The Fabulous 413

We’re trying our best to get around, and a recent survey of folx in the area show that they’re having problems with that too.  The People and Transportation Project report looks at the ways that folx in the 4 counties are and aren’t getting around, and the hardships they face getting from point A to Point which can have bigger repercussions in many other facets of daily life. We head next door to...

We have a cure for your Mondays. It’s music! Music is the cure! And a new venue that we just saw last month is getting ready to launch right into a new concert series. The Hope Center for the Arts in Springfield is reviving its days as the City Center and is announcing its inaugural 25/26 Season of performances, and we’ll chat with Isaac Eddy, Lorenzo Gaines, and Kyle Homestead about the line-up....

With Arts funding being cut everywhere, the places that are finding it in their hearts and wallets to support the creative communities around them are even more important. And today we’ll talk with Zoë Fieldman of CitySpace about their efforts to do just that. The Pay It Forward Grant recipients have just been announced, and we’ll speak with them about the 10 folx bringing their work to the Eastha...

 Metal, wood, fire, a fire lizard, and whales! Sort of.  The salamander, which is often translated to fire lizard is the squirmy looking influence behind many congressional districts across the country and gerrymandering looks like it is about to become all the rage for both Republicans and Democrats. And it just so happens that one of the nation’s experts in the history of gerrymandering lives ri...

 Folk and Americana musicians are all headed for the woods as the Arcadia Folk Festival hits year seven as a plethora of artists over two days headed to North and Easthampton from Red Baraat to Josh Ritter, and more And to talk with us about the sanctuary that will soon be filled with more than the sounds of songbirds is director of Connecticut River Valley Wildlife Sanctuaries for Mass Audubon Jo...

We’re continuing to highlight local traditions, and here at the very height of the harvest season, for Franklin County, that means the Harvest Supper which is celebrating it’s 20th year this weekend. We’ll chat with Stone Soup Cafe’s Kirsten Levitt, who helms the affair to chat about it’s origins with Juanita Nelson, the important place the event has in the community and the Cafe’s calendars, and...

Look who’s back from vacation! (It’s us!)  And look at who else is about to have their vacation end! Your Kids!  But going back to fun arts programming can take some of the sting off of that, and there’s a summer send off that helps to make sure those programs happen while also bringing the local music community together.  Transformance 35 happens tomorrow, with a new list of covers being performe...

It feels only right considering how much music we’ve filled this week with, that we go out with More music.  So we’ll revisit the celebrations of our compatriots in community radio arms for Live Music Friday. Kalliope Jones began as a group of IMA students, but has grown a lot over the past decade and they’ll visit the studios before you can catch them at the Valley Free Radio Birthday Party And o...

If you’re listening to us, you probably already believe in the power of community radio And today on the Fabulous 413, we’ll honor another station that’s rooted in the Asparagus Valley and is celebrating a milestone this weekend. Valley Free Radio began broadcasting 20 years ago and will celebrate this weekend with a birthday party, and we’ll speak with Board Members Betsy Lancto and Ed Malachowsk...

Wow there’s a lot of music going on in western Mass, and we can’t get enough so we’ll tell you about another festival happening this weekend in Florence Etchings is the project of the area’s own ECCE Ensemble , who were also eager to get their ears on new work by composers of all walks. And we’ll talk with Cassandra Holden of Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity , and festival and ensemble founder...

85 years ago Serge Koussevitzky started a tradition at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s home away from home on the Lenox-Stockbridge line, that has become a herald of the Summer for music lovers everywhere.  Tanglewood on Parade happens today, and though it began as the  “Allied Relief Fund Benefit,” it’s now a fundraiser for all of the learning that is done at the BSO’s summer home, bringing activ...

We're focusing on the amazing 01002 today. (That is the zip code for the People’s Republic of Amherst) Amherst has a lot going on. We’ll take a walk in Wildwood Cemetery where former Amherst resident, artist Matt Mitchell, has a brand new sculpture about to be unveiled. Along with cemetery director Rebebba Fricke and groundskeeper Silas Ball we talk with all three about bringing sculptures to surr...

