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      SXSW Came Back With Genuine Joy. Here Are 15 of the Best Acts.

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      The festival in Austin, which was canceled last year, returned online with more international performers and music forged during the pandemic.South by Southwest 2020 was abruptly canceled last March as the reality of Covid-19 set in. This year, it returned March 16-20 as SXSW Online, viewed remotely and downscaled to the size of a screen. Its music festival offered prerecorded virtual showcases — from studios, clubs, living rooms, backyards, city streets and odder places — for about 280 bands rather than the 1,000-plus of recent years. Though some showcases vanished after they were webcast, conference attendees can rerun many of them until April 18, and with luck the performances will make their way to a wider public afterward. For once, it’s possible to see nearly all the music at SXSW.The reduction, and the chance of replays, changed the festival’s focus. It shifted the lineup toward bands that could find management or government sponsors, which led to a much higher proportion of international performers. (Corollary: Where is federal, state or urban arts funding?) Nearly two-thirds of the festival’s acts came from abroad, including multiple bands from Britain every night.The online format also invited video ingenuity, mostly but not always low-budget, around the real-time performances that SXSW has always prized. After a year of pandemic isolation, the showcases featured the genuine joy of musicians getting together to perform, even if the audience was just a camera crew, and some showcases revisited clubs that have held out through the pandemic. The sets also unveiled songs that have emerged from a year of quarantines and reassessments. As always, there was music worth discovering, though a brief SXSW set is just a hyperlink to a career. Here, in alphabetical order, are 15 of the best acts from SXSW 2021 Online.After canceling the festival last year, SXSW returned with an online format that invited ingenuity.SXSWALIEN TANGO The singer, guitarist and keyboardist Alberto Gomez leads Alien Tango, a group from Spain that’s based in London; it was part of a Sounds From Spain showcase. Its hopped-up pop-rock songs switched between manic glee — frenzied guitar scrubbing, arpeggiators going full tilt, falsetto la-las — and sardonic crooning to match the humor in Gomez’s English-language lyrics: “You and I are gonna live a thousand years/You and I are gonna have a thousand beers.”CLIPPING The avant-hip-hop group led by the “Hamilton” star Daveed Diggs appeared in a showcase selected by NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, and took “tiny” as a video mandate. As Diggs rapped into a thumbnail-size microphone, his collaborators, Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson, pretended (on split screens) to play miniature versions of (among other things) a laptop, guitar pedals and a windup music box, as the music warped itself from pink noise to music-box tinkle to industrial distortion to techno beats. No simulation was involved in the tour de force that was Diggs’s breakneck, virtually nonstop rapping, with rhymes that raced from free-associative wordplay to nightmare imagery to a grimly prescient 2019 song, “Nothing Is Safe.”Theon Cross performed both solo and with his band, which merged wah-wah funk with Caribbean carnival rhythms.SXSWTHEON CROSS A British project called Jazz re:freshed Outernational booked Abbey Road Studios for a SXSW showcase that included a virtuosic set by the tuba player Theon Cross. He performed with an electronic backing track and, even better, with his band, which merged wah-wah funk with Caribbean carnival rhythms as Cross hopped between holding down the bass lines and joining the band’s brassy melodic crossfire.JON DEE GRAHAM and WILLIAM HARRIES GRAHAM The deep local loyalties of SXSW were summed up in a showcase for the roots-rock songwriter and guitarist Jon Dee Graham — an Austin native with a grizzled voice and a long discography of kindly and hard-won songs — and his son William Harries Graham. They were performing at Austin’s long-running Continental Club, singing rough-hewed roots-rock songs about empathy, acceptance and willed optimism. “All the mistakes I’ve made/They brought me here to you,” Jon Dee Graham sang in his weathered, forthright rasp.HeLING Part of CaoTai Music’s showcase of electronic music from China, HeLing appeared mostly with his back to the camera in a closet-size studio surrounded by synthesizers, keyboards, computer screens and flashing lights. Pecking at controls and turning knobs, he calmly constructed a performance that evolved inexorably from rich, undulating drones through swoops, blips, chirps and hissing beats to dizzying, flat-out techno — and then ended so abruptly it risked whiplash.Jade Jackson, left, and Aubrey Sellers at SXSW Online last week.SXSWJADE JACKSON and AUBRIE SELLERS Two Los Angeles-based roots-rock songwriters with solo careers decided to write together during quarantine, and emerged as a duo. Their video set for SXSW, with a partly masked backup band, was their first public performance. They leaned into electric Southern-rock stomps, shared modal harmonies, and introduced a new waltz about a year without