Sarah LaDuke

  This Sunday, June 1st the High Meadow School, located in Stone Ridge, New York, will hold its 8th Annual Ride The Ridge Bike Challenge to raise funds to benefit the new High Meadow Performing Arts Center.

Bicycling Magazine has identified Ride the Ridge to its nationwide readership as one of the best cycling events in the month of June!

All bike routes go through Ulster County in the beautiful Hudson Valley beginning and ending at the High Meadow Performing Arts Center located on Rt. 209 in Stone Ridge, New York.

Here to tell us more are Michelle Hughes, Director of High Meadow School and Paul Rakov, Chairman of the Ride the Ridge Bike Challenge.

    The narrative feature, Fort Tilden, will screen twice at The Berkshire International Film Festival this weekend. Tomorrow at 9pm at The Triplex in Great Barrington and Saturday at 2pm at The Beacon in Pittsfield.

The film is the full-length feature debut co-written and co-directed by Sarah Violet Bliss and Charles Rodgers.

    Blue Gold: American Jeans is a feature-length documentary about how one unlikely garment ended up connecting us all. Following vintage jeans hunter Eric Schrader around the world, Blue Gold searches for the reason we all wear blue mining pants from the late 1800s.

An ambassador of Americana, Eric trades in the history, myth, and intrinsic values that have made blue jeans the most expensive and fetishized piece of vintage clothing on the planet. From fashion history and subculture aspiration to the lost tradition of American manufacturing, Blue Gold explores Americana in our globalized world, where cultural exchange and social responsibility demand greater transparency and inspire innovation.

Blue Gold: American Jeans will have its festival premiere at The Berkshire International Film Festival this weekend -- screening at 11:30am on Saturday at The Beacon in Pittsfield and again at 11:30am on Sunday at The Triplex in Great Barrington.

Filmmaker Christian Bruun joins us.

    Cherien Dabis is a Palestinian American director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. When her debut feature-length film, Amreeka, was released in 2009, she was named one of Variety magazine's "10 Directors to Watch."

Her new feature, May in the Summer, is a culture clash drama-comedy and is tonight’s opening night film at the 9th Annual Berkshire International Film Festival.

In the film, May Brennan (played by Dabis) returns from New York City to her childhood home of Amman, Jordan for her wedding. Shortly after reuniting with her sisters and their long-since divorced parents, myriad familial and cultural conflicts lead May to question the big step she is about to take.

Cherien Dabis is in The Berkshires ready for the screening at BIFF tonight and she joins us, now.

  Formed in 2008, Red Baraat is a pioneering eight-piece band from Brooklyn, New York. Conceived by dhol player, drummer and composer Sunny Jain, the group has drawn worldwide praise for its singular sound -- a merging of hard driving North Indian bhangra rhythms with elements of jazz, go-go, brass funk, and hip-hop.

Red Baraat will play MASS MoCA’s 15th Anniversary Party this Saturday in North Adams, MA and Sunny Jain joins us to talk about the show, the band, and his upcoming NPR Music/Make Music New York event in June.

    Randy Graff won the 1990 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her work in City of Angels. Graff’s other Broadway credits include roles in Falsettos, Moon Over Buffalo, High Society, and A Class Act. She was the origal Fantine in Les Miserables on Broadway and starred opposite Alfred Molina in the 2004 revival of Fiddler on the Roof.

She is bringing her cabaret show “Made in Brooklyn” to Club Helsinki in Hudson, NY this Sunday, May 25th, at 8pm and she joins us now.

    Alt-country singer-songwriter, Michaela Anne will perform at The Landis Arboretum in Esperance, NY as part of The Landis Acoustic Music Series by Desolation Road Studios on Friday, May 16th at 7pm. M.R. Poulopoulos is also on the bill.

A self-described military kid, Michaela Anne has moved beyond naval bases and barracks to settle in Brooklyn, NY.  A former unhappy jazz student with a passion for Patsy Cline and Otis Redding, Michaela Anne has claimed her place among singers who go their own way.

Her latest album, Ease My Mind, was released on April 8th of this year.

  This Saturday, May 3rd at 7:30 pm - Two-time Tony Award winning Broadway superstar, Patti LuPone, will perform in concert at a gala event for The Woodstock Playhouse in Woodstock, NY.

The concert is part of the fantastically popular Broadway @ series, produced by Mark Cortale [long e] and hosted by Seth Rudetsky.

  Seth is the afternoon host on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio’s On Broadway as well as the host of Seth Speaks on Sirius/XM Stars. As a pianist, Seth has played for more than a dozen Broadway shows and he was the Artistic Producer/Music Director for the first five annual Actors Fund Fall Concerts. He currently writes a weekly column on Playbill.com and tours the country doing master classes and performing his one-man show “Deconstructing Broadway” - and that’s just the tip of the iceberg of his varied Broadway, Off-Broadway, and television career.

    This Sunday, April 27th at 4pm - jazz pianist Armen Donelian will perform works from his new CD: Sayat-Nova: Songs Of My Ancestors in a CD release gathering at Castle Street Cafe in Great Barrington, MA in association with Berkshires Jazz.

The legendary Hudson Valley pianist will perform in a trio with Dave Clark on bass and George Schuller on drums.

    During the month of April, the Catskill Mountain Foundation is launching its 2014 Orpheum Dance Festival featuring ZviDance. This exciting dance company has offered several Master Classes, and a few open rehearsals at the Catskill Mountain Foundation’s Orpheum Film & Performing Arts Center in Tannersville, NY.

ZviDance is in residency at the Catskill Mountain Foundation and will present an in-progress new work, Surveillance, on Friday, April 25 at 4 pm. This new work, which began development in the fall of 2013, explores our lives in the new world of the surveillance camera.

On Saturday, April 26, 7:30 pm, ZviDance will present a performance of Dabke, a line dance based on a Middle Eastern folk dance often performed at weddings and other celebrations.

Zvi Gotheiner joins us to tell us more.