Our expert critics supply a guide to film, visual art, theater, author readings, and music. More offerings will be added as they come in.

Film

Caligula: The Ultimate Cut
Through August 22
Somerville Theatre in Davis Square

Despite its controversial reception, due to its graphic erotic content and historical inaccuracies, Caligula remains a provocative exploration of the depths of human corruption and the consequences of absolute power. Released in 1980 after years of squabbling, the film remains notorious for a number of reasons. It was made under nightmarish circumstances — there were budget-blowing delays and “artistic differences” galore, many of them public. On top of that, producer Bob Guccione of Penthouse Magazine demanded that hardcore sex scenes be added to the final product. (Gore Vidal’s original script placed a strong focus on homosexuality, leading Guccione to demand rewrites that toned down the gay content and added in heterosexual couplings for wider audience appeal.)

More than 40 years later, this painstakingly restored cut (with previously unreleased scenes) delves, memorably, into the debauched reign of the Roman emperor infamous for his tyranny and extravagance. Vidal and the film’s director, Tinto Brass, disavowed the extensive changes to their contributions. Brass was dismissed prior to editing; Guccione brought in Giancarlo Lui to film X-rated scenes. A stellar cast includes Malcolm McDowell, John Gielgud, Helen Mirren, and Peter O’Toole.

Lonely Seal International Film, Screenplay, and Music Festival
August 20–25
Regent Theatre in Arlington

The Lonely Seal International’s Film, Screenplay, and Music Festival highlights “the best of our humanity” with story-based cinema that spotlights Women, LGBTQIA, Disabled, Minority, and Indigenous creators. On offer: comedies, dramas, tales “aching to be told,” along with live music, screenwriting events, career-enhancing seminars, and parties.

Bob Marley: One Love
August 20 at 8 p.m.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston

The Sunset Series and Roxbury International Film Festival present this free outdoor screening of the Bob Marley biopic, which boasts a great performance by Kingsley Ben-Adir in the title role. The story picks up during the time that the musician, following an assassination attempt, left Jamaica for England to create some of his greatest music.

Apollo 13
August 21 at sunset
Greenway’s Wharf District Park between Milk Street and Atlantic Avenue in Boston

The Coolidge presents a free outdoor 35mm screening of the 1995 film about the NASA mission that launched on April 11, 1970. It stars Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris.

The Phantom Creeps and The Devil Bat
August 25 at 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m.
Somerville Theatre in Davis Square

A thriller diller of a double feature to enliven your Sunday. In 1939’s The Phantom Creeps, Bela Lugosi plays a mad scientist who designs inventions that can destroy the world because he cannot get over his wife’s death. Outfitted with a “disvisualizer belt,” he turns invisible, so Lugosi and an 8-foot-tall robot can do nasty things without getting caught. 1940’s The Devil Bat gives us Lugosi going postal because he is convinced his employers have cheated him out of the company’s profits. His decides to avenge himself by altering bats to grow to twice their normal size and training them to attack when they smell a perfume of his own making. Lugois mixes the perfume into a lotion, which he offers as a gift. When the giftees turn up dead, a newspaper reporter decides to investigate.

Eyes Wide Shut in 35mm
August 31 at 7:30 p.m.
Somerville Theatre in Davis Square

Stanley Kubrick’s final film (1999) was promoted as an erotic thriller, but what the director was really going for was a dreamlike journey into the intricacies of fidelity, intimacy, personal responsibility, and truth. For your edification, here is an interview with the the movie’s stars, Tom Cruise and Nichole Kidman.

Shoeshine
August 23 – 27
Brattle Theatre in Cambridge

A 4K restoration of one of the first Italian neo-realist films. Vittorio De Sica’s 1946 masterpiece intertwines social observation and humanism. The narrative follows the trials and tribulations of two homeless, innocent boys in a postwar Rome occupied by American troops. The two shine shoes and dream of buying a horse. Rome is filled with grand buildings and statuary, but the boys live in an impoverished, bleak world. Semi-homeless, the kids sleep in hallways, elevators, and stables. Inevitably, the pair get into trouble with the law.

Pick of the Week

The Instigators
Apple TV

Rory (Matt Damon), a desperate father, and Cobby (Casey Affleck), an ex-con, are bumbling thieves and reluctant partners brought together to rob a corrupt politician of his ill-gotten gains. The heist goes hysterically wrong, leading to some astounding car chase scenes. Pursued by the police, backward bureaucrats, and vengeful crime bosses, they need to enlist Rory’s therapist (Hong Chau) to aid their wild escape through Boston. The film contains plenty of dry, dark humor and some imaginative plot twists — not to mention that it all feels very Boston. Directed by Doug Liman. Screenplay by local writer Chuck MacLean and Casey Affleck.

