An identity for American classical music
When the European settlers landed in America, they brought with them the variety of their musical traditions. In the 1700's, the first signs of musical life were seen with the arrival of the first organs from Germany. From the 1870s onwards, the great American universities, led by Harvard and Yale, opened chairs devoted to composition, thus providing a field for experimentation and support for musical creation. Thus, in the mid-19th century, American composers' search for their own identity also included an interest in local music and the songs of the first settlers' congregations. Antonin Dvorak, who lived in the United States from 1892 to 1895 and was director of the New York Conservatory, focused the attention of his students and the public on the rich traditions of the black populations of the American South and drew inspiration from them in hisSymphony No. 9, known as "From the New World. At the beginning of the 20th century, the country was also the land of refuge for many musicians fleeing Europe for political reasons: Schoenberg, Prokofiev, Hindemith, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Bartók, Martinu composed works during their American exile that were fueled by the extraordinary vitality of their host country. George Gershwin proposed one of the most original musical arrangements, between the jazz and ragtime of the 1920s and classical composition. He discovered music in the mythical Tin Pan Alley neighborhood between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, where the very first music publishers had set up shop in the early 20th century. It was there that he met Fred Astaire, with whom he became friends, but also Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin. His major works Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and Porgy and Bess have become standards of American music. A composer, but also a very good pianist, Leonard Bernstein gained fame by composing the soundtrack of the musical West Side Story. The confrontation between the Jets and the Sharks, which mixes passion, lyricism and social satire, has become a classic. Above all, Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic with mastery and tirelessly sought to break down musical boundaries, drawing from all repertoires without hierarchy. After Gershwin and Bernstein, it will be Charles Ives' turn to give a particular tinge to American classical music, with his Unanswered Question for example, followed by Samuel Barber and his famous Adagio for strings, Milton Babbit, Elliott Carter, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Morton Feldman and John Cage, one of the great thinkers of American music, pioneer of modern happening and one of the inventors of musique concrète.
Music lovers will follow closely the programming of the prestigious Carnegie Hall, the home of classical music in New York, as well as the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic, housed at Lincoln Center.
The beginnings of ballet in New York
In the 1930s, New York was the center of various choreographic experiments, notably embodied by Martha Graham, but the United States was still a desert in terms of classical ballet, which required a tradition that America lacked. With the brilliant George Balanchine at its head, a Russian émigré trained in St. Petersburg and a former dancer with the Imperial Ballet of Russia, the New York City Ballet company succeeded in becoming one of the world's leading companies, without any great financial means or state subsidies. First of all, in 1934, the School of American Ballet was created to train dancers. This school still exists today and provides most of the artists of the New York City Ballet, then the creation of an innovative choreography, adapted from the Russian school of Saint Petersburg. The New York City Ballet, as well as the Juilliard School, dedicated to all the performing arts, and the Metropolitan Opera, are located at Lincoln Center, the epicenter of the city's performing arts. New York has thus become a central place for contemporary dance, where renowned choreographers such as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Alvin Ailey, and Trisha Brown have developed their art. If today emerging companies have a hard time financing themselves, the Martha Graham Studio Theater, where a part of the history of contemporary dance was written, always offers new shows.
Jazz, a school of eclecticism and renewal
Upon disembarking from the plane taking him back to New York for the first time, Jean-Paul Sartre is said to have uttered this famous phrase: "Jazz is like bananas, you have to eat it on the spot And for fans accustomed to the hushed ambience of Parisian clubs, Manhattan's clubs offer a disconcerting ambience: you consume the notes more than you listen to them, as many clubs are also restaurants. But no other city in the world has such a plethora of clubs to choose from. While New Orleans may well have been the cradle of jazz, New York has been the nursery for it since the 1920s, and received its anthem, New York, New York, from the voice of the most famous crooner in history, Frank Sinatra. The Cotton Club, the Kentucky Club and the Savoy Ballroom are the most popular clubs. It was here that Duke Ellington and Count Basie and their big bands introduced swing, the new music craze, while Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday became the best ambassadors of jazz. Then, in the 1940s, a number of jazzmen stepped up the pace and developed the harmony of their compositions. The music, more complex, was no longer made for dancing. Artists combined long, virtuoso improvisations with the introduction of dissonance. This was the invention of bebop, whose emblematic musicians were saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and pianists Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. Other monsters such as John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Art Blakey also renewed the genre, pushing improvisation and research even further. The most famous jazz clubs are to be found in Greenwich Village, along 7th Avenue. The Village Vanguard (at 178), the last remaining historic venue, is still haunted by the shadows of Miles Davis and Coltrane. Born in 1981, the Blue Note, which has now spread all over the world, has become New York's benchmark, welcoming the cream of the crop. Alongside this jazz business, it's possible to rub shoulders with more underground music and listen to the latest avant-garde trends at the Knitting Factory (47 East Houston), where a whole new generation of musicians has emerged around John Zorn, The Lounge Lizards and Bill Frisell. For aficionados, it's also possible to make a pilgrimage to Woodlawn Cemetery, north of the Bronx, where many jazzmen (Miles Davis, Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Tito Puente, Lionel Hampton) have a stele, or to Queens to visit the Louis Armstrong House Museum.
