Wednesday Salsa & Cuban Jazz

7:00PM-10:00PM

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NOUVELLE VAGUE with Brian Lopez

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Bossa Nova = Nouvelle Vague = New Wave. This transliteration was the starting point for Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux’s unique project, which, by appropriating the punk and post-punk cannon and running it through the Bossa Nova filter, reinvented the cover band genre, revealing new and brilliant talents along the way: Camille, Phoebe Killdeer, Nadeah, Mélanie Pain, and Liset Alea.

The group’s first two albums, Nouvelle Vague (2004) and Bande A Part (2006)  defined their unique sound with Bossa versions of New Wave Classics. Their third album NV3 (2009) featured collaborations with Depeche Mode's Martin Gore, Ian McCullouch from Echo and the Bunnymen, Terry Hall from The Specials, Barry Adamson, The Saints & Minimal Compact.

Now having sold over a million records since 2004 Nouvelle Vague are back with their fifth album I Could Be Happy, which will be released in September 2016. The full band are back to celebrate the release around the main group members of Marc Collin, Olivier Libaux, Mélanie Pain, Elodie Frégé and Liset Alea.

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DHRUV with Tara Lily

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ARTIST BIO

In late May 2022, Dhruv Sharma reached a new nadir. Things had been going so well. He dipped out of Yale just two years into his degree, the music career he had been pursuing since he was a teenager in Singapore suddenly catalyzed by the runaway hit “double take,” as Dhruv. But at the start of 2022, he went to California for the first time, hoping to write his debut album with a slew of select songwriters there. Over five months, he participated in maybe eighty sessions, all abject failures. He felt both too guarded and exposed, the slickness of California and the machinery of music overwhelming his once-insular process. He flew to New York without a single song, hoping a visit with an ex-boyfriend might pick him up. He was so nervous he scratched the stains from his hoody on the way to rendezvous. And that’s where he learned that his partner of two years had already moved on, that any possibility of redemption had vanished. He felt that his personal and professional lives were crumbling, that he’d been dropped into an episode of the worst sitcom ever without a clear exit.

So Dhruv went home to London and sat in his apartment with his little Yamaha keyboard. He brooded over those months in the States and slowly started to sing about them—“feeling like the main character,” he offered, “but in my own tragedy.” The song that emerged, “Tragedy,” became the cornerstone upon which he began to build Private Blizzard, an album that explores his season of despair with perfect candor and finds the hooks, the spirit, and the sound to move on. Its title borrowed from “The City Planners,” a Margaret Atwood poem he treasured as a closeted queer teenager in Singapore, Private Blizzard confronts self-doubt, loneliness, rejection and malaise with a dozen shimmering neo-soul anthems and classic ballads that feel like Dhruv’s own cures, extended here to whomever else may need them.

Though Dhruv began writing Private Blizzard in London, it truly took shape in a place that still surprises even him: Nashville, Tenn. A friend had told him about JT Daly, a producer there whose unlikely résumé spanned Noah Kahan, Bully, Benson Boone, and k.flay. They might have chemistry? As spring arrived in Nashville in 2023, so did Dhruv. He had written versions of several songs back in London and partially regained his confidence there, as if falling back in
love with his real passion. Daly empowered him by demanding he actually doubt himself, to question what exactly his songs should contain. Dhruv thought, for instance, he knew how “Tragedy” would work, but Daly told him to consider removing several sections, to lessen the load on the listener. He was right. By week’s end, “Tragedy”—now a beautiful and seemingly effortless reflection on a very difficult time—was done. Dhruv realized he had found the musical
partner he’d sought his entire life, since he was a songwriter sequestered in his Singapore
bedroom.

Over the next several months, Dhruv returned repeatedly to Nashville, ultimately cowriting every number on Private Blizzard with Daly. Those cursed days from a year prior faded into a memory that also provided artistic fodder. Though it feels like a classic summary of unreciprocated love, its piano hook bouncing off a classic boom-bap beat, “How?” documents Dhruv’s worry that his potential career was losing momentum, that he’d lost some spark by submitting himself to music industry machinations. With strutting bass and psychedelic keyboards, “California” flashes back to those uncertain few months. Dhruv finds strength in real time by realizing he is in the act of overcoming lifetime odds with every new note he sings.

