Soothes Harried Commuters on N.Y. Subway : Classical Violinist Performs for Straphangers

Classical violinist James Everett Graseck cradled his 100-year-old Bellini under his chin and began playing Bach’s “Fugue in G Minor” to harried commuters waiting for a subway in the heart of Manhattan.

He played with an intensity that bordered on ecstasy and extracted the ultimate compliment from his straphanger audience: their attention.

“I haven’t counted how many trains I’ve missed. I’ve been here for 50 minutes,” said one listener, Alan Horowitz. “It’s a humanizing factor in the subway system.”

Graseck, a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music who made his musical debut in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, is one of a small band of musicians who make their living playing for tips in New York City’s streets and subway stations.

Tips Add Up Fast

He is not on the streets because he is down on his luck. He prefers the subway to a concert hall. Besides, the coins and dollar bills tossed into his blue velvet-lined violin case add up fast.

Graseck started while at Juilliard, using his talent to earn the $3,300 he needed to rent Tully Hall. In a review of his 1977 debut concert, the New York Times said: “The one-time street musician is an exceptionally fine violinist.”

After graduating with a master’s degree in music, Graseck taught at the Manhattan School of Music and worked as a concertmaster in Georgia for two years before returning to New York. He played on the streets for 13 years before wandering into a subway station on a bitter cold January day and discovering a better venue for his violin.

“It started out as money, but it became more than that,” he said. “I felt happy. There’s more purpose to playing here than sitting in an orchestra or teaching in a college. It’s created more of a purpose to communicate, to make music. That’s what music’s about.”

Police Are Critics

Perhaps his severest critics are New York City’s Transit Police. To them he is not so much communicating as he is breaking the law.

In the four years he’s been working the subways, he’s received about 150 summonses charging him with “begging,” “loitering,” “soliciting,” and “entertaining passengers.” The fine is currently $25 a ticket.

The law, however, is being challenged by another musician, classical guitarist Lloyd Carew-Reid. His lawyer, Arthur Eisenberg of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said he hopes the case will result in revised rules that allow musicians to perform in the subways without the threat of a summons.

William Murphy, spokesman for the Transit Authority Police, said musicians create a hazard by attracting a crowd, forcing people to walk close to the edge of the subway platform in order to pass by.

Hazard Discounted

Graseck discounts that hazard. “Even on a narrow platform like Whitehall Street,” he says, “there’s never been a problem with the crowd.”

The violinist currently plays four days a week, Tuesday through Friday, and has a set schedule of stations where he likes to play at various hours of the day.

He works the morning rush hour from 7 a.m. to about 10 a.m., then goes to an old hotel where he keeps a room for a nap. After lunch, he is back to the subway about 3:30 p.m. and plays until 8:30 or 9 p.m.

A tall, thin man in his mid-30’s, Graseck wears worn corduroy trousers and shirts fraying at the cuffs and collar to look like a struggling young artist and tug at the hearts and purse strings of his audience.

‘A Good Living’

As he plays, people fumble in their pockets and handbags. It adds up to “a good living,” he said. He refused to be more specific but said he does file tax returns on his income. Over the course of an hour recently the donations tossed in the case at his feet totaled between $25 and $30.

Graseck insists that he is a performer, not a beggar, but adds: “People want to give. People have told me they feel they’re getting something and this is the way they give something back.”

After one performance several years ago, the case also contained a note from a young woman in his audience. Today they are married and live in Brooklyn--near a subway for his commute to work.

Graseck says he isn’t interested in a more conventional job above the ground.

“I love it, I just love it,” he said. “If I won the lottery, I would still come down and spend a couple of hours a day here, just for fun.”

A Crowd Gathers

On a recent afternoon at the 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue subway station, considered by many musicians to have the best acoustics in the system, a crowd of about 20 commuters gathered as Graseck picked up his violin and began to play.

Graseck is a physical performer who works the platform and plays requests. His face lights up when he recognizes one of the many daily riders.

“Want to hear something espanola ?” he asks a middle-aged Latino. The man nodded, and the audience smiled.

As he raced through a concerto, a train roared into the station. Graseck continued to play. The crowd broke into applause, then most of them boarded the train.

“I love him. I hear him all the time,” says a woman in her 30s as she dashes into a Brooklyn-bound train.

‘Music Under the City’

From September, 1985, to January of this year, the Metropolitan Transit Authority ran an experimental program, “Music Under the City,” which sanctioned music in the subways. Musicians were given permits to play at one of eight designated stations during certain hours.

The program was well received by the public, said MTA spokeswoman Doris Gonzales-Light, and the MTA is close to signing an agreement with corporate sponsors who will underwrite the program’s $75,000 cost and revive it.

Graseck is not impressed. “One of the beauties of New York is that you can succeed at making a decent living at street music, if you’re good. What the program did by dictating starting times, and hogging special places to play for a set time, it circumscribed it to some extent. What I do relates to spontaneity and freedom of choice, rather than a bureaucratic structure.”