There’s a very special event happening at the Arcata Playhouse tonight at 7 p.m. that has been a long time in the making. Some of the most skilled jazz musicians in our community are gathering for an evening of improvisation and live compositional recitation after many months of practice and development. Trumpet player Nicholas Talvola, […]
Arcata Playhouse
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Music Tonight: Sunday, Aug. 10
Highway to van/wagon tour life duo Anna Moss and Joel Ludford, aka Handmade Moments, is jamming tonight at 7:30 p.m. The sound is hard to pin down, so I’ll list the ingredients instead: ukelele, upright bass, saxophone and vocals with beat box and purr. This should be a fun one for people who celebrate young […]
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Music Tonight: Thursday, July 24
The Creative Sanctuary’s fine cadre of jazz musicians continues rolling along with their excellent series celebrating the various satellite musicians associated with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Tonight’s gig at 7 p.m. at the Arcata Playhouse is a celebration of tenor sax player Benny Golson, whose brief stint with the Messengers produced the 1958 […]
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Music Tonight: Saturday, July 5
The Creative Sanctuary continues its Jazz is Peace series with an homage to one of my heroes and the father of some of the greatest music this country ever produced, from the Delta womb of all good American sounds, my spiritual home, New Orleans. I’m talking about Satchmo himself, Mr. Louis Armstrong, who would be […]
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Music Tonight: Saturday, June 28
The Creative Sanctuary presents another jazz show at the Arcata Playhouse tonight at 7 p.m., this one is a tribute to trumpeter and composer Kenny Dorham, a criminally underrated musician who died far too young and is perhaps most famous for his work with the early iteration of the Jazz Messengers. Co-producers James Zeller and […]
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Music Tonight: Thursday, June 26
Nashville’s Crys Matthews plays a right-handed acoustic guitar as a leftie, upside down to the casual viewer, with the tenor strings up top and the wrapped lower strings sitting on the bottom, a tradition which dates back to the pre-recording era of American blues music, and was the style in which Elizabeth “Libba” Cotton, the […]
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Music Tonight: Friday, June 20
Legendary singer/songwriter Jonathan Richman will be strumming his stuff at the Arcata Playhouse tonight at 8 p.m. He will be joined by longtime drummer Tommy Larkins, to tap into a back catalogue that stretches 50 years into the past, starting at a time when his group The Modern Lovers were changing the way people thought […]
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Music Tonight: Wednesday, June 11
Pierre Bensusan is a French-Algerian acoustic guitarist who has managed over a 50-year career to not only carve out his own sound from the brilliant force of his unique playing, but to become the master of one of the more versatile guitar tunings, DADGAD, which forms a bridge from Ireland to North Africa with its […]
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Music Today, Sunday June 8
Another Sunday, another afternoon matinee of choral music at the Arcata Playhouse. This week it’s the McKinleyville Community Choir presenting its Spring concert at 3 p.m. Admission is donation only. Enjoy.
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Music Tonight: Saturday, June 7
It’s a big show night tonight, which will hopefully make up for two quiet nights in the beginning of next week. Here’s what’s on the marquee for the evening. At 5 p.m., the Eureka Vets Hall is the venue for a benefit show for missing native man Ray Tsatoke, featuring Oakland grindcore band Bob Plant, […]
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Music Today: Sunday, June 1
The Redwood Interfaith Gospel Choir is presenting its spring concert just before the blooms go from vernal verdance to summer straw, nestled right between the Flower and the Strawberry moons. Which is just right, as far as I am concerned. This 2 p.m. matinee will be making the Arcata Playhouse thrum like a wooden diaphragm […]
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Music Tonight: Thursday, May 22
The Creative Sanctuary is putting on another jazz gig at the Arcata Playhouse, the first in a series basking in the glow of the formidable works of Art Blakely and the Jazz Messengers. Tonight’s program is an homage to Horace Silver, the post-bop pianist and co-bandleader who brought the group to his highest peaks of […]