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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

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      Chick Corea, Jazz Keyboardist and Innovator, Dies at 79

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyChick Corea, Jazz Keyboardist and Innovator, Dies at 79When jazz and rock fused in the 1970s, he was at the forefront of the movement. But he never abandoned his love of the acoustic piano.The pianist, composer and bandleader Chick Corea at the Blue Note in Manhattan in 2012. In his long career, he recorded close to 90 albums as a bandleader or co-leader and won 23 Grammys.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York TimesFeb. 11, 2021Chick Corea, an architect of the jazz-rock fusion boom of the 1970s who spent more than a half century as one of the foremost pianists in jazz, died on Tuesday at his home in Tampa, Fla. He was 79.The cause was cancer, said Dan Muse, a spokesman for Mr. Corea’s family.Mr. Corea’s best-known band was Return to Forever, a collective with a rotating membership that nudged the genre of fusion into greater contact with Brazilian, Spanish and other global influences. It also provided Mr. Corea with a palette on which to experiment with a growing arsenal of new technologies.But throughout his career he never abandoned his first love, the acoustic piano, on which his punctilious touch and crisp sense of harmony made his playing immediately distinctive.Mr. Corea in 2006 at the Blue Note, where his performances often combined reunions with longtime associates and collaborations with younger accompanists.Credit…Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesA number of his compositions, including “Spain,” “500 Miles High” and “Tones for Joan’s Bones,” have become jazz standards, marked by his dreamy but brightly illuminated harmonies and ear-grabbing melodies.By the late 1960s, Mr. Corea, still in his 20s, had already established himself as a force to be reckoned with. He gigged and recorded with some of the leading names in straight-ahead and Latin jazz, including Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Mongo Santamaria and Sarah Vaughan. His first two albums as a leader, “Tones for Joan’s Bones” (1966) and “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs” (1968), earned rave reviews. Both are now thought of as classics.But it was playing in Miles Davis’s ensembles that set Mr. Corea on the path that would most define his role in jazz. He played the electric piano on Davis’s “In a Silent Way” (1969) and “Bitches Brew” (1970), the albums that sounded the opening bell for the fusion era.From left, Dave Holland, Miles Davis and Mr. Corea in 1969. Mr. Corea played electric piano in Davis’s band and on the Davis albums widely considered to have sounded the opening bell for the fusion era.Credit…Tad Hershorn/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesSoon after leaving Davis’s group, he helped found Return to Forever, and he spent much of the 1970s touring and recording with the band, which became one of the most popular instrumental ensembles of its era.Reviewing a performance at the Blue Note in New York in 2006, the critic Nate Chinen, writing in The New York Times, recalled the innovative sound that Mr. Corea had honed with Return to Forever three decades before: “His Fender Rhodes piano chimed and chirruped over Latin American rhythms; female vocals commingled with the soothing flutter of a flute. Then the ensemble muscled up and morphed into a hyperactive fusion band, establishing pop-chart presence and a fan base to match. To the extent that there is a Return to Forever legacy, it encompasses both these dynamic extremes, each a facet of Mr. Corea’s personality.”By the time of that Blue Note show, Mr. Corea’s career was entering a chapter of happy reminiscence, full of reunion concerts and retrospective projects. But he continued to build out from the groundwork he had laid.In 2013, for instance, he released two albums introducing new bands: “The Vigil,” featuring an electrified quintet of younger musicians, and “Trilogy,” an acoustic-trio album on which he was joined by the bassist Christian McBride and the drummer Brian Blade.Return to Forever, one of the most popular instrumental ensembles of its era, in 1976. From left: Lenny White, Stanley Clarke, Al Di Meola and Mr. Corea.Credit…Dick Barnatt/Redferns, via Getty ImagesHe kept up a busy touring schedule well into his late 70s, and his performances at the Blue Note in particular often combined reunions with longtime associates and collaborations with younger accompanists, mixing nostalgia with a will to forge ahead. Those performances often found their way onto albums, including “The Musician” (2017), a three-disc collection drawn from his nearly two-month-long residency at the club in 2011, when he was celebrating his 70th birthday in the company of such fellow luminaries as the pianist Herbie Hancock, the bassist and Return to Forever co-founder Stanley Clarke and the vocalist Bobby McFerrin.By the end