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      Ralph Peterson Jr., Jazz Drummer and Bandleader, Dies at 58

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRalph Peterson Jr., Jazz Drummer and Bandleader, Dies at 58Probably the most prominent drummer of his generation to consistently front his own groups, he was also an insightful educator and mentor.The drummer Ralph Peterson Jr. at the Newport Jazz Festival in 2019. In his more than 30 years as a bandleader, he released roughly two dozen albums with an array of ensembles.Credit…Alan NahigianMarch 7, 2021, 5:34 p.m. ETRalph Peterson, a thunderously swinging drummer who began his career as Art Blakey’s last protégé and finished it as a mentor to a new generation of jazz talent, died on March 1 at his home in North Dartmouth, Mass. He was 58.His publicist, Lydia Liebman, said the cause was complications of cancer, which he had been fighting for six years.Mr. Peterson came to the fore in the 1980s as a member of the so-called Young Lions, a coterie of young improvisers devoted to the core ideals of bebop: swing rhythm, acoustic instrumentation and rigorous improvisational exchange within the constraints of a standard song form. Within that context, he brought a take-no-prisoners style and a bountiful, collaborative spirit.Mr. Peterson was probably the most prominent drummer among the Young Lions to consistently front his own groups, and over the course of more than 30 years as a bandleader he released roughly two dozen albums with an array of ensembles.One particularly successful vehicle was the Fo’tet, an unorthodox group consisting of clarinet, vibraphone, bass and drums. It seemed to prove the joyful flexibility of the straight-ahead jazz format, so long as you defined your own way of playing within it.In a 2011 interview with the pianist George Colligan, Mr. Peterson described his approach to tradition simply: “Take what you need and leave the rest.” When teaching, he said, he told students: “Don’t buy in lock, stock and barrel to any philosophy that is not based in your own experience. Because then you are not living your life.”Mr. Peterson joined the Art Blakey Big Band in his early 20s as the ensemble’s second drummer. He then became only the second person besides Blakey — and the longest-serving — to play in his main band, the Jazz Messengers, on Blakey’s own instrument. As Blakey grew ill, Mr. Peterson increasingly took over drum duties.Mr. Peterson led the band Messenger Legacy, composed of former members of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, at Le Poisson Rouge in New York in 2005. Credit…Lev Radin/Pacific Press, via LightRocket, via Getty ImagesFor decades the Messengers had been the premier finishing school for straight-ahead jazz talent, as Blakey brought in an endless stream of young musicians to fill its ranks. From the drum chair, Mr. Peterson came into contact with a Who’s Who of youthful improvisers, many of whom would hire him for their ensembles or play in his own.After Blakey died in 1990, Mr. Peterson became a guardian of his legacy. The Ralph Peterson Quintet’s 1994 album, “Art,” was devoted to the Jazz Messengers repertoire. He later founded the band Messenger Legacy, composed of former Blakey band members, and in later years he and a group of his students recorded “I Remember Bu,” a big-band tribute to Blakey (who had taken the name Buhaina when he converted to Islam in the 1940s).In the mid-’80s, as he began to move beyond Blakey’s shadow, Mr. Peterson played drums in Out of the Blue, a sextet of young musicians assembled by Blue Note Records. In 1988 he released his own debut album for the label, “V,” featuring his quintet.Praising that album in a feature for The New York Times, the critic Jon Pareles called it an “exception” to the trend of albums by Young Lions who seemed partly suffocated by their fealty to tradition. Mr. Peterson’s record, he wrote, “makes hard bop sound daring again.”Ralph Peterson Jr. was born on May 20, 1962, in Pleasantville, N.J. His father was Pleasantville’s first Black police chief, and then its first Black mayor. His mother, Shirley (Jones) Peterson, was a manager at an aviation research center.Ralph grew up surrounded by drummers: His grandfather had been one, as had four of his uncles. Ralph started drumming at 3, and never stopped.He is survived by his wife, Linea; two sisters, Michelle Armstead and Jennifer Armstead; a daughter, Sonora Slocum; and two stepdaughters, Saydee and Haylee McQuay. He is also survived by Jazz Robertson, a mentee he considered his “spiritual daughter.”Alongside drums, Ralph studied the trumpet, and he entered Rutgers University’s jazz studies program as a trumpet major. But he soon departed to join Blakey’s band, and he didn’t return to school for two decades. In the early 2000s, having overcome an addiction to drugs, he returned to Rutgers to complete his bachelor’s degree.By then he was already teaching at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he later became a full professor, gaining a reputation as an insightful and positive-minded educator. Toward the end of his career, fed by the energy of his pupils, Mr. Peterson assembled the GenNext Big Band, a group of Berklee students modeled after the original Art Blakey Big Band. The ensemble released two albums on Mr. Peterson’s Onyx Music label, “I Remember Bu” (2018) and “Listen Up!” (2019).In the classroom, he shared his deep knowledge of jazz history, the lessons that had come to him by way of elders like Blakey, and his own life struggles.“Congratulations! You guys have accomplished a lot by arriving here. You are the best in your communities, the best where you come from,” he was quoted as saying to a roomful of Black students, all newly arrived on campus, in a 2018 article for DownBeat. “My job is to fuel your hunger, create more questions in your mind. And my goal is for you to leave with a sense of empowerment.”By then Mr. Peterson was battling Stage 4 cancer, but he framed his own resilience as a resource his students could access.“What I serve is the music, not my ego,” he told the class. “I’ve had enough chances to be dead, but I’m grateful to be alive. And the focus and intensity and pace at which I’m now working and living is directly related to the spiritual wake-up call that tomorrow isn’t promised.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      St. Vincent’s Synth-Funk ‘Pain,’ and 9 More New Songs

