Author: Michael Witthaus

Counting blessings

Colby-Sawyer showcases Italian program

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

Having a community conversation was Theatre Kapow’s goal when its season began last fall. This continues with Every Brilliant Thing, a play that will spend a weekend at BNH Stage in Concord, then move to Winnipesaukee Playhouse two weeks later for three final performances.

About a child trying to encourage their mother, hospitalized after a failed suicide attempt, with a list of “brilliant things” that are worth living for, it’s technically a one-person play. However, an in-the-round crowd plays a big role, even for a theater company that’s always strived to bring it close to the action.

“Throughout … the audience is relied on quite heavily to make the story actually happen, to get the character through each scene to the next point,” Director Emma Cahoon said by phone recently. This begins when attendees enter the venue; each gets a card with a numbered “thing” written on it to call out when prompted. Bolder souls can choose bigger roles.

Playwright Duncan McMillan, she continued, tells a story about how depression can be contagious without tools to take it on. His message: People can’t go it alone, they need help. To that end, the National Alliance for Mental Illness, Capital Art Therapy and the Jason R. Flood Memorial Fund are all community partners for the production.

“He tells a story about a person discovering how important it is to talk to other people, in a way that requires the audience to be in conversation with the piece the whole time,” she said. “So the function of the storytelling is proving the narrator’s point [that] I could not get through this on my own … I had to turn to other people.”

Though the material can be dark, it radiates hope with happy thoughts of “ice cream, water fights, and knowing someone well enough to get them to check your teeth for broccoli.” There’s also an improv comedy mood; an exchange between the main actor and a volunteer co-star could go anywhere, after all.

In a Jan. 28 blog post, Eric Gutterson, a longtime patron who’s served as test audience for rehearsals, said the play evokes “laughter, sadness, joy, longing, and a sense of togetherness,” adding that it “doesn’t shy away from being real. There are dark tones, but you come up for air early and often with frequent moments of comic relief.”

Matt Cahoon co-founded Theatre Kapow with his wife Carey; Emma is their daughter and this is her second directing role. Matt, who’s also Academic Dean and Theatre Director at the New Hampton School, has taught Every Brilliant Thing to his students. He called the feelings Gutterson described in line with his company’s mission.

“Sometimes contemporary theater can feel like you’re taking your medicine, because you’re having to have these difficult thoughts,” he said by phone. “But there’s also a lot of sugar that goes with that medicine.”

The decision to make conversation a focus of their season was deliberate, in anticipation of a contentious election and its aftermath. Matt thinks Every Brilliant Thing transcends that.

“In a polarized and often isolating world, the play’s format… emphasizes shared vulnerability and collective healing,” he wrote on their website.

“There’s a stripped down, base human aspect to all of us,” he continued in conversation. “With the audience for this show, we’re not Republicans and Democrats, we’re not even men and women or old and young. We’re just humans in the space together … here’s an entry point for every single person who lives and breathes on this planet into this play.”

Though she was 6 when her parents founded the company, Emma Cahoon wasn’t always certain that it was her destiny. During her rebellious middle school years she even planned on being a nurse. Last May, however, she graduated from BU with a BFA in Theatre Arts. She’s in it for the long haul now, and comfortable with that knowledge.

“Everything I said I was going to do that wasn’t theater was, in some ways, theatrical,” she said. “I never imagined myself not in a caretaking or community-based position, and when I got over that period of time, I was like, ‘Yeah, actually, this is what I wanted to do.’ Then I went to school for it, and here we are.”

Every Brilliant Thing

At BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Friday, Feb. 7, and Saturday, Feb. 8, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 9, 2 p.m.

At Winnipesaukee Playhouse, 33 Footlight Circle, Meredith
Friday, Feb. 21, and Saturday, Feb. 22, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 23, 2 p.m.

Tickets: $25 and up at tkapow.com

Starring Peter Josephson on Feb. 7, Feb. 9, Feb. 22, Carey Cahoon on Feb. 8, Feb. 21, Feb. 23.

