Sweet Treats Can’t be Beat During Salem Festival

 History, Salem Event, Salem Festivals, Salem Shopping, SMS News  No Responses »
Jan 282016
 

Don’t miss Salem’s sweetest event of the year! Salem Main Streets, the Salem Chamber of Commerce, Destination Salem, and local retailers, restaurants, and businesses invite you to attend the 14th annual Salem’s So Sweet Chocolate & Ice Sculpture Festival. A decadent tradition of delectable chocolate, sparkling ice sculptures, and Valentine’s Day shopping await you Feb. 5-7th!

For example, in celebration of the chocolate aspect of the Festival, many of Salem’s finest restaurants will feature special chocolate offerings on their menus, including desserts, cocktails, and inventive sauces during the weekend of Feb. 6-7th.

Elsewhere, participating Salem retailers will offer innovative displays and items geared toward chocolate and Valentine’s Day, ranging from a chocolate fondue fountain to discounts on jewelry.

“This year,” reveals Kylie Sullivan, Executive Director of Salem Main Streets, “we are introducing a new in-store promotion called ‘Sweet 10%‘ – make a full-price purchase at one participating downtown business and get 10% off your purchase at next participating business!”

We also have a record-breaking TWENTY-THREE ice sculptures that will be placed all over the downtown and various entry points on Feb. 6th.

Kylie says, “I’m really excited to see some of our new businesses getting involved (Jolie Tea Company, The Bridge at 211, and TBT Post are just a few examples), the return of some traditional favorites (including a replica of The Friendship down near the water, thanks to the National Park Service), and some businesses thinking way outside the box – Rockafellas is actively working on an ice bar that will be built outside on their patio!”

Be sure to make plans for a special evening stroll on Saturday, Feb. 6th, when sculptures will be temporarily illuminated.

A full list of participating businesses and promotions will be available in brochures distributed around town and online at www.salemmainstreets.org.

When asked why she thought the Festival has had such staying power in the community, Kylie offered, “Quite frankly, there’s nothing else like it going on. By the time February rolls around, the “Ice Pikachu & Charizardmagic” of winter has faded away – this event helps brings that magic back, as the ice sculptures truly transform the downtown. People have recovered from the holidays and they’re eager to get outside, walk around, and visit their favorite businesses again. Plus, who can really say no to chocolate?”

But is chocolate beneficial to you? Besides it tasting so good?

Looking across the Internet, we found this description of the redeeming values of chocolate from Hy-Vee, operator of over 230 retail outlets in the Midwest.

“Chocolate contains iron, potassium, fiber and some of our favorite antioxidants, flavonoids. The flavonoids found in chocolate may be able to do things like relax blood vessels and promote healthy circulation, both of which may lead to healthier blood pressure levels. Chocolate also contains polyphenols, antioxidants that protect the body from free radical damage. Of course, the darker the chocolate, the healthier it is. Start with 57% cacao dark chocolate, or even semi-sweet, and work your way up until you find the perfect dark chocolate fit for you.”

It’s almost as if they were also inviting you to attend the Salem’s So Sweet kick-off event, a Chocolate and Wine Tasting, on Friday, Feb. 5th from 6:30 – 8:30 pm, at Colonial Hall at Rockafellas, 227 Essex St., where you can indeed sample all levels of chocolate and find your perfect shade and taste.

This luscious tasting event features wine and chocolate samplings from premier Salem restaurants, stores, and sweet shops. Tickets can now be purchased over the phone by calling 978-744-0004, online at http://salemmainstreets.org/festivals/salem-so-sweet/, or in person at the Salem Chamber of Commerce, 265 Essex Street, Suite 101. This event is the highlight of the season and sells out quickly!

Other activities include:

  • The Salem Trolley offers trolley rides around the festival route (weather permitting) during the day on Feb. 6th and 7th for a discounted price. Pick-up locations will be at the Visitor Center, Pickering Wharf, and near Rockafellas on Washington Street.
  • New this year, Salem Parks Recreation and Community Services will operate a small skating rink at the Museum Place Mall Fountain. Come out for hot cocoa and family fun on Feb. 6th from 5 to 8 pm and Feb. 7th from noon to 4 pm!

Visit our website for more events and details about the festival as they become available: www.salemmainstreets.org – or follow our Facebook page for all the latest updates https://www.facebook.com/salemsosweet.

