This weekend our region boasts literary readings, early music, new age music, new musical theater, new poetry, classical, opera, and Broadway.
Obie Award-winning writer Kirsten Childs’ “Buffalo Bella: An American Tall Tale,” a musical exploring the African-American experience in the Old West, is one of three new musical theater projects that will be presented in Club B10 at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday at 8pm, as part of the annual Sundance Institute Theatre Lab residency, gathering top-tier dramatic artists and including work-in-progress performances for audiences. This year’s participants tackle themes from the underbelly of American life, exploring race, love, and politics.
Pianist and new-age music composer Robin Spielberg inaugurates the new “On the Stage” series at the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield with a concert on Sunday at 2pm. Audience members will be seated onstage for performances in this series. Spielberg’s albums bring traditional, classical, original and popular music to life in piano solos and piano-based ensembles.
The award-winning period music ensemble Crescendo will present choral works of the Italian composer PietroTorri and the German composer Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel in back-to-back concerts at the First Congregational Church in Great Barrington on Saturday at 6pm, and at Trinity Church Lime Rock in Lakeville, Conn., on Sunday at 4pm.
Two-time Grammy Award-winners the Soweto Gospel Choir bring their fusion of inspiring South African gospel music and dance to the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie, tonight at 8pm. The 26-member choir blends elements of African gospel, African-American spirituals, reggae and American popular music, and has performed with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and with Peter Gabriel.
Volume, a new, free reading and music series at Spotty Dog Books and Ale in Hudson on the second Saturday of each month, kicks off on Saturday at 7pm, with readings by authors Amanda K. Davidson, Lee Matthew Goldberg, and Rebecca Wolff, followed by a quick DJ set.
A celebration for the printing of “In|filtration: An Anthology of Innovative Poetry from the Hudson Valley River,” edited by area poets Anne Gorrick and Sam Truitt, featuring readings by innovative area poets interspersed with musical performances, will take place at Time and Space Limited tonight at 7:30.
The Orchestra Now, an innovative master’s degree program and training orchestra founded by Bard College, continues its inaugural performance season at the Fisher Center at Bard College this weekend, with concerts featuring Mendelssohn’sRuyBlas Overture, Stravinsky’s Symphony in C, and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8, on Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm.
And finally, Soprano Kristina Bachrach stars in “From Opera to Broadway: Music for the Stage,” a program of opera selections from Monteverdi, Mozart, Johann Strauss, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Puccini, and show tunes by Gershwin, Weill, Kern, Rodgers, Sondheim and Wilson, at Roeliff Jansen Community Library in Copake on Saturday at 5 pm. Bachrach will be accompanied by pianist Mitchell Vines.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkshire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com