An exhilarating documentary about Billy Preston, the legendary GRAMMY-winning musician whose signature sound shaped the work of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Sly Stone, Aretha Franklin, and countless others. At the same time he established himself as a Grammy-winning solo artist. In terms of his personal life, Preston struggled to reconcile his passionate embrace of the Black church with his sexuality, dealing with a lifelong quest to find love and acceptance. Featuring an opening live performance of Billy Preston’s music by Leon Beal.

A scene from Óliver Laxe’s harrowing Sirāt. Photo: Neon

Sirāt
March 5 at 9 p.m.
Coolidge Corner Theatre

A father and his son arrive at a rave deep in the mountains of southern Morocco searching for their daughter and sister, who vanished months ago. Hope is fading, but they push through and follow a group of ravers heading to one last party in the desert. As they venture deeper into the burning wilderness, the journey forces them to confront their own limits. Director Óliver Laxe will introduce this late show. The early screening is sold out. Arts Fuse review

Late Shift
March 7 at 2 p.m.
Museum of Fine Arts

Gripping, humane, and with respectful lightness, Late Shift follows a young nurse as she works in a chronically understaffed hospital ward capturing the pressure she faces during a particularly demanding shift, where she must care for a variety of patients, including a critically ill mother and an elderly man awaiting a diagnosis. As the night progresses, her dedication is tested and we experience the physical and emotional toll of a chronically overburdened system and the extraordinary strength required to withstand it. This is an entry in the MFA’s Global Cinema Now series.

Dil Chahta Hai (2001)
March 8 at 1 p.m.
Coolidge Corner Theatre

Cinema Masala presents Farhan Akhtar’s directorial 3-hour debut: it follows three friends navigating love, friendship, and adulthood, and was a major Hindi cinema hit with wide theatrical distribution .Over time, the film has been credited with launching a new wave of urban Indian cinema, establishing Akhtar as one of the leading filmmakers of his generation.

Buster Keaton in The Scarecrow.

Buster Keaton & Lillian Gish
March 8 at 2 p.m
West Newton Cinema

The Scarecrow (1920) features Buster Keaton: two farmhands compete for the love of the farmer’s daughter. The Wind (1928) stars Lillian Gish as a frail young woman from the East who moves in with her cousin in an isolated cabin in Texas. She triggers a tumultuous sexual conflict in the family. The film ends with one of the great sand storms in cinematic history. Live music accompaniment supplied by Bruce Vogt.

Billy Idol: Should Be Dead
March 13 at 8 p.m.
Regent Theater in Arlington

Through never-before-seen archival footage, this documentary digs into Idol’s emergence as a prototypical punk rocker, particularly his meteoric rise as a global superstar in the MTV era. The film features interviews with Idol’s family, peers, and collaborators. It also includes interviews with Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan, The Who’s Pete Townshend, and Miley Cyrus. Almost fifty years into his career, Idol is still selling out arenas around the world.

2026 Fly Fishing Film Tour
March 14 at 1 p.m.
Somerville Theatre in Davis Square

Hosted by the Greater Boston Chapter of Trout Unlimited, The Fly Fishing Film Tour celebrates its 20th anniversary with a fresh collection of the finest fly fishing films from across the globe.

This year’s lineup spotlights wild places, conservation stories, and the dedicated individuals who live and breathe fly fishing. The evening includes raffles and a prize draw — winners will be announced after the completion of the festivites.

Pick of the Week

Raphaël Thiéry in a scene from The Dreamer.

The Dreamer (L’homme d’argile) (2024) Streaming on Amazon Prime

One the most interesting films of last year received no theatrical distribution. Director Anaïs Tellenne uses the narrative’s fairy tale resonances to meditate on the relationship between art and life, dream and reality. Raphaël Thiéry plays the hulking caretaker who lives, with his badgering mother, on the grounds of the estate he looks after. The actor’s imposing physicality and primitive beauty are perfect for the eponymous hero, the caretaker. The character sports an eyepatch, plays the bagpipes, and hunts moles with explosives in his spare time.

Late one night, Garance, the heiress of the property and a skilled sculptor, played by the wonderful Emmanuelle Devos, turns up to visit her estate. Captivated by Raphaël’s musical skill and attracted to his lumbering beauty, she asks permission to sculpt him in clay. Raphaël becomes a momentary celebrity and grows increasingly infatuated with the artist. Sadly, it should come as no surprise that this frog will not turn, magically, into a prince.

