The now-annual Blue Note Jazz Festival will sprinkle over 50 shows at venues across the city during its twenty day reign (June 10th - 30th).

"After the success of the inaugural Blue Note Jazz Festival, we decided to make this a yearly event as a way to continue expanding audiences, cultivate young talent and promote this wonderful music throughout New York City," Blue Note President Steven Bensusan said. "This year's performances go beyond jazz to include everything from flamenco, soul, and Latin to tap, blues and R&B, all with the common thread of improvisation. But the heart of the festival is and will always remain the type of jazz that we present night after night at the Blue Note club."

Highline Ballroom, B.B. King's, Central Park Summerstage, The Apollo, Henry Street Playhouse, Brooklyn Bowl and Sullivan Hall are all on board to host parts of the festival, which will feature everyone from Béla Fleck to Stephanie Mills, Bootsy Collins to Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) and many, many other notables. Full list of shows, below...

Continue reading "Blue Note Jazz Festival announces 2012 lineup"

"Superfly Presents and A.C. Entertainment are excited to announce the initial lineup for the 2012 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. The 11th annual four-day camping and music festival will be held on June 7 - 10 on the same beautiful 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, 60 miles south of Nashville. A full list of confirmed acts follows, and more will be announced in the coming weeks. The final Bonnaroo 2012 lineup will total over 125 bands and over 20 comedians performing on 13 stages over four days.Tickets for the event will go on sale on this Saturday, February 18, 2012 at 12 noon EST exclusively at bonnaroo.com."

Radiohead, Beach Boys, Phish, Little Dragon, SBTRKT, The Antlers, Bad Brains, Laura Marling, St. Vinent, Tune-Yards, Flying Lotus, and many more are playing Bonnaroo this year. Full list below...

Continue reading "Bonnaroo 2012 lineup announced"

DOWNLOAD: Phantom Family Halo - "White Hot Gun" (MP3)

photos by Adam Cantor

Sohrab Habibian & JG Thirlwell @ Joe's Pub

The tribute to Brian Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets went down at Joe's Pub on January 8 to a sold out audience (that included Bradford Cox). As mentioned when we first posted about the show, contributing musicians included Travis Morrison (of The Dismemberment Plan), Sohrab Habibion (Obits), Jim Sclavunos (The Bad Seeds/Grinderman), Vernon Reid (Living Color), Paul Duncan (Warm Ghost), Dom Cipolla (Phantom Family Halo), and JG Thirlwell (aka Foetus). Pictures from the show, John Schaefer of WNYC included, are in this post. You can also look at the full setlist below.

Dom Cipolla's (who played the show) band Phantom Family Halo has a new album coming out, titled When I Fall Out, on February 14 via Knitting Factory Records. You can download the album track "White Hot Gun" above and stream it below. Phantom Family Halo have two upcoming NYC shows. One happens next week at Glasslands on January 16 with Our Mountain, Eraas, and Vensaire. Tickets are available. They also play Saint Vitus on February 11. Support TBA. Tickets are on sale.

More pics from the 'Here Come the Warm Jets' show, the setlist, and PFH song stream below...

Continue reading "Brian Eno was performed @ Joe's Pub -- pics & setlist (w/ JG Thirwell, Phantom Family Halo, Travis Morrison & more)"

by Andrew Sacher

Brian Eno - 'Here Come the Warm Jets'

In 1974, following his departure from Roxy Music, Brian Eno released his first solo album, Here Come the Warm Jets. The album (and its followup) is probably his most similar to the art rock of Roxy Music, before Brian began experimenting with soundscapes and eventually created some of our most interesting ambient music. Despite his large departure in sound from Here Come the Warm Jets, the material on that album has been a long lasting influence on indie rock, and like the show at the Rock Shop this past May, on January 8 at Joe's Pub, a number of indie rock musicians will honor the album and perform the entire thing. The contributing musicians include Travis Morrison (of The Dismemberment Plan, who also performed at the Rock Shop show), Sohrab Habibion (Obits), James Sclavunos (The Bad Seeds/Grinderman), Vernon Reid (Living Color), Paul Duncan (Warm Ghost), Dom Cippola (Phantom Family Halo), and JG Thirlwell (aka Foetus). Tickets for the show are on sale now.

I wonder who's going to handle Robert Fripp's guitar solos. They should have got St. Vincent for that...

Catch Obits on 12/30 at the Bell House with Ted Leo, and then at Cake Shop in March.

Some tracks from Here Come the Warm Jets below...

Continue reading "various peeps performing Eno's "Here Come the Warm Jets""

The third annual Hudson Square Music & Wine Festival kicked off in the courtyard behind City Winery on 6/21 with a 'Make Music New York' show featuring Mike Doughty and Emily Wells. The series continues every Tuesday through August 16. All shows take place from 5:30 to 7:30 PM, admission is free, and wine, made on the premises, will be served.

Other performers this year include Vernon Reid (of Living Color), WIlliamsburg Salsa Orchestra, Nicole Atkins, and others. City Winery is also hosting the Summer BBQ Blowout Festival with Midnight Magic and others in the same outdoor location on August 6th, but that is not free. Check out the full free lineup below.

