This Week in New Haven (November 21 – 27)

T hough it isn’t a religious moment, this Thanksgiving week makes excellent use of churches, whose acoustic gifts are thanks-worthy indeed. 

Monday, November 21
Yale School of Music students premiere “ambient music, meditative and vast,” tonight from 8 to 9 p.m. in Christ Church (87 Broadway, New Haven), “one of the most resonant spaces on campus.” Free.

Tuesday, November 22
A week capped by a celebration of cooperation between settlers and Native Americans is a good time to learn something new about Native American history. R.J. Julia Booksellers (768 Boston Post Rd, Madison; 203-245-3959) obliges with a free 7 p.m. book talk by Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal author John Bowes. An associate professor of history at Eastern Kentucky University, Bowes’s book “takes a long-needed closer, more expansive look at northern Indian removal”—the general term for the American government’s Native American relocation regime during the 19th century—“and in so doing amplifies the history of Indian removal and of the United States.”

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Creches of Germany at Knights of Columbus Museum

Wednesday, November 23
Multi-instrumentalist Dean Falcone’s messy annual Thanksgiving Vomitorium—an unrehearsed concert where “friends and enemies battle their way through songs they don’t know!,” “audience members are unwillingly dragged to the stage to sing!” and “you never know who is going to show up or what they’re going to play, and often we don’t either”—enjoys its 20th year at Cafe Nine tonight. This time, starting at 8:30, four main musicians and 20 or more guest ones take on “songs of 1977,” from real bands like ABBA and the Sex Pistols, as well as other songs from fictitious bands like Spinal Tap and the Partridge Family. $8. 250 State Street, New Haven. (203) 789-8281.

Some other sonic delights on Thanksgiving Eve: Punxgiving at Three Sheets (372 Elm St, New Haven; 475-202-6909; 9 p.m.), which is accepting “pet-related donations” for the Friends of the New Haven Animal Shelter; Funksgiving at Toad’s Place (300 York St, New Haven; 203-624-8623; 9 p.m.; $20 in advance); and, before those, an “American Primitive” guitar show at Best Video (1842 Whitney Ave, Hamden; 203-287-9286; 7:30 p.m.; $8).

Thursday, November 24 – Thanksgiving
Today is one of the few days of the year when New Haven’s steady schedule of community events defers to private traditions between family and friends. Enjoy yours.

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Endgame at Long Wharf Theatre

Friday, November 25
The Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop’s annual exhibit of vintage American Flyer Trains—which are toys, in a sense, but also sophisticated machines meant to model the real deal—opens today with hours from noon to 5 p.m. A room-sized town edged and crossed by train tracks, with a charming central tableau that reminds of downtown New Haven, is the main attraction, where both kids and adults find themselves compulsively manipulating the buttons and levers that turn on little lights and make the trains go. They can do that through January 15, 2017, when the trains get put away for another year. Free to attend. 915 Whitney Avenue, Hamden. (203) 777-1833.

Saturday, November 26
Orchestra New England’s annual Colonial Concert—its “flagship, flashback entertainment event”—“bring[s] colonial New Haven back to life” this evening inside the United Church on the Green (270 Temple St, New Haven; pictured above), with the music starting at 8 p.m. Involving “wigs, waistcoats and candlelight,” among other throwbacks, the premise this year—the event’s 37th—is that Thomas Jefferson has visited New Haven and curated a “fascinating collection of personally selected music” for O.N.E. to perform. Tickets to the concert cost $35 for reserved seating, $20 for general admission and $5 for students, while tickets to a 6 p.m. pre-show dinner—featuring a “buffet feast” of things like prime rib and mashed potatoes at the nearby Graduate house of the Elm City Club (155 Elm St, New Haven)—cost $45.

Sunday, November 27
One of this evening’s choral programs introduces us to something unfamiliar, while another gives us old favorites. The first, a 4 p.m. show by the St. Petersburg Men’s Ensemble at Bethesda Lutheran Church (450 Whitney Ave, New Haven; free, with donations accepted), delivers “rich and sonorous” renditions of “diverse masterpieces of Russian sacred and secular choral music.” The second, beginning at 7 p.m. at Branford’s United Methodist Church (811 E. Main St; $15 suggested donation), features a performance by the Connecticut Yuletide Carolers, a four-part chorus dressed in Dickensian garb while singing “traditional and contemporary Christmas music.”

Written and photographed by Dan Mims. Image depicts United Church on the Green at twilight. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations and prices before attending events.

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Dan has worked for a couple of major media companies, but he likes Daily Nutmeg best. As DN’s editor, he writes, photographs, edits and otherwise shepherds ideas into fully realized feature stories.

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