— Tim Jackson

Television

Well, you’ve probably heard that the big Warner Brothers Discovery sale to Netflix went south and now Paramount Skydance has acquired the movie giant for over $100 billion. Netflix made money too, receiving almost $3 billion to terminate their pending merger agreement. The deal was wobbly, but it now seems official as of 5 p.m. on February 27. Now, joy of joys, a right-wing media behemoth will control CNN, HBO, TikTok, a bunch of sports networks, and more movies than God has (and God probably has a lot of movies). This is depressing and worrisome for reasons I don’t need to get into. Get yourself a DVD player and start buying DVDs — that’s my advice at the moment. But, until the deal goes through later this year, let’s see if we can binge-watch ourselves into a better mood, eh?

A scene from Young Sherlock. Photo: Amazon MGM Studios

Young Sherlock (March 4, Prime) This new series about a young Sherlock Holmes at Oxford stars an actor named Hero Fiennes Tiffin, whose full name is actually Hero Beauregard Faulkner Fiennes Tiffin. That’s all I have to say about that. Guy Ritchie is involved, and, well, I did enjoy his recent series The Gentlemen. Oh, and look, Sherlock’s older brother Mycroft is played by Max Irons, son of Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack. Also, it’s set in Oxford, where I spent two halcyon summers in my misspent youth…but wait, Colin Firth and Natascha McElhone are also in it? Okay, I’ll watch it and get back to you.

Rooster (March 8, HBO) Billed as a “dramedy,” this new series stars Steve Carell as a successful but self-deprecating novelist named Greg who goes to give a guest lecture at the liberal arts college where his daughter Katie (Charly Clive) teaches. The timing is inconvenient, because Katie is having a meltdown after discovering her husband (also a professor there) is having an affair with a grad student. It’s a potentially sticky — and sure to be funny — set up from show creator Bill Lawrence, who gave us Scrubs (recently rebooted) and Ted Lasso. The cast also includes such stellar talent as Danielle Deadwyler (slated to star in Ryan Coogler’s reboot of The X-Files), Phil Dunster (Ted Lasso), and Scott MacArthur (The Righteous Gemstones).

Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis in a scene from Scarpetta. Photo: Connie Chornuk/Prime

Scarpetta (March 11, Amazon Prime) A new series with Nicole Kidman is both a too familiar phenomenon (seriously, Hollywood, you know there are other actresses, right?) and an event to look forward to. In this new thriller, adapted from a series of popular novels by Patricia Cornwell, Kidman plays Kay Scarpetta, a forensic pathologist who unravels mysteries in an unorthodox fashion. A serial killer she first encountered at the beginning of her career, 28 years earlier, seems to have re-emerged. The series bounces back and forth in time, with younger actors playing counterparts, including the wonderful Rosy McEwen (Blue Jean) as a younger Kay. The series is co-produced by Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis, who also stars, and the showrunner is Elizabeth Sarnoff, a producer on Deadwood, Lost, and Barry. Other cast members include Ariana DeBose, Bobby Cannavale, and Simon Baker.

— Peg Aloi

Theater

A scene from Wakka Wakka’s Dead as a Dodo. Photo: David Zadig

Dead as a Dodo, staged by Wakka Wakka. Directed by Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage. Presented by ArtsEmerson in collaboration with Figurteatret i Nordland, Nord University, and The Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival at Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont St, Boston, March 5 through 8.

The plot: “Deep within the underworld, a skeleton Dodo and boy dig daily for fresh bones to replace their deteriorating ones, desperately trying to keep from disappearing. But one day, the Dodo miraculously sprouts feathers–and everything changes. The transformation sends the two friends into a chaotic journey as they flee the wrath of the Skeleton King and fight to stay together as they are drawn into the heart of an epic battle between life and death.”

You Cordially Invited to the End of the World! by Keiko Green. Directed by Shawn LaCount. Dramaturgy by Jessie Baxter. Staged by Company One at the Boston Public Library, Central Library in Copley Square, 700 Boylston St, Boston, March 6 through 28.

The storyline of this Boston premiere: “Come one, come all to a sparkling celebration of life, death, and cosmic connection! When Greg receives a terminal cancer diagnosis (and weird dream visitations from Greta Thunberg), he finally understands his true purpose and races to save Mother Earth as climate catastrophe looms. Meanwhile, Viv tries to hold it all together, but really just wants to stop time and hide under the covers with her husband. And through it all, our emcee, M, charts their own path while Dad is dying, life is a drag, and the world keeps spinning.”

Like Flies: a rage play by Maggie Kearnan. Directed by Sally Wood. Staged by Portland Stage, 25A Forest Avenue, Portland, ME, March 4 through 22.

The world premiere of an intriguing sounding script: “When a mysterious new midwife comes to town, a group of women think she might have solutions for more than just childbirth. She might also have something to remedy an epidemic of cruel men. New alliances are formed and each woman wonders who she can trust … [they] decide to take matters into their own hands regarding violent, despicable men.” The script “asks big questions about what it means to use violence for our own gains, and who, and what we become when we do.” In Lysistrata, the women withheld sex from their inept men — it sounds like Kearnan is raising the ante. Winner of the Clauder Competition for New England Playwrights.

