Monthly Archives: August 2010

The Nels Cline Singers: No singing here

Posted on August 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

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Yuka Honda, left, guests with The Nels Cline Singers

If you expected vocals, you were disappointed by The Nels Cline Singers. But if you weren’t, this improvisational instrumental Wilco side project probably blew you away this afternoon at the Solid Sound Festival.

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Posted in Concerts, Music, Pop and Rock

Tagged MASS MoCA, Sonic Sound Festival, The Nels Cline Singers, Wilco

The Autumn Defense: A Move Indoors

Posted on August 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Wilco side project The Autumn Defensedidn’t let the threat of rain dampen their spirits. They moved inside to the Hunter Center at MASS MoCA and kept the crowd — which had to deal with lines to get in — happy with a great set.

They ended with a Big Star cover, “You Can’t Have Me.”

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Posted in Concerts, Country, Folk, Music, Pop and Rock

Tagged MASS MoCA, Solid Sound Festival, The Autumn Defense, Wilco

Wilco amazes at Solid Sound Festival

Posted on August 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Wilco could have played all night Saturday and nobody would have complained.

Okay, maybe a neighbor or two above Joe’s Field, the venue for the mainstage shows.

Wilco created the Solid Sound Festival at MASS MoCA, so it’s not a surprise that it is a great event. But it’s the friendliest, least commercialized music festival I can remember. It’s a very pleasant surprise.

Wilco played nearly 2 1/2 hours with just a short break before the encore set. You can find a set list elsewhere (I’ll try to find a good link when I’m at a computer), but suffice to say that every album was represented. (I was hoping for “Passenger Side” from A.M., but didn’t get that.)

This show was no sell-the-new-CD trip. Jeff Tweedy and company were having a great time and it showed.

Here’s hoping they make the Solid Sound Festival an annual thing. It’s a great core concept and MASS MoCA is a perfect, well-run venue for it.

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Posted in Blues, Concerts, Country, Music, Pop and Rock

Tagged Jeff Tweedy, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Solid Sound Festival, Wilco

Mavis Staples: Only the Lord knows, and he ain’t you

Posted on August 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

Mavis Staples draws a huge crowd on Saturday evening at the Solid Sound Festival at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass.

Her new album, produced by Jeff Tweedy, is out Sept. 14.

Click here to view a video about the new album.

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Posted in Concerts, Folk, Music, News, Pop and Rock

Tagged MASS MoCA, Mavis Staples, North Adams, Solid Sound Festival

Mountain Man: What a difference a few months make

Posted on August 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

Mountain Man, a trad-ish female trio from Bennington, Vt., was really interesting @MercuryLoungeNY in the spring, but seemd not yet ready for prime time. On Saturday afternoon at Solid Sound Festival, Mountain Man was poised, strong and very much ready for the limelight. (Though they still have only one guitar among them, and they had to borrow it from somebody else!)

What a difference time can make. Nice going!

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Posted in Concerts, Folk, Music, News

Tagged Mountain Man, Solid Sound Festival

Vetiver rocks out at Solid Sound Festival

Posted on August 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

Vetiver played a short but solid set this afternoon, under beautiful blue skies at the Solid Sound Festival at MASS MoCA in the Berkshires city of North Adams, Mass.

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Posted in Concerts, Folk, Movies, Pop and Rock, Uncategorized

Tagged MASS MoCA, Solid Sound Festival

Solid Sound Festival: Wilco takes over MASS MoCA

Posted on August 12, 2010 | Leave a comment

Wilco has already begun taking over the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The three-day Solid Sound Festival, curated by Wilco, starts Friday.

A weekend of music and art, side by side in the Berkshires

If you haven’t made your weekend plans yet, you really should think about heading to the Berkshires for the Solid Sound Festival in North Adams, Mass.

Solid Sound is the band Wilco‘s takeover of the entire complex occupied by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), a fantastic 19th Century factory complex with an ever-changing lineup of modern art.

Wilco

While the museum is no stranger to hosting music events and other performing arts, the Solid Sound Festival is likely the first event that turns over the entire place — in fact, a good chunk of downtown North Adams, to a single event. As the museum website notes:

Just want to visit the galleries? We recommend you come a different weekend.

We anticipate that more than 5000 people will attend the Wilco Solid Sound Festival August 14 + 15. While the galleries will be open to non-festival goers that weekend, visitors who are looking for a contemplative time in the galleries and easy parking should visit us on a different weekend or arrive as early in the day as possible.

Starting at 8 on Friday night, the complex will be filled with thousands of Wilco fans intent on seeing their favorite band’s only East Coast show of the summer. But this event is special, because Wilco has managed to line up a place where all its side projects and friends’ bands can play too.

If you can’t make it to the festival, or even if you’re there, be sure to check back for updates on Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? and our Twitter feed.

(Festival details and links after the jump.) Continue reading →

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Posted in Art, Blues, Concerts, Contemporary, Contemporary Classical, Country, Folk, Humor, Music, Pop and Rock

Tagged Avi Buffalo, Bread and Puppet, Brenda, Comedy Cabaret, Deep Blue Organ Trio, Glenn Kotche, Jeff Tweedy, MASS MoCA, Mavis Staples, Mountain Man, Nels Cline, North Adams, On Fillmore, Pronto, Sir Richard Bishop, Story Pirates, The Autumn Defense, The Baseball Project, the Berkshires, The Books, The Nels Cline Singers, The Numero Group, Vetiver, Wilco

Revival of Maxwell Anderson’s ‘High Tor’ play to be performed on the slopes of High Tor

Posted on August 12, 2010 | 3 comments

See A free reading of the play that helped save this rockland County peak from destruction

In just 10 days from today, on Saturday, Aug. 21 and Sunday, Aug. 22, we’ll get a chance to see a performance of High Tor, a play that really did change the world.

