CD Review: Rupa & the April Fishes – Este Mundo

It’s hard to imagine a sexier album – or a smarter one - released this year. Over the course of fifteen first-class tracks – there’s not a single substandard song on this cd – Rupa & the April Fishes come off like a better-traveled Eleni Mandell backed by an acoustic Gogol Bordello. Alternating between wild gypsy dances, ska, noir cabaret, Mexican border ballads, Colombian folk, tango, klezmer and reggae, this is without question the most triumphantly multistylistic tour de force of 2009.

Frontwoman/guitarist/physician Rupa Marya is a Franco-American globetrotter of Indian ancestry. Whether singing in English, French or Spanish, her lyrics are as evocative as they are provocative (the album is a tribute to and defense of immigrants risking their lives around the world). Her breathy vocals are equally nuanced, as capable of conjuring a sultry late-night ambience as much as nonplussed outrage, backed by an acoustic rhythm section along with cello, trumpet, and accordion as well as horns and flute on several tracks. They stay in moody minor keys until the next-to-last track, a surprisingly breezy number combining a Mexican folk feel with reggae, a lament that could be told from an immigrant’s viewpoint…or just a woman missing a lover.

Before that, there’s a brief, haunting violin theme; a swinging noir tango with an incisive trumpet solo at the end; a playful, fun gypsy dance that goes out on a boomy bass solo; a dark, violin-driven reggae number; a gypsy-inflected, slinky ska tune; a defiant gypsy waltz with echoes of New York vintage latin revivalists las Rubias del Norte; a sad, mariachiesque trumpet tune; a dark Mexican shuffle; a scary, Middle-Eastern-inflected gypsy dance that builds from a stately hora-style intro; a jaunty, bluesy ragtime song with a big dixieland raveup at the end; and a bouncy cumbia featuring a characteristically intense rap interlude by the greatest English-language lyricist of our time, Boots Riley of Oakland hip-hop legends the Coup (who has an intriguing new collaboration with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Street Sweeper Social Club).

Part of this album is a great dance mix; what’s not danceable makes great makeout music. Socially aware, sometimes surreal and invariably inspired, this is one of the best albums of the year, yet another reason why we’re not going to finalize our Best Albums of 2009 list until the end of December. Rupa & the April Fishes play the Bell House along with another excellent, multistylistic, danceable band, Nation Beat on November 13 at 8 PM.

Jazz Sax Player Brendan Romaneck’s Auspicious Compositions Memorialized in a Superb New Album

This is the saddest way jazz legends are born. At age 24, sax player Brendan Romaneck was just about to record his first full-length album. Impressively, he’d put together a first-class band including powerhouse trumpeter Terrell Stafford. Tragically, before recording could begin, Romaneck was cut down in a vehicular homicide. Four years after the composer’s untimely demise, several of the musicians he’d originally assembled came together to record them along with a sensitive collection of covers. Without any context, this is a good jazz album; it’s also a reminder of what the world lost in April, 2005. Romaneck’s compositions  are ablaze with life, color and clever rhythms: he was clearly an artist with talent and passion that could have gone much further than what he left behind. What’s here offers more than a glimmer of greatness.

The songs her feature either Chris Potter or Steve Wilson on sax, Romaneck’s teacher and mentor Keith Javors on piano, Stafford on trumpet and flugelhorn and a rhythm section of Delbert Felix on bass and John Davis on drums. Impressively, the originals are the strongest suit. Romaneck obviously listened widely, as evidenced by Dream Behind the Winter, sounding like Donald Fagen gone latin, busy, bustling Javors piano trading off against balmy Potter tenor in a confidently ambitious arrangement. 3 Steps Ahead of the Spider is a catchy Brubeck-style jazz waltz packed with smart, out-of-the-box devices: suspenseful drums breaking up the piece early on; a leaping, agile piano chart played with gusto by Javors and some arrestingly intense, lightning-fast work by Potter.

The title track, Coming Together is a captivating exercise in circular melody with rousing turns by Wilson, Stafford and Javors, the band playfully running the central hook behind Davis when it comes his turn to step out. The catchy swing tune The Vibe runs from brightly wary Javors piano, to a recklessly allusive Wilson solo, to Felix’ jaunty bass. When the horns follow each other, a phalanx of warriors (or partiers) bounding off to wherever they’re going at the end, the arrangement is exquisite.

The best and most adventurous cut is Minion, Stafford and Wilson’s conversation evocative of what Trane and Dolphy were doing forty years previously, taking turns  maintaining a semblance of sanity while the other gets a chance to vent. At the end, there’s another deliciously blazing horn chart with more devious counterpoint. Another original echoes 70s-era Stevie Wonder, illuminated by a characteristically forceful Stafford solo.

What connection the covers had to Romaneck are not clear, but they’re  also well done. Killing Me Softly with His Song is a clinic in how to skirt a melody and make it interesting; Harold Arlen’s My Shining Hour, which kicks off the album, matches conviviality to a portentous suspense. And Nancy with the Laughing Face emphasizes the ballad’s effortlessly pretty, nocturnal vibe, a casual trio performance by Potter, Felix and Javors. Romaneck’s strength, at least as evidenced here, was not ballads - the two on the cd sound like student works and don’t have the strong, individual stamp he put on his more lively pieces. Now that we have this album, it’s time to hear Romaneck playing his own stuff. It’s a fair assumption that in this day and age, there must be at least a few recordings worthy of at least youtube and quite possibly an album of his own.

