Frank’s Picks: November
Recommendations of where to go and what to hear in Westchester and nearby in November 2019. For monthly “Picks,” visit artsw.org/frankspicks.
Classical/ Chamber Music
Saturday, Nov. 2, 8pm & Sunday, Nov. at 3pm
Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah)
Suppose someone looked all over the country to line up the most promising future classical instrumentalists and then invited them all together, showcasing these amazing up-and-coming musicians so you can see them up-close-and-personal before they get famous. That’s what the Artistic Director of the Evnin Rising Stars program, Pamela Frank, does every year at Caramoor, for 11 years now. This program is well defined by the Caramoor as “…an incubator for the next generation of leaders in classical music performance.” You will be treated by amazing virtuosity.
Saturday Program:
Haydn: String Quartet in B Minor, Op. 64, No. 2, Hob.III:68
Beethoven: Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 16
—Intermission—
Brahms: Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in B Minor, Op. 115
Sunday Matinee
Haydn: String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2, HOB.III:32
Stravinsky: L’histoire du Soldat Suite (world premiere of new narration by Bruce Adolphe, commissioned by Caramoor)
—Intermission—
Brahms: String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36
Blues
Thursday, Nov. 14, 8pm
Tarrytown Music Hall (13 Main Street, Tarrytown)
Hot off Eric Clapton’s 2019 Crossroads Guitar Festival in Dallas, Texas, where he blew the roof of the place, Grammy Award-winning guitarist Buddy Guy comes to Westchester for a rare local appearance. He is one of the last of the original Chicago blues guitarists of the golden era, who played with Muddy Waters and Junior Wells, among others. He was a session guitarist on Muddy’s Chess classic, Folk Singer. Jimi Hendrix cited him as a primary inspiration. Eric Clapton had allegedly called him “the best living guitarist.” As a child, he picked cotton on his parent’s sharecropper farm in Louisiana and now he is one of Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 100 guitarists. He is by now 82 years old, but trust me, he is totally on top of his game and one of the best showmen you will ever see in your lifetime. Prepare for an unforgettable musical experience.
African American Roots & String Music
Dom Flemons & Amythyst Kiah
Thursday, Nov. 14, 8pm
The Ridgefield Playhouse (80 E Ridge Road, Ridgefield, CT)
There is a fantastic revival of African American pre-blues, folk roots music happening, and two of that movement’s primary players are coming to the Playhouse together. Dom Flemons was formerly with the Carolina Chocolate Drops with Rhiannon Giddens and he has risen to great heights as a solo artist. Singer/songwriter Amythyst Kiah is now reaching fame as a member of Rhiannon Gidden’s quartet, Our Native Daughters. The pre-blues African American string music encompasses Appalachian and Piedmont banjo, Minstrel and string music stretching back to slavery days. The Grammy Award-winner, two-time Emmy Award nominee is known as “The American Songster” since his repertoire of music covers nearly 100 years of American folklore, ballads and tunes. Amythyst Kiah is a highly creative singer whose music is at once ancient, ethereal, and somehow also fresh, new and exciting
Blues
Sonny Landreth & Cindy Cashdollar
Friday, November 15, 8pm (Doors 5pm)
Daryl’s House (130 NY-22, Pawling)
Two of the world’s very best slide guitarists in one show. That is said without an angstrom of exaggeration. Expect breathtaking roots and blues guitar: Sonny on electric and Cindy on acoustic lap steel. Sonny Landreth, from Louisiana, is a wizard on the slide, a musician’s musician; Cindy Cashdollar is a five-time Grammy Award-winner who can hold her own, even against a maestro like Landreth. Some people have said she is the best female slide guitarist ever, which is an insult. She is in fact one of the best ever, period. The Woodstock native has played locally with John Herald, Paul Butterfield, and Levon Helm and Rick Danko of The Band. Eric Clapton called Sonny Landreth “the most underestimated musician on the planet, and also one of the most advanced.” He has played with the best: John Hiatt, Junior Wells, John Mayall, Irma Thomas, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Kenny Loggins, Mark Knopfler, Eric Johnson, Robben Ford, Vince Gill, Bonnie Raitt and more.
Looking Forward:
Richard Thompson (solo)
Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 7pm
Daryl’s House (130 NY-22, Pawling)
To see guitar maestro Richard Thomson, formerly of Fairport Convention, in such an intimate venue is a treat, so get your tickets now, as this will sell out quickly.
Frank Matheis is an award-winning music journalist, author and radio producer with an eclectic musical taste that covers the gamut of music from Americana to Zydeco, from Jazz to World Music. He is a regular contributor to Living Blues magazine and other music publications, and the publisher of www.thecountryblues.com. His radio documentaries have been heard on three continents in three languages.
