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      Rick Laird, Bassist at the Forefront of Fusion, Dies at 80

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      He played with jazz greats and helped make music history with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. But he gave it up in his 40s to become a photographer.Rick Laird, a bassist who played a central role in the jazz-rock fusion boom as a founding member of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, then retired from music to pursue a career in photography, died on July 4 in New City, N.Y. He was 80.His daughter, Sophie Rose Laird, said the cause was lung cancer.The guitarist John McLaughlin called Mr. Laird in 1971 with an invitation to join a group he was forming with the goal of uniting the jazz-rock aesthetic — which Mr. McLaughlin had helped establish as a member of Miles Davis and Tony Williams’s earliest electric bands — with Indian classical music and European experimentalism.The new ensemble, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which also featured the drummer Billy Cobham, the keyboardist Jan Hammer and the violinist Jerry Goodman, became one of the most popular instrumental bands of its time. It released a pair of studio albums now regarded as classics for Columbia Records, “The Inner Mounting Flame” (1971) and “Birds of Fire” (1973), and one live album, “Between Nothingness & Eternity” (1973).Mr. Laird had already begun to prove himself in the jazz world as a promising upright bassist, but with Mahavishnu he switched to playing electric exclusively. The group ranged from simmering interplay over odd time signatures to thrashing, high-altitude improvisation. It was all dependent on Mr. Laird’s steady hand, and on his knack for balancing power with restraint.“Someone had to say one” — that is, make clear where each measure began — “and that was me,” Mr. Laird said in a 1999 interview with Bass Player magazine.On the day of Mr. Laird’s death, Mr. Cobham posted a tribute on Facebook calling him “the most dependable person in that band.” Mr. Laird, he said, “played what was necessary to keep the rest of us from going off our musical rails.”“He was my rock,” Mr. Cobham added, “and allowed me to play and explore musical regions that I would not have been able to navigate without him having my back!”All of Mr. McLaughlin’s bandmates left Mahavishnu in the mid-1970s amid disagreements over money, creative control and the role of religion in the group. (Mr. McLaughlin was a devoted follower of the spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy and wanted the band to express his teachings directly.) He would continue the band for years, using different lineups.Mr. Laird spent the rest of the decade as a bassist-for-hire with some of the most esteemed names in jazz, touring the United States and the world with the saxophonists Joe Henderson and Stan Getz, among others. In the late 1970s he spent a brief stint in a band led by the keyboardist Chick Corea.Mr. Laird released one album of his own, “Soft Focus,” recorded in 1976, which featured Mr. Henderson.But in 1982, fearing that a musician’s lifestyle would prove unstable as he grew older, Mr. Laird embraced his other passion: photography. He had bought cameras and equipment on a tour of Japan and started doing photo shoots for fellow musicians. He soon made taking pictures his full-time job, shooting portraits for law firms and doing stock photography for agencies.But he also composed and recorded frequently throughout his retirement, although these projects have not been officially released.In addition to his daughter, Mr. Laird is survived by his sister, Tanya Laird; his brother, David; and his partner, Jane Meryll. His two marriages ended in divorce.Mr. Laird in 1967. He had begun to prove himself in the jazz world as a promising upright bassist before joining Mahavishnu and switching to electric.via Sophie LairdRichard Quentin Laird was born in Dublin on Feb. 5, 1941. His father, William Desmond Laird, a building contractor, was Protestant, and his mother, Margaret Muriel (Le Gear) Laird, a homemaker, was Roman Catholic; although neither parent was particularly religious, their families weren’t on speaking terms. Eventually, the couple split up.At 16, Rick was sent to live on a sheep farm in New Zealand. Hoping to pursue a career in music, he eventually moved to Sydney, Australia, where he gained a reputation on the jazz scene before moving to London.There he became the house bassist at Ronnie Scott’s, a top jazz club that often hosted musicians on international tours, and met some of the world’s most famous jazz talent. He played with the likes of the guitarist Wes Montgomery and the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, and engagements with the saxophonists Sonny Rollins and Ben Webster led to albums with them.It was a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston that first took Mr. Laird to the United States, in 1966. He moved to Los Angeles without graduating and joined the drummer Buddy Rich’s band for a year before relocating to New York. In the early 2000s, he moved to New City, just north of New York City, where he lived until his death. He died in a hospice facility.In an interview for Guitar Player magazine in 1980, Mr. Laird reflected on a career as a side musician.“If you play a supportive role, instead of soloing constantly, the chances of becoming well known by the average audience are very slim,” he said. “The more I’ve refined my skills, the less I get noticed.“It’s a paradox, but I don’t mind. I don’t think I need my ego stroked like that.” More

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      National Endowment for the Arts Announces Jazz Masters

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      Its 2022 class includes the bassist Stanley Clarke, the drummer Billy Hart, the vocalist Cassandra Wilson and the saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr.The National Endowment for the Arts has announced its 2022 class of Jazz Masters — and it represents a broad swath of the blues-based, boundary-pushing music that has been made in the last 50 years under the label of jazz.The new Jazz Masters are the bassist Stanley Clarke, the drummer Billy Hart, the vocalist Cassandra Wilson and the saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr. They will be honored in April 2022, at a ceremony at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco, the N.E.A. said on Tuesday. The Jazz Masters award is the highest national honor given to living American jazz musicians, and comes with a $25,000 cash prize.Clarke, 70, is best known as a founding member of the seminal jazz-rock fusion band Return to Forever, though he has also enjoyed a vibrant career as a solo artist. Hart, 80, can be heard on timeless recordings by Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and others. In recent decades, his quartet has often been hailed as one of the leading bands in jazz.Wilson’s husky, confiding vocal style and passion for scrambling genres made her one of the leading jazz vocalists of the 1990s. Both Wilson, now 65, and Clarke are multi-Grammy winners.Harrison grew up in New Orleans, immersed in the city’s Black musical heritage, and after earning national recognition in the 1980s and 1990s he recommitted to cultivating his hometown scene through activism and education work. Harrison will be this year’s recipient of the A.B. Spellman Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy, which the N.E.A. more typically gives to non-musicians. More

