The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include a jazz festival, a festival of new short plays, early music, late music, and one of the world’s most famous comedians and comic actors. All that, plus the circus comes to town.
Renowned jazz pianist Ted Rosenthal will perform "10, by George," featuring jazz interpretations of "Rhapsody in Blue" and nine other Gershwin favorites, as part of the Pittsfield, Mass., annual downtown 10x10 Upstreet Arts Festival, at Berkshire Museum on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Ted Rosenthal is one of the leading jazz pianists of his generation, actively touring worldwide with his trio, as a soloist, and in various configurations. Winner of the 1988 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition, he has performed with many jazz greats, including Gerry Mulligan, Art Farmer, Phil Woods, Bob Brookmeyer, and James Moody. Rosenthal's program is based on his best-selling album, "Rhapsody in Gershwin."
Barrington Stage Company presents its seventh annual 10X10 New Play Festival - featuring 10-minute plays as part of the 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival in downtown Pittsfield – tonight through Sunday, March 4. Playwrights represented include Patrick Gabridge, Christine Foster, Tom Coash, Steven Korbar, James McLindon, Cathy Tempelsman, and Jamie Roach; performers include Lucky Gretzinger, Matt Neely, Dina Thomas, Peggy Pharr Wilson, Keri Safran, and Robert Zukerman; directors include Julianne Boyd and Michael Penn.
Pianist Sezi Seskir and violinist Lucy Russell will offer period-music renditions of works by Mozart and Beethoven in Chapin Hall at Williams College in a free concert this Sunday at 3 p.m. Seskir plays a five-octave fortepiano, a Walter copy based on an instrument from 1799. Russell plays a violin and bow from the 18th century to match the fortepiano.
The Orchestra Now, led by Leon Botstein, will perform Mahler's Seventh Symphony and Weber's Clarinet Concerto No. 1, featuring soloist Elias Rodriguez, in the Fisher Center at Bard College in Annandale on Hudson, N.Y., on Saturday at 8 p.m., and again on Sunday at 2 p.m.
Vocalist Sheila Jordan, pianist Joanne Brackeen, and Brazilian ensemble Quarteto Moderno headline the inaugural Hudson Jazz Festival at Hudson Hall today through Sunday. Curated by Hudson-based jazz pianist Armen Donelian, the festival highlights talent with a melodious reach that spans the globe. The festival kicks off tonight with the Ara Dinkjian Quartet, an instrumental collaboration rooted in Turkish, Armenian, and Macedonian Roma music. Donelian will also perform in this "Sounds from the Silk Road" program. On Saturday at 7 p.m., "Take Two" features jazz matriarch Sheila Jordan and vocalist-composer Dominique Eade, following up an afternoon of jazz solo piano immersion with "the Picasso of Jazz piano" Joanne Brackeen, in a "Piano Summit" including Aaron Goldberg and James Francies at 3 p.m. Quarteto Moderno brings the curtain down on the festival with its bossa nova jams on Sunday at 3 p.m.
Hudson's own Bindlestiff Family Cirkus continues its wintertime tradition of hosting a monthly cabaret, featuring a variety of circus, theater, comedy and musical entertainers, at Club Helsinki Hudson on Saturday at 9 p.m. Each month this winter, Bindlestiff Cirkus brings a new lineup, with acts including trapeze, contortion, acrobatic balance, sword swallowing, juggling, physical comedy, and oddball novelty turns. Bindlestiff's Winter Cabaret can get pretty hot and steamy - even a little bit raunchy - and is for open-minded grown-ups only. I may have to stay home.
Eddie Izzard brings his Believe Me Tour: Comedy, Painted Nails, Politics, My Life! to the Ulster Performing Arts Center (UPAC) in Kingston, N.Y., tonight at 8pm. In this intimate evening of comedy, Izzard recounts the dizzying rise he made from the streets of London to West End Theaters and Madison Square Garden. As a self-proclaimed "action transvestite," Izzard broke a mold performing in makeup and heels and has become as famous for his "total clothing" rights as he has for his art.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkishire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com