Compiled by Arts Fuse Editor

Our expert critics supply a guide to film, visual art, theater, author readings, and music. More offerings will be added as they come in.

Film

The Flying Ace (1926)
February 2 at 2 p.m.
Somerville Theater, Davis Square

Richard Norman, a white man, was committed to portraying the strength and nobility of Black America. He also recognized that race films were good business. This silent film melodrama has an all-Black cast and concerns fighter pilot Captain Billy Stokes, who returns home victorious after World War I to resume his civilian career as a railroad detective — without removing his Army Air Service uniform, a constant reminder of his patriotism and valor. In truth, African-Americans were not allowed to serve as pilots in the United States Armed Forces until 1940. The Flying Ace was inspired by Bessie Coleman, America’s first Black female licensed pilot, who unfortunately died in an April 1926 plane crash while practicing for an air show. Musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis

Barry Lyndon
February 3 at 7 p.m.
Coolidge Corner Theater, Brookline

This Big Screen Classics presentation of Stanley Kubrick’s masterful retelling of William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1844 “satirical picaresque about the fortune-hunting of an Irish rogue” is considered by a number of critics to be one of the greatest films ever made. It offers ample evidence of the director’s obsession with period detail; the visual compositions are based on the landscapes of Watteau and Gainsborough, indoor scenes modeled on the satirical paintings of William Hogarth. The plot’s gathering of rogues centers around Lyndon (Ryan O’Neal), a man “to whom things happen”. The film received seven Academy Award nominations.

Armand
February 4 at 7 p.m.
Coolidge Corner Theater, Brookline

Armand was winner of the 2024 Cannes Best First Feature award and is Norway’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars. It was directed by the grandson of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann. It centers on the parents of two kindergartners and their fraught interactions with school authorities after 6-year-old Armand is accused of sexual abuse.

Renate Reinsve, who was riveting in the film The Worst Person in the World, stars as a defamed actress who is abruptly called into a parent-teacher meeting where she hears scathing allegations made against her son. That charge triggers an explosion of accusations between parents and faculty. A chaotic fight for redemption arises where desire, madness, and obsession prevail. There will be a post-film Q&A with writer-director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel.

Dread of Winter Series
February 5 – 12
Brattle Theater, Cambridge

Accompanied by a new restoration of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages Of Fear, this excellent series includes several double features. The theater describes the lineup as films that are “cinema’s most affecting experiments in sustained dread . . . films that walk on the same shaky ground.” Films are linked to descriptions and times.

The Wages of Fear
Jan 31 – February 3

The Ice Storm
February 5

Cure & Memories Of Murder (Double Feature)
February 6

Outrage & Repulsion (Double Feature)
February 7

The Vanishing (1988)  & Insomnia (2002) (Double Feature)
February 8

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
February 9

Enemy & The Double (Double Feature)
February 10

The Killing of a Sacred Deer
February 11

High Life & Under the Skin (Double Feature)
February 12

Look Into My Eyes
February 7 at 6:30 p.m
Bright Family Screening Room 559 Washington St. Boston

A group of New York City psychics conduct deeply intimate readings for their clients, revealing lives filled with loneliness, connection, and healing. This touching and engaging documentary from 2024 sits on the border of psychology and the supernatural: a worthy companion to the recent exhibit Conjuring the Spirit World: Art, Magic, and Mediums at the Peabody-Essex Museum. A moderated panel featuring a psychic, a poet, and a psychologist follows the screening.

From Hilde, With Love (In Liebe, Eure Hilde)
February 9 at 11 a.m.
Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline

The latest film from award-winning director Andreas Dresen: “Berlin, 1942: it was the most beautiful summer for Hilde Coppi — madly in love with Hans and joyfully pregnant. But amid the passion there is grave danger. Hans becomes involved in the anti-Nazi resistance, with a group of young people who will later be called the “Red Orchestra.

Despite the huge risks, Hilde decides to get involved herself, but is arrested by the Gestapo and gives birth to her son in prison. Now, in a desperate situation, Hilde develops a quiet inspirational strength, but she only has a few months left with her son.”

