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A native of Newton and Boston University graduate the career of jazz entrepreneur, George Wein, started with the club Storyville in Copley Square. With the Lorrilards as backers he founded the Newport Jazz Festival and later the Newport Folk Festival. He went on to the the world's foremost jazz promoter. He died today at 95 in New York.

Patricia Hills, Professor Emerita, Boston University, writes on art and politics in American art and African American Art from the nineteenth-century to the present.  Her book Alice Neel (1983) and Painting Harlem Modern: The Art of Jacob Lawrence (2009) have been source books for recent exhibition curators.  Her Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné Website was launched on July 29.  For several years she has been researching work by Joyce Kozloff.

Unlike most revues, this one also demands acting out the songs, and on this count, the artists excel, making the drama work.  Dance and blocking choreographed by Nicole Helfer provide visual dynamics. Lovers of musical revues who like the cerebral and the discovery of unfamiliar music and lyrics will appreciate this production.

Opera simply is not supposed to be this much fun. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were judicial titans representing the opposite ends of the political spectrum. Most opera goers would find Composer/Librettist Derrick Wang’s one-hour confection distinctive, entertaining, and evocative.

Experience differing views of nature during Two Perspectives, which opens on September 18 as part of ArtWeek Berkshires. The show will be hosted at Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in Lenox in the sanctuary's historic 18th century barn.

The long hiatus from indoor concerts has given Berkshires Jazz, Inc. an opportunity to reflect on the many aspects of our programming. As a result, we have re-scheduled the Pittsfield CityJazz Festival from mid-October to late April which is celebrated nationally as Jazz Appreciation Month.

Mellencamp is British writer Paul Rees’ story of a midwestern teenager growing into a musician who came to represent heartland rock, a term he disliked. The book, written with the cooperation and support of Mellencamp and his management, is highly readable, a blend of nonfiction and oral history, with many long quotes from interviews with Mellencamp, fellow musicians, friends and relatives who shared their perspectives with Rees.

'Memories of Atrocities to Come:' Written at night, edited at daytime - published in remembrance of 9/11 - atrocities of WWII - and of today....

The nighttime streets are dark and shadowy, elegant in rubble and 19th century buildings. Cobblestones glisten in the light from street lamps. Carol Reed’s 1949 film, The Third Man, shows us a visually stunning Vienna, a masterpiece of the noir realm, and probably one of the greatest films of all time.

Shakespeare’s infrequently produced “The Winter’s Tale” is often characterized as a “problem play,” meaning that its tone is inconsistent – sometimes dramatic with psychological overtones, sometimes comic with mystic qualities. 

Ungathered is a remembrance of Thanksgiving 2020, a day that people in the United States were denied life-long traditions of togetherness with family and friends due to the Covid 19 pandemic.

Linda Leslie Brown’s recent sculptural work draws upon the transformative exchanges between nature, objects, and viewers' creative perceptions. Her practice involves the assemblage of objects and fragments of plastic, metal, wood, fiber, glass, rubber, and foam, which have been scavenged from the streets of Boston and other castoff sources like dumps and thrift shops.

On Friday, September 17, at 7 pm, Iris will present the very first Iris Apfel Award to Tommy Hilfiger in a virtual event, which will also be screened at PEM as part of its Friday late-night programming. Iris selected Tommy as someone who is a creative force in the industry, and as someone who demonstrates excellence in design in balance with good business sense.

Works & Process will resume its signature behind the scenes Artist-driven programs, uniquely blending performance highlights with insightful artists discussions all prior to premiere.

Boston Lyric Opera (BLO) opens its new season October 1 with the company’s first production of “Cavalleria Rusticana,” composer Pietro Mascagni’s one-act verismo tale of love, betrayal and death in a small Sicilian village. 

Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories showcases 50 remarkable works created by women and men, known individuals and those yet to be identified, urban and rural makers, and members of the Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian and LGBTQIA+ communities.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), is offering free general admission on Saturday, October 9 in honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, inviting visitors to recognize and honor the heritage of all Indigenous peoples and the histories of their nations and communities.

The Impracticality of Modern-Day Mastodons is a new play by Rachel Teagle receiving its world premiere production at Florida Atlantic University's Theatre Lab. The professional company's production runs through Sept. 19. Jess the Mastodon seeks to find her place in a world in which she seems out of place. A Mastodon is a large, extinct elephant-like mammal.

For the realist painter, Pennie Brantley, every picture tells a story. Encountering the work in her current exhibition, The Presence of the Past, there is a lot more to the notion that what you see is what you get.

Robot, replicant, android, or body snatcher – one of science-fiction’s leading obsessions has long been the fear of alien or man-made “beings” replacing humans.  In playwright David Templeton’s “Galatea,” the near future envisions an outer-space centered universe populated by organics, like you (I think) and me, as well as synthetics, the latter being created by the former to appear and behave exactly like humans.

Angela's Ashes: The Musical is a new musical adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Frank McCourt memoir. The award-winning, Off-Broadway Irish Repertory Theatre will stream the show from Sept. 9 through Sept. 22. The online production follows an in-person, critically-acclaimed run in Ireland in 2017.

Starting with the latter 20th century, divorce, remarriage, and nonmarriage have become so prominent that the would-be-bride may have several significant women to share these charged moments with.  Or maybe none.  Yet those same consternations go on, right down to the decision whether to go through with the wedding. Playwright Meghan Maugeri has plumbed this territory with a well-written play. 

After a two block walk, the audience arrives at the lawn of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum for The Caterers by Tony Menses. At least you can understand why a museum dedicated to recent art was chosen, since the play takes place sometime after 2030.

The press release for fall programing at American Repertory Theatre contained a signifying statement.

This fall, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), will bring together the only two extant quilts made by Harriet Powers (1837–1910), displaying the iconic works together for the very first time since they were made by the artist in the 19th century. The famous Pictorial quilt (1895–98) from the MFA’s collection and the Bible quilt (1885–86), on loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, will be featured in Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories, opening October 10.