Music

Brattleboro, Vt. – Friends of Music at Guilford is beginning rehearsals next week for its “A Cappella à la Carte” concert season finale on Saturday, June 8, which follows its brief annual membership meeting and a community potluck dinner at Guilford Community Church in the Algiers village of Guilford.

The Guilford Chamber Singers will be led again by Tom Baehr, who conducted a group of nearly twenty singers for the organization’s Christmas at Christ Church program in December. Entitled “Melodies Steal Into My Heart,” the proposed spring program begins with madrigals, travels through 19th Century English Part Songs, and also includes some 20th Century tunes, a couple of 21st Century works, and even some Hoagy Carmichael.

DATURA TRIO & SILK ROAD’S SHANAHAN PERFORM ON MARCH 8

Brattleboro, Vt. – On Friday, March 8, at 7:00 p.m., Friends of Music at Guilford (FOMAG) presents a concert by the Datura Trio with guest percussionist Shane Shanahan, a founding member of Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. Proceeds from the concert and a pre-concert supper, both set at the Vermont Jazz Center on Cotton Mill Hill, will benefit FOMAG’s Music Enrichment Program at Guilford Central School, where the Datura Trio is in residence on March 6-8. Student participants in rhythm and vocal workshops may also make an appearance at the evening concert.

I am beginning my run as iBrattleboro Weekend Concertmaster with the group that got me hooked on rock n’ roll: the Who.

What these guys brought to the music that I loved and still love is a passion and energy that borders on insanity. Watch Keith Moon play the drums or Pete Townsend attack his guitar. At the same time they have fun with the music. The alacrity with which they pull out of bone crushing riffs into quiet, even delicate guitar passages and back to full roar has always been a strength of their music and that ability is on display here.

This concert is from the Who’s Tommy period. In February, 1970 they had recorded a show at the University of Leeds in England which in May became Live at Leeds, one of the best live albums ever made. This concert is essentially the same set and tour.

Electric Fence plays Whetstone Restaurant and Brewery Wednesday night, Feb. 27 at 8:30 p.m.

Steve Carmichael, Howard Weiss-Tisman, Jonny Sheehan and Jeremy Holch play original songs and unique covers from the likes of Louis Jordan, Lucinda Williams, Tom Waits and Talking Heads.

Music is free. Beer is fresh.

is the stage name of Gregg Gillis. He’s not quite a DJ, but he throws a mean party with the help of his laptop.

Gillis is an expert assembler, taking tiny samples of familiar songs and mashing them together into something unique and danceable. He likes to loop familiar snippets of songs from multiple genres and eras.  It’s a music lovers’ trivia game to identify all the samples. Was that Heart? Tone Loc? Led Zeppelin? The Jacksons? All of them. How about Nirvana mixed with Kansas over a dance beat?

It’s not for everyone, but I love this stuff. And as I have been requested to fill in for your February host this week, I offer up a Girl Talk show.

Twilight Music presents French-Algerian acoustic guitarist, singer and composer Pierre Bensusan at Hooker-Dunham Theater & Gallery on Thursday, February 28 at 7:30 pm. If World Music is music that pays tribute to the spirit of a collection of human beings through distinct rhythms, traditional instruments and harmonic colors, Pierre Bensusan can be recognized as one of the most eloquent and diverse world musicians of our time.

Tritium Well makes its debut in Brattleboro this Saturday night, 2-23-13. Rocking and irradiating the Northeast Kingdom since 2010, the five piece band joins Gangly Heart and The Diamondstones for a Power Shift dance party thrown by the SAGE Alliance, at the Stone Church from 7-11pm.

To make up for last week, and only a day late at that, I opted for a more straight-ahead rock show from now veteran Modest Mouse, performed in 2010.  YouTube commenters seem to have decided that the venue was in Sioux Falls, SD.  I’ve been a fan of Modest Mouse for most of the last decade, having originally fallen for Moon Over Antarctica.  One of the best songs on that record, Third Planet, is included on the playlist along with a host of other tunes from throughout their career.

Warning: There are a few swears.