“It’s full and it’s lively. You can come and sip wine and chat if you want … it’s really great,” Noah Bloom mused, cracking a smile as he downed his first iced coffee of the day. On his right, Sue Davidson nodded avidly, her fingers flying through the humid air as she added information.
They had reason to be this peppy on a recent Friday morning. Trading off sentences in an interview at Koffee?, Bloom, the Neighborhood Music School’s director of programs and community engagement, and Davidson, its director of institutional advancement, took a moment to discuss the school’s upcoming Twilight Tuesdays concert series, back this summer for the 15th year in a row.
Kicking off Tuesday night with a performance from Sambeleza, the four-evening, five-concert lineup will honor and celebrate NMS’s role in New Haven’s musical community, offering a range of styles intended to mirror the city’s diverse and growing listener base.
“We try to be very specific about who we plan … every single concert has a specific connection to the school,” said Bloom.
At the core of that is careful coordination that begins at least a year in advance. Each concert speaks to some aspect of the organization’s tag line NMS Presents. Sambeleza’s appearance tomorrow night in robust quintet form — the group usually performs as a trio — was “a natural first choice” because, on the heels of a new Brazilian-infused CD, it has NMS advocate and bassist Jeff Fuller at its helm. A July 28 tribute to Red Balaban will bring Balaban’s gift of Dixieland music back to a part of the country that doesn’t get it often enough, celebrating his life in the process. Coming into town on August 4, NMS alumnus Wayne Escoffery will fill the block, or at the very least the outdoor yard behind NMS, with joyous jazz as he plays with his quartet. Switching gears, Haley Hewitt’s Connecticut Harp Circle and Latanya Farrell’s strong vocal musings will close out the series on August 11.
In performing, each artist has also made a sort of commitment — or several — to the school’s summer students and performers. Escoffery will lead master classes during the day before performing in the evening. Several performers consider NMS to be integral to the fabric of who they have become as musicians. Escoffery is an alum. Fuller and Hewitt are teachers at the school and have nurtured past and current students and grown as educators and performers during their time at the organization.
That’s not all. According to Bloom, this year’s series, which will continue into fall, winter, and spring for the first time in NMS history, also marks a blockwide effort to expand what the fine and performing arts mean in New Haven.
“There’s kind of a growing coalition on the street between us, with a new director, the New Haven Ballet, which has a new director, and ECA … we’re all coming together and trying to expand on the original intention of Bitsie Clark and others who launched the Audubon Arts District. We’re thinking about how we can make this a place of artistic exploration collectively.” he said.
“It allows us to work with our neighbors,” Davidson added. “For us it’s a neighborhood event … we are the Neighborhood Music School and it’s important to us that it is truly a neighborhood event.”
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