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Marking the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s triumphant return to its summer home, BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons—who leads eight orchestra programs this summer—opens the BSO’s Tanglewood season on Saturday, July 10, with an all-Beethoven program, featuring one of the festival’s most preeminent guest artists, Emanuel Ax, performing the Piano Concerto No. 5, Emperor, on a program with one of Beethoven’s most iconic works, Symphony No. 5.

Thornton Wilder's Our Town is a widely produced icon of American Theatre. It is the subject of a new oral history by Howard Sherman.

Robert Morgan was born and raised in Pittsfield but became a citizen of the world. Now retired from a career in international finance he has returned to his roots. That means full time in the studio creating enormous representational/ surreal works on paper. Widely exhibited the new work will be seen at Blue Heron Gallery Online, a virtual art gallery. Well known in the Berkshires the virtual exhibition exposes the work to a readily accessible internet audience.

The Irish Repertory Theatre has given ten streamed performances, or arranged for them, during the time of Covid. Each one has added immensely to our pleasure. The latest comes straight from Dublin. It is a one man performance on stage by the actor Brendan Conroy. His lilting voice, describing the bleak Aran Islands and the lives of its inhabitants draws us in. We quickly understand that the man who wrote the words, J. M. Synge, was a musician. As words roll in Conroy's mouth, we hear musical phrases, dips and crescendos, textured takes on vowels and consonants.

New Normal Rep.'s inaugural production is the dramedy Jericho, by the company's artistic director, Jack Canfora. The new online theater company's debut production features strong acting, quality direction. Jericho is streaming through April 4 at NewNormalRep.org. The play is touching and funny, but not particularly original.

Playwright Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s poignant drama deals with trauma and loss that most of us, thankfully, will never have to handle. She speaks to the fears that women particularly suffer – and moreso, women of color; and moreso yet, teenage girls of color.  These core elements are enhanced by a rich exploration of boundaries – parent-child, teacher-student, parent-teacher, friend-to-friend, as well as those of professional and sexual propriety.

American art scholar Patricia Hills has researched and published the work of genre painter Eastman Johnson (1824-1906). She is seeking funds to launch a Catalogue Raisonné website working with the National Academy of Design.

New Federal Theatre has always promoted the inclusion of women artists as part of its mission. It is no surprise that they are offering works by and with women for Women’s History Month. They appeal to everyone. Petronia Paley and Margaret Odette are featured in the two-hander, Hospice by Pearl Cleage. Billed as a reading, the performances are full characterizations by actors.

Blue Heron Gallery Online, a virtual art gallery, will be presenting the art of North Adams artist Chalice Mitchell beginning at noon on Saturday, March 1, 2021.  The show, appearing on www.blueherongallery.online, will feature her paintings, and present the artist in photographs and her Artist Statement.

Growing up in Rochester, the home of Eastman Kodak, Carl Chiarenza's interest in photography began at an early age. On many levels it is significant that Career Retrospective: Journey into the Unknown is being presented at the George Eastman Museum. It remains on view through June 20.

Hancock Shaker Village, one of the most comprehensively interpreted Shaker sites in the U.S. and the oldest working farm in Western Massachusetts, announced today the appointments of Linda Johnson as Curator and Brenda Lynch as Director of Development, a newly created position.  

Sir Simon Rattle has taken out German citizenship to be closer to his children. It is also said he is exiting Britain and the cultural consequences of Brexit. Rattle will succeed Mariss Jansons as the chief conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerische Rundfunks. Recently he conducted the orchestra in a world premiere of Ondrej Adámek's "Where Are You?"

Jacob's Pillow launches its 90th season with continuity as well as renovation and a Dance We Must fundraising campaign. It seeks to raise $2 million toward a goal of $22 million.

Artist Carrie Mae Weems will join students from Williams College, Bennington College, and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts for an online public conversation at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 1. Some 500 individuals may register for the Zoom lecture which will later be available on YouTube.

This year, the presentation of the Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre will be digital. The event honoring promising lyricists and librettists will stream at 7 p.m. EST Monday, March 15. Melissa Li, Benjamin Scheuer, and Kit Yan are this year's winners. The award's namesake, Edward Kleban, is the late Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning lyricist of A Chorus Line.

Groupmuse, the community-building startup that aims to adapt the concert experience, announced their plan to become a musician-owned cooperative. They have assembled a Founding Council made up of ten diverse young musician activists. ranging from international prize-winners, to artists who have played over 150 concerts through Groupmuse, to social justice activists fighting to bring about a more equitable and inclusive concert music ecosystem.

When James Laughlin founded New Directions he wanted the company to be a place where writers could carry out their experiments in print. His initial mission was simple: introduce American readers to  international, modernist writers who could not get their work published in the United States--Dylan Thomas, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov (Laughlin rejected his scandalous blockbuster, Lolita!), and many more. "These writers were really radical,” says publisher Barbara Epler. Today they are part of the canon. Indeed, they are its twentieth-century core. 

While no others loomed so large in the public’s fascination, “The Queen’s Gambit” was certainly not the first performance work to feature chess as a central theme.  Among others was Anthony Clarvoe’s play “The Art of Sacrifice” which was first produced in 2006. This production is captured with Zoom technology.  Director Desdemona Chiang has chosen to use conventional Zoom format with actors facing separate fixed cameras.  With this limitation, actors appear as talking heads delivering competing monologues.

MASS MoCA staff petitioned the National Labor Relations Board today, March 8th, for a union election. The unit includes curators, art fabricators, educators, facilities, other front-facing staff, and more.

The winners of the Virtual Berlinale, 2021, have received their Golden and Silver Bears and will return to Berlin in June for the award ceremonies and, so the world hopes, for a public viewing of their films.

MASS MoCA presents Close to You, a group exhibition that gathers the work of artists who probe the capacity of the visual arts to conjure feelings of closeness — both to others and to ourselves. On view from Saturday, April 3, through January 2022, in the Michael & Agnese Meehan Gallery, the exhibition features the work of Laura Aguilar, Chloë Bass, Maren Hassinger, Eamon Ore-Giron, Clifford Prince King, and Kang Seung Lee.

Audiences will find a missing person in the show Safe House, a hybrid between a film and a live show. Sarasota's Urbanite Theatre's production runs through April 4.

Patricia “Pat” White is a mainstay of the New Federal Theatre (NFT). For twenty-five years she has handled all the details of running the producing company. This allows founder Woodie King Jr. to read scripts until 2 o’clock in the morning.

This March, journalist Julie Scelfo will be hosting conversations about extraordinary women from the nineteenth century who have helped shape the American story with their achievements. The events will occur free on Zoom.

Skyspace will augment one of the world’s most comprehensive experiences of installations by James Turrell while realizing a vision the artist had when visiting the museum’s campus in 1987. The Skyspace will join a long-term exhibition of Turrell works at MASS MoCA, which includes one work from each of the six decades of the artist’s career.