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    New Recordings Revive James P. Johnson and Mary Lou Williams Rarities

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    A pair of new recordings bring holy grail artifacts by the composer-pianists James P. Johnson and Mary Lou Williams into the light.This September, audiences will at last possess a more dynamic, more elegant — and just plain improved — sense of how New York City’s jazz and classical scenes converged in the 1940s.Was eight decades a galling length of time to have waited? Naturally. But better late than never.The belated occasion is because of a pair of new recordings. Each one has located and dusted off a holy grail artifact, dating from an era when Black composers with sway in jazz circles dared to pursue hybrid musical styles, all while meeting various forms of resistance or disrespect. Their classical works were discussed as they premiered, yet were rarely programmed twice. Nor were they properly documented on recordings.That last bit of the story is what’s changing, starting this week. One CD, out Friday from the Naxos label, brings the world premiere recording of “De Organizer”: a one-act opera on labor politics jointly conceived by the composer-pianist James P. Johnson and the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes.James P. Johnson, shown, jointly conceived the one-act opera “De Organizer” with Langston Hughes.Gilles Petard/Redferns, via Getty ImagesMary Lou Williams’s “Zodiac Suite” has long been popular in its jazz-trio form, but its chamber orchestra version had never been properly documented on a studio recording.Graphic House/Archive Photos, via Getty ImagesOne week after that, the chamber orchestra version of Mary Lou Williams’s “Zodiac Suite” will enjoy its first-ever studio recording on the Mack Avenue label.When news releases for both albums hit my inbox nearly simultaneously, toward the end of the summer, my mouth hung open. Both Johnson and Williams were era-defining composers and improvising pianists: Johnson was an exemplar of Harlem stride and the author of the “Charleston”; Williams matured as a composer and player in the crucible of Kansas City’s boogie-woogie style, before arranging for Ellington and tutoring lions of bebop in New York. Why shouldn’t we have access to their ambitious classical works?Johnson and Hughes’s “De Organizer” had its lone stretch onstage in 1940, at a convention hosted by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. And then Johnson’s score promptly disappeared from public view until it was (mostly) recovered, and a restoration by the scholar-pianist James Dapogny premiered in 2002.After discovering a copy of every sung note in the opera, Dapogny was also given details on the original orchestration by Johnson’s foundation. The new Naxos CD documents the scholar’s edition, recorded by the conductor Kenneth Kiesler and the University of Michigan Opera Theater and Symphony Orchestra in a 2006 performance. (It also offers excerpts from another Johnson opera, “The Dreamy Kid,” based on the Eugene O’Neill play.)In “Organizer,” the result is a chameleonic work that melds the vibrato of operatic singing with select stylistic attributes of Black spirituals and the blues; its orchestral heft also has a place for touches of the Harlem stride style that Johnson pioneered. (Dapogny is the pianist in this performance.)The libretto — previously published in Susan Duffy’s book “The Political Plays of Langston Hughes” — can seem sleek to a point of slightness, on the page. But Hughes’s narrative and rhetorical designs hit in a new way when heard in tandem with Johnson’s ebullient, inventive music; his plot feeds Johnson’s capaciousness as a composer, making space for choral meditations and grand solo entrances, even as it presses forward with clear narrative drive and a sense of high spirits.When a local overseer crashes a meeting of Black sharecroppers to discourage their unionizing, Hughes’s text indicates that the rhythm involved should evoke the song “Mamma Don’t ’Low No Piano Playin’ Here” (a folk tune that has enjoyed a great number of variations over the decades) — signaling that one authority’s wishes will not present a major obstacle for the community that can sing out together.The new “Zodiac Suite,” on LP. Diehl credited the Knights’ artistic director and conductor for his ability to “translate” the piece’s jazz-ensemble aspects to the full chamber orchestra.