Recently I went to the Accessories Council happy hour, hosted by its Media-based president Karen Giberson at Steven Lagos’ airy Northern Liberties showroom. For nearly 50 years, Lagos’ venerable jewelry collection has defined the Philadelphia’s upper echelon working woman aesthetic.

As the sunlight streamed into the showroom, emerging designers sipped white wine and noshed on DiBruno’s cheese, Lagos’ 15 collections sparkled in the background: an array of Lagos’ tiny beaded caviar pieces and oversized pearls in silver and 14K gold.

The whole night I found myself wandering back to the Lagos’ Fizz collection released last fall. Designed by Lagos’ daughter, Kate, Fizz is fashioned to look like Champagne bubbles and the 20-piece grouping of earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and rings sparkle as such. They can be worn at night with all black or during the day with a favorite pastel duster and jeans.

Fizz is available online at and at the Lagos’ flagship store at 1735 Walnut Street.

— Elizabeth Wellington

Philly ceramicist Roberto Lugo’s new show, “American Crib,” at the Clay Studio, is a small but inviting show that offers viewers a chance to sit for a spell and enjoy a cup of tea in a living room that represents his Puerto Rican family’s roots in Kensington. When I stopped by recently, someone was strumming on Lugo’s grandfather’s cuatro while sitting on a brown couch with cinder blocks for legs, which Lugo designed after his grandparents’ plastic-covered furniture.

The solo exhibit features the bold ceramic portraits and pottery that Lugo has made his signature — putting graffiti art, portraits of people of color, and imagery of hip-hop culture on pottery styled after European and Asian traditions — as well as paintings.

As a fellow Boricua, I was psyched to see a dominoes table, too; it immediately made me wish I had brought my family along so we could throw down. (Nobody can beat my dad and me, except maybe my brother, who is annoyingly good.)

On the bookshelves, I found something that had me feeling even more at home — colorful, cheeky, and stunningly detailed angel figurines. I was smiling thinking about how many of my aunts’ homes were spotted with small white porcelain angels in all sorts of poses. Here, they’re recreated with striking expressions, like they’re in a scene, midconversation, lounging on a chair. Golden wings connect to bodies that are patterned and bright, like one bearded man with a crown sporting harlequin patterns. Each one told a story on its own, and together they made up a community on various shelves, almost like seeing into an apartment building.

These little guys were so delightful and nostalgic, yet fresh and funny.

The angels were bookends for titles by James Baldwin and Maya Angelou, as well as books on ancient Greek vases, Puerto Rican independence, Kendrick Lamar, and Basquiat — because every great living room must have an impressive library, too.

“American Crib: What’s Happening?”, running through July 5 at The Clay Studio, 1425 N American St., Philadelphia, 215-925-3453 or theclaystudio.org.

— Rosa Cartagena

One of the Philly music scene’s most fruitful rites of spring is Non-Comm, the abbreviated moniker of the awkwardly named Non-COMMvention, which WXPN-FM (88.5) hosts every May.

This past week, it brought over two dozen acts to West Philly to hawk their wares in front of non-commercial radio programmers, who were even able to be served adult beverages, now that World Stage — the former World Cafe Live — has regained its liquor license.

On Wednesday night, the building was abuzz with six bands, kicking off upstairs with Weird Nightmare, the winning power-pop side project of Alex Edkins of Canadian punk band Metz and closing downstairs in the Music Hall with Death Cab for Cutie.

Those Seattle indie stalwarts were razor sharp, performing songs from their forthcoming I Built You A Tower in a space considerably smaller than the Highmark Mann where they’ll play with Japanese Breakfast on July 17.

That’s part of the kick of Non-COMM. It’s a sneak peak at what’s coming, often in more up-close surroundings than a band will play when its proper tour comes through. Plus, the whole thing is livestreamed at xpn.org and broadcast on the radio, so if you cut out early, you can listen on the way home.

The highlight of my Wednesday was Kevin Morby, the Kansas City, Miss.- based songwriter.

Morby is in my wheelhouse in a lot of ways. He’s a Dylan-ish songwriter with a touch of a sneer in his vocal delivery, part of a formidable indie rock power couple with formerly Philadelphian songwriter Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee. (They’re expecting their first child in August.)

Still, I’d never seen him live. And this was an excellent time to do so. His new Aaron Dessner-produced album, Little Wide Open, is a road trip-ready, soul searching set tinged with mystery that includes a duet with Lucinda Williams, and guest appearances by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso.

