Park concerts

• Concord holds concerts in Eagle Square on six Thursdays at 7 p.m., and the Nevers’ Band performs at different parks throughout the summer.

• The Londonderry Arts Council plans Concerts on the Common, mostly on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. at the bandstand on the Londonderry Town Common at Mammoth and Pillsbury Roads. They also run the monthly open mic Nutfield Sessions.

• New Boston’s Recreation Department organizes summer concerts on alternate Sundays at 6 p.m. (New Boston’s Blues Association’s “Barnful of Blues Festival” Aug. 1 is at the county’s 4H Youth Center.)

• Derry uses their MacGregor Park bandstand for Tuesday and Thursday night summer concerts.

• Milford’s “Sounds on the Soughegan” concerts run Wednesdays for about 10 weeks this summer at Emerson Park.

• Merrimack holds concerts mostly Wednesdays at 7 p.m. through Aug. 26 at the Abbie Griffin Park bandstand. (The form to request use of the bandstand is here.)

• Community Events, LLC, is running outdoor family film series at Veterans Park in Manchester and Greeley Park in Nashua this summer.

• New Thalian Players produces Disney’s High School Musical at Veterans Park and Nashua Theatre Guild produces Shakespeare’s The Tempest at Greeley Park (July 17-July 26). (The application to use Veterans Park is here.)

• For information about concerts and other events at Nashua’s Greeley Park’s bandshell see Nashua’s “SummerFun” calendar and check for updates here.

• For more downtown Manchester events, also see Intown Manchester.

• Not outdoors, or in a park, but still free, the SummerSundays Concert Series is at the Hillsborough Center Congregational Church.

~Let me know what else to list…

SOPHA gallery opening tonight

It’s from 7 to 10 p.m. at SOPHA. Member photographs. The exhibit is called “America” but no one could use an American flag in a photo.

Take that, clichés.

Where are you going today?

I highly recommend, if you can find your way through the maze that is 21 West Auburn St. in Manchester (it’s sort of behind Murphy’s Tap Room), head to the third floor for painter Dan Greuling’s open studio, between 3 and 9 p.m. (March 1). He’s got some wicked cool stuff, and says other third floor creative types might be participating. Should be a good time with good people.

If you are up in the Concord area, storyteller and author Rebecca Rule is trying out a piece she created from interviews of folks in the Berlin area after the paper mills closed. It’s free, and starts at 3 p.m. at the Concord City Auditorium.

Jodi Picoult play in the works

Yellow Taxi Productions has commissioned a play based on The Pact by New Hampshire author Jodi Picoult. Jeannette Angell is doing the adapting, and you can hear a staged reading of the set-in-New-Hampshire story Sunday, March 1, at 7 p.m. , at YTP at 5 Pine St., Extension, Mill Annex #6 in Nashua (follow the signs). It’s free. Stay after the reading for a talkback. YTP’s full production is in April.

Free!

It’s not open today (it’s always closed Tuesdays) but the Currier Museum of Art is offering free admission this week because of school vacation. It’s open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (150 Ash St., Manchester) for free Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Feb. 25-27. Bring your lap top and enjoy wifi in their Winter Garden cafe. Check the museum calender for tours or kid programs.
(By the way, it’s always free for kids under age 18 to visit, and admission is free Saturdays between 10 a.m. and noon.)

Open Doors

The Open Doors Cultural Tour of 2008 is in its sixth season in Manchester. There’s an installment of the quarterly event Thursday, June 26, from 5 to 8 p.m. Download a map to find out where to catch the free trolleys that loop between venues at Majestictheatre.net.

Here’s a list of participants:

• SEE Science Center, 200 Bedford St.: New exhibits include “lift yourself” pulley chairs, a super bounce ball exhibit and the NASA theater. SEE houses a LEGO model of the Amoskeag Millyard.
• Millyard Museum, 255 Commercial St.: “Nous sommes ici! We are here! A Celebration of Manchester’s Franco-American Heritage,” displays photographs, paintings, sculpture, textiles and hockey memorabilia.
• Langer Place, 55 South Commercial St.: Studios and galleries include Althea Haropulos Photographer, East Colony Fine Art and Hatfield.
• Art on the Wall at City Hall Gallery, 1 City Hall Plaza: Work from Peter Noonan‘s “City Hall Follies” and the city’s 3rd annual National Art Program/Manchester City Employee art competition. City Hall starts their Open Doors events at 4 p.m. with awards for the employee artwork.
• Art 3 Gallery, 44 West Brook St.
• Manchester Community Access Media, 540 Commercial St.: Norman Rockwell exhibit.
• New Hampshire Institute of Art, 148 Concord St., 77 Amherst St., and 165 Hanover St.
• Franco American Centre, 52 Concord St.
• Manchester Artist Association Gallery, 1528 Elm St.

