Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem on January 10th

"A tart, smart meld of American folk melody with buoyant splashes of jazz, pop, bluegrass, and blues." -The Boston Globe

The Jenkins House Concert series is pleased to welcome back Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem to the Upper West Side. All of roots music is a stage for Daisy Mayhem, and this four-piece string band loves nothing more than choreographing a jubilant mix of traditional, original, and contemporary sounds. With Arbo's bewitching alto at the helm, stunning vocal harmonies, a 100% recycled drum set, fiddle, guitar, and bass, daisy mayhem "has a grand knack for pumping new blood into old music" (The Boston Globe). Imagine, for example, a pre-civil war song from the Georgia Sea Islands sung over a New Orleans-style groove. Or, an old Irish fiddle tune with new lyrics, capped with a solo on a South American box drum. A Sondheim tune done jug band style? An original Unitarian funk gospel song? You begin to get the idea. With influences from Doc Watson to Django Reinhardt, from Ghanaian drumming to the funky Meters, and from Fiddlin' John Carson to Bob Dylan, Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem celebrates America's rich musical past and brings it into the present with good humor, impeccable musicianship, powerful songwriting, and a clear love of playing together. Here are four musicians who pick up what's lying around—from tin cans to old songs and wry observations of modern life—and create something new.

For reservations and information please contact Sandilion49@gmail.com

Tim Eriksen & The Trio de Pumpkintown, Saturday, December 6

Tonight's concert is sold out

Tim Eriksen is "widely regarded as the best ballad singer of his generation" (BBC Radio). He combines hair-raising vocals with savvy arrangements for fiddle, banjo, guitar and bajo sexto, transforming American tradition with a "northern roots" Americana sound that embraces old New England murder ballads,“shape-note” gospel and haunted originals alongside Southern Appalachian and Irish songs. Tim is also known for his own compositions - “strange and original works” (NetRhythmsUK) with a“rare sense of purpose” (Q Magazine) that have been included in the upcoming feature documentary Behold the Earth. Eriksen's other notable work has included extensive contributions to Anthony Minghella’s 2004 Oscar-winning film Cold Mountain as well as collaborations ranging from hardcore punk and Bosnian pop to symphony orchestra.

On Saturday, December 6, Tim will join fellow musicians Zoe Darrow and Peter Irvine to present
The Trio de Pumpkintown, which celebrates the songs of a fictional New England village in fresh, acoustic arrangements. Much of their music comes from the 18th and 19th centuries: love songs, murder ballads, songs of travel on the high seas, rollicking Afro-Celtic sing-alongs, music of local francophone and Scottish communities and shape-note harmony including that of 18th century Native American composer Metacomet Samson. In addition to their traditional New England repertoire, the Trio also plays their own original music and, occasionally, songs by local P’town bands and music drawn from their contact with more recent immigrants to the area.

While The Trio’s own compositions have been praised as “strange and original works” (NetRhythmsUK) and “wicked awesome” (The Pumpkinville Daily Sewer), the band is also devoted to preserving other local music of the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, and their performances sometimes include an acoustic cover version or two of songs by P’town bands like Weasel Stain (copcore), Crucifer (vegan doom) and Vaginasaur (anarcho-feminist postpop). Adding to their historical and original repertoire, The Trio de Pumpkintown sometimes draws on material gathered during the course of their collaborative research into minority musics in the region.

If you are interested in reserving a seat for this concert, please contact Sandy, at: Sandilion49@gmail.com. From there you will receive a reply and details of location and available seating. For first time visitors to this blog, the Jenkins House Concert series is located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Bob Hipkens & Friends; Matt Glaser, Jon Sholle & Marty Confurius on Sat. November 29

This concert is sold out as of 11/27/14
Bob Hipkens, Matt Glaser and Marty Confurius have known each other since the early 70s when their band, The Central Park Sheiks, first hit the music scene in New York City. So this concert is a reunion of sorts, with the addition of guitarist, Jon Sholle. This mixed influence band released a single LP, Honeysuckle Rose. The style they are most often associated with is urban and western acoustic swing music, but they played a great deal of country and folk inflected tunes, as well as original music. The band toured many colleges in the Eastern seaboard during their years together, and had a very successful final performance at New York's Loeb Student Center in New York. While not widely known outside of the eclectic music scene, the band achieved notoriety in Japan.

