Elm City Beat

Kehler Liddell Gallery, New Haven, is pleased to announce that Jean Perkins has been appointed Director of the gallery. Perkins joined Kehler Liddell in early January 2012.

Perkins brings 30 years experience in marketing, advertising, arts administration and personal experience as a working artist. Most recently she has worked as a consultant to small retail businesses, non-profits, and exhibited her work in New Haven, Guilford, Branford and Boston. Her non-profit experience includes leadership positions at the Guilford Art Center, Guilford, Connecticut, The Grant Park Music Festival, and The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Prior to that she pursued a career in marketing and advertising in Boston and New York.

Perkins said, “Kehler Liddell Gallery is extremely important in the mix of art venues in New Haven and Connecticut. It represents the work of local, award-winning artists in a full range of media including painting, works on paper, photography and sculpture. It is focused on presenting work that explores our culture while delivering an aesthetic experience. Come visit and you’ll see. This isn’t art that just sits there. It’s art with a voice: art that has the capacity to move one, stir one’s being.

“On February 2, we opened with the work photographs of Alan Shulik and sculpture of Peter Wickenden. In the North Gallery visitors will find the Member Flat File Exhibition. Selected works on paper from the file are on view accompanied by sculpture. Visitors to the gallery are invited to explore the work in the drawers of the flat file.

“It is a very compelling exhibition. I am excited and looking forward to meeting the many folks who are interested in the work of both artists as well as art lovers from all of New Haven and surrounds.”

Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH) recently awarded three $1,000 Martin Luther King community service awards to New Haven students who are setting examples in their communities. YNHH’s service award program honors the legacy of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., by providing scholarships to eligible high school students, as well as grants to New Haven elementary schools.

The award recipients must live in New Haven, attend a New Haven public school and have performed in excess of 40 hours of uncompensated community service. While students may volunteer at any agency or church in New Haven, this year’s awardees all happen to volunteer at YNHH.

The three students, all seniors, chosen this year were:

* Danielle Brodie is on the healthcare tract at Career Regional High School and volunteers at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

* Eimy Quispe, Wilbur Cross High School, is a YNHH School-to-Career intern, where she participates in the future nurse program. She also volunteers at YNHH and brings the art cart and the book cart to patients.

* Jordan Doyens, Wilbur Cross, also volunteers at YNHH where he is an ambassador, works with the Toy Closets and rode in the first Closer to Free bike ride that raised money for Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven.

“This program is very well received in our community because it focuses on the contributions of students – on the ‘heart’ they bring to their communities,” said Patricia Worthy, RN, manager, Workplace Diversity. “We think these awards capture the spirit of Martin Luther King and what he meant when he said he dreamt of a day when his children could be judged by the ‘content of their character.’”

Bay Area-based power quintet Howlin Rain, who are coming to Cafe Nine on February 11th on tour in support of their third album, The Russian Wilds. It was produced by none other than Rick Rubin.

San Francisco Bay Area-based power quintet Howlin Rain’s third album The Russian Wilds passionately protests the currently popular notion that heroically conceived and executed rock music is a thing of golden ages passed. Having been formed by bandleader-singer-guitarist Ethan Miller in 2004, as a melodic offshoot of blazing new-psych innovators Comets On Fire, Howlin Rain soon caught the attention of uber-producer Rick Rubin, who signed them to his American Recordings label and involved himself deeply in their subsequent musical evolution thereafter. Rubin worked closely with Ethan for over a year and a half as he shaped and perfected the material being written for The Russian Wilds. Finally, the band entered the studio with producer-engineer Tim Green (The Fucking Champs, Nation of Ulysses), tracking at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, as well as at Trilogy Studios and Hyde Street in San Francisco, recording most of the overdubs at Green’s Louder Studios in SF, where Tim mixed the album with crucial input from Rick.

Arriving Valentine’s Day 2012, The Russian Wilds is a sprawling, Pynchon-esque labyrinth and a colorful, feeling-filled catalyst for hungry minds. It’s the masterwork earlier studio sets and Howlin Rain’s barn-burning live shows have hinted at given blood and bone by a group in their fighting prime. “There was a point when we were really trying to blend Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, Steely Dan’s Gaucho and Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness On The Edge of Town,” says Ethan Miller. “I love the Boss’ singing, where he’s just blowing out his voice even when it’s just a pop ballad moment. And we were inspired by some of the grooves and close mic stuff on Gaucho, and by how Electric Ladyland runs the gamut from super long jams to blues numbers to drifting psychedelic pieces. There’s a sense of audacity to these records - a band chasing down strong, invisible connections - and there’s moments like that on our record. We didn’t always do the smartest or safest things [laughs].”

