In the heart of New York, the Kaufman Music Center, a venue for concerts and musical education, located in the Upper West Side district, has been offering a program since the end of January called Musical Storefronts (the musical showcases), which allows musicians to perform in the neighborhood, sheltered by a glass wall while awaiting the next reopening of the rooms to the public.
In New York, theaters will reopen to the public on April 2
Notes echoed in the still fresh morning air with, in the background, horns, cooing pigeons and construction site noises. Behind the window of an abandoned store on New York’s Upper West Side, stood the music of Debussy. Joggers, a few parents with strollers and the elderly stopped to listen and listen, through speakers, to the sound of Spencer Myer’s piano and Michael Katz’s cello. “We need this reciprocal relationship”, explains after the fact Michael Katz, who has already performed in most of the great New York classic venues. “Bringing music to people like we did is really something unique and extraordinary”.
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No concert hall, no armchairs, a separating glass, but it’s a concert, the opportunity for two musicians “Hungry” of human contact, as Spencer Myer says, to play together and find an audience, until April 2, when theaters will be authorized to reopen to the public in New York, but with a tonnage limited to 33% or 100/150 people at most.
“The need for music is as essential as food and water”
Until now, the organizers of these happenings have preferred not to disclose the exact location of the famous windows, nor to unveil the concert calendar in advance, to avoid too large gatherings, coronavirus requires. “We try to program a bit of everything”, says Kate Sheeran, who runs the Kaufman Music Center, “From classical musicians to the people of Broadway. We even had experimental improvisation ”. The project “Wants to highlight the artistic engine of New York and remind us that artists need to work”.
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« The city is like that all the time. When something serious happens, we improvise ”, enthuses Terry Lieberman, who has come to pick up some melodies by Debussy, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Boulanger. “People pull themselves together and leave. That’s wonderful “. “One of the lessons of the pandemic is the need for music, theater and dance, live performance in general that people have”, sums up Michael Katz. “It is as essential to them as food and water. It’s not just entertainment, or a commodity ”. The Musical Storefronts program will end on March 31, 2 days before the resumption of concerts and live performances in New York.
Philippe Gault (with AFP)
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