The Boston Globe is predicting a brilliant fall foliage season.  The rainy weather this past summer combine with the cool dry weather in September will yield brilliant colors in October.  Many of the trees in our yard are turning yellow, gold and red.  Below are links to the Globe article and a link to a map that forecasts peak by region.

 Globe article   Peak Foliage Map

Lenox Foliage

Next weekend we plan to go to the Harvest Festival at Berkshire Botanical Garden.  It’s an old-fashioned community event with food, music, crafts, rides & games, and a giant tag sale.  A great way to enjoy the crisp October weather.

The Cantilena Chamber Choir
Andrea Goodman, Director
 
SHAKESPEARE IN WORDS AND MUSIC
 
with

Jonathan Epstein
And Ariel Bock
 
Love in the Afternoon-an Interlude with Shakespeare’s Sonnets
and
Choral Music on Shakespearean texts by Vaughan Williams, Hector Berlioz, John Newell and John Rutter
 
With the Steve Murray Ensemble and Anita Stuart piano
 
Sunday, October 11, 2009, 5:00pm 
Trinity Church 88 Walker Street
Lenox
 
All seats $15.00
www.cantilenachoir.org
Reservations: 518-791-0185
satbchoir @yahoo.com
 
Cantilena Chamber Choir

Sunday, September 6th, the Muir String Quartet will open the South Mountain Concert series at 3 PM.  This chamber concert series runs for 5 Sunday afternoons in September and October.  It’s held in a most unusual wooded setting, in a building constructed solely for this purpose.  Situtated on a wooded slope in the midst of the Berkshires, the hall is listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings.  Its intimate atmosphere provides a unique setting to enjoy chamber music, and the performers are world reknowned.  It’s a 10-minute ride from Brook Farm Inn, and we can provide you with all the information.

• Sept. 4 Friday 8:00PM An evening with Paquito d’Rivera
• Sept. 5 Saturday 2:00PM Radio Deluxe withJohn Pizzarel, Jessica Molasky,Kurt Eling, Bucky Pizzareli, Aaron Weinstein, and Harry Allen
• Sept. 5 “Reverse Thread” with The Regina Carter Quartet  and “Dreamin the Duke” with Nnenna Freelon, Harolyn Blackwell and Mike Garson
• Sept. 6 Sunday 2:00PM “A Piano Duet” with Kenny Barron and Mulgrew Miller Vanguard Jazz Orchestra
• Sept. 6 8:00PM “The Majestry of the Trumpet” with the Jon Faddis Quartet and special guests Wallace Roney and Sean Jones.  Also the Dave Holland Octet

Plus visit the Jazz Cafe’

Back by popular demand, the Barrington Stage Company (in Pittsfield) will be presenting “Freud’s Last Session.”  Linda and I were fortunate enough to get tickets in June to see this play by Mark St. Germain.  It played to sold out audiences every night and with good reason.  The play is intelligent, well acted, and riveting.  This is theater at its best!  If you are coming to the Berkshires order your tickets now!

Mark H. Dold and Martin Rayner

Plot Summary

After escaping the Nazis in Vienna, legendary psychiatrist Dr. Sigmund Freud invites a young, little known professor, C.S. Lewis, to his home in London. Lewis expects to be called on the carpet for satirizing Freud in a recent book but the dying Freud has a more significant agenda. On the day England entered WW II, Freud and Lewis clash on the existence of God, love, sex and the meaning of life – only two weeks before Freud chose to take his own.

Tuesday through Friday at 7:30pm
Saturdays at 4pm and 8pm
Sundays at 7:30pm
(please note, no 4pm performance on Sat., Aug. 15)

On sale now! Tickets are $25 and $30 (Sat. eve.). $15 tickets are available for students age 21 and younger for all performances except Saturday evenings. Senior citizen tickets are $20 on Saturday matinees only.

Box Office:
413.236.8888

Visit the home of American Abstract Artists George L.K. Morris and Suzy Frelinghuysen, set on a 46-acre estate in the heart of Lenox, Massachusetts. View their paintings, frescoes, and sculpture; experience their exquisite collection of American and European Cubist Art.

The Frelinghuysen Morris House and Studio are open during the summer for tours on the hour Thursday thru Sunday.  It is a short walk down Hawthorne Street from Brook Farm Inn. 

Visitors can walk through the House with all of its original furnishings and view not only the works of Morris and Frelinghuysen on the walls, but walk right up to the works of some of their more famous colleagues and contemporaries including Picasso, Braque, Leger and Gris. As Director Kinney Frelinghuysen notes, “The integration of living quarters with the immediacy of a concentration of works of art is a pleasurable and unexpected way to propel visitors into early 20th century art.”

Frelinghuysen Morris House and Studio

Paris 1890 – Unlaced!  is the title for Ventfort Hall’s summer theater.  Ventfort Hall, here in Lenox just a few minutes’ walk from Brook Farm Inn, is also known as the Museum of the Gilded Age.  This mansion is a great setting for the one-woman show, which provides a humorous yet poignant glimpse into Parisian society of the Belle Epoque.  Anne Undeland plays five different women, in an intriguing mystery.

We missed this production the first time around a couple of years ago, and we’re really glad that Shakespeare & Co. is reprising “Hamlet.”  We saw it yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it.  The performance is especially interesting because a real mother, son, and step-father have leading roles.  Tina Packer is Gertrude, her son Jason Asprey is a wonderful Hamlet, and Dennis Krausnick husband of Tina Packer, plays the best Polonius we’ve seen.  It will be performed here in Lenox, Massachusetts all summer long, and we’re recommending it to guests of Brook Farm Inn.