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWith an all-Black creative team pushing for a progressive vision of labor solidarity, perhaps it’s no great mystery as to why the classical industry of the time did not promote the opera (or invest in its preservation). However the erasure of “Organizer” came about, Dapogny’s devotion to his restoration of the score, right up until his death in 2019, amounts to its own kind of artistic activism.A similar interventionist spirit was required when producing a new take of Williams’s “Zodiac Suite.” With its 12 movements — one for each astrological sign — the composer created affectionate portraits of admired artists and friends. While that composition has long been popular in its jazz-trio form, Williams was eager to adapt it for both chamber orchestra and a full orchestra. A document exists of the chamber version, capturing a live 1945 performance at Town Hall in New York, though that take’s lack of proper rehearsal time is audible in the final, muddled result.So her chamber version was also in need of a contemporary champion. It has found one in Aaron Diehl — a pianist widely admired in both jazz and classical circles.During the lockdown portion of the pandemic, he was joined by the New York Philharmonic as he played excerpts from the chamber “Zodiac” for the orchestra’s streaming channel. Yet on the new Mack Avenue recording, he’s joined not by the Philharmonic, but by the adventurous chamber orchestra the Knights, which is staffed by some of the brightest younger players on the classical scene. And they’ve clearly invested time in all 12 parts of Williams’s suite.The Knights as a whole balance lightness of touch with a forward sense of swing in the opening “Aries,” and in the regal flourishes that Williams deployed in movements like “Taurus” and “Leo.” Strings in particular seem to revel in the bluesy sliding tones of “Cancer,” which also includes the guest tenor saxophonist Nicole Glover’s elegant soloing (in a spot originally conceived by Williams for Ben Webster).The Knights flutist Alex Sopp emerges as a key figure as the suite progresses — including when she soars dreamily atop the rhythmic patterns of “Scorpio” for significant, exposed stretches. Diehl, the bassist David Wong and the drummer Aaron Kimmel are a consistent delight — as when providing authoritative piano-trio swing during “Virgo.”In an interview, Diehl lavished praise on the chamber orchestra. “It’s hard enough — even in a small jazz ensemble, five or six people — to agree on the eighth-note triplet,” he said. “When you have multiples of that — 25 or 30 people — that always makes it more difficult. It’s always about negotiating how you’re going to play, how you’re going to phrase.”Diehl credited the Knights’ artistic director and conductor, Eric Jacobsen, for his ability to “translate” the jazz-ensemble aspects of the “Zodiac Suite” to his full chamber orchestra.In a separate interview, Kiesler, the conductor of “De Organizer,” described how the Michigan performance of Johnson’s operatic music required a similar sense of open investigation regarding orchestral swing. He said he learned from Dapogny that, when it comes to swing, “the style is not always about the rhythm, but the weight — it’s about emphasis in places that we might not have it in so-called ‘classical’ music.”The interpretive insights on both new recordings are so strong, they stand alongside other recent triumphs in the American repertoire. The just-right balance of orchestral weight and lithe swing is also in evidence in a recent recording of Wynton Marsalis’s Symphony No. 4. And the engaged political elements of Johnson and Hughes’s one-act opera have a connection with the contemporary operas of the saxophonist and composer Anthony Braxton, whose “Trillium X” premiered in Prague this summer.So: More evidence of the true breadth and nature of the American repertoire is steadily coming into view. What major orchestras and opera companies do with that information may be up to their donor bases. But in the meantime, both of these new recordings are capable of dishing out American art music ambrosia — and to a broad community of listeners. More

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      Solange Curates Powerful Performances of Black Joy and Pain at BAM

