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Three Bands Raise Funds And Roof For DESK

by | Oct 25, 2024 8:53 am | Comments (0)

At the beginning of a night of music at Three Sheets on Elm Street on Thursday, Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) volunteer Andrew Zumwalt-Hathaway lauded both New Haven’s musicians and DESK as two ingredients that make the Elm City great. He noted that volunteering for DESK has become ​“one of the most fulfilling parts of my life.” 

“Now,” he said, ​“let’s rock.”

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Blue Bill Keeps Best Video Cool

by | Oct 24, 2024 10:36 am | Comments (0)

Karen Ponzio Photos.

Goodnight Blue Moon

As the outside temperature last night stayed a bit warmer than your typical October, inside Best Video the atmosphere was super cool, and not just because the AC was on. Two bands — Portland, Ore.’s Blue Darling and New Haven’s own Goodnight Blue Moon — made Wednesday more celebratory than just the halfway point to the weekend with their sweet harmonies, lush melodies, and lyrical loveliness. 

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Musical Acts Buzz The Stacks

by | Oct 15, 2024 9:24 am | Comments (0)

Dan Greene, sometimes of the Mountain Movers, cast a dislocating spell on a rapt audience at the Institute Library Saturday night, with a tremolo guitar and his echo-drenched voice. He was singing a song about a usual habit, of meeting friends downtown and hanging out in parking lots. But one night, he sang, ​“was different because / I didn’t know where I was.” The eerie sense of unease tipped into the surreal. ​“We all turned into birds / and flew over the town / we turned back into wolves / when we touched the ground.” Had they been wolves all along?

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Three New Albums Put The Heart On The Line

by | Oct 9, 2024 8:42 am | Comments (0)

Anna Webber Photo

Christian Sands.

“Good Morning Heartache,” the opening track on Christian Sands’s latest album, Embracing Dawn, begins with a warm, gently unfolding gesture from the piano, an easing into consciousness. But then there’s an insistent ping from somewhere else. Something’s off, something’s wrong. A beat settles in, heavy and lethargic, with strings adding extra weight. It’s an exploration of a state of mind, in which maybe everything will be okay in time — but it’s not okay now.

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Cornet-Piano Duo Frees Up The Space

by | Sep 30, 2024 8:37 am | Comments (0)

Kelly Jensen Photo

Taylor Ho Bynum.

Cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum smiled from the stage at Firehouse 12 Friday night, explaining how good it was to be back there. ​“I cannot imagine my life without it,” he said, from his collaborations with Anthony Braxton to his numerous performances there with other groups. On Friday, however, he was there with UK-based pianist Alexander Hawkins, as part of the Crown Street bar- recording studio-performance space’s fall jazz series, running now into December.

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Deerlady Distills The Rage

by | Sep 23, 2024 9:12 am | Comments (0)

Magdalena Abrego crouched over her pedalboard Sunday evening at Never Ending Books on State Street, and unleashed a lush, complex soundscape, a series of guitar-made tones layered over one another, now vibrating together.

As the sounds continued pulsing around her, she began to play simple chords, laying down a rhythm, a chord progression. On the downbeat, Mali Obomsawin and Willis Edmundson joined Abrego. The soundscape switched off in a second, and the band — Deerlady — sounded, suddenly, like a rock band. But the impression was left, and a point made, that the trio was drawing from a broad musical vocabulary. Which made sense; the last time Abrego, Obomsawin, and opener Allison Burik were in town, in May 2023, they were playing music that brought together elements of traditional Abenaki song and free jazz at Firehouse 12. Deerlady deployed a different sound, but still had the same searching sensibility.

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The Fiddler Was Playing -- & Praying

by | Sep 20, 2024 9:42 am | Comments (0)

Paul Bass photo

Austin Scelzo and fiddle at WNHH FM.

Austin Scelzo hit the two bottom strings of his violin, struck a couple higher notes, launched a high-lonesome lament that seemed to stretch back eight decades to rural Appalachia.

Trouble in my soul
I know it’s wrong
But it’s feeling so good …

Did Bill Monroe originally sing this? Was it a gospel number repurposed for bluegrass barn dances? It sounded as though it leaped from an old vinyl 78, minus the scratches.

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Gogol Bordello Unleashes Positive Fury

by | Sep 16, 2024 10:09 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photos

Gogol Bordello.

In an election cycle marked by acrimony and fractious divisiveness, the music at Toad’s on Friday — featuring international punk band Gogol Bordello, supported by label mates Puzzled Panther and Crazy and the Brains — amounted to a ragged, full-throated cry for action and greater community, with a sharp edge.

