Rogovoy Report For 10/14/16

The weekend’s cultural highlights in the region include the opening of a huge new art installation, a concert by a Mercury prize winner, an old country-folk legend, a new country-folk star, and a whole lot more.

Nick Cave, the artist – not the quirky rock singer – has created a massive, immersive site-specific installation in MASS MoCA’s signature, football-field-sized gallery, that opens to the public on Saturday, October 15, with a reception from 5:30pm to 7pm. Cave’s overtly political exhibition is called “Until,” as in “Innocent until proven guilty,” or, perhaps, “Guilty until proven innocent,” and includes thousands of found objects, a rich sensory tapestry of 16,000 wind spinners; millions of plastic pony beads; thousands of ceramic birds, fruits, and animals; 13 gilded pigs; more than 10 miles of crystals; 24 chandeliers; 1 crocodile; and 17 cast-iron lawn jockeys. The opening reception features a performance in the exhibition space by Shreveport, La., musicians Brenda Wimberly and Sereca Henderson.

Following the reception, Mercury Prize-winning singer-poet-pianist Benjamin Clementine performs in the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., at 8:30pm. Clementine — the category-defying artist with a heavenly voice and a lush style of playing piano, has been compared to Nina Simone, Antony, and Édith Piaf for his striking, otherworldly vocal delivery. Other musical reference points are Rufus Wainwright and Jeff Buckley. A once-homeless teen, Clementine now has cult status in the French music and art world, and is on the brink of becoming a global phenomenon. Nick Cave chose him personally to cap the daylong celebration of the opening of his exhibition, and I’m personally as excited about hearing Clementine as I am about seeing Cave’s work.

Elsewhere in the Berkshires this weekend, Folk legend and two-time Grammy Award winner Ramblin’ Jack Elliott – the missing link between Woody Guthrie and Nobel Prize-winner Bob Dylan - performs at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington tonight at October 14 at 8pm. By now the story of how Elliott Adnopoz -- the Brooklyn-raised son of a Jewish doctor and schoolteacher -- became Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, the heir to Woody Guthrie and singer of cowboy songs extraordinaire, has been often told. In the late 1950s and early ‘60s Elliott was a star in England’s folk music revival, even attracting attention from proto-rock musicians, and then he came back home to the U.S. and since then has been a representative of a signal era in American folk.

Also at the Mahaiwe this weekend, the Russian String Orchestra, formerly known as the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, will perform works by Haydn, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich to kick off the 25th anniversary season of the Close Encounters With Music Series  on Saturday, at 6pm. The program includes Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, Shostakovich’s 8th String Quartet, and Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C, featuring CEWM founder, artistic director and cellist Yehuda Hanani.

In Pittsfield, Mass., the Karrin Allyson Trio, the Scott Robinson Quartet, and the U.S. Army Jazz Ambassadors big band headline the 12th annual Pittsfield CityJazz Festival. Robinson and his quartet are at Flavours Restaurant tonight; Allyson and the Jazz Ambassadors perform at the Colonial Theatre on Saturday, October 15.

In Hudson, N.Y., Folk-country singer-songwriter Crystal Bowersox, an American Idol finalist who was the first contestant in the program’s history to have one of her original songs played on the show, returns to Club Helsinki Hudson on Sunday, at 8pm. 

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