The cultural highlights for our region this weekend include cello music by Bach, choral music by Brahms, jazz, blues, Beethoven … and a whole lot more.
On Sunday at 7:30 p.m., Close Encounters With Music presents “Forever Bach—The Celestial Suites for Unaccompanied Cello” as a free livestream from the stage of the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington. These six suites are a specialty of Close Encounters artistic director Yehuda Hanani, who has recorded them, presented master classes focusing on them, and performed them widely around the world, so it will be a real treat to get to hear them performed in all their solo glory by Yehuda. For more details visit cewm.org.
Berkshire Lyric continues its online choral series on Monday, March 1 at 7 p.m. with a performance of Brahms’s German Requiem. For more information visit berkshirelyric.org.
The Kenny Werner Trio, featuring the famed pianist best known for his effortless improvisation with his own trio and in the service of such jazz greats as Joe Lovano, Toots Thielemans, and The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, performs at the Falcon in Marlboro, N.Y., at 7 p.m.
Legendary blues harpist Felix Cabrera performs at the Towne Crier in Beacon, N.Y., tonight at 7. Felix was born in Havana and lived there for a few years before his family moved to Miami and then Union City, N.J. He fell in love with the sound of harmonica when he heard Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" on the radio. He began playing NYC nightclubs in the 1970s, including the famed Lone Star Cafe, where he once opened for James Brown. He was the inaugural act at the blues club Manny's Car Wash and appeared on Ruth Brown's NPR program "Blues Stage." Felix has long performed with Jimmy Vivino and recorded a live album with Vivino's group at Levon Helm's Ramble in Woodstock, which appropriately featured Cabrera on Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm." For tonight’s performance at the Towne Crier Felix will be joined by blues guitarist Arthur Neilson.
This week’s new BSO NOW ONLINE video stream features Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Andris Nelsons leading the BSO in Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 5 and 7 and Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers; plus a chamber music performance of Schoenberg’s Phantasy for violin and piano, featuring BSO violinist Haldan Martinson and guest pianist Max Levinson. Each new BSO NOW video launches at www.bso.org/now on Thursdays at noon.
Artist Tania El Khoury and musician Basel Zaraa collaborate in As Far As Isolation Goes (Online) as part of Bard Fisher Center's Upstreaming series. Reimagined for an online context during the coronavirus lockdown, the piece is built from their original collaboration entitled As Far As My Fingertips Take Me, in which El Khoury commissioned Zaraa to record a rap song inspired by the journey his sisters made from Damascus to Sweden. In As Far As Isolation Goes, Zaraa and El Khoury worked together to create another iteration of their previous piece focused on mental and physical health experiences of refugees in the United Kingdom. Zaraa created a song inspired by conversations with friends and colleagues who have recently claimed refuge in the UK. For more info visit fishercenter.bard.edu.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.com
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