Compiled by Arts Fuse Editor

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

Film

A scene from Naruse Mikio’s 1955 film Floating Clouds. Photo: HFA

Floating Clouds… The Cinema of Naruse Mikio screening at the Harvard Film Archive, through November 3.

A generous retrospective of the films made by a Japanese filmmaker Harvard Film Archive calls “still underrated and underappreciated.” Here is what The Arts Fuse‘s Betsy Sherman wrote about the HFA’s 2005 Centennial Tribute to a “Japanese master” who spotlit “the plight of women on the margins of society”: “Was he a precursor to Lars Von Trier, who seems to take sadistic delight in putting his female protagonists through the wringer? Or was Naruse an artist of rare courage, who could depict the pitfalls of desire while retaining a respect for those who fall prey to it?” Arts Fuse preview

— Bill Marx

A scene from Hong Sangsoo’s 2010 film Hahaha.

The Seasons of Hong Sangsoo at the Harvard Film Archive, through November 9

Hong Sangsoo has directed 27 features over 26 years, a feat accomplished through a radical reduction of means. “He funds each movie with the proceeds of his previous films, and he makes his films as he goes. After selecting actors and locations, he enters production without a script; every morning, he writes the scenes on the docket for that day or the next. Since he uses much of what he shoots, he can edit an entire feature in as little as a day or two. This modest and pragmatic approach produces works of paradoxical complexity, notable for their breezy irreverence and their emotional and philosophical depth.” (Dennis Lim in The New Yorker) Read the HFA’s Haden Guest’s profile of Hong Sangsoo here.

Outdoor Screenings

The Coolidge Corner Theatre “En Plein Air” screenings will take place at the Kennedy Greenway, the Charles River Speedway, Mt. Auburn Cemetery, the Rocky Woods, and more!

All shows begin at sunset. All films are linked with details and locations.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) (September 17)

I Know What You Did Last Summer (October 15)

A scene from Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
September 5 – 8
Brattle Theatre Cambridge

Writer-director animators Stephen and Timothy Quay have created their first feature in nearly 20 years, and it defies easy description. A ghostly train journey on a forgotten branch line transports a man visiting his dying father to a sanatorium on the edge of a mythic forest. The drama is episodic — part live-action, part stop-motion animation. “It is the latest illustration of the Quay Brothers’ considerable visual strengths.” (Screen Daily) Based on the book of the same name by the surrealistic Polish Jewish writer Bruno Schulz. Screens with the Quay Brothers’ 1986 short Street of Crocodiles — on 35mm!

A scene from Boys Go to Jupiter.

Boys Go to Jupiter
September 5-7
Somerville Theatre

Set in a magically cosmic version of Florida between Christmas and New Year’s, this lo-fi musical adult animated comedy follows the adventures of Billy 5000, an aimless teen doing his best to fill his days by stuffing his pockets with some quick cash. His plans are suddenly derailed by the appearance of a gelatinous little dude from outer space. Billy is called on to save the creature and his family from the evil schemes of the Dolphin Groves Juice Company. The debut film of Julian Glander — which he wrote, directed, and produced on a shoestring budget — features the voices of Jack Corbett, Janeane Garofalo, and Cole Escola.

Your Fat Friend
September 8 at 7 p.m.
Coolidge Corner Theatre

A film about fatness, family, the complexities of change, and the messy feelings we hold about our bodies. After the screening, there will be a discussion about contemporary fat activism as well as pending local legislation. Part of the Panorama, a film and discussion series designed to increase the scope of our awareness, empathy, and humility around issues important to our community.

Paul Newman as Billy the Kid in The Left Handed Gun. Photo: HFA

The Left Handed Gun
September 12 at 7 p.m.
Harvard Film Archive

This first offering in the Gore Vidal Goes to the Movies Series was directed by Arthur Penn and stars Paul Newman. Vidal was fascinated by the story of Billy the Kid. In 1955, he wrote a television play for NBC called The Death of Billy the Kid that starred Paul Newman. Warner Brothers picked it up, kept Newman, and changed the title to The Left Handed Gun. Penn’s Billy is a tormented punk in a trigger-happy world. Vidal later realized his original vision in 1989 with a script for TNT, Billy the Kid, which starred Val Kilmer. Vidal himself plays The Preacher in the TV film.

Holding Up the Sky
September 10 at 7 p.m.
Somerville Theatre in Davis Square

This timely documentary follows the intertwined lives of Ed and Jimmy — two formerly incarcerated men whose personal journeys reveal the transformative power of education, mentorship, and opportunity. The effort puts a humanizing lens on reentry and resilience, aiming to educate and enlighten viewers by demonstrating the power that hope, family, community support and, in particular, education, can have on incarcerated individuals.

Pick of the Week

Untold: The Liver King, streaming on Netflix

Brian Johnson in a scene from The Liver King.

“We are but clay, sir, potter’s clay, … clay, feeble, and too‑yielding clay” — Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man

We are an age of grift. In politics, finance, rentals, romance, beauty, and health scams are a multibillion dollar business. I stumbled recently on the story of Brian Johnson who called himself “Liver King,” a fitness influencer who promoted an “ancestral lifestyle” earning him, by some accounts, a $30 million fortune. In his blog, Brian Klaas described him in “over-the-top animal skins, gratuitously shirtless, with veins that look like bulging blue zits ready to pop out from his stretched-out skin … a grotesquely chiseled physique the inevitable byproduct of ditching useless fiber and instead focusing on a raw meat diet.”

