Rogovoy Report for November 21, 2014

Highlights of this weekend include a few rock concerts and a few new art exhibitions.

Monet | Kelly, the first exhibition to consider the influence of Impressionist painter Claude Monet on the works of leading contemporary American artist Ellsworth Kelly, who lives in our listening region, opens at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown on Sunday. The works in the exhibition were selected by Kelly, and include two paintings and eighteen unpublished drawings by the artist, together with nine paintings by Monet from his Belle-Île series and of his gardens. The exhibition examines how both Monet’s motifs and the sites that inspired his paintings have shaped Kelly’s approach to his work. Monet | Kelly will be on view at the Clark through February 15, 2015.

Over at MASS MoCA in North Adams, singer-songwriter Josh Ritter brings his “Trying Out Some New Songs and Such” solo tour, an intimate, acoustic set emphasizing a new body of songs yet to be recorded, to the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA on Saturday at 8pm. The Moscow, Idaho-native has a literary disposition and an affinity for the old-guard likes of Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, and Paul Simon.

Speaking of the old guard, guitarist Dave Davies, who with his brother, Ray Davies, cofounded the incredibly influential English rock group the Kinks, will perform at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield next Wednesday, November 26, at 7:30pm. While Ray Davies was the group’s primary singer and songwriter, Dave Davies’s contributions, particularly to the group’s sound, as well as the tension – creative and otherwise -- between the two brothers, helped define the Kinks’s place in the rock pantheon. When you think of the Kinks, you think of the guitar riff in “You Really Got Me.” That’s all Dave Davies.

And speaking of Dave’s brother Ray, I like to think of Chuck Prophet as America’s answer to Ray Davies. Prophet, who is one of contemporary rock’s greatest songwriters, brings his group, the Mission Express, back to Club Helsinki Hudson on Saturday at 9pm. Chuck Prophet writes and sings wry, trenchant, culturally observant rock songs – upbeat, pop-inflected tunes; minor-key ballads; and roots-rockers, that connect the dots, musical and otherwise, between Tom Petty and Warren Zevon.

The House Is Open, a temporary exhibition of performance and installation, has taken over the Fisher Center at Bard College through Sunday. This unique event, featuring six major American artists working at the intersection of the visual and performing arts, poses the question: What might happen if a performing arts center temporarily reimagined itself as an art museum?

Contemporary string quartet Ethel will perform “Grace,” an innovative, adventurous program featuring works by EnnioMorricone, Jeff Buckley, NicoMuhly and others, at the Hudson Opera House on Saturday at 7pm, as part of the Classics on Hudson’s inaugural season.

Hudson-based composer-guitarist Alexander Turnquist will be joined by Brooklyn piano trio Sontag Shogun and experimental composer/cellist Julia Kent – whose haunting work I’ve been listening to nonstop the last for weeks in preparation for this concert -- for a triple-bill of contemporary ambient music at Club Helsinki Hudson on Sunday at 8pm. The mini-festival promises an evening of peaceful, calm, quiet listening and shimmering beauty.