A Crowded Dance Card (Friday and Saturday 11/06-07)

Friday November 6:
The Buttonwood Tree welcomes back the Grass Routes Bluegrass Band, the Connecticut-based quintet led by the husband-and-wife duo of Bill Reveley (mandolin, guitar, vocals) and Marilyn Toback-Reveley (guitar, vocals.) Joined by the 3 J's (Joe Lemeris on banjo, Jack Jolie on guitar, and bassist Joe DeLillo), this is a band whose repertoire ranges from traditional tunes to contemporary folk and country songs. To find out more, go to www.grassroutesbluegrass.com. For reservations, call 347-4957.

The Middletown-based CT Gilbert & Sullivan Society proudly presents Messrs. G & S's "The Pirates of Penzance" Friday through Sunday in the Performing Arts Center of Middletown High School, LaRosa Lane. Featuring almost 50 actors and singers as well as a full orchestra (conducted by Dr. John Dreslin), the play actually debuted in the United States (New York City, New Year's Eve 1879), 4 months before hitting the London stages. Featuring one of the most recognized songs in the G & S pantheon ("I Am The Model of a Modern Major-General"), the story is quite funny and the music highly enjoyable. Performances are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday with a 2 p.m. show on Sunday. For ticket information, call 1-800-866-1606 or email to tickets@ctgilbertandsullivan.org. Click on the troupe's name above for more information about the cast and the organization.

The Boston-based Eilen Jewell performs "American Roots Music" at 8 p.m. in Crowell Concert Hall. The show, originally scheduled for this past July, features Jewell's top-notch band (Jason Beek on drums, harmony vocals, Jerry Miller on electric, acoustic and steel guitars and Johnny Sciascia on upright bass) as well as one of the finer young Gospel groups, the Sacred Shakers. Comprised of Daniel Kellar (violin), Eric Royer (vocals, banjo), Greg Glassman (vocals, acoustic guitar) and Daniel Fram (vocals, acoustic guitar), the Shakers and Ms. Jewell's trio have a great time onstage and that translate well to the audience. For ticket information, go to www.wesleyan.edu/cfa or call the Box Office at 685-3355. To get a taste of the music you'll likely hear, go to www.eilenjewell.com/.



If it's American soul, r'n'b music,, rock or popular standards you're craving, go down to Boney's Music Lounge and catch Mass-Conn Fusion in performance. Hopefully, there'll be room to dance because this sextet really knows how to "get in the groove." The first set begins at 8:30 p.m.

Saturday November 7:
The Book Bower, located inside the Main Street Market, welcomes author Marilyn Taylor McDowell, for a 3:30 p.m. reading. She's the author of "Carolina Harmony", her first book for young readers (ages 10 and older) - a synopsis of the story follows: "Carolina’s a runaway hiding out at Harmony Farm. Mr. Ray and Miss Latah treat Carolina as their own. For 10 years she lived easy with her parents in the North Carolina mountains. But it feels risky speaking about the accident that claimed them and her baby brother. And Carolina won’t reveal the year of living with Auntie Shen, her surrogate grandma who took ill and was taken away or how she, Carolina, had to live in foster homes. Then Russell, a troublemaker from the foster home Carolina ran away from, secretly comes to Harmony Farm. Believing he’s a friend, Carolina sneaks him food and takes the blame for his pranks, until one night, when something so terrible happens that Carolina runs away again." The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 704-8222.


A busy day at Wesleyan, what with homecoming weekend, a football game and a slew of seminars (to find out more, go to www.wesleyan.edu and click on "calendar".) For the arts-oriented folk, the day belongs to 2 Amys. At 1:30 p.m., author and essayist Amy Bloom reads and answers questions about writing in Memorial Chapel. Bloom, a local resident and author of "Away", "Love Invents", "Come to Me", and "Normal", is a contributor to The New Yorker and teaches at Yale. Her newest collection of short stories, "Where the God of Love Hangs Out", will be published in January 2010 by Random House. This event is free and open to the public.

Vocalist/songwriter Amy Crawford, Wesleyan graduate (2005), has been living in New York City since her time on campus and is slowly but steadily becoming known as a singer with great style and a strong voice. Her influences include the Beatles, Dido, Janis Joplin, Elton John, Amy Winehouse, Stevie Wonder and producer Jon Brion (Aimee Mann) and her own songs are exciting as well as melodically rich. She returns to Middletown to perform at 8 p.m. in Crowell Concert Hall. For tickets, call the Box Office at 685-3355.

The Floating Theater Company, the group of writers and actors that meets weekly at the Green Street Arts Center, presents a new work titled "Craig's List Missed Connections" at 7 p.m. in The Buttonwood Tree. The theatrical evening is described thusly: The staged readings are all based on a writing prompt requiring the writers to create a new work by culling the listings found at Craig's List: Missed Connections. The evening will conclude with Open Mike with the suggested theme being an expansion on the idea of missed connections. The program is directed and coordinated by Nine Dechamps, the artistic director of Acts Factory Players in Collinsville, Connecticut. Participating playwrights include Jean Wertz, Erin Striff, Jenny Lecce, Forrest Stone, Tony Palmieri, Rachelle Minkoff, Matthew Pollack and Michael Ennis." For more information, call 347-4957.

Poet/playwright/actress Terri Klein sends the following press release: "The Readers Theater" is a lively evening of new Jewish literature read by its authors. Featured readers include Michelle Cameron, reading from her new historical novel "The Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz" (Pocket Books, Sept. 2009). Based on the life of the author’s thirteenth-century ancestor, Meir ben Baruch of Rothenberg, a renowned Jewish scholar of medieval Europe, this is the richly dramatic fictional story of Rabbi Meir’s wife, Shira, a devout but rebellious woman who preserves her religious traditions as she and her family witness the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. Other featured readers will be Green Street Arts Center Teaching Artist in Creative Writing Sari Rosenblatt, reading from her novel-in-progress, Middletown radio personality and writer Richard Kamins, poet-activist Paula Panzarella, poet-memoirist Devorah Rubin as well as Ms. Klein. A wide variety of other books of Jewish interest will also be available for purchase." The event, free and open to the public, takes place at 7 p.m. in the main auditorium of Congregation Adath Israel, 8 Broad Street in Middletown. call 346-4709 for more information.