A New Yorker article even covered how “meatfluencers” have “pushed paleo to an extreme of carnivory.” The film plays like a comic parody of credulity and grift, were so not many people taken in. Johnson is an obnoxious super-bro who can’t speak without using the “F” word with every declaration while spouting statements like “why eat vegetables when you can eat testicles?” Finally, the con of his massive steroid use was exposed. Running just over an hour, the film raises questions about fitness culture, marketing, and social media.

— Tim Jackson

Television

Guts & Glory  (September 9, Shudder): A new unscripted show on the premiere horror streaming network? Could be worth a look. Shudder has done some great original content, including films (like the pandemic thriller Host), series, and documentaries (like the excellent Horror Noire). They also had a high-profile streaming hit with 2024’s found footage retro gem Late Night with the Devil, so I have high hopes for this new reality show that’s steeped in horror tropes. Helmed by Greg Nicotero, an award-winning special effects artist whose work includes the popular AMC series The Walking Dead, the show is a six-episode reality competition series that places contestants in scary situations, using top-notch horror effects that are Nicotero’s wheelhouse.

Carla Sehn in Diary of a Ditched Girl. Photo: Netflix

Diary of a Ditched Girl (September 11, Netflix) I’m a fan of European TV, and anything from Scandinavia is usually going to catch my eye. This new Swedish series follows Amanda, a 31-year-old woman struggling through contemporary dating hell, navigating disastrous speed dating meet-ups, various dating apps, and the well-meaning attempts of her friends to introduce her to eligible men. Every potential boyfriend she meets tends to preemptively dump her, and Amanda is close to giving up. Played by popular Swedish TV actress Carla Sehn, Amanda is down to earth and relatable, yet she is also susceptible to the worst social pressures and expectations, giving the show a timely vibe that viewers who are currently dating (or who’ve recently given up) will resonate with. Be warned, however: when I tried to watch a trailer for the show, it had English dubbing. This is a sort of default setting with Netflix but, in this case, it made the characters’ voices so grating it was immediately off-putting. As with any non-English language series, I cannot stress strongly enough that you should watch with English subtitles and not dubbing.

— Peg Aloi

Theater

A scene from Bread & Puppet’s Domestic Resurrection Revolution in Progress Circus

Our Domestic Resurrection Revolution in Progress Circus, performed, written, and staged by Bread & Puppet in partnership with Cambridge Arts on the Cambridge Common. Sept. 13 at 4 p.m.

A “serious and silly circus.” “Ladles and Jellyspoons! The one and only Bread & Puppet Circus is back with Anti-Empire Art that acknowledges our beloved Mother Dirt, who makes us and unmakes us, and who presents urgently needed domestic resurrection services for the victims of this latest genocide. We are joined by Palestinian cranes on their way to Washington to replace the excrement in the White House with organic bird droppings, green frogs who teach the art of hopping over seemingly insurmountable problems, and gaggles of kindergarten butterflies who frolic to their hearts’ desire.”

Southern Harmony: A Murder Ballad. Book, music, & lyrics by Kevin Fogarty, Direction & musical staging by Sam Scalamoni, and music direction by Nevada Lozanoby. Staged by the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater at the Outermost Performing Arts Center, 2357 State Highway Route 6, Wellfleet, through September 6.

A world premiere production of a musical that is based on a real-life homicide. The plot: “He was a friendly mortician. She was a wealthy widow. They were an unlikely pair. The murder was just the beginning. Now, a community has to rethink everything they know about right and wrong to try to make sense of it all. The line between good and evil runs right through the heart of Texas” in this show,”inspired by the true story of Marjorie Nugent and Bernie Tiede, and the murder that shocked the close knit community of Carthage, Texas.”

Playwright Jez Butterworth. Photo: HTC

The Hills of California by Jez Butterworth. Directed by Loretta Greco. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave, Boston, September 12 through October 12.

Yet another “critically acclaimed on Broadway and the West End” play about “the unbreakable bonds of family.” Though this entry in the well-worn genre is by the talented dramatist Jez Butterworth, so it may upend expectations. The plot, according to the HTC, deals with “the four adult Webb sisters’ homecoming to the seaside guest house in Blackpool where they grew up. As girls, their fierce and ambitious mother Veronica trained them for a singing career à la The Andrews Sisters. Now adults, the sisters must reconsider the choices their mother made, the nostalgic call of youthful harmonies, and the unbreakable bonds of family.”

Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson. Directed by Sarah Shin. A Brit d’Arbeloff Women in Science/ Catalyst Collaborative@MIT Production at the Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, September 11 through October 5.

The plot, according to the CST: “1900. Cambridge. Enthralled by the night sky, Henrietta Leavitt joins the Harvard Computers, a sisterhood of scientists who chronicle the stars. Despite dismissal from her male supervisors, she records her own observations of Cepheid stars and changes the way we look at the universe forever.” The cast includes Lee Mikeska Gardner, Erica Cruz Hernández, and Max Jackson.

Roger Williams (1603-1683), founder of the first Baptist church in America and of the colony that became Rhode Island. Williams, a rebel Puritan minister from Massachusetts, advocated for religious tolerance, church-state separation, and liberty of conscience. Photo: Baptist News

New and Dangerous Opinions of Roger Williams Staged by Aurea Ensemble at the Pawtucket Arts Festival, Old Slater Mill, Blackstone River Valley National Historic Park, 67 Roosevelt Avenue, Pawtucket, RI, on September 7, at 4 p.m.

