My new City Arts column is reviews of newly released recordings by Henry Cole and the Afro-Beat Collective, Steve Lehman Trio, Less Magnetic, Esperanza Spalding, Michael Bates and Wayne Escoffrey. You may have to pick up a hard-copy of the paper for that. But the issue also features my interview with Limor Tomer, the Metropolitan Museum’s recently appointed Curator of Performance.

Like the interviews published in the New York Times magazine, the City Arts Interview is severely edited for space considerations: It’s a compression. Below is the full version of an afternoon discussion I had with Limor, the week the official announcement of the Met’s 2012-2013 schedule of performances — with her programming, exciting in scope and imagination.

Tell me about your new job.

LT: It’s amazing. Awesome. It really is. What can I say? When I was offered the job I was very conflicted. I was at the Whitney. So I took a piece a paper and did a list of pros and cons, like you do. And there was only one item on each side: It’s the Met, and It’s the Met. That is the whole story.

I think that my being there now and what the possibilities are available now are all about Tom Campbell, the new director. He’s been there I think he’s in his third year. Very short in Met terms. And he’s turning this tanker around.

Performance has always been a part of what happens at the Metropolitan Museum. Is it now as a bigger part, more central?

LT: It’s going to a much more integrated part. What Tom wanted to do, if he was going to make a commitment to performance, he wanted it to be part of the museum. It doesn’t make sense otherwise, for the Met to be a concert hall in New York City. The challenge and the opportunity is how do you advance and present performance work – whatever that means, from performantive to moving bodies to sound to stray concerts – in a museum context. How, and where, and why. And what.

How did you approach all of that?

LT: So I’m sitting there, it’s the summer, the current season is done, the brochures are out, and everyone is asking me, “What are you going to do?” I decided to not even think about which artists, which ensembles, I decided not to start from there. I decided to live with it a little while and to develop some organizing principles. And I came up with four, over my process. It was six months, maybe, of living in the museum, observing, meeting the curators. I came up with four principles which I think will not only inform the current 12-13 season, but will really take me through. So the four organizing principles:

The the first one is about the Met itself. What I call Only at the Met. What can we do that’s unique to the Met, that can only happen there that can’t happen anywhere else, or that can’t happen in a certain way. That includes a lot of things. So you’ll see a lot of performances in galleries, or performances that resonate with exhibitions, or performances that initiate exhibitions. Or iconic moments in the history of the City. It sounds a little nebulous, but things that are really important, that the Met can do in certain way.

For instance, in this year, big Phillip Glass anniversary year, orchestras and concerts at Carnegie and this and that – but we get to present Philip himself, playing with violinist Tim Fain, in the Temple of Dendur. That can’t happen anywhere else. Not only did he chose to do the only performance he’s doing for the met, he could have done it anywhere else, but also we’re presenting in that extraordinary space. Those kinds of moments. That’s “Only at the Met.”

The second thing is “The Artists’ Voice.” I was very interested to see what would happen if we introduced living artists into the mix. What they would bring, and how we would do that. I’ve developed several different ways, ranging from inviting performance-oriented artists, like choreographers, to lead gallery tours, which is unbelievable! It felt like a good idea when I thought of it, but then when we actually do it!

We had Mark Morris gave a gallery tour of the New American Wing painting galleries, just last Monday. And it was unbelievable. What he chose to talk about, and what he choose not to talk about. We went into the gallery with Madame X, and he’s not even looking at Madame X. He’s looking at some small bronze object, that is of interest to him because of the gesture. He commented on the floor – the floor in the galleries is soft. I’ve walked through the galleries 80,000 times, did I notice?

So next year, there will be more, which we already confirmed. We invited two choreographers to lead gallery tours: Bill T. Jones will lead the gallery tour of the same, the American Paintings Gallery, because they’re new, they just opened, there’s a lot of energy. He specifically is interested in looking at the history of that collection, the American paintings, and the role it played in the founding of the museum, the met, as a response or counter to the Civil War. Which I knew nothing about. I’m learning.

Is that a reason the Met started?

LT: It’s at least a theory. I don’t want to talk much about that, because I don’t know anything about it, but he does. And the curator does. And they will co-lead a tour. And it’s going to be an amazing thing. And also a young choregrapher, whose name is Miguel Guitarrez, is going to co-lead a tour of a big Warhol sow, called “50 Artists, 50 Years,” Warhol’s impact on 50 years of artists. That’s one way.

I mean, it’s astounding. As part of my idea of introducting the artists voice I spent the entire summer last summer inviting all my friends, the artists, to come and walk with me through the museum on Mondays, when it’s closed, and see what sparks. I was walking through with John Zorn, and it turns out he comes to the Museum once a week, every week. We were walking through with Zorn and he said — this was three days after the Renaissance portrait show opened — he said, “Have you seen it? It’s amazing!” He knew every room in that museum. He was taking me through the period rooms in the American wing, you can’t even find it, and he knows every object.. . .

Another way was I was walking through the museum with DJ Spooky, the Oceanic Gallery, and he was talking about his experience in Vanuatu, and his work with Oceanic instruments. Then we go to the Asian gallery, and he talks about what he’s done with Asian film. It’s endless. Out of that walk through and further conversations, we realized we actually could create an artists residency. So we launched the first-ever artist’s residency in the history of the Met. DJ Spooky will basically be there – not physically, he doesn’t have a physical space, but he’ll have an ID, and a connection.

He’ll do five different performances that all connect with either galleries or collections or particular objects. He’ll do at least four panel discussions that connect with the contemporary residences of whatever the work it, Korea, or Oceanic or there’s this big Civil War photography show that he will use the images from to create a new piece. And then he will also be working with different constituencies that the museum works with, like the NYC public school teachers. He’ll do workshops with public school teachers, he’ll create audio guides, he’ll infiltrate a lot of different areas that the museum is working in.

