As the age of Covid-19 more or less wanes, Arts Fuse critics supply a guide to film, dance, visual art, theater, author readings, and music. More offerings will be added as they come in.

Frankenstein (1931)
Somerville Theatre at 2 p.m. on October 23

This iconic horror film from 1931 screens today with a live score by Jeff Rapsis, the performer who specializes in creating live musical scores for silent film screenings. This is an intriguing one-off!

Slash/Back
Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, through October 26

A unique horror creature feature is set in the Arctic where a team of indigenous young girls go to battle against shapeshifting aliens. It is directed by Nyla Innuksuk and set in Pangnirtung, Nunavutm, a hamlet in Baffin Island, Canada. The rousing score, fine performances, and creature effects add to what the Daily Grind calls “an affecting portrait of teen girlhood and a strong political statement about Indigenous rights and taking pride in a marginalized heritage.” Plus thrills and chills, of course.

Boston Jewish Film Festival
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
November 6

In its 34th year, the Boston Jewish Film Festival explores topics, individuals, and themes connected to Jewish life. The two selections this year are:

Farewell, Mr. Haffmann at 11:00 a.m.

Remember This at 2:30 p.m.

IFFB Fall Focus 2022
Brattle Theatre, Cambridge
October 27 through 30

The Independent Film Festival of Boston’s Fall Focus mini-festival rolls out 11 previews. Here’s the lineup.

October 27:

Women Talking, with Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Ben Wisha.w

October 28:

One Fine Morning, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve, with Léa Seydoux.

Nanny: A psychological horror fable of displacement with Anna Diop as a woman who recently emigrated from Senegal.

October 29:

Armageddon Time: A deeply personal story from director James Gray, with Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway, and Jeremy Strong.

Corsage: A visually stunning contemporary waltz through the life of the extravagant empress Elisabeth of Austria, with Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread).

Broker: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s (Shoplifters) latest. Song Kang Ho stars as a broker who sells orphaned infants, circumventing the bureaucracy of legal adoption, to affluent couples who can’t have children of their own.

Causeway: Jennifer Lawrence stars in this film about the wounds that soldiers retain from armed conflict — and those they carried with them going in.

October 30:

Empire of Light stars Olivia Colman and Colin Firth, directed by Sam Mendes (1917).

Saint Omer: A young novelist is forced to confront her personal traumas as she observes the trial of a woman accused of infanticide.

Hunt: Lee Jung-jae (Squid Game) in a ’80s-set thriller. An intelligence chief uncovers a plot to assassinate the president of South Korea while hunting for a mole within his own agency.

The Inspection: A young, gay Black man rejected by his mother decides to join the Marines, doing whatever it takes to succeed in a system that would cast him aside.

2022 NY Cat Film Festival
Kendall Square Cinema
November 2 at 7 p.m.

The Cat Film Festival is an exploration through film of the fascinating felines featuring international short films. Serious works mingle with the purely comic. The mission is “to celebrate that human-animal bond, however and wherever it occurs.” A few of the selections: Cats of Malta is a documentary that explores the island’s stray cats and cat-culture through candid interviews with charismatic local feeders, artists, and volunteers. The animated short, Duet focuses on when a timid cat who is adopted by an elderly pianist. The animal learns to express himself and connect with his family through the language of music. Please Rescue Me follows a kindly North Carolina biochemist and arborist who has volunteered his skills and equipment to extract some 250 trapped cats.

Pick of the Week

Banished: Prince Andrew
Streaming on Peacock

Prince Andrew had an auspicious beginning. He was a favorite of the Queen: there was his service in the Royal Navy as a helicopter pilot, a tour as captain of a warship, his time flying dangerous missions during the Falklands War. On top of that, he had  a reputation as a heartthrob. But his unbridled libido and sense of privilege was his downfall. His marriage to Sarah Ferguson, whom he rarely saw, ended in divorce when she was caught by paparazzi in the arms of a lover on a St. Tropez beach. Andrew never stopped flying high on hubris and womanizing. The tabloids loved his bad behavior — it sold papers.

Then he made the tragic hedonistic choice of cultivating a friendship with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his friend, imprisoned conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. This riveting 80-minute documentary is a freakish fractured fairy tale filled with greed and deception. There are smartly edited news clips, tawdry headlines, and colorful interviews. These include editorial icon Tina Brown and plainspoken interviews with wonderful British types like with royal press spokesman Dickie Arbiter (“I suppose there’s always one runt of the litter. And Andrew was it”). The piece is punctuated with a wry score by local composers Kenny and John Kusiak (The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst).