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      Pop Smoke’s Memory Lives On, and 14 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Xenia Rubinos, Swedish House Mafia, Soccer Mommy 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.Pop Smoke, ‘More Time’“Faith,” the second posthumous album from Pop Smoke, includes collaborations with Kanye West, Dua Lipa, 42 Dugg, Future and others. But this track, early in the album, is jarring and stark. Not simply because it’s still eerie to hear Pop Smoke rapping with a blend of menace and joy, but because of its chilling beat — produced in part by the rapper’s longtime collaborator Rico Beats, but also in part by Nicholas Britell, who has scored “Moonlight” and “Succession.” It is a familiar trick, these reverberating keys that stand stern sentry, but no less effective for it. Here is a splash of theater more visceral than any radio hit, any pop crossover. JON CARAMANICAXenia Rubinos, ‘Working All the Time’Xenia Rubinos’s “Working All the Time” is only two minutes long, but it’s as intricate as an arduous jigsaw puzzle. There are waves of skittish synths, air horns straight out of a Funk Flex set on Hot 97, a bridge that sounds like the glitchy maximalism of hyperpop, and last but not least, an interpolation of the traditional rumba “Ave María Morena.” Somehow, Rubinos makes sense of all these disparate pieces using her brassy, featherlight voice. Blink and you’ll miss that it’s a workers’ anthem, too: In one verse, Rubinos sings, “You better keep me poor and busy or I’d be a danger.” It’s a warning for those who try to crush the power of the people. ISABELIA HERRERASwedish House Mafia, ‘It Gets Better’I suppose you can absorb this song on the internet, where it is currently available. But the slick return of Swedish House Mafia — the Brobdingnagian kings of mainstream EDM, the clout champions of biggest-room house music — cries out for an open field, a dizzying laser show, a loss of sense of time and place. Hug a friend; the soundtrack of shared mayhem is upon us. CARAMANICAMahalia, ‘Whenever You’re Ready’A brisk, ratcheting, evolving ska-meets-trap beat carries “Whenever You’re Ready” by Mahalia, a British singer whose mother is Jamaican. It’s a semi-breakup song that flaunts confidence instead of pain. The singer is letting him go because he’s angry at her now, but she’s sure he’ll be back: “You won’t be gone for good,” she sings. “No, I’m not worried.” JON PARELESCaroline Polachek, ‘Bunny Is a Rider’Singing about a woman so elusive that a “satellite can’t find her,” Caroline Polachek makes staccato syllables and short phrases bounce all around the beat, working equally as percussion and melody. They’re just a few of the syncopated layers in a playful yet strategic production — by Polachek and her frequent collaborator, Danny L. Harle from the PC Music circle — that juggles whistling, triangle, birdsong and the giggles and gurgles of Harle’s baby daughter. “I’m so nonphysical,” Polachek exults, over the sustained bass tone that cushions the chorus. Nonsense: The song is built for dancing. PARELESSoccer Mommy, ‘Rom Com 2004’“Rom Com 2004” could have been a straightforward indie-rock love song, vowing “Just let me be yours like no one else before” over a march beat, guitar chords and a chorus with a proud leap in the melody. But Soccer Mommy — Sophie Allison — handed over her demo to the producer BJ Burton with instructions, she has said, to “destroy it.” He obliged with glitches, distortion, speed variations and exposed moments — making the song more appealing because it plays hard to get. PARELESTurnstile featuring Blood Orange, ‘Alien Love Call’From the forthcoming Turnstile album, “Glow On,” comes this shoegaze space-soul collaboration with Blood Orange (Dev Hynes). The video compiles mayhem-esque live footage more in keeping with the hardcore band’s usual rhythms, but perhaps this is the meditation before the rage. CARAMANICADave McMurray, ‘Dark Star’Dave McMurray is a longtime Detroit tenor saxophonist with decades of experience in rock, jazz, pop and R&B, mostly as a side musician. But he’s just released his second album for Blue Note as a leader: “Grateful Deadication,” a tribute to the Grateful Dead songbook. His cover of the classic “Dark Star” channels the epically trippy M.O. of a Dead performance: McMurray declares the melody over Wayne Gerard’s twinkling, distorted guitar; eventually, a dug-in backbeat sets in. Then a coolly grooving section opens up, and the saxophonist dishes out a solo that’s laced with greasy Motor City attitude but still takes its time, as if to bask in the California sun. