Full Slate of Concerts at Unity College Centre for the Performing Arts Through Fall
Unity, Maine – September, 2009 – Music fans will have many options from which to choose with a full lineup of musical talent scheduled to perform through December at the Unity College Centre for the Performing Arts in Unity.
The Janks
Thursday September 3 at 7:30 pm
Los Angeles-based band The Janks play rock and pop. Featuring original tunes by lead man and guitarist Zack Zmed, guitar and keys by Garth Herberg, Jesse Brown on drums and Wade Ryff on bass, the group mixes up the nostalgic sounds of British and American pop.
Tickets $15
Gadelle
Friday September 4 at 8 pm
Gadelle is a four member, all woman, traditional French-Acadian band that includes former internationally acclaimed Barachois members, Helene Bergeron and Louise Arsenault. Gadelle is an old Acadian word which translates as “wild berries” and also has a connotation of a feisty female. This new group's performance is delivered with a stylistic essence and the stagecraft that Barachois was well known for. All hailing from Prince Edward Island on Canada's east coast, the four members of the group are: Helene Bergeron - vocals, piano, pump organ, fiddle, foot percussion and step dancing; Louise Arsenault - fiddle, harmonica, foot percussion, step-dancing; Caroline Bernard- primary vocalist, piano, pump organ, accordion and guitar; Paige Gallant- fiddle, mandolin, guitar, bass and step-dancing. Caroline and Paige are from the newest generation of gifted traditional musicians and are teamed up here with Louise and Helene who are veterans of the stage. Gadelle members play and dance with ferocity and conviction while putting on one heck of a show.
Tickets $15
John Brown's Body
Wednesday September 9 at 8:30 pm
With seven albums and ten years of touring across the U.S., the music of John Brown's Body has been described by the New York Daily News as "more Massive Attack than Marley", and "reverent and revolutionary at the same time", a nod to their futuristic take on reggae music and their ability to put a unique twist on this music. The group has been called America's best and most original reggae band, and continues to play almost exclusively original material. They have performed with a variety of groups over the years, including Dave Matthews Band, Ozomatli, Broken Social Scene, and Jurassic 5, in addition to headlining across the nation at the theater level. They were awarded "Best World Music Act" at the 2001 Boston Music Awards, and "Best Live Act" the next year. As a result of the loss of bassist Scott Palmer from cancer, John Brown's Body went under some dramatic line-up changes during the Summer of 2006. Kevin Kinsella (Vocals and Rhythm Guitar) has formally left the band on good terms alongside hornsmen Dan Delacruz and Chris "C-Money" Welter. The band is now led by futureroots pioneers Elliot Martin (Vocals) and Tommy Benedetti (Drums).
Tickets $21.50 ($25 at the door)
Howard Levy
Saturday September 12 at 7:30 pm
Howard Levy is a musician without limits. His musical adventures include journeys into jazz, pop, rock, world music, Latin, classical, folk, blues, country, theater, and film. He has appeared on hundred of cd’s, won a Grammy (1997), won a Joseph Jefferson Award (1986) for Best Original Music for a Play, and has performed many times on American and European television and radio.
Universally acknowledged as the world’s most advanced diatonic harmonica player, Howard developed a fully chromatic style on the standard 10 - hole diatonic harmonica, revolutionizing harmonica playing and taking the instrument into totally new territory. He is also an accomplished pianist and composer, and plays many other instruments as well, including flute, ocarina, mandolin, saxophone, and percussion.
Howard was a founding member of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. He toured and recorded two albums with Kenny Loggins, and formed Trio Globo with Eugene Friesen and Glen Velez. Howard has also performed and/or recorded with Dolly Parton, Styx, Bobby McFerrin, Paul Simon, John Prine, Paquito D’Rivera, Ken Nordine, and many others.
Tickets $20
Hurricane Season
Thursday September 17 at 7 pm
Through a tapestry of spoken-word poetry, video projection, dance, shadow art, and a sound collage of personal testimonies, Hurricane Season connects the issues that surfaced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the "unnatural disasters" our communities are experiencing nationwide and worldwide on a daily basis. Alixa and Naima are the soul-sister co-conspiracy of arts activists known as Climbing PoeTree. With roots in Haiti and Colombia, Alixa and Naima reside in Brooklyn and track footprints across the country and globe on a mission to overcome destruction with creativity. Poets, performers, print-makers, dancers, muralists, and designers, Alixa and Naima have sharpened their art as a tool for popular education, community organizing, and personal transformation. With a set built of bamboo, calabash, and water that surrounds the audience in a circle of shadow and light, Hurricane Season transforms spaces into sanctuaries of healing, witness, and imagination.
Tickets $10 to $25 on a sliding scale.
