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      A Timeline of James Levine's Final Years

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      The conductor’s last years at the Metropolitan Opera included a comeback, health woes and the sexual misconduct allegations that ended his career.In the final years of his life, the conductor James Levine, who had shaped the Metropolitan Opera for more than four decades and who died on March 9, returned to his podium after a career-threatening injury; was eased out as music director after health woes made it difficult for him to fulfill his duties; and was fired from his new position as music director emeritus after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct with young men and teenagers surfaced.2013: The ComebackAfter injuring his spine in a fall and being sidelined for more than two years, Levine returned in triumph to his podium at the Met. The company welcomed him back with fanfare, making the orchestra pit wheelchair accessible and installing new lifts and ramps and a rising mechanical podium called the “maestro lift.” He allowed a reporter to watch his rehearsals.2016: Worsening Health and an Emeritus RoleAfter declining health related to Parkinson’s disease made it difficult for musicians and singers to follow his conducting, the Met tried to get him to step down as music director, but he resisted. By the end of the season, the company announced that Levine would step down and take an emeritus role that would allow him to conduct regularly.2017: Accusations of Sexual Misconduct SurfaceLevine was conducting regularly as music director emeritus, and being given high-profile assignments by the company, when several men came forward to say that Levine had sexually abused them when they were teenagers. The Met suspended him and started an investigation.2018: Levine Is Fired by the MetThe Met fired Levine, saying that an investigation it commissioned “uncovered credible evidence that Mr. Levine engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct toward vulnerable artists in the early stages of their careers, over whom Mr. Levine had authority.”2018-2020: Dueling Lawsuits and a SettlementLevine sued the Met for breach for contract and defamation; the Met countersued, detailing some of the abuse its investigation uncovered. Almost all of Levine’s defamation charges were dismissed, but the contractual case continued. The Met and its insurer eventually agreed to pay Levine $3.5 million; his contract as music director emeritus lacked a morals clause.2021: Levine Dies at 77 More

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      Elliott Carter’s Early Flops Reveal a Budding Musical Master

