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Rogovoy Report 9/28/18

The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include a new play, an indie-rock guitar legend, an art exhibition peering into the near future, an abundance of chamber music, and a whole lot more.

“Grant and Twain,” a new play by Elizabeth Diggs, opens the fall season at PS21 in Chatham, N.Y., in PS21’s new black box theater, today through Sunday. The play chronicles the remarkable friendship between Ulysses S. Grant and Mark Twain. At age 62, Ulysses Grant was bankrupted in a Wall Street swindle. His only hope to restore his honor and save his family was an offer to write his memoirs of the war. News of Grant’s calamity brought his friend Mark Twain to his side. Twain made an audacious proposal: that he himself would publish Grant’s book and make it the biggest bestseller in American history. When Grant finally agreed, he was faced with a double enemy—he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and wrote in a race with death. Playwright Elizabeth Diggs was fascinated by the rise and fall of Grant’s reputation. At the time of his death, he was revered, linked to Lincoln and Washington as one of America’s three greatest leaders. Grant’s funeral was ten times the size of Lincoln’s. But his reputation went steadily downhill for the next century, as a result of a backlash from the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups against Grant’s vigorous commitment to Southern reconstruction and civil rights.

Eric Schenkman, the Grammy Award-winning guitarist of 1990s indie-rock group Spin Doctors, brings his new band to the Egremont Barn in South Egremont on Saturday at 8 p.m. Schenkman is a virtuoso guitarist who helped craft the Spin Doctors’ sound while co-writing all five of their Top 100 hits, including "Two Princes" and "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong.”

An important art exhibition opens this weekend at Ferrin Contemporary, on the campus of MASS MoCA in North Adams. “Canary Syndrome” is a group show featuring recent works by U.S. and U.K.-based artists inspired by the saying “canary in the coal mine,” suggesting that artists, much like the caged canaries once used by coal miners as early indicators of dangerous gases in tunnels, are hypersensitive to the adverse conditions and forces that jeopardize human existence. Through their artwork, the dozen or so artists in “Canary Syndrome” employ visual means to accentuate threats to the health of the environment, culture, and ethics, to warn of dark times on the horizon.

Music, music, music – there’s chamber music all around the greater Berkshire region this weekend. Tannery Pond Concerts' 2018 season draws to a close with a final concert on Saturday at 6 p.m. featuring Paul Huang on violin and Helen Huang on piano, playing works by Dvo?ák, Prokofiev, Brahms, and others. The Tannery is located on the grounds of Mount Lebanon Shaker Village and the Darrow School in New Lebanon, New York. 

The Leaf Peeper concert series brings the young Neave Piano Trio to Saint

James Place in Great Barrington, Mass, on Saturday at 5 p.m. to perform works by Haydn, Bernstein, Brahms, and a world premiere by young American composer Dale Trumbore.

The Chamber Orchestra of Williams tackles Schoenberg’s weighty composition “Verklärte Nacht” on Saturday at 8 p.m. in a free concert in Chapin Hall.

The Hevreh Ensemble joins forces with photographer Loli Kantor for an innovative multi-media collaboration in the Daniel Art Center at Simon’s Rock College on Saturday at 8 p.m. “Path of Light” includes original works by composer Jeff Adler and a video projection incorporating images from Loli Kantor’s “Beyond the Forest -- Jewish Presence in Eastern Europe 2004-2012.”

Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com