Arts

    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.

Pots at Horowitz

    Glenn Horowitz Bookseller in East Hampton will present “Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka: Still Life With Pots” beginning Saturday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

    This will be the first dual exhibition of works by the couple, who are based in Los Angeles. Ms. Kusaka makes graceful porcelains in a minimalist vein, decorated with grids, bands, and dots to form compositions. Mr. Wood is a painter who composes portraits, interiors, and still lifes with pattern and geometry. His subject for this show is his partner’s ceramics.

    Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor will launch its 2013 Mainstage season with “Lend Me a Tenor,” a comedy by Ken Ludwig originally produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber on London’s West End in 1986, then on Broadway in 1989. Directed by Don Stephenson, the cast will include Judy Blazer, Scott Cote, Betsy DiLellio, Donna English, Nancy Johnston, Noah Plomgren, Steve Rosen, and Roland Rusinek.

   Three couples, an indiscretion, a cover-up, accusations, and crumbling alibis on overlapping sets lead to confusion and comedy in the Hampton Theatre Company’s revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s “How the Other Half Loves,” opening today for a three-week run at Quogue Community Hall.

    “A Multicultural Exploration of Homegoing Celebrations of Life: Art and Archeology of Death in the African Diaspora,” a multimedia symposium, will be held on Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Rogers Mansion in Southampton.

    The program will explore death in the African diaspora from archaeological and artistic perspectives, bringing together educators, an archaeologist, and a musician to teach communal responses to death and reveal cultural adaptation and resilience throughout African-American history.

   Konstantin Soukhovetski, a Pianofest distinguished artist and Pianofest’s artist in residence, will perform on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Levitas Center for the Arts at the Southampton Cultural Center. Mr. Soukhovetski was the first pianist to perform in the center’s Rising Stars Piano Series when it was founded in 2003. He joined the board of the Southampton Cultural Center last year.

    AcquAria, a duo composed of Michela Musolino, vocalist, and Vincenzo Castellana, drums, will give a free concert, “Sempri amMari (Always the Sea) — Folk Songs of Sicily,” on Sunday from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the Suzanne Koch Gosman Room at the Montauk Library.

    The two promise a dynamic program of music dedicated to the sea, including maritime songs, fishermen’s chanteys, legends, and love songs that illustrate the bond between Sicily’s people and the sea that surrounds their island. The performance will be in Sicilian and include a discussion in English.

   Before Saturday’s performance of “In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)” by Sarah Ruhl, the Hamptons Independent Theatre Festival, also known as HITFest, will hold a benefit at the Bridgehampton Community House for its summer outdoor performance of William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”

   The public has been invited to the preview week of “Journey Back to the Wikun Village” at the Wikun (Shinnecock for “good”) Village, the Shinnecock Museum’s new outdoor living culture attraction, today through Monday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

   An estimated 10,000 people came to the Montauk Music Festival last year to enjoy free, live, original music, a combined effort by organizers and businesses that they said resulted in a win-win-win situation for music lovers, musicians, restaurants, bars, and motels.

    From tonight through Sunday, twice the amount of businesses will welcome 100 musical acts for 250 performances with the only paid event being the $35 opening night party tonight at Gurney’s Inn, which includes passed hors d’oeuvres and a three-hour open bar.

   Free performances are on tap from 6 to 8 p.m. on Saturday in Amagansett. Innersleeve Records and Crossroads Music, both in Amagansett Square, will feature free performances by artists including Jewlee Trudden and InCircles as well as Mamalee Rose and Friends. Liz Joyce of Goat on a Boat Puppet Theatre will give a free puppet performance from 6 to 6:30 in the square. In the event of rain, that performance will be held at the Stephen Talkhouse.

   The Watermill Center has invited the East End community to a new program initiative, Saturdays @ WMC, focusing on unique ways to interact with the Watermill Center grounds, collection, studios, and kitchen. On Saturday from noon to 3 p.m. the center will host local artists to lead workshops inspired by everything the center has to offer.

   It may appear that it’s solely the new building that’s giving the Parrish Art Museum its current buzz and vigor, and it is certainly part of the equation. But the energy emanating from Water Mill also comes from within, particularly as the Parrish gears up for its first summer season.

   Shelter Island Friends of Music will present the Linden String Quartet on Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Shelter Island Presbyterian Church at 32 North Ferry Road (Route 114). The quartet will perform music by Haydn, Bolcom, and Mendelssohn. A meet-the-artists reception with refreshments will follow. Admission is free, but donations will be welcomed. More information is at 749-2251.

Expressionism Part II

    The Pollock-Krasner House in Springs will have a discussion called “Expressionism in the 21st Century: Part 2” on Sunday from 4 to 6 p.m. Participants will include Sally Egbert, Connie Fox, Colin Goldberg, Carol Hunt, and Haim Mizrahi. Linda Hatofsky, the widow of Julius Hatofsky, a West Coast Expressionist, will discuss her late husband’s work.

    Contributions from the audience will be welcomed. Admission is free and no reservations are required.

