Pittsfield Fire Knocks Down Christmas Day Blaze

02:37PM / Monday, December 26, 2022Print Story | Email Story

A first-responder caught an image of the fire before the Fire Department got to the scene.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — A Christmas Day fire on East Mill Street displaced a family of five.

Deputy Chief Daniel Garner reported that the Fire Department was alerted to the blaze at 23 East Mill at 4:39 p.m. on Dec. 25. Firefighters found flames venting from windows on the first floor of the 2 1/2 story wood frame structure.

One crew conducted a primary search to ensure the three-unit building was evacuated while others worked to extinguish the fire in the first-floor kitchen. The fire was knocked down and under control within 20 minutes but the room sustained fire damage and the first floor smoke damage. Garner put the damage estimate as less than $2,000.

The cause of the fire was not yet determined and the family was being assisted by the Red Cross. There were no injuries reported.

Tags: structure fire,

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Berkshire Jazz: New Leadership Continues Founder's Passion

By Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff
07:33AM / Saturday, February 28, 2026

Chuck Walker, left, found Berkshire Jazz a year after moving to the Berkshires and shared his enthusiasm for the musical form with Ed Bride, not realizing he was the founder. It eventually led to Walker become the organization's president.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Berkshire County is jazz, said Chuck Walker, the newly appointed president of the nonprofit Berkshire Jazz.

Jazz embodies freedom way of thinking, improvisation, and a distant respect for the rules, Berkshire Jazz founder Ed Bride said.

It is an emotional refuge from today's atmosphere. The Berkshires, too, is like that, a place to escape and clear your head, which is why so many artists over the years have visited the area, the duo said.

"You need a place to escape from that in order to, as we all used to say back in the '60s, to get your head right. The Berkshires are a place where you can get your head right," Walker said.

"The way that you just described jazz as improvisational … as being out of lockstep with whatever the prevailing society is. That's what makes jazz jazz. That, too, is what makes the Berkshires the Berkshires."

For the last 20 years, Bride has been rejuvenating jazz in the Berkshires, a genre that was once alive thanks to venues such as Music Inn and The Lenox School of Jazz, sometimes called the Music Barn, active from 1950 until the late '70s.

Bride said when he started the Pittsfield City Jazz Festival in 2005, which became the Berkshire Jazz nonprofit in 2009, you could go months without hearing jazz, with only one place in the county that would regularly play it: Castle Street Café in Great Barrington, which closed in 2016.

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