Arts & Culture

Kelly Reilly Is “Ready” For More Music

by | Jun 18, 2021 10:02 am | Comments (0)

Steve Vlazo Photo/Graphic design Andrea Sicco

Cover art for Ready For the Morning.

I’ve been down underneath the ocean of sound, got bloodied in the battle of the blues. Yeah, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but I’m ready for the morning.” The unmistakable voice of Kelly Reilly shines through like a summer sunrise on her newest single, the ethereal rocker Ready For the Morning,” released two weeks ago after a year of indelible changes. Now the legendary New Haven singer and lifetime fan of music and the local scene is ready to record again.

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Reinaldo’s Corner

by | Jun 17, 2021 6:23 pm | Comments (0)

Artists Go Solo At Ely Center

by | Jun 17, 2021 9:33 am | Comments (0)

Allison Baker’s installation transforms the front gallery of the Ely Center of Contemporary Art on Trumbull Street into something between a playground and an uneasy dream. All is glittering, but also unnaturally balloon-like — whether it’s immediately recognizable objects such as hangers, brassieres, and cleaning gloves, or less obvious (but no less glittery) shapes strewn on the floor and suspended from the ceiling. Further exploration reveals that the installation spills over into the next room, taking over half the first floor of the building. It’s fun, yes, but threatening in its entertainment. Everything is fine. Everything is wrong.

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O.K. Company Begins Again

by | Jun 16, 2021 8:37 am | Comments (0)

Evan Bakke Photo

O.K. Company

I’m looking for a little bit of trouble,” sings LaQruishia Gill on You Got Me Up,” one of two new songs by the New Haven-based band O.K. Company, formerly known as The Let Loose and currently finding its way back into the music scene after quarantine with a new release titled A Mini EP and three live shows over the next two weeks.

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Art Exhibit Traces A Path To The Stars

by | Jun 15, 2021 8:00 am | Comments (1)

It’s a lunar volvelle, a device dating to the medieval era used to chart the passage of the moon across the sky and determine days and dates. But this particular volvelle has two distinguishing features. First, it involves fragments of poetry. Second, the family members of poet and artist Monica Ong appear in a small parade in the center as one moves through the possible positions on the volvelle. Using the volvelle also reveals different fragments of poetry, so that each day produces a new poem, introduces a family member, all in the process of scientific observation.

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A&I Kelps Itself To Bagels Of The Future

by | Jun 14, 2021 8:56 am | Comments (0)

Karen Ponzio Photos

My Everything Everything bagel with Greenwave kelp schmear.

Bagels, beer, and seaweed don’t sound like three things that commonly go hand in hand, but this past Friday night they melded together deliciously as part of Food of the Future with Greenwave and Olmo, a Food Experience presented by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas.

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CT Folk Brings New Folk To Edgewood Park

by | Jun 11, 2021 8:33 am | Comments (3)

Amethyst Kiah has been making waves as a Black artist asserting her place in the world of folk music and reaching beyond it. Parsonsfield and Maggie Rose both use sonic experiments to bring new textures to well-honed songwriting skill. And Pokey LaFarge reaches into the thick American stew of carnival sideshows and revival tents to create modern carnivalesque nightmares. All four performers — and more — are part of CT Folk’s lineup for Folk at the Edge, a new concert series coming to Edgewood Park throughout the summer and early fall.

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Reinaldo’s Corner

by | Jun 10, 2021 4:45 pm | Comments (0)

The Mexicans come from the indigenous, the Brazilians from the jungle and the Argentines come from the European ships … Now we have the ship a little sunk …

At Hybrid District Show, Music Gives Shelter From The Storm

by | Jun 10, 2021 9:08 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photos

Outside the thick humidity broke into a pounding thunderstorm over New Haven, but Wednesday evening inside the Holberton School at District New Haven on James Street, Chris Bousquet — a.k.a. American Elm — made it warm and inviting for a live and livestreamed performance that pulled in a lifetime of music, from days on the beach to departed friends.

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“Yerba Bruja” Finds Roots In Elm City Earth

by | Jun 9, 2021 8:46 am | Comments (0)

Maria and Ndemeh.

Making a painstaking cup of coffee the traditional way while recounting a harrowing story of flight from Ethiopia into an unknown future. Family photographs lovingly thumbed through, even while the speaker mourns a sense of childhood lost. And dancing that invokes ancestors and reaches back into the past to both face trauma and draw strength.

Curated and produced by Jasmin Agosto and featuring Haben Maria, Colleen Ndemeh, Paul Bryant Hudson, Zvlu, Yexandra Diaz, and Ch’Varda, Yerba Bruja is part ceremony, part storytelling, part music, spoken word, and dance performance, and all honesty and respect, as the participants ruminate on what it means to leave home, lose home, and reconnect and stay resilient, in ways large and small.

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Artists Find The New

by | Jun 8, 2021 8:32 am | Comments (0)

Sheila Kaczmarek’s English Sycamore grabs the eye as soon as you enter City Gallery on Upper State Street. Viewed one way, it appears almost as if it could move, like a mobile. Viewed another, it’s possible to imagine it’s growing out of the wall. Its organic forms add up, fully, to an enveloping composition — and it’s possible to imagine it could have kept growing, or that the pod in the middle of it might hatch. That sense of completeness and open possibility isn’t just part of the finished piece, but also is present in the way it’s made.

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Studio, Craft Brewer Plan Fair Haven Moves

by | Jun 7, 2021 9:20 am | Comments (14)

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.

The potential result: a“one-two” jobs and tourism revival punch for the long-struggling River Street Municipal Development district.

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Saturday In the Park With Arts On Call

by | Jun 7, 2021 9:18 am | Comments (2)

Karen Ponzio Photos

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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Indigenous Writers Form The Backbone At A&I “Big Read”

by | Jun 4, 2021 8:34 am | Comments (1)

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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Reinaldo’s Corner

by | Jun 3, 2021 5:31 pm | Comments (0)

Yes … she is tied up …” (Background here.)

“Diary Disk” Lands In Library To Preserve Communal Memories Of Rough Year-Plus

by | Jun 3, 2021 3:48 pm | Comments (1)

Nick Perkins Photo

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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