PHILLY MUSIC FEST GOES VIRTUAL WITH STRONG LOCAL LINEUP
A number of other virtual and in-person events are planned for this weekend.
Here are some events planned for this weekend throughout the region:
• Philly Music Fest will hold an all-virtual livestream music festival featuring Japanese Breakfast and the Districts tonight and
Mt. Joy, Langhorne Slim and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on Friday, all performing live from the stage of Ardmore Music Hall. The annual festival, which typinights at three independent Philadelphia music venues, will exclusively feature local musicians, as usual. Proceeds will be donated to Philadelphia-based music education programs and seed another round of Philly Music Fest grants for local musicians struggling due to COVID-19. In order to allow venue staff to sanitize the stage, the festival will feature pre-recorded sets from emerging artists and messages from the charities that Philly Music Fest has supported in the past, which will be shown in between the live sets. The livestream will be broadcast on WXPN (88.5 FM), and the video of the performances will be available online at (livesessions.npr.org). The livestream can also be accessed at phillymusicfest.com and ardmoremusichall.com. For the schedule, visit phillymusicfest.com/schedule/.
• The Barnes Foundation will present “Elijah Pierce’s America,” a landmark exhibition featuring the sculptures of woodcarver Elijah Pierce (1892–1984), from Sunday through Jan. 10 in the Roberts Gallery. This is the first major retrospective of Pierce’s work to be presented outside his home city of Columbus,
Ohio, in more than 25 years. A barber by trade, Pierce created a unique body of work over the course of 50 years, producing his virtuoso between cutting hair. His work features remarkable narratives — religious parables, autobiographical scenes, episodes from American politics — and includes figures from sports and film, with subjects ranging from Richard Nixon to Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr., and from Hank Aaron to Warren Beatty. The Barnes Foundation, 2025 Benjamin Franklin Highway, Philadelphia, is open Fridays through Mondays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Timed tickets ($25 for adults, $23 for seniors) are available at barnesfoundation.org.
• The Jurassic Quest dinosaur exhibition in the Wells Fargo Center parking lot, Philadelphia, has once again extended its run, this time through Sunday. The interactive drive-thru features more than 70 moving and life-like dinosaurs, including an 80 -foot-long Spinosaurus, as well as the 50-foot-long Megalodon. Tickets (starting at $49 plus fees per car or SUV) for the hour-long ride must be purchased online in advance at www.jurassicquest.com. Hours are 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
• Singer-songwriter and saxophonist extraordinaire Vanessa Collier will perform an outdoor concert on Saturday at 7 p.m. at Truck-N-Brew in Willow Glen Park,
94 Park Ave., Sinking Spring. Among her many accolades, Collier has won the Blues Music Awards for horn player of the year in 2019 and this year. The 2013 Berklee College of Music graduate recently released her fourth album, “Heart on the Line.” The venue features a large tent, and tickets are limited to ensure social distancing. Gates open at 5, and food trucks will be operating from 5 to 8:30. For more information or to reserve, call 610-777-6388 or visit www. trucknbrew.com.
• The Philadelphia Orchestra launches its 121st season on Wednesday at 7 p.m. with the Opening Night Celebration Concert, presented on the Digital Stage at www.philorch.org. Led by Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the orchestra will officially kick off its reimagined 2020–21 season with selections by Rossini, Verdi, Mozart and more, as well as the first onstage performance of Valerie Coleman’s “Seven O’Clock Shout,” commissioned by the orchestra and written in honor of frontline workers in the COVID-19 pandemic. The evening will include a performance of the orchestra with soprano Angel Blue, a new virtual collaboration with Grammy-winning musician and actor Steve Martin and a remote performance by pianist Lang Lang, as well as special appearances by sports icon and owner of the Philadelphia Freedoms, Billie Jean King. The concert will feature performances captured without an audience at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, as well as pre-recorded messages. The concert will remain available to view through Oct. 7. Tickets start at $50 and are on sale at www. philorch.org or by calling Ticket Philadelphia at 215893-1999.
• Berks Sinfonietta presents the second concert of its virtual season Saturday at 7:30 p.m. The performance will be streamed on Facebook and YouTube. Listeners can easily connect to the live broadcast by visiting www.berkssinfonietta.org. This month’s repertoire features Beethoven’s “Grosse Fuge,” which was originally the final movement of his “Quartet in B-flat Major,”
Op. 130. The Sinfonietta also will perform Florence Price’s “Five Folksongs in Counterpoint,” for string quartet. The wind quintet will then play the local premiere of Ruth Crawford Seeger’s “Suite.” Seeger was an American modernist composer active primarily during the 1920s and 1930s and an American folk music specialist from the late 1930s until her death. The concert closes with a performance of Latin American composer Astor Piazolla’s “Libertango.” A donation equaling the usual ticket costs of $15 per adult and $5 per child is requested.
• The Jake Joyce Band performs a socially distanced outdoor show Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. in the Stoudts Brewery Bier Garden, Adamstown. The band will be performing originals as well as covers of Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and Willie Nelson. There will be a full menu and bar with more than 20 taps. Admission is free.
• Nativity BVM Ukrainian Catholic Church presents Bands, Bags, Beers and Baskets on Saturday at 1 p.m. at St. Benedict’s Picnic Grove, Route 10, Robeson Township. It will include live music by Echo North, Jake Joyce and Vince Rollins, a Cornhole tournament, homemade foods like pierogi, stuffed cabbage, potato pancakes and halushkie, a bar and prize basket raffles, all in a socially distanced outdoor environment. Tickets must be purchased in advance at eventbrite.com. Cost is $15 for general admission and $75 for a tournament team of two, including general admission.