Concerts

It takes a lot to get house legend and electroclash innovator Felix da Housecat to come out for a DJ set. He’s already been to all of the best parties. Hell, he’s DJ’ed for most of them.

Today Ultra Music Festival marketing manager Albert Berdellans announced the festival’s acquisition of Winter Music Conference during a news conference aboard the yacht SeaFair, docked next to the festival site at Bayfront Park.

Tattoos and thongs meant something once upon a time. Now they’re as typical as DJs performing with orchestras. You’ll be able to see all the trends this Miami Music Week in a pool party lineup that’s primetime for exhibitionists and ratchets. Equally, it’s a time for the sophisticated to laze in the shade…

Miami’s globetrotting house DJ Cedric Gervais first made waves by debuting his controversial song “Molly” at Ultra Music Festival 2012. The next year, his remix of Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” became a massive hit on pop radio, going double-platinum in the United States and earning him a Grammy. The song’s runaway success was nothing Gervais could have planned.

This weekend, Ultra Music Festival will kick off a three-day exercise in all forms of dance music. House, techno, bass, EDM, dubstep, trance, and other styles will be well represented by acts from all over the world. It’s something Ultra has been able to do extraordinarily well for the past 20 years.

From South Beach to Bayfront to Bicentennial and then back to Bayfront, Ultra Music Festival has lived many lives. From simple stages to foggy tents to massive structural wonders, Ultra has grown from a bright idea to a monolithic temple of electronic dance. It was one of the first music…

Bunny, the imposing, blond-dreaded frontman of Rabbit in the Moon, remembers Ultra Music Festival beginning with a bang. “One of the memories I have from the first Ultra was walking back to the stages — they were facing the ocean and they had a fence in the back. I get…

The magnitude of Paul Oakenfold’s “highest party on Earth” might sound strange in South Florida, where the tallest point is the garbage dump in Palm Beach County. In 2017, the DJ traveled to Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain. Climbing it is dangerous, and the allure of its 29,029-foot summit…

Miami Music Week DJs Kristen Knight, Ultra Naté, and Lisa Shaw address the #MeToo movement in the electronic music world.

Each February, tech-house producer Loco Dice makes a pilgrimage to Thailand, where he spends nearly three weeks training under muay thai masters and with pro fighters from around the world. He also meditates and cleanses his body in preparation for playing more than 100 concerts per year.

The five-member group from Los Angeles formed in 1999, but it wasn’t until five or six years ago that fans and critics began considering the bandmates “vintage reggae revivalists.”

Otto Yliperttula is a man of few words but many, many sounds. Under the stage name Yotto, the 31-year-old Finnish producer makes melodies warm enough to heat a hearth in winter and dark enough to penetrate the underground. His DJ sets span the spectrum of electronic music.

Ultra Music Festival always does it big. And because there’s a 20th anniversary to celebrate this year, you can only imagine what a flashy, beat-droppin’ spectacle it will be.

Choosing where to go on a regular Miami weekend is hard enough. Miami Music Week turns that conundrum into a Sophie’s choice. Allow this writer, an MMW veteran, to impart some sage advice: Don’t try to make it to every party. Unless you can fast-track Elon Musk’s Hyperloop within the…

If Jason Mraz, who is set to play the Arsht Center tonight, were to decorate his car with bumper stickers, none would read “WWJD?” However, there is a very good chance there might be a “WWMRD?”

Singer-songwriter Mai Tatro of the band Moonlight Drive-In is only 18 years old, but she has years of live-music gigs under her belt. Tatro has been writing and singing her own songs since she was 13, and her vocals are powerful, yet she’s all too familiar with the difficulties of scoring bookings for a band fronted by a young woman.

Jonny White is on a mission. As a cofounder of the electronic duo Art Department, he has spent nearly a decade vitalizing dance floors, from behind the booth or piped through speakers, in meccas such as Ibiza and Berlin. The group’s 2010 hit, “Without You,” earned widespread acclaim as dance track…

By any measure of success, Little Dragon has had an enviable career. Since its formation in 1996, the Gothenburg, Sweden-based synth-pop band has traveled the world, cultivated a devoted following, and collaborated with its musical heroes, as well as inspired a new generation of artists.

Beyoncé and Jay-Z will return to Hard Rock Stadium Friday, August 31.

A couple of nights ago, hundreds of Vero Beach baby-boomers piled into the Emerson Center, an 800-seat Unitarian church-cum-concert-hall, for a postprandial show by four men dressed as the Beatles. As the musicians — wearing matching suits, floppy wigs, and silly grins — took the stage, the audience erupted in shrieks. A woman in an Abbey Road shirt shouted from the nosebleeds: “I love you, Paul!”

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez doesn’t want to be forever cast as “the activist rapper,” though he acknowledges his music career and work as an environmental advocate parallel and support each another.

Miami Music Week doesn’t start for a few days, but pre-MMW parties will begin taking over venues around town well before the official festivities kick off. Pace yourself, though — St. Patrick’s Day is this Saturday, and if you’re looking for live music, Las Rosas’ full night of sets by Jacuzzi Boys, the Woolly Bushmen, and Dama Vicke might do the trick. Living legends Anita Baker, Chaka Khan, and Smokey Robinson will play Hard Rock Stadium for Jazz in the Gardens, and Jason Mraz will hit the Arsht Center stage this week.