Art notes: Sweet Briar hosting senior recital

Senior recital at SBC

Sweet Briar College student Mary Massie, a 2006 Amherst County High School grad, will perform her senior recital at 7:30 p.m. Monday in the college’s Memorial Chapel.

Admission is free.

She’ll sing 15 songs from various genres, including jazz, classical and musical theater. Selections include, among others, “At Last,” famously sung by Etta James; “I Hate Men” from the musical “Wicked;” “Not While I’m Around” from “Sweeney Todd;” and “Any Girl Fifteen or Older” from Mozart’s opera “Cosi fan Tutti.”

Massie, a soprano, will be accompanied by Anna Billias and Rebecca McCord on piano.

Art Club hosts holiday luncheon

The Seven Hills Art Club’s annual holiday luncheon is set for 11:30 a.m. Dec. 4 at Bull’s Steakhouse on Graves Mill Road. All members and invited guests are welcome. For more information, visit http://www.7hillsartclub.org.

Adult Care Center hosts White Glove Tea
The Adult Care Center’s 5th Annual White Glove Tea will be held from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Dec. 6 in the refectory of Court Street United Methodist Church.

The tea will be served in three courses: the first will be shortbreads and sweet breads, the second assorted sandwiches and the third sweets.

“That’s what a high tea is,” says Shanda Rowe, the center’s executive director. “That’s exactly the way it’s served. The only difference is we don’t serve on tea tables, which are higher.”

Legend has it that the custom of afternoon tea started in Britain in the early 1800s, when the seventh Duchess of Bedford felt faint with hunger one day in the late afternoon. Knowing that it was a long time until dinner, she started having a tray of tea with bread and butter every day at mid-afternoon and eventually invited friends to join her. It wasn’t long before the practice of afternoon tea became the “in” thing for upper class women.

Rowe says their event is a “dress-up affair, (with) a very relaxed atmosphere.”

Tickets are $25, $10 of which is tax deductible, and must be purchased in advance at the center, located at 621 Court St.

All proceeds go to the Adult Care Center’s scholarship program, which helps pay for those who cannot afford their daily fee.

“We’ve never turned away anyone who couldn’t pay for our services,” Rowe says, “and we don’t ever want to.”