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.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Boston area theaters have decided to pretty much ignore what is happening in America and beyond — mounting threats to democracy, the slide toward authoritarianism, the climate crisis, growing economic inequality, ICE’s savage round-up of immigrants, the expansion of internment camps, ongoing genocide in Gaza, transphobia, the grueling war in Ukraine, etc. I have decided in Coming Attractions to point out a production, staged in America or elsewhere, that grapples with today’s alarming realities. Sometimes the stagings 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.

A glimpse of The HawtPlates’ Dream Feed. Photo: Daniel Vasquez

Created and performed by the two-time Grammy Award winning theatrical family band The HawtPlates, Dream Feed is described as an electroacoustic or electro-acoustic vocal song cycle or “live concept album” that drops audiences into the “humor, terror, beauty, and allure” of an active mind within a slumbering body. “Can we remember our own dreams? Can we share the dreams we have in common? Can we awaken ourselves to the origin of our aspirations?” The group says that these world premiere performances will be “part lullaby, part political lament, part fever dream.”

The piece is part of the 2026 Under the Radar Festival, which describes its season as explicitly responding to a “global moment of political and cultural instability.” Dream Feed will run in the Mainstage Theater at HERE Arts Center (145 6th Ave, New York, NY), through February 1.

— Bill Marx

Film

A scene that shocked the Vatican in Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana.

Viridiana
through January 19
Brattle Theatre, Cambridge

Director Luis Buñuel takes a scathingly critical look at religion, charity, false generosity, and moral hypocrisy. Viridiana, the embodiment of Catholic principles and Christian purity, is a novice nun undertaking her formal training period preparing for her profession. Before accepting her vows, she is encouraged to visit her wealthy and reclusive uncle Don Jaime (Buñuel regular Fernando Rey). On his estate, she is subjected to his unwarranted romantic advances — he is projecting onto her his desire for his late wife. The film was controversial — it was banned in Franco’s Spain and denounced by the Vatican, which particularly disliked a scene that mimicked The Last Supper — populated by beggars and scoundrels. The screenplay is loosely based on Pérez Galdós’s 1895 novel Halma. Bunuel’s 1961 masterpiece is being shown in a 4K restoration

Belmont World Film’s Family Festival
January 19
Brattle Theatre

Belmont World Film’s 23rd Family Festival is a celebration of some of the world’s most imaginative films for and about children.

10:30 a.m. Pet Projects Short Films for Ages 3-8.

Films include:

12:00 The Songbirds’ Secret

1:45 A Different Lens Shorts Program (Ages 8-12)

3:15 Greetings From Mars

A scene from Eraserhead.

David Lynch Double Feature
January 20
The Brattle Theatre

Inland Empire at 6 p.m.

An actress’s perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish film production that was supposedly cursed.

Eraserhead at 4 and 9:30 p.m.

Henry Spencer, a new father, is left to care for his deformed baby in an industrial wasteland. Wrapped in bandages, the baby won’t eat and cries incessantly. To escape his torment, Henry has visions: one where he is decapitated, a boy finds his head in the street, and brings it to a factory to be made into erasers.

The Painter and the Thief
January 24 at 2 p.m.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston

When two of artist Barbora Kysilkova’s most valuable paintings are stolen from a gallery at Frogner in Oslo, the police locate the thief after a few days, but the paintings are nowhere to be found. Barbora goes to the trial in hopes of finding clues, but instead she ends up asking the thief if she can paint a portrait of him. This will be the start of a very unusual friendship. Covering a three year period, this documentary follows the incredible story of an artist whom while looking for her stolen paintings, turned the face of the thief into a work of art.

A scene from Steve McQueen’s documentary Occupied City. Photo: A24

Occupied City
January 24 at 6 p.m.
Harvard Film Archives

The past collides with the present in filmmaker Steve McQueen’s 2023 excavation of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. The film journeys from World War II to recent years of pandemic and protest, resulting in a provocative, life-affirming reflection on memory, time, and what’s to come. Arts Fuse review

Amrum
January 25 at 11 a.m.
Coolidge Corner Theatre

Goethe German Film presents Fatih Akin’s latest film, set on Amrum Island. In the final days of the WWII, 12-year-old Nanning braves the treacherous sea at night to hunt seals; he works at a nearby farm to help his mother feed the family. Despite the hardship, life on the beautiful, windswept island almost feels like paradise. But after peace finally arrives, a deeper threat is revealed: the enemy is far closer than the boy imagined.

A scene from Buster Keaton’s The General.

