Harlem Jazz Series - Craig Harris & the Harlem Nightsongs Big Band
Mount Morris Ascension Presbyterian Church2 West 122nd Street, New York 10027
Craig Harris leads the Harlem Nightsongs Big Band for The Thursday Night Rhythms of Resistance, a new Harlem Jazz Series program at Mount Morris Ascension Presbyterian Church. The billing presents the evening as a big-band performance under Harris’s direction, part of the series he curates in the church sanctuary. It is a focused concert setting: listeners gather in pews rather than at tables, with no bar service or dinner orders competing with the music.
Harris is identified here as the trombonist who curates the long-running Harlem Jazz Series, which brings veteran instrumentalists to this historic Harlem church for daytime and evening performances. The available information does not provide further biographical detail about Harris or the Harlem Nightsongs Big Band, but the setting is specific: a 1906 sanctuary built in Roman brick and crowned with a copper dome, valued for its clear, resonant acoustics. For this installment, the series places Harris’s big band within a Harlem institution whose design favors attentive listening and lets the ensemble’s sound carry through the room.
Built in 1906 with Roman brick and a copper dome, the sanctuary trades club atmosphere for the clear, resonant acoustics of a historic Harlem house of worship. Curated by trombonist Craig Harris, the long-running Harlem Jazz Series regularly fills the sanctuary with daytime and evening performances from veteran instrumentalists. Audiences sit in church pews for focused, seventy-five-minute listening sets without the noise of bar service or dinner orders. Seating accommodates up to 250 guests, with $30 general admission tickets easily purchased online or at the entrance ahead of start times. The quiet brownstone blocks directly bordering Marcus Garvey Park provide an easy walk to neighborhood dining along Lenox Avenue after the music finishes.