Fair Haven bound: Actor, director and studio head Michael Jai White (above), brewer Rob Leonard (below).
New England Brewing Company, outgrowing its space in Woodbridge, is negotiating to move to Fair Haven and set up production and taproom and event facilities with a scenic view of the Quinnipiac River.
Down River Street, the up-and-coming media production company Jaigantic Studios is also in negotiations to buy city land to set up headquarters.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jun 7, 2021 9:18 am
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Dr. Tiffany Renee Jackson
A twice postponed Arts on Call performance got its chance to shine this past Saturday as renowned classical and jazz vocalist Dr. Tiffany Renée Jackson entertained and educated a grateful audience with a special Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn-centered program in a cozy shaded corner of Wooster Square Park.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jun 4, 2021 10:38 am
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DJ B the T Jr.
Cafe Nine brought back another beloved series to its in-person scheduling last night as Shake ‘N’ Vibrate — the DJ-led, all-vinyl dance party — helped New Haven ease back on to the dance floor.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 4, 2021 8:34 am
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“I am welcoming you from my home on Quinnipiac land,” said Elizabeth Nearing on behalf of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas.
The greeting, which has become standard in meetings all over town, took on added meaning with the festival’s presentation, “Indigenous Writers of Connecticut,” part of the National Endowment of the Arts’s Big Read, and held in partnership with the New Haven Museum.
In the virtual event, five Indigenous writers presented a convincing case for us to acknowledge not merely that we live on Indigenous land, but with Indigenous people, whose cultures thrive among us today — and have much to teach about the history and possible future of the state — if we are willing to pay attention.
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Nick Perkins |
Jun 3, 2021 3:48 pm
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The Diary Disk at Ives Library.
”I remember reading the same book over and over to my kids. Now they are doing the same thing to their kids. Ah, the joy of reading.”
This and other quotations covered a new Covid-era “Diary Disk” at main Ives Branhch public library, part of an art installation over the past year where people are given a prompt and they share their experiences by writing them on the disk.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 3, 2021 8:40 am
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Kaitlyn Higgins
The Art of Breathing.
It’s a series of faces moving through an intense range of emotions. Maybe it’s the same person over a period of time. Maybe it’s multiple people in the same moment. Maybe the difference isn’t all that important. Kaitlyn Higgins’s The Art of Breathing is both a study in how to render emotions in paint and an expression of all those moments at once. It’s part of a series of paintings by Higgins that explore parallel senses of outward claustrophobia and inner turmoil. There are no easy answers, but in the accurate rendering of the situation, there’s communication and compassion.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 2, 2021 8:31 am
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“Build Yourself an Ark,” written by David Sasso, eases into its waltz time with a easy swing, a flourish from a mandolin. But Sasso’s voice carries instructions: “Gather some gopherwood and build yourself an ark.” It’s an immediate reference to the story of Noah’s flood, but it’s brought into the present via a form of traditional music that Sasso gives a modern twist. “Take along your loved ones; they may not all want to go / Don’t worry about your husband; he already knows,” he sings.
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Brian Slattery |
May 31, 2021 9:10 am
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Beckford.
“Learn,” from New Haven-based musician Emil Beckford’s new album, Songs About Isolation, starts with a warm, arpeggiating synth line that instantly catches the ear. The beat that drops in behind it is as lush as it is danceable. It all gets stripped back again for Beckford to coo into the microphone: “Conversation, misinformation, I just want to enjoy some relaxation / But you keep begging and in my head don’t wanna let you down / I’m antisocial, you never no show, say staying locked in the house isn’t good for ya / Get off your chair and forget your cares we’re getting out of town / I’m stuck to you like static cling, and while I’d never shake you / I want to tell you what I think, but if I did you wouldn’t hear me now.”
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Brian Slattery |
May 28, 2021 8:43 am
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Spit-Take.
