Touki Delphine, an artist collective of musicians, performers, and visual artists, brings its multimedia work FIREBIRD, inspired by composer Igor Stravinsky’s 1919 “Firebird Suite,” to the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., with viewings today and Saturday. The “rule-breaking” concert program includes an “orchestra” of light -- over 600 recycled car taillights sourced locally in the Berkshires -- that will illuminate the dance of the firebird. (Fri-Sat, Feb 2-3)
New York-based pianist Umi Garrett performs works by J. S. Bach, Franz Schubert, Clara Schumann, and works composed by Williamstown’s own Stephen Dankner at The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., on Saturday at 2pm. Garrett has recorded three solo albums and an upcoming debut chamber album of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Five Sonatas for Piano and Cello. (Sat, Feb 3)
The Orchestra Now (TŌN) launches its 2024 winter/spring season at Bard’s Fisher Center with a concert featuring Metropolitan Opera star Stephanie Blythe in an all-Brahms program on Saturday at 7pm, and Sunday at 3pm. Mezzo-soprano Blythe performs Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, based on a Goethe poem and composed as a wedding gift for the daughter of Robert and Clara Schumann. The program also features tenor Joshua Blue in the cantata Rinaldo, inspired by another Goethe poem about a knight enchanted by a cunning sorceress. (Sat-Sun, Feb 3-4)
The Apollon Musagète Quartet will perform works by Shostakovich, Schubert, and Dvořák at Union College’s Memorial Chapel in Schenectady, N.Y., on Sunday at 3pm, as part of the Capital Region Classical series. The string quartet, based in Poland, received the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award in 2014. (Sun, Feb 4)
Visual artist Phillip Schwartz’s Shoah: A Meditation on The Holocaust is on view at Christ Church Episcopal in Hudson, N.Y., through Sunday, February 11. Schwartz’s exhibition is inspired by the Stations of the Cross, the story of the Passion of the Christ told through visual art that has been used for centuries in Christian prayer and meditation. The installation is a combination of egg tempera paintings, icons, and textile works. Many of the images in these works are based on open-source photographs housed in the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. Schwartz is a Hudson-based artist and iconographer whose work has been shown locally and internationally. The installation in the church is one of serenity and solemnity, a triumph of formalism and a rare case of creating beautiful images that express humanity at its most degraded. (runs through Sun, Feb 11)
Also of note:
Singer-songwriter Dan Bern brings his outspoken, original folk-rock songs to Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., on Saturday at 8pm. (Sat, Feb 3)
Crescendo presents a program of Renaissance motets at Trinity Church in Lakeville, Conn., on Saturday at 3pm, and at St. James Place in Great Barrington, Mass., on Sunday at 4pm. (Sat-Sun, Feb 3-4)
Wilco guitarist Nels Cline brings his Concentrik Quartet to the Falcon in Marlboro, N.Y., next Wednesday, February 7, at 7pm. (Wed, Feb 7)
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.substack.com.
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