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

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

An Evening of Silent Film with Tanglewood Music Center, at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, August 12 at 7 p.m.

The Tanglewood Music Festival is bringing its Silent Film Project to Boston. According to the PR, this is a “collaboration between the Tanglewood Music Center and the Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI), and it will feature original music by TMC Composition Fellows – Caio de Azevedo, Baldwin Giang, Liann J. Kang, Joshua Alvarez Mastel, and Sofía Rocha  –  written during their summer studies at Tanglewood, to accompany short silent films. These completely new musical scores are performed live by TMC Conducting Fellows and members of the TMC’s New Fromm Players, who have distinguished themselves in the performance of new music.”

This year’s selection will feature animated comedies Mutt and Jeff, Felix the Cat, and Koko the Clown. There will also be a screening of Falling Leaves, a short made by Alice Guy Blaché, one of the first women movie directors, and several international newsreels from 1926.

— Bill Marx

Rhode Island Film Festival (Flickers)
August 6 – 11
Multiple Venues

Celebrating its 43rd Anniversary Year, the Flickers’ RIIFF is held in Providence, East Greenwich, Warwick, Westerly, Woonsocket, and locations throughout the state of Rhode Island. There multiple shorts programs, and the schedule can be difficult to navigate. I provide the consolidation of the Complete Program.

Detroit Rock City (1999)
August 8 at 7 p.m.
Coolidge Corner Theatre

A summer screening of an almost back-to-school film: Four Midwestern high school students embark on an unstoppable quest for concert tickets to the rock band KISS that brings them up against the authorities, their parents, and the persistent influence of disco. What begins as the passionate pursuit of a rock ‘n’ roll fantasy becomes a series of hairpin turns and comic misadventures with one overriding goal: the liberty to pursue one’s own dreams. Trailer

Prêt-à-Porter (1994)
August 11 at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Brattle Theatre in Cambridge

Robert Altman enlisted a star-studded cast to bring the Nashville treatment to Paris fashion week in this glittery tapestry of glamour, jealousy, passion, greed, and fabulousness. At the 6 p.m. show, there will be a special open-crafting screening and attendees are encouraged to bring and work on their current crafting, sewing, knitting, etc. projects.

Welcome To Yiddishland
August 14 at 6 p.m.
The Vilna Shul, Boston

Welcome to Yiddishland is a snapshot of the Yiddish cultural renaissance that’s going on now. Featuring the leaders and tastemakers of this tradition, the documentary focuses on the continued vibrancy of the Yiddish language. Drawing on intimate interviews and rare, behind-the-scenes access to some of the world’s top musicians and performers, the narrative showcases the innovative works of artists who use Yiddish as a vehicle for addressing contemporary issues, including identity, the refugee crisis, war, and authoritarianism. Followed by a conversation with the film’s co-producer Lisa Newman of the Yiddish Book Center. Babka will be served! Tickets: $25 (includes dinner)

The Great Remakes
Through September 1
Somerville Theatre in Davis Square

The cleverly curated series screens double features that pair films in which both the original and the remake are solid movies. “The Great Remakes series celebrates films where both versions are terrific movies that complement each other in a variety of ways.” Double Features include: The Thing, The Fly, 3:10 to Yuma, The Parent Trap, The Departed & Internal Affairs, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Airplane & Zero Hour, Cat People, Cape Fear, and A Star Is Born (1954 & 2018) Complete details and times

Outdoor Screenings

The Coolidge Corner Theater “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.

The Blob (1988) (Wednesday, August 13)

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (Wednesday, August 20)

Cemetery Cinema: The Sweet Hereafter and Gates of Heaven (Tuesday, August 26)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) (September 17)

I Know What You Did Last Summer (October 15)

The Boston French Film Festival
through August 24
Museum of Fine Arts Boston

A terrific line-up of films this year with all titles linked to descriptions. Arts Fuse review here and here.

Holy Cow on August 3 at 11 a.m. and August 10 at 2:30 p.m. Directed by Louise Courvoisier

The Count of Monte Cristo on August 3 at 1:30 p.m. Directed by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte

The Marching Band (En fanfare) on August 8 at 7 p.m. Directed by Emmanuel Courcol

The President’s Wife (Bernadette) on August 9 at 2:30 p.m. Directed by Léa Domenach

Souleymane’s Story on August 15 at 7 p.m. Directed by Boris Lojkine

Visiting Hours (La prisonnière de Bordeaux) on August 16 at 2:30 p.m. Directed by Patricia Mazuy

The Art of Nothing on August 17 at 2:30 p.m. Directed by Stefan Liberski

A Missing Part on August 22 at 7 p.m. and August 24 at 2:30 p.m. Directed by Guillaume Senez

Bonnard, Pierre and Marthe on August 23 at 2:30 p.m. and August 24 at 11 a.m. Directed by Martin Provost

