Sarah LaDuke

In Annie Hartnett's new novel "Unlikely Animals" (Ballentine Books), natural-born healer Emma Starling once had big plans for her life, but she’s lost her way. A medical school dropout, she’s come back to small-town Everton, New Hampshire, to care for her father, who is dying from a mysterious brain disease. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as having visions of the ghost of a long-dead naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, once known for letting wild animals live in his house. This ghost has been giving Clive some ideas on how to spend his final days.

The soul and jazz singer Ledisi will perform twice this summer at The Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York.This weekend she’ll take the amphitheater stage at SPAC as part of the 2022 Freihofer's Saratoga Jazz Festival on Sunday, June 26th. She’ll return on August 3 with the Philadelphia Orchestra with her renowned “Ledisi Sings Nina” concert - a tribute to Nina Simone, which she’s also released as an album and a version was filmed for PBS as “Ledisi Live: A Tribute to Nina Simone.”Ledisi is an acclaimed and award-winning musician and actor and she joins us to talk about her career, her music, and her philosophy.

Will Hermes is a long-time music writer and contributor to Rolling Stone, NPR, The New York Times, and Pitchfork. He is the author of "Love Goes to Buildings on Fire" and an upcoming biography of Lou Reed. He joins us often to share his expertise and at year's end we call on him to let us know what music we may have missed.Spotify Playlist:WAMC summer 2022

Barrington Stage Company presents “Ain’t Misbehavin’: The Fats Waller Musical Show” on the Boyd-Quinson mainstage in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. “Ain’t Misbehavin”’ is a musical revue tribute to the black musicians of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and '30s. Conceived by Richard Maltby Jr. and Murray Horwitz, the Tony Award winning musical is choreographed and directed this season at Barrington Stage by Emmy Award-nominee Jeffrey L. Page.

This week's Book Picks come from owner of Bennington Bookshop, Phil Lewis.

This Sunday, June 12, at 3pm - The Empire State Youth Orchestra will perform a very special concert at Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood in Lenox, MA.ESYO’s new Music Director and Conductor Etienne Abelin and the Symphony Orchestra will perform Beethoven’s Egmont Overture alongside Arturo Márquez's Danzón No. 2. And Fabrizio Cassol's Concerto Grosso for DJ/Electronics, Cello, Saxophone, and Orchestra is the centerpiece of the concert.

Our Falling into Place series spotlights the important work of - and fosters collaboration between- not-for-profit organizations in our communities; allowing us all to fall into place.Falling Into Place is supported by The Seymour Fox Memorial Foundation, Providing a helping hand to turn inspiration into accomplishment. See more possibilities … see more promise… see more progress. This week we learn about Capital Region Sponsor-A-Scholar.

Sol LeWitt, who lived from 1928 to 2007, was a pioneer of conceptual art and is considered one of the most influential artists of the second half of the twentieth century. His artistic practice included wall drawings, structures, photography, printmaking, artist’s books, drawings, gouaches, and folded and ripped paper works. The exhibition, “Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints” is the most comprehensive presentation of the artist’s printmaking to date and it is on view at the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, MA through June 12.Curated by David S. Areford, professor of art history at the University of Massachusetts Boston, the exhibition is accompanied by an in-depth catalog co-published by the New Britain Museum of American Art, Williams College Museum of Art, and Yale University Press.

Rebecca Soffer co-founded Modern Loss after suddenly losing both of her parents over the course of a few years in her early thirties and being forced to navigate a society where she felt lost and helpless and no one she encountered seemed to know what to do or say to help.Since co-founding Modern Loss, she’s been trying to serve up a national and global conversation that will help others who are experiencing the trauma of grief. Her latest project is “The Modern Loss Handbook: An Interactive Guide to Moving Through Grief and Building Your Resilience”(Running Press). The book features accumulated and professional insight and advice, prompts to help develop coping strategies and hold on to memories, therapeutic-based exercises - and more.

Madeleine Peyroux is an American jazz singer and songwriter who began her career as a teenager on the streets of Paris. She found mainstream success in 2004 when her album Careless Love hit and she’s celebrating that album and the songs collected on it in her pandemic-delayed “Careless Love Forever” tour.Peyroux is the type of timeless and expressive singer who transports listeners with the emotionality of her performance. The Careless Love Forever tour will bring Madeleine Peyroux to The Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on Friday, May 27 at 8 p.m.