As set out by the Aurea Ensemble, this performance sounds suitably theatrical and radical for our times: “The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence will take place next year. This piece is set during the founding of Rhode Island, a dramatic political and philosophical time in colonial America. The program shines a light on Williams’ contemporary relevance, his ground-breaking revolutionary ideas, and his deeply respectful alliance with the native indigenous inhabitants. The show utilizes Aurea’s signature blending of music and poetry, which includes English and American hymns, traditional and modern music, and Williams’ own writings and translations of Narragansett poetry. The string ensemble will perform music by Purcell, Handel, Charles Ives, and Barbara Kolb, with readings by Nigel Gore and Chris Turner, punctuated by the latter’s exuberant harmonica improvisations.”

Mother Play: a play in five evictions by Paula Vogel. Directed by Ariel Bock. Staged by Shakespeare and Company in the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, Lenox, August 31 through October 5.

The New England premiere of “a sharp-witted, darkly comedic exploration of family, identity, and survival,” the play follows hardheaded matriarch Phyllis (Tamara Hickey) and her children, Martha (Zoya Martin) and Carl (Eddie Shields), across four decades and five apartments, enduring cockroach infestations, painful conflicts, and the constant push-and-pull of love and expectation. Phyllis wants her children to follow a prescribed path, but each is determined to forge their own way.”

“The play had its Broadway Premiere in 2024, earning four Tony nominations, two Drama Desk Awards, and an Outer Critics Circle Award.”

Passengers, staged by The 7 Fingers. Written, directed, and choreographed by Shana Carroll. Co-produced by TOHU (Montréal, Canada) and ArtsEmerson (Boston, États-Unis), presented by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, September 2 through 26.

“Montréal’s acclaimed physical-theater troupe is back in Boston to perform its unique blend of circus, music, dance, and superhuman skills. Travel is a metaphor for life’s ever-changing landscape in this show.” Part of the A.R.T. season, which, in the words of artistic director Diane Paulus, proffers shows that “all grapple with what it means to be human.”

Primary Trust by Eboni Booth. Directed by Dawn M. Simmons. Staged by SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Roberts Studio Theatre in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, September 12 to October 11.

According to SpeakEasy Stage, now entering its 35th season, this 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winning play is “about how even the smallest acts of kindness can change a life. The plot centers on Kenneth, who for years has worked by day at the independent bookstore in his small town and then spent his evenings sipping mai tais at the local tiki bar. But when he is suddenly laid off, Kenneth’s carefully ordered world starts to shift – pushing him into unexpected friendships, unlikely courage, and a life he never imagined.” David J. Castillo, Arthur Gomez, Janelle Grace, and Luis Negrón comprise the cast.

Cold War Choir Practice by Ro Reddick. Directed by Aileen Wen McGroddy. Staged by Trinity Rep at 201 Washington Street, Providence, September 4 through October 5.

The world premiere of a play with music that might have some political relevance. In other words, a rarity in these parts. According to the Trinity Rep site: “It’s twilight in Ronald Reagan’s America and the specter of nuclear war hangs over the country — but rent is still due on the 1st. When a prominent Black conservative brings his mysteriously ill wife home for the holidays, the unplanned reunion sets long-simmering tensions within the family to boil — and throws each member into a bizarre maze of Reaganomics, Cold War espionage, capitalist cult predation, and… choir practice.”

NOTE: Boston area theaters have pretty much decided to ignore what is happening in America and beyond — mounting threats to democracy, the approach of authoritarianism, the climate crisis, growing economic inequality, the round-up of immigrants, the expansion of internment camps, genocide in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, etc. The American Repertory Theater claims that this is the time to put “a Spotlight on Wonder.” I have decided to spotlight stage productions, in America and elsewhere, that grapple with today’s alarming realities. Sometimes the productions will be available via Zoom, sometimes not. It is important to present evidence that theater artists are reflecting, and reflecting on, the world around us.

Kendyl Davis and Kevin Richard Best in Sulfur Bottom. Photo: Austin Pogrob

Sulfur Bottom by Rishi Varma. Directed by Megumi Nakamura at The Jerry Orbach Theater at The Theater Center located at 210 West 50th Street, NYC, September 20 at 1 p.m., September 24 at 7:30 p.m., September 27 at 1 p.m., and October 1 at 7:30 p.m.

The play “is an eco-gothic drama that explores the quiet devastation of environmental collapse through the eyes of one family over a span of 40 years. Set in a decaying home on the edge of industrial sprawl, the play transforms the slow violence of pollution into something both intimate and unsettling.

“The script has been selected as an official event of Climate Week NYC, spotlighting the urgent need for environmental justice. Through the lens of art and storytelling, Sulfur Bottom confronts the challenges of environmental collapse and sparks dialogue about its impact on communities. With performances scheduled throughout the program, the production aims to engage audiences in meaningful conversations about climate change and collective responsibility.

“Climate Week NYC, presented by Climate Group, is the biggest global climate event of its kind, bringing together tens of thousands of people from across the globe to drive action. Running September 21-28, 2025, across all five boroughs, Climate Week NYC will be the platform where the big challenges of our time are discussed.”

A Climate Week Boston? Theater here that deals with the “big challenges of our time?” Dream on …

— Bill Marx

Visual Art

An emphasis on campus museums continues as the post-Labor Day season unfolds:

William Blake, The Tyger (Plate 42, from Songs of Innocence and of Experience), detail, 1794, color-printed relief etching with hand coloring in watercolor. Photo: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

The Yale Center for British Art hosts an “Exhibition Opening Conversation: William Blake — Artist, Poet, Maker, and Radical Thinker” on September 4, 4 to 5 p.m. The featured speakers are Elizabeth Wyckoff, curator of prints and drawings, and Timothy Young, curator of rare books and manuscripts, who together organized the Center’s exhibition William Blake: Burning Bright. Blake, who is both one of Britain’s greatest poets and writers and one of its leading artists, is represented in the show by examples of his famous illuminated poems, printed from copper plates Blake made himself. They are drawn from the Center’s exceptional collection of Blake’s work, much of it collected by the Center’s founder, Paul Mellon. Admission is free. There will be an in-person presentation in the Center’s Lecture Hall which will also be available as a Livestream through the Center’s website.

