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Brian Slattery |
Jun 24, 2019 7:24 am
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On Sunday night, Paul Flaherty, on alto saxophone, began with nervous, fluttering arpeggios. Chris Corsano on drums and Zach Rowden on double bass fell in with a slow, purposeful beat. Mette Rasmussen, also on alto saxophone, bided her time, and then entered. Together, she and Flaherty held a melody, building energy that all four musicians then unleashed. Flaherty, Corsano, and Rowden took off, grinding out a fleet, chaotic rhythm. Rasmussen’s sax soared over the top.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jun 18, 2019 8:30 am
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Pentagram.
“Man, it doesn’t feel like a Monday,” said vocalist Jack Rune of Bone Church, the opening act of a three-band bill at The State House. Legendary metal band Pentagram made a stop in the city along with local heroes Bone Church and Lord Fowl. The room was packed and abuzz from moment one. Even the people standing outside waiting to get in were as hyped up as if it was a Friday instead.
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Daniel Shoemaker |
Jun 17, 2019 7:51 am
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“I told New York last night, ‘I am going to my favorite place tomorrow.’” An early intimation of love from Cheick Hamala Diabate to his rapt audience Friday evening at the State House. “I love Connecticut. We had so much fun last time. This time we have more instruments to make it more fun for you.”
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 14, 2019 7:34 am
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Puma Simone.
At the beginning of Puma Simone’s set during a three-act bill at Cafe Nine on Thursday night, she and the club’s sound engineer carefully worked out how to properly amplify one of the club’s tables, which she had brought on stage. In just a few minutes, Simone would play it like a drum. Very soon after that, someone from the audience would take over for her.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 12, 2019 1:00 pm
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Western Centuries; Jim Miller at left.
As a veteran musician in a young band, Jim Miller knows what it’s like when things come full circle, yet are new at the same time. So it will be when his current band, Western Centuries, arrives at Cafe Nine on Friday to play in the town that helped turn him on to the music he loved decades ago.
A Boston-based developer has closed on its purchase of the 335-unit, mixed-use complex that anchors the Ninth Square, thereby preserving over half of the buildings’ apartments as affordable in exchange for a 20-year tax break.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jun 3, 2019 7:34 am
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“Do you know any places where I can listen to the blues?” my best friend Deborah Ranilla asked me a few weeks back.
Funny you should ask, I told her, because I had stopped by The State House just a couple of weeks before on a Sunday to check out their monthly blues show, but I had only caught the tail end of it and wanted to return.
Deb and I have been best friends since our childhood in East Haven, and we have had our share of late nights out in the New Haven (most of them would be considered off the record), but times and lives change, and we had not been to a show here just the two of us in many many years. We made plans to go to the next State House blues show, which happened to be last night. I told her to come hungry because not only would there be music, but there would also be food.
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Daniel Shoemaker |
May 31, 2019 12:28 pm
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“Dude, that rhythm section is pretty great!” I overheard as the Haitian band RAM fired through its first rounds of mizik rasin, a brew of vodou and good old rock ‘n’ roll.
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Karen Ponzio |
May 31, 2019 7:33 am
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Killer Kin
New Haven was experiencing its third night in a row of torrential rain, and the streets were pretty quiet for a Thursday, but the sounds inside of Cafe Nine more than made up for the gray and gloom surrounding it. Presented by Please Kill Me, a website based around the works of authors Legs McNeil and Gilllan McCain and dedicated to culture and entertainment, from music and art to books and movies, the night’s inaugural show featured the debut of a local band and a return of a legend.
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Brian Slattery |
May 24, 2019 7:40 am
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Erin Lee Antonak
Sky Woman, Relative(ity), and Cosmic Joke.
The works on the wall are made of bright concentric rings, like tree trunks or onions, but also like astronomical objects, orbits. They’re things to enter, things to fall into. There’s a sound in the room, faraway and soothing, and there’s something different even about the air of the room. It’s hard to place exactly how it all adds up, but it does. And the overall effect is that rare thing in today’s politically charged art world: It’s soothing. Which is all the more impressive when you discover that there’s meaning behind the solace.
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Brian Slattery |
May 22, 2019 7:38 am
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Bernadette Despujols
Bimbo Chair 1 and I Chose Not to Be a Mom Chair.
Two chairs face each other in the window of Artspace’s gallery on the corner of Orange and Crown. One is interwoven with hair. The other one is occupied by an enormous, amorphous pink blob. In another part of the gallery is a schematic of the plans highway developers really had for the city of New Haven decades ago — plans they may well have implemented if the federal funds hadn’t run out.
The chair and the highway plans are connected. How?
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Allison Hadley |
May 16, 2019 12:18 pm
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Los Mirlos.
