Newton Cultural Alliance

Suzuki School of Newton Honors Concert
2026-02-01 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Newton Free Library, 330 Homer St, Newton, MA, 02459, United States
A select group of students from the Suzuki School of Newton will perform solo pieces on violin, piano, and harp. The program includes pieces by Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Bruch, Corelli, and others. Find out more at newtonfreelibrary.net or suzukinewton.org/events.

West Newton Cinema presents Behind the Screen: The Testament of Ann Lee
2026-02-01 13:00 - 15:30 | West Newton Cinema, 1296 Washington Street, West Newton, MA, 02465, United States
ABOUT THE FILM:
From award-winning writer-director Mona Fastvold (The World to Come, The Brutalist) comes the extraordinary true legend of Ann Lee, founder of the devotional sect known as the Shakers. Academy Award nominee Amanda Seyfried stars as the Shaker’s irrepressible leader, who preached gender and social equality and was revered by her followers. The Testament of Ann Lee captures the ecstasy and agony of her quest to build a utopia, featuring more than a dozen traditional Shaker hymns reimagined as rapturous movements with choreography by Celia Rowlson-Hall (Vox Lux) and original songs & score by Academy Award winner Daniel Blumberg (The Brutalist).
PANEL DISCUSSION FOLLOWS
A post-screening conversation will explore the film’s portrayal of Ann Lee and Shaker spirituality, with particular attention to women’s religious leadership, utopian community-building, and the historical contexts of dissenting Protestant movements in the Atlantic world.
CHRISTOPHER H. EVANS, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of History of Christianity & Methodist Studies, Boston University School of Theology
Christopher Evans teaches and writes on the history of Christianity, American religion, and Methodist history, with additional interests in religion and popular culture. His books include The Social Gospel in American Religion and Histories of American Christianity: An Introduction.
ANN D. BRAUDE, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer on American Religious History; Director, Women’s Studies in Religion Program, Harvard Divinity School
Ann Braude’s scholarship focuses on American religious history with an emphasis on women and minority religious movements. She is the author of Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-century America and is widely known for her work on the centrality of women to American religious history.
MARGARET LAMBERTS BENDROTH, Ph.D.
Historian of American Protestantism; former Executive Director, Congregational Library & Archives (Boston)
Margaret Lamberts Bendroth is a historian of American religion and the author of FUNDAMENTALISM AND GENDER, 1875 TO THE PRESENT and other works on Protestant history. She served for many years as Executive Director of the Congregational Library & Archives.

Newton Theatre Company Presents: OUR TOWN
2026-01-31 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-01-31 08:00 - 17:00, 2026-01-30 08:00 - 17:00, 2026-01-24 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-01-24 08:00 - 17:00, 2026-01-23 08:00 - 17:00, 2026-01-17 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-01-17 08:00 - 17:00 and 1 more date | Saint John’s Episcopal Church, 96 Otis Street, Newton, MA, 02460, United States
Experience this beloved classic up close with our exceptional professional cast in an intimate venue where every seat brings you into the heart of Grover’s Corners.
Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize winning play is a profound meditation on love, loss, and the precious ordinary moments that define our lives told in Newton Theatre Company’s signature style—immediate, personal, and unforgettable.
Intimate staging. Beloved actors. Our original vision.
Limited seating. Reserve soon. Tickets will sell out.
Our Town will run for three weekends. Tickets available now!
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​Friday, January 16th at 8pm
Saturday, January 17th at 2pm
Saturday, January 17th at 8pm
Friday, January 23rd at 8pm
Saturday, January 24th at 2pm
​Saturday, January 24th at 8pm
Friday, January 30th at 8pm
Saturday, January 31st at 2pm
​Saturday, January 31st at 8pm
Seating is intimate and limited, so get your tickets now!
All performances are at:
St. John’s Episcopal Church, DiMauro Hall
​96 Otis Street, Newtonville, MA

