A highly selective preview of cultural events taking place this weekend in the greater Berkshire region, including a girl-group legend; a Southern soul legend; a festival of new music; a world-renowned cookbook author; abstract art at the Clark; and a whole lot more.
Booker T. Jones
BOOKER T BRINGS SOUTHERN SOUL to MASS MoCA
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – Booker T. Jones – best known as the frontman of Booker T. & the M.G.’s — will revive the classic sounds of Southern soul when he performs at MASS MoCA on Saturday, July 22, at 8pm.
If you ask me, the greatest R&B and soul music of the 1960s was not made in Detroit — although Motown certainly produced its share of great music. But the recordings made in Memphis at Stax Records – by artists including Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Isaac Hayes, Johnnie Taylor, Bill Withers, and, of course, Otis Redding – were the real deal.
The secret sauce of those recordings was the house band – the musicians who played on almost all the recordings that came out of Stax in the 1960s – who on their own were known as Booker T. & the M.G.’s, whose best-known hits included “Green Onions” and “Hang ‘Em High.” Incidentally, with white members guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, the band was also one of the very first integrated groups of the rock era.
Ronnie Spector (photo Andy Kropa/Getty Images)
RONNIE SPECTOR BOOKENDS REGION at MAHAIWE and BARDAVON
(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., and POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y.) – Iconic “girl-group” vocalist Ronnie Spector performs with the Ronettes at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie on Friday, July 21, at 8pm, and at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, Mass., on Saturday, July 22, at 8pm. Artists including Amy Winehouse, Macy Gray, Joan Jett, Patti Smith, and countless others are unimaginable without the template fashioned by Ronnie Spector, arguably the first major female rock ‘n’ roller to embody a dialectic of innocence and experience.
cellist Ashley Bathgate
BANG on a CAN FESTIVAL TAKES OVER MASS MoCA
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – For the 16th summer in a row, new music collective Bang on a Can takes up residence at MASS MoCA for its summer music festival and institute, from Wednesday, July 19, through Saturday, August 5. Featuring public performances, recitals, and lectures, the festival will be attended by over 50 cutting-edge composers and performers from around the globe, including over 35 fellows selected from a pool of more than 250 applicants from throughout the world. This year’s featured guest composers are Louis Andriessen and George Lewis.
Festival highlights include a preview performance of the Bang on a Can All-Stars’ Road Trip on Saturday, July 29. A brand-new, evening-length work composed by Bang on a Can co-founders Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, Road Trip commemorates their 30-year collaborative journey together since founding Bang on a Can in 1987. Road Trip is a staged performance directed by Michael Counts with rock show lighting and projections designed by CandyStations. Earlier that same day, Bang on a Can celebrates the late Pauline Oliveros with a tribute concert.
Simone Dinnerstein (photo Lisa-Marie Mazzucco)
SIMONE DINNERSTEIN to PLAY BACH’S GOLDBERG VARIATIONS at PS21
(CHATHAM, N.Y.) – Pianist Simone Dinnerstein will perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations at PS21: Performance Spaces for the 21st Century on Saturday, July 22, at 8pm. Dinnerstein’s globally acclaimed rendition of this iconic work is featured as PS21’s 12th annual Paul Grunberg Memorial Bach Concert.
Dinnerstein gained an international reputation with the success of her 2007 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. It hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Classical Chart and was named to several Best of 2007 lists.
The Goldberg Variations are among Bach’s most beloved works. “Goldberg Variations has become an iconic monument in Western music,” writes Tom Huizenga of NPR, “On one level, it’s simply a beautiful keyboard work, and on another, it’s a Rubik’s Cube of invention and architecture.”
Joan Nathan
JOAN NATHAN to SPEAK at JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL at HEVREH
(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) – Author Seth Rogovoy will interview world-renowned Jewish cookbook author Joan Nathan at the inaugural Jewish Festival of Books, at Hevreh of South Berkshire on Friday, July 21, at 11am. The book fair itself takes place from Thursday, July 20, through Sunday, July 23. The festival will feature free and fee-based lectures, teachings and readings by national, international, and local authors in diverse genres ranging from adult fiction to children’s literature to cookbooks.
Jen Chapin (photo Merri Cyr)
COMING SOON: JEN CHAPIN to BRING SOULFUL, JAZZY ‘URBAN FOLK’ to HELSINKI HUDSON
(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Singer-songwriter Jen Chapin brings her unique style of soulful, jazzy “urban folk” to Club Helsinki Hudson on Sunday, August 13, at 7pm, as part of the Rogovoy Salon, a new music and literary series curated and hosted by cultural journalist and music critic Seth Rogovoy.
Chapin, who performed several memorable concerts in the original Club Helsinki listening room in Great Barrington, Mass., has been celebrated for writing “brilliant soulfully poetic urban folk music” (NPR) for well over a decade, beginning with her stunning debut album, “Open Wide,” in 2002, followed up by “Linger” in 2004, which featured such sensual numbers as “Good at Love” and “Little Hours” alongside her sociopolitically charged “Passive People” and her poignant 9/11 eulogy, “Hurry Up Sky.” The song “Let It Show” on 2006’s “Ready” was one of her first songs dealing with the responsibilities of parenthood, while the title track once again was a sultry, bedroom number.
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, is on view at Norman Rockwell Museum 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.”
Zbigniew Bzymek, A PINK CHAIR rehearsal (photo Matthew Dipple)
WOOSTER GROUP BRINGS NEW WORK to BARD SUMMERSCAPE
(ANNANDALE-on-HUDSON, N.Y.) – The Wooster Group, the critically acclaimed experimental theater company, stages a world premiere of A PINK CHAIR (IN PLACE OF A FAKE ANTIQUE), an homage to the late visionary Polish artist and director Tadeusz Kantor, in the Fisher Center at Bard College as part of the Bard SummerScape Festival, from Thursday, July 13, through Sunday, July 23.
Unnatural Causes, Jeff Robb
EXPERIMENTAL PHOTOGRAPHY by JEFF ROBB at SOHN FINE ART GALLERY
(LENOX, Mass.) – Experimental photography by English artist Jeff Robb is on view in “Liminal States” at Sohn Fine Art Gallery from Friday, July 14, through Sunday, October 1, with a reception on Saturday, August 5, from 4 to 6pm.
Robb is best known for his lenticular photographic work focusing on the female nude and abstract forms in space, which he makes in series. Robb is regularly testing possibilities with the lenticular medium and creating new immersive experiences using three-dimensional imaging and cutting-edge technology within this and additional mediums.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.