Weekend Preview August 5-9

  

New York-based choreographer Yin Mei returns to Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival August 4-8, in City of Paper, an evening-length contemporary dance-theatre work in the Doris Duke Theatre that merges sensual movement, paper and ink, and video projections with stirring live and recorded music. Called “a dancer of luminous clarity” by Jennifer Fisher of the Los Angeles Times, Yin Mei is joined by celebrated performers Kota Yamazaki, Dai Jian, and Kanako Yokota. An elaborate onstage environment, a varied score, and live viola performed by virtuoso Stephanie Griffin provide a compelling atmosphere, inspired by the choreographer’s childhood during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

 

 

“In addition to lots of beautiful, evocative dancing, City of Paper is a multimedia experience that keeps us engaged with light, music, digital scenic design, and other surprising visual effects. At one point, the dancers “paint” the set with their bodies, evoking the art of Chinese calligraphy in a completely new way,” comments Ella Baff, Jacob’s Pillow Executive Director.

 

 

 

In City of Paper, the four performers dance and interact with a digitally enhanced set designed by Yin Mei, in a series of dreamlike vignettes. The performance is set to an original score by noted composer Richard Marriott, performed live by Griffin, as well as music by experimental American composer Bora Yoon and French bossa nova singer/songwriter Camille.

 

 

Kota Yamazaki, Dai Jian, Kanako Yokota and Yin Mei’s diverse dance backgrounds add another layer of interest to the work: Yamazaki and Yokota are Butoh artists, and Jian performed with Shen Wei Dance Arts before joining the Trisha Brown Dance Company. Yin Mei's original training includes classical Chinese dance and for the past two decades she has been a contemporary dance choreographer and performance artist. Other collaborators include Peter Critchell, who provides text, and Tennessee Rice Dixon, who designed the digital projections.

 

 

 

Performance and Ticket Information for Yin Mei Dance

 

Wednesday, August 4 – Saturday, August 7, 8:15pm

Saturday, August 7 & Sunday, August 8, 2:15pm

Tickets on sale now online, via phone at 413.243.0745, or in person at Jacob’s Pillow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tickets are available through Tanglewood’s website or through SymphonyCharge at 888-266-1200.

 

 

 

Brooklyn-based band Clare and the Reasons has been seen wearing red jumpsuits and playing with kazoos. On Saturday, August 7, at 8 under the stars in MASS MoCA's Dré Wapenaar Pavilion, couple Clare Muldaur-Manchon and Olivier Manchon will share their fun-laced, orchestral, indie pop sound. The performance is the last summer Alt Cabaret, a series sponsored by the Hans & Kate Morris Fund for New Music which features up-and-coming stars.

 

 

Making music that floats like a summer breeze and evokes bittersweet nostalgia, Muldaur-Manchon says her musical roots were sewn early in her childhood, "My first musical, head-over-heels falling-in-love was with Bessie Smith when I was like, eight," the front woman explains. "My family was mostly into black music from the '20s, '30s and '40s though. I have a strong connection with musicians like her and Ray Charles. Also, my voice is very vintage." Clare and the Reasons deliver an assortment of carefully constructed songs, most written by Muldaur-Manchon in her kitchen with arrangements created by husband Manchon in the living room.

 

 

The ensemble comfortably glides between the worlds of musical maturity and childlike musical instincts, with an ever-changing list of instruments, including cellos, violas, kazoos, baby kotos, saws, recorders, and a bass drum that says "Kaboom" on it. A great compliment to the instrument contributors, Muldaur-Manchon's voice evokes romantic sensibilities. "[She] has a sweet, full voice, a perfect instrument for sweet, quirky songs that capture the quirkier regions of Europe, outer space and love in an intricate web of strings, horns and vocal harmonies," explains The Oregonian.

