Tag: The Green Room

Join us in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for a performance by Marc Ribot.

Tickets: $20
Doors at 7 pm | Show at 7:30 pm

Rolling Stone points out that “guitarist Marc Ribot helped Tom Waits refine a new, weird Americana on 1985’s Rain Dogs, and since then he’s become the go-to guitar guy for all kinds of roots-music adventurers: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Elvis Costello, John Mellencamp.” Additional recording credits include Neko Case, Diana Krall, Elton John/Leon Russell’s The Union, Solomon Burke, John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards, Marianne Faithful, Joe Henry, Allen Toussaint, Medeski Martin & Wood, Caetono Veloso, Susana Baca, Allen Ginsburg, Madeleine Peyroux, Nora Jones, Jolie Holland, Akiko Yano, The Black Keys, and many others.

Marc works regularly with Grammy® Award-winning producer T Bone Burnett and New York composer John Zorn. He has also composed and performed on numerous film scores such as “Walk The Line” (James Mangold), “The Kids Are All Right,” and “The Departed” (Martin Scorcese).

Marc Ribot, who The New York Times describes as “a deceptively articulate artist who uses inarticulateness as an expressive device,” has released 25 albums under his own name over a 40-year career, exploring everything from the pioneering jazz of Albert Ayler to the Cuban son of Arsenio Rodríguez. The enigmatic guitarist has released six very diverse solo guitar albums: (including John Zorn’s Book of Heads, Plays the Works of Frantz Casseus, Saints, Don’t Blame Me, Exercises in Futility), and 2010’s Silent Movies has been described as a “down-in-mouth-near masterpiece” by the Village Voice and earned critical praise across the board. His live solo performances are unpredictable events which may draw on all of these or none, creating a sonic matrix of memory, free improvisation, zeitgeist, extra-terrestrial radio signals, and much more … always leaving the listener on the edge of their seats.

“Dazzling and unique … The music isn’t pretty in the usual sense of the word, but it grows with intense feeling, and the effect is breathtaking, even emotionally compelling. You wish you’d been there to hear it, to hold your breath for long stretches of daring, only to suck the air back in in gulps when it was possible… ” — Will Layman, Pop Matters

“Guitarist Marc Ribot returns to the original scene in spirit and in songbook, playing feverishly and paying homage … Ribot is absolutely concentrated and sounds brilliant … building fruitfully on a venerable New York legacy, adding another chapter.” — John Corbett, DownBeat

“..he can sit down with just his guitar and simultaneously confound you with technique, beauty, and surprise…The result is solo guitar at its finest.” — John Garratt, PopMatters

“A one-of-a-kind guitarist equally adept providing an atmospheric backdrop for Tom Waits as he is calling down the heavens with skronky free jazz, Ribot’s lush collection of soundtrack work for films both real and imagined only gets richer with each listen. Solo guitar albums can sometimes sound spare or monochromatic, yet Ribot never operates in less than living color.” — Chris Barton, LA Times

“Ribot is one of the great guitarists of today, having worked for decades as a versatile sideman and an avant-garde-leaning leader, but he sort of blindsided me here, an introspective solo guitar gem that is utterly beguiling.” — Tad Hendrickson, AOL Spinner

Join us in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for a performance by Streeter & The Tribe.

Charles Streeter is a drummer, producer, composer, bassist, and keyboard player who has worked with such artists as Chaka Khan, The Jacksons, Jennifer Lopez, Stephanie Mills, and DW3. He’s currently on tour with Tori Kelly.

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

Join us in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts for a performance by Jubu Smith.

Jubu is the architect of modern R&B guitar. Beginning with his pioneering work in the 1990s with Tony! Toni! Tone!, Jubu’s limitless vocabulary of jazz distilled through the feel of blues, soul, and gospel music has set the standard for guitarists around the world. Jubu has also shared the stage and studio with Whitney Houston, Raphael Saddiq, Brandy, Maze, Toni Braxton Luther Vandross, and Mary J Blige.

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

** 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.