Community Calendar

Brahms Requiem: A Benefit Concert & Community Sing for Food Insecurity, presented in partnership with the Music for Food project.

This concert benefits the Amherst Survival Center — instead of tickets, audience members are asked to bring non-perishable food donations. The event also features a "community sing" component, inviting audience members to join in singing two movements of the Requiem. The concert features an all-volunteer orchestra, choir, and soloists made up of area professionals, teachers, and amateur musicians donating their time to support the local community. Conducted by Noah Horn & Arianne Abela, featuring soloists Junko Watanabe & Liam Shannon.

The Grammy®-nominated British vocal ensemble presents Lead Me Home, a program that journeys through the rich and varied landscape of American choral music, tracing a path through faith, folk tradition, poetry, and popular song. The program moves from the timeless devotion of Virgil Thomson’s “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need” and the spiritual “My Lord What a Morning” to the visionary sound-worlds of Caroline Shaw, Morten Lauridsen and Eric Whitacre. Alongside these sacred and contemplative works sit songs of beauty, longing, and place: Samuel Barber’s shimmering “To Be Sung on the Water,” and the timeless folk melody “Shenandoah.” The program closes with affectionate musical portraits of two iconic cities in “April in Paris” and “I Get a Kick Out of New York.”

Formed by members of Amsterdam’s famed Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (RCO), Camerata RCO performs chamber music in multiple formations from duet to small chamber orchestra, with a special focus on the Classical and Romantic repertoire for winds and strings, and active relationships with living composers. Praised by the New
YorkTimes for their “warm, glowing performance,” the ensemble has enjoyed success in the Netherlands and abroad and performs nearly 50 concerts a season internationally.

Canadian pianist Sarah Hagen’s extensive touring has taken her across Canada, to Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany and Italy, and twice to New York City’s Carnegie Hall. With “Perk up, pianist!” Sarah Hagen has transformed her award-winning role as “concert pianist” into a stand-up, or rather, sit-down comedy. Pairing anecdotes from the road with some of her favorite pieces by Chopin, Debussy, and Liszt, Sarah takes audiences deep inside the world of a classical musician as she shares her earnest efforts to keep her spirits up amid troublesome times. Part storytelling and part recital, “Perk up, pianist!” has been described as “one of the best hours I’ve ever spent at the Fringe” [The Coast, Halifax].