Award-winning dancer and choreographer Nora Chipaumire enraptured students across the Island last week in The Yard’s artists-in-the-schools program. Ms. Chipaumire, associate artistic director of the acclaimed company Urban Bush Women, teaches a blend of Southern African and modern dance.
Vineyard Dance will offer a six-week summer dance course from Monday, June 30 to August 9, at the Oak Bluffs School on Tradewinds Road off Wing Road. Adults and teenagers may join at any time. Ballet, modern dance, modern jazz and floor barre classes will be taught by Kathy Joyce Costanza. For more information, call 508-693-2257.
Singer-songwriter Bella will be performing a bossa nova show at Che’s Lounge every Tuesday through August at 7 p.m.
Called Bossa on the Moon, the show includes original songs and classics of samba, jazz and blues that Bella swings on her guitar and her cavaquinho, a soprano Brazilian guitar.
On the set list there will be sweet summer treats like Samba Chocolate and Samba Noir by Bella, and standards such as The Little Boat and Fly Me to the Moon with a bossa arrangement.
A dance party featuring the Sting Rays playing live music is set for Nov. 14 from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Tisbury Senior Center in Vineyard Haven. Too shy to dance? There will also be an hors d’oeurves and drinks (non-alcoholic) table, and you can tap your toes without leaving your seat. All are welcome and there is no charge.
Nectar’s closes out its first year here in true Vineyard style: a legion of Island musicians will take the stage for the venue’s final show, and a portion of the $15 ticket sales will go to a pair of charities: West Tisbury’s David Tucker, who suffered a heart attack back in September and has since acquired a decent pile of medical bills; and the Island Affordable Housing Fund.
Doors open at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 28. For details, call 508-693-1137.
A latter-day Odetta, with her low, low voice, singer-songwriter Melanie DeMore has shared stages with Pete Seeger, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and John Prine. Now you too can join with her singing.
Island music teachers are bringing Ms. DeMore back for the All-Island Choral Festival next week, when she will give her popular workshops not only to students but also, for the first time here, to adults. The workshop is free and open to any singers, on Tuesday, Oct. 6, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the high school chorus room.
The Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society continues a popular holiday tradition this Saturday, Nov. 28, presenting its annual Thanksgiving weekend concert at 7:30 p.m. at the Whaling Church in Edgartown.
Pianist Delores Stevens, the music society’s artistic director, has invited three notable artists to join her in a concert program that will feature two great quartets from the classical repertoire: Beethoven’s Piano Quartet, Opus 16, and Fauré’s Piano Quartet in C Minor.
He carries in his fingertips the rhythms of the world, from the Caribbean calypso that cries out from his old beat-up steel drum, to the Cuban guaguanco (wa-wan-kó) that comes from his congas, to the Brazilian sambas he lays down in layers. The samba he teaches in parts — one, for instance, he taps out to the phrase, “I like pizza, all kinds of pizza” — to groups of elderly Parkinson’s patients, to preschoolers, to prisoners and to people with cerebral palsy.
Falmouth Academy seniors Janaye Rooney and Clea Baumhofer, both of Vineyard Haven, will perform and have solos with Falmouth Academy’s Chamber Orchestra for Holidays at Heritage, at concert at Heritage Plantation in Sandwich on Friday, Dec. 11 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Falmouth Academy’s orchestra will play Corelli’s Christmas Concerto Grosso and two movements of Schubert’s fifth symphony.
