by | Feb 16, 2022 8:50 am | Comments (17)
Thomas Breen Photo
English Station: From eyesore to cultural draw?
The former English Station power plant, located in the middle of the Mill River on Ball Island in New Haven Harbor, occupies eight acres of abandoned land. Its unique location would make a perfect Museum of Contemporary Art.
by | Feb 16, 2022 8:49 am | Comments (0)
by | Feb 16, 2022 8:36 am | Comments (5)
Sup New Haven's Rinaldi at Salsa Fresca.
A cocktail from Sherkaan that involves masala spices. A stacked burger from Prime 16. A grain bowl at B Natural, brimming with vegetables. A flight of beers at Bar … All of these and more have appeared recently on Sup New Haven, an Instagram hub and now standalone website that, in its own words, is “a lifestyle blog that focuses on New Haven restaurants, retail, events, local history, and everything else 2 – 0‑3.”
Continue reading ‘Influencer Puts Elm City Under The Influence’
by | Feb 15, 2022 8:33 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Sack.
A crowd of colorful figures are running amok on a table in City Gallery. Their surfaces swirl with patterns, their forms just reminiscent enough of people or animals to endow them with a great deal of personality. They are, above all, fun — and part of “Phantasmagoria: Art to Amuse and Amaze,” a collection of mostly wax-encaustic paintings and sculptures by Ruth Sack running now at the gallery on Upper State Street through March 6.
by | Feb 14, 2022 8:44 am | Comments (0)
Adam Tolbert Photo
Jeena Yi.
Yale Repertory Theatre, which has been shut down since March 2020, is back.
by | Feb 14, 2022 8:36 am | Comments (0)
Casey Wheeler Photography
Sven Gamsky onstage at CSMH.
Singer-songwriter Still Woozy (a.k.a. Sven Eric Gamsky) reminded the audience at College Street Music Hall Friday night just how nice it is to experience live music together at a concert. The collective dancing and singing of the packed crowd offered a sense of pre-pandemic nostalgia, if only for a moment.
Continue reading ‘Still Woozy's Laid-Back Sound Propels A Party @CSMH’
by | Feb 14, 2022 8:35 am | Comments (5)
by | Feb 11, 2022 2:01 pm | Comments (2)
Paul Bass Photo
Whistleblower author Greg Dillon at WNHH FM.
Greg Dillon proudly wore a cop-solidarity “thin blue line” face mask when Covid-19 hit.
At the same time he was working a book about how he watched the cop-solidarity “thin blue line” lead to corruption and cover-ups in law enforcement.
Continue reading ‘FBI Whistleblower Straddles Thin Blue Li(n)e’
by | Feb 11, 2022 10:12 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photo
He Was A God
“Are you sick and tired?” screamed Ben Curns of the band He Was A God, with his arms raised to the audience. They answered in a chorus that turned up the volume of an already thunderous and thoroughly entertaining atmosphere at Cafe Nine last night where three bands, each one distinctly different from the other but similar in approach, delivered a Thursday full of hot and heavy sounds.
by | Feb 11, 2022 10:10 am | Comments (0)
Ted Littleford
REINALDO GOYENECHEA/LA VOZ HISPANA
by | Feb 10, 2022 4:16 pm | Comments (6)
Marc Massaro
New version of proposed monument.
Cristoforo Colombo was always aloft on his pedestal, looking out toward the harbor and sea, to catch the next ship and to sail off to his next conquest.
His replacement – the Italian, or perhaps universal, immigrant family – will have come from the sea, from far away, and to stay, to put down roots and to begin their American success stories.
That’s why they’re not going to be aloft on a plinth but at eye level, facing inward toward the park and the city they are helping to build. The viewer will be able look them in the eye.
by | Feb 10, 2022 8:47 am | Comments (1)
Courtesy Octavia E. Butler Estate
Butler.
A new art exhibit, and a panel on migration facilitated by Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS). The screening and discussion of the “first-ever ethnographic acid Western.” A Sun Ra tribute concert.
All these events and more, happening between now and the middle of May, are organized around a single novel by a science-fiction visionary that is the focus of this year’s One City: One Read, a campaign organized by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, in partnership with Yale’s Schwarzman Center, the New Haven Free Public Library, Artspace, and Best Video.
by | Feb 9, 2022 3:23 pm | Comments (5)
Paul Bass Photo
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Black Corner Store owners Kenia and Michael Massey with temporarily sidelined "Afrotina" fusion chef Ohioma Odihirin.
The word on Edgewood Avenue Wednesday was: The health department was here. Now the grill is cold.
by | Feb 9, 2022 8:36 am | Comments (9)
Brian Slattery Photo
McDonagh.
There’s a statue by sculptor Glenna Goodacre in the entryway to Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum on Whitney Avenue in Hamden that captures the desperation of people fleeing the famine of 1845 to 1852, yet only hints at the horrors they were fleeing, or the struggles they faced ahead. “She has a bag she’s carrying that has all her worldly possessions,” explained Joseph McDonagh, a representative of the nascent nonprofit Save Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, who was a docent at the museum before it closed in March 2020 due to the pandemic. “She used to be upstairs, but then they brought her down” to welcome visitors in — and give them a chance to brace themselves for what was coming.