And, of course don’t forget to post pictures as you visit Salem MA with your loved ones for a sweet experience during Salem’s So Sweet Chocolate & Ice Sculpture Festival.

Holiday Happenings – A Recap

 Salem Festivals, Salem Shopping, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jan 242016
 

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For those new to Salem and the work of Salem Main Streets, there’s a frequent misconception that life must get quieter for us after October. We do our best to laugh politely when we hear this from friends and family, as nothing could be further than the truth!  Little do they know that we have been planning for months for Holiday Happenings, a collection of events and initiatives celebrating downtown Salem that keep us going non-stop from mid-November through New Year’s Eve.

We’re often so busy looking forward to the next season that we often neglect to celebrate what we’ve just accomplished.  As we prepare for our Annual Meeting on Tuesday night, we wanted to take a quick chance to recap all the different pieces that made up Holiday Happenings 2015 for Salem Main Streets – you’ll see what we mean about going non-stop:

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  • Wreaths and Ribbons – to add to the festive atmosphere, we hung over 100 wreaths around the downtown (this year with lovely white lights, thanks to the City of Salem’s Electrical Department!), and a squad of 25+ volunteers spent a beautiful November morning lugging ladders around and covering the downtown in red ribbon.
  • The Holiday Tree – our holiday tree on Lappin Park is always a perfect example of the collaborative spirit of Salem, and this year was no exception. From the hours the City’s Department of Public Works donates in helping to decorate, to the community partners who help with selection, delivery, and donations for the tree, to the hundreds of tourists who give donations to Duchess Gigi in October specifically for the tree, and of course, one beautiful, locally-grown and donated tree!
  • Santa’s Arrival and Tree Lighting – due to a logistical snag, we re-combined these two popular events on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and we are so glad we did!  We have never had such a crowd (see picture at the top of this post), and it was truly an incredible way to welcome in the season.
  • Small Business Saturday – Main Streets teamed up with the Salem Chamber and 40 downtown businesses this year to help promote shopping small and local the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and despite the less than ideal weather, the city was packed with happy shoppers all day long. It also marked the beginning of a month-long partnership with the Boy Scouts, who sold wreaths and wrapped gifts out of the Info Booth as a fundraiser.
  • Salem Winter Market – we tried something new this year, and decided to move our winter extension of the Salem Farmers’ Market to one weekend day a month, rather than a weekly weeknight through November and December. It seems like you all approved – we saw over twice as many people in those two days than we did for the entire winter market season last year!
  • Holiday Window Contest – our annual holiday window contest between downtown businesses returned with a vengeance, this year with a social media component where shoppers posted pictures of their favorites.
  • Festive Friday Nights – we are constantly trying new ways to encourage downtown shopping, and this year we encouraged over 30 downtown retailers to commit to staying open until 8 pm every Friday in December. We gave it kind of a trial run this year, but we are looking forward to hearing from businesses whether we should expand on this in future years.
  • New Year’s Eve – and last but certainly not least, our New Year’s Eve LAUNCH! event was bigger and better than ever, with over 700 attendees during the two hour event and a “greener” countdown this year with beachballs and paper whirligigs and airplanes to replace the less environmentally-friendly balloons we’d used in the past.

Phew!  No wonder we’re just getting around to recapping it now!  But what was it all for? Why does Salem Main Streets DO all these things in the first place? Join us for our Annual Meeting on Tuesday night at Ames Hall at the YMCA at 5:30 p.m. and find out!

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You’re Invited – to Help Salem Main Streets Achieve Its Goals

 Salem Event, SMS News, Volunteer Opportunities  No Responses »
Jan 162016
 

What is ahead for Salem Main Streets and 2016? Please join us for a night of celebration and information Tuesday, January 26th as we conduct the Salem Main Streets Annual Meeting.

SAF VolsKylie Sullivan, SMS Executive Director says, “Come cheer with us over last year’s accomplishments and look ahead to see what’s coming in 2016. Learn more about Salem Main Streets’ mission and purpose, and how you can benefit and get more involved.”

This gathering is free and open to all who live, work, or play in downtown Salem – residents, volunteers, business owners, community partners, and government officials.