concerts: “I want to go back to the way it was before we had distance between us,” Jackson sang.MILLENNIUM PARADE Live Nation Japan sent SXSW a concert-scale production with the melancholy synth-pop group D.A.N., the cheerfully arrogant rapper-singer Awich (surrounded by dancers) and the full-scale overload of Millennium Parade, a large band led by Daiki Tsuneta with two drummers, plenty of computers and keyboards and multiple lead singers, male and female. It reached back to the bustling, horn-topped R&B of Earth, Wind & Fire, added latter-day sonic heft and occasional rapping, and surrounded itself with a video barrage that rocketed it into a “Blade Runner”/anime futurescape. In “2992,” between a bruising bass line and a fluttering orchestral arrangement, Ermhoi sang, “In this life we live, everyone is made to feel confused” — confused, perhaps, but exhilarated.HARU NEMURI The Japanese songwriter Haru Nemuri started her set, which looked like a one-take video, as if it were going to be soft and gauzy. She was alone in a room and rapping in a near-whisper over a looped choir of women’s voices, with hints of Björk and Meredith Monk. But when she suddenly opened a door and ran upstairs to a rooftop, hard-rock guitars and a drumbeat came blasting in, and her vocals turned to a scream. Her next song was a shouted rap-rocker named “B.A.N.G.” and, after a breathless speech about wanting her music to “create something precious on this planet,” she was twirling and rapping at top speed over a galloping beat and dense organ chords; the song’s title, and chorus hook, was “Riot.”ONIPA Based in Sheffield, England, Onipa drew on music from across Africa. Onipa means “human” in Akan, a language in Ghana, and its music had roots in Ghana, Congo, Senegal, South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Algeria, along with hints of the African diaspora. The lyrics were in English, while the grooves were fusions that put momentum first.ANNA B SAVAGE Solo on an electric guitar, the English songwriter Anna B Savage dealt in ruthless, self-lacerating confessionals, delivered in a tremulous, vehement contralto that brought drama to each phrase. Revealing her pain, she exorcised it.Squid’s performance was an inventory of cantankerousness.Thomas JacksonSQUID Headlining a British Music Embassy showcase of hard-nosed post-punk, along with Do Nothing and Yard Act, Squid was an inventory of cantankerousness. Vocals were chanted, yelped, muttered and barked, sometimes overlapping at cross purposes. The guitarist delivered barbed lines and outbursts of scrabbling chords; the keyboardist chose piercing, nagging tones; the band shared dissonant odd-meter vamps or locked into compulsive, motoric repetitions. Songs about feeling thwarted and controlled fought back, furiously.TUYO “I came here to warn you that the future is over and the people are survivors,” Lio of the Brazilian band Tuyo sang in their set, the finale of the superb Flow.Ers Agency Brazil showcase. “No need to be scared, I walk with you in this permanent hell,” she sang. The song, “Sem Mentira” (“Without a Lie”), came out in the middle of 2020. Lio and the band’s other two founders, Lay Soares and Machado, share lead and harmony vocals in songs that laced pealing indie-rock with electronics and undercurrents of Brazilian syncopation, earnest yet always graceful.Vocal Vidas sang about love and the power of music.SXSWVOCAL VIDAS This four-woman vocal group performed on a hotel rooftop in Santiago de Cuba as a tie-in to “Soy Cubana,” a documentary about them that was shown as part of SXSW’s film festival. Vocal Vidas performs Afro-Cuban songs using just voices and percussion, turning themselves into horn and rhythm sections as well as a call-and-response chorus, singing about love and the power of music; their mini-set also included a South African song: “Freedom Is Coming.”The genre-blurring Y2K92 came across as quirky and casual.Flipped Coin KOREAY2K92 Equal parts cute and baffling, Y2K92 is a South Korean duo: the producer Simo and the vocalist Jibin. The tracks were amorphous and genre-blurring: swirling flutes over sparse trap beats; loops of women’s voices over a double-time jungle-ish rush; distant distorted guitar strumming topped by someone’s whisper and strings playing a phrase of “Rhapsody in Blue”; skittering electronic plinks over shifting offbeats. Jibin, wearing a pink dress over green track pants, sang and danced with video projected on the wall behind her, and subtitles appeared as she switched between English and Korean, revealing lyrics like “I’m round and round in a hot tornado sucked in quickly./This is a jungle of silence. Parade of spiral.” It was a 21st-century pop reverie, finely constructed to come across as quirky and casual.YENDRY A Latin showcase performed at S.O.B’s in New York City included the Dominican singer and songwriter Yendry and her band in their first live set since the pandemic began. She moved easily among idioms and languages: Spanish and English, bolero, bachata, reggaeton, merengue. Her singing voice had a wiry core while hinting at the fluttering trills of flamenco; her rapping was a no-nonsense staccato. And her message was that even if she’s vulnerable, a woman has power. More

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      Go or No? An Indoor Theater Invitation (at Last!) Needs an R.S.V.P.

