Will Overman didn’t want to write a breakup album. But following a divorce, the singer-songwriter approached his latest record as a man rediscovering himself—again. On November 16, Overman will play an album release show for Stranger, his second LP as a solo artist, at the Southern Café & Music Hall. Nine and a half years […]
Will Overman didn’t want to write a breakup album. But following a divorce, the singer-songwriter approached his latest record as a man rediscovering himself—again. On November 16, Overman will play an album release show for Stranger, his second LP as a solo artist, at the Southern Café & Music Hall. Nine and a half years […]
Sharel Cassity says she knows at least 500 jazz tunes. Decades of experience performing across the globe brought her to that place. And it’s likely among the reasons she now leads jazz performance in the University of Virginia’s music department. “I do think any reputable musician should know as many harmonies as possible,” says Cassity […]
Turn on Erynn McLeod’s debut EP, Man of the House, and the first thing you’re likely to hear is a clear musical theater influence—the cabaret crooning, the overt metaphor, the complex characters, the ebb and flow of emotion. That’s all by design, the Charlottesville resident and Front Porch music teacher says. Growing up in New […]
If you’ve never heard of music industry legend Don Was, don’t beat yourself up. Born Don Edward Fagenson, Was has been making music for nearly 50 years. But until now, he’s never released a record under his own name. He has produced music for The Rolling Stones, Elton John, and Ringo Starr. He’s played bass […]
Ryan Calonder has a simple vision for something that’s become a sprawling enterprise: a music festival, but limited to two days and featuring nothing but bands from Charlottesville proper. “From where I’m standing, this town has so much good, original music coming out of it,” he says. “But over the last 10 years or so, […]
There’s a Portuguese word, saudade, that doesn’t translate exactly to English. Maybe it works out to something like “a mournful longing?” But composer and multi-instrumentalist Adrian Younge describes its meaning perfectly in trying to pinpoint his own particular brand of emotive music. “It’s the vortex of where dark music meets romantic music,” he says on […]
Jenny Scheinman doesn’t peg her parents as hippies. Despite the pair’s collective worldview being catalyzed by a mixture of 1960s politics and a desire to go back to the land, “They’re not very far out,” says bandleader and violinist Scheinman. After her parents decamped from New York and began homesteading near Eureka, California, Scheinman says […]
Nicole Mitchell has sown the seeds of inventive music across the country through time in Chicago’s jazz scene, teaching in southern California and Pittsburgh, and now as a member of the University of Virginia’s music faculty. She splits time between Charlottesville and rural North Carolina, but harbors a desire to enliven central Virginia’s creative music […]
Clemson University was proud of its doctoral student. It was 2017, and the university announced the achievement with fanfare: A.D. Carson had produced an original piece of music as his dissertation and successfully defended it to receive a Ph.D. Carson went on to receive tenure in the University of Virginia’s music department. At UVA, he’s […]
By Alan Sculley Most musicians found their activities curtailed during the pandemic. For the Indigo Girls, the COVID-19 years were a particularly creative time, resulting in a proliferation of current projects. The duo—Emily Saliers and Amy Ray—recently released a concert film, Look Long: Together, they’re the subject of a new documentary It’s Only Life After […]