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

Global Cinema Now
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Through March 7

The Brutalist, March 2 at 1 p.m (Arts Fuse review)

Flow, March 6 at 7 p.m. (Arts Fuse review)

The Girl with the Needle, March 7 at 7 p.m.

“Set in the gritty aftermath of World War I, this dark tale follows a pregnant woman struggling to survive in postwar Copenhagen. Taken in by a charismatic elder, she begins helping her run a secretive underground adoption agency, where the pair form an unlikely and tender bond amid the harshness of their circumstances.” Nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.

Frederick Wiseman: A Retrospective
March 3 to 31
Brattle Theatre, Cambridge

Local filmmaker Frederick Wiseman is American cinema’s foremost sociological auteur of documentary. Thirty-three of his features, from his debut Titicut Follies (1967) to State Legislature (2006), have received 4K restorations. The Brattle dedicates the month to a retrospective of eight of Wiseman’s features. All are linked to descriptions:

Essene  (March 3 at 8 p.m.) Double Feature with Hospital (6 p.m.)

Basic Training (March 10 at 8 p.m.) double Feature with Law and Order (6 p.m.)

Canal Zone (March 11 at 6 p.m.)

Juvenile Court (March 17 at 6 p.m.)

Welfare (March 24 at 7: p.m.)

Model (March 31 at 6 p.m.)

Forest of Changing Shapes Film Series
Rose Art Museum Wasserman Cinematheque, Brandeis University, 415 South Street Waltham, through March 23

Inspired by Hugh Hayden’s evocative exhibition, the series unmasks nature’s relentless, ever-shifting resistance, and the uneasy bond between humanity and the untamed world.

Predator
March 9 at 3 p.m.

The 1987 classic action-film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger in an adrenaline-charged battle for survival: a team of soldiers faces off against an unseen alien predator stalking them in the jungle.

Frogs
March 23 at 3 p.m.

This 1972 horror-comedy serves up a campy, cautionary message: a ruthless millionaire’s war on nature backfires, unleashing a vengeful swarm of frogs and other creatures upon his isolated island estate.

The Lois Weber Film Festival
March 8, from 12 to 10 p.m.
Capitol Theatre, Arlington

Celebrating the “History of Women in Film: Past, Present and Future,” the third annual installment of this fest will feature 30 films made by women filmmakers from around the world. There will be a very special screening of Lois Weber’s rarely seen, controversial 1915 film Hypocrites, accompanied by live music from Jeff Rapsis. The keynote address will be given by Shelley Stamp, author of Lois Weber in Early Hollywood. Complete schedule of Events and Short Film Blocks.

New England Legacy Screenings
March 5 at 7 p.m.
Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline

The first screening in this series features Jim McBride’s 1967 film David Holzman’s Diary, a brilliant mock documentary that feels all too real as it goes about parodying the conceits of Boston’s early “personally expressive cinema.” It shares the bill with Robb Moss’s wonderful Riverdogs from 1978, the director’s MIT thesis film that catches a fleeting moment of youthful exuberance on a trip along the Colorado River. The third offering is Backyard, Ross McElwee’s autobiographical thesis film from 1984, two years before his masterpiece of personal filmmaking, Sherman’s March.

Made in Massachusetts
March 9 at 1 p.m.
Somerville Theatre in Davis Square

Former IFFBoston director Adam Roffman and Vatche Arabian present their three-hour chronological journey through over 200 films and television shows that have filmed in Massachusetts from the 1920s to 2024. You will recognize locations in Boston, Somerville, Harvard Square, Concord, Gloucester, Martha’s Vineyard, Great Barrington, and hundreds of stars past and present. You will not be bored! The film is a ton of fun. A Q&A with filmmakers will follow. Free Admission. No tickets required but donations gladly accepted to support the Independent Film Festival Boston (IFFBoston).

Lifers: A Local H Movie
March 13 at 7 p.m.
Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline

The first movie from cult-rock heroes LOCAL H was written, directed, and edited by the band’s singer/guitarist Scott Lucas. The film depicts a night out at a Local H concert: it is seen as an energetic, funny, and borderline psychedelic cinematic experience. This hybrid documentary and concert film comes across as a mix of Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same and Richard Linklater’s Slacker. The screening will feature an acoustic performance and post-film Q&A with Scott Lucas.

Riefenstahl
March 16 at 11 a.m.
Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline

Leni Riefenstahl has been mulled over in books and articles, television interviews, in Susan Sontag’s notorious essay “Fascinating Fascism,” and in the three-hour 1993 documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. She was a provocative, insidious, and mysterious figure: an avid political schmoozer who understood how to play with power. She knew Hitler well, and how to cozy up to him. This documentary is a portrait and meditation on Riefenstahl — her life, her art, and the many questions pertaining to her guilt (description adapted from Variety). There will be a post-film Zoom Q&A with director Andres Veiel. This is the first entry in the National Center for Jewish Film’s Annual Film Festival, which screens through March 31. Link for the full schedule.

