Two Solos at Harper’s Books

Harper’s Books in East Hampton will open solo exhibitions of work by Martha Diamond and Daniel Heidkamp on Saturday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. The shows will continue through Aug. 15.

“Broad Strokes” consists of two distinct bodies of work by Ms. Diamond. In a series of large paintings on linen from the 1980s, she renders tall buildings and complex cityscapes from saturated skeins of color and thick, gestural brushwork. Her recent works have abandoned representation altogether for horizontal bands in black and white characterized by heavy impasto and wide brushstrokes.

“Coasting,” a dozen new paintings by Mr. Heidkamp, will be on view on the gallery’s mezzanine. In rich purples, bright pinks, and brilliant blues, the works depict scenes of imagined architecture, intimate conversation, and coastal leisure.

Long Island Landscapes

The Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum will present “Long Island Landscapes,” a group show organized by Peter J. Marcelle, from Saturday through Aug. 1, with a reception set for Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Featuring paintings by more than 15 artists, the exhibition celebrates the region’s plein-air tradition, which first took root on the East End in the 1870s, and its environmental heritage.

Among the participating artists are Bruce Lieberman, Miriam Dougenis, Terry Elkins, Cornelia Foss, Jim Gingerich, Anna Jurinich, and David Slater.

Monica Banks at Nightingale

Two exhibitions, “Butterfly Pie,” a solo show of work by Monica Banks, and “Soft Spoken,” a group show, will open Saturday at Sara Nightingale Gallery in Sag Harbor with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. and remain on view through Aug. 12.

Ms. Banks’s recent work reflects her post-election feelings of hope, despair, optimism, and anger. Her tiny figures on porcelain cake stands and her baked goods explore not only themes of consumption, ephemerality, and gender roles, but also the larger world where human emotions and political ideologies flutter on all sides of the political spectrum.

“Soft Spoken” includes works by Bill Armstrong, Roisin Bateman, Margaret Garrett, Theresa Hackett, Elena Lyakir, Daina Mattis, and Steve Miller.

Design Show at Ashawagh

The third annual East End Design Show will take place from Wednesday through Aug. 1 at Ashawagh Hall in Springs. A reception will be held July 29 from 6 to 8 p.m.

The exhibition will include one-of-a-kind furniture, sculpture, mosaics, and other works that bridge the fields of art and design. The participating artists are James DeMartis, Max Philip Dobler, Nick and Nancy Groudas, Marcie Honerkamp, J. Scott McCoy, Denis Wolf, and Nico Yektai.

Benefit at RJD Gallery

“The Girl Next Door” will open Saturday at the RJD Gallery in Bridgehampton with a reception from 6 to 8:30 p.m. A benefit for the Hetrick-Martin Institute, an organization dedicated to serving L.G.B.T.Q. youth, the show will run through Aug. 13.

Rachel Moseley and Katie O’Hagan engage the themes of identity, youth, and contemporary culture in their photorealistic figurative paintings. Ms. Moseley creates Pop portraits of young people in her community, while Ms. O’Hagan’s psychological landscapes venture beyond outward appearance.

The show will also include work by Daniel Pollera, Marco Martelli, and Rick Garland.

Bert Stern Photos in Sag

Christy’s Art Center in Sag Harbor and Keyes Art will present “Bert Stern: Lolita in Sag Harbor” from tomorrow through Sept. 8, with a reception happening tomorrow evening from 6 to 8.

Stern, known especially for his photographs of Marilyn Monroe published as “The Last Sitting,” chronicled the filming of Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel “Lolita.” Parts of the filming took place at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor.

Underground Icon Surfaces

Boo-Hooray Summer Rental in Montauk will present a show of work by Lizzi Bougatsos from Saturday through Friday, July 28. An artist who works in many mediums, Ms. Bougatsos has been called “an icon of the underground” by Zing magazine, and her work has been characterized in Hyperallergic as “Duchampian.” 

In addition to being a visual artist, she is the lead vocalist of Gang Gang Dance, an experimental music band known for its synthesized electronics and percussion.

Architectural Sculpture

Maison Gerard, a Manhattan store and gallery featuring French Art Deco furniture, lighting, and artworks, will hold its first off-site exhibition, the sculpture of Marino di Teana, in the landscaped gardens of a Grosvenor Atterbury mansion in Southampton from Saturday through Aug. 26.

