New Orleans, the Big Easy, is in the local arts spotlight this week in a couple of different ways mixing fun and fundraising, food and food for thought.
One is the New Orleans Benefit Dinner and Dance on Saturday at the Putney Inn, featuring a five-entree New Orleans-inspired buffet, followed by music performed by jazz and blues vocalist Samirah Evans, backed by local favorites Eugene Uman, George Kaye, Tim Gilmore and Barry Ries. For those of you who haven't heard Evans, she's a powerhouse. A New Orleans native who left in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and moved to this area because her husband grew up here. She's a great singer with a warm personality, and the event should be fun. It's also a benefit for two causes — Putney Family Services and the New Orleans Habitat Musicians Village. Tickets are $35. To reserve them, call 802-387-5517.
The other Big Easy-related happening is John O'Neal's appearance at Sandglass Theater's Voices of Community Series. A longtime activist for civil rights and a pioneer in the arts as activism, O'Neal is based in New Orleans. He has been dismayed at the ongoing troubles his city is suffering, but his optimism remains, tested but intact. "New Orleans will be all right," he told me in an interview he gave via cell phone as he walking down the streets of the city. His eloquence and congeniality made me feel as though I were walking down the streets with him, and that seemed to connect me to New Orleans in a personal way. I had been there once and began picture what I had seen there in my head as we talked together.
His program at Sandglass is not about New Orleans, per se, but about larger issues of community, connections between people, civil rights, justice. He will perform in Putney on Friday and Saturday night and will hold story circle workshops at the Putney Public Library Tuesday night at 7 p.m., and at the Rockingham Free Public Library in Bellows Falls on Wednesday from 7 to 9 p.m. For more information about O'Neal's visit and performances, call Sandglass at 802-387-4051.