Pick of the Week

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, streaming on Amazon and free on YouTube

A recommendation for Women’s History Month: the true story of German resistance fighter Sophie Scholl, who stood up against the Nazi regime during World War II as a key member of the White Rose, a nonviolent resistance group distributing leaflets that criticizing Hitler’s dictatorship. Based on previously unavailable testimony taken from Gestapo interrogations, eyewitness accounts of Scholl’s trial staged by the Third Reich, and interviews with the young woman’s ancestors, this beautifully shot and sobering film tells the true story of a heroine who, in 1943, was a victim of a show trial and executed that same day. She was 21 years old.

Julia Jentsch (brilliant in the The Edukators) won Best Actress Award at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival and Best Actress at the European Film Awards. It was the 2005 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.

One of Scholl’s final speeches still rings true:

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle: the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals…. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is ‘What are you doing for others?’

— Tim Jackson

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Theater

COVID PROTOCOLS: Check with specific theaters.

A Man of No Importance Book by Terrence McNally. Music by Stephen Flaherty. Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens. Directed by Paul Daigneault. Music direction by Paul S. Katz. Choreography by Ilyse Robbins. 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, in Boston’s South End, through March 22.

In his 2020 remembrance of dramatist Terrence McNally, Christopher Caggiano called this musical “an urgent but quiet tale of a closeted gay bus conductor who seeks escape through theater and poetry in a small Dublin parish.” He went on to write that “McNally completed 10 musical works, and there is not a single conventional effort among them. Each show had a distinctive edge, a tragicomic bite, a vibrant sense of the theatrical. The American stage has lost not only a singular playwright, but also a committed, serious innovator of the musical theater canon.

“This production,” SpeakEasy Stage informs us, “marks the New England premiere of the recently reimagined version of this beloved show staged by Classic Stage Company in New York, and includes the use of onstage musicians. Elliot Norton Award-winners Eddie Shields and Aimee Doherty lead an all-star Boston cast that includes Kerry A. Dowling, Jennifer Ellis, Meagan Lewis-Michelson, Will McGarrahan, Billy Meleady, Keith Richardson, Rebecca Rae Robles, Sam Simahk, and Kathy St. George.”

Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by the company from the translation by Edmund Gosse and William Archer. Staged by Apollinaire Theatre Company at the Chelsea Theatre Works, 189 Winnisimmet St., Chelsea, MA, through March 16.

As a longtime Ibsenite, I will be reviewing this production. I am a bit wary about Apollinaire using the now moldy late-19th-century translation of Gosse and Archer — let’s hope the company has done some nimble linguistic re-rejiggering. As for the play — it remains a towering achievement. Here is what I wrote about the drama in a 2011 review of a fine BU student production:

“The trick is to see that Ibsen remains with-it because, for all of their brilliance, his plays are sexy, witty, ironic, and mischievous. He nestles his visionary astringency in a frisky package, no more so than in Hedda Gabler, its anti-heroine one of drama’s most fascinating imps of the perverse. Her rejection of ‘normal’ life remains tantalizingly absolute, enigmatic, and thrillingly self-destructive.

“In fact, critic Toril Moi argues that the play marks the first time in Ibsen where the ‘everyday is no longer represented as the only sphere where we have a chance to find acknowledgment and love; here the everyday is no longer represented as potentially redemptive; it has become, rather, a petty and banal sphere of routinized, conventional, and empty transactions. In Ibsen’s previous plays, marriage stands as a figure for the redemptive everyday: in Hedda Gabler marriage and the everyday are equally empty.’ Demonic individuality, fueled by an unrequited idealism, swallows itself up — life as a bad dream.” Arts Fuse review

The Inspector by Nikolai Gogol. Newly adapted and directed by Yura Kordonsky. Staged by Yale Repertory Theatre at 1120 Chapel Street, New Haven, March 7 through 29.

A new version of Gogol’s masterpiece about cowardice and bureaucracy: “An entire town is plunged into chaos as it frantically hides its grift and incompetence from the prying eyes of an undercover inspector. But the cons are about to get conned: the mysterious stranger accepting every bauble, coin, and advance thrown his way is not who he seems to be. Everyone is on the take — or the make — in this outrageously anarchic comedy of errors.”

Madeleines by Bess Welden. Directed by Annette Jolles. Staged by Portland Stage at 25A Forest Ave, Portland, ME, March 5 through 23.

Welden is a Maine playwright. “She served as the 2024 Playwright-in-Residence for the Maine Playwrights Festival and recently created a commission for the Lives Eliminated, Dreams Illuminated project, an interdisciplinary visual art, music, and theater exhibition honoring girls and young women who died in the Holocaust. She is the Founder/Core Artist of Death Wings Project (www.deathwingsproject.org)”. The plot, according to the Portland Stage, “tells the story of Debra and Jennifer, two sisters processing the death of their mother, a professional baker. When a secret hidden among their mother’s recipes is discovered, the siblings fracture, and their understanding of family is put to the test. A play about sweets, familial rivalry, and learning to let go, Welden’s work asks us to examine how, and what, we forgive.”

My Dinner with André based on the film by Wallace Shawn and André Gregory. Staged by Harbor Stage Company at the BCA Plaza Black Box, 539 Tremont Street, Boston, March 13 through 30.