Mr. di Teana, who died in 2012, produced works in corten and stainless steel in sizes ranging from small to monumental. A trained engineer and architect, he is known for his large-scale public commissions that combined sculpture and architecture.

NYFA Award to Hamada

The New York Foundation for the Arts has awarded a 2017 artist fellowship in crafts/sculpture to the East Hampton artist Hiroyuki Hamada. The fellowship program makes unrestricted grants to artists working in 15 disciplines.

With a wide span of years and no real focus, the show “Moving Targets: American Art From 1918 to 2012” is as rambling as its title suggests. Still, it has enough standout pieces to make it worth a look. 

The show, at Mark Borghi Fine Art in Bridgehampton, features a huge canvas piece by Gene Davis, who merges his vertical-strip style of painting with larger bands of color and blank sections on either side and in the middle. Davis, a sportswriter, became a painter in the late 1940s near the height of Abstract Expressionism. He eventually became known as a Color Field artist, but never really left his native Washington, D.C. He is not a household name, but his colossal canvas is attention-grabbing and looks right at home with a nearby Kenneth Noland painting.

In the same room is a low John Chamberlain on a nearly flat plinth. Like a festive bow on a present, it is made up of metal pieces painted with stripes. The pretty spring colors also make it look like a flowering shrub. In keeping with the theme, two of his “Birthday Cards” in painted metal are in the rear room.

Even more interesting are the miniature Chamberlain sculptures in the next room. One, in which he used resin and watercolor on paper, mimics the composition of his metal sculptures. The other, a stylized noose-like shape made from aluminum foil in the 1980s, was a tiny inspiration for the colossal sculptures he made in the years before he died in 2011.

Dorothy Dehner, who was married to David Smith for over 20 years early in her career, came into her own after their divorce in 1950. She was featured in last summer’s show about Atelier 17 at the Pollock-Krasner House in Springs. Here, in a painting from 1953, her work looks kind of Cubist, a series of planes, doors, or windows. In shades of gold, yellow, gray, white, and tan, it’s a tonal work that suggests the metal materials of sculpture.

A Robert Motherwell collage is from a similar era (the ’60s) as two paintings by Nicholas Carone, a lesser-known Abstract Expressionist who has recently received revived attention. “Ear of Earth” and “Escape Plan” are about two years apart. Each has a patchy composition, painted in muted tones.

Willem de Kooning is represented by two paintings and a charcoal drawing, something sweet he might have made for his daughter, Lisa. Of the paintings, the earlier one, “Woman on a Rowboat,” is easier to love. Neither one screams de Kooning, but the earlier work, from 1964, uses a recurrent subject from his drawings of the same year. Richard Schiff, a professor at the University of Texas, has noted that the artist became fascinated by the subject after observing  a figure he spied in a boat in East Hampton and her constricted and expansive movements. The later painting from 1989, is pretty, with pastel blues, pinks, greens, and yellows, but forgettable.

Going back even earlier, the gallery displays two Marsden Hartley paintings from the early 20th century. Hartley’s career was marked by travel, both domestically and in Europe. Two of his better-known journeys are represented here. “Cactus” appears to be from a series of paintings he executed from 1918 to 1924 while in the Southwest, as one of the many artists who made a pilgrimage there. “Still Life (Berlin)” comes from the same period, but references an earlier time; Hartley was in Germany in the years leading up to World War I. A relatively straightforward bowl of fruit, it appears to be a hybrid of Cézanne and Synthetic Cubism.

Jumping forward, a number of works from the late 20th century represent many diverse impulses. Arman’s “In Favor of Admission,” a 1970 work, incorporates hundreds of Metropolitan Museum of Art admission buttons in a kind of Abstract Expressionist swirling rainbow of colors. That the museum no longer uses the buttons imbues the piece with the unintentional pull of nostalgia.

A diminutive Jean-Michel Basquiat from 1982 is worth noting. An Urs Fisher bronze statue of a “Little Girl” helps brings the survey into the 21st century. Richard Artschwager, Donald Baechler, Sonia Delaunay, Jimmy Ernst, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, and quite a few others round out the mix. It’s a light show, perfect for summertime reflection, a beach read for the visual art set.

