Dan’s Diary: Lauren Ambrose Goes Hog Wild on Father’s Day
You probably know that we’re big fans of actress Lauren Ambrose’s jazz singing with The Leisure Class. Now we’re psyched to hear her sing Willie Nelson and Patsy Cline tunes on Sunday, June 20, at Lester Blumenthal’s Route 7 Grill in Great Barrington at a benefit for the scholarship fund at the Kinderfhof pre-school in Egremont. “We’re having a pig roast that is open to anyone in the community, and I’ll be singing with a country and bluegrass band that’s an amalgamation of Berkshire musicians who I have played with before,” says Ambrose. “I think it’s a really appropriate way to spend Father’s Day, helping parents who cannot afford to send their children to pre-school. It’s going to be a really fun, family event—a real hootenanny!”
Photograph of Lauren Ambrose by Mark Baer
Kinderhof Scholarship Fun Pig Roast at Route 7 Grill
Great Barrington, MA; 413.528.3235
Sunday, June 20; noon - 4 p.m.
Adults: $35
Kids 12 and under: $5
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/14/10 at 10:41 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Simon & Garfunkel at Tanglewood
UPDATE JUNE 17: Tanglewood announced today that the concert has been cancelled. The official reason given is Garfunkel’s “vocal paresis.” There’s now a new Hottest Ticket of the 2010 Summer in the Berkshires, and it goes on sale Friday June 11 at 8 a.m online (and at 10 a.m. by phone or in person). Simon & Garfunkel, who have only occasionally toured together since the 1970s, are doing an “old friends” reunion tour this summer, which is taking them to big venues with convoluted names like the Coliseum at Alliant Energy Center in Madison, WI, and Trump Taj Mahal Etess Arena in Atlantic City. Tanglewood was a last minute addition, and it’s clearly the classiest venue on their schedule. It’s certainly turning out to be a folk-rock flashback summer at Tanglewood with James Taylor and Carole King selling out over the July 4th weekend and Crosby, Stills & Nash on September 6.
One thing’s for sure: every baby boomer in the shed and on the lawn (along with their parents, children and grandchildren) will be singing along to every word of “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” “Cecila,” “Homeward Bound,” “Kodachrome,” “Mrs. Robinson,” and all the other songs that have made Simon & Garfunkel’s music the soundtrack of so many our lives.
Simon & Garfunkel at Tanglewood on July 27 @ 8 p.m.
Click here for tickets on sale June 11 at 8 a.m.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 06/08/10 at 07:44 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: The Kennedys Are Coming To Tanglewood
It’s going to be extraordinarily magical and emotional afternoon at Tanglewood on Sunday, July 18, when the Boston Pops perform The Dream Lives on: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers, which had its world premiere at Symphony Hall in Boston on Tuesday night (see the video left.) Written by composer Peter Boyer (whose orchestral works include Ellis Island: The Dream of America) and lyricist Lynn Ahrens (Schoolhouse Rock) and commissioned by Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops, The Dream Lives On pays tribute to the legacies of John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy. Last night’s performance in Boston featured not only the Tanglewood Festival Chorus but guest narrators Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris and Cherry Jones. Alec Baldwin will be the narrator for the Tanglewood performance of the multi-media piece that combines quotes from speeches by the Kennedy brothers with original text and video, as well as the orchestral and choral score. It will be an afternoon that celebrates local, liberal politics, for folksinger Arlo Guthrie will also share the stage with the Pops in the Koussevitzy Music Shed. And the all-American spirit will continue into evening on the Tanglewood campus when classically-trained Broadway veteran Audra McDonald makes her Ozawa Hall debut with a program called The New American Songbook featuring standards as well as songs written especially for her by contemporary theater composers.
Boston Pops present The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers at Tanglewood
July 18 at 2:30 p.m.
