Event Previews
In ye olden days, the late drummer John Bonham was Led Zeppelin’s own hammer of the gods. These days, son Jason Bonham, who is of course also a drummer, has been touring with a Zep tribute band that he calls a labor of love, and fans and critics have raved about.
The latest edition of Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Experience will perform the first two Led Zeppelin albums in their entirety, plus “greatest hits” and “deep cuts.” From the notices we’ve gleaned, it’s a solid two hours-plus of heavy, bluesy goodness. Along with Bonham on drums, the current band includes singer James Dylan, guitarist Tony Catania and bassist Michael Devlin.
Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Experience will perform Tuesday (May 19) at 8 PM at the Palace Theatre (19 Clinton Ave., Albany). Tickets are $29.50 to $69.50. For tickets, call (800) 745-300. For info, call 465-3334.
Director Frédéric Tcheng’s documentary Dior and I, which is being screened this weekend at Saratoga Film Forum and Time & Space Limited, follows Christian Dior’s new creative director Raf Simons from his arrival in 2012 to the debut of his first haute couture collection for the venerable fashion house later that same year.
Variety praised Tcheng’s “well-considered direction,” and his strategy of “privileging the creative process over stereotyped glamour or backstabbing. . . . He repositions haute couture away from something superficial, as ‘serious’ cinephiles might see it, and shows that the art of design, like all art, is more about vision than price tag.”
Dior and I will be screened Thursday, Friday and Sunday (May 14-15 and 17) at 7:30 PM at Saratoga Film Forum (Saratoga Arts, 320 Broadway, Saratoga Springs). For ticket prices and info, call 584-FILM.
Dior and I will be screened Thursday (May 14) through Saturday (May 16) at 8 PM, and Sunday (May 17) at 5:15 PM at Time & Space Limited (434 Columbia St., Hudson). Tickets are $8, $6. For more info, call 822-8448.
Beginning this weekend, Chatham’s Joyce Goldstein Gallery is hosting a show of paintings by Sean Bayliss. A 1994 MFA grad of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Bayliss has shown his work throughout the United States and in Europe—most recently at the Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz—and his work is held by the Berkshire Museum and in many private collections.
In the gallery notes critic, author and curator Michael Wilson writes, “Sean Bayliss makes paintings into which verbal language intrudes quietly, sometimes invisibly, but always insistently, as if the pictures were talking or writing to themselves. . . . His palette is light, even sweet, and his surfaces display a gentle touch.”
Pictured is Too Close to the Road (oil on canvas, 22” x 28”).
Sean Bayliss’ Wait, What? opens Saturday (May 16) with a reception from 4 to 6 PM in the Joyce Goldstein Gallery (16 Main St., Chatham). The show will remain on view through June 20. For more info, call the gallery at 392-2250.
A really good jukebox musical has to accomplish two things. One, it has to have enough of a plot to distract you from the fact that it’s a jukebox musical. Two, it must pack the “jukebox” with wall-to-wall classic pop tunes. Mamma Mia!, the endlessly successful and beloved ABBA musical, succeeds on both counts.
The story is a clever yarn about a young woman who is about to be married and wants to find out who her father is before the wedding; it seamlessly blends character comedy and farce. The score is packed with hits from the ABBA songbook, including “S.O.S.,” “Super Trouper,” “The Winner Takes It All,” “Take a Chance on Me,” and, of course, “Dancing Queen.”
Feel the beat of the tambourine with Mamma Mia! Friday (May 15) at 8 PM and Saturday (May 16) at 1 and 7 PM on the Mainstage at Proctors (432 State St., Schenectady).
Tickets are $20 to $85. For more info, call the box office at 346-6204.
The Empire State Youth Orchestra, under the direction of Helen Cha-Pyo (left), will celebrate 36 years of bringing together the greatest area youth musicians this Sunday (May 17) at Proctors with a special, one-of-a-kind event: ESYO 360°.
This concert will feature all nine of ESYO’s (pronounced “ess-yo”) performing ensembles. Each ensemble’s performance will blend directly into the next as more young musicians join in on stage; by the time the hourlong concert reaches the climax (with the final movement of Respighi’s Pines of Rome), there will be 350 current members and alumni performing together.
The 360° concert is the main event, but the festivities actually start earlier. If you’re feeling social and generous, there’s a “celebration luncheon” in Proctors’ Key Hall at noon that’s $100 per person. Luncheon tickets are available only through ESYO; call them at 382-7581. Following the lunch at 1:45 PM, there will be free performances by small groups of students around the Proctors lobby complex before the main show.