For a more lively experience, head to Harlem on Sundays for a service featuring gospel choirs. The Canaan Baptist Church or the First Corinthian Baptist Church are good choices, but you may prefer a guided tour on the theme with Harlem Spirituals, Gospel & Jazz Tours.
A rock and bohemian spirit
Since the early 20th century, lower Manhattan has been an important center for the arts. In popular culture, Downtown Manhattan has always represented a place where one could forget one's troubles and have fun, as Petula Clark sang in 1964 " We can forget all our troubles, forget all our cares. So go Downtown ". Greenwich Village is known worldwide as one of the bastions of artistic culture and bohemian lifestyle. In 1961, the first public appearance of a certain Bob Dylan, who was to revolutionize the music and consciousness of American youth, took place in this neighborhood, at the Wha Café (at 115 MacDougal Street). In his memoirs, Dylan describes the human circus of the Village's bars, populated by "black-bearded literati (...) a motley crew of girls, not the kind to make a home". Simon and Garkunkel had their habits there before they met with success, with The Sound of Silence. It was also where Chas Chandler of the Animals heard Jimi Hendrix and encouraged him to join him in London. The guitarist had acquired the Generation Club (8th West Street), in the heart of Greenwich Village, with the initial idea of turning it into a nightclub. The place would become the Electric Lady, the first recording studio owned by a musician. Meanwhile, on 47th Street, Andy Warhol opened the Factory, a loft converted into an art studio that also served as a recording studio. It was above all a place where one could meet all the figures of the New York underground life. Warhol also made films there and catalyzed local artistic activity. He was also interested in music and took charge of the Velvet Underground's career, attracted by their attitude and their venomous melodies. The band of Lou Reed and John Cale has become a reference for the whole alternative scene, while at the time their first album was mainly a success of esteem.
By the end of the 1960s, Greenwich Village had become too expensive and touristy for musicians and artists, so they chose to move south to SoHo and east to the East Village. This neighborhood was derelict and rents were still cheap. At the time, many parts of New York City were a desolate sight: garbage-filled streets, abandoned buildings, and decaying vacant lots. Against this background of bankruptcy and social crisis, a protean scene gave birth to punk rock.
CBGB and the New York punk rock scene
December 1973, the CBGB opens its doors at 315 Bowery Street. The neighborhood is known to be a tough one. A famous saying reminds us that it was not good to venture beyond Avenue A " Avenue A, you're Alright, Avenue B, you're Brave, Avenue C, you're Crazy, Avenue D, you're Dead ". Despite this, the club became the epicenter of New York's underground nightlife. The Ramones performed there for the first time in April 1974. But it is with the arrival of the Patti Smith Group that the club becomes famous. When she arrived at CBGB in the early spring of 1975, Patti Smith had already acquired a certain fame in the underground. She performed with Television as the opening act for the occasion. Two months later, the Talking Heads made their debut at CBGB. In August 1975, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein moved into a loft on the Bowery, above an underground liquor store near the club. With their band Blondie, they were part of the lineup for the first festival held at CBGB, which also featured the Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, Mink DeVille, the Shirts and the Heartbreakers. Today the club has been bought by John Varvatos who transformed it into a clothing store. The place is still bathed in rock'n'roll: a vinyl space is next to the clothes and a stage, which had the honor to welcome Eric Burdon or Paul Weller, is in the middle of the store. Continue your journey towards St. Mark's Place where tattoo shops and other more or less original clothing stores are legion, notably Trash and Vaudeville, true institutions of New York alternative fashion. Legend has it that this is where Dee Dee Ramone bought his famous leather jacket. In the East Village, make a detour to A-1 Record Shop, the only record store in the neighborhood to survive the great vinyl wilderness.
After this first punk wave, the apostles of dissonance will then integrate the no wave scene, a movement which will be the receptacle of the mutations and artistic experimentations of the time, with Lydia Lynch or James Chance as emblematic artists and on which Sonic Youth will take off to become the reference of the New York arty rock.
