Tag: The Green Room

** This event is postponed until further notice. 

Join us in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for a performance by U.S. Girls.

Tickets: $10
Doors at 7 pm | Show at 7:30 pm

The highly anticipated seventh album by U.S. Girls, the protean musical enterprise of multi-disciplinary artist Meg Remy, is entitled Heavy Light. While Remy has been widely acclaimed for a panoply of closely observed character studies, on Heavy Light she turns inward, recounting personal narratives to create a deeply introspective about-face.

The songs are an inquest into the melancholy flavor of hindsight, both personal and cultural. Heavy Light follows 2018’s internationally critically acclaimed breakout album, In A Poem Unlimited. Recently named one of the best albums of the decade by Pitchfork, it was lauded across the pond by the likes of The Guardian, The Sunday Times, and Crack and Q magazine for being Remy’s most accessible record in her then decade-long career.

Heavy Light is produced by Remy and was recorded live with 20 session musicians – including E Street Band saxophonist Jake Clemons – in Montreal’s acclaimed Hotel 2 Tango studio. Heavy Light is a set of songs conceived as a balance between orchestral percussion (as richly arranged by percussionist Ed Squires) and the human voice (conducted by Kritty Uranowski). The resulting album finds Remy casting herself as lead voice among a harmonious multitude, the singers of which lend not only their voices, but also share reflections on childhood experiences that are collaged into moving spoken word interludes throughout the album.

This event is postponed until further notice.

Join us in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for a contemporary jazz performance by Nutria from New Orleans.

Tickets: $10
Doors at 7 pm | Show at 7:30 pm

Named after the infamous South Louisiana swamp rat, Nutria performs original contemporary jazz music with an emphasis on collective improvisation. Their compositional and improvisational practice at once pushes at the boundaries of instrumental music in the 21st century and situates the music within the lineage of New Orleans jazz and groove traditions.

This concert at Crosstown Arts is a part of their 2020 album release tour, celebrating their new album, “Meeting In Progress,” released in February 2020 on ears&eyes Records.

“Showing a clear strategic intelligence and inventiveness and a substantial depth of artistic resourcefulness,” according to No Depression magazine, Nutria has toured throughout the United States playing art centers, jazz clubs, and dive bars. In 2017, they performed on the Millennium Stage at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. In 2016, they were commissioned by the New Orleans-based Marigny Opera Ballet to compose “Wary Heat,” a new ballet that was premiered in February 2017 and reprised in January 2018. In 2019, Nutria began a weekly residency at one of New Orleans’ top venues for creative music, Bacchanal Fine Wine.

Nutria was formed in New Orleans in 2014 as a composition workshop for its members, who were active in different corners of the local music scene. Their sound reflects a diversity of influences yet with a deep commitment to the jazz idiom.

The members of Nutria have performed with a wide array of leading talents in New Orleans and around the world, including Leyla McCalla, James Singleton, Johnny Vidocovich, Ed Petersen, Mahmoud Chouki, Sarah Quintana, the Revelers and local favorites Los Po-boy-citos. Nutria has performed at venues such as the Kennedy Center (Washington, DC), the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (NOLA), the New Orleans Jazz Museum, Twins Jazz Club (DC), Chris’ Jazz Cafe (Philadelphia), the Jazz Gallery (Milwaukee), the Chatterbox Jazz Club (Indianapolis), and the California Clipper (Chicago).

Join us in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for a performance by singer-songwriter Gurf Morlix.

Tickets: $10
Doors at 7pm | Performance at 7:30pm

There was a time, and not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, when Gurf Morlix didn’t really think of himself as a songwriter. A guitar player, sure — armed from the get-go with the dead-aim chops and cool-handed confidence of a natural-born gunslinger. Later on, he took on the mantle of producer too, parlaying his myriad strengths as an ace sideman into an equally lauded career helping a veritable who’s who of the most formidable poets in Americana find their “growl” and cut their deepest grooves on record. But songwriter? That handle took him a bit longer to fully embrace.