“Forty years ago, two intrepid artists sat down for a five course meal, a glass of amaretto, and a simmering dialectic on the nature of theater. Two more adventurers bring this iconic conversation to the American stage for the first time. Harbor co-founders Jonathan Fielding and Robert Kropf (with Robin Bloodworth) will reprise their performances in the roles made famous by the movie’s creators, Wallace Shawn and André Gregory.”

The Grove by Mfoniso Udofia. Directed by Awoye Timpo. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at The Huntington Calderwood, 527 Tremont St. Boston, through March 9.

The plot, according to the HTC publicity: This is the “story of a family homecoming, asking how we draw on the wisdom and beauty of our ancestors when the bonds of family are stretched to the limit. Abasiama’s eldest daughter Adiaha believes that becoming a writer can make her family proud, but at her graduation party, she has to choose whether to fulfill her parents’ desires or stay true to her own dreams.” Part of the ongoing Ufot Family Cycle. Arts Fuse review

The Triumph of Love by Marivaux. Translated by Stephen Wadsworth. Directed by Loretta Greco. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave. Boston, March 7 through April 6.

Another revival of Marivaux’s delightful farce. The HTC sums the evening up this way: “Love takes center stage in this classic French comedy by 18th century playwright Pierre Carlet de Marivaux. A clever princess is smitten at first sight — but to win her prince, she must woo him in disguise. Mistaken identities, hilarious complications and deeply felt desire collide head on with Rationalist Philosophy — and surprising romantic entanglements ensue!”

Flora & Ulysses by John Glore. Based on the Newbery Medal-Winning children’s book by Kate DiCamillo. Directed by Joshua Rashon Streeter. Staged by the Wheelock Family Theater on the Riverway, between the intersections of Brookline Ave and Longwood Ave., Boston, through March 9

The lowdown from WFT: “After getting sucked up by a vacuum cleaner, a (now hairless) squirrel is rescued by Flora Belle Buckman, a 10-year-old self-proclaimed cynic. She names him Ulysses and discovers he has been reborn as a superhero. Indeed, this once average squirrel can suddenly understand Flora, fly, and even write poetry. Together they embark on an adventure full of quirky characters and bursting with heart.”

ART by Yasmina Reza. Translated by Christopher Hampton. Directed by Courtney O’Connor. Staged by the Lyric Stage at 140 Clarendon Street, Boston, through March 16.

A revival of Reza’s enormously popular 1994 three-hander that dramatizes how aesthetics can embattle friendships. The tragicomic plot, according to the Lyric Stage: “Serge has purchased a modern painting for an outrageous sum. Marc hates it. Yvan is stuck in the middle. When superficial ideals and values that they once joked about appear to be at the core of Serge’s intentions, comradery is quickly replaced by a sense of betrayal.” The powerhouse cast of squabblers includes Remo Airaldi, Michael Kaye, and John Kuntz.

The Odyssey, an adaptation of Homer’s epic by Kate Hamill. Directed by Shana Cooper. Staged by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge, through March 16.

According to A.R.T. publicity: “Kate Hamill turns a contemporary lens on Homer’s Odyssey in this new play that reimagines the stories of both Odysseus and his wife, Penelope, and asks how we can learn to embrace healing and forgiveness in order to end cycles of violence and revenge.” Arts Fuse review

Beastly: An Autobiographical Feminist Folk Tale, written and performed by Melissa Hale Woodman. At the Boston Center for the Arts’ Plaza Theatre, 539 Tremont Street, Boston, through March 2.

This one-woman show, according to writer/performer Woodman, is a “Vagina Monologues/Roald Dahl mashup that blends naughty animal poetry, perimenopausal stand-up and a strategic call to action that asks us to reckon with the power we have in our hands to change the course of history.”

Spring Rep Festival Produced in collaboration with the Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Theatre at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston,  through March 9.

Two plays running in rep: Isabelle Fereshteh Sanatdar Stevens’s The Fig Tree, and The Phoenix and The Desire to Be Reborn (directed by Nikta Sabouri) and The Recursion of a Moth by Brandon Zang (directed by Katie Brook). The BPT’s lowdown on Fig Tree: “In the Iranian province of Zanjan, in an orchard where all of the trees have gone to sleep, one remains ripe with fruit. Underneath its fig-studded branches, on the chilliest August night of 1988, eight-year-olds Mandana and Javeed meet for the first time — except somehow it doesn’t feel like the first time. A story of what the world has been, what it is now, and what it could be.” The BPT’s sum-up of the plot of Recursion: Icarus and Mikey time travel. Icarus and Mikey fall out of love. Icarus and Mikey meet each other for the first time at a job interview. Somewhere else, sometime else, Chrys buys a yellow house. The rules are: you can travel to any timeline as long as you don’t change anything. But of course, there’s always someone who thinks the rules don’t apply to them.

runboyrun by Mfoniso Udofia. The play will be recorded and made nationally available as a podcast in partnership with the Boston Public Library, GBH, and Next Chapter Podcasts. It will also be performed as a live reading at the Boston Public Library’s GBH Newsfeed Café (700 Boylston Street)on March 13 at 3:30 p.m.and again at the Huntington Theatre (264 Huntington Ave) on March 14 at 7 p.m. The audio play podcast will be made available at a later date to be announced.

