The Origin Story
It was two weeks into the complete shutdown of New York City because of the COVID-19 pandemic and veteran jazz musician and educator Roy Nathanson had an idea. “I was just so shaken by the enormity of the situation, the kind of web of fear,” he remembered. “My tours were all cancelled, people I knew were getting sick, the streets were so eerie. I heard about the Italians singing out on their balconies in Italy and I just wanted to play something beautiful for the neighborhood and myself.” He went out with his alto saxophone onto his second floor balcony in Ditmas Park and played one song: Amazing Grace. “I thought, play one song exactly at 5 pm and walk back inside.”
The next day his downstairs neighbor, bassist Lloyd Miller, set up his bass among the flowers in the garden below and joined him. The day after that, drummer Eric Alabaster and percussionist Saleem Mohamed both from around the corner joined in. One by one, other musicians, Catalonian pianist Albert Marquès from Flatbush, on the melodica, and guitarist Eddie Bourjolly, toting his electric guitar and battery powered amp from Canarsie. Roy’s son Gabe, on trumpet, joined his father on the balcony and his friend, Gabe Garcia, who grew up in the neighborhood brought his sax. Aidan Scrimgeour, a pianist, brought both his accordion and melodica after hearing the music down the street. Orlando McPherson toted his flute. Joel Siegel, a neighbor from three streets over, brought his guitar. A fiddle player, banjo player and others stopped by. Some of Albert’s students from the middle school he teaches at came to play.
The musical mélange almost immediately attracted an audience—neighbors so happy to go outside to partake of the music after a day of staying in or only venturing outside in masks for food shopping. Every day at 4:50 or so, people in masks, in couples, singles, walking dogs or pushing baby strollers filtered across the neighborhood to savor one song—one drink of sound and color to quench a thirst for music and community. Others discovered our one-song concert wandering down Marlborough Rd. from the subway at Newkirk Plaza or people driving in cars stopped to listen. Next door and cross the street neighbors sat on their porches or on the curb, cellphones out to document the one song each day that became a high point of days spent in isolation. At 5pm, it became the place to be. Since then, the daily jam has evolved into a neighborhood music program in which teens play alongside professional musicians in the Multigenerational Playing for the Light Big Band.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times