great day on eldridge street

A Great Day on Eldridge Street

At 10am on a sunny day in August 1953, 57 famous jazz musicians stood

on 126th Street in Harlem for an iconic group photo called "A Great

Day in Harlem." 50 years (and a month or two) later, over 100 klezmer

musicians from all over the world paid homage to that photo, to the

spirit of Jewish New York, to each other, and to the Eldridge Street

Synagogue, the "first great house of worship built on the Lower East

Side by Eastern European Jews."

100 Klezmer musicians in front of the Eldridge Street Synagogue

I missed the announcements for the event but heard about the photo

shoot from Brian Bender. He had gone down to NYC for the event with

Wholesale Klezmer Band-mates Joe and Peggy Kurland. WKB played at my

wedding 7 years ago. They're wonderful musicians and wonderful people.

Brian just released the fun and eclectic Little Shop of Horas, which

I'll be posting about soon.

Since hearing about it from Brian, I've seen numerous stories about

it. Nextbook podcasted it. So did The Forward. Time Out New York wrote

about it. The Forward did too. Dumneazu was there and blogged about it

(first post, second post, third post.) So did Richard Silverstien

(Tikun Olam) and Ellen Kushner. There's also a great set of photo's on

Flickr posted by Susanne Schwimmer.

So this post is clearly a "me too" sort of thing. I wasn't there and

don't have anything to add other than noting that Klezmer has come

along way over the last 30 years.