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe PlaylistSt. Vincent’s Synth-Funk ‘Pain,’ and 9 More New SongsHear tracks by Drake featuring Rick Ross, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, Bebe Rexha and others.St. Vincent previews a new album called “Daddy’s Home” with the squelchy “Pay Your Way in Pain.”Credit…Zackery MichaelJon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and March 5, 2021Updated 4:08 p.m. ETEvery 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.St. Vincent, ‘Pay Your Way in Pain’[embedded content]St. Vincent (Annie Clark) piles artifice on artifice on the way to a digitized primal scream in “Pay Your Way in Pain,” from a new album, “Daddy’s Home,” due in May. A throwaway music-hall piano introduction cuts to fat, squelchy 1980s synthesizer tones as she sings, archly but with mounting desperation, about rejection on every front, surrounded by multiples of her own voice processed into gasping, tittering onlookers; they join her to harmonize on the words “pain” and “shame” like decades-later echoes of David Bowie singing “Fame.” It’s droll until it isn’t; at the end, she proclaims, “I want to be loved,” and that last word stretches for a rasping, breathless 17 seconds. JON PARELESNo Rome featuring Charli XCX and the 1975, ‘Spinning’Pros recognize pros. It’s telling that Charli XCX (the Id Girl of hyperpop) and Matty Healy of the 1975 (the most self-conscious yet ambitious arena-rock deconstructionist) both chose to collaborate with No Rome, a Filipino songwriter and producer who melds introversion, melody and electronics. The song ends up on Charli XCX’s turf: teasing, danceable and unstable, flaunting its pitch-shifting and digital edits. But it’s also thoroughly danceable and flirtatious: full of mindless motion. PARELESBruno Mars, Anderson .Paak, Silk Sonic, ‘Leave the Door Open’Both Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars are diligent students of R&B history, especially devoted to its most opulent, funky and idealistic moments in the pre-disco 1970s. So it’s no surprise that their collaboration — Silk Sonic, though they also keep their own search-optimizing names in the billing — harks back, in “Leave the Door Open,” to the close-harmony seductions of groups like the Spinners, the Manhattans and the Stylistics; yes, kids, that’s an analog tape deck rolling as the video begins. The descending guitar glissando, the glockenspiel, the showy key changes, the contrast of grainy lead and perfectionist backup vocals, the detailed erotic invitation of the lyrics — “Come on over, I’ll adore you” — are all good things to revive. PARELESDrake featuring Rick Ross, ‘Lemon Pepper Freestyle’What’s a palate cleanse for Drake is, for most rappers, out of the reach of their ambition and skill. In between albums, he tosses off songs that focus on his tougher side, leaning in to wordy verses largely bereft of melody. “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” — from his new “Scary Hours 2” EP — is a relaxed classic of the form, full of sly rhymes delivered so offhandedly it almost obscures the technical audacity within. The song features frequent mischief buddy Rick Ross, but promptly dispenses with him so that Drake can embark upon a four-plus minute verse touching on his notary public, some wild times in Vegas, smooth co-parenting (“I send her the child support/She send me the heart emoji”), the deadening effects of too much fame, the overpriced accouterments of too much fame and the usual confession/braggadocio nexus that even after more than a decade still stings: “To be real, man, I never did one crime/But none of my brothers can caption that line.” JON CARAMANICABebe Rexha, ‘Sacrifice’New year, nü-disco. Bebe Rexha turns whispering diva on “Sacrifice” — “Wanna be the air every time you breathe/running through your veins, and the spaces in between” — on an elegant track that includes the faintest nod to Real McCoy’s mid-90s ultra-bouncey “Another Night.” CARAMANICATank, ‘Can’t Let It Show’Tank pours out his regrets and begs for reconciliation on “Can’t Let It Show”: “I should’ve been everything I promised,” he croons in an aching tenor, going on to confess, “I’ve been stupid, heartless/I’ve been useless, thoughtless.” Then, in falsetto, he answers with what’s supposed to be her side of the dialogue: a repurposed Kate Bush chorus — “I should be crying but I just can’t let it show” — that makes him think he still stands a chance because she cares. Or is it all just his wishful thinking? PARELESMaroon 5 featuring Megan Thee Stallion, ‘Beautiful Mistakes’An awkward night out in a thankless marriage between a partner barely trying to save face and a partner trying very hard to do just enough so that observers might not notice how poorly suited the pair are to each other. CARAMANICAAshe and Finneas, ‘Til Forever Falls Apart’Perhaps Finneas is a little frustrated — though well-compensated — while he keeps things quiet (but deeply ominous) when he collaborates with his sister, Billie Eilish, whose vocals tend to be melodic whispers. He goes full-scale, orchestral Wall of Sound, appropriately, to share big crescendos with Ashe on “Til Forever Falls Apart,” which starts as a vow of fidelity but turns into visions of California apocalypse. PARELESOmar Sosa, ‘Shibinda’When the prolific Cuban pianist and composer Omar Sosa toured East Africa with his trio in 2009, he brought along a small recording setup, and captured himself playing with leading musicians in every country he visited. Afterward, he overdubbed additional layers of percussion and piano atop the original recordings; now he has finally released these recordings as an album, “An East African Journey.” In Zambia, Sosa met Abel Ntalasha, a multi-instrumentalist and dancer, whose song “Shibinda” tells of a young man growing into adulthood and preparing to marry. Ntalasha plays the kalumbu, a single-stringed instrument, and sings the song’s central incantation. Sosa gets involved gradually, contributing vocals and percussion and rhythmic spritzes high up on the piano. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOHafez Modirzadeh, ‘Facet Sorey’[embedded content]To make his new album, “Facets,” the saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh brought three leading jazz pianists into the studio. But before they arrived, he retuned many of the piano’s strings to reflect an old Persian technique of finding notes in the spaces between the tempered scale. On “Facet Sorey,” Modirzadeh doesn’t play a lick of sax; instead, the multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey handles the piece alone, conjuring up conflicted clouds of harmony, letting the piano’s slightly sour tuning create a feeling of rich uncertainty. RUSSONELLOAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      New Jazz That Agitates for Change

