Tonight at 8pm, the Colony in Woodstock, N.Y., features Indigo Sparke and band, featuring Aaron Dessner of the National. Sparke is an Australian folk-rock singer-songwriter who writes and performs haunting, dark, and moody songs, much in the vein of the National. Sparke has been featured on NPR Music’s Tiny Desk concert series. (Thu, Jan 19 and Fri, Jan 20)
Singer-songwriters Lila Blue and Philip Roebuck and bassist Saskia Lane perform at Time and Space in Hudson, N.Y., on Saturday at 8pm. Roebuck, from Virginia, plays resonator guitar and percussion at the same time, in his mix of blues, gospel, old time, bluegrass and sea shanties. Lila Blue’s dreamy, acoustic, evocative country-folk has her in demand as a composer for theater, film, and TV. And Brooklyn-based Saskia Lane is a Juilliard-trained bassist, composer, performer, puppet maker and educator whose work spans many genres, including classical, jazz-pop, and klezmer. (Sat, Jan 21)
Twin opera singers Jim and John Demler bring My Evil Twin, their intimate musical about identical twin opera singers named Jim and John Demler, to Dewey Hall in Sheffield, Mass., on Sunday at 2pm. The songs by Eric Sawyer blend opera with elements of Broadway and pop and provide the twins the chance to unleash their virtuosic basso voices with madcap energy and emotion. (Sun, Jan 22)
On Sunday at 3pm, Capital Region Classical presents a Lunar New Year Celebration at the Massry Center for the Arts in Albany with the world-renowned Wu Man on pipa and Hsin-Yun Huang on viola. Man is the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and a founding member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, and Huang is a former member of the Borromeo Quartet. The program includes traditional Chinese folk melodies and a variety of other works. (Sun, Jan 22)
Philadelphia’s Slaughter Beach, Dog bring their wry brand of moody folk-rock, halfway between Wilco and the National, with a little Vampire Weekend thrown in for good measure, to Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, N.Y., on Sunday at 8pm. Appropriately enough, the group has a song called “Your Cat.” And in a song called “104 Degrees,” they rhyme “bookstore lobby” with “reading Murakami.” (Sun, Jan 22)
Next Wednesday, January 25, at 7:30pm, the Williams Opera Workshop presents a concert version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute in a free performance in Chapin Hall on the campus of Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. (Wed, Jan 25)
Also next Wednesday at 7pm, Hudson Valley-based singer-songwriter Mikaela Davis and her band perform the second concert of a three-show residency at Tubby’s in Kingston, N.Y. Raised in Rochester and currently based in Catskill, Davis is a classically trained harpist whose current style brings together elements of classic rock, 1960s and ’70s pop, rootsy Americana, and delicate modern singer-songwriter sounds. She and her band Southern Star have shared bills with such names as Bon Iver, Lake Street Dive, Christian McBride, and Circles Around the Sun. (Wed, Jan 25, and Wed, Feb 1).
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.substack.com.
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