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Brian Slattery |
Apr 30, 2021 8:46 am
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Teaching artist Justin Pesce looked over his cast of A Comedy of Errors through the window of his Zoom meeting. Before him, on the screen, 13 students from Mauro Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School were ready, in their Renaissance clothing, to perform.
“Show me what you got today,” Pesce said, both goad and encouragement. “Yesterday I challenged you and you stepped up to the challenge. I know each and every one of you can do it. Everybody get into your space. Have a great run through. We’re going to have fun.”
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 29, 2021 9:37 am
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In the main room of Horizon Recording Studio on a recent afternoon, Phil E. Brown laid down a hard, swinging groove on the drums. Elijah White, Morris Trent, and Teddy Boyd — a.k.a. Dr. Bottom — filled out a smoky sound on keys, guitar, and bass. Fred Nobles, Jr., on saxophone, danced over the top.
But the star of the hour, approaching the microphone in an isolated booth, was Yvonne Monk Adams, of the Monk Family Singers.
In the course of her life she has sung gospel, funk, blues, and jazz, but that day she was there to turn the jazz standard “Summertime” into a cry from the heart about being Black in America that felt as old as the song itself and right up to the present moment.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 28, 2021 9:29 am
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Armando Muñoz, a.k.a. Decoy, danced at the top of East Rock, popping and locking, the city of New Haven unfurling behind and beneath him all the way to the Long Island Sound. In front of him, armed with a tiny handheld camera, cinematographer Mike Pollack moved with Muñoz, following the arcs of Muños’s steps, the bending of arms, the fluttering of fingers.
A few families were at the top of East Rock at the same time, and one of them drifted close to watch.
“You’re so good!” one of the family members exclaimed.
The pandemic has delayed the in-person public opening of one of New Haven’s new landmarks, the $150 million Schwarzman Center encompassing the university’s Woolsey Hall, Commons, and other spaces at Grove and College streets.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 27, 2021 8:45 am
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An effervescent ode to coffee. Meditations on the divine and the earthly. And a call to move into the future with greater understanding and empathy. All of it was carried on the combined voices of the New Haven Oratorio Choir, in its first virtual concert, and first since the pandemic began. It also featured all works from living composers, who, making a virtue of the virtual, were all on hand from as far away as Australia to discuss their work.
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Maya McFadden |
Apr 26, 2021 8:52 am
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Maya McFadden Photos
Rae’gean Oakley with park’s new barrels.
Technically, the annual festival was canceled. Crowds still turned out for the second straight weekend to enjoy Wooster Square Park’s cherry blossoms — with the addition of a year-round tribute to their brilliance.
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Karen Ponzio |
Apr 26, 2021 8:40 am
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chad browne-springer photo
$timmy single cover art.
”$timmy,” the new song by the chad browne-springer project Dreamvoid, isn’t just a candidate for hottest single of the summer; it is also a project unto itself, birthed from a New Haven-based afterschool program where students and teaching artists became creative collaborators.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 26, 2021 8:39 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
Burnet.
Guitar in hand, Alex Burnet beamed at the crowd of about 70 people assembled — in a distanced yet communal way — in the parking lot of Best Video, on Whitney Avenue in Hamden. “Hope you’re enjoying this beautiful Saturday,” Burnet said. “If you’re vaxxed, let me be the first to say congratulations. It’s a real privilege to be able to share music with people in this time.”
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Lisa Reisman |
Apr 22, 2021 11:03 am
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Lisa Reisman Photo
Brazi’s head chef Jesse Melgar in the kitchen.
Over the last 28 years, Brazi’s Italian Restaurant, just down the walkway from Long Wharf Theatre, has played the role of host to such luminaries as Arthur Miller, Robert Redford, and Al Pacino, as well as Brian Dennehy and Amy Irving.
So it’s perhaps no wonder that, on a recent morning, head chef Jesse Melgar was at the industrial stove, adding a touch of Chardonnay to a skillet popping with chicken cutlets, red bliss potatoes, and cherry peppers, before theatrically tossing its contents as a flame gushed upward.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 22, 2021 10:09 am
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Liz Lauren Photo
Darci Nalepa and Priya Mohanty in Queen’s world premiere at Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago.
For director Aneesha Kudtarkar, two scenes from Madhuri Shekar’s play Queen stood out as scenes she was most excited to stage sometime in the future. In one, Sanam, a scientist, and Arvind, a Wall Street broker, go out on a first date in Northern California. They’re there because they’re both in their 30s, and in India, their grandfathers apparently played golf together, and while this isn’t exactly a possibility of an arranged marriage, it feels a little like it. In another, Sanam and her longtime scientific colleague Ariel are arguing over the ethical quandaries their years-long project has stumbled into, and it all comes out — the cultural and economic differences between them, the strains of being women in a male-dominated field. They’re the true heart of Queen, and in that scene, the heart perhaps beats the loudest.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 21, 2021 9:06 am
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It’s a soft, gentle sculpture, of a woman sitting next to a body of water. But the context in which that woman sits — an Afro pick — is nearly as old as civilization itself.
For artist Yvonne Shortt, it’s a connection to her personal history and to her African heritage. It’s also a way for her to connect with the struggles of other ethnicities — and reach out to everyone.
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Thomas Breen |
Apr 20, 2021 6:01 pm
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Thomas Breen photo
Mayor Elicker announces$6.3M proposed “summer reset” spending.
A citywide youth ambassador program. Fixed up city playgrounds. Drop-in centers for the homeless. Street outreach workers focused on preventing summer violence.
Those are just a few of the programs the city hopes to fund this summer with $6.3 million in federal Covid relief.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 20, 2021 8:44 am
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A drunk monk. A woman plagued by ghosts from the past. And a Sleeping Beauty much more in charge of her own story than the traditional fairy tale let on. These were a few of many ideas and arresting images swarming around the films of Kihachirō Kawamoto, a Japanese animator of puppet maker who was the subject of the latest installment of the New Haven Free Public Library’s “Animation Celebration,” hosted by Library Technical Assistant Haley Grunloh.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 19, 2021 10:00 am
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Maps of the United States in a patchwork of colors. A graph like a coiled spring. A diagram like a bullseye, creased with bright spikes. Hanging on the walls of Artspace’s gallery, they can read immediately as abstract art. They are, in fact, a series of data visualizations — charts, graphs, geographic and population information — that famed Black sociologist and activist W.E.B. Du Bois and a team of researchers created to convey some of the realities of the Black experience in America over 100 years ago.