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyPopcastSubscribe:Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsNew Jazz That Agitates for ChangeA conversation about strong recent debuts, and how canon and community can be in tension.Hosted by Jon Caramanica. Produced by Pedro Rosado.More episodes ofPopcastMarch 2, 2021New Jazz That Agitates for ChangeFebruary 15, 2021Remembering Sophie, Architect of Future PopFebruary 5, 2021The Music Lost to Coronavirus, Part 2January 31, 2021Olivia Rodrigo and ‘Drivers License’ Aren’t Going AnywhereJanuary 19, 2021Inside the Bull Market for Songwriting RightsJanuary 7, 2021How Zev Love X Became MF DoomDecember 23, 20202020 Popcast Listener Mailbag: Taylor, Dua, MGK and MoreDecember 15, 2020Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’: Let’s DiscussDecember 9, 2020The Best Albums of 2020? Let’s DiscussNovember 29, 2020Saweetie, City Girls and the Female Rapper RenaissanceNovember 18, 2020Who Will Control Britney Spears’s Future?November 10, 2020Ariana Grande, a Pop Star for the Post-Pop Star AgeSee All Episodes ofPopcastMarch 2, 2021Plenty of genres have anxiety about their relationships to history, but perhaps none more loudly than jazz. The conversation about forward movement vs. reverence of the past is at play constantly, and motivates some of the last year’s most exciting releases by Immanuel Wilkins, Jyoti, Exploding Star Orchestra, even the Sun Ra Arkestra.The anxiety can feel lighter, though, in the genre’s most progressive corners, be it the International Anthem label from Chicago, or the forward-thinking hip-hop of artists including Pink Siifu and Earl Sweatshirt.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about strong recent jazz debuts, the ways in which canon and community can be in tension, and the performers who are looking to innovate in the genre without being beholden to the past.Guests:Giovanni Russonello, who covers jazz for The New York TimesMarcus J. Moore, who writes about music for The New York Times, the Nation and othersAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Milford Graves, Singular Drummer and Polymath, Dies at 79

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMilford Graves, Singular Drummer and Polymath, Dies at 79His free-jazz drumming style was unlike anything heard before, but his explorations and inventions went far beyond music.Milford Graves in 2018 at his Queens home, where his studies ranged from music to cardiology to botany. Sought after by a wide range of students, he was known to most simply as Professor.Credit…George Etheredge for The New YorkFeb. 19, 2021Updated 6:01 p.m. ETBy the time Milford Graves took up the jazz drum kit, in his early 20s, he had spent years playing timbales in Afro-Latin groups. But on the kit he was confronted with the new challenge of using foot pedals as well as his hands. Rather than learn the standard jazz technique, he drew from what he already knew.In the Latin ensembles, “we’d be doing dance movements while we were playing,” he remembered in a 2018 profile in The New York Times. “So I said: ‘That’s all I’ll do. I’m going to start dancing down below.’ I started dancing on the high-hat.”The resulting style was unlike anything heard before in jazz.Mr. Graves mixed polyrhythms constantly, sometimes carrying a different cadence in each limb; the rhythms would diverge, then vaporize. He removed the bottom skins from his drums, deepening and dilating their sound. Often he used his elbows to dampen the head of a drum as he struck it, making its pitch malleable and introducing a new range of possibilities.But he wasn’t a drummer exclusively, or even first. Mr. Graves, who died at 79 on Feb. 12 at his home in South Jamaica, Queens, was also a botanist, acupuncturist, martial artist, impresario, college professor, visual artist and student of the human heartbeat. And in almost every arena, he was an inventor.“In the cosmos, everything — planets — they’re all in motion,” Mr. Graves said in “Milford Graves Full Mantis,” a 2018 documentary film directed by his longtime student Jake Meginsky.“We’ve got so much cosmic energy going through us, and the drumming is supposed to be very related to the intake of this cosmic energy,” he added. “That’s the loop that we have with the cosmos.”His life had taken one last poetic turn. In 2018, seemingly at the start of a late-career renaissance, Mr. Graves learned he had amyloid cardiomyopathy, a rare heart disease known as stiff heart syndrome. He was given six months to live. But since the 1960s he had been studying the human heart, focusing on the power of rhythm and sound to address its pathologies. So he became his own patient, using remedies and insights that he had developed over decades. He lived for over two more years.His daughter Renita Graves said his death was attributed to congestive heart failure brought on by amyloid cardiomyopathy.Mr. Graves said of his diagnosis: “It’s like some higher power saying, ‘OK, buddy, you wanted to study this, here you go.’ Now the challenge is inside of me.”Milford Robert Graves was born on Aug. 20, 1941, in Queens and raised there in the South Jamaica Houses, a public-housing development. His mother, Gonive (William) Graves, was a homemaker, and his father, Marvin, drove a limousine. (Early in Milford’s career, Marvin Graves would drive his son to performances in the limo.)By the time Milford could read, he was already drumming. The first band he put together, in junior high school, was a drum-and-dance group, and he was soon at the fore of his own Latin music ensembles, including the McKinley-Graves Band and the Milford Graves Latino Quintet.By the mid-1960s he had found his way to the avant-garde, at first through collaborations with the saxophonist Giuseppi Logan. He then joined the New York Art Quartet, whose 1964 debut album prominently featured Mr. Graves’s elusive drumming; it has since become part of the free-jazz canon.Mr. Graves, on drums, playing with his frequent collaborator Giuseppi Logan in 1965 at the opening of a Manhattan bookstore.Credit…Eddie Hausner/The New York TimesMeanwhile he undertook a serious study of the Indian tabla while continuing to push his style toward the brink. In a 1965 column for DownBeat magazine, the poet and organizer Amiri Baraka enthused that Mr. Graves’ drumming “must be heard at once.”