The third play in Boston’s epic nine-play Ufot Family Cycle will be recorded and made nationally available as a podcast. There will be a couple of local live readings as well. The plot: “Jumping between chilly 2012 Worcester, MA, and hot 1968 Biafra,” the script “asks what happens when a long-ago war continues inside the body of a survivor. Every day, Disciple lives in the echoes of the Biafran War, fracturing his connection to his wife Abasiama. The survival of their 30-year marriage depends on building new vocabularies, breaking traditions built on trauma — and daring, once again, to live moment by moment.

“The cast is led by the playwright as family matriarch Abasiama Ufot, and  Chiké Johnson as the family patriarch with persistent ghosts, Disciple Ufot. This production marks the first time Udofia is taking on a role in her own play cycle in Boston.”

— Bill Marx

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Popular Music

Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy and Friends perform R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction
March 7 (doors at 7/show at 8)
Royale, Boston

Two-time Oscar-nominated actor Michael Shannon and indie rock guitarist Jason Narducy – whose credits include Superchunk, Sunny Day Real Estate, and Bob Mould’s band – put on one of the best shows of 2024 when they celebrated the 40^th anniversary of R.E.M.’s indispensable debut LP, Murmur, in front of a packed Sinclair in February. In addition to the whole of that album, they also performed its preceding EP, Chronic Town, in full along with a five selections from the LP’s follow-up, Reckoning. Joining them on one song was Mission of Burma’s Clint Conley and Dana Colley of Morphine on another. If this is not enough to convince you to check in at Royale when the same duo gives R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction complete treatment on March 7, then I don’t know what will.

Vunderbar with fantasy of a broken heart and Pet Fox
March 7 (doors at 7/show at 8)
Paradise Rock Club, Boston

11-time Boston Music Awards nominee Vundabar mark the March 7 arrival of its latest album, Surgery and Pleasure, by treating a Paradise Rock Club audience to its fresh material on the same day. The band has been generous with its release of four singles in advance of the street date, all of which are indicative of the multitude of riches to be unearthed among its 11 tracks. My bet is that the BMA Nom Com will have decided one nominee in at least one of its categories upon feasting their ears on Surgery and Pleasure.

Friko with Starcleaner Reunion
March 8 (doors at 7:30/show at 8:30)
The Sinclair, Cambridge

Friko’s first LP, Where we’ve been, Where we go from here, was one of my favorite releases of 2024. And while I was not committed enough to select the singles that I liked the most, I have no doubt that “Crashing Through” and/or “Get Numb To It!” would have been among them. The Chicago band– led by the duo of Niko Kapeton and Bailey Minzenberger – will headline The Sinclair on March 8. Given the young band’s limited output thus far, the setlist is sure to be rich with selections from Where, we’ve been….

Willis with Brave Baby
March 12 (doors at 7/show at 8)
Paradise Rock Club, Boston

Nashville-based Willis released a series of Locals EPs between its 2016 formation in Florence, Alabama, and 2022. Their sound is consistently identifiable by its chill vibe, midtempo groove, soulful vocals, and reverberated guitars aplenty. The quintet’s spring tour in support of its 2024 LP I Can’t Thank You Enough will visit the Paradise on March 12 with Charleston, SC’s Brave Baby serving as support.

— Blake Maddux

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Visual Art

Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking, an exhibition opening at the Harvard Art Museums on March 7, is a deep dig into decades of museum history and the generosity of two of its most important, loyal, and, according to the museums, “transformative” donors. Philip A. and Lynn G. Straus acquired their first print by Edvard Munch in 1969. Philip (Harvard College Class of 1937) and Lynn became major collectors of the  Norwegian artist’s work, and, over several decades, gave or helped the museums acquire 117 works altogether, bringing the total Munch collection to 142 (eight paintings and 134 prints), one of the largest and most significant collections of works by Munch in the United States.

The current exhibition includes many works from a final, major gift of work from the Straus Collection and is also a collaboration between curatorial staff and conservation experts from another area of Straus generosity: their stabilizing gifts to what is now the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at Harvard. Despite his melancholic reputation, Munch was among the most technically and enthusiastically innovative artists of his time. His restless fascination with the materials of art making is explored here with prints alongside the original copper plates, woodblocks, and lithography stones that created them in a long series of thematic variations and colors that also extended to his paintings.

Opening March 15 at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart is the most comprehensive exhibition of Leaf’s work organized in more than three decades. Drawing on a 75-year career in sculpture, painting, and works on paper, the show explores her “enigmatic, beguiling, and often irreverent work” that is “both endlessly experimental and uncategorizable.”

The Art of Opposition, which opens at the Addison on March 4, was selected by Philips Academy students enrolled in Art 400 Visual Culture: Curating the Addison Collection. The group worked across the Addison’s permanent collection to find works that represented rebellion and resistance, organizing them into this exhibition.

