Jazz Among the Ruins
A free ferry boat ride out to Georges Island on Sunday, 18 August 2024.
Civil War-era Fort Warren plays host to a day of jazz organized by the New England Jazz Collaborative.
Whales! Whales! Whales! Whales! Whales! Whales!
The booker behind the local live music series Illegally Blind (puts together the Fuzzstival and more), Jason Trefts, is raising money to start a non-profit organization, staffed by brain tumor survivors, “that will provide free short-term care coordination services for people in the Boston, MA area recently diagnosed with a brain tumor.”
The mission of the project hits close to home for Trefts. In his own words, “I was diagnosed with an incurable Astrocytoma at 24 years old. I have spent the decade-plus since navigating chronic disabling conditions while working in the human services field.”
“Astrocytoma” is a type of brain tumor. And while Trefts has been dealing with that, he has also been working in care coordination himself, observing first hand how important the work is. His proposed non-profit would make more of that important work happen for more people. Find out the details and donate at the Still Around Gofundme.
Just an aside, I saw a poster for a Still Around benefit show at Arts at the Armory back in May, didn’t mind what the benefit was benefiting, and just figured it was a jokey reference to the fact that all the college kids had gone home for the summer making all the locals part of the “Still Around” club. Because I’m an idiot. Obviously the phrase means a whole lot more.
Gonna excerpt this one from my Cambridge Day spot. Check out the Camberville weekly paper (daily content online) for the latest local news in politics, business, arts and culture. And yell at them to get their social media house in order!
If you keep walking east from anywhere in Camberville, you’ll hit the ocean.
If you keep walking east on the ocean floor (like the zombies in George Romero’s Land of the Dead), you’ll hit an island called The Graves. How fucking spooky is that?
But we’re talking here about a different island in Boston Harbor, south of The Graves, called Georges Island, which hosted a free pop-up jazz concert this past Sunday. A jazz quartet, plus a few lonewolf honkers, scattered themselves amid the ruins of Civil War-era Fort Warren to enchant a ferry’s worth of adventurous souls looking for a musical romp.
The afternoon was masterminded by the New England Jazz Collaborative, an organization dedicated to Promoting, Increasing, Creating, Forging, Embodying, and Other Strong Verbing related to local jazz. Is this a non-profit? If it is, they really soft pedal the 501(c)(3) status, and they’re not popping up in the usual databases. In any event, they do good work, have a board of directors, and will happily accept your tax-exempt donations.
The next time you get the chance to visit the islands in Boston Harbor, take it. The old fort at Georges Island is an overgrown rabbit warren of discovery. The jazz quartet set up shop in the main plaza. But the music fans that wandered away were greeted by the ghostly sonority of other solo saxophonists, who had stashed themselves in various echo chambers throughout the sprawling stone edifice. With storm clouds looming and stray sax sounds on the breeze, you could have filmed an entire noir film trilogy in the space of a single Sunday visit.
Another perk? Whale sightings on the way to and from the island. Unusual, though not unheard of, and infinitely preferable to a swarm of locusts.
Looks like we weren’t the only ones to spot that whale. Check it out.
Photo Gallery
A glitzy downtempo soul-inflected hip hop promenade.