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      Malcolm Cecil, Synthesizer Pioneer, Is Dead at 84

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      His massive machine, known as TONTO, helped transform the music in Stevie Wonder’s mind into classic albums like “Innervisions.”Malcolm Cecil, a British-born bassist with the soul of an engineer who revolutionized electronic music by helping to create a huge analog synthesizer that gave Stevie Wonder’s albums a new sound, died on Sunday at a hospital in Valhalla, N.Y. He was 84.His son, Milton, said the cause had not yet been determined.Mr. Cecil, a loquacious man with a head full of curls, had played the upright bass in jazz bands in England and was the night maintenance engineer at Mediasound Studios in Manhattan in 1968 when he met Robert Margouleff, a film and record producer who owned and operated a Moog synthesizer there.“He said, ‘Robert, if you show me how to play the synthesizer, I will teach you how to become a first-class recording engineer,’” Mr. Margouleff said in a phone interview. “We had a deal.”They began designing and building what would become The Original New Timbral Orchestra, or TONTO. Starting with the Moog and adding other synthesizers and a collection of modules, some of them designed by Mr. Cecil, they created a massive semicircular piece of equipment that took up a small room and weighed a ton. It could be programmed to create a vast array of original sounds and to modify and process the sounds of conventional musical instruments.As they continued to develop it, Mr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff recorded an album, “Zero Time” (1971), under the name TONTO’s Expanding Head Band.Reviewing “Zero Time” in Rolling Stone, Timothy Crouse wrote: “Like taking acid and discovering that your mind has the power to stop your heart, the realization that this instrument can do all sorts of things to you, now that it has you, is unsettling.”The album attracted the attention of Mr. Wonder, who had just turned 21 when he showed up at Mediasound on Memorial Day weekend in 1971. Mr. Cecil lived in an apartment above the studio so that he would be available to fix anything that might go wrong, day or night.“I get a ring on the bell,” Mr. Cecil told Red Bull Music Academy in 2014. “I look out; there’s my friend Ronnie and a guy who turns out to be Stevie Wonder in a green pistachio jumpsuit and what looks like my album under his arm. Ronnie says, ‘Hey, Malcolm, got somebody here who wants to see TONTO.’”What started as a demonstration of TONTO for Mr. Wonder turned out to be a weekend-long recording experiment. Seventeen songs were recorded, and a collaboration was born.Over the next three years, TONTO became a significant sonic element of Mr. Wonder’s music on the albums “Music of My Mind” and “Talking Book,” both released in 1972, and their follow-ups, “Innervisions” (1973) and “Fulfillingness’ First Finale (1974).In an interview in 2019 with the music website Okayplayer, Mr. Cecil described part of the creative process behind the recording of “Evil,” the last track on “Music of My Mind.”“If you listen to ‘Evil,’ it has a fantastic opening, which is all TONTO, and the sound of it was classical,” he said. “There was an oboe sound. There was a horn sound and a foreboding bass.” He added, “When Stevie wanted something, he would explain what he heard in his head, and we would attempt to create it as closely as possible.”The experience of working with Mr. Wonder was, Mr. Margouleff said, “very much in the moment; nothing was preplanned. It was all intuitive and wonderful.”From left, Mr. Cecil, Stevie Wonder and Mr. Margouleff in the studio. The three collaborated on the albums “Music of My Mind,” “Talking Book,” “Innervisions” and “Fulfillingness’ First Finale.”via Robert MargouleffMr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff at the 1974 Grammy Awards. They won for their engineering of “Innervisions.”via Robert MargouleffMr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff won the Grammy Award for their engineering of “Innervisions,” which included the hit songs “Living in the City” and “Higher Ground.” Mr. Wonder won Grammys that year for album of the year and for best rhythm and blues song, for “Superstition,” which blended Mr. Wonder’s playing on drums and clavinet with a funky bass sound provided by TONTO.Mr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff’s partnership with Mr. Wonder ended after four albums.“We never got the business part of our relationship with Stevie together,” Mr. Margouleff said. “Business issues made our relationship untenable.”A year later — following technical difficulties during Billy Preston’s live TONTO performance on the NBC music show “Midnight Special” — Mr. Margouleff and Mr. Cecil broke up.Malcolm Ian Cecil was born on Jan 9, 1937, in London. His mother, Edna (Aarons) Cecil, was an accordionist who played in bands, including one, composed entirely of women, that entertained troops during World War II. His father, David, was a concert promoter who also worked as a professional clown under the name Windy Blow. They divorced when Malcolm was very young.Malcolm started playing piano when he was 3 and took up drums a little later. He began to play the upright bass as a teenager and was soon playing in jazz clubs. He studied physics for a year at London Polytechnic before entering the Royal Air Force in 1958. His three years as a radar operator prepared him for future studio work.After his discharge, he was the house bassist at the saxophonist Ronnie Scott’s nightclub in London, where he played with visiting American musicians like Stan Getz and J.J. Johnson; a member of Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, a band whose evolving cast at various times included Charlie Watts and Jack Bruce; and the principal bassist of the BBC Radio Orchestra. He also had a business building public address systems and other equipment for musicians.Suffering from collapsed lungs, Mr. Cecil decided he needed a warmer climate and moved to South Africa, where he continued playing