Arts Fuse critics select the best in film, theater, music, dance, visual arts, and author events for the coming week.

By The Arts Fuse Staff

Film

Boston Area Film Schedules — What is playing today, Where and When

Singin’ in the Rain
April 6 at 7 p.m.
The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, MA

One the greatest of the Golden Age Hollywood musicals is about the movie industry moving from the age of silent pictures to the era of the ‘talkies.’ You really need to see this on the big screen if you want to fully appreciate this classic film’s riches: Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O’Connor, great music and dancing, dazzling color, and marvelous set design.

Rye Coalition: The Story of the Hard Luck 5 (trailer) from Rye Coalition on Vimeo.

The Rye Coalition: The Story of the Hard Luck 5
April 9 at 8 p.m.
Somerville Theatre in Davis Square, Somerville, MA

The Rye Coalition were one of the first bands to develop the new “emo” sound in the early ’90s. They were at the forefront of the movement. Their first recording was a demo cassette tape which they sold during a tour in a beat-up school bus before most of them had their driver’s license. They were praised by critics and supported by a dedicated grassroots fan base including Dave Grohl (Nirvana) who came on as their producer. Then, it all imploded. Supplemented by the band’s home movies, filmmaker Jenni Matz has documented the trials and tribulations of these singular rockers for over a decade at home, in the studio, and on tour. The director will be in attendance.

Careful
April 10 at 7 p.m.
640 Commonwealth Ave., room 101, Boston University

Guy Maddin’s early (1992) masterpiece “takes place in a 19th-century Alpine village where the wary residents (adult, child and animal!) must speak softly and tread lightly lest they cause an avalanche. Bathed in lurid, luminescent tints, this is a world of repression where sexual frenzies quietly teem, setting off incestuous love triangles and quadrangles with deadly consequences.” (Fandor) Arts Fuse critic Gerald Peary’s series screens Maddin’s film as part of an evening with George Toles, a film professor at the University of Manitoba who also writes the screenplays for the visionary director.

Perils of Pauline (1967)
April 10 at 8 p.m.
The Somerville Theatre’s Micro Cinema, 55 Davis Square, Somerville, MA

Channel Zero (voted as one of the Best Screening Series by the Boston Society of Film Critics) presents Pamela Austin (Kissin’ Cousins) as the long-suffering heroine Pauline in a high camp pastiche of the classic Pearl While silent film cliffhanger. Pat Boone plays Pauline’s millionaire childhood sweetheart, who follows the girl throughout the world to declare his love but somehow always manages to miss her. The inimitable gap-toothed Terry-Thomas (It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World) is the dastardly villain. Even veteran character actor Edward Everett-Horton sneaks in there somewhere.

— Tim Jackson

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Dance

Choose Your Own Mythology
April 10 & 11, 8 p.m.
Simmons Hall, MIT
Cambridge, MA

Mariah Steele/Quicksilver Dance celebrates its fifth anniversary season with its newest production, Choose Your Own Mythology. Featuring six dancers, a dance-on-camera film, and collaborations with local musician Ryan Edwards and artist Anne Loyer, this work questions the role mythology plays in our contemporary lives.

Navarasa: The Nine Emotions
April 10 at 8pm & April 11 at 4 p.m.
Boston University Dance Theater
Boston, MA

Enjoy an evening of classical Indian dance presented by Neena Gulati and the Triveni Ensemble. This production explores the deep and varied emotions of the Hindu God Shiva (Lord of Dance) through rhythmic dancing and skilled theatricality.

DUETTI
April 10–12, 15–18
Harvard Dance Center, Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

The Dance Program and the Department of Music at Harvard University present DUETTI, a concert of duets performed by Harvard students featuring works that showcase the impressive talents of regional and national choreographers Brian Brooks, Michelle Dorrance, William Forsythe, Francesca Harper, Harvard Dance Director Jill Johnson, and Crystal Pite.

And farther afield…

KEIGWIN + COMPANY
April 11 at 8 p.m. & April 12 at 3 p.m.
The Hunter Center, MASS MoCA
North Adams, MA

This weekend, head out to Western MA to see the acclaimed contemporary dance company KEIGWIN + COMPANY, presented through the partnership of Jacob’s Pillow Dance and MASS MoCA. This mixed bill evening presents a dynamic range of movement from athletic to pedestrian, full ensemble to solo, and includes the world premiere of Panic, in which choreographer Larry Keigwin will return to the stage as a performer for the first time in three years. Arts Fuse feature

— Merli V. Guerra

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Visual Arts

Joan Jonas: Selected Films and Videos, 1972-2005
April 7 – July 5
List Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA

As video and film equipment became increasingly portable and affordable in the late 1960s and early 1970s, artists across the United States began to use film and video to alter ideas of narrative, imagery, and the nature of art.