The General / The Immigrant
January 25 at 2 p.m.
West Newton Cinema, Newton

A screening of two major silent comedies: Buster Keaton’s The General (1926) and Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant (1917). Live musical accompaniment supplied by Bruce Vogt.

Belmont World Film’s 23rd Family Festival
January 25 at 1 p.m.
Regent Theater in Arlington

“This year’s lineup includes mostly North American premieres, with more than half of the films adapted from or inspired by classic and contemporary children’s books—a longstanding festival hallmark. For young readers and those who struggle with reading, a professional voice-over will read subtitles aloud for films in languages other than English, creating an experience much like story time.

Your children can also engage in hands-on workshops–including Learn to the Draw the Minions and Hotel Transylvania Characters and Introduction to Storyboarding for Animated Films–with this year’s Artists-in-Residence, story artist and director Dave Feiss and story artist and writer Paul McEvoy, both of whom have most recently worked on The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, as well as the Minions and Hotel Transylvania franchises and many others.”

Massachusetts Avenue; Live Along Cambridge’s Main Artery
February 1 at 6 p.m.
Somerville Theatre in Davis Square

A high-flying whirlwind grand tour of Mass. Ave. featuring stunning aerial cinematography, revealing interviews with small business owners as well as coverage of controversial news-making stories (the MIT and Harvard encampments) and a look at the Avenue’s origins. Also, Central Square’s dance party as seen from above — with some love given to our local music scene.

A scene from It Was Just an Accident. Photo: NYFF

Boston Festival of Films from Iran
January 30 – February 22
Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Some of the best global cinema comes from Iran. The festival begins with a trio of brilliant films:

It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi’s multiple award nominee from 2025) Arts Fuse review
January 30 at 7 p.m. Arts Fuse review

Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami’s multi-layered meta-film with Juliette Binoche)
January 31 at 2 p.m.

Cutting Through Rocks (bold Iranian feminism)
February 1 at 2 p.m.

Pick of the Week

Urchin streaming on Amazon Prime

British actor Harris Dickinson makes an assured directorial debut with an unflinching look at a young man struggling to survive on the streets of London, scraping by on temporary jobs and petty theft. Known for his performances in Beach Rats and Babygirl, Dickinson displays a steady hand behind the camera, drawing strong, naturalistic performances from his cast, most notably Frank Dillane, who delivers a raw, unsentimental performance as Mike, a young man living on the margins who is repeatedly undone by self-destructive habits. After serving time for assault and petty theft, they guy is placed in a job through social services. His attempts to reenter society are continually undermined by ingrained patterns of self-defeating behavior.

Overlooked among last year’s releases, Urchin stands out as a tough-minded, compassionate portrait of survival and social instability. Dickinson’s balance of tragedy and gentle humor creates a gripping drama centered on the struggle of a man against himself. This is a beautiful film well worth seeking out.

— Tim Jackson

Theater

L to R: Gabriel Graetz (Don) and Deb Martin (Suzanne) in the Gamm Theatre production of Eureka Day. Photo: Cat Laine

Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector. Directed by Tony Estrella. Staged by Gamm Theatre at 1245 Jefferson Boulevard, Warwick, RI, January 8 through February 1.

According to the Gamm Theatre website, this script, which won a 2025 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play, is set “at a progressive private school in Berkeley, [where] decisions are made by consensus and everyone gets a voice—until a mumps outbreak throws everything into chaos. As Zoom meetings unravel, alliances crack, and tensions rise,” the comedy “takes a sharply funny and frighteningly familiar look at how we communicate, or fail to.”

Job by Max Wolf Friedlich. Directed by Marianna Bassham. Staged by SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, through February 17.

According to the SpeakEasy Stage Company’s website, this “Broadway thriller” tells “the story of Jane, an employee of a big tech company who has been placed on leave after becoming the subject of a viral video. As the play begins, Jane arrives at the office of a crisis therapist, Loyd, determined to be reinstated to the job that gives her life meaning. The session quickly spirals, however, offering a probing look at power, politics, and mental health in an age where identity is performative and everything is on the record.” The cast for this two-hander is Josephine Moshiri Elwood and Dennis Trainor Jr.

A scene from Kurt Hunter Marionettes’ production of Penguin In My Pocket.

Penguin In My Pocket by Kurt Hunter Marionettes. At the Puppet Showplace Theater, 32 Station Street, Brookline, through January 25.

The lowdown from the Puppet Showplace Theater about this show: “What happens when a penguin scientist crash lands in the jungle? Stranded because of a failed experimental jetpack, our penguin protagonist has to work with an artistic monkey to find her way home — and encounters a sea monster along the way! This quirky tale highlights the importance of imagination in both art and science, and features a concertina and audience participation!”

