Osburnt: Dispatches From a Life Seared by the Arts

  • South American Festival

    South American Festival

    Monday night at the Zinc Bar, the Lilihouse Agency presented the first annual NYC SOUTH AMERICAN MUSIC FESTIVAL. Four hours, four artists and their bands, four from the bar to lighten the heat. First up: Juancho Herrara (top), a Colombian born Venezuelan, with a precise, insistent and sardonic sound, streetwise and urban in tone; his…

  • Tango Mediterraneo

    Tango Mediterraneo

    Tango Mediterraneo is a welcome addition to the options we have in New York to listen to live tango music. It has a distinctive sound, sharp and individualized in its instrumentation, and is fronted by Stratos Achlatis, the accordionist and singer, whose dulcet – I want to say honeyed – voice adds just the right…

  • Por el agua de Granada

    Por el agua de Granada

    Last week at Terraza 7 Train Cafe I saw POR EL AGUA DE GRANADA … CANCIONERO LORQUIANO, a collaboration of the Spanish singer Lara Bello and the guitarist Eric Kurimski to present renderings of Federico García Lorca’s poems and lyrics. As it happens, Bello is the very first person I would turn to for such…

  • Stephane Wrembel

    Stephane Wrembel

    Many thanks to my friends at Fada for introducing me to the Brooklyn-based French guitarist Stephane Wrembel. Wrembel’s online bio is worth a look – his most influential musical tutelage was in the gypsy guitar, and his credits include the theme for Woody Allen’s magic realist comedy Midnight in Paris, which he performed live at…

  • Astoria Tango Club

    Astoria Tango Club

    On my first visit to Buenos Aires, an expatriate American that I became acquainted with said to me that the city had a “theme”, which he smartly suggested to me was “nostalgia”. He pointed to the Kennedy-era cars on every block, the coffeehouses with their bow-tied waiters, the grand Parisian architecture, and, although he scarcely…

  • Omoo Solo Voice

    Omoo Solo Voice

    I saw a rather fascinating vocal performance on Friday night at Two Moon Art House and Cafe in Brooklyn. This is only the second OMOO SOLO VOICE concert by the young Swiss singer-songwriter Emilie Weibel, and there is doubtless much refinement to come. What is striking about her show is that she travels light, just…

  • Magnus Eroticus

    Magnus Eroticus

    If you are like I was the day before yesterday, you know the Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis solely by virtue of the classic soundtrack for Never on Sunday, for which he won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1960. If you are like me today you would on Thursday evening have attended an intimate…

  • Camila Meza • North Square

    Camila Meza • North Square

    From time to time when I have needed a place to park myself prior to a later engagement, I have dropped in at the North Square for a drink. It is sort of perfect as a “lounge,” as a opposed to a bar or club – dimly lit, bartenders rather than mixologists, the sort of…

  • Tangolandó • Fain-Mantega

    Tangolandó • Fain-Mantega

    It was, to be sure, a night of non-standard tango at Joe’s Pub. Tangolandó, fusing tango song with a distinctive Afro-Peruvian rhythm, closed out a program that began with the Dúo Fain-Mantega, consisting of piano and flute, the latter one of the early instruments in tango orchestras, along with the harp and violin, but not…

  • Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet

    Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet

    Last night at Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet outdid itself with a septet of special features: (1) The rare presence in New York of the band’s original drummer, Hugo Alcázar, as evidenced in this photo, a sharp, witty, assertive artist in every way; (2) a guest appearance by the notable jazz pianist…