of his career Mr. Corea had recorded close to 90 albums as a bandleader or co-leader and raked in 23 Grammys, more than almost any other musician. He also won three Latin Grammys.In 2006 he was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, the highest honor available to an American jazz musician.Though he had become symbolic of the fusion movement, Mr. Corea never put much stock in musical categories. “It’s the media that are so interested in categorizing music,” he told The Times in 1983, “the media and the businessmen, who, after all, have a vested interest in keeping marketing clear cut and separate. If critics would ask musicians their views about what is happening, you would find that there is always a fusion of sorts taking place. All this means is a continual development — a continual merging of different streams.”Mr. Corea’s first marriage ended in divorce. He met Gayle Moran, who became his second wife, in the 1970s, when he was in Return to Forever and she was a singer and keyboardist with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, another top-flight fusion band.She survives him, as do a son, Thaddeus Corea; a daughter, Liana Corea; and two grandchildren.In the early 1970s, Mr. Corea converted to Scientology, and the religion’s teachings informed much of his music from then on, including his work with Return to Forever.Mr. Corea in 1978. “If critics would ask musicians their views about what is happening,” he once said, “you would find that there is always a fusion of sorts taking place.” Credit…Chuck FishmanArmando Anthony Corea was born on June 12, 1941, in Chelsea, Mass., near Boston. His father, also named Armando Corea, was a trumpeter and bandleader in Boston, and his mother, Anna (Zaccone) Corea, was a homemaker. He began studying piano when he was 4.He picked up his nickname from an aunt, who often pinched his big cheeks and called him “cheeky.” The name eventually morphed into the pithier “Chick.”He moved to New York City to study at Columbia University and Juilliard, but that lasted only a few months. As Miles Davis had a generation before, when he arrived at Juilliard from East St. Louis, Ill., Mr. Corea quickly found himself lured out of the classroom and into the clubs. Some of his earliest gigs came in the bands of the famed Latin jazz percussionists Mongo Santamaría and Willie Bobo, as well as with the swing-era vocalist and bandleader Cab Calloway.In 1968 he assumed the piano chair in Davis’s influential quintet, replacing Mr. Hancock. The band quickly went into the studio to record the final tracks that would round out “Filles de Kilimanjaro,” Davis’s first album to feature an electric piano. It signaled the trumpeter’s growing embrace of rock and funk music, a move encouraged by his second wife, the vocalist Betty Davis. (One of the two tracks featuring Mr. Corea is a tribute to her, the 16 ½-minute “Mademoiselle Mabry.”)The group gradually expanded in size as Davis wandered deeper into the murky, wriggling sound world of his early fusion albums. He brought a version of the “Bitches Brew” band to the Isle of Wight festival in 1970, the largest gig of his career, before an audience of 600,000.Soon after playing that concert, Mr. Corea and the bassist Dave Holland left Davis’s ensemble and joined with the drummer Barry Altschul and the saxophonist Anthony Braxton to found Circle, a short-lived but influential group that embraced an avant-garde approach.Mr. Corea founded Return to Forever in 1971 with Mr. Clarke, the saxophonist and flutist Joe Farrell, the percussionist Airto Moreira and the vocalist Flora Purim. The following year, the band released its Brazilian-tinged debut album, titled simply “Return to Forever,” on the ECM label.Also in 1972, Mr. Corea teamed up for the first time with the vibraphonist Gary Burton to record another album for the same label, “Crystal Silence.” The two became longtime friends and collaborators. Taken together, the two ECM albums represented something close to the full breadth of Mr. Corea’s identity as a musician — ranging from the serene and meditative to the zesty and driving.“We made that record in three hours; every song but one was a first take,” Mr. Burton said in an interview, recalling the “Crystal Silence” sessions. They would go on to record seven duet albums, and they continued performing together until Mr. Burton’s recent retirement.“I kept thinking, ‘Surely it’s going to run out of steam here at some point,’” Mr. Burton said. “And it never did. Even at the end, we would still come offstage excited and thrilled by what we were doing.”Return to Forever changed personnel frequently, but its most enduring lineup featured Mr. Corea, Mr. Clarke, the guitarist Al Di Meola and the drummer Lenny White. That quartet iteration released a string of popular albums — “Where Have I Known You Before” (1974), “No Mystery” (1975) and “Romantic Warrior” (1976) — that leaned into a blazing, hard-rock-influenced style, and each reached the Top 40 on the Billboard albums chart.Mr. Corea released a number of other influential fusion albums on his own, including “My Spanish Heart” (1976) and a string of recordings with his Elektric Band and his Akoustic Band. Later in his career he also delved deeply into the Western classical tradition, recording works by canonical composers like Mozart and Chopin, and composing an entire concerto for classical orchestra.