Taj Mahal and Tosh 1 Play Nectar’s
This Sunday night, July 24, Taj Mahal is playing Nectar’s. Taj is huge and Nectar’s is small. Not small in taste or talent, mind you, but small in square footage. This is a very good thing. You will be just footsteps away from guitar greatness, rather than sniffing clouds while seated a football field away as at some arena stadium.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Adam Sandler, no it’s OperaFest. That’s right, this week at various venues around Oak Bluffs the sounds of passionately, tormented love affairs will fill the air. Note, this is not to be confused with recent events: Passionate, but illegal, sounds of tormented love affairs, the result of too much time spent at the Sand Bar.
When David Gans was sent to Jamaica in 1982 by his employer, Record Magazine, he never suspected he would be setting in motion the rest of his career. While in Jamaica, Mr. Gans met photographer Peter Simon, with whom he would later coauthor his first book, Playing in the Band: An Oral and Visual Portrait of The Grateful Dead.
Robert Pinsky Headlines Reading
This Thursday night at 7 p.m., under the summer tent at Featherstone Center for the Arts, fans of poetry, music, nay fans of feeling deeply the joy that art brings, are in for a treat. There is a double bill featuring poet Robert Pinsky and musician Stan Strickland.
Every Tuesday a group calling itself Grateful Dread plays at Nectar’s. The group is made up of various Island musicians, many of whom can be seen all year long playing in various other bands. But it may be tough to recognize them amidst the trappings of the Dread. They dress like rasta dudes and play a musical mash-up of reggae and Grateful Dead music. It’s not just a brilliant concept. The effect is pure Redemption Song meets Sugaree.
Getting Jazzy With Chamber Music
Sometimes chamber music is just chamber music. Actually, to describe chamber music as just anything is a grave offense. The music always has the potential to elevate the moment by stirring the mind as well as the heart. It is, at the risk of tipping the boat, a chance to sit back with Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, all the old boys, really, and ride the tempo of history. Dare you not to feel smarter and more fulfilled after a night of chamber music.