Tag: 260212

Dinner & Django

The Livery welcomes Christine Tassan et les Imposteures

With an infectious blend of swing music and jazz created by guitar innovator Django Reinhardt, Christine Tassan et les Imposteures formed in Montreal in 2003. It was a time when Reinhardt’s style of jazz had few adherents in the French-Canadian city. That none were Manouche like Reinhardt helped explain the band’s name.

There were other reasons for the moniker. Mainly, that Tassan is a woman in a male-dominated genre, and the original Imposteures were all female. “So we felt a little bit like impostors in that very man thing,” she said in a recent Zoom interview. “Also, we come from different backgrounds.”

That final one’s the rub. Tassan and her band draw from the Django canon but add elements all their own.

“We like to incorporate folk songs,” she said. “Martine, my violinist, comes from a classical background and a lot of traditional Quebecois music. So there’s that influence coming in our compositions and shows. Kind of an impostor, you know?”

Such a melting pot is reflected in the title track from their latest album, Sur la route, which translates to On the Road.

“It has the accents of Jack Kerouac, the chords of Willie Nelson and the fingers of Django Reinhardt,” Tassan told the crowd at last year’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven.

The through line is music that, as Steve Martin once said of the banjo, easily inspires a smile, with Tassan’s playful stage presence taking it home.

“We bring a lot of humor in it,” Tassan said. “When we talk to people in between songs, there’s some kind of participation.”

That an all-acoustic genre also inspires infectious toe-tapping can be traced back to Reinhardt, she continued. “Django heard swing music coming from the States, and Louis Armstrong; they were his main influences … for sure, that’s something that is really lively.”

French-born, Tassan came to Canada not for music, but as an electrical engineering exchange student in the final year of her studies. “A friend of mine was coming to Montreal, so I followed her,” she said. “I stayed one year and really enjoyed the city, and the country. I decided to migrate.”

Music came next. Tassan dabbled in a variety of idioms, beginning with classical.

“Then I did a lot of … more like folk songs, writing and singing my own compositions,” she recalled. In 1998 she discovered some of Django’s CDs and the die was cast. “I was totally blown away.”

Tassan began to transcribe and practice Reinhardt’s solos with a small group of fellow acolytes, later launching her own band.

“From then I saw that there was really something happening with that music, we were really having some success,” she said. “So it started from there and never stopped.”

The Imposteurs lineup has changed over the years, but the one constant is violinist Martine Gaumond. “She’s been with me nearly since the beginning,” Tassan said. “We do a lot of arrangements together, and we are the heart, I would say, of the band. She plays the violin beautifully, and she writes all the little vocal harmonies we sing.”

The current lineup is rounded out by upright bass player Mathieu Gagné and his longtime compatriot, guitar player Francis Tetu, who brings a unique approach to their music. “Not exactly a traditional way … but he is a very, very virtuoso guitarist,” Tassan said.” Both joined in early January.

After playing at Wolfeboro’s Friends of Music to start February, Tassan and her band will perform at Sunapee’s Livery to follow a sit-down Valentine’s Day dinner. It’s Tassan’s first show at the historic venue. After, they’ll head home.

“We’ve been playing several times in New Hampshire, it’s fun,” she said. “It’s a beautiful place.”

Christine Tassan et les Imposteures – Dinner & Show
When: Saturday, Feb. 14, at 5:30 p.m.
Where: The Livery, 58 Main St., Sunapee Harbor
Tickets: $50 at thelivery.org

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 26/02/12

Wind & Fire, Kool & the Gang and Wild Cherry. There will be winery selections, a full bar with themed cocktails, beer and non-alcoholic drinks. Thursday, Feb. 12, at 7:30 p.m., LaBelle Winery, 14 Route 111, Derry, $40, labellewinerey.com.

• Immigrant songs: Though a fan-coined name reflects their country of origin, Young Dubliners owe more to Irish bands like Boomtown Rats and Big Country than jigs and reels, and classic rockers love them. Bernie Taupin wrote the title track for their breakout 2000 album, Red, and praise from Jethro Tull leader Ian Anderson while opening for them on tour was a boost. Friday, Feb. 6, at 8 p.m., Friday, Feb. 13, at 7:30 p.m., Rex Theater, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $44, palacetheatre.org.

• Moody melodic: Fans of Nirvana, Strokes and Super Bowl pregame heroes Green Day will enjoy Pointless Culture, performing in the Capital City’s premier basement bar with A Moment of Green. Last summer the group, formed by two guys named Harrison, released the 15-track Better Off Dead. Standout songs include the loping, dreamy psych-rocker “Utah” and “Liftoff.” Friday, Feb. 13, at 9 p.m., Penuche’s Ale House, Bicentennial Square, Concord, pointlessculture.com.

