The Berkshires

Jim Messina, whose musical legacy spans five decades and three supergroups – Buffalo Springfield, Poco, and Loggins & Messina -- performs a career retrospective featuring classics such as “Your Mama Don’t Dance,” “Angry Eyes,” “Kind Woman,” and “You Better Think Twice” at The Egg in Albany, N.Y., tonight at 7:30pm. Messina’s musical career is a testament both to being versatile and being in the right place at the right time

Before I run down the cultural highlights of the coming weekend, I wanted to share a few observations about Bob Dylan’s concert last Monday night at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady. At age 82, Dylan seemed as lively and urgent as ever. Dylan has come to terms with his voice, playing its limitations as strengths, working with it rather than against it. There is no struggle here, but rather masterful phrasing and diction, colorful tones running through his register from the top to a gleefully eerie deeper bottom.

Seth Rogovoy previews the region's weekend cultural events.

Visionary stage director R.B. Schlather brings Rodelinda, the first in an ambitious, multi-year series of operas by G.F. Handel, to Hudson Hall, with performances beginning tonight and running through Sunday, October 29. Commissioned by Hudson Hall, the production features a stellar cast and a re-orchestration performed by early music group Ruckus. In Rodelinda, a woman’s husband is missing, maybe dead. Her life as she knew it has disappeared. Villains invade her home, seeking to profit from her loss. To their surprise, she heroically overcomes her grief, defends her child and her home. After her husband’s dramatic reappearance, the evildoers are expelled, and marital order is restored. They begin again. (Fri-Sun, Oct 20-29)

Franco-Austrian artist, choreographer, and director Gisèle Vienne’s adaptation of Swiss author’s Robert Walser’s bitter family drama, L’etang (The Pond), with Pina Bausch dancer Julie Shanahan and César winner Adèle Haenel, who play all ten roles, and music by doom metal band Sunn O))) frontman Stephen O’Malley, will be staged at PS21 in Chatham, N.Y., tonight and Saturday at 7pm. The work utilizes contrasts of story and movement, an unsettling soundscape, and the incredible gifts of the two actors to create multiple levels of perception of reality and temporality, interiority and exteriority, and to magnify the family trauma central to Walser’s original piece. (Fri-Sat, Oct 13-14)

Joyous Spirit: Music for Voice, Strings and Piano, an eclectic program featuring works by Bach, Mozart, Grieg, Verdi, George Gershwin, and Amy Beach, is on tap as the opening concert of Chamber Music on the Hudson’s 2023-2024 season at the Senate Garage in Kingston, N.Y., tonight at 7pm. Orchestrated by Inessa Zaretsky, pianist and artistic director of Chamber Music on the Hudson, the concert will feature members of the Tesla Quartet and Metropolitan Opera soprano Courtney Johnson. (Fri, Oct 6)

American Celtic punk band Dropkick Murphys, two-time Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning singer and instrumentalist, MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, and composer of opera, ballet, and film Rhiannon Giddens, Aoife O’Donovan, and Lukas Nelson headline the three-day FreshGrass Festival at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., today through Sunday.

The Band of Heathens bring their unique blend of roots-rock to the Stationery Factory in Dalton, Mass., tonight at 7:30pm, and to Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, N.Y., on Saturday at 8pm. The Austin-based group, formed in 2005, incorporates influences from Americana, country blues, jam-rock, and R&B to create their heartfelt brand of rock ‘n’ roll. (Fri, Sept 15)

Pianist, actor, and playwright Hershey Felder brings his one-man show about Ludwig van Beethoven to the Colonial in Pittsfield, Mass., tonight at 7pm; Saturday at 2pm and 7pm; and Sunday at 2pm. Felder’s performance includes narrative, storytelling, and plenty of Beethoven’s powerful music. (Fri, Sep 8-Sun, Sep 10)