MUSIC
Pop & Rock
OOMPA Fresh off the release off her quick-talking, bass-heavy single “Lebron” — which will appear on the forthcoming full-length “Unbothered,” out Oct. 1 — the Roxbury-based MC and storyteller headlines this weekend’s installment of the ICA’s Summer Sessions. Aug. 13, 5 p.m. (doors). Institute of Contemporary Art Boston. 617-478-3100, icaboston.org
FREEZEPOP The local electropop stalwarts, with a slew of local acts like glam outfit Sidewalk Driver and hip-hop upstart Brandie Blaze in tow, throw a two-night celebration in honor of their latest album, last year’s “Fantasizer.” Aug. 13-14, 8 p.m. The Sinclair, Cambridge. 617-547-5200, sinclaircambridge.com
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INDIE ROCK FLEA MARKET The daylong open-air market and concert features a lengthy bill of New England acts including scruffy riffers Saturrniids, sharp-edged power-poppers Dutch Tulips, and plush bedroom-pop outfit Senseless Optimism. Aug. 14, noon. ONCE at Boynton Yards, Somerville. oncesomerville.com
MAURA JOHNSTON
Folk & World
MAC MCANALLY McAnally wears a lot of hats in the world of country music — seasoned producer, award-winning songwriter, veteran session player, and touring musician, including a lengthy tenure as a member of Jimmy Buffett’s band (he’ll be playing with Buffett in Mansfield the night before this show). He’s also a solo artist, and he’ll have a chance to focus on his latest effort in that regard, “Once in a Lifetime,” on Sunday. Aug. 15, 8 p.m. $45-$55. City Winery, 80 Beverly St. 617-933-8047, www.citywinery.com/boston
LINDA GAIL LEWIS She’s been playing rockabilly and country music, with and without brother Jerry Lee, for around six decades, and she’s still going strong — witness “Wild! Wild! Wild!,” the explosive record she made with another wild man of sorts, Robbie Fulks, just a couple of years ago. Aug. 18, 7 p.m. (outside show). $20. Askew, 150 Chestnut St., Providence. 401-710-3203, www.askewprov.com
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THE BRIGHTON HOUSE FESTIVAL Passim celebrates a little-known residence in Brighton that has housed and served as the launching point for dozens of area folk artists. Wednesday, some of them, including Sean Trischka, Greg Liszt, and members of Twisted Pine, will pay tribute to that musical incubator. Aug. 18, 7 p.m. $15. Club Passim, 47 Palmer St., Cambridge. 617-492-7679, www.passim.org
STUART MUNRO
Jazz & Blues
THE MAKANDA PROJECT WITH MICHAEL GREGORY JACKSON The Boston-based big band’s main mission is airing the underheard compositions of Boston native Makanda Ken McIntyre. It also brings us infrequent visitors to the area. This time it’s marvelous guitarist and singer Jackson, who’ll join the Project in a program including his own pieces alongside McIntyre’s. Aug. 14, 1 p.m. Free. First Church in Roxbury, 10 Putnam St. (John Eliot Square), Roxbury. www.makandaproject.com
CHARLIE KOHLHASE’S EXPLORERS CLUB This intrepid septet, led by the multi-saxophonist and composer, plays engaging Kohlhase originals as well as choice numbers by such jazz notables as Elmo Hope, Ornette Coleman, and erstwhile Kohlhase collaborators Roswell Rudd and John Tchicai. Aug. 15, 6:30 p.m. $10. Lilypad, 1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge. www.lilypadinman.com
RODERICK FERGUSON The engaging comedian, singer, and actor’s latest show, “Man Overboard!!!,” made quite the splash in Provincetown this summer. In this rare Boston appearance, he’ll perform his signature solo cabaret act. Aug. 19, 7 p.m. Reservations required. Napoleon Room at Club Café, 209 Columbus Ave., Boston. 617-536-0966, www.clubcafe.com
KEVIN LOWENTHAL
Classical
TANGLEWOOD This summer’s abbreviated Tanglewood season winds down with the beloved tradition that is John Williams’s Film Night (Aug. 13), the long-awaited Tanglewood debut of BSO assistant conductor Anna Rakitina (Aug. 14), and finally an all-Brahms program featuring nonagenarian conductor Herbert Blomstedt and violinist Leonidas Kavakos (Aug. 15). If you can make it a long weekend, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra’s final concert is the next day (Aug. 16). Lenox. 617-266-1200, www.tanglewood.org
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ROCKPORT MUSIC This weekend on Cape Ann, the Rockport Chamber Music Festival presents cellist Zlatomir Fung with an opera-themed evening (Aug. 13); the Miró Quartet and clarinetist Anthony McGill (Aug. 14); and the Junction Trio performing piano trios by Ravel and the trio’s own pianist, Conrad Tao (Aug. 15). Each concert will be performed at 5 and 8 p.m.; virtual tickets are also available. Shalin Liu Performance Center, Rockport. 978-546-7391, www.rockportmusic.org
A.Z. MADONNA
ARTS
Theater
