Coloratura soprano Galina Nikonovskaya, pianist Rosalia Shifrin and poet/translator Anatol Zukerman will perform in the Library’s Cultural Bridges program, an afternoon of Russian/English poetry and song. The event will take place on Sunday, October 2, at 2:00PM. Nikonovskaya will perform songs by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Tariverdiev, Tukhmanov and others with lyrics written by poets Pushkin, Lermontov, Block, Martinov and Bunin. Zukerman will read his translations of the pieces.

Newton resident Zukerman is the organizer of the Library’s continuing Cultural Bridges program.

Pianist Christopher Dwyer will return to the Library for a concert of Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-Tableaux, Schumann’s Carnival and a sonata by Mozart on Sunday, October 9, at 2:00PM.

Dwyer is a member of the Lavazza Chamber Ensemble and has performed with the Art of Music Chamber Players and in the Boston Academy of Music chamber music series as well as with many of the area’s finest freelance musicians. He participated in the Banff Center chamber music festival where he worked with Robert Aitkin, Gilbert Kalish, and Anton Kuerti. As an educator he was a long-time member of the Brown Bag Opera, and is currently a faculty member of the Joy of Music Program as well as director of chamber music and orchestra at the Buckingham Browne & Nichols middle school. He lives in Newton.

The Library welcomes the return of the 18 member close harmony a cappella chorus Boston Jazz Voices. Their concert of jazz, ballads, swing and pop will take place on Sunday, October 16, at 2:00PM. Many of the songs will be from the American Songbook, though some are written by European and Latin American composers.

The group was founded in the mid 1980s as the New England Close Harmony Ensemble. Their repertoire includes the six-to-eight-part close harmony arrangements made famous by the Singers Unlimited as well as

All Newton Music School begins its annual faculty series at the Library with a concert by classical guitarist David Patterson on Sunday, October 23, at 2:00PM. The program will include works by Villa-Lobos, Albeniz, Britten, Sor and Brouwer.

Patterson has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in the U.S. and abroad. In 1988 he founded the critically acclaimed New World Guitar Trio, dedicated to forging new ground in the music world. As the group’s producer and arranger, Patterson has worked closely with composers Osvaldo Golijov, Claudio Ragazzi and Dana Brayton on works commissioned by the Trio. He has also performed with various ensembles including the Auros Group, Musica Viva, The Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Harvard Group for New Music as an artist in residence. He worked with composer Osvaldo Golijov and soprano Dawn Upshaw as an arranger and performer in the Tanglewood 2003 world premier of the opera Ainadamar under the baton of Robert Spano. His most recent project, a solo classical guitar recording, features music by Villa-Lobos, Brouwer, and Ginastera in addition to arrangements of Bach and Albeniz.

Mezzo-Soprano Petra Pacaric and pianist Michael Strauss will present “Café au Lait,” a concert of light repertoire in French, English, Spanish and German by Piazzolla, Poulenc, Weill and other composers. The concert will take place at the Library on Sunday, October 30, at 2:00PM. Seating is limited.

Pacaric has won several awards in competitions at the regional, national, and international level and performed in Austria, France, Spain and Ontario as a soloist in recitals, chamber and ensemble settings, and participated in major chorus and oratorio works. More recently she has given several recitals in Massachusetts and New Hampshire with featured solo appearances in operatic and oratorio concerts with the Metrowest Symphony Orchestra,

the Nashua Symphony Orchestra, New England Light Opera, Granite State Opera and Longwood Opera.

Strauss has been the featured concerto soloist with the principal orchestras of South Africa. More recently, he has been active in the Boston area as an accompanist, conductor and vocal coach. He has recorded with various chamber music ensembles for WGBH radio and has also toured with the Boston Music Theater in 1999 in Brussels for the 50th anniversary of NATO, in 2001 in Paris and Brussels and in 2002 in Moscow and Saint Petersburg which included a performance at Rachmaninoff Hall at the Moscow Conservatory.

The Library's Poetry Reading Series, coordinated by Doug Holder, continues with readings by Dick Lourie, Laura Rosenblatt and Clara Silverstein on Tuesday, Oct 11, at 7:00PM, followed by an Open Mike with a limit of one poem per reader.

Lourie is a long-time editor for Hanging Loose Press whose own poetry has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Massachusetts Review, Verse and other publications. He has released a spoken word and music CD, “Ghost Radio Blues.”

Rosenblatt’s poems have been published in such journals as Academic Medicine, Ibbetson Street, Poesy and Bellevue Literary Review. She is a psychiatrist practicing at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and teaches at Harvard Medical School.

Silverstein is a food writer for the Boston Herald and author of the book White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation. Her poetry has appeared in the Comstock Review, Patterson Literary Review, Anthology of New England Writers and other publications.

