Musical to Put You Under a Spell
Spellcheck is for wussies. Plus it’s boring. A right answer every time. Where’s the drama in that? How about backing away from the keyboard and heading to where the real action is, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Starting July 22 and continuing through August 8, this Tony Award winning musical will be moving into the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven, courtesy of the Island Theatre Workshop.
Livingston Taylor was the pesky little brother who ran around at family gatherings, the one that loved show and tell at school, and the little brother that pulled at sister Kate Taylor’s pigtails. Hopefully at their Tabernacle concert this weekend, there will be no hair pulling, only song.
“I’m amusing, but Kate is magical,” Mr. Taylor said on a recent afternoon on his back patio. “My sister is so beautiful, so spirited, and has such a grace. I’m good, but my sister is great. She’s got the magic.”
Carol Wincenc, one of the most respected and praised flutists performing today, will be the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society featured guest artist in the second concert of its season next Monday at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown.
Ms. Wincenc’s stand-out piece will be Fury of Light, written for her by the well-known young opera composer Jake Heggie, which sets to music Mary Oliver’s poem Sunrise. Ms. Wincenc debuted this work at Merkin Hall in 2009. Another virtuoso piece will be Grigoras Dinicu’s Hora Staccato.
Experiment: Put 17 teenagers together under one roof. Take away their cell phones and send them to their rooms at 10 p.m., lights out at 11. Sketch out a detailed daily itinerary that includes intense workouts, short breaks for meals and absolutely no beach time.
What might they do? Throw temper tantrums? Band together and stage a full-scale revolt?
In this case, they sing. Arias.
This is OperaFest, a two-week, summer camp-like program for some of the youngest and most dedicated opera enthusiasts in the country.
Spirituals Enlightenment
The songs sung by slaves to send messages to each other will be decoded by the teaching choir led by Jim Thomas, president of the U.S. Slave Song Project, on Saturday at 7 p.m. at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs. The concert, Songs from the Field: The Mystery of Spirituals, with guest Lavert Stuart, is family-friendly. Tickets are $15.
A grand puppet parade down Main street, Vineyard Haven on Saturday will be a highlight of the fourth annual weekend-long Martha’s Vineyard Puppet Festival. The parade will begin at 5 p.m., but anyone who would like to join the parade can bring a puppet friend and meet at Katharine Cornell Theatre at 4:30, or come at 3 p.m. to a free puppet-making event and make a parade puppet to follow the giant puppets — Mother Earth, Mother Ocean and Father Sky.