Calendar Archives

For more information on any of the Library events,
please call the Library at (617) 796-1360

Unless noted otherwise, all events take place at the Library's Main Branch.
All events are free and open to the public.

The Library is handicapped accessible. For special assistance when attending programs, call 796-1410 during business hours and 796-1360 evenings and weekends.

To view a previous calendar, click here to view the Archives. (Available from October 2004.)

Gallery & Main Hall Hours

Monday to Thursday 9:00 am to 9:00 pm
Friday 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
Saturday 9:00 am to 5:00pm
Sunday Noon to 5:00 pm

ART EXHIBITION INFORMATION

Are you interested in exhibiting your artwork at the Library? The Newton Free Library presents monthly exhibits by regional artists in the Gallery and Main Hall of the main library, a state-of-the-art facility which 11,000 people visit weekly. Please click here for more information.

Classical Guitarist Sharon Wayne to Perform

Classical guitarist Sharon Wayne will return to the Library for a concert featuring Spanish and Latin American Romantic works including music by Albeniz, Turina, Legnani, Barrios and others. The concert will take place on Sunday, October 3, 2:00PM.

Wayne’s playing has been lauded as “spectacular’ with “superbly executed style” (Charleston Post and Courier). She has performed widely as both soloist and chamber musician throughout the U.S. and Japan and was twice a featured performer at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston.

First Prize winner of the 1991 ASTA Solo Guitar Competition, she was also a semi-finalist at the Guitar Foundation of America’s International Competition in Buffalo, NY. As a founding member of the San Francisco Guitar Quartet, she commissioned and performed much new repertoire for guitar. Her music appears on five CDs including the solo recording “From the Heart” which features works by 20th century composers. Formerly a member of the guitar faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, she is the Artistic Director of the Boston Classical Guitar Society.

Spanish and American Classical Music Concert

The Aurora Duo, composed of Loren Pearson, viola/ violin and Kevin McGinty, piano, will perform a concert of Spanish and American music including “Le Grand Tango” by Piazzola and other works by de Falla, Sarasate, Gershwin and Copland. The concert will take place on Sunday, October 10, at 2:00PM.

Pearson has performed with many orchestras in Boston and the New England area including the Hartford Symphony and the Rhode Island Philharmonic. She has toured extensively throughout Europe with distinguished orchestras from Germany. She serves on the faculty of Milton Academy and often performs with husband McGinty.

McGinty has performed in numerous concert halls as a recitalist, accompanist and chamber musician including concerti with the Boston Pops, Brookline Symphony Orchestra and Central Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra at Mechanics Hall in Worcester. He has performed on WGBH and WERS radio stations and on WICN and WCUW in Worcester. He teaches piano privately as well as at All Newton Music School and at M.I.T.’s Department of Music and Theater Arts.

Pianist Sarah Tocco to Perform

Pianist Sarah Tocco will return to the Library for a concert including Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu and Rachmaninoff Preludes on Sunday, October 17, 2:00PM.

Tocco has been active as a concert artist since her successful debut in 1986 as an accompanist at Carnegie Weill Recital Hall, praised as a “very sensitive pianist” by the New York Times. Since, she has performed in California, New York, Massachusetts and toured Jamaica and was a piano competition judge for the Junior Bach Festival and Southern Youth Music Festival in Los Angeles. Currently Tocco is music director at Stanley School in Swampscott and teaches privately in Burlington.

Kathryn Mannyng and William Merrill to Perform

Soprano and Celtic harpist Kathryn Mannyng and pianist William Merrill will present a concert of “Night, Dreams and the Supernatural in Celtic and Classical Music” at the Library on Sunday, October 24, at 3:00PM. Music by Mozart, Faure, Debussy and Mendelssohn will be featured as well as such Celtic ballads as “Two Sisters” and “The Unquiet Grave.”