Continue reading ‘Organization Rallies To Save Irish Famine Museum’
by | Feb 8, 2022 1:54 pm | Comments (3)
Abby Cadet with the new book she wrote with her mom.
A mom who started seeking to fill her daughter’s home library with more books featuring Black characters has begun publishing some of those books herself — with her daughter.
by | Feb 8, 2022 9:28 am | Comments (0)
Yvonne Shortt’s Material Investigations at the Ely is simple yet evocative — a system of ropes that Shortt is slowly transforming over time into something else. The patterns she’s creating remind one of braids, or farther toward the floor, maybe cascading dreadlocks. The knotting she’s doing is a simple macrame, but also the pattern for the beads on a shekere. All these evocations are in play; she “investigates hair and cultural mindsets using rope, repetition, various other materials, and historical context,” she writes. But the rope serves another purpose, to bind together all the artwork around it, in form, process, and function.
by | Feb 8, 2022 9:26 am | Comments (5)
by | Feb 7, 2022 9:02 am | Comments (0)
“I Love You,” the opening track from Rudeyna’s new EP Queen Yapadoo, starts with beguiling simplicity; it’s a slow jam in the R&B vein, with a lazy groove, a lush organ, a floating guitar. Rudeyna’s voice, quavering but sure, enters and declares the simplest, most effective lyric in pop music: “I love you,” she sings. She sings it again, playing with it more. Shimmering keyboards, cooing background vocals, begin to destabilize things. Then a distorted electric guitar crashes in, and everything changes at once. The song reinvents itself from there, over and over.
by | Feb 4, 2022 10:14 am | Comments (4)
Owner Bernadino Lanche with family members who work at the restaurant: Joseph Lanche, Hugo Rivas-Lanche, and Teodora Lanche.
Coral Ortiz Photo
Chile relleno at Vivaz.
When Bernadino Lanche was a young boy in Hidalgo, Mexico, he began dreaming of opening his own restaurant. Years later, he has fulfilled his dream — and brought authentic Mexican food back to a popular spot on Park Street.
His new restaurant, Vivaz Cantina, has opened at 161 Park St., location of former longtime popular hangout Viva Zapata.
by | Feb 4, 2022 9:13 am | Comments (2)
New Haven-based musician Tim Palmieri’s upcoming show with Lotus — at College Street Music Hall on Feb. 19 — is another step in his long career as a nationally touring guitarist, but also a chance to return an Elm City stage. “I’m 42 years old and I’ve been gigging since I was 13,” Palmieri said. “Band after band, gig after gig — and now I’ve been able to join Lotus.”
Continue reading ‘Tim Palmieri Comes Home To College Street’
by | Feb 3, 2022 8:27 am | Comments (0)
Three long, heavy bags of salt snake across the wall in one of the galleries in the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, and their goal is empathy. To artist Ying Ye, who created them, they evoke fortune cookies. But their weight — 50 pounds each — is meaningful, too; as Ye writes, that “represents the average physical weight … restaurant workers need to lift up in the workplace.” The salt “implies their sweat and pains have transformed into delicious tasty food.”
Continue reading ‘Art Exhibit Makes Compassion A New Year's Resolution’
by | Feb 2, 2022 9:10 am | Comments (1)
Cafe Nine on State and Crown was the spot Tuesday night for three young New Haven-based acts who brought genuine affection to the stage — for one another, for the audience, and for the Elm City itself.
by | Feb 1, 2022 8:43 am | Comments (2)
Fernanda Franco Photo
Fernanda Franco
Fernanda Franco brings every aspect of her artistic self to her new job as outreach director of New Haven Reads. “I walk into the office at Bristol Street, and I feel like Belle from Beauty and the Beast because you walk in and the walls are lined with books and it’s beautiful,” she said. She sang that last line, not unlike the character did in the movie.
Continue reading ‘Fernanda Franco Books New Gig At New Haven Reads’
by | Jan 31, 2022 5:00 pm | Comments (0)
Kimberly Wipfler Photo
CeCe Brown Sugah performs Sunday night at Jazzy's.
A new Harlem Renaissance-inspired burlesque performance turned up the heat at Jazzy’s Cabaret supper club Sunday night, as the debut of The Sugar Strut: World Famous Burlesque Revue left audience members thirsty for more.
by | Jan 31, 2022 9:11 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photos
On Sunday, there I was again at Brooksvale Park, ready to take another five-mile hike, as I do most times I come here. But today I was strapping on snowshoes and making sure the bottoms of my snow pants were tight enough. We may have been spared the worst of the winter storm that dropped 30 inches of snow in eastern Massachusetts, but 9 to 12 inches was still enough to transform the landscape, making the familiar park new again, and offering the chance to see again how the town changes — day to day, year to year, decade to decade.
Continue reading ‘Snow Hike At Brooksvale Marks The Changes’