by | Jan 20, 2025 9:31 am | Comments (0)
Etai Smotrich-Barr Photo
Eneji Alunbe and Dyland Rowland performing at Three Sheets.
The Clutchtet
Three Sheets
Jan. 17, 2025
Elm Street was awash Friday night in the warm sounds of “The Clutchtet,” a jazz piano trio that is a semi-regular feature of the bandstand at Three Sheets.
by | Jan 17, 2025 8:00 am | Comments (0)
Jamil Ragland Photo
Brandt Taylor performs at the Old State House Food Court as part of the Winter Blues concert series
Brandt Taylor
Connecticut Old State House Food Court
Hartford
Jan. 16, 2025
The blues is a fascinating art form, because its conventions point to suffering and pain; it is called the “blues,” after all. But the individual styles of the artists who perform it draw out different emotions for the audience. While listening to Brandt Taylor, a regular on the state blues circuit, performing at the The Winter Blues series at the Connecticut Old State House Food Court, I felt a sense of longing in his music that gave the requisite bluesy emotional anchor, but with joyful and bright singing.
by | Jan 13, 2025 12:46 pm | Comments (0)
Arthur Delot-Velain Photo
Wes Lewis, composer of "Dimensionality Reduction," performing Saturday night at Jazzy's.
High up the neck, by the body of the bass, there was nowhere left to go. The notes rose with the tension until they couldn’t go any higher, until a growling sax came to take it away.
Continue reading ‘Original Jazz Compositions Shine at Jazzy's’
by | Jan 13, 2025 10:09 am | Comments (0)
Leigh Busby Photo
Soto performing Sunday at Three Sheets.
Dan Soto returned to where he started with a song called “You Own My Soul” — just him and his acoustic guitar.
by | Jan 13, 2025 7:50 am | Comments (0)
Nutmeg Slim (center) and the Black Eyed Sally's House Band.
Nutmeg Slim
Black Eyed Sally’s Southern Kitchen and Bar
Hartford
Jan. 9, 2025
If there’s one instrument I associate with the blues, it’s the harmonica, and Nutmeg Slim let it wail at Black Eyed Sally’s.
by | Jan 10, 2025 7:58 am | Comments (0)
Jamil Ragland Photo
Ashley Hamel performs at Winter Blues in the Old State House Food Court.
Ashley Hamel
State House Square Food Court
Hartford
January 9, 2025
I’ve got a case of the Winter Blues. That was a good thing.
Continue reading ‘At Winter Showcase, I Found What I Was Looking For’
by | Jan 6, 2025 10:00 am | Comments (1)
Karen Ponzio Photos.
American Elm, aka Christopher Bousquet.
With a new year typically comes promises to oneself to try something they haven’t done before or to do something in a different way. A beloved local singer songwriter did just that Saturday night with a healthy dose of support from his friends.
The singer, American Elm (aka Christopher Bousquet), presented “Resounder” a live song cycle complete with 17 original songs he had written over the course of one year, only one of which exists in recorded form.
Continue reading ‘New Year Resounds With 17 New Songs Of Hope & Renewal’
by | Jan 3, 2025 12:40 pm | Comments (0)
Arthur Delot-Vilain photo
Nick Di Maria blasts off at The Cannon.
New Haven’s jazz scene entered the new year Thursday night in modal, spacey, vegan style, as trumpeter Nick Di Maria and his band lit up The Cannon.
Continue reading ‘Jazz Underground Casts A Spell On Dwight Street’
by | Dec 20, 2024 10:01 am | Comments (2)
Brian Slattery photo
A true New Haven circuit board melds music and apizza.
Donato Biceglia of Dual Stage Amplification has been making and repairing amplifiers, guitar pickups, pedals, and other music gear for years out of his Erector Square space. He’s expanding his business now by rolling out a couple new pedals, among them a compressor and a phaser, all embedded with New Haven-specific messages burned right onto the circuit boards he uses for his gear.
by | Dec 20, 2024 9:43 am | Comments (1)
Paul Bass Photo
Nu Haven Kapelye's David Chevan, Will Bartlett, Dana Astmann perform at WNHH FM.
