BerkshireWeekend Cultural Preview, July 5-9, 2017

A highly selective preview of cultural events taking place this weekend in the greater Berkshire region, including a pop star singing Bob Dylan; Mahler, Schubert, and Paganini; contemporary art at Shaker Village; abstract art at the Clark; and a whole lot more.

 

 

Joan Osborne

JOAN OSBORNE SINGS BOB DYLAN at MASS MoCA

(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – Blues- and R&B-oriented pop singer-songwriter Joan Osborne will perform works by Bob Dylan at MASS MoCA on Friday, July 7, at 8pm. The concert is in advance of Osborne’s upcoming ninth studio album, “Songs of Bob Dylan,” set for release on September 1. Joan Osborne made a name for herself in 1995 with the success of her multi-platinum album Relish, which featured the hit single “One of Us.” The success of “One of Us” — it spent two weeks at number one, sold three million copies, and received numerous Grammy nominations — made Osborne a household name.

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Kristine Opolais (photo Tatyana Vlasova)

ANDRIS NELSONS and BSO OPEN TANGLEWOOD SEASON with MAHLER

(LENOX, Mass.) – Music Director Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra open  the BSO’s 2017 Tanglewood season with a gala performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, on Friday, July 7, at 8pm. Nelsons returns to the Shed podium for his second concert of the season on Sunday, July 9, at 2:30pm, for an afternoon program featuring 16-year-old Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich in his BSO and Tanglewood debuts performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3. The program also includes Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. On Saturday, July 8, at 8pm, Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops perform the symphonic version of Sondheim on Sondheim, featuring a cast of acclaimed Broadway performers.

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Jessica Lang Dance performing The Calling (excerpt from Splendid Isolation II) Dancer K. Kimura (photo Takao Komaru)

JESSICA LANG, FAYE DRISCOLL BRING ORIGINAL WORKS to JACOB’S PILLOW

(BECKET, Mass.) – Jessica Lang Dance and Faye Driscoll and her ensemble are in residence at Jacob’s Pillow from Wednesday, July 5, through Sunday, July 9. Lang’s program includes “Glow,” a Pillow-commissioned world premiere; Driscoll’s is the first installment of a trilogy is performed in the round with an intimate number of audience members.

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Andy Statman (photo Jason Marck)

COMING SOON: ANDY STATMAN, ALICIA SVIGALS to MAKE YIDSTOCK DEBUTS

(AMHERST, Mass.) – Andy Statman, widely regarded as the world’s greatest klezmer clarinetist and the individual perhaps most solely responsible for the klezmer revival, and Alicia Svigals, a cofounder of the Klezmatics, widely regarded as the world’s great klezmer fiddler, will make their Yidstock debuts this summer during the sixth annual Yidstock: The Festival of New Yiddish Music, running at the Yiddish Book Center from Thursday, July 13, through Sunday, July 16.

Returning stars of Yidstock include Eleanor Reissa, Hankus Netsky, Frank London and Lorin Sklamberg of the Klezmatics, Lauren Brody, and Steve Weintraub – the Pied Piper of Yiddish dance. Yidstock will also feature a rare staging of the multimedia folk oratorio “A Night at the Old Marketplace,” created and directed by Alexandra Aron, composed by Frank London, written by Glen Berger, featuring vocalist Lorin Sklamberg, and based on the groundbreaking 1907 modernist play of the same name by I.L. Peretz, regarded as the father of Yiddish literature.

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Edson Scheid

EDSON SCHEID BRINGS SOLO PAGANINI ‘CAPRICES’ to ASTON MAGNA

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., and ANNANDALE-on-HUDSON, N.Y.) – Baroque violinist Edson Scheid will perform the complete cycle of 24 Caprices for Solo Violin by Niccolò Paganini at Bard College on Friday, July 7 at 8pm, and at Saint James Place in Great Barrington on Saturday, July 8, at 6pm, as part of Aston Magna Music Festival. Some of these works are considered the most difficult violin pieces ever written.

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ROCKWELL EXHIBIT EXPLORES CREATIVE METHODS of POPULAR ART CORRESPONDENCE COURSE

(STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.) – “Learning from the Masters: The Famous Artists School,” exploring artworks and creative methods featured in that program during the 1940s and ‘50s, opens at Norman Rockwell Museum on Friday, July 8, and remains on view through October 29, 2017. A special opening event on Thursday, July 20, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, will celebrate the exhibition and the new book “Drawing Lessons from the Famous Artists School: Classic Techniques and Expert Tips from the Golden Age of Illustration.”

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Shai Wosner

PIANIST SHAI WOSNER to PLAY SCHUBERT at TANNERY POND

(NEW LEBANON, N.Y.)  — Israeli pianist Shai Wosner will play three of Schubert’s late piano sonatas at the Darrow School on Saturday, July 8, at 8pm, as part of Tannery Pond Concerts. Wosner will play Schubert’s Sonata in A Minor, Op. 42, D. 845; Sonata in D Major, Op. 53, D. 850; and Sonata in G Major, Op. 78, D. 894 (Fantasie).

Wosner compares Schubert’s last six piano sonatas to “thick novels, rich with insight about the human condition. They are like symphonies in their scope yet, at the same time, they are imbued with a sense of intimacy.”  According to Wosner, these sonatas are the key to the composer’s inner life.

