Aurelia Butler

In 2020, she released a lauded album exploring the Coltranes’ music. The next year, she broke her jaw in a crash and turned the harrowing experience into inspiration for a new LP, “Phoenix.”In mid-September 2021, the saxophonist and bandleader Lakecia Benjamin was driving home from a performance in Cleveland when her car slid off the highway, careened through a wooded area and flipped into a drainage ditch.“I woke up the first time to somebody pulling me out of the car, trying to break it open,” Benjamin, a bright light on the New York scene since the early 2010s, said through two masks on a recent Saturday morning at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. “Then I woke up in the hospital on a surgical table and them telling me, ‘You’re going to be OK.’ I didn’t know what happened or what was going on.”The accident left the Washington Heights native with three broken ribs, a fractured scapula, a perforated eardrum, a concussion, neurological damage and — worst of all — a broken jaw, a severe blow to any horn player, let alone one with her intensity. Undeterred, Benjamin went to Europe just three weeks later, somehow summoning the strength to play songs from her 2020 album, “Pursuance: The Coltranes,” a project dedicated to the astral jazz of the creative soul mates John and Alice.How did she get through it? “A little bit from the Heights,” she said, alluding to her toughness. “A little bit of clamping down and staying clamped on the mouthpiece. And I really think I was lucky that I was playing the Coltrane music. That energy, and that message; that was what I was supposed to be doing.”Though Benjamin has been a rising star in jazz for more than a decade, she reached a new gear in 2020 following the release of “Pursuance: The Coltranes,” an album lauded for its refreshing take on bebop and spiritual jazz. The car accident couldn’t dim her determination. Hustle and ingenuity have defined Benjamin’s career, and her strong will, warmth and down-to-earth persona come through in the music. Equally melodic and assertive, her sound feels rooted in tradition, yet broad enough to encompass R&B and Latin music; its pronounced funk suggests allegiances to hip-hop and dance.The trauma of Benjamin’s crash anchors her new album, “Phoenix,” out Friday, a vast, labyrinthine set of arrangements that opens with “Amerikkan Skin,” a propulsive song that features the wail of emergency vehicle sirens. “Instead of starting musically only, I’m trying to put the audience in a state of mind, of the type of frenzy and frantic, the hecticness I felt getting out of the car,” she explained.By incorporating sampled gunfire into the mix, the song also recollects wider tensions of recent years. “Black people are going through it,” Benjamin said. “Lower class people are going through it. Everyone is going through something.”Featuring the civil rights activist Angela Davis, the poet Sonia Sanchez, the pianist and R&B singer Patrice Rushen and the saxophonist Wayne Shorter, the album both examines the nuances of Blackness and emphasizes the contributions of women to American culture. “Revolutionary hope resides precisely among those women who have been abandoned by history,” Davis declares on “Amerikkan Skin.” “I truly believe, and men should applaud this, that this is the era of women.”Benjamin started her own journey in jazz, long a male-dominated form, when she told an art teacher at her elementary school that she wanted to play alto sax before she even knew what it was. Actually getting her hands on the instrument involved persuading a classmate to switch from sax to art. “I think I negotiated a couple Oreos or something,” Benjamin deadpanned.She attended the Harlem School of the Arts, then the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, where she studied saxophone under the multi-reedist Patience Higgins. Later, as a student at the New School, she went to concerts after class and saw players like Gary Bartz whenever they were in town. Benjamin said she talked Bartz into giving her “one little lesson,” which led to his teaching her how to play classical music. From there, she studied under other noted saxophonists — Vincent Herring, Bruce Williams, Jerome Richardson and Steve Wilson — and tried to absorb everything she could about the instrument: “I was calling Kenny Garrett, everybody, ‘Hey, can you teach me?’”The drummer Terri Lyne Carrington met Benjamin around 2010, when she was touring to support her album “The Mosaic Project,” and Benjamin joined to play a few shows. “She came in and I was like, ‘Wow, this is really electrifying,’” Carrington said in a telephone interview. “I could hear her spirit, her soul, everything was right there on the line.” She commended Benjamin for playing with emotion without losing the technical aspects of playing the blues.“We all have to heal from the pandemic,” Benjamin said. “We all have to rise from these ashes.