Selected Shorts, the popular public radio program featuring actors reading works of contemporary literature, returns to the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, Mass., with an all-new holiday-themed episode, featuring original Saturday Night Live cast member Jane Curtin, Joanna Gleason, Michel Gill, and Bhavesh Patel, on Saturday at 1pm. Curtin will read Jeanette Winterson’s “The Silver Frog,” Gleason will read “Raised by Wolves” by Simon Rich, Gill will read “The First Hanukkah” by Andy Borowitz, and Patel will read Kurt Vonnegut’s “Present for Big Saint Nick.” (Sat, Dec 14)
Pianist Jeewon Park and cellist Edward Arron, artistic directors of the Clark’s Performing Artists in Residence program, are joined by violinist Amy Schwartz Moretti and violist Che-Yen Chen for a program of works by Handel, Enescu, Mozart, and Fauré, at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., on Sunday at 2pm. (Sun, Dec 15)
The Vivace Chamber Orchestra will join forces with Close Encounters With Music artistic director and cellist Yehuda Hanani to perform works by Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Britten, Boccherini, and Barber at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, Mass., on Sunday at 4pm. The concert’s centerpiece is Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, which is said to “channel solemnity and joy into one perfect package.” Also on the musical menu are Barber’s iconic Adagio and Grieg’s Holberg Suite, offering chorale-like harmonies, joyous and lilting rhythms, and hints of a rural fiddle player. (Sun, Dec 15)
Phil Kline’s Unsilent Night – a “mobile sound-sculpture” that has become a holiday cult classic -- will return to the region in Kingston, N.Y., next Friday, December 20, at 6pm. Now in its 32nd year, Unsilent Night was first performed in New York City’s Greenwich Village as a one-time, 45-minute composition. Since then, the pioneering work of public sound art – performed by whomever shows up with a boombox or amplified digital music player (such as a smartphone) – has grown into a beloved annual event performed in communities around the world during the winter holiday season. (Fri, Dec 20)
Also of note:
Singer-songwriter Vance Gilbert brings his pointed and humorous observations-in-song to Studio 9 at Porches in North Adams, Mass., tonight at 7:30pm.
Banjo wizard Tony Trischka brings his of a winter’s night program to WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio the Linda in Albany, N.Y., tonight at 8pm.
Upstate New York husband-and-wife folk duo Kim & Reggie Harris and fellow upstate couple Magpie (Terry Leonino and Greg Artzner) join forces for their annual quartet concert, Sing Solstice!, at 8th Step at Proctors in Schenectady, N.Y., on Sunday, December 15, at 7pm.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.substack.com.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.