Nestled in the heart of Northampton, MA, the BOMBYX Center for Arts & Equity is a vibrant hub for diverse cultural and artistic expressions. This December, the center invites you to partake in an array of events that promise to enlighten, entertain, and empower. From the transformative Shamanic Healing Ceremony to the harmonious sounds of the Bombyx Brass Collective, and the cultural fusion at Fiesta de la Simcha, the program is rich and varied. With legendary performances, thought-provoking workshops, and engaging market experiences, BOMBYX is set to end the year on a high note.

A Feast for the Senses: Celebrating Arts and Culture at BOMBYX Center

Join beloved local authors Jane Yolen and Heidi E.Y. Stemple for this community interfaith holiday celebration. Families are invited to make light-inspired crafts provided by BOMBYX in-house congregations, Beit Ahavah, The Reform Synagogue of Greater Northampton, and Florence Congregational Church. Jane and Heidi will read their new picture book WE CELEBRATE THE LIGHT, and Little Roots will provide musical accompaniment. A community fire will cap off the twinkly evening!

We Celebrate the Light

BOMBYX Center for Arts & Equity

Contact Improvisation is an honoring of every moment. The Class will focus on fundamental physical skills of this partner dance form. Learn to stay in integrity with each choice, never forcing, never rushing. Learn to recognize and differentiate the subtle impulses in our choices and our partner's choices. Begin to decipher the touch cues that we give and receive which tell us when to lead or follow, when to go up, when to go down, how to lift, when to slow down, and when to be still.

The Flo-Jam: Bombyx Contact Improv Class & Jam

Bringing the goal or object of your dream into present time through creative imaging and dynamic make believe. Bring a sketchbook, drawing pad, or journal and favorite friendly writing tool. You will be offered guidance in updating the working title of your goal or vision and in exploring the imaginary state of your personal success manifesting here and now - using the laws of creative visualization, focused concentration, emotional animation, and attitude of gratitude for transitioning into your success mind flow and body lingo. Fun, interactive, transformative, playfully liberating, and empowering. Please bring a yoga mat, cushion, and other props to comfortably sit on the floor in the Peacock Room.

Laws of Manifestation Workshop with LARAAJI

An immersive sound experience led by multi-instrumentalist LARAAJI, who puts the healing and mystical properties of music into practice. He has performed ambient music on piano, electric zither (stringed instrument), and mbira (thumb piano) since 1979.

Sound Bath with LARAAJI

Little Roots, Bombyx, Art Always, & High Five Books are excited to present a Winter Kids' Makers Market. Featuring kids as the makers, ranging from 6-18 years old! Come purchase gifts for yourself, your friends, or family - for the holidays, birthdays, fun surprises, or just because. You'll find jewelry, soaps, note cards, art, candles, food and more.

Winter Kid's Makers Market

Light One Candle is an afternoon of holiday harmony and captivating barbershop a cappella sound.  Your host, Heart of the Valley Chorus, will perform alongside The Cider House Boys and special guest singers to bring you the light and love of holiday favorites with opportunities for you to sing along if you wish.  Singing, especially in groups, helps connect us with others in a way no other activity can.  This event is intergenerational and it’s fun.

Light One Candle

What do you do with an unread manuscript that tells the story of a teenage Romanian Jewish girl’s journey across five countries and seven languages? Her tale unfolds through a series of vignettes: solitary confinement in a Soviet prison, dodging Nazi gunfire, enduring a miscarriage at 17 after jumping off a train. Spanning 2,000 raw pages of typewritten ink, her accent lingers in the odd spellings and old-world phrases. It offers a glimpse into a vanished world, while the human emotions within—cruelty, ingenuity, longing, kindness, and solidarity—remain deeply relatable.

About This, It Was Not Yet Written

Legendary singer-songwriter and Folk Rock pioneer Tom Rush, celebrating over 50 years on stage and in the studio, continues to thrill audiences with captivating performances. Experience his romantic, rustic folk music that features a time tested mix of new and old with favorites like “Urge For Going”, “Who Do You Love” and “No Regrets”. Tom left a stamp on generations of artists as his legendary album Circle Game helped shape the 1960s folk revival and the renaissance of the 1980s and 1990s and introduced the songs of Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and James Taylor. Accompanying him is acclaimed pianist Matt Nakoa. Don't miss his annual return to Northampton, this time at BOMBYX where we are delighted and honored to host him.

An Evening with Tom Rush

In a time of rising anti-immigrant, antisemitic, and anti-Latino incidents, Fiesta de la Simcha brings us together in joy and community for a groundbreaking mash-up of Puerto Rican cuatro and Jewish klezmer music featuring Fabiola Méndez, Ezekiel's Wheels Klezmer Band, and Professor Ilan Stavans.

