome to Shakira and the Puerto Rican reggaeton star’s first collaboration. “Te Felicito” is a bitter send-off to a paramour whose love has been a charade that marries some of the superstars’ signature gifts: the Colombian singer’s eccentric choreography and Rauw’s penchant for funk-infused reggaeton. The Shak stamp of approval is a sought-after trophy for young artists ascending the ranks of the industry — just another sign that Alejandro is here to stay in all his freaky glory. ISABELIA HERRERAMidas the Jagaban featuring Liya, ‘420’Marijuana anthems abound on April 20. Here’s a lighter-than-smoke one from Nigeria, sung by the always-masked female songwriter Midas the Jagaban and a guest, Liya. The tapping, airborne polyrhythms of Afrobeats, topped by labyrinthine echoed vocals, provide just enough propulsion and haze as the women declare, “Whatever I do/I do it better when I smoke my marijuana.” PARELESPinkPantheress featuring Willow, ‘Where You Are’To capture the way a breakup can upend everything, PinkPantheress enlisted two beat experts — Skrillex and Mura Masa — to share production on “Where You Are,” along with Willow (Smith), who delivers full-throated hooks. They sing about the limbo between wanting to move on and longing to stay together: “I know it will never be the same,” Willow wails. The song is a vortex of obsession, with a brisk beat, a fingerpicking pattern (sampled from Paramore’s “Never Let This Go”) and vocals that diffuse into echoes and wordless syllables as PinkPantheress (breathy) and Willow (desperate and dramatic) toss around all the possibilities of separation, confrontation and wishing for a reunion. PARELESLaura Veirs, ‘Winter Windows’Laura Veirs has been a folk-rock fixture since the early aughts, but over the past few years she’s experienced a great deal of personal and professional change. Shortly before the pandemic, she divorced her longtime collaborator Tucker Martine, who had produced many of her albums — including “My Echo” from 2020, which was partially about their split. Her forthcoming album “Found Light,” due July 8, is her first album without Martine and the first she co-produced herself. Veirs sounds fittingly reinvigorated and inspired on the lead single “Winter Windows,” an antsy, guitar-driven meditation on motherhood and moving on. “I used to watch them watch you light up every room,” she sings, a gritty resilience in her voice. “Now it’s up to me, the lighting I can do.” ZOLADZSorry, ‘There’s So Many People That Want to Be Loved’On the London group Sorry’s charming “There’s So Many People That Want to Be Loved,” Asha Lorenz sings with the sort of sweet, earnest guilelessness that Mo Tucker brought to the Velvet Underground’s “After Hours.” “See them in the nightclubs, barking up the walls, head in their hands in the bathroom stalls,” she notes of all the lonely people she observes. But as the song gradually builds from unassuming to epic, “There’s So Many People” becomes less a lament and more a celebration of communal human longing — a feeling to be cherished, and, ironically, shared. ZOLADZRavyn Lenae, ‘M.I.A.’It’s been four years since the Chicago R&B singer Ravyn Lenae dropped her “Crush” EP, a Steve Lacy-produced release that stitched her sky-high vocals with funky bass lines and delicious electro-soul textures. For “M.I.A.,” her first single from her debut album “Hypnos,” Lenae pairs with the producer Sango for something a little more breezy. Over a buoyant, syncopated Afrobeats production, a gleaming synth expands and contracts under Lenae’s airy falsetto, as she coos about finally making it: “I’m gonna run the town, ain’t nothing in my way.” HERRERARuth Radelet, ‘Crimes’“Is it easy to start over?” Ruth Radelet wonders on the chorus of her debut solo single, and it’s safe to assume that’s an autobiographical sentiment. For nearly two decades, Radelet was the frontwoman of the moody electro-pop group Chromatics, who disbanded last summer amid drama surrounding a mysterious (and possibly nonexistent) final album. On the glassy, synth-driven “Crimes,” though, Radelet sounds ready to wipe the slate clean. The verses have a bit of a steely bite (“I know what they’re telling me is true/I know I could never be like you”), but the lush chorus is awash in her signature, dreamy melancholy. ZOLADZHelado Negro, ‘Ya No Estoy Aquí’Helado Negro’s music may be dreamlike and crepuscular, but don’t confuse his songs for simple lullabies. “Ya No Estoy Aquí,” his latest single, revisits the celestial meanderings that have defined his work: soft, pulsing drum loops and wobbling, echoing synths. The Ecuadorean-American artist sings about isolation and melancholy alongside harmonic melodies from the Chicago singer-songwriter Kaina. “Ojalá me estoy volviendo loco/Por lo menos tengo con quien puedo hablar/alucinaciones,” he intones (“Hopefully I’m going crazy/At least I have someone to