And the Winners Are . . .

   Bruce Wolosoff, a composer and pianist who lives on Shelter Island, will give a benefit recital for the German Diez Scholarship Fund at the Renee Weiler Concert Hall of the Greenwich House Music School at 46 Barrow Street in Manhattan tonight at 8. Tickets cost $20 and are available at the door. Additional donations have been requested.

   Much like a chrysalis, the stage of Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater is undergoing a living transformation as the company of actors put together by director Stephen Hamilton embody their roles in the Martin McDonagh play “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” which opens for a very limited run on Wednesday.

   Alan Alda, the actor, director, writer, and educator, was honored on April 24 at the Stony Brook Foundation’s annual fund-raising event, held at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. The benefit raised more than $4 million, which will help pay for the university’s new Center for Communicating Science.

    The university’s president, Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., announced to the 750 guests at the event, among them the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Dr. Eric Kandel, that the building will henceforth be known as the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.

   Amber Liao, a classical pianist, will perform at the Montauk Library on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. The concert, which is free, will include masterworks by Mozart, Chopin, Debussy, and Daniel­pour.

    Ms. Liao has given recitals and solo performances throughout the United States and abroad, including recent engagements at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. Her recording of works by Schumann, Beethoven, and Granados was recently released on the MSR Classics label.

   Robert Wood will lead a night sky photography workshop for adults and children 12 and up on Saturday at 8 p.m., at the South Fork Natural History Museum and Nature Center in Bridgehampton.

   Toby and Itzhak Perlman and young artists of the Perlman Music Program will return to Shelter Island for concerts this weekend.

    On Saturday at 7:30 p.m., an alumni recital will feature Christine Lamprea, cello, and Hannah Shields, piano, with a program of Bach, Beethoven, Penderecki, and Prokofiev. Both musicians are graduates of the program’s chamber music workshop, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary season this summer. Ms. Lamprea, who is Columbian-American, recently won the Sphinx Competition for young black and Latino string players.

Albertini Presents “Stuffed”

    Sydney Albertini will present “Stuff­ed and Other Feelings . . .” at Ille Arts in Amagansett beginning Saturday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

    According to Ms. Albertini, the show is about “four feelings that work in pairs and as a whole.” “Stuffed,” which occupies its own room, is a giant blue soft sculpture with “feelings of gratitude represented by embroidered pillows.” The artist asks, “Can gratitude be trivialized?”

    You think you know Caroline Doctorow? “Something Pulls Me to You,” the opening track of the singer-songwriter’s new album, leaves behind flowery folk for Hank Williams lonesome. Backed by the loping twang of Pete Kennedy’s guitar, it calls to mind hunched patrons at a late-night New Mexico roadside diner, nursing their sorrows as much as their coffee cups.

    Artists of all disciplines may apply to the Watermill Center now for residency slots in 2014, from January through June or September through December. The deadline is June 12 at 5 p.m.; selected artists will be notified in August.

    The center will host four information sessions for prospective applicants, two in Water Mill and two at its Manhattan studio. The sessions in the city happen at 2 p.m. today and at 6 p.m. on May 30 on the 10th floor at 115 West 29 Street. Sessions at the center are on May 21 at 6:30 p.m. and May 28 at 5 p.m.

   Guild Hall and the Naked Stage will present three staged readings on Tuesday from 7 to 9:30 p.m. in the Boots Lamb Education Center. On tap are “WHOA!” by Lisa Bonner, “From Ship to Shape: An Excerpt” by Walker Vreeland, and “At the Bar” by Hortense Carpentier.

   Hamptons Take 2 will present an evening with the documentary filmmaker Roger Sherman tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, at which the half-hour film “Zapruder & Stolley: Witness to an Assassination” will be shown, its first showing in New York State.

    The evening also includes a screening of “Alexander Calder,” a 60-minute film on the life and work of the American kinetic sculptor.

    Audrey Flack and the History of Art Band will perform on Tuesday at 6 p.m. as part of an all-day conference at the Baruch Jewish Studies Center at 55 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The performance happens at the Engelman Recital Hall in the Baruch Performing Arts Center. The entrance is on East 25th Street between Lexington and Third Avenue. 

    The Choral Society of the Hamptons has named David M. Brandenburg its executive director. He is a composer, co-founder of the Hamptons Shakespeare Festival, and music director of the Sag Harbor Community Band.

    Mr. Brandenburg will help produce the society’s June 29 performance of Handel’s oratorio “Israel in Egypt” Part II (Exodus) and Bach’s cantata 79, “Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild.”

    Tina Andrews will bring her new production of “Buckingham” to the South­ampton Cultural Center for seven performances beginning tonight with a preview at 8 p.m.

    Ms. Andrews wrote the play and will also direct it. It “dramatizes the aristocratic intrigue, ethnic scandal, and family dysfunction in the life of Queen Charlotte Sophia who was forced to hide her Moorish features and skin tone under heavy white Elizabethan makeup before her arranged marriage to “mad” King George III,” according to the center. The ruse was not discovered until their wedding night.