Category: Featured Content

This Week 26/01/29

Thursday, Jan. 29

The SNHU Arena (555 Elm St., Manchester, 644-5000, snhuarena.com) will host Dancing With the Stars: Live tonight beginning at 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $85.

Thursday, Jan. 29

The Granite Stage, a community talent showcase celebrating New Hampshire’s artists, musicians, dancers, comedians and creators from Rhythm and Roots Studio (rhythmandrootsstudiollc.com), will take place tonight at the Rex Theatre (823 Amherst St., Manchester, 668-5588, palacetheatre.org) from 6 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $30.

Friday, Jan. 30

Queen tribute act Almost Queen will perform at the Nashua Center for the Arts (201 Main St., Nashua, 800-657-8774, nashuacenterforthearts.com) tonight at 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $46.

Saturday, Jan. 31

Boogie Wonder Band will take the stage at Tupelo Music Hall (10 A St., Derry, 437-5100, tupelomusichall.com) tonight at 8 p.m. Tickets are $50.

Saturday, Jan. 31

Red River Theatres in Concord will host a screening of The Testament of Ann Lee, a film starring Amanda Seyfried as Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers, today at 4 p.m. and tomorrow, Sunday, Feb. 1, at 10 a.m., with both screenings featuring post-film dicussions with the Canterbury Shaker Village Museum’s curator of research & collections and archivist. Tickets are available at redrivertheatres.org.

Saturday, Jan. 31

Join Main Dunstable Elementary School PTO for a special Parents’ Night Out Clean Comedy Fundraiser in the Auditorium at Nashua South High School (36 Riverside St., Nashua) tonight at 7 p.m. Headliners Comedy Club will bring comedians Kyle Crawford, Judy Sloane and Rob Steen to the stage for a fun, feel-good evening filled with laughs that everyone can enjoy. General admission tickets are $25, and all proceeds benefit the Main Dunstable School PTO.

Sunday, Feb. 1

The Majestic Theatre (880 Page St., Manchester, 669-7469, majestictheatre.net) welcomes the Scott Spradling Band, a 12-member big band, this afternoon at 2 p.m. The performance will be held at The Majestic Theatre Studios, 880 Page St. in Manchester. Tickets are $28.

Sunday, Feb. 1

Two-time Emmy and Grammy Award winning comedian Kathy Griffin will perform at the Chubb Theatre (Chubb Theatre at CCA, 44 S. Main St., Concord, 225-1111, ccanh.com) as part of her “New Face; New Tour” tour tonight at 7 p.m. Tickets start at $49.

Wednesday, Feb. 4

The Dover Public Library will present Bob Sheppard and his program “My Father, the Tuskegee Airman” about his father, Master Sergeant James A. Sheppard Jr., today at 6:30 p.m. in Room 306 of the McConnell Center, 61 Locust St. in Dover, according to a press release. The event is free and open to the public. See library.dover.nh.gov.

Save the Date! Saturday, Feb. 14
Emo Night Brooklyn, a late-night DJ-based dance party blasting emo and pop-punk jams, will take place Saturday, Feb. 14, at 8 p.m. at the Nashua Center for the Arts (201 Main St., Nashua, 800-657-8774, nashuacenterforthearts.com). This is a general-admission open floor show. Ticketholders must be 18+. Tickets start at $26.

Featured photo: The Testament of Ann Lee will screen at Red River Theatres.

News & Notes 26/01/29

Bob Baines

Bob Baines, who served as Manchester’s mayor in the early 2000s, died last week, according to a statement from his family posted on current Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais’ Facebook page. The statement, posted Jan. 23, reads: “With heavy hearts, the family of Robert ‘Bob’ Baines shares the news of his passing. Bob left us peacefully, surrounded by his loved ones. We kindly ask that you keep the Baines family in your thoughts and prayers during this incredibly challenging time.”

Baines was elected mayor in 1999 and his tenure is listed as 2000-2005 on the city’s website. Baines was currently a member of Manchester’s Board of School Committee, representing Ward 9. Baines, who was born in Manchester, taught music at Alvirne High School from 1968 to 1977, was the principal of Manchester High School West from 1980 to 1999 and was named New Hampshire Principal of the Year in 1990 and Educator of the Year by Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce in 1996, according to manchesternh.gov. “Mayor Baines married Maureen McCaugney of Nashua in 1974 and they have three children: Christina, Timothy and Catherine,” the city’s website said, and the Union Leader reported that they also had four grandchildren.