Girl Talk
February 12 at 6:30 p.m.
West Newton Cinema

The late Lucia Small’s (My Father the Genius) final film was set in the cutthroat, male-dominated world of high school debate. It’s a compelling and timely story: five girls on a top-ranked Newton South Debate Team of Massachusetts strive to become the best debaters in the United States. The documentary was the Audience Award winner at the 2022 IFFB film festival.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
February 15 at 6 p.m.
Harvard Film Archives, Cambridge

In 2022, for the first time in 70 years, a woman director took the top spot in Sight and Sound’s “Greatest Films of All Time” critics’ poll. The winner: Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman. Just as remarkable is the experimental nature of her film. “The plot conflates temporal structures as Jeanne’s (repeated) activities are depicted serially across a three-day grid, performing her role as housewife and mother to her teenage son Sylvain, and as prostitute for three loyal clients each with his own allocated day. Order and cleanliness fill her daily existence and her outward appearance has an unassuming elegance that belies any connotation of prostitution. But the absolute perfection of her clothes, make-up and hair paradoxically suggests something hidden, something to be concealed.”(British Film Institute)

Pick of the Week

The Count of Monte Cristo (2024), screening on Amazon Prime

That the extraordinary “Emilia Pérez” was the French entry to the 97th Academy Awards should not diminish achievement of The Count of Monte Cristo, which was next in line. It is the front-runner for this year’s French César Awards with 14 nominations, including Best Film and Best Directing. The latest French adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ serialized novel of fate, romance, and revenge spares no expense when it comes to authenticity and set design. An unstarry but colorful and capable cast keep the three-hour adaptation continuously engaging. Written and directed by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, this is a lavish old fashioned type epic and a fine way to escape for a few hours.

— Tim Jackson

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Visual Arts

A characteristic work of medieval Islamic culture is the encyclopedic compendium: an expansive, written account of everything that is known in heaven and on earth, from its creatures and geography to its varied nations and their histories and their endlessly surprising inhabitants, to the planets in their orbits, and the stars. The title of one of these books, The Wonders of Creation and Rarities of Existence, written in Arabic and Persian by the 13th-century scholar, Zakariyya al-Qazwini, suggests the tone of these narratives: delighted astonishment at the endless surprises of the cosmos.

The McMullen Museum at Boston College has taken Qazwini’s text and its lavish illustrations as the framework for the exhibition, Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World, opening February 9. An impressive list of 170 works, borrowed from such institutions as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, the Cambridge University Library, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Al-Sabah Collection, Dar Al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, Kuwait, includes illustrated manuscripts and paintings, maps, scientific instruments, magic bowls, luster glazed ceramics, architectural fragments, and new works, some of them specially commissioned, by contemporary Islamic artists.

Sections of the show, the museum says, explore twelve centuries of Islamic thought on the celestial realm, terrestrial sphere, and humankind through such topics as astronomy, astrology, natural history, mineralogy, alchemy, medicine, geometry, and architecture.

Even as their actual numbers dwindled over the 20th century, the influence and fame of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, better known as the Shakers, only grew. Numerous books, studies, lectures, museums, private and public collections, and exhibitions over the decades have extolled the elegant simplicity of Shaker furniture and architecture, the ecstatic purity of their music and art, their communal values of shared property, equality of the sexes, and simple living.

In the summer of 1996 ten artists were invited to live, work, and worship in the last remaining active Shaker community in Sabbathday Lake, Maine. Works from that residency were shown in a 1998 exhibition at the ICA, Boston, called The Quiet in the Land. A sequel to that show, Believers: Artists and the Shakers, opening at the ICA on February 13, reunites a core group of artists from 1998 — Jonathan Berger, Taylor Davis, Gordon Hall, Pallavi Sen, and Carleen Smith — and extends its themes with a new group of works by other contemporary artists. Believers, the museum says, “considers how contemporary artists negotiate the space between received representations of the Shakers and the utopian community’s vital experience as ‘ordinary people attempting to live an extraordinary life.’”

Meanwhile, for the ICA’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall, the Vancouver-born artist Sara Cwynar has created a layered photo mural organized around an alphabetical list of terms borrowed from Internet search engines, including some of the most popular search terms since 2020. The terms are represented by common types of images: the reclining woman, logos, luxury cars, food with high visual appeal, and others. Handwritten notes raise questions about how the images relate to their index of terms. Says the museum: “Cwynar draws on the principles and history of billboard design to create her mural, where what is being ‘advertised’ is the seductive power of commodities and searching in our contemporary moment.” Sara Cwynar opens February 7.

