Savannah Music Festival 2012 Schedule
March 27 11 a.m.: Sebastian Knauer, piano. Trinity United Methodist Church. 12:30 p.m.: Kenny Baron, piano. Morris Center. 5:30 & 7:30 p.m.: Hello Pops/A Celebration of Louis Armstrong by Wycliffe Gordon & Friends. Morris Center. 6 p.m.: The Mendelssohn Piano Trios: David Finckel, Wu Han, Philip Seltzer. Telfair Academy. March 28 12:30, 5:30 & 7:30…
As if Fukushima never happened
This past February, a month before the one–year anniversary of the Fukushima meltdown, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave a Georgia Power–led consortium the green light to add two new nuclear reactors to the existing two at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River. Aside from the tone–deaf timing, the permitting of the reactors is…
March 26: Today’s events
Here’s what’s going on today (Monday, March 26): It’s (for real) Rent audition day. JinHi Soucy Rand will be directing the hit musical at Bay Street Theatre in late spring; auditions are at 6:30 p.m. today and Tuesday – at Muse Arts Warehouse, which is JinHi’s place. The Savannah Music Festival continues with a noon…
SMF: Ruthie Foster @ Morris Center
Texas singer, songwriter and combo-leader Ruthie Foster made her Savannah Music Festival debut two years ago, and the response was overwhelming. Foster was voted “Audience Favorite” for the year, and invited back for another round of appearances. That finally came to pass in 2012, and apparently Savannah hasn’t forgotten this bright-eyed woman with the million-dollar…
March 25: Today’s events
Here’s what’s going on today (Sunday, March 25): The Savannah Music Festival continues with performances by Ruthie Foster and the Campbell Brothers, in the Morris Center (at 4:15 and 7 p.m.); and (at 3 p.m. at Telfair Academy) Daniel Hope (violin) and Sebastian Knauer (piano) in a program of Brahms Violin Sonatas.
SMF: Lyle Lovett/John Hiatt @ Trustees Theater
This is what I have always found so astonishing about Lyle Lovett: He writes these dry, witty, oddly literate songs like “Good Intentions” and “Creeps Like Me,” and then turns around and destroys you with the most aching, devastating portraits of doomed love, like “L.A. County” and “She’s Already Made Up Her Mind.” And as…
March 24: Today’s events
Here’s what’s going on today (Saturday, March 24): The most hotly-anticipated show of the Savannah Music Festival is tonight at the Trustees Theater – singer/songwriters Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt, intimate and acoustic at 8 p.m. It’s been sold out for weeks. Violinist Daniel Hope leads a chamber music ensemble, with Menahem Pressler, at the…
SMF: Preservation Hall/Del McCoury @ Trustees
It’s been written before but I’ll write it again: There are only two American musical traditions worth talking about: 1) The African-American tradition, historically centered in the Mississippi River Delta; 2) and the Scots-Irish tradition of the Appalachian Mountains. That’s it. Everything else that’s come out of this country that’s worth listening to – jazz,…
March 23: Today’s events
Here’s what’s going on today (Friday, March 23): It’s Day Two for the Savannah Music Festival, with a day full of cool stuff. Connect recommends the 8 p.m. show in the Trustees Theater, with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and bluegrass titans the Del McCoury Band. Comedians Sommore and Tony Rock headline an all-star show…
The Hunger Games
THE HUNGER GAMES *** So, read any good books lately? As anyone with even the faintest trace of a pulse has heard, The Hunger Games, the eagerly awaited adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ smash bestseller, has finally hit theaters, and even though I’m not Catholic, let me pull up a confessional booth and admit that I’m…
SMF: Bela Fleck & the Flecktones @ Trustees Theater
It’s just a hair less than a quarter-century since Bela Fleck and the Flecktones began crafting a most unusual sort of jazz fusion, using 5-string banjo, harmonica, electric bass and synthesized drums. The world has changed immeasurably since 1988, but this quirky little quartet is still one of the coolest things in music. Despite each…
SMF: Takacs Quartet @ Telfair
I always make a point to go see Hungarian musicians when I can. Hungary is the epicenter of European Gypsy culture, and Hungarian musicians — even if they may not always admit it — often reflect their unique cultural inheritance with a suitable Gypsy-like panache and intensity that isn’t always found in the rest of…
March 22: Today’s events
Here’s what’s going on today (Thursday, March 22): What’s NOT going on today?! The Savannah Music Festival opens with a handful of beauties, including bluegrass and gospel at the Morris Center (5:30 p.m.), a Telfair Academy concert from classical music’s Takacs Quartet (6 p.m.), the indie band The Head and the Heart (from the great…
Do tax cuts actually grow jobs?
