Music
• BMC presents Lydian String Quartet: On Saturday, April 9, at 7:30 p.m., the Lydian String Quarter will present “Encore! Encore!” at Centre Congregational Church in Brattleboro as part of the Brattleboro Music Center's Chamber Music Series.
“Encore! Encore!” was created to showcase works written by composers who enjoyed success early in their careers but who were compelled to stay connected to their inner muse, to reinvent themselves as they grew older - who came back, yet again, to another round of applause.
The program features Franz Josef Haydn's Quartet in E-flat Major (“The Joke”), Op. 33, No.2 (1781); Gabriel Fauré's Quartet in E minor, Op. 121 (1924); and Ludwig van Beethoven's Quartet in F Major, Op 135 (1826).
Since its formation, in 1980, the Lydian String Quartet's exquisite artistry has inspired critical acclaim worldwide. Their interpretive mastery of traditional works and special flair for contemporary repertoire has also won prizes at international festivals and earned the prestigious Naumburg Award for Chamber Music.
Tickets ($30, $20, $10) can be purchased by calling the Brattleboro Music Center at 802-257-4523 or by visiting www.bmcvt.org.
• Eugene Friesen in Bellows Falls: Stone Church Arts presents Eugene Friesen and Friends performing Love Songs of the Americas on Saturday, April 9, at 7:30 p.m., at Immanuel Episcopal Church, 20 Church St., Bellows Falls.
Love Songs of the Americas is an offering of exceptionally beautiful music from North and South America performed by four veteran musicians: Mili Bermejo (voice), Eugene Friesen (cello), Tim Ray (piano) and Dan Greenspan (double bass). Songs in Spanish, English and Portuguese feature the vocal artistry of Mili Bermejo in arrangements enhanced by the soulful cello of Eugene Friesen. Using music language authentic to each song and informed by jazz and other world traditions, Love Songs of the Americas reveals the unique facets of the four players while placing ensemble playing as the focal point of the performance.
Admission is $17 for adults ($13 for seniors and children under 12) in advance and $20 ($15) at the door. Tickets are available at Village Square Booksellers (Bellows Falls), Toadstool Bookshop (Keene, NH), Brattleboro Books, Misty Valley Books (Chester), and at www.brattleborotix.com or available at the door. For more information, call 802-463-3100.
• Happy birthday, Edmund!: Marlboro College will host an Early Music Gala performed by Edmund Breslford and Friends at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 10, in the Whittemore Theater.
The annual concert marks the 47th anniversary of the Marlboro Recorder Workshop and this year also celebrates the 80th birthday of the workshop's artistic director and founder, Edmund Brelsford. Admission is free and all are welcome to join us for refreshments, a cake cutting, and to meet the artists at the reception in the lobby following the concert.
The program consists of vocal and instrumental music of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque, and the Classical Period from Austria, England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, including arias and duets from Mozart's Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute. Special guest vocalists Margery McCrum (soprano) and James Anderson (tenor) will join Brelsford (baritone, lute, recorder); Wendy Redlinger (soprano, psaltery, harpsichord); Sarah Cantor (recorder), Angus Lansing (viola da gamba), Andrus Madsen (harpsichord) and Timothy Merton (baroque cello).
Brelsford studied recorder with the Dutch virtuoso Frans Bruggen and baroque flute with Hans-Martin Linde of the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland. He is a former faculty member of the International Recorder Schools at Saratoga Springs, N.Y. and Siena, Italy as well as the Brattleboro School of Music. His concert career has taken him on tour all over the world. Edmund also taught language and literature at Marlboro College for more than 40 years.
• Orla Fallon at the Bellows Falls Opera House: She has a new PBS special, a new solo album, and Orla Fallon's journey to promote these exciting endeavors includes a stop at the Bellows Falls Opera House on Thursday, April 14, at 7:30 p.m., sponsored by Vermont Festivals LLC.
