For fans of the cozy and enemies of the conventional, Friday night was an evening of tunes, nosh, and acoustic soundtracks to old silent films at Upper State’s Volume II. It was one of the first out-of-town shows for Aesop’s Sound Fables, an ambient chamber music ensemble based in Brooklyn.
The group alternates between silent film sets like Friday’s, called “Strange Animations,” and “Soup Shows,” which are accompanied by readings and, yes, soup.
Though Friday was not officially a Soup Show, New Haven soupheads found a way to bring in a steamy chowder anyway. Aesop’s Sound Fables’s local-talent openers included soft-spoken singer Melanie Champagne, indie band Old Milk Mooney, and pop-up chef Soup Pauper, who’s been slinging broth in New Britain and New Haven since the beginning of last year. Let me lay out the scene for you, one sense at a time.
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Jamil Ragland |
Apr 8, 2025 7:48 am
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Evelyn Dillon and Trevor Pitts perform at Parkville Market.
Evelyn Dillon Parkville Market Hartford April 3, 2025
I’m going to be honest with you: I really didn’t want to work on Thursday night.
It was a gray and rainy evening, the kind where you want to curl up in bed and listen to the raindrops hit the window pane. But I heard that there was live music at Parkville Market, and it had been almost a year since my last visit. I got dressed and headed out.
By the time I arrived, the place was already bumping. I walked into the bar just as the performer, Evelyn Dillon, was singing one of my favorite songs: “Ascension,” by Maxwell. The bar was packed with people nodding their heads and singing along. I felt my mood begin to brighten.
The Big Bad Johns, a former staple of New Haven’s local music scene, returned to Cafe Nine from points far and wide for one of their periodic reunion shows Friday night, and the place was packed. Leigh Busby was among the throng taking these photos and videos.
On Saturday night the vegan/vegetarian spot The Cannon turned into an old-school hip-hop party for WAX.
Hosted by Dooley‑O, the monthly party event features local and well-known DJs who spin from their personal vinyl collections. This time Billy Bush out of Norwalk crushed the 1s and 2s for three and a half hours, moving the crowd of 70 or so to their feet. Every time I started to take a breather, he’d mix in another banger, and I’d keep dancing.
Spirals Multi-genre arts event 770 Chapel St. March 30, 2025
What is protest art? What is political art?
Since the dawn of state-regulated “artivism,” artists have felt the pressures of society to either opt in to the whole label — use the right keywords on applications, categorize themselves neatly for gatekeepers and audience members, and perhaps be taken less seriously by those who espouse the ideals of “pure art” — or attempt to stay out of politics, an impossible task for someone whose existence is inherently political.
On Sunday afternoon at 770 Chapel St., artists and art-lovers alike simply chose a secret third approach.
It would be uncouth for me to tell you what two movies I saw Thursday night at the monthly gathering of Best Video’s Secret Music Documentary Society.
The group is secret, after all. Their policy is that you can’t ask about previous titles; if you miss a screening, you have to live knowing you may never find out what the group watched in your absence. What happened there was a secret.
Thursday night’s gathering was the latest edition of the monthly society, which Faith Marek and Gorman Bechard founded this January to share unreleased, suppressed, or otherwise underground documentaries about the musicians we know and love. The group meets on the fourth Thursday of every month (except next month’s meeting, which is on Wednesday, April 23) to screen secret films and discuss secret thoughts over pizza and beer. (You can check Best Video’s event calendar for updates.)
Without mentioning any film titles or main characters, I’ll tell you what I can about the sights and sounds of the films playing Thursday evening. The first short film of the night was “compelling, even though it was Barbies,” according to audience member Jeremy Hudson.
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Jamil Ragland |
Mar 27, 2025 8:14 am
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Trinity PHoto
Alcee Chriss, Wesleyan University organist
Alcee Chriss Trinity Organ Series Trinity College Hartford March 25, 2025
Somewhere Over the Rainbow is one of my favorite songs, so I was surprised to hear Alcee Chriss describe it as a complicated piece.