“His versatility is second to none when it comes to the jazz world,” Mr. Burton said. “He played in so many styles and settings and collaborations.”In 1997, delivering a commencement address at Berklee College of Music, Mr. Corea told the members of the graduating class to insist on blazing their own path. “It’s all right to be yourself,” he said. “In fact, the more yourself you are, the more money you make.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Mastery and Transgression’ in Music That Bridges Genres

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Notebook‘Mastery and Transgression’ in Music That Bridges GenresA new box set showcases Julius Hemphill’s work as a composer, saxophonist and flutist on the boundary between jazz and classical styles.“The Boyé Multi-National Crusade for Harmony,” issued by New World Records and named after one of Julius Hemphill’s touring projects, shows how thoroughly he adapted and reinvigorated his early influences.Credit…George Rose/Getty ImagesFeb. 5, 2021Julius Hemphill was a vigorous force in American music from his first public performances and recordings in the late 1960s until his death, at 57, in 1995. Whether playing saxophone or flute — or even, as on his overdubbed solo “Blue Boyé,” both at once — he blended folk traditions with a joyous avant-garde edge.Growing up in Fort Worth, he heard R&B-infused jazz and country twang. The booklet included with a new seven-disc set of Hemphill’s compositions, many previously unreleased and drawn from his archive at New York University, quotes from an interview about those early years: “It was musically rich,” he said. “I could hear Hank Williams coming out of the jukebox at Bunker’s, the white bar. And Louis Jordan, Son House and Earl Bostic from the box at Ethel’s, the Black bar across the street.”[embedded content]Hemphill may have started with those related, if segregated, reference points. But the widely varied recordings on the new set — “The Boyé Multi-National Crusade for Harmony,” issued by New World Records and named after one of Hemphill’s touring projects — show how thoroughly he adapted and reinvigorated those early sources.The first two discs contain some formative late-’70s small-group recordings, as well as an astonishing duo set (date and location unknown) by Hemphill and the cellist Abdul Wadud, one of his crucial collaborators. On the track “Rhapsody,” you can hear Hemphill’s alertness on soprano saxophone, as Wadud switches between thick, strummed playing and lyrical bowing. Hemphill’s melodic sensibility, supple even when spare, is present throughout, even when his sound production turns piping or frenzied.Before Hemphill’s emergence as a bandleader, he came into contact with other inquisitive, improvising players like the trumpeter Lester Bowie. Hemphill began experimenting with theatrical works, too. He started his own label, and in St. Louis helped launch the Black Artists Group (known as BAG) alongside poets, dancers and other saxophonist-composers, like Oliver Lake. After a 1971 BAG performance was interrupted by a bomb threat, it was a Hemphill score that was heard after the all-clear had been given. (That episode is recounted in Benjamin Looker’s book “Point From Which Creation Begins,” a crucial history of BAG and resource about Hemphill’s work.)Hemphill later joined forces again with Lake in the World Saxophone Quartet, which played open-minded, poly-genre spaces like the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Devoted to jazz but not exclusively defined by it, Hemphill wrote solo and chamber works for the virtuoso pianist Ursula Oppens, his partner toward the end of his life. (Search out the Tzadik release “One Atmosphere” to hear the vivacious piano quintet that gives that album its title.)The New World box set also contains a disc of Hemphill chamber music. In addition to a work written for Oppens, it includes the premiere release of a 2007 Daedalus Quartet performance of “Mingus Gold,” a 1988 composition in which Hemphill arranged tunes by Charles Mingus.These are not straight transcriptions, as the take on “Better Get Hit in Your Soul” proves. During its opening, the cello part occasionally comes close to Mingus’s own bass motifs, though it also diverts from the source material, with the other strings pausing to meditate before the quartet digs into Mingus’s theme with gusto.Hemphill’s experimental yet songful approach connected him to adventurous pop artists; he joined Lake on tour with Björk in support of her album “Debut” in 1993-94. And like Lake, Hemphill was apt to say that his varied pursuits were not evidence of a scattershot sensibility, but rather of a complex, integrated purpose. The liner notes for the new box set include