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Charles Neville

CHARLES NEVILLE BRINGS NEW ORLEANS SOUNDS to GUTHRIE CENTER

(HOUSATONIC, Mass.) – Charles Neville and the New England Neville Brothers, featuring his sons Khalif and Talyn, will bring the sounds of New Orleans to the Guthrie Center on Friday, July 7, at 8pm. Grammy Award-winning folk artist Tom Chapin performs on Saturday, July 8, at 8pm.

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Stephen Hannock, The Great Falls for Xu Bing

CONTEMPORARY ART SHOW at HANCOCK SHAKER VILLAGE

(HANCOCK, Mass.) – Works by an all-star team of contemporary artists, including Gregory Crewdson, Don Gummer, Stephen Hannock, Jenny Holzer, Maya Lin, and David Teeple, go on view at Hancock Shaker Village on Saturday, July 1, in Making: Then and Now, a landmark exhibition of contemporary art that explores the connection between artists today and an historic utopian movement in the Berkshires, a place both have called home.

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Madame Butterfly, 2000. 102-color woodcut from forty-six woodblocks on three sheets of handmade paper, 41 3/4 x 79 1/2 in. Helen Frankenthaler Foundation © 2017 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Tyler Graphics Ltd., Mount Kisco, N.Y.

HELEN FRANKENTHALER WORKS on VIEW at THE CLARK

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts, an exhibit exploring the artist’s inventive and groundbreaking approach to the woodcut, and As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings, which focuses on nature as a long-standing inspiration for the artist, are on view at the Clark Art Institute.

The No Rules exhibition, on view through Sunday, September 24, includes 17 large-scale prints, on loan primarily from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and the Williams College Museum of Art, presenting the full range of Frankenthaler’s experimentation with the medium from the 1970s through 2000s. No Rules celebrates the pioneering spirit that expanded the possibilities of the woodcut and established Frankenthaler (American, 1928–2011) as one of the medium’s great innovators.

The exhibition explores the artist’s collaborations with printers, publishers, woodcarvers, and papermakers that pushed the medium in new directions. In 1994, during an interview with printer/publisher Ken Tyler, Frankenthaler stated, “There are no rules, that is one thing I say about every medium, every picture . . . that is how art is born, that is how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules, that is what invention is about.”

As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings, which focuses on nature as a long-standing inspiration for the artist, is on view in the Lunder Center at Stone Hill from Saturday, July 1, through Monday, October 9.

The As in Nature exhibition comprises a selection of large paintings by Frankenthaler from the 1950s through the 1990s, focusing on nature as a longstanding inspiration. Like many abstract artists, Frankenthaler continually tested the constraints of the genre, at times inserting into her compositions elements of recognizable subject matter that throw the abstract elements into relief. The paintings in this exhibition represent the full range of styles and techniques that she explored over five decades of work; while all are primarily abstract, they also contain allusions to landscape, demonstrating how Frankenthaler’s delicate balance between abstraction and a nuanced responsiveness to nature and place developed and shifted over time. As Frankenthaler once commented, “Anything that has beauty and provides order (rather than chaos or shock alone), anything resolved in a picture (as in nature) gives pleasure—a sense of rightness, as in being one with nature.”

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The Flying V guitar (courtesy National GUITAR Museum)

GUITAR GETS SPOTLIGHT at BERKSHIRE MUSEUM

(PITTSFIELD, Mass.) – GUITAR: The Instrument That Rocked the World, a fully immersive exhibition exploring all aspects of one of the most enduring musical icons of the last 200 years, is at the Berkshire Museum, on view through Monday, September 4.

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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.

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Grounded Iceberg, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, by Shaun O’Boyle

SHAUN O’BOYLE’S ANTARCTICA PHOTOGRAPHS at BERKSHIRE MUSEUM

(PITTSFIELD, Mass.) – Extraordinary images of Antarctica by Berkshire-based photographer Shaun O’Boyle are on view in the Berkshire Now gallery space at the Berkshire Museum now through August 21.

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MASS MoCA Building 6

MASS MoCA UNVEILS NEWLY RENOVATED CAMPUS

(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) — MASS MoCA has unveiled its newly renovated campus with the opening of Building 6, the third phase of campus development that encompasses 130,000 square feet of interior renovations to the museum’s 19th-century mill buildings. The new galleries include works by Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Bourgeois, James Turrell, Jenny Holzer, Laurie Anderson, and Gunnar Schonbeck (Bang on a Can), among others.

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PICASSO WORKS on VIEW at THE CLARK

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – Works by Pablo Picasso are on view at the Clark Art Institute, along with an exhibition devoted to painter-designer Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Picasso: Encounters includes paintings and prints by the 20th century visionary and is on view through Sunday, August 27.

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ROCKWELL and WARHOL in UNIQUE PAIRING at NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM

(STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.) — On the surface they might seem like an odd couple from two different universes, but for the first time Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol come face to face in “Inventing America: Rockwell and Warhol,” at the Norman Rockwell Museum. With 100 works of art, a selection of archival materials, and objects relating to their work and lives, the exhibition will show how both of these internationally celebrated image-makers — among America’s most important visual communicators — created enduring icons and opened new ways of seeing.

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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.

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