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      For a Night at the Theater, Bring a Negative Coronavirus Test

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      A pilot program in Berlin is reopening some of the city’s landmark cultural venues, despite surging numbers of infections and toughened restrictions in other areas of life.BERLIN — On a snowy, gray morning last Friday, as a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic in Germany was taking hold, Anna Schoras, 30, lined up outside a pop-up testing site inside a repurposed art gallery in Berlin. Cultural life in the German capital has largely shut down because of the virus, but if Schoras’s test came back negative, she would be allowed to attend the first live stage production in the city in about five months, scheduled for that evening.“I’m just really looking forward to getting out of the house and to consuming live culture,” she said, adding that before the pandemic, she would go to the theater or the opera about twice a month.Earlier that week, Schoras had been among the lucky few to secure one of 350 tickets to the show at the venerated Berliner Ensemble theater. They sold out in four minutes.The performance was part of a pilot project, coordinated by the city of Berlin, that allows its landmark cultural venues to put on a show in front of a live audience — as long as the audience members wear masks, maintain social distancing and present a negative result from a rapid test taken no longer than 12 hours before curtain. The test, which is included in the price of the ticket, must be administered by medically trained workers at one of five approved centers.Along with two nights at the Berliner Ensemble, live performances are being held at two of the city’s opera houses, the Philharmonie and Konzerthaus, and at the Volksbühne theater. Holzmarkt, a nightclub, will also host a sit-down concert. The short run of shows is intended to test whether organizers can put on cultural events safely, even as infection numbers soar.Despite an extension announced on Monday to restrictions that have been in place in Germany since October, Torsten Wöhlert, the city official in charge of the project, said he was determined to keep it running. “The pilot is designed to be safe even when infection rates are high,” he said.But given a recent surge in new cases, regional lawmakers could be called to vote on whether to continue the project, Wöhlert conceded. On Friday, Berlin surpassed the health authorities’ warning level of 100 infections per 100,000 people in a week. The Berlin Senate decided on Tuesday to move back three shows that had been scheduled for the Easter weekend, though others set to be staged before then can go ahead.Germany’s muddled national response to the virus has given way to local initiatives to keep life going, including a program to keep shopping and outdoor dining open for tested customers in some cities. As well as an epidemiological experiment, the Berlin initiative is a signal from a city that prides itself on its vibrant arts scene that — despite being shut down since October — culture still matters.“There is a big appetite for art,” said Wöhlert. “That was evidenced by the speed with which the shows sold out.”Of the 350 people who snapped up the Berliner Ensemble tickets for Friday’s performance of “Panikherz,” a gritty work examining eating disorders and featuring heavy drug use, everyone tested negative before arrival, according to the theater. (Anyone testing positive is guaranteed their money back.)The theater’s bar and coat check were closed, but in any case there was no intermission, to keep mingling opportunities to a minimum, and the compulsory empty seat between spectators, which was supposed to ensure social distancing, also made an excellent substitute coat rack.The Berliner Ensemble’s auditorium, shortly before a performance on Saturday. Spectators had to wear masks and maintain social distancing; every second seat was left empty.Gordon Welters for The New York TimesBerlin is not the only city that could benefit from the insights from the project, with findings expected in mid-April.New York is also experimenting with ways to bring back indoor live performances. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said this month that, beginning April 2, arts and entertainment venues would be allowed to reopen at a third of their regular capacity, holding up to 100 people indoors — and up to 150 if they require audience members to bring proof of a negative test. Some venues are preparing to test audiences themselves. Others will also accept proofs of vaccination.But with New York City still reporting high numbers of new infections each day, real risks remain. Plans by the Park Avenue Armory to stage a new work this week by the choreographer and director Bill T. Jones before a limited, virus-tested, socially-distanced audience were postponed after several members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dance company tested positive for the virus.Other European nations are running their own trials. This month, the Netherlands hosted a series of pop and dance music concerts called “Back to Live,” with up to 1,500 tested