one of his better known statements: “Well, you often hear people nowadays talking about the tradition, tradition, tradition. But they have tunnel vision in this tradition. Because tradition in African-American music is wide as all outdoors.”Since his death, Hemphill’s influence has continued to make that vista ever wider. His most famous composition, “Dogon A.D.,” with its addictive, loping 11/16 percussion groove, was memorably covered by the pianist Vijay Iyer on his breakout 2009 trio album, “Historicity.” Player-composers like Tim Berne and Marty Ehrlich, who wrote the liner notes for the new release, also swear by Hemphill.The World Saxophone Quartet in 1978.Credit…Deborah Feingold/Getty ImagesSo why aren’t his contributions better known? One reason is that his most celebrated album, also called “Dogon A.D.” (1972), has spent long stretches out of print. (It was available on CD for a brief period, in the 2010s, but now that version and the original LP command high prices on the secondhand market.) Another reason likely has to do with the policing of the border between jazz and classical traditions (a subset of the larger issues of racial exclusion in classical music). Most classical programmers are likely unaware of the breadth of Hemphill’s legacy. His music has occasionally been played on predominately classical series like the Composer Portraits at the Miller Theater at Columbia University, but he is usually perceived as a jazz artist, full stop.But while his music can swing hard, he also explored airier, less propulsive realms. One lengthy track on New World’s disc of chamber music, “Unknown Title No. 1,” documents a 1981 performance by a wind and brass quintet Hemphill conducted.The unhurried, pungent material heard at the outset is far away from “Dogon A.D.,” “Rhapsody” or the glosses on Mingus. After detours into riotous improvisation, the performance eventually hurtles into a bumptious, tuba-driven conclusion. But its route there is distinctive in the available Hemphill catalog.Back when Vijay Iyer’s cover of “Dogon A.D.” was earning him plaudits, he described in a profile how seeing Hemphill in concert in 1991 had been a transformative experience. Hemphill’s 1988 album “Big Band” “dazzles me as much today as it did then,” Iyer said in an email, also noting Hemphill and BAG’s important contributions during the “period of Black artists’ self-determination initiatives,” which also included the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in Chicago.Hemphill, devoted to jazz but not exclusively defined by it, in 1990.Credit…Michael WildermanRelating the experience of watching a 1992 duo performance by Hemphill and Wadud, later released as the album “Oakland Duets,” Iyer wrote, “I was astonished by the sense of simultaneous mastery and transgression. I think that describes his music in a nutshell.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Cardi B’s Gleefully Relentless ‘Up,’ and 12 More New Songs

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe PlaylistCardi B’s Gleefully Relentless ‘Up,’ and 12 More New SongsHear tracks by Bomba Estéreo, SG Lewis, Flock of Dimes and others.Cardi B barely offers listeners a chance to catch their breath on her new solo single, “Up.”Credit…YouTubeJon Pareles, Giovanni Russonello and Feb. 5, 2021, 11:48 a.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.Cardi B, ‘Up’[embedded content]On “Up,” her first solo single in several years, Cardi B’s preferred method of annihilating the haters is oxygen deprivation — her flow is so relentless that for nearly three minutes she doesn’t offer listeners a single moment to catch their breath. “Big bag bussin’ out the Bentley Bentayga/Man, Balenciaga Bardi back,” she raps with rapturous alliteration, before running that tongue twister back again, in case you didn’t catch it all the first time. “Up” is a homage to the steely Chicago drill sound that Cardi grew up on, and it also finds her reuniting with DJ SwanQo, who worked with her on the hardest-hitting song on “Invasion of Privacy,” “Get Up 10.” (He co-produced “Up” with Yung Dza.) Her tone is a bit more gleeful than the drill influence would suggest, and there are of course some classically comedic Cardi punch lines here, but the ravenous way she digs into this beat is serious business. LINDSAY ZOLADZSG Lewis featuring Nile Rodgers, ‘One More’Choices, chances. SG Lewis sings about the ways an encounter at a party could go: Will it evaporate amid distractions, or will continuing the conversation for just one more song and lead to romance? Either way, it’s a dance party, and the guitar scrubbing away at complex chords over the neo-disco beat belongs to the disco and dance-pop wizard Nile Rodgers. JON PARELESSia and David Guetta, ‘Floating Through Space’How far has the pandemic lowered the bar for triumph over adversity? “You made it another day, made it alive,” Sia sings over David Guetta’s echoey, synthetic adaptations of a Caribbean soca beat. It’s computerized happiness for a worldwide predicament. PARELESMiss Grit, ‘Grow Up To’Miss Grit is