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      Through Saint Heron, the musician brought Angélla Christie and the Clark Sisters for a night exploring Black religious music, and Linda Sharrock and Archie Shepp for a show that felt anything but safe.When the alto saxophonist Angélla Christie strode onstage on Friday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, she was joined only by a piano player. But Christie, one of the more prominent instrumentalists in contemporary gospel, was at full throttle from the very first note — playing in high-gloss, reverb-drenched ostinatos — and within moments, the crowd had become her rhythm section, clapping along on every off-beat.An usher got swept up while walking a couple to their seats, and on her way back up the aisle she shimmied a bit, her right hand flying into the air in a testifying motion. A woman sitting at the end of Row H reached out for a high five, and their palms gripped each other for a moment.It was just a few minutes into “Glory to Glory (A Revival for Devotional Art)” — part of BAM’s multidimensional “Eldorado Ballroom” series, brilliantly curated by Solange via her Saint Heron agency — and already something was hitting different.After Christie, the concert continued with two more sets: selections from Mary Lou Williams’s religious suites, delivered by the 14-person Voices of Harlem choir and a pair of virtuoso pianists, Artina McCain and Cyrus Chestnut; and a roof-raising show from the indomitable Clark Sisters, the best-selling band in gospel history and a fixture of Black radio since the 1980s.The Clark Sisters onstage at BAM on Friday, as part of a bill celebrating Black American religious music.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThat’s a lot already: a stylistic tour of Black American religious music, mostly in the hands of women, going back more than 50 years. But “Eldorado Ballroom” was aiming for even more. Rarely does a single series pull together so many strands — not just of Black music, but of Black creativity writ large — into an open-ended statement, speaking to what might be possible as well as making a comment on how Black creative histories ought to be remembered.“Eldorado Ballroom” is an extension of the work Solange has been doing for the past 10 years under the auspices of Saint Heron. As she told New York magazine’s Craig Jenkins recently, her aim with Saint Heron — whether you call it an agency, a studio, a brand or simply a creative clearinghouse — is “to centralize and build a really strong archive that in 20 years or 30 years can be accessible by future generations to be a guiding light in the same way that so many of my blueprints guided me.”Thanks to Saint Heron, Solange has managed to put her cultural capital to use while keeping her own celebrity mostly out of view. On Friday, the singer and songwriter sat beaming from an opera box near the stage while the Clark Sisters motored through a 40-plus-year catalog of danceable gospel hits, but she never took a bow.Saint Heron surfaced in 2013 with the release of a mixtape that helped set the standard for a new wave of outsider R&B. Some of its contributors, like Kelela and Sampha, became stars. Since then, Saint Heron has served as a flexible play space for Solange and her creative community, crossing lines between fashion and design, visual art, publishing, music and dance. Mid-pandemic, Saint Heron released a free digital library of books by Black writers and artists.Solange, middle, attends “Glory to Glory (A Revival for Devotional Art)” at BAM on Friday night. The singer and her Saint Heron agency curated the series, “Eldorado Ballroom.”Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAnd clearly, Solange has gained the attention of a broad, young, literary community of color. The capacity crowd at “Glory to Glory” on Friday was — unlike at most events in such spaces — about 90 percent Black, and as diverse in age and attire as Flatbush Avenue on any spring afternoon. Twenty-somethings in custom streetwear stood cheering next to older women in their Sunday finest.On Saturday, the crowd again skewed under 50 and majority Black for “The Cry of My People,” a night devoted to poetry and experimental jazz. If “Glory to Glory” was a celebration of how “triumphant and safe” gospel music can make a person feel, as Solange put it to Jenkins — a night devoted to joy, basically — then “The Cry of My People” was a confrontation of pain.The show began with a reading from the poet Claudia Rankine, who stood at center stage as the curtain came up, then read two poems: “Quotidian (1),” about inner turmoil, and “What If,” about a kind of exhausted rage. The second included the line: “in the clarity of consciousness, what if nothing changes?”Rankine had put words to something that the next performer, the