NEW YORK, NY.- Paul Simon walked onstage to a rousing ovation in a royal purple jacket for a casual downtown evening — as laid back as something with about 150 guests could be — at the SoHo Sessions loft in NoLIta on Monday just after 8 p.m. for a small benefit concert.
“Today is my birthday,” said Simon with a mischievous, boyish smile, drawing more cheers. He quickly added, “It’s not my birthday.” (He’ll be 83 in October).
Earlier, the venue’s runners escorted guests — including Whoopi Goldberg, Kevin Bacon, Amy Schumer, Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld, and musician Jackson Browne — in the updated freight elevator to the loft, a 3,500-square-foot fifth-floor space that was the original site of Chung King Studios, a former recording studio.
Since December 2021, Nicole Rechter and Greg Williamson, two concert producers, have curated 14 Soho Sessions — private, mini-concerts raising funds and awareness for various causes, including mental health and gun control, and building community around the music. Rechter and Williamson are also behind the annual Love Rocks NYC, benefiting God’s Love We Deliver.
Simon, who lost hearing in his left ear about three years ago while working on his most recent album, “Seven Psalms,” was there to help raise awareness for the Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss. Blue posters with QR codes hung around the room inviting guests to donate and learn about the research.
The walls were covered with photographs of musicians and performers by Danny Clinch, a guest, who was also photographing the performance. Candles burned along window sills and tables, and autumn-colored flowers and stalks filled large cylinder glass vases near charcuterie and cheeses by Murray’s Cheese.
Jay Sweet, the producer of the Newport Folk Festival, said Simon’s last large concert appearance was an “incredible” one at the festival in 2022. (Simon played an acoustic version of “Graceland” at the White House state dinner this year).
“This is a very rare performance,” said Williamson, who introduced Simon to fans, who had become pin-drop quiet.
During his set, Simon sat down, instead of standing as he once did, to better hear the music. He sang in dulcet tones, and switched between two Martin guitars. Accompanying him was Mark Stewart, playing a cello and a Petros guitar and coming in on vocals now and then.
He had other accompanists, too — Bernie Williams, the former New York Yankees center fielder, volunteered to whistle during a chorus of “Me and Julio.” Simon gave him a standing ovation and offered him $17 for the gig.
“That’s all I have,” Simon said with a shrug and a laugh. “The price is right.”
The audience pitched in with the “lie-la-lies and lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lies” chorus in “The Boxer.”
Simon also sang “Slip Slidin’ Away,” “Mother and Child Reunion” and “Homeward Bound.”
Fans — music insiders and performers, some who flew in and have listened to him for decades — were excited for the chance to see him perform live.
“I would walk anywhere, go anywhere to see him,” said Goldberg, who came from the Oranges in New Jersey with her grandson Mason Dean. “Paul’s music always represented home.”
Speaking of home, her favorite song is “America.” (Her grandson was partial to “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”)
“‘Kodachrome’ takes me back to riding in the car with my dad through the Bronx going to see my grandparents,” said actor Michael Imperioli, who starred in “The Sopranos” and lives on the Upper West Side. “His music is a reflection of life through a New York lens.”
Christopher Meloni, a star of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” who lives in Greenwich Village and has been to several Soho Sessions, said that the salon-style events reminded him of “SNL in the beginning.” “I’m on the ground floor of what can be an iconic cultural happening,” he added.
Browne said his favorite album lately was “Seven Psalms,” which came to Simon in a dream.
“It’s meditative and somber,” he said, especially the song about a hitchhiker, “The Sacred Harp.”
“Oh God, I couldn’t pick just one favorite,” said Seinfeld, who went to Queens College. “The one I hear the most is ‘Mrs. Robinson.’”
“Paul is an infusion of Queens beauty and sound,” he added. “I grew up in Long Island; born in Brooklyn. Queens felt right somehow. He captured the hopeful melancholy of Queens. I feel the sound of his music goes inside of you.”
Simon closed his set with “The Sound of Silence,” and then reflected on his own hearing loss.
“As you can imagine, and as probably some of you already know, it is really frustrating as a musician, devastating, not to be able to sort sounds out,” Simon said.
He then introduced Dr. Konstantina M. Stankovic, a professor and chair of otolaryngology, head and neck surgery at Stanford Medicine, who discussed the study of hearing loss, as Simon stood off to the side by the audience.
After Stankovic concluded her speech, members of the crowd rose from their seats, and the chatter returned.
Simon greeted fans as they approached. The musician, who traces his love of the Yankees to a game he listened to with his father in 1948 when he was 7, also shared his own joyful moment as a Yankees fan with Williams, his recent accompanist.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