A constellation will be visible to the naked eye during the coming week, not in the sky above Guild Hall but in its John Drew Theater, where Alec Baldwin and Harris Yulin will star in a staged reading of “Gross Points” on Tuesday at 8 p.m. and Tovah Feldshuh and Richard Kind will headline a reading of “Assisted Loving” on Friday, July 28, also at 8. 

The only previous run of “Gross Points,” a play by Ira Lewis, was at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor in 2001. “It hasn’t been changed since then,” said Josh Gladstone, the artistic director at John Drew. “In fact, it’s been in a drawer because the writer passed away five or six years ago.”

That production starred Alec Baldwin as Johnny Checco, a movie star whom Alvin Klein, a New York Times critic, called “insufferably childish, boorish, and full of himself. . . .” It was directed by Stephen Hamilton, who, according to Mr. Gladstone, probably had the only extant copy of the play.

Two years ago Mr. Baldwin told Mr. Gladstone he wanted to do the play again, and an opportunity opened up this summer when the actor was available and a scheduled play fell through.

At Mr. Baldwin’s request, Mr. Hamilton signed on again not only as the director but also as Vincent, Checco’s wisecracking assistant. Mr. Baldwin surprised Mr. Gladstone by offering him the role of Larry, a novice playwright.

Checco makes $13 million a picture but claims his first love is theater. He has in fact played Hamlet in what members of his entourage insist was a tour de force. 

Harry, the actor’s agent, is played by Tuck Milligan, a Guild Hall regular and longtime friend of Mr. Baldwin’s. Mr. Yulin has the role of a maniacal director who changed his name from Sidney Samuel to Samuel Sidney. Joanna Howard, who first performed at Guild Hall in 2001 when she was 16, has the sole female part.

According to Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Baldwin considers “Gross Points” the funniest play he has ever worked on. In 2001 he was best known as a young leading man. “But after all those years on ‘30 Rock’ and hosting ‘Saturday Night Live,’ his chops are bound to be sharper. I’m excited to see what he brings to it this time.”

As for “Assisted Loving,” it is a new play by Bob Morris, who wrote a column for the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times for many years and has been a commentator for NPR’s “All Things Considered.” He adapted the play from his own comic memoir of the same title.

Mr. Kind plays a recently widowed man who wants to resume dating, much to the consternation of his son, David, who is expected to be his father’s wingman. 

“It’s so much about the son having to manage his expectations after his mother passed away,” Mr. Gladstone said, “but it’s also a comedy about the way Richard meets the women,” one of whom is played by Ms. Feldshuh.

When the play came to Mr. Gladstone from a colleague, he agreed to read it as a courtesy since he did not know Mr. Morris. “It turned out to be very good, very polished, and very funny, with a great clipping pace.” When Mr. Gladstone agreed to present the play if Mr. Morris could get some good actors, the playwright said, “Richard Kind loves this piece, and so does Tovah.” Brian Sills as the son and Max Wolkowitz as his partner round out the cast.

“It’s not a deep play,” said Mr. Gladstone, “it’s light and playful. Both of these pieces are pure comedy.” Tickets for “Gross Points” range from $30 to $75, $28 to $70 for members. For “Assisted Loving” the cost is $30 to $50 and $28 to $48.

Not satisfied with one house, this year the Hampton Designer Showhouse, which benefits Southampton Hospital, will feature two next-door houses in a new subdivision to the west of Southampton Village.

The two layouts gave designers more flexibility in addressing the functions of different rooms. Instead of the endless interpretations of bedrooms that are often a feature of these presentations, there are multiple living areas, outside porches and terraces, dining rooms, lounges, and mudrooms to consider. 

Separated into the “Beachcomber” and “The Linden,” the houses don’t seem to have any overarching theme that is unique to each one. This year, however, the more than 30 designers seem particularly enamored of color in a way they have not been in recent years. There is still an engagement with natural and organic materials, but the grays and drabs have been replaced with deep pinks, greens, and many shades of blue.

Some of the designers and firms based on the East End include Brady Design, East End Home, English Country Home, Greg McKenzie, Old Town Crossing, East Hampton Gardens, MancAVes, Grayson De Vere, Sea Green Designs, Mabley Handler, and Wolf Interior Design.

