Category: Regions

Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes Announces December Holiday Concert

As the family-friendly holiday activities start rolling out, consider a live music event, like the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes’ holiday concert this December 3. The concert will showcase diverse vocalists and genres, as well as compositions created by international musicians. The OSFL will explore themes of healing and community; encapsulated in the season’s felicitous motto: “Together We Are Sound.”

To ensure the event includes all holidays in its festivity, the OSFL commissioned an Israeli-American composer, Avner Finberg, to write a medley of iconic Klezmer dances. His composition, Dances in Freygish, will put Hanukkah in the global spotlight, as the December 3 concert is its world premiere.

This concert also promises big band fun, the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes will play a collection of 40s jazz favorites by Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and more.

The concert will take place in the Clemens Center Powers Theater at 2:00 p.m. Tickets are $20-$50 for adults, $10 for college students with ID, and free for youth under 18 (if accompanied by a ticketed adult.)

November 20, 2022
Homeward Bound: The Long Island Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame to hold Grand Opening on November 25

Ernie Canadeo

Thanksgiving is a time for homecomings, reminiscing, laughter and song. After 18 years, The Long Island Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame will have their homecoming on November 25th in Stony Brook.

I had the opportunity to interview Chairman Ernie Canadeo on the latest episode of The Long Island Sound Podcast. You can join the conversation right here.

The organization was formed in 2004, by educators and musicians who really, really have a passion for music. And they created it to preserve and celebrate Long Island’s musical heritage
Ernie Canadeo

Grand Opening

Joan Jett

The Hall of Fame will feature world-class displays and unique memorabilia that showcases Long Island’s rich and diverse musical and entertainment history. This past week Joan Jett’s classic Jaguar will be on display along with other donated memorabilia from Billy Joel, Twisted Sister, The Good Rats, Debbie Gibson, Blue Oyster Cult, and from the families and estates of Harry Chapin, Guy Lombardo, John Coltrand and so many more.

The Hall of Fame and Museum is open Wednesdays-Sundays from noon to 5pm. The first exhibit, created by world-renowned designer Kevin O’Callaghan, is titled “Long Island’s Legendary Club Scene – 1960’s-1980’s and is designed to be “a club crawl” through Long Island’s legendary 60’s, 70’s and 80’s club scene.

The Long Island Music & Entertainment Hall of Fame (LIMEHOF) is dedicated to preserve Long Island’s musical heritage for future generations. To date the organization has inducted more than 100 musicians and music industry executives and also offers educational programs, scholarships, and awards to Long Island Students and educators.

Besides supporting future musicians, Chairman Canadeo spoke to the healing power of music and how LIMEHOF will be partnering with one of their sponsors, Catholic Health Services:

We will be partnering on a program called Health and harmony next year, where we will be sending musicians and comedians and bold types of entertainers into senior centers into hospitals.
Ernie Canadeo

During the interview on The Long Island Sound podcast Erne and I both recognized the pent up need to reconnect with the community after the quarantine and Covid. There is great pride in being a Long Islander, and recognizing the wellspring of talent in the region. I invite you to review the List of over one hundred LIMEHOF Inductees over the past years, it’s quite remarkable.

Grand Opening in Stony Brook

Simon and Garfunkel (inducted 2008) and their song Homeward bound is so appropriate for the emotions surrounding this Grand Opening:

Home, where my thought’s escaping. Home, where my music’s playing. Home, where my love’s lie waiting, silently for me, silently for me.
Simon & Garfunkel

Everyone needs a place to call home. Now the musician and entertainment community with roots on Long Island have a place to call home in Stony Brook. With the rotation of new exhibits, the Hall of Fame is sure to attract musicians, students, educators and those headed homeward bound.

During this holiday season, let’s be generous with our joy, and let the music take us on a journey.

November 19, 2022
This Week’s EQXposure Features No More Death Stars

Each Sunday evening from 7-9 p.m. 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 No More Death Stars.

