A highly selective preview of cultural events taking place this weekend in the greater Berkshire region, including psychedelic pop; electronic Latin soul; Americana; punk; dance for social justice; new short plays; jazz; Japanese woodblock prints, and a whole lot more.
Sam Cohen
SAM COHEN BRINGS PSYCHEDELIC POP to MASS MoCA
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) — Pop-rock singer-songwriter Sam Cohen brings his individual brand of retro-psychedelia and his buzzsaw guitar licks to Club B-10 at MASS MoCA on Saturday, February 25, at 8pm. The former frontman of Apollo Sunshine and The Yellowbirds, who has lent his guitar talents to the likes of Bob Weir and CeeLo, will be fronting his full band at the show, which injects a sunny blast of summer into the cabin-fever season.
Cohen has developed his solo career while collaborating with a disparate range of nationally and internationally recognized artists, including Norah Jones, Shakira, the National, and the aforementioned Bob Weir and CeeLo. Cohen’s musical posse widened during his tenure as the musical director of “The Complete Last Waltz,” a 41-song concert that paid homage to The Band’s iconic album, in which he directed and played with artists Nels Cline, Dr. Dog, and Cass McCombs.
Jeffrey Foucault (photo Joseph Navas)
JEFFREY FOUCAULT BRINGS ORIGINAL FOLK-ROCK to COLONIAL
(PITTSFIELD, Mass.) – Singer/songwriter Jeffrey Foucault brings his rootsy folk-rock to the Colonial Theatre in the On the Stage Series on Thursday, February 23, at 7:30pm. The guitar-playing Foucault will be accompanied by drummer Billy Conway, best known for his stint in Morphine. Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Zak Trojano will warm up the crowd for Foucault.
A native of Wisconsin, Jeffrey Foucault emerged out of the same New England folk scene that produced Mark Erelli, Peter Mulvey, Kris Delmhorst aka Mrs. Peter Mulvey, and Ellis Paul before them. Like those other artists, Foucault is known for his gritty, personal fusion of American country, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and folk – often called Americana.
John Doe
PUNK-ROCK LEGEND JOHN DOE BRINGS BRINGS ‘PSYCHEDELIC SOUL’ to HELSINKI HUDSON
(HUDSON, N.Y.) – John Doe, cofounder of seminal California punk-rock band X, brings his new “psychedelic soul” along with musical selections from his entire four-decade career, to Club Helsinki Hudson on Thursday, February 23, at 8pm.
With Exene Cervenka, John Doe was a cofounder, co-vocalist, and chief songwriter of legendary California punk-rock outfit X, which still tours to this day. While punk-rock was mostly a New York City- and London-based phenomenon, the band X was the leader of a small Los Angeles outpost of punk. The group’s unique style, which incorporated a roots-music influence into its punk-rock mix, foreshadowed a punk-roots fusion that would be more common years later, as well as hinting at the alt-country movement of the 1990s.
Rene Lopez
RENE LOPEZ BRINGS ‘ELECTRIC LATIN SOUL’ to EGREMONT BARN
(SOUTH EGREMONT, Mass.) – Rene Lopez brings his distinctive brand of Latin soul and rock to the Egremont Barn on Saturday, February 25, at 8pm. Lopez’s music spans funk, disco, salsa, and at times recalls the sort of NYC street-soul of early Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison and the late 1970s art-funk of Talking Heads.
Marsha Parrilla (photo Ernesto Galán)
FREE SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT WORKSHOP & LECTURE/DEMONSTRATION by DANZA ORGÁNICA
(PITTSFIELD, Mass.) – Boston-based contemporary dance theater company Danza Orgánica, directed by choreographer and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Creative Development Residency Artist Marsha Parrilla, will host a free Dance for Social Justice Movement Workshop followed by a lecture/demonstration performance of Parrilla’s work “Running in Stillness,” at the Boys & Girls Club of the Berkshires in Pittsfield on Friday, February 24, as part of the 10×10 Upstreet Arts Festival. The workshop is at 4pm and the lecture/demonstration is at 6pm.
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Dina Thomas
BARRINGTON STAGE HOSTS 10X10 NEW PLAY FESTIVAL
(PITTSFIELD, Mass.) – The sixth annual 10X10 New Play Festival at Barrington Stage Company takes place now through Sunday, March 5, at BSC’s newly renovated St. Germain Stage, located at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center. The event, part of the 2017 10X10 Upstreet Arts Festival in Pittsfield, features ten new 10-imnute plays performed in repertory by a cast of a half-dozen professional actors, directed by BSC artistic director Julianne Boyd and Matthew Penn, co-artistic director of the Berkshire Playwrights Lab in Great Barrington.