“Stay after the show to meet the artists and see the puppets up close! Plus, enjoy a dress-up station, coloring sheets, and a penguin puppet craft. These activities are available after every performance, 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.. All ages welcome, especially enjoyed by ages 4 – 8.

The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar) by Nia Akilah Robinson. Directed by Mina Morita. A co-production between Company One and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company at the Modern Theatre at Suffolk University, through January 31.

The plot, according to the Company One website: “Charity and her mom both work as counselors at a sleepaway camp in Philadelphia. On the same grounds, almost two centuries earlier, a strangely familiar mother and daughter stand watch at the grave of a recently deceased loved one. As betrayals and buried horrors come to light, love holds fast across twisting timelines.” Why this play now? “Set in 1832 and the present day, The Great Privation asks us to examine our country’s complex racial history through the parallel stories of a mother and daughter, who each embody the roles of both ancestor and descendant.”

A scene from the January 2026 production of Library Lion featuring the title beast. Photo: Nile Scott Studio

Library Lion by Eli Bijaoui. Music by Yoni Rechter. Based on the English translation by M. Rodgers and A. Berris. Directed by Ran Bechor. Staged by Adam Theater at The Calderwood Pavilion, 527 Tremont St., Boston, through January 25

From the Arts Fuse review of the January 2025 production of this delightful children’s theater production. “There’s a new kid on the block and he’s got remarkably expressive blue eyes, a golden mane of hair, four paws, and a long tail that’s great for dusting off books. He’s a larger-than-life-sized puppet, and he’s very definitely the star of the children’s play Library Lion, which is being staged by Adam Theater, an equally new and welcome addition to the Boston theater scene.”

The Great Pistachio by Nicholas Cummings. Directed by Josh Telepman. Staged by Yorick Ensemble at the Plaza Black Box at Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, January 23 through February 1.

Billed as an absurdist comedy, this script explores the idea of “what it means to play, even at the end.” Here’s the plot: “Future world-renowned artist, Bertrand Brambles, has buried himself in a dirt hole for decades to craft the greatest play ever written, uninfluenced by the world around him. His brother, Boris, has spent that time sitting in his chair attempting to read every newspaper ever written. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, the world outside has ended. The two brothers embark on the journey to mount this magnum opus with the only survivor they can find, a young girl, Beatrice.”

The Roommate by Jen Silverman. Directed by Curt Columbus. Staged by Trinity Repertory Company in the Dowling Theater, Lederer Theater Center, 201 Washington Street, Providence, R.I., January 28 through March 19.

Here is the Wikipedia summary of this 2015 script: “Sharon is recently divorced and lives in Iowa and invites Robyn, relocating from New York City, to be her roommate. As the two get to know each other better, secrets are revealed and they learn more about themselves in the process.” This will be the final show Curt Columbus directs at Trinity Rep’s Lederer Theater Center as the company’s Artistic Director.

Nathan Salstone, Garrett McNally, and members of the A.R.T. cast of Wonder. Photo: Hawver and Hall

Wonder Music and Lyrics by A Great Big World (Ian Axel & Chad King). Book by Sarah Ruhl. Music Supervision by Nadia DiGiallonardo. Choreography by Katie Spelman. Directed by Taibi Magar. Based on the novel Wonder by R.J. Palacio and the Lionsgate and Mandeville film Wonder. Staged by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge, through February 15.

The American Repertory Theater website on this world premiere production: “Based on R.J. Palacio’s novel and Lionsgate & Mandeville Films’ hit feature film, this uplifting new musical follows the Pullman family as they navigate change, identity, and what it means to belong. Auggie Pullman has been homeschooled his entire life, often retreating to outer space in his imagination. But when his family decides it’s time for him to start going to school, Auggie must take off the space helmet he has used to hide his facial difference. As Auggie navigates a world filled with kindness and cruelty, his parents and sister go on their own journeys of transformation and discovery. Featuring a driving, pop-inspired score, Wonder celebrates empathy, resilience, and the power of choosing kindness.” Arts Fuse review

Small Mouth Sounds by Beth Wohl. Directed by Tanya Martin. Staged by the Wilbury Theatre Group at the WaterFire Arts Center, 475 Valley Street, Providence, Rhode Island, January 29 through February 15.

