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Brian Slattery |
Jan 7, 2021 11:14 am
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Host Nadine Nelson turned over a string of pink beads she was starting in her hands on Wednesday evening.
“I think it might be the end of the world,” she said, referring to the riots at the U.S. Capitol, so “I think I’m going to make a necklace and some earrings.” She wanted to “make something I can finish.”
Her guest, artist Lee Lee McKnight, was working on an altered book. It was the latest installment of Co Create, a series supported by the New Haven Free Public Library in partnership with MakeHaven.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 6, 2021 10:18 am
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Ruth Sack
There’s a clock on the back wall of City Gallery. It doesn’t have hands, and the numbers by and large have been replaced by abstract shapes. It’s a sign of how time has drifted away, and the expression on its face gives an unmistakable sense of mixed feelings. The piece, by artist Ruth Sack, is about the election season, the sense of anticipation and worry it has brought, but in another sense it sums up how so much of the last year felt — and how we look to this coming year with beleaguered hope.
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 5, 2021 10:54 am
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“The Coffee Tree and I.”
In “The Coffee Tree and I,” a short film by Konjit Seyoum, we see a coffee tree in its adolescence, not much more than a sapling. A red liquid at its base — is it water colored by fertilizer, or just water as it appears after poured onto the soil? — seeps slowly into the ground around its roots. It’s a chance to take a long, deep breath, to think about how we nourish plants, and how plants, in turn, nourish us. Margaret Hart’s “Poly-Morphosis” is an animated collage that ruminates on the wonders of science in an elliptical, often humorous way. And Daniel Hyatt’s “Escape from the Cage (and Dance)” features just that, as a man first magically finds his way out of a kennel, then dances until he disappears.
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Emily DiSalvo |
Jan 4, 2021 3:42 pm
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If you order Mikro Depot’s Sunday brunch in Hamden and can’t decide which breakfast food you are craving most, you can ask for the French toast and get the flavor of multiple breakfast foods all in one order.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jan 4, 2021 11:24 am
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Addy Edward Photo
single cover
“Crawling into bed / a busy head / Later that it gets / the more I stress / Anxious now to sleep / the cycle creeps / on and on and on / right through the dawn.”
So begins “Too Hungry to Eat,” the latest single from New Haven-based multi-instrumentalist Addy Edward, a meditation on pent-up frustrations and the anxiety of an emptiness that cannot be filled, themes that have become more common than not as the world continues to find a balance between safety and searching for a way to keep themselves occupied and entertained. For Edward — full name Adam Bensen — this included developing a new approach to his music.
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Brian Slattery & Karen Ponzio |
Dec 24, 2020 10:44 am
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Live to livestreaming. Crowded bars to living room concerts to shows in the open air. Release shows to emailed links. Loud, back-of-the-bar conversations to threads full of typos in chatboxes. Stage lights to video production.
Musicians were among the first to feel the immediate societal effects of the Covid-19 pandemic — and among the first to adapt. The precariousness and resourcefulness, the ability to make something out of almost nothing, that has always been the heartbreaking and uplifting double-edged sword of a life in music turned out to be a source of innovation and change in a year that needed it most.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 23, 2020 10:42 am
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Brian Slattery Photo
”(I’m In The) Sunshine State,” the first track from Popsychle, the second release of 2020 from The Alex Butter Field, begins a crackling guitar and, well, sun-drenched vocals that intone the title in rich harmonies. “I’m in the sunshine state,” the voices sing, “and I feel great.”
Whether they mean Florida specifically is beside the point. As winter sets in on a strange year, the song is a blast of warm weather, and much-needed optimism.
City government and business leaders have launched an “Eat New Haven” campaign to encourage people to order from restaurants to help them survive the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 22, 2020 10:44 am
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Dan Gries
180 Cups of Coffee, detail.
It’s a simple geometric design, just a grid of dark circles, but look closer and you see the abstraction is pulled out of something very concrete. Dan Gries’s 180 Cups of Coffee — part of the “Solos 2020” exhibition now running at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art on Trumbull Street through Feb. 21 — fits in with a theme that emerges among the six artists’ work in the exhibit, of using unorthodox materials and exploring the most basic ideas of our existence, like hunger, thirst, and the simple fact of living in our own bodies.