Content Transparency:
Verbal descriptions of depression, self-harm, suicide and suicidal ideations.
There will be some warm and inclusive audience participation.

Featured photo: Emma Cahoon. Photo by Sarah Coleman.

Stones’ fab four

Paying tribute to a hot streak of albums

By Michael Witthaus

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Beginning with Beggars Banquet in 1968, the Rolling Stones made four records in a row that are all among the greatest to come from the classic rock era — and the last one, 1972’s Exile on Main Street, was a double album. The other two were, of course, 1969’s Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers, released in 1971.

Here’s the thing, though. It was an iconic streak, but the band’s true achievement was surviving it. Most of them, anyway; co-founder Brian Jones barely made it through the first two LPs before his death. Arrests, bad business deals, a disastrous free concert and a midnight run from England to France all happened, while the music just got better.

A show on Feb. 1 at Pembroke City Limits will feature four songs from each album, along with a look at the times that produced them. A house band led by John Zevos of Lichen will recreate “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Midnight Rambler,” “Dead Flowers,” “Tumbling Dice” and a dozen others.

“I was peeling through some of the Stones’ essential works of the late ’60s and ’70s and I just could not get past these four records,” PCL owner Rob Azevedo, who organized the show, said recently. “Mick’s potent lyrics, Keith’s blazing riffs and the magnitude of these incredible creations…. I thought, we need to pay tribute to these songs, and soon!”

Hosting and providing historical context for the event will be me, Michael Witthaus. I watched a lot of it unfold as a teenager in Northern California, like the horrific Altamont show that summarily ended the ’60s idealism once rising at Woodstock. When the Stones returned to San Francisco in 1972 and played Winterland, I was there.

Since then, I’ve learned a lot more from books and podcasts about the decade’s music. I’ll talk about living in that era, and tell stories about the Greatest Rock & Roll Band in the World, like the one about how the organ player on Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” later joined The Stones and helped shape the opening bars of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

A seasoned group of Stones-loving musicians is promised, which will include a horn section for a few songs consisting of sax players Brian Booth, Dani Sven and Jason Reichelson, along with John Spring on trumpet. Zevos wrote the horn charts, something he’s done for Azevedo-organized tribute shows in the past. The band, he said in an email interview, consists of “people I’ve played with a lot over the years that I knew would be great playing Stones tunes.”

On keyboards and singing is his wife Diane Zevos. She’s also a member of Lichen, a band nearly as durable as the Stones, having marked 43 years together last August. “Di loves rock ’n’ roll, and adds so much to any band she plays in,” Zevos said. “We love playing together.”

Playing guitar and vocals is Wayne Hughes, a longtime collaborator of Zevos’. “We play together all the time in various situations, and he knows more about the Stones than anyone I know,” he explained. “As soon as Rob asked me to do this I said to myself, ‘I have to get Wayne,’ and he was eager to jump in.

Steve Forgione, though best known for his guitar work in local band Who Knows What, will move to drums for the show. “He grew up drumming in drum corps, and he is also a fantastic drummer,” Zevos said, adding, “Steve knows this material really well and I think because he is a guitar player he is a very musical drummer.”

On bass and vocals is a newer friend of Zevos, Peter Borden. “I met Peter while playing with him in another band and we found that we have the same taste in music,” he said. ‘Even more than that, we hit it off musically. When I found out he was into the Stones, he seemed like the logical choice, and it is working out really well.”

Zevos will handle the “Keef” parts on guitar. “A lot of them are in the open tunings that Keith Richards uses,” he said. “You can play all of the songs in standard tuning, but to get the same sound as Keith, on some songs you need to use the tunings. I like it, it’s really fun. I’ll need to bring four guitars.”

Rolling Stones Tribute Show

When: Saturday, Feb. 1, 2 p.m.
Where: Pembroke City Limits, 134 Main St., Suncook
More: pembrokecitylimits.com

Featured Photo: Rolling Stones, 1969 (Courtesy Photo).

