Folk Songs

The Carlisle Community Chorus, composed of singers from Carlisle and surrounding towns who range in age from 11 to 87, presents its winter concert, "Nia (Purpose)," Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Corey Auditorium on the Carlisle Public School campus. The program focuses on the purposes of music in culture by exploring songs written for work, worship, protest, recreation, and more. The repertoire includes folk songs from Appalachia, Zambia, and Israel, choral classics by Gwyneth Walker and Orlando di Lasso, and songs of celebration.

NEW YORK - Tristram P. Coffin, 89, a folklorist who unearthed worlds of meaning in the ordinary rituals of which nearly every American partakes, including holidays, baseball, and sex, died Jan. 31 in Wakefield, R.I. The cause was pneumonia. Dr. Coffin, a retired member of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote many books for a popular readership. Dr. Coffin came at the field unequivocally from the English side, mining literature high and low - novels, plays, poems, folk songs - for what it revealed about ritual and belief.

TODAY Let there be light This time of year, Handel is usually associated with his ‘‘Messiah," but George Frideric also penned the Hanukkah oratorio, ‘‘Judas Maccabaeus," one of the selections at tomorrow's ‘‘A Light Through the Ages. " Boston Jewish Spirit presents a multi-faith holiday celebration of love, family, hope, and peace featuring the musicians of Emmanuel Music and a candlelight ceremony. Dec. 18 at 4 p.m. Free. Emmanuel Church, 15 Newbury St., Boston.

The Carlisle Community Chorus, composed of singers from Carlisle and surrounding towns who range in age from 11 to 87, presents its winter concert, "Nia (Purpose)," Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Corey Auditorium on the Carlisle Public School campus. The program focuses on the purposes of music in culture by exploring songs written for work, worship, protest, recreation, and more. The repertoire includes folk songs from Appalachia, Zambia, and Israel, choral classics by Gwyneth Walker and Orlando di Lasso, and songs of celebration.

Aoife O'Donovan's haunting voice introduced the fifth annual Christmas Celtic Sojourn at the Cutler Majestic Theatre Thursday just as it had done all week in this nine-date run, which ends tonight. But the Newton-born singer, who has had considerable success this year with her alternative bluegrass band Crooked Still, didn't launch the holiday show with words. Instead, she issued soft, sustained notes, breathily and beautifully sung over the lightest backing from the nine musicians seated behind her. Over the next 2 1/2 hours of music, dance, poetry, and storytelling, along with other cast...

THE CREOLE CHOIR OF CUBA At: Somerville Theatre on Oct. 1, 8 p.m. Tickets: $28. 617-876-4275. www.worldmusic.org After the awful earthquake of January 2010 that devastated Port-au-Prince, Haiti, an unusual form of consolation and aid arrived from nearby Cuba, alongside the medical corps that the Cuban government quickly dispatched. This other, less orthodox relief group took the form of a 10-person vocal choir, five women and five men. They visited the camps, slept in the open air with survivors, played with the children - and...

A true star is a marvel to behold. She transfixes a room simply by her presence. It takes her just a glance to establish her charisma. She turns the finest musicians into her reverent personal retinue. Asha Bhosle, whose 12,000-plus songs have permeated Indian film and pop culture for six decades, did all of this Sunday at the Berklee Performance Center, mesmerizing a sold-out house deep into the night while brushing aside the program's weaker opening performance like lint off her bejeweled sari.

NEW YORK - Tristram P. Coffin, 89, a folklorist who unearthed worlds of meaning in the ordinary rituals of which nearly every American partakes, including holidays, baseball, and sex, died Jan. 31 in Wakefield, R.I. The cause was pneumonia. Dr. Coffin, a retired member of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote many books for a popular readership. Dr. Coffin came at the field unequivocally from the English side, mining literature high and low - novels, plays, poems, folk songs - for what it revealed about ritual and belief.

ANGELIKA KIRCHSCHLAGER , mezzo-soprano Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano At: Jordan Hall, Friday night Even in a Liszt anniversary year that has swept vast quantities of his music onto concert stages, the composer's art songs, roughly 80 in total, remain an underexplored corner of his work. This made the second half of Friday night's Brahms-Liszt recital, given by Austrian mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager and French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, all the more welcome.

