Get ready to immerse yourself in three nights of music, drama and dance – at three locations – when the West by Northwest New England Festival takes place this weekend, June 9 through 11. The festival will feature different performances each night, all built around the theme of “Classical Folk Tales: Folk Dressed Up For the Stage.” There will be string quartets based on Romany and Native American folk songs as well as spirituals. In addition, there will be dramatic narratives, a movement workshop for children, a wine tasting, and more.

It all begins Friday night at the Ashfield Congregational Church at 7 p.m. On Saturday, the concert will be held at the Three Sisters Sanctuary in Goshen at 6 p.m. A movement workshop for children will precede the concert at 4:30 p.m. The festival wraps up on Sunday at Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center in Greenfield. There will be a wine tasting at 4:30 p.m., and the concert, which will be at the Perch on the fourth floor, will begin at 6:30 p.m.

Conway Fine Arts promotes arts education and live music performances, and they have recently expanded to include drama and dance in their programming. The organization is led by MikaylaArchambeau, the executive director, and her husband, Geoffrey Archambeau, the artistic director.

The couple are both experienced musicians, and Mikayla also has a background in dance. They established Conway Fine Arts when they moved here from the west coast in 2021. They hope to provide enriching opportunities for both the audience and the artists and use the arts as a vehicle to build a sense of community.

West by Northwest New England is the follow-up to last year’s Heirloom Festival, which explored finding the blues in classical music. This year, the festival was renamed to be more in-line with Conway Fine Arts’ current vision and to make it clear that it has nothing to do with Heirloom tomatoes. (It’s true that some people heard the word Heirloom and instantly thought of tomatoes.)

“Going forward, we are going to invite independent arts and music organizations to our wonderful area of New England, which I feel is best designated by West by Northwest,” said Geoffrey about the name change during a recent interview with the couple.

“It’s a natural evolution,” added Mikayla about their decision to add drama and dance to their performances. “We think that the fine arts feed off of each other, and the best artists delve into everything – and some of the most interesting things come about when you put those elements together.”

With a new name for the festival, expanded programming, and an additional day from last year, the couple is excited about this upcoming weekend. It was Geoffrey’s idea to have the theme be classical folk tales.

“I was inspired by folk melodies I’d heard in pieces by great composers, specifically in string quartets, and wanted to show how great music has roots in folk,” he said. “Folk music is an evergreen source of inspiration for great art.”

Geoffrey is a violist who will perform as part of the string quartet. A group of fantastic local musicians will join him: violinist Allyson Michal of Greenfield, violinist KailaGraef of Amherst, and cellist IgnacyGaydamovich, who currently resides in Hartford but previously lived in Amherst.

The musicians will perform Native American folk music, Roma (gypsy) folk music, spirituals, and the blues in string quartets by Bartok, Haydn, Gershwin, Tomlinson Griffes, Amy Beach and Florence Price. They cover a highly diverse group of composers. It’s worth noting that Price (who is Black) and Beach were the first two women composers to have their music performed by an American orchestra.

Each night will offer a different concert as well as different storytelling and verse narrated by Laura Zawarski, an actor from New York.

“We have a lot of material, so we can layer everything and make it three different programs. Friday night in Ashfield will have more of a focus on Roma and gypsy music, and Saturday will have more of a focus on Native American music,” said Geoffrey about the different programming each night. “Sunday at Hawks & Reed will have more of a focus on blues and spirituals. And the verse will change every night with the actor who is joining us.”

Friday night will feature gypsy folk tales by LuminitaMihaiCioaba, Saturday includes Indian folk tales by Yankton Dakota writer Zitkaia-Sa, and Sunday features a short story by Virginia Woolf and poetry by Langston Hughes.

Saturday’s concert at the beautiful Three Sisters Sanctuary is the most kid-friendly of all three; not only does this outdoor venue provide more space for young audience members to move about, but the material performed should be more to their liking. For this reason, they chose to offer a special movement workshop for kids ages 5 to 10 before the show. The workshop will be taught by Mikayla, who is an experienced ballet dancer.

“It’s an exceptionally beautiful space, so we paired the movement workshop with that location,” said Mikayla. “As someone who teaches kids ballet, I find there’s a natural inclination for kids to connect to music through movement, and so it is a way to invite kids in and get them excited about some of the tunes we are going to play, and also with the folktales we hope to be engaging for the kids and people of all ages.”

There will be an added treat for the adults at the Sunday Hawks & Reed show as there will be a wine and cheese tasting with Alexandre Pazmandy that will take place at 4:30 p.m. Pazmandy is a friend of the couple who has extensive knowledge of wine.

So whether you come for one night or the entire weekend there will be plenty to experience at the West by Northwest Festival New England. “It will be a full sensory experience,” said Mikayla of the festival; for more information and to purchase tickets, visit conwayfinearts.com.

Carrie Ferguson releases “She, He, They (A Pronoun Song)” for Pride Month

Saturday is Franklin County Pride and there will be plenty of celebrating in Greenfield. In addition to the parade starting at noon, there will be music at Energy Park that begins at 2 p.m. The festival organizers have have assembled a great lineup that includes the eclectic sounds of Zoe Lewis, multi-instrumentalist Olivia Nied, the local B52’s tribute band called the B-52.0s, and more. And it’s all free.

In other Pride Month-related news, local singer-songwriter Carrie Ferguson of Northampton will release a special song in honor of the occasion called “She, He, They (A Pronoun Song).”

“It is a bouncy bluesy little tune exploring different pronouns while simultaneously affirming and normalizing diversity of gender expression,” wrote Ferguson is a recent email. The song is being released today, June 8, on all streaming platforms. Ferguson will follow the release with an accompanying video that should be available soon.

Ferguson sas regularly performed the song with her kid’s music band, the Grumptime Club, but thinks it’s a song that adults will enjoy too.

You can catch the Grumpytime Club at the Athol Public Library on Friday, June 23, at 5:30 p.m. In addition, there will be a Carrie Ferguson family music concert at Wendell Free Library on Saturday, June 24, at 10:30 a.m., and at Carnegie Public Library in Turners Falls, on Tuesday, June 27, at 11 a.m.

Sheryl Hunter is a freelance writer who resides in Easthampton. Her work has appeared in various regional and national publications. She can be reached at Soundslocal@yahoo.com.

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