The Music Roundup 25/01/30

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

• New Yorkers: Nosaj and Haight Keech’s new duo Wave Generators hit town in support of their latest LP, After the End. Released last year, the 11-track effort has elements of the rap rock that fueled New Kingdom, Nosaj’s former group, with the growling “New North” harkening back to ’90s era Iggy Pop. Also appearing are area favorites Cody Pope and Byron G., along with Nahreally. Thursday, Jan. 30, 8 p.m., Zo’s Place, 235 Main St., Nashua, wavegenerators.bandcamp.com.

• Family sound: Offering gorgeous close harmonies and delicate instrumentation, Golden Oak is fronted by the sibling duo of Zak and Lena Kendall. One writer described the mood of their unique music as “energetic intimacy.” Their most recent album, Room to Grow, explores the physical and spiritual effects of the climate crisis. Liz Simmons, known for her work with trio Low Lily, opens the show. Friday, Jan. 31, 8 p.m., BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, $31 at ccanh.com.

• Just ducky: After enough customers told her she was the best thing about Boston’s Duck Boat Tours, Jody Sloane went from delivering sit-down jokes while driving an amphibious vehicle to standup comedy. A regular favorite at the Doubletree Hotel showcase room, she’ll headline a weekend show. Saturday, Feb. 1, 8 p.m., Headliners Comedy Club, 700 Elm St., Manchester, $20 at eventbrite.com

• New romantic: Enjoy a Sunday afternoon sans football with highbrow melodies from Anthony Nunziata. In his Bocelli and Beyond show, the singer mixes operatic gems such as “O Sole Mio” and “Ave Maria” with pop hits like “When I Fall In Love” and originals one critic wrote have the “songwriting passion of a young Billy Joel combined with the soulfulness of Ed Sheeran.” Sunday, Feb. 2, 2 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $39 and up at palacetheatre.org.

• Helping hands: The Woodman Winter Warm-Up event has music from Gnarly Darling, a rootsy band playing originals and covers of bands like Wilco, Black Pumas and John Prine. There will be drinks, food and a raffle with custom guitars from Miranda Lambert and Luke Bryan, all to benefit the Woodman Museum’s mission “to advance and develop passion for history, nature, and the arts.” Tuesday, Feb. 4, 5 p.m., Chapel + Main, 83 Main St., Dover, $75 at simpletix.com.

Arts exchange

Colby-Sawyer showcases Italian program

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

Every year for more than two decades, students from Colby-Sawyer College in New London head to Italy for a semester at the Florence School of Fine Arts. The city serves as the study abroad program’s laboratory and studio. For the first time, an upcoming exhibition will show some of their works, along with those of the artists who run the school.

“Florence is filled with antiquities, art objects, museums and cathedrals; it’s very inspiring,” Jon Keenan, a professor who also runs the Davidow Fine Art Gallery at Colby-Sawyer, said in a recent phone interview. “These students are translating their experience of their studies there, and we’re able to exhibit it.”

Keenan got the idea during a visit last year with Florence School of Fine Arts founder Melania Lanzini, and photographer Charles Loverme, Lanzini’s husband, who runs the school with her. “I’ve been working with them pretty much since they started up,” he said. “We were saying, ‘We should have an exhibition, to highlight and celebrate our relationship.’”

Lanzini and Loverme will both display works.

A young man takes pictures of pictures on display in an art gallery.
Art by Colby-Sawyer students. Courtesy photo.

“Melania does a lot of lithography and collage work,” Keenan said. “She’s combining both traditional and contemporary approaches, working with some found objects, as well as depicting scenes in and around Florence and the area that they live in.”

In an artist statement, Loverme described the work he’ll bring to the exhibit: “For the past two decades, Italy has been both my home and my muse. Living in the historic center of Florence for 20 years, and now amidst the rolling hills of Chianti, I’ve found inspiration in the juxtaposition of city and countryside. This series explores these contrasting worlds.”

His black and white images primarily capture what Loverme calls “the timeless geometry of urban life, the interplay of light and shadow [that] highlights the city’s elegance,” while his color work focuses on rural subjects that “draw the eye to the small, overlooked details of the natural world — fallen leaves, scattered fruit, and the quiet poetry of decay.”

