Vinnie Sperrazza on Kensington Windsor Terrace:
I moved to Brooklyn in 2002 and lived in the same apartment for 17 years. It was on the border between two similar but distinct Brooklyn neighborhoods: Kensington and Windsor Terrace. The boundary between those neighborhoods is so fuzzy that residents in the area where I lived often just called it "Kensington-Windsor Terrace".

Located on East 5th Street between Fort Hamilton Parkway and Caton Ave, it was a four-floor, two-family duplex. My roommates and I had the top two floors. The front room on the second floor was our music room, and the high ceilings, brown carpet, and hexagonal shape made for an accommodating music space.

I had a drumset, and, at various points, a marimba, a Fender Rhodes, a fancy Roland keyboard (borrowed), an acoustic guitar, electric bass, amps, microphones- the works.

I also had the most valuable asset in a musician's life: tolerant and understanding landlord and neighbors. For years, I could write, rehearse, record, and teach right in my own home. As long as I didn't start making noise too early, or go too late, or play too many days consecutively, I could, more or less, play all day.

Over 17 years, a lot of music was made in that room. So many great players came over to play and rehearse and hang. Just off the top of my head: Michael Formanek, Chris Speed, Jim Black, Satoshi Takeishi, Ethan Iverson, Stew, Ben Goldberg, Jacob Sacks, Jacob Garchik, Gerald Cleaver, Thomas Morgan, Michael Attias, Adam Kolker, Samuel Blaser, Brandon Seabrook, Chet Doxas, Andrew Bishop, Yoon Choi, Elena Moon Park, Simon Jermyn, Dana Lyn, Kirk Knuffke, Curtis Hasselbring, Noa Fort, Matt Blostein, Geoff Kraly, Josh Dion, Ryan Meagher, Loren Stillman, John McNeil, Ben Monder, Rich Perry, Dave Scott, Dave Ambrosio, Pete Brendler, Jeremy Udden, Aryeh Kobrinsky, Caroline Davis. I'm sure I forgot some of the most frequent visitors.....yikes...

Mike McGinnis and Elias Bailey and I became a trio in this room; the Choir Invisible, the band with Charlotte Greve and Chris Tordini, became a band here, as did EMBER, with Caleb Curtis and Noah Garabedian; my first time playing through Pepperland with Ethan Iverson was in this room; almost every song under my name was written in this room; I jammed with my father and brother a lot in this room, and easily gave 500 hours of drum lessons there too.

In January 2015, I had an idea that I could make a record at home. Over the next 4 months, I recorded, edited, and mixed these tracks for a planned full-length "music at home" album. Ultimately, I didn't get 45 minutes of listenable, releasable music, before moving on. These tracks are the best music from those sessions, and they are near and dear to me.

Please look past the "at home" sound and focus on the joy I'm obviously experiencing as I find, for the first time, that I can put together some very simple music by myself.

Now that we're at home keeping safe and keeping each other safe, it seemed a good time to release these tracks, in mind of all the fun we can have at home.

These seven tracks are a tribute to homes everywhere, and the friends and neighbors that let musicians make joyful noise at home.


-Vinnie Sperrazza, April 30th, 2020, updated September 30th, 2020, updated Feb 2, 2024

PS Jan 16, 2022
I just uploaded a track called "Ditmas", recorded, appropriately, in Ditmas Park, not Kensington-Windsor Terrace. The small studio where I recorded it, in early 2021, engineered by the great Jason Nazary, closed later that year. I was hoping to record more there, but there's just this one track. Rather than wasting away on a hard drive, it lives here now, among family.