Joan Jonas, often described as a “pioneer” of video and performance art, was one of the first whose work blended conceptual art, happenings, performance art, modern dance choreography, and developing video technologies. Her creations touched on a dizzying range of cultural reference points and trends: Japanese Noh theater, feminism, fairy tales, folk songs, Greek mythology, and ambiguities of gender and identity.

A native of New York City, Jonas’ education and career has touched on Massachusetts at several points. She studied art history at Mount Holyoke and sculpture and drawing at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has been a professor of visual arts at MIT since 1998. Last year, MIT’s List Center was chosen to organize an exhibition of Jonas’ work for the U.S. Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, the international contemporary exhibition which is held every odd-numbered year and has become the most massive art show on earth.

In conjunction with the Biennale exhibition, which opens on May 9, the List Center is presenting seven of Jonas’ most important film and video works, including Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy (1972), Mirage (1976), and Double Lunar Dogs (1984), which is based on a classic story by the celebrated science fiction writer Robert Heinlein. Although her influence on contemporary American art has been considerable, Jonas is better known in Europe than here. For those who won’t make it to Venice this year, the List show should prove an excellent introduction to Jonas’ career.

Robert Gerard Pietrusko: Six Microphones
April 8 – April 19
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

In his Six Microphones, designer and composer Robert Gerard Pietrusko transforms the usually intensely irritating audio phenomenon of feedback, produced when a microphone picks up its own sound off a nearby speaker, into an artistic medium. Pietrusko’s piece creates “sonic textures” from the space it occupies and the locations of listeners within that space.

This eleven-day installation is part of the Carpenter Center’s new program called “The Interstitial,” which uses the down time between regular exhibitions for performances, installations, and other pieces that unfold over a few hours or several days. The artist is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Hokusai
April 5 – August 9

In the Wake: Japanese Photographers Respond to 3/11
April 5 – July 12, 2016
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

In Edo period Japan (1603-1867), the “floating world” was the entertainment district of Edo (modern Tokyo), a semi-subterranean world of courtesans, geishas, popular kabuki theatre, and other hedonistic pastimes that catered to a rising, urban merchant class. In their Ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” elaborately organized workshops of artist/designers, carvers, printers, and publisher/promoters produced woodcut prints that depicted beautiful women, famous actors, urban scenes, wildlife, landscapes, and famous views.

Ukiyo-e prints were on the fringes of traditional Japanese respectability, but they were beautifully produced, vividly colored images with striking designs. These prints were among the first Japanese works of art to reach Europe in quantity. Their influence on modern European artists, starting with the Impressionists, became enormous. The effects still resonate across commercial and fine art to this day.

The MFA’s Hokusai celebrates one of the most famous and admired of the Ukiyo-e artists, Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). The MFA took to things Japanese early on and its magnificent collection of Japanese art includes the greatest variety of Hokusai prints in any of the world’s museums.

Works on view will include the iconic “Under the Wave Off Kangagawa (Great Wave),” from the justly admired landscape series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, to a vast array of landscapes, nature scenes, fantasy worlds, a multi-panel screen painting “Phoenix” (1835), and other seldom-seen rarities. For anyone interested in Japanese prints, or just fine design, this is a show not to be missed.

Opening the same day at the MFA is In the Wake: Japanese Photographers Respond to 3/11 (referring to the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck east Japan on March 11, 2011). Combining a typical sense of Japanese fine design with a tragic sensibility, the photographers transform devastation and loss into powerful and unforgettable images.

— Peter Walsh

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Jazz

Maggie Scott
April 6, 8 p.m.
Top of the Hub, Boston, MA.

The doyenne of Boston singer-pianists, Maggie Scott, makes her monthly visit to the empyrean realm of the Top of the Hub’s cocktail lounge to show the kids how it’s done. Joining her are her superb rhythm mates, Marty Ballou on bass and Jim Gwin on drums.

International String Trio
April 8, 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA.

The Russian-born guitarist Slava Tolstoy, English violinist Ben Powell, and Japanese bassist Ippei Ichimaru are all former Berklee students, now playing music with a core in gypsy jazz but extending to Shostakovich and American folk. They’re joined for this outing by young Finnish guitar ace Olli Soikkeli (Rhythm Future Quartet) and Czech violinist Jakub Trasak.

Carlos Averhoff Jr.
April 8, 8 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston, MA.

The Cuban tenor saxophonist and composer Carlos Averhoff Jr. has strong roots in his country’s ancient folkloric dance rhythms, but he’s also a modernist of the first rank, with his own brand of post-bop fluency. He celebrates the release of his CD iRESI with alto saxophonist Greg Osby, pianist Aruan Ortiz, bassist John Lockwood, and drummer Francisco Mela.

Vijay Iyer Trio
April 10 and 11, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA.

Harvard prof, MacArthur “genius,” pianist and composer Vijay Iyer leads his longtime profoundly exploratory trio with bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore. Their latest album, Break Stuff (ECM), is, says Iyer, about the music that happens in the “breaks” of hip-hop and jazz. But you can also say that it’s about a band that likes to break stuff, like preconceptions about what a jazz piano trio should sound like. Expect rigorous mathy rhythmic experiments, extended-form landscapes, and maybe some Monk and Billy Strayhorn. (Iyer’s solo take on “Blood Count” is one of the highlights of the new album.) See Arts Fuse feature

A-Town Jazz Fest
April 11 [7 p.m.- 9 p.m.] and April 12 [2 p.m.-6 p.m.]
Arlington Senior Center and Arlington Center for the Arts, Arlington, MA.

Hosted by trombonist, bassist, and teacher Dan Fox and his Morningside Music Studio, this fourth-annual festival opens Saturday night at the Arlington Senior Center with a concert by student musicians and veteran ringer reedman Tom Ferrante, and continues Saturday at the Arlington Center for the Arts with performances by the Latin-jazz Hernandez/Rosario Project; Manuel Kaufman’s Manduca Sexta, featuring trumpeter Greg Hopkins; the LovelySinger Band, featuring vocalist Lydia Harrell and pianist Mark Shilansky; and student group performances led by Fox.

Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock
April 12, 7:30 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA.

Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock take the stage as an acoustic-piano duo, something they did for the first time in 1978. Profoundly influential, they each command broad audiences, so it’s advised that you jump on this to get the good seats.

Nando Michelin
April 14, 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA.

The Uruguayan-born pianist and composer Nando Michelin assays his latest project, “Musica de Ida y Vuelta,” a cross-section of various flamenco-influenced styles from Arabic, Spanish, Eastern European, and South American traditions. Expect to hear Michelin’s singular fusion of tango, solea, candombe, milonga, and more. The band includes Jordanian violinist Layth Sidiq, Palestinian cellist Naseem Alatrash, American bassist Bob Taylor, and drummer Tiago Michelin (Nando’s son).

Gabrielle Agachiko
April 15, 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA.

The charismatic singer and songwriter Gabrielle Agachiko bids adieu to Boston as she decamps to Marseille. Our loss. This band, which goes by the name Agachiko, began as a Nina Simone tribute project, but soon became something else indeed. The arrangements are by tenor saxophonist and Either/Orchestra honcho Russ Gershon, with a lineup that also includes Ken Field on flute, Scott Getchell on trumpet, guitarist Sam Davis, bassist Blake Newman, and drummer Phil Neighbors.

— Jon Garelick

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Roots and World Music

Martin and Eliza Carthy
April 8
Johnny D’s, Somerville, MA

This father/daughter duo, considered members of the first family of British folk, have revolutionized the way that traditional songs are performed. What they lack in flash they more than make up for in substance.

The Sonics with Barrence Whitfield and the Savages
April 10, Brighton Music Hall, Boston, MA
April 11, Columbus Theater, Providence, Rhode Island

A can’t-miss bill for those who like their rock wild, greasy, and soulful. In the mid-’60s, Northwest garage icons the Sonics took R&B and performed it louder and tougher than anyone else. The core of the band reunited a few years ago and it has delivered some blistering sets at garage revival events. That would have been good enough — but now comes This is the Sonics. It may be the group’s first LP in 49 years, but the record sounds as if it came from the same sessions that produced “Here Are the Sonics” and “Boom.” The opening act: Boston’s own reunited purveyors of garage-soul mayhem, Barrence Whitfield and the Savages.

