Springfield Jazz and Roots
Thursday, July 20 – Saturday, July 22
The highlights below give you just a few examples of what’s happening at the 10th annual Springfield Jazz and Roots. Visit the festival website to learn more.
Opening Concert: Garifuna Collective
Outdoors at the Student Prince, Fort Street Thursday, July 20 at 7 p.m.
The hybrid culture of the African-Amerindian Garifuna communities, located on the Caribbean coasts of Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras, is influenced by West Africa and indigenous Carib, as well as the Arawak Indian language.
Shemekia Copeland Friday, July 21 at 8:30 p.m. at the Charles Neville Main Stage, Stearns Square
An award-winning blues, soul, and Americana singer, Shemekia Copeland is known for her instantly recognizable and deeply soulful voice. Born and raised in Harlem, she burst onto the blues and R&B scene with her Alligator Records debut album “Turn the Heat Up” at the age of 18.
Second Line Parade
Saturday, July 22 at 12:30 p.m. at the steps of City Hall
It’s a New Orleans tradition in honor of Charles Neville. The parade will be led by the Brown Rice Family and the Community Music School of Springfield's Sonido Musica students and faculty.
The Paradigm Shift Project
Saturday, July 22 at 8 p.m. at the Urban Roots Stage, Tower Square Park
Songwriter/bassist Melanie Athena has brought together a group of World class musicians to perform as one band for the first time exclusively for The Springfield Jazz and Roots Festival.
Delfayo Marsalis & the Uptown Jazz Orchestra
Sunday, July 23 at 8:30 p.m. at the Charles Neville Main Stage, Stearns Square
Featuring up to 18 accomplished musicians, the Uptown Jazz Orchestra sets the global standard for celebrating jazz in its authentic musical form, inspiring the next generation of jazz musicians and promoting a culture of diversity, inclusion and accessibility in the arts.
City of a Million Dreams Film Screenings
Reevx Labs, 270 Bridge St, Springfield
Friday, July 21 at 6 p.m.
Saturday, July 22 at 3:30 and 5 p.m.
Step into the captivating world of jazz funerals and second line parades of New Orleans with a thought-provoking film.
The Hidden Territories of the Bacchae
Double Edge Theatre 2023 Summer Spectacle
The Farm, Ashfield
July 19 – July 31 at 8 p.m.
August 2 – 6 at 7:30 p.m.
Since 2002, Double Edge Theatre presents an annual “Summer Spectacle” in Ashfield. They are site-specific and move throughout the grounds of the Farm Center, incorporating myth and folktale with daring circus arts. In recent years, they present each new work over two summers. Directed by Stacy Klein, The Hidden Territories of the Bacchae is a re-imagined version of Double Edge Theatre’s 40th Anniversary Summer Spectacle which was presented last year. It’s a response to Euripides’ Bacchae in which women’s rites are no longer in hidden territories and women are freely able to express their deeply held desires.
Humane Ecology: Eight Positions
The Clark, Williamstown
Exhibit open through Sunday, Oct. 29
This new exhibit features artists who explore the inseparability of the natural and social. Each represents a distinct approach and place, or position, but all think in ecological terms — about the complex relationships between living things and their environments. In doing so, they challenge ideas of “nature” as something separate from humans.
Willi Carlisle with Jobi Riccio
Bombyx, Florence
Thursday, July 20 at 7 p.m.
Born and raised on the Midwestern plains, Willi Carlisle is a poet and a folk singer for the people. With guitar, fiddle, button-box, banjo, harmonicas, rhythm-bones, and Willi's booming baritone, this is populist folk music in the tradition of cowboys, frontier fiddlers, and tall-tale tellers. With a quick wit and big sing-alongs, these folksongs bring us a step closer to breaking down our divides. Berklee grad Jobi Riccio melds classic songwriting craftsmanship with modern indie-leaning production.
Cécile McLorin Salvant
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington
Thursday, July 20 at 8 p.m.
Jean McDonough Arts Center, Worcester
Friday, July 21 at 8 p.m.
Cécile McLorin Salvant is a composer, singer, and visual artist. The late Jessye Norman described Salvant as “a unique voice supported by an intelligence and full-fledged musicality, which lights up every note she sings.” She’s an eclectic curator, unearthing rarely recorded, forgotten songs with strong narratives, interesting power dynamics, unexpected twists, and humor. She has received three consecutive Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for “The Window”, “Dreams and Daggers”, and “For One to Love.”
