-
Only Lovers Left Alive
I have never been so admiring of Jim Jarmusch as have his acolytes, but he seemed the perfect choice to direct a vampire movie and had the good taste to include a scene of Yasmine Hamdan singing in a café, so I was drawn without resistance to ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE. There is a lot…
-
Bésame mucho
BÉSAME MUCHO, which bears the subtitle “Latinas Sing Latinas,” and the further tagline, “Una antología musical de las más grandes compositoras latinoamericanas,” is substantial, even educational, in content, yet light and emotionally buoyant. Structurally it resembles Voces del tango, which I saw late last year from the same writer and conceiver, Pablo Zinger: four singers…
-
Sílvia Pérez Cruz
I had planned, upon hearing Sílvia Pérez Cruz sing at Joe’s Pub, to make my way to another event involving music. But the idea of altering the state in which she, and the guitarist Raül Fernández Miró, had left me was practically unthinkable; the tenor of the experience deserved, as the profoundest of our aesthetic…
-
Russian Red
I opted on St. Patrick’s Day for Russian Red in lieu of Irish green. It was her shimmering interpretation of the song “Loving Strangers” on the soundtrack of Julio Medem’s beautiful film Room in Rome that first set me on this young Spanish singer-songwriter. Her given name is Lourdes Hernández, but she took as her…
-
Tosello Solla Reyes
TOSELLO SOLLA REYES, whom I heard recently at the enchanting new venue in Brooklyn called The Classon, consists of the singer Sofía Tosello, the pianist Emilio Solla (both from Argentina), and the violinist Sergio Reyes (from Guatamala). They return to the same location next month, on April 18, and I urge you not to miss…
-
Yasmine Hamdan
It can be a special gift to listen to a song in a language that you neither speak nor understand. A language has its own rhythms and tonalities, just as musical forms and genres do, and when there is singing, the musicality of language merges directly with that of the instruments. The deepest engagement with…
-
Glamour Tango
Polly Ferman presented her show GLAMOUR TANGO, subtitled “Tango in Feminine Form,” on Monday night at Tango House, using New York based, but international, talent, all of them, appropriately, women. It follows the basic form of a lot of tango shows. There is a live orchestra at the back of the stage, which includes Ayelen…
-
Este nuestro espacio
The lovely little play that I saw on Saturday night began with the Spanish singer Lara Bello, dimly visible, evoking a lost bohemia from behind a diaphonous scrim, accompanied by the pianist Shai Bachar. It is almost a cameo to look at now, like something contained in a locket of long ago, from someplace in…
-
Recuerdo tango
RECUERDO TANGO is the second of Mariela Franganillo’s tango shows that I have seen, and like the previous one, Tango Connection: Love Stories, it is distinguished by a feel for dramatic structure that goes beyond that of a revue whose main purpose is to showcase the history and virtuosity of the dance. Franganillo – in…
-
Voces del tango
Amidst the exceptional diversity of tango – orchestras, dance shows, milongas, club tango – it is easy to forget the tango song. I do not just mean those singers who front full bands or the passionate and accomplished amateurism of the tango bar. I am also thinking of the tango canción as a sort of…