Arts

Scratching the Surface

    The Southampton Cultural Center is showing “Shaping the Surface” through May 20.

     Arlene Bujese organized the show, which features work with tactile or more three-dimensional surfaces. The artists include Bob Bachler, Jim Gemake, Margaret Kerr, Pope Noell, and Charles Waller, who employ such techniques as assemblage, collage, textural application, and modeling of forms using fired clay, found objects, clay bricks, thick paint, and paper/canvas collage.

    A reception will be held tomorrow from 5 to 7 p.m.

   Four Bay Street Theatre supporters will be honored Saturday at a benefit dinner at East Hampton Point restaurant that will feature a performance by Joy Behar. David Bray, Ana R. Daniel, Michael Grim, and James Osburn will be thanked — and roasted — during the 8 p.m. event. Tickets cost $175, or $300 for a couple.

   The Southampton Cultural Center’s Rising Stars piano series will present Di Wu, a prizewinner in the 2009 Van Cliburn competition, on Saturday at 7 p.m. She will perform works by Bach, Chopin, Scriabin, and Ravel.

    Twenty years ago, Jaqui Leader, artistic director of the East End Special Players, hesitated before calling Helen Rudman to apply for her current job. She was an actor, not a trained therapist.

    “I thought, I don’t have a degree working with people with learning disabilities,” she said Friday.

    Then she came in and met the group.

    “I realized I didn’t need a degree in psychology. Twenty years ago, and I’ve been doing it every Saturday since. We are getting old together,” she said, laughing.

    On Saturday, LongHouse Reserve will open its grounds for the season with a riot of daffodils and some early cherry blossoms, among the other garden’s delights — some organic and some more structural.

    Marco Albonetti, a saxophonist, and Annalisa Mannarini, a pianist, will perform a duo concert titled “Postcards From Dreamland” on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Montauk Library.

   Behind a black curtain, a shaft of light fell from a vent in the eaves of the South Fork Natural History Museum barn, dimly illuminating video equipment and stacks of twigs and branches. To eyes grasping for a way to make sense of the space, it was a welcome sight. To Christine Sciulli, however, it was a challenge.

    “Alice Aycock Drawings: Some Stories Are Worth Repeating,” will open this week at not one, but two venues — the Parrish Art Museum and the Grey Art Gallery at New York University.

    The show, presented in partnership with the two venues and organized by Jonathan Fineberg, an adjunct curator for the Parrish, will follow the artist’s creative process from 1971 to the present through the vital and early stages of her ideas and their development.

    Shattered Glass is an appropriate name for the truly exceptional string ensemble that performed at Saturday night’s Music for Montauk program. An appropriate name because as the musicians made their final bows many in the audience felt as though something precious had been broken.

    Following a sold-out run at Manhattan Theater Company’s Studio at Stage II, “Murder Ballad,” featuring music and lyrics by Juliana Nash, an indie rock singer-songwriter who lives in Amagansett, will transfer to the Union Square Theater for a nine-week engagement. The musical will feature three of the cast members from its M.T.C. run, John Ellison Conlee, Rebecca Naomi Jones, and Will Swenson. Caissie Levy will join them in the role of Sara. The musical has received five Lucille Lortel nominations, including best musical.

Art Gets Its Groove Back

    This weekend at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, art and music will blend to form a show driven by a dance beat. “Art Groove,” in its third year, will present 14 contemporary artists with Motown, disco, and hip-hop music.

    Dictaphone Group, which creates live art performances based on findings and stories produced through research on space and oral history, will present “Nothing to Declare,” a lecture performance that explores borders within Lebanon, those between Lebanon and its neighbors, and across the Arab world, tomorrow from 8 to 9:30 p.m. at the Watermill Center.

    The Choral Society of the Hamptons will hold auditions for its next concert, which will feature Handel’s “Israel in Egypt” and Bach’s Cantata No. 79. Those wishing to audition are invited to sit in for the first rehearsal on Monday at 7:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian Church in Bridgehampton. Auditions will take place on April 29 with Mark Mangini, the society’s music director, and most rehearsals will be on Mondays from 7:30 to 10 p.m. at the church. Those auditioning should be prepared to sing a short song, for which accompaniment will be provided.

  Neoteric Fine Art continues its series of free-ranging talks featuring individuals from the South Fork who are doing something, creative, meaningful, or different in their careers or hobbies. 

   Those speaking next Thursday at the Amagansett Gallery will include John Randolph, an artist and academic; Amanda Merrow and Katie Baldwin from Amber Waves Farms; Tyler Armstrong an environmentalist and educator; Scott Lewis who will presenting new environmental technology and off-the-grid systems, and Daniel Cabrera, an artist who will discuss the Quechua language of the Andes.

    The Sara Nightingale Gallery in Water Mill will host a series of musical “blind dates” beginning next Thursday with Dalton Portella and Ryan Messina from 6 to 8 p.m.

    Mr. Portella is a Montauk artist and guitarist and Mr. Messina, who is from Dix Hills and is a teacher, plays the trumpet. They have never performed together or even met previously.

On February 17th of that year

(1945, it was a Saturday)

I was wearing my birthday watch and I

ran like hell between the raindrops

unaware that even a secret wish is in a way

a contract. That afternoon

I was sporting a

huge red cap which seen from afar

gave me the appearance

of a ladybug riding an ant

to an all-cartoon matinee.

