Newton Cultural Alliance

Newton Community Pride presents Fall Village Concerts
2025-09-14 17:00 - 18:00, 2025-09-21 15:00 - 16:30, 2025-09-28 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York)
Newton Community Pride presents a free, outdoor concert . This concert is part of a series of 3 free and accessible events as part of the Fall Village Concert Series.
Sept 14- Jazz Barracudas in the courtyard at Trio Newton
Sept 21- Christopher Steele at Upper Falls Depot
Sept 28- Jim & Nick at Newton Centre Plaza

AEM presents Practical Musicianship and Music Theory for Early Musicians
2025-09-15 17:30 - 19:00, 2025-09-22 17:30 - 19:00, 2025-09-29 17:30 - 19:00, 2025-10-06 17:30 - 19:00, 2025-10-13 17:30 - 19:00
with Shira Kammen – vielle, voice, harp

5:30 – 6:45 pm, 11 November 2024

Shira
Kammen **
Violin & Vielle

4 Monday sessions, November 11, 18, 25 & December 2, from 5:30 – 6:45 p.m. ET

Class Description

Commonwealth Chorale Auditions
2025-09-16 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. The 2025-2026 season marks Commonwealth Chorale’s 50th Anniversary and will be filled with special performances.
In November, we will perform Daniel Pinkham’s Christmas Cantata, as well as works by Lili Boulanger, Flor Peeters and Max Janowski. 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 the evenings of August 25th and 26th from 5:30 to 9:30 and on September 2nd, 9th, and 16th at 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

Newton Theatre Company Presents FUN HOME
2025-09-19 20:00 - 22:00, 2025-09-20 08:00 - 17:00, 2025-09-20 14:00 - 16:00, 2025-09-26 08:00 - 17:00, 2025-09-27 08:00 - 17:00, 2025-09-27 14:00 - 16:00, 2025-10-03 08:00 - 17:00, 2025-10-04 08:00 - 17:00 and 1 more date | Saint John’s Episcopal Church, 96 Otis Street, Newton, MA, 02460, United States
Based on Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking graphic memoir, Fun Home is a refreshingly honest, funny, and deeply moving musical about growing up, coming out, and discovering the secrets that shape our families. As Alison looks back on her childhood and her relationship with her enigmatic father, she unravels the moments—both big and small—that helped her find her voice. With its intimate storytelling and unforgettable score, Fun Home invites audiences on a journey of memory, identity, and self-discovery.
Fun Home will run for three weekends. Get your tickets now!
September 19th, 2025 at 8:00pm
September 20th, 2025 at 2:00pm
September 20th, 2025 at 8:00pm
September 26th, 2025 at 8:00pm
September 27th, 2025 at 2:00pm
September 27th, 2025 at 8:00pm
October 3rd, 2025 at 8:00pm
October 4th, 2025 at 2:00pm
October 4th, 2025 at 8:00pm
Seating is intimate and limited, so get your tickets now! Fun Home is recommended for ages 13+.
All performances are at:
St. John’s Episcopal Church, DiMauro Hall
​96 Otis Street, Newtonville, MA

New Art Center presents
2025-09-23 09:00 - 16:00 | New Art Center, 61 Washington Park, Newton, MA, 02460, United States
Drop In Program GR K-5 – Rosh Hashanah 09/23

Join New Art Center for a day of art-making and friend-making! All participants will explore 2D (drawing and painting), 3D (sculpture), clay, and printmaking, in groups divided by age. The day will be packed with possibilities for creativity and fun. Please bring a lunch and 2 snacks. For grades K – 5, all materials are provided.
If you are interested in registering your child for all our Drop-In Programs for the fall term, you can click here to register for all 4 programs today and save 5% off your total! This offer does not include Morning Care or Extended Day programs.
link to class:https://canvas.newartcenter.org/classes/3031

New Art Center presents Friday Figure Draw Workshops
2025-09-26 18:30 - 21:30, 2025-10-10 18:30 - 21:30 | New Art Center, 61 Washington Park, Newton, MA, 02460, United States
Friday Figure Draw Workshops
Enjoy a life drawing open studio with a live model, beginning with quick poses and ending with an hour pose. The evening will be relaxed but professional, with music and a great model. No photography allowed. No instruction. For artists 21+ with drinks available for purchase. Bring your own art supplies (no oils); easels/chairs provided.
September 12, September 26, October 10, November 14
6:30 PM – 9:30 PM
https://canvas.newartcenter.org/classes?category=Figure+Drawing.
BLOOM: Sustainable Floral Design Workshop 16+. All levels
Join floral designer and Master Gardener Susan Margolin to create your own floral sculpture using locally grown blooms and foraged materials. Learn sustainable floral design, flower care, and composition-all while connecting with nature through art.
Drinks are available for purchase at the bar for 21+.

Friday, September 26
6:30 PM – 9:30 PM
https://canvas.newartcenter.org/classes/3009.

