Sunday, May 3 is Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday, and as part of a worldwide celebration of the man and his music, Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs will host a free concert. The event begins at 4 p.m. Tristan Israel, Nancy Jephcote, Mark Lovewell, and Paul Thurlow will perform songs both written and made famous by the legendary environmentalist, civil rights activist, and folk singer.
That proud twinkle in John Alaimo’s eye on the cover of his latest solo album does not deceive.
Called Songs for Three Seasons, the disc delivers a rich and textured display of a master mood painter on an enchanting and enriching spree. Mr. Alaimo affably invites us to share his whimsy, his nostalgia, an occasional flirtation with regret, all on a splendidly harmonic solo pianistic tour of nature’s three warmer seasons.
In his 1841 essay Circles, the transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson celebrated the moment when a visionary rises up amongst us. “By a flash of his eye,” wrote Emerson, the artist “burns up the veil which shrouded all things, and the meaning of the very furniture, of cup and saucer, of chair and clock and tester, is manifest.”
On April 4, the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School Minnesingers performed at the Massachusetts Instrumental and Choral Conductors Association Festival, and despite this being their first return to the festival in ten years and singing pieces of the highest-rated level of difficulty, they excelled, and were awarded by the association a bronze medal. Congratulations go out to the Minnesingers; their director, Janis Wightman and their accompianist, Melanie Sroka.
Eight Island kids participated in a dance competition Tuesday morning at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square in New York city as a part of the Pimple Blocker Battle, hosted by Clearasil. The competitions pits five dance crews against each other to become the first Clearasil Dance Crew.
The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School Minnesingers are in rehearsal mode for a very busy spring performance season. On April 4, they will participate in the Massachusetts Instrumental and Choral Conductors’ Association festival at Algonquin Regional High School. Competing against set performance standards, they will be judged in several categories including tone quality, balance and blend, expression, rhythmic and intonation precision, and style. This is their first trip to a MICCA festival in 10 years.