Arts Briefs

By The Independent Aug 30, 2023

Women in Music Take the Outer Cape

The 9th annual Cape Cod Women’s Music Festival takes the stage at Payomet Performing Arts Center (29 Old Dewline Road, North Truro) on Friday, Sept. 1 at 7 p.m. Local musician Sarah Swain created the event in 2012 after she lost her mother to ovarian cancer. Since then, the festival has become one of the Cape’s most popular annual events. Previously held in Dennis, this year is its first time at Payomet and on the Outer Cape.

In 2014, recognizing the event’s potential, Swain started a nonprofit called the Cape Wellness Collaborative. Each year, festival proceeds go to the nonprofit, which provides “free-of-charge integrative therapies and nutritious meals to people facing cancer on Cape Cod and the Islands,” according to the festival website.

“It started as a fun music festival and turned into a mission,” says Courtney Wittenstein, who is on the festival’s board.

This year’s lineup features Kat Wright and her band, Tianna Esperanza, Kim Moberg, Gabriela Simpkins, Toast & Jam, and the festival’s own Sarah Swain and the Oh Boys with Sarah Burrill. Many of the musicians are locals, and their styles range from folk and singer-songwriter to rock and punk. In addition to the headliners, the festival features the annual New England Songwriting Contest winner. This year, it’s Lainey Dionne, a singer-songwriter from Rhode Island.

“It’s always a really magical evening,” Wittenstein says. “People walk away feeling very full from it. It’s laughing, dancing, crying. It’s a little bit of everything.”

The festival will be dedicated to Provincetown performer Thirsty Burlington, who is currently facing cancer. Tickets range from $45 to $75. See payomet.org for information. —Eve Samaha

The Ambiguous Paradise of Cara Di Angelis

For all her use of bright colors and surreal imagery that alternates between playful and sinister, Cara Di Angelis asks some serious questions in her paintings, which are currently on view at Gary Marotta Fine Art (162 Commercial St., Provincetown).

In an artist statement that accompanies the show, Di Angelis says that its themes focus on our desires as human beings to both conquer nature and to somehow live within it. “Is the need to conform the natural world to our modern human society an act of love or an act of fear?” she asks. “What does this dissonance say about our fear of being out of control or back in the wild?”

She answers those questions in a series called “Was This Paradise.” The fact that the exhibition title does not include a question mark hints at the ambiguity present in all of her paintings, which occasionally include materials such as glitter, vintage paper, and gold leaf. Is the supine figure surrounded by a skull and a cartoon fox in the titular painting dead, asleep and dreaming, or temporarily struck unconscious by the ominously smoking nuclear reactor in her environment? Are the individuals in Out of Falling Water — named for the famous building by Frank Lloyd Wright, whom Di Angelis cites as an inspiration for the series — a family secure in their interior environment or one that has taken refuge from the uncertainties lurking outside it? And how are we to read the idyllic pastoral fantasy of In Eden, knowing that the apple the female figure is holding presages the eventual collapse of the paradise she and her partner occupy?

Ultimately, Di Angelis’s paintings challenge the viewer to take action. “Humanity has come to a symbolic fork in the road,” she says. “Which path will we take? What happens if we don’t decide either way?”

There will be an opening reception for the exhibition on Friday, Sept. 1 at 7 p.m., and the show is on view through Oct. 19. See garymarottafineart.com for information. —John D’Addario

John Dowd’s Art of Quiet Drama

John Dowd planned to be an architect but decided that before starting a new job he’d spend a summer working in Provincetown. With a humble beginning as a houseboy, Dowd is now one of the most notable painters in a town of celebrated painters. His latest collection of paintings is on view at William Scott Gallery (439 Commercial St., Provincetown) until Sept. 15. Titled “Summer Work,” the show contains around 20 recently created paintings, a mix of nocturnal and daylight images.

Brian Galloway, the owner of the gallery, has been showing Dowd’s work since he opened in 1995. Almost 30 years later, Dowd’s end-of-summer shows have become big moments for collectors and fans.

Dowd’s subjects are usually the houses, dunes, and nearly empty roads of Provincetown. Most often, scenes are captured in twilight or near total darkness. His crepuscular blues are hypnotic.

Like an establishing shot in a movie, each of Dowd’s paintings show us where we are as the action begins — or possibly is ending. A light is on in a window; a car is coming around a bend; a creeping moonlight illuminates the dunes. Your eyes search for human figures that never appear. Thus triggered, your imagination is free to alight on any number of engaging possibilities of what happens next.

There will be an opening reception for the show on Friday, Sept. 1 at 7 p.m. See williamscottgallery.com for information. —James Judd

Remembering Gabriel Kuttner at Harbor Stage

Among the many roles the late actor Gabriel Kuttner is remembered for is his performance in the Harbor Stage production of playwright Conor McPherson’s slow-burn mystery The Weir in 2018. To cap its 2023 season, which was dedicated to Kuttner’s memory, the theater is reuniting the team that originally mounted the acclaimed production for a one-night-only staged reading at Harbor Stage (15 Kendrick Ave., Wellfleet) on Monday, Sept. 4 at 5:30 p.m.

According to Harbor Stage founder Bob Kropf, who directed The Weir, Kuttner’s performance was one for the ages. “Gabe reached a kind of artistic pinnacle with this role,” said Kropf in Kuttner’s obituary in the Independent in 2019. “Anyone who was lucky enough to see it knows exactly what I mean. It was staggeringly real and funny and sad and true. He showed up with a suit he’d found. He wore it on day one of rehearsals through to the opening. It was exactly right.” In the Labor Day reading, Kropf will read the role that Kuttner played in the 2018 production.

