Preview: “Ms. Music: The Jackie Alper Story” at the Eighth Step at Proctor’s GE Theatre, Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025

How to distill a long, musically and politically active, admired and heroic life into a words and music show shorter than a season-long TV mini-series?

Saturday’s Eighth Step premiere of “Ms. Music: The Jackie Alper Story” represents the triumph in a shared struggle by two leaders of the folk community who’d worked for decades with the activist, singer, radio host and guiding spirit. 

Jackie Alper. Photo provided

“I’ve had a terrible time writing about this, terrible,” lamented Eighth Step impresario Margie Rosenkranz, who’s presenting the show Saturday at the Eighth Step at Proctors GE Theatre. “Jackie was the Forrest Gump of the folk world; she was in all the hot places.” 

“In the research of this show, I learned way too much,” agreed Spence, now-retired chief of Old Songs and partner with Sarah Dillon in the year-long writing of what she calls a folk musical. “She was a friend to all of us and she helped all the folk organizations in the area,” said Spence. “She pointed the way, how to think about how music effects peoples’ lives.”

“We talked about Jackie all the time,” said Rosenkranz of co-launching the project with Spence. “Andy and Sarah Dillon picked up the ball when I went to do my (Eighth Step fall and winter) season,” now underway through December.

In the show’s program booklet, Spence cites eight source books including by Weavers Pete Seeger and Ronnie Gilbert, plus others about Seeger and Woody Guthrie, and Scott Alarik’s posthumous Jackie tribute in Sing Out magazine. Spence also acknowledges 11 interview sources including Jackie’s son George and many musicians, notably Ruth Pelham whose interview with Jackie provided the narrative structure for the first act of the two-part show. Those segments are prefaced as “in Jackie’s words.”

Guided by Buttons of Belief

Spence found her path through too much information in the button collection Jackie wore on her vest. Those buttons told “what she believed in,” Spence explained. In the program’s second half, “We tried to put in the things that she wore on her buttons.” As Rosenkranz notes in the concert news release, they include “War is not the Answer,” “Peace Through Music,” “If You’re not outraged You’re Not Paying Attention,” “My Karma Ran Over My Dogma” and “Buttons are Not Enough.”

The program cover shows Greg Artzner’s button collection that paralleled Jackie’s, with messages supporting peace, justice, love and community.

The program lists songs the cast of nine will perform, expressing those values, plus the choruses for each so all can sing along. They’ll sing gospel, blues and folk, including “Old Jim Crow” which Jackie co-wrote with jazz giant Nina Simone.

“This kind of music and singing brings people together,” said Spence. “What I’m hoping is that we have a swelling of pride in this country…and we can survive this,” she said, noting current political and social strife. 

Hard Times, Saved by Song

Jackie lived through similarly troubled times: the Great Depression, WWII, the 1950s red scare/McCarthy-ism and the 1960s folk-scare that was largely a progressives’ reaction.

Fellow folksinger Paul Robeson was a Greenwich Village grammar school classmate and sang at the infamous Peekskill riots years later when KKK thugs attacked a free folk concert, throwing stones at their bus as they fled. Pete Seeger told me that afterward, “I combed the broken glass out of my children’s hair.” Rosenkranz said, “He also picked up one of the stones they were throwing and built his hearth around it” in his hand-built Beacon home. Laughing, she added, “Isn’t that just vintage Pete?”

Between growing up in New York and arriving in Schenectady with husband Joe in 1950, Jackie sang with the Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie and other folk revival pioneers, and with the equally progressive Priority Ramblers while working with folklorist Alan Lomax in the Office of War Information in Washington during WWII. Returning to New York, she presented concerts by Guthrie, Seeger, Leadbelly and more through People’s Songs. Their fees, Spence found: $15 a concert. “Ms. Music” features songs by all these giants. 

A Weaver, for a Time

Jackie was in the original lineup of breakthrough folk stars the Weavers before returning to DC to organize the legal defense of artists and activists the McCarthy Hearings targeted in the “red scare” days. She nominated her friend and room-mate Ronnie Gilbert, whose contralto voice resembled Jackie’s, to replace her after just one concert; and moved to Schenectady when typesetter husband Joe left his printing career in New York to become a photographer, risking this life change after a deadly diagnosis of kidney disease.

