NEW YORK — Patti Smith performed a mini-concert at the Brooklyn Museum on Tuesday to honour photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and add her voice to a series of pop-up events that represent New York City’s first baby steps toward the return of live indoor performances.
Smith performed six songs as well as read poetry and excerpts from her book “Just Kids” in the Beaux-Arts Court at the museum, her voice bouncing off the skylight 60 feet above. It was a concert to also honour museum workers and drew just under 50 people, all socially distanced in widely spaced chairs.
“I’m not nervous, but it’s been so long,” she told the crowd. An hour later, just before donning her mask and walking off after a standing ovation, she added: “Hope to see you soon.”
Dressed in black from her boots to her shirt with her gray hair flowing, Smith and an accompanist, Tony Shanahan, performed “Wing,” “My Blakean Year,” “Grateful” and “Dancing Barefoot,” as well as Tim Hardin’s “How Can We Hang On to a Dream?” and Neil Young’s “Helpless.” She ended the hourlong set with her biggest hit, “Because the Night,” written with Bruce Springsteen.
The concert came on the same day in 1989 that Mapplethorpe died at age 42. It also marked the one-year anniversary of when Smith last performed live, at The Fillmore in San Francisco. She weaved stories about Mapplethorpe and her husband, Fred Smith, with her daughter, Jesse, in attendance. She spoke of the day in 1976 in Detroit that she first locked eyes with her future husband.
Smith, known as the Godmother of Punk, came out of New York in the early 1970s to create a blend of cerebral, raggedly emotional music. On Monday, she read from a selection from “Just Kids” about her life with Mapplethorpe in the borough of Brooklyn, describing a couple with not much money but a killer record collection.
It was one of many cultural events as part of NY PopsUp, a new festival running until Labor Day that is overseen by producers Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal. The shows are being held in performance spaces — including The Apollo in Harlem, St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn and Broadway’s Music Box theatre — that are able to be adapted for social distancing guidelines.
Other artists expected to participate include Hugh Jackman, Chris Rock, Alec Baldwin, Amy Schumer, Many Patinkin, Q-Tip, Sutton Foster, Billy Porter, Idina Menzel, Renée Fleming, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick.
Mark Kennedy, The Associated Press
