Tag: The Green Room

TANGELA “Splendid Mind Series ii”, featuring Spek (Was Here) and DJ set by STH MEMPHIS JEFF

Crosstown Arts presents TANGELA “Splendid Mind Series ii”, featuring Spek (Was Here) and DJ set by STH MEMPHIS JEFF in the Green Room.

The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
Saturday, February 4, 2023
Doors open at 7 pm | Show begins at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $15 advance | $20 at the door

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

TANGELA is the glittery finish to a masterfully crafted collage. She glows, sparkles, and shines wherever she is present. A fusion of love and artistic vision, TANGELA has dibble-dabbled in The Arts since she was a toddler — weaving in and out of painting classes, bands, theatrical outfits and dance troupes, intent on discovering her most magical talents.

Memphis music legends baptized and verified TANGELA at a young age, as she studied under the tutelage of soul music icons at the city’s STAX Academy of Music. The spirit of Memphis — the tension, hustle, grind, grit, and flair — are evident in the Berklee College of Music graduate’s products.

For more information about TANGELA:

Visit @PUSSII_DUSSE on Instagram

Email tangelamgmtco@gmail.com

Stream “SPLENDID MIND EP” on your music listening platform of choice

Gareth Pearson (SOLD OUT)

Crosstown Arts presents Gareth Pearson in the Green Room.

The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
Saturday, April 29, 2023
Doors open at 7 pm | Show begins at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $20

“Gareth is fast becoming one of the world’s most renowned instrumental guitarists.” – Adam Walton (BBC Radio Wales)

“I really respect Gareth’s abilities. He’s a great young man and a great ambassador for the acoustic guitar.” – Tommy Emmanuel

Gareth Pearson is referred to as “The Welsh Tornado” which is particularly appropriate, seeing as this special talent combines fingerstyle pyrotechnics, with explosive lead runs making Pearson one of the most exciting acoustic musicians gigging today.

Gareth has a distinctive style that can be heard through his creative and innovative arrangements which cover a wide spectrum of genres, including country/folk/classical/pop/rock/jazz/swing and bluegrass music, along with his own beautiful and often intricate original compositions.

Drawing his playing style initially from influences such as Chet Atkins, Merle Travis, Jerry Reed and Tommy Emmanuel, he has developed a style that is both inspiring and entertaining.

Within a year of taking up the guitar, Gareth was opening for Tommy Emmanuel on his 2005 UK tour. It was in Cardiff where Tommy invited Gareth to play at the CAAS convention (Chet Atkins Appreciation Society) in Nashville, Tennessee.

Later that year, Gareth was performing and touring alongside Ray Davies (The Kinks), John Renbourne, and Southside Johnny and the Ashbury Jukes. During the Southside Johnny tour, Gareth was invited by Southside to be flown over to the USA to open for his annual New Years Eve concert at the Count Basie Theatre in New Jersey.

The following year Gareth was invited by Tommy Emmanuel to be the support act for his UK tour, following extensive UK supports to Jan Akkerman, Andy McKee and appearing at numerous Folk Festivals and Guitar workshops including the Montreal Jazz Festival.

With appearances throughout Europe and a growing reputation, Gareth was invited to perform at the 2008 Canadian Guitar Festival where he came to the attention of Candyrat Records. This lay the seed for Gareth to be the first UK guitarist to be signed by the label. On its release, Gareth’s debut album “Urban Echoes Vol 1” was selected by Acoustic Guitar editors and frequent contributors as one of the “Essential Acoustic Albums of 2010”.

With appearances at the 2009 Montreal Guitar Festival, USA and worldwide tours and guitar workshops, Gareth’s reputation as a performer and teacher is constantly growing.

Xiu Xiu with The Pop Ritual

Crosstown Arts presents Xiu Xiu with The Pop Ritual in The Green Room.

The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
Wednesday, April 12, 2023
Doors at 7 pm | Show at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $25 General Admission

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Xiu Xiu’s most recent work is a record of halves.

Angela Seo sings on half of the record. Jamie Stewart sings on half of the record.

Half of the songs are experimental industrial. Half of the songs are experimental modern classical. Half of it is real. Half of it is imaginary.

The real songs attempt to turn the worst life has offered to five people the band is connected with into some kind of desperate shape that does something, anything, other than grind and brutalize their hearts and memory within these stunningly horrendous experiences.

The imaginary songs are an expansion and abstract exploration of the early rock and roll “Teen Tragedy” genre as jumping off point to decontaminate the band’s own overwhelming emotions in knowing and living with what has happened to these five people.

What none of this record does and despite the oft repeated assertion, what Xiu Xiu has never done, is attempt to superficially shock the listener. Instead, Xiu Xiu has spent twenty years grappling with how to process, to be empathetic towards, to disobey and to reorganize horror; there is no other word for it other than horror.