 

 

Clare and the Reasons bring the whimsy of their music to the stage as well, performing shows in red jumpsuits, recording haiku diaries, and covering 1980s classics with their own personal twist. "We're a bunch of idiots! We definitely mix that into what we do because that's who we are," confesses Muldaur-Manchon, "We take the music we do very, very, very seriously, but we don't take ourselves that seriously." Their delightful melodies and clever antics will leave you with the frolicking-in-a-field-on-a-breezy-spring-day feeling.

 

 

Tickets are available through the MASS MoCA Box Office located on Marshall Street in North Adams, open from 10 until 6 daily. Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 during Box Office hours or online at any time.

 

 

 

Shakespeare's classic verse meets the driving passionate rock of iconic singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley in the world premiere musical The Last Goodbye, the last production of the Williamstown Theatre Festival's 2010 season on the Nikos Stage.

 

 

Conceived and adapted from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by Michael Kimmel, with the music and lyrics by Jeff Buckley (Grace), arranged and orchestrated by Kris Kukul, an ensemble of fourteen singer/actors bring to life the lyrical beauty of two great poets set in a world of youthful angst, grandeur and grit. Kimmel (The Secret Agenda of Trees) directs and Sonya Tayeh (So You Think You Can Dance) choreographs The Last Goodbye, which plays August 5 - 20 (opening night August 7).

 

 

 

Tickets: http://www.wtfestival.org and by phone at 413. 597.3400 or in person at the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance, 1000 Main St (Route 2), Williamstown, Mass.

 

 

 

 

ArtBerkshires kicks off this weekend with a pilot program, 20/21 Modern Style and Studio Craft, focused on modernism in art and design in the Berkshires from the mid-20th century to the present. This initial project is a collaboration between galleries and museums, consisting of a series of exhibits and events taking place August through October.

 

 

The project’s launch weekend includes tours, talks and receptions in Lenox, Stockbridge, and Pittsfield. Among the talks are conversations with curators Jane Adlin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y.; Sarah Archer, director of Greenwhich House Pottery, N.Y.,  and guest curator of 20/21 Modern Style and Studio Craft at the Barn Gallery at Stonover Farm; Mark McDonald, a leading expert in modernism and dealer of mid-century objects based in Hudson, N.Y.; author and artist Mark Shapiro of Worthington, Mass.; and ceramist Ani Kasten of Takoma Park, Md. The weekend’s itinerary includes private tours of Berkshire Museum and Frelinghuysen Morris House and Studio that highlight historic connections of modernism in the Berkshires. 

 

 

 

“With ArtBerkshires, we are pleased to present a combination of venues and programs that focus attention on contemporary visual arts in the Berkshires,” says Leslie Ferrin, founder and co-owner of Ferrin Gallery. “We have fantastic museums, public collections, and a lively community of working artists in this area. We chose Modern Style and Studio Craft as our first joint project to bring awareness to the continuity of modernist design from the 1950s to the present, and to demonstrate how it is reflected in artwork being produced and collected today. The artwork by the artists presented as part of this project is connected in some way to the fifties; sometimes that line is direct, as in period objects by artists whose lives spanned that time period, Tom Patti, Karen Karnes and Wendell Castle. In other cases, contemporary artists such as Mark Shapiro and Ani Kasten are working in modern style by drawing inspiration from that time period. It’s our expectation that this project will make it easier to understand the connections and explore the role of the Berkshires in the modernist movement and how that connects to the artists working within the realm of studio craft.”

 

 

Berkshire Museum played a pivotal role in American modernism, explains Stuart Chase, the Museum’s executive director, “Berkshire Museum was founded in 1903 by Zenas Crane, who, throughout our first decade, donated many rare artifacts and artworks that formed the basis of our permanent collections of natural history and fine art,” says Chase. “Another key era was the 1930s, when the museum became the first public institution to purchase work by Alexander Calder in 1933, and the first to commission public work by Calder in 1936. In 1937, artist and collector Albert Eugene Gallatin donated five important abstract works to the museum, before donating 15 more in 1943. These holdings made the museum a major player in American Modernism.” Visitors can see Berkshire Museum’s Calder collections on their own, but on August 7, the Museum’s Director of Interpretation, Maria Mingalone, will lead a tour of the Museum’s storage vaults, focusing on the A.E. Gallatin holdings and other modernist works from the collection not currently on view in the galleries.