— Tim Jackson

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Theater

COVID PROTOCOLS: Check with specific theaters; requirements often include proof of vaccination or a negative Covid-19 rapid test. Also, companies are requiring masks at indoor performances.

On Beckett, written and performed by Bill Irwin. Presented by Arts Emerson at the Emerson Paramount Center, Robert J. Orchard Stage, 559 Washington Street, Boston, October 26 through 30.

“Samuel Beckett’s words take center stage as they are unpacked and delightfully examined, including selections from Waiting for Godot, Texts for Nothing, and Watt. Irwin’s physical approach to both the comic and tragic sides of Beckett’s writing invites audiences to experience the writer’s language as they never have before.” Arts Fuse interview.

Golden Leaf Ragtime Blues by Charles Smith. Directed by Raz Golden. Staged by Shakespeare & Company at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, MA, through October 30.

“The story of a young African American boy and an aging vaudevillian thrown together in circumstances beyond their control, Golden Leaf Ragtime Blues explores their unusual connection, as discovered through stories and music — illustrating how our basic needs and human emotions cut across the barriers of race, religion, and age.”

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woof? by Edward Albee. Directed by James Bundy. Staged by Yale Rep at the Yale Chapel Theater, 1120 Chapel Street, New Haven, through October 29.

Edward Albee’s black comedy about couples and the breakdown of manners and morals.”It’s 2 a.m. and George and Martha are just getting started. The middle-aged married couple, a once-promising historian and his boss’s frustrated daughter, welcome a younger professor and his wife for a nightcap — only to ensnare them in increasingly dangerous rounds of fun and games. An unblinking portrait of two American marriages.”

Calle Allende, written and performed by Pinned & Sewtured. At the Puppet Showplace Theater, 32 Station Street, Brookline, November 4 and 5.

A Massachusetts premiere: “Anatar Marmol-Gagne, the founder and director of Pinned & Sewtured, was already drawing and painting extensively by the age of 8. She was always drawn to the intensely personal style of storytelling found in Kahlo’s paintings, so creating a work inspired by her story and distinctive artistic style was a natural progression. Calle Allende is based on the well-known diary entry called ‘The Two Fridas,’ in which Kahlo describes meeting another version of herself — the other Frida — in the form of an imaginary friend from her childhood.”

Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Adapted and originally directed by Lee Sunday Evans. Directed by Rosa Joshi. Original music by Heather Christian. Staged by the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, 50 East Merrimack Street, Lowell, MA, through November 6.

An adaptation this way comes. “In this brisk version of Macbeth, the three witches, or Weird Sisters or Weyward Sisters, play out the entire story of a man who becomes so possessed by power and ambition that he will destroy anyone who gets in his way. Are these witches ancient prophets or contemporary witnesses?”

Into The Breeches! by George Brant. Directed by Bryn Boice. Staged by the Hub Theatre Company of Boston at The Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St., Boston, November 4 through 20.

A Boston premiere: “It’s 1942 and there’s trouble brewing at Boston’s Oberon Play House! With the men overseas, it appears that the season must be cancelled. Until, that is, the women of the company see their chance to move from the sidelines to center stage and mount the first all-female production of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Will their show be a victory in the battle for equality or a target for tomatoes?”

Lightning, directed and devised by Jenny Louise Eaton and the Double Edge Theatre Company. Staged by Double Edge Theatre at the Farm, 948 Conway Road, Ashfield, MA,mNovember 4 through 6.

“Layering large puppetry, shadow, and song, Lightning takes place at the collision point between the worlds of our internal and external experiences. We look at our past and tell the birth story of the inner monsters we both need and deny. Before the show there will be a pre-performance musical offering by DE company Member Robert Carlton.”

Saltonstall’s Trial, cowritten by Michael Cormier & Myriam Cy. Directed by Myriam Cyr. Presented by Ford Hall Forum, Suffolk University Theater Department, and Punctuate 4 Productions at the Modern Theatre, 525 Washington St., Boston, October 27.

