Jamaica Plain News (https://www.jamaicaplainnews.com/category/entertainment)
Looking for something to do with the family this Saturday? Then check out the Franklin Park Winter Festival. The festival will include indoor and outdoor fun such as board games, giant Jenga, karaoke, arts and crafts, and story books. If it snows there will be sledding, but it doesn't look like snow is being forecasted. The Franklin Park Winter Festival is Saturday, Feb.
SingPostive is excited to launch our 2023-2024 season. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bANVPEIcT8I&t=22s
We are an intergenerational community choir based in Jamaica Plain, directed by Lexi Ugelow and Lysander Jaffe. Joel Sindelar founded the choir in 2012, and it has since grown into a vibrant community where singers of all ages make music together. We sing fun, eclectic music from many different styles, from folk to world to musical theatre and R&B, and we offer musical programming for the whole family, including Kids Choir, ukulele class, and supervised playground time for younger children during the Adult Choir portion of rehearsal. Kids under 3 join free!
This year's Jamaica Plain Porchfest will feature more than 60 different performances on Saturday. Performances are from noon to 6 pm across the neighborhood, and there's music, dance performances (and plenty of opportunities for you to dance!) for everyone of all ages and music tastes. Just a sampling:
The Femmes (12:30-1:30 pm at 58 Round Hill St.) are an all-woman and non-binary wedding band specializing in songs by female and non-binary artists
movement improvisation (12-12:30 pm at 30 Sunnyside St.) is an exciting and vulnerable dance improvisation by local movement artists
Tokyo Tramps (5-6 pm at 13 Armstrong St.) is named after Bruce Springsteen’s song “Born To Run,” and has been creating unique and exciting Blues/Rock with New Orleans funk groove and Hendrix-inspired guitar sound. They've released 9 original albums in a 20+year musical career
Dance Class with Jean Appolon Expressions (3-4 pm at 42 Horan Way) Come dance with Mcebisi Xotyeni of JAE! Jean Appolon Expressions (JAE) is a contemporary dance company deeply rooted in Haitian-folkloric culture that celebrates, nurtures, and empowers a global community.
In celebration of Pride Month, the Jamaica Plain Historical Society is co-sponsoring a virtual book talk with Dr. Wendy Rouse about her book Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement on June 12. Rouse is a professor of History at San Jose State University, and her book explores the important role of queerness and queer suffragists in the fight for the vote. The book highlights the alliances that queer suffragists built and the innovative strategies they developed to protect and preserve their most intimate relationships as they defied the gender and sexual norms of their day. This event is co-sponsored with the Boston Public Library Connolly Branch. Click here to register for this virtual event that begins at 6:30 pm.
The Arnold Arboretum is hosting a free operatic adventure with puppets about science and climate for children on Saturday, and there will also be a puppet-making workshop. The 45-minute performance of Mr. Twister and the Tale of Tornado Alley will be performed in the Bradley Rose Garden by the three ponds. Mr. Twister and the Tale of Tornado Alley follows Mr. Twister and his grandson Bobby on a journey around the globe—from the chilly arctic to the sizzlingly warm Gulf of Mexico. Through the power of his magic telescope, Mr. Twister can see just about everything—except the family reunion of the North and South winds that is about to create a cyclone in Tornado Alley!
The performance begins promptly at noon, and attendees are being asked to please allow adequate time to find your way to the garden and get settled in for the show. Attendees are welcome to bring blankets or low chairs for the performance.
If you've mastered the basics of chess and want to move up to the intermediate level, then you should sign up for at least one of the four free workshops and tournament being offered by JP Chess this summer. A US Chess Federation titled player will guide each workshop covering elements of the opening, the middle game and endgame. National Master Ryan Young, an experienced chess player and coach, will be a presenter at the workshops. He attained the title of National Master in 2017 and teaches private lessons, group classes, workshops, and Scholastic Nationals teams.
The workshops are geared for players who have mastered the basics of chess and are now seeking to get to intermediate level. The workshops are suitable for those with ratings between 1,000 and 1,400, and is for adults and juniors ages 10 and up.
The Eliot School Free Schoolyard Summer Concert Series kicks off June 4. Held every Sunday at 5 pm from June 4 to September 24, the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts Free Schoolyard Summer Concert Series features a variety of music styles throughout the summer including reggae, R&B, soul, classical, jazz, hip-hop, Latin, Brazilian, and percussion. In total, 15 local musical groups will perform on the school's lawn. New this year, The Hive will provide a beer garden and food trucks will be featured throughout the summer. On particular dates there will also be free ice cream from FoMu and J.P. Licks.
The Loring Greenough House is kicking off this summer's outdoor movie series with the Academy Award-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once on Friday. The movie stars Michelle Yeoh, who became the first Asian-American to win an Oscar for Best Actress, for her role as a Chinese immigrant being audited by the IRS. It's a very wacky and fun film that is a great movie to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. The film is rated R, so it is not suitable for children younger than 12. Seating is not provided, so you have to bring your own seats and blankets.
If you've got a kite, bring it -- if you don't, don't worry, you can buy one at the annual Franklin Park Kite & Bike Festival on May 20. The Haiti Kite Team will be on hand to help novices learn to fly a kite. There will be bike and trike activities for younger children with Franklin Park Coalition's partner Countdown to Kindergarten. Free helmets will be distributed by Boston Children's Hospital. There will also be a bike repair station sponsored by REI.
While the 45th annual Wake Up the Earth Festival will be a lot of fun this weekend, it's also important to recognize the reason the festival was created, and how it relates to modern times. This year's festival is from noon to 5 pm on the Southwest Corridor by the Stonybrook MBTA Station. The original festival was created by community activists who worked together to defeat a proposal to put a highway through the neighborhood. This year's organizers would like to "move more deeply into awareness of climate resiliency and how climate change connects to low income and affordable housing access, and the racial inequities in Boston that make climate change a vitally important social justice and racial justice issue." As organizers explore how they can make an impact, they're encouraging the community to make a pledge to action.