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Film and Jazz, Broadway and Opera at Southampton Arts Center

Film and Jazz, Broadway and Opera at Southampton Arts Center

Melissa Zapin will offer music from opera and Broadway at the Southampton Arts Center on Saturday.
Melissa Zapin will offer music from opera and Broadway at the Southampton Arts Center on Saturday.
By
Star Staff

“Bohème to Broadway,” an evening of music ranging from opera classics to Broadway and beyond, will take place at the Southampton Arts Center on Saturday at 7 p.m. Melissa Zapin, a vocalist, actress, and voiceover artist, will perform with Willy Falk, a Tony Award-nominated actor-singer, and Konstantin Soukhovetski, a conductor and pianist. Tickets are $50 and include a preconcert reception.

The center’s free weekly Jazz on the Steps series will feature Dan Later, tenor sax, and Claes Brondal, drums, on Sunday at noon. The concert series is presented by the Jam Session Inc., which was created by Mr. Brondal to showcase the diversity of jazz for both adults and children.

On Sunday afternoon at 5, Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Marine Program will hold a screening of the most recent episode of “On the Water and In the Field,” its news magazine show. Local oysters and wine will be on offer after the screening. Tickets are $12.

High-Speed Shakespeare Visits Southampton

High-Speed Shakespeare Visits Southampton

Ian J. Harkins, Shannon Harris, and Rafe Terrizzi undertook a brief contemplation of poor Yorick during a performance of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)” in Southampton.
Ian J. Harkins, Shannon Harris, and Rafe Terrizzi undertook a brief contemplation of poor Yorick during a performance of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)” in Southampton.
Presented by Purpled Pheasant Productions
By
Mark Segal

If you think eating 70 hot dogs in 10 minutes is difficult, imagine performing all 37 of William Shakespeare’s plays in 90 minutes. Ian Harkins, Shannon Harris, and Rafe Terrizzi will attempt the seemingly impossible feat not once but 10 times starting Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center.

“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)” — okay, there are a few shortcuts, and you can’t abridge a hot dog — is full of physical comedy, fast and furious entrances and exits, popular and local references, costume and character changes, all at a madcap pace. 

The play is presented by Purpled Pheasant Productions, a new theater company dedicated to bringing high-caliber professional productions to the East End in partnership with the cultural center. Two of the founding partners are East End residents, Mr. Harkins in Southampton, Mr. Terrizzi in East Hampton.

All three performers are Equity actors with extensive theatrical experience and a particular penchant for the Bard. Mr. Harkins has performed on stages in London and the United States with such luminaries as Patrick Stewart, Alan Rickman, Mark Rylance, and Emma Watson. Ms. Harris’s theater credits range from “The Winter’s Tale” and “Romeo and Juliet” to Ntozake Shange’s “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.” Mr. Terrizzi’s film work includes “Howl,” “A Good Marriage,” and “Back to the Front.”

Performances will take place Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 5 p.m. Tickets are $30 for adults, $28 for senior citizens, $22 for those 18 and under and students. A benefit party complete with minstrels, troubadours, wizards, jesters, farm animals, a silent auction, and an Elizabethan feast will follow Saturday’s performance at 9 at the Southampton Inn. The ticket price, $250, includes admission to any available performance.

An appropriate prelude to Saturday’s performance will take place at the center at 5 p.m. when “Summer Roses VI: Shakespeare’s Musical Legacy” will be performed by Junko Ohtsu, a violinist, Sarah Moulton Faux, a soprano, and Michael Fennelly, a pianist. The concert will include excerpts from Shakespeare’s writings performed by Mr. Harkins, Ms. Harris, and Mr. Terrizzi. Tickets are $40, free for children under 14. 

Films on the Jewish Experience

Films on the Jewish Experience

“My Italian Secret” tells the story of courageous Italians who rescued Jews, partisans, and refugees from Nazi-occupied Italy.
“My Italian Secret” tells the story of courageous Italians who rescued Jews, partisans, and refugees from Nazi-occupied Italy.
Presented by the Southampton Cultural Center in partnership with the Chabad Southampton Jewish Center
By
Mark Segal

The second annual Southampton Jewish Film Festival has brought together seven documentaries and one narrative feature that explore different aspects of the Jewish experience. Presented by the Southampton Cultural Center in partnership with the Chabad Southampton Jewish Center, the weekly screenings will begin Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. with a showing of “I Have Never Forgotten You,” a 2006 documentary about Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor, and his work with the American War Crimes Unit, which tracked down more than 1,000 Nazi war criminals.

The dramatic rescue of the sixth Lubavitch Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, from war-torn Poland in 1939 is the subject of “Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers,” a documentary by Larry Price that will be shown on July 19. Rabbi Eliezer Zaklikovsky, who specializes in Jewish educational programming, will speak after the screening.

Carole Basri, director of “The Last Jews of Baghdad: End of an Exile, Beginning of a Journey,” will attend the Aug. 9 showing of her film, which provides a historical and personal view of the persecution, torture, escape, and flight of over 160,000 Jews from Iraq between 1940 and 2003.

