Arts
by Jarice Hanson | Mar 7, 2024 | Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Theater Matters, Uncategorized
By Jarice Hanson For the Valley Advocate World premieres are challenging pieces of theater in every sense. For many theaters and theater companies, it’s safer to produce an “old chestnut”— a show that has a proven track record with audiences, or a show that is...
by Jennifer Levesque | Mar 7, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Mixtape, Music, Uncategorized
By Jennifer Levesque For the Valley Advocate Local musician Chris Croteau took a musical hiatus to focus on parenthood, but is now back with an album that is worth the wait. Released in November of last year, “Mesmir” is Croteau’s comeback. The 16-track album has...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 2, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Uncategorized
By DON STEWART For the Advocate There are those who see winter not as a season but as a siege. They tire of shoveling white glittering fractals from their driveways and see snow as the unnecessary freezing of water. If you’re among those who don’t consider the frozen...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 2, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Music, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Back in the 1980s, Jack Frisch, then in his early twenties, got bitten pretty hard by the jazz bug, taking the ferry from his home in Staten Island, New York, over to Manhattan with some friends and haunting record shops. His interest had...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 26, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Music, Staff Picks, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer When John Piskor opened his Cajun-style restaurant, Gombo Nola Kitchen & Oyster Bar, in Northampton last year, he said he eventually wanted it to turn it into something akin to a New Orleans cafe, where people come out for a drink and...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 26, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Looking for some talented older actors who can play a wide range of roles? Who have decades of experience in theater, film and television? Raye Birk and Candace Barrett Birk are at your service. The Florence couple, relatively new...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 19, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Staff Picks, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Ever since the November 2022 elections, politicians in over a dozen Republican-controlled states have seemed to compete with each other in attacking parts of the LGBTQ community: banning or restricting gender-affirming medical care for...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 8, 2024 | Arts, Featured, News, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer It’s been a long run — but the finish line is now in view. The Northampton Community Arts Trust building, largely or partly shuttered for most of this year, is poised to reopen, as work to make the final improvements in the...
by Jennifer Levesque | Jan 8, 2024 | Arts, Columns, Featured, Mixtape, Music
By JENNIFER LEVESQUE For the Advocate Notorious for her vocal range, local singer/songwriter Lexi Weege releases her second solo record, “lw.” Weege started performing when she was really young with her mother’s traveling cabaret show. “I was exposed to all types of...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 8, 2024 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, News, Uncategorized
By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL Staff Writer When Chris Freeman was in eighth grade, his father took him to the Iron Horse Music Hall for his first concert at the venue, where he was immediately entranced by the atmosphere, sitting at one of the tables by the wall plastered...
by Jarice Hanson | Jan 8, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Stage, Theater Matters, Uncategorized
By JARICE HANSON For the Advocate For theater aficionados December has been rich with holiday performances that run the gamut from musical reviews to the classics, and occasionally, campy reminders that the holidays bring out the child in all of us. This year, three...
by Advocate Staff | Nov 24, 2023 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Uncategorized
By MADDIE FABIAN Staff Writer It was a cold and icy winter day when Amy Thompson accidentally locked herself out of the house, with nothing but her phone and time to spare — not an uncommon tale. But rather than becoming frustrated with herself for wasting 40 minutes...
by Melissa Karen Sances | Nov 24, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Music, Uncategorized
By MELISSA KAREN SANCES For the Advocate As snow mingles with rain this Tuesday evening, the door to Spare Time Northampton is cool to the touch. But inside the bowling alley’s City Sports Grille, the cracks of falling pins fade into the warm pulse of swing music. The...
by Advocate Staff | Nov 3, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Paintings that date to the early 1800s. Native American crafts and textiles from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Depression-era photographs and ones taken just a few years ago. A quilt that offers interesting commentary on a pop...
by Advocate Staff | Nov 3, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Though she was too young to understand many details at the time, Mollye Maxner remembers the Vietnam War had a profound effect on her family. Her father, Steve Maxner, served as a combat medic in the war and endured emotional turmoil from...
