Rogovoy Report For November 20, 2015

This weekend our region boasts old and new classical music, art openings, theater, and rootsy blues.

Singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt, the contemporary bard of wry romance, will perform an alphabetically ordered concert of 26 songs from his vast catalog, which includes the Magnetic Fields’ masterpiece “69 Love Songs” and two dozen albums under four different band names, in the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday at 8pm. In this stripped-down, intimate performance, Merritt will be accompanied by Magnetic Fields bandmate and cellist Sam Davol, and will mine his song catalog for material from A to Z.

The Adaskin String Trio, with clarinetist Pascal Archer and violinist Annie Trepanier, will perform one of my all-time favorite pieces of music, Grammy Award-winning composer Osvaldo Golijov’s landmark 1994 composition, “The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind,” and a piece by Mozart, at the Yiddish Book Center, on the campus of Hampshire College, in Amherst, Mass., on Sunday at 2pm.

Mark Peskanov will be the featured soloist when the Berkshire Symphony performs the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in Chapin Hall at Williams College tonight at 8pm. The program will also include Roy Harris’s Symphony No. 3, and Johannes Brahms’s Third Symphony.

“Echoes of the Borscht Belt,” a poignant series of photographs by Marisa Scheinfeld, featuring haunting contemporary images of the former thriving resort hotels in the Catskill Mountains region, in their current state, now abandoned, ghostly, and caught in a state of entropy and decay, goes on view at Valley Variety in Hudson this weekend, and will remain on view through the end of the year. There will be a ticketed artist talk and reception with the photographer on Saturday, December 12, from 5:30 to 8:30pm.

American-Canadian violinist Benjamin Bowman and Toronto-based pianist Peter Longworth will offer a program featuring Karol Szymanowski’s “Mythes: Three Poems for Violin and Piano,” Edward Elgar’s Violin Sonata, and Jean Sibelius’s Four Pieces for Violin and Piano, at the Hudson Opera House as part of Classics on Hudson’s second season on Saturday at 7pm. All three works on the program were written during the First World War.

 “Radical Inventions,” a group show featuring the work of five artists, opens at Carrie Haddad Gallery this weekend, with a reception for the artists on Sunday from 2 to 4pm. Painters David Konigsberg, of Hudson, and Ralph Stout will show recent work alongside gallery favorites of fellow artist Shawn Snow. Multi-media constructions by Stephen King will also be featured, along with large abstract works by architect turned visual artist Juan Garcia Nunez.

And roots-blues musician David Jacobs-Strain will bring his singular modern take on rootsy blues to Club Helsinki Hudson tonight at 9pm. Jacobs-Strain is a highly percussive guitarist and slide wizard, whose live shows move from humorous, subversive blues, to delicate balladry, and then swing back to swampy rock and roll.