G4 The Boston Globe FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2019
ByJames Sullivan
GLOBECORRESPONDENT
Rayna Yun Chou was a studentat
the New England Conservatory of Mu-
sic whenthe Celebrity Series of Boston
launched its “street pianos” project in
- To mark its 75th anniversary,
the organization wantedto beginpre-
sentingfree outdoorpublicperfor-
mances,a far cry fromits institutional
classical origins.
Chou, a violist, and her classmates
loved visiting the street pianos while
they were on display. They’d take turns
improvising, or plinking out familiar
movie scores. The experience gave her
an idea.
Three yearslater in Taiwan,she de-
buted“OneMinuteof Us,” a pop-up
event in which a singlelistenercould
experience one minute of solo perfor-
manceby a musician. Working inside a
glass-walled shed,she and the musi-
ciansshe recruited wonderedwhether
anyone would take them up on the of-
fer.
“Classical music is still like a for-
eign art form in Taiwan,” Chou says.
“We were joking that if no one comes,
we’ll just practice.”
But an hourbefore the doorwas
thrownopen,curiouspassersby began
to gather as a violinist tuned her in-
strument. Told what wouldtake place,
they said, “We’ll wait.”
“From that moment, we had not a
minuteof rest for the rest of the day,”
Chou recalls. “Peoplewouldget in line
not reallyknowingwhat was going
on.”
That successful experiment leads us
to Friday, when the Celebrity Series
will open the doors on Chou’s latest en-
terprise: 10 days of free live perfor-
mancecalledConcert for One. For a
minuteat a time,visitorswill sample
performancesby a variety of Boston-
area musicians insidecustom-fitted
shipping containers on Harvard Uni-
versity’s Science Center Plaza and in
Chin Park on the Rose Kennedy Green-
way.
“I love the phrase ‘encountered
art,’ ” says Gary Dunning, president
and executive director of the presti-
gious Celebrity Series.“This will give
people live music in a day that might
have otherwise not had it.”
From noonto 6 p.m.eachday, a
roster of nearly 60 musicians will take
hourlongturns insidethe makeshift
performance spaces. They’ll range
frompianists, violinists, and cellists to
clarinetists, a percussionist, and more
than one solo vocalist. It’s not likely
the musicians will have much idle time
to practice, or checktheir phones.
“I don’t knowwhat to expect, to tell
you the truth,” says saxophonist Ken
Field, who plays in the Revolutionary
Snake Ensembleand Birdsongsof the
Mesozoic and helpscoordinate Somer-
ville’s annual Honk! Festival. He has
plenty of ideas running through his
head.
“I’ll play some of my own composi-
tions, little bits of them,” he says. “I’ll
probably play a pieceof somethingI
wrote for ‘Sesame Street.’ Somespiritu-
al musicthat has really intrigued me
for many years.” He may trot out the
old ballad “My One and Only Love” or
the Argentinetango “El Choclo.”
As a saxophonist, he’s not especially
used to playing solo withno rhythm
section. As it happens,he just played a
gig at Truro Vineyards on CapeCod.
His bassist couldn’t make it, so he was
stuck playing solo.
“People loved it,” he says, still re-
lieved.
When she was first invited to apply
as one of the performers, Veronica
Robles felt maybe the project wasn’t
for her. In Boston for 20 years,she hascarved out a spot as a leading local pro-
ponentof the traditional music of her
native Mexico. Her adopted home-
town has grown much moreopen to
indigenousmusicthanit was when
she first arrived,she says. Still, she felt
the organizers were probably looking
mostly for classical and jazz players.
Now she’s excited to participate.
Robles will be playing the vihuela, the
small, guitar-like five-stringed instru-
ment of traditional mariachi bands.
“One on one — for me, that’s really
beautiful,” says Robles, who runs a cul-
tural centerin East Boston. “I love to
be connected to my audiences.”
Exactly how those connections will
unfold, no one knows. Some musicians
couldtake requests, or try to match a
listener’s mood.Somevisitorsmay
wantto chat a little with the perform-
ers. Othersmay simply wantto sit qui-
etly and listen.
“One of the fun thingsabout doing
new things is you don’t have all the an-
swers,” Dunning says.
Field agrees.
“I’m an improviser,” he says. “That’s
my basic mode. So I’ll play it by ear.”JamesSullivan canbe reached at
[email protected].ByMarc Hirsh
GLOBECORRESPONDENT
In conversation — whenspeaking
to a journalist over the phone, for in-
stance — Ezra Furman talks in slow,
measuredsentences,as thoughshe’s
carefully considering every thought as
it travels fromher brain to her mouth
and maybe isn’t sure she trusts her lis-
tener with the information onceit es-
capes. It’s in almost diametric opposi-
tion to the experience of Furmanon re-
cord,a furious barrage of words
catapulted through the wires via an
untrammeledshriek. To hear the sing-
er tell it, the two modes of communica-
tion are directly connected.
