Star Struck

Written by

Seth Rogovoy

The diversity of performers on Berkshire stages this summer is matched only by the diversity of their individual talents

Summer always brings stars out in the sky—and to Berkshire stages. This coming summer, in particular, seems an exceptionally star-studded one, featuring many well-known artists who bring a deep and broad range of talents to their performances. Few of these entertainers can be easily pigeonholed, and most of them have won their fame by virtue of their dedication and determination to stamping their careers with the imprint of their unique personalities. We like that approach, and we celebrate these artists and the venues that provide them with platforms for plying their trade.

SHE’S NOT A DOCTOR, SHE JUST PLAYS ONE ON TV
Actress or singer? How about both? Especially when you have four Tony Awards and two Grammy Awards to your name. While these days Audra McDonald may be best known for her role as Dr. Naomi Bennett on TV’s Private Practice, McDonald has enjoyed a critically acclaimed career on Broadway (Ragtime, A Raisin in the Sun) and as a recording and performing artist, in the tradition of Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand before her. As a classically trained vocalist she has sung opera and Kurt Weill, and her recording and concert repertoire includes new show tunes and contemporary songs by writers such as Elvis Costello, Randy Newman, Nellie McKay, Neil Young, and Rufus Wainwright. At Tanglewood, McDonald’s program, “A New American Songbook,” reflects her interest in contemporary songwriters.

Jul 18, Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood, Lenox, Mass., 888.266.1200

FIDDLING AROUND
At the age of thirty, violinist Hilary Hahn already has a lifetime of achievements behind her, which can only mean that incredible things are expected of her in years to come. A two-time Grammy Award-winning soloist who was named Gramophone’s Artist of the Year, Hahn has performed with leading orchestras throughout the world playing a repertoire spanning Bach to Barber, Beethoven to Bernstein, and Stravinsky to Schoenberg. But Hahn’s interests extend beyond the dead-white-male canon to include film scores, collaborations with folk-rock singer-songwriters such as Josh Ritter and Tom Brosseau, and the work of contemporary composers including Edgar Meyer and Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Higdon. A true child of her generation, Hahn also blogs and tweets, and at Tanglewood on August 7 she joins the Boston Symphony Orchestra to perform Sibelius’s Violin Concerto.

Aug 7, Tanglewood, Lenox, Mass., 888.266.1200

GIVING VOICE
While Dawn Upshaw first garnered renown as an opera singer tackling the great Mozart roles as well as modern works by Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Messiaen, it is as an interpreter of contemporary art song that she has become the darling of the classical world, the first-choice vocalist for living composers including John Harbison, John Adams, and, especially, Osvaldo Golijov, with whom she is perhaps most identified, notably for their previous collaborations at Tanglewood. The 2007 MacArthur Fellow and four-time Grammy Award-winner will present a selection of Songs of the Auvergne by Joseph Canteloube and Golijov’s Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra when she performs with the BSO on August 20 at Tanglewood.

Aug 20, Tanglewood, Lenox, Mass., 888.266.1200

PIANO MAN
Tracing the arc of Herbie Hancock’s career is like reliving the history of jazz and pop music of the last fifty years. A kind of “Zelig” character, the classically trained Hancock was behind the keyboards when Miles Davis redefined the role of the jazz rhythm section. His own albums of the 1960s were some of the decade’s bestsellers, defining the post-bop sound that would influence jazz for the next forty years. He popularized jazz with his music composed for the Bill Cosby TV show Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, and, along with Davis, he was one of the key figures to combine jazz and electric funk—called “fusion”—and incorporate the synthesizer into the jazz ensemble. While always returning to the traditional acoustic format, Hancock’s forays into pop included one of the first major MTV hip-hop hits, “Rockit,” which introduced the sound of scratching to the mass audience, and he played a role in the acid-jazz movement before tackling the Joni Mitchell songbook for his Grammy-winning album, River: The Joni Letters. This summer marks the release of his Imagine Project, featuring jazz-pop versions of songs by Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, the Beatles, Bob Marley, and John Lennon, which he will draw upon for his playlist at Tanglewood on August 9.

Aug 9, Tanglewood, Lenox, Mass., 888.266.1200

AQUARIUM DRINKERS
In one form or another, Wilco has been together now for sixteen years. And while it’s been a long and rocky road that has included numerous personnel changes (beside leader Jeff Tweedy, only bassist John Stirratt remains from the original lineup), broken record deals, and drug and health issues, the band soldiers on in its role as perhaps America’s greatest rock outfit since The Band. With a solidified lineup of incredibly creative talents and a string of excellent albums released over the past fifteen years (see last year’s Wilco (The Album) and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and watch the documentary film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart if you’re not familiar with the group), the band has chosen MASS MoCA to stage not only its sole East Coast appearance of the summer, but a full-fledged, three-day Solid Sound Festival, including two Wilco shows plus its various members’ solo projects, performances by other groups (including North Adams’s own The Books) and comedians, and art installations. Always forward-looking, Wilco takes the whole idea of the rock festival into uncharted territory with Solid Sound.