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York Times“We as jazz musicians can be musically intellectual and worried about playing hip and all those things,” Carrington said. “I was so happy to hear someone of her generation connect to the blues and to the origins of jazz in the way that she did.”Carrington produced Benjamin’s new album, tweaking compositions while adhering to the saxophonist’s own vision for the LP. “She wanted to involve people that she has called elders in some ways,” Carrington said. “I think that’s really an important element with young musicians to recognize or not recognize: to want to exchange. All of us have to, including her, pass on what we know to the people that are coming up behind us. That’s the only way the music survives.”The song “Basquiat” — a scorching arrangement dedicated to that artist — has a shape-shifting rhythm that pivots between calm and tranquillity. And the rapper, singer and producer Georgia Anne Muldrow appears on the title track, offering celestial coos for its spiritual-minded intro. The slow-rising arrangement purposefully depicts Benjamin’s resurgence in the wake of her accident.“I’ve seen her transform,” Muldrow said over the telephone. “The most beautiful thing about ’Kecia is that she is just more of herself. She’s more open with sharing the ideas that are within her. She’s become absolutely fearless in what it is — a compositional value, performance value, all these things. If you know ’Kecia, she ain’t gonna tell you nothing but the truth. She ain’t gonna give you nothing but what’s on her mind.”Benjamin said the perseverance she’s put into her career, and into recovering from her accident, are the backbone of “Phoenix,” which she hopes shows others “that anything is possible.”“I think I’m starting to see that I can accomplish more with the help of God than I thought I could,” she said. “I keep thinking this is the ceiling for me. And then I keep pressing it and pushing it. I’m growing; I feel like a phoenix. But I also feel we’re all out here the same way. We all have to heal from the pandemic. We all have to rise from these ashes.” More

The tenor Limmie Pulliam, who made his debut at Carnegie Hall on Friday, hopes to break barriers for larger artists.As a rising young tenor in the 1990s, Limmie Pulliam dreamed of a career that would take him to the world’s top stages. But Pulliam, who has struggled with excessive weight for much of his life, quit singing in his early 20s because of concerns about body shaming in the music industry, finding work instead as a debt collector and a security guard.Now, after spending much of the past decade rebuilding his voice and career, Pulliam, 47, is finally realizing his dream. He made his debut at Carnegie Hall on Friday with the Oberlin Orchestra, singing the title role in R. Nathaniel Dett’s “The Ordering of Moses.” And last month, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in the role of Radamès in Verdi’s “Aida,” filling in for a tenor who had canceled his appearance — making Pulliam the first Black singer to perform that role in the Met’s history.His solemn performance received a warm ovation at Carnegie.“To hear Limmie succeed in this moment so beautifully, and at this point in his life, was personally satisfying for me,” said Timothy LeFebvre, the chair of the voice department at Oberlin. “We always cheer on our colleagues when they reach these notable achievements, but even more so when it is so hard fought.”In an interview, Pulliam reflected on his 12-year break from singing and the challenges facing larger artists, who once were common in the industry but have faced pressure in recent years to slim down. He also talked about how a chance to perform the national anthem while working as a field organizer in Missouri for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign allowed him to rediscover his voice. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.After you attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, you seemed destined for a career in opera. Then you quit. What happened?There was a lot of pressure on artists in terms of appearance. The industry cared about things that really had nothing to do with the voice, but with physicality, and that made it difficult for singers of size. It made it easy for me to walk away. I made myself a promise that if it ever stopped being fun, I would do something else. And so I did.What was it like at the time for singers struggling with concerns about their weight?People within the industry were able to make comments regarding someone’s physical look with impunity. In other industries, that would not be accepted, but it was almost widely accepted within the classical music world. It felt like it was OK to make fun of people of size and that we weren’t worthy of careers. It was a very difficult time, and it’s still a very difficult time.What would people say to you?I’ve had general directors send me email messages complimenting me on my voice and then saying, “Well, when you lose 50 pounds, get in touch with me again, and I’ll give you a live audition.”How did it feel to hear those comments?I began to look at rejection in a different way. I used to get a bit down when I received a note like that or just a flat-out refusal about an audition. But I began to use that as fuel to make me want to work even harder — to be an even better vocalist. I thought, “They may not want me right now, but they will need me at some point.”During your break from classical music, you worked a variety of jobs, eventually starting your own security firm. Did you sing at all, even for your own pleasure — at home, in the shower, at church?Not really. I was deliberately making the decision not to sing. I just didn’t have the desire. I wasn’t singing that much in church, and I rarely listened to the radio