A fascination with the rural and the pastoral — shepherds and animals, open fields and grand vistas, humble cottages, temples, castles, and ruins — has been part of art since classical times. The Clark Art Institute’s Pastoral on Paper, opening March 8, uses a works-on-paper collection rich in pastoral themes to create an exhibition that harmonizes elegantly with the museum’s own bucolic setting in the Berkshires. The show’s 38 works (including one painting) focus on images from the 17th and 18th centuries, in particular by the great masters of the pastoral, Claude Lorrain and Thomas Gainsborough, supplemented by loans of Dutch and Italian examples. The whole “analyzes pastoral imagery to examine how artists  construct their own visions of an idealized landscape.”

Flora et Fauna: Nature in Ancient Mediterranean Art and Culture, opening at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art on March 6, takes on one of the big themes of classical art: the representation of plants and animals in the context of a rich and complex culture of Nature as a source of knowledge and inspiration. Drawn from the museum’s own collections of ancient art, the selection spans nearly two millennia, from about 1300 BCE to 400 CE, from the earliest moments of archaic Greek art to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The show, the museum says, “examines how ancient  Mediterranean societies understood and depicted the natural world.”

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art’s Free First Thursdays on March 6 focuses on the exhibition Paper, Color, Line: European Master Drawings from the Wadsworth Atheneum. With free admission after 5:00 pm, the evening’s theme, “Barolo and Baroque,” includes a European feast for the senses with music by the CT Virtuosi Players, a drawing session in the galleries, and a screening of the film Emily at 7:30 pm. For an additional fee ($40, $35 museum members), visitors can enjoy a wine-tasting workshop with a sommelier from Bourassa Catering & Events, which includes Italian wine and a selection of rustic Italian food.

— Peter Walsh

TransCultural Exchange’s 2025 International Conference on Opportunities in the Arts: Avenues for Daring at The Foundry, Cambridge, March 7 through 9.

Just what the culture ordered, as a Trump-led America embraces provincialism. “Once again, TransCultural Exchange invites artists and those who support artists’ work to come together for our 8th International Conference on Opportunities in the Arts’ Avenues for Daring.” In this “three-day extravaganza, connecting artists around the globe, down the block and across the nation. During this unique global gathering, we will consider our era’s pressing need for diversity, political equity, and climate and social justice. We will do so, while also celebrating the arts’ ability to provide joy, respite, and common ground for dialog. Both here and abroad. We will reach beyond cultural, political and social divides, showcasing programs designed to engage artists with other cultures and disciplines to provide them with the tools, means and inspiration to, in turn, present the wonders and realities of the world to us. We will explore innovative strategies, technologies and working methods for artists to best express today’s challenges. With roundtable discussions, panels, small convenings, workshops, PechaKucha pitches, portfolio reviews, receptions, networking activities, and tours of local attractions, we will promote resources for sharing and new possibilities of caring.”

— Bill Marx

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Jazz

Burk/McLaughlin/Sofferman Trio
March 2 at 3:30 p.m.
Lilypad, Cambridge

I last wrote about pianist/composer Greg Burk in 2002, in anticipation of an upcoming Regattabar gig. Burk, with a master’s degree from New England Conservatory, had been the pianist, as well as contributing composer, for the Either/Orchestra, and had a new trio CD coming out that I described as shining “with quiet authority,” mixing beautifully wrought original pieces with free improvisation. Then Burk decamped for Rome, Italy. Now he’s back for a visit, checking in with some of his old compadres, bassist Rick McLaughlin (see Feb. 20) and drummer Brooke Sofferman.

Sheryl Bailey Quartet
March 6, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Long Live Roxbury Brewery & Taproom, Boston
FREE

Guitarist Sheryl Bailey — one of the treasures of the Boston scene — fronts a quartet in the Long Live Roxbury free Thursday night series. The band includes keyboardist Gilson Schachnik, bassist Ian Ashby, and drummer Neal Smith.

Ethan Iverson Trio
March 6 at 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge

Pianist, composer, educator, jazz scribe, and founding member of the Bad Plus Ethan Iverson is touring with different trios in each city. We get bassist John Lockwood and drummer Nasheet Waits. Not too shabby! Iverson is always pushing his writing and playing in new directions, making him especially worth hearing live.

Jason Moran
March 6 at 8 p.m.
Williams Hall, New England Conservatory, Boston
FREE

Pianist, composer, and conceptualist Jason Moran follows up last week’s solo-piano concert with this free residency concert at New England Conservatory celebrating “the history of Boogie Woogie, the influential piano style that straddles blues and jazz and inspired a musical revolution in rhythm and blues, as well as rock and roll.” That show will include Moran solo and in ensemble performances with NEC students. And it’s free.

Ron Carter Quartet
March 7-9
Regattabar, Cambridge

All five shows by this revered jazz master Ron Carter (now 87) and his quartet (with Donald Vega, Jimmy Greene, and Payton Crossley) are officially sold out. But you can always stand at the door and hold a finger up. Good luck!

