Great Barrington, Mass.—The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center has added three new programs to its year-round schedule this spring: choral group Chanticleer on April 11; dance company Pilobolus on May 3, performing, among other works, a new interpretation of Martha Graham’s Lamentation; and singers Madeleine Peyroux and Bettye LaVette in a co-bill on May 16.
“We are having fun thinking ahead to spring with this segment of programming,” says Mahaiwe Executive Director Janis Martinson. “Each of these shows features performers with dazzling range, whether the vocal pyrotechnics of Chanticleer, the acrobatic flexibility of Pilobolus, or the depth of musical interpretation by soul legend Bettye LaVette and jazz singer-songwriter Madeleine Peyroux.”
These shows join previously announced spring programs Billy F Gibbons on February 15, Patton Oswalt on March 22, and José González on March 28.
Chanticleer
Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer will perform at the Mahaiwe on Friday, April 11 at 8 p.m. Hailed by The New Yorker as “the world’s reigning male chorus,” Chanticleer is known around the world for its wide-ranging repertoire and dazzling virtuosity. Founded in San Francisco in 1978 by singer and musicologist Louis Botto, Chanticleer quickly took its place as one of the most prolific recording and touring ensembles in the world, selling over one million recordings and performing thousands of live concerts to audiences around the world.
Chanticleer’s repertoire is rooted in the Renaissance and has continued to expand to include a wide range of classical, gospel, jazz, popular music, and a deep commitment to the commissioning of new compositions and arrangements. The ensemble has committed much of its vast recording catalogue to these commissions, garnering Grammy Awards for its recording of Sir John Tavener’s Lamentations & Praises, and the ambitious collection of commissioned works entitled Colors of Love. Chanticleer is the recipient of the Dale Warland/Chorus America Commissioning Award and the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming, and its Music Director Emeritus Joseph H. Jennings received the Brazeal Wayne Dennard Award for his contribution to the African-American choral tradition during his tenure with Chanticleer.
Named for the “clear-singing” rooster in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chanticleer continues to maintain ambitious programming in its hometown of San Francisco, including a large education and outreach program that recently reached over 8,000 people.
Tickets are $39 to $69 with discounts for Mahaiwe Members and individuals ages 30 and under.
Pilobolus
The Mahaiwe will present Pilobolus for two performances on Saturday, May 3 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., amid the dance company’s re:CREATION Tour.
Step into a realm where imagination knows no limits. The boundaries of gravity and creativity blur, offering an intimate window into the essence of creativity itself with Pilobolus’ re:CREATION Tour, bringing their celebrated collection of repertory to delighted audiences from coast to coast. re:CREATION is a transformative odyssey of reinvention where both audience and artists rediscover, redefine, and recreate timeless narratives through new visions of history, myth, and the innate human need for expression.
Pilobolus will debut its interpretation of Martha Graham’s seminal work, Lamentation, on the Mahaiwe stage to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the Martha Graham Dance Company—Graham100—as part of the Lamentation Variations project.
Pilobolus has tested the limits of human physicality to explore the beauty and the power of connected bodies since being founded at Dartmouth College in 1971. Pilobolus has performed on Broadway, at The Oscars, and the Olympic games, and created over 120 dance works. The mission of Pilobolus is to create, perform, and preserve dances, expand and diversify audiences, and teach dancers, non-dancers, and organizations to harness creative potential.
Tickets are $28 to $78 with discounts for Mahaiwe Members and individuals ages 30 and under.
Madeleine Peyroux & Bettye LaVatte
Singers Madeleine Peyroux and Bettye LaVette team up for a double bill at the Mahaiwe on Friday, May 16 at 8 p.m., as part of their Let’s Walk Tour 2025.
Madeleine Peyroux is an American jazz singer and songwriter who began her career as a teenager on the streets of Paris.
“Let us advance our mortal bodies up, where hearts and minds will go, let’s walk, let’s roll,” Peyroux sings on the upbeat title track of her captivating ninth album, Let’s Walk, the acclaimed singer-songwriter’s most assured, courageous work to date. Powered by the distinctive, honeyed croon that delivered her from the Paris streets to concert halls, these ten unabashedly personal songs, all co-written by the versatile Peyroux, deftly interweave jazz, folk, and chamber pop, with themes ranging from the confessional to the political, from whimsy to yearning. In every note, Peyroux digs deep, rendering this exquisite work with the disarming grace and gravitas of an artist in peak form.
For the ardently civic-minded Peyroux, Let’s Walk continues the scintillating conversation with her audience – and with the world at large. “This music is part of a dialogue,” she says. “That’s what art is. It’s engagement, community. I believe more than anything in getting together with people and listening to music and conversing. Music is the only way I’ve ever built community.”
Bettye LaVette is hailed by The New York Times as “one of the great soul interpreters of her generation,” while country music legend George Jones characterized her as “truly a singer’s singer.”
Her career began in 1962, at 16 years old, in Detroit, Mich. Her first single, “My Man, He’s a Lovin’ Man,” was on Atlantic Records. Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, she recorded for several major labels. She also appeared in the Broadway musical Bubbling Brown Sugar alongside Honi Coles and Cab Calloway.
Now, at 78 years old and in her 62nd year in show business, she is one of very few of her contemporaries who were recording during the birth of soul music in the 1960s and is still creating vital recordings today.
Tickets are $55 to $85 with discounts for Mahaiwe Members and individuals ages 30 and under.
Tickets
Tickets go on sale to Mahaiwe Members on Wednesday, November 13 at noon, and to the public on Friday, November 15 at noon. Tickets can be purchased online at mahaiwe.org, or by calling or visiting the Box Office, 413-528-0100, on Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 4 p.m.
To learn more about Mahaiwe Membership, contact Brenna Hull at 413-644-9040 x107 or brenna@mahaiwe.org, or visit mahaiwe.org/membership.
Individuals ages 30 and under are eligible for $15 youth tickets. Visit the Box Office or call 413-528-0100 Wednesday through Saturday, from noon to 4 p.m.
About the Mahaiwe
Located in downtown Great Barrington, Mass., the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center is the year-round presenter of world-class music, dance, theater, classic films, Live in HD broadcasts, and arts education programs for the southern Berkshires and neighboring regions. The intimate jewel box of a theater opened in 1905. Since 2005, the performing arts center has hosted over 1,500 events and welcomed over half a million people through its doors. More than 26,000 students from 75 different schools have benefited from the Mahaiwe’s school-time performances and residencies. For more information, see mahaiwe.org.
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