in the car. There wasn’t much going on musically for me during that time. I was just concentrating on this new life that I was trying to build and trying to move forward.And then, in 2007, when you were 31 and working as a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Missouri, your home state, you got an unexpected chance to perform the national anthem.We had invited someone to sing the national anthem. And they got cold feet at the last minute and decided they didn’t want to do it. And it happened to be an event that I had invited my boss to attend. And he immediately said, “I remember seeing on your résumé that you used to be an opera singer. Why don’t you sing it?” And I said, “Well, you know, I haven’t sung for a number of years. And the national anthem is not an easy song to sing. I’m not sure I can pull it off.” It was terrifying; it was not something I had practiced or prepared. I did not know what was going to come out.But he convinced me to do it. And I sang at the event and ended up singing at several other events. And in doing so, I noticed some very interesting changes in my voice. It had taken on a more mature, burnished quality. And it had grown substantially in size. And it really piqued my interest as to the type of repertoire I could possibly sing with this new instrument.Your returned to the stage five years later, when you were 36, at the National Opera Association’s vocal competition. How did you prepare?I pulled out my old lesson tapes from the conservatory and began working with those lesson tapes and polishing things, just out of interest to see what the voice could do. And I eventually reached out to a voice teacher in Memphis, Tenn., and began working with her. We realized that we had something that was special — that there wasn’t anyone like me as an artist out there. We were working to rekindle the voice. That’s when I found the joy again in singing.Was it easy to get back into the business?It took a good three years or so before that first staged operatic engagement came, and it came because I was posting clips of my singing on YouTube and other platforms and just sharing wherever I could, and reaching out to friends who were still in the industry and letting them know I was back and basically trying to sing for anyone who would hear me.A friend saw a clip of me singing “Ch’ella mi creda libero e lontano” from Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West” with my former high school choir director playing the piano. She shared it with her husband, who happened to be the music director of a small opera company in the Seattle area. They invited me to to sing the role of Canio in “Pagliacci.”You were the first Black singer to perform the role of Radamès at the Met. Do you feel that classical music is doing enough to address racial and ethnic disparities?As a Black man, I’m usually the only one who looks like me in a rehearsal setting. So there always is a sense of isolation, of not fitting in. You have to learn to work through that and do your job to the best of your ability.We always seem to have had celebrated Black female voices in the industry, like Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Grace Bumbry and Shirley Verrett. But the list of Black men has always been quite short. There are some in the industry who have difficulty in seeing Black males in romantic leads. We’ve made progress, and we just have to keep pushing forward and breaking down some of these walls.How did it feel to make your debut at Carnegie Hall?It was very difficult for me to enjoy it fully. It has been a challenging year for me personally. On May 8, my father passed away. And the following week, after the funeral, I left to get on a plane to prepare for my debut with the Cleveland Orchestra singing the role of Otello. I arrived in New York on Nov. 10 to begin my cover contract with the Met for “Aida.” On Nov. 14, my eldest sister passed away.It has been an emotional roller coaster for me. One never knows how grief will manifest itself. And grief is a very sneaky thing. And it pops up on you at very odd times, and you never know what’s going to trigger it. I was able to make it through because of the strength of my faith and knowing that my loved ones were in complete support of me and my career and would have wanted me to be where I was.What did your family say to you after the performance?My mother walked up to me and gave me a hug and a kiss and said: “God bless you. I’m extremely proud of you.” My oldest brother, whenever I go to perform, he always reminds me to make the family proud. And his response on Friday night was, “That’s how you make us proud.” More

