This Week in New Haven (September 18 - 24)

… starring prize-winning writers, the father of African cinema, a New York sports hero and a new colorful season, with an eclectic soundtrack.

Monday, September 18
During the next virtual Mondays at Beinecke lecture at 4 p.m., Michael Morand, the library’s director of community engagement, discusses a little-known figure from local history, John Warner Barber. Barber “was an American engraver on both copper and wood, a topographical draftsman, and an historian,” whose “illustrations and books are essential chronicles of 19th-century… New Haven.”

At 7:30, Yale’s Battell Chapel hosts a performance by “Grammy-winning professional chamber choir” The Crossing with guest flautist Claire Chase.

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Tuesday, September 19
The New Haven Free Public Library’s Welcome Week picks up today with a visit to the Fair Haven Branch.

The 2023 Windham-Campbell Prizes Festival begins at 5 p.m. with an opening party featuring live music, a DJ and free food from four food trucks out on College Street (presumably along the New Haven Green). That’s followed 24 hours later by the prize ceremony and keynote address by prolific author Greil Marcus, in turn leading to two busy days of talks and other events led by this year’s prize winners.

The next local PechaKucha—featuring eclectic presentations formatted for 20 slides that advance every 20 seconds, so they’ve gotta be snappy—happens at East Rock Brewing at 6 p.m.

Thursday, September 21
A Yale Film Archive series celebrating the early works of Ousmane Sembène, the “father of African cinema,” picks up at 7 p.m. in the Humanities Quadrangle with a 1968 feature and a 1970 short. In Tauw, the short, a young man “beset by family expectations and modern bureaucratic nightmares… looks for work.” In Mandabi, “jobless Ibrahima Dieng receives a money order for 25,000 francs from a nephew who works in Paris… ews of his windfall quickly spreads among his neighbors, who flock to him for loans even as his attempts to cash the order are stymied in a maze of bureaucratic obstacles, and new troubles rain down on his head,” according to a summary by The Criterion Collection, which says the film is the first “made in an African language.”

Friday, September 22
At 7 p.m., Yankees star pitcher CC Sabathia, who was “the MLB’s active leader in strikeouts, innings pitched, complete games, and WAR” when he left baseball in 2019, comes to SCSU’s Lyman Center to share details from both his career and his retirement.

At Space Ballroom in Hamden, Bully brings the ’90s rock back during an 8 o’clock show.

Saturday, September 23
On the first official day of fall, Brooksvale Park in Hamden holds its Fall Festival. From 11 a.m. to 4, attractions include live music, food trucks, a kids’ zone, a climbing wall, a pumpkin patch, beekeeping demos, nature crafts, environmental exhibits, K9 demos, a bake sale, craft vendors “and more!”

From noon to 6 at Crown and Orange Streets, this year’s New Haven Pride festival promises “over 40 vendors” along with musical, drag and burlesque performances.

Experimental rock band The Mars Volta bring their “songs of breath-taking complexity also possessing powerful emotional immediacy” to College Street Music Hall for an 8 p.m. bill.

Sunday, September 24
From noon to dusk, you can get out of the house and into a House Music Experience in Goffe Street Park.

Then, at 7, the Moonfruits—Canadian purveyors of “craft contemporary folk, organically alternating between French and English, that addresses our collective humanity with heart, wit, and wonder”—visit Volume Two, a.k.a. Neverending Books.

Written by Dan Mims. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations, prices and other details before attending events.