“1692, Salem Hysteria abounds and witchcraft accusations fly. A respected judge, Nathaniel Saltonstall, is called to serve on the court of the Salem Witch Trials. As Saltonstall questions the legitimacy of the proceedings, he is forced to choose between integrity and self-preservation. The truth will put his loved ones at risk and himself on trial.” The script is based on a true story.

This staged reading will feature Elliot Norton Award-winners Jeremiah Kissel, Malcolm Ingram, and Laura Latreille, along with Phil Thompson, Carol Goans, and Barbara Bourgeois.

Let the Right One In by Jack Thorne. Based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Presented in special arrangement with Concord Theatricals. Directed by Christopher V. Edwards. Presented by Actors’ Shakespeare Project in collaboration with the Boston University School of Theatre at the Booth Theatre, 820 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, through November 6.

A collaboration and regional premiere opens the company’s 19th season. According to the production’s director, the script is “a coming-of-age love story that is reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet and other love stories from Shakespeare. It’s a modern/supernatural take on two young people trying to find comfort, support, and partnership in their lives. At face value it’s a vampire horror romance, but under that facade there is a story of people combating extreme loneliness, reaching out for acceptance, and overcoming hate. This play is important now because we are in a time of recovery from extreme loneliness after years of pandemic closures. People are reaching out for acceptance and community.” Arts Fuse review

English by Sanaz Toossi. Directed by Melory Miraschrafi. Staged by SpeakEasy Stage Company in the Roberts Studio Theatre in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, through November 19.

Winner of the 2022 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, this comedy-drama “takes place in Karaj, Iran, in 2008, and centers on Marjan, an English teacher struggling to prepare her four students to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) The exam has life-changing implications for each classmate; but between the word games and the show-and-tell sessions, one student seems set on derailing the lesson plan.” The cast features Josephine Moshiri Elwood, Lily Gilan James, Deniz Khateri, Leyla Modirzadeh, and Zaven Ovian.

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson. Directed by Lili-Anne Brown. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at 264 Huntington Avenue, Boston, through November 27.

One of August Wilson’s finest dramas: “At a Pittsburgh boarding house in 1911, Herald Loomis arrives in search of his lost wife — but first he must regain a sense of his own heritage and identity.” This production serves as the inaugural production of the newly renovated Huntington Theatre. Arts Fuse review

The Orchard, conceived & directed by Igor Golyak. Based on The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, translation by Carol Rocamora. Groundswell Theatricals, Inc in association with Cherry Orchard Festival & ShowOne Productions presents an Arlekin Players | (zero-G) Lab’s production. A hybrid presentation, this live production can be experienced in two ways: in person at the Robert J. Orchard Stage, Paramount Center, ArtsEmerson, Boston, November 4 through 13 or The Orchard /an auction/ – online through a live virtual, interactive experience available worldwide.

“The Boston premiere of a fully staged live performance of The Cherry Orchard, including new material. The cast is helmed by Jessica Hecht as Lyubov Ranevskaya, and features Juliet Brett, Darya Denisova, Jeffrey Hayenga, Elise Kibler, Nael Nacer, and Gene Ravvin. Mikhail Baryshnikov plays Firs.”

— Bill Marx

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Visual Arts

The Hood Museum of Art’s exhibition about art and grief, Nothing Gold Can Stay, takes its title from the Robert Frost poem of the same name. Frost is not really writing about death or mourning, though. His poem concludes “So dawn goes down to day/Nothing gold can say,” and is more about the inevitable decline of early glory and promise into the quotidian. But no matter. The show, which opens on October 29, explores the wide ranges and stages of grieving, reaching toward a universal human experience. It is part of “A Space for Dialogue,” a long-running series of exhibitions at the Hood organized by Dartmouth students.

In recent years, MassMOCA, with its huge installations by contemporary artists that incorporate lights, sounds, video, movement, bright colors, and fun house-like spaces, has started to resemble a sprawling amusement park of High Culture. Its commodious galleries in a rambling former industrial complex seem dedicated to art that can be explored and enjoyed as a kind of adventure.

The museum’s latest installation, EJ Hill: Brake Run Helix, which opens October 30, pushes the idea into more literal territory. Los Angeles artist Hill has created a “massive” installation that “incorporates freestanding sculptures, paintings, a stage for performances, and a rideable sculptural installation inspired by the form and function of roller coasters.” It is the artist’s first solo museum show.

For Hill, amusement parks, a focus of desegregation efforts during the Civil Rights Movement, are a “critical component of social equity” that he sees as “public monuments to the possibility of attaining joy.”

