“Spectacle of Music” in Newport, 26 May

On Sunday, 26 May, the Newport Historical Society will host “A Spectacle of Music” at the Colony House in Washington Square.

This is a series of varied concerts:

• 1:00 – The Ministers of Apollo present the Orange County Militia Drum and Fife Band (as shown in part to the left), who perform military music of the American Revolution with period instruments in authentic clothing.
• 2:00 – Mother Earth Singers: Traditional Native American drum and singing courtesy of the Dighton Intertribal Council.
• 3:00 – Singer Gerard Edery and violinist Meg Okura perform “Treasures of Sephardic Song,” tracing the surprising and exotic musical synergies between Christians, Arabs, and Jews from Medieval Spain to the present.
• 4:00 – Stuart Frank and Mary Malloy share eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ballads and songs in a concert based on Rhode Island whalemen’s journals. Dr. Frank is Senior Curator at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

These performances thus represent the different cultures and professions that made up eighteenth-century Newport. The concert is the first “Spectacle of Toleration” event for the year.

The concert is free, though the historical society naturally welcomes donations.