Arts

Arts

A New Spotlight For the Independents: The Beacon Independent Film Festival

By Robert Burke Warren An old musician temporarily outwits the Grim Reaper and gets an extra decade of life, during which he nurtures his community; a mom n’ pop cryonics operation promises immortality and thrives, despite the scoffing of scientists; a middle-aged mother struggles to save her prescription pill-addicted daughter,

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Arts

"Love Where You Live" - Hammertown's Mantra Is Now A Book, Too

By Dan Shaw If grown-up life is really high school all over again and again, then the Rural Intelligence region finally has a yearbook thanks to Joan Osofsky of Hammertown: Love Where You Live: At Home in the Country, a coffee-table design tome published by Rizzoli that features 18 country

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Arts

Happening on the Hudson: Lit Lions and Pop Provocateurs at Basilica Soundscape

By Robert Burke Warren “Anything can happen here," says Melissa Auf der Maur, former Smashing Pumpkins/Hole bassist, and rising Upstate arts maven.  “This place is a shape shifter, a beast." She’s speaking of Basilica Hudson, the multi-purpose venue she and her filmmaker husband, Tony Stone, opened

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Arts

Frenemies, A Love/Hate Story: "Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah" at Barrington Stage

Photos by Kevin SpragueBy Jeremy D. Goodwin With friends like this, who needs enemies? The simplest reference to famed literary frenemies F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway conjures a sense of Jazz Age glamour, a romantic notion of novelists as pop stars, living off the largesse of their rich friends

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Arts

Legacy Act: Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion Celebrate New CD, New Sound at Helsinki

By Robert Burke Warren Some legacy-bearers follow directly in their ancestors’ footsteps, keeping to tradition, and carrying on in a predictable vein. Others, like Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion, challenge expectations, a more risky prospect; she is Arlo’s daughter, he is John Steinbeck’s grandnephew, and, since 2004,

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Arts

From Bach to Bawdy, Sonnets to Sonatas, Shakespeare to Schubert: Music and More in the Berkshires

By Robert Burke Warren Attendees of the 2013 Music and More Festival in New Marlborough, Massachusetts enjoy the unique experience of walking into history, both literally and figuratively; the impeccably performed chamber music, jazz, Renaissance reels, and Elizabethan poetry take place in the township’s circa 1839 Meeting House, home

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Arts

Ghost Adventures: Edith Wharton Live (and in Spirit) at the Mount

By Sarah Ellen Rindsberg It’s time to visit your stately but inviting neighbor in the Berkshires: Edith Wharton. Although the esteemed writer will not be there in the flesh to greet you, her spirit reigns in more ways than one. Which is a good thing: she was a lovely

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Arts

Thriving On the Outskirts of Fame: Shawn Mullins Returns to Infinity Hall

By Robert Burke Warren You cannot keep a good troubadour down. While naysayers bemoan the difficulty of convincing couch potatoes to invest in live music, a dedicated breed of singer-songwriters still grace stages in small-to-medium sized venues, connecting with appreciative audiences as if the Internet and basic cable never happened.

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Arts

Beyond Borders: The Art of Kenro Izu

By Robin Catalano After three decades of seeking his muse in far-flung locales, from the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria to Canyon de Chelly in Arizona, photographer Kenro Izu is looking for inspiration closer to home — as in, his backyard. The peripatetic artist, renowned for capturing sacred places in

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Arts

Where the Wild Things Are: Beasts of the Southern Wild, Live at MASS MoCA

By Robert Burke Warren When Ronen Givony, director of New York City’s Wordless Music Orchestra, saw Beasts of the Southern Wild, a mythic tale of devotion and loss that was nominated for four Academy Awards this year, he knew the majestic, Cajun-inflected, occasionally edgy score belonged onstage, fleshed out

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Arts

Islam Contemporary? A Journey Into Past, Present, Future, and Action

By Nichole Dupont Don't let the New England landscape fool you as you ascend the corner steps to Pittsfield's Lichtenstein Center for the Arts. There is nothing about what's happening inside — the recently opened Islam Contemporary curated by Brandeis graduate and native of Pakistan,

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Arts

All’s Welles That Ends Welles: A New Book From Chatham Film Festival's Peter Biskind

By Sam PrattOne afternoon in Los Angeles in 1983, Richard Burton cautiously approached Orson Welles’ usual table at Ma Maison, to ask if he could bring Liz Taylor over to meet him. Welles rudely shooed both away. Now, with the publication of Vanity Fair critic and Chatham Film Festival honcho

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