Arts
Pick of the Day 4/4: The genius of Svetlana Boym at UMass
SVETLANA BOYM: EXILE AND IMAGINATION Celebrating the legacy of literary and cultural critic Svetlana Boym who passed away in 2015, Exile and Imagination traces Boym’s life from when she left the USSR for the US in 1980. After her graduate studies, she became...
Calendar: What to do 4/4
WEDNESDAY 4/4 MUSIC All Ages Open Mic Night With Host F. Alex Johnson: 7 p.m. – 10 p.m. Award winning guitarist F Alex Johnson hosts this weekly open mic featuring some of the best talent in the valley. All ages, free and open to all. Brew Practitioners, 36 Main...
Pick of the Day: Panique at HCC
Catch the tail end of Holyoke Community College’s 2018 French Film Festival. Bring your escargot and beret to watch Panique, a 1947 adaptation of Mr. Hire’s Engagement by Belgian crime writer Georges Simenon. It’s a “bleak picture of human nature at its vilest...
Calendar: Tuesday 4/3
TUESDAY 4/3 MUSIC Gary Mullen and The Works: 7:30 p.m. Springfield Symphony Hall, 34 Court St., Springfield. Northampton Jazz Workshop: 7:30 p.m. – 10:30 p.m. $5. Richmond, VA based clarinetist Darryl Harper will be the guest soloist with the Green Street Trio...
Calendar: Things to do on 4/2
MONDAY 4/2 MUSIC Back Stage Bar at Luthier’s Co-op: 6 p.m to 11 p.m. 108 Cottage St., Easthampton Hartford Jazz Orchestra: 8 p.m. Free. Arch Street Tavern, 85 Arch St., Hartford. STAGE/FILM/DANCE The Death of Stalin: 1:55 p.m., 4:35 p.m., 7:10 p.m., 9:40 p.m....
Pick of the Day 4/2: The Death of Stalin
Has it snowed enough for ya? Well, dip inside Amherst Cinema today or tonight and check out IFC’s new release, The Death of Stalin. Political intrigue and farce are usually recipes for fun and hilarity — The Death of Stalin is no exception. It’s set in...
Transit: A Marriage of Words and Solar Motion
Hadley Town Commons is sleepy and quaint and on one of the four corners of the intersection of Routes 47 and 9, sits the historic Goodwin Memorial Library. It’s a brick building, unassuming, old, and encumbered by time. The Goodwin, however, is slated for enormous...
Calendar: Saturday and Sunday 3/31- 4/1
SATURDAY 3/31 MUSIC Sylvan Esso: 8 p.m. – 11 p.m. $28. MASS MoCA. 1040 MASS MoCA WAY, North Adams. AEIOUkes: 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. A community ukulele club who meets regularly to sing together and to improve our playing. All levels and experiences. Forbes...
Pick of the Day 4/1: Forest Park Zoo in Springfield
After a long and treacherous winter, The Forest Park Zoo is back! They’ll be open Easter Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Who doesn’t want to see furry and feathery adorableness? Sheep, monkeys, pythons, fennec foxes, spotted leopards, kangaroos and more. On...
Pick of the Day 3/31: Pablo Fransisco at the Huke Lau
You know the Huke Lau is closing on April 6, right? Well, you do now, so you might as well get your fill tonight before it’s too late. Comedian Pablo Fransisco is headlining tonight. Fransisco has two Comedy Central one-hour comedy specials to his credit: “They...
Pick of the Day 3/30: Brooks Williams at the Parlor Room
The Advocate’s intern Sarah Heinonen made a wise staff pick a few days ago; Brooks Williams is performing tonight. This is what Sarah says: “Wind down your week with some good old fashioned blues at The Parlor Room. Georgia-born guitarist and songwriter...
Pick of the Day 3/29: The Take at the Pioneer Valley Workers Center
The Take is a documentary film made in 2004 about a group of unemployed Argentinian auto-workers who decided to restart the plant where they used to work as a cooperatively owned business. Using archival footage, director Avi Lewis and writer Naomi Klein give a often...
Pick of the Day 3/28: Blackbird Effect in Holyoke
Here’s how The Blackbird Effect describes themselves: ” The Blackbird Effect= Pan Morigan & John Cabán, performing bent blues, green jazz & other Americanismos with roots to the sky!” “Americanismos,” that’s some fancy...
Calendar: Wednesday 3/28
MUSIC All Ages Open Mic Night With Host F. Alex Johnson: 7 p.m. – 10 p.m. Free. Award winning guitarist F. Alex Johnson hosts this weekly open mic featuring some of the best talent in the valley. Brew Practitioners, 36 Main St., Florence. 413-584-2444....
