{"id":39382,"date":"2022-06-11T10:04:09","date_gmt":"2022-06-11T14:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=39382"},"modified":"2022-06-11T10:04:15","modified_gmt":"2022-06-11T14:04:15","slug":"on-stage-extra-sarah-borges-rocks-but-is-hard-to-define","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/?p=39382","title":{"rendered":"On Stage Extra: Sarah Borges rocks, but is hard to define"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Denny Dyroff<\/strong>, Entertainment Editor, The Times\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"

Sarah Borges<\/p><\/div>\n

When Sarah Borges performs live, she rocks the house.<\/p>\n

Borges, is a Boston guitarist\/vocalist whose music has been described as \u201cwalking that fine line between punk and country.\u201d<\/p>\n

When\u00a0Borges\u00a0straps on her guitar and starts to sing, she rocks out. There is country, blues, punk, and rock in her musical DNA, but it is the rock element that stands out the most.<\/p>\n

Area fans of Borges are in for a double treat this week.<\/p>\n

On June 11, she will perform at the Sellersville Theater\u00a0sharing the bill with Steve Forbert in a show that was postponed from March. On June 15, she will play a show at City Winery Philadelphia sharing the bill with the John Doe Folk Trio. Both of her performances will be as a duo with Keith Voegele.<\/p>\n

Borges, who arrived on the national music scene in 2005 as the lead singer of the Broken Singles, has gone from frontwoman to solo act, to frontwoman again. In 2018, Sarah\u00a0Borges\u00a0& The Broken Singles released their sixth album \u2013 \u201cLove\u2019s Middle Name\u201d \u2014 on Blue Corn Music.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In the early months of 2020, the life-altering global pandemic began to hit hard, and for performers, the crisis not only suddenly, jarringly halted tours or\u00a0any\u00a0shows large or small, but also quashed the creative chemistry that comes from musicians getting together and jamming in the same room.<\/p>\n

As an artist whose lifeblood flowed from these real-life exchanges of camaraderie and community, the Boston-based\u00a0Borges\u00a0was faced with perhaps the most daunting question of her professional career: How to connect and continue as a vital and viable working artist amid a frightfully uncertain future fraught with unknowns.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where the aptly named brand new album,\u00a0\u201cTogether Alone,\u201d which was released on February 18\u00a0on\u00a0Blue Corn Music, comes in. In a true-life twist on the old saying, \u201cwhen life gives you lemons …,\u201d a homebound\u00a0Borges\u00a0did the one thing she knew how to do better than almost anything else. She picked up her guitar and started writing songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe stayed busy during the pandemic lockdown,\u201d said\u00a0Borges, during a recent phone interview from her home in Taunton, Massachusetts. \u201cWe really focused on finishing a new album. I made the album with Eric \u201cRoscoe\u201d Ambel. We did the recording via computer during the lockdown, so we had a lot of different players that we used. Roscoe has a great group of players he uses so I left it to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ambel is a highly respected performer and producer whose credits include The Bottle Rockets and Steve Earle & the Dukes. He was the founding guitarist for Joan Jett & the Blackhearts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the pandemic first started, I was writing songs just to feel better and keep from getting bored,\u201d said Borges. \u201cWith Eric, I had the songs, and he had the knowledge how to do it. Eric has been doing this for 40 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything that got recorded, he would send to me and then I\u2019d give him feedback \u2013 especially on bass and drums. Eric played all the electric guitar. I played acoustic guitar and my Keith Voegele played bass.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new album has all originals. Some I co-wrote with Roscoe and some with Keith Voegele, who is my music partner and my life partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeith and I don\u2019t have a studio. So, when I was writing the songs, I was singing in a closet with a microphone and recording on my cell phone.\u00a0We wrote all through the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started making the album in June 2020 and kept going. It was influenced by the pandemic.\u00a0The song \u2018Together Alone\u2019 has the feeling that we\u2019re all in this together, but we have to be apart. The songs are about isolation. There was no escape.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first song is \u2018Wasting My Time.\u2019 It\u2019s about assessing what I\u2019m doing while I\u2019m sitting at home. Another was \u2018She\u2019s a Trucker.\u201d I\u2019m a trucker. My other job is an airport courier driver.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole lockdown thing gave us time to write. This is the first time it was a singular project. It was challenging with no-one to give feedback. My opinion was the only one that counted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d spend a lot of time on the basic track. I\u2019d write a song and bring it to the band to work on it. They\u2019d add more. The final mixing was done by Roscoe at Cowboy Technical Services, which is his studio in Brooklyn.\u201d<\/p>\n