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.

This week the new album .jpg by No More Death Stars will be played on EQXposure. The group comes out of Albany and is the creative brainchild of Kevin Cardinale, and a bunch of collaborators. They self-identify as a pop-punk collective, being compared to indie-punk contemporaries such as Jeff Rosenstock and AJJ.

The group reemerged this year to create their new album, which takes influence from Radiohead and Brian Wilson. It incorporates orchestral instrumentation composed by Cardinale and performed by newcomers Anthime Miller, Ben Burt, and Sam Mark.

The songs off the new album “Halloween 2008,” “Have you ever wondered if Osama Bin Laden has ever fallen in love?” and “Emotional Lint Roller” will be played on EQXposure.

November 19, 2022
Hudson Valley Native Soul Blind Releases New Single “Feel It All Around”

Local to the Hudson Valley, Soul Blind released their newest alternative single “Feel It All Around” on November 11^th. “Stuck In A Loop” leans into the band’s ‘90s alternative influences, flowing through rich guitar tones into an intoxicating breakdown.

As you listen through tracks like “Ain’t Hard To Tell” and “System (Failing),” it’s easy to see the juxtaposition of the environment the band grew up in bleeding into how they approach music. The songs serve as a pair centered around people sucking the life out of you, as “Ain’t Hard To Tell” takes the viewpoint of watching a person change into someone unlikable, “System (Failing)” finds one progressing past the relationship.

The band explains how inner struggles serve as a recurring theme throughout the album, this particular track feeds into the paranoia of the mind. “Imagine the visual of being stuck in a loop inside one’s thoughts due to a mental lapse onset by a drug induced night, and not knowing how to escape” vocalist Cen comments on the song’s lyrical content. “The ‘view’ is this other, brighter side that you can put yourself in, but the ‘glue’ has you stuck in a loop until you can get yourself out.”

Soul Blind is Cen (vocals/bass), Justin Sarica (guitar), Finn Lovell (guitar), and Steve Hurley (drums).

Much of Feel It All Around was written in Soul Blind’s hometown of Hudson Valley, NY, which the band describes as “a place of beauty within hopelessness of its people, where you find the richness between the despair.”

Alternative rock band Soul Blind pushes the boundaries of their genre with a rich collage of sounds and emotionally charged lyrics. Formed back in 2018, the band hit their stride in 2021 with the release of their critically acclaimed Third Chain EP. They have been praised for lush, distorted riffs and divine, whirling vocals, the band build on those elements on their upcoming full-length album, Feel It All Around.

To listen to Soul Blind releases and Feel It All Around, click the link here.

November 19, 2022
Syracuse Jazz Festival Announces Fundraising Goals

The Syracuse Jazz Festival has announced they are currently searching for private and public sector funding to help fund the 2023 edition of the festival.

The Syracuse Jazz Festival is now in its 37 year and returned last year after a five-year-long hiatus due to financial issues. It is the nation’s 12 longest-running festival and the world’s 12 longest-running jazz festival. It was previously named “The Largest Free Jazz Festival In The Northeast”, winning 30 International, national and regional awards as the Best Music Festival.

Many legendary artists have performed at the festival, including Aretha Franklin, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, and Sonny Rollins. These performances gave the festival international acclaim.

The festival organizers are currently pursuing private and public sector funding to mount a 2023 edition of the festival in the amount of $650,000. According to festival founder and executive producer Frank Malfitano, “The cost of mounting a world class, non ticketed festival – one that remains free of charge
for area residents and visitors – has risen dramatically.” He also went on to say that artists’ fees have doubled and even tripled since the pandemic. In 2022, the festival got $400,000 in funding to bring it back.

