Photo courtesy of Lucie Englehardt ’23
If you walk along New London’s Golden Street on Thursday nights, you can hear soft waves of alto sax rhythms that seem to emanate from the musicians stretched across the mural on the adjacent block. It is drifting from the top floor of RD86, where the live jazz will pique your curiosity enough to pull you inside.
I first entered the speakesy-esque studio at RD86 when my friend brought me, who stumbled across the space a few weeks ago when she followed the music. Hidden behind a black curtain at the top of the stairs, jazz at RD86 is evidence of the eccentric corners where music, style, and culture flourish in New London.
Every week is a different trio. The week I visited I found Jonathan Barber, hailing from Hartford, on drums shaping the group’s beat with a stylish, effortless swing. To his right was Michael Carabello, playing a rich piano riff that moves in and around the beat. Ben Simmons tied it all together in animated saxophone wails. At RD86, Thursdays around 7pm is a casual blend of dining, live broadcasting, seemingly sound-producing, and bartending, harmonized by a joyous swell of jazz. The music is coupled with drinks and appetizers that range from baba ganoush to hickory smoked barbeque wings to braised short rib and salmon cake sandwich.
New London has been historically defined by its maritime culture, due to its time as the second largest whaling port in the world in the mid-nineteenth century. Since then, as reliance on its ports have waned, funky spaces like RD86 remind us that New London has a rich, ever-growing art scene that lends itself to vibrant community spaces.
Key figures actualizing this idea are co-owners Robert Ramsay and Hannah Gant, who are driven by their shared interest in community economic development, hospitality, and concept creation. The space has been around since the end of 2017, when they wanted to create a business incubator that highlighted both the city’s established artistic identity and its creative potential. RD86 (“Research and Development”) is project-based, fueled by local artists and entrepreneurs that Gant and Ramsey believe in to help shape it into an embodied space.
Gant also helped in starting Spark Makerspace on Union Street, established with a similar mindset of cultivating creativity. Ramsay uses the studio’s jazz performances to experiment with his own tech-y endeavors of audio engineering and broadcasting. Beyond Thursdays, the space hosts Sunday Brunch, Taco Tuesday, with event pop-ups in between.
“We use our space to connect to entrepreneurs we believe in,” Gant shares. Those working with RD86 for an event don’t rent the space but rather work with Grant and Ramsey develop their idea: “we believe in you, we support you, let’s test and develop,” is Gant’s mindset. We take a social enterprise approach instead of nonprofit – working with the market to make money supporting these entrepreneurs to test their concepts with a live audience instead of hoping and waiting for grants to come through.There are a lot of services in the nonprofit world to write a business plan, but nothing to take it to the next level and test the concept.”
When asked what she has come to know about the city, they share that “people are very New London proud.” The idea behind the space is that it is intentionally built by and for the community, and it takes time and intention for a community to take shape. Newer ventures like RD86, who work within previously neglected buildings and seek to support local entrepreneurs, are inevitably tasked with moving through their community in a culturally relevant way and being thoughtful about how they operate within it. Ultimately, they want to stick to their salient goal of innovation and for it to be a spot where creativity can prevail for an excited audience.
There is no cover and no reservation needed on Thursday evenings at the RD86 Dinner & Jazz series bar, from 6-9pm. Check out its other event-based experiences at https://www.rd86space.com
