Community Calendar

The Living Room Concert Series, part concert, part live interview, the night will be hosted by Steel Wheels Frontman, Trent Wagler. Oliver Bates Craven is a Nashville based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist with a dynamic sense of performance that honors nuance and originality, his musicality is one of a seemingly effortless focus, and a clearly impassioned and tangible joy.

Arts Council of the Valley invites you to join in the arts-focused fun on the First Friday* of EVERY month! Throughout Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, 38 venues offer a variety of new art exhibitions, live performances, poetry, comedy, music, artmaking activities, food, and so much more. You can find a list of venues, online map, and details for all First Fridays of the Valley events – all updated monthly – at valleyarts.org/first-fridays-of-the-valley/! Thanks to Kathy Moran Wealth Group, Exclusive Sponsor for 2025 First Fridays of the Valley.

*In 2025, July's "First Friday" arts programming will be held on THURSDAY, July 3 (NOT JULY 4)

The literary canon explodes as the Reduced Shakespeare Company (RSC) once again unleashes a comic outrage on an unsuspecting public. The Bad Boys of Abridgment take audiences on a roller-coaster ride through a compact compendium of the world’s great books in All the Great Books (abridged). It’s a blast of bibliography! Confused by Confucius? Thoroughly thrown by Thoreau? Wish Swift was swifter? Tennyson tinier? Then buckle up as three cultural guerrillas zip through everything you didn’t get around to reading in school. Called a “trio of Modern Marx Brothers” (Boston Herald) RSC is London’s longest-running comedy troupe, and has charmed audiences at the White House, Lincoln Center, Off-Broadway, the Kennedy Center, and Montreal’s famed Just For Laughs Festival.

RSC shows contain some occasional bawdy language and mild innuendo, so they rate their shows PG- 13: Pretty Good If You’re Thirteen.

The band’s new stripped-down, self-titled collection is the purest distillation of their sound yet, showcasing the arresting power of the couple’s gorgeous harmonies and intricate fretwork. The songs are timeless, rooted in rich, character-driven storytelling, and the performances are similarly transportive, fueled by delicately intertwined banjo, guitar, and octave mandolin. Though the songs were born out of a period of deep uncertainty, the record itself is a work of profound self-assurance, one delivered by a duo whose personal and professional lives embody the limitless possibility of honest, organic collaboration. Press play on Ordinary Elephant and you’ll hear more than just a husband and wife; you’ll hear the sound of sincerity and commitment, of patience and gratitude, of learning to let go of expectation and revel in the simple beauty of the moment.

In GreenBeats, Live! our hero Malia learns to make small changes to protect her neighborhood and the environment with help from Skip the Stray, Scoop Dog Sam and her other friends. This high-energy live theater show is presented by The Virginia Stage Company.

Arts Council of the Valley invites you to join in the arts-focused fun on the First Friday* of EVERY month! Throughout Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, 38 venues offer a variety of new art exhibitions, live performances, poetry, comedy, music, artmaking activities, food, and so much more. You can find a list of venues, online map, and details for all First Fridays of the Valley events – all updated monthly – at valleyarts.org/first-fridays-of-the-valley/! Thanks to Kathy Moran Wealth Group, Exclusive Sponsor for 2025 First Fridays of the Valley.

*In 2025, July's "First Friday" arts programming will be held on THURSDAY, July 3 (NOT JULY 4)

A blend of original and traditional music inspired by Mexican, Appalachian & Atlantic basin musics.

Mexilachian music is a new style of traditional music inspired by Mexican and Appalachian song forms, Jewish and Eastern European tonalities, Baroque melodic ideas, and narrative storytelling approaches. They have created a repertoire that constitutes a new traditional music that is being shared with their children to experience, transform, and pass on.

The Lua Project has been called a ‘cultural pollinator’, and was formed by David Berzonsky and Estela Knott after they returned to Virginia to raise children after almost a decade of travelling, performing, and recording, throughout the Western hemisphere, in places as far afield as Lima, Peru, Veracruz, Mexico, Recife, Brazil, and Berkeley, Ca.

Hailing from sunny Charlottesville, Bent Mountain Trio has provided the perfect musical backdrop for many rustic weddings and festive events set against the green rolling hills of Virginia wine country. Now they are coming to Harrisonburg to perform live on the Court Square Theater stage!

Serving up a mix of old-time bluegrass and roots music they like to call “cocktailgrass,” this mainstay of the private event scene in Central Virginia combines expert picking and rich vocal harmonies to capture the spirit of music and celebration that brings so many to this beautiful part of the country. Of course, the group can bring this subtle (and occasionally bombastic!) musical magic to any gathering – not just weddings! No matter what the occasion, traditional bluegrass instruments and a deep love of mountain music perfectly complement any event held in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Johnny Cash may have passed away back in 2003, but the original country outlaw is still with us today in many ways. Of course, the classic Cash tunes that have become country standards are a part of history, and they'll be ingrained in our cultural consciousness forevermore. But there's another way in which Cash's music continues to make itself heard, in a more immediate and physical way, and that's Cash Unchained: The Ultimate Johnny Cash Tribute.

Led by 20-year-old Virginia native James Tamelcoff, the band is dedicated to creating a Johnny Cash experience that's as authentic as it is exciting, presenting a generous dose of Cash's most beloved tunes in a manner that's unerringly respectful of the country legend's unmistakable sound. Incredibly, Tamelcoff was only in his teens when Cash Unchained first started performing. But the precocious singer/guitarist already had a vocal gravitas way beyond his years, giving him the uncanny ability to emulate Cash's distinctive, larger-than-life baritone.

Arts Council of the Valley invites you to join in the arts-focused fun on the First Friday* of EVERY month! Throughout Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, 38 venues offer a variety of new art exhibitions, live performances, poetry, comedy, music, artmaking activities, food, and so much more. You can find a list of venues, online map, and details for all First Fridays of the Valley events – all updated monthly – at valleyarts.org/first-fridays-of-the-valley/! Thanks to Kathy Moran Wealth Group, Exclusive Sponsor for 2025 First Fridays of the Valley.

*In 2025, July's "First Friday" arts programming will be held on THURSDAY, July 3 (NOT JULY 4)