Arts

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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Arts

Speaking Through Clay

For nearly two decades, Dan Bellow was a wordsmith. You might say it’s the family business. The son of Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Saul Bellow, he worked the circuit of Northeast newspapers, covering crime in Albany, city government in Pittsfield, and state politics in Burlington, Vermont. But side

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Arts

Not Just a Fluke: Sheffield Shop Perfects the Ukulele

The Stradivari family has the violin. The Gibsons have the guitar. For the Webb family in Sheffield, while the family business has yet to hit the 20-year mark, it seems they have cornered the fast-growing ukulele market, which is beginning to enjoy celebrity status thanks to the likes of Bette

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Arts

At the Clark Museum: Giselle's New World

On a free admission day at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute a couple of weeks ago, 11-year-old Giselle Ciulla seems like just one of the many other well-behaved kids hanging out with their parents on a day's cultural excursion. Upbeat and bubbly, she says she enjoys

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Arts

Simone Felice's Happy Days

It's been eight months of traversing the globe for musician Simone Felice, all in support of his eponymous, moody folk debut album. Even so, the singer-songwriter-author and Catskills resident says he’ll approach his December 7 performance at Helsinki Hudson, the first of two back in home territory,

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Arts

Kelly Meets Cage, Once Again

Left: photo of John Kelly by Billy Erb; right: photo of John Cage poster by Everett McCourt On a New Year's Eve in the early 1990s, John Kelly was invited to a party at a downtown Manhattan loft while working on a production of his Light Shall Lift

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Arts

Cool Brit Gets Blown Around by the Winds of America

Longtime rock music fans may remember England's whiskey voiced Graham Parker and his group, the Rumour -- an ensemble equally adept at Motown-ish rave-ups, reggae, and Dylanesque folk rock — for their 1979 hit album, Squeezing Out Sparks, which yielded the catchy soul-pop single “Local Girls.” Now a Hudson

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Arts

Art Reaches for the Stars at Williams

Like many of us, Elizabeth Rooklidge's fate, it seems, was written in the stars. A second year art history graduate student at Williams College, Rooklidge, who made her way east from Southern California, found her muse in the vaults of Williams College Museum of Art's (WCMA&

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