After a hiatus over the summer, the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Andover Academy reopens and launches its fall season with gusto with five exhibitions, three opening on September 2 and two on September 9. Playing to Our Strengths (September 2) is a permanent collection show selected from the museum’s 29,000 objects. This is the second in a series of shows highlighting special strengths of the collection and juxaposes “distinct tendencies in American art during the late 19th and early 20th centuries” — American Impressionism vs. Pictorialist photography, which itself tends towards Impressionism, in the first gallery, and artists of the Ashcan School v.s social realist photographers in the second.

Also in the September 2 roster: Hayes Prize 2025: Tommy Kha, Other Things Uttered, the first museum solo exhibition of the Memphis-born Chinese-American photographer who creates surrealist images from manipulated and collaged photos. Family Portrait is a second photography collection show, featuring nearly two centuries of images capturing “both the particular and universal aspects of family experience.”

Opening a week later on September 9, Making Their Way: The Florida Highwaymen Painters and Captive Lands set up another artistic dialogue. Making Their Way presents the work of 26 African-American landscape painters, sometimes unofficially called the Florida Highwaymen, who sold their haunting and vividly colored tropical scenes door-to-door and out of the trunks of their cars along coastal roads in the 1950s-80s. The contrasting show, Captive Lands, brings together works from the permanent collection to show “the myriad ways in which the American landscape has been romanticized, exploited, celebrated, commercialized, and conquered.”

Woman’s Ceremonial Skirt (Tapis), Indonesia, Sumatra, Lampung, 16th–17th century. Cotton and silk; warp-faced plain weave, warp ikat, and embroidery. Photo: Yale University Art Gallery.

On September 12, the Yale University Art Gallery opens Nusantara: Six Centuries of Indonesian Textile. “Nusantara,” or “outer islands,” is the original name for what is now the Indonesian archipelago (and also the name of Indonesia’s new capital city, now under construction on the coast of Borneo). The Yale show features one of Southeast Asia’s primary art forms — woven textiles — in a huge variety of forms, from the 14th to 20th centuries, and including ceremonial cloths, ritual weavings, clothing, shrouds, and hangings. Three dimensional objects — sculpture, combs, and headgear — help provide context.

Also on September 12, the Harvard Art Museums open Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black. The show explores how the distinctive tactile qualities of traditional monochrome drawing materials — charcoal, chalk, crayon, and graphite — can be used to create a rich variety of visual effects. Some 120 works, drawn from Harvard’s collections of drawings, one of the most important in the world, include such masters of the media as Ingres, Degas, Seurat, Sargent, Mondrian, Feininger, and many others. The exhibits will include artists’ materials from the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies and will invite visitors to sketch in the galleries, experiment with media in the Materials Lab, and explore from home in a series of Instagram drawing tutorials.

Up at Dartmouth College, on September 6, the Hood Museum also opens a show revealing the complex history of artists’ materials in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Making Colors in Europe, 1400-1800. The show explores the transition from artist-crafted to industry-produced materials and the collaboration between artistic aspiration and scientific discovery. The early modern quest for newer, better, cheaper, longer-lasting colors grew at a time when formulas for pigments and dyes were often closely guarded secrets and critical to the value of a work of art. These changes permanently shifted how artists worked with and thought about media.

Anni Albers, Orange Meander, 1970. Photo: Mt Holyoke College Museum of Art

The Mt. Holyoke College Museum of Art opens two shows on September 2. Anni’s Orchestra: Theme and Variation in the Prints of Anni Albers focuses on a late project of Anni Albers, wife of fellow Bauhaus figure Josef Albers and a leading textile artist — the first textile designer to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Also an accomplished printmaker, Anni Albers created the Orchestra series to evoke her love of music and to explore visual analogues, in her abstract, textile-like images, for sound.

Lorna Simpson: Cloudscape features the multimedia artist’s uncanny 2004 video installation, Cloudscape. A solitary figure of a man whistles in a fog, and, as the fog thickens or disperses, fades in and out of view, like a ghost.

Since opening his Paris fashion house in 1995, Singaporean designer Andrew Gn “has become synonymous with opulence, intricate embellishment, and luxurious craftsmanship.” Andrew Gn: Fashioning the World, opening at Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum September 13, includes nearly 100 works from the more than 80 collections and 10,000 elegant ensembles he has produced to date, designs that “blend Western aesthetics, art history, and Asian decorative art and design.”

— Peter Walsh

Roots and World Music

Gloria Gaynor
September 4
Italian Feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian, East Cambridge

A few weeks ago this would have been a very different pick. Gloria Gaynor, who turns 82 in September, is one of the last of the great disco divas. She has one of the better backing bands on the nostalgia circuit and is still in good voice. Her booking at this free event was a major coup for the Cosmas and Damian’s 100th anniversary. Then President Trump announced that he’s reshaping the Kennedy Center honors into an event he’ll be hosting. Gaynor is on a somewhat dubious list of honorees that Trump promised included “no wokesters.” Considering that Gaynor is almost exclusively known for singing the LGBTQ anthem “I Will Survive” there was swift backlash from those who questioned why she would be cozying up to an administration that has prioritized erasing the very LGBTQ history that the singer is part of. Gaynor’s management offered me a chance to interview her — as long as I didn’t ask about the Kennedy Center honors. I declined. The news — and subsequent details about her financial contributions to anti-LGBTQ Republican candidates — provided yet another opportunity for would-be audience members to decide if they can separate an artist from their art.

