music

Four Upcoming Concerts Worth Your Time

Staff Writer

12 Mar 2026 — 2 min read

Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass & Other Delights (Sell-Out Watch)

College Street Music Hall
238 College St, New Haven, CT 06510
March 26, 2026
Pop-jazz / classic brass-pop

Herb Alpert’s music still runs on elegance: clean melodic lines, rhythmic buoyancy, and arrangements that know exactly when charm beats force. The nostalgia angle is obvious, but the better reason to go is craft—songs built with enough snap and polish to outlive their era. In a room this size, the show should feel less like a museum piece than a reminder that sophistication can still move a crowd. Grade: B+

Reprise — Recreating 5/7/94 The Bomb Factory (Dallas, TX)

FTC Warehouse
70 Sanford St, Fairfield, CT 06824
March 26, 2026
Jam-band tribute / live reconstruction

Normally, reenactment is a warning sign. Here, the appeal is the opposite: a band trying to recover the looseness, nerve, and playful instability that made the original performance matter in the first place. Tribute logic works only when imitation gives way to momentum, and this setup looks built for exactly that. Grade: B+

The Hives

Toad’s Place
300 York St, New Haven, CT 06511
March 19, 2026
Garage rock / high-velocity rock

The Hives remain one of the few bands that can make discipline look deranged. Every riff is a shove, every pause a setup, every chorus engineered to hit before the room has time to get polite. In a club that rewards speed and swagger, this should feel less like revival than proof that the old combustion formula still works. Grade: A-

Cass McCombs + Band

Space Ballroom
295 Treadwell St, Hamden, CT 06514
March 20, 2026
Indie songwriting / folk-rock

Cass McCombs writes songs that seem to drift until they suddenly lock into place. The melodies are unhurried, the observations sly, and the band format gives the material a little extra backbone without sanding off its oddness. In a compact room, that combination should land exactly as intended: intimate, literate, and just off-center enough to linger. Grade: A-

This stretch of the calendar makes a good case for the corridor’s range: brass-pop polish, jam-scene devotion, garage-rock velocity, and songwriterly drift, all on the board before March is out.

FAIRFIELD CIVIC ROUNDUP

2026-04-16 RTM Budget Hearings Were Held April 6–8 as $402.9 Million Proposal Moves to Final Stage Fairfield’s Representative Town Meeting held budget hearings on April 6, 7, and 8, 2026, marking the final major public step before the RTM votes on the proposed fiscal year 2026–27

Fairfield Weighs Boundaries for New Parking District Under State Housing Law

Fairfield’s Town Plan and Zoning Commission is considering where to draw a new conservation and traffic mitigation district authorized under Connecticut’s 2025 housing law, November Special Session Public Act 25-1, commonly known as HB 8002. A preliminary map has been presented based on staff work and commissioner input,

Local Tables

April 15, 2026 The Whelk (Westport) $$$$ 575 Riverside Ave, Westport, CT 06880 Hours: Dinner Tue–Thu 4:30pm–8:30pm; Fri–Sat 4:30pm–9:30pm; Sun 4:30pm–8:30pm; Mon closed Hours listed as of publication; verify before visiting. The Whelk operates as a polished coastal dining room

Upcoming Arts & Events:

April 16–April 29, 2026 The two weeks ahead in Fairfield are dense with live music at the Fairfield Theatre Company and a marquee theatrical event at the Quick Center that brings professional Broadway actors together with Fairfield University students for the first time. The Edgerton Center at Sacred Heart