Pick of the Day 3/27: Chinatown at Amherst Cinema
Tonight at Amherst Cinema, Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway star in the 1974 mystery classic mystery Chinatown. The omnipresent Wikipedia describes it as having “many elements of film noir, particularly a multi-layered story that is part mystery and part...
Calendar: Tuesday 3/27
MUSIC Open Mic: 8:30-11:00: 8:30 p.m. Luthier’s Co-op, 108 Cottage St., Easthampton. STAGE/FILM/DANCE PVJFF: Keep the Change: 7 p.m. – 10 p.m. Rave Cinemas, 864 Riverdale St., West Springfield. Science on Screen: Chinatown: 7 p.m. – 9:30 p.m. Amherst...
Pick of the Day 3/26: GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II
GI JEWS: Jewish Americans in World War II is a documentary that will air on PBS in April, but you can see it as part of the Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival tonight at The Springfield Jewish Community Center. GI Jew tells the story of the 550,000 Jewish men and...
Calendar: MONDAY 3/26
MUSIC Jeff Holmes Big Band featuring Dawning Holmes, vocals: 7:30 p.m. – 10 p.m. Free. 17 piece big band plays leaders arrangements & compositions with vocalist Dawning Holmes. Jazz, Blues, Soul & more! The 121 Club at Eastworks, 116 Pleasant St.,...
Pick of the Day 3/25: Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal
Okay, if you’re into the Grim Reaper, a disillusioned knight, the plague, a terrible stage performer who sees visions, chess and the oh-so-fun Crusades, then you’ll be into Ingmar Bergman’s classic film The Seventh Seal. It involves a lot more but...
Pick of the Day 3/23: Jeremy Turgeon Quintet at Rootstock
Jeremy Turgeon is a young guy, but man does he have chops and the Jeremy Turgeon Quintet, or “JTQ,” brings a fresh, new sound to modern jazz. As part of Rootstock tonight, they’ll be making magic, fusing the timeless combination of Jazz, R & B...
Pick of the Day 3/22: Shut Up, Emily Dickinson
Smith College wants Emily Dickinson to just shut up already! There’s no better way to describe this show than “Emily Dickinson: poet, recluse, a**hole.” HA!!! And furthermore, this is “a pseudo-historical, quasi-biographical, hysterically existential...
Pick of the Day 3/20: PVJFF Raise the Roof
Boston artists Rick and Laura Brown of Handhouse Studio embarked on a 10-year journey to reconstruct the elaborate roof painting and ceiling of the Gwoździec synagogue. The project involved over 300 students and professionals from 16 countries. During those years...
CALENDAR: What’s Happening Tuesday, 3/20
MUSIC Faculty Concert: Voices of a New World: 7:30 p.m. Free. Jamie-Rose Guarrine, soprano and Seth Keeton, bass-baritoneNadine Shank and Laura Bolton, piano and Karl Knapp, celloBezanson Recital Hall, FAC, 151 President’s Dr., Amherst. 413-577-2154....
Pick of the Day 3/19: East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem
As part of the Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival : Released in 2014, East Jerusalem West Jerusalem is a musical documentary which follows Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza as he records a new album with a mix of Israeli and Palestinian musicians. Broza is able...
Pick of the Day 3/18: Mamma Mia!
Channel your inner Streep — or Brosnan — and dance your way to a special screening of the smash hit movie musical Mamma Mia! Don’t worry if you don’t know the words, there will be onscreen lyrics. Come dressed as your favorite character and sing-along!...
Pick of the Day 3/17: High Mud Comedy Fest at MASS MoCA in North Adams
It’s the second day of the High Mud Comedy Fest and you’re invited to MASS MoCA to get in on the fun. Headlined by Mike Birbiglia of This American Life, comedians will spend the late afternoon and evening making funny. At 4 p.m. you can take a...
Pick of the Day 3/14: Ben Cosgrove at Click Workspace
Did you know the National Park Service hosts artists-in-residence? I didn’t! But Ben Cosgrove is that guy. Cosgrove is a composer and multi-instrumentalist from Methuen whose “work mainly explores the intersection of sound and place.” Which means his...
Valley Advocate Podcast: TX Watson Is selling their soul to pay for student loans
T.X. Watson, a transgender student at Hampshire College, feels grateful to the academic institution for the level of aid they received. However, upon graduation this spring, T.X. will still have more than $45,000 in debt between student loans and credit card debt for...
Pick of the Day 3/12: Group exhibit “Women in History Month”
Well, we’re just about half way through March, which means in a couple of weeks being a woman will once again be out of fashion. But you still have time to celebrate Women’s History Month by checking out the Floyd Gallery’s 17th annual Women in...