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      Two critics, hungry for live performance, weigh whether they’re ready to take a health risk for “Blindness,” which opens in New York next month.On Monday afternoon, theater critics in and around New York City received something they hadn’t seen in more than a year: an invitation to an in-person, indoor performance at an Off Broadway house. “Blindness,” Simon Stephens’s adaptation of the novel by José Saramago, directed by Walter Meierjohann and prerecorded by Juliet Stevenson, would open at the Daryl Roth Theater on April 6.The production, which played in London in August, involves no live actors, but it does invite live, masked, temperature-checked audience members to attend in pods of two. And if you are a theater fan still waiting on a vaccine, it also invites conflicting emotions — excitement, indecision, eagerness, fear — because any social interaction involves risk. Is theater (and particularly a show without actors) worth it? Two New York Times critics took to Twitter, and then to email and a Google doc, to try to sort it out. Here is their edited conversation.LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES Alexis, when you saw the invitation, what went through your mind?ALEXIS SOLOSKI Panic, basically. I’d heard about the show and I am breathlessly (wrong word, I know) excited for the return of in-person theater, but I won’t be vaccinated for months and I don’t feel ready to make this moral/professional/hygienic calculus. You?COLLINS-HUGHES When I think about returning to indoor theater, there are things that scare me and things that make me feel safe. I am terrified by anything involving poor air quality, or people eating and drinking, or people singing or playing wind instruments or otherwise breathing hard, like from dancing. “Blindness” has none of those. And when I think about the Daryl Roth Theater, I think about how airy it is. That’s huge for me.SOLOSKI I mostly think about “De La Guarda,” the longtime show it hosted, which was one big, sweaty upskirt shot. But to your point, “Blindness” involves no human actors. Why would I want to take on the associated risks of subway and lobby and the mask habits of other patrons for something that doesn’t even offer the energetic flow between performer and audience?COLLINS-HUGHES Fair point. I’m not vaccinated yet either and have no idea when I will be. To me, taking what feels like a minimal risk is partly about gathering, partly about theater design being a strong lure for me — and designers have been left out of a ton of online work. But I sensed when you raised the subject on Twitter and we started chatting (and it took our editor all of three minutes to intervene, suggesting we have that conversation here instead) that you weren’t feeling comfortable yet.SOLOSKI I wasn’t alone. A lot of our colleagues voiced mixed feelings, too, though some had already R.S.V.P.’d. And a London acquaintance piped up to say that he had seen it at the Donmar Warehouse and found the safety protocols impressive. But when I read that invitation, I felt nauseated. Which came as a huge surprise. Because I thought I’d be desperate to go. I dream about theater most nights. And even though this will probably sound insufferable, it’s something I actively mourn. I also miss the me who went to the theater, who put on hard pants and lipstick (remember lipstick?) and left my home as a functional adult who did professional stuff in the company of other apparently functional adults. I miss that almost as much as I miss the transport that theater offers. But no, I don’t feel comfortable. And then I feel like a wimp for feeling that discomfort.COLLINS-HUGHES One valuable lesson we learned right away, a year ago, is that it can be very brave to follow your gut and not do the thing that’s reflexive — like going to the theater, like keeping a show running — if it doesn’t feel safe. Theater does not work when the audience, or the artists, have to sit there and worry about something other than the show.SOLOSKI Yeah, but does it work when you’re at home and children are yelling and the temptation to check your phone or fold laundry is just overwhelming?COLLINS-HUGHES Wait, I thought you got into the online stuff?SOLOSKI I did. I do. Particularly when there’s a participatory or a gaming element. I am extremely competitive! But not when it doesn’t feel live. Then again, will something like “Blindness,” in which you listen on headphones to a prerecorded voice, feel live anyway?Signs promoting “Blindness” in New York include review excerpts of last summer’s well-received London production.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCOLLINS-HUGHES I just hunger for the in-person element, even if there are no in-person actors. The way I think about the safety of indoor theater is that it has to have what makes outdoor theater relatively safe: people in masks (“Blindness” requires them, and mine will be doubled), at a distance from one another, in a space with excellent ventilation. But I am surprised to see, when I check on the websites for “Blindness” or the Shed, for example, that there’s no mention of contact tracing, like they have at the Park Avenue Armory or at “Frozen” in Australia. [Note: After this article was published, publicists for “Blindness” said that a fuller description of safety protocols, including contact tracing and a medical questionnaire, was on the Daryl Roth Theater’s website.]SOLOSKI Laura, why didn’t we become critics in Australia? I guess I would feel more comfortable if audience members had to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test, like the one I had to show when I visited a television soundstage recently.COLLINS-HUGHES The Armory is requiring on-site rapid testing as well as a health questionnaire in advance, and the Shed has a testing requirement and a questionnaire. Those make me feel a little better than a temperature check.SOLOSKI Temperature checks are basically useless.COLLINS-HUGHES Over the summer, I went to a tiny indoor show, where the guy at the door asked where I’d traveled lately, and specifically inquired about a few virus hot spots in New York City. That felt reassuring.SOLOSKI What do you make of the edict that no single seats are available for “Blindness” and that people have to arrange to come in twos or purchase the extra seat?COLLINS-HUGHES I’m wildly opposed to that. I’ve spent the past year by myself, am ravenous for anything resembling ordinary life and am not thrilled to feel unwelcome as a single person at the theater. There has to be a way to make the economics of socially distanced audiences work less cruelly. But have you decided for certain not to go to “Blindness”? What would make you feel OK about going back to indoor theater?SOLOSKI I’ve mostly decided, at least insofar as my natural and wild ambivalence allows. Rapid tests would help, but the vaccine seems so close now and for an indoor performance, especially this indoor performance, I’d rather wait. I can turn off the lights and put on headphones right here at home. You’re going?COLLINS-HUGHES I am. And I will report back.SOLOSKI Good luck. Don’t get Covid! Even Juliet Stevenson isn’t worth it. More

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      Should the American Theater Take French Lessons?