Audra McDonald’s The New American Songbook in Ozawa Hall
July 18 at 8 p.m.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/19/10 at 08:16 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Broadway Bound in the Berkshires
The out-of-town tryout is a tried-and-true Broadway convention, and in the good old days shows played Philadelphia or New Haven before heading to New York City. This summer, Great Barrington is getting to play that part. The Broadway bound production of Lombardi—a play about the fabled Green Bay Packers coach that is being co-produced by the National Football League in its first Broadway venture—will have a pre-season run at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center July 22 - 28. Starring Dan Lauria (above left) as the coach and Judith Light (above right, who gave a tour de force performance last summer in A.R. Gurney’s Children at Williamstown Theatre Festival) as his wife, Marie, Lombardi is scheduled to begin performances at Circle in the Square in New York City on September 23. Written by Academy Award winner Eric Simonson and based on the book When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi by Pulitzer Prize winning author David Maraniss, the play will officially open on October 21. With all tickets at Circle in the Square costing $115, Lombardi at The Mahaiwe is a bargain with tickets at $42 - $65. There’s a definite Broadway vibe at the Mahaiwe this summer: the diva Patti Lupone will be performing there on July 11 and the legendary Elaine Stritch on August 15.
Lombardi at The Mahaiwe: July 22 - 28
Great Barrington, MA
Tickets go on sale Friday, May 14
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 05/12/10 at 10:52 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Poetry for All!
If you’re in Millerton, NY, Salisbury, CT, or Great Barrington, MA, on Thursday, April 29, Andrew Belcher (left) or Athena Fliakos may approach you out of the blue. Their intense passion may lead you to believe they are proselytizing or politicking, but all they’re hoping to do is share their bliss by offering you a poem to read and put in your pocket (or on the refrigerator door when you get home.) “We’re piggybacking on the American Academy of Poets’ Poem in Your Pocket Day,” says Belcher, explaining that he and Fliakos have founded an arts organization based in Ashley Falls, MA, to produce and promote accessible art. “We call our organization Mass Bliss, and our goal is to make art that effects the quality of your day. Poem in Your Pocket Day perfectly fits our mission. We can provide people with a moment of reflection and contemplation for free.”
Belcher, who was an apprentice and an artist-in-residence at Berkshire Theatre Festival (BTF), believes that art should not be a special event. And while he is about to play the young Albert Einstein in Breath on the Mirror at the legendary East Village theater La MaMa etc, he does not think it is any more important than the plays he peformed with BTF at schools throughout Massachusetts. “I have seen every cafeteria, hallway and gymnasium in every elementary school in western Massachusetts,” he says, laughing. “I don’t think about Making It. I think about making art every day.” He hopes that Mass Bliss will provide a year-round home for artists who are in search of a creative community in the country. “There are people of varying ages and origins here who are dying to connect in a real way,” he says. “Poetry in the Pocket is an example that shows that making art and human connections do not have to be turned into a commodities.”
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 04/27/10 at 07:25 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Reasons to Dress Up
We have a sentimental attachment to the annual IS 183 costume ball: It was the first event we covered “live” for Rural Intelligence so we think of it as our anniversary party, too. While this year’s dance party on March 6 has a theme—Radioactive Bodega—that is somewhat puzzling, it is also a challenge that should make it just a visually stunning and amusing as Rock the Opera in 2008 (left) and the Hair Ball in 2009. If you like to dress up in a more conventionally glamorous way, the Berkshire International Film Festival is having a “Red Carpet” Academy Awards party at the Beacon Cinema on Sunday March 7. With the Beacon’s high definition screens, you’ll be able to analyze every borrowed diamond necklace and beaded dress in a way that you can’t at home, and you’ll have a crowd to gossip with over drinks and dinner all evening long.
Radioactive Bodega Dance Party
March 6 at 8 p.m.
Pittsfield, MA
Berkshire International FIlm Festival Oscar Party
March 7 at 7 p.m.
Pittsfield, MA
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 03/01/10 at 09:20 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: The Olympics Come to Pittsfield
The Beacon Cinema is living up to its promise to be a team player in Pittsfield’s revitalization. From February 17 - 28, every night from 8:30 - 11 p.m., the Beacon will be showing the Winter Olympics in one of its theaters with stadium seating. Admission? Free. Owner Richard Stanley says that he was “looking for a way to showcase the Beacon’s all digital projection system and give the audience an example of its unique capabilities.” He added: “Digital projection allows us to not just be in the movie business but truly in the entertainment business. What better way to share that with an audience than with a fun and free event like the Winter Olympics? Can you imagine downhill ski racing or snowboarding on a 40 foot screen? You just can’t get that experience at home.”
