A highly selective preview of cultural events taking place this weekend in the greater Berkshire region, including a concert of Bubu funk; Beethoven; English soul-rock; trombone music; ceramic art; sculptural art; 17th century Dutch painting; Japanese woodblock prints; new plays; Americana; and a whole lot more.
Janka Nabay (photo Sidney Schlief / Oliver Citrin)
JANKA NABAY BRINGS MODERN ‘BUBU’ FUNK to MASS MoCA
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) — Sierra Leonean singer Janka Nabay brings his modern update of Bubu – an ancient Sierra Leonean call-and-response style of folk music influenced by the 18th-century regional introduction of Islam – to Club B-10 at MASS MoCA on Saturday, March 11, at 8pm. With the help of his group, the Bubu Gang, Nabay turns this 500-year-old roots music into a frenetic, hypnotic, funky dance music with flourishes of electronica.
Takacs Quartet (photo Keith Saunders)
TAKÁCS QUARTET to PERFORM BEETHOVEN STRING QUARTETS at WILLIAMS
(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – The Takács Quartet performs three works by Ludwig van Beethoven in a free concert at Chapin Hall on the Williams College campus on Sunday, March 12, at 3pm. The Takács Quartet, now entering its 42nd season, is renowned for the vitality of its interpretations.
The New York Times recently lauded the ensemble for “revealing the familiar as unfamiliar, making the most traditional of works feel radical once more,” and the Financial Times described a recent concert at the Wigmore Hall: “Even in the most fiendish repertoire these players show no fear, injecting the music with a heady sense of freedom. At the same time, though, there is an uncompromising attention to detail: neither a note nor a bow-hair is out of place.”
Adam Masterson
ADAM MASTERSON BRINGS ENGLISH SOUL-ROCK to EGREMONT BARN
(SOUTH EGREMONT, Mass.) – Rock singer-songwriter Adam Masterson brings his distinctive blend of soul and rock to the Egremont Barn on Friday, March 10, at 8pm. Masterson is often compared to Nick Drake and Van Morrison, and his vibe also recalls early Bruce Springsteen and Jakob Dylan.
Ron Barron
WORKS for TROMBONE FEATURED in RICHMOND BENEFIT CONCERT
(RICHMOND, Mass.) – A recital of American music for trombone, featuring Ronald Barron, retired principal trombonist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, will take place at Richmond Congregational Church (1515 State Road-Route 41) on Sunday, March 12, at 3pm. The concert, which will benefit the Richmond Emergency Fuel Assistance Fund, also includes pianist Larry Wallach, soprano Pamela Wolfe, and bassist Larry Wolfe, performing a cross-section of American musical culture.
Daniel Bellow
HAND-THROWN PORCELAIN by DANIEL BELLOW at BERKSHIRE MUSEUM
(PITTSFIELD, Mass.) – An exhibition of hand-thrown porcelain by Berkshire-based artisan Daniel Bellow is on view in the BerkshireNow gallery space at the Berkshire Museum now through Monday, May 22. The work by the accomplished potter, remarkable for its exquisite glazes and intriguing textured surfaces.
For this solo exhibition, Bellow has created sculptural forms in porcelain and imagined a detailed scenario about their origin. According to Bellow’s backstory, scale models of rocket ships, supposedly created during the Song Dynasty in China at the command of Emperor Gaozong, have recently been discovered by archaeologists.
The unique sculptural “rocket ships” in the exhibition echo the work of the Song dynasty potters, whose smooth, dense porcelain ware was praised for its simplicity of shape and understated decoration.
Elizabeth King. ‘Pupil’
SCULPTURES and VIDEOS by ELIZABETH KING at MASS MoCA
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – Radical Small, a solo exhibition combining small sculptures and large videos by Elizabeth King, is on view at MASS MoCA. An opening reception takes place on Saturday, March 18.
Radical Small is Richmond, Va.-based artist Elizabeth King’s most expansive one-person exhibition to date. Utilizing one of MASS MoCA’s largest exhibition spaces on the museum’s second floor, King examines the notion of radical smallness, or what French philosopher Gaston Bachelard has called “intimate immensity.”
King combines precisely movable half-scale figurative sculptures with projections of stop-motion video animations in works that skillfully merge and confuse the boundary between actual and virtual objects. Intimate in scale — this is theater for an audience of one — and made to solicit close viewing, the work reflects her interests in early clockwork automata, the history of the mannequin, puppetry, and literature’s host of legends in which the artificial figure comes to life.
For MASS MoCA, King will test the power of small sculpture to articulate and command a large double-height gallery, staging an extended exchange of dimensionality and scale through the languages of sculpture, film, and animation. Additionally, King will use the gallery as an animation studio for the first two weeks of the exhibition, producing a new film of her sculptures at MASS MoCA.
Gabriel Metsu (Dutch, 1629–1667), Public Notary, c. 1653. Oil on panel, 16.14 x 12.8 in (41 x 32.5 cm). The Leiden Collection, N.Y.
17TH-CENTURY DUTCH PAINTINGS at THE CLARK
(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – An Inner World: 17th-Century Dutch Genre Painting is on view at the Clark Art Institute now through Sunday, September 17. The exhibit brings together paintings from the Clark and The Leiden Collection, among the largest and most important private collections of Dutch Golden Age paintings in the world. The exhibition features seven exceptional genre paintings by Dutch artists working in or near the city of Leiden in the 17th century.
An Inner World explores the work of Gerrit Dou (Dutch, 1613–1675) and his contemporaries by considering tradition and innovation in the representation of figures in interior spaces, individuals in moments of contemplation or quiet exchange, and the enduring taste among collectors for works created by fijnschilders, or fine painters.
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.
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, ‘Until’ (detail) (photo Doug Mason)
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.