There is more to the New York Historical Society than chronicles. Last Friday night Abe Lincoln was standing on the front steps to welcome me as I dashed past in the rain, blurring a photo op but not able to stop. Jazz was in session and I was late. But forget the fluster, one foot inside the auditorium and the pace changed. George Cables was taking the audience through the Harlem Renaissance from Duke Ellington to Lord Kitchener’s sound of bebop Calypso. Suddenly there was that cool pause that only jazz can inspire. Conspiratorial smiles between grand piano, bass and drums suffused to shoulders and heads and toes approving the groove. The audience was entranced.

The performance was a mood setter for an exhibition called The Black Fives, which covers the pioneering history of the African American basketball teams that existed in NYC in the earlier 1900s. Another exhibition showcases Bill Cunningham  and his photographic documenting of fashion and NY architecture in the early seventies. I will have to go back again to see that, for the mood for jazz was upon me and a walk home in the rain would  do nothing to dampen my spirits…