talk to/Hallucinations”). Underneath that soothing exterior, Helado Negro’s music holds a special power: the capacity to engage difficult feelings. HERRERALou Roy, ‘U.D.I.D.’The Los Angeles songwriter Lou Roy regularly juggles euphoria and disillusionment. Her debut album, “Pure Chaos,” is due April 29, and in “U.D.I.D.” — “You don’t I don’t” — she probes a relationship that seems about to fissure. “I always want you here/but I’m starting to get the deal,” she sings. The track, which she co-produced with Sarah Tudzin of Illuminati Hotties, has an upbeat 4/4 pop thump, but some sonic elements — vocals, keyboards, guitar chords — linger like contrails, hinting that the romance may already be a memory. PARELESCharles Mingus, ‘The Man Who Never Sleeps’One heavy day in 1973, Columbia Records dropped every jazz musician on its roster besides Miles Davis. The bassist and composer Charles Mingus (whose 100th birthday would have been on Friday) was among them. So were Ornette Coleman, Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans. But just months before that, the label had arranged to have a performance by Mingus’s new sextet recorded at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London. The tapes were ultimately shelved. They’ll finally be released on Saturday, Record Store Day, as the triple-disc set “The Lost Album From Ronnie Scott’s.” On “The Man Who Never Sleeps,” Mingus is lit up by the antic virtuosity of the young trumpeter and Dizzy Gillespie protégé Jon Faddis, barely 19, who had just joined the band. Just before Columbia would press a final symbolic seal on an entire jazz generation, you can hear a torch being passed. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOFred Moten, Brandon López and Gerald Cleaver, ‘The Abolition of Art, the Abolition of Freedom, the Abolition of You and Me’“Freedom is too close to slavery for us to be easy with that jailed imagining,” the poet and theorist Fred Moten says in a coolly controlled voice, speaking over the rustle of Gerald Cleaver’s drums and the dark pull of Brandon López’s open bass strings. There’s a doom-metal energy here, and Sun Ra’s relationship to darkness — as a substance. López hangs on the high strings for a moment at the end of Moten’s phrase, aware that the thought needs time to settle and land, then comes home to the root of the minor key. In the past 20 years Moten has become perhaps the leading thinker on Black performance, writing volumes of poetry and theory that dance with the ways in which Diasporic expression resists definition and capture. “The Abolition of Art” is the first track from a new album, “Moten/López/Cleaver,” putting that engagement directly to music and sacrificing none of its complexity or wit. RUSSONELLO More

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      The Multifaceted Mingus

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      On the bassist and bandleader’s centennial, 10 jazz musicians discuss his achievements and complexities and pick out a pivotal track from his repertoire.Charles Mingus was everything all at once: jazz, folk, dance, theater, label owner, brave Black man. In an era where the wrong opinions could get him killed or, at the very least, exiled from the music business, he expressed himself boldly, and exorcised strong emotions through the strings of his upright bass. His playing style was fierce, almost violent, as if the trauma of American racism was coming through it.Born 100 years ago on Friday along the United States-Mexico border, in a body that confounded easy racial categorization (one of his most memorable ballads is “Self-Portrait in Three Colors”), Mingus lived, wrote and played bass in a state of agitated brilliance. He stretched the instrument’s powers of melody and found new ways of making it into leadership material. As a composer, he brought the blues erudition of Duke Ellington into every group he led, whether sextets or full orchestras. And he kept his ensembles as loose as a group of friends joking around the card table.In one of his most quoted interviews, with the producer Nesuhi Ertegun, Mingus explained that the smoldering, sizzling force of his music was a reflection of everything happening inside. “What I’m trying to play is very difficult, because I’m trying to play the truth of what I am,” Mingus said. “The reason why it’s difficult — it’s not difficult to play the mechanics of it — it’s because I’m changing all the time.”By the time he released his most widely remembered album, “Mingus Ah Um,” in 1959, he was both a leading man and an elder statesman on the New York scene. But his defining years were still ahead: Mingus’s music would ultimately become hard to disassociate from the 1960s, probably because it so powerfully conveys a feeling of convulsive change. He made reinvention and regrowth feel like a ritual and a party, all the way until his