A musical, lyrical and historical week starts with a holiday that marches on, we hope, in spite of snow.
Monday, January 20 - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
From 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., the Yale Peabody Museum’s 2025 MLK celebration actually spans three nearby locations—the Peabody, the Yale Science Building and the New Haven Museum—with attractions including live music, poetry, storytelling and kids’ activities.
Meanwhile, at 2 p.m. within First and Summerfield United Methodist Church, “Harmony in Action, the advanced student orchestra at Music Haven, present their annual concert in honor of MLK” along with the faculty-comprised Haven String Quartet and St. Luke’s Steel Band.
Tuesday, January 21
At 7 p.m., the next “Listen Here” event at the Institute Library promises “storytelling for grownups” via “captivating short stories read aloud by actors from the New Haven Theater Company… Tea and cookies served.”
A few blocks away, the Takács Quartet, described in 2020 in The New York Times as “one of the world’s greatest string quartets,” takes the stage for a 7:30 show at Yale’s Morse Recital Hall.
Thursday, January 23
Concurring with In the First Person, an exhibition featuring excerpts from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale’s Beinecke Library hosts a 5 p.m. concert of “Songs from Testimonies,” a “research and performance project based on poems and songs recounted in interviews with survivors recorded at the Fortunoff Archive. This concert will feature songs that represent a wide diverse array of musical traditions, genres and languages, from instrumental Hasidic niggunim to Polish tango and Yiddish folksongs.”
At Best Video in Hamden, “The Secret Music Documentary Society,” a new monthly screening series curated by local filmmakers Gorman Bechard and Faith Marek, shows its first “underseen or unknown music documentary” at 7, with an optional beer-and-pizza hour beforehand.
Friday, January 24
At 9 p.m. at Cafe Nine, DJs TI-99 and R.I.C.H.A.R.D. promise “a little time travel” via “the best of ’80s, new wave, post punk and alternative hits” during the next Party Out of Bounds.
Saturday, January 25
From 10 to noon or 1 to 3, a workshop at the East Rock Ranger Station invites you to “learn about the different types of local animals, their tracks, and how to find and identify them in snow and mud.”
From noon to 4, the New Haven Museum hosts its next “What’s in the Whitney Library?” exploration of the museum’s holdings, this time centered on local “proclamations, posters, and broadsides” dating back to the 1700s.
At 1, Dixwell Congregational Church hosts Charles “Chaz” Warner for a workshop titled “Legacies of Freedom: Profiles of Dixwell Congregational Church in the Struggle for Civil and Human Rights,” where attendees will have a chance to “engage with historical texts and artifacts.”
At 8:30, “a live, multi-sensory musical experience” honors the music of Joe Hisaishi, best known for his collaborations with the Japanese animated filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, at Bridgeport’s Bijou Theatre.
Sunday, January 26
At noon, Armada Brewing hosts a ticketed “speed puzzle competition” offering the chance to test the sharpness of your jigsawing.
From 1 to 3, the Ely Center of Contemporary Arts is also putting the pieces together, during a multi-show opening reception featuring works by seven artists.
At 4, Center Church on the Green holds its annual Charles Ives Recital, this time “featuring organist Holly Broadbent from the Yale School of Music [performing] works by J.S. Bach, Claude Debussy, and Jonathan Dove.”
Written by Dan Mims. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations, prices and other details before attending events.
