5.8.08
Weekend Highlights May 9-11
THE ROGOVOY REPORT
5.6.08
[PRESS RELEASE] Pinchas Zukerman daughter Natalia to headline at Club Helsinki
Coming to Great Barrington, Mass., nightclub on May 18
5.2.08
Singer/composer Jenny Scheinman at MASS MoCA is weekend's top pick
Preview by SETH ROGOVOY, Berkshire Living Magazine
4.25.08
[FILM REVIEW] Shine a Light (The Rolling Stones)
review by SETH ROGOVOY, Berkshire Living Magazine
4.17.08
[FILM REVIEW] The Counterfeiters
review by SETH ROGOVOY, Berkshire Living Magazine
4.11.08
Klezmatics do Woody Guthrie's Jewish songs
Weekend highlights, April 11-13
3.17.08
GOLEM returns to Club Helsinki for PURIM this Friday night
Press Release from Club Helsinki
3.8.08
CHEESE TO BE SPOKEN OF AND EATEN ON MARCH 30
part of BERKSHIRE LIVING's REST OF THE STORY series
2.25.08
Richard Thompson, America, and Madeline Peyroux added to Mahaiwe lineup this spring
Mahaiwe press release
7.1.07
[DANCE REVIEW] State Ballet of Georgia at Jacob's Pillow
Review from the NEW YORK TIMES
2.24.08
[MUSIC REVIEW] Urban vs. Pastoral Music at the Mahaiwe courtesy of Close Encounters with Music
Review by Seth Rogovoy, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
2.18.08
[THEATER REVIEW] TRUMBO at Barrington Stage
Review by Seth Rogovoy, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
2.18.08
[MUSIC REVIEW] Sarah Aroeste's neo-Ladino at Club Helsinki
Review by Seth Rogovoy, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
2.21.08
[FILM REVIEW] THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
Review by Seth Rogovoy, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
2.11.08
[COMEDY REVIEW] The Flying Karamazov Brothers at the Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
2.11.08
[COMEDY REVIEW] The Flying Karamazov Brothers at the Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy, BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine
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[MUSIC REVIEW] JAZZ PASSENGERS
11.18.07
MASS MOCA
North Adams, Mass.
ALT CABARET
Saturday, November 17, 2007
JAZZ PASSENGERS
"SUBWAY STORIES"
review by SETH ROGOVOY, editor-in-chief and critic-at-large, BERKSHIRE LIVING
Magazine
(North Adams, Mass., November 18, 2007) -- Attempts to fuse poetry and jazz have a long and spotty history. At their worst, they produce post-beatnik style pomposity, bad poetry recited over aimless bebop.
At their best, however, as in the work of Everton Sylvester and Searching for Banjo, and now, in Roy Nathanson's "Subway Stories," his latest multimedia project with downtown's greatest jazz group, the Jazz Passengers, the fusion makes total sense.
It helps when you have on hand a group of musicians such as the Passengers, whose lineup reads like an all-star team of downtown jazz, including trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, vibraphonist Bill Ware, drummer E.J. Rodriguez, and, of course, saxophonist Roy Nathanson himself.
It also helps that in Nathanson's latest program, he adds video to the mix, and Andrew Gurian's short films, alternating abstract images, collages, and straightforward narrative, help support Nathanson's prose/poems about and inspired by life on the Brooklyn subway.
It also helps that Nathanson's music is tailored to the poetry, so that there is a direct connection. It helps that jazz has had a long, respectable relationship with trains and subways (think Ellington/Strayhorn's "Take the A Train"), and that the Passengers made the most of this in the composed sections and in their improvisations, and in
keyboardist/samplist Hugo Dwyer's interstitial passages, which were like pauses in between trains pulling into the station that was the Club B-10 at MASS MoCA. Each time a train pulled in, Nathanson got us on and took us for a ride with his narratives and music, until we were let off at the next station.
It was a terrific program that fed the soul in multiple ways -- through Nathanson's poetry and music, through the musicians' performance, through Gurian's video, and again, through Nathanson's vibrant, athletic commitment to the whole of his performance.
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