Who hasn’t had moments of self-examination during the past year?
“We had wonderful resources, and no way of sharing them,” says Cape Ann Museum’s director, Oliver Barker, recalling the time last spring when museums worldwide were forced to close. “Prior to the pandemic, we were analog,” he says. “We needed to find a way to use art, past and present, to engage people. We started by looking at what happened on Cape Ann in 1918.”
Illustrating Barker’s point, one of the most striking images in “CAM (Re)Connects,” an exhibition on view now at the Pleasant Street campus, is a simple photograph of the Addison Gilbert Hospital parking lot from the era of the devasting 1918 Spanish Flu. Filled with tents to handle the patient overflow from that deadly pandemic, it’s a reminder of what we’ve been through, and that others endured similarly in the past.
Keith Powers
A chamber group goes on a residency before its first performance? Makes perfect sense.
Boston Baroque has formed a new chamber ensemble from its principal players X-tet. Actually, X-tet was scheduled to make its debut last March 20. You can guess what happened to that concert.
After a year’s delay, it’s time for a public introduction.
The core of X-tet includes Boston Baroque concertmaster Christina Day Martinson, violinist Jesse Irons, violinist/violist Sarah Darling, violist Jason Fisher and cellist Michael Unterman. They’ll camp out for one week in a South Shore AirBnB later this month, after testing and quarantining.
David Ng named executive editor of The Providence Journal
A long journalism career in New York and New Jersey, punctuated by historic local and national events and a newsroom Pulitzer Prize, has brought David Ng to The Providence Journal as the new executive editor.
Ng follows Alan Rosenberg, who retired in December after almost 43 years at the newspaper in various roles.
“The goal of any paper is to be the town square for its citizens whether it’s a city, state or nation a place where we gather to share our stories and to exchange ideas and debate our opinions,” Ng said. “It used to be just print, but now it’s also a digital town hall. These are tough times and people are making tough decisions. And our neighbors, friends and families need facts, information that they can trust, to make those tough decisions. And the powers that be need to know that. The Providence Journal’s soul is fulfilling that mission. I hope to keep fulfilling that mission for readers, p
Trying to create a bright side to a holiday season filled with concert cancellations, the Cape Symphony will present a free all-star variety show, debuting online Sunday, featuring musicians from past “Holiday Pops” concerts.
Symphony musicians had hoped to return to the stage earlier this month. A modest group of musicians was due to gather safely, and perform together for the first time since the orchestra was forced to cancel concerts back in March. The performance would only have had a virtual audience, but at least the musicians would be together again.
It wasn’t to be. Due to the recent surge in COVID-19 cases, restrictions on assembled groups and the use of woodwind instruments had to be tightened again. Bringing together even a dozen or so musicians to create a virtual concert was deemed too risky by health officials.
592 pages
When an old house outside London is renovated, a treasure trove of Jewish documents from the 17th century is discovered in a secret cubbyhole, setting up a mysterious tale about life in a Jewish family that skips between the 1990s and the 1660s. British university historian Helen Watt joins forces with an intrepid graduate student to prove the identity of the person they believe is a female scribe who wrote the forgotten papers for a blind rabbi, a forbidden role for women during a time when the plague was rampant. The story delves into the hardships, successes and intimate lives of several Jewish families in an age where women s roles were extremely circumscribed. While it took me a while to really get into this work of historical fiction that took Rachel Kadish a dozen years to research and write, after I d read a few chapters the intricate story had me hooked. This 2017 National Jewish Book Award winner is a mystery and history all in one.