Arts

   LongHouse Reserve’s annual container invitational, “Planters: ON+OFF the Ground VI,” in which top landscape designers, artists, and other horticultural professionals compete to see who can create the most striking “container” of plant material, will open to the public on Saturday. Visitors may vote for their favorites for the People’s Choice Award starting at 2 p.m. This year’s judges, all of them well known in the field, are Tovah Martin, Paula Dietz, and Jack deLashmet.    

   There is a lot of black and white in the paintings of Nicolas Carone, particularly in the works he painted in New York City. But in his East Hampton paintings from the 1950s, on view at the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs, he worked mainly in color.

    He used moody color mixed in with some areas of black and white, but not in the primary way found in his other work. In these paintings, he worked in a limited palette, with a lot of browns, oranges, and ochres mixed with patches of blue, green, and the occasional purple with gashes of red.

   Audra McDonald, the celebrated soprano and actress, will perform at Guild Hall with her jazz ensemble on July 6 at 7 p.m.

    A graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, Ms. McDonald has been touring in support of her new album, “Go Back Home.” Released on May 21 on Nonesuch Records, it is her fifth album for Nonesuch and first in seven years. “Go Back Home,” which debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart, features songs by composers including Stephen Sondheim, Adam Guettel, Michael John LaChiusa, and Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Mannix at Hampton Hang

    In a new show opening tomorrow, Karyn Mannix is looking beyond the beloved South Fork medium of painting to find other artistic inspiration that falls outside that two-dimensional form.

    At Karyn Mannix at Hampton Hang, her summer exhibition space in Water Mill behind Suki Zuki, she has brought together four artists: Maria Bacardi, Charles McGill, Gabriele T. Raacke, and Claire Watson, who use unusual mediums to approach art from a more conceptual viewpoint.

   The Wellness Foundation of East Hampton will be the beneficiary of an event to be held on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. at a private residence on Dunemere Lane. Joe Cross, the star of the award-winning documentary “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead,” and founder of Reboot with Joe, will be honored.

    Vegan hors d’oeuvres and wine will be served, and Jane Hastay, Peter Martin Weiss, and John Cataletto will provide live music. Tickets cost $150 and can be ordered through wfeh.org or by calling 329-2590. Tickets will not be sold at the door.

   Local artists will lead workshops from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Watermill Center, as part of the center’s Saturdays @ WMC series, which aims to find new ways for visitors to interact with the art collections, studios, kitchen and more.

    Yoga will be featured, led by Geoffrey Nimmer, as will puppet-making with Andrea Cote. There will be tours of the buildings and grounds, and a presentation by Mary Woltz, the owner and beekeeper at Bee’s Needs.

    More information can be found at watermillcenter.org.

   The dog days of summer — and the game that has long been an East Hampton institution — are not here yet, but an exhibition opening on Saturday at Guild Hall will bring together and celebrate artists, writers, and their work.

    “Millions know their voices, but no one knows their names” is the tagline for “Twenty Feet From Stardom,” a new documentary to be shown as part of the Hamptons International Film Festival’s SummerDocs series on Saturday.

   Hamptons House of Gardens in Southampton will host a comedy night on Saturday from 8 to 10 p.m. featuring Mary Dimino and Meghan Hanley.

    Ms. Dimino is 2010 MAC Award winner for outstanding female comedian from the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs, and is known for her New York-Italian humor and attitude, according to a release. Ms. Hanley is a comedian, actor, and writer also from New York.

    Tickets cost $30 at the door and $25 in advance through Michelle Simmons at [email protected].   

    Soldier Ride, a homegrown effort to raise money for wounded veterans that took root in conversations at the Stephen Talkhouse nightclub in Amagansett and has grown into an international initiative sponsored by the Wounded Warrior Project, sees its 10th anniversary next summer, and by then, it is hoped, a documentary tracing its extraordinary growth and impact will be ready for its premiere.

   All for the East End, a nonprofit that will raise money for other East End charitable organizations, will host its inaugural concert on Aug. 19 at Martha Clara Vineyards in Riverhead. Nile Rodgers will headline the concert, dubbed the AFTEE Nile Rodgers Dance Party. Joining him will be Avicii, a Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum Swedish D.J.

    In addition to the “Artists & Writers: They Played in the Game” exhibition, Guild Hall will open its summer season with two other new shows: works by John Alexander and Joel Perlman.

    Mr. Alexander is known for his Surrealist paintings of natural phenomena and the human form as well as his biting social commentary. In a solo show opening on Saturday he will present recent natural landscapes.

   The John Jermain Memorial Library is creating a special collection for the music of local artists and is looking for CD donations from musicians to add to its lending catalog of music. Eventually, the library plans to make its collection a searchable online archive available for music streaming.

    Eastern Long Island residents who would like their music included in the collection have been asked to contact Eric Cohen by phone at the library or by e-mail at [email protected].

    Guild Hall’s screening of “The Audience” tomorrow is sold out. The National Theatre Live presentation features Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in a series of imagined private meetings with prime ministers ranging from Winston Churchill to David Cameron.

    Despite persistent rumors, Ms. Mirren will not be attending the screening, nor was she ever slated to be there.

   D.J. Mister Lama will return to the Parrish Art Museum for its Sounds of Summer series tomorrow at 6 p.m.