Most of us have our version of a “private blizzard,” the tumultuous things we conceal in order to function in this world, to get by as best we can. The gift of art is that someone shares theirs, extending it so that we might all feel less alone, crazy, or depressed. That is precisely what Dhruv has done with his Private Blizzard. He has shown us the inner workings of one of the lowest periods of his life by singing the very songs that were not only his map of those hardships but his map out of them, too. Private Blizzard is, at least, a welcome clearing.

Dhruv is returning to Europe in the spring of 2025 for his Private Blizzard tour.

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MAGIC CITY HIPPIES with Mustard Service

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We can all take solace in the simple pleasures awarded us through our senses. Imagine, the memorable clink of ice hitting a rocks glass, the scent of muddled limes and mint, the faint crackle as the tipple is poured, the effervescent fizz of soda about to broach the rim, the straw insertion and swirl, the first sip of vacation...

Life would be miserable without these gifts, and life would most certainly suck without the perfect soundtrack to the first cocktail of some much needed time off. Pop the cork on some Magic City Hippies.

MCH initially floated onto the scene as Robby Hunter Band, yet once their album titled Magic City Hippies dropped, it became clear they had accidentally found their identity through an album title. Renamed in 2015 as Magic City Hippies, the Miami boys tasked themselves with marrying the funk sweat of a midafternoon sail with the syncopated shoulder shimmy of a late night out. They quickly gathered steam and took to gracing stages across the planet, from packed night clubs, to sold out concert halls, to earning performances at Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, and Lollapalooza, Magic City Hippies cater to those simply looking to escape with a welcoming, never-haughty, yet delightfully naughty, thwap.

Their Hippie Castle EP (2015) was just the tip of the proverbial ice cube in a cocktail glass of hippie sass. It mixed pool-side melodies and three day weekend grooves with a soulful, upbeat, vacation-heavy inflection of what can only be described as their own brand of musically casual psych-pop. Modern Animal (2019) brought MCH beachside, adding even more sultry swank to an already damp pair of chinos. A few years later, Water Your Garden (2022) brought the world out of a socially isolated pandemic, with a brilliantly shimmering and joyous celebration of dancing on our own, yet now together.

While the studio albums have each received both fan and critical acclaim, their engaging and unapologetically energetic live show takes even the most dance-stubborn attendee and persuades a sort of hypnotically voluntary participation. Seeing first timers become lifelong fans is a galdarn tradition when it comes to a live Magic City Hippies experience.

Whether this sunshine funk is all up inside your alley, or even if pink neon signs flashing the words SENSUAL AUDIBLE MASSAGE just have you curious, Magic City Hippies deliver a rare blend of musical talent and touring tenacity, with an uniquely cool and pastel fashion sense offering up funky sweaty smiles aplenty.

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Sitar player and composer Anoushka Shankar is a singular figure in the Indian classical and progressive world music scenes. Her dynamic and spiritual musicality has garnered several prestigious accolades, including five Grammy® Award nominations, recognition as the youngest - and first female - recipient of a British House of Commons Shield, credit as an Asian Hero by TIME Magazine, and a Songlines Best Artist Award. Most recently, she became one of the first five female composers to have been added to the UK A-level music syllabus.

Deeply rooted in the Indian Classical music tradition, Anoushka studied exclusively from the age of nine under her father and guru, the late Ravi Shankar, and made her professional debut as a classical sitarist at the age of thirteen. By the age of 20, she had made three classical recordings for EMI/Angel and received her first Grammy® nomination, thereby becoming the first Indian female and youngest-ever nominee in the World Music category. In 2005, Anoushka released her self-produced breakthrough album Rise, which earned her a second Grammy® nomination. Following this nomination Anoushka became the first Indian artist to perform at the Grammy® Awards.

As an international solo artist, Anoushka has performed in a range of distinguished venues such as Carnegie Hall, Barbican Centre, Sydney Opera House, Vienna Konzerthaus, Salle Pleyel, Royal Festival Hall, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Théâtre des ChampsElysées, Palais des Beaux-Arts and the KKL Luzern. Her event appearances include the Verbier Festival, the Prague Spring Festival, Boom Festival and the London Proms. 