the alias of Margaret Sohn, a Michigan-born New York transplant who, like St. Vincent, is equally enamored of both textured guitar distortion and crisp, clean melody. (When Sohn was a student in NYU’s music technology program, she briefly considered a career in making effects pedals.) Miss Grit’s self-produced second EP, “Impostor,” is a confident and searching meditation on that psychological scourge Impostor Syndrome and her outsider status as a Korean-American growing up in the Midwest. But the single “Grow Up To” is more of an abstraction — albeit a hypnotically catchy one. Beneath a vocal with a hazy, deadpan cool that recalls Mary Timony, Sohn retraces the melody line with her guitar, snaking and sparking like a lit fuse. ZOLADZBomba Estéreo featuring Okan and Lido Pimienta, ‘Agua’Folklore, mysticism, nature and electronics converge in “Agua,” the first single from an album due in April by the Colombian group Bomba Estéreo, joined by Toronto-based expatriates: the Colombian singer Lido Pimienta and the Afro-Cuban vocal duo Okan. Voices harmonize to chant the four ancient elements — “Agua, tierra, aire, fuego” (“water, earth, air, fire”) — over traditional-sounding drums, handclaps and bird calls; then the synthesizers appear, blipping and arpeggiating, as Pimienta and Bomba Estéreo’s Li Saumet sing and rap about being inseparable from the natural world. PARELESFlock of Dimes, ‘Two’“Can I be one? Can we be two?” Jenn Wasner asks on her stirring new single “Two.” The song — and its colorful, playfully choreographed video, directed by Lola B. Pierson and Cricket Arrison — is an exploration of the simultaneous needs for individuality and intimacy within a romantic relationship, but it also reflects the multiplicity of Wasner’s musical output. With her collaborator Andy Stack, she’s one-half of the band Wye Oak, while as a solo artist she releases music under the name Flock of Dimes. “Two” is driven by an irregular beat (Wasner recently joked on Twitter about her penchant for “odd time signatures”), as if to mirror the hesitant questioning of its lyrics. Even when she’s being somber or ruminative, Wasner has a touch of gallows humor, as when she muses memorably, “We’re all just wearing bodies like a costume til we die.” ZOLADZAlan Braufman (Angel Bat Dawid remix), ‘Sunrise’A slow, billowing, rafters-raising saxophone melody — distinctly in the spiritualist free-jazz tradition of Albert Ayler — becomes just one element in a digital swarm in this remix of a tune by the saxophonist Alan Braufman, from his 2020 quintet album, “The Fire Still Burns.” With the young multi-instrumentalist and composer Angel Bat Dawid at the controls, the track begins as a saxophone reflected upon itself, bouncing around the walls of an electronic prism; that leads into a steady, clipped, electronic beat, somewhere between deep house and ambient music. A veteran of New York’s jazz loft scene of the 1970s, Braufman only recently resuscitated his public career as a musician. “The Fire Still Burns,” featuring an intergenerational cast of side musicians, was a triumphant claim to artistic vitality, at age 69. This Dawid remix is another indication of what it means to stay engaged decades on, bringing the tradition ahead. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOVic Mensa featuring Wyclef Jean and Chance the Rapper, ‘Shelter’“I’ll be your shelter,” Wyclef Jean promises, sometimes in a sweet falsetto and sometimes with hoarse vehemence, over mournful, syncopated guitar chords. But the track, even with hints of hope at the end, is an elegy, and raps by Vic Mensa and Chance the Rapper matter-of-factly set out how many people aren’t sheltered from disease, poverty and racism: “Hospital workers in scrubs with no PPE/But they got money for riot gear,” Mensa observes. PARELESH.E.R., ‘Fight for You’How’s this for building anticipation: H.E.R.’s new song was nominated for a Golden Globe a day before it was even released! The soulful “Fight for You,” from the soundtrack of the upcoming Black Panther drama “Judas and the Black Messiah,” strikes an appropriate balance between period-pic scene-setting and up-to-date cool, as lyrics like “all the smoke in the air, feel the hate when they stare” draw unfortunate parallels between past and present. ZOLADZJimmy Edgar featuring 24hrs, ‘Notice’The producer Jimmy Edgar has far-flung connections. He has collaborated with producers including Sophie and Hudson Mohawk and rappers like Danny Brown. The Atlanta rapper 24hrs sing-raps assorted phrases in “Notice,” but all the action is in the track: viscous bass tones stopping and starting, little whistling interjections, double-time boings and swoops and tinkles. There’s a slow, determined push forward, but at any given moment, it’s impossible to predict where it will land. PARELESArchie Shepp and Jason Moran, ‘Wise One’You can hear history coursing both ways, future sloshing up against past, as the pianist Jason Moran and the saxophonist Archie Shepp revisit John Coltrane’s “Wise One.” When Moran pulls an arpeggiated rumble into a rhythmic