    A Sag Harbor resident, Mister Lama describes himself as a “Peruvian redneck from Texas who has been manipulating sound for more than 20 years.” He hosts “Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers” on Stony Brook University’s WUSB 90.1. His set at the Parrish will feature a mix of records from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Mister Lama hosted radio shows on WRCT, Pittsburgh, and KPFT, Houston, and was a talk show host for Pittsburgh’s Waffle Shop TV.

   Bay Street Theatre’s Comedy Club will feature Kenny Garcia, Vic Henley, Chris Clarke, Mark Riccadonna, and Marina Franklin, all rising stars on Monday, as part of the All Star Comedy Showcase.

Lights, Camera, Action

    QF Gallery in East Hampton will open Annika Connor’s show “The Hitchcock Kiss” on Saturday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

    Ms. Connor’s colorful paintings, which are based on fantasy, have an illustrative quality. Her subjects are abundant gardens, opulent rooms, regal animals, and  humans in their finery alone or as a couple.  She blends “contemporary moments with cinematic nostalgia,” according to the gallery. She also has an acting career, which tends to inform her artwork. The show will be on view through June 30.

   The Perlman Music Program will present two evenings of collaborations in which “future stars of classical music” join such veterans as Paul Katz, Merry Peckham, Roger Tapping, Don Weilerstein, Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, and Itzhak Perlman himself to perform chamber music masterworks. A meet-and-greet reception with the artists will follow both events.

   The laughs continue at Bay Street Theatre’s Comedy Club on Monday, with Jim Breuer, a stand-up comedian, taking the mike. Raised UpIsland in Valley Stream, Mr. Breuer hit the big time when he joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live,” where he became known for his original character Goat Boy and for his impression of Joe Pesci, the actor. Since then, the comic has had roles in several movies, most notably “Half Baked,” in which he co-starred with Dave Chappelle. He was featured in Comedy Central’s “100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time.”

   Orion Weiss and Anna Polonsky will play for the Rising Stars piano series on Saturday at the Southampton Cultural Center’s Levitas Center.

    A renowned young American soloist, Mr. Weiss has been a Pianofest participant since he was 15. Ms. Polonsky, who will make her debut at Carnegie Hall later this year, will join him to perform Gabriel Faure’s “Dolly” Suite for four hands, Igor Stravinsky’s Concerto for Two Pianos, and George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” for two pianos.

   The Watermill Center will hold its last two open rehearsals of the spring season this week.

    On Sunday at 6 p.m., Susan Yan­kowitz, a librettist and playwright, and Kamala Sankaram, an Indian-American composer, will present “Thumb­print,” an opera-theater work inspired by the experiences of Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani woman who famously brought her rapists to justice.

   A summer stock standard has come to the Main Stage at the Bay Street Theatre, and if the quality of this production of the farcical sex comedy “Lend Me a Tenor” is a sign of things to come for Bay Street’s three-play 2013 season, buying a season subscription might be a good ticket to ride this year.

    The Parrish Art Museum’s Landscape Pleasures garden tour and lecture benefit will take place on Saturday and Sunday. The theme of this year’s program, co-chaired by Lillian Cohen, Jack deLashmet, Martha B. McLanahan, and Linda Hackett Munson, is “Modernism, Minimalism, and Meadows.”

    On Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., a symposium will include three talks with Thomas Woltz, Richard Hartlage, and a joint presentation by Christopher LaGuardia and Viola Rouhani.

Four Women at Ille

    Ille Arts in Amagansett will show the artwork of Monica Banks, Suzanne Goldenberg, Janet Nolan, and Nicole Parcher in a show called “Four Women” beginning tomorrow with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

   There is an oft-repeated assertion by the late historian Jacques Barzun that starts, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.” Perhaps less known is the full quote, which includes the suggestion that one learn the game “by watching first some high school or small-town teams.”

    This came to mind during a viewing of “The Only Real Game,” an engrossing and deeply stirring documentary depicting the popularity of our national pastime in what would seem an unlikely place: Manipur, a poor and embattled state in northeastern India.

   The Southampton Cultural Center will present a dance recital by Steps Repertory Ensemble on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the center’s Levitas Center for the Arts. Under the guidance of Claire Livingstone, the artistic director and a former dancer with the Royal Ballet, the ensemble has grown to a company of 10 to 12 professional dancers.

   East End nightspots attract hundreds of 20 and 30-somethings like moths to light every summer, but a slightly more sedate crowd wends its way to more serene surroundings for classical music.

    The highest notes come from the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, the Perlman Music Program, which sponsors a summer school for international students on Shelter Island, and Pianofest, a remarkable program of master classes and concerts for and by prizewinning pianists.

Any day now, with the scut work over and a vast pile of 1950s rubble trucked away, they’ll be bringing in a load of steel support beams, and the enormous task of turning the falling-down shell of Thomas Moran’s East Hampton Village house back into the eccentric showplace it used to be will get under way for real.

   An abundance of nationally and internationally acclaimed musicians will perform on the South Fork this summer. The more prestigious venues offer a broad range of musical shows, many of which will take place in a setting more intimate than audiences are likely to find anywhere else.

East End Photogs at 25

    The East End Photographers Group will observe its 25th anniversary with a show at Ashawagh Hall in Springs opening Saturday and running through June 9. This will be the first of a number of shows in the area this season to mark the milestone. The group has dedicated this one to the memory of Tim Lee and Vito Sisti, who both died this year.