Celebrating the Life and Musical Legacy of Canary Burton
The musical legacy of the late Canary Burton — longtime Wellfleet resident, modern music composer, and WOMR announcer — will be celebrated at a tribute concert at Wellfleet Public Library (55 West Main St.) on Thursday, March 27 at 1 p.m.
Burton, who died in 2024, began her career in music as a keyboardist playing in jazz and rock ensembles. Her focus shifted from performance to composition early in her career, and she went on to compose pieces for the piano and other instruments that incorporated and juxtaposed eclectic musical elements: ragtime jazz with classical, string instruments with Mongolian chants.
For many years, Burton had her own modern music show, The Latest Score, broadcast on Tuesday afternoons on WOMR. In Outermost Radio: The Film, a 2015 documentary about the station, Burton spoke emphatically about the importance of community-based media.
“A whole wide range of musicians would never get heard,” she said, were it not for stations like WOMR and programs like hers. “And isn’t it a nice change from Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, whom everyone’s gotten sick of?”
Burton is fondly remembered at the station. “She was very active in planning our International Women’s Day programming,” says John Braden, WOMR’s executive director. “I recall her music as quite lovely.”
The Wellfleet library program was organized by Marylou Blakeslee, who was a close friend of Burton. “She was a unique creative on the Outer Cape, here since 1984,” says Blakeslee, adding that Burton’s death was “a loss for the entire community.”
Several local musicians will perform at the tribute, including Harriet and Rick Arnoldi, Rifka Helton, Denya LeVine, Jeremy Gold, and Tom Tracy. The program is free. See wellfleetlibrary.org for more information. —Katy Abel
‘More Little Devils’ Are Coming to a Theater Near You
Among the 45 short plays submitted to the Helltown Players for their upcoming “More Little Devils” theater festival, a surprising number involved stories about memory or the past, says company founder Jim Dalglish. Both are prominent themes in the six scripts that were eventually chosen for the program, which spotlights works by writers living on or connected to Cape Cod.
The second annual festival runs over four weekends beginning Friday, March 28, and will be presented at theaters in Brewster, Orleans, and Provincetown.
Dalglish says that last year’s inaugural production showed how well audiences could connect to short plays running 10 to 15 minutes. “It was fascinating to see how, even in that short time frame, audiences would bond with the characters,” says Dalglish. “They were transported to other worlds. Each really takes you on a journey.”
The program includes Patrick Riviere’s Remembering When I Used to Remember, about a gay couple preparing to renew their marriage vows in Provincetown, and Candace Perry’s No Surrender, about a disoriented stranger clashing over history and identity with others in a homeless camp. A woman in Melinda Buckley’s Colour My World unexpectedly encounters someone from her past.
Bill Jacobs’s Convergence, set in 1965, is about three men who wrestle with race, privilege, and purpose. In Wendy Watson’s Rolando, a man and young woman take a haunting subway journey. R.D. Murphy’s The Pros and Cons of Implosion focuses on a teen who wants to restore her neighbor’s rusting Volvo.
Mounting the productions in three theaters — each configured differently — has been a challenge for staging, says Dalglish. Directors for each play plan to use projections, sound, and minimal furniture to set scenes.
“More Little Devils” runs from Friday, March 28 to Sunday, March 30 at Cape Rep Theatre (3299 Main St., Brewster). It will then run Fridays and Saturdays over two weekends from April 4 to 12 at the Academy of Performing Arts (120 Main St., Orleans) and from April 17 to 20 at Pilgrim House (336 Commercial St., Provincetown). Tickets are $10 to $40, plus fees. See helltownplayers.org for a complete schedule and more information. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
Welcoming Two Queer Filmmakers to Provincetown
Next month, two filmmakers with international reputations — one whose debut feature premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and one who has been recognized as an up-and-coming presence in independent film — will be spending a week in Provincetown as part of the 2025 Provincetown Film Society’s 2025 LGBTQ+ Filmmaker Residency Program, which is presented in partnership with the Provincetown Arts Society.
Filmmakers Charlotte Wells and Mackie Mallison will stay at the Mary Heaton Vorse house from April 7 to 14, where they will work on current projects.
Originally from Scotland, Wells is currently based in New York City and studied in the M.F.A. film program at New York University. Her debut feature film Aftersun, which starred Paul Mescal as a father on holiday with his 11-year-old daughter and was loosely based on Wells’s own childhood, was nominated for the Caméra d’Or Award when it premiered at Cannes in 2022. It went on to receive several international awards and nominations, including a Best Actor nomination for Mescal at the 2022 Academy Awards, and was awarded first place by Sight and Sound magazine in its poll for the best films of the year.
Brooklyn-based Mallison was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker magazine in 2023 and has had previous fellowships at Sundance and Lincoln Center Artists Academy. Three of his short films were acquired by the Criterion Channel in 2024, and he is currently developing two feature films.
As part of the residency, Waters Edge Cinema (237 Commercial St., Provincetown) will host two screenings during the week of April 7: Wells’s Aftersun will be shown on Wednesday, April 9, at 5 p.m., and a collection of Mallison’s short films will be shown on Saturday, April 11 at 11 a.m. Both screenings will be followed by Q&A sessions with the filmmakers.
The residencies are part of the Provincetown Film Society’s Gabriel A. Hanna Film Institute, which also offers two Women Filmmaker Residencies every October.
See provincetownfilm.org for more information. —John D’Addario
VB and the Buzz Keeps It Real
When singer and guitarist Mark van Bork first started his band a decade ago, he called it “Vanborkestra.” The original group was a trio that included Cape Cod natives Trevor Pearson (known widely on the Outer Cape for his juggling) on bass and Nauset High School physics teacher Ricky Bartolini-Pollo on drums. But when the band’s name appeared on flyers, “the sheer number of syllables scared some people off,” he says. So, he changed it to “VB and the Buzz”: VB for the initials of his last name, and “the Buzz” to represent the “large collective of many musicians from the Cape who circle in and out of my band as needed.”
For his concert at the Eastham Public Library (190 Samoset Road) on Saturday, March 29, van Bork will be joined by Chris LoCascio on piano and organ, Ben Sloan on bass, and Lucas Massouh on drums.
Van Bork grew up near Rochester, N.Y. As a child, he spent two weeks every summer at a campground in Truro. He’s lived on the Cape since 2001. Currently based in Harwich, he works in Chatham as the town’s media coordinator.
When he was in high school, van Bork attended a seven-week summer program at Berklee College of Music. “I realized I wanted to do music as a big part of my life,” he says. He later majored in music production and engineering at Berklee, with guitar as his principal instrument, and graduated in 1992.
For a while, Van Bork worked as an audio recording engineer in New York City. When he moved to the Cape, he noticed many small bands gigging in bars. “I found that lots of bands needed a drummer,” he says. “At a certain point, I realized that if you’re the drummer and the singer gets sick, you lose your grocery money for the week.” That’s when he started his own band.
The library is a different venue from the ones Van Bork and his band are used to. (No one will be drinking, talking, or dancing, he says.) Their set will include an hour of what van Bork calls “feel good music”: mostly ’50s and ’60s-style blues, jazz-oriented pop, Motown, funk, soul, and classic rock. Van Bork calls the era “a prime time in music.”
“People listening to music in the 21st century are expecting music that is perfectly in time and autotuned,” he says. “The music of the ’50s and ’60s could not rely on that. It was very human.”
The concert is free. See easthamlibrary.org for information. —Dorothea Samaha