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOHalf Waif, ‘Swimmer’The songs on “Mythopoetics,” Nandi Rose Plunkett’s new album as Half Waif, suffer and exult in all-consuming love. As “Swimmer” leaps from everyday sensation to all-out devotion and need — “I want to know they can’t take this away from me” — synthesizer arpeggios and vocal harmonies swarm around Plunkett’s ardent voice, like a suddenly racing heartbeat and an uncontainable obsession. PARELESYas, ‘Idea of You’A viscous tar pit of a track — slow, oozing bass tones, sparse drum-machine taps and gaping silences — hints at the difficulty of pulling free from an increasingly destructive relationship. Yas (the songwriter, singer, producer and violinist Yasmeen Al-Mazeedi) sings about being “in love with the idea of you” amid details of mental and physical abuse. The negotiations aren’t quite over; her voice rises to a fragile soprano as she decides, “You think that I want you back — I don’t.” PARELESKoreless, ‘White Picket Fence’Koreless — the Welsh producer Lewis Roberts — swerves between pastorale and rave on “White Picket Fence.” A keening female voice, uncredited and possibly built from samples, floats at first over a stately harpsichord; then fuzzy synthesizers arrive with a pulsing beat under that vocal melody, before it gets stretched and chopped up; then it’s sent back to harpsichord territory. In the video, directed by FKA twigs, club creatures climb out of a futuristic green car alongside a bucolic creek, where fishing ensues; urban artifice meets Nature. PARELESKarol G, ‘200 Copas’To a friend who’s still tearful about her ex, the Colombian songwriter Karol G (Carolina Giraldo Navarro) doesn’t mince words in “200 Copas” (“200 Drinks”); she dismisses the guy with profanities after all the suffering he caused. Yet her 21st-century bluntness gets a traditionalist backing; while the rest of her album, “KG0516,” traverses modern Pan-American pop with all its technological tricks, “200 Copas” is an old-fashioned waltz backed by a few acoustic instruments, nothing more. The lyrics are decidedly impolite, but the predicament she sings about is not new. The new video has her leading a beach-bonfire singalong: solidarity against undeserving men. PARELESTainy and Yandel, ‘El Plan’“Dynasty” is a new collaborative album from Tainy and Yandel, two titans of reggaeton celebrating 16 years of eminence. With its sinister harpsichord, muted marimbas and a piercing dembow riddim, “El Plan” recalls the mid-00s reggaeton that required listeners practice dancing in front of the mirror. It’s all about the thrill of an after-hours dance-floor chase — the electrifying, will-it-or-won’t-it-happen energy of a night at the club. “Estoy esperándote y tú perreando sola,” Yandel says. “I’m waiting for you and you’re dancing alone.” Luckily, he knows he’s at the whim of his partner: “Pero tú dime cuál e’ el plan.” You tell me what the plan is. HERRERAMas Aya, ‘Momento Presente’It is easy to reference folkloric sounds, but have little to offer other than mere nostalgia. The instrumentalist Brandon Valdivia, better known as Mas Aya, escapes this fate masterfully on “Momento Presente.” More than a mere collision of past and present, the track is a study in the power of harnessing ancestral knowledge. Over six and a half minutes, Valdivia braids a skittish footwork beat with a flurry of Andean pan flutes, arpeggiated synths and polyrhythms. Halfway through, the voice of an elder reflects on centuries of protest, a reminder that the work of liberation is part of a continuum. One moment the song is celestial, transporting the listener 40,000 feet into the air. In another it is meditative, urging us into quiet introspection. HERRERAMatt Mitchell and Kate Gentile, ‘Trapezoids | Matching Tickles’In recent years the pianist Matt Mitchell and the drummer Kate Gentile have developed a book of pithy, one-bar-long compositions, which they play with small ensembles under the name Snark Horse. Through intense improvisation, taking equal cues from free jazz and metal, they morph and distend and scramble these little melodic fragments. On Friday, Snark Horse released its first album — a boxed set spanning no fewer than 49 tracks and five-and-a-half hours, mostly recorded at a three-day session in late 2019. “Trapezoids” is a Gentile composition, a crooked and incessant spray of notes, with Jon Irabagon’s saxophone further destabilizing the mix. It’s paired on this track with “Matching Tickles,” a Mitchell piece, which he plays more softly and abstractedly, as if it were the echo of another idea. RUSSONELLO More

