by | Nov 14, 2022 11:30 am | Comments (0)
Lindsey Skedgell photo
Skater / moviemaker Thomas Purtell at Plush screening Saturday.
Skaters rolled down the blacktop of a partially closed Orange Street, gathering in a large group. They were there Saturday night to see the premiere of Sucker, a new skate film by Thomas Purtell.
by | Nov 10, 2022 5:25 pm | Comments (34)
Paul Bass photos
Earth movers: State development deputy chief Alexandra Daum, city development chief Mike Piscitelli, Ancora L&G veep Peter Calkins, Alder Carmen Rodriguez, Mayor Justin Elicker, builder Clay Fowler (never saw a Coliseum show, but fave would have been The Boss), Economic Development Corp. CEO Ginny Kozlowski (favorite concert: Billy Joel), Chamber prez Garrett Sheehan.
Ready to rumble: Crew members Rich Vishinsky, foreman Albino Barroqueiro, and Trevor Gill Thursday by their "monster" truck.
The ghosts of metal bands, hockey brawlers, and Bible-thumping Jehovah’s Witnesses were shaken from their graves Thursday as a groundbreaking marked the beginning of construction of a bustling mini-city on the burial grounds of the old New Haven Coliseum.
by | Nov 3, 2022 8:16 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Pocket Vinyl.
Eric Stevenson leaned hard over the piano, his arms spread like wings, his hands like spiders. Intricate figures of notes poured from his fingers, and he sang in a high clear voice, as unironically advertised, about “defiant hope.” Nearby, her back turned to the audience but her work plain to see, Elizabeth Jancewicz deftly began with a blank canvas and began painting a bird in woods. Then she set it all on fire. The people in the audience sat in near-complete silence, giving the music and the artwork all their attention. It was that kind of night at Cafe Nine, one in which the crowd gave the musicians free rein of the room, and got, in return, a show of rare intimacy.
by | Nov 1, 2022 4:04 pm | Comments (11)
The New Haven Pride Center has lost its tax-exempt nonprofit status and has replaced its executive director after failing to file multiple years’ worth of tax forms.
by | Oct 28, 2022 12:00 pm | Comments (13)
Spinnaker image
Rendering of future med-lab building at "Square 10."
Hundreds of new apartments, a retail “laneway,” a parking garage, and a medical lab and office building are one big step closer to coming to a Ninth Square surface parking lot — now that the city has officially conveyed the former Coliseum site to a Norwalk-based developer.
by | Oct 24, 2022 8:36 am | Comments (0)
Daniel Shoemaker Photos
Just how far can a groove take you? To the depths of space, to stretches of desert punctuated by towns nestled among the dunes? On Saturday at Cafe Nine, Dilemastronauta and Imarhan gave a masterclass in those kinds of grooves, courtesy of promoter Shaki Presents (Rick Omante).
by | Oct 20, 2022 9:05 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
June of 44.
Early in June of 44’s set, after a strenuous number, two sound tech men rushed onto the stage to reattach drummer Doug Scharin’s drum mics. Vocalist and guitarist Jeff Mueller turned around with a smile on his face. “He’s hitting the hell out of them,” he said. To Scharin directly, he said, jokingly, “what are you doing?”
“He’s rocking out,” said someone in the audience.
by | Oct 4, 2022 8:30 am | Comments (0)
Rawling.
In preparing for the latest production from Madame Thalia — the Prohibition-era vaudeville show that music and theater mastermind Zohra Rawling is bringing back to Cafe Nine on Oct. 9 — Rawling thought of the last time she got to stage it in the club on State and Crown, in 2019. She ended a particular segment on a complete cliffhanger. “Tune in next time,” she recalled intoning to the crowd, only to have a member of the audience interrupt, yelling back “you monster!”; the cliffhanger was apparently too much anticipation for them to take. “I’ve done my job,” Rawling recalled thinking. “That was the best compliment I’ve ever received on stage.”
by | Sep 27, 2022 8:24 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Ninja Brian, a.k.a Brian Wecht, stood on the stage of Cafe Nine Monday night without uttering a single word, communicating with the audience only through a poorly constructed PowerPoint presentation, bodily gestures, and flashing eyes. “Hello,” the first card read, as if warming up the crowd. A few other typical pleasantries followed. Then: “I will kill you all after the show.” The full house assembled for the show dissolved in laughter.
