This February, Jazz is PHSH returns to New York with two stops in Rochester and NYC, bringing with them perform unique arrangements featuring the music of Phish and an all-star lineup. Alongside bandleader and drummer Adam Chase, musicians Felix Pastorious (Hipster Assassins), John Culbreth (Naughty Professor) and Yesseh Furaha-Ali join together for these coming shows, with Matthew Chase and Jonathan Huber joining for the first three shows, and Snarky Puppy’s Bob Lanzetti and Justin Stanton joining for the rest of the tour.
“Ultimately, it became my goal to create arrangements that would be fun for Phish fans to enjoy while presenting the music in a way that even the most pretentious jazz professor would be forced to respect,” says co-creator and music director Adam Chase, of the process.
To formulate their compositions, the Chase brothers do things like write original chord changes to support the existing melody or pull chord changes from jazz standards and add them to solo sections. The ensembles create their own unique interpretations and arrangements of songs by the beloved improvisational rock band and, at times, their unique interpretation of music from the Phish songbook are completely unrecognizable.
Jazz is PHSH Tour Dates:
1/30 – Baltimore, MD – Union Craft Brewing
1/31 – Toronto, Ontario – Velvet Underground
2/1 – Rochester, NY – Anthology
2/4 – Boston, MA – City Winery
2/5 – Philadelphia, PA – City Winery
2/6 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Bowl
2/7 – Winchester, VA – Bright Box Theater
2/8 – Harrisburg, PA – The Abbey Bar
Watch a live version of “Stash” from City Winery in Atlanta
Two centennial celebrations will be commemorated by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, tying music and history together in a unique and inspired way. On Thursday, January 30 and Saturday, February 1, Music Director Ward Stare and the orchestra will present “Women’s Suffrage: Past + Present” and on Thursday, February 6 and Saturday, February 8, Stare will lead a concert performance of Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s salute to Susan B. Anthony, “The Mother of Us All.” The events will be held at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre at the Eastman School of Music.
The two performances celebrate historical events that are rooted in Rochester and Western New York. 2020 marks suffragist Susan B. Anthony’s 200th birthday, as well as the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment, which enshrined a women’s right to vote in the U.S. Constitution.
The first two concerts feature orchestral compositions by three women spanning three centuries: Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, from the 19th century; Julia Perry, from the 20th century; and Gemma Peacocke, a New Zealand-born composer from the 21st century.
Peacocke’s work “All on Fire” is a commission from Stare and the RPO, and was inspired by a quote from Susan B. Anthony: “How can you not be all on fire?…I really believe I shall explode if some of you young women don’t wake up — and raise your voice in protest against the impending crime of this nation upon the new islands it has clutched from other folks. Do come into the living present and work to save us from any more barbaric male governments.”
Stare has high hopes for the brand-new piece, as well as the first of two performance weekends. “I hope this first half demonstrates the huge variety of music by women composers,” Stare said. “Regardless of the composer’s gender, these are simply very good pieces.”
The second weekend of performances includes the Virgil Thomson opera “The Mother of Us All,” from Librettist Gertrude Stein, which has been produced occasionally since premiering at Columbia University in 1947. The opera is about Susan B. Anthony but also includes a large cast including Daniel Webster, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Supreme Court Chief Justice Thaddeus Stevens, among other minor historical figures.
Ward Stare notes that his preparation for these upcoming concerts included a private tour of the Susan B. Anthony House on Madison Street, which he found very moving. “To see the room where she met Frederick Douglass and other great figures — and the work room where she wrote so many amazing pamphlets — made me even more appreciative of everything Anthony went through in her life.”
Prince, William. That’s one of the hardest working commas you will see, and this isn’t a post about drama with the British Royals. Juno-winning singer-songwriter, William Prince, sprinkled plenty more punctuation throughout his two-set show for Honest Folk at Restaurant Good Luck in Rochester, on Monday night.