Fiesta de la Simcha

The Bombyx Brass Collective is thrilled to welcome new Music Director Juli Sansoucy to the project.

Bombyx Brass Collective Concert

In this three hour ceremony, Alex will embark on a transformative journey with you, guiding you toward your inner healing and empowerment through spiritual and multidimensional practices. By connecting you to the wisdom of your ancestors and helping you release past traumas and negative patterns, he facilitates a path to self-love, balance and joy. Through smudging, rattling, drumming, chanting, and a guided power beings' retrieval, our sessions aim to bring peace, trust, alignment with your life purpose, and harmony, allowing you to live your life with newfound freedom and creativity. When you enter the circle, you are already committed to your own healing.

Shamanic Healing Ceremony

Unplug from your devices and recharge your serenity. Join us for Cut Loose: Digital Detox, a workshop designed to help you take a break from the digital world and reset your stress through the therapeutic art of collage. Within a supportive community of all skill levels, you'll explore hands-on techniques to create unique pieces of art, all while enjoying a much-needed respite from screens.

Cut Loose Digital Detox Collage Workshop

"If you had asked me at age 22, I would have said that I would never, never make music for the public," Jesse Cook says with a laugh. "I would have told you that the public is much too fickle — they may love you one minute and forget you the next. Well, it turns out I did the thing I said I'd never do, and somehow it's worked out."

Jesse Cook

Join High Five Books and author/ illustrator Colleen AF Venable for a purr-fect afternoon celebrating the beloved Katie the Catsitter graphic novel series!

Katie the Catsitter Party!

Lisa Gutkin’s “solo” show is a whimsical wander through her musical styles, intertwining Irish, Jewish, American, and other sounds with improvisations and humorous touring stories. It features Lisa on fiddle, tenor guitar, and voice, with a star studded back up band: Christina Crowder on accordion and banjo, Pete Rushefsky on tsimbl and special guest Rachel Leader on violin.

Lisa Gutkin on Stage

Lisa Gutkin will teach a klezmer tune along with methods to learn by ear, basic ornamentation, phrasing and accompaniment ideas. This is a participatory class for musicians of all levels, listeners, folks who know the music, and folks who are just curious. Audience members are welcome to participate with instruments, voice, clapping or foot tapping. Or to simply sit back and enjoy!

Klezmer Workshop with Lisa Gutkin

Ghost Ensemble fosters groundbreaking music that blurs borders of genre, style, and scene, expanding perceptual horizons through shared immersive experience. Collaboration with living composers is its primary focus.

Ghost Ensemble

Directed by local filmmaker and educator Kate Way, Banned Together follows the recent wave of book bans in the United States. The feature length documentary film follows the courageous efforts of three students from a small South Carolina community who take a stand when almost 100 books are abruptly removed from their school libraries. As the students rise to become national voices in the fight against censorship, the film captures the broader narrative of book banning and curriculum censorship across the United States.

Banned Together

Ellen Clegg invites you to join this weekly class to discover the impressive and inspiring healing power of drumming - for ourselves and our communities. With 35 years of experience studying numerous of our world’s rich drumming traditions, Ellen brings depth of knowledge, heart, and spirit to sharing the common and unique voices of rhythm and drumming.

Drumming with Ellen Clegg

You're invited to be part of a new gathering at Florence Congregational Church. We think life is better with potlucks! So each month, bring something to share (does NOT have to be fancy!), enjoy getting to know other community-minded folks, and make life a little less isolated for yourself and others. The only way to meet more people is to come out and meet them! We'll even have conversation starters to get you going.

Sunday Suppers and Spirit

Join Mountain River Taiko & Friends in a celebration of Japanese culture and performance arts!  Bunka no Hi, or Culture Day, is a Japanese holiday celebrated on November 3rd that is dedicated to culture, the arts, and academic endeavors.

Bunka no Hi

September's Soundbath with KAMAUU was the most vibrant ever so we decided to add one in November - a chance to pause before the holiday rush.

A Quiet Moment With KAMAUU

Since its inception, the language of flamenco has been expanding to include non-traditional instruments such as the saxophone, harmonica, and bass. Within these new formulas, it seemed unthinkable to overlook one of the principal instruments of the orchestral tradition: the violin. Virtuosic, mystical, and emotive, the violin has stood as the flagbearer of canonical and academic music.

Pablo Giménez Spanish Ensemble

Bill Frisell’s career as a guitarist and composer has spanned more than 40 years and many celebrated recordings, whose catalog has been cited by Downbeat as "the best recorded output of the decade."