A dirty guitar chord echoed across the Best Video parking lot Thursday evening, summoning the crowd of a couple dozen to attention. The guitar came from Tim and Matt Rowe, opening for Spit-Take, continuing the cultural center’s practice of providing a stage for New Haven’s live music scene as the area emerges from the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic,
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Karen Ponzio |
May 27, 2021 12:26 pm
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Siul Hughes with DJ Collin In Kind
District Arts and Education turned their bi-weekly DAE Presents livestream into a live, on-site event Wednesday night as they invited a small number of guests in and added a food truck and outdoor musical entertainment — as a prelude to their indoor performance, that would be broadcast on Facebook Live.
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Brian Slattery |
May 27, 2021 9:07 am
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Brown in the studio in October.
New Haven-based artist Amira Brown‘s Bailout Gallery has returned — this time to try to raise funds to rebuild Palestine. As its tagline on Instagram reads, “we sell art and raise money for causes. That’s it. We support Palestine and reject anti-Semitism.”
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Brian Slattery
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May 26, 2021 8:42 am
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The cast of A Light in the Dark — the showcase from Lights Up Drama Club at Wilbur Cross High School, which will be broadcast June 4 and 5 — assembled in a rehearsal room at the school that would also serve as the beginning scene for the number “I Feel So Much Spring,” from the William Finn-penned musical A New Brain.
As the music began, and music director Matt Durland conducted, all the voices behind the masks sprang to life.
The students glided across the floor as co-director Salvatore DeLucia weaved among them with a camera. It would all be edited together into a final product, with 17 other songs, in time for broadcast.
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Brian Slattery |
May 25, 2021 9:27 am
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There was already one message written on the large black circle with the prompt “I hope,” written in several languages. That first inscribed message read “that our memories will not all be of darkness.”
The disk was located at the entrance to the Wooster Square Farmer’s Market this past Saturday morning. A woman with a child in a stroller approached the disk with a white marker. She knelt and added her own message. Within the hour, many more would follow.
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Karen Ponzio |
May 24, 2021 8:52 am
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Alexis Robbins, Cliff Schloss, and Dylan Olimpi McDonnell.
When Suzannah Holsenbeck and Robb Blocker were organizing a party for their children this year, they knew exactly where to turn to provide the entertainment: The International Festival of Arts and Ideas Arts On Call program.
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Brian Slattery |
May 21, 2021 9:19 am
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The art on the walls of Claire’s Corner Copia, on the corner of Chapel and College, thrums with energy, vibrant colors, and shimmering textures. But there’s a heaviness there, too.
Neither simply joyful nor simply sorrowful, the work of New Haven-based artist Shaunda Holloway uses old motifs in new ways; it reaches back in order to move forward, with strength and resolve, mindful of the sorrows of the past but hopeful for the future.
Holloway’s pieces are the latest to be exhibited as part of an artist-in-residence program at Claire’s.
As friends and fellow artists dropped by on Thursday to have a snack or dinner and offer congratulations, Holloway had a chance to revisit how her artistic practice has developed in the past decade, and in what new directions it may point.
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Brian Slattery |
May 20, 2021 8:36 am
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There was a problem. On Zoom, Chef Kevin McGuire of Kawit! was expertly moving his audience from how he makes chicken adobo to how he makes tofu. The problem was that I, at home, in an attempt to keep up, had already used the tofu I was supposed to have only now started cooking.
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Lisa Reisman |
May 19, 2021 11:34 am
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Xiaona Lu picks up lunch from Healthy Way’s Melissa Chang.
It was a few minutes past 11 on a recent Wednesday on Cedar Street, and Christopher Chialastri was digging into an aluminum container of spicy fried shrimp.
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Brian Slattery |
May 19, 2021 9:15 am
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Hank Paper
L.A. Life.
The two shows at Kehler Liddell Gallery — “Parallel Worlds,” by Robert Bienstock, and “L.A. Color, East Coast Weather,” by Hank Paper, up now through June 20 — hang well in the gallery together, unified by a love of strong lines and bold color. But Bienstock’s pieces are paintings and drawings, while Paper’s are photographs. Bienstock’s pieces chronicle the past year and a half. Paper’s are the documents of a lifetime of work.