“This is going to be something of an amorphous take, but we’ll see how it goes,” Chriss, one of the state’s most renowned organists, said during the annual Clarence Watters Memorial Recital at Trinity College. Again, I didn’t get it: if there’s a piano version, then it must not be that hard to play an organ version, right?
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Jisu Sheen |
Mar 24, 2025 12:50 pm
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Teo Hernandez sings his heart out.
Wally The Shop Hamden March 21, 2025
Teo Hernandez asked someone to cover his shift at Hamden’s Best Video, and it wasn’t his brother Lucas, even though they work together. Mild-mannered video store sweeties by day and New Haven indie rock stars by night, the Hernandez brothers had both accepted Saturday evening as their turn to embody the latter.
As daytime bled into night, longtime followers and soon-to-be fans alike ebbed into local recording studio The Shop to see the Hernandez brothers’ band Wally play their first full-band show in about a year.
You might treat her like dirt. But when the romance ends, she’s gonna write and deadpan-chant the following lyrics about you:
The silver hoop on my finger was a noose Emotional suicide whenever I was with you Why would you date me if you fucking hate me? And why would you fuck me if you think that I’m ugly?
I hope it hurts when you think of me I hope you know that you sicken me … I’m choking on all the breath I waste while blood and vomit’s all I can taste
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Jisu Sheen |
Mar 21, 2025 10:26 am
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Cover art for "What a Guy."
SB Khi, a multi-genre star of the younger, post-pandemic-onset generation of musicians in the New Haven scene, made a stop at a dive bar in Pennsylvania when he had an encounter that would end up inspiring his newest single.
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Jamil Ragland |
Mar 19, 2025 1:54 pm
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Clayton Stephenson informs and entertains during Notes and Narratives at the Artists Collective in Hartford.
Notes and Narratives with Clayton Stephenson The Artists Collective Hartford March 18, 2025
I ventured back to my old stomping grounds in the North End of Hartford for a classical piano concert featuring Clayton Stephenson, and got so much more than I was expecting. Founded by the world renowned saxophonist Jackie McLean in 1970, the Artists Collective is one of the premier arts institutions in the state, and trains Black and brown children from Hartford in music, dance, theater and more. I went there when I was a kid, and so did my son when he got old enough.
So it made sense for the Collective to host Clayton Stephenson, the Joyce C. Willis artist in residence at the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. The residence program supports Black artists and aims to increase diversity in the arts community.
Unlike at a regular concert, Stephenson turned his performance into an educational experience. He began by showing the audience how Franz Schubert took one musical passage in his Impromptu and built an entire song around it.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 17, 2025 9:33 am
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Thin Lear.
Matt Nilsen, Thin Lear, David Wirsig, and Niagara Moon Never Ending Books March 14, 2025
There was a microphone set up, but Matt Nilsen dispensed with it, instead forgetting about the stage and standing on the floor right in front of the audience. He strummed his guitar a couple times, just to test the room.
“There’s no graceful way to do this except to just do it,” he said, and started his set. In doing so, he set the tone for an evening of music on Friday at Never Ending Books — featuring him, Thin Lear, David Wirsig, and Niagara Moon — that brought musicians and audience closer together, literally and figuratively.
Operatic and concert soloist and recording artist Adriana Zabala at WNHH FM.
Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper-Chekhov never made it to a villa they dreamed of on Italy’s Lake Como. Adriana Zabala shed a tear about that the other day.
Zabala, a mezzo-soprano, also lifted her voice. You can argue that she helped make the Chekhovs’ dream come true.
Umut Yasmut brings the kanun to RAWA, all the way from New York.
As Umut Yasmut filled the dining area of Westville’s Mediterranean and Middle Eastern fusion restaurant RAWA with cascading melodies, the New York musician said that his instrument, an intricately carved stringed creation, did not exist.
