The first-ever Wild In The Trees Music and Skate Festival hosted by Mirth Films will happen from October 1-2 on the grounds of the Lake George Skate Plaza in Lake George.
The musical artists range from punk and jam bands to alternative rock and feature well-known artists like Annie in the Water, Glass Pony, Neon Avenue, El Modernist, and more. Also included during the two-day festival is a skateboarding competition at the Lake George Skate Plaza, with competitions including a spot-based jam session, best trick, high ollie, game of S.K.A.T.E, and Skate -or- Dice.
The festival was born as a way to pay homage to all efforts made to raise money to build the Lake George Skate Plaza while embracing all the local talent. The skate plaza came about in 2008 when local skateboarders brought to the attention of the town the need to have a skate park. Through town board meetings and the creation of a skateboard committee, the town came together and raised over $100,000.
By 2014, the park was designed with oversight from the local skaters, and in 2015 it was finally done. The Lake George Skate Plaza attracts skateboarders from all across the northeast and beyond each year and gives them a safe place to skate and have fun without getting into trouble.
For more information about The Wild In The Trees festival, go here. To buy tickets to the festival, happening October 1-2, go here.
The Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown will return indoors to its theater after presenting this past summer’s performances outdoors in “Glimmerglass on the Grass.” The 2022 season will run from July 8 to August 21 in the Alice Busch Opera Theater.
Artistic & General Director Francesca Zambello has announced the 2022 Festival will be her 12th and final season with the company.
My years with The Glimmerglass Festival have been the best of my life. I got married and built a home here with Faith and our son, Jackson, and the Cooperstown community has become an integral part of our lives. I am so proud of this company and all we have accomplished over the last decade. This is not goodbye; it is a time of transition and excitement for this company I adore. I am excited to witness and support the beginning for the next era of the ever-evolving Glimmerglass Festival/
Francesca Zambello
She has done a lot during her time at the company. She initiated the annual appointment of Artists in Residence, including internationally-renowned stars Bill Burden, Christine Goerke, and more. During her tenure, the Festival added original youth operas to the summer season, established an Attica Correctional Facility initiative, and introduced second-stage events with adaptations of classics, cabarets, gospel and klezmer concerts, and more.
Francesca Zambello.
Zambello will remain in her position through the conclusion of the 2022 Festival and will continue her role as Artistic Director at Washington National Opera and as an independent opera and theater director.
The 2022 Festival will feature productions of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, as well as Bizet’s Carmen, directed by 2022 Artist in Residence Denyce Graves. In August, she will also reprise her role in an extended version of The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson in a two-night-only presentation.
Following the festival will be the releases of the Festival’s first two commissioned works on film: The Knock, by Aleksandra Vrebalov and Deborah Brevoort, which is about military wives; and On Trac I<, a dance piece, composed by Nicolas Lell Benavides and choreographed and performed by Amanda Castro, which looks at the intersection of human and machine in rural America.
The 2022 festival is happening right now, and tickets are on sale here.
The Smoke Jazz Club, one of New York City’s premier live music venues, announced its long-awaited reopening.
Located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side at the junction of Broadway and 106th Street (aka Duke Ellington Boulevard), the club offers classic and modern jazz performances. Created in 1999, the club is internationally recognized with top-notch programming and rising stars. It has survived economic crashes, fires in the building, and more but the pandemic proved to be much more difficult.
For the past two years, the club has had to change the way they did things to make sure it was done safely. These include modified operations like live streams, sidewalk concerts, and outdoor dining. Although indoor performances were closed, Smoke has survived with a newly expanded space.
Smoke Jazz Club has so much history. Despite the struggles of the last few years, we just knew that the music couldn’t stop here. The past couple of years have not been easy for anyone, but having live music back in the club with everyone together, musicians and listeners, seems like a turning point. We are very excited to take this next step.
co- owners Paul Stache and Molly Sparrow Johnson.
The club will add smaller combined spaces to operate safely, serving as an attached lounge featuring the relocated, historic, full-length bar providing more space for audiences and a larger stage for performers in the main listening room.