Besides Miller, Howlin Rain comprises Raj Ojha (drums, percussion), Cyrus Comiskey (bass), Joel Robinow (keyboards, guitar, vocals) and Isaiah Mitchell (guitar, vocals). These musicians have drawn upon the basic vocabulary of classic rock but then stretch and reshape it to more arcane and ambitious ends. The results present a unique aural vision that expresses the fantastical and the practical in equal measure, resonating quite nicely with the work of kindred spirits such as Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Wooden Shjips, Chris Robinson Brotherhood and Vetiver. This New Cosmic California movement shares an exploration of song-grounded, psych-touched, emotionally charged boogie and blues; they are, in short, the next generation to carry on the viscerally charged spirit of the musical pioneers that once rendered the Fillmore and Winterland stages magic in decades long passed. Where Howlin Rain differs from some of their compatriots is their penchanct for conjuring simmering soul grooves in unexpected places, marrying blue-eyed soul influences to strutting highway-ready rock. In addition, their latest work reflects increased focus on sophisticated harmony vocal arrangements, adding exciting new dimensions to their ouevre.

Howlin Rain has performed at major festivals in the U.S. (Bonnaroo, Outside Lands, Bumbershoot) and in Europe (Green Man, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Azkena), and has toured with The Black Crowes, Queens of the Stone Age, and Black Mountain, as well as sharing bills with Mudhoney, Roky Erickson, Terry Reid, Okkervil River and The Meat Puppets. After their period of intense woodshedding over these past few years, Howlin Rain is looking forward to seeing this new music blossom on concert stages around the world!

Check out their track "Phantom in the Valley" here.

"Bay Area-based Howlin Rain is an unguardedly passionate modern classic, a band that would have been a headliner at the Fillmore East and Winterland in another era that reassembles rock's primary elements in ways that make it roil with new life on their latest album, The Russian Wilds." - RELIX


"A psychedelic cocktail of Crosby, Stills and Nash, the Faces, the Damned and author Raymond Carver"
- Rolling Stone Magazine

An exhibit featuring “New Haven’s Sentinels: The Art & Science of East and West Rock” on display at the New Haven Museum  will provide the perfect backdrop for the launch of registration and outreach for this year's Rock to Rock Earth Day Ride, which will take place on Saturday, April 21.

What: Launch Party for the 2012 Rock to Rock Earth Day Ride

When: Thursday, Feb. 9, 5:30-7 p.m.

Where: New Haven Museum (formerly the New Haven Colony Historical Society), 114 Whitney Avenue, New Haven

Why: To celebrate New Haven's largest environmental fundraising eventand start registrations

Who: Members of the Rock to Rock partner organizations, sponsors, andmembers of the public who will be riding It's the fourth annual Rock to Rock event -- the biggest environmental fund-raiser in New Haven, and the city's largest Earth Day celebration.

In addition to the family-friendly 8-mile ride (with police escort) from West Rock to East Rock, this year features a 20-mile ride to Sleeping Giant and a new 40-mile option.

All rides start with a scrumptious farm breakfast at Common Ground High School, nestled at the foot of West Rock. The ride will feature music organized by CT Folk, a Picnic for the Planet in partnership with The Nature Conservancy, a farmer's market and green fair, and opportunities to visit many of the city's parks and green spaces. In each of the last three years, the event's fundraising impact has more than doubled: from more than $10,000 in 2009, to $21,000 in 2010, to more than $50,000 in 2011. This year, Rock to Rock organizers are aiming to raise $100,000 for 16 local environmental organizations!

To reach our goal, we need a lot of riders collecting a lot of pledges. We'll have computers set up at the launch to make it easy to register on-line.

"The 2011 Rock to Rock Ride was a wonderful outreach opportunity for New Haven/Leon Sister City Project and other local organizations,” says Chris Schweitzer, Program Director NHLSCP.

“It really boosted the resources available to environmental projects throughout New Haven, and was great fun!"

Rock to Rock raises money for 16 local environmental organizations: Common Ground, CitySeed, Inc., Elm City Cycling, Farmington Canal Rail-to-Trail Association, Friends of East Rock Park, Friends of Edgewood Park, Friends of Beaver Pond Park, the Interreligious Eco-Justice Network, the Nature Conservancy's Connecticut Chapter, New Haven Inner City Outings, New Haven Environmental Justice Network, The New Haven Land Trust, New Haven-Leon Sister City Project,New Haven Parks Department, Solar Youth, and the The Urban Resources Initiative. The following lead sponsors have already signed on to support Rock to Rock:The City of New Haven, IKEA New Haven, the Center for Orthopaedics, the Devil's Gear Bike Shop, Elm Campus Partners, the Farmington Canal Rail-to-Trail Association, Higher One, Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Haven Museum, West Rock Ridge Park Association, Caseus, and the New Haven Economic Development Corporation.

For the seventeenth consecutive year, generous hosts throughout the New Haven area will open their homes on Wednesday, February 29, for a much-anticipated evening of intimate dinner parties, bringing together distinguished guests and supporters of LEAP (Leadership, Education and Athletics in Partnership). The eminent guests of honor at each of the dinners will lead conversations on diverse subjects from cheese to China, dogs to dogma, economics to Egypt, museums to the military, and Josef Stalin to J. Edgar Hoover. Among this year’s luminaries are Egyptian Ambassador Sallama Shaker, iconic poet and human rights activist Rose Styron, sports writer and broadcaster Jon Wertheimer, PBS economics correspondent and Yale professor Paul Solman , and many more eminent writers, performers, academics, and activists.

