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Three times over these first four weeks of the sweet season — starting Saturday night at Court Street Arts in Haverhill — the duo will share with Upper Valley audiences songs from Summer Samba, the sequel to their 2004 debut Brazilian Breezes. This time, the focus is on infusing American pop favorites with Brazilian rhythms.
“I’d hear songs like (Carole King’s) Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? and (Burt Bachrach’s) Walk on By on the radio while I was in the car,” Gray, who lives in North Haverhill, said this week, “and I’d think, ‘Can we do this as a samba?’ ”
Eastridge saw no reason why not. Sharing Gray’s passion for music from the economic, political and cultural titan of the Amazon basin, he’d already recorded one album with her, and they’d been performing together around the Upper Valley and New England for 15 years.
“I liked her voice from the beginning,” said Eastridge, a retired sound engineer and producer who lives in Thetford. “It’s easy to perform with Lydia. She’s a professional.”
One of the daughters of 1950s singer Betty Johnson, Gray left an acting career — “mostly soap operas” — to start singing professionally in New York in the mid-1990s, before moving to the Upper Valley to raise her young son and daughter. She doubts that music would still be her calling if she hadn’t walked into the Hanover Strings store one day in 2002, someone could recommend a guitarist to accompany her during a gig at an art-gallery opening.
“I went in not knowing the musical community up here at all, and (then-owner) Charley (Conquest) said right away, ‘Ed Eastridge is your guy,’ ” Gray recalled. “I called him, we met, I told him what I had in mind and he said, ‘Let’s just come up with 14 or 16 songs.’ At the end of the opening, everybody came up to us and asked, ‘Do you have a CD?’ ”
They didn’t until they released Brazilian Breezes in 2004, after many short sessions at the studio in Eastridge’s barn.
“It took a long time to do that — probably a couple of years from start to finish,” Gray recalled. “I’d leave my kids at nursery school in Lyme, go to record maybe one song at 9 a.m. and then pick up my kids at noon. Ed is such a laid-back and understanding guy. Not a lot of people in this business would get it that ‘I’ve got something with my kids: I have to cancel right now.’ ”
Soon the duo was playing regularly, usually with each other, sometimes with instrumental accompanists such as drummer Marcus Copening — who worked on both of the recordings, and is touring the new release on gigs with Gray, Eastridge and bassist Andy Bourke.
“As we collaborated,” Gray said, “we’d take turns saying, ‘Do you know this song?’ ‘Do you know that song?’ and it organically evolved.”
Running through the collaborations was that Brazilian vibe, particularly the compositions of the late Antonio Carlos Jobim.
“It’s guitar-based music,” Eastridge said. “Most of the bossa nova and other Brazilian stuff is written for guitar. I like the rhythm and the weird chords, the Brazilians’ choice of chords. They’re way out there, yet they make it work, somehow.”
As do Gray and Eastridge themselves, 16 years after Conquest, who died in 2016, brought them together.
“I thank my lucky stars that Charley was at Hanover Strings that day,” Gray said. “It changed my life.”
Singer Lydia Gray, guitarist Ed Eastridge, drummer Marcus Copening and bassist Andy Bourke perform at Court Street Arts in Haverhill on Saturday night at 7. For tickets ($10 to $35) and more information, visit courtstreetarts.org or call 603-989-5500. The ensemble also will appear at the ArtisTree Community Arts Center in South Pomfret on June 29 ($10 for general-admission tickets) and on July 20 at 8 p.m. at the Skinny Pancake in Hanover.
Best Bets
Lyme resident Phil Pochoda visits Lyme’s Converse Free Library tonight with a preview of the upcoming Canaan Meetinghouse series of author readings. The free presentation, which starts at 7, offers a guide to a lineup that will include former New York Times correspondent and editor Christopher Wren, a Thetford resident, reading from his new book Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom: Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys and the American Revolution on July 19. To learn more about the author series, visit meetinghousereadings.wordpress.com.
