New York-based Complexions Contemporary Ballet pays tribute to David Bowie with their evening-length Bowie-inspired work, STAR DUST, featuring a host of Bowie’s greatest hits, in the Ted Shawn Theatre at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, Mass., today through Sunday. Complexions is known for its lively contemporary ballets set to music by the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Metallica, and Lenny Kravitz. (Fri-Sun, Aug 11-13)The Bard Music Festival continues its exploration of the life and work of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, with programs at the Bard Fisher Center today through Sunday. Highlights include The Lark Ascending: British Music for Small Orchestra, featuring works by Vaughan Williams alongside Elgar, Delius, and Gustav Holst, tonight at 8pm, and A New Elizabethan Age?, featuring the American Symphony Orchestra performing works by Sibelius, Elizabeth Maconchy, and William Walton along with two of Vaughan Williams’s late symphonies, on Saturday at 8 p.m. (Fri-Sun, Aug 11-13)
Terezín Music Foundation director Mark Ludwig explores the Nazi “cultural cleansing” policy targeting jazz, modernist, and non-Aryan — including all Jewish — composers before and during World War II, in Immersion: Defiant Music Part 1, at the Linde Center at Tanglewood, today at 4:30 p.m. The exploration continues Saturday at 3 p.m., in a program showcasing music and art created by prisoners in the Terezin concentration camp. (Fri-Sat, Aug 11-12)
Violinist/violist Miranda Cuckson, guitarist/composer Pedro Cortes, and percussionist/vocalist Jose Moreno join forces for a concert fusing flamenco and classical violin at First Reformed Church in Chatham, N.Y., on Saturday at 6 p.m., as part of the Garage at Chatham music series. The trio will perform Grace and Passion, by Pedro Cortes and Dave Soldier, who has performed as violinist, guitarist, and composer/arranger with Bo Diddley, John Cale, and Kurt Vonnegut. (Sat, Aug 12)
The London-based Marmen Quartet performs works by Haydn, Beethoven, and Ligeti at Tannery Pond, located at the Darrow School in New Lebanon, N.Y., on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Presented by Capital Region Classical, the quartet won first prize at both the 2019 Bordeaux and Banff International String Quartet Competitions. (Sat, Aug 12)
Seven-time Grammy Award-winning Latin jazz pianist Arturo O’Farrill leads his quartet in a program of Cuban-influenced jazz at Maverick Concerts in Woodstock, N.Y., on Saturday at 8pm, as part of Maverick’s Latin Voices: Celebrating Hispanic and Latino Traditions in Classical and Jazz series. The series continues Sunday at 4 p.m., when Maverick presents the Dali Quartet, focusing on masterpieces of the Spanish and Latin American repertoire. (Sat-Sun, Aug 12-13)
Israeli vocalist Lala Tamar brings her contemporary blend of Middle Eastern fusion to the Race Brook Lodge in Sheffield, Mass., on Sunday at 8 p.m. Accompanied by guitarist Ofer Ronen, Lala Tamar draws on her Moroccan and Brazilian ancestry to create a unique blend of world music uniting Latin and Arab, Jewish and Muslim, African and Asian, East and West, with percolating contemporary pop, hip-hop, and electronic textures. (Sun, Aug 13)
And finally, the Grammy Award-nominated Neave Trio -- featuring violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov, and pianist Eri Nakamura -- will perform Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 1, op. 8; Ravel’s Piano Trio in A minor, op. 67; and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Five … Melodies for Piano Trio in the free Concerts at 7 chamber music series based at the Plainfield Congregational Church in Plainfield, Mass., on Monday at 7 p. m. (Mon, Aug 14)
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.substack.com.
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