flow, or splashes a fistful of high notes onto the keyboard behind Shepp’s high warbling cry, it’s almost impossible to say whether the younger pianist is guiding his elder down a new path, or following his lead. Shepp became a Coltrane apostle more than half a century ago, and it was Trane who brought Shepp to Impulse! Records, helping him build a reputation as one of the leading jazz innovators of the 1960s. Moran came up decades later, idolizing them both. Shepp and Moran’s album, “Let My People Go,” is out now — only the latest in a long history of memorable piano-sax duet albums by Shepp, including ones with Mal Waldron and Horace Parlan. RUSSONELLOVampire Weekend, ‘40:42’ remade by Goose and Sam GendelEver conceptual, Vampire Weekend called on musician-fans to remake “2021,” a minute-and-a-half ditty about relationships and the passage of time (“Copper goes green, steel beams go rust”) from its 2019 album “Father of the Bride.” There were conditions: Each remake was to last exactly 20 minutes and 21 seconds, to be combined for an EP entitled (do the math) “40:42.” Both acts rose to the occasion. Goose, a methodical jam band from Connecticut, did a live jam, on video, with clear landmarks of Minimalistic stasis, playful crosscurrents and dramatic, attentive buildups. Sam Gendel, a saxophonist who has worked with Ry Cooder, Perfume Genius and Moses Sumney, came up with multiple, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure scenarios: breathy woodwind chorales, abstract modal drones, electronic meditations and loops, cozy fireside acoustic session, raucous jazz finale. Musicians delight in working with limited parameters and leaping beyond them. PARELESAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jazz at Lincoln Center Focuses on Music’s Role in Social Justice

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJazz at Lincoln Center Focuses on Music’s Role in Social JusticeA new season of video concerts will feature a tribute to renowned jazz vocalists and include new compositions created in collaboration with Bryan Stevenson.This season, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, led by Wynton Marsalis, will feature programs like “Freedom, Justice and Hope” and a concert focusing on John Coltrane.Credit…Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2021With in-person concerts unlikely to return this spring, Jazz at Lincoln Center on Tuesday announced a full season of video presentations, all centered on jazz’s role in the fight for social justice.The spring programming will feature four shows, each one streaming on the center’s website for $20 a ticket. (Prices are lower for members and subscribers.) Each show will remain available for streaming over a period of days.The first concert, “Legacies of Excellence,” will premiere on Feb. 20. Featuring the vocalist Catherine Russell, it explores the contributions of jazz legends through an educational lens, and is presented as part of an initiative called Let Freedom Swing.For the remaining three shows, guests will join the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, led by Wynton Marsalis. On March 26, the ensemble will present “Voices of Freedom,” a celebration of four eminent 20th-century jazz singers: Betty Carter, Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln and Nina Simone. A lineup of contemporary vocalists, including Melanie Charles and Shenel Johns, will offer renditions of these figures’ famous works.The orchestra returns on May 21 with “Freedom, Justice, and Hope,” a program featuring new compositions by two rising musicians: the bassist Endea Owens, who will debut a suite honoring the pioneering Black journalist Ida B. Wells; and the trumpeter Josh Evans, who will present a work in response to the 1919 Elaine massacre in Arkansas. The compositions were written in collaboration with the racial-justice activist Bryan Stevenson, who will participate in the concert.The season concludes with a show on June 10 devoted to the music of John Coltrane, including a big-band rendition of his landmark “A Love Supreme.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Sibongile Khumalo, South Africa’s ‘First Lady of Song,’ Dies at 63

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySibongile Khumalo, South Africa’s ‘First Lady of Song,’ Dies at 63Proficient across a range of genres, she had the hall-filling power of an operatic mezzo-soprano and the directness of a pop singer.The South African singer Sibongile Khumalo in performance at the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn in 2007. Credit…Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2021, 3:04 p.m. ETSibongile Khumalo, a virtuoso vocalist whose ease of motion between opera, jazz and South African popular music made her a symbol of the country’s new social order after the end of apartheid, died on Thursday. She was 63.Her family wrote on Instagram that the cause was complications of a stroke, and that she had endured a long illness. The post did not say where she died.Fleet and precise across a wide vocal range but