SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Universal Preservation Hall (UPH) announced last week the addition of several shows to its programming. Tickets for the events are currently on sale.
Alex Shillo and Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen — Aug. 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Shillo, a singer/songwriter from New England, and his six-member band tour the country performing a high-level musical tribute to Springsteen.
Spyro Gyra — Oct. 30 at 7:30 p.m.
One of jazz fusion’s most enduring acts, Spyro Gyra brings 50 years of their signature blend of jazz, R&B, funk, and pop to UPH for a night of musical virtuosity.
John Waite — Nov. 14 at 7:30 p.m.
The voice behind hits like “Missing You” and “When I See You Smile,” Waite brings decades of chart-topping rock to the UPH stage with an intimate live performance.
Chris Botti — Nov. 30 at 7:30 p.m.
Renowned trumpeter Chris Botti returns with his command of jazz, pop, and classical music — a mesmerizing night with one of the world’s best-selling instrumental artists.
Tickets are on sale via phone at (518) 346-6204 or online by visiting atuph.org.
Jontavious Willis takes the stage at Caffe Lena on June 15. Photo by Jonathon Norcross.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Grammy-nominated bluesman Jontavious Willis seemed amused with himself as he used a glass Saratoga Water bottle to play slide guitar during his set at Caffe Lena last Sunday night.
The fingerpicking traditionalist interspersed comedic moments like this one with more sincere songs about our “tangled” world, delivering an always-entertaining performance that made it easy to understand why legendary musician Taj Mahal once called him a “wonderboy.”
Willis, who was mentored by both Mahal and Keb’ Mo’, regaled the Spa City crowd with stories about growing up in rural Georgia, where his younger self sang gospel music at a Baptist church before falling in love with the blues.
“To me, the blues is the most important musical genre and the roots of many others,” Willis says on his website. “Deeper than that, it is a cultural thing for me and my heritage. I feel when I play the blues I am connecting with those before me and presenting it to others, a spiritual type thing.”
Willis’ stripped-back playing style keeps it simple: his voice, a guitar, a harmonica, and the occasional tapping foot. It’s a modus operandi that cuts through spectacle and allows the audience to focus on the words, stories, and sentiments Willis expresses.
“When you start focusing on your instrument more than vocals, you are forgetting the purpose of the blues, which is to tell a story,” Willis says.
Not yet 40, Willis has already released three studio albums: “Blue Metamorphosis” (2017), “Spectacular Class” (2019), and “West Georgia Blues” (2024). Upon its release, “Class” appeared at No. 12 on the Billboard Blues Albums chart before being nominated for Best Traditional Blues Album at the 2020 Grammy Awards. His original composition, “Rough Time Blues,” appears as the last track on “Room on the Porch,” an album by Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ that was released on May 23 to rave reviews.
Prior to Sunday, Willis had appeared at Lena in Feb. 2019 as part of the “Bright” series, alongside Blind Boy Paxton in Nov. 2019, and once again as a headliner in April 2020.
Image via LiveNation/the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — When a local woman won $500 on stage by playing cornhole during an extended medley dubbed “Cocaine Cowboys,” it was clear this wasn’t a typical concert.
Vampire Weekend, a band that was once practically synonymous with the Brooklyn hipster scene of the 2000s, made its Spa City debut last Wednesday night at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), on a night when thousands swarmed downtown for Belmont on Broadway. Without throwing shade at Gin Blossoms, it’s hard to imagine that their free concert was a more unique experience than what Ezra Koenig and company brought to the Spa State Park.
Vampire Weekend’s live performances have become increasingly odd in a way that might be polarizing but feels like a welcomed respite from watching old musical acts drag themselves up on stage to play the same songs the same way they’ve been playing them for decades. Vampire Weekend instead embraces the improvised and the unexpected, while stopping just short of venturing into jam band territory a la Dave Matthews or Phish. “Cocaine Cowboys” is a ten-plus minute medley typically comprised of the band’s original tune “Married in a Gold Rush,” blended with “Possum” by Phish, “All the Gold in California” by Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers, “Sin City” by the Flying Burrito Brothers, and “Cumberland Blues” by the Grateful Dead.
