Westport Friends Meeting

Coffee House features Quaker musicians Jesse Palidofsky and Richard Broadbent

Pianist, guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, Jesse Palidofsky will be joined by fellow Quaker musician Richard Broadbent at a Coffee House Saturday, March 5 at 7pm at the Macomber Community House, 930 Main Road, Westport MA. (This was originally advertised as an event featuring just Jesse Palidofsky, but he and Richard have performed together frequently,and both have agreed to do this event.)

Sponsored by the Westport Monthly Meeting of Friends, doors will open at 6:30 pm and Proceeds will benefit the American Friends Service Committee, Southeastern New England Area Office. Tickets are $10. For information and/or tickets, call 508-997-0940.

Richard Broadbent is a Quaker musician and songwriter who can play traditional folk, but his own material (which he writes a fair amount of) tends to be about contemporary topics of the heart and world. He's been playing and singing much of his life, but only turned professional recently.

Jesse Palifodsky

Jesse Palidofsky’s compositions have been featured on radio, at the National Theatre’s “Monday Night” series on the Hudson River sloop “Clearwater” with Pete Seeger, at festivals like Common Ground on the Hill and the Washington Folk Festival, and at the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian National Folklife Festival with the Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation.

Jesse did not register for the draft in 1972, and began attending unprogammed Friends meeting in Michigan in 1978. He spent a life-changing 6 months at Pendle Hill in 1982, and ended up as part of the largest class of unprogrammed Friends to attend Earlham School of Religion, where he received his masters. Jesse was on the planning committee for the World Gathering of Young Friends in 1987, and is co-founder of the Quakers in Pastoral Care & Counseling conference. He has led two retreats on the male spiritual journey at Pendle Hill, as well as a retreat for men in the maximum security prison in Salem, Oregon.

Jesse has led pre-plenary singing at FGC for 1200 Friends, performed many times at Pendle Hill, for the Quakers in Pastoral Care & Counseling conference, at Earlham, at the World Gathering of Young Friends, and at numerous meetinghouses. Jesse has sung with hundreds of the terminally ill in hospices and hospitals, at peace rallies, and also with prisoners at the Detroit House of Correction.

He has sung one-on-one with hundreds of terminally ill patients in hospices and hospitals, and also led singing for groups of a thousand people or more, and performed for conferences of clinical psychologists. Jesse has received numerous Visiting Artists and Scholars Grants from the Arts and Humanities Council in Montgomery County, and has offered some 700 multi-cultural musical performances for highly diverse audiences in the DC area in his work with Arts For The Aging.

Jesse's CD of original compositions “Food For the Long Haul” reflects the rich diversity of his Detroit musical heritage, moving seamlessly from the harmonica-driven "Crossing the Poison River," to the Appalachian-style political broadside, "Ballad of Sammie Abbott," to the jazzy sax and hilarious verbal juxtapositions of "I Need Mercy (A Million Times a Day)," to the sublime, Sweet Honey in the Rock-style spiritual, "Send Down Your Healing Water." This is mature, inspired music, lyrically and harmonically.

"Jesse's music is quite wonderful . . . He brings artistry and social concern together in a very powerful way!" says Parker Palmer, Author of A Hidden Wholeness and Let Your Life Speak

Jesse uses his music to transport people to a profound level of self and soul, which creates openings for people's deeper experience . . ." says Margaret Kornfeld, American Association of Pastoral Counselors

In the mid 1970s, Jesse founded the COMPARED TO WHAT! Coffeehouse in Detroit, showcasing an amazing array of Detroit-based talent from legendary blueswoman Sippie Wallace to songwriter Michael Smith ("The Dutchman," "Spoon River"), from Motown session musicians like saxophonist Norma Jean Bell and bassist Ralph Armstrong (who both moved on to Jean Luc Ponty's band), to future Prairie Home Companion regular Claudia Schmidt and Ray Charles' lead trumpeter Marcus Belgrave.

Richard Broadbent

Richard Broadbent and his music have been described as "irrepressible and unique. His songwriting is direct and wry, as is his wit. His talking blues are not to be missed."

Writes another reviwer: "If this song (Cape Cod Girls) doesn't make you want to get in a convertible, put the top down and tap your fingers on the dashboard, then get back to the medical school lab, because you're a cadaver. " - Jim Libbey, The Gazette, Frederick, MD

Richard performs solo with 6 and 12 string guitars and harmonicas, playing his original music alongside songs of tradition. Playing and singing nearly all his life, he began writing songs in 2001. Richard's writing aspires to that of the great storytellers like Steve Goodman, John Prine and Bob Dylan.

Richard's first recording is "Christiana" - a collection of songs 53 years in the making, and released in November, 2003. Produced by David Essig, in British Columbia, "Christiana" features fine Canadian players Oliver Schroer on violins, Essig on slide guitars and mandolin, Tobin Frank playing bass and accordion, and percussion by Vince Ditrich in addition to Broadbents guitars, harmonicas and vocals.