All tagged Music
As the head of the Performing Arts department at Strath Haven High School, music director Nick Pignataro wears many hats. Swarthmorean contributor John Hurst recently sat down with Nick to learn more about his history with, and philosophy for, the program.
I moved to the United States from Europe in 2018 to pursue my music career. One night we played at the waR3house3 in Swarthmore. I totally loved the vibe of the place and the awesome crowd. After a couple of months, I decided to move to Nashville, Tennessee. I had bought a car for that purpose, and I was ready to go, but then I wrecked it. On January 25, 2019, my friends helped me put a show together at the waR3house3 called “The Road to Nashville,” which helped me raise money for my adventure. I’ll forever be grateful to everyone who was in the room that night.
Wallingford Presbyterian Church is celebrating great music and making a difference in the community through Concerts for a Cause. The series will begin at 3 p.m., on Sunday, October 17, with classical guitarist Yovianna Garcia.
Swarthmore’s own Gretchen Walker (née Iversen), also known as Gretchen Elise, is an educator and musician on a mission. Over her more than 20-year career, she’s forged her own path through jazz, soul, and folk, to make music that is at once sophisticated and accessible to audiences of all ages.
John Conboy is the organizer of this group of musicians that he calls Pickers Circle — a group of musicians who have been play, pick, and sing along at the SEPTA station on Thursday evenings.
What is a pickers circle, you ask? Enthusiastic participants arrive with their instruments to play, pick, and sing along. They play original songs, covers of their favorite songs, and new tunes they create on the spot. Talking while the music is playing is strongly discouraged — and will earn you a visit from Sheriff John.
Come enjoy a story and song event for children, Let’s Tour the World, with author Theresa Lynn and guitar player and singer Fiona Eve Murray, at 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 31, at Little Crum Creek in Swarthmore.
Swarthmore United Methodist Church invites the community to the second of its free Sunday night concerts on the lawn, July 11 at 7 p.m., The concert will feature local musicians Jack Scott and Ingrid Rosenback of the band Last Chance.
The Delaware County Department of Parks and Recreation recently announced that Rose Tree Park’s Summer Festival concert series will return. The nine-week concert season opens on Saturday, June 26, featuring several ensembles from the Delaware County Symphony, a community orchestra performing under Music Director Sebastian Grand.
We are definitely in a Stevie Wonder season.
The Department of Music and Dance at Swarthmore College will host a virtual performance series, Zoom Tunes, that brings prominent guest artists to the Swarthmore community over Zoom on Sundays at 1 p.m., beginning on February 21.
The Music Ministry of Trinity Church Swarthmore will present a 30-minute recital on Sunday afternoon, November 1, at 5 p.m. Two song cycles, Beethoven’s “An die Ferne Geliebte” (“To the Distant Beloved”) and Gabriel Fauré’s “Cinq Mélodies de Venise” (“Five Songs of Venice”), will be performed by tenor Colin Doyle and pianist James Smith, the church’s music director.
Friday Night Live concerts are back at the Community Arts Center. The Dave Manley Trio will play on Friday, September 25, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., on the center’s side lawn. (RAIN DATE: Saturday, September 26). Dave Manley will perform with an electric jazz trio featuring Nimrod Speaks (bass) and Khary Abdul-Shaheed (drums). Typically held in the Duke Art Gallery, this concert, and the rest in the fall series, will all be presented outdoors.
COVID-19 may have put a stop to live musical performances, but new music is still available. Local duo Last Chance — Swarthmore’s Ingrid Rosenback and Wallingford’s Jack Scott — released their fourth CD on July 1. “Summer Again” boasts 16 original songs by Scott.
Since 2000, Swarthmore resident Lawrence Katz has been a guitarist for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, a group you most likely know for songs they recorded before Katz joined them, such as 1992’s “Where Did You Go?” or 1993’s “Someday I Suppose.” The band’s sound is sometimes punk overlaid with ska horns, sometimes straighter ska but with rock-and-roll guitar solos. This is a story of his musical journey, including how he found Swarthmore.
The very next day after I met Rogers Stevens, I was in the CVS south of Swarthmore on Route 320 when “No Rain” started playing on the overhead sound system. Stevens, an attorney and a guitarist, lives in town — it was probably just as likely that he’d have been in the CVS as that I was. “No Rain,” which topped the charts in the early nineties, is a song with an immediately recognizable jangly electric guitar intro, and it was Stevens who played it.
In her lecture “I Am Delivert!” on Thursday, November 21, Alisha Lola Jones, assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Indiana University Bloomington, draws from Black male musicians’ narratives and recordings since the late 1980s, exploring a social history of anxieties surrounding the performances of deliverance testimonies in Pentecostal gospel music scenes.
Swarthmore College undergraduates coached by members of the faculty have been rehearsing and will soon perform three concerts in the fall 2019 Elizabeth Pollard Fetter chamber music series. The first concert in the series will take place on Saturday, November 16, 8 p.m. at Lang Concert Hall. “Critical Mass,” an ensemble of seven students coached by James Blasina will undertake works by de Machaut, Monteverde, des Prez, and Byrd.
Paul Downie, executive director of the Community Arts Center in Wallingford, is also a professional musician who has played drums and sung in the Philadelphia area for 20 years. Coincident with that anniversary is the release of Paul’s new album, In the Moment.
All over the state, young musicians who study with members of the Pennsylvania Music Teachers’ Association have auditioned this month for the honor of being presented in a Showcase Recital at Penn State University. All of the students of Swarthmore piano teacher Donna Kay Jones who were in the area on October 13 entered the audition, and all were selected to play at Penn State University on November 23, 2019.