There was a grand reopening concert to kick off the revamp, and a slew of artists are set to perform in the near future including Charles McPherson, Vijay Iyer, Mary Stallings, Bill Charlap, Bobby Watson, and more. For more information about the Smoke Jazz Club and to buy tickets to the many events happening, go here.
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.
Jason Wolfman Martin- Test Singles EP
At 7 P.M., the entire Test Signals EP will be played over the air. Jason Wolfman Martin is an artist/musician/curator, active from 1989 to now, with three decades of LPs, CDs, and tapes under his belt. He hasn’t made music in over seven years, and this new EP serves as his comeback.
Shane Guerrette- “Lost Without”
Luminous Crush- “Binary Star”
Luminous Crush is made up of Laura Molinelli and Ben Campbell, who make a wide variety of music spanning multiple genres like bluegrass, country, indie, and psychedelic.
MuMu, from Harlem, is a singer/songwriter who writes songs based on the guidance she received listening to spangled pop stars to feel less alone living in a home rife with addiction and mental illness.
The new single “Wrapped Up” is about the overturning of Roe v. Wade which makes the right to an abortion constitutional. This essential procedure is now illegal for many people across the United States. The song retells the real stories of three women who faced the challenges of unplanned pregnancy and expresses how important the right to choose is, and the detrimental effects of those rights being taken away.
MuMu wrote an essay talking about the single, and how important it is.
Abortions have always existed and always will. They are part of our human herstory. There is written documentation of different abortion methods used all over the world. Archeologists have discovered instruments used to perform abortions that date back hundreds of years. Limiting abortion access does not prevent abortions from happening, it prevents them from being safe. An abortion is not an easy choice to make, but it’s an impossible choice to make for a stranger. And if we take away the right to safe reproductive care, people will suffer. People will die.
MuMu
“Wrapped Up” explains what it feels like to go through an abortion for those who have never gone through it. The song is groovy and slow, and her vocals are reminiscent of Alanis Morissette. There are a lot of emotional and powerful lyrics like “He took her hand/And swore a lie/Until she opened up her thighs/When she went to the doctor/People screamed and rocks were thrown/They wanted a child/To have a child of her own.”
The chorus is fiery and emotional as she sings “All the fear you give/And all the faith you hold Is heavy on her heavy heart of gold/All your virtue and strong beliefs WRAPPED UP in her destiny.” The rest of the song talks about the trauma an abortion can cause and the family struggles that come after it.
Overall, the new single is well thought out, emotional, and backed with groovy guitars and MuMu’s sultry voice to speak about the ongoing struggle with the government handling women’s rights issues.
The print rock ‘n’ roll magazine CREEM has just announced its new issue, the first in 33 years, featuring Slash, The Who, Special Interest, and more.
CREEM Magazine Issue 1 Preview
Founded in 1969 Detroit, it grew from underground paper to national powerhouse – an essential source of music journalism for 20 years. Kurt Cobain once said “I’ll just retire to Mexico or Yugoslavia with a few hundred dollars, grow potatoes, and learn the history of rock through back issues of CREEM.”
Back when the magazine first started it cultivated some of the most legendary writing talent of the era – like Lester Bangs, Cameron Crowe, and Patti Smith.
The new magazine will cover multiple generations of artists with contributors ranging from established writers and photographers, to up-and-coming voices. It will embrace rock ‘n’ roll as a mentality rather than a genre with the biggest bands of all time and records no one has ever heard of.
The rebound of CREEM comes after the critically-acclaimed 2020 documentary Creem: America’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll Magazine earned praise from New York Times to CBS This Morning. CREEM Entertainment is led by former VICE publisher John Martin as CEO, alongside Chairman JJ Kramer (son of original co-founder & publisher Barry Kramer), and original editor Jaan Uhelszki, one of the first women to work in rock journalism.
Subscriptions for the magazine will also come with a free digital archive of every issue from 1969-1989, with 224issues, 69,000 photos, articles, and reviews, making it the most significant cache of rock ‘n’ roll history ever shared online at one time.