That Non-COMM gig was the first Morby had ever played with the terrific band backing him up on a tour, which will crisscross the country before coming back to Philly in June.

Morby is a folk rocker at his core, but Little Wide Open cuts like “Badlands” — not the Bruce Springsteen song — and “Javelin,” came alive on stage with more musicality and drama than I expected, aided by players like saxophonist/conga player Cochemea Gastelum and keyboard player/violinist Camellia Hartman. All that, and Fantastic Cat sounded terrific on the radio on the way home, too.

“Little Wide Open” comes out May 15, and Kevin Morby plays Union Transfer on June 9.

— Dan DeLuca

“This is a God dream, this is a God dream …”

Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” plays over as filmmaker and visual artist Arthur Jafa puts together images of Black lives across decades — seemingly disparate images cobbled from archives, home videos, blurry cell phone footage, news, films, police dashcams all come together to tell the story of Black lives and the unending volley of racist violence they have faced and survived for centuries.

Jafa’s Love is the Message, The Message is Death is named as an homage to the 1970s song “Love Is the Message” by the Sigma Sound Studios house band, MFSB (short for “Mother Father Sister Brother”). The Soul Train theme, “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia),” was one of its biggest hits.

Love is the Message was released in 2016; its documentation of systemic violence taking on an unfortunate relevance four years later with the murder of George Floyd. The collage-like film continues to haunt us in 2026 where a president has called teaching students about America’s racist history an indoctrination in “radical, anti-American ideologies.”

In Jafa’s world, images sometimes move at a feverish pace and sometimes they slow down — we recognize Shirley Chisholm amidst a sea of faces, see Michael Jackson dancing in a car, seethe at clips from DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, and hear Barack Obama sing “Amazing Grace” in his eulogy for the Reverend Clementa C. Pinckney.

Then there are streams of unknown faces. Nothing and no one is identified but everything we see is all too familiar: the violence, the loss, and the pain but also the joy that runs through the agile bodies of ballroom dancers, the radiant brilliance of Black scholars like Martine Syms and Hortense Spillers, the genius of artists like Jimi Hendrix and Charles Burnett, and the lightness of the unnamed boy who jumps into the air in a slow motion shot.

The film is playing at the Barnes Foundation, as part of “Freedom Dreams,” curated by BlackStar founder Maori Karmael Holmes. It is at once an ode, a dirge, and a manifesto, forcing the viewer to bear witness and plead accountability.

After a deluge of images, as I sat in the quiet dark room, one question from actor Amandla Stenberg’s Tumblr video “Don’t Cash Crop My Cornrows: A Crash Discourse on Black Culture” stayed on in my mind, pricking my insides like a fishbone stuck in my throat:

“What would America be like if we loved Black people as much as we love Black culture?”

“Freedom Dreams,” also featuring films by David Hartt, Garrett Bradley, Ja’Tovia Gary, and Tourmaline, runs through Aug. 9 at the Barnes Foundation, 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, barnesfoundation.org

— Bedatri D. Choudhury

A night at the ballet is a night at the orchestra, too.

It should never be taken for granted that Philadelphia Ballet uses a live orchestra, and there it was in the Academy of Music pit this week for the world premiere of Juliano Nunes’ Romeo and Juliet set to Prokofiev’s most gorgeous score.

Fans used to hearing the work in its orchestral-suite form might have found jarring the more copy-and-paste way in which sound must hew to the dance. The music is all there, though, heightening the emotion and sharpening twists in the story.

The production with sets and costumes by Youssef Hotait puts center stage a giant storybook with turning pages. Dancers dance before it, suggesting characters that have escaped from a pop-up book.

The 56-member orchestra is every bit as multidimensional. This ensemble doesn’t have the mass it might, especially in the strings. But heard Thursday night, under conductor Beatrice Jona Affron, the musicians etched beautiful characterizations. Lithe was the music depicting young Juliet and her nurse, with superb solo lines from oboe and trumpet. Harp, flute, and pizzicato strings melded into an eerie backdrop at the ball.

And of course, the title characters in their love scenes could not have floated with the same sense of ecstasy without those soaring, reaching melodies. Here, Affron and the Philadelphia Ballet Orchestra made Prokofiev a worthy successor to Tchaikovsky.

Philadelphia Ballet’s “Romeo and Juliet” continues at the Academy of Music with two performances on Saturday and one on Sunday. philadelphiaballet.org, 215-893-1999.

- Peter Dobrin