Fuse Coming Attractions: What Will Light Your Fire This Week

Arts Fuse critics select the best in film, theater, dance, music, 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

The loving couple in "Bride of Frankenstein." Screens at Coolidge Corner Theatre this week.

The loving couple in “Bride of Frankenstein.” Screens at Coolidge Corner Theatre this week.

The Bride of Frankenstein
October 26 at 7 p.m.
Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, MA

Director James Whale’s follow-up to Frankenstein is a camp masterpiece that squishes together mythology, expressionistic filmmaking, bizarre side plots, and a gay subtext. Some of these elements are parodied in Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein, but the movie stands alone as a delectable combination of comedy and horror. If you’ve never seen this film, you owe it to yourself to see how inexplicably strange a sequel it is. The great cast includes Boris Karloff as the monster, Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein, Dwight Frye as Karl, Ernest Thesiger as a swishy Dr Pretorius, and Elsa Lanchester’s brilliant creation of the monster’s Bride.

Still from "Nothing Is Truer Than Truth," Screening at the OBERON.

Still from “Nothing Is Truer Than Truth.” Screening and wrap party at the OBERON this week.

Nothing Is Truer Than Truth
OBERON Screening and Wrap Party
October 21 at 7 p.m.
Oberon, Cambridge, MA

A celebration for cast, crew, and supporters of the film Nothing Is Truer Than Truth and the education outreach program “Shakespeare for Bullies.” The evening includes a screening of the film and Q&A with the director. The film follows Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, A-list party boy on the continental circuit, who spent a year and a half in 1575–76 traveling Europe, learning about commedia dell’arte, and collecting the experiences that would become the works of Shakespeare. Filmed in Venice, Verona, Mantua, and Padua, the film ventures to the actual sites that De Vere visited, including the settings for The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and Two Gentlemen of Verona. The film features A.R.T. director Diane Paulus, Sir Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylance, and Tina Packer. Cocktails at 7 p.m.. Film at 8 p.m.

Balagan Experimental Series
Tuesday, October 20—Friday, October 23
Three Locations

The venerable Balagan Series is back with four evenings of screenings for experimental film enthusiasts. Tuesday (8:15 p.m. at AgX Film Collective, 144 Moody St. Building 18, Waltham) and Wednesday (8 p.m. at the MassArt Film Society) will feature an illustrated lecture by Stephen Broomer, who will talk about practical skills for artists who are interested in using video to alter and augment film images. This will be followed by a screening of his own works, which seamlessly traverse the media of photochemical film and digital video.

Thursday and Friday (7:30 p.m. at the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, Room B04) present a two-part program made up of 16mm prints of films made at European and American artist-run film labs. This is a traveling film series that aims to explore what it means to work in—and exhibit on—photochemical film today. Kevin Rice of the Colorado-based Process Reversal will be present at these screenings.

Director Michael Moore—his new film screens at the Brattle Theater this week.

Director Michael Moore—his new film screens at the Brattle Theater this week.

Where to Invade Next
October 25 at 7 p.m.
Brattle Theater, Cambridge, MA

Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2015 is a new series that proffers some terrific premieres. This week it is Michael Moore’s new film. The Guardian review makes it sound compelling: “As America crawls towards a new administration—another chance to sell hope as a cure-all—we need voices like Moore’s to remind us that change takes work. Where to Invade Next, shot exclusively outside of America, shows Moore using lessons from the outside world to cajole the US into self-improvement. It’s not specific in its anger in the way that we’ve become accustomed to and loses something for that, but the intention—the drive to get Americans thinking (and complaining) about their lot—holds strong. In typically roguish style, Moore’s final message for America comes to the audience via an unlikely interpreter: a murderer serving 11 years in a Norwegian penal colony.”

Monday at 8 p.m.: The Invitation by Karyn Kusamaat, a psychological thriller that unfolds over one dark evening in the Hollywood Hills.

Tuesday at 8 p.m.: Entertainment with Gregg Turkington, John C. Reilly, and Amy Seimetz is about a broken, aging comedian touring the California desert.

The Assassin follows on Wednesday.

—Tim Jackson


Dance

Monkeyhouse presents "Misplaced/Displaced" in Cambridge this weekend.

Monkeyhouse presents “Misplaced/Displaced” in Cambridge next weekend.

Misplaced/Displaced
October 23 & 24 at 8 p.m.
Multicultural Arts Center
Cambridge, MA

Monkeyhouse celebrates its 15th anniversary season with this jam-packed production of eclectic artistic partnerships. The company works with everything, ranging from a master palindromist and pottery to history.

