Salisbury Handmade is having their first Artisan Market of the year on Saturday, May 10th from 10 am - 5 pm on The White Hart lawn in Salisbury, CT. There will be 20 plus artisans set up on the lawn featuring jewelry, baked goods, woodwork, fiber arts, metal and leather work, ceramics, and so much more! This is a not to miss event for your Mother’s Day weekend. Visit artisansale.org for the full list of participating artisans. The market is free. All are welcome.

Crescendo presents their last concert of the 2024­–25 season, offering two performances of a rarely heard early Baroque work for soloists, chorus, and orchestra: Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo (Representation of Soul and Body) by Emilio de’ Cavalieri. This musical drama in three acts was composed in 1600 and is the first musical work of its kind. Written and published at a turning point in musical history, the beginning of the revolutionary Baroque era, this work is considered both an opera and an oratorio. Among a cast of allegorical figures, the two main characters Soul and Body argue about the meaning of their existence. They are tempted to enjoy material goods by Pleasure, World, and Worldly Life, and urged to pursue a virtuous life by Counsel, Intellect, and the Guardian Angel. The conflict also includes visions of Hell, with the appearance of the Damned Souls, and of heaven in the voices of the Blessed Souls and the Angels. Also on the program are two short balletti by Cavalieri and his contemporary Cristofano Malvezzi, composed for the marriage of their patrons Ferdinand I of Medici and Christina of Lorraine. Malvezzi’s piece features thirty voices, divided into seven choirs, creating an auditory climax for this performance.

The cast of soloists includes internationally and nationally renowned early music specialists from Montreal, Canada to New York City. Soprano Paulina Francisco, Anima, “delivers a strong performance [and] showcases her clarity, control and her agility” (The Washington Post). Baritone Anicet Castel, Corpo, has performed with famous European Baroque ensembles such as Les Arts Florissants, Le Concert d'Astrée, Le Poème Harmonique, and Accentus. Bass-baritone Paul Max Tipton, Mondo, is a soloist for Bach Collegium Japan and has been described as “a dignified and beautiful singer” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Tenor Pablo Bustos, Intelletto, “sang elegantly, with his own brilliant set of flourishes in the da capo” (The Boston Musical Intelligencer). The cast also includes baritone Jermaine Woodard Jr., Consiglio; countertenor Benjamin Rauch, Piacere; mezzo soprano Salomé Sandoval, Angel Custode; and soprano Jennifer Tyo Oberto, Vita Mondana. The award-winning Crescendo Chorus of thirty-five singers includes both amateur and professional singers of the tri-state area. They are joined by Crescendo Period Instrument Orchestra, an ensemble of fourteen period instrument players from New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and Bloomington, IN.

This concert will be repeated the following day, Sunday, May 11, at 4:00pm at Saint James Place in Great Barrington. Tickets range from $10 to $75, and are available online at www.crescendomusic.org or on a first-come-first-served basis at the door, 45 minutes prior to the concerts.

A pre-concert talk will be held on Saturday, April 26 at 2:00 PM at Trinity Church. Crescendo’s Founding Artistic Director Christine Gevert will explain the background of Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione. The talk will also be live streamed on Zoom. Details will be available on Crescendo’s website: www.crescendomusic.org.

Support for these concerts has been provided to Crescendo by the Connecticut State Department of Economic and Community Development/Connecticut Office of the Arts (COA) from the Connecticut State Legislature. We also thank NBT Bank and WMNR Fine Arts Radio for their support.

Presented by Oblong Books in partnership with The White Hart & Scoville Memorial Library.

An Economist Best Book of 2024!

Tickets Required.

Tickets $15: Include a complimentary glass of house wine, beer or non alcoholic beverage plus a $5 voucher towards the purchase of THE EDITOR at this event.

Author Sara B. Franklin and Alice Quinn will discuss Franklin's book THE EDITOR - the story of the woman behind some of the most important authors of the 20th century.

During her more than fifty years as an editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Jones nurtured the careers of literary icons such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Tyler, and John Updike, and helped launched new genres and trends in literature. At the forefront of the cookbook revolution, she published the who’s who of food writing: Edna Lewis, M.F.K. Fisher, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, James Beard, and, most famously, Julia Child.

Sara B. Franklin is a writer, teacher, and oral historian. She received a 2020–2021 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Public Scholars grant for her research on Judith Jones, and teaches courses on food, writing, embodied culture, and oral history at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She is the author of The Editor, the editor of Edna Lewis, and coauthor of The Phoenicia Diner Cookbook. She holds a PhD in food studies from NYU and studied documentary storytelling at both the Duke Center for Documentary Studies and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. She lives in Kingston, New York.

Alice Quinn, executive director of the Poetry Society of America for eighteen years, was also the poetry editor at The New Yorker from 1987 to 2007 and an editor at Alfred A. Knopf for more than ten years prior to that. She teaches at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and is the editor of a book of Elizabeth Bishop’s writings, Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments, as well as a forthcoming book of Bishop’s journals. She lives in New York City and Millerton, New York

The White Hart Inn is a fully wheelchair accessible space with on-site van accessible parking. Microphones and speakers will be used at this event. If you have specific questions about the space or how an event can be made more accessible to you, please do not hesitate to contact us: info@oblongbooks.com.

Presented by Oblong Books in partnership with The White Hart Inn and Scoville Memorial Library.

Tickets $15: Include a complimentary glass of house wine, beer or non alcoholic beverage plus a $5 voucher towards the purchase of HOW TO BE WELL at this event.

Amy Larocca will talk about her deeply researched, lively, and personal exploration of the multibillion-dollar wellness industry -- about why women are feeling so un-well and how this trend has shaped our thinking about health and self-care - with Meredith Rollins.

A clear-eyed and honest portrait of the weird world of wellness, How to Be Well lays bare the ways in which the simple notion of caring for oneself has become a seriously big business. Peloton. Pilates. Biohacking. Colonics. Ashwagandha. Today, the wellness industry is a $3.7 trillion behemoth that touches us all. In this timely and clear-eyed book, journalist Amy Larocca peels back the layers behind the wellness movement and reckons with its promises and profits. How did we get here and how did the idea of wellness become integrated with women's lives? And how did we end up spending so much money on products that may not work at all?

Amy Larocca is an award-winning American journalist. She spent twenty years working at New York magazine as both fashion director and editor at large. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Town & Country, and the London Review of Books, among other publications. She lives with her family in New York and North London.

Meredith Rollins is the former Editor in Chief of Red Book Magazine. She is a content strategist, writer and brand consultant. She lives in New York City and the Hudson Valley with her family.

The White Hart Inn is a fully wheelchair accessible space with on-site van accessible parking. Microphones and speakers will be used at this event. If you have specific questions about the space or how an event can be made more accessible to you, please do not hesitate to contact us: info@oblongbooks.com.