by | Jul 27, 2023 9:02 am | Comments (1)
Eleanor Polak Photos
"Rockin' Richard" and Bobby Mapp at The Towers.
A local music legend got his due Wednesday night during a celebration at The Towers of Bobby Mapp, who was the original drummer for The Five Satins and is now a resident at the senior living community located at 18 Tower Ln.
by | Jul 27, 2023 8:54 am | Comments (0)
Autumn Nelson
Self-Indulgence.
Autumn Nelson’s canvas is the first piece in “The Past Pushes Forward” — an art show installed in the top floor of the Blake Hotel at 9 High St., now until August 31 — to greet viewers as they exit the elevator. It’s hung in just the right spot so that the canvas functions as a double of the subject matter. The mirror that reflects the painter is held up to the viewer as well. Do we love ourselves as much as Nelson loves herself? How much are we allowed to love ourselves? Why is it fraught to even ask that question?
by | Jul 26, 2023 11:17 am | Comments (0)
barbiethemovie Instagram
Barbie promotional poster.
Greta Gerwig’s movie of the summer, Barbie, hit theaters this week in an explosion of pink, sparkles, and unexpected profundity.
I walked into Bow Tie Cinemas at 86 Temple St. at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, proudly sporting the only pink top I own, and I thought I was ready for anything. Turns out, I wasn’t ready for Barbie.
by | Jul 26, 2023 8:54 am | Comments (2)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Psychedelic Don Ho Down Orchestra
On any given night you can walk past Christopher Martin’s, the restaurant and bar at 860 State St., and hear the clinking of glass and animated conversations from inside, or from one of the many outdoor tables that line its sidewalks. On Tuesday evenings, however, you can hear live music, and on this Tuesday, it was the music of the Psychedelic Don Ho Down Orchestra, a band comprised of seven stalwart and seasoned musicians from the New Haven scene.
by | Jul 25, 2023 9:08 am | Comments (1)
Eleanor Polak Photos
Westville neighbourhood lines up to buy homemade pies.
The air over Beecher Park, located at Mitchell Library at 37 Harrison St., rang with chatter, music, and a heavenly mixture of sugar, spice, and everything nice.
Westville Village Renaissance Alliance hosted on Monday evening the latest installment in Hi-Fi Pie Fest, its weekly summer pie baking competition, a community-centric event complete with food and live music.
It’s “really just getting people together,” said WVRA Executive Director Lizzy Donius, who sported a Hi-Fi Pie Fest t‑shirt bearing the words “Come for the music, stay for the pie!” The slogan, said Donius, is interchangeable. Some people come for the pie and stay for the music.
Continue reading ‘Hi-Fi Pie Fest Makes Sure Everyone Gets A Piece’
by | Jul 25, 2023 9:03 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Maya Elise and the Good Dream.
On Monday night three acts — Low Ceilings, Kendra McKinley, and Maya Elise and the Good Dream — brought the warmth of connection and culture to an appreciative crowd at Never Ending Books, turning the communal spot at 810 State St. into a sanctuary.
by | Jul 24, 2023 7:35 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photos
Thabisa Rich at arts collective kickoff.
Musician and arts organizer Thabisa Rich stood before a packed room inside the NXTHVN arts complex at 169 Henry St. on Friday evening, ready to announce a new initiative. “I don’t know if I should be nervous or excited,” she said, “because this is a dream come true.”
Continue reading ‘Rich Arts Collective Finds Wealth In Being Humble’
by | Jul 24, 2023 7:33 am | Comments (1)
Eleanor Polak Photos
Mustafe Mussa performs for audience at Gather.
Outside of Gather, the cafe at 952 State St., rain poured down in torrents. Wet-haired and clutching their umbrellas like lifesavers, people filed in, ready to dry off and cheer up. Fortunately, this Friday evening Gather could offer both. Nine performers — two musicians and seven comics — were busy setting up for a show. As Jake Strom sold tickets to the incoming audience members, his fellow comedian Mustafe Mussa stood ready and waiting with a roll of paper towels.
by | Jul 21, 2023 12:58 pm | Comments (0)
Sarah Bass Photo
Victoria Elling performs at the LowDown.
Paul Bass Photo
Welcome to Tulsa -- with Dylan lyrics at the airport terminal.
