Community Calendar

On Saturday, August 2 at 7:00 pm at the First Church in Jaffrey, Electric Earth Concerts will present “Ladies on the Move!” Our 2020 celebration of the vote for women fell victim to the pandemic, so for the 105th anniversary we offer music by New Hampshire’s own Amy Beach, Katie Semro, Elise Grant, and celebrated Chinese American Chen Yi.

Featuring David McCarroll and Shanshan Yao,violin; Angela Park, cello; Emely Phelps, piano; Laura Gilbert, flute; and Jonathan Bagg, viola.
Admission is $30, payable online or at the door via cash or check. Students may attend for free. www.electricearthconcerts.org

This program traces the evolution of the string quartet, from classical elegance to modern complexity. It opens with Haydn’s Quartet in D Major, a lively and inventive work by the “father” of the string quartet, whose wit and mastery of form define the genre. Next is Mendelssohn’s Quartet in D Major, blending lyrical beauty with energetic drive and showcasing the composer’s Romantic expressiveness. Webern’s Langsamer Satz offers lush, expressive lines from the Austrian composer, known for his atonal works but here showcasing his lyrical side. The program concludes with Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 9 in E-flat Major, a poignant, emotionally charged work that deepens the string quartet form with the composer’s signature depth and complexity.

Learn more and buy tickets now at spac.org

On Thursday, August 14 at 7 pm at the First Church in Jaffrey, Electric Earth Concerts presents the second of two collaborative concerts with Maine’s Sebago-Long Lake Festival with a program including: Max Reger: Serenade for Flute, Violin and Viola in G Major, Op. 141a, Maurice Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Cello, and Johannes Brahms: Piano Quartet in A Major, Op. 26.
Featuring Laura Gilbert, flute; Emilie-Anne Gendron, violin; Todd Phillips, violin; Matthew Sinno, viola; Mihai Marica, cello; Mihae Lee, piano.

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

This program explores emotional depth and contrasts in chamber music, balancing drama with lyrical beauty. It opens with Kodály’s Serenade for Two Violins and Viola, a delicate work that showcases the warmth of string trio textures by the Hungarian composer known for blending folk influences with classical traditions. Next is Shostakovich’s Trio No. 2 in E minor for Piano, Violin, and Cello, a powerful piece that moves from somber to fiercely energetic. Shostakovich’s Two Pieces for String Quartet blend haunting lyricism with gripping rhythms, characteristic of his emotionally charged style. The program concludes with Dohnányi’s Quintet No. 1 in C minor for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello, a dramatic work by the Hungarian composer, whose passionate intensity and lyrical moments reflect both late-Romanticism and early 20th-century innovation.

Learn more and buy tickets now at spac.org

This free presentation from The Hampshire Music Club will compare classical violin playing and fiddling. The presenters will be violinists and fiddlers Sarah Briggs and Kira Jewett. The Club will also reveal details of their Musical Potpourri series that will take place at the Northampton Senior Center in October.

We welcome back this charming singer after his beguiling Ravel performance at the Tannery in 2023. The baritone offers a special hour-long program highlighting popular and cabaret songs of the early 20th century.

Songs of WWI: From Tin Pan Alley to Cabaret

We close the summer with a special matinee performance highlighting Dvořák’s Bohemian masterwork that has delighted audiences for over a century. The concert features a special collaboration of the Terras and Ozel, who have separately received rousing ovations at the Tannery.

Haydn: D-major Quartet, Op. 71, No. 2
Bartók: Third Quartet
Dvořák: A-major Piano Quintet, Op. 81

“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 Shea 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.

“The Parting Summer” showcases the music of composer and pianist Kaeza Fearn, a former resident of the Pioneer Valley who now lives on Cape Cod. The major work is her song cycle “Der scheidende Sommer” (The Parting Summer) for voice and piano, based on a group of sixteen poems about a love affair with a woman named Kitty. In 1834 Heine sent a dozen of them to a composer friend, who unfortunately thought they were merely a joke. This inspired Shea to commission Fearn to write a complete, modern musical setting of Kitty’s story in 2006. The resulting song cycle was premiered by Shea and Monica Jakuc Leverett in 2009 on Fearn’s graduate composition recital at The Hartt School in West Hartford, CT. This will be its fifth performance. The other works on the concert include two stand-alone songs, the toy piano suite “A Day in the Life of a Toy Piano,” commissioned by Jakuc Leverett in 2015, and two short piano pieces performed by the composer.

“New Songs for an Old Poet” is a series of four concerts that will span the remainder of 2025. Organized by long-time Valley vocalist Peter W. Shea, who is also the principal performer, the series presents a very wide 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 he continues to inspire. All but one of the sixty-plus songs have been composed since the turn of this century, with two-thirds of the composers being from New England.

This concert, “Heinrich Heine, Far and Near,” features sixteen songs by thirteen composers who hail from as far away as Germany and as close at hand as the Pioneer Valley. The songs range in style from cabaret to classical, in mood from witty to tragic, and in tonality from Baroque to twelve-tone. Nearly all display some aspect of Heine’s characteristic irony, and several will be sung in English translation. Peter will be joined by mezzo-soprano and guitarist Justina Golden, pianist and guitarist Clifton J. Noble, Jr., and soprano Junko Watanabe.