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      Jazz Musicians Unite With One Goal: Celebrating Frank Kimbrough

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      The underrecognized pianist died suddenly last December. On Friday, his peers and former students will release a tribute album featuring nearly 60 of his pieces.A couple of months ago, as the long, lean era of pandemic stillness was just beginning to open to new possibilities, some of the finest jazz musicians in New York could be found shuffling in and out of a Lower East Side recording studio as if through a revolving door. At one point, several of them — including the saxophonist Donny McCaslin, the trumpeter Ron Horton and the pianist Craig Taborn — delved into a wistful composition titled “Regeneration,” giving it all the supple dynamism of a banner rippling in the breeze.Along one wall of the studio was a framed photograph of the song’s composer, the pianist Frank Kimbrough, who died suddenly at the end of last year, at 64. His sly smile in the portrait, conveying a benevolent skepticism, felt well suited to the project underway: an elaborate tribute featuring nearly 60 of his pieces interpreted by more than 65 of his associates, including former students and distinguished peers. Amounting to more than five and a half hours of music, this ambitious release is available on Friday digitally and on streaming services from Newvelle Records, which usually focuses exclusively on premium vinyl.Within a musical landscape defined by relationships, Kimbrough operated as both a connector and an outlier. “He just had a 360 view of things, and a completely open mind on the scene,” said the alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, who took part in the sessions. “The folks who knew him really loved him,” he added, “but even among musicians, there are a lot of people who don’t know his name.”Ron Horton, left, and Michael Blake. “Frank was modest about his composing,” Horton said.Anna YatskevichA grand gesture on behalf of an underrecognized figure, “Kimbrough” looks from one angle like the culmination of a lifetime’s accumulated good will. As a pianist, Kimbrough was prolific and widely admired but best known for a lasting tenure with the Maria Schneider Orchestra; his precise, perceptive accompaniment helped shape that ensemble’s expressive sound, up to and including “Data Lords,” the most critically acclaimed jazz album of 2020. As an educator, Kimbrough left behind a deep legacy of mentorship, most recently in the prestigious Jazz Studies program at the Juilliard School.Elan Mehler, a pianist who studied with him during an earlier stint at New York University, co-founded Newvelle about six years ago, and invited Kimbrough to record its inaugural release. That album, “Meantime,” paired him with a handful of younger players like the trumpeter Riley Mulherkar, who had just completed a masters at Juilliard. Fittingly, all of the proceeds from “Kimbrough” will go toward the Frank Kimbrough Jazz Scholarship there, established by his widow, the singer Maryanne de Prophetis.Mehler conceived the tribute with an intergenerational ideal in mind, arranging his rotating cast so that barely any tracks have the same personnel. “I had multiple spreadsheets, color-coded by musician,” he said during a break in the session. “I’ve never fallen as deeply into anything as I fell into this project. I’d be up until two, three in the morning just putting bands together and then playing the songs with headphones on the keyboard, and changing it, flipping it around, and then falling asleep and dreaming about it.”In addition to Mehler and Taborn, the pianists on the new set include Fred Hersch, who knew Kimbrough as a contemporary, and Isaiah J. Thompson, who had him as an instructor — along with an honor roll of others, like Gary Versace, Helen Sung, Dan Tepfer, Elio Villafranca and Jacob Sacks. Like everyone involved in the project, they donated their services, creating not only a stirring homage but also a snapshot of a uniquely transitional time.Elan Mehler is a pianist who studied with Kimbrough and the co-founder of Newvelle Records, the label releasing “Kimbrough.”Cody O’Loughlin for The New York Times“If it wasn’t this moment where everybody’s ready to finally play music again, but not yet touring, this wouldn’t have been able to happen,” Mehler said. “Just the fact that everybody’s in the same city is crazy.”As a compendium of Kimbrough’s music, the Newvelle release also stakes a serious claim for his legacy as a composer — something that took even Mehler somewhat by surprise. When he first started mapping out the project, he consulted with de Prophetis about material. They asked Horton, an experienced archivist, to assemble a book of Kimbrough compositions. He ended up compiling more than 90 of them.“Frank was modest about his composing,” Horton said during a session break. “But those of us who knew him, going back 40 years, knew he was very special as a composer.”Moments earlier, Horton had demonstrated the point while recording a ballad titled “Noumena,” with a hymnlike calm that spiraled into agitated abstraction. The guitarist Ben Monder imparted a barbed edge with his pedal effects, as Horton and McCaslin jostled around the melody. Their performance was a vibrant extrapolation of Kimbrough’s original design — charged with a spirit of freedom, as he’d meant it to be.Kimbrough took his stewardship of the jazz tradition seriously: his final and most ambitious release, in 2018, was “Monk’s Dreams: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Sphere Monk.” (It was issued as a six-CD boxed set, for which I wrote liner notes.) What Kimbrough prized most highly as a musician was a sense of unfolding mystery and slippery lyricism — qualities he associated with Monk and a few other personal touchstones, like the drummer Paul Motian, the keyboardist Annette Peacock and the pianists Andrew Hill and Paul Bley.For a period starting in the early 1990s, Kimbrough performed and recorded extensively with the Jazz Composers Collective, founded by the bassist Ben Allison. Though it was created to spotlight new music by its members, the collective had its most visible success story in the Herbie Nichols Project — a repertory group and reclamation project focused on another of Kimbrough’s piano heroes, featuring Horton and Allison, among others.From left, Dave Douglas, Joe Lovano and and Craig Taborn. Some musicians who played at the sessions were rekindling fruitful associations. Others were meeting for the first time.Anna YatskevichThe pianist Helen Sung in the studio.Anna YatskevichThe saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins.Anna YatskevichSpeaking in a studio hallway before he joined Horton and others for a raucous take on “TMI,” Allison marveled at the impromptu community that had formed around Kimbrough: “Elan’s organizing the sessions, but it’s his musicality and what he did as an artist that coalesces other musicians like moths around a flame,” he said. “And for the decades that I knew him and worked with him, we talked a lot about that: how to bring people together around an idea.”The saxophonist Joe Lovano — who recorded a moving “Elegy for P.M.” in a first-time encounter with Taborn and Monder — raised a similar point in reference to Kimbrough’s compositions. “Each one is an idea,” Lovano said, “and has a sound.” Another of the pieces he played was “727,” with Taborn, the trumpeter Dave Douglas, the bassist John Hébert and the drummer Clarence Penn. On the page, this piece involved minimal instruction; in the hands of these musicians, it bloomed.“What’s there in the song, it’s the essential information,” reflected Taborn after the take, describing Kimbrough as a composer attuned to the intuition of seasoned improvisers. “It’s clearly reductive of a larger scheme. He’s asking, ‘What’s the thing that needs to be here that makes this phrase happen?’ And then everything else is stripped away.”Lovano and Donny McCaslin. “Each one is an idea,” Lovano said, of Kimbrough’s compositions, “and has a sound.”Anna YatskevichWhat’s remarkable about “Kimbrough” is how fully the songs are realized, almost invariably in a first take, by unexpected groupings of musicians. Among the many highlights are a gently drifting “A&J,” with Alexa Tarantino on alto saxophone, Tepfer on piano, Rufus Reid on bass and Matt Wilson on drums; “Quiet as It’s Kept,” featuring Mulherkar and the pianist Samora Pinderhughes; “Eventualities,” with its collegial sparring between McCaslin and Wilkins; and an authoritative read on “Quickening” by Kimbrough’s piano protégé Micah Thomas, with Allison and the drummer Jeff Williams.Some of these musicians were rekindling fruitful associations for the first time in years. Others were meeting for the first time on the studio floor. After such a long period of isolation, apart from any semblance of a living scene, those connections felt all the more sustaining and vital. “Hearing everybody come together around this music is very gratifying,” Allison, who knew Kimbrough as well as anyone involved, said in a studio hallway.Public recognition had never come easily to Kimbrough, who loathed artistic compromise as much as he did musical cliché. What would he have thought about so many musicians coming together in his honor? Allison flinched, as if the question had knocked the wind out of him. He fell silent for more than 15 seconds before he could form a choked reply: “I’m sure he’d love it.” More

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      A 1970 Live Album Offers a New Perspective on Roy Brooks’s Jazz

