Grammy Award-nominated guitarist and songwriter Gary Lucas brings an eclectic program of music ranging from 1930 Chinese pop to Captain Beefheart to Jeff Buckley to Spencertown Academy Arts Center in Spencertown, N.Y., on Saturday at 7:30pm. Lucas has veritably created his own guitar language and applied it to original songs, blues, works by Wagner and the Rolling Stones, electronic soundscapes, and more. Lucas has performed and collaborated with the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Lou Reed, John Cale, Patti Smith, Chris Cornell, Bryan Ferry, Nona Hendryx, Bob Weir, Nick Cave, Thurston Moore, and many others. He has also recorded over 50 albums to date in his own right in a variety of genres — including jazz, rock, classical, folk, blues, avant-garde, and world music — and has performed in over 40 countries. Lucas will perform solo on acoustic and electric guitars. (Sat, Feb 24)
Johanna Hedva will debut songs from their upcoming, in-progress album, Fist, in Club B10 at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., on Saturday at 8pm. Written on a haunted acoustic guitar that disappeared for ten years and then returned in the winter of 2023, the songs from Fist materialize as “hag blues, succubus folk, and bog-witch lullabies.” Hedva’s trademark voice, trained in both classical opera and Korean P’ansori, “finds an uncanny other place in croaking, screeching, growling, and screaming, while slouching toward a serenade.” (Sat, Feb 24)
New Zealand-born violinist Geneva Lewis and pianist Janice Carissa perform works by Handel, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Poldowski, Coleridge-Taylor, and Elgar’s E-minor Sonata at Union College’s Memorial Chapel on Sunday at 3pm, in a concert presented by Capitol Region Classical. Lewis is the recipient of a 2022 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and Grand Prize winner of the 2020 Concert Artists Guild Competition. (Sun, Feb 25)
The Grand Kyiv Ballet presents the Albany Premiere of its Giselle at The Egg on Saturday at 7pm, and at the Palace Theatre on Wednesday, February 28, at 7pm. The production, featuring music composed by Adolf Adan, showcases the talents of the Grand Kyiv principal dancers Kateryna Kukhar and Oleksandr Stoianov, both hailing from the National Opera of Ukraine. The 19th-century classical ballet filled with romance, ghosts, tragedy, and betrayal is considered a masterwork of the genre. (Sat, Feb 24; Wed, Feb 28)
Also of note:
Hungarian pianist Gabor Csalog performs works by Hungarian composers, most notably Bartok, plus compositions by Ligeti, Liszt, and Schumann, in a salon concert in a private home in Hudson, N.Y., presented by the Hudson Festival Orchestra today at 3pm.
Mary Fahl, formerly of October Project, brings her new music and her new band to the Towne Crier Café in Beacon, N.Y., tonight.
Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue bring their Shortygras Tour featuring their jazzy funk-rock to UPAC in Kingston, N.Y., tonight at 8pm.
Ice Rasta and Father Hotep bring their mixed- and multi-media sounds to The Clark in Williamstown, Mass., on Saturday at 7pm.
The Hot Club of New England pays tribute to Duke Ellington, performing renditions of his works in the “Gypsy jazz” style of Django Reinhardt, at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Mass., on Saturday at 7:30pm, in a presentation by Berkshires Jazz.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.substack.com.
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