Although best known to many as lead in the popular group Celtic Woman, Fallon's career of song and harp has meandered between solo and group performances, always with a large dose of Irish heart. The new CD and DVD which is being shown as a PBS special across the nation, is a musical pilgrimage through the artist's beloved Ireland. A celebration of the people and the landscape of the Emerald Isle, the DVD was filmed on location at the historic 17th Century Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin, and at craggy cliffs, green coastlines, villages, meadows, and even pubs that make up the fabric of the Irish countryside.
Her first album, The Water Is Wide, debuted in the Billboard World Music Top Ten upon its release in the United States. She toured extensively in Europe, Africa, and North America, where her renditions of traditional Irish songs and her self-penned compositions were described as “haunting and deeply moving.” She had carved out a very successful solo career for herself prior to being approached by composer David Downes to form the group Celtic Woman.
The Celtic Woman story has been, from the beginning, one of overwhelming success. Between their self-titled debut album, a Christmas album titled, A Christmas Celebration, as well as their New Journey CD, Celtic Woman has held the No. 1 position on the Billboard World Music Charts for a record-breaking 95 consecutive weeks.
This is a reserved seating theater concert and tickets are available only at Village Square Booksellers or online at www.brattleborotix.com. Tickets are $25, $33, and $40, for balcony, rear orchestra, or front orchestra, respectively. For more information, call Vermont Festivals at 802-463-9595.
• Spring concert features Estey pipe organ: The Pioneer Valley Symphony Chorus returns to Brattleboro on Sunday, April 17, at 4 p.m., for a special spring concert to be held at First Baptist Church on Main Street. Grant Moss will be the featured organist performing on the church's Estey pipe organ.
The Pioneer Valley Symphony Chorus is part of one of the oldest community orchestras in the nation. More than 120 singers from four states lend their voices to the choir. Chorus Director Jonathan Harvey leads the group.
The chorus program will open with three works about music, from composers William Billings, Henry Purcell, and Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, intended to add some levity and lightheartedness to the beginning of the performance.
The chorus's theme for its 72nd season is “Take Five” and this concert features five settings of the Catholic Eucharist hymn text. Works by W. A. Mozart, Edward Elgar, Charles Gounod, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, and William Byrd are included. The centerpiece of the program is Franz Liszt's piece Via Crucis, or The Way of the Cross, a musical journey through the 14 Stations of the Cross for chorus, soloists, and organ.
The Stations of the Cross are a Roman Catholic devotional rite, developed by Franciscan monks in the 14th century, retelling and commemorating the final hours of Jesus's life. The chorus performs the Liszt piece in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth. This piece features several extensive organ solos by Grant Moss.
Refreshments will be provided. There is a $15 suggested donation to benefit the Estey Organ Museum. For more information about the Estey Organ Museum, visit www.esteyorganmuseum.org.
• New recording by T. Namaya: Vermont My Home: A Celebration is the new CD/MP3 by T. Namaya, the jazz poet, storyteller, and international performance artist.
This CD is a celebration of Vermont, the Green Mountain state, and the author's home on Blue Heron Pond, a 13-acre forest sanctuary. Namaya and musical director Jon Simpson have worked closely together to create a beautiful and poignant tapestry of music, poems and stories. The music ranges from a Bach fugue on Geometry of Perfection, to Namaya's moving rendition on classical guitar of Midnight on the Pond.
The CD/MP3 can be downloaded directly at http://www.vermontpoet.com/products-page.
Visual arts
• Collage as an art form: The Saxtons River Art Guild hosts a creative collage workshop with artist Virginia Wyoming on Saturday, April 9, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at The United Church in Bellows Falls.
Expect to have some fun with exercises taking different approaches to color, organizing images, and pictorial space. Participants will experiment with humor in art, figurative and landscape work as well as abstraction or non-objective art.
There will be enough time for participants to develop a work of their own invention, and specialty papers will be available for a small materials fee. Bring white glue, scissors, colored markers or colored pencils, and a few magazines. Optional are other art materials, such as yarn, fabric, etc. that you may want to use.