Continue reading "Hudson Square Music and Wine Festival -- 2011 lineup of free shows outside City Winery"

by Andrew Frisicano

Burkina Electric

The annual Bang on a Can Marathon took over the World Financial Center Winter Garden Sunday, June 27th for 13 hours (one over the expected 12).

As evidenced in the pictures below, I only caught the last quarter or so of the night (it the was the same day as Gil Scott-Heron in Central Park). The day was packed with curiosity-provoking sets, like the US premiere of Fausto Romitelli's "Professor Bad Trip," performed by the Talea Ensemble...

Broken into three "lessons," the dense piece vividly communicated a kind of doomed atmosphere, beginning with sighing, deflating sounds pouring out of the winds and violins and pitched percussion nervously skittering, and later growing into thunderous sound from the full chamber orchestra. The highlight came in the second section, with a pained, growling cello solo played with impressive control by Chris Gross.

While Romitelli had his share of devotees, there was a clear sense of relief with the contrast Buke and Gass offered next. Playing their namesake baritone ukelele (buke) and guitar-bass hybrid (it's pronounced "gase"), and a drum with tambourines embedded, their emphatic, quirky brand of rock, enhanced by buke player Arone Dyer's pure folk-singer voice, was exactly what the crowd needed.
[NJ Star Ledger]

When I arrived, a group of musicians, Slagwerk Den Haag, were scribbling furiously (and rhythmically) on chalk boards.

A focus toward the end seemed to be video projections, which accompanied the double bass loops of Florent Ghys, guitarist Tim Brady's wall of sound, and the night's final performance by Signal, Shelter, a piece composed by Bang on a Can heads Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe. Burkina Electric provided a late-evening burst of energy with West African dance music (they play Celebrate Brooklyn on July 8th and Central Park on July 25th).

Q2 will be broadcasting music from this year's Marathon in August (as will WNYC's New Sounds), so look out for that.

More pictures are below...

Continue reading "2010 Bang on a Can Marathon in pics (Burkina Electric, who play Summerstage & Celebrate Brooklyn, included)"

We need your help to raise $100,000 in four nights to help the victims of Haiti's catastrophic earthquake. No country in the Western Hemisphere has been battered more than Haiti in the last 500 years--the nearly complete annihilation of its native population over two decades, a brutal slave regime, ongoing foreign military interventions over hundreds of years, brutal dictatorships supported by western powers, blockades of aid and more recently, devastating natural disasters from hurricanes to this latest earthquake.

100% of proceeds from this benefit will be donated to Doctors Without Borders, Partners In Health and the mobile hospital initiative directed by the Jewish Renaissance Medical Center - all recommended by the Haiti Consule General. We ask that you give any way you can.

Check out the four shows (with ticket links) below...

Continue reading "Patti Smith, Swell Season, Josh Ritter, Roseanne Cash, JW Harding & many more playing Haiti benefits @ City Winery"

Since the closing of LES spot Tonic in 2007, The Stone has been one of the venues that's attempted to fill the void left by the experimental-music-friendly space.

Like Tonic did, The Stone frequently brings on guest curators (not coincidentally Stone founder John Zorn was one of Tonic's most regular hosts and played at Tonic's final show). Now, with guitarist Grey Gersten's monthlong May curatorial run ending Sunday, May 31st, former Tonic co-owner Melissa Caruso Scott comes out of booking retirement to take the reigns in programing the first two weeks of June at The Stone.

Speaking about her choices Scott said, "These artists played some of my favorite Tonic shows and I can't wait to see them again." Her picks include Japanese musician Yuka Honda, who's also playing a Summerstage show with Mike Watt, guitarist Charlie Hunter, Elysian Fields, Vernon Reid, Joan as Polcewoman, cellist Erik Friedlander, and more. Her full schedule is posted below.

Speaking of Friendlander, he plays on Yoko Ono's new DON'T STOP ME! EP (out June 9th Via iTunes Exclusive Digital Download), and you can also catch him live on June 5th along with saxophone player Colin Stetson at the Abrons Art Space Recital Hall. The show is presented by The Manhattan New Music Project, and tickets are on sale.

Before the time of both Tonic and The Stone, the original Knitting Factory on Houston Street featured an ecclectic mix of avant and experimental music (frequently with Zorn and others). The co-founder of that venue, show promoter and current owner of City Winery Michael Dorf, will curate the second half of the June at The Stone.

Acts on his schedule include Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers (who have completed their Pianos residency and are also playing Citysol), Ethan Iverson (of the Bad Plus) with saxist Tim Berne, and Marc Ribot, the guitarist who's had considerable presence at each of the aforementioned venues -- gigging regularly at the Knit on Houston St, getting arrested for protesting the closure of Tonic, and hosting several nights of his 55th-birthday retrospective at The Stone in mid-May.

Check out the full June schedule for The Stone, below...

Continue reading "Tonic owner returns, joins City Winery's Michael Dorf to curate John Zorn's club The Stone in June - full lineup"