Mannyng has performed featured operatic roles and given many solo classical recitals in her native Minnesota as well as throughout New England. Much in demand as a traditional harpist, as well, she has appeared at the New England Folk Festival, House of Blues, King’s Chapel Concert Series, Ginkgo Coffeehouse, the premier folk venue in St. Paul, Minnesota and at many other locations. Named the Minnesota Clan Campbell Official Harper, she has expanded her storytelling and harp series with a Celtic Myth and Music program. Mannyng is also a Certified Reiki Practitioner, working in the emerging field of sound healing with music; she has given concerts on healing and comfort in classical and Celtic music at various venues, including the Library. Her recordings include “Tara’s Halls: Harp Music of Ireland,” “Thys Endrys Nyght” and “‘Til Heartstrings Break.”

A noted collaborative pianist and vocal coach, Merrill has accompanied many singers in the Boston and New York areas, including recitals at Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall. He has concertized in Rome, as well as in Beijing and Shanghai, as a guest of the government. He has been affiliated with the Boston Academy of Music, the Opera Company of Boston, Boston Lyric Opera Company, the Goldovsky Opera Institute and the New England Conservatory Opera Department. Merrill can be heard on a CD of songs by Sir Arthur Sullivan on the Pearl label. He is Principal Coach and Accompanist of the Boston Aria Guild.

Steinway Winner to Perform

Pianist Nathan Carterette, Winner of the 2004 first annual Steinway Society Piano Competition, will perform a concert of Schubert Impromptus, Schoenberg’s Six Little Pieces for Piano, Bartok Improvisations on Hungarian Folk Themes and Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz. The concert will take place on Sunday, Oct. 31, 2PM.

Carterette is an active pianist, having performed as recitalist throughout North America and Europe and participated in master classes in many countries. With a great interest in performing music by 20th century mas-ters, he has collaborated with composers as diverse as James MacMillan, Chen Yi and Aaron Jay Kernis. He won first prize in the 24th annual Bartok-Prokofiev-Kabalevsky Competition, held in Sicily. Recently awarded a Master’s certificate in piano performance from Yale University, he is also trained as an organist and composer.

Legal Series Talk on ElderLaw

The Library's Legal Series began in 1994 with two programs on ElderLaw and ElderCare. Beginning a new decade for the series, William J. Brisk, Esq. returns to speak on the 2004 book he co-authored, A Will is not Enough, on Wednesday, October 6, 7:15PM. Directed to seniors, young parents and those in the "sandwich generation," this program will explain what important estate planning tools one needs besides a will.

Brisk has been practicing elder law in Newton for 15 years. In recognition of his exceptional service, he has been designated a Fellow of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. He has authored or co-authored several other resources: Legal Planning for the Elderly in Massachusetts, Massachusetts Elder Law and Massachusetts Medicaid Update 2002.

Cartoon Depiction of the Caning of Charles Sumner (New York Public Library)

Emancipation of the Human Spirit: Newton and the Civil War

The Library and the Newton History Museum at the Jackson Homestead present this year’s Newton History Series, "The Emancipation of the Human Spirit: Newton and the Civil War." The series will focus on Newton’s participation in various aspects of the Civil War, in commemoration of the 140th anniversary of the ending of the conflict.

On Thursday, October 7, at 7:00PM, at the Library, Suffolk University Dean Kenneth Greenberg will speak on the origins of the Civil War and the related caning of Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts.

Sumner, a leading Republican, became a leader of the anti-slavery forces in the Senate. During a two-day oration delivered to the Senate in 1856, he vehemently condemned the Southern advocacy of the expansion of slavery. Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina was so offended by the speech that he used his cane to beat Sumner into unconsciousness.

Greenberg, Dean of Suffolk University College of Arts and Sciences and Distinguished Professor of History, is the author of several books and papers on the Civil War and recently completed a documentary film for PBS on the Nat Turner Slave Rebellion of 1831. He has been an advisor to the Newton History Museum.

Newton Civil War materials are available in the Newton Collection (Special Collections Room) at the Library and the Newton History Museum at the Jackson Homestead.