West Newton Cinema presents Among Neighbors
2026-01-27 19:00 - 21:00 | West Newton Cinema, 1296 Washington Street, West Newton, MA, 02465, United States
AMONG NEIGHBORS
2026 Special Event DCP with Filmmaker Q&A intended for screenings on or around International Holocaust Remembrance Day | January 27, 2026
ABOUT THE SPECIAL EVENT
The Special Event Q&A includes a brief pre-recorded introduction by filmmaker Yoav Potash, and an in-depth post-film Q&A compilation that reveals the fascinating making-of stories –– as well as the ongoing controversy –– behind this critically-acclaimed film. The Q&A compilation was filmed live at sold-out screenings in New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area, lending a special event feel to the content.
FILM SYNOPSIS
Using beautiful hand-drawn animation to bring the past to life, “Among Neighbors” investigates the story of a small, rural town where the longstanding peace between Jewish and Polish neighbors was shattered by World War II. Now, in an era where difficult truths about the past are being silenced for political gain, the film focuses on the only living Holocaust survivor from the town, and an aging eyewitness who saw Jews murdered there – six months after the Nazis were defeated. Produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker Yoav Potash (“Crime After Crime,” Sundance Film Festival), “Among Neighbors” is an evocative and heart-pounding murder mystery with urgent political relevance.

New Art Center presents Teen Build Your Art Portfolio class
2026-01-26 17:30 - 19:30, 2026-01-19 17:30 - 19:30, 2026-01-12 17:30 - 19:30, 2026-01-05 17:30 - 19:30, 2025-12-29 17:30 - 19:30, 2025-12-22 17:30 - 19:30 | New Art Center, 61 Washington Park, Newton, MA, 02460, United States
Teen Build Your Art Portfolio class // All Levels // GR 8-12 // Mondays with Mattea Weinberg
This all-levels class is perfect for teens looking to build strong skills and prepare a competitive portfolio for college art programs. Students will draw from life, experiment with materials, and create meaningful, finished pieces—all with the support and guidance of an experienced instructor. Whether applying to art school or simply wanting to grow as an artist, this class offers the structure and feedback teens need to succeed.

West Newton Cinema presents Keaton and Chaplin: Live Music Accompaniment
2026-01-25 14:00 - 16:00 | West Newton Cinema, 1296 Washington Street, West Newton, MA, 02465, United States
Join us for screenings of Buster Keaton’s, THE GENERAL (1926), and Charlie Chaplin’s, THE IMMIGRANT (1917) with live musical accompaniment.
ABOUT THE FILMS:
THE GENERAL, Buster Keaton-
After being rejected by the Confederate military, not realizing it was due to his crucial civilian role, an engineer must single-handedly recapture his beloved locomotive after it is seized by Union spies and return it through enemy lines.
THE IMMIGRANT, Charlie Chaplin-
Charlie is an immigrant who endures a challenging voyage and gets into trouble as soon as he arrives in America.
LIVE MUSIC
BRUCE VOGT
Bruce Vogt is a Canadian pianist who has devoted a distinguished career to performing and teaching. He has toured cities and towns of all sizes throughout North America, Europe, and Asia as a soloist and chamber musician. He has mentored generations of young artists in his role as professor of piano at the University of Victoria, and has lectured widely, leading master classes, workshops, and adjudicating for festivals.
Bruce has sustained an interest in exploring the many conversations to be found between music and film, literature and painting. This has evolved into an unusual side hustle: improvising accompaniments for the great films of the silent era. He has developed a robust career in this multimedia sphere bringing sound to many masterpieces — by Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Griffith, Sjöström, Von Sternberg and many others. In movie theaters across Europe, Asia, and North America, he has provided for audiences a greater intimacy with these films, transforming the silence of the medium into another sphere.