death of a heart attack in 1979, at 56.Highly sensitive, he had a short temper onstage and sometimes with his band; he was called the “Angry Man of Jazz” in a time when the genre was hopped up on cool. (His infamous memoir, “Beneath the Underdog,” showcased this sometimes volatile passion.) Mingus’s legacy is best represented by the unruly beauty of his recordings, including “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady,” a courageous 1963 album filled with the roots of Baptist gospel and the blues, the language of Blackness and the sound of togetherness. He wanted to stray from the labels that siphoned Black music into prescribed boxes and sanitized it for the mainstream marketplace. This was him — the rage, the swing, the beauty and the confusion.Still, no single album sums up the live-wire brilliance of Mingus. What follow are edited excerpts from conversations with a wide range of jazz musicians who are active today, including one who played with Mingus and many who carry his torch. Each picked a pivotal track from his career and explained its powers.Charles McPhersonSaxophonist, 82; played in Mingus’s ensembles from 1960 to 1972Mingus to me was a complicated person, and he had a lot of moving parts, which can translate into musical dimension. I would use the term “Renaissance man.” I think of him as a world thinker. He had feelings, thoughts and opinions about the world, and he expressed all of that in his compositions.When we would play his music, if we were too clean, he would say: “I do not want it to sound processed. It’s too pristine.” And if we weren’t as organized, then he would say, “Well, that’s too raggedy.” He would say, “I like organized chaos.”He called his group the Jazz Workshop. So when you come to see Mingus, you’re not only coming to see a performance, but you’re also coming to see a process. He would sometimes just stop a tune right there, in front of 200 people, and give advice to the musicians. And then he would turn to the audience and say, “Jazz Workshop process. You’re witnessing creation in progress in real time.”“Peggy’s Blue Skylight” (live at Town Hall, 1962)There was a recording date at Town Hall where we were reading music that was being copied while we were on the bandstand — and we were performing this music and some of the parts were still not quite written. That’s a great example.Georgia Anne MuldrowSinger, songwriter, rapper and producer, 38I think the most meaningful aspect is his naturalness, because we can look at it two different ways, right? His naturalness as far as the transparency of his emotions coming through his arrangements, and just him. However he felt it, he was going to write it. And I think the other thing is in the way he arranged his music, and the way he taught it to people. Like, “I’ll hand you the music, but you should probably play it how I’m singing it to you.” That’s one of my favorite things about Mingus, because it’s something that transcends the paper.He was pressing up his own stuff — and I love that, too. I think that’s one of my favorite things, his independent business sense. He walks his talk, basically. He’s like, “Yo, I’m going to do this differently. I’m going to own my own thing.”“Myself When I Am Real” (recorded 1963)I love Mingus on piano, so “Myself When I Am Real” is one of my favorites. He’s just such a West Coast dude, and it’s a beautiful song.Jason MoranPianist, 47; studied for years with Mingus’s longtime pianist, Jaki ByardFirst, Mingus wholeheartedly acknowledges the folk aspect of all great music. That means acknowledging your ancestry and how it shows up — and that you can never put a tuxedo on it. That’s what makes it vital, because a folk tradition just is. That’s one aspect that makes Mingus’s music vital today, for the artistry’s part.But the political part, I think, is that, because of his generation, he was able to say things with maybe a more pointed tongue than, say, Ellington. Then he and Max Roach and Ellington teamed up, and that’s a really beautiful generational meet-up. Whether everybody was on the same page or not, it’s necessary. So I think he also represents that every generation will have a way that they view the politics and react to it, and the artists will find a way to sew it in so that it hits people differently.“Meditations on Integration,” (a.k.a. “Praying With Eric,” recorded live at Town Hall, 1964)On “Meditations,” there’s something that happens in it, especially when they would play it live, where it feels like it just rips apart. It sounds like the band is literally screaming through the instruments.Esperanza SpaldingBassist, vocalist and producer, 37I like the way that you hear the personality of everybody in his band, even when it’s a big band. Even as you’re hearing the arrangement that clearly was written by his hand on a piece of paper. And the total sound of the arrangement is this tapestry of every individual’s sound and way of playing.I think his transparency is really meaningful. His transparency of who he is and what he thought, what he felt and what he was dissatisfied with. And what he was striving for and what he was talking about in the music. From the way he plays and the way he writes and the titles of his songs, and the words in the songs, you can feel exactly what he means. I feel like that was his point, to let you know exactly what the hell he meant, and exactly who he was. And I think that’s really radical for anybody.