The cultural highlights for our region this very busy weekend include jazz, roots music, musical theater, chamber music, blues … plus a whole lot more.
Grammy Award-nominated jazz vocalist Karrin Allyson joins acclaimed pianist Ted Rosenthal and his trio to perform their Wonderland holiday show with two performances at 5 and 7 on Sunday at the Gateways Inn in Lenox, Mass. The group will perform jazz versions of holiday favorites and more.
Clarion Concerts brings young violin sensation Randall Goosby to St. James Place in Great Barrington on Sunday at 3, when he will perform works by Mozart, Florence Price, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, and César Franck's Violin Sonata in A major. The New York Times raved that in his Carnegie Hall debut, Goosby “exerted a masterly level of control and lavished an exquisite tone.”
New-music composer Phil Kline’s walking symphony experience, ‘Unsilent Night’ -- in which participants collectively create the event by walking in a group with boomboxes, bluetooth speakers, and other amplified audio devices tuned to different parts of Kline’s 4-track surround soundscape -- will take place at several venues around our region, starting Saturday at 5:30 p.m. at Art Omi in Ghent, N.Y. In Williamstown, Mass., this free community event takes place next Thursday, December 9, when it will kick off at the ‘62 Center on the Williams College campus at 5:30. I have participated in “Unsilent Night” on a number of occasions, and it is truly a magical, mystical musical experience.
The Elephant in the Room, an autobiographical musical from writer/actor/musician Melanie Greenberg, opens tonight at the Apple Tree Inn in Lenox and runs for 3 consecutive Friday nights. Greenberg’s one-woman musical recounts the tale of a nice Jewish girl who goes on a psychedelic odyssey though Pentecostal churches, psych wards, the Ivy League and 12-step meetings that finally brings her closer to God, herself, and a resolution of intergenerational trauma, all in brutally honest and often hilarious detail, while paying tribute to the show tunes that helped Greenberg survive the whole ordeal.
Diego Ongaro's latest film, Down With The King, had its world premiere last summer at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie, which was partially shot in Sandisfield in the Berkshires, will be distributed by SONY next year. But local audiences will have a chance to see the movie on its home turf next Thursday, December 9, when the Berkshire International Film Festival screens it at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington at 7 p.m. The feature tells the story of Money Merc -- a famous rapper disillusioned with the music industry and the pressures of being a celebrity -- who leaves the city and his career behind to find himself in a small-town farming community. The film stars real-life rapper Freddie Gibbs as well as Berkshire native Bob Tarasuk, a farmer in Sandisfield. Irving Berlin's White Christmas The Musical begins its three-week run at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield on Saturday at 7 p.m. And Fat Knight Theatre Productions brings My Witch: The Margaret Hamilton Stories, about the actress who has scared generations of children and adults alike in her role as the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz," to Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill for seven performances beginning tonight and then playing Thursdays through Sundays through December 12.
The ever-popular Wanda Houston Band brings its dynamic blend of classic jazz, R&B, and pre-rock pop music to the Spencertown Academy on Saturday at 8 p.m. String-band legends Tony Trischka and Bruce Molsky join forces on banjo and fiddle respectively in a rare duo concert at the Stissing Center in Pine Plains, N.Y., on Saturday at 8 p.m. And Ted Horowitz aka Popa Chubby brings his Bronx-bred style of electric blues to the Falcon in Marlboro, N.Y., tonight at 7.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.com
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