Representing Colby-Sawyer are Brian Cal-Mallo, who’s both a painter and photographer, printmaker Alex Jenkins, and Sota Morishita, a photographer. All are studio art and graphic design majors who studied in Florence during the summer program in 2024.

“Though varied in their chosen media, each artist shares common ground in finding inspiration in the contrasts of beauty in Florence, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, and the Tuscan region,” Keenan said. “This exhibition reminds us not only that art is a joy to experience but also a universal language and a vibrant expression of our shared humanity.”

The exhibit will open on Jan. 30 with the three student artists in attendance.

“We always do a nice reception to celebrate the audience and create community through the arts,” Keenan said. “We’re going to have lots of great food and beverages.”

It runs through April 2, and Loverme will visit on the final day for a meet and greet, and to discuss his work.

Funded by William H. and Sonja Carlson Davidow, the latter a 1956 Colby-Sawyer graduate, the gallery opened six years ago. Keenan was involved in the conception and execution of the state-of-the-art facility where it resides, which also has a black box theater and multiple facilities for students to create in.

It sits amidst natural beauty, with Mt. Kearsarge in view, and Keenan hosts six events a year in the gallery.

“My goal is to create community, bring people together through the arts,” he said. “This venue is the ideal place to do that — to provide learning for the public, and to support the arts. Whatever we can do to keep it happening is our privilege.”

Opening Reception: The Florence School of Fine Arts & Colby-Sawyer College Art Project

When: Thursday, Jan. 30, 4-6 p.m.
Where: Davidow Fine Art Gallery, 541 Main St., New London
More: colby-sawyer.edu

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Music meld

Co-bill promises collaboration

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

An upcoming show at Exeter’s Word Barn features a pair of unique performers both collaborating and performing their own music. Nate Sabat is an upright bass player who transforms his rhythm instrument into something all-encompassing. Rakish, the duo of Conor Hearn and Maura Shawn Scanlin, weds traditional Celtic music to modernity for a fresh sound.

The show is part of a four-date mini tour. “We’re really excited about it,” Hearn said, along with Scanlin, in a recent Zoom interview. “Nate’s going to play, and then we’ll play with Nate on his music, and Nate will play with us on our music…. it’s sort of this integrated thing that we’re trying to pull off.”

Rakish released their second-full length album, Now, O Now, in October. It’s a rich and varied work that kicks off with “Lonely Hotel Room,” a buoyant yet bittersweet ode to road weariness. The title track follows, one of two James Joyce poems set to music by Hearn, something he also did with W.B. Yeats’ “The Stolen Child” on their eponymous debut EP.

Hearn, a literature major at Tufts, delights in detecting song patterns in poetry. “Joyce was very interested in music, but we don’t necessarily hear the music that they had going on in their head when we read their poems except to the extent that we have their rhyme schemes and their meters and such,” he said. “To take a text like that and infer what a new melody could be lets us use some of our compositional muscles.”

The two took artistic risks on the new disc, like the Jamie Oshima-produced “765,” which echoes Natalie MacMaster’s 1999 crossover hit “In My Hands” with its fiddle electronica dance beat. It’s also the only track not helmed by Hearn and Scanlin, who elected to self-produce after working with Solas’s Seamus Egan on 2022’s Counting Down the Hours.

In addition to being lyrically compelling, with standout songs like “Island in the Sea” and “Lightly Come or Lightly Go,” Now, O Now stands out for another reason, Scanlin pointed out.

“The entirety of the album is all original musically, even excluding those two James Joyce poetry pieces,” she said, adding that she’s pleased to have it as a unifier, “instead of trying to come up with a thread about how JS Bach relates to this other old Irish tune relates to a tune that I wrote yesterday or something, which was the case on the previous album.”

Scanlin hails from Boone, North Carolina. Despite growing up in the Appalachian region, she initially studied classical music, but repeated trips to folk festivals with her parents got her interested in fiddlers like MacMaster, Hanneke Cassel and Liz Carroll. Hearn grew up in Washington, D.C., and got into Celtic music at summer camps and other places.