by Advocate Staff | Oct 27, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Music, News, Stage, Uncategorized
By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL Staff Writer At long last, the Iron Horse Music Hall has a new owner, and music could be emanating from the venerable Center Street location as soon as February. The Parlor Room, a nearby music venue run by a nonprofit, announced last month...
by Jennifer Levesque | Oct 27, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Mixtape, Music, Stage, Uncategorized
By JENNIFER LEVESQUE For the Advocate We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: The music scene just hasn’t been the same post-COVID. Many venues remain vacant and are quite literally decaying. Some opened for a short period of time, then closed indefinitely....
by Jarice Hanson | Oct 27, 2023 | Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Theater Matters
By JARICE HANSON For the Advocate With the summer season winding down and “transition time” — both in terms of the seasons and the local theater offerings — ramping up, two plays stand out as “the best of the best.” Donald Margulies’ newest (and perhaps his best)...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 29, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Music, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Like so many other arts venues, the Fine Arts Center at the University of Massachusetts had to resort to online productions during the worst of the pandemic. As FAC Director Jamilla Deria told the Gazette at the time, planning for the...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 29, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Staff Picks, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer From the pages of a 17th century Algonquin-language Bible, to a 2021 painting that celebrates the majesty of whales, a new exhibit at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College devoted to Native American art is built around the theme of...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 29, 2023 | Arts, Columns, Featured, Music
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer A Fool’s Journey: To the Beach Boys & Beyond By Carli Muñoz Interlink Publishing Jazz pianist Carli Muñoz has had a long and successful career in music, both as a jazz and blues player but also logging time with rock and pop bands,...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 22, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Music, Staff Picks, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Max Roach is celebrated as one of the most influential drummers in jazz history, a pioneer of Bebop who led groundbreaking ensembles in every decade of his long career. As a drummer and a composer, he’s credited with making drums a more...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 22, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Music, Uncategorized
By MADDIE FABIAN Staff Writer As many Easthampton residents do, Marjory Zaik has deep ties to the historic New City Neighborhood. A 1930s family photograph pictures her aunts Stella and Helen laughing while cheerfully leaning against the rail of their Federal Street...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 22, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer The Hilltown 6 Pottery Tour, in which potters in the region open their studios to visitors, has been a staple in the Valley for almost 20 years. Now the Hilltown Open Studio Tour is making its move to become a mainstay annual event. The...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 8, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Music, News, Podcast, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRERStaff Writer Musicians are always looking for another venue to play. Actors and playwrights search for a new place to stage a show. Dancers want another floor to move on. At Holyoke Media, they all can find room. The independent, nonprofit...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 8, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Leisure, Staff Picks, Uncategorized
By DON STEWART For the Advocate A short drive from downtown Lenox, you travel past ornamental wrought iron gates and enter into the former Gilded Age estate of “Brookhurst.” You’re first greeted by a voluptuous two-and-a-half-ton reclining female figure sculpted by...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 25, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Music, News, Staff Picks, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Joe Farnsworth was 10 or 11 when he got the chance to meet a drumming legend: Max Roach. It was at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in 1979, where Roach taught. Farnsworth, who grew up in South Hadley, remembers how one of his...
by Jarice Hanson | Aug 25, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Staff Picks, Stage, Theater Matters
By JARICE HANSON For the Advocate This has been a summer of some outstanding theater opportunities for audiences to become reacquainted with familiar company names that may have been on hiatus over the past couple of years (due to that pesky pandemic that has kept...
