For most of her life, Stacy Kovacs has been following the beat of the drum, which has led her to people and places she never anticipated.
“Drums are about rhythms and patterns, and I love patterns,” said Ms. Kovacs, 48, the founder of Fogo Azul NYC, a drum line for women and people who are transgender or nonbinary. “I see music in colors. Playing the drum is like making art.”
Ms. Kovacs, who is a physician assistant at NewYork-Presbyterian, started out playing piano at age 5. By 8 she was a drummer, and although she took up the trombone in her teens, she retained an affinity for striking the sticks.
“I used to drum on everything when I was a child,” said Ms. Kovacs, who is from Buffalo. “When we went out to eat, I would drum on the table with straws.”
The fact that there weren’t many female drummers in the 1980s only spurred her on.
She began playing drums in Brazilian bands in New York City and has performed at the Carnival in Salvador, Brazil, and at events in France, Spain, Bermuda and Britain. In 2016, she founded Fogo Azul NYC. The band, whose name means “blue fire” in Portuguese, started with only 14 drummers and now has 132, ages 14 to 89. It’s also where Ms. Kovacs met her partner, who is in the film industry.
Ms. Kovacs, who owns 175 drums, lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens, with her ancient rescue cats, Louie and Libby.
CAT FIGHT Little cat paws prevent me from sleeping in on Sundays. At 5 a.m., Louie makes his presence known, climbing into bed so he can whack me in the face. He usually swats me, and if I don’t respond quickly enough to suit him, he will sometimes go so far as to gently pull my hair. I try to hold him off until 6. I’ve never told Louie this, but I really enjoy getting up early enough to hear the birds sing.
THINKING TIME I spend a lot of time catching up on emails and events requests for Fogo Azul NYC, and at some point, I prepare the cold brew that I brewed the night before. I often use chocolate malt powder with some vanilla syrup and mix it with half and half in a small blender to make cold foam. I have a retro 1960s diner booth I drove all the way to Syracuse to pick up. It and its chairs are yellow, my favorite color. I like to sit there and think. Louie, who follows me like a dog, always jumps up on the table.
OUT AND BACK By around 8:30 or so, I go out and buy my partner the Sunday New York Times from the corner deli. She likes to read the book reviews and the magazine and do the crossword puzzle. For breakfast, I often resort to making pancakes with bananas and chocolate chips.
BANDWIDTH On most Sundays, from noon to about 3:30 or 4, my time is consumed with shows, workshops and rehearsals for Fogo Azul NYC at various places around New York City. And I love it, especially in the summertime when the weather is beautiful and so many things are happening all at once.
Right now, we’re doing free public workshops at Brooklyn Bridge Park. If I do have a rehearsal, I have to prepare the lesson plan or decide to wing it and go with what I think we need to work on. I don’t really eat lunch. It’s more of a grab-and-go snack. Trying to navigate the subway changes is often difficult — the drums are large and bulky — but once I get to rehearsal, it’s kind of like church service in a way because it’s a regular scheduled meet-up of people who share the same values. We all like to come learn and be with one another.
I often go out to dinner after our shows with some or all of the band members. We look for places that have enough space for us and our drums.
THE BEAT GOES ON When there’s nothing going on for Fogo Azul, I catch up on things I didn’t have time to do during the week. Things tend to pile up, so I clean the apartment and do laundry. I also talk over the news with my partner and check and recheck the band’s social media and look to see what other bands around the world are doing.
A SHORT RUN My partner and I recently started running. On Sundays, we’ll run alone or together for 20 to 30 minutes on the sidewalks around the neighborhood. We don’t have a preferred route — we go with the walk/don’t walk lights. We recently completed the Middle-earth Halfling Marathon — an 11K race through the Hobbiton Movie Set in Matamata, New Zealand. It’s built on a working farm with animals, and it was really amazing. It rained the day of the run, so it was a mud run.
WRITING AND REVIEWING After showering, I’ll do the grocery shopping and use the rest of my free time writing new music and reviewing videos of our shows to see how we can improve or change. Occasionally, we’ll rent a Zipcar and take a Sunday drive that usually entails some sort of errand, such as picking up cat litter.
LISTENING TO SILENCE Fogo Azul NYC is my life — I don’t get home until 7 or 8. Nobody ever believes me when I say this, but I don’t watch TV or movies, and I don’t have a streaming service. Sometimes, I’ll read the news on my phone. My partner doesn’t go to every event the band has, so this is my time to catch up with her. But mostly I just sit with the cats and decompress. Drums are loud. I enjoy the silence. By 9, I’m in bed. I need my sleep because Louie, of course, will get me up at 5, and I have to leave at 6:45 to get to work by 8.
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