Vimoksha
October 23 & 24 at 8 p.m.
Green Street Studios
Cambridge, MA

An international company originating from The Netherlands, Vimoksha presents its first double-bill show here in Cambridge. The work explores the emotional gaps one feels when alone, separated, or standing in an empty space.

And further afield…

Katie Workum and Kimberly Bartosik
Saturday, October 24 at 8 p.m.
MASS MoCA
North Adams, MA

Up-and-coming Katie Workum and Bessie Award-winner Kimberly Bartosik make their MASS MoCA debuts. “Workum brings her new piece Black Lakes, a work full of improvisation, risk, and humor. The second half of the program features Bartosik’s Ecsteriority4 (Part 2), part of an evening-length project that constructs a landscape of power and desire to explore violence in American culture today.”

—Merli V. Guerra


Visual Arts

Ornament and Illusion: Carlo Crivelli of Venice
October 22–January 25, 2016
Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA

Carlo Crivelli (ca. 1435–ca. 1495) is a bit of an oddball in the heady mix of the Italian Renaissance. Born in Venice, his style seems to have little to do with the luminous visions of Venetians like Titian and Giorgione, or with his Venetian contemporary Giovanni Bellini. More than a generation younger than Masaccio and Fra Angelico, Crivelli seems to have little to do with the great advances of Florentine naturalism either. Instead, he painted in an apparently conservative, Gothic style, rich in sharply painted detail and heavy with symbolism, in a strange, overemphatic Mannerism that sometimes makes him look more German or Flemish than Italian.

Though Crivelli had a successful career working in northern Italy, critical opinion has gone back and forth since his death at the end of the 15th century. Left out of Vasari’s celebrated catalogue of great Renaissance artists, he was admired by the English Victorian painter Edward Burne-Jones and his fellow Pre-Raphaelites, partly, one assumes, because he pre-dated Raphael and his lush classicism.

The Gardner exhibition is billed as the sole venue for the only monographic exhibition of Crivelli’s work ever mounted in the United States. Its 23 paintings and one drawing are centered on the Gardner’s own Saint George Slaying the Dragon. The show benefits from a recent revival of scholarly interest in Crivelli’s work, an attitude that tends to view his stylized approach more as looking forward to 20th-century modernism than as a backward glance at the Middle Ages. Visit the show to judge for yourself.

Rosa Barba, The Color Out of Space, 2015, HD video still. Photo: courtesy the artist.

Rosa Barba, “The Color Out of Space,” 2015, HD video still. Photo: courtesy the artist.

Rosa Barba: The Color Out of Space
October 23–January 3, 2016
List Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA

Italian-born Rosa Barba is one of a number of contemporary artists whose artistic medium is film without actually being filmmakers. Barba’s “film sculptures” look in particular at the material qualities of the machinery, projected light, and plastic film stock of old media cinema. Her new Color Out of Space film contrasts geological and even cosmic time with the relatively tiny span of a human life, and uses images of the stars and planets collected at the Hirsch Observatory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York.

The Anxiety of Influence: European and American Art, 1689–1913
October 23–Ongoing
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA

This collections-based show at the Williams College Museum of Art probes the complicated aesthetic and political relationships between North America and Europe from the early years of European colonies in North America to the eve of the First World War. American-made works are juxtaposed with works from the great colonial powers: Britain, France, Holland, Italy, and Spain, as the Americans slowly break free of their cross-Atlantic roots.

—Peter Walsh


Jazz

Fribgane/Rourke/Rivard/Amendola
October 18, 7 p.m.
Lily Pad, Cambridge, MA

The core group here is drawn from the Club d’Elf orbit—oud player and percussionist Brahim Fribgane, turntablist Mister Rourke, bass and sintir player Mike Rivard—plus drummer Scott Amendola, who’s been a regular with Nels Cline, Charlie Hunter, and Bill Frisell. Amendola finished a two-night gig with Regina Carter Saturday, giving him an opportunity to hang around for a day to jam with these guys.

Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra
October 18, 3 p.m.
Cambridge Family YMCA Theater, Cambridge, MA

The Jazz Composers Alliance opens its 31st season with this show of “new and recent compositions” by Darrell Katz, Bob Pilkington, David Harris, Norm Zocher, and Mimi Rabson. Most of the crew has been together for decades, presenting varied ideas about orchestral jazz form and texture, abetted by first-class soloists.

Abdullah Ibrahim

The great South African pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim performs at the Berklee Performance Center this week.

Abdullah Ibrahim & Ekaya
October 18, 7:30 p.m.
Berklee Performance Center, Boston, MA

The great South African pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim, now 81, brings his mix of township folk, Ellingtonian harmony, and deep, elemental grooves to Boston for the first time in ages, with his longtime group Ekaya.