The next reading will be held on November 8. The series is coordinated by Doug Holder.

 

In honor of Massachusetts Archaeology Month, Dr. Robert Murowchick will speak on “Making Silent Sentinels Speak: The Archaeology of China’s Buried Armies of Clay” at the Library on Tuesday, October 18, at 7:30PM.

The lecture will cover the latest research into the world-renowned archaeological discoveries of legions of terra cotta soldiers that guarded the mausoleum of Qin Shihuangdi, the “First Emperor of China,” during the Qin Dynasty, which started about 221 B.C. E. Several new discoveries of miniature armies dating to the later Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E. – 220 C.E.) will also be discussed. These armies replaced the large-scale sacrifice of humans as practiced in earlier times.

In the summer of 2004, the riveting news story of the kidnapping of journalist Micah Garen in Iraq filled the airwaves and headlines. In the shadow of the tragic beheadings of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg, many feared the worst, especially after the insurgents threatened his execution if U.S. forces didn’t leave Najaf in 48 hours. In a striking turn of events, after 10 days in captivity, Garen was released, due in large part to the unflagging efforts of his family and of his partner and fiancee Marie-Helene Carleton. Hear Garen and Carleton speak at the Library on their book American Hostage: A Memoir of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq and the Remarkable Battle to Win His Release on Thursday, October 20, 7:30PM, followed by a booksigning.

Former Library Director Virginia Tashjian will present a lively Book Talk at the Library, recommending a range of new fiction and non-fiction books on Thursday, October 20, 10:30AM. Light refreshments will be served.

 

Author Eric Scigliano will speak on his new book Michelangelo’s Mountain:The Quest for Perfection in the Marble Quarries of Carrara at the Library on Monday, October 24, at 7:30PM, followed by a booksigning.

No artist looms so large in Western consciousness and culture as the sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti. And perhaps no place on earth provides a stone so capable of simulating the warmth and vitality of human flesh and incarnating the genius of a Michelangelo as the statuario of Carrara, the storied marble mecca in Tuscany. It was there, where shadowy Etruscans and Roman slaves once toiled, that Michelangelo risked his life in dozens of harrowing expeditions to secure the precious stone for his Pietà, Moses and other masterpieces.

Scigliano brings this haunting place and fascinating artist to life in a sweeping tale peopled by popes and poets, mad dukes and mythic monsters, scheming courtiers and rough-hewn quarrymen. He recounts the saga of the David, the improbable masterpiece created against all odds, and of the rival who stole the commission for the giant Hercules that he tried to erect beside it. He plumbs Renaissance archives, uncovering previously unpublished and untranslated documents, and trolls the earthy cantinas of Carrara, where old cavatori who wrestled giant blocks from the mountains by hand recount the miseries and glories of a vanishing heroic age. Interweaving art, architecture, science, politics, folklore, and even quarry cuisine, he traces the mystique of marble and the magic of the stone carver’s art from prehistory to the present, culminating in the sublime art of Michelangelo.

Scigliano’s ancestors were quarrymen and stone carvers in Carrara. His great-grandfather immigrated to Boston from there and hand carved decorations for the Boston Public Library, Metropolitan Theatre, Boston’s Cathedral and many churches. Eric grew up in Needham and now resides in Seattle.

He is a long-time journalist with work selected for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004 as well as the author of Love, War, and Circuses: The Age-Old Relationship Between Elephants and Humans, Seattle from the Air and Puget Sound: Sea Between the Mountains.

 

You are invited to the Friends' Annual Meeting on Thursday, October 27, at 7:30PM to hear about their activities, how they support the Library and how to get involved. The Friends will vote on a slate of officers and Library Director Kathy Glick-Weil will speak, as well.

 

Discovering What’s Next: ReVitalizing Retirement has announced the Grand Opening of the Discovering What’s Next Hub at the Library on Tuesday, Nov. 1, at 7PM, featuring a special program, "Celebrating What’s Next: A Conversation with Paul La Camera," General Manager of WBUR-FM.

La Camera, one of America’s most accomplished and prominent broadcast executives, as well as a longtime resident of Newton, recently retired from his role as President of WCVB-TV where he worked for more than 33 years. Event co-chairs, George and Cissie Klavens, will engage La Camera in a lively discussion on “What’s Next,” drawing on his personal experiences as well as his observations garnered from his position as an influential community leader.

La Camera is also a board member of Boston’s Catholic Charities, the Boston Public Library Foundation, the Boston Foundation, the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

Mayor Cohen will be on hand for the ceremonial ribbon cutting for the new Hub which will be located on the third floor of the Library. According to Shirley Selhub, DWN V.P., "The Hub will