Tanglewood

Joe Finnegan, a former Wall Street floor trader, who evokes the heart-throb, Don, in TV's Mad Men, moved his family four years ago to Williamstown. He hooked up with boyhood friend Steve Lawson to become President of his Williamstown Film Festival. We talked with Finnegan about gearing up for his first season as General Manager of the prestigious but challenged Williamstown Theatre Festival.

James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra will give the American premiere of Elliott Carter's Flute Concerto, featuring BSO principal flutist Elizabeth Rowe in her Symphony Hall solo debut, on February 4, with repeat performances on February 5 and 9. The program also features Brahms's Symphony No. 4 and the Overture and Entr'actes from Schubert's incidental music to the 1823 play Rosamunde.

The exhibition "Acts & Memory: Paintings by Langdon Quin, 1990-2010" will be on view at the Museum of Art of the University of New Hampshire through April 8. David Carbone is the curator of the exhibition.

Mass MoCA has organized a provocative documentary film series Lie!Cheat! Steal! Fake It! We recently attended the first in the series "American Casino" that explored the sub prime mess that decimated banks and brought down Wall Street. The films are screened on Thursdays once a month through April 29.

The Barrington Stage Company season will start on May 27 with a Stage 2 production of "The Whipping Man" and run through December with "A Christmas Story." Not for the squeamish that arch villain "Sweeney Todd" will be serving up gory meat pies to the delight of one and all starting June 17.

During the cold winter in the Berkshires the hot new restaurants to enjoy is Flavours of Malaysia tucked away in a basement on McKay Street just around the corner from the new Beacon Cinema in Pittsfield. On weekends reservations are recommended.

Dutch early music specialist Ton Koopman leads a program of 18th- and 19th-century works by Haydn, C.P.E. Bach, and Schubert January 6-12. In addition to conducting the BSO from the podium, Mr. Koopman leads the orchestra from the harpsichord in a performance of Haydn's Symphony No. 98, which features harpsichord obbligato. One of Mr. Koopman's close collaborators, Yo-Yo Ma, joins him and the orchestra as the soloist in Haydn's Cello Concerto No. 1.

Bazaar Productions, in collaboration with MASS MoCA, will present a work-in-progress showing of The Waypoint, a play that began development during the EarlyStages Program at The Berkshire Fringe in 2008. After a two-week residency with the original ensemble The Waypoint will be performed on Saturday, February 6, at 8 PM in Club B-10 as part of MASS MoCA's Alt Cabaret series.

A near capacity audience braved the first storm of the winter to attend a benefit, solo performance by a Berkshire neighbor, Arlo Guthrie. It was a great evening at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox.

Patricia Racette shared insights into operatic performance and Puccini at the Morgan Library. The lecture on "Adventures in Italian Opera" was co-sponsored by the Morgan and the Casa Italiana of New York University. The evening's moderator was opera and Italian culture aficionado, Fred Plotkin.

In a great Boston tradition Keith Lockhart will conduct the Boston Pops in all of the Holiday favorites. The fun begins on December 9 at Symphony Hall. There will be 35 performances through December 27. Followed by a New Year's Eve gala.

In article after article since John Barrett III lost a tough Mayor's race in North Adams the Berkshire Eagle has shed crocodile tears over his unanticipated defeat. To say the Eagle blew its coverage is an understatement. Now columnist Alan Chartock wades in on why he loves "Big John" who was "done in" by a "few disgruntled self styled arts types."

The Music Museum of New England is dedicated to preserving the musical heritage of the region. Currently operating a website, its long-term goal is to build an archive and open a visitors center. Many area musicians will celebrate the season in a benefit for MM/ONE on December 13 at the Regent Theatre in Arlington, Mass.

Once again the Boston Symphony Orchestra has scheduled a full, rich and diverse season for Tanglewood 2010. Many of the most beloved composers and conductors will be featured.

The Berkshires will be booked solid for the Fourth of July weekend. On Friday night Keith Lockhart will lead the Pops in its 125th anniversary concert. On Saturday and Sunday the legendary song writers James Taylor and Carole King will bring their world tour to Tanglewood.

America's Orchestra, the Boston Pops, conducted by Keith Lockhart will launch its annual Northeast Tour on December 5 in Storrs, Connecticut and end in Providence on the 19th. These appearance will coincide with Symphony Hall performances from December 9 to 27. Yo, ho, ho.

The Baroness Hilla Rebay and her patron Solomon R. Guggehneim visited the Bauhaus studio of Vasily Kandinsky in 1930. The acquisition of his work was the basis of the Museum of Non Objective Art which opened in 1939 with Rebay as director. In 1952 it was renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and 50 years ago it opened its Wright building. This spectacular Kandinsky exhibition celebrates that history.

The overall Tanglewood attendance was up some 20,000 last summer. But subtract the 61,198 for the five day sellout of James Taylor and Friends and Tanglewood would have been down some 40,000 with an overall loss even greater than the $3 to 4 million reported by the Berkshire Eagle. Will there be any surprises when the coming season is announced on November 20?

For ten days in September we were invited by the artist, Dorothea Fleiss, of the organization East West Artists to participate in 12e Symposium d'art contemporain. It was hoted by Christine and Werner Endriss in the vilage of Paraza in the South of France. It proved to be a truly remarkable experience.

Last summer Amanda McBroom played two memorable SRO evenings at Barrington Stage 2. She was a sensation. This weekend she returns to meet the apparently insatiable thirst for genuine cabaret singers that exists in the Berkshires and surrounding hills. We talk to her about her two great talents, songwriting and singing powerful songs straight from the heart.

The Fifth Annual North Adams Open Studios will occur on the weekend of October 17 and 18. During the Columbus Day weekend there was a preview of the anticipated mayhem with opening of the Eclipse Annual and Studio 21 South. Organizer Phil Sellers is upbeat about the city wide event.

Although these opera broadcasts were encores, they seemed very present -- revealing the originals in a new and satisfying experience.

The Sunday program, ending the three day Tanglewood Jazz Festival featured blistering afternoon and evening programs of straight up jazz. It was a take no prisoners conclusion to a fabulous season of music in the Berkshires.

Day two of the Tanglewood Jazz Festival was intense with programming from 2 PM through 11 pm. The afternoon featured a broadcast of John Pizzarelli's Radio Delux. The evening started magnificently with the Regina Carter Quintet. But ended poorly with the enervating "Dreaming the Duke" which combined the singers Nnenna Freelon and Harolyn Blackwell.

The nine time Grammy winner, Paquito d'Rivera, who defected from Cuba in 1981, kicked off the annual Labor Day Jazz Festival. He offered a stunning tribute to the original Mambo King, the bass player Israel "Cahcao" Lopez. It was a blistering evening of Latin Jazz.