F ests, celebrations and “wars” meet a fair, a spotlight and a spectacular.
Monday, April 15 – Tax Day
File away, if you haven’t already.
Tuesday, April 16
The 2024 Yale Review Festival, offering “special writing workshops, talks, and panels with some of today’s most exciting poets, novelists, and critics” today through Friday, begins at 1 p.m. with a lunch-and-talk featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Hernan Dias. (Note: The festival’s “talks and panels are free and open to the public,” while “workshops are open to members of the Yale community, with preference given to Yale students.”)
Yale Consort, “a newly formed professional vocal ensemble” that “provides high-quality choral music for a series of evening services in local parishes and chapels,” heads to St. Mary’s Church for an hourlong “service of Choral Vespers” starting at 5:15. The program includes “a range of music from Gregorian chant to 8-voice polyphony.”
At 7, Best Video in Hamden screens The Straight Story (1999), a movie “based on the true story of Alvin Straight’s 1994 journey across Iowa and Wisconsin on a lawn mower. Alvin is an elderly World War II veteran who lives with his kind intellectually disabled daughter. When he hears that his estranged brother has suffered a stroke, Alvin makes up his mind to visit him and hopefully make amends before he dies. Because Alvin’s legs and eyes are too impaired for him to receive a driver’s license, he hitches a trailer to his recently purchased thirty-year-old John Deere 110 Lawn Tractor” and, with a top speed of five miles per hour, begins the 240-mile drive.
Wednesday, April 17
Starting at 6:30, East Rock Brewing hosts a night of “general” trivia to benefit the Greater New Haven Cat Project, which is “dedicated to improving the lives of stray, abandoned, and feral cats.”
Thursday, April 18
At 6 p.m., Yale history professor David Blight heads to Madison’s RJ Julia to discuss Yale and Slavery: A History, a book he authored with critical research assistance from the Yale and Slavery Research Project. “This narrative history offers a comprehensive look at how slavery and resistance to it have shaped this renowned American institution of higher learning. … Drawing on wide-ranging archival materials, Yale and Slavery extends from the century before the college’s founding in 1701 to the dedication of its Civil War memorial in 1915, while engaging with the legacies and remembrance of this complex story.”
Ruby the Hatchet, purveyors of “doomy, evil hard rock with occult-flavored psychedelia for a witchy brew of dazzl[ing] and ominous cosmic rock sounds,” headline an 8 o’clock bill at Hamden’s Space Ballroom. Suitably dark openers include Acid Witch and Connecticut’s own When the Deadbolt Breaks.
Friday, April 19
From noon to 4, New Haven Makes, a fair for “creatives of all kinds, whether you want to make music, enjoy painting, explore woodworking, or so much more,” convenes seven local organizations eager to explain “how they can help people with whatever they want to make” at an eighth: Ives Main Library.
Three days, three venues, three lineups, three letters. NHV Fest, a local music festival, starts at 6 p.m. with four bands at Volume 2 (a.k.a. Never Ending Books); continues tomorrow at 7 p.m. with five bands at Crunch House; and finishes Sunday from 2 to 10 p.m. with eight bands at The Beeracks in East Haven.
Also starting today at 6, the East Haven Rotary Club’s annual Anginette Wars fundraiser, located at East Haven High School, promises “a day filled with sugar, laughter, and friendly competition” as “bakers from all around compete to create the most delicious and creative anginette cookies.”
Saturday, April 20
From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., the Quinnipiac Car Club’s sixth annual Spring Car Show promises “food, music, friends, vendors, and of course plenty of cars” at Quinnipiac University’s York Hill Campus in Hamden.
From noon to 9 today and 2 to 6 tomorrow, East Rock Brewing’s second annual Spring Fest promises a new beer release, a cookout and a concert today and a vendor fair and additional show tomorrow.
From 5 to 7:30 at NXTHVN, a registration-required New Haven Composers Spotlight performance is the culmination of the program’s inaugural “commissioning of three works by diverse and emerging local composers”: Alyssa Chetrick, Tyler Goldchain and Benjamin Webster. “While centering the Dixwell community in our vision, the debut will highlight the interactions between a large performance ensemble that bridges musical backgrounds, institutions, and communities in New Haven, and the visions of these three unique composers.”
At 7 in Yale’s Alice Cinema, the finale of a “Comic Legacies on the Japanese Silver Screen” series offers a double feature plus a panel discussion featuring one of the film’s directors. Billed first among the movies is Kamome Diner (2006): “On a quiet street in Helsinki, Sachie has opened a diner featuring rice balls. For a month she has no customers. Then, in short order, she has her first customer, meets Midori, a gangly Japanese tourist, and invites her to stay with her.” Billed second is Make Way! Jaguars! (1968): “A plot by an evil mastermind to eliminate the lead singer of the Japanese ‘Group Sounds’ rock band, The Jaguars, leads the group through a series of psychedelic, comedic escapades.”
At 8:30 at Jazzy’s Cabaret, Simone Moné & The Score conjure the music—and “the magic”—of Whitney Houston.
Sunday, April 21
A ticketed pre-Earth Day “forest therapy” walk starts at 10 a.m. in the Lake Wintergreen section of West Rock Park. “This will be a gentle slow-paced walk where you will be invited to connect with nature using your senses through a series of invitations. … At the end I will prepare a tea and snack for us to share,” writes organizer Kristine Weidner.
The next New Haven Comic & Collectible Spectacular, held from 10 to 3 at the Annex YMA Club, promises vendors selling “Golden and Silver Age through Modern-era comics, graded books, sets, trades, keys and bargain books as well as vintage toys, modern action figure lines, Funko items, LEGO, and MORE! We’ll have featured artists discussing, doing live sketches [of], taking commissions [for] and selling their original art.”
From 1 to 3, the Ely Center of Contemporary Art hosts an Earth Day Celebration featuring “a drop-in art-making session using eco-friendly materials.”
From 5 to 8, Petonito’s Pastry and Cupcake Shoppe in East Haven celebrates “70 sweet years” with an offering of “delicious complimentary desserts” and a performance by The Valente Brothers.
Written by Dan Mims. Image features Ruby the Hatchet. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations, prices and other details before attending events.
