Music

music live performance returns

A Tanglewood concert during normal times.

The wait is over! Guests will once again be able to enjoy live music on the Tanglewood grounds this summer. All performances will be held in the open-air Koussevitzky Music Shed—with appropriate distancing limits— and will last up to 80 minutes with no intermissions. Distanced lawn seating will, of course, also be available. The regular season will run July 9 – August 16 and feature BSO Conductor Andris Nelsons leading eight orchestra programs in this reduced, six-week season. BSO concerts will take place Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons, with Friday evenings reserved for Boston Pops concerts and guest chamber music artists. Guest artists will include Emanuel Ax, Lisa Batiashvili, Yefim Bronfman, Karina Canellakis, Leonidas Kavakos, Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony Marwood, Wynton Marsalis, Baiba Skride, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Daniil Trifonov. Updates to the Popular Artist Series will be announced shortly, with a target date of late August and early September for these concerts.

Close Encounters With Music will present two evenings of “Wine and Song” at The Mount in Lenox. On May 23 in the courtyard, soprano Sonja Tengblad, contralto Emily Marvosh, and pianist Joseph Turbessi present songs of nature, summer, flowers, meteorology and pollution by composers ranging from Schumann, Handel, and Delibes to Cole Porter, Aaron Copland, and Tom Lehrer. On June 13 in the garden, the award-winning New York-based a cappella vocal jazz ensemble West Side Five will offer innovative takes on jazz standards. Later in the summer, CEWM’s Berkshire High Peaks Festival invites the public to participate virtually in two weeks of daily master classes and talks by distinguished musicians, July 20 – August 2. Highlights include late-night jamming and moonlight sonatas; workshops on technique, historical performances, jazz and improvisation; sessions on performing and appreciating world music; open master classes with international faculty artists and pedagogues; talks by leading contemporary

The Egremont Barn, already in full swing, will host a full lineup this summer, including comedians Dave Hill and Jessica Kirson, music from Lauren Ambrose and The Leisure Class, Chris Barron of the Spin Doctors, the local acts you love, open mic nights, and more, plus great food and cocktails, and a super chill atmosphere. Clockwise from top: Close Encounters With Music presents West Side Five, soprano Maria Valdes and baritone Sebastian Catana from Berkshire Opera Festival’s Rigoletto (2018) return in new operas this season, Hot Sauce performs at The Egremont Barn.

composers with glimpses into works in progress; and more.

Also virtual this summer will be six concerts presented by the Aston Magna Music Festival, America’s oldest annual summer festival devoted to music of the past performed on period instruments. Celebrating the music of Mozart, Bach, Monteverdi, Purcell, Beethoven and more, streaming of these concerts will premiere on two Sundays in June (the 13th and 27th) and then every Saturday in July from the 3rd through the 24th, and they will be offered free of charge to the public. Find program details on the Aston Magna website. Coming back to live performances, cellist Inbal Segev and The Aizuri Quartet kick off the Tannery Pond Concerts season on Saturday, July 3, followed by a lineup that will include Steven Banks, classical saxophone, and Xak Bjerken, piano; conductor and violinist Scott Yoo and Friends; and pianist Haochen Zhang.

Bard SummerScape 2021 opens July 8-10 with the world premiere of I was waiting for the echo of a better day, a new commission from Bard Fisher Center Choreographerin-Residence Pam Tanowitz and Bernstein Award-winning composer Jessie Montgomery, performed outdoors with live music before an audience at Montgomery Place. Other productions this season will be staged for limited in-person audiences both indoors and out, up through The 31st Annual Bard Music Festival: Nadia Boulanger and Her World in August.

Music Mountain opens its season on Sunday, July 4 with local favorite Shanghai Quartet. A full lineup of their season will be announced at a later date. Music outdoors on Friday and Saturday nights begins in June at The Foundry in West Stockbridge and will include Tony Award-winner Cady Huffman, The Fremonts, Charming Disaster, and Habibi, plus jazz, chamber music, flamenco, offerings from The American Songbook, and more.

The Town of Great Barrington Summer Concert Series returns to the gazebo with crowd favorite Wanda Houston Band.

