Arts

Primo Levi Tribute

    The Montauk Library will offer a free presentation of “But When We Started Singing . . .” on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

    Robert Spiotto, the artistic director of community arts programs at Hofstra University, will be the sole performer in this tribute to Primo Levi, an Italian-Jewish author who died in 1987. Levi was a novelist, essayist, and poet who was best known for his recountings of his imprisonment at Auschwitz during World War II. The event will commemorate the 25th anniversary of his death and International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

   On Saturday, the East Hampton Historical Society will present a daylong illustrated seminar on famous and infamous antiques fakes and forgeries with Charles F. Hummel.

   Mr. Hummel, an expert on antiques and American decorative arts, is the author of “With Hammer in Hand: The Dominy Craftsmen of East Hampton.” He has documented the Dominy family as well as the history of East Hampton and is the retired senior director of the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, one of the most important collections of American decorative arts.

   Initially, it might be difficult to reconcile Dan Flavin’s Expressionist tendencies with his use of the quite literally linear form of long, colored fluorescent lightbulbs to express himself for most of his creative life. Yet a new exhibition of his drawings at the Morgan Library demonstrates that his stylistic influences were varied and well outside of the Minimalist milieu with which he is primarily associated.

Therapy in Numbers

    Beginning Saturday, Harper’s Books in East Hampton will present “Group Therapy,” an exhibition of paintings, photographs, and mixed-media works. The artists, who all work on eastern Long Island, include Linda K. Alpern, Mary Ellen Bartley, Philippe Cheng, Peter Dayton, David Diskin, Jameson Ellis, Sunny Khalsa, Laurie Lambrecht, Liliya Lifanova, Steve Miller, Peter Sabbeth, Bastienne Schmidt, Matt Satz, Michael Solomon, Kevin Teare, Ross Watts, and Nick Weber.

   Fred Melamed was 22 in 1978, the first time he played the title role in Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” which he is now reprising in an innovative and daring production directed by Stephen Hamilton at the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall for a limited run next month.

    Mr. Melamed had graduated from Hampshire College the previous summer, where, as a freshman, he’d joined the music department.

Concert for Concerts

    Three of the East End’s most popular local bands will perform at Gurney’s Inn on Sunday from 3 to 7 p.m. in the fourth annual Concert for the Concerts to benefit the Montauk Chamber of Commerce’s free Monday night Concerts on the Green series. 

    Gene Casey and the Lone Sharks, Caroline Doctorow and the Steamrollers, and Nancy Atlas with Johnny Blood will entertain for the cause, with a $10 admission fee. A discounted menu will be available for hungry listeners.

   The story of the building known as the E. and C. Bennett Blacksmith Shop at the South­ampton Historical Museum began and ended with a tree.

    The shop building, complete with a functioning forge, was originally built from local oaks in about 1790, moved to the museum from Hampton Road in the 1970s, and was restored in the 1990s. There it stood until Aug. 28

   Sometimes a play needs a grand vision. Sometimes it needs a minimal touch. But sometimes, it needs both. Josh Perl and Peter-Tolin Baker have brought both to bear on a late Tennessee Williams play “In the Bar of a Toyko Hotel,” which opens next Thursday in Bridgehampton.

   The Parrish Art Museum will celebrate Anne Porter’s life and her contributions to the arts and letters of the East End on Saturday at 3 p.m.

   Ms. Porter, a poet who was a National Book Award finalist, was married to Fairfield Porter, an artist with whom she raised a family on South Main Street in Southampton. She died in October, just shy of her 100th birthday.

Groovy in Springs

    Music and art will merge at Ashawagh Hall this weekend with the second annual presentation of “Art Groove,” an exhibition of work by 14 artists paired with music with a dance beat, including Motown, disco, and hip-hop styles.

   On a temperate spring day last week, works of art from Audrey Flack’s light and airy studio in East Hampton were being gently borne to the Gary Snyder Gallery in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, where they will be on view from next Thursday through May 19. They range from tabletop size to flat-out enormous, and they all showcase Ms. Flack’s passion for the “sacred feminine” — the women heroes of mythology and religious iconography.

Pollock-Krasner Benefit

    Stony Brook University will honor Ed Harris, an actor, writer, and director, at its 2012 Stars of Stony Brook Gala on April 25 at Chelsea Piers in New York City. The event will also honor the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which has issued a $1 million challenge grant to help the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs establish an endowment during this centennial anniversary year of Pollock’s birth.

    Farmer, winemaker, musician, “art worker,” editor, chef, and even artist, were some of the vocations represented last week at the Parrish Art Museum’s second “Lighting Round” presentation.

    Participants were asked to show 20 slides and speak for six minutes on who they are and what makes them tick.

New at the Monkey

    The Crazy Monkey Gallery in Amagansett will feature work by three members of its artists cooperative — Barbara Bilotta, Lance Corey, and Wilhelmina Howe — beginning tomorrow.