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      Arts workers are protesting closings and occupying playhouses all over France. On Broadway, that drama has yet to open.The only march you’re likely to see on Broadway this year is the kind with trombones in “The Music Man.”And if you ever hear people say the Majestic Theater has been forcibly occupied, you can be pretty sure they’re referring to “The Phantom of the Opera.”Which is why the news last week that thousands of protesters were marching in France to demand the reopening of theaters there seemed so difficult to comprehend here. Our theaters draw thousands outside only if they are lining up to see the Rockettes inside.Nor were the French merely marching. Dozens of protesters also forced their way into playhouses across the country — including three, in Paris and Strasbourg, designated as national theaters — to demand that cultural institutions, shut down since October, be treated like other businesses, some of which have been allowed to reopen.Also on their agenda: an extension of tax breaks for freelance arts workers, or “travailleurs d’art.”That the phrase “arts workers” (let alone “national theaters”) barely registers in American English is part of a bigger problem here — and suggests a bigger opportunity.The pandemic has been a disaster for the theater, of course, potentially more damaging to performing arts industries than to any other. And yet, in the long run, if there is a long run, how we repair our stages could also lead to long-needed changes that would elevate the people who work on, under and behind them.Not that those workers are likely to endorse the immediate reopening the French are seeking; by a strange quirk of political culture, the push for a return to normalcy at all costs that is a calling card of our right wing seems to be a progressive position there. The protesters — mostly students and actors and other theater workers — frame art-making as a matter of both liberty and labor. They see themselves as frontline workers; one of the signs they carried read: “Opening essential.”Cultural workers protesting the government closure of arts institutions, which are deemed nonessential, during the pandemic.Ian Langsdon/EPA, via ShutterstockHere, the unions representing actors and other theater workers make the opposite argument: They worry that a too-swift reopening for the sake of the economy would expose their members to unacceptable risk. Singing, trumpeting and spitting while speechifying are occupational hazards most other professions don’t face.Which is why, even in states like Texas and Montana that have ended mask mandates and declared themselves open for business without restriction, theaters aren’t on board. The Alley Theater, in Houston, is offering only virtual performances of its new production of “Medea” this month; the season at Montana Repertory Theater, in Missoula, remains a remote one regardless of state rules.But if the specific motivation for the French protests seems unpopular here, the underlying assumptions about art are ones Americans should heed. Begin with how we look at our theater, and how it looks at itself.Even when producing work that becomes a part of the national conversation — “Hamilton,” “Slave Play,” the Public Theater’s Trump-alike “Julius Caesar” in 2017 — our musicals and dramas are too often seen as inconsequential entertainment. The frequent abuse of the phrase “political theater” to describe cheap and manipulative appeals to sentiment tells you in what regard our theater is reflexively held.But if that attitude toward content is uninformed and condescending, the attitude toward the people who create it is worse.There is no tradition in the United States, as there is in France, of treating artists as skilled laborers, deserving of the same respect and protections provided to those who work in other fields. It doesn’t help that American unions are so weak compared to those in France, where nearly all workers are covered by collective bargaining contracts. The comparable figure here has hovered around 12 percent for years.Behind the statistics is an abiding strain of prejudice, dating back to the Puritan settlement, that sees cultural work, especially stage acting, as a species of child’s play or worse. In “An Essay on the Stage,” Timothy Dwight IV, a Yale president in the early 19th century, wrote that those who indulge in playgoing risk “the loss of the most valuable treasure, the immortal soul.”Or as a German character in “Sunday in the Park With George” puts it: “Work is what you do for others, Liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.”Both attitudes are very nearly backward, but that doesn’t mean they’re not widely maintained even today. Indeed, they are enshrined in the stinginess of American governmental support for the arts, which remains a pittance. Cultural spending per capita in France is about 10 times that in the United States.Which is one reason there are six national theaters in France, not just the three occupied last week. More than 50 other cultural spaces around the country, including the Opera House in Lyon, which students entered on Monday, have now been occupied as well, the protesters say. To occupy a building (while permitting rehearsals within it to continue) may be a misdemeanor, but it is also a sign of love and ownership.It’s hard to imagine such an occupation in the United States; for one thing, there is no national theater. And who would play the role of the actress at the French film industry’s César awards ceremony this weekend who protested her government’s lack of support by stripping off a strange costume — was it a bloody donkey? — to reveal the words “No culture, no future” scrawled across her naked torso?But ours is a country that treasures its cultural heritage without wanting to support the labor that maintains it.Perhaps that’s changing, if less dramatically than in France. Though the pandemic has left many theater artists without work — and, often, without the health insurance that comes with it — the relief bill President Biden signed last week will make it cheaper for them to obtain coverage elsewhere. The bill also includes $470 million in emergency support for arts and cultural institutions.Organizations like Be an #ArtsHero are working to expand that relief even further. And hundreds of theater makers have used their talents to raise millions for organizations, like the Actors Fund, that are helping their colleagues survive the pandemic.But arts workers shouldn’t be remembered just in emergencies and just as charity. Nor should they be remembered solely for their economic impact. It is often argued that Broadway alone contributes $14.7 billion to New York City’s economy, as if that were the point when it is really just the bonus.What the French protests challenge us to consider is that the arts are neither an indulgence nor a distraction; they are fundamental not just to the economy but also to the moral health of a country. They are worth marching for.Surely our theater artists, those highly skilled laborers, can figure out, if anyone can, how to demonstrate that idea — if necessary, in front of the Majestic Theater, with trombones and Rockettes in tow. More

