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

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.

Review: Janis Ian at Caffe Lena; Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025

Janis Ian performed a sweet/sad swan song Saturday at Caffe Lena without singing a note, except on the screen where her “Breaking Silence” bio-documentary film showed before a Q&A and meet-and-greet.

Singer-songwriter Janis Ian, left, and Caffe Lena Executive Director Sarah Craig

Caffe Executive Director Sarah Craig led the Q&A, scurrying through the crowd with a mic for fan-questioners, like Phil Donahue back in the day. For many fans, the main event was meeting Ian at the merch table. There she signed albums, many dating from her 1960s and 1970s early fame, and listened graciously as fans poured out their hearts to the iconic singer-songwriter whose tour promoting the film may be her last.

Before showing the film, Craig asked who had delayed seeing the film until Saturday’s event, although it’s streamed on PBS’s American Masters series since June. Many in the mostly boomer crowd claimed they’d waited, and the experience felt fresh again in warmly welcoming company, even though I had seen it. 

“Breaking Silence” shares its title with her 1992 album, an uncommonly candid expression, even for the open-book Ian. It traces her artistic and personal journey in eye-opening detail through onstage performances, interviews with peer artists (she has very, very few of those) and with Ian herself; plus well-staged re-enactments. From precociously ambitious folkie who learned literally at Pete Seeger’s knee to early teen-aged success in the 1960s Greenwich Village “folk scare” to rapid achievement and influence, it’s a vivid story of oscillating ups and downs, creatively and personally. 

No spoilers here; go watch it; after reading this.

In the Q&A that followed the two-hour film, Ian gently steered questioners away from worshipful praise for her music’s impact on their lives to matters at hand, as framed by the film. 

She spoke of the stage as not a safe place, citing the courage it takes to perform where anything can happen, from patrons booing, or worse, to blithely leaving after finishing their pizza. She told of being driven offstage by organized-bigot protests at an early concert, but returned to finish the show, a crucial lesson in persevering in service to her artistic vision and purpose.

Other lessons followed; how drive and talent opens doors; how today’s political and social struggles take persistence, and the optimism she finds in seeing younger artists coming up who sing the same values of acceptance, honesty and courage that power her songs.

Now 74, acknowledging Saturday that “I have more behind me than in front of me” and that health challenges now prevent her from performing or recording – but not from writing – she seldom seemed nostalgic. She did, however, show warm affection for how heroes in the cultural centers of Greenwich Village, LA’s Laurel Canyon and San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury had nurtured her career and life.

Technical insights about writing, making records and performing included such practical tips as writing in rhythm to let listeners recover from heavy lines, and “Don’t fuck the band.” 

Fans inspired by her as a bisexual Jewish woman now married to a woman and a stubbornly creative force who struggled in a male-dominated industry and society expressed grateful awe at her courage. 

When the half-hour Q&A ended, Ian told Sarah Craig, sitting beside her onstage, “I love coming here” – to the Caffe where she’d often performed. 

Before playing cozy Caffe Lena, Ian had also performed at SPAC, where Alice Cooper and Judas Priest played Saturday.

Ian had played that same big stage, opening for Kris Kristofferson; late 1970s, early 1980s.

After her opening set, Kristofferson invited us writers backstage – a strong physical presence then, a tanned, fit, blade of a man after a month training with Muhammad Ali at the boxer’s Poconos camp. 

Radiating energy and confidence, he was nonetheless genuinely cowed by the daunting prospect of following Ian onstage.

His career strong with plentiful hits, he could afford a strong band and brought a mighty crew to SPAC: drummer “Slammin’ Sammy” Creason, keyboardists Donnie Fritts and Glen Clark (of the great duo Delbert and Glen), guitarist Stephen Bruton, multi-instrumentalist Billy Swan, and bassist Tommy McClure – all killers.

Even with all that – honed charisma, big hits, killer band – Kristofferson was terrified of going on after Ian, who had played with just another guitarist.

He was awed by her songs and said he feared his own wouldn’t measure up. His humility felt totally genuine and really touching.

Onstage, he told the audience all this; how he was awed by her talent, her songs and her presence.

