Concerts by Dan Zanes & Friends are always cause for celebration, filled with singing and dancing to songs brimming with warmth, wisdom and wonderful music. The Grammy Award Winner is joined by his "beautifully scruffy, harmonically precise, spirited, and better-than-ever band" performing songs sung in a homespuns style giving you the feeling that a bunch of wildly talented friends and neighbors just got together to throw a party . . . and everyone's invited.

"True children's music, but executed with such sweet (and un-gooey!) humor, casual multiculturalism and shambling groove that you can call it your own." The New York Times

The life and art of Georgia O'Keeffe has fascinated art lovers and critics since she burst onto the scene in the early twentieth century. This summer the Clark adds a new chapter to the discussion of her life with Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence, the first exhibition to reveal the role of modernist painter Arthur Dove in O'Keeffe's artistic development. In this free lecture, director of the Clark's center for education in the visual arts, Michael Cassin explores O'Keeffe's life and continued friendship with Dove and his role in the development of her early abstractionist paintings. This Clark-exclusive exhibition is on view June 7 - September 7, 2009.

With little radio support, Yonder Mountain has become one of the fastest rising touring bands in the country, its fanbase having ballooned through high-profile festival sets, all of which are full of improv and none of which feature the same set list. It can't be understated just what the band has achieved with that non-traditional banjo/bass/mandolin/guitar line-up. Using bluegrass as its bedrock, the band has grown like few rock bands do.

An unmistakable voice, a dancer's body; a consummate performer. An arched eyebrow, a subtle shimmy and a flick of her wrist is all she needs to keep you in the palm of her hand. With two Tony awards and two Emmy Awards, she is considered television and Broadway royalty.

With her mesmerizing vocal abilities, Bebe Neuwirth is a true singing actress; an exciting song stylist, captivating audiences across the country with her signature brand of supple sass and sexiness.

Bebe's current show features an exciting and eclectic selection of songs. She has become a premiere interpreter of the works of Kurt Weill as well as her CHIGAGO composers, John Kander and Fred Ebb, and their catalogues are well represented. Bebe also explores such landmark composers as Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim and Tom Waits. Her stunning interpretations of favorite songs allow you to hear them as if they were new. Bebe also introduces some lesser known treasures that will entrance the entire audience. She is a gift to songwriters,approaching each song as a story to share; sometimes filled with steely determination while others are fraught with breathtaking vulnerability. Hilarious and heartbreaking, her one woman show, STORIES WITH PIANO, is quite simply, stunning and truly unforgettable.

The Mahaiwe welcomes back Symphony Space's Selected Shorts for a second Great Barrington season on Sunday, July 12 at 3pm and Sunday, December 6 at 3pm. Hosted by Symphony Space Artistic Director Isaiah Sheffer, and featuring Frances Sternhagen and Charles Keating, this acclaimed series features some of the finest artists of the American theater reading contemporary and classic short fiction. The July performance focuses on stories about summer pleasures - from baseball to a beach romance, and features stories by Italo Calvino, M.F.K. Fisher, and W.P. Kinsella.

The December performance, presented in cooperation with the National Yiddish Book Center, highlights Yiddish writers.

The BPL is dedicated to encouraging, developing, and presenting new plays. Through readings, workshops, and fully staged productions, the Lab will provide emerging and established writers with a professional and creative environment, while offering audiences the unique and provocative opportunity to share in the dramatic evolution of premiere works.

Berkshire Playwrights Lab Artistic Directors: Joe Cacaci, Jim Frangione, Bob Jaffe, and Mathew Penn

Director Francis Ford Coppola brings Mario Puzo's multigenerational crime saga to life in this Oscar-winning epic. When an organized crime family patriarch (Marlon Brando) barely survives an attempt on his life, his son Michael (Al Pacino) convinces his brother Sonny (James Caan) to let him take care of the would-be killers. Amid betrayals and corruption, Michael launches a campaign of bloody revenge that continues through the film's two sequels

Racking up Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director (Francis Ford Coppola) and Best Supporting Actor (Robert De Niro), the second film in The Godfather series continues the Corleone family's saga and explores its roots. In parallel story lines, the film traces Don Vito's (De Niro) journey from Sicilian immigrant to head of a powerful crime family, and charts his son's (Al Pacino) ascension to don as the family extends its operations to Cuba.

The Metropolitan Opera just announced a new Best of the Met: Live in HD Encore Presentation broadcast series. The Mahaiwe is pleased to present the 2007 Met production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, with Renee Fleming and Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

The Emmy and Peabody Award-wining series Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD returns to the Mahaiwe on Saturday, October 10 with Puccini's Tosca. This live cinema telecast of the 2009-10 Met season will continue with Verdi's Aida on Saturday, October 24, Puccini's Turandot on Saturday, November 7, Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann on Saturday, December 19, Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier on Saturday, January 9 at 1pm, Bizet's Carmen on Saturday, January 16, Verdi's Simon Boccanegra on Saturday, February 6, Thomas's Hamlet on Saturday, March 27, and Rossini's Armida on Saturday, May 1. All of the Met broadcasts begin at 1pm.