— Tim Jackson

---

World Music and Roots

NRBQ
The Cut, Gloucester, August 21
The Center for the Arts, Natick, August 30
Spire Center, Plymouth, August 31

A recent pair of deluxe NRBQ-related reissues on the Omnivore label perfectly capture the different musical influences that have made the long-running band so unique: “She Sings, They Play” captured the Q’s 1985 collaboration with country great Skeeter Davis. “Terrible” was Q pianist Terry Adams’s first solo album, and included guest spots from avant-jazz heroes Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra and Roswell Rudd. But make no mistake: The Q is alive and well, thanks to the current version that features Adams as well as younger members Scott Ligon, Casey McDonough, and John Perrin, all of them ideal foils for Adams’s excursions from power pop to outer space. The band makes a trio of Boston-area appearances this month in Gloucester, Natick, and Plymouth.

Richie Spice with Jahriffe and Junior Rodigan
August 22
La Fabrica, Cambridge

Buju Banton
August 30
TD Garden

The Boston Caribbean Carnival is this weekend (you can see a schedule of official events and parade routes here) and with it comes a bounty of Caribbean music. This month two major figures in reggae are both playing Boston for the first time in years. Starting things off is popular rootsman Ritchie Spice, whose 2000 “Earth a Run Red” is a bonafide classic. Since then he’s released a consistent stream of serious-minded reggae. Rounding out the excellent bill is Boston reggae great Jahriffe with the Roots Alley Collective backing both acts and DJ music from local legend Junior Rodigan.

While Spice’s seven year absence from Boston venues was likely due to the vagaries of the music business, a federal prison term for cocaine trafficking kept ’90s superstar Buju Banton off American stages. After he was deported, in 2019 Banton started appearing on Jamaican and European stages in shows that included his many hits — except for his notorious debut, the anti-gay “Boom Bye Bye,” which has thankfully remained off of his setlist. Thanks to some deft legal maneuvering, Banton is now able to appear in the US again. While some New York dates this summer were quick sellouts, Bujumania seems to have its limits — other dates on his fall arena tour were scrapped. As of this writing, there are thousands of unsold seats for his Garden show.

Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore With The Guilty Ones
August 23, 7:30 p.m., Boston City Winery
August 24, 3 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., Take Me To the River Festival, Fall River

The roots music dream team of California’s rockabilly poet Dave Alvin and mystic Texan Jimmie Dale Gilmore has released a new album, the aptly titled Texicali, that celebrates their many decades observing this country through a windshield. (Kudos to Alvin for mentioning Boston’s Bill Morrissey in his “Southwest Chief.”) At press time, available tickets at the City Winery were approaching single digits, but they’re also headlining a rather impressive — and free — day of music courtesy of the Narrows Center that also includes Cracker and Vanessa Collier.

The Big Show featuring Russell Thompkins Jr. and the New Stylistics
August 24
Chevalier Theater, Medford

A good 20 years ago, the noted soul music producer Paul Kyser produced a series of mammoth sweet soul harmony revues called The Big Show. These lavish shows featured a full string and horn section, played memorable nights at the Wang and Orpheum, and were recorded for a pair of DVDs. He’s revived the package concept for this evening, which will also serve as a tribute to Boston record man and radio host Skippy White. Two of the greatest living soul falsettos are on the bill: Original Stylistics lead Russell Thompkins Jr, and Eddie Holman of “Hey There, Lonely Girl” fame. The night is rounded out by a parade of legacy acts, Delfonics and Harold Melvin’s Blue Notes among them, which feature no original members, although a Temptations tribute act includes Paul Williams Jr., the son of one of the greatest of the Tempts.

We Make Noise Fest
August 24
Downtown Crossing, Boston
Noon to 8 p.m.

Although the purpose of this free daylong bash is to celebrate music made by women and gender-expansive artists, it also serves as an excellent reminder of how much great music is being made across different genres right here in Boston. Among the many artists appearing are hip-hop inspirations Oompa and Cakeswagg, R&B voice Lisa Bello, singer/songwriter (and organizer) Naomi Westwater, and Boston-via-Mexico-City sound architect Daniela Gómez. The event is co-presented by Mass NOW and the City of Boston.

