Music

Next Stage Arts Project presents two indie rock bands, Brattleboro-based quartet The Snaz and Keene-based trio Jake McKelvie & The Countertops, at Next Stage on Saturday, December 7 at 7:30 pm.

The Snaz is a young, original rock band featuring Dharma Ramirez (15, lead vocals and guitar), Mavis Eaton (15, keyboards and backup vocals), Zack James (13, drums) and Sally Fletcher (15, bass). They have won “Battle of the Bands” competitions in Brattleboro and Northampton. Their prize for the Brattleboro event was recording time at the Guilford Sound studios, where they recorded an EP with the help of Grammy nominated record producer Peter Solley.

On Friday, December 6th at 8:00 PM, the Vermont Jazz Center will present a Gala Performance with the VJC Big Band supporting internationally acclaimed vocalist, Kevin Mahogany. This is a dance concert and more than half the floor will remain open for people to move to the sounds of the VJC’s 18 piece orchestra.

Kevin Mahogany is well acquainted to singing with big bands as he has his own repertoire and custom-made charts, some of them arranged by the legendary Frank Mantooth. According to the respected jazz website, allmusic.com, Mahogany’s “swinging style is reminiscent, but not derivative of Joe Williams.” He takes pride in his Kansas City roots and, just like another Kansas City resident, Charlie Parker, his delivery is deeply saturated in the authentic blues. In one recent performance, Kevin joked that the state law in Kansas City required a minimum of two blues numbers per set!

For the second year running, the Kurn Hattin Children’s Select Choir has been invited to join Grammy-winning fiddler Natalie MacMaster on stage for her “Christmas in Cape Breton” concert. Kurn Hattin Music Director
Lisa Bianconi has chosen 26 out of the 64-member advanced choir to perform in the concert, which takes place at the Latchis Theater in downtown Brattleboro, Vermont on Friday, December 6 at 7:30 PM

Guilford, Vt. – Friends of Music’s 41st Annual Christmas at Christ Church program is set for 8:00 p.m. on Friday, December 13, and 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 15—note this departure from past years’ schedule for the reprise performance. Christ Church is at the corner of Rt. 5 south and Melendy Hill Road in the Algiers Village of Guilford.

        “Brightest & Best: Music to Welcome the Holy Child” is this season’s theme for the program. Since mid-September, Tom Baehr has been conducting rehearsals with sixteen Guilford Chamber Singers. Many have sung with Friends of Music for a long time, and others are new to this annual “pick-up” group but sing with other choirs and choruses in the area.

Brattleboro, Vt. – Friends of Music at Guilford, for a 43rd year, invites singers and music lovers in the Tri-State region to start their holiday season with its annual Community Messiah Sing on the first Saturday in December. Set again at Centre Congregational Church, 193 Main Street in Brattleboro, the Sing’s permanent home since 1982, the event is a benefit for agencies serving the area’s homeless.

        This year the first Saturday falls on December 7, and the program is set to begin as usual at 1:00 p.m. with Clark Anderson at the helm as conductor for a third season. William McKim graciously stepped in for a 28th year as Sing organist when Christian Huebner, Centre Church’s resident organ master, learned that his ministerial ordination ceremony was set for the same afternoon. Messrs. Anderson and McKim will lead the assembled singers through the Christmas portion of Handel’s masterwork, plus a few other favorite sections from Parts II and III.

An old-time Gospel Hour is planned in West Dummerston on Sunday Dec. 1st.,from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Dummerston Community Center. Guitar and vocals will be by GinMillBill.

There will be no preacher and no preaching, just music and singing. Songbooks will be available. Light refreshments will be available. Donations will be accepted for the Community Center’s heating and maintenance fund.

Hugh Keelan and the Windham Orchestra recently collaborated with young musicians and singers from Kurn Hattin Homes to create a thing of immense beauty.

If you missed the concert earlier this month, you can catch the ! Goosebumps guaranteed!

Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present an evening of bluegrass and Americana music with the award-winning Claire Lynch Band and double banjo bluegrass quartet Hot Mustard at Next Stage on Friday, November 22 at 7:30 pm.

The Claire Lynch Band – Claire (guitar, vocals), Matt Wingate (guitar, mandolin, vocals), Mark Schatz (bass, clawhammer banjo, percussive dance) and Bryan McDowell (mandolin, fiddle, vocals) has the innate ability to perfectly interpret the beauty, subtlety and genre-defying sophistication of Claire’s music. By any measure, the quartet is high on the bluegrass world’s A-List, with musicians whose accolades include three International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Female Vocalist of the Year awards and two Grammy nominations for Best Bluegrass Album (Claire), two IBMA Bass Player of the Year awards (Mark), MerleFest Doc Watson Guitar Champion (Matt ) and an unprecedented first-place win in three instrument categories at the Walnut Valley National Flatpicking Championship (Bryan).

The Brattleboro Women’s Chorus directed by Becky Graber will present its eighteenth annual fall concerts entitled “Where There is Light” on November 23 and 24 at the First Baptist Church in Brattleboro. Seventy local women and girls will perform, accompanied by guest musician Kate Parsons on piano.

Included in the performance will be two of Graber’s compositions, “Travelin’ Light” and “Let Your Light Shine On.” From Minnesota composer Elizabeth Alexander is a Chinese proverb set to music about light, beauty, harmony, honor, and peace, “Where There is Light in the Soul.”  The Zulu song “Thula Sizwe” will be combined with Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released.”

