June Snippets

Jacqueline Jonée (6/12/17)
Make Music NY (6/21/17)

Jacqueline Jonée is referred to as the world’s premier concert pianist drag diva, a moniker that suits her just fine. Her recent appearance at the Library for the Performing Arts was a little more sparsely (is that an oxymoron?) attended than some I’ve seen, possibly because the main attraction was a viewing of the 2009 HD video A Date with Liberace, which was a program previously performed at LPA. As it turns out, that was OK by me, since that is one of her programs that I had never seen before. It’s a fun take on the life of Liberace with Ms. Jonée playing works associated with the flamboyant entertainer. It’s sort of a biopic touching on the history of Liberace as a performer through the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. And it turns out that Ms. Jonée met the great man twice (as Jacqueline or her real life alter ego, I’m not exactly sure). After the video, Ms. Jonée tickled the ivories of the Steinway grand piano with a couple of touching performances celebrating gay pride and the need for liberté, egalité, and justice for all!

Make Music NY is a semiannual event—June 21 (since 2006) and December 21 (since 2011)—that offers free concerts, as well as the opportunity to make music yourself, all day long by way of 1,000+ free concerts in public spaces in all five boroughs. Alas, this year it was a workday, so my choices of after work concerts were limited, but I managed to schedule three. And attend two—truth be told, only one and a half. At 5:00pm I attended the Art Song Preservation Society’s offering at the Bard Graduate Center on West 86th Street. The vocalists were amateurs who all had some degree of vocal training. As such, the quality varied quite a bit but it’s not every day you get to hear Ricky Ian Gordon songs (Stars, Joy) side by side with Bellini, William Schuman (Kiss Me Not Goodbye), and Kurt Weill (I’m a Stranger Here Myself). Plus a Japanese folk/art song. I left after forty minutes because I wanted to make sure to get to Bryant Park by 6:00pm. And I made it.

I heard a terrific male a cappella group, Cantus, who I have heard before. In this outdoor setting, using microphones, their sound was less focused and tight than I remembered but they still sang a heck of a performance. They started off with a nice rendition of There’s a Meetin’ Here Tonight, followed by a Dolly Parton song, Jolene, with one of the group’s basses adding guitar accompaniment. Have you gathered yet their song selection was eclectic? After a suitably tear-inducing (yeah, I’m that much of a sap) Danny Boy, a set followed that included Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors. A mini-Beatles set followed, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They Got by, serenaded Lucy in the Sky, and asked that oh so important question, to me, at the crux of When I’m 64. Just before we heard Imagine, we learned that Yoko Ono has just been officially added to the writing credits for the song. They also included a Sweet Honey in the Rock tune before closing out with some of their more contemporary classical and classical pieces, but hearing their approach to the less-than-classical pieces made me appreciate this Minnesota-based vocal ensemble even more.

I was concerned that a group accordion event scheduled for 7:00pm in Bryant Park might interfere with the afterglow of the Cantus performance. I never saw the accordionists, and since a second accordion event was not scheduled to begin until 8:00pm, I bagged it and went home. But I’ll be looking for Make Music NY on December 21 and next June 21. I might even take days off from work to experience more free music.

ConcertMeister