Nevermind the fact that his perspective on the matter was inevitably skewed by his years of working with such grading-curve-blowing talents as Blaze Foley, Lucinda Williams, Butch Hancock, Robert Earl Keen, Mary Gauthier, and Ray Wylie Hubbard: a high bar is a high bar, and Morlix, for all of his famed minimalist aesthetic both onstage and in the studio, has never been one to cut corners when it comes to quality.

Through the years, Morlix also produced such artists as Lucinda Williams, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Tom Russell, Butch Hancock, Ian “Mac” McLagan, Slaid Cleaves, Michael Penn, the Pinedogs, and the Setters. His numerous recording credits include works by Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Miller, Peter Case, Bob Neuwirth, Trish Murphy, Marvin Etzioni, Andrew Hardin, Jim Lauderdale, Don Walser, Michael Penn, Linda McRae, Danny Tate, and Mojo Nixon, among others.

Crosstown Arts presents the Coalescent Quartet in a special performance in The Green Room. The program will feature varied works from composers Edvard Grieg, Fernande DeCruck, Zack Browning, and Memphis-based Dr. Evan Williams from the faculty of Rhodes College.

Tickets: $10
Doors at 7 pm | Performance at 7:30 pm

Formed in 2016, the Coalescent Quartet explores the diverse saxophone quartet repertoire from traditional to contemporary works. Its members Nathan Bogert, Michael Shults, Nick Zoulek, and Drew Whiting bring together years of combined chamber music experience and disparate pedagogical backgrounds to present sensitive, exciting, and distinctive performances. In addition to being active performers, the Coalescent Quartet are dynamic educators. Its members have taught at Ball State University, Silver Lake College, the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, the University of Wisconsin Whitewater, the University of Memphis, and Oakland University. Collectively, the quartet has presented master-classes across the country, including at Kent State University and the Ohio State University. As champions of new saxophone quartet repertoire, in its short lifespan the quartet has commissioned composers such as Ted King-Smith and Martin Bresnick, and arranged music by Evan Ziporyn for saxophone.

Join us in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for a special Valentine’s Day performance by Kortland Whalum.

Tickets: $10 (SOLD OUT)
Doors at 7 pm | Performance at 7:30 pm

Unforgettable: An Evening with Kortland Whalum gives music lovers a front row seat to singer Kortland Whalum’s “tribute to the love song.” Unforgettable showcases some of the most endearing romance songs of the last century, including songs from Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, and Ed Shereen, as well as Kortland’s original material. Expect to hear the languages of love translated through jazz, pop, and soul.

Please join us for a special album release party with Crosstown Art’s own Paul Taylor. He’s releasing his first full-length album — “The Music Stands” — under the nom de plume, New Memphis Colorways. And he’s assembled a very interesting cast of musical characters for the evening — Susan Marshall & Reba Russell on background vocals, Pat Harrington on electric guitar, David Collins on keyboards and auxiliary sounds/textures, Rob Douglas on bass, and Kyle Neblitt on the drums.

Tickets: $10
Doors at 7 pm | Performance at 7:30 pm

Some of Paul’s friends and musical associates have already chimed in about “The Music Stands”:

“Paul has really come into his own here. Although the songs are deceptively simple, there’s a world inside each track. These little musical creations are killer. They will creep up on you. They’ll reach out and grab you. It’s all very soulful. And a little magical too. Kinda proggy. Kind of indie. And utterly impossible to describe. I dig it.” — Chuck Prophet

“Paul’s out of his damn mind. He conjures more original musical ideas in 12 bars than most musicians do with entire albums. ‘The Music Stands’ finds him, as always, accessing strangenesses and welding the unexpected with a singular vision.” — Cory Branan

Having put out three releases under his birth name, including “Open Closed” (2007) & “Share It” (2009), both on Makeshift Records, as well as self-released The Old Forest Trail EP (2015), Paul has now embarked on a new project called New Memphis Colorways. New Memphis Colorways more fully embodies the wide-ranging influences from his storied career as a Memphis musician. This moniker debuted with his self-released Old Forest Loop EP (2018) and continues with the forthcoming “The Music Stands,” due out on 1/31/2020.