August 9-18: Through 12 themed concerts, pre-concert lectures, panel discussions and expert commentary, the 30th Bard Music Festival examines the life and times of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957).
As the original Falcon in Marlboro once proved beyond argument, barn concerts can be pretty high-end affairs, not just straw-strewn and horsey hootenannies. Hardeman Orchards in Red Hook are themselves old hands at the high-end barn venue game: a point that will be amply proven over the next two weekends.
Tannersville’s Catskill Jazz Factory provides support for both sides of jazz’s legacy: the traditional and the revolutionary.
Aug. 3: The scope and density of this one-day affair defies easy description. It is full of exhibits; serious talks by serious artists; five hours of world-class international dance in and around barn; live music with a hip, global, and Bacchanalian bias; and general pageantry executed at the visual and conceptual level one would expect from an artist’s colony.
Fort Worth native Peter More is a polymath of roots rock, ultra-competent, fluent in regional dialects and sensitive to sound of the eras, observationally astute and emotionally anchored. He rocks, grooves, swoons, waltzes and whispers with the kind of offhand authority that his genre reveres. He can even turn a tune with a wonderfully rustic Samba or Afro-Cuban flair.
Sunday, July 21: The Great Hack follows the inscrutable tracks of Brittany Kaiser, the ambiguous, complicated, brilliant and downright-Shakespearean figure whose actions at various times can be said to have both created and cracked the whole damn affair.
Saturday, July 20: One of rock’s most identifiable interpreters, Southside turns everything he touches to Southside, whether it is “Walk Away Renee,” “The Fever” or his signature song, “We’re Having a Party.” This is the essence of New Jersey rock ‘n’ roll.
Saturday, July 20: In retrospect, Blondie and Elvis Costello represent the style and the substance, respectively, of the New Wave pop revolution of the late ’70s.
A true celebration of the local by the locals, the long-running Rosendale Street Festival returns July 20-21.
July 15-28: Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Summer Jazz Academy, a two-week residential high school summer institute for advanced study in jazz performance, takes place at Bard College and offers locals a number of opportunities to hear great jazz performed by both the Jedis and the Padawans.