New TV presents Future Forward Gala
2025-09-30 18:00 - 21:00 | Boston Marriott Newton, 2345 Commonwealth Avenue, Newton, MA, 02466, United States
NewTV is pleased to announce their inaugural Future Forward Gala on September 30, 2025 beginning at 6:00PM. The Gala will take place at the Boston Marriott Newton, located at 2345 Commonwealth Avenue.
Like most community media centers, NewTV is funded primarily by a surcharge on the cable bill of local cable subscribers. With more and more people “cutting the cord” in favor of streaming services and apps, NewTV is rapidly losing a major source of funding needed to serve the Newton community. Supporting the Future Forward Gala helps to finance NewTV’s annual fundraising campaign, ensuring that NewTV remains the best community media center in the nation.
The gala features an immersive journey through NewTV’s history: Learn what NewTV has accomplished and discover some of the most meaningful content they have created over the past three decades. NewTV will also define their vision for the future – how they will continue to protect your First Amendment right to free speech, and how they will continue to provide you with transparent local government coverage and journalistic integrity.
The evening also includes cocktail hour and hors d’oeuvres, a sit-down dinner, a live performance by Boston music legend Livingston Taylor, and a tribute to outgoing Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller.

A Taste of the Season at The Allen Center
2025-10-03 19:00 - 21:00 | The Allen Center, 35 Webster St, WEST NEWTON, MA, 02465, United States
A Taste of the Season: Friday October 3rd, 7pm
The Allen Center’s Lucky 13th year’s musical season will open with A Taste of the Season, presenting vignette performances by several of the artists represented during the year including Karen Walwyn (Steinway Artist), Maxim Lubarsky, Allison Eldredge, and Julia Glenn (Lydian Quartet), as well as presenting the opening of mixed-media works by artist Laura Scheuerell including Steinway Series Reimagined. In celebration of the season ahead, a curated spread of food and drink will elevate the evening. Buy Tickets.

Explorations in Sound at The Allen Center
2025-10-04 19:30 - 21:00 | The Allen Center, 35 Webster St, WEST NEWTON, MA, 02465, United States
Explorations in Sound: Saturday, October 4th, 7:30 pm
Internationally known jazz pianist Maxim Lubarsky and vocalist/ composer Gabriela Martina will perform works from their most recent CD release and collaboration, Explorations in Sound. Buy Tickets.

Steinway Alive at The Allen Center
2025-10-05 15:00 - 17:00 | The Allen Center, 35 Webster St, WEST NEWTON, MA, 02465, United States
Welcoming Our New Steinway Concert Grand Piano
To complete our opening weekend celebration, renowned Steinway artists Max Levinson and Karen Walwyn will present works for piano to celebrate the new partnership between The Allen Center and M. Steinert & Sons, followed by a champagne reception. Buy Tickets.

Behind the Screen: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
2025-10-05 16:00 - 18:30 | West Newton Cinema, 1296 Washington Street, West Newton, MA, 02465, United States
Agathe (Camille Rutherford) works in the legendary Shakespeare & Co. bookshop in Paris, where she dreams of becoming a successful writer and of experiencing love akin to a Jane Austen novel. Instead, she finds herself desperately single and plagued by writer’s block. When Agathe’s best friend (Pablo Pauly) helps secure her a spot at the Jane Austen Writers’ Residency in England, Agathe finally has her Jane Austen moment . . . and is caught in a very unexpected romantic triangle. In the end, Agathe must let go of her insecurities to decide what she really wants for herself and to achieve her romantic and professional dreams.
POST SCREENING PANEL DISCUSSION
Jane Austen’s novels have inspired countless adaptations in film, literature, television, and theater. Our distinguished panel will dive deep into the author’s unparalleled influence on the arts and her enduring appeal, tracing themes of class, gender, and marriage in her work and their resonance in today’s world.
SONIA HOFKOSH, Ph.D.
Associate Professor & Chair of English at Tufts University
Sonia Hofkosh is the author of Sexual Politics and the Romantic Author and coeditor of Romanticism, Race, and Imperial Culture, 1780–1834. She has published essays on Jane Austen and among her favorite courses to teach is one that considers Austen’s marriage plots in relation to Mary Shelley’s speculative fiction.
DEIDRE LYNCH, Ph.D.
Ernest Bernbaum Professor of English Literature at Harvard University
Deidre Lynch is the editor of Janeites: Austen’s Disciples and Devotees and has prepared editions of Austen’s Persuasion for Oxford University Press and Mansfield Park for Harvard University Press. She is also the author of Loving Literature: A Cultural History and has written for the Los Angeles Review of Books and Public Books.
TARA MENON, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English at Harvard University
Tara Menon’s debut novel, Under Water, will be published by Riverhead Books in
March, and her first monograph, Speaking Parts: Conversation, Character, and Social
Worlds, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press in the fall of 2026.
Moderator:
MARY COTTON
Mary has owned and operated Newtonville Books with her husband, the writer and editor Jaime Clarke, for nearly twenty years.

