Lehman, Steve

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    Branford Marsalis and Steve Lehman Rethink the Jazz Cover Album

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    Marsalis leads a take on Keith Jarrett’s 1974 LP “Belonging,” and Lehman interprets “The Music of Anthony Braxton,” revealing fresh lessons.Great jazz composers are legion. But the list of great jazz composers whose work gets played by other artists with any regularity? That’s a far more exclusive club.So when a jazz musician devotes an entire record to the work of a less-celebrated figure, it reads like a deliberate, even courageous, act of advocacy. The soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy did this for Thelonious Monk in 1959, releasing “Reflections,” the first-ever tribute album to the pianist, which paved the way for a wider engagement with Monk’s sui generis songbook; likewise, in the ’80s and ’90s, the pianist Misha Mengelberg, the trombonist Roswell Rudd and the collective known as the Herbie Nichols Project each made strong cases on record for the work of the once obscure Nichols.Two new jazz releases find a pair of saxophonists taking similar stands. On “Belonging,” Branford Marsalis leads his working quartet through a full-album take on Keith Jarrett’s 1974 LP of the same name. And on “The Music of Anthony Braxton,” Steve Lehman and his longtime trio mates, with the guest tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, play a live set heavy on material by Braxton, the unorthodox, genre-transcending visionary who was also Lehman’s personal mentor and former collaborator. Both records showcase the potency of the material at hand while achieving a certain kind of expressive liftoff that makes them more than just rote covers.Jarrett’s “Belonging” places unusual demands on the would-be interpreter. It’s an album of emotional extremes that encompasses ecstatic exuberance and prayerful yearning. It also seems almost inextricable from the idiosyncrasies of its maker, revered as an improviser but still undervalued for his prolific writing, which peaked in the ’70s with bespoke works for both a stateside quartet and the European one heard on “Belonging.”Marsalis has tackled imposing jazz masterworks before, covering the entirety of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” in the studio and onstage in the early 2000s, but at its best, his “Belonging” goes deeper. On the original album, the title track is a brief, reflective interlude, played as a solo-free duet between Jarrett on piano and Jan Garbarek on tenor. Marsalis takes his time with the piece, stating the theme on soprano saxophone and leaving space for the rhythm section — the pianist Joey Calderazzo, the bassist Eric Revis and the drummer Justin Faulkner — to set up a lovely rubato ballad texture. Re-entering, Marsalis starts out playing gentle, aqueous phrases, then steadily crescendoes to a piercing intensity for the final theme statement, the band swelling to match him as his tone grows ever more urgent. It’s a performance that both honors and amplifies the somber beauty of the source material.“The Windup” represents the other pole of “Belonging.” A rollicking, acrobatically twisty theme, it suggests boogie-woogie gone prog, conjuring a mood of infectious delight. Marsalis’s quartet has embraced it as a favorite in recent years, and an earlier version appeared on the band’s 2019 live album, “The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul.” Like in that performance, Faulkner is the driving force on the new studio take. Here he pushes even harder, complementing the opening piano-and-bass vamp with a busily festive beat marked by a barrage of syncopations on snare and cowbell.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Maren Morris Revels in a Fresh Start, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Cat Power, Chris Stapleton, Loraine James and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. 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, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Maren Morris, ‘The Tree’Maren Morris forcefully pulls free of a bad relationship in “The Tree,” an arena-scale waltz full of botanical imagery: “The rot at the roots is the root of the problem/But you wanna blame it on me.” Buttressed by a massive drumbeat, power chords and a choir, Morris has clearly made up her mind: “I’ll never stop growing.” JON PARELESMitski, ‘My Love Mine All Mine’Mitski’s seventh album, “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” — out Friday — is suffused with a luminous warmth and an easy confidence that are both on ample display on the single “My Love Mine All Mine.” “Nothing in the world belongs to me but my love,” Mitski sings in a clarion croon, as a chorus of backing singers fill out the atmosphere around her. Tinkling barroom piano and the occasional whine of pedal steel give the song a nocturnal country flair, while Mitski leads the way at an unhurried tempo that seems to slow time itself. LINDSAY ZOLADZCat Power, ‘She Belongs to Me (Live at the Royal Albert Hall)’Last year, Chan Marshall, who records as Cat Power, played a full performance recreating Bob Dylan’s fabled 1966 “Royal Albert Hall” concert (which actually took place at the Manchester Free Trade Hall). On Nov. 10, she’ll release a