AARON NEVILLE, OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW COMING to MASS MOCA
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – In what has become a tradition at MASS MoCA, one of the great icons of American music, Aaron Neville, helps usher in the summer season at MASS MoCA with a concert on Saturday, May 25, 2013, at 8pm, in the Hunter Center. Neville, one of the true great vocalists of the last half-century, whose musical range includes soul, R&B, pop standards, country, opera, gospel, and, of course, his native New Orleans music, will be joined by his saxophonist brother, Charles Neville – who now calls Western Massachusetts home – making for a mini-Neville Brothers reunion. Old Crow Medicine Show Previews Fall Festival at MASS MoCA. A few days later, Old Crow Medicine Show, whose hard-hitting approach to old-time country, folk, string-band and bluegrass anticipated the neo-folk revival of bands including Mumford & Sons, Lumineers and Avett Brothers, performs at MASS MoCA’s Hunter Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday, May 28, 2013, at 8pm. The show by the Nashville-based outfit serves both to kick-start MASS MoCA’s summer performance season as well as previewing the museum’s huge festival of roots music, Freshgrass, which takes place next September.
Juri Henley-Cohn stars in the title role of ‘Bashir Lazhar’ at Barrington Stage
POLITICAL DRAMA GETS U.S. PREMIERE at BARRINGTON STAGE
(PITTSFIELD, MA) – Bashir Lazhar, a drama about a French-Algerian political refugee who becomes an elementary school teacher in Montreal, written by Canadian playwright Evelyne de la Chenelière, receives its U.S. premiere run at Barrington Stage Company from Wednesday, May 22, 2013, through Sunday, June 8, 2013. Juri Henley-Cohn makes his Barrington Stage debut in the title role.
Joseph Montgomery
THREE NEW EXHIBITS OPEN at MASS MOCA
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – Three solo exhibitions featuring new and recent work, including several pieces created specifically for the museum, are opening this weekend at MASS MoCA. On Saturday, May 25, 2013, from 5 to 7pm, there will be an opening reception for Hudson, N.Y.-based artist Jason Middlebrook; Northampton native Joseph Montgomery, now of New York City; and Paris-based sculptor Guillaume Leblon. Members are admitted free; others may attend for $10 per person. Middlebrook will mount a fully functioning, 28-foot high fountain as the centerpiece of his exhibition of new and recent works at MASS MoCA. Montgomery’s Five Sets Five Reps features over twenty new and existing works made between 2007 and today. Guillaume Leblon’s Under My Shoe – his first solo exhibition in an American muesum – will feature fifteen works made over the last five years, including two major new projects created specifically for MASS MoCA, including a woven, metal sculpture and a series of plaster wall works.
Christopher O’Riley (photo by Wendy Lynch)
CHRISTOPHER O’RILEY and MATT HAIMOVITZ OPEN TANNERY POND SERIES
(NEW LEBANON, N.Y.) – Tannery Pond’s 23rd concert season, taking place in the Tannery on the grounds of the Darrow School, opens Saturday, May 25, 2013, with a concert featuring pianist Christopher O’Riley (of “From the Top” fame) and cellist Matt Haimovitz, in an all-Russian program of works by Prokofiev, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky.
Offenbach Overtures Parisa Khobdeh and Michelle Fleet (photo Paul B. Goode)
PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY RETURNS to MAHAIWE with NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE
(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) – Paul Taylor Dance Company returns to the Mahaiwe for its sixth consecutive summer season on Friday and Saturday, May 24 and May 25, 2013, at 8pm and Sunday, May 26, 2013, at 3pm and 7pm. The performances include the New England premiere of Taylor’s Perpetual Dawn (2013), which depicts young people experiencing the awakening of love, perhaps for the very first time, and the final performance of senior female dancer Amy Young with the Taylor company.
SEAN RILEY ARTWORKS on DISPLAY at ALLIUM
(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) – New works from Berkshire-based artist Sean Riley – including paintings on panel and dyed-paper collages – are now on display at Allium Restaurant in Great Barrington. Riley’s colorful works evoke certain qualities of fabric and use patterns that fold in upon themselves in origami-like fashions that give rise to a tension between flat and three-dimensional space. In his collage work, Riley soaks his paper in numerous baths of colored water, allowing the color to sink into the paper, adding a rich and tactile quality to the works. Using tape as a “resist” he is able to create patterns on the paper in much the same way that is done with traditional fabrics.