Tal National
April 10
Johnny D’s, Somerville, MA

A hugely popular guitar band in their native Niger, the multi-ethnic Tal National (presented here by World Music/CRASHarts) are renowned for their marathon all-night performances. The club has a separate show later that night, so the band won’t be doing the five-hour set they do at home.

— Noah Schaffer

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Theater

Mommy Queerest, written and performed by Kat Evasco. Staged by Theatre Offensive at Club Cafe, Boston, MA, April 9 through 17.

An autobiographical one-woman show: “How is young Kat’s precocious sexuality tangled up with her Filipina family history? Mommy Queerest reveals every raunchy, hilarious and poignant detail.” “The show includes adult content and strong language. No children under 14 please.”

A Flea in Her Ear by Georges Feydeau. A new translation by Curt Columbus. Directed by Tyler Dobrowsky. Staged by the Trinity Repertory Company in the Dowling Theater, Providence, Rhode Island, through April 26.

“Often heralded as the most masterful farce ever written, A Flea in Her Ear is an uproarious tale of a disintegrating marriage” and slamming bedroom doors.

Big Fish Book by John August. Music & Lyrics by Andrew Lippa. Based on the novel by Daniel Wallace and the Columbia Motion Picture written by John August. Directed by Paul Daigneault. Staged by SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Boston Center for The Arts, through April 11.

A revival (with some streamlining changes) of the Broadway musical about “Edward Bloom, a traveling salesman whose larger-than-life stories of epic adventures delight everyone around him, except his pragmatic son Will.” Arts Fuse review

The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht. Directed by Liz Diamond. Staged by the Yale Repertory Theatre at the University Theater, New Haven, CT, through April 11.

Critic Martin Esslin’s verdict: “With its poetry, its use of narrators, its two-pronged construction, it stylized action — the negative, wicked characters are masked — The Caucasian Chalk Circle is the outstanding example of the technique of ‘epic’ drama. It is one of Brecht’s greatest plays.” I have no quarrel with that — and, given how few productions of Brecht are around these days, it may well be worth a trip down to New Haven to see OBIE award-winning director Diamond’s revival.

Out of the City by Leslie Ayvazian. Directed by Christian Parker. Staged by the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Lowell, MA, through April 22.

The regional premiere of a romantic comedy by an Outer Circle Critics Award-winning playwright that “presents endearing, relatable characters in a setting that’s both fantastical and familiar. It’s a play about friendship amidst marriage, forgiveness amidst hurt, and enduring love amidst elusive romance.”

City of Angels Music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by David Zippel, book by Larry Gelbart. Directed by Spiro Veloudos. Staged by the Lyric Stage Company, 140 Clarendon Street, through May 2.

“Set in the seductive Hollywood of the 1940s, City of Angels chronicles the misadventures of Stine, a disillusioned young novelist attempting to write a screenplay for a tyrannical movie producer. As his marriage falls apart, we follow Stine’s film alter-ego, the dashing detective Stone, who is haunted by the memory of the girl that got away.” The Lyric Stage cast includes Leigh Barrett, Ed Hoopman, and Jennifer Ellis.

God’s Ear by Jenny Schwartz. Directed by Thomas Derrah. Staged by the Actors’ Shakespeare Project at the Davis Square Theatre, Somerville, MA, through April 12.

Edward Albee called this “a provocative, adventuresome, beautifully written play.” “Language works as equal parts shield and sword in the verbal warfare at the center of God’s Ear. As married protagonists Mel (Tamara Hickey) and Ted (Gabriel Kuttner) try to hold together a marriage unraveling after the accidental death of their son, words stream forth in torrents as both deflect their own pain by inflicting more.” Arts Fuse review

a.vanishing.point, conceived and performed by Andy Russ. Presented by Passive Aggressive Novelty Company at AS220’s Black Box, Rhode Island, April 8 and 9.

Russ’s performance piece is a “meditation and a provocation, a ‘physical poem”’composed of elements at once familiar and foreign. A chair, a book, a body, an ocean, a gesture, a song – these elements are repeated, rearranged and turned inside out, ignoring narrative logic in favor of ‘meaning’ that is gained or lost within the resonance between sensory combinations.”

