Neo-traditional string band The Wildmans plays The Prism Coffeehouse series January 3. Publicity photo
Big time traditions: The small town of Floyd, Virginia—its population was 425 in the last census—has become so synonymous with the Appalachian mountain music tradition that visitors often outnumber the residents. The latest to emerge from the robust tiny scene is neo-traditional string band The Wildmans, a fledgling group of top-notch players that includes Aila Wildman on old-time fiddle, Eli Wildman on mandolin, and Victor Furtado on the clawhammer banjo—who’ve all won awards at the Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention, and attend the American Roots Music Program at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Multi-instrumentalist Sean Newman completes the band on upright bass and vocals.
Friday, January 3. $14-17, 7pm. The Prism Coffeehouse at C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris St. 978-4335.
Willard Gayheart Family Band celebrates a lifetime achievement at C'ville Coffee on Sunday. Publicity image.
Lifetime record: Born in 1932, Willard Gayheart recalls the early influence of hearing the 1936 recording of Mainer’s Mountaineers’ “Maple on the Hill.” “I listened to that record over and over,” he says. “I just couldn’t get enough of it.” So it may come as a surprise that the accomplished guitarist and songwriter only recently recorded his first solo album, at age 86. It took a nudge from his granddaughter Dori Freeman and her producer Teddy Thompson to issue At Home in the Blue Ridge, a love letter to the mountains and musical family that surround Gayheart in his Galax, Virginia, home. Also a renowned pencil artist, Gayheart will have artwork on display and give a talk before performing with the Willard Gayheart Family Band.
Sunday12/8. $15-18, 5pm. The Prism Coffeehouse at C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris St. 978-4335.
Expert pickin' and a whole lot of grinnin' will hit C'ville Coffee on Saturday night when Dry Branch Fire Squad takes the stage. Publicity image.
Burnin’ bluegrass: Dry Branch Fire Squad has played at every single Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival, a bi-annual gathering that will celebrate its 80th concert in 2020. That’s 40 years of performances, and it speaks to why DBFS describes itself as “aggressively traditional.” Frontman Ron Thomason has been called the “Forrest Gump of Bluegrass” because he’s so connected to the genre’s history. Known for his comedic live banter, Thomason employs social commentary and catchy lyrics to weave the band’s instrumental talent into pure entertainment.
Saturday 11/30. $16-19, 7pm. Prism Coffeehouse at C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris St. 978-4335.
Charlottesville's own, David Schulman returns to play with his band Quiet Life Motel on Saturday. Maggie Picard Photography
Quiet time: Electric violinist and composer David Schulman has several soundtracks to his credit including NPR’s “The Big Listen,” and APM’s “Spectacular Failures.” He is a frequent collaborator with modern dance companies and museum programs, and his extensive musical training has led him to explore and preserve the traditions of charanga and mambo. The Charlottesville native, a former member of the CHS orchestra, returns home with his band, Quiet Life Motel, featuring Tillery, a legend on D.C.’s jazz and go-go scene, and fellow Charlottesvillian Matt Wyatt on percussion.
Saturday, September 28. $10, 7pm. C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris St. 817-2633.
Songwriter Pat Alger has written eight No. 1 songs and many hits for Americana and country artists. He's playing them at C'ville Coffee on Saturday. Publicity image.
Behind the hits: Chart-topping songwriter Pat Alger says, “It never grows old hearing a great singer perform one of my songs.” Alger brought his skills to Nashville in the ‘80s, and made a name penning hits for others including Nanci Griffith and Garth Brooks. His songs have been performed by Peter, Paul and Mary, Dolly Parton, Lyle Lovett, Brenda Lee, and Crystal Gayle, and in 2010, Alger was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. His live show includes many of his recognizable hits, plus some tunes he’s kept for himself.
Saturday9/21. $2-23, 7pm. C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris St. 817-2633.
Riley Baugus brings his old-time banjo expertise to C'ville Coffee on Sunday. Publicity image.
Lucky strike: North Carolina blacksmith Riley Baugus was a craftsman by day and a master musician by night, playing his self-made banjo with friends in old-time string bands, when he got the call from Hollywood. A friend assisting with music direction for Civil War epic Cold Mountain had recommended him to T Bone Burnett, who ordered three banjos from Baugus before casting him in the film as the singing voice of Pangle. It was a twist of fate that launched Baugus’ solo career, and landed him a new line of work touring with Tim O’Brien, and recording with Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, and Willie Nelson.
Sunday9/15. $15-18, 7pm. C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris St. 978-4335.
Veteran jazz vocalist Stephanie Nakasian kicks off a busy fall schedule with a special evening of bebop classics backed by The Richmond Jazz All-Stars. Publicity image.
Stephanie Nakasian grew up with the American songbook in her ear. You know the tunes: “Fly Me to the Moon,” “I Get A Kick Out of You,” and so many others. She sang them at home, and in choir, and played them on piano and violin, too.
These melodies and lyrics were in her ear while she studied economics and earned an MBA at Northwestern University, and the songs followed her to a job in New York City.