In the Jan. 25 issue of “Day By Day,” the Substack newsletter by local author and Hippo co-founder Dan Szczesny, Dan shared his memories about Baines: “His years as mayor coincide with myself and my two partners creating and launching HippoPress … Back then, one of our first stops … even before the paper had launched, was the mayor’s office. … Much to our surprise, he welcomed us enthusiastically. … [During] that first meeting with him (maybe the second or third) he was blunt about our chances of success, in particular because he hated the idea of the paper being called The Hippo. ‘That doesn’t even make sense!’ he’d say. We went with it anyway and the name stuck. And every time any of us saw him after that, he’d just smile and yell ‘Hey, Hippo!’ … He was a good guy. That’s it, that’s what sticks and this has played out after his passing as friends, officials and lawmakers from ever side of the political spectrum have come out to sing his praises.”

Interim chief

Deputy Chief Barrett J. Moulton has been named Interim Chief of the Concord Police Department effective Jan. 24, according to a Concord city newsletter. He takes over for Chief Bradley Osgood, who retired Jan. 23, the newsletter said. “Chief Moulton has more than 27 years of experience in law enforcement. He grew up in New Hampshire and attended Northeastern University. He joined the Concord Police Department in 2006 after serving as a Police Officer and Sergeant with the Town of Loudon,” the newsletter said.

The New Hampshire Audubon is holding an open house for raptor biologist Chris Martin, who has retired after 35 years with NH Audubon, on Wednesday, Feb. 11, from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at the McLane Center, 84 Silk Farm Road in Concord, according to an Audubon newsletter. RSVP by Jan. 30 at nhaudubon.org.

Capitol Cross-Country Ski Day, featuring races, gear demos and free lessons, will take place Sunday, Feb. 8, at the Concord Community Nordic Trails at Beaver Meadow Golf Course in Concord, according to skithebeav.org, where you can register for the races and clinics for youth and adults.

The Nashua Public Library, 2 Court St. in Nashua, will hold its first-ever metal concert with the local death metal band Cytokine on Friday, Jan. 30, at 7 p.m. in the Chandler Wing, according to a press release. The concert is free and all-ages. See nashualibrary.org.

Bringing the funk

Fox and The Flamingos hit BNH Stage

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

Female-fronted funk will be in the spotlight when Fox and The Flamingos perform at BNH Stage on Jan. 23, with additional grooves provided by opener Pocket Drop, a music collective that includes a few familiar Concord faces. The showcase is the latest high point for a band approaching its fifth anniversary.

Released in September, “Nowhere But Up” is Fox and The Flamingos’ most recent single, with a title that well describes the Milford quintet’s current trajectory. The upbeat, danceable track is anchored by a solid rhythm section, tasty guitar licks and swirling keyboard, with the soulful voice of front woman Maizy Rae at its heart.

Maizy is a lifelong singer who honed her craft at local gatherings.
“A lot of my friends would throw these parties, and it was always in a basement,” she said. “Just basically a big party that would turn into a big jam session.” At one of those, she met a bass player who invited her to audition for a funk band he and some friends were forming.

She was the first and last singer to audition. The bass player, it turned out, wasn’t a good fit; he only lasted a month. Gary Smith, a veteran on the scene who’s played with Roots of Creation among other acts, was recruited to fill the vacancy. The other band members liked his affinity for what he termed “weird stuff” in a Zoom co-interview with Maizy.

“I’m a jazz nerd,” he said. The interview happened as Smith and Maizy were about to perform a duo set at Forum Pub in Concord as Vaudeville Vixen, their duo side project. “I do looper stuff with my eight-string guitar, and she sings. We do reinterpretations of more modern songs in the jazz vein — ‘Santeria’ and things like that.”

When Smith joined, Fox and The Flamingos included guitarist Tyler Moran, Ryan Pratt on drums, keyboard player Ryan Bossie and Maizy. Bossie left last summer, and Zach Sweetser, who also plays in the Dave Matthews Tribute Band, took his spot. Saxophone player Derek Adams began sitting in last year and is now a full-time member.

The band played its first gig in 2021 at Concord’s now-shuttered Area 23. Smith recalled Maizy as tentative that night, but that didn’t last. “Now, she’s bouncing around on the stage doing whatever,” he said. “Displaying that confidence helps us in getting gigs with the bigger bands. They see us and they’re excited to play with us.”

The group has been gathering fans steadily. In 2024 they beat out five other groups at StrangeCreek Battle of the Bands, and won a cabin set at the festival.

“That was really huge for me personally,” Maizy said. “I’ve been going to StrangeCreek for 10 years…. I think that was crucial to getting our name out there.”

The band released their debut album last year, Spirit Animal. It’s an axiom that a first record takes four years to make and the second takes four months; that looks to be true with this flock. To follow “Nowhere But Up,” the band recently began playing a new song at shows, “Can’t Blame You.” It’s an absolute banger, with more in the works.