This year’s playwrights are Suzanne Bradbeer, Marilyn Millstone, Annette Storckman, Allie Costa, James McLindon, Gwendolyn Rice, Tom Coash, Scott Mullen, Susan Middaugh, and Ann Marie Shea.
The cast of the 10X10 New Play Festival features returnees Matt Neely, Dina Thomas, and Peggy Pharr Wilson, along with newcomers Jane Pfitsch (BSC’s “His Girl Friday”), Lucky Gretzinger, and Douglas Rees.
Matt and Atla DeChamplain
TRIO to PERFORM ‘TEN FLAVOURS of JAZZ’ in PITTSFIELD
(PITTSFIELD, Mass.) – The Matt DeChamplain Trio, featuring vocalist Atla DeChamplain, will present ten jazz styles “Ten Flavours of Jazz” at Flavours of Malaysia on Saturday, February 25, at 8pm, as part of Pittsfield’s annual 10×10 Upstreet Arts Festival. The musical menu includes New Orleans/traditional; swing; Brazilian/bossa nova; stride; Kansas City/blues; West coast/cool; and contemporary. The program is a presentation of Berkshires Jazz, Inc.
Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams
LARRY CAMPBELL & TERESA WILLIAMS to BRING AMERICANA SOUNDS to HELSINKI HUDSON
(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Husband-and-wife duo Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams will bring their award-winning Americana music to Club Helsinki Hudson on Saturday, February 25, at 9pm.
The Woodstock, N.Y.-based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell is a Grammy Award-winning producer and an Americana icon whose career has been inextricably intertwined with the likes of Judy Collins, Lucy Kaplansky, Linda Thompson, Sheryl Crow, Paul Simon, B. B. King, Willie Nelson, Eric Andersen, Buddy and Julie Miller, Kinky Friedman, Little Feat, Hot Tuna, Cyndi Lauper, k.d. lang, Rosanne Cash, most notably, Levon Helm – for whom he served as musical director of the Midnight Rambles – and Bob Dylan, with whom he toured and recorded for eight years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as part of what is generally agreed to have been the strongest lineup of Dylan’s “Never Ending Tour” band.
The Americana Music Association presented Campbell with its Lifetime Achievement – Instrumentalist award. In addition to guitar, Campbell plays mandolin, violin, Irish bouzouki, banjo, pedal steel guitar, and bass.
Teresa Williams has Americana flowing through her blood, having grown up picking and hoeing cotton on her family’s seventh-generation West Tennessee farm. Williams left the farm to make her mark as a singer in New York, gaining a job as a member of Southern Comfort, opening act and backup for Eddy Arnold, the Tennessee Plowboy. She went on to perform with favorite singers Bonnie Bramlett, Emmylou Harris, Mavis Staples and Buddy Miller, among others.
Hashimoto, Young Girl
JAPANESE WOODBLOCK PRINTS on VIEW at THE CLARK
(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – More than a century of Japanese printing traditions, represented by seventy-three color woodblock prints, will be presented in the Clark Art Institute exhibition Japanese Impressions: Color Woodblock Prints from the Rodbell Family Collection.
The exhibition explores the complex and changing relationship among artists, woodblock cutters, and publishers from the ukiyo-e (scenes from the floating world) tradition of the mid-19th century, the shin-hanga (new print) movement of the 1920s and 1930s, and the sosaku-hanga (creative print) movement that began in the 1950s. Japanese Impressions is on view through April 2, 2017.
NICK CAVE’S SITE-SPECIFIC ‘UNTIL’ TAKES OVER MASS MoCA
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) — Nick Cave, the artist known for his wearable sculptures called Soundsuits, turns expectations inside out at MASS MoCA in “Until,” a massive immersive installation. Cave uses MASS MoCA’s signature football field-sized space to create his largest and most overtly political installation to date, made up of thousands of found objects, a rich sensory tapestry. The sheer volume of material that has been gathered is astounding — 16,000 wind spinners; millions of plastic pony beads; thousands of ceramic birds, fruits, and animals; 13 gilded pigs; more than 10 miles of crystals; 24 chandeliers; 1 crocodile; and 17 cast-iron lawn jockeys.
NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM SALUTES SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON TEAM HANNA-BARBERA
(STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.) – “Hanna-Barbera: The Architects of Saturday Morning” features the work of the creative team behind such memorable Saturday morning cartoons as “The Yogi Bear Show,” “The Flintstones,” and the “The Jetsons,” on view at Norman Rockwell Museum through May 29, 2017.
Before the rise of basic cable, Saturday mornings for many children in America were spent watching cartoons on one of three available television channels. From 1958 through the 1980s, a majority of those cartoons bore the imprint of Hanna-Barbera. Creating scores of popular series such as The Yogi Bear Show, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, and Scooby-Doo, Hanna-Barbera was an animation powerhouse and its bountiful creativity is beloved to this day.