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Date: 7/20/2022
HUNTINGTON – Following a two-year break due to the coronavirus pandemic, North Hall at 40 Searle Rd. will reopen its doors for the upcoming 12th annual Historic North Hall Arts Festival on Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m.
Performances of the arts festival will also take place on the Huntington Town Common at 24 Russell Rd., after a successful series of outdoor concerts in 2021. All performances are free. Donations are appreciated.
The festival will open on the North Hall stage on July 31 with “Frances Perkins: A Woman’s Work,” an original performance by Jarice Hanson portraying the first female Secretary of Labor, who worked to create Social Security and refine laws on child labor, workplace safety and other workers’ rights.
Hanson, who is a professor emerita of communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, will act out this chapter in history through the eyes of Perkins, a workers’ rights activist in Massachusetts in the 1930s and ‘40s. While at Mount Holyoke College, Perkins observed the working conditions of immigrants, women and children in Holyoke factories and pursued a career of advocacy for those who had no voice in government, rising to become the first woman in a presidential cabinet.
Hanson has performed in theaters throughout New England, and has hosted public television programs at WGBY in Springfield and WHYY in Philadelphia.
Two more performances scheduled for the North Hall Stage include a program mix of calypso, jazz and Carnival music on Aug. 21 with the Bob Sparkman Trio and Ellen Redman on flute and piccolo. On Aug. 28, Helen Gillet, a multi-faceted, jazz-based cellist, singer, composer and improviser, will present a program with a mixed variety of musical influence and rhythms.
Continuing the tradition, on Aug. 5 an open mic music jam will meet at 7 pm in North Hall.
In consideration of safety for performers and patrons attending indoor performances in North Hall, a mask and proof of vaccination will be required.
After the successful series of concerts that took place on the Huntington Town Common last year, the North Hall Arts Festival will also continue to sponsor concerts on the common, beginning on Aug. 14 with The Uncles, a trio playing folk, jazz, rock and roll, and bossa nova, with three-part harmonies and improvised tunes by Jimi Hendrix, Charles Mingus and Stevie Wonder.
On Sept. 11, the Old Country Road Band will share vintage country tunes dedicated to keeping the sound of “true” country music alive, and on Sept. 18, Hold On Honeys, an a cappella indie folk minimalist trio, will offer tight-knit harmonies to nourish the soul and invigorate the senses.
The festival will end on the Town Common on Sept. 25 with Dixieland Stomp, an ensemble featuring a Mardi Gras foot-stomping performance with banjo and brass instruments.
In case of rain, Town Common concerts will move to Stanton Hall. For updates on all performances, visit northhallhuntington.org. The seven-program series is sponsored by Westfield Bank and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and cultural councils of Chester, Cummington, Huntington, Middlefield, Montgomery, Russell, Westhampton and Worthington.