The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include a global funk concert, a festival of new short plays, early music, Romantic music, feminist art, and two stars of alternative cabaret.
Sinkane brings his electrifying, socially conscious, world-funk sextet to Club B10 at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday at 8pm. The London-born, Ohio-raised Ahmed Gallab aka Sinkane incorporates a wealth of musical influences into his unique, horn-laced soul fusion, reflecting his global background, with bits of Afro-pop, alt-rock, soul, blues, reggae, disco, electronica, free-jazz, and funk.
Barrington Stage Company presents its seventh annual 10X10 New Play Festival - featuring ten, 10-minute plays as part of the 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival in downtown Pittsfield – tonight through Sunday, March 4. Playwrights represented include Patrick Gabridge, Christine Foster, Tom Coash, Steven Korbar, James McLindon, Cathy Tempelsman, and Jamie Roach; performers include Lucky Gretzinger, Matt Neely, Dina Thomas, Peggy Pharr Wilson, Keri Safran, and Robert Zukerman; directors are Julianne Boyd and Michael Penn.
"The Global Impact of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony," an afternoon of film and music about the great composer, features a screening of "Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony" -- including a Q&A with co-producer Greg Mitchell -- and a Beethoven sonata performed by pianist Lincoln Mayorga, is at Spencertown Academy in Spencertown, N.Y., on Saturday at 4pm.
Countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, a 2017 Met Opera Audition winner, will make his Berkshire debut performing English song from Dowland, Purcell, and Handel in "Voice of the Baroque -- A Close EnCountertenor," at St. James Place in Great Barrington, Mass., on Saturday at 6pm, as part of the Close Encounters With Music Series. The concert will also include cellist and series artistic director Yehuda Hanani performing Bach's Gamba Sonatas.
"Women and Power," an exhibition of works by ceramic artist Mary Anne Davis inspired by the manifesto of the same name by Mary Beard, opens at the Chatham Bookstore in Chatham, N.Y., with a reception tonight at 5pm. The exhibit, which runs through April 6, features a group of women Davis represents in decorated porcelain. Many were trailblazers, such as Katherine Graham, Brooke Astor, and Dorothy Draper.
Award-winning cabaret performer Charles Busch brings his one-man show, "My Kinda '60s," to the Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, N.Y., on Saturday at 4pm. Busch interweaves personal tales of a childhood and adolescence spent coming of age under the guidance of his indomitable Aunt Lillian, with songs by such artists as Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb, the Beatles, Henry Mancini, Bob Dylan, Stephen Sondheim, and Kander and Ebb. Tom Judson accompanies on piano.
And then at 9pm, Alt-cabaret vocalist Joseph Keckler, whom the New York Times calls "an operatic singer whose range shatters the conventional boundaries of classical singing," brings his rich, versatile three-plus octave voice and his sharp wit back to Club Helsinki Hudson on Saturday at 9pm. Keckler is a widely-acclaimed singer, writer, songwriter, and artist. His compelling performances combine humor, autobiography, and classical themes from a unique perspective. Keckler's style, voice, and approach may remind listeners of Rufus Wainwright and Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons.
Also, "Music and the Progression of Life," a chamber music program featuring Robert Schumann's Kinderszenen cycle for piano and Franz Schubert's haunting Winterreise song cycle, will be performed by tenor Jon Morrell and pianists Noah Palmer and David Smith at Van Buren Hall in Kinderhook, N.Y., on Saturday at 4pm, as part of the Concerts in the Village series.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkishire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com