Music
Out of Hiding
Bernard Scavella, the veteran saxophonist, is a man of few words. His breath seems like a terrible thing to waste. The virtuoso divides his time between his work as a pharmacist and mesmerizing gaggles of jazz buffs on the weekends. Scavella has grown a little hoary around the temples, and his face registered a... »
Colombian Exposition
“What I love about cumbia is that it’s the music of the people,” said Tiff Itzi-Nallah. Itzi-Nallah spun last Thursday at Zhou B. Arts Center with the People’s DJs Collective, bringing the popular art form into a new context. Traditionally the music of the Colombian peasantry with a distinctive Afro-Caribbean beat, cumbia has begun... »
Creative Futures
Bruce Taylor began the first day of class by asking his nine students why they were given their first names. “I was named Joy,” responded one student, “because my daddy said I brought joy into his life.” After two beats of respectful silence a single giggle escaped from someone’s mouth. The class erupted in... »
Party Classics
Dan Labovitch was no stranger to the “visor, pacifier, and huge pants” look back in the day. But aesthetics come and go with the movements that define them, and Labovitch, one of the founders of ravearchive.com, can certainly attest to that. »
God Save the Scene
The Orphanage, on the second floor of the community center attached to Bridgeport’s First Lutheran Church of the Trinity, seamlessly merges luxury with punk. At last Wednesday’s show, kids in studded jackets kicked their Docs up on velvet divans and sipped on cans of cheap beer. »
Making house a home
A sonic blend of jazz, funk, blues, disco, soul and New Wave, the house music celebrated by the women of Honey Pot Performance is not the heavily-digitized music we think of today. Their inaugural show at the Experimental Station at 61st and Blackstone last Thursday attempted to recreate the energy and intimacy of the... »
A New Song
The flashing disco lights signal that a musical performance is about to begin. An artist picks up the mic, singing one of his old Mexican favorites, barely even looking at the screen for the correct lyrics. And this tradition is part of a larger project, called the People’s Stage. »
One o’clock jump
The fifth annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival showcased twenty hours of music at thirteen locations and drew over 150 professional jazz musicians from around the world. Twelve hours after the first horns had been blown, however, the festival shifted focus away from the virtuosos and onto the audience itself. »