Xian Zhang conducts Copland and Dvořák featuring Nimbus Dance
Tanglewood, Lenox
Friday, July 21 at 8 p.m.
Xian Zhang is currently in her seventh season as Music Director of the New Jersey Symphony. She also is Principal Guest Conductor of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and Conductor Emeritus of Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano following a hugely successful period from 2009–2016 as their Music Director. The program is Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Dvořák’s New World Symphony.
Mystic Bowie’s Talking Dreads
Gateway City Arts, Holyoke
Friday, July 21 at 8 p.m.
Since debuting his Talking Dreads project live at the High Times Music Festival on the beach in Negril in late 2015, Mystic Bowie has electrified audiences at more than 100 shows across North America — spinning the heads of initially skeptical Talking Heads fans, and getting everyone else grooving along to the infectious, joyous rhythms and jubilant spirit of his native island.
Paris, ACTORS!
Williamstown Theatre Festival
Saturday, July 22 and Sunday, July 23
For seven decades, the Williamstown Theatre Festival has brought emerging and professional theater artists together in the Berkshires to create a summer festival of diverse, world premiere plays and musicals, bold new revivals, and accompanying cultural events. Paris, ACTORS! takes place in Occupied Paris. Real life celebrity Nazi Werner Krauss is between projects. But the Party, desperate for a propaganda extravaganza in the City of Lights, has arranged a remount of his notorious Merchant of Venice produced by a French theater teeming with family secrets.
Dustbowl Revival
Shea Theater, Turners Falls
Saturday, July 22 at 8 p.m.
Dustbowl Revival is known for pushing the boundaries of what American roots music can be. After throwing five of their own virtual Sway-At-Home festivals during the shut-down (featuring nearly forty artists), the always-evolving group of string and brass players is excited to welcome a new wave of talent to the band.
August Wilson’s Fences
Shakespeare & Company, Lenox
Saturday, July 22 – Sunday, Aug. 27
A moving study of emotional depth and the human condition, August Wilson’s Fences follows the story of Troy Maxson — a working-class Black man struggling to provide for his family. His past includes the low of a prison sentence and the high of a promising career with the Negro Baseball League. His unrealized dream to play for Major League Baseball fills his days with resentment and regret. Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play in 1987, it is set in the 1950s and is part of the playwright’s acclaimed American Century Cycle.
The MOSSO Horn Trio at the Sevenars Music Festival
Sevenars Concert Hall, South Worthington, MA
Sunday, July 23 at 4 p.m.
The MOSSO Horn Trio (Beth Welty, violin; Sarah Sutherland, horn; and Elizabeth Skavish, piano) will perform the world premiere of “Triptych” for Piano, Violin and Horn, a commissioned work by Max Mueller. The program that also includes: Frédéric Duvernoy's Trio No. 1 for Violin, Horn, and Piano; Trygve Madsen's Trio, Op. 110 for Violin, Horn, and Piano; and Johannes Brahms' Trio in Eb Major for Violin, Horn, and Piano.
Sam Amidon
Antenna Cloud Farm, Gill
Sunday, July 23 at 7 p.m.
Antenna Cloud Farm welcomes back Vermont-native Sam Amidon, a world-renowned contemporary folk artist who specializes in guitar, fiddle, and banjo. Sam has released a string of acclaimed albums and collaborates with such artists as classical composer Nico Muhly, experimental composer and producer Ben Frost, composer and violinist Eyvind Kang, composer Aaron Siegel, Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman), guitar legend Bill Frisell, and others.
Walkin’ with WordXWord
The Mount, Lenox
Sunday’s July 23 – Aug. 6 starting at 5 p.m.
Wear your walking shoes and follow along as poets offer an exploration of The Mount’s grounds and selected works in the SculptureNow exhibition. Using a sculpture, or multiple sculptures, and/or the natural or built environment as prompts, poets are challenged to offer new ways of “seeing” what is before us. Each of the three dates will offer a unique combination of poets and poems. This is free and open to the public.
Oona Doherty
Jacob’s Pillow, Becket
Wednesday, July 26 – Sunday, July 30
Note that this is NEXT week. We're including it now because tickets for Jacob’s Pillow can be hard to come by. A rapidly rising star in contemporary dance, Oona Doherty will be making her Jacob’s Pillow debut this summer as the first headlining artist from Northern Ireland to perform at the festival. Doherty will bring Pillow audiences the U.S. premiere of Navy Blue, her largest work yet, driven by a thrilling in-your-face mash-up of ensemble dance, spoken word poetry, political candor, and eclectic music.