The cultural highlights for our region this weekend include chamber music, drone music, virtual theater … plus a whole lot more.Close Encounters With Music presents “Felix, Fanny and Frederic: Chopin and the Mendelssohns,” an online event on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. Its seventh and final program of the season, livestreamed from the stage of the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, the concert features a quartet performing works by Chopin, Fanny Mendelssohn and Felix Mendelssohn. Visit cewm.org for more details of how to watch this free virtual concert.
You can warm up for the Close Encounters concert on Sunday at 3 p.m. when Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington presents a new faculty concert, “Music for Viols and Harpsichord,” featuring faculty members Anne Legêne and Larry Wallach. The concert will be broadcast live via Zoom from the Kellogg Music Center on the Simon’s Rock campus, and will feature a new composition by Larry Wallach called “Little Suite,” composed to feature Anne Legêne’s tenor viol. The program also includes two works by Johann Sebastian Bach: his Partita No. 3 in A Minor for solo harpsichord, and Sonata No. 3 in G Minor for bass viol and obbligato harpsichord. Find complete details at simons-rock.edu.
Great Barrington Public Theater opens the 2021 season with a play-length series of brand-new monologues by David Mamet. "Four American Women" delivers voices and stories in the words of two famous and two anonymous women. The production can be viewed online beginning Monday, April 26, through May 9, with streaming available on many platforms. Visit greatbarringtonpublictheater.org for more details and to make reservations.
WAM Theatre in Lenox streams “THE LIGHT” by Loy A. Webb beginning Sunday, April 25 through Sunday, May 2. The 70-minute, real-time rollercoaster ride of laughter, romance, and despair uncovers how the power of radical love can be a healing beacon of light. For further details visit wamtheatre.com.
On Saturday at 3 p.m., Berkshire Playwrights Lab and the Mahaiwe Theatre present the play “Some Old Black Man,” by James Anthony Tyler, starring Wendell Pierce, who frequently appears on Berkshire stages but who is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Detective Bunk Moreland on the acclaimed TV series “The Wire.” In “Some Old Black Man,” Calvin Jones, played by Pierce, is a hip, coolly intellectual African American college professor who moves his 82-year-old ailing father from Greenwald, Mississippi into his Harlem penthouse. The play begins with an argument over what to eat for breakfast, then turns into a generational clash over race; Father-son strife escalates when their generational conflict is viewed through the lens of civil rights. Immediately following the play there will be a live Q&A and talkback. For details visit berkshireplaywrightslab.org.
Basilica Hudson's 24-Hour Drone festival plays out virtually as “Drone at Home” this weekend, with 10 hours of brand new DRONE commissions, plus 14 hours of archived highlights from past 24-HOUR DRONE events, starting at noon Saturday through noon Sunday. Artists include Chloe Alexandra Thompson, LaMont Hamilton, Brian Dewan & Ross Goldstein, Maria Chávez, and the Lumen Project. Complete details on how to stream the event are available at basilicahudson.org.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.com
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