Arts

Arts

Art by Serendipity: Isha Nelson Gallery Brings Light

Step one foot into the Isha Nelson Gallery on (Great Barrington's haute highway) Railroad Street and you will not want to leave — not too soon anyway. The gallery, which had a soft opening at the beginning of December, is an aesthetic amalgamation of bohemian chic meets pristine cathedral.

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Arts

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fame: Mary Gauthier at Towne Crier

What do Boy George, country music superstar (and co-host of The Voice) Blake Shelton, and R & B/gospel artist Candi Staton have in common? These disparate artists have each recorded the songs of restaurateur/chef/Americana troubadour Mary Gauthier (pronounced go-SHAY — it’s Cajun). Touring behind acclaimed new CD

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Arts

Women Writers Unite! (and Chat) at Berkshire Festival

At the risk of sounding like a self-help guru, I’m going to share with you my Moment of Personal Transformation. It happened about four years when I attended my first writing workshop in Hudson, New York. The facilitator was a short, sharp New York City author and teacher who’

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Arts

Ecstatic Truth Gumbo: Howard Fishman Quartet at Hudson Opera House

Singer-songwriter-bandleader Howard Fishman knows how to rock a venue — any venue. Since 1999, his unique folk-jazz-Americana has left its mark on New Orleans street corners, Lincoln Center, Manhattan’s tony Algonquin Oak Room, the French TV show Le Petit Journal, and countless clubs and halls. On Saturday, March 2, at

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Arts

Selected Shorts: Review of BSC's 10x10 New Play Festival

If you have to have a citywide arts festival in the dead of winter, you absolutely must have good theater somewhere, if not everywhere. And preferably of the kind that doesn’t strain the audience’s understandably frigid attention span. This is a hallmark of 2013’s 10x10 Upstreet Festival

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Arts

Deee-Lucius: A Cult Fave Comes to the Berkshires

When Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig sing together in their Brooklyn-based band Lucius, they create a third being, an ethereal presence greater than the sum of its parts, a voice haunting, playful, yearning, and sexy. Depending on the song, that voice can conjure kohl-eyed, bee-hived 1960s girl groups, Cocteau Twins

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Arts

Covering Duncan: Sheik At Infinity Hall

If you prefer your love odes on the bittersweet side, Duncan Sheik is your man, and his upcoming Valentine’s Day show at Infinity Hall is just the ticket for you and your date — or just you and a fantasy one. “I’ve written a lot of songs that are

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Arts

Collage Convention: Cutting It Up in North Adams

The dead of winter is a time when many shivering denizens of the Rural Intelligence zone —especially the more zealous fans of the toasty comforts of a wood stove — become more familiar with the contents of their wood sheds. Used as a verb, “woodshedding” is a term jazz musicians invoke

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Arts

Habitat for Harmony

Photos of Melissa Auf Der Maur by George Folk; Tommy Stinsom by Steven Cohen for Spinner; Meshell Ndegeocello, courtesy of www.meshell.com; Rapustina by James Jackson When three internationally acclaimed, world-traveled rock star bassists and a cellist picked the same ten-by-five block town — Hudson, NY— as the place to

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Arts

The Grand Slambovians and Darlingside: The Twain Shall Meet

By Robert Burke Warren Americana road warriors The Grand Slambovians (left) and string-band pop upstarts Darlingside (right) are excited to share the bill at the esteemed Norfolk, CT venue Infinity Hall, in part because each band reveres the other, but also because of Mark Twain. Legend has it the Bard

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Arts

His Brother's Keeper: Van Gogh Takes Center Stage

He was a zealous Evangelical preacher, a surrogate father to the children of a whore, a lover of wheat fields, an artist...but above all else, Vincent van Gogh was a misunderstood man with an unbridled passion for love of all kinds. So says his disabused brother Theo in Starry

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Arts

A Rhinebeck Rocker’s Christmas

Grammy and Golden Globe-nominated singer-songwriter-guitarist Marshall Crenshaw, whose songs have been covered by Bette Midler, Ronnie Spector, and Top 40 hitmakers the Gin Blossoms, is digging through the “Christmas Section” of his massive LP collection. The record aficionado, who shares his wide-ranging assortment of music on New York City’s

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