New York City is a place with a vibrant and seemingly ever-expanding music scene. What about the signature sounds of the place itself? The rhythmic clatter of the subway? The honks of taxis? Fire hydrants spilling onto the streets on hot summer days? Does the sonic identity of the place evolve with its music? Performance Today assembled a collection of "community-sourced sounds" submitted by PT listeners from their New York neighborhoods.

For this series called "New York Out Loud," composer Arun Luthra used those sounds in five new musical works - one for each of the five boroughs of New York.

"It was kind of analogous to the notion of a sculptor. You might say a sculptor is removing stone [to] create a shape. They create what is in their mind. But then, you know, the kind of deep Zen approach to the sculpture is -- I'm removing the excess stone to reveal the shape that's already within the stone. And I started to think of the sounds that way. I wanted to find the music in the sounds that were given to me rather than trying to kind of impose something on them."

Once human ears are tuned in to this kind of listening, PT Host Fred Child explains, it's hard to ignore:

 "I've gone around with a greater consciousness, and I hear people talking and I hear music now in a different way. I hear rhythm and melody because [Arun] kind of brought that to my attention in these compositions."

Arun Luthra assembled an ensemble of talented New York musicians to record his five new works; Marko Churnchetz (piano), Thomson Kneeland (upright bass), Jonathan Barber (percussion) and Luthra himself plays saxophone and provides vocals.

Some composers emphasize rhythm by writing for drums and percussion, but in his composition Brooklyn: runners and riders, Luthra explains, he chose to ground the rhythm in his voice.

"I come from an Indian family on my father's side and a British family, my mother's side, and from the youngest age, hearing my father listening to his Indian classical music records, I was just completely fascinated by the rhythmic aspect of the music, and there's a tradition of vocalizing rhythms rather than playing them on a drum."

The technique is called Konnakol. Luthra uses Konnakol like a thread, to weave together community-sourced sound samples like the rickety rattle of a Coney Island roller coaster and the cheering of crowds at a New York City Marathon. 

"It is really about having a kind of a childlike wonder at the world...and accessing that part of your brain... Here is this amazing city. And it's easy to think of a city as a mechanical or structural thing, but it's really made up of the people who who live here."

Composer Arun Luthra amplifies the music of the city through his five new works: Brooklyn: runners and riders, Staten Island: Charlie's world of wonders, Manhattan: subterranean daydream, Queens: omnijoy and The Bronx: courtly groove. New York Out Loud is produced by Jocelyn Frank.

Amidst the traffic of New York's Times Square--honking horns, shuffling tourists, screeching bus tires, and flashing lights-- there are musical sounds, if you listen closely, while standing over the right subway grate. The sound art of Max Neuhaus's Times Square rises up to greet listening ears.

Dia Art Foundation curator Kelly Kivland explained in an interview with Performance Today, that "amongst the cacophony, he [Neuhaus] wanted you to have a moment of pause, that envelops you-- an unusual audible sound, resembling the after-ring of large bells."

Neuhaus's work begins below the ground with speakers tucked under the surface. They generate the sound audible above. As pedestrians pass by or stand over the subway grate at the intersection of 45th Street and Broadway, they may first perceive the work as a gentle rumble, or vibration, through the soles of their shoes and soon the "after-ring" may become noticeable to the ear.

Before Neuhaus was a sound installation artist, he was a successful percussionist. He studied at the Manhattan School of Music. While there, he met John Cage and Morton Feldman. His ears became increasingly alert and attentive to the sonic potential around him.

He organized Listen sessions: Neuhaus guided small audiences on performative, participatory, walking and listening tours of New York City. The tours paused at sites with unique soundscapes. Some stops showcased industrial sounds and others featured the whisper of wind through trees. Listen walks often concluded with a solo percussion performance by Neuhaus himself.

In 1968 Neuhaus decided to leave percussion performance behind entirely and dive more deeply into the creation of sound art. In 1977, with the help of the New York Transit Authority, Neuhaus installed Times Square. Functionally, the work requires loudspeakers and electronic sound generators tucked into the subway ventilation shaft running under a pedestrian area on Broadway between 45th and 46th Streets.

The work has likely reached over 20 million sets of ears. That street corner ushers over 1 million people through on New Year's Eve alone (which is, by comparison, 997,196 more sets of ears than the Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall can welcome for a given performance).

