Local team shines at Boston/New England Emmy Awards

NORTHAMPTON – Staff and students at Northampton High School, a key support person with the Young@Heart Chorus, and Northampton Open Media (NOM) have combined forces to win a top award for a feature film at the 46th annual Boston/New England Emmy Awards.

The Emmy, for special event coverage, was for a video production of the 40th Anniversary Concert of Young@Heart, held last November at the Academy of Music. The film was directed and co-produced by Jeromie Whalen, a communications and media production teacher at NHS, who worked with a volunteer video crew that included a number of NHS students; they used over a dozen cameras to film the concert.

Another vital part of the effort was Julia van IJken, a content director for Young@Heart who has also co-directed a number of their more recent concerts. Van IJken, a Dutch native who joined Y@H a few years ago, edited the film under a tight deadline and also mixed in archival footage of the chorus.

The Emmy honors Van IJken as the film’s editor, Whalen as producer/director, and Al Williams, director of NOM, as executive producer.

In winning the award, presented June 10, the Young@Heart concert film bested entries from major news outlets such as NBC 10 Boston and WCVB.

The film will screen at the Amherst Cinema July 19, and Julia van IJken, Y@H Director Bob Cilman, and chorus members will take part in a Q&A afterward.

Summer arts program returns to North Hall

HUNTINGTON – The North Hall Arts Festival, now in its 13th season, will feature seven free programs this summer, beginning in mid-July and running to Sept. 24, with a variety of music and theater on the bill.

All events take place on Sundays at 2 p.m., with six on the historic North Hall stage and one on the Huntington town green.

The season opens July 16 on the town green with The Time Stretchers, who play classic rock, country and swing from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as more contemporary tunes. The band includes Barry Searle and Clark Howell on guitar and vocals, Pete Rzasa on vocals, pedal steel and harmonica, and Sarah Miller on percussion and vocals.

In case of rain, the concert will be held in Stanton Hall.

And on July 30, La Voz De Tres will be at North Hall, featuring a mix of jazz, Latin American rhythms, original compositions, and selections from the Great American Songbook. The group features Jason Ennis on seven-string guitar, Chilean vocalist Natalia Bernal, and pianist Mike Eckroth.

Additional programs include staged readings in August of the comedy “The Last Romance” by Joe DiPietro’s and the drama “Fresh Horses” by Mitch Giannunzio, and other concerts will feature Cuban, country and opera music.

More details are available at northhallhuntington.org.

More Hilltown music

WORTHINGTON – Grammy nominee Carla Cooke, the youngest daughter of legendary soul singer Sam Cooke, will bring her band to The Links at Worthington July 2 at 7 p.m.

Carla Cooke, who first played in Worthington last summer, covers a range of music, from jazz to gospel to soul and R&B. She was nominated for a Grammy award in 1999 for best vocal jazz performance.

A songwriter as well as a singer, Cooke also performs her own versions of some of her father’s classic songs, such as “You Send Me,” “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and “Summertime.” He died in 1964, a few months after his daughter was born.

But as Cooke told the Gazette in an interview last year, performing her father’s songs helps her remain connected to him.

“His music still influences people today,” she said. “I feel him every time I’m on stage.”

More information on this and other concerts at The Links, including ticket prices, is available at worthingtongolfclub.com.

Here come the writers

SOUTH HADLEY – The Odyssey Bookshop is keeping up a busy schedule of author visits this summer, and three writers will visit in the next two weeks to talk about their new books. All three talks take place at 7 p.m.

On July 5, Zelda Lockhart, a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Award, will discuss her new novel “Trinity,” a three-generation saga about a Black southern family trying to overcome trials and trauma and free themselves from the darkness of the past.

Drawing comparisons to works such as “The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Lockhart’s book, one critic writes, “breathes life into the landscape and gives us Black history through characters you will never forget.”

On July 11, the Odyssey welcomes Chuck Collins, whose debut novel, “Altar to an Erupting Sun,” tells the story of veteran environmental activist Rae Kelliher who, facing terminal illness, commits a shocking murder-suicide by killing an oil company executive for delaying efforts to fight climate change.

Seven years later, Rae’s friends and family gather at her Vermont farm to try to understand her violent exit and the rapid social transformations triggered by her desperate act.

And on July 12, Sarah Weinman will discuss her work as editor of “Evidence of Things Seen: True Crime in an Era of Reckoning,” in which 14 writers examine crime cases that shed light on society today, such as a lynching left unsolved for decades by an indifferent police force and a family’s push for answers.

Weinman, the author of a number of true-crime books, will be joined in conversation by freelance writer Abraham Josephine Riesman.

An artistic conversation

SHELBURNE FALLS – A new exhibit at the Salmon Falls Gallery pairs work by two northern New England artists who have collaborated on their show by creating work in response to each other’s art.

Sharon Myers, a fabric, clay and mixed media artist from Vermont, has created a series of small works by using scraps of fabric that are a direct response to 12 monotype collages fashioned by her friend, New Hampshire printmaker Erika Radich.

Radich, in turn, had previously “responded strongly” to other fiber works created by Myers with “a desire to engage with and talk to the pieces in her (Radich’s) own art practice,” according to exhibit notes.

“The result is a visually compelling conversation between artists that is at once joyful and contemplative,” exhibit notes add. “Borrowed themes and color palettes are reinterpreted, creating entirely new pieces – a result of studio practice and friendship.”

There will be an artists’ reception at the exhibit Saturday, July 8, from 2 to 4 p.m., with live music provided by Loren Feinstein.

Compiled by Steve Pfarrer

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