Arts & Entertainment
The Districts at The Haunt

The Districts: Energetic and Invigorating at The Haunt

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When I started listening to The Districts a few summers ago, I quickly fell for the band’s fresh and personable sound.  It was the lead singer’s powerful voice and the band’s unique sound that kept me a fan for years. Stepping into the venue Saturday night, I was filled with suspense and excitement.  The band filled the smaller venue with their vibrancy and rich sound.  By the end of the night, the band had transcended my expectations.

Arts & Entertainment
Consider the Source at The Dock

“Sci-Fi Middle Eastern” Band Consider the Source at The Dock

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Consider the Source introduced themselves as a “sci-fi middle eastern” band, returning after two years to Ithaca at The Dock. Gabriel Marin plays a double neck guitar, one side fret-less and the other standard, which together with a “sci-fi” range of effects offered almost every sound but what one could expect from a guitar-bass-drums trio. The set started with soaring melodic progressions which returned to the same Balkan and Turkish harmonic cores, only to be interrupted by riffs of double-pedal (Jeff Mann on drums) and strummed chords on the bass (John Ferrara). Later on, we got to hear many more nuances of each musician’s arsenal, of which I will mention a Wooten-inspired bass solo that was as lyrical as it was percussive. I left thinking that for a fusion band, Consider the Source is probably a brilliant name, if you can stop bouncing around to their music and think about what is being mixed with what.

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Pluck and Verve: Jerusalem Quartet Enlivens Barnes Hall

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Since the mid-1990s, the Jerusalem Quartet has been slinging its unmistakable tone and adroit programming to audiences worldwide, and at last to Barnes Hall on Saturday night. What distinguishes Jerusalem Quartet from its umpteen contemporaries is its interlocking tonal spread, meticulous attention to rhythm and balance of repertoires. For this performance, these spirited musicians presented a trifecta of drama, whimsy and lyricism. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Quartet No. 11 in F minor set the stage not only musically, but also technically, as idiosyncrasies came immediately to the forefront.

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Jamila Woods performs in Risley Dining on Saturday night. (Cameron Pollack / Sun Photography Editor)

Healers and Protesters: Jamila Woods, SadoSan and Paulitics

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Even before Jamila Woods stepped on stage, you could tell it was going to be an incredible night. At first, the Risley dining hall seemed too stiff of a venue for a show that celebrated black artists as healers and protesters (after all, the room is modeled after the Christ Church Refractory at Oxford), but openers Paulitics and SadoSan brought energetic and fun tracks that made the somber portrait of A.D. White peering over their shoulders appear ridiculously irrelevant. Paulitics — Cornell’s own Paul Russell ’19 — blended hip hop and indie rhythms for the perfect intersection of jumping and chill. Dancing without restrain across the stage, Paulitics basked in the fun absurdity of his songs and got the crowd moving. From “college is exploration with ecstasy in between” on his opening song “Hotels” to “I’m falling sideways / I guess that’s all I ever do” on the aptly-titled “Youth,” his lyrics embrace and surrender to the emotional precarity of young-adult lives.

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Blind Spots and Bottom Boys: A Night of Eclectic Rock

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It was St. Patrick’s day and the Haunt is a bar, so there was a crowd. I suspect the two acts performing helped attendance. The Ithaca Bottom Boys were already on stage when I got in, and people were clearly digging their music. The dance floor was packed, but since the Haunt has like three chairs in the entire building, this was not surprising.

Arts & Entertainment

Music Department Presents “Song of the Land: Poems of Ishion Hutchinson”

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Barnes Hall was packed for “Song of the Land: Poems of Ishion Hutchinson,” a performance presented by the Music Department that put Hutchinson’s poetry to compositions by graduate student composers. The performance presented a fusion of the old and the new, incorporating multiple forms of art to deliver a powerful concert. Guest artist Rachel Calloway, a mezzo soprano, sang a dramatic reading that conveyed the emotion communicated in the performance, and did so in a way that drew the audience in to share in the experience with her.  This innovative project brought the respective virtues of literature and music into a symbiotic relationship that managed to showcase both the artistry of the music and the postmodern themes of Hutchinson’s poetry. The English department’s Ishion Hutchinson writes narrative poetry that investigates colonialism through his depictions of landscape and the emotional weight of colonial history.

Arts & Entertainment

The Adam Ezra Group Fills an Empty Haunt

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The long and short of the Adam Ezra Group’s concert at the Haunt is that it was a great show that no one really went to. Ten or so fans and at least a few people who came for drinks or dinner contributed to the overall sparse feel of the venue. Somehow they still ran out of chairs and stools. I suppose you’re supposed to dance, but the only people on the floor were a middle aged man and a girl I hope was his daughter. It almost seemed like the Group was trying to compensate for the emptiness of the bar with the fullness of its roots rock sound.

Arts & Entertainment
Simon Shaheen plays violin during his performance of Zafir at Bailey Hall.

Winds of Exchange: Simon Shaheen’s Zafir at Bailey

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Something special happened last Friday at Bailey Hall — where master violinist, oud player, and composer Simon Shaheen and his ensemble presented their program, Zafir — before a single melody was played. As the musicians were tuning, Shaheen’s brother and fellow oudist Najib asked that the house lights be turned up. “We can love you better this way,” he quipped to the audience, a statement which, after a smattering of laughter, sank in as deeply as any of the music that followed. “No one ever does that,” Shaheen told me when I remarked on it after the show, and by those words closed a circle that I will remember most from among the evening’s plethora of conceptual shapes. None of this is meant to imply that what transpired was any less moving; only that the heartfelt fluidity of it was all the clearer in being so prefaced.

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COURTESY OF CORNELL CONCERT SERIES

Breathing Out: A Conversation with Simon Shaheen

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All music is world music. Few know this more genuinely, more instinctively, than Palestinian-born musician Simon Shaheen. Not only because he has worked with such diverse musical champions as Bill Laswell, Quincy Jones, and Muhammad Abdul Wahhab (the Stravinsky of the Arab world), but also because through his cross-cultural visions he has embodied transcend barriers as a plane soars from one continent to another.  

As a virtuoso of both the violin and the lute-like oud, the latter a cornerstone of many Arabic soundscapes, one might think he would approach these instruments differently, that their voices — torn by a colonially articulated divide — would sing from exclusive worlds. But in his hands, guided by the vastness of his experience, they are an extension of something that cannot be distinguished by the baggage of association.

Arts & Entertainment
(Cameron Pollack/Sun Photography Editor)

The Head and the Heart at the State Theater: The Past and Present of the Seattle Indie-Folk Outfit

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The move from a small label to Warner Bros. for the Signs of Light album should leave no fan surprised that the stage production was as polished as the album’s established indie pop sound. Hanging lights and potted ferns were arranged across the stage, like a dreamy NYLON Mag photo shoot, and the draped reflective curtains in the back and twinkly lights atop the antique piano were impressive alone. An impressive light show weaved through the setlist, neon colors (sometimes a complimentary yellow over violet, but always bright) and floor lights always in motion created a stage your eyes couldn’t ignore. A disco ball was even added during the sixth song, and as Josiah and Jonathan crooned the last line of “Let’s be Still” the lights switched off right as the final chord was strummed, a beautiful quiet moment after long projections of light.