It started with a question mark. “Does anyone know who I am?” he asked in singsong banter before opening the night with “Young,” a song he wrote only two days prior. “Yours are the first human ears to hear that song,” he remarked. It was an unusual start for a musician who is touring ahead of his sophomore album release, due out February 8. But Prince would prove to be someone who plays by his own rules. He opened the second set with another new one written within the last two months.
After an album is created he just continues to write new music, he explained. It isn’t surprising. The man is oozing music. Songs drifted in and out of each other with ellipses. His banter was sung, spoken over a picked guitar, or both, and was as engaging as the very personal, emotionally attached music. It served to enhance the songs meaning, bring the crowd into his life and turned an already intimate show into virtually one-on-one conversations with each audience member.
Many incredible words were bracketed by quotation marks throughout the night, both in song and out: from the funny, “if you have marijuana, meet me outside at the break,” to the wise, “You can sit in a garage all you want, but you’ll never turn into a car.” Or the insightful, “Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood, and where there’s blood there’s pain.”
Prince’s rich voice, fluid guitar picking, and the tenor of his songs, combined for a sound that sat squarely in the most traditional folk music. Unlike much from the genre, his lyrics found optimism, hope and love in even the darkest times. So much of his writing centered on the love of family, his parents, partners, and his son.
Songs of his parents became songs about his parenthood, songs of his childhood became songs about his child. Passed down like his heritage as descendant of First Nations people in Canada. Songs about his departed father weren’t steeped in sadness, but concentrated more in loving memory. Even songs about his ex were happy and loving. He preferred not to dwell in the negative, putting positive spins on some of the lower points in life and simple misunderstandings alike.
The show-opening question mark was answered with a resounding exclamation point by show’s end, with multiple standing ovations and a mutual admiration from musician and audience.
Honest Folk might be batting 1.000 when it comes to eliciting an expression of amazement from the artist upon announcing the next show. And so it was with the announcement that Joe Pug would be playing Good Luck February 17. Early bird tickets are on sale now.
With each new year comes the promise of new music, and this year is also the start of a new decade. To usher in the new era, musician Jake Bellissimo has collaborated with legendary composer Gerald Busby on a new song, “The Budding of The Rose.” The song is from Bellissimo’s new album The Motion That We Make, which is set to release later this month.
Formerly of Rochester, NY, Bellissimo has been living in Berlin, Germany. The song is a cross-Atlantic effort with Bellissimo providing lyrics, and Busby setting them to melody and composing music for viola from his home at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. The resulting song is sublime. The ardent love song traipses through a sonic garden of delight. It’s contemporary, yet timeless and classic.
Busby has resided at the Chelsea since 1977, when his mentor Virgil Thompson procured him a room. A child prodigy, he was playing with the symphony by the age of 15. He started composing later in life, and debuted professionally when he wrote the score of Runes for choreographer Paul Taylor’s dance company. He’s best known for writing the music for Robert Altman’s acclaimed movie 3 Women.
Bellissimo, in addition to being a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, runs the label Drunk With Love Records. The Motion That We Make is a contemplation on motion, mortality, and coincidences. It is a reflection on the places they’ve been and the people they’ve loved, and those they’ve lost. Watch for the release on January 24 on Drunk With Love Records.
For the second year in a row, Queen City prog-rockers Aqueous performed at The Town Ballroom for the final two nights of the year, selling out both December 30 and 31 with musical themes for each night. The 30th had an “Almost Dazed and Confused” theme, while New Year’s Eve was “Fast Times at The BreAQfast Club.” Fans dressed with the themes for the nights, adding to the festive feel of the end of the year run that celebrated the music of the ’70s and ’80s.
