On a mellow April afternoon, a most unusual performance was scheduled to take place in Manhattan's last remaining natural forest, in Inwood Hill Park at the northern tip of the island. The veteran avant-garde jazz composer and improviser Joe McPhee, in town for a concert at the Brecht Forum, planned to wander among the park's old growth oaks and tulip trees, playing the saxophone unamplified, Pied Piper-like, his audiene trailing behind.

Directions to the meeting place, near the park's natural rock caves, left something to be desired, so a cluster of concertgoers found themselves at the edge of the Harlem River, staring at the Henry Hudson Bridge in confusion. No McPhee, only a Little League game in full swing. "Maybe the 'C' stands for caves," said a man with a French accent and a long goatee, pointing at the Columbia University logo painted on the cliff across the river.

A friendly park ranger at the nature center provided directions and a map, encouraging everyone to hike to the top of the hill for a view of the New Jersey Palisades after the show. The group meandered towards the woods under a benevolent spring sun, the sounds of shouts and batted balls echoing through the park. "I've lived in New York for eight years and I've never been up here," said one attendee, who'd taken the subway up from Williamsburg. "So what better to do on a day like this?"

Just beyond the tree line, a crowd of about 70 was gathered in a circle beside the path. The audience included both graybeards and strollers, with several whole ragged families in attendance. McPhee, a heavyset middle-aged black man with a graying mustache and mirrored sunglasses, stood at the far edge, greeting arriving guests and occasionally checking his watch. At the last minute he scuttled his plan to roam, instead climbing the hillside to stand atop a massive boulder, where he raised a slim gold soprano sax and began to play.

A plane thundered overhead as he sounded his first tentative, gentle, carefully enunciated notes. Passersby walking dogs and bicycles slowed to see what was happening. Rocking a bit, McPhee began an intricate series of little runs, fingers flying over the keys. His high notes were often manic, twittering, breathy moans that sounded like the birds in the trees, while his lower register was all molasses and caramel, drifting lazily through the warm, leaf-scented air. Some listeners nodded rapturously with half-lidded eyes; others looked very somber. The park was quiet, but not quiet: besides the chattering birds, digital camera shutters beeped, leaves crunched underfoot, a little girl cried out, "Mommy!" And the planes kept coming, one every few minutes. McPhee played under and around their roar, stopping only once to stare up balefully at the sky.

After half an hour, he lowered his instrument and said a few words about Steve Lacy, the late soprano saxophonist whose outdoor recordings had inspired McPhee to play outside himself. "Maybe we can do this again sometime," he said. "I'd really like to. Enjoy this day -- it's a great day."

The audience applauded, then slowly began to disperse. A well-wisher approached, joking, "You couldn't get LaGuardia to impose a flyover ban?"

"I thought the planes made it great," responded an organizer from April Is the Coolest Month, which had sponsored the event, with a patient smile. "And he was definitely playing with the planes."

Looking a bit drained, McPhee sat on a low rock wall, accepting congratulations from his guests. "I was so nervous," he said. "I started shaking, and then I got goose bumps. This little tree kept hitting me in the head, and I thought it was a little kid saying 'stop.'"

He stood to put his sax back in its case, then paused. "I love these ambient sounds," he said, gazing off into the woods. "It started with this recording I did. It was so hot, and I heard the birds chirping through the window, and I said, 'Don't close the window! Let's go out there!'"

McPhee looked like he might like to spend the rest of the afternoon in the forest, but it was time to leave -- he had to head downtown to teach a master class in improvisation at the Brecht. His entourage began walking down the path towards the entrance. A late arrival had chalked "McPhee" on the pavement, an arrow pointing up at the trees. "McPhee, your name's all over this park!" someone hollered. The saxophonist chuckled and strolled towards a waiting car.