Jackie Alper, Ronnie Gilbert and Pete Seeger at Jackie’s 1994 retirement celebration at the Eighth Step. Photo provided

In 1960, Joe and Jackie met Bob Dylan at the newly opened Caffe Lena; one of many folk and jazz stars he’d photograph for publications and record companies. (See Photo Pass, below.) Meanwhile Jackie began volunteering in area folk venues the Eighth Step and Old Songs as well as Caffe Lena, serving on their boards. She also hosted “Mostly Folk” on WRPI for 23 years; when she retired in 1994, Seeger played her retirement celebration at the Eighth Step.

Rosenkranz said longtime folk artist and booking agent David Tamulevich, who played the Eighth Step recently, agreed that “this region is, if not the most active folk music community in the country, it was then.” When Jackie was on WRPI every week, “Jackie had an enormous amount to do with that,” Rosenkranz added. 

Friends in Song, from left: Ruth Pelham, Jackie Alper, Ronnie Gilbert, Jacke’s daughter Jaye, and (partly obscured) Margie Rosenkranz – all singing at the original Eighth Step on Willett St. in Albany. Photo provided

Active in all directions during that time, Jackie fostered artists both established and just emerging while also working for Schenectady City Schools and managing Joe’s photo archives after his too-early death. Spence said, “The whole second half (from 1950 to her death in 2007) was tough to write…because we knew how many (artists) she liked,” and whose music is in the show.

Rosenkranz supported Jackie in her long decline with Lewy Body Dementia, just as Jackie visited Lena Spencer of Caffe Lena and read to her in the hospital after the fall that ultimately took Lena’s life. And just as Jackie was widely known as “the fifth Weaver,” she joked that Rosenkranz was her fourth child, after son George and daughters Jaye and Jeri, the latter two now deceased.

Packed with Tunes

Songs outlive their makers and good songs stay good; and “Ms. Music: The Jackie Alper Story” is packed with tunes. The first half is framed by Ruth Pelham’s invaluable 2000 interview and the second by the ideals that inspired Jackie’s decades of creativity and activism, non-stop work that earned her 2024 induction into the Thomas Edison (“Eddies”) Hall of Fame.

The cast of “Ms. Music: The Jackie Alper Story” are all veteran area artists; most played in Andy Spence’s previous “folk musicals”(See Folk Musicals, below) – Kate Blain, vocals; Greg Griorgio, vocals and narration; Howard Jack, bass and vocals; Ruth Pelham, guitar, vocals and narration; Charlie Rhynhart, guitar, bass and vocals, Michael Slik, dobro, steel guitar and vocals; Toby Stover, keyboards, percussion and vocals; Allen Thomson, keyboards and vocals; and George Wilson, fiddle, banjo and 12-string guitar and vocals.

Show time 7:30, doors 7. $26 adv., $28 on Saturday, $40 front and center. 518-346-6204 www.8thstep.org

BACKSTAGE PASS

Backstage at a Peter, Paul & Mary concert at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, I mentioned to Mary Travers that Jackie was there, waiting at the loading dock area with other fans hoping to meet the stars. 

Mary jumped up, asked “Where?” and took my hand. We swept along a long hallway from the dressing room to where fans waited. Mary was a majestic, rapid-rolling presence so I felt like the engineer of a freight train, moving fast, as we approached the fan throng. When we got to Jackie, Mary dropped my hand and I basically disappeared as she took up Jackie in a warm hug and they reminisced about being Village neighbors.

PHOTO PASS

My friend George Alper, Jackie’s son, once offered to share some family snaps. I knew George’s late father Joe Alper had been a photographer so I said, “Sure, what have you got?” He handed me contact sheets one at a time, each a single print collecting an entire roll of 35 mm black and white negatives in tight rows. One showed George, about five years old, in his pajamas, building a castle of blocks on the floor…with Bob Dylan. 

When Dylan came to Schenectady and Saratoga Springs for his first gigs outside the Village, he couldn’t afford a hotel after his Caffe Lena debut, so Jackie and Joe put him up at their place along with his girlfriend Suze Rotolo. They’re shown walking in the snow together in the Village on the album cover of “The Freewheeling Bob Dylan.”) The Alpers welcomed Dylan and Rotolo to their home at 1620 Brandywine Ave., half a mile from where I now sit; a building we in my family revere by bowing to it whenever we drive past.