live album of the full 15-song set, including this stirring rendition of “She Belongs to Me.” A prolific and intuitive interpreter of other people’s songs, Marshall brings the right balance of reverence and invention to this 1965 Dylan classic, slowing the original’s tempo and conveying a coziness through the crackling, bonfire warmth of her voice. ZOLADZChris Stapleton, ‘Think I’m in Love With You’The stolid backbeat, laconic guitar hooks, stealthy organ chords and hovering string arrangement of “Think I’m in Love With You” come straight out of 1970s Memphis soul. So do Chris Stapleton’s vocal choices; his leaps, quavers and evasions of the beat can be traced to Al Green. But Stapleton brings his own drama and grit to the style; his homage carries an emotional charge. PARELESParchman Prison Prayer, ‘Break Every Chain’Inmates at Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Farm prison sing at weekly church services. Like the folklorist Alan Lomax in the 1940s, earlier this year the producer Ian Brennan visited Parchman to record. In one Sunday session, he gathered fervent gospel performances, most of them solo and unaccompanied, from prisoners, collectively billed as Parchman Prison Prayer. Proceeds from the album, “Some Mississippi Sunday Morning,” will benefit the Mississippi Department of Corrections Chaplain Services. One is from M. Kyles, a prisoner in his 50s, whose voice sails aloft as he extols the power of Jesus’s name to “Break Every Chain.” PARELESNas, ‘Fever’Nas, like hip-hop itself, turns 50 this year, and in “Fever” he’s “celebrating years of flows and crazy wordplay/Seasoned, I’m leaving my 40s, I’m a griot.” Backed by minor-chord loops of guitars, strings and distant voices, his raspy voice is both proud and generous: “I wish at least 50 on all my good people,” he declares. PARELESLoraine James featuring Morgan Simpson, ‘I DM U’The electronic producer Loraine James teams up with the indefatigable muscle power of Morgan Simpson — Black Midi’s drummer — in “I DM U” from her album out next week, “Gentle Confrontation.” She dispenses sustained chords and sporadic bass lines at a stately tempo; he’s all over his kit, barreling ahead at quadruple speed, impulsive where she’s measured. But they’re working in tandem, moving forward together. PARELESJenn Champion, ‘Jessica’Grief and anger roil in “Jessica,” a quietly devastated ballad about a friend’s fatal overdose. Jenn Champion, who has been making music since she was a member of Carissa’s Wierd in the 1990s, double tracks her voice over a cycle of three basic, echoey piano chords as she mourns “stupid dead Jessica,” a friend she loved, who couldn’t overcome her addiction: “Honestly, who OD’s in their [expletive] 40s,” she sings, even as she recognizes, “Our friends die but we keep getting older.” PARELESSnail Mail, ‘Easy Thing (Demo)’Lindsey Jordan’s recordings as Snail Mail have increasingly reveled in the possibilities of studio production. But songs have to start somewhere, and “Easy Thing” — an unreleased song that will be included on an EP of demos from the 2021 album “Valentine” — harks back to Jordan’s sparse early recordings. It’s a waltz backed by just a few home-recorded tracks — guitars, flutelike synthesizer and an occasional harmony vocal — as Jordan sings about still longing for an ex who moved on. “Forget about that girl,” she urges, though not exactly confidently. “We’ll always have that easy thing.” PARELESKavita Shah and Bau, ‘Flor de Lis’On her quietly riveting new album, “Cape Verdean Blues,” the vocalist and folklorist Kavita Shah teams up with Bau, a guitarist and one of Cape Verde’s best-known musicians, to explore the island nation’s repertoire of traditional ballads and dance songs. But on “Flor de Lis,” Shah and Bau take a detour to Brazil, playing this popular samba by the MPB musician Djavan. Shah’s vocals maintain pitch-perfect clarity even as she arcs a high melody over the chorus. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOSteve Lehman, ‘Chimera’How Steve Lehman gets music to sound the way he does is both an object of fascination and, to some degree, a mystery we must accept. To unpack it, you’d have to understand how he uses spectral harmony — a computer-assisted approach that treats the shapes and contours of sound waves as the basis for harmony — and that’s before you even begin to decode his densely scribbled, tone-smearing saxophone lines. Indeed, “Chimera” is an apt name for a piece of his. This version of the tune (which has been in his repertoire for years) begins with two minutes of Chris Dingman’s vibraphone mixing with other mallets and chimes, thickening the air before Lehman’s alto saxophone enters, joined by a full horn section, playing in pulses and stabs. Drums and bass put their weight into a tensile, halting rhythm. The tune comes from Lehman’s new album, “Ex Machina,” which he recorded with the Orchestre National de Jazz in France (the birthplace of spectral composition, by the way). Lehman’s music, always flooded with ideas, has rarely felt so fully fleshed out and exposed. RUSSONELLO More

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      An Artist Embodies an Approach to Music Without Borders