She collaborated on the melodies for signature commercials that sang the praises of McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and other brands.Ginny Redington Dawes, a songwriter whose compositions included memorable advertising jingles like the chipper McDonald’s declaration “You, You’re the One” and Coca-Cola’s boast that “Coke Is It,” died on Dec. 31 in Manhattan. She was 77.Her companion and only immediate survivor, James McCullar, said the cause was complications of hepatic cirrhosis.Ms. Dawes never became well known herself, but she helped maintain or boost the popularity of the products she promoted. And she insinuated infectious tunes into the nation’s repertoire that Americans whistled and hummed as much as the songs played on Top 40 radio.She hooked listeners with melodically and rhythmically catchy jingles that accompanied slogans for everything from Tide detergent to Hartz’s tick and flea-fighting pet collars, Kit Kat candy bars and Johnson’s baby powder.“When I’ve got a really great lyric,” she told Charles Osgood of CBS in a 1977 television interview, “I put a very simple melody to it.”Ms. Dawes started writing the music and lyrics for commercials in 1975 after the firm of Sidney E. Woloshin — who composed the original McDonald’s “You Deserve a Break Today” jingle in 1971 — was commissioned to do one for the chain’s new “You, You’re the One” advertising campaign.Mr. Woloshin invited about 20 jingle writers to submit proposals. Ms. Dawes produced the winning tune. Adopted by the ad agency Needham, Harper & Steers, it was suddenly everywhere.In 1979, she married a jingle-writing competitor, Thomas W. Dawes, whose credits included Alka-Seltzer’s “Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz” and “7Up, the Uncola.”They later collaborated on the music for, among other campaigns, American Airlines’ “Something Special in the Air” and the familiar “Coke Is It.” Mr. Dawes died in 2007.The jingle that underscored Coke’s claim to be “It,” introduced in 1982, was described as a “piece of dynamite” by John F. Bergin, the worldwide director of the Coke account at the McCann-Erickson agency.While David Ogilvy, a founder of the Ogilvy & Mather agency, was credited with the credo “If you don’t have anything to say, sing it,” Mr. Bergin argued that the musical accompaniment to the Coke commercial was anything but an afterthought. If soda drinkers paused to parse the ambiguity of what “It” was, the tune was intended to define the term and embellish it.“It’s like a football fight song,” Mr. Bergin told The New York Times. “Usually you get a languid ballad. We were looking for a big, bold sound, and a big, bold statement. This isn’t an ipsy-pipsy drink, and the music says that loud and clear.”The song, composed by Ms. Dawes and arranged by her husband, was one of 18 jingles and 36 proposed slogans presented to Coca-Cola executives to succeed “Have a Coke and a Smile.”The music and copy were tested separately in consumer focus groups and individual interviews until the agency and company reached a consensus that “Coke is it” was, indeed, it.Ms. Dawes also wrote pop songs, including “Hurtin’ Song,” recorded by Eddy Arnold, and “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” (written with Rose Marie McCoy), recorded by Sarah Vaughan.She began her musical career as a singer, to glowing reviews.When she appeared in 1975 at the Coriander, a restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, John S. Wilson of The Times called her a “startling performer” who sang “in a deep, strong, beautifully controlled voice that is filled with vivid colors, as she moves from low, sexy passages to an open, lusty shout.”Virginia Mary Redington was born on May 13, 1945, in Brooklyn and raised in the Bay Ridge section of the borough. Her father, Joseph, was a naval architect. Her mother, May (O’Brien) Redington, was a teacher.Virginia attended Fontbonne Hall Academy in Brooklyn and graduated from St. Josephs College, also in Brooklyn, with a degree in English in 1966.She and Mr. Dawes — a founder of the folk-pop group the Cyrkle, best known for its 1966 hit single “Red Rubber Ball,” written by Paul Simon and Bruce Woodley of the Seekers — married in 1979 and, merging their talents, formed TwinStar Music to produce jinglesThe couple also wrote the book, music and lyrics for “The Talk of the Town,” a show about the fabled literary round table at the Algonquin Hotel, whose members included Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and George S. Kaufman. First produced in 2004, it ran nearly two years at the Bank Street Theater before it moved as a cabaret show to the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room.Reviewing the show for Bloomberg News, John Simon wrote that its music and wit matched “the infectious energy and sophistication of the real-life luminaries it is based on.”Ms. Dawes was also a collector of antique jewelry and the author, with her husband (who took the photographs) and others, of several books on the subject, including “The Bakelite Jewelry Book” (1988), with Corinne Davidov, and “Georgian Jewellery 1714-1830” (2007), with Ms. Dawes’s fellow collector Olivia Collings. More

Dalia Stasevska returned to the orchestra’s podium with a world premiere and subtly linked works by Tchaikovsky and Sibelius.The opening of the New York Philharmonic’s concert on Friday took a step toward solving one problem while exposing another.Wang Lu’s “Surge,” given its world premiere at the top of the show, is the product of an initiative by the League of American Orchestras to commission new works from six composers — all women — that will be guaranteed performances from ensembles across the country.So far, so good. Too often, premieres have short rehearsal periods; then, unless future performances are lined up, or unless soloists champion concertos written for them, the music can easily disappear. The League’s project at least gives contemporary work a fighting chance at longevity.I hope, however, that the other premieres to come out of this initiative don’t have the running time of “Surge.” At a mere