Each year, it is the pleasure and privilege of Chronogram’s editors to bring you the Summer Arts Preview. We admit it’s a daunting task trying to choose what particular festivals, performances, and exhibits to highlight each year out of the Hudson Valley’s vast cultural cornucopia. It’s as difficult as drinking from a firehose. (Don’t try this at home.) There’s so much going on. Tom Hanks is premiering a play at Shadowland Stages. Bard’s Speigeltent is back! The Clark hosts a blockbuster Rodin show. The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival performs for the first time in its new home.
The region’s rich cultural legacy is the backdrop against which all of this season’s performances and exhibitions are silhouetted against. From Thomas Cole’s landscape paintings to the craft-informed sculptures of Martin Puryear, from the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony to the Wassaic Project, from Bob Dylan to Aaron Dessner, from John Cage’s premiere of “4:33” at the Maverick Concert Hall in 1952 to the workshopping of “Hamilton” at New York Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Theater in 2013, the Hudson Valley has also long been home to some of the most vibrant arts activity on the planet. (And sometimes past and present collide, as in this summer’s exhibition of the long-neglected studio work of Harvey Fite, creator of Opus 40.)
The region is constantly abuzz with resident and visiting artists who take joy and pride in expressing their creativity for themselves and those who savor it—no matter whether the chosen medium is visual art, music, theater, dance, or some combination of these disciplines. It just so happens that summer is when the majority of the artistic activity takes places. Like seemingly everyone else, artists want to spend the summer in the Hudson Valley. Who can blame them?
The 2022 Summer Arts Preview is sponsored by Tanglewood.
A trip to Tanglewood is an escape to extraordinary. Enjoy music by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops, world-renowned guest artists, and more, all in the beauty of the Berkshire Hills. Learn more and get your tickets today at tanglewood.org.
