Posts tagged ‘Boarding House Park’

September 2nd, 2011

Folksinger Richard Thompson at Bd Hse Park Tonight and Etc.

by PaulM

Folksinger and songwriter Richard Thompson is featured tonight in the Lowell Summer Music Series. There was a long line of people waiting for the opening bell to ring at 7 a.m. so they could get their chairs and blankets in place. The forecast is for mixed sun and clouds, so let’s hope for a clear sky this evening. Central Street was partially blocked due to cobblestone work. UTEC construction crew was already busy on the Hurd Street side. I saw Alex Demas with this fiddle case, who must have been coming from a WCAP appearance to promote the Banjo and Fiddle Contest on Saturday, Sept. 10. The Lowell Summer Music Series management team is looking forward to the Friday, Sept. 9, show with Warren Haynes of Allman Bros., The Dead, and Government Mule fame. Tomorrow night at Bd Hse Park the star is Matisyahu, a Reggae Rapper, and there will be a large contingent of UMass Lowell students thanks to the Student Activities Office. We’re wrapping up another impressive season of the Music Series. Congratulations to all the organizers, sponsors, and ticket-buyers.

Last thought: Can someone explain what the Lowell Connector construction work is about? It’s a huge project, but I don’t know enough about roadwork to be able to figure out what is going on. Shoring up overpasses?

 

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July 22nd, 2011

Moe. Better in L-Town

by PaulM

I didn’t know anything about Moe. before 7.30 p.m. tonight. It was hot as hell at Boarding House Park, and Moe. brought out the mellowest crowd of the year. The first half of the concert featured the highly anticipated long jams and as soon as the sun set a light show with multicolored spirals, amoeba shapes, and gear-wheels circulating on the face of the Boott Cotton Mills behind the stage. I’d judge tonight’s to be the youngest, hippest audience of the summer so far. Couples and singles, including lots of blissed-out looking young women and guys, were kind of swimming through the park as they slowly danced down the paths between the sections of lawn.

Emcee John Marciano delivered his pre-concert house remarks with just a bit more verve than usual, asking the crowd to help out by watching their neighbors in the heat. “If the person next to you suddenly starts talking about his or her childhood, please check to see if that person is properly hydrated,” urged John. He actually called our city “L-Town.”

We had people with psychedelic hula hoops, toddlers with heavy-duty earphones on for protection, all kinds of crazy hair, intermittent retirees in plaid lawnchairs, excess tie-dye and dreads, and standees in the first tier who all knew the words when there were words in the songs. The beautiful people were in the house. And that was only the first set.

Moe. at the Lowell Summer Music Series in Boarding House Park (phone-cam photo by R. Noon, slightly edited by Joe Marion)

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July 8th, 2011

All Hail Bela and the Flecktones

by PaulM

Just back from Boarding House Park and what some audience members described as a “life-changing experience” after 2.5 hours of musical immersion in the art of Bela Fleck and the fabulous Flecktones. I don’t know the vocabulary of the banjo, but Mr Fleck coaxes out of it a sophisticated sound that is its own language, a whole dictionary, maybe encyclopedia, of distinctive sounds (in the spirit of folk-grass, jazz, blues, classsical, country, pop, soul, you name it) that make a harmonious union with the other instruments and players on stage.

Mr Fleck’s reputation as an artist makes him known to even the uninitiated. One of his bandmates tonight announced that Mr F has been nominated in more categories and more times than anyone else on the Grammy list. That’s a feat. I can see, or hear, why after having the show wash over me tonight. The Lowell Summer Music Series is getting to be a “Can you top this?” operation. After Joan Baez, Lyle Lovett, and Chris Isaak in the past two years, the organizers keep climbing the ladder of excellence.

