Music From the Old World. The New World, Too

Duos are on the menu at Club Helsinki, July 11. In an interesting and diverse double bill, the Great Barrington nightclub will offer Alternative World Music and Indie-Americana on the same showcard when HuDost and The Bowmans get together and share the stage starting at 9 p.m.

   HuDost is a commanding, experimental Indie World Rock group whose core musicians are singer/songwriters Moksha Sommer from Montreal and Jemal Wade Hines from New York.Their original work ranges in style from Alternative World Music to their own Country and Eastern fusion, merged with an atmospheric, rich, experimental sound. This is mixed with the rich, eclectic blending of traditional Sufi music, Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian and Balkan folk music, Farsi, Turkish, Arabic, Folk, Pop and Rock.

   The Bowmans are a heavily DIY Indie-Americana songwriter duo. Twin sisters Sarah and Claire Bowman have been touring virtually nonstop for the past two years. The duo’s sound has been compared to Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Joni Mitchell, to name a few, but they are impossible to pigeonhole. Tickets are $15, in advance at the club, by calling 413-582-3394 or online at clubhelsinkiweb.com

   Join the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival’s Open House on July 12, honoring founder and patroness Ellen Battell Stoeckel. The day’s events are free and open to the public. The children’s concert will begin at 1 p.m. in the Music Shed. Between 2 and 3:45 p.m., guests are welcome to tour the festival grounds and enjoy tours of Whitehouse, an Ice Cream Social, games and activities for children, and an exhibition of Virgil Thomson in the Music Shed. The day will wind up with a concert by the U.S. Coast Guard Chamber Ensemble at 4 p.m. in the Music Shed.

    Other events this weekend at Norfolk include two festival artist concerts, two student concerts, an open house and a lecture. Friday night’s performers include pianist André-Michel Schub and clarinettist Richard Stolzman in music of Mozart, Ravel, Thomson and Beethoven.

    Saturday night’s program features Bartók’s String Quartet No. 5 and Schubert’s Cello Quintet in C Major, written for two cellos instead of the typical Mozart- and Beethoven-established two-viola format. Schubert creates a vibrant and rich texture in his beloved quintet, a piece completed only weeks before the composer’s death and now one of the most beloved works in the entire chamber music repertoire.

   Meanwhile at Tanglewood, this Friday’s 6 p.m. chamber music prelude in Ozawa Hall will be followed by a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert in the shed with Emanuel Ax as soloist in Beethoven’s sublime Piano Concerto No. 4.

   This Sunday afternoon at 2:30 p.m., Herbert Blomstedt will conduct Beethoven’s “Egmont†Overture, and the brilliant Joshua Bell will perform Bruch’s richly romantic Violin Concerto No. 1. p

 

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