Skip to main content

Arts

Rory Kennedy’s Latest

“Last Days in Vietnam,” the third film in the Hamptons International Film Festival’s SummerDocs series, will be screened on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at Guild Hall.

This final film from Rory Kennedy, whose intimate biography of her mother in the film “Ethel” was screened in the SummerDocs series two years ago.

Alec Baldwin will host the event and lead a discussion with Ms. Kennedy and Stuart Herrington, one of the subjects of the film.

Aug 12, 2014
The Art Scene: 08.14.14

New at Halsey Mckay

Halsey Mckay Gallery in East Hampton is presenting two concurrent exhibitions through Aug. 24. “Waterworks” features Karl Haendel and Adam Helms, both of whom transform pre-existing images from pop culture, news media, the Internet, and other sources, in this case, water-related subjects.

Aug 12, 2014
Well-Tuned, Adventurous

The string quartet Brooklyn Rider performed back-to-back hour-long concerts on Saturday, just about halfway through this summer’s Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival. One was, as usual, at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, at 6 p.m., and, in a new partnership for the festival, the other was at 9 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill.

Aug 12, 2014
‘Songs and Stories’

“Songs and Stories,” a cross-genre performance series, will be launched by the Southampton Cultural Center on Saturday from 3 to 6 p.m. The ongoing initiative will pair writers, poets, musicians, dancers, visual artists, and other creative individuals in free performances presented simultaneously at different venues in Southampton.

Inspired by the art exhibition “Tactility,” Iktus Percussion will perform two pieces at the cultural center. Sebastian Noelle Jazz will explore chance and the unconscious at Arthur T. Kalaher Fine Art.

Aug 12, 2014
‘ToasT’ Up at Guild Hall

“ToasT,” a new play by the acclaimed spoken-word artist and Tony Award-winning writer Lemon Andersen and directed by Elise Thoron, will be given a staged reading at Guild Hall tonight at 8. A Public Theater commission first presented at the Public’s Under the Radar festival, “ToasT” weaves characters from black oral narratives into a drama about a group of inmates at Attica during the 1971 riots at the prison.

Aug 12, 2014
Andrea Solari’s “Head of St. John the Baptist” has been co-opted by Robert Wilson for his series of video portraits of Lady Gaga. A Gaga Transformation

Lady Gaga is a musical artist with a strong visual sense who transforms herself regularly from public appearance to public appearance, record to record, video to video. Robert Wilson works with performers, composers, and writers to create highly visual, mostly musical productions.

While much was made of Gaga’s collaboration with Jeff Koons on the art work for her “Art Pop” album and the related art pieces, launch parties, and joint appearances, a more satisfying union has occurred with Mr. Wilson, the results of which are on view now at the Watermill Center.

Aug 11, 2014
Comedy, Not Reggae

Bob Marley, winner of this year’s XM/Sirius Super Bowl of Comedy, will appear at Bay Street Theater Monday at 8 p.m. as part of its Comedy Club series.

Aug 5, 2014
Film, Music at Parrish

The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill will present the East Coast theatrical premiere of “Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro Sr.” tomorrow at 6 p.m. Terrie Sultan, director of the museum, will lead a Q & A with Geeta Gandbhir, the film’s director, after the screening. Tickets are $10, free for members, children, and students.

Aug 5, 2014
Guild Hall a la Carte

Anthony Bourdain, a chef and writer whose explorations of food and culture have formed the basis of several successful television series, will be at Guild Hall Sunday at 11 a.m. for a conversation with Florence Fabricant, a cookbook author and food columnist for The New York Times. A book signing will follow.

Aug 5, 2014
Robert Motherwell’s early paintings sought to reconcile abstraction with Surrealism. Above, “In Beige With Sand” (1945), Below, “Black Figuration on Blue” (1950). Motherwell’s Early Work

“Robert Motherwell: The East Hampton Years, 1944-1952” will open Saturday at Guild Hall and remain on view through Oct. 13. The exhibition will include 22 works from important private and public collections that illuminate a portion of Motherwell’s work that is not well known or often exhibited.

Aug 5, 2014
Stanford White Lecture

The Orchard, a Southampton estate designed by Stanford White, will be the subject of the second Samuel L. Parrish lecture, to be delivered by Gary Lawrance, an architect and co-author of “Houses of the Hamptons: 1880-1930,” next Thursday at 5 p.m. in the music room at Whitefield, 155 Hill Street.

Mr. Lawrance will discuss the evolution of the Orchard from an early Greek-revival farmhouse to the 16-acre estate built in 1895 for James L. Breese, a financier. Considered one of White’s finest summer homes, it is now the Whitefield Condominiums.

