The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include a comedy festival, chamber music, orchestral music, author readings, and a whole lot more.
Storytelling funny man and “This American Life” regular Mike Birbiglia and comedic songstress Nellie McKay headline the annual, two-day High Mud Comedy Festival at MASS MoCA in North Adams this weekend, starting tonight and running through tomorrow night. Also on tap are Saturday Night Live alum Sasheer Zamata, Maggie Crane, Comedy Central-favorite Matteo Lane, Joyelle Johnson, and glamazon hip-hop icon Shasta Geaux Pop, plus funny films, comedy-writing workshops, and more.
The Ariel Quartet performs works by Schumann, Brahms, and Janá?ek in a program of string quartets sharing the theme of a love triangle, at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, Mass., on Saturday at 6 p.m., as part of the Close Encounters With Music series. Works being performed include Schumann’s String Quartet No. 2 in F Major; Brahms's String Quartet in A minor No. 2; and Janá?ek's Quartet No. 1 aka the “Kreutzer Sonata.”
Celebrated painter Duncan Hannah will read from his brand-new memoir, “Twentieth-Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies” (Knopf), at Jeff Bailey Gallery in Hudson, N.Y., on Saturday at 3 p.m. Hannah’s memoir is a rollicking and vividly immediate account of his life in 1970s New York, where Hannah, a Bard College alum, crossed paths with Patti Smith, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Andy Warhol, and dozens of other cultural figures.
Hudson’s own Bindlestiff Family Cirkus concludes its wintertime tradition of hosting a monthly cabaret, featuring a variety of circus, theater, comedy and musical entertainers, at Club Helsinki Hudson on Saturday night at 9, with a typical adults-only show, and again on Sunday at 3 p.m., with a special program suitable for all ages.
The Orchestra Now (T?N) will perform a free concert at Hudson Hall on Sunday at 3 p.m., featuring Virgil Thomson’s “The Plow that Broke the Plains Suite,” Arvo Pärt’s mesmerizing Fratres, and Georges Bizet’s romantic Symphony in C, written in 1855, the same year Hudson Hall was erected. The orchestra will be conducted by Hudson’s own James Bagwell.
The “Music & Words” concert series curated by Damien Sneed at the Fisher Center at Bard College continues on Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with The Golden Age of Song, featuring an ensemble joined by special guest multiple Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Keyon Harrold, who has worked with Erykah Badu, Jay-Z, and Lauryn Hill, and who is an eclectic artist who has been featured on nearly 100 albums. Harrold recently starred as the trumpet sound of Miles Davis for the Grammy Award-winning soundtrack of the 2016 biopic “Miles Ahead.”
And finally, Authors Elif Batuman, Buzzy Jackson, and Kate Reed Petty, 2018 Edith Wharton Writers-in-Residence, celebrate their time spent at The Mount in Lenox, Mass., in “Writers in the House”, a free, public conversation on Tuesday, March 20 at 4 p.m. Moderator Donna M. Lucey, a 2017 Edith Wharton Writer-in-Residence, will discuss with them their experience, current projects, careers, and Edith Wharton as a continuing influence on women writers.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkishire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com