anthologysd.com

The Bill Frisell Trio impressed a crowd of attentive jazz fans at Anthology at a recent show.

The trio, which included longtime collaborator Kenny Wollesen on drums and pianist Jason Moran — a virtuoso in his own right — played songs from throughout Frisell’s catalog, as well as a couple of unexpected Stephen Foster tunes.

After a quick joke about the big screen above the stage (”I’m not used to seeing myself on television”), the trio opened with a slowly building, chaotic intro that began with bird calls and ended with a rearrangement of Foster’s “Hard Times.” The lyrics, though not sung at the show, go like this: “Tis the song, the sigh of the weary/Hard times, hard times, come again no more/Many days you have lingered all around my cabin door/Oh, hard times, come again no more.”

It felt appropriate. With “Hard Times,” Frisell seemed to be asking us to cast off our preoccupations and just listen and enjoy — if only for a couple hours. After that, we could go back to whatever was bothering us. And Frisell didn’t make it very difficult to forget our cares. The trio — with what seemed like very little effort — had no trouble creating something artful and unique that transcended the day-to-day. I can guarantee you that very few audience members were thinking about anything other than the atmosphere and good music playing at Anthology that night.

Frisell himself played without any kind of pretense; he spent almost the whole show smiling, often downright beaming at Moran and Wollesen, and not saying much else except through his careworn Telecaster.

Before the encore, a fan on the balcony yelled, “You guys rock!” Frisell acknowledged the attention while looking distrustfully, again, at the big screen, then launched into another Foster tune, “Beautiful Dreamer.” Judging from the relaxed way people lingered at their tables after the music ended, not too many folks left the show thinking about hard times.

T. Loper is a writer for the San Diego music blog Owl and Bear.

The Anthology Gift Card - the perfect gift for Birthdays, Celebrations, Thank You’s and Congratulations!

Check out these great gift card ideas:

$25 - Fun for Two
2 Happy Hour Drinks + 2 Appetizers
- or -
Two Fresh Vibe Tix + 2 Glasses of Wine + 2 Appetizers
- or -
2 V-tix + 1 appetizer

$50 - Great Vibes
2 Fresh Vibe Tix + 2 Drinks + 2 Entrées
- or -
2 V-tix + 2 Glasses of Wine + Nosh
- or -
2 Tickets for Main Floor Seating

$100 - Big Night Out
2 Fresh Vibe Tix + 2 Drinks + Two 3-Course Meals
- or -
4 V-tix + 4 Martinis + Appetizers
- or -
Happy Hour With the Gang

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For more information contact our box office at 619-595-0300

Eclectic artist to play at Anthology on Wednesday

Morgan M. Hurley, SDGLN Copyeditor

Singer, songwriter, bassist and recording artist Meshell Ngedeocello flies into San Diego this week, to promote her latest release, Devil’s Halo. Ndedeocello will be performing an intimate show at Anthology, located in Little Italy, on Wednesday.

The petite, tattooed, bisexual musician with closely cropped hair, thinks media attention focused on her sexuality is boring. She may be right. It certainly isn’t the most interesting thing about her, by a long shot.

She first got interested in performing at 15, when Prince blew her mind with his over the top style and presence. She counts Prince and also Sting, as two of her earliest bass influences and you can still pick those influences out in her music today.

Her categorization on iTunes™ under “R&B/Soul” is rather a misnomer; the fact of the matter is, you never really know what you’re gonna get with Ndegeocello.

“It is really disturbing when the color of your skin affects what genre of music you should be playing,” she said recently.

The most unfortunate aspect of that miscategorization, is that a lot of people will miss out on what a truly amazing, edgy, eclectic and talented musician she really is. Her influences and appreciation for music genres vary far and wide, which could also describe her own musical journey. She seems to pull ingredients from all those genres together, throw them into a blender with a few ideas of her own, and produce a frappe that is all of them, yet none of them. She is not afraid to take chances, and it shows.

Ndegeocello is not hung up on who gets her music, either. “You either get it or you don’t,” she has said. You won’t know if you get it or not unless you give it a listen - and everyone should - because she just might surprise you.

Devil’s Halo, her eighth studio album, is much less personal and less autobiographical than her previous works. She tends to write songs that offer a look into her soul. This time, she steps out of herself and becomes the looker, instead of the one being looked at, and has written songs looking into the souls of others.

Almost every track on Devil’s Halo tells a story that could have easily played out on the rough and tumble streets of a town she’s spent a day walking through, or in a bar that she’s sipped a scotch in from that corner seat. It’s definitive storytelling, combined with tragic lyrics, steady back-beats and the most luxuriously melodic tracks you may ever hear, laid right on top.

