Photography, oil painting, fine furniture, klezmer and jazz – it’s all in a weekend’s work here on the Rogovoy Report.
An exhibition of photographs of the historic Central Mexican village of San Miguel de Allende is currently on display at Art On Main, the gallery at Barnbrook Realty in Great Barrington. All the work in the exhibit, which runs through June 27, was created by the growing number of Berkshire residents who have been lured to San Miguel to live or vacation during the winter months. Among the photographers whose work is included are Gina Hyams and Honey Sharp. The exhibit was curated by Peggy Reeves.
New York City vocal ensemble Tenet will perform a program of works by J.S. Bach and his predecessors, including Dietrich Buxtehude, at the First Congregational Church in Great Barrington on Saturday at 7pm, as part of the Berkshire Bach series. "Bach and His Predecessors: Choral Works" offers a glimpse of the musically rich world from which Bach emerges.
The quaint, Norman Rockwell village of Stockbridge will play host to the Stockbridge Art Lab, a series of “pop-up” galleries based at local businesses exhibiting the work of IS183 Art School’s faculty artists, beginning today and running through June. This wide-ranging, interactive community spectacle will be free and open to the public, with an opening at Hall’s Garage today at 5pm, with ‘galleries’ open for viewing from 6pm to 8 pm rain or shine.
Oil paintings by Bob Crimi and custom-made furniture by Joel Mark are on display now through June 2 at Neumann Fine Art in Hillsdale. Crimi’s work is influenced by the great jazz bebop players he used to go hear in clubs in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1977 JoelMark founded a custom architectural woodworking company located in Brooklyn, N.Y. He moved to Hillsdale about 15 years ago.
April may be the cruelest month, but it was also Jazz Appreciation Month. The month of May, however, is not so cruel, and so it brings more jazz to downtown Pittsfield, with a performance by the Williams College Jazz Ensemble tonight, and Royal Hartigan’s Blood Drum Spirit ensemble on Sunday, in two free shows sponsored by Berkshires Jazz.
Golem, widely considered one of the best Yiddish-klezmer ensembles on a vibrant, international scene, will perform its unique blend of Eastern European folk and theatre songs, as well as original numbers at Club Helsinki Hudson on Sunday at 8p.m. Led by singer-folklorist-accordionist Annette Ezekiel, Golem performs Yiddish folk and theater music with Balkan, Slavic and Gypsy influences. Golem has stumbled upon a rich vein of traditional music in passionate songs of the Old World. And with only a slight modicum of non-traditional elements added to the arrangements – a little jazz here, a pop quotation there, some rock ‘n’ roll bounce in the drums here, a surprisingly sympathetic bit of Latin or swing there – Golem has unearthed a treasure trove. Think of it as another world of standards – the eastern, darker, but no less sophisticated inverse face of the so-called Great American Songbook.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkshire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, online at ROGOVOY REPORT DOT COM.