The weekend’s cultural highlights in the region include a chamber concert featuring works about unrequited love; a documentary performance artwork about life in a Mexican border town; a concert of seasonal music by an all-star ensemble of acoustic roots musicians; a communal, interactive new-music holiday parade; and a whole lot more.
Works by Saint-Saëns and César Franck and the object of their mutual love, Augusta Holmès, are on tap in “L’Amour Toujours,” a chamber concert at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, Mass., on Saturday at 6pm, as part of the Close Encounters With Music series. Featured musicians are pianist Roman Rabinovich, violinists Diana Cohen, Sarah McElravy, and Julian Rachlin, and Close Encounters artistic director, cellist Yehuda Hanani.
Theater Mitu’s multimedia performance work “Juárez: A Documentary Mythology,” which explores the juxtaposition of the neighboring border communities of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas — one a hot zone of the drug cartel wars, the other the self-proclaimed “Safest Large City in America” – will be staged at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., on Saturday at 8pm.
Led by Juárez-born and -raised founding artistic director Rubén Polendo, Theater Mitu’s company members condensed hundreds of hours of interviews and field recordings from both cities. Drawing on their research, “Juárez: A Documentary Mythology” illuminates the region’s memories, hopes, and fears.
Violinist and acoustic music legend Darol Anger brings his annual holiday-music program – this year featuring banjo genius Tony Trischka and singer-songwriter Emy Phelps – to Club Helsinki Hudson on Sunday at 8pm. The concert will feature an all-star cast of string musicians in a multigenerational musical experience focusing on the spirit of mid-winter and the turning of the year.
“Unsilent Night,” an interactive, communal, seasonally themed new-music work by composer Phil Kline, will make its Hudson debut as part of the city’s 20th anniversary Winter Walk celebration on Saturday at 5pm. Originally created as a work for boomboxes, when it debuted in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1992, Kline’s ethereal holiday street parade has been updated for the digital era, with its own app that can stream to smartphones and wireless speakers. The sum effect of a community performance of the work is that of a mobile sound sculpture which is unique from every listener’s perspective.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkishire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com