You might treat her like dirt. But when the romance ends, she’s gonna write and deadpan-chant the following lyrics about you:
The silver hoop on my finger was a noose Emotional suicide whenever I was with you Why would you date me if you fucking hate me? And why would you fuck me if you think that I’m ugly?
I hope it hurts when you think of me I hope you know that you sicken me … I’m choking on all the breath I waste while blood and vomit’s all I can taste
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Jisu Sheen |
Mar 21, 2025 10:26 am
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Cover art for "What a Guy."
SB Khi, a multi-genre star of the younger, post-pandemic-onset generation of musicians in the New Haven scene, made a stop at a dive bar in Pennsylvania when he had an encounter that would end up inspiring his newest single.
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Jamil Ragland |
Mar 19, 2025 1:54 pm
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Clayton Stephenson informs and entertains during Notes and Narratives at the Artists Collective in Hartford.
Notes and Narratives with Clayton Stephenson The Artists Collective Hartford March 18, 2025
I ventured back to my old stomping grounds in the North End of Hartford for a classical piano concert featuring Clayton Stephenson, and got so much more than I was expecting. Founded by the world renowned saxophonist Jackie McLean in 1970, the Artists Collective is one of the premier arts institutions in the state, and trains Black and brown children from Hartford in music, dance, theater and more. I went there when I was a kid, and so did my son when he got old enough.
So it made sense for the Collective to host Clayton Stephenson, the Joyce C. Willis artist in residence at the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. The residence program supports Black artists and aims to increase diversity in the arts community.
Unlike at a regular concert, Stephenson turned his performance into an educational experience. He began by showing the audience how Franz Schubert took one musical passage in his Impromptu and built an entire song around it.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 17, 2025 9:33 am
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Thin Lear.
Matt Nilsen, Thin Lear, David Wirsig, and Niagara Moon Never Ending Books March 14, 2025
There was a microphone set up, but Matt Nilsen dispensed with it, instead forgetting about the stage and standing on the floor right in front of the audience. He strummed his guitar a couple times, just to test the room.
“There’s no graceful way to do this except to just do it,” he said, and started his set. In doing so, he set the tone for an evening of music on Friday at Never Ending Books — featuring him, Thin Lear, David Wirsig, and Niagara Moon — that brought musicians and audience closer together, literally and figuratively.
Operatic and concert soloist and recording artist Adriana Zabala at WNHH FM.
Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper-Chekhov never made it to a villa they dreamed of on Italy’s Lake Como. Adriana Zabala shed a tear about that the other day.
Zabala, a mezzo-soprano, also lifted her voice. You can argue that she helped make the Chekhovs’ dream come true.
Umut Yasmut brings the kanun to RAWA, all the way from New York.
As Umut Yasmut filled the dining area of Westville’s Mediterranean and Middle Eastern fusion restaurant RAWA with cascading melodies, the New York musician said that his instrument, an intricately carved stringed creation, did not exist.
Decades after an aborted attempt by local officials to deliver an honorary certificate at Toad’s Place, New Haven’s mayor joined an alder onstage to officially express the city’s pride in the 50-year-old legendary York Street rock club.
At an album release party Friday night at Cafe Nine, DJs from New Haven’s HEATSYNC all-vinyl collective dropped tracks from their new 4‑track techno dance EPBuddy City. The crowd pulsated as fog and humming beats pumped into the space. Every so often, a dancer would take over the floor for a moment, flowing alongside the distortion and sweet noise.
As DJ 7Ways played one of the original tracks from Buddy City, his voice floated over the crowd: “This record is for sale. And this is the first time a mic has ever been used at HEATSYNC. Goodbye.”
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Karen Ponzio |
Mar 3, 2025 9:14 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos.
Jack Daniel and Brian Ember miming magic.
What do you do when your birthday is on Feb. 29 but it’s not a leap year? Jack Daniel of The Broken Robots threw himself and a raucously receptive crowd a Very Merry Un-Birthday Party at Best Video on Feb. 28 instead, complete with cake, improvised poetic jazz performance art, and the musical stylings of Brian Ember.
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Karen Ponzio |
Feb 27, 2025 2:30 pm
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College Street Music Hall
Howard Jones takes College Street back, with ABC (below).
Howard Jones &ABC College Street Music Hall Feb. 26, 2025
On Wednesday night a vibrant crowd at College Street Music Hall rejoiced in their remembrance of the 1980s with two of its most successful and celebrated British New Wave synth pop acts: Howard Jones and ABC.
Both acts made their mark as equally for the memorable visuals in their videos played on near perpetual repeat on MTV throughout its first decade as well as for the string of radio hits each had that continue to get regular airplay on Sirius XM’s First Wave radio station devoted to purveyors of post punk and synth-soaked tunes.
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Brian Slattery |
Feb 24, 2025 12:55 pm
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Brian Slattery Photos
Allie Burnet.
