YIDSTOCK: The Festival of New Jewish Music returns
Amherst—The Yiddish Book Center is proud to present the 10th anniversary of YIDSTOCK: The Festival of New Yiddish Music. The festival will be held from Thursday, July 7 to Sunday, July 10, at the Center, located on the Hampshire College campus in Amherst, Mass. The Klezmatics, Eleanor Reissa, Socalled, and Paul Shapiro’s Ribs & Brisket Revue will all perform. This year’s festival, curated by Seth Rogovoy, celebrates some greatest hits of the first decade of YIDSTOCK, featuring return appearances by many audience favorites, as well as new faces and new and reconfigured ensembles. Workshops, talks, films, and conversations with artists round out the schedule of events. Tickets are now on sale and can be purchased online at yiddishbookcenter.org/yidstock.
“We are beyond excited to be bringing YIDSTOCK back live to the stage at the Yiddish Book Center,” said Lisa Newman, director of public programs and publishing at the Center. “It’s been two years since we have been able to host our annual four-day festival in person. This year’s 10th anniversary festival promises to be one for the books!”
Making his YIDSTOCK debut, Cantor Yaakov “Yanky” Lemmer will kick off the festival. With an ensemble led by Frank London of the Klezmatics, Lemmer brings fresh interpretations to traditional liturgical prayers and Hasidic nigunim as well as to some more obscure Yiddish songs. Lemmer currently serves as head cantor of Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan.
Veteran Michael Winograd brings his band, the Honorable Mentshn, to YIDSTOCK for the very first time, celebrating the launch of their newest album, Early Bird Special. Packed with the energy, passion, and drive, Early Bird Special delivers the schmaltz-drenched, hard-hitting klezmer that your soul craves and gets you up and dancing.
Perennial favorite Eleanor Reissa returns with a new sound and a new ensemble led by her frequent collaborator, trumpeter Frank London of the Klezmatics, to share her unique takes on Yiddish song, as she continues to reinvent the art of storytelling through Yiddish cabaret.
Paul Shapiro’s Ribs & Brisket Revue returns to perform its “Music of Mrs. Maisel” program. Blending jazz, Yiddish swing, R&B, klezmer, and humor, this joyous ensemble swings hard and is endlessly entertaining. This program features the 1950s repertoire that underscores The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel TV series.
Josh Dolgin, aka Socalled, the de facto godfather of “Klezmer hip-hop,” returns to YIDSTOCK singing solo at the piano and accordion in a rare, intimate, unplugged program of Yiddish and Yiddish-related music and history.
Vocalist Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell and accordionist Dmitri Gaskin return with their enhanced project, Tsvey Brider + Baymele. For the past five years, Russell and Gaskin have been entertaining audiences performing their original and stylistically diverse settings of 20th-century Yiddish modernist poetry. Their collection of songs, now reimagined through Gaskin’s arrangements for string ensemble, bring a whole new world of sound, texture, and color to the work of Tsvey Brider.
The Klezmatics, the internationally acclaimed, Grammy Award–winning modern klezmer outfit, will once again bring down the curtain on YIDSTOCK on Sunday. The Klezmatics blend instrumental and vocal virtuosity and experimentation with theatricality firmly rooted in klezmer and Yiddish tradition. The Klezmatics brought the revival of klezmer into the rock era, blazing the path for the klezmer renaissance with one foot in the shtetl and the other in the downtown avant-garde.
—A.J.
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Shakespeare & Company offer professional development workshop
LENOX– Shakespeare & Company will host a one-week, professional development workshop for teachers from Monday, July 11 through Friday, July 16 at the company’s Lenox, Mass. campus, led by Founding Member and Director of Education Kevin G. Coleman.
Using Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet to offer hands-on experience and strategies to help their students experience Shakespeare’s language, the company’s Professional Development Workshops are the result of more than 40 years at the company and are designed for teachers, directors, and teaching artists. The program intends to help them create dynamic, engaging learning experiences of Shakespeare in the classroom and on the stage.