Infants of the Spring: A new play views the Harlem Renaissance with a jaundiced eye
The artistic nexus of the 1920s known as the Harlem Renaissance or New Negro Movement is remembered as a great flowering of black talent and a golden age in American cultural history. But at least one of its members, looking at it from the inside, saw it quite...
Review: Sally Clegg’s Bundle curious and unique; UMass’ Hampden Gallery could use work
There are so many settings in which you can find art exhibitions: Cafes, restaurants, hospitals, hotels, and of course college campuses. UMass Amherst, as a matter of fact, has four galleries under the auspices of the Fine Arts Center. The Student Union Gallery,...
Pick of the Day 3/7: Adam Benzine’s Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
The Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival will screen a special director’s cut of Adam Benzine’s 2015 documentary, Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah. It took French journalist, philosopher, and filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, 12 years to make his...
Pick of the Day 3/6: The Smith College Annual Bulb Show
Although March has come in like a lion, Smith College’s Lyman Conservatory is the perfect antidote to Western Massachusetts’ gray skies and chilled winds. Head to Smith today and take spring’s glorious promises which include an array of beauties like...
Stagestruck: Defying Gravity, Again
That wizard of wise foolery known as Avner the Eccentric is back. Avner Eisenberg is a genius of physical comedy and quick-witted clowning whose whimsical website states that “as a kid his passions were snakes and juggling. He wanted to be a doctor, but after a year...
Pick of the Day 3/5: Lady Bird at Amherst Cinema
Lady Bird Takes Flight at Amherst Cinema First time director and actress, Greta Gerwig delivers a brilliant film about the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of a mother and her teenaged daughter in Sacramento in the early aughts. Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson...
Stagestruck: Willkommen to “Cabaret”
As I wrote in this space last year, “So much of what we see and create seems newly topical and timely” since the rise of Trump. “Everything is now filtered through a horrifying new prism, taking on fresh meaning and urgency.” A striking example of the “Trump Effect”...
Lauren L. Anderson is Connecting Moments at Sam’s Pizzeria and Cafe in Northampton
Sam’s Pizzeria and Cafe is nestled in the 200 block on Main Street in downtown Northampton. Like its owner, Sam Harbey, the eatery is down to earth and friendly. “We’ve been here for 11 years in the same spot,” Harbey says sitting in one of the glossy wood benches...
Staff Picks: And the Kids, Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Cabaret
And The Kids at the Stone Church // SATURDAY, March 3 Northampton-based indie rock group And the Kids heads to Brattleboro on March 3 to play at the Stone Church, a former All Souls Unitarian Church renovated into a music venue. The band recently released its latest...
The Face of Children’s Literature: Eighty Years of Caldecott Books
There are three exhibitions on display at the Eric Carle Museum this month, but the one that will tug at the book lover’s heartstrings is Eighty Years of Caldecott Books. It’s a collection of first edition Caldecott medal-winning children’s books that date from 1938...
Pick of the Day 3/1: Arts Night Plus in Amherst
Tonight is Arts Night Plus in Amherst from 5-8 p.m. Check out this free monthly cultural event in downtown Amherst. It’s a mixed bag every month but you can look forward to taking in some visual art, a little poetry, maybe a musical performance, or a...
Pick of the Day 3/3: The Old Deerfield Spring Sampler Craft Fair at the Big E
You know spring is coming when Old Deerfield says it is, and Old Deerfield has spoken. The Old Deerfield Spring Sampler Craft Fair is at the Big E this weekend. The fair features 150 juried artisans in all crafts media, including goodies for garden and Easter-themed...
Stagestruck: Happier Valley Comedy expanding on improv
A troupe of high-spirited performers bound onstage and solicit goofy suggestions for characters and situations from the audience. Then they improvise short, snappy scenes based on those prompts. The comedy flows from the incongruities and the improvisers’ quick wits....
Pick of the Day 2/24: Telluride Mountain Film Festival at Hampshire College
Hampshire College invites you to enjoy a few hours of action packed films from the Telluride Mountain Film Festival. Mountainfilm travels year round and worldwide with a selection of its best short films. This year, 13 films are screening at Franklin Patterson Hall...
Pick of the Day 2/25: Outside Mullingar at the Majestic Theater
As the mighty Shakespeare (or the Martian) might say, “here’s the rub”: Anthony and Rosemary are two clueless, lovelorn neighbors. Anthony’s father Tony and Rosemary’s mother Aoife are locked in a bitter land feud. Rosemary has been...