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      Met Opera Musicians Accept Deal to Receive First Paycheck Since April

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      The Metropolitan Opera offered its orchestra temporary payments of up to $1,543 a week in exchange for simply coming to the bargaining table.The musicians of the Metropolitan Opera orchestra have voted to accept a deal that will provide them with paychecks for the first time in nearly a year in exchange for returning to the bargaining table, where the company is seeking lasting pay cuts that it says are needed to survive the pandemic.The musicians, and most of the Met’s workers, were furloughed in April, shortly after the pandemic forced the opera house to close. Months later, the Met offered the musicians partial pay in exchange for significant long-term cuts, but their union objected. Then the Met softened its position: Since the end of December, it has been offering to pay the musicians up to $1,543 a week on a temporary basis if they agreed to start negotiations. While the union representing the chorus agreed to the deal more than a month ago, the orchestra’s union took longer to accept the deal.On Tuesday, the musicians in the orchestra, which became the last major ensemble in the United States without a deal to receive pandemic pay, agreed to take the offer, according to an email sent by the Met orchestra committee to its members.“We’re very pleased that our agreement with the orchestra has been ratified and that they will begin receiving bridge pay this week,” the Met said in a statement, “along with the start of meaningful discussions towards reaching a new agreement.”The orchestra committee, which represents the players in negotiations, declined to comment. The Met’s relationship with its musicians has been contentious during the pandemic months. Musicians have been frustrated by the extended period without pay, and worried that even when they returned to the opera house, their pay would be significantly reduced.The Met has insisted that economic sacrifices need to be made because of the financial impact of the pandemic, which it says has cost the company $150 million in earned revenues. For its highest-paid unions, the company is seeking 30 percent cuts — the change in take-home pay would be approximately 20 percent, it said — with a promise to restore half when ticket revenues and core donations return to prepandemic levels.Under the deal, musicians will receive up to $1,543 for eight weeks; money they get from unemployment or stimulus payments is deducted from that total. If, after eight weeks, the musicians and the Met have not reached an agreement but the negotiations are productive, the partial paychecks will be extended, according to an email from the Met to the orchestra explaining the offer. The musicians’ labor contract expires at the end of July.The Met offered the same deal to its choristers, dancers, stage managers and other employees who are represented by a different union, the American Guild of Musical Artists. That union accepted the deal at the end of January, and its members have been receiving paychecks for roughly five weeks.The opera company is hopeful that it can start performing for the public in the fall, but opening night will be determined by where the virus and vaccination rates stand, as well as the outcome of the Met’s labor disputes. The company locked out its stagehands in December after their union rejected a proposal for substantial pay cuts.In a note to Met employees sent on Friday, one year after the Met shut its doors, the company’s general manger, Peter Gelb, wrote that there was a “light at the end of the tunnel” because of the accelerated pace of vaccinations that President Biden had announced. Still, Mr. Gelb wrote, the Met needed to “come to terms with the economic necessities” that the pandemic has demanded.“Even before the pandemic, the economics of the Met were extremely challenging and in need of a reset,” Mr. Gelb wrote. “With the pandemic, we have had to fight for our economic survival.” More

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      Satoko Fujii, a Pianist Who Finds Music Hidden in the Details of Life

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      In ensembles big and small, the prolific musician uses sound to make the world’s complexities a little more graspable.Whether she’s playing solo piano or leading one of her various large ensembles, the pianist and composer Satoko Fujii will tug you toward the details.The leader of a dizzying array of ensembles both large and small, Fujii is arguably the most prolific pianist in jazz — if also among the most underrecognized. Since the 1990s, she has released close to 100 albums, mostly through her own Libra Records label. Two years ago, celebrating her 60th birthday, a milestone known as “kanreki” in Japanese culture, she put out a new album each month, including both solo piano and big-band works.Fujii says that she seems to hear music everywhere, and she feels challenged to channel the sensations of the world as directly as she can. “This probably sounds strange, but when I compose I feel like the music is already there — we just didn’t notice,” she said in a recent interview from her home in Kobe, Japan. “I feel like I’m just looking for something that was hidden, but that is already there.” The sound of an airplane overhead, an overheard conversation, even the rustling of trees can provide a spark.Without access to gigs, jam sessions or a recording studio during pandemic lockdown, she felt herself becoming unmoored. On walks around Kobe, she was touched by the uncanny nervousness of the atmosphere, but she and her husband, the trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, had nobody else to play with. “Everything was canceled,” she said. “I felt like: Who am I?”She decided to outfit her tiny piano room, which barely fits her beloved Steinway grand, with a home-studio setup. Then she continued writing and recording and releasing music, at an even faster clip than before.Across all of Fujii’s work, contradictions come into balance; though her music is abstract and sometimes wild, each element shimmers with clarity. In situations large and small, her tender attention to detail is equaled by her ability to convey enormous breadth and textural range. Listening to her, visual-art metaphors become tempting: These works are as complex and detail-driven as, say, a Mark Bradford canvas, and just as huge in scale.Since the start of quarantine she has posted well over a dozen albums to her Bandcamp page. They include “Prickly Pear Cactus,” a trio disc that she and Tamura made with the electronic musician Ikue Mori, trading sound files via email and