This weekend our region boasts several modern dance concerts, classical piano, psychedelic pop, a literary festival, and an Americana superstar.
Three-time Grammy Award-winner Lucinda Williams bookends our region with back-to-back concerts at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington on Saturday at 8pm, and at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie on Sunday at 7pm. Williams has been one of the most consistently lauded Americana singer-songwriters, incorporating rock, folk, and country into her achingly personal lyrics, since her eponymous debut in 1988. Her 1998 album, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” is widely considered one of the greatest albums of the rock era.
Dr. Dog brings its swirling, Beatlesquepsychedelia to the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday at 8pm. The quintet from West Grove, Pennsylvania, combines a love of stomping melody and harmonies out of the late 1960s with lo-fi indie-rock featuring grungy guitars recalling Dinosaur Jr and Guided by Voices. Northampton’s Sun Parade warms up the crowd.
American Ballet Theatre celebrates its 75th anniversary season with a world premiere by choreographer Mark Morris in the Fisher Center at Bard College this weekend with four performances - tonight at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2pm and 8pm; and Sunday at 2pm. The program includes AlexeiRatmansky’s “Piano Concerto #1” – with a live performance of DmitriShostakovich’s Concerto No. 1 for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings, Op. 35 - and Paul Taylor’s “Company B.” Morris’s work is accompanied by a live performance of Hummel’s chamber work, Septet in C, op. 114, “The Military,” with all-new costumes by Isaac Mizrahi and lighting design by Michael Chybowski.
Continuing his rise as an international sensation, pianist Roman Rabinovich kicks off the second season of Classics on Hudson at the Hudson Opera House on Saturday at 7pm. Rabinovich will perform works by Haydn, Schumann, and Beethoven. Praised by the New York Times for his “uncommon sensitivity and feeling,” the Israeli pianist is the winner of the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition.
Authors Andrea Kleine, Melissa Holbrook Pierson, Wesley Brown, Joseph Luzzi, DW Gibson, Lynne Tillman, and famed poet Bernadette Mayer, headline Arts Walk Literary 2015, at several venues throughout Hudson over the holiday weekend, tonight through Sunday.
Brian Brooks Moving Company, the Chase Brock Experience, Jessica Lang Dance and Martha Graham Dance Company headline the third annual Hudson Valley Dance Festival on Saturday at the Historic Catskill Point. The one-performance-only event is produced by and benefits Dancers Responding to AIDS, a program of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkshire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com