SantaFe.com

Developing a relationship with Ohio composer Samuel Gordon has been a rewarding experience for the Santa Fe Women’s Ensemble. Gordon, who is director of choral studies at the University of Akron, heard the group’s CD “Voices of Light” several years ago and was inspired to write “Motets for the Ladymass” for them.

“He’s been a champion of ours for several years,” Santa Fe Women’s Ensemble board president Keytha Jones said. “It’s because of his connection with three music festivals in Italy that the Santa Fe Women’s Ensemble is making a trip to Italy to perform in five concerts.”

Friday, June 6, 2008
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe

To remake “The Trinity Session” could be compared to tampering with “Casablanca.”

The Cowboy Junkies’ seminal, spellbinding 1988 album jump-started their career, becoming the kind of album aspiring songwriters would name as a career pivot point. Spare and ethereal, “The Trinity Session” made haunted desolation beguiling.

In February, the band released “Trinity Revisited,” a DVD packaged with an audio CD to commemorate the 20th anniversary of this legendary release. The Cowboy Junkies will perform at the Lensic Performing Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. Sunday and at Albuquerque’s KiMo Theatre...

Monday, June 2, 2008
by Kathaleen Roberts • Journal Santa Fe

Zach Condon weaves across the globe, the musical equivalent of a cultural shape-shifter. An exercise in Great Adaptations, Condon’s first album explored the raucous bleating of Balkan-inspired pop with “Gulag Orkestar.” The improbable CD rocketed him to New York’s hottest clubs from the anonymity of his Santa Fe bedroom.

Still too young to drink, he faced the pressures of crafting a second release that proved he was more than just the latest blog sensation to sputter on landing.

It’s been a tsunami ride from scooping Haagen Dazs on the Plaza in the City Different to performing his own...

Friday, May 30, 2008
by Kathaleen Roberts • Journal Santa Fe

Alex Shapiro was excited and ready to move to town when Santa Fe Pro Musica offered him the job of executive director.

“I’ve wanted to live in Santa Fe for a long time,” he said at the group’s Luisa Street office. “When I was searching for a new job, Santa Fe Pro Musica rose to the top of my list.”

Pro Musica’s co-founder Thomas O’Connor was functioning as general director and artistic director before Shapiro came on board on April 7. Now, O’Connor is able to concentrate his efforts and energy on the music.

“I’m just starting to absorb what all of this means to me,” O’Connor said. “The...

Friday, April 25, 2008
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe

Shelby Lynne strips Dusty Springfield of braying horns and pop filigree to dive deep into a core of loss.

Lynne’s 10th studio release, “Just a Little Lovin’,” has garnered the kind of press most singers only dream about. The collection of spare, haunting songs is a tribute to the late Springfield, regarded as the greatest of the 1960s British pop divas, her soulful voice buttressing a tragic life. Lynne will perform the songs at the Lensic Performing Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. Sunday.

Lynne knew she was treading on sacred pop territory. (Springfield died of breast cancer in 1999 — two weeks...

Friday, April 18, 2008 at 4:00 PM
by Kathaleen Roberts • Journal Santa Fe

After 35 years of making music, two members of Los Lobos are now opening their front doors to their fans — metaphorically speaking.

“We’re gonna invite people into our living rooms and sit them on our couches and have a nice conversation with them,” said Louie Pérez during a recent phone interview from his home in Orange County.

Pérez and band mate David Hidalgo will bring the band’s impressive music catalogue to the Lensic Performing Arts Center tonight for a special acoustic performance that will be an “intimate and candid forum.”

The show will be stripped-down and informal — fellow Los...

Friday, April 18, 2008 at 4:00 PM
by Vic Vela • Journal Santa Fe

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” navigates two sides of the African-American experience: assimilation versus life as a perpetual outcast.

The Bay Area’s Word for Word Performing Arts Company is bringing one of the author’s finest early works to Santa Fe. The performance opens at the Lensic Performing Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 12.

Da’Mon Vann plays the title role in “Sonny’s Blues,” a tormented jazz pianist who has rejected a conventional life.

Sonny’s brother, a schoolteacher and family man, is the nameless narrator who provides the stage direction through the original...

Friday, March 7, 2008
by Kathaleen Roberts • Journal Santa Fe

One of the better compliments bass player Travis Book heard recently came from a barista inside a hotel lobby.

Book, his band mates from The Infamous Stringdusters and other musicians were jamming inside a Tacoma, Wash., hotel’s hallways in preparation for a bluegrass festival there when their music caught the ear of a 27-year-old working behind a coffee bar.

He told the band that he dug the sounds that filled the lobby that day — quite a compliment from a young man who up until that point only had ears for hip-hop.

“He said that’s all he listened to,” said Book during a recent phone...

Friday, March 7, 2008
by Vic Vela • Journal Santa Fe

Finish this analogy: Santa Fe is to the Santa Fe Opera as Albuquerque is to ___? If you can’t think of anything to fill in the blank, consider this. The Santa Fe Opera is a place where devotees of the arts, and general lovers of a good time, gather to worship on the altar of New Mexico’s glorious summers. They picnic and strut in their finery, then experience world class singing, staging and music in a spectacular venue.

What would be the corresponding answer for Albuquerqueans? The Albuquerque Museum’s new outdoor amphitheater, of course. Now we Duke City denizens have a place comparable...

Monday, August 1, 2005
by Kelly Koepke • localflavor magazine