FOLK MUSICALS

Andy Spence pioneered the words and music format that shapes “Ms. Music: The Jackie Alper Story.” Her first such effort, “The Visitors – the history, music and songs of the Adirondacks” (2009) featured story-teller/poet Joe Bruchac, troubadour Dan Berggren and others. Spence followed with “The Civil War: A Musical Journey” (2012), her first with narration. Her “Down with the Rent: The Anti-Rent Rebellion of New York State” (2014) inspired UAlbany professor Nancy Newman’s “Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York,” recently published by SUNY Press. Then came Spence’s “Forward Into Light: The American Women’s Suffrage Movement in New York State in Song & Story” (2017), and its shortened version “New York Women: Singing for Suffrage” (2017), and “The Remarkable, Irresistible Erie: Snapshots & Voices” (2023).

Review: Ensemble Connect at Skidmore’s Arthur Zankel Music Center on Friday, October. 24, 2025

Young music students of the Ensemble Connect fellowship program connected a near-capacity audience (admitted free) to four modern chamber-scale short pieces Friday; each of two halves establishing different moods and atmospheres.

Two ensembles took the Zankel stage at first; both in business-like black. A string quartet opened with “Da pace Domine” (Give peace, Lord) Arvo Part’s solemn near-dirge mourning the 2004 Madrid terrorist attack. Its minimalist power packed the same poignant punch as the great rocker Willie Nile’s outraged/sad tribute for the same victims, with his harrowing line “Cellphones ringing in the pockets of the dead.” Part’s slow, low chords rose and grew more complex before subsiding, with little rhythmic development to build quiet, hypnotic effect.

Part’s earlier (1964) “Quintettino”(little quintet) packed woodwinds around French horn in a lighter, more varied three-movement miniature; like “Da pace Domine,” it was only five minutes long. This built in deliberate momentum from a staccato start, almost nervous in its restlessness, into slower, sparser passages with solos springing up from the familiar blended feel.

Then the stage was re-set for Leos Janacek’s nostalgic sextet “Mladi” (Youth); written at 70 in a sentimental evocation of his homeland and family. This began with a hearty bustle, the feel of a city in its kinetic counterpoint. A bass clarinet dialog with the other winds evoked the melancholy of parting from home and family to study music, but a lively march-style Vivace with bright oboe and piccolo restored the piece’s fundamental sentiment. Animated low passages spurred the slower finale before density and tempo increased, rose and fell, quietly resolving.

After intermission, the “Piano Quintet in G Minor” of Dmitry Shostakovich set a more emotive and expressive tone. The three first-part pieces all presented confident precision to be expected from elite Conservatory players; this single composition that comprised the second brought something more personal and propulsive. 

All the players wore black in the first half, while those in the second – who had all played in the first half – wore bright colors. Their body language was more expressive, leaning and shifting in rhythm, raising their bows after bravura phrases.

The piece offered plenty of opportunity for such expression, and for smiles; as a slow Prelude with stratospheric violin passages and plaintive feel flowed into a slightly faster Fugue that flowed low and sparse through exposed piano and cello solos, slowing and growing more solemn as the quintet reassembled. The Scherzo built on blend, syncopation and brief pizzicato energy, the piano pulsating emphatically.

The lovely Lento, lyrical and light, set up a spirited finale alternating quiet, gliding, dance-like passages with assertive piano, then subsiding into serene, sparse, valedictory farewells. Another spry dance of piano and violin brought things home.

A standing ovation, a curtain call; then the players left the stage to chat in the aisles with Skidmore music students.

“Connect” is quite correct; a complicated pedigree as a program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education; with support from the family of Beverly Sanders Payne (Skidmore 1959) and her late husband David B. Payne.

A two-year fellowship program, Ensemble Connect unites students of elite music programs including the conservatories Colburn, Eastman,, Juilliard, Curtis, Manhattan, New England, Peabody, Shepherd, Stony Brook, USC and Yale.

Friday’s performance culminated a weeklong residency with numerous community concerts and workshops at Skidmore and elsewhere.

Future events of the Skidmore Music Department and Office of Special Programs include the Skidmore and Bennington Folk Festival Nov. 8, SURROUND: Julie Doiron Nov. 9 and a dozen additional performances through mid-December by both student and professional touring artists.

Review: Tom Rush and Matt Nakoa at the Eighth Step at Proctors GE Theatre, Saturday, October 18, 2025

A year ago, Tom Paxton (88) played the Eighth Step on his farewell tour; on Saturday, Tom Rush (84) played a low-key, subtle but strong show proving he has miles, and albums, still to go.