Capella Clausura presents "'in tongues': Ruehr's "Cassandra"
2026-01-24 16:00 - 17:00 | Grace Episcopal Church, 76 Eldredge Street, Newton, MA, 02458, United States
Magic spells, prophecies, secrets, prayers; what happens when words mean more than what they say? Speech has the power to persuade, clarify, distort, and to move. It can even affect the way we remember things, the ways our minds encode memories. This program, centered around Elena Ruehr’s magnificent choral opera “Cassandra”, considers these questions. The figure of Cassandra, from Ancient Greek mythology, provides perspective for understanding these questions. In myth, Cassandra’s blessing is that she can see the future; her curse is that no one believes or understands her prophecies.
Featuring music by: Elena Ruehr, Julia Wolfe, Alissa Voth, and Isaac Roth Blumfield

Spark Newton presents Winterfest
2026-01-23 08:00 - 2026-01-25 17:00 | MA
A fun-filled weekend of wintery events runs Friday through Sunday. Find the whole lineup of family adventures to enjoy from music, storytelling, arts and crafts, an interactive light show, and the beloved annual soup social. https://sparknewton.org/happenings/winterfest-2026/

A Musical Menagerie
2026-01-18 15:00 - 17:00 | War Memorial Auditorium, 1000 Commonwealth Avenue, Newton, 02459, United States
This January, conductor Conner Gray Covington leads your family on a thrilling trip to our musical zoo! Things get buzzing with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s zippy Flight of the Bumblebee. In Camille Saint-Saëns’s humorous Carnival of the Animals, clucking chickens, lumbering elephants, and braying donkeys all make their appearance. Works by Modest Mussorgsky, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Ludwig van Beethoven paint vivid scenes of children playing, swans dancing, and birds calling to each other by a brook. Our visit ends with The Mountain That Loved a Bird, in which Caroline Shaw’s stirring music brings Alice McLerran’s heartwarming fable to musical life.
Tickets are free, but please register on the website through the ticket platform at https://www.proarte.org/concerts/a-musical-menagerie.
Sponsored by Newton Cultural Council and the Music Performance Trust Fund of the American Federation of Musicians

Lydian String Quartet at The Allen Center
2026-01-15 19:30 - 21:00 | The Allen Center, 35 Webster St, WEST NEWTON, MA, 02465, United States
An Open Rehearsal
The Naumberg Award-winning Lydian String Quartet, recently named Ensemble in Residence at The Allen Center, will deliver the four open rehearsals with two Beethoven quartets framing contemporary works that demonstrate Beethoven’s lasting influence and providing new context for listening and understanding these canonical works in today’s world. Buy Tickets.

NAA presents Rhythm of Color at The Allen Center
2026-01-14 08:00 - 2026-02-26 17:00 | The Allen Center, 35 Webster St, WEST NEWTON, MA, 02465, United States
EXHIBITION & AWARD CEREMONY: The Allen Center, The Rhythm of Color
Welcome to the RHYTHM of COLOR!

End the year with a splash of color! Join the NAA for this annual Allen Center Expo! Let your creative side go wild. Explore your inner color any way you like.
Exhibition: January 14 – February 26
Award Presentation: Rescheduled to Wednesday, March 19 7-9 pm, weather dependent
ABOUT THE JUROR
Santiago Hernandez is a Cuban-born visual artist and musician based in Boston, MA. Although trained in traditional techniques of working from observation, his work has evolved to reflect graphic design, architectural rendering, geometric abstraction, and music. Santiago currently teaches Fine Arts at Lesley University College of Art & Design and at Mass College of Art & Design. In addition, he performs as a jazz drummer and percussionist throughout the Boston area with his trio Detour Ahead.

Commonwealth Chorale Auditions
2026-01-13 17:30 - 18:45, 2026-01-06 17:30 - 18:45 | First Baptist Church in Newton, 848 Beacon St, Newton, MA, 02459, United States
Commonwealth Chorale seeks singers of all voice types who have strong vocal and sight-reading skills. We are especially looking for tenors and basses. The 2025-2026 season marks Commonwealth Chorale’s 50th Anniversary and will be filled with special performances.
In March, we will perform a new arrangement of Mozart’s beloved Requiem by English composer Howard Arman along with two Psalm settings by 19th-century Brazilian composer Jose Maricio Nunes Garcia. In May, we conclude our celebration with Martín Palmeri’s tango-influenced Misa a Buenos Aires (“Misatango”). The program will also feature tango works with tango orchestra and tango dancers! We conclude with Argentinian Alberto Ginastera’s Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah, written while Ginastera was living in the USA after being targeted by the Perón regime for supporting civil liberties.
Auditions will be held by appointment on January 6th and 13th from 5:30 to 6:45. Auditions are held at our rehearsal location at First Baptist Church, 848 Beacon Street in Newton Center, a few minutes’ walk from the Newton Center stop on the “D” Green Line. There is also plenty of parking behind the church and on adjacent streets.
We have scholarships to reduce costs for singers 30 and under! See website for details: https://commonwealthchorale.com
To apply for an audition, click here: https://commonwealthchorale.com/join-us

