The Stories That Shape Us in Sag Harbor

The fourth annual Sag Harbor Cultural Heritage Festival will take place Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at locations throughout the village. Sponsored by the 12 members of the Sag Harbor Cultural District, this year’s event, Sag Harbor: The Stories That Shape Us, will highlight the community’s literature, art, music, theater, and history.

The Eastville Community Historical Society will kick off the festival Friday morning at 11 with “Sheet Music Shapes Our Lives,” a special weekend exhibition that celebrates the community’s relationship with music. Friday afternoon at 5, the historical society will also host Vinyl and the Vine, an opportunity to sip wine while listening to records on vinyl. 

Also Friday, Bay Street Theater’s weekend-long series “Title Wave: New Works Festival” will open at 7 p.m. with “My Lord, What a Night,” the first of four free readings of new plays in development.

A variety of live music is on the schedule for the weekend. The Three Village Chamber Players will perform on period instruments at the Custom House on Saturday at 11 a.m. and, courtesy of the Sag Harbor American Music Festival, the indie singer-songwriter Rorie Kelly will appear at the John Jermain Memorial Library on Saturday afternoon at 2.

The Old Whalers Church will host a short talk and demonstration of its historic tracker organ by Walter Klauss, the music director, on Sunday at 12:30 a.m. Daniel Koontz, an organist and choir director, will perform brief selections from Bach and others on the Muller organ at Christ Episcopal Church, on Sunday afternoon a 1:30.

Thanks to the Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center, film enthusiasts can take in a free screening of John Ford’s Oscar-winning adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel “The Grapes of Wrath” on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. at Pierson High School. 

Speaking of Steinbeck, his Sag Harbor house will be one of several on a walking tour of literary Sag Harbor led from the John Jermain Memorial Library by Tony Garro at 10 a.m. on Saturday. 

Talks and readings will be devoted on Saturday afternoon to the letters of the whaleboat captain William Cooper and his family at the Sag Harbor Historical Society at 1:30; the poetry of the late African-American writer Olivia Ward Bush-Banks at the Eastville Community Historical Society at 2, and, at Canio’s Cultural Cafe at 5, the adventures of Mary K. Edwards, a Melville scholar, aboard an 1841 sailing ship.

Hurd Hatfield, an actor and former Sag Harbor resident known for his starring role in the 1945 film “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” will be the subject of a talk by Peter Murray on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum.

Visual arts will be represented in the weekend’s events by “East End Beauty: The Work of Ken Robbins,” a pop-up exhibition of work by the late Springs photographer at four Sag Harbor galleries as well as the library. More information on that event can be found in “The Art Scene” on C2. 

On Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m., the Sag Harbor Historical Society will hold an exhibition of historic photographs by Tucker Burns Roth not used in her book “Images of America: Sag Harbor,” as well as an exhibit on the history of Havens Beach.

On Saturday afternoon at 3, Temple Adas Israel will show video interviews with families whose ancestors helped found the temple, and some descendants will be on hand to answer questions.

A complete schedule of events can be found at bit.ly/CHF2019Schedule.