Civilised New Years Eve

'A Concert on the Threshold
of the New Year', at St. Barts

Civilised New Years Eve

'A Concert on the Threshold
of the New Year', at St. Barts

By Ruby Lips
January 1st, 2003
The one truly civilised event in New York City, every New Years Eve, is Bill Trafka's organ concert at St. Barts beginning at 11 PM, and ending moments after the dawn of the new year with the crescendo of Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man.  Mark your calendar.

After a leisurely dinner somewhere (see below) one can mosey into St. Barts for free around 10:30 and choose a pew beneath the celestial dome.  After that time, the place begins to fill up and is totally packed, by 11, with well dressed aficionados anticipating a civilised orgasm.

It might seem redundant to say that many of the organ pieces played are written by gay composers, but the fact is nevertheless delicious.  The Copland finale, with drums booming, is a Trafka tradition grandly thundering in the new year ever so poignantly for us purse-lipped cognoscenti.  This was preceded, this year, with David Conte's Recollection, a classically Conte hauntingly reminiscent refrain of sweet sadness.  Life does not get much better than sitting in the heart of Manhattan moments before the midnight hour hearing Trafka exquisitely play Conte (oh for God's sake, get your mind out of the gutter).

And then there is the Vierne: Carillon de Westminster, known to Spielbergians as the theme to Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind.  I told a 20-something about that; alas, the movie is 'so old' that he'd not heard of it!  Sigh.  I have always wondered which organ was actually used for the deep throated thundering response of the space ship?  (Speilberg's enduringly enchanting joke being that the aliens knew Vierne.)  Hearing Trafka's resounding rendition was yet another purse-lipped pleasure of the evening.

Bach, although not gay, was represented with the delightfully de rigueur, "Das alte Jahr verganen ist," BWV 614; as well as Prelude and Fugue in C-Minor BWV 546.

The evening began with Noël sur les Jeux D'anches, Luis Claude D'Aquin. Next came a lovely 'Pastorale en la mineur' by Roland Van den Berg, a 33 year old Dutch piano tuner (I haven't a clue, dear).  Elgar's Imperial March was followed by the Vierne and Bach pieces.  The most intriguing, perhaps, were two pieces arranged by Neely Bruce: "I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem" and "Jesus on the Waterside (from Slave Songs of the United States)."

There is no finer way to ring in the New Year (other than the obvious, of course).