MuseFlashes

Compiled by BONNIE WELLS

Published on March 07, 2008

Celtic group Leahy sets mood for St. Pat's

Leahy, a Canadian family octet, brings its upbeat blend of Celtic, folk and pop music to the UMass Fine Arts Center Concert Hall March 12 at 7:30 p.m.

Led by world-class fiddler Donnell Leahy, the siblings combine a variety of styles, including jigs, czardas, Cape Breton fiddling and Celtic music with high-energy step dancing.

The group is continuing the tradition of the Leahy Family Band, in which the children performed with their parents in the 1970s. An extension of Canada's rural musical traditions, the family played and sang together in the evenings after long days of working their farm. Once they went public, they quickly became a favorite at folk festivals and country fairs. A documentary on the group, "Leahy: Music Most of All," won a 1985 Academy Award for Best Foreign Student Film.

The ensemble took a hiatus in the late 1980s, but during the following decade two of the sibs began performing publicly and gradually lured the others back in. In 1997, they recorded an album, "Leahy," that reached Number 4 on the Billboard world music chart in the U.S.

That success led to honors for Best New Group and Best Instrumental Group at the 1997 Juno Awards, Canada's equivalent of the Grammys. The following year, a performance at the Juno Awards led to an international tour with Shania Twain. The group has since added two more recordings to their artistic satchel, the 2001 "Lakefield" and 2004 "In All Things."

Tickets for Leahy range from $15-$35; $7-$15 for five college students and $12 youth 17 and under. They can be reserved at the Fine Arts Center Box Office at 545-2511, or online at www.fineartscenter.com. Also on offer is a Celtic-inspired prixe fix dinner at the University Club prior to the show, at $25 adults, $6 for youth 17 and under. For menu and reservations, call the FAC Box Office.

Lecture series to fete digital arts in the Valley

Amherst author John Katzenbach will kick off the lecture series "Valleywood II: A Celebration of the Digital Arts in the Pioneer Valley" with a talk titled "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Why I Love Hollywood and Why I Hate Hollywood" Saturday, from 2 to 3:30 p.m., at the Jones Library in Amherst.

The series sponsored by The Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce, Reader to Reader Inc. and A-Z International Associates aims to celebrate the digital arts in the Valley with monthly talks by regional writers, screenwriters, filmmakers, animators and others who develop content for Hollywood, television and other digital media while making their homes in the Valley.

Katzenbach is a best-selling crime fiction writer whose first brush with Hollywood came when his novel "In the Heat of the Summer" was adapted for the big screen as "The Mean Season."

Since then his books have resulted in the films "Just Cause," and "Hart's War." Filming of the script he wrote based on his novel "The Madman's Tale" is scheduled to begin in the spring.

"Having one's work adapted for film is a bittersweet affair," Katzenbach said in a statement. "There are many positives and many negatives and I'll talk about both."

Admission to the talk in the Large Meeting Room at the library at 43 Amity St. is $10; $8 for Amherst Chamber members. The series continues April 12 with a talk by Pelham screenwriter Dan Giat, followed by a talk May 10 by Belchertown improv theater veteran and videographer David Shepherd. For more information about the program call 253-4124.

Rafter-rattling singing at Sacred Harp weekend

If the term Sacred Harp singing, a.k.a. shape-note singing, is mysterious to you, this weekend offers one of the best opportunities of the year to check it out.

Saturday and Sunday upwards of 300 Sacred Harp singers from all over the region will converge on the Northampton Center for the Arts for two days of foot-stomping, rafter-rattling, four-part harmony shape-note singing at the Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp Singing Convention. It's free and open to the public to join in, dip in and out or just listen.

Sacred Harp is a genre of 19th-century vocal music that many people heard for the first time in the 2003 film "Cold Mountain," though there have been Valley groups gathering regularly to sing together for over 20 years.

The term Sacred Harp comes from the name of the songbook the singers use, which is a compilation of sacred and secular music, continuously in print since 1844. The book uses a form of musical notation invented in 1802 in Newburyport, based on a four-syllable scale, with noteheads in squares and triangles in addition to the rounded form - hence the alternative term for the genre, "shape-note" singing.

But don't let the description daunt. The group welcomes inexperienced singers and the drill can be easily learned. A local devotee once described it as the 19th-century analogue of today's rap or rock and roll.

The convention takes place from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, at the center for the arts at 17 New South St. (Daylight Savings Time begins Sunday.) The throng will break for a potluck lunch at 12:30 on both days.

For more information, call Peter Irvine, chair of the convention, at (413) 587-0008. For information on a local group that meets to sing regularly at the First Congregational Church in Amherst, call (413) 773-8325.

