Library Concerts: Berkshire Big Band - WOW

I cannot say enough good things about the Berkshire Big Band.  I saw them at the Brookfield Library on March 18 - a free concert - and it was just incredible. (Library concerts are wonderful that way.)

 "They're going to knock your socks off" Victoria Munoz, who is a sax player with the band, told me before the show. She was right. The sound of those smooth brass harmonies flowed over me like a wave! They are just amazing: The playing is tight, nuanced, totally danceable. They present each piece in the frame of its history, cut across styles and do it well, play things you don't expect or things you do in a way you didn't.  For this show, there were tunes or arrangements by Benny Goodman, Glen Miller, Count Basie, Buddy Rich and more.  There was a vocalist too Jan Maki.  It was a wonderful show. Go see them.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Berkshire-Big-Band/75080779193

Paddies Day Part 2: Killian Troupe at Molten

Three heads are better than one they say. On Paddies Day evening I caught the first performance ever of a new trio: the Killian Troupe at Molten Java in Bethel. It's an acoustic trio where all three sing and write songs.



It's comprised of Richard King, (upper right)  Cassandra Mulcahy (upper left) and Jeff Smith (lower left). This was their very first show as a group. Though there are a few instrumental kinks to work out,  the result will be quite nice judging by Saturday's performance. Their vocal harmonies were wonderful, and they can also each take the spot light for a song or more or swap out instruments to lend variety to the show.






Each of these independent musicians/songwriters brings different strengths and skills to the group and this may play out well over the long haul:

• Jeff Smith  brings a relentless melancholy musicianship and songwriting to his own songs, that is emotive and somehow transcendent. He also brings guitar and mandolin, both accompaniment and lead.
• Cassandra Mulcahy, a music therapist, brings a counterbalancing joy and delight in life, an impish loving song-writing charm on guitar, keyboard and bass guitar chops too.
• Finally Richard King who bills himself as "The Old Picker" brings a lifetime of performing as a folk/country player. With it come a sense of pacing and that solid entertainer's patter to the audience which is almost always lacking in the shows of beginning musicians and songwriters who are so busy feeling their music that they forget they must be showmen too.

You can find out more, and click "like" on their Killian Troupe Facebook page where there are links to their individual pages.

Paddies Day Part 1: Flowers & Music at Art and Frame

Jen Vanderlyn and some of the Flowers wall display.

Art and Frame in Danbury (on Route 6) stages some really nice art show openings and this Paddies Day event was no exception.  There's eye candy on the walls, tasty interesting food & wine  - and to ice the cake, there's live music.

Jen Venderlyn

The music on Paddies Day was Jen Vanderlyn who is half the sisters folk/rock duo Free Thought.   She has a great voice and compelling original material. I really can't wait to hear the whole duo in August. For information or to hear some wonderful samples from CDBaby visit their website at FreethoughMusic.WordPress.com

The Flowers show runs through April 29th. You can see what else is up at Art and Frame at http://artandframeofdanbury.com/

the table!

Serendipity: an accidental photo

This photo about sums up my week. First I've felt like a big oppressive hand was getting ready to grab me by the scruff. (And it was I had a day-long migraine the day after I wrote this.) Second I feel like the puzzle of my life is ahhh still well, a puzzle.

The photo to the right didn't start out as a a trick pic. It  was taken accidentally on Enders Island as I was walking around snapping pictures. I turned and swung around and must have taken a picture while not aiming.... The frame captured the horizon and my hand, all out of scale...  Serendipity!

It was subsequently finessed in the online photo editor "Picnik" using a Puzzle effect and a frame effect - two of the effects Google, (which owns Picnik) hasn't seen fit to port over to the Google Plus "Creative Kit" Unfortunately Picnik will close in April and we will be stuck with a much more limited array of possibilities than previously. Lately I've begun wondering if Picasa Web Gallerys are going away eventually as well, tucked into G+.  I wouldn't mind but they always leave out some little functionality or other that I had admired and that worked well for me.

Oh well.

