Brian Slattery Photos
Kevin Sherwin
If you were walking along Trumbull Street in the early afternoon on Friday, you may have noticed the evocative tones of a Spanish guitar. They were coming from the lawn behind the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, courtesy of guitarist Kevin Sherwin, and they were a small yet integral part of Make Music New Haven.
Make Music New Haven — sponsored by the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, the city, the state, Firehouse 12, Suzio-York Hill, and Design Monsters — was the local branch of a globe-spanning effort to fill city streets around the world with music. In Make Music New Haven’s case, that meant dozens of artists in over a dozen locations throughout the area, from Best Video to the New Haven Green to Three Sheets (see coverage from there) to, yes, the Ely Center.
Coulter Davis, a.k.a. Clones of Clarence, offered a set of originals and one cover that layered on keyboards, drum samples, trumpet, and vocals to create plaintive yet chilled-out R&B to a growing and enthusiastic audience. His cover, of Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” got a few people up and moving on the lawn.
The mellow jams and sweet harmonies of Pious Mantis — at the Ely Center without drummer, but still with plenty of rhythm to go around — were the right vibe an afternoon moving from showers to sunshine.
“We got an album coming out someday, so just keep searching the internet. We’ll get there,” the band mentioned in its low-key way, while audience members enjoyed snacks and drinks from White Leaf Foods and the Jitter Bus, parked on Trumbull Street.
Quinn Harley announced that she just turned 19 and couldn’t imagine a better way to spend a birthday than to turn Make Music New Haven into a “mini-tour” of six shows in a day. She was grateful for the audience, having just played an “empty church.” But the Ely Center was not empty; as another band played inside to accommodate all the bands who had been scheduled, Harley and her bandmates played a set of originals that were lush yet propulsive enough to tap dance to, as dancer Alexis Robbins ably demonstrated. Upright bass player Greg Hunter, when he wasn’t laying down the rhythm, threw out compliments to the Ely Center’s hospitality, as they provided lunch to the hungry musicians driving from venue to venue — including a certain snack.
“I didn’t know they were peanut butter pretzels” before he bit into them, Hunter explained, “and thought, ‘what a magic surprise.’ I was also very grateful I was not allergic to peanuts.”
Robbins mentioned that she was a dance instructor, with a studio in Erector Square. “I teach open adult tap classes if anyone wants to learn how to do this,” she said.
“I do!” said someone from the audience.
By this time the audience on the lawn had grown, including a few people who were waiting to perform and a few people who had stuck around after performing, but mostly were people there just to hear the music.
Some who arrived in the afternoon ended up wandering the Ely Center’s exhibit space to check out its latest show, “Sea and Soil.” Hours after it started, Make Music New Haven at the Ely Center was still going strong, filling the building inside and out.