Garment District, NYC: Broadway Rhythm's Free Lunchtime Concerts Feature Galdort Gumbo Oct. 22

Broadway Rhythm is a free lunchtime concert series in Midtown Manhattan's Garment District, presented by the Garment District Alliance. It takes place on the Broadway plazas between 39th and 40th Streets. The season opened on June 9 with the Dingonek Street Band, and the music has run every Tuesday and Thursday from noon to 2pm, with no admission charge.

The performers come from MTA Music, the program behind the musicians who play in New York's subway stations. Time Out reported in May that the MTA was staging more than 50 free outdoor performances in Midtown, moving subway acts onto the Broadway plazas for lunch-hour shows. The idea is simple: music you would normally catch on the way to a train, played above ground where you can stay for a while.

The calendar has been wide-ranging. Summer dates included Diverse Concert Artists, the Robert Anderson Jazz Band, Underground Horns, Trojan Horns Brass Band and Triad Brass. Later came Koku Gonza, Sean Grissom, The Opera Collective and The Metropolitan Horn Authority. October leaned toward guitar-based acts and songwriters: Clovers Curfew on October 6, Inti and the Moon on the 8th, Cupid's Nemesis on the 13th, Zuique on the 15th and Chanese Elifé on the 20th.

On Thursday, October 22, the bill is Galdort Gumbo & The Righteous Cats, a five-piece band shown lined up with their instruments in the photo on the organizer's page. Like every Broadway Rhythm date, it runs from noon to 2pm and costs nothing, so it fits an ordinary lunch break: listen to a song or stay for the whole set.

The location is Broadway between West 39th and West 40th Streets, in the Garment District, a short walk from Times Square and Bryant Park.