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Brian Slattery |
Nov 18, 2022 9:00 am
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Katy Rea.
Poetry about the end of the world. Pop music by turns dreamy, elliptical, lush, and jagged. And transfixing music from half a world away. All three art forms were on lavish display at Never Ending Books on Thursday night, as two poets and three musical acts comprised a diverse and thoroughly engrossing evening that entertained, warmed, and nourished.
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Karen Ponzio |
Nov 14, 2022 8:31 am
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Ghost Lot.
Two three-piece bands shook up Best Video on Saturday. One was fairly new to the New Haven scene. The other was a couple years in, but with deep roots. Both had enough hard-hitting sound to get the crowd riled up and ready for more.
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Adam Matlock |
Nov 14, 2022 8:20 am
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Aleks Karjaka Photo
Orli Shaham.
It is one thing to go to a performance by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, or any other orchestra, to witness a subdued spectacle — 50 to 60 musicians on one stage, working to convey a piece of art with sometimes dizzying levels of interconnected parts. That was of course on display in Friday’s performance, featuring works by Coleridge-Taylor, Chopin, and Brahms, featuring Orli Shaham as the soloist for Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F minor.
Steve Mednick emerged from this week’s elections with two more charter revisions under his belt, and a new album of politically inspired original music.
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Karen Ponzio |
Nov 11, 2022 8:45 am
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The Bargain.
“There’s something in the moon / I feel it in my bones / The end is coming soon / Repent and be reborn / Don’t be broken into pieces / Cast into the fire / Don’t walk in slippery places / And fall into the mire.”
Thus begins “Garden of Sorrow,” the first song off the new album’22 by The Bargain. Heady topics, but delivered with the most heavenly of sounds by the three singer/songwriter/musicians who make up the band: Frank Critelli, Shandy Lawson, and Michael “Muddy” Rivers. The 11 songs on the record feel like lightening in a bottle — an empty bourbon bottle perhaps? — captured at sunset on a crisp fall day.
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Karen Ponzio |
Nov 7, 2022 8:50 am
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Movimiento Cultural
The world-renowned Shubert Theatre was home to some of New Haven’s own on Saturday night, as a show entitled Elm City’s Finest brought artists performing everything from bomba to dramatic monologues to rock ‘n’ roll to this first-of-its-kind event. The evening also included work displayed by local visual artists, food from local restaurants, and wares from local vendors.
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Brian Slattery |
Nov 3, 2022 8:16 am
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Pocket Vinyl.
Eric Stevenson leaned hard over the piano, his arms spread like wings, his hands like spiders. Intricate figures of notes poured from his fingers, and he sang in a high clear voice, as unironically advertised, about “defiant hope.” Nearby, her back turned to the audience but her work plain to see, Elizabeth Jancewicz deftly began with a blank canvas and began painting a bird in woods. Then she set it all on fire. The people in the audience sat in near-complete silence, giving the music and the artwork all their attention. It was that kind of night at Cafe Nine, one in which the crowd gave the musicians free rein of the room, and got, in return, a show of rare intimacy.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 25, 2022 9:04 am
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Mike Scialla of T!LT.
On Sunday evening just before 7 p.m. five new bands arrived at Space Ballroom in Hamden. About three and a half hours later, the audience had seen over a dozen musicians representing the youngest generation of the area’s musicians — many of whom honed their skills during the shutdown and are now more than ready to take their place in New Haven’s music scene.
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Maya McFadden |
Oct 24, 2022 8:51 am
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Erika Zelocuatecatl: "When we get together as diverse as we are, we come as a united chorus."
Maya McFadden Photo
Career students perform "Latino Moves" at Friday's fest.
The sounds of salsa, bachata and merengue filled Hill Regional Career High School alongside a host of Spanish-language pride as staff and students celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month.
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Allison Hadley |
Oct 24, 2022 8:36 am
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Daniel Shoemaker Photos
Just how far can a groove take you? To the depths of space, to stretches of desert punctuated by towns nestled among the dunes? On Saturday at Cafe Nine, Dilemastronauta and Imarhan gave a masterclass in those kinds of grooves, courtesy of promoter Shaki Presents (Rick Omante).