Kimberly Akimbo by David Lindsay-Abaire. Directed by Allison Olivia Choat. Staged by Moonbox Productions at the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatre, 539 Tremont Street, Boston, MA, through April 25.

A revival of the “heartwarming and quirky coming-of-age play from Pulitzer Prize-winning South Boston native David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole).”

Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, adapted by Sarah Ruhl. Directed by by Daniel Morris. through April 12.
O, Ship! Aboard the Ship!, an original work for all ages adapted and directed by Liz Fenstermaker. April 11 through 18. Staged by Bad Habit productions in repertory at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, MA.

O, Ship! Aboard the Ship! guides children and families through an interactive journey around the globe using stories, music, dance and poetry; in Orlando, Sarah Ruhl adapts Virgina Woolf’s gender bender of a novel for the stage: “Orlando starts off life very much a boy. As a young servant in the court of Queen Elizabeth I many women fall in love with him, including the great Queen herself. But soon all his affairs start spinning out of control.”

Come Back, Little Sheba by William Inge. Directed by David Cromer. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at the South End / Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA, through April 26.

In this intimate production of Inge’s play about frustrated lives in ’50s Middle America, celebrated director David Cromer “invites audiences into Doc and Lola’s home and examines how our yearning for the past can get in the way of living in the present.”

God Box, written and performed by Antonia Lassar. Directed by Christine Hamel. Staged by New Repertory Theatre part of its Second Annual Next Rep Black Box Festival at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown, MA, through April 19.

This one-woman show offers a twist on the usual mother/daughter clash: “When her daughter dies, Gloria Andelman discovers the unthinkable — that her daughter wasn’t a practicing Jew!” So … what is a mother to do about an appropriate funeral service?

Needles and Opium, by Robert Lepage. Presented by ArtsEmerson at the Emerson/Cutler Majestic Theatre, Boston, MA, April 9 through 12.

According to the Arts Fuse preview of this show, the narrative “focuses on jazz trumpeter Miles Davis’s visit to Paris in 1949, during which he became enamored with French chanteuse Juliete Greco. That drama is intertwined with French writer Jean Cocteau’s visit to New York during the same period. Despite the historical grounding, this work gets the full-blown Lepage treatment: technology, stage craft, lighting, music, and acrobatics are blended to form a mind-trip of a mélange, a surrealistic tapestry.”

The Clytemnestriad, by A. Nora Long. Directed by Caitlin Lowans. Staged by Fresh Ink Theatre at the Hale Chapel in First Church Boston, Boston, MA, April 10 through 18.

Fresh Ink takes on a script by Long, an associate artistic director for the Lyric Stage Company of Boston and one of the artistic directors for New Exhibition Room, “a local fringe company that specializes in developing cheeky ensemble-based new work.” Here is the intriguing set-up: “When a photograph is all that remains of a soul, who will tell her story? A modern reinterpretation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Euripides’ Iphigenia plays, this story blends time, memory, and myth to suss out other sides of an ancient tale. How can a family find justice after an unspeakable act and end the cycle of revenge?”

Ulysses on Bottles by Gilad Evron. Translated by Evan Fallenberg. Directed by Guy Ben-Aharon. ArtsEmerson presents a production by the Israeli Stage at the Jackie Liebergott Black Box at the Emerson/Paramount Center, Boston, MA, April 9 through 25.

A high-caliber Boston cast (Jeremiah Kissel, Will Lyman, Karen MacDonald, Daniel Berger-Jones and Ken Cheeseman) is featured in the North American premiere of Evron’s “poetic and poignant examination of lives in conflict.” The script won the Israel Theater Prize for Best Original Play in 2012.

Kaddish, an adaptation for the stage of Imre Kertész’s novel Kaddish for an Unborn Child. Directed by Barbara Lanciers. At the Charlestown Working Theater, Boston, MA on April 10 and 11.

“The first ever American staging” of this early novel by Kertész, who in 2002 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The piece is “an eloquent meditation on human vulnerability and strength told through the eyes of a survivor of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” In his preface to Imre Kertész: The Holocaust as Culture, critic and translator Thomas Cooper sums up the writer’s value well: “The work of Kertész freed the memory of the Holocaust from a rigid ideological mould, transforming it from mute emblematic museum piece to lived individual experience. If culture is to continue as the vessel of memory, it will do so through similar continuous interrogation of received versions of the past.”