Cloud
Through August 7
Brattle Theater in Cambridge

Premiere of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s psychological horror thriller. The title, Cloud, refers to the digital space known as the cloud in this peculiar horror story about how hatred spreads online. Yoshii suddenly becomes a “target” when he hears a voice saying “I’ll kill this guy” while looking at an online screen. A man wearing a mask then appears at his door. A suspense thriller that depicts a “collective madness.” Arts Fuse review

Kurasawa
Through August 14
Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline

Akira Kurosawa’s films have influenced many of the world’s major directors, Spielberg, Scorsese, Lucas, Coppola, and Leone to name a few. He defined the samurai genre, spotlighting elegant storytelling and exquisite camerawork. A roundup not to be missed – eleven of his films, digitally restored, make up this series: Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Rashomon, Sanjuro, Yojimbo, Stray Dog, Red Beard, Ikiru, High and Low, Seven Samurai, and Ran. Schedule of Films

Pick of the Week

Summertime, streaming on Amazon Prime and Kanopy

This uplifting summer film features 25 ethnically and sexually diverse Los Angeles young poets from Venice Beach to Koreatown performing spoken-word pieces that evoke the broad mosaic of the city. Short vignettes accompany each segment. Part narrative, part documentary experiment, the film is the result of workshops at GetLit, an LA non-profit program developed to increase literacy and energize communities. The film’s director, Carlos López Estrada, has created music videos for Billie Eilish, Katy Perry, and many others. It has been called “a musical without music.”.The film is a celebration of young voices at a time when diversity is being marginalized. If you have any doubt about the quality of the work, read the remarkable poem in the beginning of my Arts Fuse review from 2021.

— Tim Jackson

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Theater

Our Domestic Resurrection Revolution in Progress Circus!, performed, written, and staged by Bread & Puppet at the company’s farm at Glover, VT, through August 31 at 3 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.”

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Directed by Kevin G. Coleman and Jonathan Epstein. Staged by Shakespeare and Company at the Arthur S. Waldstein Amphitheatre, Lenox, through August 10.

W. H. Auden on the tragedy, specifically its ending: “Behind their passionate suicides, as well as their reactions to Romeo’s banishment is finally a lack of feeling, a fear that the relationship cannot be sustained and that, out of pride, it should be stopped now, in death. If they become a married couple, there will be no more wonderful speeches — and a good thing, too. Then the real tasks of life will begin, with which art has surprisingly little to do. Romeo and Juliet are just idolaters of each other, which is what leads to their suicides.”

As You Like It by William Shakespeare. Directed by Steve Mahler. Staged by Commonwealth Shakespeare Company on the Boston Common, through August 10.

Free Shakespeare under the starry skies. This year it is one of the Bard’s oft-produced romantic comedies, though the action is more sophisticated than it looks. The cast includes Nora Eschenheimer, Michael Underhill, Remo Airaldi, Brooks Reeves, and Maurice Emmanuel Parent.

W.H. Auden on the play: “Civilization is a dance between the ocean of barbarism, which is a unity, and the desert of triviality, which is diverse. One must keep a dialectical balance, and keep both faith — through will, and humor–through intellect. Jaques has the latter, Rosalind has both, so she is able to get the returning exiles to join in the rite of dance.” Arts Fuse review

Dying is No Excuse, written by and featuring Renée Taylor. Directed by Elaine May. Presented by the Berkshire Theatre Group on the Larry Vaber Stage at the Unicorn Theatre, Stockbridge, August 7 through 30.

Here is the build-up on the BTG website: From the legendaryRenée Taylor—Emmy winner, Academy Award nominee and one of comedy’s most beloved voices—comes the World Premiere of Dying is No Excuse, a hilarious and heartfelt new play shaped with Elaine May and with thoughtful staging by Greg Santos.

The Piano Lesson by August Wilson. Directed by Christopher V. Edwards. A Shakespeare and Company co-production with Actors’ Shakespeare Project at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, Lenox, through August 24.

Right up there with Fences as one of August Wilson’s most produced plays. The Actors’ Shakespeare Project staged the show, which won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, earlier this season. Here is the set-up on the ASP’s website: “Tensions are crackling under the floorboards of Doaker Charles’ household when his fast-talking nephew Boy Willie blows in from Mississippi with a scheme to set their descendants up for generations. The plan: sell the family’s ornate antique piano carved by an enslaved ancestor and use it to buy the land where his ancestors were enslaved. But half of the piano also belongs to Berniece, who refuses to let her brother pawn off the heirloom. As the siblings dig in their heels, they will search deeper into their lineage and uncover shocking revelations.” 

Come From Away, book, music and lyrics by Irene Sankoff and David Hein. Directed and choreographed by Kelly Devine. Staged at the Cape Playhouse, Dennis, August 6 through 30.

The acclaimed musical is “based on the true story of the time when the isolated community of Gander, Newfoundland, played host to the world. What started as an average day in a small town turned into an international sleepover, when 38 planes, carrying thousands of people from around the globe, were diverted to Gander’s airstrip on September 11, 2001. Undaunted by culture clashes and language barriers, the people of Gander cheered the stranded travelers with music, an open bar and the recognition that we’re all part of a global family.”

