A grave concern
‘We don’t do Halloween-y, spooky or creepy,’ says Harry J Weil, who manages concerts and events at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Besides being home to 570,000 permanent residents, the 183-year-old cemetery presents an extensive menu of dance, theatre and visual arts programmes, as well as one of the most talkedabout classical concert series in New York.
Dubbed ‘Angel’s Share’ and held across Green-Wood’s 478 acres of headstones, mausoleums and catacombs, the series ‘is intended to show off how beautiful the landscape is’, says Weil. It has also increasingly involved high-profile musicians such as violinist Gil Shaham, pianist Simone Dinnerstein and the JACK Quartet.
On a balmy evening in June, I joined a group of about 60 mostly masked listeners along Green-Wood’s meandering paths to six different sites, where members of the New York Philharmonic presented pieces on themes of ‘resilience and renewal’. The event was co-produced
