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The inaugural Phoenicia Festival of the Voice took place in our local Catskills village this past weekend, August 13-15, and by all standards, was a runaway hit. Envisaged by local opera singers Kerry Henderson, Louis Otey and Maria Todaro after a successful fund-raiser last summer for children’s playground equipment in the Parish park, the Festival leaned towards the classical and the classics, with the main events in the Park including a vocal recital, a performance of Verdi’s opera “Falstaff,” and a Sunday afternoon finale featuring several local choirs. Still, the organizers were keen to embrace as many different elements of the human voice as initially possible. To that extent, the Festival also included a “gospel” recital in the local Protestant church, a “sacred” music recital in the local Catholic church, a cautious foray into world music, a piano recital by the renowned Justin Kolb featuring the powerful spoken word of local resident Jay Braman (see picture below), the opening of the new musical Closer Than Ever at the Shandaken Theatrical Society (which is ongoing through this coming weekend) and a performance by the village’s own children’s favorite Uncle Rock at the Phoenicia Railway Museum.

All the indoor events was sold out or standing room only, while the Saturday night performance of Falstaff drew as many as a thousand people to the Park, the biggest crowd to congregate there in memory. (See pictures below.) Even a torrential rain storm on Sunday afternoon failed to fully dampen the spirits of those who came to hear the choirs, of children and adults alike, perform everything from “Amazing Grace” to “Rock Around The Clock.” Thankfully, the organizers had thought ahead to erect a large covered tent.

According to Jay Braman’s report in the Daily Freeman, the Festival was such a success that planning for next year (and beyond) has already begun. While I freely admit that not every aspect of the Festival appealed to my own musical tastes, I was as delighted as the next resident to see the event prove such a triumph. Congratulations are due not only to the trio of Henderson, Otey and Todaro for imagining it, but to all the many local residents who began the hard work of physical organization so many months ago, to the dozens of volunteers who pitched in over the weekend (including my wife and older son), and to all the local businesses and individuals who welcomed it, recognizing that such an event could only make Phoenicia that much more phenomenal.

Two years ago, Hudson Valley radio DJ Raissa St. Pierre traveled all the way to Timbuktu to experience its annual Festival Au-Desert. There she fell in love with the music of Mali’s own Khaira Arby. This past Thursday, August 12, the honor was returned when Arby and her 7-piece band played their first ever American concert at Bard College in Red Hook, Dutchess County, where St. Pierre promotes a Thursday night series in the amazing Spiegeltent for Bard’s SummerScape series.

Adey Cisse, Khaira Arby and Diara Inne line the Spiegeltent stage, August 12, guitarist Barke Dembele in the background.

Arby’s music is a mix of tradition and modernity, with the stringed ngoni and calabash drum joined by trap drums, electric bass, and two electric guitarists, of which Abdrahman Toure’s lead work was particularly vibrant at the Spigeltent, his taut solo riffs based on the West African highlife music of neighboring Ghana yet distinct in its own right. All the group wore traditional clothing, two of the band in full desert garb (though this didn’t stop ngoni player Ebelaw Yattara from acknowledging my enthusiasm as I took pictures of him); a male dancer and occasional singer Adey Cisse, and backing vocalist/percussionist Diara Inna, each helped work the audience of all ages and many colors into an almost instant dancing frenzy. Center stage throughout was the effervescent and energetic Khaira Arby herself, singing what is widely referred to as “desert blues,” a music that is at times both secular and sacred, music that tells elaborate stories of family and folklore, but that also sings the praises of the prophets.

Arby’s own story is one of relentless determination in the face of frequent adversity. A native of the Timbuktu area, and a cousin of Mali’s heralded Ali Farke Toure, Arby was widely recognized as a talented singer in childhood, but rather than encourage this gift, her disapproving father married her off at the age of just 14. Eight years later, she successfully filed for divorce and resumed her singing career, embarking on a two-decade long journey to the forefront of her nation’s musical reputation. Indeed, in Mali she is regarded, and for all the word’s positive connotations, as a “diva.” (She is also, we learned on Thursday night, a newly proud grandmother of twins.) But though Arby has also carved out a strong following in African music’s European homeland of France (she spoke French to the audience at the Spiegeltent), until now her fame has spread no further. That should hopefully change with the international release of her fourth album, Timbuktu Tarab, by Clermont Music; you can hear some of it at Arby’s MySpace page, where her American tour dates are also listed, and where there are links to some enticing YouTube videos of her and her band in performance.

The set at the Spiegeltent was captivating but brief, certainly by African standards. I suspect that the gig was viewed as an informal warm-up of sorts for what will presumably be longer sets at venues that include both City Winery and Joe’s Pub in Manhattan, the Lotus and Global Roots Festivals in Bloomington and Minneapolis respectively, and a host of clubs, festivals and cultural centers in-between. Rest assured, should you take up the chance to see her and her group, that every minute is a thrill.

Click on any of these images from the show at Bard to see them full size. (You may need to click through a second time.) Special thanks to SummerScape for keeping the ticket prices to an almost comically low $10, and for serving $4 glasses of Millbrook wine and $5 Magic Hat beers.

