Saturday, Sept. 7: At a certain point, you begin to suspect she has a double – even a fleet of Lara Hopes and Ark-Tones that she sends out simultaneously along various national circuits, coordinated to ensure that the plausibility of it being one band is never completely challenged.
It’s one thing to consider an arts colony, such as Woodstock, in terms of its artists. You can also be impressed with the organizations that come to life and become institutions supporting those artists.
Sunday, Sept. 1: Upstate Reggae is equally about the preservation of the reggae tradition and the curation of the up-and-coming. Now that the Bearsville Theater is ominously dark, Upstate Reggae has taken to the water. This sunset cruise features music by Vybz Eurostar Lord and DJ Kevin, as well as Jamaican food.
Sunday, Sept. 1: As is well-known among musicians, the Military Academy bands tend to be red-hot and stacked with serious players. The arts of war and brass, in particular, have always been closely allied. Although perhaps necessarily conservative in repertoire, the West Point Band never fails to bring the articulate thunder.
Saturday, Aug. 31: The Texas-bred Pentatonix have sold nearly 10 million albums worldwide, in an age when 100,000 is a lot, and boast new media stats on the order of 15.5 million YouTube subscribers and views in the literal billions. And they are really good, too!
Saturday, Aug. 31: Rapturous, borderline-messianic praise for hip-hop auteur Flying Lotus flows as freely as it once did for his great-aunt and -uncle, Alice and John Coltrane, and for many of the same reasons.
Sunday, September 1: The New Yorker declared Trio Solisti “the most exciting piano trio in America,” and this writer regards their 2005 recording of Brahms’ three trios to be among the most sensitive he has heard, thanks largely to pianist Fabio Bidini’s grace under pressure (Brahms is murder on pianists).
Saturday, Sept. 7: Even by the Falcon’s lofty standards, this is a big one: The region’s premiere jazz-and-more venue presents MoodSwing Reunion, saxophonist Joshua Redman revisiting his landmark 1994 album with the quartet who made it, all of whom – to a man – a have gone on to become legitimate jazz superstars and generation-defining musicians and composers: drummer Brian Blade, bassist Christian McBride and pianist Brad Mehldau.
“You feel things deeply from music,” Lewis said. “This music does that.”
CMS Legacy Ensemble will perform a rare concert at Maverick Concert Hall on Saturday, August 31, at 8 p.m., honoring jazz great Ornette Coleman, who collaborated in the founding of CMS in the 1970s.