bass. But he disliked living amid apartheid.He sailed to San Francisco in 1967 and then headed to Los Angeles, where he spent a year as the chief engineer at Pat Boone’s recording studio. He later moved to New York City, where he worked at the Record Plant for six weeks before being hired as the maintenance engineer at Mediasound.He admired the Moog synthesizer IIIc at Mediasound but did not meet Mr. Margouleff until his fifth night there. They quickly began recording experimental psychedelic music together, and six months later the jazz flutist Herbie Mann signed them to his Embryo label.The first track they recorded for what would be their album “Zero Time” was “Aurora,” which was originally 23 minutes long. “I said, ‘Malcolm, I’m not even sure it’s music,’” Mr. Margouleff recalled. They cut its length by two-thirds.Mr. Cecil and Mr. Margouleff turned TONTO into the most advanced synthesizer in music. It was used, largely in its 1970s heyday, on recordings by Richie Havens, the Doobie Brothers, James Taylor, Quincy Jones, Joan Baez, Little Feat and others.Mr. Cecil in 2018 at the National Music Center, in Calgary, Alberta, where TONTO currently resides, and where its impact was celebrated at a five-day event.Sebastian BuzzalinoIn the 1980s and ’90s, Mr. Cecil produced several of Gil Scott-Heron’s albums and produced or engineered albums by the Isley Brothers, Ginger Baker, Dave Mason and other artists. He also played bass on Mr. Scott-Heron’s 1994 album, “Spirits.” Mr. Margouleff went on to produce the rock band Devo.TONTO’s Expanding Head Band released one more album, “It’s About Time,” in 1974. “Tonto Rides Again,” a digitally remastered compilation of the two earlier albums, was released in 1996.“Margouleff and Cecil were about 30 years ahead of their time when they started this project,” Jim Brenholts wrote in a review of “Tonto Rides Again” on AllMusic.In addition to his son, Milton, Mr. Cecil is survived by his wife, Poli (Franks) Cecil.TONTO had several homes in New York City, including Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios; it also spent time in Los Angeles and in a converted barn owned by Mr. Cecil in the Hudson River town of Saugerties, N.Y.In 2013, TONTO was acquired by the National Music Center in Calgary, Alberta, where it was restored and its impact celebrated in a five-day event in 2018. A Tribe Called Red, a Canadian electronic-music duo that admires TONTO and considers it an influence, performed there, and Mr. Cecil gave a demonstration.A member of the band, Ehren Thomas, compared TONTO to the combination spaceship and time machine on a long-running British TV series.“It’s like the Tardis in ‘Doctor Who,’” he told the CBC, “because you can’t program it to do something specifically. You can set up the parameters and ask TONTO to do what you want, but what comes out is beyond your control.” More

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      Constance Demby, New Age Composer, Is Dead at 81

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      Ms. Demby wrote ethereal, otherworldly music and played much of it on instruments of her own making, including one she called the Space Bass.Constance Demby, whose ethereal music, some of it played on instruments she designed, was much admired by New Age adherents, spiritual seekers and fans of electronica, died on March 19 in Pasadena, Calif. She was 81.Her son and only immediate survivor, Joshua Demby, said the cause was complications of a heart attack.Ms. Demby’s 1986 album, “Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate,” was a breakthrough for both her and the New Age genre, selling more than 200,000 copies, a substantial figure for that type of music. Pulse magazine named it one of the top three New Age albums of the decade and called it “a landmark, full-length electronic symphony reminiscent of Baroque sacred music with crystalline effects that take you out of the realm of everyday experience.”Ms. Demby’s album “Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate,” released in 1986, sold more than 200,000 copies, a substantial figure for New Age music.Constance DembyMore recently, tracks like “Alleluiah” and “Haven of Peace” from “Sanctum Sanctuorum,” a 2001 release, have been drawing attention from a new generation of fans, said Jon Birgé, owner of Hearts of Space Records, Ms. Demby’s label for the past 20 years.Ms. Demby viewed sound, when harnessed properly, as having transformative and even healing power.“Music is a realm of consciousness the listener enters by traveling on a beam of sound,” she told Malibu Surfside News in 2010. “It opens the heart.”Eleni Rose-Collard, her former assistant, saw the effects of Ms. Demby’s music on audiences, including those who came to her studio for small-scale house concerts.“Her home concerts were magical, immersive, healing, profound,” Ms. Rose-Collard said by email. Ms. Rose-Collard herself experienced those effects.“One of my deepest memories was being there with her while she was composing ‘Novus Magnificat,’” she said. “I was across the room, I fell to my knees, crawled to her, put my head in her lap and sobbed.”Ms. Demby’s studio was full of synthesizers, computer monitors and various instruments, including one she named the Space Bass, which she created in the 1960s when she was an artist in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood making sculptures.“I brought this 10-foot-long sheet of mirror-finished steel to the studio and hung it up to start torching it,” she recalled in the 2010 interview — and she was transfixed by the sounds that emanated from the metal when it wobbled. She added some brass and steel rods and other refinements, and the Space Bass was born.There was also the Whale Sail, another sheet-metal creation, as well as a hammered dulcimer that she and the noted instrument maker Sam Rizzetta designed especially to reach notes lower than a traditional hammered dulcimer can produce.