This Week in New Haven (April 12 – 18)

P owerful voices enlighten and entertain us on screens and stages.

Monday, April 12
The Jewish Community Center for Greater New Haven’s 10th annual Beckerman Jewish Film Series enters its 10th of 13 weeks, with each week offering a new film to be screened online at home. This week’s feature is Crescendo (2020), a drama inspired by real-world events, in which a “world-famous conductor” forms “an Israeli-Palestinian youth orchestra for a peace performance… But first he must have his group overcome their beliefs, fears, and bigotry in order to come together.” Tickets cost $10 for one movie or $24 for three.

Over the course of five daily sessions starting at 5:30 this evening, Nadine Nelson, the current Creative-In-Residence at Ives Squared, leads “Camp Public Kitchen,” a free youth-oriented program “aimed at getting our kid chefs to be excited about creating food and being confident in the kitchen. They will be taught basic cooking skills and methods. Kids will learn skills for a lifetime and a repertoire of recipes to wow family and friends,” plus other “home ec” lessons. Participants can register for one, two, three, four or all five sessions.

sponsored by

Yale Center for British Art

Thursday, April 15
At 5 p.m., journalist, novelist and Yale Poynter Fellow Nathaniel Rich (pictured above)—“author of Losing Earth: A Recent History (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Award, and a winner of awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Institute of Physics”—discusses “The Future of Environmental Journalism.” Free; registration required.

The outdoor stage at Best Video Film and Cultural Center (1842 Whitney Ave, Hamden; 203-287-9286) reopens for spring with a 5:30 p.m. performance by “roots singer-songwriter” Shawn Taylor, whose “thumping thumb, dancing fingers, wailing harp, deep, gritty, soul-stirring vocals and poetic blue-collar lyrics… ooze American roots; wandering roots.” The show is free, “but please bring cash for the musicians’ tip jar.”

Also at 5:30 p.m., a virtual lecture given by Stephen Blackmer and hosted by Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music aims to reorient spiritual practice around experiencing, appreciating and preserving the natural world—“the vastness of the heavens, the fertility of the Earth, and the mystery of life.” Blackmer will point to his Church of the Woods in Canterbury, New Hampshire, “where the land itself is the sacred space, Christian practice is transformed in Nature, and human beings re-connect with our original source of beauty and divine inspiration,” as a case study. Free; registration required.

Friday, April 16
Yale Opera’s Spring Showcase premieres at 7:30 p.m., offering “an evening of recorded performances of music by Bizet, Donizetti, Dvorák, Handel, Massenet, Mozart, Rossini, and R. Strauss, with piano accompaniment.” Free.

Yesterday and today at 8 p.m. and tomorrow at 4 and 8 p.m., Yale Cabaret presents Nomè SiDone’s Dear 2020, With Love: A Euphoric Play, which follows a “love story… amidst a global pandemic.” Tonight’s performance—both live and virtual, as the entire 2020-21 season has been—is a bit special thanks to a half-hour talkback following the show. Tickets cost $6 or $5 for Yale faculty/staff and $4.50 for students.

Written by Dan Mims. Image features Nathaniel Rich. 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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