The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include chamber music, alternative rock, folk-rock … plus a whole lot more.
Singer-songwriter Jeffrey Foucault brings his Midwestern amalgam of blues, country, rock’n’roll, and folk to Caffe Lena tonight at 8. Foucault has a warm, emotional storytelling style and a beautiful voice to match. Then on Saturday night, Aztec Two-Step 2.0, featuring the folk-rock group’s cofounder Rex Fowler and his wife, Dodie Pettit, performs at the historic folk venue in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., at 8pm. (May 13, May 14)
Speaking of venerable folk-rock singer-songwriters, Greg Greenway celebrates the release of his new album, Songs from the Beginning, to the Eighth Step at Proctor’s in Schenectady on Saturday at 7:30. Greenway is a dazzling multi-instrumentalist on guitar, piano, ukulele, and melodica, and his musical influences include gospel, rock, blues, jazz, and world music. Greenway tops it all off with a warm, smooth voice that recalls James Taylor. (May 14)
A Bintel Brief was a long-running advice column that ran in the Jewish Daily Forward, a New York City-based Yiddish newspaper that served millions of Yiddish-speaking immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Now, A Bintel Brief is a musical, and it will receive a staged reading with live music at Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, N.Y., on Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 2. (May 14-15)
Speaking of Yiddish, A Shayna Maidel, the Obie and Outer Critics Circle award- winning drama by Barbara Lebow, will be staged by The Two Of Us Productions at the Claverack Free Library in Claverack, N.Y., tonight through Sunday and again next weekend. A Shayna Maidel, which is Yiddish for “beautiful girl,” tells the story of the reunion of two sisters after World War II, one having survived the Nazi concentration camps. (May 13-15, May 20-22, Friday and Saturday performances are at 7:30pm and Sunday matinees are at 3pm)
The Berkshire Bach Society continues its 30th anniversary season on Saturday at 4pm with choral conductor James Bagwell leading soloists, chorus, and orchestra in two choral works: a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria in D Major, at the First Congregational Church in Great Barrington, Mass. (Saturday, May 14)
The 61st Hudson Valley Philharmonic season concludes with Themes & Variations, with guest conductor André Raphel, featuring the New York premiere of a concerto by Avner Dorman, Israel’s preeminent composer, with guest violinist Lara St. John, in a program showcasing Jewish composers from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, including Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Richard Danielpour, and Felix Mendelssohn, on Saturday at 8pm at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. (Saturday, May 14)
Nearly Stationary, a new interdisciplinary work conceived and designed by Barbara Kilpatrick, premieres at Hudson Hall in Hudson, N.Y., on Saturday night. The program features choreography by Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener and John Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts performed by Four Parts Quartet. The program will be repeated for the next three weekends. (Saturday, May 14 at 6pm; May 21, 22, 28, 29 at 3pm and 5pm; June 4 at 5pm and 7pm; June 5 at 3pm and 5pm)
Violinist Yevgeny Kutik joins forces with baritone Ben Luxon for “The Reflected Voice: Music for Violin and Spoken Word.” The program includes two works by British composer Richard Pantcheff: To Autumn, featuring British poetry on the theme of autumn, and the world premiere of New England Elegy, with a text by Nathaniel Hawthorne, on Saturday at 4pm at Stockbridge Congregational Church in Stockbridge, Mass., as part of the Music on Main series. Kutik will also perform Bach’s Adagio and Fugue from Bach’s Sonata No. 3 in C Major. (Saturday, May 14)
And finally, alternative rockers Crash Test Dummies, best known for their 1990s hits including “Superman’s Song” and “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm,” perform at the Egg in Albany tonight at 7:30pm. (May 13)
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.com
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