Continue reading ‘Variety Show Reveals Art Of Comedy Ninjutsu’
by | Sep 22, 2022 10:32 am | Comments (0)
Ilana Harris-Babou
Still from Leaf of Life.
The tree in the image from the short film Leaf of Life has spread its branches wide, offering inviting shade, protection — and perhaps nourishment. The fruits that artist Ilana Harris-Babou has placed in its branches are healthy enough, but the way Harris-Babou has rendered them, there is something fake about them, a little suspicious. We want to eat well. We want to be healthy. We want to live better lives, in greater harmony with our neighbors and with nature. But how do we know when we’re doing that? How do we know if we’ve been had?
by | Sep 19, 2022 9:07 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photos
Cara DeLucia of Qween Kong.
Artist and musician Bill Saunders, of New Cardiff Giants, was beaming from the stage of the State House Friday night, looking over the good-sized crowd who had assembled there. He marveled at the health of the New Haven music scene, the emergence of new bands, the persistence of older bands. “It seems like everyone’s coming out with their own form of self-expression,” he said. Then he introduced the first band by saying he got to announce something he’d wanted to be able to say for a long time: “The Queen is dead! God save Qween Kong!”
Continue reading ‘Elm City Punk Explosion Lights Up State House’
by | Sep 15, 2022 9:44 am | Comments (5)
Brian Slattery Photo
Iridessa Søul LaFlare performs for PRIDE.
Host Maddelynn Hatter broke in the crowd at Gotham Citi Cafe on Orange Street Wednesday night by establishing a few guidelines regarding drag shows.
“If you ever know any drag queens, you know the most important rule — other than to be able to paint your face — is to be kind,” she said. “All of the queens have passed the test. They are very kind. Which is good, because I am an awful person.”
by | Sep 12, 2022 9:33 am | Comments (0)
Niyonu.
Niyonu Spann had her eyes closed, her hands reaching for the audience. The gesture mirrored the music swirling around her. In all of it was weight and longing, but also, strength and freedom. It was the heady sound of an experienced hand flying into uncharted territory, as on Friday night at the State House, Spann, a musician with a career spanning decades, was launching new music with a new ensemble, digging ever deeper and expanding on the musical and spiritual ideas that had fueled her for her entire life. Backed by a small choir of singers — Foluke Bennett, Paul Bryant Hudson, Ingrid Lakey, Cindy Mizell, and Diane Spann — as well as a band of John F. Adams on keys, Carl Carter on bass, Chris Wright on drums, and Eric Rey on conga, Spann created music of deep grooves, rich harmonies, and poetic lyrics that spoke to the spirit. Mizell regaled the audience with a scorching take on Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On?”
by | Sep 5, 2022 4:20 pm | Comments (1)
Maya McFadden Photos
Evan Jones outside Plush's soft opening (above). Below: Opening night party.
Skateboarders from New Haven and beyond gathered on Orange Street for the soft opening of the city’s second community skate shop.
by | Aug 22, 2022 8:46 am | Comments (0)
Colin Roberts Photos
Rex.
On Friday night, Cafe Nine played host to a pair of bands — Snake Oil and Rex — that had both been out of commission for some time. The Connecticut- and New York-based Snake Oil hadn’t played since 2019. Rex’s current run of shows marked the first since their unceremonious split in the late 1990s. Before that, however, their trio of albums — rex, C and 3 — were pivotal in the development of the indie rock subgenre known as slowcore. With two-thirds of the records seeing a recent reissue, the formerly-Brooklyn-based-by-way-of-Maine band reunited to take their songs to a new generation of audiences.
by | Aug 18, 2022 9:12 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Meridian Brothers.
The Meridian Brothers were already driving hard on a cumbia when bandleader Eblis Álvarez, who had been contributing a rhythmic guitar pattern to the groove, suddenly wrenched an echoing clatter out of the instrument — a sound that people unfamiliar with Álvarez’s work might not have known a guitar could make. But very few people in Cafe Nine on Wednesday night seemed new to the Meridian Brothers, a Colombian band that has steadily made fans worldwide on the strength of its recorded output from Bogotá. With pandemic restrictions lifted, the band was now on tour in the U.S. for the first time in years, and at the club on State and Crown, there was a sense of floodgates opening.
by | Aug 5, 2022 10:35 am | Comments (0)
Roundhouse Trio at Cafe 9.