When my turn to meet Ian at the merch table came Saturday at Caffe Lena, I handed her a note about what Kristofferson had said, rather than hold up the fans behind me to tell her. And I handed her the CD booklet to “Breaking Silence” for her to sign, noting my brother Jim Hoke played on it. 

“Ah, Jim – he’s great; Jim’s the best,” she said, and pointed to other albums on the merch table he’d played on with her.

“One of the saddest things about not recording any more is that I don’t get to work with Jim.” 

Yet, even on this farewell tour of sorts, Janis Ian seemed a happy presence, a tiny woman of enormous presence, power and achievement, whose songs and singing, words and voice, remain to inspire, to teach, to awe.

Preview: Kemp Harris at the Eighth Step at Proctors; Saturday, Sept. 27, 2025 (The Addy Theatre, 432 State St., Schenectady)

Singer-songwriter Kemp Harris plays his Eighth Step debut this weekend after making music for decades. The under-the-radar artist has perhaps been overlooked, like NRBQ, for example, because he makes more than one kind of music.

Kemp Harris. Photo provided

All About Jazz hailed his “Edenton” album, named for his segregated North Carolina hometown and recorded with now-departed gospel-soul singing Holmes Brothers, for its diverse covers. The pub reported “Donny Hathaway’s ‘Tryin’ Times’ is a hypnotic blues vamp, rolling along in a place where Howlin’ Wolf would have felt at home.” The review also singled out Harris’s versions of Willie Nelson’s country classic “Night Life” and the gospel jewel “Didn’t It Rain.”

Downbeat, another jazz pub, also sang Harris’s praises for “Edenton,” citing it as “Earthy, insightful, haunting…sacred and profane. Harris is in perfect communion with the Holmes Brothers and his earthy band.”

A retired teacher and gay Black man, Harris is a northeastern transplant. He’s made big-city scenes, composing music for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and Complexions Contemporary Ballet. He set up a songwriting residency at Boston’s Wang Theatre, and presented master classes at Berklee College of Music on Artists as Activists – along with Chad Stokes of the band Dispatch and members of the Urban Bush Women dance troupe.

Activism also shaped his new album “The America Chronicles” whose song titles illuminate the concerns inspiring his jazz/R&B/soul/gospel tunes: “Ruthie’s,” “Don’t You Hear Them America,” “Tulsa,” “Edenton,” “Standing Your Ground,” “Down,” “In For the Kill,” “This Is America,” “America/Border Song” and “Goodnight America.”

This is music and message working together at a high level, aimed at hearts and minds. It’s tough truths, written more in sadness than in anger; hard tales to tell at times, and sung with wise, pained tenderness. Like Randy Newman at his most devastatingly wry, and Joni Mitchell at her most sweetly hopeful, Harris sees his flawed, beloved country clearly and his aim at those flaws is true. Sometimes you can hear humor, but you always hear the truth in his words and voice.

Harris sang “Goodnight, America” to wide acclaim on Wanda Fischer’s “Hudson River Sampler” (WAMC) edition of Phil Ochs Song Night, and an audience vote selected him as winner of the Falcon Ridge 2024 Folk Festival Emerging Artist Showcase.

Freebo, Bonnie Raitt’s former longtime bassist, produced and arranged Harris’s songs on “The America Chronicles,” whose recent release will be celebrated at the Eighth Step Saturday. They recorded at the aptly-named Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with Harris at the mic and the piano and Freebo playing bass, plus Clayton Ivy, organ; Will McFarlane, guitar; Justin Holder, drums, and singer Alice Howe.

At the Eighth Step, Harris will play piano, with harmonica player Adam Osgood.

Speaking of the new album, Harris told Americana UK magazine, “At the end of the day, I’m an old Black man telling stories and spreading love.”

“Scary times,” mused Eighth Step executive artistic director Margie Rosenkranz of  the volunteer-run Eighth Step. “We need voices like his.”

Show time for Kemp Harris and Adam Osgood Saturday at the Eighth Step in Proctors The Addy Theatre is 7:30 p.m., doors at 7.

