Rogovoy Report 3/31/17

The cultural highlights in our region this weekend include a cutting-edge comedy festival; new music inspired by Norman Rockwell; alt-cabaret; photography; and a whole lot more.

Comedian Phoebe Robinson headlines the High Mud Comedy Festival, hosted by comic Dave Hill, in the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., tonight and tomorrow. In addition to stand-up comedy, the festival includes comedy films; funny museum tours with performers; a joke cam; workshops; and a comedian-led beer-tasting and tour of Bright Ideas Brewery on the MASS MoCA campus. After the mainstage acts are done, the top regional comedians will pop up in the city’s nightspots for a late-night comic invasion of North Adams.

“Paintings in Song: Visions of Norman Rockwell,” a multimedia work with choruses, musicians, and graphic animation, by Berkshire-based composer John Myers, will have its world premiere as part of the “Norman Rockwell and Alice Parker: Visions of America in Art and Song” program presented by Crescendo at Saint James Place in Great Barrington, Mass., on Saturday at 3 and 7pm.; and at Kent School’s Mattinson Auditorium in Kent, Conn., on Sunday, at 4pm.  Myers’ work celebrates Norman Rockwell’s timeless images in a musical setting and highlights the continued relevance of the cultural values represented in Rockwell’s paintings. Myers based his composition on the iconic “Four Freedoms” and five other paintings by Rockwell.

WAM Theatre stages a limited-run remount of the company’s very successful 2013 production of Lauren Gunderson’s “Emilie: La Marquise Du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight,” featuring the entire original cast, at Shakespeare & Company’s Tina Packer Playhouse in Lenox, Mass., tonight through Sunday, April 9. 

Violist Stephanie Griffin and veteran new music pianist Cheryl Seltzer will play contemporary works by Wolpe, Mamlok, Babbitt, and a piece written especially for these performers by Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra in the Kellogg Music Center at Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington, Mass.,  on Sunday, at 3pm. The concert, a presentation of the South Berkshire Concert Series, will also include the “Arpeggione” Sonata by Franz Schubert and a piece by Stephanie Griffin herself.

Photographer Marisa Scheinfeld will speak about her years-long project documenting the ruins of the once vital resorts in the Catskill Mountains and sign copies of her new book, “The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland” at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., on Sunday, at 2pm.

Chuck Prophet, one of contemporary rock’s greatest songwriters, brings his band the Mission Express to Club Helsinki Hudson tonight at 9pm. With the aid of the Mission Express, his band of heartbreakers, Chuck Prophet embraces a host of traditional and classic sounds, including country, soul, LA rock, indie-rock, folk-rock, and plain old rock ‘n’ roll. Prophet writes and sings wry, trenchant rock songs that connect the dots, musical and otherwise, between Tom Petty, R.E.M., Link Wray, and Warren Zevon. Famed alt-country group The Bottle Rockets will warm up the crowd for Prophet.

Alt-cabaret vocalist Joseph Keckler, whom the New York Times called “an operatic singer whose range shatters the conventional boundaries of classical singing,” performs a concert to benefit Animalkind, the cat rescue and adoption center in Hudson, at Club Helsinki Hudson on Sunday evening at 7pm. Keckler is a widely-acclaimed singer, writer, songwriter, and artist, with a rich, versatile three-plus octave voice and sharp wit. His compelling performances combine humor, autobiography, and classical themes from a unique perspective.