[Dixielandjazz] Music at NYC's Museum of Modern Art

[Steve barbone]

Long article about the resumption of Music, 1/2 classical and 1/2 jazz at
MoMA in NYC. Also shows the influence of Marsalis & Lincoln Center on the
present growth of the new audience for jazz.

Not Dixieland, but there are parallels to be drawn. Explore new venues, new
audiences, new sources of money, sponsorships etc. etc. There are lots of
opportunities out there for those who promote the music.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

A Little More Night Music, Outdoors at the Modern

By ANNE MIDGETTE Published: July 15, 2005 NY Times

Picasso's "She-Goat" is still in place. The pavements are still made of
white marble. There is still lush greenery and cool water. The Museum of
Modern Art may have reopened last fall in a brand-new incarnation, but its
heart is five decades old: the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden,
surrounded on three sides by museum buildings, retains basically the same
layout that Philip Johnson detailed in 1953.

MUSICAL OASIS Summergarden returns to the Museum of Modern Art's sculpture
garden on Sunday. 

On Sunday, the garden is reinstating another familiar tradition: outdoor
concerts, which have been held there since the 1960's - and under the
present rubric of Summergarden, since 1971 - with a few interruptions for
renovations to the building over the years.

Yet Summergarden, while beloved of the public, has not enjoyed quite the
same critical acclaim as the rest of the museum. In fact, one reliable
Summergarden tradition in recent decades involved music critics complaining
about the ambient traffic noise on West 54th Street, year in, year out,
despite substantial amplification of the music. So everyone is waiting with
curiosity (on the public's part) and perhaps trepidation (on the museum's)
to see how the new incarnation of Summergarden will fit in its new, old
home.

Not that Summergarden has ever been all that established a tradition. The
format and nature of the Modern's outdoor concerts has been changing
virtually since their inception. The first series, in the 60's, was called
Jazz in the Garden. In the 70's, the garden was open free to the public on
weekend nights until 11, and Summergarden involved a wide range of different
kinds of events - from folk music to dance to performance art - as well as
classical music and jazz. It wasn't until 1987 that the museum began the
collaboration with the Juilliard School that led to the form of Summergarden
familiar for the last decade: performances of modern and contemporary music
performed by Juilliard's contemporary-music ensemble.

Accompanying the museum's relaunching is a new format that is less a
departure than a return to the series's origins. Three of this summer's six
concerts are performances by the New Juilliard Ensemble under its conductor
Joel Sachs, who has been artistic director of Juilliard's Summergarden
concerts since 1993. And three of them are by jazz artists presented by Jazz
at Lincoln Center, whose artistic director is Wynton Marsalis.

The season's theme is "Premieres." Mr. Sachs is offering a host of works new
to New York, the United States, the Western Hemisphere and even, in one or
two cases, the world. (One hopes that the distinction "Western Hemisphere
premiere" will not be noted in too many concert programs.) The jazz artists
have responded even more directly. Myra Melford and Greg Osby are both
composing new works reacting directly to the site: Mr. Osby's is called
"Cityscape Oasis"; Ms. Melford is focusing on a single sculpture, Joan
Miró's "Moonbird." And Henry Threadgill has assembled a brand-new ensemble,
3+3, for the event.

"Wynton Marsalis and the programming department focused on MoMA's aim to
make this a dialogue between established and experimental, past and
present," said Katherine E. Brown, Jazz at Lincoln Center's executive
director.

She continued to enumerate the objectives: "Lots of different musical
influences, extremely creative, address a broad range of audiences, old to
young, of different interests and backgrounds. Wynton was also interested in
artists who could connect to MoMA and the sculpture."

Museums are constantly exploring the question of how to present music. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art presents chamber concerts and recitals; the
Guggenheim offers examinations of works in progress. At the Modern, the
definitions of "modern" and "contemporary," and the differences between
them, are as relevant in music programming as in art. Modern includes
Picasso and Stravinsky; contemporary, Andreas Gursky or Valentin Bibik, who
died in 2003, but whose String Quartet No. 5 is having its first performance
at the concert on Aug. 14.

Paul Zukofsky, who preceded Mr. Sachs as the head of Juilliard's
contemporary ensemble, deliberately set out to mirror the museum's
collection and mission while acting like a curator, programming summer-long
"shows" that were usually focused, thoughtfully and engagingly, on one or
two composers: Debussy and Bartok in 1989, Satie in 1991. He presented not
one but two John Cage festivals (appropriately, given that Cage's first
concert in New York, in February 1943, was held at the museum): one for the
composer's 75th birthday and one five years later. The 80th-birthday
festival became sadly remembered for the fact that Cage died during the
course of it. 