Drummer Kassa Overall. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Kassa Overall
September 9
Cafe 939 at Berklee

In recent years, drummer Kassa Overall has been a welcome presence at jazz-leaning events like Big Ears and the Newport Jazz Festival, where he’s performed sets that were master classes in making hip-hop-influenced funk and jazz both edgy and exciting. Now he’s examining a different side of the equation with his forthcoming record Cream, which turns hip-hop classics like the Wu-Tang title track into convincing and nicely arranged post-bop jazz tunes.

Jimmy “Duck” Holmes  and Ryan Lee Crosby performing together in 2025. Photo: You Tube

Jimmy “Duck” Holmes with Ryan Lee Crosby
September 13, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Myrtle, Providence

Acoustic Mississippi blues guitarist and singer Jimmy “Duck” Holmes is one of the last great practitioners of the deep and haunting Bentonia style. This is apparently his first trek into New England, making this matinee appearance exceptionally special. Sharing the bill is his Rhode Island-based protege and collaborator Ryan Lee Crosby, who recorded to reel-to-reel tape Holmes’s new record. Crosby features Holmes on his own splendid new LP, which was likewise recorded at Holmes’s Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia.

— Noah Schaffer

Popular Music

oso oso with Born Without Bones
September 3 (doors at 7/show at 8)
Arts at the Armory, Somerville

Last August’s life till bones was the follow-up to oso oso’s highly praised sore thumb, which appeared three days short of one year after the death of guitarist Tavish Maloney. Given that the latter was more or less complete at the time of Maloney’s passing, life till bones comprises the first newly written songs by bandleader Jade Lilitri in the wake of the loss of his cousin and bandmate. Nevertheless, almost all of life till bones’s 10 highlights are sprightly and upbeat, with “many ways” — “once you pull that trigger/what’s done is done” — and “seesaw” — “Feel like I stayed too late/you left too young” — serving as the unmistakable to even the most casual listener encapsulations of Lilitri’s melancholy. (Each of these songs include the lyric “life is a gun.”) The digital version life till bones is currently available on bandcamp for the low low cost of “name your price.” Grab it in advance the band’s September 3 show or — better yet, do so on bandcamp Friday, when Lilitri and co. will receive 100% of the revenue from your generosity.

Sparks
September 11 (show at 8)
Berklee Performance Center, Boston

Ron and Russell Mael — ages 80 and 76, respectively — keep Sparks alive with this year’s MAD!, their fourth LP since returning in 2017 with Hippopotamus after a nine-year break. Each of the five singles that appeared as many as four months in advance of its May 23 release illustrates the expert fashion in which the 2024 AIM Independent Music Awards winners have continued to sound fresh and unfathomably quirky over the course of their 26-album, six decade-spanning career. Furthermore, MAD! confirms the lifelong Angelenos’ appeal among British listeners generally and Scottish listeners specifically, who sent it to #2 and #1 on their respective sales charts.

Supergrass
September 12 (doors at 7/show at 8)
House of Blues, Boston

Given the infrequency of their stateside tours, it is odd that Supergrass’s upcoming Boston date was moved from the 5,000-capacity MGM at Fenway to the 2,200-person House of Blues. More baffling is that this happened despite it’s being the quartet’s first area gig since 2006. Compounding this even further is that this show will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the band’s debut, I Should Coco, with a performance in its entirety. Still, that 2006 performance was at the Paradise, so HOB is definitely a step up. Besides, a packed smaller house is a far better setting for Supergrass’s exuberance than a sparsely populated one.

Superchunk with Tee Vee Repairman
September 12 (doors at 7/show at 8)
Crystal Ballroom, Somerville

The other “super” group that will bless the area with its presence on September 12 is probably the most important indie-rock torchbearer of the past four decades. The discography of Chapel Hill’s Superchunk — in which the four singles and B-side collections are at least as significant as the 13 proper albums — is sufficient for them to claim this distinction. However, the band is also responsible for the founding of what is quite likely the most important label in indie rock, Merge. On August 22, the quartet uncaged the reliably inspired, melodic, and hard-rocking Songs in the Key of Yikes, further proof that slowing down simply isn’t a Superchunk kind of thing. (Here is my 2019 interview with lead singer Mac McCaughan.)

Lovina Falls with Count Zero, and Gene Dante and The Future Starlets
September 13 (doors at 7)
Sonia, Cambridge

Valerie Forgione distinguished herself in the late ’90s and early 2000s as the frontwoman of the Boston quartet Mistle Thrush. Among the praise heaped upon Forgione was that of late Globe music critic Steve Morse, who gushed that she possessed “some of the most versatile pipes since the dream-pop heyday of Kate Bush,” a comparison that rings familiar to younger fans today thanks to the inclusion of Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” in Stranger Things. Forgione released her first album in May 2023 under the name Lovina Falls, Calculating the Angle of Our Descent (on which she played — among other instruments — autoharp, accordion, and Moog). Two new singles followed in 2024, and now she’s back with a brand new EP,Would That It Were. Veteran Boston artists Count Zero and Gene Dante and the Future Starlets will join her at Sonia on September 13.