Call Kathy at 802-463-9456 or Donna at 603-835-2387 for cost information and to register for the workshop.
Performing arts
• Actors Theatre Playhouse plans auditions: The Actors Theatre Playhouse in West Chesterfield, N.H., is holding open interviews and auditions for its proposed August-September production of Noel Coward's delightful comedy, Hay Fever.
The roles that are to be cast include Simon (male) and Sorrel (female), precocious, athletic, petulant, and highly dramatic son and daughter of a zany household of artists; Sandy, a houseguest who happens to be a professional boxer; and Myra, a stylish houseguest who finds the whole family a bit nuts. These roles are for actors between 18-35. Also needed is someone in the age range of 25-50 to play Richard, a diplomat and houseguest who can't quite figure out exactly what is going on.
Contact director Greg Lesch for further information or an appointment at 802-254-4565 (daytime) or 802-254-2134 (evenings). Also, anyone wishing to participate in any backstage, box office, or organizational crews at the Actors Theatre Playhouse should call Lesch.
Writing
• “Murder in Shorts” workshop: Mystery on Main in Brattleboro will hold a “Murder in Shorts” mystery short story panel/workshop on Sunday, April 10 from 5 to 7 p.m., featuring author Michael Nethercott of Guilford, who has been published several times in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, including Thin Ice, Crime Stories by New England Writers, and By Hook or by Crook: The Best Crime Mystery Stories of the Year.
Nethercott is a recent recipient of the Black Orchid Award for traditional mystery writing. Joining Nethercott on the panel/workshop are mystery authors Leslie Wheeler of Cambridge, Mass., and Nancy Means Wright of Middlebury.
Wheeler's latest book is Murder at Spouters Point, the third in her Miranda Lewis “living history” mystery series. Her stories have appeared in five anthologies of crime stories by New England writers, published by Level Best Books, including Thin Ice, to which she is a contributing editor.
Wright's Midnight Fires is the first in the Mary Wollstonecraft mystery and a second one will be out in September. She is also the author of five Ruth Willmarth series mysteries, and was an Agatha Award winner and Agatha finalist for her two children's mysteries. She has published stories in American Literary Review, Level Best anthologies, and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
The panel/workshop is free and open to anyone interested in writing, in mysteries, and in the world of publishing. Participants are encouraged to bring 1-2 pages of the opening of a mystery story-in-progress to read and be discussed.
For more information, call 802-258-2211, or email [email protected] to reserve a space.
• RFPL celebrates Poetry Month: “Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation,” said Robert Fitzgerald.
The Rockingham Free Public Library will be celebrating National Poetry Month on Monday, April 11, at 7 p.m., with readings from the local poetry group, “River Voices.”
This diverse and dynamic group is made up of eight local poets and has been going strong since the late 1990s.
The “River Voices” meet weekly to critique, refine and share their ongoing work, and hold open readings at Village Square Booksellers on the second Saturday of each month. They have recently published an anthology of their poems which will be available at the reading. They invite attendees to join in at the end with readings of their own poems. This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments served.
• New book from Crochetta: When David Burton runs away from home with his high school buddy in the summer of 1967, the 17-year-old could not anticipate that he is about to enter a social maelstrom that will rock the very foundation of his generation. In an intolerant time and place, the farm-raised teen lives big city life to its fullest, from a Diggers pad in Los Angeles to the uninhibited gay bars of Greenwich Village.
Brattleboro author Vidda Crochetta has chronicled the end of the Sixties from the perspective of one teen's coming-of-age amid America's greatest period of social change. No other decade carried the mantle of revolution on its shoulders the way the 1960s did.
The baby boomers lived an avant-garde way of life that younger generations today can only imagine. His new book, Boomers' War, is about the last three summers of the Sixties when young people smoked pot, made love not war, did not trust anyone over 30 and changed the world.
More information about Boomer's War, including where to order a copy, can be found at www.viddacrochetta.com.