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Brian Slattery |
Sep 17, 2021 9:01 am
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Bob Gorry starts “Javelina.” from GoBruCcio — the latest release from the New Haven Improvisers Collective — with a statement from his guitar that’s somewhere between the blues, punk, and free jazz. Pete Riccio on drums finds his way in fast, suggesting a hip-swinging groove that Pete Brunelli on bass catches at once. Within a minute the trio are off and building momentum, making their improvisation into a lurching dance that, a minute later, they’re already taking apart, moving into another set of rhythmic and harmonic ideas.
Kica Matos and Moviemiento Cultural lead a bomba drum circle …
… as neighbors “reclaim” the parking lot in front of Grand Cafe.
Cafe owner Jose Rivera watches protest with patron Julian Welch.
With wooden drums, lawn chairs, free pizza and board games, 30 Fair Haven neighbors “reclaimed” the parking lot outside of Grand Cafe — in a grassroots effort to calm a violent hotspot.
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Karen Ponzio |
Sep 15, 2021 8:20 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos
Shamarr Allen
Can you start celebrating the weekend on a Tuesday? You could if you were at Cafe Nine last night. Two acts got the crowd energized enough to make it seem as if it were much later in the week than it actually was, with music that made you move.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 15, 2021 8:07 am
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Toby Winarto Photo
Kang.
Without warning, pianist Min Young Kang laid into the keys to declare the opening figure to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor. The players in the Ulysses Quartet — sharing the stage with her at First Presbyterian Church on Whitney Avenue Tuesday evening — followed with choral declarations of their own. Ideas flowed one into the other from there, passed from instrument to instrument until it all came together in a sweeping, heroic theme that fell into an aching fugue.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 13, 2021 8:08 am
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Sage.
Rachael Sage flashed the audience at Never Ending Books a wide smile. “What a revelation to be here performing for human beings in person,” she said. Like several other recent touring musicians visiting New Haven recently, Sage remarked that this was among the first times she had performed live for people, after months and months of livestreaming.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 10, 2021 7:53 am
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Marjorie Wolfe
Pavilion.
It’s a seaside pavilion, framing an island off the Connecticut coast. But the way the image is cast, it doesn’t allow for simple idyll. It’s peaceful, sure, but also lonely. There’s the tranquility of isolation, but also a sense of insecurity. It is, said photographer Marjorie Gillette Wolfe, “evocative of what I went through” during the depths of the Covid-19 shutdown, as she found herself alone and outside in “protective spaces, but in another sense, not protective at all.”
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 9, 2021 6:42 am
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Posen.
Ariel Posen — acclaimed guitar hero on tour from Canada — had something to say near the beginning of his set at Cafe Nine Wednesday.
“This is equally amazing and equally strange,” he said. “Something you do pretty regularly for kind of forever stops for what feels like forever … then we’re expected to just jump back into it like nothing happened.”
He smiled.
“It wouldn’t feel like it used to if it wasn’t for you guys, so give yourselves a round of applause.”
The packed audience of entirely masked people clapped their hands. At a show at which proof of vaccination was required at the door and wearing a mask was the rule, Posen and the Connecticut-based Joey Wit and the Definition served up two sets of guitar music straight from the heart.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 8, 2021 7:42 am
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Emily Pruitt
Anti-Romantic.
The young woman at the center of Emily Pruitt’s Anti-Romantic looks as if she has a story to tell, but she’s not going to tell us what it is. The photograph itself conveys conflicting emotions — humor and defiance, playfulness and a little bit of dread. That, as it turns out, is the point.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 7, 2021 7:19 am
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“September,” the lead track from Youth XL’s new EPSocial Creature, starts with a whine of feedback and a scream of “let’s go!” before the song struts into its open figures, all cylinders firing. The energy of the song, however, can’t hide the cleverness of the songwriting. As the song — “about breaking up and floundering around in the nostalgia of past relationships,” the liner notes reveal — moves through its middle section, positively Beatlesque backing vocals rise and fall and the chord structures get knotty, mirroring the emotional maze the singer is lost in.
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Karen Ponzio |
Sep 3, 2021 7:55 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos
Durden gets ready to record Jefferson and Thabisa’s conversation.
District on James Street was the scene Thursday night of the official launch of Space Studios, the brainchild of videographer and entrepreneur Donnell Durden. Durden is hoping to provide the physical space and equipment — as well as the spark and support — for creatives to make their mark in the world of music, photography, videos, and more.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 2, 2021 8:55 am
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Host Dan Kalwhite smiled at the mic on the Cafe Nine stage Wednesday evening as he welcomed the crowd of a few dozen who had come down to the club on the corner of State and Crown despite the rain picking up outside.
“You braved the storm — thank you so much,” he said. “Who came down the river by boat?”
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 1, 2021 7:12 am
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Dawn Tallman.
The International Festival of Arts and Ideas is taking over the New Haven Green again — for Labor Day weekend. The event, called “Vaccination & Vibes,” will feature two evenings of music, dance, and poetry that draw from talent in New Haven and elsewhere. It marks the A&I organization’s continued work in creating deeper connections with the New Haven community than it has in the past. Under the direction of Executive Director Shelley Quiala — who last August took the reins from co-directors Liz Fisher and Tom Griggs — the Labor Day weekend events are also A&I’s very public foray into throwing events outside of June, and even outside of the May-June summer programming it held this year.
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Lisa Reisman |
Aug 31, 2021 3:41 pm
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Chef Jeyson Santoni; his jam-packed 259 Orange burger (top).
You might call the 259 Orange a cheeseburger, a bacon burger, or an egg burger. Or maybe a short rib burger or an avocado burger.
The only thing certain is that the 259 Orange Burger nearly didn’t happen. Nor, for that matter, did Dangle’s Bar and Grill, which serves the 259 Burger, and which opened three weeks ago on 259 Orange just up the street from the New Haven County Courthouse.
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Sam Carlson |
Aug 31, 2021 7:20 am
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Sam Carlson Photos
Noah Silvestry struck the opening chords of the song “Ancient” in front of a rapt crowd at Cafe Nine, signaling both the start of the show and the first-ever live appearance by his band, Luke Ellingson. Silvestry, a Pennsylvania native, moved to New Haven for school and has made his way into the local music scene recording at his home studio in Wooster Square under the Luke Ellingson moniker. His most recent release, Clementine, is out now on the Connecticut-based label Funnybone.
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Ainissa Ramirez |
Aug 30, 2021 3:09 pm
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Kwadwo Adae at work on the Bouchet mural.
As you drive through New Haven on Henry Street, you will notice something at the intersection of Dixwell: Across from a derelict lot is a magnificent mural in progress on a wall that was once pink.
The image consists of cascaded portraits of a Black man rendered in gradients of color. The man is Edward Bouchet, a New Havener who was the first Black man to get a doctorate in the United States. Bouchet got his Ph.D. in physics from Yale in 1876. Yet, most children in the Elm City don’t know about him.
Muralist Kwadwo Adae hopes to change that one brushstroke at a time.