Mr. Sachs is known for programming a wide range of little-known music, often
by living composers. His Summergarden concerts have had thematic tie-ins to
the museum's shows as well. The first one, in 1993, focused on Latin
American music to coincide with the museum's show "Latin American Artists of
the 20th Century." In 1996, he wanted to plan something to coincide with the
museum's Picasso show.

"I said, 'Let's do Picasso's Paris,' " Mr. Sachs recounted on the phone last
week. "The curator said Picasso didn't like music that much. I said, 'He
collaborated with Stravinsky.' The curator said, 'Yeah, but he didn't care
for it.' I did 100 years of new music in France, instead."

Glenn D. Lowry, the museum's director, said: "We leave programming open to
our partners. We want a level of independence, because that's what's going
to produce the best music."

Independence, of course, costs money, and there is less of that at
Summergarden than there was in the days when Mobil Oil was the regular
sponsor. The museum will not comment on the current cost of financing the
series, but one could speculate that Mr. Sachs's Juilliard students come
somewhat cheaper than, say, Sonny Rollins (who gave a solo performance at
Summergarden in 1985). For the students, of course, one attraction is
getting paid at all; performances of the New Juilliard Ensemble at Juilliard
during the school year are, of course, viewed as part of their education,
and therefore unpaid.

A major force in the continuation of Summergarden was a longtime museum
employee named Ethel P. Shein, whose role at the institution seems to have
outstripped her various titles. Those included executive assistant to the
museum's last director, Richard E. Oldenburg, and director of special
programming and events. Her unofficial roles included "institutional memory"
and protector of Summergarden; a music lover, she not only helped continue
to find financing for the series after the corporations bowed out but was
instrumental in establishing the relationship to the Juilliard School. Shein
died in 2004; her memorial, established by the trustees, is the Ethel P.
Shein Fund for Music at MoMA, which will finance the series for the
foreseeable future.

Artistically, the addition of Jazz at Lincoln Center makes sense, bringing a
new energy and dimension to a series that had narrowed to one very specific
kind of music. Jazz at Lincoln Center is also able to work with the series's
programming flexibility; rather than years of lead time, the whole
collaboration came together in a matter of months.

For the museum, the most immediate concerns about the new series are the
logistics of putting on a show in the new garden. While the kinks are being
ironed out, the museum may even hope the concerts don't do too well at
first. Summergarden concerts were last presented here in 1999. (A strike
canceled the 2000 season, and the 2001 season was presented in Bryant Park,
as preparations began for the three-year renovation.) They were held twice
each, on Friday and Saturday nights. This year, each will be offered once,
on Sunday, with free tickets distributed starting at 5:30 and the garden
opening at 7 p.m. for an 8 o'clock concert.

"The advantage of Friday night was that we started right after the museum
closed," Mr. Sachs said. "I loved that we would get people who were not
necessarily a music audience. But the museum was terrified of that prospect
this year, because they've been getting 5,000 people a day. If they all came
out into the garden ..." His voice trailed off, conjuring the specter of
such masses in a space that for his concerts usually holds, he said, "crowds
numbering in the substantial hundreds."

Another, more concrete difficulty with holding concerts on Friday and
Saturday in the garden's new configuration is the Modern: the new restaurant
as successful as the museum that houses it. The south side of the garden,
where Mr. Sachs and his forces used to perform, now holds outdoor tables
full of diners. Concerts this summer will be played at the garden's western
end - the narrow side of its rectangle - against the glass wall of the
museum's new atrium. But at least on Sunday, when the restaurant is closed,
the musicians won't have to compete with the chink of glass and silverware
and the hum of conversation.

There are other basic logistical issues for Melanie Monios, who has been
Summergarden's production manager since 1989, to contend with. For the first
time, concerts won't be canceled in the event of rain; rather, they will be
moved indoors, to a space that will allow for about half the garden
audience. But setting up takes a couple of hours, so the decision to go out
or in will have to be made long before curtain time. And the sound system
has to be worked out.

"We know it's noisy," Ms. Monios said. "On the record. This is not an ideal
acoustic space. We're in the middle of Manhattan."

"Performing on Sunday," she added, "may help."