She has never cared for her own voice, but that is not easily understood. On tracks such as Tie One On, White Girl, Blood on the Curb, Crying in Your Beer and the title track, she seems to settle in somewhere between Sade and Joan Armatrading, lending it a familiarity that is at the same time, clearly and uniquely hers.

SDGLN got the chance to ask her a few questions recently, in advance of her arrival. Here’s what transpired:

SDGLN Your privacy is obviously important to you. Why was the fact that you identify as bisexual something you decided to let be known?

Meshell Ndegeocello (MN) Someone asked the question and I told the truth. I was naïve not to know it would be a big part of my marketing but I didn’t. I don’t regret it but it has been defining in a way that’s confining.

SDGLN “Ndegeocello” means “free as a bird.” What language is it derived from and how did you come to choose it as your surname?

MN Swahili. Seemed like what I was trying to achieve, feel, be.

SDGLN You’ve said that you are a “bass player above all else,” and you have played your bass alongside the greatest of the great, but you are also a songwriter with 8 albums of songs and a dozen more you wrote for movie soundtracks. What truly fulfills you the most – writing, singing or playing - and why?

MN I like recording. I love making the music, hearing the parts, putting them together, exploring the sounds, and making new sonic environments. I love to play. Singing is definitely not my favorite.

SDGLN You were one of the first artists that Madonna “chose” for Maverick Records. I have to ask..is she really involved in the whole process, and how was it to work with her?

MN That was 20 years ago. I’m sure Madonna is entirely different than she was then, as I am. She was involved in signing me, but not in the records I made with Maverick.

SDGLN You toured with the first Lillith Fair, did you enjoy it and would you do it again?

MN I loved it. Really nice people and really good food. I’d consider it again but it would probably depend on the line up. I don’t know who the Lilith artists might be nowadays or if I’d fit the bill.

SDGLN What is the difference (production-wise) with how you made your current album, “Devil’s Halo” with Mercer Street and say, “Peace Beyond Passion,” with Maverick?

MN This record was played and recorded as a live band. We all played together, rather than parts recorded individually. I also produced this record with Chris Bruce, our guitar player, and it was generally a more intimate production. It was one of the most satisfying record making experiences I’ve had.

SDGLN In 2002, you participated in a benefit for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) at Carnegie Hall. Is Carnegie Hall everything that its cracked up to be?

MN Definitely. I’ve played there since then, too and remembered how intimidating it is to look up at those steep balconies. It’s incredible sounding. The acoustics are singular.

SDGLN What musicians inspire you? What inspires you in life?

MN My band inspires me. Chris Bruce makes me work harder. Mark Kelley, our bass player, makes me humble. Deantoni, who plays drums, just blows my mind. Right now, David Bowie and Stevie Wonder are topping the list but I listen to a lot of music, cycle through inspirations on a regular basis. There’s something to find everywhere. In life - my family. My imagination. I live in the country now, so I’ve got the natural world to dazzle me too.

SDGLN You once were a judge for the Independent Music Awards. What advice do you have for up-and-coming independent musicians?

MN Dig deep to determine if you want to play to make music or for fame and fortune. It’s not the same road.

Ndegeocello presents “The Best of Bitter” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Anthology, 1337 India St. in Little Italy. Call (619) 595-0300

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Via SDGLN

By Michelle Guerin | DiscoverSD.com

Can’t stand classical music? Challenge yourself to change your mind this Sunday at Anthology Supper Club in Little Italy.

Anthology invites you to re-discover classical music with a modern multi-media performance that intertwines music, dance, and film coverage. Music Director / Conductor Jon Stubbs of California Ballet has modernized the classical music experience in a new production called Luscious Noise.

Historically, classical music has been associated with a mature aristocratic society. But starting this Sunday, Jon Stubbs is making classical music accessible to general audiences and a younger demographic with a dynamic performance and affordable price point at one of the hippest music venues in San Diego.

“Whenever I see pop groups perform, I always wish I could see that same level of fun for classical performances,” says Stubbs. When he discovered Anthology, Stubbs realized it may be the perfect venue for him. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do here, but I knew I had to do something. The built-in multi-media capabilities made me very interested in wanting to perform there.”

Luscious Noise music selections will include Grieg’s Holberg Suite and Mozart Divertimento, among many, and visual excerpts will include “The Third Man” – a film noir classic, “Street Scene” from Kurt Weills and more. The performance will feature members of the San Diego Symphony and Prima Ballerina Denise Dabrowski who will perform “The Dying Swan” in a signature solo.

