Entertainment

Esoteric out jazz? Strange funk from specific neighborhoods in Washington, DC? An overplayed pop star?

Not this week. This week we have Muppets.

This is a 1987 TV special called Muppet Family Christmas, featuring holiday songs, talented frogs, fashionable pigs, and bad jokes by bears. In fact, it features characters from the Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, and Muppet Babies all performing together.

Time for more holiday fun.

In addition to the iBrattleboro animated interactive calendar, there are some more goodies in the bag to share.

For example, we have the Christmas Calendar at Castle Arcana, and numerous cards to play with, such as Build Your Own Snowman, Trim Your Own Tree, and more at http://www.castlearcana.com/christmas/

I’ve been listening to John Coltrane since college, when my pal Everett introduced me to the world of jazz. At first it sounded like a lot of squeaking and noise to my ear. After hearing a new piece, I’d jokingly ask if he was done tuning up.

Ev taught me to think of the jazz sax as a voice, a singer. He wanted me to listen to what Coltrane was saying, not playing.

It took a while to get it. I made a cassette with Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, and John Coltrane’s Love Supreme on the other side, and let it play over and over again.

We’ll take a bit of a detour this week and feature the holiday music stylings of singer Andy Williams.

Andy Williams used his weekly variety show for an annual Christmas special on TV each year throughout most of the 60’s and early 70’s. Often the Osmonds would show up. It was a bit like a hipper Lawrence Welk Show, and is was fun for the entire family to watch.

This video is a collection of Andy William’s favorite clips from those specials.

This week we feature Tuba Skinny, a band from New Orleans. I don’t know much about them, other than my dad played me a bit of them from his iPhone this week.

This seems to be recorded in Australia for a live radio program.

GRAFTON, VT—The critically acclaimed Russian Duo will play at the White Church in Grafton on Sunday, December 1 at 3 p.m.

Featuring vocals and Russian percussion, the Duo will perform Russian folk music, romances, dances, classical music, gypsy melodies, and interpretations of favorites from around the world. Oleg Kruglyakov is a balalaika virtuoso originally from Siberia; Terry Boyarsky is an American concert pianist. The balalaika, with its three strings and a triangular body, is the instrument of choice for traditional Russian folk melodies.

Here’s a show from Montreal in 1964. One of the YouTube comments say that it is “a Radio-Canada video of the first night of Ellington’s appearance in the Le Hot Jazz room in Montreal’s Casa Loma, taped Apr. 20 1964.”

So this is what people were doing a few months before I was born.

Sandglass Theater’s New Visions series presents, Leila Ghaznavi with Pantea Productions: Beyond the Light. This new work, a theatrical exploration of dance, aerial acrobatics, light effects, and puppetry, was conceived by Leila Ghaznavi, a 2012 recipient of the Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant and the 2012 Puffin Grant.  Beyond the Light is an elegant hybridization of dance, puppetry, shadow work, aerial acrobatics, lighting effects, all set to the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emma Lazarus.  Creator Leila Ghaznavi blends these media to create an epic journey of a soul that is torn in two, seeking to reunite itself.

Let’s visit the Estival Jazz Lugano on July 6, 2012 for a show by David Murray’s Big Band, with guest vocalist Macy Gray.

David Murray has been one of my favorite sax players since his days with the World Saxophone Quartet. He always keeps moving and experimenting, releasing albums with out-jazz trios, quartets, octets, and big bands. he works with great musicians, dabbles in musical styles he’s new to such as music of the Grateful Dead, and has embraced a unique approach to world music through his own style. He reminds me Dolphy and Coltrane, but for this era.

Next up in Sandglass Theater’s New Visions Puppetry Series is Adelka Polak and her company Sova Theater with the world premiere of their new piece Branches. Presented at Sandglass Theater on November 15 & 16 at 7:30pm, tickets are $16 general and $13 for students and seniors. To make reservations please call Sandglass Theater at 387-4051.

This weekend we have good tickets for an interesting show. It’s the summer of 1985, in Union City, New Jersey, and someone classified as punk, new wave, classical, and performance artist. It’s the future wife of Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson,

She made this film much the way the Talking Heads released Stop Making Sense. Her music didn’t translate completely to album format, and the visual elements are captured here for listeners and viewers.