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      A composer of famously thorny music had two failed forays into ballet, given fresh reconsideration on a new album.The composer Elliott Carter, looking back on his early ballet “Pocahontas,” wrote that it was “full of suggestions of things that were to remain important to me, as well as others which were later rejected or completely transformed.”“Rejected” is putting it lightly. The approachable “Pocahontas” — one of Carter’s first scores, from the late 1930s — bears almost no resemblance to the thorny and unpredictable works that would come to define his long career, which continued until shortly before his death in 2012, at 103.Carter, a composer who always seemed more interested in the future than the past, was no champion of “Pocahontas,” which despite its likability quickly fell into obscurity — never a repertory staple and never recorded. That is, until now, with the release of a new album by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project that also includes “The Minotaur” (1947), Carter’s only other ballet.The recording offers an opportunity to reconsider what on the surface were early failures. “Pocahontas,” written for Lincoln Kirstein’s touring Ballet Caravan, was panned by the New York Times dance critic John Martin for a score that was “so thick it is hard to see the stage through it.” “The Minotaur” was meant to be choreographed by George Balanchine, for the company that would become New York City Ballet. But instead the job fell to John Taras, and — as David Schiff, the composer and former Carter student, observes in the album’s liner notes — the mythological work was overshadowed by Balanchine’s similarly minded collaborations with Igor Stravinsky, which became classics.After “The Minotaur,” Carter was on the cusp of both a crisis and a breakthrough with his First String Quartet (1950-51). “I had felt that it was my professional and social responsibility to write interesting, direct, easily understood music,” he wrote. “With this quartet, however, I decided to focus on what had always been one of my musical interests, that of ‘advanced’ music, and to follow out, with a minimal concern for their reception, my own musical thoughts along these lines.”Carter didn’t care to dwell on his early period, but if there’s an ensemble up to the task of making a fresh case for “Pocahontas” and “The Minotaur,” it’s the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, which in the past decade has released nearly 100 recordings of both premieres — including Andrew Norman’s “Play” — and overlooked gems. (It’s something like classical music’s equivalent of New York Review Books.)“Pocahontas,” composed in the late 1930s, was one of Carter’s first scores and showed an early master of orchestral writing.George Platt Lynes“In both of these ballets, the sophisticated use of harmony and rhythm foreshadows the stuff to come,” Gil Rose, the group’s artistic director and conductor, said in a recent interview. “He’s obviously a brilliant composer.”Rose took a break from editing an album of John Adams’s two chamber symphonies to discuss the ballets — their importance within Carter’s output and what they share with his later masterworks. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.What are the hallmarks of Carter’s early sound?His music had not become as stark. “The Minotaur” isn’t so much padded with a sonic cushion, but “Pocahontas” is. He could really write a lush orchestration, and with a big string section. In that way its inspiration is more a Romantic ballet than a 20th-century ballet. So it’s more like Prokofiev than anything else — nothing like the Neo-Classical stuff that does take him by storm down the road. “The Minotaur” is more like that. There’s a big pas de deux in it that could have come out of any middle-period Stravinsky ballet.What does looking at these ballets together reveal about Carter’s progression as a composer?His sound gets more angular. That’s probably also because a lot of Stravinsky’s middle-period works start to get known in the United States. Rhythmically, it gets less flexible — more repeated patterns and spiky rhythms. And harmonically, it’s more dissonant. The orchestration has this brashness, and a lot of clashes and disjunct that shows itself already in “Pocahontas.” It is interesting though: If you play “Pocahontas” for someone and say, “Name that composer,” it would take a lot of people who know a lot about music to get through a lot of composers to get to Carter.I would say the time is easy to place, but definitely not the composer.If you hear the Piano Sonata (1945) and the “Holiday Overture” (1944), they’re of the same ilk. He sort of didn’t advocate for his early music very much. But I think it’s important to know where he came from. If you pair this with his late music, it’s a hell of a journey. And this is how it started.Can you point to anything that survives the turn Carter takes after the First String Quartet?It’s a little hard to compare “Pocahontas” with a piece like the String Quartet. But I would look at the Pavane at the end, the way he starts to lay harmonies on top of each other. It’s clear at this moment he’s not writing “Billy the Kid,” or any other kind of Copland Americana, even though it has an Americana subject. He doesn’t stick a folk tune in, or nod to Native American music. He writes in a sense like Prokofiev: He writes the music that he wants to write.At the same time, it’s not at all juvenilia. You know it’s a piece that was done by a gifted and skilled composer. The writing is quite sophisticated. Even talented orchestrators make mistakes in their early pieces, but you get into a movement like “Princess Pocahontas and Her Ladies” — that’s really subtle writing. Most young composers on their first orchestra piece couldn’t pull that off. When we think of Carter, we don’t think of orchestration as one of his main strengths. But with this piece it clearly is.It reminds me of early Joyce, straightforward yet showing a total mastery of prose.That’s a great example. Because nobody understands any of James Joyce at the end. You have to read every sentence like 16 times, but it’s still worth it. The early things that have a more direct communication line to the accepted musical syntax of the time can still be interesting. The quality of his mind and music is apparent even in a form that’s digestible by the normal concert-going audience. And just because it’s digestible doesn’t mean it’s not musical, or not interesting. In fact, it’s sometimes harder to write music that functions on both planes. Those are the pieces that I really love. More

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      The Avett Brothers, Billy Strings and Jon Pardi Set to Headline Concerts on the Farm Series

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      The Scott Avett-fronted band will play three socially-distanced shows at the Bonnaroo festival site, while the bluegrass musician and the country crooner are set to perform on back-to-back May dates.

      Mar 17, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      The Avett Brothers, Billy Strings and Jon Pardi are to headline three upcoming socially-distanced shows at the Bonnaroo festival site in Manchester, Tennessee.

      The “Concerts on the Farm” series will kick off in May, with Grammy winner Strings playing on May 28 and Pardi taking the stage the following day. Strings’ set is said to be called “An Evening with Billy Strings”, while Pardi will be joined by special guest Jameson Rodgers during his gig.

      The Avett Brothers will play three shows at the outdoor venue over the Independence Day weekend in July.

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      Tickets will be sold in groups of four, offering fans an eight-foot-square area, six feet from other viewing pods. Every $1 from each ticket will go to the Bonnaroo Works Fund.

      In accordance to COVID-19 safety guidelines, concertgoers will be required to wear mask outside their pods. Attendees are also encourage to bring their own chairs and blankets. Food and drink, in the meantime, will be available via mobile ordering.