The Rhode Island premiere of this critically-admired script. According to the WTG website: “In the overwhelming quiet of the woods, six runaways from city life embark on a silent retreat. As these strangers confront internal demons both profound and absurd, their vows of silence collide with the achingly human need to connect.” Here is my mixed-to-negative review of the 2019 production of the play at Boston’s SpeakEasy Stage Company.

Two of the party animals in Party Animals. Photo:

Party Animals by Sarah Nolen of Puppet Motion. At the Puppet Showplace Theater, 32 Station Street, Brookline, on January 31 and February 1.

This puppet play’s plot: we follow “five furry friends as they navigate the biggest social hurdle of their young lives — throwing their first party! Meet a bunny with boundless energy, a sloth with social anxiety, a hedgehog wrestling with wrapping, and a skunk who’s trying to keep everything cool and under control. Through song, dance, and original rock ‘n’ roll music by Boston local Phil Berman (of Puppet Playtime & The Holiday Sing-Along), these little stars discover that music can be an exuberant and healthy way to express their inner selves.”

A scene in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2006 production of Sejanus: His Fall. Photo: Stewart Hemley

Sejanus: His Fall by Ben Jonson. Adapted and directed by Nathan Winkelstein. Staged by Red Bull Theater at Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 416 West 42nd Street, NY, NY. In-Person & Simulcast on January 26 at 7:30 p.m. ET

A rare opportunity to see a staged reading of one of Ben Jonson’s tragedies (1603-5), which I saw thrillingly produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2006. This Roman tragedy can be viewed as a riposte to Julius Caesar — though there is evidence Shakespeare performed in its premiere at the Globe. It is a brilliant study of the interconnections between dictatorship and paranoia, one of the most devastating in the history of the drama. The plot: well, imagine that Trump skipped off to Mar-a-Lago for an extra long golfing vacation and J.D. Vance saw this as his opportunity to advance his plans to take over. He begins to wheel and deal in secret with Republicans and Democrats, knitting together a murderous plot (that includes killing the ruler’s family members) to displace the barbaric but mentally incompetent tyrant. Double and triple agents, counter-plotters, and leakers become part of the mix, including some memorably spineless liberal moderates.

But Trump returns unexpectedly to Washington D.C. and, after back-stabbings galore, all hell breaks loose, with Marco Rubio (the despot’s real favorite?) out for blood. Was it all a set-up? Many insightful lines here touch on today’s gangster politics:

“We since became the slaves to one man’s lusts,/ and now to many. Every minist’ring spy/ that will accuse and swear is lord of you,/ Of me, of all, our fortunes and our lives./ Our looks are called into question, and our words,/ How innocent soever, are made crimes;/ We will not shortly dare to tell our dreams,/ Or think, but ’twill be treason.”

— Bill Marx

Visual Art

The Museum of Fine Arts is one of just two museums in the United States to collect the brilliantly colored and vividly realistic lithographic prints of Hindu divinities, produced by the thousands in South Asia and distributed to Hindu communities around the world. In Hindu communities everywhere, the inexpensive devotional prints, created by Bengali artists, are ubiquitous, adorning homes, offices, factories, cars, calendars, computers, and even shop counters.

Satyanarayan, printed and published by the Kansaripara Art Studio, around 1910. Photo: MFA

Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal, opening at the MFA on January 31, features 38 lithographs from 19th- and early 20th-century Calcutta (Kolkata), where their production began with the Indian encounter with the new technology. More than 100 objects from South Asia, including prints, paintings, sculptures, and textiles, explore how lithography gave Bengali artists “a means to change not just devotional but also artistic, political, and social life.” The show, the first of its kind in the U.S., concludes with an immersive room featuring wall-sized collages of modern popular images.

The Addison Gallery’s Parasol Press: Breaking New Ground opens January 24 with the first ever survey of the innovative print atelier’s output from 1970 to 2014. Parasol’s editions are ranked with the late 20th century’s “most ambitious prints,” creations that challenge the limits of the medium and that won Parasol a reputation as one of the most important print publishers of the century. Parasol’s output included prints by leading minimalist, conceptual, photorealistic, and neo-expressionist artists, featuring such virtuosic examples as Chuck Close’s largest mezzotint ever created, Richard Estes’ photorealistic screen prints with their hundreds of color layers, and a collaborative portfolio of works made entirely with rubber stamps.

“I’m disabled,” says artist Finnegan Shannon, “and I need to sit. I’ve been dreaming about an exhibition where instead of having to move from artwork to artwork, I could sit somewhere comfortable and have the artwork come to me.” Shannon, known for works that challenge traditional museum practices, has now brought that dream to life in Don’t mind if I do, opening at the Smith College Museum of Art on January 30.

