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      Meditation Apps Want Us to Chill Out. Musicians Are Happy to Help.

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      Music and mindfulness have become increasingly linked during the pandemic, and artists like Erykah Badu, Grimes and Arcade Fire are teaming with tech companies to make it happen.When Erykah Badu creates a new song, she begins with instruments that are usually treated as accessories, like singing bells, shakers, mallets and tuning forks. It’s been that way since “Baduizm,” the vocalist and producer’s 1997 debut.“What draws me in, and you and anyone else, is that those frequencies and tones connect with our organs and cells,” she said from her home in Dallas. “You are able to cancel out certain ailments. You’re vibrating the molecules apart.”Badu is a longtime believer and practitioner in what she calls the healing arts. She became a doula in 2001 and a reiki master in 2006. For her latest journey, she constructed a 58-minute instrumental piece of “new age ancient futuristic medicine music” for the meditation app Headspace. Released as part of the company’s Focus Music series, it’s a gently undulating wave, occasionally punctuated by deep reverberations of bass.“I feel like life is a process of healing after healing after healing,” said Badu. “Anything I make is going to reflect that.”Badu’s composition is part of the ever-expanding swirl of music and mindfulness that’s only grown stronger during the pandemic. With no dance floors or concert halls to fill, many listeners turned toward gentler, unobtrusive music to help quiet their restless minds. In response, artists who might not have publicly ventured into this sometimes esoteric terrain now feel emboldened to do so.John Legend is Headspace’s chief music officer. In that role, he inaugurated the app’s monthly Focus Music project.Jorge Guerrero/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLast September, Diplo released his first ambient album, “MMXX,” while in early May, Sufjan Stevens put out a five-volume collection of keyboard music called “Convocations.” Alicia Keys recently conducted a 21-day “meditation experience” with Deepak Chopra that is available through his meditation app website.Though new age artists have released music for meditation on cassette and CD for decades, now tech companies have become happy to financially support musical experimentation that meshes with their own goals. Over the past 15 anxious and uncertain months, wellness apps have grown flush with new subscribers looking for different experiences. In the past, musicians might align themselves with initiatives connected to Vans, Red Bull or Toyota — powerful brands willing to use their deep pockets to gain credibility with young consumers. Now, mindfulness apps are playing a similar role, offering artistic opportunities at a precarious moment for the music industry.Headspace wanted to develop more music that helps people concentrate on a task, and last August the company announced the appointment of John Legend as its chief music officer. Legend inaugurated the monthly Focus Music project with a licensed playlist of mellifluous jazz tracks. In addition to Badu’s contribution, subsequent installments have featured original, vocal-free pieces by artists including the acclaimed movie-score composer Hans Zimmer and the rock band Arcade Fire.“Musicians have always been about, can they evoke a particular frame of mind through a song or a sound,” said William Fowler, head of content for material that appears within the Headspace app. He noted that Focus Music arrived “in a year where musicians who had other plans found themselves with time for a project like this,” giving the company access “to people that otherwise might be doing other things.”In March 2019, Moby debuted “Long Ambients Two,” an album of extended compositions intended to help listeners fall asleep, exclusively on Calm, which started as a meditation app. Afterward, the company got inundated with inquiries from other musicians. Calm had limited experience with this world, and hired Courtney Phillips, the former director of brand partnerships at Universal Music Group, to become its head of music and grow its library.She has continued the streaming premieres, but also commissioned artists like the country star Keith Urban and the genre-twister Moses Sumney to create original tracks. Calm also released a series of hourlong “sleep remixes” of songs by Universal artists, including Post Malone’s “Circles” and Ariana Grande’s “Breathin.”“We’re a tech company, so we love to look at: What are people coming here for? What do they want?” Phillips said. “Piano is the most popular genre of all time, according to Calm, so I want to make sure that I’m offering a variety of different piano music for people. And at the same time, I want to work with artists and be like, let’s do something that maybe people don’t expect.”Endel, the Berlin-based tech company, has developed an approach toward fostering mental health through music that embraces European sophistication. Instead of the bright colors and feel-good iconography of its competitors, its app is strictly black and white with a minimalist interface. Oleg Stavitsky, the company’s chief executive, is an avowed music obsessive who during our video interview proudly pulled out his Laurie Anderson and Ornette Coleman albums. He said he got interested in delving deep after mining his parents’ vinyl collection.“Once you start digging you inevitably end up at Brian Eno at some point,” he said, referring to the producer and composer responsible for several of ambient music’s landmark works.Moses Sumney has been tapped to create original tracks for Calm.Rich Fury/Getty Images For CoachellaCalm has also released “sleep remixes” of songs by artists including Ariana Grande.Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhile the music on most meditation apps either loops or has predesignated start and finish points, Endel’s output is more dynamic. The company developed an algorithm that it says considers factors like time of day, weather and a person’s heart rate to deliver an individualized sonic experience each time.The neoclassical composer Dmitry Evgrafov is one of Endel’s co-founders, and he provides the original stems of music that the artificial intelligence incorporates, but naturally those within the company got curious about what would happen if the source material came from other artists. Grimes devised the sleep aid “AI Lullaby,” and Endel recently released a productivity piece called “Deep Focus” from Plastikman, the minimal techno alias of the D.J. and producer Richie Hawtin.