attendees and no social distancing. Britain’s government has announced plans to run several similar pilot events in April, including at a nightclub in Liverpool, England.In addition to Berlin’s performance-venue project, museums reopened around Germany last week after the federal authorities loosened the rules. At the Alte Nationalgalerie in central Berlin, each visitor — who can visit without having to present a negative test result — is allocated 430 square feet of space, meaning that only 360 preregistered guests can visit daily, about a fifth of the number the museum would usually attract on a busy day before the pandemic. Tickets are sold out for the coming weeks.Ralph Gleis, the museum’s director, said, “You realize that museums are an essential space in society, where one can go to be distracted, to occupy oneself with external things — especially during a crisis, culture is really important.”But even that respite hangs by a thread. Although museums were open on Wednesday, the rising rate of infections in Berlin could oblige them to close again on very short notice.Visitors at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin on March 16. German museums were allowed to reopen this month after coronavirus lockdown measures were eased.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockHolzmarkt, a sprawling club complex on the Spree River, was the only nightlife venue to join the performance pilot. Although the club’s organizers said that they were happy to put on a concert for 80 people in a space where 400 people could usually cram in — with very few sitting — Konstantin Krex, the club’s spokesman, said that the management was not content with the rules that have kept the venue shuttered since October.“It’s a pretty long way from the real club feeling,” Krex said of the seated concert at Holzmarkt, planned for March 27.Even if the restricted performances lack the bustle of a packed house, the audience at the Berliner Ensemble on Friday night seemed excited to be part of the brief reopening. The actors were nervous after a five-month enforced break, said Oliver Reese, the director.After the cast took its bows, the play’s author, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, jumped onstage to thank the crowd for being part of the project.“It is not a superspreader event — it is culture,” he said. Judging by the applause, the audience agreed. And when the findings of the pilot program come in next month, they will know if he was right.Alex Marshall contributed reporting from London. More

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      Richie Tienken, Whose Comedy Club Propelled Careers, Dies at 75

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRichie Tienken, Whose Comedy Club Propelled Careers, Dies at 75At the Comic Strip, which Mr. Tienken and two partners opened in 1976, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld and many others made a lot of people laugh.Richie Tienken onstage at the Comic Strip in Manhattan in an undated photo. He and two partners opened the club in 1976, and a long list of careers began or were advanced there.Credit…via Tienken familyMarch 6, 2021, 3:25 p.m. ETRichie Tienken, a founder of the influential Manhattan comedy club the Comic Strip, where Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock and countless other leading comics did some of their earliest work, died on Feb. 27 in Ridgewood, N.J. He was 75.His wife, Jeannie Tienken, confirmed his death and said the cause had not been determined. In recent years, he had struggled with throat cancer.In the mid-1970s, Mr. Tienken, who owned several bars in the Bronx, went to see one of his bartenders, an aspiring comic, perform at the comedy club Catch a Rising Star, which was in Manhattan at the time. It was a Monday night — normally a slow one in the bar business — and Mr. Tienken was impressed by how packed Catch a Rising Star was, as told in his 2012 book, written with Jeffrey Gurian, “Make ‘Em Laugh: 35 Years of the Comic Strip, the Greatest Comedy Club of All Time!”In a telephone interview, Mr. Tienken’s son Richie said another business fact was not lost on Mr. Tienken: At the time, comics weren’t generally paid (though the Comic Strip did eventually start paying modest amounts).“He was paying bands $400 a night” at his bars, the younger Mr. Tienken said. He did the math, and he decided that opening a comedy club to compete with Catch a Rising Star and the Improv, the only other prominent comedy club in Manhattan at the time, could be profitable.He and his partners settled on a run-down bar on Second Avenue between 80th and 81st Streets.“The place was old — really old,” Mr. Tienken wrote in the book. “But the bathrooms were in place, which meant that the plumbing was all in.”The Comic Strip (now known as Comic Strip Live) opened in 1976, and a long list of careers began or were propelled along there.