Saxophonist Michael Parker, guitarist Norm Wolfe and singer Alison “AliT” Turner perform jazz at The Fells in Newbury, N.H., on Sunday afternoon at 3, during the formal opening of the historic estate’s exhibit of sculpture. Admission is $50 to the opening, which includes refreshments and a tour of the exhibit. To reserve tickets and learn more, visit thefells.org or call 603-763-4789, ext. 3.
The Hopkins Center jumps into its summer schedule of live performances next week with alternating doses of Shakespeare and The Beatles.
On Tuesday, Wednesday and next Thursday nights at Dartmouth College’s Bema Outdoor Amphitheater in Hanover, Italy’s Compagnia de Colombari tackles The Merchant of Venice. Trumpeter and keyboard player Frank London, a veteran of the Klezmatics, provides the live soundtrack to the performances, which the company created to mark the 500th anniversary of the creation of the Jewish ghetto in Venice. For tickets ($20 to $45) to each show, all starting at 8, and to learn more, visit hop.dartmouth.edu or call 603-646-2422.
And at 8 next Thursday night and the nights of June 29 and 30, the Mark Morris Dance Group will cavort around the stage of the Moore Theater to Pepperland, jazz composer Ethan Iverson’s adaptation of songs from The Beatles’ groundbreaking 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. To reserve tickets ($12.50 to $60) and learn more, visit hop.dartmouth.edu or call 603-646-2422.
Barnard native Tristan Henderson and his colleagues in the Americana trio Pete’s Posse sets the rhythm and David Eisenstadter calls the steps for a contradance at the East Thetford Pavilion on Saturday night at 8. Admission is $5 to $10. Potluck desserts and snacks at the break.
The New London Barn Playhouse kicks off its staging of the Broadway adaptation of Little Women next week, starting with performances on Wednesday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. The production runs through July 8. Camelot ends this weekend. To reserve tickets ($20) for these and subsequent productions, visit nlbarn.org or call 603-526-6710.
Interplay Jazz & Arts hosts a swing dance at Woodstock’s Little Theater on Wednesday night at 8, with faculty and students from Interplay’s annual summer camp playing big-band classics. For tickets ($20) and more information, visit interplayjazzandarts.org/events.
Looking Ahead
Boston-based comedian Bob Marley will perform at Court Street Arts in Haverhill next Thursday night at 7. For tickets ($26) and more information, call 603-989-5500, email info@alumnihall.org or visit courtstreetarts.org.
Theater/Performance Art
The BarnArts Center for the Arts stages the new adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’ dystopian novel It Can’t Happen Here on Friday and Saturday nights at 7 on the outdoor stage at Fable Farm in Barnard. For tickets ($15 to $20) and more information about the play, which runs through July 1, visit barnarts.org or call 802-234-1645.
Norwich resident and Circus Smirkus alumnus Sam Gurwitt clowns around during the Cirque Us! troupe’s four weekend performances at the Barrette Center for the Arts in White River Junction. Shows are scheduled for 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. The troupe will host a workshop for jugglers on Sunday at 11:30 a.m. This year’s theme is “Star Struck: A Cosmic Circus.” To reserve tickets ($15 to $25, plus a processing fee) and to learn more, visit thecirqueus.com.
Music
Fiddler Patrick Ross leads the Americana dance band Atlas Key to Fable Farm in Barnard this afternoon at 5:30, to serenade the weekly Feast and Field Market.
Strafford native Noah Kahan performs pop-infused folk tonight ta 7, on the bandstand in Lebanon’s Colburn Park.
The South Royalton Town Band returns to the Richard W. Ellis Bandstand on the town green Thursday night at 7, for its first home concert of the season. Admission is free.
Classicopia co-founder and pianist Daniel Weiser performs three concerts over the weekend with violinist/violist Omar Chen Guey and clarinetist Steve Loew, starting Friday night at 7:30 at Damon Hall in Hartland.
Subsequent performances, of compositions by Mozart, Peter Schickele and Srul Irving Glick, are scheduled for 7:30 Saturday night at the First Congregational Church of Lebanon and for Sunday afternoon at 2 at a private home in Hanover, where reservations are required because of limited seating.
Admission costs $18 for the Friday and Saturday recitals and $40 for the house concert. To reserve tickets and learn more, visit classicopia.org.
