NYS Music 202​1

Category: Saratoga Springs

  • Caffe Lena to Celebrate the Life of Matt McCabe

    Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs will celebrate the life of Matt McCabe, owner of Saratoga Guitar and former Commissioner of Finance. The memorial will be livestreamed on Saturday. February 20th at 7pm.

    Caffe Lena Matt McCabe
    Photo from Caffe Lena’s website

    The event will be hosted by McCabe’s friend and fellow musician Rick Bolton. The online tribute will feature stories and musical performances by some of the community members who found McCabe’s shop to be a place of support and inspiration. The performances have been prerecorded and include: Leigh Gibson of the Gibson Brothers, Kate Taylor, Dan Berggren, Mark Tolstrup, Chuck Lamb, John Kribs, Michael Eck, Brian Melick, Ria Curley, Angelina Valente, Pete Pashoukas and many more.

    Matt McCabe was an example of how a small business can have a huge impact. His goal was to raise the quality of life for everyone. That is why we’re celebrating him. He gave away instruments for fundraising raffles, he gave steep discounts to those in need, and he donated performances to make life a little brighter.

     Sarah Craig, Caffe Lena Executive Director

    Caffe Lena is a historic music venue located on downtown Saratoga Springs, opening up back in 1960. The café has seen a number of legendary act take it’s stage, from the likes of Bob Dylan in 1961 to recently Sawyer Fredricks in 2014. The Library of Congress has recognized Caffe Lena as “An American Treasure”; as well as being recognized by The Grammy Foundation for important contributions to the development of American music.

    The Matt McCabe memorial will be streamed for free on all Caffe Lena social media channels. More information can be found at www.caffelena.org

  • America Sings Returns to Caffe Lena After Shutdown from COVID-19

    Saratoga Springs company, Opera Saratoga, has announced that their series dedicated to highlighting BIPOC talent, America Sings, returns on February 21 to Caffe Lena.

    America Sings Caffe Lena
    America Sings Headliner Luis Alejandro Orozco

    The free concert, America Sings, takes place at Caffe Lena after months of being paused due to the pandemic. America Sings was created to lift up the voices of the unheard and underrepresented racial groups on the opera stage. Texas native baritone, Luis Alejandro Orozco, is the first performer for this comeback, along with pianist Michael Lewis. The program will also feature music from classical composers, Schubert, Brahms and Piazzolla.

    Orozco is a Mexican-American opera singer and was apart of Opera Saratoga’s Young Artist Program. He is noted for his baritone and legato. For several seasons, Orozco performed in several shows for a plethora of operas. Due to COVID-19, the 2019-2020 season was short-lived, he performed at the Opera in Williamsburg and Opera Roanoake. While he has already performed nationally and internationally, he made his Swiss debut recently at Theater St. Gallen.

    America Sings debuted in November 2020 with Mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel as the headliner for the first concert with pianist Giovanni Reggioli. COVID-19 put the series to a halt, however, it is ready to be put back in action. It is live-streamed and free to the public but viewers are encouraged to donate through a virtual tip jar. The tips are split evenly to support the Opera Saratoga and the performing artist since both parties have been financially impacted by opera shutdowns.

    The series comes back this Sunday at 7 p.m. Future performers include soprano Brandie Sutton, baritone Justin Austin and composer and pianist Damien Sneed, who were originally supposed to perform in December and January. Leadership support for the show comes from Greenburg Traurig, LLP and hospitality sponsorship from The Hampton Inn & Suites Saratoga Springs. America Sings live-streams on Caffe Lena’s Youtube channel and Facebook and Opera Saratoga’s Facebook.

  • SPAC Dance Residency Unveils “Too Darn Hot” Virtual Performance

    On February 8th, Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) unveiled “Too Darn Hot,” a video featuring performances by 104 fourth grade students who took part in SPAC’s public-school dance residency.

    The popular in-school dance residency has continued this school year despite the pandemic with safe but immersive dance training for students at the Charlton Heights Elementary School and online fourth graders in the Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake school district.

    Image result for SPAC dance residency too darn hot
    Charlton Heights Elementary School students practicing “Too Darn Hot”

    Led by SPAC Teaching artists Cristiane Santos, J. Michael Zygo, and Brian Melick as well as Dennis Moench, former Broadway star and Senior Director of Education at SPAC, a total of 104 students (both in person and virtual learners) took part in SPAC’s Dance Residency in October-November 2020.


    The students participated in two in-person or virtual classes and continued with a series of video lessons on the SPAC Learning Library to learn Broadway-style choreography to the show tune “Too Darn Hot” from the musical Kiss Me, Kate.

