Milk Boy Art House
Leyla McCalla will be performing this evening at The Milk Boy Art House in downtown College Park, Maryland. Milk Boy Art House is an interesting club like venue with artistic programing run by the University of Maryland’s The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center a.k.a The Clarice, https://theclarice.umd.edu/. Unfortunately, after two and a half years, the Milk Boy Art House has closed. You can read about their closing here: https://www.milkboyarthouse.com/. Fortunately, already booked programing by The Clarice at the Milk Boy Art House will continue for the remainder of the season. These include tonight’s Leyla McCalla Quartet show, and future jazz programs by MacArthur Fellow, Miguel Zenon (26 March 2020); Japanese pianist Hiromi (4 April 2020); and another MacArthur fellow Mary Halvorson (8 May 2020).
Leyla McCalla
Layla McCalla is a Haitian-American, multi-lingual, multi-instrumentalist, cellist and singer who grew up in Brooklyn, NY. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I will refer you Ms. McCall’s website for a more complete biography, https://leylamccalla.com/about/. I first heard Ms. McCalla when she was playing cello with a later version of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_Chocolate_Drops, at the Hamilton in DC. She was actually flying off the next week to begin a solo European tour. More recently, she has released a solo album, Capitalist Blues, https://www.npr.org/2019/01/17/685696394/first-listen-leyla-mccalla-the-capitalist-blues, from which we have played tunes on past Morning Brew – Classic Jazz Edition programs. She has also teamed up with Rhiannon Giddens (a former Chocolate Drop), Amythyst Kiah, and Allison Russell on the Songs of Our Native Daughters project available on Smithsonian Folkways, https://folkways.si.edu/songs-of-our-native-daughters.
Leyla McCalla Quartet
Tonight, Leyla McCalla will be performing with yet another project of hers, the Layla McCalla Quartet, which also includes New Orleans musicians Dave Hammer (electric guitar), Shawn Myers (drums/percussion), and Pete Olynciw (electric and acoustic bass). See https://www.sfcv.org/reviews/sfjazz/leyla-mccalla-cool-under-pressure for a review of their SFJAZZ performance.
Come out and support the music. See you there. If you miss this evening, you can catch them tomorrow at the Elk Creek Cafe, https://elkcreekcafe.com/, in beautiful downtown Millheim, PA (4-hour drive from DC). I only mention this because Millheim is a very tiny hamlet (population 904) a stones throw away from my wife’s only slightly larger hometown (population 1,265).
