The former faculty and fellows of MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies gathered from all over the world for a 50th anniversary exhibition and celebration. There was a lively reception in the ground floor gallery of the MIT Museum which faces MASS Ave in Cambridge. The exhibition continues in galleries above. The museum moved to this more accessible building several years ago. The project also entailed galleries in the Rotunda area of the main building on the MIT campus.

Semyon Bychkov understands that no matter what the back story of a composition, it stands on its own in performance. The conductor deeply understands the music he performs. He conveys this to his orchestra. At the conclusion of a recent concert at David Geffen Hall, instrumentalists congratulated each other and the conductor, amazed and delighted that together they had reached incredible performance heights.

The play is set in the misty garden of a mansion in New Orleans’ Garden District in late summer 1936. Violet Venable (Mary K. Nigohosian), a wealthy widow, is telling the story of her poet son Sebastian, who died under mysterious circumstances the previous summer in Spain.

From the moment you enter the Harvey Theater at BAM this is an extraordinary experience. The set is by no means a glass house, but it has the effect of one. The walls are semi-transparent. Tall bookcases line the central living room in one corner. Stairs ascend. The front door of the house leads to a walkway visible from the living room. This is the 'home' that will be endlessly called to mind in O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Double your pleasure, double your fun with the fabulous duo pianists, Christina and Michelle Naughton. The Sunday morning concert at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center is a popular fixture of the Great Performers series. Here up and coming important artists introduce themselves. The Naughtons are well on their way to prominence in the field of classical music. In this wake-up concert they took it upon themselves to delight by alternating conventional music, marvelously performed, with deconstructions of familiar themes by John Adams and Witold Lutoslawki.

Million Dollar Quartet ran for more than two months at suburban Miami's Actors' Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre. The return engagement is just as electric, while proving a bit kinder to eardrums. First-rated performers prove commendable quadruple threats in the roles of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis.

It is a rare occurrence for a Vintage Port year where all of the critics are hailing 2016 as one of the greatest vintage port years. After previewing the ports, I must agree that it is truly a banner year. Small yields mean that this vintage will be hard to find.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sir Simon Rattle presented Gustav Mahler, composer and one-time music director of the New York Philharmonic, at David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center. His last program featured the unfinished 10th Symphony which has not been taken on as often as Franz Schubert’s. Rattle first recorded the Symphony over three decades ago with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.