Schrock & Schrock
Saturday September 19 at 7:30 pm
Singer and songwriter Kate Schrock has one piece of advice for those who want to come to a new show she's putting together with her father. "Come with an open mind," she said. Schrock, 44, and her father, Gladden, a writer and Pulitzer-nominated novelist, will start a tour May 9 in Boothbay Harbor that will take them to venues across the state. The show, called "VOICES: Schrock & Schrock," will be a blend of Kate's music and her father's writing. Gladden, 73, said he will read from his body of work, which includes fiction, poetry, essays and speeches. Gladden described the format as a throwback to poetry readings with music interspersed. "Some of her music and a lot of my writing seems to have a similar DNA," he said. Kate, who lives in Portland, has released six albums on her Kakelane Music label. The most recent, "Invocation," came out in 2007 and is described as a blend of jazz and rock gospel that includes raggae and dancehall. For this show, she'll pull from 20 years worth of work. "I will probably lift out some of the B-sides, some of the more nuanced stuff," she said. Gladden Schrock, who lives in South Bristol, is an actor, playwright and novelist who was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1974 for "Letters from Alf." A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, he's performed at the Cleveland Playhouse and Long Wharf Theater, which he helped establish. In 2007, he retired from teaching at Bennington College in Vermont. For more than 20 years, he fished commercially for herring while working on his writing projects. "I'm an old coot," he said. "I've been around the barn a long time." Both father and daughter say they have so much material they could produce three distinct shows. They plan to have an outline of what they will perform, but it will change from night to night as they play in different venues to different audiences.
Tickets $15
Twiddle
Saturday September 26 at 9 pm
Talented musicians with a devoted following, Twiddle are quickly carving out their own distinctive nook in Vermont’s music scene and Natural Evolution of Consciousness is an excellent debut from Vermont’s newest indie-jammers. The band features Mihali Savoulidis on vocals and guitar, Zdenek Gubb onBass guitar and vocals, Ryan Dempsey on keyboards and B3, and Brook Jordan on drums.
Tickets $15
Dog Wants Out
Saturday October 3 at 7:30 pm
Dog Wants Out will perform a benefit concert for hunger-relief efforts in Waldo County, as part of the third annual Arts for Hunger sponsored by the Unity Area Rotary Club. Dog Wants Out is a music group from Unity, Maine currently dedicated to supporting and promoting local food events through a growing season tour of Maine farmer's markets and local food events. DWO plays Alternative Funtry Music with a folk sensibility. Their set list is designed to provide hum-along opportunities for the farmer's market crowd and includes "He Thinks my Tractor's Sexy," "Jive Talkin," "A Place in the Choir," and "Harvest Moon." Dog Wants Out is Rob Constantine on folk keyboards (more on that later), Anna McGalliard, originally from Hickory North Carolina on banjo, Sara Trunzo singing and playing the mandolin, and John Zavodny on guitar and vocal.
Admission: Please bring a bag of non-perishable food items to the concert.
Blaggards
Saturday October 10 at 7:30 pm
Stout Irish Rock is what Blaggards plays, traditional Irish music mixed with rock n' roll, informed by everything from Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley to Thin Lizzy and Black Sabbath. They are often compared to bands like Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys, and the Pogues. Blaggards consists of original members Patrick Devlin and Chad Smalley, plus newcomers Chris Buckley and Michael McAloon. Front man, guitarist and singer Patrick Devlin grew up in Dublin, Ireland, and moved to Houston in his early 20's. After working in the local club scene for several years, Patrick recognized a demand for Irish rock music that nobody was taking advantage of. In 2003, while hosting a weekly open mic at an Irish pub, Patrick met bassist and singer Chad Smalley, who had recently returned from New York City and was looking for a new project. A year later, Blaggards was born. Chris Buckley, an accomplished fiddler who has won first place awards in the Midwestern Fleadh Cheoil and competed in two All-Ireland world competitions became a Blaggard, followed in 2009 by drummer Michael McAloon, a first generation Scot-American whogrew up learning Irish step dancing, winning gold medals all across the United States before picking up the drums at age 13.
"Thoroughly irresistible, ass-kicking Irish rockers..." -- Margaret Moser, Austin Chronicle
Tickets $15
Tree by Leaf
Saturday October 17 at 7 pm
Tree by Leaf will perform a benefit concert for hunger-relief efforts in Waldo County, as part of the third annual Arts for Hunger sponsored by the Unity Area Rotary Club.
Tree by Leaf is the unique synergy and musicianship of Garrett Soucy, whose songwriting taps at the pulse of the soul of human experience, but never dips into journal-entry pathos, Cliff Young, whose keyboards slide from roaring command to a mere hum of electricity, and Siiri Soucy, whose voice could draw a heart right out of its body. Eric Sanders adds the primal rhythm to the new TBL sound. Influences as divergent as a childhood steeped in church music, hip hop, rap, and the classical education that Cliff Young and Siiri Soucy brought to the band, turned Garrett's ear for melody and undeniable writing talent into something extraordinary.