Pick of the Day 2/23: Flathead Rodeo Celebrates Johnny Cash’s Birthday
It’s Friday and who wouldn’t want to celebrate the legendary man in black: Johnny Cash. Flathead Rodeo plays an original blend of rockabilly and the music that influenced it. Flathead Radio is: Mistress Miriam on vocals, Theo Aronson on upright bass,...
Pick of the Day 2/22: Luvvie Ajayi at Mount Holyoke College
Social media expert, New York Times best-selling author, and pop-critic, Luvvie Ajayi takes the stage at Mount Holyoke College as it continues its celebration of Black History Month. If you’re in the mood for great intelligence, wit, and charm, this is the place to...
The Art of Laughter: A Conversation with Comedian Kim Deshields
Comedian Kim “Boney” DeShields is funny, except when she’s talking about making people laugh. “It’s an art,” she says matter of factly. “You have to be smart to make people laugh. You have to be well read and knowledgeable about a lot of things. But most of all,...
Pick of the Day 2/20: March of the Penguins at the Academy of Music
March of the Penguins Just because it’s school vacation doesn’t mean you have to sit at home and play games on your phone all day. Go see the feel good movie March of the Penguins at KidsBestFest at the Academy of Music. It’s a free film festival for...
Coming Soon: ‘Fields of Flowers’ at the Smith College Bulb Show
For those people who just can’t wait for Spring to come, there will be a sneak peek from March 3 to 18 at the Botanical Garden of Smith College, 16 College Lane, Northampton. Fields of Flowers: The Annual Spring Bulb Show will be open to all. Right now, the...
Pick of the Day 2/19: Hidden Figures at Amherst Cinema
Hidden Figures As Elon Musk’s Space X program soars, NASA’s illustrious history seems a little dull. One way to put back the shine is to see Hidden Figures, the three time Oscar nominated film starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae....
Pick of the Day 2/18: Liz Longley at Iron Horse
Liz Longley A subtle Sunday is in order. Go check out Berklee College of Music graduate and award-winning songwriter, Liz Longley. Longley performs at the Iron Horse Music Hall. Some think of Shawn Colvin or Paula Cole when they think of Langley, but recognize she...
Pick of the Day 2/17: Nicholas Ryder Quintet at the Bing
Nicholas Ryder Quintet at the Bing Arts Center It’s a good night to check in at the Bing Arts Center and warm up with some cool jazz. Nicholas Ryder Quintet will dig into some songbook standards and tunes by the legendary likes of “Long Tall Dexter”...
Pick of the Day 2/16: Robin Hood at New England Youth Theater
Robin Hood Sherwood Forest never gets old. Since the 15 century, Robin Hood (dressed in Lincoln green) and his lovable merry band have been roving the forest robbing the rich and giving to the poor in swashbuckling heroic style. Throughout film and theater, this...
Stagestruck: Marx and Sparks
If, like me, you thought the National Theatre’s production of One Man, Two Guv’nors, either on NT Live or Broadway, was the funniest, wittiest farce you’ve ever seen (with Noises Off a close second), chances are you’ll enjoy Young Marx. It’s on this weekend at Amherst...
Poste Nebuleux: Ben Banville’s Life in Art
Bernard “Ben” Banville’s life sounds as if it was an unfettered celebration of creativity. Born in Quebec, for many years Banville made his home in Greenfield. He was a musician, a photographer, and an artist who spent years on the Pioneer Valley artscape...
Things To Do: Love, Anime Style, at Tower Theaters
Valentines Day, February 14, catch Cardcaptor Sakura: The Sealed Card. Romance and intrigue, Japanese anime style. South Hadley’s Tower Theaters, 19 College Street, South Hadley. 9 p.m. $12.50 in advance; $14 at the door. towertheaters.com. — Gina...
Introducing the Valley Advocate Podcast – a chat with provocative artist Imo Imeh
Recently, the Advocate wrote about President Donald Trump’s derogatory comments about Africa, Haiti, and El Salvador during an immigration discussion – calling them shithole countries. Now we are pleased to continue the conversation and simultaneously...
Color and Heat: Pan American Prints at Smith College Museum of Art
The great mysteries of the southernmost countries of Pan America lie in the enormity of its territory, its rich history, and the shroud of chaos and human suffering. But Nobel-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz beautifully sums up the artistic heritage of these nations....
Stagestruck: Something Rotten! — a tasty musical dish
I grew up on Shakespeare and musicals, so what was I to make of Something Rotten!, the hit musical that mercilessly lampoons both? Love it for its origins or hate it for its irreverence? Having missed it on Broadway, where it earned a double handful of Tony...E-Edition
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