ROMEO AND JULIET Shakespeare’s tragedy of the star-crossed lovers will be staged throughout Chelsea’s downtown in an outdoors, site-specific, bilingual adaptation, directed by Danielle Fauteux Jacques. Aug. 14-28. A collaboration by Apollinaire Theatre Company and Teatro Chelsea, in partnership with the city of Chelsea. No tickets required, but information or updates in case of rain at 617-887-2336 or www.apollinairetheatre.com
NINA SIMONE: FOUR WOMEN Christina Ham’s play imagines a conversation-with-music among the great singer-songwriter and civil rights activist Nina Simone and three Black women. Simone will be portrayed by Felicia Curry. Also in the cast: Darlesia Cearcy, Najah Hetsberger, and Sasha Hutchings. Directed by Gerry McIntyre. Aug. 13-Sept. 5. Berkshire Theatre Group. Performances indoors on the Larry Vaber Stage in the Unicorn Theatre, Stockbridge. 413-997-4444, www.berkshiretheatregroup.org
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DINDIN The always inventive playwright-actress Brenda Withers joins Jonathan Fielding, Stacy Fischer, and Robert Kropf in the cast for the premiere of her drama, which is described as “a meditation on predators, prey, and the insatiable appetite of a killer instinct,” revealed at a dinner among an affluent couple and a pair of single friends where tensions escalate. Through Sept. 5. Harbor Stage Company, Wellfleet. 508-514-1763, www.harborstage.org
THE ARBORETUM EXPERIENCE A “self-guided journey” through the Arnold Arboretum that features audio plays; pop-up performances; and guided, interactive movement maps. Created by a team that includes director Summer L. Williams, playwright Kirsten Greenidge, choreographer Jill Johnson, and musician Tim Hall. Open-ended run begins Aug. 21. American Repertory Theater and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Free and unticketed. Information at 617-547-8300, www.americanrepertorytheater.org/arboretumexperience
DON AUCOIN
Dance
TEN TINY DANCES In this Dance Complex presentation, 10 choreographers are challenged to see what creative feats they can accomplish in less than five minutes while performing atop a platform only 4 feet square. This year’s iteration promises influences of flamenco, Bharatanatyam, Odori, Butoh, and circus. Aug. 14-15, Starlight Square Stage, Cambridge. Free with registration. www.eventbrite.com/e/ten-tiny-dances-tickets-165948930719.
NETTA YERUSHALMY The culmination of the Israeli-born dancer-choreographer’s residency at The Yard is a presentation of the new evening-length “Movement.” Featuring an original electronic sound score and an international cast of performers, the work is infused with movement quotes spanning a wide range of dance genres as a way to explore ideas of pluralism and discord. Aug. 13-14, $5-$30. Patricia Nanon Theater, Chilmark. www.dancetheyard.org
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STREB Be prepared to drop your jaw and hold your breath as MacArthur Award-winning Elizabeth Streb brings her Extreme Action Company back to the Pillow for the first time in more than two decades. The company’s artful daredevil routines take kinesthetic exploration to its gravity-defying limits. The retrospective includes classic early solos plus newer works using the “action machines” that have defined the company in the 21st century. Aug. 18-22, $45. Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Leir Outdoor Stage, Becket. www.jacobspillow.org
KAREN CAMPBELL
Visual Arts
IN AMERICAN WATERS In American art, few motifs transcend the boundaries of era, practice, culture, and history like the perpetual indifference of the sea. A byway of global commerce and colonialism, a dividing line between old and new world, and a well of dark mystery, the inscrutability of oceans continues to generate powerful work by a gamut of artists. A brief roll call for this exhibition bears that out: Georgia O’Keeffe, Amy Sherald, Hale Woodruff, Paul Cadmus, Thomas Hart Benton, Jacob Lawrence, Valerie Hegarty, and Stuart Davis. Through Oct. 3. Peabody Essex Museum, Salem. 978-745-9500, www.pem.org
IN AND OUT OF LOVE (BUTTERFLY PAINTINGS AND ASHTRAYS) The Yale Center for British Art reopened last fall, in the midst of a deadly pandemic, in unsettling fashion: With a re-creation of Damien Hirst’s first solo exhibition, “In and Out of Love,” originally shown in London in 1991, where live butterflies flitted about the gallery while patrons perused Hirst’s monochrome canvases (and they were smoking, one might assume, given the ashtrays that are integral to the show). On the lower level, dead butterflies were pressed into similar canvases, making the fragile beauty of life upstairs a spectacle, instead, of the inevitability of death. After a pandemic spike through the winter that prompted a lengthy closure shortly after it opened, the center is now welcoming the public back, extending the exhibition through the end of the year. It marks the work’s 30th anniversary by putting it alongside famous meditations on life and death, including Henry Fuseli’s tragic “Dido,” from 1781, and Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding’s celebration of nature in “A Scene on the Coast, Merionethshire — Storm Passing Off,” from 1818. Through Dec. 31. Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven. 203-432-2858, britishart.yale.edu
