westhampton beach performing arts center Archives

A Night Inside ‘Bubby’s Kitchen’ With Shira Ginsburg

Blog October 6, 2021

As the tradition goes, the center of many Jewish households is the kitchen. And for Judith Ginsburg, hers was no exception.

She took pride in her vibrant, tight-knit family piling around the table, sharing laughs and smiles and food — by far and away her love language — and it was there that her granddaughter, Shira, first heard her Bubby’s stories about World War II.

In fact, she can’t imagine a time that she hasn’t known them — or when she started to realize they were unique.

“Like any other child, you don’t know that you’re different, that anything is different, until you get a little bit older and you start to see yourself in the context of the rest of the world,” Shira Ginsburg said during a telephone interview. “So for me, it was just what I knew — until I started telling people my grandparents were in the woods in the war, and they were like, ‘What do you mean, like, camping?’”

Not quite. As teenagers, Judith Ginsburg and her husband, Motke, lived for years in the forests of Belarus, serving as resistance fighters against the Nazi regime.

Finding Their Way Back: Spin Doctors to Play Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center

Blog Celebrity Music September 21, 2021

On Monday afternoon, Eric Schenkman found himself heading east through western New York, just south of Buffalo, taking in his surroundings on his drive to Brooklyn.

“It’s actually really, really beautiful,” he mused. “I’m going through these rolling hills with cornfields.”

Once he reaches his destination, the guitarist will settle in with Chris Barron and Aaron Comess, the frontman and drummer, respectively, of the Spin Doctors — the band he co-founded in the late 1980s, only to leave five years into their stardom and eventually rejoin seven years later.

“When you’re into a heavy thing, it becomes difficult to see the forest through the trees, and that is dysfunction,” he said. “And you’re lucky in life when you get enough distance to see the forest again — and that’s what happened with us.”

From the Great Beyond: Christopher Allan Brings Psychic Readings to WHBPAC

Blog July 28, 2021

Every waking moment, Christopher Allan lives with an inescapable white noise, like a refrigerator humming, or background music at the supermarket.

When he tunes in, the quiet sharpens into focus. His physical world fades away. And, in a meditative state, he hears them — the voices whispering in his ear.

They belong to mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, lovers and friends, all attempting to communicate from what Allan calls “the great beyond” — with he, a psychic medium who claims to communicate with the dead, as their conduit.

“I think it’s important to show that there are no such things as goodbyes and that love simply doesn’t die,” Allan said, “and I’m merely an instrument to convey that message.”

Andy Grammer Brings His Good Parts to Westhampton Beach

Celebrity Music April 15, 2020

For every album Andy Grammer writes, there are 100 songs that came before it — at least.

In the case of his third studio release, “The Good Parts,” it was 115. But who’s counting, the musician said.

Alan Cumming, A Legal Immigrant, Strikes Back

Award-Winning Celebrity Stage April 12, 2020

The candid nature of New York makes Alan Cumming feel nostalgic toward Scotland, where political and social activism are everyday norms. Ten years ago, he became a dual citizen, inspired by Barack Obama’s presidential run and eager to vote.