© 2025 New England Public Media

FCC public inspection files:
WGBYWFCRWNNZWNNUWNNZ-FMWNNI

For assistance accessing our public files, please contact hello@nepm.org or call 413-781-2801.
PBS, NPR and local perspective for western Mass.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Culture to Do: Feb. 5, 2025

CISA presents "Field Notes: An Afternoon of Storytelling" at Academy of Music in Northampton, Saturday, Feb. 8 at 4 p.m.

Holyoke High School Theater Company: Lord of the Flies
Holyoke High School North, 500 Beech Street
Wednesday, Feb. 5 – Saturday, Feb. 8
“Lord of the Flies,” adapted for the stage by Nigel Williams, brings William Golding's 1954 novel to life. Stranded on a deserted island, a group of British boys spiral into chaos, battling for power and survival. In the HHS production, a minimalistic, student-built set and custom lighting will amplify the feelings of isolation and tension that the characters in the play are experiencing.

APE: If These Feet Could Fly
33 Hawley, Northampton
Thursday, Feb. 6 – Sunday March 2
Opening Reception Friday, Feb. 14 from 5–8 p.m.
Natasha Wein is a self-taught physically disabled abstract painter, poet, and small business owner. She started painting with her feet when a neck injury left her temporarily unable to use her hands. By creating in a way that is safer for her body, Natasha abstracts the pain and grief of living with serious chronic health conditions and discovers new story lines free from the constraints of injury and illness.

Endea Owens And The Cookout
Bowker Auditorium, UMass
Friday, Feb. 7 at 8 p.m.
Though she’s still young in jazz years, Endea Owens is moving quickly toward stardom as a composer and bandleader. Owens is a daughter of Detroit and an alum of The Julliard School. She’s most recognizable for her tenure as bassist for the Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s house band. Her work is soulful and energetic, evocative of cool jazz here, inviting listeners to get up and move their feet there, and joyful everywhere.

Winter Exquisite: Zine & Diorama Fair
Forbes Library, Northampton
Saturday, Feb. 8 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Forbes Library’s resident Zine Club is hosting this event which will feature an immersive winter-scape. Dress warmly as you browse the wares of local book-artist and book-art adjacent creators. Peer into an exhibit of winter-inspired dioramas, microcosms into which the entire season has been painstakingly depicted. From noon until 3 p.m., you will hear the musings of locally-sourced electronic music composers as they evoke the essence of the barren season. Take home a frost-flower anthology of winter musings entitled, Winter Exquisite.

Full Snow Moon Gathering & Eastern Woodlands Social Dance
Greenfield Community College Dining Commons
Saturday, Feb. 8 from 1 – 4 p.m.
Here’s a rare opportunity to enjoy a traditional Eastern Woodlands social dance led by the Wampanoag Nation Singers and Dancers — a group of musicians, educators, and artisans from the tribal communities of Mashpee on Cape Cod, Aquinnah on Marthas Vineyard, and Herring Pond in Bourne. They encourage audience participation and prefer to dance with instead of for the people. They will teach you some single-file call-and-response dances which will be accompanied by a water drum and handcrafted rattles. Bring your own rattle to shake out the end-of-winter cabin fever!

Berkshire Bach
Renée Anne Louprette: The Best of Bach—The Great Organ Works
Unitarian Universalist Meeting of South Berkshire, Housatonic
Saturday, Feb. 8 at 2 p.m.
I’m not sure that there is such a thing as “the best of Bach” but this program presents some superb examples of what Bach wrote for organ. Renée Anne Louprette is a Fulbright Scholar who spent the Fall 2022 season in Transylvania, surveying the preservation of historic Romanian pipe organs. She is Assistant Professor of Music and College Organist at Bard College. She will play on the UU’s fine historic 1893 William Johnson & Son organ.

CISA Field Notes: An Afternoon of Storytelling
Academy of Music, Northampton
Saturday, Feb. 8 at 4 p.m.
Sit with farmers and friends in the glow of community on a winter’s eve. At CISA’s sixth Field Notes live storytelling event, local people will share their true stories about following dreams, sustaining livelihoods, and connecting with others through food. Ranging from humorous to heartwarming, the stories will show how local food and farming touch our lives and enhance our communities.