“Richie Tienken’s club gave me my start in comedy,” Mr. Seinfeld, who first performed there in 1976, said through a spokesman. “And he had a wonderful, fatherly way about him that gave us all a feeling of encouragement as we stumbled around his stage trying to figure out how to do it. We all loved seeing him every night, and he took good care of us.”Mr. Tienken, second from left, with, from left, the comedians Jimmy Brogan, Jerry Seinfeld and Mark Schiff. “Richie Tienken’s club gave me my start in comedy,” Mr. Seinfeld said.Credit…via Tienken familyMr. Seinfeld returned to the club to perform a 2017 Netflix special, “Jerry Before Seinfeld,” in which he included the first jokes he told from the Comic Strip stage.Mr. Murphy, soon to achieve stardom on “Saturday Night Live,” was another comic who honed his stand-up at the club in its early days. Mr. Tienken and one of his co-founders, Robert Wachs, managed him for a time, and they both had producer credits on some of Mr. Murphy’s movies.A somewhat later group included Adam Sandler, Ray Romano and Mr. Rock, who wrote the introduction for “Make ‘Em Laugh” and compared comedy clubs like Catch a Rising Star and the Comic Strip to colleges for young stand-ups.“Catch was Yale, and the Strip was Illinois State University, Urbana,” he wrote. “Catch was stressful, like you were always on the verge of being expelled if you didn’t keep up your grades. The Strip was laid back. If you put in the work and studied, you would do well. But if you blew off a term smoking pot, it didn’t go on your permanent record.”And Mr. Tienken?“He had powerful shoulders and was genial,” Mr. Rock wrote, “like a bouncer who babysat on the side.”Richard John Tienken was born on June 11, 1945, in Manhattan. His father, John, was an electrician, and his mother, Helen, was a homemaker and also worked in a department store.He left home at 13, he said — he had stolen a car, and when reform school loomed, he hit the road to avoid it. His father was surprisingly supportive when he announced his plans.“He said, ‘After looking into them’” — that is, reform schools — “‘I understand; here’s 50 bucks,’” Mr. Tienken recalled last year in an episode of Mr. Gurian’s video series, “Comedy Matters.”He sold magazines and delivered groceries, and he eventually got into bar and bingo hall ownership. Then he moved into comedy.Mr. Gurian, a writer, comic and comedy historian who worked with Mr. Tienken again on a 2016 update of the 2012 book that they called “Laughing Legends: How the Comic Strip Club Changed the Face of Comedy,” said that among Mr. Tienken’s innovations was instituting a schedule so comics would know when they were going onstage; in other clubs, they might sit around for hours not knowing when or even whether they would get stage time on a given night.Some of the comics who came through his club were known for edgy material, but Mr. Tienken’s son Richie said his father was a fan of restraint.“He encouraged comics to tell stories about their own life over shock value and vulgarity,” he said.Mr. Tienken married Jeannie Nardi in 1991. In addition to her and his son Richie, Mr. Tienken, who lived in Hawthorne, N.J., is survived by another son, Jonathan; three daughters, Jacqueline, Dawn and Christina; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.Mr. Tienken’s club had financial troubles at times (its post-pandemic future is unclear), and in recent years he had been embroiled in legal battles with the widow of Mr. Wachs, who died in 2013. But in the video interview last year, he said Mr. Seinfeld’s recent special had given the club a financial lift.So did a gesture by another alumnus, Mr. Sandler, who shot part of his 2018 Netflix special called “100% Fresh” there. But unlike the Seinfeld taping, that one was a surprise to Mr. Tienken; his wife kept it a secret from him.“She said to me, ‘When you come in tonight, dress nice,’” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jerry Brandt, Whose Music Clubs Captured a Moment, Dies at 82

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostJerry Brandt, Whose Music Clubs Captured a Moment, Dies at 82Energizing Manhattan night life, he opened the Electric Circus in 1967 and the Ritz 13 years later. He died of Covid-19.The promoter Jerry Brandt, right, with Tina Turner and Keith Richards in 1984 at the Ritz, the East Village club Mr. Brandt opened in 1980.Credit…Bob GruenJan. 28, 2021Updated 5:52 p.m. ETJerry Brandt, a promoter and entrepreneur who owned two nightclubs, the Electric Circus and the Ritz, that were attention-getting parts of New York’s music scene in their day, died on Jan. 16 in Miami Beach. He was 82.His family said in a statement that the cause was Covid-19.Mr. Brandt made a career of trying to catch whatever wave was cresting on the pop-culture scene. With the Electric Circus, which he opened in 1967 on St. Marks Place in the East Village, it was psychedelia. With the Ritz, opened in 1980 a few blocks away, it was the exploding music scene of the MTV decade, with the shows he staged there — Parliament-Funkadelic, U2, Tina Turner, Ozzy Osbourne, Frank Zappa and countless others — reflecting the exploratory energy of the time.Not all his big bets paid off. Perhaps his best-known debacle was Jobriath, a gay performer whom Mr. Brandt backed with a lavish promotional campaign in 1973 and ’74, hoping to create an American version of David Bowie’s androgynous Ziggy Stardust persona. The concertgoing and record-buying public soundly rejected the attempt to manufacture a star, and Jobriath, whose real name was Bruce Campbell, faded quickly.But Mr. Brandt’s successes, especially with the Ritz, caught their cultural moment and propelled it forward. At the Ritz, he not only booked an expansive range of bands; he also brought new technologies into the mix.