The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include the kickoff to the season at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival; the return of a living legend of modern jazz; Baroque music; a Tennessee Williams revival; a one-man band, and a whole lot more.
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet kicks off the season at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Mass., with a program of works by choreographers including Alejandro Cerrudo, Fernando Melo, and Cayetano Soto in the Ted Shawn Theatre tonight through Sunday. Also this weekend, the 14 dancers and musicians of Juan Siddi Flamenco Santa Fe present a program of flamenco dance and live music in the Doris Duke Theatre.
Grammy Award-nominated jazz saxophonist and composer Joshua Redman returns to the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, Mass., on Sunday at 7pm. The Joshua Redman Quartet, featuring Aaron Goldberg on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass, and Gregory Hutchinson on drums, performs original compositions, jazz classics, and jazz versions of classics from the Great Anglo-American Rock ‘n’ Roll Songbook.
Aston Magna Early Music festival, led by artistic director Daniel Stepner on baroque violin, performs “The Trio Sonata,” a collection of violin works by Handel, Corelli, Purcell and Leclair, and a newly commissioned work for period instruments by Alex Burtzos, at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., tonight, and at Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington on Saturday night. Stepner is joined by Brazilian violinist EdsonScheid, with Aston Magna ensemble members Laura Jeppesen on viola dagamba and Michael Sponseller on harpsichord.
The Tennessee Williams classic “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” about a Southern family’s web of emotional deceit, opens the summer season at the Fitzpatrick Main Stage at Berkshire Theatre Group in Stockbridge, running tonight through Saturday, July 16. The play is directed by Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize award-winning playwright David Auburn.
The Pioneer Valley’s Matt Lorenz aka The Suitcase Junket brings his one-man roots-music band to MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday night at 8pm. The Suitcase Junket’s music spans from soft folk-rock to punk-infused blues.
“Lives Not Numbers,” an exhibition by documentary photographers AtishSaha and Bryan MacCormack, opens in the Back Gallery at Basilica Hudson with a reception on Saturday at 5pm. In their first collaboration, the documentary photographers present a series of photographs that reveal the lives behind the anonymous victims of mass tragedies.
Matthew Placek’s breathtaking work, “130919 • A Portrait of Marina Abramovic,” a 3D “moving portrait,” remains on view at the Second Ward Foundation in Hudson through Sunday. Shot in one take and without dialogue, the short film offers a rare, uninterrupted moment with the legendary performance artist, who is filmed in the Hudson space where she plans to locate her own headquarters dedicated to the perpetuation of her technique of long-duration artworks.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkishire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com