Saxophone and vocalist Grace Kelly returns to the Berkshires
Dalton— On Friday, September 29th for an 8 p.m., the Stationery Factory presents “An Evening with Grace Kelly”, the musical genre-bending saxophonist and vocalist, presented in collaboration between Berkshires Jazz and The Stationery Factory.
A rising legend at the age of 31, Grace Kelly has become a mainstay of what she calls “State-of-the-art Electro Jazz Pop”, with millions of followers across that spectrum. A unique, dynamic, and genre-bending artist with her enchanting vocals and exuberant sax, she has performed at the Hollywood Bowl, as a part of the house band for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” as a soloist with the Boston Pops, and much more. At home in any genre of music, her melodic creativity and improvisational skills refer inexorably to her jazz roots.
The all-ages concert is on Friday, September 29th for an 8 p.m. at the Stationery Factory on Flansburg Avenue in Dalton. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $55. Beverage service will be available. Tickets and more information can be found online.
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The Williams College Museum of Art celebrates ‘Beatriz Cortez: The Portals Exhibition’
Williamstown— On Thursday, September 21st at 5 p.m., the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) will host a celebration of “Beatriz Cortez: The Portals”, an exhibition in multiple locations in and around WCMA that explores alternative genealogies of Williams College.
Three outdoor components located on Main Street attend to omissions and erasures in the built environment of the campus: Historic House, 2022-23, which invites visitors to imagine the space where these forgotten workers tended to the households of colonial settlers; XX, 2022-23, a mound of steel rocks, shaped and welded by hand that pays tribute to the 18th and 19th century Black residents of Williamstown, in particular, who remain unidentified and unknown to us to this day; and Mohican Homelands, 2023, which uses locally sourced stone to spell out “Kpomthe’nã Mã’eekanik,” which translates as “We are walking on the Mohican homeland.”
Inside the WCMA Rotunda, an immersive sound installation interrogates the stories that we selectively tell, those we remember, and those we choose to forget. In the adjacent Stoddard Gallery, the artist’s steel structures offer an embrace to two objects that came into WCMA’s collection against their will.
Stitching together different voices that inhabited the landscape, “The Portals” invites viewers to coexist with various people who have believed in equality, justice, curiosity, diversity, and freedom in the area where Williamstown was created, and also to imagine the cyclical dimension of these struggles that seem to repeat themselves in a nation plagued by inequality.
Born in El Salvador, Beatriz Cortez received an MFA in Art from the California Institute of the Arts and a Ph.D. in Literature and Cultural Studies from Arizona State University. She has had solo exhibitions at Storm King Art Center, New York (2023); the Craft Contemporary Museum, Los Angeles (2019); Clockshop, Los Angeles (2018); Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles (2016); Centro Cultural de España de El Salvador (2014); and Museo Municipal Tecleño (MUTE), El Salvador (2012), among others.
The celebration, including a walking tour, is on Thursday, September 21st at 5 p.m. at the Williams College Museum of Art on Lawrence Hall Drive in Williamstown. The exhibit is on view through May 12th. The museum is open to the public Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. More information can be found online or by calling 413-597-2429. The walking tour portion of the celebration includes moving a short distance of less than half of a mile with some hills and street crossing; please contact Roz Crews by emailing rc15@williams.edu to arrange accessible options for participation.
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14th annual Berkshire Biodiversity Day brings community together to survey local species
Berkshire— From noon on Saturday, September 23rd to noon on Sunday, September 24th, celebrate local biodiversity during a time of unprecedented global biodiversity loss at the 14th Annual Berkshire Biodiversity Day, also known as Berkshire BioBlitz. Community members of all ages are welcomed to join biologists, naturalists, and environmentalists to identify as many plants, animals, fungi, and other organisms as possible during a 24-hour period.
This year’s program is packed with guided walks, presentations, and demonstrations led by experts. Presentation topics include leaf-mining insects with Charley Eiseman, fungi and mushrooms with John Wheeler, and arachnids with Joseph Warfel. Aliza Fassler will present about native bees and lead a wild bee walk. Professor Tom Tyning will lead an amphibian and reptile walk. Rene Wendell from Hoffmann Bird Club will lead an owl prowl and early morning bird walk, and Ben Nickley of Berkshire Bird Observatory will conduct a bird banding demo. Find a detailed schedule of the 24-hour program online.