Shock Exchange
October 19, 8:30 p.m.
Outpost 186, Cambridge, MA

Ornette Coleman keyboardist David Bryant reconvenes his hellacious ’80s ensemble with saxophonist George Garzone of the Fringe, bassist John Turner, and drummer Chris Bowman.

John Raymond Quartet w/Dan Tepfer
October 20, 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA

I’m just catching up with trumpeter/flugelhornist John Raymond, but my rule of thumb is that any band with pianist Dan Tepfer is worth seeing (consider his crazy-good Goldberg Variations project, his frequent work with alto legend Lee Konitz, or his own superb trio). Joining Raymond and Tepfer are bassist Rick Rosato and drummer Jay Sawyer.

John Coltrane Memorial Concert
October 24, 7:30 p.m.
Blackman Theater, Northeastern University, Boston, MA

This 38th annual event is titled “Ornette ’n’ Trane,” featuring music by Coleman that Coltrane recorded (with Ornette’s rhythm section), like “The Blessing” and “The Invisible,” as well as a few other tidbits from Coltrane’s book: “Lazy Bird,” “Leo,” and “Peace On Earth.” The all-star cast includes Leonard Brown, Jeff Galindo, Laszlo Gardony, Yoron Israel, John Lockwood, Jason Palmer, Rick Stepton, Stand Strickland, and Bobby Tynes.

Joshua Redman and The Bad Plus play the Detroit Jazz Festival. They play at the this week. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Joshua Redman and The Bad Plus play the Detroit Jazz Festival. They play at the Berklee Performance Center this week. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman
October 25, 7:30 p.m.
Berklee Performance Center, Boston, MA

The iconoclastic piano trio joined forces with saxophone hero Joshua Redman a couple of seasons ago, released an album this year, and now hit Berklee again for the first time since their triumph playing Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction.

—Jon Garelick


Theater

Photo: Stratton McCrady.

John Kuntz (Iago) and Johnnie McQuarley (Othello) in the Actors’ Shakespeare Project production of “Othello.” Photo: Stratton McCrady.

Othello by William Shakespeare. Directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary. Staged at the Modern Theatre, Suffolk University, Boston, MA, through October 25.

The Bard’s tragedy about the “green-eyed monster”—the cast includes John Kuntz as Iago and Johnnie McQuarley as Othello. Read the full review on The Arts Fuse here.

Einstein’s Dreams. Alan Lightman’s novel adapted and directed by Wesley Savick. Staged by Underground Railway Theater at the Central Square Theater, Cambridge, MA, through October 24.

“Absurd, comic, and poetic,” this play “captures the poignancy of the human condition. In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, Underground Railway Theater reunites the original 2007 world premiere cast, adapted by director Wesley Savick (Mr g, Car Talk: The Musical!!!). The cast includes Debra Wise, Steven Barkheimer, and Robert Najarian. Read the full review on The Arts Fuse here.

Copenhagen by Michael Frayn. Directed by Eric Tucker. Staged by the Nora Theater Company at the Central Square Theater, Cambridge, MA, through November 15.

A revival of Frayn’s challenging exploration of the mysterious connections between ideas and personalities. “Copenhagen, 1941: Two brilliant physicists—fast friends from enemy nations—famously confront each other at the height of WWII. This award-winning psychological mystery unravels what transpired on that fateful night. Werner Heisenberg and his mentor Niels Bohr meet again in the afterlife, goaded by Bohr’s wife, Margrethe. Who will remember the truth that changed the course of history?” Arts Fuse review

Photo: John Hed.

Michael F. Toomey in “An Iliad.” Photo: John Hed.

An Iliad, an adaptation of Homer’s epic poem (the Robert Fagles translation) by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare. Directed by Jonathan Epstein. Staged by Shakespeare and Company in the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, Lenox, MA, through November 1.

“A modern-day retelling of Homer’s tale of gods and goddesses, undying love and endless battles, the narrative is told through the eyes of a single narrator (Michael F. Toomey), whose gripping monologue captures both the heroism and horror of war. Crafted around the stories of Achilles and Hector, this powerful piece vividly drives home the timelessness of mankind’s compulsion toward violence.” The OBIE award-winning play also features musician Gregory Boover.

Indecent by Paula Vogel. Directed by Rebecca Taichman. A Yale Repertory Theatre co-production with La Jolla Playhouse at the University Theatre, 222 York Street, New Haven, CT, through October 24.