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., through March 19.

Here is the Wikipedia summary of this 2015 play: “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.

l to r: Will Conrad and Eva Kaminsky in the Huntington Theatre Company production of We Had a World. Photo: Annielly Camargo

We Had a World by Joshua Harmon. Directed by Keira Fromm. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Calderwood Pavilion, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, through March 15

This script by the author of Prayer for the French Republic was inspired by “thirty years of family fights, monstrous behavior, enduring love, and unexpected dishes of home-cooked spaetzle.” More about the inspiration for the drama on the HTC website: “A dying woman calls her grandson and asks him to write a play about their family. ‘But I want you to promise me something,’ she says. ‘Make it as bitter and vitriolic as possible.’” Arts Fuse review

The Bald Soprano & The Lesson by Eugène Ionesco. Directed by Bryn Boice. Staged by Hub Theatre Company of Boston at the Boston Center for the Arts, Black Box Theatre, 539 Tremont St., Boston, through March 8.

I agree with Hub Theatre Company in its publicity release that “given current ICE policies [director] Bryn’s vision for Ionesco’s show has become all too timely and we would love to share it with you. Now more than ever artists and journalists must work together to ‘hold a mirror up to nature’ and speak out against the threat of fascism. Trust us — these absurdist masterpieces have never been so timely or so true!” So on board with the mordant relevance of “absurdist masterpieces,” though it will be interesting to see how these two Ionesco plays, which focus on the breakdown of language, can be tailored to condemn fascism. Other of the dramatist’s scripts serve that useful purpose more directly: Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It spotlights (literally) a corpse that won’t stop growing, eventually it pushes a couple out of its home; The Killer focuses on a serial murderer run amok in “Radiant City” (one of the characters is a fascist rally leader).

A scene from the Gamm Theatre production of Ibsen’s Ghosts. Photo: Anaïs Bustos

Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen. Adapted and directed by Tony Estrella. Staged by the Gamm Theatre at 1245 Jefferson Blvd., Warwick, RI, February 26 through March 22.

Be still my heart! Could we be having a local Ibsen boomlet? First a couple of productions of Hedda Gabler and now a version of his masterpiece from 1881, the dramatist’s splendidly acidic response to the critical rejection of A Doll’s House. In 1934, James Joyce wrote a poem, “Epilogue to Ibsen’s Ghosts,” in homage to the play. In it, Captain Alving, the play’s deceased patriarch, supplies some excuses for his amoral behavior. The first stanza: “Dear quick, whose conscience buried deep / The grim old grouser has been salving, / Permit one spectre more to peep. / I am the ghost of Captain Alving.”

Kween by Vichet Chum. Directed by Pirronne Yousefzad. Staged by the Merrimack Repertory Theatre at the Nancy L. Donahue Theatre at Liberty Hall, 50 E. Merrimack Street, Lowell, through March 15.

The world premiere of a new work set in Lowell “that celebrates queer identity, Cambodian American heritage, and the courage to speak one’s truth. An MRT Commission, Kween follows Soma, a queer Cambodian American teenager navigating family, culture, and self-expression.”

Glen Moore in Liars and Believers’ The End is Nigh. Photo: Ollie Kamens

The End is Nigh, created and performed by Liars and Believers. Directed by Jason Salvick. Staged by LAB at The Foundry, 101 Rogers Street, Cambridge, March 12 through

The world premiere of what sounds like a wild spoof of Reality TV via interactive theater — or perhaps the show savages real world madness? “Join our host and live studio audience as three unsuspecting contestants compete for the grand prize – survival! With physical comedy, live music, and satire, The End is Nigh is serious comedy for serious times.” Liars and Believers describe the show as “Animaniacs meets The Hunger Games.”

Zabel in Exile by R.N. Sandberg. Directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakia. At Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Comm Ave, Boston, February 19 through March 8.

“Yerevan, 1937. Armenian writer and activist Zabel Yessayan sits in a Soviet prison cell, awaiting execution. But what exactly is her crime? Writing novels? Knowing how to speak French? Being a woman? As Zabel confronts her captors, past and present blur, and she reckons with the injustices she has witnessed and confronted—from schoolyard bullying to the horrors of genocide.” The script is a memory play “that honors the strength of a woman unafraid to stand up to tyranny and wrestles with whether it is possible to continue to believe in light during times of endless darkness.”

A timely historical drama for an America staggering towards authoritarian rule. The play was developed at Merrimack Repertory Theatre and The Armenian Museum in Watertown.

