GABRIEL KAHANE’S CHAMBER-POP at MASS MOCA
(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) – Chamber-pop singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane, whose songs betray his parallel life as a classical music composer, will be joined by Rob Moose of Bon Iver for a duo concert at MASS MoCA‘s multi-colored Pavilion, an outdoor sculpture of overlapping canopies located at the center of the museum’s renovated 19th-century factory campus, on Saturday, July 20, 2013, at 8pm. Kahane combines a voice like Paul Simon’s, the musical palette of a Randy Newman, and the eccentric lyrical sensibility of a Tom Waits or David Byrne.
ALT-THEATRE FESTIVAL JOINS BERKSHIRE RANKS
(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass,) – The already crowded summer theater season gets just a bit more crowded this week when Mass Live Arts, a festival presenting three New York City-based alt-theater companies, takes a bow at Simon’s Rock College. Radiohole, New York City Players, and Half Straddle will be performing from Thursday, July 18, 2013, through Saturday, August 3, 2013, at the Daniel Arts Center – already home to the Berkshire Fringe Festival — at Simon’s Rock.
YIDSTOCK BOASTS KLEZMER CONSERVATORY BAND, GOLEM, ALL-STAR SUPERGROUP LED BY FRANK LONDON
(AMHERST, Mass.) – The Klezmer Conservatory Band, one of the founding bands of the klezmer revival, will kick off the second annual Yidstock: The Festival of New Yiddish Music, on Thursday, July 18, 2013, at the Yiddish Book Center. The event runs through Sunday, July 21, and features performances by Golem; Brass Khazones: Steven Bernstein and Frank London Play Cantorial Music; Ilene Stahl’s Klezperanto; Margot Leverett & the Klezmer Mountain Boys; and the Wholesale Klezmer Band. The festival will conclude Sunday night with the Yidstock All-Stars, an unprecedented klezmer jam session led by Frank London featuring performers from throughout the weekend.
CELEBRITY PHOTOGRAPHER GREG GORMAN GETS RETROSPECTIVE SHOWING at SOHN FINE ART
(STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.) – There will be an artist’s reception for A Distinct Vision, a 40-year retrospective of works by award-winning photographer Greg Gorman at Sohn Fine Art Gallery, running through September 30th, 2013, on Saturday, July 20, 2013, from 4 to 8pm. Gorman has photographed some of the leading creative personalities of our time, including Andy Warhol, Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jeff Koons, Helen Mirren, Al Pacino, and Meryl Streep.
SHAW’S ‘PYGMALION’ GETS WTF STAGING
(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – George Bernard Shaw’s timeless and incredibly influential play Pygmalion – which has influenced dozens of works of art since its 1912 debut, including Werner Herzog’s film Kaspar Hauser, Bernard Pomerance’s play The Elephant Man (as well as the subsequent David Lynch film version), and the Three Stooges’ 1935 slapstick comedy, Hoi Polloi – is being staged at Williamstown Theatre Festival from Wednesday, July 17, 2013, through Saturday, July 27.
COMPANIES DANCE in HONOR of OUT WEEKEND at JACOB’S PILLOW
(BECKET, Mass.) – Contemporary ballet company Ballet BC from Vancouver and post-modern group Tere O’Connor Dance of New York City are at Jacob’s Pillow Dance from Wednesday, July 17, 2013, through Sunday, July 21, 2013. Ballet BC performs three U.S. premieres: A.U.R.A. (Anarchist Unit Related to Art) by Italian choreographer Jacopo Godani; Petite Cérémonie, a piece created by Nederlands Dans Theater’s Medhi Walerski; and Molnar’s most recent work, Aniel. Tere O’Connor Dance features four male dancers in Cover Boy, exploring the closeted gay experience and universal feeling of “otherness.” Both companies are presented as part of the Weekend OUT series of events.
BRITISH PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER ‘TRYST’ at CHESTER THEATRE COMPANY
(CHESTER, Mass.) – Chester Theatre Company is staging the British psychological thriller Tryst by English playwright Karoline Leach through Sunday, July 21, 2013, at the Chester Town Hall. Tryst is set in Edwardian London, where a handsome con-man — going by the name George Love — courts women, marries them, then takes their life savings and disappears.
ORIGINAL CAST MEMBER KAREN ALLEN DIRECTS ‘EXTREMITIES’ at BTG
(STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.) – Actress Karen Allen, who played the lead role of Marjorie in the original 1983 off-Broadway production, will direct William Mastrosimone’s Extremities running through Sunday, July 27, 2013, at Berkshire Theatre Group’s Unicorn Theatre.
AFROPOP LEGEND OLIVER ‘TUKU’ MTUKUDZI at CLUB HELSINK HUDSON
(HUDSON, N.Y.) – One of Afropop’s living legends, Oliver Mtukudzi, bring his fusion of traditional Zimbabwean music and African funk along with his band, the Black Spirits to Club Helsinki Hudson on Friday, July 19, 2013, at 9pm. Mtukudzi is so renowned in his native land and throughout Southern Africa that his nickname, “Tuku,” has been applied to an entire genre of music.
ORIGINAL STAGE ADAPTATION of POPULAR RUSSIAN NOVEL at BARD SUMMERSCAPE
(ANNANDALE-on-HUDSON, N.Y.) – An original stage adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, widely recognized as one of the greatest and most beloved Russian novels of the 20th century, will enjoy its world premiere as part of the Bard SummerScape festival through Sunday, July 21, 2013, in Theater Two of the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, on Bard’s Hudson Valley campus.
NEW EXHIBITION of CONTEMPORARY REGIONAL SCENES at NEUMANN FINE ART
(HILLSDALE, N.Y.) –The Power of Place, an exhibition featuring oil paintings of contemporary regional scenes by Ken Young and Jeffrey L. Neumann, is on display at Neumann Fine Art through September 2. The show features two painters with different styles but a commonality in depicting scenes which evoke a strong sense of our region.