Ty Burr's Movie Club: I Know Where I've Been!
2025-10-09 18:30 - 20:30 | 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
I’m always a little surprised when someone says they haven’t heard of I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING!, the 1945 Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger romance set in the rugged, mystical Scottish Hebrides. It was my mother’s all-time favorite movie, so, for me, it’s always been around — she would have been 22 when it came out, and for her generation I think it held some of the same eldritch appeal as a show like “Outlander” does today (albeit with rather less bodice-ripping).
More to the point, I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING! has within it the genetic material of so many romantic comedies and dramas that have followed, then and now and the day after tomorrow: The Proud Heroine, all set to marry the wrong man; the Right Man right there by her side, annoying her while she annoys him until they just say the hell with it and kiss; a Forest of Arden setting whose magic bends the laws of attraction; a wry best friend or two and a gallery of eccentrics to remind the Proud Heroine she’s part of the human race. Plenty of movies before I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING! had some or all of those ingredients, but few filmmakers have been able to suggest the wildness of life bursting through repressed British decorum like Powell, here and in films like “The Red Shoes,” “Black Narcissus,” and many others.
–Ty Burr

Film Screening of An Uncommon Education: The Allen School
2025-10-14 18:30 - 21:00 | West Newton Cinema, 1296 Washington Street, West Newton, MA, 02465, United States
Historic Newton, West Newton Cinema, and Newton Cultural Alliance are excited to present a showing and panel discussion of the film “An Uncommon Education: The Allen School”! Join us on Tuesday, October 14 to view the original film (released in 2023) followed by a panel discussion and Q&A with the filmmakers. Tickets are $20 and equally benefit all three non-profit organizations.

West Newton Cinema Reads: The Bostonians
2025-10-16 18:30 - 20:30 | West Newton Cinema, 1296 Washington Street, West Newton, MA, 02465, United States
In Boston, in the aftermath of the Civil War, Verena Tarrant (Madeleine Potter), a gifted young orator, has attracted the attention of Olive Chancellor (Vanessa Redgrave), who wishes to nurture Verena as an inspirational force for the Women’s Movement. Ranged against her is Basil Ransom (Christopher Reeve), a handsome male chauvinist, who wants Verena as his wife. Against a backdrop of luminous New England landscapes, battle is joined, and for Olive, the struggle will prove an odyssey that forces her to acknowledge her true nature. Merchant Ivory Productions’ acclaimed screen adaptation of Henry James’s The Bostonians (1886), set in Cambridge and Boston, charts the struggle between two charismatic forces to gain control over the destiny of a spirited young woman.
Join us for a special screening of The Bostonians, now in stunning 4K restoration, with an opening discussion of both the film and the novel led by Sierra Eckert and David Kurnick and moderated by John Plotz. This screening opens the Brandeis Novel Symposium set for Friday, October 17, a free event drawing scholars from across the country that audience members are encouraged to attend.
THE BRANDEIS NOVEL SYMPOSIUM is a one-day conference that chooses a single novel as a point of focus for salient theoretical, historical, political, and narratological questions about the novel as a genre. This year’s symposium on Henry James’s The Bostonians will be held on Friday, October 17, in Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center, and speakers will include Louis Menand (Harvard University) and Holly Jackson (University of Massachusetts, Boston).
SIERRA ECKERT is Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University. She specializes in nineteenth-century British and Anglophone literature, disciplinary history, critical and social theory, and the digital humanities. Her work has appeared in Victorian Studies and Studies in the Novel.
DAVID KURNICK is Professor of English at Rutgers University at New Brunswick. He is the author of The Savage Detectives Reread and Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel, and his writing has appeared in Bookforum, Public Books, and Chronicle of Higher Education.
JOHN PLOTZ is Mandel Professor of Humanities at Brandeis University. He co-hosts two podcasts: Novel Dialogue and Recall This Book, and oversees the annual Brandeis Novel Symposium.
Registered attendees of the Brandeis Novel Symposium are entitled to a ticket discount. To receive the discount, tickets must be purchased ONLINE with code. To receive your code, register for the Brandeis Novel Symposium for free at the following link:
www.brandeis.edu/english/events/brandeis-novel-symposium/

Harvest and the Hunt
2025-10-18 15:00 - 16:30 | the allen center, 35 Webster Street, West Newton, MA, 02465, United States
Fall is in the air! Prepare to celebrate the extraordinary beauty of autumn with The Highland Glee Club Men’s Chorus. Warm tones of the season for mannercor, followed by an Oktoberfest-style reception complete with beer and pretzels! Gorgeous part-songs of Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and more, along with festive Czech folksongs celebrating the harvest. All in the wooded, intimate space of Newton’s Allen House. Don’t miss it. Info and tickets at www.highlandgleeclub.com