That’s a big way to introduce an artist’s voice. A lot of time what gets called a “residency” in New York City is some guaranteed gigs in New York City. And that’s great, it’s not bad, but it’s not what you really should call a residency – it’s not cohesive, not integrated . . .

Have you worked with Spooky before?

LT: Yes, many times. It certainly adds to my level of comfort, knowing him, knowing how to work with him, what he can bring. I was at Lincoln Center when he did “The Rebirth of a Nation.” I invited him to remix Varese with the Whitney. I don’t remember why we were doing Varese at the Whitney, but there was some connection.

That’s two.

LT: My third one principle is more linear, straightforward – how do we work with what’s going on in the museum? Again I turned to the curators. And the curators who have shows coming up. Together we designed brainstormed or came up with these suites of programming, both performative and straight lecture, panels, conversations, film screenings, that deal directly with the shows they have coming up. That is the heart and soul of this job: Working with the curators.

How many curators are there at the museum?

LT: 200.

200! Have you met them all?

LT: Oh no-no-no-no. Not even close. But I am working closely with Maxwell Hearn, who is Chairman of the Asian Art Department, for instance. His specialty is China but he heads the entire Asian art department and he and I put together a performance of “The Peony Pavilion,” the famous Chinese opera, which will be staged in the Astor Court, the Chinese scholar garden at the Met. It’s Tan Dun’s version. He created his version from an excerpt of the entire opera. And then out of that work Mike is going to create a contextual show about Chinese gardens in China. So in this case, performance drives what’s in the galleries. It goes both ways. That’s amazing.

You’ve been at the Museum just a year, right?

LT: I got there last July. Less than a year. There’s a lot of new energy. Maxwell Hearn had been in the museum many years, but he was appointed head of the department by Tom. There have been a lot of of big, big changes.

My fourth principle is about how we deal with classics. The idea of a classic piece, or a masterpiece.

I was thinking, “How does the Met deal with the classics? How do they deal with Rembrandt?” Well, they’ll do a Rembrandt show, and they’ll do Rembrandt show after Rembrandt show, and every one of them will move the scholarship forward, because they’ll do it from this angle, or from that angle. They’re going to do Bernini, I’m sure they’ve done many Bernini shows, but this one is about his process of working with models, so they’ll be showing both his sketches and clay models. Right now they have Degas and Rembrandt side by side, portraits. Showing how influenced Degas was by Rembrandt. So those shows happen, but every time they happen they happen in a way that moves the scholarship forward.

I thought “Ok, what’s a great body of work that commands that kind of constant revisiting?” I said, “Ok, we’ve just had a Beethoven Quartet cycle — we’re going to have another one! And now we’re going to look at it from a different perspective, we’re going to do it differently.” Instead of having six concerts over the course of a season, we’re doing it as a two-weekend marathon. Total immersion. So the format is different. We’ve invited one of the most renown British quartets, very famous in Europe but unknown in this country, so we’re adding that element to it. It’s not a quartet you can hear regularly at Lincoln Center or Carnegie. And then on top of that, I’m working with the curators of European paintings to create a context of lectures that deal with Beethoven at the nexus of the death of neo-classicism, and the launch of the genius myth and Romanticism. So you could go to that lecture if you want to, or the panel, you can go to the concert, and you can go look at the Davids.

And we’re going to build it out that way. The next step would be, I’m working with colleagues in the education department to create some sort of a mechanism, something we email or you can download from the museum website before the concert that gives you six objects to look at that relates somehow to the concert you’re going to hear.

You have all the interactive media going on, too. Do you have a staff for all this?

LT: I do. And the staff is great. It’s undergone a lot of change.

Did you not have staff at the Whitney?

LT: At the Whitney my staff was tiny. First of all, at the Breuer building there isn’t really a proper venue, At the Met there’s a 700-seat auditorium plus a lot of galleries that can hold performances. But at the Whitney is was me, part-time and I had an incredible producer, part-time. That was all that was needed.

The Met is a much bigger operation. This is a $3 million-dollar-a-year, free-standing concert series with 60 to 70 lectures a year, and something like 50 concerts a year. Now this concert series, when I was a student I used to go all the time. It was definitely one of the most important classical chamber music series in the city. It just wasn’t integrated into the Met or any way connected to the Met. So for me it isn’t about whether we’re going to do this genre or that genre, it’s all driven by what is unique to the Met. What can I come up with that makes sense in the context of this place?

What is the lead-time for your programming?

LT: I just finished the 2012-2013 season, and I’m beginning to work on the 2013-2014 season. I’m on the exhibition timeline.

It sounds like a dream job.

LT: I have to tell you one more thing about the classics, which will be especially interesting to you. One of the things the Met does it focuses on iconic people, performers or creators. So in the 2012 – ’13 season we’re going to have Charles Lloyd, having his only concert in NY of the season, it will be with his current trio with Jason Moran and Eric Harland, and also this incredible Greek singer whose name is Maria Farnatu. She actually brings a lot of Byzantine chants into the mix, and it connects, though it’s marginal, but it does connect with the big Byzantium show we’re going to have. And we’re not doing it because we want to have more jazz. We’re presenting Charles Lloyd because he’s an extraordinary American artist who warrants this kind of consideration.

Tell me more about how this connects with what you’ve been doing, your own training.

LT: I have a black belt in classical piano.

What was your repertoire?

LT: Oh, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Shumann, and Henry Cowell – wooowooowooowoo! Luckily I had one teacher at Juilliard who was the modern music specialist and taught me about John Cage and Henry Cowell, Charles Ives, Lou Harrison, all that. So I am conservatory- trained, and played classical piano for 10 years. Then in 1984 I went to see “Einstein on the Beach” and I left the theater after four hours, and I couldn’t remember why I was practicing Chopin études anymore. It was a complete crisis of confidence. But it came at the right age. Within a few years I’d turned my life around, I quit playing piano, I went to work with Harvey Lichtenstein at BAM, I just put myself in a very different trajectory that had to do with living artists and very contemporary work.

