Bargemusic gives new meaning to the term “swing”--as this unique jazz venue housed in a former coffee barge anchored in the Hudson River, a stone’s throw from the majestic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge, sways with the tides. This atmospheric music hall is located on the Brooklyn side of the Great Bridge’s classic span immortalized by the poet Walt Whitman and later by filmmaker Ken Burns with views of the iconic Manhattan skyline seen from aboard that are
extraordinary.
But the most essential thing is the music,
interaction between players, their muse and audience and the quality of that interplay is as appealing as this cozy but undeniably magnificent setting. Founded by passionate music lover and accomplished concert
violinist Olga Bloom, Bargemusic has been satisfying the appetites of classical listeners for 30 years and counting.
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Bargemusic gives new meaning to the term “swing”--as this unique jazz venue housed in a former coffee barge anchored in the Hudson River, a stone’s throw from the majestic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge, sways with the tides. This atmospheric music hall is located on the Brooklyn side of the Great Bridge’s classic span immortalized by the poet Walt Whitman and later by filmmaker Ken Burns with views of the iconic Manhattan skyline seen from aboard that are
extraordinary.
But the most essential thing is the music,
interaction between players, their muse and audience and the quality of that interplay is as appealing as this cozy but undeniably magnificent setting. Founded by passionate music lover and accomplished concert
violinist Olga Bloom, Bargemusic has been satisfying the appetites of classical listeners for 30 years and counting.
Bloom might be a classical violinist but when it comes to life and keeping her barge and passion for music afloat, she’s always been a great improviser. Born and raised in Boston, she was 10 years old when the nation crashed into The Great Depression of 1929, plunging her family into poverty. Things didn’t get that much easier. A scholarship violin student, she had the opportunity to go to Tanglewood -- cellist Gregor Piatigorsky was her chamber music coach there. But a scholarship at Juilliard would remain unfulfilled. No one would guarantee her funding to eat and pay the rent, so she joined the ranks of New York’s working musicians anonymously playing in theaters and
studios. A pension that came to her from the death of her first husband, a violinist who died in World War II (curiously arriving after the death of her second
husband, violinist Tobias Bloom) gave her the funds to create Bargemusic.
Now her homey musical salon is also charting a new course, aiming to please jazz fans as well by adding an improvisational music night to a full
year-round schedule of four performances a week. Such established talents as pianists Dick Hyman and Fred Hersch, trumpeter Randy Sandke, guitarists Frank Vignola, Howard Alden and Jack Wilkins, bassist/vocalist Jay Leonhart, pianists Ted Rosenthal and Judy Carmichael, clarinetist Ken Peplowski, multi-reedist Michael Marcus and bassist Nicki Parrott have or will be coming aboard. And many young
lesser known players are also getting a chance to make their mark.
But why jazz now?
As with improvised music, you never know what is going to happen. “We held a fundraising event for one of the schools in the area and we had a jazz trio playing,” says artistic and executive director Mark Peskanov, a classical violinist who is 88-year-old Bloom’s appointed “heir apparent”. “It sounded very lovely and a musician from the group told me he had this original composition that was about 25 minutes long and how it’s not so easy to program these things at some other jazz venues. That struck the right chord with me. I feel it’s so important for people to
artistically express themselves.” So he decided to start jazz programming.
Bloom herself had tried the concept when she first barged onto the Brooklyn waterfront, amazing all
witnesses by tying up her “boat” to the shore--a
midstream life decision. “Howard Collins was a dear friend of mine. He was a jazz guitarist I met in the
profession,” she says. “He was very much intrigued by this whole effort I was on and he helped me put down bricks at the entry to the barge. I was so touched by his help I said, “all right, Howie, we’ll have jazz once a week all year long.”
But it only lasted that year. “I used to have to take money from the classical and put it to the jazz players. I thought it should be presented in concert form. And that it deserved more respect than to be background noise for people who are eating and talking.” But crowds didn’t come. “They didn’t feel as I do that it should be listened to with reverence.”
Dick Hyman came to play back then and also inaugurated the return of regular jazz performances in
June 2007. He hooked Bloom up with jazz players that first year and he still suggests performers to Peskanov, who books all the classical and jazz shows, studying the scene and coming up with his own ideas.
The concert setting is still in force. There are two halves to each evening’s presentation, with an
intermission. Says Peskanov, “People don’t just get up during a performance, they listen and sit in their seats, but at the same time they’re not being so restricted as well, because of the wake, the waves, things like that -- so it’s quite a unique experience.”
The setting on the water and the fluid behavior of the river, he says, is like jazz because both are
“spontaneous” and with both, “you never know what is going to happen next.”
~Laurel Gross
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