Using robotic cameras and state-of-the-art technology, Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD captures the action from interesting angles and heightens attention to the narrative elements of both performance and production. Behind-the-scenes features, live interviews with cast and crew, insightful short documentaries, and bird's-eye views of the productions offer an unprecedented look at what goes into the staging of an opera at one of the world's great houses.

Tickest on-sale to Members of "Friends of the Mahaiwe" in August; general public sales begin in September.

Four-time Grammy-winner Dianne Reeves is one of the pre-eminent jazz vocalists in the world today. As a result of her virtuosity, improvisational prowess, and unique jazz and R&B stylings, she was awarded the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance for three consecutive recordings-a Grammy first in any vocal category. Reeves appeared and performed in George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, the Academy Award-nominated film that chronicles Edward R. Murrow's confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy. The soundtrack recording of Good Night, and Good Luck provided Reeves her fourth Best Jazz Vocal Grammy in 2006. She has recorded and performed extensively with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Blue Note Records released her latest album, When You Know, last year.

Inaugurated into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 2004, Don McLean's superstar status is always attributed to his remarkable song, "American Pie" which, in 2000, once again topped the charts worldwide, (re-recorded by Madonna). Between the heady years of 1971 and 2000, Don McLean released over 20 albums and scored major chart successes for "Vincent" ("Starry Starry Night"); "Everyday"; "Mountains of Mourne"; "Crying"; "Castles in the Air"; "Since I Don't Have You" ; "You Can't Blame the Train"; and "The Grave", (recorded by George Michael) in protest of the Iraq War.

Like Water for Chocolate (Como Agua Para Chocolate) (1992 - Spanish with English Subtitles) Rated R

A feast for the senses, this magical romance from director Alfonso Arau was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and a Golden Globe. The passionate Tita (Lumi Cavazos) is in love with Pedro (Marco Leonardi), but her controlling mother (Regina Torne) forbids her from marrying him. When Pedro instead marries her sister, Tita throws herself into her cooking -- and discovers she can transfer her emotions through the food she prepares.

At 5pm prior to the screening of Like Water for Chocolate, acclaimed food historian Francine Segan will give a presentation about the history of chocolate and candy, followed by a tasting of fine chocolates and retro candies provided by Berkshire Bark, Catherine's Chocolates, Chocolate Springs, and Robin's Candy Shop. She will discuss chocolate's history, starting with its New World origins, journey to Europe, and transformation over the years that turned it from a grainy bitter brew into the treat we know and love today. She will also reveal the sweet history of candy and the amusing origins of such goodies as jelly beans, Necco wafers, Chuckles, Tootsie Rolls, Red Hots, wax lips, gum, and more.

BUDDY, BOPPER & VALENS: Their Last Show 50 Years Later!!

On Feb. 3, 1959, the plane carrying Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper & Ritchie Valens went down. Now, 50 years later, their last show is re-created as the music lives on with the dynamic Scott Walker as Big Bopper; Cousin Ernie Valens as Ritchie Valens, and the nation's leading Buddy artist, Brian Best:
"Chantilly Lace", "Peggy Sue", "LaBamba", "That'll Be The Day"

Talk with writer and NYTimes City Section Editor highlighting her latest work: Boulevard of Dreams -Heady Times, Heartbreak, and Hope along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx (book description) Stretching over four miles through the center of the West Bronx, the Grand Boulevard and Concourse, known simply as the Grand Concourse, has gracefully served as silent witness to the changing face of the Bronx, and New York City, for a century. Now, to coincide with the Concourse's centennial, a New York Times editor brings to life the street in all its raucous glory. Designed by a French engineer in the late nineteenth century to echo the elegance and grandeur of the Champs ElysŽes in Paris, the Concourse was nearly twenty years in the making and celebrates its centennial in November 2009. Over that century it has truly been a boulevard of dreams for various upwardly mobile immigrant and ethnic groups, yet it has also seen the darker side of the American dream. Constance Rosenblum unearths the colorful history of this grand street and its interlinked neighborhoods. With a seasoned journalist's eye for detail, she paints an evocative portrait of the Concourse through compelling life stories and historical vignettes. The story of the creation and transformation of the Grand Concourse is the story of New York - and America

Legendary outlaws Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) display perfect comedic timing and charisma as they pull off heist after heist in this Oscar-winning film from director George Roy Hill. To evade a relentless posse, the boys flee to Bolivia, thinking they'll find easier pickings there. But trouble finds the fugitives wherever they go, and soon, the charming desperadoes are on the run again.