The Complete Fela Catalog To Be Reissued for the First Time in North America

Great news for Afrobeat fans – to coincide with the new musical FELA! opening on Broadway at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on November 23, Knitting Factory Records will not only be reissuing the entire Fela catalog on cd in digipacks with reduced images of the original artwork, they’ll also be reissuing the albums on vinyl as well over the next eighteen months. What’s more, they’ll also be reissuing the entire extant catalog of Koola Lobitos, Fela’s 1960s high-life band.

The first of the releases is the greatest-hits compilation The Best of the Black President, originally compiled in 1999 (you can hear the whole thing on last.fm). While it makes a fine introduction to the iconic Nigerian freedom fighter/bandleader, it’s necessarily flawed by the constraints of trying to cram as much essential Fela as possible into one package. It simply isn’t possible. Fela Kuti’s genius was to package revolution as sexually charged thirty-minute dance vamps – for Fela, a short song clocked in at about eight or nine minutes, so the concept of editing these frequently album-long jams down to something approximating their essence is simply a lost cause. While The Best of the Black President does contain full-length versions of the iconic Zombie and Sorrow Tears and Blood, the edited or truncated segments from most of the other revolutionary anthems here – including his signature song Coffin for Head of State - work as dance grooves and little more. To resonate at full power, these numbers need to be heard – and under ideal circumstances – danced to in their entirety. Which makes the pending reissue of the full Fela catalog something to salivate over: fans will be able to pick and choose from the original releases.

It may also come as a shock to discover that the Fela musical actually seems as if it might be worth seeing: a listen to some of the original cast recordings reveals that the musicians (that’s right, a real Afrobeat band, not just a synthesizer and a cd with live vocals) and the actors seem up to the challenge: they’ve actually taken their subject seriously. This isn’t the same guys who played in the pit (or on the soundtrack) for the Abba musical shifting gears and trying their hand at psychedelic Nigerian funk. It looks like they’re trying to be the real deal.

CD Review: The Asylum Street Spankers – God’s Favorite Band

Things like this happen with bands who’ve been around awhile and have the good sense to record themselves in fortuitous circumstances. Back in 2006, the Asylum Street Spankers – the world’s smartest, most deliriously fun oldtimey Americana band – recorded some live performances at the Saxon Pub in their hometown of Austin. Among the songs were several traditional gospel tunes along with a handful of originals that wouldn’t be drastically out of place, musically at least, in a straight-up gospel set. It isn’t implausible to imagine the band hanging around the dressing room one night after a show after someone put these songs on a boombox, while a  joint made its way around the room. Suddenly percussionist/singer Wammo has an epiphany and turns in amazement to multi-instrumentalist/siren Christina Marrs: “Holy shit, we have a gospel album here!”

As improbable as it might seem at first thought for the Spankers to be doing a gospel album, it actually makes perfect sense when you consider how deep their knowledge of American roots music is. As sacriligeous as the band is, Marrs has an amazing set of pipes and pulls out all the stops here. Likewise, the band’s vocal harmonies are tight and inventive when they’re not being tight and absolutely period-perfect, as with their minstrel-esque version of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

An ancient-sounding  instrumental version of the Blind Willie Johnson blues Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground opens the cd and sets a rustic tone. The standards Each Day, Down by the Riverside, By and By and Wade in the Water each get a fervent, ecstatic treatment which rather than being camp reaffirms the band’s seemingly innate feel for these songs as universal expression of the human spirit that transcend any doctrinaire limitations. Then they do the same thing with a contemporary Christian song (yes, that’s what it is), the Violent Femmes’ Gordan Gano’s Jesus Walking on the Water.

But as expected it’s the originals that bring down the house. Wammo’s somewhat snide Right and Wrong has an ironclad Iraq War-era logic to go along with the stoner humor: “I ain’t got no problem with Buddha, ’cause he’s a huge Nirvana fan.” And his other song here, Volkswagen Thing reclaims a Nazi-era relic as vehicle for the divine. In case you don’t remember it, the Thing during its brief revival in the 70s was  one of the most unsafe cars ever built, a car so rear-heavy that it could pop a wheelie despite being ridiculously underpowered. Satan, on the other hand, drives his Mercedes like the pig he is – and he’s got a Hummer, too. The band closes out this raucous collection with a defiant version of Gershwin’s It Ain’t Necessarily So, a vivid reminder of where they’re really coming from for anyone who might not have been paying attention. Steampunks everywhere, not to mention fans of both traditional and secular gospel alike (the Lost Crusaders and Rev. Vince Anderson especially come to mind) will love this album. The Spankers made it to NYC a couple of times this year and they will doubtlessly be back (they recorded their sensational What? And Give Up Show Business? live cd here), watch this space for details.

CD Review: Frank London/Lorin Sklamberg – Tsuker-zis

Perhaps the greatest thing about Jewish music is that it’s so well-traveled. In a sense, it could be said that it embodies the best of all worlds. The new collaboration between the “legendary trumpeter of the klezmer underground,” as one recent concert flyer described Frank London, and former Klezmatics accordionist/frontman Lorin Sklamberg certainly could be categorized as such. With contributions from ex-Psychedelic Fur Knox Chandler on guitar and effects, Ara Dinkjian adding gorgeously clanging, plinking and plunking textures on Middle Eastern lutes including the oud, saz and cumbus, and world music percussionist Deep Singh on tabla and dhol, the cd – recently out on Tzadik – alternates between boisterous and haunting reinterpretations of traditional Jewish liturgical music. Is this klezmer? Folk music? Jazz? Rock? Well, it’s all of the above: the melodies are as rustic as would be expected, but the playing, the arrangements and the production all draw deeply on what’s happened in the hundreds or maybe even thousand years since these tunes first saw the light of day. This is a beautiful and plaintive album and it also really rocks from time to time.

