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Xi.me.na
The vocal artist Xi.me.na wore paper at Joe’s Pub, which was only so surprising since, when I first saw her, at DROM, she was be-hooped in plastic. The clothes do not, of course, make the singer – the voice does – but they carry an attitude. Hers is fiercely self-assertive and unafraid of ornamentation so…
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Bria Skonberg
It was her sophistication as a storyteller that leapt out when I saw the Canadian trumpeter-vocalist Bria Skonberg’s “Love Songs from the Big Easy” at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in February. It was a few days before Valentine’s Day and she basically told love stories, both in her banter (which was word-for-word in both sets) and…
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Rita Redshoes
Rita Redshoes does, to begin with, wear red shoes. They were rarely glimpsed Monday at Joe’s Pub, amid the onstage monitors, but accented her black outfit assertively. Redshoes’ given name – she is Portuguese – is Pereira. Whether there is a story to the stage name, I don’t know, but it fits her art pop…
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Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Ginastera was born on April 11, 1916, and it was a hundred years later, on April 11, 2016, that the Spectrum Symphony presented a centennial commemoration of the Argentine composer at the Broadway Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. The wide-ranging and innovative concert wasn’t limited to works and performances by Ginastera or other artists with…
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Carminho • Sara Tavares
The fadista Carminho sang almost by surprise last week at City Winery. The concert was announced perhaps a week before, but she stood before a full house, following an energetic set by the Portuguese creole artist Sara Tavares. It wasn’t the only way she surprised me. I expected, from what I had seen of her…
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Emel Mathlouthi
With Emel Mathlouthi, I confronted the difficulty of listening to political song in a language I do not understand. In some ways this should not have been hard. She tells us what the titles mean or the lyrics refer to: freedom and justice, breaking silence with speech and putting pen to paper, not to avert…
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Postales
I knew from seeing her a year ago that Karina Beorlegui can be streetwise and a little punky. Now I know that she can be supremely elegant. I knew that she could be tart and witty and clever. Now I know that she can be lush and suave and cosmopolitan. I knew that she was…
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Ariel Ardit
Trim but stout looking, with a widow’s peak the curves of which seem to raise the eyebrows on his armadillo face, giving him a look not of surprise but of perpetual sympathy and amusement, the tango singer Ariel Ardit could be a clown or comedian were it not for his consummate posture and deportment, strong,…
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Sophie Auster
The personae of Sophie Auster are ever shifting, and she unites them in a persona that avoids the fatal stamp of a changeless character. To appreciate her in performance is to grasp the fluidity of the shifts and the constancy of what ties them together. She projects herself physically and visually, and who she becomes…
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Danças Ocultas • Pires
I made my way to Newark on Saturday to hear Nathalie Pires sing fado and on the way encountered a quartet of diatonic accordionists called Danças Ocultas. Artur Fernandes, Filipe Cal, Filipe Ricardo, and Francisco Miguel, who formed the group in 1989, were the first half of the program at the New Jersey Performing Arts…