“Graves has a rhythmic drive, a constant piling up of motor energies, that makes him a distinct stylist,” Mr. Baraka wrote.Mr. Graves joined the band of the saxophonist Albert Ayler in 1967; its historic performances included an appearance at John Coltrane’s funeral. That same year Mr. Graves won the DownBeat critics’ award for the brightest young talent.He began to appear more often as a leader, or in duos, and embraced a full-body approach to performing. He vocalized more from behind the drum set, usually in a babble or a rhythmic cry. As his career went on, his performances came to include philosophical, humorous lectures in roughly equal measure to the music.Mr. Graves performing in 2013 on opening night of the Vision Festival in Brooklyn, where he was honored.Credit…Ruby Washington/The New York TimesWith Black Nationalism gaining steam, Mr. Graves helped lead the way for a cadre of musicians seeking self-determination in the industry. He started the Self-Reliance Project record label to release his own albums and became involved in actions on behalf of student protesters and revolutionary groups.For much of the 1960s he lived with his wife and children in the East New York section of Brooklyn, then returned to his old neighborhood in 1970, moving into the South Jamaica house where his grandparents had lived.They had once used the house’s basement as a neighborhood speakeasy, but when Mr. Graves moved in he converted it into a dojo, where he practiced and taught Yara, a martial art of his own creation. Its name is the Yoruba word for agility, and its practices mixed East Asian traditions with West African dance, as well as insights from Mr. Graves’s close study of live praying mantises.The basement eventually became his laboratory, where he focused on cardiology, acupuncture and herbalism. He also worked in a veterinary lab during the 1970s, where he set up and ran clinical tests to investigate new medicines.In the house’s garden, he mixed plants from all parts of the world. “I have a global garden,” he said in the documentary. “My garden’s not like people. You’ve got all these people of different ethnicities, they all hang out in their own communities. This don’t work like that. They all hang out together.”In addition to his daughter Renita, Mr. Graves is survived by his wife of more than 60 years, Lois Graves; three other daughters, Kim, Monifa and Lenne’ Graves; his son, Kevin; and grandchildren.At the invitation of Bill Dixon, a trumpeter and organizer, Mr. Graves joined the faculty of the Black Music Division at Bennington College, where he taught for 39 years, traveling to Vermont once a week for classes.But he also ministered to musicians who traveled from afar to seek him out and to a devoted following of men living in the neighborhood who respected him as a community elder. For decades he hosted martial arts workshops, herbalism clinics and salons that doubled as drum lessons. To all the participants, he was known simply as Professor.Mr. Graves often demanded that visitors submit to recording their heart beats for research purposes. Initially he worked with analog tape recorders, attaching speakers to people’s chests. After receiving a Guggenheim fellowship in 2000, he bought a full suite of computers and loaded them with the LabView application, which he programmed to measure and document the wide range of sonic frequencies created by the human heart.Mr. Graves in 2018 in his lab at his Queens home. He programmed computers to measure and document the wide range of sonic frequencies created by human heart.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesHe then created a kind of electronic music out of the frequencies and sought to use this music to strengthen the natural heartbeat. In recent years he developed a partnership with Carlo Ventura, a cardiologist at the University of Bologna, doing research that demonstrated, they said, that his heart music could be used to stimulate stem cell growth as well.Late in life, Mr. Graves began creating sculptural works inspired by his research into the heart, and he was quickly embraced by the visual art world. In the months before he died, he was the subject of a far-ranging and well-received retrospective exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Philadelphia.In a 2009 interview for All About Jazz, Mr. Graves said he had always sought to treat every second of the waking day as a chance for inquiry.“Don’t tell me how many years you’ve been doing something,” he said. “I want to know how completely you’re filling that time, how you’re spending each nanosecond.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Billie Holiday’s Story Depends on Who’s Telling It

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBillie Holiday’s Story Depends on Who’s Telling ItThere are almost as many interpretations of her short life and enormous legacy as there are books and films about her, including the new biopic starring Andra Day.Andra Day and Kevin Hanchard in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” directed by Lee Daniels.Credit…Takashi Seida/Paramount Pictures/HuluFeb. 18, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETFor the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, the story of Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz singer, came to her in dribs and drabs. When Parks was growing up, she said, “our parents would tell us, ‘She had a tragic story.’ And then, as we got a little older, ‘She used drugs.’ And then as we got a little older, my mom would start saying things like, you know, they got to her. But she didn’t really get into it.”In the forthcoming drama “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” Parks, who wrote the screenplay, really gets into it, placing many of Holiday’s better-known battles — with heroin addiction, Jim Crow-era racism, and a seemingly endless string of swindlers and cads — in the context of her lesser-known struggles with Harry J. Anslinger, the unabashedly racist head of the now-defunct Federal Bureau of Narcotics.