Pulp with Hamilton Leithauser
September 13 (doors at 5:30/show at 7)
The Stage at Suffolk Downs, Boston

As Oasis and Blur fought the main battle in the War of Britpop in the early 90s, Pulp – which formed in 1978 – managed to stay comfortably above the fray. As a result, they emerged from it with more of their dignity intact than either of their main competitors. 1995’s “Common People” is arguably the anthem of the era, and its parent LP, the equally monumental LP Different Class, housed several other Pulp classics. The Jarvis Cocker-led assemblage further cemented its legacy with 1998’s This Is Hardcore and 2001’s We Love Life. Twenty-four years later, the band is back with the appropriately title More and are set to play its first Boston show since 1998 on September 13.

— Blake Maddux

Jazz

Bert Seager’s Heart of Hearing
September 3 at 7 p.m.
Lilypad, Cambridge

Pianist and composer Bert Seager’s quartet Heart of Hearing makes its monthly stop at the Lilypad with their mix of Seager originals, a standard or two, some Monk, and a bit of poetry. The band includes saxophonist Rick DiMuzio, bassist Andrew Schiller, and drummer Dor Herskovits.

Bassist Ciara Moser plays with Lumanyano Mzi at Lou’s on September 5 and leads her own band at the Mission Hill Arts Festival on September 7.

Mission Hill Arts Festival
September 5-7 at 5 p.m.
The Yard at the Tobin Community Center, Boston

A dandy weekend of early-evening shows at the Yard: pianist Olivia Pérez-Collellmir and her quartet (Friday, with bassist James Heazlewood Dale, drummer Bertram Lehmann, and singer Esperanza Delgado); indispensable Boston jazz players, trumpeter Jason Palmer and pianist Kevin Harris, in a rare duo setting (Saturday); and bassist/composer Ciara Moser (Sunday, with saxophonist Salim Charvet, guitarist Amaury Cabral, keyboardist Arman Mohammed, drummer Lumanyano Mzi, and singer Aditi Malhotra).

South African-born drummer/composer Lumanyano Mzi. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Lumanyano Mzi
September 5 at 7 p.m.
Lou’s, Harvard Square, Cambridge

On his recent Ithemba Elitsha (A New Hope), South African-born drummer/composer Lumanyano Mzi combines the township lilt of his native Cape Town with a skilled songwriter’s ear for pop and the open forms and harmonies of jazz improvisation. Playing with him at Lou’s are saxophonist (and fellow Cape Town expat) Jean Strauss, guitarist Isaac Romagosa, keyboardist Arman Wali, and bassist Ciara Moser (see Mission Hill Arts Festival).

Arturo Sandoval
September 5 and 6 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

Cuban-born trumpet dynamo Arturo Sandoval leads an octet for four shows over two nights at Scullers: saxophonist Mike Tucker, guitarist William Brahm, pianist Lisandro Pidre, bassist Maximillian Gerl, drummer Daniel Feldman, percussionist Samuel Torres, and second trumpeter (!) Keith Fiala. Sandoval does like to play piano, so it will be interesting to see how this format shakes out.

Saxophonist Sam Spear. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Sam Spear Quintet
September 6 at 8 p.m.
Peabody Hall, Parish of All Saints, Dorchester

Jazz nerds, help me out here: I’m trying to come up with an apt comparison for the dual saxophone blends that reed player Sam Spear gets on her debut from 2024, First Pitch — Pete Christlieb and Warne Marsh? Al Cohn and Zoot Sims? Gerry Mulligan and Paul Desmond? Like those encounters, First Pitch is more about buoyant lyricism than saxophone “battles.” (Spear, on alto, is joined on the CD by tenor Ian Buss.) For this Mandorla Music/Dot Jazz Series show, Spear plays with Andy Voelker on tenor (see September 11), pianist Brian Friedland, bassist Mark Poniatowski, and drummer Gen Yoshimura.

Aardvark Jazz Orchestra
September 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Center for Arts at the Armory, Somerville

The Aardvark Jazz Orchestra opens its 53rd season with a pointed mix of pieces by Duke Ellington and Aardvark musical director Mark Harvey. Under the title “No Walls, Jazz Beyond Category,” the program will include Ellington’s Civil Rights era “It’s Freedom” (1968) and “Chinoiserie,” from The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse Suite. Harvey’s selections include “The Journey” (addressing the more than 100-year “struggle for desegregation of the Boston Public Schools”), “No Walls” (of a piece with Ellington’s cross-cultural enthusiasms), and Harvey’s arrangement of “Chester,” by Revolutionary War-era Boston composer William Billings.

Point01 Percent
September 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Lilypad, Cambridge

The always rewarding mix-and-match of the Point01 Percent series continues. As per usual, the first set will be spontaneously improvised, in this case by NEC faculty members Anna Webber (saxophones) and Anthony Coleman (piano), esteemed Berklee prof Bruno Råberg (bass), and drummer Eric Rosenthal. Expect to be fully engaged by an integral composition improvised on the spot. For the second set, Rosenthal’s Point01 co-organizer Pandelis Karayorgis (piano) leads a like-minded trio with bassist Nathan McBride and the masterful free-jazz drummer Nate Mugavero. Karayorgis works with tunes but, as Rosenthal adds, “with a lot of open improv built in.”

Clear Audience. Photo: Facebook

Clear Audience
September 11 at 6:30 p.m.
Eustis Estate, Milton, MA

The quartet Clear Audience is well into their second decade delivering their unique brand of progressive post-bop swing and experimentation. They perform original pieces by all the band members: saxophonist Andy Voelker, guitarist Steve Fell, bassist Jef Charland, and drummer Luther Gray. They’re playing the final 2025 summer concert at the Eustis Estate presented by Mandorla Music.