The reading will be followed by the theater’s annual “Drain the Har-Bar” end-of-season fundraiser, which will include drinks, snacks, and entertainment. Tickets are $50, and donations above the ticket price will be matched up to $10,000 through the support of an anonymous benefactor. See harborstage.org for information.

Kim David Smith Channels a Legend

Does anyone really remember Marlene Dietrich? Although she’s currently number nine on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest female legends of classic Hollywood cinema, it’s been 100 years since she made her film debut. I often confuse her with Tallulah Bankhead, another sultry stage and screen star of the 1930s. Mostly, I think of Madeline Kahn’s Dietrich-esque saloon worker belting out “I’m Tired” to an audience of lustful cowboys in Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles.

Fortunately, Australian cabaret star Kim David Smith is returning to Provincetown to refresh our memories of Dietrich — and of Berlin’s pre-World War II era of smokey glamour — with his one-man cabaret show “Mostly Marlene” at the Post Office Café and Cabaret (303 Commercial St., Provincetown) on Friday, Sept. 1 and Saturday, Sept. 2 at 8:30 p.m. It’s not a drag act: Smith, who channels the vibe of the Weimar-era more than strictly impersonating Dietrich, will attempt to recreate the sensation of being in those doomed, decadent music halls.

Though she was once the highest paid actress of her era, Dietrich was a creature of the stage and loved performing for a live audience. She performed in several Shakespeare plays in the early years of her career but drew the most acclaim for appearing in musicals — and ultimately, in a glitzy Vegas act. Although her singing ability was somewhat limited, she was able to transport her audiences with sultriness and humor.

Smith, a regular headliner at Alan Cumming’s Club Cumming in New York City, also has a long association with the Cape. He played the Emcee in Cabaret in a production in Dennis in 2016 and played the titular role of Salome in a production at the Provincetown Theater in 2017. He also was a headline performer at this year’s Cabaret Fest in Provincetown. The “mostly” part of the title of his current show refers the fact that, while it’s mostly composed of Dietrich numbers, Smith also incorporates songs from Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Liza Minelli, and Mae West, rearranged to reflect Dietrich’s style.

Tickets for the show are $35 ($40 for V.I.P. seating) at postofficecafe.net. —James Judd

String Quartet in the Studio

The next set of chamber concerts organized by violinist Roseminna Watson for her Music in the Studio series brings a string quartet to Truro this weekend. Watson will be joined by violinist EmmaLee Holmes-Hicks, violist Gillian Gallagher, and cellist Jacob MacKay for performances on Friday, Sept. 1 and Saturday, Sept. 2 at 7:30 p.m. in Cammie Watson’s art studio.

The program opens with Signs, Games and Messages, sets of pieces for solo instruments by the Hungarian composer György Kurtág, who is 97. “Each is an homage to music of the past,” says Watson, “a playful quip to friend or acquaintance, or a cryptic message embedded within two minutes or less of music.”

Next will be Entr’acte, composed in 2011 by Caroline Shaw when she was 29. The following year, she became the youngest person to win the Pulitzer Prize for music.

Watson says she experiences the piece “as a coalescing of disparate breath, a coming together, a bridging between two things, and a look from the other side of the glass. Inspired by the music of Franz Joseph Haydn, Shaw creates a new take on an age-old form: the minuet and trio. Her piece finds innovative, subtle, and deeply human sounds and textures amidst the instruments of the quartet, as well as unexpected and playful conglomerate rhythmic gestures. The effect is fresh reprise — as if I were looking at a familiar sight with my head cocked slightly to the side.”

The program concludes with Béla Bartók’s first string quartet, which he composed in 1909 at age 27. It was written, says Watson, “as a return to life — a metamorphosis from the ash to the phoenix — as he recovered from severe heartbreak.” The work begins with what he called a “funeral dirge” in a highly Romantic style. Over the course of the piece, the music is swept up by its own momentum and gives way to the boisterous and mischievous folk style that defines his later work.

Admission to the two concerts is by donation. See roseminnawatson.com for information. —Edward Miller

Samara Joy Lights Up Provincetown

The arrival of Samara Joy on Thursday, Aug. 31 at Provincetown Town Hall (260 Commercial St.) is a crown jewel in what has been a truly glittering season. At just 23, she’s already a double Grammy-winning artist, zipping across continents on a world tour that has her singing in a different city almost every other night.

“Being on the road has its ups and downs,” she told the Independent during a rare moment of down time. “I miss my family big time. However, I am getting to do what I love and experience new things, which I know they’re proud of as well. Overall, I’m learning how to take better care of myself while on the road.”

Joy’s rise to fame has been rapid. A native of the Bronx, she was born into a family of gospel singers and musicians. She began winning jazz vocal competitions while still in high school and won the Sarah Vaughan International Competition in 2019. She became an Ella Fitzgerald Memorial Scholar in 2020. As Elysa Gardner noted in the New York Times last year, “Joy’s singing, with its precocious depth, creamy tone and fluttery vibrato, continued to inspire comparisons to both of those legends.”

That same year, one of her performances on TikTok was viewed more than 1.5 million times — a rarity for jazz musicians. Jazz Times named her its Best New Artist for 2021. In February 2023, she took home two Grammys for Best Jazz Vocal Album and Best New Artist.

What drives this massively talented young artist? “I just instantly feel happier and a sense of freedom when I sing,” she says. “I get very overwhelmed in my everyday life, and singing is the only place where I feel completely free.”

Tickets start at $75 for balcony seats. See provincetownarthouse.com for information. —James Judd

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Filed Under: Arts & Minds, Arts Briefs