We hope music is helping you get through this difficult time. We cannot have an audience in the house, but we haven’t shut down! Watch live shows in real time broadcast from Caffe Lena’s stage. Your tips help offset the loss of work for musicians, and help our legendary, non-profit venue survive the shutdown. Click the tip jar to lend your support!
Coming Up Next
Concerts & Music Classes Streamed Live.
Folk Club Kids! Stories, Sing Alongs and Dancing! 30 minutes of fun for infants to pre-schoolers FREE
Folk Club Kids! Stories, Sing Alongs and Dancing! 30 minutes of fun for infants to pre-schoolers FREE
Guitar Workshop for Beginning~ Intermediate players / 10 weeks with Drop in option / Adults
Guitar Workshop for Beginning~ Intermediate players / 10 weeks with Drop in option / Adults
Weekly Slow Jam: Folk, bluegrass & more returns to Caffe Lena!
Weekly Slow Jam: Folk, bluegrass & more returns to Caffe Lena!
Darin and Brooke Aldridge
Darin and Brooke Aldridge
Maswick & Brown with opener Mike O’Donnell
Maswick & Brown with opener Mike O’Donnell
Live Stream: Maswick & Brown with opener Mike O’Donnell
Live Stream: Maswick & Brown with opener Mike O’Donnell
It’s All About Community
Weekly Newsletter
September 9 – 15
First time in Saratoga! After nearly five dozen Grand Ol’ Opry appearances and 5 months at #1 on the bluegrass gospel charts, Brooke & Darin Aldridge bring their stirring harmonies and sizzling picking to our stage on Thursday night. Brooke is IBMA’s reigning Female Vocalist of the Year. Known for ethereal harmonies and a positive, uplifting vibe, their new release, “He’s Getting Me Ready,” a gospel rouser featuring The Oak Ridge Boys, has spent a record-setting 5 months atop the Bluegrass/Gospel Chart.
September 2 – 8
We have just two shows for you this coming weekend. One is already sold out, and the other is getting close. Tickets are still available for Honeysuckle. Irresistible vocal chemistry ignites this duo’s acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin and synth. It’s a plugged in, progressive take on folk informed by their wry attitude toward pop culture and their conservatory training in American roots music. For fans of Boy & Bear, The Novel Ideas, and Shook Twins. We thank you for a strong summer season, and we look forward to sharing so much good music with you this fall.
August 19 – 25
Paul Winter was the first to interweave wolf calls and whale songs with jazz and world music, waking audiences around the world to the music in nature and earning 7 Grammy Awards. This coming weekend marks the first time Mr. Winter has shared his process of creation and his music in a club setting. Experience Winter’s profound musical tapestry and connection to nature in this unforgettable sonic highlight of our summer season. Joined by Brubeck Brothers pianist Chuck Lamb, who anchors Caffe Lena’s jazz programming, and who is the whole reason we get to present this amazing concert.
Caffè Lena In the News
Caffè Lena at 60: Still ‘Essential’ After All These Years
While New York City wrote itself into music history with its sheer volume of folk venues—The Gaslight Cafe, The Bitter End, Cafe Wha?—Saratoga Springs needed just one. Caffè Lena, opened by Lena and Bill Spencer on Phila Street 60 years ago last month, typified a decade marked by great cultural upheaval and the transformation of societal norms. “The first show that ever happened on Caffè Lena’s stage was a Jewish woman opening for an African-American man,” says Sarah Craig, Caffè Lena’s executive director of 25 years, referring to Maxine Abel and Jackie Washington Landron. “It was very clear that Lena and Bill, while they may not have been out at the front of marches and might not have been making speeches, were having the Caffè take a position.” That same month, the Civil Rights Movement was in full tilt in the segregated South, with lunch-counter sit-ins in Nashville, TN. And the soundtrack of that cultural revolution—the punk rock of its time—was folk music.