When she was in her mid-20s and working on Wall Street, she met bebop jazz pianist Hod O’Brien (who would become her husband of 38 years) and heard these songs anew. “When I saw Hod playing piano, [they] just seemed so alive. The same songs I’d heard before, [but in] a fresh sound. I loved the swing feel of it,” she says, sitting at a table in C’ville Coffee, her preferred Charlottesville jazz listening and performance venue.
Nakasian closes her eyes, perhaps to remember the sound of her late husband’s piano. “Fly me to the moon,” she croons with more swing than Sinatra, bobbing her right hand back and forth through the air as she snaps her fingers to the beat. “Let me play among the stars / Let me see what spring is like on / A-Jupiter and Mars.”
She asks if this reporter can hear the difference, the swing, the (be)bop. It’s palpable indeed, and that right there, she says, is why, at 25, she chose to leave her job on Wall Street and give jazz singing a go. Nakasian took a major risk, and it’s paid off. Dubbed the “Renaissance Woman of Jazz” in a 2012 industry profile, she’s released 15 albums; performed with jazz legends like lyricist and singer Jon Hendricks; sings at legendary jazz venues like New York City’s Birdland; and has taught voice at UVA and elsewhere for more than two decades.
That sort of spirit—one of taking chances and following a lead wherever it may go—is what Nakasian intends to convey to her audience at Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church on September 8, when she performs a concert of bebop classics with The Richmond Jazz All-Stars.
The Richmond Jazz All-Stars. Publicity photo
Nakasian calls the group, comprised of pianist Weldon Hill, saxophonist James “Saxsmo” Gates, bassist Michael Hawkins, and drummer Billy Williams Jr., her “dream band.” And not only because they’re accomplished musicians who’ve shared the stage with superstars such as Jon Faddis, Kristin Chenoweth, Art Blakey, and Terence Blanchard, among others. It’s because, for Nakasian, these musicians hit all the right notes. “Jazz is incredibly creative,” she says, “an interesting experiment. And the perfect band is the band that technically and musically fits with you, and then emotionally supports you and inspires you.” It’s important to have that relationship among band members, she says, because jazz makes musicians and singers explore their boundaries and push beyond them with every rehearsal, every performance.
Playing jazz is a way to discover something new about oneself, to grow as a person and an “expressive human being,” Nakasian continues. “Maybe [I] make a mistake. And [I] survive it, and you know what? Then I’m not so scared about making a mistake again. It’s a good life lesson,” to approach through jazz, and the complexity of bebop in particular.
Bebop is a fast-tempo style of modern jazz that, to many ears, may sound like just a lot of notes, says Nakasian. Virtuosic musicianship is a requisite to play bebop’s rapid and frequent key changes, complex harmonies and melodies, and long lines of improvisation that can go on for quite a while before returning to a familiar phrase or refrain. Though it’s deeply rooted in the standards, Nakasian’s been told more than once that bebop can be intimidating for some listeners.
It’s a challenge for Nakasian as a singer, too—imagine singing lyrics, or scatting (using one’s voice almost as a horn), to complex instrumental solos? She demonstrates willingly (though not at full volume) in the coffee shop, singing some of Jon Hendricks’ original lyrics for Miles Davis’ “Four,” snapping her fingers quick to the beat: “Of the wonderful things that you get out of life there are four. / And they may not be many but nobody needs any more.” She can’t help but smile as she sings.
“I’m always giving myself these difficult assignments,” she says, laughing. But bebop is a chance for her to stretch her skill, to tap into a vocalization or a lyric (Hendricks’ are particularly, delightfully, philosophical) in order to feel the color and emotion of the melody and the message.
And with a band of this caliber playing classics from Blakey, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and so many other greats, chances are, Sunday night’s concert will feel pretty darn good, says Nakasian.
“It’s going to be magical,” she says with a wide smile, her eyes twinkling as much as the diamond ring on her finger. “And it’s going to be fun.”
All that jazz
Here’s what Nakasian has lined up, locally, for the fall season:
Sunday, September 8 Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church: Stephanie Nakasian and The Richmond Jazz All-Stars
Saturday, September 14 C’ville Coffee:
September Songs
Saturday, October 12 C’ville Coffee:
Autumn Serenade
Saturday, November 16 C’ville Coffee: The ’60s
and ’70s, Jazz Style
Dr. Coincidence puts his theories to song and dance at C'ville Coffee on Saturday. Publicity image.
No happy accidents: Dr. Bernie Beitman’s 2016 book, Connecting With Coincidence, throws science at the notion that surprise happenings in our lives are not entirely by chance. Dr. Coincidence’s Song and Dance Show takes that thinking to the stage, where personal stories of serendipity come alive through, well, song and dance. Beitman is joined by musicians John D’earth and Greg Howard, and proceeds from the evening will go toward saving trees threatened by the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
Saturday 6/8. $7, 7pm. C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris St. 817-2633.
