The weekend highlights in our region include world-beat fusion; a country music legend; Southern California folk-rock; a folksinger turned author; modern dance; contemporary theater; and a whole lot more.
At least as far back as the Beatles in the 1960s, musicians have been experimenting with combining the basics of North Indian classical music with other styles, including rock, jazz, and contemporary Minimalism. Sameer Gupta, a tabla player, brings his unique melding of traditional and modern improvisational styles, including bebop, avant-garde jazz, European classical percussion, and North Indian classical tabla, to MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., tonight at 8pm. Gupta’s quartet will premiere music from his new album, “A Circle Has No Beginning.” Innovative violinist and Bang on a Can favorite Todd Reynolds opens the show.
She needs no introduction, but five-time Grammy Award-winner Wynonna Judd brings her “Roots & Revival Tour” to the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington on Sunday at 7pm. Judd will explore material from throughout her 33-year career, backed by her band, The Big Noise.
Laurel Canyon was home to a handful of the best Southern California country-laced folk-rock artists of the 1970s. A program called Live from Laurel Canyon: Songs & Stories of American Folk Rock pays tribute to the musical legacy of the place and time, with music by the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Carole King, James Taylor, the Mamas & the Papas, Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills & Nash, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Neil Young and others, at the Colonial in Pittsfield, Mass., on Saturday at 8pm.
Spin Doctors’ drummer Aaron Comess brings his trio to The Barn in South Egremont, Mass., tonight at 8pm, for an intimate evening of music also featuring singer-songwriter James Maddock, who has been compared to Norah Jones and Loudon Wainwright III.
Dar Williams, best-known as a singer-songwriter, will discuss her new book, “What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician’s Guide to Rebuilding America’s Communities One Coffee Shop, Dog Run, and Open-Mike Night at a Time,” as part of the Food for Thought series at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield on Saturday at 6pm. It’s safe to assume that Dar will wind up playing at least a few tunes, also.
Legendary British folk-pop singer-songwriter Lloyd Cole brings his patented blend of catchy melodies and sophisticated, literate songcraft to Club Helsinki Hudson on Saturday at 9pm. Cole is probably best known for his work as frontman and songwriter for UK band the Commotions in the mid-1980s, which produced such classics as “Perfect Skin” and “Rattlesnakes.” Cole will be performing a career retrospective devoted to music from the Commotions years through 1996.
Trisha Brown Dance Company concludes a two-week residency at Bard College with open rehearsal performances of three dances by the late, eponymous choreographer in the Fisher Center at Bard College tonight at 7:30pm. The program includes Accumulation, set to “Uncle John’s Band” by the Grateful Dead; Groove and Countermove, with music by jazz composer Dave Douglas; and L’Amour au théâtre, with music from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie.
The summer theater season may be over and done with, but there’s still stuff to see. Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award-winning dramedy “God of Carnage” is getting a critically acclaimed staging now through October 8 at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass. Starring a quartet of the company’s finest actors, the play is a contemporary cross between Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and TV’s “Modern Family.”
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. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.