The Albany Symphony and Maestro David Alan Miller will return to EMPAC this weekend to present the American Music Festival. Over a two-night period, the ASO and its Dogs of Desire group will perform an astonishing array of contemporary American music.
Friday (May 15) at 7:30 PM, the ASO’s new-music ensemble Dogs of Desire will perform in the EMPAC Theater. The Dogs will be joined by vocalist Theo Bleckmann and composers-in-residence Sleeping Giant. Tickets for this show are $40.
On Saturday (May 16) at 7:30 PM, the Albany Symphony will perform in the EMPAC Concert Hall. Featured soloist Amy Porter (pictured) will join the ASO on Michael Daugherty’s Trail of Tears Concerto for Flute and Orchestra. Also on the program will be Derek Bermel’s Migration Series (which Wynton Marsalis premiered at Lincoln Center) and world premieres by Andrea Reinkemeyer (Liquid Heart) and Clint Needham (We Are All From Somewhere Else). Tickets for this performance are $19 to $61; the concert will also be simulcast in the EMPAC Theater.
The Albany Symphony Orchestra’s American Music Festival will be held Friday and Saturday at EMPAC (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy). For tickets, including tickets to the Saturday night simulcast, call 694-3300.
Nominated for six Grammys over the years, electric guitarist extraordinaire Mike Stern has released 16 albums as a leader in addition to having performed with Blood, Sweat & Tears, Billy Cobham, Miles Davis, the Brecker Brothers and Jaco Pastorius. He’s playing two shows at the Madison on Friday, with a band that will include drummer Dennis Chambers, reedman Bob Franceschini and English bassist Janek Gwizdala.
In a rave 2013 review of a show at Manhattan’s Iridium, The New York Times wrote that Stern’s virtuoso band “achieved a blues-rock bliss state, goading each other toward notions of strenuous metaphysical abandon.”
The Mike Stern Band will perform two shows tomorrow (Friday, May 15) at 7 and 9 PM at the Madison Theater (1036 Madison Ave., Albany). Tickets are $22 in advance, and $24 at the door. Tickets can be purchased at the box office or at www.themadisontheater.com. For info, call 438-2094.
One of the Emerald Isle’s most original and influential Irish harpists, Maire Ni Chathasaigh has long been hailed for the new techniques, particularly in ornamentation, that she’s developed for authentic harp music. According to The Guardian, “She takes one of the most effete instruments in traditional music and breathes fire into its belly.” Chris Newman is one of the UK’s most admired acoustic guitarists, known for his “playful and incredibly dexterous” picking. Together, the duo have crafted seven highly acclaimed releases; at Old Songs, expect a virtuoso evening of Irish music, swing jazz, bluegrass, and baroque, along with an abundance of onstage warmth and wit.
(May 16, 8 PM, $23; $5 children 12 and under, 37 S. Main St., Voorheesville, 765-2815)
This Canadian folk-rock duo use recorded loops, percussion machines and changing instruments to make it sound like a full band, rather than just a talented husband-and-wife team, have taken over the stage during their live performances. After touring in each other’s individual bands for years, Melissa McClellan and Luke Doucet formed Whitehorse in 2010, “putting aside their award-winning individual careers to build a new band out of their exceptional guitar playing, his-and-her harmonies and a flair for dramatic, narrative songwriting.” They released their first album, The Fate of the World Depends on This Kiss, in 2013 to reviews calling them “perfect together,” and the album “beautifully arranged and masterfully written.” In February, they released their third full-lengther, Leave No Bridge Unburned, which has been hailed as boundary-pushing “bigger, bolder rock.”
(May 20, 6 PM, $10, 335 Central Ave., Albany, 432-6572)
According to the program notes, artist Ellie Ga’s “multimedia essays are part field dispatch, part artist’s notebook, part home-movie, and part poem.” Ga is at EMPAC beginning tonight for a series of performances.
The Fortunetellers is a narrative piece inspired by Ga’s “six-month residency on the Tara, a research boat frozen in arctic ice, drifting near the North Pole to gather scientific data.”
Eureka, a Lighthouse Play (pictured) is a performance that “centers on the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria,” which was destroyed by a series of earthquakes in the Middle Ages. Ga was part of an Alexandria (Egypt) University program to search for traces of the lighthouse.
Ellie Ga’s The Fortunetellers will be presented tonight (Thursday, May 7) at 8 PM in EMPAC’s Studio 2 (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy). Tickets are $18. Eureka, a Lighthouse Play will be presented tomorrow (Friday, May 8) at 8 PM, also in EMPAC’s Studio 2. Tickets are $18. For tickets and info, call the box office at