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      “Understanding,” recorded 35 years before the drummer’s death, captures him at a pivotal moment after a series of albums with Yusef Lateef.In 1991, as part of its Magic Music Days initiative, Disneyland hosted the International Musical Saw Festival. Fifty people who played the instrument — the actual tool, held between one’s knees and stroked with a violin bow — descended on Anaheim, Calif., to compete in different genres. Roy Brooks, a drummer from Detroit, took home third place in the pop/jazz category.Two decades earlier, while touring Europe with Charles Mingus’s band, Brooks received a more prestigious honor: a regular feature called “Blues for Roy’s Saw,” where the drummer would step away from his kit and solo on his side instrument. (Instead of a bow, Brooks used a mallet.)Brooks, who died in 2005 at 67 after a life of ecstatic highs and perilous lows, worked with jazz legends like Horace Silver, Yusef Lateef and Mingus; he also had bipolar disorder, and served a sentence for felony assault from 2000 to 2004. On Friday, a previously unreleased Brooks live album from 1970 titled “Understanding” arrives on vinyl, providing an opportunity to deepen listeners’ comprehension of his talent. (Digital and CD releases will come out July 23.)The seven-track “Understanding” was made at Baltimore’s Famous Ballroom, where Brooks and his band had recorded their lauded live set “The Free Slave” only six months prior. The concert features the trumpeter Woody Shaw and the bassist Cecil McBee — holdovers from the night that resulted in “The Free Slave” — plus Harold Mabern on piano and Carlos Garnett on tenor saxophone.Despite similar personnel and only a brief interval between engagements, “The Free Slave” and “Understanding” are worlds apart. Where the first release is a euphoric joy ride that touches on funk and odd-time grooving, the new album is an intense, hypnotic journey that seems immovable even at its gentlest moments. What a difference a half-year makes.“Understanding” was recorded at the Famous Ballroom in Baltimore.Zev Feldman, a co-producer of “Understanding,” was struck by the LP’s sprawling nature. A typical track runs about 20 minutes, making room for multiple unhurried solos. (Brooks breaks out the saw on “Prelude to Understanding.”)“There’s expansive boundaries here,” Feldman said. “It’s so adventuresome. They’re really going out there.”Brooks, who grew up in Detroit playing basketball and in jazz bands, was in a pivotal place in 1970. He had just wrapped a three-year stint with Lateef (he can be heard on “The Golden Flute” and “The Blue Yusef Lateef”) and was newly a member of M’Boom, the Max Roach group featuring seven or more percussionists.His own rhythm section was unshakable, but never rigid. Brooks and McBee met in the early ’60s at a Sunday jam session in Detroit hosted by Alice McLeod — soon to be Alice Coltrane — but they truly connected while playing in Lateef’s group. When Brooks realized he could trust McBee to handle the heavy time-keeping, new paths seemed to open up for both musicians.“He loosened up and would play things that would loosen me up,” McBee said in an interview. “Although you understood your responsibility to keep the flow. Once you understand that, and know what that is — and you both are clear about that — then you don’t have to do it. Just let it go. ’Cause you can feel it.”Cory Weeds, the founder of the label Reel to Real, which is releasing the album, sees the live recording as a perfect primer for understanding Brooks’s accomplishments.“This record sort of encapsulates his whole career,” said Weeds. “Like, ‘OK, now I sort of get the trajectory of Roy Brooks.’ From growing up in Detroit, and then moving to New York, and doing those straight-ahead dates, to this.”Brooks onstage in 1972, two years after both the live album “The Free Slave” and “Understanding” were recorded.Cellar Music Group/Reel to RealIn the years after the performance that yielded “Understanding,” Brooks returned to Detroit and formed the Aboriginal Percussion Choir, which featured 20 drummers, and developed a solo performance called the Mystical Afronaut, which found him playing along to a Joe Louis fight and jamming with battery-powered toys. His avant-garde leanings didn’t begin in the mid-70s, though; earlier, he had invented the Breath-a-Tone, which connects plastic tubes to a tom-tom. The instrument can be heard near the end of “Billie’s Bounce,” from “Understanding.”“I remember being a kid, watching him solo, and being scared to death,” Brooks’s son Raheem Brooks said in an interview. “Like, ‘Is he going to have a heart attack?’ So much force would go into it — you know, when he solos, he goes in.”Brooks pushed himself to the limits onstage and off, and as the decades passed, he struggled to manage his mental illness.“You read some of the stuff, and I’ve seen stuff like, ‘The Wild Man on the Drums,’ or something like that,” Raheem Brooks said of how he’d seen his father described. “It really paints a picture that’s negative.” But Brooks recalls his father as a tireless, disciplined artist, whose passion for music was all-consuming.“He was always working out things,” Raheem said. “I could be watching ‘Twilight Zone’ or something, and he’s behind me playing steel drums, working out something. Where he lived, it was instruments all over the house. Something come to mind, and he’ll work it out on the marimba, or work it out on the steel drums. Work it out on the balafon, even.”Brooks’s drive to play endured for decades. Mark Stryker, who wrote part of the liner notes for “Understanding” as well as the 2019 book “Jazz from Detroit,” said he saw Brooks give a transcendent performance in the ’90s.“When I saw him play, you felt as if you were in the presence of a spirit,” Stryker said. “There was a shamanistic quality to Roy’s presence and his playing. You absolutely felt that. There was something beyond music happening with Roy.”The promise of great jazz bands, he added, is “that you can have the same players playing the same tunes in the same place and for some reason, there’s this extra jolt of energy and electricity and creativity that pushes the music into a higher plane of invention.” On “Understanding,” he said, “I think that that happened.” More

