Silent Night in a Subway Train

Silent Night in a Subway Train

I am continually impressed at the wealth of musical talent on tap in New York, but this appreciation goes beyond musical theater, the concert stage, and the stylings of standards and jazz offered up in restaurants, bars, and jazz clubs … to the streets and – quite often in my experience – beneath the streets of the city.

This musical musing was inspired by an impromptu shot I took on a downtown Subway train, as it rumbled beneath the West Side on a Holiday Season evening a few years ago – the last Holiday Season in fact (2019) in which our vocabulary and behavior patterns were not dogged by that unwelcome addition to the daily discourse, Covid-19.

I often refer to serendipity as a phenomenon that energizes my photography, and there are so many examples of this in my NYC photo-moments. I just happened to be in the right car of this well packed Holiday Season Saturday evening train to enjoy something so unexpectedly lovely amidst the ambient noise of a Subway train rumbling and clattering through its subterranean maze of tracks and switches, that the musical memory is as fresh as if it were yesterday.

These two young musicians got on board at a stop along the way and began to
play this lovely arrangement for trumpet and guitar of Franz Gruber's "Silent Night."

While the ambience of the train 's movement was far from silent, I was impressed that at least the
passengers in my part of the car were silent and attentive to this beautifully played, and quite
unexpected, musical bonus to a Holiday Season ride beneath the streets of Gotham.

This is the photo's first appearance. I wish I could have done more justice to both the young musicians but,
as noted, it was a pretty packed train. Still, for me, it made this pre-Christmas Eve ride very special.

Merry Christmas, F-C friends.

©2022 Steve Ember