At first, it looked like a small, no-frills concert in a carefully controlled environment: jazz musician Jon Batiste, seated at a piano in an auditorium in the Javits Center on the west side of Manhattan, performed in front of an audience of about 50 seated health workers in uniform divided rows – some with scrubs, others with army gear.
The dancer Ayodele Casel began to tap, with no musical accompaniment other than a recording of her own voice, her amplified twitch rolls filled the room. And opera singer Anthony Roth Costanzo performed “Ave Maria” in the angelic tones of a countertenor.
But about half an hour later, the performers stepped off the stage and left the room, turning what had started as a formal concert into a rolling procession of music and dance that slid through the barren building – the convention center was turned into a field hospital early on. in the pandemic and is now a massive vaccination site – where hundreds of hopefuls had come Saturday afternoon to get their shot.
Batiste switched to the melodica, a toy-like, hand-held reed instrument with a keyboard, and the group of musicians – which had been expanded with a horn section and percussionists – paraded up the escalator and through the convention center to eventually create a high ceiling room. dozens of people quietly waited for the required 15 minutes after receiving their vaccinations.
This concert-turned-roaming party was the first in a series of ‘pop-up’ shows in New York designed to shock the arts by providing artists with paid work and the opportunity for audiences to enjoy live performances after almost a year of darkened theaters and concert halls. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced plans for the series, dubbed ‘NY PopsUp’ last month, stating that ‘we need to bring art and culture back to life’, adding that their resurgence would be crucial to the economic revival of New York. City. The shows are kicking off as he comes under fire for the way the state is handling the Covid-19 deaths of nursing home residents.
Since the program is wary of attracting crowds, most performances will be unannounced and suddenly pop up in parks, museums, parking lots and street corners. The idea is to inject a dose of inspiration into the lives of New Yorkers – a time when they can pause their planned life and witness art during a pandemic year that has limited human contact and strict restrictions on the activities of New Yorkers. people.
“We need more spontaneity; that’s the beauty of it, ”said Batiste in an interview. “You don’t know what’s around the corner.”
As the group of musicians walked through the Javits Center, the health workers crowd followed them, clapping to the beat and recording the spectacle on their phones. Batiste, who is the band leader on ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’, drove his musicians through the space (most of them have played with the show’s house band, including Endea Owens on bass, Tivon Pennicott on saxophone, and Joe Saylor and Nêgah Santos on percussion).
Bre Williams, a 35-year-old nurse in blue scrubs who had come from Savannah, Georgia, to help out in New York, stared.
“You all do this here all the time?” she said with a laugh.
Shortly before the music ended, some caregivers rushed to resume their workday (after all, this concert took place during their hiatus).
The series was created by a public-private partnership led by producers Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal, along with the New York State Council on the Arts and Empire State Development. Zack Winokur, the director and interdisciplinary artist responsible for the programming, said the group aims to feature more than 300 pop-up performances during Labor Day, in every neighborhood and around the state. The artists are chosen by a council of artists – including Batiste, Casel and Costanzo – who are each asked to tap into their own network to find participants.
“It has been a long time since I have seen a live performance,” Winokur said in an interview. “It is a highly necessary experience right now.”
After their first gig at the Javits Center, the musicians headed to Brooklyn, where they started another flash-mob-style street jam, starting at Cadman Plaza Park and working their way through Dumbo to arrive at a skate park, where teenagers go to. stared at them. curious before they jump back on their skateboards. The free, mobile concerts have been referred to by Batiste as “love riots”, which she previously planned on social media. This traveled over sidewalks and muddy snow, sometimes slowing traffic.
Preventing tap dancing in the street, Casel beat out rhythms by clapping her hands on the metal plates of her tap shoes; Costanzo danced with the band and at one point grabbed the megaphone to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.
While the music was intended to give a spontaneous performance to passersby, the march itself was as tightly regulated as any pandemic-era event. Security personnel sent members of the musical entourage around uneven terrain and dog poo. Another employee asked onlookers to spread out when they started violating social distance guidelines.
Despite the logistics involved, the plan succeeded in arousing a spontaneous curiosity for the dozens of people who unexpectedly came into contact with the music. As they walked down narrow alleys and shopping streets, the band made people stop, stare and sometimes groove a bit. Children looked through the windows along Washington Street; a doorman shot out of an apartment building to see what all the noise was about; pharmacy workers leaned out of the doorway to film the procession down the sidewalk.
Not everyone seemed to like the music, however. At one point, someone in an apartment building started throwing objects at the protesters from different floors (one of the security guards said he thought he saw an orange juice container and a trophy in the snow).
Used to improvising, the band simply dodges the flying objects and marches a little faster, the music never stops.