A couple of the tracks here turn worship into slinky, undulating Levantine dances, bouncing along on the beat of the tabla. Another couple have an upbeat dance feel and a Celtic tinge to the melodies. Still a couple more could be called shtetl ska, even if they go back long before ska was invented. The album’s twelfth track, a lament about being overrun by invaders, showcases London’s facility for channeling diverse moods both with and without a mute. After that, Sklamberg gets to breathlessly rattle off a Hasidic acrostic for a lyric while the band scrambles to keep up - and then Chandler throws in a big blazing arena rock solo where London then picks up the melody again, seamlessly  yet exhilaratingly as middle-period ELO would do. The ambient final cut nicks the intro from Pink Floyd’s Shine On You Crazy Diamond, an expansive showcase for the whole band and especially Sklamberg’s rapt, incantatory vocals.

London’s playing is characteristically soulful, whether swaying through a sly muted passage or with half-balmy, half-ecstatic clarity. It’s also particularly pleasant to see how well Sklamberg’s voice has aged: it’s lower than it was in his Klezmatics days, the petulance of that era replaced with an unaffected, very welcome gravitas. This album ought to appeal to a vastly wider audience than your typical collection of traditional Jewish ngunim, while providing a decisive answer to the age-old question, does Rabbi Saul of Mozditz really rock? Answer: an emphatic ja.

CD Review: The Silk Road Ensemble – Off the Map

Their most adventurous album. For ten years, the Silk Road Ensemble has been bringing some of the most fascinating, intense and pioneering Asian and Asian-inflected music to western audiences. On their latest cd, an all-star cast of some of the most imaginative players on the planet – literally – take a flying leap into a rich, cutting-edge program of cross-pollination with equal parts gusto and finesse. For one reason or another, it’s arguably the least Asian of the Silk Road albums, and also the most demanding – while some of the compositions here are among the most accessible the ensemble has recorded, others are far from that – but a close listen pays tremendous rewards.

The cd opens with a three-part suite by the reliably multistylistic Gabriela Lena Frank (who just won a Latin Grammy!), titled Ritmos Anchinos. The opening piece, as Frank puts it, has Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man discovering her inner latina. The second is a blissful little dance inspired by a Chinese-African village in Peru; the third hitches a raw, clattering, rhythmically tricky, reverb-driven pipa piece to a second part where the pipa takes on some particularly imaginative jazz guitar voicings.

Hong Kong-born composer Angel Lam’s phantasmagorical, shapeshifting Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain follows, building to a dark, dramatic crescendo following a sparse buildup in the Asian scale, Kojiro Umezaki’s rustic shakuhachi flute bringing back a rain-drenched, ambient feel. The second part is a mysterious narrative of the events of the first part, sweeping along uneasily on the wings of the strings.

Evan Ziporyn’s compositions draw deeply on his gamelan work, and his trio suite here, Sulvasutra is no exception. Based on an ancient treatise on the proper proportions for Hindu altars, there’s a definite symmetry here, circular, echoey and insistent, the extraordinary string quartet Brooklyn Rider interpolating atmospherics within tabla player Sandeep Das’ hypnotic rhythms. The second part sounds like what another adventurous string composer, Ljova Zhurbin, might have done with a gamelan, adding a raw Carpathian edge to the ppointillistic ambience; Wu Man reappears deviously in the concluding segment, taking the piece rousingly back to Fiji.

The concluding suite – if you can call it one – is the album’s star attraction, the latest from Osvaldo Golijov, alternatingly rousing, joyous, raptly hypnotic and haunting. On the slinky, seductive first section, the Argentinian avant garde luminary proves himself adept and frankly exhilarating (if not exactly innovative) at lush Mohammed Abdel Wahab-style levantine orchestration. The still, brooding, mystical tone poems that follow fall in stark contrast with the ecstatic, defiant Sardinian protest song that fades up and blasts along like the Pogues, Galician bagpipe star Cristina Pato fueling the blaze. And then it’s over. It’s out now on World Village Music and it makes a particularly suitable holiday gift for the cutting-edge listener on y0ur list.

CD Review: Massimo Sammi – First Day

Truth in advertising: the retro 70s-style cover of Massimo Sammi’s debut album pictures the jazz guitarist staring out somewhat warily beneath a bare tree in what looks like late autumn or early winter. That’s a considerably evocative image for this bracing, dark yet ultimately triumphant collection of narrative jazz pieces. A cynic might say that Sammi saw A Beautiful Mind and decided he should write an album based on the movie – obviously, he was inspired by the struggles and in particular the theories of John Nash, especially Nash’s belief in the power of intuition. Beyond that, it’s not known what else if anything Sammi might have in common with the mathematician, but there’s considerable tension, struggle and even a slightly understated horror that comes through vividly in the seven utterly original compositions here. As one would think, the overall feel here is quite cinematic. The band is first-rate: Boston luminaries John Lockwood on bass and Yoron Israel on drums lock in on a fluid groove for Sammi and George Garzone’s tenor and soprano sax. Garzone is a particularly good choice since he can evoke literally any mood he wants and doesn’t shy away from what a lesser musician might find profoundly disturbing. Dominique Eade also adds heartfelt, nuanced vocalese to a couple of tracks.

Over the opening track’s slinky, modified bossa beat, Sammi offers hints of what’s to come: the tune is catchy yet has a troubled edge. Garzone doesn’t waste any time introducing just a hint of madness on the second cut, Encryption, Sammi taking a long, ruminative solo with an outro that grows more insistent. Things go completely over the edge on the third track, Garzone’s sax fluttering with an anxiety that grows quickly to a muted terror echoed starkly by Lockwood’s bass. This segues into track four, Sammi’s guitar taking the angst-ridden tone up yet another notch, rhythm section rumbling ominously beneath, all the way through to a horror-movie crescendo where Garzone’s tenor bleats, gasps and finally gives up completely. The effect is viscerally chilling.