The world premiere of a “play with music …inspired by the true events surrounding the controversial 1923 Broadway debut of Sholem Asch’s The God of Vengeance—a play seen by some as a seminal work of Jewish culture, and by others as an act of traitorous libel.” I have been intrigued by Asch’s play since I reviewed Donald Margulies’s version of the melodrama at the Williamstown Theater Festival in 2002. The script touches on prostitution and lesbianism, and the New York production was greeted by charges of anti-Semitism. The company was arrested and fined. Not sure who finds The God of Vengeance to be a “seminal work of Jewish culture,” but it certainly made a splash.

An Evening with M

A glimpse of “An Audience with Meow Meow.” Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

An Audience with Meow Meow, created by and starring Meow Meow. Directed by Leigh Silverman. Choreography by Sonya Tayeh. Presented by True Friends Productions at the Emerson/Cutler Majestic Theatre, Boston, MA, through October 24.

“Beloved by everyone from David Bowie to Amanda Palmer, Meow Meow is the Mother Courage of performance, the Queen of Kamikaze Cabaret, and the Weimar-style camp-cum-comedian who is about to take Boston by storm!” Read the full review on The Arts Fuse here.

I and You by Lauren Gunderson. Directed by Sean Daniels. Presented by Merrimack Repertory Theatre at the Nancy L. Donahue Theatre, 50 East Merrimack Street, Lowell, MA, through November 1.

This New York-bound (for off-Broadway) production “tells the story of two very different teenagers, Caroline and Anthony, who struggle to connect as they work on a school project about Walt Whitman’s poetry. Over the course of the play, and through a stunning surprise ending, they find that there is more that unites them than divides them. This production marks the New England premiere of the play that won the 2014 Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award, which recognizes new work produced outside of New York.”  Read the full review on The Arts Fuse here.

A Number by Caryl Churchill. Directed by Clay Hopper. Staged by the New Repertory Theatre in the Charles Mosesian Theater at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown, MA, through November 1.

Nael Nacer and Dale Place are featured in a production of Churchill’s two-person play about the emotional and metaphysical fallout of cloning: “In this stark and startling drama, a son confronts his emotionally distant father, learning a horrifying truth about his past. As anger and abandonment issues emerge, a mystery is exposed, revealing a disturbing incident involving a number of ‘others.'”  Read the full review on The Arts Fuse here.

On the suspects in "Clown Bar" at the Charlestown Working Theater.

One of the suspects in “Clown Bar” at the Charlestown Working Theater. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Clown Bar: A Clown Noir by Adam Szymkowicz. Staged by Theatre on Fire at the Charlestown Working Theater, Charlestown, MA, through October 24.

A take on film noir with clowns? Sounds like it. “Happy Mahoney is a cop. He used to be a clown, but gave it up to go straight. When his brother Timmy is shot and killed, he must go back to his old hangout to face his old friends, enemies, and demons. Can he find the murderer and bring him to justice? Forget it, Jake—it’s Clown Bar.”

Song of a Convalescent Ayn Rand Giving Thanks to the Godhead (In the Lydian Mode) created and performed by Wolf 359. Written by Michael Yates Crowley. Directed by Michael Rau. Staged at OBERON, 2 Arrow Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, through October 23.

Intriguing title for a new-fangled cabaret about art and suffering. Here’s the setup: “In 1825, a gravelly ill Ludwig van Beethoven writes a groundbreaking string quartet. In 1982, a pissed Ayn Rand wakes up in the afterlife. In 2011, a very intellectual drag queen gets her fifteen minutes of fame in Peoria, Illinois. In 2015, Michael Yates Crowley and Michael Rau tunnel through time and space to bring all these people (and more) together in a true story about migraines and philosophy, with digressions into song and dance.”

Babylon Revisited, an adaptation by Donald Marcus and Anthony Nikolchev of the F. Scott Fitzgerald story. Staged by the Ark Theatre Company at Shakespeare and Company in Studio One in the Bernstein Center for the Performing Arts, 70 Kimble Street, Lenox, MA, through October 25.

A world premiere production of a stage adaptation of one of Fitzgerald’s major stories. The piece “stars critically acclaimed actor/writer Anthony Nikolchev, as the sole live actor onstage who takes on the lead role with supporting characters who appear in video projections in this exceptional and unique production.”

Now is Our Time: The Pleasures and Perils of our Third Chapter by Annette Miller. Staged at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown, MA, on October 19 at 7:30 p.m.

“Boston’s own beloved and celebrated Annette Miller presents a new theater piece that the actress created as a Resident Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center. By turns poignant, joyous, and resolute, this theatrical collage explores the mix of experiences and reflections of women and men of a certain age.”

