Cool Jazz

A most intriguing voice, hefty blasts of (and from) the past, plus cool jazz, folk and world music have our attention in this week's new recorded music offerings. THROUGH THE HOOP: There's no staying neutral on Jesca Hoop and her second album "Hunting My Dress" (Vanguard, A-) . In the vein of a Bjork, PJ Harvey or Kate Bush, you'll find Hoop fascinating or off-putting and for much the same reasons - her soaring range, tongue-rolling pronunciation (sometimes appearing British, though she's not)

Mothers and fathers came. So did daughters and sons. Aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews were there, too. They all came to take part in Lawnside Family Day. Under a spotted-blue afternoon sky, residents and family members ate barbecue, fried turkey and more than 2,000 hot dogs. Later, they listened to jazz and watched fireworks. Lawnside Family Day, held on June 24 this year, is a grand fair for this borough of nearly 3,000. It is also much more: The annual event, which dates back more than 40 years, is a borough reunion.

It's impossible to imagine that on Tuesday night, between 8:30 and 11, anyone could have averted his gaze from the Democratic primary battle in Philly. But Tapes 'n Tapes tried to get your attention. The Minneapolis ensemble stole some election-night thunder when they - and another favorite of the blog world, White Denim of Austin, Texas - packed First Unitarian Church. The band might have had less hype than Barack Obama coming into Tuesday, but only slightly less: Indie-music-blog aficionados can attest to the powerful buzz surrounding T'nT.

You've heard of cool jazz. Now there's cool rap. From the Great Black North, Toronto to be exact, the Dream Warriors came to the Chestnut Cabaret on Wednesday night. Or Thursday morning, really. They're Afrocentric, but more celebratory than messianic. They're strange, but not in De La Soul's bugged-out-just-to-be-bugged-out manner. They use science fiction to help "drop science. " Let's get one thing straight: The Dream Warriors are not the world's greatest rappers, though they're more than merely competent.

Earnest folk, cool jazz, and flip, hip, beat poetry all coexisted comfortably in the smoky coffeehouses of the 1950s. So why shouldn't those art forms cohabit now? That's one ambition of the worldly wise and often wonderful new Devonsquare album "Industrial Twilight," a three-suite journey through existential dilemmas and contemporary survival. The group will be introducing the material live tomorrow at Tin Angel. "Frankly, it's been a reach for radio to play it," concedes the group's Herb Ludwig.

Jazz vocalist Ms. Justine and the Gerald Price Quintet will join with alto sax player Frank Heppenstall on Saturday for an afternoon of jazz to raise money for the Fletcher Lone Holiday Basket Drive, which provides food for needy families. Price has formerly worked with Dakota Staton, and Heppenstall was a longtime member of the Donna Washington band. The music goes from 2 to 6 p.m. at Club LaPointe, 4600 N. Broad St., and the $7 tab includes a buffet lunch. Phone: 215-659-7215. FLIGHTS OF COMEDY.

This Labor Day weekend, you can nod your head to some down-home bebop, wiggle your hips to some contemporary funk, or excite your tongue with chilled wine while chilling to cool jazz in Chadds Ford. First, the bebop. It comes in the form of the Sir Charles Quartet, led by Southwest Philly tenor player Charles Cunningham. His quartet, with Fred Simmons on piano, Ed Crocket on bass and Bill Byrd on drums, will be at St. Maron's Hall SUNDAY night. Cunningham is from the old school and lists Lester Young as one of his greatest influences.

"What are we supposed to do now? I've never been here before," wondered the woman at the end of Wednesday night's visit from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel. "Sometimes they do an encore," said the man next to her. They didn't. But with Verizon Hall packed with newbies, you had to believe that to want survival of orchestral music in America these days is to be at peace with internalized bouts of complexity and contradiction. Here was a slightly unkempt performance of John Adams' City Noir , a signature piece of this orchestra penned by its own creative chair, and an unremarkable Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6. But classical music was winning friends.

Are we having fun yet? I don't know about you, but I certainly am. And one of my favorite spots on Saturday nights is Red's, 9217 Atlantic Ave., behind Lucy the Elephant, in Margate. This is where I go when I'm in the mood to stand on the edge and look around, as the Van Halen song says. The last time I was in Red's, I saw a guy with a technicolor 'do who looked like he had birthday candles growing out of his head. The scary part was, he seemed sober. But you catch my drift - there are some wild and wacky folks here.

All in all, it has been a year for going gaga over Sun Ra. In January, Conshohocken-based Evidence Music released five compact discs of long-unavailable albums from the cosmically mysterious big-band leader who lives in Germantown, and this month, the company followed suit with five more CDs in a kind of holiday-season coda to what is an extraordinary series. Ra is one of those musicians beloved for his inscrutability and mystical coolness that can't be easily categorized.

