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Thursday, January 26, 7:30 p.m.; Friday, January 27, 1:30 p.m.; Saturday, January 28, 8 p.m. Andris Nelsons leads the world premiere of American composer/guitarist Steven Mackey's Concerto for Curved Space, a BSO co-commission (Thursday and Saturday concerts only). Mackey's style embraces influences ranging from Beethoven to modern rock.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is pleased to announce the first round of recommended awards for fiscal year 2023, with more than $34 million in funding to support the arts nationwide. This is the first of the NEA’s two major grant announcements each fiscal year and includes grants to organizations through the NEA’s Grants for Arts Projects, Challenge America, and Research Awards categories.

In short order, playwright Lynne Kaufman offers enticing insights into two contrasting, important modern poets, and the simple production succeeds through fine acting. This compact but impactful taste of familiarity fully satisfies on its own, while many attendees will want to learn even more about these fragile artists and their robust literary works.

Keith Haring made thousands of unsanctioned chalk drawings in New York City subway stations. Most of them were promptly thrown away or papered over by subway authorities. Only a limited number survive to this day. Seventeen of these historic drawings will be exhibited publicly for the first time at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center

Gloucester 400th Plus is an occasion for research and reflection on all aspects of the history and culture of Cape Ann. in 2022 the Cape Ann Museum hosted a range of panel discussions and lectures. Here is the full program with links to their videos. It is significant that the museum has preserved and made available such a valuable resource.

All the big opera companies have something to learn from the Prototype Festival, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

In a fast-moving 60 minutes, mime comic Ennio provides cleverly curated cartoon characterizations of celebrities and lip syncs to songs, mostly recorded by the people portrayed. The music is the songbook of our lives (if you’re middle aged or older!), including rock-and-roll, pop of various sorts, and rap.

Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji—Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master.

Who does not remember Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film 'A Clockwork Orange' based on the novel by Anthony Burgess from 1962!? It was one of the most chilling cinematic affairs then, and it remains today on stage. Here, the photographs speak a million words....

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA)  presents Across Shared Waters: Contemporary Artists in Dialogue with Tibetan Art from the Jack Shear Collection, on view from Feb. 17 through July 16, 2023.

This major exhibition is the first dedicated to Hopper’s formative development on Cape Ann, marking the centennial of the pivotal summer of 1923 when Edward Hopper and his future wife, Josephine “Jo” Nivison, visited Gloucester. Edward Hopper & Cape Ann opens on Hopper’s birthday, July 22, 2023, and runs through October 16, 2023, and is presented in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art, the major repository of the Hoppers’ work.

The 90th birthday of composer Pauline Oliveros was celebrated on Saturday at the newly reconfigured Zankel Hall in Carnegie Hall.  The steeply raked seating on two sides of the hall, leading to a central stage area embedded in seats on all four sides, felt like an Oliveros’ creation.  We are brought to the hall to listen, deeply.

 Front Porch Arts Collective and The Huntington announce the cast and creative team of K-I-S-S-I-N-G, their co-production of the world premiere play written by Massachusetts playwright and Huntington Playwriting Fellow Lenelle Moïse and directed by The Porch’s Co-Producing Artistic Director Dawn M. Simmons. Front Porch Arts Collective is in residence at The Huntington as part of a multi-year strategic partnership.

“Mah nishtanah, ha-laylah ha-zeh,mi-kol ha-leylot” (Why is this night different from all other nights?). This invocation, spoken by the youngest capable person at the dinner table at seder, is perhaps the most famous and evocative sentence in Judaism. Not only does the ritual that follows those words reflect on the traumatic history of the Jewish people, but it speaks to their very existence.

The exhibition highlights Behind Blue Eyes, a project started by Dima Zubkov and Artem Skorohodko, volunteers who distribute food and supplies to residents in liberated Ukrainian villages.

Rhiannon Giddens talks often of being comfortable in the crossroads of her art. The new configuration of Zankel Hall in Carnegie looks like a crossroads. The audience comes from every direction to focus on the world being presented. The stage is a hybrid space where different music from different times can exist side by side.

Barrington Stage Company (BSC), under the leadership of Artistic Director Alan Paul, will produce a 2023 season that will feature two major musical revivals, two world premiere plays, and two modern classic play revivals.

"Rotterdam" is an emotionally-rich play receiving a strong production at Island City Stage. The production runs through Feb. 19 at the company in Wilton Manors, near Ft. Lauderdale. "Rotterdam" opens Island City Stage's 2022-23 season.

“Cashed Out” takes place on the Gila River Reservation in southern Arizona, home to the Pima tribe, traditionally noted for their finely woven baskets – tightly twined bowls with crisp angular patterns.  While the compelling narrative gives interesting insights into the culture of the native people, universal themes abound – the power of love in family and friendship; internal struggle and external conflict; forgiveness and redemption.  The production is striking and highly appealing.

Dominique Morisseau has written a sometimes funny but always tense noirish drama which Director Dawn Monique Williams plumbs for all its nuance. The actors find the essence of each character and deliver a gripping entertainment.

Valentines Day is drawing near and the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, Germany, seems to bow to this occasion with its new production 'Amore' under the direction of Aram Tafreshian.

The "innovative, clever and thoroughly professional" BERKSHIRE OPERA FESTIVAL (BOF) announces its 2023 season in Great Barrington and Pittsfield, MA, and for the first time in New York City. The only company of its kind in the Berkshire region, BOF produces opera at the highest level under the vision of esteemed co-founders Brian Garman (Artistic Director) and Jonathon Loy (Director of Production). The festival has "destination" status. Others write: "No longer need we confine our opera-going to HD films—now we have the highest quality productions and performers in our own backyard." 

For all of human history and eons before, Mount Everest has stood as steady as a rock – literally. In its eight years, the opera “Everest: An Immersive Experience” has had three very different realizations, even though under the baton of Nicole Paiement for each version. The genesis of the opera’s narrative is a real-life tragedy about three members on an Everest expedition in 1996, two of whom never came back.

 The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) announces that longtime museum supporters James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes have made a significant donation to enhance PEM’s 120,000-square-foot Collection Center in Rowley, Massachusetts.

Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is enjoying a must-see run at the Irish Repertory Theatre.  Starring Bill Irwin, the clown and Beckett aficionado, as Clov and John Douglas Thompson as Hamm, here uncharacteristically for Thompson, the “insider.” He is bound to a wheelchair, blind and dependent on painkillers, yet the clear force of the moment. Clov lurches around him.