Decades after an aborted attempt by local officials to deliver an honorary certificate at Toad’s Place, New Haven’s mayor joined an alder onstage to officially express the city’s pride in the 50-year-old legendary York Street rock club.
At an album release party Friday night at Cafe Nine, DJs from New Haven’s HEATSYNC all-vinyl collective dropped tracks from their new 4‑track techno dance EPBuddy City. The crowd pulsated as fog and humming beats pumped into the space. Every so often, a dancer would take over the floor for a moment, flowing alongside the distortion and sweet noise.
As DJ 7Ways played one of the original tracks from Buddy City, his voice floated over the crowd: “This record is for sale. And this is the first time a mic has ever been used at HEATSYNC. Goodbye.”
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Karen Ponzio |
Mar 3, 2025 9:14 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos.
Jack Daniel and Brian Ember miming magic.
What do you do when your birthday is on Feb. 29 but it’s not a leap year? Jack Daniel of The Broken Robots threw himself and a raucously receptive crowd a Very Merry Un-Birthday Party at Best Video on Feb. 28 instead, complete with cake, improvised poetic jazz performance art, and the musical stylings of Brian Ember.
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Karen Ponzio |
Feb 27, 2025 2:30 pm
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College Street Music Hall
Howard Jones takes College Street back, with ABC (below).
Howard Jones &ABC College Street Music Hall Feb. 26, 2025
On Wednesday night a vibrant crowd at College Street Music Hall rejoiced in their remembrance of the 1980s with two of its most successful and celebrated British New Wave synth pop acts: Howard Jones and ABC.
Both acts made their mark as equally for the memorable visuals in their videos played on near perpetual repeat on MTV throughout its first decade as well as for the string of radio hits each had that continue to get regular airplay on Sirius XM’s First Wave radio station devoted to purveyors of post punk and synth-soaked tunes.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 24, 2025 12:55 pm
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Brian Slattery Photos
Allie Burnet.
Midway through her set with her band, the Proven Winners, Allie Burnet asked to do one song by herself. In a break from her original material, she launched into a cover of Sinéad O’Connor’s “Black Boys on Mopeds,” a 1990 song about police brutality that has aged all too well.
To give the song a final twist, Burnet changed one line. In 1990, O’Connor sang, “These are dangerous days / to say what you feel is to dig your own grave.” Burnet altered the second half of that line: “To be who you are is to stand in your grave.”
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Jisu Sheen |
Feb 24, 2025 10:03 am
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LÉA THE LEOX with guitarist Graham Bhuyan.
When asked to describe how he felt about the set he played at Hamden’s Space Ballroom Saturday night, LÉATHELEOX’s guitarist, Graham Bhuyan, smiled and said, “It kind of felt like hugging your favorite color.” An up-and-coming soul, pop, and R&B act out of LA, LÉATHELEOX and Bhuyan wasted no time stealing hearts on Hamden soil. It’s safe to say whatever the color was, it hugged back hard.
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Chris Randall |
Feb 17, 2025 10:21 am
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Chris Randall Photo
Guitarist and composer Hiroya Tsukamoto played an amazing show at Fair Haven Furniture, turning the cozy, intimately-lit space into a personal mini-concert hall. His mix of detailed fingerpicking and heartfelt storytelling made for a captivating night, with every note filling the unique setting with warmth and emotion.
by
Jisu Sheen |
Feb 14, 2025 12:40 pm
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Jisu Sheen Photo
I-SHEA on the Conga, Seny Camara on Jembe, and Douglas Wilson III on guitar.
“The telepathy up here is crazy.”
Jocelyn Pleasant, leader of Connecticut’s well-loved Afro-funk fusion ensemble The Lost Tribe, might have been talking about communication between band members, but she also set the stage for an intimate connection between the band and the audience at a performance Thursday night at NXTHVN in Dixwell.