As if that wasn’t unique enough, Vampire Weekend also spends almost the entirety of its encores taking requests from the audience, which at SPAC included renditions of “Shakedown Street” by the Grateful Dead, “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus, “Break Stuff” by Limp Bizkit, “Them Changes” by Thundercat, “Beast of Burden” by the Rolling Stones, and “Basket Case” by Green Day.
The band’s stage design was exceptional, with a giant “Vampire Weekend” banner plummeting dramatically to reveal an ensemble of drums, saxophones, violins, keyboards, and guitars. Looming behind the group was a large tunnel, somewhat reminiscent of a New York subway passage. As the band wrapped up their set, each member exited behind the stage through the opening. The use of stage lighting was also impressive, with Koenig himself at one point illuminating band members with something akin to a large fluorescent bulb.
For some, this may all be a bit too unorthodox. But Vampire Weekend has never been a predictable musical project. The group always seems to be searching for something new to do, and it has helped ensure their legacy as one of the 21st century’s greatest acts.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Shania Twain, one of the best-selling musicians of all time, and her Shania Twain Foundation are donating $25,000 to the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, providing meals for 100,000 people. The gift is part of Twain’s commitment to donate to local food banks at every stop of her tour, which includes a July 20 performance at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC).
“At the Shania Twain Foundation, we believe everyone deserves access to nutritious food,” Twain said in a news release. “These donations to the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern NY will provide direct support throughout the region. We can make a meaningful impact across the country by helping to ensure that food banks are well stocked and, in turn, uplift people in every city we visit this summer.”
The Shania Twain Foundation is dedicated to improving the lives of children and families facing poverty and food insecurity. The foundation supports programs across North America that provide access to food, education, mental well-being, and other resources for underserved communities.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — A new exhibition by nature photographer and Saratoga Springs resident Louis Valenti, “Saratoga Naturally: Photographic Images of Saratoga’s Most Beautiful Parks & Preserves,” is currently on display at Soave Faire (449 – 451 Broadway) until July 5. The exhibition is open to the public and free of charge, Monday through Sunday, 9:30 a.m. until 6 p.m.
Saratoga Naturally features photos of Saratoga Spa State Park, Colonel William F. Fox Memorial Saratoga Tree Nursery, Geyser Creek Trail, Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail, and the Saratoga National Historical Park and Battlefield.
Through the exhibit, Valenti hopes to inspire an appreciation and deeper understanding of the beauty and uniqueness of Saratoga’s parks, trails, preserves, and wildlife.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Agents Mulder and Scully will return to the X-Files Museum in Saratoga Springs on Saturday, when they appear in an outdoor screening of three classic episodes: “Bad Blood,” “Our Town,” and “Darkness Falls.”
The event is the third hosted by the The X-Files Preservation Collection at 4284 Route 50. This year’s edition will also feature a live virtual Q&A with Chris Waddell, who worked on the hit FOX sci-fi/horror series, assisting with props and special effects.
For more information, visit xfilespreservationcollection.com.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Skidmore College has unveiled the 2025 programming lineups for both the Stewart’s Signature Series and the Upbeat on the Roof concert series.
Stewart’s Signature Series
This summer series, organized yearly by Skidmore College’s Office of Special Programs and made possible by a grant from Stewart’s Shops and the Dake Family, celebrates community through music, readings, and discussion by acclaimed artists and scholars. All events are free, unless otherwise specified.
The series kicks off on Tuesday, June 24, with a reading with PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winner Garth Greenwell and Binnie Kirshenbaum, whose most recent novel “Counting Backwards” received a glowing New York Times review.
Additional highlights include a concert with jazz supergroup ARTEMIS on July 1. The quintet, which was named jazz group of the year for the second time running in fall 2024 through a Downbeat magazine reader’s poll, will be performing at the College and teaching at the Skidmore Jazz Institute.