America's Favorite Little Big band! This contemporary swing band from southern California specializes in tunes from the 1940's and 1950's and has sold more than three million albums, performed at Super Bowl XXXIII with Stevie Wonder and Gloria Estefan, and had their music used in over 60 film and TV trailers.

Billy Wilder's legendary screwball comedy reveals dark, hilarious roots with its transvestitism, palpable sex and murder. Musicians Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis accidentally witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and get out of town the only way they know how -- dressed as women. On the road to Florida with an all-girl band, they meet Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), and things start to heat up in this legendary farce.

Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, directed by Marianne Elliott, with Oliver Ford Davies, Clare Higgins, Conleth Hill, George Rainsford and Michelle Terry "Live in HD", presented by London's National Theatre.

In 2002, the world came to know Daniel Pearl as the Wall St. Journal reporter who was abducted and murdered by Islamic extremists in Pakistan, but many Berkshire residents knew Danny well before this tragedy. Daniel Pearl began his journalism career at the North Adams Transcript and the Berkshire Eagle and lived in the Berkshires from 1986-1990. In addition to being a journalist, Danny was a talented musician who believed in the power of music to bring people together regardless of the differences between them. A classically trained violinist and avid fiddler & mandolin player, music was Danny's way of connecting with people and learning about the local culture as he traveled the world. He was also very involved in the local music scene while he lived in the Berkshires.

In 2005, Berkshire resident Todd Mack, a close friend and former band mate of Pearl's, started FODfest (Friends of Danny festival) as a way to honor his friend with a legacy that reflects the ideals by which he lived rather than the tragic way in which he died. FODfest is a unique concert format that is part jam session, part song swap, part concert. Some of the musicians performing were friends of Danny's, while others didn't know him at all. Most are meeting for the first time on stage. They all share Danny's belief in music as a universal language. Now in its fifth year, FODfest has grown considerably from its humble beginnings as an informal backyard jam. FODfest '09 is a 32 day national concert tour featuring hundreds of musicians from across the country and is a registered event of Daniel Pearl World Music Days, which is organized by the Daniel Pearl Foundation.

FODfest, Inc. is a 501 (c) non-profit organization whose mission is to create free live concerts and multi-media projects that harness the power of music to bring together a diverse group of people. Modeled around the ideals in which Daniel Pearl believed, FODfest lays the foundation for long-term community building and provides the platform to create change. All concerts are free and open to the public. In lieu of an admission charge, donations are accepted at each show. For more info, please visit http://fodfest.org.

Husband-and-wife attorneys Adam and Amanda Bonner (Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) sit at opposing sides of the courtroom in this comedy directed by George Cukor. Amanda decides to defend Doris (Judy Holliday), who stands accused of the attempted murder of her husband (Tom Ewell) and his mistress (Jean Hagen), while Adam signs on as the prosecuting attorney. The sensational trial rules the headlines and strains the Bonners' marriage.

The Emmy and Peabody Award-wining series Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD returns to the Mahaiwe on Saturday, October 10 with Puccini's Tosca. This live cinema telecast of the 2009-10 Met season will continue with Verdi's Aida on Saturday, October 24, Puccini's Turandot on Saturday, November 7, Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann on Saturday, December 19, Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier on Saturday, January 9 at 1pm, Bizet's Carmen on Saturday, January 16, Verdi's Simon Boccanegra on Saturday, February 6, Thomas's Hamlet on Saturday, March 27, and Rossini's Armida on Saturday, May 1. All of the Met broadcasts begin at 1pm.

Using robotic cameras and state-of-the-art technology, Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD captures the action from interesting angles and heightens attention to the narrative elements of both performance and production. Behind-the-scenes features, live interviews with cast and crew, insightful short documentaries, and bird's-eye views of the productions offer an unprecedented look at what goes into the staging of an opera at one of the world's great houses.

Tickest on-sale to Members of "Friends of the Mahaiwe" in August; general public sales begin in September.

Pilobolus began in 1971 as an outsider dance company, and quickly became reknowned the world over for its imaginative and athletic exploration of creative collaboration. Nearly 40 years later, it has evolved into a pioneering American cultural institution of the 21st century.

Chopin in Paris

A celebration of the 250th anniversary of Chopin's birth, with Ballades, Mazurkas and Polonaises - framed by chamber works of his favorite opera composers, including Bellini and Donizetti as well as his friendly rival Franz Liszt. Acclaimed in every major concert hall throughout the world, and with a special affinity for Chopin and the Romantics, pianist Walter Ponce has been hailed by the Chicago Tribune as "magical."

THE DOO-WOPP HALL OF FAME OF AMERICA is presenting a special 0ne-night only concert at The Mahaiwe Theatre, featuring some great recording artists of the '50's and '60's, altogether in one fabulous show!

