by | Apr 14, 2021 2:02 pm | Comments (2)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Federal judge Jed S. Rakoff has seen too many corporate executives walk out of court unscathed, while impoverished young men plead guilty to crimes they did not commit.
Voters can prevent this from happening, Rakoff says in his new book, Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free.
by | Apr 14, 2021 11:00 am | Comments (3)
Callie Smith/Fescue
Fescue & pal Dandy Lion dare to be different.
Yale
Joseph LaPalombara.
A single blade of grass bucked the crowd to pursue its own path in the world — and now, 50 years later, will inspire young humans to do the same.
Continue reading ‘Political Scientist Turns Kids’ Book Author’
by | Apr 14, 2021 10:33 am | Comments (5)
Sarah Bass Photos
The magnificent cherry blossoms have begun their annual display of natural beauty in Wooster Square Park.
Continue reading ‘Covid Kills This Year’s Cherry Blossom Festival — But Not The Blossoms’
by | Apr 14, 2021 9:51 am | Comments (0)
“Soul Searching,” the first song from Mighty Tortuga’s Live from Lockdown, shows right from the start how the band members work together to make their sound. Guitars, bass and drums all have interlocking parts that, in themselves, are all sparse enough to make space for the music to live in — and for the vocals to be heard. “Can you be honest? / At least enough that you can keep a promise? / Are you sure?” The way the singer’s voice bends upward on the last word — sure? — sticks the phrase, lacing its earnestness with humor, and showing that the band has spent the pandemic further honing its craft.
Continue reading ‘Mighty Tortuga Comes Out Of Its Pandemic Shell’
by | Apr 13, 2021 8:27 am | Comments (1)
Chris Ferguson
Blue Lights at Night.
The profile of the Q Bridge is unmistakable to anyone who lives in New Haven, but it rarely gets the treatment painter Chris Ferguson gives it. Under his eye and brush, the bridge feels hazy and gauzy, a distant mirage. Ferguson’s choice to highlight marsh and beach in the foreground adds to the sense of the bridge as an object to find beauty in. His generous eye, warm and inviting, is a thread that runs through all his work in “Looking Up!” a show he shares with artist Amanda Duchen at Kehler Liddell Gallery in Westville, running now through May 9.
by | Apr 12, 2021 9:43 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Chris “Big Dog” Davis.
Delores Willams and Lauren Anderson of the Whalley Avenue community bookstore People Get Ready beamed in front of the small, rapt audience seated in front of them Sunday evening.
“Give yourselves a hand,” Williams said. “We’re so grateful that you’re here.”
The bookstore, she said, was getting ready to reopen after a “long, necessary hiatus” — but before that, it hosted a concert by beloved musician Chris “Big Dog” Davis, back in New Haven on the heels of his latest release, the single “Heal The World.”
Continue reading ‘Chris “Big Dog” Davis Plays One For The Books’
by | Apr 12, 2021 9:38 am | Comments (1)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Buzz Gordo.
A toast of “cheers” with glasses raised was replaced with the phrase “welcome home” past Friday night at Cafe Nine, when the aptly nicknamed “musician’s living room” reopened for live music with a limited number of in-person patrons allowed in under Covid-19 guidelines.
by | Apr 9, 2021 4:49 pm | Comments (8)
Courtney Luciana photo
Bark&Vine ribbon cutting.
City officials gathered in the Ninth Square Friday to launch “New Haven Eats Outdoors 2021.”
Continue reading ‘City Boosts Outdoor Dining, Small-Biz Pandemic Recovery’
by | Apr 9, 2021 10:11 am | Comments (3)
Lary Bloom Photos
The daffodils are out, spring after spring.
I looked for the woman I used to see at the Mill River every day. I found new life and new faces in her place.
by | Apr 9, 2021 9:39 am | Comments (0)
Kevin Sanchez Walsh
by | Apr 8, 2021 4:34 pm | Comments (0)
“They call me … homophobic, racist, torturer, and now I am genocidal .… the virus will not go …”
by | Apr 8, 2021 9:52 am | Comments (5)
Gary Bimonte, at right, demonstrating his pie chops for a 2016 airing of Vice Media’s Pizza Show
Gary Bimonte, co-owner of Wooster Square’s legendary Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana, died Wednesday night after a heart attack, police reported.
by | Apr 7, 2021 2:07 pm | Comments (4)
Emily Hays Photos
Anna models a tie-turned-headscarf.
“La Bottega” has opened within the Skappo storefront.
Anna Sincavage will sell dresses in the morning and lasagna in the evening — all from 59 Crown St.
That’s the plan now that the family behind Skappo Italian Wine Bar is taking advantage of lower indoor dining demand to convert one corner of their restaurant into a new mini-shop, La Bottega.
by | Apr 6, 2021 2:03 pm | Comments (2)
The plate was set for a return to social dining.
A friend who recently moved to East Rock called last week inviting us to a dinner party.