Silverada with Jason Scott and the High Heat
August 27
The Sinclair, Cambridge

A friend recently confessed that they’d never checked out the stirring Texas troubadours Mike and the Moonpies. Why? Because the group’s name suggested that it was a novelty joke band. Perhaps others had the same reaction; the band has wisely changed its name to Silverada on the eve of their eponymous ninth album. What hasn’t changed is leader Mike Harmeier’s gift of breathing fresh energy into the traditional country themes of wistful longing and life on the road, and his bandmates’ stellar ability to bring things home musically. There are a lot of country bands in Texas, but few are as good as this one.

;

Mavis Staples
August 28
The Cabot, Beverly

The undisputed queen of gospel soul, Mavis Staples has been part of many memorable collaborations over the years. Her family’s Staple Singers, The Band’s Last Waltz, Bob Dylan, and, more recently, Jeff Tweedy — they all have had their art elevated by Mavis’s passion and presence. Given that kind of history, her time in Prince’s orbit is sometimes forgotten about, but the purple one produced two albums for Mavis that were released on his Paisley Park label. This summer Mavis revisited that time with a new Prince-inspired single, “Worthy,” that finds her thriving in a funky electro setting. She’s returning to the Cabot, the site of a 2017 triumph that Fuse writer Blake Maddux highly praised. Staples had “a voice untarnished by more than 60 years as a professional singer, a smart selection of songs from a fathomless well from which to choose, a loose and groovy band that was in perfect lock-step, and an effortless rapport with the enraptured audience.” As with that show, the band will be led by guitarist and past Fuse interview subject Rick Holstrom.

Rhythm and Roots Festival
Charlestown, RI
August 30 to September 1

Considering how many independent festivals have folded in recent years, it’s nothing short of a miracle that Rhythm and Roots is still going. Founder Chuck Wentworth had planned on ending the fest while he battled the medical ailments that led to his passing earlier this year. But a new team took over the Louisiana-flavored weekend. Among the headlines are Emmylou Harris, the Drive-By Truckers, Old Crow Medicine Show, and cajun/zydeco dance favorites like Nathan and the Zydeco Cha-Chas and the Pine Leaf Boys. Fest mainstay Steve Riley is appearing with Cajun Four, a combo of (otherwise) young hotshots led by his son and drummer, Burke Riley.

— Noah Schaffer

Visual Arts

Younes Rahmoun was born in 1975 in Tetouan, a city in the north of Morocco. At a time when many contemporary artists move continents away from their birthplaces in pursuing their careers, Rahmoun still lives and works in his hometown. His work, which leans toward drawing, installation, and multimedia, draws, it has been said, “from his own universe, its origins, beliefs, and experiences.”

The Smith College Art Museum’s exhibition Younes Rahmoun: Here, Now, which opens on August 30, is his first solo show in the United States. It sprawls over four locations in Massachusetts and across three continents, with “partner exhibitions” in Mulhouse, France, and Rabat, Morocco. The shows in and around Northampton include a miniretrospective at the SCMA, with a selection of sculptures, drawings, videos, and installations Rahmoun has made since the 1990s. Site-specific installations are located at the Lyman Plant House on the Smith College Campus; on the banks of Paradise Pond, “near the Japanese Garden” (Chajara-Tupelo, 2019) in Northampton; and at the Ada and Archibald MacLeish Field Station in West Whately. Although the four venues have slightly different public hours, they can, the museum says, all be visited on the same day. At the field station, visitors are warned to expect “approximately 2 miles … of walking on moderate, uneven terrain along a maintained woodland trail with trail markers” — a short journey compared to the one the artist has made for the show.

Further west, in Williamstown, the Williams College Museum of Art opens Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art on August 23. A “central figure in Los Angeles’s Queer and Chicano artistic circles,” Sandoval (1949-1995) made “subversive, yet playful artworks that explored the codes of gender and sexuality and continuously mined archetypes of masculinity in his work.” The “Butch Gardens” of the show’s title was the name of an L.A. gay bar in the 1970s that Sandoval frequented and adopted as a fictional institution and artistic persona.

The Williams show, the artist’s first museum retrospective, will include prints, drawings, mail art, xerography, and works by other queer, Latinx, and Latin American artists.

Still further out in the Berkshire Hills, MassMOCA’s Osman Khan: Road to Hybridabad opens August 25. Khan’s work, a kind of new tech Arabian Nights, draws on folktales and cultural lore from South Asia, the Middle East, and Muslim traditions. The show includes an animatronic djinn, drone-assisted flying carpets, a wall-destroying sound system/cannon, and an AI Scheherazade who, along with the rest of the show, tells tales of “identity, difference, and power.”

