Once, Boston was âa special placeâ where musicians thrived
By Malcolm Gay Globe Staff,Updated March 12, 2021, 7:53 a.m.
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By almost any measure, keyboardist Wesley Nagy was doing pretty well.
The Vineyard Haven musician had carved out a comfortable life for himself, playing the islandâs lucrative wedding circuit, serving as music director at Grace Church, and gigging at bars and other venues with his reggae-infused cover band, The Grateful Dread.
One year after the onset of the pandemic, however, Nagy has seen his performance schedule evaporate. His income has shrunk to less than a quarter of what it was before the COVID-19 crisis. Heâs racked up an estimated $80,000 in credit card debt. And although he had been trying to make ends meet doing construction, that came to a crashing halt last summer when he cut off his little finger while sawing a piece of oak. Now heâs on unemployment, hoping eventually to sell some property he and his estr
On their latest album, Obviously, Lake Street Dive once again make smart, soulful pop that hums along with the integrated precision of an Indy race car.
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he United States vs. Billie Holiday starring Andra Day is the third film adaptation drawn from Holiday’s life story and the third that looks at Holiday through a prism of sensationalism, sordid or heroic, rather than as a groundbreaking musician who expanded and refined the possibilities of jazz.
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Unless their teacher was Victor Rosenbaum.
“His mother found me,” Rosenbaum says of his young student, Kingsley Chen. “She contacted me, and said her son was in love with my playing. They had just immigrated from China to Las Vegas. I visited them there on a trip, and heard him play.
“Then they moved to the Boston area to be closer to me. I’ve been seeing him in person I couldn’t not do it.”
During his 53 years of teaching, Rosenbaum who has taught at New England Conservatory all that time, even while he was president of Longy School of Music (1985–2001), and then faculty at New York’s Mannes School of Music (2004–17) had given up working with such young students. After all, he’s had generations of conservatory-level pianists to coach.