Compiled by Arts Fuse Editor

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
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found
January 10 – 14
Brattle Theater

After his death, more than 60,000 of Ernest Cole’s 35mm film negatives were discovered in a bank vault in Stockholm, Sweden. Born in Pretoria, Cole lived through the casual horrors of white rule in South Africa and chronicled it from behind the lens of his camera, which he started using at a young age, photographing life under apartheid while freelancing for various newspapers. He smuggled the evidence out of the country when he fooled the government into believing he was mixed race instead of a native Black African. Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) directs with Cole voiced by LaKeith Stanfield.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’État
January 10 – 14
Brattle Theater

The film centers around the murder in 1961 of Patrice Lumumba, whose tenure as the first prime minister of the Republic of Congo lasted 3 months before he was assassinated. Powerful interests like the United States and Belgium swooped in to exploit the country’s mineral deposits. Belgian film director Johan Grimonprez weaves the music and voices of Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Abbey Lincoln, Max Roach, and Louis Armstrong together with news clips, speeches, commercials, historical footage, readings, and first-person accounts to create a unique essay on colonial exploitation that is as maddening as it is entertaining. One of the best documentaries of 2024. Arts Fuse review

A Traveler’s Needs
January 16 at 7 p.m.
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

In the third collaboration between Hong Sang-soo and Isabelle Huppert (In Another Country and Claire’s Camera), Huppert plays Iris, a woman who finds herself adrift in Seoul. Without any means to make ends meet, she turns to teaching French via a peculiar method. Through a series of encounters, we grow to know more about Iris and her situation — but mysteries surrounding her circumstances only deepen. “You can spend the entire film wondering if you have properly understood the joke, or if it is a joke. But it is hypnotically watchable.” (The Guardian)

(Some of) The Best of 2024
January 16 – January 30
Brattle Theater

The Brattle’s annual post-season redux of films for the past year is packed with some remarkable offerings. Many were on the list of Best Films from Arts Fuse critics.

A Complete Schedule is here.

Lose Your Mother: A Film Shorts Program from BlackStar Projects
January 16, 7 p.m.
Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston

BlackStar Projects presents an evening of short films exploring ancestral connections through time and space. Food, music, technology, and more work to define our culture, and our culture is what we leave behind. Featuring experimental films by Charlotte Brathwaite, Curtis Essel, Jenn Nkiru, Joseph Douglas Elmhirst, and Luis Arnías. Free / no tickets required Post-screening discussion with filmmaker Luis Arnías and Maori Karmael Holmes, Chief Executive and Artistic Officer of BlackStar.

Eno
January 17 at 7 p.m; January 18 and 19 at 3 p.m.
Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston

This is a career-spanning documentary that innovatively examines Eno’s creative strategies and his lifelong search for the meaning of music. Utilizing a generative software system that director Gary Hustwit (Helvetica, Rams) developed with artist Brendan Dawes, Eno draws on a documentary process that produces infinite variations — each with its own archival material, interviews, backstage footage, oblique strategies, and musical numbers.There are millions of possible variations, ushering in a groundbreaking approach to storytelling. No audience ever sees the same film twice. It is a viewing experience that resonates with Eno’s own artistic practice, his use of technology to compose music, and the mercurial essence of the imagination. The film is as much about the creative process as it is a biography. Arts Fuse review

Belmont Family Festival
January 18 from 10:30 a.m.
West Newton Cinema at 1296 Washington Street

Film programs include:

Pet Projects: Playful pets and wild creatures populate this wordless collection of funny and creative international short films (10:30 a.m.)

Elli and the Ghostly Ghost Train (Canada): In a futuristic world where ghosts and the abnormal are no longer allowed in society, homeless little ghost Elli goes in search of her missing uncle (11:45 a.m.)

Dounia: The Great White North (shown with Skipping Rope from Taiwan): Dounia and her grandparents experience life in Canada after fleeing the war in Syria, leaving her father in Aleppo. (1:30 p.m.)