Paxton had played with the Don Juans, singer-songwriters Don Henry and Jon Vezner. They were to play Caffe Lena this week, until Vezner’s illness cancelled that show. But we digress.

Rush played Saturday with the generation-younger skilled singer-songwriter, pianist and guitarist Matt Nakoa in a two-set show, each shining in solo spots as well as polished but unfussy duets.

Tom Rush, right; and Matt Nakoa

Recorded bluegrass antiques greeted the mostly boomer crowd filing into Proctors black-box GE Theatre; then Rush followed Margie Rosenkranz’s introduction to the stage and went straight for the funny-bone with the wry, fatalistic, bouncy “Making the Best of a Bad Situation.” 

Matt Nakoa joined in for “Glory Road” – written 54 years ago but un-recorded until Nakoa as producer put it on “Gardens Old, Flowers New,” Rush’s 19th album since 1962. Nakoa shifted to a grand piano and synthesizer for “I Won’t Be Back At All.” This somber farewell moved slower than the preceding mid-tempo numbers and was the first of several to address aging and loss. That theme didn’t dominate, however, as Rush riffed through covers and originals, folk, blues and rock; and Nakoa shifted from guitar to keyboards and back. Rush spoke-sang its sad lyric, then spiced the chorus with a skat-yodel.

Rush introduced songs with stories, noting he’d met Joni Mitchell in 1966 and begged her for tunes to fill out an album two years overdue to set up her “Urge for Going.” Later he enviously marveled that Jackson Browne wrote “These Days” while only 16, adding “I hate him!” Self-deprecating, sly, he noted 7.5 million YouTube plays of “The Remember Song” hadn’t earned him a dime, but sounded genuinely grateful that “No Regrets” had put two of his children through college. This paean to fading memory also set up a tasty joke; after mourning misplaced keys, glasses, planner, his face went all mock-confused as the next verse should have arrived. As if forgetting the words, he just kept strumming until the audience got it.

His first set featured two Nakoa solo songs, both well-made and played with an earnestness that contrasted nicely with Rush’s ease. Sandwiched between Rush’s antique blues romp “Drop Down Mama” and “The Remember Song” goof, Nakoa’s “Holding Out Hope” and “Lightning” felt charmingly sincere.

Rush wrapped both sets with story songs, the railroad epic “Panama Limited” in the first and the hometown-warm “Merrimack County” in the second. He played skillful, unflashy bottleneck slide in “Panama,” and noted that, for all the appeal of his older tunes, “I’m writing better stuff, since” – a forward-looking assertion of purpose that would jump-start his second set.

He sang “Ladies Love Outlaw” in bold, assertive strength as he retook the stage, cueing Nakoa’s piano solo, “Let it happen, Cap’n” then asking “You done?” as he resumed singing. “These Days” eased back, into a warm poignance. Then, sounding every bit the Harvard English major he’d been when he started his career in Cambridge coffee-houses, he described the folk process as “musical Darwinism” – old tunes get new parts as succeeding generations sing them. This launched “The Cuckoo,” spiced with Nakoa guitar solos.

Nakoa’s second-set spot featured the cartoon-soundtrack piano piece “Tumbleweed Tango” that playfully went variously Latin until he raised his arms in flamenco-style triumph.

Rush took over for “What’s Wrong With America?” – perfect for No Kings Day with its mock lament that “the poor have too much and the rich don’t have enough.” The populist in Rush combined with the jokester to beautifully scornful effect as the crowd sang or laughed along.

Rush and Nakoa finished strong with the wistful farewell “No Regrets,” third song Rush ever wrote and covered by folk, rock, metal, even hip-hop artists. “Driving Wheel,” by contrast, was all regrets, but cloaked in delicious music, with Nakoa echoing Garth Hudson’s grand style in a soaring organ solo, beefy bass lines punching out from the other end of his synthesizer keyboard.

Rush set up “Merrimack County” with word-gems he collected from neighbors there, decorated with synthesizer drones and piano pointillism.

They didn’t bother leaving entirely before launching a rocking encore of “Bo Diddley,” whom Rush noted was among guests at his 2012 50th anniversary-in-show-business at Boston’s Symphony Hall. Rush and Nakoa rocked it for real, Rush dropping his mellow baritone into its lowest range for booming authority and going mock-pedantic near the end: “WHOM do you love?”