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      Steve Lehman’s varied stylistic language draws from classical and jazz traditions as well as funk and hip-hop.On a recent afternoon at David Geffen Hall, the New York Philharmonic’s violins began to play an ensemble pizzicato pattern underneath a turntable-scratch solo by the artist DJ Logic. I couldn’t help but smile.That gratifying moment hit during jazz trumpeter Etienne Charles’s “San Juan Hill,” which Lincoln Center commissioned for the Philharmonic. It was a musical fusion, executed surprisingly well in a surprising space.But while it may have been unusual for Lincoln Center, it isn’t a shock for New York as a whole. In between Charles’s new piece and the Philharmonic’s 1997 performance of “Skies of America” — a collaboration with the composer-saxophonist Ornette Coleman and his Prime Time ensemble — a broad artistic network has cleared fresh paths for American composers, ones in which varied stylistic languages can draw energy from classical traditions, jazz-influenced improvisation and the beat-work of funk and hip-hop.And beyond large institutions like Lincoln Center, musicians have been making this happen in smaller spaces. To take one example, shortly before the Philharmonic premiere of “San Juan Hill,” Roulette, in Brooklyn, hosted a concert that brought together the saxophonist-composer Steve Lehman and the Orchestre National de Jazz with its artistic director, Frédéric Maurin.The compositions were by Lehman, who played in the ensemble, and Maurin, who conducted. In addition to the 15 acoustic players — members of Lehman’s regular ensembles, like the trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, and artists of Maurin’s group — both composers also employed another electronic musician, who manned a laptop that was running real-time interactive software developed by Ircam, the French electronic music center founded by Pierre Boulez in the 1970s.Ircam checked the box for cutting-edge classical music. The acoustic improvisers channeled the history of jazz performance. And the head-nodding sounds of experimental hip-hop came into view in the rhythms of the half-dozen scores that Lehman contributed to the concert.Roulette posted the concert on YouTube. And from the outset of Lehman’s music, beginning with “Los Angeles Imaginary,” about 11 minutes into the video, the keyboardist plays a complex ostinato pattern across two different manuals: one acoustic, one electronic. The riff is not an obviously danceable one. But after the percussionist comes in — offering a steady syncopation with the keyboard — the vibe of New York’s late 1990s underground hip-hop rears its head.Next comes the addition of the acoustic bass. But the piece really blooms when Lehman triggers the reeds and brasses — along with a granular, spectral wash of electronic sound that comes from the laptop artist embedded within the orchestra. A saxophone solo by Lehman, 44, adds textures that he’s honed on his alto instrument: slantwise methods that he developed in formal training and time on the New York scene. During his undergraduate years at Wesleyan, he studied with the saxophonists Anthony Braxton and Jackie McLean, while also learning from the avant-garde music of Iannis Xenakis. While working on his Ph.D. in composition at Columbia, he worked with the French spectral composer Tristan Murail and the American experimentalist George Lewis.In a recent interview, Lehman recalled studying with Murail and focusing on the limits of what listeners might grasp, in terms of complexity. Lehman obsessed over questions like: “When does a single note start sounding like chord, or vice versa? Or when does an electronic sound start sounding acoustic? Or when does something sound like it’s in a tempo versus out of tempo?”Lehman added that, ever since that time with Murail, he has always tried to “exploit those transitions to make music that’s meaningful or exciting to listen to.” He’s enjoyed wide-ranging success on that front, writing chamber music for Grossman Ensemble and a larger-scale work for the American Composers Orchestra.The show included real-time interactive software developed by Ircam, the French electronic music center founded by Pierre Boulez in the 1970s.Matt Mehlan, via Roulette IntermediumHe has also collaborated with the composer-performers Tyshawn Sorey and Vijay Iyer, and Lehman’s releases on the Pi Recordings imprint have proven broadly influential in jazz circles. Lehman’s latest album on that label, “Xaybu: The Unseen,” was produced with yet another group that he participates in: the international jazz-rap fusion ensemble Sélébéyone.In addition to Lehman, Sélébéyone includes the soprano saxophonist and composer Maciek Lasserre, the drummer Damion Reid, as well as two M.C.s: HPrizm, known to fans of Antipop Consortium as High Priest, and the Senegalese artist Gaston Bandimic, who raps in the Wolof language. (“Sélébéyone” is the Wolof word for “intersection” — befitting perhaps any Lehman ensemble, but particularly one that involves bilingual rhyming.)“Xaybu: The Unseen,” offers yet another way to hear the contemporary cross pollination of classical, rap and jazz. In Lehman’s work “Liminal,” you can hear the influence of spectral harmony on his electronic production. And toward the end of one verse from HPrizm, — after the rapper mentions “riding on bare rims” — Lehman’s polyrhythms pile up, making a wild ride even bumpier.

