The weekend highlights in our region include Latin music, jazz, contemporary art; Russian music; a folksinger turned author; and a whole lot more.
Singer, songwriter, drummer, guitarist, and Latin American music researcher Ani Cordero brings her quartet, her pan-Latin stylings, and her original protest music to Club B-10 at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., on Saturday at 8pm. The Brooklyn-based, Puerto Rican songstress cut her teeth as touring drummer for the legendary Brazilian psychedelic-rock band Os Mutantes, and has toured extensively with such notable acts as Rasputina, Josh Joplin Group, and Dean and Britta, to name just a few.
Also at MASS MoCA this weekend, “The Archaeology of Another Possible Future,” by Los Angeles-based artist Liz Glynn, opens to the public on Sunday. The installation is Glynn’s largest and most ambitious project to date, a sprawling multi-sensory sculptural experience of sight, sensation, sound, and scent stretching nearly a football field in length in MASS MoCA’s Building 5.
“More” is on tap this weekend at Music & More, when award-winning author Simon Winchester interviews Roy Blount Jr., in an attempt to tease from the well-known humorist — who has a serious side — how he supposes writing and thinking and creating will flourish or otherwise in today’s new and somewhat unprecedented political climate. The discussion takes place at the Historic Meeting House in New Marlborough, Mass., on Saturday 4:30pm.
“Gaslight,” the psychological thriller that was adapted into the popular 1944 film of that name starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, and which introduced the term “gaslighting” into common parlance, is running now at Barrington Stage in Pittsfield, Mass., through Sunday Oct 22.
Singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco brings her singular brand of funky punk-folk to the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie tonight at 8pm. With her 20th studio album, “Binary,” the iconic singer-songwriter-activist-poet-DIY trendsetter returns to the outspoken political material that first brought her to the world’s attention more than 25 years ago. Andrea Gibson warms up the crowd for DiFranco.
Jazz titan Fred Hersch joins his protégé Sullivan Fortner for a unique, cross-generational double piano debut in the Fisher Center at Bard College on Saturday at 7:30pm. The Heard Fresh: Music for Two Pianos concert will include works by Hersch, Cole Porter, Thelonious Monk, and others.
The Auction Project — a jazz supergroup led by Grammy Award-winning pianist, composer and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill and alto saxophonist and composer David Bixler — performs at First United Methodist Church of Hillsdale on Saturday at 5pm. The group also features Grammy Award-winning percussionist Vince Cherico, violinist/fiddler Heather Bixler, and bassist Carlo De Rosa.
The Voxare Quartet will perform an all-Russian program accompanying “Man with a Movie Camera,” Vertov’s 1929 Soviet-era documentary film masterpiece, at Time & Space Limited in Hudson on Saturday at 7:30pm, as part of the Leaf Peeper Concert Series. Voxare’s “soundtrack” includes works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Mosolov. Documenting urban scenes in Moscow and Ukraine, “Man with a Movie Camera” captures citizens from dawn to dusk in all aspects of life, from the mundane to the sublime.
And finally, author/musician Wesley Stace, also known as John Wesley Harding, brings his Cabinet of Wonders revue – featuring a phenomenal all-star lineup, including musicians Juliana Hatfield, Tracy Bonham, Suzzy Roche, and Hudson’s own Stephin Merritt (Magnetic Fields); novelist Charles Bock; author Daniel Mendelsohn; and comedian Dave Hill– to Club Helsinki Hudson next Wednesday, October 11, at 8pm, in a program to benefit Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkishire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.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.