One of the treasures of the Berkshires is Close Encounters with Music, the brainchild of premiere cellist Yehuda Hanani. Close Encounters performs in nooks and crannies around the Berkshires and also in more prominent venues like the modern Osawa Hall designed by William Rawn of Boston, who went on to create much the same successful combination of indoor and outdoor space in Sonoma County, California. Concerts are performed in the charming turn-of the-century Mahaiwe in Great Barrington. Conceived by Joseph Mcarthur Vance, this hall was brilliantly updated by Hugh Hardy.

Berlin Philharmonic had its big season finale in Waldbühne Stadium, Olympic Park, Berlin. Gershwin, Bernstein and John Williams were featured on a program re-introducing the Berlin Philharmonic live and to their live audience. Wayne Marshall conducted, and performed the Rhapsody in Blue. Martin Grobinger,  a  percussionist, was featured in a John Williams’ The Special Edition.

In 1818 the Hancock Shakers established the South Family to handle the overflow of new members. Also known as the "Young Believers’ Order," South Family members lived before committing fully to the Church and community.  They closed the South Family in 1849. In celebration of the opening of the South Family Trail on Saturday July 17, there will be member reception and interpretive walk starting at 10AM.

As summer temperatures rise Melting Point is the theme of a collaboration between Ferrin Contemporary in the Berkshires and Heller Gallery in Manhattan. The group exhibition of glass and ceramic artists entails use of the melting point as central to their practice.

There is a new pop-up gallery, Poker Flats, in Williamstown. There will be a public opening reception Saturday June 26  4-6pm.

Layon Gray's historical drama "Cowboy" tells the tale of the first black U.S. Deputy Marshal. The play is Off-Broadway-bound. The world premiere production at the National Black Theatre Festival in 2019 sold out its run in a few hours. The current Miami production is nearing its closing weekend, and has been selling out .

The Mount, Edith Wharton’s Home announces its line-up for the 2021-2021 Summer Lecture Series. Now in its 28th year, the Summer Lecture series bring leading biographer and historians to the Berkshires. This year’s series will New York Times bestselling author Janice P. Nimura, Pulitzer-prize winner author Debby Applegate, and Biographer Sydney Ladensohn Stern.

Nancy Rhodes, founder and artistic director of Encompass New Opera Theatre, led a Zoom for an international audience of teachers. Rhodes formed Encompass just as the women’s movement was blossoming. There are special women in the American music world who have soldiered on in their professions, whatever complications were created by gender.  Bursting onto the scene at about the same time as Gloria Steinem, Nancy Rhodes created an innovative company.. 

Erika Marquardt was an extraordinary woman, painter and artist. We were dear friends and I have followed her and Susan Erony's work since 1995. The rare collaboration between those two painters of more than 1000 small paintings ( 7"x10") lasted from 1998 to 2006. And they also collaborated on a large triptych. Altogether an amazing feat!

With their fully-staged production of Christopher Chen’s work, kudos to Mountain View’s Pear Theatre for leading the way in the return to indoor theater after 15 months of pandemic-imposed darkness.  The adventuresome small company not only offers socially-distanced indoor performances to a play with a full cast, but also outdoor performances and online streaming, to accommodate all manner of theater lover.  Hallelujah!  

Opera Saratoga announces the company’s return to the stage for its 60th Anniversary with a season of performances inspired by the iconic novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Working closely with a team of medical professionals and a dedicated COVID Safety Officer, Opera Saratoga is committed to bringing audiences and artists together safely for the 2021 Summer Festival, which will be produced outdoors during June and July in partnership with the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), Saratoga Spa State Park, and Pitney Meadows Community Farm to provide three unique performance spaces for audiences to safely enjoy two fully staged productions and a special concert.

The Yale Center for British Art opens a student-curated online exhibition that showcases four decades of experimental British filmmaking. The result is the Center’s first exhibition presented exclusively online. Art in Focus: The Provocation of Conditions features four short films. All four films can be viewed exclusively on the Center’s website from June 21 through August 23, 2021.

Beginning in the eighteenth century, the Shakers welcomed many African Americans into their communities. The Shakers believed that all were equal in the eyes of God, and allowed anyone to join their communities, provided that they turned over their property and all material wealth once they committed to communal life.

The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art (mowna) announces a special sneak-peek of the film "pandemic statements," directed by cari ann shim sham* with a pre-show musical performance featuring accordionist Sarah Bellows, and a post show Q&A with the "pandemic statements collaborative” in the mowna party room. The event will take place virtually on June 25th at 8 pm Eastern Time. Tickets for this event are sliding scale, pay what you wish, and include access to the 2021 mowna Biennial exhibition.

In this new book of color photographs, all shot in 1981, Allen Frame attempts to revisit a zeitgeist that had given rise to an aesthetic that was distinctly New York. The distinctiveness was related to a circle of friends, many – though not all of them - gay men, who were making art at a specific moment in New York’s history.  FEVER is Frame’s personal documentary of that time, before the deepening tragedy of AIDS that would claim the lives of many of the young artists pictured in this book.

All phases of the oeuvre have been interesting going back decades to our first encounters. Trained in Europe there has been an intriguing cultural confluence of L'art pompier, formalism, conceptualism, Americana, and pop. Imagine a painting conflating Bougereau, Malevich, Duchamp, Warhol and Rosenquist. Miroslav Antic sent images of work created during the pandemic.

On June 13 in 1870, a train arrived in North Adams with 75 young men from China hired to replace striking shoe workers. Over 2,000 people watched as the men walked to the factory under police escort. The crowd was hostile, but there was no violence. The Chinese proved to be both cheaper and more efficient than the union shoe workers they replaced.

Did you miss Global Pillow this weekend? There's still time to watch this global celebration of dance!

David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History represents a landmark moment in American art: the first major exhibition of David Driskell’s remarkable career as a painter. The exhibition is featured at Maine's Portland Museum of Art through September 12.

Developed in partnership with Fuller Craft Museum, Plymouth College of Art, and The Box (both in Plymouth, England), Another Crossing brings together artists from the United States and Europe for a global, cross-cultural effort that examines a pivotal event in world history.

This summer, New Light: Encounters and Connections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), brings more than 60 works of art from across the collection—including 23 newly acquired contemporary pieces—into thought-provoking dialogue. Organized into 21 “conversations,” the exhibition juxtaposes each contemporary work with one or two rarely seen objects acquired earlier in the Museum’s history.

Area Stage mounts 'Annie' with eight actors, all of them adults. The production takes place inside a speakeasy. This immersive 'Annie' is yet another triumph for visionary theater artist Giancarlo Rodaz. The production runs through July 4.

How theater is presented this summer continues to expand. TheaterWorks in Hartford, West Hartford’s Playhouse on Park and Ridgefield’s Thrown Stone Theater are exploring what are called “site-specific” productions – where the production’s content has a relationship to the site where it is performed.

Tania Leon has been awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for music for Stride, commissionedb by Project 19 of the New York Philharmonic. The project commissioned work by women composers.

This 2021 Boston Pops July 4th Spectacular will be a televised, live-streamed concert to take place under the direction of Keith Lockhart from the stage of Tanglewood’s Koussevitzky Music Shed, Sunday, July 4, 8-11 p.m., broadcast live on Bloomberg TV and Radio, as well as locally on WHDH-TV Channel 7.