07.27.2024 Red Rocks Part 1: Tedeschi Trucks + Harlem

As a person who has thrilled at the opportunity for new experiences and connecting with people and cultures different than mine, our Hudson High School New Dimensions class trip to Manhattan in 1978 had me ramped up with excitement from the time our bus dropped us off at our midtown hotel. Walking in the Lower East Side, hearing my first opera (Carmen at Lincoln Center), the shows and street venders of Broadway, looking across the city from the World Trade Center observation area . . . it all opened my spirit and my heart.

And, then, we spent an afternoon in Harlem. . . the Harlem Gospel Choir, whose powerful, emotive voices resounded in the small church, sitting along the edge of the studio as the Dance Theater of Harlem practiced, under the direction of Arthur Mitchell. There was something about this area of the city that took me to another level – a combination of happiness and an undefinable sense of recognition and sense of place.

NYC has called me back so many times over the years. . . day trips from my husband’s family home in PA, visiting my son at NYU, conferences for the Women’s Caucus for Art, The Feminist Art Project and the UN, my daughter’s camp at Barnard, visiting friends who live in the West Village. And, each time I find myself in Harlem, for art or the blues or restaurants, I felt that inexplicable awareness and appreciation for its history and challenges and cultures and people.

Around the same time my son and his partner were considering apartments in the Harlem area, I heard Tedeschi Trucks’ “Midnight in Harlem” for the first time. I found myself in tears. I still can’t fully describe the reason. I felt it right that they should live there. That didn’t come to be. They found something else in the area. And, this is more about my own reaction to Harlem. But, that song and others by that band have found themselves in frequent rotation on my playlists and hearing them live became a goal.

I thought that goal would be realized in NYC, but, perhaps even better, at least acoustically, it happened last weekend at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado. The amazing architecture of natural rock and skillfully designed sound systems – funneled the soulful sound into my body, expanding it and bringing forth, again, tears of connection.
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I may never know why Harlem does this to me. For now, I am grateful for the experiences it has created for me and in me.