      About the concert series, Tennessee Department of Tourist Development commissioner Mark Ezell stated in a press release, “The soundtrack of America is made in Tennessee, and I can’t think of a better place to celebrate the return of live music than at the Bonnaroo Farm.”

      “We’re ready to see our stages and venues full again, and artists back on the road doing what they love. We know music fans are ready as well, and Concerts On the Farm’s approach to delivering live music in a responsible environment will set the bar high for future events.”

      Meanwhile, this year’s Bonnaroo festival has been rescheduled from June to September after last year’s event was scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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      Let’s Make the Future That the ‘New World’ Symphony Predicted

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      To grasp in full this classic work’s complex legacy would allow us to move beyond it, fostering new paths for artists of color.The last live performance I attended before the lockdown last year featured excerpts from Nkeiru Okoye’s gripping 2014 opera “Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom.” The score takes listeners on a journey through Black musical styles, including spirituals, jazz, blues and gospel.“I am Moses, the liberator,” Harriet proclaims in her final aria, pistol in hand as she urges an exhausted man to continue running toward freedom. “You keep on going or die.”With its themes of survival and deliverance, Okoye’s work would make a fitting grand opening for an opera company’s post-pandemic relaunch. But the American classical music industry has too often chosen familiarity and homogeneity over the liberating power of diverse voices.To help break this inertia, we must confront a work that has left indelible marks on music in this country: Antonin Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony. To grasp in full the complex legacy of this classic piece would allow us to move beyond it, fostering new paths for artists of color.In 1893, the year of the symphony’s premiere, Dvorak argued in print that Black musical idioms should form the basis of an American classical style — not an entirely new position, but far from the norm at the time. Some white musicians were so scandalized that they accused reporters of misrepresenting Dvorak’s ideas. Of course, he meant exactly what he said, for he consistently reiterated his views, eventually adding Indigenous American music to his recommendations.Janinah Burnett in the title role of Nkeiru Okoye’s 2014 opera “Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom.”Richard Termine for The American Opera ProjectDvorak was true to his word in the “New World.” After finishing the symphony, he explained in an interview with the Chicago Tribune that he had studied certain songs from Black traditions until he became “thoroughly imbued with their characteristics” and felt “enabled to make a musical picture in keeping with and partaking of those characteristics.” Musical gestures inspired by these songs pervade the piece, such as the melodic contour of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in the first movement and the second movement’s famous, plaintive Largo theme, which has often been mistaken as a direct quotation of a spiritual — but which actually was only later given words and turned into a spiritual, “Goin’ Home.”Echoing segregationist Jim Crow policies in force at the time, several white critics bent over backward to deny Black influence on the “New World” — despite Dvorak’s own words — as if African origins would preclude the piece’s place in the national musical fabric. Black writers, on the other hand, acknowledged the importance of his advocacy. Richard Greener, a former dean of what is now Howard University School of Law, suggested in 1894 that if Black musicians heeded Dvorak’s recommendations, they would “become greater than the lawgiver” — a clear challenge to the prevailing social order.Composers from a variety of racial backgrounds, including R. Nathaniel Dett, Amy Beach, Henry Gilbert, Florence Price, Dennison Wheelock, John Powell and Nora Holt, followed in Dvorak’s footsteps during the first quarter of the 20th century, writing a cascade of pieces invoking Black or Indigenous folk styles.White writers attacked Black composers like William Dawson for writing under the influence of Black idioms.W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, UMass Amherst Libraries.White composers frequently earned praise for their music’s engagement with these idioms, which often included direct quotation. A critic for the magazine Musical America wrote, for example, that Powell’s “Rhapsodie Nègre” had a “savage, almost brutal polyphonic climax yielding gradually to a more peaceable slow section reared on a lyrical phrase with Dvorakian loveliness.” But white writers attacked Black composers like Florence Price and William Dawson for using similar approaches.When Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra performed Dawson’s “Negro Folk Symphony” at Carnegie Hall in 1934, another writer for Musical America wrote that “the influence of Dvorak is strong almost to the point of quotation, and when all is said and done, the Bohemian composer’s symphony, ‘From the New World,’ stands as the best symphony ‘à la Nègre’ written to date.”What was sophisticated and lovely when Powell did it was plagiarism when Dawson did.Dawson responded in The Pittsburgh Courier, a major Black newspaper, to defend his stylistic choices. “Dvorak used Negro idioms,” he said. “That is my language. It is the language of my ancestors, and my misfortune is that I was not born when that great writer came to America in search of material.”Over the decades, the “New World” steadily