A companion exhibition, Sara Cwynar: Alphabet, unfolds on February 13. Alphabet is an installation of collages based on photographs Cwynar created herself, commissioned, downloaded, or found, arranged in panels inspired by the celebrated German art historian Aby Warburg, whose Mnemosyne Atlas (1925-9), organized almost 1,000 images in an attempt to understand recurring visual themes and patterns across time and cultures, from antiquity to the present.

On February 8, the MFA opens Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson, the largest exhibition of the late Boston artist’s work yet presented. The retrospective’s 110 works, selected from a 60-year career, includes prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, and illustrated books exploring such subjects as anti-Black violence, the civil rights movement, labor, and family life.

Paint/Fold/Cut/Stitch, at the Brickbottom Gallery from February 9, was organized by painter Diane Novetsky, a founding member of the Brickbottom Artists’ Building in Somerville, where the gallery is located. The three artists she has chosen to include — Denise Bergman, Yildiz Grodowski, and On-Kyeong Seong— along with her own work use bold color, biomorphic shapes, and crisp geometry in constructions that dangle from the wall, are stitched and painted together, bend out of the picture frame, or envelope sensuous stains and glazes.

Something must have been in the stars over Brunswick. New Hampshire native Franklin Pierce graduated along with 13 others in the Bowdoin College Class of 1824. Pierce’s life-long friend Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow graduated a year later with the Class of 1825. Pierce, handsome and charming and from a prosperous and prominent family, became the 14th president of the United States in 1853, and presided over what is now considered one of the least successful administrations in American history. Hawthorne and Longfellow became writers whose material success went in different directions but whose work included some of the 19th century’s most popular poetry and fiction.

Apparently leaving aside Pierce for the moment, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art has organized Poetic Truths: Hawthorne, Longfellow, and American Visual Culture, a selection of the hundreds of paintings, sculptures, prints, and even ceramics inspired by the authors and the characters and plots in their creations. At the same time, both writers drew inspiration from works of art and art objects, even incorporating them as organizing features of their narratives. The exhibition, which opens in Brunswick, Maine, on February 6, explores how American visual culture before and after the Civil War was partly shaped by these two college classmates.

— Peter Walsh

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Popular Music

Something in the Way Fest
February 2, 1 p.m.
Roadrunner, Boston

A total of two dozen artists will take the stage in the course of this festival’s two days. Brought to you by the independent Boston label Run for Cover Records and The Bowery Presents, the top-billed artists are Balance & Composure, Soccer Mommy, and American Football on day one, and slowdive, Fiddlehead, and Mannequin Pussy on the second day. Local bands Women in Peril and My Fictions are also among the participants, Seattle’s Great Grandpa will present brand soon-to-be-released material.

— Blake Maddux

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Theater

COVID PROTOCOLS: Check with specific theaters.

Crumbs From the Table of Joy , by Lynn Nottage. Directed by Tasia A. Jones. Staged by the Lyric Stage at 140 Clarendon St, Boston, through February 2.

Here is how the Lyric Stage sums up Lynn Nottage’s 1995 drama: “Adrift in Brooklyn during the racially charged 1950s, two teenage sisters Ernestine and Ermina live with their devout, recently widowed father, Godfrey, who follows the teachings of spiritual leader Father Divine. Almost to the point of obsession, Godfrey’s staunch beliefs cause his girls to heal their wounds with Hollywood films, daydreams, and lots of cookies. Their humdrum lives are turned upside down with the arrival of their vivacious Aunt Lily, who brings with her a few bad habits and a taste for rebellion. When Godfrey makes a shocking decision that involves a German woman named Gerte, can the family find new meaning in what makes a home?” The NYTimes review of a 2023 revival describes it a “bittersweet memory play.” Arts Fuse review

The Father: A Tragic Farce by Florian Zeller. Translated by Christopher Hampton. Directed by Josh Short. Staged by Wilbury Theater Group at 475 Valley Street, Providence, through February 9.

This is not a revival of August Strindberg’s masterpiece. The plot: “Now 80 years old, André was once a tap dancer. He lives with his daughter, Anne, and her husband, Antoine. Or was André an engineer, whose daughter Anne lives in London with her new lover, Pierre? The thing is, he is still wearing his pajamas, and he can’t find his watch. He is starting to wonder if he’s losing control.” The 2014 winner of France’s Molière award for best play, this is a Rhode Island premiere.

Ain’t No Mo by Jordan E. Cooper. Directed by Dawn M. Simmons. A co-production of Front Porch Collective and Speakeasy Stage Company at the Roberts Studio Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, through February 8.

