ENTERTAINMENT: ScotsFest set for Batesville; spooky concert by candle

FUN

ScotsFest 2025

Bagpipes and Highland games will be the order of two days at Lyon College, 2300 Highland Road, Batesville, as it hosts ScotsFest 2025, the 45th Arkansas Scottish Festival, Friday and Saturday.

The weekend’s events kick off Friday with open Lyon College classes, vendors and Scottish clan gatherings, a Scottish Heritage Program director’s reception and a free rocket-building workshop.

Combined with homecoming weekend, Friday’s lineup concludes with the annual alumni awards celebration on campus and an all-alumni social at Polk & Paddle in downtown Batesville.

Saturday’s lineup includes Highland heavy athletics; living history presentations by MacLachlan’s Jacobite Highlanders and Colonel Munro’s 37th Regiment of Foot; Scottish dancing; sheepdog demonstrations; pipe band performances; a British car show; and a dog show. New this year: a petting zoo.

More than 20 Scottish clans will have displays and information about their unique histories and traditions in the clan village.

Entertainment throughout the weekend will include performances by Celtic rock bands Mudmen and Barleyjuice, Celtic high-soprano singer-songwriter Misty Posey, entertainer and bagpipe educator Patrick Regan and the all-female Central High School Kiltie Drum and Bugle Corps of Springfield, Mo. The festival will also offer authentic, traditional foods, including savory meat pies and Scottish pastries.

The festival culminates on Sunday with a Kirkin’ o’ the Tartan worship service and the annual Club 50 luncheon.

General admission is free; some alumni and festival activities, including the Friday evening alumni awards banquet, the Saturday evening cèilidh feast and entertainment zone, require tickets. Proceeds support the college’s Scottish Heritage Program and fund student scholarships.

For a full schedule and more information, visit arscottishfest.com.

Haunted theater

The Royal Theatre, 111 S. Market St., Benton, opens its sixth annual Haunted House on Thursday, 7-9 p.m. Thursdays, 7-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday through Oct. 31. (There’s also a 7 p.m. walk-through Oct. 29.) Tickets are $10 (plus fees); visit our.show/trthauntedhouse2025.

MUSIC

Halloween by candlelight

Promoter FeverUp is bringing its Candlelight concert series — the revolving-membership Listeso String Quartet performing classical music and pop tunes in the glow of thousands of candles — back to Little Rock, starting with a Halloween program “carefully curated to pay tribute to the spooky, the fantastical, and the supernatural,” according to a news release, 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the Albert Pike Memorial Center, 712 Scott St. Tickets are $26-$47.50. Visit feverup.com/m/192221.

The “Candlelight: A Haunted Evening of Halloween Classics” program includes “Danse Macabre” by Camille Saint-Saëns, “Funeral March of a Marionette” (better known as the theme for TV’s “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”) by Charles Gounod, and the second movement of Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8, plus Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” (the theme from “The Exorcist”), “Night on Bald Mountain” by Modest Mussorgsky (featured in Disney’s “Fantasia”), “Prelude” from “Psycho” by Bernard Herrmann, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (arranged for string quartet), “Time Warp” from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and the main themes from “Beetlejuice,” “The Addams Family,” “Ghostbusters,” “Halloween,” TV’s “Stranger Things” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

That same evening, at 8:45, and at the same venue, using (presumably) the same candles: “Candlelight: Neo-Soul Favorites,” the quartet performing a program that tentatively includes SZA’s “Good Days,” Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor,” Solange’s “Don’t Touch My Hair,” Miguel’s “Adorn,” Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You,” Prince’s “Purple Rain,” Sade’s “Smooth Operator,” Childish Gambino’s “Redbone,” Alicia Keys’ “You Don’t Know My Name” and Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road.” That program will repeat at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 17. Tickets are $26-$47. Visit feverup.com/m/395889.

Met Live onscreen

The Metropolitan Opera kicks off its 19th season of “The Met: Live in HD” cinecasts to movie theaters — including the Movie Tavern in Little Rock and the Razorback Cinema in Fayetteville — with the company’s new production of Vincenzo Bellini’s “La Sonnambula,” noon Saturday. The Razorback Cinema will “air” an encore at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Soprano Nadine Sierra sings the role of Amina with tenor Xabier Anduaga as Elvino. Riccardo Frizza conducts. Ticket information is available at fathomentertainment.com/releases/the-metropolitan-opera-la-sonnambula.