This project is being funded through the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners with funds from the Library Services and Technology Act, a federal source of library funding.

Poetry Reading Series Continues

The Library Poetry Reading Series, coordinated by Doug Holder, continues with readings by David Slavitt, Wendy Drexler and Faye George on Tuesday, October 12, at 7:00PM.

Slavitt is a novelist, critic, poet, journalist, dramatist and author of more than 70 works of fiction, poetry and translations. He was the former movie critic for Newsweek. Currently he is running for election as State Representative of the 26th Middlesex District in Cambridge/ Somerville.

George is the author of two chapbooks, the book-length collections A Wound on Stone and Back Roads. She has received the Arizona Poetry Society’s Memorial Award, and The New England Poetry Club’s Gretchen Warren Award. Her poetry has appeared in the Paris Review, Yankee and many other publications.

Drexler’s poetry has appeared in The Brooklyn Review, The Aurorean, Pudding Magazine, Poetry Motel and other publications. She works as an editor in Cambridge and is a member of Barbara Helfgott Hyett’s Workshop for Publishing Poets in Brookline.

The next reading in this free series will be held on November 9.

Larry Tye Speaks on New Book on Pullman Porters

“If race is the story of America, the Pullman porter represents one of its most resonant chapters.” So begins Larry Tye’s Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class on which he will speak at the Library on Thursday, October 14, at 7:00PM, followed by a booksigning.

This enlightening, lively social history chronicles the stories of hundreds of black men who worked for George Pullman on his luxurious overnight trains from the end of the Civil War to 1969 when the Pullman Company terminated its sleeping car service. Veteran reporter Tye interviewed more than 40 surviving porters and other black railroad workers, using their stories as a prism for the evolution of race relations in America.

In the 1920s, the Pullman Company was the largest employer of African-American men and the job of sleeping car porter was a coveted one. But behind the porters’ courtly service lay a day-to-day struggle for dignity that anticipated black America’s bloody crawl towards equality. Unbeknownst to most of their white passengers, these porters played critical political and cultural roles, bringing seditious ideas about freedom from the urban North to the segregated South, carrying jazz and blues from big cities to outlying towns and forming America’s first black trade union.

The Pullman porter’s story has special resonance now, as America celebrates the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling and the 40th anniversary of the historic March on Washington. The lead attorney in the Brown case, Thurgood Marshall, once worked on the railroads, his father was a train porter, and the lead organizer of the civil rights march, A. Philip Randolph, was president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. “Behind most every successful African-American, there is a Pullman porter,” Tye writes.

Tye was a longtime journalist for The Boston Globe, winning numerous awards for his work. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, he is the author of The Father of Spin and Home Lands: Portraits of the New Jewish Diaspora.

Gain your independence! Learn a computer skill at one of our free, one session, hands-on classes. Stop by a Reference Desk to sign up or call 617-796-1380.

Booklists Available

Looking for a good book to read or conducting research in a particular area? The Reference Department has compiled many booklists in a variety of subjects: African Americans in American Life, College Admissions, Books for Modern Parents, Buddhism, Day Trips, Gardening Guides, Rise and Fall of Saddam Hussein, Retirement and much more. Ask a Reference librarian at the YA Desk on the second floor for help in locating a list.

Garden City Cafe, Too!

The cafe we've all been waiting for has arrived at the Library in its cheerful location off the art gallery. Stop by for a muffin or a great cup of coffee in the morning or a satisfying lunch later in the day.

To Our Concert Goers:

Please be considerate of the performer today as well as your fellow audience members and refrain from leaving the auditorium during a piece of music. If you have small children with you, please sit in the back rows. If you leave the auditorium between pieces, please close the door quietly behind you and wait to re-enter after a musical piece. Also, if you have a cellphone, please shut if off. Thank you.

PLEASE DON'T SAVE SEATS!

When attending a Sunday after-noon concert, please do not save more than one seat as this deprives others of attending the concert. The rule is first come, first served.