“The story is about how this woman, this icon, was much too outspoken, and so the government came after her,” Parks said in a phone interview. “It’s about how we African-American folks love this country that doesn’t really love us back.”Directed by Lee Daniels, the film reveals how Anslinger doggedly pursued Holiday (played by the Grammy-nominated vocalist Andra Day) ostensibly for her drug use, but really because she refused to stop singing “Strange Fruit,” the haunting and visceral anti-lynching anthem that has become one of the most famous protest songs of all time.The role, Day admitted, was daunting. Holiday was one of the world’s most gifted and celebrated jazz singers, her songs later covered by artists like John Coltrane, Barbra Streisand and Nina Simone, her influence felt by singers from Frank Sinatra to Cassandra Wilson to Day herself. And then there were all the others who had tackled the role before her. “I just had this idea running in my head that people would be like: ‘Billie Holiday’s so amazing, Diana Ross was amazing, Audra McDonald was amazing,’” Day said in a video call. “‘Oh, and then remember that girl, Andra Day, who tried to play Billie?’”Audra McDonald played the jazz star in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” on Broadway in 2014.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPremiering on Hulu on Feb. 26, the biopic is the latest in a series of portrayals of Lady Day and her music that date back decades. Day’s Golden Globe-nominated performance follows Ross’s star turn in the 1972 feature “Lady Sings the Blues” and McDonald’s Tony-winning performances in the Broadway musical “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill.” In addition, there have been biographies (“Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon”), children’s books (“Mister and Lady Day: Billie Holiday and the Dog Who Loved Her”), and documentaries (“The Long Night of Lady Day”; “Billie”). Over the years, portrayals of Holiday have become more nuanced, shifting focus away from her problems with addiction to include insights into her history and legacy as a musician, a pioneering Black female entertainer and, with “Strange Fruit,” a champion of civil rights.Looming over them all is “Lady Sings the Blues,” Holiday’s 1956 ghostwritten autobiography, which omitted many details of her life (the singer’s affairs with Orson Welles and Tallulah Bankhead) and fictionalized others (her place of birth; the marital status of her parents).The book formed the basis for the 1972 biopic, a film that, coincidentally, inspired Daniels to become a director. (His credits include “The Butler” and “Precious.”) “‘Lady Sings the Blues’ changed my life,” he said in a phone interview. “It was beautiful Black people. It was Diana Ross at the height of her everything. It was Black excellence mixed in with a little bit of pig’s feet and pineapple soda and cornbread. It was magic. I had never been so entranced by anything.”The musical “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” imagines a single set — but what a set! — during which the singer goes off the rails in a small nightspot in Philadelphia, the site of her previous arrest on drug charges. (“When I die,” she cracks, “I don’t care if I go to heaven or hell, as long as it ain’t in Philly.”) Holiday rails against the bad men in her life, including her first husband, Jimmy Monroe, and the anonymous attacker who raped her when she was a child.Since that musical’s premiere in 1986, a host of would-be Lady Days have tackled the demanding role in theaters across the country, including Lonette McKee and Ernestine Jackson. In 2014, McDonald’s rendition won the actress a record-breaking sixth Tony.Diana Ross as Holiday in the 1972 movie “Lady Sings the Blues.”Credit…Paramount PicturesTo bring the icon to life in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” Parks read everything she could about the singer and immersed herself in her music. She reread “Lady Sings the Blues” but didn’t revisit the movie. (“Lee loves that film, so I was like, I’m going to let him have that.”) She also read several books by Anslinger, Holiday’s longtime nemesis (played by Garrett Hedlund in the film), who declared that jazz “sounded like the jungle in the dead of night” and declared that the lives of its players “reek of filth.”“Anslinger was fascinated with what he called the ‘jazz type,’ and saw himself as making America great again,” Parks said.Parks also studied up on Jimmy Fletcher, the Black narcotics agent whom Anslinger enlisted to help bring Holiday down. “That’s the situation we’re in as Black America right now,” Parks said. “Want to prove you’re not really Black? Put down some Black people. That’s the way to climb the ladder in the entertainment business. I’m not going to name any names! But you still see it.”In addition to Fletcher and Anslinger, a whole roster of bad men enter Holiday’s life, including the mob enforcer Louis McKay, the singer’s third husband. In the 1972 “Lady Sings the Blues,” McKay, as played by Billy Dee Williams, is Holiday’s super-suave, would-be savior, who struggles mightily (and fails) to get the singer off drugs. (The real McKay served as that movie’s technical adviser.) In reality — and in Daniels’s film — McKay was a pimp, a junkie and a wife beater.“The same woman who was so strong, who could see so clearly the injustices in our culture, just kept hooking up with the wrong guy,” Parks said. “But I guess that’s how it always is. Great people do great things, but then at home, they’re like —” and here the writer screamed.Even so, the singer who emerges in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” is more fighter than victim, taking on Anslinger (near the end of the film, she tells him, “Your grandkids are going to be singing ‘Strange Fruit’”) and holding her own against Fletcher.