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      The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber’s Bouncy Plea, and 14 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Little Simz, Nathy Peluso, Courtney Barnett,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.The Kid Laroi featuring Justin Bieber, ‘Stay’Bracingly effective, hyper-slick new wave/pop-punk hybridization from the Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber, “Stay” is about expecting more from a partner than you’re capable of giving. They both sound aptly desperate and defensive, a familiar approach from Laroi and a sneaky stretch from Bieber, who still injects some falsetto tenderness into his icy pleas. “Stay” is a more effective pairing than the two had on “Unstable,” from Bieber’s most recent album, on which he sounded as if he was jogging while Laroi sprinted. JON CARAMANICAThe Kondi Band featuring Mariama, ‘She Doesn’t Love You’Kondi Band is an electronic concoction rooted in Sierra Leone. The kondi is a 15-pronged thumb piano played by the Sierra Leonean musician Sorie Kondi, with production by DJ Chief Boima (an American whose family is from Sierra Leone), the English producer Will LV (a.k.a. Will Horrocks) and, on this song, the voice of a songwriter from Sierra Leone, Mariama Jalloh. The song is propelled by multiple layers of Sorie Kondi’s plinking thumb-piano riffs and grainy call-and-response vocals in Krio (Sierra Leonean Creole); midway through, Mariama airily delivers a reminder about consent: “It’s her mind, her body, her rules/If she doesn’t love you there’s nothing you can do.” JON PARELESLittle Simz, ‘I Love You, I Hate You’The Nigerian-English rapper Lil Simz keeps her voice calm and steely as she grapples with her relationship with her biological father, who’s “in my DNA” — she’s seen Polaroid photos — but whom she barely knows: “Is you a sperm donor or a dad to me?” The emotions that buffet her are in the track, produced by Inflo, with orchestral and choral swells, a sputtering funk beat and a male voice singing the title. She’s wrestling with her own feelings, trying to empathize and reaching for forgiveness; it’s complicated. PARELESBLK presents Juvenile, Mannie Fresh and Mia X, ‘Vax That Thang Up’Ah yes, you remember this classic, from the album “400 Degreez (Is What Your Temperature Will Be if You Get Covid-19 So Please Get Vaccinated).” CARAMANICAZuchu, ‘Nyumba Ndogo’What will happen when African musicians latch onto hyperpop? “Nyumba Ndogo,” from the Tanzanian singer and songwriter Zuchu, hints at the possibilities. It’s thin, speedy, synthetic, Auto-Tuned — and irresistible. PARELESmazie, ‘Dumb Dumb’The songwriter who lowercases herself as mazie folds multiple levels of ironic self-consciousness into her songs. She sings in a little-girl voice, and she starts “Dumb Dumb” with the sounds of kiddie instruments — ukulele, toy piano — before surreally stacking up keyboards, voices and harps and declaring, “Everyone is dumb, la la la la la la la.” It’s a song about misinformation, gullibility and incredulity; she wrote it the day after the insurrection at the Capitol. PARELESCourtney Barnett, ‘Rae Street’Courtney Barnett previews an album due in November — “Things Take Time, Take Time” — with another of her deadpan, steady-strummed songs that find large lessons in mundane observations. In “Rae Street” she chronicles her neighbors: parents, children, repair people and dogs, having an ordinary day. Behind the normalcy, there’s a wary undercurrent: “Time is money, and money is no man’s friend,” she sings, and, later, “You seem so stable, but you’re just hanging on.” Calm doesn’t mean contentment. PARELESAngel Olsen, ‘Gloria’There’s no point in a cover version that doesn’t transform the original song. Angel Olsen does just that with her version of the Laura Branigan hit “Gloria,” the first track from her coming album of 1980s songs, “Aisles.” While Branigan’s 1982 “Gloria” had pumping synthesizers and a perky vocal, Olsen paid attention to the lyrics. It’s a song about a desolate, lonely woman on the verge of a breakdown, or perhaps already having one: “Are the voices in your head calling, Gloria?” Olsen’s version is blearily slow, thickened with distorted keyboard chords and grunting cellos; this “Gloria” is mired, not triumphal. PARELESgglum. ‘Glad Ur Gone’Clouds of vocal harmonies float prettily; a beat bustles; keyboards throb in warm major chords. None of it quite conceals the rancor of “Glad Ur Gone,” as gglum — the songwriter Ella Smoker — sings about how clingy and manipulative an ex can be. PARELESJ.D. Allen, ‘Mother’Jon Irabagon, ‘KC Blues’J.D. Allen and Jon Irabagon, two standard-bearing tenor saxophonists, have new solo-sax albums that were forged in the solitude of lockdown. Irabagon, 41, spent much of 2020 living with extended family in South Dakota, and he often slipped off to the outskirts of Black Hills National Forest, where he spent hours revisiting the Charlie Parker songbook en plein-air with a recorder on. He’s released those recordings as “Bird With Streams” (yes, it’s a pun). Playful as ever but also luxuriously patient, his take on “K.C. Blues” is a feast of smeared tones and little open spaces. Allen, 48, went into a Cincinnati studio to capture the 13 tracks on “Queen City,” but he kept things spare, treating the process as an extension of the soul-searching he’d done in the early days of lockdown. “Mother,” an Allen original, starts with a three-note pattern that spins almost into a drone before he leaps off into free improvisation, zagging and curling and, later, painfully scraping his notes, as if to pry them open. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLONathy Peluso, ‘Mafiosa’The Argentine songwriter Nathy Peluso is ready to seize power as a woman in “Mafiosa,” vowing (in Spanish), “May bad men fear me.” She’s backed by a sinewy, old-school salsa groove with horn-section muscle: playful and teasing, but not to be crossed. PARELESMaluma, ‘Sobrio’A gentle song befitting Maluma’s gentle voice, “Sobrio” is an unhurried and lovely tale of a man only able to declare his heart after a few drinks. There’s nothing anguished about Maluma’s meanderings, though — rather, the slackness of the rhythm, and of his lightly slurry anguish, makes for a compellingly smooth confessional. CARAMANICASufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine, ‘Reach Out’Sufjan Stevens has been mightily productive during the pandemic year, with songs, instrumentals and now a collaboration. Acoustic picking defines “Reach Out,” from the album “A Beginner’s Mind” by Stevens and the songwriter Angelo De Augustine, which is due in September — and based, they say, on watching movies. Fans of Stevens’s largely acoustic album “Carrie and Lowell” will appreciate “Reach Out,” which doesn’t hide the squeaks of hands moving up strings. In close harmony, they sing about memory and healing, insisting, “the pain restores you.” PARELESSamara Joy, ‘It Only Happens Once’At 21, the vocalist Samara Joy has been approaching the jazz spotlight since she won the 2019 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. The close precision and frothy power of her voice stand out immediately, and on her self-titled debut album, so does the depth of her comfort within the jazz tradition. “It Only Happens Once” is a rarely played tune, best known for Nat King Cole’s dreamy 1943 version, but she tucks right into it, as if she’s been singing the song her whole life. RUSSONELLO More