For more information about the revamp, and to purchase a subscription, go here.
The New York City Council approved a measure to name a Lowe East Side Manhattan intersection “Beastie Boys Square” made famous by The Beastie Boys’ album Paul’s Boutique.
The Beastie Boys, pictured in 2009.
The Beastie Boys were an American rap group from New York City, formed in 1981. The group was composed of Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “MCA” Yauch, and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz. Beastie Boys have sold 20 million records in the United States and had seven platinum-selling albums from 1986 to 2004. They are the biggest-selling rap group since Billboard began recording sales in 1991.
The corner of Ludlow and Rivington streets is seen on the cover of their 1989 masterpiece, and the vote on Thursday marked an end to a nearly decade-long grassroots campaign by fans. In 2014, the city council voted against “Beastie Boys Square” by a vote of 24-to-1.
Cultural advocate LeRoy McCartney spearheaded similar landmark-naming campaigns, like the Wu-Tang Clan (Wu-Tang District in Staten Island) and The Notorious B.I.G. (Brooklyn’s Christopher Wallace Way), and credits Council Member Chris Marte with helping to push the renaming.
As many of us know, once the Beastie Boys hit the scene, it really changed the hip-hop game. I see it as a celebration. A celebration for the Lower East Side, a celebration for hip-hop and especially a celebration for our community who has been organizing for a really long time to make this happen.
Chris Marte
Marte also gave credit to the group themselves for paving the way in the genre of hip-hop and thanked the local residents, businesses, politicians, and more who supported the fight for the street name.
McCarthy also spoke about the decision in a statement.
It has been a long road to get Beastie Boys Square accomplished, but I am happy to see New York government formally embracing the indigenous arts and culture of hip hop, and the street sign is very appropriate because hip hop is from the NYC streets.
LeRoy McCarthy
Mayor Eric Adams will have to sign off on the measure before it can be scheduled to get dedicated.
The Rockland County Jazz & Blues Society is a non-profit arts organization whose mission is to promote the heritage, performance, appreciation, and vitality of jazz, blues, and related music forms in Rockland County, NY, and surrounding regions. For the first time, the week will open with an all-day, outdoor, free festival featuring local jazz artists.
We support musicians and audiences by creating opportunities for performances and educational events, identifying sources of funding to support the creation of new musical works, and by facilitating communications between musicians and their audiences. We foster the development of musicians and audiences of the future through educational programs and mentoring, so music remains a vital and relevant cultural force in the region.
Rockland County Jazz & Blues Society
Nyack Jazz Week Lineup
Opening Jazz Fest-July 17 1:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M.
The opening day jazz fest will take place July 17 from 1-5 P.M. outside on Broadway in Nyack featuring local jazz artists.
Second Showing: 9:30 P.M. Arturo O’Farrill-piano, Adam O’Farrill-trumpet, Zack O’Farrill-drums, Liany Mateo-bass, Carlos Maldonado-percussion
Arturo O’Farrill, pianist, composer, and educator, was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. A technically virtuosic pianist, Arturo’s professional career began with the Carla Bley Band and continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte. Arturo is the internationally acclaimed leader for Afro-Latin Jazz and has won an impressive 7 Grammy awards for his recordings. He will be performing at Maureen’s Jazz Cellar in Nyack, tickets are $30.
Arturo O’Farrill
July 23- Vincent Herring Quartet
First Showing: 7:30 P.M.
Second Showing: 9:30 P.M.
Vincent Herring-alto sax, Mike LeDonne-piano, Jason Clotter-bass, Joe Farnsworth-drums
Alto Saxophonist Vincent Herring’s intense, soulful, multi-noted style and ebullient swing have excited audiences worldwide. With his sound strongly influenced by Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Vincent’s virtuosity and promise led to a nine-year relationship with Nat Adderley. After Nat’s death, Louis Hayes collaborated with Vincent to form the Cannonball Adderley Legacy Band. Vincent worked and recorded with Cedar Walton for more than 20 years. He has also performed and/or recorded with Lionel Hampton, Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Kenny Barron, and Nancy Wilson among many others. He will be performing at Maureen’s Jazz Cellar in Nyack, tickets are $30.