Winners (Germany): Mona, an 11-year-old Kurdish girl who fled Syria with her family, now lives in a Berlin must overcome obstacles on and off the field to discover the true meaning of teamwork. (3 p.m.)

Sunday, January 19 at the Regent Theatre in Arlington

Tiddler (UK): Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso, Game of Thrones) narrates the newest adaptation of a Julia Donaldson (The Gruffalo) picture book. (10:30 a.m.)

Robin and the Hoods (UK): For 11-year-old Robin and her loyal crew, 'The Hoods,” their neighborhood’s patch of overgrown woods is a magical “Kingdom” where they engage in fantasy games with a rival gang (11:45 a.m.)

Hitpig! (UK, Canada, US): A pig-for-hire saves an elephant from a cruel circus owner in this animated film based on an original idea by Bloom County cartoonist Berkeley Breathed. Post film Q&A with year’s Artist-in-Residence, Davis Feiss. (1:45 p.m)

Tartini’s Key (Slovenia): Three children embark on an exhilarating treasure hunt tied to the medieval town’s mysteries to find a collection of letters exchanged between legendary violinist Tartini and iconic violin maker Stradivarius. (4 p.m.)

Pick of the Week

Say Nothing, streaming on FX and Hulu

Patrick Radden Keefe’s 2019 book Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland has been brilliantly adapted into a 9-part mini-series. A brilliantly researched narrative, the non-fiction study shifts between personal histories and the larger social and political context of The Troubles. While it cruises along as a thriller, the story also offers an illuminating perspective on the history and the terrible violence and assassinations that took place in Northern Ireland during the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. The mini-series begins with the kidnaping and disappearance of Jean McConville, the mother of 10 children accused of being a ‘snitch’ for the British. It then follows Dolours and Marian Price, two sisters recruited by Gerry Adams and the IRA as soldiers for the resistance. To the British, they were terrorists. Weaving together a shocking historical narrative is an older Dolours speaking to the Belfast oral history project at Boston College. It features a terrific cast of Irish actors led by Lola Petticrew (also in Tuesday with Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Hazel Doupe as the Price sisters. The series successfully turns a page-turner of a true crime tome into a binge-worthy cable series. Subtitled.

— Tim Jackson

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Visual Arts

Tara Sellios’ large-format photographs can evoke the strange assemblages in the candle-lit side chapels of European cathedrals, the slightly macabre clutter of Dutch Golden Age still lifes, with their slabs of beef, dead fish, lady bugs, and fading flowers, or a dusty, Victorian, dome-covered arrangement of dried vegetation and stuffed birds on a marble parlor mantelpiece. The Boston artist’s exhibition Tara Sellios / Ask Now the Beasts, opening at the Fitchburg Art Museum on January 18, highlights, the museum says, this “beauty of the grotesque.” Sellios’ still life vignettes of organic material, like animal bones, insect specimens, and dried flowers, are captured using a large format camera and printed out on a monumental scale. The show’s title derives from the Book of Job, “exploring the concepts of the harvest and the apocalypse.”

Do you sometimes feel you are little more than a social media algorithm? Irreplaceable You: Personhood and Dignity in Art, 1980s to Now, on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art starting January 16, suggests a way out of the digital boxes of the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle. The show, says the museum, “touches on subjects from the recent and not-so-recent past, looking at how art helps build our capacity for empathy” even when our digitized environment does not.

While we wait for science or politics to figure out how to fully recycle the massive amount of trash that is getting dumped on our planet, the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton suggests some “messy fun” making new Franken-toys from old plastic. “Professor Gizmo: Cork Creatures and Franken-Toys” will unfold on Sunday, January 19, from 2:00 pm-4:00 pm. Offered in conjunction with the museum’s exhibition Waste Not, Want Not: Craft in the Anthropocene, the workshop will be all about recycling and reusing materials to create something never seen before. Open to all ages, under 16 must be accompanied by an adult. Free but on-line registration required, limited to the first 40 participants.

