Local Performers Return for Annual Concert Series

July 17, 2024
• Jazz, folk rock and classical will echo through Town Hall, as local and visiting artists share their musical talents with Needham.

Needham’s Great Hall Performance Foundation announced the lineup of its upcoming concert series, which starts this fall and will feature new and returning performers covering a range of musical genres. All four shows are set to take place at Powers Hall at Town Hall.

In its 11th year, the annual program’s slogan is to bring “world-class music in your backyard,” and that convenience is a draw for local audiences.

“We make sure that we’re booking really top-notch acts that people don’t have to travel for,” said foundation board member Rob Stegman, who handles artist relations. “You don’t even have to go to [The Center for Arts] in Natick. You’re right here in Needham.”

Two past performers will join forces for the first show of the season on Sept. 21. Catherine Russell, a Grammy Award-winning vocalist, previously graced the Needham stage in 2015, but this fall, she’ll return alongside jazz guitarist John Pizzarelli, who appeared with his quartet the year prior.

Americana musician and singer Alice Howe will play with folk blues guitarist Freebo on Nov. 2. Howe, who hails from Newton, is “an outstanding performer,” Stegman said, and he considers Freebo “an icon.”

While she’s now based in Los Angeles, Howe said she often returns to her old stomping grounds to perform and visit family. When she picked up the guitar around 12 years old, Howe said she felt supported to pursue the arts, namely by her music teacher Margie Brodsky, who now sits on the Great Hall Performance Foundation.

It was Brodsky who contacted Howe about performing in Needham, which Howe described as “a really sweet full-circle moment.” This upcoming show builds on her foundational love of music, in part thanks to her parents’ record collection.

“My parents were not professional musicians or anything, but they loved music, and I was exposed to a lot of the music of their generation, so ’60s and ’70s folk and rock and singer-songwriters,” Howe said. “That really impacted me and shaped, I would say, my musical consciousness.”

Her love of ’70s folk singer-songwriters — namely Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt — eventually led her to Freebo, who played with Raitt in the ’70s for a decade, as well as with Crosby, Stills and Nash and other big acts. He would go on to produce Howe’s first full-band record.

“When I met him, initially, I didn’t recognize his name, but I went home and turned over my mom’s Bonnie Raitt records in her record collection and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s him,’” Howe said.

The pair will be playing their originals and cover songs with an electric guitarist and drummer for a Needham audience. Howe expressed her excitement on returning to her roots and joining the concert lineup.

“It feels so good to be recognized for what I’m doing in my own home area,” Howe said. “There’s nothing like that.”

Country rock group Pure Prairie League will follow Howe and Freebo with their own concert March 8. The band, known for their hit song “Amie,” was on Stegman’s booking radar for a while. He remembers listening to the group in his youth and said he’s looking forward to hearing them live.

“They are really kind of known as an early pioneer of what was country rock in the ’70s,” Stegman said. “Our audience is, shall we say, older… Everybody remembers listening to them in high school and college or whatever on what was then early FM radio.”

The Needham Concert Society’s Ron Lowry will take the stage in the Orion Chamber Ensemble, where he will play the cello alongside pianist Randall Hodgkinson and violinist Peter Zazofsky. The ensemble has played concerts together for more than 20 years, said Lowry, who serves as the artistic director of the NCS. The ensemble actually played in the inaugural season of the concert series and recently performed in the NCS’s own concert series in November.

Come May 3, the trio will not be performing alone — violinist Irina Muresanu and violist Noriko Futagami will join them onstage, as will a number of local student musicians, Lowry said. They plan to play “some really big hit chamber music pieces,” including Beethoven’s Ghost Trio and Dvořák’s Piano Quintet Op. 81.

Lowry, who lived in Needham for nearly 30 years, said he feels excited to see familiar faces again at Town Hall.

“I’m very close to Needham, my kids grew up and went to school there, so it feels very special,” he said.