Levyosn Album Release with Burikes
Jewish Community of Amherst
Wednesday, June 7 at 7 p.m.
Founded in 2021, Levyosn is a new Boston-based trio specializing in Yiddish song and klezmer. Their repertoire includes both traditional music and original songs in Yiddish, Hebrew, Ladino, and English, and draws from adjacent Eastern European folk traditions. They bring rich vocal harmonies and driving dance rhythms to classic Yiddish songs, little-known gems, and original songs alike.
Leo Kottke
Bombyx, Florence
Thursday, June 8 at 7 p.m.
Leo Kottke is best known for his 12-string slide instrumentals and five-finger picking technique. When his career blossomed with the folk revival of the 1960s and 1970s, he earned the early title of “virtuoso.” Rolling Stone described him as “so good that he didn't need a band.” Folk great Pete Seeger, who (along with John Fahey) was one of Kottke's first influences, called the young guitar player "the best twelve-string guitarist [he has] ever heard.”
Shemekia Copeland
Shea Theater, Turners Falls
Thursday, June 8 at 8 p.m.
Award-winning blues, soul and Americana singer Shemekia Copeland possesses one of the most instantly recognizable and deeply soulful roots music voices of our time. She is beloved worldwide for the fearlessness, honesty and humor of her revelatory music, as well as for delivering each song she performs with unmatched passion. She was winner of the 2021 Blues Music Award for B.B. King Entertainer of The Year.
Pioneer Valley Symphony: Music at the Vineyard
Black Birch Vineyard, North Hatfield
Friday, June 9 at 6 p.m.
The Pioneer Valley Symphony presents a free outdoor chamber music concert in the beautiful vineyards at Black Birch featuring musicians of the Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Chamber groups will include a strings quartet, a clarinet quintet, woodwind trios, and a chamber choir. Delights from Thai Chili Food Truck and Black Birch wines will be available for purchase.
House of Colors: Queer Youth Prom
El Mercado, Holyoke
Friday, June 9 from 6 – 9 p.m.
Queer Prom is an annual event for LGBTQ+ youth ages 13-20 in Hamden County, where highschoolers can express themselves, make friends, and have fun. This chaperoned event will have food, music, drag performers, gift bags filled with goodies and resources, and more. Registration is required.
Greenfield Players: Twelfth Night
Energy Park, Greenfield
Opens Friday June 9 at 6 p.m.
It’s Shakespeare in the Park. I’m talking about Greenfield’s Energy Park. Greenfield Players, a local amateur theater group in Western Mass, is affiliated with the Greenfield Recreation Department. This weekend and next, they are presenting free performances of Shakespeare’s beloved and romantic comedy, Twelfth Night. And they’ll be on The Fabulous 413 on Thursday to tell us more about the troupe and the production.
West x Northwest New England Festival
Concerts in Ashfield, Goshen and Greenfield
Friday, June 9 – Sunday, June 11
Conway Fine Arts is presenting the WxNWNE Festival this weekend. It’s a fascinating, complex and well-thought-out weekend of chamber music performances, readings, and talk-backs. There’s a dance and movement session for children, a kids-friendly concert, and wine and cheese paring for adults. Each night will feature a different program of music and narrative, but they’re all interconnected.
Rina Sawayama Hold The Girl Tour: Reloaded with Isabel LaRosa
MASS MoCA
Friday, June 9 at 8 p.m.
The Japanese-British pop savant Rina Sawayama has exploded into our collective consciousness with a sound, look, and spectacular live show that leaves audiences swooning. Starring opposite Keanu Reeves in the new John Wick 4 and with high-profile festival appearances coming up at Bonnaroo, Governors Ball, Lollapalooza Berlin, and more, she seems to be everywhere—including kicking off her summer tour on our Courtyard D stage with singer-songwriter Isabel LaRosa!
Eavesdrop with Cloudbelly
Gateway City Arts, Holyoke
Friday, June 9 at 8 p.m.
Originating as an acoustic trio, Kara Wolf, Laura Buchanan and Kerrie Wert maintain their vocal roots and continue to shape their sound through collaborative songwriting. With over seven years of writing, performing and touring together, these Western Massachusetts natives have honed a special sound that brings the listener in and surrounds them with a powerful combination of intricate harmonies, contagious melodies and moving rhythm. With their latest LP, the have incorporated some of the valley’s finest musicians. Cloudbelly is the moniker of singer-songwriter Corey Laitman, whose poetic lyricism, stirring vocals and disarming stage presence have earned them a strong and growing following in the region.