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Time Has Told: These Hoodies Are A Hit

by | Sep 9, 2024 11:56 am | Comments (3)

Courtesy of Josh McCown

Time A Tell's Josh McCown in action with Moroccan-born American rapper French Montana at Oakdale Theatre.

Jayce Greene, 10, and his mother pushed through the door of Time A Tell, the clothing store and smoke shop at 1700 Dixwell Ave. He was looking for a Time A Tell hoodie.

“All the kids on my team are wearing them,” said Jayce, a student at Worthington-Hooker School and member of the Elm City Elite basketball team, as owner Joshua McCown brought out a selection of sizes and colors in the high-ceilinged, warmly-lit space. ​“They’re all over New Haven,” his mother added.

That’s an index of the quantum leap that McCown, 20, has taken in the two years since opening his shop with a mission to leverage his eye for fashion into being his own boss and realizing financial freedom.

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CT Folk Festival Bridges The Generations

by | Sep 9, 2024 8:38 am | Comments (1)

Brian Slattery Photos

Leyla McCalla.

A flurry of rainstorms throughout the afternoon on Saturday didn’t keep the CT Folk Festival and Green Expo out of Edgerton Park — nor did it keep stalwart listeners away, to hear from some of the finest voices of two different generations of artists upholding traditions and carrying them ably through the present and into the future.

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Rocking Out While The Sun's Still Out

by | Aug 30, 2024 9:39 am | Comments (0)

Marisa Torrieri photo

Jammin out at Cafe 9 on a Sunday afternoon.

Turkey Vulture — a metal/punk duo of Milford-based couple Jessie May (vocals, guitar) and Jim Clegg (drums) — typically spend Sunday afternoons entertaining their two toddler sons. So when May growled into the mic and ripped into a distorted-guitar riff at Cafe Nine on a recent Sunday afternoon in early August, it felt wholly cathartic.

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State House Compilation In The Works

by | Aug 28, 2024 9:47 am | Comments (0)

Local rapper Ceschi, to be featured in State House compilation.

The State House may be closed — but its music lives on, in recordings made of a wealth of live performances that happened during the much-loved former venue’s five-year run.

Former co-owner Carlos Wells has a plan to release some of those recordings via a digital compilation featuring four Connecticut artists — in what he hopes will be the first in a series that documents the vast array of local, national, and international acts that left their mark on the Elm City at the now-shuttered State Street spot.

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Three Albums Welcome The Young Guard

by | Aug 27, 2024 9:23 am | Comments (0)

Short chords from electric piano and synthesizer set the mood, contemplative but with a pulse. ​“Estoy aquí / ya estuve allá / ya fui feliz / y acaba mal,” Ene de Nadie croons — ​“I’m here / I was already there / I was already happy / it ends badly” — as the beat drops. The lyrics are full of longing and regret, while the music pulses on, the kind of song you can dance and cry to.

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HeArts For Justice Puts Youth First

by | Aug 26, 2024 9:15 am | Comments (1)

Leo Slattery Photos

Thirty vendors in a crescent surrounded a central green area. From the stage, a rotating selection of spoken word, music, and dancing was interspersed with an ongoing set from DJ Tunes. Off to the side of the stage, activities and crafts were available, including free tie-dyeing and a community banner. People of all ages darted around, chatting with vendors or people they recognized.

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Snake Hill Blues Gets Gritty

by | Aug 15, 2024 1:43 pm | Comments (0)

For the first time, WNHH’s Tuesdays @ the Mediterranea Cafe concert series featured a saxophone, a harmonica, and a golden trumpet — though the last wasn’t making any sound.

That didn’t keep Snake Hill Blues lead singer Vaughn Collins from taking the miniature instrument from around his neck, pressing his fingers to the keys, and letting the imaginary horn blare among the real, rightly-sized instruments surrounding him.

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Weird Music Night Says “Hellooo!”

by | Aug 9, 2024 9:26 am | Comments (0)

Eleanor Polak photo

The Chomins at Weird Music Night.

“Hellooo!” called out John O’Donnell, in an exaggerated, almost Cookie-Monster-like voice.

“Hellooo!” called back the crowd, matching his energy and tone. It was weird, wacky, and wildly entertaining, setting the tone for Weird Music Night, a monthly event at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art on Trumbull Street. Attending the event felt like walking through a cabinet of curiosities, as the audience shifted from room to room and experienced a series of acts that were as odd as they were incredible.

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