Celebrating Community
It’s hard to say just what a bassoon power trio should include, maybe hurdy-gurdy and viol de gamba. Brooklyn’s Bassoon’s got none of that, though. The heavy prog-metal Brooklyn band put out their debut in 2012 and somehow only now have decided to follow it up with Succumbent (Nov. 17, Nefarious Industries, CD and download). The band was formed in […]
’Tis the season of the list, and for your local man in jazz that means putting together what were, for me, the best new and archival recordings I heard this year. And I mean “heard” seriously; I listened all the way through something like 250 albums released in 2023, and at least partially through an additional 400-plus (those are records […]
Community Board 6 held a meeting on landmarks and land use on Nov. 30, which included an application for rezoning 41 Richards St. in Red Hook, between Sebring St. and Commerce St. “The Proposed Action would facilitate the development of a seven-story plus cellar, 113,557 gross square foot mixed-use building with 41 parking spaces,” said the Department of Environmental Conservation […]
The work of five American artists, mainly New Yorkers and five German artists, mainly Berliners, is the subject of the exhibition titled International Waters which opened recently as part of the Red Hook Open Studios program in The Wall Gallery. The Wall Gallery is an artist-run space which specializes in exchanges between Brooklyn New York and Berlin Germany. International Waters […]
Hearing someone tell you about a dream they had can make your eyes glaze over. It could be because dreams follow their own logic, unique to each of us. Dreams can feel specific, urgent and compelling after we’ve experienced them, but vague, meandering and uninteresting in the retelling. Cartoonist Roz Chast understands this completely—but she still wants to tell you […]
A step ahead at looking back. In April, I wrote about Joe Jackson’s 1981 album Jumpin’ Jive in a review of Taj Mahal’s recent album of early jazz songs. Since then, Rickie Lee Jones has issued a respectable collection of crooner tunes, and countless rockers-of-certain-ages have done so before, generally with far lesser results than Jackson, Jones and Mahal (special […]
In art music (meaning music not designed for mass commercial success), there used to be a general consensus about forms and styles. That’s obvious when you look at classical music, but also things like folk music (in the English speaking world) and the blues; things were generally done within certain guidelines and outliers were less revolutionaries than eccentrics and avant-gardists, […]
At this year’s New York Film Festival, the marquee documentary event was the American premiere of 93-year-old Frederick Wiseman’s latest opus, Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros. La Maison Troisgro, a three-star Michelin restaurant in central France, is at the center of the film, which radiates outward to explore the supply chain of farms that provide much of the place’s food and the […]
Review of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride (Riverhead Books; 2023; 386 pages; $28) Reviewed by Michael Quinn Two kinds of people live in Chicken Hill, Pennsylvania: immigrant Jews and Blacks. These two groups eye each other warily, thinking they have nothing in common. Neither is especially thrilled to be there. It’s a rundown place, cut off […]
Who says a jazz band can’t play rock music? That question was implied, if not directly posed, within the lyrical permutations of Funkadelic’s 1978 “Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?” Genre lines might be a bit blurrier 45 years later, but they’re still there to be crossed. Bassist Hannah Marks has worked for some highly regarded jazz bosses (Terri […]