Black Art Jazz Collective
March 8 at 7 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

Founded in 2013, the BAJC “is dedicated to celebrating African American cultural and political icons, as well as preserving the historical significance of African Americans in jazz.” Musically, that means mining the hard bop tradition in forging their own steely compositions. The band includes trumpeter Wallace Roney Jr., tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, trombonist James Burton III, pianist Victor Gould, bassist Ugonna Okegwo, and drummer Jonathan Butler.

Daniel Ian Smith
March 8 at 8 p.m.
Peabody Hall, Parish of All Saints, Dorchester, MA

Smith — founder of the New World Jazz Composers Octet, Berklee prof, and a go-to multireed man for numerous ensembles in the Boston area — fronts his Generations Ensemble with Cuban pianist and composer Camilla Cortina Bello, electric bassist Gerson Lazo Quiroga, and drummer Mark Walker.

Seba Molnar
March 13 at 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge

The saxophonist, composer, and jazz activist (founder of the Charles River Jazz Festival and nonprofit Boston Jazz Foundation) Seba Molnar follows the release of his most recent album, J.F.R., with some of the players from that project, including trumpeter Billy Buss, keyboardists Jiri Nedoma and David Ling, bassist Mike Gary, drummer Tyson Jackson, and the charismatic singer Debo Ray.

Kris Davis + GEORGE
March 13 at 8 p.m.
Lilypad, Cambridge

The unclassifiably brilliant pianist and composer Kris Davis joins forces with equally sui generis drummer and composer John Hollenbeck’s “energetically enigmatic group” GEORGE, which includes Anna Webber (tenor saxophone, flute, alto flute), Sarah Rossy (voice, synthesizer), Chiquitamagic (synthesizers, voice), and Hollenbeck on drums and glockenspiel. Davis will play a solo set, joined by members of GEORGE, and will then join GEORGE for the second set.

Linda May Han Oh
March 14 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Arrow Street Arts, Cambridge

The extraordinary bassist Linda May Han Oh is best known these days as a member of Vijay Iyer’s trio with Tyshawn Sorey. But she’s been impressive as a sideperson, composer, and bandleader for more than a decade. She’s joined by singer Sara Serpa, pianist Fabian Almazan, saxophonist Greg Ward, and drummer Eric Doob.

Miguel Zenón
March 14 at 8 p.m.
Thomas Tull Concert Hall, MIT, Cambridge

The brilliant saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón last year released one of his most ambitious — and satisfying — projects, Golden City, based on his experiences exploring the history of the city of San Francisco. The multifaceted extended composition was one of the best large-ensemble pieces in recent memory. Here he will give it a live workout joined by pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist Chris Tordini, drummer Dan Weiss, guitarist Miles Okazaki, percussionist Samuel Torres, trumpeter and valve trombonist Diego Urcola, trombonist Alan Ferber, and trombonist and tubist Jacob Garchik. Part of MIT’s Artfinity festival, it’s free and open to the public, but tickets are required.

Michael Weiss Trio
March 15 at 7 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

Michael Weiss is accomplished both as a pianist and composer, as the grand prize winner of the 2000 BMI/Thelonious Monk Institute Composers Competition and a string of prestigious sideman gigs (Johnny Griffin, Art Farmer, Frank Wess, George Coleman, Jimmy Heath, Lou Donaldson, Wynton Marsalis). His latest disc, Homage, is a richly flowing recital of originals and standards. For this show, he’s joined by bassist Paul Sikivie and drummer Van Nostrand.

Brandee Younger Trio
March 16 at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Arrow Street Arts, Cambridge

The star harpist and composer Brandee Younger plays this Celebrity Series show at Arrow Street Arts with bassist Rashaan Carter, and drummer Allan Mednard.

Mixing: A Creative Music Series Fundraiser
March 15 at 4 p.m.
24W, Acton, Mass.

The Creative Music Series — a mainstay for adventurous improvised music in the Boston area, now 11 years old — is holding a house concert fundraiser that will feature many of the musicians it has presented over the years: pianists Tatiana Castro-Mejía and Martin Gohary, guitarist Gabe Boyarin, trumpeter Ellwood Epps, saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra, drummers Noah Mark and Curt Newton, bassist Jacob William, and probably many more.

— Jon Garelick

Makanda Project with Charles Tolliver
March 8, 7 p.m. (waiting list only) and 8:30 p.m.
Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library, 149 Dudley Street, Roxbury (Nubian Square)

Five decades ago jazz trumpeter Charles Tolliver co-founded Strata-East, a groundbreaking artist-owned label that released some of the most essential jazz of its era. Although Strata-East’s business model would continue to resonate, most of its catalog has been out of print for years. Later this spring a reactivated Strata-East will be reissuing over 30 albums. Meanwhile Tolliver remains active and will be performing with another group that believes in jazz as a vehicle for community organizing and self-determination, Boston’s Makanda Project. They’ll be playing two free shows of compositions by both Tolliver and Makanda Ken McIntyre. The early show is full, but reservations are still available for the late set.

