Rogovoy Report For January 15, 2016

This weekend’s cultural highlights in our region include an avant-garde concert of acoustic and electronic music and visuals; a discussion of a classic Norman Rockwell illustration; a neo-vaudevillian circus; several art openings, and a tribute to the king himself, Elvis Presley.

After a weeklong residency at MASS MoCA’s cultural laboratory, multimedia artist Daniel Wohl will present a work-in-progress performance of Holographic, a “multi-sensory audience experience” featuring a blend of acoustic instruments and electronic creations, in the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday at 8pm. Wohl’s music will be accompanied by artist Daniel Schwarz's visuals. Paris-born and Brooklyn-based Wohl blurs the line between electronic and acoustic instrumentation, blurring them into a greater organic whole. For this program, Wohl’s music will incorporate an improbable combination of sounds, inspired by new ideas in modern science and humanity’s symbiotic relationship with technological creations.

Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., will present The Pullman Porter: Norman Rockwell’s ‘Boy in Dining Car’, a talk and brunch to be held on Sunday at 11 am. Stephanie Plunkett, the Museum’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator, will take an in-depth look at Norman Rockwell’s 1946 Saturday Evening Post cover, "Boy in Dining Car," just in time for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

Hudson NY’s own Bindlestiff Family Cirkus continues its wintertime tradition of hosting a monthly cabaret, featuring a variety of circus, theater, comedy and musical entertainers, at Club Helsinki Hudson, with four programs over the next three months. The winter cabaret kicks off on this Saturday at 9pm, with appearances by musical visionary Tony Kieraldo – one of my all-time favorite musical geniuses, and I say that because I have performed with him and he made me sound 10 times better than I really am – along with female impersonator Bernie Brandall, burlesque star Pinkie Special, comedy favorites Fly By Night, aerial acrobat Jason Mejias, and of course, Bindlestiffcofounders Keith Nelson and Stephanie Monseu

Fold and unfold, a solo exhibition of sculptures and drawings by Anne Lindberg, opens at Omi’s Visitors Center & Gallery in Ghent, N.Y., with a reception on Saturday from 1 to 3pm. Lindberg works with an expanded definition of drawing languages, and is influenced by the resurgence of drawing in contemporary art. Looking ahead, her exhibition will conclude on Saturday, March 12, at 7pm, with a special performance featuring “hyperpianist” Denman Maroney.

And while we’re talking about contemporary art, solo exhibitions of works by Nicole Cherubini and Ted Gahl open at Retrospective Gallery in Hudson, N.Y. with a reception on Saturday from 6 to 8pm. Cherubini’s show, ‘the love tapes’, is a retrospective of her work. Gahl’s show, ‘Hibernation Anxiety,’ features works in various modes, all of them rooted in drawing. Cherubini lives and works in Hudson and Brooklyn; Gahl lives and works in nearby Litchfield, Conn.

And finally, let’s talk about the king. Club Helsinki Hudson’s annual Elvis Birthday Bash, featuring Albany-based rockabilly revivalists the Lustre Kings plus other special guests, will take place tonight at 9pm, just one week after what would have been Elvis Presley’s 81st birthday.