Too Fat for China, written, drawn, and performed by Phoebe Potts. At the Central Square Theatre, Cambridge, August 7 through 10.

According to the online PR, Potts’s one-person show is “a one hour comedic storytelling performance about adoption, race in America and making a family by any means necessary. It’s just Phoebe and her traveling crankie – a giant roll of mural sized comix.”

Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker. Directed by Jonathan Fielding. Staged by the Harbor Stage Company at 15 Kendrick Avenue, Wellfleet Harbor, August 7 through 31.

According to the HSC website: “Five New England neighbors. Six weeks of theater games at the community center. One disarming meditation on small towns, big feelings, and the transformative power of art.” When the play debuted, in 2009, it received the Obie Award for Best New American Play. About the script, the dramatist has said she “wanted the audience to learn about the characters through formal theater exercises. I knew I wanted there to be excruciating silences. I knew I wanted a doomed class romance that left one character embarrassed and the other heartbroken. I knew I wanted the characters to deliver monologues as each other….Eventually I realized that the fun of the play is the fact that it’s confined to this dull, windowless little space.”

— Bill Marx

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Visual Art

Summers in Maine

As anyone who has stayed on the Maine coast at this time of year knows, the last few mysterious weeks of the season are especially haunting. The light on the water and on the storm-battered buildings is brilliant and white, the warm wind is scented with pine pitch and seaweed, and time is almost viscous. Each day seems to flow slowly, reluctantly, toward deep nights splashed with stars.

Since the late 19th century, summer on the coast of Maine has attracted American artists, many of whom escaped the heat and stress of New York City. Starting early in the 20th century, a series of important American modernists became part-time residents, often buying second homes near the water. Since 1948, when the Farnsworth Art Museum—the first museum devoted to artists associated with Maine—opened somewhat unexpectedly in Rockland, the old fishing and industrial town has gradually become a hub of contemporary artistic activity in the state. Facilities include several buildings operated by the Farnsworth, a string of private art galleries downtown, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, housed in its Toshiko Mori-designed structure, a short walk from the main Farnsworth building

What follows is a short virtual tour of some of these Maine-affiliated modern artists and their summer haunts. Not all the places mentioned here are open to the public, but others are, and they offer insight into why this rural state at the far eastern end of the country has appealed to so many artists for so many years.

Wyeth Family, Port Clyde and Cushing

The Wyeth family’s long, deep, three-generation association with summers in Maine began more than a century ago, in 1920, when N.C. Wyeth, well established as a leading American illustrator, bought a house in Port Clyde, south of Rockland. There he spent summers with his family, including his son, Andrew, who also grew up to be an artist (as did Andrew’s son, Jamie). In a small studio the elder Wyeth built near the water, he created some of his most important work.

When the Farnsworth opened in 1948, N.C. Wyeth was already dead, killed in a tragic accident near the family’s winter home in Chadds Ford, PA. By then Andrew had already forged his own close relationship with Maine, one that shaped his life and career.

In 1939, in Cushing, Maine, where her family summered, Andrew met his future wife, Betsy James, then seventeen. They were married the following year. Betsy introduced Andrew to Anna Christina Olson and her younger brother, Alvaro, who lived in a large 18th-century family farmhouse in Cushing. Christina suffered from an undiagnosed degenerative disease that left her paralyzed from the waist down. Andrew kept a studio in the house for a time and returned to it again and again, until 1968, when Christina died, to paint the house and its inhabitants. In 1948, Wyeth painted Christina’s World, his most famous work, with Christina in the foreground (partly modeled by Betsy) and the weathered house against the horizon. Wyeth is buried on the property in the Olson family graveyard.

After changing hands several times after the Olsons’ death, the house was donated to the Farnsworth Museum, which manages it and opens it to the public. The interior of the house is currently closed for restoration but visitors can take a self-guided tour of the grounds and visit the interior virtually on the museum’s website.

Robert Indiana, Vinalhaven Island

From Rockland, you can take a state ferry to Vinalhaven Island, once a major producer of granite, in the Gulf of Maine. The painter Robert Indiana, famous for his image of the word “Love,” which became a visual icon of the ’60s, first visited the island in the summer of 1969. He later rented part of the hulking former Odd Fellows Hall, known as the “Star of Hope:” a Victorian pile that dominates the waterfront. He bought the building in 1973 after its owner, Life magazine photographer Elliot Elisofon, died. Indiana moved to Vinalhaven full time in 1978.

Indiana lived on the island for the rest of his life, but his time there was often uneasy and ultimately grew dark. Behavior that might be tolerated for a famous artist living in New York did not go down well in rural Maine. In 1990, he was charged with paying men and teenaged boys for sex. Two counts were later dropped and he was found not guilty of a third in 1992, though the allegations surfaced again in a recent Social Security fraud case. Towards the end of his life on the island, Indiana became a recluse. His business associates and caretakers were accused of exploiting him for money and control over his substantial estate. He died at 89 in 2018 in the Star of Hope under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

The Star of Hope Foundation, established under Indiana’s will, has announced plans to restore and open the Star of Hope and Indiana’s art collection as a museum, but so far the interior remains closed to the public.