• Movie mirth: Spend Valentine’s Day laughing with comedian Tim McKeever, the second of two nights of standup at a Manchester dine-in movie house (Kenny Rogerson performs Friday). Saturday, Feb. 14, at 8:30 p.m., Chunky’s Cinema Pub, $20, chunkys.com.

• Longhair music: Carry the Mardi Gras spirit beyond Fat Tuesday with Soggy Po’ Boys, a Granite State octet that’s been spreading Big Easy joy for the past 14 years. They now have female energy via new lead singer Shaina Schwartz. “There’s such a rich history of music in New Orleans,” now-departed founder Stu Dias said in 2024. “If you ask me, all American music came out of there.” Sunday, Feb. 15, at 7 p.m., Big Bear Lodge, 16 Route 13, Brookline, $25, andresinstitute.org.com.

The Emergency, by George Packer

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 401 pages)

During the Covid-19 pandemic, George Packer often traveled between rural New York and New York City. They seemed like two different worlds, he told the Pittsburgh Review of Books. The dichotomy underpins Packer’s dystopian novel The Emergency.

It centers on 48-year-old surgeon Dr. Hugo Rustin, struggling to adapt to his new life after the collapse of the government, defined only as “the empire.” There was a standoff in the capital that lasted for weeks and devolved into fighting between mobs, and before long the leadership and police fled and looting began. A new form of governance emerged, more egalitarian than the old system, marked by the motto “Together.”

Rustin was happy to do what he could to keep the hospital running. But as Together took hold, he began to resent some of the changes — how people under his command called him by his first name, how titles like “nurse” or “housekeeper” were replaced with “healing associate” and patients were called “healing recipients.”

He finally snaps when a junior associate points out a mistake at the end of a grueling day. That results in Rustin being called into a meeting — a “Restoration Ring” — where his colleagues recite principles of Together like “I am no better and neither are you” and “Listen to the young.” Rustin tries to apologize without compromising his values, and it doesn’t go well. He is advised to spend a month wandering around the city and then come back and share the lessons he has learned.

Meanwhile, Rustin’s wife, Annabelle, is caught up in the spirit of Together and starts a ministry of sorts helping to care for the homeless “Strangers” constructing tent encampments near their home. His son Pan and his daughter Selva, too, have taken up the cause.

It is the father-daughter relationship that is at the heart of this book, as Dr. Rustin and Selva attempt a dangerous journey in a dystopian world even while bickering about the ordinary things families bicker about. Rustin understands that Selva’s beliefs, as much as he thinks they are wrong, come from a good place — at one point, she tells him, she has been angry with him “because you never believed the world could be better or worse than the one you gave me. And that breaks my heart.”

And Packer makes it clear that there were things wrong in the pre-Emergency world; for one thing, the disdainful way Rustin and those of his standing referred to the bottom 10 percent, the ones barely getting by and often succumbing to addiction, as “Excess Burghers.”

But there are uncomfortable things in the new world, too, such as the “Suicide Spot” — a gallows where young people go and put a noose around their neck, and are then talked out of the act by young people serving as “Guardians.” It is a ghastly sort of therapy, but the Guardians take pride that they have not lost a child. And there are ghastly things that father and daughter encounter as they venture beyond the city’s borders in hope of reuniting a “Stranger” father in the city with his missing son.

From the opening pages of the novel it is clear we are being asked to consider what happens when a society of disparate means and morality throws out the old ways of being for a new order. But it is not clear whether Dr. Rustin is the hero or the antihero in this world. That is one of the mysteries that propels the reader through the story; it is as compelling as whether Hugo, Annabelle and their children can stay together in a Together world. Give Packer credit for not revealing his hand; this is a deeply nuanced book. Most astonishingly, it’s also occasionally funny. B+

Featured Photo: The Emergency, by George Packer

Oscar documentaries

Many of this year’s Oscar-nominated feature-length (four of the five nominees) and short-film documentaries (three of the five) are available for home viewing and make for compelling, though not particularly lighthearted, watches.

My pick in the Documentary Feature category would be The Perfect Neighbor (Netflix), a chilling look at a sour neighbor relationship that turns tragic and is told largely through police body cams. The movie gets the drumbeat of dread going from the beginning.