Luscious Noise takes over Anthology this Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 7:30pm. Tickets range from $10 - $20 and are available online at AnthologySD.com or at the door.

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Click here for the original article on DiscoverSD.com.

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The Mads Tolling Quartet performs at Anthology on Wednesday, October 28, 2009. Click here for tickets.

Ranch & Coast writes:

If you opt to spend your Friday night at Anthology, take full advantage of everything this superb supper club has to offer. Executive chef Eric Bauer’s fresh culinary approach boasts a menu that highlights the simplicity and authenticity of the region’s finest offerings. Friday night performances include Floyd-Fx and Sirak Baloyan y Su Sonora Antillana (October 2), Shawn Colvin (October 9), Second City (October 16), and a CD release party for Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers (October 23).

Posted on San Diego Entertainer Magazine on Monday, August 3, 2009
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If Taco Tuesday isn’t your thing, opt for something a little classier at Anthology in Little Italy.

While there’s nothing wrong with dollar tacos and half-priced margaritas the size of fishbowls, “Jazz Up Your Tuesday” offers San Diego’s more “refined” patrons a blend of fine dining and great music weekly, at a starving college student’s price.

Priding itself on food made from farm-fresh, local ingredients, Anthology has made a name for itself as one of San Diego’s best dining and live music establishments (check out our review here). Come early for happy hour (5:30 – 7:30) where special menu items, including select drinks, are all under ten dollars.

The house band starts around 7:00, at which time the restaurant starts charging a whopping $5 cover.

By Erick Pettersen | allaboutjazz.com

On July 26, at 7PM, at Anthology–a jazz club in San Diego’s Little Italy neighborhood–an ensemble of seven jazz performers, including jazz guitarist Peter Sprague and vocalist
Kevyn Lettau, will perform a tribute concert to Sergio Mendes–a Brazilian musician who plays bossa nova, which he crosses with funk and jazz. Mendes influenced modern jazz, as well as the seven people who will perform that evening.

In 1995, many years after he met Mendes, jazz guitarist Peter Sprague’s musical aspirations almost wore away like the ledge of a flood worn sandstone cliff. After almost two decades of playing guitar on the road, Sprague found himself on the road away from his wife Stefani and daughter Kylie more than he wanted. Then, doctors diagnosed the new father with Psoriatic Arthritis¹, and the direction of his musical career changed.

After that diagnosis, he decided he could no longer play guitar full time, so he opened his recording studio Spragueland–the west coast solution to Jimi Hendrix’ Electric Lady Land Studio. Sprague recalls of the choice to open Spragueland, “For your family to thrive, that’s your key right there. It’s just to be in the family, and not the stranger that reports back once a month or something.”

More than a decade after the first days of Spragueland, Kylie plays the piano and sings. Every year, Sprague and Kylie, along with friends and family, perform at the amphitheatre outside Del Mar’s Inn l’Auberge. Sprague opens his guitar case and sets it down for people to throw their tips in. It’s a tradition he began in 1978.

When Sprague gets away from the music, he takes his family on camping trips, practices yoga, and enjoys his family the best he can. For the most part, he and Kylie enjoy different music; though, they found common interests in The Beatles and an Irish folk-rock band called Solaf.

Before they discovered those common interests, when Sprague first noticed signs of Psoriatic Arthritis, he took six months off. He hoped the pain would end; though, it spread throughout his body. He explored holistic medicine and yoga, but the pain overwhelmed his body. For years, while he struggled to continue his music career, he suffered in silence.

Though, Sprague found comfort in the understanding of long time friend and jazz vocalist Kevyn Lettau– the original voice Kylie came to replace on that Christmas Eve stage. Sprague met Lettau in 1978 when he formed the band, “The Dance of the Universe Orchestra.” They needed a vocalist, and Lettau needed a musical outlet. After Lettau left the band, she toured with Sergio Mendes for eight years, and then found success in the U.S. and Asia.

When she recorded The Color of Love, Lettau came to the edge of her own flood worn cliff. After one record company declined to work with Lettau, they said to her lawyer, “She obviously is a good singer, but her voice is too healthy.” Her pianist, Russell Ferrante, told her the same thing Bobby Vincer of the Yellowjackets told him: “You’ve got to strive for tone.” Lettau realized Ferrante meant she had to work on maintaining flexibility and freedom in her voice. Devastated because “[She] really loved having a healthy voice” she learned from that advice.

Six years after the release of The Color of Love, Lettau sometimes feels inadequate. Speaking of her song “What is Enough,” she admitted, “I’ve never felt like I’ve been enough, as a woman or as a singer or as a human being”; though, she realizes “I’m not alone in that. There’s a lot of people like that.” That realization led Lettau to acknowledge if she had to choose any other career, she would become a family therapist and work with incest victims–other’s who often suffer in silence.