Fairfield and Eliot Porter, Great Spruce Head Island

My favorite anecdote about Fairfield Porter is his 1961 invitation to the New York School poet Jimmy Schuyler to recuperate in his family’s Long Island home following a hospital stay. Schuyler, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1981, stayed on for a dozen years, until 1973.

I don’t know if Schuyler spent those summers at the Porters’ second home on Great Spruce Head Island, due north of Vinalhaven, where Fairfield’s brother, the nature photographer Eliot Porter, also summered. Both brothers used the fairly remote and untouched island as subject matter in their work. Fairfield’s soft-hued domestic vignettes, often set on the island and controversial in the era of Abstract Expressionism, have been compared to Bonnard and Vuillard. Eliot, who trained to be a physician, began his career in photography with studies of the island’s birds.

Great Spruce Head Island is privately owned by the Porter family but it can be seen from nearby Islesboro Island and from boats in the Gulf of Maine.

Marsden Hartley, Lewiston

I spent some crucial years of my childhood in the old textile town of Lewiston, Maine’s second largest city. At the time, I didn’t know who Marsden Hartley was, that he was born and grew up in Lewiston, or that he had left an important collection of his work to the small, local college where my father taught. But Hartley, who has been described as the first great American modernist, would surely have recognized the city I knew: not that much had changed since he died some sixteen years before I arrived.

As an artist, Hartley lived and worked in many places: New York, Paris, Berlin, Nova Scotia, Provincetown, Bermuda, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Mexico, and the Bavarian Alps. But he always circled back to Maine. By 1937, he returned permanently, declaring he wanted to become “the painter of Maine.” Among the places he stayed and painted in after that was Vinalhaven, a fact much appreciated decades later by Robert Indiana.

The Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection, which contains the art work left to Bates College on the artist’s death in 1943, now resides in the Bates College Museum of Art on the school’s Lewiston campus. The museum has sponsored a number of Hartley exhibitions and the Marsden Hartley Legacy Project, a comprehensive, annotated online catalogue of all known paintings and works on paper created by Hartley during his lifetime.

John Marin, Cape Split, Addison

John Marin, another great American modernist, began painting in Maine in 1914. The coast’s rugged, rock-girded coastline, with its brilliant blue skies and often turbulent seas, suited his Cubist-influence style, as had the skyscrapers and dynamic street life of New York City. He started out in Phippsburg and moved on to Stonington in the ’20s. He first visited Cape Split in 1933 at the suggestion of a friend and in 1934 bought an oceanfront house with views of sand, sea, and islands out to the Tunk and Cadillac mountains on the opposite shore of the Gulf of Maine. He painted the views hundreds of times, entertaining artist friends ,like Marsden Hartley and Fairfield Porter, at his Maine retreat, and staying in the Cape Split house every summer into the fall until he died there in October 1953.

After Marin’s death, his son, John Marin, Jr., and his wife, Norma, took over the house, eventually living there full time until they, too, died there. In the ’70s, the couple established a gallery in the house that operated into the next decade but the house is no longer open to the public.

Edward Hopper, Cape Elizabeth and Pemaquid

Edward Hopper never owned a house in Maine. When he could afford it, he built a studio and summer home in South Truro, on Cape Cod, where he summered for the rest of his life. For many years, though, he and his long-suffering wife, favorite model, and business manager and promoter, the artist Jo (Josephine) Nivison, took long, summer working tours through New England, painting in watercolor on the road, and in oil back home in New York. Between 1926 and 1929, the couple made several long tours through Maine, visiting Rockland, Portland, Cape Elizabeth, and Pemaquid from a base in Cape Elizabeth, south of Portland.

Hopper was particularly interested in Maine coastal lighthouses, austere structures that looked out on the sea from their perches on the rocky shore. The Hoppers visited Pemaquid Point on Muscongus Bay between June 27 and July 3, 1929 and Hopper painted Pemaquid Light, a watercolor, now in the Portland Museum of Art, that year. Jo described these lighthouse pictures as “self-portraits,” because, like her husband, they were tall, solitary, and taciturn. She noted that talking to her husband was sometimes like dropping a stone down a well, except you didn’t hear a splash.

Louise Nevelson, Rockland

Sculptor Louise Nevelson reversed the Maine adventures of many of her contemporaries. Born in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, she moved to Rockland, Maine, as a small child with her immigrant family and graduated from Rockland High School in 1918. In 1920, she married wealthy businessman Charles Nevelson and moved to New York City.

