A jewel of a venue tucked into one of the less-trendy corners of Williamsburg, close by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Rose Live Music celebrates its fifth anniversary this week -- and also its last. The intimate bar and restaurant, located at 345 Grand Street, is set to close at the end of February.

After hundreds of performances of jazz, classical, funk, African, Brazilian and Cuban music, the club is for sale. Its owners are ready to move on to other adventures.

"What do you want to do in this lifetime with the time you have?" asked Carlo Vutera, a Sicilian opera singer who opened the space in 2006 with his sister, Gina Vutera. They named it Rose, after their mother.
[Wall Street Journal]

Say goodbye to Rose Live Music during their final month which includes a Charlie Hunter residency and much more. A couple of flyers below...

Continue reading "Rose Live Music turning 5 and... closing"

by Andrew Frisicano

"Saw Marc Ribot, MeShell Nedegocello and Chocolate Genius play together last night @ Rose Live Music. It was amazing and in Williamsburg!" -just_some_pix

Silent Movies...

Inventive avant guitarist Marc Ribot will be releasing a new record, Silent Movies, September 28th on Pi Recordings. As its title suggest, the album expands on Ribot's work scoring film (this year he performed several times with Charlie Chaplin's The Kid)

The album reflects Ribot's fascination with movies and contains pieces intended to function as music for films: some are adaptations of music he has actually written for films, others for classic silent movies that he scored for his personal amusement, still others for films of his own imagination. His goal is to explore, as he says "the strange area between language and spatiality that exists partly in between music and visual image, and partly as a common property of both." Whatever the inspiration, Silent Movies is replete with beautiful melodies and quietly wistful playing of a sort seldom heard from Ribot and delivers a program filled with gentle, haunting songs that evoke the feel of a different time. As he says in the CD's liner notes, the recording project "did indeed have the feeling of having walked backwards into the beautiful frame of a silent movie."

Though the album is a solo work, Ribot, a tireless collaborator, is pairing up with new friends for three nights at Rose Live Music on August 18th (yesterday), 19th (tonight) and 22nd. The first two feature bassist/singer Meshell Ndegeocello, guest vocals Chocolate Genius and drummer Deantoni Parks. For the last, Ribot plays with his Ceramic Dog sidemen Shahzad Ismaily and Ches Smith, and writer Ariana Reines. More info on those is at the Rose Live Music site.

Also coming up is a release show for Silent Movies on September 15th at (Le) Poisson Rouge. Tickets are on sale.

All of Marc Ribot's upcoming tour dates (and the lineups for each) plus a video of Ribot with the Lounge Lizards and John Lurie (whose current "disappearance" got a full write-up in a recenty New Yorker) are below...

Continue reading "Marc Ribot releasing 'Silent Movies', playing more shows "

by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: HEALTH - DIE SLOW (Pink Stallone remix) (MP3)

HEALTH are releasing DISCO2, a remix album of their 2009 LP, GET COLOR, on June 22nd through Lovepump United. The concept is a follow-up of sorts to DISCO, a remix collection of songs from their debut self-titled. The new record comes with a bonus "digital album" that has 12 additional remixes. One of those bonus- tracks is a remix of the single "DIE SLOW" done by Jersey DJ collective Pink Stallone. Get it above, or stream the song below.

You can actually catch Pink Stallone live at Love Tempo, a monthly party at Williamsburg's Rose Live Music. The next edition of that is on Saturday, June 19th with guests Love on the Run and Peter Reyes. The mixes on Pink Stallone's Myspace are definitely worth checking out if you're looking for some chill disco-funk jams to bring in the weekend. They have their first full-length set to come out sometime this summer.

HEALTH, who played a NXNE show in Toronto last night, are currently on tour, and they come to Music Hall of Williamsburg for a show on June 20th. Also on the bill are Indian Jewelry, Gold Panda and Robin (of 20JazzFunkGreats/TriAngle). Tickets are still on sale.

After that HEALTH have a European tour, followed by a handful of US dates around Whartscape and Lolla, more Euro fests, and then an October European tour with Crystal Castles (who are in NYC for Hard Fest in August).

