Previews: Weather changes mean venue changes as music moves indoors. This weekend brings one of the season’s last shows-under-the-sun: Caffe Lena at SPAC on Saturday. Indoors, there’s plenty.
Virtuoso BEATrio at Universal Preservation Hall Thursday
Edmar Castaneda in August at Proctors in a Music Haven presentation. Michael Hochanadel photo
Does Edmar Castaneda live here now? He played Music Haven’s gala in late August at Proctors, then the Lake George Jazz Weekend in September.
The jazz harp pioneer returns in very fast company.
BEATrio, from left: Edmar Castaneda, harp; Bela Fleck, banjo; Antonio Sanchez, drums. Shervin Lainez photo supplied.
Thursday at Universal Preservation Hall, Castaneda plays with the newly formed (last year) BEATrio world-music combo with banjoist Bela Fleck and drummer Antonio Sanchez.
Fleck also plays here often, with fantastic bands including the Flecktones, symphony orchestras, banjoist wife Abigail Washburn and all-star crews in many styles and traditions. BEATrio is the latest of many and one of the most intriguing.
Since Earl Scruggs’s “Beverly Hillbillies” theme inspired Fleck right through his NYC TV screen, Fleck became the most versatile and ambitious banjoist since Scruggs himself. Through dazzling virtuoso skill and wide-open collaborations, Fleck has won 19 Grammys in categories from historic to innovative, classical to country to jazz to folk to world-beat to roots to pop. Highlights here have included duos at the Van Dyck with jazz pianist Chick Corea and Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain, and a show at RPI’s EMPAC with top traditional African players on his award winning “Throw Down Your Heart” album and film.
The BEATrio promises similar fireworks.
Colombian-born Castaneda is to jazz harp what Fleck is to omni-banjo, a startlingly fresh stylist pioneering a new tradition in varying formats. He led a nine-piece world-jazz combo at Proctors, then a trio at Lake George; and has recorded with Japanese jazz pianist Hiromi, French harmonica wizard Gregoire Maret and Cuban saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera.
Mexican drummer Antonio Sanchez is their peer in talent and curiosity. Pat Metheny told me when he first heard Sanchez, from outside a New York jazz club, he thought he was hearing two drummers and was shocked to find Sanchez making all those beats alone. Like Fleck, Sanchez played with Corea, plus multitudes of jazz greats; but his most impressive achievement may be the Golden Globe-nominated score for director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film Birdman (2014).
“I tend to find people to collaborate with who are the only person who plays that way,” says Fleck in his website bio. “I connect with people over rhythm…The rhythm is so compelling between Antonio and Edmar that I can roll, like on a bluegrass song, and have it sound perfectly natural.”
Fleck, Castaneda and Sanchez play Thursday as the BEATrio at Universal Preservation Hall (25 Washington St., Saratoga Springs). 7:30 p.m. $79.50-$40.50. 518-346-6204 www.proctors.org.
Saxophonist Sarah Hanahan at A Place for Jazz
In a season of saxophones at A Place for Jazz– three of five shows star saxophonists – Sarah Hanahan stands out as a young woman (28) unafraid to tackle tunes nearly every saxophone colossus before her claimed and played, explored or exploded. Her playing on alto has the fluid, joyful bounce of Charlie Parker and Jackie McLean: The beat is having fun, the notes happy to hear each other.
Sarah Hanahan. Photo provided
Thursday at A Place for Jazz, she brings top credentials and critical praise.
Trained at the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the Hartt School of Music of the University of Hartford (B.A., 2019) and The Juilliard School (M.M., 2022), Hanahan’s debut album “Among Giants” won a five-star review in Downbeat and a spot on the magazine’s list of Best Albums of the Year for 2024; and she was named Number One Rising Star on Alto Saxophone in it’s 2025 Critics Poll.
In addition to leading her own trio, she also plays in the Mingus Big Band.
The Sarah Hanahan Quartet plays Friday at A Place for Jazz in the Carl B. Taylor Auditorium of the SUNY Schenectady County Community College music school. 7:30 p.m. $25 at the door, cash or check. www.aplaceforjazz.org.
Mustard’s Retreat at the Eighth Step
David Tamulevich wears several hats, like stellar singer-songwriter and savvy country music publicist Lance Cowan. Tamulevich was a performer before becoming artist manager for folk stars John Gorka, Ani DiFranco, Stan Rogers, Kate Wolf, Greg Brown, Dar Williams, and Ellis Paul, He hit the road in 1975 with Mustard’s Retreat, originally a trio, now a duo. They’ve made more than a dozen albums, though they toured sporadically as Tamulevich busily represented other artists.
Mustard’s Retreat; Libby Glover, left; and David Tamulevich. Photo provided
Friday, he returns to the Eighth Step, a frequent tour stop, like other regional venues including the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival and Clearwater’s Great Hudson River Revival – and such national-caliber venues as the folk showcases at Wolf Trap, Lincoln Center and Kennedy Center. Mustard’s Retreat is now a duo of Tamulevich with Libby Glover, armed with a stage full of instruments and deep bags of songs and stories.
He calls their music “defiantly hopeful,” and expresses “joy and fun, mystery and wonder, then heartbreak and resiliency…it’s celebrating life.”
7:30 pm., doors at 7. $26 in advance, $28 on Friday; $40 front and center. 518-346-6204 http://www.proctors.org.
Caffe Lena at SPAC
Saturday brings the return of Caffe Lena at SPAC; a free outdoor multi-act show at SPAC’s Charles R. Wood Stage. During late-June’s Saratoga Jazz Festival presented by GE Vernova, it becomes the Charles R. Wood Jazz Discovery Stage. Saturday’s slate features mainly folk or folk-adjacent artists.
Unlike LiveNation events, fans can bring in chairs and blankets for the free event. Doors open at 11:30 a.m.
Noon: Aleksi Campagne. Bilingual Canadian fiddler and singer-songwriter
1:10 p.m.: Farah Sirah. Time Out New York hails the Jordanian cross-cultural singer as “the Norah Jones of the Middle East.
2:20 p.m.: Tom Chapin. Triple Grammy-winning singer-songwriter with 27 albums and key role in National Geographic Explorer TV series
3:30 p.m.: Chatham County Line. Harmonizing bluegrass/Americana trio with four albums that topped Billboard’s Bluegrass Chart
4:40 p.m.: Misty Blues. Powerhouse Berkshires blues band with 17 albums and tour dates here, across Canada and the UK
Caffe Lena at Caffe Lena
Also Saturday, at 7 p.m. and as part of the Saratoga Book Festival, Caffe Lena presents author/musician Tom Piazza in “John Prine: A Night of Song and Stories” celebrating Piazza’s book Living in the Present with John Prine. New Orleans-based novelist and essayist Piazza is a Yaddo alum and four-time winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Music Writing. He was working with Prine on an autobiography when Prine died of COVID in April 2020.
WAMC’s Joe Donahue interviewed Piazza for a Roundtable segment available at www.wamc.org.
Hoke's Jukebox 