“When we’re talking to a lot of these artists, either they have been thinking about doing something like this, or they have already been doing something like this,” Stavitsky said. “They are looking for low risk and interesting ways to put that content out there.”Hawtin enrolled in a series of Transcendental Meditation classes shortly before the pandemic engulfed Western Europe, where he resides. Now twice a day he takes 20 minutes to repeat his mantra. Those experiences remind him of a D.J.’s ability to guide and almost hypnotize a receptive crowd. “For all its beauty, the techno and electronic dance music community has been on this hamster wheel for so many years,” Hawtin said. “This has been a real introspective moment to reconnect to the music, the machines and alternative ways of thinking and producing.”Other artists arrived at meditation music during America’s last moment of financial uncertainty, in 2008. Trevor Oswalt, who releases music as East Forest, spent the early 2000s playing in bands in New York City, hoping to get signed. Then came the recession. “Things were falling apart externally, and that reflected in my internal life too,” Oswalt said from his current home in Southern Utah. “It was pushing me into finding alternatives.”He began making instrumental music to help him during his own meditation practice and to mentally prepare himself before taking psilocybin. Eventually he put out the music for the public. Since 2011, he’s averaged at least one new album a year, including a 2019 collaboration with the spiritual teacher Ram Dass, who died that December. Years ago Oswalt created music for apps like Happy and one developed by the yoga and meditation instructor Elena Brower. He’s since become involved with apps like Wavepaths, Mydelic and Field Trip, which are designed to assist during psychedelic therapy sessions.Oswalt seems amused by the recent influx of artists creating music for mindfulness apps, comparing it to asking a painter trained in realism to make something abstract. He believes they might have the skills to pull it off, but they lack the experience to really know what they’re doing. But he respects the musicians’ willingness to give it a try.“It’s pretty clear on the face of things that we’re going through a major shift as a civilization, and that shift has to do with letting go of ways that aren’t working,” he said. “It’s sort of like you burn the fields, you have to do that to fertilize the soil.” More

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      ‘For Those I Love’ Sets Sad Stories to Electronic Beats

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      David Balfe never thought the public would hear his deeply personal debut album. But it became a runaway success in his native Ireland.David Balfe feels guilty. The Irish musician’s debut album “For Those I Love,” which he recorded under the same name, has had the kind of success most artists only dream of: It has won widespread critical praise and was only beaten to the No. 1 spot in the Irish album charts by Justin Bieber.But the record wasn’t made for public release, and Balfe said he feels uncomfortable receiving recognition for an album about his working-class Dublin childhood and a friend’s recent death.“I seem to have benefited from the release of these difficult and deeply personal stories,” Balfe, 29, said in a recent video interview. “It’s a little bit out of my control now.”He described the album — which depicts gang violence, poverty and substance addiction — as “storytelling set against a backdrop of electronica.” Its lyrics mix reminiscences of all-night parties with Balfe’s close circle of friends and indictments of wealth inequality in Ireland — a country where both house prices and homelessness rates have surged in recent years.Balfe grew up in the North Dublin suburb of Donaghmede, but went to school and had family and friends in nearby Coolock, where crime levels were rising throughout his teenage years. “I emerged at a young age into quite a violent backdrop and aggressive place,” he said. To survive there, he added, “I needed to learn a coldness.”On the album, Balfe explores death, grief and inequality in Dublin, which he said were all “intrinsically linked.” On one track, “Birthday/The Pain,” he recalls a homeless man who was murdered on the street where he lived when he was six.Balfe said he was “struck by the universal acceptance of a record that is so descriptive of a very specific piece of geography,” adding that he was surprised to see the “minutiae of a world that I grew up in resonating with people from a world so far from mine.”Balfe’s best friend, Paul Curran, played a key role in many of the stories told on “For Those I Love.” They met in high school, and Curran went on to become a popular spoken word artist, writing and performing work about everything from politics to soccer.At Chanel College, in Coolock, the two discovered music in lunchtime guitar jam sessions organized by an English teacher, Mick Phelan. “David and Paul were non-judgemental,” Phelan said of Balfe and Curran in a video interview. “They had their friends, but they talked to everyone. I saw a humanity and a maturity in them that I don’t often see in teenage lads.”After graduating, Balfe and Curran continued making music and art together: first in a hardcore band called Plagues; later, as part of Burnt Out, a collective that made audiovisual works that addressed youth unemployment in Coolock, which was running at around 25 percent throughout Ireland at the time.Balfe returned to the problems of Dublin’s suburbs in 2017, when he began “For Those I Love,” layering vocals over a solo instrumental project he put together in his mother’s garden shed. He brought his own voice — half-sung, half-spoken, in a strong Irish brogue — to the sample-heavy dance music he had written, mixing in snippets of WhatsApp voice notes and spoken word work by Curran.The tracks were made to share with his closest friends and his family, he said: “A document of love and thanks for the sacrifices they made.”In April, Balfe released a short film, “Holy Trinity,” as part of the For Those I Love project. Tiberio VenturaBut in February 2018, Paul Curran died by suicide and Balfe, grief-stricken, put “For Those I Love” on pause. The next few months were “a thundering whirlwind of chaos,” he said, that felt like “a day and a decade in one.”“In the shadow of grief, all of us were very different people,” he said. “It’s very easy to believe that you might never be creative again.”Balfe’s return to writing music was the “first step in the recovery” after Curran’s death, he added. Some of the material, like the opening track “I Have a Love,” was rewritten completely, changing from an ode to his group of friends to a eulogy to Curran; nostalgic new songs, such as “You Stayed,” were added.“It was very much a mode of self expression and survival at the time,” Balfe said.When “For Those I Love” was finished, in May 2019, Balfe put it on the independent music platform Bandcamp, to share with family and friends. A few Irish music blogs found it, too, and the record received some favorable reviews. But Balfe’s fortunes really changed when “For Those I Love” came to the attention of Ash Houghton, an A&R manager at September Recordings, which also represents Adele and London Grammar.