Chesterwood to host 41st annual contemporary sculpture exhibition
Stockbridge — Chesterwood will host “One Impulse from a Vernal Wood,” its 41st annual outdoor contemporary sculpture exhibition, beginning Saturday, June 29. The exhibition includes nine large sculptures constructed by artists-in-residence Rick and Laura Brown using carefully selected distressed or standing dead trees located within Chesterwood’s forest trails. A preview event with the sculptors will be held Friday, June 28, from 5 to 7 p.m.
This is the Browns’ first solo exhibition at Chesterwood. The sculptors, who share a passion to create monumental shapes and forms out of wood, were invited to live and work at Chesterwood for a month in June 2018. On their frequent walks with sketchbooks and cameras in hand, the Browns were inspired by the natural beauty of the landscape and Chesterwood’s aging New England forest. The sculptors cut and assembled three-dimensional models, and then placed them in front of large photographic prints of specific places in the woods to mark their future locations. During their residency, the Browns began to curate this site-specific exhibition as an expression of their wonderment in not only the size and variety of the trees themselves, but also how the trees are connected below the surface in an unseen world.
The preview event is free for Chesterwood members and $20 for nonmembers. The exhibit will be on view through Sunday, Oct. 27. For more information, contact Chesterwood at (413) 298-3579 or chesterwood@savingplaces.org.
–E.E.
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Music professor Jeremy Yudkin to speak on ‘Papa Haydn’
Pittsfield — The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Berkshire Community College will present the illustrated lecture “Papa Haydn: Without Him – No Classical Music” with Boston University music professor Jeremy Yudkin Saturday, June 29, at 3 p.m. at the Berkshire Museum.
Franz Joseph Haydn is regarded as the progenitor of the entire Classic style: symphonies with four movements; serious string quartets; profound Mass settings; delightful Italian operas; piano sonatas, piano trios, and on and on. The lecture will explore the life and music of Haydn, without whom there would be no Mozart or Beethoven.
Yudkin is professor of music and director of the Boston University Center for Beethoven Research. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the Boston University Center for the Humanities, the Camargo Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Yudkin’s principal fields of research include medieval music, Beethoven, the Beatles and jazz. He is the author of 10 books and, for the past 36 years, has presented a series of popular pre-concert lectures during the Tanglewood season.
Tickets are $10 for OLLI and Berkshire Museum members, $15 for the general public, and free for BCC students and youth ages 17 and under. For tickets and more information, see the Berkshire Edge calendar or contact OLLI at (413) 236-2190.
–E.E.
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Whitney Center for the Arts to present ‘La voix humaine’
Pittsfield — The Whitney Center for the Arts will open its season a fully staged production of Francis Poulenc’s “La voix humaine (The Human Voice)” Friday, June 28, and Saturday, June 29, at 8 p.m.; and Sunday, June 30, at 2 p.m. The one-woman opera features mezzo-soprano Julie Rumbold and is directed by Rachel Hanauer. Corbin Beisner will accompany on the piano. Violinist Emma Piazza will open the evening with a solo performance.
Composed in 1958 from a 1936 play by Jean Cocteau, Poulenc’s 45-minute solo piece is a devastating and sensual piece about an elegant woman and her final telephone conversation with a lover who is about to leave her. The opera will be sung in English.
A Connecticut native, Rumbold has sung throughout the New England area and beyond. She has worked with Berkshire Opera Festival, Lollipop Opera, Contemporary Theater Company, Connecticut Lyric Opera, Simsbury Light Opera Company, and Connecticut Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Rumbold has studied and performed with New England Opera Intensive in Boston and at the International Music Festival in Vols am Schlern, Italy. In 2016 she was a finalist for “American Opera Idol” with Opera Connecticut. Rumbold was also the proud organizer and key soloist for a benefit concert for cystic fibrosis in 2017.
Tickets are $17.50–$20. For tickets and more information, see the Berkshire Edge calendar or contact the Whitney Center for the Arts at (413) 443-0289 or info@thewhit.org.
–E.E.
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PS21 Opening Night Revue to feature venue favorites in dance, music
Chatham, N.Y. — PS21 will kick off its summer performance season Saturday, June 29, at 8 p.m. with an Opening Night Revue of music, dance, and comedy.
Patrons are invited to arrive at 6:30 p.m. and stroll the trails around the theater and picnic on the ground overlooking the Catskill mountains. Beer and wine will be available to purchase local food trucks will be on the premises. A free tour of the PS21 theater will take place at 7 p.m.
Performers for the Opening Night Revue will include members of the Jamal Jackson Dance Company, which fuses various traditional African dance styles with modern and hip hop techniques; New York-based contemporary dance company Dance Heginbotham; New York City-based Parsons Dance; Grammy Award-nominated violinist and fiddler Jeremy Kittel performing his original music; and Hilary Chaplain, who has been recognized as one of America’s foremost professional physical comediennes. After the show, there will be a reception with the performers under the stars on the theater’s north patio.
Advance tickets are $50 general admission, $45 for PS21 members and $10 for students. Tickets at the door are $55, $50 and $10. For tickets and more information, see the Berkshire Edge calendar or call PS21 at (518) 392-6121.
–E.E.
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Susie Kaufman to launch new book
Housatonic — Writer and Edge contributor Susie Kaufman will read from and launch her new book “Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement” Sunday, June 30, at 4 p.m. at Deb Koffman’s Art Space.
The book is a collection of short essays that engages the subjects of memory, aging and mortality, in which Kaufman looks back on her early life in Manhattan and forward to the blank page of her end-of-life story.
Kaufman is a retired hospice chaplain whose writing has appeared in America and Lilith magazines and the journal Presence. Several of her pieces were included in the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers anthology “Writing Fire.” Kaufman reads regularly at the monthly In Words Out Words open mic.
The event is free an open to the public. For more information, contact Deb Koffman’s Art Space at (413) 274-1201.
–E.E.