six minutes, it was shorter than all but one movement in the classics that followed at David Geffen Hall on Friday: Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Sibelius’s Second Symphony.Larger commissions are certainly possible. A week ago, Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “Catamorphosis” took up the first 20 minutes of the Philharmonic’s program; last season in Los Angeles, an entire evening was given over to Thomas Adès’s 100-minute “Dante.” Imagine the League’s group of orchestras nurturing music on the scale of symphony. Then they might tackle what is perhaps the problem of world premieres: that, as brief curtain-raisers unrelated to the rest of a concert, they tend to just read as perfunctory exercises in box-ticking.That said, Wang’s piece has the elements of an enormous score skillfully accordioned into the shape of a much smaller one. From the flourish of its first measure, “Surge” is a restless succession of swinging gestures, martial flashes and exercises in disparate, assertive voices coming in and out of focus, then occasionally finding common ground in a tutti mass. It all had the feel of a TikTok binge: an endless and entrancing stream of much of the same in short, slightly different bursts. The music ended before it became exhausting — but, like TikTok, left you wanting more.At the podium was Dalia Stasevska, in her second appearance with the Philharmonic. Her debut last season proved her bona fides in contemporary music, with a whirlwind trio of works by Missy Mazzoli, Anthony Davis and John Adams. Friday’s premiere was equally impressive; Stasevska led the Wang with verve, commitment and, above all, clarity (despite distractingly wide-armed conducting mannerisms that could qualify as a cardio workout).The Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili, a longtime outspoken critic of Russia, performed Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in a gown design to resemble the Ukrainian flag.Chris LeeThe rest of the program was another kind of test: standard repertory. For the Tchaikovsky, she was joined by the Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili, in characteristically elegant and modestly electrifying form, with a focused, penetrating sound. In this piece, the orchestra mostly plays a supporting role to the singingly Romantic solo part. But ensemble moments were nevertheless distinct; the introduction alone seemed to inhale and exhale its phrases, and the cellos’ freely beating fifths in the finale set the tone for the rubato and joyously dancing liveliness that Batiashvili has previously brought to folk-inflected music by the likes of Szymanowski.It was the kind of performance that, without trying to, had audience members roaring with applause after the first movement, then, at the end, immediately rising for a standing ovation — one of the most passionate I’ve heard at Geffen Hall this season. They had a similar response to the Sibelius, which here was anxiously brisk and occasionally furious.The symphony can come off as an exercise in motivic obsession on the level of Beethoven’s Fifth, and even has that work’s style of a soaringly ecstatic finale. But Stasevska’s heavily opinionated interpretation was unusual from the start; the slurred tenuto phrases of the strings, rather than gentle waves approaching a shore, were a ride along a bumpy road. With a liberal treatment of tempo markings, passages were pushed and pulled, some relished and others simply rushed. The last movement was an uncertain triumph, with a suggestion of continuing struggle, until Stasevska savored the radiance of the closing measures’ chords.Throughout, it was difficult to avoid seeing this idiosyncratic account as a personal one. Stasevska lives in Finland but was born in Ukraine, which she has been fervently supporting — through fund-raising, through driving trucks packed with supplies across its border — since Russia’s invasion nearly a year ago. Batiashvili, too, has long been outspoken against Russia and the classical musicians who have benefited from its leadership, especially the conductor Valery Gergiev. On Friday, she performed wearing a gown in the stark blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag.Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto was written in the glory days of Imperial Russia — an empire that included Finland as a grand duchy subjected, by the time Sibelius’s Second Symphony premiered in 1902, to severe policies of Russification. Sibelius denied as much, but listeners heard in this work an outcry for national pride and independence. To them, the music could never be met with a neutral response. And it’s just as impossible to have one to Stasevska, neither to her life nor to her passionately argued performance.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Sunday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