Nevelson never lived in Maine again, but she kept up ties with Rockland. In the early ’80s, she donated 87 works of art to the Farnsworth, including 56 of her own pieces. Her brother and sister also made significant gifts of art. Following a 1985 exhibition of her work at the museum, she wrote: “When I was growing up in Rockland from grammar school to high school, there was no museum. One of the great joys of my life is that we have a first-rate one now— a beautiful building that encloses creative works that can stand with the great ones. That is something that I had not expected in my wildest dreams to find in a town in Maine— a jewel that shines.”

After the Whitney Museum in New York, the Farnsworth now has the second largest collection of Nevelson’s work in the world.

— Peter Walsh

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Television

American Prince: JFK Jr. (August 9, CNN): There was a 2003 TV film with the title American Prince, released after the tragic death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn, and her sister Lauren in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard in 1999. JFK Jr., son of former president John F. Kennedy and wife/former First Lady Jacqueline, was considered a political golden boy. He had worked as an assistant district attorney and reportedly was considering a political career at the time of his death. His good looks, intelligence, charm, fairy tale wedding, and family mythos heralded a bright future—though the world will never know.

CNN’s three-part documentary mini-series comes at a time when the Kennedy legacy is suffering mightily because of the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. RFK, Jr., a former heroin addict with a sordid past and a tendency to spew conspiracy theories, has been all but disowned by his other family members. On top of that, Trump is rapidly dismantling other Kennedy institutions: Jackie’s White House Rose Garden was recently paved over with concrete, and he’s planning to change the name of the Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts to honor his own slovenly, criminal persona. The Kennedy family legacy is not without scandal, but decades of tragedy and loss have cemented their place in American history. This series about one of their best and brightest is poised to make viewers reflect, perhaps, on the hope we once had for a brighter national future, which now seems reduced to tatters.

And Just Like That…, Season 3 (August 15, HBO) I found the original Sex and the City series, which debuted in 1996, entertaining and often groundbreaking in its frank depiction of sex. Despite the characters’ irritating wealth and privilege, occasional dramatic comeuppances and growth occurred. Two feature films followed: one good, the other appallingly bad.

The new series reboot, And Just Like That…, has had some missteps. Adding characters of color for diversity’s sake has been a good move, but everyone is still super wealthy, privileged, and attractive. COVID is blithely mentioned as nothing more than a blip that curtailed peoples’ social lives. Plot lines have been shallow and contrived, dialogue hyper-aware of, yet cringingly out of touch with, the current social zeitgeist, and Samantha’s absence hovers like a specter of failure. And there is the same old, same old: Carrie still makes stupid decisions about men. The series has not been renewed for a fourth season. Maybe, like me, you’re really only still watching it for the outfits.

— Peg Aloi

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Roots and World Music

Fandango
August 6 and 20, 7:30 p.m.
The Natural Wonders
August 10 and 17 at 4:30 p.m.
Sally O’Brien’s

The first couple of the Cambridgeville scene, Fred Griffeth and Gail Nickse, are moving to Mexico after decades making music on local stages. Their band the Natural Wonders is wrapping up its Sunday afternoon residency at Sally O’Brien’s while Griffeth’s soul-country unit Fandango has a few more Wednesday nights left.

Sierra Hull with Kathleen Parks
August 10 at 6:30 p.m.
Boarding House Park, Lowell

Tony Trischka’s Earl Jam plus Jacob Jolliff Band
August 10 at 5 p.m.
Groton Hill Music Center

Bluegrass fans sure have a tough choice on Sunday night. One of the great mandolinists to emerge in recent years, Sierra Hull, will lead her tight newgrass unit in Lowell in a show that also includes opener Kathleen Parks of Twisted Pine. Meanwhile, in Groton, the banjo innovator Tony Trischka is returning with his tribute to the man who started it all for bluegrass banjo, Earl Scruggs, with the excellent singer/guitarist Michael Davies in his band. Another mandolin wiz, Jacob Jolliff, opens that show.

Kyshona
August 13 at 8 p.m.
Club Passim

One of the best albums of last year was Kyshona’s Legacy, a deeply personal look at how her family ties have shaped her as a songwriter and a person. And even better was the live show Kyshona performed at Club Passim when the album was released. She’s finally returning for a well-deserved encore.

— Noah Schaffer

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Popular Music

Folk Bitch Trio opening for Whitney
August 4 (doors at 6/show at 7)
The Pavilion at Tree House Brewing Company, Charlton
August 5 (doors at 7/show at 8)
Levitate Backyard, Marshfield

The numerous singles that they recorded from 2020 onward evinced the unmistakable promise of Melbourne-based Folk Bitch Trio. Thus, the July 25 release of their debut LP, Now Would Be a Good Time, was highly anticipated. Unsurprisingly, acclaim has poured in from all over, including AllMusic, NME, NPR Music, Flood, and Paste. The record’s minimal instrumentation serves the 10 songs beautifully by putting emphasis on the gorgeous – frequently a cappella – harmonizing of Gracie Sinclair, Jeanie Pilkington, and Heide Peverelle, whose vocals are reminiscent of Joni Mitchell and Aimee Mann. FBT will open two Massachusetts shows this week for Chicago’s Whitney, whose latest collection of new material is slated for release on November 7.

