Here is our cultural crib sheet of can’t-miss Hudson Valley events to attend in March, spanning theater, film screenings, music, and literary events.
Storm Lake | March 4 at Philipstown Depot Theater
Since 2005, 2,200 local newspapers across America have closed. One still in existence is the Storm Lake Times, a twice-weekly newspaper covering a patch of rural Iowa with a circulation of less than 4,000. The paper’s editor, Art Cullen, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for Editorial Writing that challenged corporate agricultural interests. Filmmakers Jerry Risius and Beth Levinson’s 2021 documentary chronicles the challenges facing small-town journalism, especially during a pandemic. Levinson, who codirected the film, will be at the 7:30pm screening at Philipstown Depot Theater in Garrisons Landing.
“Concert in Wave Fields” | March 4 at RPI
The EMPAC Wave Field Synthesis system (EMPACwave) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s EMPAC facility is a unique configuration of over 200 loudspeakers set up for listeners to walk through and experience a truly vast spectrum of sound. The four works to be played at this concert were created for EMPACwave by composers Miya Masaoka, Bora Yoon, Nina Young, and Pamela Z premiered at New York’s Time:Spans contemporary music festival last August, but COVID protocols meant that they couldn’t be presented at EMPAC concurrently. Presented here in the center’s Studio 1, their upstate unveiling will be filled with sonic revelations. (Mary Kouyoumdjian’s“Paper Pianos”closes March 9.) 3pm. Free.
“Underground Figures” | March 5 at Bardavon
The Hudson Valley Philharmonic at the 1869 Bardavon Opera House celebrates the legacy of Harriet Tubman with an all-female lineup of composers, soloists, and visual artists. Led by the esteemed African American composer and conductor Dr. Anne Lundy, the orchestra will premiere Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor and play works by Julia Wolfe (with projections of images by Georgia O’Keefe, Imogen Cunningham, Margaret Bourke-White, and others) and Nkeiru Okoye (“Songs of Harriet Tubman”: four arias featuring soprano Kishna Fowler). (The Met’s production of Verdi’s “Don Carlos” streams live March 26; the Wailin’ Jennys yowl March 27.) 8pm. $40 (children 12 and under $15).
Daniel Wyche/Shane Parish/Wild C | March 10 at Tubby’s
Chicago-based guitarist Daniel Wyche gained well-deserved praise last year when he cofounded “The Quarantine Concerts,” an innovative livestream performance series that has to date raised $100,000 for artists and performers who lost income during the pandemic. Wyche’s recent music has focused on widescreen multichannel sounds and includes compositions for quad- and 16-channel guitar. This night at Tubby’s pairs him with Athens, Georgia, fingerstyle acoustic guitar master Shane Parish along with the local experimental duo of Wild C (AKA multi-instrumentalists Brian Whitney and Jared Ashdown). (Tonstartsbandht and Dominick and the Family Band visit March 11; Weak Signal and Masaaki rock it up March 25.) 7pm. $5. Kingston.
Harvey Fierstein | March 11 at Bard College’s Fisher Center
To celebrate his recently published memoir, I Was Better Last Night (Knopf), cultural icon, gay rights activist, and four-time Tony Award-winning actor and playwright Fierstein talks with Justin Vivian Bond at Bard College’s Fisher Center about his poignant and hilarious book and the never-before-told stories of his personal struggles and conflict, of sex and romance, and of his fabled career. The evening is presented in partnership with Oblong Books, and the ticket price ($38) includes a signed copy of I Was Better Last Night.
Mayuhk Sen | March 12 the Amelia Hudson
In Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America (2021), Mayukh Sen creates a group portrait of foreign-born female culinary influencers, reconstructing the lives of these women, some still lionized today, like Marcella Hazan to forgotten pathbeakers like Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican food. Sen, a James Beard-award winner, will discuss his work at the intersection of food, immigration, and gender at the Amelia Hudson, the first in the hotel’s Saturday literary series. Other upcoming writers in the series include Sabheba Sathian (April 23), Mira Jacob (May 14), and Jennifer 8 Lee (date TBD).
“Norm’s Memory Sale” | March 12 at Holland Tunnel Gallery
As part of the exhibition “The Narrative of Things” at Holland Tunnel in Newburgh, artistic chameleon Norm Magnusson—whose work is in the show with Kathleen Vance, Shari Diamond, and Tamara Rafkin—will perform an hour-long series of vignettes. Here’s how Magnusson describes it: “I wanted to get rid of some of the tchotchkes and bric-a-brac that I’ve amassed over the years, but instead of a yard sale, I decided that I would create fictional provenance for each of them and started making up little stories.” The objects will be on display and for sale. Musical accompaniment by guitarist Peter Dougan.