The lineup of events hosted on Skidmore’s campus include:
• Tuesday, June 24 (8 p.m.): Fiction reading with Garth Greenwell and Binnie Kirshenbaum at the Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall
• Tuesday, July 1 (7:30 p.m.): ARTEMIS at the Arthur Zankel Music Center
• Tuesday, July 8 (7:30 p.m.): Ben Wendel Group at the Arthur Zankel Music Center
• Thursday, July 10 (8 p.m.): Fiction and poetry reading with Francine Prose and Ishion Hutchinson at the Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall
• Wednesday, July 16 (8 p.m.): Fiction reading with Jamaica Kincaid and Susan Minot at the Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall
Upbeat on the Roof Concert Series
The Upbeat concert series began in summer 2001 on the roof deck of the Tang Museum building. The series became so popular, however, that the concerts came off the roof and onto the lawn, but the Upbeat on the Roof name remains.
Visitors are invited to bring blankets, camping chairs, food, and drinks to picnic on the lawn. Plenty of parking is available in the lot adjacent to the museum. In the case of inclement weather, concerts will be held inside the museum. Admission to the concerts is free. The performances begin on Thursday, July 10, at 6 p.m., and continue each week through August 21.
This year’s lineup includes:
• July 10: Alex Torres & His Latin Orchestra — This 12-piece orchestra is known for its original blend of Afro-Caribbean rhythms such as salsa, merengue, cha-cha, bomba, plena, and Latin jazz. The group’s music has been used in numerous commercials, TV shows, and films, including “Ugly Betty,” “Blacklist,” and “Shameless,” among others.
• July 17: Joan Kelsey — Kelsey is a New York City-based artist known for their folksy melodies and rich storytelling. Kelsey’s songs discuss God, loss, failure, friendship, and refracted memories.
• July 24: The Heavenly Echoes Gospel Band — The Band performs in the storied tradition of Southern-style gospel music with spirituals, hymns, traditional contemporary gospel, and originals.
• July 31: The Pine Hills Band — Borrowing mandolin and banjo from bluegrass, and percussion and electric bass from rock ’n’ roll, The Pine Hills Band creates both originals and deep-cut covers.
• August 7: Annie and the Hedonists — Featuring musicians Annie Rosen, Jonny Rosen, Peter Davis, Don Young, and Jerry Marotta, Annie and the Hedonists covers an eclectic mix of blues, jazz, swing, and folk roots Americana. Recent projects include a 2024 cover album in collaboration with Caffè Lena.
• August 14: Girl Blue — Girl Blue, aka Arielle Woodul, is known for her lyrical storytelling, deeply emotional songs, singable hooks, and soft vocals. She has been featured on top Spotify playlists (New Music Friday), and charts (No. 2 on US Viral Charts), and in national commercials.
• August 21: Hot Club of Saratoga — This gypsy swing ensemble specializes in the timeless sounds of Django Reinhardt and the vibrant atmosphere of 1930s Paris.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Universal Preservation Hall recently announced new programming for its 2025-2026 season lineup. Tickets for the shows are currently on sale.
HYPROV (Thursday, Sept. 25) combines hypnosis and improv. The evening begins with Asad Mecci welcoming 20 volunteers on stage to be hypnotized. The most receptive to hypnosis then join Colin Mochrie to improvise the rest of the show, while hypnotized.
The trio of Béla Fleck, harpist Edmar Castañeda, and drummer Antonio Sánchez (Thursday, Oct. 2) features instrumentation that might safely be called uncommon. Unless, of course, you’re already familiar with 19-time Grammy-winner Fleck — a genre-blurring virtuoso.
Josh Blue’s (Saturday, Oct. 4) stand-up routine is in a constant state of evolution, and his off-the-cuff improvisational skills guarantee that no two shows are alike. Next, Blue is bringing the “Freak Accident Tour” to Saratoga Springs.
Pink Martini (Saturday, Oct. 18) is celebrating their 30th Anniversary with a North American tour and the release of new music this summer and fall. Their performances feature a rich variety of musical styles.