“Songs come together pretty quickly,” Smith said. “It’ll either be Maizy saying, ‘I have this melody’ or someone will have a chord progression or a riff. Usually we can get a song together in a rehearsal. It takes us a couple hours to shape them up. We’re getting better at utilizing our time in the studio, but it’s a learning experience for sure.”

Maizy takes inspiration from Betty Davis, a mid-’70s soul singer with a cult following who mixed Tina Turner’s brashness with the style of David Bowie. A key moment happened when she saw Harsh Armadillo, now called Harsh, at their final Wild Woods Festival on a Croydon farm in 2018.

At the time, Harsh was led by Andrea Beladi, who left when the pandemic hit. “It changed everything,” she said. “I’d always been a singer, but it really put it into perspective — like … that’s a thing you can do? I hadn’t really thought about it, because I was just getting into the local live music scene.”

Fox and The Flamingos w/ Pocket Drop
When: Friday, Jan. 23, 8 p.m.
Where: BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord
Tickets: $18 at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Fox and The Flamingos. Courtesy photo.

The Miller’s Tavern opens

A new restaurant brings lessons from one Elm Street corner to another

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

For 15 years, The Farm Restaurant was a solid presence on Elm Street in downtown Manchester. Then after the holidays, it was gone.

Ryan Cox is part of the family that owned The Farm and several other restaurants in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

“What happened,” he said, “was the lease [for the Manchester Farm] had ended. We were there 15 years. We had a great run there. We love The Farm. We still have one location in Dover, New Hampshire, and one in Essex, Massachusetts, as well, and they’re still staying open. It was just one of these things where we couldn’t see eye to eye with the landlord, and with the age of the building, we just decided it was time to kind of look somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else” turned out to be on the corner of Elm and Lowell streets, in the location most recently occupied by Keys Piano Bar.

“We found this great location two blocks over,” Cox said. “And we were able to bring in a different one of our concepts, which is what we have in Methuen, Massachusetts. It gave us a chance to revitalize what kind of what we’re doing as a business.”

The new restaurant, which opened in early January, is The Miller’s Tavern. It specializes in upscale American pub food.

Cox said the Tavern is not the same place as The Farm, but they share some of the same DNA. “We’ve learned a lot in our 16 years of operating our company,” Cox said. “And so we’ve really been able to dial in our menu and really been able to dial in what we’re going for, which is an American tavern. It’s a place where we would like people to be able to come three days a week. Perhaps you come in for a burger and a beer and watch a game. Perhaps you come in another time for dinner. and perhaps you come in with your family if you want as well. The idea is to cater to all price ranges and all types of people.”

The concept of the menu at The Miller’s Tavern is to take pub classics and elevate them to their highest potential. Cox used mozzarella bites as an example.

“Instead of what people would buy as mozzarella sticks, frozen, we make them all in house,” he said. “We take real chunks of mozzarella, so when you stretch it, you take a bite, it stretches for days. We have our famous fajitas that we’ve taken from The Farm, which we would put up against any Mexican restaurant out there. Our steak tips, we make them in house. That’s a home run. We have a pizza oven. We have a panko chicken that we think is outstanding. Our fish and chips are seriously good — our seafood’s fresh, you know, which is something that we’ve kind of learned from being down on the coastal areas.”

Cox said there are also high-end items on the menu.

“On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, we have a choose-your-own-cut-size of rib-eye steak. You can choose a 16-, 18-, 20-, 24-, 28-, 30-ounce cut, if you’d like. We cut it for you right here, topped with gorgonzola cheese, caramelized onions, and onion rings on top of that, so it’s a really cool meal.”

The Miller’s Tavern
1087 Elm St., Manchester, 854-8442, themillerstavern.com
Open Monday through Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Ice carving, axe throwing

Concord holds its annual winter festival

By John Fladd
jfladd@hippopress.com

According to Jessica Martin, the executive director of Intown Concord, one of the most exciting parts of this weekend’s Concord NH Winter Fest will be the ice carving.

“They use two large locks of ice and they’re so beautiful,” she said. “They carve things like eagles and dragons and The Old Man of the Mountain on the Statehouse lawn. There will be a little preview Friday night if anybody wants to come down between 3 and 9 p.m. the evening before the event, if anybody wanted to come down and watch them.” On Friday night, Martin said, the ice carvers will recreate the logos of the Festival’s sponsors in ice, but the actual ice carving competition will take place on Saturday.

Saturday will also see food trucks on Main Street. “We have so many different food trucks that are attending this year,” Martin said. “We have Batulo’s Somalian food, we have Deadproof Pizza, we have Wicked Tasty and we have Bumblebee Dumpling and Bumblebee Tea.”

