Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis
Tanglewood, Lenox
Friday, June 26 at 7 p.m.
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis brings one of the world’s great jazz ensembles to Tanglewood. Founded in 1988, the orchestra is known for performing a sweeping repertoire that ranges from Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charles Mingus to new music by leading jazz composers and arrangers. With Marsalis at the helm, this should be a powerhouse evening of swing, virtuosity, and big-band brilliance under the Shed, or under the stars.
New Directions Cello Festival
Bombyx, Florence
Friday, June 26 – Sunday, June 28
Since its inception at New York City’s Knitting Factory in 1995, the New Directions Cello Festival has provided an international forum for the exchange of music and ideas for creative and alternative cellists of all ages, levels and backgrounds. With a “big tent” ethos, New Directions embraces all styles of music, particularly those not commonly taught at conservatories and music schools and especially those that incorporate improvisation. The Friday and Saturday concerts showcases facilitators and guest artists; Sunday features guest artists and festival participants together.
Victor Wooten & The Wooten Brothers
The Drake, Amherst
Friday, June 26 at 8 p.m.
Victor Wooten & The Wooten Brothers bring a lifetime of musical connection to The Drake. The brothers first performed together in Hawaii in 1966, making an early impression as musical prodigies. Over the years, they went on to build a robust genre-crossing sound with influences of R&B, jazz, funk, soul, fusion, and more. Together, they’ve earned 10 Grammy Awards and 26 Grammy nominations.
CLI Conservatory End of Year Show
Academy of Music, Northampton
Saturday, June 27 and Sunday, June 28 at 12 p.m. and 6 p.m.
If you go to the Big Y in Southampton at lunchtime, you often see groups of cheerful young people walking around with a distinctively poised gait. They’re students of the CLI Conservatory, a dance school that is housed in two nearby buildings. (One used to be the Peebles department store, the other was the Harley Davison dealership.) These young adults are training for careers as dancers under the tutelage of CLI founder and Southampton native Teddy Forance alongside some of the best choreographers in the world of dance. I went to their multimedia year-end show last year. It was tremendously inspiring.
Montague World Music Mini-fest
Peskeompskut Park, Turners Falls
Saturday, June 27 from 4 – 7 p.m.
Weathervane Community Arts’ free World Music Mini-fest returns to Peskeompskut Park with an afternoon of music, workshops, and food in downtown Turners Falls. The concert lineup includes Myrtle Street Klezmer’s exuberant Eastern European music, pipa virtuoso Minqi Wang, and Guachinangos, a high-energy NYC band that blends Mexican son jarocho with Colombian cumbia and other Latin American rhythms. Bring a lawn chair or blanket and look for food from the El Sotano Taco Truck. Rain date is Sunday, June 28.
Mohawk Trail Concerts: Lizzie Shamash, Ilana Davidson & Stephen Porter
Charlemont Federated Church, Charlemont
Saturday, June 27 at 5 p.m.
Mohawk Trail Concerts continues its summer season with a wide-ranging vocal recital featuring mezzo-soprano Lizzie Shamash, Grammy-winning soprano Ilana Davidson, and pianist Stephen Porter. The program includes works by Monteverdi, Handel, Offenbach, Brahms, Debussy, Irving Berlin, and others. All Mohawk Trail Concerts take place at the Charlemont Federated Church on Route 2, which has excellent acoustics and air-conditioning.
Paul Simon in Concert: A Quiet Celebration
Tanglewood, Lenox
Saturday, June 27 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, June 28 at 6 p.m.
Paul Simon makes his Tanglewood debut with “A Quiet Celebration,” a two-part concert that opens with Seven Psalms, his Grammy-nominated, 33-minute continuous work for voice and acoustic instruments. After a brief intermission, Simon returns to the stage with songs from across his remarkable career, including greatest hits and deeper cuts. Shed tickets are sold out. But as of this writing, lawn tickets are still available which, weather permitting, would offer lovely way to hear Paul Simon on a June evening in the Berkshires. Try to nab them now.
Clark Art Summer Concert Series
Reflecting Pool Lawn, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown
Wednesdays, July 1 – July 29 at 6 p.m.
The Clark’s free summer concert series returns to the Reflecting Pool Lawn with five Wednesday evening concerts connected thematically to the museum’s Ground/work 2025 exhibition. Bring your own chair or blanket and settle in for a terrific lineup: guitar powerhouse Jackie Venson on July 1, Berkshire band Vaguely Pagan on July 8, rising blues star Jontavious Willis Trio on July 15, the Latin jazz-infused Natalia Bernal Band on July 22, and the Lao Tizer Quintet on July 29. Food from the outdoor Café 7 grill will be available for purchase beginning at 5 p.m. Rain moves the concerts indoors to the Manton Research Center auditorium. Note: Jackie Venson is also performing at De La Luz Soundstage in Holyoke on Thursday (see below).