On Sunday August 8, rising singer-songwriter Holly Miranda performed at Laura Levine’s Mystery Spot in Phoenicia as part of the store’s annual summer Music for Front Porch series. She decided NOT to play songs from her debut XL album The Magician’s Private Library but rather to use the unusual location – literally, a deck porch on the middle of a bustling Sunday village Main Street – to perform a series of covers, which ranged from “Fulsom Prison Blues” to a delightful rendition of the Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.” (And, for a finale, one of her own songs anyway; I missed the title.) This Sunday August 15, in the midst of Phoenicia’s first-ever Festival of the Voice, the Mystery Spot will be playing host to Jonathan and Grasshopper from Mercury Rev, AND Dean (Wareham) and Britta (Phillips).

Tracy Bonham, who divides her time between Brooklyn (my old home) and Woodstock (my new one), launched her lovely new album Masts of Manhatta, with a concert at Woodstock’s Bearvsille Theater on Friday August 6. The show was all the better for cross-generational pollination with old-time Greenwich Village folkie and long-term Woodstock resident Happy Traum (who makes several appearances in my book All Hopped Up and Ready To Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77). You can read about how Tracy balances City and Country in the New York Times and our wonderful local monthly magazine, Chronogram.

On Friday July 30, it was up to Radio City Music Hall for the performance by Spiritualized, complete with orchestra and choir, of the seminal 1997 album Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating In Space. To say I was excited about this one would be an understatement on par with saying I’d be excited about Crystal Palace playing at Wembley in the FA Cup Final against, oh, perhaps Manchester United. After all, Radio City might just be the finest live music venue of its size in the world, with faultless acoustics, perfect sightlines, a stage vast enough to accommodate any number of high-legged Rockettes, and a wonderful sense of history. As for Jason Pierce’s Spiritualized, they have provided me, over the years, with some of the greatest concert experiences of my life. (Windows on the World. Roseland. Tramps. The Supper Club. The list goes on and on.) And although – or perhaps because – I’ve allowed myself to drift away in recent years, this show felt like something of a reunion. It seemed like I knew at least every tenth person out of the 4 or 5,000 in attendance. Many of us have been following this act since 1992.

For those unfamiliar with the work at hand, Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating In Space is the 1997 album Pierce wrote about his break-up with his former Spiritualized bandmate and evident love of his life Kate Radley (who left him for Richard Ashcroft of the Verve), and the descent into serious drug addiction that followed. It’s an emotionally naked and musically epic album, full of painful admissions of eternal desire and narcotic self-abuse, and though I fully agree with New Model Army’s old motto “Only Stupid Bastards Use Heroin,” Pierce proved himself, at least in the short term, as an exception to the usual rule, because Ladies and Gentlemen was acclaimed then, and remains to this day, an astonishing piece of music. Playing it from start to finish, at this venue, in this format, therefore had a sense both of recognizing and making history.

The announcement of a full orchestra turned out to be somewhat exaggerated; there was but a string section and horn section. Still, by the time you counted the 10-piece gospel choir, that made for 31 musicians on stage – justification, perhaps, for the $75 tickets. Mine, obtained for free I’m pleased to report, had me back the stalls, where the sound from the flown PA was muted somewhat by my position a few rows behind the lowest mezzanine. When I moved forward during the encore, the sound opened up enormously. while my friends on the third mezzanine, which has a higher ceiling than anywhere but the front stalls, reported that their ears were actually hurting. Yep, that sounds like Spiritualized alright.

Thirty-one – count them if you can – musicians on stage at Radio City Music Hall. Jason Pierce sat on the stool at right hand side.

Oddly enough, although full album performances have been all the rage this past couple of years, this was my first recent encounter with the concept. And when I racked my brains, the only other time I could recall seeing something similar was all the way back in 1977, when as a 12-year old, I went to Wembley Arena and saw Pink Floyd perform both Animals AND Wish You Were Here in their entirety. That seemed an especially appropriate bookend, given how Ladies and Gentlemen takes psychedelia and prog-rock to the very border line of preposterousness yet still pulls off some of the most majestic music on offer. Listen to the 20-minute version of “Cop Shoot Cop” from Radio City, if you dare; or rewind to “I Think I’m In Love” from earlier in the set for some of Pierce’s most amusing and poetic lyrics. An encore of “Out of Sight,” from 2001’s Let It Come Down, served to remind that Ladies and Gentlemen may not even be Spiritualized’s finest 71 minutes. The finale cover version of “Oh Happy Day” was almost inevitable given the presence of the gospel choir; listening to it now, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, it sounds even better than I remember.

For most in the audience, including myself, this was the Spiritualized show they had been waiting for, confirmation that such an epic album could be done justice in such a classic space. Post-show conversation (and there was much of it at the Hotel Jane after-party) centered around whether this was the finest of all the band’s live performances in New York, or whether that honor should be reserved for a show a couple of years back at the Harlem Apollo, in a stripped down format. I can only regret that I missed out on that one; I’ll make sure not to let it happen again. Because, while the last Spiritualized album, Songs In A&E, and the general paucity of new material, might suggest that Pierce has run out of creative inspiration in the studio, he proved at Radio City that his live legacy lives on. And on.