But there’s a happy ending. Eade’s consoling voice signals in a gentle waltz and an equally warm, reassuring Sammi solo on track five, Icecream and Tears, Please, followed by the catchy, even blithe Hallways, Garzone tossing off a second clever, playful Trane quote (no spoilers here – get the cd and hear it for yourself). The all-too-brief concluding chorale has Eade soaring over Sammi’s triumphantly Spanish-inflected fingerwork. It’s kind of scary and it’s awfully good. Keep an eye on this guy, he’s really got a feel for a remarkably wide expanse of emotions and ideas.

Concert Review: Randi Russo at the Delancey, NYC 11/2/09

An aptly timed post-Halloween solo show by the raven-haired master of outsider anthems. After spending the better part of the decade as the leader of a careening, somewhat shapeshifting electric band who toward the end were going deep into psychedelia, Randi Russo has in recent months been playing stripped-down solo shows. By the standard that that if something sounds good acoustic, it ought to sound great fleshed out by an electric band, her gig Monday night at Botanica frontman Paul Wallfisch’s weekly Small Beast extravaganza was full of good omens. Resolute with her guitar in the corner of the small upstairs stage in flickering candlelight, Russo ran through a mix of crowd favorites and intriguing newer material.

She started with a newly rearranged version of Invisible, a ridiculously catchy backbeat-driven outsider anthem that’s seen some revisions lately – a new intro, this time around. She followed that with the casually excoriating Venus on Saturn, a savage dismissal of a drama queen:

The cornerstones of her addictions are stored up in her own mind…

Without it she’d be boring and no one would listen

Now she’s just annoying, and she’s getting all the attention…

Now Freud and Picasso can hone in on your womanly being

And render you two-dimensional in an essay or a canvas painting

The rest of the set ranged between catchy consonance and the eerie overtones that resonate as she plays some of the more unorthodox voicings in her repertoire (she’s a lefty and plays upside down a la Hendrix). The big 6/8 ballad Push-Pull had a gentleness and warmth that a louder electric version might have burnt away; the Zeppelin-inflected, psychedelic Head High While You Lie Low got a surprisingly and very effectively sultry treatment, as did a hushed yet insistent take on the hypnotic Hurt Me Now and another resolute anthem, the defiantly feminist Shout Like a Lady (the title track to her most recent full-length cd). By contrast, the tongue-in-cheek, tricky Parasitic People scurried along like the parasites in the lyric.

By the time she got to the hypnotic escape anthem Ceiling Fire, the drape over Wallfisch’s piano (the Small Beast) started to slip and seconds after she reached the lyric, “any cloud that comes casts a shadow on the seat next to mine,” it fell off completely: another omen? She also debuted a memorably bluesy yet indie-flavored number, yet another anthem for someone trying to keep their bearings in a surreal world. Wallfisch followed, solo on piano, maintaining the warm, soulful vibe, playing with particular warmth and conviviality in a quasi-gospel vein. Turns out that Tuesday would be his wedding anniversary, so he played to his wife (an equally admired cult artist, painter Pat Arnao), who looked on with equal parts appreciation and amusement. It would have been nice to have been able to stay for more than just the obscure Dylan cover and the absolutely exhalted love song – “You gotta trade it all in for love” – that will soon serve as the title track from the forthcoming Botanica album. But there was another victorious event going on, in Philadelphia, to watch with bated breath.

Next week’s Small Beast is a particularly good one, featuring Wallfisch plus haunting, anthemic art-rockers Norden Bombsight.

Concert Review: The Chelsea Symphony Play on Halloween 2009

It was a dark and stormy night. Actually, it wasn’t exactly that -  instead, a brutally humid afternoon with the occasional sputter of raindrops sprinkling  the revelers whose numbers gathered as the sun went down. Gathered in the beautiful Gilded Age interior of St. Paul’s German Church in Chelsea, an enthusiastic audience was treated to an imaginative, innovative, skillful performance of both old chestnuts (or old jack-o’-lanterns, maybe?) and new compositions by a couple of members of the Chelsea Symphony, one of New York’s newest and most adventurous orchestras.

With maestro Mark Seto on the podium, they opened with a shockingly subtle version of Moussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain. Other orchestras treat this as classical heavy metal, barrelling through it with a gleeful abandon. In this ensemble’s hands, it was a joyous, festive romp through a series of Balkan-inflected dances, more delight than menace. Up close, the stereo effects of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s arrangement were nothing short of psychedelic, and the dynamics were striking, notably the beautiful flute solo at the end as the sun rises and the spirits have all gone back to wherever they linger when they’re not dancing up a storm.

Next on the program were two richly and compellingly performed world premieres. The droning introduction to Benjamin Brody’s Prelude seemed at first like it would remain static, in a Steve Reich vein, but quietly and methodically built to a starkly beautiful minimalism, long crescendos leading into a memorable two-bar theme where the percussionist’s tubular bells grew more insistent, finally to the point where they introduced each phrase as they recurred. And then suddenly it was over. Bassist Tim Kiah’s Rise From the Ashes built in a circular fashion, something akin to Meredith Monk, its second movement swaying along on the slinky pulse of a modified bossa nova bassline into a cinematic waltz. At the end, bells added an eerie ninth interval to its deliberate, stately beat.

