Three Martha’s Vineyard students were accepted into the prestigious OperaFest 2008 workshops on the Island, and two will be performing arias and scenes from famous operas with up-and-coming young singers from New Jersey on Saturday, July 26, at 8 p.m. at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs.
The Vineyard Students are Rosie Bick, who will sing Cunegonda from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide and Mitch Lowe who will sing in the Torreador Scene from Bizet’s Carmen.
Award-winning dancer and choreographer Nora Chipaumire enraptured students across the Island last week in The Yard’s artists-in-the-schools program. Ms. Chipaumire, associate artistic director of the acclaimed company Urban Bush Women, teaches a blend of Southern African and modern dance.
Vineyard Dance will offer a six-week summer dance course from Monday, June 30 to August 9, at the Oak Bluffs School on Tradewinds Road off Wing Road. Adults and teenagers may join at any time. Ballet, modern dance, modern jazz and floor barre classes will be taught by Kathy Joyce Costanza. For more information, call 508-693-2257.
Singer-songwriter Bella will be performing a bossa nova show at Che’s Lounge every Tuesday through August at 7 p.m.
Called Bossa on the Moon, the show includes original songs and classics of samba, jazz and blues that Bella swings on her guitar and her cavaquinho, a soprano Brazilian guitar.
On the set list there will be sweet summer treats like Samba Chocolate and Samba Noir by Bella, and standards such as The Little Boat and Fly Me to the Moon with a bossa arrangement.
Alasdair Fraser, one of Scotland’s finest fiddlers, and Natalie Haas, the talented young Californian cellist will perform at the Katharine Cornell Theatre on Thursday, May 15, at 8 p.m.
The Kramer Montgomery Band with Aerosmith’s Joey Kramer, James Montgomery and special guests Jim Belushi, James Cotton and The Rolling Stones horn section The Uptown Horns, will take the stage at Outerland on Thursday, July 17.
One of rock’s top drummers joins forces with a legendary blues master and a killer backup section for this show.
The film Chops, about high school jazz bands competing at the Essentially Ellington Festival, will screen as the final Tabernacle summer film, tonight, Tuesday, August 19, at 8 p.m. in the Camp Ground in Oak Bluffs.
Filmmaker Brice Broder turns his lens on one Florida band at the festival hosted by Wynton Marsalis at Lincoln Center. Running 88 minutes, Chops is appropriate for all ages. Admissions is $8 and $5 for film society members.
When jazz crooner Jerri Wells is finally coaxed up to the front of Oak Bluffs’ Offshore Ale by Eddie (Pepé Caron) Larkosh for a rendition of Do You Know What It Is to Miss New Orleans? she does not stick to the script for long. She delivers a few bars of the prescribed number then, like some sort of thief sidling past a security guard, hums her own improvised segue and ducks into the second verse of A ll Of Me, the Billie Holiday version, leaving the band to scramble after her.
The chorus was catchy, the kind that easily got stuck in your head: “When the sparks turn to flames, it’s time to play the blame game.”
The beat was almost inspirational, symphonic samples over a kick and a snare.
“Yo, who’s them four MCs with the same name?” rapped Robert (Bubba) Brown, Matt Lucier and Andrew Larsen, all seniors at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, together with their friend Henry Peacor from Colorado College.
Among many funny things about Steve Roslonek, this may be the funniest: After everything that’s happened in the past 10 years, he still thinks his voice — and even his personality — is best suited to singing backup. Think about that when, in all likelihood, he and his band fill the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs with thousands of parents and children for a free concert on Sunday afternoon and get them clapping, stomping and singing along to tunes such as Elephant Hide and Seek, The Veggie Song and Opposite Day.
