The highly selective cultural highlights in our region this weekend include contemporary dance, blues, country, jazz … plus a whole lot more.

 

EXPERIMENTAL DANCE at THE FOUNDRY

Tonight at 7:30pm choreographer Fiona Scruggs brings her multi-piece work titled “Qualia” to the Foundry in West Stockbridge, Mass. Qualia is defined as one’s own individual experience and consciousness. Fiona Scruggs’s work “Qualia” illustrates the cyclical and ephemeral nature of time, space, and energy and their relationships to our perception of transient experiences. (Friday, April 1)

 

 

COUNTRY MUSIC WALTZES INTO THE COLONIAL THEATRE

It’s country music night tonight at 7:30pm at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Mass., featuring million-selling country artists Lonestar along with Whiskey City. (Friday, April 1)

 

CLUB D’ELF BRINGS MOROCCAN TRANCE DUB to LEVON HELM STUDIOS

Boston-based world-dub-jazz collective Club d’Elf celebrate the release of their new double album, “You Never Known,” featuring a fusion of jazz, gnawa and other North African traditional music influences refracted through a prism of contemporary psychedelia, tonight at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, N.Y., where the band will be joined by sometime member John Medeski on keyboards. Club D’Elf shifts from chopped dub-jazz through trance epics that reimagine Boston as a city of bazaars. Half the songs on the new album are original compositions; others are based on works by Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, Joe Zawinul, as well as gnawa and Sufi folk songs. Club d’Elf will be back in the region in a couple of weeks when they play at Bombyx in Northampton, Mass., on Thursday, April 14. (Friday, April 1)

 

DIANA KRALL at UPAC in KINGSTON, N.Y.

Diana Krall is the only jazz singer to have eight albums debut at the top of the Billboard Jazz Albums chart. To date, her albums have garnered two Grammy Awards, ten Juno Awards and have also earned nine gold, three platinum and seven multi-platinum albums. Krall brings her voice that the New York Times called “at once cool and sultry, wielded with a rhythmic sophistication” to UPAC in Kingston, N.Y., on Saturday at 8pm. (Saturday, April 2)

 

 

WILLIE NILE at THE FALCON

Rock singer-songwriter Willie Nile brings his blend of thoughtful folk-rock and intimate acoustic balladry to the Falcon in Marlboro, N.Y., tonight at 7. Over the years, the Buffalo native has been compared to everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Lou Reed to the Clash to Bob Dylan, to whom Nile paid tribute several years ago with an album of all Dylan covers. (Friday, April 1)

 

 

 

THE ORCHESTRA NOW and ANNA POLONSKY PLAY CLARA SCHUMANN and BRAHMS

The Orchestra Now (T?N) performs at Bard College’s Fisher Center twice this weekend, on Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm. Acclaimed pianist Anna Polonsky will tackle Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto, and Brahms’s German Requiem is also on the program. (Sat-Sun, April 2-3)

 

 

 

 

 

 

MISSISSIPPI HEAT and LILLI LEWIS BRING BLUES & ROOTS to THE LINDA

Chicago blues band Mississippi Heat, led by harmonica master and songwriter Pierre Lacocque, brings their fresh yet vintage-based musical ideas to WAMC’s Performing Arts Center The Linda tonight at 8pm. Be sure to arrive on time to hear the dynamic New Orleans soul diva Lilli Lewis, who draws upon a wide range of Americana roots music and is said to boast “storytelling with transformative empathy and classically trained poise.” (Friday, April 1)