Stephanie at boothIn other words, we want you there if you have anything to say about how the Downtown District was promoted by us in the past and —

Kylie emphasizes, “We are especially looking for feedback to help improve our work going forward.”

The meeting will run from 5:30 – 7:30pm at Ames Hall in the Salem YMCA, 1 Sewall Street (enter from the Essex Street entrance).

Free appetizers and cash bar!

Please invite your neighbors, associates, and friends! This is you chance to have an impact on how Salem is seen by the local community and the world.

Please RSVP to Kylie at kylie@salemmainstreets.org or 978-744-0004 x15.

Salem Main Streets’ mission is the continued revitalization of downtown Salem as a vibrant, year-round, retail, dining and cultural destination through business retention, recruitment, and promotion of the Downtown District.

String Quartet Musically Transports Salem to Middle Earth

 Salem Event, Salem Festivals  No Responses »
Jan 122016
 

Rivendell is coming to Salem, featuring music from Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, and More – as performed by the New England String Quartet. It is the much-awaited second production from Salem Classical and is set for Saturday, Jan. 16, at 8pm in Old Town Hall.

RivendellRivendell is of course an Elven outpost in Middle-earth, a fictional realm created by J. R. R. Tolkien. It can be found, for example, in the The Lord of the Rings tales.

As for Salem Classical, it is intended to become the home of classical music located in the heart of the pedestrian zone of historic downtown Salem with the Old Town Hall as its principal venue. Created to establish a musical home for local and touring musicians, it is designed to provide a constant source of classical music to the residents of Salem and the thousands of visitors to the city.

The fertile mind behind Salem Classical is Richard Guérin, and we asked him two basic questions to help entice potential attendees. Why a string quartet and why science fiction & fantasy themed music?

Guérin explains, “the medium of the string quartet is the most intimate of them all. The grandiosity of the scores chosen for this program take on an entirely fresh form for listeners when heard this way.”

On the other hand, he points out that string quartets present the greatest challenge to composers, “to many it’s the most intimidating way of writing because for centuries it has been the proverbial mirror to which composers hold up to themselves to see if they have anything to say as artists – because it’s not possible to hide behind the orchestra.”

By expressing this music through the intimacy of a quartet, the Rivendell concert will bring the folk tunes of our time into a fresh light, all the while also showcasing their absolute musical value. Translate that as give your ears a delightful treat!

Established in Boston in 2007, the New England String Quartet is dedicated to expanding the contemporary chamber music tradition through performances, recordings, educational activities and community outreach projects. The ensemble seeks to develop collaborations with contemporary composers, soloists and other ensembles. Having made their debut at Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, the ensemble is featured in concert series across New England including 3rd Sundays @ 3, Menotomy, Bach’s Lunch, Parma Music Festival and the Chromatic Club of Boston.

String QuartetThe quartet also collaborates with popular music, soundtrack, and video game producers. In 2014, NESQ recorded soundtracks for Lord of The Rings and Dungeons & Dragons online video games (for Warner Bros. Entertainment).

Guérin describes, “The huge canvas and broad brush strokes of the brilliant tapestry of sound Howard Shore created in his scores for Lord of the Rings will be communicated brilliantly through this new arrangement by Nikolai Clavier by an ensemble the size of which you might find in a pub in the Shire.”

“And as a simple matter of musicality,” he adds, “I don’t think it would be an overstatement to say what Ramin Djawadi’s theme to Game of Thrones which we will hear performed by the sublime New England String Quartet, is possibly the biggest ear-worm composed in the last decade. I met Djawadi this summer in Poland and heard the piece played by a 100 piece orchestra in a stadium of 10,000 listeners. I myself can’t wait to hear it in the warm setting of Salem’s Old Town Hall with some of the finest players in this area.”

As for the SF/fantasy theme of the music, he notes we are in Salem which can have its own comparisons with Rivendell.

“The strongest commonality is the sense of being a magical place. People from all over the world come to Salem and we meet them all the time. I met someone from California last week visiting Salem for the first time. To her eyes Salem appeared to be a movie set. She’d go up and knock on the bricks to see if the buildings are part of a set like in Hollywood.”

Guérin points out “Salem’s greatest asset is, more than any other factor including its history and architecture, its gravitational pull that makes you feel you are at a destination. There are very strong reasons why people want to live and work here and it’s the same magical pull.”