There was a packed park tonight on the front lawn of the Mogan Cultural Center. I don’t know numbers, but I’d guess a couple of thousand people or near that figure. The gray sky kept squeezing rain on the audience for the first half of the performance, which prompted Mr Fleck to call an audible and cancel intermission for fear the drizzle would worsen. As soon as his ensemble swung into the second half of tunes, the rain stopped and never returned. It was clear sailing through the second set, and what a set it was with extended improvisation by virtuosos on harmonica and piano (Howard Levy), bass (Victor Wooten), and an invention that I think was called a “drumtar” (Futureman)—a drum machine shaped like a sawed-off guitar. Special guest Casey Driessen on fiddle/violin lifted several compositions to higher orbits, in keeping with the recent release “Rocket Science.”

Lowell continues to be the platform for the best in the arts. The National Park Service, Lowell Festival Foundation, and all the series’ sponsors and partners deserve wild applause for their contribution. It all adds up, it’s all cumulative, and I’m convinced there’s something bigger going on here than even close observers realize. The high quality experiences, good news, and social and cultural capital being created day by day is yielding important results, and the yield will only increase as the months and years advance.

Here’s the band’s website.

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June 19th, 2011

Lowell Cultural Summit: Chris Isaak, Pat Mogan, & Amy Black

by PaulM

Thanks to Amy Black on Facebook for this historic image that I hope she doesn’t mind us sharing here—this is inside the Patrick J. Mogan Cultural Center, which has a front lawn in the form of Boarding House Park where Amy and Chris performed masterfully last night to open the 2011 Lowell Summer Music Series. That’s Pat Mogan, “Father of the Park,” in the permanent bronze. By the way, Pat is still around and giving homework assignments to some of us.

Chris Isaak, Patrick J. Mogan, and Amy Black (web photo courtesy of www.amyblack.com )

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April 10th, 2011

Shakespeare in the Park: Free Show in Lowell, August 14

by PaulM

Shakespeare will return to Boarding House Park this summer with a free performance thanks to the Moses Greeley Parker Lectures and Lowell Summer Music Series. On Sunday, August 14, at 4 pm, see the New England Shakespeare Company’s production of “Measure for Measure.” For news on the whole schedule announced to date, visit www.lowellsummermusic.org

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August 21st, 2010

‘Love Shack’ by the Trolley Tracks

by PaulM

You don’t have to say a lot more than “the B-52s played Boarding House Park last night.” They raised high the steel roof beams of the trademark pavilion set against a wall of brick and tall windows at the Boott Mills. The moon floated over downtown at about 7/8ths round and the air was cool and still. It was a standing dance party for the Lowell Summer Music Series crowd, something I haven’t seen often.

The iconic band of good-sport entertainers played all the fan favorites, plus a few new songs. The band of bass, keyboards, lead guitar, and drums superbly powered through vocal-driven numbers. Propulsive is a word to use here. Shouting is another word to use. Fred Schneider joked at one point about the group’s ballads. I didn’t hear much of that. Little Richard-type shout-singing from the 50s is more like it. And a kind of campy pop gospel holler mixed with ’80s’ techno-rock. They are from the South, after all.  The sound level all night seemed slightly over the top, but maybe it’s just my older ears. 

Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson raised the roar in the park with an extended version of “Roam,” and the whole crew closed the 90-minute show with a souped-up version of  “Love Shack.” They came back for a two-song encore, the cosmically goofy “Planet Claire” and cellar dance classic ”Rock Lobster.” The last words from the stage by (was it?) guitarist Keith Strickland were a big shout out to Lowell’s own “dead beat”—”Thank you Jack Kerouac, wherever you are.”