One common denominator in\u00a0Borges\u2019 songs \u2013 they all rock hard.
\n\u201cIn the live shows now, we\u2019re playing a lot of new songs,\u201d said Borges. \u201cThey\u2019re re-issuing \u2018Silver City\u2019 (her debut album in 2005) so I\u2019ll also be doing songs I haven\u2019t played in 17 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Borges\u2019 old songs and new songs are all characterized by musical intensity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe love playing good, fast rock songs,\u201d said\u00a0Borges, who graduated from Emerson College with a degree in radio. \u201cWe keep evolving but we also keep playing some of the older songs. With so many songs I\u2019ve recorded, it\u2019s hard putting together a set list.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith COVID, we waited for a while after the album\u2019s release to go out on tour. We wanted to wait until we felt safe. But when you put out a record, you have to go out. You have to keep working.\u201d
\nVideo link for Sarah\u00a0Borges\u00a0\u2013\u00a0https:\/\/youtu.be\/qaPzt9YteHU<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The show at Sellersville on June 11 will start at 8 p.m. The show at City Winery will get underway at 8 p.m.<\/p>\n

Tickets for the Sellersville date range from $29.50-$45.<\/p>\n

Tickets for the City Winery show range from $20-$30.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s June, then it\u2019s time for The Crossing\u2019s annual musical event \u2013 \u201cThe Month of Moderns.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

The Crossing<\/p><\/div>\n

The Crossing (www.crossingchoir.org<\/a>) is an American professional chamber choir based in Philadelphia. The Crossing is conducted by\u00a0Donald\u00a0Nally\u00a0and dedicated to new music. It is committed to working with creative teams to make and record new, substantial works for choir that explore and expand ways of writing for choir, singing in choir, and listening to music for choir.<\/p>\n

Many of its nearly 120 commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues. With a commitment to recording its commissions, The Crossing has issued 19 releases and received two Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019), and three Grammy nominations in as many years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always called the \u2018The Month of Moderns,\u2019\u201d said\u00a0Nally, during a phone interview last week. \u201cAnd it\u2019s always in June.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s schedule includes \u2013 \u201cMonth of Moderns 1: The Books of Color and of Never,\u201d on\u00a0June 11 at 7 p.m. It features two world premieres: \u201cBook of Colors\u201d by Marcos Balter and \u201cThe Book of Never\u201d by Aaron Helgeson.<\/p>\n

The remaining concerts are \u201cMonth of Moderns 2: Unhistoric Acts\u201d on June 25 at 5 p.m. featuring the U.S. premiere of Chaya Czernowin\u2019s \u201cUnhistoric Acts\u201d with the JACK Quartet, in addition to the world premiere of Tawnie Olson\u2019s \u201cBeloved of the Sky,\u201d and \u201cMonth of Moderns 3: The Book of Dawkins Songs\u201d July 8, at 7 p.m. featuring the world premiere of David Shapiro\u2019s \u201cSumptuous Planet: A Secular Mass.\u201d<\/p>\n

All three concerts will be performed at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill (8855 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Month of Moderns 2022 launches with \u201cThe Books of Color\u201d and \u2018The Books of Never.\u201d A pre-concert talk with Nally and the composers will take place at 6 p.m. in the Burleigh Cruikshank Memorial Chapel.<\/p>\n

Marcos Balter\u2019s \u201cThe Book of Colors\u201d<\/em> explores the historical, philosophical, social, and cultural ways we interact with and understand colors. The work engages coloristic aspects of vocal music as a door into historic symbolisms relating to identity, cultural appropriations and misappropriations, synesthesia, astronomy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a cool piece,\u201d said Nally. \u201cMarcos wrote his own text. It looks at the aspects of colors that play a role in our lives \u2013 a lot of different colors. There are four movements \u2013 each with a different scenario.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are the stubborn greens \u2013 plants that find their way to grow on anything \u2013 plants the come up in the middle of a crack in the sidewalk. Another is about the feeling of the color of summer. It\u2019s 20 minutes long and there are a lot of rhythmic pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Book of Never\u201d is commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University. Balter\u2019s work, drawing on his signature rhythmic energy and ingenuity, uses Jude Stewart\u2019s book ROY G BIV as a stepping-off point to an exploration of color in our lives; how it lifts us, changes us, makes connections, and inspires thought.<\/p>\n

History also lies deep in the origins of Helgeson\u2019s monumental \u201cThe Book of Never,\u201d a fascinating adaptation of the Novgorod Codex, a wooden book of psalms from 999 believed to be owned by a monk sent to convert the village of Novgorod from Paganism to Orthodox Christianity. After his excommunication, the monk focused on preserving history of the village through writing and overwriting many layers in the Codex, a technique that Aaron masters musically as he overlays these ancient texts of Novgorod with 20th-century liberal writers Wilde, Neruda, Stein, Angela Davis, and Thanhha Lai.<\/p>\n

