It’s hard to believe that in their 25-plus years of existence local fiddling legends the Flying Elbows have never released an album. That is, until now: on Sunday, Nancy Jephcote will lead the Elbows in a release concert at the Grange Hall for their boisterous new album, Pokedelic.
While a certain Chicago politician comes ashore in a little over a week, an ambassador from that other great Chicago institution, its jazz scene, will have already made landfall; the legendary Ramsey Lewis performs at the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center this Sunday.
Mr. Lewis has just finished composing Colors: the Ecology of Oneness, a piece commissioned for a performance in Tokyo in September. He says he may test some of the new material on his audience at Oak Bluffs.
Singer, songwriter and guitarist Phil daRosa will perform this Saturday Sept. 18, at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs. Phil is about to release a new EP and this is your chance to say I heard it first.
Doors open at 7 p.m. Opening for Phil are Erich Luening and Meghan LaRoque.
Tickets are available at ticketsmv.com or at Above Ground Records, daRosa’s and Island Music. For more details, call 508-524-2065.
All or none. That’s what is listed under religion on Nora Guthrie’s birth certificate. Even with folksinger Woody Guthrie as a father and a famous Yiddish poet for a grandmother in a densely populated Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y., Ms. Guthrie grew up in a household where religion was understood to be a personal connection for each individual.
The Edgartown School presents the classic musical comedy Once Upon a Mattress. The play was originally created at a summer camp and opened on Broadway in 1959. It featured the debut of a talented young lady named Carol Burnett.
The cast includes over 25 Edgartown School students in grades six through eight, with stage direction by Donna Swift, musical direction by Beth Carr, stage management by Mariah Mac-Kenzie, sets by Alison Carr and sound by William Fligor and Peter Sawyer,
Be you Islander, washashore, summer dink or weekender it’s time to rock local this Sunday night, Sept. 5 at the Katharine Cornell Theatre when Local Colors takes the stage. The band consists of Joe Keenan, Kevin Keady, Nancy Jephcote, Tristan Israel and Paul Thurlow, all familiar Island names who happen to make extraordinary music together.
The show starts at 7:30 p.m. and tickets are $12 at the door.
What is Summer Song? It’s a free evening of entertainment, song, music and refreshments at the Sailing Camp Park in Oak Bluffs overlooking the Lagoon on Monday, August 16, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. in support of Island Theatre Workshop’s Children’s Theatre program and the Payne-Fierro Scholarship fund.
Were you that guy or gal Holding Back the Years while hoisting 99 Luftballoons at your White Wedding full of Karma Chameleons? Or maybe, instead, you were the Owner of a Lonely Heart because Sister Christian said Girls Just Want to Have Fun and then she started Dancing in the Dark with Mr. Roboto to the heat of St. Elmo’s Fire. Well, it Gives Love a Bad Name, right, all this Dancing on the Ceiling, but even if you do Blame It on the Rain, the sad fact is you miss doing the Wild Thing.
The Marafanyi beats go on, from Sunday, August 22, through Tuesday August 24: workshops where adults, children and families together can learn West African drum, dance and song will be held at the Chilmark Community Center. For details and registration, e-mail Mary Ambulos at mvmar@comcast.net or see online marafanyi.com.
Every August, Vineyarders flood the fair grounds at the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society Hall in West Tisbury. Every fall, we are treated to the harvest festival to celebrate the season’s bounty, and every winter we have Island artisans’ fairs, community potlucks or most recently the winter farmers’ markets. The Vineyard is a place of tradition, and the Ag Hall is a beacon of that.