The showhouses will open with a preview cocktail party on Saturday from 6 to 8:30 p.m. and will run until Labor Day. Mario Buatta is the honorary Showhouse chairman. Jamie Drake and Alexa Hampton are the honorary design co-chairmen.  The houses are located at 78 and 82 Rosko Lane. Regular hours for viewing will begin on Sunday and will run sevens days from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

Children 6 and under, infants, stroll­ers, and pets are not admitted in the showhouses. Admission is $40 and the cocktail party tickets are $225 each. 

“Barney’s Wall,” a new documentary about Barney Rosset, the Grove Press and Evergreen Review publisher who successfully waged battles against censorship and introduced to American readers such writers as Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and Jean Genet, will be shown at Guild Hall next Thursday at 8 p.m. 

The film’s title refers to a 12-by-15-foot three-dimensional mural Rosset constructed on a wall of his East Village loft while in his late 80s. That creation offers a way into the psyche of a legendary figure who did nothing less than shatter America’s sexual taboos and revolutionize its cultural landscape. 

Tickets are $15, $13 for museum members.

“An Evening With Lorna Luft,” a new show from the acclaimed stage, screen, and television actress and vocalist, will take place Monday evening at 8 at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor as part of its Music Mondays cabaret series.

The show will feature music from the Great American Songbook, Broadway classics, shows in which she has starred, and a few songs from her show business legacy as the daughter of Judy Garland and Sidney Luft and half-sister to Liza Minnelli. Ms. Luft has performed on the world’s most prestigious stages, among them the Hollywood Bowl, Madison Square Garden, Carnegie Hall, the London Palladium, and L’Olympia in Paris.

Tickets range from $55 to $85.

Music Mondays, the Broadway cabaret series at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, will conclude its summer season with “Stephen Schwartz and Friends” on Monday evening at 8. Appearing with Mr. Schwartz will be Liz Calloway, Scott Coulter, and Debbie Gravitte.

A composer and lyricist, Mr. Schwartz has earned three Academy Awards, four Grammys, a Tony, and a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His numerous Broadway credits include “Wicked,” “Godspell,” “Pippin,” and “The Magic Show.” 

Ms. Callaway, a Tony nominee and Emmy winner, has appeared in “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Miss Saigon,” “The Three Musketeers,” and, for five years, in “Cats.” Mr. Coulter, who has received a dozen awards for his work in cabaret, directed and starred in “A Christmas Carol: The Symphonic Concert” with the Baltimore Symphony. Ms. Gravitte, who won a Tony for her performance in “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway,” has sung with the New York City Ballet and appeared with Bette Midler in “Isn’t She Great?”

Tickets range from $69 to $125. Only a handful remained as of press time.

Race and matrimony are at the heart of “Intimate Apparel,” a 2003 play by Lynn Nottage in revival now through July 30 at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

This affecting, if sometimes sluggish, play introduces Esther, an African-American woman who travels to 1905 New York in an attempt to live and work independently. She lives in a boarding house for women while working as a seamstress, sewing (you guessed it) intimate apparel for her clients, who range from wealthy white women to prostitutes.

As the play begins, Esther is 35 and still single, though she has a pen pal named George Armstrong who is working on the Panama Canal and eager for female companionship. Their letters to each other (each written by a third party, it will turn out) grow increasingly amorous. Might George come to New York and marry her, Esther begins to wonder? 

Be careful what you wish for, my dear. 

While the real subject of “Intimate Apparel” is the difficulty for African-American women in forging lives of their own in post-antebellum America, Ms. Nottage seems to take special aim at the institution of marriage, which never fares well in this drama. One of Esther’s clients, for example, a Mrs. Van Buren, is a frivolous white socialite whose husband is having numerous affairs, and she revels in her independence when her husband attends to business abroad, leaving her alone for months. Another of Esther’s friends, Mayme, meanwhile, is a black prostitute whose clients are “all married,” prompting Mayme to take a dim view of relationships.

By the time George Armstrong arrives in New York to marry Esther, you are ready for the worst, and indeed the first act ends with the newly betrothed couple holding hands and staring out into the audience with a distinct look of terror.

