Arts

Robert Harms makes paintings you want to inhale, lie beside, wallow in. In a little cottage on Little Fresh Pond in Southampton, he bides the time, season by season, absorbing his surroundings through eyes that transmute the air and landscape into a distillation of time and place.

The sixth annual Montauk Music Festival, featuring artists old and new, homegrown and hailing from as far as Texas, begins tonight with an opening party at Gurney’s Inn. From tonight until the festival’s conclusion on Sunday, Montauk will rock to more than 300 performances by some 80 acts at over 30 venues.

“Hay Fever,” Noel Coward’s comedy of bad English manners, will conclude the 30th anniversary season of the Hampton Theatre Company with a run from next Thursday through June 7 at the Quogue Community Hall.

The Rising Stars Piano Series at the Southampton Cultural Center will present a concert by Fei-Fei Dong, a Chinese pianist who won the 2014 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition, on Saturday at 7 p.m.

The 2015 art season gets into full swing with some excellent shows opening in May. Don't miss Dan Rizzie at the Peter Marcelle Project in Southampton and join the crowd at the Silas Marder Gallery in Bridgehampton for the “Big Show.”

A screening of the National Theatre Live presentation of Arthur Miller’s play “A View From the Bridge” will take place at Guild Hall on Saturday at 7 p.m.

Over the years, the painterly products of Chuck Close’s photographs have transcended the art world to become part of popular culture, while the source material has been mostly held back from consideration.

After a monthlong shakedown cruise, the White Room Gallery in Bridgehampton will launch officially on Saturday with a 6 to 8 p.m. group exhibition featuring work by Eric Ernst, Jim Gingerich, and Sally Breen, with music by Mama Lee.

Guild Hall will present National Theatre Live’s recorded performance of “The Hard Problem” on Saturday at 7 p.m. The play is the latest by Tom Stoppard, the author of acclaimed plays and screenplays such as “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead ”and “Shakespeare in Love.”

The Perlman Music Program will present a recital by Philip Zuckerman, a violinist and an alumnus of the program, on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Clark Arts Center on Shelter Island.

The Dia Art Foundation will open “Dan Flavin: Icons” at the Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton today. The works, created from 1961 to 1964, are the artist’s earliest experiments with light.

The Montauk Library will present a free performance of “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” a play by Nora and Delia Ephron based on the book by Ilene Beckerman, on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

Guild Hall has extended its footprint, annexing a lot to its south to provide housing for performers and, potentially, artist residencies.

What was once a fixture of the Montauk cultural scene faltered recently after the death of its director in 2013. Ruth Widder ran Music for Montauk for two decades and produced more than 90 free concerts for the greater community.

Daria Rabotkina, a Russian-born pianist who won the 2007 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, will perform tomorrow at 6 p.m. with the Verona Quartet in the Salon Series at the Parrish Art Museum.

From Amagansett to Southampton the East End art world comes to life with solo openings. Guild Hall opens the season with its annual Artist Members Exhibition.

The Hampton Independent Theatre Festival (HITFest) is partnering with Non Disposable Productions (NDP), a new troupe of New York City actors, to present “Shakespeare on Wine,” a one-hour program of wine-related scenes from the Bard’s oeuvre, on May 16 at the Bridgehampton Community House.

The third annual Steinbeck Festival, held in honor of the celebrated author who lived in Sag Harbor from 1955 until his death in 1968, will take place Saturday and Sunday, with events at several venues in the village.

The John Drew Theater Lab will present a free, fully staged performance by Tandy Cronyn of Simon Bent’s play “The Tall Boy” on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. The play, which won best adaptation at the United Solo Theatre Festival last year, was adapted from a short story by Kay Boyle.

It has been almost a year since the publication of “Unstill Life: A Daughter’s Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction,” Gabrielle Selz’s book about her parents and the art world in which they held such a prominent place.

Art for Aid is the brainchild of Wendy Wachtel, who opened Walk Tall Gallery in East Hampton in 2007 while at the same time working in international high-end real estate.

The Parrish Art Museum’s Salon Series will continue tomorrow at 6 p.m. with a concert by Kimball Gallagher, an American pianist whose repertoire ranges from Baroque to modern.

Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will present its second New Works Festival with free readings of plays in development, beginning tomorrow at 7 p.m. with “A Delicate Ship” by Anna Ziegler.

Temple Adas Israel and Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will present “Tango, A Story With Jews,” a documentary about the events that brought Jews to Buenos Aires in the 19th century.

The Met: Live in HD will present Pietro Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci,” one of opera’s most enduring double bills, on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. at Guild Hall.

The East End art scene springs to life with several exciting group shows and a studio class with a master printmaker.

The Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival will present “Iris,” the last film by Albert Maysles, who died in March at the age of 88, on Sunday afternoon at 2:30 at Bay Street Theater.

Working with shaped panels of pressed wood and squares or rectangles of aluminum, Mr. King creates objects that straddle painting and sculpture, abstraction and representation, the industrial and the handmade.

In the wake of Jason Alexander’s departure from Bay Street Theater’s “Other People’s Money” to replace Larry David in his Broadway show “Fish in the Dark,” the theater has had to do some tweaking of its summer season.

“Emmett, Down in My Heart,” a play by Clare Coss, who lives in Springs, will be performed at the Castillo Theatre in Manhattan from tomorrow through May 17.

The play interweaves text, music, and immersive staging to tell the story of the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta. Performances will take place Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are available at castillo.org.