“It ended up being almost five feet long,” Ms. Demby wrote on her website, “because that low C string demanded a certain length in order to achieve the note. The resonance is such that the sound of one string being struck hangs in the air for nearly 15 seconds.”The writer Dave Eggers, a nephew, recalled how his aunt’s albums and artworks had brightened his youth in Chicago.“Whenever Connie would create a new album, she’d send it to us,” he said by email, “and the contrast between our many-shades-of-brown house and her records and posters, all with ethereal themes and rainbow colors, was dramatic.”Later he would visit the studio where she made her music.“In her place in Sierra Madre, in a light-filled front room, the Space Bass made sounds of thunder and crashing oceans,” Mr. Eggers wrote. “Most of her compositions were otherworldly — as if she were composing the soundtrack to the next world.”Ms. Demby in 2015 at the Space Bass, an instrument she created in the 1960s when she was an artist in SoHo making sculptures.Michael McCoolConstance Mary Eggers was born on May 9, 1939, in Oakland, Calif. Her father, John, was an advertising executive, and her mother, Mary Elizabeth (Kingwell) Eggers, was a homemaker.She grew up in Greenwich, Conn. When she was 8, her mother acquired a grand piano, which sparked Connie’s interest in music.“I watched her two hands interacting,” she said. “Within days I was taking piano lessons.”Ms. Demby married David Demby in 1961 (the marriage would end in divorce), and she spent much of that decade in New York, where she fell in with musicians like Robert Rutman, who would become well known as a multimedia artist. In 1966 Ms. Demby relocated to Maine, and soon Mr. Rutman did, too. Around 1970 she joined him in the Central Maine Power Music Company, a performance group that made much of its music with homemade instruments.“It has given concerts in various auditoriums,” a local newspaper wrote of the group, “sometimes playing to large, enthusiastic audiences, and sometimes playing to a baffled and resistant handful.”Ms. Demby in the 2000s on the terrace of her home in Spain, where she lived for a time before settling in California. Constance DembyMs. Demby lived in Spain for a time before settling in California. She took her music all over the world. Mr. Eggers recalled her telling stories of performing at Stonehenge in England and at the foot of the pyramids at Giza in Egypt. She often performed at planetariums and other astronomy facilities, including the Mount Wilson Observatory in California.Her music was used or sampled in a number of films. Her other albums include “Set Free” (1989), “Aeterna” (1994) and “Spirit Trance” (2004).“What Demby likes to do,” Ms. Demby told The Los Angeles Times in 2000, “is to play energy, and play the audience as one of her instruments.”Mr. Eggers said he had spoken frequently to his aunt, most recently a few weeks ago, when her health was failing.“Her memory was not good, and she couldn’t remember many friends or any recent events,” he said. “But she knew her music. She knew everywhere she’d played, and the name of every composition.”“Out of nowhere she began talking about heaven,” he added. “‘I think I’ll be welcomed there,’ she said. ‘I think they’d like the music I made, and they’ll open the gates for me.’” More

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      Paul Laubin, 88, Dies; Master of Making Oboes the Old-Fashioned Way

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      He learned the craft from his father and continued to make his instruments by hand. Laubin oboes are cherished for their dark and rich tone.Paul Laubin, a revered oboe maker who was one of the few remaining woodwind artisans to build their instruments by hand — he made so few a year that customers might have to wait a decade to play one — died on March 1 at his workshop in Peekskill, N.Y. He was 88. His wife, Meredith Laubin, confirmed the death. She said that Mr. Laubin, who lived in Mahopac, N.Y., had collapsed at his workshop at some point during the day and the police found his body there that night.In the world of oboes, his partisans believe, there are Mr. Laubin’s oboes and then there is everything else.Mr. Laubin was in his early 20s when he began making oboes with his father, Alfred, who founded A. Laubin Inc. and built his first oboe in 1931. He took over the business when his father died in 1976. His son, Alex, began working alongside him in 2003.Oboists in major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the St. Louis Symphony, have played Mr. Laubin’s instruments, cherishing their dark and rich tone.“There is something that strikes a chord deep in your body when you play a Laubin,” said Sherry Sylar, the associate principal oboist of the New York Philharmonic. “It’s a resonance that doesn’t happen with any other oboe. It rings inside your body. You get addicted to making that kind of a sound and nothing else will do.”In a dusty workshop near the Hudson River, lined with machines built as long ago as 1881, Mr. Laubin crafted his oboes and English horns with an almost religious sense of precision. He wore an apron and puffed a cob pipe as he drilled and lathed the grenadilla and rosewood used to make his instruments. (The pipe doubled as a testing device: Mr. Laubin would blow smoke through the instrument’s joints to detect air leaks.)His father taught him instrument-making techniques that date back centuries. As the decades passed and instrument makers began embracing computerized design and factory automation, the younger Mr. Laubin steadfastly resisted change. As far as he was concerned, if it took 10 years to build a good oboe — well, so be it.