Native American artist Cara Romero’s vivid photographs mix stereotypes, traditional and contemporary symbols, original costumes, and striking environments from underwater to an oil field to outer space to create images that “celebrate the multiplicity, beauty, and resilience of Native American and Indigenous experiences.” Romero’s first major solo exhibition, featuring the last two decades of her work, opens at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth on January 18. The title, Cara Romero: Panupunuwugal (Living Light), the artist explains, refers to a word meaning “the spirit of light” in her tribal Chemehuevi language, which, as part of the Uto-Aztecan language family, is spoken from the Great Basin to central Mexico.

Permanence is not necessarily a feature of traditional Indigenous artifacts, which, usually made from environmental materials, are often meant to fade back into nature, like all living things. This, and the complex history of the interaction of Native and European-American societies, can present a special set of problems for art museums that collect, steward, and preserve Native American art. In conjunction with its exhibition, Kay WalkingStick/ Hudson River School, the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy is presenting a Virtual Talk: Caring for Native American Collections on a museum’s role and responsibilities on January 14 at 3 p.m.. The Zoom-based presentation is free of charge, but registration is required.

Two New England Museums are planning day-long celebrations of the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on January 20. In Salem, the Peabody-Essex Museum’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration runs from 11 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. and includes art by David Boxer and Alison Saar and other works “that examine social justice, identity and freedom across the generations” as well as a series of “pour art” workshops with African-American artist Rahim Gray. Same-day admissions tickets are required for the workshops; limited spaces are available.

In Boston, at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Dr. Martin King, Jr. Day of Service 2025 runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and offers free admission “honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King through various art forms that ask us to reflect on why we still dream.”

— Peter Walsh

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Theater

COVID PROTOCOLS: Check with specific theaters.

Every Brilliant Thing / Cada Cosa Maravillosa by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe. Directed by Danielle Fauteux Jacques. Staged by the Apollinaire Theater Company at the Chelsea Theater Works, 189 Winnisimmet St., Chelsea, through January 19.

Apollinaire Theater Company says this is “a play about depression and the lengths we go to for those we love. It will be performed on alternating nights by two actors and in two languages. Cristhian Mancinas-García will be performing the show in both languages. Parker Jennings will be bringing her own spin to the story for six English language performances.” According to Mancinas-García, “this play is a brilliant (pun intended) exploration of a side of the human condition that people often avoid talking about, and shows us that there is hope even in the darkest hours. I’m excited to present a play to our Spanish speaking community that doesn’t dwell on the myriad specific issues we encounter as immigrants. Perhaps by sharing a story that’s about just being human, we can find some unity in the divisive times we are living through.”

Whispering to Dostoyevsky: A Love Story, written and directed by Richard McElvain. Staged by Players’ Ring Theater at 105 Marcy St, Portsmouth, NH, through January 19

The lowdown from the theater’s website on this two-person drama: “When his unscrupulous publisher had a gun to his head to complete a book in a month, Fyodor Dostoevsky reached out to a school that taught a new science called Stenography. The woman he hired, Anna, would soon become his indispensable collaborator, his lover, his wife and eventually his publisher. Together they survived his bouts with epilepsy, gambling addiction, dreadful debt, and the death of two children. Anna truly became ‘the architect of his life,’ and throughout it all, they remained hopelessly in love as Dostoevsky climbed to become one of the greatest novelists of all time.”

Girls & Boys by Dennis Kelly. Directed by Rachel Walshe. Staged by the Gamm Theatre at 1245 Jefferson Blvd., Warwick, Rhode Island, through January 19.

Here is what the Gamm is telling us about this play: “When a woman meets the man of her dreams, their whirlwind romance seems destined for greatness. Their life is filled with passion, success, and the joys of parenthood. But as ambitions grow and cracks begin to show, their idyllic world spirals into the unexpected.”