The wall drawing as an art form, with its ties to minimal and conceptual art, was first developed by the artist Sol LeWitt (for a full survey of LeWitt’s wall drawings, see the large retrospective at MassMOCA, which has a run of 35 years). The centerpiece of Shelagh Keeley: Drawn to Place, which opens on November 5 at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, is a latter day 58-foot-long wall drawing commissioned by the museum, based on the artist’s decade-long research into the museum’s long history and diverse collections, especially the role of the 19th- and early 20th-century zoologist, archaeologist, and collector Edward Sylvester Morse.

Besides his celebrated work on evolution and marine invertebrates, especially brachiopods, Morse is known as “the father of Japanese archaeology.” A research trip to Japan sparked a lifelong fascination with traditional Japanese culture. His large, pioneering collection of everyday Japanese objects has long been one of the museum’s most distinctive resources, and his huge collection of Japanese ceramics is now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Morse’s efforts have been credited not only with promoting the appreciation of Japanese culture in the US, but with helping Japan, at a time of rapid modernization and Westernization, understand and value its own visual heritage.

MIT’s List Center’s Curator’s Tour: The Microbial, Fungal, and Chemical, on October 27 at 5:30  p.m. will feature a guided survey of Symbionts: Contemporary Artists and the Biosphere, led by a member of the  exhibition’s curatorial team, Caroline A. Jones. Jones is professor in the history, theory, and criticism section of MIT’s Department of Architecture and has written and researched on the various intersections of art and science. She is currently working with the Harvard historian of science Peter L. Galison (who also happens to be her husband) on a book about images of environmental harm in our “Anthropocene” geologic era.

— Peter Walsh

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Jazz

Bruce Gertz Group
October 25 at 7:30 p.m.
Lilypad, Cambridge

The veteran bassist and composer Bruce Gertz gathers a stellar group of musicians to play compositions by himself and, we’d guess, probably some others as well: trumpeter Phil Grenadier, guitarist Sheryl Bailey, pianist Rebecca Cline, and drummer Alberto Netto.

Kenny Barron with Strings
October 27, 8:00 p.m.
Berklee Performance Center
136 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston

The great pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader Kenny Barron, an NEA Jazz Master, performs original arrangements of his music by Eric Gould with a Berklee string section under the direction of Eugene Friesen.

Benny Green
October 29 at  8 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

Schooled early on in the bands of Eddie Henderson, Betty Carter, and Art Blakey, and then working with countless others as sideman and bandleader, pianist Benny Green embodies the hard-bop verities of tunefulness and swing. The Scullers gig is a rare solo-piano show.

Dee Dee Bridgewater Ensemble
November 3 at 7 p.m.
Red Room, Café 939, Berklee College of Music, Boston

Jazz vocal great Dee Dee Bridgwater leads a student ensemble in Berklee’s intimate Red Room.  Bridgewater has been directing the students in a repertoire inspired by her 1995 album Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver. With one jazz master schooling adept students in the music of another, the results are sure to be worthy. Bridgewater and the student ensemble will perform Silver compositions including “Nica’s Dream,” “Permit Me to Introduce You to Yourself,” “Señor Blues,” and “The Tokyo Blues.” The band includes Rares Gherman (guitar), Caleb Texier (piano), Aki Oliviero (guitar), Joe Tavarez (drums), Chick Green (drums), Camden Bunker (baritone saxophone, doubles), Ian Banno (bass), Rinat Fishman (tenor saxophone, doubles), and Brandon Volel (trumpet), under the direction of Berklee associate professor Shirazette “She Beats” Tinnin.

John Stein
November 4 at 7 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

The guitarist John Stein spent part of the pandemic incapacitated by a rare autoimmune disease but somehow managed to put together a 26-track double CD retrospective of his distinguished career. Spanning more than two decades and 15 CDs as a leader, Life Line shows his mastery of mainstream swing, Brazilian samba and bossa, tango, and funk, with an uncommon touch, ear for harmony, and detailed fingerwork. Now recovered, Stein comes to Scullers with pianist Jesse Taitt, bass guitarist Ed Lucie, and drummer Mike Connors, with special featured guest Cindy Scott on vocals and flute.