Back in the City of Boston, the ICA opens Tau Lewis: Spirit Level on August 29. The show is yet another first US solo exhibition: Toronto-born Lewis uses foraged materials like old clothing, fabrics, leather, photographs, driftwood, and seashells, often picked up near homes in Toronto, New York, and Negril, Jamaica. Her soft sculptures, quilts, masks, and assemblages relate to “forms of material inventiveness practiced by diasporic communities” and explore, she says, “the transference of energy and emotion that occurs when an object is made by hand.”

Opening the same day at the ICA, Boston City Hall, and the MASS Design Group gallery in Boston’s South End is The Gun Violence Memorial Project. Launched in 2019 at the Chicago Architecture Biennale, the project consists of four glass houses each built with 700 (the average number of gun deaths each week in the US) clear bricks designed to hold personal objects like baby shoes, photographs, and graduation tassels, contributed by the families of victims of gun violence. The installations, the ICA says, create “space to gather, remember, and act in light of the ongoing gun violence crisis.”

Bob Marley: One Love, biopic of the celebrated reggae musician, is the feature of the Museum of Fine Arts’ Sunset Cinema on August 20, 8 p.m. The free screening will take place outdoors on the MFA’s Huntington Avenue lawn. Presented in partnership with the Roxbury International Film Festival.

— Peter Walsh

---

Classical Music

Arabian Nights
Presented by Boston Landmarks Orchestra
August 21, 7 p.m.
DCR Hatch Memorial Shell, Boston

Christopher Wilkins and BLO wrap their summer season with a pair of favorites — the “Polovtsian Dances” from Alexander Borodin’s Prince Igor and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade — framing Gity Razaz’s Mother and Akram Haddad’s “Arabic Singers Medley.”

Ehnes and Bax in recital
Presented by Tanglewood Music Festival
August 21, 8 p.m.
Seiji Ozawa Hall, Lenox

The excellent violinist James Ehnes and his equally superb recital partner, pianist Alessio Bax, make their respective Tanglewood debuts in a recital of sonatas by Mozart, Brahms, and Beethoven.

Canellakis conducts BSO
Presented by Tanglewood Music Festival
August 24, 8 p.m.
Koussevitzky Shed, Lenox

One of the Boston Symphony’s finest guest conductors returns to lead a program anchored by one staple — Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2 — and featuring some less-regularly played hits by Beethoven, Brahms, Chausson, and Ravel. James Ehnes is on hand for Chausson’s Poème and Ravel’s Tzigane.

Bruckner and Beethoven
Presented by Tanglewood Music Festival
August 25, 2:30 p.m.
Koussevitzky Shed, Lenox

The BSO rounds out its summer season by marking 2024’s two big classical bicentenaries: that of the first performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and of the birth of Anton Bruckner. Bruckner’s music will be all but absent from the ensemble’s upcoming Symphony Hall season, but his brief Ecce sacerdos magnus allows the Tanglewood Festival Chorus to strut its stuff.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

---

Theater

COVID PROTOCOLS: Check with specific theaters.

The Plastic Bag Store Created, written, designed, and directed by Robin Frohardt. Music by Freddi Price. Produced by Pomegranate Arts. Presented by Mass MoCA and Williamstown Theatre Festival at Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA, through September 2.

Billed by Mass MoCA as “an immersive, multimedia experience by Brooklyn-based artist Robin Frohardt that uses humor, craft, and a critical lens to question our culture of consumption and convenience — specifically, the enduring effects of single-use plastics. The shelves are stocked with thousands of original hand-sculpted items — produce and meat, dry goods and toiletries, cakes and sushi rolls — all made from discarded single-use plastics in an endless cacophony of packaging.”

The Islanders by Carey Crim. Directed by Regge Life. Staged by Shakespeare & Company at the Tina Packer Playhouse, Lenox, through August 25.

A world premiere production of a script that was originally staged at Shakespeare & Company in 2022 as a reading in the Plays in Process series. The Shakes & Co summary of the plot: “Anna lives an insular life on an underpopulated island in the Great Lakes. She has few friends and likes it that way. Her quiet, controlled world is turned upside down by the arrival of a charming but secretive new neighbor, Dutch. For different reasons, Dutch and Anna have each retreated from mainstream society. Can their connection survive the revelations that must inevitably come with true intimacy?”

