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Now that SullyCole, who was born when her parents lived in Thetford, is embarking on a doctorate in ethnomusicology, where better to share the sound of the 21-string, harp/lute hybrid than … the Upper Valley?
“I’ve been wanting to perform more often up there for a while,” SullyCole, who has gigs scheduled Saturday night in Sharon and Aug. 17 in Woodstock, said last week from New York City. “I like to spend as much time as I can in the Valley now that my parents are living in Thetford. And in the shows I’ve played so far, the audiences have been so attentive. They appreciate something quite different. Most of the people who come are not kora fans, so it helps me extend my studies to my performance.”
In both realms, SullyCole is following in the footsteps of her father, improvisational jazz musician Bill Cole, who taught world music at Dartmouth College for more than 15 years.
Born in 1990, the year that Cole and his wife, Sarah Sully, left the Upper Valley, SullyCole watched her father put together his Untempered Ensemble of improvisational players, compose music, play his wide array of non-Western wind instruments and record with the likes of Ornette Coleman. He also taught at Syracuse University and wrote books on jazz and world music.
It all rubbed off on the youngest of his four children.
“I grew up with him and his ensemble in the house all the time,” said SullyCole, who also teaches world music at Columbia University, where she is studying for her doctorate. “So I now have so little anxiety about who I’m playing with and what I’m playing.”
During her formative years, SullyCole dabbled with flute, guitar and voice. Then, during her undergraduate years at Barnard College, she went on an exchange program to Senegal, where she spent several years studying the kora and working as a resident artist at the Bois Sakre studios in Dakar, the capital city.
“The spark happened when Althea went there,” said Cole, who with Sully moved back to the Upper Valley in 2017. “She kept going back. It really ignited her.”
SullyCole followed the light to the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, where she embarked on a master’s in “music in development” and formed a duo, 42 Strings, with a fellow student who was learning the zheng, a Chinese instrument related to the zither.
“We had very similar visions,” SullyCole said, “about what we wanted to do with our instruments.”
She’s been seeking out musicians with wide-ranging visions and ambitions ever since, from members of her father’s Untempered Ensemble to Belgian guitarist Alec Saelens, whom she met in Senegal and with whom she now lives. For Saturday’s show, at Seven Stars Art Center in Sharon, Saelens will join her along with saxophonist/flutist Ras Moshe.
“Both of them are intimately familiar with my whole repertoire,” SullyCole said. “It’s a joy to be able to work with them.”
And now she’s sharing it with Upper Valley audiences.
“It’s quite a vibrant music scene there,” she said. “I’ve seen some amazing music not only at venues like ArtisTree (in South Pomfret) but the (Thursday-night) concerts at Feast & Field Market. It seems like the community there is open to variety.”
Althea SullyCole performs with Alec Saelens and Ras Moshe at the Seven Stars Arts Center in Sharon on Saturday night at 7:30; for tickets ($15) and more information, visit sevenstarsarts.org or call 802-763-2334. On Aug. 17 at 7 p.m., the trio will perform with pianist Sonny Saul at his store, Pleasant Street Books, in Woodstock; admission $10.
Sound of Ceres mixes puppetry, experimental theater, laser-light art and music, during a three-night residency at the Aidron Duckworth Art Museum in Meriden Thursday through Saturday. Each performance starts at 8, and doors open at 7:30. Admission is free.
■Cellist Benjamin Kulp plays all six of Bach’s solo suites for the instrument on Saturday morning at 10, at the Upper Valley Music Center in Lebanon. Admission: adults $20, under 18 free.
■The New York Theatre Workshop opens its three-week summer residency at Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center with the staging of two plays-in-progress on Saturday in the Warner Bentley Theater. At 4 p.m., Stacey Sargeant performs Buh Wha’ Trouble is Dis? (or The Exhumation of MC Spice), her one-woman show about coming of age as a first-generation Caribbean-American, in New York City during the 1980s.
And at 7:30 p.m., workshop actors perform Will Arbery’s You Hateful Things, exploring the fraught relationship between three siblings of color and their white father.
Admission is $10 to $15 per play, or $50 for a pass to all six scheduled shows.
■The Fodhla trio ranges across the spectrum of Celtic-flavored North American roots music on Saturday night at 7, at the Library Arts Center in Newport. Tickets cost $16 in advance (visit libraryartscenter.org) and $20 at the door.
■The Aardvark Jazztet performs two programs featuring the music of Duke Ellington this weekend in the Upper Valley. On Saturday night at 6:30 at the West Claremont Center for Music and the Arts, the ensemble celebrates Ellington’s 120th birthday with works starting in the swing era and running through his movie scores and his twist on bossa nova. Admission $5 to $40.
And on Sunday afternoon at 2 at the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park in Cornish, the jazztet will tackle compositions of Ellington as well as a commissioned work by Aardvark founder Mark Harvey, in a celebration of Saint-Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial. Admission is included in the $10 entry fee to the park.
