For all the art and music fans there is a particular treat happening this weekend at the Bridge. Charlottesville’s own HzCollective, a very busy and active avant-garde music collective, is putting on a two day festival for experimental music. While Saturday will be held at the Bridge, the Sunday event will be at Gallery 5 in Richmond and thus cater to the initiative’s other goal, namely to facilitate an interaction and communication between the two communities. In the past the collective held a number of smaller events which were always extremely fascinating and artistically stimulating. Even if you are not a music fan, but perhaps you like contemporary art, I am sure you will find something you like. A few acts are working together with visual artists and film makers for example. Other acts, particularly the ones later in the day, may even excite your dancing feet here and there.

I think the initiative deserves all the support and praise it can get, for their festival is entirely self organized and self financed and still manages to get a number of nationally and internationally known acts from all over the world along with local artists. It runs all day (well from 3 pm to 11 pm) on both days and if you want to stop by for only an act or two it will be greatly apreciated.

After the break I’ve posted the info from their website, which lists the individual acts. If you actually go to their website you can find music samples from almost all of them, or at least their myspace pages: »Read More

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Our beloved staff writer Shaun has posted on the Jazz scene in town a number of times before, but I feel it’s time to give a little update, especially with the arrival of new readers that, among other things, the beginning of the semester shall hopefully bring. (We do need indeed more people to write about music, art, theatre, literature etc. to give this site more variety. Shaun cannot do it all by himself!)

So here is my subjective preview of Jazz for the next week and a half. Before people feel the need to point it out: yes, some of my own bands will be in it, but I’ll make sure to give a fair overview, including the latest jive-talk of the town.

So this Friday, August 22nd, we’ll start with a rare Jazz treat. John Carden and the Greenwich Swing Time will play at Friday’s after Five at the Pavilion. Those who have never heard him perform surely missed out on something rare. It is not necessarily the most swinging or avant-garde of all ensembles in town but they are a lot of fun. Think: Billy Eckstine meets Broadway career and then gets endorsed by the Charlottesville Jazz society. The backup band features Humberto Sales of Beleza Brazil fame. His playing alone will, I think, make this a nice Summer evening event.

Also at Friday’s after Five the local jack-of-all-trades Matthew Willner will perform with his Jazz quartet. Who knows what instrument he’ll be playing here. Every time I have seen him in the past I have been astonished how creative and sophisticated his playing is and he surely surrounds himself with great musicians. He deserves the big stage.

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This just happened to me on my way home from work. 10 minutes ago.

I was reading a play by this German romanticist playwright and listened to Albert Ayler on my IPod, in short being my pretentious self, as this toothless construction worker starts talking to me. He was sweating beer, or at least I smelled something that I felt had to be beer, and looked pretty shaken by heat, work and what must have been a tough life.

I thought he had asked me if the trolley had come by yet. So I took out my earphones and politely asked him to repeat his question. In fact he had wondered if I was reading poetry. Now, I get that a lot. People ask me what I read, I tell them its something German and then they tell me all about their feelings about Germany, their ancestors, their food preference and how Germany makes good beer but plays lousy soccer these days (in fact they did today…bummer). So my initial reaction was a sigh and I answered that I was not reading poetry but a play by Schiller. To my surprise he said he didn’t like Schiller much but he was a fan of Brecht and Rilke. I cannot imagine there are many construction workers in Charlottesville that even know that these guys are poets, let alone know how to pronounce their names. I was impressed, but still didn’t feel like sitting next to him on the bus.

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This is not so much a post as more a survey. I suppose just like me, many of you are musicians, artists, actors, playwrights, poets and what not in their own right. How do you feel about using (or perhaps abusing) cvilleMUSE to make your own performances known?

Personally I am tempted every time I see my own band not listed in the weekend outlooks, but I also feel it takes away from the integrity of the site if I stared posting about my group’s upcoming shows. On the other hand, since one can always post anonymously and pretend that one is just a well-wishing friend, this may be a more honest way of doing it.

I just wonder what everybody thinks.

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All right, this is my first post and I want to start it off with a review. A (slightly) negative review. I realize this is not the best way to say hello, but somehow the bad shows always provide enough energy to get up and actually make the post.

I attended last night’s concert at Old Cabell Hall. It was a student recital of Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians,” conducted and staged by the ever so creative Maximilian Kayser Frantz.

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