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By STEVE PFARRER

What a difference a year makes.Late last May, the Northampton Fire Department abruptly shut down virtually all music performances at the Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity in Florence, citing inadequate fire prevention measures at the venue.The move...

By STEVE PFARRER

If you’re like me, counting the days to spring, it’s a little over three weeks to the official first day, March 19.Yet that’s just a date on the calendar, and the weather in mid-March can still spell winter. But one antidote to that is to hit the Back...

By STEVE PFARRER

It’s still winter, but music festivals, small and large, are in the works. Here’s a look at some coming events, one that’s imminent and one further down the road.First off, Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares is offering a mini-fest next weekend, Feb. 22-25,...

By STEVE PFARRER

The Parlor Room features a steady stream of singer-songwriters, given the Northampton club’s intimate setting is ideal for acoustic music.The vast majority of those performers come bearing acoustic guitars. But Abbie Gardner will bring her dobro, or...

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

NORTHAMPTON — The city’s License Commission this week canceled two of business owner Eric Suher’s liquor licenses that were to be transferred to The Parlor Room, the new owners of Iron Horse Music Hall, and Gombo, a downtown Cajun restaurant, as part...

By STEVE PFARRER

Back in the 1980s, Jack Frisch, then in his early twenties, got bitten pretty hard by the jazz bug, taking the ferry from his home in Staten Island, New York, over to Manhattan with some friends and haunting record shops.His interest had been...

By STEVE PFARRER

When John Piskor opened his Cajun-style restaurant, Gombo Nola Kitchen & Oyster Bar, in Northampton last year, he said he eventually wanted it to turn it into something akin to a New Orleans cafe, where people come out for a drink and live music after...

By STEVE PFARRER

In my last column, I mentioned that The Parlor Room in Northampton and the Marigold Theater are maintaining busy schedules right through these early, dead-of-winter days.Another area venue that keeps pumping up the music is The Drake in Amherst, and...

By STEVE PFARRER

When Lisa Kron was growing up in southern Michigan, her family would make an annual trek to a noted amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio — Cedar Point — one of the oldest operating amusement parks in the country, known in particular for its 16 different...

By STEVE PFARRER

Early January, just after the holidays and New Year’s Eve have run their course, can be a quiet time for a lot of music venues.But The Parlor Room in Northampton has put together a pretty jam-packed schedule right through this month, starting with a...

By STEVE PFARRER

He’s one of the most famous and beloved children’s book authors ever, and he grew about 20 miles south of here. So the work of Theodor Seuss Geisel — better known, or course, as Dr. Seuss — seemed like a natural fit for the new musical by Amherst...

By TINKY WEISBLAT

HAWLEY — Alice Parker, who composed more than 500 pieces in a life devoted to singing and song, died at her home in Hawley early on Christmas Eve. She was 98.While Parker’s work included operas, song cycles, cantatas and anthems, she was particularly...

By STEVE PFARRER

Like father, like son: Tim Buckley and his son, Jeff, both became musicians at a young age, and both died well before their time — Tim of a heroin overdose at age 28 in 1975, and Jeff from drowning at age 30 in 1997.Tim Buckley became a pretty...

By STEVE PFARRER

As Steve Sanderson sees it, First Night Northampton is getting its mojo back.The annual New Year’s Eve celebration got shot down two years in a row by COVID-19, first in December 2020 and then again in December 2021 when, just days before the event...

By STEVE PFARRER

People celebrate the holidays in different ways.Lucas Fappiano and Colin Hodgson are doing it by hosting a free screening of movies by area filmmakers, with the goal of bringing people together to recognize some of the Valley’s artistic strength and...

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

NORTHAMPTON — For Argentinean Jews, the word “Libertad” isn’t just the Spanish word for freedom — it’s also the name of one of the streets within the old Jewish quarter in Buenos Aires, as well as the name of the largest synagogue in that city.It’s...

By STEVE PFARRER

When staff at the Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity, in the midst of doing renovations in the basement, came across a tattered but still readable playbill from a concert apparently staged at the property in 1873 — then known simply as the Florence...

By STEVE PFARRER

There’s no shortage of theater in the Valley. But how often can you catch two solo productions by women on the same weekend?On Nov. 17, “All Things Equal: The Life & Trials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” a solo show starring Michelle Azar as the late...

By STEVE PFARRER

In the last few years, a number of music and performing venues in the Valley have embraced the nonprofit model to support the arts, from The Drake in Amherst to the Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity in Florence to The Parlor Room in Northampton.Now...

By JULIAN MENDOZA

For the small handful of Pioneer Valley artists nominated between this year’s New England Music Awards and Boston Music Awards, the region’s highest musical honor would not merely be an individual accolade, or even a matter of putting the Valley on...