Resplendent inside the defunct Portland Savings Bank, Sonny’s is serving Latin and Southwestern dishes at tables and booths scattered inside a large, high-ceilinged space. Longtime Portlanders will remember the business men in good suits who smoked cigarettes as they drank scotch at the bar of F. Parker Reidy’s. In 2010 at 3-month-old Sonny’s, young folks […]

Anyone interested in contemporary music, and even those who aren’t sure, should set aside April 17 and 18 for the second annual Back Cove Contemporary Music Festival at the Portland Conservatory of Music in the Woodfords Congregational Church. Programs are scheduled for 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. April 17 and 7:30 p.m. April 18. Last […]

If there were a gold medal for good fortune, Nicholas Sparks would be standing atop the podium. The 44-year-old husband and father of five from North Carolina writes tear-jerking romances that have sold more than 50 million copies in more than 30 languages. Six of his 15 books have been made into movies that attract […]

Ed Lin

This week • The Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick on Thursday opens “Methods for Modernism: Form and Color in American Art, 1900-1925.” The exhibition examines American encounters with and participation within European modernism. It opens with a reception at 5:30 p.m. Thursday and will remain on view through July 3. Regular museum hours […]

PORTLAND ‘Mary’s Wedding’ opens Portland Stage’s full season With the opening of “Mary’s Wedding” this week, Portland Stage Company announced the lineup for its 2010-11 performance season. The season opens Sept. 28 with a production of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps,” adapted by Patrick Barlow. On Nov. 2, the theater will stage “Last Gas,” a […]

Western culture is steeped in Christian art. Modern musical notation was developed in the Catholic Church. Michelangelo worked directly for the pope. For centuries, most of our culture’s greatest art was commissioned by the church. Symbols, subjects, styles, aesthetics and much more that came out of the ecclesiastical tradition are still very much part of […]

Winthrop writer Ben Thomas is out with an adventure novel about high schoolers trying to crack a World War II code.