LENOX - Thomas Hampson, America’s baritone, brought his latest tribute to American song - of the classical variety - to Ozawa Hall on Wednesday and triumphed. He triumphed over entropy. (How do you keep a long career alive? Here’s one way.) He triumphed over those who say no one has the musicianship, chiaroscuro, or charisma to keep the song recital alive. (He certainly does.) And he triumphed, finally, despite the fact that American art songs are, with a few exceptions, rather dull.

TODAY Let there be light This time of year, Handel is usually associated with his ‘‘Messiah," but George Frideric also penned the Hanukkah oratorio, ‘‘Judas Maccabaeus," one of the selections at tomorrow's ‘‘A Light Through the Ages. " Boston Jewish Spirit presents a multi-faith holiday celebration of love, family, hope, and peace featuring the musicians of Emmanuel Music and a candlelight ceremony. Dec. 18 at 4 p.m. Free. Emmanuel Church, 15 Newbury St., Boston.

ANGELIKA KIRCHSCHLAGER , mezzo-soprano Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano At: Jordan Hall, Friday night Even in a Liszt anniversary year that has swept vast quantities of his music onto concert stages, the composer's art songs, roughly 80 in total, remain an underexplored corner of his work. This made the second half of Friday night's Brahms-Liszt recital, given by Austrian mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager and French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, all the more welcome.

THE CREOLE CHOIR OF CUBA At: Somerville Theatre on Oct. 1, 8 p.m. Tickets: $28. 617-876-4275. www.worldmusic.org After the awful earthquake of January 2010 that devastated Port-au-Prince, Haiti, an unusual form of consolation and aid arrived from nearby Cuba, alongside the medical corps that the Cuban government quickly dispatched. This other, less orthodox relief group took the form of a 10-person vocal choir, five women and five men. They visited the camps, slept in the open air with survivors, played with the children - and everywhere sang,...

LENOX - Thomas Hampson, America’s baritone, brought his latest tribute to American song - of the classical variety - to Ozawa Hall on Wednesday and triumphed. He triumphed over entropy. (How do you keep a long career alive? Here’s one way.) He triumphed over those who say no one has the musicianship, chiaroscuro, or charisma to keep the song recital alive. (He certainly does.) And he triumphed, finally, despite the fact that American art songs are, with a few exceptions, rather dull.

Maybe Armenian folk music idioms aren't your cup of tea. But make sure you get a ticket to hear soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian the next time she comes to town, no matter what's on the program. The Canadian Armenian singer is spreading the name of Armenian priest, composer, and ethnomusicologist Gomidas Vartabed, whose work has preserved and uplifted the music of his native land. Gomidas, as he is known, was arrested and deported by the Turkish government during the genocide in 1915, when he was in his 40s, and though he survived, he was left a broken man and...

Aoife O'Donovan's haunting voice introduced the fifth annual Christmas Celtic Sojourn at the Cutler Majestic Theatre Thursday just as it had done all week in this nine-date run, which ends tonight. But the Newton-born singer, who has had considerable success this year with her alternative bluegrass band Crooked Still, didn't launch the holiday show with words. Instead, she issued soft, sustained notes, breathily and beautifully sung over the lightest backing from the nine musicians seated behind her. Over the next 2 1/2 hours of music, dance, poetry, and...

Dylan's Visions of Sin By Christopher Ricks, Ecco, 528 pp., $26.95 Good criticism is a kind of magic. Some have said it's akin to pulling rabbits from a hat -- the hat being a sonnet, a novel, or a song provided by the mad hatter artist. But what should a critic do when the magic seems to have run out -- the work is already popular and the rabbits seem to have been pulled? What happens, for instance, when an iconic rock star like Bob Dylan goes under the kind of close reading usually reserved for "serious" poets?

A true star is a marvel to behold. She transfixes a room simply by her presence. It takes her just a glance to establish her charisma. She turns the finest musicians into her reverent personal retinue. Asha Bhosle, whose 12,000-plus songs have permeated Indian film and pop culture for six decades, did all of this Sunday at the Berklee Performance Center, mesmerizing a sold-out house deep into the night while brushing aside the program's weaker opening performance like lint off her bejeweled sari.