Melting Pot Mashup: Kosher Gospel
Remy Tumin

For Joshua Nelson, sing unto the lord a new song is more than just a commandment. The Isaiah 42:10 verse is a challenge for him and all Jews to continue to bring something new to the table.

Kosher gospel music is just that.

The words together may seem strange at first, but then Mr. Nelson, the self-proclaimed prince of kosher gospel, explains how pairing soulful music with Hebrew prayers gives Judaism a new layer.

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Getting Jazzy With Chamber Music

Getting Jazzy With Chamber Music

Sometimes chamber music is just chamber music. Actually, to describe chamber music as just anything is a grave offense. The music always has the potential to elevate the moment by stirring the mind as well as the heart. It is, at the risk of tipping the boat, a chance to sit back with Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, all the old boys, really, and ride the tempo of history. Dare you not to feel smarter and more fulfilled after a night of chamber music.

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Night at Opera Provides Musical Education

Night at Opera Provides Musical Education

On Thursday, August 25, beginning at 7 p.m. Vineyard audiences will be treated to the luscious music provided by Opera Noire. Luscious may seem an odd way to describe opera, but the performers provide so much more than great music that new and more fully-formed ways of describing the experience are needed.

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When Going Viral Meant Passing Posters, Folkies All Flocked to the Moon-Cusser
Jonah Lipsky

In the summer of 1963, America was on the brink of being split apart by the tumult of the Viet Nam War, the Civil Rights movement and Bob Dylan going electric.

The folk music revival was in full swing and was making a big impact in the popular culture. Martha’s Vineyard got caught up in the folk music movement that summer when David Lyman, the manager of a coffeehouse in Boston, and Philip Metcalf, a college student with a car and knowledge of the Vineyard, opened a coffeehouse called the Moon-Cusser.

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Bang Up Party at Nectar’s for YMCA Benefit
Nick Moorhead

Chiddy Bang, the rap duo currently in possession of a Guinness Book World Record for the longest freestyle rap coming in at nine hours, 15 minutes and 15 seconds, played, alas, a somewhat shorter set at the Stars and Stripes festival held at Nectar’s on Saturday night.

The event was a benefit for the YMCA and produced by Neon Gold Records, a record company run by Chilmark summer residents Derek Davies and Lizzy Plapinger. The evening also featured The Knocks, French Horn Rebellion and Savoir Adore.

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Sassy Start to African American Theatre Festival at Playhouse
Holly Nadler

Not to start on too bossy a note, but do go out and catch all five plays and musical productions of the African American Theatre Festival being performed, mostly, at the Vineyard Playhouse and running this week through early September.

The festival began this past Wednesday with Root, a one-woman play written and performed by Vanessa German and directed by Heather Arnet. The play travels from 1980s Los Angeles to the Civil Rights marches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to drug-saturated Juarez, Mexico to a battered and drenched New Orleans.

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Playing With the Dread, David Gans Joins Island Jam

Every Tuesday a group calling itself Grateful Dread plays at Nectar’s. The group is made up of various Island musicians, many of whom can be seen all year long playing in various other bands. But it may be tough to recognize them amidst the trappings of the Dread. They dress like rasta dudes and play a musical mash-up of reggae and Grateful Dead music. It’s not just a brilliant concept. The effect is pure Redemption Song meets Sugaree.

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Quartet of Greek Love

Quartet of Greek Love

The Tempus Continuum Ensemble presents The Four Loves at the Chappy Community Center on Saturday, August 27, at 7 p.m.

The event features four performers from the Manhattan School of Music presenting a repertory of pieces chosen to reflect the four different loves of Greek ideology, love in the form of friendship, romance, affection and unconditional love.

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David Crohan Plays 88 Keys to Cherie’s Recovery

On Sunday, July 31, at 8 p.m. at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs, David Crohan and friends will perform a benefit concert in support of Cherie Stannard, an “Island girl” who has spent all of her summers at her family cottage in the Camp Ground. In 2010, Ms. Stannard was left paralyzed from her shoulders down, the result of a car crash. After the accident, Cherie’s sister and brother quit their jobs and stayed at family-housing at the Lawnwood Regional Medical Center in Ft.

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Local Boys Give Back to Hospice
Jonah Lipsky

Two years ago Mike Parker walked into the trailer office of Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard with $2,000 and a wide grin on his face. The previous weekend he had organized a benefit concert for Hospice. The money was his gift to the organization that had supported his family when his father was dying of liver cancer while Mr. Parker was still in high school.

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