The Flash Company | March 17 at Town Crier Cafe
It’s Saint Patrick’s Day! So how about some fine Irish music? In their fourth annual holiday show at the Towne Crier, the Flash Company will once again perform traditional and contemporary Irish and Celtic songs and originals in the mold of age-old pub tunes. The trio, which features Eric Garrison and Jim Pospisil on banjo, mandolin, octave mandolin, tin whistle, flute, melodica, and bodhran and Bryan Maloney on guitar, takes turns trading off on lead vocals and telling stories. Among the requisite rousing instrumentals and sweet ballads, their repertoire includes covers of material by the Chieftains and contemporary Irish artists like Luka Bloom, Touchstone, Cathie Ryan, and Cherish the Ladies. (Loudon Wainwright III lights up March 5; the Tannahill Weavers wend by March 27.) 7pm. $15 in advance, $20 at the door. Beacon.
Circles Around the Sun | March 17 at Infinity Hall
In 2019, after recording his parts for LA instrumental jam band Circles Around the Sun’s newest album, Let It Wander, the group’s founding guitarist, Neal Casal, took his own life. He left behind a note asking his collaborators to keep the project going. Their current tour, which will bring them to Infinity Hall this month, sees them keeping their collective flame burning. “Our mission is to extend Neal’s musical legacy,” says drummer Mark Levy. “He was a classy dude and had a regal vibe about him. Maybe there are people out there in the same sort of darkness Neal was in, who can hear us and say we can work positively on multiple fronts in his memory.” (Teddy Thompson and Jenni Muldaur do country duets March 6; Spyro Gyra spins by March 16.) 7pm. $28-$38. Norfolk, Connecticut.
Amor Towles | March 19 at the Bardavon
In The Lincoln Highway (2021), Amor Towles’s third novel, the year is 1954 and 18-year-old Emmett Watson has just been released from the juvenile work farm in Nebraska where he served 18 months for involuntary manslaughter. Watson and two buddies from the work farm take a cross-country trip to New York City that’s told from multiple perspectives and is a sweeping portrayal of a quintessentially American journey. At the Bardavon, Towles will discuss his latest book as well as his two previous bestsellers, Rules of Civility (2011) and A Gentleman in Moscow (2016). The reading will be followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.
Hrishikesh Hirway and Jenny Owen Youngs | March 20 at Upstate Films in Saugerties
Welcome to the age of podcast celebrity. Or at least notoriety. Award-winning podcasters Hrishikesh Hirway (“Song Exploder,” “The West Wing Weekly,” and “Home Cooking”) and Jenny Owen Youngs (“Buffering the Vampire Slayer” and “Veronica Mars Investigations”) are teaming up for select dates of music and storytelling. (In addition to being podcasters, Youngs and Hirway are also musicians.) The pair will be on stage together, doing one combined set of all their songs, performing them as a duo, interspersed with stories. Upstatefilms.org
Shadowland Studio Cinema Series | March 27
Maybe you saw the recent adulatory profile in the real estate section of the New York Times of formerly-going-nowhere Ellenville. Long before it was discovered by the Times, Shadowland Stages had carved out a significant piece of cultural real estate for the village with its theatrical and cinema programming. This spring, the theater rolls out Shadowland Studio Cinema, a classic film series, in its new black box theater. The series kicks off on March 27 with His Girl Friday (1940), Howard Hawks’s unromantic journalism satire with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell—it’s actually a comedy. Lon Chaney haunts The Phantom of the Opera (restored 1925 version) on April 10. H. G. Wells sci-fi prognostication Things to Come screens on April 24. And Salt of the Earth, Herbert Biberman’s paean to workers’ rights, will be shown on May 1.
Mdou Moctar | March 21 at Colony
Nigerian guitar god Mdou Moctar leads what’s perhaps the greatest live band on the planet, a mystical unit that stirs together their indigenous North African “desert blues” with the transcendent feels of John Coltrane, Can, Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar, hard funk, and deep dub (there’s even a little Prince in there; Moctar stars in the first Tuareg-language film, a remake of Purple Rain). His eponymously named quartet’s ace American bassist Mikey Coltun produced their 2019 album Afrique Victime, but it’s arguably drummer Souleymane Ibrahim who’s perhaps the group’s real secret weapon; his mind-boggling rhythms make any resistance to dancing entirely futile. Emily Robb will open for Mdou Moctar at Colony March 21. (Sasami sings March 5; Kaki King holds court March 20.) 8pm. $25-$30. Woodstock.
This article appears in March 2022.