Midway through her set with her band, the Proven Winners, Allie Burnet asked to do one song by herself. In a break from her original material, she launched into a cover of Sinéad O’Connor’s “Black Boys on Mopeds,” a 1990 song about police brutality that has aged all too well.
To give the song a final twist, Burnet changed one line. In 1990, O’Connor sang, “These are dangerous days / to say what you feel is to dig your own grave.” Burnet altered the second half of that line: “To be who you are is to stand in your grave.”
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Jisu Sheen |
Feb 24, 2025 10:03 am
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LÉA THE LEOX with guitarist Graham Bhuyan.
When asked to describe how he felt about the set he played at Hamden’s Space Ballroom Saturday night, LÉATHELEOX’s guitarist, Graham Bhuyan, smiled and said, “It kind of felt like hugging your favorite color.” An up-and-coming soul, pop, and R&B act out of LA, LÉATHELEOX and Bhuyan wasted no time stealing hearts on Hamden soil. It’s safe to say whatever the color was, it hugged back hard.
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Chris Randall |
Feb 17, 2025 10:21 am
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Chris Randall Photo
Guitarist and composer Hiroya Tsukamoto played an amazing show at Fair Haven Furniture, turning the cozy, intimately-lit space into a personal mini-concert hall. His mix of detailed fingerpicking and heartfelt storytelling made for a captivating night, with every note filling the unique setting with warmth and emotion.
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Jisu Sheen |
Feb 14, 2025 12:40 pm
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Jisu Sheen Photo
I-SHEA on the Conga, Seny Camara on Jembe, and Douglas Wilson III on guitar.
“The telepathy up here is crazy.”
Jocelyn Pleasant, leader of Connecticut’s well-loved Afro-funk fusion ensemble The Lost Tribe, might have been talking about communication between band members, but she also set the stage for an intimate connection between the band and the audience at a performance Thursday night at NXTHVN in Dixwell.
Killer Kin, Intercourse, Dissolve, Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean Space Ballroom Hamden Feb. 9, 2025
On Super Bowl Sunday, thousands of viewers across the United States tuned in to Caesar’s Superdome in New Orleans to share the wonder and excitement of the biggest sports evening of the year.
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Adam Matlock |
Feb 10, 2025 12:09 pm
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Matt Fried Photo
Matt Fried Photo
Music’s ability to offer hope or resilience, to soothe or to bolster, is often a feature of the conversation around public performance of classical music. In Woolsey Hall on Sunday afternoon, washed entirely in natural light, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra amplified that message.
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Leo Slattery |
Feb 6, 2025 2:31 pm
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Matt Esposito Photo
Rachel Goswell of Slowdive at CSMH.
Slowdive College Street Music Hall New Haven Feb. 4, 2025
There was a slow, two-minute build. The drums began to accelerate and subdivide. The bass switched its pattern, following the drums’ rhythm. The sung melody soared over it all, an angelic wordless wail. Other lines moved in and out, from guitars and electronics, somehow both floating and gathering energy. The lights around the crowd and stage slowly multiplied and became more colorful.
Finally, it erupted. The lights started flashing, impossibly fast. The music consumed itself, becoming an onslaught of noise that pummeled bobbing heads and waving arms in the audience. All the while, the line of musicians at the front of the stage — Slowdive members Rachel Goswell (vocal, guitar, synth), Neil Halstead (vocal, guitar), Christian Savill (guitar), Nick Chaplin (bass), and Simon Scott (drums) — were motionless, staring out at the crowd or down at the row of pedals and flashing lights by their feet.
Edward Beverly (above) and Killian Dobroth (below) performing Thursday night at Musical Intervention Studios.
“You gotta be who you are,” Edward Beverly sang Thursday night in an alcove retail space beneath the suspended concrete planet known as the Temple Street Garage, “because that’s who you are.”
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Brian Slattery |
Jan 30, 2025 10:28 am
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Brian Slattery Photos
Chris Brunetti of Trench CT.
Rage found an outlet in voices and beats as three Connecticut bands — Remedies, Trench CT, and Psycho Brat — took to the stage at Cafe Nine on Wednesday night. With newspaper headlines full of political tension, the bands’ sets of hardcore and punk made a place for release.
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Mickey Mercier |
Jan 27, 2025 1:30 pm
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From an Askew album cover.
Ed Askew, a Yale-educated painter who achieved wider renown as a singer-songwriter, died in New York City on Jan. 4 at age 84. The venerable music publication NME described him as a “psychedelic folk musician.” People magazine called him a cult figure.
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Etai Smotrich-Barr |
Jan 27, 2025 10:46 am
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Chris Randall photo
Cécile McLorin Salvant Yale Schwarzman Center New Haven Jan. 25, 2025
Cécile McLorin Salvant, perhaps the jazz vocalist of the last decade, performed in New Haven Saturday in what she described as an evening of “pure fantasy.”