building gradually on one another’s work; “Beyond,” a set of serene duets with the vibraphonist Taiko Saito; and a solo-piano album, “Hazuki,” available on CD this Friday, featuring compositions Fujii wrote in the early months of quarantine.Writing by email, Mori said she had started collaborating with Fujii a few years ago, after having heard from other musicians on the scene about a pianist with a “dynamic and diverse style.” The “Prickly Pear Cactus” project had allowed them to collaborate at an unhurried pace. “This time, taking our time playing and working on the details, was a perfect situation for both of us,” Mori said.Born in Tokyo, Fujii was obsessed by music from her early childhood, but she didn’t immediately excel at it. She remembers that classical piano didn’t come easily, and some instructors were less supportive than others. As a teenager, she said, one classical teacher told her: “If you just keep playing, when you get to be my age, like 70, you’d be a great piano player. Anyone can be a good piano player. Just keep playing.”That might sound like faint praise, but it steeled Fujii’s resolve. Speaking via video interview last month, she was bright-eyed and quick to laugh. But she described herself as a restless spirit, saying she feels at ease only when creating.“If people are happy enough with their life, they probably can just sit down and have a good tea and be happy,” she said. “I’m not like that. Somehow — I don’t know how I can explain this — I have to live with my energy. With my effort. That’s the thing that lets me be happy; that’s the way that I can feel I’m living.”After high school, Fujii earned a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, moving there in 1985. As a young pianist, she was still figuring out how to position herself in relation to the jazz tradition, and she hadn’t yet written much of her own music when she attended a composition master class led by Chick Corea.“He said that just as we practice playing an instrument, we also can practice making compositions,” she said. “That was very new for me at that time. I decided, ‘OK, so maybe I can just do that.’” Maybe tirelessly putting in the work really was what mattered most — even when it comes to composing.“I have to live with my energy. With my effort,” Fujii said. “That’s the thing that lets me be happy; that’s the way that I can feel I’m living.”Bryan MurrayOr is it work at all? For Fujii, sonic inspiration comes from all angles — so the real challenge would be not to constantly spin it into something new. As a kind of diary of her inspirations, Fujii’s music troubles the divide between abstraction and realism. Plucking or scraping the strings of the piano; covering them up as she strikes the keys; letting the low, rustling textures of a horn section coalesce into harmony: All of this amounts to abstract expressionism, in musical form. But it’s equaled by her rich sense of simplicity, sprung from the feeling that she is simply converting the riches of the world around her into music.After Berklee, Fujii returned to Japan for a time, working as a teacher and session musician while developing a reputation in Tokyo as a farseeing bandleader. Then, in 1993, she returned to Boston to attend graduate school at the New England Conservatory. There she studied with the influential pianist Paul Bley, renowned for his wandering, dreamlike approach to improvising. He heard something within Fujii’s playing that she hadn’t completely unleashed, she said, and he encouraged her to cut away as much jazz orthodoxy as she could.“He said, ‘You cannot play like some other person,’” she said. “‘If you play like yourself, there is a reason to get your CD.’”The pair kept in touch after her graduation, and in 1995 they recorded “Something About Water,” a remarkable piano duet that was also one of Fujii’s first self-released albums on Libra. Soon she was getting calls to perform around the avant-garde scene in Brooklyn, where she and Tamura eventually moved for a year and a half.She ultimately returned to Japan, but not before laying the foundation for what would become Orchestra New York, a big band featuring many of the finest improvisers in the city. She has released a handful of albums with the group, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year. She has also maintained Orchestra Tokyo, composed of musicians there, and Orchestra Berlin, which she founded during a five-year stint living in Germany in the 2010s. Each orchestra has a different relationship to Fujii’s music, and perhaps she writes a little differently for each one.The tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby has been playing with Orchestra New York since the ’90s. He said that Fujii’s instructions to the band can often seem maddeningly understated, and she rarely records more than one take of each tune. Sometimes, Malaby said, it’s not until he hears the recording played back afterward that he gets a full measure of the music’s depth. “The simplicity is beyond the imagination,” he said.“You’re done, and you’re on the train, and you’re like, ‘What the hell was that?’” Malaby continued, describing the experience of leaving a recording session with the orchestra. “And then you get the CD in the mail, and it’s so powerful.”He was struck by how ably Fujii applied the language of her solo piano playing to her large ensembles, where she rarely plays a note on the keyboard. “She’s transcended the piano with the orchestra, and it sounds like when she plays trio or solo,” he said.Fujii said that she doesn’t think differently about the process of recording a solo album, or one with a large band. Either way, it’s about using sound to make life’s complexities a little more graspable. “The energy that I spend on a project, whether solo or for big band, it’s pretty much the same,” she said. “I just focus on it, spending time, 100 percent of my energy.”Articles in this series examine jazz musicians who are helping reshape the art form, often beyond the glare of the spotlight. More

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      Review: Living the ‘Dream,’ on Your Laptop or Phone