“What’s the rush?” Mr. Laubin said in an interview with The New York Times in 1991. “I don’t want anything going out of here with my name that I haven’t made and checked and played myself.”Mr. Laubin would store the blocks of his rare hardwoods outdoors for years so they could acclimate to extremes of weather and become more resilient instruments, resistant to the cracks that are the bane of woodwind players. After he drilled a hole that would become the instrument’s bore, the chunk of wood sometimes needed another year to dry out.Mr. Laubin, who was a professional oboist as a young man, constantly played each oboe he worked on in search of imperfections. “Every key is a struggle,” he told News 12 Westchester in 2012.When a Laubin oboe was finally completed, its unveiling became a cause for celebration. One customer arrived at the Peekskill workshop with a bottle of champagne, and as he played his first few notes, Mr. Laubin raised a toast.Mr. Laubin learned oboe-making from his father, who made his first instrument in 1931.via Laubin familyPaul Edward Laubin was born on Dec. 14, 1932, in Hartford, Conn. His father, an oboist and music teacher, started making oboes because he was dissatisfied with the quality of the instruments that were available; he built the first Laubin oboe as an experiment, melting down his wife’s silverware to make its keys. Paul’s mother, Lillian (Ely de Breton) Laubin, was a homemaker.As a boy, Paul was enchanted by the instruments he saw his father making, but Alfred initially did not want his son to pursue music. Paul kept pestering him; when he was 13 his father reluctantly gave him an oboe, a reed and a fingering chart, and Paul taught himself how to play.Mr. Laubin studied auto mechanics and music at Louisiana State University in the 1950s. Before long, his yearning to perform got the better of him, and he landed a spot in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Soon after that, he finally joined the family business and began to build oboes with his father in the garage of their home in Scarsdale, N.Y.In 1958, they moved their workshop to a clarinet factory in Long Island City in Queens, and for a time the business was churning out (relatively speaking) 100 instruments per year.Mr. Laubin married Meredith Van Lynip, a flutist, in 1966. He moved the company to its current location in Peekskill in 1988. As time passed, Mr. Laubin’s team got smaller, and so did his production.By the 1990s, A. Laubin Inc. was producing about 22 instruments a year. By around 2005, the average was down to 15. Over time, the scarcity of Laubin oboes only added to their legend. The company has rarely advertised, relying on word of mouth. A grenadilla oboe costs $13,200, and a rosewood instrument costs $14,000.In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Laubin is survived by a daughter, Michelle; a sister, Vanette Arone; a brother, Carl; and two grandchildren.Mr. Laubin was well aware that selling so few instruments a year, no matter how exquisite, did not necessarily make financial sense. “I chose to follow my father even though I knew I’d never get rich on it,” he told The Times in 1989. “I would have to think twice about starting it today.”The company’s fate is now undetermined. Alex Laubin served as office manager and helped with some aspects of production but did not learn the full process. He often urged his father to modernize their operation — to little avail.“No one sits down anymore and files out keys,” Meredith Laubin said. “No one turns out one oboe joint at a time. This is all automated now, like how robots make cars. But Paul wasn’t endorsing any of these things. To him, there was no cheating the family recipe.”But Mr. Laubin knew the old ways would come to an end. In recent years, he was finding it harder to ignore the stark realities of being an Old World artisan in the modern era.“Paul got to have one part of his dream, which was to be able to work with his son,” Ms. Laubin said. “But the other part of his dream, knowing that his work would continue on in the way he did things, he knew that wasn’t going to happen.”Nevertheless, he hewed to tradition. On his work table the day he died lay the beginnings of Laubin oboe No. 2,600. More

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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

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      ¿A qué suena el alma de Guatemala?

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      La imbaluna, uno de los instrumentos inventados por Joaquín Orellana que se exponen en la Americas Society.Credit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexPara expresar el sonido de Guatemala, él inventó nuevos instrumentosLas creaciones del compositor, inventor y escritor guatemalteco Joaquín Orellana son el tema de la exposición ‘The Spine of Music’ de la Americas Society.La imbaluna, uno de los instrumentos inventados por Joaquín Orellana que se exponen en la Americas Society.Credit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main story28 de febrero de 2021 a las 07:00 ETRead in EnglishNUEVA YORK — En un relato, el compositor, inventor y escritor guatemalteco Joaquín Orellana se imagina a un músico que, insatisfecho con los instrumentos de la civilización occidental, se propone crear el sonido del hambre. Poseído por el deseo de plasmar el sufrimiento de su pueblo, se va matando de hambre poco a poco y luego graba su voz alterada y delirante. En su delirio, ve cómo las partituras cobran vida con gritos angustiosos y violentos: el sonido del hambre.Orellana, de 90 años, es uno de los compositores más respetados de Guatemala y el centro de una cautivadora exposición en la Americas Society, The Spine of Music (La espina dorsal de la música) que da a conocer instrumentos —esculturales, surrealistas y oscuramente sensoriales— de su invención. Como protagonista de su historia, Orellana busca expresar el sufrimiento de un país traumatizado por el genocidio y la guerra civil, mientras evita usar los materiales de la música occidental.Orellana con el herroím, uno de sus “útiles sonoros”Credit…vía estudio de Joaquín OrellanaLa mayoría de los compositores escriben música para instrumentos que ya existen. A excepción de Wagner, quien creó un híbrido entre una tuba y un cuerno para su ciclo del “Anillo”. El compositor experimental Harry Partch inventó instrumentos adaptados a su sistema de afinación poco ortodoxo. En una entrevista en video desde Ciudad de Guatemala, Orellana habló de su proceso como un intento de liberar a la imaginación musical de las formas preconcebidas.