Many years ago, Brendan Begley read the following horoscope in a Dublin newspaper: Follow your heart. A moment of madness is better than a life of logic. Mr. Begley promptly quit his job as a Dublin schoolteacher and headed back to Dingle to start making music.
The Ryan Montbleau Band is coming to the Vineyard this Saturday, August 28. They will be playing at Nectar’s, a venue that in two years has very quickly proven itself as the go-to club for serious musical talent. This weekend’s choice is the perfect coda to a summer full of top-notch acts.
It’s time to get out your party wear, buy the goofy looking 2011 glasses and ring in the New Year Vineyard style. But waking up with glitter in your hair from the night before isn’t the only way to send 2010 out with a bang, although that is certainly an option.
The Infinity Brass Quintet and special guest Livingston Taylor will be in cahoots next week when the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society concert performs Peter Schickele’s Wild West spoof, Hornsmoke: A Horse Opera.
It’s the singer, not the song or is it? After all, it is the melody that lingers, the words that capture the undefinable. Songs are mercurial things, each having a mystery path — so far from the iPod or radio dial — that evades the fan. But next weekend, at various locations across the Island, the Martha’s Vineyard Songwriters Festival brings a dozen of the nation’s best songwriters together to celebrate songs, stories and each other.
Enjoy an evening of contemporary chamber jazz in Vineyard Haven on Sunday, with a new jazz ensemble consisting of professional musicians from West Tisbury and Chilmark: Eric Johnson on electric and nylon-string guitar, Tauras Biskis on percussion, and Boaz Kirschenbaum on fretless bass guitar.
The concert is on August 22 at 7:30 p.m. at the Katharine Cornell Theatre on Spring street in Vineyard Haven. The program will feature the music of Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius.
Grab a slice of Haydn next week with your packets of roast beef, ham and swiss. Don’t see the connective tissue there? Well, that’s because one never really knows what will be uncovered when pulling back the curtain on our neighbors’ lives.
This Saturday, Sept. 4, Cindy Kallet and Grey Larsen will perform at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven. The two have spent much of the past five years collaborating together. Cindy is a songwriter, singer, guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist. Grey plays the Irish flute and tin whistle, concertina, fiddle, piano and harmonium. As composers each has contributed much to the tapestry of contemporary folk and world music as it flourishes in America today.
It’s quiet out there, at night on the Island this time of year. In town there are a few signs of life. But on the back streets, after the sun goes down and the winter chill takes over, mostly it’s just smoke from a woodstove or a startled rabbit or nothing at all. But looks can be deceiving.
Growing up, Grace Potter always had a strong taste for celebrity. She remembers wishing she’d some day just morph into Ariel, of Disney’s The Little Mermaid. When it started to look as if coronation was out of the question, she embarked on another path to fame, joining up with some college buddies to form the band Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.