Danbury Library Concerts - The Kerry Boys

This past Saturday morning at 11 am - I was down at the Danbury Public library, already caffeinated, with ears perked and ready. Besides browsing among the books - I was there to hear the Kerry Boys, or at least two of them do their musical Irish thing....  The event was well-attended and there were lots of wee folk and I am not talking the little green kind of Irish folk lore. It's good to see a new generation getting hooked on live music.  Pierce Campbell led the kids in a series of hand motions to the Unicorn song which was a big hit with the younger set.

 The able fellow on banjo and mandolin was a great foil to Campbell's quips. They did some original Irish drinking songs and took favorities requests from the audience. On of the requests was O Danny Boy. Campbell was in excellent voice and did a really nice job on that tune. I needed a tissue.   Thanks to those Kerry Boys, and the Danbury Library. For information check out the Kerry Boys website and Pierce Campbell who also plays and sings original folk and jazz. Givea listen. Get on their mailing lists!

POEM: Open Source Cosmos

Last night I read just this one poem at the Calling All Poets series open mic at the Silas Bronson Library in Waterbury, where Jon Anderson was the evening's feature poet.  It's from my latest chapbook, Tabernacle of Bees, published in Nov of 2011. I believe I read this one at Confluence in Feb of 2009 as well.

For those not into computer lore, open source is a kind of software program where the code is freely available and any enterprising geek can tweak it, and change the code to add or remove functionality, to streamline or enhance it or add hidden easter eggs of silly sayings...  And the functionality is improved very gradually by little changes over time. Of course if it weren't serendipitous we could tweak ourselves off the map.....

Open Source Cosmos

in serendipitous evolution,

the replicant’s tic in mutating pattern
changeling inheritance gathering force

'til mental metamorphosis tweaks free,
a comet trail of idea scatters seeds.

Laugh as the vortex roars, the brass
the shatter and scold of turbulent limit,

of serendipity in the dark cackle chambers,
the immaculate laugh-box, the techno-lotus mind

where time loops asymmetrically, the meme
slips into everything, lost, replenished

gone and coming around,
altered just a little.

-- Mar (Mistryel) Walker

c 2011

First Layer: Chromebook as canvas

This is the first layer of a new painting I've started -  just a doodle so far really, and it's just black and white, though that will change. The canvas is the white cover on my Chromebook. Okay I am nuts. I was admiring some of the laptop covers I saw which are sold on various sites around the web. They seemed too pricey though - I thought it would be easier and cheaper just to paint the thing itself. Call me crazy, (or reclusive, awkwardly antisocial in many cases. )

I used an inexpensive acrylic paint in a squeeze bottle. I only have black  right now, so when I get more colors I will add new layers and post a photo of each as I go along.

Images of the unspoken: dances by Pina Bausch

Polite small talk is a social mask, but in the dances of choreographer Pina Bausch - you simply cannot escape viewing the unspoken subtext.

A severe and menacing man chooses among deeply fearful women who offer him a red cloth. He rejects all but one.  All are distressed. A flock of men poke and prod a woman as if she were a melon, or a small child.

These were among a few vingettes in the film "Pina" - a commemoration of the work of coregorapher Pina Bausch. It's not a biography, nor a documentary really, nor an epic. It sets Bausch's major works in the loose frame of her dancers memories of her - which are admiring and well, sort of oddly worshipful. The film shows them onstage and sometimes takes them dancing out into the city, and country.

I hoped the images present in the dances would be interesting and might inspire a painting or a drawing perhaps a poem also.  (I like to paint the human form in motion, and evoke motion, even in doodling.)  The dances were evocative of human relations and contained quite a bit of visual metaphor. The trailer will give you the idea.....

One scene that really struck me contained a couple embracing. Suddenly another man comes out of the side door and rearranges their embrace - then he picks up the woman and hands her to the man. The nitpicking spectator then goes back behind the door, after which, the man drops the woman. She immediately gets up and flies back to him, and they assume the original pose...  Then, of course, the man comes back out of the side door, rearranges them again, and this whole process repeats over and over and over - and  accelerating faster and faster to an impossible pace.

Finally the man no longer comes out to rearrange them. He doesn't have time and doesn't need to either because they have accepted his expectations and rearrange themselves. They subsequently revert to type, rearrange themselves, revert to type......, repeat, repeat, etc etc  What an odd, wonderful visual metaphor for social expectations and the way we internalize them.