CONCERTS
George Gritzbach Band Plays Original BluesBass River Arts Campus
Fri, Aug 29, 730pm Member $20, Not-Yet-Member $25
The George Gritzbach Band plays inventive takes on classics and a healthy helping of innovative originals, offering a great mix of blues, roots, and R&B, but tonight, they will focus on original blues. The band has appeared at a wide variety of venues and Festivals across North America, including opening for B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, and many others, as well as local nightclubs and Performing Arts Centers. They also have the versatility to play unplugged acoustic sets for a more intimate experience.
The band, led by George, a serious blues devotee who caused a sensation when he first debuted on the New England blues scene, is now backed by a seasoned rhythm section featuring Scott Lariviere on bass and backing vocals, Johnny Menezes on keyboards, and Christian McCarthy on drums, percussion, and backing vocals. Rounding out the group is Peter Murray, laying it down on the sax.
David Wax Museum-Live at the Center
Bass River Arts Campus
Sat, Aug 30, 730pm Price $45
Dvid Wax Museum is bringing their signature “Mexo-Americana” sound back to the Cultural Center of Cape Cod.
Enjoy songs from David Wax Museum’s album “You Must Change Your Life,” out now, on Nine Mile Records. “You Must Change Your Life” is an openhearted manifesto – a collection that embodies, then transcends bedrock elements of the band’s 15-year recording career. For Wax, music has guided every step he holds sacred; he’s followed its palpable power, abiding by its requisite unpredictability. After graduating at the top of his class at Harvard, he wandered off an academic path to southern Mexico, finding what he calls “a clear before/after moment in my life.” There, he studied folk music “at the feet of the masters” and internalized structures and rhythms that continue to drive the band today.
He and wife, Suz Slezak, fell in love on their first national tour, setting in motion a future full of vivid waking dreams. Together (now with their two children in tow), they’ve logged 1,500 shows in every corner of the globe. Wax and Slezak have transmitted their kinetic energy in platforms including CBS This Morning: Saturday, Tiny Desk Concert, and NPR’s World Cafe. They have soundtracked love stories on and off screens, from the Netflix #1 show Firefly Lane to the wedding of US Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg. Wax and Slezak permit listeners to answer the whispers around and within them.
David Wax Museum blends traditional Mexican music’s ancient and ever-relevant rhythms with amber pop hues, their unabashed rock riffs emanating an air of AM radio circa 1975, all tethered together by seductive harmonies. It’s a seamless tapestry of boundless curiosity, an artful display of what Wax frames as “the lines blurring and dissolving between musical cultures and eras.” “You Must Change Your Life” is a celebration and an invocation, pure and infallible: It’s never too late. What are you waiting for? You must change your life.
Jazz Standards and Django Reinhardt Manouche Jazz with the Henry Acker Trio
Bass River Arts Campus
Fri, Sep 5, 730pm. Member $25, Not-Yet-Members $30
Join us as the Henry Acker Trio performs a lively combination of jazz standards and Django Reinhardt style Hot Club Jazz.
Henry Acker is a young powerhouse jazz guitarist who performs in the style of Django Reinhardt and traditional jazz. A child prodigy who began playing at age 8 and performing professionally at age 9, his talent and abilities have developed into nothing short of astonishing. Henry has already shared the stage with jazz greats Bucky Pizzarelli, Frank Vignola, Julian Lage, Bireli Lagrene, and Vic Juris as well as Mancouche Jazz legends Samson Schmitt, Mozes Rosenberg, Adrien Moignard, and Joscho Stephan. He is the winner of the 2017 Djangofest Northwest Saga Award and a five-time winner of the Downbeat Magazine Student Award for jazz guitar soloist. Based in Boston, MA, he also dazzles audiences at Jazz Festivals across the United States and Europe, and tonight he brings his talents to the Cultural Center.