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The Cape Ann Museum’s auditorium was packed for a Sunday afternoon book launch. Edited by Martin Ray, Gloucester Encounters: Essays on the Cultural History of the City from 1623-2023, is a compendium of 37 largely community based essays on aspects of Gloucester’s lifestyle, issues and concerns.

All about quarries, ponds and rocks! This article presents a photo and word essay - in the format that I have exhibited at the Eclipse Mill as well as this summer/fall at the Berkshire Art Museum in North Adams, MA.

Before he writes in the morning, Michael Cunningham as always listened to PHilip Glass's music. Serendiptiy brought Glass's score to the Stephen Daldry film based on Cunningham's book, The Hours. He discusses the works with Berkshire Fine Arts.

Whether this is autobiographical or only suggested by Stoppard’s family, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the brilliant acting and story-telling.

What happens when you combine A Christmas Carol and Sherlock Holmes? You end up with A Sherlock Carol which is returning to off-Broadway. In this version through Sunday, Jan. 1, Holmes is called in by an adult Tiny Time to investigate the death of Scrooge.

Christoph Willibald Gluck’s contributions to opera extend beyond the merits of his individual operas. Like Richard Wagner a century later, Gluck conceived an intellectual framework that changed the opera landscape.

The exhibition, Promenades on Paper: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, includes a selection of eighty-four studies, architectural plans, albums, sketchbooks, prints, and optical devices that expand our understanding of drawing as a tool of documentation and creation in the age of Enlightenment.

Palm Beach Dramaworks (PBD) in Southeast Florida is preparing to mount a production of the classic courtroom drama, "Twelve Angry Men." The play's basis is the Academy Award winning 1957 film with the same title. PBD's production will run through Dec. 24 at PBD's intimate venue in West Palm Beach.

New City Players in Southeast Florida has mounted a solid production of a live radio play adaptation of the Christmas classic film, "It's a Wonderful Life." The production runs through Dec. 18. The adaptation, while charming and heartwarming, is too similar to the source material.

On a drawing board of mixed media, live at the Blue Building on 44th Street, Art Bath gives New York talent a chance to experiment.  Six times a year, twice in the spring and twice in the fall, Art Bath presents programs in which artists mix and match new and daring forms. These are enchanted evenings. 

“There’s no better way to start the new year off than by making sure that our doors are wide open for our community and for all visitors to the area,” said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark. “We believe that the chance to engage with art is a truly fulfilling and enriching part of life and we want to make sure that everyone has plenty of opportunities to visit the Clark and to get to know us better.”

Death of a Salesman, starring Wendell Pierce, is getting an interesting, if not always successful, revival at the Hudson Theater on W. 44th Street. The revival produced by the Young Vic Theatre originated in London last spring to acclaim.

“I am always amazed at how Cabaret manages to speak to our time, making it one of the most remarkable and resilient works of American musical theatre,” commented Alan Paul. “As the US experiences a rise in acts of virulent anti-Semitism, it seemed an appropriate time for our audiences to revisit this enduring classic. It’s also an opportunity in my first season to celebrate one of the shows that helped establish the legacy of this theatre company.” 

The Arts Vibrancy Index report is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to better understand how the arts and culture sector contributes to a community’s economy and public life. Now in its seventh iteration, the report has helped organizations evaluate where to relocate or focus their operations; provided clarity for funders on how and where to invest; and made it easier than ever for communities to learn how to cultivate arts vibrancy in their area.

Ghosts.  Dancing skeletons.  A giant toothy snake from Hell, like Saturday Night Live’s land shark on steroids. “The Handbook for the Recently Deceased.”  When the title character mirthfully tells the audience that this is a play about death, he’s not kidding.  Fortunately, it’s all in good fun, and there is plenty of it in this delightfully camp musical adaptation of the highly successful 1988 comedy-horror film.

Women have often been called witches and other words that rhyme. What insights can we glean today about the trials held in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts? Playwright Sarah Ruhl tackles the question.

"O Christmas Tree," a new holiday play with music, made a triumphant world premiere at South Florida's Thinking Cap Theatre. The playwrights are Thinking Cap's Artistic Director, Nicole Stodard, and Thinking Cap's Managing Director, Bree-Anna Obst. The world premiere marks just the beginning of "O Christmas Tree's" theatrical life.

With the 2022 publication of Gloucester Encounters: Essays on the Cultural History of the City 1623-2023, edited by Martin Ray, we have a kick start launch of a year of commemoration in 2023. Originally planned for six writers it was expanded to 36 by editor Martin Ray. It reads like a pot luck supper with savory chapters as well as many not so. But you won't leave it feeling hungry for Gloucester.  

 Julia Bullock and the American Modern Opera Project brought a new version of John Adams’ and Peter Sellars' El Nino to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, known for its support of the arts and blessing of all animals. This will become a traditional performance.

Around Six years ago, I signed up for the National Geographic Family History DNA Test.  For around $125, I received a Cheek Swab Kit and some paperwork.  I was instructed to reveal nothing more than my Name and Age.  A few weeks later, I received a box which included a Printed Brill Family History based solely on the DNA I presented.  The National Geographic Report let me know that I am Jewish and that my Father’s Family started in the Middle East and traveled to Sicily around a thousand years ago. 

The works in On the Town celebrate city life and community, illuminating a Boston area of the past through the vision of one of its more unique residents. Arnold Trachtman’s paintings tell stories and reveal an artist as deeply invested in his neighborhood as it was in him.  

Gallery NAGA welcomes 2023 with a selection of works by two artists, Cheryl Ann Thomas and Michael F. Rohde, in a feat of interdisciplinary collaboration. This exhibition was first organized by the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona California and curated by Jo Lauria, Adjunct Curator for the American Museum of Ceramic Art and a design historian based in Los Angeles, California. 

Here’s my list of the best Connecticut productions I saw this year. Instead of ranking them, I’ve just listed what I found particularly noteworthy.

Some Like It Hot is fun, tuneful and worth spending Broadway prices to see. Is the musical really an adaptation of the classic slapstick, Billy Wilder comedy?

He’s been making jazz, and nurturing young jazz artists, for more than 50 years, and it’s about time we paid tribute to Mike Schiffer. At the age of 93, he is still playing local gigs. But this time, on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 29 (4pm), he’ll be in the audience with the rest of us lucky jazz followers.