Music events coming up and Open House New York

The holiday weekend looks to be kind of quiet for early music. (Go to Open House New York events instead.) I’ll be at shapenote in Brooklyn on Sunday (2:00 at St. Paul’s Church, Carroll Gardens). Next week, however, the Streetsingers’ subset is performing at Grand Army Plaza on Saturday 10/17 at noon (weather permitting — we’ve already been rescheduled once because of threatened rain), and the whole group on Sunday 10/18 somewhere. And Sunday afternoon (10/18) is the Blue Heron concert at St. Ignatius of Antioch. More on that soon, but it’s going to be great.

Drawn [in] by New York

I had the privilege of joining a curator’s tour of Drawn By New York, an exhibition at the too-little-visited New-York Historical Society. (Even if there were no other reason to love it, there’s that 1804 hyphen.)

The curator, Roberta Olson, took the 8500 objects in the Historical Society’s collection of drawings and watercolors and pulled out about 150 with which to tell a clutch of different stories. One story is about birds: one of the Society’s great treasures, maybe comparable to the Thomas Cole “Course of Empire” paintings (no, actually, I’ll say it, more beautiful and more representative of the myth of America), is its collection of watercolors by John James Audubon, including all the final drawings for The Birds of America. Roberta practially persuaded us that the plate of the Carolina Parakeet anticipates futurism in its active spiral of bright, noisy birds. But there are also a set of ravishing birds that she’s identified as dating to the 16th century (!). The Society’s collections also can tell stories about the American landscape, the American peoples (including remarkable portraits by Saint-Memin of Osage Indian leaders), American habits, and of course the city of New York. There’s reflection on the making of art, from a school-piece calligraphic drawing of a horse by a Pennsylvania teenager to a group of sketches of the young John Singer Sargent goofing around the studio by his Paris roommate, James Carroll Beckwith. Eccentric masterworks include a thirteen-figure silhouette party.

The show is up till January 7 and it’s really worth a visit. While you’re there you can also look at their great collection of Hudson River School landscapes.

Everybody takes the train.

Even devils, princesses, heroes, flappers, spacemen, boxers, giant scissors, and ghouls. We got off the six train at 28th last night and as we walked down the platform the departing train’s windows flickered past us with, embedded among dark jackets, the feathers, gold lame, purple hair and red nylon of the costumed. Later, a pharaoh gathered up his robes to climb the stairs at Bleecker Street while Dorothy Gale hugged a penguin.

Catching up, 2 – Streetsingers at Sea

Governor's Island from Red Hook, 1800

Back on October 5, it was a beautiful afternoon, after a gray rainy morning, to take the short ferry ride from the Maritime Building at the Battery (a marvelous relic next to the new Staten Island Ferry terminal), walk under the tall plane trees, and sing under a similarly tall brick archway for an appreciative audience. I think we made more of some of the new, sad pieces than we ever had before (that arch was a great blender and softener for us.) Best bonus for me: I got to see, though not talk to except for sign language (waves, blown kisses) and lip-read greetings, my old theater teacher, Bill S., looking great and accompanied by his young daughter. One of my favorite people ever.

LES shapenote, October 4

Bradford was in town, a happy occasion, though as I said: I’ll remember this as The Day Bradford Pitched Everything Higher. (It also seems to be true that I’m losing my high notes, doubling the trouble for me.) A few newbies or near-new, who’d been at the All-Day Singing in September, came & claimed to have a good time. For their sake and at Diane’s instigation, we paused along the way for a few words of guidance. (None of which had to do with pastrami.)

Open House New York, Oct 4-5

For the (is it?) fourth time, my friend D is coming in from San Francisco to do Open House New York. We’re going to meet on Saturday morning to visit locations in Gowanus and Crown Heights (maybe) — then I’m off to shape-note. Some of the tours are already fully booked, so act fast.

PARK(ing) Day, September 19

This is one of those quirky little things grown suddenly large, a largeness that I, in my cynical or conservative way, find a little suspicious if not regrettable. I also look askance at the mingling of whimsy and earnestness. Still, I am glad to hear about it.

Park(ing) Day NYC is an effort of the New York City Streets Renaissance which offers individuals and groups small grants to turn more than 50 parking spots throughout New York City’s 5 boroughs into human-friendly places for a single day.

People put down grass, have picnics, engage in advocacy in temporarily transformed parking spaces. I heard about it through the High Line blog; the Friends of the High Line will be setting up at Ninth Avenue between 19th and 20th Streets. There are lots more planned around the city, though I was not surprised to see that my work neighborhood, the Upper East Side, is practically park(ing)less.