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This season Julianne Boyd has taken another crack at Sondheim's Company and critics appear to be unanimous that a sensational production is on the short list of her best work. She is noted for loving musicals and this one is a corker.

A man for all seasons, Jerry Martin, the Berkshire artist/ illustrator has passed. With quirky Mr. Natural looks and mannerisms he was a pithy and complex character and friend. He was a lively presence in the Alice’s Restaurant gang that hung out at the church in Stockbridge and communal holiday gatherings. In the summer we skinny dipped in the secluded Green River on his spacious property. Benno Friedman remembers our much loved friend. He passed this week at 91

As a matter of public record we have examined the Federal tax information Form 990 disclosures of the Berkshire Museum from 2011 to 2015. They do not appear to create a profile of a cultural institution in dire straits. The museum is going forward with last ditch plans to sell 40 works of art. It is possible that there has been a dramatic downturn in the past two years? A Berkshire Eagle editorial asked “Why deny access to the museum's profit/loss statements for the past two years?" Based on reports for the prior five years we have questions for the museum, its director, Van Shields, and the board of trustees.

On Wednesday, August 23, there will be a reading and book launch for Gloucester Poems: Nugents of Rockport at the Gloucester Writers Center. It will feature the author. Charles Giuliano, and poet Geoffrey Movius.The new book is built around an extensive interview with the author's mother, Dr. Josphine R. Flynn, that was conducted in 1986 during a commute from Palm Beach to her summer home in Annisquam. In this excerpt from the book they discuss the Nugents of Rockport and summers she spent with her grandmother on Beaver Dam Farm in Rockport. The book is available through Amazon.

In southern France, close to the Mediterranean Sea lies a region that specializes in wines made for seafood. That wine is Picpoul de Pinet and is perfect for oysters, mussels, clams and the gamut of seafood that inhabits the earth.

“Hamlet” once again graces the Lowell Davies Outdoor Festival stage as part of the Old Globe’s Summer Shakespeare Festival. The ‘melancholy Dane’ and his travails is crisply directed by the Old Globe’s Erna Finci Viterbi artistic director Barry Edelstein, who caps off another winning season of plays and musicals selected and produced under his stewardship.

Award-wining ensemble, Broken Box Mime Theater will host an Open Studio Share at the Bennington Center for the Arts on Sunday, August 27 at the conclusion of a week-long residency

We are now one month away from the opening of the three day 'Fresh Grass' festival that takes place, yearly, on the grounds of MASS MoCA, located in North Adams, Massachusetts.

The special exhibition Figuratively Speaking, at the Eclipse Mill Gallery, September 1 to 24, offers fresh and evocative interpretations allowing for a broad range of approaches to the perennial conundrum of the human condition. The five Berkshire based artists include William Archer, Joanna Klain, Linda O’Brien, Opie O’Brien, and Wilma Rifkin.

New City Players presents a blazing production of True West. The Sam Shepherd play sizzles in sunny, suffocating South Florida Expect plenty of fireworks in powerfully acted production.

Netia Jones has combined tenor Ian Bostridge's thirty year passion and a brilliant "compositional interpretation" of the piano music for orchestra into a hydra-headed tour de force with video, sets and the suggestion of cabaret. Bostridge has the perfect voice for the wanderer, a stranger at the start and at the end. The staging works well.

At the end of a night of binge drinking the Princetown freshmen Tom (Joshua Boone) and Amber (Alexandre Socha) hook up. In the clear night of morning was she raped?. They were so drunk that neither can recall details. It is up to a review panel of faculty to hear both sides and decide on appropriate action. It is a poignant and timely issue as lives are in the balance on college campuses all over America.

In a key op-ed piece for the Berkshire Eagle, Laurie Norton Moffatt the director of the Norman Rockwell Museum, called on the Berkshire Museum to "pause" its plans to sell 40 works including two by Rockwell. Largely based on her position the story broke in the national media. In the process the rhetoric escalated. In this opinion piece she asks for a wider understanding of the commmitment and responsibilites of serving on boards of non profits. With so many cultural institutions looking for funding from the same small pool of donors there are parfticular and extreme pressures for boards in the Berkshires. She calls for a focus on issues and not individuals.

The exhibition to celebrate 'Centerbeam’s' 40 th anniversary has been open since mid May in Karlsruhe. On September 2nd ZKM will host ten representatives of the original participants on location or via skype. The symposium should deliver lively discussions of the past and perhaps a way forward to recreate 'Centerbeam,' a third time, in the near future.

Youthful, still, at 49, Joshua Bell proved his place in the history of great performances at Tanglewood, when playing Mendelssohn's, 'Violin Concerto in E minor, Opus 64.

International Contemporary Ensemble is the go-to group for the performance of contemporary music.They presentedd three important contemporary composers as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival.

The renowned former Whitney Museum director, David A. Ross, in an exclusive statement posted to Berkshire Fine Arts strongly opposes plans initiated by the Berkshire Museum. “This is a sad affair. Perhaps the board, if unwilling to raise funds in the way all museums have to, should resign (along with its feckless director). My feeling is it should merge administratively with another educational non-profit in the region, and then begin the process of stabilization. It would be preferable to see the museum close for a few years of re-organization, than to forever destroy the core of its irreplaceable art collection.”

From 9 AM to noon there was an ordely and peaceful demonstration in front of the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. Pickets came and went with between 40 and 80 individuals linuing the sidewalk at any given time. Most passing cars honked their support. There was a media presence. While museum director, Van Shields, remained hunkered down in the bunker, board president Elizabeth "Buzz" Hayes McGraw delivered her boilplate message to a TV crew from Albany.

Heimaey is the only inhabited one of the fifteen volcanic Westman Islands on the southeast coast of Iceland. Rising from the cold sea, the island has a rugged appearance which belies its natural beauty and friendly people. Visiting Heimaey is a moving experience to learn about volcanic devastation and people's resilience to rebuild and to preserve the island's nature-made beauty.

Ruca Malen has spent several years developing an appealing wine that is affordable. Developed for younger wine drinkers, the approachable wines are for wine drinkers of all ages.

The Festival of Contemporary Music is a highlight of the Tanglewood season. Curators assemble concerts from commissioned works and also from composers whose works form the canon of the contemporary music scene. Opening night suggested how rich this repertoire has become.

The artists and their supporters in the Berkshires will take to the streets on Saturday, August 12, from 9 AM to noon. There will be picket lines in front ot the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. They will provide a visible presence of those protesting the pending sale of 40 choice works and plans to gut and "reboot" the historic museum and collections.

Lawrence Brownlee, tenor, showed us his stuff, ranging from the baroque to Lead Belly.. We changed rooms at the Park Avenue Armory, moving from the regal Officers Room to the Veterans Room as we moved forward in musical time. At the Armory, music is presented for pleasure, for illumination and surprise.

To help the audience experience what takes place inside the head of Christopher, director Elliott employs the full technical arsenal of the Ahmanson that is available to her. The set design by Bunny Christie, is a huge three sided space staging area with colored LED lights both on the walls and the floor that are cued by Christopher’s dialogue and stage movement. It’s all very technical and very eye-popping. In a transfer from Lodon “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” won a Tony Award in 2015.

Much of the criticism of this work is noteworthy but inappropriate. Complainers argue that the opera misses much of the play, which must be expected unless you want a five-hour opera. This is the same argument people use when they’ve read a long book and then see the movie.