Margaret Swan is an artist I have followed with much appreciation over decades. Her recent exhibition "Aloft" at Boston Sculptors Gallery was insired by the rigging, spars and sails, of tall ships. With this latest work there is a readily identified thread that reveals the aesthetic DNA of an artist who has been sharply focused through the years. Yet again the reliief pieces of varying scale are pristine in thought and execution.

Measure for Measure Theatre Company and Infinite Abyss Productions mount an emotionally-potent Next to Normal. Actors and technical team vividly capture the highs and lows of a family on the brink. A heart-shattering moment toward the end will hit close to home for many people.

Two recent documentaries, both directorial feature film debuts, approach the memory and history of World War II from distinctly different and refreshing perspectives. Serena Dykman’s “Nana” is a eulogy, not only for her grandmother, Maryla Michalowski-Dyamant but for all victims of the Holocaust. Claudio Poli’s “Hitler versus Picasso and the Others” is a thorough history of the labyrinthine fate of European art during World War II.

Known for its cutting-edge and often transformative shows about art and technology, Boston Cyberarts has recently presented two inspired gallery exhibitions as well as unconventional outdoor exhibits presenting examples of augmented reality art.

Top Girls was first produced at London’s Royal Court Theater in 1982 and is still relevant for its socio-economic and political topics, and it weighs in on women’s places at work and in society. Liesl Tommy directed the play that is considered a Masterpiece.

Theatre for the New City and the Fulton Foundation are presenting Andrea Fulton’s “A Punk or a Gentleman”. Andrea Fulton has an uncanny knack for giving us an incisive vision of difficult social issues. We are asked to reconfigure our preconceptions. Her topic, domestic violence, is not what you might expect. The victim is a man and he, like 25% of American men, is experiencing physical abuse at the hands of his wives and girlfriends.

The critical success of "Astral Weeks" by Ryan Walsh has brought national media attention to Boston's counter culture in 1968. Following a prior interview with former Cambridge Phoenix editor, Harper Barnes, we pick up on the other side of the Charles River with former Boston After Dark Editor, Arnie Reisman. This continues our coverage of arts and media during a golden age from 1969 to the demise of The Real Paper in 1981.

The Marsh San Francisco is noted as the Bay Area’s premiere home for solo theatrical performance. With Two Minds it doubles the cast size and the richness of the drama.

Mariss Jansons conducted Mahler's Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall. Andris Nelsons, the music director of the Boston Symphony and a protégé of Jansons, introduced himself to the BSO with this symphony.

Assembled Identities is a new work being presented by HERE, as the important Art Center celebrates its 25th anniversary. In many ways, the play reflects the company’s core commitment to hybrid art.

Eight months after Hurricane Irma, Measure for Measure Theatre Company to finally mount an inaugural production. The Pulitzer-winning musical Next to Normal will mark new South Florida company's first staging.

Anthony Roth Costanzo is a counter tenor opera aficionados come out to hear. His voice is unusually rich for this range. He is a physical actor of great skill. The Master Voices presentation of Orphic Moments implanted a dramatic cantata Matthew Aucoin wrote for Costanzo into the opera by Gluck.

To our surprise, a Monday night at Provincetown's The Mews, in early May, the joint was jumping. It was packed to the gills for a fabulous night of cabaret with pianist/ singer/ raconteur Zoe Lewis and the Bootleggers. It was the absolute highllight of a pre season week on the Cape.

Playwright Janes is an English writer and producer who works in TV, film, radio and stage. Buddy—The Buddy Holly his best-known work and ran for 14 years in London’s West End and toured in the U.K. for 17 years. Buddy has also been on Broadway, toured the U.S., Germany, Australia and New Zealand.

Seven years ago, AM-DOCS Film Festival founder Teddy Grouya, felt that filmmakers of documentaries needed a proper festival of their own to display their diverse and wide-ranging, special subject-matter films. Accordinglt, the documentary film genre has been presented a festival format with all the trimmings.

With judicious tweaking, cuts, and color blind casting director/ adapter, Scott Edmiston, mounted a stunning producton of Anna Christie at Boston's Lyric Stage. The 1921 drama by Eugene O'Neill won a Pulitzer Prize. He would go on to earn three more Pulitzers including for a posthumous production of the autobiographical family epic A Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Manfred Honeck, who was narrowly beaten out by Jaap van Zweden for the job of music director of the New York Philharmonic returned to the podium of America's oldest orchestra this week. He brought an ambitious program, featuring two of his own arrangements of orchestral music by Dvorak and Tchaikovsky, each drawn from fairy tale works by those great Romantic composers, and the evergreen Sibelius Violin Concerto as an ample and satisfying makeweight.

Through the end of May The Eclipse Mill Gallery launches its 2018 season with the first Berkshire solo show of abstract paintings by resident artist, Rick Harlow. In an artist's statement Harlow provides a context for what he describes as The Landscape of Energy. On May 26 in the gallery at 243 Union Street, North Adams, the group Aluna will create improvised music inspired by the paintings.

Mariss Jansons started his program with the presumed warhorse, The Wiliam Tell Overture. He brings freshness to the work. In his customary attention to detail, which is then swept up into the greater whole, we hear a symphony, which begins with a beautiful cello solo and expands finally to a rip-snorting conclusion. All sections of the orchestra have a chance to shine in ensemble or solo performance.

Bekah Brunstetter’s play shines in giving us insights on the thinking behind a baker’s refusal to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. Brunstetter helps us understand the thinking on both sides; this is not a leftwing harangue.

Howard Zinn’s celebrated play comes “home” to the Soho Playhouse, starring Bob Weick as Karl Marx. The theorist of communism engages in a passionate, funny and moving commentary about contemporary American politics and society. Come celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth.

In the 1960's, after nearly extinction, the Sagrantino varietal was revived and has come back and is known as one of Italy's finest grapes. Montefalco, in Umbria, is where this bold,concentrated grape thrives. Huge tannins take years to cool down. With daytime summer temperatures near 100F, cool nights are needed for this grape to survive. And it has.

Gerald Finley, in announcing his program at Alice Tully Hall, said that he and his collaborator on the piano, Julius Drake, had selected songs they loved. It is a measure of this consummate bass-baritone and superb piano partner that the songs were also among the most difficult in the literature. These masters of the form did not struggle as they displayed pyrotechnics on the keyboard and a wide-spreading musical and emotional range in the voice.

The arrival of the sensational conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic is always a cause for celebration at Lincoln Center. Dudamel remains the leading musical export of Venezuela, the proof that that country's El Sistema program is an entirely successful social experiment in producing quality musicians under difficult circumstances.

Antinori Winery from Tuscany is the oldest, active, wine producer in the world. In 1986, the company bought property in Napa Valley and founded the Antica Winery. After 30 years, the winery is well known for wines that maintain the same high quality as the wines from Antinori have done for their entire existence.