The second half of the program began with an idiosyncratic yet rewarding take on Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre. Like the Moussorgsky before it, it’s a staple of the horror classical canon. Under the direction of the second of the afternoon’s two conductors, Miguel Campos Neto, it became a careful, even stately, courtly dance, albeit a totally twisted one. Those who know this from innumerable recorded versions will recall how right before the final crescendo, the brass rises, goosebumps and all, against the strings’ macabre main theme and this was as lushly memorable as it was ghoulish. They closed with several selections from Mozart’s Don Giovanni: to their credit, orchestra, conductor, singers and choir did their best to emphasize every conceivably interesting turn in the melody or the arrangement, but ultimately these were exercises in futility. Only at the end, where Don Giovanni defiantly refuses to repudiate his misdeeds and is sent off to hell on the wings of some bitter minor-key swells, does the material rise above the level of schlock and that doesn’t make what comes before worth waiting through. Maybe you have to be a serious opera fan to “get it” – otherwise, it seemed completely buffo, a strange and ultimately unwanted contrast with the rich emotionality and sensitivity of the rest of the bill.

NYC Live Music Calendar Plus Other Events for November-December 2009

Because of ongoing renovations at Lucid Culture HQ, November’s calendar is vastly less comprehensive than the exhaustive one we would have put together if we’d had the time – hopefully we will be back up to full steam by the time 2010 rolls around. In the meantime if you’re ambitious you can try our NYC clubs and venues page where you can find your favorite batcave and search their schedules yourself, just like we’d be doing if we weren’t so busy with other stuff. There are also plenty of other sites who do live music calendars for NYC: ohmyrockness for indie rock, NYC Bluegrass for country, etc., scroll down a little and look to your right for the blogroll which has all the links. You can also try finding your way around Time Out NY if you’re really, really ambitious. If you’re in a band, it’s time to get wiki: add a comment below and let the world know where/when you’re playing.

Here’s what we have so far – as always, weekly events first followed by some daily listings:

Starting 10/29 Taylor Mac’s epic extravaganza The Lily’s Revenge – a lily goes on a quest to wed a human bride and destroy the God of Nostalgia, approximate duration 5 hours!!! – with music by the incomparable Rachelle Garniez runs through November 22nd at Here Arts Center, 145 6th Ave. at Dominick (across the park, downstairs, west side of the street).

If you can’t make it to this year’s Womex in Copenhagen, you can stream the 2009 Womex album with all kinds of killer world music acts: Kayhan Kalhor and Brooklyn Rider, Watcha Clan and more.

Sundays there’s a klezmer brunch at City Winery, show starts round 11:30 AM – 2 PM, $10 cover, no minimum, lots of good bands.

Sundays from half past noon to 3:30 PM, bluegrass cats Freshly Baked (f.k.a. Graveyard Shift), featuring excellent, incisive fiddle player Diane Stockwell play Nolita House (upstairs over Botanica at 47 E Houston). Free drink with your entree.

The 2009-10 series of organ concerts at St. Thomas Church continues most every Sunday (holidays excepted) at 5:15 sharp, featuring an allstar cast of performers. Concerts continue through the end of May 2010.

Stephane Wrembel plays Sundays at Barbes at 9. The guitarist has few if any equals as an interpreter of Django Reinhardt, but it’s where he takes the gypsy jazz influence in his own remarkably original, psychedelic writing – and what he brings to the Django stuff – that makes all the difference. One of the most interesting players in any style of music, anywhere in the world.

Every Sunday the Ear-Regulars, led by trumpeter Jon Kellso and (frequently) guitarist Matt Munisteri play NYC’s only weekly hot jazz session starting around 8 PM at the Ear Inn on Spring St.  Hard to believe, in the city that springboarded the careers of thousands of jazz legends, but true. This is by far the best value in town for marquee-caliber jazz: for the price of a drink and a tip for the band, you can see world-famous players (and brilliant obscure ones) you’d usually have to drop $100 for at some big-ticket room. The material is mostly old-time stuff from the 30s and 40s, but the players (especially Kellso and Munisteri, who have a chemistry that goes back several years) push it into some deliciously unexpected places.

Every Sunday, hip-hop MC Big Zoo hosts the long-running End of the Weak rap showcase at the Pyramid, 9 PM, admission $5 before 10, $7 afterward. This is one of the best places to discover some of the hottest under-the-radar hip-hop talent, both short cameos as well as longer sets from both newcomers and established vets.

Mondays at the Fat Cat the Heun Choi String Quartet play a wide repertoire of chamber music from Bach to Shostakovich starting at 7

Mondays at the Jazz Standard it’s all Mingus, whether with the Mingus Orchestra, Big Band or Mingus Dynasty: you know the material and the players are all first rate. Sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 and worth it.

Mondays at the Delancey on the main floor, 9 PMish Botanica frontman and master of menace Paul Wallfisch presents the edgiest weekly music series in town, playfully called Small Beast, an international mix of some of the most intelligent (and frequently darkest) performers passing through town. It’s free and there’s always some kind of drink special or freebee. If you wish Tonic was still open, Wallfisch is keeping the flame alive. He typically opens the night solo on piano, reason enough to put this on your calendar. November artists include Randi Russo, Rachelle Garniez, McGinty & White, Carol Lipnik, Norden Bombsight, And the Wiremen, Bee & Flower and more.

Also Monday nights Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, a boisterous horn-driven 11-piece 1920s/early 30’s band play Sofia’s Restaurant, downstairs at the Edison Hotel, 221 West 46th Street between Broadway & 8th Ave., 3 sets from 8 to 11, surprisingly cheap $15 cover plus $15 minimum considering what you’re getting. Even before the Flying Neutrinos or the Moonlighters, multi-instrumentalist Giordano was pioneering the oldtimey sound in New York; his long-running residency at the old Cajun on lower 8th Ave. is legendary. He also gets a ton of film work (Giordano wrote the satirical number that Willie Nelson famously sang in Wag the Dog).

