Classical Music

Beethoven, Interrupted

I confess: I don’t typically like listening to excerpts from extended works. Nor do I enjoy hearing other compositions sandwiched between different movements of a major piece. (Just play something whole — and then do something else!)

But “Healing Modes,” a new album from the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, has turned me around on this strategy. Before the group engages with one of Beethoven’s rapturously admired late quartets, Op. 132, they open with a new piece by the reliably fascinating composer and improvising saxophonist Matana Roberts.

Titled “borderlands …,” her composition uses graphic as well as traditional notation. Textures proliferate quickly in the quartet’s performance: Droning tones, staccato rhythmic explosions and restless pizzicato are all in motion. (The string players also have to use their voices — recalling the incantatory approach of Roberts’s recordings as a bandleader.) It’s intriguing on its own, and also a rewarding setup for the rest of the album, which alternates between movements of the Beethoven quartet and various shorter works by other contemporary artists (including the Pulitzer Prize winners Du Yun and Caroline Shaw).

For me, the sequencing worked wonders. I don’t believe I’ve ever experienced the radical emotional range of Op. 132’s long, slow movement — with its liberating, dancing interjections — more intensely than when listening to the entirety of “Healing Modes.” And if you must hear the master’s quartet in its regular order, you can always buy the digital files and reshuffle the tracks in a playlist. (In this perilous period for performers, please consider paying artists for albums you enjoy.)
SETH COLTER WALLS

Theater/Television

The Musicals That Weren’t, but Should Be

When passionately hate-watching NBC’s “Smash” back in 2012-13, many viewers complained it was lame and unrealistic. Fine, so the musical-theater-themed drama lacked the rigor of a Frederick Wiseman documentary. What it did have was great singing by the likes of Megan Hilty, Jeremy Jordan and Will Chase, as well as wackadoo antics.

Now that “Smash” is easily accessible on streaming platforms, it’s high time to reclaim the show. (If you have a cable subscription, you can watch it free on NBC.com, or you can rent or buy it from Amazon, Fandango, Google Play, iTunes or Vudu.)

“Smash” started semi-seriously as a backstage story about the making of a (fictional) Broadway musical called “Bombshell.” It was not long — say, the second episode — until it devolved into a nutty soap opera. In hindsight, neither the creators nor the showrunners seemed to realize that the insanity was the point.

That, and cranking out many really good tunes, including Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s “History Is Made at Night,” Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s “Rewrite This Story” and Joe Iconis’s “Broadway, Here I Come!” Those numbers were written for “Bombshell” and its Season 2 rival, the supposedly grittier “Hit List.” Some of us harbor hope that one day reality will catch up to fiction and these musicals will come to an actual stage.
ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

Comedy

Quick Bites of Laughter

“Gayme Show!” is a straightforward, gay-positive comedy competition that its creators and hosts, Matt Rogers and Dave Mizzoni, developed for more than a year at the Lower East Side basement club Caveat. As its popularity grew, it moved to larger performance spaces such as the Bell House and the Gramercy Theater.

If you missed out on the live experience, or if you just miss live comedy, you can now view “Gayme Show!” on Quibi, the new smartphone streaming platform for short-form videos, founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg.

In these seven-minute episodes, Rogers and Mizzoni deftly whisk the audience through a competition in which two heterosexual comedians vie for the title of “Queen of the Straights.” Each contestant receives help from a celebrity partner (in the first episode, Bowen Yang of “Saturday Night Live” and Ilana Glazer of “Broad City” provide the assist). It’s easy, breezy fun.

Other comedy programs that will soon join “Gayme Show” on Quibi include “Nice One!,” an adaptation of the compliment competition Boast Rattle; “Let’s Go Atsuko!,” a spin on Japanese game shows that tests how “woke” comedians are; and “This Joka,” from Will Smith, which features sets by stand-up comedians, and Smith’s interviews with them, filmed in Las Vegas.