grew in popularity but never shed the aura of controversy surrounding its connections to Black music. A New York Philharmonic program annotator remarked in 1940 that “Dvorak, in his enthusiasm for Negro music, overlooked the fact that there exists in our diversified population a rich heritage of folk music brought hither by white colonists.” Around the same time, Olin Downes of The New York Times called the origin and inspiration of the symphony “a question for academic argument.”For many Black musicians, though, the “New World” was galvanizing precisely because of its ties to the African diaspora. In June 1940, a little over a year after the release of Billie Holiday’s anti-lynching protest song “Strange Fruit,” Artur Rodzinski and the New York Philharmonic premiered Still’s heart-rending “And They Lynched Him on a Tree.” A somber English horn solo early in the piece recalled the famous “New World” Largo, which directly preceded it on the program.A New York Philharmonic program from 1940 included the text for William Grant Still’s “And They Lynched Him on a Tree.”New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital ArchivesAfter Rodzinski discouraged the violinist Everett Lee from auditioning for the Philharmonic because of his race, Lee formed one of the nation’s first racially integrated orchestras, the Cosmopolitan Symphony Society, and became its conductor. During its third season, in 1951, he programmed Dvorak’s Ninth, which he would later direct at engagements around the world in an illustrious career spanning nearly seven decades.At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, in the mid-1960s, a group that included the conductor Benjamin Steinberg and the composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson founded another major integrated orchestra in New York called the Symphony of the New World — an optimistic nod to Dvorak. When Everett Lee returned from Europe to conduct the group in 1966, his program included its namesake, and his favorite: the “New World” Symphony. And the piece has remained a staple in the repertoire of many other prominent Black conductors, including A. Jack Thomas, Rudolph Dunbar, Dean Dixon, Jeri Lynne Johnson, Thomas Wilkins and Michael Morgan.Over the last 50 years, the “New World” has become perhaps the keystone in epochal American orchestral concerts abroad, including the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1973 tour of China and the New York Philharmonic’s trip to North Korea in 2008. But ensembles have rarely paired it with pieces by living composers of color; instead, Dvorak alone becomes the international spokesman for the whole multiracial American experience.Everett Lee conducted the “New World” at engagements around the world in an illustrious career spanning nearly seven decades.New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital ArchivesThat should change. To start, organizations should reject the uncritical valorization of white composers of the past who appropriated Black or Indigenous musical styles — Dvorak, for example, or George Gershwin — as if programming their work comes at no cost to composers of color, past and present.Like Okoye. Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” has its strengths, but unlike it, Okoye’s deeply researched opera offers singers ample opportunity to engage with our national past while being liberated from the burden of embodying distorted stereotypes. Okoye’s evocative “Black Bottom,” premiered by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at its annual Classical Roots celebration last March, is one of the most engrossing musical portraits of Black history in the available repertoire. (The performance was an especially memorable moment for an artist who attributes her decision to continue a career in composition in part to the Detroit orchestra’s tradition of inclusivity.)Beloved and moving, the “New World” Symphony has a secure place on programs well into the future. But Dvorak, and the white composers who followed in his footsteps, should not be the loudest voices speaking on behalf of all Americans.At the Detroit Symphony’s first Classical Roots celebration, in 1978, the conductor Paul Freeman programmed the “New World” alongside music by Hale Smith, William Grant Still and José Maurício Nunes Garcia — a rich musical cross-section of living and historical Black composers from diverse backgrounds. To continue reckoning with Dvorak’s legacy today, Detroit has commissioned a piece by James Lee III that will premiere alongside the “New World” next season. Lee’s work, “Amer’ican,” presents a lavish tapestry of musical images drawn from over six centuries of Indigenous and Black history.Lee said in an interview that he found it “quite gratifying” to join Dvorak in weaving Black and Indigenous musical materials into a work. According to the notes accompanying the piece, it closes with “music representing memories of unbridled freedom and exhilaration.”Lee added that his work had been set alongside Dvorak’s by other orchestras, but that in Detroit he would join a tradition of true creative dialogue between past and present.“Being programmed with the music of Dvorak is nothing new to me,” he said. “But this case is special.”Douglas W. Shadle is an associate professor of musicology at Vanderbilt University and the author of the book “Antonin Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony.” More

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      Charlamagne Tha God Accuses Drake of Cheating After History-Making Billboard Hot 100 Debuts

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      Having been known for his hate toward the Canadian star, ‘The Breakfast Club’ host questions if they’re ‘still in a Drake era’ and claims that ‘Aubrey Graham is a demon who doesn’t play fair.’