“You get to see her as human,” Day said. “As Black women, we’re not supposed to show the ugly parts or the mistakes. Billie’s funny, she has this great magnetism, she can be crazy and self-destructive. But she can also stand up and be a pillar of strength when forces that are so much greater than her are trying to destroy her.”The singer as seen in James Erskine’s documentary “Billie.”Credit…Michael Ochs/Greenwich EntertainmentJames Erskine, the director of the recent documentary “Billie,” also wanted to move beyond the standard narratives of Holiday as victim. “I was really keen to show that she lived life,” he said. “There’s a sequence where she’s on 42nd Street and she’s having lots of sex and taking lots of drugs, and I really wanted that to feel very positive, that she was determining her own destiny.”Erskine’s film drew from 200 hours of audio interviews conducted by the journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl in the 1970s. Many of the comments haven’t aged well: One psychiatrist declares Holiday a psychopath; others attribute her beatings by assorted men to masochism.The documentary also includes commentary about Holiday’s deep and platonic love for the saxophonist Lester Young, her unfulfilled desire to have children, and her sold-out 1948 concert at Carnegie Hall, following her stint in a federal prison in West Virginia.“The perception from ‘Lady Sings the Blues’ is very much Billie as victim and junkie, but I think that while she was victimized by people, she was really a fighter,” Erskine said. “And she was also a great artist, of course, which is why we’re still talking about her long after she died.”For Daniels, Holiday’s story will always be relevant. “It’s America’s story,” he said. “And until we’re healing, until American has healed, it’s not going to not be relevant.”In Parks’s view, “She was a soldier. Just the fact that she kept singing ‘Strange Fruit’! She was a soldier of the first order. Those mink coats and diamonds that she wore were her armor, and her voice was her sword.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Chick Corea: Hear 12 Essential Performances

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPlaylistChick Corea: Hear 12 Essential PerformancesThe jazz pianist and innovator was at the forefront of the movement blending jazz and rock in the 1970s, and recorded close to 90 albums as a bandleader or co-leader.Whether on his own, leading the collective Return to Forever or accompanying giants like Miles Davis, Chick Corea helped enrich the lexicon of jazz.Credit…Chuck Fishman/Getty ImagesFeb. 12, 2021, 2:23 p.m. ETChick Corea, the pioneering keyboardist and bandleader who died on Tuesday at 79, will be forever regarded as a crucial architect of jazz-rock fusion.It’s a fitting one-line tribute. Whether on his own, leading the collective Return to Forever or accompanying giants like Miles Davis (on landmark albums including “In a Silent Way” and “Bitches Brew”), Corea helped enrich the lexicon of jazz — merging its harmonic language with the heaviness (and amplification) of rock and funk. But no description, even one this broad, can encompass a vision so limitless.“After all, formal styles are only an afterthought — an outgrowth of the creative impulse,” Corea told The New York Times in 1983. “Nobody sits down and decides to specifically write in a predetermined style. A style is not something you learn so much as something that you synthesize. Musicians don’t care if a given composition is jazz, pop or classical music. All they care about is whether it is good music — whether it is challenging and exciting.”For more than five decades, Corea modified his sound to follow that simple maxim — chasing whims from bebop to free jazz to fusion to contemporary classical. He recorded close to 90 albums as a bandleader or co-leader. And he always prioritized melody and musicality over empty-calorie showmanship (though few could rival his raw skill on the Fender Rhodes).Here are 12 of his elite studio and live performances.‘Miles Runs the Voodoo Down’ (1970)Corea and Joe Zawinul form a wall of Rhodes on this slinky, funky cut from Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew,” punctuated by John McLaughlin’s ice-pick guitars and Davis’s sighing trumpet. The rhythm section is so dense, it’s hard to savor it all: two electric basses (Dave Holland and Harvey Brooks), two drum sets (Don Alias and Jack DeJohnette) and the congas of Juma Santos. Good thing it lasts 14 minutes. The keyboardists shift from question marks to exclamation points — one moment prodding against the groove, the next soloing in colorful bursts of noise. “Trust yourself,” Corea said in 2020, was Davis’s philosophy. “When he says, ‘Play what you don’t hear,’ he means, trust your imagination. Trust yourself to say, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do next, but I’m just going to do it because it’s fun. Because I love it.’”‘Chris’ (1970)Corea splatters electric piano all across this nine-minute monster from the guitarist Larry Coryell’s “Spaces,” a pillar of early fusion. The arrangement seems to teeter between structure and improvisation, straight groove and cosmic freedom. The lineup is the definition of a supergroup: Corea and Coryell, plus John McLaughlin on guitar, Miroslav Vitouš (later of Weather Report) on double bass and Billy Cobham on drums.‘Spain’ (1973)The rare fusion tune with a shelf life as a jazz standard, “Spain” remains Corea’s signature composition — covered by artists as different as Stevie Wonder and Béla Fleck. The original, from Return to Forever’s “Light as a Feather,” is untouchable: Over nearly 10 minutes, the keyboardist’s hands joyfully pirouette across the Rhodes, his mellifluous melodies matched by Flora Purim’s tranquil coo and Joe Farrell’s fluttering flute. The chorus, with its clipped keyboard phrases and enthusiastic handclaps, ranks alongside Weather Report’s main “Birdland” theme as one of the catchiest moment in fusion history.‘Space Circus, Part I’/‘Space Circus, Part II’ (1973)In its infancy, Return to Forever already rivaled the intensity of most ’70s rock bands. But it sounded positively massive on its third album, adding two new recruits (the powerhouse drummer Lenny White and the guitarist Bill Connors) and letting Stanley Clarke switch to electric bass. The group showed its full dynamic range on this two-parter from Return to Forever’s “Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy,” opening with Corea’s dreamy Rhodes theme before erupting into tightly clenched funk. Connors’s bruising guitar and Clarke’s distorted bass drift into psych-rock territory — but even when the keyboardist lays back a bit, his steady chords remain the heartbeat of the ensemble.