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The Berlin Philharmonic, inarguably the greatest symphony orchestra in the world, came to New York to show us how much fun music can be.  Their showpiece example, the famously tormented Gustav Mahler. 

George Fifield, founder of the Cyberarts Festival and Boston Cyberarts, curator, scholar, arts administrator, creative mentor, videographer, educator, and a major champion of fusing art with technology, passed away on November 11 at the age of 72 from complications that followed a devastating fall that occurred at his Martha’s Vineyard home early last summer

“We all come from sort of a traditional background, but then we have different influences that we’re interested in,” explains fiddler and singer Rachel Davis. “Chrissy (Crowley, fiddler) likes to dive into a lot of world music, Darren (mandolin, guitar, banjo, etc.) comes from a kind of Irish theme from playing around a lot. More of the traditional Cape Breton stuff is really what I love, plus all the folk songs, so it’s an interesting mix.”   

One of the most distinctive and creative of all jazz singers, NEA Jazz Master and self-described “Jazz Child” Sheila Jordan is one of those rare vocalists whose voice can be regarded among the great instruments of the music.

Kevin Connors has managed to keep the pace fast and the timing almost perfect. That’s a key to effective farce. Too slow and you lose interest. You can’t have time to really think about what is happening.

The recipients of the 2022 Boston Artadia Awards are Stephen Hamilton, the Liberty Specialty Markets Artadia Award recipient, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, and Shantel Miller. The 2022 Boston Artadia Awards were also supported by the Paul and Edith Babson Foundation, the Meraki Artist Award, the Artadia Board of Directors, Artadia Council Members, anonymous funders, and individual donors across the country.

Ellen Schön’s New Directions Home, her second solo exhibition at Boston Sculptors Gallery, features two discreet series of new ceramic sculpture. Inspired by diverse cultural traditions, Schön employs both ancient and contemporary technologies in her sculptural interpretations.  

Did you hear the one about the time the Duke of Burgundy Philippe the Bold, outlawed the cultivation of Gamay back in 1385? He claimed it was a "disloyal and bad plant." He reserved his region for the more elegant Pinot Noir. You may wonder why we have such an affection for Gamay at Mezze. We often root for the underdog. 

The downtowns of Pittsfield and Lenox, Massachusetts will be sprawling with live music on the weekend of Nov. 18-20, with the first Berkshires Jazz Fall Sprawl. Artists range from small, local groups to the 17-piece Amherst Jazz Orchestra, and spotlight 16-year-old prodigy Brandon Goldberg, who is making his Berkshires debut that weekend.

Within three months Connecticut theatergoers have seen two excellent productions. In the summer it was produced at Sharon Playhouse. Now ACT-CT in Ridgefield has opened its season with another fine production which runs through Sunday, Nov. 20. Each is well cast, well sung and well directed.

Now in its 34th year, the Fall Festival of Shakespeare leads students at 11 high schools in Massachusetts and New York through a language-based exploration of Shakespeare's plays. This work culminates in full-scale productions at their own schools as well as the Main Stage at the Tina Packer Playhouse during a raucous, four-day celebration.

Dead Center: Chekhov’s First Play has had a jam-packed audience in its run at the Irish Arts Center in New York.  To be sure the city is crammed with actors who play Chekov roles.  This play is a tip to fathoming their secrets.  It is also pure fun for any theater goer.

When the murderer reveals himself and points the gun at his next victim, I expect to feel some fear. Unfortunately, in the stylish but misguided Hartford Stage production of The Mousetrap (running through Sunday, Nov. 6), not only didn’t I feel fear, I had no sense that the intended victim felt fear.

In every sense Richard Thomas Griffiths OBE (31 July 1947 – 28 March 2013) was a larger than life actor. We subscribe to Acorn through Amazon Prime. It offers a menu of British, Australian and New Zeland programs. Lately we have been binge watching Griffiths in five seasons as chef detective Henry Crabbe in "Pie in the Sky." You might also know him from appearances in Harry Potter films. On stage he won numerous awards including a Tony and Laurence Olivier Award.

We The Innumerable is an opera created by the Iranian/American composer Niloufar Nourbakhash with libretto by Lisa Flanagan. Sara Jobin, who is committed to works which bring about peace and global understanding, conducted. National Sawdust staged. The opera tells the story of a woman who protects the truth at all costs It is set during protests in Iran after a contested election in 2009. It echoes today’s protests.

Through January 29 the Institute of Contemporary Art is displayng a gallery with 11 totemic ceramic standing figures by Rose B. Simpson. A graduate of RISD she grew up in a culture noted for its distinctive pottery created by her mother, Roxanne Swentzell, her late grandmother, Rina Swentzell and her late great-grandmother, Rose Naranjo.

Murder!  Mystery!  Mayhem! are the order of the day (er – night) as Center Rep takes on the classic trapped-in-a-scary-mansion who-dunnit?  Did the butler do it?  In a play that relies on style rather than gravitas, Director Nancy Carlin pulls all the right strings to make for a fluffy and entertaining ninety minutes.

This is a big show for TheaterWorks Hartford with a cast of nine and a band of seven. Under Rob Ruggiero’s sure hand, it comes together to create a thought-provoking and moving play.

Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley is presented in honor of  Shakespeare & Company Costume Director Govane Lohbauer, and in memory of actor, teacher, and weapons master Bob Lohbauer,who passed away in September 2022.

Upcoming at the Williams College '62 Center are theater and dance performances. THEATRE: A LOVE STORY By Caridad Svichm directed by Emmanuelle Delpech and Pachedu (F)ALL Ensembles.

In response to these difficult times, artist Justin Freed, former owner and programmer of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, has created An Evening of Jazz and Healing with live music, photography, drawings, projection and film.

In 1929 Erich Maria Remarque published the controversial anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front. It follows the tale of Paul and his classmates who enlisted to fight for the Fatherland. One by one they died until Paul, the last, is killed by a sniper in the final minutes before Armistice. Just a year later Hollywood released the classic film which won two Oscars. Now available on Netflix is an epic, cinematic, gruesome remake by the German director Edward Berger. The spectacular retelling is disrespectful in selecting some and discarding many of the plot points and metaphors of a literary masterpiece.

Alice Denison refers to this large body of work as her Pangloss series and they are rooted in her interest in ornately rendered plants and flowers.  At once dreamlike and mysterious with a tangle of floating flora, they are now beginning to allude to a real place—it’s as if the tapestry has been lifted to reveal a distant landscape.     

During the Depression years Mitchell Siporin found relief and commissions through the mural program of the WPA. In 1939 he traveled to Mexico and drew inspiration from the muralists. Recently discovered negatives from that trip led to an exhibitiion by his daughter Rachel Siporin at Bowery Gallery in New York. Siporin founded the studio program at Brandeis University.

If you think spending an evening with Hamlet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is not your best choice for a fun experience, think again. This production is a hoot.  Pure pleasure.