*THE FLAMINGOS' (Pioneer lead singers Doug McClour & Sid Hall) "I Only Have Eyes For You"

* Legend of Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters with Hall of Fame son, RON MCPHATTER ... and Ron's special salute to Tony Williams & The Platters, "The Treasure of Love", "My Prayer"

*Special Guest, Hall of Fame Detroit R&B star, BILLY DAVIS

*THE TUNE WEAVERS, "Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby"

*Harvey Robbins' ROYALTY OF ROCK 'N ROLL ALL STARS

The first "Warm Up the Winter" concert, in January 2009, took place on one of the coldest and iciest nights of the year, reminding us just how important it is to assist those who seek help with fuel costs during the cold and dark winter months. Join us for our second annual benefit concert featuring a group of wonderful Berkshire musicians who will come together to "warm up the winter" for friends and neighbors in need of our support.

Returning performers will include Quintessential (Al Thorp, Jay Wise, Jim McMenamy, John Miner and David Anderegg), Joshua Zecher-Ross, and Deborah Zecher, with Joe Rose accompanying.

Watch this website for the announcement of other performers who will share their musical gifts for the benefit of our community!

All proceeds from this concert will go toward fuel assistance for those in need in South Berkshire County, to be administered by Construct Inc. www.constructinc.org

Non-perishable food donations (non-glass) accepted at the door.

The Shangri-La Chinese Acrobats perform their trademark acrobatics, balancing feats, marital arts displays, and more. A show for all ages, the grace and precision of the acrobats are the triumph of years of dedicated training and discipline, but their art has been formed by centuries of tradition. The morning performance will be a special field trip presentation for local school students; the evening performance is open to the general public.

Since being first runner-up in the 1998 Thelonious Monk Institute Vocal Competition at the tender age of 20, sultry jazz vocalist Jane Monheit has taken the jazz world by storm.

Following the Success of their previous Berkshire Holiday Concerts , the ever popular Empire Brass returns to the Mahaiwe for a family friendly Holiday Show and Concert.

L'histoire du Soldat: Holiday Concert!

Set to music by Igor Stravinsky, with a libretto based on a Russian folk tale, the much loved L'hstoire du Soldat is a parable about a soldier who trades his fiddle to the devil for a book that predicts the future of the economy. The music-orchestral color at the fore - is scored for a septet of violin, double bass, clarinet, bassoon, cornet, trombone, and percussion and the story is told by a narrator, in this case the celebrated English baritone Benjamin Luxon. With virtuoso violinist Yehonatan Berick leading the performance.

Hosted by Symphony Space Artistic Director Isaiah Sheffer, this acclaimed series features some of the finest artists of the American theater reading contemporary and classic short fiction. The July performance focuses on stories about summer pleasures - from baseball to a beach romance. The December performance, presented in cooperation with the National Yiddish Book Center, highlights Yiddish writers.

Internationally known cool jazz singer and master guitarist John Pizzarelli performs on Friday, December 18 at 8pm. He has recorded 23 albums of his own, as well as other joint recordings with his father, Bucky Pizzarelli. Pizzarelli has recently established himself as the consummate entertainer and radio program host with "Radio Deluxe with John Pizzarelli," a nationally - syndicated radio program co-hosted with his wife, Broadway star Jessica Molaskey.

Back by popular request, the virtuosi of the Berkshire Bach Ensemble, directed by harpsichordist Kenneth Cooper, return with their "irrepressible" versions of The Brandenburg Concerti of Johann Sebastian Bach. Known for a zesty and captivating style, the Berkshire Bach Ensemble always delivers these great works with its inimitable passion and vitality. Come and savor this classic concert and join in a festive evening as the Berkshire Bach Society ushers in the New Year in Style!

Grammy Award-winning Ladysmith Black Mambazo performs on Sunday, February 7 at 3pm. This legendary a cappella group represents the traditional culture of South Africa and is regarded as the country's cultural emissary at home and around the world. They have recorded with numerous artists, including Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Josh Groban, and Dolly Parton.

The all-female collective Cherish the Ladies performs on Saturday, February 27 at 7pm. One of the most sought-after Irish-American groups in Celtic music, they are known for their musicianship, breathtaking singing, and lively step dancing, and they have shared the stage and studio with such performers as Joan Baez, James Taylor, the Clancy Brothers, the Chieftains, Arlo Guthrie, and Pete Seeger.

NATION is based on a novel by Terry Pratchett, adapted by Mark Ravenhill, and directed by Melly Still. Cast TBD.
"The NT Live events are designed to bring what we do on the stages of the National to a far greater number of people than we would ever be able to reach otherwise," says Nicholas Hytner. "Through high definition broadcasts, we have the technology at our disposal to present our productions beyond the four walls of the National, to reach passionate theatre-goers all over the world, and to do it really well."