— Noah Schaffer

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Roots and World Music

Ethan Setiawan & Fine Ground
March 12
Club Passim, Cambridge

New England mandolinist Ethan Setiawan is at the forefront of exploring where new acoustic music can go. For his latest project, he’s put together a more traditional bluegrass band that’s full of some of the area’s finest pickers:  BB Bowness on banjo, Julian Pinelli on fiddle, Alex Rubin on guitar, and a welcome return visit from bassist Brittany Karlson, who recently moved to New York.

Fundo de Quinta
March 15
Oceanside Events Center, Revere

Brazil’s Carnival is winding down, so the stars of Carnival are coming here.  Fundo do Quinta is the quintessential samba band who helped create the sound of pagode by drawing on traditional Afro-Brazilian instruments. The outfit still features original members Bira Presidente (pandeiro) and Sereno (tan-tan). Expect a raucous party full of deep Brazilian rhythms.

— Noah Schaffer

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Classical

Mahler’s Sixth Symphony
Presented by Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra
March 2, 3 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston

The BPYO returns to one of its triumphs from about a decade ago: Gustav Mahler’s towering Symphony No. 6. Benjamin Zander, Boston’s longtime — and most high-profile — Mahlerian, conducts.

Kavakos & Trifonov in recital
Presented by Celebrity Series
March 5, 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston

Virtuosos Leonidas Kavakos and Daniil Trifonov team up for a recital of violin-and-piano works by Beethoven, Poulenc, Brahms, and Bartók.

Music in the Shadow of War
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
March 6 at 7:30 p.m., 7 at 1:30 p.m., and 8 at 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston

Conductor Eun Sun Kim’s BSO debut is built around the unsettling but timely concept of music and violence. Anatol Liadov’s The Enchanted Lake and Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (featuring Inon Barnatan) chronologically frame the 20th century’s two world wars. In between comes Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3, completed in 1936.

Midori in recital
Presented by Celebrity Series
March 6 & 7, 8 p.m.
Groton Hill Music Center (Thursday), Groton, MA, and Jordan Hall, Boston (Friday)

Violinist Midori returns to the Celebrity Series with a recital of selections by Poulenc, Brahms, Ravel, and Che Buford.

Howl
Presented by Radius Ensemble
March 8, 8 p.m.
Pickman Hall, Longy School of Music, Cambridge

Radius’s season continues with Howl, a concert featuring works by Kaija Saariaho, Sean Kisch, David Lang, Beethoven, and Kenji Bunch.

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Presented by Music Worcester
March 9, 6 p.m.
Mechanics Hall, Worcester

ASMF returns to Worcester with a delightfully varied program that has music by Copland and Haydn, framing works by John Adams (a Worcester native) and Shostakovich. Jeremy Denk is the soloist in the latter’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

The Seasons
Presented by Boston Lyric Opera
March 12-14 at 7 p.m. and 15-16 at 3 p.m.
Emerson Paramount Center, Boston

BLO brings countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo’s collaboration with playwright Sarah Ruhl to town. Its plot follows a group of artists who relocate to a small farm to work, only for their plans to be thrown into disarray by extreme weather events. The music is all by Antonio Vivaldi.

Dashon Burton, Ray Chen, and Teddy Abrams
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
March 13 at 7:30 p.m., 14 at 1:30 p.m., 15 at 8 p.m., and 16 at 2 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston

Teddy Abrams makes his BSO debut leading baritone Burton in Michael Tilson Thomas’s Whitman Songs. Also on the docket is Chen performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and the Symphonic Dances from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

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Author Events

Shilpi Suneja – Newtonville Books
House of Caravans
March 2 at 2 p.m.
Free

“Join us for an author talk with Shilpi Suneja, whose acclaimed novel House of Caravans is just being released in paperback.” Born in India, her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in Guernica, McSweeney’s, Cognoscenti, and the Michigan Quarterly Review.

Leslie Jamison in conversation with Louisa Thomas – Porter Square Books
Splinter
March 4 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Leslie Jamison is among our most beloved contemporary voices, acclaimed for her powerful thinking, deep feeling, and electric prose. In Splinters, Jamison turns her unrivaled powers of perception on some of her most intimate relationships: new motherhood, a ruptured marriage, and the shaping legacy of her own parents’ complicated bond. In examining what it means for a woman to be many things at once, Jamison juxtaposes the magical and the mundane in surprising ways. The result is a work of nonfiction like no other, a deep reckoning that grieves the departure of one love even as it celebrates the arrival of another.”

Clea Simon at Harvard Book Store
The Butterfly Trap
March 4 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Greg has his life all planned out: become a doctor, buy a house, and have a wife and children — and when he meets Anya during his post-doc studies in Boston, all of his dreams seem to come true. It’s love at first sight, and Greg doesn’t shy away from changing his life to provide Anya, his beautiful butterfly, with everything she wants and needs.

“Anya is a struggling artist, determined to make it as a painter in Boston’s art scene — but getting involved with shy and sweet Greg could thwart her lifelong ambition. Their relationship unfolds like a classic love story … except that Anya seems to be hiding something that unsuspecting Greg soon must face.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at First Parish Church – Harvard Book Store
Dream Count: A Novel
March 5 at 7 p.m.
First Parish Church, Cambridge
Tickets are $42 with book

“Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until — betrayed and brokenhearted — she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America — but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

“In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations of the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.”

