A sip tastes like caramel, but deeper and not overpoweringly sweet, and it’s warm in the back of the throat. It’s color is lighter than amber and darker than gold, almost the color of late oak leaves … Holidays are returning in the Berkshires — even in an uncertain year we can find music and storytelling, light in the dark and energy in local places.
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Firelight and music transform NightWood at the Mount
The flame streams sideways in the wind. The bowl of the torch is gleaming copper — it’s an oil lamp, essentially the same as the lamps that burned in Constantinople 2000 years ago, or in the temple of the Macabees …
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Emily Isaacson leads a Classical Uprising
Emily Isaacson remembers attending classical concerts as a teenager, feeling the music viscerally, connecting with the sound. The music was exciting, passionate — it made her want to move …
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Thankful for handmade improvisation (November 24 newsletter)
I was at WallaSauce in the Beaver Mill, in a room full of bright cloth, and then at the Bennington Museum in a show inspired by snow …
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Indigenous artists alloy lands and stories at the Forge
In Mohican, Heather Bruegl says, the shape of the language shows one person thinking of another. Between you and I, you come first. She is remembering storyteller and linguist Brock Schreiber, as he spoke at the Forge Project just over the ridge in the Taconics.
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Multimedia and film explore the changing Arctic
Allison Maria Rodriguez was floating in salt water that can have ice floes at this time of year, but she was there in the six weeks of summer, in the brief thaw …
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Japanese prints probe a contemporary world
Saitō Kiyoshi’s Autumn in Nanzen-Ji (1971) is not a classical inkbrush painting, and it’s not a Kandinsky — but Oliver Ruhl thinks it may be kin to both.
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Japanese artists warm up the weekend (November 10 newsletter)
Kiyoshi Saito is walking through a street lined with machiya, tall, lean wooden houses. Afternoon light slants down an alley-way, and he can see someone in silhouette walking from the shadow into the sun …
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New local shops spring up in North Adams
I keep hearing about new places in North Adams lately — offering everything from baked goods to books to begonias — so I’m taking a walk through town.
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Women transform rooms into life-changing moments
Marie Tattiana Aqeel is sitting at the kitchen counter, strumming a guitar quietly, and two friends pause in their conversation to listen to her sing. … More than 65 artists have come to the Berkshires from across the country to create a new work of theater together.
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