WFMZ Channel 69 News: Out and About – Season’s Bounties Highlight Festivals

America’s beloved apple is celebrated at the sixth annual Apple Days, presented by Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites. The two-day family festival at Burnside Plantation in Bethlehem features apples in every conceivable form, from apple pie to hard ciders.

From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, celebrate the season with family fun, including apple bobbing, kids crafts and activities, cooking and colonial demonstrations, barn and house tours, live music, culinary contests, doughnut-eating contests, and everything apple.

Apple desserts available for sale include doughnuts, pies, dumplings, fritters, strudel, muffins, ice cream and more.

Test your eating skills with a doughnut-eating contest at 12:15 p.m. both days and a kids culinary contest at 1 p.m. Sunday.

Live entertainment is presented both days by musical groups, including Barrel House Brothers, Tim Harakal and Rebecca Connelly, the Lyons Fiddle Festival Champions and area school groups.

Colonial demonstrations include chainsaw carving, black smithing and chair caning.

Adults can try different flavors of Hardball Cider as well as apple and other fruit wine from Sleepy Cat Winery or a “Big Apple Cocktail” from Kilimanjaro Distillery in the hard cider tent.

Admission is $5 for people 18 and up. Kids are free but can get a $5 craft pass, which entitles them to make and take crafts, including clay pinch pots, stencil t-shirts, pine cone bird feeders, tin-punched ornaments or decorate-a-rock. Adults also may buy a $10 cider pass, which includes admission, a commemorative glass, and your first glass of hard cider.

Free festival parking and shuttle buses are located at the former Bon-Ton of the Westgate Mall, 2524 Schoenersville Road, Bethlehem.

For more information, call 610-882-0460 or go to HistoricBethlehem.org.

For those who like it hot, every kind of hot pepper you can imagine, from jalapeno to the legendary ghost pepper, can be found at the 24th annual Chile Pepper Food Festival on Friday and Saturday at William Delong Park in Maxatawny Township, Berks County.

The event is the largest chile pepper festival of its kind anywhere, with more than 100 different varieties of chili peppers.

From 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, enjoy hot chili, spicy seafood and more, or cool off your palate with chuck wagon old-fashioned sodas. Sample jalapeno wine or one of their many sweeter fruit wines at Boyd’s Cardinal Hollow Winery.

Dare to enter the jalapeño pepper eating contest or sample entries in the salsa contest. Available will be excursions to the pepper fields.

Dozens of vendors will have a wide assortment of varieties of hot sauces, spicy barbecue sauces, hot pickles, salsas, fresh and dried hot peppers and pepper plants.,

Admission is by donation and parking is free.

William Delong Park is at 233 Bowers Road. For information, go to pepperfestival.com.

The Vivaldi Project to perform works from Moravian Archives The Vivaldi Project, a period instrument ensemble dedicated to presenting innovative programs of baroque and classical string repertoire that combine scholarship and performance, will perform at the historic Old Chapel on Central Moravian Church‘s campus at 4 p.m. Sunday.

Part of Central Moravian Church’s Chamber Music in the Chapel series, the program will include string trio works found only in the Moravian Archives, including “Trio in B-flat minor” by Johann Ignaz Klauseck and “Trio in C major” by Leopold Hofmann.

Other works on the program, “Sonata in G major, B.37,” by Johann Christian Bach and “Trio Op. 2, No. 3 in D major” by Francesco Zannetti, were copied by Moravian composer Johann Frederich Peter and brought with him from Europe to Bethlehem in the 1770s. Peter served Moravian congregations in Bethlehem, Nazareth, Lititz and Salem, North Carolina, as an organist and violinist.

Rounding out the concert’s Moravian-inspired first half will be a performance of “Trio II in D minor” by John Antes, a Pennsylvania-born Moravian composer known for his sacred choral works and chamber music.

The second half of the concert will have a Viennese flare, with some early waltzes that Ludwig van Beethoven wrote for the famous music hall La Redoute near Bonn in the late 18th century.

Founded in 2007, the Vivaldi Project takes its name from the virtuoso violinist and composer Antonio Vivaldi in recognition of his pivotal position between earlier baroque and later classical composers. Members are Elizabeth Field, violin, Allison Edberg Nyquist, violin and viola, and Stephanie Vial, cello.

Suggested donation is $10.

Central Moravian Church, 73 West Church Street, Bethlehem, was founded in 1742, and is Bethlehem’s first congregation and the oldest Moravian Church in North America.

For information, call 610-866-5661 or go to www.centralmoravianchurch.org.

Free Bach in Bethlehem Get a free concert of music by The Bach Choir and Bach Festival Orchestra when the new season of Bach at Noon kicks off at Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem on September 10.

Doors open at 11:30 am and the concert begins at 12:10 p.m. The performance features soloists, along with members of The Bach Choir and Bach Festival Orchestra, with an informative introduction to each piece from conductor and artistic director, Greg Funfgeld. There is a good-will offering.

Septembers program includes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Sonata in F Major, KV 332,” featuring

Eugene Albulescu on piano and Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Cantata 73, Herr, wie du Willt, so shicks mit mir.”

The Bach at Noon program is presented on the second Tuesday of the month in September, October, November, January, February, March and April.

The August Bach at Noon performance will be broadcast on WWFM at 1 p.m. September 9.

Bach’s compositions have been called music that “transcends time, place, and creed to express the inexpressible.” The Bach at Noon concerts offer a “gift of spiritual and musical nourishment” to the community, always free and open to all.

For information, go to bach.org.

Plein Air in the Parks Would you like to paint outside? From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. September 7, join other like minded artists at Plein Air in the Parks at Gring’s Mill in Spring Township, Berks County.