Boston Ballet School presents Open Studio Week
2026-01-10 - 2026-01-16 | Boston Ballet School, 153 Needham St, Suite N101, Newton Highlands, MA, 02464, United States
January Open Studio Week
Parents of children ages 16 months to 6 years* are invited to join us for Open Studio Week January 10–16 at our Boston, Brighton, Brookline, and Newton studios. You and your child can get a firsthand experience of our classes, connect with our faculty, learn more about our curriculum, and tour our state-of-the-art studios.
Date: Saturday, January 10–Friday, January 16
Time: 9am–12:45pm, actual time based on level
Locations:
Newton Studio – 153 Needham Street, Newton, MA 02464
Boston Studio – 19 Clarendon Street, Boston, MA 02116
Brighton Studio – The Presentation School Community Foundation Center: 640 Washington Street, Brighton, MA 02135
Brookline Studio – 1431 Beacon St, Brookline, MA 02446
January Placement Class
Join us for a free placement class on January 10 at our Newton Studio. This placement class is for students ages 7-18 who are interested in joining our Foundations or Classical Ballet Training. The placement class will allow our faculty to assess your child’s skill level and determine which class will be best for them to further their dance education.
Date: Saturday, January 10
Time: 3:30–4:30pm
Location: Newton Studio – 153 Needham Street, Newton, MA 02464
Follow the event link to RSVP for this FREE event!

West Newton Cinema presents Ty Burr's Movie Club: Her
2026-01-08 18:30 - 21:00 | West Newton Cinema, 1296 Washington Street, West Newton, MA, 02465, United States
TY BURR’S MOVIE CLUB is hosted by the nationally recognized film critic Ty Burr.
Each month Ty presents and discusses one of his favorite films with the audience. His selections span the spectrum from classics that have stood the test of time to contemporary films that merit a second viewing.
ABOUT THE FILM
In the near future, a lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with an operating system designed to meet his every need.

Newton Cemetery & Arboretum: Artist in Residence Program - Applications Now Open
2026-01-01 00:00 - 2026-02-14 23:59 | Newton Cemetery and Arboretum, 791 Walnut St, Newton, Massachusetts, 02459, United States
The Friends of Newton Cemetery & Arboretum is delighted to announce that the application period for the 2026-27 Artist in Residence (AiR) Program is now open.
This residency invites an artist to immerse themselves in the Cemetery’s historic landscape, its mission of remembrance, and its role as an accredited arboretum. The selected artist will have the unique opportunity to use the grounds as both inspiration and workspace, creating original work that reflects the beauty, memory, and community embodied in this garden cemetery.
The residency will conclude with a public program and exhibition, offering visitors a chance to experience Newton Cemetery & Arboretum through the artist’s creative lens.
Applications are being accepted through Feb. 14, 2026.
Artists interested in engaging with this meaningful environment are encouraged to apply.

Stefan Jackiw & Friends at The Allen Center
2025-12-18 19:30 - 21:00 | The Allen Center, 35 Webster St, WEST NEWTON, MA, 02465, United States
Stefan Jackiw & Friends: Thursday December 18th, 7:30pm
Violinist Stefan Jackiw with pianist Kevin Ahfat, will present the Prokofiev Violin Sonata in D and duos with clarinetist Yoonah Kim by Schubert and Mozart. Allison Eldredge and Kevin Ahfat will join Jackiw and Kim in the Walter Rabl Piano Quartet. Buy Tickets.