May I ask how old you are?

LT: 49.

Did you have a background, your family being artistically inclined?

LT: No. A lot of academics and scientists.

What were you like growing up in Israel?

LT: I was the girl who played piano. I lived in a little suburb just outside of Tel Aviv. And yeah, came to New York at 13, went to Juilliard pre-college, college. It’s funny, because it was really my experiences going to BAM that . . . Because we were pretty bourgie, and I was playing piano, so my mother thought we should have a subscription to the Philharmonic. And we did have one for one year, but we really couldn’t afford it. So she noticed there was something called the Brooklyn Philharmonic, which was a quarter of the price. So she bought me the subscription and I would get on the 2 and 3 trains and trundle down there, during high school. And she didn’t know this but it was the heyday of Lukas Foss. And I was hearing Penderecki, and just completely insane music. . .and that started to open me up, in a way that really set the stage for my curiosity.

You did post-grad work in esthetics?

LT: At NYU. That was more out of fear than anything. Fear of life. Fear of having to be out of school. For someone who’s been at school all their life, it’s suddenly – Okay! And also, when I was at Juilliard, it was a very different time than it is now. I felt that I needed to get educated. I really did. I didn’t sign up for esthetics for any particular reason. It was the program that made the most sense that was music-based but academic. I didn’t want another music conservatory thing. I needed to read books, to find out who Heidegger is, to understand literary theory and other things that people need to be in the world.

Do you think it informed you?

LT: Oh my God yes, absolutely! It was critical. I did all the course work, I got pretty far and I wrote a proposal for a dissertation, and I realized at that point I wasn’t going to spend seven years writing a dissertation to become an academic. It just wasn’t what I wanted to do. But the education I got there was critical. At that time in the late ’80s you didn’t come out of Juilliard with a good education. Now you do. I see the kids now and they know a lot of stuff.

What else has changed in NYC since the late ’80s?

LT: I think Harvey’s Lichtenstein’s legacy has taken hold. You have new music, contemporary music, living composers everywhere. Carnegie, Lincoln Center – Lincoln Center festival is a direct result and outgrown of it. All that stuff used to only happen at BAM. The other thing that I feel is there’s no longer such a thing as uptown and downtown. It’s just gone. It’s everywhere. And another thing, because of the tough economic situation, it’s really the larger institutions that can afford to take risks. The smaller institutions that can’t take rists will continue to present Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson. But the Met Opera can be the one that’s doing new opera, and the NY Phil can start a new music series, and Lincoln Center can start the White Light festival – they can afford it. It’s really exciting!

I’m interested in what’s happening at smaller institutions, such as Roulette.

LT: I love Roulette. It’s places like Roulette that led the contemporary revolution, they have to look at what’s now. Who are the people who they were championing in Tribeca, and champion them now, but of course at that time the overhead was a lot lower.

It’s a challenge, I’m sure — but not one you have to deal with right now. You sort of winced when I asked about a staff. Is it hard for you to be a manager?

LT: Not really. It’s new. But I’m collaborative in a really deep way. And I’m not hierarchical. I like to work with very special people. And I had that at the Whitney, and at my radio job. It’s us sitting in a room, asking what would be incredible new and fun and challenging, and who is the best person to do it.

You’re looking for creative people and input, you don’t feel you have to be dictating everything, you’re looking for ideas. Is that the way Harvey worked too?

LT: Yes and no. In the realm of ideas, yes, and when there were big decisions about the trajectory, he would hash it out with his senior staff. The other thing I learned from Harvey was to listen, listen. Have your door open and talk to artists all day long. Don’t be afraid of it.

Is that how you keep up?

LT: Yeah. That and going out a lot.

Are you out every night?

LT: In the fall I was out every night, then I put a moratorium on it, and I was out the nights a week, either because they were my own shows or things I absolutely had to go to. But it’s tough, it’s really tough.

Where do you like to go?

LT: The only place it’s hard for me to get to is Williamsburg, because of the trains. But other than that, I go wherever the thing is. Zankel, Roulette, wherever.

I love the Studio Museum. They just came over and we had a great conversation about the things we could do together I’m not as connected to what’s going on in Harlem right now as I was. I was a freelancer for a lot of years, and at that time I worked for a lot of different places. One of those places was Symphony Space. When I worked at Symphony Space I was really plugged in because it was really about the uptown neighborhood. But now I’m not as connected to it.

And you listen broadly, too?

LT: Right now I have a really good opportunity to revisit the classical repertoire, because my daughter is nine. We put on the Beethoven violin concerto and her mind is blown.

Does she play?

LT: She does, she plays violin and started to play French horn. And this is completely off topic, but – you know, the Met was struggling with what to do about children’s programming, and I thought about it for months. And I decided what I really want to do is focus on the older childhood ages, six to 13 and partner with parents. At that age the kids are old enough to sit, and they’re not old enough to not go with you. And that’s what I know how to do, I think.

So we’re gearing a lot of our hard-core classical concerts and our other concerts – a lot of our concerts are ready for that age. They start at 7 pm, they’re on Fridays and Saturdays, We instituted a new price for kids that age, starting at seven and up: $1 – zero risk. We’re doing away with intermissions whenever possible. Straight through, 70 minutes, 90 minutes – if we need intermissions, we’ll do them, but a lot of the concerts are just like that.

Parents need a couple of things. First of all, they have no idea where to take their kids. Parents don’t know where to go, but the Met is a brand name. Another thing that I think people forget that keeps people from coming to concerts, if you work like a dog like everybody does in New York and you’re out and work late, you don’t want to get a baby sitter and not spend the night with your kid. You want to spend the night with your kid. So what if you come to the museum with your kid? You can have a snack, you can go to the concert, and if the kids get bored, you go to the Arms and Armor court, it’s right there. The museum is open ’til 9 on Fridays and Saturdays when we do our concerts. Our concerts start at 7. It’s a whole package.