BrooklynVegan has a pair of tickets to give away to HEALTH at MHOW (along with a copy of the remix record). Details on how to enter, the streaming remix and the full album tracklist, all tour dates and more are below...

Continue reading "HEALTH remix LP out soon, here's the Pink Stallone MP3 (and dates, a ticket contest & other stuff) "

by Andrew Frisicano

Marc Ribot & Caged Funk plays at Rose Live Music tonight (June 17th). For that Marc joins keyboardist Bernie Worrell (ex-Parliament Funkadelic, Talking Heads), guitarist Marco Cappelli, bass player Brad Jones, drummer JT Lewis, and DJ Logic on turntables for a set of "John Cage looped, hi-jacked, detourned, and scratch mixed." Some background...

In rehearsing for a performance of John Cage's 'Sonata for Two Voices' (1933) at Issue Project Room last winter, guitarist Marco Cappelli and Marc Ribot made a strange discovery. The two guitarists overcame the gap between the rhythmic complexity of the piece and Mr. Ribot's somewhat limited sight reading skills by 'looping' measures: constantly repeating each difficult passage until it became easier. It was in this way they became aware of a strange fact about John Cage's music that would have probably surprised (and possibly dismayed) the composer himself: John Cage was one funky dude. The resulting project, "Caged Funk", is a further exploration of this little known aspect the late composer's work. Tonight's performance is an open rehearsal. This work was commissioned by and will be premiered July 8,2010 at the Ludwigsburg Festival 2010 in Germany.

On June 26th, Marc plays with another super-improv group at (Le) Poisson Rouge - a quintet with guitarist Leonid Fedorov, bassist Vladimir Volkov, John Medeski on keys, and percussionist Ches Smith. Tickets are on sale.

Marc Ribot goes on to play at The Stone on June 29th with bassist Greg Cohen, and for free at the Stuy Town Oval on June 30th with Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos and La Cumbiamba eNeYe. After that, dates in Canada and Europe.

Videos and all dates are below...

Continue reading "Marc Ribot @ Rose Live Music w/ Bernie Worrell & other dates "

by Andrew Frisicano

Rose Live Music (Found the Band)

Rose Live Music, the dance club/venue behind that glowing sign on Williamsburg's Grand Street, has been running a Tuesday night series of drummer-led bands for a couple weeks now. Past editions have included music from jazz/metal drummer Mike Pride's From Bacteria to Boys and frenetic Latin drummer Dafnis Prieto.

Tonight (3/2) eclectic drummer/composer Bobby Previte plays two sets: one with Sex Mob saxist Briggan Krauss and another with guitarist Mike Gamble and bassist Ari Folman-Cohen (who will play as Previte's Coalition of the Willing Trio). Bobby Previte has other gigs coming up (hear a podcast with Bobby here). On the horizon, he's working on a project called Terminals in collaboration with So Percussion and an impressive list of soloists, which is planned for 2011.

TERMINALS is an evening-length work of nine concertos for improviser and percussion ensemble, featuring the SO Percussion group. Each piece will feature a different improviser in a setting composed specifically for them. The soloists include John Medeski, Greg Osby, Elliott Sharp. DJ Olive, Elizabeth Brown, Zeena Parkins, and Bobby Previte.

The upcoming schedule for the drummer-led series includes Ben Perowsky's Moodswing Orchestra, an female drummer showcase put on by Tom Tom Magazine, and series closer Ryan Sawyer (Tall Firs, Stars Like Fleas, Eye Contact and solo project Lone Wolf), who'll play with Thurston Moore and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter, on March 31st.

The full schedule (which extends to Wednesdays for a few weeks in March) and videos (including one from Charlie Hunter's residency at the club earlier this year) are below...

