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By STEVE PFARRER

The Valley’s music scene lost a well-known and well-liked voice last July when Kate Lorenz unexpectedly died of heart failure. Lorenz, who lived in Belchertown, had originally been part of the Amherst folk-rock band Rusty Belle in the early 2000s with...

By STEVE PFARRER

Valley writers have had a strong run of major awards in recent years, from poet Martín Espada winning a National Book Award in 2021 to novelist Ruth Ozeki claiming Great Britain’s Women’s Prize for Literature last year.Now over a dozen area writers...

By STEVE PFARRER

SPRINGFIELD — Almost three years after their last contract expired, and following months of contentious negotiations for a new one, musicians with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra (SSO) have agreed to a new deal with the orchestra’s management.The...

By STEVE PFARRER

In the United States, the early 20th century has often been portrayed as a time of hope and excitement, in which the nation’s growing industrial power, improvements in mass communications, and advances in technology and science heralded a new era of...

By STEVE PFARRER

Were You Close? A Sister’s Quest to Know the Brother She Lost by Anne Pinkerton; Vine Leaves Press In 2008, Anne Pinkerton’s world turned upside down: Her oldest brother, David, died in a fall while hiking alone high in the Rocky Mountains in...

By STEVE PFARRER

Easthampton, measured by a variety of yardsticks, has made considerable strides in the last several years as an artistic town. Public art projects and new galleries. Artist studios in old mill buildings. New music venues such as the Marigold Theater....

By STEVE PFARRER

Get Gone by Dennis Crommett In the summer of 2021, Dennis Crommett and his bandmates in Valley indie rockers Spanish for Hitchhiking released their first album in several years, “Wild Love,” a hard-rocking collection of songs written and sung by...

By STEVE PFARRER

The Fairest in the LandBy Lesléa NewmanIllustrated by Joshua HeinzAbrams Books for Young Readers I Can Be … Me!By Lesléa NewmanIllustrated by Maya Christina GonzalezLew & Low Books Holyoke poet and children’s author Lesléa Newman, who’s written some...

By STEVE PFARRER

A couple years ago, Loudon Wainwright III passed a milestone: The venerable folksinger, known for his sardonic wit and autobiographical songs, turned 75.The number, on one hand, feels kind of arbitrary, because Wainwright has seemingly been around...

By STEVE PFARRER

If you’ve been thinking there aren’t enough good roles or opportunities for women in theater, this weekend offers a good antidote to that in Easthampton and Northampton, where several productions have been created entirely by women. Here’s what on...

By STEVE PFARRER

NORTHAMPTON — For the second year in a row, the Northampton Arts Council has joined forces with a local education company to produce the Power of Truths Arts & Education Festival, a two-day event designed to use the arts as a means to promote social...

By STEVE PFARRER

There are poetry readings, the workshop leader said, and then there are poetry slams — and it’s important to know the difference.“Slam poetry,” said Lyrical Faith, “is about winning. It’s a very competitive sport.”Faith should know. She began...

By STEVE PFARRER

Like millions of other Americans, Matthew King spent much of 2020-2021 in lockdown after COVID-19 arrived on the scene.But like other artists, King, of Amherst, also used that downtime to keep busy with his music, writing a number of new songs and...

By STEVE PFARRER

When he and his wife moved to the Valley in 2005, Edo Mor says he found much to his liking: good bread, good bicycling country, nature and more. But for some time, the kind of eclectic music he liked, from North African guitar sounds to Middle Eastern...

By STEVE PFARRER

Amy Johnquest has had a number of different gigs during her life, from designing posters for Downtown Sounds in Northampton, to painting signs and creating window displays for other businesses, to creating her own mixed media art.But later this...

By STEVE PFARRER

Sleeping as Fast as I Canby Richard MichelsonSlant Books Richard Michelson has long made a name for himself as a children’s book author, winning a number of honors in the process, including a National Jewish Book Award for “The Language of Angels,” a...

By STEVE PFARRER

The climate news seems relentlessly bleak: rising seas and melting glaciers; growing drought and firestorms; increasingly violent storms that destroy everything in their path and unleash terrible flooding.Oh, and let’s not forget more longstanding...

By STEVE PFARRER

April in Amherst in an odd-numbered year: It must be time for the Bach Festival & Symposium at the University of Massachusetts.The biennial event, begun in 2015, offers a wide range of J.S. Bach’s music, from solo performances to expansive pieces with...

By STEVE PFARRER

It’s a long way from Boston to the Appalachians, but you wouldn’t know it for the number of top bluegrass players and string bands that seem to come out of The Hub.Consider Molly Tuttle, for instance, the award-winning guitar picker who studied at...

By STEVE PFARRER

NORTHAMPTON — A University of Massachusetts professor and a filmmaker who grew up in Amherst are among eight people in Massachusetts who have won Guggenheim Fellowships.Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, who teaches English at UMass and is a specialist on the...