The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include theater, film, chamber music, folk-rock … plus a whole lot more.
Fresh Fest: A Farm and Food Film Festival, kicks off this evening at Images Cinema in Williamstown, Mass., and runs through Thursday, May 12. This annual film festival explores the ways farming and food culture impacts our lives in rich and varied ways and makes links to local farmers and food producers. All events will take place at Images Cinema. Tonight at 7:30, the festival will screen the film “Cow.” Monday at 7:30, “Hive” will be screened, and Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., audiences will view “The Ants and the Grasshopper.” (May 6-12)
This year marks the centennial of the Lincoln Memorial, and to mark the occasion in the Berkshires the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge and Chesterwood — the historic summer home and studio of the statue’s famed sculptor, Daniel Chester French — join forces with a variety of exhibitions and programs, the centerpiece of which is The Lincoln Memorial Illustrated exhibition at the Rockwell Museum, which opens to the public tomorrow and runs through September 5, 2022. (Saturday, May 7)
Six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald headlines the Bardavon Gala on Saturday at 8 p.m. McDonald will perform her signature mix of songs from Broadway, the Great American Songbook, and beyond. McDonald has starred in 12 Broadway shows and received Tony Awards for her roles in Carousel, Master Class, Ragtime, A Raisin in the Sun, Porgy & Bess, and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. (Saturday, May 7)
The Approach by Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe opens tonight in the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., and runs through May 29. The play follows the story of Anna, Cora, and Denise as they converse over coffee about their shared childhoods and burgeoning middle-age, with much left unspoken. The play features Nicole Ansari, Michelle Joyner, and Shakespeare & Company veteran Elizabeth Aspenlieder. (Friday, May 6 - Sunday, May 29)
Jazz & Classics for Change presents cellist Julian Müller, violinist Anthony Bracewell, and pianist Gili Melamed-Lev at the Tydeman Farm in Germantown, N.Y., on Saturday at 4 p.m., performing two piano trios, including Schubert’s No.1 in B flat and Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, along with the premiere of the Sonata for Viola and Piano by Brian Shea. (May 7)
Singer-songwriter Josh Ritter performs a solo acoustic concert at Old Dutch Church, on Wall Street in Kingston, N.Y., tonight at 8, in a presentation by the Bardavon, and then returns to the region on Sunday when he performs at Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs, presented by Caffe Lena. The rootsy folksinger blends rock, country, and blues influences into his original folk compositions, which the New York Times compared to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Mark Knopfler. (Friday, May 6)
The Bard College-based Orchestra Now presents a program called New Voices from the 1930s at the Fisher Center at Bard College on Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Under the direction of Leon Botstein, the orchestra will perform rarely heard masterpieces from the late 1930s by the likes of William Grant Still, Carlos Chávez, Witold Lutosławski and Karl Amadeus Hartmann. (May 7-8)
And finally, mother-daughter duo Suzzy Roche and Lucy Wainwright Roche bring their organic harmonies, killer song catalogs and familial sense of humor to Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., tonight at 8. (Fri, May 6)
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.com
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