by Jennifer Levesque | Aug 25, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Mixtape, Music, Review, Staff Picks, Stage, Uncategorized
By JENNIFER LEVESQUE For the Advocate Years ago, the late musician Ted Pratt made a Facebook post stating he wanted to start a thrash band and call it “Uzi Jacuzzi.” Intrigued, vocalist and guitarist Tristan Jorud reached out to Pratt and the two got together that...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 11, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Staff Picks, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Edgy. Sardonic and deadpan. Willing to joke about difficult subjects. Willing to joke about himself. As Sam Morril sees it, pretty much anything is fair game for comedy, at least as an antidote to the news and to life in general. “It’s a...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 11, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Over the years, the Valley has sent some talented playwrights into the world — the late Wendy Wasserstein, a Mount Holyoke College graduate, is one notable name — but few can rival the success of Annie Baker, the 1999 Amherst Regional...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 4, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Staff Picks
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer As a painter, he’s got a great eye for color, lots of energy, and a self-taught technique that lends itself to subjects like music, pop culture, history, current events and fantasy. He’s also got a colorful pen name, so to speak, to go...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 4, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Music, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer July was a challenging month for outdoor music shows, with the heavy rain that flooded local farms and roads also washing out some concerts and threatening others. Organizers for upcoming music festivals in Easthampton are hoping things...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 31, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Music, Review, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER STAFF WRITER Several years ago, Grayson Ty and Laura Buchanan first met as separate working musicians. That night, Ty, a singer-songwriter, was co-billed at the Iron Horse Musical Hall in Northampton with Eavesdrop, then an acoustic folk-pop trio that...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 17, 2023 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Staff Picks, Stage
By EMILY THURLOW For the Advocate Whether he’s sporting villainous Maleficent-style horns, channeling his inner witch dressed as Winifred Sanderson, twirling in a red-and-black polka-dot a-line dress or lounging around in a raglan T-shirt, Aaron Johnson is still,...
by Jennifer Levesque | Jul 17, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Uncategorized
By JENNIFER LEVESQUE For the Advocate I pry my body up from my laid back lounge chair that was holding me for the last 53 minutes and 41 seconds, and grab a sweater – suddenly chilled to the bone. I then check out my reflection in the mirror and wipe away my...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 17, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Uncategorized
By JARICE HANSON For the Advocate ‘The Happiest Man on Earth,” Barrington Stage Company’s first production of the season on the St. Germain Stage, leaves the audience breathless with the story of a Holocaust survivor. The show closed June 17, but the script is...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 17, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Music, Uncategorized
By MELISSA KAREN SANCES For the Advocate When it was time for the hip hop tribute at this year’s Grammys, Black Thought took center stage to introduce his girl: “Fifty years ago, a street princess was born to be an icon. The art form took the entire world by storm....
by Advocate Staff | Apr 7, 2023 | Articles, Arts, Featured
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Spring is here — or at least the calendar says it is. And as the weather (hopefully) warms, there’s more incentive to get outside and check out what’s on view at local art galleries. Here’s a look at some selected shows this month. PULP...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 9, 2023 | Arts, Featured, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer A couple years ago, Forbes Library received a $10,000 donation from a donor who wanted to remain anonymous but also wanted the money used for a very specific purpose: to broaden the Northampton library’s permanent art collection. More...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 31, 2023 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Time was when Rachel Portesi did much of her photography using Polaroid film. She loved the immediacy of the image, the way each photo was different and often didn’t quite match what her eye had seen, and what she calls “the feeling of...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 27, 2023 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer A few years ago, Luc Abbott, a marketing consultant who works with various clients in the area, decided to produce an online guide of regional businesses and organizations that, broadly speaking, embodied progressive values and...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 28, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
I filed my first article for the Advocate in May 1986. This one is my last. After 36 years and some 2,000 reviews, previews, features, interviews and musings, I’m giving up my ticket to the critic’s proverbial aisle seat and taking my place in line at the box office....