Upstairs over the theatre was

a beauty parlor, Madeleine’s, where

ladies sat under the driers like popes

perusing Cosmopolitan and McCall’s, my mom

Rolph Scarlett’s Geometrics

    Beginning next Thursday, Law­rence Fine Art in East Hampton will present a retrospective of the work of the American modernist painter Rolph Scarlett through May.

    Scarlett was a geometric abstractionist who shared affinities with Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Joseph Stella. His varied stylistic career explored Cubism, Biomorphism, Abstract Expressionism, and Surrealism. According to the gallery, the artist worked with Jackson Pollock and also produced drip paintings.

Freilicher at Tibor de Nagy

    Guild Hall, in partnership with the Naked Stage, will present the Naked Stage Radio Hour, a staged reading, on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Joshua Perl will be the lead artist at this free performance.

    Bay Street Theatre has announced its second annual Honors Benefit, set for April 27 at East Hampton Point. This year the honorees include David Bray, Ana R. Daniel, Michael Grim, and James Osburn. All of the honorees support Bay Street, as well as many other local businesses and nonprofits.

   The spring program presented Sunday by the Choral Society of the Hamptons at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church was an engaging and enjoyable study in intimacy and nuance. What at first appeared as a strange collection of repertoire proved very effective in reminding the listener of how beautiful even the simplest parts of life can be under the proper lens.

    From almost the moment that Gina Abatemarco conceived the idea six years ago for a film about a tiny island in Alaska that appears destined to be one of North America’s first victims of climate change, she has been raising money to bring that project to fruition.

    Now, with some 500 hours of original footage, plus archival stills and home videos, she is in post-production on a feature-length documentary, “Kivalina People.”

    Maria D’Amato, a soprano and former lead singer with St. Luke’s Choir, will make a return engagement to East Hampton when she pairs with her fiancé, Dimitrie Lazich, a baritone, for a concert at the church’s Hoie Hall on Saturday at 4 p.m.

    The couple will sing duets of Italian arias, familiar American songs, Broadway tunes, and a special set selected from the works of Sheldon Harnick, an East End resident and Pulitzer Prize-winning lyricist. Bill McNally, the artistic director of the Music at St. Luke’s series, will accompany the singers on piano.

    Shattered Glass, a conductor-less string ensemble dedicated to reimagining the concert experience, will perform as part of the Music for Montauk series on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Montauk School. The performers, who met while attending the Manhattan School of Music, are a collection of talent from around the world, with members representing Russia, Venezuela, Korea, China, Taiwan, and cities across the United States.

   James Katsipis of Montauk had the idea to join Kickstarter, an online site that raises money for individual creative projects, on a whim and a Hail Mary, he said. He had no idea it would go off the way it did. The photographer wanted to raise enough money to avoid exhibiting his work within traditional borders and frames.

    The Southampton Cultural Center will present two concerts this weekend.  Tomorrow at 7 p.m., “An Evening of Latin Flair” will showcase Stony Brook University doctoral candidates. Jay Sorce on guitar, Andrea Lodge on piano, Elizabeth York on violin, Josh Schwalbach on bass, and Scott Litroff on saxophone will perform works by Piazzolla, Milhaud, and Rodrigo.

    On Saturday, the Rising Stars piano series returns at 7 p.m. with Michelle and Kimberly Cann, a Caribbean-American two-piano duo who will play works by Lutoslawski, Ravel, Dolores White, and Rachmaninoff.

    Mick Hargreaves and Pete Mancini will embark on a tour of mid-Atlantic states on Wednesday. The musicians will perform material from their respective catalogs in an acoustic duet format. The tour, lasting through April 27, will take the duo to venues in New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, as well as across Long Island.

   Spring is literally springing through the air for the Springs Community Theater, as its actors soar above the stage during rehearsal at Guild Hall for a new production of the ever-popular 1954 musical version of the J.M. Barrie classic, “Peter Pan.”

    “It was a dream of hers. She always wanted to do it,” Barbara Mattson, the producer, said of her long-time friend, and co-driving force behind the company, Jayne Freedman.

  Barbara Hellering will give an illustrated talk on “Jane Austen: Her Writing, Her World” at the Montauk Library on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. Ms. Hellering will discuss the author’s life and work, breaking down the locations and historical events in her writing to place her characters more fully in their world.

    Ms. Hellering, a resident of Riverhead who is a member of the Jane Austen Society of America, believes Austen’s popularity can be attributed to the enduring nature of her subjects, from love and marriage to economic well-being.

    From 6 to 9 tonight there will be no-charge swing dancing to the Max Feldschuh Quintet, as well as free lessons in the basics, at a bandstand night at 230 Down, the bottom level of 230 Elm Street in Southampton.

    A cash bar and a $10 buffet will also be offered, along with a raffle to benefit a June production by Our Fabulous Variety Show. A contest will be held to choose a beneficiary for the group’s upcoming performance at Guild Hall, both on their Facebook page and via a “penny war” at the event, votes to be cast with spare change.

Putting It on Paper

    Arlene Bujese has returned to the Southampton Cultural Center to present “Paperwork” through April 22. A reception will take place on Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m.

    The exhibition, for which Ms. Bujese served as curator, will include collage, drawing, painting, and photography. The artists include Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Margery Harnick, Anne Sag­er, Roseann Schwab, Walter Schwab, Gail Miro, Mary Stubelek, Greg­ory Thorpe, E.E. Tucker, and Hans Van de Bovenkamp.