December holiday music was in free swing — in Yiddish.
by | Dec 20, 2024 9:42 am | Comments (2)
Alex Lussenko's Quartet at Black Eyed Sally's
The Alex Lossenko Quartet
Black Eyed Sally’s Southern Kitchen and Bar
Hartford
Dec. 18, 2024
Jazz is such a versatile genre that each band seems to have a different lead instrument.
by | Dec 17, 2024 9:36 am | Comments (0)
Matt Wilson.
Drummer Matt Wilson had much to say at Firehouse 12 on Friday night, but there was one word he used the most. He used it when bassist Paul Sikivie unfurled a series of ideas on his instrument, again when Sikivie and reeds player Jeff Lederer played as if they were talking, again when all three of them executed an elegant turn of phrase. Again and again, that word was “beautiful.”
by | Dec 16, 2024 9:31 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos.
Who's your Daddy Krampus?
Eleven musical acts, two comedians, and everybody’s favorite horned holiday folk creature joined together on Saturday to celebrate Punxmas, the annual celebration of punk music and community in honor of the season.
The Cellar on Treadwell, all decked out in flashing lights and garland, hosted the event’s ninth year, which began at 2 p.m. and ran well into the evening. According to musician Jeremy Zombii, Punxmas organizer and proud champion of the punk community, his main goal was to bring everyone together for “tons of fun,” especially after a couple of years of the scene being on the quieter side.
by | Dec 9, 2024 9:27 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos.
The Mercy Velvet Project taps it out at Katalina's.
Going to a bakery for a few cupcakes seems like an obvious choice, but going to a bakery to preview a tap dance-based rock opera seems less obvious. Fortunately, the New Haven arts community has become more and more creative at working together to allow new projects to seed, germinate, and grow.
On Saturday night, Katalina’s Bakery was the latest alternative space used, this time to host a fundraiser for The Mercy Velvet Project, a re-creation of the 1999 album Live in Vain by the band Mercy Velvet in rock opera form.
Continue reading ‘Dancers Tap Into Sweetness For "Mercy Velvet Project"’
by | Dec 9, 2024 7:48 am | Comments (0)
A Century of Songs: Travelers Chorale 100th Anniversary Concert
Bushnell Center for Performing Arts
Hartford
Dec. 5, 2024
The last time I went to a performance of the Travelers Chorale during their spring concert earlier this year, I was blown away by the musical talent on display from a group of people who worked in insurance by day. I promised that I would be there for their next concert, so I was in my seat at 7:30 sharp for their winter 100th anniversary concert.
Continue reading ‘It’s Beginning to Sound A Lot Like Christmas’
by | Dec 6, 2024 12:15 pm | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Tommy V and David Ramos.
There are people who talk about helping and change and making the world a better place one day, and then there’s Joey Batts and the CT hip hop community, who for the past 11 years have gathered for a series of shows at multiple venues throughout Connecticut and Massachusetts to actually do it. Hip Hop for the Homeless began its annual December run raising funds and collecting donations for local groups on Thursday night.
First stop: New Haven’s Cafe Nine, where host for the evening Sketch tha Cataclysm brought forth a healthy and harmonious collection of CT-based hip hop artists to entertain for a worthy cause: Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen.
Continue reading ‘Hip Hop For The Homeless Launches Year 11’
by | Dec 2, 2024 8:12 am | Comments (0)
After 16 years of albums, tours, collaborations and compilations, Ceschi, a.k.a. Julio Ramos — the New Haven-based musician who cut a burning swath though indie hip hop and folk and started a record label in the process — is done. This spring saw a final East Coast tour, and November featured a final swing through the West Coast, culminating in a return home for a sold-out show at Space Ballroom.
His newest album, released in November — Bring Us the Head of Francisco False, Part 2, which completes Part 1, released in April, and finishes a cycle of albums that started with Sad, Fat Luck in 2019 — explains why. And doesn’t. And doesn’t have to. It’s a wrenching goodbye and a wistful farewell, a reintroduction and moment of liberation, all at once. As a final gesture on a long arc of artistic work, it’s a firework thrown into the sun, and it leaves us bathing in the glow of a thousand colors.
by | Nov 27, 2024 12:06 pm | Comments (2)
Jim Lenn holding an Ovation Guitar
Ovation Guitars
Manchester Public Library
Manchester
Nov. 25, 2024
I went to the Manchester Public Library on a chilly Monday evening to hear a lecture about the Connecticut-made guitar that saved the music industry. Little did I know that I was also in for a delightful concert too.
by | Nov 26, 2024 8:27 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Parlay Droner, with his "toys."