Aug 5, 2014
As J.T., Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone, front and center, belts it out with a chorus of street people, at least in the imagination of the man whose life is a musical. ‘My Life Is a Musical’

Take whatever musical comedy you recall and be ready to suspend disbelief when you go, as you should, to see “My Life Is a Musical,” which had its world premiere at the Bay Street Theater on Saturday night.

Adam Overett, who wrote the music, lyrics, and book, knows what’s been on stage and in film in the last few decades, and he draws upon that familiarity in a two-act tour de force, which is both satiric and sentimental with a bit of pop psychology, romance, and Marx Brothers mayhem. They’re ingredients for success.

Aug 5, 2014
A member of the audience at “Voyeur” caught a glimpse of Susan Stout as a mourning mother in Kate Mueth’s production at the Parsons Blacksmith Shop in Springs. ‘Voyeur’ in Springs

Two little girls, seemingly about 6 and adorable in sheer white dresses and black slippers, lean against two trees on the lawn of the old Parsons Blacksmith Shop near Ashawagh Hall in Springs. An audience, limited to eight people, stands nearby. The girls start to play tag, join in a circle dance, and collapse onto a blanket, gazing at the sky, until one runs away, her friend chasing and calling after her.

Aug 5, 2014
“Untitled (Spring Breakers)” by Enoc Perez will be one of several photographic works embellished with cutouts in a show opening at Harper’s Books on Saturday. The Art Scene: 08.07.14

“Summer Job” at Harper’s

“Summer Job,” an exhibition of recent work by Enoc Perez, will open Saturday at Harper’s Books in East Hampton and remain on view through Oct. 14.

The series, which includes collages, two sculptures, and a selection of repurposed three-dimensional objects, juxtaposes products of high and low culture and forms of high and low artistic media. Using found images, Mr. Perez investigates the changing nature of representation in the age of social media.

Aug 4, 2014
David Sedaris A Guild Hall Trifecta

Humor, music, and fashion are on Guild Hall’s agenda this weekend. David Sedaris, an NPR humorist and best-selling author, will bring his trenchant wit and incisive social observations to the John Drew Theater Sunday evening at 8.

Jul 29, 2014
The colors and shadows of Arlene Slavin’s sculptures at Guild Hall change throughout the day. Here, the artist and her work are bathed in early-morning sunlight. Arlene Slavin: Color, Light, and Shadows

Arlene Slavin’s “Intersections” series, on view at Guild Hall through Oct. 13, consists of outdoor sculptures made up of interwoven, translucent, colored vinyl strips, and paintings whose bands of color make similar use of the grid and the diagonal. These new works, most of which were produced over the past two years, refer consciously to paintings Ms. Slavin was making during the early 1970s.

Jul 29, 2014
Carlos Mencia Onstage

Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will present Carlos Mencia on Monday at 8 p.m. as part of its Comedy Club series. A performance at an open mike night at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles launched Mr. Mencia on the path to a successful stand-up career, a popular series called “Mind of Mencia” on Comedy Central, comedy specials on HBO and Comedy Central, and film and television appearances.

Jul 29, 2014
Peter-Tolin Baker's set design for "The Tempest" uses the rear barn at Mulford Farm as its focus. HITFest's Production of 'The Tempest’ to Open at Mulford Farm

Last Thursday night, a storm brewed in Bridgehampton and threatened to spread east across the towns into the peaceful Village of East Hampton. This being late July, everything about the previous sentence is spurious. The weather was calm and East Hampton, peaceful? In July?

Still, there is no denying that “The Tempest,” that old play by William Shakespeare, will take over East Hampton, specifically Mulford Farm, from Wednesday to Aug. 24.

Jul 29, 2014
“Footnotes,” a photograph by Caren Sturmer, will be on view in the Springs Invitational exhibit, which opens tomorrow at Ashawagh Hall. Invitational Highlights East End Art

The 47th annual Artists of the Springs Invitational Exhibit will open at Ashawagh Hall tomorrow and remain on view through Aug. 17. An opening reception will be held tomorrow from 5 to 8 p.m., and the exhibition’s curator, Sue Ferguson Gussow, will lead a tour of the show on Aug. 16 from 4 to 5 p.m.

Jul 29, 2014
Jazz in the Movies

“Jazz Goes to the Movies,” a free program of Hollywood film music performed by four East End jazz artists, will be presented Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Montauk Library.

Vanessa Trouble is a jazz vocalist who performs regularly in Manhattan and on the East End, including, last Saturday, at the Parrish Art Museum’s members’ reception in Water Mill.

Bob Stern, a full-time Montauk resident, has been playing the violin for 50 years, in styles ranging from Baroque to country to jazz.