Tulsa — As a touring folk-country singer-songwriter’s band kicked into gear, a regular pointed to a stuffed possum wrapped in Christmas lights suspended over the bar. The possim, he said, had a backstory.
As he spoke, I knew we’d come to the right place to find people to help start the Independent’s new multi-city arts reviewing initiative.
Continue reading'Oklahoma! Independent Review Crew Takes Off'
by | Jul 21, 2023 9:52 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photo
Skedgell: Publish or perish.
Days of smoke. Heat waves. The return of El Niño. These large-scale climate events shape our lives. But so do the people giving over their property to rewilding, the people clearing parks of invasive species, the people who take time out from their day to unplug and put their hands in a garden’s soil.
Journalist, documentary filmmaker, and musician Lindsay Skedgell wants to hear about it all. She’s starting a new journal called Heel and Hive that “explores the environmental and climate landscape of our times, our relationships to nature and ecology” — focusing on the region we live in.
by | Jul 21, 2023 9:51 am | Comments (0)
Eleanor Polak Photos
Ruth McInton Cogswell's silhouettes of New Haven characters.
“Profiles: Ruth McInton Cogswell and Dorothy Cogswell” — the latest exhibition at the New Haven Museum at 144 Whitney Ave. — highlights the lives and work of two women who played an important role in the Elm City’s early 20th-century local art scene. The mother-daughter duo of artists used watercolors, pencil drawings, and silhouettes to pay tribute to the people of New Haven and commemorate their history. Through the Cogswells’ work, the show provides a tour of the city’s past, where viewers can recognize familiar figures and learn new aspects of their history.
by | Jul 21, 2023 9:39 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
The Storytellers.
“Storytellers assemble,” said Zach Andersen into his microphone, as he beckoned the three singer-songwriters who would be joining him on The Cellar at Treadwell stage Thursday night. It was the 13th installment of Storytellers in The Cellar, the bimonthly event that finds Andersen and guests rotating through their songs and the stories behind them. This evening also happened to be the second anniversary of the series, which began in July 2021 and has not seen any repeat performers yet, save for Andersen, who curates, hosts, and performs at each one.
Continue reading ‘Storytellers in The Cellar Offer Songs and Slices of Life on Second Anniversary’
by | Jul 20, 2023 11:00 am | Comments (1)
The New Haven Symphony Orchestra has appointed conductor Perry So to be its next music director, beginning with the 2024 – 25 season.
by | Jul 20, 2023 9:26 am | Comments (0)
Natalie Somekh via Instagram
John McCrea.
The Westville Music Bowl really lives up to its name. Sitting in the center feels like being dropped to the bottom of an enormous serving piece, with nowhere to look but up at the great blue walls of seats around you, the evening sky above, or the stage straight ahead. On the menu for Wednesday evening: Cake, a now-venerable alternative rock band hailing from Sacramento, California.
by | Jul 19, 2023 1:35 pm | Comments (0)
Yale Art Gallery
The Nautilus Cup by Jan Bellekin.
Imagine yourself peering through the large end of a telescope, looking at the world in miniature. You feel blown out of proportion, almost godlike, a giant out of Gulliver’s Travels staring down at people the size of insects going about their days. But as you look, you begin to notice details in the minute, humanity condensed to an anthill ready for your inspection. You see the big picture, made small.
by | Jul 18, 2023 9:51 am | Comments (8)
ASHER JOSEPH PHOTOS
Michael Waters explains different styles of columns at Monday night's Preservation Trust event at Make Haven.
Fifty homeowners and architecture enthusiasts sat stumped by the house’s sloping turret, asymmetrical facade, and spindly woodwork.
Then New Haven newcomer Madeline Altman put the pieces together: “It’s a Queen Anne.”
by | Jul 18, 2023 9:24 am | Comments (0)
Esthea Kim
Textures and Elements.
The ribbon that winds its way through Esthea Kim’s four paintings — each titled as a series, Textures and Elements — presents itself as a mystery. The light cloudscapes Kim has painted on each of the canvases are ambiguous enough, as they suggest both peace and a sense that they conceal something. The ribbon connects them all, invites the viewer to understand the four paintings as a whole. But to what end? Is there a meaning to be sussed out? Or is the connection itself the meaning?
by | Jul 17, 2023 3:07 pm | Comments (1)
Sallow Friend.
