The Stage at HEIRLOOM

Double Diamond is the latest musical collaboration between Berkshires’ Sarah McNair and Karl Mullen, formerly of indie folk favorite Wandering Rocks. This bluegrass duo will make the hills shimmy and shake as they pluck their way through some classic rollicking tunes. (Fresh Grass, 2013)

Born to a gardener & a journalist who would blast The Beatles, Canned Heat, & Peter, Paul and Mary during car rides to-and-from their rural Massachusetts home, it’s fitting that Eliza Edens is a musician who takes an observational approach to the natural world around her. Combining the adventurous fingerpicking of The Tallest Man on Earth, the calm resolve of Laura Marling, and the aching pulse of Bon Iver, Eliza spins songs with wistful lyrics and winding melodies that belong somewhere between your tumbledown front porch stoop and a hazy bar in the big city — and leave a little space to linger. She is a grantee of Club Passim’s 2017 Iguana Music Fund and is currently crafting a debut record.

Hailing from Williamstown, Mass., Jimmy Bergin (viola), Ted Gilley (bass) and Bill Wootters (keyboard) will kick off our HEIRLOOM festival with gypsy jazz standards and hefty dose of local flavor.

A local legend, Norm’s music and presence lift up the minds and spirits of all who hear him play.

DANCER

Bryanna Bradley creates dance performances that conjures the connectivity of internal and external world(s). She was born in 1995 and raised in Southeast Queens.  In July 2016, Bradley participated in the Improv Traditions & Innovations Program at The School at Jacob’s Pillow under the tutelage of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (Urban Bush Women). That same summer she was a Black Girl Spectrum (BGS) on Tour participant with award-winning choreographer Camille A. Brown. In May 2017, Bradley premiered her dance workbuck:an exploration of black masculinity in Nick Cave’s exhibit ‘Unti’ at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), the largest contemporary art museum in the U.S. Bradley made her theatrical debut in October 2017 as a guest actor and choreographer at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts(MCLA) Theatre production of Passing Strange. She has performed for other artists like choreographer Mersiha Mesihoivc/Circuit Debris, dream-pop band Arc Iris, and Boston Poet Laureate Danielle Legros Georges. Bradley was a 2018 LANDING program participant at Gibney led by Miguel Gutierrez and spends her days laughing at her own sense of humor.

DESCRIPTION OF PIECE:

Soul Train(ed) is a 13-minute work in which the audience is configured in the structure of Soul Train line. Set to “Truth” by Kamasi Washington, the performance uses the form of the Soul Train line to explore the history, movements, and transitions—“heirlooms” I have picked up as a black American woman. Layering these physicalities along with zoning in and out of the audience creates multiplicity in the experience ..

Erica Barreto exercises her passion for the arts, experiential learning, and writing through her workshop facilitations, community-based projects, publications and research opportunities. In 2018, Erica Barreto earned a BFA in English/Communications with a concentration in Creative & Professional Writing and a minor in Arts Management from MCLA. She is currently the Communications & Enrollment Assistant at BART Charter Public School.

Melissa Quirk Cairns (also known as Sadie’s mom) is a teacher, poet, and Associate Director of WordXWord. She has performed as feature poet on several area stages including Greenfield Poetry Festival, Poets Speak Loud (Albany), and Pittsfield’s 10X10 Festival, and has been a guest poet for Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’s podcast on Indiefeed Poetry. Her poems have appeared in print in The Mind’s Eye and Rogue Particle.

Alex is a multidisciplinary artist and workshop facilitator based in New England. He has performed on final stage at poetry slams in Boston, Chicago, and Seattle, as well as represented the Mill City Poetry Slam of Lowell, Massachusetts at local, regional, and national slams in 2015 and 2016. When he is not building furniture, baking bread or drawing comics, he hosts “World of Mouth,” a youth literary safe space at The Bookloft, an independent bookstore located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Cynthia Saunders Quinones is a poet and teacher living in North Adams. Her poems have been published in several print and online journals. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College, where she was a Rona Jaffe Fellow. Currently, she works at Pine Cobble School as the KidLit Ambassador, she facilitates a writing workshop for teens via the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, and teaches as an artistic mentor for Barrington Stage Company’s Playwright Mentoring Project.

Liz Bevilacqua’s work has been published in Monkey Bicycle, Juked, Slice, Bodega, Dime Show Review, and Bridge Eight. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Florida and lives in Williamstown, MA.

You can also find Liz in the gWorks’ kitchen hosting a kombucha-making workshop. Don’t miss either!

Stage programming is free with your HEIRLOOM entry!