Disco pop
Studio 54 opened its doors on April 26, 1977 on the site of a former opera house, the Gallo Opera House. Glamorous and iconic, the club attracted the world's jet-set by offering evenings more delirious than the others. The photos of Bianca Jagger, riding bareback on a white horse, accompanied by naked servants, whose bodies were covered with gold paint, went around the world. New York is a party city, where pop culture is the focus. In the 1980s, Madonna became a global phenomenon, with her disco-pop and her look taken up by young girls around the world, she had composed a character, a provocative mix of fake and sexy, sport and punk, playing with all the dress codes without adopting any. More recently, Lady Gaga has followed in her footsteps and continues to fascinate with her sometimes experimental music and her increasingly crazy outfits.
Nostalgia rock
For the more nostalgic, a night at the Chelsea Hotel allowed, until a few years ago, to touch a bit of rock history. The hotel has hosted, and even sheltered, some of the most famous artistic talents of the 20th century. Writers like Arthur Miller, Allen Ginsberg and Dylan Thomas, but especially musicians Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin and Iggy Pop. And if you have some time left, make a detour to the Dakota Building, on 72nd Street on the edge of Central Park West. This was John Lennon's last residence as he was murdered in front of it on December 8, 1980, while getting out of a cab. Yoko Ono still lives there today. To honor Lennon, she worked with landscape architect Bruce Kelly and the Central Park Conservancy to design a section of Central Park, renamed "Strawberry Field" after one of the Beatles' signature songs. A mosaic has been installed there and is titled "Imagine", the title of another Lennon song.
The strength of indie rock
In the early 2000s, The Strokes, TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, The Rapture and The Killers embodied the post-punk revival, proving the vitality of the New York scene. Today it is in Brooklyn that the epicenter of independent music has moved. After MGMT and Vampire Weekend, Parquet Courts or Bodega have become the standards. It is between the shipyard and Greenpoint that we find the most exciting concert halls of the borough, like Baby's All Right or Muchmore's. Housed in a former steel mill in the Williamsburg neighborhood, Brooklyn Steel, a new concert hall with an all-Brooklyn feel, complete with brown bricks and industrial architecture, was opened in 2017 by LCD Soundsystem, who played there five nights in a row.
The supremacy of hip-hop
In the late 1960s, New York was a desolate place, and the Bronx was one of the poorest and most dangerous parts of the city. Black music had begun to assert its mode of expression through artists such as James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone and The Last Poets. Soul and funk had already become key vectors of protest and emancipation. Hip-hop built on these foundations to take off in the streets of the South Bronx, at neighborhood parties organized in the ghetto. Between funk, disco, dub, talk-over and Jamaican sounds, DJs deconstructed the music to create a new rhythm. American popular culture has always been open to the artistic expression of the working classes. After the Bronx, Harlem and then Brooklyn also succumbed to block party fever. After developing and fortifying itself, hip-hop emerged from its ghetto to become the dominant culture today. And it was in New York that some of the biggest names in hip-hop were born. Among them is RZA, born in Brownsville, a very underprivileged district of Brooklyn. His group, the Wu-Tang Clan, formed in 1992 on Staten Island, and has had a considerable influence on the global rap scene. New York rap has produced a number of hip-hop artists who have gone down in history, from Grandmaster Flash and the Beastie Boys to Nas, Public Enemy and Notorious B.I.G. Today, hip-hop is embodied by Max B & French Montana, A$AP Rocky, Azealia Banks and Nicki Minaj. And Jay-Z, artist and financier extraordinaire, remains the undisputed star of young New Yorkers, who detailed his worship of the city of all possibilities in his first global hit Empire State of Mind.
Brooklyn's Flatbush district is home to numerous nightclubs like Social Butterfly and restaurants like The Safari Room at El Cortez, which feature hip-hop. But hip-hop culture has its roots in the streets of the Bronx. There are no museums, but some places have acquired a cult following: the mural at the corner of Grand Concourse and 166th Street, created to pay tribute to DJ Kool Herc, the hip-hop legend who developed the sample technique; the basketball court at 106th Street and Park Avenue, famous for its breakdance competitions; and the Bronx Walk of Fame, at the corner of Grand Concourse and 161st Street.
The experience of a show in New York
It's hard to resist the call of Broadway to see a show in New York. The Theater District, between West 40th and West 54th, is a veritable musical theater district. In New York, the musical is a veritable institution. A single show is often at the top of the bill for years, with several performances a day. Producers compete with each other to create increasingly original shows. If you want to be the first to discover the next big thing, the MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village is home to more innovative productions. Philip Glass and Amy Sedaris debuted at La MaMa.