Biological surveys and expert-led walks will be conducted in Bow Wow Woods, a 50-acre parcel of land just off Rte 41 on Bow Wow Road, which was recently acquired by Greenagers and will soon be protected by a conservation restriction to be held by the Sheffield and Egremont Land Trusts. There are two half-mile trail loops in Bow Wow Woods, one on relatively flat ground and another that descends a small hillside before running alongside vernal pools and wetlands. All other activities will take place at April Hill.
The BioBlitz is taking place from noon on Saturday, September 23rd to noon on Sunday, September 24th at Greenagers’ April Hill Education and Conservation Center on Undermountain Road in South Egremont. It is free and open to the public. Participants may take part at any time during this period to record a survey of their findings and experience first-hand the importance of a healthy, active ecosystem in their community. More information can be found online.
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Berkshire County Historical Society welcomes lauded author and music writer Tom Piazza
Pittsfield— On Friday, September 22nd at 5:30 p.m., the Berkshire County Historical Society welcomes author Tom Piazza for a discussion of his latest novel, “The Auburn Conference”.
What would happen if Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, and Harriet Beecher Stowe all attended the same literary festival in upstate New York in 1883? Such is the intriguing scenario explored by author Tom Piazza in his latest novel, “The Auburn Conference”, in which a who’s who of American literary eminences congregate to discuss their work and argue, sometimes vociferously, about the unsettled future of the nation some twenty years after the end of the Civil War.
Tom Piazza is celebrated both as a novelist and as a writer on American music. His twelve books include the novels “The Auburn Conference” and “City Of Refuge”, the short-story collection “Blues and Trouble”, the post-Katrina manifesto “Why New Orleans Matters”, and the essay collection “Devil Sent The Rain: Music and Writing in Desperate America”. He was a principal writer for the innovative New Orleans-based HBO drama series “Treme”, and the winner of a Grammy Award for his album notes to “Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey”.
The discussion is on Friday, September 22nd at 5:30 p.m. at Arrowhead on Holmes Road in Pittsfield. Tickets are $15 and $10 for members. Tickets and more information can be found online.
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Ancram Opera House presents Crystal Radio Sessions
Ancram— On Saturday, September 23rd at 7 p.m., the Ancram Opera House presents Crystal Radio Sessions.
A longtime AOH audience favorite, “Crystal Radio Sessions” is modeled after NPR’s “Selected Shorts” series and features the best of short fiction from writers in the Hudson Valley and Berkshires, read aloud by professional actors.
This performance will feature Arthur Boyle’s “Angela Lives,” where a woman’s apartment takes on a life of its own; and Pamela Ryder’s “The Tintype of Billy the Kid,” where an itinerant tin typist makes his living taking portraits of the dead. The series is curated by Ashley Mayne, author of the novels “Mankiller” (2014) and “Tiger” (2015).
The performance is on Saturday, September 23rd at 7 p.m. at the Ancram Opera House on County Route 7 in Ancram. Tickets are $25 and $15 for students. Tickets and more information can be found online.
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Clark Art Institute Research and Academic Program presents lecture of Raphael’s ‘The Sistine Madonna’
Williamstown— On Tuesday, September 26th at 5:30 p.m., the Clark Art Institute’s Research and Academic Program hosts a talk by Clark Fellow Brigid Doherty, who considers the significance of Raphael’s “The Sistine Madonna” (1512/13) in and around two epochal essays of the twentieth century, Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” (1935–39) and Martin Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art” (1935–36).
Brigid Doherty is associate professor of German and art and archaeology at Princeton University where she is also an associated faculty member in the School of Architecture and a member of the executive committees for the European Cultural Studies and Media + Modernity programs. At the Clark, she is completing research for a book on Raphael’s The Sistine Madonna and the idea of the “artwork essay” in German-language art history and philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century, with a focus on writings by Heinrich Wölfflin, Walter Benjamin, and Martin Heidegger.
The free lecture takes place on Tuesday, September 26th at 5:30 p.m. in the Clark’s auditorium, located in the Manton Research Center. At 5 p.m., there is a pre-lecture reception in the Manton Research Center reading room. More information can be found online.