“The album speaks for itself,” Houghton said in an email. “My only thought at the time was that it would be a tragedy if more people weren’t able to hear it.”Houghton offered a release on the label, yet Balfe initially was hesitant to share such personal work with a wider audience, he said. But friends who had also known Curran suggested the album could help others, he said, “and speak to them as they move through their own grief.”In March, September Recordings rereleased “For Those I Love,” which entered the Irish album charts at No. 2, and Balfe’s debut live show in Dublin, scheduled for October, sold out in 10 minutes.Niall Byrne, the editor of Nialler9.com, an Irish music site that was one of the album’s early champions, said in a video interview that, while many Irish musicians were producing good music, “you don’t hear a lot of rawness.” It was this quality, he added, that set Balfe’s record apart.A recent wave of new artists, he said — including Balfe, the group Pillow Queens and the post-punk band the Murder Capital — were “less defined by genre or sound,” but rather “by the sensibility and values their music holds. Their lyrics are informed by real issues.”Balfe said he was working on a new album, that would also be informed by Dublin and its politics, but that the project had hit a “frustratingly stagnant brick wall.” Despite the success of “For Those I Love,” he was still working “a day job,” he said — though he didn’t want to say what that was. He kept the job, which he had before signing the record deal, out of “fear of turning the thing that I love the most, the creative pursuits, into labor.”Since the wider release of “For Those I Love,” Balfe said, fans had been messaging him on social media, to share how the record has “helped them shake their grief.”He still mourns Curran, he said: “A semi-successful local record isn’t going to make that better.” But, he added, he was happy that his music has touched others. “Those responses,” he said, “have gone a long way to help with some of the guilt.” More

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      Yoshi Wada, Inventive Creator of Sound Worlds, Dies at 77

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      A member of the Fluxus performance art movement (and a contractor by trade), he incorporated bagpipes, electronics and, yes, plumber’s materials in his music.Yoshi Wada, a Japanese-born composer and artist who drew a following creating cacophonous, minimalist performances on homemade instruments and was a member of the Fluxus performance art movement that took root in New York in the 1960s, died on May 18 at his home in Manhattan. He was 77.His son and musical collaborator, Tashi Wada, confirmed the death but said the cause was not known.Yoshi Wada’s music was characterized by dense, sustained sounds that could create mind-bending acoustic effects. He borrowed widely from different musical traditions — Indian ragas, Macedonian folk singing and Scottish bagpipes — all while supporting his musical life by working in construction.In one early technique, in the 1970s, he attached mouthpieces to plumbing pipes that could extend more than 20 feet. In ritualistic, multihour concerts, he immersed listeners in the richly resonant drones that emanated from this Alphorn-like instrument, which he called an Earth Horn.Combined with electronics created by the sound artist Liz Philips, the pulsating sonorities of the pipes offered a new take on the minimalist style then in vogue.“The result was certainly one of the more coloristically attractive of the many recent instances of minimalist, steady-state sound that one hears these days,” John Rockwell of The New York Times wrote of one Wada concert in 1974, at the Kitchen in Lower Manhattan, “rather like an evening’s worth of the very beginning of Wagner’s ‘Rheingold.’”Mr. Wada’s idiosyncratic singing and use of bagpipes became the basis for two important albums in the 1980s, released on free-jazz labels. One, “Lament for the Rise and Fall of the Elephantine Crocodile,” was recorded in an empty swimming pool; to delve more deeply into the project, Mr. Wada slept in the pool. The other release, “Off the Wall,” made in West Berlin through a grant he had received, combined bagpipes with a handcrafted organ and percussion.“What I’d like to get is a feeling of the endless space,” he said in a 1987 interview. “I want to create this feeling of infinity by sound.”Mr. Wada also created elaborate sculptural sound installations. For “The Appointed Cloud,” in 1987, he hung organ pipes and gongs in the Great Hall of the New York Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. Guided by a computer program developed by David Rayna, visitors would press buttons to change the sound of the composition in real-time.“A lot of young children came,” Mr. Wada recalled in 2016, “and they went crazy pushing the buttons and enjoyed it quite a lot.”Mr. Wada performed with his son, Tashi, in 2018. They became a duo in recent years. Dicky Bahto via RVNG Intl.Yoshimasa Wada was born on Nov. 11, 1943, in Kyoto, Japan, to Shukitchi Wada, an architect, and Kino Imakita. His father died in World War II, and his childhood was marked by the hardships of the postwar years.Yoshi had powerful early experiences hearing monks chant in a local Zen temple. Enthralled by Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman, he took up jazz saxophone as a teenager. He studied sculpture at the Kyoto City University of Fine Arts and sought out avant-garde collectives in Japan, like the Gutai group and Hi-Red Center.“It was looking at the moon in a Zen garden for a whole night,” Mr. Wada later recalled of a “happening” presented by the artist and musician Yoko Ono. “It was quite a nice feeling. I remember that afterwards I took a bath and went home.”After receiving his bachelor’s in fine arts degree, he moved to New York in 1967. George Maciunas, widely credited as the founder of the Fluxus movement, lived in Mr. Wada’s building. Soon, Mr. Wada was enmeshed with Fluxus’s high-minded absurdism, making music from cardboard tubes and syncopated sneezes.Mr. Maciunas had started purchasing abandoned buildings in the area of Manhattan that would become known as SoHo and converting them into artists’ co-ops, and he conscripted Mr. Wada to help with the carpentry and plumbing.Never having trained in music formally, Mr. Wada took lessons in electronic music from the composer La Monte Young and became, in the early 1970s, a disciple of the guru Pandit Pran Nath, who taught North Indian classical singing in Mr. Young’s studio.