The 30th annual NERFA folk conference is a wrap. Coming at the end of a convulsive period, there was concern about how the conference would play out. Whatever dysfunction NERFA may have experienced as an organization, the conference was a resounding success.
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I first met guitarist Billy Strings about 10 years ago at the Folk Alliance conference in Memphis. Then in his early 20’s, he was playing with an older mandolin player, Don Julin, and it was clear he was something special.
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The Avett Brothers are now on Broadway – not as performers, but the creators of a new musical, Swept Away, which just opened at the Longacre Theatre
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Ever since I heard Songs for Bright Street in 2006, I’ve been a champion of Amy Speace, whose writing and singing have stood out from the crowd. Since then she’s recorded 9 more albums, the last 8 in Nashville, where she’s lived for many years.
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One of the most eagerly-awaited Broadway productions this fall is the revival of Sunset Boulevard (now at the St. James Theatre), which took London by storm, winning seven Olivier awards.
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The production of McNeal, now at Lincoln Center Theatre, opens with a projection of an iPhone looming over an empty stage. Instantly, I thought of Steve Jobs’ minimalist ethos and flashed on the new iPhone’s AI capacity. It turns out that artificial intelligence is very much at the heart of McNeal, and that projections are essential to the production.
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For almost 30 years, starting with the Grammy-nominated Revival album in 1996, Gillian Welch and her partner in music and life, David Rawlings, have set the standard for acoustic Americana duos.
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For years Neale Eckstein had a career as a pediatric dentist while pursuing a passion for music on the side...
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When Madeleine Peyroux released her debut album, Dreamland, in 1996, she was a 23-year-old singer who spent years busking in Paris and had an uncanny vocal similarity to Billie Holiday.
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Over nearly 50 years, banjo maestro Tony Trischka has managed to satisfy both bluegrass purists and progressive bluegrass fans, who are drawn to groups expanding the genre with outside influences like jazz and psychedelic music (which he did in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s with Country Cooking, Skyline, and Psychograss). On his new album, Earl Jam (a sardonic nod to rockers Pearl Jam), he pays tribute to his hero Earl Scruggs, bringing together an all-star cast which bridges generations and styles.
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In a career that has spanned 57 years, beginning as a teenager in London as a member of the seminal folk-rock group Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson has given us a body of work with sharply drawn lyrics and melodies accented by his distinctive guitar playing. His new CD, Ship to Shore, his 27th solo studio album (and first in six years), offers plenty of those attributes.
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The buzz about Stereophonic had been building for its Broadway opening at the Golden Theatre in April. It had earned raves for its production at Playwrights Horizon in the fall, but though the playwright Daniel Adjmi had won awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, it was his Broadway debut.
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It’s been 54 years since Chris Smither’s debut album, I’m a Stranger Here Too! (produced by the recently deceased Michael Cuscuna, who also produced Bonnie Raitt’s Give it Up, which contained Smither’s most famous song, “Love Me Like a Man”). It made him known among critics, but not a household name.
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Chekhov’s plays, like Shakespeare’s, are essential to the theater canon. His oeuvre isn’t as deep as Shakespeare’s, of course, but it is rich and thus open to multiple revivals. Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of Uncle Vanya is satisfying in every way.
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It really has been an amazing journey for Tommy since The Who released the original double album in 1969. Hyped as the first rock opera, it did have an operatic structure – an overture, an “underture,” certain recurring musical themes – and Pete Townshend’s expansive ambitions (including borrowing the “Amazing Journey” riff from his previous “mini-opera,” “Rael,” on The Who Sell Out). With some dissenters, it did generally get critical praise and strong popular support, driven in part by “Pinball Wizard” as a hit single.
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Aoife’s new release, All My Friends, is an ambitious departure, centering on songs inspired by the women’s suffrage movement, including a five-song suite that was commissioned by the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in 2021 and four others that augment the theme.
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At the age of 83, Tom Rush’s powers are undiminished: as a singer, a guitarist, an onstage performer, and judging by his new album, Gardens Old, Flowers New, as a songwriter. Because he’s known for burnishing the careers of Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, et al, he is sometimes underrated as a writer himself.
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I’m back from Kansas City for my annual (10th? 12th?) Folk Alliance pilgrimage – both an exhausting and refreshing experience. The main objective, of course, is to hear as much music as I possibly can, but the ancillary benefits (learning from sessions, reconnecting with friends) are equally rewarding.
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The ghost of Jack Lemmon has appeared twice on Broadway this season. First In Some Like It Hot, the adaptation of the 1959 film starring Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe which closed at the end of the year (and recently won a Grammy). Now in Days of Wine and Roses, a teleplay that became a 1962 film and earned Oscar nominations for Lemmon and Lee Remick.
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