On any given night at The Haven, the Scottish restaurant at 2 Perkins Street, you can treat yourself to a traditional Scottish meal of Finnan Haddie Croquettes along with a poke of chips, and wash it down some Belhaven Ale on tap or maybe some Thirsty Cross Cider in a bottle. But on Wednesday and Thursday nights, you can add live music to the mix. JP resident Joshua Lee Loomis is a bartender and server at The Haven, and he coordinates the Wednesday night hootenannies and the Thursday local band nights. Loomis, 35, also plays guitar and sings in the rock band The Great Buriers, whose most …

  Tim Casey does not wear a mask to cover his identity. Nor is he a mad scientist. But he does sometimes go by the name of Doctor X, at least when he’s making music. That’s something the Roslindale native has done most of his life, comfortably moving back and forth between folk and rock and electronica, usually writing his own music, but never shy about attempting an eclectic cover of something by the Beatles or Bob Dylan. Casey has been called Doctor X for about a decade, but now the name is being used for the four-piece band he’s fronting, featuring Casey on guitarsand keyboards, Billy Carl…

  When Michael Winter won the spot as third horn with the Boston Symphony Orchestra earlier this year, the 28-year-old Jamaica Plain resident markedthe day as a dream come true. A California native, and part of a family ofmusicians, he came to Boston to study at New England Conservatory, andafterward landed jobs with the Syracuse Symphony and the Buffalo Philharmonic orchestras. But the pianist-turned-horn player knew all along that he wanted to play with the BSO. We recently spoke over coffee at Caffé Aromi. Jamaica Plain Patch: Before we discuss the BSO, how did you happen to switch from …

When Rick Berlin, Shamus Moynihan, and Randace Rauscher Moore were putting together last year’s inaugural Jamaica Plain Music Festival, they noted on their permit application that they expected 300-500 people to show up. They ended up getting, depending on who you ask, between 1,200 and 2,000 audience members grooving on a wide variety of musical genres performed by 22 acts. Three months after that free August event, they were back in planning mode for this year’s, set for Sept. 8, again at Pinebank Field, near the banks of Jamaica Pond. The 2012 edition will feature a few changes: two large …

It’s pronounced "debbo," and it means communal labor or collective effort in Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia. “It’s kind of an archaic word,” said JP resident Danny Mekonnen, 31, who founded and plays saxophone in Debo Band. “It’s not a word that’s in everyday use, but it’s short and easy to remember, and it has a nice definition of people working together.” In fact, Debo Band has 11 members working together, playing exciting, dance-worthy original songs that are sort of a mash-up of traditional and modern Ethiopian pop music. They’ve been together since 2006, most of them live in …

Ask any local musician about the music scene in Jamaica Plain, and they’ll tell you it’s a hotbed. Rock, jazz, blues, folk, classical...it’s all performed here in clubs and churches and parks. And more often than not, the players also live here. Former JP resident William Shoucair, who currently lives in Dorchester, has, over the past few years, founded, and currently conducts, both the Boston Repertory Orchestra and the Dorchester Symphony Orchestra. Shoucair, 60, is a conservatory-trained trumpet player—and still performs in different ensembles—but his main passion these days is conducting…

No one calls it the Midway Café. Sure, there are still signs with both words outside and up above the inside stage. But to pretty much everyone, it’s just the Midway. It was probably that way even back in the 1940s, when the Boston Gas Company used to be across the street, and workers from the 8 a.m., 4 p.m. and midnight shifts kept the bar packed. But when Boston Gas moved out in 1982, business shriveled. Five years later, Dave and Jay Balerna took over the Midway’s liquor license from their aunt and uncle, who owned the whole block, and the brothers became the then-youngest bar owners in …

There are likely no places other than Tres Gatos where you can order sheep’s milk cheese, confit of chicken thigh, and a nice glass of sherry, peruse a collection of books by Charles Bukowski, and flip through a chaotically arranged selection of new and used vinyl albums. A recent visit to the record bins at the back of the restaurant-book-music one-stop revealed plenty of gems, in the order they’re listed here: “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” soundtrack, “Best of Emmy Lou Harris,” “Listen” by A Flock of Seagulls, “Caught in the Act” by Grand Funk Railroad, “Frank Sinatra Sings Only for …

It’s always one of the first questions: Is your name really Lizzie Borden? Yup. Elizabeth Borden, and she headed up the all-girl punk band Lizzie Borden & the Axes throughout most of the 1980s, starting when Borden, on bass, was around 13. They initially worked as a quartet, then added a fifth member, playing local hot spots such as the Rat, the Space, and Cantone’s. After some personnel changes and label problems, and even a forced name change – to Mata Hari – the band folded, and Borden started up Lava Beat, then the Finch Family. These days Borden, who has lived in Jamaica Plain for two …

Will Riley and Heather Rogers Riley are completely wrapped up in music. Living in the Pondside neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, he plays and teaches guitar, and she plays and teaches piano. She’s chair of the piano department at Indian Hill Music in Littleton, and runs the Heather Rogers Riley Classical Piano Studio from their home. He’s a lecturer and teacher and head of Classical Guitar Studies at UMass Dartmouth, and teaches at New England Conservatory Prep School and the Childbloom Guitar Program of Boston. With a love of music for as long as they can remember, they both moved to Boston – …