Paper Lady with Skorts and The Croaks
August 9 (doors at 7/show at 8)
Deep Cuts, Medford

“Paper Lady is the immortal crone, casting spells and wreaking havoc in Boston, MA” reads the About section of the trio’s website. Since forming in 2019, Paper Lady have moved themselves upward via EPs in 2020 and 2023, a sold-out Paradise show and Boston Calling set in 2024, and their first LP, Idle Fate, in 2025. “Silt,” “Static,” and “Joe Modern” have been the album’s first extractions, and they are sure to figure into the setlist at Deep Cuts on August 9.

One Fall with Tired Radio, Cape Crush, and Blame It On Whitman
August 9 (doors at 7/show at 8)
Deep Cuts, Medford

One Fall is – in their own words – “a melodic punk/hardcore band from Salem, MA.” The band could correctly call itself a supergroup, consisting as it does of current members of Drug Blood, Giant Target, Razors in the Night, and Meliah Rage and an erstwhile member of Tijuana Sweetheart. The quartet’s August 8 show at Deep Cuts will celebrate the release of their third EP, Cut & Run, on which the band’s melodic punk/hardcore is indisputably borne out.

Robert Jon & The Wreck
August 9 (doors at 7/show at 8)
Blue Ocean Music Hall, Salisbury

The long-running blues and Southern rock-inspired quintet Robert Jon & The Wreck is clearly eager to preview its forthcoming new material. After a 2-1/2-month mid-April-early July tour of Europe, the Orange County, California natives will play more than a dozen US dates ahead of its latest LP, Heartbreaks & Last Goodbyes, which Joe Bonamassa’s Journeyman Records will issue on August 22. With production by nine-time Grammy winner Dave Cobb, renowned for his work with Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlisle, Jamey Johnson, Sturgill Simpson, and Chris Stapleton, and dozens of others, their tenth LP is sure to be a particularly enduring entry in their already distinguished discography.

Cheem
August 17 (doors at 7/show at 8)
Warehouse XI, Somerville

Cheem are self-described purveyors of “nu pop from nu england.” Since 2016, this Connecticut quintet has been impressively prolific, offering up singles, EPs, and LPs on a consistent basis over the past decade. The most recent of the EPs is last November’s Faster Fashion (a play on the meaning of Depeche Mode, perhaps?) and this past July’s single “Pivot.”

— Blake Maddux

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Jazz

Newport Jazz Festival
August 3
Fort Adams State Park, Newport, R.I.

Last day of the sold-out Newport Jazz Festival, y’all! The festival website has posted a waitlist for tickets. Good luck!

Yoron Israel and High Standards
August 3 at 5 p.m.
Highland Park, Roxbury, Mass.
FREE

In preparation for the release of a new album, Inspiration, Boston drummer (and chair of Berklee’s percussion department) Yoron Israel plays this free Jazz at the Fort show, part of Berklee’s Summer in the City series in conjunction with the City of Boston. The band features players from the album: pianist Laszlo Gardony (in whose trio Israel has played for decades), singer Leah Hinton, saxophonist Ian Buss, and bassist Avery Sharpe, long of McCoy Tyner’s bands.

Jake Leckie Quartet
August 5 at 7:30 p.m.
Lilypad, Cambridge, Mass.

The Brookline-born bassist and composer Jake Leckie (credits include Sixto “Sugarman” Rodriguez, Matana Roberts, and Susan Alcorn) returns to his home turf with a locally assembled band that includes saxophonist Gregory Groover, pianist Jesse Taitt, and drummer Tyson Jackson. They’ll be working from the Leckie originals on his latest CD, Planter of Seeds. The disc has a multi-hued, relaxed post-bop feel, by turns swinging and funky, with lots of room to breathe among the varied rhythms.

Eric Hofbauer
August 7 at 7 p.m.
Lou’s, Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass.
FREE

Good news for jazz fans is the opening of Lou’s, in the old Beat Hotel space in Harvard Square, with weekend live music programming. The space has been completely gutted and revamped and looks beautiful. Coming this week, the superb guitarist and composer Eric Hofbauer (known in part for his quintet’s Prehistoric Jazz series and his solo guitar American Vanity series) fronts a quartet with tenor sax Ben Canfield, bassist Tony Leva, and drummer Miki Matsuki. And there’s no cover charge at Lou’s.

David Chesnut Jazz Festival
August 9 from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Eustis Estate, Milton, Mass.

The third annual iteration of the David Chesnut Jazz Festival, outdoors at the Eustis Estate, will feature saxophonist Gregory Groover’s quartet, cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum’s Nextette, keyboardist Ana Petrova’s organ trio, and Caio e Jess, the duo of American singer Jess Curran and Brazilian guitarist Caio Afiune.

esperanza spalding
August 10 at 7 p.m.
Shalin Liu Performance Center, Rockport, Mass.

