© 2024
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
An update has been released for the Android version of the WAMC App that addresses performance issues. Please check the Google Play Store to download and update to the latest version.

Rogovoy Report 6/4/21

The cultural highlights for our region this weekend include folk-rock, chamber music, jazz, theater, Latin music … plus a whole lot more.

Legendary folksinger Tom Rush performs in downtown Pittsfield on Saturday afternoon with two shows outside, under the tent at The Colonial Theatre parking lot, at 3 and 5:30 p.m. While Rush himself is a songwriter – his best known tune is “No Regrets” – he is probably even better known for popularizing works by Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, and James Taylor, giving each of them a leg up early in their careers. Make it a weekend of folk-rock and catch singer-songwriter Mark Erelli performing at the Egremont Barn in South Egremont, Mass., tonight at 8.  

Barrington Stage Company of Pittsfield presents a streamed, virtual reading of “Get Your Pink Hands Off Me Sucka and Give Me Back” by Daniella De Jesús, the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bonnie and Terry Burman New Play Award, tonight through Sunday. The play is a kind of fever dream in which a Dominican-American student visiting the throne room of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain gets plunged into a hyperrealistic world and landscape at the time of Columbus.  

Alec MacGillis, Pittsfield native and author of “Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America,” will speak in Roche Reading Park, located next to the Lenox Library, on Sunday at 4 p.m. In his book, the award-winning journalist investigates Amazon’s impact on the wealth and poverty of towns and cities across the United States.

The Escher String Quartet kicks off the chamber music portion of the season at PS21 in Chatham, N.Y., next Tuesday, June 8 at 8 p.m., with a program including Bela Bartók’s Quartet No. 6 for Strings and the Quartet in D minor for Strings, Op. 56, plus works by Jean Sibelius and others. Recipients of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Escher was termed by the Guardian “one of the finest quartets of their generation.”  

GRAMMY-nominated jazz saxophonist and producer Marcus Strickland brings live performance back to the stage at Hudson Hall this weekend, with two concerts featuring the

Marcus Strickland Quartet on Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 5 p.m. Strickland, who has been hailed as 'one of the most creative and adventurous saxophonists on the NYC scene'," will present new arrangements of his Twi-Life repertoire. Strickland's Twi-Life music is an accessible reimagining of jazz fusion, based in jazz tradition, incorporating a wide range of artists and styles around Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and not afraid to embrace pop and funk conventions.

Tarrytown Music Hall opens its doors for the first time since the COVID lockdown for an intimate, one-night-only recital by Grammy Award-winning superstar violinist Joshua Bell, next Wednesday, June 9 at 7 p.m. Accompanied by pianist Peter Dugan, Bell will tackle two hallmarks of the violin-piano repertoire: Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 2 and Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2, along with additional works to be announced from the stage.

Spencertown Academy’s Roots & Shoots Streams will broadcast a virtual concert by Brazilian pianist Jovino Santos Neto, a three-time Latin Grammy nominee, on Saturday at 8 p.m. The free, solo piano program includes works by Neto’s musical mentor, Hermeto Pascoal, plus Neto’s own Brazilian tone poems. Neto will also pay tribute to great Brazilian composers including Jobim and Ernesto Nazareth. 

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.