‘Song to John (Part I)’/‘Song to John (Part II)’ (1975)Corea’s acoustic piano slips into sumptuous New Age territory on the first half of these tracks from Stanley Clarke’s “Journey to Love,” trading fanfare with Clarke’s bowed bass and John McLaughlin’s acoustic guitar. The group nails down an intense Latin groove on the second half, with McLaughlin and Corea sparking fireworks. In the liner notes, Clarke dedicated the two-part piece to John Coltrane — and it lives up to the billing.‘Sorceress’ (1976)The definitive Return to Forever lineup — Corea, Clarke, White and the guitarist Al Di Meola — splintered after the 1976 album “Romantic Warrior.” But as this funky odyssey proves, they went out at a near peak. White is credited as composer here, and his fidgety drum groove certainly keeps the engine running. But “Sorceress” also finds Corea at perhaps his most versatile, keyboard-wise — weaving in atmospheric pads, squiggly synth leads and Latin themes on acoustic piano.‘Spanish Fantasy’ (1976)Corea was always influenced by Latin music, explaining “that flavor, I find, is mostly in everything I do,” to Billboard in 2019. “It’s a part of me. I don’t know how to differentiate it.” But he never plunged in more deeply than on his 10th solo LP, “My Spanish Heart.” The record peaks with this whiplash four-part suite, which sprawls from elegant string and brass sections to acoustic piano interludes to the tastiest jazz-rock rave-ups this side of Steely Dan’s “Aja.”‘Short Tales of the Black Forest’ (1976)Composed by Corea for his Forever bandmate Di Meola’s debut solo album, “Land of the Midnight Sun,” this mini-epic makes good use of its virtuoso flash — both players sound like they could drift away from their instruments into the sky. But there are plenty of graceful melodies packed into these five and a half minutes. Midway through, Corea slips into gentle chordal comping while Di Meola ascends and descends the scales. Corea even gets to showcase his marimba skills, adding extra drama to a climactic flourish.‘Homecoming’ (1979)Corea and Herbie Hancock, two of fusion’s elite keyboardists, embarked on an acoustic duo tour in 1978, and the pair, both veterans of the Miles Davis bands, interlock to a startling degree on the two live LPs that emerged from those dates. One highlight is a 19-minute version of “Homecoming” from “CoreaHancock,” expertly merging their instruments into one organism. They move from beauty to ugliness on a dime — midway through, the piece morphs into a section of guttural grunting, percussive pounding and prepared piano madness.‘Rumble’ (1986)Like most fusion giants who survived into the mid-80s, Corea embraced the colors and contours of the time, forming his Elektric Band with the drummer Dave Weckl, the bassist John Patitucci and the alternating guitarists Scott Henderson and Carlos Rios. The rhythm section runs free on this neon-coated number from “The Chick Corea Elektric Band,” defined by its twisting, Zappa-like rhythms and Corea’s comically bright synthesizers.‘Spain (Live)’ (1992)Corea stretched out “Spain” like taffy over the decades, retaining his interest by reworking it for various settings and band configurations. (“By 1976 or so, I started to tire of the song,” he told The Atlantic in 2011. “I started playing really perverted versions of it — I’d refer to it just for a second, then I’d go off on an improvisation.”) One of his most stunning later-day renditions is this live acoustic duet from “Play” with the vocalist Bobby McFerrin, who breathes new life into the piece with his divine falsetto, rumbling bass lines and body percussion. For all the sublime technique, the biggest revelation is hearing these two giants lock into perfect symmetry on the main theme.‘Crystal Silence’ (2008)Corea re-teamed with the vibraphonist Gary Burton for the Grammy-winning, double-disc live LP “The New Crystal Silence,” built largely on reworked pieces from Corea’s back catalog. The duo had collaborated on and off for decades, and the music here feels appropriately natural and lived-in — even full-blown Zen, like on the expanded take on “Crystal Silence.” Captured in crisp, studio-level fidelity, Corea and Burton trade phrases and counterpoint patterns, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra rounding out that breezy conversation.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Taylor Swift’s New Old ‘Love Story,’ and 12 More Songs

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe PlaylistTaylor Swift’s New Old ‘Love Story,’ and 12 More SongsHear tracks by Dua Lipa, Nicky Jam and Romeo Santos, R+R=Now and others.Taylor Swift has released a new version of her 2008 hit “Love Story” as the first of the songs she is rerecording from her first six albums.Credit…Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Chris Pizzello/Invision/ApJon Pareles, Jon Caramanica, Giovanni Russonello and Feb. 12, 2021Updated 2:22 p.m. ETEvery 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.Taylor Swift, ‘Love Story (Taylor’s Version)’[embedded content]As the first official release of her rerecorded back catalog, “Love Story,” from Taylor Swift’s 2008 album, “Fearless,” is a savvy pick. Not only is it one of her most beloved hits, but it also means that the first new-old lyric we hear the 31-year-old Swift sing is, “We were both young when I first saw you” — an immediate invocation of the past that subtly reframes the recording as a kind of tender love song to her 18-year-old self. Swift is more interested in impressive note-for-note simulacrum than revisionism here, though sharp-eared Swifties will delight in noticing the tiniest differences (like the playful staccato hiccup she adds to “Rom-e-oh!” on the second pre-chorus.) When Swift first announced her intentions to rerecord her first six albums, skeptics wondered if the whole project was just an uncomfortably public display of personal animosity toward her former business partners, and the songs’ new owners. But Swift has so far brought a sense of triumph, grace and artistry to the endeavor, and in doing so has begun the process of retelling her story on her own terms. It’s better than revenge. LINDSAY ZOLADZRebecca Black featuring Dorian Electra, Big Freedia and 3OH!3, ‘Friday (Remix)’Let’s say you want to rewrite your past. Write it over, like an old hard drive. Take a thing that made you well known, and reclaim it. Send a message to the people who robbed that thing of the pleasure and satisfaction it brought you. Sure, you could do a note-for-note rerecording that serves primarily as a middle finger to equity investors. Or