Reprise: Bodega Returns to Catham
A concert to benefit the Chatham Food Pantry. featuring Bodega, a traditional band based in Glasgow that has been called ‘the Scottish Nickel Creek,’ will take place this Wednesday evening at PS/21 in Chatham.
The members of Bodega got together at Scotland’s National Centre of Excellence for Traditional Music in 2004 when all were still in high school. They formed a band and within a year, they had won the coveted BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award.
Last year, Bodega performed to a sell-out crowd at the Spencertown Academy. The following week they did a workshop with members of the Chatham High School Orchestra, a program they intend to repeat this year. Says Jean Waggoner, string teacher at the school. “This is the most talked about and eagerly anticipated workshop at the High School I have ever done.”
PS/21
2890 Route 66, Chatham; 518.392.5848
Wednesday, September 24 at 7
Admission $10/adults; $5/students; children under 8 free with a canned food donation
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 09/19/08 at 03:17 PM • Permalink
Romantic Music and Sexual Intrigue
Their relationship is the stuff of legend and, of course, song. When they met at the home of a mutual friend of both their parents, she was just nine, he eighteen, and her piano playing so inspired him that he resolved to give up law to study music with her father instead. A few years later, when she was just 13 and already a virtuoso, his mother remarked by way of congratulation after one of Clara’s concerts, “You ought to marry my Robert someday.” Two years later Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann did fall in love, and her father objected so furiously that he resorted to the courts to keep them apart. Finally, at 19 and 28, they wed and went on to become the music power couple of their era, the center of a creative maelstrom that included Liszt, Mendelssohn, Brahms, with whom they were particularly close, and seven progeny.
At New Marlborough’s Meeting House on Saturday, September 20, as part of Music and More’s ongoing series of cultural happenings, the love letters of Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann will be read by actors Eric Hill and Ariel Bock, of the Berkshire Theatre Festival. The readings will be interleaved with performances of compositions by the Schumanns and others in their circle by William Hite, tenor, Judith Gordon, piano, Ronald Gorevic, violin, and Matthias Naegele, cello. Says the series artistic director Harold Lewin, “In particular, the letters illuminate the tempestuous relationships between Clara, her husband-to-be Robert Schumann, and her domineering father.” Juicy stuff.
Music and More at The Meeting House
154 Hartsville-New Marlborough Road, New Marlborough; 513.229.2785
Saturday, September 20 at 4:30
Admission: $25; $20/members
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 09/16/08 at 04:23 AM • Permalink
Four Nations: The Sounds of the Past
Painting by Jackie Rogers
Forget Sarah Palin for just a moment; better yet, forget her for an entire afternoon and lose the present to the sounds and sights of the past. The Four Nations’ Hudson River Harvest Concerts is a series of three concerts (one, alas, already sold out) in settings as transcendent as their music, which is 18th-century and played on the harpsichords and other instruments of the era that the composers conceived it for.
This Sunday, for example, Four Nations presents a program of Jean Marie Leclair’s sensual and devilishly difficult music, which they will compare to that of the composers who inspired and competed with him (Locatelli and Mondonville). The setting: a magnificent Palladian Barn with heart-stopping views. In October, the theater music of Henry Purcell and George Frederic Handel will be presented in a glorious Dutch Barn. (Purcell, as it happens, wrote thrilling music for Restoration Comedies. Who knew?)
Each of the afternoons begins with a glass of good wine, supplied by Chatham Liquors, and an opportunity, for those who arrive on time, to spend a half-hour touring the property. The concert begins at 4, and after, around 5:45, an astonishing array of substantial hors d’oeuvres by Susan Lawrence of Chappaqua (FYI: the Clintons’ caterer) fuels whatever corner of the soul the music failed to satisfy.
The Four Nations Ensemble
Sunday, September 14; Saturday, October 25
Admission: $75
For tickets and details: 212.928.5708; .
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 09/12/08 at 07:51 AM • Permalink
Music & Art: The Bow & the Brush
There are deep resonances between music and art. Liszt studied art to spark ideas for his music. Mussorgsky’s response to a group of paintings became Pictures at an Exhibition. On Saturday, September 13, Yehuda Hanani (left), a world-renowned cellist who is artistic director of Close Encounters with Music and lives in Spencertown, will deliver a lecture/demonstration that includes, among other pieces, Luigi Boccherini’s Cello Duo, which he will perform with cellist Lisa Lancaster.
In this lecture-demonstration, Hanani reveals parallels between musicians and painters as they strive to harmonize line, color, shape, form and balance. His presentation highlights works of art that depict music and musical compositions influenced by art and architecture. Hell show how Goethe saw architecture as “frozen music;” how Vivaldi’s musical palette reflected Canaletto’s Venice; how Kandinsky’s canvases influenced Scriabin’s theory of tones; and how no fewer than thirty composers were inspired to write music after viewing Picasso’s Guernica..
