Arts

    “Millions know their voices, but no one knows their names” is the tagline for “Twenty Feet From Stardom,” a new documentary to be shown as part of the Hamptons International Film Festival’s SummerDocs series on Saturday.

   Hamptons House of Gardens in Southampton will host a comedy night on Saturday from 8 to 10 p.m. featuring Mary Dimino and Meghan Hanley.

    Ms. Dimino is 2010 MAC Award winner for outstanding female comedian from the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs, and is known for her New York-Italian humor and attitude, according to a release. Ms. Hanley is a comedian, actor, and writer also from New York.

    Tickets cost $30 at the door and $25 in advance through Michelle Simmons at [email protected].   

    Soldier Ride, a homegrown effort to raise money for wounded veterans that took root in conversations at the Stephen Talkhouse nightclub in Amagansett and has grown into an international initiative sponsored by the Wounded Warrior Project, sees its 10th anniversary next summer, and by then, it is hoped, a documentary tracing its extraordinary growth and impact will be ready for its premiere.

   All for the East End, a nonprofit that will raise money for other East End charitable organizations, will host its inaugural concert on Aug. 19 at Martha Clara Vineyards in Riverhead. Nile Rodgers will headline the concert, dubbed the AFTEE Nile Rodgers Dance Party. Joining him will be Avicii, a Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum Swedish D.J.

    In addition to the “Artists & Writers: They Played in the Game” exhibition, Guild Hall will open its summer season with two other new shows: works by John Alexander and Joel Perlman.

    Mr. Alexander is known for his Surrealist paintings of natural phenomena and the human form as well as his biting social commentary. In a solo show opening on Saturday he will present recent natural landscapes.

   The John Jermain Memorial Library is creating a special collection for the music of local artists and is looking for CD donations from musicians to add to its lending catalog of music. Eventually, the library plans to make its collection a searchable online archive available for music streaming.

    Eastern Long Island residents who would like their music included in the collection have been asked to contact Eric Cohen by phone at the library or by e-mail at [email protected].

    Guild Hall’s screening of “The Audience” tomorrow is sold out. The National Theatre Live presentation features Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in a series of imagined private meetings with prime ministers ranging from Winston Churchill to David Cameron.

    Despite persistent rumors, Ms. Mirren will not be attending the screening, nor was she ever slated to be there.

   D.J. Mister Lama will return to the Parrish Art Museum for its Sounds of Summer series tomorrow at 6 p.m.

    A Sag Harbor resident, Mister Lama describes himself as a “Peruvian redneck from Texas who has been manipulating sound for more than 20 years.” He hosts “Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers” on Stony Brook University’s WUSB 90.1. His set at the Parrish will feature a mix of records from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Mister Lama hosted radio shows on WRCT, Pittsburgh, and KPFT, Houston, and was a talk show host for Pittsburgh’s Waffle Shop TV.

   Bay Street Theatre’s Comedy Club will feature Kenny Garcia, Vic Henley, Chris Clarke, Mark Riccadonna, and Marina Franklin, all rising stars on Monday, as part of the All Star Comedy Showcase.

Lights, Camera, Action

    QF Gallery in East Hampton will open Annika Connor’s show “The Hitchcock Kiss” on Saturday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

    Ms. Connor’s colorful paintings, which are based on fantasy, have an illustrative quality. Her subjects are abundant gardens, opulent rooms, regal animals, and  humans in their finery alone or as a couple.  She blends “contemporary moments with cinematic nostalgia,” according to the gallery. She also has an acting career, which tends to inform her artwork. The show will be on view through June 30.

   The Perlman Music Program will present two evenings of collaborations in which “future stars of classical music” join such veterans as Paul Katz, Merry Peckham, Roger Tapping, Don Weilerstein, Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, and Itzhak Perlman himself to perform chamber music masterworks. A meet-and-greet reception with the artists will follow both events.

   The laughs continue at Bay Street Theatre’s Comedy Club on Monday, with Jim Breuer, a stand-up comedian, taking the mike. Raised UpIsland in Valley Stream, Mr. Breuer hit the big time when he joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live,” where he became known for his original character Goat Boy and for his impression of Joe Pesci, the actor. Since then, the comic has had roles in several movies, most notably “Half Baked,” in which he co-starred with Dave Chappelle. He was featured in Comedy Central’s “100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time.”

   Orion Weiss and Anna Polonsky will play for the Rising Stars piano series on Saturday at the Southampton Cultural Center’s Levitas Center.

    A renowned young American soloist, Mr. Weiss has been a Pianofest participant since he was 15. Ms. Polonsky, who will make her debut at Carnegie Hall later this year, will join him to perform Gabriel Faure’s “Dolly” Suite for four hands, Igor Stravinsky’s Concerto for Two Pianos, and George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” for two pianos.

   The Watermill Center will hold its last two open rehearsals of the spring season this week.

    On Sunday at 6 p.m., Susan Yan­kowitz, a librettist and playwright, and Kamala Sankaram, an Indian-American composer, will present “Thumb­print,” an opera-theater work inspired by the experiences of Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani woman who famously brought her rapists to justice.

   A summer stock standard has come to the Main Stage at the Bay Street Theatre, and if the quality of this production of the farcical sex comedy “Lend Me a Tenor” is a sign of things to come for Bay Street’s three-play 2013 season, buying a season subscription might be a good ticket to ride this year.

