Lola’s may have arrived late to this summer, but the re-opened Oak Bluffs dining establishment will dance its way out of this hot summer with what’s billed as nothing less than a Labor Day End of Season Blow-Out Pajama Party Buffet.
Admission is $20 on Monday night, Sept. 6. The party featuring deejay Steve starts at 9 p.m., and it’s bring your own pj’s and dancing shoes.
It’s hard to believe that in their 25-plus years of existence local fiddling legends the Flying Elbows have never released an album. That is, until now: on Sunday, Nancy Jephcote will lead the Elbows in a release concert at the Grange Hall for their boisterous new album, Pokedelic.
While a certain Chicago politician comes ashore in a little over a week, an ambassador from that other great Chicago institution, its jazz scene, will have already made landfall; the legendary Ramsey Lewis performs at the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center this Sunday.
Mr. Lewis has just finished composing Colors: the Ecology of Oneness, a piece commissioned for a performance in Tokyo in September. He says he may test some of the new material on his audience at Oak Bluffs.
Singer, songwriter and guitarist Phil daRosa will perform this Saturday Sept. 18, at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs. Phil is about to release a new EP and this is your chance to say I heard it first.
Doors open at 7 p.m. Opening for Phil are Erich Luening and Meghan LaRoque.
Tickets are available at ticketsmv.com or at Above Ground Records, daRosa’s and Island Music. For more details, call 508-524-2065.
The 100 voices that make up the Island Community Chorus will fill the warming spring air of Edgartown with two performances this Saturday and Sunday, April 17 and 18, at the Old Whaling Church.
The spirit of the human voice and its capacity to bring people together with melody and rhythmic movement is a big part of Jim Thomas and his spirituals choir. They perform tomorrow night at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs. The program is called Songs from the Field: the Mystery of Spirituals, and it includes songs and stories going back to the Civil War era.
As in the past, the 28-member choir will have the audience swaying and clapping along. The choir sings slave songs that carry a message and tell a story crossing the generations.
The musical play Bears Beware — Goldilocks Is in Your Town answers the question “What kind of world is it were little girls break into houses that bears own?”
James (Jim) Thomas, president of the U.S. Slave Song Project Inc., will direct the Spirituals Choir in performance on Wednesday, June 9 at 7 p.m. at the Vineyard Haven Public Library.
Mr. Thomas has earned the American Red Cross’s National Diversity Award and President’s Award for Leadership.
The Spirituals Choir was created in 2005 as a diverse and educational choir who sing examples of the tunes presented by the narrator.
After weeks of stifling heat, Dave Brubeck brought relief to Edgartown society types on Sunday night with his eminently cool brand of jazz in a performance at the Field Club. One of the pioneers of West Coast jazz in the 1950s, Mr. Brubeck led his quartet through an evening of stylish standards and thrilling improvisation to help raise money for the new YMCA.
“This guy doesn’t just play music, he is music,” said Kate Taylor in her introduction.
The crowd at Che’s Lounge sang along Saturday night, as brothers Dave and Rob Myers brought a cornucopia of music and nostalgia to the underground coffee shop in the alley off Main street in Vineyard Haven.
Many of the Island’s seasoned musicians showed up at Che’s; for them, it was a step back to the 1990s and a time when the Island was home to a number of vibrant live bands that played regularly enough that audiences became fans, buying locally-produced albums and memorizing lyrics.