www.joemcphee.com

Aaron Stewart-Ahn is a co-operator of Seattle-based production company Otaku House and director of the Plug Award-winning video for the Decembrists' "Sixteen Military Wives." He recently curated Directions, a companion DVD for Death Cab for Cutie's latest album, Plans, which gave a dozen talented independent directors, including Lance Bangs, Cat Solen, Monkmus, Ace Norton, and Stewart-Ahn himself, complete creative control in directing videos for each of the 12 songs on the album. Stewart-Ahn, who has a long-standing relationship with the band and collaborated with Death Cab bassist Nick Harmer on Directions, was inspired to undertake the project by his observations on how music videos are changing, and where he thinks they could head. Here, he shares his thoughts:

I believe that videos have become accepted by the broader public as an art form because a great video has a completely different effect than a feature film or an episode of television. Videos are immediate and instant, they recall personal memories, they make you reconsider how you perceive the world and recognize sensory input isn't divisible. Videos are like pop music itself. And for better or for worse, they're the closest thing we have to a properly funded experimental short cinema in America. Everyone's wondering though, with budgets continuing to shrink and a misconception that digital technology is making filmmaking cheaper, how to find funding for the videos that strive to be art.

To me it's about subverting the typical hand-in-hand relationship between art and commerce -- taking capital and finding a way to fulfill the needs of whoever is providing it, while doing something more interesting with it at the same time. A little over a decade ago, I read an interview with Peter Greenaway in which he suggested that the future of filmmaking was as a patroned art. I thought it was silly nonsense at the time. But given the evolution of the music video, I've come think it's not only applicable, it's what we should be striving for, especially in the United States. I mentioned the frustrations of finding music video budgets for bands I really like to some Canadian musicians recently, and they suggested I apply for government funding grants. If only...

I believe there is very little point anymore in making videos whose primary obligation is to promote a single that isn't one of the 20 or so really huge pop songs of the year. I can tell you all about the performance-to-story ratios required to get a video played on MTV, or what kind of lighting is preferred, and these rules his is doing nothing but make videos boring, lifeless, stagnant. Audiences recognize that.

Meanwhile, with the emergence of video on the Web, MTV isn't the only game in town anymore. When something blows up, it happens in a way that's unlike any other distribution medium. Word of mouth and heavy linking leads to instant and frequent viewing. The viewer makes an active choice to watch, and if they like what they encounter, they feel empowered. It wasn't shoved at them, it didn't just try and blast them while they were flipping channels. So it makes sense to me that if you're a creatively minded band on a major or indie label but you're not one of acts with one of the 20 MTV-approved songs, it's a waste to take the label's capital and produce a by-the-numbers retread through the stagnant power of committee, just to gamble on the chance of getting 10 seconds of your video shown during the credits of an MTV? It doesn't make financial or marketing sense, and so it seems far more prohibitively risky than a patronage model.

In a patronage system, on the other hand, a band can choose to make the best video possible by sponsoring an interesting filmmaker it respects and coheres with, letting them go to work, supporting them creatively, and not interfering. Hopefully they'll make a beautiful little piece of film art and the quality will drive people to watch it online. MTV is not the outlet for this on television, hasn't been for many years, and it's about time people stopped being so sheepish about suggesting that music videomakers should disengage from that channel if they aren?t working with the enormous artists of our time. They have a massively influential future as a lifestyle channel. They'll be fine.

Now that encoding quality has increased so dramatically, the music video is perfectly situated to feed audiences' enormous, demonstrated desire to share music online without destroying businesses. People can share a song along with an example of the band's aesthetic. But it?s not the song itself, it doesn't go in the car or get played at the party the same way.

If artists have access to capital, and are being driven in this day and age to generate content, shouldn't they use their resources to promote the creation of work they enjoy as much as they enjoy creating their own music? I don't know a single musician who isn't interested in other mediums, and many dabble in them from time to time. If musicians have access to a budget, they should approach them as producers, creatively and supportively, to share the things they themselves appreciate with their audiences and with the larger world. That's generally how the best videos come into existence, I think.

I hope more than anything that other bands recognize the intention of what Death Cab for Cutie has done, and what was hoped for when this project began: given the opportunity to make videos, they decided to do it with the same sense of ambition and freedom with which they made their own music. They shared that creative spirit with thirteen filmmakers. How is that anything other than wonderful?

deathcabforcutie.com/directions
www.otaku-house.com