The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include a sound installation, chamber music, literary readings, dramatic readings, more chamber music … plus a whole lot more…
This weekend at MASS MoCA, the genre-bending trio Son Lux kicks off Auditory After Hours, a new series giving visitors to the cultural laboratory in North Adams a chance to engage with art while listening to a bespoke experience curated by cutting-edge musicians. Included in this weekend’s program is a special preview of Son Lux’s upcoming album Tomorrows II, arranged specifically for MASS MoCA’s galleries, a sort of site-specific musical installation.
As a huge David Bowie fan, I can’t believe I’ve never seen the movie musical “Labyrinth,” which features Bowie playing along with Jim Henson puppets. The Mahaiwe in Great Barrington is actually screening the film live before a limited number of socially distanced viewers tonight at 7pm and tomorrow at 4 and 7pm. So I guess I have no excuse after this weekend to say that I’ve never seen this odd, cultural mashup.
On Sunday at 7:30pm, the Close Encounters With Music chamber series presents a free livestream of French music being performed at the Mahaiwe. The program will include works by Saint Saëns, Debussy, Fauré and Boulanger. Close Encounters With Music artistic director Yehuda Hanani will set the stage with a brief talk about the greatest period of creativity among French composers, which coincides with the emergence of Impressionist art. The program includes Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 1, Debussy’s Cello Sonata, Saint Saëns’s Rondo Capriccioso, and Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps. More info is available at cewm.org.
Also on Sunday, the West Stockbridge Chamber Players present a virtual benefit concert from the stage of the Old Town Hall in West Stockbridge, featuring works by Prokofiev and Brahms. Artistic director Catherine Hudgins on clarinet will be joined by Sheila Fiekowsky on violin, Lisa Kim on violin, Daniel Getz on viola, and Adam Esbensen on cello in a program that features Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two Violins in C Major, op 56, and Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115. The concert will remain available for viewing until November 22nd. Visit www.weststockbridgehistory.org for more information.
Shakespeare & Company’s virtual reading series continues this weekend with KERNEL OF SANITY by Kermit Frazier, running today through Sunday. The play is described thusly: “In a small Midwestern city in the late 1970s, a young actor, on his way from New York to California, takes a detour for a surprise visit to a veteran actor - an actor he's worked with in only one play, but to whom he's found himself inexorably, if nearly unwittingly, attached. In a taunt, tense 90 minutes, three people – a black man, a white man, and a white woman – clash over their contradictory senses of marginalization and betrayal, and their contrasting perceptions of illusion and reality.”
And finally, author Danielle Evans is getting a lot of press for her new short story collection, “The Office of Historical Corrections,” which explores how history haunts us, personally as well as collectively. Evans will take part in The Mount’s free, virtual True Conversations series with Heidi Pitlor, editor of Best American Short Stories, on Sunday at 4pm. For more information go to edithwharton.org.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available 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.