The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include indie-pop, theater, art, chamber music, jazz … plus a whole lot more.
Indie-pop artist Half Waif brings her shimmering electropop to Courtyard D at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday at 7 and 9pm. The Williamstown native, who grew up as Amanda Rose Plunkett and is also known as Nandi Rose, is also a member of indie-rock band Pinegrove. She has received rave reviews from Pitchfork Magazine, has toured with Mitski and Iron & Wine, and, for this special homecoming concert, will be joined by Elena Moon Park on violin and Spencer Zahn on bass.
Theater lovers take note – on Saturday at 2pm, Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., will present a staged reading of the bard’s “Pericles” outdoors at the Wooden O Theatre.
Works by six Berkshire artists are included in “The New Realism,” a new exhibition opening today at Bernay Fine Art in Great Barrington. Artists featured include Stephanie Anderson, Warner Friedman, Jessica Hess, Phil Knoll, David Ricci, and David Vickery.
The Berkshire Trio is at the Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge on Saturday at 2pm. Violinist/violist Bing Liu, violinist/violist Eileen Markland, and cellist Jay Shulman join forces for a program featuring classical string trios.
On Saturday at 5pm, Clarion Concerts will livestream a concert by Lark and Thurber. Violinist Tessa Lark and composer/bassist Michael Thurber fuse their classical backgrounds and their American roots-music influences to create a wholly original sound in a program ranging from Bach to bluegrass and beyond.
On Saturday evening, the West Stockbridge Chamber Players perform at the Foundry in West Stockbridge at 7pm. The program includes works by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Schubert, and the musicians include cellist William Rounds, clarinetist Catherine Hudgins, and clarinetist William Hudgins.
Then on Sunday at 3pm, the concert series at Roe Jan Park’s Hilltop Barn in Hillsdale will close out with Eribeth Chamber Players, an instrumental duo based in the Capital District who have performed across the globe. Founding members Elizabeth Silver and Erica Pickhardt are members of the Albany Symphony and have performed chamber music together for more than 30 years.
If you, like me, loved David Bowie’s farewell album, ‘Blackstar,” then you might want to check out Donny McCaslin & Friends at the Falcon in Marlboro, NY, on Saturday at 7pm. Saxophonist and bandleader McCaslin and his band performed a lot of the music on Bowie’s final album, imparting their particular sonic vibe to the intriguing, magical effort.
A new album by Capital District composer and keyboardist Bob Gluck is worthy of note. Gluck’s “Early Morning Star” opens with vocalist Andrea Wolper chanting "Arise, oh my beloved," the phrase serving to establish the foundation of what's to come musically and thematically: an invocation to listeners to harken to the medium and the message. The album draws from a multiplicity of genres and influences, including collective improvisation, modern jazz, avant-garde, klezmer, Middle Eastern, and Hebrew texts ostensibly addressing social justice concerns—yet in sum it presents a remarkably unified sound and vision that can only be called Bob Gluck music.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.com
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