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Brian Slattery |
Jun 21, 2024 8:17 am
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Haitian-American band Jo. L. & Friends started their Thursday evening set on the Green with a barrage of drums, tight and pounding beats. An hour and a half later, the Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha announced its presence on the stage by ripping out rhythms on multiple drums.
Both musical gestures had the same effect. They were calls to gather. They set the tone for each band’s set. And they were a promise, that each band would stir the feet and heart, even as the sources of their musical traditions were over 5,000 miles apart.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 19, 2024 9:18 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
Shrapknel.
Dying in hospice. Shedding the uniform known as your body. Name-checking Milford. All these topics and more flew through bar after bar of hip hop, as six acts from near and far burned through their sets to the delight of a good-sized audience who had come to hear them at Cafe Nine.
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Eleanor Polak |
Jun 18, 2024 9:17 am
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What would you do to keep your reality intact? This was the question posed by composer, conductor, and jazz pianist Kevin Harris to a crowd of hundreds gathered in the Beinecke Library on Monday. By the light of illuminated bookshelves, New Haveners gathered to share in a musical and educational experience, inspired by the work of writer and activist James Baldwin and part of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
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Eleanor Polak |
Jun 17, 2024 1:26 pm
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Eamon Linehan (Free Artist Production)
Wadada Leo Smith: “I was born in Mississippi where the sunrise comes out of the ground."
Creative Musicians Improvisors Forum (CMIF) co-founder Wadada Leo Smith kept the audience at Firehouse 12 on Saturday enraptured as he detailed a life rooted in musical history, from Mississippi to California to Chicago to Europe to New Haven.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jun 17, 2024 9:20 am
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Reena Esmail.
A tapping of a tabla, a voice lifting up Hindi poetry, a striking of a cymbal, a chorale joined in harmony: all came together to evoke the image of water and the multitude of ways it affects our lives in Reena Esmail’s Malhaar: A Requiem for Water, performed at Albert Arnold Sprague Memorial Hall early Saturday evening as part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 17, 2024 9:17 am
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A pairing of two bands steeped in traditional music — Cécilia and the Ebony Hillbillies — showed the ways in which having deep roots in a particular musical style can lead to grounded explorations elsewhere, while also getting audiences out of their chairs and onto their dancing feet, during a Sunday afternoon concert on the Green as part of the opening weekend of Arts & Ideas.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 14, 2024 9:23 am
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Brightening the dark at Never Ending Books.
Stan Nishimura announced his entrance with a fanfare from his trombone. Paul McGuire, on saxophone, answered with a wail. For a moment they made a game of matching notes and unmatching them. Then they moved into playing off one another, supporting one another, but breathing together, starting and ending their phrases together, turning the movement of air in and out of their lungs into their own rhythm section.
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Thomas Breen |
Jun 13, 2024 12:27 pm
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Chia-Yu Joy Lu bowed a pastoral landscape into being — a gently sloping grassy expanse with a big sky and low horizon — when, suddenly, her right hand let loose a run of clipped, staccato notes, horses’ hooves running wild across the Green.
Lu offered that transporting musical experience for several dozen onlookers Thursday morning during a press conference celebrating Friday’s start of the 29th annual International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 13, 2024 9:06 am
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Rocking hard from Australia to Hamden.
“Is anyone in love in the audience?” G Flip asked the packed house at a sold-out show at Space Ballroom on Wednesday night. There were a few vigorous nods, and then someone said the obvious; they were in love with G Flip.
“Thank you for coming!” G Flip said.
“Thank you for being here!” the audience member responded.
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Mark Oppenheimer |
Jun 10, 2024 9:54 am
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John Kritzman Photo
Bleachers.
Milling around the floor-level seating area at the Westville Music Bowl on Friday night, I had no particular idea what I was in for. I had come to review a show by Bleachers, the six-piece band conceived, fronted, conducted, and in every way emceed by Jack Antonoff, the producer and songwriter responsible for approximately 63.4 percent of the songs inflicted on me by Top 40 radio, including large chunks of the catalogues of Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Lorde, Kendrick Lamar, and Carly Rae Jepsen. He is also an alumnus of the band Fun. (period intended), for whom he co-wrote the unbelievably catchy 2012 song “Some Nights.”
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Eleanor Polak |
Jun 10, 2024 9:41 am
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Eleanor Polak photos
Lynette Devore and Lisa Bellamy Fluker (below) at Riverfest.
The June sunlight sparkled off the smooth waters of the Quinnipiac River beside the Quinnipiac River Marina in Fair Haven, where people of all ages gathered to participate in the Quinnipiac Riverfest this Saturday.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jun 10, 2024 9:34 am
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Robert Eddy Photo
Composer Gwyneth Walker.
Sunday afternoon saw a wealth of appreciative music fans fill Woolsey Hall for the New Haven Chorale’s season finale that was also part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. Its program filled heads and hearts with a resplendent array of selections that focused on fond memories, gratitude for those memories as well as the present moment, and an offering of comfort and peace for those of us in the here and now, even as we grapple with grief and pain.
