Get Island musicians riffing about what makes a chord-sparring, memory-jarring, above-par, raise-the-bar jam session here, and the name Maynard Silva inevitably comes into the conversation.

First it was Owen Bennion’s two front teeth vs. a steel basketball pole. Then it was Matt Ungaro’s left ear vs. a moth of undetermined species.

With a voice frequently compared to Joni Mitchell’s, Nancy Jephcote is gearing up for the release of a solo album this fall — but you can hear the Vineyard singer, songwriter and award-winning fiddler at a concert at 8 p.m. tonight, Friday, August 15, at Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven.

Well known for her work with the Flying Elbows fiddle band, songwriting has long been another side of this versatile performer’s offerings. Paul Thurlow and Brian Weiland will add instrumentals and vocal harmonies.

Music will not be the only thing sizzling this summer at Outerland, the nightclub and live music venue at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport: Smoke’n’Bones Restaurant, opposite Tony’s Market in Oak Bluffs, is coming to Outerland for the summer season starting tonight.

This will be Smoke’n’Bones’s third location on Martha’s Vineyard. Their new locale at Outerland will be known as Smoke’n’Bones Up-Island.

Girls Guns and Glory

Boston-based band Girls Guns and Glory plays Friday at the Offshore Ale in Oak Bluffs on Friday night from about 10 p.m.

The band won a Boston Music Award last year and in 2008, the WBCN Rumble — the first roots, rock and country act to ever win the Rumble. One of just four unsigned acts in the Top 40, their latest disc, Inverted Valentine, is currently number 16 on the National Americana Music Association Chart.

The Aquinnah Public Library will be host to a community celebration on Saturday, August 30, from noon to 3 p.m. The event is free and will be held on the grounds of the library on State Road in Aquinnah. In case of rain, the event will be held inside the old town hall across State Road.

Two musical guests will perform: the Wampanoag tribe’s own Black Brook Drummers will perform at noon and Sol y Canto, a popular Latin music group from Cambridge at 2 p.m.

Soprano Claudette Peterson, formerly with New York’s City Opera, and renowned bass-baritone David Kline, will present a master class for singers at the Martha’s Vineyard High School on Monday. Dan Murphy, director of music at the high school, arranged for the class to give interested students the opportunity to work with these world-class artists and to introduce them to Operafest 2008, a summer program for which Mr. Murphy will serve as choral conductor and accompanist.

Peter Simon on Radio

Peter Simon and his Jamaica-inspired book Reggae Scrapbook will be featured this Sunday, June 29, at noon, on NBC Boston’s CityLine show. Peter will talk about his travels through Jamaica and the culture and music that make Jamaica known and loved throughout the world.  CityLine airs on WCVB-TV, the NBC affiliate in Boston. The show covers a wide spectrum of topics of public interest, including people profiles, ethnic cuisine, travel and entertainment previews from around the city.

The pencilina is like an instrument from Dr. Seuss’s The Butter Battle Book. It’s got bass and treble necks with movable bridges and open strings which can be plucked, played with a bow and manipulated with drumsticks. It is mounted with four bells: a fire bell, a doorbell, and two brass telephone ringers.

It was Sunday afternoon, deep underground in the sub-basement studio of community radio WVVY, and they were having what one of the flustered on-air staff called “real extreme technical difficulties.”

The monitor outside the studio, an ancient Aiwa radio cassette, was not picking up any signal. Hurried phone calls were made and the suspicion was confirmed: the station was not broadcasting the program, although it was apparently going out okay to a small number of online listeners.