Also Mondays the free reggae show that used to be held at Rehab has gravitated to SOB’s, 9ish, free w/rsvp to rsvp@jamrockmagazine.com, 21 and over.

Also Mondays in November the Barbes house band, Chicha Libre plays there starting around 9:30. They’ve singlehandedly resurrected an amazing subgenre, chicha, which was popular in the Peruvian Amazon in the late 60s and early 70s. With electric accordion, cuatro, surf guitar and a boisterous rhythm section, their mix of obscure classics and originals is one of the funnest, most danceable things you’ll witness this year. Perhaps not so strangely, they sound a lot like Finnish surf rockers Laika and the Cosmonauts in their most imaginative moments.

Also Mondays in November Rev. Vince Anderson and his band play Union Pool in Williamsburg, two sets starting around 11 PM. The Rev. is one of the great keyboardists around, equally thrilling on organ or electric piano, an expert at Billy Preston style funk, honkytonk, gospel and blues. He writes very funny, very politically astute, frequently salacious original gospel songs and is one of the great live performers of our time. Moist Paula from the late, great Moisturizer is the lead soloist on baritone sax.

Mondays at 7 PM in November Pierre de Gaillande, frontman of estimable art-rockers Melomane and the Snow plays the music of Georges Brassens in his own English translations at Barbes. Brassens was a member of the French Resistance, an anarchist, a furiously lyrical, lecherous, somewhat louche presence and one hell of a songwriter. Here’s a way to get to know a French icon who deserves to better known outside his native land. Gaillande will be releasing an album of Brassens songs on Barbes records in 2010.

The second and fourth Tuesday of the month there are free organ recitals at half past noon at Central Synagogue, Lexington Ave. at 55th., an exciting list of first-class performers in a sonically gorgeous space, a great way to spend your lunch break if you work in the neighborhood.

Tuesdays the boisterous and very popular brass-heavy gypsy jazz band Slavic Soul Party plays Barbes at 9. Get here as soon as you can as the opening act is usually popular as well.

Tuesdays inNovember the Dred Scott Trio play astonishingly smart, dark piano jazz at the Rockwood at midnight.

Every Wednesday, Michael Arenella & the Dreamland Dance Band play sly yet boisterous oldtimey hot jazz at the Clover Club, 210 Smith St. (Butler/Baltic) in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, 8:30 -10:30 PM.

Every Wednesday in November, Will Scott and drummer Wylie Wirth play mesmerizing, hypnotic, completely authentic Mississippi hill country blues along with Scott’s own melodic, tuneful blues originals at 68 Jay St. Bar in Dumbo, starting around 8:30 PM. Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside and Asie Payton are sadly gone but Scott continues their tradition of music that is as danceable as it is trance-inducing, and does his influences justice.

Sonia’s Party, who blend a bewitching oldschool Motown sound with a vintage Memphis groove play a free show every Wednesday in November at 11 PM at Shrine uptown

Fridays there’s live Mediterranean music – Greek- Arabic, Turkish Armenian, Israeli fusion with Mike Stoupakis, Christos Zavolas, Sofia on on vocals, Elias Sarkar-oud/vocals, Kostas Konstantinou – drums,  plus bellydancers at Lafayette Grill & Bar, 54 Franklin St., downtown,$20 cover, 10ish, free after 1 AM.

11/2 noir outsider anthem genius Randi Russo followed by Botanica frontman Paul Wallfisch at Small Beast at the Delancey 8:30 PM

11/4 Gil Scott-Heron at BB King’s 8 PM $30 adv tix rec.

11/4 the increasingly Tom Waitsish, smartly literate, funny Maynard & the Musties at Lakeside 9 PM

11/5, 8 PM the International Pop Overthrow at Kenny’s Castaways, a killer lineup:

8:00 Edward Rogers & Pete Kennedy (with Ward White)

8:30 Maura Kennedy

9:00 George Usher

9:30 The Doughboys

10:00 Mission 5

10:30 Wendy lp

11:00 The Pretty Faces

11/5 Americana chanteuse Rebecca Turner at Banjo Jim’s 7 PM

11/5 jazz guitar legend Gene Bertoncini at the Jazz Standard, $25, sets 7:30/9:30, reservations highly recommended.

11/5 new wave legend Ellen Foley at Lakeside 9 PM.

11/5 lush, atmospheric art-rockers the Quavers at Barbes at 8 followed by the inscrutable, unpredictably, virtuosic, hilarious, charismatic keyboardist/chanteuse/dramatist Rachelle Garniez at 10 PM.

11/6, 7 PM at Banjo Jim’s Charlene and Mo of Spanking Charlene play acoustic

11/6-8 the haunting Vijay Iyer Piano Trio at the Jazz Standard, sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $30 ($25 Sunday), adv tix. highly recommended.

11/6 smart female-fronted psychedelic rock trio Devi at their new private space in Jersey City, details TK, free

11/6 Simon & the Bar Sinisters at Lakeside 10:15ish

11/6, 7 PM a rare chance at le Poisson Rouge to see dissident rockers from behind the former Iron Curtain: Psí Vojáci (from the Czech Republic), Bez Ladu a Skladu from Slovakia, Timpuri Noi (from Romania). The 11/7 show, starting at 11 pm, will feature Kontroll Csoport (from Hungary) and legendary Polish punks Dezerter. $15 dirt cheap cover for each night.