Magical thinking, psychologists tell us, is virtually universal, as least in childhood. Children regularly imagine that unrelated deeds, like stepping on a crack — or words, like cursing out a tormentor, or even thoughts can bring about actual events in the real world.  But modern-day adults are expected to brush such notions to the far corners of the mind, lest they be thought odd, or worse. Magical Thinking, of Systems and Beliefs, a group exhibition opening January 29 at the Grossman Gallery and Anderson Auditorium at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, 230 Fenway, Boston, suggests, on the contrary, resisting “Western frameworks and their historically dominant visual and political regimes…” and instead accepting the artists’ “invitations to see signs, relationships, and links between the material and spiritual worlds in knowledge systems from across the Global South.” The works on view include sculpture, video, prints, sound installation, and new media.

Related events include an opening reception and performance on January 29 from 6 to 8 p.m. and a commissioned site-specific performance, suite for a minor meeting by Jonathan Gonzalez, at the African Meeting House on Joy Street.

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield opens two shows on January 25: Chenlu Hou and Chiara No: What the Hands Remember to Hear, and Jennie Jieun Lee: Luteal Elements and Grooves. The work of all three artists uses richly colored ceramics to evoke past traditions, ceremonies, and rituals. Her Aldrich show will be Jennie Jieun Lee’s first solo museum exhibition and will feature Marie (2022), Lee’s recreation of the New Orleans Pilgrimage Site: the tomb of Marie Catherine Laveau (1801–1881), the so-called “Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.”

Al E., Chest of Drawers, 2008, Cherry, 33” x 33” x 21.” Photo: Bill Truslow

The Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton explores one of the creative arts programs that have broken new ground in changing the lives of people incarcerated in the United States. Shaping Futures: The Prison Outreach Program of New Hampshire Furniture Masters opens January 24. The show features the impressive craftsmanship produced by the New Hampshire Furniture Masters’ Prison Outreach Program at prisons in New Hampshire and Maine. “Through a diverse array of finely crafted objects,” the museum says — including objects by the program’s participants and its instructors — “Shaping Futures underscores the transformative impact of making, mentorship, and the development of hand skills.”

— Peter Walsh

Classical Music

Pianist Seong-Jin Cho. Photo: Harald Hoffmann

Music by Loggins-Hull, Bernstein, and Tchaikovsky
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
January 15 at 7:30 p.m., 16 at 8 p.m., and 17 at 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall

Favorites by Tchaikovsky (Piano Concerto No. 1, with soloist Seong-Jin Cho) and Leonard Bernstein (Chichester Psams) share the bill with Allison Loggins-Hull’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Joni, a tribute to singer-songwriter Mitchell. BSO principal flautist Lorna McGhee is the soloist in the latter.

Ax & Shaham play John Williams
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
January 22 at 7:30 p.m., 23 at 1:30 p.m., and 24 at 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall

It’s a safe bet that no composer of orchestral music has a bigger following than John Williams, who’s also cultivated a remarkably close relationship with the BSO and the Pops. Here, music from his film scores alternate with the local premiere of 2025’s Piano Concerto and a revival of TreeSong, a 2000 tribute to a redwood tree in Boston’s Public Garden.

Bach’s Christmas Oratorio
Presented by Music Worcester
January 24, 8 p.m.
Mechanics Hall

Music Worcester’s Complete Bach survey continues with a belated performance of the Christmas Oratorio. Chris Shepard conducts the Worcester Chorus, Winchendon Players, and soloists.

Composer Carlos Simon introduces his work Fate Now Conquers at Tanglewood in 2024. Photo: Hilary Scott

Carlos Simon’s Good News Mass
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
January 29 at 7:30 p.m. and 31 at 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston

Thomas Wilkins leads the BSO in the premiere of Composer Chair Simon’s latest opus, which features soloists, the Good News Mass Gospel Chorus, and The Crossing. Filling out the evening are selections from David Lang’s poor hymnal.

Leif Ove Andsnes in recital
Presented by Vivo Performing Arts
January 30, 8 p.m.
Jordan Hall

Pianist Andsnes returns to Boston with a program of works by Schumann, Kurtág, and Janacek in tow.