BETTY BAM!, an adaptation of Daniil Kharms’ play Elizaveta Bam. Translated by Zoya Derman. Directed by Matthew Woods, Joey C. Pelletier, and Michael Underhill. Staged by imaginary beasts at the Plaza Black Box at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA, April 10 through May 2.

The imaginary beasts return to the surrealistic writings of Kharms, who was one of the many unfortunate casualties of the Stalinist era. (This production is the second part of the company’s Daniil Kharms’ Project.) I found the tone of the imaginary beasts’ earlier production of Kharms material too broad and slapstick-y, but I will definitely take in the staging of this dramatic rarity, which no doubt “defies classification.” Kharms was a genius at whipping up linguistic insanity, though underneath the inventive craziness is political outrage and a deep sadness.

— Bill Marx

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Classical Music

Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony
Presented by the Boston University Symphony and Chorus
April 7, 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston

Mahler’s epic Symphony no. 2 returns to Symphony Hall courtesy of the Boston University Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Kelley Hollis and Sara Beth Shelton are the soloists; David Hoose conducts.

Richard Goode plays Mozart
Presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
April 9-11, 14, 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston

Andris Nelsons concludes his inaugural season with the BSO with these concerts, welcoming Richard Goode as soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 27. Gunther Schuller’s Dreamscape and Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben round out the program.

BMV World Tour 2015
Presented by Boston Musica Viva
April 11, 8 p.m.
Tsai Performance Center, Boston

Scores influenced by musics from around the world make up BMV’s season finale. Shirish Korde’s Kala-Cakra (Cycles of Time) receives its world premiere, while Chou Wen-Chung’s Ode to the Eternal Pine, Franco Donatoni’s Arpege, and Sebastian Currier’s Whisper fill out the bill.

Boston Symphony Open House
Presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
April 12, 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA

The BSO has gotten much right with Andris Nelsons this season and they cap off his first year in town with a free open house. Ensembles giving performances include the BSO with Nelsons conducting (playing Wagner, Verdi, some Haydn, Erik Esenvalds, and Leonard Bernstein), the Boston Youth Symphony (performing works by Beethoven, Vieuxtemps, and Stravinsky), and the NEC Brass and Percussion Ensemble (in some Arvo Part, Morton Lauridsen, and Henri Tomasi). There’s also an interview with Nelsons and BSO Managing Director Mark Volpe.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

Pianist Yevgeny Sudbin
April 7 at 8 p.m.
At Boston Conservatory’s Seully Hall, Boston, MA

On the program: Scarlatti’s Sonatas, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Chopin’s Nocturne, op. 27, No. 1, Scriabin’s Sonata No. 9 (Black Mass), Mozart/Sudbin’s “Lacrimosa” from the Requiem, and Saint-Saens’s Danse Macabre.

NEC Percussion Ensemble
April 7 at 8 p.m.
New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Free

The program includes the world premiere of Winter Music, a new commissioned work by Larry Wallach. There are also works by Steven Reich, marimbist/composer Nebojsa Zivkovic, and a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Halil, which commemorates an Israeli flutist killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Dublin Guitar Quartet
April 8 at 8 p.m.
Presented by Celebrity Series at Pickman Hall in the Longy School of Music, 27 Garden St. Cambridge, MA

The program will include works by John Tavener, Leo Brouwer, György Ligeti, and Arvo Pärt.

Renaissance Men
April 10 at 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA
April 11 at 3 p.m. at the Old South Church, Gordon Chapel, Boston, MA
(same program in venues)

Renaissance Men tosses its big concert of the spring season, “RenMen Branches.” In this series the group accepts the challenge set by the Boston Musical Intelligencer and tries its hand “at some difficult, but undeniably beautiful, ‘serious’ music. Music by Rheinberger, Reger, Schubert, and Strauss will be featured, as well as a men’s setting of Gustav Holst’s Six Choral Folk Songs.”

Boston Early Music Festival
April 10 at 8 p.m.
At Harvard University’s Sanders Theater, Cambridge, MA

The stars of BEMF’s June 2015 production of Monteverdi’s Poppea—soprano Amanda Forsythe and countertenor David Hansen—are joined by musicians of the BEMF Chamber Ensemble and GRAMMY Award-winning Musical Directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs for a recital that features selections from Poppea, sparkling arias by Handel, and brilliantly virtuosic instrumental gems by Handel and Castello.

