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Brian Slattery |
Sep 15, 2021 8:07 am
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Kang.
Without warning, pianist Min Young Kang laid into the keys to declare the opening figure to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor. The players in the Ulysses Quartet — sharing the stage with her at First Presbyterian Church on Whitney Avenue Tuesday evening — followed with choral declarations of their own. Ideas flowed one into the other from there, passed from instrument to instrument until it all came together in a sweeping, heroic theme that fell into an aching fugue.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 13, 2021 8:08 am
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Sage.
Rachael Sage flashed the audience at Never Ending Books a wide smile. “What a revelation to be here performing for human beings in person,” she said. Like several other recent touring musicians visiting New Haven recently, Sage remarked that this was among the first times she had performed live for people, after months and months of livestreaming.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 9, 2021 6:42 am
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Posen.
Ariel Posen — acclaimed guitar hero on tour from Canada — had something to say near the beginning of his set at Cafe Nine Wednesday.
“This is equally amazing and equally strange,” he said. “Something you do pretty regularly for kind of forever stops for what feels like forever … then we’re expected to just jump back into it like nothing happened.”
He smiled.
“It wouldn’t feel like it used to if it wasn’t for you guys, so give yourselves a round of applause.”
The packed audience of entirely masked people clapped their hands. At a show at which proof of vaccination was required at the door and wearing a mask was the rule, Posen and the Connecticut-based Joey Wit and the Definition served up two sets of guitar music straight from the heart.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 7, 2021 7:19 am
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“September,” the lead track from Youth XL’s new EPSocial Creature, starts with a whine of feedback and a scream of “let’s go!” before the song struts into its open figures, all cylinders firing. The energy of the song, however, can’t hide the cleverness of the songwriting. As the song — “about breaking up and floundering around in the nostalgia of past relationships,” the liner notes reveal — moves through its middle section, positively Beatlesque backing vocals rise and fall and the chord structures get knotty, mirroring the emotional maze the singer is lost in.
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Karen Ponzio |
Sep 3, 2021 7:55 am
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Durden gets ready to record Jefferson and Thabisa’s conversation.
District on James Street was the scene Thursday night of the official launch of Space Studios, the brainchild of videographer and entrepreneur Donnell Durden. Durden is hoping to provide the physical space and equipment — as well as the spark and support — for creatives to make their mark in the world of music, photography, videos, and more.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 1, 2021 7:12 am
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Dawn Tallman.
The International Festival of Arts and Ideas is taking over the New Haven Green again — for Labor Day weekend. The event, called “Vaccination & Vibes,” will feature two evenings of music, dance, and poetry that draw from talent in New Haven and elsewhere. It marks the A&I organization’s continued work in creating deeper connections with the New Haven community than it has in the past. Under the direction of Executive Director Shelley Quiala — who last August took the reins from co-directors Liz Fisher and Tom Griggs — the Labor Day weekend events are also A&I’s very public foray into throwing events outside of June, and even outside of the May-June summer programming it held this year.
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Sam Carlson |
Aug 31, 2021 7:20 am
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Noah Silvestry struck the opening chords of the song “Ancient” in front of a rapt crowd at Cafe Nine, signaling both the start of the show and the first-ever live appearance by his band, Luke Ellingson. Silvestry, a Pennsylvania native, moved to New Haven for school and has made his way into the local music scene recording at his home studio in Wooster Square under the Luke Ellingson moniker. His most recent release, Clementine, is out now on the Connecticut-based label Funnybone.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 30, 2021 10:17 am
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“Summer Song” — the first song from Past Midnight, the latest EP from the New Haven-based band Arms Like Roses — earns its title from its opening guitar lines, sunny, chiming, and intertwining. The vocal climbs through them: “Time flies with a blink of an eye / And a whisper that reminds you it’s cold outside / Again, not again,” the vocalist sings. As percussion enters, adding urgency, the whole band digs deeper into the late-summer vibe, the kind that’s the most poignant for how truly fleeting it is.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 24, 2021 10:20 am
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To longtime fans of New Haven rap icon Steven Williams, a.k.a. Stezo, who died in April 2020 at the age of 52, the voice from his 1996 song “Where the Funk At” is instantly recognizable, the flow easy yet urgent. But so much else has changed: the sound and pattern of the drums, the introduction of a bubbling organ part, and perhaps most poignant, a chant at the beginning of the song: “Clap your hands for Steven,” they say. “It’s all right.”
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Karen Ponzio |
Aug 20, 2021 8:15 am
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Mightymoonchew.
Thursday night’s music bill on the Best Video deck in Hamden began under an ominous umbrella of dark clouds and ended in a burst of sunshine and blue, all to the soundtrack of two New Haven-based bands.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 18, 2021 7:47 am
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“Harder Than It Should Be,” the latest single from Goodnight Moonshine — the New Haven-based duo of Molly Venter and Eben Pariser — starts with a cooing, provocative line from Venter while Pariser joins on guitar. It’s a simple setup that lets the song unfold in its own time, as Pariser gradually adds in other elements while Venter’s voice, front and center, unfurls lyrics range across the history of a relationship and politics, striking just the right balance of personal and universal.
