InLightened

This would end up as the People’s Choice winner at last night’s InLight Richmond Shockoe Slip street party, another score for the tireless imagineers of Venture Richmond who still had one more in their pocket after the triumphs of the 2nd Street Festival and the Richmond Folk Festival, all in the past month!  So exciting to see downtown alive with such inspired activity, and on a perfect October night under a brilliant full moon.  This work was called Analog Audience, conceived and built by the Wave Coalition comprised of five talented VCU students.  The interactive sculpture is controlled by a photosensitive lightboard (above) activated by the laying on of hands.  And this one called Estrella Intersects the Plane, literally a living painting made of 40 motorized arms each holding two color-changing LEDs. And they were just two of 35 other luminous expressions that added that many more reasons to be proud of our city and what we’ve become.  I know this is a music blog and there was the chorus of remnant purple martins gathered in the trees…there were also BJ Kocen and Brad Tucker holding forth in the Urban Farmhouse at 13th & Cary.  But we’ve come such a long way in making downtown a great place to spend quality time…just had to drift a little off topic.  Thanks for indulging me.

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Tomorrow, Sunday the 24th brings a chance to witness our town’s top-tier jazz players pay tribute to the late Charles Mingus, a 1979 victim of ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease.  VCU Jazz program founder Doug Richards will lead the large band comprised of Bryan Hooten, Reggie Chapman, Stefan Demetriadis, Pete Anderson (trombones); John D’earth, Marcus Tenney, Scott Frock, Michael Davison (trumpets); John Lilley, J.C. Kuhl, John Whitman, Jonathan Gibson, Kevin Simpson, John Winn (reeds); Adam Larrabee (guitar); Brian Jones (drums); Bob Hallahan (piano); Randall Pharr (bass).  It’s a fundraiser for an ALS research foundation…according to Doug Richards, [Mingus was] “one of the three or four truly significant composers in jazz history. His various groups that he led, from the mid 50s through his death, were some of the most outstanding ensembles in jazz history, and the recordings that they made are some of the most significant recordings made. As a bassist, he is, in my opinion, one of the four or five greatest jazz bassists. There aren’t too many individuals that one can make all of those accolades about.”  The concert will go down at CentreStage on East Grace in the Rhythm Hall.  Get tickets here.

And we have a few seats left for our next JAMinc/In Your Ear studio concert series featuring Sam Bush Band guitarist/vocalist Stephen Mougin and banjo great/SiriusXM deejay Ned Luberecki this coming Tuesday.  Check ‘em out playing on Nashville’s WSM’s Music City Roots concert series from the Loveless Barn. This would be a great night for folks who’ve never caught one of our intimate shows with a delectable pre-show pot luck buffet…bring your own favorite beverage and enjoy two top-notch musicians doing their thing.  Reservations here on our newly designed JAMinc website.  Many thanks to Phil Hunnicutt for all the work in getting us to a new and much needed better place on the Web.

Jimmy Dean is being posthumously inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame this weekend.  It’s hard to fathom why it took this long but at least he knew of his long-overdue election before he died last spring.  Here he is at his TV best with now fellow Hall of Famer Buck Owens from The Jimmy Dean Show, 1966.  Justice is done. Happy trails Donna…

TT