Cuban filmmaker shows documentaries

Cuban filmmaker Ricardo Bacallao will be on hand for a screening and discussion of two of his documentaries March 10, from 7 to 10 p.m., in Herter Hall, Room 227, at the University of Massachusetts.

In his 2004 "Short Radiography of Hip Hop in Cuba," and the 2006 "The Maji-Maji Readings" Bacallao uses two very different cultural phenomena - Hip-Hop music in Cuba and the work of the Abok Ensemble, a prominent Afro-German theater group in Berlin - to comment on the status of blacks and the manifestations of racism in both societies.

Born in Havana, Bacallao graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte as a director of TV, radio and film. He is a member of the Cuban Association of Young Creators and the National Movement of Video. Bacallao is a screenwriter and cameraman as well as a painter and sculptor. He recently arrived in the United States from Berlin.

South Church presents staged reading of J.B.'

"In every respect, "J.B." is theater on its highest level," wrote critic Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times, after attending the 1958 premiere of Archibald MacLeish's play in verse at the ANTA Theater in New York.

The show based on the biblical story of Job went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama that year. And since the challenge of responding to undeserved suffering is as fresh today as it was when "J.B." and indeed the Book of Job itself was written, the South Congregational Church offers yet another opportunity to mull the moral question in a staged reading of the play next week.

"J.B." is set in postwar suburban America, where the title character is a prosperous, upright man who loses everything without cause or explanation, and struggles to maintain his integrity.

Harrison Gregg performs the title role with Tina Swift as Sarah, J.B.'s wife. Doug Albertson and Rev. Caroline Meyers perform as Nickles and Zuss, the "Satan" and "God" figures in the play. Twenty other members of the South Church community participate as cast and crew for the 90-minute show, which is directed by Bruce Penniman.

The performance is free and open to the public March 12 at 7 p.m. at the church at 1066 South East St., on the South Amherst Common. For more information call 253-2669.

Classic women's health book looks at pregnancy

For decades, women have found honest and up-to-date information on women's health issues in the trusted tome "Our Bodies, Ourselves," first published in 1970 by the nonprofit Boston Women's Health Book Collective. Now Simon & Schuster has published the group's latest version, focusing on pregnancy and birth.

"Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth" covers topics such as choosing a good health-care provider, understanding pre-natal testing, coping with labor pain, speeding physical recovery and adjusting to life as a new mother.

Several editors and contributors to the new book, including the collective's co-founder Judy Norsigian, co-editor Kiki Zeldes and co-author Julie Feineland, will discuss the book and sign copies March 13 at 7 p.m. at Food For Thought Books in Amherst, followed by a reception.

The event, sponsored by the Everywoman's Center and MotherWoman, is free and open to the public at 106 No. Pleasant St.

College sparks dialogue on war and peace with Web site, art and music

This semester two classes in the music department at Amherst College created an interactive Web site called "The Experience of War" to encourage a conversation, on campus and beyond, about music, war, violence and peace.

Saturday afternoon at two p.m. in the college's Stirn Auditorium, around the corner from the Mead Art Museum, the students will present and discuss the site, which includes a gallery of images, video, sounds and music and text.

The presentation will be followed at 4 p.m. with a reception in the museum, where a display of artworks used by the classes will be on view and music will be performed by the jazz combo Offbeat Generation as well as other student musicians associated with the "Experience of War" project. Both events are free and open to the public.

The day culminates in a rare performance of Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem" at 8 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall in the Arms Music Center.

The Amherst College Choral Society will be joined by the Smith College Glee Club and featured soloists Janna Baty, mezzo-soprano, tenor Scott Murphee and baritone Richard Lalli as well as the The Amherst College Symphony Orchestra.

The piece features a dramatic liturgical setting of the traditional Latin Mass for the Dead, interspersed with settings of anti-war texts by Wilfred Owen, a young soldier-poet who died during the last week of hostilities of World War I.

Tickets are available for $6; free to five college students with I.D. All tickets are for reserved seating and may be reserved by e-mailing amherstwarrequiem@gmail.com.

Literary detective to speak at conference on Shakespeare

Vassar College professor Don Foster, whose literary text analysis skills have been brought to bear in such high-profile cases as the Unabomber episode, the JonBenet Ramsey murder and the 2001 anthrax letters, will turn his attention to Shakespeare Saturday at a daylong conference at the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies in Amherst.

Foster is the keynote speaker at the conference titled "Suspected Shakespeares," which runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the center at 650 East Pleasant St.

Other presenters will discuss attribution problems with Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew," as well as issues of authorship of "The Booke of Sir Thomas More." Members of the Renaissance Center Theater Company will perform staged readings of selected passages from the disputed works.

The conference is free and open to the public and lunch will be served. For more information or for required pre-registration call (413) 577-3600 or e-mail to renaissance@english.umass.edu.