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August 14th, 2010

All Hail Lyle Lovett for Lifting Up Lowell

by PaulM

(Web photo courtesy of Grand Rapids Press)

This isn’t a photo from last night’s show at Boarding House Park (The Lowell Summer Music Series), but it will help anyone who missed the so-far show of the year picture what the stage looked like. At one point, Lyle had 15 musicians and singers on stage. I never once thought of Lawrence Welk. I had never seen/heard Lyle Lovett in concert. What was I missing? What I was missing! Where to begin? Wow. Double-wow. The twin dynamos of BHP, Peter Aucella and John Marciano, keep out-doing themselves. For shows in recent years, Lyle Lovett & His Large Band ranks with the appearance of Joan Baez under the French Street pergola for sheer musicianship and performance power. For energy and lift and proliferation of fun, the edge goes to Lyle. The Sun this week reported that his troupe has played in Boston and on Cape Cod, but I can’t believe those shows were better than the one last night. The recording gods should have been at their machines because a live album/cd/download of the show last night in Lowell would be a mega-hit. The band played for more than two hours after a catchy opening set by song-stylist Kat Edmonson, whose voice wraps around standards like “Summertime” as if culturally engineered for them. I can’t remember the names of the players in the “Large Band” or the four fabulous older guys singing on the side, but each of them deserves to have his name etched into the steel of the performance pavilion for history’s sake. People will talk about this concert for years, maybe decades. The temperature was perfect. A searchlight swept across the sky overhead all night for added glamour. Am I too enthusiastic? Sitting there with my wife and some close friends, I was dual-tracking in my head, savoring every well-played note and beautifully sung word while trying to put what was going on in experiential context. Like the labels on science displays in the Exploratorium in San Francisco that ask ”What’s going on here?”—I was thinking, This is the essence of art-induced joy. This is why people say they “love” music, and it is not too strong a word. How many people attended the show? More than 2,000 probably. And there were moments when the artists and audience bonded in pleasure that explain why people have been beating on drums and plucking strings and trying to make harmonious sounds together for six million years or so. The show was a tour of American music, from rock and roll to jazz, from country and gospel to the pop songbook, from alt-country to blues and swing and the other variations. We witnessed a unit at its peak. When the lights came back on at the end of the show the grounds buzzed and bubbled with chatter as people folded up blankets and chairs and moved toward the exits. To the organizers and sponsors: “Well done, well done.” To the band-leader and the band: “Forget Cape Cod; come back to Lowell next summer.”

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July 31st, 2010

Marc Cohn at BHP: Instant Review

by PaulM

Accompanied by world-class guitarist Shane Fontayne and occasional vocals by Amy Correia, the masterful Marc Cohn lifted up the full-house audience at Boarding House Park with his stellar compositions like “Walking in Memphis,” “Silver Thunderbird,” and “True Companion” as well as beautifully rendered covers of a handful of hits from 1970 that are featured on his new CD, “Listening Booth: 1970.”

Cohn and Fontayne filled the Park with lush sounds of piano and various guitars, complementing and magnifying each other’s musicianship. Fontayne is a veteran of sessions and shows with Sting and Springsteen.  Marc Cohn was a strong presence on stage, introducing many of the songs with back-story tidbits and bantering at times with audience members. What came through was his artistry as a composer and performer—and in particular his deeply textured singing. He joked about a good Jewish boy singing gospel and the blues in Memphis. Cohn’s love of the American songbook makes him a kind of throwback to an earlier era when musicians immersed themselves in the whole tradition on their way to finding their own voices and sounds.

From the covers CD he played “Wild World” by Cat Stevens, “Long as I Can See the Light” by John Fogerty, “The Letter” by the Boxtops, “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison, and “No Matter What” by Badfinger—each in distinctive interpretations, often slower and more bluesy or slightly countrified. These won’t be to everyone’s taste, but the songs are so strong they hold up to Cohn’s new takes. When you’ve heard something the same way for 40 years, it requires some adjustment to receive these versions. His live renderings of “Wild World” and “Into the Mystic” were especially pleasing tonight.

And what can one say about “Walking in Memphis”? It’s a hall-of-fame candidate. Cohn mentioned that he heard that Cat Stevens/Yusef Islam has the song on his iPod-mix. He also let people know that the song is a tribute to Muriel the pianist, not Elvis and his blue suede shoes, as some folks assume.