New York City's Times Square may appear to be completely saturated with the sounds and lights of passing celebrations, fleeting advertisements and musical theater shows, but unlike those things that come and go, Neuhaus's sound art work continues.

"Unlike music, which has a beginning, a middle and an end, a sound installation is a continuous sound environment" explains Alan Licht, author of Sound Art Revisited, in an interview with Performance Today.

Times Square did run continuously from 1977 until 1992. It's components then fell into disrepair. Max Neuhaus, along with help from the Dia Art Foundation, restored and reinstalled the work in 2002. Since then, it's been audible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It's audible but not easily findable. Tourists and passersby don't always immediately recognize from where the sounds of Neuhaus's Times Square originate. The physical work is unmarked and underground.

The best advice may be to listen carefully for unexpected sonic collaborations between the city's signature sounds of daily life (traffic, horns, tourists' chatter etc), and the works of fine sound art, at every corner- just in case. The effort could be rewarded with meaningful moments of pause and reflection -- just as Neuhaus hoped to create through his work Times Square.

Ariel Francisco is Performance Today's New York Out Loud Series Poet. He is the author of A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship (Burrow Press, 2020) and All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017). A poet and translator born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents and raised in Miami, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Queens.

Five new works by Ariel Francisco- one for each borough of New York:

FOR THE MARIACHI BAND PLAYING ON THE
QUEENS BOUND 7 TRAIN IN THE MORNING
Ariel Francisco

Breath of the accordion swelling
in the emptying car: everyone
heading towards Manhattan in the AM
but the music heads east away from the city
with the few of us listening
to the guitar's caffeinated cries,
the miracle of violins vibrating
in unison as the car rocks
out of rhythm. How difficult
it must be to balance on this
hurtling stage for such a meger
audience that grows even thinner
with each stop. And still the singer
sings, leaving a little beautiful Spanish
at each stop, perhaps catching
the passing ear of someone driving
to work as they look up to the sound
just in time to see the train pulling
out of the station, blazing in the sun.

 
HEARING SPIDER-MAN SPEAKING SPANISH
IN TIMES SQUARE
Ariel Francisco

Peter Parker has really packed on the pounds
but still the children approach him excitedly
asking for a picture, their parents holding up
their cameras with cash in hand as Spider-Man says
claro, claro, motioning them over. Maybe
it's something about the mask that makes it ok.
No echo in a photo, no accent, no remnant of identity,
no doubt in anyone's mind that this is Spider-Man.
Without the mask he would be harrassed,
told to speak English, told to go back to where
he came from, wherever that might be. But here
in the red and blue, under the neon and noise,
he's the hero for a few dollars, constantly reminded
of the importance of keeping his secret identity.

 
FOR THE CASITAS OF THE SOUTH BRONX
Ariel Francisco

Small worlds grown to outlast
the change that ousts so many:
for every home torn down
for a condo, a plum, a pear
fruiting into fullness on the branch.
For every displaced voice, a grape
on a vine weaving so thick
through the trellis it blocks
out the sun, a new roof
that can't be caved in, that won't
feel a wrecking ball's fist, that gives
cover to singing and dancing
and music that will never fade,
that feeds the gardens that feed
the people that feed their people.

 

READING DEVIN KELLY'S "READING ARIEL FRANCISCO ON
THE STATEN ISLAND FERRY" ON THE STATEN ISLAND FERRY
Ariel Francisco

On this bright orange boat
that could be a giant toy
the Statue of Liberty
plays with like a child in the tub
in the night's deepest hours
when she thinks no one is looking,
when the only sleepless person
in this sleepless city is the Domino's
truck driver dropping off those trash
ingredients beneath your apartment--
what is not yet pizza rattling you from sleep.
Every night I am awoken by potential
and I suppose even the flavorless
mediocrity of an unassembled
Domino's pizza, a disc tasting
of cardboard disappointment, is a kind
of potential. And maybe Staten Island
growing larger in the distance is like
the Domino's Pizza of places,
and the Staten Island Yankees are like
the Domino's Pizza of baseball,
(and baseball is, of course,
the Domino's Pizza of sports)
because they too are terrible and yet
there's something beautiful in the
trying, right? In a minor league dream,
in potential under flimsy lights
of the stadium like a round rust-colored
pepperoni on the island's face.
In traversing all of Manhattan
and New York Bay to watch amateurs
lose at a dying sport again and again.
Or maybe they win, it doesn't matter--
it's a beautiful night,
I think I understand now.

