Thursday, June 14: Jazzstock, our region’s tireless collective of professional jazz players, promoters and preservers working now out of the Senate Garage, has made big-name jazz bookings routine. But even by their high standards, this is a huge get: Multiple-Grammy-winner Cassandra Wilson will perform with the Lonnie Plaxico group.
Younger players are, famously, all about renegotiating roles and identities, redistributing power arrangements and smashing the guitariarchy.
Saturday-Monday, May 26-28: The ukulele – once the pop-culture musical quarry of Don Ho and Tiny Tim, pretty much exclusively – has enjoyed a run of popularity in recent years that has reached the status of a genuine renaissance.
Saturday, May 19: New Folk trailblazers, massive hitmakers and ardent social activists, the Indigo Girls are synonymous with the lighter side of ’90s music – which is to say pretty darn dark themselves, but leavened with a fine sense of close harmony and with songs that sport at least glimmers of hope and redemption.
Saturday, May 19: On his third record, the Woodstock-area songwriter/producer quickly announces the turf: a kind of high-drama ambient American rock with equal parts grit and ether.
Saturday, May 26: Curated by Ron English, the three-stage, noon-to-close show boasts an impressive list of performers entitled The Falcon in Delusionville, centering around English’s Rabbits in Delusionville rock opera and artwork.
Thursday, May 24: Jazzstock welcomes the trumpet/flugelhorn legend to Uptown Kingston. Vache’s “played with” credits aren’t so shabby. Any list that begins with Benny Goodman…and goes on to include Rosemary Clooney, Benny Carter, Hank Jones, Gerry Mulligan and Woody Herman tells you something about the man’s history.
Saturday, May 5: This band gets way out there, demonstrating once again that the difference between “experimental” and “jam” is semiotic more than musical.
Tuesday, May 1: A legendary performer well into the sixth decade of his hit-studded career, Jones effortlessly bridges camp and art because he probably doesn’t give a damn about either. He has sold more than 100 million records, scoring not just hits, but cultural landmarks with such tracks as “It’s Not Unusual,” “Delilah,” “What’s New, Pussycat?” and a cover of Prince’s “Kiss” that sent his already-established career hurtling into the pop stratosphere.
Friday, April 27: This New Paltz-area band is serious, studious and fastidiously respectful of the music they have loved and learned well. They have apprenticed whenever possible with “the real thing,” but make no claim to being it themselves. They play their thing: a fusion of authentic West African “butterfly” guitar pop, island grooves and various folk styles from their own soil.