Grease, teen-angst musical comedy set in the 1950s, performances at New London Barn Playhouse Thursday through Sunday afternoon. Tickets $20 to $37.
■Summer Pride Festival, staged readings of plays with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer (LGBTQ) themes, through weekend at Chandler Music Hall: A Late Snow, Friday night at 7:30; Standing in This Place: Growing Up LGBTQ in Vermont, Saturday night at 7:30; All Together Now, Sunday night at 7:30. Tickets $15 to $20.
Macbeth, four Opera North performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s adaptation of the Shakespeare tragedy at Lebanon Opera House, from Sunday afternoon through Aug. 10. Admission $25 to $90. Call 603-448-0400.
Strangled Darlings, folk, Thursday night at 5:30, during Feast & Field Market at Fable Farm in Barnard.
■Fred Haas Organ Trio, jazz, Thursday night at 6 at The Skinny Pancake in Hanover; Sunday afternoon at 1 at Gallery on the Green in Woodstock.
■Mystic Bowie’s Talking Dreads, reggae, Thursday night at 7 at Colburn Park in Lebanon; Lyme Town Band, Monday night at 7.
■ Daby Toure, pop fusion, Friday night at 5:30 on lawn behind North Universalist Chapel in Woodstock. Admission by donation.
■Reckless Breakfast, folk/roots, Friday night at 6:15 on downtown Lebanon mall; Rose Hip Jam, folk/roots, Saturday night at 6:15.
■Susie Burke and David Surette, folk, Friday night at 7:30 at The Livery in Sunapee Harbor. Admission $15.
■Still Hill, folk/roots, Saturday night at 6 at Crossmolina Farm in West Corinth.
■Village Harmony, eastern European, South African and French-Canadian folk, Monday night at 7 at Seven Stars Arts Center and Wednesday night at 6 at Haverhill Corners Common. Admission by donation.
■The Shugarmakers, Tuesday night at 6 on Strafford Common. Admission by donation.
■Spurs USA, classic country covers, Tuesday night at 6:30 at Fairlee Town Common. Free.
■The Panhandlers, Caribbean steel drums, Tuesday night at 7 at Canaan Town Common. Free.
■Cantabile chorus, “SummerSing” for women, Tuesday night at 7 at First Congregational Church of Norwich. Free.
■The Party Crashers, rock and pop, Wednesday night at 6:30 at Lyman Point Park in White River Junction. Free.
■East Bay Jazz Ensemble, Wednesday night at 6:30, at Ben Mere Bandstand overlooking Sunapee Harbor. Free.
The Dinosaurs, roots, Thursday night at 6 at Peyton Place in Orford; Iva Wich, country, Sunday night at 6.
■Fiddle Witch, bluegrass, Thursday night at 7 at Windsor Station; The Pilgrims, rock, Saturday night at 9:30; Andrew Alling, folk, Tuesday night at 6.
■Peter Concilio Jazz Ensemble, Friday night at 8 at Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland Four Corners.
■Saxophonist Michael Parker and singer Randy White, jazz, Saturday night at 8:30 at Lake Morey Resort in Fairlee.
■Alec Currier, rock, Saturday afternoon at 4 at Salt hill Pub in West Lebanon.
■DJ Middle MGMT, turntable rock, Saturday night at 5 at Abracadabra Coffee in Woodstock. Pizza truck, clothing vendors, coffee drinks and desserts.
■Dixie Dee and the Diamonds, jazz/R&B, Sunday night at 5:30, weekly Loch Lyme Lodge supper buffet on Post Pond (admission $10 to $25); Pawley Daley, roots/folk, Wednesday night at 5:30 at weekly cookout (admission $8 to $20). For meal reservations, call 603-795-2141.
■Jim Yeager, rock/funk, Monday night at 7 at Woodstock Inn’s Richardson Tavern.
■Michael Parker Trio, jazz, Tuesday night at 7 at Carpenter and Main in Norwich.
■Jazz pianist Sonny Saul, Wednesday night at 6:30 at On the River Inn in Woodstock.
Jim Yeager hosts open mics Thursday night at 7 at ArtisTree Community Arts Center; Tuesday night at 6 at the Public House Pub in Quechee; and at Skunk Hollow Tavern in Hartland on Wednesday night at 8.
■Alec Currier’s open-mic at Salt hill Pub in Lebanon, Thursday nights at 8.
■Joseph Stallsmith’s hootenanny of Americana, folk and bluegrass, Monday nights at 6 at Salt hill Pub in Hanover.
■Fiddler Jakob Breitbach’s jam session — bluegrass, Americana, old-timey — Tuesday nights at 7 at Filling Station Bar and Grill in White River Junction.
■Tom Masterson’s open mic, Tuesday nights at 7 at Colatina Exit.
■ Jes Raymond’s String Band Karaoke session of roots music, Wednesday night at 6 at The Skinny Pancake in Hanover.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com or 603-727-3304. Send entertainment news to highlights@vnews.com.