It’s often the inmates telling their own story in The Alabama Solution (HBO Max), which looks at the abuse and neglect of prisoners in the state’s prison system and their attempts to get somebody to listen to their plight. Come See Me in the Good Light (Apple TV+) is a sad, beautiful and frequently funny look at Colorado Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson as they battle an incurable cancer, fighting for a chance to do one last live show and get more time with their wife, poet and author Megan Falley. In Mr. Nobody Against Putin (VOD and streaming on Kino Film Collection), a videographer at a school in Russia is horrified by the increasing amount of government propaganda pushed on the students and unsure how to help them and himself.

Of the short documentaries: I watched the 33-minute All the Empty Rooms (Netflix) in small chunks over several days — it offers heartwrenching interviews with four families whose kids were killed in school shootings and gives us a look at the bedrooms they left behind, with all their photos and stuffies and bits of hopeful kid-ness. In Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud (HBO Max), Craig Renaud talks about the work and death of his journalist brother, including a look at Brent’s focus on the people caught in war zones. Also on HBO Max, The Devil Is Busyoffers a well-constructed day-in-the-life of a woman who works at a women’s health care clinic and the stress and threat of violence she and her colleagues face.

Album Reviews 26/02/12

Amanda McCarthy, Looking For The Light (self-released)

Surely you recognize this country-pop singer-songwriter’s name if you’ve followed New Hampshire music news for any amount of time. After racking up a good number of big-time opening gigs and awards for her winning writing and big-time sound, she left the area for the glitz of Nashville. It sounds to me like she’s on the right track with this album, which is only her second and really just needs to be heard by the right Music City VIP at the right time. This one opens with the instant ear-grabber “Vodka,” whose rich and delicious chorus evokes peak KT Tunstall right from the gate, after which she flexes her bluegrass/Americana muscles with “Normal,” a deep, lush and well-constructed joint that has a slight Wilco flavor to it. “Fine” tells me that she’s been listening to Chappell Roan with an eye toward improving the formula; “LOL WTF” shoots for the Tay-Tay demographic and hits nothing but net while vibe-checking 1990s Wilson Phillips. I have no complaints whatsoever. A+

Maria Schneider, American Crow (ArtistShare Records)

It’s a little unsightly that this EP isn’t listed in the Minnesota composer/jazz orchestra leader’s Wikipedia page, but between crowdfunding her work (ArtistShare was the first crowdfunding site), composing music and wrangling an orchestra, it’s unsurprising that things get lost in the shuffle. Clocking in around 30 minutes, this record is an astonishing achievement, a brilliantly elaborate post-bop big-band effort with touches of rock; it’s one that needs to be heard to experience its symphonic ebbs and flows. Schneider, a multiple Grammy winner who was a 2021 finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in music in 2021, has a deeply organic, breathe-in-breathe-out touch, dedicated to “the art of listening,” as she puts it; Wayne Shorter described her ensemble as rendering “the very stuff of life into music.” This tuneage is brilliantly but unobtrusively listenable, fit for practically any set of ears; the constant sparring between guitarist Jeff Miles and trumpeter Mike Rodriguez is claimed to mimic our post-cooperative world, characterizing “a society at verbal war, screaming from their echo chambers.” Don’t we know it. A+

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Ack, look out, the next Friday-load of new albums will be dumped into your streaming service on Feb. 13, yes, a Friday the 13th, as if my expectations weren’t, as they are every week, already lower than the Earth’s magma layer! Actually there are three Friday the 13ths this year, which is better than five or 12 of them at least, so there’s that; we simply must stay positive in these Lovecraftian end times, or Cthulhu will have beef! Speaking of beef, Charli XCX is said to have a problem with Taylor Swift, according to people who take that nonsense seriously, but never mind that, because this week Charli is releasing the soundtrack to the new Wuthering Heights movie, the (literally) 30th film adaptation of the 1847 Emily Brontë novel to be burped into theaters since 1920, but this one is special because big budget or whatever. Far as that goes, the other day the 2026 film’s star, Margot Robbie, tweeted this after she invited a bunch of her girlfriends to a private screening: “Twenty women were like frothing at the mouth. They were like rabid dogs. There was screaming and sobbing. If Jacob walked in right now, they’d eat him.” See that, folks, this is why it’s difficult to be a man in this timeline, you gals only care about one thing, but anyway, a lady friend replied to that tweet with “This is the kind of press you do when you know your movie is terrible and you are desperate to drum up business,” which I suppose is kind of cynical, but I’ll never know for sure, because if I ever do watch a film version, it won’t be this Barbie one or whatever, it’ll be the most iconic version, the classic 1939 one featuring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, but that sort of depends on whether I ever run out of new episodes of Cheaters, because I know I’ve seen one or two PBS versions, so I already know that it’s just a story about dealing with a boyfriend who kind of sucks, don’t we all? Of course, Charli XCX was a great choice for soundtracking this new remake, because she’s sort of like Chappell Roan except for being like Madonna, just check out the teaser single, “Chains Of Love,” from this album! Naturally it is epic, like if Enya and Lorde recorded a duet, echo-y Celtic drums and gigantic eerie choruses stolen from Highlander or whatever. We bad boyfriends are the source of all art!

