The Brooklyn Rail

Highly Selective Listings

Brooklyn Rail Highly Selective Music Events

A thoughtful, discerning, and carefully compiled list of the most notable, promising and unique musical events for the month of September in New York City.

Selling Out to Freedom

By George Grella

52nd Street is gone, Slug’s is gone, even Sweet Basil is gone, but there’s still something of a jazz world around, populated by musicians, fans, and habitués.

A PARLIAMENT OF SOUND
The Twentieth Annual Vision Festival

By Ryan Meehan

There was a jazz band wrapping up its afternoon set on a pathway in Washington Square Park as I made my way to Judson Memorial Church. There was little to indicate that anyone enjoying the music was aware of the formidable residency underway just across the street, where the final day’s events of the twentieth annual Vision Festival were underway.

SINGING HISTORY
The President’s “Amazing Grace”

By Brian Barone

It’s no secret that the practices of African-American musicians living in the South around the turn of the last century form the bedrock of American popular music. The styles they birthed—blues, gospel, jazz—donned various uniforms as they grew; over the airwaves, on vinyl, and in binary code, they mounted a campaign that conquered the known musical world.

Outtakes

By Steve Dalachinsky

Originally written in 1995 and centering around the wackiness that was part of a quickly changing mid-’80s Manhattan, Stink has been published by Folio Book Club.

Diary of a Mad Composer

By George Grella

Noise and silence initially appear to be opposite and antagonistic extremes, but in musical terms they are two sides of the same page, using different means and different language while sharing the same values.

Spacious and Relaxed

By Michael Blair

Emil Amos, the Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist of Grails and OM, has been recording highly personal, thickly philosophical tunes under the name Holy Sons for going on twenty-five years.