A most intriguing voice, hefty blasts of (and from) the past, plus cool jazz, folk and world music have our attention in this week's new recorded music offerings. THROUGH THE HOOP: There's no staying neutral on Jesca Hoop and her second album "Hunting My Dress" (Vanguard, A-) . In the vein of a Bjork, PJ Harvey or Kate Bush, you'll find Hoop fascinating or off-putting and for much the same reasons - her soaring range, tongue-rolling pronunciation (sometimes appearing British, though she's not)

"What are we supposed to do now? I've never been here before," wondered the woman at the end of Wednesday night's visit from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel. "Sometimes they do an encore," said the man next to her. They didn't. But with Verizon Hall packed with newbies, you had to believe that to want survival of orchestral music in America these days is to be at peace with internalized bouts of complexity and contradiction. Here was a slightly unkempt performance of John Adams' City Noir , a signature piece of this orchestra penned by its own creative chair, and an unremarkable Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6. But classical music was winning friends.

The coming month may prove to be the homecoming Philadelphia-born painter Barkley L. Hendricks has long deserved. Notable for stark, postmodern black-and-proud oil portraits, "Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool" - his first career retrospective, on tour for the last two years - finally opened yesterday at his alma mater, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. And starting Nov. 6, Sande Webster Gallery hosts Hendricks' quietly dynamic Caribbean landscapes. In addition, on Nov. 12 "Walkin' With Walker: Narrative Photography of Barkley Hendricks" begins at the African American Museum, showing the 63-year-old North Philly native's observational edge with a camera.

When Carol Stauder started giving Hurricane Katrina tours, she couldn't get through them without crying. Seeing the devastation caused by the flooding four months earlier - friends' homes destroyed and neighborhood after neighborhood abandoned - was too painful. Almost three years later, most of those homes are still broken and deserted, but what saddens Stauder even more are the empty lots sprinkled among them. The houses have been razed, the debris removed, and all that's left are rectangular patches of grass or weeds.

It's impossible to imagine that on Tuesday night, between 8:30 and 11, anyone could have averted his gaze from the Democratic primary battle in Philly. But Tapes 'n Tapes tried to get your attention. The Minneapolis ensemble stole some election-night thunder when they - and another favorite of the blog world, White Denim of Austin, Texas - packed First Unitarian Church. The band might have had less hype than Barack Obama coming into Tuesday, but only slightly less: Indie-music-blog aficionados can attest to the powerful buzz surrounding T'nT.

Pre-Atlantic City Expressway, in the midst of sweltering, non-air-conditioned summers, many black families in Philadelphia piled into their Buicks and Oldsmobiles and motored down the Black Horse or White Horse Pike for a day on the beach in Atlantic City. Food, bathing suits, towels, blankets, and buckets and shovels were stacked in the car trunk or in the backseat. These trips were family affairs. They included aunts, uncles, cousins, and people who were like family - play-aunts, play-uncles and play-cousins.

Tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, who just won a Grammy award, appears with his quartet tonight at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. And the quartet will be a strong one with Mulgrew Miller on piano, Idris Muhammad on drums and Cameron Brown on bass. Entrance to the Convention Center is at 13th and Cherry streets. Showtime: 8 p.m. Tickets: $20. Info: 215-569-8080 or www.pcmsnet.org. Meanwhile Mount Airy native Kurt Rosenwinkel will be at a little smaller location tonight and tomorrow.

This Labor Day weekend, you can nod your head to some down-home bebop, wiggle your hips to some contemporary funk, or excite your tongue with chilled wine while chilling to cool jazz in Chadds Ford. First, the bebop. It comes in the form of the Sir Charles Quartet, led by Southwest Philly tenor player Charles Cunningham. His quartet, with Fred Simmons on piano, Ed Crocket on bass and Bill Byrd on drums, will be at St. Maron's Hall SUNDAY night. Cunningham is from the old school and lists Lester Young as one of his greatest influences.

One of the country's premier jazz events, the annual Mellon PSFS Jazz Festival, returns June 13 for an eight-day run. Pianist McCoy Tyner, a West Philadelphia native who first gained renown three decades ago as a member of the John Coltrane Quartet, will be the festival's featured musician. His career has never been bigger; he has won two Grammys in the '90s. In a program titled "The Real McCoy," Tyner will give a free concert at 6 p.m. Saturday, June 14, at Penn's Landing.

Earnest folk, cool jazz, and flip, hip, beat poetry all coexisted comfortably in the smoky coffeehouses of the 1950s. So why shouldn't those art forms cohabit now? That's one ambition of the worldly wise and often wonderful new Devonsquare album "Industrial Twilight," a three-suite journey through existential dilemmas and contemporary survival. The group will be introducing the material live tomorrow at Tin Angel. "Frankly, it's been a reach for radio to play it," concedes the group's Herb Ludwig.