 

 

The Frelinghuysen Morris House, another participant in the 20/21 Modern Style + Studio Craft launch weekend, is a masterpiece of modernist architecture. The house and studio of abstract artists George L.K. Morris and Suzy Frelinghuysen, the house is filled with art and objects by these artists and their peers from that era. Mark McDonald will lead a private tour of and conversation about the house and its furnishings with Kinney Frelinghuysen, director of the house and programs, a painter and the nephew of Suzy Frelinghuysen, on Sunday, August 8th at 11:30. McDonald, a noted expert and dealer of objects from this period also lent period jewelry and furniture to exhibits at Sienna Gallery and the Barn Gallery at Stonover Farm, where a domestic vignette of vintage objects from the 1950s and ’60s arrayed with contemporary art, has been staged in a repurposed barn. This bohemian scene evokes the Berkshires’ long legacy as a haven for artists and arts enthusiasts. Guest curator Sarah Archer will discuss the Barn Gallery installation during a conversational brunch at Stonover Farm on Saturday, August 7. 

 

 

20/21 Modern Style + Studio Craft kicks off on Thursday, August 5 at 7 p.m., with a conversation with Mark Shapiro at Ferrin Gallery, continuing Friday, August 6 with an opening reception at the Barn Gallery at 5 p.m. Following is a complete list of launch weekend events, which can also be found at ArtBerkshires

 

Thursday, August 5

6:30 – 8 pm

Conversation and Reception:

Mark Shapiro, artist and writer

Bottles and Other Muses - solo show of ceramics

Author and editor of “Karen Karnes, A Chosen Path”

Ferrin Gallery, Pittsfield, Mass.

 

Friday, August 6

5 -7 pm

Opening Reception:

20/21 Modern Style and Studio Craft - group show of art + object + design.

The Barn Gallery at Stonover Farm, Lenox, Mass.

 

Saturday, August 7

10 am – Noon

Conversation and Brunch:

Sarah Archer, Guest curator and Director of Greenwich House Pottery

The Barn Gallery at Stonover Farm, Lenox, Mass.

 

1 – 2:30 pm

Conversation and Tour:

Maria Mingalone, Director of Interpretation followed by tour of collection storage.

Modernism in the Berkshires - Alexander Calder, A. E. Gallatin and Berkshire Museum

Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Mass.

 

4 – 6 pm

Conversation and Reception:

Sarah Archer: Modern Style in American Studio Ceramics - Karen Karnes to Jonathan Adler 1950 – 2010.

Ferrin Gallery, Pittsfield, Mass.

           

Sunday, August 8

 

10:00 – 11:15 am

Conversation and Brunch:

Jane Adlin, Associate Curator of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Jewelry of Alexander Calder.

Sienna Gallery, Lenox, Mass.

 

11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Conversation and Tour:

Mark McDonald and Kinney Frelinghuysen at the Frelinghuysen Morris House, Lenox, Mass..

 

2 – 4 pm

Conversation and Reception:

Ani Kasten – Contemporary Ceramics

Presented by Lacoste Gallery, Concord, Mass. at Kasten Fine Art, Stockbridge, Mass.

 

 

 

The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare runs at Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Mass., through August 14. A longtime Shakespeare favorite, “the Scottish play,” as it is often referred to by those who believe the play and those who participate in it are somehow cursed, ranges the emotional gamut from jealousy to spirituality, ambition, lust, and fear, in this fast-paced ride through bloody 11th-century Scotland

 

413-298-5576 or visit www.berkshiretheatre.org

 

 

 

 

Catie Curtis and Jonatha Brooke will be at the Colonial Theatre on August 7 at 8.