Suffice it to say that the Armstrong marriage quickly runs into problems. The Caribbean-born George finds his own racial stumbling blocks in his search for work and begins to dig into Esther’s life savings, which she has sewn into her quilt. Esther, on the other hand, has a continuing flirtation with a Jewish fabric merchant, a man who would be a more suitable husband than George if not for the racial and religious prohibitions.

If you think this doesn’t exactly sound like the stuff of dramatic fireworks, you would be correct. “Intimate Apparel” is a subtle drama played out in a minor key, though if this production lacks a certain energy at times, it hardly seems like the fault of the cast, who breathe badly needed oxygen into the somewhat airless script. 

Kelly McCreary as Esther especially brings great depth and empathy to an otherwise dour character. Her impassive acceptance of heartbreak seems to speak directly to the African-American experience of the era — as if disappointment is not only expected but inevitable. Then there is Julia Motyka as Mrs. Van Buren, who plays up her character’s frivolity with wicked glee, employing bourbon and a high-pitched superficiality to hide her pain. And Edward O’Blenis is so likable as George (even if his Caribbean accent isn’t always convincing), the audience sympathizes with him probably more than it should, even when his behavior turns cruel.

Ms. Nottage is the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama twice, first for “Ruined” in 2009 and then again this year for “Sweat.” With “Intimate Apparel,” however, you never really feel the liftoff of great drama, and at nearly 2 hours and 40 minutes’ running time, the play begins to feel overlong and undercooked. It’s as if the work were born of a social history lesson, rather than artistic inspiration. 

In spite of this, you will be moved by the end of “Intimate Apparel,” the emotions of which seem to creep up from behind rather than knock you cold. Ms. McCreary’s performance is daring in its use of sadness and melancholy to slowly win over an audience, and the actress earned a standing ovation on the night I attended. 

Along the way, however, theatergoers will need to bring a healthy dose of patience to this somber, dilatory drama.

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position;

how it takes place

While someone is eating or opening a window. . . .

W.H. Auden, “Musee des Beaux Arts”

By any measure Johannes Brahms was an “Old Master” and it was with his German Requiem, that musical salve for human suffering in the face of death that the Choral Society of the Hamptons, joined by the Greenwich Village Chamber Singers and the South Fork Chamber Orchestra, closed its 2016-2017 concert season on Saturday in the Parish Hall of Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton.

Although an old master he surely was, with this glorious music Brahms parts ways not only with Auden’s description of obliviousness to suffering but with centuries of musical practice as well. Instead of solemn pleas in Latin for the eternal rest of departed souls, Brahms offered comfort, in their own language, for those left behind to grieve. Brahms wrote not for the departed soul of Icarus but for the consolation of Daedalus, his grief-stricken father. Which is why on Sept. 20, 2001, when the New York Philharmonic was to have opened its season with a gala and festive concert, its program was changed to “Ein Deutsches Requiem,” and the audience, still reeling from the attack on the World Trade Center, was asked not to applaud at the work’s conclusion, but to remain silent.  This was music for the consolation of all present, performers and audience alike.

Before Saturday evening’s concert, as additional chairs were brought in to accommodate the exceptionally large and growing audience, the orchestra began to warm up and there was a palpable sense of excitement in the room.  This would not be a performance of the Brahms Requiem for chorus, piano, and a few strings in a watered-down arrangement of Brahms’s brilliant orchestration; here were 38 professional instrumentalists including brass, tympani, and harp and from the opening bars of the introduction, with the gently throbbing low Fs in the double basses, it was clear that the excitement and anticipation of the now standing-room-only audience was warranted.  With the achingly tender entrance of the chorus singing “Selig sind, die da Leid tragen” (Blessed are they that have sorrow) it became clear that the audience was in for a special evening.

One might have wondered how Mark Mangini, the music director of both choruses who conducted, would manage to blend the sound of choruses made up of singers of apparently different ages and backgrounds.  It was rarely an issue and never one that provided significant distraction.  (What did provide distraction, especially in quieter sections, was a noisy air conditioning unit that continued throughout the concert.) 

The German vowels were well blended and with a few minor exceptions, final consonants were clearly articulated and uniformly placed.  Where the voices of the Greenwich group were especially welcome was in the tenor section and in the higher passages sung by the soprano section.  For the sopranos, this was most evident in the As and the B-flat of the second movement. Also impressive in this occasionally stark and dirge-like second movement was the convincing forte at “Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras” (For all flesh is like grass) and the even more impressive gradual decrescendo that followed.  The ability to sing an even and gradual decrescendo is one of the marks of a well-trained choir.