The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare. Directed by Ben Steinfeld. Staged by Trinity Repertory Company at the Dowling Theatre, 201 Washington St., Providence, Rhode Island, through March 22. (Running in rotating repertory with The Roommate).

Poet W.H. Auden claimed that Act III, Scene iii of this play was the most beautiful scene in Shakespeare. “Set on the desert coast of Bohemia, it is beautiful not in actual words, but in its situation. You could tell the story and describe the scene in other words and one would know at once that it is beautiful in a way that a dream can be beautiful. We have had Leontes’ storm of jealousy versus the physical beauty and peace in the description of the oracle at Delphi, and Polixenes’ storm in Arcady versus the music of the shepherds. We now have the final music of reconciliation. In the middle of the desert near the scene, there is a storm and there are beasts of prey, hunters hunting bears and bears hunting hunters. We have an innocent baby, a weak and too obedient servant who has become Leontes’ accomplice, the careless youth of hunters, the good poor — the shepherd and his son.” (W.H. Auden, Lectures on Shakespeare, Edited by Arthur Kirsch, page 293)

Jorge Rubio as Eddie, Sehnaz Dirik as Beatrice, Naomi Kim as Catherine, Andres Molano Sotomayor as Rodolfo in the production of A View from the Bridge. Photo: Danielle Fauteux Jacques

A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller. Directed by David R. Gammons. Staged by the Apollinaire Theatre Company at the Chelsea Theatre Works, 189 Winnisimmet St., Chelsea, through March 22.

Arthur Miller’s celebrated 1955 drama “explores the complex reality of the immigrant experience and the pursuit of the American dream. In an Italian enclave where loyalty is everything, forbidden desire wracks a family and their tight-knit community.”

The Antiquities by Jordan Harrison. Directed by Alex Lonati. Staged by SpeakEasy Stage at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, March 6 through 28.

The New England premiere of a script “set in the not-so-distant future, and concerns the efforts of the AI curators at The Museum of Late Human Antiquities as they attempt to reconstruct the past through vinyl records, yoga mats, and other relics But as their exhibit grows, so do the cracks in their understanding.” The cast includes Kelsey Fonise, Jesse Hinson, and John Kuntz.

— Bill Marx

Visual Art

Salem’s East India Marine Hall. Photo: courtesy of Peabody-Essex Museum

From its founding in 1799 as the East India Marine Society, an association of sea captains and traders who sailed from Salem to ports all over the world, the Peabody-Essex Museum has reinvented itself again and yet again. Once devoted largely to natural history and an early version of anthropology, it now focuses primarily on art and the diversity of world cultures. This March, in honor of the bicentennial of its first permanent gathering and exhibition space, East India Marine Hall, the museum turns the clock back to its roots. Built in 1824–1825 and now a National Historic Landmark, the East India Marine Hall has always been at the center of its physical campus, even as the museum has evolved around it.​

“The hall’s new installation aims to revive the experience of a 19th-century museumgoer who declared, ‘to walk around this room was to circumnavigate the globe,’” according to Peabody-Essex curator-at-large George Schwartz. “Visitors will encounter artistic and cultural achievements that stitch connections across time and space while providing a global perspective on what, over the centuries, has made Salem such a distinctive city.”

Objects on view include spears from Fiji, ship models from China, a Māori nose flute, ceremonial kava bowls, the lower jaw of a very large sperm whale, and an Indian palanquin. From an institution originally devoted to the exotic and the adventures of the sea—the hall was the venue for long, lavish Society dinners featuring members’ tales of ocean voyages to the opposite side of the globe—the exhibition, opening March 15, will be enriched by interactive audio and video that “give voice to the words of early collectors, trading partners, visiting historians, journalists and museum visitors.”

Ross Sterling Turner, “A Garden Is a Sea of Flowers” (detail), 1912. Transparent and opaque watercolor on board. Gift of the Estate of Nellie Parney Carte. Photo: courtesy of the MFA

During a long and snow-filled New England winter that shows so far no signs of ending, the MFA’s Framing Nature: Gardens and Imagination should be a welcome reminder of what surely is to come. The multimedia, multicultural show, opening the last official week of winter on March 15, surveys the universal impulse to capture gardens and all the varied activities that take place in its inspired confines. Tapestries, Chinese scrolls, modern prints, and photographs all “bring visitors on an immersive journey through a variety of cultivated and natural worlds.” The exhibition is timed with the 50th anniversary of the MFA’s Art in Bloom festival

Jared James Lank, director of Bay of Herons. Photo: ourtesy of Sundance Institute.