What is Your Hand in This?
Presented by Vivo Performing Arts
January 31, 8 p.m.
Sanders Theatre

Bass-baritone Davóne Tines and the period band Ruckus team up for a survey of American music that spans the colonial era to the present day.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

Jazz

Zaccai Curtis – Cubop Lives!
January 23 at 7 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

The gifted pianist Zaccai Curtis leads his Cubop Lives! ensemble (from a 2024 recording of that name), with his brother Luques on bass, flutist Jeremy Bosch, and a percussion section that includes Willie Martinez (timbales), Camilo Molina (congas), and Reinaldo de Jesus (bongos). As played on the album, this is both true Cuban and true bebop (IMO), the way Dizzy, Chano Pozo, and George Russell envisioned it.

Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in action. Photo: Luigi Beverelli

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
January 23 at 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston

The website for Vivo Performing Arts (formerly Celebrity Series of Boston) says that there are a “limited number of obstructed view seats available via phone sales” for this annual visit by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. The program is a good one: “Duke in Africa,” featuring selections from the Ellington suites “Afro-Bossa,” “Liberian Suite,” and the Grammy-winning “Togo Brava Suite.” The linked website will guide you to the box office, 617-482-6661.

Bruce Gertz Quintet
January 24 at 7 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

The esteemed Boston bassist and composer Bruce Gertz leads a quintet in a show that will include material from his latest release, the sublime Octopus Dreams, with tenor saxophonist Rick DiMuzio, pianist Gilson Schachnik, and drummer Gary Fieldman (all from the album) as well as guitarist Tim Miller.

Alfredo Rodriguez and Pedrito Martinez. Photo: Anna Webber

Alfredo Rodriguez & Pedrito Martinez
January 24 at 8 p.m.
Berklee Performance Center, Boston

In 2019, the Cuban-born virtuosos Alfredo Rodriquez (piano) and Pedrito Martinez (percussion) released the recording Duologue, produced by Quincy Jones, and performed a program from it for the Celebrity Series of Boston. Now the duo are back for this venerable non-profit presenter under its new name, Vivo Performing Arts.

Kurt Rosenwinkel Quintet
January 25 at 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, Mass.

As of this writing, no clue as to who will be in the quintet for this Sunday matinee-early evening gig. But bigger-than-a-trio implies extra demands on this thoughtful, inventive, one-of-a-kind bandleader, composer, and guitarist — worth hearing in any context.

Max Ridley and Zoe Rose dePaz
January 25 at 5 p.m.
Eustis Estate, Milton, Mass.

The busy Boston bassist, composer, and bandleader Max Ridley works with singer-songwriter multi-instrumentalist Zoe Rose dePaz in this duo, playing “original music that draws on their diverse musical backgrounds and inventive covers of folk and Americana tunes.”

Celebrating Phil Wilson’s 89th Birthday: Phil Wilson Big Band feat. Christine Fawson
January 30 at 7 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

The storied big band leader, Grammy-winner arranger, and educator Phil Wilson taught countless young musicians how to play in ensembles in his long career at Berklee. Wilson and trumpeter/vocalist Christine Fawson are leading Wilsons’s big band in a celebration of his 89^th birthday with a crew of longtime (and more recent) associates, including trumpeter Jeff Stout, saxophonists Dino Govoni and Tucker Antell, trombonists Angel Subero and Jeff Galindo, and drummer Lee Fish, and more.

Saxophonist Tia Fuller. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Tia Fuller
January 31 at 7 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, Mass.

Given her saxophone chops, natural charisma, and a resume that includes touring with Beyoncé, Tia Fuller could have taken a route into pop stardom, but her last release, Diamond Cut (as well as work with Terri Lyne Carrington and esperanza spalding) shows the Berklee prof still holding true to jazz expression (case in point: “Fury of Da’mond,” with guitarist Adam Rogers, from that album). There was no word as of this writing who will be in her band at the R-bar.

— Jon Garelick

Roots and World Music

The Filipino band Isla Singko will be performing at Mixx360, part of an evening raising funds for disaster relief. Photo: courtesy of the band

A Concert for Cebu
Jan. 23
Mixx360
Malden

Last fall, the province of Cebu in the Philippines was rocked by back-to-back natural disasters: a deadly earthquake followed a few weeks later by a typhoon that caused widespread death, destruction, and displacement. A group of Filipino entertainers will come together to raise funds for disaster relief. Performing are Carlo and Glen, the Playboy Monkeys, Isla Singko, Caritmo, and DJ Hm. The event is organized by the local literacy non-profit Bagong Kulturang Pinoy, with proceeds going to Save the Children Philippines’ Cebu Disaster Relief Program and other aid groups.

Edgar Meyer, Mike Marshall, George Meyer
Jan. 30
Groton Hill Music Center

Upright bassist Edgar Meyer and mandolinist Mike Marshall have each spent decades obliterating the boundaries between bluegrass, classical music, jazz, and world music. They’ll be playing as a trio with Meyer’s son George, an accomplished fiddler.