• Gogol Bordello, the New York-based Romani/Ukrainian-flavored punk band, isn’t done causing political trouble or whatever their problem is, no sir, because their new album, We Mean It Man, is heading to your Pirate Bay outlets as we speak! The title track is a masterwork of 1980s synths, antique robot vocal effects, and, of course, manic spazzing. I have no idea what they’re even trying to say, but the video’s worth it for the fake eight-bit graphics alone!

• Australian indie band Howling Bells drops their new album Strange Life this week! The single, “Heavy Lifting,” is a sleazy little thing with a shoegaze beat and Karen O-style vocals; it isn’t very special at all in my opinion, but it might be the coolest thing you’ve ever heard, I just don’t know!

• Lastly we have Converge, a metalcore band from Salem, Mass., which means I must be nice to them up to a point. They have been around since 1990 and are said to be very ferocious, with interesting lyrical concepts, but I’ve never listened to anything by them, so I assume they sound like Tool but with more heaviness, not that that’d be difficult, but we’ll find out right now as I preview the title track from their new LP, Love Is Not Enough! Yup, nope, it sounds pretty much like Cannibal Corpse, not Tool, so there it is, folks, the first time I’ve been wrong since 1998.

Featured Photo: Amanda McCarthy, Looking For The Light and Maria Schneider, American Crow (ArtistShare Records)

Brown Butter Fruit Blondies

  • 8 Tablespoons (1 stick) butter, browned
  • 3/4 cup (150 g) sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 cup (120 g) all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon citric acid (optional) – I have discovered that citric acid and browned butter complement each other very well. On the other hand, you might not have a bag of the stuff on hand. It’s one of those ingredients that you rarely need but keep finding uses for if you have it around.
  • 3 ounces (85 g) chocolate or white chocolate chips
  • 1 cup (150 g) frozen fruit – Most frozen fruit from a supermarket will work well for this. I particularly like the idea of a “tropical fruit blend” that you often find, with frozen pieces of mango, banana, pineapple and for some reason strawberries. My particular preference is that I’m not crazy about raspberries or blackberries because of the seeds, but that’s a personal thing.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Grease and line a 9×13” baking pan with parchment paper.

You can absolutely use an electric mixer to combine all these ingredients, but this is actually a pretty easy throw-together recipe that you can old-school your way through in a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. Mix the browned butter and sugar together. If you are using an electric mixer, beat them together for a couple of minutes, until they get thoroughly combined.

Mix in an egg and the vanilla, then the dry ingredients. If you’re being super-conscientious, you might want to whisk the flour, baking powder, salt and citric acid together separately. If you don’t feel up to it, don’t worry. Betty Crocker and a team of commandos in Kevlar aprons will not come crashing through your window on zip-lines to arrest you on charges of baking laziness. You can just put the mixing bowl on a kitchen scale and add the amount of each by weight. If you do that, just make certain that you stir in the salt and citric acid first, so you can stir the mixture thoroughly and make sure they are evenly distributed.

Stir the chocolate chips in by hand, then transfer everything to the baking pan. Smooth the mixture out with your spoon, making sure you push it into all four corners. Finally, push the pieces of frozen fruit into the top surface of the batter. It should just about take up all the available surface area.

Pop the pan into the oven, and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until it isn’t jiggly anymore and has browned a bit. Remove from oven, and set aside to cool.

When you’re ready to serve these bad boys, lift everything out by the parchment paper, then lay it out flat on your kitchen counter and cut it into brownie-sized pieces. If you have good self-control, this might be 12 or even 15 pieces. If you’ve had a particularly challenging day, it might be six unreasonably large pieces.

If you are in the mood to eat these with ice cream, bless you. However, hard-won experience has taught me that the cold ice cream will toughen the blondies up to the point where they are difficult to cut through with a spoon. You’d be better off dicing your blondie — reasonably sized or not — into small pieces, and sprinkling them on top of the ice cream.

Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.

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