Arts Briefs: Yiddish music festival returns, ‘Roman Holiday’ on the big screen, and more
The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst will once again host Yidstock: The Festival of New Yiddish Music from Thursday, July 10, through Sunday, July 13.
The festival includes seven concerts, four workshops and nine talks, all of which will celebrate Yiddish music, language, and culture. This year’s headliners are The Klezmatics, Eleanor Reissa, Joanne Borts and Michael Winograd.
“This year’s lineup represents what is best about Yidstock,” said Seth Rogovoy, Yidstock’s artistic director, in a news release. “Concertgoers will enjoy a mix of festival veterans and artists making their Yidstock debuts, plus familiar artists with new programs and collaborations. It all adds up to a vibrant pageant of new, exciting and ever-evolving Yiddish and klezmer music.”
Tickets are available for individual events, but prices for shows available as of this writing vary from $42 to $60 for members and $48 to $68 general admission. Guests who cannot attend in person can purchase a Livestream Concert Pass for $36.95 for members or $49.19 general admission. To purchase tickets or for more information, including a full schedule, visit yiddishbookcenter.org/yidstock.
The classic Audrey Hepburn movie “Roman Holiday,” co-starring Gregory Peck, will screen at Amherst Cinema on Sunday, July 6, at 1:30 p.m., and Tuesday, July 8, at 7 p.m.
The movie stars Hepburn as a sheltered European princess who longs to explore the world and falls in love with an American newsman, played by Peck, while traveling in Rome on her own.
The movie was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Actress in a Leading Role for Hepburn.
Tickets for the Sunday screening are $10.75 for adults and $9.75 for seniors (65 and up) and students via amherstcinema.org. Tickets to the Tuesday screening are each one dollar more than the Sunday prices.
“Welcome to Night Vale,” a narrative fiction podcast about a spooky, surreal small town in the desert, will return to the Academy of Music in Northampton on Sunday, July 13th, at 7 p.m. for a live show, “Murder Night in Blood Forest.”
Per the event description: “Beloved former teen militia member Tamika Flynn is joining a few hundred of her friends for the annual Murder Night in Blood Forest, a celebration of crows, ravens and all corvids. But a masked killer is hunting these carefree partiers one by one. Who would ruin Murder Night with murder? Can Cecil and Tamika solve the mystery before the murderer has gotten them all?”
This performance is a standalone episode (one not connected to the overall plot of the show), so guests don’t need to have extensive familiarity with “Welcome to Night Vale” to attend.
The show will feature Cecil Baldwin, Symphony Sanders, live music by Disparition and Al Olender (who will be performing as “The Weather,” which is music in the “Night Vale” universe), and surprise guests.
Tickets are $35.86 at aomtheatre.com. Card to Culture tickets are also available for $10. For more information about “Welcome to Night Vale,” visit welcometonightvale.com/live.
More than 50 current and former artists at Cottage Street Studios, the first factory building in Easthampton to be turned into artist studios, will hold an exhibition of work at the Elusie Gallery and the ECA Gallery in Easthampton from Saturday, July 5, through, Saturday, July 26, with an opening reception on July 5 from 4 to 7 p.m.
The exhibition will include photography, paintings, prints, ceramics, fiber art, sculpture, fine crafts, pottery, and more.
“Despite recent challenges — including the displacement of many artists and makers due to steep rent increases — our community remains vibrant, close-knit, and committed to enriching Easthampton and the surrounding region through the arts,” said artist Matthew Simons in a press release. “Come be part of the story. Celebrate the past, present, and future of Cottage Street Studios Artists Community.”
Admission is free.
Local vocalist Peter W. Shea will perform “The Noble Heine,” a concert featuring 21 poems by celebrated German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine set to music, on Sunday, July 6, at 7 p.m. at Bombyx.
The settings, composed by local pianist Clifton J. “Jerry” Noble, are all works “that Shea has in some way helped to bring into the world, either by suggestion, commission, or premiere, as part of his thirty-year project on Heine and the music he continues to inspire,” according to the event description, including Noble’s 16-song Heine Song Cycle, which pays tribute to Romantic composer Robert Schumann.
The show also will feature the vocal sextet Cantabile and former Cantabile member Justina Golden.
The show is the first in “New Songs for an Old Poet,” a series of four concerts this year celebrating Heine, including “The Parting Summer” (Sept. 13), “Heinrich Heine Far and Near” (Oct. 26), and “Seas, Birds and Trees” (Dec. 13, Heine’s birthday).
Sliding scale tickets are $5 to $35. To purchase tickets or for more information about the concerts, including the program for “The Noble Heine,” visit bombyx.live/events/the-noble-heine-new-songs-for-an-old-poet-concert-2.
Chester Theatre Company will open its production of Tatty Hennessy’s play “A Hundred Words for Snow” on Thursday, July 3, at 2 and 7:30 p.m.
The show is about a teenager trying to live out her late father’s dream to take the two of them on a trip to the Arctic.
According to the show description: “After her father’s unexpected death, 15-year-old Rory discovers that he was planning a trip for the two of them to the North Pole. So, she picks up his ashes, her passport, and her mother’s credit card, and sets out to make good on his plans. Layered, complex and as beautiful as snowfall, Hennessy’s play is an epic Arctic adventure about adolescence, grief, love, and being an explorer in a melting world.”
Tickets are $55 via chestertheatre.org.
The Greenfield gallery/thrift art store Looky Here will host a figure drawing session with a live nude model on Thursday, July 3, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Participants should bring their own materials, but easels and drawing horses (a type of bench made for artists) will be provided.
Admission is $15 via lookyheregreenfield.com/event/figure-drawing-7-3-15.
Daily Hampshire Gazette