As everyone knows, December is when UFAUX’s tend to float over the skies of Brattleboro.

Is it because of some planetary alignment?

Is it because the occupants of the UFAUX’s are interested in the celebrations that happen near Christmas ?

Do they come here near the darkest time of the year so as to avoid all that solar glare on their windshield, when they buzz the cows in stealthy fly bys?

Or, could it be that that this is when we launch the lightships that my wife Cynthia Houghton created, and the best time for lights in the sky is in the time of the year when it gets dark early?

Let’s set the musical time machine for the end of September in 1986 and head to London’s Town& Country Club for a funky few songs with Trouble Funk.

Yes, it is another Trouble Funk show. Our previous look was in a bigger space, whereas this show takes to a hot and sweaty nightclub, which is more their home turf. Big Tony and his bass lead the band through a handful of their most popular songs at the time for this British TV show.

THE MET: LIVE IN HD: PUCCINI’S CLASSIC DRAMA TOSCA STARS PATRICIA RACETTE AND ROBERTO ALAGNA

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 at 12:55 p.m.* at The Latchis Theatre, 50 Main Street

THE MET: LIVE IN HD, TOSCA by Giacomo Puccini
Host: Renée Fleming

Puccini’s enduring favorite, starring an exceptional trio of singing actors in the leading roles, will be simulcast LIVE from the Met on Saturday, November 9 at 12:55 p.m. ET. Acclaimed American soprano Patricia Racette stars in one of opera’s greatest roles as the ultimate diva, Floria Tosca, in Luc Bondy’s production.

Thanks to your support, Brattleboro’s own has been nominated for Best GLBT Podcast in the 9th Annual Podcast Awards.

In 15 seconds a day for the next 2 weeks, you can help us win.

October 2013 Artist ala Mode presents:

The music of Bada Raga

The Green Mountain Mummers, Windham County’s men’s sword dance troupe, will be performing on Halloween weekend for the 39th consecutive year! On Saturday, October 26 and Sunday, October 27, the group will present its symbolic death-and-resurrection “street theater” rain or shine in seven locations in Windham County, Vermont (see full schedule below).

The group of 12 men (mostly Windham County residents) is the oldest continuing sword dance and mumming troupe in the United States. Founded in 1975 and with only one of the original members still performing, the group has added many younger members over the last several years. However, it still operates in the manner of the traditional English morris and sword dancers from which the dances were originally collected: they meet to practice and perform only once a year. A favorite every year at election season is the group’s mummers play which has been characterized as a “live political cartoon,” drawing on current events and providing social commentary through humor.

Lenelle Moïse in Womb-Words, Thirsting

November 2-3, 7:30pm

$16 General, $13 students and seniors

For reservations email info@sandglasstheater.org or call (802)387-4051

Sandglass Theater’s Voices of Community Series kicks off on Saturday, November 2nd and Sunday, November 3rd, with poet/theater artist Lenelle Moïse and her one-woman show Womb-Words, Thirsting at Sandglass Theater in Putney, VT.

This week’s concert takes us to Los Angeles in 1983 for a performance by Midnight Star.

This show has everything you need to get your funk on. Shiny suits, bright colors, Jheri curls, sunglasses, robot voices, and nightclub floor-fillers. If you listen to the Chocolate City show on WVEW Saturdays, these songs should sound familiar.

They got started at Kentucky State University in 1976, had a few under-the-radar albums, then broke out big with No Parking On The Dance Floor. The music video featured a classic dancing in the streets scene. with both Prince and Michael Jackson impersonators and dancing police, cowgirls, and construction workers. If they are at this LA show, however, they are watching from the audience.

Vermont Premiere of “World Circus” Film 
Saturday, November 2nd @ 7:30pm 

NECCA – New England Center for Circus Arts, 74 Cotton Mill Hill, Brattleboro, VT 
63min Documentary – Suggested donation @ door 

The “World Circus” feature documentary follows five top circus acts from around the world to the Monte Carlo Circus Festival, and with interviews from the founder of the Big Apple Circus, owner of Ringling Bros., and artistic director at Cirque du Soleil, it reveals the behind the scenes life, history, and culture of circus on an international scale.