Beacon Cinema
57 North Street, Pittsfield, MA; 413.358.4780
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 02/15/10 at 07:36 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: The Sounds of Summer 2010
If you missed out on getting tickets to see James Taylor & Carole King at Tanglewood, you still have time to get the best seats for other Tanglewood concerts and for Bard Summerscape, the world-class arts festival in nearby Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. On Sunday February 14, Tanglewood tickets go sale online at 8 a.m. and by telephone at 10 a.m. The 2010 season begins and ends with tapings of radio shows: Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion on June 26 and Radio Deluxe with John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey (making an encore appearance at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival) on September 4. The official opening night of the season is July 9 with James Levine conducting Mahler Symphony No. 2, and it continues through August 29 with appearances by conductors such as Seiji Ozawa and Kurt Masur and musicians such as Peter Serkin, Yo-Yo Ma, and Emanuel Ax.
If you’re signed up for Bard Summerscape’s email newsletter, you can already buy tickets which go on sale to the general public on February 16. Berg and His World is the theme for the 21st annual Bard Music Festival on August 13 - 15 and August 20 - 22, which honors the Austrian composer Alban Berg (1885–1935). The Summerscape offerings include dance (Trisha Brown, July 8 - 11), theater (Judgment Day by Ödön von Horváth, which was written in 1937 in Nazi-occupied Berlin, July 14 -25) and opera (Franz Schreker’s The Distant Sound, July 30 - August 6.) As a lighthearted counterpoint to all this heady fare, Bard will once again host the Spiegeltent with late-night dance parties, children’s events, and eclectic cabaret performances.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 02/10/10 at 07:32 PM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: It’s Too Late Baby Now (Sort Of)
It’s like our version of the running of the bulls in Pamplona: the stampede to get the best seats to James Taylor’s annual concerts at Tanglewood. And it’s a bull market this year for his Troubadour Reunion Tour with Carole King, which plays Lenox on July 3 & 4. Even before the general public ever had a chance to purchase tickets in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, the dues-paying Friends of Tanglewood who have early buying privileges have apparently bought every seat, so only lawn tickets are now available and they are expected to sell-out very quickly. So if you have your heart set on being part of James Taylor and Carole King’s historic concerts at Tanglewood, you should set your alarm for 8 a.m. on Sunday, February 7, when online ticket sales commence at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s website. You can sleep in if you’re on the wrong side of the digital divide, because phone orders will not be accepted until 10 a.m. that day through Symphony Charge at 888.266.1200.
As for the rest of the Tanglewood 2010 season, which includes the return of Seiji Ozawa, Kurt Masur, Mark Morris, Prairie Home Companion, Audra McDonald and James Levine, tickets go on sale for the general public on Februay 14. But if you want to get the best seats, you might want to become a Friend of Tanglewood right away so you can buy tickets now.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 02/01/10 at 07:23 AM • Permalink
Dan’s Diary: Lauren Ambrose & The Leisure Class Packs the Lion’s Den
With its low ceilings, small tables and intimate scale, the Lion’s Den at the Red Lion Inn is a classic cabaret, and it was literally packed to the rafters for Monday night’s second Berkshires performance of Lauren Ambrose and the Leisure Class, a gypsy-like, New Orleans style jazz band with a life affirming performance style. Was it worth getting there two hours early to secure a seat for the no-cover show? My table unanimously agreed that it definitely was (and discovered that one order of nachos makes a leisurely dinner for two.) Ambrose, who became famous as Clair Fisher in HBO’s Six Feet Under and is now the Accidental It Girl of the Berkshires, was quite simply radiant, but she never upstaged the boys in the band:Andy Bean (banjo, plectrum guitar, vocals), Matt Downing (double bass), Lyon Graulty (saxophone, clarinet), Brian Kantor (drums), Evan Palazzo (piano, accordion).
The Leisure Class is a true ensemble. The audience was a multigenerational mix of long-time rural residents and émigrés from big cities, whom Ambrose saluted in the contemporary torch song “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down.” When she sang the line “New York I love you but you’re freaking me out,” you understood why a young woman who has already starred on an HBO series and on Broadway would choose to live in the Berkshires instead of Manhattan or LA. It was clear that she felt genuinely herself with the crowd in the Lion’s Den. (She’s bringing the show to the big bad city on Thursday, January 21, when The Leisure Class plays Joe’s Pub.) The only disappointment of the evening: The band did not do a third set (they claimed they’d played their entire repertoire), but they did perform an appropriate Martin Luther King Day encore—a jazzy, version of the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome.”
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