The upcoming cultural highlights in our region include folk-pop, comedy, Chinese classical music, a Latin dance party, theater, and a whole lot more.
M.A.K.U. Soundsystem brings its potent mixture of Colombian folklore, psychedelic rock, and Caribbean grooves for dancing to Club B10 at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday at 8 p.m.
Folk-pop based singer-songwriters Elizabeth and the Catapult, Emily Mure, and Matt Sucich bring their unique voices and songs to the Egremont Barn in South Egremont, Mass., on Saturday at 8 p.m. I saw Elizabeth and the Catapult there two years ago, and I especially enjoyed her soulful vibe. I wrote about the concert, saying “A dazzling performer who writes disarmingly catchy pop tunes that in another era would be instant Top 10 hits, Elizabeth has it all going on: vocal and instrumental virtuosity that betrays both her conservatory training and her inborn talent; a flair for storytelling, character portraiture, and lyrical riffs; a brilliant and diverse compositional palette that simultaneously allows her music to go anywhere it needs to while also remaining part of an overall, coherent, and personal style; and the gift of a natural ease onstage, an easy rapport with an audience ranging from solo piano ballads through R&B-infused, guitar-based hard-rocking full-band dance numbers.” Wow, that makes me want to see her all over again.
Academy Award-winning comedian Steven Wright, the king of deadpan observational comedy, brings his new standup show to UPAC in Kingston, NY, tonight at 8.
The Orchestra Now’s six-concert winter-spring season at Bard College’s Fisher Center begins on Saturday at 7 p.m., as the orchestra performs in The Sound of Spring, a Chinese New Year concert presented by the U.S.-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Central Conservatory of Music, China. Soloists from the Central Conservatory’s world-class faculty in traditional instruments will perform on Chinese percussion, erhu, pipa, sheng, and suona.
I Am, You Are, We Were, a play by Jane Denitz Smith, gets a staged reading by Berkshire Playwright’s Lab at St. James Place in Great Barrington, Mass., on Sunday at 7 p.m. Directed by Joe Cacaci, the play takes place in 1914 and today, and explores the equilibrium of two families — one Russian, one suburban Jewish — and a garage bursting with a lifetime’s worth of possessions.
Stupid F*%king Bird, a new adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull, written by Aaron Posner, runs at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY, tonight through Sunday, February 2. Directed by Kirk Jackson and produced in partnership with Bennington College, the play is “…an accessible and unfailingly delightful jaunt into misery …. absorbing in its every glance and revealing in its every sigh,” according to the Washington City Paper. The play runs Fridays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Saturdays-Sundays at 2 p.m.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkishire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.com