Forbes Library will host “Accessing Portable Apple and Android Devices”

WHAT: Accessing Portable Apple and Android Devices
WHEN:  Friday, May 10 at 1 PM
WHERE: Forbes Library, 20 West St, Northampton, MA

Forbes library will host a program to teach folks how to make using Android and iOS devices easier, especially for folks with low vision. When Apple introduced the iPad in 2010, it had no features to make it accessible to individuals with vision, hearing, motor and like challenges. Since that first iPad, Apple has made enormous strides in supporting access in all their devices. As a result, other manufactures were pressed to offer similar access. This class will focus on enlarged text, spoken output and fine motor access. Bring your interest and, if you have one, your device and lots of questions. Forbes Library will host “Accessing Portable Apple and Android Devices” on Friday, May 10 at 1 PM. This workshop will be led by Rick Ely.

This workshop is part of "Accessibility Focus", a series of programs focusing on accessibility and assistive technology. The events in this series are designed for anyone with an interest in accessibility, including educators, designers, decision makers, and anyone who might benefit, or knows someone who might benefit, from increased accessibility. Many of the events in this series focus on assistive technology, which helps people with challenges like low vision, hearing loss, or fine motor problems that make holding a book or turning pages difficult.

For questions about the workshop please contact Forbes Library at 413-587-1017 or info@forbeslibrary.org.

Young@Heart + Chicago Children's Choir = Mash-Up VII

WHAT: Mash-Up VII: The Young@Heart Chorus (Y@H) and Chicago Children’s Choir (CCC)
WHEN: Saturday, May 4 @ 7:30PM
WHERE: Academy of Music Theatre, Northampton MA

The Young@Heart Chorus (Y@H) and Chicago Children’s Choir (CCC) team up once again for Mash-Up VII on Saturday, May 4 @ 7:30PM at the Academy of Music Theatre, Northampton MA. Tickets are available at aomtheatre.com or by calling the Academy box office at 4134-230-9032 ext. 102

Y@H and the CCC close the generation gap in Mash-Up VII. The choruses are world renown for their commitment to changing lives through music, albeit from different stages of life. The Choruses will sing separately and together. Together they will explore music from Matisyahu to the Specials and Manhattan Transfer to Chicago’s own, Sly and the Family Stone...and much more.

"One Day" w/ Y@H and CCC from 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwpyDP_PjEM

The Hyde Park Neighborhood Choir of Chicago Children’s Choir is one of the shining lights of the South Side of Chicago. CCC Director Mollie Stone, who attended Amherst College, describes the impact of the collaboration:

“When our Chicago Children’s Choir Hyde Park Neighborhood Choir toured to Northampton, Massachusetts in 2014 to collaborate with Young@Heart, our singers’ lives were transformed. For the first time, they realized that the powerful experience of singing together and creating community within the context of an ensemble was a gift they could share for their entire lives. They started to understand that their music- making truly functioned as a way to create community with people from any background, any age, and any part of the world. Our singers had been performing for their elders at senior centers around Chicago for years, but had never had the chance to see their elders as fellow performers, and collaborators. Witnessing an entire ensemble of elderly singers coming together to sing music from genres that are usually perceived as belonging to the “younger generation” also gave our singers an important understanding that one can cross the imagined boundaries imposed on us by society—that they have the ability to learn about any type of music, and connect with the people who love it, and perform it.”

Mash-Up VII is sponsored by Greenfield Savings Bank, Lathrop Communities, Christopher Heights, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Valley Advocate, The River/WHMP, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mass Cultural Council, and the Davis Foundation.

Poster attached. Photos furnished upon Request.

For more information please contact Bob Cilman info@youngatheartchorus.com or call 413-230- 7909.

Chicago Children’s Choir (Josephine Lee, President and Artistic Director) is the nation’s preeminent youth choral organization, serving over 5,000 students across the city of Chicago. Founded in Hyde Park in direct response to the Civil Rights Movement in 1956, CCC has grown from one choir into a vast network of in-school and after-school programs driven by one mission: to inspire and change lives through music.

As a national and international touring ensemble, Chicago Children’s Choir has performed throughout the United States, in Cuba, South Africa, India, Argentina, Uruguay, Korea, Canada, Japan and Europe and for such dignitaries as former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former Chinese President Hu Jintao, former South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso.

CCC has performed with or for such acclaimed artists as Renée Fleming, Denyce Graves, Kathleen Battle, Luciano Pavarotti, Samuel Ramey, Yo-Yo Ma, Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, Enrique Iglesias, Quincy Jones, Al Green, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Bobby McFerrin, Kurt Elling, Celine Dion, Eddie Vedder and Beyoncé. CCC has recorded on multiple labels including James Ginsburg’s Cedille Records (Songs from Spoon River, 2009) and has released five studio recordings under its own label– We All Live Here (2016), Holiday

Harmony (2010), Songs on the Road to Freedom (2008), Sita Ram (2006) and Open Up Your Heart (2004).

