Each Thursday morning for as long as they could remember, commuters walking from the underground World Trade Center PATH station to the Manhattan subways could count on seeing a strange figure on the platform or near the subway entrance.
A violinist – sometimes in a full tuxedo, sometimes dressed in a flowing white open-at-the-throat blouse – would give passing commuters a brief and dazzling concert. Sometimes, he would even chase commuters with his violin.
“I saw him there on my way to work,” said Sharon Griffiths, a Jersey City resident, who was one of the few people who knew him by name. “I went to Julliard with him.”
James Graseck has played at the World Trade Center subway for over 20 years, serenading people in the morning on their way to work. At one point, he did so everyday, but changed his routine to Thursdays about two years ago.
In numerous published accounts after the Sept. 11 attack, people recalling their memories of life at the World Trade Center before the two towers collapsed recalled James Graseck, like a haunting symbolic memory of normalcy to which no one could return. One woman, volunteering to help Red Cross on the site, believed him dead in the crash until she heard him playing “America the Beautiful” near the ruins. Graseck had moved his operations to a nearby memorial to the victims of the World Trade Center.
During the waning days of 2001, Graseck made his way to Harmon Cove in Secaucus to help raise money for the Sept. 11th Fund.
Graseck was joined for a Nov. 18 fundraising concert by the Princeton Tigertones, Princeton University’s a cappella group, who helped raised funds by presenting a program of music that ranged from The Beatles to barbershop quartet music. The group – whose revolving membership has toured the world for over 55 years – raises money for numerous good causes.
History
After graduating from Julliard in the late 1970s, Graseck soloed with orchestras in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, South Carolina and Long Island. But he decided to take his act onto the street, and has been featured in films and on TV as one of the premier street performers, often bowing to commuters as they board their trains after his performances. He called his relationship with these people “an unspoken love.”
At the Harmon Cove Concert, Graseck talked about his many friends in the World Trade Center who would smile, wave, stop to listen or cheer him on, yet for whom he had no names. He said he didn’t know what happened to many of them after the Sept. 11. disaster.
Graseck in the past has described his street performance as one of his great loves, and claimed he wasn’t playing for strangers, but for humanity as a whole. He called commuters part of his extended family. The fact is, he met his wife in 1982 while performing on Fifth Avenue.
Since the disaster, of course, people steered him to Pier 11 in Manhattan where many of the former World Trade Center employees arrive by ferry. He said he has found many of his old audience members there. But some, he said, he knows he’ll never see again.
“He developed relationships with people from them just having seen him so often, and he felt like they knew him,” said Alice Allured, a members of the Harmon Cove Cultural Committee, who invited him and the Tigertones to help raise funds for World Trade Center disaster. “It was a real blow not knowing what happened to many of those people.”
Graseck, who has appeared three times in Harmon Cove, has also appeared on the Tonight Show and other more classically oriented venues, and frequently performs at private affairs – although admits the street provides him with an opportunity to meet more people daily.
At Harmon Cove, he played what audience members called “a poignant rendition” of the hauntingly beautiful “Ashoken Farewell.”
“It was the theme song from Ken Burns Civil War TV series,” Allured said, “And it was so appropriate for the moment.”
The Tigertones were also well-received. Over their century long existence, they have released 26 recordings, and played for numerous dignitaries from President Bill Clinton to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. They have appeared in many of the same prestigious venues as Graseck, such as Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and then many others throughout the world. At Harmon Cove, the Tigertones, according to audience members, were full of high energy and humor.
“It was just what the doctor ordered after all the sadness and anxiety since Sept. 11,” said Allured. “it was a contrast, but brought everyone out of the doldrums.”
While the concert was planned before Sept. 11, after the disaster the committee decided to shift gears and used the event as a fundraiser. The Cultural Committee, which put on the concert for residents of the condominium community, donated all ticket sales to charity.
The committee sent the $1,100 check to the Sept. 11 Fund – a not-for-profit established by the United Fund and the New York Community Trust to help agencies working at the WTC or to provide support and services to victims, their families and others affected by the Sept. 11 tragedy.