      Mar 17, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Charlamagne Tha God still refuses to acknowledge Drake’s influence in the hip-hop scene despite his latest feat. Following the Canadian star’s No. 1, 2 and 3 debuts on the Billboard Hot 100, the radio host has accused the “Hotline Bling” of cheating and calling him a “demon.”

      Charlamagne weighed in on Drake’s history-making achievement in the Tuesday, March 16 episode of “The Breakfast Club”. During the “Rumor Report” segment, he shared three thoughts on the 34-year-old’s Billboard Hot 100 record.

      “I have three thoughts. First off, congrats to Drake. That is an incredible feat,” Charlamagne began. “I asked a question a few months ago and the question was simply, ‘are we still in a Drake era?’ When you’re #1, #2, and #3 on the charts, I think that answers your question. When it comes to streaming and radio, he’s still the guy. That top 3 might not reflect what’s happening in the clubs or with a slightly younger demo but he’s still the guy with regards to radio and streaming.” Claiming that Drake pulled a trick to score the top three debuts, Charlamagne argued, “Streaming and radio manipulates the game in ways we’ve never seen but we’ll forget all that.”

      Charlamagne then compared Drake to Jay-Z, Nas and Lil Wayne, who created “classics” later in their career, suggesting that Drizzy now has to live up to the same expectation. “The pressure is really on for Drake right now. Because the three-pack is dope and I like the energy of the three-pack,” he stated. “The pressure is on because with ‘Certified Lover Boy’, I’m expecting an undeniable body of work.”

      The 42-year-old continued, “When I think of the greats like the Hov’s and the Nas’ and the Lil Wayne’s, these guys were giving us classics much later in their career. Whether it’s ‘The Blueprint’, ‘Illmatic’, or ‘Tha Carter III’, I’m expecting that level of project from Drake at this point in his career.”

        See also…

      Despite congratulating Drake on his feat, Charmalagne wasn’t done criticizing the OVO Sound founder. “He cheated!” the TV personality claimed. “Don’t let the heart cut in his head fool you. Aubrey Graham is a demon who doesn’t play fair. He cheated.”

      When his co-hosts asked where the accusation came from, Charmalagne admitted, “I can’t prove it. This might be pure hate. … I’m not standing on nothing with this.” He insisted though, “I just think he cheated.”

      Drake recently set a new Billboard record by having three songs debuted in the top three spots of the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time. “What’s Next”, “Wants and Needs” with Lil Baby and “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” featuring Rick Ross, which are all lifted off his fourth and latest “EP Scary Hours 2”, entered the chart at No. 1, 2 and 3 respectively.

      Drake also matches The Beatles and Ariana Grande’s achievements as the only acts ever to rank at Nos. 1, 2 and 3 on the Hot 100 simultaneously. The 34-year-old singer/rapper has eight Hot 100 No. 1 and 45 top 10s so far.

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      Liam Payne Proud of Harry Styles for Winning First Grammy

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      WENN

      The ‘Strip That Down’ singer congratulates his ‘brother’ for becoming the first One Direction star to win a Golden Gramophone at the Grammy Awards over the weekend.

      Mar 17, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Liam Payne has congratulated his “brother” Harry Styles on his Grammy win.

      The singer sent One Direction fans into a frenzy after he gushed about how “proud” he is of his bandmate for taking home his first-ever Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance for “Watermelon Sugar” at Sunday’s (14Mar21) ceremony.

      “Congrats @hshq on your Grammy win. What a huge moment, proud to be your brother,” he captioned a meme about the boy band on his Instagram Story, leading to “proud to be your brother” trending on Twitter.

      Harry – whose bandmates also include Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan – is the first 1D star to be both nominated and to receive a Grammy.