vocalist Linda Sharrock, would express without them. Sharrock has been heavily respected in jazz circles since the 1960s for her raw and riveting use of extended vocal techniques: Moans, breaths and cries have been her musical units. But like so many women in jazz, she spent the peak years of her career in the shadow of a more famous husband, the guitarist Sonny Sharrock, and ultimately quit the scene. Before Saturday, her last show in New York City had been in 1979. In more recent years she has suffered health setbacks including a stroke that left her aphasic, and has performed only rarely.Linda Sharrock sang as part of “The Cry of My People” on Saturday night at BAM. Her last show in New York City before this past weekend was in 1979; she has suffered health setbacks including a stroke.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAt BAM, backed by a signal-scrambling, free-improvising, eight-piece band, Sharrock sat in a wheelchair beside an upright piano (that she often touched but hardly played) and sang in big, open vowel sounds. They felt confounding, yet clear. Most of the time, the sounds came in wide, billowing arcs; when she held a single, steady note — sometimes spiked with a growl — it brought the urgency to an almost unbearable level. Often there were hints at a secondary feeling (surprise? anger? wonder? all possible) but the main message was consistent: pain.The backstage crew seemed to have difficulty following the band’s cues, and after the curtain had been down for a solid three minutes following Sharrock’s set, it came back up. The band was still playing. Sharrock performed another mini-set before an awkwardly long wait for the curtain to come down once again. Maybe a clean ending wouldn’t have fit. The crowd — dazed, moved — gave Sharrock a warm response, but there was little that felt “triumphant and safe” about this night.It concluded with a set from Archie Shepp, the luminary tenor saxophonist, composer, vocalist and writer. A disciple of John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor, Shepp became a leading advocate for Black musicians’ right to self-determination in the 1960s and has hardly quieted his voice ever since. At 85, his saxophone chops have faded, and he needed help from other band members to bring the instrument into playing position, but the whispered notes he did get out of the horn carried fabulous amounts of weight.Archie Shepp, center, performs at “The Cry of My People,” backed by a nine-piece ensemble.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesBacked by a nine-piece ensemble featuring three excellent vocalists (Amina Claudine Myers, Sarah Elizabeth Charles and Pyeng Threadgill) and a pithy, three-man horn section, Shepp pulled from across his broad repertoire. He revisited his classic cover of Calvin Massey’s stout, dirgelike “Cry of My People,” and the swiveling rock beat of “Blues for Brother George Jackson” from the “Attica Blues” LP. On Duke Ellington’s gospel standard “Come Sunday,” Shepp sang in an earnest baritone while Myers, who briefly took over the piano chair from Jason Moran, splashed him with generous harmonies. As Shepp sang the line, “God of love, please look down and see my people through,” the house erupted in a wave of support.His set, like his six-decade-long career, was a reminder that the walls that divide spiritual music, popular music and art music can often be arbitrary. “Where did they come from, anyway?” he seemed to ask. This, you could say, was the message of “Eldorado Ballroom” writ large.The series takes its name from a once-legendary venue in Houston’s Third Ward neighborhood, where Solange grew up. At the ’Rado, as it was known, jazz, gospel and soul — art, spiritual and popular — all appeared on the same stage, until an economic downturn and a pattern of police repression forced the venue to close in 1972.The night that Solange’s series kicked off — March 30, with a show featuring the outsider-R&B trifecta of Kelela, keiyaA and Res — the actual Eldorado Ballroom was celebrating its grand reopening in Houston, after a nearly $10 million restoration project. With a little luck, Houston may have its own “Eldorado Ballroom” soon, too. More

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      5 Minutes to Make You Love Jazz

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Sun Ra

      Questlove, Dawn Richard and a range of other musicians, writers and critics share their favorites from the experimental pianist, organist and bandleader’s wide-ranging catalog.
