Osburnt: Dispatches From a Life Seared by the Arts

  • Congregata

    Congregata

    So, I saw CONGREGATA by FKA twigs. There were three back-to-back sold-out shows at the Brooklyn Hangar, of which I availed myself of an opportunity to see the last one. I was in pretty good company, not just of the exceptionally well turned-out twentyoneoroversomethings who dominated the crowd, but, at least for a while, the…

  • Say Lou Lou

    Say Lou Lou

    “We’re twins,” said one half of Say Lou Lou, at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn, halfway into the Swedish-Australian pop-rock duo’s first (so they also said) concert in the United States. She had to say it, just to be sure we knew, and it added a wrinkle, because what is ingenious about these engaging sisters…

  • From the Earth to the Moon

    From the Earth to the Moon

    He was, when I was growing up, a boy in a normative Middle American family, essential reading, along with Conan Doyle, Tolkien, and a few others. But I have the sense, hoping that I am wrong, that Jules Verne is not, at least in this country, so much read anymore. Part of this is simply…

  • Sofia Ribeiro

    Sofia Ribeiro

    Hearing the Portuguese jazz singer Sofia Ribeiro last weekend at Cornelia Street Café was, for me, a real discovery. She is, to begin with, wonderful in front of an audience, good-naturedly self-effacing, bouyant and open in a way that wends its way through her personality and into her music. The most wistful and reflective of…

  • 10

    10

    I haven’t seen the Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet so elegant, in sound or deportment, as they were Monday night at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. The spot has an elegance in its own right, with a view of Central Park and a good, Southern inspired menu. The band has appeared there before, in a series sponsored by…

  • Origin of Adjustable Things

    Origin of Adjustable Things

    It was by whim and circumstance that I found myself, on Tuesday night, at SubCulture for the CD release of THE ORIGIN OF ADJUSTABLE THINGS, by the singer Joanna Wallfisch and the pianist Dan Tepfer. The strange poetry of the title belies the eccentricity of how it came to Wallfisch while water skiing on a…

  • Flamencos y mestizos: Lara Bello

    Flamencos y mestizos: Lara Bello

    I would no more call what Lara Bello does “fusion” than I would the diverse flowers of a meadow seeded by the winds. The flora of her landscape seem to have landed there quite naturally and grown at their own pace. Flamenco, jazz, and folk, the genres of North Africa, the Near East, Asia, Iberia,…

  • Mariel Martínez

    Mariel Martínez

    BUENOS AIRES … CUANDO LEJOS ME VI  is the title of a show by Mariel Martínez & La Porteño Tango Trio currently in Madrid to promote a CD of the same name. I have admired Martínez’s recordings since listening to her 2010 Perfume de tango. The album includes a compelling interpretation of  “Luna curiosa,” a…

  • Granada

    Granada

    There is something in Sílvia Pérez Cruz’s voice so pure that it makes you lose your mind. You wonder where it possibly can be coming from, for it seems a thing of nature, but utterly unique, a plant never before seen, yet born organically. There ought to be many of them, but there is only…

  • Havana Rakatan

    Havana Rakatan

    After the intermission, HAVANA RAKATAN moves inside, from the streets and waterfront locations evoked in the first act to a scenography of nightclubs and theatrical shows. It seems, suddenly and counter-intuitively, more authentic than it did before. Colorfully dressed farmers and urban workers, dancing in celebration of weddings, harvests, fiestas, might seem, on the surface,…