Musicians find ways to soothe city with music
‘Porch performance’
On Saturday afternoons, pianist Harry Mayronne wheels a piano onto the front porch of the home of jazz singer Anais St John for their weekly performance. The duo – spaced 6-feet apart – serenades a handful of friends and neighbors assembled on chairs on the sidewalk and a larger audience online.
For years, the two have performed intimate cabaretstyle jazz numbers at the city’s swanky clubs and hotels. But now as the coronavirus has shuttered those venues, they and other musicians have been forced to find other outlets to both make ends meet and musically soothe a city that desperately needs it.
“It’s something that’s become really magical and really special very suddenly,” said Mayronne. Few cities are as closely identified with music as New Orleans. It’s heralded as the birthplace of jazz, and it’s a rich melting pot of genres, from zydeco to hip-hop, from R&B to rock. It’s a destination for vibrant live performances that can be heard from just about every corner of the city.
But the coronavirus and the social-distancing measures designed to fight it have nearly silenced its music scene. Bars and restaurants, where music could be blaring out until early morning hours, are closed. The numerous festivals held in the spring, which are an important money-maker for artistes before the slow, hot summer months, have been canceled, such as this week’s New Orleans Jazz Fest. The weekly second-line parades on Sundays featuring brass bands have stopped.
The young musicians making a name for themselves busking on the streets in the French Quarter are gone. Jazz funerals where mourners send off loved ones with a slow dirge and then an uplifting rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In” are over.
Musicians have also fallen victim to the virus, most notably Ellis Marsalis Jr. The jazz pianist, longtime musical educator and patriarch of the Marsalis musical family, died April 1 after contracting the virus.
But the city’s musicians are still finding ways to get the music out to the people. As the clubs and venues close, many artistes are livestreaming from their porches, studios, living rooms, front lawns or wherever they can find space for safe distancing.
For Mayronne and St John, the weekly performances sometimes have a theme. One week it was “Quarantina” featuring songs by Tina Turner. But other days, it’s simply a “porch performance,” as it’s billed on social media.
A handful of neighbors – many wearing masks – bring folding chairs to watch and listen from the sidewalk, careful to keep a safe distance from one another.
“It’s nice to just be able to walk around the corner, bring your wine and have a glass of wine with Anais,” said resident Penny Warriner, sitting across the street during a recent performance. People can also watch online and tip through Venmo and PayPal.
On Frenchman Street, the normally packed clubs like Snug Harbor or The Spotted Cat are quiet and their doors shuttered. The occasional pedestrian or bicyclist, some wearing face masks, goes up the street.
Inside the Maison lounge one recent Sunday, New Orleans rapper Mannie Fresh is playing DJ. He says into a microphone, “smile, today is a new day,” as he spins the Kirk Franklin gospel tune “I Smile” to an audience of thousands. Thousands, that is, online.
The club known for live acts such as the Brass-AHolics and Big Easy Brawlers is shuttered. Fresh’s only physical audience is the club’s owner, Jeff Bromberger, and a handful of technicians streaming the performance to the outside world via Facebook, Instagram and Twitch.
“It’s just my way of uplifting people, and it’s uplifting for me as well,” Fresh said of his three-hour sets on Friday and Saturday nights and inspirational onehour sets on Sundays.
“If you’re clapping your hands right now, put a thumbs-up sign to me or send me some prayer hands,” he says into the camera on his computer, browsing comment threads and giving shout-outs to fans.
They also provide some structure and “routine” as residents remain under a citywide stay-at-home mandate, he said.
His audience has been growing each weekend, lately drawing some 10,000 to 20,000 viewers, Bromberger said: “It’s almost like medicine for people, because it’s a distraction.”
Waiting is a challenge for club owners like Bromberger, who owns the Maison and Dragon’s Den. He had just started gutting and building a new venue when the pandemic hit.
Bromberger said he’s concerned about the uncertainty of how much time it will take for the music scene to rebound and tourists to return. But he’s also worried about reopening only to have to close a second time if there’s a another wave of infections.
For now, New Orleans artistes are just grateful that fans are watching – and tipping – online or, for the lucky few who live close enough to catch one of St John’s porch concerts, coming in person, from a safe distance, of course. She was scheduled to perform at this month’s French Quarter Festival, a free multi-day event during which area artistes perform in various venues.
By Stacey Plaisance
Performances
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NEW YORK: It’s a stunning sound, emerging amid the clanging and the whooping and the banging and the honking at 7 pm each night as New Yorkers cheer front-line workers: the velvety, buttery baritone of Brian Stokes Mitchell.
For decades, Mitchell’s voice has been one of the most celebrated in the Broadway theater, evoking goosebumps in musicals like “Kiss Me, Kate,” for which he won a Tony, and “Man of La Mancha,” in which he played Don Quixote. Now, with Broadway’s houses shuttered due to the coronavirus, the voice rings out from a fifth-floor apartment on the Upper West Side – fittingly on Broadway, a couple miles up from the theater district.
“This is my quest,” Mitchell sings, leaning precariously out his window, launching directly into the meatiest part of “The Impossible Dream.”
Below, and across the avenue in their apartments, neighbors cheer. But Mitchell, 62, is looking to serenade crews of ambulances, fire engines, police cars, or medical workers from the nearby urgent care facility. When they do stop and listen – as a city bus did recently – Mitchell sings directly to them. And when people clap, he sweeps his arms over the workers, as if to say: “Not me. Them.” (AP)