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 13, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck, Uncategorized
One night last month I was at the Academy of Music for a show, and there, behind the concession stand, was Nikki Beck. “Are there three of you?” I asked, amazed. She laughed and said, “Probably.” Nikki is one of the busiest theater people around. You’ll never see her...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 4, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck, Uncategorized
In this season of entertainments that cater to our appetite for cozy tradition (I’m talking about you, Nutcracker, Messiah and Christmas Carol), two shows next weekend hit the nostalgia nerve from a different angle, adding a holiday-themed sequel to a classic love...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 28, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
As winter approaches, National Theatre Live serves up a summertime tonic (as in, gin and). The live-capture of the National’s stylish Much Ado About Nothing screens twice this month in the big theater at Amherst Cinema, the Valley’s indispensable film house. Director...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 17, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
When I was in London this fall, I saw two shows that turn received history on its head. In the West End, I finally caught up with the long-running mini-musical SIX, in which the half-dozen wives of Henry VIII sing their side of the story. And at the Globe, a new,...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 8, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In the Valley this weekend and next, there’s a show in which a man becomes a woman, one in which a man becomes a feminist, and a few more that feature (mostly) women who promise to become hilarious. The latter shows all spring from the same fertile source, Pam...
by Steve Pfarrer | Nov 2, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Featured, News, Uncategorized
Growing up in Springfield, Aprell May knew a few bits and pieces about her Native American ancestry. But it was not something that family members talked about much. In fact, May says that for years she thought of herself as a “Lost Bird” or a “Missing Feather”...
by Jennifer Levesque | Nov 2, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Uncategorized
The dose of nostalgia you get from toy gawking — in my opinion — is like no other. Whenever I’m on a Walmart or Target run, I have a tendency to gravitate toward the toy aisles to see what new Marvel action figures line the shelves – yes, I am that person. This time...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 2, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Stagestruck, Uncategorized
Next month on area stages (and a screen), three shows featuring women front and center, bucking prejudice, expectations, even labels. Plus, a musical farce with a woman in a beard. That one first. “Die Fledermaus,” the fall offering from Valley Light Opera, is the...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 26, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Next month on area stages (and a screen), three shows that place women front and center, bucking prejudice, expectations, even labels. Plus, a musical farce featuring a woman with a goatee. That one first. Die Fledermaus, the fall offering from Valley Light Opera, is...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 19, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two shows happening in Franklin County this weekend (c’mon Hampshire, it’s not that far) – one an actual happening, the other a comedy about politics that we could wish were actually happening. The comedy, opening at Silverthorne Theater Company on Friday for a...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 19, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
I went to college with Angela Davis, though we moved in different circles. One of us was a campus radical, marching for peace and justice, the other was a serious student focused on getting good grades. The good student was Angela; I was the peace-marcher (and...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 18, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
The funniest show I’ve ever seen onstage I didn’t see onstage. It was One Man, Two Guv’nors, the runaway hit that began at London’s National Theatre, went on to Broadway, and made a star of James Corden. I saw it onscreen at the Amherst Cinema, part of the NT Live...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 13, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
The title of the Puppets in the Green Mountains festival that was supposed to happen two years ago came from Goethe: “There are two things that parents should give their children: roots and wings.” Sandglass Theater’s biennial puppetfest revives this month, after the...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 11, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Danny Eaton opened the Majestic Theater 25 years ago with a jukebox musical, The Buddy Holly Story. So it’s fitting that this anniversary season on the West Springfield stage kicks off with another hit-parade show – and closes next spring with The Buddy Holly Story....
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 2, 2022 | Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
His name was Moses, his chosen people were New Yorkers escaping summer in the city, his promised land was Jones Beach, and his Red Sea crossing was a borough-slicing expressway to Long Island Sound. He was Robert Moses, the fascinating, maddening subject of a smart,...
by Dusty Christensen | Aug 26, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Featured, News, Uncategorized
Stephen Parmenter married his wife Nina on a special, palindromic date: Nov. 11, 2011. Read another way: 11/11/11. So as the couple’s 11th anniversary approaches, Parmenter knew his anniversary gift to his wife had to be special. Nina is originally from Vietnam,...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 25, 2022 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
2020’s Summer of Rage following the murder of George Floyd — another “last straw” in police killings of Black men — gave rise to much soul-searching in many areas of American society, including the theater community. Some of the fruits were on view this summer. Most...