“El compositor está imbuido de su realidad social”, dijo. “El compositor es una especie de filtro y su sensibilidad social está insertada en ese filtro”. Agregó que cuando las ideas musicales inundan la imaginación del compositor, “en esa mente auditiva están los conceptos y las imágenes de un contexto social, una realidad sociopolítica; y la música está inevitablemente en deuda con estas cosas”.Orellana comenzó a experimentar con los materiales de producción sonora en los años setenta. Estudió violín y composición en el Conservatorio Nacional de Música “Germán Alcántara” de Ciudad de Guatemala y después obtuvo una beca de dos años en el Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales de Buenos Aires, Argentina. El centro era un imán para los compositores innovadores de todo el subcontinente, y contaba con un estudio de música electrónica de última generación que despertó la imaginación de Orellana.Sebastian Zubieta, director musical de la Americas Society, toca el sinusoido pequeño de Orellana.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesCredit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesA su regreso a Guatemala no tenía recursos técnicos comparables y se sintió ajeno a la escena musical centrada en las tradiciones folclóricas expresadas a través de la marimba, el instrumento nacional.Sin embargo, Orellana se sentía fascinado por la marimba. Es muy probable que este instrumento haya llegado a Guatemala a través de las rutas de la esclavitud desde África occidental y que la población rural lo haya acogido como un símbolo de las esperanzas, el dolor y las injusticias de su país. Así que lo deconstruyó y le dio nuevas formas.Orellana llama a sus inventos “útiles sonoros”. “Mediante los útiles sonoros”, explica, “la marimba se extiende en el espacio acústico y físico como en una especie de Big Bang”.La imbaluna, una contracción de marimba y lunaCredit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesLa primera herramienta sonora que recibe a los visitantes de la galería de la Americas Society es la esquelética imbaluna, con un teclado de marimba en forma de media luna, sustentada por resonadores puntiagudos (los nombres de los inventos de Orellana suelen ser portmanteaus poéticos, en este caso, compuesto por el prefijo “imba” de la palabra “marimba” y la palabra luna).El circumar tiene la forma de una gran tetera con teclas de marimba suspendidas en sentido perpendicular al suelo. Para el sinusoido, suspendió las teclas de la marimba siguiendo la forma de una curva sinusoidal, parecida a una montaña rusa. Ambos instrumentos se tocan pasando una baqueta por su interior en un movimiento continuo, una acción que exige al intérprete mover todo el brazo y el torso y que produce sonidos tintineantes. Sebastián Zubieta, director musical de la Americas Society, comentó que en las creaciones de Orellana “es el gesto el que da la forma”.Estos instrumentos —y otros con formas similares, que usan carillones de metal o cañas de bambú— pueden tener un sonido increíblemente parecido a la música electrónica. Zubieta comentó que no era casualidad que los sonidos creados en un instrumento con forma circular o sinusoide se parezcan a los creados a través de los bucles y la secuenciación electrónica. “Es como una pieza de cinta antigua”, dijo. “Es una solución de baja tecnología para un deseo vanguardista”.El herroímCredit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesEl cirlum pequeñoCredit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesEl periominCredit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesThe prehimulinho.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesEl ingenio de los inventos de Orellana oscila a menudo entre el juego y la crueldad. El periomin es una especie de perchero mecedora que, cuando se pone en movimiento, hace que los carillones o campanas de viento se balanceen de un lado a otro a lo largo de cuerdas de cuentas de plástico, que producen el sonido de una cascada vidriosa. El pinzafer consiste en una enorme lámina de hierro con forma de cola de langosta, suspendida de un armazón de hierro. Al pasar un arco, encordado con cuerda de piano, por un recorte dentado, se produce un gemido oscuro y metálico. Al pasar el arco (esta vez con cuerdas de acrílico) por el tubarc, un tubo de aluminio con un orificio en el centro montado sobre un marco rectangular, se produce un silbido que de tan agudo hace rechinar los dientes.En sus composiciones, Orellana suele utilizar sus inventos junto con cantos corales, sonidos ambientales grabados e instrumentos occidentales. En 2017, compuso “Sinfonía desde el Tercer Mundo” para la edición número 14 de la Documenta, la exposición de arte contemporáneo en Atenas; llenó el escenario con coros de adultos y niños, una orquesta sinfónica y sus útiles sonoros. Fue una réplica a la Sinfonía n.º 9 de Dvorak, subtitulada “Desde el Nuevo Mundo”.Un instrumento llamado CF A.Credit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesPara la exposición de la Americas Society, compuso una nueva pieza exclusivamente para sus creaciones. La pieza, titulada “Puntos y efluvios”, estaba pensada para ser interpretada por cuatro percusionistas dentro de la galería y tenía la intención de invitar a los miembros del público a participar en ciertos momentos con gritos, aullidos y llantos en un lenguaje inventado por Orellana.Debido a las limitaciones de la pandemia, Zubieta grabó por su cuenta cada parte de su composición; la pieza editada, con sus tintineos de alfileres y sus ráfagas de estruendos, ahora ronda por la galería a intervalos regulares. Un video de acompañamiento alterna entre tomas del intérprete inmerso en los gestos ritualistas de la música e imágenes de la partitura gráfica de Orellana, que, con garabatos rítmicos, grupos de puntos y diagramas coreográficos, remite a la visión de su relato de los pentagramas de las partituras que se derriten.Zubieta toca lenguatón.Credit…Victor Llorente para The New York TimesAl rememorar su carrera, Orellana hace una reflexión: “Hacer música para mí nunca fue un proceso determinado, sino una forma de liberarme de las obsesiones: la obsesión por manifestar el sonido y una cierta necesidad compulsiva de sacarlo de mi ser”.“He llegado a la conclusión de que lo que intento es liberar el sonido”, resumió.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      To Express the Sound of a Country’s Soul, He Invented New Instruments

