Riviello And Big Band Bring ‘La Dolce Vita’ To Brooklyn Block Party

The annual Reeve Place Block Party has always had something special — a 16-piece big band set up in the street playing classic jazz arrangements from the 40s through the 60s.

But for the 10th anniversary, scheduled for September 17, the event has something extra-special to celebrate: a highly anticipated performance by band leader Tommy Riviello, whose musical history helped inspire the party.

The shindig takes place along Reeve Place, a three block stretch between Prospect Park Southwest and Prospect Avenue. Neighbors welcome “everybody who might want to wander in” to an afternoon concert, sax player Jeff Lederer said, and the two-hour performance traditionally ends with a Charleston dance contest.

Riviello, a drummer who cut his musical teeth playing with a band called The Melodiers at the Villa Roma resort in the Catskills during the 60s, helped launched the block party along with Lederer and Lederer’s wife, Mary LaRosa.

LaRosa’s Brooklyn Real, a real estate firm that specializes in residential properties around Windsor Terrace, sponsors the event. “The musicians are all paid $30, a sandwich and a warm beer. We get the sandwich, a very tasty Italian sub, from Russo’s on 7th Ave. in Park Slope,” she explained. That gives her naming rights to the band, which is known as the Brooklyn Real Big Band.

LaRosa’s brother Joe played with Riviello in The Melodiers. The band “would move up to the Catskills for the whole summer season,” Lederer said. “The guitarist in the band was Jack Wilkins, who went on to have a notable jazz career. Tommy played those summers when he was younger, but then went on to work in a civil service job until he retired.”

“I was lucky enough to catch the tail end of that era and worked those hotels when I was a young musician in New York arriving in the 1980’s: Browns, The Brickman, Hotel Neville,” Lederer said. “I worked those joints with Milton Berle, Henny Youngman and many others. I did a show with Eddie Fisher when he was so drunk he could barely get on stage and sing.”

“Mary and I bought our house in Windsor Terrace 20 years ago, and it was coincidentally located right across a little alley from the house where Tommy grew up and still lives,” he recalled. “It was such a cool connection with their shared history that I wanted to encourage Tommy to get his drums out of the basement and play again. We started with a little band in the alley, then I decided to do things on a bigger scale and present the Brooklyn Real Big Band.”

As the block party became a neighborhood tradition with the band at its center, Riviello’s role grew way beyond keeping time. “One of the things I love about the band is that Tommy will tell jokes and do impersonations, as well as playing the drums,” Lederer said. “Sometimes ‘blue’ jokes; we have to watch him with children around at the block party. He does a great impersonation of Nat King Cole, and James Cagney, and Fiorello LaGuardia.”

“This year will be very special, because Tommy suffered an illness, and it has been a long recovery for him,” said Lederer. “He is doing very well, and working hard with rehabilitation to regain all of his physical skills. He will be on the drums once again and it will be a celebration of music and life!”

The big band performance is the public face of a neighborhood party that begins with events focused on Reeve Place residents. Around 10:30am, with Riviello on drums and Lederer on saxophone, “we start the day off at playing patriotic and ‘ethnic’ themes while marching down the block with a parade of children,” Lederer explained. “We play Jewish, Italian, Irish, Dominican, Puerto Rican, traditional African American themes – the whole gamut of New York diversity.”

The Brooklyn Real Big Band sets up around 2pm, and the tenor of the event changes, becoming a little less block party and a little more public spectacle. Using stock charts supplied by Windsor Terrace saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo, the musicians take their places. The afternoon concert draws fans from far beyond the block; in past years, an appreciative Mayor Bill de Blasio has been in the audience.

“I was always taken by the Feliniesque quality of this enterprise – the strangeness of someone turning the corner on Prospect Park Southwest and encountering a full big band playing on the street,” Lederer explained. The band is “made up of a mix of older neighborhood amateur musicians and some of the younger hipster strivers in the neighborhood. Music brings us all together.”

The Event Rundown: 10th Anniversary Reeve Place Block Party
Where: Reeve Place between Prospect Park Southwest and Prospect Avenue.
When: Saturday, September 17 beginning at 10:30am. The Brooklyn Real Big Band begins at 2pm. Times may vary.