“The Ritz opened May 14, 1980, with a video screen the size of the proscenium arch it hung from,” the WFUV disc jockey Delphine Blue, who was a Ritz D.J. for five years, said by email. “On it were projected cartoons, movie bits, psychedelic montages, while the D.J.s played records and jockeyed back and forth with the V.J., who played music videos. This was over a year before the debut of MTV in August of 1981.”There was, she said, a rope dancer who was lowered from the ceiling. There was a cameraman lugging a huge video camera around the dance floor, capturing the dancers and projecting the images on the big screen. The club was often packed and the chaos barely controlled. Sometimes it was not controlled at all.“A full house at the Ritz began throwing bottles at the club’s video screen two weeks ago when the British band Public Image Ltd. performed behind the screen, refused to come out from behind it and taunted the audience,” The New York Times reported in the spring of 1981. “Several fans then stormed the stage, ripping down the screen and destroying equipment. There was a moment of near-panic on the crowded dance floor, though apparently no one was hurt.”Mr. Brandt was the center of it all.“Jerry,” Ms. Blue said simply, “was the P.T. Barnum of nightclubs.”Mr. Brandt made a career of trying to catch whatever wave was cresting on the pop-culture scene. With the Electric Circus, which he opened in 1967, it was psychedelia.Credit…Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesJerome Jack Mair was born on Jan. 29, 1938, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to Jack and Anna (Cohen) Mair. His father, Mr. Brandt wrote in his memoir, “It’s a Short Walk From Brooklyn, if You Run” (2014), left when he was 5. When his mother subsequently married Harold Brandt, Jerry took his stepfather’s name.After graduating from Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, he served in the Army from 1956 to 1958. Back in New York, he eventually got a job as a waiter at the Town Hill, a Brooklyn club that featured top Black performers like Sam Cooke and Dinah Washington.“It was a dream come true,” he wrote in his memoir. “I could see great performers and make money at the same time. It made me realize that I wanted to be in the music business.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Piano Bars and Jazz Clubs Reopen, Calling Live Music ‘Incidental’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPiano Bars and Jazz Clubs Reopen, Calling Live Music ‘Incidental’As the coronavirus continues to spread, Marie’s Crisis Cafe became the latest Manhattan music venue to reopen, claiming that it is not a performance venue.Despite the worsening pandemic, Marie’s Crisis Cafe, a West Village piano bar, reopened with a singalong this week. Like other venues, it says its music is “incidental,” and therefore allowed.Credit…Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesSarah Bahr and Dec. 11, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETAlthough most indoor live performances have been banned in New York since the coronavirus began its deadly spread in March, about a dozen people turned up Wednesday night at Birdland, the jazz club near Times Square, for a 7 p.m. performance that was billed as dinner with live jazz. They had reservations.Among them was Tricia Tait, 63, of Manhattan, who came for the band, led by the tuba player David Ostwald, which plays the music of Louis Armstrong. Until the pandemic hit, it had performed on most Wednesdays at Birdland. She admitted to health worries “in the back of my mind,” but said, “Sometimes you just have to take a chance and enjoy things.”While the number of daily new coronavirus cases in New York City has been climbing to levels not seen since April, in-person learning has been suspended at public middle schools and high schools, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo warned this week that indoor dining in the city could soon be banned, Birdland and a number of other noted jazz clubs and piano bars across the city have been quietly offering live performances again, arguing that the music they are presenting is “incidental,” and therefore permitted by the pandemic-era guidelines set by the State Liquor Authority.Those guidelines state that “only incidental music is permissible at this time” and that “advertised and/or ticketed shows are not permissible.” They continue: “Music should be incidental to the dining experience and not the draw itself.”That has not prevented a number of New York venues that are better known for their performances than their cuisine — including Birdland, the Blue Note and Marie’s Crisis Cafe, a West Village piano bar that reopened Monday with a show tune singalong after declaring itself a dining establishment — from offering live music again.