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Adam Matlock |
Oct 21, 2022 8:41 am
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Joel Thompson.
The hints of boldness are scattered throughout the catalog for the New Haven Symphony Orchestra’s 2022 – 23 season. Maybe you only counted Brahms once. Beethoven three times, but two of them are concerti. You might have noticed the number of names a casual fan of the orchestra might not be as familiar with. But the boldness is especially apparent in this Sunday’s season opener, which features the New England premiere of contemporary composer Joel Thompson’s “To Awaken the Sleeper,” paired with Dmitri Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony — two works that show classical music’s ability to speak to the issues of its time.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 20, 2022 9:05 am
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June of 44.
Early in June of 44’s set, after a strenuous number, two sound tech men rushed onto the stage to reattach drummer Doug Scharin’s drum mics. Vocalist and guitarist Jeff Mueller turned around with a smile on his face. “He’s hitting the hell out of them,” he said. To Scharin directly, he said, jokingly, “what are you doing?”
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 18, 2022 9:07 am
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Olive Tiger.
“Gather,” the opening track from Olive Tiger’s latest release, Softest Eyes: Side B, is well-named. Over a bed of tremulous tones, a violin issues a call, something like a hymn. A cello responds with a message of its own. Then there’s an abrupt right turn, into crunchy electronica, hard-hitting percussion. All the elements are brought together for an emotional peak, and then a long, glitchy fall. It’s the sound of people who have done some experimentation and know what they want. It also doesn’t sound quite like anything else.
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Karen Ponzio |
Oct 17, 2022 10:45 am
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Long Wharf Theatre leaders at Audubon St. fest Saturday.
Lucy Gellman / New Haven Arts Paper photo
Bidding adieu to 222 Sargent stage on Friday.
Audubon Street burst into party mode Saturday as Long Wharf Theatre celebrated its move from a Sargent Drive stage to offices downtown — as well as the beginning of a new itinerant model of presenting works across various locations in Greater New Haven.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 13, 2022 9:04 am
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Tiny Ocean
“Culling of an Ache,” the first song from Tiny Ocean’s latest album, Shot by My Arrow, starts with a fingerpicked guitar, sketching out a harmonic structure that the rest of the band — electric guitar, bass, and drums — unexpectedly slides into. Together the three instruments create a slow, swinging sound, a little bit country, a little bit lounge, and a lot of vibe. There’s a sense of space, a tinge of menace. “There’s a red ribbon in my bedroom,” the vocalist sings. “graceful, hideous, without a face.” The lyrics paint a mysterious picture. Then the chorus opens up, following the singer’s voice: “When it’s loud,” she sings, and the music swells; “it makes me quiet,” she finishes, and the music calms. “Culling of an ache,” she adds, and the guitar responds. The music pauses, and moves on.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 10, 2022 8:32 am
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Brian Jawara Gray.
Halfway through Brian Jarawa Gray and the Healing Drum’s set at Best Video on Saturday night, the musicians had settled into a deep set of rhythms centered around three big beats. Drummer Michael Mills looked up and out into the audience. “Heartbeat! Heartbeat!” he began to chant. “Heartbeat!” The audience joined him as Mills set up a chair in front of him, facing the band, and put a drum next to it. He got someone from the audience to play it. Soon he had turned the semicircle of the band into a full ring, of moving hands, steady rhythms, and smiling faces.
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Karen Ponzio |
Oct 7, 2022 9:01 am
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Seth Adam
Seth Adam recalled the feelings that bubbled up inside of him after the release of his remastered EPEast Rock back in 2019: “I thought to myself … there’s a lot going on in the world, especially the U.S., and I was like, I have a lot to say, I have a real lot to say.” Three years later, the New Haven-based singer-songwriter is singing those words loud and clear on his latest full-length record, the energetic and emblematic Fits and Starts and Stops. Available on CD since September and released today digitally, the album features 10 songs that not only showcase Adam’s straightforward yet poetic lyrics, but also his hard-hitting and harmonious hooks. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, Adam asks his listeners to ponder what they hear.
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 6, 2022 9:05 am
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The cover for Big Wheel.