The Doctor, an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi, written and directed by Robert Icke. An Internationaal Theater Amsterdam production, streaming with English subtitles on January 9 & 16.

Last chances to stream a highly praised and much awarded production that ran for four years in Amsterdam. The ITA setup for this problem play: “A girl lies dying in a hospital room. A priest wants to enter, but her doctor won’t allow it. This is also how Professor Bernhardi from 1912 by the Austrian playwright and general practitioner Arthur Schnitzler begins, on which The Doctor is based. In Robert Icke’s adaptation, the Jewish doctor Bernhardi has become a woman, Ruth Wolff. The incident brings her into such heavy external fire that the survival of her hospital is threatened. At the same time, a colleague takes advantage of the case to bend an internal appointment procedure to his will.”

Crumbs From the Table of Joy , by Lynn Nottage. Directed by Tasia A. Jones. Staged by the Lyric Stage at 140 Clarendon St, Boston, January 10 through February 2.

Here is how the Lyric Stage sums up Lynn Nottage’s 1995 drama: “Adrift in Brooklyn during the racially charged 1950s, two teenage sisters Ernestine and Ermina live with their devout, recently widowed father, Godfrey, who follows the teachings of spiritual leader Father Divine. Almost to the point of obsession, Godfrey’s staunch beliefs cause his girls to heal their wounds with Hollywood films, daydreams, and lots of cookies. Their humdrum lives are turned upside down with the arrival of their vivacious Aunt Lily, who brings with her a few bad habits and a taste for rebellion. When Godfrey makes a shocking decision that involves a German woman named Gerte, can the family find new meaning in what makes a home?” The NYTimes review of a 2023 revival describes it a “bittersweet memory play”.

Ain’t No Mo by Jordan E. Cooper. Directed by Dawn M. Simmons. A co-production of Front Porch Collective and Speakeasy Stage Company at the Roberts Studio Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, January 10 through February 8.

The script was a 2023 Tony Nominee for Best Play. The Guardian review describes the script, which is made up of interwoven vignettes, as an “absurdist satire about race in America.”

OVO, written and performed by Cirque du Soleil. Touring production at the DCU Center, 50 Foster St, Worcester, January 9 through 12

The Cirque du Soleil’s summary of its ecological extravaganza: “OVO is a headlong rush into a colourful ecosystem teeming with life, where insects work, eat, crawl, flutter, play, fight and look for love in a non-stop riot of energy and movement. The insects’ home is a world of biodiversity and beauty filled with noisy action and moments of quiet emotion. When a mysterious egg appears in their midst, the insects are awestruck and intensely curious about this iconic object that represents the enigma and cycles of their lives.

It’s love at first sight when a gawky, quirky insect arrives in this bustling community and a fabulous ladybug catches his eye – and the feeling is mutual.

The name OVO means ‘egg’ in Portuguese. This timeless symbol of the life cycle and birth of numerous insects represents the underlying thread of the show. Graphically, OVO hides an insect in its name: The two ‘Os’ represent the eyes while the letter ‘V forms the nose.'”

Elephant & Piggie’s “We Are in a Play!” Book and Lyrics by Mo Willems. Music by Deb Wicks La Puma. Staged by the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, in partnership with UMass Lowell and Middlesex Community College at the Richard & Nancy Donahue Family Academic Arts Center at Middlesex Community College, 240 Central Street, Lowell, January 8 through 24. (School performances Jan 8 through 24. Public performance on Jan 25).

MRT’s description of this children’s show: “A elephant named Gerald, and a pig named Piggie are best, best, “bestus” (a word Gerald and Piggie made up that means “very best”) friends, but Gerald worries something could go wrong to end their friendship. Piggie is not worried at all. She’s even happier and more excited than usual. She and Gerald have just been invited to a party hosted by the Squirrelles, three singing squirrels who love to have a good time. And so begins a day where anything is possible. These two pals and their devotion to each other will remind you of how good it feels to celebrate friendship. This performance is recommended for ages 3 and older.”