particularly elegant in the upper register, Ms. Khumalo’s voice had the hall-filling power of an operatic mezzo-soprano and the directness of a pop singer. After making her debut as Carmen in a production in Durban, she earned wide acclaim for her roles in South African operas and plays, including “UShaka KaSenzangakhona,” “Princess Magogo KaDinuzulu” and “Gorée,” all of which toured internationally.At home she was equally known for her catchy original compositions and her renditions of South African jazz standards like the straight-ahead anthem “Yakhal’ Inkomo,” written by the saxophonist Winston Ngozi, which became a calling card.When the apartheid government fell and Nelson Mandela became the country’s first democratically elected president in 1994, Ms. Khumalo performed at his inauguration. Mandela famously referred to her as the country’s “first lady of song,” and the title stuck.The next year, when South Africa went to the Rugby World Cup — a moment of national reconciliation later immortalized in the film “Invictus” — Ms. Khumalo was invited to perform both her home country’s national anthem and that of its opponent, New Zealand. It was “the one and only time I’ve ever watched a rugby match, at any level, of any kind,” she told a television interviewer in 2017, laughing.In 1996 Sony released her debut album, “Ancient Evenings,” which included a number of originals and loosely adhered to a vocal-driven South African pop style. Over the next two decades she would release a steady stream of albums, earning four South African Music Awards. For her stage performances, she garnered three Vita Awards.In 2008 she received the Order of Ikhamanga in silver, among the country’s highest honors for contributions to the arts.Sibongile Mngoma was born in Soweto on Sept. 24, 1957, to Grace and Khabi Mngoma. Her mother was a nurse; her father was a scholar and musician who helped found the music department at the University of Zululand.Sibongile began studying at age 8 under a respected local music teacher, Emily Motsieloa, focusing on the violin. She was heavily influenced by the music of local healers and ministers at the nearby church, as well as the Western classical and pop records her parents played around the house.She also inherited her father’s passion for education and went on to earn undergraduate degrees from both Zululand and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She later received honorary doctorates from Zululand, Rhodes University and the University of South Africa.She taught at Zululand, but she also sought opportunities to reach children who lacked access to major institutions. She held teaching and administrative positions at the Federated Union of Black Artists Academy in Johannesburg and the Madimba Institute of African Music in Soweto.Ms. Khumalo’s husband, the actor and director Siphiwe Khumalo, died in 2005. The couple had two children, Ayanda and Tshepo Khumalo. A full list of survivors was not immediately available.In 1993, she won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award at the famed Grahamstown National Arts Festival, and her star rose swiftly. She had already begun turning heads with a concert program, titled “The 3 Faces of Sibongile Khumalo,” that showed off her versatility across genres. Those “faces” were jazz, opera and traditional South African music.When Ms. Khumalo was a girl, her father had brought her to see Constance Magogo kaDinuzulu, a Zulu princess and musician known for her prowess as a singer and composer. “My dad made me sit at her feet to listen to her play ugubhu and sing,” Ms. Khumalo wrote in the notes to her self-titled 2005 album, referring to a Zulu stringed instrument. “I thought he was being very unkind to me because all the other children were out in the yard playing.”But decades later, she drew upon the experience when she collaborated with the scholar Mzilikazi Khumalo (no relation) to create “Princess Magogo KaDinuzulu,” billed as the first Zulu opera, centered on the princess’s own compositions. “It must have been destiny,” she said. “In my professional years the music came back and it began to make sense.”When “Princess Magogo KaDinuzulu” traveled to the United States in 2004, Anne Midgette reviewed it for The New York Times, praising Ms. Khumalo’s “talent and versatility.” Ten years after South Africa had achieved democratic rule, Ms. Midgette noted, Ms. Khumalo seemed to represent “a symbol of its new culture.”In a 2019 interview ahead of her performance at the Joy of Jazz Festival in Johannesburg, Ms. Khumalo said that no matter the symbolism, her main commitment was to the singularity of her own voice. “While exposing yourself and opening yourself up to what is out there, it is also important to remain true to yourself, so that even when you allow yourself to be influenced by others, you retain an identity that clearly defines you,” she said.Whatever the subject matter, she added, “it is the truth in what you express, and how you express it, that is paramount.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More