“Ghost of Fun,” the lead song from Christopher Cavaliere’s new album Big Wheel, starts off on a lope so easy and free that it takes a closer listen to appreciate the clever construction of it. There’s a guitar that draws the ear, but all around it, a organ bubbles, percussion doesn’t do quite the obvious thing. The song takes its time, building slowly but irrepressibly, pushed along by lyrics that show humor and humanity (“He prefers his drama first thing in the morning”). By the end, that lope is headed into outer space, floating off on clouds of fluttering synthesizers. We’re not going back to the beginning. Where are we headed?
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Brian Slattery |
Oct 4, 2022 8:30 am
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Rawling.
In preparing for the latest production from Madame Thalia — the Prohibition-era vaudeville show that music and theater mastermind Zohra Rawling is bringing back to Cafe Nine on Oct. 9 — Rawling thought of the last time she got to stage it in the club on State and Crown, in 2019. She ended a particular segment on a complete cliffhanger. “Tune in next time,” she recalled intoning to the crowd, only to have a member of the audience interrupt, yelling back “you monster!”; the cliffhanger was apparently too much anticipation for them to take. “I’ve done my job,” Rawling recalled thinking. “That was the best compliment I’ve ever received on stage.”
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Lindsay Skedgell |
Oct 3, 2022 8:51 am
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Through the curtain-lined doorway of Never Ending Books on Saturday night, an older woman in a blue shirt left the performance room, plugging her ears with her fingers. This reporter passed by her, going in the opposite direction. The room inside was in darkness, the sounds of metal grinding and shaping layers of noise music, echoing from a monitor on a fold-out table. Behind the table, OPCOH moved his hand along what looked to be a black electric violin, while the monitor, with wiring colored red, yellow, and blue, jutted out from the near corner of the table. His performance felt like a conjuring, what with the backdrop of wind from Hurricane Ian’s remnants picking up speed behind him. As he neared the end of his set, it sounded as if raindrops were falling from different corners of the dark room, the sound of them moving off into the distance and then disappearing.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 30, 2022 9:13 am
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Duvall.
Amanda Duvall, of the New Haven-based dance studio Baila Con Gusto, danced a solo salsa on the stage of the New Haven Green Thursday afternoon with a heady mixture of strength and grace. As the music churned out its unstoppable rhythm, a sense of joy and play surged through her, a smile never leaving her face even as the moves became more athletic. Her enthusiasm, it turned out, was contagious. Five minutes later dozens of people, adults and high schoolers alike, would join her and Baila Con Gusto co-instructor Jason Ramos in a dance and history lesson that deepened understanding as it taught steps.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 29, 2022 1:44 pm
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At one point during the first hour of the evening, a concertgoer turned to this reporter and asked, half rhetorically, “are you here for Yo La Tengo or Japanese Breakfast?” “Both” was a valid answer, as the bill at College Street Music Hall Wednesday night, uniting indie rock veterans with a recent indie favorite, brought together multiple generations of New Haven music fans and showed how two groups can arrive in the same expansive musical territory by different routes.
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Karen Ponzio |
Sep 28, 2022 8:25 am
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Leigh Busby Photo
Alexis Robbins.
Tap dance is an indelible form of American art, a practice we have all seen on screens little and big, but have you ever seen it done in a public park? And have you ever thought, “Hey, I wish I could do that?” Tap dancer and choreographer Alexis Robbins is here to tell you that you can see it and practice it, on a stage and in a park, right here in New Haven in the days and weeks to come.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 28, 2022 8:23 am
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The video for Ionne’s latest single “The Last Time” — off his new album Fracture — sends the viewer into a spiral from the start. When the camera finally stops spinning, it’s still moving, and there is Ionne himself, singing into the darkness on a beach, a crashed spaceship behind him. “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,” he sings. It’s a melody about loss, but the music isn’t about giving up. It’s about falling down and getting up again, of finding the strength to start something new.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 27, 2022 8:24 am
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Ninja Brian, a.k.a Brian Wecht, stood on the stage of Cafe Nine Monday night without uttering a single word, communicating with the audience only through a poorly constructed PowerPoint presentation, bodily gestures, and flashing eyes. “Hello,” the first card read, as if warming up the crowd. A few other typical pleasantries followed. Then: “I will kill you all after the show.” The full house assembled for the show dissolved in laughter.