As odd as it seems, this concert might be the first opportunity some of these people have had to hear a string quartet. For more info on the quartet, go to www.nestringquartet.com

“There’s a great responsibility here to present interesting things in the right way because everything Salem Classical will present, will aim to transcend barriers and make people excited to come hear what we are doing. These things happening in Salem are so exciting and wonderful, even if it’s like the weather north of The Wall,” muses Guérin.

He concludes, “The music on this program is tremendously important to me and to have a chance to bring people together in Salem to celebrate it, is significant. This is music that everyone knows and loves.”

For the full musical program go to this Creative Salem page. For ticket details go to Eventbrite.

PEM Provides Creative Weekend Alternative

 History, Salem Event  No Responses »
Jan 102016
 

RodinLet’s face it, if you’re not a football fan, the next few weekends will leave you on your own as the sports aficionados in your household are glued to the couch watching NFL Playoffs. What will you do? Consider visiting the Peabody Essex Museum which is open on weekends from 10am to 5pm.

What do they have at the PEM? A diverse selection to entertain, inform and intrigue (especially today as the rain drops silently fall outside).

For example, just opened on Saturday, is Alchemy of the Soul: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, a most ambitious collaboration between the Afro-Cuban artist and her husband, musician and composer Neil Leonard.

PEM describes the exhibition “Through large-scale blown-glass sculptures, paintings, photographs and evocative soundscapes, the artist draws on the structural forms found in the abandoned sugar mills and rum factories of her childhood island home. Incorporating the sweet smell of rum, this multi-sensory exhibition creates an intoxicating re-conceptualization of the often-brutal history of the Cuban sugar industry, offering a visceral experience that ignites the senses and our emotional awareness of place, memory, identity and labor.”

It runs until April 3, 2016.

Interested in making the PEM a weekend event (especially during baseball, hockey and basketball seasons)? Here are some upcoming exhibitions and events for the next 6 months.

  • Intersections: Anila Quayyum Agha

February 6 — July 10, 2016
Intersections is an immersive single room installation that bathes the visitor in a geometric array of light and shadow. Inspired by traditional Islamic architectural motifs, Pakistani-American artist Anila Quayyum Agha’s laser-cut steel lantern conjures the design of the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain, a historic site of cross-cultural intersection where a thousand years ago Islamic and Western cultures thrived in coexistence. Agha, an internationally renowned award-winning artist, creates mixed-media works that engage topics ranging from global politics and cultural multiplicity, to mass media and gender roles.

  • Asia in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age

February 27 — June 5, 2016
Amsterdam in the 17th century was a vibrant city with global connections. The largest and most powerful trade and shipping company in the world, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) filled Dutch homes with Asian porcelain, lacquer, sumptuous textiles, diamonds and spices. Inspired by these novel imports, Dutch potters, textile designers and jewelers created works of art we now perceive as distinctly Dutch. Artists such as Rembrandt, Willem Kalf, Jan Steen and Pieter Claesz were also quick to incorporate these luxuries into their paintings. Co-organized by the Peabody Essex Museum and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, this exhibition of nearly 200 superlative Asian and Dutch works of art explores the transformative impact that Asian luxuries had on Dutch art and life in the 17th century.

  • Rodin: Transforming Sculpture

May 14 — September 5, 2016
Whether working in plaster, marble or bronze on an intimate or monumental scale, Auguste Rodin captured the emotional and psychological complexities of human beings in ways that few sculptors before or after him have achieved. He also profoundly changed the language of sculpture by playing with accident and emphasizing the act of creating rather than completing a work of art. Rodin favored fragmentation and recombination as the principal expression of the significance he attached to change and transformation as the keys to creativity. Featuring sculptures and drawings, this thematic exhibition highlights the drama and experimentation that have established Rodin as one of the greatest sculptors of all time. Originally titled Metamorphosis: Rodin’s Studio, the exhibition was organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, in collaboration with the Musée Rodin, Paris.

The Peabody Essex Museum is located at 161 Essex St, Salem, MA. For more info Call 866‐745‐1876 or visit pem.org.

(Image credit: Auguste Rodin, The Thinker, large version, 1903. Patinated plaster for bronze casting, Paris, Musée Rodin. © Musée Rodin. Photo by Christian Baraja)

 

 

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