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      in Movies

      Suzzanne Douglas, Star of ‘The Parent ’Hood,’ Dies at 64

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      Her four-decade acting career also included roles in the films “Tap” and “Inkwell,” as well as appearances on Broadway.Suzzanne Douglas, an actress who appeared on Broadway but was probably best known for her role as a wife, mother and law student on the sitcom “The Parent ’Hood,” died on Tuesday at her home on Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts. She was 64.Her husband, Jonathan Cobb, said the cause was complications of cancer. He did not specify what type of cancer Ms. Douglas had, but he said she had been sick for more than two years.Ms. Douglas with Gregory Hines in the 1989 movie “Tap.”TriStar Pictures/Getty ImagesMs. Douglas played a wide array of roles in her career. Eight years after her first onscreen appearance, in the 1981 television adaptation of the Broadway musical “Purlie,” she starred alongside Gregory Hines, Sammy Davis Jr. and Savion Glover in the theatrical movie “Tap,” earning an N.A.A.C.P. Image Award. In 1994, she was seen in the films “The Inkwell” (1994) and “Jason’s Lyric.”She became nationally known as the matriarch Jerri Peterson opposite Robert Townsend (one of the show’s creators) on the WB sitcom “The Parent ’Hood,” which explored the challenges of raising a family in New York City and ran for five seasons before ending in 1999.Ms. Douglas, seated at right, in an episode of “The Parent ’Hood,” a sitcom about the challenges of raising a family in New York City, which aired for five seasons on the WB network. Her co-star, Robert Townsend, is standing in the center.Warner Bros.Ms. Douglas’s other acting credits include the films “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” (1998) and “School of Rock” (2003), the sitcom “The Parkers” and “Whitney” (2015), the made-for-TV Whitney Houston biopic directed by Angela Bassett, in which she played the singer Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mother.She was also in “When They See Us,” the award-winning 2019 mini-series directed by Ava DuVernay about the teenage boys known as the Central Park Five who were convicted of rape. She played the mother of one of them. Ms. DuVernay remembered Ms. Douglas on Wednesday as “a confident, caring actor who breathed life into the words and made them shimmer.”On Broadway, Ms. Douglas was seen in the 1989 revival of “Threepenny Opera,” starring Sting, and “The Tap Dance Kid” (1983). In 2000, she became the first Black woman to play the lead role of Vivian Bearing, a poetry professor battling ovarian cancer, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Wit.” Alvin Klein’s New York Times review of the production, at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, N.J., called Ms. Douglas’s portrayal “vibrant” and “defiant.”“I believe that artists are, and can be, the consciousness of the nation,” Ms. Douglas said in a 2015 interview. “We have a social obligation to tell a story that creates dialogue that allows us to grow and change.” She said she chose roles with social consciousness, adding, “They have to really speak to my heart and bring awareness.”Ms. Douglas, second from left, with, from left, Aunjanue Ellis, Kylie Bunbury and Niecy Nash in the 2019 mini-series “When They See Us.”Atsushi Nishijima/NetflixMs. Douglas was born on April 12, 1957, in Chicago. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Illinois State University and, much later, a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music, according to her website.She was also a recognized composer and singer, having performed with jazz musicians including the drummer and bandleader Thelonious Monk Jr., the trumpeter Jon Faddis and the saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, according to a talent agency representing Ms. Douglas.At her death, Mr. Cobb said, she was working on an album.In addition to Mr. Cobb, her husband of 32 years, Ms. Douglas is survived by a daughter, Jordan Victoria Cobb.Having done so much in her career, Ms. Douglas reflected that it was much more intimidating to perform as a singer than as an actress.“You’re more vulnerable,” she said in a 2014 interview. “It’s just you. There’s no character to hide behind. There are no costumes, no lights. It’s just you sharing the songs and telling the stories within the songs so that they have a universal appeal and touch people where they need to be touched.” More

