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      How to Pretend You’re in New Orleans Tonight

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      While your travel plans may be on hold, you can pretend you’re somewhere new for the night. Around the World at Home invites you to channel the spirit of a new place each week with recommendations on how to explore the culture, all from the comfort of your home.Over the course of the decade since I first visited, I have often imagined myself at home in New Orleans. I think of the syncopated shuffle of a snare drum, the simple pleasure of an afternoon walk with a to-go beer in hand and the candy-colored shotgun houses that sink into the ground at odd angles. And so it wasn’t a huge surprise when, at the beginning of 2021, I found myself packing up my life and moving to the Crescent City for a few months. Why not be somewhere I love at this difficult time, I thought? Why not live in my daydreams for a little while?From left: Bike paraders on Frenchmen Street the week before Mardi Gras; a shotgun house; the Pete Fountain jazz funeral second line paraded during Jazz Fest in 2016.From left: Emily Kask for The New York Times; Sebastian Modak; Bryan Tarnowski for The New York TimesNew Orleans is above all else resilient. Mardi Gras parades were canceled this year, though it didn’t stop New Orleanians from finding ways to celebrate (nothing ever will). In recent months, brass bands have taken to street corners in front of masked, socially distant spectators instead of packed night clubs. Strangers still chat you up about the Saints from their front porches. My visions of this city may still be filtered through the fuzzy lens of a visitor, but I know I’ll be pretending I’m still there long after I’m gone. Here are a few ways you can, too.A brass band plays on Frenchman Street the week before Mardi Gras.Emily Kask for The New York TimesTurn up that radioNew Orleans music is a collage of sounds: it’s the birthplace of jazz, of the frenetic dance music known as bounce, popularized by superstars like Big Freedia, the call-and-response songs of Mardi Gras Indians, and so much more. For an overview of the sounds of this loud, percussive city there is no better place to start than the wonderfully eclectic WWOZ, a community-supported radio station that has been on the air since 1980. Luckily, you can listen to it from anywhere online. It’s only a matter of time before you start getting to know the various D.J.s and tuning in for your favorites.From left: musicians Big Freedia, Rebirth Brass Band and Kermit RuffinsFrom left: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images; Bryan Tarnowski for The New York Times; L. Kasimu Harris for The New York TimesPut on a curated playlist“New Orleans is not a periphery music scene,” Soul Sister, who has hosted a show on WWOZ for more than 25 years, told me. “New Orleans is the reason for it all.” Soul Sister was one of a handful of local experts I consulted in putting together a playlist that will send you straight to New Orleans. Among her recommendations are a bounce classic by DJ Jubilee and the music of Rebirth Brass Band, which brings her back to afternoons spent celebrating on the street: “It reminds me of the energy and freedom of being at the second line parades on Sundays, dancing through all the neighborhoods nonstop for three or four hours,” she said.On this playlist, you will also find some classics — the rollicking piano of Professor Longhair, for example, starts it off — recommended by Keith Spera who writes about music for the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate. By the end of the playlist, you will undoubtedly agree with Mr. Spera’s assessment of New Orleans music: “There is no singular style of ‘New Orleans music’ — is it jazz? Rhythm & blues? Funk? Bounce? — but you know it when you hear it.”The Mosquito Supper Club is a Cajun restaurant in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. Denny CulbertExpand your cookbook collectionJust like its music, New Orleans food contains multitudes: Creole, Cajun, African, Vietnamese and other flavors collide like nowhere else. A fine place to start is with the Dooky Chase Cookbook, the collected recipes of Leah Chase, who died in 2019, of Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, an institution that has hosted civil rights leaders, presidents and countless regulars at its location in Treme, the neighborhood where jazz was born. Next, tap into the Cajun influence on the city with “Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou,” by Melissa M. Martin who oversees a restaurant of the same name in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. Ms. Martin recommends making her grandmother’s oyster soup. “I can picture her stirring a pot on Bayou Petit Caillou and seasoning a broth with salty Louisiana oysters, Creole tomatoes and salted pork,” Ms. Martin said. “The marriage of three ingredients transports me to the tiny fishing village I call home, where salt was and still is always in the air.”From left: Velma Marie’s oyster soup; President George W. Bush with Leah Chase at Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in 2007; Linda