Bob Hipkens has played many Jenkins house concerts during the past 12 years. He and his daughter Sarah often appear together as a duo which features Bob's dobro and guitar wizardry. Sarah will be making a guest appearance on November 29.

Matt Glaser, violinist, is the Artistic Director of the American Roots Music Program at the Berklee College of Music where he has been on the faculty for 28 years. The Boston Herald has called him,"possibly America's most versatile violinist." Matt has performed at the White House and at Carnegie Hall with Yo Yo Ma as part of Stephane Grappelli's birthday celebration. He has been on staff at the Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp in upstate NY and serves on numerous boards of string and chamber music associations.

Marty Confurius, bass, has been a part of the NYC music business since the Shieks toured in the early 70s. He then joined legendary mandolinist Andy Statman for ten years, resulting in numerous recording projects and tours with various Klezmer and Bluegrass bands. His is currently teaching and freelancing in the New York area.

Jon Sholle, guitarist, was a member of the David Grisman Quartet and has performed on Broadway in "Big River, " and "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." He also played with mandolinist Andy Statman and recorded with him as recently as 2011.

If you are interested in reserving a seat for this concert, please contact Sandy, at: Sandilion49@gmail.com. From there you will receive a reply and details of location and available seating. For first time visitors to this blog, the Jenkins House Concert series is located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Tamar Korn, Dennis Lichtman, Jesse Gelber - Oct. 10

It wasn’t until singer Tamar Korn inherited her grandmother’s Ella Fitzgerald record at sixteen that she listened to very much jazz. “I was excited at the idea of being able to change the melody and rhythm of the written music,” says Korn. “I was so trained in strict forms where you play just what is written that improvisation came as an epiphany through her.” Raised by musically inclined parents – her father is a violinist – Tamar was classically trained on piano, and as fascinated as she was by the sound of jazz, she still felt a bit intimidated of scatting and diving head first into the chaotic feel of the sound. “I started to not be scared of dissonance; if I repeated a shape melodically and rhythmically and built upon it, I started to see a trajectory, a musical idea, and that’s what a solo was.". Tamar continued her exploration through her college years, during which she studied experimental theater and started to learn the bounds of her voice. “That was a time of great expansion in my vocal imagination.” Tamar performed professionally with the now defunct Cangelosi Cards for over six years. She appears regularly with Dennis Lichtmans's, Braincloud, a more Western Swing-based group and most recently with Gaucho, a gypsy jazz ensemble with whom she has written her first original material.

A native of suburban Boston, Dennis Lichtman began his musical career with violin lessons at the age of 5. Over the next decade, Dennis took up serious study of a number of instruments, making smooth transitions from Suzuki violin kid to clarinet stud to guitar wanker, and eventually to mando-blaster. In 2001, Dennis graduated Magna Cum Laude from the Hartt School of Music, where he studied clarinet under New York legend Charles Russo and filled the principal clarinet chair in the Hartt Symphony. Now a New York resident, Dennis performs regularly with a variety of groups, ranging from bluegrass to classical, Klezmer, and Celtic.