 

 

Catie Curtis has been a fan favorite on the acoustic music scene for a number of years. Her well-deserved reputation as one of our very best singer/songwriters has followed her through nine critically-acclaimed recordings. With her tenth and newest project, Hello Stranger, released in August 2009, she enticed new listeners with a recording that captured some of the magic of her live performances. With the help of her Nashville-based record label, Compass Records, she selected a few of Nashville's best musicians to make an album featuring fiddle, mandolin and banjo as well as acoustic guitar. 

 

 

Curtis has created a dedicated following that has grown steadily over the course of her 15-year career. With her live shows, film and tv placements, the 2006 International Songwriting Competition Grand Prize, and now the Hello Stranger string-band project, Curtis has proven that she's the real deal: a musician with the kind of raw talent and artistic maturity that makes her a force to be reckoned with, albeit a sweet force. 

 

 

Jonatha Brooke's musical career began in the late 1980s with fellow songwriter Jennifer Kimball while at college in Northampton, Mass.. The pair later formed the band The Story, and after writing their debut album Grace in Gravity, the pair became signed to the label Elektra Records in the early ’90s. The music at this point was predominantly folk fused with pop, but when Jonatha and Jennifer went their separate ways in 1994, Brooke started writing more commercially styled songs.

 

 

Brooke released a steady stream of albums throughout the ’90s (Plumb, 10 Cent Wings, Steady Pull). Brooke borrowed the title of her latest album, The Works, from a Woody Guthrie lyric she came across in a notebook stored at the Guthrie archives – “I am the WORKS, the whole WORKS,” the American folk legend had scribbled, “The saint, the sinner, the drinker, the thinker....” Placing hitherto unseen Guthrie lyrics in contemporary musical settings to create brand-new songs, Brooke, backed by a small combo of stellar jazz and rock players, offers an extraordinarily intimate, emotionally revealing portrait of an American folk legend and an album that’s very much her own.

 

413.997.4444 or online

 

 

 

The second concert in The Clark’s chamber music series takes place Tuesday, August 10, at 8 and features the Miró String Quartet. The program includes the Beethoven String Quartet in C minor, Opus 18, No. 4, Barber Quartet Opus 11, and Dvořák’s Quartet No. 12, in F Major, Opus 96 (“American”). Tickets are $21, $18 for Clark members and students with ID, and may be purchased at www.clarkart.edu, by phone 413.458.0524, or in person at the museum shop. 

 

 

The critically acclaimed Miró Quartet is one of America’s highest profile chamber groups.  Members of the quartet studied at the Juilliard School, Cleveland Institute of Music, and the Oberlin Conservatory. The group was founded in 1995 at the Oberlin Conservatory and met with immediate success winning first prizes at the Coleman, Fischoff, and Banff competitions as well as the prestigious Naumburg Chamber Music Award. The Miró Quartet was also a recipient of the Cleveland Quartet Award and was the first ensemble ever to be awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant. In 2003, the Miró became the first faculty string quartet at the University of Texas at Austin. Its members teach and coach chamber music there, while continuing their active international touring and recording schedules. The Miró was Quartet-in-Residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two and was named to the Distinctive Debut Series of Carnegie Hall. At the invitation of Isaac Stern, they performed live at the Jerusalem Music Center in Israel.

 

 

 

 

It’s an all Mozart weekend on August 7 and 8 at Music Mountain with the world class Amernet String Quartet joined by Chauncey Patterson, viola, performing all six of Mozart’s Viola Quintets in two concerts – August 7 at 6:30 and August 8 at 3.  This is the first time in Music Mountain’s entire 81 year history that all six pieces have been presented in one weekend.

 

 

Saturday’s performance features three of the viola quintets: Viola Quintet in C Minor, K. 406 (1787); Viola Quintet in G Minor, K. 516 (1787), and the Viola Quintet in C Major, K.515 (1787). Then on Sunday the remaining three: Viola Quintet in B Flat Major, K. 174 (1773); Viola Quintet in D Major, K. 593 (1790) and Viola Quintet in E Flat Major, K. 614 (1791).