Music on stage. Art on the walls. Pizza and drinks on the table. Pickles in the corner. The latest installment of Mood Maker Mondays at The Cellar on Treadwell in Hamden featured all of the above, mixed together for a healthy-sized Monday night crowd who came out to hear experimental musician Parlay Droner and veteran surf rockers the Vulture, partake of Jam City Pizza’s Detroit-style pizza, check out the fantastical art of Thomas Drew, and sample the vinegar delights of Mo Piklz.
Continue reading ‘Cellar On Treadwell Mixes It Up On Monday’
by | Nov 25, 2024 8:27 am | Comments (0)
Sharmont "Influence" Little: "Humanity has never been given by a Greek god."
A symphony orchestra in a vast concert hall. Ballet dancers, barefoot. A spoken-word poet and a singer. A traditional African drummer.
These elements all came together in concert, as a collaboration among the New Haven Symphony Orchestra (NHSO), New Haven poet laureate Sharmont “Influence” Little, and members of the New Haven-area Tia Russell Dance Studio added up to a past-honoring, forward-thinking presentation of Beethoven’s ballet The Creatures of Prometheus that was both an embodiment and celebration of creativity.
by | Nov 22, 2024 7:58 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Allie Sandt and Teddy Holly.
From the stage at Never Ending Books on Thursday night, Trae Sheehan asked if there were “any introverts in the crowd.” He was met with complete silence. He beamed.
“See, I try that at every show, and audiences fail,” by cheering, he explained. The cheer, he said, was a sign that they couldn’t be introverts; the silence felt all too right. “This one goes out to you,” he said.
Sheehan was part of a three-act bill at Never Ending Books on State Street — including Sam Moth and Allie Sandt — that warmed a rainy night by fostering honesty, openness, and kindheartedness in song after song.
by | Nov 21, 2024 8:21 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Videodome.
On Wednesday night at Cafe Nine on the corner of State and Crown, two area bands, Nervous City and Videodome, welcomed a touring band, Parachute Club, to its first-ever gig in the state of Connecticut with big riffs, squalls of guitar noise, and an appreciative crowd of rock fans ready to stay up and have a good time.
by | Nov 20, 2024 11:46 am | Comments (0)
Jamil Ragland Photo
Violist Michael Wheeler
I Want My ’80s: A Totally Rad Musical Rewind
Hartford Public Library
Hartford
Nov. 19, 2024
What makes a song a classic?
by | Nov 13, 2024 10:58 am | Comments (0)
Abdullah Ibrahim.
Jazz legend Abdullah Ibrahim waited at the piano, listening intently, while his bandmates, Cleave Guyton on flute and Noah Jackson on bass, finished a quietly acrobatic rendering of a Duke Ellington classic that was also a nod to Ibrahim’s past. Guyton and Jackson finished, and left the stage. Then Ibrahim began, slowly, deliberately, with exquisite touch and gorgeous dynamic control, the product of decades of playing. He took his time working through his theme, and as the large audience at the Shubert Tuesday was struck silent, seemed to stop time itself.
Ibrahim’s performance — organized jointly between the Shubert and the Schwarzman Center — was part of a string of performances carrying the venerable College Street theater through the end of the year.
Continue reading ‘Shubert Ending Year With String Of Shows, New Space’
by | Nov 11, 2024 8:53 am | Comments (3)
“How many people are here to hear the song ‘Jim Martin?’” asked Al “Pist” Ouimet, lead singer of local punk legends The Pist — who on Friday celebrated the release of their 7‑inch vinyl record that included a song about another local punk legend, Jim Martin. The crowd cheered loudly enough to confirm that yes, many of them were. It was one moment of many that solidified the strength of not only the local punk scene’s commitment to continuing to make music that matters, but to letting their friends and fans know that their connections to each other are just as strong.