MusicViews - Music as a Bloodstream
For an overview of the MusicViews column, visit the "What is MusicViews?" page.
For information about how to submit music files or a CD for review, click here.
With love and honor for the gift of music, Kimmy Sophia Brown
View the complete list of MusicViews from One Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine.
(They're also intermixed in the list below.)
A Wild, Incendiary Performance by Caravan of Thieves
Venue: One Longfellow Square Portland, ME ~ April 22, 2011 ~
We decided to attend based on a few seconds we’d seen of a video in which they were joyously and rhythmically pounding on a wooden trunk, garbage cans and other objects on stage.
more
more
Po' Girl on the Road with Peter Mulvey
Venue: One Longfellow Square, Portland ME ~ April 1, 2011 ~
Allison Russell and Awna Texiera are like enchanted panpipes -- the music flows through them like fiber optic cables. Their faces are beautiful and luminous when they sing...
more
more
Peter Mulvey on the Road with Po' Girl
Venue: One Longfellow Square, Portland, ME ~ April 1, 2011 ~
Mulvey’s musical teeth were cut while playing for years in the Boston subway. He seems totally at home on stage and has that sort of vital male energy that emanates like sunshine, the way fit muscles burn calories at rest.
more
more
A Swingin' Good Time with the George Cole Quintet
Venue: One Longfellow Square Portland, ME
~ January 15, 2011 ~
~ January 15, 2011 ~
Oh, you poor silly heads who stayed home, what were you thinking? Peter and I got to sit in the front row, right in the middle, only a couple of feet from George...
more
more
Jim McGrath - Last of the Romantics
CD Review
Folksingers express the plight of the common people. Jim McGrath absolutely comes from that tradition, working in the New England music scene for over four decades. He wrote nine of the twelve songs on this album.
more
more
Greg Davis - Second Wind, Alive Again
CD Review
Halfway through the song, the time signature changes and takes off in a kind of “After Midnight” direction, ala Eric Clapton, (when he played with Delaney and Bonnie and Friends). This song has the potential to be lots of fun performed live, replete with improvisation and jamming.
more
more
Glen Velez and Lori Cotler
and the TA KA DI MI Project
Venue: One Longfellow Square, Portland Me ~ November 19, 2010
What really blows me away about musicians such as Glen Velez and Lori Cotler (and Inanna, which opened for them) is that they are tapping into fundamental places within human beings when they perform. The first drum rhythm we hear is the heartbeat of our mother.
more
more
Inanna, Sisters in Rhythm, Interpretations of Ancient Voices, Rhythms and Drums
Venue: One Longfellow Square, Portland Me ~ November 19, 2010
I was enthralled from the first moment. I was excited to see educated looking, mid-life white women, (my demographic!), playing complex drum rhythms, singing like angels and dancing like them too, all with generosity and joy.
more
more
Over A Cardboard Sea Makes a Gurgling Splash
Venue: One Longfellow Square, Portland ME ~ October 2, 2010
Charming head vocalist, Timmy Findlen, whose voice recalls Rudy Vallee or Al Jolson, hammed it up wearing a porkpie hat while strumming a ukulele and mini-banjo. He also inspired shock and awe in the audience as he coaxed out the haunting melody of “Shine on Harvest Moon”, from the singing saw.
more
more
A Summer Serenade by Lilianne Labbe with Don Hinkley
Venue: Seaside Pavilion, Old Orchard Beach ME ~ July 20, 2010
Lilianne is a tall slim, silver haired woman, with a relaxed and humorous air and a seemingly effortless ability with a melody. Her voice is in the class of Judy Collins, very full and powerful. Don had a very warm spirit and the guitar proficiency of Richard Thompson.
more
more