 

 

These six Viola Quintets (2 Violins, 2 Viola and Cello) span Mozart’s entire creative life. The first one was written when he was barely 18, and the last, his final major chamber music work, only a few months before his death.

 

 

The Amernet String Quartet, Ensemble-in-Residence at Florida International University has garnered worldwide praise and recognition as one of today’s exceptional string quartets. Praised for their “flawless intonation, extraordinary beauty of sound, virtuosic brilliance and homogeneity of ensemble…” Nurnmberger Nachtrichten (Germany), the Amernet regularly tours throughout the United States and Europe.

 

 

Rising to international attention after only one year of existence, after winning the Gold Medal at the 7th Tokyo International Music Competition in 1992, the Amernet has been described by The New York Times as “Immensely satisfying……. Their fine performances were most notable for the quality of unjaded discovery that came through so vividly.” Three years later the group was the First Prize winner of the prestigious 5th Banff International String Quartet Competition. Tickets are available online, at the door before the concerts, or by phone at 860.824.7126.

 

 

 

The Work O’ the Weavers will perform its tribute to Pete Seeger at the Guthrie Center Friday, August 6 as part of the ongoing Troubadour Series. The following night, Saturday, August 7, the folk duo Jay Ungar & Molly Mason (of “Ashokan Farewell” fame) will entertain.

 

 

Ungar and Mason are known for their “hard-driving Appalachian, Cajun and Celtic fiddle tunes”—the repertoire includes Civil War classics, golden age of swing standards, and country waltzes. Ungar and Mason, known also for their Ashokan fiddle and dance camps, will as well perform their own compositions at the Guthrie Center show. Jay Ungar’s “Farewell to Ashokan” was nominated for an Emmy after Ken Burns selected it for the soundtrack of his The Civil War documentary, a song that has earned Ungar and Mason international acclaim.

 

Both the Friday, August 6 concert featuring The Work O’ the Weavers, and the Saturday, August 7 concert featuring Jay Ungar & Molly Mason, begin at 8 p.m. in the Guthrie Center concert room. Guest tables are open both nights at 6 p.m., where light fare and refreshments are available from the Guthrie Center kitchen. Ticket prices for The Work O’ the Weavers on Friday night are $20 for Guthrie Center members, and $22 for non-members. Ticket prices for Jay Ungar & Molly Mason on Saturday night are $25 for members and $30 for non-members. For more information, visit www.guthriecenter.org.

 

 

 

 

 

On Friday, August 6, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival presents an evening with the famed Tokyo String Quartet. The program includes Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor and Mozart’s Quintet for Strings in D Major. Opening the program is Lera Auerbach’s String Quartet No. 2, Primordial Light. A prolific composer and virtuoso pianist, Ms. Auerbach’s Primordial Light contains six prayer-like movements reminiscent of both Bartók and Barber. Debussy’s String Quartet stunned audiences at its premiere, where it introduced the style that defined Debussy’s mature works.

 

 

Saturday Night features works of Schumann, Brahms and Mahler. Pianist André-Michel Schub joins Grammy award-winning William Purvis (horn) and David Shifrin (clarinet) in performances of Robert Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro for Horn and Piano in A-flat Major and Brahms’ magnificent Sonata for Clarinet and Piano in E-flat Major, Op 120, No. 2. Concluding the program is a rare opportunity to hear Mahler’s 4th Symphony arranged for chamber ensemble by Erwin Stein. This arrangement manages to maintain the colors of the symphony in an ensemble of only fourteen musicians. The instruments (flute, oboe, clarinet, two pianos, harmonium, two percussionists, and string quintet) produce a distinctly Viennese sound world similar to the salon orchestras popular in the early 20th century. Soprano Jihee Kim sings the final movement based on the song Heavenly Life- an innocent expression of wonders of heaven. Ransom Wilson conducts.

 

 

860-542-3000