11/7 2:30 (two thirty) PM the catchy Wilco-meets-the-Clash Brixton Riot at Kenny’s Castaways

11/7, 7 PM at Banjo Jim’s dark garage rocker Lorraine Leckie and Her Demons followed at 9 by alt-country legend Zane Campbell

11/7, 8 PM menacing, tuneful noir rockers Darren Gaines & the Key Party and deliriously fun Japanese gypsy band Kagero at the Gershwin Hotel, 7 East 27th Street (5th/Madison), all ages, $10, free wine bar (21+)

11/7, 8 PM Cudzoo & the Faggettes at Ars Nova Theatre, 54th & 10th Ave., perfect venue for these filthy theatrical rock sirens-slash-retro 60s pop satirists. They promise can’t-miss new video footage at this one…hmmm…! They’re also at Bar Matchless in Williamsburg on Dec 3.

11/7 9 PM slinky, haunting, amazing Egyptian film music revivalists Zikrayat at Alwan for the Arts, $15 and worth it

11/7, 9 PM the dark haunting hypnotic powerhouse Katie Elevitch (back from another triumphant European tour) downstairs at her M’Sonic Sessions series at the The Brooklyn Masonic Temple, 317 Clermont Avenue, 3rd Floor, Fort Greene

11/7 the ferociously good, intense, Radio Birdman-esque punk/garage rockers the Mess Around 9 PM at Don Pedro’s

11/7 the amusing, laid-back Americana duo Two Man Gentlemen Band at the Jalopy, 9ish

11/8 a killer Americana afternoon starting at 3 PM at Spikehill with smart, catchy bluegrass innovators Frankenpine, the oldschool honkytonking Newton Gang, the soaring Alana Amram & the Rough Gems and the funniest man in country music, Uncle Leon & the Alibis headlining around 5. And then Nashville gothic monsters Ninth House at 8!

11/8, 7 PM at Barbes classical violist Jennifer Stumm playing rare and obscure pieces by the first viola virtuoso Alessandro Rolla

11/8 powerpop powerhouse Patti Rothberg at Otto’s, 11 PM with her excellent band.

11/9, 8:30 PM at Banjo Jim’s lead guitarist to the stars of the underground, Homeboy Steve Antonakos.

11/9 Botanica frontman Paul Wallfisch followed by haunting, anthemic art-rockers Norden Bombsight at Small Beast at the Delancey 9 PM

11/10, 8 PM at BB King’s Capleton, Cocoa Tea and Anthony B $30 adv tic rec.

11/10 smoove oldschool hip-hop with Ice Cube’s little bro Warren G at Bowery Ballroom, 9ish, $20 gen adm

11/11 southwestern gothic rocker Tom Shaner at Lakeside 9 PM.

11/12 deviously virtuosic, exuberant mostly-female klezmer rockers Isle of Klezbos at 7PM at Holy Apostles Church, 296 Ninth Ave at 28th St, $10

11/12-15 the Claudia Acuna Quintet at the Jazz Standard, sets 7:30/9:30 PM, $25 ($30 Fri-Sat). Soulful, worldly wise, socially aware Chilean-American jazz chanteuse with an astonishingly powerful band behind her – guitarist Juancho Herrera is a ferocious, intense player but the rest of the band is inspired as well.

11/12 Linda Draper, soulful ex-choirgirl and literate lyricist par excellence whose new cd Bridge & Tunnel is one of the year’s best – plays the National Underground, 8 PM.

11/12, 10 PM Spanglish Fly mixes up mambo and Motown to make Latin soul in the Joe Cuba boogaloo tradition at Camaradas El Barrio, 2241 1st Ave (115th St.) dirt cheap, $5 – free boogaloo lessons for neophytes.

11/12, 10 PM the Bay Area’s best gypsy band, Gaucho plays a rare NYC date at Barbes.

11/13, 8 PM at Barbes amazing oud player/educator/scholar Mavrothi Kontanis plays with his band (who just backed another amazing musician, Iranian-American singer Monika Jalili, on her new cd), followed at 10 by Bill Carney’s Jug Addicts.

11/13, 8 PM at the Bell House, Brooklyn’s own forro/ska/reggae/funk baccchanal Nation Beat open the show followed by the genre-bending, gypsyish latin hellraisers Rupa & The April Fishes

11/13 “Brooklyn’s #1 regressive rock act”, hilarious metal parody band Mighty High’s 7″ release show at Hank’s, 9ish.

11/13, 9 PM smart, metaphorical Kentucky expat/Americana chanteuse Kirsten Williams‘ full-band cd release show for her new one Yesterday’s Waves at Kenny’s Castaways.

11/13, 10 PM fiery, guitar-driven, Steve Earle-ish highway rockers the Sloe Guns at the National Underground

11/13, midnight, powerhouse dark lyrical rocker Daniel Bernstein and the Everybody Knows‘ cd release show (everybody gets a freebee) at the Brooklyn Tea Party, 175 Stockholm Street, Buzzer 303, Bushwick, Brooklyn (btw. Wilson/Knickerbocker, M to Central Ave). Brand new band from the past features Scott Loving on electric guitar, Strictly Beats on drums, Scott Fragala on bass and Erin Regan on vocals.

11/14, 7:30 PM a doublebill by arguably the two best Americana chanteuses in the business, Amy Allison and Laura Cantrell at the 92Y Tribeca, $15

11/14 an amazing doublebill at Barbes starting at 8 with the devious and lushly romantic French chanson stylings of les Chauds Lapins and continuing with the careening 1920s hot jazz juggernaut Brian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra at 10ish.

11/14, 10ish at Teneleven ornate, upbeat cello rockers Snazz Mammoth play one of those powdered wiggie Rubulad-ish parties  $5 cover

11/14 Shonen Knife at Maxwell’s, 10ish, $12 adv tix very highly recommended; 11/17 they’re at the Brooklyn Bowl.