Yehuda Hanani is an extraordinary recitalist, who has played with the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, BBC Welsh Symphony, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, and Seoul Symphony, among others. Lisa Lancaster (right) has toured and recorded with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Music From Marlboro and the Amabile Piano Quartet. She lives in Pine Plains, where, when not playing her 400-year-old Maggini cello, she raises llamas.
Pre-Performance Wine Reception
Paul Chaleff Studio, 384 Poole’s Hill Road, Ancram
Saturday, September 13 at 5:30
Concert: Ancram Opera House
1330 County Route 7, Ancram
Saturday, September 13 at 7
Admission: $15/advance; $20/at door
Post-show dinner:
The Bottletree Grocery, Ancram; 518.329.0444
or
Reservations required; last seating 8:30
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 09/11/08 at 11:30 AM • Permalink
Guess Who’s Coming To Breakfast? James Taylor and Yo Yo Ma
You don’t have to wait until next summer at Tanglewood to hear James Taylor and Yo Yo Ma give an outdoor concert in the Berkshires. The two local favorites will be peforming live on the porch of the Red Lion Inn on Monday, September 15, as part of Good Morning America’s “50 States in 50 Days” whistle-stop tour.
GMA will begin its day at the Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum at the historic Lenox Station, and then a special Amtrak train will make a stop in Lee before arriving at the Stockbridge Station, where local residents will be able to greet Diane Sawyer, Chris Cuomo, Robin Roberts and Sam Champion. The second hour of the show will be broadcast from the Red Lion’s porch and will include a segment on Red Lion chef Brian Alberg’s work with the Railroad Street Youth Project. There will be special area set up to view the show and concert. (The Town of Stockbridge has not yet announced its parking and traffic plans for the day.)
The broadcast is a coup for Red Lion Inn owner Nancy Fitzpatrick, who is the ultimate Berkshires booster and founder of the Berkshire Creative Economy Council. She is thrilled that her historic hotel will get national television exposure but she was coy about her involvement in getting the two world-famous musicians hooked up with GMA. “Well, they both happen to be personal friends, however, wasn’t it a no-brainer for ABC?,” she said in an email Tuesday night from John F. Kennedy International Airport, where she was waiting to board a plane for Europe. The indefatigable Fitzpatrick noted that she would be in Ireland next Monday on a long-planned Mass MoCA trip. “I’m really sorry to be missing all the mayhem at the inn, but at least it will be easy to stay out of everyone’s way.”
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 09/10/08 at 10:40 AM • Permalink
Vivica Genaux at Tannery Pond
If you did not get your fill of classical music this summer, head to Tannery Pond on Saturday night where the mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux will sing pieces by Franz Joseph Haydn, Gioacchino Rossini and Frderic Chueca among others, accompanied by pianist Craig Rutenberg. The intimacy of the 1834 Tannery barn is an ideal setting to experience the audaciousness of Genaux whose “small face is dominated by wide eyes and a Julia Roberts smile that give her a distinctive, elfin beauty that she has parlayed into androgyny in stage portrayals of a couple of dozen men — the trouser roles that are the bread and butter of a mezzo Baroque specialist,” according to The New York Times, which also wrote: “Her voice is as striking as her looks: less striking, even, for the light, free upper notes or rich chocolaty lower ones than for the runs of coloratura that she releases with jackhammer speed, gunfire precision and the limpid continuity of spring raindrops.”
Vivica Genaux and Craig Rutenberg at Tannery Pond
New Lebanon, NY
Saturday, August 30, 8PM
Tickets: 888.820.9441
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 08/29/08 at 06:31 AM • Permalink
The Tanglewood Jazz Festival’s Grande Dame
The incomparable Marian McPartland appears at Tanglewood Saturday
Although she’s not a singer, jazz pianist Marian McPartland’s distintive Continental voice is as famous as her musicianship. As the host of Piano Jazz on NPR since 1979, McPartland interviews and scats with other legendary musicians every week. She returns to Tanglewood on Saturday, August 30, to celebrate her 90th birthday and to tape her radio show with guests Nnenna Feelon, Mulgrew Miller and Spencer Day. If you took our advice back in February, you have tickets for the sold-out 2 PM show in Seiji Ozawa Hall. If you don’t have seats inside, you can still hear and watch the show from the lawn if you buy a Tanglewood Jazz Festival day pass ($33.)
Happy Birthday, Marian, and many happy returns!