The multi-Grammy-winning virtuoso bassist, singer, songwriter, and conceptualist plays this intimate Rockport Music show with her longtime collaborator, the equally talented pianist Leo Genovese.

Makanda Project
August 16, 1 to 4 p.m.
First Church in Roxbury, 10 Putnam Street (John Eliot Square), Boston
FREE

The Makanda Project continues its free summer programming at First Church in Roxbury. The program will feature more recent arrangements from the band’s extensive book of pieces by the late Makanda Ken McIntyre (1931-2001) as well as some old favorites. The intermission feature will be a performance by the Roxbury-based program Teen Empowerment. The 13-piece band features saxophonists Kurtis Rivers, Seth Meicht, Sean Berry, Temidayo Balogun, and Charlie Kohlhase; trumpets Jerry Sabatini and Haneef Nelson; trombones Alfred Patterson and Richard Harper; bass trombone Bill Lowe; bassist Avery Sharpe; drummer Jocelyn Pleasant; and pianist, bandleader, and arranger John Kordalewski.

— Jon Garelick

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Classical

Mercury Orchestra
Presented by Boston Landmarks Orchestra
August 6, 7 p.m.
DCR Hatch Shell, Boston

Mercury Orchestra and music director Channing Yu are joined by tenor David Rivera Bozón and the New World Chorale for a program of selections by Gerald Finzi and Respighi.

Joshua Bell plays Lalo
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
August 8, 8 p.m.
Koussevitzky Shed, Lenox

Violinist Bell returns to Tanglewood to play Eduardo Lalo’s brilliant Symphonie espagnole. Andrés Orozco-Estrada also conducts Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9.

John Williams’ Film Night
Presented by Boston Pops Orchestra
August 9, 8 p.m.
Koussevitzky Shed, Lenox

Keith Lockhart leads the Pops in one of the summer’s annual highlights: an evening of film music curated by one of the genre’s defining icons.

Ma plays Saint-Saëns
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
August 10, 2:30 p.m.
Koussevitzky Shed, Lenox

Cellist Ma concludes his ’25 Tanglewood residency with a performance of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1. BSO assistant conductor Samy Rachid directs further works by Camille Pépin and Mendelssohn.

Debussy & Music of the Sea
Presented by Boston Landmarks Orchestra
August 13, 7 p.m.
DCR Hatch Shell, Boston

BLO and New England Aquarium team up for a concert that celebrates the briny with a mix of favorites (Debussy’s La mer, Ravel’s Une barque sur l’ocean, Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture), rarities (Korngold’s The Sea Hawk, Paul Gay’s North Atlantic Sea Songs), and an, in Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, a meditative outlier.

Slobodeniouk conducts Beethoven
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
August 15, 8 p.m.
Koussevitzky Shed, Lenox

Dima Slobodeniouk returns to Tanglewood to conduct the BSO in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 and Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte. Cellist Jean-Guihen Queras also solos in Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme.

Hadelich plays Tchaikovsky
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
August 16, 8 p.m.
Koussevitzky Shed, Lenox

Augustin Hadelich plays Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Anna Handler leads the BSO in further favorites by Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann.

Thibaudet plays Liszt
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
August 17, 2:30 p.m.
Koussevitzky Shed, Lenox

Jean-Yves Thibaudet joins the BSO for a reprise of his October performance of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Also on tap are works by William Grant Still and Sibelius.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

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Author Events

 

Picture + Panel: Resistance and Resilience with Mattie Lubchansky and Denali Sai Nalamalapu – Porter Square Books
August 4 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Picture + Panel is a monthly conversation series that brings fantastic graphic novel creators to the Greater Boston area. Discover terrific authors and fascinating stories that combine text and art through conversational confabulation. Produced in partnership by the Boston Comic Arts Foundation, Porter Square Books, and the Boston Figurative Arts Center, Picture + Panel provides thought-provoking discussions for adults about this unique form of expression.

All BCAF events are free to attend. If you wish to pay it forward, a $5 suggested donation helps sustain BCAF’s comics advocacy and educational programming in the Greater Boston area.

Mattie Lubchansky is a cartoonist and illustrator. She is also an Ignatz winner, a Herblock Prize finalist, and the author of Boys Weekend, The Antifa Super-Soldier Cookbook, and her latest work, Simplicity. She lives in beautiful Queens, NY, with her spouse.

Denali Sai Nalamalapu is a climate organizer from Southern Maine and Southern India. Denali lives in Southwest Virginia. They have written for Truthout, Prism, and Mergoat Magazine, and their climate activism has been covered in Shondaland, Vogue India, Self, The Independent, and elsewhere. They studied English Literature at Bates College and completed a Fulbright grant in Malaysia. Their debut graphic novel is Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance. You can find them at @DenaliSai on Instagram.”