Martha S. Jones at Harvard Book Store
The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir 
March 5 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Martha S. Jones grew up feeling her Black identity was obvious to all who saw her. But weeks into college, a Black Studies classmate challenged Jones’s right to speak. Suspicious of the color of her skin and the texture of her hair, he confronted her with a question that inspired a lifetime of introspection: ‘Who do you think you are?’

“Now a prizewinning scholar of Black history, Jones delves into her family’s past for answers. In every generation since her great-great-great-grandmother survived enslavement to raise a free family, color determined her ancestors’ lives. But the color line was shifting and jagged, not fixed and straight. Some backed away from it, others skipped along it, and others still were cut deep by its sharp teeth.

“Journeying across centuries, from rural Kentucky and small-town North Carolina to New York City and its suburbs, The Trouble of Color is a lyrical, deeply felt meditation on the most fundamental matters of identity, belonging, and family.”

Kelly Andrew with C.L. Herman – Brookline Booksmith
I Am Made of Death
March 6 at 7 p.m.
Free

“From bestselling author Kelly Andrew comes the most electrifying dark romance of the decade…. Following the death of his father, Thomas Walsh had to grow up quickly, taking on odd-jobs to keep food on the table and help pay his gravely ill mother’s medical bills. When he’s offered a highly paid position as an interpreter for an heiress who exclusively signs, Thomas — the hearing child of a Deaf adult—jumps at the opportunity.

“But the job is not without its challenges. Thomas is expected to accompany Vivienne wherever she goes, but from the start, she seems determined to shake him. To make matters worse, her parents keep her on an extremely short leash. She is not to go anywhere without express permission. She is not to deviate from her routine.

“She is, most importantly, not to be out after dark.”

Agnes Callard at Harvard Book Store
Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life
March 7 at 3 p.m.
Free

“Callard draws our attention to Socrates’ startling discovery that we don’t know how to ask ourselves the most important questions — about how we should live, and how we might change. Before a person even has a chance to reflect, their bodily desires or the forces of social conformity have already answered on their behalf. To ask the most important questions, we need help. Callard argues that the true ambition of the famous ‘Socratic method’ is to reveal what one human being can be to another. You can use another person in many ways — for survival, for pleasure, for comfort — but you are engaging them to the fullest when you call on them to help answer your questions and challenge your answers.

“Callard shows that Socrates’ method allows us to make progress in thinking about how to manage romantic love, how to confront one’s own death, and how to approach politics. In the process, she gives us nothing less than a new ethics to live by.”

Peter Wolf at First Parish Church – Harvard Book Store
Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses
March 11 at 7 p.m.
Tickets are $40 with book

“Harvard Book Store welcomes Peter Wolf — Boston-based rock ’n’ roll legend and former front man of the famous J. Geils Band — for a discussion of his new memoir Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses. He will be joined in conversation by Peter Guralnick — Grammy Award-winner for his liner notes for Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, and prize-winning author of the two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love.”

Katherine Stewart with Kate Risse – Brookline Booksmith
Money, Lies, and God 
March 12 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.

She introduces us to reactionary Catholic activists, atheist billionaires, pseudo-Platonist intellectuals, self-appointed apostles of Jesus, disciples of Ayn Rand, women-hating opponents of “the gynocracy,” pronatalists preoccupied with the dearth of white babies, Covid truthers, militia members masquerading as “concerned moms,” and battalions of spirit warriors who appear to be inventing a new style of religion even as they set about attacking democracy at its foundations.”

Riley Black in conversation with Evan Urquhart – Porter Square Books
When the Earth Was Green
March 13 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Using the same scientifically-informed narrative technique that readers loved in the award-winning The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, in When the Earth Was Green, Riley Black brings readers back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home.

“As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides readers along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present.”

Sloane Crosley at Harvard Book Store
Grief Is for People
March 14 at 7 p.m.
Free

“For most of her adult life, Sloane and Russell worked together and played together as they navigated the corridors of office life, the literary world, and the dramatic cultural shifts in New York City. One day, Sloane’s apartment is broken into. Along with her most prized possessions, the thief makes off with her sense of security, leaving a mystery in its place.

“When Russell dies exactly one month later, his suicide propels Sloane on a wild quest to right the unrightable, to explore what constitutes family and possession as the city itself faces the staggering toll of the pandemic.

“Sloane Crosley’s search for truth is frank, darkly funny, and gilded with resounding empathy. Upending the ‘grief memoir,’ Grief Is for People is a category-defying story of the struggle to hold on to the past without being consumed by it. A modern elegy, it rises precisely to console and challenge our notions of mourning during these grief-stricken times.”

Kate Fussner in conversation with Sara Farizan – Porter Square Books
13 Ways to Say Goodbye
March 18 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Tenderhearted and hopeful, 13 Ways to Say Goodbye was the book I didn’t know I needed. The one for all of us who have ever had to tiptoe around a ghost we love. Fussner deserves a spot in every single middle school classroom.” — Andrea Beatriz Arango, author of Newbery-Honor winning Iveliz Explains It All

— Matt Hanson