A note on the performance by Paul Masse, Artistic Director
* * * * *
Last week, deep in the cobwebs of my computer’s documents folder, buried amid my notes and research about the short life of George Gershwin, I found the file titled ProgNotes92YMar4. This would be a mundane enough file name, but in this infinite free-fall of a year, it exposes its contents as wildly outdated and irrelevant. Ah, yes, March 4th, 2020, that date back in “ye olde tymes” when I sat in a busy steakhouse haunt on 52nd Street, having a late-night meal amongst tourists and scribbling program notes for the “Lyrics & Lyricists” evening I’d conceived, its opening performance fast approaching. Much was still to be done, completing new arrangements for two pianos of complex Gershwin orchestral works, getting materials to the cast of five glorious performers, finishing script edits, strategizing rehearsal time with the amazing director Kelli Barclay, quotes for press blurbs, all the miscellany “essential” to presenting a concert at a renowned arts institution for a celebrated series that has existed for just over a decade longer than I have.
Of course, that date on the file requires the old definition of “essential” when considering its content. In just a few short days, the word would stand alongside a handful of others like “social” and “distant” to be morphed into the rather inelegant pandemic-speak that has redefined not only the ways in which we move about the world but the ways in which we regard others. Those of us who have made our livelihoods in the performing arts watched as the new usage of such words dismantled our industry, condescended our craft, and left us with very little to cling to not only for our financial survival, but for what is indeed the essence of most who dared to commit their lives to that passion for communication and expression.
The Gershwin program “postponed,” after a hastily assembled, nerve-wracking “livestream” of twenty or so minutes of piano music (playing whatever I thought I could easily shrink back to one piano on the fly with the lowest risk of horrendously wrong notes), I adhered to guidance as best I could and retreated to my Harlem apartment with my dog to awake each morning (read: afternoon) to a fresh bit of news to send me yet further into despair. I watched a handful of the early attempts many of my colleagues made at streaming performance, those improvised bathroom recording studios, computer screens reminiscent of the Bye Bye Birdie “Telephone Hour,” Broadway’s biggest stars belting notes at their screens, their big moments often halted mid-measure by that little buffering wheel. I marveled at the perseverance and adaptability of so many of my colleagues, while simultaneously concerned about the ramifications of being too adaptable and accommodating. Asked to participate in a handful of such events, I politely declined. For me, the energy of collaboration is everything; being in one room with my peers, sharing a piano bench with a composer sketching out a piece of music that never existed before, smelling the Olympian effort of a Broadway chorus rehearsing a nine-minute dance number for the seventh time that day, feeling the vibration in the room of lungs sending air across the vocal cords of stars known and yet-to-be, feeling collectively the impact of words sent across lips three or four or five feet away from you, the impact of merely sharing the same oxygen, the unspoken secrets in direct eye contact with an old friend, the hugs.
Fast forward to this past Monday afternoon and a masked, “socially-distant,” covidically copacetic rehearsal with two singers who will perform on this jigsaw puzzle of an endeavor we are creating, dubbed “Preludes.” Somehow I had convinced fourteen of the most talented people I know to go on a vaguely described journey with me in creating five programs for a series of L&L-oriented content for this streaming platform I had so resisted for all these many months. The difference for me would be that, while the seats would be empty and we’d be creating these programs one or two performers at a time over several weeks, they would be standing on an actual stage again, with appropriately simple lighting, me twelve feet away at a grand piano, interpreting songs and stories the way we always have, together in a space, feeling the emotional journey together without even needing to discuss it. As I looked up at Katharine Henly and Zachary Noah Piser on Monday singing “… I think I hear the sound of wrap your arms around me …” at each other from opposite sides of an empty room, I could not place a word on what I felt; they’d never met each other before that day, but we were all three in the same room pouring our hearts into this moment and all of its restrictions and chaos; it seemed as if none of us ever wanted that song to end. A few minutes later, discussing with Zachary how we might put across the iconic and relentlessly covered “Moon River” to hear it in a slightly different way, we zeroed in on one line of this tiny ten-line lyric: “We’re after the same rainbow’s end …” There we were, doing our version of keeping our heads above water, maintaining our health and sanity, feeling like our world is disappearing and all we’ve worked for has been deemed “non-essential” …. In this moment, with this little song we’ve all heard for decades, a moment of clarity set in. We are all here together, just trying to connect. We are a social species, we rely on each other, we crave touch and connection and intimacy, we long for empathy and understanding. And here is this song. It has been here the whole time, and whatever Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini’s original intent, this is what it meant to us in that one moment. And we must not lose sight of it. We must see that our best hope for a loving and caring world, our best means of communicating and understanding those different from us, is in the arts. It is our most enduring human essence since before anyone even thought to write it down.
In the following line, Mercer wrote: “ … waitin’ ‘round the bend, my huckleberry friend…” While Mercer has been quoted as merely referencing his memories of growing up in the South, picking berries, and the connection of the word to that journeying character of Americana we know as Huckleberry Finn, this term “huckleberry friend” has come to mean different things to different people, but its interpretation always leads one back to the idea of traveling through this life together, side by side, on what may seem a never-ending stream of yearning unfulfilled. “… Two drifters, off to see the world; there’s such a lot of world to see.”
As we share this yearning through the limited means available to us right now, please know that while we are going to need all the life preservers anyone can spare, our passion remains essential and our essence remains a lifeline. Humanity needs togetherness, empathy, and love. Artists will provide that, but only if we refuse to allow them to be regarded as extracurricular, unnecessary, non-essential. The arts are anything but that.