perhaps you could take the Rebecca Black route. It’s been around a decade since “Friday,” her debut single, made her an early casualty of social media cruelty. But Black has been releasing music steadily, and quietly, for the last few years, and recently she’s been inching back into the spotlight as a reliably charming presence on TikTok. Musically, she’s found her footing as an outré eccentric with sturdy savvy, an ideal approach for — and a natural position for — someone who’s been chewed to pulp by the internet. Hence, the reclaiming of “Friday,” with a chaotic, loopy, joyful, meta-hyperpop remix with Dorian Electra, Big Freedia and 3OH!3, all produced by Dylan Brady of 100 gecs. The original song became an ur-text of outcast misery. How wonderful to hold it tight all these years, and just wait for your band of misfits to come along. JON CARAMANICADua Lipa, ‘We’re Good’Dua Lipa is at her cheekiest on “We’re Good,” a bonus track from the new deluxe “Moonlight Edition” of her 2020 album, “Future Nostalgia”: “We’re not meant to be, like sleeping and cocaine,” she croons. OK then! The video is, similarly, full of irreverent, not-sure-it-all-quite-lands humor, as a tank of imperiled lobsters are saved from becoming dinner by … the Titanic sinking? Thankfully the song itself is pretty straightforward and fun — a sassy, slinky kiss-off that’s more reliably buoyant than that doomed luxury liner. ZOLADZNicky Jam and Romeo Santos, ‘Fan de Tus Fotos’“Fan de Tus Fotos” finds the smooth reggaeton star Nicky Jam and the bachata superstar Romeo Santos both longing for the same woman, crooning one come on after another. Santos, in particular, is vivid, singing (in Spanish), “I’m your fan looking for a ticket/for a concert with your body.” In the video, both are office drones obsessed with the same supervisor, who metes out two punishments for their workplace insubordination — she fires them (bad), then finds more direct ways to boss them around (ummmmm … not bad?). CARAMANICACherry Glazerr, ‘Big Bang’Clementine Creevy, the songwriter who leads Cherry Glazerr, has moved well beyond the lean, guitar-driven rock of her recent past. “Big Bang” is a negotiation with an ex who’s still in the picture: “I still call you when I need escaping,” she admits, only to insist, “I don’t wanna make you my lifeline.” Her mixed feelings play out over a stately march that rises to near-orchestral peaks. Is she arguing with her ex or with herself? JON PARELESDeath From Above 1979, ‘One + One’What happens when post-punks grow up? The guitar-and-drums duo Death From Above 1979 has one answer: a hard-riffing embrace of happy monogamy and proud fatherhood. “One plus one is three — that’s magic!” The drums still pound and skitter, and the guitar still bites, while the nuclear family is reaffirmed. PARELESR+R=Now, ‘How Much a Dollar Cost’The pianist Robert Glasper and the alto saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin played important roles in the making of Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly,” and they’re also at the nucleus of R+R=Now, a contemporary-jazz supergroup that works in conversation with hip-hop and R&B. (It also includes Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah on trumpet, Derrick Hodge on bass, Taylor McFerrin on synthesizer, and Justin Tyson on drums.) When the group performed at Glasper’s Blue Note residency in New York in 2018, Lamar’s “How Much a Dollar Cost” was part of the set. That show was released today as a live album; on the Lamar cover, without an M.C., the fiery interplay between Adjuah and Martin takes over storytelling duties. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOMatt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, ‘Hall of Death’What could have been a country waltz becomes, instead, a hyperactive scramble of distorted Tuareg guitar riffs and three-against-two cross-rhythms. The weary voice and haunted lyrics of Will Oldham (Bonnie “Prince” Billy) are backed not only by Matt Sweeney but by the unstoppable Mdou Moctar Ensemble — which includes their songwriting collaborator Ahmoudou Madassane on guitar, from Niger. The track winds up, unexpectedly, as something like a love song. PARELESLil Tjay featuring 6lack, ‘Calling My Phone’Lightly resentful sad boy R&B from Lil Tjay and 6lack — Lil Tjay sounds depleted, while 6lack sounds like he never takes his sunglasses off when he looks you in the eye. CARAMANICAKaty Kirby, ‘Portals’Katy Kirby’s voice is modest and breathy, with a few unconcealed cracks, as she muses over a shaky relationship in metaphysical terms: “If we peel apart will we be stronger than before/we had formed ourselves together in a temporary whole?” She’s accompanied by calm, steady, basic piano chords in the foreground, while chamber-pop co-conspirators open up creaky mysteries around her. PARELESLucy Gooch, ‘Ash and Orange’The composer and singer Lucy Gooch layers her keyboards and vocals into enveloping reveries. “Ash and Orange” relies on organ-toned synthesizer chords, distant church bells and countless choirlike overdubbed harmonies for a song that evolves from meditation to an open-ended quasi-confession — despairing? forgiving? — from overlapping voices: “In my heart, in my head, I’ve tried.” PARELESMark Feldman, ‘As We Are’Fluidly spiraling up the violin’s neck, then dashing and plucking and scraping back down in a rough swarm: that’s the sound of Mark Feldman — unflinching and unconstrained as always — in a solo rendition of Sylvie Courvoisier’s “As We Are.” Later he lets the piece’s off-the-grid melody carry him into a stretch of intense improvising. This track opens Feldman’s engrossing new album, “Sounding Point,” his first solo violin LP in over 25 years. RUSSONELLOBrent Faiyaz featuring Purr, ‘Circles’In “Circles,” the producer and singer Brent Faiyaz ponders identity, purpose and eschatology: “Did I forget who I am? Chasing gold?/Only heaven knows if you can truly win in the midst of a world that’s gon’ end.” Nothing is reliable: not the computer-shifted pitch of his voice, not the loop of plinky tones behind him, not the beat that’s sometimes interrupted, not even whether it’s one song or two. For its last 47 seconds, the track changes completely, turning into retro soundtrack rock as, in the video, Faiyaz leaves the studio gloom, climbs into his sports car and drives off. PARELESAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More