St. Luke's Subway Series to Bring Brass Music to Various NYC Venues this Month

Over one week in late September, brass quintet music-from courtly dances to ragtime tunes-will ring out from scenic gardens and overlooks throughout the five boroughs. For a fourth year, the annual St. Luke's Subway Series will bring free concerts across New York City while collecting food donations for City Harvest. This year's program, Brass Gardens, will be performed exclusively in outdoor venues, allowing the music to mix with nature, and offering audiences a relaxed and unique concert experience.

The brass quintet includes hornist Patrick Pridemore, trumpeter Carl Albach, trumpeter John Dent, trombonist Michael Powell, and bass trombonist John Rojak. The program will open with graceful consort music from the Elizabethan era and joyful Venetian canzoni from the 17th century. The quintet will then perform several selections by Eric Ewazen, an American composer and Juilliard professor known for writing tonal music rooted in Romanticism. Scott Joplin's rags are sure to be familiar crowd-pleasers, along with Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story Suite, which completes the program.

The series begins on Saturday, September 21 at 12:00 PM, at Wave Hill in the Bronx, where audiences will enjoy colorful gardens, foliage, and sweeping views of the Hudson River. The next afternoon, Sunday, September 22 at 4:00 PM, St. Luke's performs atCherry Circle in Queens Botanical Garden, surrounded by nearly 40 acres of beautiful blossoms and mature trees. On Tuesday, September 24 at 6:00 PM, the series continues at the Upper Terrace of Bryant Park, an oasis of lush gardens, historic sculptures, and London Plane trees-the only green space amid the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan. The second weekend of the Subway Series starts Friday, September 27 at 7:00 PM, at Brooklyn Bridge Park's Granite Prospect on Pier 1, a remarkable overlook offering spectacular views of the iconic bridge and the New York Harbor. Finally, on Saturday, September 28 at 2:00 PM, St. Luke's travels to historic Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden in Staten Island to perform at the serene Richmond County Savings Foundation's Tuscan Garden, a bucolic setting evoking the countryside and architecture of Florence, Italy.

Concertgoers are encouraged to bring non-perishable food items to the St. Luke's Subway Series performances. These will be donated to City Harvest, a food-rescue organization which helps to feed more than one million New Yorker's facing hunger each year. In addition, for each St. Luke's Collection CD sold at the concerts, $5 will be donated to City Harvest. At the 2012 Subway Series, St. Luke's collected more than 1,200 pounds of food.

Subway Series attendees can indulge in delicious treats while enjoying the music-Melt Bakery will sell gourmet ice-cream sandwiches at each performance.

St. Luke's partners with the MTA throughout the year to offer ticket discounts and other benefits; at the free Subway Series concerts, attendees can receive a complimentary 4 Seasons DVD from St. Luke's Collection when showing their valid MetroCard.

St. Luke's Subway Series is supported, in part, by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

To post a comment, you must register and login.