Weekend Cultural Highlights, Feb 26-28, 2010

 

After debuting her newest performance piece, Delusion, at the Vancouver Olympics, Laurie Anderson returns to Northern Berkshire, where she workshopped the production at MASS MoCA in North Adams last month. Tonight and tomorrow night, Anderson presents her multimedia show, conceived as a series of short mystery plays, at the ’62 Center on the Williams College campus in Williamstown, Mass.

 

 

Combining violin, electronic puppetry, music and visuals, Delusion is full of nuns, elves, golems, rotting forests, ghost ships, archaeologists, dead relatives and unmanned tankers told in the colorful, poetic and imagistic language that has become Anderson’s trademark. Employing a series of altered voices and imaginary guests Anderson, tells a complex story about longing, memory and identity. At the heart of Delusion is the pleasure of language and a terror that the world is made entirely of words.

 

 

“You begin with a blank mind. There is absolutely nothing in it. Not a single picture. There is a void. No names. The first thing to wander into this mind is a small spotted dog named Terence and his owner, historian and social commentator Fenway Bergamot.”

 

 

DELUSION

by Laurie Anderson

February 26 & 27 | 8:00 PM | MainStage ’62 Center

$10 / $3 students

 

 

 

 

Fans of traditional Irish music can get a jump on St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday night when Cherish the Ladies, one of the world’s first and greatest all-woman traditional Irish folk music ensembles, performs at the Mahaiwe at 7.

 

 

 

Taking its name from the Irish jig of the same title, the sextet blends vocals, instrumentals, and step dancing to present a full panoply of traditional Irish culture. The group includes Joanie Madden on flute, whistle and harmonies; Mary Coogan on guitar, banjo, and mandolin; Roisin Dillon on fiddle; Michelle Burke on vocals; Mirella Murray on accordion; and Kathleen Boyle on piano, each of whom is a star of Irish music in her own right.

 

Mahaiwe box office: 413-528-0100

 

 

 

 

Speaking of an all-ladies group, the Parnas Sisters are fast becoming one of the hottest attractions in classical music. The duo, who know each other as Madalyn and Cicely, join forces with the Albany Symphony on Saturday afternoon at 3 at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Mass., to perform Saint-Saëns’ rarely heard La Muse et le Poète and Vivaldi’s Double Concerto for Violin & Cello in Bb Major. Also on the program are Schoenberg’s early romantic masterpiece, Verklärte Nacht, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8.

 

 

 

Still in their teens, the Duo Parnas have released two highly acclaimed CDs, and taken first prize in international chamber music competition and top prizes in national soloist competitions. Recently hailed in the New York Times for their "electrifying" performance, "lush tone" and "pinpoint precision," the duo also performs with the Berkshires’ own Peter Serkin in the Parnas/Serkin Trio.

 

 

Box office: 413.236.8888 or buy online now.

 

 

 

 

Shahzad Ismaily, an American of Pakistani descent, graduated from Simon’s Rock College, where he majored in pre-med, in 1988. Born and raised in Shickshinny, a quiet ex-coal mining town in Pennsylvania, Ismaily also studied music theory, composition, expression, form, and acoustics while at Simon’s Rock. His interests soon took him outside the Western tradition, and led him to pursue study of traditional music in Bali, Pakistan, Japan, Morocco, Brazil and India.

 

As a composer, he has written works for small chamber ensembles, short film, dance and live theatre. He performs and records regularly on piano, electric bass, electric guitar, double bass, drums, percussion, and electronic textural instruments. Composer and musician Ismaily, currently working in New York City, wrote the score for Frozen River, which won the 2008 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize in drama. It was also nominated for two Academy awards. He has performed, collaborated, or recorded with a diverse range of artists, including Laurie Anderson, Yoko Ono, Will Oldham, Marc Ribot, Sigur Ros, Iggy Pop, Min Tanaka, Tom Waits, and John Zorn.

 

 

On Saturday night in the Daniel Arts Center at his alma mater, Ismaily will be joined by Sam Amidon, on banjo and vocals, and music faculty member, John Myers, on reeds and guitar, in a program featuring three new pieces for solo guitar and solo electric bass, as well as several experimental improvisations for drumset, synthesizer and piano.

 

 

Simon’s Rock

Saturday, February 27, 2010 • 8:00 pm

Where:   McConnell Theater, the Daniel Arts Center

 

 

 

 

On Tuesday at 8 in the ’62 Center at Williams College, New Zealand’s leading contemporary dance company Black Grace performs a three-part program, including Minoi, a signature work based on the fusion of Samoan and western contemporary dance styles; and excerpts from Surface and Gathering Clouds, a new work which responds to controversial claims made in a paper stating that Pacific Islanders are a drain on New Zealand’s economy.