Library Lion by Eli Bijaoui. Music by Yoni Rechter. Based on the English translation by M. Rodgers and A. Berris. Directed by Ran Bechor. Staged by Adam Theater at the Calderwood Pavilion, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, January 10 through 19.

All spots for the inaugural staging of this site-specific play at Boston Public Library were taken in September. So it is good news that this rousing adaptation of the children’s book Library Lion is back. “There’s a new kid on the block and he’s got remarkably expressive blue eyes, a golden mane of hair, four paws, and a long tail that’s great for dusting off books,” wrote Arts Fuse critic Joan Lancourt of the initial production. “He’s a larger-than-life-sized puppet, and he’s very definitely the star of this children’s play, which is being staged by Adam Theater, an equally new and welcome addition to the Boston theater scene.”

The plot: “In the library, there are books. But also very clear rules: no shouting, no running, no eating or drinking. But what happens when one day a lion enters the library? He doesn’t roar or rampage, and contrary to expectations, he peacefully joins storytelling hour. Not everyone is okay with this, after all, he doesn’t abide by the rules. (A lion? In the library? – that’s completely out of order!) It will be revealed that rules are important to follow, but not only that: That it is also very important, here and there, to dust off some of these rule books as well.” Arts Fuse review

— Bill Marx

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World Music and Roots

BMCFest: Boston Celtic Music Fest
January 16-19

BMCFest is locally focused when it comes to talent, but it takes a very expansive view of Celtic music. This year includes concerts at Club Passim, workshops, a Ceilidh dance that draws on Scottish and Cape Breton traditions, and a Saturday afternoon Davis Square club crawl with non-stop music at the Crystal Ballroom, Rockwell, and the front and back rooms of the Burren. Traditional Irish stars Dervish headline a Saturday night concert at the Somerville Theater, a presentation that will also include guest spots from local greats and a tribute to the late WGBH radio host, concert producer, and tireless Celtic music advocate Brian O’Donovan.

Yacouba Sissoko & Mike Block 
January 17, 7:30 p.m.
Shalin Liu Performance Center, Rockport

The ultra-versatile cellist Mike Block has been curating the Shalin Liu’s Global Journeys Series, a run of surprising and often first-time collaborations. For this edition he’ll be performing as a duo with Yacouba Sissoko, a master of the kora who hails from a long line of Malian griots. Sissoko has plenty of experience with such cross-cultural and improvisatory settings, having played with everyone from Harry Belafonte to jazz violinist Regina Carter.

— Noah Schaffer

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Jazz

Soggy Po Boys
January 9 at 7 p.m.
Shalin Liu Performance Center, Rockport, Mass.

The Maine-born New Orleans-tainted septet hits Rockport Music and maybe even gets the swing-dancers moving in the venue’s aisles.

Tierney Sutton & Tamir Hendleman
January 11 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

The endlessly inventive singer Tierney Sutton, usually heard in small ensembles, here teams up with longtime collaborator (and widely esteemed arranger) Tamir Hendelman on piano. It will be fun to hear what Sutton and Hendelman pick from her wide-ranging book of material. (The sharp title track from her last disc, with the San Gabriel Seven, “Good People,” was especially spot on, lyrically and musically.)

Miguel Zenón and Luís Perdomo
January 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Groton Hill Music Center, Groton, Mass.

Master saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón and his longtime collaborator, pianist Luís Perdomo, offer a concert presentation based on their two-volume, Grammy-winning exploration El Arte del Bolero.

Dan Rosenthal/Eric Hofbauer Quartet
January 11 at 8 p.m.
Peabody Hall, Parish of All Saints, Dorchester, Mass.

Trumpeter Dan Rosenthal and guitarist Eric Hofbauer have an association that goes back at least to their very tasty 2018 quartet record, “Human Resources,” as well as being members of Charlie Kohlhase’s Explorers Club and a gazillion other bands between them as both leaders and sidemen. For this show, Rosenthal and Hofbauer reconvene that quartet format, with the album’s Austin McMahon on drums and a bassist TBA.