    The students then performed their dance by filming individual videos for the SPAC team to combine into the virtual performance that premieres today to celebrate the students’ achievements and share their work with their families, peers, and the community.

    This program is a reimagined dance residency – a program that SPAC offers to elementary schools every year. As of last year, there were already eight local schools receiving the 5-10 week in-school dance program with SPAC teaching artists. This spring, SPAC plans to provide this virtual programming to other schools who participated last year to keep dance alive in their classrooms.

    “We were concerned that we might see a decline in student engagement in comparison to previous years with this new, primarily virtual format,” says Moench. “But we were pleasantly surprised when we saw all of the students fully commit to the program and give 100% of their energy immediately on day one!”


    “The arts are such an important part of the educational process, and it has been such a pleasure to work with the amazing and talented professionals from SPAC to bring dance to our fourth graders at Charlton Heights,” says Tim Sinnenberg, principal at Charlton Heights Elementary. “Our students have loved their experience, and practiced with all of their hearts for the recording of their moves.”

    Fourth grader Kadynce Dahl summed up the experience this way, “I have a lot of energy and I like horsing around so the dance residency was so awesome because I got to use my energy!”

    SPAC education partner Stewart’s Shops will be showing the video in its stores throughout Saratoga County from February 8-22.

  • Misty Blues Join Universal Preservation Hall for Virtual Concert

    Universal Preservation Hall will present a live-streamed concert of Misty Blues on February 12 at 8 p.m. This serves as a celebration of their 10th album, None More Blue, and over two decades together.

    Misty Blues

    After the performance of their new album, the band will perform the “Queens of the Blues” soundtrack as a Black History Month celebration. The Queens of the Blues movie shows the lives of four African-American female blues artists: Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton, Ruth Brown, and Koko Taylor. All four of these women made an undeniable impact on blues, jazz, and popular music throughout the twentieth century and beyond.

    All compositions on None More Blue were written during the pandemic and show the connections the band was able to maintain despite a remote environment. The album release date is February 14.

    misty blues

    Misty Blues, led by lead singer/band founder Gina Coleman, was a 2019 International Blues Challenge finalist. The band has performed original and traditional blues with hints of jazz, soul, funk and tent revival gospel since 1999. They have recorded and shared the stage with Charles Neville and opened for contemporary blues artists like Tab Benoit, John Primer, Albert Cummings and Michael Powers. The band recently earned an Independent Blues Music Award nomination for the best contemporary blues song. The band’s original recordings have wide radio airplay in the U.S. and U.K. 

    Tickets for Misty Blues are $20 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday (1/15) at Universal Preservation Hall.

  • The first EQXposure of 2021 features Dryer, Laveda and many more

    Each Sunday evening from 7-9pm you’ll find EQXposure on WEQX, featuring two hours of local music from up and coming artists. Tune into WEQX.com this Sunday night to hear new music from Dryer and many more!

    dryer

    WEQX has long been the preeminent independent station in the Capital Region of New York, broadcasting from Southern VT to an ever-expanding listening audience. NYS Music brings you a preview of artists to discover each week, just a taste of the talent waiting to be discovered by fans like you.

    On Sunday, January 3, 2021 EQXPosure will explore the music of Dryer. The Saratoga based band has been making music together for as long as EQXposure has been on the air, nearly 28 years. Tune in and listen to an eight song career spanning selection of tunes that shows just how incredibly consistent and relevant these four musicians are. 

    Writing songs and making records that stand the test of time is the goal of all artists. Dryer was working out their sound well before global online streaming, when to hear new music people had to go out and see bands playing live, no email lists, download codes, Spotify playlists, it was up to the live show to grow your audience. That work, the real work of putting on a great show, and being remembered is still part of the puzzle today but when this band started it was all there was. That scene, that history, is evident in the records we’re playing. 

    Punk rock, straight rock, up tempo head bobbing jams, this band has been compared to The Pixies but their music is all their own bombastic blast of fun. From their 2016 release, Bright Moon, Bright Sun we will hear “Green Paper,” “Book of Maps” and “Summer of 87.”


    Off their 1996 release Saturday in Vein we will hear the title cut, “Saturday in Vein“, from their 2001 release Everything in Static, “Desperate Annies,”  from their latest release Prognerd, “Operation Suicide,” “Stupid for You,” and from Out of the Loop (1998) we will hear “Red Light.“

    Also on Sunday we will hear” Better Now” the new single from Laveda off their debut album What Happens After. Laveda features dreampop and shoegaze sounds, mixed with a bright hopeful grit and passionate singing of the male female combination of Jacob Brooks and Ali Genevich, who’s balance of pop melodic sounds and broad psyched out soundscapes make for an enjoyable listening indulgence.