This weekend’s highlights include a film festival, chamber music, orchestral music, a weird science event, some rock ‘n’ roll music and some spooky theater to get you in the mood for Halloween.
The five-day FilmColumbia festival – running through this Sunday – celebrates its 15th anniversary with screenings of internationally award-winning films and film-related activities in both Chatham and, for the first time, in Hudson. This year’s festival features an array of prize-winning films and audience favorites from prestigious international film festivals including Cannes, Toronto, New York, Berlin and Sundance.
Close Encounters With Music opens its 2014-15 season of chamber music concerts with an all-Mozart program at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington on Saturday, at 6pm. The program includes Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in F, Flute Quartet in D, the Piano Quartet in E-Flat, the Rondo in A minor for solo piano, and, the rarely heard Quintet for Glass Harmonica, the instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin.
The Secret Science Club, a regular gathering in New York City featuring mind-bending lectures, volatile experiments, and thematic chemical libations, makes its MASS MoCA debut in Club B-10 in North Adams on Saturday at 8pm, with a screening of “Particle Fever,” a "dazzling, dizzying documentary" that follows six high-energy scientists as they seek to unravel the mysteries of the universe. Physicist Chad Orzel, who teaches at Union College, and who is an alumnus of nearby Williams College, will be on hand to answer questions about all things physics before and after the screening.
Works by Schubert and Chopin are on tap for the opening concert for the 2014–15 season of the American Symphony Orchestra in the Fisher Center at Bard College in Annandale on Hudson tonight and tomorrow night at 8 p.m. The program includes Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 11, with Maryna Kysla ’15, on piano; and Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C Major also known as Schubert’s “Great Symphony”. The concert will be conducted by Leon Botstein, the ASO’s music director.
The Schoemer Formation, an all-star trio featuring spoken word performer Karen Schoemer on lead vocals, “Wreckless” Eric Goulden on fuzz bass, and Amy Rigby on guitars and keyboards, will perform at the Half Moon in Hudson tonight at 9pm. Also on the bill are the Jam Messengers from New York City.
Brooklyn-based quartet Lip Talk and San Francisco rockers Yassou Benedict bring their respective approaches to dream-pop to Helsinki Hudson on Saturday night at 9pm. Lip Talk was originally formed in Saratoga Springs, where they were known as Railbird; Yassou Benedict were formed right here in Hudson, and resident rock star Melissa Auf Der Maur contributed vocals to one of their early recorded efforts.
Jeffrey Hatcher’s theatrical adaptation of “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James will be presented by the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon on Tuesday, October 28, at 7:30pm and again at Boscobel House and Gardens in Garrison from Wednesday, October 29, through Saturday, November 1, at 7pm. A reception will follow each performance.
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