The script was a 2023 Tony Nominee for Best Play. The Guardian review describes the script, which is made up of interwoven vignettes, as an “absurdist satire about race in America.” Arts Fuse review

The Piano Lesson by August Wilson. Directed by Christopher V. Edwards. Staged by Actors’ Shakespeare Project at Hibernian Hall, 184 Dudley St., Roxbury, through February 23.

Here is Fuse critic Robert Israel’s synopsis of August Wilson’s Pulitzer prize-winning script lifted from his review of the recent Netflix film version of the script: “The play centers on the history, and quarrels over the fate, of a carved spinet piano that has gone largely unused for years. It sits in the parlor of Bernie Charles’s Pittsburgh home, circa 1930s. Boy Willie, her brother, has come to sell the valuable piano so he can afford to buy farm land down South. There are backstories aplenty in this play, and they revolve around slavery, the endurance of racism, and a Black family’s quest for the American dream.”

Eden by Steve Carter. Directed by Brandon J. Dirden. Staged by Yale Rep at Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel St, New Haven, through February 8.

The plot: “1927, San Juan Hill, a six-block stretch of Manhattan where tensions run deep between its populations of Black Americans and Caribbean immigrants. Eustace, recently transplanted from the South, falls in love with the girl next door, Annetta. But her ironfisted father, Joseph, an ardent Garveyite, has arranged for her to marry another man from the West Indies to protect his bloodline.” The resulting clash between “ideologies and youthful passions threaten dangerous consequences for two families and their community.”

Life & Times of Michael K, J.M. Coetzee’s novel of the same name, adapted and directed by Lara Foot. Staged by South Africa’s Baxter Theater and Handspring Puppet Company presented by ArtsEmerson at the Robert J. Orchard Stage, 559 Washington Street, Boston, through February 9.

A theatricalization (including puppets) of the Booker Prize-winning novel by J.M. Coetzee. According to ArtsEmerson’s publicity: “The hauntingly beautiful story follows Michael K, a simple man who embarks on a journey through South Africa, ravaged by civil war, to return his mother to die on the farm where she was born. He finds strength in his own humanity, his profound connection to the earth, and his unique path, which, as it unfolds, reveals to him his reason for living.”

Someone Will Remember Us by Deborah Salem Smith and Charlie Thurston. Created by Dr. Michelle Cruz, Deborah Salem Smith, and Charlie Thurston. Directed by Christopher Windom. Staged by Trinity Rep at the Dowling Theater, 201 Washington St., Providence, through February 23.

The world premiere of a play that, according to “interlaces the real-life testimonies of U.S. military veterans, a Gold Star family, Iraqi civilians, and refugees living in Rhode Island. As military conflict wages on multiple fronts across the world, this production paints a moving portrait of the innumerable tolls of war, and how we find connection through it all.”

SPACE by L M Feldman. Directed by Larissa Lury. Created by Feldman and Lury. A Brit d’Arbeloff Women in Science production at the Central Square Theatre, 450 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, through February 23.

The world premiere of a drama about the Mercury 13 that marks the 20th Anniversary of Catalyst Collaborative@MIT, the nation’s only ongoing partnership between a professional theater and research institution. The setup: “At the dawn of two different Space Races, aviators traverse time, generations, Newtonian physics, governments, political bodies — and human bodies — to reach beyond our star system for a radical restart. SPACE intertwines imagined scenes with Congressional transcripts, and feats of endurance with the historical record, to interrogate the story of the Mercury 13 female pilots and their ancestors — Bessie Coleman, Hazel Ying Lee — and descendants — Mae Jemison, Sally Ride — over the course of a national Civil Rights Space Race that has spanned our past century. SPACE asks: What future are we headed towards?” The cast includes Barlow Adamson, Valencia Proctor, Monica Risi, Mitra Sharif, Catharine K. Slusar, MK Tuomanen, Kaili Y. Turner, and Hui Ying Wen.

A Night of Art & Magic: A Journey from the Ashcan School to the West End, written and performed by Joe Ledoux. At The West End Museum, 150 Staniford St. Suite 7 (on Lomasney Way) Boston, February 8.

Prepare to be amazed! “Step into a world where art, magic, and history collide! Join the West End Museum for an unforgettable evening featuring Magical Artist Joe Ledoux. This unique event blends a live magic performance, an artist talk, and an exclusive exhibit of Joe’s newest creations inspired by Boston’s historic West End and the Ashcan School.”