Yulia Musayelyan Quartet
November 5 at 8 p.m.
Peabody Hall, Parish of All Saints, Dorchester, MA

The composer and virtuoso flutist Yulia Musayelyan — born in Moscow, with degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and NYU, now teaching at Berklee — has become a mainstay of Boston’s Latin music scene, fluent in Brazilian and Argentine rhythms and forms. For this show, presented by Mandorla Music and Greater Ashmont Main Street, she’ll be joined by pianist Maxim Lubarsky, a frequent collaborator, bassist Keala Kaumeheiwa, and drummer Gen Yoshimura.

Jussi Reijonen
November 6 at 5 p.m.
Shalin Liu Performance Center, Rockport, MA

Jussi Reijonen was born in a small Finnish town on the Arctic Circle, but he also grew up in Jordan, Tanzania, Oman, Lebanon, and the United States — eventually studying and teaching at Berklee College of Music and new England Conservatory, where a multinational collection of fellow students and colleagues gave him insight to his own pan-cultural identity. You could say that the new Three Seconds | Kolme Toista is the ultimate fruit of Reijonen’s many travels — a five-part suite encompassing varied rhythms and forms played by an international cast of musicians. The nine-piece ensemble playing the piece in Rockport includes Reijonen on guitars and oud, trumpeter Herman Merhardi, trombonist Robin Eubanks, drummer Vancil Cooper, bassist Kyle Miles, pianist Utar Artun, violinist Layth Sidiq, cellist Naseem Alatrash, and percussionist Keita Ogawa.

— Jon Garelick

John Baboian
October 26 at 7:30 p.m.
Black Box Theatre at Mosesian Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal St., Watertown, MA

Guitarist John Baboian with Daniel Ian Smith (reeds), Rich Greenblatt (vibes), Bruce Gertz (bass), Larry Finn (drums). Baboian has been away from this Watertown arts venue for too long. This concert is a welcome return and a Halloween celebration as well. Come in costume.

— Steve Elman

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Dance

Side by Side
October 28, 29, 30
Boston Center for the Arts
Boston

City Ballet of Boston and BoSoma Dance Company present Side by Side, an evening of contemporary dance. This production of new and restaged works includes José Limón’s “The Moor’s Pavane” in honor of Limón Dance Company’s 75th Anniversary, as well as choreography by acclaimed artists Adrienne Hawkins, Jessica Flynn, Johanna Kepler, Junichi Fukuda, Gianni DiMarco, Tony Williams, and Katherine Hooper.

The Women Gather
November 3-6
The Strand Theater
Boston

The Women Gather describes itself as “a ritual of healing … in an environment created by the ensemble, in a soundscape of our voices and bodies and the voices of our mothers and our grandmothers.” Engage with this international ensemble of women-identified artists, as they use movement to create a safe space and inspire strength for what lies ahead.

La Survivance
October 30 at 5 p.m.
The Stadium Theatre
Woonsocket, RI

La Survivance: An Evening Celebrating French Canadian Heritage presents a night of live music and dance celebrating the vibrant Franco-American history of Blackstone Valley. The event is produced by Nicole C. Laliberté, artistic director of Freedom Dances and current producer of L’Echo Musical on WNRI Radio. La Survivance honors stories of both local French-Canadian descendants and the legacy of Laliberté’s father, RI Radio Hall of Fame broadcaster Roger Laliberté, and his mother, Maria. Also, Colette Fournier will call quadrilles and the audience will be invited on stage to participate.

Constellation Stories: Stories of the Night Sky
November 5 from 12-4 p.m.
Springfield Science Museum
Springfield, MA

PLACE Project (Presenting Landmarks through Artistic Community Engagement) is an annual event dedicated to celebrating cultural and historic landmarks through the integration of dance, history, and the arts. This year’s PLACE Project travels to the stars  — it is a celebration of Seymour Planetarium’s 85th anniversary (the oldest planetarium in the country) at Springfield Science Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts.

This exciting collaborative performance of dance, light, and science will feature astronomy-based mythologies from China, Japan, Estonia, Greece, Puerto Rico, and Cape Verde. The event comprises contemporary performances by Luminarium Dance Company; traditional Taíno solos by Chali’naru Dones and Vinny “Tata’niki” Iraheta; and Celestial Gift, a new work by Henoch Spinola. It is all about honoring the night sky. Visitors are encouraged to wander the museum as the dancers pop up in different locations throughout the afternoon. Free with museum admission and intriguing for all ages, this event is not to be missed!