Continue reading "Rose Live Music's drummer-led series continues (w/ Ryan Sawyer, Bobby Previte, more)"

by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: Charlie Hunter - High Pockets and a Fanny Pack (MP3)

Charlie [Hunter] has wrapped up the recording of his next record titled 'Gentlemen, I Neglected To Inform You You Will Not Be Getting Paid.' The lineup includes Eric Kalb (Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, John Scofield) on drums, Curtis Fowlkes (Jazz Passengers, Lounge Lizards, Bill Frisell) and Alan Ferber (Don Byron, Kenny Wheeler) on trombone, and Eric Biondo (Antibalas, TV On The Radio) on trumpet! The official street date for the new album is January 12th!

Guitarist Charlie Hunter's residency at Brooklyn's Rose Live Music starts tonight (1/5) and runs through the month of January. Tickets are on sale. The shows coincide with Hunter's new record Gentlemen, I Neglected To Inform You You Will Not Be Getting Paid, a track from which is posted above.

Eric Biondo, who plays with Charlie, is also a member of Antibalas, who are continuing their Thursday night residency at Knitting Factory Brooklyn into 2010. They're on the schedule for January 7th (tix), 14th (tix), 21st (tix), and 28th (tix). Members of Antibalas play in the Broadway musical Fela!, which is currently selling tickets into June 2010 (we're rooting for it in light of the news that 10 Broadway shows are closing this month alone)...

...[Fela!]producer Stephen Hendel knows that developing audiences for Fela! isn't going to be easy: He needs to sell three times as many seats a week as he did off-Broadway. So he's enlisted rapper Jay-Z and superstars Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith to lend their names as producers. He hopes Fela! will become a hot ticket, like it was off-Broadway.

"Suddenly, we were just sold out," he says. "Celebrities calling every day, world-famous musicians. We had no tickets. We'd squeeze them in."

Jones says he's already hearing good word of mouth when he stands at the back of the theater.

"It's a fun evening," he says. "Even with all the things that go down in that second act, I heard some people describing it as 'uplifting' the other day. Uplifting? Well, it ends with people bringing coffins into the theater, but I guess that's ... I've also heard people say, 'It made me want to go out and be an activist!' Well, that's good." [NPR]

More on Fela! here.

All Charlie Hunter tour dates and album info are below...

Continue reading "Charlie Hunter kicks off Brooklyn residency (w/ new album), Antibalas extends theirs (while Fela! continues on Broadway)"

By Andrew Frisicano

Rain washed out Marc Ribot's initial Hudson Square date on July 21st (the story of the summer). So in addition to switching the show to August 18th, Ribot also decided to switch groups (perhaps another rain-caused necessity), subbing the originally booked La Cumbiamba with his "rock band" Ceramic Dog and violinist Eszter Balint.

The parking lot of City Winery, which has been hosting shows all summer, served as a relaxing, tucked away venue, after the sun finally hid behind one of the surrounding buildings. The set sounded great, but accurately describing Ceramic Dog's sound (as I've found in trying to tell friends) can be a bit difficult. It's not exactly what you hear on 2008's Party Intellectuals. That album is more funk driven and homogeneous than their live set, which veers between genres and sounds without warning. Live there were plenty of solos and riffing, but the real clincher was when Ribot pulled more natural, acoustic-based sounds out from the guitar, at times reminding me a little of a spare-sounding Bright Eyes. Subtly comped chords matched up with crunchy leads - often coming, in a reversal of roles, from Balint's overdriven violin. Vocals bounced between Ribot and Balint, who rhapsodized in foreign tongues and, on other songs, added pleasant harmonies. But the loose rhythm section was the element that fought most against the "rock band" premise. Drummer Ches Smith and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily (who moved from bass to synth to other noisemakers) lead the songs into strange places with a pulse that was more textures and color than 4/4.

Tonight (8/26) Marc Ribot plays Rose Live Music with Sun Ship, a free-form-jazz inspired group with Mary Halvorson, Jason Ajemian and Chad Taylor.

Further on, he plays with Marianne Faithfull (as he did earlier this year) on September 24th at Town Hall. He's also on the schedule for the NY Guitar Festival's Silent Films/Live Guitars series in early 2010.

More Hudson Square pictures and tour dates are below...

Continue reading "Marc Ribot played Hudson Square @ City Winery (pics) ++ at Rose Live Music tonight & other tour dates"