Osburnt: Dispatches From a Life Seared by the Arts

  • Melissa Aldana

    Melissa Aldana

    South Americans get the saxophone in a way that gets to me. It started with Gato Barbieri and Last Tango in Paris, his tenor paradoxically sharp and lush, a bite and a kiss. It stayed with me, like an inoculation against its own forgetting, since first I heard it. Then, a few years ago, when…

  • 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…

  • Prisma

    Prisma

    I waited a few days to listen to Camila Meza’s PRISMA, the release of which she celebrated last week at the Kitano. The recording is more than representative of her great talent, exceeding my expectations, which were high to begin with. She has transported the ethereal vibe of her earlier work, which always seemed to…

  • 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…

  • Camila Meza

    Camila Meza

    Camila Meza has once again executed the rare feat of both singing the standards and playing the guitar, this time at the Cornelia Street Café’s downstairs cabaret, one of my favorite New York venues for food and music. When I first heard this Chilean artist sing in her native Spanish, I thought there was something…