“So Long Eric” (live in Stockholm, 1964)There is this song for the saxophonist Eric Dolphy called “So Long Eric.” It was his last gig with the band. I remember hearing it when I was pretty young, thinking, “This is a grown man onstage in front of people he doesn’t know, offering a song of longing and grieving and farewell to another person that he loves. That’s so generous and radical.” What a profound gesture of love.Michael FormanekBassist, 63; played in Mingus Dynasty and Mingus Big Band in the 1990sWhen people talk about Mingus’s music, more often than not they talk about these pieces of music that are incredible tunes by themselves. But in some ways, I think of him as so much more than that: as a composer who was able to combine different moods and feelings and colors in ways that are just so human.He was also about setting things in motion and then cutting them off. And pulling the rug out from under you, and then sending you back in another direction. And then just when things are getting to a certain point of tension, he would throw in this beautiful ballad idea — but it would only last for a short time. His compositions often had many moods right up against each other, yet changing very quickly. I think human beings can relate to that in a different sort of way, maybe even unconsciously. The internal sort of push-and-pull of life. It’s very real, it’s very exposed. And very beautiful.“Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk,” (recorded 1964) and “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blue,” (recorded 1974)“Orange Was the Color of Her Dress” is a really important one for me, partially because the recorded versions are so different. The sextet played it in Europe in ’64, with Jaki and Dolphy and Clifford Jordan. To go from that to “Changes Two” in 1975, to hear what they did with it, and how portable the material was. To have music like that, with all that character and all that complexity, but that can really happen in really different ways with different groups — to me, that’s amazing.Miles MosleyBassist, singer and composer, 42One of my favorite ideas of Mingus’s is that rhythm is felt in a circle. Each of us feels time in a slightly different place. When I refer to “time” in music, it’s the rhythm, the beat, the tempo. And Mingus would put his band together depending on who felt the rhythm where, in this concept of a circle: ahead of it, on top of it, behind it. And he would make it so that the entire band equaled a group of musicians that created a full circle of time.What Mingus embraced in his music, what you’re hearing, is someone embracing the idea that you want to cultivate a collection of humans because they are different from one another, not because they are the same. You’re not hearing a bunch of people in unity. You are hearing a bunch of people sharing a concept and expressing it uniquely to themselves, all at once. That is one of the most unique approaches to music, to jazz, that I’ve been able to bring into my own thought process. And I think it’s a wonderful idea: The small things that separate us on a common goal is what makes us more powerful.“Haitian Fight Song” (recorded 1957)There’s so much I like about this piece of music. One is the constant tension of that bass line and the constant lurking sound that it has: Something is coming for you. He was so able to capture the spirit of the Haitian revolution throughout the arc of that song. It sounds like it’s starting at night. It sounds like people are making their way toward some purpose. The ability of that song to set visuals in your head is something that I aspire to at all times — not just tell a story but to evoke imagination in the listener.I also like that the band and Mingus don’t stay quiet inside of their instruments. They’re expressing themselves vocally. They’re expressing themselves with yells and shouts, not just for effect, but in actual praise of the musicians around them and the performances they’re hearing.Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (formerly Christian Scott)Trumpeter and composer, 39If I had to choose one thing to take away from what he contributed, it would be courageousness, the things that he levied against a world that refused to see all people’s humanity, in a time where those types of accurate appraisals of our environment could have been met with death.And, as much as his musicianship and genius, the things that he was able to conceptualize and actualize, I think his ability to be upright in the moment and say the things that he said through his chest and mean it, is one of the greatest examples that we have in the 20th century of a human being speaking to the ills of this world and trying to do something to contribute light to it.“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” (recorded 1959)Obviously, we understand that it’s written for the great Lester Young. It was my grandfather’s favorite song, and when I was a very small boy, and before I started to cut my teeth into music, he would play the song all the time. It’s just one of the most beautiful examples of that kind of send-off, the power in the melody, the space and the timing of it, texturally what’s going on.Endea OwensBassist and bandleader, 30I was introduced to Mingus at Michigan State University. I was told to play “Haitian Fight Song,” the first tune of his I ever played. I listened to a lot more Mingus after that, partially because that record is so iconic and begins with an open bass solo. It’s something that every bass player knows.When I listen to Mingus, I can hear all of the influences that relate to me, even in 2022. Mingus’s music was a very social-activist music. You take “Fables of Faubus,” that was written in the late ’50s. People were still getting lynched for speaking their minds back then. To create music that really impacted such a social change and pressed against the society’s norms at the time, that was incredible. He always kept the integrity.“Better Git It in Your Soul” (recorded 1959)“Better Git It in Your Soul,” that’s just a feel-good song. I grew up in church, so automatically I’m just vibing to it. I could hear people doing the two-claps, and then just all the jazz language that he uses in it. From his work with Ellington, he found a way to mash everything together and make it relatable and timeless.William ParkerBassist and composer, 70Musically, he had a great imagination, and lots of the content in his music came from the church. His music grew from contrasts, fast against slow; from the idea of politics; from color and bursts of sound; and using the instrument as a human voice.If you look at the way the books try to clean up Mingus’s music, I feel that his music was much less cleaned up than they represent. If you’re changing it every time you play it, it can’t be boxed in. There’s one thing missing when you say, “Let’s play the music of Charles Mingus.” And that’s Charles Mingus. You need Mingus.“Money Jungle” (recorded 1962)Mingus was a street musician, to me. People say, “Well, he’s academic, he’s trying to do a kind of classical or symphonic music.” But, to me, the way he played was non-calculated; he used his ear a lot. If you listen to “Money Jungle,” with Duke Ellington and Max Roach, I believe they just came together and pulled that record together in the studio.Nick DunstonBassist and composer, 25In the music, I feel like there’s a very audible sense of his search for identity, and constructing an identity in real time. And him being multiracial — that’s been a significant part of my identity development over the years, and he also went through that.There was such a strong foundation of the blues in particular, and also Ellington’s music. And you can tell that even as he branches out with experimentation, and exploring other kinds of music in his work, he is always playing with this idea of tension and release. There’s this balance of checking out relatively unexplored areas, and then connecting it back to the blues roots. It also, I think, challenges this idea that musical evolution is a linear concept. He really turns that inside out. It’s more like a circle.“Duet Solo Dancers” (recorded 1963)“Duet Solo Dancers” is the second track on “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady,” and I think is pretty much a perfect composition. What starts out as the most beautiful ballad I’ve ever heard goes into a section where the band starts in this sort of downtempo funeral march, and then just keeps on constantly accelerating. Then they drop back down. He’s kind of messing with you a little bit, which I really dig. And then, toward the end of the track, he brings back stuff from the track prior, in really creative ways. As the album progresses, all this material kind of returns; it gets folded back and creates this really beautiful chaos that he’s controlling. More