The July Romeo & Juliet workshop will offer new ways for teachers and students to engage with Shakespeare’s text through practical, structure-based methodologies and techniques for the rehearsal room, with each six-day workshop including 36 hours of Professional Development Credit; take-home materials of the strategies, and rationale for each activity; tickets to Shakespeare & Company; optional evening classes such as directing student productions, stage combat, and more.
Tuition is $900, and scholarships, as well as limited housing in the Berkshires, are available upon request. For more information or to apply, email Kaitlin Henderson at khenderson@shakespeare.org.
—A.J.
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The Berkshire County Historical Society conducts survey
PITTSFIELD— The Berkshire County Historical Society is asking the community to participate in an online survey to help shape its strategic plan. The brief, anonymous survey is available on the BCHS website at https://berkshirehistory.org/2022-community-survey/; a link to the survey can also be requested by writing melville@berkshirehistory.org. Those participating in the survey will be entered into a drawing for a hat or t-shirt from the museum shop.
BCHS is currently in the process of updating the strategic plan that will guide the organization during the next several years. “The world has changed a lot over the past few years, and now is a good time to look at what BCHS is doing, what our community’s needs are, and how we can move forward to best meet those needs,” said Executive Director Lesley Herzberg.
The Berkshire County Historical Society is a non-profit corporation dedicated to collecting, preserving, and disseminating the history of Berkshire County in western Massachusetts. In addition, the Berkshire County Historical Society is committed to the preservation and interpretation of Arrowhead, home of author Herman Melville, designated a National Historic Landmark. The Berkshire County Historical Society provides tours of Arrowhead, and programming dedicated to the history of western Massachusetts and the life and writings of Herman Melville. For information on visiting, go to berkshirehistory.org.
—A.J.
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Facilities work at CHP Great Barrington Family Dental Center
GREAT BARRINGTON— As part of CHP’s dental expansion project, CHP Great Barrington Family Dental Center is being temporarily reconfigured and some patients’ appointments will be impacted.
As of July 1, the Great Barrington practice will be closed on Thursdays and Fridays. South County patients with appointments on these days may keep their scheduled times if they are willing and able to travel to CHP Neighborhood Dental in Pittsfield. On those days the Great Barrington dental staff will be working in the Pittsfield practice location on North Street. If that is not possible, patients will be able to reschedule their appointments during Great Barrington hours.
This temporary adjustment in Great Barrington is part of CHP’s wider plan to expand dental care access in the Berkshires, with more dentists and expanded dental facilities. New dentists have joined the CHP dental practices in Pittsfield and North Adams, and design/construction work is under way on a new practice facility in Adams. Eventually, the Great Barrington practice will relocate to a larger South County location.
For more information, call CHP Great Barrington Family Dental at (413) 528-5565
—A.J.
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Berkshire Community College to host admissions info sessions
PITTSFIELD— Learn how easy it is to apply to Berkshire Community College (BCC) at one of three free virtual information sessions to be held in the month of July: Wednesday, July 6 at 4 p.m.; Monday, July 18 at 12 p.m.; and Tuesday, July 19 at 6 p.m. The 30-minute info sessions, presented by admissions counselors on Zoom, are designed to familiarize prospective students with the application and registration process.
To register for a session, visit www.berkshirecc.edu/openhouse.
Information session participants can:
- Ask questions about the admissions process: how to apply, register, and choose classes
- Learn about BCC’s affordability and its financial aid options
- Hear from staff about quality programs and student support services
- Discover how classes will transfer to hundreds of schools or prepare graduates for an immediate career
For more information about the sessions, contact the Admissions Office at (413) 236-1636.
Berkshire Community College (BCC), situated on 180 park-like acres, is located four miles from the center of Pittsfield in the heart of the beautiful Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. As a public, fully accredited community college, BCC strives to place higher education within reach of all residents of Berkshire County and beyond, offering associate degree and certificate programs to approximately 2,000 enrolled students per year. Visit BCC online at www.berkshirecc.edu.
—A.J.