Winter Fest will include activities like curling, axe-throwing, s’mores-making, a morning matinee of the animated movie Balto with complementary hot chocolate at Red River Theatres, and an ice bar in Arts Alley.

Also on Concord’s weekend schedule are the Concord Garden Club’s 23rd Annual Art and Bloom exhibition at Kimball Jenkins (Thursday, Jan. 22 through Saturday, Jan. 24); the Winter Fest Hot Cocoa Tour at participating downtown restaurants (11 a.m.to 2 p.m.; register on Intown’s website); a family fun day at the New Hampshire Historical Society (30 Park St.) from 2 to 4 p.m., and the Black Ice Pond Hockey Championship (blackicepondhockey.com) Friday, Jan. 23, through Sunday, Jan. 25.

Concord NH Winter Fest
Where: Downtown Concord, in front of the Statehouse, plus some off-site events
When: Saturday, Jan. 24, from 11 a.m to 4 p.m.
More: Visit intownconcord.org/events

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Carrying on

Ukrainian ballet tour comes to New Hampshire

By Michael Witthaus
mwitthaus@hippopress.com

The Grand Kyiv Ballet Company was forged through the crucible of two crises. In 2014, Russia occupied Eastern Ukraine, forcing dancer Oleksandr Stoianov and his ballerina wife Kareryna Kuhkar to move to Kyiv. Once there, Stoianov formed a ballet company consisting solely of his fellow countrymen and women.

“Before this we worked with the Russian companies, promoting the Moscow Ballet or the Russian Ballet,” Stoianov said in a recent phone interview. “Many people didn’t know that they were about 50 percent Ukrainian. It was my main idea to create the Grand Kyiv Ballet with a Ukrainian name, and with Ukrainian dancers.”

In 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine forced another turning point. When the war began, Stoianov and Kuhkar were performing across Europe. They quickly put together a solidarity tour in France and Scandinavian countries, along with working to get dancers and students to safe places.

Government officials, including Scandinavian royalty, attended performances. Ballet became a voice for grief, resistance and national identity.

“We did speeches from the stage about weeping for our country,” Stoianov recalled. “It was a most difficult and terrible time.”

Theaters in Ukraine were closed. Jobs disappeared overnight, and for dancers, life without rehearsal and performance is unimaginable. Many were young, only in their teens, and forced to start from zero in foreign countries. Others were caring for children or elderly parents. Homes were destroyed, and stability vanished.

Some paid a much higher price. Oleksandr Shapoval, who’d danced with Stoianov and Kuhkar, volunteered for service and died in September 2022. Artem Datsishin, another principal dancer from Ukraine’s National Opera, died from injuries sustained from Russian shelling.

In response, larger and more frequent tours were created to provide work, income and purpose for displaced performers. Its scale has grown steadily and adapted to shifting challenges. The company is now a global presence, appearing across Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and more recently China.

Each tour and performance reinforces the visibility of Ukrainian culture on the world stage.

Stoianov, Kuhkar and their two daughters now live in Seattle. Stoianov oversees Grand Kyiv Ballet’s many projects, like two upcoming New Hampshire stops. Giselle, with principal dancers Victor Tomashek and Ekaterina Malkovich, will be performed in Nashua on Jan. 22, and Swan Lake is at Portsmouth’s Music Hall Jan. 25.

These days, the two dance infrequently. An injury stopped Stoianov in 2024, but he hinted, “perhaps a grand return is still ahead” on the company’s website. In the interview, he shared that a world tour of the ballet Carmen will happen next year. “We’ll start class and rehearsals this summer, and then in 2027, we’ll say goodbye to everybody from the stage.”

Giselle is a tale of love, deception and betrayal. Malkovich said in a late December Instagram post that it’s among her favorites to perform.

“When the curtain falls, you leave the stage not tired, but drained,” she wrote. “It’s a ballet after which you don’t want to say anything because there’s nothing left to say.”

Stoianov agrees, adding that its themes resonate with audiences. “All people feel sometimes in their lives in a situation like Giselle, a young girl who was in love, was betrayed and became crazy,” he said. “I’ve seen this ballet a thousand times and my eyes still become wet — but they are happy tears.”

Grand Kyiv Ballet presents Giselle
When: Thursday, Jan. 22, 7 p.m.
Where: Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua
Tickets: $46.75 and up at etix.com
Sunday, Jan. 25, 4 p.m. Grand Kyiv Ballet presents Swan Lake at The Music Hall, Portsmouth, themusichall.org.

Featured photo: Giselle. performed by The Grand Kyiv Ballet. Courtesy photo.

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!