Friday, Jan. 25: Fronted by guitarist/songwriter and Almanac Weekly music critic John Burdick, the Sweet Clementines blend nervy, angular guitar rock and an understated dumpster-cabaret vibe with a huge catalogue of sweet, weird and sad electric pop songs, swarming with harmonies and odd word choices. Music journalist Ron Hart wrote, “That the Sweet Clementines are still not signed to a national record label is just criminal.”
Saturday, Jan. 26: Directed by Michael Mayer, this new production of Verdi’s beloved tragedy features a dazzling 18th-century setting that changes with the seasons.
January 23 to April 14: The “durational” works that established the Saugerties artist’s creative reputation include Art/Life: One Year Performance, in which she was bound by rope to Taiwanese performance artist Tehching Hsieh 24 hours a day for a full year.
January 31 – February 10: Vassar serves up nearly two weeks of thematically connected music, lectures, films and more in venues around the Vassar campus and – for the first time this year – off-campus as well. Modfest’s 2019 theme is “In Motion.”
Viewers find themselves surrounded by mysterious imagery painted on a 100-foot-long length of raw canvas, eight feet high, that encircles the room. The space is now the permanent home of Marilyn Reynolds’ Composition in the Round. Reynolds and her family are in the process of renovating the former firehouse into a studio, gallery and workshop space for community art classes.
The first show, entitled Arbitrary History: The People’s Choice, begins with receptions on Saturday, February 2.
The Long Island, then-Brooklyn, now-Saugerties singer/songwriter Laura Stevenson splits her bandwidth just about evenly between a rambunctious, stormy and keenly melodic power-pop on one side and a delicate (though still stormy) chamber Americana on the other.
Friday, Jan. 19: His new record Angels and One-Armed Jugglers is made with an A-list cast of New York session players, a number of whom are Woodstock-area residents.
Sunday, Jan. 20: The first lecture for 2019 brings design historian and historic interiors expert Jean Dunbar of Historic Design, Inc. for the unveiling of a new discovery at Thomas Cole’s home.
Later this month, Pine Hill-based artist Brenda Goodman will be heading down to New York City’s influential Chelsea art district for a solo show at the prestigious Sikkema Jenkins Gallery she’s had her heart set on showing in for years now.