If you go, feel free send comments and photos to arts @ hippopress.com.

Aponovich and Lamb

If you are one of those people who gets out of work at 4 p.m., and if you have an interest in fine wood crafts and painting, the public unveiling of the the Griffith Secretary should be interesting. A long time patron of New Hampshire Furniture Master David Lamb wanted to see what would happen if Lamb and acclaimed New Hampshire painter James Aponovich worked together. The resulting mahogany with ebony and flame birch secretary for patron Diane Griffith has a cabinet adorned with a triptych by Aponovich. The public reception is going on from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 25 in the Governor and Council Chambers in the State House.
Earlier tomorrow, there’s also a gallery tour planned at Sulloway & Hollis Gallery, (29 School St.in Concord) for the exhibit “Synesthesia,” of work by Michael Roundy, Charlie Goodwin, Tom Driscoll and Thaddeus Beal. The 1 p.m. tour is followed by a discussion there called “The Art of Collaboration” at 2 p.m. You’ll year from Lamb, Aponovich, New Hampshire Furniture Master Bill Thomas, artist Tom Meyers, the state’s commissioner of the Department of Cultural Resources, Van McLeod, and Rebecca Lawrence, director of the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts.

Sunday in Nashua

In Nashua on Sunday, Chimera Gallery in the Picker Building is holding a show opening for “Women on Fire” from 2 to 5 p.m. The exhibit features work by potters Paula Barry, Gayle Joseph and Alene Sirott-Cope. On the walls, Art Ferrier is showing a series of his photographs called “Orange.” A few blocks away from the Picker Building, the sculptors are leaving the city’s first international sculpture symposium, and a closing event is planned to start at Railroad Square at 2 p.m. and “promenade” across Main Street to Water Street where Le Parc de Notre Renaissance Francaise sits along the Nashua River. Bring a picnic lunch and chat with the artists.

Concord music and Londonderry art

Paul Dykstra and Gregg Pauley, musicians who are both Concord Community Music School faculty members, will perform a free lunchtime concert called “Evening at Symphony: Transcriptions for Piano Four-Hands,” on June 12. But get the background on that by coming to Dykstra’s free lunchtime lecture today (June 5, 12:10 p.m., at 23 Wall St. – bring your own lunch) called “Piano in the Parlor: Orchestral Listening before the iPod.”
And on Friday evening, The Wine Studio in Londonderry is welcoming artist Barbara Scott with a reception at 6 p.m. for a show of her work there in June. They are also pouring some California wines to taste.

Thursday in Manchester

I got to peruse some of the work from the Open Studio kids for a story for the May 29 Hippo, and it’s pretty cool stuff. The Currier program matches a group of high schoolers who are serious about their art with

professionals. They show off the results of this semester’s focus under the direction of John O’Shaughnessy with an exhibit called “Portraits and Personal Imagery: Reduction Relief Prints and Solar Plate Etchings.” The show is up through Sept. 1, and the prints are for sale. Proceeds go to the program. The show opening is happening during First Thursday at the Currier Museum of Art. Before expansion, the museum stayed open

evenings more regularly, but they are currently doing so once a month. So check out the emerging artist work in the Currier Community Gallery

between 5 and 7 p.m. The museum should be open between 5:30 and 8 p.m.

Angeera Khadka, 17, of Manchester explaining her print process at left.

A reduction relief print and plate by student Noelle Stillman at right.

Also going on is the monthly art show opening at The Wine Studio in Manchester. Happily, these usually coincide with the store’s Thursday wine tasting session and the June 5 one features some Cote du Rhone wines. Cori Caputo‘s watercolors are featured, which have a dreamlike quality to them.