Over the years, the New York classical music scene has had a clear suggestion of death.
You can thank Andrew Ousley for that. As founder and mastermind of Death of Classical, Ousley took the occasions of classical music and opera to characteristic and unconventional spaces of the city with exemplary acoustics. It turns out that those spaces were meant for the dead.
This week, Death of Classical kicks off its 2021 season, which includes events in October, with “Hymn to the City” at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Halfway between concert, walking tour, birthday party and healing ritual, the occasion will feature musicians from the New York Philharmonic performing fiery American classics like Aaron Copland’s “Simple Gifts,” a sequel to Gershwin’s “West Side Story” and a performance of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” and a bit of Paul Simon as a smart move.
Other highlights of the season come with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Schubert with the Ulysses Quartet and the Secret Mausoleum Music Club.
For the record, and despite the name of the total corporation, classical music has rarely been as important as in the hands of Ousley, who answered some questions about the next occasion for Forbes.
Andrew, Green-Wood Cemetery is a history-steeped position. How about that as a functional place?
Green-Wood is simply a deeply charming position to provide performances, and there is a nonviolent reflected image quality in the cemetery that is helping to create a deeply directed atmosphere. Our performances usually take place in the catacombs in the middle of Green-Wood, which is an area with incredibly hard physical and acoustic energy, so having the twilight walking through the cemetery before the concert and returning to the moonlight creates a magnificent band of anticipation and release books that surround those emotionally charged musical experiences.
Death of Classical took classical music out of the concert hall and into shocking and dramatic spaces in the past. The delight of classical music in the walking style of “Hymn to the City” is anything else. How do you think the two hours?Will it walk and improve the music in general?
Compared to our more specific concerts that take a stand in a bachelor position like the Crypt or the Catacombs, “Hymn to the City” will be a much more immersive theatrical experience, where the cemetery itself becomes a component of the narrative. in the performance, alternating shorter and more intense performances of music, dance and poetry, with silent stretches of walks through the park, and it all come to one through the scripted story told to the actors who advise each audience group, combining the high-level themes of the night with stories about other people buried in Green-Wood, vital figures in NY Phil hitale and more.
What can you tell us about the variety of music planned for “Hymn to the City” in particular?
All musical choices are connected to the no unusual thread of the night, which is the birthday party of New York’s spirit of resilience and renewal through the many demanding situations it has faced over the years. The other individual functionality teams communicate on other topics, starting with a song of gratitude to our first responders in Copland’s “Simple Gifts,” and solidarity with “United People Will Never Be Defeated!
Next, we stop at the grave of Leonard Bernstein, which stands right after two incredibly hard monuments of the civil and revolutionary wars, and we, those who fought for our freedom and others like Lenny, who worked tirelessly in the service of peace. At his grave, a brass quintet will perform a sequel to West Side Story, one of music’s most important love stories that strives to triumph over hate and division.
Then, in the most sensitive part of The Hill of Graves, where thousands of other people from the first wave of German, Irish and Italian immigrants from New York are buried, we do not forget the tired, deficient and grouped masses who came here in search of a better life, and whose work and sacrifice built this city and continue to do so. There we’ll hear Paul Simon’s Bach-inspired ode to immigration, “American Tune,” followed by Kinan Azmeh’s “Café Damas,” which was commissioned through the Philharmonic in 2019 to read about New York City’s immigrant roots, and that’ll be accompanied by incredible dancer Liana Kleinman.
Then, in front of the imposing Mausoleum of Chauncey, we will be the pioneers, those who helped advise the way through unexplored waters, breaking barriers and inciting us to ask ourselves more . . . , we will listen to the andante moderato movement of Florence Price. “String Quartet in Primary G” – Price was the first African-American woman to be identified as a symphonic composer and the first to play a composition through a primary orchestra.
We’ll end up in the Catacombs, with a definitive functionality that recalls how, even after terrible trauma, New York has figured out a way to heal, rebuild, and become more powerful than before, and offer an example of how other people can come together and do something bigger than the sum of their parts. Pianist Adam Tendler will debut with “Cadenza on Rhapsody in Blue,” breaking the remarkable melody into a thousand pieces and transitioning to Sarah Kirkland Snider’s haunting song on September 11, titled “How Graceful Things Are, Falling Apart,” sung through the incredible Lucy Dhegrae. Catalyst Quartet will then perform Kevin Puts’ last hopeful move from his piece “Credo,” before the entire ensemble is combined to finish with a new arrangement of the non-secular discovered in Dvořák, “Goin’ Home. “
On a non-public note, after the last 14 months, what does the return of live classical music mean to you?
As a New York native, I am incredibly grateful to be able to paint with Green-Wood and NY Phil to offer this birthday component of the city I love, and to thank the other people of New York for making plans for this program, I have an idea not only of how we have cared for each other and our city around this pandemic. , but also the many times before that: my East Village neighbors helping both are left blank after Hurricane Sandy; winery owners distributed loose ice cream to others returning home during the 2003 blackout; and the countless thousands of American flags that other people hung on one and one and both windows of Sixth Avenue in the wake of September 11. . . component of this city, and I’m pleased to be able to share this percentage with other New Yorkers!
I’m self-employed in New York and I write about art, design and pop culture.