Jaime Branch’s final flight

The wildly inventive trumpeter Jaimie Branch was to have returned to Lexington in March 2020 to play the Outside the Spotlight series. Though she had performed in other ensembles for the series, this was to be the first local outing for her trumpet/cello/bass/drums quartet Fly or Die. Cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the concert

The endless outlaw ride of Willie Nelson

In one of his most storied hits, “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys,” Willie Nelson takes a prolonged look in the rear-view mirror at a life fading from view like a stretch of desert highway. Far from celebrating the Western imagery the song’s title suggests, the lyrics honors cowboys for “their own brand of misery”

Robbie Robertson, 1943-2023

Robbie Robertson knew how to spin a yarn. The songs he penned with The Band – scrapbooks of folkloric Americana designed by a Canadian in an age of psychedelia – served as glorious proof. Then again, as referenced in “The Last Waltz,” he had a lot to draw on “physically, spiritually and psychotically.” Case in