Category Archives: Previews

Singer/Songwriter Jimmy Fong Bridges Cultures, with Help from John Denver

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OCT. 17 CONCERT BENEFITS ERIC LARSEN ENDOWMENT AT UNM

Gig Photo 1 Growing up in Penang, Malaysia, in the ’60s, singer/songwriter Jimmy Fong encountered
popular Western music on the radio, thanks to a nearby Australian air base and a steady flow of Americans on R&R from Vietnam. The songs of one artist, in particular, captured Fong’s ear: John Denver.

Fong’s fascination with this native New Mexican (Roswell; December 31, 1943) put him on a
musical path that has made him a popular entertainer in Australia, where he now lives, and the Far East. That path led to a meeting with his idol when Denver toured through Malaysia, and it is bringing him to Albuquerque, where he will share his story in a multimedia concert titled “My Time with John Denver,” backed by the award-winning local band Breaking Blue. Proceeds from the event, sponsored by ListenABQ and the New Mexico Music Awards, will benefit the Eric Larsen Endowment at UNM, which offers scholarships to students who have declared music or the recorded arts as their major. Continue reading →

Finding the Real in the Weird

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FABIO_ALBUM_COVERFloozy, His Name Is Fabio (Flophouse Records)
A Review

On their second release, His Name Is Fabio (Flophouse Records), the trio Floozy—
Bronson Elliot (acoustic guitar, accordion,
vocals), Tanya Nuñez (bass, background
vocals), and Lauren Addario (drums)—
continues their exploration of the truly weird corners of the human heart. The subjects of most of their tightly focused songs—a bird on a wire; a murderer; a desperado; unfulfilled obsessives, one knee-deep in baby diapers and another armed with plastic cups and a highway overpass; an uncertain lover, a long-suffering friend—are warped, and so are the songs. Lyrics are crammed into tight spaces. Line breaks fall midword. Odd rhythmic patterns and chord
progressions and a complete disregard for genre—you’ll find rock, folk, classical, punk, tango, and pop—defy a listener’s expectations.

In short, these songs break the rules, and that’s why they work. With broken rules and minimal instrumentation—made possible by Nuñez’s edgy, expressive bass—Floozy has developed a compelling signature sound, creating evocative musical settings. What’s more, their warped, wounded, and weird subjects open real insights into the human heart that apply, sometimes uncomfortably, to all of us normal people. Continue reading →

Bev Rogoff: Song and Schtick Woman

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Bev Rogoff swings.

If Fanny Brice were alive today, she might have some serious competition from Albuquerque’s Bev Rogoff. Of course, if Brice were alive, she’d be 123 years old, so how hard could it be for a mere octogenarian like Bev Rogoff to give her a run for her money?

Rogoff has certainly had plenty of practice vocalizing: she started at age six, putting on shows under her older brother’s direction in the basement of the family home in Denver. “The first song my brother had me singing was—you probably haven’t heard it before, and I don’t even know that I remember all the lyrics—but it was”—and she breaks into song—‘Oh, Johnny, oh, Johnny, how you can love/Oh, Johnny, oh, Johnny, heavens above.’ And I didn’t know this was a sex-rated song,” she says, laughing.

Her 25-minute set at the Outpost this Thursday, where her quartet will include Sid Fendley on piano, Michael Olivola on bass, and John Bartlit on drums, may or may not be sex rated, but it will include some tunes from her two CDs, Songs and Schtick and Treasures, and plenty of
chutzpah. She’ll be followed by the Jazz Brasileiro Duo, with vocalist Debo Orlovsky and guitarist Tony Cesarano, and by the Cesarano’s quartet, with pianist Rick Bowman, bassist John
Blackburn, and percussionist John Bartlit. Continue reading →

Doug Lawrence Introduces a Deep-Fried Organ Trio

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DL in RedFat and juicy. Such a big and palpable presence that you could almost settle into it like an easy chair. Doug Lawrence’s instantly recognizable sound on the tenor saxophone—at once
romantic and hip—conjures a state of grace that many of today’s young players speed
heedlessly by, leaving a blizzard of notes in their wake. For Lawrence, lead tenor saxophonist in the Count Basie Orchestra, it is all about the sound and the story, and in the intimate, funky
setting of the organ trio, he can stretch both out in a way that the big band does not permit.

This Sunday, he and Hammond B-3 specialist Bobby Floyd and drummer David Gibson will all play hooky from the big band and turn up the funk factor at the Outpost in the final
Albuquerque concert of the 2015 New Mexico Jazz Festival. Continue reading →

NM Jazz Fest Honors John Trentacosta

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John Trentacosta. Photo by Paul Slaughter.

John Trentacosta. Photo by Paul Slaughter.

Several High-Profile Friends Join the Drummer in Concert This Week

Since moving from New York City to Santa Fe back in 1992, John Trentacosta has made it his business to invigorate the jazz community in northern New Mexico, and he plays numerous roles to accomplish that: drummer, band leader, producer, educator, and radio DJ. This
Thursday at the Outpost, the New Mexico Jazz Festival honors his contributions by presenting him in concert. He’ll be joined by several friends who are gathering from across the country and within New Mexico to celebrate Trentacosta’s commitment and to play with one of the
swingingest drummers on the scene. They include vocalist Giacomo Gates, flutist Ali Ryerson, trumpeter Michael Morreale, reedman Arlen Asher, pianist Bob Fox, and bassist Earl Sauls.

“It’s a tradition of the festival to honor some major figure in the New Mexico jazz scene,” says festival codirector Tom Guralnick. As bandleader of Straight Up—“one of the standout groups in New Mexico jazz,” says Guralnick—as producer of several series over the years in a variety of venues, from Bumble Bee’s Baja Grill to the Museum Café, as a key figure in the formation of the Santa Fe Music Collective, Trentacosta has had a major impact. Continue reading →