The Grove by Mfoniso Udofia. Directed by Awoye Timpo. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at The Huntington Calderwood, 527 Tremont St. Boston, February 7 through March 9.

The plot, according to the HTC publicity: this is the “story of a family homecoming, asking how we draw on the wisdom and beauty of our ancestors when the bonds of family are stretched to the limit. Abasiama’s eldest daughter Adiaha believes that becoming a writer can make her family proud, but at her graduation party, she has to choose whether to fulfill her parents’ desires or stay true to her own dreams.” Part of the ongoing Ufot Family Cycle.

The Odyssey, an adaptation of Homer’s epic by Kate Hamill. Directed by Shana Cooper. Staged by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, February 9 through March 16.

According to ART publicity: “Kate Hamill turns a contemporary lens on Homer’s Odyssey in this new play that reimagines the stories of both Odysseus and his wife, Penelope, and asks how we can learn to embrace healing and forgiveness in order to end cycles of violence and revenge.”

Flora & Ulysses by John Glore. Based on the Newbery Medal Winning children’s book by Kate DiCamillo. Directed by Joshua Rashon Streeter. Staged by the Wheelock Family Theater on the Riverway, between the intersections of Brookline Ave and Longwood Ave., February 15 through March 9

The lowdown from WFT: “After getting sucked up by a vacuum cleaner, a (now hairless) squirrel is rescued by Flora Belle Buckman, a 10-year-old self-proclaimed cynic. She names him Ulysses and discovers he has been reborn as a superhero. Indeed, this once average squirrel can suddenly understand Flora, fly, and even write poetry. Together they embark on an adventure full of quirky characters and bursting with heart. ”

Sonic Cyberfeminisms: A Music Theatre and Installation Project Employing Soft Robotics Online on Zoom, February 5, noon ET.

This is a virtual discussion by Patricia Alessandrini, a composer/sound artist, electronics performer, and researcher who is currently a fellow at the The Radcliffe Institute. The description of the music theater piece she is developing is tantalizing enough — given its fusion of science, music, and futurism — to make this presentation worth checking out. The notion of a warbling cyborg certainly intrigues.

Alessandrini is a pioneer who, according to the Radcliffe website, “explores immersion, interaction, creative AI, and instrument design for inclusive performance. At Radcliffe, she is working on a cyberfeminist futurist intermedial music theater work set in outer space for coloratura virtuosi Marisol Montalvo and Donatienne Michel-Dansac and ensemble, based on a libretto by the novelist Alexandra Kleeman. Informed by feminist theory of Donna Haraway, Judy Wacjman, and others, this work posits how future technologies could develop in a distributive, non-hierarchical manner in the absence of male and other hegemonies. In particular, Alessandrini and her team of Radcliffe research partners are employing soft robotics and principles of affective computing in the design of a singing cyborg “pet” capable of reacting empathetically to biosignals, which will also be featured in an installation at France’s Le Fresnoy Art Center in Fall 2025.

— Bill Marx

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World Music and Roots

Fred Moten & Brandon López Duo and Noah Campbell Ensemble
February 5
The Foundry, Cambridge

Long close cousins, jazz and poetry seem to be reconnecting. aja monet was a highlight of last year’s Newport Jazz Festival, and now poet/theorist Fred Moten and bassist Brandon López are embarking on a series of collaborations. They’ve got a very compelling recording called Revision coming out in April, a show at the Big Ears Festival in March, and before all that an appearance for Non-Event in Cambridge this week. Moten’s soft speaking voice unwraps a world full of thorny, multi-layered stories, while López offers perfect accompaniment utilizing the entire palate of his instrument. A fellow academic/musician, Providence-based saxophonist Noah Campbell, opens with a trio.

Willy Garcia
February 8
Oceanside Events Center

In recent decades Colombia has been one of the epicenters of salsa, in large part due to the success of Grupo Niche. Garcia spent a good decade in the ’90s as their lead singer, and his endearing, romantic voice makes him a favorite for Valentine’s Day dances like this one.

San Miguel Fraser & Friends
February 12

Some might remember Galen Fraser from his time in Boston when he went to Berklee. The son of Alasdair Fraser is now based in Spain and, along with María San Miguel, he’s making music in the duo San Miguel Fraser. This lively and adventurous group connects Celtic music to the sounds of Castile, a place with deep musical traditions that are rarely heard in the outside world.