Is the audience at the Met reflective of all the constituencies in town?

LT: I want to answer that a little differently, then you can ask it another way if you want. I want to talk about the difference between the music audience and the visual art audience, which I found out working at both the Whitney and now the Met. Visual art audiences are much more curious and very open to looking at contemporary work. They love their classics and their El Grecos but they’ll also walk through the contemporary galleries, and it’s not a big deal. If they hate the work, they’ll say “I hated that work. I’m going next week to see another show.”

Can you imagine that happening in a concert hall? If you go to a concert and somebody programs a Boulez piece, you’ll say you’ll never go to a concert again, and that’s it. I don’t know why that is. But I find the visual arts audience is much more tolerant about stuff that stinks, or that they don’t like, that’s not their thing – they’ll come out and try again.

They want to go to the lectures, and learn more about it. They’re curious. That was an amazing thing to me when I understood it. I don’t know why people who are hardcore music lovers who go to the Chamber Music Socity of Lincoln Center, why they are so resistant to music they don’t already know. That drives me mad.

Music does seem to impose more time demands than visual arts.

LT: Time-based arts. Yes, you can’t leave in the middle.

And sometimes it seems classical listeners have a more rigid mindset. If you listen to classical music, that’s it, that’s what music is. Anything else – no. Visual arts are more plastic. . .

LT: There’s much more flow.

Do you have plans to engender more curiosity among audiences?

LT: I’m all about curiosity. I don’t know if I’ll be successful in actually creating curiosity, but I’m hoping . . . At the the press conference I described the DJ Spooky residency, and someone said, “Oh, so you’re interested in attracting a younger demographic?” I said I’m not interested in a younger demographic per se. I’m interested in a curious demographic. That’s the heart of it.

I want to find ways to engage with that curious audience. Maybe it’s a curious audience that goes to the 11 o’clock lecture, but doesn’t think to go to the concert, and maybe we can make a connection to make them think about going to the concert. Or maybe it’s the audience that comes to the Warhol or Bernini show, and we can kind of interest them in the performative thing, whether it’s a concert or a dance piece or whatever. Something that’s actually on a digital platform, where the venue is online. And create something like that. Really just expand people’s knowledge and engage that curiosity. I don’t know if it’s possible to make someone who’s not curious curious. But I hope we can.

Does the Met draw across the city’s economic spectrum?

LT: I don’t think I’ve been there long enough to answer that question. When I walk around the galleries it looks that way: Tourists, and young people and school groups, every demographic and ethnic group you can imagine. The concerts are fairly pricey, which one of the things I’m doing about that is – well, I’ve started with a tiny bit but intend to do a ton of stuff that’s free with museum admission. That was the model at the Whitney, performance was just something that happened in the gallery, Everything was free with museum admission. Even most of the performances at the Biennial are like that. Some are ticketed — I think that has more to do with crowd control. So we’ve already done a couple of things that were free with museum admission.

The biggest was three weeks after I got to the Met – we did a big concert at the Temple of Dendur for the September 11 anniversary that was free with museum admission, and then for the opening of the American painting galleries we had a performance in the America scuplture court that was beyond free admission. It kind of just happened. It was the Asphalt Orchestra: Two members started playing out of the blue in the great hall, in the lobby. It was like, “What?”

The volunteers are starting to call security. They started playing and then they came together, and people were like following them, and they played, and then they started walking while playing, and led 200 people with them through the Egyptian halls through the Temple, back into the American wing, 200 people following them saying, “What is going on?” and when they got to the American wing the rest of the band was there pretending to be sitting in the café, and then they got up and the performance started. It was fantastic.

I can’t pull that off without the curatorial group that controls the American wing. I don’t have that kind of range. So I go to the curators and say, “Let’s do this.” And the curators in the American wing were all over it. They’d never heard of the Asphalt Orchestra, they’d never heard of any of this, but they got it, and they were delighted. As long as we do it carefully, with respect for all the objects, they’re completely thrilled to collaborate.

Do you remember when you first visited the Met?

LT: My first trip to the Met in my life? Yes.

I walked through the park, I was 13, I had just gotten to New York that summer. I think I was with my uncle who was visiting from Israel. We went through the Egyptian wing, we went through the old Greek and Roman halls, I think the Temple of Dendur had just opened, it was pretty new. We didn’t do the American wing, I don’t know what shape the American wing was in – it has just now finished a 10-year renovation. Then we went upstairs and looked at the European paintings galleries. And I was exhausted, and then we walked home.

You can’t do the Met in one day.

LT: Listen, I can’t even go upstairs. I’ll get lost. I confine myself to the ground floor.

What do you go to there for, yourself?

LT: There are two ways I must answer that: for myself and with my daughter. For myself, I go to the Asian wing. I have a lot to learn. I don’t know enough or anything about that work. I’m starting, I’m trying to learn. Again one of the things that happened we walked through in the summer, I was walking through with Peter Sellars and it was really the objects in the Asian department that sparked him. He was just effervescent. Something about those galleries, I find myself there a lot.

They’re very peaceful.

LT: Yes, there are fewer visitors there.

And with your daughter?

LT: I mostly take her to the European paintings. I want her to get that in the DNA. I had the opportunity to go through the Louvre and the British Museum and the Prado when I was young. It just lowers the threshold of entry for your whole life. Then you’re not just intimidated. The museum belongs to you. And museum. You just go.

Is the trend now to bring people into the museum in through performance, and to use performance to air the art out?