Gerry Grimo and the East Bay Jazz Ensemble open the summer series of free concerts on Orford’s new bandstand on Saturday night at 7.
Trombonist Chris Brubeck joins the Boston Civic Symphony at Colby-Sawyer College’s Sawyer Center Theatre in New London on Saturday night at 7:30. Admission costs $5 to $25. To learn more, visit summermusicassociates.com or call 603-526-8234.
Dance
Gina Capossela leads the Raqs Salaam Dance Theater troupe in a performance on the bandstand at Lebanon’s Colburn Park on Monday night at 7, then offers an introductory class.
Bar and Club Circuit
Saxophonist Mike Parker and singer-guitarist Alison “AliT” Turner play the Taverne on the Square in Claremont tonight at 6.
Singer-songwriter Holly Furlone performs at Peyton Place in Orford tonight between 6 and 9.
Hartford native Jes Raymond leads The Blackberry Bushes into the Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland Four Corners on Friday night at 8, for a danceable set of Americana music.
The Nina’s Brew trio ranges around blues, soul, rock and R&B at the Skinny Pancake in Hanover on Friday night at 8. And at 8:30 on Saturday night, Davina and the Vagabonds play their blend of soul, blues and jazz; tickets cost $15 in advance and $18 at the door.
The weekend line-up at the Salt hill Pub in Lebanon features a set of rock from FLEW-Z on Friday night at 9 and a soulful dose of rock, funk and blues from About Gladys on Saturday night at 9.
Busker Ryan Alvanos shares songs and stories at Hanover’s Salt hill Pub on Friday night at 9, and the Virginia-based duo Haze & Dacey plays a set of Americana on Saturday night at 9.
Singer-songwriter Thomas Knight travels from New Hampshire’s seacoast to play Newport’s Salt hill Pub on Friday night at 9, and Boston-area singer-songwriter Chris Parlon performs on Saturday night at 9.
Arthur James sings and plays the blues at the Salt hill Pub in West Lebanon on Saturday night at 9.
The Burlington-based rock ensemble Citizen Pine pulls into Windsor Station at 9:30 Friday night, and Jack in the Pulpit performs on Saturday night at 10. Singer-songwriter Alison “AliT” Turner swings in from her native Royalton on Tuesday night at 6.
Pianist Sonny Saul performs jazz at the On the River Inn in Woodstock on Saturday and Wednesday nights from 6:30 to 9.
Soulfix plays the Lake Morey Resort in Fairlee on Saturday night starting at 8:30.
The Americana ensemble of keyboardist Doc Winslow, bassist Tom Lord, guitarist Kit Creeger and drummer Bryant Harris serenades the weekly brunch at Poor Thom’s Tavern in Meriden on Sundays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Sensible Shoes plays at SILO Distillery in Windsor on Sunday afternoon from 1 to 3.
Open Mics
The Interplay Jazz and Arts summer music camp hosts a jam session tonight at 7 at the Norman Williams Public Library. While admission is free, listeners and performers are encouraged to RSVP at interplayjazzandarts.org.
Woodstock musician Jim Yeager hosts open mics tonight at 7 at the ArtisTree Community Arts Center in South Pomfret; at Bentley’s Restaurant in Woodstock on Monday at 7:30; at the Public House in Quechee on Tuesday at 6; and on Wednesday from 8 to midnight at Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland Four Corners.
String players of all ages and abilities are welcome at the weekly acoustic jam session at South Royalton’s BALE Commons on Friday night from 6:30 to 10.
Joe Stallsmith leads his weekly hootenanny of Americana, folk and bluegrass on Monday night at 6 at Salt hill Pub in Hanover.
Fiddler Jakob Breitbach leads a weekly acoustic jam session of bluegrass, Americana and old-timey music on Tuesday nights at 7 at The Filling Station Bar and Grill in White River Junction.
Tom Masterson hosts the weekly open mic at Bradford, Vt.’s Colatina Exit on Tuesday nights at 8.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304. Entertainment-related news and announcements also can be sent to highlights@news.com.