Italian flat picker (and fan of American roots music) Beppe Gambetta plays The Prism Coffeehouse Series at C'ville Coffee this Friday. Publicity photo
Beppe Gambetta loves American roots music as much as the music of his native Italy, and he pairs the two in his mastery of the acoustic guitar. Gambetta has wooed fans worldwide with his intricate flatpicking style, open tuning, and fluid slides—a style that’s led to stage appearances with contemporaries such as David Grisman, Gene Parsons, Doc Watson, and Norman Blake.
Friday, March 15. $16-19, 7pm. The Prism Coffeehouse at C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris St. 978-4335.
The Hard Modes' goal, says Greg Weaver (center), is to get jazzheads and gamers into the same room to appreciate something together. Photo by Tristan Williams
Greg Weaver has been playing video games since…well, since he can remember. Growing up, his family had an Atari system and his cousin had a classic Nintendo NES. One particularly exciting Christmas, the family got a Super Nintendo system.
The Weaver siblings spent hours playing on the consoles, immersed in the worlds contained therein, but when their dad put on Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, they’d boogie down. Weaver was particularly into the songs with heavy sax, and when he was about 6 years old, he started begging his parents for a saxophone of his own.
By the time Weaver got his wish (and a PlayStation), he was in sixth grade and more than ready for a wind instrument—all that blowing on video game cartridges to fix the glitches just might have helped increase his lung capacity (emphasis on the “might”), he says.
About two decades later, Weaver still plays video games and saxophone, and he combines his love for the two in The Hard Modes, a jazz ensemble that plays original arrangements of video game music and counts American jazz icons Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman, as well as Japanese video game composers Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu, among its influences.
The Hard Modes will play C’ville Coffee Saturday night, with Weaver on tenor and soprano saxophones, Brandon Walsh on trumpet, Trevor Williams on vibes, André La Velle on bass, Nick Berkin on keys, and Pat Hayes on drums.
Weaver, who arranges most of The Hard Modes’ pieces, has been playing video game music himself for years now. In middle school, he’d pluck out the “Zelda: Ocarina of Time” theme on his parents’ stand-up piano; other times, he and friends would take midi files of their favorite game music and feed them into a computer program that would print out corresponding sheet music, allowing the friends to play their favorite game tunes before jazz band practice started.
But it wasn’t until Weaver’s fourth-year music recital at UVA that the jazz musician, who studied with John D’earth and Jeff Decker, arranged some of his favorite game music for saxophone, combining two tunes—“Proto Man” and “Gemini Man” from Mega Man 3—for the program.
Weaver guesses that when most people hear the phrase “video game music,” they think about synthesizer bleeps and bloops, the earworm melodies from 8-bit games like Super Mario Brothers and Tetris that stick in your head for hours. But video game music has come a long way, and game music composers have fewer limitations than they did, says Weaver. Some of the soundtracks have been so popular, they’ve been released as albums.
In recent years, video game music has made its way into orchestra repertoires—like The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses tour, which made a stop in town at John Paul Jones Arena in April 2016. And rock bands, such as heavy metal instrumental group Powerglove (named for the Nintendo controller accessory), play versions of video game music, too.
It only makes sense for a jazz group to do it, though video game music hasn’t caught on as quickly in the jazz world, says Weaver. “Throughout time, jazz has taken the popular music of the era and adapted it” into the language of jazz, he says, and when you think about how much time people spend playing video games, this music is some of the most popular stuff out there. A few groups have done it, but it often comes out sounding like lounge or elevator music, says Weaver.
“It’s easy to take a piece of video game music, arrange it, and make it really cheesy,” he says, in part because video game music “is kind of humorous” to begin with. It’s more difficult to strike a balance between a thoughtful arrangement that honors both the spirit of jazz and the playfulness of the original composition. The Hard Modes are up to the challenge.
Weaver focuses on “adapting that rich, harmonic, rhythmic, melodic language that jazz has, to these video game tunes,” and makes very deliberate choices about which pieces the group will adapt and play. On Saturday, they’ll play selections from the Game Boy classic Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening; critically acclaimed modern game Undertale; some from Chrono Cross, one of the earliest games to gain recognition for its soundtrack (composed by Mitsuda, who claims classical, jazz, and even Celtic influence on his music); and an arrangement of a tune from Secret of Mana nestled within one from Secret of Evermore (Walsh arranged this one).
The goal, says Weaver, is to get jazzheads and gamers into the same room to appreciate something together. The Hard Modes want to put on a good show, one that proves the strength of video game music composition to the jazz fans while opening up the world of jazz music to gamers, challenging any preconceived notion either group has of the other’s art. “There’s such a connection between the two; hopefully we can blur the lines a little bit,” says Weaver.
Weaver feels that connection most strongly during the improvisational moments of The Hard Modes’ performances. In jazz improv, “you’re keeping the melody in mind, using it as an influence on what you’re playing. It may not be obvious, but it’s in the back of your mind. And with these video game tunes, you get to put your own emotions and memories into what you’re playing when you improvise,” like the memory of playing Nintendo 64 with your best friend, or recalling the excitement of unwrapping a Super Nintendo on Christmas morning. “Expanding upon those melodies that we already love,” says Weaver, “that’s really fun.”
The Hard Modes strike a balance between serious jazz and less-serious video game music on February 23 at C’ville Coffee.