Point01 Percent
January 14 at 7:30 p.m.
Lilypad, Cambridge, Mass.

The promising brew cooked up by the Point01 Percent crew this month features, first, a quartet with saxophonist/flutist Anna Webber, pianist Anthony Coleman, bassist Bruno Råberg, and drummer Eric Rosenthal, followed by Construction Party, with saxophonist Dave Rempis, trumpeter Forbes Graham, pianist Pandelis Karayorgis, bassist Nathan McBride, and drummer Luther Gray.

Dave Bryant “Third Thursday”
January 16 at 8 p.m.
Harvard-Epworth Church, Cambridge, Mass.

Keyboardist-composer Dave Bryant puts together something different for each of his Third Thursday shows — in this case a 25^th anniversary celebration of the experimental ensemble Trio Ex Nihilo, with leader Jeff Song on cello, Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet, and Curt Newton on drums. For this show they’ll be joined by Bryant and saxophonist Tom Hall

Avery Sharpe
January 18 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

The distinguished bassist and composer Avery Sharpe (the longtime bass anchor in McCoy Tyner’s bands) celebrates his most recent album, I Am My Neighbors Keeper, with that album’s Double Quartet ensemble: pianist Zaccai Curtis; drummer Yoron Israel; Tony Vacca on balafon and African percussion; violinists Laura Arpianen and Kaila Graef; violist Gregory Diehl; and cellist Dave Haughey.

Robert Pinsky
January 18 at 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Boston

Robert Pinsky, former US Poet Laureate, has described himself as a frustrated jazz musician (he pursued jazz saxophone seriously in his youth), and his PoemJazz project has perhaps allayed that frustration. And it’s the real deal. Declaiming his verse in the company of a top-flight jazz band, Pinsky never fails to take this ship airborne. In this case he’s joined by pianist and music director Laurence Hobgood, saxophonist, flutist, and vocalist Stan Strickland, cellist Catherine Bent, bassist John Lockwood, and Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson, for a show Pinsky calls “PoemJazz Con Salsa.”

Robert Glasper
January 19-21
City Winery, Boston, Mass.

Jazz crossover superstar Robert Glasper (categorized as “R&B/Neo-Soul” on this date) does one of his regular six-shows-in-three-nights gigs at City Winery. No word on the band. Say what you will, I’m still trying to figure out those J Dilla rhythms. How do they do that?

— Jon Garelick

Isaiah Collier
January 10, 7 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club

Comedian Mort Sahl used to bring a newspaper to the stage and riff on the events of the day. Saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Isaiah Collier does Sahl one better by splicing actual news clips into the deeply spiritual jazz compositions heard on his new album The World is On Fire. The lives of Sandra Bland, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Sonya Massey are remembered; also examined are the racial dynamics of the January 6 insurrection along with the wars happening around the world. Like his fellow Chicagoans who created the AACM, Collier not only draws on post-Coltrane jazz but on African and Afro-Latin rhythms. The result is a sound that is as powerful as it is immediate. Both this LP and Collier’s other 2024 record with The Chosen Few, The Almighty, can be heard on Bandcamp but not streaming services. For his Boston debut he’ll be joined by pianist Liya Grigoryan, John Lockwood on bass, and Tim Regis on drums.

— Noah Schaffer

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Classical

Beethoven & Romanticism: The Complete Symphonies
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
January 8-25, times vary
Symphony Hall, Boston

The Boston Symphony kicks off 2025 with performances of the complete Beethoven symphonies, presented chronologically, plus special events that highlight the German icon’s larger output and influence. Andris Nelsons conducts.

Yo-Yo Ma in recital
Presented by Music Worcester
January 10, 7:30 p.m.
Mechanics Hall, Worcester

The celebrated cellist returns to Worcester for a concert of repertoire that’s “shaped his thinking about art, human nature, and our search for meaning.”