— Noah Schaffer

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Jazz

Jazzmeia Horn
February 10 at 7:30 p.m.
City Winery, Boston

The gospel-trained winner of the 2013 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition and the 2015 Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition returns with her singular take on not-so-standard repertoire plus her own socially informed music.

Jared Sims Quartet
February 6 at 7:30 p.m.
Peabody Hall, Parish of All Saints, Dorchester, Mass.

Multi-reed and flute player Jared Sims was a fixture of the Boston scene before taking off for a few years to run the West Virginia University jazz program He’s now back in the Boston area and cooking up new sounds. His latest project seems to be a going concern: a Latin-jazz-centered band playing original music, with the superb Cuban-music specialist Rebecca Cline on piano, the highly valued veteran bassist Keala Kaumeheiwa, and rising drum phenom Gen Yoshimura. This show is part of the Dot Jazz Series co-produced by Mandorla Music and Greater Ashmont Main Street.

Aaron Parks Little Big
February 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, Mass.

Pianist and keyboardist Aaron Parks and Little Big come to the Regattabar on the heels of their third album, and Blue Note debut, Little Big III. The band includes Parks, guitarist Greg Tuohey, bassist David Ginyard Jr., and drummer Jongkuk Kim (replacing Tommy Crane). The trio’s brew — with pieces contributed by all band members — shades to the proggy end of jazz-rock fusion (think strains of early Keith Jarrett, Weather Report, and Secret Story-era Pat Metheny). But they also have a post-rock thing that’s all their own.

Tim Berne
February 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Jordan Hall, Boston

The New York Times has called Tim Berne “one of the true thought leaders in progressive jazz — an unassuming yet undeniable force in the music for more than four decades.” I rest my case. Berne, now 70, is putting the kids at New England Conservatory through their paces this week, including this residency concert, in which he will perform his own music with NEC’s Jazz Composers’ Workshop Orchestra “as well as various small groups.”

The Westerlies
February 14 at 7:30 p.m.
Crystal Ballroom, Somerville, Mass.

The Westerlies’ last album, Move (2023), included pieces by Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Mason Bynes, and Andy Clausen (one of the group’s two trombonists) — all from the classical camp. But this brass quartet (two trumpets, two trombones) is into improvisation and definitely has a jazz vibe going on. Trumpeter Riley Mulherkar — whose solo album Riley was one of the best, ahem, jazz discs of 2024 — is out for this round. So trombonists Clausen and Addison Maye-Saxon and trumpeter Chloe Rowlands will be joined by trumpet Ray Larsen.

Dianne Reeves
February 16 at 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Shalin Liu Performance Center, Rockport, Mass.

It seems the 7 p.m. show is sold out but that there are still pricier tickets available for the 5:30 fundraising cocktail reception and concert. If you can swing it (or are just feeling generous toward this wonderful non-profit venue), it should be worth it: The show will feature Reeves with the great Brazilian guitarist Romero Lubambo.

— Jon Garelick

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Classical;

Eberle plays Beethoven
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
February 6 at 7:30 p.m., 7 at 1:30 p.m., and 8 at 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston

While the BSO just finished a survey of the nine Beethoven symphonies, they’re not through with the composer just yet. To wit: violinist Veronika Eberle joins the ensemble to assay his Violin Concerto. Nathalie Stutzmann is on the podium, making her conducting debut with the orchestra, and leads further works by Ravel and Stravinsky.

Love, Handel
Presented by Handel & Haydn Society
February 7 at 7:30 p.m. and 9 at 3 p.m.
Jordan Hall, Boston

Soprano Joélle Harvey joins H&H and artistic director Jonathan Cohen for a pair of Handel cantatas—Delirio amoroso and Tra le fiamme—and, in between, the G-major Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 1.

Blomstedt conducts Schubert and Brahms
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra
February 13 at 7:30 p.m., 14 at 1:30 p.m., and 15 at 8 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston

The 97-year-old Blomstedt returns to Symphony Hall for his latest stand with the BSO. This one visits symphonies by Schubert (the rarely heard No. 6) and Brahms (the oft programmed No. 1).

Seth Parker Woods in recital
Presented by Celebrity Series
February 13, 7:30 p.m.
The Crystal Ballroom, Somerville

The celebrated cellist makes his Celebrity Series debut playing sarabandes from Bach’s unaccompanied Cello Suites that are interspersed with works by 20^th– and 21^st-century composers, including Chinary Ung, Carlos Simon, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.

