This weekend’s cultural highlights in and around the Berkshires include a new music festival, a new Israeli dance company, a one-woman show, a musical quartet, a new musical about baseball, and a mini-jazz festival.
The 12th Annual Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival is up and running at MASS MoCA in North Adams. Called Banglewood by insiders, the three-week residency of the contemporary music organization is, like Tanglewood down the road, a summer school and a performance series. Featured concerts include the Bang on a Can All-Stars and special guests performing Bang on a Can co-founder Julia Wolfe’s mesmerizing, evening-length art ballad Steel Hammer this Saturday night at 8pm; the Composer Premiere Concert on Monday, July 29 at 4:30pm, showcasing brand new works written by the Summer Festival composition fellows; and the 12th annual Bang on a Can Summer Marathon, featuring more than fifty musicians and composers in six hours of non-stop, boundary smashing music, including compositions by Aphex Twin, David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe, closing the festival on Saturday, August 3, from 4 to 10pm.
L-E-V, the contemporary dance company founded by Israel-based co-creators Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, is making its U.S. debut in the Ted Shawn Theatre at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival tonight through Sunday. The company performs the U.S. premiere of HOUSE, a hypnotic, evening-length work originally commissioned by the Batsheva Dance Company. With a score by the popular composer Ori Lichtik, and lighting by acclaimed designer Bambi, the exquisite dancers of L-E-V, including Sharon Eyal herself, perform this compelling and mesmerizing work.
The Miró Quartet make its Tannery Pond Concerts debut on Saturday at 8pm in the Shaker tannery on the campus of Darrow School in New Lebanon. The Miro will perform music by Schubert, Puccini and Beethoven. Founded in 1995 at the Oberlin Conservatory, the Miro is considered to be one of America’s most distinguished chamber music groups.
Latter-day vaudevillian Hilary Chaplain brings her award-winning solo show, “A Life In Her Day,” to PS21 in Chatham on Saturday, at 8pm, as part of PS21’s comedy-themed summer program of theater, music, film and dance. Regarded as one of America’s foremost physical comediennes, this quirky actress creates a lifetime in a day as she chases the elusive promises of happily ever after.
Johnny Baseball, a quintessentially American musical that unearths the source of the Curse of the Bambino, and the secret to its triumphant end off Big Papi’s bat in 2004, will be presented on the Nikos Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival through Saturday, August 3. Packed with resonant social history, Johnny Baseball features a book by Richard Dresser with music and lyrics by brothers Robert and Willie Reale, who both received Tony Award nominations for their collaboration on the musical A Year with Frog and Toad. Personally, I’d rather see an opera about the Amazin’ Mets of 1969, but no one consulted me before programming a musical about the Red Sox and the Yankees.
Freddie Bryant & Kaleidoscope and the Greg Caputo Big Band with special guest Phil Woods headline the weekend-long Berkshire Gateway Jazz Weekend, in downtown Lee, today through Sunday. The festival includes jazz films, a jazz brunch, an art exhibit, and free performances by local jazz musicians.