Jupiter String Quartet
April 11 at 8 p.m.
Presented by the MIT Music Department at Kresge Auditorium, 48 Mass. Ave, Cambridge, MA

Visiting Artist Final Concert: Beethoven’s String Quartet Cycle — Op. 18, No. 3; Op. 95, Op. 130 with grosse fugue, Op. 133.

Mistral: Gypsy Spirit
April 11 at 5 p.m.
At St Paul’s Episcopal Church, 15 St Paul St, Brookline, MA
Same program on April 12 at 3 p.m., West Parish Church, Andover, MA

On the program: Brahms’s Hungarian Dances No. 1,4 & 5 for four-hand piano and Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25; Ravel’s Tzigane (Gypsy) for violin and piano; Haydn’s Piano Trio No. 39 in G major, “Gypsy” (flute arr. Julie Scolnik); Monti’s Czardas for flute and strings

Vocal Chamber Music in Times of War and Peace
April 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Presented by Massachusetts Peace Action at Harvard Epworth Church, 1555 Mass. Ave. Cambridge, MA

Musicians D’Anna Fortunato (Mezzo-soprano), Linda Toote (Flute), Michelle La Course (Viola), Ina Zdorovetchi (Harp), and Mana Tokuno (Piano) perform a program that includes Earl Kim’s “Now and Then: 5 Movements with Soprano, Flute, Viola and Harp,” Francis Poulenc’s Priez pour Paix with Voice and Harp, Claude Debussy’s Nous n’avons plus de Maison with Voice and Piano, and Maurice Ravel’s Greek Songs with Voice and Harp.

— Susan Miron

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Rock

The New Highway Hymnal
April 10
Middle East-Upstairs, Cambridge, MA

Haverhill’s own New Highway Hymnal are starting to break nationally. This past December they were named an “Artist to Watch” by Spin magazine and earlier this year, they released their second album, Reverb Room. The band’s sound is garage rock pop and fuzzy as hell. Might be one of your last chances to see them in such an intimate local room.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Rumble: Preliminary Rounds
April 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, and 18
TT the Bear’s Place, Cambridge, MA

A tradition unlike any other…the Rock ‘n’ Roll Rumble! Every April, Boston’s finest bands battle it out to see which will reign supreme. Brought to you by WZLX and the magnificent Anngelle Wood, this year’s preliminary rounds feature Mister Vertigo, the Rare Occasions, Band Without Hands, Nemes, Drab, Eternals, Raw Blow, Duck & Cover, Le Roxy Pro, Salita, the Static Dynamic, Psychic Dog, Mercury On Mars, Dan Webb and the Spiders, Dirty Bangs, Protean Collective, New City Ghost, Yale, Massachusetts, Soft Pyramids, and the Warning Shots.

Upcoming and On Sale…

John Mellencamp (4/15/2015, Citi Performing Arts Center and 4/16/2015, Providence Performing Arts Center); Jeff Beck (4/19/2015, Orpheum Theatre); They Might Be Giants (4/23/2015, House of Blues); Rock ‘n’ Roll Rumble Semifinal Rounds (4/23-24/2015, TT the Bear’s Place); Manic Street Preachers (4/24/2015, The Sinclair); Rock ‘n’ Roll Rumble Finals (5/1/2015, TT the Bear’s Place); Sufjan Stevens (5/4/2015, Citi Performing Arts Center); Faith No More (5/11/2015, Orpheum Theatre); Kasabian (5/15/2015, House of Blues); Primal Scream (5/17/2015, Royale); Crosby, Stills and Nash (5/19/2015, Citi Performing Arts Center); Palma Violets (critic’s note: “The Greatest Live Band in the World”) (5/19/2015, Great Scott); Boston Calling (featuring Beck, Pixies, My Morning Jacket) (5/22-24/2015, City Hall Plaza); The Who (5/24/2015, Mohegan Sun Arena); Conor Oberst (6/5/2015, House of Blues); Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (6/6/2015, Boston Opera House); Florence + the Machine (6/10/2015, Blue Hills Bank Pavilion); Best Coast (6/12/2015, Paradise Rock Club); Paul Weller (6/13/2015, Paradise Rock Club); Spoon (6/18/2015, House of Blues); Rush (6/23/2015, TD Garden); Buffalo Tom (6/26-27/2015, The Sinclair); Huey Lewis and the News (6/27/2015, Indian Ranch); Melvins (6/27/2015, Paradise Rock Club); U2 (7/10, 11, 14, 15/2015, TD Garden); Mudhoney (7/11/2015, Brighton Music Hall); Billy Joel (7/16/2015, Fenway Park); Foo Fighters (7/18-19/2015, Fenway Park); Modest Mouse (7/23/2015, Blue Hills Bank Pavilion); Interpool (7/23-24/2015, House of Blues); Bombino (7/27/2015, The Sinclair); Willie Nelson & Family (8/21/2015, Blue Hills Bank Pavilion); AC/DC (8/22/2015, Gillette Stadium); Death Cab For Cutie (9/11/2015, Blue Hills Bank Pavilion); Mark Knopfler (10/9/2015, Orpheum Theatre); The Who (10/29/2015, TD Garden)