Plein air is a perfect way to get outside and create. This art form is for everyone, professional artists and those just looking to have some fun. Grab any materials you have: a sketchbook, pencils, canvasses, paints, and more, pack yourself a picnic lunch, and bring them along.

Meet local artists who love to paint and draw outdoors, and join others while making Gring’s Mill ‘picture perfect.’ Participants need no experience, just a willingness to create an image from something they see and enjoy our park setting. Artists can ‘check in’ upon arrival and be involved in an online Facebook gallery of the day’s work, if they choose, or just show up and pick your spot. Scenic vistas abound in the park, so you may want to scope out your location in advance to save time.

Local plein air artists will be on hand to answer questions about creating outdoors, and children can create a masterpiece of their own using chalk in a “sidewalk gallery.”

Be sure to ‘check in’ again at the end of the day to share your newly created masterpiece and be included in the online gallery. A limited amount of art supplies will be available for children, but not guaranteed.

Gring’s Mill is at 2083 Tulpehocken Road. For information, call 484-509-2667 or email Lisa Gauker at lgauker@countyofberks.com.

‘Clue the Musical’ at Pines in Allentown Fans of the classic mystery-solving board game “Clue,” won’t want to miss the interactive musical version of the 70-year-old game that opens at Pines Dinner Theatre on Friday.

Enjoy a sit-down dinner while trying to solve the puzzle of who murdered Mr. Boddy at “Clue: The Musical,” on stage September 6 through October 27 at the dinner theater in Allentown.

The show takes place in Boddy Mansion, where the audience meets Professor Plum (played by Kristofer Holtz), Miss Scarlet (played by Leslea Rodig), Colonel Mustard (played by Christopher Wheatley), Mrs. Peacock (played by Amber Blatt), Mrs. White (played by Jennifer Hope) and Mr. Green (played by Mike Covel).

When Mr. Boddy (played by James Ofalt) turns up dead, the possibilities are endless, with six suspects, six possible murder scenes, and six potential weapons.

Helping with the possibilities are three audience members chosen to come onstage and choose one card each from one of three stacks, representing six suspects, six rooms and six weapons. The selected cards, unseen by the selectors, cast or the audience, are placed in an envelope marked “Confidential,” which is displayed on stage for the duration of the musical and opened to reveal the cards near the end.

The musical, which was produced off-Broadway in 1997, was written by Peter DePietro, with lyrics by Tom Chiodo and music by Wayne Barker, Galen Blum and Vinnie Martucci. The playful score includes songs like “Life is a Bowl of Pits” and “She Hasn’t Got a Clue.”

Performances are 12:30 p.m. dinner, 2 p.m. show Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday; 6:30 p.m. dinner, 8 p.m. show, Friday and Saturday, September 6 through October 27.

Pines Dinner Theatre is at 448 North 17th Street, Allentown.

Tickets are $50 for adults; $35 for students and $20, for children ages 2-9. Show only tickets are $30 for adults and $20 for children.

For information, call 610-433-2333, or go to pinesdinnertheatre.com.

‘Crimes of the Heart’ in Macungie Between the Lines Studio Theatre will present Beth Henley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning tragicomedy “Crimes of the Heart” at Macungie Institute Performing Arts and Conference Center in Macungie, Lehigh County, September 6 through 15.

Directed by Kathy Patterson, “Crimes of the Heart” follows the three Magrath sisters who have gathered at Old Granddaddy’s home in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, to await news of the pariarch, who is living out his last hours in the local hospital.

“Crimes of the Heart” opened on Broadway in 1981 and was nominated for a Tony Award for best play. That same year, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Lenny, played by Kelly Herbert James, is the oldest sister, unmarried at 30 and facing diminishing marital prospects; Meg, played by Whitney Pirnik, is the middle sister, who quickly outgrew Hazlehurst, and is back after a failed singing career on the West Coast; while Babe, played by Margaret Wilson, is the youngest, and is out on bail after having shot her husband in the stomach. Their troubles are highlighted by their priggish cousin, Chick, played by Michelle Keller Rieder; and by the awkward young lawyer, played by Corey Breiner, who tries to keep Babe out of jail while falling in love with her. In the end the play is the story of how its young characters escape the past to seize the future, but the telling is so true and touching and consistently hilarious that it will linger in the mind long after the play is over. Also in he cast is Troy Brokenshire as Doc Porter.

Performances are 7:30 p.m. September 6-7, 13-14; 3 p.m. September 8 and 15. Tickets are $14 for adults and $12 for seniors and students.

Macungie Institute Performing Arts and Conference Center is at 510 East Main Street, Macungie.

For information go to betweenthelinestheatre.com.

National Theatre Live returns to Easton Williams Center for the Arts‘ National Theatre Live Downtown returns for its third season in Easton, opening with Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” at 7 p.m. September 8, broadcast from London, featuring Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo as the powerful and tragic lovers, on Sunday.

From London’s West End to cinemas around the world, National Theatre Live broadcasts stage productions from the United Kingdom’s most celebrated theaters. Captured live in performance, the plays are screened in high-definition cinemas.

National Theatre Live Downtown is presented in Landis Cinema at Buck Hall, located at North Third and Snyder streets on the downtown arts campus at Lafayette College.

The season’s opening presentation is Simon Godwin’s study in the entanglement of passion, power, and war, the tragedy unfolds on dual fronts of the Roman Empire and Egypt. With infatuation clouding political calculation, Antony and Cleopatra’s obsession leads to a plague of self-destruction.

Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee, Tony winner, NAACP Image Award winner, and Black Reel Award recipient Sophie Okonedo (“Doctor Who,” “A Raisin in the Sun,” “Hotel Rwanda”) stars alongside Oscar and BAFTA nominee, Tony Award winner, and William Shakespeare Award winner Ralph Fiennes (“Schindler’s List,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”).

 

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