Rush first payed Symphony Hall in 1958; and he told the Boston Globe before his 2012 celebration there, “The artist plus the setting equal the experience, which is what people want.”

The Eighth Step, where he’s played since its days on Albany’s Willett Street church basement home, once again proved a comfortable, cozy setting for Rush’s easy-chair style, diverse repertoire, deceptively simple guitar picking, and Nakoa, an ace accompanist.

Set List

I: 7:34 – 8:35 p.m.

Making the Best of a Bad Situation (Rush solo)

Glory Road (Rush with Nakoa, guitar)

I Won’t Be Back at All (Rush with Nakoa, piano)

The Urge for Going (Rush with Nakoa, piano)

Drop Down Mama  (Rush with Nakoa, piano)

Holding Out Hope (Nakoa solo, guitar)

Lightning (Nakoa solo, piano)

The Remember Song (Rush solo)

Sienna’s Song (Rush solo)

Panama Limited (Rush solo)

Intermission 

II: 9:06 – 9:58 including encore

Ladies Love Outlaws (Rush with Nakoa, piano)

These Days (Rush with Nakoa, piano)

The Cuckoo (Rush with Nakoa, guitar)

Tumbleweed Tango (Nakoa, piano [no vocal])

What’s Wrong with America (Rush solo)

No Regrets (Rush solo)

Driving Wheel (Rush with Nakoa, piano)

Merrimack County (Rush with Nakoa, piano)

Bo Diddley (Rush with Nakoa, piano)

Previews: Brian Patneaude, Leo Russo, Tom Rush

When jazz drummer-pianist Cliff Brucker composed “Schenectady Is The Place,” he might have been predicting this weekend, alive with two jazz saxophone shows – Brian Patneaude Thursday then Leo Russo Friday – followed by a Saturday show by folksinger Tom Rush.

Thursday night, tenor saxophonist Brian Patneaude leads his Quartet at the Van Dyck Jazz Club, upstairs from Stella Pasta Bar (237 Union St.)

Thursday’s show of original Patneaude tunes and jazz classics marks a return for the saxophonist and his longtime drummer Danny Whelchel; they played in the Van Dyck’s 90s house band for weekly jams. Patneaude’s Quartet also celebrated the release of its debut album “Variations” (2003) there.

Brian Patneaude at Jazz on Jay in July 2024. Michael Hochanadel photo

“I have fond memories of hearing many of my biggest musical inspirations there,” says Patneaude, “including Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny, Chick Corea, Chris Potter, Dave Holland, Brian Blade and so many more.” Note Patneaude mentioned Brecker first; his own kinetic, controlled style resembles Brecker’s smoothness and drive. Patneaude also played the Van Dyck with Keith Pray’s Big Soul Ensemble during the big band’s long residency there. (He’ll play with Pray Tuesday, Oct. 28 at the Cock ’N’ Bull in Galway, the big band’s new home, since COVID.)

At the Van Dyck Thursday, Patneaude and Whelchel will play with pianist Rob Lindquist and bassist Jerod Grieco. Patneaude says, “We couldn’t be more excited to return to this legendary stage!” 

Showtime is 7:30 p.m., dinner service at Stella Pasta Bar begins at 4 p.m. Admission is $15, advance; $20 at the door. 518-630-5173 http://www.stellapastabar.com/vdmc.

Patneaude is a fan of Albany-born saxophonist Leo Russo, playing Friday at A Place for Jazz a few blocks from the Van Dyck. Along with saxophonist Nick Brignola, Russo inspired a new generation of area reed players.

Leo Russo. Photo provided

“I’ve always admired him. His playing is top notch,” Patneaude told the Times Union’s R.J. DeLuke before a 2018 show. “He knows every tune you can throw at him and even if he doesn’t know, he can navigate his way through it and play some of the most beautiful, lyrical improvisations you’ll ever hear.”

The Leo Russo Sextet plays Friday at A Place for Jazz in the Carl B. Taylor Auditorium of the SUNY Schenectady County Community College music department, with his saxophonist son Lee Russo, pianist Larry Ham, guitarist Mike Novakowski, bassist Pete Toigo and drummer Bob Halek. All are busy area pros (though Ham lives in the lower Hudson Valley), each playing in multiple bands. Most are also teachers, as Leo Russo was for 27 years in Troy public schools.