Rocking-acoustic-swinging-soul music Friday night at Pleasant Valley Brewing in Saxtons River. Electric Fence returns with a night of free music, great beer and November cheer to take the chill off. Music starts at 8:00 and goes until 10:30.

Manuel Valera’s New Cuban Express to present a rhythmically charged evening at the Vermont Jazz Center on November 16th, 2013 at 8:00 PM

The Vermont Jazz Center will present Cuban pianist/composer Manuel Valera in concert with the New Cuban Express Quintet (NCE) on Saturday, November 16^th at 8:00 PM.  This international band is touring in support of a new, highly acclaimed recording, Expectativas, their second Grammy nominated disc in two years. Valera (Cuba) is on piano and keyboards, Joel Frahm (USA), saxophone, John Benitez (Puerto Rico), bass, Ludwig Alfonso (Cuba), drums and Mauricio Herrera (Cuba), percussion.

Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present Winnipeg, Canada-based roots music quintet The Duhks at Next Stage on Saturday, November 9 at 7:30 pm. The Grammy nominated and Juno award-winning band’s original members – Jessee Havey (vocals), Tania Elizabeth (fiddle), Jordan McConnell (guitar, pipes, whistles, vocals), Leonard Podolak (banjo, vocals) and Scott Senior (percussion) – have reunited after a three-year hiatus. Vermont-based, Americana, folk and roots music duo Red Heart The Ticker will open the show.

Theory & Musicianship I, an introduction to music theory for all instrumentalists & vocalists, will provide the fundamental skills related to music theory, analysis, and general musicianship. Designed for instrumental and vocal students, members of this course will use their primary instrument to help review basics of key, interval, and diatonic chord motions. Basic actions of harmony and voice leading will be discussed, providing students with insight into how a melodic line implies or demands certain chord movement. Discussion of melodic content, phrase, and motive will lead to an introduction of basic analytical techniques.

Vocalist and Composer, Kavita Shah to appear in VJC’s Emerging Artist Series, November 2^nd, 2013 at 8:00 PM

The Vermont Jazz Center launches its new Emerging Artist season with a choice that perfectly fits their concept.  The goal of the series is to present young musicians who deserve to be heard, individuals who are on the cutting edge, performing original, fresh, high quality music; artists with unfamiliar names whose personal statements are moving the music forward.  Kavita Shah is all of the above and more.  A talented singer, she is a tireless organizer with a vision and a body of work that challenges the definition of jazz while at the same time paying deep respect to its lineage. 

Here’s a band that seems largely forgotten now.

Back in ’85 when this concert was recorded, REM was becoming one of the biggest bands in America – even if nobody could understand Michael Stipe’s mumbled lyrics.

From Germany, REM, in 1985.

As part of the opening of the Windham Orchestra’s 44th season, Maestro Hugh Keelan and the Windham Orchestra, along with musicians and singers present Resounding Hills: A Transformative Musical Collaboration. This concert takes place at 7:30 PM November 1 at Kurn Hattin Homes’ Higbie auditorium and is open to the public. Admission is by donation at the door.

Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present roots music quartet Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem at Next Stage on Saturday, October 26 at 7:30 pm.

One of “America’s most inventive string bands” (The Boston Herald), Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem mix traditional, original and contemporary sounds on fiddle, guitar, bass and recycled percussion, and top that with joyous harmonies from four skilled lead singers. Hailed as “one of the most song- and arrangement-oriented bands in a field overgrown with pyrotechnic, jam- and solo-conscious virtuosos” (San Francisco Guardian), the band tackles the human condition with playfulness, courage and heart.

On Sunday, October 20 at 3 pm, the Brattleboro Music Center presents a recital with faculty members Richard Ullman, guitar, and guest Kristen Carmichael-Bowers, voice, at Centre Congregational Church in Brattleboro, VT.

For this recital, Ullman revisits some of his favorite pieces from Spanish composer Andrés Segovia’s repertoire.  Segovia is considered the father of modern classical guitar and, although his works have fallen out of fashion in recent decades, is credited with popularizing classical guitar music. Segovia was a catalytic figure in granting respectability to the guitar as a serious concert instrument capable of evocativeness and depth of interpretation.

Over Columbus Day weekend, the Blanche Moyse Chorale will again honor the memory of its beloved founder, Blanche Moyse, by performing a favorite selection of J. S. Bach’s choral music. This year’s selection is the “Christmas Oratorio”. But why in October? Simply because Mme. Moyse’s celebrated New England Bach Festival (NEBF: 1969-2004) was always held in early October. Thus the scheduling of her annual Memorial Concert has followed the same tradition. Moreover, while Bach’s oratorio does tell the Biblical Christmas story, this great work of art touches on many aspects of human experience, transcending the specifics of the Christian holiday calendar.

The 3rd Annual Blanche Moyse Memorial Concert will be performed twice: at 7:30 P.M. on Friday, October 11, at the Bellows Falls Opera House, in Bellows Falls, VT, and at 2:00 P.M. on Sunday, October 13, at Marlboro College’s Persons Auditorium, in Marlboro, VT.

The Gaslight Anthem are a band that formed in the early 2000s from New Jersey. They are heavily influenced by Bruce Springsteen and the Clash. They are also influenced by legendary soul and blues musicians such as Miles Davis, Wilson Pickett and Sam Cooke. They rock hard and know how to masterfully craft a great song. Their songs almost invariably have memorable melodies. They have 4 LP’s out at this point and all of them are solid with tons of excellent tracks. ’59 Sound is probably their best. Check it out!