Jared Lank: Bay of Herons, opening at the Portland Museum of Art on March 20, is the distillation of countless hours spent in the environment of Mackworth Island, which lies in Maine’s Casco Bay, into an award-winning film. A Mi’kmaq artist, writer, and educator, Lank’s roots in the region are deep as a member of a people indigenous to Maine. He has scored his film, the museum says, to express “the dissonance felt by many Indigenous people across unceded ancestral homelands indelibly altered by colonization.”

They fascinated the Romans as the barbarians who lived just beyond the frontiers of empire. During the Enlightenment, they were revived as a touch point of identity for the Scots and Irish and for Romantic ideals of the primitive and unspoiled: “the Celtic fringes have posed for the urban intellectual,” writes Malcolm Chapman, “as a location of the wild, the natural, the creative and the insecure.”

Celtic Art Across the Ages, opening at the Harvard Art Museums on March 6, focuses on the concrete legacy of the various peoples labeled “Celts” over the centuries: their art. The first major exhibition of its kind in the United States, the show spans centuries from 800 BCE to the present, including metalwork, decorated weaponry, jewelry, and horse and chariot trappings— archaeological discoveries of the last 200 years. Together these objects, the museum says, “defy stereotypes of what constitutes ‘Celtic Art.’”

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art’s long running MATRIX series on emerging contemporary artists continues on March 5 with Mariel Capanna/MATRIX 198. Born and based in Philadelphia, the fresco artist and instructor uses oil paint mixed with marble dust and wax to record fleeting impressions from moving images, including home videos, documentaries, and feature films. In her MATRIX exhibition, Capanna debuts new paintings that reinterpret works from the Wadsworth’s American art collection and a site-specific fresco installation.

The Manton Study Center for Works on Paper at the Clark Art Institute offers a visual smorgasbord of food-related prints, drawings, and photographs in its drawing program Drawing Closer: Feast Your Eyes on March 13, starting at 10:30 a.m. Artists of all experience and skill levels are invited to copy from the originals or to practice free style “fundamentals.” Basic materials are provided. Free, but advance registration is required through the museum’s website.

— Peter Walsh

Classical Music

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Presented by Vivo Performing Arts & Boston Symphony Orchestra
March 3, 7:30 p.m.
Symphony Hall

The VPO returns to Boston for the first time since 2003. They present Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Lang Lang is the soloist in the last and BSO music director Andris Nelsons conducts.

Conductor Herbert Blomstedt in action. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Blomstedt conducts Brahms
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
March 5 at 7:30 p.m., 6 at 1:30 p.m., and 7 at 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall

Ninety-eight-years-young conductor Herbert Blomstedt returns to Boston with some familiar Brahms (the Symphony No. 4) and less-well-known Brahms (Nänie and the Schicksalslied) in tow. The latter pair feature the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass
Presented by Boston Baroque
March 6 at 7:30 p.m. and 8 at 3 p.m.
Jordan Hall

Boston Baroque continues its season with a program consisting of Haydn’s vigorous setting of the Mass Ordinary and Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. Patrick Dupré Quigley conducts.

Cellist Maya Baiser. Courtesy of the artist

Maya Beiser plays Riley
Presented by Museum of Fine Arts
March 13, 7 p.m.
Museum of Fine Arts

Cellist Beiser comes to the MFA to perform her adaptation of Terry Riley’s In C.

The Last Savage
Presented by Odyssey Opera
March 13, 8 p.m.
The Huntington Theatre

Odyssey tackles Gian Carlo Menotti’s neglected satire of Western society in a one-night-only staged performance at The Huntington Theatre. Sharleen Joynt sings Kitty and Phillip Lopez is Abdul. Gil Rose conducts.

Yo-Yo Ma and Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
March 15, 3 p.m.
Symphony Hall

Cellist Ma joins the IAAC and conductor Cristian Macelaru for a new Wynton Marsalis composition for cello and orchestra. Additional works by Reena Esmail (RE/member) and Charles Ives (Symphony No. 4) fill out the afternoon.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

Jazz

Ethan Iverson
March 4 at 7:15 p.m.
GBH Studios, Boston

Pianist Ethan Iverson — founding member of the Bad Plus, but now equally well known for his own impressive solo career and his extensive writing about jazz — plays this solo piano show celebrating “the music of early Harlem Stride pianist James P. Johnson, who contributed to the evolution of jazz from ragtime in the 1920s, contrasted by music from the iconic saxophonist John Coltrane, whose modal jazz and ‘sheets of sound’ revolutionized the art form in later decades.” Presented by GBH Music and JazzBoston, the show takes place in GBH’s Fraser Performance Studio.

Saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón and his quartet will perform at Arrow Street Arts. Photo: Jimmy Katz.

Miguel Zenón Quartet
March 5 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Arrow Street Arts, Cambridge, Mass.

