Neutral Milk Hotel
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – Indie-rock band Neutral Milk Hotel brings its farewell tour to MASS MoCA next April; Lucinda Childs’s landmark dance presentation Available Light, featuring sets by Frank Gehry and music by John Adams, will be staged in March; alt-country icon Steve Earle performs an encore gig in February, and Steven Bernstein’s Sex Mob performs its new live score to Maciste in Hell in April, as MASS MoCA announced its performing arts and exhibitions lineup for the 2015 Winter/Spring season.
Wilco‘s Solid Sound Festival kicks off MASS MoCA’s summer season Friday-Sunday, June 26-28.
Fallen heroes, collapsed economies, politics, sin, and doomsday predictions feature in Jim Shaw‘s Entertaining Doubts, as the artist takes over the second-floor galleries to mine the essentials of American cultural detritus in his largest-ever East Coast exhibition. Massive paintings on theatrical scrim, video, sculpture, and a newly commissioned work remind us that the end is near and that reality is more absurd than plausible. A member’s opening reception with the artist happens on Saturday, March 28, 5-6:30pm.
A fierce observer of contemporary culture and politics, artist Fang Lijun is a founding protagonist of the Cynical Realist movement in post-Tiananmen China. In Fang’s first major solo exhibition in the United States, a vast suite of his visually immersive, monumentally scaled paintings and rarely exhibited ink sketches is on view, as well as new works of sculptural porcelain, some of which will be produced and fired by museum visitors in a participatory kiln project set within the galleries.
On February 19, MASS MoCA exhibiting artist Mark Dion discusses his prolific career and The Octagon Room, his mini-retrospective, on view now.
Works-in-Progress
Celebrated choreographer Lucinda Childs revives Available Light, her seminal 1983 collaboration with composer John Adams and architect Frank Gehry for three work-in-progress presentations on March 6, 7, and 8, before the show begins a major domestic tour.
Helado Negro workshops his new musical/visual project Island Universe Story on January 24, with creative collaborators including Mikael Jorgensen of Wilco, members of the William Onyeabor Atomic Bomb Band, and Marc Ribot’s band.
Zammuto is Mikey Zammuto (bass), Sean Dixon (drums), Nick Zammuto (vocals, guitars) and Gene Back (guitar and keys)
Live Music
The elusive indie-rock gods Neutral Milk Hotel perform one of their final full band shows as their farewell tour stops by on April 17, an encore to frontman Jeff Mangum’s 2013 sold-out Hunter Center solo effort. Alt-country trailblazer Steve Earle returns on February 7, just before the release of his new album, Terraplane. Local hero Nick Zammuto (formerly of The Books) returns with his eponymous band for an entertaining night of mad science-music-and-video on March 21.
Up in the cabaret-style Club B-10 theater, retro-soul chanteuse Kat Edmonson brings her smooth and sultry approach on March 14. Swoon-worthy Irish singer-songwriter-raconteur Liam Ó Maonlaí performs a St. Patrick’s Day show on March 17, accompanied by some of his Hothouse Flowers bandmates. Magnetic crooner Carl Hancock Rux is up in the club on March 28 for an intimate night of songs and poetry set to live piano music.
Propulsive jazz quartet Sex Mob, led by the uber-talented composer/trumpeter Steven Bernstein, returns to the museum to perform its original live score to Maciste in Hell, a pivotal work of the Italian silent film era, on April 4.
Cameron Esposito, the edgy comic whom Jay Leno dubbed “the future of comedy,” writes a biweekly AV Club column about life as a stand-up comedian and hosts her own weekly stand-up show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in LA. She’ll say funny things on May 9.
In a rare Club B-10 dance presentation, Storyboard P and the Warriorz, a crew of smooth-moving Brooklyn dancers, break it down, street-style, on February 28.
Live Dance Music
Nomadic Massive promises a game-changing night of old-school hip-hop with live instrumentation and a global vibe on January 31, two weeks before Brooklyn-based Legs brings its dreamy indie-pop to Club B-10 for a Valentine’s Day show on February 14.
Keigwin + Company dancers in “Runaway” (photo by Matthew Murphy)
Dance
Provocative, witty, and engaging choreographer Larry Keigwin fuses high art and pure entertainment when Keigwin + Company perform two shows on April 11 and 12, a co-presentation with Jacob’s Pillow Dance.
Documentary Film Series
The art of deceit takes center stage in the four films that comprise our documentary series Deception! An arms-smuggling international super-criminal poses as a florist; a champion cyclist is a clandestine Nazi resister; a master art forger anonymously donates his handiwork to world-class museums; and a magician reveals his tricks (or does he?). In Art and Craft (January 22), My Italian Secret (February 12), The Notorious Mr. Bout (March 12), and Deceptive Practices (April 9) trust no one, good or bad, to be what they seem to be.
For Families
Discover what goes on behind the scenes of the museum during Free Day on January 31, our annual museum celebration when we throw the doors open to welcome all visitors, big and small, to MASS MoCA. Director Joseph Thompson elaborates on the history of the museum’s campus while art fabricators break down the process of taking a project from concept to completion. Learn how to light a show, listen to live elevator music, catch performances by local dance groups, and take part in art activities throughout the museum. Inspired by Mark Dion’s Octagon Room, Art Ninjas: Warrior Collectors create a museum-worthy collection and design their own vessel during a week-long program held on February 16-20. Spring Break ArtBar Specials feature springtime art-making every day from April 20 to April 24.
How To Get (Cheap!) Tickets
Building on the success of an instantly popular early-bird ticket promotion, MASS MoCA discounts tickets 25% for 2015 Winter/Spring performances (January 24 through May 9) when purchased by December 31. (Exceptions: Available Light, Neutral Milk Hotel, Keigwin + Company, and Art Camps.)
Tickets for all events are available through the MASS MoCA box office located on Marshall Street in North Adams, open 11am – 5pm Wednesdays through Mondays; closed Tuesdays through spring 2015. Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 during box office hours or purchased on-line at MASS MoCA. All events are held rain or shine.