Rax King with Luke O’Neil – Brookline Booksmith
Sloppy, Or: Doing It All Wrong
August 5 at 7 p.m.
Tickets are Free or $22.37 with in store book pickup

“‘Most writers are boring people. King, though, seems different: Bettie Page meets Carrie Bradshaw.’—Washington Post

With Rax King’s trademark blend of irreverent humor and heartfelt honesty comes a new collection of personal essays unpacking bad behavior. Sloppy explores sobriety, begrudging self-improvement, and the habits we cling to with clenched fists.

In “Proud Alcoholic Stock,” King examines her parents’ unwavering dedication to 12 step programs and the texture her family history has lent to her own sobriety. “Shoplifting from Brandy Melville” is a lighthearted look at, what else?, shoplifting from Brandy Melville—one of her few remaining indulgences now that she doesn’t drink. King writes about her overspending and temper control issues as well as her poorly managed mental health. These seventeen essays capture the personal and generational vices that make us who we are. From being a crummy waitress to using uppers to force friendships, from obsessing over the Neopets forums to lying for no discernable reason, these essays approach bad habits with emotional intelligence, kindness and—most importantly—humor.”

Noah Giansiracusa at Harvard Book Store 
Robin Hood Math: Take Control of the Algorithms That Run Your Life
August 5 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Award-winning mathematician Noah Giansiracusa explains how the tech giants and financial institutions use formulas to get ahead—and how anyone can use these same formulas in their everyday life. You’ll learn how to handle risk rationally, make better investments, take control of your social media, and reclaim agency over the decisions you make each day.

In a society that all too often takes from the poor and gives to the rich, math can be a vital democratizing force. Robin Hood Math helps you to think for yourself, act in your own best interests, and thrive.”

Peter Guralnick at the Cambridge Public Library
The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership that Rocked the World
August 6 at 6 p.m.
Tickets are free or $40.38 with book

“Featuring troves of previously unpublished correspondence, revelatory for both its insights and emotional depth, The Colonel and the King provides a unique perspective on not one but two American originals. A tale of the birth of the modern-day superstar (an invention almost entirely of Parker’s making) by Peter Guralnick, the most acclaimed music writer of his generation, it presents these two misunderstood icons as they’ve never been seen before: with all of their brilliance, humor, and flaws on full display.”

Marguerite Holloway at Brookline Booksmith
Take to the Trees
August 8 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Journalist Marguerite Holloway arrives at the Women’s Tree Climbing Workshop as a climbing novice, but with a passion for trees and a deep concern about their future. Run by twin sister tree doctors Bear LeVangie and Melissa LeVangie Ingersoll, the workshop helps people—from everyday tree lovers to women arborists working in a largely male industry—develop impressive technical skills and ascend into the canopy.

As Holloway tackles unfamiliar equipment and dizzying heights, she learns about the science of trees and tells the stories of charismatic species, including hemlock, aspen, Atlantic white cedar, oak, and beech. She spotlights experts who are chronicling the great dying that is underway in forests around the world as trees face simultaneous and accelerating threats from drought, heat, floods, disease, and other disruptions.

As she climbs, Holloway also comes to understand the profound significance of trees in her relationship with her late mother and brother.”

James C. O’Connell at Harvard Book Store 
Boston and the Making of a Global City
August 12 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Boston and the Making of a Global City pulls together scholarship, media stories, personal interviews, and city planning documents to tell the story of Boston’s historical trajectory, as it quickly became a competitive global hub. Starting with its role as a colonial port and nineteenth-century maritime power, but moving quickly forward, the book describes how Boston capitalized on its strengths in higher education and such innovation sectors as life sciences, healthcare, information technology, and finance.

Author James O’Connell traces the historical sweep of global flows—trade and supply chains, innovation and the dissemination of knowledge, investment, transportation, tourism, telecommunications, and immigration—that have shaped the city and region’s development. This volume also addresses the economic, social, and environmental challenges that Boston currently faces and how it is strategically positioned to confront them going forward.”

WBUR CitySpace: Alyson Stoner – Brookline Booksmith
Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Everything 
August 13 at 6:30 p.m.
Free

“Alyson Stoner — former child actor turned mental health practitioner — delivers a compelling deconstruction of identity, cultural myths and the illusion of being “well-adjusted” in a dysfunctional society in their debut memoir, Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything. Overflowing with intimate details from film and TV sets like Camp Rock, Cheaper by the Dozen, Step Up, and Phineas and Ferb, Stoner exposes a turbulent upbringing behind the scenes, including family violence and betrayal, eating disorders and religious trauma.”

Scott Ellsworth at Harvard Book Store
Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America
August 14 at 7 p.m.
Free

“In the sweltering summer heat of 1864, President Abraham Lincoln had a front-row view of the Civil War, as he dodged firing bullets from the approaching Confederate army at Fort Stevens. It was the first time in American history that a sitting president would come under enemy fire, but the history books would put a far greater focus on his assassination just eight months later. In Midnight on the Potomac, Scott Ellsworth rewrites history, arguing that the two events were in fact connected and that Lincolns’ assassination was likely ordered by leaders of the Confederate Army.”

— Matt Hanson