Tickets: $28 advance, $30 on Saturday, $45 Gold Circle (front and center) Other than Gold Circle, seating is open: first come, first served. 518-473-0723 or 346-6204. www.8thstep.org or www.proctors.org

Review: Porchfest No. 3, Saturday, Sept. 20, 2025

Rock trio Nice Hockey wrote their “City of My Dreams” about Montreal, but Saturday those words fit a north-side Schenectady neighborhood in and around its historic GE Plot. There seven porches – well, six plus a church – hosted 14 musical acts in the third annual Porchfest, a nomadic, free-music festival that draws ever-larger crowds.

Nice Hockey, above; Kevin Carey Group below

Looking down from a Wendell Ave. porch wide enough for his seven-piece jazz combo, keyboardist Kevin Carey pronounced the throng below on portable chairs or blankets to be three times larger than last year’s; the weather was equally perfect for both.

A bit before noon, the Backyard Brass, one of three brass ensembles, played classy tunes on an Avon Rd. side porch. Formed as a COVID-era hobby band, they’ve outlasted the plague through happy persistence, aiming their five trumpets Saturday at a somewhat rocky “Masterpiece Theater” theme to start. They played smoother in the peppy syncopated “America” from “West Side Story,” then a mellow “Shenandoah” as the audience grew.

Backyard Brass, above; Alex Torres and His Latin Orchestra, below

Brass Abbey followed a few blocks away on Douglas Rd., a polished, playful crew whose early numbers I missed to catch Alex Torres and His Latin Orchestra – our best musical party on wheels – who started at the same time (noon) on Rugby Rd. A Latin rhythm section with a crisp jazz horn section and strong singers, the Orchestra plays everywhere, all the time, achieving a muscular swing in cha-cha, meringue and Cuban tunes that got folks dancing.

Brass Abbey

After a happy taste of Latin, walking down Rugby, right on Wendell and left down Douglas Rd., I caught Brass Abbey in a clever medley of patriotic flag-wavers before injecting Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” with quotes including TV themes (“Get Smart”!) and other surprises, a fun Name-That-Tune puzzle.

Vocal Jazz Vanguard, above; from left: Kaitlyn Fay, Dave Shoudy (bassist), Jeanine Ouderkirk and Mowgli Gianitti. Below, John LeRoy, left, Dave Shoudy, Jeanine Ouderkirk (obscured) and Kaitlyn Fay

Nearby (east in Douglas, a short block north on Wendell) the Vocal Jazz Vanguard – singers Kaitlyn Fay, Jeanine Ouderkirk and Mowgli Gianitti, plus pianist Jon LeRoy, bassist Dave Shoudy and drummer Cliff Brucker – shuffled through the Great American Songbook with exciting results. The Lambert, Hendricks and Ross classic “Centerpiece” united all three voices in bluesy swing, or vice versa. Solo or harmonized, the singers worked wonderfully well with the players.

A more subdued mood settled over the crowd on Stratford where the meditative, quiet classical duo of two Melanies – flautist Chirignan and pianist Hardage – cast a serene spell, gentle and sweet. Like chamber music in miniature, the pieces had an inviting calm grace.

Above, The Chirignan-Hardage Duo; Melanie Chirignan, flute, left; and Melanie Hardage, piano. Below, Unken Brew, from left: Bruce Thompson, Sam Katz and Dave Liebman

Back on Rugby, Unken Brew went for rowdy bluegrass zip, bluesy depth and, as guitarist-singer Dave Lieberman announced, “enough stomp to keep the bears away,” scanning the shady streets in mock alarm. With mandolinist Sam Katz and guitarist/dobro player Bruce Thompson, Katz revved the Flatt & Scruggs antique “100 Years From Now” and they never looked back, a spirited set with stringed-things playing as precise as their harmonized vocals. 

