88 Pianos, Gothel, and Glinda

Next Tuesday, the streets of New York will be lined with 88 pianos.

Is it National Get-Rid-of-Your-Piano Day? Nope. Are all the pianos of New York uniting and staging a strike? Not quite. June 21st, 2011 will mark the 5th annual celebration of the Make Music New York Festival!

Passers-by are encouraged to sit down and play any one of those 88 pianos. Or, if they happen to wander past Gainsevoort Plaza (the passers-by, not the pianos!), they can join an impromptu sing-along of Mozart's Coronation Mass or Handel's Messiah. New Yorkers might also choose to parade up 10th avenue with a New Orleans-style Marching Band or participate in an Interactive iPhone Symphony on Wall Street (I already downloaded the app and am ready to participate!). The list goes on and on. At sunrise in Central Park, the city is invited to perform Yoko Ono's Secret Piece:

(And yes, June 21 officially marks the first day of summer.)

It didn't surprise me to discover that John Corigliano--one of Alex Ross' "midtown" composers--is among the masterminds behind all this. What better way to get the average New Yorker involved in classical music than by turning the music-making experience into an interactive festival of major proportions? I can't wait. Depending on my mood, you may find me listening to bagpipes in Herald Square or playing along with a Gong Ensemble (no experience required!) in Central Park.

And I'm definitely going to find one of those 88 pianos. I walked through Washington Park the other day and saw a trained pianist performing on a Steinway right by the central fountain, so maybe street pianos aren't entirely uncommon in New York. Here's hoping that mine's a Steinway!

*****

Some Close Encounters of an Absurd Kind:

Yesterday I'd just finished mailing a submission to a composition competition when I turned down an obscure midtown street. . .and ran straight into one of the church members I know from Boston! He just happened to be visiting New York for a few days.

I've been doing a lot of that lately--running into people, I mean.

One example: Earlier this week, a random stranger and I did the "awkward dance" on the sidewalk. You know the kind I mean: Someone tries to pass another person walking the opposite direction, and that person moves the same way at the same time while the two, in their earnest efforts to avoid contact, end up blocking and eventually running into each other. I've also been "running into" things figuratively. Last week, for example, I ran into the Hudson river for the very first time. Who knew that there was a beautiful pier and free canoeing just a three-minute walk from my apartment? I've run into Donna Murphy--aka "Mother Gothel"--twice within the last month too. I think she's following me. (Not really.)

The first time I saw her, I was sitting on a balcony in a theater where she was giving her Tony-nominated performance as Raisel in The People in the Picture. The premise of the show seemed promising: A Jewish performance troupe in Poland suffers--but still manages to lift spirits--during the Holocaust. Unfortunately, the music and script kind of fell flat. Donna Murphy single-handedly saved the show with her seamless performance as both the young and the elderly versions of her character. Her execution of the script was so genuine, so subtle, and so powerful that it made up for the fact that the words she was speaking were contrived, overly-sentimental, and kind of flimsy. Thanks to her acting, the deathbed scene brought the entire audience to tears despite the emptiness of the dialogue.

The second time I saw Donna Murphy was at a performance of the off-Broadway musical Lysistrata Jones. I was using Charles Strouse's unused ticket that night, and apparently a lot of other Broadway celebrities had been invited to the performance too. (The musical, by the way, was okay but not great. It was kind of like Glee minus some of the heart and most of the wit.) And there was Donna Murphy again, sitting across the aisle from me!

While I'm throwing out names of famous people, let me throw out a couple more: Alan Green and Helene York. Alan is currently in Sister Act on Broadway, and Helene recently played Glinda in the national touring production of Wicked. These two are involved in Charles Strouse's musical revue, so I get to hang out in a room with both of them, a stage writer, and a music director three hours a week. Wow, right? Maybe some of their star power will rub off on me.

Speaking of star power, I saw the ballet The Bright Stream at the Met this week and was dazzled by every one of the dancers! Most ballets feature a few principles with a unified background ensemble, but this ballet showcased each dancer as a delightfully-unique character within the larger ensemble. Shostakovich's music was brilliant (hey--I keep "running into" this guy too!), and the show had its audience roaring from beginning to end. At one point, a wife dresses like her husband and the husband dresses like his wife in order to teach another couple a lesson about fidelity. It turns out that watching a man trying to teeter delicately en pointe and a woman trying to leap about the stage looking muscular is very entertaining! (Watch the YouTube Clip) I think I've discovered a new ballet favorite.

I've also discovered that it is 1:00 AM here in New York. I'm heading to bed now, but judging by my recent track record, I'm sure we'll "run into" each other again sometime soon. . .