      Background Image: A colorful animated illustration of a musician with a loose resemblance to Sun Ra playing a keyboard with one hand raised and their eyes closed. Planets float in the background. More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Mary Lou Williams

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      We asked a dozen musicians, scholars and critics to help take us on a tour of the music and mind of a pianist whose decades-long career made her a Mount Rushmore figure in jazz.Over the past few months, The New York Times has asked experts to answer the question, What would you play a friend to make them fall in love with jazz? We’ve gotten plenty of answers, with selections of favorites for artists like Duke Ellington, Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra and styles from the bebop era to the modern day.This time, we’re turning to Mary Lou Williams, who fell in love with music as a toddler, sitting on her mother’s knee at the organ and learning by ear. Williams’s grandfather liked Western classical music, so she learned to play sonatas with an elegant touch; her stepfather liked boogie-woogie, so she developed a steam-engine left hand; her uncle liked Irish folk songs, so she memorized that repertoire, too.Soon the “little piano girl” of Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood was a local celebrity, renowned among musicians even in the piano-player-packed city and in demand as an entertainer of wealthy white families. As a teenager she joined Andy Kirk and His 12 Clouds of Joy, a Kansas City big band on the make; her compositions and arrangements — not to mention her bravura playing style — helped make it one of the era’s leading bands.In the coming decades, Williams stayed abreast of the major developments in jazz, following her ear and leading by example. She wrote briefly for both Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, then became a mentor to the young bebop musicians rising up in Harlem.But as artistically successful as she was, life for Williams never really got easy. Things have rarely been simple for genius Black musicians in America, but for a woman in jazz, things were especially tough. She wasn’t signed by a major label, and rarely received star billing. In 1954, while living in Paris, she stepped away — literally, midperformance — from jazz. She converted to Catholicism and stayed away from the music for three years. When she returned, she was as an activist and an educator as much as a pianist and composer.Today, Williams is a Mount Rushmore figure in jazz, possibly the greatest multiplier of openness and mastery the music has yet known. Below, we asked a dozen musicians, scholars and critics to help take us on a tour of the music and mind of Mary Lou Williams. Enjoy listening to their choices, check out the playlist at the bottom of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Helen Sung, pianistIt is fascinating to hear this live performance (from one of Williams’s last recordings) of “Roll ’Em,” a composition from early on in her career. One hears a broad swath of jazz history in her playing: boogie-woogie, swing, big-band riffs, subtle chromaticism in her left-hand chords when the band settles into a more modern trio format. Williams’s artistry is steeped in the blues and full of sass and rhythmic swagger. Her soloistic approach here recalls folks like Fats Waller, Art Tatum and Erroll Garner, where the bassist and drummer simply come along for a thrilling ride with the piano maestra.◆ ◆ ◆Courtney Bryan, pianist and scholarIn 1945, Williams, a pathbreaking genius composer, recorded her first extended composition, “Zodiac Suite.” Soon afterward, she presented chamber and full orchestra versions of the suite. The 12 movements are based on zodiac signs, each honoring creative people and friends.Williams, a Taurus, dedicated this movement to Duke Ellington, Joe Louis and Bing Crosby. “Taurus” takes you on an adventure — starting with the solo piano opening statement in major and minor alternating with open tempo whole-tone figures, to the trio swinging in time with chromatic and bluesy themes with exciting detours, and then ending, as Williams explains in the liner notes, “with the same theme to indicate the personality that ‘only changes when it is forced to do so.’”Following a music sabbatical and conversion to Roman Catholicism with a focus on charity, her return to music was in 1957 with Dizzy Gillespie at Newport Jazz Festival, where she performed movements from “Zodiac Suite.” She went on to compose several jazz-inspired Masses. The afterlife of “Zodiac Suite” can be heard in contemporary takes by a range of artists.