The West Branch Conservation Association, Rockland County’s Land Trust, is producing two performances of Maxwell Anderson’s New York Drama Critics’ Circle Best Play Award winner for 1937 on the on mountain the play was written to save and from which it takes its name.

Write what you know

The old adage for writing is that you do your best when you “write what you know.” That’s what famed playwright Maxwell Anderson did in 1936.

Maxwell Anderson, left, accepts the 1936 New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1936, a year before he won it again, this time for "High Tor."

Anderson was a resident of South Mountain Road in New City, an area that had become artists colony over the years, attracting creative folks such as Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, John Houseman, cartoonist Milton Caniff — along with Burgess Meredith and Alan Jay Lerner, who lived just over South Mountain in Pomona. Continue reading →

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Posted in Free, History, Music, News

Tagged Alan Jay Lerner, Archer Huntington, Burgess Meredith, Hesper Anderson, High Tor, High Tor State Park, John Houseman, Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, Maxwell Anderson, Milton Caniff, New CIty, New York Drama Critics' Circle, New York Trap Rock Corp., Palisades Interstate Park Commission, Pomona, Pulitzer Prize, Rockland County, South Mountain Road, West Branch Conservation Association

Hello again: The Last Goodbye

Posted on August 11, 2010 | 1 comment

Jeff Buckley Meets William Shakespeare

Romeo (Damon Daunno) and Juliet (Kelly Barrett) in the Williamstown Theatre Festival production of The Last Goodbye. (Photo by Sam Hough)

When The Last Goodbye blossomed on the stage of downtown Manhattan nightspot Joe’s Pub in April 2009, Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? knew director Michael Kimmel (who also conceived and adapted this show) and his collaborators were onto something good. The idea of pairing the lyrics and music of tragic pop star Jeff Buckley with Shakespeare’s story of tragic lovers, Romeo and Juliet, had an instant appeal.

And it took shape well onstage. My mind was blown by that early reading. It went through some changes, was re-presented in New York City this March, and now it’s taking a polished form at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts.

Many members of that original Joe’s Pub cast remain with the show. And that’s for good reason. They’re great.

Word of mouth

We haven’t yet seen this fully staged version, which opened on Saturday and runs through Aug. 20. But the word is very good. A friend of this blog who saw the Joe’s Pub version calls the Williamstown production “quite good,” with “much better integration of the bard’s language.”

Audience reaction was good:

Check out the first review

The first detailed review we’ve found, on the blog This Is Somewhere, is also quite positive.

For more about this show, and details on how you can see it, click through to the jump. Continue reading →

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Posted in Dance, Music, Pop and Rock, Theater

Tagged Damon Daunno, Jeff Buckley, Jo Lampert, Joe's Pub, Kelli Barrett, Michael Kimmel, Romeo and Juliet, The Last Goodbye, William Shakespeare, Williamstown Theatre Festival

Chekhov under an open sky

Posted on August 8, 2010 | 3 comments

Lake Lucille echoed with the sounds of stagecraft for five days last week as a company of 60 actors, musicians and various other theater professionals put together a free, outdoor production of Ivanov, by Anton Chekhov, performed from a new translation by Curt Columbus.

This production of Chekhov on Lake Lucille was particularly welcomed because it marked the return of a neighborhood tradition. The annual run was broken last summer when host-producers Melissa Kievman and Brian Mertes moved to the West Coast for personal and professional reasons. But they kept their wonderful brownstone house — which is the centerpiece of the set for each Chekhov production — and managed to return this summer with a bigger-than-ever performance and neighborhood cookout and potluck supper at intermission.

Melissa Kievman, Brian Mertes and the band.

You could call it summer camp for theater professionals. Most of the volunteer staff spent the week living in tents, eating meals alfresco in the neighborhood and working to create a context for Chekhov’s drama in the suburban landscape of the Lake Lucille neighborhood.

It drew hundreds of guests to enjoy the creative staging under clear skies with moderate summer temperatures.

Dozens of neighbors and local businesses provided support for an undertaking that costs thousands of dollars. This year, the West Branch Conservation Association, Rockland’s Land Trust, helped produce the play with a grant obtained by the office of Assemblyman Kenneth P. Zebrowski and the late state Sen. Thomas P. Morahan. The Tisch East Alumni Council help with a microgrant for costuming.

The production uses the natural features. Here Ivanov makes an entrance from the lake itself.

Ivanov emerges, dripping wet.

Ivanov walks through the audience toward the stage.

As is often the case in Chekhov, the characters complain of boredom.

But Jesse J. Perez, who played Kosikh, choreographed some great routines to keep things interesting:

Check out more photos after the jump.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Benefit, Free, Music, Theater

Tagged Anton Chekhov, Bill Irwin, Brian Mertes, Broadway, Chad I. Goodridge, Joanna Settle, Lake Lucille, Lake Lucille Property Owners Association, Melissa Kievman, Passing Strange, Shakespeare on the Sound, Tony Award, West Branch Conservation Association

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Monthly Archives: August 2010

The Nels Cline Singers: No singing here

The Autumn Defense: A Move Indoors

Wilco amazes at Solid Sound Festival

Mavis Staples: Only the Lord knows, and he ain’t you

Mountain Man: What a difference a few months make

Vetiver rocks out at Solid Sound Festival

Solid Sound Festival: Wilco takes over MASS MoCA

A weekend of music and art, side by side in the Berkshires

Revival of Maxwell Anderson’s ‘High Tor’ play to be performed on the slopes of High Tor