Yes, we’re back! We never actually went away, it’s just that Make Music New York represents the final point of a months-long process of organization and mobilization, and so summer is a time for a little hibernation. That’s part of the process too, at least for the blog; lie in a cool, dark space for a while, let the images, memories and words stew around for a bit until they start to make some sense . . .

We hope all of you had a great time at MMNY, as we did. Each year seems to be a step forward in every direction, with more musicians, more venues, more styles and more special events (one of our brand-new special events was, unfortunately but understandably, not open to the public: on June 20, Rikers Island hosted Funk Island). There was far too much music for any group of people to take in. On the central North-South axis in Manhattan we were able to get to, the experience was great, even spectacular.

We began at dawn in Central Park for the Yoko Ono Secret Piece. The Park is surprisingly busy at 5:00am, with groups of people exercising, sprinklers running automatically and the ever present sound of cars on the surrounding streets. Still, it was lovely and stimulating to be there, and the impression was that the piece succeeded on Ono’s terms. It’s meant to define an environment where the individual is deeply conscious of the surrounding woods, and if the contemplative feeling that we carried around all day long was evidence, it worked.

Next stop, the entirely different environs of Wall Street, for GROUP and a tremendous performance of composer Louis Andriessen’s Hoketus. It’s difficult to play music outside, you have to work against either wide-open spaces or overly reflective echoes. The music was ricocheting across the street in an exaggeration of the hocket technique that Andriessen uses, but the power of the sound and the fabulous precision of the musicians made it work. It was great to see traders in their floor jackets wander out of the stock exchange to see what the hell was going on!

By this time, the early afternoon, it already seemed like a full day, but it was time to head back up to Central Park for SWELTER. Talking with Luke Jaaniste of Super Critical Mass a few days after MMNY, it turned out that up until almost the last moment the piece was struggling to come together. But on the lake it was a tremendous success. The combination of sight – musicians on the lake, facing outward like in a Caspar David Friedrich painting – and the sound of resonant horns reaching out to each other across the expanse of water, was indescribably magical. The lake and the Park belonged to the sound, and the aesthetic gesture took full dominion over the landscape. Stunning, and beautiful.

For us, the day came to an end up at Morningside Park, for a spectacular and deeply powerful performance of Inuksuit. We saw the indoor production at the Park Avenue Armory earlier in the year, but there was no comparison between the two. It’s a tautology, but witnessing the work outdoors explains why it is meant to be performed outside. The open space, the uneven vistas and broken sight lines are the perfect accompaniment to a piece that has a large-scale organization but inside which the musical events, the playing, happens with little coordination. It’s not random, but it is by chance inside that larger enclosure, and that is a cognate for what it’s like for us to sit or stroll through a park or down the street in a city. It’s John Cage’s idea, but without the extreme dehumanization. It was easy to call it beautiful, but what it really felt like was something that happened inside us and outside us at the same time. Towards the end, as the music diminishes, we could hear the birds in the park sounding out of the aural landscape. After the final notes of the piece itself, the crowd sat in a kind of levitating, sweet silence for a minute or so, before lauding composer John Luther Adams and musical director Doug Perkins with massive, and deserved applause. This wasn’t just a great MMNY event, it was one of the greatest musical events we’ve witnessed, anywhere, in many years.

There’s so much more to MMNY, and you can find clips, bits, pics and sounds from all over collected at our companion Tumblr.

Peruse the latest blog posts, sort through the schedule, and you’ll see that Make Music New York features many spectacular, fascinating “Special Events.” Some are all about making music outdoors in the summertime – like Punk Island and the Block Parties – and others feature a piece or an idea that fits perfectly into the event and especially into some space in New York City, like last year’s Persephassa on Central Park Lake.

This year, with the invaluable contribution of Doug Perkins – who organized the Persephassa production – John Luther Adams‘ Inuksuit, a piece for ninety-nine percussionists intended for outdoor performance will fill, and become a part of, Morningside Park.

This is not New York’s first performance of Inuksuit — the Park Avenue Armory took those honors as the crowning program of their Tune-In Festival in February. With 55,000 square feet in the drill hall, the work came close to a complete realization, with musicians in every part of the hall and on the stairs and in the corridors outside. Here’s a taste:

Perkins was part of that performance, and was also part of one in Texas last year (where the pictures on our schedule page were taken). He’s looking forward to the MMNY one: “[Morningside Park] is a beautiful park that a lot of people don’t know about. [We get to] share and highlight a piece of New York City that a lot of people don’t know about; bringing people together for an experience like this. It’s an improbable event, MMNY [itself] should not happen, but it does.”