Pianist Kenny Barron. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Kenny Barron Trio
September 11 at 7:30 p.m, and 9:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge

Peerless jazz piano master Kenny Barron, now 82, holds forth for two shows with stellar trio-mates Kiyoshi Kitagawa on bass and Savannah Harris on drums.

McCoy Tyner Legacy Band
September 12 at 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge

Francisco Mela, who served as the drummer for McCoy Tyner’s bands for the last 10 years of that great pianist’s life, has organized a tribute, called “Blues on the Corner” (from a tune on Tyner’s 1967 The Real McCoy), that includes the Tyner acolyte Benito Gonzalez on piano, bassist Gerald Cannon, and saxophonist George Garzone (of the Fringe).

— Jon Garelick

Classical

Winsor Music in action. Photo: courtesy of the artist

City of Light
Presented by Winsor Music
September 7, 7 p.m.
St. Paul’s Church, Brookline

Winsor kicks off its new season with a survey of 19th- and 20th-century fare. The program includes familiar items (Debussy’s Syrinx) as well as more peculiar (Stravinsky’s La Marseilles).

Complete Brandenburg Concertos
Presented by Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
September 13 & 14, 1:30 p.m.
Calderwood Hall, Boston

The Gardner Museum’s fall offerings open with the period group ACRONYM performing J. S. Bach’s complete Brandenburg Concertos.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

Author Events

Ann Wolbert Burgess and Steven Matthew Constantine at Brookline Booksmith
Expert Witness: The Weight of Our Testimony When Justice Hangs in the Balance
September 4 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Written through Burgess’ singular lens of compassion and lived experience, Expert Witness pulls back the curtain on some of the biggest cases in the last thirty years—from Bill Cosby to the Menendez brothers to Larry Nassar—to reveal the deeply human stories behind the trials that have captivated a nation. The book explores the role of expert witnesses in high stakes court cases, offering first-hand accounts and never-before-seen interviews with attorneys, victims, and offenders.

“Expert Witness places readers inside the mind of the nation’s most prominent courtroom expert, following Burgess as she takes on one seismic case after the next. Throughout the narrative, each case deepens the reader’s understanding of the art and science of expert testimony, taking readers from the women’s movement of the 1970s to the #MeToo movement of today—one of the largest social reckonings in recent history. At its core, Expert Witness is a story of empowerment. It’s a story of compassion and the ever-increasing need for individuals to stand up and speak truth to power or to popular opinion. And it’s ultimately a story of how revolutionary one voice can be.”

Osita Nwanevu at Harvard Book Store
The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding 
September 4 at 7 p.m.
Free

“The Right of the People offers us challenging answers: while democracy remains vital, American democracy is an illusion we must make real by transforming not only our political institutions but the American economy. In a text that spans democratic theory, the American Founding, our aging political system, and the dizzying inequalities of our new Gilded Age, Nwanevu makes a visionary case for a political and economic agenda to fulfill the promise of American democracy and revive faith in the American project.

‘250 years ago, the men who founded America made a fundamental break not just from their old country but the past—casting off an order that had subjugated them with worn and weak ideas for the promise of true self-governance and greater prosperity in a new republic,’ Nwanevu writes. With exactly their sense of purpose and even higher, more righteous ambitions for America than they themselves had, we should do the same now⁠ — work as hard as we can in the decades ahead to ‘institute new Government’ for the benefit of all and not just the few.’”

Jyoti Mukharji & Auyon Mukharji at Brookline Booksmith
Heartland Masala: An Indian Cookbook from an American Kitchen
September 5 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Jyoti Mukharji has been teaching cooking classes out of her Kansas City kitchen since 2010. Heartland Masala is an artfully photographed collection of her favorite recipes, enriched with droll, illustrated vignettes authored by culinary historian Auyon Mukharji. Inside you’ll find restaurant staples like Saag Paneer, regional specialties like Murgh Rezala (Chicken Curry with Water Lily Seeds and Cashews), and creative originals like Masala Brussels Sprouts. A feast for culturally curious readers and adventurous cooks alike, this inventive collaboration is unlike any Indian cookbook you’ve seen before.”

Fara Dabhoiwala at Harvard Book Store
What Is Free Speech?: The History of a Dangerous Idea
September 8 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Fara Dabhoiwala explores the surprising paths free speech has taken across the globe since its invention three hundred years ago. Though free speech has become a central democratic principle, its origins and evolution have less to do with the high-minded pursuit of liberty and truth than with the self-interest of the wealthy, the greedy, and the powerful. Free speech, as we know it, is a product of the pursuit of profit, of technological disruption, of racial and imperial hypocrisy, and of the contradictions involved in maintaining openness while suppressing falsehood. For centuries, its shape has everywhere been influenced by international, not just national, events; nowhere has it ever been equally available to women, the colonized, or those stigmatized as racially inferior.

“Rejecting platitudes about the First Amendment and its international equivalents, and leaving no ideological position undisturbed, What Is Free Speech? is the unsettling history of an ideal as cherished as it is misunderstood.”

Nicholas Boggs at Harvard Book Store
Baldwin: A Love Story 
September 9 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Nicholas Boggs shows how James Baldwin drew on all the complex forces within these relationships—geographical, cultural, political, artistic, and erotic— and alchemized them into novels, essays, and plays that speak truth to power and had an indelible impact on the civil rights movement and on Black and queer literary history. Richly immersive, Baldwin: A Love Story follows the writer’s creative journey between Harlem, Paris, Switzerland, the southern United States, Istanbul, Africa, the South of France, and beyond. In so doing, it magnifies our understanding of the public and private lives of one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century, whose contributions only continue to grow in influence.”