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      in Theater

      With Venues Reopening Across New York, Life Is a Cabaret Once Again

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      “Thank you all for risking your lives by coming out tonight,” Joe Iconis quipped, welcoming a socially distanced crowd to the June reopening of the cabaret venue Feinstein’s/54 Below in Manhattan.Iconis, a composer, lyricist and performer beloved among young musical theater fans, was joking, but before diving into an alternately goofy and poignant set with the actor and singer George Salazar — a star of Iconis’s first Broadway production, “Be More Chill” — he added, earnestly, “It’s the most incredible thing to be able to do this show for real human beings, not computer screens.”Moist-eyed reunions between artists and fans have been taking place across the city as Covid-19 restrictions are gradually relaxing. “I hope you’re prepared for how emotional it will be when you’re onstage, because it will be emotional for us, supporting artists we love again,” a fan told the band Betty. In the intimate spaces that house these shows, interaction between artists and those who love them is integral to what the downtown fixture Sandra Bernhard called “the in-the-moment, visceral experience.”Storied establishments like the jazz clubs Birdland and Blue Note, newer spots such as the Green Room 42 and City Winery at Hudson River Park (which both reopened in April), along with the East Village alt-cabaret oases Pangea and Club Cumming are once again offering food, drink and in-the-flesh entertainment, as cabaret veterans — along with other jazz and pop acts, and drag performers — return to the work that is their bread and butter.Fans at Feinstein’s/54 Below snap a selfie before Joe Iconis and George Salazar took the stage.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesAn emotional Salazar onstage at Feinstein’s/54 Below.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesSalazar mingles with fans after the June show.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“To see people physiologically responding to music again — toes tapping, heads bopping — that’s almost better than applause,” said the pianist and singer Michael Garin, one of many who used social media to stay connected with fans during the pandemic, and among the first to resume performances for live audiences.But, Garin noted, “It’s not like we’re flipping a switch and bringing everything back to normal.” Particularly in the spring, not everyone was ready to pick up where they left off. “There were some musicians who were ready to book as soon as possible, and others who said, ‘Let me see — I don’t know if I want to be in an indoor space right now,’” said Steven Bensusan, the president of Blue Note Entertainment Group.The producer and host Scott Siegel, creator of the virtual “Scott Siegel’s Nightclub New York,” said that trepidation is still shared by some patrons: “Everybody’s hopeful, but I hear people say they’re nervous. There are also many who come in from outside the tristate area, and it’s more of an effort to get in.”Iconis rehearsing for his return to the live stage.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“It’s the most incredible thing to be able to do this show for real human beings, not computer screens,” Iconis said.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesWith regulations still in flux, both vigilance and adaptability are key. Before Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s mid-June announcement that the state could almost fully reopen, Birdland had planned to return at just 50 percent capacity on July 1. Instead, all 150 of its seats have been accessible from the start, with returning variety-show hosts Jim Caruso and Susie Mosher featuring theater and cabaret luminaries such as Chita Rivera and Natalie Douglas in the first week back. (The club’s downstairs space, Birdland Theater, will remain closed until September.) The Blue Note, which reopened in mid-June at roughly two-thirds capacity, has since made all of its 250 seats available. Proof of vaccination against the coronavirus is not required at either club, though masks are recommended for the unvaccinated at Birdland.By contrast, at 54 Below, where the plan is to build gradually back to a full crowd of about 150, proof of vaccination is necessary, as it is in the 60-seat cabaret room at Pangea, still limited to 80 percent capacity. Both venues were among those that developed streaming series while shuttered. “We originally got into it to remain active, but it became a way to pay staff, and expand the audience,” said Richard Frankel, one of the owners of 54 Below, which will kick off the new series “Live From Feinstein’s/54 Below,” offering live streams direct from the venue, on July 11. “Right now we’re focused on reopening live, but it’s definitely something to continue exploring after the dust settles.”Streaming a performance “broadens the spectrum of who’s able to see things, and that’s so important,” said the singer and actress Lilli Cooper.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesRyan Paternite, director of programming at Birdland, has been similarly encouraged by the response to “Radio Free Birdland,” though he added, “My feeling is that people are pretty burned out on watching shows on their computer or phone — especially if they have to pay for tickets.”Artists generally remain bullish on the opportunities posed by technology. “I’m very pro-streaming,” said the Tony Award-nominated singer and actress Lilli Cooper, who is set to appear at 54 Below on July 28 and August 15. “It broadens the spectrum of who’s able to see things, and that’s so important.” Caruso plans to continue streaming his “Pajama Cast Party” weekly; he noted that the virtual program has allowed him to diversify both his audience (“It has become more colorful, literally and figuratively”) and his talent pool (“I’ve delved into TikTok and Instagram and discovered some thrilling new artists”).Many are hopeful that diversity and inclusivity will be further emphasized in an art form that counts artists of color like Mabel Mercer and Bobby Short as historical icons. “My art is often based on what I’ve gone through, and being a Black man is part of that,” said the Broadway veteran Derrick Baskin, who packed R&B classics into his set list for recent dates at 54 Below.Garin, seen from above performing at the piano at the Roxy Hotel.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“It’s not like we’re flipping a switch and bringing everything back to normal,” Garin added.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesJustin Vivian Bond, scheduled to reopen Joe’s Pub in October, said, “The brilliant thing about cabaret is that you can react, if you’re capable, to what’s going on in the world.” For Bond, the pandemic posed challenges as sobering, albeit in a different way, as those faced by the L.G.B.T.Q. community during another plague: “When AIDS was happening, even when people were dying, you could be with them. What we’ve just been through was a very isolating trauma. I don’t know if I’ll have any brilliant insights about it, but hopefully what I’ll say will resonate with the audience.”Bernhard, who will return to Joe’s Pub in December for the annual holiday engagement she had to skip in 2020, still isn’t sure what insights she’ll be offering. “The head space that I’m in, I don’t even know what the next two months are going to bring,” she said. “I just want to perform, like everybody else does right now.”“My art is often based on what I’ve gone through, and being a Black man is part of that,” Derrick Baskin said.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“I cannot imagine any artist now taking any moment of what we do for granted,” Michael Feinstein said.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesPerformers and fans will be greeted with renovations at certain venues, and other enticements. Birdland has reduced its ticket price to 99 cents in July, the fee when the club originally opened in 1949. 54 Below is offering a new menu, created by the “Top Chef” winner Harold Dieterle. The West Bank Café’s Laurie Beechman Theater is getting a “face lift,” said its owner, Steve Olsen — fresh paint, new carpet and bar equipment, upgraded sound and lighting — in preparation for a reopening after Labor Day. The Triad Theater also used its forced downtime to “improve the furnishings, repaint and get new equipment,” said the booking director Bernie Furshpan.But it is the love of performing itself, and the perspective gained after a year of lost shows, that is driving many artists’ emotional responses to returning to the stage. Michael Feinstein, the multitasking American songbook champion and namesake for clubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as New York, believes “that anyone who is a performer is coming out of this in a very different place, with a deeper sense of connection and joy and gratitude.”“I cannot imagine any artist now taking any moment of what we do for granted,” he added. More