We’re learning history through our bodies, and arts and culture everywhere.  The twelfth annual Pocumtuck Homelands Festival happens this weekend in Great Falls, honoring the many peoples who have stewarded and called these lands home for millennia with dance, song, vendors who are masters of their craft and more. We’ll chat with Kitty Hendrick Miller of the Mashpee-Wampanoag peoples , about the p...

We’ve got a bunch of current issues we’re tackling, some on stage, some in the houses of law.  Two professors at Bard Microcollege in Holyoke are producing a theatrical work that dovetails with their teachings tidily. BELLY is a work that condenses a decade of research on Black motherhood, and reproductive autonomy into an experience of music, dance, and spoken word, while stretching those finding...

We’re reminding you that Africa is not a single country, so stop treating it like that. In fact there’s an opportunity coming up for you to learn more about and interact with the culture of several of the nations that make up the continent in Springfield.  The African Community Festival happens August 9 celebrating people of the African diaspora and their many cultures. We’ll speak with organizers...

This weekend, visual art isn’t the only type of art that you can see in the halls and galleries at Mass MoCA , as a 40 year musical collective known for expanding the definition of ensemble, vocal, and solo music commandeers the museum to push those boundaries in sound further.  Today on the Fabulous 413, we head to North Adams, to get a sneak peek at Bang on a Can’s Loud Weekend , where the fello...

Over the course of this show, we’ve made many mentions of how important local agriculture is, and how crucial local involvement with that agriculture is. One of the best ways we as consumers can make that happen is through the implementation of CSAs: Community Supported Agriculture and the Farm Share model.  So today we visit a farm in Great Barrington that was one of the first to start what you g...

Electronic Music has come a long long way since the first synthesizers and theremins of the early 20th Century, and today we’ll get into the wide array of sounds this style of music includes at a festival being thrown this weekend at The Shea Theater.  Extension Cords II happens this Saturday bringing an eclectic mix of 6 musicians, each with their own flavor of sound to the stage. We’ll speak wit...

Today on the Fab 413, there’s a festival coming up in the Berkshires that will encourage the next generation of filmmakers to pick up a camera and shoot the movies they've imagined. In Great Barrington, Trifest is currently open for submissions of work from filmmakers 25 and under of all lengths and all topics and all film styles. We chat with Salem Rabley of Triplex Cinema about the films that ha...

There’s a lot of history to be learned in opera and recitals; but this weekend at Tanglewood will take new histories and reframe the music around them to expand the way we look at not just vocal music but a continent that western documentation has largely ignored.   African Queens is a newly commissioned song cycle that highlights the lives of 7 Afro-diasporic figures of femme royalty. And that’s...

Five centuries of theater history has taken root in the mountains, and is bringing audiences, thespians young and older, and more of the community together to celebrate the art of stagecraft.  For the past 50 plus years, Shakespeare and Company has been bringing works to life on stage and  teaching others the work that goes into making staged productions spectacular. And since their move to their...

We’re headed out into the wilds to a not so clearly disclosed location in Hampshire county to witness epochs of evolution and change in the hills and dales.  Professor and author Noah Charney takes us deep into the woods to explore one of the locations described in his book “These Trees Tell a Story: The Art of Reading Landscapes”, where along with some budding naturalists we see how the happening...

Good news and Bad News.  Bad News First: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has lost over a billion dollars of funding. Billion with a "B." Which is bad, but what does that mean for NEPM itself? A lot of us are asking that question, so to make a little more sense out of last night’s surreptitious vote to defund public media , we’ll speak with NEPM’s own president Matt Abramovitz to gain some...

Today is historical and history making.  In Great Barrington where one of the pioneers of American Civil Rights movement and black academia was born. Author, sociologist, historian, activist, founder of the NAACP and more, W.E.B. Du Bois is getting a new tribute right in the heart of the town at the Mason Library after years of planning. We’ll speak with Ari Zorn, Dubois Thomas, Julie Michaels, an...

We’re connecting with the Celtic diaspora on two sides of the river, much like they straddle the North Channel. In Florence this weekend, many will gather fife, pie, and drum, don their kilts and take to Look Park for the Glasgow Lands Scottish Games, where over 700 musicians, crafters, athletes, and more will gather to celebrate, and we’ll speak with founder Peter Langmore about the new things th...