The motivation for writing Ignore Grief to be about a child who was sold into prostitution by his mother, a junior high student who was kidnapped and murdered, incessantly choosing alcohol and cocaine over one’s family, becoming lost in the bleakest, darkest aspects of cultish spirituality and committing suicide as means to escape and protest a life of violent sex work is because the members of Xiu Xiu themselves are deeply shocked.

Old friend and new member David Kendrick (Sparks, Devo, Gleaming Spires) joins Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart through whatever this may be and whatever it may mean and why ever it may have occurred. The point of aesthetic examination is to see if there is any way to come out the other side or if there is even any reason. In either case there may not be but to simply turn away would be yet a further act of destruction.

“I had now lost all confidence in myself, doubted all men immeasurably, and abandoned all hopes for the things of this world, all joy, all sympathy, eternally. This was the truly decisive incident of my life. I had been split through the forehead between the eyebrows, a wound that was to throb with pain whenever I came into contact with a human being.” – Osamu Dazai

Tonya Dyson & the Ainitmanes

Crosstown Arts presents Tonya Dyson & the Ainitmanes in The Green Room.

The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
Friday, February 3, 2023
Doors open at 7 pm | Show starts at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $15 in advance | $20 at the door

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Tonya Dyson wears so many hats: non-profit arts executive, music educator, serial entrepreneur, community leader, and festival organizer. You name it. She’s also a beloved artist who has not only built a devoted following in a creative landscape of her own design but has helped develop and nurture that same environment for countless other Memphis artists. She’s the genuine article in Memphis’ new soul underground.

Charu Suri Quartet

Crosstown Arts presents Charu Suri in The Green Room.

The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
Saturday, March 4, 2023
Doors open at 7 pm | Show begins at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $20 ($10 students)

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

“Charu’s raga-based improvisations are singular.” – Multi Grammy-award winning pianist Arturo O’Farrill

Pianist and composer Charu Suri treads fearlessly between genres, pulling global influences that range from the mood-anchoring Indian ragas, Sufi music, to the trio. Her ground-breaking albums, The Book of Ragas, and its sequel, The Book of Ragas vol. 2 have often elicited the response, “I’ve never heard this type of sound before.”

One of the few female composers from India to perform work at Carnegie Hall, Charu has lived in four continents, and writes music that reflect her journey as both a traveler and her training as a classical music piano prodigy. She has been playing the piano since the age of five, and performing since the age of nine, and one of her best memories is winning an international piano competition at the age of 15.

What started purely as an experiment with her “Book of Ragas” has turned into a niche that she is now increasingly becoming known for. Her latest album is RAGAS & WALTZES, a first collaboration between her and Preservation Hall’s jazz drummer, Joe Lastie.

In this album, dedicated to her late father, she explores European waltzes through her own jazz lens. The album also includes two ragas, performed by guitarist Noshir Mody and flutes by Al Jewer. RAGAS & WALTZES has received a lot of praise from critics. JAZZIZ Magazine has praised its classic reinvention of the European waltz, and All About Jazz said, “These are all Suri originals, with which she creates a mood that is a mix, tune-by-tune, of longing and solemnity, then of a lilting and uplifting beauty, segueing into tender reverence that shifts gear into a segment of lively swing before drifting back to loving respect. And that swing is surely inspired by New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s drummer, Joe Lastie, Jr., sitting in the recording session’s drummer’s chair.”

But she is no stranger to the art of the Songbook too (attribute this to her listening to numerous records of Bill Evans and Billie Holiday as a kid). “The New American Songbook” has garnered many awards, including a “Band Single of the Year” crystal trophy for her song, Bluesy, awarded by the International Singer-Songwriters Association (ISSA) in 2021.

Charu has performed at Lincoln Center and other prestigious concert halls around the world, including St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She often performs with her band, and sometimes as a soloist. She embarks on a multi-city RAGAS & WALTZES tour to India starting with a performance at the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai, on September 16th.

Modern Masters Jazz Series: Tony Dagradi

Crosstown Arts presents the Modern Masters Jazz Series: Tony Dagradi with the Ted Ludwig Trio in The Green Room.

The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
Tuesday, November 14 2023
Doors at 7pm | Show at 7:30pm
Tickets: $20 in advance | $25 at the door | $10 student tickets at the door

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

For nearly four decades he has made his home in New Orleans, performing on tenor and soprano saxophone with many of the Crescent City’s most celebrated artists, including Ellis Marsalis, Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair, James Booker, The Meters, Dr. John, James Black, Johnny Adams and Gatemouth Brown. An accomplished classical performer as well, he’s often called upon to augment the woodwind section of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. His performing past also includes five years as a member of the internationally acclaimed Carla Bley Band and appearances and recordings with Bobby McFerrin, Mose Allison and Nat Adderley.

Since 1990 Dagradi has been a Professor of Saxophone and Jazz Studies at Loyola University in New Orleans where he maintains a large saxophone studio, teaches classes in improvisation, and directs various ensembles.