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Brian Slattery |
Apr 12, 2023 8:38 am
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Showrocka.
It’s fitting that “peace, peace,” are the first words on the album Dear Aires, the latest release from the New Haven-based Showrocka and Ansolu. They set the tone for an album about getting older that is jubilant and nostalgic, energetic and laid-back, and always guided by two MCs who are old enough to know who they are, be at home in their style, and at the same time, ready to see where it takes them. Dear Aires is one of a few new releases from New Haven-based artists that shows the music scene as vibrant and diverse as ever, in genre and feeling.
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Karen Ponzio |
Apr 11, 2023 8:16 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos.
Townwide Tyler and DJ B to the T Jr. strike a pose.
Jazz floated in the air between whispers and animated conversations as people sipped wine and coffee and munched on pita chips and popcorn this past Thursday at Best Video. It was another installment of Lounge Night — a monthly event at the film and cultural center where, over the course of four hours, patrons are treated to movies, music, and conversations about both. On this night, the crowd was treated to three short films from the New Haven 48 Hour Film Project as well as music from DJs Townwide Tyler and B to the T Jr.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 5, 2023 8:52 am
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The cover of Fire Illuminations.
Even before trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith enters the musical room of “Ntozake Shange” — the first cut off Fire Illuminations, which Smith released last week — the music has left little doubt as to what’s going on. The beat is slow and dripping with grease, strong and powerful. The first phrase from Smith’s trumpet feel like a call to arms and a call to prayer at the same time. One by one, the rest of the instruments, guitars and basses, electronics, are gathered. They take their time, and at the same time have the feel of gorgeous inevitability. They’re moving in the same direction, toward a common destination. Even if that place is out of sight, they know it’s there.
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Brian Slattery |
Apr 4, 2023 8:46 am
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It was Saturday morning and the technical crew was setting up lights, cameras, and microphones. The musicians in the band at Hamden Plains United Methodist Church, on the corner of Dixwell Avenue and Church Street in Hamden, had rehearsed their parts. In the pews in front of the altar, the Rev. Jeremiah Paul, pastor of Hamden Plains UMC, was running parts with the choir — in preparation to document a collaboration, and perhaps the beginning of a beautiful friendship, between Hamden Plains UMC and Yale Gospel Choir.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 31, 2023 9:01 am
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Corpse Flower
Kelly Kancyr of Corpse Flower was just doing her mic check from behind the drum kit Thursday night, but she had a message for the audience. “What’s up Cafe Nine?” she said. “New owner, still the same vibe. We love you, Cafe Nine!” So it seemed in the final days of club owner Paul Mayer’s run of the place. The club may be changing hands this weekend, when new owners Patrick Meyer, Jesse Burke, and Chris Meyer take the wheel. But it felt like just another good night of music for the live-music institution on State and Crown.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 30, 2023 8:32 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
Sooyun Kim, Kate Arndt, Tanner Menees, Christine J. Lee, and Bridget Kibbey (l. to r.)
Min Young Kang, founder and artistic director of Kallos Chamber Music Series, smiled at the full house in the ballroom of the New Haven Lawn Club before Wednesday night’s concert began. “It always feels so great to come back here to share music with such a welcoming and warm audience like you,” she said. “Every single one of you plays a huge role in our performance, because we feed off our audiences.”
To the pawn shop customer who now has Robert Picagli’s early ‘60s-vintage Gibson B‑25 hollow body guitar: We’d like to introduce you to a little girl and her late grandfather.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 27, 2023 8:37 am
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Ezra Furman.
Beloved indie rocker Ezra Furman — rounding out a national tour and soon to embark on an international one — prowled the Space Ballroom stage Sunday evening even before her set started. “Joy and resolve,” she said, setting the tone for her set and providing a fulcrum for an evening of music that tapped, in time, into all the emotions.
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Adam Matlock |
Mar 24, 2023 8:51 am
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Perry So.
Conductor and New Haven Symphony Orchestra music director candidate Perry So offered a concise answer to the question of what an orchestra can provide in response to the needs of current or potential classical music audiences: “A sense of engagement with the past. And a sense of optimism for the future.”
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Marisa Torrieri |
Mar 20, 2023 8:43 am
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Daniel Eurysm Photo
Zombii.
On Saturday, punk musician Jeremy Zombii and friends from nine local pop, rock and ska bands came together to honor the memory of Zombii’s sister, Rebecca Lorch, and celebrate her incredible, odds-defying life — which included her rise to the level of “America’s Strongest Woman” just a few years after a bad motorcycle accident threatened her ability to ever walk again — at a nine-hour concert at The Cellar on Treadwell.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 15, 2023 8:55 am
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Amelia Maurer
Maeve and the Monsoons.
Amelia Maurer’s surreal image evokes power and magic, a sense of fearlessness. The viewer is the intruder in this scenario; the subject is a guardian, and she’s holding all the cards. The piece is striking enough on its own. Presenting it as the cover art for an imaginary album only magnifies its allure. It suggests that the associated music is strange and visionary. You haven’t heard anything like it, but you want to.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 14, 2023 9:02 am
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Brian Slattery Photo
Lloyd.
