Ten years ago, during HASC 24, four percussionists opened the show, playing the now-famous HASC theme with nothing more than drumsticks
The month of January always gets me into HASC mode, even though this year, due to COVID concerns, “A Time for Music 34” (that’s 34 years of these amazing concerts) will be pushed off to February 14 but will still feature some very exciting firsts in Jewish music (although, in accordance with the well-known concert mystique of keeping the lineup a secret until the curtain rises, I can’t tell you too much else).
Instead of looking toward the uncertain future though, I prefer to look back to those blasts from the past, when we had a dream to go big and reinvent the whole concert formula it’s still hard to believe we’d actually managed to sell out Lincoln Center at $500 a ticket that very first year. And from where I sit, it’s so much more than just the singers, great as they are.