The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include chamber music, orchestral music, experimental movement, jazz-funk, choral music, and a whole lot more.
Mid-Hudson Valley resident Marco Benevento performs two solo shows featuring his soulful keyboard jams in Courtyard D at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday at 7:30pm and 9:30pm. Benevento’s virtuosic approach to the piano is celebrated for its gritty, soulful edge. Benevento has recorded and collaborated with musicians including Andrew Barr, Billy Martin, George Porter, Mike Gordon, Trey Anastasio, and Phil Lesh.
The West Stockbridge Chamber Players will present the last in their series of outdoor summer concerts on Saturday at 2:30 and 5pm in West Stockbridge. The program will feature music by Kókai, Messiaen, and Mozart. Musicians include clarinetist Catherine Hudgins, violinist Sheila Fiekowsky, violist Daniel Getz, violinist Lisa Kim, and cellist Oliver Aldort.
D-CELL: an exhibition & durational performance in two parts, conceived and directed by multi-disciplinary visual artist David Michalek, takes place at PS21 in Chatham, N.Y., today and Saturday. Utilizing PS21’s architecture, grounds, and trails as media canvases, dancers from BodySonnet, Peridance, Gallim, and the Martha Graham Dance Company will perform decelerated sequences on sand-covered raised platforms throughout the landscape. Live music by the Neave Trio will accompany the movement, including works by Morton Feldman. The video portion of the event utilizes ultra-high-speed cameras to record scenes with well-known theater and film performers which, when played back, unfold at a glacial pace, thereby creating new layers of scenic content and meaning. Portraits in Dramatic Time features leading actors including Lili Taylor, William H. Macy, Patti LuPone, Holly Hunter, Alan Rickman, and Liev Schreiber. It will also have live musical accompaniment by the Neave Trio.
On Saturday, the second program of Bard Music Festival’s “Out of the Silence: A Celebration of Music”, streaming live from Bard College, takes place at 5:30pm. The concert offers a snapshot of contemporary music with works by three of today’s most compelling Black composers: Jessie Montgomery, Alvin Singleton, and Adolphus Hailstork, in addition to Dvo?ák’s Serenade for Strings.
On Sunday, Hershey Felder performs his one-man show, George Gershwin Alone, in a livestream from Florence, Italy, on behalf of the Berkshire Theatre Group. George Gershwin Alone tells the story of the great composer born in 1898 to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn. Together, he and his brother Ira wrote standards such as “The Man I Love,” “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “Embraceable You,” “Fascinating Rhythm,” “I Got Rhythm,” “’S Wonderful” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” His groundbreaking opera, Porgy and Bess, is now considered an American classic. All told, George Gershwin wrote more than 1,000 songs for the stage and screen as well as works for the opera house and the symphony orchestra. In 1937, Gershwin died of an undiagnosed brain tumor at the young age of 38, never knowing how famous and beloved he and his work would become.
And finally, the Cantilena Chamber Choir will present a concert in the Chinese garden at Naumkeag in Stockbridge on Sunday at 4pm. The program will include music by Bach, Chesnokov, Victoria, Barber, Copland, Erb and spiritual selections from Cantilena’s Martin Luther King Jr. concert series.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of the Rogovoy Report, available at rogovoyreport.com
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