BY STEVEN ROSEN

Transcendence is a goal in so much music - so much art - that it feels too easy, too common. Maybe that's because contemporary "transcendent art" too often has an abstracted spiritual/religious dimension that gets all wrapped up in spacey New Age-ness and its attendant clichés.

For Antony Hegarty, it's a little different. His songs encapsulate a desire - made concrete in the lyrics of songs like "For Today I Am a Boy" or "Another World" - to transcend identity as defined by gender. So he rubs right up against one of the limits of life here on earth.

It's in the lilting, ethereal mournfulness of his melodies; it's in the by-turns hopeful and darkly regretful quality of his naturally high-pitched, fluttering and quietly considered voice, reminiscent of a young Little Jimmy Scott's or the Nina Simone of "Lilac Wine."

For the third show of his tour supporting Antony and the Johnsons' new The Crying Light album, their third, he came to a gloriously restored vaudeville-era Columbus, Ohio theater - the Southern - on a bitterly cold night.

The concert was sponsored by the Wexner Center for the Arts, which had brought him to town in 2002 for one of his first performances outside home base Manhattan. "That show meant a lot to me; it gave me confidence," he explained to the amazingly respectful - make that awed - audience of more than 600. (The theater holds about 900.)

To one side of a spare stage, Antony sat behind the piano, often favoring a single backlit spotlight that made him more ghostly silhouette than fully dimensional presence. The six Johnsons occupied center stage - the five men wearing demure suits, some with ties; cellist Julia Kent also dressed darkly. Their sound - superbly played violins, guitars, cello, drums - was primarily acoustic and semi-classical, like Avalon-era Roxy Music. It was given jumps by a clarinet, squealing sax (on "Shake That Devil") or even a short, sharp funky, guitar solo (on "Fist Full of Love") from most-valuable-player Jeff Langston. Occasionally, as on "Crying Light" or "Crazy in Love," Antony would go lightly on the piano - maybe just snap his fingers - to make the performance all about his voice.

When the stage lights got brighter, one could see him clearly - long dark hair, tall and bulky, wearing a loose-fitting tunic and baggy jeans, like a heavier version of Lauren Bacall-era Bowie.

Audience members, male and female, would shout out "We love you" and it seemed to embarrass him, but he politely accepted it. However, an interesting thing happened at encore's start. A woman yelled out "Antony, stand up and sing," and he seemed to become determined to rough up the intimately relaxed attitude that was taken as a given between audience and star.

He perhaps wanted to remind people he wasn't a martyred angel sent to earth for their pleasure, which at times can seem his image, but rather a New Yorker who knows that city's wild side very well indeed. And that he has carnal desires...and can act on them.

"It's been a long time since I took orders," he replied, and then digressed into an anecdote about "waitressing" on the graveyard shift at a Village restaurant frequented by junkies. When a man shouted out his love, Antony answered, mischievously, "It makes me think all sorts of things when I hear baritone voices say they love me."

That led into some graphically sexual recollections of a former boyfriend who had "full, luscious nipples" but who ultimately rejected him. As this went on, taking aback some in the crowd that ranged from college age to much older, he asked, "Am I saying too much to you?"

But he didn't retreat. He recalled once seeing a prostitute beat up a john along Manhattan's West Side Highway and push him into the river, and recalling the victim probably got what he deserved.

That proved the intro for the song that followed, a breathtakingly gorgeously ballad called "Cripple and the Starfish" in which a victim pleads to be hurt because he will "grow back like a starfish." Beauty can come from some strange places.

After a concluding "Hope There's Someone," Antony and his band took a final bow and he apologized for "being a little inappropriate" with his comments. But as the audience left, they didn't seem to care. They were just talking about how good the music was.

Transcendent, even.

[Photo credit: Pieter Van Hattern]