Celtic baroque band Makaris brings its singular Irish-accented twist on the music of J.S. Bach to the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, Mass., on Sunday at 4pm, in a presentation by Close Encounters With Music. Scottish music proved creatively productive and financially lucrative for several composers during the 18th century. Haydn and Beethoven alone arranged hundreds of these traditional songs for home performance. Makaris shows why this repertoire proved so popular with audiences and artists. (Sun, Mar 17)
New York Comedy Club and the Borscht Belt Museum are joining forces to create a new stand-up comedy series at Shadowland Stages in Ellenville, N.Y., a Catskills resort town once home to some of the region’s most storied hotels and nightclubs, among them the Fallsview, the Granite, and the Homowack, which regularly presented comedy greats for a good part of the 20th century. For the series debut on Saturday at 7pm and 9pm, some of the country’s best-known comedians, among them Michael Hirsch, Jesse Eigner, Rachel Williams, and Eitan Levine, will update Borscht Belt comedy for the 21st century. (Sat, Mar 16)
Richard Thompson, Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams, the Mammals, Laura Cantrell, Peter Case, Tarbox Ramblers, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band are just a handful of the fifty-plus artists taking part in the 10th annual Back Porch Festival, at ten different venues in Northampton, Mass., starting tonight and running through Sunday. The festival kicks off with an all-star tribute to Willie Nelson at the Academy of Music tonight at 8pm, featuring Mark Erelli, Kris Delmhorst, Jeffrey Foucault, the Deep River Ramblers, and many more. (Fri-Sun, Mar 15-17)
The Takács Quartet returns to Union College’s Memorial Chapel in Schenectady, N.Y., on Sunday at 3pm, to perform a new work written for them by Nokuthula Ngwenyama, between masterworks of Haydn and Beethoven. Flow was written for the Takács as a meditation on the theme of climate change, commissioned by nine concert presenters throughout the U.S., including Capital Region Classical. (Sun, Mar 17)
Also of note:
Amy Crossman brings her one-woman play The Great Divide to Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill, N.Y., tonight through Sunday.
Alt-country band Loose Cattle bring their blend of outlaw country and rootsy punk rock to WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio The Linda tonight at 8pm.
Sweden’s Lena Jonsson Trio brings its blend of Swedish folk music, pop, rock and American roots music to the Ashokan Center in Olivebridge, N.Y., tonight at 7pm.
Blues rock guitarist and singer-songwriter Samantha Fish will perform at the Mahaiwe on Saturday at 8pm.
Folk-pop royalty Lucy Wainwright Roche brings her literate, wry observations to Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., on Saturday at 8pm.
The Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck presents a modern staging of Shakespeare’s Hamlet now through Sunday, March 24.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.substack.com.
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