Bill Frisell | In My Dreams

Bombyx is delighted to welcome the return of “On A Winter’s Night” featuring veteran singer-songwriters Cliff Eberhardt, John Gorka, Lucy Kaplansky, and Patty Larkin together onstage swapping songs and stories. In 1994, Christine Lavin gathered them together to showcase music of the Winter Season on the now-classic On A Winter’s Night CD. With fond memories of their touring days together, the winter season is again celebrated by these unique and timeless performers, back together by popular demand. Last year’s show sold out so don’t miss out.

On A Winter's Night

Alan Doyle - actor, producer, best-selling author, and best-known as lead singer for Newfoundland’s beloved Great Big Sea these past 20+ years— hardly needs an introduction. With five solo albums under his belt, Doyle has been touring the world with his ace six-piece band for the last decade. In late 2014, Doyle released his best-selling memoir Where I Belong, followed by A Newfoundlander In Canada released in October 2017, and All Together now released in November 2020. Amidst these projects, Doyle found time to write music for and appear on CBC’s Republic of Doyle, guest on CBC’s Murdoch Mysteries, a role in 2014’s Winter’s Tale and 2010’s Robin Hood. With his 2022 live album “Here, Tonight” and a recent JUNO nomination for his 2021 album “Back to the Harbour”, Doyle chalks up a lot of where he is right now to luck. “I’m the luckiest guy I’ve ever even heard of,” he says. “This was all I ever wanted, a life in the music business, singing concerts.”

Alan Doyle

Biribá Union features Mike Block (Cello, Vocals), Christylez Bacon (Beatbox, Guitar, Rhymes), and Patricia Ligia (Electric Bass, Pandeiro, Vocals), forming a dynamic trio that blends original music with global influences, creating a fresh and accessible sound. Each member draws from their diverse backgrounds, such as Brazilian, Bluegrass, Jazz, Classical, Hip-Hop, Funk, and Pop styles, synthesizing them through original compositions and songs that highlight their improvisational spontaneity and high energy stage presentation.

Biribá Union

The Ancient Law, (Das Alte Gesetz) Ewald André Dupont’s 1923 silent masterpiece, is the moving story of the rupture between a rabbi and his son in a Polish shtetl, when the young man abruptly leaves to become an actor in Vienna.  With its fascinating attention to cultural detail, and ensemble of some of the great actors of the day, the film still resonates deeply with audiences in its 100th anniversary year.

Cine Concert: The Ancient Law

A Glezele Tey (Yiddish for “a very little glass of tea”) invites audiences into a warm, intimate, and enthralling performance of klezmer, Yiddish folk song, and tkhines (traditional Ashkenazi prayers centering the experiences of women, trans, and gender non-conforming people, set to new melodies). Rooted in the music of the Eastern European Jewish diaspora, their performances are soulful, spontaneous, and deeply personal. A Glezele Tey will have the audience dancing, singing along, and experiencing the full range of human emotions!

A Glezele Tey

Garrison Keillor Tonight is an evening of stand-up, storytelling, audience song, and poetry. One man, one microphone. There are sung sonnets, limericks and musical jokes, and the thread that runs through it is the beauty of growing old. Despite the inconvenience, old age brings the contentment of LESS IS MORE. Your mistakes and big ambitions are behind you, nothing left to prove, and small things give you great pleasure because that’s what’s left. (“I was unhappy in college because it was a requirement for an intellectual, but then I went into show business and discovered that people won’t pay to be made unhappy, their kids will do it for free.”)

Garrison Keillor Tonight

Mames Babegenush, a sextet from Copenhagen, give the zesty, brassy, festive, and sad hybrid music of Eastern Europe a crisp Scandinavian touch. They blend the sounds of trumpet, accordion and clarinet; part ecstatic wedding celebration, part marching band, part chamber jazz and just a touch of zany cartoon chaos. Klezmer combines Jewish traditional and folk styles with regional flavors, providing the music with a bit of Nordic atmosphere. In true klezmer style, Mames Babegenush makes jubilant music that always contains the suggestion of a possible lament, to season the exuberance with an eyedropper of introspection.

BOMBYX Center for Arts & Equity

Feb 1, 2025

Pablo Giménez Spanish Ensemble

Feb 4, 2025

Bill Frisell | In My Dreams

Feb 16, 2025

On A Winter's Night

Mar 11, 2025

Alan Doyle

Mar 16, 2025

Biribá Union

Dec 22, 2024

We Celebrate the Light

Dec 21, 2024

The Flo-Jam: Bombyx Contact Improv Class & Jam

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BOMBYX Center for Arts & Equity