“He tried to absorb everything, at a very high spiritual level,” Mr. Young said of Mr. Wada in an interview. “He was a very pure and noble person.”His fascination with the microtonal inflections and hypnotic drones of Indian ragas, along with his dissatisfaction with standard instruments, led Mr. Wada to create the Earth Horns. But his musical interests continued to expand. He heard Macedonian folk singing at a festival and decided to study it, then started a small choir to sing eerie, modal improvisations. He attended Scottish Highland games in the late 1970s and was struck by the possibilities of the bagpipe.After learning the solo bagpipe style known as “piobaireachd,” Mr. Wada built his own “adapted” version of the instrument — with plumbing fittings, pipes and air compressors — for evening-length performances that fused composition and improvisation.“In studying all of these different traditions, one thing he always talked about was that he wanted to find ways to make them his own,” his son, Tashi, said in an interview.Mr. Wada performing at the Signal Gallery in New York in 2016. “He tried to absorb everything at a very high spiritual level,” the composer La Monte Young said. “He was a very pure and noble person.”Peter GannushkinMr. Wada supported his family by continuing his construction work, even starting his own contracting company. He stored his menagerie of makeshift instruments in the subbasement of their building, one of those that Mr. Maciunas had developed. Tashi Wada recalled that a childhood drum kit once found its way into one of his father’s sound installations.Beginning in 2007, Tashi Wada, who is also an experimental composer, helped reissue his father’s older recordings, which are now available on the label Saltern. In 2009, the Emily Harvey Foundation, which promotes the arts and which had preserved some of Mr. Wada’s Earth Horns, invited him to reprise his 1970s performances. The original electronic drone system was lost to history; instead, Tashi re-created the parts live. Father and son became regular musical collaborators.Mr. Wada’s first wife was Barbara Stewart. He married Marilyn Bogerd in 1985; they divorced in 2014. In addition to their son, he is survived by their daughter, Manon Bogerd Wada, and a granddaughter.In 2016, Tashi Wada interviewed his father for the arts magazine BOMB and asked him about the hallucinatory effects that he said he had experienced in the 1980s while practicing his music in a small studio space in West Berlin.“I wasn’t taking drugs at that time,” Mr. Wada said. “It wasn’t needed. Sound draws me into a dreamlike world, when the sound is in tune. It’s a very good effect and keeps me awake.” More

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      Some Venue Owners Get a Federal Lifeline. Others Are Told They’re Dead.

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      The first applications for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, offering $16 billion in federal aid, were approved.As the emails finally started arriving late last week, some business owners got the good news they had been long awaiting: They would be awarded a piece of a $16 billion federal grant fund intended to preserve music clubs, theaters and other live-event businesses devastated by the pandemic.But other applicants ran into fresh obstacles — including the discovery that the government thinks they’re dead. It was the latest bureaucratic mishap for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant initiative, an aid program created by Congress late last year that has struggled at nearly every turn to disburse badly needed relief funds.Derek Sitter, the owner of the Volcanic Theater Pub, a 250-capacity music and performance venue in Bend, Ore., was at home on Saturday watching a British soccer game when an alert popped up on his phone: “Congratulations,” ran the subject line of an email from the Small Business Administration, which manages the grant program.Mr. Sitter ran outside to tell his wife and daughter the news, with tears swelling in his eyes. “My heart rate increased,” he recalled in an interview. “But it was a good increase.”The Volcanic was awarded about $140,000, Mr. Sitter said, though the funds have not yet arrived. (The size of the grant is pegged at 45 percent of a venue’s gross revenue from 2019.) Just how many venues have learned that their applications have been approved is unclear, but members of the network of small venues — which became a tightly connected hive during the pandemic — say they have heard of only a few so far. The Small Business Administration has not released details on how many claims it has approved.Bobby McKey’s, a piano bar near Washington, is stuck in bureaucratic limbo. Bob Hansan, the venue’s managing partner, said that his application was stalled because the government thinks he is dead. Charles King/C King MediaOther applicants got grimmer news. Bob Hansan, the managing partner of Bobby McKey’s, a piano bar near Washington, received a cryptic email Tuesday afternoon that began: “Your name appears on the Do Not Pay list with the Match Source DMF.”A few minutes of frantic Googling revealed that was a reference to the government’s Death Master File, a record of more than 83 million people whose deaths have been reported to the Social Security Administration.Mr. Hansan immediately called Social Security’s headquarters, which referred him to his local office, which told Mr. Hansan that they could find no record of his name anywhere on the death list. The office agreed to send him a form affirming that he’s alive, but the document can only be sent by mail, he was told — a process he worries will be slow.“It’s this continual drip-drop of delays,” he said.Michael Swier, the founder of the Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge in New York — and a prominent figure in the independent music world — also received notification early Wednesday that he was considered dead, and said that he was beside himself trying to understand how to correct the error.“What do I do? What kind of proof do they need?” Mr. Swier said. “Can I say over the phone, ‘It’s me’?”Representatives of the Small Business Administration did not answer questions about the erroneous death data.Michael Swier, the founder of the Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge in New York, was told he was considered dead. (He is alive.) “What do I do?” he asked. “What kind of proof do they need?”Michal Czerwonka for The New York TimesThe glitches were the latest to bedevil the program, which has suffered many delays, including a complete failure of its online system on the day it tried to start taking applications. (The application system finally opened in late April.)Some 13,000 people applied, seeking a total of $11 billion. The Small Business Administration has not yet released details on how many it has approved.In Facebook groups and on Twitter, frantic business owners have been swapping tips and trying to glean where in the application process their own claim might be.Some venues are beginning to get good news.Hugh Hallinan, the executive producer of Downtown Cabaret Theater, a nonprofit venue in Bridgeport, Conn., spent weeks checking the S.B.A.’s grant portal each day, and last Thursday learned that his theater had been approved for a $541,000 grant.On Tuesday the theater held a news conference with Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.