MCLA Presents! Home: Past Shows : 2009/2010 Season
Alex Torres & his Latin Orchestra
Sunday, September 20, 2009; 3 p.m.
MCLA Quad
Join MCLA and The Latin American Society as we kick off Hispanic
Heritage Month and the MCLA Presents! 2009-2010 season... With their
original blend of Afro-Caribbean rhythms such as salsa, merengue,
cha-cha, bomba, plena and latin jazz, Alex Torres and his Latin
Orchestra are a dancer's delight and a listener's indulgence
captivating audiences of all ages and cultures.
Kinodance Company
The Refractive Kinescope
Thursday, September 24, 2009; 6,7 and 8 p.m.
MCLA Gallery 51 Annex
Immerse yourself in art with a multi-sensory performance that will
rejuvenate your eye and challenge your perception. Kinodance Company,
an artist collaborative founded in Boston in 1999, creates stage
performances, installations and films which make transparent the
boundaries between dance, cinema and visual art. Commissioned by DownStreet Art, Kinodance Company will culminate their summer's work in this special gallery performance in their installation The Refractive Kinescope at MCLA's Gallery 51 Annex.
Watcha Clan
Wednesday, September 30, 2009; 8:00 p.m.
MCLA Venable Gymnasium
Be ready to dance as we take a musical trip the world with the
eclectic stylings of Watcha Clan. True nomads in the world of music,
and based in Marseilles, France, Watcha Clan searches for space and
freedom. With a socially progressive agenda and a complex tapestry of
musical styles, they combine Eastern European melodies with Algerian
blues, cherifian grooves and hip-hop to form music that sings with the
freedom of traveling people.
Emeline Michel
Wednesday, October 28, 2009; 7:30 p.m.
MCLA Church Street Center
The reigning Queen of Haitian Song brings the sounds of the Caribbean to Church Street Center. Emeline Michel is a captivating performer, versatile vocalist and one of the premier Haitian songwriters of her generation. Singing both in French and Haitian Creole, her nine albums have catapulted her to international acclaim. A hit three years ago when Emeline performed for the incoming freshman class, it is an honor to have her back on the Church Street Center stage.
115th Anniversary Celebration featuring
Donna McKechnie
Friday, November 13, 2009
5:30 p.m. Dinner 8:00 p.m. Concert - MCLA Church Street Center Auditorium
SPECIAL PRICE SHOW Call 413.662.5204
Celebrate 115 years of excellence at MCLA with dinner and a show! The world of Broadway comes to the Berkshires in an intimate and dazzling evening with the incomparable Donna McKechnie. Donna is known to many as the Tony Award-winning Cassie in the original A Chorus Line and regarded internationally as one of Broadway's foremost singing and dancing stars.
Please join us for this special evening to benefit scholarships at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
Animalia: Stories of Collapse, Calamity and Departure
Wednesday, November 18, 2009; 7:30 p.m.
MCLA Church Street Center
Animalia is an inter-species fairytale that combines live music on
singing saw, accordion and strings with movement and projection.
Performed within a landscape of mesmerizing video and archival film,
Animalia invokes visions of secret bee societies and haunted circus
scenes. A multimedia performance, Animalia offers metaphors of flight
as departure points from environmental collapse and the hallucinatory
effects of war. By appropriating the masculine power symbol of the buck
'rack' and reinserting it onto feminine characters, the narrative blurs
the divisions between masculine/feminine identity and human/animal
forms. This project was created by artist-musician C. Ryder Cooley.
Margaret A. Hart '35 GospelFest
God's Trombones
Sunday, December 6, 2009, 3:00 p.m.
MCLA Church Street Center
$20 General Admission, FREE MCLA Students
All proceeds benefit the Margaret A. Hart '35 Scholarship.