LT: On the positive side, I think performance can and needs to be completely integrated into the museum context and can be done in a really authentic way. It needs to be done. Especially if you’re dealing with contemporary work. The artists are going that way and have been for 30 years. It’s not new. You have to allow for that. And there are museums that deal with performance curatorially, and it becomes part of the mix. Like the Met now, MOMA now, and the Whitney always, always, always. In the ’60s and ’70s before the letters B-A-M were ever put together, Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown Steve Reich, Phil Glass, Meredith Monk, Bruce Neumann, all those guys were performing at the Whitney.

Then there’s the fact that museums want to respond to the way people choose their leisure time, and why they go to museums, how to get them to go to museums. “Well, people like performance, and they like the experience of a social thing, so let’s have a Friday night thing!” And those programs sometimes get run out of the visitors services area, or the outreach areas and its’ not really thought of curatorially, and that is kind of less interesting to me. Also the museums that tend to do that, they don’t have a lot of experience with performance, they don’t understand the economics of it and how much money they’re going to loose. They just see people – “Indie rock is really big, let’s do an indie rock series!” But they don’t realize how much something is going to cost them. And if they don’t have an auditorium, it becomes a whole other thing.

Is performance always a money looser?

LT: Performance? Of course! Performance is not something you can acquire or gift or transact – you’re selling experience. As you probably know, ticket prices account for a very small percentage of the overhead of a perforamnce. You have to make up the rest. One way or another.

Are you responsible for fundraising also?

LT: I am up to my eyeballs with my colleagues in development, yes. We are like this.

But you’re not thinking about the next thing you’re going to do.

LT: I am so into what I’m doing now. Also: the Met thinks in decades. You don’t go to the Met for five or six years. I mean, you just don’t know, I don’t know, I may be gone in five or six years. But the intention is that this place moves deliberately, and over time. What I’ve found is it can turn on a dime when it wants to. I pulled off some crazee stuff in my first few months. The free-with-admission concert was very complicated – the September 11concert – with four pieces, all living composers, lots of electronics, very complicated. Then we began last summer with a tabla symphony, 22 tabla players and singers on the steps of the Met, outside. Unfortunately just when it was going to start it started to rain, and we had to reschedual it for Oct in the Great hHll. But the same thing with Asphalt Orchestra: Very complicated, very serious. Moving big tubas and wearable drum kits in the sculpture garden? Let’s do it. Funding was found, rehearsal time was found, and it just rolled out. But in terms of impact and developing programs and building something – yes, I’m thinking long term, definitely.

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My Brooklyn neighborhood, called Kensington, is full of musicians, because residences are large and still semi-affordable. So I hear the guitarist across the street get excited while practicing, run into NEA Jazz Master pianist Kenny Barron when walking to the bakery and go to Sycamore, a flower shop-bar with basement recital room where  on Sunday nights the Brooklyn Jazz Underground stages intimate, advanced concerts, one of my favorites being the Schoenbeck Eisenstadt Family, featuring drummer Harris E. and his wife bassoonist Sara S., with good buddies Mike McGinnis on clarinet and Marika Hughes, cello (young Owen Eisenstadt was left at home, which is nearby, with a sitter).

The local scene is unique, but also akin to jazz communities across the country and throughout the world, as the Jazz Journalists Association highlights with its first Jazz Day Blogathon.

Jazz Day — April 13 — was designated as such by the U.S. Council of Mayors; go to the blogathon to read reports (or watch brief eyeJAZZ style videos) of activities in Kuwait (!), Italy, Finland, Sweden, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Spartanburg SC, Philly and Ambler PA, Ottawa, Cleveland, Indianapolis and Cambridge MA, not to mention Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Washington Heights neighborhoods  — all posted just in the first 24 hours of an online “event” that will last through April 30 (“International Jazz Day” as designated by UNESCO, thanks to Herbie Hancock).

What all the communities reporting in share is that local folks live the jazz they play and listen to. Jazzers in every community are scrappy, unpretentious, meritocritical (word?), fun-seekers. Jazz isn’t all they do, but jazzers are self-defined by keeping jazz very much in mind. We accept that jazz isn’t the commercial blockbusting, mainstream media darling that other musical forms can boast of being . . . and we tend to think that’s cool, as long as our music isn’t threatened by extinction, because we tend to think it has to last. Jazz has, after all, lasted for 100 or so years without being for most of them highly regarded much less generally respected or richly rewarded. But it rewards those of us involved in it, because the music, the process of creating it, the world-view it reflects seems to ring with something honest and true.

Which is not to say jazz communities can thrive without a little do-re-me, but on the other hand jazz activists learn how to make big fun out of what’s at hand. And we recognize each other wherever we go, so I’ve been able to make good friends fast on the island of Ponta Delgado in the Azores, in Amman, Jordan, in Kiev and Armenia, Cuba and Mexico, Gambia and London and Paris and Siena. Of course I really work at it — and I’m communitarianly (not so much communally) oriented. I still feel like part of the jazz community in Chicago where I grew up, though I moved out 30 years ago (I go back regularly). I have a stake in the jazz community in D.C., where I lived for only six months, decades back, and in San Francisco, Portland OR, Boston and New Orleans, all of which I like to visit. The ‘net lets us cast our communities broadly, and sustain ties cheaply, with ease — all to the good.

Some jazzers swear by the Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer standard, “Free and Easy,” with its tagline “Any place I hang my hat is home.”  Personally, I don’t go that far. Home is where I store my books and cds, snuggle up to my baby, keep my flutes, bang on the piano, sit at my desk, do the cooking. My current neighborhood is probably the most diverse, ethnically speaking, I’ve ever lived in, with an African Apostolic church on the corner, Russian emigrés up and down the block, our nice landlord and his large family representative of the greater Bangladeshi settlement around here, Hassids next door, people from the Caribbean isles and Mexico, cab drivers from everywhere and an influx of hipster refugees priced out of Manhattan. I ride my bike through this community, shop in its stores, explore its potential, try to be part of it, but in truth I only sorta fit in. Whereas my jazz community — I’m pretty comfortable in that.  It’s not just a Brooklyn jazz underground; it’s everywhere, it’s everywhere. As the JJA blogathon starts to show.