“We’ve been in Bridgeport for 41 years, and we’ve never gotten recognition like this,” Mr. Hallinan said in an interview. “I just thought, ‘We’re going to soak it all up right now. We’re going to bask in it.’”Downtown Cabaret came close to shutting down last year. Downtown Cabaret Theater, in Bridgeport, Conn., which came close to shutting down, learned that it had been approved for a $541,000 grant. Richard Pettibone“If all patrons who had tickets called in and said, ‘I need a refund,’ it was game-over time,” Mr. Hallinan said. Instead, many opted for a credit on their account, and about a third of donated the cost of their tickets back to the venue, Mr. Hallinan said.The funding has not yet started flowing to Broadway. A spokeswoman for the Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, said that none of its members had notified the group about receiving application approvals. Charlotte St. Martin, the group’s president, had said last month that officials had told the group that money would start coming in by the end of May, but that deadline has now passed.And several major performing arts organizations in New York City that are planning summer or fall reopenings are also still waiting. Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, the Public Theater and the Metropolitan Opera have not yet heard. Many will not be eligible until a later round of awards.Mr. Sitter, in Oregon, said he had no idea why the Volcanic got its award so early. Like many applicants, it had lost at least 90 percent of its revenue during the pandemic, which qualified the Volcanic for the first round of grants. Others who lost less will be eligible for awards in mid- to late June.The Volcanic received some federal money last year from an earlier round of federal pandemic relief. That got it through 2020, Mr. Sitter said. But by last month, the Volcanic was down to its last few thousand dollars, not enough to cover its rent and monthly bills for June, Mr. Sitter said. He was considering whether to sell or shut it down.With the shuttered venue grant, the Volcanic can stay open until next year, when Mr. Sitter expects its pipeline of shows to be back to normal. This weekend, it is planning to put on its first shows since last summer, at 50 percent capacity.“There’s certainly not a lot of profit going to be made here,” Mr. Sitter said. “This is simply to lift the spirits of people, to say, ‘We can kind of do this, we’re doing good, and there is a way out.’” More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Percussion

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      Listen to the varied, explosive, resonant sounds of instruments struck, shaken, pounded, scratched.In the past, we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, piano, opera, cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, violin, Baroque music, sopranos, Beethoven, flute, string quartets, tenors, Brahms and choral music.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love percussion — the resonant sound of instruments struck, shaken, pounded. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Andy Akiho, composer and steel pan virtuosoIt’s an exciting era for percussion innovation and inspiration. Particularly new works with flexible instrumentation, because they really showcase an ensemble’s choices and personality. Sandbox Percussion’s multiple versions of Jason Treuting’s “extremes” are an awesome example of how a great composition can renew itself with each interpretation. It’s interesting to learn how the piece works and what inspired the material — rhythms drawn from the letters of six American cities — but most important, I just love listening to and watching it be performed, and I want to share that experience with you.Jason Treuting’s “extremes”Sandbox Percussion (Jonny Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum, Terry Sweeney)◆ ◆ ◆Valerie Naranjo, musician and ‘Saturday Night Live’ band member“Gmeng Se Naah Eee” (“What Shall We Do?”) is a concerto movement for gyil (pronounced “jeel”) and orchestra. The gyil is a pentatonic African marimba that utilizes only four notes per octave in any particular work. Its composer poses the question — When trouble strikes, what shall we do? — then answers it: We will press forward with wisdom and determination, until we move from dismay to delight. I find it amazing that the 12 notes the gyil uses in this work can tell the story of wisdom conquering all with such exuberance — lifting my mood and making me dance.Ba-ere Yotere’s “Gmeng Se Naah Eee”Orchestrated by Andrew Beall; performed by Valerie Naranjo◆ ◆ ◆Evelyn Glennie, musicianPercussion is primal, sophisticated, raw, refined, playful, complex; it evokes a web of emotions and ignites vibrations that transform the body into a huge ear. “Thunder Caves” is relentless drumming that unleashes the human hand and technology together. The voice is primal, too, and what I drum I think about through the guttural grunts of my voice. Pronged sticks, drum sticks, flix sticks, skin on skin — all contribute to the sound colors on these conventional instruments. The incessant pounding of the kick bass drum gives this piece unrelenting momentum.“Thunder Caves”Improvised and performed by Evelyn Glennie (RCA)◆ ◆ ◆Antonio Sánchez, drummer and ‘Birdman’ composerThe drums are the engine of pretty much any band, but some engines work in a unique way. The first time I heard this live recording of Duke Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be” with the Keith Jarrett Trio — Jarrett on piano, Jack DeJohnette on drums and Gary Peacock on bass — back in college, I was astounded by how fluid the drums made the music sound. DeJohnette is one of the most original voices to ever play the instrument. Even though the swing factor is undeniably strong in his performance, the unconventional fills and accents keep a very well-known tune, with a very simple form, exciting and unpredictable. You can hear the crowd going crazy behind some of those trademark DeJohnette fills. Pure bliss.