The musicians will not fill the entire park, but will still be deployed in a large area covering four blocks from 112th to 116th streets, spreading out to the east and west edges of the park. Some will be up on the terrace that overlooks the park from the west, blowing the conch. The musicians begin gathered in a central place, then wander out to their playing stations; Inuksuit is in an arch form, beginning quietly and ritualistically, building to a tremendous density of sound and activity, then tapering off to silence. The topography of the park (“it’s so rich, you’ll have to wander around” to best experience the piece, Perkins says), means that the players will be out of line of sight of each other, and the listeners will also not be able to see all the performers.

Since the work is made to be part of the environment, the opening and closing ten (or so) minutes will imperceptibly blend deliberate music making with the sounds of the park and the city – this is by design. Perkins considers the first ten minutes a way for the audience to “tune their ears” to what is happening, they “may not realize they are hearing the piece.” And as the music recedes to notated bird songs for metallic percussion and piccolo, “everyone’s ears will be ready to hear that,” when it fades away, leaving behind the companionship of the park. “It happens, and it works, and there you are, listening to the birds.”

Inuksuit is co-sponsored by the Friends of Morningside Park and Miller Theater at Columbia University School of the Arts. The small army of musicians will include So Percussion, the Percussion Group Cincinnati, the Proper Glue Duo, Mantra Percussion, and students from music schools in New York City and beyond, including Juilliard, NYU, Brooklyn College, Eastman, the Hartt School, McGill, Grand Valley State and Baylor.

There is also a companion film; Miller is hosting the premiere of Leonard Kamerling’s Strange and Sacred Noise, a documentary of a piece of Adams performed on the arctic tundra. The screening takes place on Monday, June 20 at 7pm and, like the MMNY performance, is free, open to the public and requires no tickets. Following the screening, Kamerling, Adams and Perkins will have a discussion with each other and the audience. Miller is also producing podcast-based audio program notes for Inuksuit, available by calling  855-468-57848 (INUKSUIT]), or by downloading podcasts. Check their website by June 17 for files and information. And there’s an Inuksuit tumblr! When arriving at Morningside Park, you can find more information at a table Miller will have at the southwest corner, near the entrance at 110th and Morningside Drive: View Map

And if you’d like to volunteer to help out (keeping an eye on the percussion set ups, helping clean up, answer questions and give directions), you can fill out an online form. We are grateful to Miller and Director Melissa Smey for bringing this tremendous production to life.

Some of the Make Music New York staff made our way to the huge, gorgeous Park Avenue Armory yesterday for a performance of John Luther Adams percussion piece Inuksuit, the closing event of the Tune-In Festival.  The whole festival was programmed by eighth blackbird, a chamber music group based in Chicago, and they were joined by dozens of other musicians, including members of Newspeak and red fish blue fish, for a total of 72 players.  The piece was created to be played outside, but since the Armory Hall is 55,000 square feet, with 85’ high ceilings, the feeling was still quite expansive.

That feeling was perfect for the piece.  The musicians and audience all shared the floor and the balconies, the players began all together in the middle then moved out to static stations both inside the hall and in the vestibule of the building, while some listeners sat in place, stood looking down from the balconies, or wandered through the space.  Adams himself, distinctively tall, could be seen constantly, amiably drifting amidst the crowd.  Music, and playing, was happening all around and what we heard depended on where we were, and were we moved.  Even though it was indoors, hearing the waves of sound, sometimes ghostly, sometimes delicate, sometimes thunderous, was like being outside, the instruments expressing how it sounds to be in nature.

It was inspiring, because this is what Make Music New York is all about, people coming together to make music and listen to music.  That’s something we all enjoy, but it’s really rare when the musicians and audiences are pretty much the same group, enjoying the same space together, rather than each separated by a stage and assigned seats.  And coming together to make music is the original civilized thing that people do.  Everyone who was in the Armory yesterday had a strong taste of what they can enjoy this June 21, throughout the city, and we left feeling even more excitement for that date.