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      Lizzo’s Disco Dance Party, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Phoebe Bridgers, KeiyaA, Wild Pink and others.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.Lizzo, ‘About Damn Time’The disco revival continues on Lizzo’s “About Damn Time,” which features a rubbery, “Get Lucky” bass line and a bridge overflowing with Diana Ross glitter (“I’m comin’ out tonight, I’m comin’ out tonight”). More of a crowd-pleaser than last year’s Cardi B duet “Rumors,” “About Damn Time” is the first official single from Lizzo’s long-awaited album “Special,” which will be out July 15. If this track is an indication, she hasn’t switched up the formula too much, and at times — the Instagram-caption one-liners; the obligatory flute solo — it can feel a little paint-by-numbers Lizzo. But the song is best when she leans more earnestly into its emotional center, belting, “I’ve been so down and under pressure, I’m way too fine to be this stressed.” LINDSAY ZOLADZAmelia Moore, ‘Crybaby’In “Crybaby,” Amelia Moore moans, “Do you like to make me cry, baby, because you do it all the time.” The production heaves and twitches with up-to-the-minute electronics: reversed tones, programmed drums, little keyboard loops, computer-tuned vocals. But the song’s masochistic drama stays rooted in the blues, and in the ways a human voice can break and leap. JON PARELESCisco Swank and Luke Titus featuring Phoelix, ‘Some Things Take Time’The multi-instrumentalist bedroom beat-makers of Instagram, who live by the loop and have lately turned overdubbing into a visual art form — or, at least, into visuals — are a mini-movement by now: Jacob Collier, DOMi and JD Beck, Julius Rodriguez. The list continues, and it’s bound to grow. If they’re all different, most are united in their worship of Stevie Wonder, more for his solo-studio mastery than for the extended-form genius of his compositions. The moment is understandably more interested in texture and groove than in duration or arc. Then it tracks that “Some Things Take Time” — the fun-loving debut album from Cisco Swank and Luke Titus, a duo of young polymaths — is barely the size of a mixtape: just 24 minutes across 11 tracks. And wisely, the tracks themselves aren’t overstuffed. The album’s title tune is a breezy blend of Titus’s sizzling snare patter; Swank’s rich piano harmony, no-notes-wasted bass line and synthesizer strings; and the falsetto flurries of Phoelix, the Noname accomplice who contributes a guest spot. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKay Flock featuring Cardi B, Dougie B and Bory300, ‘Shake It’A deeply strategic song that sounds deliciously happenstance, “Shake It” solves a few conundrums at once. First, for more than a year, sample drill has been the prevailing sound of New York rap, primarily from Brooklyn and the Bronx. But even though artists like Kay Flock and B-Lovee have had minor radio breakthroughs, the sound could still benefit from an ambassador. Enter Cardi B, who is due for a re-emergence, and is almost certainly the only mainstream rap star currently working who could hop on this rowdy of a drill song so seamlessly. Which isn’t to say without effort: This is a return to adaptable form for Cardi, reminiscent of the way she adopted Kodak Black’s flow on her breakout single “Bodak Yellow.” Her verse here is punchy and clipped — she’s morphing to the sound, not imposing herself onto it.Inside Lizzo’s WorldThe Grammy-winning singer is known for her fierce lyrics, fashion and personality.‘Big Grrrls’: The singer wanted a new kind of backup dancer. In her pursuit of proper representation, she created a TV show.‘Feel-Good Music’: Lizzo says her music is as much about building yourself up as it is about accepting where you are.Why ‘Truth Hurts’ Matters: In 2020, The New York Times Magazine put her No. 1 hit on its list of songs that define the moment.Diary of a Song: Watch how Lizzo made “Juice,” a party song that packs all of her joy and charm into three danceable minutes.Technically, this song belongs to Kay Flock, who is currently in jail: He was arrested in December and charged with murder. It also features Bory300 and Dougie B, another promising Bronx rapper who has the most limber verse here. Unlike the sublimated anxiety of the recent Fivio Foreign hit “City of Gods,” which strains to mold his brusque style into something soft-edged and arena-scaled, “Shake It” is nothing but abandon. It’s true to sample drill heritage, with bits of Akon’s “Bananza (Belly Dancer)” and Sean Paul’s “Temperature” woven throughout. But it has its eyes on bigger targets. An early snippet was made available as part of the highly viral New York video show “Sidetalk,” a favorite of insiders and voyeurs alike, giving “Shake It” a running start toward the kind of online ubiquity that makes for a contemporary pop hit without forsaking the essence of drill. JON CARAMANICAEdoheart, ‘Pandemonium’“Pandemonium” is the explosive title track of a new EP by Edoheart, a singer and producer who was born in Nigeria and is based in New York. It’s four minutes of brisk, skewed, constantly shifting African funk with rhythmic double vision: staggered guitar