Viet Thanh Nguyen with Takeo Rivera at Brookline Booksmith
To Save and Destroy
September 10 at 7 p.m.
Tickets are free or $32 with book

“The essays here, delivered originally as the prestigious Norton Lectures, proffer a new answer to a classic literary question: What does the outsider mean to literary writing? Over the course of six captivating and moving chapters, Viet Thanh Nguyen explores the idea of being an outsider through lenses that are, by turns, literary, historical, political, and familial.

“Each piece moves between writers who influenced Nguyen’s craft and weaves in the haunting story of his late mother’s mental illness. Nguyen unfolds the novels and nonfiction of Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Ellison, William Carlos Williams, and Maxine Hong Kingston, until aesthetic theories give way to pressing concerns raised by war and politics. What is a writer’s responsibility in a time of violence? Should we celebrate fiction that gives voice to the voiceless–or do we confront the forces that render millions voiceless in the first place? What are the burdens and pleasures of the ‘minor’ writer in any society?

“Unsatisfied with the modest inclusion accorded to “model minorities” such as Asian Americans, Nguyen sets the agenda for a more radical and disquieting solidarity with those whose lives have been devastated by imperialism and forever wars.”

PSB: Boston Edition Silent Reading Party at Porter Square Books
September 11 at 6 p.m.
Free

“The Silent Reading Party continues! You can either BYOB (bring your own book) or buy a book here! We’ll be sitting and reading quietly for an hour, followed by some discussion about what we read. Or not, if you don’t feel like talking! Snacks, refreshments, and excellent book recommendations will be provided.”

Sam Wachman with Grace Talusan at Brookline Booksmith
The Sunflower Boys 
September 12 at 7 p.m.
Free

“A harrowing and gorgeous tale of love, identity, lost innocence, and survival set in a time of devastating war, The Sunflower Boys is a powerful, heartrending exploration of young queer love, the Ukrainian spirit, and a family’s struggle to survive.”

Sarah Green, Keetje Kuipers, and Natalie Shapero at Porter Square Books
September 15 at 5:30 p.m.
Free

“Sarah Green’s The Deletions is a spiritual and psychological reckoning with ecological grief, infertility grief, and the loss of a marriage. These poems live at the intersection of ode and elegy, simultaneously observing and reflecting upon multiple kinds of love (friendship, romance, family). With a tone that ranges from poignant to stoic and from playful to irreverent, the speaker sifts through generational layers of divorce, revisiting the violence of teen girlhood and ultimately rediscovering her own resilience.

“Keetje Kuipers’ unforgettable love poems in Lonely Women Make Good Lovers–queer, complicated, and almost always compromised–engage a poetics of humility, leaning into the painful tendernesses of unbridgeable distance. As Kuipers writes, love is a question ‘defined not by what we / cannot know of the world but what we cannot know of ourselves.’ These poems write into that intricate webbing between us, holding space for an ‘I’ that is permeable, that can be touched and changed by those we make our lives with.

“The politics of labor and performance collide with comedy and tragedy in Natalie Shapero’s fourth poetry collection, Stay Dead. Shapero’s unflinching poems explore theories of acting, discourses of survival, privacy and publicity, power and punchlines, and the language of despair. This work explores how ‘your death place / is the birthplace you choose.’ With appearances by Claude Monet, Mark Rothko, Chris Burden, Studs Terkel, Anthony Bourdain, Gene Kelly, and others.”

— Matt Hanson

Celebrating 100 years of the Norton Lectures at Harvard at Farkas Hall (12 Holyoke Street), Harvard University, Cambridge, September 11 at 6 p.m.

“The Office of the Dean of Arts & Humanities, the Mahindra Humanities Center, and Harvard University Press invite you to join us for a conversation on the vital role of the arts and humanities in public life with Stephanie Burt, Adam Gopnik, Vijay Iyer, and Viet Thanh Nguyen.” Given the current  political situation, with Donald Trump escalating his attacks on cultural institutions (including Harvard), demanding that the Smithsonian “focus less on slavery” and releasing a 26-point memo targeting queer history, migrants, indigenous people, and others, this might be more than the usual self-adulatory confab among members of the “cultural elite.” Will someone raise the issue of how lamely the arts community is combating encroaching authoritarianism?

Alexander von Humboldt – The Whole World in 250 Essays
At the Goethe Institute Boston, 170 Beacon St, Boston, on September 11 at 6:30 p.m.
Admission free, please RSVP

Oliver Lubrich, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Bern in Switzerland and editor, and Rex Clark will guide the audience through the world and writings of Alexander von Humboldt. “The German naturalist, anthropologist and travel writer is well-known for his explorations of the Americas and of Russia, for his ascension of Mount Chimborazo, and for his contributions to the understanding of man-made climate change. Though he is cited today as the ‘father of environmentalism,’ many of his works have not been accessible since his death, especially his numerous papers, articles, and essays published in journals, newspapers, and magazines all over the world. Humboldt’s international reception was unparalleled during his time, with publications spanning across five continents in fifteen languages, and his work influenced generations of writers—from Darwin, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman to Carpentier, Reyes, Aira, Galeano, and García Márquez.” Lubrich was co-editor of Alexander Von Humboldt: Writings in English, Part I: 1789-1824.

— Bill Marx