The Principle of Hope Circus, based on Ernst Bloch’s book The Principle of Hope. Written and performed by Bread & Puppet Theatre at 753 Heights Road, Glover, VT, through August 31.

The venerable political troupe’s summer show will be performed on Saturdays and Sundays through the end of the month. The festivities begin at 2 p.m. Saturday circuses will be followed by Gaza Grey Lady Cantata in the Paper Maché Cathedral; Sunday circuses will be followed by a pageant in the pageant field adjacent to the circus ring. Director Peter Schumann on the circus’s focus: “The imminent end of the capitalist empire, colonizing and genociding as the whole world looks on in horror, attacked by a flock of cranes migrating from Palestine to replace the shit inside the White House with genuine bird droppings. Frogs, caribou, dancing bears, bicycling chickens make up the rest of the cast.”

Westminster written and directed by Brenda Withers. Staged by Harbor Stage Company at 15 Kendrick Avenue, Wellfleet, through September 1.

A regional premiere. According to the Harbor Stage Company website: “When Pia’s old friend gifts her with a surprise rescue dog, the women and their partners face off over issues of nature, nurture, and accountability A new comedy that takes a bite out of good breeding and bad manners.” Cast includes Stacy Fischer, Jonathan Fielding, Robert Kropf, ​and Withers.

Flight of the Monarch by Jim Frangione. Directed by Judy Braha. Staged by Shakespeare & Company in association with the Great Barrington Public Theatre at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, Lenox, through August 25.

A regional premiere. According to the Shakespeare & Company website: “Two siblings, Sheila and Thomas, were both born and raised in a small New England fishing village, where they still live. This darkly comic play explores how siblings’ lives are intertwined, what we owe to the people who know and love us best, and how family members’ needs and desires may push the boundaries of what we can be expected to do for others.”

Three Tall Persian Women by Awni Abdi-Bahri. Directed by Dalia Ashurina. Produced by Shakespeare & Co at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, Lenox, August 30 through October 13.

A world premiere: this play, according to Shakespeare and Company, is “about generational differences, grief, control, and learning to let go; but more than anything, it’s a love story to immigrant mothers. Golnar, a punkish Iranian-American millennial, returns home to her mother Nasrin for the anniversary of her father’s passing and walks into hoards of family memorabilia that her grandmother Mamani has moved in with her.”

Wish You Were Here by Sanaz Toossi. Directed by Melory Mirashrafi. Staged by Gloucester Stage at 267 East Main Street, Gloucester, through August 25.

From the Gloucester Stage website on this script by a Pulitzer prize-winning playwright: “A circle of tight-knit girlfriends gather to plan weddings, trade dirty jokes, and try to hang onto a sense of normalcy as protests are breaking out all around them. Centered on a suburb of Iran from 1978 to 1991, each of the friends must choose whether to join a wave of emigration or to remain where the future is uncertain.” Arts Fuse review

Conscience by Joe DiPetro. Directed by Lisa DiFranza. Staged by Portland Stage at 25A Forest Avenue, Portland, ME, September 25 through October 13.

A historical drama that has some direct links with what is happening today. The script takes us back, according to the Portland Stage, “to a time when Maine senators were the heart of the United States Senate. This is the story of Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a trailblazer of Maine and national politics…. the play is a deep look into her gripping political rivalry with Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy. As the two begin to form a tense friendship that becomes an unlikely alliance, Senator Smith must choose between her political success, (including a potential Vice Presidential nomination), and her own conscience, culminating in the delivery of a potentially disastrous speech on the Senate floor, her Declaration of Conscience.”

The Queen of Versailles, Stephen Schwartz, music and lyrics. Lindsey Ferrentino, book. Directed by Michael Arden. Presented by Broadway in Boston at the Emerson Colonial Theatre, Boston, through August 25.

A new musical starring Kristin Chenoweth that is headed for Broadway. According to the Emerson Colonial website: “From computer engineer to Mrs. Florida to billionairess, Jackie Siegel sees herself as the embodiment of the American Dream. Now, as the wife of David ‘The Timeshare King’ Siegel and mother of their eight children, she invites us to behold their most grandiose venture yet: building the largest private home in America — a $100 million house in Orlando, Florida, big enough for her dreams and inspired by the Palace of Versailles. But with the Great Recession of 2008 looming, Jackie and David’s dreams begin to crumble, along with their lavish lifestyle.” The show purports to explore “the true cost of fame, fortune, and family.” Arts Fuse review

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Directed by Diane Paulus. Choreography and movement direction by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Staged by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center in Harvard Square, Cambridge, August 31 through October 6.

