The coronavirus crisis will not have spared musicians around the world. While theaters await their reopening this Friday, April 2 – with a judge limited to 33% – musicians continue to look for alternatives to continue to share their music with a live audience. Some invest in the windows of disused stores to give an atypical concert to passers-by.
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Notes echoed in the still fresh New York 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.
No concert hall, no armchairs, a separating glass, but it is indeed a concert, the occasion for two musicians “hungry“of human contact, as Spencer Myer says, of playing together and finding an audience.
“We need this reciprocal relationship“, explains after the fact Michael Katz, who has already appeared in most of the great classic New York venues.”Bringing music to people like we did is really unique and extraordinary.“
From Friday April 2, theaters will be authorized to reopen to the public in New York, under strict conditions, namely with a limit of 33% or 100 people at most. On April 14 and 15, the New York Philharmonic will be making a personal return to The Shed, a cultural space in midtown Manhattan.
But this will only be a foretaste, because the Philharmonic, which has also organized small impromptu outdoor concerts since September, is already looking towards September, like the Metropolitan Opera or the New York City Ballet which have very quickly canceled their entire 2020-2021 season.
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While waiting for this gradual return to concert halls, the Kaufman Music Center, a place of concerts and musical education, located in the Upper West Side district, has set up this program called “Musical Storefronts“, which can be translated by”musical showcases“, which allows musicians to perform in the neighborhood, sheltered by a glass wall.
The organizers prefer not to disclose the exact location of the famous showcase, nor to reveal the concert schedule in advance, to avoid too large gatherings, coronavirus obliges, leaving the pleasure of discovery and surprise to passers-by. .
“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 that artists need to work“.
Some 30% of New York City adults have already received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, and with the onset of spring, hope is reborn.
The city “is like this all the time. When something bad 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“.
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