◆ ◆ ◆Fredara Hadley, ethnomusicology professorI learned who St. Martin de Porres is through Williams’s 1964 album “Black Christ of the Andes.” The album opens with a (mostly) a cappella choral piece named for the saint. It is part chant and part hymn but is rife with a reverence that reveals Williams’s expansive bebop and blues harmonic ingenuity. My favorite moment happens over three minutes after the song begins. It is right where I’m tempted to slip into the contemplative world Williams creates, but then she begins her brief piano solo with an awakening glissando and a habanera rhythm that reminds me that she’s not honoring just any saint, but St. Martin de Porres, an Afro-Peruvian priest who represents social justice and interracial harmony. This is soul music. “St. Martin de Porres” and all of “Black Christ of the Andes” is Williams’s spiritual offering to her chosen patron saint, and it is a gift of hope and reflection to our listening ears.◆ ◆ ◆Jason Moran, pianistWilliams’s “Night Life” is a blistering three-minute dance. It’s the kind of song that raises your heart rate because Mary Lou creates so much drama by pressurizing the syncopation between her perfect hands. In those hands we hear the drama of a night: A scene seems to unfold here with laughter and clinking glasses, and we can almost hear the dancers emerge onto the floor. (I practice my Lil Uzi Vert dance to this track.) This is an excellent example of her vocal quality as a pianist, describing a night out. Midway through, around 1:42, the scene changes; it’s as if someone had come in to rob the patrons of the club, but heard Mary Lou’s playing and changed their mind, joined the dance and bought everyone a round. By the end, Mary Lou is shoulder-dancing us all out into the street at daybreak. Time for work. I’ll always love Mary Lou.◆ ◆ ◆Tammy Kernodle, musicologistThis performance of “A Grand Night for Swinging” is taken from a 1976 live album of the same name. Written by her close friend and fellow pianist Billy Taylor, the tune became a staple in Williams’s repertory after 1957. She first recorded it in 1964 for the “Black Christ of the Andes” album, and it is featured on a few of the live albums she recorded during the last five years of her life. This rendition, however, is my absolute favorite as it displays how the richness of her artistry as a pianist had deepened during this late chapter of her career. It is funkier and grittier than the others that precede it, no doubt because of the chemistry that existed between Williams, the bassist Ronnie Boykins and the legendary drummer Roy Haynes.Mary Lou had a reputation for pushing bass players and drummers. She wanted a particular kind of rhythmic drive and often coached her sidemen in real time by stomping her left foot or moving her head. But it is clear from the opening motive to the last chord that Boykins and Haynes knew exactly what Mary Lou wanted. They established a rhythmic pocket that allowed Williams to effortlessly weave line after line of blues-tinged improvisation. It is a reminder that when Mary Lou said she had played through every era of jazz, that she indeed had played and mastered many of the different iterations of jazz piano. This performance situates her squarely in the sonic genealogy of the East Coast hard bop aesthetic. But the unique hallmarks of Williams’s style are also very evident, especially her driving left hand, and the strong chord clusters she would periodically bang out in the lower register of the piano to break up the continuity of her comping. This is Mary Lou at her best!◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times music criticOne mark of an influential artist is the ability to speak through modern-day disciples. When latter-day pianists on the level of Geri Allen and Aaron Diehl offer us informed and inventive takes on Williams’s 1940s “Zodiac Suite,” that’s a sign of its own. But what was Williams herself thinking about, when completing that ambitious composition in its various editions for small combo and chamber orchestra alike? On the evidence of sides cut for the Asch label, she was enjoying a wide range of styles — including Harlem stride and the beginnings of bop. A solo approach to W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” from this period reflects her composer’s sense of proportion as well as her wide-ranging ear; she starts at a stately pace, and adds delirious ornaments as she goes — eventually throttling into a thrilling, boogie-woogie gear.◆ ◆ ◆Carmen Staaf, pianistOne of the astonishing things about Williams is the number of musical eras during which she continued to break new ground. “Olinga” (from 1974’s fascinating “Zoning” album) exemplifies her ability to sound fresh, even after mastering so many earlier styles. Williams’s version of this Dizzy Gillespie composition is relaxed, soulful and grooving, yet constantly surprising. Her touch remains beautiful and lush across a wide dynamic and textural range. By bringing out individual notes within voicings and contrasting big chords with single-note lines, she creates a topography of sound, the music alive in multidimensional space. In the improvisation, her right hand freely pushes and pulls against the time over funky left-hand chords. Bluesy licks, long a central part of her sound, lead fluidly into bebop lines and more modern language; her soloing seems to encapsulate the history of jazz piano while looking ahead into its future.