Alex Torres & His Latin Orchestra (Saturday, Nov. 1) mark 45 years of music-making. Formed in 1980 and led by Bronx-born bassist Alex Torres, this 12-piece ensemble blends Afro-Caribbean styles like Salsa, Merengue, Cha-cha, Bomba, Plena, and Latin Jazz into a high-energy experience.
The Seven Wonders: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac (Friday, Nov. 7) are seven musicians paying homage to the music of Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks. They recreate all the great hits of Fleetwood Mac, including “Dreams,” “Go Your Own Way,” “Rhiannon,” “Edge of Seventeen,” “Landslide,” “Gypsy,” and more.
The Adirondack Trust Company Festival of Young Artists returned for its eighth annual event on Sunday, June 1 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Following the theme Wonder – the festival celebrated the collaborative creativity of more than 700 of the Capital Region’s young dancers, musicians, singers, poets, and visual artists, all in support of SPAC’s mission to provide free and accessible arts programming for local youth. The afternoon included individual pop-up performances and art displays, culminating in a large-scale, coordinated production on SPAC’s stage. As part of the production, an original musical composition by festival student, Siyi Guo (Guilderland HS, Grade 12), premiered on the SPAC stage, performed by the ESYO Symphony Orchestra. Photo by Erica Miller.
Cannon in Saratoga National Historical Park, Saratoga County, Upstate New York, USA. This is the site of the Battles of Saratoga in the American Revolutionary War.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Rick Atkinson discusses his latest book with WAMC/Northeast Public Radio’s Joe Donahue at the Saratoga Springs City Center on May 30. Photo by Jonathon Norcross.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — About ten miles from the site of the Battles of Saratoga, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson assessed the historic importance of the events, calling them a “manifest catastrophe for the British.”
Atkinson’s discussion of the famed skirmishes jived with what would probably be considered common knowledge among locals: Benjamin Franklin used the victory to entice the French into the war, a critical turning point that ultimately led to American independence. But he also described why the battlefields were a valuable resource for the second installment of his American Revolution trilogy, titled “The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780.”
“If you go to Saratoga, you’ve got some sense of the sacrifice that was made there,” Atkinson told a large audience at the Saratoga Springs City Center last Friday. “You get some feel for it. Even though it’s 250 years ago, there are ghosts there and you can feel them. It’s also important for me as an amateur to see the ground and to understand tactically why they did this and why they did that.
“I spend a lot of time understanding the flora and fauna of places. When I go to Saratoga or Valley Forge or whatever, I’ve got apps that show me what’s growing there, and I use that to be able to bring the reader in touch with the natural world the way that they were then…I think that’s one of my ambitions as a writer, to recreate that.”
Atkinson elaborated on his artistic aspirations as a chronicler of history, saying he hoped to bring long-dead people back to life, make the reader feel like they don’t know what’s going to happen (even when they do), and empower the reader’s imagination by allowing them to hear, smell, and feel historic events as if they were unfolding in the present.
“That is when I think you begin to transform history into art, when the reader’s imagination is playing on the words on the page in a way that they have become engrossed in the story,” Atkinson said.
One perhaps surprising detail Atkinson uncovered in his research was that he found George III to not quite be the “royal brute” described by Thomas Paine, nor the “tyrant” that Thomas Jefferson called him in the Declaration of Independence. Atkinson was granted access to thousands of previously unpublished letters written by George III, which helped him better understand the king’s perspective.
Cover of Atkinson’s “The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780” provided.
“He’s a constitutional monarch,” Atkinson said. “He’s a patriot king. He’s a child of the Enlightenment who’s a great patron of the arts and the sciences. He’s got a lot going for him.”
The scholar’s latest tome covers, among many other things, the Battles of Saratoga and the role of Fort Ticonderoga in the American Revolution. His previous work includes the Liberation Trilogy (“An Army at Dawn,” “The Day of Battle,” and “The Guns at Last Light”), as well as “The British Are Coming,” the first volume of his Revolution Trilogy.
His appearance at the Saratoga Springs City Center was presented by the Northshire Bookstore and the Saratoga 250 Commission, which had “soldiers” in revolutionary garb posted outside the event.