This past year, with the help of Amazon, Onondaga County and the City, we achieved our primary goal of bringing the festival back, and we’re extremely proud of that collective accomplishment. We’re also proud of the fact that we were able to showcase many of our region’s finest jazz artists in 2022 at 20 different venues over 3 evenings, providing needed work opportunities for more than 100 Syracuse-based artists who had been negatively impacted by the pandemic. While we were successful in helping revitalize the region’s cultural and music scene by achieving those goals, we simultaneously fell a little short of securing needed and hoped for multi-year funding commitments for Jazz Fest. But, we’re hoping our success in 2022 will lead to even greater success in 2023.
Frank Malfitano

Malfitano concluded by saying that anyone interested in learning more about the 2023 Syracuse Jazz Fest Sponsorship can contact him here.

November 18, 2022
The Dresden Dolls Reunite for Three Explosive Nights at The Colony in Woodstock

The punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls, created by Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione in 2001, held nothing back deep in the woods of Woodstock for a three night run at The Colony from November 10th to November 12th. The best way to experience this band is up close and personal, which made the Colony the perfect place for their first live performances since 2018 in the UK, as the venue held roughly 150 people from the floor to the balcony.

Palmer, now 46, still performs like she is 25 at the start of The Dresden Dolls’ birth. Her raw energy and flawed flawlessness that she puts into any one of her performances is something that cannot be explained through words, it’s something that needs to be experienced. Her vocals are unmatched with a mix of melodic sounds and scream-singing and her skills on the piano complement that so well. She is one of the most passionate artists out there and is a sight to behold. Her passion is so strong that it spills out from her voice into her piano and every single move she makes. She breathes a new breath into every single performance.

Viglione on the drums, back-up vocals, bass, electric and acoustic guitar complements that beautifully. He matches her energy and that brings every performance from a 10 to a 20. The things he can create, on the drums especially, is an artform all by itself. The two clad in cabaret styled clothes and mime-like face paint created an experience for the audience that is part rage, part beautiful storytelling, with a little bit of everything mixed in. Everything includes a cover of “Fight For Your Right” by The Beastie Boys where Amanda got up from her piano and took over the drums while Brian played guitar and guest bass player Manta joined in.

The performance overall was a mash up of high-energy rage-filled songs like “Girl Anachronism” and some lower-energy ballads. This included their song “Delilah” which was accompanied by a newer artist named Veronica Swift who’s vocals were out of this world. It was truly show-stopping.

The performance and the reaction of the audience breathed new air into The Dresden Dolls and if you’re lucky enough to score a ticket to any one of there other performances, GO. Long live the Punk Cabaret.

Setlist: Good Day, Sex Changes, Gravity, Bad Habit, Backstabber, Modern Moonlight, My Alcoholic Friends, Missed Me, Mrs. O, Astronaut, Delilah (with Veronica Swift), Gardener, Ultima, Fight For Your Right, Amsterdam, Mandy Goes To Med School, Coin Operated Boy, War Pigs, Half Jack, Girl Anachronism

Encore: Truce, Sing

Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione rocking out Colony. Photo by Samantha Rychlicki

November 18, 2022
Marco Benevento Announces 2023 Tour, Stops in Woodstock and Jersey City

While many found the sudden lockdown spurred by 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic depressing, isolating and fruitless, Marco Benevento found the time trapped in his Hudson Valley dilapidated home studio to be inspiring and invigorating. In that room, surrounded by outdated technology, malfunctioning drum kits and eclectic instruments, the Woodstock keyboardist found his latest album: Benevento. Benevento will be celebrating the album’s release with a tour across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest in March 2023.

The production of Benevento took place over many solo jam sessions, rife with experimentation and improvisation, things Benevento is no stranger to. Within the keyboard, Benevento finds and exploding breadth of sound and texture, and he wanders into the realm of psychedelic funk in his latest album, taking with him notes of rock, jazz and especially dance.

Benevento is pulling a two night stand in his home town of Woodstock at Levon Helm Studios in January, 2023. Tickets go on sale November 18 at 10 a.m. for the March leg of Marco Benevento’s tour. He’ll have a couple shows in the New York area, including on March 10 at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City. See the complete list of tour dates below; tickets here.