Ah, the sounds of the Amazon. Leaves swaying. Birds chirping. Monkeys calling. Driving percussion. Psychedelic guitar. Heels hitting the hardwood floor of the State House on Wednesday night: With its sonido amazonico, the legendary Peruvian band Los Mirlos took New Haven on a special journey.
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Adam Matlock |
May 13, 2019 7:15 am
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Peter Ganushkin Photo
There’s an austerity to the music of Fly or Die, the quartet led by trumpeter Jaimie Branch. The band’s second set at Firehouse 12 on Friday night was cinematic, about 50 minutes in length, during which they displayed a wide scope of expression. Whether fluidly navigating between open spaces for part or all of the band, or playing pieces with tight grooves and prominent vocals and lyrics by the leader, the music felt grounded and present throughout, displaying a sense of trust between the members — and a puckish sense of humor.
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Brian Slattery |
May 10, 2019 7:25 am
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The Drawbar.
Nick Lloyd looked out from the seat of his Hammond organ to the full house that had come to Cafe Nine to hear The Drawbar — Lloyd, guitarist George Baker, and drummer Sam Oliver III — play together in public, as a trio, for the very first time.
“We’re just going to start playing,” Lloyd said, “and then we’ll talk about it later.”
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Karen Ponzio |
May 7, 2019 11:51 am
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TEEN
As she took some time to tune her guitar between songs, Danielle Capalbo of daniprobably told the audience Monday night at Cafe Nine, “TEEN is so great and they’re really fun. We are all going to figure this out together.” She received a few shouts of yes right back at her from the crowd.
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Adam Matlock |
Apr 24, 2019 7:01 am
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Kholood Eid Photo
Kidambi.
There is a matter-of-factness to how vocalist, keyboardist, composer, and improviser Amirtha Kidambi sings the text “eat the rich or die starving” toward the end of the opening track of From Untruth, the newest album from her quartet Elder Ones. The group plays in support of this album this Friday, April 26, at Firehouse 12 on Crown Street.
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Thomas Breen |
Apr 18, 2019 11:24 am
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Firefighters on the scene at 746 Chapel St.
A dumpster fire in a back lot caused heavy smoke damage inside the Chapel Street federal post office, and led to the temporary closure of stretches of Chapel and State. No one was injured.
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Adam Matlock |
Apr 9, 2019 4:47 am
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Smith.
When trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith presented the first CREATE Festival at Firehouse 12 on Crown Street in 2017, the endeavor served to introduce, or reintroduce, people to Smith’s body of work as a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer.
From the atmosphere in the room on Sunday, this year’s CREATE Festival — the third — was as much about the celebration of a musical family, old and new.
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Daniel Shoemaker |
Apr 8, 2019 7:52 am
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With the performance of Mauritanian griot musician and singer Noura Mint Seymali and Brooklyn-based Ethiopian jazz act Anbessa Orchestra in late March, and the upcoming shows from Brooklyn from Zimbabwean rhythm kings Mokoomba on Tuesday, April 9, the State House, our fair city’s most precocious young venue, has kicked off its World Beat concert series, allowing locals to explore the fertile frontier of international grooves without having to leave the comfort of the Elm City.
Stamford musician Furious Stylesz received an email informing him that his song had been selected as one of seven to be played for an award-winning music supervisor. The next night, he caught a train up to the Elm City to see how it would be received.
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Karen Ponzio |
Apr 4, 2019 7:49 am
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Thelma and the Sleaze.
“It’s great to be here in New Haven on a … what day is it?” asked L.G., lead singer and guitarist for Thelma and the Sleaze.
“Wednesday!” someone yelled.
The energy and atmosphere at Cafe Nine last night had enough of a party vibe to make anyone forget that it wasn’t already the weekend, as three bands steamrolled through the first true hot and sweaty night of the season.
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Karen Ponzio |
Mar 25, 2019 7:42 am
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FUTURE PUNX
“Hi, we’re people making noises,” said Emily Rose of Glambat, the opening act of a three-band bill at Cafe Nine on Friday that filled the small space with large waves of sound, loads of mirth, and lots of movement.
Brooklyn band Future Punx headlined the night, supported by local bands Pleasure Beat and the aforementioned Glambat, who when last seen by this reporter had begun working on a record and had a few different members.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 13, 2019 7:13 am
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Private Language.
Ryan Sindler of Private Language let loose a couple chords from his guitar. It was all bassist Matthew Peddle and drummer Nikolai Corey needed to fall, and they were off. Only after the first song did Sindler introduce the band.
“Hello,” he said. “Now let’s go around,” he motioned to the small but enthusiastic audience. No one responded.
