Friday, July 20: With her first consistent post-Sonic Youth project, Kim Gordon certainly did not make a beeline toward pop and the big payday. Body/Head – her somewhat unsettling collaboration with guitarist Bob Nace – is, if anything, more abstract and less congenial than most anything Sonic Youth ever recorded.
The Bardavon presents Brian Wilson – with special guests and old friends Al Jardine and Blondie Chapin – giving final performances of Pet Sounds at the Ulster Performing Arts Center (UPAC) on Sunday, July 22 at 7 p.m.
Saturday, July 14: Chart-toppers from bygone eras teaming up for nostalgia shows at the big-shed summer venues: This has been a model of success for years and years, a way to tap not just a band’s legacy but an era’s. So what it is about this one that surprises me? I guess it is the thought of Steely Dan playing nice with any of their era peers and ever agreeing to period branding such as this.
Friday, July 13: A tireless touring and recording artist, a versatile confessional-style writer with a distinctively soulful voice, Sexton is one of the godfathers of today’s groovy acoustic folk/rock.
Saturday, July 7: ne of the brassiest ideas Jeff Tweedy ever had was to open Wilco’s elegant and inclusive progressive-roots sound to the shred-grade chops of Nels Cline. Let’s be clear: Hip people hate chops, and let’s be equally clear: Cline has them and makes no attempt to hide them.
Tuesday, July 10: Dave Eggers declared the Tivoli writer “one of the most distinctive and unforgettable voices I have read in years.” Hunt’s recently reissued novel is about a young woman who believes herself to be a mermaid. She falls in a love with a damaged veteran of the first Iraq war, a fisherman named Jude.
Sunday, July 1: Locally, the pillar of Ed Sanders’ fame might well be his lead role in the band of rock ‘n’ roll subversives known as the Fugs, but internationally he will always be known principally as the best-selling author of The Family, the first great work on Charles Manson. Sanders is an unabashed fan of RFK and of what might have been.
The 360-degree, cross-disciplinary nature of inquiry at SummerScape inclines the curators toward composers who lived in fractious and interesting times: more to work with, more meaning to tap. Fortunately, that includes most of them.
June 30-September 2: Maverick Concerts in Woodstock is the oldest continuous summer chamber music festival in America. Lest that sound too staid and venerable, Hervey White’s Maverick colony, of course, was an incubator of progressive thought in society and in all the arts. Maverick Concerts is White’s legacy, and the current curators honor that with an inclusive approach to programming and repertoire that is anything but pandering.
Saturday, June 16: The story concerns the rekindling-under-duress of a friendship between Julie and her gay ex-husband from long ago. Sardonic, wry and ceaselessly funny as it may be, My Ex-Life genuinely surprises as it progresses, accumulating tenderness, warmth and complexity.
The business of media is changing, but local, on-the-ground, fact-checked journalism is needed now more than ever.
