Berkshire Pop Year in Review
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Dec. 15, 1999) - You win one, you lose one. That pretty much sums up the landscape for popular music in the Berkshires in the final year of the century.

After too many years of false starts, unfulfilled promises, unanswered questions, and general floundering for a toehold, the National Music Foundation threw in the towel this past year and announced it was selling its Lenox campus and leaving town. By the time the news broke, no tears were shed. Programming at the foundation had steadily dropped in quantity and quality, while plans kept getting delayed for the actual funding and construction of a "National Music Center." Finally, an enormous sense of relief could be felt at the closure provided by the foundation's announcement that it was shuttering its operation.

What little blow this might have given to the local concert scene - after all, in one form or another, the Lenox campus had been the site of concerts for over a decade, and Shakespeare and Company's plans for the venue do not include concert programming - was cushioned by the long-awaited opening of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams.

More than just an art museum, the restored, 19th-century mill complex proved itself to be a cultural laboratory that would include live music in its purview, especially when the music was married to other forms, such as the Philip Glass/Robert Wilson collaboration, "Monsters of Grace," and the film series with live musical accompaniment that brought Philip Johnston's Transparent Quartet and the BQE Project to town.

These sorts of cross-cultural collaborations typically feature the most cutting-edge content, and thus audiences in the Berkshires can now look forward to performances by artists typically seen only in the largest metropolitan centers, as well as more standard concert fare like Joan Armatrading and Duke Robillard, who also performed at MoCA.

Like Mass MoCA, Jacob's Pillow has also been an unlikely host to some of the most intriguing musical performances, in past years presenting artists including Abdullah Ibrahim, the late Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy, and the Klezmatics. This past summer was no different, when fresh from his sweep of the New York Jazz Awards, bandleader/composer Dave Douglas brought his Charms of the Night Sky ensemble to the Pillow for a residency featuring a live collaboration with the Trisha Brown Dance Company as well as an evening concert.

As local organizations join the bandwagon of promoting the Berkshires as a cultural tourist attraction, efforts are being made to include popular music and jazz on the menu. Last spring's "Jazztown" effort in Williamstown drew crowds to area venues and restaurants for big names like the Mingus Big Band as well as lesser-known ensembles of college alumni. This coming year's festival, the second weekend in April, promises to be even bigger, with the Billy Taylor Trio featuring guest vocalist Sheila Jordan on Friday, April 7 and the Tom Harrell Quintet on April 8. The festival will culminate with a performance by the hottest jazz ticket in the world: the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra led by Wynton Marsalis, at Mass MoCA on Sunday, April 9, at 2.

Perhaps the greatest question mark in terms of programming non-classical music remains Tanglewood, which in recent years has pretty much opted out of presenting popular artists other than Tanglewood's resident guaranteed sellout, James Taylor. The annual Labor Day Weekend jazz festival continues to shrink in size and imagination, too. The official word at Tanglewood is that they would like to see the return of a diverse lineup of jazz and popular artists, and that they have taken strides to see that this begins to happen this year. We'll see.

Elsewhere on the scene, the summer festival season seems to be attracting a more diverse crowd and lineup. The Noppet Hill Bluegrass Festival in Lanesboro enjoyed another weekend of great music and good weather last July, and Noppet Hill will undoubtedly attract another crowd of happy campers this coming summer with the return of Del McCoury to the top of the bill. The rain-plagued Berkshire Mountain Music Festival, the neo-hippie jam fest that debuted in 1998 in Lanesboro and then moved to Butternut Ski Area in Great Barrington this past summer, is 0 for 2 in terms of weather, but that didn't keep the crowds from flocking this past August to catch top bands including the Roots, Soul Coughing and Los Lobos. Three strikes and they could be out.

Questions remain. The ever-elusive local nightclub remains a phantom promise. While no one expects downtown Pittsfield to be home to a seven-nights-a-week Iron Horse-like performance space, many still wonder why the Berkshires can't be host to at least one or two good performances of this type every weekend. Arlo Guthrie's plans for an entertainment venue in downtown Pittsfield hold out the vague promise of such. One hopes that those sketching out the future of a restored Colonial Theatre are including popular music in their field of vision. The newly-renovated Café Helsinki in Great Barrington certainly jazzes up that town's nightlife, and there are bound to be similar efforts to spice up the scene in North County, if only to serve that region's growing population of Silicon Village workers.

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[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Dec. 31, 1999. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1999. All rights reserved.]