Rudy Pankow and Emilia Suárez lead the cast in A.R.T.’s “heart-pounding” (their words) new production of the Bard’s oft-oft-oft-oft produced romance. W.H. Auden on the tragedy’s view of love in his Lectures on Shakespeare: “Romeo and Juliet don’t know each other, but when one dies, the other can’t go on living. Behind their passionate suicides, as well as their reactions to Romeo’s banishment, is finally a lack of feeling, a fear that the relationship cannot be sustained and that, out of pride, it should be stopped now, in death. If they became a married couple, there will be no more wonderful speeches — and a good thing, too. Then the real tasks of life will begin, with which art has surprisingly little to do. Romeo and Juliet are just idolaters of each other, which is what leads to their suicides.”

The Arsonists by Max Frisch. Translated by Alistair Beaton. Directed by Bob Scanlan. Staged by Praxis Stage at Chelsea Theatre Works, 189 Winnisimmet Street, Chelsea, September 5 through 15.

A very appropriate time for Swiss dramatist Max Frisch’s tragicomic parable about what happens when denying reality becomes self-destructive. According to Praxis Stage’s PR: “What would make you hand over a book of matches to someone who you have the creeping suspicion would turn your home to ashes?… Written in the late ’50s, previously translated as The Firebugs or The Fire Raisers, the play depicts the goings-on within businessman Mr. Biedermann’s home in a town that is facing a spate of arson attacks on its homes and businesses.” Also, be “sure to come early for the cabaret atmosphere of live music and an MC with stories to tell before curtain.”

— Bill Marx

---

Jazz

New England Jazz Collaborative
August 18, 11:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Georges Island, Boston Harbor
FREE

The nonprofit New England Jazz Collaborative has put together this generous afternoon free program, which includes complimentary ferry tickets to the venue, Georges Island in Boston Harbor. The featured band will be guitarist-composer Eric Hofbauer’s formidable quartet, with saxophonist Noah Preminger, bassist Sean Farias, and drummer Francisco Mela, “plus special guests in impromptu solo and duo performances in scenic locations around the island.” The ferry departs from Long Wharf North at noon. You must register in advance here.

JazzBoston Jazz Jam
August 23 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Oggi, Cambridge
FREE

JazzBoston has announced that it will be resuming its every-other-Friday jam sessions at the Oggi restaurant, in the Smith Campus Center in Harvard Square. Saxophonist and flutist Ken Field, JazzBoston’s president, will lead the house band in these early-evening sessions — pianist Joey Thieman, bassist Josiah Reibstein, and drummer Phil Neighbors. All are welcome to join the band, and it’s free.

Medford Trad Jazz Festival
August 24 and 25, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Medford Condon Shell, Medford
FREE

The second annual free two-day Medford Trad Jazz Festival features nine New England-based bands, playing a mix of “ragtime, hot jazz, stride, New Orleans, and other early jazz styles.” Saturday’s bands are the Rubin Brothers, the Catnip Junkies, the Wolverine Jazz Band, and Annie and the Fur Trappers. Sunday’s lineup: the Seacoast Revival, 2-bit Jazz Band, the Riverboat Stompers, the Smack Dabs, and Josiah Reibstein and the Hubtones. The Saturday events will include an open jam session at the Donut Villa Restaurant, 5:30–8 p.m.

Seventh Sun with Edo G
August 29 at 6 p.m.
Long Live Roxbury Brewery & Taproom, Boston
FREE

The Boston saxophonist and composer Seventh Sun returns to the Long Live Roxbury Brewery and Taproom with his jazz-rock-rap-funk fusion outfit of the same name, following the June 27 release of a debut album. This time Seventh Sun is joined by an esteemed elder of Boston rappers, Edo G. The band also includes singer Khaleb Roberts, guitarist Chris Hanford II, keyboardist Ian Michael, bassist Joav Ganor, and drummer Chris Napoleon. Seventh Sun has a big, burnished sound on tenor, with ideas to spare, and can incorporate rap into acoustic jazz arrangements with nary a wrinkle as well as going full-fusion electric. As with all these Thursday evening shows at Long Live Roxbury, it’s free.

