It’s a weekend full of new music, old music, folk music, country music, Broadway, opera, and more in our region. Here are just a few highlights.
The 14th annual Bang on a Can Summer Marathon, a six-hour, day-night, boundary-busting festival finale featuring 50-plus musicians and composers from around the world, will bring to a close this summer’s Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday, starting at 4pm and running at least until 10pm. Festival fellows, faculty, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars will perform excerpts from Philip Glass’ legendary “Einstein on the Beach,” songs by Meredith Monk, the forceful “Singing in the Dead of Night” by this year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Bang on a Can co-founder Julia Wolfe, and much more.
If it’s classics or Romantics you prefer, the Miro Quartet will perform a program featuring works by Schubert and Beethoven in the Tannery Pond Concert Series at the Darrow School in New Lebanon, NY, on Saturday at 8pm. The dynamic quartet, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, will be playing Schubert’s Quartet in G major, No. 15, and Beethoven’s Quartet in C-sharp minor, No. 14, Op. 131:2.
If it’s folk music you prefer, Judy Collins, Garnet Rogers, Susan Werner, Nerissa and Katryna Nields, June Rich, and the Duhks headline the 27th annual Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, taking place at Dodds Farm in Hillsdale, NY, today through Sunday. The festival includes concerts and workshops, hours of dancing on the 7,000-sq.-ft. dance floor, a family stage, kids activities, an international food court, and an array of vendors.
If it’s country music you prefer, Nashville-based JP Harris & the Tough Choices bring their classic country and honkytonk sounds to Club Helsinki Hudson tonight at 9 p.m. Rolling Stone magazine named JP Harris one of fall 2014’s “Country Tours Not To Miss” as well as one of “21 Must-See Country Acts at SXSW 2015.”
Is Broadway your thing? Tony and Grammy Award-winning composer Duncan Sheik returns to Powerhouse Theater at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie with an Inside Look Workshop of his brand-new musical, “Noir,” today through Sunday. This lush and mysterious new musical, inspired by radio plays and classic film noir, is the story of a heartbroken man who never leaves his apartment, consoled only by the music on the radio. Through the thin walls he hears almost every word of the couple next door and before long his eavesdropping becomes an obsession.
I know – you’re an opera fan. The first fully-staged American production of “The Wreckers” by Ethel Smyth continues its run at the Fisher Center at Bard College as part of Bard SummerScape tonight through Sunday. Although Smyth remains the only female composer whose work has ever been produced at the Metropolitan Opera, this is the first time that “The Wreckers” – her greatest contribution to the genre – has been staged in the U.S.
So that’s it. Something for everyone.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkshire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com
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