Branden Lewis is leader of the famous Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which brings its Creole Christmas concert to Memorial Hall on December 6. The trumpet player understands the responsibility of his role but is aware that he’s one of more than 50 people who have played in the band since its inception in 1961. Audiences come to see the group, not necessarily a particular player. That’s fine with Lewis, who has a number of side projects that includes co-creating the International Trumpet Mafia Collective and touring with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. He worked with Bobby Rush and Dr. John on th ..read more

Photograph by Katie Kauss When Grammy Award winner and Grand Ole Opry member Ashley McBryde makes a stop at the Andrew J Brady Music Center on December 2, the vocal powerhouse promises she’ll come out throwing some punches. “For the first seven songs, I don’t say a whole lot,” says McBryde during a recent interview, laughing. “I give a nice welcome and I introduce one band member. We’ll slow it down to give you time to take a breath, but not ’til that seventh song.” And more often than not, that seventh song is “Girl Goin’ Nowhere,” an autobiographical gem that snagged McBryde, 40, nominations ..read more

Zach Williams knows he owes Cincinnati big time. “I think it was about 10 shows that we had to reschedule,” he says about the vocal strain that forced him to take some time off the road last year. “You never want to do it. Sometimes you’re just forced to make those decisions. But, yeah, it always surprises me whenever I show up and the place is packed out and people have held onto their tickets. It feels good.” Indeed, the Grammy Award-winning Christian music artist heads to the Taft Theatre on October 26 on his A Hundred Highways tour feeling good and healthy and eager to get back in front of ..read more

There’s a reason why PAR-Projects is calling its September 23 art fair OUR-Block Party and not PAR-Block Party. “Anybody who’s participating is invited to have some ownership of the event,” says Jonathan Sears, executive director at the Northside-based arts organization. He likes to think the event will pull together an unexpected mix of people and art from all over the community. Hoffner Street will be closed to traffic from Apple to Cherry streets at 3-10 p.m., when it will be filled with 30-plus artists, pop-up shops, and art installation projects as well as live music, food, and more. Admi ..read more

The National’s Homecoming festival, which comes to the Andrew J Brady Music Center’s outdoor stage September 15 & 16, is the concert you’ve been waiting for … for exactly three years, four months, and one week, in fact. The second edition of the Cincinnati-bred band’s multi-act event was originally scheduled for May 2020, but the pandemic had other ideas. All told, they had to cancel not only Homecoming but 39 other shows around the world. And while The National ultimately released their ninth album (First Two Pages of Frankenstein came out in April) and have been back on the road, the ret ..read more

Because Corinne Bailey Rae’s September 12 concert at Memorial Hall comes just three days ahead of the release of her Black Rainbows, attendees will get a preview of a musically inventive and daring album that the British singer-songwriter hopes will be a conversation starter about race in America. Bailey Rae is best known for her expressively jazzy voice; with its seemingly relaxed fluidity, she turned 2006’s “Put Your Records On” into an international hit. For Black Rainbows, the Grammy winner’s first studio album since 2016 and just her fourth overall, she has collaborated with Theaster ..read more

Many cities claim to be the cradle of the Blues. Saint Louis has a very nice Blues museum, and so does Clarksdale, Mississippi. The Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown, said New Orleans was “the home of the Blues.” Cincinnati has never exerted a serious claim along those lines, but we must ask: Did Lafcadio Hearn discover something like the Blues in Cincinnati as early as 1876? Portrait of Lafcadio Hearn From “The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn” by Elizabeth Brisland Published 1906 Digitized by Internet Archive It is impossible to research Cincinnati history without running into the man ..read more

Matthew Ozawa’s work as stage director for Cincinnati Opera’s 2019 production of Romeo and Juliet impressed Artistic Director Evans Mirageas so much he asked if Ozawa would be interested in directing Madame Butterfly. After pandemic-induced schedule shuffling and some soul-searching, however, the version of Butterfly in Music Hall on July 22, 27, and 29 veers from the original plan. With Ozawa still at the helm, it’s now a world premiere of a new production designed by Japanese and Japanese American artists, launching here and then going on to co-producing opera companies in Pittsburgh, Utah ..read more

West Chester native and Miami University grad Robin James recalls the 1980s, ’90s, and early ’00s heydays of WOXY radio—the mighty 97.7 FM signal beamed from Oxford, Ohio, to much of Greater Cincinnati—in her new book, The Future of Rock and Roll: 97X and the Fight for True Independence (University of North Carolina Press). It’s been published just in time for the 40th anniversary of the station’s launch, which is also being commemorated online this week and across Memorial Day weekend with a revival of its annual “Modern Rock 500” countdown via the online station Inhailer Radio. The author o ..read more

Brian Brodeur published his fourth collection of poetry, Some Problems with Autobiography (Criterion Books), in February after it won the 2022 New Criterion Poetry Prize. His teaching colleague at Indiana University East, Nathan Froebe, set one of the poems, “Primer,” to music and performed it in concert at the university on February 13, featuring soprano Alison Moore. Brodeur and his family, including his daughter Anna, whose fleeting childhood is the poem’s subject, were in the audience. Brodeur, an associate professor of English and creative writing at IUE in Richmond, Indiana, and Froebe ..read more