On Sunday, July 26, after more than three decades of collaborating with names like Chuck Correa, Al Jarreau, and others, the sum of Sprague and Lettau’s silent sufferings, difficult choices, and unbreakable friendship will bring them to the Anthology stage. Sprague commented of the many tribute concerts he and his band performs, “We love the challenge of saying we’re going to do a whole night of this music… What can we do to bring something new to it.” He added that by focusing on a certain jazz musician and learning from their music it improves his music. Of the audience’s opportunity to hear the illustrious sounds of Sergio Mendes, Sprague said, “It’s kind of a way for them to live in the moment of Sergio Mendes for a night.”

Alongside Sprague and Lettau, jazz enthusiasts will hear Leonard Patton and Carol MacFarland-Thuet on vocals, Tripp Sprague on sax and flute, Gunnar Biggs on bass, and Duncan Moore on drums. After years of making difficult choices and pushing through the pain, Sprague and Lettau will pay tribute to Sergio Mendes –a man whose music helped bring them through all of those hard times.

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ANTHOLOGY
1337 India Street
San Diego, California 92101

BOX OFFICE
619-595-0300

Click here to read the NBC San Diego article.

From Parlor to Parking Lot

By Josh Board (San Diego Reader) | Published Wednesday, May 13, 2009
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Alison Brown went from playing banjo outside of Shakey’s Pizza in La Mesa to performing with Alison Krauss + Union Station, being named the Banjo Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association, and starting her own label, Compass Records.

I asked Alison a few questions about her instrument and her days in San Diego.

How did you become a banjo player?

“There’s not much that was cool about the banjo in the mid-’70s. Most students at La Jolla High School were more into being surfers and surfer chicks than banjo pickers. But I was really drawn to the sound of the instrument when I first heard Earl Scruggs’s Foggy Mountain Banjo album, and when we moved from Connecticut to San Diego in 1974 I fell in with the San Diego Bluegrass Club.

“There was a really vibrant bluegrass community in Southern California in the ’70s. There used to be banjo/fiddle contests nearly every weekend. The first contest I ever entered was in Old Town. The next one was at Balboa Park. I’ll never forget going to Lou Curtiss’s shop Folk Arts to collect my prize for the banjo contest; I still have the hand-drawn picture of a banjo with the words ‘First Prize!’ that he sketched for me on a piece of manila paper while I waited.

“I also have very fond memories of the parking-lot jam sessions at the Shakey’s Pizza parlor in La Mesa. Lots of great local bands — Pacifically Bluegrass, Pendleton Pickers, Damascus Road — played sets on stage while several circles of pickers jammed outside in the dark, scattered among the parked cars. That’s really where I cut my teeth on the bluegrass repertoire.

“And I tuned in every Sunday night to Wayne Rice’s Bluegrass Special on KSON. He’s still on the air and probably has one of the longest running bluegrass radio shows in the country. So, as it turned out, San Diego was a great place to learn to play bluegrass, even though that might sound a little counterintuitive.”

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Click here for the rest of the article.

Please click here if you can’t watch the video below.

Arturo Sandoval performs again tonight as Anthology. Don’t miss this show!

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It started with a spark of an idea from a twenty-something named Philip Gilpin, who quit his corporate job and banked it all on changing the world.

Please click here if you have trouble watching the video below.

Music Legends Storm San Diego

Multi-Grammy winner Tom Scott and the critically acclaimed vocalist Paulette McWilliams get musical in the NBC 7/39 studios before their show at Anthology on Friday night.

Click here if you can’t watch the video above.

Don’t miss Tom Scott and Paulette McWilliams performing tonight at Anthology!

Simultaneously playing an upright bass and singing, while leading her own jazz band, is second nature for Kristin Korb. A Montana native who moved here in 1992 to attend UCSD, where she studied with contrabass legend Bertram Turetzky, Kristin performs here with her trio Wednesday at Anthology, where she will celebrate the release of her fifth album, “In the Meantime,” which she is releasing on her own label, the slyly named Double K.

You can hear a sneak preview Monday at 11:30 a.m., when Kristin will chat and perform on Fill In The Blank, my weekly live music interview show on amplifysd.com. Kristin, who is just back from a world tour, will also discuss her life in L.A., where she teaches music at USC and does gigs around town.

If you want to ask Kristin a question, you can do so Monday on our toll-free number: (888) 642-2468. And if you miss the show, you can click back here anytime after Monday for the Podcast.

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By George Varga
Via SignOnSanDiego.com by the Union-Tribune