The third movement featured the baritone Jason Eck, who had sung with the Choral Society once before, and it is not surprising that he was invited to join them again.  Although he possesses a fine voice with many well-chosen colors in his palette, it is his willingness to place that voice so convincingly in the service of the music and text that was particularly memorable.  He clearly understood and communicated the meaning of every word he sang. Perhaps because of its role as accompaniment to the soloist, the chorus was not as sharp in this movement, with several unprepared high notes that had been sung earlier with no problem now ringing untrue.

The familiar fourth movement, “How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place,” was sung with beautifully shaped phrases.  Mr. Mangini succeeded not only in achieving the long shape of each line but had clearly given attention to the smaller shapes within each larger phrase. This is sophisticated music-making.  Some intonation issues in the winds were noticeable but not fatal.

Ileana Santamaria was the soprano soloist for the fifth movement.  She too put her voice at the service of the music and text, and her lovely, angelic voice floated effortlessly on the quiet, rising thermals of the choir’s subdued imprecations below.  

There was nothing subdued about the choir’s singing in the sixth movement. They were especially thrilling in the fugal section of this movement, successfully managing the eighth-note triplets in quick tempo, an impressive bit of vocal agility.  The entire ensemble, with the conductor’s clear direction, managed the tricky sections where singers and players are at rhythmic odds with one another. The final movement, with its unmistakable references to material from the first, brought the evening’s music to an enormously satisfying conclusion, and the audience quickly rose to its feet in a show of appreciation for this most impressive performance.

The Brahms Requiem concluded the Choral Society’s 2016-2017 concert season. As noted in an earlier review, this season was satisfying not only for the quality of its music-making but for the thoughtfulness and creativity of its programming. It can be tempting to fill a summer concert with lighter fare, and the Brahms Requiem is decidedly not lighter fare. But it was clear from the expressions on the faces of a number of the singers and from the response of the audience, both in choosing to attend in large numbers and in the ovation they gave at the concert’s conclusion, that the need for consolation from the pen of an old master provided something important and perhaps much needed.  And for that, a grateful concert-going community gave an enthusiastic and memorable thank-you.

Contrary to one opinionated pop song, video did not kill the radio star, MTV’s late-20th-century reign notwithstanding. Nor did the consolidation and corporatization of terrestrial radio, despite its best efforts to do so. Not even satellite radio, nor innumerable internet stations, nor multiple streaming services, have brought about the demise of FM. 

Dennis Elsas, a longtime D.J. at New York’s legendary WNEW-FM, has not only navigated the twists and turns of broadcasting for more than four decades but thrived in its many forms and formats. In that time, he has conducted celebrated on-air interviews with rock ’n’ roll heroes including John Lennon, Pete Townshend, Mick Jagger, Jerry Garcia, and Elton John. 

In 2000, Mr. Elsas joined WFUV, Fordham University’s noncommercial station, where he is on the air on weekday afternoons. In 2004, he launched a career in satellite radio, where he is heard on Sirius XM’s Classic Vinyl channel and, most recently, its new Beatles channel. 

On Sunday at 7 p.m., he will present “Rock ’n’ Roll Never Forgets,” a multimedia show featuring highlights from his interviews with rock ’n’ roll royals, at Guild Hall in East Hampton. In “Rock ’n’ Roll Never Forgets,” Mr. Elsas shares rare audio and video along with favorite stories and a unique perspective on broadcasting, from the early days of the Top 40 AM stations he grew up with to WNEW’s revolutionary programming and his 21st-century adventures at WFUV and Sirius XM. 

In hindsight, Mr. Elsas’s life prior to Sept. 28, 1974, could be seen as essential preparation for the hours in which he and Lennon, who with the Beatles changed popular culture over the previous decade, conversed and played records on a rainy afternoon. Growing up in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, “I didn’t know anyone in media,” he said. “I didn’t even know there was media.” 

“For most of that period,” before the late-1960s rise of FM and stereo broadcast, “I’m listening to 1010 WINS with Murray the K and other personalities, WABC with Scott Muni” — later his boss at WNEW — “and WMCA with Dan Daniel and a host of folks.”