The evening’s events begin with a delectable cocktail reception at the historic Hopkins School, New Haven, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., with food and beverages generously provided by Culinary Concepts and the Wine Thief. Guest authors will be there to sign their recent books. The dinners follow at 7:30 pm.

For those unable to attend this February 29 event, another dinner is offered on March 7, featuring Dean Karlan, a Yale behavioral economist who co-founded StickK.com, the online “commitment store.”

To take advantage of this rare opportunity to feast with like-minded citizens and enjoy conversations with some of the nation’s leading thinkers and artists, call the LEAP development office at 203-773-0770 for a detailed invitation listing the hosts and special guests for all twenty-nine dinners.

The Winchester Revitalization Art Project will host its third Coffee House and Open Mic Night this Saturday, January 28 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. The event will be held at Yummie's Restaurant at 679 Dixwell Avenue. Artists of all ages and skill are invited to participate. There will be a live band and refreshments.

W.R.A.P. is an ongoing project of New Haven Department of Arts, Culture & Tourism, the Livable City Initiative, and the Office of Economic Development. The project seeks to encourage arts and culture in the Newhallville neighborhood through programming on Winchester Avenue and other area venues. The neighborhood-based program seeks to engage the community in positive arts activities that take advantage of vacant city-owned lots and other community spaces.

“The Newhallville area has seen substantial public and private investment in recent years for newly paved roads, new sidewalks, housing rehabilitation, tree trimming, street lighting, as well as the Science Park development. W.R.A.P. leverages those investments by highlighting the local arts community in existing spaces and vacant or underutilized lots,” said Mayor John DeStefano Jr.

“This project has brought new positive energy to Newhallville by providing spaces for youth and adults to meet and interact with other members of the community. Bringing art to these local places has made a huge difference by giving people opportunities to share their talents with each other,” said Alderwoman Alfreda Edwards.

Last summer W.R.A.P. offered free arts experiences three times a week on the empty lot on Winchester Avenue between Division and Starr streets. Activities included hip-hop dancing, introduction to guitar, painting, and drama. Small theatrical vignettes were also hosted outside the police substation on Winchester Avenue. A large chess board with life-sized pieces was also placed outside the substation.

Artists interested in participating in Saturday’s open mic night should contact (203) 946-7172 or wrapmoore@gmail.com. Photographs from a previous open mic event can be found on the Office of Cultural Affair’s Facebook page.

Pre-applications are now being accepted from nonprofits serving the 20-towns covered by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and its affiliate the Valley Community Foundation. Funding is available through the annual Responsive New Grants process, the largest competitive grantmaking process available through the two foundations. Pre-applications must be completed online and submitted by 5:00 p.m. March 2, 2012; a complete list of eligibility criteria is located at www.cfgnh.org/grants or www.valleyfoundation.org/grants.

The Responsive New Grants process is intended to be a source of flexible funding and is open to all requests for projects and organizational support that meet the eligibility criteria. Any nonprofit that creates positive sustainable impact in the areas of: arts and culture, basic needs, civic vitality, economic success, quality education, the environment, health and wellness and children and youth is encouraged to apply. In 2011, more than $3 million in single and multi-year grants was awarded through the Responsive New Grant processes of the two foundations.
The first step to applying for a grant through the Responsive New Grants process is submitting a pre-application online. Applicants are encouraged to attend a webinar scheduled for February 2, 2012, from 9:30 am – 11:30 am. Participation in the webinar is not required to apply for a Responsive New Grant or to start the pre-application process. However it is strongly encouraged, even for experienced applicants, as there are changes from last year. To register for the webinar, visit www.cfgnh.org/grants or www.valleyfoundation.org/grants.

Grants awarded through the Responsive New Grants annual process are made possible through the generosity of donors who have created individually-named funds to be used for broad charitable purposes or to support special interests that benefit the local Greater New Haven and Valley communities.
For more information about the Responsive New Grants process, please contact Denise Canning, Grants Manager, at dcanning@cfgnh.org or call 203-777-7076.

Established in 2004, the Valley Community Foundation is dedicated to making the Valley a better place to live and work by: increasing philanthropy, especially permanent endowments, connecting donors to needs and opportunities and providing leadership on critical community issues. It is the community endowment for Ansonia, Derby, Oxford, Seymour and Shelton, CT. For more information, visit www.valleyfoundation.org.
Thanks to the generosity of three generations of donors, millions of dollars each year are distributed from an endowment of approximately $325 million in more than 800 named funds at The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. In addition to its grantmaking, The Community Foundation helps build a stronger community by taking measures to improve student achievement, reduce New Haven’s infant mortality rate, promote local philanthropy through www.giveGreater.org and encourage community awareness at www.cfgnh.org/learn