A shout-out here to Cliff Brucker who’s played with Russo since 1986 in bands large and small including the Full Circle group which Brucker organized to showcase Russo in the studio, then onstage. 

“When Leo turned 80…in 2016, I came up with the idea of getting him ‘on wax’ to document his playing,” Brucker said. They recorded at the College of St. Rose where Brucker was then teaching. They completed “Full Circle, Vol. 2” on Russo’s 81st birthday. The albums marked a career renaissance for veteran sax-master Russo.

Show time is 7:30 p.m. $25, $10 for students with ID. http://www.aplaceforjazz.org. Cash or check sales at the door, no credit cards.

A few years younger than Leo Russo (88), folksinger Tom Rush (84) returns Saturday to the Eighth Step at Proctors GE Theatre (432 State St.) – a frequent stop in a touring career deep as Dylan’s. 

Rush started performing in Boston-area coffeehouses while studying at Harvard, recorded his first album onstage at the Unicorn there in 1962 and hasn’t stopped for long since. 

Tom Rush. Photo provided

His low-key style has endured as a model of durability through unerring taste in selecting songs that fit his low-pressure voice. He trusts the songs to do the heavy lifting and simply releases them before us, which is why his voice has lasted so well. He’s credited with launching the 1970s singer-songwriter era by discovering songs by stars-to-be Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and others. An early peak “The Circle Game” (1968) remains his highest-charting album, introducing three Mitchell tunes, two by Taylor and one each by Browne, Charlie Rich and Billy Hill. “The Circle Game” also introduced two Rush originals other singers have covered since: “No Regrets” and “Rockport Sunday” – the latter lending its name to Rush’s COVID-era online series of homemade kitchen table videos of his songs.

That’s Rush’s gift, so obvious but so effortless-looking that it’s easy to overlook its power: Wherever he plays, from his woody north shore kitchen to Boston’s classy Symphony Hall and everywhere he plays on tour, he makes us feel we’ve just pulled up a chair at his kitchen table. He sits across from us with his six string, his easy voice and headful of top tunes and tall tales.

He’s invited us into that intimate performing style for decades of shows here, including the only concert I ever saw in Troy’s Proctors Theater. This was in 1974, a few years after “The Circle Game.” He brought cool folk-rock openers Orphan and Travis, Shook and the Club Wow, before George Carlin hired them as his longtime opener. Had to be fall: Rush wryly touted his “Ladies Love Outlaws” album as “a perfect holiday gift.”

His Eighth Step shows are year-after-year favorites. Once, during intermission, Eighth Step impresario Margie Rosenkranz brought me into Rush’s dressing room. He barely looked up from the book he was reading – large, hard-cover, Harvard-caliber – as she asked me to tote his two six strings onto the stage. I got a nice round of applause but I’ve wondered ever since what he was reading.

Berklee grad Matt Nakoa plays piano with Rush on Saturday at the Eighth Step. 7:30 p.m. $33 advance, $35 on Saturday; $60 front and center seating with 6:30 onstage meet and greet. 518-346-6204 www.proctors.org www.8thstep.org

Review: Sarah Hanahan Quartet at A Place for Jazz; Friday, October. 4, 2025

The high energy and fearless enthusiasm of wild youth can carry musicians only so far.

Twenty-something alto saxophone prodigy Sarah Hanahan brought more to A Place for Jazz Friday: deeply intense love of music, all music; performing power beyond her (28) years and skilled, united, all-in band mates.

Sarah Hanahan Quartet, from left: pianist Caelen Cardello, alto saxophonist Sarah Hanahan, bassist Matt Dwonszyk and drummer Sam “Bang-Bang” Bolduc

Sarah Hanahan, alto saxophone

The evening felt richer than those elements might imply. Interpreting how all this means jazz is in good young hands instantly proved far less significant than the sheer fun the music delivered.

Hanahan, pianist Caelen Cardello, bassist Matt Dwonszyk and drummer Sam “Bang-Bang” Bolduc treated a happy crowd to a high-intensity two-set show, mixing mostly new tunes built on classic-tune strength with classic tunes rejuvenated by fresh energy. While most in the seats seemed a generation older than those onstage, the many SUNY Schenectady Community College music students present seemed just a scant decade younger than the band. Engaged throughout, they supplied supportive shout-outs in a feed-back loop that helped the music build moods and momentum.