Anoushka has championed her father’s four sitar Concertos with the world’s leading orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, MDR Sinfonieorchester, Lucerne Symphony and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, under the leadership of esteemed conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Kristjan Järvi and Jakob Hrusa. 

In 2011 Anoushka signed to Deutsche Grammophon, heralding a fertile creative period which was rewarded with three further consecutive Grammy® nominations. Traveller (produced by Javier Limon), was a critically-hailed exploration of Indian Classical music and Spanish flamenco. This was followed by Traces of You (produced by Nitin Sawhney and featuring Anoushka’s halfsister Norah Jones on vocals), and Home, a purely Indian Classical album where she returned to the Ragas her father had taught her.

Through her bold and collaborative approach as a composer, Anoushka has encouraged cross-cultural dialogue whilst demonstrating the versatility of the sitar across musical genres. As a result, Anoushka has created a vital body of work with a prominent roster of artists such as Sting, M.I.A, Herbie Hancock, Pepe Habichuela, Karsh Kale, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Joshua Bell.

Recent highlights include curating a Tagore Festival at The Globe Theatre in London, dedicated to the legendary Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore, and a large-scale Zeitinsel at Dortmund Konzerthaus where she was given a carte-blanche to present four full-length programmes reflecting different aspects of her artistic life.

Besides her career as a composer and performer, Anoushka has authored the book Bapi: The Love of My Life, a biographical portrait of her father, and been a regular columnist for New Delhi’s First City magazine and the Hindustan Times.

Anoushka’s artistic output increasingly seeks to reflect her impassioned support of women’s rights and social justice. In 2011, in response to the horrific gang-rape of Jyoti Singh Pandey in Delhi, Shankar threw her weight behind the campaign One Billion Rising on Change.org. To support the campaign, she released a video in which she demanded an end to crime against women, and revealed she had been sexually abused for many years as a child. Following this, she was invited to take part in a special panel on violence against women at the annual Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in New Delhi (2013). Other recent projects include hosting a radio show about gender quality to promote the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and coordinating a call-to-action to the UK government in response to the current European refugee crisis, which was signed by more than 100 leading British cultural figures and published in a full-page advert in the Guardian newspaper in September 2015.

The 2015/16 season sees a tour of India with her classical ensemble in support of Home, along with European performances at the Berlin Konzerthaus and Royal Albert Hall. Her new album Land of Gold; Shankar’s response to the humanitarian trauma of displaced people fleeing conflict and poverty, will be released on Deutsche Grammophon in March. The release will be followed by tours of North America (April 2016), Europe (summer and autumn 2016), and India (winter 2016). Forthcoming concerto performances include the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig and the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn.

Today, from her home in London where she lives with her husband and two sons, Anoushka’s career reflects her aim to constantly learn and grow as an artist. Across continents and demographics, people respond to what she calls the “honesty” in her music, which is integral to her work both in the classical and modern musical spheres. As Nitin Sawhney wrote, “no one embodies the spirit of innovation and experimentation more evidently than Anoushka Shankar."

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Cincinnati singer-songwriter Michael Marcagi’s ascent is a homegrown success story. With a career built largely through grass roots social media support, the folk-rock singer has demonstrated that listeners are hungry for earnest storytelling rooted in age-old American musical traditions. His debut Warner Records EP, American Romance, expands on that promise, highlighting the timeless sound and engaging sense of emotional truth that has made Marcagi’s music so immediately compelling.

Marcagi never undermines his listeners or takes them for granted. “Audiences are usually smarter than the musicians they are listening to,” he says. For him, there’s

plenty of evidence that modern listeners of all generations understand and connect with specificity and sophistication in songwriting. This is part of why he aspires to remain as open and approachable as possible—in both his music and his public persona. If what has happened in his career during the past year is any indication, he may be on to something.“I want people to feel like they know me,” Marcagi says. “I’ve never really connected to that mysterious rock band thing—four blurry faces in a field where you don’t know who the guys are. I don’t want to hide.”

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The Garden State 20th Anniversary Concert benefiting The Midnight Mission! A one night only musical event featuring songs from the iconic Grammy Award-winning soundtrack performed by the original artists The Shins, Iron & Wine, Frou Frou, Colin Hay, Thievery Corporation, Remy Zero, Cary Brothers, Bonnie Somerville, and Sophie Barker from Zero 7. Plus special guests.

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