Historically informed performances of music from the distant and not-so-distant past provide the soundtrack for a week with birthday bookends.
Monday, April 13
“Recommended for ages 3-8, with caregiver,” a party at Ives Main Library celebrates Winnie-the-Pooh’s 100th birthday. “Bring your favorite stuffed animal to the party, where we’ll do crafts and activities and have a bear-y good snack.”
Tuesday, April 14
At 8 p.m., teenage travel soccer teammates from decades ago team up for a well-traveled 8 p.m. bill at Cafe Nine. The headliners are the Ain’t Sisters, whose eclectic folk rock, whether uptempo or down-, feels refreshingly honest and uninhibited—a quality it shares with the music of opener Lee-Ann Lovelace (who played soccer with Sisters co-frontwoman Barb Carbone).
Wednesday, April 15
With a 4:30 p.m. lecture and 5:15 concert at Beinecke Library, historically informed musical ensemble Yale Collegium Musicum presents “Music, Morals and Philosophy: Modes, Planet/gods, and the Power of Music in the Renaissance.”
Thursday, April 16
In conjunction with the exhibition Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750-1850, a 5 p.m. performance at the Yale Center for British Art features “vocalists Sherezade Panthaki, Ria Modak, and Ahona Palchoudhuri, along with musician Jeffrey Grossman, explor[ing] the hybrid musical culture of India and the West through a performance of Indian songs and melodies transcribed by Sophia Plowden, the British wife of an East India Company official who lived in Lucknow, India, from 1777 to 1790.”
Friday, April 17
At 5 p.m. at Bethesda Lutheran Church, Mexamorphosis, “a unique project that incorporates traditional musical styles and diverse instrumentation from various cultures,” performs a program of songs spanning Vivaldi, “a traditional South Indian improv” and the five-century Son Jarocho social music tradition of Veracruz, Mexico.
At 7, a Lord of the Rings trivia night takes place in a fitting venue: the fantasy-themed Armada Brewing.
Also at 7, in Yale’s 53 Wall Street auditorium, the Yale Film Archive presents a chance to view Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) on the big screen. “Expanding cinema’s scale and language with metaphysical wonder,” the film “follows astronauts sent to Jupiter to investigate the origins of a strange lunar obelisk with links to our own evolution.”
Saturday, April 18
From 8 a.m. to noon under the auspices of the New Haven Bird Club, Cheryl Cape and Dan May lead a field trip “start[ing] at the Kelley Memorial Preserve in Branford, which surrounds the active Stony Creek quarry… We hike a moderately strenuous loop of 1.5 miles, observing the geological features and the birds in woodland and riparian settings. An optional (and shorter) second part of the trip, after a rest stop on I-95, will be at Quarry Park Preserve in Fair Haven Heights.”
From 9 to 3, an Earth Day Festival hosted by landscaping company Madison Earth Care convenes “25 vendors, food trucks, farm animals, hayrides, face painting, sensory bins, [a] mini touch-a-truck, and so much more!”
Meanwhile, from 10 to noon not too far away, a registration-requested Earth Day beach and park cleanup at Madison’s breathtaking Hammonasset State Park offers a chance to help “improve the appearance for everyone’s enjoyment” and, more importantly, for “the health of birds and aquatic animals.”
At 2 p.m. on “the anniversary of the most famous horse ride in American history,” author Kostya Kennedy comes to the New Haven Museum to present “The Ride: Paul Revere and the Night That Saved America,” featuring “little-known aspects of a beloved story.”
In advance of 4/20, The Cellar on Treadwell in Hamden hosts the third annual Riffs & Spliffs music festival, “a celebration of stoner, doom, sludge and the art and culture surrounding it.”
Maybe the timing is also no coincidence at North Haven’s Small Batch Cellars, where a show by Back to the Garden 1969: The Woodstock Experience, “a high-energy Woodstock tribute featuring iconic ’60s hits, immersive visuals, and storytelling that brings the era to life,” starts at 7.
As far as I can find, you can’t hear them as a unit anywhere online, but you can hear Red Skies—“bring[ing] together four of New England’s most talented and widely-beloved bluegrass musicians”: Joe K. Walsh, BB Bowness, Alex Rubin and Steve Roy, each of whom “have made careers out of playing acoustic string-band and bluegrass music at the highest level all over the world”—at Neighborhood Music School at 7:30.
Sunday, April 19
The 2026 Cherry Blossom Festival in Wooster Square Park lasts from noon to 4:30 and promises live music, dozens of food vendors, a children’s zone, an “engagement zone” (featuring local arts orgs) and an “Italian Heritage Zone.” And while no promises can be made, it looks like the park’s cherry blossoms will be at or near peak bloom.
Friends of Grove Street Cemetery and Beinecke Library team up for a 305th birthday commemoration of American founding father, New Haven history all-star and cemetery resident Roger Sherman. First, a graveside ceremony at 12:30 features remarks from the Sons of the American Revolution, the City Historian Michael Morand and others, as well as a wreath-laying. Then, from 1 to 4 in Beinecke’s reading room, visitors can peruse “a special display of materials from Yale Library collections related to Roger Sherman,” among other topics.
At 2, the documentary Zoo (1993) screens at Yale’s Humanities Quadrangle. Director Frederick Wiseman “spent 42 days filming in Miami’s zoo, revealing the routines and contradictions of captivity and care. While visitors and animals gaze at one another through bars, zookeepers juggle ethical, organizational, and research interests in an environment where human interventions mean life or death.”
Written by Dan Mims. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations, prices and other details before attending events.
