Houston Area Traditional Dance Society
Karen's In the Moment: A NOT Concert takes place every Tuesday evening at 7:00 ET / 6:00 CT on Facebook Live. If you are on Facebook you can find Karen at karen.axelrod.9.
Although you must have a Facebook account to listen and watch each not-concert as it streams, the videos are viewable without a Facebook account after the stream is done. Links to the videos are posted near the bottom of this page.
notconcerts?
Karen receives recordings of tunes from fellow ECD musicians such as Daron Douglas, Anna Patton, Rachel Bell, Jeff Spero, and several more. Although Karen knows what the tunes are in advance, she doesn't listen to the recordings ahead of time and has no idea what the other musician is going to do with the tune.
Playing either piano or accordion, she plays along with each recording while streaming on Facebook.
Not only is it musically spontaneous, but anything can and does happen. That only adds to the fun and the in-the-moment and not-a-concert aspects. Power has gone out, a smoke alarm has gone off, extra and totally unexpected musicians have turned up on recordings, and there is the occasional technical glitch. Karen has to react to each of these, and sometimes her reactions are priceless.
Here is 
Karen's Tip Jar on PayPal.me (PayPal account required). Karen shares these tips with the core musicians who send her recordings. Please donate if you can.
The first video is Karen's concert in honor of Set for Spring. The evening of March 23 would have been the Saturday ball of Set for Spring here in Houston with Karen, Anna Patton, and Daron Douglas as the musicians.
There are two versions of the Set for Spring video: the original hosted on Facebook and a version hosted on the HATDS site. The HATDS version lacks the comments (and pop-ups) of the Facebook original and has about five minutes of pre-concert setting-up removed. The original is also reversed (mirrored); this has been rectified in our hosted version.
Each not-concert is about an hour long—unless the power goes out.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands—one for helping yourself, the other for helping others. ~ Audrey Hepburn