Franklin County Pride Parade and Rally
Saturday, June 10 from 12 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Franklin County Pride envisions a community in which all LGBTQIA+ youth, adults, and families can enjoy the freedom to live safely, openly, and genuinely, free from discrimination due to race, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation. At this year’s Pride parade, over 50 groups will march through downtown Greenfield, starting at the intersection of Federal Street and Sanderson Street and finishing at Energy Park, the site for musical performances, speeches, food trucks, and over 25 vendors.
Cultural Chaos
Easthampton
Saturday, June 10 from 12 – 5 p.m.
Now in its 10th year, Cultural Chaos is Easthampton’s annual street festival, highlighting and celebrating the local artists, performers, and businesses that make the city unique! There’s something for everyone at Cultural Chaos — puppets, stilt-walkers, circus acts, dancers, musicians, and performance artists, plus a variety of restaurants, artists, makers, and poets. Creative hearts from every discipline line the street and open their businesses’ doors to share their unique wares and imaginations with the 10,000+ attendees who come from far and wide each year.
June Millington (of Fanny) & Friends
The Drake
Saturday, June 10 at 8 p.m.
If you have not yet watched “Fanny: The Right to Rock” which was recently on NEPM TV, you should. It’s about the rise of the groundbreaking all-women band, Fanny. One of the founding members, June Millington, lives in Goshen where she directs the Institute for the Musical Arts which mentors women, especially women of color, in their pursuit of careers in the field of music. This event/concert at the Drake is a benefit for June’s sister (and Fanny cofounder) Jean. If you have not yet heard June’s interview on The Fabulous 413, you should.
Tony Sarg: Genius at Play
Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge
Opens Saturday, June 10
Here’s the first comprehensive exhibition exploring the life, art, and adventures of Tony Sarg, the charismatic illustrator, animator, puppeteer, designer, entrepreneur, and showman who is celebrated as the father of modern puppetry in North America. His vast knowledge of puppet technology was instrumental in his design of the inaugural Thanksgiving Day parade balloon for Macy’s Department Store in 1927.
Sí Se Puede (Yes We Can)
Presented by MIFA Victory Theatre and NEPM
Pratt Hall, Mount Holyoke College
Saturday, June 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Following up on the groundbreaking “El Puerto Rico” project, which commissioned, performed and recorded new classical chamber music by Puerto Rican composers, Music Director Tianhui Ng and the MIFA Victory Players will explore Mexico during its 2023 residency. Sí Se Puede (Yes We Can) will feature premieres of compositions by composers J. Andrés Ballesteros, Cody Criswell-Badillo, Marina López, Felipe Pérez Santiago, Jorge Sosa, and Leaha Maria Villarreal. Rehearsals start on May 29, in-school student workshops in Holyoke, Chicopee, and Springfield Schools will follow, and the premiere concert will be held at Pratt on June 10. NEPM Culture to Do subscribers receive 20% off ticket purchases with promo code NEPMLOVE.
Pamela Knowles
Old Town Hall, West Stockbridge
Saturday, June 10 at 7:30 p.m.
The West Stockbridge Historical Society Jazz Series continues its 2023 season with vocalist Pamela Knowles. The power of Pamela’s singing to move an audience owes a lot to the acting experience which shaped her career. She has performed around the world including in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Australia Now based in the Berkshires, Pamela regularly performs and teaches voice.
Buddy Guy – Damn Right Farewell
The Pines Theater at Look Park, Northampton
Tuesday, June 13 at 7 p.m.
At age 86, Buddy Guy is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a major influence on rock titans like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago’s fabled West Side sound, and a living link to the city’s halcyon days of electric blues. Buddy Guy has received 8 Grammy awards, a 2015 Lifetime Achievement Grammy award, 38 Blues Music Awards (the most any artist has received), the Billboard Magazine Century Award for distinguished artistic achievement, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. We get to see him live at Look Park. And if he’s calling the tour, “Damn Right Farewell,” we’d better not put it off.
Wednesday Folk Traditions: Evelyn Harris with Giving Voice
Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum, Hadley
Wednesday, June 14 at 6:30 p.m.
Evelyn Harris, the Grammy-nominated composer and vocalist and former member of Sweet Honey In The Rock, is joined by Ellen Cogen and Mary Witt for Wednesday Folk Traditions’ 11th Horace Clarence Boyer Memorial Gospel Concert. As a trio, Evelyn Harris and Giving Voice perform uplifting interpretations of the traditional African-American song cannon including spirituals, freedom songs, jazz, pop, rock 'n' roll, gospel and blues.