Jams in the Hamlet, a new concert series to be held in Hillsdale Hamlet Park on the third Saturday of each month from May to September, will feature classical, jazz, singer-songwriters, and children’s performers, and will close with a community talent show in the fall to coincide with Pumpkin Fest. Listeners are invited to spread out on the lawn and enjoy refreshments for purchase from Roe Jan Brewing Co., Little Apple Cidery, Mama Lo’s BBQ, and Bacon’s Pizza. The Town of Great Barrington Summer Concert Series will present free concerts, weather permitting, every Friday evening beginning May 28th (the premiere concert presents the BTUs) through early September, plus occasional Wednesday evening concerts as well. These folk, rhythm and blues, soul, rock, jazz and more concerts are meant to appeal to audiences of all ages. Plus, David Grover will host children’s concerts every Saturday morning during July and August.

Barrington Stage Company, best known for its theater offerings, will welcome Grammy Award-winner and Tony Awardnominee Elizabeth Stanley in a concert on June 28, outdoors under the tent at the BSC Production Center in Pittsfield.

Berkshire Theatre Group’s Colonial Concert Series, held Saturday evenings under tents at the company’s Pittsfield location, will run at least through July and include performers Chris Thile, Tom Rush, KJ Denhert, and more.

Another theater company more focused this year on music than plays is the Sharon Playhouse, over the border in Connecticut. Musical acts will perform on weekends from July through October on an outdoor main stage, beginning July 3 with America’s Sweethearts who sing in the style of the Andrew sisters. And there will be patio dinner cabarets on a secondary outdoor stage where Broadway stars, including local favorite Wanda Houston, will perform their cabaret acts.

MASS MoCA is planning a series of summer weekend concerts, to include performances by Bang on a Can and Roomful of Teeth. Details will be announced soon. Hancock Shaker Village Back Porch concerts will kick off with singersongwriter Sean Rowe on June 12. This year, the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival will reimagine itself, morphing from a weekend in Hillsdale to a one-day event at the Goshen Fairgrounds in Connecticut on July 31. The festival will also offer a livestream of its performances for those who can’t make it to Goshen. A selection of food and crafts vendors will still be on site, but interactive dance workshops are postponed until next year.

Berkshire Opera Festival returns this summer with three new offerings: Glory Denied, which tells the true story of Colonel Jim Thompson, America’s longest-held prisoner of war, will be performed July 22 and July 24 at the Daniel Arts Center on the campus of Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington. Much Ado About Shakespeare, an evening concert featuring texts by Shakespeare sung by members of the cast of BOF’s upcoming Falstaff production, is slated for August 11 at The Mount in Lenox. The aforementioned Falstaff, Giuseppe Verdi’s final opera and a celebration of life and laughter, will run at The Mahaiwe for three dates in late August.

one region, many stages theater & performance

Last years outdoor performance of The Hills Are Alive with Rodgers & Hammerstein at Barrington Stage Company.

Barrington Stage Company’s

season will kick off on June 10 and feature productions both outdoors at its Production Center and indoors at the BoydQuinson Stage, both in Pittsfield. Outdoor performances will include Who Could Ask for Anything More?: The Songs of George Gershwin, and Boca by Jessica Provenz (July 30 – August 22). The Boyd-Quinson Stage will open with Chester Bailey (June 18 – July 3) by Emmy Award-winner Joseph Dougherty (thirtysomething, Pretty Little Liars), and starring the father-andson duo of Tony Award-winner Reed Birney (House of Cards) and Ephraim Birney (Gotham, The Americans) as doctor and patient in a potent World War II drama, directed by Ron Lagomarsino (Picket Fences, Ally McBeal). Next up will be a full staging of the new one-woman play Eleanor (July 16 – August 1) by Mark St. Germain, about first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and starring Tony Award-winner Harriet Harris. The world premiere of Sister Sorry (August 12–29) follows, by New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson and loosely based on a true crime confession. The season concludes in September with the world premiere of A Crossing. Other events include a streamed virtual reading of the 2020 Burman New Play Award-winner Get Your Pink Hands Off Me Sucka and Give Me Back by Daniella De Jesús, a staged reading of Andy Warhol in Iran by Brent Askari, and Celebrating Black Voices, a week-long celebration of local Black artists, featuring poetry, storytelling, jazz, talent shows, and more.

