[Updated] Arts Fuse critics select the best in music, theater, and film that’s coming up this week. A new feature!

By The Arts Fuse Staff.

Roots & World Music

David Mallett
June 28
Club Passim, Cambridge, MA

Maine bard Mallett’s most enduring number is surely “The Garden Song,” but he’s got a lifetime of stories and ballads to offer.

El Chapo de Sinaloa
June 28
Wonderland Ballroom, Revere, MA

It’s a bit unclear when the Wonderland Ballroom will be bulldozed. Tickets are now on sale for a reggae show in August, but it’s doubtful the venue will live on much beyond that. So this norteño/banda star may be one of the last of the many regional Mexican acts to play the storied Revere ballroom.

Richard Thompson
June 29
Boarding House Park, Lowell, MA,

June 30
Prescott Park, Portsmouth, NH
The legendary British guitar slinger gave a rousing performance with his band at the Orpheum this spring, but his most ardent fans will tell you that he’s at his best solo, like he’ll be for this pair of area performances.

Sonny Landreth
June 29
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA
Peter Frampton’s Guitar Circus featuring Sonny Landreth

June 30
Indian Ranch, Webster, MA
Louisiana swamp-blues guitar master Landreth is a favorite among British classic rockers. He’s a fixture at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festivals, and now he’s opening for—and almost certainly jamming with—Peter Frampton on a summer tour that kicks off at Indian Ranch. The night before Landreth brings his band to Cambridge for his own show, which will likely draw heavily from his new all-instrumental release Elemental Journey.

Emeline Michel
July 3
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

The MFA’s idyllic Concerts in the Courtyard series continues with the lush sounds of Haiti’s premier songbird.

— Noah Schaffer

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Classical Music

Boston Symphony Chamber Players with David Deveau, piano.
June 27, 8 p.m.
Rockport Music, Shalin Performance Center, Rockport, MA.

The performance features music of Mozart, Martinu, Carter, and Brahms.

Cosi Fan Tutti by Mozart
Staged by the North end Music and Performing Arts Center
June 27–30
Faneuil Hall, Boston, MA

A production of Mozart’s beloved opera in Italian with English Supertitles.

Music of Rossini, Verdi Poulenc, Britten by Mohawk Trails Concerts
June 28 and 29
Federated Church, Charlemont, MA

A first-class chamber music program with excellent players, including William Hite, tenor. On the program are Benjamin Britten’s “On this Island,” English Folksong Settings, songs by Poulenc, and Verdi’s Quartet in e minor.

Sergey Antonov, cello, and Ilya Kazantsev, piano
June 29, 8 p.m.
Rockport Music, Shalin Performance Center, Rockport, MA

Antonov, the Gold Medalist Winner of the 2007 International Tchaikovsky Cello Competition, performs with award-winning pianist Kazantsev in a highly-recommended program of works by Grieg, Paul Creston, and Rachmaninoff.

Pianist Joyce Yang (replacing the previously announced Dubrovka Tomsic).
June 30, 5 p.m.
Presented by Rockport Music
Shalin Performance Center, Rockport, MA Sunday, June 30, 5 p.m.

The concert features music by Scarlatti, Currier, Schumann and Rachmaninoff.

— Susan Miron

Wagner, Schoenberg, Hindemith, and Modern Middle East
Presented by Mohawk Trails Concerts
July 5, 7 p.m. and July 6, 7:30 p.m.
Federated Church, Charlemont, MA

This is surely the summer’s most eclectic program, featuring Liszt’s arrangement of the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, a collection of cabaret songs by (of all people) Arnold Schoenberg, and Hindemith’s 1919 Sonata for viola and piano paired with pieces by three young, Middle Eastern composers: Lev Zhurbin, Yousif Sheronick, and Hafez Nazari.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

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Film

The Roxbury Film Festival
June 27–30
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Massachusetts College of Art and Design
, 621 Hungtington Avenue, Boston, MA
Haley House Bakery Cafe, 
12 Dade Street, Roxbury, MA

This year’s festival, now in its 15th year, has an especially strong line up of films. The festival continues in its commitment to celebrating and screening both notable and new filmmakers and stories about the experiences of people of color.

