As you’ve probably heard by now, MASS MoCA in North Adams will mark its 15th anniversary on Saturday, beginning at 4pm with a series of events culminating in a huge dance party featuring the Bhangra funk of Red Baraat. The hours leading up to the dance concert, which takes place at 8:30pm, will feature pop-up performances by the likes of Mark Mulcahy, Cynthia Hopkins, and Bang on a Can’s Mark Stewart, and an opening reception for As Above So Below, a series of dynamic and immersive new works by Brooklyn-based artist Teresita Fernández.
Chamber music abounds this weekend. The Dover Quartet and Israeli pianist Alon Goldstein will perform works by Haydn, Barber, and Dvorak in the inaugural program of the 24th season of the Tannery Pond Concerts chamber music series in the Tannery on the grounds of the Darrow School in New Lebanon, N.Y., on Saturday, at 6pm. And on the very same evening, “The Great Quintet Caper,” a program of 18th-century chamber music by Fasch, Haydn, Mozart, Brahms and the Bach Brothers, will be performed by the Berkshire Bach Ensemble at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington at 7:30pm. And on Sunday, Les Inegales, a French Baroque duo, will perform works by French and German Baroque composers on period instruments at Dewey Hall in Sheffield at 4pm.
Two theaters are kicking off their seasons this weekend. Emmy Award-winner and Golden Globe nominee Marg Helgenberger stars in Sharr White’s The Other Place, which opens the 2014 season at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield this weekend, and runs through Saturday, June 14. And Shakespeare’s Will, a provocative one-woman play about the bold and unapologetic journey of William Shakespeare’s enigmatic wife, Anne Hathaway, and the couple’s unconventional courtship and marriage, kicks off the 2014 season at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox tonight, running through August 24. Hathaway will be portrayed by longtime Shakespeare & Company actor Kristin Wold
Grammy Award-nominated British singer-songwriter Karl Wallinger, who performs under the band name World Party, brings his catalog of pop-rock confections to Club Helsinki Hudson on Monday, at 8pm. The music of World Party is influenced by and recalls the greats of the rock era, from the Beatles to the Kinks, the Beach Boys, The Band, Neil Young, the Rolling Stones, Dr. John, and Prince. You may recall them for their mega-radio hit in 1987, “Ship of Fools.”
Pioneering performance artist John Kelly will be in residence at Hudson Opera House over the weekend for a creative doubleheader: the opening of his exhibition, Muse Ascending a Staircase, a multi-media work paying homage to Marcel Duchamp’s scandalous Nude Descending a Staircase, and two performances of The Caravaggio Songs: Music from The Escape Artist. The exhibition opens on Saturday, from 5 to 7pm, followed immediately by a performance of The Caravaggio Songs at 7pm. A second performance of Caravaggio is on Sunday, also at 7pm.
“The Cabinet of Wonders,” a musical and literary variety show based at New York City’s City Winery and hosted by author Wesley Stace, aka folk-rocker John Wesley Harding, will pay an upstate visit to the Spotty Dog in Hudson on Saturday, at 8pm. In addition to Stace reading from his new novel, Wonderkid, and performing a few songs, the event will feature authors David Grand and Emma Jane Tourtelot, singer-songwriter Amy Rigby, and a reading/sound performance by Karen Schoemer and Tyson Hauf.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkishire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com