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      Accepting the award, Harry said, “Wow. To everyone who made this record with me, thank you so much. This was the first song we wrote after my first album came out, during a day off in Nashville and I want to say thanks to Tom, Tyler, and Mitch. Rob Stringer and everyone at Columbia, my manager Jeffrey who has always nudged me to be better and never pushed me, thank you so much, I feel very, very grateful to be here.”

      His speech was then bleeped out as he praised his fellow nominees; Justin Bieber, Doja Cat, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, and Taylor Swift.

      “All of these songs are f**king massive so thank you so much. I feel very honoured to be here among you, so thank you so much,” he said.

      Harry’s Grammy success came after former One Direction band member, Zayn Malik – who quit the “What Makes You Beautiful” group in 2015 to pursue a solo career – blasted The Recording Academy and accused them of having “secret committees.”

      He tweeted, “@recordingacad are moving in inches and we need to move in miles. I’m keeping the pressure on & fighting for transparency & inclusion. We need to make sure we are honouring and celebrating ‘creative excellence’ of ALL. End the secret committees. Until then … #f**kthegrammys (sic).”

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      Cardi B Celebrating as 'WAP' Grammy Performance Becomes Viral Hit Following Criticisms

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      WENN

      The ‘Bodak Yellow’ hitmaker thanks the conservative critics including Candace Owens and FOX News for helping to boost online views of her raunchy Grammy performance.

      Mar 17, 2021

      AceShowbiz –
      Cardi B is embracing the conservative backlash to her raunchy Grammy Awards performance of “WAP” because the controversy is only helping to drive up video views of the set.

      The rapper teamed up with song collaborator Megan Thee Stallion to turn up the heat at Sunday’s (14Mar21) ceremony with a steamy rendition of the X-rated tune, which saw the stars bump and grind against one another onstage.

      The set sent conservative political commentators into a spin, with pundit Candace Owens claiming the performance of “WAP” was “an attack on American values,” adding, “We are celebrating perversity.”

      However, Cardi, who has always made it clear the song was not for children, insists having haters discuss the topic on TV and online has only served to boost YouTube views of her Grammys appearance, which ultimately benefits her.

      “Love it or hate it, criticize it, judge it JUST BRING THE VIEWS IN… NUMBER 1 trending,” she tweeted on Monday.

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      As the video footage passed the four million views mark, Cardi quipped, “Americans are so horny,” and went on to share footage of Owens’ appearance on broadcaster Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show.

      “Yaaaayyyyyyy WE MADE FOX NEWS GUYS !!! Wap wap wap (sic),” she joked in the early hours of Tuesday.

      Cardi has since remarked, “Matter fact I’m just going to thank Candy (Owens).”

      “She put my performance on Fox News giving it more views that boosted the views on YouTube and is counting towards my streams and sales…”

      “STREAM UP AND WAP .REMEMBER GROWN PARENTS ONLY YOU CAN MONITOR WHAT YOUR KIDS WATCH NO1 ELSE (sic).”

      Cardi is no stranger to the criticism of “WAP”, an acronym for “Wet A** P**sy”, as she also faced backlash over the song’s subject matter when it was first released last summer (20).