“We think it’s incidental,” Ryan Paternite, the director of programming and media at Birdland, said of its calendar of performances that include a brass band and a jazz quartet. “It’s background music. That’s the rule.”The rules have been challenged in court. After Michael Hund, a Buffalo guitarist, filed a lawsuit in August challenging them, a judge in the U.S. District Court in the Western District of New York issued a preliminary injunction last month preventing the state from enforcing its ban on advertised and ticketed shows. “The incidental-music rule prohibits one kind of live music and permits another,” the judge, John L. Sinatra Jr., wrote in his Nov. 13 decision. “This distinction is arbitrary.”The state is appealing the ruling.“The science is clear that mass gatherings can easily turn into superspreader events, and it is unconscionable that businesses would attempt to undermine proven public health rules like this as infections, hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise,” William Crowley, a spokesman for the liquor authority, said Thursday. He noted that a federal judge in New York City had ruled in another case that the restrictions were constitutional. He said that the state would “continue to vigorously defend our ability to fight this pandemic whenever it is challenged.”But it is unclear what, exactly, “incidental” music means. Does that mean a guitar player in the corner? A six-person jazz band like the one that played at Birdland on Wednesday night? The Harlem Gospel Choir, which is set to perform at the Blue Note on Christmas Day? Mr. Crowley did not respond to questions seeking further clarity on Thursday, or about what enforcement actions the state has taken.Customers at Marie’s Crisis Cafe.Credit…Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesRobert Bookman, a lawyer who represents a number of New York’s live music venues, said venues interpreted the ruling as allowing them to advertise and sell tickets for incidental music performances during dinner.So venues have chosen their words carefully. They are taking dinner reservations, and are announcing calendars of lineups for what Mr. Paternite, of Birdland, characterizes as “background music during dinner.” Unlike Mac’s Public House, the Staten Island bar that declared itself an autonomous zone and was recently lampooned on “Saturday Night Live,” they have no interest in openly flouting regulations.Mr. Paternite said that Birdland, after laying off nearly all of its 60 employees in March, is now back to what he calls a “skeleton staff” of about 10 people.“It’s a huge risk for us to be open,” he said. “And it only brings in a pittance. But it helps us out in our agreement with our landlord, because to pay our rent over time and stay current on our utilities and taxes, we need to stay open. But we’re losing massive amounts every day.”If venues don’t reopen now, he fears, they may never do so. The Jazz Standard, a beloved 130-seat club on East 27th Street in Manhattan, announced last week that it would close permanently because of the pandemic. Arlene’s Grocery, a Lower East Side club that hosted the Strokes before they became well known, said it was “on life support” and, without aid, would have to close on Feb. 1.Randy Taylor, the bartender and manager at Marie’s Crisis Cafe, said the last time the piano bar had served food was probably back in the 1970s — or perhaps earlier. “There’s a very old kitchen that’s totally disconnected upstairs,” he said. Its dining options are extremely limited: It currently offers $4 bowls of chips and salsa. “We are required to sell them,” he said. “We can’t just give them away.”Steven Bensusan, the president of Blue Note Entertainment Group, said that he hopes the state does not move to shut down indoor dining.“I know cases are spiking,” he said. “But we’re doing our best to keep people safe, and I hope we can continue to stay open. We’re not going to be profitable, but we have the ability to give some people work who’ve been with us for a long time.”The clubs said that they were taking precautions. At the Blue Note, which reopened Nov. 27, the formerly shared tables are now six feet apart and separated by plexiglass barriers, and its two nightly dinner seatings are each capped at 25 percent capacity, or about 50 people. At Marie’s Crisis Cafe, where the masked pianist Alexander Barylski was ensconced behind clear shielding on Wednesday night as he led a jubilant group chorus of “Frosty the Snowman,” Mr. Taylor said that tables were separated by plastic barriers, and that the venue conducted temperature checks and collected contact tracing information at the door.Daniel Wiseman, left, and Rindi Klarberg are greeted by Moni Penda, right, at Birdland, a noted jazz club that now calls its live music “incidental.” Credit…Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesMarie’s Crisis Cafe had been livestreaming shows on Instagram and its Facebook group page, but Mr. Taylor said it wasn’t the same. On Wednesday night, 10 customers belted out holiday tunes through masks, some sipping their first drinks at a venue since March.“There have been some tears,” Mr. Taylor said. “People really, really missed us. We can’t see their smiles through their masks, but their eyes say it all.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More