THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER16, 2020 5
OPPOSITE: COURTESY THE CRITERION COLLECTION; RIGHT: ILLUSTRATION BY STEPHANIE F. SCHOLZ
The intrepid pianist Keith Jarrett recently disclosed that he has lost the
use of his left hand and is unlikely to resume live performances. The
revelation casts a shadow over “Budapest Concert,” his latest live album.
Recorded in 2016, the solo showing follows a familiar format: relatively
compact improvisations on spontaneously composed themes, capped by
heartfelt readings of a few standards. Jarrett’s extraordinary gifts as an
impromptu inventor of both highly lyrical and engagingly craggy mel-
odies have been evident since his run of solo recordings in the seventies,
and the Budapest performance finds him at the peak of his late-period
powers. Hearing him caress the ballads “It’s a Lonesome Old Town” and
“Answer Me,” or his own “Part XI,” and then considering a future without
his playing adds yet another loss to a calamitous year.—Steve Futterman
JAZZ
1
MUSIC
Busta Rhymes: “Extinction Level
Event 2: The Wrath of God”
HIP-HOP In 1998, with Y2K on the horizon, the
raucous New York City rapper Busta Rhymes
considered a potential apocalypse on the album
“E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event): The Final
World Front,” his manic delivery selling the fore
boding sense of dread that sometimes comes on
the cusp of a crisis. Now, more than two decades
later, he has released a doomsday sequel, subti
tled “The Wrath of God,” amid a pandemic and
alongside a critical election season in a divided
nation. Busta is seeing the signs everywhere, and
he raps with purpose, and occasional menace,
about all that’s looming before him. But the rec
ord is less about lamenting the end of days and
more about getting through them—with some
assistance from Mariah Carey, QTip, Rakim,
Kendrick Lamar, the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard,
and the comedian Chris Rock. Throughout the
album, Busta performs with the conviction of a
conspiracy theorist proved right.—Sheldon Pearce
Chamber Music Society
of Lincoln Center
CLASSICAL The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln
Center is booting up two new free online series
devoted to contemporary fare. The first, “Com
posers in Focus,” lets viewers watch live conversa
tions among creators and interpreters, enhanced
with archival recordings. In its initial episode,
the pianist Orion Weiss and the violinist Kristin
Lee chat with Zosha Di Castri, a Canadian com
poser of riotously inventive works. Weiss and
Lee also perform Di Castri’s “Sprung Testament”
in the first installment of “New Milestones”;
the series arrives on Dec. 3 and includes music
by Trevor Weston and Helen Grime.—Steve
Smith (Nov. 16 at 6:30; chambermusicsociety.org.)
Chucky73: “De Chamaquito
Siempre Cabezu”
LATIN TRAP The rapper Adel Mejia, who performs
as Chucky73, is one of the standout figures in the
Bronx crew Sie7etr3, a group known for bringing
a cultural specificity to Latin trap. Dominican
artists, such as the rappers Fuego and Messiah,
have long pushed the genre forward, and Sie7etr
has continued to represent the Caribbean with
clever wordplay and rhythms steeped in tradi
tion. Chucky73’s solo début, “De Chamaquito
Siempre Cabezu,” is no exception; he waves a
proud banner in the title alone, which is written
in Dominican vernacular. The forceful “Tutu”
and the dembowinspired “Dominicana” serve as
reminders of Chucky73’s striking agility, letting
him shape elaborate rhyme schemes over beats
inextricably tied to his background.—Julyssa
Lopez
Orchestra of St. Luke’s
CLASSICAL A mainstay of New York’s classical
scene, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s is halfway
through a livestreaming series that draws at
tention to the underrepresented role of Black
composers in music history. In a program
called “Connections Across Time and Space,”
the ensemble finds synergy between Johannes
Brahms’s String Sextet No. 1 (1860) and Flor
ence Price’s String Quartet No. 2 (1935). Both
works tug at the heart by harnessing the throb
bing quality of a string ensemble’s middle range.
Christine Delphine Hedden’s “Cuimhne,” a
recent O.S.L. commission, completes the pro
gram.—Oussama Zahr (Nov. 16 at 6:30.)
Pole: “Fading”
ELECTRONIC Stefan Betke, the Berlin techno pro
ducer who works under the alias Pole, has made
glitches—the popping, wheezing, whirring noises
that his damaged Waldorf 4Pole analog filter
emits—a primary composition tool for more than
two decades. In that time, his loping, dubin
spired tracks, full of bulbous bass lines and flick
ering echo, have grown steadily warmer and less
minimalist. “Fading,” the latest Pole album,
presents Betke’s music at its lushest, with curling
synthesizers providing a dense undergrowth
where static makes merry. This is nominally
ambient music, but, even at its most relaxed,
the tenor remains restive.—Michaelangelo Matos
Heather Trost: “Petrichor”
INDIE ROCK In the Albuquerque duo A Hawk and
a Hacksaw, Heather Trost and her husband,
Jeremy Barnes, perform heady, Balkanstyle
folk music, often driven by her violin. Hearing
that band won’t prepare listeners for Trost’s
solo records, which are also plotted with Barnes
but occupy a separate headspace. The vibe on
Trost’s new album, “Petrichor,” is part lullaby,
part soundtrack to an offkilter sciencefiction
film produced at the behest of Leonid Brezh
nev. The album deviates, slightly, from her
signature psychedelic turf on its lone cover
song, “Jump Into the Fire,” by Harry Nilsson,
who played the same role on Trost’s previous
LP. The late pop savant travelled a different
stylistic lane than Trost, but he serves as an
enticing patron saint: Trost’s music taps into
Nilsson’s unearthly glow, as if beamed down
from parts unknown.—Jay Ruttenberg
Wizkid: “Made in Lagos”
AFRO-POP The Nigerian singer Wizkid has led
a revolution in African pop music, blending
traditional rhythms with the softened textures
of R. & B. to produce a glossy, modern sound.
His new album, “Made in Lagos,” is the closest
he’s come to complete synthesis, balancing
the cultural characteristics of his home with
his immense desire to become a citizen of the
world. Artists from Nigeria, America, Jamaica,
and England converge for a cultural exchange
that mirrors his colleague Burna Boy’s 2019