“There’s somethinga bit dramatic
going on when I get my chance to say
what I have to say and it’s being ampli-
fied,” Furmansays. “Not only am I a
shy person,I take a little while to say
what I mean, especially in a social situ-
ation, and usually those move too fast
for me to say anything at all. So whenI
do thosesongsto say the thingthat
I’ve preparedto say, I say it like my
head’s about to explode. [It’s] this feel-
ing of ‘Finally, my chance. This is my
chance.’ ”
Hesitancy and urgency are just two
of the competing forces fuelingFur-
man, whose just-released “Twelve
Nudes”is a marvel of chaotic, frag-
mentedpunk noiseand straightfor-
wardsongcraft. In a 2015piece in The
Guardian, the singer — who uses both
masculineand femininepronounsbut
prefers the latter — wrote,“Nothing
sets me on fire like the walking contra-
diction.” It’s a theme that recurs again
and again withFurman.Ask, for in-
stance, aboutwhether she feels any re-
sponsibility as a queer, devoutlyJew-
ish performer to respond to this partic-
ular moment in American history and
she’ll provide two answers in the
course of one.
“I always maintain that artists do
not have any responsibility to do any-
thingexceptcauseno harmand do
whatever we wantto do as artists. I
don’t like the notion that artists have a
responsibility to be political,” says Fur-
man, a 2008 Tufts University graduate.
“However, as a citizenand not as an
artist, as someone who is trying to be a
good citizen and an ethical person, I
feel a responsibility to use my extra re-
sources — things like a little bit of extra
time, a little bit of money — and use
those things whenpossible to stick up
for people who need some sticking up
for. And there’s always people who
needthat. So yeah,it’s a funny thing.
I’m trying to be an activist, and I think
of that as separate from my work as an
artist. But it isn’t.”
That bleed-through made itself
knownrecently when Furman— hav-
ing just movedbackto Boston in Au-
gust after decampingfor Brooklyn a
decadeago, withsubsequent stops in
Chicago and the San Francisco Bay ar-
ea — canceled a Sept. 11 showat Sonia
in response to sexual misconduct accu-
sations circulated on socialmedia
against one of the venue’s owners. The
show was moved to Great Scott and re-
scheduledfor Monday. (Joseph Sater,
who co-ownsSonia and the Mideastnightclubwith his brother, has denied
the allegations against him.)
“Sonia was nice enough to say to us,
‘Listen, other people have canceled
their shows here also, and if you want
to cancel, we don’t think you should,
but that’s OK if you do.’ So I commend
the peopleworking therefor allowing
the show to be moved,” Furmansays.
The boundaries are also blurredinthe way Furmansees thoseaspects of
her identity as fuel for the songson
“Twelve Nudes,” either directly or as
metaphor. “Blown” kicks off with a dis-
torted howl of “Trans power!,” and “I
Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” addresses
the apparentdisconnect between the
singer’s genderand her body. “I think
that beingqueer, it has builtthis out-
siderperspective into me that allowsme to make punk music,” she says. “Be-
ing queer is my superpower, kind of.”
And Furman’s religionis reflected
in “Evening Prayer aka Justice” and a
recentBillboard profile, both of which
liken live music to prayer. “There’s
nothing quite like it, being present in a
big group of people having something
like a sharedexperience,” says Fur-
man. “There’s something that’s analo-
gous, or that I wantto be analogous,
where it’s like: Should it be something
that repairs you, that gives you energy
to do good in yourlife, do good in the
world?Could the energies fromthe
showbe converted into [making]a
better culture outside of the show as
well?”
Furmanhas turned to television as
another avenuefor positivechange,
scoring “Sex Education,” the Netflix
showabouta British teenager who fol-
lowsin his mother’s footsteps and be-
comes an unofficial sex therapist for
his classmates. “I am usually a little an-
noyedwithhow muchmedia repre-
sents sex, and especiallyyoung people
having young sexual experiences,” Fur-
man says. “And this [show] was about
being realistic and being really healthy
and positive about sex. I feel like I’ve
beenwaitingfor that showto exist,
particularly for the teenage audience.”
Then again,as Furmandeclares,
“I’ve always hated beingmarketed to.
And whenI have somethingrecom-
mended to me by someone who makes
money if I like it, my brain goes, ‘Well,
I don’t like that.’ ” It’s that walking con-
tradiction standing up again, proud,
almost defiant. It’s a reclamation of
her right to be the one to determine
who Ezra Furman is and a refusal to be
hemmed in or defined.
“It bugsme because people are like,
‘I know what kind of person you are, so
you would like this. The kind of people
like you are peoplewho like this,’ ” she
says. “And I’m like,‘Youdon’t [exple-
tive] knowme.’I contain multitudes.”Marc Hirsh can be reached at
[email protected].CONCERTFORONE
At pop-upvenueson the Harvard
ScienceCenterPlaza, Cambridge,
and in ChinPark on the Rose
KennedyGreenway, Boston,Sept.
20-29from noonto 6 p.m.Free.
http://www.celebrityseries.orgPHOTOSBY ROBERT TORRESA musician and an audience member meet in a
shipping container for one minute, and it’s a concert
EZRAFURMAN
At Great Scott,Allston,Sept. 23
at 9:15p.m.Tickets $15,
http://www.bowerypresents.comThe ‘superpower’ that
sharpens Ezra Furman’s
punk perspective
JESSICA LEHRMAN‘I take a littlewhileto say what I mean.... SowhenI dothosesongsto say thethingthat I’vepreparedto say, I say it like myhead’sabouttoexplode.[It’s]thisfeelingof “Finally, mychance.This is mychance.”’EZRA FURMANThe rosterof 60Concert forOnemusicians
includesRaynaYun Chou(top),Ken Field,and
VeronicaRobles.