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Natalie Kainz |
Aug 15, 2021 12:17 pm
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Natasha and Naomy Velez at Saturday’s fest.
Natasha and Naomy Velez flew across the stage, shaking their white skirts to the rhythmic beat of a barriles drum. The twin sisters were performing the Bomba — a traditional dance from Puerto Rico — in front of more than 100 people Saturday in Criscuolo Park.
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Maya McFadden |
Aug 12, 2021 12:59 pm
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Rapper G Herbo performs for fans at Westville Bowl Wednesday night.
The Chicago rapper known as G Herbo used to come to New Haven as a teen to kick start his music career. He returned to town as the headliner for a free full-capacity hip-hop show for pandemic-weary city youth, a summer celebration of community at the Westville Bowl.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 12, 2021 9:02 am
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Rich Moran and his band had already swung through way through the classics “Let’s Fall in Love” and “Getting to Know You” when he addressed the audience directly. “Thank you for being here. We are so happy to be here, finally.”
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 11, 2021 9:43 am
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Loralee and Bruce Crowder.
A new documentary from Gorman Bechard, the New Haven Documentary Film Festival’s executive director, sparked a gathering of New Haven musicians who came together to pay tribute to a departed rock icon at Cafe Nine Tuesday night.
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Lisa Reisman |
Aug 10, 2021 7:08 pm
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Rocky Lawrence channels Robert Johnson at Monday night’s Hi-Fi Pie.
He bowed his head, closed his eyes, and clutched the neck of his guitar. His faded leather shoes pounded the ground. His voice broke. His guitar moaned.
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Sophie Sonnenfeld |
Aug 10, 2021 11:54 am
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Sophie Sonnenfeld photo
Gamaliel “Gammy” Moses performs at festival’s first week.
Newhallville neighbors gathered at the Learning Corridor Saturday afternoon to enjoy jazz, art, and an interactive drum circle, for the first week of a concert series that is scheduled to run through September.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 4, 2021 9:29 am
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“Brightest and Best,” the lead single from Joshua Banbury’s and Kevin Sherwin’s Forgotten Folklore, starts with the crackle of a record, a wash of strings that evokes wide open spaces, before settling into a sparse, urgent guitar pattern, a voice hovering somewhere between a warble and a chant.
“Hail the blest morn, when the great Mediator / Down from the regions of glory descends,” the singer intones. “Shepherds, go worship the babe in the manger / Lo, for His guard, the bright angels attends,” the singer intones. It’s a prayer of hope, but the music suggests something more complex, elements of fear and awe.
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 3, 2021 9:10 am
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Olive Tiger.
“The Boys,” from Olive Tiger’s latest release, Softest Eyes: Side A, starts off with a growling drone, a pulse, and then pounding drums, the kind of beat that can make people put down their drinks in a club, get up, and swing their hips to. The vocal wastes no time to come in, with a message to deliver: “Why don’t the boys paint their faces? / My mother laughed and called it ‘war paint’ / Pink pepper spray on a keychain / My father gave me mace for Christmas / Because he loves me.” On that last line, the guitar lets it rip, noise rattles in the distance. The voice has more to say, as a organ joins the sound, filling it out. “Why are the boys taught survival? / All I got was that friendship bracelet / Homework to draw a pretty tiger / I quit the Girl Scouts from that assignment / Because I love me.”
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Brian Slattery |
Aug 2, 2021 9:34 am
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Two New Haven-based bands — Love ‘N Co. and Thabisa — brought groove and growth to Cafe Nine on Friday night, as both made music that nourished heads, hearts, and feet.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 29, 2021 8:32 am
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Ferrer.
Fernandito Ferrer began the last song of his set Wednesday night with a shaker that he fanned in the air in front of the microphone. His pedal captured the sound. He added whistles uncannily like bird calls, a falling chain that sounded like rain. Then he began playing the guitar and lifting his voice. By the end he had built the song into cascading waves of sound that entranced the full house that had come to Cafe Nine to hear music — and he, humbly, was the opening act.
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Brian Slattery |
Jul 28, 2021 9:53 am
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The song “Go Down Moses” may be familiar, but the New Haven-based Afro-Semitic Experience’s take on it isn’t. It starts with the rhythms, stretching through the Caribbean and back to West Africa, the sense of the interlocking drums propelling everything. And above the impassioned vocals, there’s a trumpet drenched in effects, creating its own small universe of sound. It feels new but drenched in history — which is fitting for Freedom Seder, the Afro-Semitic Experience’s latest album and one that has a history of its own.
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Natalie Kainz |
Jul 27, 2021 9:34 am
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Natalie Kainz
The Nields in Westville on Monday.
Sending folk harmonies and bluegrass tunes out onto the grassy slope behind Mitchell Branch Library, folk-rock band The Nields became a part of the Westville community on Monday afternoon.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jul 26, 2021 9:02 am
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Jazz on the patio at The Orchid Cafe
Brunch is one of the most celebrated meals in this city, and the brunches that include jazz are particularly revered. This reporter decided it was time to revisit three of them: one that had recently restarted, one that was a limited-run event, and one that had been ongoing for the past year.
