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Weekend Preview May 19-24
Bob Dylan tributes, Deborah Voigt, Tom Paxton, Bill Kirchen, John Kirk and Trish Miller
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Deborah Voigt Headlines Mahaiwe Gala
Opera star to sing arias, show tunes on Saturday, May 21
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5.11.11
Weekend Preview May 12-16
Cultural Highlights of the Berkshire Weekend
6.4.09
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[MUSIC REVIEW] Avalon Quartet in Close Encounters at Mahaiwe
Review by Seth Rogovoy
5.8.11
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Review by Seth Rogovoy
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[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy
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[FILM REVIEW] Bill Cunningham New York
Review by Seth Rogovoy
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Klezmatics do Woody Guthrie's Jewish songs
4.11.08
ROGOVOY REPORT for weekend of APRIL 11
At the Clark in Williamstown, Mass., on Saturday at 8, The Klezmatics, one of the world’s greatest modern klezmer bands, will be performing its unique, Grammy Award-winning Wonder Wheel program, featuring Jewish-themed lyrics written by Woody Guthrie, put to music and performed by the band, which will also undoubtedly perform some of its own unique modern klezmer compositions, combining jazz and world rhythms with the ancient sound and rhythms of Eastern European klezmer.
What’s particularly notable about this program is it got its start right here in the Berkshires. About a decade ago, the Klezmatics performed with Itzhak Perlman at Tanglewood. After the concert, Woody’s daughter, Nora, who is the chief archivist of Woody’s papers, was talking to Perlman backstage (I happen to know this because I was there, too).
Perlman asked Nora Guthrie, “How did you like the Klezmatics version of your grandmother’s song?” Guthrie was stunned; she had no idea while sitting in the Shed that she had sat through a Yiddish/klezmer version of something written by her grandmother, Aliza Greenblatt, who in fact was a famed Yiddish poet and lyricist. She then met the Klezmatics, and together they unearthed a treasure trove of sketches and unfinished lyrics on Jewish themes by her dad, who was very close with his mother in law and very fond of the Jewish socialist culture in which she thrived.
To make a long story short, Nora Guthrie passed along Woody’s heretofore unknown Jewish lyrics to the members of the Klezmatics, who then put them to music. The end result, Wonder Wheel, won a Grammy Award last year, and this is the program that the band will be presenting tomorrow night at the Clark in Williamstown at 8.
Other highlights of the Berkshire cultural weekend include:
• The Williamstown Jazz Festival, already in progress, continues tonight at MASS MoCA in North Adams with a zydeco dance party featuring CJ Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band at 8. The festival’s premier event takes place tomorrow night at the 62 Center with a performance by the Joe Lovano Quartet, featuring the famed saxophonist. Latin guitarist Freddie Bryant will close the weekend festivities at the Williams College Museum of Art on Sunday at 2.
• Here in Great Barrington, Club Helsinki presents a busy weekend of music, starting tonight with old-time country band, Chatham County Line. Tomorrow night, Helsinki presents an encore performance of Sugar Shack Burlesque from NYC, a neo-burlesque show featuring Legs Malone and RunAround Sue. Sunday night Helsinki favorite Fred Eaglesmith, who I like to call the Jimmy Buffett of Canada, returns with his unique brand of folk-rock songs portraying small-town, blue collar life with an ironic twist.
• For classical music fans, The Berkshire Symphony performs at Williams College tonight, and tomorrow night, the Walden Chamber Players offer a program of featuring works by composer Elliott Carter in his centenary year at Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington.
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