Kevin Carey’s Grpup, nearly as big as Torres’s Latin Orchestra, brought similar strength to Carey’s modernist-but-melodic jazz compositions in small/big band style. Top players gave all-in sections a brisk cohesion and soloed over the moon. While Carey’s piano led strong, saxophonists Keith Pray (alto) and Matt Steckler (tenor) got the most spotlight time, with trombonist Phil Pandori and trumpeter Omar Williams also holding their own. Bassist Dave Shoudy switched from acoustic bass with the Vocal Jazz Vanguard to electric with Carey and stayed right where he was, playing busier than he had with the singers and linking tight with drummer Dave Berger. The mellow swing of “Easy In Blue” set up the complex, episodic “D.O.A.,” Carey letting his soloists fly before tapping his head to bring back the main melody.

Above, Kevin Carey Group horns, from left: Phil Pandori, Matt Steckler, Keith Pray, Omar Williams

Smaller scale, decidedly Latin, Bossamba leaned into the Antonio Carlos Jobim songbook as Maggie McDougall sang in English or Portuguese with equal fluency. Pianist Wayne Hawkins led in one of his own Brazilian-inspired instrumentals as McDougall admired from the sidelines and bassist Lou Pappas and drummer Mark Foster dug deep in this complex number. She reclaimed her lead spot with Jobim’s classic “Photograph.”

Bossamba above, singer Maggie McDougall, below

Porchfest’s silliest band, Signature Brass, brought Oktoberfest fun to the corner of Rugby and Ardsley, wearing lederhosen and dirndl and going gleefully oompah in smile-pumping party songs. Tunes felt like a toast of celebration – and not just “The Chicken Dance” – although “Ein Prost” didn’t excite the can-can dancing that leader-trumpeter-Porchfest organizer Steve Weisse hoped to ignite. They played it straight, and really well, Sousaphone player Jeremy Pearson pushing from below and Weisse carrying the melodies up top.

Signature Brass, above; Chicken-dancing fans, below

Above, Steve Weisse toasts the crowd; below, Nice Hockey rocks the same porch

Next, Nice Hockey rocked on bassist Chad Rogers’s own Rugby and Ardsley porch, bringing the most joyful mood of the whole fun day as kids from toddler to kindergarten age danced, jumped and ran around in a dust-raising happy frenzy of music-pumped energy. Parents – the same folks who did “The Chicken Dance” there – enjoyed their kids’ happy motion, and the band’s. It felt like neighborhoods should do.

Chad Rogers

In 2024 Porchfest, the COVID-positive Rogers had to play from his own living room, looking through its bay window at his bandmates. Saturday, he joined guitarist Eric Ayotte and drummer Harrison Schmitt on the porch where they started with “Siren Swell” about the scream of ambulances passing on Rugby, a busy route to Ellis Hospital. Even that song sounded happy – and so did others about taking nights off to relax from over-busy lives, how life is better together and how to keep toddlers entertained.

Eric Ayotte of Nice Hockey, which also plays as the Eric Ayotte Band

The music did that, for everybody, in the most rocking and upbeat set that whole sun splashed day. The most stylistically varied and best attended Porchfest yet, it felt like a neighborhood should feel, on a perfect afternoon.

On foot, 12,000 steps, starting at my house just blocks from the nearest porch-stage, I still didn’t manage to see everything. I missed the young fiddlers of the Empire State Youth Orchestra CHIME program, blues-jazz-rockers the Evidence, the innovative jazz group Yolanda Bush Cool Water Collective and the Calvary Choir and Musicians.

But the music I did catch all worked just fine, and I appreciated the two porta-johns and two food set-ups.

And, oh yeah – meanwhile, Union football won their first game of the season just half a block west of the Douglas Rd. porch-stage. There, hosts Barbara and Tony opened their home – bathroom, drinks and snacks – to the players. And another host, away for the weekend, had friends open her home and porch to players and fans.

ENCORES:

After playing with Kevin Carey’s Group, Matt Steckler played Saturday at Stella Pasta Bar with his new MS Organ Trio with Jon Leroy, organ (he played Porchfest with the Vocal Jazz Vanguard) and Pete Sweeney, drums.

Nice Hockey plays the Schenectady Green Market at noon today (Sunday).

Alex Torres and His Latin Orchestra celebrate 45 years together on Nov. 1 at Universal Preservation Hall.