Yulianna Avdeeva in recital
Presented by Celebrity Series
January 15 at 7:30 p.m. and 16 at 8 p.m.
Pickman Hall (Wednesday) and Groton Hill Music Center (Thursday)

The Chopin Competition gold medalist makes her Celebrity Series and local recital debuts with a program of selections by Liszt and Beethoven.

Crossing the Deep
Presented by Handel & Haydn Society
January 17 at 7:30 p.m., 19 at 3 p.m.
Jordan Hall, Boston

H&H reprises their 2023 exploration of Black spirituals and sacred music by Handel. Anthony Trecek-King leads the proceedings, which also feature countertenor Reginald Mobley and soprano Brianna Robinson.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

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Popular Music

Little Oso with Permanent Blue and MK Naomima
January 18 (doors at 8)
Bit Bar, Salem

Portland quartet Little Oso describes its music as “sparkle-gaze” that aspires to “commemorate summertime nostalgia with catchy melodies, shimmering vocals, and spacey lead guitar riffs.” This goal is flawlessly accomplished on “Metaphorical Ohio,” “Other People’s Lives,” and “Ruski’s,” each of which appear on their forthcoming LP How Lucky to Be Somebody. With the band’s three Eps adding up to 57 minutes, I would be happy to hear their entire output when they perform within walking distance of my house on Saturday.

The Vaccines with Thus Love
January 18 (doors 6:00/show at 7:00 pm)
Royale, Boston

Hugely popular in their native land, The Vaccines scored their sixth consecutive top 5 album on the UK albums chart with last year’s Pick-up of Pink Carnations, a compact, 31-minute collection of – to reference the title of their debut – all that fans have come to expect from The Vaccines. While only one of their releases has managed to scrape even the very bottom reaches of the Billboard chart, there is always a built-in audience of American Anglophiles (among whom I count myself) who will rush to British bands’ shows in justified bewilderment of their lack of stateside popularity. Sweeting the pot of The Vaccines’ upcoming show at Royale will be the opening set by Thus Love, a Brattleboro, VT, foursome whose second LP – All Pleasure – was released by Captured Tracks last November.

— Blake Maddux

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Author Events

Tara Tai with Aislinn Brophy – Brookline Booksmith
Single Player 
January 7 at 7 p.m.
Free

In Single Player, “Cat Li cares about two things: video games and swoony romances. The former means there hasn’t been much of the latter in her (real) life, but when she lands her dream job writing the love storylines for Compass Hollow — the next big thing in games –she knows it’s all been worth it. Then she meets her boss: the infamous Andi Zhang, who’s not only an arrogant hater of happily-ever-afters determined to keep Cat from doing her job but also impossibly, annoyingly hot.

Adam Haslett at Harvard Book Store
Mothers and Sons: A Novel
January 8 at 7 p.m.
Free<

“Mothers and Sons is both moving and deeply compelling, a story about the search for our own humanity, and the lengths we will go to maintain it. A new book by Adam Haslett is always cause for celebration. He is one of our very best writers.” —Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake and The Dutch House

Sebastian Smee in conversation with Andrew Krivák – Porter Square Books
Paris in Ruins
January 9 at 7 p.m.
Free

“The Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic’s gripping account of the “Terrible Year” in Paris and its monumental impact on the rise of Impressionism. From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, famously dubbed the “Terrible Year” by Victor Hugo, Paris and its people were besieged, starved, and forced into surrender by Germans—then imperiled again as radical republicans established a breakaway Commune, ultimately crushed by the French Army after bloody street battles and the burning of central Paris. As renowned art critic Sebastian Smee shows, it was against the backdrop of these tumultuous times that the Impressionist movement was born—in response to violence, civil war, and political intrigue.

