Julie Corbalis – Brewster Farmers Market – October 1, 2016
Corbalis was the final performer for this year’s local farmers market, cheerfully reeling off the numbers despite the intermittent drizzle. Her latest CD effort is titled “What’s Up With This Heart?”. Mostly originals, though she covered Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It”.
Julie Corbalis
Awa Sangho – White Plains Jazz Fest – September 25, 2016
This was actually a multi-act afternoon, of which I caught only a fraction. Headliner Sangho, the “golden voice of Mali”, is from a griot lineage; she featured a band that was totally (or almost – Moreno from USA, I think) African. The music had a strong drive, and when Sangho’s shoes came off, oooh the dancing!
Awa Sangho
Daniel Moreno
Abou Lion Diarra
Yacouba Sissoko
Gustavo Dantas Magnani
Fred Doumbé
Pluck and Rail – Upstream Gallery – September 24, 2016
New venue for me, located in Hastings-on-Hudson. This is a curious Americana-esque duo, in that one of the instruments is a cello, played standing up. Repertoire was a mix of originals and folksy standards. Schubert, a bandmate of Gierer’s from a previous group, joined in for a couple of numbers, not enough to get included in the painting. I’d thought that the name in some way referred to music, specifically the combo’s particular instrumentation or methods of playing. But no, instead, these are slaughterhouse terms, giving some indication of the band’s sensibility, suffused with humor and irony.
Andrew Sussman and George Gierer
Allison Schubert
MAKU SoundSystem – Rubenstein Atrium – September 22, 2016
MAKU is pretty close to the ultimate in World Music. The basic band has a South American orientation, mostly Colombia. The concert was like a showcase revue, with MAKU showing their stuff, and then bringing on musicians from elsewhere, not merely backing them up, but getting deep into the collaboration. We had Lodescar with a gospel-oriented focus; Ben Jaafar (Morocco), playing the guembri (this oversized version is a kind of proto-electric bass) as part of Innov Gnawa, specializing in the music of northwest Africa; Benavides was part of the Afro-Colombian song-and-dance troupe Bulla en el Barrio. There were others that I didn’t get to portray. Half the time, in the dim light, I was merely guessing which color I had in my hand. Poor Liliana!
Juan Ospina
Liliana Conde
Moris Canate
Andres Jiminez
Robert Stringer and Isaiah Richardson Jr.
Kemba Lodescar
Hassan Ben Jaafar
Gabriel Benavides
Herbie Waters IV – Busking New York City – September 22, 2016
Herbie is the youngest performer I have portrayed, couldn’t have been more than 12. There he was in front of the Apple store on Broadway at 67th Street. For all I know, he had decided to practice his classical riffs in public. Who knows what HW III thinks about all of this, or if he even knows!
Herbie Waters IV
Music Conservatory of Westchester Jazz Faculty Quartet – Grace Episcopal Church – September 21, 2016
Biggest mouthful of a name for a group I’ve ever documented. This was a memorial dedicated to the music of jazz sax player (and fellow Westchester-er) Michael Brecker (1949-2007). New venue for me, and this was part of the ever-expanding White Plains Jazz Fest.
Jake Robinson
Rale Micic
Nicholas Biello
John Lang
Dorraine Scofield – Davis Park, West Shokan – September 10, 2016
Scofield was a performer at “Olive Day”, which refers to the Ulster County Town of Olive, rather than the horticultural fruit. So it was a lucky find for my camping weekend at nearby Oliverea. She’s a true hometown girl, carrying on what is becoming more apparent to me over time, the Catskills Americana trouper tradition. She seemed to know and greet just about everyone that passed in front of her at this town fair. Yes that’s an actual photo – I’m getting less doctrinaire about the format of the posts.
Dorraine Scofield
Dorraine at 4 years
Ben Rounds – Wells Park, Brewster – September 3, 2016
In addition to relocating the farmers market to Wells Park this year, Brewster has also (thankfully) added occasional live entertainment. This week was Ben Rounds; when I arrived he seemed to be in a mini-set of dog-related tunes, so I was happy that he could accommodate my request, Hank Williams’s “Move it on Over”.
Ben Rounds
Tabou Combo – Rubenstein Atrium – September 1, 2016
The Haitian roots of this group go way back; it has now been headquartered in NYC for decades, but beneath my radar. For the event, space that is customarily given over to seating had been cleared of chairs to make way for dancing, which was definitely the order of the day. The music was compas, a high-energy rhythmic pan-Caribbean style. This in turn worked to my benefit, as it allowed me to change settings several times for the full complement of sketches.
Herman Nau
Jean-Claude Jean
Yves Joseph
Ron Felix
Jonas Imbert
Yvon Andre
Reynald Vlame
Andre Atkins & Saxophonist
Jocel Alcemus
TC Trumpet
Roger Eugene
Ralph Conde
John Luther Adams “Inuksuit” performance – Governors Island – August 27, 2016
This was a large piece that involved a whole slew (too many for me to count) of percussionists spread out across the Hills section (iconic brand new habitat) of Governors Island. Unfortunate dealings with the ferry – 5 minutes late translates into missing 40 minutes of music! Oh well! Situation was too complicated to get everything signed and documented; for now I’m just posting the composite of the sketches I got, with the composer’s autograph.
Inuksuit
John Luther Adams & me
