The Miami jazz fusion circuit has become somewhat of a phenomenon. Although the genre has existed since the Sixties, a noticeable surge in horns and keyboards has taken over local bands and nightclubs. Suddenly every band is a jazz-funk-rock-R&B crossover. From Brazilian to Afro-Cuban, avant-garde to acid, jazz is quickly…
Grunge as it could only be interpreted on the Sunset Strip, Red Rover is perhaps the ultimate set piece. On Agent Sparks’ debut album, these Angelinos recast mid-Nineties Northwest sludge as artful noise, full of thick, rolling bass lines and sculpted squalls of feedback. The band’s parallel universe imagines Cobain…
Slide Hampton, longtime friend and associate of jazz legend John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, will be leading the moving tribute to this fallen hero at the Frost School of Music. Nine years after his death, Gillespie’s memory lives on in the minds of all jazz fiends. A major player in the…
Brazilian percussion musicians Ney Rosauro, Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez, and Heitor Villa-Lobos will be honored during this concert at the Frost School of Music. The University of Miami Percussion Ensemble will jam along with guests Esther Jane Hardenbergh, Wan Chun Liao, Shannon Wood, and Ney Rosauro himself during a special evening…
Sporting her trademark diamond-encrusted sunglasses and boasting a vocal range that rivals Mariah Carey’s, Diane Schuur knows how to work a stage. This is the first stop on a year-long international tour. Grab a tissue and prepare to be blown away when she croons songs like “Send Me Someone to…
What constitutes punk rock? Is it a squad of Beach Boys fans donning leather jackets and crooning about drugs and fascists? A bunch of shabbily dressed sods cribbing their poorly executed licks from the New York Dolls catalogue? Sound? Attitude? Timing? What is that indefinable property of punk rock that…
J’Ouvert, a traditional sunrise party that takes place in Caribbean islands during Carnival season, has made its way to Miami Carnival. This celebration, which will go strong until the early morning, will feature the Exodus Steel Orchestra (Trinidad and Tobago), Pepper Pot Steel Orchestra (Daytona Beach), Tamboo Bamboo Steel Orchestra…
The sultry sounds of bossa nova are eternally soothing. One whiff of this music and you will instantly find yourself transported to a beachside café on Copacabana, enjoying warm sea breezes and strong coffee under a glowing moon. Derived from samba, but a bit slower and less complex, bossa nova…
In this hyperaccelerated digital age, when old methods of musical delivery quickly become outmoded relics, Q-Burns Abstract Message (born Michael Donaldson) is bringing the eight-track back! First he remixed Lawrence Welk, a strange bedfellow to other mixes he has done for the likes of the Chemical Brothers and Meat Beat…
Electric Six probably shouldn’t be taken seriously, because it’s obvious the bandmates themselves don’t: They go by pseudonyms like Dick Valentine and Rock N Roll Indian, and rhyme the words “Taco Bell” with “gates of Hell.” The sextet from Detroit keeps a little of that city’s signature garage fuzz-guitar sound,…
Raven-haired beauty Ivete Sangalo is the queen of Brazilian Carnaval. She made her break with the group Banda EVA before exploding as a solo act in 1999. A native of Bahia, Brazil’s seductive and sweltering northern state, she is known to draw crowds in the thousands to see her shows…
Born in Tacoma and bred in Seattle, Donald Glaude is a Washington man through and through. He has stayed in his home state throughout a blossoming career and even though more frequent trips to California might have easily led him to go Hollywood. Glaude has long held the Pacific Northwest…
Indie-rock quartet Aberdeen City’s sound is not particularly unique but perfectly appropriate for a rainy day. The group gained notoriety in Boston with the album The Freezing Atlantic before it was re-released nationwide in 2006. Atlantic is an accurately titled work, featuring instrumentations as big as an iceberg and droning…
The Square Egg is taking urban music from Cristal-sipping, club-banging hits that make you grind, to smooth, soulful poems that make you think. The antithesis of mass-produced pop ditties, the ten-piece band’s socially aware lyrics and musical inclination are a far cry from the crass lyrics and machine-produced beats ubiquitous…
When Brazilian Girls singer Sabina Sciubba took the stage at Studio A this past March for one of the club’s inaugural shows, she strutted and preened while burbling her signature five-language lyrics in an Avengers-era white mack. The sound system and the enthusiastic crowd offered support, and Sciubba — along…
Since a change of ownership late last year, South Beach stalwart Laundry Bar has retooled itself as a tucked-away last bastion of underground electronic music. Its Friday-night party, Basshead, has especially attracted a number of notable out-of-town acts. Adding to the so-far sterling roster tonight is One Self, making the…
A Colombian folk version of Norah Jones — boasting stunning looks that make her an almost identical twin to Nelly Furtado — Marta Gomez infuses traditional roots with a modern femininity. She is a master of the complexity of Latin music, and her second and latest album, Entre Cada Palabra,…
Yet another band of floppy-haired, earnest-looking Brooklyn boys, We Are Scientists truly broke out of the Williamsburg scene ghetto this year with their major-label debut, With Love and Squalor. Their sound is far more melodic than most of their native borough’s dark or noisy counterparts, owing to the influence of…
The mass popularity of Continental-cocktail versions of postpunk classics is more cinch than mystery — think about it: smart, sexy, resonant, and familiar. Do potions come any stronger than that? With Bande a Part, the fine-blended followup to the band’s eponymous debut, Nouvelle Vague has concocted a long, tall drink…
“Everybody knows your baby done left you,” says Eric Garcia, lead singer and harp player for Juke, “but we want to do something more.” And thus is Juke. The local group feels the heart of the blues but adds a raw, groove-oriented, swampy indie style. The bandmates feed off one…
Belgium produces some of the most energetic, fun, crazy “world” music (in the sense of traveling the world, not tie-dying it) in the, well, world. But for every day Roger 23 from Front 242 spends dressed in a giant eggshell at the Atomium in Brussels, for every hour the Lords…
The Aquabooty crew rolls out the red carpet this weekend for producer/DJ extraordinaire DJ Spinna, straight from Crooklyn. One of the frontrunners of the late-Nineties indie hip-hop scene, producing tracks for many underground mainstays and as part of crews the Jigmastas and Polyrhythm Addicts, Spinna has grown into a respected…
