Music: Custom Concerts

In the smoky recesses of a Manhattan cellar known as the Village Gate, Folk Singer Josh White was strumming Scarlet Ribbons and Saint James Infirmary. Uptown, at the 92nd Street Y.M.-Y.W.H.A., a group known as the Tichman Trio (clarinet, cello and piano) was threading its agile way through the chamber music of Beethoven and Brahms. Between the two —and a couple of blocks east of Carnegie Hall, where the Boston Symphony was unfolding Gustav Mahler's massive Symphony No. i—choir and soloists at St. Bartholomew's Church on Park Avenue were launching into Beethoven's stately...