Dover Quartet
Presented by Celebrity Series
February 14, 8 p.m.
Jordan Hall, Boston

The Dovers return to the Celebrity Series with a pair of favorites—Dvorak’s “American” Quartet and Tchaikovsky’s No. 1—sandwiching Robert Schumann first (A minor) effort.

Lysistrata, or The Nude Goddess
Presented by Odyssey Opera
February 15, 7:30 p.m.
Jordan Hall, Boston

Gil Rose and Odyssey Opera present Mark Adamo’s update of Aristophanes’ comedy about sex, politics, and war. The cast includes Anya Matanovič, Maggie Finnegan, Alexis Peart, and Kevin Deas.

Zander conducts Mahler
Presented by Boston Philharmonic Orchestra
February 16, 3 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston

The Boston Philharmonic returns to action with a program of 20^th-century Romantic favorites. Soprano Claire Booth joins the ensemble for Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. Afterwards, Benjamin Zander conducts Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

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Author Events

Jennifer Finney Boylan at The Brattle Theatre – Harvard Book Store
Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us
February 5 at 6 p.m.
Tickets are $35 with book, $10 without

“Harvard Book Store welcomes Jennifer Finney Boylan — a 2022-23 Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University, and author of nineteen books, including Mad Honey, coauthored with Jodi Picoult — for a discussion of her new memoir Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us. She will be joined in conversation by Cristela Guerra — a senior arts and culture reporter for WBUR and 2024 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.”

Natasha Hakimi Zapata in conversation with Dan Chiasson – Porter Square Books
Another World Is Possible
February 6 at 7 p.m.
Free

“A new generation of Americans has declared that another world is possible. And yet, the stubborn problems of inequality, climate change, and declining health seem as intractable as ever. Where might different answers lie?

Intrepid journalist Natasha Hakimi Zapata has traveled around the world, from Costa Rica to Uganda, and Estonia to Singapore, uncovering how different countries solve the problems that plague the United States. Through in-depth reporting, including interviews with senior government officials, activists, industry professionals, and the ordinary people affected by their policies, Another World Is Possible examines innovative programs that address public health, social services, climate change, housing, education, addiction, and more.

In each instance Hakimi Zapata provides a clear-eyed assessment of the history, challenges, cost-effectiveness, and real-world impact of these programs. The result is a compelling, frame-shifting account of how we might live differently and create a safer, healthier, more sustainable future.”

Ann Suk Wang and Hanna Cha – Brookline Booksmith
The House Before Falling Into The Sea 
February 9 at 2 p.m.
Free

“A child and her family take in refugees during the Korean War in Ann Suk Wang’s The House Before Falling Into The Sea, a picture book about courage and what it really means to care for your neighbors.

Every day, more and more people fleeing war in the north show up at Kyung Tak and her family’s house on the southeastern shore of Korea. With nowhere else to go, the Taks’ home is these migrants’ last chance of refuge “before falling into the sea,” and the household quickly becomes crowded, hot, and noisy. Then war sirens cry out over Kyung’s city too, and her family and their guests take shelter underground. When the sirens stop, Kyung is upset—she wishes everything could go back to the way it was before: before the sirens, before strangers started coming into their home. But after an important talk with her parents, her new friend Sunhee, and Sunhee’s father, Kyung realizes something important: We’re stronger when we have each other, and the kindness we show one another in the darkest of times is a gift we’ll never regret.”

Jayne Anne Phillips at Harvard Book Store
Night Watch: A Novel
February 11 at 7 p.m.
Free

“In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.

The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their story: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee’s father, who left for the War and never returned. Meanwhile, in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother’s maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility — the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.”

Tova Mirvis in conversation with Jessica Shattuck – Porter Square Books
We Would Never
February 12 at 7 p.m.
Free

“Inspired by a true story, Tova Mirvis’ We Would Never is a gripping mystery, an intimate family drama, and a provocative exploration of loyalty, betrayal, and the blurred line between protecting and forsaking the ones we love most.”

Cory Doctorow with Ken Liu: – Brookline Booksmith
Picks and Shovels
February 14 at 7 p.m.
Free

“New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow returns to the world of Red Team Blues to bring us the origin story of Martin Hench and the most powerful new tool for crime ever invented: the personal computer.

