Space is New York is tight. Scratch that understatement. Space is New York is near impossible to come by. From your expensive studio apartment where your dinner table doubles as a Murphy Bed to the Bodega on the corner that you can barely fit in, there is not much room in New York City. Maybe that’s why we are enamored by Central Park or anything ‘green’ around town. While it’s not the first thing we think of when it comes to space and grass, cemeteries certainly provide the open, airy green space we love and long for. Yes, there are some tombstones in the way, but the history is plentiful!
We are being a bit facetious but there is truth to what we’re saying. Andrew Ousley of Unison Media proved that at The Green-Wood Cemetery. The grounds cover 478 acres in Brooklyn and boasts extraordinary works of nineteenth- and twentieth-century sculpture, statuary and architecture. Home to thousands of historic figures, The Green-Wood Cemetery offers tours of its grounds, concerts, book readings and other public events throughout the year.
Now that we established how unique this cemetery is, lets dive deeper – literally and figuratively. How about a classical concert beneath all of this? We are not kidding. There is only one person we know who could pull this off and he did. You may remember him from Crypt Sessions. Well, Mr. Ousley has outdone himself.
Unison Media and The Green-Wood Historic Fund have produced an all-new series of classical music concerts entitled, The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs. The series presents opera and chamber music in one of the Cemetery’s oldest structures. The Catacombs were built in the 1850s and are normally closed to the public.
Exclusive, dark, scary and beautiful. We were fortunate enough to attend the performance on August 6th – The Sacred and the Profane. Harpist-slash-Rockstar Bridget Kibbey brought a haunting program to the catacombs, accompanied by a crack team of top-shelf string players. Together, they performed epic music that hovers in the shadows between darkness and light, from Debussy’s Sacred and Profane dances, to Bach’s haunting Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, to the grand finale: André Caplet’s gripping Conte Fantastique. After experiencing this show, we can tell you that the harp does not equal angelic!
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- The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs.
The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs.
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- The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs.
The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs.
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- The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs.
The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs.
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- The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs.
The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs.
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- The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs.
The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs.
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- The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs.
The Angel’s Share performed in Green-Wood’s Catacombs.
In Unison Media fashion, they kicked off the evening with a Sunset whiskey tasting reception. We tasted a variety of whiskeys from Virgil Kaine Lowcountry Whiskey Co., Van Brunt Stillhouse, and Five & 20, and also had beer from Lagunitas Brewing Co. After the show, we took a tiki torch walk through the romantic and every setting after dark.
This was a one of a kind experience that we will cherish for a long time. Anyone can buy a ticket to Carnegie Hall. How many people do you know that made it in and out of a catacomb and heard top notch strings along the way?
The series continues through the Fall. For more information and tickets, please visit: https://www.deathofclassical.com/angelshare
Just keep in mind, tickets go fast!
Photo credit: Steven Pisano