In addition to the concert, an Art/Craft Sale featuring items donated by local artists and citizens will take place throughout October in the UCCPA Art Gallery. All proceeds from the Tree by Leaf concert and the art/craft sale will benefit the local hunger-relief efforts of the Volunteer Regional Food Pantry, People for People and Open Door. Patrons are encouraged to bring non-perishable food items to the concert.
Tickets $10
Bill Evans and Megan Lynch
Friday October 23 at 7:30 pm
World-renowned California bluegrass banjo player (and author of Banjo For Dummies) Bill Evans (Dry Branch Fire Squad, David Grisman, Peter Rowan) and six-time National Champion Nashville fiddler Megan Lynch (Pam Tillis, 3 Fox Drive, Jim Hurst) blend tradition and innovation, mixing original instrumentals with creative interpretations of modern tunes and a few well-chosen standards. Fast banjo and fiddle duets? Most definitely! But you’ll also be surprised at how well these celebrated bluegrass sidepersons blend their voices on bluegrass, folk and swing material from such diverse sources as Rose Maddox and Ralph Stanley to Van Morrison and John Gorka.
Tickets $15
The Brew
Friday October 30th and Saturday October 31st at 8:30 pm
Massachusetts-based quartet The Brew cook up a musical melting pot on their brand-new, self-released album, Back to the Woods, that combines their roots in classic rock, adding ingredients of prog, jazz, reggae, world beat, indie, funk and orchestral pop, sometimes in the course of a single song. The band has been busy building a fan base by touring the northeast, playing events like the Gathering of the Vibes in Connecticut and the Up North Festival in Maine and headlining Boston’s famed Paradise Rock Club. They opened for Bruce Hornsby in 2006, and again in 2008, and were voted Best Opening Act by his fan site. This year, the band was nominated for the “Best New Groove” (Best New Artist) award at the J ammy’s in New York City’s Madison Square Garden.
Their eclectic stylistic palette can be heard clearly on Back to the Woods, from the tribal world beat and prog-rock of “S een It All” and the reggae rhythm of “Looking Down” to the jazz-funk and S ting-like vocal on “Control,” the lush Beach Boys a cappella harmonies of the title track and the Queen-like overkill of “Castle Walls” and the climactic “Chance Reaching.”
Tickets $16.50 $18 at the door.
Kinobe & SoulBeat Africa
Friday November 6 at 7:30 pm
Kinobe Herbert is a young talented musician from Uganda who is already receiving acclaim throughout Africa, Europe and America. Kinobe started played music at the age of 5, and soon began playing alongside Africa's greatest musicians, including Youssou Ndour, Salif Keita, Baaba Maal, Toumani Diabate, Angelique Kidjo and many more. In May 2007, he released his debut album, Soul Language, which reflects his roots in traditional Ugandan acoustic music. With his band Soul Beat Africa, Kinobe blends traditional instruments from Africa with modern instrumentation to create a unique African-World music, bringing together rhythms from Africa, Asia, America, and the Caribbean.
Tickets $15
Nate Wilson Group
Saturday December 12 at 7:30 pm
Originally formed for a weekly residency at the legendary Stone Church near the University of New Hampshire, the Nate Wilson Group solidified its sound in 2007 with the release of their first studio EP, featuring original tracks "For the Sun," "Justify," and "Unbound." Gathering much of their inspiration from the riff-heavy psychedelic hard-rock of the 60's and 70's, the Group has drawn comparisons to 1st generation luminaries Led Zeppelin and Cream, as well as neo-classic and stoner rock contemporaries Wolfmother, The Black Keys, Dead Meadow, and The Raconteurs. Since their inception, the group has divided its time equally between the stage and the studio. They continue to write and tour, expanding their fanbase throughout the Northeast while promoting their debut album, Unbound. (September 2008) The Group is Adam Terrell onguitar, Tommy Lada on bass, Nate Wilson on keys and vocals, Tom Arey on drums.
Tickets $15
All dates & performers subject to change.
Call 207 948-SHOW for latest update or email show@unitymaine.org
The Unity College Centre for the Performing Arts is located at 42 Depot Street (off Route 202) in Unity, Maine. Tickets are available online at www.unitymaine.org/theater/ ; or www.unitymaine.org.
For more information contact John Sullivan, General Manager, 207 948-SHOW, or by e-mail jsullivan@unity.edu.
Free parking is available.
Unity College is a small private college in rural Maine that provides dedicated, engaged students with a liberal arts education which emphasizes the environment and natural resources. Unity College graduates are prepared to be environmental stewards, effective leaders, and responsible citizens through active learning experiences within a supportive community.
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