◆ ◆ ◆Daphne Brooks, Black studies scholarThe genius of Williams’s take on the Gershwins’ “It Ain’t Necessarily So” lies in both the context of this recording as well as its rich, ambling and contemplative content. Appearing as track No. 2 on her pivotal “Black Christ of the Andes” album, her post-Catholic conversion masterpiece, Williams’s cover of the “Porgy and Bess” trickster-villain Sportin’ Life’s ode to religious skepticism eschews the original’s vaudevillian flash in favor of offering a brooding ramble, a gently swinging peregrination that traverses hills and moves in and out of dark valleys to the rhythm of philosophical questioning and questing. Less Cab Calloway and Sammy Davis Jr. and more midnight Mary at the altar working out the complexities of faith, her reading of “It Ain’t Necessarily So” expands the lexicon of jazz spirituality.◆ ◆ ◆Ethan Iverson, pianist and writerA fast piano blues is usually a “boogie-woogie.” That’s a rhyme, “boogie” and “woogie.” Rhymes repeat sound, and the musical characteristics of boogie-woogie include riffs and rhythms that constantly replicate. On the glorious 1939 side of “Little Joe From Chicago,” Williams suavely varies both the top and bottom patterns in a notably carefree fashion. Musicians call that kind of initiative “mixing it up.” Williams mixes it up, but her performance still has more than enough hypnotic, danceable repetition to make it classic boogie-woogie. (On the full band version with Andy Kirk, the lyrics turn out to be a sardonic appraisal of Louis Armstrong’s manager Joe Glaser: “Little Joe from Chicago wears a big blue diamond ring. Little Joe from Chicago never wants for anything. He handles plenty money and he dresses up like a king.”)◆ ◆ ◆Cory Smythe, pianistIt’s hard to top the opening of “Lonely Moments” — the way its spare octaves, separated at first by bewilderingly long silences, gather momentum and burst into rousing, syncopated harmonies. I imagine solitude might have been something like this for Williams, whose lonesome moments yielded so much thrilling invention. But I might like what comes next even more: a glissando that swings up past the “right” note and sounds, magically, like the piano in its exuberance is singing just a little sharp. The whole track is like this, suffused with flourishes that transform the solo piano into the sounds of an entire band. Notice the chords in her right hand that begin and end with little tremolos, perfectly calibrated to make the decaying piano tones do something they should not — shake, flutter, growl.◆ ◆ ◆Damien Sneed, pianist and professorI first heard Williams’s recording of her original song “What’s Your Story Morning Glory” in my first year at Howard University in Washington, D.C. I immediately fell in love with her piano playing and was mesmerized by her voicings as well. This track showcases her effervescent melodic content combined in her right hand and her passionate comping in her left hand. Williams was a pianist, composer and arranger well ahead of her time. One of the things that stands out to me about her pianistic excellence is the subtle yet virtuosic quality in the development of her solos.◆ ◆ ◆Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz criticOK. Now that you’ve gotten to know Mary Lou Williams’s brilliance, her generosity and her range, let’s learn a bit about how she sparred. Williams and the great avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor were mutual admirers until she organized a joint concert at Carnegie Hall in 1977. So-called “free jazz” was one style of the music she never embraced, but the depths of Taylor’s talent and knowledge of musical traditions won her over. When the time came for the concert, however, he revolted: Taylor hated that she had chosen the rhythm section without him, and he felt she wasn’t giving his 12-tone approach enough room to run. The concert was titled “Embraced” (as was the resulting album), but the actual affair felt more like a joust. And yet, by the end, Williams had managed to establish some balance; on “Back to the Blues,” their last tune together, she digs a deep trench of boogieing rhythm and challenges Taylor in the upper register, where he often lit his brightest fires. As the bassist Bob Cranshaw and the drummer Mickey Roker lock in with her, around the 11:00 mark, Taylor’s two-handed flurries finally start to sound like they fit.◆ ◆ ◆Brandee Younger, harpistThis bass line pulls you right in. It’s grooving, it feels really good, and then the melody comes in and instantly makes your head turn. It makes you wonder, too, because harmonically it is sort of peculiar against the bass, yet still fits perfectly. It’s almost like the blending of two different worlds. The drummer and composer LaFrae Sci introduced me to “Ode to St. Cecile” while on the road with her band, the 13th Amendment. Learning how Williams composed this after converting to Catholicism, retreating and returning to music was a real eye-opener. It made me think about what the melody may have represented in her life at that moment. And musically, just the contrast between the thick, consistent groove and the contemplative melody is enough to keep you on the edge of your seat.◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      Dawn Richard Honors New Orleans Second Lines, and 7 More New Songs