— Adam Ellsworth

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Author Events

Peter Slevin
Michelle Obama: A Life
April 8 at 7 p.m.
Brookline Booksmith, Coolidge Corner MA
Free

It should come as no surprise that her husband has gotten the majority of the public attention, but First Lady Michelle Obama’s story is equally compelling if not more so. Journalist Slevin has written the first comprehensive account of Michelle Obama’s impressive rise from working-class roots in Chicago’s segregated South Side to the White House.

Lydia Davis
Can’t and Won’t: Stories
April 8 at 6 p.m. (Doors open at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, Cambridge MA
$5 tickets

An American literary master and acclaimed translator of Proust, Lydia Davis will read from and sign copies of her latest short story collection, her fifth. Can’t and Won’t continues Davis’s career-long mission to see how much emotional weight and philosophical inquiry she can squeeze into a sentence. At its best, her sly, witty, and piercingly precise eye for detail can turn the pieties of daily life on their head.

Charles Simic
The Lunatic: Poems
April 10 at 7 p.m.
Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, MA
Free

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet reads from his latest collection of verse. Simic’s voice – lyrical, surreal, incisive – is nothing if not distinctive. The seventy poems in this volume range widely, taking on topics large and small: from issues of mortality and the language of personal ads to memories of the author’s youth in war-torn Yugoslavia.

Malcolm Gladwell
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants
April 13 at 7:30 p.m. (Doors open at 7)
First Parish Church, Cambridge MA
$20.25 tickets, including book

Everyone knows the story of David improbably slaying the much-larger Goliath. He shouldn’t have won- or should he? Gladwell’s new book argues that those with the odds stacked against them might actually be better favored to win after all. The massively bestselling author and New Yorker staff writer (no underdog he) will read, discuss, and sign copies of his latest book.

Peter Singer
The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically
April 13 at 6 (Doors open at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, Cambridge MA
$5 tickets

In an event co-sponsored by Oxfam America, the illustrious and influential ethicist will discuss “effective altruism,” the topic of his latest book. Singer’s argument is that living the most effective life possible inevitably means “doing the most good you can do.” His latest tome details the lives of individuals who have found enormous peace and fulfillment by following this utilitarian principle.

Rachel Kushner
April 14 at 6 p.m.
Photonics Auditorium, Boston University
Free

The third-ever speaker in the Ha Jin Lecture Series at Boston University is novelist and art critic Rachel Kushner, the widely acclaimed author of 2013’s The Flamethrowers and 2008’s Telex From Cuba. Both novels were nominated for the National Book Award, the only time this has ever happened for both a first and second novel.

Lloyd Schwartz, Jennifer Formichelli and Michael Todd Steffen
Celebrating A Centenary of “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”
April 15 at 7 p.m.
Hastings Room, First Church Congregationalist, Cambridge MA
Free

A hundred years ago, T.S. Eliot published one of the most influential poems of the 20th century. Eliot first conceived the idea for the work while attending Harvard and living in Boston, so it’s fitting that Prufrock be celebrated in Cambridge. Formichelli is a Boston University faculty member who has written extensively on Eliot’s life and work and will provide a brief history of the poem. Schwartz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, poet, and professor emeritus at UMass-Boston (as well as an Arts Fuse contributor) will read the poem in its entirety as well as earlier work by Eliot along with poems that influenced Prufrock. “So let us go then, you and I…”

— Matt Hanson