Caelan Cardello, piano

Hanahan’s own “Call to Prayer” hit hard and fast, a fanfare blast, like Pharaoh Sanders often played, then stacked solos on the grooves. The best were by Hanahan – restless, explosive riffing reinforced by eager repeats – and McCoy Tyner-like hammered chords and circular patterns from Carmelo’s piano. 

Hanahan quietly sang the next title: Gary Bartz’s “I’ve Known Rivers” over Dwonszyk’s bass intro, then a Horace Silver-like groove lifted off the stage, Hanahan leaning her body to cue chord changes, then laying out as the trio built from restrained phrasing to pure, joyous fire. Episodic structure made a firm but shifting foundation for this sonata-form exploration that ended as it began, with voice and bass; wild peaks subsiding into peace. 

“Rivers” also made plain Hanahan’s debt to 80-something alto giant and composer Bartz, who played agelessly at SPAC’s Saratoga Jazz Festival in late June. Like Bartz, she played with a smooth tone, assertive phrasing, at speed, and used repeats to build tension.

Hanahan introduced her players with affection, repeating their names like a carnival barker. She said she’d met Cardello in Joe Farnsworth’s band and shanghai’ed the hyper active pianist for her own crew before noting he returns to A Place for Jazz with singer Tyreek McDole Nov. 7. She praised Dwonszyk’s rainbow-like bass playing and told how a random sign in a midwestern bar inspired drummer Bolduc’s nickname “Bang-Bang.” 

Explaining her affection for standards, she mellowed deep in the calm lyricism of “Stardust,” a compelling ballad expression. She played with soft-spoken vibrato, hummed through the horn, quoted “You Are My Sunshine” near the end and turned fire-fingered Cardello loose in a gorgeous solo that jacked the tempo, then subsided.

The second sets was all straight-ahead, and big fun.

“Crash Out” flew on pounding piano chords as Hanahan played fast scalar runs on the same racing pulse and several times quoted a riff borrowed from ‘Trane’s “A Love Supreme.” She urged bassist Dwonszyk to play “Higher! HIGHER!” so he plucked the strings below the bridge while also tapping high on the neck; one-man counterpoint. When drummer Bolduc elbowed his tom heads to change the pitch, she called, “Make it SING! – and he did. 

Matt Dwonszyk, bass; above; Sam “Bang-Bang Bolduc, drums, below

When she recalled talking with students about swing and the blues in her afternoon master class, one called out song titles they’d discussed before she introduced David “Fathead” Newman’s “Hard Times,” a swinging blues that shared the propulsion of the classics the student cited. This flowed hard, delicious momentum powering a cozy riff that flexed and flew. Cardello’s percussive chords and zippy glissandos inspired echoes in Hanahan’s own phrasing; again using repeats as if the tune had developed wild centrifugal force and sky-high runs.

“I can’t go much higher than that!” she gasped before asking the most obvious question possible: “Want one more?” then citing her affection for 80s pop to introduce Tears for Fears’ bouncy “Everybody Wants to Rule The World.” This upbeat melodic strut proved perfect for Hanahan’s pulsating power as she ranged from a big deep whomp to re-quoting “A Love Supreme;” also perfect for energetic very Tyner-like piano, surging bass and big-clatter-wherever-it-fits drumming, like prime Tony Williams.

Hanahan’s contagious enthusiasm engaged the audience easily, both speaking and playing. She pumped up the energy in her happy band and an audience that caught her mood from the first and rode it with her all the way.

First recognized by the jazz press as a promising prodigy newcomer, then accomplished artist, who’s clearly arrived, in the five-star praise of last-year’s “Among Giants” debut album, Hanahan came to A Place for Jazz as a shining star who lit up the place and people.

Set List 

Set 1: 7:33 – 8:36

Call to Prayer (Hanahan)

I’ve Known Rivers (Bartz)

Stardust (Carmichael)

Set 2 8:58 – 9:27

Crash Out (Hanahan)

Hard Times (Newman)

Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Roland Orzabal, Ian Stanley and Chris Hughes)

A Place for Jazz continues with saxophonist Leo Russo’s Sextet Oct. 17 and concludes with singer Tyreek McDole – remember: Cardello plays with him – Nov. 7. http://www.aplaceforjazz.org.