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      The imbaluna, one of the invented instruments by Joaquín Orellana on view at the Americas Society.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexTo Express the Sound of a Country’s Soul, He Invented New InstrumentsThe Guatemalan composer, inventor and writer Joaquín Orellana’s creations are the subject of the Americas Society exhibition “The Spine of Music.”The imbaluna, one of the invented instruments by Joaquín Orellana on view at the Americas Society.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 19, 2021, 12:48 p.m. ETIn a short story, the Guatemalan composer, inventor and writer Joaquín Orellana imagines a musician who, dissatisfied with the instruments of Western civilization, sets out to create the sound of hunger. Possessed with a desire to express his people’s suffering, he progressively starves himself, then records his altered, raving voice. In his delirium, he sees sheet music staves come alive with anguished and violent cries — the sound of hunger.Orellana, 90, is one of his country’s most respected composers and the subject of a captivating exhibition at the Americas Society, “The Spine of Music,” which showcases instruments — sculptural, Surrealist and darkly sensuous — he has invented. Like the protagonist of his story, Orellana seeks to express the suffering of a country traumatized by genocide and civil war, while largely shunning the materials of Western music.Orellana with the herroím, one of his “útiles sonoros,” or sound tools.Credit…via Studio of Joaquín OrellanaMost composers write music for instruments that already exist. One exception was Wagner, who created a tuba-horn hybrid for his “Ring” cycle. The experimentalist composer Harry Partch invented instruments adapted to his unorthodox tuning system. In a video interview from Guatemala City, Orellana spoke of his process as one of liberating the musical imagination from preconceived forms.“The composer is imbued with his social reality,” he said. “The composer is a kind of filter, and his social sensibility is integrated into that filter.” When musical ideas flood the composer’s imagination, he added, “in that auditory mind there are the concepts and images of a social context, a sociopolitical reality; and the music is inevitably beholden to these things.”Orellana began experimenting with the materials of sound production in the 1970s. He had studied violin and composition at the National Conservatory in Guatemala City, then won a two-year fellowship at the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales in Buenos Aires. That center was a magnet for innovative composers from across the subcontinent, with a state-of-the-art electronic music studio that fired Orellana’s imagination.Sebastian Zubieta, the Americas Society music director, playing Orellana’s sinusoido pequeño.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesCredit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesHe didn’t have comparable technical resources when he returned to Guatemala. And he felt alienated from a music scene centered on folkloric traditions expressed through the national instrument, the marimba.Still, the marimba fascinated Orellana. It had most likely come over on the slave routes from West Africa; embraced by the rural population in Guatemala, it had come to resonate with his country’s hopes, pain and injustices. So he pried it apart and twisted it into new forms.Orellana calls his inventions “útiles sonoros,” or sound tools. “By means of the sound tools,” he said, “the marimba extends into acoustic and physical space as in a kind of Big Bang.”The imbaluna, a portmanteau of “marimba” and the Spanish word for moon.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe first sound tool to greet visitors to the Americas Society gallery is the skeletal imbaluna, with a crescent-shaped marimba keyboard backed by spiky resonators. (The names of Orellana’s inventions are often poetic portmanteaus, this one of “marimba” and the Spanish word for moon.)The circumar is shaped like a large kettle with marimba keys suspended perpendicular to the floor. For the sinusoido, he strung marimba keys on a frame shaped like a warped roller coaster. Both are played by running a mallet along the inside in continuous motion — an action that requires full engagement of the performer’s arm and torso and produces tinkling rushes of sound. Sebastián Zubieta, the Americas Society music director, said that in Mr. Orellana’s creations, “it’s the gesture that shapes it.”These instruments — and others shaped similarly, using metal chimes or bamboo canes — can sound uncannily like electronic music. Zubieta said it was no accident that sounds created on a circular or sinusoid instrument resemble those created through electronic looping and sequencing. “It’s like an old tape piece,” he said. “It’s a low-tech solution to an avant-garde desire.”The herroím.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe cirlum pequeño.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe periomin.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe prehimulinho.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe ingenuity of Orellana’s inventions often hovers between playfulness and cruelty. The periomin is a kind of rocking coat rack that, when set in motion, makes wind chimes swing back and forth along strings of plastic beads, sounding like a glassy waterfall. The pinzafer is a large iron sheet, shaped like a lobster tail and suspended from an iron frame. Running a bow, strung with piano wire, through a serrated cutout produces a dark, metallic moan. Drawing a bow (this one strung with acrylic) over the tubarc, a metal chime fixed on a rectangular frame, produces a whistle sharp enough to make teeth fizz.In his compositions, Orellana often uses his inventions alongside choral singing, taped environmental sounds and Western instruments. In 2017, he wrote “Symphony From the Third World” for Documenta 14 in Athens; he flooded the stage with adult and children’s choirs, a symphony orchestra and his sound tools. It was a rejoinder to Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, subtitled “From the New World.”An instrument called the CF A.