We had a perfect night of weather and music at the Lowell Summer Music Series. Onward with Suzanne Vega, Patty Larkin, and Herbie Hancock next weekend!

Shane Fontayne and Marc Cohn

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July 31st, 2010

Boarding House Park Scuttlebutt

by PaulM

Huge show last night with Indigo Girls. Can you say “the” Indigo Girls? I have a memory that they say “Indigo Girls,” not “the” for some reason. Can anyone clarify? Indigo dye was used to dye cloth blue in the Lowell mills. Anyway… huge show last night. The blankets and chairs were out in force by 7 a.m. yesterday morning. The show was sold out; no tickets at the gate.  Unusual for BHP. By 7 p.m., the park was wall-to-wall fans. People were walking toward the park down John Street carrying bags of take-out food from the restaurants on Merrimack. I heard the performers, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, arrived early as they have in the past for Lowell shows to walk around and eat downtown. The musicians said good things about the city from the stage. One guy who was at the show said it was the best performance by them that he had ever experienced.

This morning, the folding chairs and blankets were out by 6.30 a.m. on Boarding House Beach. One woman sat in her chair reading as the sun did its chin up over the Boott Cotton Mills. A steady stream of cars and trucks pulled up alongside BHP to let out runners with quilts and towels and old flannel blankets, whatever can be used to stake out a patch of grass. The Lowell Summer Music Series has its own culture now, which includes the polite land rush to claim prime viewing space. Pity the folks from Acton who don’t have a pal in Lowell to lay out a blanket early but just waltz in with their picnic basket at 7.10 p.m. Third tier in the rear, I’m afraid, is what’s left for hot acts. Maybe that reality will cause a behavior shift, and concert-goers from out of town will start to arrive by noon to take in the museums, shops, and architectural sights. That would be good.

Marc “Walking in Memphis” Cohn tonight at 7.30 p.m. I remember first hearing Marc Cohn music on the radio, probably “The River” from Haverhill/Boston. He struck me as a good writer as well as a musician. Critic Dave Marsh praised “Walking in Memphis”  as “a perfectly written narrative.” Marc’s got a compelling personal story also, having survived being shot in the head during a random carjack in Denver. The weather should be near perfect for an outdoor show.

Marc Cohn

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July 18th, 2010

Joan Armatrading: Lowell and London

by PaulM

John Wooding of UMass Lowell and the COOL Board of Directors is a regular at the Lowell Summer Music Series. He sent us this instant review of Joan Armatrading’s performance at Boarding House Park last night, which sparked a cross-Atlantic memory for him. —PM

“Another great night at Boarding House Park.  Joan Armatrading was in fine fettle and clearly enjoying herself.  It took me back — way back.  I remember the last time I saw her, maybe 1977?  She was playing at Chalk Farm in London.  Thirty-three years ago.  Time like that is an oil slick. 

“Last night she did old and new stuff and the old stuff brought it back for me – Love and Affection, Show Some Emotion — s’funny how songs can be the jumper cables of memory.  Only reason I remember that other concert (although I have a vague image of her — young, very young, and self conscious) was that a friend was staying with me then and came to the show.  Later that night, back at my flat, he fell against the record deck and sent the needle skidding across my copy of “Let It Be.”  Sent the little arm on a vacation “Across the Universe.”  I had to listen to that click for years until I got the CD.

“Thirty-three years.  The speed of an LP on the turntable.  Another hot summer night in Lowell.  Perfect evening.  In front of me last night, three young women —  maybe 16, 17 — rocking out to Armatrading, knowing all the words from all the songs, high-fiving each other when a favorite got played.  So good to see them, connecting the times.  This is what Lowell can sometimes do so well.  History getting up there with the present and, maybe, even the future.  Score another one for the music series.”

—John Wooding

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