This week’s highlights include several chamber music concerts, a visit from a classic folk-rock group from the late 1980s, a star-studded literary event, some old-fashioned rockabilly, a few new art shows and a salute to an avant-garde film pioneer.
Autumn is chamber-music season in the region, and violinist Paul Huang and pianist Louis Schwizgebel will play works by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Kreisler and Corigliano in the final concert of the season at Tannery Pond Concerts in the Tannery on the grounds of the Darrow School in New Lebanon on Saturday at 6pm.
Mirror Visions Ensemble brings its "Concert à la Carte" – featuring food-themed songs by the likes of Barber, Berg, Bernstein, Bolcom, Porter and Schwartz - to Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall on the Williams College campus in Williamstown on Saturday at 8pm.
St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble will perform works by Bach, Mozart, and Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington on Saturday at 7:30pm, in a presentation by Berkshire Bach.
Folk-rock group 10,000 Maniacs – one of the original “indie-rock” groups – brings its vintage 1980s “college-rock” sound to the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield on Saturday at 8pm. At the height of their popularity, when Natalie Merchant was still their lead singer, the upstate New York band – from Jamestown, N.Y. – had a number of hit singles, especially on MTV, including “Like The Weather,” “What’s The Matter Here?” “Eat for Two,” as well as covers of Cat Steven’s “Peace Train” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Because the Night”. At this point, Mary Ramsey has been lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs for far longer than Natalie Merchant ever was.
Authors Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt and Roy Blount Jr. - the three distinguished writers who inaugurated the program in 1994 – will bring this year’s Music & More series to a conclusion at the New Marlborough Meeting House on Saturday at 4:30pm. The event will be hosted by Mitchel Levitas of the New York Times, and will also include an appearance by documentary filmmaker Ellen Weissbrod, screening clips of her prize-winning film “a woman like that” — the story of Artemisia Gentileschi, a 17th-century woman artist.
Celebrating their 25th anniversary this year, Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys brings their swinging brand of neo-rockabilly to Club Helsinki Hudson tonight at 9pm. The group appeals to fans of Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Buck Owens, Chuck Berry, and, of course, Elvis Presley – which means, pretty much, everyone.
Mixed media constructions and drawings by Linda Cross, paintings by William Clutz, and encaustic works by Allyson Levy and Joshua Brehse will be on view at Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson through Sunday, November 2. There will be an opening reception for the new exhibition on Saturday from 6 to 8pm.
Works by seminal avant-garde filmmaker Gregory J. Markopoulos will be screened and discussed as part of the September edition of Basilica Screenings at Basilica Hudson on Sunday at 8pm. Filmmaker Robert Beavers and film curator Mark Webber will be in attendance for a discussion of Markopoulos and his work. The event, billed as "Film as Film: Three Films by Gregory J. Markopoulos," will include rare screenings of three early Markopoulos films -- “Ming Green,” “Twice a Man,” and “Through a Lens Brightly: Mark Turbyfill” -- that were made in the United States in the mid-1960s.
Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkishire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at www.rogovoyreport.com