“Things Ain’t What They Used to Be”(ECM)◆ ◆ ◆Stewart Copeland, composer and former Police drummerMost concert works for percussion are as much fun as a concussion. But sometimes folks like Steve Reich and John Adams find real beauty in hitting things. In this piece Tan Dun takes it further, bravely writing for waterphones and other wildly rebellious instruments. He builds a rich orchestral envelope to suggest pitches and rhythms for the unpitched, wafting water sounds. Listening on your slick system, or over your headphones in a darkened room, it is guaranteed to inspire a wild adventure movie of your own design. For background while doing stuff, it will inspire lateral thinking and novel solutions. Probably not great for group bonding, marching or sex — and definitely don’t drive on this stuff!Tan Dun’s Concerto for Water PercussionNew York Philharmonic; Kurt Masur, conductor◆ ◆ ◆Sarah Hennies, composer and percussionistThe composer and performer Michael Ranta, born in 1942, is a crucial figure in percussion music, though he is almost totally unknown today, even to musicians. He was extremely prolific in the 1970s as an interpreter of avant-garde composition, as an improviser and as a composer of highly individualistic solo works, which he still produces today. He has spent significant time in Asia, especially China and Japan, and “Yuen Shan,” for live percussion and prerecorded sounds, is based on ancient spiritual principles and was composed over a period of almost 40 years. Ranta’s stalwart commitment to being a percussionist who is also a creative artist has been a source of great inspiration for my own work.Michael Ranta’s “Yin-Chu”From “Yuen Shan”◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerCarl Nielsen’s irrepressible Fourth Symphony was written in 1916, in the middle of World War I, and it’s a dogfight between light and dark. Where does the percussion fit in? As the orchestra tries to soar into glory in the finale, two timpanists duke it out, stationed at opposite sides of the stage — and, as Nielsen wrote, “maintaining a certain threatening character,” their dueling dissonances and the brutality of their attack almost pulling the music back into martial disaster. But not quite; life triumphs. It’s one of the most remarkable uses of the percussion in the symphonic repertoire, and stunning to witness live.Nielsen’s Fourth SymphonyBerlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Cynthia Yeh, Chicago Symphony principal percussionistThe most obvious traits of percussion in the orchestral realm are sheer power, intensity and terror — both overt, in-your-face terror and a subtler undercurrent of fear. Percussion is often used to create a color, a shimmer, a sparkle or crashing waves. The sounds we can make are limitless because our instruments actually are limitless; percussion is defined as anything one shakes, scrapes or strikes, and this is why I chose Christopher Cerrone’s “Memory Palace.” Almost all the instruments in this piece are D.I.Y.: planks of wood, pieces of pipe, bowls and bottles. It showcases the versatility of percussion — the range of instruments, the creation of rhythm, melody, harmony, character and mood.Christopher Cerrone’s “Memory Palace”Ian David Rosenbaum, percussion (National Sawdust Tracks)◆ ◆ ◆Glenn Kotche, composer and Wilco drummerDynamic and energetic, “Drums of Winter” is at the heart of John Luther Adams’s fascinating early multimedia work “Earth and the Great Weather: A Sonic Geography of the Arctic.” Even without pitched percussion, it contains all of the most exciting elements of percussion music. The tumultuous power and subtle peace of the natural world are expertly encompassed. The piece moves quickly and covers a lot of ground, with the sonic peaks and valleys of rhythmic consonance and dissonance showcasing the tonal potential of the drum quartet. The last 30 seconds are an exhilarating finale bound to open doors and ears to more.John Luther Adams’s “Drums of Winter”Amy Knoles, Robert Black, Robin Lorentz and John Luther Adams, percussion (New World Records)◆ ◆ ◆Anthony Tommasini, Times chief classical music criticThough the piano is a percussion instrument, we agreed we’d look beyond its traditional repertoire for this feature. But John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano are works that truly create a percussion ensemble of exhilarating variety. In these 20 pieces, Cage continued his experiments with prepared pianos — regular pianos with screws, bolts, slabs of rubber, pieces of plastic and other items inserted, according to Cage’s precise specifications, between its strings. By striking the keys, a player produces an array of thuds, chime-like tones, near-pitchless plunks, delicate harplike sounds and more. In the paired Sonatas XIV and XV, “Gemini,” the music sounds like a vaguely Asian dance, with rippling riffs in the bass register, melodic bits in peeling high tones, alluring thumps and intricate rhythmic figures.John Cage’s “Gemini”David Greilsammer, piano (Sony Classical)◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times classical writerWhen it comes to Duke Ellington’s music from the early 1940s, discussion tends to center on the contributions made by the bassist Jimmy Blanton and the tenor saxophonist Ben Webster — and the skill of the percussionist Sonny Greer is often overlooked. Yet Ellington himself described Greer, his longtime drummer, as the “world’s best percussionist reactor.” “When he heard a ping,” Ellington added in his memoir, “he responded with the most apropos pong.” You can hear that responsiveness throughout the classic “Cotton Tail,” as Greer drives the ensemble sections, adds excitement to an already stirring Webster solo and pongs nimbly underneath Ellington’s piano.Duke Ellington’s “Cotton Tail”(Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Tyshawn Sorey, composer and instrumentalistComposed in 1978 for an eight-member percussion ensemble, Roscoe Mitchell’s “The Maze” is a seminal example of his dialogic/Afrologic relationship to composition. Its unusually notated score favors an egalitarian aesthetic, in which each of the performers has opportunities not only to interpret complex, traditionally notated passages, but also to explore different sonic areas in their individualized assemblages, which feature traditional Western percussion instruments, self-invented equipment and a multitude of found objects. “The Maze” encourages the performers to collaboratively interact with all the traditionally and graphically notated materials in a manner that problematizes separatist notions of “improvisation” and “composition,” cultivating a sonic universe in which such a binary never existed in the first place.Roscoe Mitchell’s “The Maze”(Nessa)◆ ◆ ◆Steven Schick, musicianDuring my first visit to New York City on a crystalline autumn day in 1977, I walked the length of Manhattan to stand outside of the building where Edgard Varèse had lived in SoHo. Along the way, I heard the metal-on-metal cacophony of construction, wailing sirens and snippets of the city’s joyous mix of world music. I realized then that “Ionisation,” composed of those very sounds, was not barren modernism but Varèse’s love letter to his adopted home. Listening 44 years later, the noises of “Ionisation” are still bracing, the rhythms still joyous, and I am buoyed again by this fierce anthem to the present.Varèse’s “Ionisation”Ensemble Intercontemporain; Susanna Malkki, conductor◆ ◆ ◆Jason Treuting, composer and So Percussion memberI first listened to “Genderan” in 1997. It is in the gamelan gong kebyar style and showcases so many of the transfixing qualities of Balinese music — qualities that led me to study with I Nyoman Suadin at the Eastman School of Music, and then to travel to Bali to learn more with him and other musicians. “Genderan” begins with a unison introduction, then hits with intricate hocketing over the gong cycle, showing off bright melodies that wind over the beat in endlessly compelling ways. This music utterly changed my life and my understanding of percussion and its capacities. I hope you love it, too.