A highly selective preview of cultural events taking place this weekend in the greater Berkshires region, including an avant-garde multimedia revival of a lost filmmaker’s work at MASS MoCA; a chamber concert devoted the far-flung works by those associated with the Bach musical family at the Mahaiwe; a ‘Mad Men’ era illustrator at the Norman Rockwell Museum; and the return of the first family of jazzy soul to Hudson’s Club Helsinki.
Trimbin Band
MULTIMEDIA PROGRAM FEATURING WILCO MEMBER REVIVES LOST COUNTERCULTURE FILMS
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – The Trimbin Band, featuring Mikael Jorgensen of Wilco with art historian and curator James Merle Thomas (his partner in Quindar), performer and composer Nick Hallett, and guitarist William Tyler, launches a new project that blends Quindar’s intergalactic sonic waves with folk fingerpicking and found images from the archive of Los Angeles filmmaker Fred Engelberg, in the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA on Saturday, March 19, at 8pm.
ACRONYM Ensemble
CHAMBER CONCERT CELEBRATES MUSICAL BACH FAMILY
(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) – Works by or associated with the illustrious Bach family will be featured in “J.S. Bach and Sons — Legitimate and Otherwise,” at the Mahaiwe on Saturday, March 19, at 6pm, in a chamber concert in the Close Encounters With Music series. The program includes music by Johann Sebastian Bach’s uncle Heinrich and his sons Johann Christoph Friedrich, Wilhelm Friedemann, and Carl Philipp Emanuel, his “illegitimate” son P.D.Q. Bach aka Peter Schickele, and the master himself, in a rendition of “Brandenburg Concerto” No. 3 as performed by ACRONYM, a self-described 12-piece Baroque “string band.”
Mac Conner, Illustration for “Let’s Take a Trip Up the Nile” in This Week Magazine, November 5, 1950. Gouache and graphite on illustration board. ©Mac Conner. Courtesy of the artist.
ROCKWELL MUSEUM EXPLORES WORK of ‘MAD MEN’-ERA ILLUSTRATOR MAC CONNER
(STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.) – Mac Conner, whose work as a prominent illustrator in advertising and magazines in the mid-1950s and 1960s helped shape the aesthetic and tone of the “Mad Men” era, is the subject of Mac Conner: A New York Life, an exhibition of more than 70 original works by the New York City-based artist at the Norman Rockwell Museum, on view from Saturday, March 19, through June 19.
Lady Moon & the Eclipse
LADY MOON & THE ECLIPSE BRING JAZZY SOUL to HELSINKI HUDSON
(HUDSON, N.Y.) – With roots right here in Hudson, jazzy soul-funk outfit Lady Moon & the Eclipse returns to Club Helsinki Hudson on Friday, March 18, at 9pm, to preview songs from their debut EP, “Believe,” due out this spring. Lady Moon & the Eclipse is a multicultural seven-piece band based in Brooklyn, N.Y. Led by lead singer Ngonda Badila – whose name means “moon” in Congolese – aka Lady Moon, the band includes her two sisters, Ntangou and Nkoula. The three of them grew up in a creative, artistic, and very musical family in Hudson, where they were well known and beloved by the community. The music of Lady Moon & the Eclipse is a blend of R&B and Afrobeat-influenced rhythms, and their songs address social issues.