Paul Taylor’s gravity-defying masterwork Esplanade, danced to Bach by the Taylor 2 company, tops a packed lineup for this year’s Diversity in Dance, the annual showcase of dance sponsored by The Yard.

The performance begins Sunday, July 20, at 6:30 p.m. at the Performing Arts Center at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, with a dessert and champagne reception with the cast following.

Girls Guns and Glory

Boston-based band Girls Guns and Glory plays Friday at the Offshore Ale in Oak Bluffs on Friday night from about 10 p.m.

The band won a Boston Music Award last year and in 2008, the WBCN Rumble — the first roots, rock and country act to ever win the Rumble. One of just four unsigned acts in the Top 40, their latest disc, Inverted Valentine, is currently number 16 on the National Americana Music Association Chart.

Time does not heal all wounds, at least for the Gulf Coast, which is why, three years after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, Finding Our Folk, the New Orleans Hot 8 Brass Band, and the KatrinaRitaVille Express Trailer are coming to the Vineyard this weekend, under the leadership of Derrick Evans.

Spirituals at East Chop

Lighthouse: Free at Five

The Martha’s Vineyard Museum will present the second in their summer Free at Five series on Wednesday, July 23, at the East Chop Lighthouse in Oak Bluffs.

The lighthouse will be open free of charge to the public beginning at 5 p.m., followed by a performance by the Jim Thomas Spiritual Choir at 6 p.m.

An Evening with Livingston Taylor at the Tabernacle, his only concert on the Vineyard this summer, will be tomorrow, Saturday, July 19, 8 p.m.

Delores Stevens, pianist and artistic director of the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, will join a quintet of musicians from the Music from Salem festival series in two concert performances July 21 and 22.

After a genre-stretching foray into jazz chamber music with Billy Childs and the Infiniti Brass, the society, now at the midpoint of its five-week season, returns to its romantic classical roots with a program of music by Felix Mendelssohn and Cesar Franck.

The Chappaquiddick Summer Music Festival opens its 2008 season on Thursday, July 24 at 8 p.m. with a performance by the Jupiter String Quartet. The concert will be held at the Chappaquiddick Community Center.

Called by the New York Sun “one of the strongest young string quartets in the country,” the quartet includes violinists Nelson Lee and Megan Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel, and cellist Daniel McDonough.

The Kramer Montgomery Band with Aerosmith’s Joey Kramer, James Montgomery and special guests Jim Belushi, James Cotton and The Rolling Stones horn section The Uptown Horns, will take the stage at Outerland on Thursday, July 17.

One of rock’s top drummers joins forces with a legendary blues master and a killer backup section for this show.

Popular American singer-songwriter Greg Brown will perform at Oak Bluffs’ historic Union Chapel on Wednesday, July 16, at 8 p.m.

He is nationally known as a familiar presence on Prairie Home Companion and for his deep, thundering voice, unpretentious musical vision, humor and warmth. Fellow Iowan Bo Ramsey will open the concert and continue to play with Mr. Brown.

The New England Conservatory of Music’s Millennium Gospel Choir perform Saturday, July 12, at 7 p.m. at The Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs. Admission is by freewill donation.