Tuba Skinny
September 1 at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Shalin Liu Performance Center, Rockport, MA

The remarkable young (i.e., millennial) trad-jazz ensemble Tuba Skinny were born as buskers on New Orleans’ Royal Street over a decade ago and have since become a popular club and concert act in town as well as an international touring band. Led by my favorite living cornet player, Shaye Cohn, and boasting a book of deep-cut early-jazz and blues (Jelly Roll Morton, Joe “King” Oliver, Jabbo Smith, early Ellington, Clarence Williams, Memphis Minnie, Blind Boy Fuller, etc.) as well as delightful originals, the band has been making annual stops at Rockport Music’s Shalin Liu Performance Center for the past few years. The shows tend to sell out, so don’t sit on this.

Arturo Sandoval
Sept. 6 and 7 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

The powerhouse Cuban-born trumpeter, pianist, and composer Arturo Sandoval opens the Scullers fall season with four shows over two nights. The band will include saxophonist Mike Tucker, guitarist William Brahm, pianist May Haymer, bassist Luca Alemanno, percussionist Samuel Torres, and drummer Daniel Feldman.

— Jon Garelick

---

Author Events

Ken Liu – Havard Book Store
Laozi’s Dao De Jing: A New Interpretation for a Transformative Time
August 20 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Laozi’s Dao De Jing was written around 400 BC by a compassionate soul in a world torn by hatred and ambition, dominated by those that yearned for apocalyptic confrontations and prized ideology over experience. By speaking out against the cleverness of elites and the arrogance of the learned, Laozi upheld the wisdom of the concrete, the humble, the quotidian, the everyday individual dismissed by the great powers of the world.

“Earthy, playful, and defiant, Laozi’s words gave solace to souls back then, and offer comfort today. Now, this beautifully designed new edition serves as both an accessible new translation of an ancient Chinese classic and a fascinating account of renowned novelist Ken Liu’s transformative experience while wrestling with the classic text.”

Hasia R. Diner with Edward T. O’Donnell- Brookline Booksmith
Opening Doors
August 20 from 7- 8 p.m.
Free or $30 with in-store pickup

“Popular belief holds that the various ethnic groups that emigrated to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century regarded one another with open hostility, fiercely competing for limited resources and even coming to blows in the crowded neighborhoods of major cities. One of the most enduring stereotypes is that of rabidly anti-Semitic Irish Catholics, like Father Charles Coughlin of Boston and the sensationalized Gangs of New York trope of Irish street thugs attacking defenseless Jewish immigrants.

In Opening Doors, Hasia R. Diner, one of the world’s preeminent historians of immigration, tells a very different story; far from confrontational, the prevailing relationships between Jewish and Irish Americans were overwhelmingly cooperative, and the two groups were dependent upon one another to secure stable and upwardly mobile lives in their new home.

“The Irish had emigrated to American cities en masse a generation before the first major wave of Jewish immigrants arrived, and had already entrenched themselves in positions of influence in urban governments, public education, and the labor movement. Jewish newcomers recognized the value of aligning themselves with another group of religious outsiders who were able to stand up and demand rights and respect despite widespread discrimination from the Protestant establishment, and the Irish realized that they could protect their political influence by mentoring their new neighbors in the intricacies of American life.”

Jesselyn Cook at Harvard Book Store
The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family
August 22 at 7 p.m.
Free

“In The Quiet Damage, celebrated reporter Jesselyn Cook paints a harrowing portrait of the vulnerabilities that have left so many of us susceptible to outrageous falsehoods promising order, purpose, and control.

“Braided throughout are the stories of five American families: an elderly couple whose fifty-year romance takes a heartbreaking turn; millennial sisters of color who grew up in dire poverty  —one to become a BLM activist, the other, a hardcore conspiracy theorist pulling her little boy down the rabbit hole with her; a Bay Area hippie-type and her business-executive fiancé, who must decide whether to stay with her as she turns into a stranger before his eyes; evangelical parents whose simple life in a sleepy suburb spirals into delusion-fueled chaos; and a rural mother-son duo who, after carrying each other through unspeakable tragedy, stop speaking at all as ludicrous untruths shatter a bond long thought unbreakable.”

Kayla Cottingham in conversation with Sara Farizan – Porter Square Books
Practical Rules for Cursed Witches
August 28 at 7 p.m.
Free

“From the New York Times bestselling author of My Dearest Darkest comes a cozy fantasy romance about a teen witch who must complete her magical training by breaking a powerful family’s curse. But her own affliction — to never find true love — gets in the way when she falls for the girl she’s trying to save.”

