Peter Simon on Radio

Peter Simon and his Jamaica-inspired book Reggae Scrapbook will be featured this Sunday, June 29, at noon, on NBC Boston’s CityLine show. Peter will talk about his travels through Jamaica and the culture and music that make Jamaica known and loved throughout the world.  CityLine airs on WCVB-TV, the NBC affiliate in Boston. The show covers a wide spectrum of topics of public interest, including people profiles, ethnic cuisine, travel and entertainment previews from around the city.

The pencilina is like an instrument from Dr. Seuss’s The Butter Battle Book. It’s got bass and treble necks with movable bridges and open strings which can be plucked, played with a bow and manipulated with drumsticks. It is mounted with four bells: a fire bell, a doorbell, and two brass telephone ringers.

It was Sunday afternoon, deep underground in the sub-basement studio of community radio WVVY, and they were having what one of the flustered on-air staff called “real extreme technical difficulties.”

The monitor outside the studio, an ancient Aiwa radio cassette, was not picking up any signal. Hurried phone calls were made and the suspicion was confirmed: the station was not broadcasting the program, although it was apparently going out okay to a small number of online listeners.

Yard Arts! this weekend kicks off its third year of presenting dance, theater, music and opera on Martha’s Vineyard, which runs from July 13 to Sept. 21.

This year is a bittersweet one for The Yard, its first summer season without founder Patricia N. Nanon, who passed away in February. Her legacy continues with those at The Yard committed to her vision of nurturing and supporting the art of choreography and the growth of individual artists, thanks to her generous gift last year of the Chilmark land and buildings The Yard calls home.

Susanna, a Neopolitan countess of the early 1800s, has a segreto, a secret: she smokes. Her husband, Count Gil, an obsessively jealous man — but a perfectly nice fellow in every other way — sniffs tobacco in the palace and draws a logical but preposterous conclusion: Susanna is having an affair with a man who smokes. The pair is at loggerheads, and more than willing to sing about it, courtesy of the great Enrico Wolf-Ferrari. Thus unravels the 15-minute intermezzo comic opera, Il Segretto di Susanna, to the merriment of all.

Summer may still be weeks away, but the music is already hot and spicy at Che’s Lounge in Vineyard Haven. Singer-songwriter Bella and her musical partner Daniel Waters have created a show of bossa nova and samba that opens Tuesday night, June 3, at 7 p.m., and will return (with musical friends and variations of repertoire) every Tuesday throughout the summer.

Paul Taylor’s gravity-defying masterwork Esplanade, danced to Bach by the Taylor 2 company, tops a packed lineup for this year’s Diversity in Dance, the annual showcase of dance sponsored by The Yard.

The performance begins Sunday, July 20, at 6:30 p.m. at the Performing Arts Center at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, with a dessert and champagne reception with the cast following.

Kenny Lockwood and Red Road are making a rare appearance on the Island at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown, Saturday, August 30, at 8 p.m.

It’s a little musicians’ inside joke: Delores Stevens, pianist and artistic director of the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, has dubbed this weekend’s performance The Phantom Violin Concert.

A quartet of acclaimed musicians will gather on the stage of the Old Whaling Church at 7:30 p.m. this Saturday, April 5, for the society’s annual spring concert. There will be music by Telemann, Beethoven, and Poulenc and Schumann, and for the finale, a performance of Cesar Franck’s Violin Sonata in A Major — without the violin.

Martha’s Vineyard music students will display their violin, piano, viola and flute skills at a concert Sunday, June 29, at 4 p.m. in the Whaling Church on Main street in Edgartown.

The program includes a flute and piano duet by sisters Rebekah and Kaija Nivala. Rebekah is the winner of this year’s Caroline Worthington Prize, named for one of the founding musicians of the Chamber Music Society.