MONET AND BOSTON: LEGACY ILLUMINATED The MFA elicited an expected logjam last fall when it opened the “Monet and Boston: Lasting Impression” exhibition as the pandemic deepened; meaning, with attendance limited, demand would grossly outstrip supply. Several of the Impressionist master’s iconic works have moved on to other shows around the globe, but the museum’s deep holdings of his work means they were able to rejig another exhibition to help appease those who couldn’t get tickets the first time around. Of special note: a gallery exploring the influence of Jean-François Millet, Monet’s immediate artistic forebear. Through Oct. 17. Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue. 617-267-9300, www.mfa.org
MELTING POINT Ferrin Contemporary teams up with New York’s Heller Gallery for this exhibition of glass and ceramic works, featuring artists who melt and re-form their materials to explore bigger questions about social justice, life during a pandemic, and, of course, climate change. The art was all made in 2020 or 2021 and reflects the heat rising, in one way or another, in this stressful time. Through Sept. 25. Ferrin Contemporary, 1315 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams. 413-346-4004, www.ferrincontemporary.com
MURRAY WHYTE
ELISE ANSEL Ansel, a painter’s painter who works wet-on-wet, uses old master paintings as source material to create fluid, gestural abstractions. It’s as if she’s pulling the vaunted old scenes authored by Great Men through time’s vortex and revealing them to be something new — shorn of history’s traps but still rooted in its essence, something that shimmers and hums. Through Sept. 1. Schoolhouse Gallery, 494 Commercial St., Provincetown. 508-487-4800, www.galleryschoolhouse.com
CATE McQUAID
EVENTS
Comedy
CHRIS TABB The Boston comic says a night out with the guys is the most dangerous night of the week. “Guys’ night out usually ends with something like this,” he says, assuming the posture of someone looking up at a friend in a high place. “‘Dude, just [expletive] jump, all right? Just jump! Don’t be such an ass, just jump! All right? Dude, it’s five lanes of traffic, just run!’” Aug. 13, 8 p.m. $20. Nick’s Comedy Stop, 200 Warrenton St., Boston. www.nickscomedystop.com
KATE WILLETT Willett says her mom frequently bemoans the current state of sexual politics. “She’ll say these things like, ‘Oh, I think it’s really sad that women today will hook up with these loser guys who just leave,’” says Willett. “I think that’s a lot better than the days when women hooked up with loser guys who just stayed. I know that I have certainly never woken up next to a DJ and thought to myself, ‘Thank God he’s still here.’” Aug. 13-14, 9 p.m. $20-$160. The White Bull Tavern, 1 Union St., Boston. 617-681-4600, www.thewhitebulltavern.com
MIKE BIRBIGLIA Get your first peek at Birbiglia’s next one-person show covering themes of aging and mortality. He has been honing the material with comedian guests on his podcast “Working It Out” for the past year, and he’s also noted that the Melody Tent is the first place he saw live comedy when he attended a Steven Wright show. Aug. 19, 8 p.m. $52-$92. The Cape Cod Melody Tent, 41 W. Main St., Hyannis. 508-775-5630, https://melodytent.org
NICK A. ZAINO III
Family
WALKER BUTTERFLY FESTIVAL In the 14th year of this fluttery festival, families get the chance to observe butterflies in their natural habitat. Featured activities include naturalist workshops, butterfly art, tours of the butterfly garden, and more. Children who come in costume win a prize. Aug. 14, noon-4 p.m. $5 for members, $6 for nonmembers. Broad Meadow Brook Conservation Center and Wildlife Sanctuary, 414 Massasoit Road, Worcester. massaudubon.org
FISHERMAN’S FEAST This weekend, the North End will be full of processions, entertainment, food, and many more special events. Children’s activities take place on Aug. 15 from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Listen to Billy and the Jets cover Billy Joel and Elton John tunes on Saturday, or catch the procession of la Madonna on Sunday. Through Aug. 15. Free. North and Fleet streets. fishermansfeast.com
CHESS ON THE LAWN Lay out on the grass and whip out your best strategies for this chess gathering. All ages and abilities are welcome, and participants are encouraged to bring their own clock if they want to play with time controls. Weather permitting, the event provides tables, chairs, and chess sets. Aug 19., 6 p.m.-8 p.m. Free. Loring-Greenough House, 12 South St., Jamaica Plain. facebook.com
RIANA BUCHMAN