On Thursday night, a bustling crowd gathered in front of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music in Park Slope, listening to a jazz ensemble led by bassist Amina Scott. It was kind of an absurdly idyllic scene, something out of "Hey Arnold!": The sun setting on a perfect summer day, people leaning out from balconies and stoops to listen, the shopkeepers at Mandala Tibetan Store rolling in their racks of clothes for the night, and jazz, jazz, jazz. When does something like this ever happen in real life?
Four Thursday nights every summer since 2021, it turns out, and the final performance for summer 2025 is next week. This year, the BKCM's Midsummer Nights outdoor concert series was curated by jazz vocalist and flautist Melanie Charles, a veteran of the conservatory who got involved when she was 12 years old, growing up in Bushwick.
"My mom is a Haitian immigrant, and she was like, 'I want my daughter to be in culture.' I don't know how she found this place, but she found it," Charles said—she studied flute and voice at the conservatory, and sang in the conservatory's community choir with both her mother and brother.
Charles rattled off the Brooklyn institutions in which she was able to nurture her talent: "I was a choir member of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and they're based a few blocks away, off of Court Street. I also studied at the Brooklyn Music School, which is next to BAM. What I'm trying to say is that I was very blessed to get the best musical education and support that the city could offer at that time." Those institutions are under threat now, of course, by federal budget cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts, including BKCM, which had a $50,000 grant for youth music education terminated, but also by a mayor that hasn't shown much commitment to funding arts and culture in New York City.
"As an artist, there can be so much chaos. But the ritual around BKCM, of grabbing a pastry and a coffee across the street and going into lessons, represented safety," Charles told me.
Two years ago, after studying jazz at the New School, and touring with artists like India Arie and Maxwell, she returned to accept BKCM's Jazz Leaders Fellowship. "They poured into me as a kid musically, and as an adult they still have been a support to me."
Charles added, "Being awarded that grant provided financial support, but it also made me feel like what I was doing was needed and was valuable."
For the past two summers, she has curated the outdoor concert series, though she's never seen it as crowded as it was on Thursday. "I'm really dedicated. I don't got much, you know, I ain't famous or nothing. But I care, and being born here, I know all the people." Given that, I asked her to give some recommendations for more idyllic, jazz-driven scenes to check out over the next few weeks:
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