A suitcase was onstage at Cafe 9 — and someone was singing out of it.
Continue reading ‘At Cafe 9 Improvisers Showcase, The Conversation Was Off The Walls’
by | Jul 22, 2022 8:50 am | Comments (1)
A group of men chat on the street corner. Behind them, a hamburger rotates slowly, to serene music. An astronaut tumbles through space. Prisoners of war get anti-communist propaganda tattooed on their chests and backs. A White man muses on the fear White people have of retribution from Black people about slavery.
It’s a quiet summer night on Crown Street, but something is disrupting the flow — and in its disruption, is reminding us of the flow that we’re in almost all the time and usually don’t pay much attention to.
The disruption makes us aware of how we’re subtly being disrupted all the time, without us being entirely conscious of it. What would happen if we were to wake all the way up to that fact?
by | Jul 1, 2022 9:20 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Dr. Martino was halfway through its set at the State House on Thursday night when Simone Puleo and Amy Shaw, who had been playing guitar and bass, respectively, suddenly switched instruments. Shaw then shot a smile toward the crowd.
“Any questions?” she said. “I’m taking questions. No? Good.”
The trio then ripped into another joyously raucous song, celebrating not only the band’s return to the State House stage, but a 10-day tour it was about to embark on with fellow Connecticut rockers Big Fang. There was thus a sense of things coming full circle, as the two bands had toured together before the pandemic, in 2019, but also starting new.
Continue reading ‘Big Fang & Dr. Martino Kick Off Tour From State House’
by | Jun 30, 2022 9:15 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Lighthouse.
Positive energy flowed through Cafe Nine Wednesday night as three bands — Lighthouse, Lumot, and The Fivers — brought music that was filled with ups and downs, quiet and loud, and at the same time, conveyed a sense of equilibrium.
Continue reading ‘Three Bands Get Loud And Quiet At Cafe Nine’
by | Jun 27, 2022 2:22 pm | Comments (1)
Kimberly Wipfler Photos
Don Randi, Christine Ohlman, Leah and Justin Randi, and Daniel Mizrahi.
So one day, I’m told about a young Motown act coming into the studio. I get there, and it’s a group called the Jackson Five. And a young man by the name of Michael comes and sits next to me at the piano and says, ‘Mr. Randi, could you show me what you just played?’ And this is what I played…
As keyboardist Don Randi told that story, the band, which had been vamping alongside, swung into the opening bars of the Jackson Five’s hit single, “ABC.” Randi plunked the familiar chords, as he did over 50 years ago on the original recording.
by | Jun 21, 2022 1:54 pm | Comments (1)
Artspace Executive Director Lisa Dent shows Sen. Blumenthal New Havener Leonard Galmon's Gloria.
New Haven’s annual “Open Studios” festival will have a farther reach and more space to display local artists’ work this year thanks to a $75,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
by | Jun 20, 2022 8:47 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
TJ and the Campers.
Chris Depot, singer and trombonist for TJ and the Campers, eyed the large crowd assembled at Cafe Nine on Saturday night. “Hello, Connecticut!” he said. “Is everyone ready for an evening of ska?” Over a three-band bill full of driving rhythms and sweaty dancing, the answer was a resounding yes, as New Haven showed that its roots in third-wave ska continue to bear fruit.
by | Jun 13, 2022 3:31 pm | Comments (14)
Laura Glesby Photo
Cycletrack would begin on far side of this notoriously car-centric stretch.
Plans for the curbed bike lane: filling "an important gap."
If Giovanni Zinn’s vision comes to fruition, cyclists will no longer need to take their lives into their hands while riding along Water Street beside highway-bound cars.
by | Jun 10, 2022 12:48 pm | Comments (0)
Kristina Kolosova Photo
This is what it looked like when Chicago blues guitarist Lurrie Bell blew through town and played a set at Cafe Nine Thursday night.