The Finnish string ensemble, Frigg. Photo: Ulla Nikula

Frigg
Club Passim
Jan. 30

The secret is out: The rich Nordic folk tradition has produced a number of cutting-edge bands who are now popular attractions on the American roots music circuit. One of the best is Frigg, a Finnish string ensemble named after the Norse goddess of love and fertility, which has been going strong for over 25 years.

Fabio Pirozzolo’s World Review feat. Walid Zairi & Talween 
McCarthy’s Upstairs
Feb. 1, 4 p.m.

This exciting monthly series, hosted by percussion great Fabio Pirozzolo, continues with a  group led by the mesmerizing Tunisian oudist Walid Zairi. The band, which usually features Pirozzolo and accordionist Ken Hiatt, brings touches of jazz and Western chamber music to the classical Arab tradition.

— Noah Schaffer

Rock, Indie, and Alternative

LaMP (Scott Metzger, Ray Paczkowski and Russ Lawton) head for the Sinclair. Photo: courtesy of the artist

LaMP
Jan. 24 at 8 p.m.
The Sinclair, Cambridge, Mass.

The organ trio takes a jammy twist in the hands of Boston-bred drummer Russ Lawton and his Vermont keyboardist comrade Ray Paczkowski – who both play in the Trey Anastasio Band – and Brooklyn guitarist Scott Metzger, best known as a member of Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. The guitarist provides an intriguing element beyond his mates’ previous duo project, Soule Monde, and the funky grooves that the band builds on their new album One of Us should easily generate plenty of spontaneity onstage

–Paul Robicheau

Author Events

Small Press Book Club – Brookline Booksmith
To Smithereens
January 19 from 7- 9 p.m.
Via Zoom
Free

“To Smithereens is a lighthearted satire of art world personalities, a glimpse into Manhattan of the 1970s–with its seedy theatres and beloved freaks–and a riotous foray into the craze of mid-century women’s wrestling. Inspired both by Drexler’s experiences as one of few women in the Pop Art movement and her own career in the ring (immortalized in Andy Warhol’s Album of a Mat Queen), and first published in 1972, To Smithereens is an antic, biting portrait of its time from a voice that speaks directly to ours.”

Lance Richardson at Harvard Book Store
True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen
January 21 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), a towering figure of twentieth-century American letters, achieved so much during his lifetime, in so many different areas, that people have struggled to pin him down. While ambivalent about his WASP privilege—as a teenager he demanded that his name be removed from the New York Social Register—he attended Yale and cut his teeth in postwar Paris, co-founding The Paris Review as he worked undercover for the CIA.

But then, after a rebellious stint as a Long Island fisherman, he escaped into a series of wild expeditions: floating through the Amazon to recover a prehistorical fossil; embedding with a tribe in Netherlands New Guinea; swimming with sharks off the coast of Australia. His novels, inspired by his travels, were unclassifiable meditations about Caymanian turtle hunters and frontier outlaws in the Florida Everglades. Meanwhile, his nonfiction became legendary: nature books like Wildlife in America—“key parts of the canon of emergent environmental writing,” says Bill McKibben—as well as advocacy journalism supporting Cesar Chavez, Leonard Peltier, and Native American land claims.

Underlying all Matthiessen’s disparate pursuits was the same existential search—to find a cure for ‘deep restlessness.’ This search was most profoundly articulated in The Snow Leopard, his famous account of a 250-mile wildlife survey across the Himalayas. In True Nature, Lance Richardson reconstructs the full scope of a spiritual quest that ultimately led Matthiessen, even as he inflicted great pain on his family, to the highest ranks of Zen. Drawing on rich primary sources and hundreds of interviews, Richardson depicts Matthiessen’s life with page-turning immediacy, while also illuminating how the writer’s uncanny gifts enabled him to sense connections between ecological decline, racism, and labor exploitation—to express, eloquently and presciently, that ‘in a damaged human habitat, all problems merge.'”

Letter Write-In with Abolitionist Mail Project – Brookline Booksmith
January 22 from 6 to 8 p.m.

“Join Abolitionist Mail Project at Brookline Booksmith for a community card-writing event to write letters to incarcerated people in Massachusetts.”