Aug 13-15, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Mass., 413.662.2111

PRINCESS DIARIES
Sutton Foster’s first brush with fame was as a fifteen-year-old on Star Search. (She also auditioned for the cast of The Mickey Mouse Club). But it was her role in the 2002 Broadway revival of Thoroughly Modern Millie—she was a last-minute replacement for the scheduled lead—that won her acclaim and the first of many awards. Foster went on to star in Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein, and, most recently, as Princess Fiona in Shrek the Musical, for which she was honored with Tony and Drama Desk nominations and the Outer Critics Circle Award. Foster’s cabaret program, which she performs at the Berkshire Theatre Festival on August 22, draws on songs from all of these shows and other Broadway musical classics.

Aug 22, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stockbridge, Mass., 413.298.5576

SISTER ACT
Nerissa and Katryna Nields have been singing together their entire lives, and like other sister groups—think the Roches and the McGarrigles—something out of the ordinary happens when they harmonize. Sure, on some level, you can chart it out, but there is an additional element between them, something organic and intangible, which elevates their music into another dimension. It’s what’s been attracting fans to the Nields since they started out as a summertime lounge act at the Williams Inn in the early 1990s (their first recording was titled 66 Hoxsey Street, named after their Williamstown, Massachusetts, address). While over the years the Nields have played in various formations, including as a trio and a rock quintet, the core of their sound has always been the magic that occurs when the sisters sing together, and it is what keeps them headlining stages at folk festivals such as Falcon Ridge, where they perform July 23-25.

Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, Hillsdale, N.Y., 866.325.2744

WICKED GOOD
Idina Menzel’s resumé reads like a list of much that has been cool in Broadway, film, and TV for the last fifteen years. Her first big break was as a cast member in the original ensemble of Rent, for which she received a Tony nomination. She went on to play roles in Hair, Aida, and most notably, Wicked, for which she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical among countless other honors. All the while, Menzel also worked as a recording and performing artist, with a role in 1998’s Lilith Fair, and on TV, where most recently she has been seen as a recurring guest star on the hit show Glee. So Menzel will have plenty to draw upon when she performs with the Boston Pops at Tanglewood in a program that also includes Johnny Carson’s bandleader Doc Severinsen. (A bit of trivia: Menzel attended high school in Syosset, N.Y., with Berkshire Living publisher Michael Zivyak.)

Jul 2, Tanglewood, Lenox, Mass., 888.266.1200

DON’T CRY FOR HER
While forever identified with the title character of Evita, in a role that created her as much as she created the role, Patti LuPone has gone on to reign as one of the powerhouses of the Broadway musical, seen most recently in her award-winning portrayal of Rose in the classic Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim-Arthur Laurents musical Gypsy. When LuPone takes to the concert stage, she draws upon a wealth of credits and experience, including roles in the Los Angeles Opera’s production of Weill-Brecht’s Mahagonny; John Doyle’s award-winning Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd; the title role in Marc Blitzstein’s Regina, a musical version of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes; a critically acclaimed performance as Fosca in a concert version of Stephen Sondheim’s Passion; and a multi-city tour of her theatrical concert Matters of the Heart. She’ll undoubtedly sing of those and other matters when she performs at the Mahaiwe on July 11.

Jul 11, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, Mass., 413.528.0100

GERMAN SHEPHERDESS
Ute Lemper draws a direct musical line from the heyday of cabaret in 1920s Weimar Germany to “off-beat contemporary rock writers” including Nick Cave, Tom Waits, and Elvis Costello. While the German native is best known for her moody renditions of classic songs by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, Lemper is equally at home in modern musical theater (with roles in Chicago, Peter Pan, and Cats), as well as the French chansons of Edith Piaf, Jacques Prévert, Joseph Kosma, and Serge Gainsbourg. Lemper has also tackled repertoire from Hungarian, Jewish, Arab, Romany, South American, and Russian traditions—in part as a conscious way of coming to terms with her native land’s history of destruction of many of these cultures. (For the same reason, she now calls the melting pot of New York City home.) Lemper hopes to present a kinder, gentler Berlin in her concert at the Colonial Theatre on August 27.