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      Gorgeous but thin, this half-hour experiment from the Royal Shakespeare Company turns Puck into an avatar and “theatergoers” into fireflies.Do you know of a site where the wild thyme blows? You do now.“Dream,” an interactive experience from the Royal Shakespeare Company, which runs through Saturday and lasts about as long as a power nap, transports its thousands of viewers to a sylvan grove, then to a rehearsal space in Portsmouth, England, for a live Q&A. Tickets are free, though those who prefer a lightly interactive experience can purchase seats for 10 British pounds (about $14) and appear onscreen as fireflies.Inspired by Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — in the wispiest, most gossamer way imaginable — “Dream” signifies a bounding leap forward for theater technology and a short jog in place for theater itself.A different “Dream” was meant to open in Stratford-upon-Avon about a year ago, as a showcase for Audience of the Future, a consortium of institutions and tech innovators assembled in 2019 and tasked with exploring new ways to make and deliver theater remotely. (Theater on your phone? They saw it first.) The 2020 “Dream” would have played to both a live audience and a remote one, integrating actors, projections and live motion-capture into a verdant whole.Jamie Morgan as Peaseblossom, a character rendered as sticks and flowers.Stuart MartinBut in-person audiences are rare these days, and this remote “Dream,” however gorgeous — and it is gorgeous, enormously gorgeous — feels thinner for it, less a forest of imagination and more a small copse of some really lovingly rendered trees. It begins with Puck (E.M. Williams), that merry wanderer of the night, imagined here as an assemblage of pebbles in the approximate shape of a human body. Why render Puck — nimble, fleet and girdling the earth in the time it takes most of us to load the dishwasher — as a pile of rocks? Dunno. Looks cool.In traveling around the forest, Puck encounters Shakespeare’s other fairies, like Moth (an accumulation of moths), Peaseblossom (sticks and flowers) and Cobweb (an eyeball inside a squirrel’s drey). Apparently, Puck also met Mustardseed (more sticks?). I missed it. And the singer Nick Cave contributed some voice acting! I missed that, too.“Dream,” performed live, is exquisite, denatured and almost entirely contentless. It isn’t quite theater, and it isn’t precisely film, though it could pass for a highbrow “Avatar” short. For stretches, it resembles a meditative video game, but it isn’t that either, mostly because the interactive elements (clicking and dragging fireflies around the landscape) are wholly inconsequential.Those who purchase tickets are represented onscreen as fireflies.Paul MumfordWatching it, I felt inexplicably cranky, like a toddler who has been offered a variety of perfectly nice snacks but doesn’t want any of them. Because maybe what the toddler really wants is to safely see an actual play in an actual theater with an actual audience. And that just isn’t available right now.So I don’t really know what to say about “Dream.” Because it represents an obviously fruitful and seemingly happy collaboration among top-of-their-game actors, directors, designers, composers and technicians, many of whom assumed some physical risk in the making of it. (Among them are Robin McNicholas, credited with direction and narrative development; Pippa Hill, credited with script creation and narrative development; and Esa-Pekka Salonen, the production’s music director and co-composer.) It also signals real progress in the use of live motion-capture (something the Royal Shakespeare Company has already experimented with) and offers a tantalizing glimpse of how that technology might be used when proper in-person theater returns.But this isn’t proper theater. Or even improper theater. It’s a sophisticated demonstration of an emergent technology. Shakespeare is the pretext, not the point. The pentameter, pushed into random virtual mouths, helps us better appreciate the software architecture — which is great if you like software and less great if you like the language itself, or the original play’s plot or characters or keen insights into our big, dumb, desiring hearts. This “Dream” is beautiful. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all wake up now?DreamThrough March 20; dream.online 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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      The Arts Are Coming Back This Summer. Just Step Outside.

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      The return of Shakespeare to Central Park is among the most visible signs that theaters, orchestras and opera companies aim to return to the stage — outdoors.The path back for performing arts in America is winding through a parking lot in Los Angeles, a Formula 1 racetrack in Texas, and Shakespeare’s summer home in New York’s Central Park.As the coronavirus pandemic slowly loosens its grip, theaters, orchestras and opera companies across the country are heading outdoors, grabbing whatever space they can find as they desperately seek a way back to the stage.The newest sign of cultural rebound: On Tuesday, New York City’s Public Theater said that it would seek to present Shakespeare in the Park once again this summer, restarting a cherished city tradition that last year was thwarted for the first time in its history.“People want to celebrate,” said Oskar Eustis, the theater’s artistic director, who is among the 29 million Americans who have been infected with the coronavirus. “This is one of the great ways that the theater can make a celebration.”New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio (center) at a press event inside the Delacorte on Tuesday, detailing plans for the reopening of Shakespeare in the Park.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLarge-scale indoor work remains a ways off in much of the country, as producers wait not only for herd immunity, but also for signs that arts patrons are ready to return in significant numbers. Broadway, for example, is not expected to resume until autumn.But all around the country, companies that normally produce outdoors but were unable to do so last year are making plans to reopen, while those that normally play to indoor crowds are finding ways to take the show outside.This is not business as usual. Many productions won’t start until midsummer, to allow vaccination rates to rise and infection rates to fall. Limits on audience size are likely. And attendees, like those visiting the Santa Fe Opera, will find changes offstage (touchless bathroom systems) and on: Grown-ups (hopefully vaccinated), not children, will play the chorus of faeries in the opera’s production of Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”There remain hurdles to overcome: Many of the venues still need to win permission from local officials and negotiate agreements with labor unions. But the signs of life are now indisputable.In Los Angeles, the Fountain Theater is about to start building a stage in the East Hollywood parking lot where it hopes in June to open that city’s first production of “An Octoroon,” an acclaimed comedic play about race by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Austin Opera next month aims to perform outdoors for the first time, staging “Tosca” in an amphitheater at a Formula 1 racetrack, while in upstate New York, the Glimmerglass Festival is planning to erect a stage on its lawn.Usually presenting shows inside, the Phoenix Theater Company has set up an outdoor stage in the garden at a neighboring church.Reg Madison PhotographyAt that outdoor venue, the armrests have QR codes, one to read the program, and one to order food and drink. Reg Madison PhotographyOrganizations that already have outdoor space have a head start, and are eager to use it.Mark Volpe, the president and chief executive of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, said that later this month he will ask his board to approve a plan to hold performances once again this summer at Tanglewood, the company’s outdoor campus in Western Massachusetts. The season, if approved, would be just six weeks, mostly on weekends, with intermissionless programs lasting no longer than 80 minutes, and no choral work because of concerns that singing could spread the virus.The audience size remains unknown — current Massachusetts regulations would allow just 12 percent of Tanglewood’s 18,000-person capacity — and Volpe said that, even if the regulations ease, “we’re going to be a tad conservative.” Nonetheless, the prospect of once again hearing live music on the vast lawn is thrilling.