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Karen Ponzio |
Oct 4, 2021 8:23 am
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Space Camp.
Friday marked the start of live shows at The State House after a year and a half of Covid closures and restrictions. The venue, which had been allowing a few closed-to-the-public events, such as livestreams and video shoots, reconvened with a three-band bill that reenergized the space as well as the music community, who gathered with masks on and space between them, but still as one with an intention to celebrate.
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Karen Ponzio |
Sep 30, 2021 7:58 am
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Pond View.
Holberton School was the place to warm up on a chilly Wednesday night as local rockers Pond View took to the stage for the latest District Arts and Education livestream show.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 29, 2021 7:53 am
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The New Haven Chorale at rehearsal Monday — in person!
As the sun set Monday evening, dozens of people began to congregate in the parking lot of the Unitarian Society on Hartford Turnpike in Hamden. They brought lawn chairs, sheet music, folders, and clip-on lights. On the stairs at the entrance to the building, New Haven Chorale Music Director Edward Bolkovac stood behind a small podium, a score in front of him, a microphone in his hand. Accompanist Blake Hansen sat behind a keyboard near him. In front of him, a camera was ready to Zoom everything. The New Haven Chorale was ready for outdoor rehearsal.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 28, 2021 7:33 am
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In the past few weeks, three New Haven-based musical projects have unleashed three new albums that answer the mentality of the pandemic’s lockdown with a keen sense of freedom.
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Karen Ponzio |
Sep 20, 2021 8:08 am
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Still from “Skin.”
Black Haven Film Festival returned on Saturday for its second year, with five new filmmakers ready to share their vision via spoken word, song, dance, and animation — both in person and online.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 20, 2021 8:05 am
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Seated on the Best Video deck Sunday evening, Mamady Kouyate reached behind him to trigger a tight, intricate loop of drums and synthesized backup. The loops offered harmonic and rhythmic structure, but no sway. That was the humans’ job. Ousmane Kouyate on rhythm guitar and Jocelyn Pleasant on djembe breathed velocity and relaxation into the music, falling in with the programmed elements and bringing them all to life. Now Mamady stood up, and in the light of the setting sun, brought cascades of keening notes, intricate rhythmic figures, idea after idea, speaking of aching joy.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 17, 2021 9:01 am
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Bob Gorry starts “Javelina.” from GoBruCcio — the latest release from the New Haven Improvisers Collective — with a statement from his guitar that’s somewhere between the blues, punk, and free jazz. Pete Riccio on drums finds his way in fast, suggesting a hip-swinging groove that Pete Brunelli on bass catches at once. Within a minute the trio are off and building momentum, making their improvisation into a lurching dance that, a minute later, they’re already taking apart, moving into another set of rhythmic and harmonic ideas.
Kica Matos and Moviemiento Cultural lead a bomba drum circle …
… as neighbors “reclaim” the parking lot in front of Grand Cafe.
Cafe owner Jose Rivera watches protest with patron Julian Welch.
With wooden drums, lawn chairs, free pizza and board games, 30 Fair Haven neighbors “reclaimed” the parking lot outside of Grand Cafe — in a grassroots effort to calm a violent hotspot.
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Karen Ponzio |
Sep 15, 2021 8:20 am
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Shamarr Allen
Can you start celebrating the weekend on a Tuesday? You could if you were at Cafe Nine last night. Two acts got the crowd energized enough to make it seem as if it were much later in the week than it actually was, with music that made you move.
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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.
by
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.
by
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.”