In stirring and exceptionally vivid prose, Smee tells the story of those dramatic days through the eyes of great figures of Impressionism. Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas were trapped in Paris during the siege and deeply enmeshed in its politics. Others, including Pierre-August Renoir and Frédéric Bazille, joined regiments outside of the capital, while Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro fled the country just in time. In the aftermath, these artists developed a newfound sense of the fragility of life. That feeling for transience—reflected in Impressionism’s emphasis on fugitive light, shifting seasons, glimpsed street scenes, and the impermanence of all things—became the movement’s great contribution to the history of art.”

Adam Ross at Harvard Book Store 
Playworld: A novel
January 9 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Less a bildungsroman than a story of miseducation, Playworld is a novel of epic proportions, bursting with laughter and heartache. Adam Ross immerses us in the life of Griffin and his loving (yet disintegrating) family while seeming to evoke the entirety of Manhattan and the ethos of an era — with Jimmy Carter on his way out and a B-list celebrity named Ronald Reagan on his way in. Surrounded by adults who embody the age’s excesses—and who seem to care little about what their children are up to—Griffin is left to himself to find the line between youth and maturity, dependence and love, acting and truly grappling with life.”

Edwin Frank in conversation with Maggie Doherty – Porter Square Books
Stranger Than Fiction
January 14 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Imagine the history of the twentieth-century novel recounted with the urgency and intimacy of a novel. That’s what Edwin Frank, the legendary editor who has run the New York Review Books publishing imprint since its inception, does in Stranger than Fiction. With penetrating insight and originality, Frank introduces us to books, some famous, some little-known, from the whole course of the century and from around the world. Starting with Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground of 1864, Frank shows how its twitchy, self-undermining, and never-satisfied narrator established a voice that would echo through the coming century.

He illuminates the political vision of H.G. Wells’s science fiction, Colette and Andre Gide’s subversions of traditional gender roles, and Gertrude Stein’s untethering of the American sentence. He describes the monumental ambition of books such as Mrs. Dalloway, The Magic Mountain and The Man Without Qualities to rebuild a world of human possibility upon the ruins of World War I and explores how Japan’s Natsume Sōseki and Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe broke open European models to reflect their own, distinct histories and experience. Here too are Vasily Grossman, Anna Banti, and Elsa Morante reckoning in specific ways with the traumas of World War II, while later chapters range from Marguerite Yourcenar and V. S. Naipaul to Gabriel García Marquez and W.G. Sebald.”

Yahya Gharagozlou at Brookline Booksmith
Killing Gilda 
January 17 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Killing Gilda is infused with intrigue, but at its heart, it’s a love story that follows the best traditions of classics like The Beauty and the Beast. We enter the rarified atmosphere of the court, the young woman’s life, and the reasons for her death. We follow the characters through the Paris of Madame Claude, the Shah’s ski resort at St. Moritz, and Doctor Pitanguy’s plastic surgery clinic in Baden Baden.

The story, with its scheming characters and rare glimpses into Shah’s private life, eschews easy labels. The Shah’s sexual adventurism didn’t stop his liberal policies for women’s rights.”

Colette Shade at Harvard Book Store
Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was)
January 17 at 7 p.m.

“In Y2K, one of our most brilliant young critics Colette Shade offers a darkly funny meditation on everything from the period’s pop culture to its political economy. By close reading Y2K artifacts like the Hummer H2, Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” body glitter, AOL chat rooms, Total Request Live, and early internet porn, Shade produces an affectionate yet searing critique of a decade that started with a boom and ended with a crash.

In one essay Colette unpacks how hearing Ludacris’s hit song “What’s Your Fantasy” shaped the sexual awakening of a generation; in another she interrogates how her eating disorder developed as rail-thin models from the collapsed USSR flooded the pages of Vogue; in another she reveals how the McMansion became an ominous symbol of the housing collapse. Perfect for fans of Jia Tolentino and Chuck Klosterman, Y2K is the first book to fully reckon with the mixed legacy of the Y2K Era — a perfectly timed collection that holds a startling mirror to our past, present, and future.”

— Matt Hanson