“Escape to the Rising Sun,” which will be shown Aug. 23, is another story of flight, in this case of Jews to Shanghai, the one place in the world that didn’t require an exit visa in 1939. “Forbidden Films (Nazi Propaganda),” a 2005 film by Felix Moeller, analyzes 40 Nazi-produced movies still banned in Germany, except in a scholarly context, because they are considered too offensive. It will be screened on Aug. 16.

Several of the films address less harrowing themes. “The Midnight Orchestra,” set for July 26, is a Moroccan narrative feature about a father and son that breaks down stereotypes about Jewish-Muslim relationships. “Raise the Roof” (Aug. 2) is a documentary about two artists and their 10-year reconstruction of the elaborate roof and painted ceiling of the Gwozdziec Synagogue in Poland. 

The festival will conclude on Aug. 30 with “My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes,” the little-known story of Gino Bartali, an Italian sports idol, and other Italians who carried out ingenious schemes to rescue Jews. More than 80 percent of Italian Jews survived the war.

All films will be shown at the Southampton Arts Center at 25 Job’s Lane and take place Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15, $7.50 for students, except for the opening and closing films, which are free. 

Focus on Performance at Parrish

Focus on Performance at Parrish

Jonah Bokaer, whose interdisciplinary practice combines dance, media art, history, and storytelling, will present two installations and one performance
By
Mark Segal

Once a year the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill invites one artist to use the museum as a playground whose building, collection, and grounds are fair game for projects that use them in imaginative and innovative ways. Since the “Platform” series launched in November 2012, “We have been wondering how the series would incorporate performance, dance, and other artistic disciplines,” said Andrea Grover, the museum’s curator of special projects. “Since Jonah Bokaer is very much a crossover artist working between media, he seemed like the perfect person to invite to do this.”

From Saturday through Oct. 16, Mr. Bokaer, whose interdisciplinary practice combines dance, media art, history, and storytelling, will present two installations and one performance that make use of the galleries, landscape, and architecture. All three works are inspired in large measure by “Neither,” an idiosyncratic opera with a musical score by Morton Feldman and a 16-line libretto by Samuel Becket. 

One component of the project is a two-channel video projection of a dance for the camera choreographed by Mr. Bokaer. One projection, on the east wall of the museum’s lobby, features four performers framed by the architecture and landscape of the building as seen through the south-facing window wall. The second video, projected on the opposite wall, shows the same view, but without performers.

The second element, titled, like the video, “Neither,” consists of 122 graph­ite drawings on Mylar of Feldman’s score for the opera. The drawings will be secured with monofilament to the ceiling beams that form the central spine of the building, one drawing to each beam and, in a sense, constitute a “visual score” for the silent video. 

According to Ms. Grover, who organized the exhibition, “The ‘Neither’ opera has influenced many, many people, probably because it’s so opaque. There’s no narrative to it; it really repeats the same sentiment over and over. Many people have interpreted it as being about in-betweenness or about nothing or about a transitional state. It’s one of those tabula rasa kinds of works.”

The performance, “The Disappearing Portraits,” will take place on the south meadow on July 22 at 6 p.m. The audience will sit on the south-facing concrete bench that runs the length of the building. The score for the performance was created by the Soundwalk Collective, an international musical trio based in Berlin and New York City known for its musical compositions, audio guides, art exhibits, and walking tours of cities.

“Jonah has been fascinated by human migration, probably because his father originally emigrated from Tunisia and spent many years moving around the world. This, coupled with the largest migration in human history that’s happening now, has influenced him. So the performance is about this notion of people without a place or home, which relates to ‘Neither’ because the latter is also about this in-betweenness or the transition between states.” 

Mr. Bokaer studied both dance and media arts and joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company when he was only 18 years old. While he has designed apps and done work that is more visual art than performance, his specialty, according to Ms. Grover, is working in museums and collaborating with other visual artists.

He has worked extensively with Rob­ert Wilson, and in November will be launching a project at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Daniel Arsham and an original score by Pharrell Wi­lliams. He has performed at more than 30 museums around the world.

The new exhibition will coincide with the museum’s Midsummer Party, which will begin on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. with cocktails and be followed at 7:30 by dinner on the terrace. The 10 p.m. after-party, with desserts, drinks, and dancing, will be open only to members of the Parrish Contemporaries Circle, a new membership category, and their guests. Tickets to the Midsummer Party start at $1,500. After-party tickets are $150.

The museum has also announced the appointment of Chris Siefert as its deputy director. Mr. Siefert brings to the Parrish more than 20 years of professional museum experience spanning operations and administration, capital projects, public art, landscape architecture, and teaching with an emphasis on organizational systems, community engagement, and cultural programs. He comes to the Parrish from the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, where he was deputy director.

A Feast of Music and Drama

A Feast of Music and Drama

Jarrod Spector and Kelli Barrett, newly married Broadway veterans, will perform the greatest songs from notable married couples
By
Mark Segal

If music is the food of love, a satisfying supper can be had at Guild Hall on Sunday evening at 8 when Jarrod Spector and Kelli Barrett, newly married Broadway veterans, will perform the greatest songs from notable married couples, among them Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Sonny and Cher, and Beyonce and Jay-Z.

