The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include chamber music, cabaret, classic country, reggae, folk-pop, and a whole lot more.
Last summer, Darnell Abraham turned in an award-winning performance as Coalhouse Walker, Jr., in Barrington Stage Company’s production of “Ragtime”. Abraham returns to the Pittsfield, Mass., theater company this weekend, this time out bringing his “Wheels of a Dream” solo show as part of Mr. Finn’s Cabaret series. Darnell’s program ranges from pop to classical to jazz and blues, and it’s a good bet he just might revive a few numbers from “Ragtime.” Shows are tonight and tomorrow night at 8pm.
On Saturday night at 8pm, Elizabeth Ziman, who performs as Elizabeth and the Catapult, returns to the Egremont Barn in South Egremont, Mass., with her unique brand of dazzling, original folk-pop. The Brooklyn-based Elizabeth is an avowed acolyte of the Joni Mitchell school of songwriting who also knows her way around a catchy pop hook and a funky dance rhythm. She makes the kind of music that in another era – say, the 1970s – would make it into the Top 10.
On Saturday at 4:30pm, the Neave Trio will perform works by Haydn, Schumann, and Shostakovich at the Historic Meeting House in New Marlborough, Mass., as part of the Music & More series. On Sunday at 3pm, the Broad Street Orchestra opens the 9th season of the Concerts in the Village series in Kinderhook, N.Y., with “Glorious Strings: Light and Darkness in the 19th and 20th Centuries”. Joined by guest soprano Andrea Bargabos and taking place at The School?Jack Shainman Gallery, the program includes the Romanian and Transylvanian Dances by Bartok; three songs by Sibelius; plus works by Stravinsky; Shostakovich; and Dvorak.
Author Amanda Stern will read from her new memoir, "Little Panic: Dispatches from an Anxious Life," at the Stockbridge Library in Stockbridge, Mass., on Saturday at 4pm. Candid, tender, and funny, “Little Panic” is at once a love letter to 1970s- and ’80s-era New York City and a brilliantly ironic memoir about living life on the razor’s edge of anxiety.
Speaking of New York City in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Richard Boch, author of “The Mudd Club,” a memoir of his years as doorman at the downtown nightclub that came to define the era, will do a reading, slideshow, and booksigning at the Kingston Artists Collective in Kingston, N.Y., on Sunday at 3pm.
The Colony Café in Woodstock, N.Y., turns into the Colony Opry on Sunday night when singer-songwriter Robert Burke Warren hosts an evening of classic country, featuring artists including Ruth Ungar of the Mammals plus her mom, acclaimed folkie Lyn Hardy; Lara Hope of Lara Hope & the Ark-Tones; Carrie Bradley Neves of the Breeders; stringed instrument wizard Happy Traum, and others. Performances will feature immortal songs from the Golden Era of country by the likes of Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Townes Van Zant. Lucky for you there’ll be two shows on Sunday night; one at 8 and another at 9:30.
Also this weekend, folk-rocker Neko Case is at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie tonight at 8; seminal Jamaican reggae outfit Black Uhuru is at Club Helsinki Hudson on Saturday at 9; and comedian Lewis Black is at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, Mass., on Sunday at 7pm.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com