What kind of music do you listen to? Do you only listen to one type or do you like a wide variety?
When I started thinking about this question I decided to look at my iPod to see how many categories of music I have on it. I found twelve: big band/vocal, bluegrass, blues, celtic/folk, choral, classical, country, jazz, opera, pop, reggae, and rock.
That’s why I’m glad I live in the South Coast.
In the month of November alone, you can find a live performance of just about every one of those types of music: Handel’s Messiah by the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, chamber music concerts by the South Coast Chamber Music Society and by Concerts at the Point, a jazz concert of “My Favorite Things” by young musicians who have receive music scholarships from the Tri-County Symphonic Band and Music Association
And there’s much more:everything from the eclectic pop/rock/country/big band musician Lyle Lovett to Celtic Fire to afro-cuban jazz great Chucho Valdes at the Zeiterion Performing Arts Center.
Wow!
Be sure to keep in touch with our calendar of events at www.coastalmags.com for listings at venues throughout the South Coast.
The Narrows Center for the Arts always offers a wide range of music and November is no different, with performers ranging from Rickie Lee Jones to Steve Earle.
And if you love the blues, then this month you are going to spend a lot of time at the Narrows.
On November 1st, New Orleans bluesman Anders Osborne opens for Toots and the Maytals. I saw Osborne this summer at the White Mountain Blues Festival and can tell you he can play. He tours the country nonstop and recently performed with Robert Cray in Denver and at the Joshua Tree Music Festival in California.
Nobody pushes the blues harder than Tommy Castro and he’ll be at the Narrows with his band, The Painkillers, on the 4th. Castro has performed with B.B. King and John Lee Hooker and in the mid-1990s he led the house band for NBC’s Comedy Showcase.
The Blues Foundation has awarded Castro multiple honors including Blues Male Artist of the Year, Contemporary Blues Album of the Year, B.B. King Entertainer of the Year, and with his band, Band of the Year.
On November 9th three of the original members of The Blues Project will bring back the music they created when rock ‘n roll was still young, a special rock-blues sound coming out of Greenwich Village in New York. They were hailed as the East Coast’s answer to the Grateful Dead and blew away audiences at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium in the 1960s.
The members of the Blues Projects were recognized as exceptional musicians who reveled in extended improvising and jam sessions. Two of the original members later went on to form Blood, Sweat and Tears.
Finally, one of the greatest blues bands of all time, Roomful of Blues, will fill the Narrows on November 21st.
Few bands today have blues credentials like Roomful of Blues. They have been nominated for five Grammy Awards and seven Blues Music Awards. They were named the Blues Band of the Year in 2005 and Billboard called the band “a tour de force of horn-fried blues…Roomful is so tight and so right.”
The DownBeat International Critics Poll has twice selected Roomful of Blues as Best Blues Band.
I first heard Roomful of Blues when I was in high school. They came up to small jazz and blues club in Beverly called Sandy’s and blew everybody away. The horn section is a good as it gets and they always have a lead guitarist that can play. Their first was the consummate bluesman Duke Robillard, who can play more blues than anybody.
Then came the extraordinary Ronnie Earl, perhaps the most intense and soulful blues guitarist playing today. Now they have Chris Vachon, who is carrying on where the others left off.
Read the entire article in the November edition of the South Coast Insider
