Jazz festival at the Sixth Street synagogue

Our wonderful composer friend Peter Melnick invited us to an evening of "radical" Jewish-oriented jazz at this beautiful Orthodox synagogue on East Sixth Street, a block best known for its spicy cluster of twenty or so Indian restaurants. The music was varied, to say the least, and I punned that it fell into three categories : Heavy Mendel, Jew Orleans, and Jewdelydoodly. It was more than a little odd to hear power chords, super-funky trumpet solos and wild be-bop improvisations bouncing off the walls of the synagogue, but what was even odder was the wonderful Rabbi, Greg Wald, known, of course, as the Jazz Rabbi. That's him below on the left blowing his heart out -Sonny Rollins-style. This world-class musician, who has played in Carnegie Hall and made numerous CDs, told me his congregation is growing fast - especially among NYU students living in nearby dorms. Only in New York.

Klezmatic trumpeter Frank London solos. Note the wooden railing that separates men and women at the Orthodox services which, as is traditional,  feature no music at all. Other than that produced by the Cantor, I suppose.