” Jazz Sessions That Evoke an Earlier Era ”Featured on NBC and in the New York Times, BROWNSTONE JAZZ at Sankofa Aban B&B is a celebration of music in the heart of Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Live music, performed in an intimate setting with an open-mic session."
"scarcely distinguishable from the other brownstones along the quiet, tree-lined streets of its historic part of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Only a tiny sign beside the stoop suggests the gorgeously restored 19th-century town house is not a private home.
From the sidewalk, one can see dapper jazz musicians bounce and hear the thumping of a double bass. ...
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” Jazz Sessions That Evoke an Earlier Era ”Featured on NBC and in the New York Times, BROWNSTONE JAZZ at Sankofa Aban B&B is a celebration of music in the heart of Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Live music, performed in an intimate setting with an open-mic session."
"scarcely distinguishable from the other brownstones along the quiet, tree-lined streets of its historic part of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Only a tiny sign beside the stoop suggests the gorgeously restored 19th-century town house is not a private home.
From the sidewalk, one can see dapper jazz musicians bounce and hear the thumping of a double bass.
The weekly event recalls a time when Bedford-Stuyvesant house parties were the jam.
“In the evening hours, after a full week, you can get out somewhere and kick back with others while feeling at home, and listen,” said Debbie McClain, the owner, noting that the parlor of brownstones like hers were ballrooms in bygone days. “People gathered in elegance,” she said, adding, “We look to continue an old trend.”
BY: JONATHON SCHAFF | 4.15.2013 | Kurt Vonnegut once defined jazz as “safe sex of the highest order.” If that quote doesn’t make sense now, just wait until you’re under the spell of the romantic, historical Sankofa Aban Bed and Breakfast’s BrownstoneJazznight. Serenaded in a centuries-old brownstone by live bass, piano, and drum, you’ll get the drift right away._____
The B & B throws a jazz party that looks and sounds straight out of the ‘60s and even earlier. When Brooklyn was an epicenter for jazz music, swelling with clubs that sprung up on practically every corner. Those days, on any given night, you could stumble into a jazz parlor and find musicians such as Max Roach, Hank Mobley, and Miles Davis blowing away.
Brownstone Jazz holds a candle for that lost place in time. Standing outside 107 Macon night of a show, the scene looks much like it would have in the years ago. A bass player—Brownstone Jazz co-founder Eric Lemon—stands silhouetted in the bay windows, plucking his vintage standup. Inside, Lemon is joined by a rotating cast of musicians and friends, some of whom stop by with their instruments in tow to join in for a song or two. Accomplished jazz singer Boncella Lewis is often on hand to lend her formidable talents to the concert, alternatively wowing the crowd with soulful standards and delivering self-deprecating one-liners about her life as a New York stage performer. Boncella is a favorite of Debbie McClain "the song I insist she sing all the time is ‘Here’s to Life.’ It gives me chills up and down my spine.”
During a typical show, the intimate audience sits on folding chairs in the parlor, where it’s easy to sit back and soak up the music and the ambiance. Here in Bed-Stuy, the setting is as authentic as the jazz; the Victorian-style brownstone dates back to the 1880s, and original details and period pieces have turned the restored townhouse into a veritable time machine. The parlor piano, for instance, has parts in it that were made in 1860. “The piano has not just a history, but a soul,” says McClain, whose family has owned the building for six generations.
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