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesFor the Americas Society exhibition, he composed a new piece exclusively for his creations. Titled “Puntos y efluvios” (“Outpours and Dots”), it was intended to be performed by four percussionists inside the gallery, and would have invited audience members to participate at certain moments with screams, howls and cries in a language Orellana invented.Because of pandemic limitations, Zubieta recorded each part by himself; the edited piece, with its pinprick tinkles and squalls of booming rushes, now haunts the gallery at regular intervals. An accompanying video alternates between shots of the performer engaged in the music’s ritualistic gestures and images of Orellana’s graphic score — which, with rhythmic squiggles, dot clusters and choreographic diagrams, harks back to the vision in his short story of sheet music staves melting away.Zubieta playing the lenguatón.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesLooking back on his career, Orellana said, “Making music for me was never a determinate process, but rather a way to free myself from obsessions: the obsession to manifest sound and a certain compulsive need to get it out of me.”“I’ve come to the conclusion,” he added, “that what I’m trying to do is liberate sound.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Hear the Sound of a Seashell Horn Found in an Ancient French Cave

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrilobitesHear the Sound of a Seashell Horn Found in an Ancient French CaveMusic from the large conch probably hadn’t been heard by human ears for 17,000 years.The shell of Charonia lampas recovered from the Marsoulas cave in the Pyrenees of France.Credit…C. Fritz, Muséum d’Histoire naturelle de ToulouseFeb. 10, 2021Updated 5:10 p.m. ETIn 1931, researchers working in southern France unearthed a large seashell at the entrance to a cave. Unremarkable at first glance, it languished for decades in the collections of a nearby natural history museum.Now, a team has reanalyzed the roughly foot-long conch shell using modern imaging technology. They concluded that the shell had been deliberately chipped and punctured to turn it into a musical instrument. It’s an extremely rare example of a “seashell horn” from the Paleolithic period, the team concluded. And it still works — a musician recently coaxed three notes from the 17,000-year-old shell.Listen to a Recording of the Seashell HornWhen the conch was played by a musician, it produced notes that were similar to C, C-sharp, and D.“I needed a lot of air to maintain the sound,” said Jean-Michel Court, who performed the demonstration and is also a musicologist at the University of Toulouse.The Marsoulas Cave, in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, has long fascinated researchers with its colorful paintings depicting bison, horses and humans. It’s where the enormous tan-colored conch shell was first discovered, an incongruous object that must have been transported from the Atlantic Ocean, over 150 miles away.Despite its heft, the shell, from the sea snail Charonia lampas, gradually slipped into oblivion. Presumed to be nothing more than a drinking vessel, the conch sat for over 80 years in the Natural History Museum of Toulouse.Another view of the shell.Credit…C. Fritz and G. ToselloA conch from New Zealand and its mouthpiece made of a decorated bone tube.Credit…Musée du Quai Branly, Jacques ChiracOnly in 2016 did researchers begin to analyze the shell anew. Artifacts like this conch help paint a picture of how cave dwellers lived, said Carole Fritz, an archaeologist at the University of Toulouse who has been studying the cave and its paintings for over 20 years. “It’s difficult to study cave art without cultural context.”Dr. Fritz and her colleagues started by assembling a three-dimensional digital model of the conch. They immediately noticed that some parts of its shell looked peculiar. For starters, a portion of its outer lip had been chipped away. That left behind a smooth edge, quite unlike Charonia lampas, said Gilles Tosello, a prehistorian and visual artist also at the University of Toulouse. “Normally, they’re very irregular.”The apex of the conch was also broken off, the team found. That’s the most robust part of the shell, and it’s unlikely that such a fracture would have occurred naturally. Indeed, further analysis showed that the shell had been struck repeatedly — and precisely — near its apex. The researchers also noted a brown residue, perhaps remnants of clay or beeswax, around the broken apex.The mystery deepened when the team used CT scans and a tiny medical camera to examine the inside of the conch. They found a hole, roughly half an inch in diameter, that ran inward from the broken apex and pierced the shell’s interior structure.An ancient painting in Marsoulas cave. Credit…C. Fritz and G. ToselloAll of these modifications were intentional, the researchers believe. The smoothed outer lip would have made the conch easier to hold, and the broken apex and adjacent hole would have allowed a mouthpiece — possibly the hollow bone of a bird — to be inserted into the shell. The result was a musical instrument, the team concluded in their study, which was published Wednesday in Science Advances.This shell might have been played during ceremonies or used to summon gatherings, said Julien Tardieu, another Toulouse researcher who studies sound perception. Cave settings tend to amplify sound, said Dr. Tardieu. “Playing this conch in a cave could be very loud and impressive.”It would also have been a beautiful sight, the researchers suggest, because the conch is decorated with red dots — now faded — that match the markings found on the cave’s walls.This discovery is believable, said Miriam Kolar, an archaeoacoustician at Amherst College in Massachusetts who studies conch horn shells but was not involved in the research. “There’s compelling evidence that the shell was modified by humans to be a sound-producing instrument.”While other “seashell horns” have been found in places like New Zealand and Peru, none are as old as this conch.Dr. Fritz said it was incredible to hear Dr. Court play the conch. Its music hadn’t been heard by human ears for many millenniums, which made the experience particularly moving, she said.“It was a fantastic moment.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Times's Five Minutes Series on Classical Music a Hit