Wally's Teo Hernandez, Lucas Hernandez, and Alex Blair perform at WNHH FM.
“Everything’s meant to be broken / Everything’s meant to pass …”
Alex Blair wrote those words back in junior high or high school; he’s not sure of the exact year, but he knows his heart was broken.
A decade or so later, he was singing those words with brothers Teo and Lucas Hernandez, sliding into pitch-perfect harmony they’ve honed since those school days.
After singing the chorus to the song, called “Hiding Behind The Moon,” Blair, on his Ovation guitar, and Teo, on his Martin, added a newfound twist: a chromatic descent influenced by Blair’s newfound interest in Bossa Nova music.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 5, 2024 9:19 am
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Chloe.
Chloe, of the Hartford-based band Cvmrats, told stories about deceased friends and the difficulties of being mistaken for a train hopper, but everyone at Cafe Nine on Tuesday night knew the reason she — and all of them — were there. As the State Street club listed it, “on behalf of Chloe from Cvmrats, we are hosting a benefit show for her mom. All door proceeds are going to help support her current financial hardships and make a tough situation into hopefully something better.” As Chloe had posted on Instagram, the proceeds would “help my mom get back into stable housing” and “a better situation in general.”
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Eleanor Polak |
Jun 3, 2024 8:16 am
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Aly Maderson Quinlog and Ty/Tyasha Pace at Pride Center's Zine Fair.
The New Haven Pride Center at 50 Orange St. was decked out this Saturday with colorful flags and even more colorful artwork.
Magik Press, a micro-press and arts studio run by Aly Maderson Quinlog and Ty/Tyasha Pace, was hosting its first-ever zine party and punk show. It was an event, the two stressed, about community, and the community was out in full force, from the vendors showcasing their creativity to the buyers eager to share in it.
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Eleanor Polak |
Jun 3, 2024 8:14 am
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Ponybird & Co.
The music room in Never Ending Books at 810 State St. was cluttered but homey. A collage of brightly-colored abstract art and painted records decorated the walls, which were lined by well-worn musical instruments. It recalled a grandparent’s house, a place where one might go to hear wise truths and rambling stories. On Friday night, two groups of musical storytellers gave the audience just that.
Messer Chups performing this weekend in New Haven.
Spooky sounds emanated from Cafe Nine Saturday night. Instead of sending shivers up spines, it kept a crowd smiling and shuffling from side to side for a nonstop hour.
Armando Acevedo clicked on a file from his phone. He unrolled a taped-together 10-page scroll. He started rapping the printed lyrics, summoning the insights of a noted 20th century Swiss psychologist married to 21st century beats.
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Eleanor Polak |
May 28, 2024 8:32 am
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Dan Soto performs "Deep Dark Heart."
Best Video Film & Cultural Center was alight on Friday night with movies, music, and general merriment. Three acts — Dan Soto’s Natural Fool, Katy Pinke, and Sallow Friend — performed live music to a crowd of 30 to 40 people, sandwiched together between shelves of video tapes. Before the night was over, the walls would seem to shake with the combined sound of instruments, vocals, and thunderous applause.
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Brian Slattery |
May 24, 2024 9:26 am
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Allie Bee stood in front of an admiring audience in the downstairs space of Westville’s Third Space. Tracks they’d made themself played behind them as they took their time unfurling melodies they’d written on bass. The first one, groovy, insistent, they said, was called “Wayward Giant.” The second one, hazier and jazzier, was called “Blue Moon,” named after a smoothie of the same name that they’d made at work.
“Inspiration comes in weird places,” they said.
An enthusiastic voice came from the back: “Yeah it does!”
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Brian Slattery |
May 21, 2024 9:16 am
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City of Meriden.
New Haven-based artist Michael Miglietta has a visual style that leans into the surreal and the cosmic, creating dizzying, shape-shifting images with bold linework and vivid color. Under the moniker Parlay Droner, he’s also an experimental musician, exploring the harsher edges of sound. For a show of his artwork at the Cellar on Treadwell in Hamden, however, he faced a more pragmatic problem: “What do I have to do to get people to see a great band from Ireland on a Monday night?”
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Brian Slattery |
May 20, 2024 9:06 am
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Still from video for "My Holy Shrine."
A chiming guitar, light percussion from bongos, an ambling bass, a laconic vocal describing a trip down a city street evocative enough that one can visualize the dim sulphur lights, shadows shortening and lengthening as the voyage proceeds. The journey begun, a wavering, fuzzed-out guitar strides onto the scene, taking its time to develop its ideas. The second guitar switches to a fuzz of its own, and together they take the song farther out. Another vocal break, this one taking things in a more surreal direction. “The sun shines on the moon,” two voices sing, and the band keeps going, keeps searching.
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Brian Slattery |
May 17, 2024 9:42 am
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Trashing Violet; "Put your earplugs in deep."
Marisa B. of Trashing Violet was nearing the end of her set, but in another sense, she and her band were just getting warmed up. “Put your earplugs in deep. You’ve been warned,” she said, as the band tore into its most visceral original yet, a song that started and ended with screams that the audience couldn’t help but respond to in kind.