    Ms. Bilotta attended the fine arts program at the State University at Stony Brook. An “abstract impressionist,” she said she uses “the flow of colors and their relationship to trigger the imagination.”

From Europa to Heidi

    On Sunday at 2 p.m., Guild Hall will screen in HD the Berliner Philharmoniker’s “Europa Konzert” from Moscow in its North American premiere. The concert will feature Vadim Repin, a violinist, with Sir Simon Rattle conducting. The program will include Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, Bruch’s Concerto for Violin No. 1 (Op. 26), and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major (Op. 92). Tickets cost $20, $18 for members. Students under 21 are free with identification.

   Purists may sniff at giving up an entire museum show to a single private collector and — in the Parrish Art Museum’s case — putting art on the wall that is from an entirely different region of the country. Yet there is an argument to be made for the “EST-3: Southern California in New York-Los Angeles Art from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection” exhibition, and the museum and its curator have made it well.

New Work at Vered

    “Ray Caesar: Selected Works” will open at the Vered Gallery in East Hampton tomorrow. The exhibition features the artist’s work in Maya, a three-dimensional modeling software used for digital animation effects in film and games.

St. Luke’s Series Ends

    The Music at St. Luke’s series will conclude on Saturday with a solo recital by Daria Rabotkina, a pianist, at 4 p.m. in Hoie Hall at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton.

    The program will be: Robert Schumann’s Humoreske, op. 290, Franz Schubert’s Grand Rondeau for four hands in A Major, D. 951 (featuring William McNally), and Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet — Op. 75.

    Tickets are $20 and free for students 18 and younger.

New Organist

New Amagansett Gallery

    “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” the 18th-century French novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos about aristocratic power games and the lives they affect, has been adapted into every form imaginable. It can boast of at least seven versions on film, including two set in Korea, an opera, a radio series, and even a ballet. But it is the Christopher Hampton stage adaptation that has garnered the most attention in the Western world, first as a successful Broadway production and then as a successful Hollywood film in the 1980s.

Pina and Juliet

    The Parrish Art Museum’s schedule of programs for next week starts on Sunday with a screening of “Pina,” a documentary by Wim Wenders about the choreographer Pina Bausch, and continues with a ballet performance of “Romeo and Juliet.”

   We all should write a thank you note to Robert Wilson for locating his grand experiment in arts sponsorship on the South Fork.

Body on View at Ashawagh

    “Body of Work VII” will revisit the figurative work of several members of this group of artists, including Rosalind Brenner, Linda Capello, Michael Cardacino, Cynthia Loewen, Anthony Lombardo, Bob Markell, Frank Sofo, and Margaret Weissbach. In addition, four other artists have been invited to exhibit with the group for the first time — Janet Culbertson, Tina Folks, Douglas Reina, and Frederick Paxton Werner.

   Carol Muske-Dukes will be among those receiving Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Awards from the Poets & Writers organization at a benefit dinner on March 29 in Manhattan. The award recognizes “authors who have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community,” it says on Poets & Writers’ Web site.

With the buzz factor on the new Cindy Sherman retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art already at full decibels, aptly descriptive words such as malleable, prescient, and chameleon-like are already sounding like clichés.

    Yet, it is not just her seemingly shape-shifting originality that is so impressive in this epic collection of photographs from three decades of art making, but the evolving mastery of her medium in coaxing out the effects that allow these transformations to occur.

CLICK TO SEE MORE IMAGES

Dwyer Does Cider

    Coming up next in the East Hampton Historical Society’s concert series, the Cider House Sessions, is Doug Dwyer, who will perform at the Clinton Academy on Saturday at 7 p.m. Mr. Dwyer made his musical debut in Southampton in 1964 and his repertory is wide ranging, covering country, classic rock, rhythm and blues, and jazz. Performing with him will be Mike Appel, who was Bruce Springsteen’s original manager and producer (e.g., on “Born to Run”). Mr. Dwyer will sing Mr. Appel’s new song “Pink Cotton Candy.”

    The Choral Society of the Hamptons will explore three centuries of music in its spring concert on March 18 at 5 p.m. at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church. Jesse Mark Peckham will conduct and three soprano soloists will participate.

    The 60-member Choral Society has chosen music by Mozart, Fauré, and Rutter, whose sacred music is marked by exquisite melody. Members of the South Fork Chamber Ensemble will accompany the chorus on harp, flute, oboe, glockenspiel, cello, and timpani. Thomas Bohlert, the music director of the church, will play the organ.

   The Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center’s lineup for the spring includes a new Breakout Artist series that showcases young singer-songwriters and musicians, with tickets in the $20 range. This is in addition to the world-renowned artists of the Main Stage shows.

    Diego Garcia is up first, with a performance tomorrow at 8 p.m. that includes his new song “You Were Never There,” which is getting play on WEHM, a partner in the series. Mr. Garcia will display his Latin roots with a jazz and blues flavor.