    The Parrish Art Museum’s Landscape Pleasures garden tour and lecture benefit will take place on Saturday and Sunday. The theme of this year’s program, co-chaired by Lillian Cohen, Jack deLashmet, Martha B. McLanahan, and Linda Hackett Munson, is “Modernism, Minimalism, and Meadows.”

    On Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., a symposium will include three talks with Thomas Woltz, Richard Hartlage, and a joint presentation by Christopher LaGuardia and Viola Rouhani.

Four Women at Ille

    Ille Arts in Amagansett will show the artwork of Monica Banks, Suzanne Goldenberg, Janet Nolan, and Nicole Parcher in a show called “Four Women” beginning tomorrow with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

   There is an oft-repeated assertion by the late historian Jacques Barzun that starts, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.” Perhaps less known is the full quote, which includes the suggestion that one learn the game “by watching first some high school or small-town teams.”

    This came to mind during a viewing of “The Only Real Game,” an engrossing and deeply stirring documentary depicting the popularity of our national pastime in what would seem an unlikely place: Manipur, a poor and embattled state in northeastern India.

   The Southampton Cultural Center will present a dance recital by Steps Repertory Ensemble on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the center’s Levitas Center for the Arts. Under the guidance of Claire Livingstone, the artistic director and a former dancer with the Royal Ballet, the ensemble has grown to a company of 10 to 12 professional dancers.

   East End nightspots attract hundreds of 20 and 30-somethings like moths to light every summer, but a slightly more sedate crowd wends its way to more serene surroundings for classical music.

    The highest notes come from the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, the Perlman Music Program, which sponsors a summer school for international students on Shelter Island, and Pianofest, a remarkable program of master classes and concerts for and by prizewinning pianists.

Any day now, with the scut work over and a vast pile of 1950s rubble trucked away, they’ll be bringing in a load of steel support beams, and the enormous task of turning the falling-down shell of Thomas Moran’s East Hampton Village house back into the eccentric showplace it used to be will get under way for real.

   An abundance of nationally and internationally acclaimed musicians will perform on the South Fork this summer. The more prestigious venues offer a broad range of musical shows, many of which will take place in a setting more intimate than audiences are likely to find anywhere else.

East End Photogs at 25

    The East End Photographers Group will observe its 25th anniversary with a show at Ashawagh Hall in Springs opening Saturday and running through June 9. This will be the first of a number of shows in the area this season to mark the milestone. The group has dedicated this one to the memory of Tim Lee and Vito Sisti, who both died this year.

   Valerie Coates, a mezzo-soprano, and Jason Andrews, a pianist, will perform Wagner’s “Wesendonk Lieder” and Verdi’s “Composizioni da Camera” on Sunday from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the Montauk Library. The free concert is part of a series of events sponsored by the library in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of both composers.

   On a searingly bright but breezy mid-spring day, Melville (Mickey) Straus stood on his patio wearing a purple sweater over a plaid shirt and cords with a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye. “My wife will be angry that I suggested we sit out here in the cold, but I just love being outside,” he said, grinning as he offered a warming cup of coffee. He seemed to appreciate that the panoramic view from the patio, overlooking his pool, Hook Pond, and the late afternoon golfers at the Maidstone Club, was worth a little chill in the air.

   Christine Sciulli, the first artist in residence at the South Fork Natural History Museum on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike in Bridgehampton, will collaborate with Jaanika Peerna, an artist and performer, and David Rothenberg, a composer, for a multimedia concert and performance on Saturday based on Ms. Sciulli’s installation “The Expansive Field.”

    Ms. Sciulli is a projection and installation artist. Saturday’s event will take place at the museum’s grounds and in its barn studio from 6 to 9 p.m. Light refreshments will be served.

   Arthur Pinajian’s life and legacy combine to form one of those stories that should be made into a book or movie, and it was. Yet, it wasn’t about him specifically. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel “Bluebeard: The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian” is about an eccentric Armenian-American painter who knew all the big boys of Abstract Expressionism but chose to paint his own art in obscurity and died unknown. This is also Pinajian’s story in brief, and the similarities in “Bluebeard” continue, but you get the idea.

    Ille Arts in Amagansett is sponsoring a fund-raising concert by Philip Glass and Jon Gibson on June 8 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the lecture hall at the Ross School. Proceeds will support the gal­lery’s community programs and emerg­ing artists exhibitions.

    Along with the music of Mr. Glass and Mr. Gibson, a saxophonist, attendees can enjoy cocktails and an opportunity to bid on works of art offered in a silent auction.

    Tickets cost $200 and are available by e-mailng Sara de Luca at sara@illearts. com.

    The Hamptons International Film Festival will begin its fifth SummerDocs series on June 15 with “Twenty Feet from Stardom,” directed by Morgan Neville.

    The documentary looks at the backup singers who help bring out the best in their leads. It focuses on three artists, all different in their styles, genres, and time periods, who offer their take on what it’s like to be just to the left of the limelight.

   The sounds of summer begin tomorrow at 6 p.m. with the return of D.J. Blind Prophet to the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill. The public is invited to enjoy food and beverages, along with music, on the terrace. The event is free with museum admission.

    Blind Prophet is Joseph Burns, a native Long Islander. After his first release, on the Car Crash Set label out of Seattle in 2010, his music has appeared on other labels including L2S Recordings, Gradient Audio, DubKraft, and Haunted Audio. He has performed in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Reservations are suggested.