The highlights of the cultural weekend in our region include classical music, Americana, Broadway, Big Band, folk music, literary conversations … plus a whole lot more.
NYC-based songwriter and performer Shaina Taub will perform an array of musical selections related to activism, gender equity, and social justice in the cabaret-like setting of Club B10 at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday night at 8. Songs by the Vermont native have been performed and recorded by the likes of Audra McDonald, Sutton Foster, and Josh Groban, and she is writing an original new musical about Alice Paul and the American women's suffrage movement in the decade leading up to the passage of the 19th amendment.
The Berkshire Symphony will perform works by Mozart, Brahms, and Allen Shawn in Chapin Hall at Williams College tonight at 7:30.
Cold Chocolate brings their genre-bending style of Americana that fuses folk, funk, and bluegrass to create a unique sound all their own, to the Egremont Barn in South Egremont, Mass, tonight at 8.
The Sandisfield Arts Center will present a special evening of songs by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne on Saturday at 8 p.m. Mary Verdi, Linda Mironti, and Brian DeLorenzo will perform songs from Broadway musicals including Gypsy, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Funny Girl, accompanied by Joe Rose on piano.
Das Lied Vonder Erde, the inaugural performance of Story and Song, featuring works by Alma and Gustav Mahler performed by vocalists Heather Green and Jon Morrell, is at First Presbyterian Church of Hudson on Saturday night at 7:30. If jazz is your thing, Steven Feifke Big Band brings its original and arranged works for 17 pieces to Hudson Hall on Saturday at 7 p.m.
Canadian husband-and-wife duo the Young Novelists perform in the Flying Cat music series at Phoenicia’s United Methodist Church on Saturday at 7:30 p.m., while the Hudson Valley Philharmonic performs works by Copland, Daugherty, and Jay Ungar & Molly Mason in “Tales of Appalachia & Hemingway” at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie, NY on Saturday at 8 p.m.
The Orchestra Now Wind Quintet performs a program of works by American composers inspired by the natural world at Beattie-Powers Place in Catskill, NY, on Saturday evening at 5. The evening includes works by two brilliant woman composers, Amy Beach and Jennifer Higdon, as well as numbers by Irving Fine, Samuel Barber, and others.
Author and musician Cameron Dezen Hammon’s new memoir “This Is My Body” chronicles her zealous conversion to evangelicalism and her search for a more progressive and fluid theology, as well as the endurance of marriage in spite of an unexpected obsession that threatens to upend her carefully constructed life. She will speak about all this and more in conversation with author Hallie Goodman on Saturday at 7 p.m. at Spotty Dog Books & Ale in Hudson, NY.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkishire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.com