      Xaybu: The Unseen by Steve LehmanIn the interview, Lehman said that in his work with Sélébéyone, he often samples some of his classical music. “Any time you hear a harp or anything like that, or some kind of spectral, chamber music chord,” he said, it likely came from a piece like “Ten Threshold Studies,” which he wrote for the American Composers Orchestra.That work, which I heard at Zankel Hall in 2018, is ripe for consideration as Lincoln Center and New York Philharmonic branch out. (Sélébéyone would sound good in the newly renovated David Geffen Hall, too.)But regardless of whether Lehman is invited, his work is, thankfully, being well documented by Roulette, Pi Recordings and more.Whether considering large-ensemble jazz writing or experimental rap or orchestral music, Lehman said, “I’m trying to survey the landscape, and figure out: Where do I fit in? What am I sort of uniquely equipped to contribute? And, in a best-case scenario, kind of add on to these histories.” More

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      Romeo Santos and Justin Timberlake’s Team-Up, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Shygirl, Ava Max, Horse Lords and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Romeo Santos and Justin Timberlake, ‘Sin Fin’Ever the canny collaborator, Justin Timberlake joins Romeo Santos — formerly of the Dominican-rooted boy band Aventura, now a stadium act on his own — to pump up a typically imploring bachata. Both of them are sleek high tenors who can always sound like they’re eager for romance; both also know what it’s like to sing answered by ecstatic screams. “Sin Fin” (“Endless”) is a bilingual pop promise with a stalking undercurrent. Timberlake sings, “Can’t escape my love ’cause it’s yours/Even if you walk out the door it’ll chase you down.” It opens with cathedral-choir harmonies, then buttresses the bongos and syncopated guitar of bachata with pop’s synthesizers and hip-hop’s hype-man cheers. Melding bachata and power ballad, it still begs for love with high drama. JON PARELESAva Max, ‘Million Dollar Baby’Ava Max is partying like it’s 2000 and 2004 on the thumping “Million Dollar Baby,” a sleek, calisthenic pop song that name-checks Clint Eastwood’s Best Picture winner and interpolates “Can’t Fight the Moonlight,” LeAnn Rimes’ once-inescapable “Coyote Ugly” theme song. (Who said Y2K nostalgia was dead!) While Max still hasn’t quite carved out a distinct persona in the pop sphere, she’s proven herself to be a satisfying practitioner of aughts-pop pastiche — there’s even a stuttering echo of “Bad Romance” on the bridge. “She broke out of her chains,” Max sings of her titular, diamond-encrusted heroine, “Turned the fire into rain.” LINDSAY ZOLADZAlex Lahey, ‘Congratulations’On the booming power-pop track “Congratulations,” the Australian singer-songwriter Alex Lahey attempts to process the news that an ex is getting married: “Congratulations,” she sings, dripping with sarcasm, “so happy for your perfect life.” There’s pathos in her voice during the verses — “If I don’t care then why do I still think about you all the time?” — but the chorus is volcanic and cathartic, as Lahey’s colossal guitar tones swell like a sudden surge of inner strength. ZOLADZShygirl, ‘Nike’“Peri-peri, too hot to handle,” the London-based Shygirl boasts with cool confidence on “Nike,” the latest single from her forthcoming debut album, “Nymph.” While the previous songs she’s released from the record have been glitchy and ethereal — think hyperpop crossed with “Visions”-era Grimes — “Nike” is all woozy low-end and spotlit swagger. “He tell me, ‘Nike, just do it,” Shygirl intones on the track (which was produced by the British electronic artist Mura Masa), her delivery full of winking, sensual charisma. ZOLADZHorse Lords, ‘Mess Mend’The instrumental “Mess Mend,” by the Baltimore band Horse Lords, starts out skewed — with chords from a slightly detuned piano hitting unevenly on offbeats — and gets nuttier from there, with a tricky 7/4 meter, a guitar melody that suggests