The trip will mark the first time that the government officially recognizes the genre in its American Music Abroad program.Members of the Beatbox House, a group of five vocal percussive artists from Brooklyn, will follow in the footsteps of American music legends Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong when they travel abroad later this month to serve as cultural ambassadors for the United States.Chris Celiz, Gene Shinozaki, Amit Bhowmick, Kenny Urban, and Neil Meadows (better known as NaPoM), all beatboxing champions, will visit Indonesia and Singapore with the State Department for three weeks of beatbox competitions, workshops and collaborations with local musicians as part of American Music Abroad, an outreach program sponsored by the department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.The Beatbox House, a group that has tens of thousands of fans, creates drum and instrument sounds with accented speech, distorted singing and lip oscillations. The music covers many genres, including hip-hop, EDM, grime, trap and rock. The group is also known for its popular cover of the Rednex song “Cotton Eye Joe.”Members of the Beatbox House have won competitions individually, in pairs and as a group, and they are active in music education efforts around New York City. In the group’s workshops, students are introduced to basic beatbox sounds, as well as to the endless possibilities that the human voice offers for musical expression. Now, the group has the chance to share the same lessons abroad.Known for holding inclusive, community-oriented competitions — known as battles — around the city, the Beatbox House has an itinerary that will include visits to plenty of community centers abroad. Alison Bassi, a cultural affairs officer for the U.S. Embassy in Singapore, hopes that the locations beyond bars and concert halls will make the music “accessible to lots of different people and a slightly different audience,” not just beatbox devotees.Dancers recently performed in a collaboration with members of the Beatbox House at the Guggenheim Museum.Jordan Macy for The New York TimesOriginally one of the five pillars of hip-hop, beatbox made its way to Europe in the late 1980s by way of American soldiers. Since then, the appetite for the art form in Europe and Asia has grown. The international beatbox community now numbers in the millions, with Asia representing many of the recent gains in support and participation. For the State Department, sending the Beatbox House musicians abroad — the first time it will recognize the musical genre in the cultural program — presents an opportunity to share an art form that is both specifically American and quite popular overseas.“We depend upon our American artists to join in our country’s diplomacy,” Lee Satterfield, the assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs, wrote in an email. In recent years, this mission has led American Music Abroad to partner with fewer chart-topping artists and more mission-driven performers like the Beatbox House, a shift that reflects what Mr. Satterfield said was the department’s goal to “expand the reach of music diplomacy.”Of course, security issues, on a smaller and more intimate scale, might crop up in Indonesia, where the group is already popular. “They love us out there,” Mr. Shinozaki said. Last time some of its members performed in the country, he said, they had to be escorted out of the venue.Mr. Shinozaki, Mr. Celiz and Mr. Bhowmick are all first-generation Americans whose families came from Japan, the Philippines and Bangladesh, respectively. For the five band members, performing an American style of music, in a diverse group, sums up the spirit of hip-hop, the spirit of democracy and the best of what this country has to offer.“My parents wanted the American dream,” Mr. Celiz said. “I feel like I’m getting to live it. But we’re also redefining what that means. This is our version of it.”Mike Quinlan, the spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia, wrote in an email that the Beatbox House was the Embassy’s “top choice” for the visiting artists program.“They have a good amount of people who are very excited about them being here,” Mr. Quinlan said, adding that “the Beatbox House is a living example” of the diversity of the United States, and of its music.Mr. Shinozaki, left, and Chris Celiz in their show, “The Missing Element.”Jordan Macy for The New York TimesSome Beatbox House members have experience in the region already, like Mr. Shinozaki in Indonesia. And four years ago, Mr. Bhowmick, Mr. Meadows and Mr. Shinozaki performed in Bangladesh, enjoying a warm reception, especially Mr. Bhowmick.“They look up to me,” he said of his fans in Bangladesh. “I’m a Bengali kid who changed his parents’ minds and broke the conventional path. So when we went there, the crowd was just amazing.” The trip with American Music Abroad, he said, “is going to be very similar in that way, if not even crazier.”Ms. Bassi pointed out that the biggest beatbox battle in Singapore is typically held in December. But when the organizers of the competition learned that the members of the Beatbox House would be in the country in February, they delayed the competition until then “to bring a bigger audience,” she said.After visiting Singapore, the group will continue its tour in the Philippines and Japan, doing the same community building, on their own time, that they are doing with the government program, simply because it matters to them. This will be the first trip to Asia that will involve all five members of the group, so they want to make it last as long as possible.Mr. Urban summed up the mood on behalf of the group, saying he was “just excited to be with my squad” and to “tour the world.”In addition to performing, the Beatbox House is dedicated to community outreach. Jordan Macy for The New York Times More