“Genderan”From “Music for the Gods”; recorded in Ubud, Bali, 1941◆ ◆ ◆Joshua Barone, Times editorIn its rhythms and lyrical gestures, this piece seems to contain elements of Steve Reich and John Adams — maybe even Leonard Bernstein. Yet it predates them all: Colin McPhee wrote “Tabuh-Tabuhan” in 1936, influenced by his years spent studying gamelan music in Bali. He transplanted his research onto the Western classical orchestra, featuring Balinese gongs but also creating what he called a “nuclear gamelan” of two pianos and percussion instruments, and approximating the sounds of hand-beaten drums in the strings. The resulting works helped to pave a new path, later trod by Benjamin Britten and broadened by Lou Harrison, for Western percussion in the 20th century.Colin McPhee’s “Tabuh-Tabuhan”BBC Symphony Orchestra; Leonard Slatkin, conductor (Chandos)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music editorIn the prelude to Janacek’s opera “Kat’a Kabanova,” the percussion is as articulate as any singer could be in previewing the drama to come: the timpani, first shadowy, then brutal, beating like a heartbeat, like fate; and the insistent sleigh bells that will later carry away a husband, leaving his wife to temptation, adultery and suicide. Percussion functions under, over and through the orchestra — adding punctuation, italics, boldface.Janacek’s “Kat’a Kabanova”Vienna Philharmonic; Charles Mackerras, conductor (Decca)◆ ◆ ◆Kate Gentile, drummer and composerThe brilliant, multitudinous improvisation in this excerpt typifies the “ancient to the future” ethos of this revolutionary group. The Art Ensemble of Chicago’s extensive percussion setup is played freely and fully by all four band members on this 1969 recording, made before Famoudou Don Moye joined. Lester Bowie is listed as playing bass drum; Roscoe Mitchell, cymbals, gongs, conga drums, logs, bells, siren, whistles, steel drum, etc.; Joseph Jarman, marimba, vibes, conga drums, bells, whistles, gongs, siren, guitar, etc.; and Malachi Favors, log drum, cythar, percussions, etc. — all that in addition to their primary instruments.“Reese and the Smooth Ones”Art Ensemble of Chicago — A.A.C.M.◆ ◆ ◆Elayne Jones, former San Francisco Opera timpanistThe timpani can be such a loud instrument, and people tend to watch you when you’re playing it. But it really captures the audience when it’s so soft; it kind of gets you. Just before the end of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, it’s only the solo piano and the quiet timpani. Something so big and so heavy, but it comes out so delicate. You capture everyone’s imagination.Beethoven’s Fifth Piano ConcertoAndras Schiff, piano; Staatskapelle Dresden; Bernard Haitink, conductor (Teldec)◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      New York’s Concert Scene Gets a Lavish New Addition: Brooklyn Made

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      The 500-capacity live venue in Bushwick will offer unique perks to musicians who play there, including a private pool and use of a loft apartment.For the last year, with the concert business mothballed by the pandemic, small clubs and theaters have warned that their survival was at risk, and dozens of venues across the country have shut down.But with concerts now coming back, something that might have seemed unthinkable just a few months ago is happening: Not only have old venues reopened their doors, but entirely new ones are sprouting up, buoyed by the hope that concert-hungry fans will help the industry come roaring back.On Sept. 30, Brooklyn Made, a new club in Bushwick, Brooklyn, will open with two nights featuring Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. Everything about the space is planned as deluxe and high-concept, from the Moroccan lamps adorning the 500-capacity performance space to the adjoining cafe and rooftop deck. Visiting artists will find an impossibly luxurious spread, including a private pool and use of a loft apartment with striking views of the Manhattan skyline.It is one of a handful of changes to the post-pandemic New York concert scene, including the return of Irving Plaza, the landmark rock club off Union Square that will reopen in August after a two-year, multimillion-dollar renovation.Brooklyn Made will open its doors to audiences on Sept. 30 with a concert by Jeff Tweedy.Lila Barth for The New York TimesFor Brooklyn Made, the club’s very existence is a bullish bet on the return of live music and the nightlife economy in New York, said Anthony Makes, a longtime player in the New York concert world who is one of the principals behind the new club.“I believe in the future, and I think everyone’s going to come back,” Makes said on a recent tour of the space, where construction machines were still whirring, but the sunny artist apartment, one level up, was an oasis of quiet.When Brooklyn Made opens its doors — other fall bookings include Greg Dulli (Oct. 2), Trombone Shorty (Oct. 4-5), Turnover (Oct. 12-13), Steve Earle (Oct. 16) and Band of Horses (Oct. 18-20) — it will be the latest independent operator in a local scene dominated by two corporate powers, Live Nation and AEG Presents.To stand out in a hypercompetitive market, Brooklyn Made wants to cater to concertgoers as well as to artists. For fans, the club will present itself as an all-day hang in the heart of hipster Brooklyn, with a cafe open from morning till night; the live room will feature up-to-the-minute lighting and sound.Brooklyn Made’s building, at 428 Troutman Street, has been a subject of local mystery for years. Lila Barth for The New York TimesNow it will host a private apartment for artists.Lila Barth for The New York TimesAnd ample space for performers to rest, before and after shows.Lila Barth for The New York TimesKelly Winrich, of the Americana band Delta Spirit, is Makes’s partner in Brooklyn Made. He said the club’s hospitality for artists — four green rooms, along with the pool and apartment — will help it stand out to musicians whose touring life can otherwise be a blur of undistinguished black-box spaces.