Later, against the backdrop of the British Invasion, which launched countless more bands on either side of the Atlantic, he attended Queens College. “I’m thinking, maybe I’ll be a lawyer, my parents would like that,” he recalled. “But I discovered that there was a speech department, and I liked a couple of the courses: advertising, radio, film, and TV.” 

With no support from the institution, “we launched the first Queens College radio station, broadcast to the cafeteria and the student lounge. It’s 1966, ’67, all this music is coming out, and in addition to going to school I’m learning my craft, making it up as I go along, absorbing the best of what I’m hearing.” 

With the Federal Communications Commission’s 1967 non-duplication rule, which prohibited FM simulcasts of AM broadcasts, rock ’n’ roll began to appear on FM frequencies, giving rise to freewheeling and “underground” programming, helping to spread and fortify the growing counterculture. In his first job, at a small, middle-of-the-road station in New Rochelle, Mr. Elsas convinced his superiors to allow a nighttime rock ’n’ roll show, which he named “Something Else Again,” after a 1968 album by Richie Havens. “I was making it up,” he said, “my version of early progressive FM, in the early days of WNEW and the best of what I could take of Top 40, creating a personality and a playlist.” 

He sent an audition reel to Mr. Muni, then WNEW’s program director, and received a polite rejection. Three months later, the station had a temporary opening for a fill-in D.J. “I got that phone call I’ll never forget,” he said, “that great, deep, Scott Muni voice: ‘Do you want to come in for an interview?’ I showed up in my only suit.” Within six months, he was the station’s music director. 

“He was a young guy, and he was terrific,” said George Meredith, a former advertising executive who worked with WNEW for many years and now lives in Springs. “It was an interesting thing he had to do, because Scott Muni had been there for years. There were all these careers there, and he fit in great. He did well by it.” 

“I was basically learning at the feet of Scott Muni, getting that ‘College of Rock ’n’ Roll’ knowledge,” Mr. Elsas said, “getting a perspective on how radio is done, and also meeting my rock ’n’ roll heroes. That allowed me to get to the Lennon interview.” 

At the Record Plant, a studio where Lennon recorded much of his post-Beatles work, Mr. Elsas had met and invited the musician to talk on the air about his forthcoming album, “Walls and Bridges.” To his surprise, Lennon accepted. 

“He knew that I knew my stuff,” Mr. Elsas recalled, “and I could figure out pretty quickly that he’s a Beatles fan. When he shows up, I know he’s there to talk about ‘Walls and Bridges,’ and I’m a responsible young broadcaster, I’m going to help one of my idols talk about his album. But what I really want to talk about is Beatles, Beatles, Beatles.”

A wide-ranging conversation followed in which Lennon told stories of his former band, discussed his immigration struggle, and delivered incisive and always witty commentary on music, commercials, even the weather forecast. “I met a centered, enthusiastic, warm, gracious guy who was understanding of how excited I was,” Mr. Elsas said. 

All things must pass, and WNEW’s format changed, and changed again. “I’m starting to look at my career as what I did in the 20th century, and what I’m doing in the 21st,” he said. “I spent the 1970s and ’80s and ’90s working for the biggest and most important rock station in New York,” during which he also created a career doing voiceover work. At WFUV, “I grew with the station, they grew with me.” There, “I found an opportunity to embrace all the old stuff I loved and share that with an interested and willing audience. Because the radio station prides itself on breaking new artists, I get the added benefit of being part of that discovery.” 

He enjoys the Classic Vinyl channel because “I love that music, and I’ve learned that you can’t talk about these bands as often as you do without finding out even more. It also gave me a national platform. And I like being part of new technology, so for me, satellite is a win-win, and being able to combine it with WFUV, it’s a win-win-win.” 

“Rock ’n’ Roll Never Forgets” is approximately 90 minutes, with a question-and-answer session to follow. It is not simply an “oldies” show, Mr. Elsas said. Rather, “it’s me looking back at the people I’ve met, both famous people and also the listeners. I couldn’t have done all this without them.” 

Tickets for “Rock ’n’ Roll Never Forgets” cost $20 and $30, or $18 and $28 for Guild Hall members.