11/14 the Brooklyn What at Bar Matchless in Williamsburg 9ish

11/14 sly baritone crooner and country hellraiser (and ferociously good lead guitarist) Jack Grace at Rodeo Bar, 11:30 PM

11/15, 3 (three) PM the Antara Ensemble plays at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 2065 Fifth Avenue at 127th Street: Leos Janácek’s Idyll for String Orchestra, W. A. Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp in C Major, K. 299, Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins & Cello in D minor, and the World Premiere of Richard Spencer’s Fantasie on a Hymn for Flute & String Orchestra. Tix $25/$20 stud/srs.

11/15, 9ish at SOB’s Zulu Nation presents the 35th Anniversary of Hip-Hop Culture: Afrika Bambaataa, Naughty By Nature, Positive K, Melle Mel, Large Professor, Craig G, Shaheim, Dana Dane, $25 adv tix

11/16 the queen of phantasmagoria, Carol Lipnik and Spookarama at Small Beast at the Delancey, 9 PM.

11/18 harmony-driven, rousingly retro country crew the Sweetback Sisters at Rodeo Bar, 10:30 PM

11/19 the incomparable, inscrutable, multistylistic Jenifer Jackson at the Rockwood at 8.

11/19, 10 PM multistylistic jazz/gypsy/Americana guitar genius Matt Munisteri at Barbes.

11/20, 8 PM jangly Boston rockers Aloud and then moody, haunting groove/downtempo slinks El Jezel at Spikehill

11/20 surf music classics and obscurities with the Boss Guitars at Lakeside 11 PM

11/20 the Brooklyn What – whose ferocious and funny debut cd is our pick for best album of 2009 – at Trash Bar 11 PM

11/21  fiery Irish American rock legends Black 47 at Connolly’s, also 11/28, 12/5, 12/12, and New Years Eve

11/21, 8 PM Portuguese fado legend Mariza at Carnegie Hall with special guests Afro-Peruvian vocalist Eva Ayllón and Afro-Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba $25 tix available.

11/21, 8 PM The New York Chamber Players’ fundraiser at Bechstein Concert Hall, 207 West 58th St., music by Mozart, feat. piano virtuoso Karine Poghosyan

11/21 ferociously haunting, danceable pan-Balkan rockers Ansambl Mastika at Shrine uptown, 8 PM

11/21 Lights and Alana Amram & the Rough Gems (watch Alana on bass and then guitar – or vice versa) at Union Pool

11/21 Spanking Charlene at Lakeside 11 PM

11/22, 3 (three) PM the world-class Greenwich Village Orchestra plays Dvorak’s New World Symphony at Washington Irving Auditorium, cattycorner from Irving Plaza, $20 for a show that would probably cost you a hundred bucks at Carnegie Hall.

11/23 three of the most powerful sirens in any style of music: grand guignol powerhouse Vera Beren, retro keyboard/vocal genius Rachelle Garniez – whose previous two albums are the #2 and #3 cd’s of the decade according to our Best Songs of the Zeros list – and the phantasmagorical Carol Lipnik at Small Beast at the Delancey. Show starts at 9 with Lipnik followed by Garniez, then the dazzlingly lyrical retro 60s psychedelic pop band McGinty & White at 10:30, and then Beren headlining. Definitely the best show of the year and we won’t even be there, sob!

11/24 Americana guitar genius Robbie Fulks in one of his frequent, sparkling duo shows with another first-class player, violinist Jenny Scheinman at Barbes at 7.

11/24-25 and 11/27-29 the Maria Schneider Orchestra makes a welcome appearance at the Jazz Standard, sets 7:30/9:30, tix $35 but no minimum, adv tix very highly recommended.

11/27 for those who stayed in town, a killer Balkan brass show with Raya Brass Band at Barbes, 10 PM.

11/27 a rare live show by legendary mod punk Dog Show frontman Jerome O’Brien at Lakeside 11 PM

11/28 southwestern gothic rocker Tom Shaner at Lakeside 11 PM

11/29 haunting Balkan-tinged tunes with trumpeter Ben Holmes and his trio at Barbes, 7ish.

11/30, starting 8:30ish the artsy Pharmacy & Gardens, then the master of menace, Botanica frontman Paul Wallfisch at the keys, the twangy southwestern gothic of And the Wiremen and then atmospheric noir soundtrack songs with Bee & Flower at 11ish at Small Beast at the Delancey.

12/1-2 trumpet powerhouse Ingrid Jensen with a quintet and then quartet at Jazz Standard, $20, sets 7:30/9:30 PM

12/3-6 the Chano Domínguez Flamenco Quintet including vox and dancer at the Jazz Standard, $30, sets 7:30/9:30 PM. At the Spanish jazz festival here last spring the pianist was haunting, even transcendent – this is something you shouldn’t miss.

12/4, 8 PM the NY Chamber Players play Beethloven’s 6th Symphony and Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No 2 with pianist Luigi Fracasso at Christ & St.Stephen Church, 122 W 69th St.

12/8, 7:30/9:30 PM, legendary jazz percussionist/bandleader Chico Hamilton at the Jazz Gallery where he’ll be performing tracks off of his latest album Twelve Tones of Love (recently reviewed here, very favorably) with his quintet Euphoria.

12/10–12/13 the Tango Meets Jazz Festival with the Pablo Ziegler Quartet with special guests Miguel Zenon (12/10 & 12/11) and David Sanchez (12/12 & 12/13) at the Jazz Standard, $30, sets 7:30/9:30 PM

12/12 a real blast from the past, 80s new wave rockers That Petrol Emotion at the Bell House, 7:30 PM, $17 adv tix rec.

12/22–12/23 the Edmar Castaneda Trio plus Special Guest Joe Locke at the Jazz Standard. You want eclectic and innovative? Can’t miss with this crew: Colombian harp, trombone, drums and vibes, $20 sets 7:30/9:30 PM