Community Calendar

Electric Earth Concerts once again proudly presents the Borromeo Quartet on Saturday, November 1 at 7 pm at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Peterborough, NH. This program will include works by Straavinsky, Benjamin Britten, and Dvořák.
Each visionary performance of the award-winning Borromeo String Quartet strengthens and deepens its reputation as one of the most important ensembles of our time. Admired and sought after for both its fresh interpretations of the classical music canon and its championing of works by 20th and 21st century composers, the ensemble has been hailed for its “edge-of-the- seat performances,” by the Boston Globe, which called it “simply the best.”

Admission is $30, payable online or at the door via cash or check. Students may attend for free.
electricearthconcerts.org.

Please join us for our performance of Handel's "Messiah"! The Adult and Youth Choirs of St. Michael's Cathedral will be joined by singers from around the Diocese of Springfield and professional musicians for this special event, which is not to be missed! Prelude music will begin at 7:15, and will include Baroque organ works and Handel's "Eternal Source of Light Divine." The performance is free of charge; goodwill offerings are welcome to support renovations of our nearly 100-year-old organ, as well as instruction of our youth choir members.

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the nation’s premier orchestra dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording new orchestral music, kickstarts its 29th season with BANG THE DRUM: a one-night only concert at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, Saturday, November 1, 2025, at 8:00 p.m. Celebrating the versatility of percussion instruments, BMOP and its Grammy Award-winning Conductor and Artistic Director Gil Rose present three virtuosic works by Jessie Montgomery, Richard Danielpour, and Gunther Schuller showcasing the vast and imaginative sonic possibilities of percussion.

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), the nation’s premier orchestra dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording new orchestral music, kickstarts its 29th season with BANG THE DRUM: a one-night only orchestral concert at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, Saturday, November 1, 2025, at 8:00 p.m. Celebrating the versatility of percussion instruments, BMOP and its Grammy Award-Winning Conductor and Artistic Director Gil Rose present three virtuosic works showcasing the vast and imaginative sonic possibilities of percussion.

Celebrate the harvest season with beautiful music at Grace Church! The concert will feature Mark Fraser, cello; Estela Olevsky, piano; Dick Damon, organ; Hanif Lawrence, tenor soloist; the Silverwood Quartet; the Cantabile vocal ensemble; and the Grace Church Choir directed by Hanif Lawrence. Suggested donation is $25 at the door, with proceeds benefiting the Grace Church Organ Fund.

“New Songs for an Old Poet” is a series of four concerts spanning July through December 2025. Organized by long-time Valley vocalist Peter W. Shea, who is also the principal performer, the series presents an enormous variety of songs, all of them musical settings of the great nineteenth-century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, whose verses have been set to music more than any other poet. All are works that Peter has in some way helped to bring into the world, either by suggestion, commission, or premiere, as part of his thirty-year project on Heine and the music his poetry continues to inspire.

“Seas, Birds and Trees,” to be presented on Heine’s 228th birthday, is an evocative potpourri of works by eleven composers, among them Massachusetts residents Clifton “Jerry” Noble, David Kidwell, John Craig Cooper and Gregory Hayes, as well as Vermonters Paul Dedell and Zeke Hecker.

The ocean was a major recurring theme in Heine’s poetry, particularly the shore and islands of the cold and stormy North Sea, where he spent several holidays in his twenties. The sea’s bleak beauty haunted Heine the rest of his life, inspiring him to write poems that combine rich descriptions of the natural scene with fanciful and ironic tales and poignant love-songs. Those sea poems in turn have inspired much of this concert’s music, which consists of seven solo songs with piano, a suite for piano four-hands, and five pieces for one or two voices and various combinations of instruments. Pianist Brenda Moore Miller will accompany Peter on the solo songs, and will collaborate with Clifton J. Noble on the piano four-hands suite. Noble will also accompany the pieces with additional musicians. Mezzo-soprano Justina Golden will join in two vocal duets, and five wind and string players, including hornist Jean Jeffries and flutist Nina Wurgaft, will each play in two songs.