The cultural highlights for our region this weekend include Broadway, bluegrass, Latin jazz, art, dance, klezmer … plus a whole lot more.
Jacob's Pillow concludes its summer season this weekend with Ballet Coast to Coast, featuring dancers from Boston Ballet, Houston Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. Dancers from each company will take turns performing, and then in the program finale, dancers from all three companies will perform together in “Second to Last,” a work by Pacific Northwest Ballet’s resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo, inspired by and set to the music of Arvo Pärt.
Husband-and-wife Broadway performers Kate Baldwin & Graham Rowat perform songs by Stephen Sondheim; Bock and Harnick; Frank Loesser; Cole Porter and Jason Robert Brown, in "Dressed Up Again," as part of the Colonial Concert Series Outside Under The Big Tent at The Colonial Theatre Parking Lot in Pittsfield, Mass., on Saturday at 7pm.
Gedney Farm in New Marlborough, Mass., says goodbye to summer on Sunday from 2pm - 6pm with Slyboots, an intriguing modern rock band that boasts an all-female front line of vocalist Tiffany Lyons, guitarist KG* Noble and bassist Margaret LaBombard. The group offers hints of the GoGos and Blondie in its mix of dreamy rock with rich keyboard textures, post-punk bass, and melodic guitars.
Latin jazz flutist Andrea Brachfeld and her quartet, Insight, perform at Saint James Place, Great Barrington, Mass., on Saturday at 7:30pm, in a program presented by Berkshires Jazz. In addition to familiar jazz tunes with a Latin flavor, the repertoire will feature “If Not Now, When,” a new Brachfeld original.
Old-time bluegrass duo Golden Shoals, featuring Amy Alvey on fiddle and guitar and Mark Kilianski on guitar and banjo, bring their contemporary style of Appalachian mountain music to Dewey Hall in Sheffield, Mass., tonight at 7.
Pianist Noah Palmer will be joined by Andre Laurent O'Neill on cello and Mitsuko Susuki on violin for an eclectic afternoon of classical and folk music from around the world on Saturday at 3pm at the Hilltop Barn in Roe Jan Park in Copake, N.Y.
The Hudson Eye, an annual festival of arts and performance, kicks off today and runs through next weekend, featuring a diverse array of artists in free and ticketed events at a variety of indoor and outdoor venues throughout Hudson. In addition to displays of public art and gallery exhibitions, events include a performance by downtown avant-garde vocalist Shelley Hirsch, dances by the David Norsworthy & Monèt Noelle Marshall duo and Skyla Schreter, and Emily Ritz in an album release concert for “In Love Alone” at Basilica Hudson next Thursday at 7:30pm. Visit thehudsoneye.com for the complete schedule and ticket information.
As part of the Hudson Eye festival, SEPTEMBER gallery will present works by Reginald Madison, known to many in the region as Reggie. A painter and sculptor, Madison was greatly influenced by his parents’ love of jazz and the stories they told of seeing Sun-Ra at the legendary Club DeLisa on Chicago’s south side, and by his family’s frequent trips to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, all of which you can detect in Madison’s own work.
And finally, Grammy Award-winning klezmer outfit the Klezmatics – the founders of the modern klezmer style combining traditional music with contemporary sounds, including folk, rock, reggae and jazz – perform at the Falcon in Marlboro, N.Y., on Sunday at 7pm.