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Locked Down is The Black Keys guitarist-songwriter Dan Auerbach’s collaboration with Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack — the two premiere it April 5 – 7 at Brooklyn Academy of Music, second program of three the good Dr. presents there over three consecutive weekends. I bet it’ll be a better-produced show than his “Tribute to Louis Armstrong,” the all-star hodgepodge I’ve reported on in my new City Arts column. Which was fun, but. . .

On first listen: Locked Down is bluesy, hooky and kinda rad, more wry and martial than funky and celebratory. A retro-soul mix: Plenty of gtr-tremolo, cheesy organ, stiff-rockin’ rhythms, girls goin’ ooh and ahh while Mac croons, “Religious delusions . . . stone confusions . . .rebellion revolution . .  Is this the final solution?” over riffing bari sax. He rues our current hard times in “Ice Age,” warns “the world’s loss is everybody’s business,” portrays an egomaniac in “Big Shot” then gets credibly humble in “God’s Sure Good.” Not about to replace “I Walk on Gilded Splinters” in my playlist, but a strong followup, 45 years later, to that swamp mystic classic.

Next week Dr. John hosts New Orleans homies Irma Thomas, Ivan Neville, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, alto saxist Donald Harrison and trumpeter Nicholas (“‘BAM’ not ‘jazz,’“) Payton. Predicting that will be another loose, over-stuffed, fun-enough event.

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A followup: the Asia Society posted the  entire video of the  3.5 hour wayang kulit (shadow puppet and Javanese gamelan orchestra performance) that I wrote about Sunday — the one in which President Obama stopped by — in five parts. And colleague Richard Gehr wrote up the event for the Village Voice blog.

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President Obama made a surprise cameo appearance at the Asia Society’s production of a Javanese shadow puppet show  — a Wayang Kulit — by dhalang Ki Purbo Asmoro with Gamelan Kusuma Laras on Manhattan’s upper east side on Friday night (March 16).

As a translucent strip of water buffalo hide, upright if not as nimble on his tusk-bone rods as flesh-and-blood Obama is on the campaign trail,  the puppet Obama popped up among a trio of clownish Javanese street-types. At first they addressed him with awe, one bowing to kiss the President’s ring. But then he turned assertive, urging — admonishing! — President O to spend US money on arts and education, not on war.

The puppet president said he would. Gongs struck and bells rang, a deep bass drum thumped, women sang in the highest range of human pitch, a haze of whistles, wavery flutes, bowed strings sounds or maybe just overtones arose over the gaggle of musicians sitting crosslegged at bottoms-up brass kettles lodged firmly in low, carved wood frames. The musicians hammered short, repeating note patterns on the xylophone-like metal slats, banged on slender barrel drums and struck cymbals.

The audience would have become raucous if we’d been at one of Java’s traditional seven-hour wayang kulit extravaganzas, outdoors family overnight picnics held in fields, fairgrounds, village squares, parks, schools, really anywhere. But then we’d have been sitting on the far side of a screen to watch the puppets’ shadows, rather than in theater seats at the elegant Asia Society edifice on Park Avenue. We wouldn’t have watched the shadow-side of the show on a big tv screen at the lip of the  stage.

No simultaneous English translation would have been projected above the puppet stage of the dhalang’s multi-voiced characterizations depicting Bima’s Spiritual Enlightenment and quest-search from forest floor to the ocean depths. There’d have been no live webcast of the event (I assume it will be archived eventually at AsiaSociety.org/live). We’d have been in Java or Bali.

Indonesian wayang kulits and performances by gamelan orchestras aren’t frequent in NYC, and though this one was spectacular, it required a stretch of the imagination and suspension of residents’ inherent impatience to enjoy. Obama showing up during a comic interlude spelling relief from the Bima plot lent the evening its liveliest moments.

A dhalang, the puppet master, is supposed to be adept at improvising such bits of social commentary as well as philosophical speculation and dramatic variations; dhalang Purbo Asmoro is, according to Asia Society’s program notes, “at the forefront of the modern, classical interpretive treatment” of wayang. Reportedly he both embodies the 900-year-old traditions of the form, which has been recognized by UNESCO as a “masterpiece of human heritage,” and also adopts contemporary innovations, while standing above recent trends to trivialize the art or render it unfamiliarly avant-garde.

However, the story drawn from the Hindu epic Mahabharata is neither familiar to most Westerners nor compelling to audiences conditioned to fast-paced editing and computer generated imagery. Bahasa Indonesia is incomprehensible to most Americans so Asmoro’s inflections, asides and word-play were lost on us (Kathryn (Kitsie) Emerson is amazing at the simultaneous translation, howver, keying it into the computer as quick as Asmoro spoke) . The tale’s humor and puppets’ knockabout tiffs seemed roughly as sophisticated as a Three Stooges routine. Time didn’t have our accustomed pace.

Yet the shadow theater and gamelan experience is worthwhile precisely for taking us from our usual entertainments. For a while I sat in a front row, two yards at most from the orchestra, and became immersed in the shimmering net of sonic ribbons and knots, dynamic intensities and relaxations created almost exclusively by the synchronized percussion.  If I didn’t understand the puppet master’s nuances, I could admire his handwork, commanding stick figures to bob and weave, strike poses of pride and humility. I wasn’t on the edge of my seat concentrating on psychological realism, but no one suggested that I should be.

With audience members coming and going, people of all ages walking up onstage to view the puppets as they’re viewed in Java and Bali, shadows on a screen, a welcomed informality reigned.

The Asia Society provided food and drink and places to sit and chat outside the theater, in emulation of the festive, neighborly atmosphere wayang kulits create at home. In shadow puppet and gamelan shows, there is apparently no fourth wall.

 

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The Herbie Hancock who concertized at Jazz at Lincoln Center last Saturday night was the casually joking yet research-minded fusion meister. A review of his Friday night concert by Jon Pareles in the New York Times takes a generous view of Hancock darting among his multitude of possibilities, but I was less taken by his next evening’s mostly greatest-hits show. I think Hancock underplayed his true piano genius.

Over a two-hour period, the 72-year-old prodigy played only one piece through concentrating on the Fazioli grand, which seemed so bright and hyper-responsive to his touch as to nearly replicate the sound of the electric Fender Rhodes Suitcase Piano he used in the early 1970s (sans the vibrato effect and inherent Rhodes fuzziness). Here’s a taste Herbie playing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” the Faizoli at last January’s NAMM (Nat’l Assoc. of Music Merchandisers) convention —

Compare with this demo of the ’70s electric:

Several times during the Jazz at Lincoln Center show Hancock turned to his grand turned after establishing a song on his Korg Kronos synth. Several times he strapped on his Roland AX-7, which has (according to Wikipedia) “a pitch-bending ribbon, touchpad-like expression bar, sustain switch, and volume control knob, all on the upper neck of the instrument” where a guitarist would fret, were this a guitar. The AX-7 has an exceptionally broad range of high and low notes, which Hancock deployed spectacularly during a duet with electric bassist James Genus — the two musicians went lower and lower, faster and faster. However, it also has a lot of cheesy sounds, ostentatiously blaring and without the natural fade out (decay) of a piano’s taut wires hit by felt hammers. And since the keytar involves its player’s right hand principally to play single note runs, Hancock’s brilliant harmonic abilities were rather reduced. It struck me he might as well have been blowing an amplified melodica.

I didn’t recognize the one acoustic piece he performed, unaccompanied — it may have been impromptu. However, his version of “Watermelon Man” (originally popularized in 1963 as a boogaloo by conguero Mongo Santamaria) reprised Hancock’s 1973 arrangement for his jazz-rock Headhunters, a prominent second theme juxtaposed against the main line. Except at JALC, instead of using an intro derived from Central African Pygmy’s hocket-like hindewhu singing/blowing, Hancock led in with his guitarist Lionel Loueke’s composition “Seventeens.” Loueke was quick and nimble in exchanges with Hancock, who has adopted his late mentor Miles Davis’ manner of stepping right up to and into the face of his sidemen while they’re interacting. Drummer Trevor Lawrence, however, was isolated up a raised platform toward the back of the stage, and pounded out grooves without much of the forward propulsion formerly revered as “swing.”

Was this what was called for on the occasion of Hancock’s debut at the House that Wynton Built? Marsalis, after all, did his first prominent recording as a member of Hancock’s quartet (with Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums) in 1982. That was an all-acoustic affair, their album comprising Monk’s “Well You Needn’t” and “‘Round Midnight” as well as Hancock’s “The Eye of the Hurricane,” part of his Maiden Voyage suite, and “The Sorcerer” which he’d written for Miles Davis to record in 1967. At Rose Hall, before a Jazz at Lincoln Center audience including many fans who’ve followed him since the ’60s, Hancock relied on his best-selling, not his most beautiful, compositions.

Besides “Watermelon Man,” he offered up a succinct version of his 1983 single “Rockit” which introduced dj-scratching to his repertoire (an element performed by Trevor Lawrence, apparently from a computer rather than a turntable). He performed a version of “Cantaloupe Island”  based not on the luminous track from his 1964 album Empyrian Isles but rather on the sampled “Cantaloop (Flip Fantastia)” rendition Us3 sold to gold status in 1994.

Freddie Hubbard played a brilliant solo on the original recording and did it again with Hancock, Carter, Williams and Joe Henderson for the concert One Night With Blue Note in 1985. At JALC Herbie used his keytar and emphasized Us3’s wacka-jawacka acid-jazz underpinning, but here’s how he did it when on tour with guitarist Pat Metheny, bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette in 1990:

No question that Hancock has a knack for catchy riffs that can be embellished over repeating hooky bass figures. Of course the finale was “Chameleon,” his ’70s Headhunters anthem that has by now launched two or three generations of jazz jams. It was another display of bombast over nuance, though as if to make that very point his entire ensemble got quiet as a whisper before blasting out the show’s last choruses.

“Chameleon” is the kind of melodic funk that’s easy to learn and like, same as “Watermelon Man,” “Rockit” and “Cantaloupe Island.” It’s rousing, and as Herbie Hancock plays it with keytar squiggles to a thumping backbeat, a sure crowd pleaser. But Hancock commands considerably more musical sophistication than this set-list represented. I’m all for jazz fun instead of fustiness — and I was sitting next to bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding, who clearly enjoyed Hancock’s oomph. But is it too much to expect that in the presumed temple of jazz purism the subtlest pianist in our land do something a bit more substantial?

Maybe so. Maybe next time.

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Guitarist John McLaughlin‘s Mahavishnu Orchestra was the highest-flying of any ensemble emerging from Miles Davis’ jazz-rock initiative in the early 1970s, establishing a previously unapproached standard of virtuosity, improvisational excitement and commercial success for all-instrumental electric bands to follow. Drummer G. Calvin Weston‘s Treasures of the Spirit quintet playing music of McLaughlin’s MO at the 92nd St. Y Tribeca in NYC last night (Feb 10, 2012) heroically addressed the complexity, speed and power of unique, difficult, enduring and compelling repertoire – a feat rarely attempted but inspiring to hear when musicians nail it, as Weston’s cohorts did.