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHooking Readers on Classical Music, Five Minutes at a TimeDrawing on the passion of experts, a Culture desk series has doubled its audience for the genre.CreditCredit…Angie WangFeb. 3, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETMark Hamill was spellbound by a Mozart composition, but he couldn’t remember its name. The haunting choral masterpiece played near the end of the Broadway production of “Amadeus” more than 40 years ago, in which he performed the title role.So when Mr. Hamill, the actor who portrayed Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars,” was approached in June 2020 by Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times’s classical music editor, to suggest an irresistible Mozart piece, he responded with one request: Can you track it down?With some help from the team at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Mr. Woolfe identified the mystery earworm: a section of Mozart’s Requiem. Mr. Hamill played the composer hundreds of times on Broadway and in the first national tour of “Amadeus” in the early 1980s. But, he told Mr. Woolfe, “I never got tired of the sound.”Mr. Woolfe chatted with Mr. Hamill for the Mozart installment of The Times’s classical music appreciation series, “5 Minutes That Will Make You Love _____.” Once a month online, about 15 musicians, pop-culture figures and Times writers and editors each select the piece they would play for a friend tied to a theme, be it an instrument, composer, genre or voice type. This month’s theme, published today, is string quartets.The series aims to make classical music as accessible to readers as a Top 40 track, Mr. Woolfe said. You don’t need to know the difference between a cadenza and a concerto. “It’s about pure pleasure and exploration,” he said.Now two and a half years and a dozen segments into the project, Mr. Woolfe said he had been surprised at readers’ appetite for the series, regardless of the theme. “It’s like, ‘OK, ‘5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Mozart’ is super appealing,’” he said. “But ‘5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Baroque Music’? Or ‘5 Minutes That Will Make You Love 21st-Century Composers’? But those both did terrifically as well.”The name for the series came to him in the shower in 2018 as he was pondering ways he could make The Times’s classical music coverage accessible to a broader audience. “I was thinking about being at a concert or listening to a recording, and being like, ‘OMG, that note she hit!’” Mr. Woolfe said. “Then I had the idea of asking different people to pick their favorite little five-minute nuggets and presenting them like a playlist.”The first installment, in which he asked artists like Julia Bullock, the young, velvety-voiced soprano, and Nicholas Britell, the composer of the Oscar-nominated score for “Moonlight,” to choose the five minutes they would play to make their friends fall in love with classical music, became a runaway hit with readers, racking up more than 400,000 page views in its first week alone.That reception inspired him to expand the series — first to individual instruments like the piano, then to genres like opera and composers like Mozart and Beethoven. And the pandemic motivated him to ramp up the pace: Since last April, new segments have published on the first Wednesday of every month.“It has doubled our audience for classical music,” Mr. Woolfe said. “It’s gratifying that whatever we do, people are willing to explore and be into it.” But he added that he had been happy to hear that classical aficionados have enjoyed the series, too.David Allen, a freelance critic for The Times and a frequent contributor to “5 Minutes,” said he targeted both novices and experts with his selections. “I sometimes have thought deeply about finding pieces that are off the beaten track,” he said, like a little-heard piece from Bach’s organ music or a movement from a Mozart serenade.Mr. Woolfe also credited the appeal to the series’s vibrant, eye-catching animations, like pulsating cello strings or a silhouette of Mozart caught in a colorful confetti storm. “They enhance the playfulness and accessibility of the series,” he said.Angie Wang, the freelance illustrator who creates them, said she watched videos of the musicians and noted their characteristic movements, paying particularly close attention to wrist and elbow articulation. “I wanted to render them with delicacy,” she said. “The animations are a kind of visualization for the music.”One of Mr. Woolfe’s favorite aspects of working on the series has been getting to know artists outside the performance context in which he typically encounters them (“Renée Fleming is a really good writer,” he said), as well as talking to notable names outside the classical music world about a subject they are rarely, if ever, asked to discuss.“I get to see how people think in addition to how they perform,” he said. “It’s another facet of the personalities of artists.”Although the series was not conceived as an antidote to the polarization that has gripped politics and public health in the past year, Mr. Woolfe is glad it has worked out that way. “I’m so happy it’s been counterprogramming for people during the pandemic,” he said. “And I hope they’ll keep listening.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More