The year is 1986. The city is San Francisco. Here, Martin Hench will invent the forensic accountant–what a bounty hunter is to people, he is to money–but for now he’s an MIT dropout odd-jobbing his way around a city still reeling from the invention of a revolutionary new technology that will change everything about crime forever, one we now take completely for granted.”

Judith Rosen at Harvard Book Store 
Bookstore Romance: Love Speaks Volumes
February 14 at 7 p.m.

“What is the most romantic place to get engaged? A bookstore, of course. The perfect wedding venue? A bookstore! Book-loving couples from all over America agree, and Bookstore Romance celebrates not only a couple’s love for each other, but also their love of books and bookstores.

Bookselling journalist Judith Rosen interviewed twenty-four couples who tell their stories about how they planned and celebrated their engagements and weddings in independent bookstores. And of course, these perfect occasions could not have been orchestrated without the help of willing booksellers who slipped rings into books, made special displays of handmade volumes, and hid behind bookshelves to snap photos.

These heart-warming stories, and inspirational photographs collected in this charming book will make a perfect gift for the book-lover in your life.”

Tom Acitelli at Harvard Book Store
The Golden Age of Beer: A 52-Week Guide to the Perfect Beer for Every Week of the Year
February 17 at 7 p.m.
Free

“All hail the golden age of beer! Today there are nearly nine thousand breweries in the US alone, brewing an enormous range of styles from imperial stouts to double India pale ales, golden pilsners, briny melon goses, and much more. But while this breadth can delight the taste buds all year, how does one choose what to drink without feeling overwhelmed or defaulting to the same brews again and again?

In this unique volume, acclaimed beer expert Tom Acitelli presents a fifty-two week guide to choosing the perfect beer to complement every week of the year. With tasting notes, brand recommendations, a guide to how to best serve, sip, and savor, plus fascinating backstories and trivia, Acitelli unearths what beer lovers actually care about and reveals how to appreciate the best that the golden age of beer has to offer.

The Golden Age of Beer embraces Acitelli’s inviting, accessible voice and dives into homebrewing, beer icons, today’s industry game-changers, and more. It cuts through the noise and the hype to leave you with a lush, inspiring, and reliable guide for sampling and entertaining all year long.”

Panel Discussion: The War in Europe – Goethe-Institut
February 19 at 7 p.m.
Goethe Institut Boston MA
Free

“On the eve of the third anniversary of the bloodiest war in Europe in eighty years, we’ll reflect on how we got here, where we stand now, and what might be required in the aftermath–for the United States, Europe, and of course, Ukraine. Three of the world’s leading authorities on Ukraine will assist us in exploring these matters.

Serhii Plokhii, Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, will offer an update on the current situation in Ukraine, along with relevant background on the war; Professor of Modern European Intellectual History at Yale University Marci Shore will examine the intellectual framework that enabled the war, together with its impact and implications for Ukrainian, and European, culture. Economist Liudmyla Kurnosikova, currently a McCloy Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, will speak about plans for the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. The panel will be moderated by writer and editor Askold Melnyczuk, University of Massachusetts Boston.
This panel discussion marks the publication of a special issue of Ireland’s leading literary journal, Irish Pages, guest-edited by Askold Melnyczuk, on the topic of The War in Europe. Copies of Irish Pages will be available for sale.”

Third Thursday Poetry at Ten Trees Books
Natick
February 20 from 6:30 – 8 p.m.
Free

“Join us for Third Thursday Poetry! We have a 15-minute featured poet, a time to socialize with wine and cheese, and then an open mic. Before COVID, for more than fifteen years, Third Thursday Poetry was hosted inside Gallery 55 in Natick Center. We’re excited the founder, Molly Saccardo, re-launched the series at Ten Trees Books. Poetry reading will start promptly at 6:45 p.m.

Our featured poet will be Lynne Viti, a lecturer emerita at Wellesley College and the inaugural Poet Laureate of Westwood, Massachusetts. Her most recent poetry collection is The Walk to Cefalù (Cornerstone Press, 2022). Her poem, “No Registration Required,” was named poem of the year in the 2024 Hale Education Poetry Contest. She was selected for the 2023 Miriam Chaikin/Westbeth Artists Poetry Award and a third place prize in the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest. She facilitates a poets in the schools program in Westwood, as well as a poetry workshop for adults at the Westwood Public Library. Space is limited to 30. Our first one sold out – reserve your ticket early, so you don’t miss out.”

— Matt Hanson