It's a tough choice between the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. All these concert halls are among the best in the world. For its 2021-2022 season, New York's Metropolitan Opera is offering Gershwin's famous opera Porgy & Bess, as well as Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème and Australian composer Brett Dean's Hamlet . The list of stars who have performed at Carnegie Hall is both comprehensive and diverse - from Judy Garland to David Bowie to Jay-Z. If you're not lucky enough to get tickets to experience the hall's superb acoustic capabilities, a visit to the Rose Museum is a real treat, with snippets of the venue's history: Benny Goodman's clarinet, Ella Fitzgerald's glasses and a Beatles Program in which Paul McCartney is mislabeled "John McCartney". Radio City Music Hall, its little sister, has also hosted a brilliant list of artists since it opened in 1932, from Frank Sinatra to Ray Charles, or more recently Beyonce and Britney Spears.
Learn to dance
And why not take advantage of being in New York to take some dance classes? The offer is wide and easy to access. Look for "open classes" or "drop-in classes" in dance studios, i.e. classes that do not require continuous registration. TheAlvin Ailey American Dance Center is a reference and offers classes for all levels, from beginner to intermediate. Just off Union Square in the heart of New York City, the Peridance Capezio Center is ideally located. The center occupies a beautiful historic building and offers state-of-the-art facilities. The Juilliard School offers the highest level of training in dance, music and drama, with a single artistic credo of excellence. If you don't attend the school, you can also attend student performances. The Broadway Dance Center and Steps on Broadway also offer a wide range of classes given by Broadway artists, accessible to beginners.
Theater in New York
Since its creation in 1947 by Lee Strasberg, Cheryl Crawford and Bobby Lewis, the Actors Studio has gained an international reputation with its famous method of acting: an intense preparation during which the actor must search deep inside to find his mode of expression. The great American playwrights, from Tennessee Williams to Arthur Miller, as well as actors such as Robert de Niro, Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino have passed through this institution. While Arthur Miller's work is based on a critique of the injustices of the capitalist system and political conservatism, as in Death of a Salesman, Tennessee Williams' plays are based on the conflict between the transgression of sexual prohibition and the constraints imposed by society, as in Streetcar Named Desire. With Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee is the most illustrious of the American authors of the theater of the absurd, strongly criticizing the modern way of life in the United States. Of all the playwrights of the new American scene of the next generation, David Mamet with his scathing humor is considered the leader. With Glengarry Glenn Ross, he too had highlighted the flaws of our society, mad with ambition and greed.
The cultural diversity of New York is also reflected in the profusion of theaters in the city. Broadway and its Theater District often offer more commercial plays, while the East Village seeks to stand out. You will be spoilt for choice. The Schubert Theatre offers Harper Lee 's 2019 Tony Award-winning To kill a mockingbird , starring Jeff Daniels and Atticus Finch. Co-produced by Lincoln Center Theater and Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Sound Inside is a brand new play at Studio 54, written by Pulitzer Prize finalist Adam Rapp and directed by David Cromer that will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. For a more original evening, book the Theater for the New City, one of the city's leading Off-Off-Broadway theaters. You'll find more political and committed plays.
If you have a good level of English, experience a stand-up show, a New York classic. There are many comedy clubs where four to five comedians perform each night. The prices are usually not very high and most of the time you will just be asked to buy something. In Manhattan, Comedy Cellar is the most famous and has a different show every night. So, be on time or risk being seated poorly, or not having a seat at all. Comedians Chris Rock and Louis CK have put on memorable nights. If you want to spend a few moments with a comedian, head upstairs after the show to The Olive Tree Cafe, where the performers have a regular spot. On the Upper West Side is Stand Up, a landmark that saw the debut of Jerry Seinfeld. Two sessions, of a fairly high standard, are offered each night. The organizers vary their programming, combining several talents that complement each other by the themes addressed. Some are very political, others more focused on personal life and examine societal issues, with the cynical humor characteristic of New Yorkers. Carolines on Broadway is also an excellent choice. Its programmers produce the New York Comedy Festival, which brings together the best in comedy every winter. The Broadway Comedy Club in Midtown invites up-and-coming comedians to perform before they move on to more established stages. You'll get to see the rising stars before anyone else. In the Chelsea neighborhood, Gotham Comedy Club also hosts big names in comedy like Lewis Black, Colin Quinn and Dave Chappelle.