Jul 29, 2014
Last of the SummerDocs

The Hamptons International Film Festival will present two more films before the end of the summer, Rory Kennedy’s “The Last Days in Vietnam” and “The Overnighters” from Jesse Moss.

Jul 29, 2014
Lectures at Watermill

The Watermill Center is presenting the Scaler Summer Lecture Series, which features notable speakers from the arts, humanities, and science, through Aug. 14.

The next program, “Music and Memory,” will take place Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Daniel J. Levitin, a neuroscientist and writer, will discuss the art and science of writing music with Daniel Knox, a composer and songwriter.

Jul 29, 2014
Philippe Petit has his feet firmly on the ground in Springs. Man on a Wire, 40 Years On

Philippe Petit, the French high-wire artist who captured the world’s imagination in 1973 with his walk between the two 110-story towers of the World Trade Center, will repeat his elevated stroll at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton at 6 p.m. next Thursday, the 40th anniversary of his historic feat.

Titled “Look Up,” his performance will use the same wire, tensioning device, and balancing pole and will cover the same distance, but at a height of 20 feet instead of almost 1,400.

Jul 29, 2014
The Art Scene: 07.31.14

Two at Drawing Room

Concurrent shows of works on paper by Sue Heatley and sculpture by Adrian Nivola will be on view at the Drawing Room in East Hampton from tomorrow through Aug. 31.

Ms. Heatley, who lives in East Hampton, was influenced by the intense color and visual stimuli she encountered while in India in 2012. Her new work expands on her longstanding interest in patterns and textures with a vibrant palette, sweeping lines, looping archways, and ornamental fields activating the picture plane.

Jul 29, 2014
This abstract landscape, to be offered by Hollis Taggart Gallery at Art Southampton, is by Hans Hofmann, one of the 660 artists with work on view at the fair this weekend at the Elks Lodge grounds. Art Southampton Opens Today

If there were any remaining questions as to whether the South Fork could support three art fairs, their continued return over the past few years should quell them.

This week’s returnee is Art South­ampton, an offshoot of Nick Korniloff’s Art Miami empire, which includes that main fair, held each December during Art Basel Miami Beach week, and a variety of others he hosts, either in Miami or, now, in Silicon Valley.

Jul 22, 2014
Kate Wetherhead and Jim Stanek in “Clever Little Lies,” a play at Guild Hall that might be destined for Broadway. Bravo for ‘Clever Little Lies’

“Clever Little Lies,” the new play by Joe DiPietro, is described as a “new comedy” on the cover of the playbill, which is accurate to an extent. But this play has a dramatic spine that takes the audience on an unexpected journey, one that had the house silent, on the edge of their seats, at the end on opening night. That is, until the final blackout, and the bravos rang out.

Mr. DiPietro titillates us into his story, giving the flash of a frothy sex comedy, but this is anything but.

Jul 22, 2014
Busch at Bay Street

Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will present “A Divine Evening With Charles Busch,” who will be accompanied by Tom Judson, on Saturday at 8 p.m. Mr. Busch, an actor, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director, and drag legend, is the author and star of such plays at “The Divine Sister,” “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom,” and “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife,” which ran on Broadway for almost two years and received a Tony Award nomination for best play.

Jul 22, 2014
A performance during last year’s Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church Chamber Festival to Star Finest and ‘Hippest’

Take some of the world’s finest musicians, both veterans and rising talents, pair them with the rock-solid classics and some cutting-edge contemporary works, and wrap it all in an atmosphere of relaxed elegance and charm. That seems to be the successful formula for the 31-year-old Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, which runs from Wednesday to Aug. 24.

The festival began in 1984 with just two concerts and five artists. It has grown to 12 concerts over a three-and-a-half-week period, and it is said to be the longest-running classical music festival on Long Island.

Jul 22, 2014
Irish Music in Montauk

The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-Os will perform Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Montauk Library as part of its summer music series. Band members, professional musicians from Brooklyn, perform a full range of Irish music, from traditional to contemporary, as well as American folk music, bluegrass, and country.

Performers include Jordan Shapiro, guitar, accordion, and vocals, Sarah Alden, fiddle and vocals, and Tim Kiah, bass and vocals. The library’s concerts are free and open to the public.

 

Jul 22, 2014
Jazz at John Drew

Peter and Will Anderson, saxophonists who began touring at the age of 15, will perform at Guild Hall Monday at 7:30 p.m. The twin brothers, who will be accompanied on guitar by Alex Wintz, will play hits from the American Songbook, New Orleans jazz, and classical adaptations.

The Andersons have played with Wynton Marsalis, Jimmy Heath, the Village Vanguard Orchestra, and Wycliffe Gordon, and have headlined at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., the New Orleans Jazz Fest, and Iowa’s Bix Beiderbecke Festival, among many others.

Jul 22, 2014