After sell-out performances at the world famous Apollo Theater, Craig Harris's God's Trombones returns to the Berkshires in a stirring concert version at MCLA. God's Trombones is based on James Weldon Johnson's classic collection of poems that refigure inspirational sermons by itinerant African-American preachers. Craig Harris' interpretation looks to transcend the sectarian roots of the sermons and focus on the spirituality that moves all religious experiences.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010; 7:30 p.m.
MCLA Gallery 51
Delve into the mind of American poet Sylvia Plath, as played by Marcy J. Savastano, in the critically acclaimed play Edge produced by Method Machine. Plath was a poet and author from the '50s and '60s, most famous for the novel The Bell Jar.
Paul Alexander's play is set in England on the last day of the prolific
writer's life as she reflects on her childhood, her husband poet Ted
Hughes and her work.
MCLA's 5th Annual Blues & Funk Festival: DAY ONE
Slavic Soul Party
Thursday, February 4th, 2010; 7:30 p.m.
MCLA Venable Gymnasium
2-NIGHT FESTIVAL TICKETS: $20 General Admission
Slavic Soul Party gets the festival started on Thursday night with
fiery Balkan brass, hip-grinding American grooves, and ecstatic
anthems both new and old. Brash and strong as slivovitz, these nine
musicians have forged virtuosic new brass band music in the heart of
New York City--melding Gypsy, East European, Mexican and Asian
immigrant backgrounds with American jazz and soul.
MCLA's 5th Annual Blues & Funk Festival: DAY TWO
Big Sam's Funky Nation
Friday, February 5th, 2010; 7:30 p.m.
MCLA Venable Gymnasium
2-NIGHT FESTIVAL TICKETS: $20 General Admission
Big Sam's Funky Nation takes the stage New Orleans style on Friday night. Presiding over his Funky Nation is Big Sam, formerly the trombonist for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, who blows the funk out of his trombone and refuses to let the audience sit still. Between solos and trombone riffs, Big Sam second-lines (a uniquely New Orleans style of street-dance) and gets the crowd going both in movement and in replies to his call-and-response MC-style.
The Amazing Acousta- photophono- grammitron
Music = Art
Thursday, February 25, 2010; 7:30 p.m.
MCLA Gallery 51
Throughout the months of February and March, MCLA Gallery 51, in
partnership with MCLA Presents!, will be exhibiting artists who find
the muse both in the visual and performative worlds--in other words,
artists who are musicians, musicians who are artists and all that falls
between. Thursday February 25 will be an evening of performances by a
handful of these artists including Paul de Jong (of The Books),
Tristan Perich, Lesley Flanigan and Ven Voisey.
Sekou Sundiata Evening of Poetry and Spoken Word
Iyeoka Ivie Okoawo
Wednesday, March 10, 2010; 7:30 p.m.
MCLA Gallery 51
Iyeoka Ivie Okoawo, of Nigerian decent, is one of the most sought after
poetry slammers, a recipient of the 2008 National Performance
Network/NCCC Artist of Color Residency Award and a two-time National
Poetry Slam Individual Finalist. She has been asked to compose and
perform for Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, and was commissioned
by Discovery Channel for their 2008 brand campaign.
A Night at the Cabaret
with Katie Johnson '07
Friday, April 16, 2010; 9:00 p.m.
Taylor's Restaurant
SPECIAL PRICE SHOW
$5 General Admission, MCLA Alumni, Faculty and Staff, FREE Members and MCLA Students
A Night at the Cabaret returns to Taylor's Restaurant with Katie Johnson. Katie was a huge hit at last year's highly successful Cabaret Night. Katie's credits include but are not limited to Urinetown, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Fame: The Musical, Chicago, Annie, Sound of Music, and Cinderella. Bring sheet music for your favorite Broadway show tune and take your own turn at the mic.
PAM! Show: World Street Corners
Wednesday, April 28, 2010; 7:30 p.m.
MCLA Venable Gym
World Street Corners is an urban music festival featuring headliners The ReMINDers and Gokh-Bi System. Planned and organized by MCLA's Performing Arts Management class under the supervision of Jonathan Secor, World Street Corners will end the season with a bang.