The first night featured covers from 1970’s bands Led Zeppelin, Stillwater (from Almost Famous) Black Sabbath and the Bee Gees and a first set closing “Random Company.” An encore of “Eon Don” > “Tiny Gantzer” brought the house down, with David Loss singing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” as “Tiny Gantzer.” Earlier in the night, a VIP set found Aqueous performing five songs acoustically that had previously never been performed in that style. The overall debut of “Spirit and Soul” was found among new arrangments for “Say it Again,” “They’re Calling For Ya” and “On the Edge.”
For New Year’s Eve, a theme of “Fast Times at The BreAQfast Club” combined the music of two great 80s films, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and The Breakfast Club with some Aqueous thrown in for good measure. Songs by The Cars, Prince, Duran Duran, Simple Minds and Flock of Seagulls were performed near-flawlessly by the band, who wore outfits from their recent music video “Come and Go.” An up-tempo/ska version of “Marty” stood out among the mang covers in the first set, which ended with “Strange Times.”
Appropriately, Aqueous performed “20/20” to ring in 2020, following the traditional “Auld Lang Syne,” and closed the set with fan favorite “Origami.” The encore held one last surprise for the night though as drummer Rob Houk took a wireless microphone and sang the closing song from The Breakfast Club, “Don’t You Forget About Me.” During the song, the lights were kept low and before the fans could realize it, Houk was on the bar behind the crowd and walked up to the rail through the crowd singing. If this is how the ’20s begin for Aqueous, this might be their best year yet.
Set 1 (VIP): Say It Again (1,2) > They’re Calling For Ya (1,2), America (1,4), Spirit and Soul (1,3), On the Edge (1,2)
Set 2: Fever Dog (3,5) > Paranoid (3,6), Burn It Down, The Median, Gordon’s Mule, Slow Ride (3,7,8) > Misty Mountain Hop (3,8) Random Company
Set 3: Dave’s Song > Sweet Emotion (9,10), Little Something To Me, You Should Be Dancing (3,11) > Don’t Do It, All In > Do You Feel Like We Do (3,12) > All In
Encore: Eon Don (13) > Tiny Gantzer (14)
1- AQoustic Debut 2- New arrangement 3- Debut 4- Simon & Garfunkel 5- Stillwater 6- Black Sabbath 7- Foghat 8- ft. Travis Gray (Wild Adriatic) on vocals 9- ft. Ryan John Nogle (Funktional Flow) on triangle 10- Mega Bustout, LTP: 11/24/10 (870 shows) 11- Bee Gees 12- Peter Frampton 13- Neon Don 14- Mega Bustout, LTP: 9/21/13 (632 shows)
Set 1: Come and Go¹, I Ran (So Far Away)² ³ > Warren in the Window, Moving In Stereo⁴ ² > Second Sight > Marty⁵, Hungry Like The Wolf² ⁶ > Strange Times⁷
Set 2: Let’s Go Crazy² ⁸, Skyway, I Melt With You² ⁹, On The Edge, Don’t You Want Me² @@ > Be The Same > Auld Lang Syne, 20/20 > Origami
Encore: Don’t You Forget About Me² @@@ Notes:
¹ Band came out dressed in their outfits from the music video. ² Debut ³ Flock of Seagulls cover ⁴ Cars cover, Included Spicoli pizza delivery skit from Fast Times at Ridgemont High (By The Cars) ⁵ Ska ⁶ Duran Duran cover ⁷ Life in the Fast Lane (Eagles) tease ⁸ Prince cover ⁹ Modern English cover @@ Human League cover @@@ Simple Minds cover, Rob on lead vocals, Ryan Nogle on drums, sang end of song in the crowd
Every Thursday for the last two years, and for the foreseeable future, Three Heads Brewing’s stage has been taken over by a local musician. Each musician gets to command the stage for a month of Thursdays in what has been dubbed the Rochester Residency. Old bands have been resurrected, current bands have been discovered, new bands have been formed and the classics have been recreated. This year also saw one local musician try their hand at booking with great success.
Three Heads has released the 2020 Residents and it should be another fine year. First though, the month of January will be used to take a look back at some of the favorite shows from the first 2 years.
