Innovative composer Sandy Prager will return to the Newton Free Library with a concert of original jazz-based improvisational music for guitar on Thursday, December 12, at 7:30PM.

A seventh generation musician with a flawless classical technique, Prager plays classical and 12 string guitar in a style which spans diverse influences: Latin, bop, Klezmer and many others. Guitar Nine magazine called his music "intense and rhythmically exciting as [his] melodies fluidly emanate from his acoustic guitar…a gifted jazz guitarist and all-around top-notch artist."

The Paul Speidel Jazz Duo will return to the Newton Free Library on Sunday, December 1, 2:00PM. This guitar and acoustic bass duo will present a concert of jazz standards from the Great American Songbook. Seating is limited.

A Newton resident, guitarist Speidel teaches blues and jazz at Newton Community Education as well as privately. He has appeared with Patti Page, Jay Geils, Duke Robillard, James Montgomery, Shirley Lewis, Les Arbuckle and other musicians at local and national venues. For several years he hosted a highly regarded Blues Showcase Series at Yerardi’s Restaurant.

Acclaimed storyteller Betty Lehrman will present a program of humorous and touching stories, folk tales and songs to celebrate the holidays. This performance for adults will be held at the Newton Free Library on Sunday, December 15, 2:00PM. Lehrman plays guitar and encourages much audience participation. Her program will feature stories of Christmas, Chanukah and the winter season. Curt Leviant’s "The Extra Flame" is about a Jewish family who has just moved to a small Southern town. At first they feel isolated and ill at ease until their Chanukah candles are joined by other lights from an unexpected source. "Three Kings Day" is set in a small town in Cuba, where each year three of the eldest boys dress up as the Three Kings of the Orient, delivering gifts on horseback – but this year something different happens….

Lehrman has been a professional storyteller for 25 years, appearing across the U.S. and Australia, as well as in Thailand as a guest of the U.S. Information Service. She has produced three storytelling recordings which have won Parents’ Choice and American Library Association awards. Several of her stories appear in anthologies, including Chosen Tales, edited by Peninnah Schram.

Tamara Kreinin, co-author of "Girls’ Night Out: Celebrating Women’s Groups Across America" will speak at the Newton Free Library on Monday, December 9, 7:30PM, followed by a booksigning.

Girls Night Out focuses on a vibrant and important phenomenon in women’s lives: women’s groups. Profiling an inspiring selection of fifteen groups from all around the U.S., this book reveals the powerful role these groups play in many lives. The authors traveled all over the country interviewing members of women’s groups and attending their meetings, exploring the value of the emotional support and life-long friendships the groups provide.

"We have witnessed an explosive interest among women in making enduring connections with other women, not simply through friendships, but through groups. They bring intellectual empowerment; they’re a source of celebration and comfort; and they encourage a unique freedom of expression," write Kreinin and co-author Barbara Camens.

Girls Night Out presents women of all ages who have come together to create the special bond only a long-standing group can offer, from the adventurous African-American motorcyclists who share exciting rides to the artists who met in graduate school and hold group shows of their work, the twenty-something career women who meet regularly to play mah-jongg and vent about work and one group of women in their seventies and eighties who have been meeting for more than fifty years.

In the concluding chapter, the authors offer a wealth of practical tips for starting a successful women’s group.

Join Guenter Wehrmann at the Newton Free Library on a virtual dogsled trip with Greenland's Polar Eskimos north of Thule Airbase, following in the tracks of polar explorers Robert Peary and Peter Freuchen. The slide show will take place on Wednesday, December 11, 7:30PM.

The trip begins in the Eskimo town of Qaanaaq north of Thule in Northwest Greenland. The Eskimos were resettled in this town when the U.S. Airforce built Thule Airbase in the early 1950s. Wehrmann then traveled with the Eskimos on dogsled to neighboring islands and fjords culminating in a three-day dogsled trip over the frozen sea and a large glacier to Thule Airbase.

Northwest Greenland played a prominent role in late 19th and early 20th century polar exploration. This is where Robert Peary recruited the Eskimos that supported him on his attempts to reach the North Pole, where he wintered in the 1890s and where his first child was born in 1893. After Peary, the Danish explorers Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen came and built the Thule trading post.

Wehrmann has taken a keen interest in the Arctic and Antarctic since his teenage years. He has driven sled dogs in Alaska and traversed the Alps with his Siberian Husky - the topic of his presentation last March at the Library.

Wehrmann studied photography at New York City's International Center of Photography and his work has been published by Leica Photography International and other publications. He has given slide shows in New York City, India and in his native Germany. A diplomat, he and his wife made Newton their home last fall.

Decoy by Bob Brophy

Newton resident Holtzberg is the Manager of the Folk Arts & Heritage Program at the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is the author of The Lost World of the Craft Printer (1992), Portrait of Spirit: One Story at a Time (1996), producer of the sound recording Georgia Folk: A Sampler of Traditional Sound (1990) and co-director/producer of the documentary film Gandy Dancers (1994).