Salisbury Press

You don't need to travel to Oberammergau, Bavaria, Germany, to experience a passion play. There's one right here in the Lehigh Valley.

The Muhlenberg College Music Theatre (MSMT) "Jesus Christ Superstar," through July 28, Empie Theater, Baker Center for the Arts, Muhlenberg College, 2400 Chew St., Allentown, is a thoughtful, often startling, entertaining passion play.

The first hit musical by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Tim Rice, which debuted in 1971, is a...

Craig Kastelnik and his wife, Pat Flaherty, have been delighting Lehigh Valley jazz fans for more than 40 years, playing together as Kato, and with other local musicians in various configurations.

Craig Kastelnik & Friends, including Flaherty, vocals; Tom Kozic, guitar; Bernard Purdie, drums, perform at 7:30 p.m. July 19, Jazz Cabaret Series, Rodale Community Room, Miller Symphony Hall, 23 N. Sixth St., Allentown.

Kastelnik, 59, has been active in music since the age of...

Blackbirds are familiar birds observed throughout the Lehigh Valley. Blackbird flocks often tend to create great dark streaks as they fly across distant horizons. You may also have been close enough to hear the buzz of thousands upon thousands of wing pairs.

Members of the blackbird family tend to congregate, especially during spring and fall migrations. It is often difficult to tell one species from another when assembled in massive groups.

Most blackbirds are medium-size...

Theater creates the opportunity to live twice. If you are hooked on "Downton Abbey," perhaps part of the attraction is going inside: a beautiful castle, beautiful yet complicated and fragile lives, and a mesmerizing world from another time that is otherwise unavailable to us.

At the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival (PSF), you can live many lives: yours and the life of a famous English King, a novice nun in Vienna, an Oklahoma cowhand, a Victorian matriarch, a spy novel hero on the...