 
AT BROADWAY JUNCTION STATION, BROOKLYN
Ariel Francisco

There's the man selling bootleg DVDs
of decade old films laid out on a rug
like holy relics catching the sunlight;
there's the woman selling churros with her
daughter, two for a dollar, a dangerous
deal that would rot my teeth if I ever
had any cash; the preachers, oh,
the preachers: in suits, in collars,
in Brooklyn Nets hats, some screeching
the demise of passers by heading
to the L or the J, the A and C,
trying to have their call of doom heard
over that of a rival, while others mumble
their end-of-days predictions,
staring at their shoes instead of staring
into the souls of the commuters
as though not quite as devout
in their beliefs as they should be,
dragging their feet under the stain-
glassed windows lining the walls;
there's the silence of the escalators broken
again, the silence of the looming three levels
of stairs-- no easy ascension here,
we all take the hard way.

Sam Zygmuntowicz is a luthier, a maker of stringed-instruments, in New York City. Violin soloist Dylana Jenson explains that after over 35 years of performing on a variety of violins, she's confident Zygmuntowicz is the best of the best."Working with Sam," she says, "was a shocking revelation of what a master artist can do for a musician."

Professor Angella Ahn of Montana State University agrees:

"I still pick up my violin every single day, grateful to have this piece of art from the most famous violin maker in the world."

Zygmuntowicz studied violin-making during college. He then moved to New York to focus on his craftsmanship by working under the esteemed luthier Rene Morel. Zygmuntowicz established his own workshop in Brooklyn and now mentors rising luthiers himself.

If you tie a thread from Zygmuntowicz, to his New York luthier teachers, to their teachers, and their teachers before them- a direct line leads back to Antonio Stradivarius. He lived more than 300 years ago, in Cremona, Italy and is considered the greatest stringed instrument maker of all time. The connection to Stradivarius isn't just a claim to fame, Zygmuntowicz explains that the violins he produces actually reveal little clues of this powerful Italy-to-New York lineage.

"You can actually recognize it in the color palettes we use for retouching. There's a certain style that comes out of this shop. There's certain styles of knife grinding-- the shape, the edge... there's certain things that are quite distinctive, the shape of the sound post, and you can really see where someone's learned through the little quirks and flourishes," he says.

As a kid Sam Zygmuntowicz was interested in sculpture. He spent hours at the library reading about different styles of art. He stumbled on a book about the art of instrument making.

"Instrument making caught my attention because it uses the tactile skills of a sculptor," he explains. "It can use the ear of a musician and hopefully the aesthetic sense of an artis, but also I used a microscope. So there's the analytical aspect to it."

Unlike many luthiers in the business, Zygmuntowicz didn't come from a family of instrument makers. However, the presence of violins was a given in his family.

Zygmuntowicz says, "My parents being European immigrants, of course, gave my older brother's violin lessons, which they dropped when they were brave enough to tell them they didn't want them... by the time they got to me, they never actually gave me violin lessons, but there was a violin in the house."

For Zygmuntowicz there is no better place to master his craft than in New York City. It's a town with a brilliant music scene, some of the most highly respected venues and creative composers, and it is in New York that bold and innovative artists seek out the best instruments for their work. Sam Zygmuntowicz feels a real sense of responsibility to be an usher, of sorts, for the brilliance of his violin clients:

"By living here, it's about being connected to...my people and being there for them and getting their feedback...the heights that [the violin] will be taken to are just mind-blowing. The things that these people can do..."

Although music is most often talked about with a focus on performers and composers, Sam Zygmuntowicz feels the gravitas of his role as a luthier.

"I increasingly see myself as shaping this thing that exists in the air at the moment that the bow touches the string," Zygmuntowicz says. "You know of course I have to carve the wood and do all that stuff but also...there is a very physical and very tangible line from the brain of the player to the brain of the listener. And part of my job is to be the curator of that little stream of energy that's flowing through the whole thing."

This story is part of a special week-long series, New York Out Loud, produced by Jocelyn Frank and edited by Suzanne Schaffer.

For as long as there has been a subway system in New York, there have been musicians decorating it with sound. However, they haven't always been welcome. PT host Fred Child talks with subway historian Susie Tanenbaum about the shift from official bans, to official support for music underground.

In this short film, Fred Child heads underground to explore the history and importance of Subway music to the city.