— Merli V. Guerra

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Roots and World Music

Boston Festival of New Jewish Music Season Showcase
October 26
Boston Synagogue

One of the better things to happen to Boston’s music scene recently has been the birth and success of the Boston Festival of New Jewish Music. If you’d like to get a taste of who will be playing at this JArts-sponsored event at the Boston Synagogue, tonight will serve as a useful sampler — quite a few of the 2022-2023 artists will be dropping by to perform mini-sets.

Wesli
October 27
Arts at the Armory, Somerville

Singer/songwriter Wesli takes the rhythms of his native Haiti like the rara festival sound and adds especially effective doses of reggae, soukous, and zouk. His high-energy band is a favorite at world music festivals for good reason.

RAM with Eddy François and Boukan Ginen
October 28
Oceanside, Revere, MA

A scarily good Halloween party for lovers of Haitian music. RAM spread the Haitian mizik rasin (roots music) sound all over the world during the ’90s, combining Vodou rhythms with jazz, funk, and rock. One of the band’s great contemporaries was Boukman Eksperyans. The lead singer on their early ’90s output, Eddy François, will share the bill along with his longtime band, Boukan Ginen.

Los Tigres del Norte
October 28
Boch Center Wang Theater, Boston

For decades, Los Tigres del Norte have been the giants of norteño music. A new streaming documentary tells the group’s story well. They usually come to Oceanside, but this show finds them gracing the elite stage of the Wang Center.

Boston Soul Live!
October 29
The Sinclair Restaurant, Cambridge

This writer was part of the team that produced and wrote the liner notes for a new compilation, The Skippy White Story: Boston Soul 1961-1967, which collects rare recordings produced by the famed record store owner. There’s some doo-wop, some sweet soul, some funky saxophone instrumentals, a lot of gospel, and what Skippy would call a “big bad bluesy biscuit.” All of the music was made right here in Boston.

We’re celebrating with a one-time revue that finds the album’s co-producer Eli “Paperboy” Reed leading a band of all-stars, with guest turns from Sax Gordon, Leon Beal, Dennis Taylor, Ryan Lee Crosby, and the Harmonizing Stars of Boston. Few of the artists on the album are still with us, but Joyce Crayton of the Crayton Family Singers will be there singing “Master on High.” Look for an interview with Skippy’s first employee, Bruce Patch, in the Arts Fuse.

— Noah Schaffer

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Classical Music

Uchida plays Beethoven
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
October 27 at 7:30 p.m., 28 at 1:30 p.m., and 29 at 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston

Pianist Mitsuko Uchida joins the BSO for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (Emperor). The program, which the orchestra is taking on tour to Japan in November, also includes Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.

Remembered Futures
Presented by New England Philharmonic
October 30, 8 p.m.
Jordan Hall, Boston

Tianhui Ng makes his debut as the NEPO’s new music director. He leads a typically ambitious lineup of pieces: John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1, Mary D. Watkins’s Soul of Remembrance, Iván Rodríguez’s A Metaphor for Power, and Eric Nathan’s Opening.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

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Author Events
WBUR CitySpace: Chelsea Manning – brookline booksmith
README.txt
October 24 at 6:30 p.m.
Tickets are $25- $5

“Chelsea Manning is alternately celebrated for transparency and at the same time is a polarizing figure for disclosing more than 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks in 2011. Manning, who was a US Army intelligence analyst in Iraq at the time, was convicted by court-martial for her whistleblowing and sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013, the longest sentence ever handed down in an American leak case.

“Join Here & Now co-host Scott Tong in a conversation with Manning where she’ll discuss her much anticipated memoir, README.txt, and recount her early life as a computer savvy kid, what drew her to the military, her gender transition while at Fort Leavenworth prison, and her life now as an activist and also DJ. Copies of README will be available for purchase from our bookstore partner Brookline Booksmith.”

George Saunders at Old South Church – Harvard Book Store
Liberation Day: Stories 
October 25 at 7 p.m.
Tickets are $29.75 with book

“The “best short-story writer in English” (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose — wickedly funny, unsentimental, and exquisitely tuned — Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: Here is a collection of prismatic, resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality.”

Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire — brookline booksmith
October 26 at 7 p.m.
Free

An in-person event with Asmaa Abu Mezied, Yousef Aljamal, and Jehad Abusalim. “Gaza, home to two million people, continues to face suffocating conditions imposed by Israel. This distinctive anthology imagines what the future of Gaza could be, while reaffirming the critical role of Gaza in Palestinian identity, history, and struggle for liberation.

Light in Gaza is a seminal, moving, and wide-ranging anthology of Palestinian writers and artists. It constitutes a collective effort to organize and center Palestinian voices in the ongoing struggle. As political discourse shifts toward futurism as a means of reimagining a better way of living, beyond the violence and limitations of colonialism, Light in Gaza is an urgent and powerful intervention into an important political moment.”

Lawrence Millman, The Last Speaker of Bear – Porter Square Books
October 27 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Porter Square Books is delighted to host Lawrence Millman to celebrate the release of his latest book, The Last Speaker of Bear: My Encounters in the North! Millman is an arctic explorer and mycologist who presents stories from his travels in a collection of vignettes that span from Yukon to Iceland.

Showcasing his reverence for the Indigenous and Native communities he has encountered, including Inuit, Inuk, Innu, Alutiiq, and Cree Nations (among others), Millman invites his readers to experience his journeys with him.”

Boston Book Festival 2022 – Harvard Book Store
October 29 at 9 a.m.
Copley Square, Boston
Free

“Join us at the Boston Book Festival on October 29th in Copley Square. The BBF celebrates the power of words to stimulate, agitate, unite, delight, and inspire; the Boston Book Festival presents year-round events culminating in an annual festival that promotes a culture of reading and ideas and enhances the vibrancy of our city.” More info available at www.bostonbookfest.org

Puppet Showplace Theater: Sarah Silberstein Swartz — brookline booksmith
Heroines, Rescuers, Rabbis, Spies: Unsung Women of the Holocaust
October 30 at 6 p.m.
Free

“Discover nine ordinary women who took extraordinary measures to save lives during the Holocaust, resisting terror and torture while undercover or in hiding, in concentration camps, in forests, and in exile.

With compassion and admiration, author Sarah Silberstein Swartz paints portraits of women who stood up for themselves and others in dangerous times. Overlooked by history, they leapt from fear to action with bravery that deserves recognition.”

Shonda Rhimes & Betsy Beers: Inside Bridgerton – brookline booksmith
November 1 at 9 p.m.
Free

“Inside Bridgerton is the intimate behind-the-scenes story of the hit Shondaland series on Netflix. Shondaland executive producers Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers offer exclusive insights, and introduce you to the series writers, producers, directors, cast, crew, and talented creatives who brought Julia Quinn’s beloved novels to the screen.

“Full-color and beautifully designed, Inside Bridgerton is the official book about the show, and includes never-before-seen photographs, firsthand accounts on casting, insight into the decisions behind the costumes and sets, directors’ accounts on filming your favorite scenes, and more from the creative minds that launched a cultural phenomenon.”

WBUR CitySpace: AGNI at 50 – brookline booksmith
November 4 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Join us for a celebration of 50 years of AGNI, ‘a beacon of international literary culture’ (PEN) and a crown jewel of Boston University. Sanskrit for fire, AGNI ignites with writing that responds to each new now; the magazine has become an essential gathering place for those who feel literature’s power to nurture an authentic engagement with the world.

“Three-time US poet laureate Robert Pinsky will emcee this evening of readings and music, with performances by Teju Cole, Victoria Chang, Jo Ann Beard, Chanda Feldman, Caren Beilin, Pinsky himself, and the Boston-based, cross-cultural music project Meridian 71, led by Giuseppe Paradiso.

“A complimentary catered reception with a cash bar will follow.”

Natasha Rogoff at Harvard Book Store – Harvard Book Store
Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia
November 7 at 7 p.m.
Free

“In Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia, Natasha Lance Rogoff brings this gripping tale to life. Amidst bombings, assassinations, and a military takeover of the production office, Lance Rogoff and the talented Moscow team of artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and puppeteers remained determined to bring laughter, learning, and a new way of seeing the world to children in Russia, Ukraine, and across the former Soviet empire.

“With a sharp wit and compassion for her colleagues, Lance Rogoff observes how cultural clashes colored nearly every aspect of the production — from the show’s educational framework to writing comedy to the new Russian Muppets themselves — despite the team’s common goal.”

— Matt Hanson