Quibi is offering a free 90-day trial for those who sign up by April 30; subscriptions to the app range from about $5 to $8.
SEAN L. McCARTHY

Dance

Ballet for Everyone, Everywhere

In the past few weeks, online dance classes have become the new normal, as dancers and dance instructors keep themselves and others active at home. But long before gathering in studios was off limits, the New York choreographer Katy Pyle was teaching ballet remotely — or more specifically, Ballez, Pyle’s inclusive and imaginative style of ballet training.

Pyle (who uses the pronoun “they”) created the YouTube series Ballez Class Everywhere last year, as a way to bring their method to more people, especially outside of major metropolitan areas. Like Pyle’s dance company (also called Ballez), a Ballez class embraces all body types and forms of gender identity and expression. If you’ve ever felt curious about ballet but are turned off by its narrow definition of “perfect,” Ballez Class Everywhere is for you.

Joined by members of their company, who stand at barres arranged in a circle (a Ballez class hallmark), Pyle leads viewers through 12 short exercises (about an hour total), offering colorful prompts and historical context, as well as compassionate directives: “If anything hurts, don’t do it.” As someone who has always felt out of place in ballet class, I had more fun doing the series in my bedroom, holding on to the back of a kitchen chair, than I’ve ever had at a more conventional barre.

If you’re up for something more advanced, Pyle is now teaching Pro Ballez Barre and Stretch via Zoom. Follow @ballez.company on Instagram for details.
SIOBHAN BURKE

Pop

Venturing Beyond NPR’s Tiny Desk

NPR Music has amassed an impressive following on its YouTube channel through its Tiny Desk series, which for more than a decade has invited musicians — at first, indie acts like Beirut and, more recently, superstars including Lizzo and Taylor Swift — to perform in a charmingly cluttered corner of its offices. But the channel is also home to the Front Row series, a trove of concert footage filmed in more conventional settings.

Offerings range from a 19-year-old Chance the Rapper bounding around a small South by Southwest stage to a revved-up Lucinda Williams holding court at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival. For those of us with ample time on our hands, some of the best selections are full-length sets clocking in at over an hour. While live music’s sense of communion can hardly be approximated through a screen, these videos offer a different kind of thrill: a chance to peek under the hood at all the discrete parts — voices, gadgets, masses of tangled wire — that make up the transcendent whole. The view is better than any you’ll get craning to see over strangers’ heads in a darkened room.

Start with Bon Iver’s 2016 performance at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Captured shortly after the release of the singer-songwriter’s album “22, a Million,” the video features nearly a dozen musicians assembled to reconstruct that record’s glitchy electronics and prismatic vocals in real time. In a moment of collective crisis, the prevailing themes of uncertainty and alienation in these songs are especially resonant.
OLIVIA HORN

KIDS

Screen On, Curtain Up

The Trusty Sidekick Theater Company is living up to its name, even in a time of social distancing. This appealing troupe, which offers intriguing and sometimes immersive productions, is posting much of its repertory online. Every Monday since mid-March, the company has been adding an archival video of a show to its website, where you can stream most of the performances free through June.

Have antsy preschoolers? Send them on a trip to the moon with “Shadow Play,” a beguiling and almost wordless multimedia adventure in which a boy’s rebellious silhouette takes off on its own. Or join the dance party in “Scurry,” a tale about toe-tapping friends who are in for a big surprise. Interested in discovering wildness in the city? “Campfire,” a nature celebration, will be posted on Monday.

If your youngsters are school-age, try a Shakespeare mash-up. “The Stowaway (or How the Mistress Quickly Went From Madcap to Majestic)” — which features a seafaring heroine, a missing duke and his dictatorial substitute — makes Elizabethan comedy digestible. And for children on the autism spectrum, Trusty Sidekick presents “Up and Away,” a hot-air-balloon voyage that you can stream now.

The company plans to add new titles, including shows for tweens and teens, through May 25. It also offers some related online activities, like dance lessons from “Scurry.” On Friday, a video of a puppetry workshop inspired by “Shadow Play” will go up on the website. Bring cardboard, scissors, a pencil, imagination and your own trusty silhouette.
LAUREL GRAEBER