Vivo Performing Arts kicks off Jazz Festival 2026 (actually a long weekend of shows) with the exciting Miguel Zenón Quartet. The Puerto Rican saxophonist and composer (a MacArthur “genius” Fellow, among many other accomplishments) leads his long-running band with pianist Luis Perdromo, bassist Matt Penman, and drummer Henry Cole.

Peter Bernstein
March 6 at 7 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

The superb guitarist Peter Bernstein comes to Scullers with a very nice band: pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Vicente Archer, and drummer Joe Farnsworth.

Isaiah Collier
March 6 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Arrow Street Arts, Cambridge, Mass.

The highly touted young saxophonist and composer Isaiah Collier makes his Boston debut, with his band the Chosen Few, in a Coltrane-inspired show for this Vivo Performing Arts Jazz Festival event. The band includes pianist Davis Whitfield, bassist Conway Campbell, and drummer Tim Regis.

The late Alex Lemski, founder of the Creative Music Series, and its artistic director throughout its 11-year run in the Boston area. Photo: Stephen Malagodi

Celebrating Alex Lemski
March 7 from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Lilypad, Cambridge, Mass.

As founder and director of the Creative Music Series, from 2015 until his death in December 2025, Alex Lemski brought countless important musicians to Greater Boston who probably would not have otherwise played here, including Mario Pavone, Henry Kaiser, Matthew Shipp, Ingrid Laubrock, and many more, as well as a core of important improvising musicians from the local scene.

On March 7, some of the folks whose music Lemski supported will be celebrating him in a day-long event. There will be a social Celebration of Life, from 2 to 4 p.m., “with words and images offered by family and friends,” which is free and open to the public. Music will start at 4 p.m., with a separate cover price for single sets or the whole afternoon. The players include the Fully Celebrated Orchestra; Hocha Langra (with Steve Lantner, Allan Chase, Luther Gray, and Jim Hobbs); Pandelis Karayorgis (solo piano); the Ellwood Epps Quartet (with special guest Stephen Haynes); the New Language Collaborative (with Glynis Lomon, Vance Provey, Eric Zinman, and Eric Rosenthal); guitarist Isao (with Scott Samenfeld, Kelly Bray, Brittany Karlson, and Lemuel Marc); and Jorrit Dijkstra’s Blink (with Nate McBride, Eric Rosenthal, Eric Hofbauer, and Gabe Boyarin). Arts Fuse remembrance

Flutist and composer Jamie Baum will perform at Scullers Jazz Club this week. Photo: Erika Kapin

Jamie Baum
March 7 at 7 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston

It’s been too long since the wonderful flutist and composer Jamie Baum last hit Boston. Her album What Times Are These was my pick as a top-10 album of 2024 and her In This Life for 2013. With a new disc in the works, her band for this show will include alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, pianist Julian Shore, bassist Sam Minaie, and drummer Jeff Hirshfield.

The Kris Davis Trio will be playing at Arrow Street Arts this week. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Kris Davis Trio
March 7 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Arrow Street Arts, Cambridge, Mass.

The Vivo jazz festival continues: pianist Kris Davis’s mighty trio, with bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake.

The Makanda Project with Charles Tolliver
March 7 at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m
12^th Baptist Church, Roxbury, Mass.
FREE

Sheesh, March 7 is sort of a mess, isn’t it? Well another can’t-miss event, with the advantage that it’s free: The long-running Makanda Project brings in the esteemed trumpeter, composer, and label head Charles Tolliver (of the recently revived Strata-East) to play and conduct the Makanda crew, mostly in his compositions for big band. The band includes saxophonists Kurtis Rivers, Seth Meicht, Sean Berry, Temidayo Balogun, and Charlie Kohlhase; trumpeters Zibran Aponte, Matt Naeger, Haneef Nelson, and Ian Behrstock; trombones Alfred Patterson, Zane Larsen-Kuerth, Richard Harper, and Bill Lowe, pianist and Makanda musical director John Kordalewski, bassist Avery Sharpe, and drummer Yoron Israel.

The Sullivan Fortner Trio. Photo: Mark Sheldon

Sullivan Fortner Trio
March 8 at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Arrow Street Arts, Cambridge, Mass.

Fresh off his Grammy win for 2025’s Southern Nights, Sullivan Fortner leads a trio, with bassist Tyrone Allen and drummer Kayvon Gordon, for the closing event of Vivo Performing Arts’ Jazz Festival 2026.