Choice by Winnie Holzman. Directed by Sheryl Kaller. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, through November 15.

Winnie Holzman (who wrote the book for the musical Wicked and penned TV’s My So-Called Life) has come up with her first nonmusical, full-length play. According to Holzman, the script deals with “a woman journalist who ends up writing a story that changes her life. I’m so interested in friendships and their complications, and women friendships are so interesting to me. The center of this play is a female friendship that is so different from Wicked.

The late Irish Playwright Brian Friel. Photo:

The late Irish playwright Brian Friel. Photo: Media HQ.

Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel. Directed by Sally Wood. Staged by Portland Stage, 25 Forrest Avenue, Portland, ME, through October 25.

One of the major Irish playwrights of the postwar era, Friel recently died at the age of 86. Here is an opportunity to see one of his strongest scripts, a memory play that interweaves “the story of five unmarried sisters eking out their lives in the small village of Ballybeg in Ireland in 1936.”

A Measure of Normalcy by Lucas Balsch. Directed by David R. Gammons. Staged by Gloucester Stage at 267 East Main Street, Gloucester, MA, October 22 through November 1.

World premiere of a play that deals with “lost youth and lost souls [who] struggle to find meaning amid dingy basements, vanishing malls, and a bleak Midwestern summer.” Note: Ages 15 and up. Strong language and some adult situations.

Saturday Night/Sunday Morning by Katori Hall. Directed by Dawn M. Simmons. Staged by the Lyric Stage Company of Boston at 140 Clarendon Street, Copley Square, Boston, MA, October 23 through November 23.

A play by the author of The Mountaintop “that brings together seven African-American women in a Memphis beauty parlor/boarding house during the waning days of World War II. As they wrestle with the uncertainty of what the future will hold when, and if, their men return, they fight dirty—with each other and with their own fears and desires, uncovering newfound friendship and love.”

The Shipment by Young Jean Lee. Directed by Marcus Stern. Presented by the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University, at the OBERON Annex, 2 Arrow Street, Cambridge, MA, October 23 through 25.

Around the edges, the American Repertory Theater manages to present some noncommercial fare. In this student production, “a cast of 5 African-American performers create an unsettling terrain of well-trodden stereotypes that dare audiences to laugh as they consider their own preconceptions about race and culture.” Korean-American dramatist Young Jean Lee has received plenty of mainstream hype (irony intended) in New York as an “experimental playwright.”

This Stained Dawn: Dagh Dagh Ujala, created and staged by Voices of Partition. Staged at the Grace Vision Church, 80 Mt. Auburn St, Watertown MA on October 24. (The tour continues goes on the Amherst, MA then Ithaca, NY and ends in Washington, D.C.)

This intriguing Voices of Partition project is a collaboration between Theatre Wallay in Islamabad and American Theatre artists. Theatre Wallay members interviewed Partition survivors and created dramatic monologues that were then transformed into a full theater production that presents rarely heard stories of Partition. The goal was to preserve personal accounts of the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 through an original theater piece.

“Voices of Partition is funded by a U.S. Embassy grant and the Fulbright Specialist program. It focuses on the personal stories of survivors of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947: the largest mass migration in modern history, and one in which over one million lives were lost. The project is both an attempt to preserve these stories before a generation of survivors is lost, and also educate people in our own country about a world event that has and continues to have enormous ramifications.”

Casa Valentina by Harvey Fierstein. Directed by Scott Edmiston. Staged by SpeakEasy Stage Company of Boston at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA, October 24 through November 28.

The New England premiere of Fierstein’s script, nominated for a 2014 Tony Award for Best Play: it is “set in 1962 at a Catskills resort where a group of heterosexual men gather secretly to dress and behave as women.” An all-star cast includes Thomas Derrah, Will McGarrahan, and Robert Saoud.

Luna Gale by Rebecca Gilman. Directed by Rebecca Bradshaw. Staged by the Soneham Theatre, Stoneham, MA, October 22 through November 8.

A Boston-area premiere that examines a crisis in the career of a veteran social worker: “Caroline thinks she has a typical case on her hands when she meets Peter and Karlie, two teenage drug addicts accused of neglecting their baby, Luna Gale. But when she places Luna in the care of Karlie’s mother, Caroline sparks a family conflict that exposes a shadowy, secretive past and forces her to make a risky decision with potentially life-altering consequences.” The impressive cast includes Paula Plum and Stacy Fischer.

A scene from "The Missing Generation" Photo: Lydia Daniller.

A scene from “The Missing Generation,” coming to Hibernian Hall this week. Photo: Lydia Daniller.