arpeggios, sputtering drumbeats, distant horns and overlapping voices proclaiming, “Change must come!” and, believably, “I’m free!” PARELESKeiyaA, ‘Camille’s Daughter’KeiyaA — the songwriter, instrumentalist and producer Chakeiya Camille Richmond — liquefies everything around her in “Camille’s Daughter.” Keyboard chords melt into wah-wah and echo, the beat drifts in late and haltingly, and KeiyaA starts and ends verses where she pleases, trailed by ever-shifting clouds of her own backup vocals. “Never will you replicate me,” she taunts, utterly secure in every self-made fluctuation. PARELESNaima Bock, ‘Giant Palm’Weightless and unpredictable (“I float high, high above it all”), the Glastonbury-born artist Naima Bock’s “Giant Palm” sounds a song you’d hear in a pleasant dream. Bock used to be in the British art-rock group Goat Girl, but her solo material leans more into the traditions of European folk and the off-kilter pop she heard during a childhood spent in Brazil. There’s a bit of ’70s Brian Eno in her vocal delivery and an echo of John Cale in her arrangements, but the fusion of her disparate cultural influences makes for an enchanting sound entirely Bock’s own. ZOLADZPhoebe Bridgers, ‘Sidelines’In Phoebe Bridgers’s world, even the most wholehearted love song is usually bittersweet: “Had nothing to prove, ’til you came into my life, gave me something to lose,” she sings on “Sidelines,” her first new song since her breakout 2020 album “Punisher”; it will be featured in the forthcoming Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s “Conversations With Friends.” “I’m not afraid of anything at all,” Bridgers insists at the beginning of the song, before listing off a series of potential fears (earthquakes, plane crashes, growing up) in the sort of granular detail that makes her previous statement sound a little ironic. “Sidelines” features what has by now become Bridgers’s signature multi-tracked vocals — here, they glimmer with an almost Vocoder-like iridescence — which make her sound at once numb and, quite poignantly, wrestling with something ghostly right under the surface. ZOLADZWild Pink, ‘Q. DeGraw’Wild Pink hails from Brooklyn, but the group specializes in the sort of open-air, stargazing indie rock that usually gets associated with the Pacific Northwest. Like its acclaimed 2021 album “A Billion Little Lights,” its towering new single “Q. Degraw” shows Wild Pink’s flair for the epic, but it’s less an anthemic rocker than a slow-smoldering mood piece. The frontman John Ross’s muffled vocals are buried under distortion that obscures them as diffusely as a moon behind clouds, though the moments they become legible are especially affecting. “I’ve been to hell and back again,” he murmurs, before adding tenderly, “I know you’ve been to hell too.” ZOLADZKisskadee, ‘Black Hole Era’Kisskadee pulls together progressive-rock (the Canterbury school to be precise), astronomy, chamber-pop, computer sound manipulation and faith in resurrection in “Black Hole Era.” The music is rooted in a lurching piano more-or-less waltz — the meters shift — and it grows ever more programmed, overdubbed, manipulated and elastic. A lot of transformations happen within five minutes. PARELESFKA twigs, ‘Playscape’FKA twigs keeps working her art and fashion connections. “Playscape,” with a diversely cast video that she directed, is a showcase for wool clothing and Isamu Noguchi sculptures. After a sustained intro — isolated syllables and vocal harmonies — that hints at both Meredith Monk and Take 5, she goes full late-1970s punk, channeling the wail and saxophone of X-Ray Spex to remake a song with terminology that survived into the 21st century: “Identity.” With a mostly one-note melody, FKA twigs wails, “Identity! When you look in the mirror do you see yourself?” It’s not a new song, but it’s still pointed. PARELESJoel Ross, ‘Benediction’With his octet, Parables, the vibraphonist Joel Ross plays what could be called chorales, though they involve no vocals. The group’s repertoire grew out of a series of casual improvisations that Ross played and recorded years ago with the saxophonist Sergio Tabanico. Ross went back and pulled small curves and dashes of melody out of those recordings, then taught them to the octet by ear. They developed into entire pieces over time, through a process of collective weaving, until each tune had taken on an illusion of contained endlessness, like Maya Lin’s land sculptures or an old song of praise. Indeed, Ross built the octet’s new album, “The Parable of the Poet,” around the structure of a church service. But these seven tracks don’t seek to raise the rafters so much as waft slowly up toward them. “Benediction,” the final track, begins with a sublimely peaceful intro from the young pianist Sean Mason; at the end, the track fades with the band still savoring the melody in harmonized communion. RUSSONELLO More