Today original music tends to fall into two camps popular and academic. There are those that write purely for the purposes of making money and those that write purely for the sake of complexity. Jesse Gelber’s music is the rare exception that combines the sophistication of academic knowledge with the accessibility of American Popular Song. Jesse holds a Master’s in jazz theory from Rutgers University and a Bachelor’s in jazz performance and composition from the New England Conservatory of Music. Jesse has lectured on topics like Bitonality for the Music Theory Society of New York State, he teaches seminars on the history of jazz and blues piano at the National Guitar Workshop, and he teaches courses on music theory at Rutgers University. Despite Jesse’s academic background his music tends to be melodic and memorable. His work has been sung and played by Theodore Bikel, Hal Linden, and The Massachusetts Springfield Symphony. He won a 1997 ASCAP Foundation -- Morton Gould Young Composer Award for his Opera, Broad Stripes and Bright Stars, which was showcased January of 2002 at La MaMa theater. He was the musical director for both the 50th Anniversary of Israel Concert in Boston’s Symphony Hall, and A Delhi-Mix performed at Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College. Jesse has written arrangements for several broadcast performances including A Taste of Passover and The Chanukah Special, both of which were shown on PBS Television.

Jesse’s song “Boston in the Rain” is the featured track on Julian Yeo’s new critically acclaimed CD Old New Borrowed Blue. “Boston in the Rain” has been sung and recorded by many artists including Jesse, whose own vocal style has been compared to Jelly Roll Morton and Dave Van Ronk. In addition to his own songs, Jesse likes to sing obscure blues and novelty numbers.

For more information and details about this concert, please contact Sandy at, Sandilion49@gmail.com. If this is the first time you have visited our blog, the location of these monthly concerts is in Manhattan. Hope to see you here soon.

Sold Out as of 10/6/14

Hanneke Cassel & Mike Block, Friday, September 26

We are so pleased to welcome both Hanneke Cassel and Mike Block back to our concert series. Since their last appearance at a Jenkins House Concert in 2010, the two have become one-i.e. they got hitched. Hanneke's music influences range from Scotland to China, along with grooves and musical innovations from the hip Boston bluegrass/Americana scene and is fused together to create a uniquely American approach to Scottish music. She has received many honors and awards including 1997 U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Champion. She teaches regularly at the legendary Club Passim in Cambridge, MA, and fiddler’s camps across the country and holds a Bachelors of Music in Violin Performance from Berklee College of Music.

Hanneke will be joined by her husband and cellist, Mike Block. Hailed by Yo-Yo Ma as the "ideal musician of the 21st Century", Mike Block is a pioneering multi-style cellist, composer, and educator living in Boston. While still studying at the Juilliard School, Mike joined Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, and shortly thereafter also joined Mark O'Connor's Appalachia Waltz Trio, which he played in for over three years. Mike has also toured extensively with Darol Anger's Republic of Strings and The Knights orchestra. Mike is Associate Professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA.

For more information and reservations for this concert, please contact Sandy Jenkins at; Sandilion49@gmail.com. If this is your first visit to our blog, our concert location is in Manhattan. Details will be provided by email at the time a reservation is made.

This concert is sold out as of Sunday, September 14, 2014. Hope to see you next time!

Miss Tess and The Talkbacks on Saturday, June 14

Miss Tess is a Brooklyn based songwriter and performing musician, who tours the country regularly with her band, The Talkbacks. Inspired by styles of vintage swing, blues, country, and folk, Miss Tess draws comparisons to artists such as Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, Peggy Lee, and Chuck Berry, but maintains a style all of her own. Stemming from the truest meaning of “Americana”, Miss Tess and her band push their influences into the current music scene with something totally fresh and soulfully timeless. The skilled musicianship of the quartet combined with her heartfelt songwriting and powerful stage presence creates a live experience that is more interesting and engaging then most by popular musicians today. It’s quality music you can’t define in one sentence. 
Morningsiders, Reid Jenkins and Magnus Ferguson, will start the evening off followed by Thomas Eaton who will warm up the house for Miss Tess with some tunes from his new album release. For more information and reservations for this concert, please contact Sandy Jenkins at; Sandilion49@gmail.com. If this is your first visit to our blog, our concert location is in Manhattan. Details will be provided by email at the time a reservation is made.