Musician and event curator Matt Robidoux has been quietly showcasing and celebrating experimental art in the area. He’s about to move across the country, but first he’s collaborating with Mystery Train Records in Amherst for The Matt Robidoux Going Away Party. The show will take place inside and outside of the store on Sunday at 6 p.m. Free, but donations for the performers are encouraged.
“We are both believers in the great varied scene out here…all the fringe characters too,” said Mystery Train owner Josh Burkett.
“Josh and I kept asking performers and it’s reached a point beyond critical mass!” Robidoux said.
The event, which also doubles as the closing party for the Tony Moloney art show, will feature Tom Cream (playing an outdoors banjo set), Dollar Bin, Taskmasker (from Providence), Idea Fire Co., Weeping Bong Band, Fire Swingset, Donkey No No, Clear People, Robidoux himself and others.
In addition to the Going Away Party show, Robidoux has also put together a festival “celebrating people of all abilities in the arts,” entitled “Free As I Want to Be II,” which takes place today, Friday, in Energy Park in Greenfield from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Robidoux works with VIABILITY as part of their Community Based Day Activities Staff, “which is somewhat open ended,” he said. “Staff need to be creative in which ways they choose to engage the participants in the community. I chose to set up recurring arts programs for them: a dance/drama class, radio show, music improvisation sessions, a monthly concert series and the festival. Hosting a program of participant performances alongside some recognizable figures from the Western Massachusetts music scene seemed the best way to expose the incredible work of the participants to a wider audience, and to give them affirmation for the value of this work.”
Robidoux is moving to Oakland for a graduate program in music composition at Mills College. “I predict my thesis will have great emphasis on continuing work with this population and the role of composition as public art,” he said.
Western MA’s own Wistaria String Quartet (violinists Sarah Briggs and Kaila Graef, violist Delores Thayer, and cellist Wayne Smith) performs at the cozy Montague Bookmill on Saturday at 8 p.m.
Dublin-born vocalist Mary Black takes the stage at the Academy of Music in Northampton on Sunday at 7:30 p.m.
Old Flame, a political indie-rock band led by Valley native Emma Ayres, takes some inspiration from blues, punk, and the protest music of the past, borrowing an idea from Woody Guthrie to describe the group as “a machine that kills fascists,” and intending to make their art an active form of resistance. They team up with Lady Jane, aka local singer-songwriter Esperanza Friel, for a show at The Iron Horse in Northampton on Monday 7 p.m.
Socks in the Frying Pan have traveled to these shores from the west of Ireland to play their modern Celtic sounds at The Iron Horse on Wednesday at 7 p.m. Local fiddler Zoe Darrow opens the show.
Texas country swing trio The Western Flyers (Joey McKenzie, Katie Glassman and Gavin Kelso) are the featured act at this week’s Watermelon Wednesday concert at the West Whately Chapel on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Yes, there will be watermelon, and when you’re munching away, outside at intermission, you might catch a flurry of bats zoom out of the eaves and light across the pasture into the dusky sky.
Junior Brown brings his deep baritone voice, witty tunes, flying fingers and one-of-a-kind “guit-steel” double-neck guitar back to The Iron Horse on Thursday at 7 p.m. Local old-school country band Sixtyone Ramblers start off the night on the right foot.