Musical Mondays at Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs start this Monday, June 29, at 6:30 p.m. with renowned guitarist Jon Zeeman and Friends. The rolling hills at the Featherstone campus create a natural amphitheatre, an ideal environment to enjoy a picnic while absorbing the sounds of Mr. Zeeman’s funk, jazz and blues guitar.
Mr. Zeeman came of age listening to the music of Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He has worked with Janis Ian, the Allman Brothers and Susan Tedeschi, and for two decades has performed his own music.
Russian-born violinist maestro Yuval Waldman (heralded as “spectacular” by the New York Times) will be performing an evening of “lost” Jewish music, accompanied by the artistic director of the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, Delores Stevens, on Thursday, August 13, at 7:30 p.m. The performance is the final event in the Summer Institute series at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center.
The Infinity Brass Quintet and special guest Livingston Taylor will be in cahoots next week when the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society concert performs Peter Schickele’s Wild West spoof, Hornsmoke: A Horse Opera.
It’s the singer, not the song or is it? After all, it is the melody that lingers, the words that capture the undefinable. Songs are mercurial things, each having a mystery path — so far from the iPod or radio dial — that evades the fan. But next weekend, at various locations across the Island, the Martha’s Vineyard Songwriters Festival brings a dozen of the nation’s best songwriters together to celebrate songs, stories and each other.
Enjoy an evening of contemporary chamber jazz in Vineyard Haven on Sunday, with a new jazz ensemble consisting of professional musicians from West Tisbury and Chilmark: Eric Johnson on electric and nylon-string guitar, Tauras Biskis on percussion, and Boaz Kirschenbaum on fretless bass guitar.
The concert is on August 22 at 7:30 p.m. at the Katharine Cornell Theatre on Spring street in Vineyard Haven. The program will feature the music of Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius.
Grab a slice of Haydn next week with your packets of roast beef, ham and swiss. Don’t see the connective tissue there? Well, that’s because one never really knows what will be uncovered when pulling back the curtain on our neighbors’ lives.
This Saturday, Sept. 4, Cindy Kallet and Grey Larsen will perform at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven. The two have spent much of the past five years collaborating together. Cindy is a songwriter, singer, guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist. Grey plays the Irish flute and tin whistle, concertina, fiddle, piano and harmonium. As composers each has contributed much to the tapestry of contemporary folk and world music as it flourishes in America today.
It’s quiet out there, at night on the Island this time of year. In town there are a few signs of life. But on the back streets, after the sun goes down and the winter chill takes over, mostly it’s just smoke from a woodstove or a startled rabbit or nothing at all. But looks can be deceiving.
Growing up, Grace Potter always had a strong taste for celebrity. She remembers wishing she’d some day just morph into Ariel, of Disney’s The Little Mermaid. When it started to look as if coronation was out of the question, she embarked on another path to fame, joining up with some college buddies to form the band Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.