Mr. Spector won a Tony nomination for his portrayal of Mr. Mann in “Beautiful: The Carol King Musical” and played Frankie Valli for 1,500 performances of “Jersey Boys.” Ms. Barrett originated the role of Lara in the Broadway production of “Dr. Zhivago” and has starred in more than 20 films and television shows.

Tickets for “This Is Dedicated: Music’s Greatest Marriages” range from $30 to $75, $28 to $70 for members.

An encore screening of “Hamlet” from London’s National Theatre Live will be shown at Guild Hall on Wednesday evening at 7. Benedict Cumberbatch, an Academy Award nominee, stars as the Prince of Denmark in the 2015 production that the Financial Times called “a fresh, dynamic staging with a vivid, supple performance at its heart.” Tickets are $18, $16 for members.

Musicians from the New York Philharmonic, America’s oldest symphony orchestra at 174 years and counting, will perform two different concerts at Guild Hall on Friday, June 15, and June 16. The musicians will be Michelle Kim and Quan Ge, violin; Rebecca Young and Robert Rinehart, viola; Eileen Moon, cello; Philip Myers, horn, and William Wolfram, a guest artist, on piano.

The Friday program will consist of Mozart’s String Quintet in C major, K. 515; Brahms’s Scherzo in C minor, from F.A.E. Sonata for Violin and Piano, Op. WoO2, and Brahms’s Trio in E-flat major for Horn, Violin, and Piano, Op. 40. The July 16 program will feature Mozart’s Horn Quintet in E-flat major, K. 407/386C; Dohnanyi’s Serenade for String Trio, Op. 10, and Dvorak’s Quintet in A major for Piano and Strings, Op. 81.

Tickets to each program are $30, $28 for members. Free student rush tickets will be available.

Paul Reiser Onstage

Paul Reiser Onstage

At Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor
By
Star Staff

Some people need no introduction, and Paul Reiser is one of them. The actor, comedian, and writer will bring his stand-up comedy to Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Monday evening at 8.

For those who have been living in another galaxy for the past 25 years, Mr. Reiser is perhaps best known as co-creator and star of “Mad About You,” the comedy that ran on NBC for seven seasons. However, his extensive film career has included roles in such recent, high-profile pictures as “Whiplash,” “Concussion,” and “The Darkness.” He also played opposite Michael Douglas and Matt Damon in Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace biopic for HBO, “Behind the Candelabra,” and made his theatrical debut in Woody Allen’s “Writer’s Block.”

Mr. Reiser’s national comedy tour highlights the humor in love, life, and relationships. Tickets to the Bay Street show range from $75 to $125 and are likely to sell out in advance.

Bay Street’s 25th Annual Summer Gala will light up Long Wharf on Saturday, starting at 5:30 p.m. with cocktails and continuing with an awards presentation and performances in the theater from 6 to 7:30 and more cocktails, dinner, and a silent auction from 7:30 on.

Special appearances will be made by Richard Kind, B.D. Wong, Jason Alexander, Alec Baldwin, Josh Grisetti, and Harris Yulin. Tickets are priced at $425 for young professionals, from $1,250 for everyone else.

Israeli Pianist

Israeli Pianist

At Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor
By
Star Staff

Tomer Gewirtzman, an award-winning Israeli pianist, will perform a classical recital at Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor tonight at 8. Only 26 years old, Mr. Gewirtzman has performed in London, Paris, Moscow, Belgium, and the United States, as well as regularly in Israel. Tickets are $20 at the door, and wine and refreshments will be served after the performance.

Blues in Sag Harbor

Blues in Sag Harbor

At the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum
By
Star Staff

Jake Lear, a blues guitarist and songwriter, will perform a free concert at the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum tomorrow evening at 7:30. Raised on the music of John Lee Hooker, Jimi Hendrix, and Howlin’ Wolf, he recently relocated to East Hampton from Memphis, where he recorded three albums with his drummer, Roy Cunningham, and bassist, Carlos Arias.

Jazz on the Steps

Jazz on the Steps

At the Southampton Arts Center
By
Star Staff

Jazz on the Steps, a weekly program at the Southampton Arts Center that brings live music outside onto Job’s Lane, will feature Nestor Milanes, a pianist, and Steve Shaughnessy, a bassist, on Sunday at noon. The series is presented by the Jam Session Inc., which presents eclectic concerts with musicians from the East End and beyond. The concert is free.

Musical Potpourri

Musical Potpourri

At the Montauk Library
By
Star Staff

This year’s Aviva Players concert will take place at the Montauk Library on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. The evening will feature Karen Jolicoeur and Hillary Schranze, sopranos, and Mimi Stern Wolfe on piano. The free program will include songs, duets, and solos for voice and piano composed by May Aufderheide, Erwin Schulhoff, Mira J. Spektor, Mozart, and Gilbert and Sullivan.