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      How the Harp Got Hip

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      An instrument long associated with angels and virtue plucks its way across musical genres and social media.“I am not the quintessential image of a harpist,” said Brandee Younger, 37, a classically trained harpist, composer and educator. Ms. Younger, who lives in Harlem, smiled audibly as she enumerated the common stereotypes of the stringed instrument. “You’re blond, your eyes are blue … little naked baby angels,” she said, joking. “It’s just so not down to earth.”Bringing the harp to the masses has been a central goal of Ms. Younger’s career. Her jazz-infused compositions have been featured on works by pop and R&B’s most recognizable names including Beyoncé, Stevie Wonder, John Legend and Lauryn Hill.For centuries the harp has been lodged in the domain of “serious” music — a niche instrument, perhaps dusted off for weddings and bottomless mimosa brunches. With such an entrenched reputation, could the harp ever be hip?Ms. Younger in performance at the Blue Note Jazz Club.Erin Patrice O’BrienIt’s not without precedent. Lizzo gave the flute a boost back in 2018 when she declared on Instagram “HO AND FLUTE ARE LIFE.” Videos of the singer twerking while flawlessly tooting rap melodies quickly went viral, challenging stereotypical connotations of the flute as an instrument of purity and innocence.Thanks to a collection of emerging independent artists and social media musicians, the harp is also finding a new audience. And the instrument is turning up in some unexpected places, including PornHub movie soundtracks and heavily engaged TikTok posts.Ms. Younger’s love affair with the instrument began when she was a girl growing up in the suburban enclave of Hempstead, N.Y., and heard a father’s colleague play; she started lessons as a teenager. “The harp is one of the few instruments that creates sound with direct touch,” she said. “There’s no barrier between you and the sound.”But as her musical career progressed, instead of solemnly plucking chamber music by Claude Debussy or Carlos Salzedo, Ms. Younger wanted to play the soulful music of her idols Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby, two Black female jazz harpists she has called the “lodestars” of her career.“Not only are they playing this music that is just killing, but I want to play this stuff because it’s so cool,” Ms. Younger said. “They were women. They were Black. I was just connected to them on so many different levels.”If Ms. Coltrane’s liquid glissandos provided Ms. Younger ways to make harp music youthful and fresh, it was Ms. Ashby’s transcendence of genre that set the blueprint for her career. Fans of rap and hip-hop have been unwittingly listening to Ms. Ashby’s music for decades, with samples of her work used by Jay-Z, Mac Miller, Drake and other big names.Ms. Younger’s most recent album, “Force Majeure,” is a collection of livestream performances recorded with her longtime collaborator bassist Dezron Douglas. The album features an original jazz- and gospel-tinged composition, as well as covers of hit songs from Kate Bush and “Sesame Street.”“We’re making music for people,” Ms. Younger said. “Sometimes you have to branch out of what you are used to doing or what you’re trained to do.”The StringfluencersThe harp is one of the oldest known instruments, and was widely played in ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures. Later it became popular among the royal and aristocratic classes of Europe — Marie Antoinette regularly entertained guests at the French Court with her ornate gilded harp — and became a fixture in Victorian-era salons. Exhibiting proficiency in musical instruments like the harp was one way for women to prove they were worthy marriage material.The association of the harp with chastity and virtue has dogged modern players. Joanna Newsom, the indie singer-songwriter who catapulted the harp onto Billboard music charts with her acclaimed 2006 album, “Ys,” has fought the stereotype of its music being all fairy tales and unicorns.“It’s an infantilizing thing that happens,” Ms. Newsom told the British press upon the release of her 2015 album, “Divers.” “The language is minimizing and narrowing of possible narrative depth.”“People would spill their beer on my harp,” said Marilu Donovan of her time touring.Serge SerumMarilu Donovan, 33, a harpist in New York, is also over the instrument’s prudish rep. “It just becomes exhausting,” she said. “It’s an instrument. It’s multifaceted. It can have so many different feels to it and still be beautiful.”Ms. Donovan performs with Adam Markiewicz, a violinist and vocalist, under the name LEYA. The duo brings a punk mentality to their experimental work, which has been described by Pitchfork as “eerie, beckoning and tinged with horror.” Ms. Donovan achieves this effect through unorthodox tunings and amplifications. The result creates an unearthly dissonance: the auditory equivalent of awakening in the fog of a bad dream only to discover you’re still trapped in the nightmare.LEYA collaborates with their peers in the experimental music scene, recording tracks with Eartheater, a musician in Queens, and the Brooklyn black metal band Liturgy. Mary Lattimore, another contemporary harpist, also collaborates with musicians from other genres, including prominent indie rockers like Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and the Violators’ Steve Gunn and Kurt Vile.“When I started playing with LEYA we were playing these little noise shows in basements,” Ms. Donovan said of the band’s early touring appearances, giving a virtual tour of her apartment over Zoom.She stopped next to two towering pedal harps — one ivory and one walnut — made by the famed Lyon and Healy music company in Chicago. A harp from the manufacturer can weigh more than 80 pounds and costs, on average, over $30,000; $50,000 if it’s gilded. It’s the older ivory harp that Ms. Donovan takes touring. “People would spill their beer on my harp,” she said. “People have fought during our shows.”This same harp also makes a surprising cameo in the 2018 PornHub film “I Love You,” directed by Brooke Candy, a stripper turned rapper who hired the band after seeing the video for their single “Sister.”Cloaked under veils of crimson tulle, Ms. Donovan and Mr. Markiewicz play haunting melodies as artfully choreographed erotic scenes unfold onscreen. LEYA used several songs from that production for their 2020 album, “Flood Dream.” “Brooke is just such a positive, good energy person,” Ms. Donovan said of her experience on set. “It was so much fun.”The harp’s delicate curves have also found a wider audience on social media. Hannah Stater, a music student at the University of Michigan formerly known as @hannah_harpist on TikTok (she now uses her full name), has accumulated hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of likes on the platform.