Michael Andor Brodeur with Catherine Tung -Brookline Booksmith
Swole: The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscle 
August 29 from 7 to 9 p.m.
Free or $29 with in-store pickup

“Michael Brodeur is a Gen-X gay writer with a passion for bodybuilding and an insatiable curiosity about masculinity — a concept in which many men are currently struggling to find their place. In our current moment, where ‘manfluencers’ on TikTok tease their audiences with their latest videos, where right-wing men espouse the importance of being ‘alpha,’ as toxic masculinity and the patriarchy are being rightfully criticized, the nature of masculinity has become murkier than ever.

“In excavating this complex topic, Brodeur uses the male body as his guide: its role in cultures from the gymnasia of ancient Greece to Walt Whitman’s essays on manly health, from the rise of Muscular Christianity in 19th-century America to the swollen superheroes and Arnold Schwarzeneggers of Brodeur’s childhood. Interweaving history, cultural criticism, memoir, and reportage, laced with an irrepressible wit, Swole takes us into the unique culture centered around men’s bodies, probing its limitations and the promise beyond: how men can love themselves while rejecting the aggression, objectification, and misogyny that have for so long accompanied the quest to become swole.”

Grown Up Book Fair at Aeronaut Brewing, featuring Maia Lee Chin – Porter Square Books
Et Cetera
August 31 from 2 to 6 p.m.
Free

“Remember getting the book fair flyers at school? Seeing if the next book in your favorite series was coming out, comparing lists with your friends, checking off the books you want, and planning how you’ll totally convince your parents that yes, in fact, you definitely need all those books because don’t they want you to get into a good college or whatever? And then the thrill when the books arrive and you see a pencil set you absolutely need and stickers for your trapper keeper and one of those friendship necklaces? Think you would never get to experience that rush again? Think again!

“Our Grown Up Book Fair returns to Aeronaut Brewing on August 31 from 2 to 6 p.m, and will feature a pop-up signing with author Maia Lee Chin for the launch of her book Et Cetera. Maia will sign copies of her book, and anyone who preorders a copy will receive a coupon for $5 off a purchase of $25 or more at the book fair. Preorder your copy here!

“The book fair will also feature a great selection of Greek/Roman-inspired books specifically selected for the day as well as everything you love about school book fairs, including all of those fun gift-y items, like stickers, socks, mood rings, and more! Oh, and you can drink beer while you shop!”

Jenny Rosenstrach – Porter Square Books
The Weekday Vegetarians Get Simple: Strategies and So-Good Recipes to Suit Every Craving and Mood: A Cookbook
September 3 at 7 p.m.
Free

“100 accessible, stress-free recipes to make plant-forward cooking more streamlined than ever, from the bestselling author of The Weekday Vegetarians. Jenny Rosenstrach’s bestselling cookbook introduced home cooks to the idea that you don’t have to be a vegetarian to eat like one. In The Weekday Vegetarians Get Simple: Strategies and So-Good Recipes to Suit Every Craving and Mood: A Cookbook, she shares 100 new recipes that make eating meat-free even easier, even tastier.

“Jenny focuses on solutions to common misconceptions and roadblocks — like ‘Vegetarian cooking is so complicated!,’ which she counters with the skillet and sheet pan dinner chapter and recipes like a cozy Sheet Pan Gnocchi with Butternut Squash. Or, ‘Vegetarian dinners just aren’t filling!,’ which became the comfort food chapter, rich with recipes for hearty dishes like a Golden Greens Pie and Mushroom-Chard Bread Pudding. And, ‘I don’t want to eat pasta every single night!’ as a driver for showcasing dinner-worthy bowls like Crispy Eggplant Bowls with Pistachios & Basil and Farro Piccolo with Crispy Mushrooms & Parm.”

Anthony Abraham Jack at Harvard Book Store
Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price
September 5 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Elite colleges are boasting unprecedented numbers with respect to diversity, with some schools admitting their first majority-minority classes. But when the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial unrest gripped the world, schools scrambled to figure out what to do with the diversity they so fervently recruited. And disadvantaged students suffered. Class Dismissed exposes how woefully unprepared colleges were to support these students, and shares their stories of how they were left to weather the storm alone and unprotected.

“Drawing on the firsthand experiences of students from all walks of life at elite colleges, Anthony Abraham Jack reveals the hidden and unequal worlds students navigated before and during the pandemic closures and upon their return to campus. He shows how COVID-19 exacerbated the very inequalities that universities ignored or failed to address long before campus closures. Jack examines how students dealt with the disruptions caused by the pandemic, how they navigated social unrest, and how they grappled with problems of race both on campus and off.”

— Matt Hanson