Jason Moran
March 11 at 8 p.m.
Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theatre, New England Conservatory, Boston
FREE

Pianist, composer, and conceptualist Jason Moran is offering this free faculty recital focused on the music of Thelonious Monk “with a particular emphasis on vocal interpretations of Monk’s music. Since Carmen McRae’s groundbreaking 1990 recording, Carmen Sings Monk, vocalists have often explored Thelonious Monk’s compositions, featuring lyrics by Bernie Hanighen, Jon Hendricks, and Abbey Lincoln.” Student vocalists joining Moran will be Rachel Ambaye, Anouk Chemla, Rhiannon Hurst, and Bogata Orban-Ducos.

Gretchen Parlato Berklee Ensemble
March 12 at 7 p.m.
Red Room at Café 969, Berklee College of Music, Boston

The accomplished singer and songwriter Gretchen Parlato (Lean In, her 2022 album with guitarist Lionel Loueke, was a particular gem) is the guest host in this Berklee Signature Series concert. For these shows, Berklee associate professor Matthew Stevens drills a select group of students in the artist’s choice of material; the results tend to be fresh and inspired.

— Jon Garelick

Roots and World Music

Safiya
March 5
Long Live Roxbury, 152 Hampden Street, Boston

Safiya will perform at Long Live Roxbury this week.

Carnival season has just wrapped up in much of the world. If you didn’t make it to New Orleans, Trinidad, or Brazil, the next best thing is the talented and versatile Boston singer Safiya, who brings together jazz, R&B, soca, reggae, Latin, samba and much more. She also has a knack for selecting excellent bandmates, and this free gig is no exception, with its lineup of Tariq Nicholson on keyboards, Aaron Seymour on drums, Dom Dove on bass, Zion Rodman on guitar, Andy Bergman on tenor saxophone, Brian Paulding on trombone, and percussionists Dillon Zahner and Brandon Mayes.

Paul Beaubrun
March 7
Tamboo, Brockton

The multifaceted Haitian singer/songwriter Paul Beaubrun was born into music: His parents were the co-founders of the famed Boukman Eksperyans. Recently Beaubrun has been crossing over, thanks to a collaboration with Jackson Browne and an appearance at GlobalFest. But he still performs for the Haitian-American community at events like this Women’s Day celebration, which is part of the Konpa en Jazz series.

Catherine Capozzi and Rafi Sofer of FauxMenco in action. Photo: Facebook

FauxMenco
March 15
Eustis Estate, Milton

The fast-strumming guitar duo of Catherine Capozzi and Rafi Sofer may be influenced by the Spanish sounds of flamenco, but they go well beyond that tradition, bringing in everything from surf rock to acoustic metal to French manouche jazz. And they’re as fun as they are eclectic. This early evening show is part of Mandorla Music’s Wintersounds series at the Eustis Estate.

Kedmah
March 15
Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center

The Boston Festival of New Jewish Music has been presenting shows at a number of venues this season. Next up: an important group co-led by multi-instrumentalist Yoni Avi Battat and Rabbi Yosef Goldman. Their distinctive approach explores the deep roots of Jewish Arabic music from Iraqi, Syrian, and Yemenite traditions.

— Noah Schaffer

Author Events

Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau at Harvard Book Store
P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance
March 3 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Global superstar Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, like many other Puerto Ricans, has lived a life marked by public crises—blackouts, hurricanes, political corruption and oppression, among others—that have exposed the ongoing impacts of colonialism in Puerto Rico.

Offering a portrait of the past and future of Puerto Rican resistance through one of its loudest and proudest voices, P FKN R draws on interviews with musicians, politicians, and journalists as well as ethnographic research to set Bad Bunny and Puerto Rican resistance in a historical, political, and cultural context. Authors Vanessa Díaz and Petra Rivera-Rideau—creators of the “Bad Bunny Syllabus”—demonstrate Bad Bunny’s place in a long tradition of infusing both joy and protest into music and honor the many evolving forms of daily resistance to oppression and colonialism that are part of Puerto Rican life.”

Christopher Buehlman with Joe Hill at Brookline Booksmith
Between Two Fires 
March 4 at 6 p.m.
Free

“Enter a darker age with USA Today bestselling author Christopher Buehlman’s Between Two Fires, a medieval horror adventure unlike anything on the shelf.

The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found a young girl alone in a dead Norman village. An orphan of the Black Death, and an almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas that plague is only part of a larger cataclysm—that the fallen angels under Lucifer are rising in a second war on heaven, and that the world of men has become their battleground. Is it delirium or is it faith?”

Sophie Pinkham at Harvard Book Store
The Oak and the Larch: A Forest History of Russia and Its Empires
March 5 at 7 p.m.
Free

“By examining the country from the forest’s perspective, Pinkham pushes far beyond the contemporary political environment in Russia. In The Oak and the Larch, she draws on literature, history, and art to connect the expanse of the Russian wilderness and the nature of Russian culture, with indelible portraits of the diverse figures who have inhabited and celebrated these forests: the legendary indigenous guide Dersu Uzala, giants of literature like Tolstoy and Chekhov, political thinkers like Kropotkin and even Stalin. She confronts the forest’s role in Russia’s long history of imperial conquest, and in resistance to this conquest.”

