We had a weekend full of musical interludes this week.  All of them free, and most of them out of doors.

Sunday was one of those amazingly perfect days you sometimes get at this time of year in New York. Clear, sunny, cool breeze and brilliant blue sky. So we went to a street fair – one of our favorites, the one on 3rd Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. 

It’s one of the best street fairs, because it features mostly local businesses, with a minimum of the standard stuff that appears at every fair these days.

Bay Ridge is an interesting mix of cultures. Early on, there was a heavy Norwegian/Lutheran influence, still seen in the churches and schools. Now it’s a mix of Italian, Greek, and Middle-Eastern.  You see a lot of women in Muslim head scarves at the street fair. (We even passed a coffee shop with signs entirely in Arabic – illegal, I think, in New York.)

As a result, there are restaurants of every kind, and lots of them.  We even passed what claims to be the only authentic German restaurant in Brooklyn; we’ll have to go back and try them one day, though German food is best in winter – it really warms you from the inside out. A lot of the restaurants had booths selling delicious takeaway food.

Anyway, back to the music.  The 3^rd Avenue street fair has lots of music.  We went there specifically to hear one of the best – the Samaha Ensemble (http://www.jeffsamaha.com/misssaigon.html), and we missed them!  They are a large choral group, with a variety of instruments as well, who do great old songs that have the crowd clapping in time and dancing in the street.  Their specialty is the songs from Smokey Joe’s Café (Leiber and Stoller), and they often finish with a crowd-pleasing version of “I’m a woman – W-O-M-A-N”.  This year we missed them because, instead of their usual spot, they were on the main stage and finished early.  Click here for photos from last year.

We did see an Elvis impersonator.  Don’t laugh – he was really good!  And a couple of women in front of us were going crazy.

And we saw a great band named “Risky Business” (http://www.risky-biz.com/) doing doo-wop with terrific harmony.  They were a lot of fun.

But not all the music was at the street fair.  When we went into the subway, a small Asian guy was sitting on a bench playing “Ave Maria” on the harmonica.  He was great- I’ve never heard a harmonica played like that in my life.

And the pièce de resistance was in the 14^th Street subway passageway.  His name is Jim Graseck (http://www.recklesslyromantic.com/), and he’s been playing classical violin in New York subways for many years.  We first saw him maybe 20 years ago, playing in the subway and in street fairs, and every now and then we cross paths with him again. Now we’re all 20 years older, but he has just gotten better.

New York is full of musicians – some better than others.  This weekend we caught some of the good ones.