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe PlaylistDawn Richard Honors New Orleans Second Lines, and 7 More New SongsHear tracks by 24kGoldn, Amythyst Kiah, Lil Yachty and others.Dawn Richard’s new single “Bussifame” is a preview of her April album “Second Line.” Credit…Alexander Le’JoJon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and Feb. 19, 2021, 10:53 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.Dawn Richard, ‘Bussifame’[embedded content]Dawn Richard gives “Bussifame” four syllables — as in “Bust it for me” — when she chants it in her new single, a preview of her April album “Second Line.” The video, released on Mardi Gras, opens with someone dancing to a (sadly uncredited) New Orleans brass band’s second-line beat. Then the track itself begins, with Richard and her dancers wearing pointy, futuristic costumes outside the giant graffiti on a derelict former Holiday Inn. “Feet move with the beat/Bussifame, second line,” she chants, huskily, in an electronic track that’s closer to house than to second line, but just keeps adding levels of perky syncopation. JON PARELESAmythyst Kiah, ‘Black Myself’“Black Myself” starts out as a blunt catalog of stereotyping and discrimination — “You better lock the doors as I walk by/’Cause I’m Black myself — before affirming Black solidarity and self-determination in its final verse. The song was already a bluesy stomp when Amythyst Kiah first recorded it with the folky all-star alliance Our Native Daughters; now she revisits it with a fuller studio production, reinforcing its distorted guitar with more effects, more layers and a bigger beat, adding extra clout. PARELESMichael Wimberly, featuring Theresa Thomason, ‘Madiba’Over a stuttering bass line, plinking balafon and wah-wah-drenched guitar, the gospel vocalist Theresa Thomason offers an unflinching tribute to Nelson Mandela, lingering on the struggles he endured and vowing to carry his legacy forward. “Always looking left, always looking right/Always defending the people’s truth/We’ll never forget you,” she sings. The song comes from “Afrofuturism,” the latest album by the percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Michael Wimberly, who recorded it with a diverse group of musicians from across the world. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO24kGoldn, ‘3, 2, 1’24kGoldn’s version of hip-hop is, in essence, pop-punk coated with just the faintest layer of R&B — which is to say, exceedingly pop. His latest single, which arrives while “Mood,” his recent No. 1 with Iann Dior, is still at No. 5 on the Hot 100, is taut, angsty and extremely efficient, a fait accompli of hybrid pop. JON CARAMANICALil Yachty featuring Kodak Black, ‘Hit Bout It’Lil Yachty, KrispyLife Kidd, RMC Mike, Babyface Ray, Rio Da Yung OG, DC2Trill and Icewear Vezzo, ‘Royal Rumble’Three or so years ago, you would not have pegged Lil Yachty as destined to be one of hip-hop’s more versatile talents. And yet here he is, fast rapping over a nervous beat on “Hit Bout It,” a strong duet with the fresh-out-of-jail Kodak Black. That comes less than two weeks after “Royal Rumble,” a posse cut of (mostly) great Michigan rappers full of the non sequitur tough talk that’s been defining that scene for the last couple of years, and which Yachty has an affinity (if not quite aptitude) for. Focus instead on great verses from the stalwart Icewear Vezzo and the up-and-comer Babyface Ray. CARAMANICAMahalia featuring Rico Nasty, ‘Jealous’A sample of flamenco guitar curls through the insinuating, two-chord track of “Jealous” as the English singer Mahalia and the Maryland rapper-singer Rico Nasty casually demolish male pride. “Im’a do what I want to baby/I won’t be stuck without you baby,” they nonchalantly explain, as Mahalia flaunts her wardrobe, her car, her “crew” and her indifference. “Unless you got that heart then you can’t come my way,” she sings, staccato and unconcerned. PARELESChris Pattishall, ‘Taurus’For his debut album, the rising pianist Chris Pattishall reached back 75 years to revisit Mary Lou Williams’s 12-part “Zodiac Suite.” The result is neither overly nostalgic nor newfangled and gimmicky. Pattishall’s “Zodiac” is a startling achievement precisely because of how deeply — and personally — this old material seems to resonate with him. Pattishall has said that he is particularly drawn to Williams because of the way she seemed to hopscotch between atmospheres and registers within individual compositions, without sacrificing a sense of narrative. That’s borne out on his album’s very first track, “Taurus” (Williams’s own star sign), which starts with a passage of ruminative piano before a quick acceleration, with Pattishall leading his quintet into a swirling, bluesy refrain. RUSSONELLOAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More