There isn’t a musician or a true music fan anywhere around Boston who doesn’t know or hasn’t been touched or inspired by longtime JP resident Rick Berlin. His storied performance history goes something like this: Sang with the Whiffenpoofs at Yale, formed Orchestra Luna, morphed it into Orchestra Luna 2, changed it to Luna, started up the Suitcase Band, then Berlin Airlift, then Rick Berlin the Movie, which was followed by a solo period, then a variety show he called Marlene Loses It at the Lizard, then the Shelley Winters Project, some more solo work and, these days, singer in the Nickel & …

One band and one style of music wasn’t enough for Erin Harpe. The longtime Brookside resident, who sings and plays acoustic and electric guitar, fronts two groups, and they don’t sound anything alike. You can sample both of them live over the next couple of weeks. Her quartet, Erin Harpe & the Delta Swingers, goes the country blues route at Smoken’ Joe’s Barbecue in Brighton on Dec. 3, and her trio, Lovewhip, mixes up some disco, some New Wave, and some electro-pop right here at the Midway Café on Dec. 9. Who else is in these bands besides you? My husband, Jim Countryman, plays bass in both …

By the time classical singer Peter Terry and then-St. John’s Music Minister Ken Brooks started up the music series JP Concerts, in 2008, Terry had already been settled in Jamaica Plain for three years, having lived, as he puts it, as far east as Israel and as far west as Seattle. JP Concerts, which features performances in genres and styles ranging from chamber music, recitals, baroque music on period instruments, new music, to jazz, got its start when Terry and Brooks, who had been planning a concert at St. John’s Church, found out that Randace Moore of Centre/South Main Streets was …

Heather Foxwell can’t recall exactly how long she’s been singing. But the 24-year-old guitarist, who moved to Jamaica Plain a year ago, was showing off her vocal prowess – along with some fine slide work – by belting out a few vocals at the Jamaica Plain Music Festival, fronting her power trio H-Fox. Born in Germany and brought up in Reno, she moved to the area to attend Berklee College of Music, where she recently finished up a degree in music therapy.   What brought you to Jamaica Plain? I had a lot of friends that lived here and I just wanted to be closer to them. I’ve moved around a lot, …

You never know where you’ll find singer-songwriter, multi instrumentalist, band leader Jessie Torrisi these days. She could be at the front of the stage, slinging either an electric or an acoustic guitar, with a microphone nearby to pick up her deep, rich vocals. Or she could be behind the drum kit, a harmonica hanging in front of her, another vocal mike nearby. The former New Yorker, who now lives in Austin, makes her first trip to Boston, with her band the Please, Please Me, for a show of heartfelt pop and rock and ballads at the Milky Way on Thursday. She spoke by phone from her tour van …

A Far Cry, the 5-year-old, Jamaica Plain-based, self-conducted string orchestra, was recently awarded a $25,000 grant from the Free for All Concert Fund. The fund, according to A Far Cry violinist and founding member Megumi Stohs, helps a variety of local musical groups give free concerts in different communities. “They prefer to support music going into a community rather than in a traditional concert venue,” said Stohs. The 18-member group regularly tours the country with programs of chamber music, serves as the chamber orchestra in residence at both the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and …

When Ken Pope turned 10 it was time for him to pick an instrument to play. His choice was trumpet. But his mom, at one time an accordion teacher, said, “No, everybody needs a French horn or an oboe or a bassoon.” He went for the horn because, as he now says, “It was closest to the trumpet.” But Pope, 50, who went on to be a horn performance major at Oberlin, doesn’t only play the beautiful and stately member of the brass family, he also fixes them. The basement space beneath his home in the Forest Hills area of Jamaica Plain, is also the home of Pope Instrument Repair, which he opened in 1989…

His real name is Timothy Maxwell, but everyone knows him as T Max. And they know his magazine, The Noise, filled to the brim with music news, reviews and interviews, as a publication that has tied the New England music scene together for decades. Three decades, to be exact. The Noise brings its ongoing 30th anniversary celebration to its hometown – it got started in T’s Jamaica Plain home – for a night of live music at the Midway Café on Saturday. T, who is also a singer-songwriter, left JP a couple of years ago, but is looking forward to a return to his stomping grounds. He recently spoke …

There was a moment, after Lynn Torgove already earned a B.A. in theater and a B.S. in occupational therapy, that the Jamaica Plain resident had an epiphany. Driving down the road, Torgove, who remembers singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to her grandmother when she was 5, and singing “Hava Nagila” at her nursery school graduation, decided to apply to graduate school for music. Thinking back on it now, sitting in her Sumner Hill living room, she says she didn’t know if she would be able to make a living at music, but there was nothing she wanted to do more.   What’s a typical week for you …

Mike Irwin has been playing music since he was 7, starting with piano lessons when he was growing up in Lenox, later switching to trumpet, and at the ripe age of 12, taking up guitar. These days the Jamaica Plain resident plays guitar, piano, bass, pedal steel, and drums. With plenty of knowhow under his belt, from lots of lessons and from working in rock bands over the years, he maintains a day job of teaching guitar and bass. He also runs his own recording facility in the Bournewood neighborhood, Now I Have a Machine Gun Studios.   Where does the name of your studio come from? It’s from “…