The Missing Generation created by Sean Dorsey. Presented by The Theater Offensive at Hibernian Hall, 184 Dudley Street, Boston, MA, October 22 through 25.

A “dance-theater work that gives voice to longtime survivors of the early AIDS epidemic. Sean Dorsey created the work over a 2-year period by conducting oral history interviews with longtime survivors of the early AIDS epidemic, including Boston choreographer-activist Peter DiMuro—and wove excerpts of these interviews into a lush, multi-layered soundscore.”

—Bill Marx


Roots and World Music

Performer Emmanuel Jal  will perform at Berklee Performance Center this week. Photo: Berklee News

Emmanuel Jal will perform as part of a “Celebration of Sudanese Music” at Berklee Performance Center this week. Photo: Berklee News.

Al-Murtaja: A Celebration of Sudanese Music
October 22
Berklee Performance Center, Boston, MA

Despite a recent history of violence and oppression, Sudan has produced a wide range of musical talents. A number of its biggest stars, including iconic pop star Abu Araki Elbakheet and politically charged rapper Emmanuel Jal, will collaborate with Berklee students—including Araki’s son Mohamad—at one of the Berklee Signature Series’ most ambitious and unique presentations to date. It concludes a week of related programming that includes a panel discussion on Monday and a documentary film screening on Tuesday.

Daby Toure
October 22
Red Room at Cafe 939, Boston, MA

West African-born, Paris-based songwriter Toure is a singer/songwriter with a soulful voice and a knack for storytelling. His latest LP, Amonafi, combines the personal with the universal as he examines everything from the migration of African youth to the plight of a Romanian beggar near his home.

Brasileiro Treasure Box of Funk and Soul Release Party
October 24
Middle East, Cambridge, MA

Boston’s Cultures of Soul label does yeoman’s work bringing the public rare grooves from around the world. Their latest endeavor is the Brasileiro Treasure Box, which compiles choice cuts from an era where samba, psych, bossa, and soul were all colliding. Curator Deano Sounds will be playing tracks from the LP as well as other goodies as part of the weekly Soulelujah night.

1021_TheEx2

The Ex with Ken Vandermark performing with opener Debo Band at Great Scott this week.

The Ex with Ken Vandermark with opener Debo Band
October 25
Great Scott, Boston, MA

It’s a good bet that this is the first time a MacArthur Genius Fellow has played Allston’s tiny Great Scott rock dive. Chicago jazz experimenter Ken Vandermark is touring with the kindred spirits who make up the long-running Dutch collective The Ex. Ethiopian music is one of The Ex’s many interests and inspirations, so Boston’s Debo Band are an inspired choice for the opening slot. Perhaps they’ll reappear later in the night as well.

—Noah Schaffer


Rock

Old 97’s
October 19
Paradise Rock Club, Boston, MA

While the perennially dashing front man Rhett Miller opts for smaller venues such as Atwood’s Tavern and Johnny D’s, the rebanded (hey, disbanded is a word, right?) Old 97’s move up a level or two and land at the Paradise Rock Club on Monday. Somehow I have never seen Miller or the Old 97’s, but I would be at this show if time were not an object and the human body did not require rest.

Joe Jackson
October 22
The Wilbur Theatre, Boston, MA

Elvis Costello’s fellow malcontent juvenile male (I think that’s what they used to call them) hits up The Wilbur. Initially making (new) waves with the catchy and taut skinny-tie era single “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”, Jackson ventured into more sophisticated pop territory with early-MTV staple “Steppin’ Out,” and recently recorded a tribute to Duke Ellington. As creatively restless if not quite as prolific as Costello, Jackson’s new album Fast Forward came out on October 2.

Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band
October 23
Citi Performing Arts Center (Wang Theatre), Boston, MA

Maybe you’ve heard of him? The eldest Beatle brings the 12th line-up of his All-Starr Band—which includes the incomparable Todd Rundgren along with former members of Journey, Toto, and Mr. Mister—to Boston.

Kinky Friedman
October 23
Johnny D’s, Somerville, MA

Steven Wright, my personal favorite comedian, has a joke about meeting a woman in a bar who says that she is attracted only to Jewish cowboys. Upon hearing this, Wright proceeds to introduce himself as Bucky Goldstein. This was a joke, of course, but actual Jewish cowboy—and musician, humorist, novelist, and political activist—Kinky Friedman will visit Somerville.

Blues band Jane Lee Hooker will perform at this week. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Blues band Jane Lee Hooker will perform at this week at Johnny D’s. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Jane Lee Hooker
October 24
Johnny D’s, Somerville

I have not listened to this distaff NYC blues-rock quintet, but I am not sure how, judging it by its name , it could not pay beautiful dividends. Among its ranks are former members of Nashville Pussy and Bad Wizard. The Boston-based Greg Allen’s Fringe Religion opens.