Ketkeo Rajachack with daughter Christine Son at Pho Ketkeo.
Ketkeo Rajachack learned to make khao poon from her mother to sell from an open-air tent in Laos. Now she cooks and sells the dish at her Temple Street restaurant, Pho Ketkeo.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 18, 2020 4:23 pm
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“Sweet Sorrow,” the newest song from Thabisa, begins with a pulsating guitar line that suggests both melancholy and movement
“Even in strange times, I’ll find my strength,” Thabisa sings. “Even when I’m down, I’ll stand tall / Do you ever feel you don’t belong? / Sometimes I wish I wasn’t born.”
That’s all before the rhythm comes sneaking in — and, in time, crashing in — as the song builds in intensity, and Thabisa uses her voice to become an entire chorus.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 17, 2020 12:50 pm
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Brian Slattery Photos
Seikichi Muto, owner and chef at Sonobana on Dixwell in Hamden, took a small ball of rice in a gloved hand and deftly made it just the right shape to accept a piece of raw, tender yellowtail. He did the same with with piece of salmon, and with a piece of tuna — as he has been doing for 34 years in the same location, and now during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Karen Ponzio |
Dec 16, 2020 10:52 am
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The monthly NHDocs series that debuted in November is already taking a turn towards adapting its offerings, this time considering not only the holiday season but the spirit of its generosity and good cheer. Moving the series to the third weekend of the month is only one part of the change. Adding in a filmed musical event and raising funds for a local beloved club are two more.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 15, 2020 11:04 am
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Dan Katz
Dust Control at NG2BC, pre-pandemic.
Dust Control’s “Your Idea of Success” starts with a churning guitar, a growling bass, before the drums begin to propel everything forward, and the singer hollers out his truth. It’s the kind of music that needs and finds a home in every city, and as the title of the album — “Live” at Never Get To Be Cool — Dust Control found its home at Never Get to Be Cool, or NG2BC, a DIY music space in the Wooster Square neighborhood that gave up its lease at the beginning of December, about a week after “Live” was recorded.
Dust Control’s album thus marks the end of a run for NG2BC, of over two years, about 150 shows, and who knows how many recording projects.
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Karen Ponzio |
Dec 14, 2020 10:59 am
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Kicker Pictures
S.G. Carlson & The Tines
Sam Carlson has made it one of his personal and professional goals to create new ways to help New Haven’s music scene survive, thrive, and proliferate. His latest endeavor involves video, a media he has used with success before. But this time he’s using it to showcase a live performance of three songs at one of New Haven’s live venues — even if that venue can’t be open for an audience to enjoy them in person.
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Brian Slattery |
Dec 11, 2020 12:28 pm
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Brian Slattery Photos
Owners Sukra Shrestha and Arjun Khadka, chef Krishna Paudel.
Arjun Khadka, the head chef and one of the owners of Cumin India on Skiff Street in Hamden, laid out a spread of Cumin’s more popular dishes. Among them were well-known fare like chicken tikka masala and garlic naan.
But the restaurant is also a place to sample Indo-Chinese dishes, a lesser-known facet of Indian cuisine that combines the influences of India and its neighbor, China. Among the many Indo-Chinese offerings on the menu is vegetarian Manchurian — vegetable dumplings topped with a sauce that pulls its ingredients from across Asia and elsewhere, and reminds us that India, as vast as it is, is also connected inextricably with the wider world.
Drivers honked to protest Yale. Marchers chanted and claimed the street. A boxed-in bus driver yelled his own protest and ended up in a rush-hour stand-off. Other drivers slipped by ferrying menorahs.
The evening ended with a hushed tree-lighting to launch the official Christmas shopping season.
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Lary Bloom |
Dec 11, 2020 10:59 am
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Avi Szapiro at work.
On the evening of Dec. 19, my wife Suzanne and I will cook a whole fish while being advised and encouraged by an expert at such delicate culinary matters.
It’ll be an adventure, I’m sure, just as on previous Saturday evenings when challenged by this internationally trained chef to do the right gastronomic thing, we have complied — though not always without some strain and a sprinkling of four-letter commentary.
