popcorn youth

The Turtle Island String Quartet do not sound like what their name implies. Yes, they are a “string quartet,” but they do much more than what the tradition of the string quartet would suggest, including adapting popular jazz songs and even rock’n’roll numbers. Though they play without a rhythm section — drums, bass guitar or […]

IT photographer and graphic designer Rob Ochshorn has kindly contributed the photos he took over the weekend of various Light in Winter events. You can view the whole series on our Flickr photos tab, or just check out our Flickr page. He captured some great images of the dance company Pilobolus, as well as the […]

Is there a place for music criticism in the context of the local, regional, geography-bound music journalism that you will find in the Ithaca Times? Does a community such as Ithaca offer the possibility for observing, analyzing, and commenting on trends and developments in new music, be they popular, avant, or classically oriented genres of […]

For nearly 20 years, Bang on a Can has been reinventing our very notion of classical music, concert hall music, and even pop music. Founded in 1987 by three American composers who are now the artistic directors, it grew to also include the Bang on a Can All-Stars, their popular touring ensemble.
Bang on a Can […]

Ok, this is possibly one of the most exciting things to happen to me all week — Popcorn Youth finally has a super spiffy amazing unlimited storage flickr account. And that’s not all — I have a really neat plugin that lets you view all the photos right here on my blog, so you don’t […]

The huge event of the weekend is Ithaca’s Light in Winter Festival, which aims to bring together artists, musicians and scientists to experiment, think and innovate. If you look closely at the program of events, you’ll see that nearly everything looks interesting — I doubt you’ll regret attending any number of these events. But here […]

Tonight Cornell Cinema screened “Last Dance,” a documentary following the collaborative process between author Maurice Sendak and the experimental dance company Pilobolus. Pilobolus will be performing at Ithaca’s State Theatre this Friday at 8pm. Unfortunately, Cornell Cinema did not receive the second reel of the film, and everyone had to leave halfway through! The free […]

From this week’s Encore:
Iva Bittova is one of the Czech Republic’s most famous avant-garde artists. She is a successful actress, but Bittova is best known as an experimental violinist, vocalist and composer. Bittova grew up in a deeply musical family — her father is a Slovakian Roma musician, and her mother is a professional singer […]

Here’s the complete article that appeared in this week’s Ithaca Times about artist Wenda Gu, who left his home of Shanghai in the mid 80s for New York City, where he has lived ever since. To read the complete transcript of our exclusive interview with Wenda Gu, go to our interviews section. His exhibit “Forest […]

Recently, Popcorn Youth interviewed Adam Matta, a NYC beatboxer and visual artist. He’s been a part of the fertile beatboxing scene in NYC since the mid 80s. Matta will be an artist in residence at Cornell University for the month of February, culminating in his collaborative show “Beat Box Bard,” which will feature the sonnets […]

Last week Jorge Strunz and Ardeshir Farah were kind enough to sit down with the Ithaca Times in order to discuss by phone their music, their compositional and improvisational practices, their new album Fantaseo, the changes wrought by the advent of digital technology, and many other aspects of their craft.
Ithaca Times: You are often […]

For fans of jazz and R&B, the past month has been a somber one. December 25th brought the death of James Brown, a musician whose impact on American music was as comprehensive as it was unmistakable. Last week, at the age of 80, percussionist Ajaramu Shelton passed away. A member of Chicago’s […]

Growing up in San Diego, I’ve always loved Pinback. They were a San Diego-based band that were, in my eyes, gracious enough to play all-ages show on almost a weekly basis. It’s been almost ten years, and I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve seen them play at the Che Cafe, […]

It’s been a pretty mellow week for news — until all the students return from winter break, things are pretty low key around here. In any case, there are a couple events of interest coming up. Our cover story this week was with Afro/soul/jazz combo Mifune, and they’ll be playing The Haunt tomorrow night. They’ve […]

This past week, the IT focused on looking back at 2006. You can read about Bryan’s succinct (and frequently hilarious) summary of Ithaca’s notable events in 2006, or you can hit up your Netflix queue after you read about the top movies of 2006 in BVC’s “A Year in the Aisle.” Brian K. (so […]