[ELECTRONIC/DANCE] Black Swan Lounge returns with another raging summer patio party this Saturday, August 1. Black Swan Summer Session will feature DJs Brother Bear, Hattwein & Short, Twist, Spacelines, Arehouse, Alex Sarabia, and DJ Universal for an all day, outdoor blast.
[ELECTRONIC/DANCE] The first Outer Harbor concert of the summer approaches and it’s a unique, and even messy one. Imagine a crowd full of fans ready to party, holding spray bottles full of paint and standing in front of some fully loaded color-hoses wielded by a crew of costumed performers. This is just what Funtime Afterdark has in store for Buffalo when they bring the Life in Color, Big Bang world tour featuring EDM superstars Adventure Club to the Outer Harbor Concert Site on Friday, July 31.
[WEIRD] From Rochester with heaping mounds of irony and sarcasm comes Passive Aggressives Anonymous, and if their tunes are any indication, the 12-step program isn’t working. That’s okay.
[ART] Ever wonder what materials an artist uses to produce that awesome drawing you like so much? Well Wednesday is your rare chance to get a glimpse inside an artist’s mind. This biannual fundraising event for Buffalo’s oldest art non-profit, Hallwalls, invites a wide spectrum of local artists to construct drawings in front of a live audience and then the attendees can bid on their favorite works.
[INFRINGEMENT] This Saturday the stunning and lofty interior of Karpeles Manuscript Library on Porter Avenue will transform into the setting for a lineup of dance performances put together by some of the city’s most stirring dance collectives and choreographers. Beginning at noon, Si Si Nana Dance Ensemble will perform an eclectic blend of African, Samba, Caribbean, and Praise, and leave the floor to Glimpse, an exquisite choreography influenced by hip hop, African, and contemporary.
[INDIE] New recordings needn’t excite, innovate and/or transcend in order to succeed. The best music conveys emotion, but sometimes listeners need to work for the payoff. Indie folk-rock buds Sam Beam (a.k.a. Iron and Wine) and Ben Bridwell from Band of Horses have teamed up for this eclectic set of cherry-picked covers that’s initially subtle but offers some curious transformations that reveal with time and repeated listening.
[INFRINGEMENT] Buffalo left-wing drama house, Subversive Theater Collective, present Rhinoceros at the Manny Fried Playhouse from this Thursday through Saturday. Rhinoceros, written by Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco, is an absurdist drama that plays out events in a small provincial French village whose residents are turning into Rhinoceroses.
[INFRINGEMENT] The interactive performance, which inspired the creation of the first Infringement Festival in Montreal, Car Stories returns to the parking lot of Allentown stomping ground, Nietzsche’s for the Buffalo Infringement Festival.
[FOOD] When VegFest founder and co-founder, Albert Brown and Sara Rogers, were discussing venues for the upcoming event, they were met with many great options. They looked at Canalside, along with some other sites, but found that Delaware Park really had everything they were looking for. With the natural beauty of the park as its backdrop, it made sense to hold a large-scale plant-based event there. “It had a lot of what we were looking for, plus it’s a historic site and a lot of people describe it as the heart of Buffalo,” said Brown.
[ROCK] For a guy whose guitar playing earned him an sit-in with the Allman Brothers Band in his teens and the #16 slot in Rolling Stone’s 2011 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list, Derek Trucks is surprisingly unassuming. Humble, bashful, and always learning, Trucks and his wife—fellow guitarist and blues-belting powerhouse Susan Tedeschi—have evolved into a rock and roll power couple. It’s a journey that called them both away from their respective solo projects to merge musical forces.
[COMEDY] Deon Cole has been the only African American writer in the Conan writer’s room for the last few years, and in that time his coworkers have asked him such questions as: “Do black cats have harder lives than white cats?” He has played a key role on the two-time Emmy-nominated writing staff, but has also managed to tap into a larger fan base with his hilarious on-screen appearances as a correspondent.
[INDIE] The first time you listen to Stokeswood, you will be surprised by how easily their hip hop beats and indie rock melodies hypnotize you and get your body moving. The Atlanta-based quintet have been spreading their sticky sound since the early 2000s, and are known for their captivating stage presence and their tendency to seamlessly trade off instruments throughout their set. While their previous efforts were quite popular in the South, the keyboard-filled dub-pop electro-beats from their latest album, 2075, deserve national recognition.
[INDIE] There is a short biography of Father John Misty on the Sub Pop Records website and it’s written by Mr. Misty himself. It’s not a biography in a traditional sense, though. It does not begin with the story of how Misty, AKA Joshua Tillman, grew up in a household of Evangelical Christians in a Washington DC suburb where secular music was not allowed and where hell was a real place, somewhere down there. The bio begins with a story about how Tillman tries to avoid writing love songs.
[DANCE] Local area dancers Nancy Hughes and Angela Lopez have teamed up to create six new groundbreaking dance pieces to showcase during the 2015 Buffalo Infringement Festival. The event, Body Obstacles, presents an assortment of fresh modern dance works interconnected with a visual art backdrop. Choreographers Hughes and Lopez focused on creation in dance when coming up with the concepts for these pieces, since they’re both deeply influenced by several movement styles throughout history.