The rest of the “Live in HD” lineup: Giacamo Puccini’s “La Bohème,” Nov, 8; Richard Strauss’ “Arabella,” Nov. 22, Umberto Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier,” Dec. 13;. Bellini’s “I Puritani,” Jan. 10; Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” March 21; Peter Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” May 2; and Gabriela Lena Frank’s “El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego,” May 30. All performances will be Saturday matinees transmitted live from the Met stage.

ART

‘Space’ and spooky

“S P A C I O U S,” works by painter, photographer and multidisciplinary artist Andrea Kielpinski, opens with an Argenta Third Friday Art Walk reception, 5-8 p.m. Friday at the Argenta Library Gallery, 420 Main St., North Little Rock. It’s up through Nov. 7; library hours are 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday. Admission is free. Call (501) 687-1061 or visit NLRlibrary.org.

Also during Third Friday Art Walk, 5-8 p.m. Friday, The Innovation Hub, 204 E. Fourth St., North Little Rock, hosts a special “Make It Spooky” event with hands-on activities including gourd painting, spooky temporary tattoos, “spooky STEAM activities” and an indoor artist market showcasing “unique, spooky creations from local artists and artisans,” according to a news release. Meanwhile, “Hey Y’all! Look at My Legs!” — leg-themed ceramics by Gigi Gabriel, is on display through Oct. 31. Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. the first and third Saturday of each month. Admission is free. Call (501) 907-6570 or visit Hub.NLRlibrary.or.

UALR exhibitions

Two exhibitions are opening at the Windgate Center of Art and Design at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 5617 W. 28th St., Little Rock.

◼️ “Lauren DiCioccio: Soft Skills,” fiber-art sculpture and mixed media by DiCioccio, opens Thursday in the Maners Pappas Gallery.

◼️ The 2025 Annual Student Competitive exhibition opens Tuesday and will be up through Nov. 7 in the Brad Cushman Gallery. Juror Kevin Cole selected 53 works by more than two dozen student artists. A reception is set for 2-4 p.m. Nov. 7 with the announcement of student awards at 2:30 p.m.

Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Admission is free. Call (501) 916-5103.

 

Villegas ‘Voices’

“Voices in the Space of Time,” mixed-media works by Maria Botti Villegas, goes on display with a 5-7 p.m. reception Thursday in the Ben J. Altheimer Gallery at the Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas, 701 S. Main St., Pine Bluff. The exhibition will be up through Feb. 21. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Fridays, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday. Admission to the reception and the gallery is free. Call (870) 536-3375 or visit artx3.org/exhibitions.

AUTHOR, AUTHOR

Debut novelist

Naturalist India Hayford will discuss and sign copies of her debut novel, “The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree,” 5:30-6:30 p.m. Thursday at the William F. Laman Public Library, 2801 Orange St., North Little Rock. The book is a 2025 Arkansas Gems Selection from the Arkansas Center for the Book and the Arkansas State Library. Copies of the novel will be for sale, courtesy of Paper Hearts Bookstore. Light refreshments will be served. Admission is free. Call (501) 758-1720 or visit NLRlibrary.org. Hayford, an Arkansas native whose family roots stretch back to the 1830s (her family’s tree farm still stands in Hempstead County), is now based in Wyoming.

ETC.

‘Goats and Gardening’

Wintersage Red Horse, Arkansas native gardener and goat herder and owner of handywoman firm Luck Be a Lady Rentals and Repairs, will discuss “Goats and Gardening — Raising Both” at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Bell House, in the center of Mt. Holly Cemetery, 1200 Broadway, Little Rock. It’s the final session of the 2025 Mt. Holly Garden Series. Take along a lawn chair; there will be door prizes. Admission is by suggested $10 donation; proceeds benefit the cemetery. Email [email protected].

Harvest Hootenany

Historic Washington State Park, 103 Franklin St. in the Arkansas town of Washington, celebrates a 19th-century way of life at Harvest Hootenanny, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, with historical cooking, 19th-century games, vintage dancing, a hayride and a scavenger hunt. The park’s Williams Tavern Restaurant will be open from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Admission/parking is $20 per vehicle for 2-10 individuals; if the vehicle contains more than 10 people, parking is $10 per person over that number. Cash only. Call (870) 983-2684.