Review: The BEATrio – Bela Fleck, Edmar Castaneda and Antonio Sanchez at Universal Preservation Hall; Thursday, October. 2, 2025

Antonio Sanchez called BEATrio “world’s most unlikely band” Thursday at Universal Preservation Hall, claiming fans have “never seen this” – a trio of his drums with Bela Fleck’s banjo and Edmar Castaneda’s harp. His claim stood strong as the unprecedented band overwhelmed the capacity crowd in a brilliantly intuitive, jazz-complex explosion of their self-titled album, released in March, plus extras from Fleck’s vast output.

BEATrio, from left: Bela Fleck, banjo; Antonio Sanchez, drums; Edmar Castaneda, harp

Their first two songs came from the album; but the trio stretched them onstage from “Archipelago” at under six minutes and “Pellucidar,” just over seven, to nine and eleven minutes, respectively; inventive and complex. If paid by the note, those guys would have owned the building, and the town.

Both openers flexed tight ensemble power, the former a Latin groove, the latter a bristly hesitation beat with longer, more questing solos. Things opened up still further in “Throw Down Your Heart,” Fleck’s sparse solo banjo riding variations into a Bach-y sequence before Sanchez and Castaneda jumped into its cascading melodies, more Grateful Dead-like in rock-fugue repeats and modulations than how Fleck played it with his all-star African band in 2008. 

Each player introduced a section of the two-hour show, their obvious mutual admiration sometimes edged with humor, then led that stretch in one of their own compositions. 

Sanchez went first, describing the band as a collective, a democracy, before an extended, joyously noisy drum solo launched his “Kaleidoscopes” (five and half minutes on record, 14 onstage Thursday). He soloed mostly on toms and kick until Fleck and Castaneda joined in, then he shifted into the upper registers where banjo and harp flew, engaging snares and cymbals as the band exploded into full formidable strength. At times his kick drum hit micro-perfectly with the low notes (long strings, where the red string sits in the photos) booming from Castaneda’s harp. Other times, they tugged or compressed the beat, no seams or slack. Up top, fleet banjo riffs welded with blinding-fast treble harp lines and cymbal splashes.

Antonio Sanchez

Fleck noodled his oblique way into “The Star Spangled Banner;” more melancholy than Jimi’s fierce Woodstock riff-bombs and machine-gun rage; this introduced “Hooligan Harbor,” a rocking groove under a long-line melody.

Next, Castaneda spoke somberly of a challenging time after a broken hand jeopardized his music-making, livelihood and family. His “Whispers of Resilience” sketched a serene mood; not resignation but recovery, maybe the most emotionally direct tune all night. Feeling vividly and visibly powered the energetic, animated and engaging Castaneda.

Edmar Castaneda, above; Bela Fleck, below

Fleck spoke last, after “Walnut and Western” bopped around extra elements including “Rhapsody in Blue,” a breathtaking banjo exploration of this familiar orchestrated jazz classic. 

He introduced “Cloak and Dagger” with a funny, self-deprecating tale of trying to write a tango, only to hear from Castaneda that it was not a tango, but a cha-cha. When he asked Sanchez what he thought of the new cha-cha, the drummer countered that it was a danson, not a cha-cha. Fleck added that fans compliment him on the samba before noting lots of his music defies description. Praising his band-mates, as they both had done, he expressed his gratitude for playing with guys like these, then corrected himself: “They’re the only guys like these” – true of himself as well.

Tango, cha-cha, danson or samba, this Latin-y number inspired Fleck’s most explosive playing, fierce grimaces (about seven of ten on the John Mayer scale) attesting to its riff challenges. Like the openers, this flew fast and far on unity in ensemble runs and ear-popping solos. 

Fleck’s astonishing ability to transform conventional banjo language of crisp tight rolls that exploit the instrument’s short note-decay time has found a new and thrilling context in BEATrio as he concentrates as much on rhythm as melody and harmony, a seriously exciting band.

Unanimous tumult brought them back onstage for “Touch and Go,” a vintage Fleck bluegrass-y number in which jazzy counterpoint, zippy counter-rhythms and a quote of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” focused wild and wonderful energy from “the only guys like these.”

Set List

*Archipelago

*Pellucid

Throw Down Your Heart

*Kaleidoscope 

*Hooligan Harbor

*Whispers of Resilience

*Walnut and Western 

*Cloak and Dagger

* From “BEATrio” – all were generously stretched far past their recorded durations

Encore: Touch & Go

The crowd, before the show