This weekend’s cultural highlights in our region include a multimedia performance about the first family of Indian music; a troupe of storytellers including one big fat liar; a husband-and-wife piano duo playing holiday favorites from the classical canon; an opera legend singing seasonal songs; a photo exhibition about the decline and fall of the Catskills as a resort region; and a P-Funk-style holiday party.
“Nari,” a multimedia performance piece based on the story of the women of the famed Indian musical family of Ravi Shankar, who with George Harrison of the Beatles helped bring Indian music to the West in the 1970s, will get a work-in-progress showing in the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA in North Adams, on Saturday at 8 pm. Among the artists is musician GinggerShankar, whose mother and grandmother, Viji and LakshmiShankar, collaborated with her great-uncle, Ravi Shankar.
A special holiday-themed edition of New York City-based storytelling troupe The Liar Show will hold court in the Drawing Room at The Mount in Lenox on Saturday at 7pm. Seasoned storytellers Andy Christie, Tara Clancy, Martin Dockery, and Andy Ross will share personal stories about the trials and tribulations of the holiday season. But the audience must listen closely, as only three of them will be telling the truth. After the storytelling, listeners will have a chance to interrogate the cast and expose the liar, in the hopes of winning a prize.
Husband-and-wife piano duo Kate Lee and Ran Dank will perform a holiday-themed concert at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington on Saturday at 6pm, as part of the Close Encounters With Music chamber music series. Works on the two- and four-handed program include Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite,” Debussy’s Preludes, Barber’s “Souvenirs,” Mozart’s Four Hand Variations, and Scriabin’s mystical Fantasy in B minor.
Acclaimed soprano and Grammy Award-winner Dawn Upshaw will be joined by actress Mary Stuart Masterson, singers of the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program, pianists of the Conservatory Post Graduate Piano Fellowship Program, and the Chancellor-Livingston 5th Grade Chorus ,for “A Winter Songfest,” a family-friendly program of festive songs and ensembles in the Fisher Center at Bard College in Annadale-on-Hudson on Sunday at 3pm.
“Echoes of the Borscht Belt,” a poignant series of photographs by Marisa Scheinfeld, featuring haunting contemporary images of the former thriving resort hotels in the Catskill Mountains region now abandoned, ghostly, and caught in a state of entropy and decay, is on view at Valley Variety in Hudson this weekend and will remain on view through the end of the year. There will be a ticketed artist talk and reception, including hot borsht and potato lates, with Scheinfeld on Saturday from 5:30 to 8:30pm,
Once again the holiday-funk spectacular Holidelic - the brainchild of Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, producer, actor and dancer Everett Bradley - will usher in the holiday season at Club Helsinki Hudson, this year with a two-night stand celebrating the club's 20th anniversary season, tonight and Saturday at 9pm. Part dance party, part funk concert, part comedy show, the Yuletide-themed event features original holiday songs as well as loose, funk-infused adaptations of Tchaikovsky, "Frosty the Snowman," "Little Drummer Boy" and the like.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkshire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com