Maya McFadden Photo
Diego Padilla and Miles Singer end their set with “How High the Moon.”
Two of the eight members of the Premier Jazz Ensemble harmonized their way from the Neighborhood Music School (NMS) to the New Haven Green on Friday to jazz up the joint.
Diego Padilla played the trombone alongside bandmate Miles Singer on the Tenor saxophone on the Green’s corner of Church and Chapel Street as a part of a “Wake Up The Green” pop-up series sponsored by the Proprietors of the New Haven Green, the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, and the New Haven Parks and Recreation Department.
Padilla, 16, a rising senior at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School, said it was different performing without his entire group of eight, but once he got over his nerves, he was prepared for last-minute performance changes. “It was like cooking without all your ingredients: You just have to learn to make substitutions,” he said.
Local jazz legend Jeff Fuller, an NMS faculty member and coach of the Premier Jazz Ensemble, said that the group could not pass up on the opportunity to be a part of the Green series. “It’s always great to have performances in the heart of New Haven. It reminds us of where passions started,” he said.
Some in the lunch hour crowd on the Green took a seat at park benches to watch and listen to the performance while others bobbed their heads to the rhythm of the jazz as they walked by..
Proprietors Janet Arterton and Kica Matos said that the ongoing pop-up series began as a turnaround effort after the K2 overdose crisis on the New Haven Green that made national news last August.
“New Haven has a lot of talent, so we put that together with our idea that an active Green is a positive Green,” Arterton said.
Instead of hosting the pop-ups around the center of the Green, Matos said, they decided it would be most effective to stage the performances near the heavy foot traffic by Church and Chapel.
So far the pop-up series performances have included drumming, Capoeira, and tai chi, and R&B. For August, Matos said she is looking forward to a performance by the Movimiento Cultural Afro Continental, Inc., which recently played in the International Arts & Ideas Festival.