A dinner party? Leave the house? Eat with other people? Change my sweatpants?
by | Apr 2, 2021 3:17 pm | Comments (4)
Crawford Manor before redevelopment.
A manor — and a huge swath of neighborhood — erased to make room for a highway.
Architectural historian and preservationist Marisa Angell Brown kept stories like these alive as she explored the architectural history of post-World War II New Haven in a lecture at the Yale Center for British Art, recalling some of New Haven’s most contested issues of the mid-20th century that continue to reverberate today.
Continue reading ‘Urban Renewal Reexamined Through Architectural/Preservationist Lens’
by | Apr 2, 2021 8:50 am | Comments (0)
Ceschi stood alone on the stage of the State House Thursday night, surrounded by another band’s gear.
“I’m from here, New Haven, Connecticut, and I’m here live at the State House,” he said.
The other band in question was the New Haven-based experimental neo-soul band Phat A$tronaut, as the two acts were splitting a bill, livestreamed from the State House, to help raise money for the Semilla Collective, an organization that has focused on getting food during the pandemic to migrant families in New Haven who need it.
Continue reading ‘Ceschi And Phat A$tronaut Take The State House Stage’
by | Apr 1, 2021 9:30 am | Comments (1)
Two murder mysteries. A string of love letters. A Choose Your Own Adventure-style story. And testimony after testimony of the things lost and found during the pandemic.
Co-op High School’s theater department has joined a national theater-by-mail festival, and in doing so, will have a chance to show New Haven and beyond how a high school theater program can continue to make art even when stages have to stay dark.
Continue reading ‘Co-Op High Puts Its Stamp On Pandemic Theater’
by | Mar 31, 2021 10:53 pm | Comments (16)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Winfred Rembert at work in his Newhall Street home.
WInfred Rembert
“Cotton Field Rows,” 2009.
Winfred Rembert, a nationally renowned artist who depicted vivid scenes of Southern cotton fields and chain gangs and juke joints, died Wednesday inside the Newhall Street home where he carved his leather masterpieces.
by | Mar 31, 2021 3:13 pm | Comments (2)
Emily Hays Photos
Robert Harris: I can’t make just a little collard greens.
It was 30 years ago when Robert Harris finally got his mother’s collard greens recipe exactly right.
Now he doesn’t even have to taste the cooked greens to know that they are ready for the customers of his Whalley Avenue restaurant, Mama Mary’s Soul Food.
by | Mar 31, 2021 10:15 am | Comments (2)
Thomas Breen Photo
Keeping it local: Nunez-Smith at Fair Haven vaccination campaign launch, juggling national and grassroots New Haven Covid work.
Nunez-Smith in conversation Tuesday evening with Kica Matos.
Public health and the arts working hand in hand in the quest for social justice.
by | Mar 30, 2021 9:45 am | Comments (1)
“Indigo Seven,” the opening and title track from Nick Di Maria’s latest album, starts with a flourish from a keyboard and drums that then heads off on a searching groove. A trumpet delivers a melody that takes its time unspooling over the rhythm. As the band settles in, the texture gets deeper and darker, and doesn’t return until nearly 10 minutes later, when the melody takes over again. It’s a long trip — fitting, since part of the New Haven-based musician’s mission is to explore possibilities, to make space. On Indigo Seven, with its overt nods to science fiction, that mission couldn’t be more apparent.
by | Mar 29, 2021 8:51 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Frank Critelli and The Birdmen share the distanced love.
“Boy, does it feel nice to be back in this room,” said Shellye Valauskas from the stage at Cafe Nine . She and Dean Falcone were one of four acts who made their way through three songs each in celebration of the Local Bands Show’s 34th anniversary — and the birthday of one of its founders, local music legend James Velvet, who died in 2015.
Continue reading ‘Local Bands Celebrate New Haven Music Icon’
by | Mar 26, 2021 1:28 pm | Comments (4)
New Haven’s Nu Haven Kapelye klezmer band marked a tradition that’s thousands of years old with a new tradition of its own.
by | Mar 26, 2021 9:32 am | Comments (0)
On Thursday night, a filmmaker and two professors screened a new documentary about Soul! — the pioneering PBS show focusing on Black culture that ran from 1968 to 1973 — and found, in its celebration of Black artists and message of revolutionary uplift, serious parallels with our current moment. The screening and discussion were sponsored by the Schwarzman Center and the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale.
by | Mar 26, 2021 8:00 am | Comments (1)
Eliza Benitez Photo Logo by Gil Morrison
Album art.
“Tigerlily,” the opening track off the new album Deja Reve from New Haven’s own synth-pop rock angel Falconeer, catches you almost off guard. The synthesizer sizzles through the speakers, the rhythm repeating until you find yourself moving along, and when the beat drops you ask yourself, “where’s the party?” — until you realize that with this album the party can be anywhere you like. And that’s exactly what Falconeer (a.k.a. Gil Morrison) intended.