FRONT YARD CONCERTS – THE GENESIS…

Not really sure where to begin with this post – 2020 has been so difficult in so many ways, and yet there has been so much joy. A couple of weeks into the stay-at-home order, our ensemble was struggling with a completely wiped out spring schedule, and my neighbor Emily messaged me: “If I Venmo you now, can you come play for me and my neighbors when the weather warms up?” (We were still having intermittent snow at that point, so it was going to have to be a few weeks, at best.

Around 1pm on March 26, I realized the temps were going to hover right around 60*F, the threshold for good outdoor-playing weather, and I texted her. “What about 4pm???” She replies: “I’ll text my neighbors!”

I showed up to a street of people emerging to their porches, or standing at distance on the sidewalk, careful not to be too close to one another. I performed for about 30 minutes and when I was done, more than one listener had tears in their eyes. The experience was powerful and profound. A few generous listeners tipped me on Venmo (an app we rarely used, but which we now rely on in the pandemic age).

One of the listeners managed a local jazz venue. He live-streamed the entire performance to that page and in a few hours it had thousands of views. Messages began coming in for more experiences like this across northeast Ohio, but one of the most significant was a note from Mike Guttierez, an artist and small-business owner in Old Brooklyn. We ended up forming a partnership to bring live music across multiple Cleveland neighborhoods in a carefully curated way – more on that next time.