Blues & Soul Festival featuring Victor Wainwright and Eli “Paperboy” Reed
October 24
Larcom Theatre (Beverly), MA

There would be not rock ‘n’ roll without blues and soul. Thus, it is reassuring that such capable artists as Victor Wainwright and Brookline native Eli “Paperboy” Reed are not only keeping the genres alive, but injecting them with well-deserved vitality. If you live on the North Shore or are planning a Halloween season visit, be sure to include a trip to Beverly’s beautiful Larcom Theater for this date.

Upcoming and on sale:

The Polyphonic Spree (10/31, Johnny D’s); Howard Jones (11/3, Johnny D’s); Buddy Guy (The Wilbur Theatre, 11/5); Jonathan Richman (Somerville Theatre, 11/10); My Morning Jacket (11/20-21/2015, Orpheum Theatre); The Flamin’ Groovies (11/25/2015, Brighton Music Hall); Parquet Courts (12/5/2015, Middle East-Downstairs); Deerhunter (12/10/2015, Royale)

—Blake Maddux


Classical Music

The Planets
Presented by the Boston Philharmonic
October 22, 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA

Holst’s celestial tone poem wraps up the BPO’s first program of the season. Its first half is devoted to Richard Strauss’s cosmic Also sprach Zarathustra.

Haydn(s) and Mozart(s)
Presented by Boston Classical Orchestra
October 25, 3 p.m.
Faneuil Hall, Boston, MA

Music by three generations of Haydns (brothers Franz and Michael) and Mozarts (father Leopold and son Wolfgang) make up the BCO’s second concert this year. Allison Eldredge is the soloist in F. J. Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C major; a trio of symphonies by the others fills out the bill.

Pictures at an Exhibition
Presented by the Longwood Symphony
October 25, 3 p.m.
Jordan Hall, Boston, MA

Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures shares the Longwood Symphony’s opening program with Beethoven’s epic Piano Concerto no. 5. Nobu Tsujii is the soloist in the latter.

Stepping Stones of the 20th Century
Presented by the New England Philharmonic
October 25, 3 p.m.
Tsai Performance Center, Boston, MA

Richard Pittman and the NEP pay tribute to Gunther Schuller, a longtime associate and advocate of the ensemble. Schuller’s The Past is in the Present gets its Boston premiere. It is prefaced by composers and works that influenced Schuller: Irving Fine, Ravel, Webern, and Shostakovich (a very rare outing of the tone poem, “October”).

—Jonathan Blumhofer

Muir String Quartet will perform at Boston University this week.

Muir String Quartet will perform at Boston University this week. Photo: Arts Management Group.

Muir String Quartet
October 19 at 8 p.m.
Boston University, Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA

On the program: Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in E-flat, Op. 12; Bartok’s String Quartet No. 3; Dvorak’s Piano Quintet (Michele Levin, piano).

Borromeo String Quartet/Richard Stolzman, clarinet, Mika Yoshisa, marimba
October 20 at 7:30 p.m.
New England Conservatory, Jordan Hall, 290 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA

On the program: Heiss’s Microcosms (Richard Stoltzman, clarinet, Mika Yoshida, marimba); McKinley’s Haiku Cycle (Richard Stoltzman, clarinet, Mika Yoshida, marimba); McKinley’s Mostly Blues (Richard Stoltzman, clarinet, Mika Yoshida, marimba); Beethoven’s String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 130 with Grosse Fuge, Op. 133.

Peter Zazofsky, violin and Pavel Nersessian, piano
October 22 at 8 p.m.
Boston University, Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA

The program includes works by Mozart, Ravel, and Prokofiev.

Paula Robison, flute and Deborah De Wolf Emery, piano
October 22 at 7:30 p.m.
New England Conservatory, Jordan Hall, 290 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA

On the program: Hue’s Fantasie; Debussy’s Syrinx; Debussy’s Five Songs for Flute and Piano; Copland’s Duo for Flute and Piano; Mozart’s Andante in C Major for Flute and Piano K315; Martinu’s Sonata for Flute and Piano H 306.

Brookline Symphony Orchestra
October 24 at 8 p.m.
All Saints Parish, 1773 Beacon Street, Brookline, MA

On the program: the world premiere of Oliver Caplan’s Fairsted: A Brookline Overture; Sarasota’s Carmen Fantasie for clarinet and orchestra; Kalinnikov’s Symphony no. 1.