Is there any evidence to support the mantra that cutting taxes stimulates job growth? I’m old enough to remember the Reagan years, and it seems most of those tax cuts went into the pockets of the wealthy, and what trickled down was pink slips as jobs went offshore. – Keynes Friedman Locke., Greenspan, Minnesota The…
Pink Martini: Shaken and stirred
It’s been a wild and wooly year for Pink Martini, the cocktail–cool, multi–lingual “retro” band from Portland, Oregon that’s playing one of the most hotly–anticipated Savannah Music Festival shows this year. Vocalist China Forbes is just back from an extended leave (not only is she raising a 3-year-old, she had throat surgery), and, in her…
A Broughton spot reborn
Until regulatory hoops are jumped through, the most obvious change of the former Seasons of Japan Bistro location into the new Lime Grill takes place when you step through the door. Gone are the thatched, tiki hut canopies and the high–backed bamboo and rattan chairs. The interior of The Lime Grill illustrates how minimal a…
Concerned about gas prices? Demand Complete Streets
The rising price of gasoline is uniting Americans in collective dread. If we think prices are high now, we are warned, wait until summertime. While we have no idea why gas prices keep going up, we do know that we are mad as hell! Who’s responsible for this outrage? The president? The previous president? Speculators?…
Say cello to the future
Not many people these days have the experience of working with the same group of people for 33 years. To end a working relationship like that must be quite difficult. That’s exactly what longtime Savannah Music Festival favorite David Finckel is doing. Formerly the cellist with the groundbreaking Emerson String Quartet, Finckel last month announced…
Spotlight: John Hiatt
JOHN HIATT At 8 p.m. March 24/Trustees Theater Long tall (and legendary) Texas singer/songwriter Lyle Lovett is no doubt the reason this show was one of SMF 2012’s fastest sellouts. He and Hiatt are playing solo, acoustic sets – which means Lovett’s brilliant and bizarre Large Band, for which he is a justifiably famous concert…
You gotta have Hope
As associate artistic director of the Savannah Music Festival, Daniel Hope is in charge of building the classical side of the program — a pursuit which has brought numerous world premieres, special commissions, and one–of–a–kind programs played by one–of–a–kind artists to town. The South Africa–born, British–bred violinist is also a world–class musician in his own…
Don’t STOP the BOP
One of the most influential and revered pianists in modern jazz, Cedar Walton began his professional career at the tail end of the 1950s, playing with Art Farmer and J.J. Johnson’ and their nascent groups. The Texas native’s big break came early in the new decade when, as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers,…
Beads of light & darkness
BEADWORK IS in some ways one of the most underappreciated fine art forms. Usually associated with crafts and costumes rather than serious art, beads can deliver an amazing amount of texture — an effect made all the more dynamic by the subtle play of light off the varying surface of the beads, themselves constructed in…
Spotlight: Preservation Hall Jazz Band
PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND At 8 p.m. March 23/Trustees Theatre The good old, good time Dixieland music of Mississippi riverboats is alive and well thanks to this venerable NoLa ensemble, which has been the house band at Preservation Hall, in the French Quarter, for more than 50 years. Actually, there are a couple of misnomers…
Spotlight: Takacs Quartet
TAKACS QUARTET 6 p.m. Thu. March 22, Telfair Academy of Arts & Sciences 6 p.m. Fri. March 23, Telfair Academy of Arts & Sciences Not every classical musician grows up with the dream of performing with Philip Seymour Hoffman. But that’s what the Takacs Quartet did once in a performance of “Everyman” in Carnegie Hall,…
Spotlight: Ruthie Foster
RUTHIE FOSTER At 6:15 and 9 p.m. March 24; at 4:15 and 7 p.m. March 25/Morris Center All these are joint performances by the Campbell Brothers, a “sacred steel” group, playing slinky and smoky R&B-fueled Pentecostal gospel music, and the incredible blues/gospel vocalist Ruthie Foster. With a strong, powerful and incredibly nuanced voice – a…
Mark your calendar: Friends of Statts
It’s been nearly four years since Jason Statts was shot in one of the most senseless local crimes in recent memory. A talented graphic artist and musician, Statts has been in a wheelchair for those four years. Because he suffered irreparable damage to his spinal column, he is a quadriplegic. On the average, his health…
Spotlight: The Head and the Heart
THE HEAD AND THE HEART At 7:30 p.m. March 22, Lucas Theatre Steve Earle’s kid, the whiskey-soaked Americana trail-rider Justin Townes Earle, opens this performance by one of the brightest indie-pop bands to come out of Seattle in a good long while. The Head and the Heart, which has opened for Death Cab For Cutie,…
The Black Lips, Les Racquet
THE BLACK LIPS At 10 p.m. Wednesday, March 21 The Jinx, 127 W. Congress St. $10 Hey, forget about St. Patrick’s Day – the real mayhem starts whenever Atlanta’s four horsemen of the untamed punk apocalypse come to town. These guys have been a ramshackle party band since the mid 1990s, which is when they…
Yes, another festival!
We’re very proud at Connect Savannah to have been a key sponsor of the Savannah Music Festival for the past several years. In conjunction with our owner Charles H. Morris, we’re happy to have helped in our own way to bring some of the hottest musicians in the world to Savannah during that time. While…
Victor Wooten: Home bass
Since 1988, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones have been one of America’s most musically adventurous and consistently enjoyable instrumental bands. Fronted by the banjo–wielding Bela, the band incorporates elements of jazz, bop and fusion, bluegrass, African, Eastern and sundry bits, pieces and spots and slivers of this, and of that. These guys are virtuosi en…
Don’t blame the lunch ladies
What could be more maligned these days than public school lunches? Between Congress’ nod to pizza as a vegetable last fall and the current uproar over the notorious, ammonia–laced “pink slime” the USDA wants to pass off as meat, school lunch has a worse reputation than Lindsay Lohan’s plastic surgeon. But isn’t this the way…
The (Up)cycle of Spring
The vernal equinox officially switched up the seasons Tuesday, but for artist Katherine Sandoz, spring kicked off months ago. Much like a bee working its way through an acre of azaleas, the painter and fibers visionary has been busy creating a showcase of exquisite small works and growing a virtual garden from plastic grocery bags.…
Commander-in-cheat
Profane, cynical, audacious, loquacious — November, opening this weekend at Muse Arts Warehouse, is everything we’ve come to expect in a play by David Mamet. From American Buffalo to Glengarry Glen Ross to Oleanna, the playwright’s works are visceral, brittle and bitterly accurate snapshots of American lives in disarray. Oh, and November is a comedy.…
March 20: Today’s events
Here’s what’s going on today (Tuesday, March 20): It’s the first day of Spring, Grasshopper. Enjoy it.
