Celebrating Community
Sunny’s Bar is a community staple in Red Hook. It has served local patrons and out-of-towners alike for over a hundred years, first as a lunch spot for dockworkers, and since the 1990’s as a archetypal Red Hook watering hole. Now, it is also the subject of a play, titled The Wind and the Rain: A story about Sunny’s Bar. […]
Who says a jazz band can’t play rock music? George Clinton didn’t quite ask that question on the 1978 Funkadelic track “Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?” but it’s a logical implication of the various permutations of the lyric, which questioned genre divisions at a time when radio and television were still segregated, even if schools weren’t. These […]
By the time you read this, Bud Powell’s 100th birthday (September 27) will have passed, with a 24-hour broadcast from WKCR and a 25% discount promotion from Blue Note records on the two Powell LPs on their label currently in print. So after blowing out the candles, let’s take a look at how that is a tragedy. Powell was the […]
The 62nd New York Film Festival kicked off September 27 with Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel. What followed on the main slate was one heavy hitter after another: U.S. premieres of The Room Next Door, Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, Brady Corbet’s Oscar frontrunner The Brutalist, Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, and Hard Truths, […]
Review of “Static,” by Brendan Gillen Review by Michael Quinn New York has always been a magnet for ambitious creative types. Making it in this city rewards you with a unique badge of honor—though success here often comes at a high price. How much are you willing to pay? This question lies at the heart of “Static,” the well-paced debut […]
A belated Baldwin birthday bash. After being rained out on August 2—the proper centennial of the outspoken author and activist James Baldwin—the release concert for Meshell Ndegeocello’s No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin (CD, LP, download from Blue Note Records) in the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! concert series was rescheduled for August 14. As it happens, that night was […]
Every year, the Vision Festival opens with a concert dedicated to one musician who is honored with a Lifetime Achievement award. That’s an evening of three or four sets, each one featuring this figure. In 2023, that was French bassist Joëlle Léandre, one night at Roulette with four sets in four different grouping around her playing and artistry. That, June […]
There’s an alternate universe where, after the 1973 release of The Spook Who Sat By the Door, director Ivan Dixon would have worked regularly in studio movies rather than be relegated to episodic TV journeyman. But that’s a universe where The Spook Who Sat By the Door — a singular movie about the CIA’s first Black operative, hired as token […]
A dozen summer songs. I don’t know why London’s Los Bitchos are waiting until the end of August to release the perfect summer soundtrack, but there’ll still be a good three weeks left to fill with their new Talkie Talkie (CD, LP and download out August 30 from City Slang), and more if you allow for the changing seasons of […]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD (6th edition), introduces vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson by pointing out that if he “were a saxophonist, trumpeter, or pianist, he would be regarded as a major figure in modern jazz.” That’s no exaggeration, Hutcherson (who died in 2016) was one of the greatest of all jazz musicians of the post-1959 era. He was an […]