Novgorod was a town in what is now Ukraine. It is a sad irony of art being life that the work is born out of an authoritarian overlord, The Church, attempting to take over another land; in its failure to do so, it instead attempts to annihilate it, its people, and its culture. A concert that leaves us pondering the ingenuity and complexity of humans as we reflect on \u201chow we got to this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is very different from the first piece in the show,\u201d said Nally. \u201cIt\u2019s surprisingly relevant to today\u2019s news.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s in Ukraine. The monk\u2019s village had been excommunicated. The musical texture is very over-layering writing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAaron wrote a piece for us in 2017. This piece grew out of discussion from the original piece. It used the origin as the other layers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program also features a third piece \u2013 \u201cDarest thou now O Sou,\u201d. \u00a0A world premiere, it is a new work from Gabriel Jackson — a Whitman setting, written as a birthday gift to Nally. \u00a0It draws on \u201ceverything we\u2019ve got\u201d — virtuosic, insightful, acrobatic, and a hell of a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s based on Walt Whitman \u2013 based on a poem,\u201d said Nally. \u201cIt was a birthday present for me last year. It\u2019s a big piece \u2013 very virtuostic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Video link for The Crossing — https:\/\/youtu.be\/7Z2rPWrOz9o<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tickets are $35 General Admission, $25 Seniors and $20 Student Link.<\/p>\n

June is also a big month for the Serafin Ensemble (http:\/\/serafinensemble.org\/<\/a>) \u2013 the start of its summer season<\/p>\n

\"\"

The Serafins<\/p><\/div>\n

The Serafins, who have a change in identity in recent years, begin their summer with a pair of concerts in Wilmington this weekend at The Music School of Delaware\u2019s Concert Hall (4101 North Washington Street, Wilmington, Delaware,\u00a0https:\/\/www.musicschoolofdelaware.org\/tickets.html<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\u201cSerafin\u00a0used to be\u00a0Serafin\u00a0String Quartet,\u201d said Artistic Director\/violinist Kate Ransom, during a phone interview from her home in North Wilmington. \u201cThat started in spring 2001. It became\u00a0Serafin\u00a0Ensemble in 2019. We had been functioning as a quarter for a long time. That was the beginning of our first full season as\u00a0Serafin\u00a0Ensemble.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a lot of changes happening in the viola seat. And, our residency as University of Delaware\u2019s String Quartet was coming to an end. So, we decided to move away from the fixed line-up of a string quartet and move to a roster of artists. We wanted more work with other instrumentalists, so we changed to an ensemble. We have a roster of 11 with strings, piano, horn, flute and voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s summer festival will include nine concerts spread over three weekends with six shows in Wilmington and three in Lewes, Delaware.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited about this festival,\u201d said Ransom. \u201cOur first year was 2019. The 2020 season was all planned and then was canceled because of COVID.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, I took Season Two and kept it intact and we did it in 2021. We had a wonderful season last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first show this year is \u201cFrench Connection,\u201d which was performed on June 10 and featured works by Debussy, Ravel, Faure and Poulenc.<\/p>\n

On June 12 at The Music School of Delaware\u2019s Concert Hall, the Serafin String Ensemble will present \u201cMarvelous Masters\u201d \u2013 compositions by Ludwig von Beethoven and Johannes Brahms performed by Eric Pritchard and Kate Ransom violin, Luke Fleming viola, Jacques-Pierre Malan cello, and Read Gainsford, piano.<\/p>\n

The opening piece is Beethoven\u2019s\u2019 Piano Trio in Bb Major, Op. 97 (Archduke) — Allegro moderato (1770-1826) Scherzo: Allegro Andante cantabile (attacca) Allegro moderato. The second half of the show will be Brahms\u2019 Quintet for Piano and Strings in F Minor, Op. 34, Allegro non troppo (1833-1897) Andante, un poco Adagio Scherzo: Allegro \u2013 Trio Finale: Poco sostenuto \u2013 Allegro non troppo.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are audience favorites,\u201d said ransom. \u201cThere are two fairly big numbers \u2013 each with four movements. There is a lot of energy \u2013 nothing left at the end. The piano trio by Beethoven is a timeless work \u2013 very well-loved.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe second half of the show is the most revered piano quintet by Brahms. It\u2019s one of the greatest masterworks of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The performance on June 10 will start at 7 p.m. and the concert on June 12 will get underway at 5 p.m.<\/p>\n

Tickets for each concert are $25 for adults and $15 for students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Denny Dyroff, Entertainment Editor, The Times\u00a0 When Sarah Borges performs live, she rocks the house. Borges, is a Boston guitarist\/vocalist whose music has been described as \u201cwalking that fine line between punk and country.\u201d When\u00a0Borges\u00a0straps on her guitar and starts to sing, she rocks out. There is country, blues, punk, and rock in her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39379,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6518,10701,12429,13661],"class_list":["post-39382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-featured","tag-sarah-borges","tag-the-crossing","tag-the-serafins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39383,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39382\/revisions\/39383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennetttimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}