Green’s ya-ka-mein.From left: Denny Culbert; Evan Vucci/Associated Press; via Linda GreenCook up some noodle soup, Nola style“It is New Orleans’ best kept secret,” the chef Linda Green, better known as Ms. Linda, told me when I asked about her specialty. Festival and second line crowds come to her for ya-ka-mein, a salty beef noodle soup often eaten as a late-night snack or a next-morning cure (hence its “Old Sober” moniker). The dish’s origins are mysterious: a product of cultural exchange involving, depending on who you ask, Black soldiers returning from the Korean War or Chinese railroad workers arriving in the 1800s. Ms. Linda’s family recipe is also a mystery (she credits the globe-trotting chef Anthony Bourdain for encouraging her to keep it secret). But she has shared versions of her recipe, so you can try your hand at it at home. “That will get you pretty close to the real thing,” she said with a wink I could almost hear over the phone.First Street, in the Garden District, is lined with ornate mansions that are still lived in today. The pink Italianate mansion, above, is the Carroll-Crawford House.Sebastian ModakWalk it offNew Orleans is a city full of history and it can be hard to know what you are looking at without some guidance. You can feel like you are on your own personal walking tour thanks to Free Tours by Foot, which has transferred their expertise to YouTube. You can now stroll the grandiose Garden District, pull away the sensationalism around New Orleans’ Voodoo traditions and take a deep dive into jazz history in Treme. “New Orleans is full of painful history, and it’s also known as one of the most fun cities in the world,” Andrew Farrier, one of the tour guides, said. “I think it’s useful for all of us to know how those two things can live so close to each other.”From left: the Bywater, the Sazerac and the Brandy Crusta — all New Orleans inventions.From left: Drew Stubbs; Craig Lee for The New York Times; Melina Hammer for The New York TimesFix a drinkContrary to so many pop culture depictions of the city, New Orleans’ drinking scene extends far beyond the vortex of debauchery that is Bourbon Street. There are the classic New Orleans inventions, of course, like the Sazerac, but for something a little different, turn to one of the city’s most revered mixologists. Chris Hannah, of Jewel of the South, invented the Bywater as a New Orleanian spin on the Brooklyn. “Among the ingredient substitutions I swapped rum for rye as a cheeky nod to our age-old saying, ‘New Orleans is the northernmost tip of the Caribbean’,” Mr. Hannah said.Chris Hannah, making a cocktail behind the bar, is a revered mixologist and the co-owner of Jewel of the South. L. Kasimu Harris for The New York TimesHave a little partyWhile it’s impossible to fully channel the spirit of a New Orleans dive bar at home, combine the playlist above with your quarantine pod and a “set-up” and you might just get close. What is a set-up, you ask? It’s a staple dive bar order that will get you a half-pint of your liquor of choice, a mixer and a stack of plastic cups. It’s also an often-overlooked part of New Orleans drinking culture, according to Deniseea Taylor, a cocktail enthusiast who goes by the Cocktail Goddess. “When you find a bar with a set-up, you are truly in Nola,” Ms. Taylor said. “First time I experienced a set-up, it was paired with a $5 fish plate, a match made in heaven.”From left: a still from Lily Keber’s documentary “Buckjumping”; the cover of Sarah M. Broom’s book “The Yellow House”; Jurnee Smollett and Samuel L. Jackson in the 1997 film, “Eve’s Bayou.”Mairzy Doats Productions (far left); Trimark Pictures (far right)Wind down with a story or twoIt should come as no surprise that New Orleans, with its triumphant and tragic history, its syncretic culture and its pervasive love of fun, is a place of stories. There is a wide canon of literature to choose from. For something recent, pick up “The Yellow House,” a memoir by Sarah M. Broom, which the Times book critic Dwight Garner called “forceful, rolling and many-chambered.” Going further back in time, try “Coming Through Slaughter,” a fictionalized rendition of the life of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden by Michael Ondaatje.If you are in the mood for a documentary, Clint Bowie, artistic director of the New Orleans Film Festival, recommends Lily Keber’s “Buckjumping,” which spotlights the city’s dancers. For something fictional, Mr. Bowie points to “Eve’s Bayou” directed by Kasi Lemmons. It’s hard to forget New Orleans is a city built on a swamp when you feel the crushing humidity or lose your footing on ruptured streets, and this movie will take you farther into that ethereal environment. “Set in the Louisiana bayou country in the ’60s, we could think of no better film to spark Southern Gothic daydreams about a visit to the Spanish moss-draped Louisiana swamps,” Mr. Bowie said.Glimpses of south Louisiana’s swampy flora can be found in New Orleans’ Audubon Park.Sebastian ModakHow are you going to channel the spirit of New Orleans in your home? Share your ideas in the comments.To keep up with upcoming articles in this series, sign up for our At Home newsletter. More