The Tanglewood Jazz Festival
Lenox, MA
August 29 - 31
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 08/28/08 at 05:13 PM • Permalink
Bravo! Berkshire Opera’s “Figaro” at The Colonial
Suzanne Ramo and Ryan McKinny, photo by Nick Atlas
My highly-cultured friend, the Mozart Maven, is a regular at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center so I hesitated asking her to drive an hour to Pittsfield to see the Berkshire Opera’s production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (which has two more performances on August 22 at 8PM and August 24 at 2 PM.) She was duly impressed by the intimate 1903 Colonial Theatre, a Gilded Age relic which has been so grandly renovated (though not the utilitarian lobby.) She smiled during the familiar overture which was played with sweet clarity and verve by the orchestra led by Kathleen Kelly. She approved of the spare, graphic sets (by Dipu Gupta) and the decision to costume the singers in contemporary clothes (by Charles R. Caine.) And she thought that having character send text messagea and use a laptop were clever devices to give the 1786 opera a contemporary spin.
Figaro is an easy opera to love. It’s comic and the music is as pretty and lyrical as music can be. The Berkshire Opera has supertitles so you don’t need to read the libretto beforehand or know Italian to understand perfectly what is happening on stage. The casting is excellent: Ryan McKinney is a charismatic Figaro and Suzanne Ramo is a suitably coquettish and troubled Susanna. Liam Bonner is full-voiced Conte Almaviva and Tamara Wilson sings the Contessa beautifully but, alas, she is not perfectly suited to the role. The part of Cherubino—an oversexed adolescent who is always played by a woman—is dressed like a butch lesbian in this production (or, at least, that’s how I saw the costuming as well as the direction), which added a frisson of gender-bending lesbian subtext to the role of Cherubino who was played marvelously by Maureen O’Flynn. The Mozart Maven heartily approved: She found the Berkshire Opera’s production engaging, entertaining and exhilarating.
Berkshire Opera at The Colonial Theatre
111 South Street, Pittsfield, MA; 413.997.4444
Le nozze di Figaro
August 22 at 8 PM
August 24 at 2 PM
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 08/21/08 at 02:38 PM • Permalink
“In Formations” Kicks up Dust in Ancram
Photo from the New York Times by Ruby Washington
Last week, they played for free before a crowd of passersby and random on-lookers at a little-known venue in lower Manhattan and, for their trouble, got a rave revue in the New York Times; tomorrow, they open at the Veterans Memorial Ball Field in Ancram, then later do a follow-up performance indoors, at the Ancram Opera House. Is this a step in the right direction for In Formations?
Well, we certainly think so. The troupe of twenty dancers, who, in performance, function as one to create geometric patterns that break up and reform, is the company of Douglas Dunn & Dancers, recognized as one of America’s leading experimental choreographers. Every year they perform at such venues such as Danspace Project, The Kitchen, P.S.122, Dance Theater Workshop in New York, and the Walker Arts Center, Portland State University, Arts Festival of Atlanta, and Bennington College. And now our own AOH, which was constructed in 1919 as the Ancram Grange Hall and transformed in 1972 by two ambitious opera lovers into an intimate theatre with lovely acoustics and a raked stage. Joan Arnold purchased the building in 2002 and began offering a unique set of programs in it: Alexander Technique workshops and private sessions, yoga classes, and theatrical events. In spring 2005, Jim Paul joined the staff as house manager, and Opera House programs were extended to include literary arts, such as readings and workshops.
Veterans Memorial Ball Field, Ancram
Saturday at 7
Admission: Free
(Bring a lawn chair.)
Ancram Opera House
Saturday at 8
Admission: $15/advance purchase; $20/door
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/21/08 at 12:13 PM • Permalink
Free Festivals: Bring the Kids!
This weekend, two venerable cultural institutions—the 80-year Berkshire Theatre Festival and the 78-year Music Mountain Chamber Music Festival—are hosting free, family-oriented open houses to engage and encourage the support of future generations.
On Friday August 15, from 11 AM to 3 PM, for Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge is offering a performance of Around the World in 80 Days (above) at 11 AM and a musical preview of Oliver! at 1 PM for its free Community Festival Day. There will also be a Costume Shop Tag Sale, a child-friendly auction, and the de rigueur face painting, popcorn and balloons as well as a barbecue lunch provide by Route 7 Grill.
On Saturday August 16, from 11 AM to 4 PM, for its 3rd annual Free Family Festival, the Music Mountain campus in Falls Village will abound with musicians, dancers, mimes, storytellers and puppets, including marionettes and the life-size creations of Mortal Beasts & Deities (above.) There will be continuous performances in historic Gordon Hall, including the Bergonzi String Quartet at 2 PM, which will play their unique interpretation of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. Visitors are encouraged to bring picnics and blankets. There will also hamburgers and hot dogs for sale by the Falls Village Volunteer Fire Department.