Long & Away: Lecture and Concert
October 25 at 4 p.m.
Goethe Institute, 170 Beacon Street, Boston, MA

A CD-release party for Long & Away’s first album, Music at the Württemberg Court: Samuel Capricornus. The program includes a lecture and concert premiere of sacred concerti by Bohemian composer Capricornus. Professor Sarah Mead of Brandeis University is the lecturer. RSVP: program2@boston.goethe.org.

Emmanuel Music
October 25 at 4 p.m.
Emmanuel Church, 15 Newbury Street, Boston, MA

On the program Mendelssohn’s Lied ohne Worte in D Major, op 109 for cello and piano; Wolf’s Liederstrauß (Heine) and Michelangelo Lieder; Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, op. 49

Seraphim Singers
October 25 at 3 p.m.
First Church of Cambridge, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA
October 30 at 8 p.m.
St. Cecilia Parish, 18 Belvidere Street, Boston, MA

The program is entitled “For heaven is a different thing”: Choral Settings of Sacred Poetry. “A world premiere by Richard J. Clark and works of Gerald Finzi, Carson Cooman, James Woodman, and others give voice to poetry by George Herbert, John Donne, Adam Wood, and Hildegard of Bingen. With Heinrich Christensen, organ.”

Boston Chamber Music Society
October 25 at 7:30 p.m.
Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

On the program: Bach’s Ricercar a 6 from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079; Beethoven’s Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, “Archduke”; Strauss’s Metamorphosen, TrV 290 for String Septet

—Susan Miron


Author Events

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Paul Murray
The Mark and The Void
October 19 at 7 p.m.
Brookline Booksmith, Coolidge Corner, MA
Free

The Irish author of the Booker and National Book Critics Circle Award-nominated Skippy Dies comes to Brookline to read from his latest novel, an examination of the global financial crisis written in Murray’s trademark mix of tragedy and farce.

Joyce Carol Oates
The Lost Landscape: A Writer’s Coming of Age
October 19 at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30)
First Parish Church, Cambridge, MA
Tickets are $5

The astonishingly productive novelist, critic, and professor comes to Cambridge to read and discuss her latest book, which tells the story of Oates’s younger self. After writing so much fiction over the years, Oates describes the growth of her artistic temperament and of first finding the inspiration to imagine the world through the eyes of a writer.

Bob Woodward
In Conversation with David Gergen
The Last of the President’s Men
October 20 at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30)
Harvard Book Store, Cambridge MA
Tickets are $5

The story of Richard Nixon’s rise and fall has been told many times in fiction, nonfiction, stage, and screen. Bob Woodward just happened to have been one of the people who, to put it mildly, changed the narrative forever. He will be discussing with CNN’s David Gergen the story of Alexander Butterfield, the Nixon aide who disclosed the secret White House taping system and revealed even more of Nixon’s lies, obsessions, and executive secrets.

Paul Tremblay
A Head Full of Ghosts
October 22 at 6 p.m.
Andover Bookstore, Andover, MA
Free

Now that Halloween is just around the corner, it’s time for readers to get Gothic. Boston’s own Paul Tremblay has written many award-winning novels and stories and comes to read from his latest, concerning a New England family haunted by their daughter’s inexplicable schizophrenia.

Margaret Atwood
The Heart Goes Last
October 22 at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30)
Gamble Auditorium, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA
Free, purchase of book required for signing

The brilliant author of The Handmaid’s Tale and Alias Grace will read and sign copies of her latest novel. In her inimitable socially critical and vibrantly creative style, Atwood examines the failures of a crumbling marriage in the context of a dystopia where the lawful are incarcerated and the lawless run free.

Lafayette-in-the-Somewhat-United-States-by-Sarah-Vowell

Sarah Vowell
Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
October 23 at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30)
First Parish Church, Cambridge, MA
Tickets are $5

Nobody writes history quite like Sarah Vowell: her unreservedly geeky passion for the often overlooked events and figures who get the benefit of her thorough research and dry wit makes her books a consistent delight. Her latest concerns the life of the dynamic Marquis de Lafayette, “The Hero of Two Worlds,” who played a major role in the battlefields and the political debates in both America and his native France.

Boston Book Festival
October 23—24
Copley Square, Boston, MA
Free, some events are ticketed

It’s time for the annual literary event that brings readers and writers together in a two-day extravaganza to celebrate the written word with panel discussions, readings, and showcasing new titles from up-and-coming authors. There are many speakers throughout the day, including the likes of James Wood, Colum McCann, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, M.T. Anderson, Edwidge Danticat, Heidi Julavits, and many more.

—Matt Hanson

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