Origami Night — Arrow Street Arts
March 5-8
Tickets are $50 or less with code

“Origami Night is a multi-disciplinary choreo-poem utilizing spoken word, dance, and sensory design to trace a woman’s life from working class navy brat to radical feminist to mother, and explore aging, love, loneliness, and the queer act of self-examination.

Described by”The Sleepless Critic during a 2024 residency with Boston Center for the Arts as an “intense experience unlike anything I have seen before,” the piece features the poetry of Boston-based poet Pamela Annas, adapted for the stage by multimedia designer (and her son) Christopher Annas-Lee and choreographed by Graham Cole (a Portland, OR-based producer and Director of the Oregon dance presenter White Bird). Origami Night, which impressed The Somerville Times as “a deeply satisfying and authentic collaboration,” will begin its 2026 US Tour in Boston at Arrow Street Arts on March 5.”

Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad at Harvard Book Store
The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde
March 6 at 7 p.m.
Free

“The Fire Inside explores the writings of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin through a Dharmic lens, revealing for the first time how two of America’s greatest literary voices reflect—and expand—Buddhism’s most timeless truths toward justice and liberation.

Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad dives deeply into a dharma of liberation as lived by Baldwin and Lorde, offering timely lessons to help us each meet this moment. She explores the writers’ enduring legacies to show that liberation depends not only on organizing and mass movements, but the generative power of inner well-being, authenticity, art, and embodiment. Each chapter shares how looking inward is the way forward, examining Baldwin and Lorde through key Buddhist principles.”

Natalie Haynes with Luna McNamara at Brookline Booksmith
No Friend to This House
March 9 at 7 p.m.
Free

“No Friend to This House is an extraordinary reimagining of the myth of Medea from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes.

This is what no one tells you, in the songs sung about Jason and the Argo. This part of his quest has been forgotten, by everyone but me . . .Jason and his Argonauts set sail to find the Golden Fleece. The journey is filled with danger, for him and everyone he meets. But if he ever reaches the distant land he seeks, he faces almost certain death.

Medea—priestess, witch, and daughter of a brutal king—has the power to save the life of a stranger. Will she betray her family and her home, and what will she demand in return?

Medea and Jason seize their one chance of a life together, as the gods intend. But their love is steeped in vengeance from the beginning, and no one—not even those closest to them—will be safe. Based on the classic tragedy by Euripides, this is Medea as you’ve never seen her before.”

Darcy Steinke in conversation with Rick Moody at the Parkside Bookshop
This Is The Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith
March 12 from 6:30-730 p.m.
Free

“Darcey Steinke, acclaimed author of Flash Count Diary and Suicide Blonde, explores the world of pain for those who suffer and those who love them.

Steinke gets to the heart of pain with her usual brilliance, humor, candor, and empathy. In chapters that trace the body—The Spine, The Heart, The Knees, and more—she introduces sufferers to new and ancient understandings of pain through history, philosophy, religion, pop culture, and reported human experience. Leaving no stone unturned, Steinke takes readers under the knife, through the archives, and across oceans. She interviews working physicians, analyzes the writings of Frida Kahlo, recounts her own back surgery, and journeys to Lourdes, where she finds herself invited to participate in the famed pilgrimage site’s rituals.

For readers of Joan Didion, C. S. Lewis, Sheila Heti, and Leslie Jamison, This Is the Door beautifully illuminates the experience of pain and its myriad effects on the body, mind, and soul.”

M.J. Beasi with Kayla Cottingham at Brookline Booksmith
I Was a Teenage Death God
March 13 at 7 p.m.
Free

I Was a Teenage Death God is a debut young adult fantasy novel by M.J. Beasi about a nonbinary teen with a supernatural curse. Charlie Ford unintentionally drains seconds of life from anyone they touch, complicating high school and relationships.

Anne Fadiman in conversation with George Howe Colt at Porter Square Books
Frog 
March 16 at 7 p.m.
Free

“In Frog, Anne Fadiman returns to her favorite genre, the essay, of which she is one of our most celebrated practitioners. Ranging in subject matter from her deceased frog, to archaic printer technology, to the fraught relationship between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his son Hartley, these essays unlock a whole world—one overflowing with mundanity and oddity—through sly observation and brilliant wit.

The diverse subjects of Frog are bound together by the quality of Fadiman’s attention, and subtly, they come to form a slantwise portrait of the artist, a writer dedicated to chronicling the world as it changes around her, in ways small and large, as time passes.” Arts Fuse review

— Matt Hanson