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      Testing, One, Two. Fans Flock to an Experimental Indoor Rock Concert.

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      An organizer said this Barcelona event, one of several planned in Europe, was “a small but important step toward normality.” The listeners there basked in being part of an audience again.BARCELONA, Spain — Mireia Serret, a 21-year old student at the University of Barcelona, said that she was not a big fan of the band that played here on Saturday, nor does she normally like large crowds.Nevertheless, Serret had snapped up one of the 5,000 tickets to Europe’s biggest indoor rock concert since the start of the pandemic because “it had just been too long since I was last able to dance and have fun at a concert.”Organized by a group of Spanish music promoters as part of an initiative called “Festivals for Safe Culture,” the concert in the Palau de Sant Jordi was presented as Europe’s boldest effort to get thousands into an indoor venue, without seating or mandatory social distancing. The sole act was Love of Lesbian, a Spanish indie rock band, which formed before Serret was born. “For me, this isn’t about whether I really like their music, but about being able to feel and live their music, right next to so many other people,” Serret said.The sole act was Love of Lesbian, a Spanish indie rock band.Albert Gea/ReutersTrial concert or festival events have been held in several European countries, including in Germany and the Netherlands, as part of efforts to allow crowds to form again to see live music. The British government will also run a series of test events next month, including one at a nightclub in Liverpool, also without requiring social distancing.Europe’s famed summer music festivals, which draw tens of thousands of fans to open outdoor spaces, are in doubt this year despite the tests. Several major festivals have already canceled their June lineups, including Rock am Ring at the Nürburgring racetrack in Germany and Sonar festival in Barcelona. Sonar’s management pushed their flagship festival to 2022 and is planning two smaller events in October. Still, Roskilde, Denmark’s biggest, hopes to go on in June with acts including the rapper Kendrick Lamar. The Danish government said last week that it aims to restart pop concerts from May 6 onward with the help of a “corona passport” that will allow people to show their status of vaccination, proof of recent negative tests for the virus or documentation they have recovered from Covid-19.At a time when countries like France and Italy have recently put their residents back under lockdown to help stop another wave of infection, the people behind the Barcelona event said their goal was to look ahead.Albert Gea/ReutersLluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOne of the organizers, Ventura Barba, the executive director of the Sonar festival, said in an interview that Saturday’s concert was “a small but important step toward normality.” Barba forecast that the Barcelona concert would break even, but he stressed that it was “not a commercial project,” nor could it be replicated for festivals that operate over several days and with other financial constraints. Ticket sales accounted for 36 percent of the Barcelona concert’s budget of about €250,000, with 30 percent covered by public authorities, 24 percent from private sponsors and 10 percent from the promoters themselves.A hospital team helped test the concertgoers for Covid-19 before the event, using as their model a smaller concert last December in another Barcelona venue, the Sala Apolo. At the Apolo, the audience of 500 people was tested before the show, as well as another 500 people who acted as a control group, and everybody got tested again eight days later. The Apolo’s concertgoers all tested negative, while two people in the control group tested positive, according to Josep Maria Llibre, a specialist in infectious diseases from the Germans Trias i Pujol hospital northeast of Barcelona who is also monitoring the Palau concert.Ahead of Saturday’s concert, six people tested positive, according to the organizers. However, the medical team is using neither a control group nor postconcert testing, relying instead on public medical records to track whether any concertgoers will later get Covid-19.Dr. Llibre said the decision was made both for financial and practical reasons. He acknowledged in an interview that the tracking method used Saturday would be less accurate than that used at the Apolo, but he argued it could still help show that a safely-organized concert “is not a super-spreading event,” contrary to what some might presume. “In the case of concerts, there has been very little or no data, but it has been empirically assumed that it is a very high risk to have people dancing together,” he said.The Palau can welcome 17,000 people, but the 5,000 ticketholders were not allowed into its stands and instead were kept divided within three areas of the dance floor, while having to wear FFP2 face masks (the European standard) provided by the organizers.Healthcare workers prepare to collect swab samples from concertgoers before the show.Albert Gea/ReutersOn Saturday, some concertgoers said they felt fully reassured by the safety protocols, but a few others said they had briefly hesitated before going.“If I had not been vaccinated already, I really would have thought twice about coming here,” said Cristina Delgado, a doctor. But Ana, her sister, who was also vaccinated because she works in health care, felt differently. “I was going to come whatever, because I want to save culture and return us to normal life,” she said.Inés Villasuso, a 24-year old nurse, also said that “it would have been better to get everybody tested again later, to have scientific evidence that can really convince the authorities that such a big event can be held safely.” But she and her twin sister, Eva, agreed that the concert outstripped their expectations. “It felt like living a total dream,” Eva said.In an interview before the concert, Julián Saldarriaga, a member of Love of Lesbian, said that the band’s decision to perform had received very broad support, but also generated “some criticism, from people who have called us irresponsible or who say that we only care about money.” But for his band, he said, “we really saw this as an opportunity to take part in the recovery of culture.”Rather than featuring a supporting act, the concert was preceded by a series of videos about Covid-19, shown on the big stage screen and interspersed with hits from the distant past — like “Come Together” and “Here Comes the Sun,” by The Beatles — whose themes warmed up the crowd.To comply with the safety protocols, on Saturday, concertgoers visited one of three smaller Barcelona music venues to get a rapid antigen test for Covid-19. The cost was included in the €23 ticket price.Christiana Guldager, a photographer, said that she cried before her test at the Razzmatazz nightclub. “I’ve been dancing so often in that place that it made me feel very emotional to find it instead converted into a mini-hospital,” she said.Santi Balmes, the lead singer, invited the crowd to deliver the chorus of a song. Lluis Gene/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLater that night in the Palau, emotions also ran high. The dance floor was lit up by cellphones as well as white face masks. When Santi Balmes, the lead singer, invited the crowd to deliver the chorus of a song, he got a powerful response. “Woohoo, you still remember how to sing!” Balmes shouted back. As he brought the concert to a close, Balmes told the crowd, “the band is not important: What is important is the experience and the experience is incredible.”Pablo García, 27, an illustrator, agreed. “Of course I never stopped listening to music, but you really need to be at a concert to feel the bass right inside your heart.”Alex Marshall contributed reporting from London. More

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      in Theater

      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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      in Television

      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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      in Music

      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