Young@Heart
What started out in 1982 at a Western Massachusetts elderly housing project to joyfully pass the time instead of passing before your time has developed into the stereotype- defying, generation-crossing musical extravaganza better known as The Young@Heart Chorus. From The New York Times to TIME, The Tonight Show to The Ellen Show and stars of the Fox Searchlight Top 50 all-time documentary, Young@Heart, this group of fearless seniors, ranging in age from 73- 92, has toured from Northampton to New Zealand, Europe to Japan. Featured in E*Trade’s acclaimed Super Bowl ad This Is Getting Old (2018), Young@Heart continues to wow audiences worldwide while conducting weekly rehearsals and concerts with incarcerated singers in two local prisons through their PrisonVision program launched in 2014. In their annual Mash-Up concerts, they collaborate with the best youth performance groups, including Staten Island’s PS22 Chorus, Chicago Children’s Choir, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.

EMERGENCE/SEE

Pop-a-cork for the arts!

WHAT: Pop-a-cork for the arts!
WHEN: June 15, 2019, 7pm
WHERE: Glendale Ridge Vineyard, 155 Glendale Rd, Southampton, MA 01073

Please join us at Glendale Ridge Vineyard for the 2019 Fundraiser to celebrate and support the historic Academy of Music Theatre!  The Academy spends all year bringing diverse arts programming to the pioneer valley, but we can’t do it without the support of our community.  Come sit out on the winery lawn, enjoy the views, a glass of wine, the sweet tunes of Eavesdrop, and remember for a moment what it means to live in the Pioneer Valley.  Official invitations will go out in May.

ABOUT EAVESDROP
Hailing from the Northeast, these Pioneer Valley natives provide a sound all their own; a perfect combination of soulful vocals, intricate harmonies, contagious melodies and moving rhythm.  Originating as a trio, friends Kara Rose Wolf, Kerrie T. Bowden and Laura Marie Picchi maintain their vocal roots and continue to shape their sound through writing and collaborative instrumentation. Eavesdrop’s debut EP, The Afterglow, showcased the trio’s vocally charged acoustic, folk, soul roots. With their latest release, TIDES, the band has expanded into a six piece ensemble. Co-produced by Alan Evans and Ross Bellenoit, TIDES is the band’s first full length album. It brings the listener on a ride alongside the three songbirds, taking a deeper look into the life events that fostered their creativity.

KARA ROSE WOLF - VOX & PERCUSSION
KERRIE BOWDEN - VOX & PERCUSSION
LAURA PICCHI - VOX/A. GUITAR/STOMP
JARED QUINN - E. GUITAR
MARC SEEDORF - BASS
STURGIS CUNNINGHAM - DRUMSET

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

Richard Shaw: Reading and Book Launch

WHAT: Reading and Book Launch
WHEN: Thursday April 25, 7:30pm
WHERE: A.P.E. Gallery, 126 Main Street, Northampton, MA 01060

Richard Shaw will be reading from his new collection,

The Orchard House (Antrim House, 2019)

“The Orchard House is a transcendent book replete with lyric poems not just regarding the human interface with nature but something infinitely more. Richard Shaw’s poems are meditations that develop into mystical experience through keen observation.”

—Wally Swist

“The natural world quickens within him in these quietly rhapsodic poems. Shaw’s unpunctuated lines convey breathlessness, silences, and ecstasy. What a generous vessel is this poet.”

—Donald Platt

The 26th Annual Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival is proud to present a program of short films by Vanessa Renwick

WHAT: Program of Short Films by Vanessa Renwick (approximately 75 minutes)
WHEN: Wednesday, April 17, 7:30pm
WHERE: Isenberg School of Management room 137, UMass Amherst

Vanessa Renwick is a Portland, Oregon based artist and filmmaker. She is described on her own website as the "founder and janitor" of the Oregon Department of Kickass. Renwick's style of art is both experimental and documentary, and comes in many forms. Her work is highly invasive and radically political. Through her films, Renwick "builds authentic moving image works revealing an insatiable curiosity and unflinching engagement with the world around her."  Her art has been shown internationally, in such venues as the Museum of Modern Art, The Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, the Andy Warhol Museum, and many more.

Focusing on glimpses of outsiders from the Pacific Northwest, or the landscapes that surround them, her creatively eclectic filmmaking covers a range of style, subject matter, and tone through experimental approaches to the moving image. Once you’ve seen them, you won’t soon forget.  This evening’s screenings offer a range of extraordinary work from her extensive and often surprising filmography.

Vanessa Renwick will be present for discussion and Q&A

FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

https://www.umass.edu/film/event/screening-selection-shorts-vanessa-renwick

Live Mural Painting of Sojourner Truth

WHAT: Watch local artist paint a mural of Sojourner Truth
WHEN: Friday-Sunday April 26-28, 10am-2pm
WHERE: Intersection of Main St & Maple St, Florence, MA

Northampton artist Jeff Wrench will paint a portrait of abolitionist, women's rights activist, and Florence resident Sojourner Truth on an electrical box at the center of town. Stop by to see the work in progress or talk to the artist.

Recently, Jeff Wrench painted portraits of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost at the center of Amherst. He is also known for painting colorful and sometimes semi-abstract portraits on paint chips and sheets of wallpaper.

Instagram: @noisician
Web: noisician.com

This event is supported in part by a grant from the Northampton Arts Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.