The pair met while both were attending different colleges, Hearn at Tufts and Scanlin at the New England Conservatory. Mutual friends and shared interests brought them together. They’d jam at Irish sessions at clubs like The Burren and The Druid; later they were in a band called Pumpkin Bread, before pairing up to focus on their shared favorite music.

One of the duo’s earliest supporters was Brian O’Donovan, a major force in New England’s Celtic music community and beyond before his death in 2023. “Brian was definitely the first to really elevate us and what we were doing and give us a platform and throw gigs at us,” Hearn said. Scanlin concurred, saying, “in a more tangible sense Brian literally did give us our very first gig together as Rakish, so our relationship as a band goes back all the way.”

Recently Rakish was named as the inaugural Brian O’Donovan Legacy Artist, part of an effort to memorialize the man who, here in New Hampshire, regularly hosted events like Celtic Christmas at Derry’s Pinkerton Academy. The weekend after this interview they served as resident artists at the Boston Celtic Music Festival, which featured a musical tribute to O’Donovan along with the awarding of six $2,500 grants in his name, with Rakish being among the recipients.

“Brian brought so much to Celtic music,” Scanlin said, from connecting people Stateside to folks back in Ireland as well as bringing the Northeast community and the rest of the U.S. together. “We’re really grateful to him, and also honored … to be stepping foot into this Brian O’Donovan Legacy role for its very first year. We’re so excited to see where that fund goes, and just totally excited to be the first in that role.”

Rakish and Nate Sabat

When: Thursday, Jan. 23, 7 p.m.
Where: Word Barn, 66 Newfields Road, Exeter
Tickets: $16 and up at portsmouthnhtickets.com

Featured Photo: Rakish. Photo by Sasha Pedro.

The Music Roundup 25/01/23

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

• B.I.G. Dead: Preposterous though it may look on paper, the sound of Grateful for Biggie makes sense. A melding of the Dead and the late Notorious B.I.G. interjects songs like “West L.A. Fadeaway” and “Eyes of the World” with lyrical flow from the late rapper, as jam band chops meet urban poetry. Watch two very different eras join together for a singular sonic experience. Thursday, Jan. 23, 8 p.m., Stone Church, 5 Granite St., Newmarket, $20 at portsmouthnhtickets.com.

• Blues return: In the middle of the 2010s Delanie Pickering made a mark on the Concord music scene with incendiary guitar playing and inspired singing. Now that she’s relocated to the Cape, it’s been too long since she’s done an area show, but that changes when Johnny Hoy & the Bluefish hit town. Pickering joined the popular Martha’s Vineyard band after laying low for a bit following her arrival. Friday, Jan. 24, 7:30 p.m., BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, $28 at ccanh.com.

• Metal ladies: Three female-fronted Granite State bands appear at an event dubbed Metal Queens & Burgers. Under the Horizon is a power trio led by singer/bassist Izzy McIntyre that opened for Great White at Tupelo last summer. The Saturn Cycle, the duo of Ariana Doccola and Jordan Leonard, use looping for a big sound and have a new album due next month. Vermilion recently appeared at Pizzastock. Saturday, Jan. 25, 8 p.m., BAD BRGR, 1015 Elm St., Manchester, $10 at the door.

• Comedy tonight: Steve Scarfo will deliver the laughs at Chunky’s this weekend. A native Mainer, Scarfo came up in the Boston club scene and once took part in a mashup of Survivor and Last Comic Standing that’s worth a look on YouTube. Saturday, Jan. 25, 8 p.m., Chunky’s, 707 Huse Road, Manchester, $20 at chunkys.com.

• Southern accent: After attending a weekly cumbia night in San Francisco, Chuck Prophet became fascinated with the rhythmic Colombia-based music. During treatments for a stage 4 lymphoma diagnosis, he marinated in it, which led to the making of Wake the Dead, a life-affirming live in the studio album made with his band and two members of cumbia combo ¿Qiensave? Wednesday, Jan. 29, 8 p.m., 3S Artspace, 319 Vaughan St., Portsmouth, $22 and up at 3sarts.org.

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