With electric guitar Bill Berends, violinist Marina Vishnyakova, electric bassist Elliot Garland and keyboardist David Dzubinski addressing roles originally performed by McLaughlin himself (usually on a double-necked instrument), Jerry Goodman (still active, he’s been in the Dixie Dregs among other genre-confounding groups), Rick Laird (now Richard Laird, photographer) and Jan Hammer (composer for “Miami Vice,” Cocaine Cowboys, innovative computer animations and the first commercial tv network in Eastern Europe), Weston pounded out gloriously fast, muscularly emphatic rhythms to propel “Hope,” “One Word,” “The Dance of Maya,” “Open Country Joy”, “Triology,” “Dawn” and “Meeting of the Spirits” — multi-part compositions originally recorded on The Inner Mounting Flame (released in 1971), Birds of Fire (’72) and The Lost Trident Sessions (recorded in ’73, not released until 1999).  If it seems odd for a drummer to reprise material written for a frontline of electric guitar, violin and keyboards (including synth) plus electric bass, know that the original Mahavishnu Orchestra was driven by Billy Cobham, a contributor as essential to the group’s sound and prodigious four-year-run (reportedly 580 concerts during that period) as McLaughlin himself. (In fact, drummer Gregg Bendian also has an ambitious Mahavishnu Project -Redefined , which coincidentally had a booking scheduled for tonight (Feb 11) in New Hope, PA — postponed due to icy roads in the region).

Obviously Weston digs Cobham. He showed up in Tribeca with a vast array of tom-toms, cymbals, a gong and double bass drums, akin to the kit Cobham eventually employed. Weston’s beats were true to Cobham’s models: solidly struck, whip-snap fast and precisely fulfilling the unconventional time signatures derived from Indian tabla practices which gave the Mahavishnu Orchestra its distinctive motivation. But Weston has his own shtick, too. Among his skills:

• ferocious press rolls on his snare, but also with his two feet on the kick pedals;
•  independence yet also paired coordination of his four limbs;
• ability to throw in fills and accents where there wouldn’t seem to be time to put them;
• mastery of the different pitches/timbres of all those cymbals and toms;
• control of dynamics so that there’s always a notch up-the-scale to go,
• and with bassist Garland an instinct for bringing the lowdown funk out of Mahavishnu material initially intended for seeking a transcendent spiritual plane.

Weston directed all the action from his seat in the manner of drummer-bandleaders like Art Blakey and Jack DeJohnette. At 52, he has enviable reserves of energy. He turned what had been advertised as two sets into one long one, throwing punches for two hours continuously like a determined boxer who doesn’t hear the bell tolling that he can rest between rounds.

Although the Mahavishnu Orchestra was brilliantly conceived to flow from classically-stated themes to raging collective jams, soft, folkish or raga-like passages to competitive call-and-response episodes, it was the bodacious end of its sonic spectrum that most engaged listeners in the ’70s and has wowed us ever since. Not that the MO was just loud, though it was indeed loud. The MO was on fire, with neatly shorn, pale, earnest, white-clad young McLaughlin, a disciple of Sri Chinmoy (who gave him the name “Mahavishnu” after the Hindu creator/destroyer/preserver of the universe) at its center, engaged yet serene. He excelled at articulating strange scalar lines and bent notes in upper octaves at speed-metal tempi, while violinist Goodman bowed quickly also in top registers and Hammer bent or pushed pitches where newly developed synthesizers had never gone before.

Berends, Vishnyakova and Dzubinski worked the same angles to nearly the same affect. There were minor, easily forgiven fluctuations of intonation, and by definition they weren’t the originators of the MO vision, so the question sometimes arose: Whose music is this? Weston’s Treasures of the Spirit last night was not so visually imposing as its predecessor: The players wore street clothes, and Berends bears a resemblance to Penn Gillette wearing a pirate bandana, rather than McLaughlin the handsome Yorkshireman pure as snow aspiring to eternal bliss.

Well, it’s no longer 1971, and the shock of hearing musicians reach with hedonistic rock fervor for the holy unattainable is gone for good. The small crowd at the Y, a multi-use facility with excellent performance space but off the nightlife track, seemed to be predominantly men who remember hearing Mahavishnu in their youth and have not gotten over it (like me). That’s unfortunate, because this music — not just its imagery and mythology —  as Weston & Co. put it forth should appeal to ravers of all ages, anyone looking to pump it up.

G. Calvin Weston’s other associations are certifiably hip: He’s recorded and toured with Ornette Coleman’s amplified double quartet Prime Time, been in the Lounge Lizards, the Free Form Funky Freqs with Vernon Reid and Jamaaladeen Tacuma and on the Get Shorty soundtrack. In each context he strives for the personal satisfaction of making music live, immediate and interactive as possible.

If Treasures of the Spirit has a flaw, it’s that the band sometimes moves less than persuasively through the pastoral, contemplative moments McLaughlin planted in his pieces for introduction, punctuation and contrast to the urgency Weston wants to convey about time passing inexorably, now. Time is moving fast, there’s no way to stop it and we don’t exactly catch up by reaching back 40 years to remembered pleasures. But revisiting, restoring and reviving music that was born years ago but has lost no vitality doesn’t feel like a desperate attempt to recapture an era so much as a statement of faith in the value of that music then and in the present. Jazz — fusion-manifestations included — is made in the moment and if the sounds fit those who play it and hear it, they are indeed treasures of the spirit. I came home from G. Calvin Weston’s show enriched by people out here collaboratively lifting earthy rhythms and searing melodies to the open sky.

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Jose Reyes of the online listening station Jazz Con Class has posted  a Q&A with me about “free jazz” and “the avant-garde” — which he proposes as two distinct subgenres of jazz, tied to the 1960s. 

New things — innovations — thinking outside the box — breaks from conventions and the continuum of progress (evolution) — these issues are regards jazz, among other art forms, has long fascinated me. It’s the topic of my book Miles Ornette Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz and the inspiration of this blog. So I spin out more of my pov about these matters in response to Jose’s questions, and I hope you’ll enjoy them while listening to the playlists he’s set up — but comment on the Q&A discussion below, or on my Facebook post of this blog posting.

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