“Some venues know how to do it right; some don’t,” Winrich said. “When they do it right, it makes a world of difference for an artist coming through.”Money makes a difference too. The club has already developed a reputation among talent agents for aggressive offers. Makes said that in many cases Brooklyn Made will pay artists virtually the entire face value of tickets, an arrangement more common among superstar tours than in the razor-thin margins of the club business.Anthony Makes, left, and Kelly Winrich, are partners in Brooklyn Made. “Some venues know how to do it right; some don’t,” Winrich said. Lila Barth for The New York Times“We are basically giving them the gross of the ticket sales,” Makes said, which he called “unheard-of in this modern era of doing business.”Makes, 52, who set up his promotion company last year, is the former president of Live Nation’s New York office, and he has also worked at the Bowery Presents, which is half-owned by AEG. Brooklyn Made will now compete with those companies for bookings.Irving Plaza, a rock venue since 1978 — and where one person died in a 2016 shooting during a T.I. concert — has gotten a major face-lift inside, with new bars, new bathrooms and improved sight lines. Its rough-around-the-edges vibe was always part of its charm, but Margaret Holmes, the general manager of the club, which is owned by Live Nation, said the changes will only improve the fan experience.“It still feels like a rock club to me,” Holmes said, where fans will be “up close to the stage, close to your favorite artists.” She added: “But it just feels nicer.”The renovated Irving Plaza in Manhattan.Halkin/Mason PhotographyIrving Plaza will return Aug. 17 with the country singer Ashley McBryde. Other shows include Noah Cyrus (Aug. 27), Ben Folds (Sept. 12) and the rapper J.I. (Sept. 16). In a sign of just how hard it is for midsize venues to secure unique bookings, the alt-rock stalwarts Guided by Voices will play both Irving Plaza (Sept. 10) and Brooklyn Made (Dec. 31).Brooklyn Made’s building, at 428 Troutman Street, has been a subject of local mystery for years. A former warehouse, it was purchased in 2011 by Charlie Kaim, the proprietor of the Maracuja bar in Williamsburg. Kaim spent eight years renovating the Troutman building, intending to create a venue called the Bushwick House of Music.Last year, as the pandemic hit, a frustrated Kaim decided to sell. “Time for some young blood in there,” he said in an interview.Winrich’s family bought the building in November for $9.4 million; in a separate transaction early last year, Winrich also took over Maracuja.Makes and Winrich, 37, will operate Brooklyn Made through their partnership. Brooklyn Made Presents, their promotion company, also books the United Palace in Manhattan and CMAC, an amphitheater in Canandaigua, N.Y.Like some venues in New York, Brooklyn Made is waiting to open its doors until pandemic restrictions are eased and it can operate at full capacity; Makes and Winrich expect that to be in the fall, if not before. But just in case a full reopening takes longer than expected, they say they are well financed and can wait.“We’ll be ready to go and the world is ready to go,” Makes said, “no matter how long that takes.” More

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      Bo Burnham’s ‘Inside’: A Comedy Special and an Inspired Experiment

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      Using cinematic tools other comics overlook, the star (who is also the director, editor and cameraman) trains a glaring spotlight on internet life mid-pandemic.One of the most encouraging developments in comedy over the past decade has been the growing directorial ambition of stand-up specials. It’s folly to duplicate the feel of a live set, so why not fully adjust to the screen and try to make something as visually ambitious as a feature? More

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      John Davis, a Voice Behind Milli Vanilli, Dies at 66

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      The singer was one of the voices behind the pop duo Milli Vanilli, fronted by Fabrice Morvan and Rob Pilatus, who later admitted that they did not sing on their albums or in concert.This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.John Davis, one of the real voices behind the lip-syncing duo Milli Vanilli, died in Nuremberg, Germany, on Monday. He was 66.His daughter, Jasmin Davis, who confirmed the news of his death on Facebook, said he had Covid-19.While living in Germany, Mr. Davis started unknowingly singing for Milli Vanilli in the 1980s after he met Frank Farian, a German music producer. Mr. Farian asked Mr. Davis to work on a project, but he did not disclose that his voice would be used for others to lip-sync, Mr. Davis told The Hustle podcast on an episode posted in April.Only later would he discover that his voice was being used by Fabrice Morvan, one-half of the pop duo Milli Vanilli, with Rob Pilatus.“The truth is, I signed a contract with Frank Farian before I even knew who Milli Vanilli was,” Mr. Davis said. “One evening, I was sitting at home watching my TV, and I saw Fab singing ‘Girl I’m Gonna Miss You.’”Milli Vanilli was best known for hits like “I’m Gonna Miss You” and “Girl You Know It’s True,” and won the Grammy for best new artist in 1989.By 1990, Milli Vanilli’s work had sold more than seven million copies, but after Mr. Morvan and Mr. Pilatus admitted that they did not actually sing on Milli Vanilli’s albums or in concerts, they were stripped of the award.Mr. Morvan and Mr. Pilatus then told The Los Angeles Times that they wanted to give the award to those who actually voiced their work, including Mr. Davis, Brad Howell and Charles Shaw.“I didn’t want the Grammy because it was their faces and our voices,” Mr. Davis said. “I was mad.”Mr. Pilatus died in 1998, but Mr. Davis and Mr. Morvan later had an amicable relationship and even performed together.On Friday, Mr. Morvan shared a video with pictures of him performing with Mr. Davis.“Your golden voice will continue to be heard, you best believe that those classic records will live just like you eternally,” Mr. Morvan said on Twitter.Additional details about survivors were not immediately available on Saturday.Mr. Davis, who was born on Aug. 31, 1954, in Anderson, S.C., was stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army and stayed there for much of his life, he told The Hustle podcast.In Germany, Mr. Davis found many opportunities to play in Army clubs in the 1970s, he told the podcast.Mr. Davis said he learned how to play music from his father, a choir director who played piano and guitar.“My one mission I had on this earth was to become a musician and to play music,” Mr. Davis said.Those We’ve LostThe coronavirus pandemic has taken an incalculable death toll. This series is designed to put names and faces to the numbers. More