With so much going on culturally speaking in our region, this is my highly selective, curated snapshot of some of the most promising events happening this weekend …
Courtney Barnett’s touring Here & There Festival touches down in Joe's Field at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday from 1:30 to 11 p.m. In addition to Barnett, performers will also include Lucy Dacus, Men I Trust, Faye Webster, Bartees Strange, The Beths, and Hana Vu. (Sat, Aug 13)
The Nields, a long-running Western Mass.-based sister duo, bring their thoughtful blend of folk and pop and their heavenly harmonies to Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield tonight at 7. (Fri, Aug 12)
Western Mass. native Seth Glier, a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, brings his stark, moody folk-rock originals to the Guthrie Center in Great Barrington, Mass., on Saturday at 8 p.m. (Sat, Aug 13)
The Rhythm Future Quartet brings its original take on Gypsy jazz to the New Marlborough Meeting House on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. The virtuosic foursome, named for a Django Reinhardt tune, offers up a newly minted sound, influenced by the classic Hot Club of France yet wholly contemporary. The quartet performs dynamic and lyrical arrangements of both Gypsy jazz standards and original compositions that draw upon diverse international rhythms and musical idioms. (Sat, Aug 13)
Berkshire Theatre Group’s summer theater season at the Colonial in Pittsfield, Mass., concludes with a new stage adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic of gothic horror, “Dracula,” directed by Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winner David Auburn. The show previews tonight at 7, opens officially on Saturday night at 7, and runs through Saturday, August 27. (Aug 12-27)
Singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer recently returned home to the Hudson Valley after a two-and-a-half year lockdown in New Zealand. The visionary talent will be joined by fellow performers Gracie and Rachel plus Chris Wells and Holly Miranda in a benefit concert for O Positive on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Old Dutch Church in Kingston. (Sat, Aug 13)
The 16th annual Hudson Jazzworks concert, featuring pianist and arranger Michael Abene alongside participants of the 2022 Hudson Jazz Workshop, including co-directors Armen Donelian on piano and Marc Mommaas on saxophone, takes place at Hudson Hall on Sunday at 4 p.m. (Sun, Aug 14)
Bard SummerScape’s Bard Music Festival concludes this weekend with two concerts featuring works by Rachmaninoff. On Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Bard Fisher Center, conductor Leon Botstein leads The Orchestra Now in a diverse program called “Whose 20th Century?,” featuring works by Respighi, Cowell, Shostakovich, and Rachmaninoff’s seldom-performed Fourth Piano Concerto, with celebrated pianist Zlata Chochieva. Then on Sunday at 5 p.m., the closing concert, “Symphonic Poetry and Spirituality in the Silver Age,” revisits the artistically fruitful period before the Russian Revolution with grand-scale choral symphonies by two of its leading lights: former classmates Scriabin and Rachmaninoff. (Aug 13-14)
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.com
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