a non-Euclidean hoedown and a gradual devolution into a funky electronic drone, not to mention a final twist. It’s a brainy lark. PARELESVDA, ‘Môgô Kélé’VDA — short for Voix des Anges — is a vocal duo from Ivory Coast that has become a consistent hitmaker in the Ivorian pop style called zouglou, which floats suavely sustained vocals over brisk polyrhythms and glossy synthesizers: airborne tracks that often hold sociopolitical messages. Above the speedy six-beat rhythms of “Môgô Kélé” — a hyperactive mesh of drums, marimbas, flutes and call-and-response vocals — VOA sings about easing tensions that have risen lately between Mali and Ivory Coast, citing their longstanding historical ties. The video shows jailed soldiers; it also gives the VDA a backdrop of both countries’ flags and words like “la paix,” “fraternité” and “union,” while the music sparkles and bounds ahead. PARELESDanielle Ponder, ‘Only the Lonely’“Love is lost and I must walk away,” Danielle Ponder sings, with mournful resolution, in “Only the Lonely,” a ballad that fights back any regrets with the certainty that “You don’t love me, you just lonely.” As the track rises from hollow keyboard tones to grand orchestral melancholy, Ponder’s voice opens up to reveal its bluesy power, with ghosts of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. By the end she finds herself, once again, nearly alone. PARELESCarm featuring Edie Brickell, ‘More and More’CJ Camerieri, who records as Carm, plays brass instruments in yMusic, a contemporary chamber ensemble he co-founded; he has also backed Bon Iver and Paul Simon. In his own music, he often multitracks his trumpet and French horn into a supportive brass choir, as he does in “More and More,” a collaboration with Edie Brickell as a topliner. She sings about love, almost diffidently, amid sustained swells of brasses and strings. an electronic drumbeat and some echoing trumpet calls raise tensions, only to dissolve them in the undulating warmth of Carm’s orchestrations. PARELESWild Pink featuring Julien Baker, ‘Hold My Hand’John Ross, who leads Wild Pink, went through extensive cancer treatment between the band’s 2021 debut album and its coming one, “ILYSM.” He has explained that “Hold My Hand” came from a moment of “lying on the operating table where a member of the surgical team held my hand right before I went under.” As he whisper-sings to ask, “Will you be there when I come around,” joined by Julien Baker sounding delicate and fond, the band rolls through four rising chords again and again, promising nothing but reassurance. PARELESDawn Richard and Spencer Zahn, ‘Vantablack’The ever-evolving, impossible-to-pigeonhole Dawn Richard once again introduces a new side of herself on the first movement of “Pigments,” an upcoming collaborative album she made with the experimentalist Spencer Zahn. Each track on the album is named for a specific hue: “Coral,” “Sandstone,” “Indigo,” and “Vantablack” make up “Movement 1,” which the pair released in full this week. The culmination “Vantablack” is a tranquil, abstract, and utterly gorgeous contemporary classical soundscape populated by lilting clarinet, Zahn’s airy bass playing, and above it all Richard’s fluttering vocals, which profess a deep and radical comfort in her own skin. ZOLADZSteve Lehman and Sélébéyone, ‘Poesie I’In the hip-hop-jazz-avant-electroacoustic group Sélébéyone — which means “intersection” in the West African language Wolof — the saxophonist, composer and producer Steve Lehman collaborates with rappers from New York City (HPrizm from the Antipop Consortium) and Dakar (Gaston Bandimic), a saxophonist from Paris (Maciek Lasserre) and a drummer based in Brooklyn (Damion Reid). The group’s second album, “Xaybu: the Unseen,” pushes its previous ambitions further. “Poesie I” knocks its rhythms around with piano clusters, drumming that keeps moving the downbeat, hopscotching saxophone lines and a rap from HPrizm that keeps switching up its flow: “These words don’t fit so I’m forcing ‘em in/smashing the edges,” he declares. PARELES More