The Beat
By Seth Rogovoy(WILLIAMSTOWN - November 7, 1996) With little or no fanfare, the National Music Center in Lenox has taken a few small steps toward making its campus a place where American music is not only celebrated but created.
Jazz pianist and composer Randy Weston -- who has a longstanding relationship with the Berkshires, and with Lenox in particular, dating back to the early 1950s -- has been staying at the center recently, using the facilities as a country getaway and a place to compose, away from the distractions that surround him at home in Brooklyn, N.Y.
"This is the best place on the planet," said Weston last week in a phone interview from his quarters at the center, which are provided free of charge to Weston -- along with use of the theater's piano -- when they are not being used by student groups.
"I've written some of my most important compositions here," said Weston, speaking of Lenox, where he spent numerous summers in the '50s and '60s performing at Music Inn, where he wrote such well-known pieces as "Berkshire Blues."
"New York is such a busy place. Even when you're sleeping, it's busy. But here I just look at the trees and the grass and take walks and experience nature and that's all I need," he said.
This fall is not the first time Weston has stayed at the center. Last year he came up for a few weeks -- accompanied as he was recently by his arranger, Melba Liston -- to prepare new works for a festival in Montreal. "It's tremendously helpful being here because Melba is in a wheelchair and here she doesn't have to go up stairs, so she can just write and feel at ease," said Weston about Liston, with whom he has collaborated since 1958.
While Weston took part in a holiday concert a few years ago at the center, he has not had many opportunities to perform in the area, something he said that he would like to do. "I'd be very happy to perform around here, since this area means so much to me," he said.
Spotlight 1
At a Friday night, round-robin showcase kicking off the weekend-long Newport Folk Festival last August, Northampton's Cliff Eberhardt more than held his own against fellow singer/songwriters John Gorka, Patty Larkin and Cheryl Wheeler. In fact, to some in the room, Eberhardt's devilishly black humor, soulful, gritty vocals, deft guitar work and incisively personal song lyrics were more than a match for the other three, no slouches they! You can hear him on his most recent album, the excellent "Mona Lisa Cafe" (Shanachie) but, even better, you can see him live at the Iron Horse in Northampton on Saturday, Nov. 9, at 7.
Spotlight 2
In the world imagined by Williamstown sculptor Amy Podmore, the walls literally have ears. And if you get too close to them, they start spinning around inside motorized snow globes."Curtain with Ears" is one of nine different sculptures by Podmore on view through Nov. 26 in "Flip-Float," a show of her recent sculpture at No. B.I.A.S., a gallery located in the BCIC Building on Water Street in North Bennington, Vt. Gallery hours are Tues.-Sat. from 10 to 6 or by appointment. For more information, call 802-447-7754.
"Root" is a pair of plaster cast feet seemingly growing out of a wall, with some sort of vegetable roots growing out of the bottom of the feet. It is typical of Podmore's work in its playful, sometimes surreal use of body parts -- if not whole bodies -- frequently cast in plaster or papier mache and suspended in odd positions, as if weightless or, as in the case of "The Bed, The Girl and The Serpent," woven into the metal springs of a steel bed frame.
Podmore says she draws inspiration from "the secrets of life, its perplexity and bizarreness." Her biomorphic figures range from the abstract to the figurative, lending qualities of both to each other. "The older I get, the more humorous and lighthearted my work is," she said.
Backstage bits
It looks like veteran regional rock band Max Creek is a good bet to play The Studio in Pittsfield on Nov. 30. Hold Nov. 23 open on your calendar, too, for a band-to-be-named-soon.This ain't no TV: Now that Pittsfield has its very own, big-league entertainment space, natives are going to need a crash-course in nightclub protocol. Shows like the Black 47 gig at The Studio are not concerts in the traditional sense, where the audience is supposed to stay seated in neat, parallel rows. Plenty of seating is available for those needing to rest their weary dogs -- bleachers in the rear and folding chairs spread around the room -- but these chairs aren't intended to be laid out in rows, as happened spontaneously before the Black 47 show, making for a few tense moments at the beginning when some seated patrons objected to fans standing in front of the stage and dancing. The majority quickly caught on, and the dance floor was soon packed with people who came to participate and not merely observe, as was meant to happen
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
music news, interviews, reviews, et al.
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Copyright © 1996 Zenn New Media, LLC