Thursday’s opening film is Things Never Said, Charles Murray’s movie about an aspiring spoken word poet with a troubled marriage. Friday’s screening is Knockaround Kids, director John Adekoje’s look at kids stuck in, but who want out of, the welfare system. On Friday, The Haley House presents a dinner with the movie In Search of the Black Knight. On Saturday, there is a Shorts Program at Mass Art in Boston, and at the MFA, there will be a screening, in collaboration with The Jewish Film Festival of Boston, of Our Mockingbird. Also at 12 p.m. on Saturday there is a Teen Workshop on Storytelling and Screenwriting
 taught by Deborah Shariff. It will held at 
Northeastern University at the John D. O’Bryant Center. See the schedule for full details on the many of the other films.

Best of Boston Open Screen
June 27, 7:30 p.m.
Brattle Theater, Cambridge MA

For the past 10 years, Boston Open Screen has been making use of different venues to show “any film under 10 minutes.” Tonight they show the “best, freakiest, weirdest, most awesome stuff” from their first decade.

The Nantucket Film Festival
Through June 30
Nantucket Island, MA

Nantucket Island presents a variety of world-class independent films. Special awards include the Tony Cox Award for Screenwriting, the Adrian Shelley Award for excellence in filmmaking, and awards for Best Writer-Director, Best Storytelling in Documentary, Best Teen Film, and the Audience Award.

— Tim Jackson

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Theater

Love’s Labor’s Lost by William Shakespeare
Staged by Shakespeare and Company
Through September 1
Tina Packer Playhouse, Lenox, MA

The director promises a “fresh” take on this early play of the Bard’s and her choice of time frame is certainly intriguing. She sets the script “against the provocative backdrop of a post-war 1940’s—a time of picking up the pieces while forging new ground in women’s rights and capabilities. From the workplace to an ever-expanding worldview, it was indeed one of the most memorable decades in American history—and a time when the cost of war was in the forefront of public concern.” The photo of Rosaline suggests that women are not going to be dainty push overs in this production.

— Bill Marx

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Jazz

A busy weekend before the Fourth of July lull.

Claudio Ragazzi
June 28, 7 p.m.
Lily Pad, Cambridge, MA

Claudio Ragazzi devotes substantial time to composing and arranging music for film and television—and in conveying those skills to Berklee students aspiring to do the same—but nonetheless maintains an active performing career, invariably with other top-flight musicians. Take the opportunity and catch Ragazzi and his superb quartet (with pianist Nando Michelin, bassist Fernando Huergo, and drummer Franco Pinna) at the Lily Pad in Inman Square.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exzu_mVGh98

Sumie Kaneko
June 28, 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA

Sumie Kaneko is a new voice in several senses. She sings in Japanese—sometimes original songs, sometimes those of others—but her phrasing is fluidly jazz-based. She also plays traditional Japanese string instruments—the koto and shamisen—but, again, solidly in the jazz idiom. She and her J-Trad & More project float among Boston, New York, and Tokyo, so this is a chance to hear them while they’ve alighted here.

Terence Blanchard
June 28, 8 p.m.
Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall, Lenox, MA

The Tanglewood Jazz Festival seems to have been replaced by occasional individual performances by jazz artists out at the BSO’s summer home. If you’re spending this weekend in the Berkshires, though, you’re in luck: New Orleans trumpeter Terence Blanchard and his quintet will take a break from the heat and humidity of his home town to enjoy . . . the heat and humidity of Massachusetts. (Maybe Blanchard’s next visit will be with the Boston Symphony itself—attention Andris Nelsons!—since his opera Champion just received its premiere by Opera Theatre of St. Louis.)

Di eVano: Danzón & Evolution
June 29 8 p.m.
Lily Pad, Cambridge, MA

Count on violinist Mimi Rabson to always be involved with an intriguing project. Di eVano (with violinist Lydia Yu-Lin Wang, cellist Junko Fujiwara, bassist—and founder—Irais Brito, and percussionist Judith Soberanes) explore commonalities in the classical and Latin jazz idioms and push them into new territory. The intimacy of the Lily Pad should serve them well.

— J. R. Carroll