Vincent Herring
For more information about Nyack Jazz Week and to purchase tickets, go here.
Brooklyn-based bedroom pop artist, PRONOUN, has released a new song called “roe vs gofvckurself,” detailing the utter frustration and hopelessness many are feeling with the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, which protects the right to get an abortion, among other things.
Alyse Vellturo, aka PRONOUN.
PRONOUN is the lovechild of Alyse Vellturo, and she is an American singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist making indie-synth music. Billboard named her as one of their breakout indie artists for 2019, and she is also the founder of Sleep Well Records.
The song is very slow, and gradually picks up speed with guitars and electrifying bass lines. Vellturo encapsulates the dire feelings as she sings, “I was outside having a cigarette/When I first heard the news/Really hard for me to quit smoking/When it feels like i have nothing to lose.” It is short but sweet, as the only emotions that come to mind are anger and shock when hearing the news.
The end of the song is the most emotional as she sings “And it’s the way you make us feel like nothing at all/Five years later/Burn it all/Burn it down.” Having the essential right to an abortion being taken away from you is scary, especially for women in states that aren’t allowing them and for low income people.
Overall, PRONOUN encapsulates the emotional and dire feelings surrounding the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and how we all must fight and protest more than we have before to try and get the decision overturned.
The NBT Summer Concert Series is back in Norwich’s East Park, featuring artists hailing from all corners of the country, every Thursday night this summer.
Besides the fabulous music, East Park is the perfect place to set up some chairs and blankets, relax, and eat some good food.
The summer concert series kicked off July 7 with Fruition from Portland, Oregon. They fuse acoustic, bluegrass, and rock and roll music, and just released their newest album Broken at the Break of Day.
The McCoury brothers- Ronnie (mandolin) and Rob (banjo) -were born into the bluegrass tradition, with their father Del McCoury being one of the most successful musicians in the history of the genre. The group became the only group to have each member recognized with an International Bluegrass Music Association Award for their instrument at least once.
Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes first achieved prominence in the mid-1970s, emerging from the same New Jersey area as his friend Bruce Springsteen. Their song “I Don’t Want To Go Home” became their signature song, a mix of horn-based melodic riffs and sentimental lyrics. Rolling Stone voted their album Hearts of Stone among the top 100 albums of the 70s and 80s.
Shinyribs is a band based out of Texas, that blends Texas blues, New Orleans R&B, Memphis soul, and more. The nine-piece supergroup is led by Kevin Russell, who continuously swaps out an electric guitar for a ukelele. They were named Best Austin Band at the Austin Chronicle’s Austin Music Awards (2017, 2018), awarded Album of the Year for I Got Your Medicine (2017), and Best 2020-Themed Song for “Stay Home” (2020).
The Garcia Project’s performances are recreations of full, classic Jerry Garcia Band set lists from 1976-1995, using thoughtful arrangements and proper instrumentation. Maria Muldaur is best known worldwide for her 1974 mega-hit “Midnight at the Oasis,” which received several Grammy nominations. She has worked closely with Jerry Garcia and joined the band officially from the fall of 1977 through 1978.
Blair Crimmins began his music career in Atlanta, Georgia, with the determination to bring Ragtime and 1920s-style Dixieland Jazz to new audiences. He has toured the country playing large venues and has opened for acts such as Mumford & Sons and Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
Mike Zito is an American guitarist, singer, record producer, and songwriter from St. Louis, Missouri. He is regarded as one of the most lauded artists in the contemporary blues genre today, he has won BMAs in the categories of Blues Rock Artist as well as Blues Rock Album of the Year.
Trigger Hippy’s music has roots in country, Delta blues, R&B, gospel, and Southern rock. Made up of Steve Gorman and Nick Govrik, the group hit it off when they first met, and have been unstoppable since.