Four bands made an emotional evening of music at Never Ending Books Sunday night, as Nose Bleed, Sallow Friend, Mildly Allergic, and Kitchen gave a rapt audience songs that were by turns energetic and meditative, angular and wistful.
Continue reading ‘4 Bands Bring Angular Introspection To Summer Heat’
by | Jul 14, 2023 8:15 am | Comments (0)
Frank Bruckmann
I-95 N. Benson Rd.
Frank Bruckman’s paintings of the highways around the state have been a thread running through Kehler Liddell Gallery’s programming for years. The technical ability and attention to detail brought to such a mundane subject has layers of meaning attached to it. On one level, no one said that paintings can’t be funny, and there’s humor in every brushstroke. But there’s also the message built into the skill and hours brought to the canvas: driving in traffic on the interstate may seem like something to get through, something to forget. But we all spend hours of our lives doing it. Maybe it’s important for that reason alone — as important, in its own way, as a naval battle, or a visitation from a saint.
by | Jul 13, 2023 9:11 am | Comments (0)
Zepeda and Omonte.
Shaki Presents, a.k.a. Rick Omonte, brought an evening of cumbias to Bregamos on Wednesday night, centering on California DJ Turbo Sonidero, who combines the old Latin American dance with elements of hip hop to create his own style. All the elements came together to create a mesmerizing mix of rhythms and voices, just right to propel dancers’ feet across the floor.
Continue reading ‘Cumbias Bring The People Together At Bregamos’
by | Jul 12, 2023 9:45 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Michel doing his best Bogey in a scene from "Breathless"
A swipe of a lip, a cigarette lighting another cigarette, a woman running in a striped dress: these iconic moments and more defined Breathless, the first feature of Best Video Film and Cultural Center’s July film series that spotlights essential French New Wave cinema.
Continue reading ‘Best Video Film Series Leaves Audience "Breathless"’
by | Jul 11, 2023 11:31 am | Comments (4)
Courtesy Yale Peabody Museum
This torosarus skull, now part of the collection of the Yale Peabody Museum, was found at Lightning Creek in Wyoming in 1891 by American paleontologist John Bell Hatcher. A few years later, Hatcher would go fossil hunting in Patagonia and write a book about that expedition that would be published in 1903. Even with his success at the time, he may not have predicted that his star in paleontology would rise to the point where, in 2018, author and fellow paleontologist Lowell Dingus would publish a book about him called King of the Dinosaur Hunters.
Continue reading ‘Groundbreaking Information System Sheds Light On The Past’
by | Jul 10, 2023 10:48 am | Comments (3)
Brian Slattery Photos
Tijoux at Sunday's ULA event.
Songs and art of hope and strength came to Bregamos Community Theater as international hip hop artist Ana Tijoux headlined an afternoon and evening of food, history, and artistic vision — for an event put together by Unidad Latina en Acción to celebrate 21 years of operation as an immigrant rights activist group.
by | Jul 10, 2023 8:37 am | Comments (2)
Eleanor Polak Photos
Bajzelle plays at Gather.
A crowd assembled in the basement of Gather, at 952 State St., lit only by a few strings of red bulbs and the lurid screens of old-fashioned television sets. The scene felt intimate and grungy, stripped to the bare essentials of a show: lights, sound, and people. David Taylor Coffey, soft spot, and Bajzelle prepared to fill Gather with a buffet of genres and sounds. The audience swelled inside the confined space, with enough enthusiasm and energy to fill a stadium. What was an empty basement transformed into a party as soon as someone plugged in the mic.
by | Jul 7, 2023 9:20 am | Comments (0)
Eleanor Polak Photos
Conor Perreault of Human Flourishing at Never Ending Books.
In the sweltering heat and dim lighting of the side room of Never Ending Books, at 810 State St., three acts redefined their music through their own distinct experimental sounds. Lit by the strings of fairy lights in the window, and cooled by electric fans, Human Flourishing, reCAPTCHA, and Excavator turned music on its head, gutted it for parts, and then took it for a joyride.
Continue reading ‘Experimental Musicians Choose Their Own Adventure’