MARCO BENEVENTO Complete Tour Schedule

November 17 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg ^

November 18 – New Haven, CT – Space Ballroom ^

November 19 – Holyoke, MA – Race Street Live ^

December 29 – Denver, CO – Ogden Theatre *

January 13 – Woodstock, NY – Levon Helm Studios

January 14 – Woodstock, NY – Levon Helm Studios

March 10 – Jersey City, NJ – White Eagle Hall

March 11 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts

March 12 – Baltimore, MD – 8×10

March 13 – Pittsburgh, PA – Thunderbird Cafe

March 14 – Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom

March 15 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall

March 16 – Milwaukee, WI – The Back Room at Colectivo

March 17 – St. Paul, MN – Turf Club

March 18 – Madison, WI – High Noon Saloon

^ w/ Ghost Funk Orchestra

* w/ Ghost Light

November 18, 2022
Baldwinsville Welcomes New Weekly Music Series “Jazz at Timber Banks”

Timber Banks, a golf course-based residential community in Baldwinsville, will soon be hosting the “Jazz at Timber Banks” music series at their brand-new Persimmons Restaurant.

Running from November 30 to May 10, the series will showcase events every Wednesday from 6 to 9 p.m. It will begin with a performance by Edgar Pagán and his “Grupo Pagan Lite” trio, playing pop and Latin pop selections, on a night featuring free finger food.

Promotional poster for “Jazz at Timber Banks.”

Excluding a holiday break, Fitzsimmons will host every week over the course of its 5+ month run. No show will include a cover charge. Edgar Pagán’s GPL will also feature at the series’ closing event.

CNY Jazz is presenting the series as their latest “CNY Jazz Club” offering. “Now the northern suburbs will have nearby access to great music of all kinds on a regular basis in a cabaret setting,” said Larry Luttinger, leader of the upstate non-profit operation and series curator of the concert series.

21 events and 15+ acts strong, the series bills itself as multidisciplinary, featuring blues, funk, R&B, Americana, country swing, Latin crossover, modern pop, and Sinatra in addition to jazz.

CNY Jazz donor cardholders will receive 10% discounts on food and drink at all events scheduled at Persimmons.

Information on more upcoming CNY Jazz events can be found here.

November 18, 2022
Goose Announce Five Shows in March at Capitol Theatre

Amid their current tour with Trey Anastasio Band, Goose has announced their first shows in six years at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, and they’re going big for it. Over March 8-12, Goose will play 5 consecutive nights, adding to the band’s historic rise, and the extensive history of The Cap.

The only other time Goose played The Capitol Theatre was a single set on October 1, 2016. Here’s the setlist, via elgoose.net: Arcadia, Madhuvan, Jive I, Indian River, Creatures, Turned Clouds, So Ready, One More Saturday Night.

Presale tickets will be available starting Thursday, November 17 at 10am through 10pm using the password TUMBLE with general on-sale beginning Friday, November 18 at 10am. $1 of each ticket sale will support Backline, a mental health and wellness resource for the music industry.

Check out coverage of Goose with Trey Anastasio Band at Mohegan Sun and at Glens Falls this past week.

November 17, 2022
In Focus: Black Star at Sony Hall

On Tuesday, November 15, Black Star took the stage at Sony Hall in Times Square for a once in a lifetime performance, presented by Blue Note Entertainment Group and co-presented by podcast platform Luminary.

Photo by Dervon S. Dixon

Black Star is Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey, the internationally recognized icons of rap, activism, and entertainment. This night, they performed songs from their iconic debut Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star, as well as their new album No Fear Of Time, which was released after an extended hiatus of nearly 25 years. In addition to the Black Star originals, they both performed hits from their individual catalogs.

The Sony Hall show followed their SNL debut on Saturday, November 12th, where Black Star performed “So be it.”

Photos by Dervon S. Dixon

November 17, 2022

Built in Breakdance