The weekend’s cultural highlights in the region include a world premiere of new music by Magnetic Fields; the return of a husband-and-wife new wave duo; a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic; a composer sharing thoughts on classical music’s glass ceiling; a concert of contemporary music from China; and a whole lot more.
After a two-week residency working on their vast new repertoire, The Magnetic Fields will premiere the material off the group’s upcoming album, “50 Song Memoir” – featuring 50 new songs written by bandleader Stephin Merritt, one for each year of his life – in a staged performance in the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA in North Adams, over the course of two nights, featuring songs 1 to 25 tonight and songs 26 to 50 on Saturday night. Both concerts begin at 8pm. Merritt will be joined by a seven-person band playing 50 instruments from his eclectic collection. This remarkable show recounts Merritt’s decades on planet Earth, from his conception by hippies on a houseboat in St. Thomas, to his current position as one of America’s greatest living songwriters, living in the artist’s retreat of Hudson, N.Y. Songs include “’86: How I Failed Ethics,” “’93: Me and Fred and Dave and Ted,” “’02: Be True to Your Bar,” and “’13: Big Enough for Both of Us.”
Jeff and Jane Hudson, who helped define the Boston art punk sound as founding members of late-1970s new wave group the Rentals, celebrate the release of their terrific new duo CD, “The Middle,” with a “New Wave Party” in the Ballroom of the Williams Inn in Williamstown, Mass., on Saturday at 8pm. “The Middle” is a glorious throwback to the postpunk era of proto-electronic bands such as the B-52s, Human Sexual Response, and Devo, with rhythms and guitars and vocals that recall the proto-punk of Iggy Pop and even the Velvet Underground. “The Middle” includes mostly new songs, with newly recorded arrangements of old favorites including “Gertrude Stein” and “Los Alamos”
Boston Globe Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee will discuss his acclaimed new book, “The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art,” at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown tonight at 7pm. In “The Art of Rivalry,” Smee examines the complex relationships between eight celebrated artists, and explores the admiration, envy, and ambition inherent in the friendships that linked each to a counterpart. The book details rivalries between Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet; Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso; Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock; and Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, as Smee considers the influence each had on the other’s work. The lecture is free, and a booksigning will follow.
Composer Hannah Lash will give a lecture entitled “A Studio of Her Own — Shattering the Glass Ceiling,” as part of the Close Encounters With Music “Conversations With…” series, at Hudson Opera House on Sunday at 3pm. Lash’s talk will review the history and current state of women as composers of art music.
The Orchestra Now will perform works by contemporary Chinese composers as well as an old dead Russian named Rachmaninoff at the Fisher Center at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., on Saturday at 8pm, and again on Sunday at 2pm. The orchestra performs under the baton of Jindong Cai, and features soloist Jie Yuan on piano.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkishire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors.