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.

Last week in the back room of the Tripoli Gallery in Southampton, a discussion was taking place between brothers. How, Tripoli Patterson asked his younger brother, Jake Patterson, were they going to describe his artworks that will be on view in the gallery starting tomorrow.

The answer‚ “digital paintings,” is certainly accurate and straightforward. Yet it is lacking as a complete description for the hybrid form born of a digital application called emoji.ink, which can be used to draw or paint images made completely out of emojis. The app was created by Vince McKelvie, Jake’s friend and business partner in a design company called Tig.ht Corp.

The artist is mostly known as Yung Jake, an identity “established on the internet in 2011,” according to a biography on the website of Steve Turner, his Los Angeles dealer. “I wasn’t an emoji guy,” Yung Jake said in “LeBron in the Paint,” a video he made for the Intel Corporation that was posted on YouTube in May. “I have a background in painting, but I knew it was something to run with.”

As he described it, he started making celebrity portraits with emojis, and it “blew up on social media‚“ with thousands of “likes” and hundreds of comments in several languages (including emoji), commissions, articles, and his recognition as an Instagram star.

His goal in this medium was to make iconic images, and indeed they have the import of a classical imperial portrait bust meshed with the small chaotic visual information found in a Chuck Close portrait that allows the eyes and the mind to perceive it as a coherent whole. With 15,000 to 20,000 emojis per portrait, “it’s like this mess of information, but then in the end it comes together as one idea,” he said in the video.

He starts with an underpainting of emojis, chosen by color, just like he would if he were prepping a canvas. Then he chooses emojis appropriate to the subject. For LeBron James, he used images such as basketballs, crowns, and lions to connote his primacy in basketball. In a portrait of Taylor Swift for Valentine’s Day two years ago, her face was made of things like hearts, CDs, bunnies, and trademark symbols. 

The emoji portraits are known primarily through Instagram but have also appeared sporadically in print or as art prints — a 10-foot print of his portrait of Blake Griffin now adorns the Staples Center in Los Angeles, commissioned by the L.A. Clippers. Tripoli’s new show, “Emoji Portraits‚“ will be the first grouping of large-format versions of them in a gallery. The paintings will be printed on Dibond — two ultra-thin aluminum sheets mounted to a polyethylene core. They will measure in the range of seven to eight feet.

The complex medium is fitting for someone described as a creator in the Tripoli Gallery’s press release. This umbrella term captures Mr. Patterson’s creative output from his youth through his postgraduate years, a multistage, multifaceted, and multihyphenate period of work often co-existing simultaneously.

He began painting at a young age. His first group show was at the Bridgehampton Historical Society in 2008 when he was a senior at Bridgehampton High School. At the time, this author said his paintings “suggest a knowledge of complicated art theory far beyond his years, which he adopts organically, almost as a given.” Klaus Kertess, an influential curator who died last year, chose Mr. Patterson soon after for a group show he organized at the Fireplace Project in Springs. 

He then studied at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2012 after eschewing painting for other mediums such as performance, video, and conceptual art. Although painting has regained respectability as a contemporary medium, there was little love for it at CalArts. Classmates and instructors were critical of his paintings, suggesting, as a diss, that he study animation instead of fine art.

Here is where it gets complicated, because CalArts does have a world-class animation program, and Jake was inspired by the cartoons he watched as a child, at one time aspiring to attend the school for that purpose. But he did take the gibes as an insult and expanded his practice. 

With showings of his conceptual work, such as “E.m-bed.de/d” and other projects at the Sundance Institute, L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, and several solo shows with his brother here and in Los Angeles at the Steve Turner gallery, it is fair to say he has had the last laugh. Given that many of his conceptual projects read as, if not complete satire, then at least cultural commentary, we can laugh with his work too.

The Patterson children moved around a lot growing up — living in places like Sag Harbor, Bali, Geneva, California, and Costa Rica. They became used to moving constantly, and their domiciles varied wildly. Neither brother could remember living anywhere for more than a couple of years. When a place had a television, Jake said, he would plant himself in front of it and watch cartoons obsessively. He is now working in the Cartoon Network’s creative department as his day job. His other commercial work includes directing commercials for products like Pepsi. 

The videos he directs for himself and for groups such as Rae Sremmurd, a hip-hop duo, fall on the art side of the spectrum for him, more so than the emoji digital paintings, which he categorizes as things he needs to do to keep his other art projects going. Among these are a few different series of vinyl image-wrapped found metal objects distinct in their themes, the latest including images from animation — Woody from “Toy Story” and a slightly altered Bart Simpson. “Doing the emoji paintings is more like design to me. I tend to distance myself from it.”

Although he posted a rap video in March on his Twitter feed, he is moving away from that form of expression. The piece is a dry comment on the medium, delivered earnestly and tweeted with a disclaimer that the views expressed in the video don’t necessarily reflect his views or opinions. The lyrics include references to various illegal substances and crude language about sexual exploits, as well as ordering pizza from Domino’s, Coachella, ill-fitting pants, and low SAT scores.

He’s not calling out the hip-hop community as poseurs, but he did note that in rap “you talk about things because it suits the medium,” not necessarily because it is true. “Like you might make a love song, but not necessarily be in love at the moment.”

“Emoji Portraits” will be on view tomorrow through Aug. 14, with a reception on Saturday from 7 to 9 p.m.

In the tidy brick building that once housed a Southampton Village power station, Jeff Lincoln has taken up residence with a gallery of visual and functional art. “The Organic Impulse in Contemporary Art and Design,” his current show, celebrates how artists and designers look to nature and organic shapes and motifs to inform their work in literal and more thematic ways.

Andrea Branzi’s aluminum bookcase is warmed with the addition of undulating birch branches, which are incorporated into the piece. Porky Hefer’s womb-like seating environments may be woven into a kind of hanging nest or structured into a cowhide conch-shaped shell. Each alien-like pod, looking like a plant from nature that might poison and then eat those who enter it, still attracts with its undulating primal design. 

Many of the forms are bulbous, curvaceous, globular. When they are not — for example, Rick Owens’s “Stag Bench” — they include elements of nature such as a moose antler or the aforementioned white birch branches. Stefan Bishop’s console looks like a desert tree in its accretion of walnut slabs. Wendell Castle has a series of tables and chairs modeled after human teeth in a colorful, cartoonish way. 

Joris Laarman is represented by a beautiful, kind of coppery bronze that looks like a low tree with a number of tree house platforms on it. Embellished with owl-like objects and a lacy nest/bowl that the artist designed, it is one show-stopping piece. Mr. Lincoln said its weight and the sharp angles of the shelves also made it a very perilous object to install. “My instructions to the crew were if anything happened, to let it go.” It could have taken someone’s leg or arm off otherwise. Knowing that such a graceful and beautiful object could be that dangerous adds to its allure. 

In some areas of the space, or even in some individual works, it is hard to define where the functional gives way to the fine. A series of large wood sculptures by Raoul Hague are interspersed throughout the floor space. They suggest that they could be tables or seating, but are placed intentionally on pedestals. They magically meld with whatever objects Mr. Lincoln places near them, be they an Al Held painting, a John Chamberlain early metal sculpture, or paintings by Per Kirkeby. 

Jack Youngerman’s floral abstractions meld with a chair, table, and lamps with plant-like motifs. A stool and lamp from the Haas Brothers could easily be branded sculpture, yet their descriptions include the words stool and lamp, evidence of a clear preference for the functional in their design. Some artists, such as Peter Lane, work across genres, making ceramic wall hangings that look like metal, and glazed stoneware that he forms into tabletops that look like marble sculpture.

None of it is too obvious or too pedantic. The objects and their groupings please the eyes before the brain can begin its analysis.

Some of the visual art choices might be too clever, but they are never too obvious. Lee Mullican is represented by colorful paintings that mimic wood grain. Georg Baselitz’s upside-down Morandi-esque “Still Life #2,” of a bottle and glasses on a table is a pleasant surprise, an abstraction that reveals its fitting subject slowly. The abstractions are soothing, if slightly decorative in this setting. Some paintings, like Eugene Leroy’s, seem almost sculptural with their thick impastoed buildup of paint. 

The two connected rooms are full of light and space with garage doors that open out to the parking lot for air on cooler days. The pieces on display look completely at home in their early industrial setting, a testament to Mr. Lincoln’s background in interior design, which he continues to do while running this establishment. The show will be on view through July 31.

When a retrospective of Deborah Buck’s paintings was held in 2012 at the Garrison Art Center in Garrison, N.Y., several people told her that they resembled her work from 20 years before.

While there is definitely a consistency over the years, it’s like quicksilver — difficult to pin down. Because strange, almost surreal forms are central to her paintings, they aren’t resolutely abstract. At the same time, with a few exceptions, they are not figurative either — except perhaps in her head, where magic is the norm. 

“I make images of things I wish existed. Like nature on steroids. It’s like making a world where I can live, a world a little more interesting to me than one without them.”

Her titles are important, she said. “They are clues to what it is I’m trying to convey. As these paintings go through manifestations, there are many layers to them, a lot of push and pull in the process. But when I finally get the title to the image, then it quickly resolves itself.”

“Sonar,” for example, has a variety of elements — a mass that resembles a cluster of mussels or clams, a multicolored disc, an upside-down bottle shape from which little circles descend. “When the title came to me, I figured out that I was under water. The shapes then resonated as sound waves.”

Her most recent paintings begin with an acrylic wash in a single color. Once that dries, depending on its shape, she draws over it with sumi ink. “The shape is like a map to the drawing that’s going to go over it. The ink, with its heavier viscosity, gives my hand more control. It allows me to work very, very fast.”

Ms. Buck was born and raised in and around Baltimore. “I came out of the egg interested in art,” she said. Her mother was a docent at the Baltimore Museum of Art and later studied at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Both parents encouraged her to think of herself as an artist, but it was her father who put her securely on the road to a life in art. When Ms. Buck was still in high school, Clyfford Still lived in a town near her family’s farm in Maryland. Ms. Buck’s father approached him one day and said, “I’m David Jones, and you’re responsible for my wife dragging me to the Albright-Knox” for a retrospective of his paintings. “But I’m really glad she did.” 

Still, who early on broke with the art world’s gallery system, was notoriously private, but both men were farm-team baseball catchers and baseball fans, and they regularly had breakfast at the same restaurant. One day Mr. Jones told the famous painter that his daughter was an artist too, and asked if she could help out in his studio. “He said very nice things the first time he saw my work, and I wrote him a letter thanking him for taking the time. Somehow I struck a chord in him and I saw him on a regular basis.” He became her mentor when she was 16 years old.

In 1975, Still received the Skowhegan School’s Medal for Painting, which entitled him to give a scholarship in his name to a young artist. He chose Ms. Buck. She knew him for the last six years of his life; he died in 1980. “To me, he was like a wizard with this power, the power of the imagery, the paint, the canvas.” She recently learned that he preserved all her letters to him; they are in the archive at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver.

Ms. Buck attended Trinity College in Hartford. The head of the art department, George Chaplin, who had studied at Yale with Josef Albers, would “come to my basement studio and we would talk about his work and everybody else’s work, and I think that was a formidable education.”

She found a job in Baltimore after graduation with a subsidiary of Disney that animated theme displays for stores and malls. “We engineered them, and we installed them, and I illustrated and designed them. It was really great discipline. It doesn’t matter what you’re drawing if you’re drawing every day.”

After 10 years she had enough money to move, and went to live in Boston. It was a mistake. “Boston was too severe for me, and I realized I had overshot the runway. I was supposed to be in New York.” She has been there ever since.

In 2001, feeling isolated in her studio, she opened Buck House, a gallery on Madison Avenue that carried midcentury modern furniture, contemporary art, photography, and whatever else caught the owner’s eye. “I would occasionally slip one of my paintings in.”

She painted during the years she owned Buck House, but did not try to show her work. “When I closed the gallery five years ago, it was time to begin exhibiting again. I’ve been really lucky. That’s what I’m doing.” Her most recent show was at Ille Arts in Amagansett with John Monti, a sculptor.

The artist was ready for a change. Her son, Sam, was in college, and she was divorced. She rented a little house in Water Mill, and then began to look for one to buy. She found it in Sagaponack, close to Sagg Main Beach.

“There were a bunch of silly little houses there built in the 1980s. I call mine a rescue house, since it was pretty beaten up and nobody wanted it. It was a joke house. But it had good bones and a view of the ocean.” 

She now splits her time between Sagaponack and the city, with studios in both places.

Guild Hall has a lively week ahead, with performances by the internationally acclaimed Pilobolus Dance Theater, the Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress and vocalist Bebe Neuwirth, the classical musicians Boyd Meets Girl, and a sold-out talk by Misty Copeland, a principal dancer of the American Ballet Theater. 

Boyd Meets Girl, made up of Rupert Boyd, an Australian classical guitarist, and Laura Metcalf, an American cellist, will perform tomorrow evening at 8. The duo will present a variety of material, including many of their own arrangements, ranging from the Baroque to the contemporary. Their debut album, to be released on July 28, will feature the work of composers from Bach to Piazzolla. Tickets range from $20 to $45, $18 to $43 for Guild Hall members. 

Pilobolus is renowned for its unique, diverse collaborations that mix creative disciplines and its ongoing exploration of new ways to use the human body as a graphic and expressive medium. Formed in 1971, the New York company has performed in more than 65 countries, won many awards, including a prime-time Emmy, and performed at the 79th Academy Awards and on “60 Minutes,” “Oprah,” and “The Today Show,” among others.

For its 8 p.m. performance on Saturday, Pilobolus will present four pieces, including “On the Nature of Things,” which explores the body’s ability to tell stories about desire, shame, and revenge. During this piece, three dancers balance on a two-foot-wide column. Tickets are $45 to $100, $43 to $95 for members.

Next Thursday at 6:30 p.m., the “Thinking Forward” lecture series, presented by the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center and Guild Hall, will feature Ms. Copeland speaking about her life, dance, and writing. Born in Missouri and raised in California, she began studying ballet at age 13, joined A.B.T.’s studio company in 2000, and became a member of the corps de ballet in 2001. In 2007, she became a soloist, and in 2015 she was the first African-American woman in the company’s history to be named principal dancer. Ms. Copeland’s lecture is free, but reservations are required.

Ms. Neuwirth will light up the stage Friday, July 21, at 8 p.m. with an evening of story songs. She is known for her roles in Broadway shows including “A Chorus Line,” “Chicago,” and “Sweet Charity” and on the television programs “Cheers” and “Frasier.” She will present songs of musicians and composers from Stephen Sondheim to Edith Piaf, embodying a range of emotions and style. Scott Cady is the music director and will accompany on the piano. Tickets cost $55 to $150, $53 to $145 for members, and can be purchased online at guildhall.org.

If the title “The 39 Steps” makes you think of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller from 1935, you may be in for a surprise when the Southampton Cultural Center hosts a very different adaptation of the story, which itself was loosely based on the 1915 novel “The Thirty-Nine Steps” by John Buchan.

Via Brooklyn will present Patrick Barlow’s play of the same title, which spoofs Hitchcock’s murder mystery with a cast of four playing more than 50 characters, along with fast changes, shadow puppets, fog machines, projections, questionable accents, and moustaches.

Directed by Craig J. George, the production stars Rafe Terrizzi, Hannah Tova Wolff, Ian Harkins, and Cori Hundt, all of whose fingers will presumably remain intact. The play opens Saturday at 7 p.m., and, for that night only, will be followed by the attempt of the cast and crew to solve a murder that took place during the presentation.

The play will run through July 30, with performances at 7 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and July 24, and a 2:30 matinee on July 30. Tickets are $28, $20 for students, and are available at viabrooklyn.org.

As part of its “Music on the Terrace” series, the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill will host Mamalee Rose and Friends, a popular East End band that has mixed blues, gospel, and lively vocals for more than 20 years. The outdoor performance will take place tomorrow at 6 p.m.

Table eating is reserved for Golden Pear cafe patrons, so the museum encourages guests to take chairs or blankets for the lawn. The cafe will be open for light fare, beverages, and specialty cocktails, and the museum’s galleries will be open to the public as well. The concert is free for members, children, and students, and otherwise costs $12.

The Bridgehampton Antiques and Modern Design Show will take place at the Bridgehampton Community House through Sunday. It opens today with a preview from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The event is a showcase for Drucker Antiques, a leading specialist in Georg Jensen hollowware, flatware, and jewelry. Janet Drucker will be available to sign copies of her 2001 book, “Georg Jensen: A Tradition of Splendid Silver.”

Also on view will be a collection of vintage Butler and Wilson rhinestone jewelry, along with folk art and textiles, fine art, Hermes and Louis Vuitton fashion accessories, prints and posters, garden pieces, and wicker, from dealers ranging from Glen Leroux Antiques to David Smernoff Fine Art.

The show will be open tomorrow and Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., and Sunday from 10 to 5. Admission is $5.