Introvert/Extrovert: A Two-Piano Recital
The Clark, Williamstown
Saturday, Feb. 8 at 6 p.m.
Composer-pianist Matthew Aucoin and pianist Conor Hanick team up for an inventive two-piano recital, featuring a new work composed by Aucoin for Hanick. In addition to Aucoin's new piece, which is inspired by the luminous recent poetry of Ben Lerner, Hanick and Aucoin play a program divided into "introverted" and "extroverted" halves: in the former category, a mysterious and meditative work by Morton Feldman, and in the latter category, a selection of jubilant and thrilling music for one and two pianos by Gabriella Smith, Julius Eastman, and John Adams.

The Wedding Jester, with John Feffer
Yiddish Book Center, Amherst
Sunday, Feb. 9 at 2 p.m.
We all know the story of Fiddler on the Roof, but what about the behind-the-scenes story of the making of the film? John Feffer’s one-man show is a fictional account inspired by the real-life making of the Fiddler on the Roof film. It centers on how a Jewish comedian confronts a non-Jewish director over errors in the film’s script. Along the way, the show traces the history of Jewish comedy from the weddings of the old country to the Borscht Belt of the United States.

Silver Chord Bowl 2025
John M. Greene Hall, Smith College
Sunday, Feb. 9 at 2 p.m.
In its 41st year, the Silver Chord Bowl is the oldest and most respected collegiate a cappella showcase in the region. This year’s event will begin with a performance by Northampton High School’s very own Northamptones, followed by Smith College’s Smithereens, the Berklee College of Music Upper Structure A Cappella, Rochester Institute of Technology’s Eight Beat Measure, UMass Amherst’s Duly Noted, The University of Connecticut’s Extreme Measures, and Northeastern University’s Treble on Huntington.

Valley Classical Concerts: Lydian Trio with Jiayan Sun, piano
Sweeney Concert Hall, Smith College
Sunday, Feb. 9 at 3 p.m.
From its beginning in 1980, the Lydian String Quartet has embraced the full range of the string quartet repertory with curiosity and virtuosity. Residing at Brandeis University since the group’s founding, “The Lyds” offer compelling, insightful, and dramatic performances of the quartet literature. They will perform Haydn’s String Quartet no. 3 in C Major and Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor. Pianist Jiayan Sun will join them for César Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor.

Wassail 2025
TOURISTS, North Adams
Sunday, Feb. 9 at 3 p.m.
TOURISTS is a hotel and riverside retreat inspired by the classic American roadside motor lodge, set on the banks of the Hoosic River in North Adams. They’re having their third annual Wassail celebration, hosted with Berkshire Cider Project, to brighten up the dark days of winter. Make a wassail crown, enjoy a hard cider bar, special food menu, music and vaguely pagan rituals. Brighten up the dark days of winter and help bless the 2025 apple harvest!

Quartetto Mosso: The All American Program
52 Sumner, Springfield
Sunday, Feb. 9 at 3 p.m.
Quartetto Mosso, featuring violinists Ronald Gorevic and Beth Welty, violist Delores Thayer, and cellist Yoonhee Ko, is the Springfield Chamber Players’ education and outreach quartet, which had its premiere last year in the Berkshires, before performances in Springfield and Longmeadow. “The All American Program,” includes two works by African-American composers, William Grant Still and Florence Price; Lullaby by Broadway’s George Gershwin; Antonin Dvořák’s “American” Quartet; and Henry Mancini’s film music for Charade.

Evie Shockley: Reading followed by conversation with Yona Harvey
Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall, Smith College
Tuesday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m.
Poet Evie Shockley’s suddenly we (Wesleyan University Press, 2023) is a collection confronting recent years' watershed moments — from Black Lives Matter protests to the pandemic — while investigating how we might forge what she terms "new solidarities.” A National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize nominee, Shockley will be joined in conversation by Yona Harvey following the reading, and there will be a book signing.

Yasmin Williams + Diana Demuth
Iron Horse, Northampton
Tuesday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m.
Yasmin Williams is an innovative artist known for her unique compositional approach and expansive instrumental style. Her music, while rooted in folk traditions, transcends conventional structures to incorporate elements of progressive rock and experimental composition. Beyond traditional fingerpicked guitar, she plays multiple instruments including kora, harp guitar, banjo, and electric guitar. A proud LGBTQ daughter of the Massachusetts coast Diana DeMuth, has burst onto the singer-songwriter scene with a breathtaking voice and arresting perspective about life, love and self-discovery.