For Nick Lloyd, owner and chief engineer of Firehouse 12 on Crown Street, the announcement of the space’s spring concert series — kicking off March 24 and running every Friday through June 23 — is both a return and a rejuvenation. As in the past, the concert series features many of the leading lights of the experimental music scene, locally, regionally, and nationally. Those groups, however, will get to play in a renovated space that reflects, after two decades, Lloyd’s even surer sense of what a concert venue can sound like, and what it can do for players and audience alike.
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Adam Matlock |
Mar 14, 2023 8:54 am
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Guo, Miller, and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.
There are two responses to the notion that classical music’s canon is too narrow. The first is to turn one’s back on the canon entirely, and the second is to dig deeper into the canon, looking for lesser-known works from famous composers.
Arnold Gorlick saw one of the best leading-actress performances on the screen — then was outraged not to see it acknowledged Sunday night at the Oscars.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 13, 2023 8:59 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
The Jovial Crew.
Rick Spencer eyed the growing crowd at Cafe Nine Sunday afternoon after the St. Patrick’s Day parade, a healthy mix of parade-goers, families, and groups of friends, as The Jovial Crew took the purple-lit stage at the club on the corner of State and Crown.
“Good evening,” he said, gesturing toward the band. “I’m Shane MacGowan. This is Dolores O’Riordan, Bono, and Van Morrison.” The references to famous Irish singers drew appreciative laughter from the crowd, and set the tone for the show to follow, as The Jovial Crew turned Cafe Nine into a regular Irish pub, right on time for the holiday.
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Karen Ponzio |
Mar 10, 2023 8:50 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos
Perennial at Gather.
Four acts packed the room Thursday night at Gather, from coffee counter to chalkboard walls to bookshelves lined with everything from Eric Carle to Descartes. The lineup included Square Loop from Worcester, Mass., touring in support of their latest album, as well as local acts Perennial, Snowpiler, and Tj Redding.
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Adam Matlock |
Mar 8, 2023 8:35 am
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Tania Miller.
“When programming for an orchestra, I believe in curating experiences that will have a profound impact. Programming in a way that brings people in,” said Tania Miller, candidate for music director of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. “So we don’t start with music that is unreachable.”
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 6, 2023 9:07 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
Cloudbelly.
Corey Laitman, a.k.a. Cloudbelly, smiled at the eager crowd about halfway through their set Sunday afternoon at Cafe Nine. “I’ve never done a matinee show,” they said, marveling at the experience of performing earlier in the day. “I don’t feel tired at all. I don’t have to rally.” Laughter rippled through the room.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 3, 2023 8:32 am
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The pulsing hook of Ionne’s “The Last Time” reverberated through the speakers at Lilly’s Pad, the upstairs stage at Toad’s Place. Dancer Tadea Martin-Gonzalez struck a pose, then moved from it, her actions graceful and strong. As the beat churned to life, Ionne himself (a.k.a. Maurice Harris) sang the first few lines, clear, concise, mixing mournfulness and hope. “All we ever feared / Was killing time / Several hundred years / Amount to / Castles that we’ll never own / And songs I write / But cannot sing myself / Our dreams of spaceships / And their secret plans / To take us somewhere else.”
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Karen Ponzio |
Mar 1, 2023 8:49 am
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Tom Hearn Photos
The Cadavers.
Before punk was a word people tried to define, before it was a movement and state of mind, there were the live shows that brought music to many who were hungry for more than what they were getting from sharing albums with their friends. Among those many were the few who carried it out of basements and back rooms and into people’s memories.
Larry Loud, local punk legend, was a teenager in Bridgeport when he played a show with his band in 1978 that would later be heralded as the first original punk music show in Connecticut. That show will be celebrated this Saturday night, March 4, at Cafe Nine with Loud’s band The Cadavers, the New York-based Live Ones, and Bridgeport’s own Bad Attitude.
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Adam Matlock |
Feb 28, 2023 9:11 am
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Milos Babic Photos
Netta Hadari and Mark Rike, violins, Tina Lee Hadari, viola, Rebecca Patterson, cello (l. to r.).
In his introduction to “Brahms’ Alarm Clock,” by composer and pianist Istvan B’Racz, violinist Netta Hadari told the full house in the recital hall at Neighborhood Music School that at one point while working on the piece, he had asked the composer for “just a bit more of one section, to help complete it for me emotionally.” B’Racz obliged, and the full work, sometimes driven by a frenetic two-note motif with sudden jumps from string to string, was an impressive display. With quotes weaved in from Brahms’ Violin Concerto, and references to Hungarian folk music, the piece was a compelling study of the violin’s tone. And Hadari’s joy in playing it was clear.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 24, 2023 9:13 am
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Stone.
Cult band Buttery Cake Ass are playing what might be their final show, and it might be their best. There aren’t many people in the audience, but what they’re hearing is blowing their minds. The saddest songs make them all cry. The songs filled with rage seem like they could set the hall on fire. The band members are engaged in the kind of musical alchemy that maybe only happens a few times in every musician’s life. Somewhere on the soundboard, a tape is rolling. What will it sound like when they take it home?