Shakespeare & Company will inaugurate a second outdoor venue on its grounds this summer—the 500-seat New Spruce Theater—with King Lear, starring beloved actor Christopher Lloyd, July 2 – August 29. Other announced performances include Becoming Othello: A Black Girl’s Journey, Debra Ann Byrd’s multimedia choreopoem featuring music that shaped her growing up in Spanish Harlem, at the outdoor Roman Garden Theatre July 16 – 25, after which the theater will be home to Yasmina Reza’s contemporary play, Art, July 30 – August 22.

Above: The Tempest at Shakespeare & Company. Below: Godspell under the tent at Berkshire Theatre Group in 2020.

Berkshire Theatre Group has three immersive outdoor experiences planned for the season, running on multiple stages on its Pittsfield and Stockbridge campuses: The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people,” will be set on the grounds of BTG’s Stockbridge campus June 18–July 10; Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winner David Auburn will direct the production. For Nina Simone: Four Women, audiences will be seated in the Courtyard of the Stockbridge campus. Tony- and Grammy Award-nominee Valisia LeKae plays the main role in this meditation on Simone’s transition from singer to activist. The Wizard of Oz community production will be a reimagined musical full of world travelers, festive carnivals, and spectacular sideshows for families, outside under the Big Tent on the grounds of the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield.

The Great Barrington Public Theater, just two years old but already quite accomplished, showcases writers, actors, directors and technical crew who live in the Berkshires. This summer they will present three plays, all live and in-person at the Daniel Arts Center on the campus of Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington. First up is Dad, a new “life with cantankerous father” comedy by Mark St. Germain, June 25 – July 3. Then another new play, Mr. Fullerton by Anne Undeland (July 21 – August 1), is a gilded-age love story about Edith Wharton, her friend Henry James and her younger lover Martin Fullerton. And, running July 30 – August 7, is the East Coast premier of a brand new David Mamet play, The Christopher Boy’s Communion. The summer season will also include Treat Williams in his own one-man play Grant, and The Queen of Fenway Court by Leigh Strimbeck about Isabella Stewart Gardner.

Williamstown Theatre Festival’s lineup will feature three world premieres held at three outdoor locations in town July 6 – August 8. Nine Solo Plays by Black Playwrights, centering on and celebrating Black artists and their voices through theatrical storytelling, will take over the front lawn of the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance. The reflecting pool at The Clark Art Institute becomes the stage for Row, an uplifting musical that interrogates the resilience, fear, and ambition inside one individual as she aims to be the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic. Finishing the season, Tony Award-nominated director Michael Arden and The Forest of Arden company present Alien/Nation, an immersive experience that takes guests on a journey throughout Williamstown, revealing unexpected surprises around you and within you. Choose to experience this unique site-specific performance by foot or by car, and plunge yourself into the center of stories inspired by real events that took place in Western Massachusetts in 1969.

Chester Theatre will find a temporary outdoor home this summer as Hancock Shaker Village welcomes Chester@ Hancock for three performances, one per month from June through August. Will Eno’s Title and Deed, starring James Barry, starts off the season, followed by The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess, “a barnburner of a play” tackling race, history, and power. Tiny Beautiful Things, written by Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) ends the season with a celebration of the simple beauty of being human, based on the “Dear Sugar” advice column written by Cheryl Strayed.

Further north, the Dorset Theatre Festival has partnered with Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester for a series of live outdoor performances from July through August. The Festival’s season will also include special performances and talks for audiences on the SVAC campus, which also offers campus art galleries, walking trails, the new curATE café, and performances by the Manchester Music Festival. Show details will be announced at a later date.

The Theater Barn in New Lebanon, N.Y., presents a season complete with music, murder, and comical mayhem. The Barn’s five-show season kicks off on June 3 with a relevant historical staged reading of the award-winning new play We the People.