      @hannahstater here’s a little treat for all my @charlixcx fans #charlixcx #party4u #howimfeelingnow #hannahharpist ♬ original sound – Hannah Stater (she/her) Kristan Toczko, a Canadian harpist, was praised by the gaming community after Reddit went wild for her rendition of the Halo video game’s theme song.Plenty of PluckWhen Madison Calley, who is in her 20s, started posting videos of her own harp performances to her social media profiles, she didn’t expect to have even a fraction of that success.A typical video shows Ms. Calley in her spacious living room, dotted with various greenery and flooded with natural light.Rikki D Wright for The New York TimesMs. Calley, who lives in Los Angeles, had completed a recording session for Ariana Grande’s “Positions” album. Then came the coronavirus and canceled concerts. Ms. Calley turned to Instagram to keep her skills sharp.A typical video shows Ms. Calley playing pop and R&B on a towering champagne-hued pedal harp in her spacious living room, dotted with various greenery and flooded with natural light. One of her earliest clips, a cover of Alicia Keys’s song “Diary,” was noticed by Ms. Keys, who reposted Ms. Calley’s rendition to her millions of followers.“I think once the pandemic hit everyone was on their phones looking for some escapism from all the craziness going on in the world,” Ms. Calley said. “I had no idea it would take off the way it has.”Soon, producers from the Latin Grammys were calling with an offer to play in the 2020 awards show. Ms. Calley shimmers in a glittering gold evening gown as she initiates the orchestral opening for the Colombian singer-songwriter Karol G’s performance of “Tusa,” which was nominated for Song of the Year.Ms. Calley also appeared onstage for the rapper Roddy Ricch’s musical performance of “Heartless” on Sunday’s 63rd annual Grammy Awards broadcast. “A lot of interesting and amazing opportunities have come from social media,” Ms. Calley said. She has taken on a small group of students — all women of color — hoping to instill enthusiasm for the harp.If social media has made the harp more approachable to music fans, then advances in production that make the instrument more portable — and affordable — have also lowered the barriers to entry for beginning players.One such purveyor of budget-friendly harps is Backyard Music in Willimantic, Conn., owned by David Magnuson. The Fireside Folk Harp, which costs $169 and can be shipped ready made or as a D.I.Y. kit, has become a popular choice among harp hobbyists and beginner musicians.Mr. Magnuson said he began to notice a shift in harp sales within the last few years, a trend that accelerated with the onset of the pandemic. Last year alone, he said, his Etsy store sold some 300 harps. “It was shocking to me,” Mr. Magnuson said. “It has really picked up and hasn’t slowed down at all.”Antonio Arosemena, 35, is one of Backyard Music’s customers. Mr. Arosemena, who teaches music at the East Ramapo School District in New York, needed an affordable practice instrument he could use with his 6-year-old son, Luca.As a toddler, the young boy gravitated toward his father’s harpsichord — but he wasn’t interested in touching the keyboard. He wanted to get at the strings underneath the hood.“He was looking inside the instrument more and wanted to touch the strings,” Mr. Arosemena said. “I was like, ‘If you want to touch the strings, we’re going to get you an instrument where you can touch all the strings that you want.’”His search for a suitable starter harp initially led him to a manufacturer in Pakistan. But as his son’s playing progressed, Mr. Arosemena realized he needed something more portable that he could bring with him on road trips to keep up his practice routine.So Mr. Arosemena ordered the Fireside harp kit. He documented the entire process on Instagram and said it took him only a few days to build the three-piece hardwood kit; the most difficult part was installing the 22 strings. “That went from being my instrument to help him with rhythm to being his practice instrument,” he said.A recent Instagram post shows Luca, who started kindergarten last fall, dutifully reading sheet music as he practices arpeggios on the harp from the comfort of his living room couch. As he cleanly plucks the last note, he turns toward the camera and shyly reveals a smile, celebrating his musical triumph. More