Harvey C. Mansfield at the Cambridge Public Library – Harvard Book Store
The Rise and Fall of Rational Control: The History of Modern Political Philosophy
January 26 at 6 p.m.
Tickets are $37.19 with book

“Mansfield locates the birth of modern political philosophy in the work of Niccolò Machiavelli, the first to assert that the objective of politics is not to achieve wishful ideals of justice or virtue—as the ancients had it—but to manipulate the brute facts of the world in service of interests. Here rational control, free from the order of gods or God, is the key to achieving the modern order, which can liberate humans from slavery and conflict.

Hobbes and Locke later develop Machiavelli’s modern idea, laying foundations for liberalism. Then comes the first crisis in the form of Rousseau, who introduces historical change into the very idea of reason, which itself is said to evolve. After Rousseau, history takes center stage, as witnessed in Kant, Marx, and Hegel. The second crisis of modernity arrives with Nietzsche, who casts doubt on reason itself. Ever since, political thought has been stranded in the desert of postmodernism, where Machiavelli’s necessities are replaced by faded subjectivity.”

WBUR CitySpace: Joanna Weiss and Stephanie Burt on Taylor Swift – Brookline Booksmith
January 27 at 6:30 p.m.
Tickets are $30, $20 for BU faculty, $10 students

“Calling all Swifties! Ready to go even deeper into the world of Taylor Swift? Join Cognoscenti, WBUR’s ideas and opinions team, and fellow fans for an exciting exploration of the artist who has not only won 14 Grammy Awards but shattered records with the highest-grossing tour and the biggest concert film of all time. Think you know everything about the pop icon? Think again.

Get insider scoop from journalist Joanna Weiss, who has dissected every album; Harvard professor Stephanie Burt, whose new book unpacks Swift’s joyful, collaborative brand of genius; and Berklee professor Scarlet Keys, who teaches songwriting through the lens of Swift’s music. Throughout the night, we’ll showcase iconic photos, videos and songs spanning Swift’s entire career to set the mood and spark lively conversation. Cloe Axelson, senior editor of Cognescenti (and mother of three Swifties), moderates.”

A.S. Hamrah in conversation with Sean Burns – Porter Square Books
Algorithm of the Night
January 28 at 7 p.m.
Cambridge Edition, 1815 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA
Free

“‘Unerring’ (Bookforum), ‘hilarious’ (Dana Spiotta), ‘our age’s most irreplaceable critic’ (Guernica), ‘a genius’ (Kenyon Review), A. S. Hamrah returns with an extraordinary collection of his best film writing for n+1, The Baffler, The New York Review of Books, the Criterion Collection, and other publications.

Algorithm of the Night assembles Hamrah’s essays on films and filmmakers and his inimitable, aphoristic reviews–a body of work that, taken together, presents a powerful alternative to a culture mired in publicity and stale convention. A journey through the overlapping dystopias of the Trump years, the Covid years, and the Trump years, Algorithm of the Night attends with remarkable style and precision to a film industry in self-imposed crisis, a chronicle of failures and occasional miracles from AI to The Zone of Interest. Against the tides of ignorance and solipsism, Algorithm of the Night is film criticism as literature and–perhaps–prophecy.” He will discuss the book with Sean Burns, film critic from WBUR. Arts Fuse review 

George Saunders at Back Bay Event Center – Harvard Book Store
Vigil: A Novel
January 29 at 7 p.m.
Tickets are $50 with book

“Harvard Book Store welcomes George Saunders—bestselling author of thirteen books including the Man Booker Prize-winner Lincoln in the Bardo—for a discussion of his highly anticipated new novel Vigil. He will be joined in conversation by Paul Tremblay—award-winning writer and author of the New York Times best sellers Horror Movie and Another, as well as The Cabin at the End of the World, which was adapted into the Universal Pictures film Knock at the Cabin”

Japonica Brown-Saracino at Harvard Book Store
The Death and Life of Gentrification: A New Map of a Persistent Idea
January 29 at 7 p.m.
Free

“In this lively and insightful book, Japonica Brown-Saracino traces how a concept originally intended to describe the brick-and-mortar transformation of neighborhoods has come to characterize transformations that have little to do with cities. She describes how journalists, artists, filmmakers, novelists, and academics use gentrification as a symbolic device to mourn how everyday pleasures and forms of self-expression—from music to marijuana, kale, and tattoos—entered the domain of the elite.

She weighs the implications of turning to gentrification as a tool to tell stories, entertain audiences, and communicate political messages. Relying on vivid examples, the book reveals how the term today expresses widespread ambivalence about rising economic inequality and unease with a variety of forms of social change. This pathbreaking book forces us to think about whether the wide-ranging way we use gentrification dilutes its meaning and stymies efforts to identify and resist urban displacement.”

— Matt Hanson