“Having the orchestra back onstage with an audience,” Volpe said, “I can only imagine how emotional it’s going to be.”The Muny, a St. Louis nonprofit that is the nation’s largest outdoor musical theater producer, is hoping to be able to seat a full-capacity audience of 10,000 for a slightly delayed season, starting July 5, with a full complement of seven musicals, albeit with slightly smaller than usual casts.“Everyone is desperate to get back to work,” said Mike Isaacson, the theater’s artistic director and executive producer. “And our renewal numbers are insane, which says to me people want to be there.”An artist’s rendering of the Fountain Theater’s planned new stage in its parking lot, where the Los Angeles company expects to present “An Octoroon” in June. Fountain TheaterThe St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, which performs in another venue in that city’s Forest Park, has much more modest expectations: It is developing a production of “King Lear,” starring the Tony-winning André De Shields of “Hadestown,” but expects to limit audiences to 750.The Public Theater, which has over the years featured Al Pacino, Oscar Isaac, Meryl Streep and Morgan Freeman on its outdoor stage, is planning just one Shakespeare in the Park production, with an eight-week run starting in July, rather than the usual two-play season starting in May.“Merry Wives,” a 12-actor, intermission-free version of “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” adapted by Jocelyn Bioh and directed by Saheem Ali, will be set in Harlem and imagine Falstaff as an African-American seeking to woo two married women who are immigrants from West Africa.How many people will be able to attend? Current state regulations would allow the Public to admit 500 virus-tested people, in a Delacorte Theater that seats 2,000, but the theater is hoping that will change before opening night. And will there be masks? Testing? “We are planning on whatever needs to happen to make it safe,” Ali said.For professional theaters, a major potential hurdle is Actors’ Equity, the labor union, which throughout the pandemic has barred its members from working on any but the small handful of productions that the union has deemed safe. But the union is already striking a more open tone.“I am hopeful now in a way that I could not be earlier,” said Mary McColl, the union’s executive director. She said the union is considering dozens of requests for outdoor work, and has already approved several. As for Shakespeare in the Park, she said, “I’m very excited to see theater in the park. We are eagerly working with them.”E. Faye Butler starred in “Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer,” a one-woman show on the new outdoor stage at the Asolo Repertory Theater in Sarasota, Fla.Cliff RolesA few theaters already have union permission. Utah’s Tuacahn Center for the Arts starts rehearsals next week for outdoor productions of “Beauty and the Beast” and “Annie.” Tuacahn, which stages work in a 2,000-seat amphitheater in a southern Utah box canyon, is planning to use plexiglass to separate performers during rehearsals, but expects not to need such protections by the time performances begin in May.“I’m extremely excited,” said Kevin Smith, the theater’s chief executive. “We had a Zoom call with our professional actors, and I got a little emotional.”Because Broadway shows, and some pop artists, are not ready to tour this summer, expect more homegrown work. For example: the 8,000-seat Starlight Theater, in Kansas City, Mo., which normally houses big brand tours, this summer is largely self-producing.In some warm-weather corners of the country, theaters are already demonstrating that outdoor performances can be safe — and popular.The Phoenix Theater Company, in Arizona, and Asolo Repertory Theater, in Sarasota, Fla., both pivoted outdoors late last year; the Arizona company borrowed a garden area at the church next door to erect a stage, while Asolo Rep built a stage over its front steps.The audience seems to be there. Asolo Rep’s six-person concert version of “Camelot” sold out before it opened, and the Phoenix Theater’s current “Ring of Fire,” featuring the music of Johnny Cash, is also at capacity.Now others are following suit. There are big examples: Lincoln Center, the vast New York nonprofit, has announced that it will create 10 outdoor spaces for performance on its plaza, starting next month, while the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Playwrights Horizons are planning to stage Aleshea Harris’s play, “What to Send Up When It Goes Down,” in June in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.And on Monday, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association said it anticipates limited-capacity live performances at the Hollywood Bowl this summer.The finances are complicated so long as there are capacity limits imposed by health officials. For some, performing outdoors promises more revenue than working indoors with social distancing.“I was sitting in my theater alone, looking out at the empty seats, and realized that if audiences were forced to sit six feet apart, it reduced my audience size from 80 to 12, which is not a robust financial model to present to your board of directors,” said Stephen Sachs, a co-founder and artistic director of the Fountain Theater. “So why not go outside?”But for larger organizations that cost more to sustain, capacity limits pose a different challenge. In San Diego, the Old Globe says that, at least in the near term, it might only be allowed 124 people in its 620-seat outdoor theater.“Just to turn on the lights requires an investment that will eat up most of what those seats will yield,” said the theater’s artistic director, Barry Edelstein. “It’s just incredibly challenging to figure out what we can afford to do — maybe a little cabaret, or maybe a one-person performance of some kind.”Nonetheless, Edelstein said he expects, like his peers, to present work outside soon. “There is a lot of stuff happening outdoors — dining, religious services, sports,” he said. “We’re not really fulfilling our mission if we’re sitting here closed.” More