Watermelon Wednesdays: Skye Consort with Emma Björling
West Whately Chapel, Whately
Wednesday, July 1 at 7:30 p.m.
Watermelon Wednesdays brings wonderfully adventurous acoustic music to the intimate West Whately Chapel. Skye Consort & Emma Björling perform what they call trans-Atlantic chamber folk, drawing on songs and tunes from Scandinavia, Québec, Ireland, Scotland, England, and beyond. With voices, fiddle, nyckelharpa, cello, bouzouki, banjo, and percussion, the group moves through whirling polskas, groovy reels, love songs, hymns, and original compositions.
Jackie Venson
De La Luz Soundstage, Holyoke
Thursday, July 2 at 7 p.m.
Austin blues-rock guitarist and vocalist Jackie Venson brings her fierce musicianship and genre-hopping sound to De La Luz. Known for blistering guitar work and magnetic vocals that move through blues, soul, electro-funk, rock, and R&B, Venson has shared stages with Gary Clark Jr. and Melissa Etheridge, appeared on Austin City Limits, and earned praise as one of Austin’s most exciting rising stars. Expect a night of big energy, deep grooves, and serious guitar fireworks.
Fannie (The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer)
Chester Theatre Company, Chester
Thursday, July 2 – Sunday, July 12, 2026
Filled with music, humor and spirituality, this is the impassioned story of American civil rights activist and hero, Fannie Lou Hamer, from her beginnings as the daughter of a sharecropper, to co-founding the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, to her historic speech at the 1964 Democratic Convention and beyond.
Music Mondays
Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge
Mondays, June 29 – Aug. 31, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Find the perfect spot to picnic amidst the BBG’s beauty while enjoying performances from some very talented local performers. Bring a blanket, sip something cool and let the sweet sounds set the tone for a perfect summer evening. Music Mondays will take place rain or shine; however, in the event of severe weather, concerts will be canceled, and refunds will be provided. First up on Monday, June 29: The Rejuvenators with Wanda Houston.
COMING SOON
Twelfth Night
Shakespeare & Company, Lenox
Saturday, July 4 – Sunday, July 26
Shipwrecks, disguises, and mistaken identities spark the joyful chaos of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s most playful romantic comedy. Love runs amok and nothing is quite what it seems in this sun-soaked tale of music and mischief. Performed outdoors July 4–26 at one of Newsweek’s Top 10 Outdoor Theater Venues in the U.S., this summer production invites audiences to relax, laugh, and revel in Shakespeare under the open sky.
Young@Heart Brass Bash
The Sanctuary at Look Park, Florence
Tuesday, July 7 at 7 p.m.
Just days after America's 250th, Young@Heart Chorus and the Bombyx Brass Collective take the stage at the Sanctuary in Look Park to perform songs from the American songbook with a nuanced look at our country's past. This is the first collaboration between the two groups — and you can expect to dance the night away under the stars. Bring your picnics and lawn chairs.
Yidstock: The Festival of New Yiddish Music
Yiddish Book Center, Amherst
Thursday, July 9 – Sunday, July 12
This four-day festival will include musicians and performers at the forefront of the Yiddish music scene. In addition to seven concerts, the lineup also includes workshops, talks, and special tours, all in celebration of Yiddish music, language, and culture. Better order tickets now!
A Stake in the Ground
Historic Deerfield
Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, July 10 – Aug 16
In the summer of 1774, seeds of revolution begin to germinate in Deerfield when a Liberty Pole is brought to town. The characters in three new one-act plays explore the political divisions, tangled family relations, and the complexities of enslavement from all sides. The plays will be performed outdoors at the locations near where the characters lived in the past, including outside the Ashley House, the Allen House, and the Stebbins House.
Marlboro Music Festival: 75th Anniversary Season
Marlboro, Vermont
Saturday, July 18 – Sunday, Aug. 16
Marlboro is in Vermont, and therefore not within the four western Mass. counties that we cover in Culture to Do. But any chamber music lover in the 413 will want to experience the fruits of this extraordinary program. Each summer, some 80 musicians from around the world gather on Marlboro's campus for seven weeks of intensive rehearsal, study, and discovery. As the summer unfolds, groups that feel they have gotten to the very heart of the music present the results of their work to audiences during five weekends of concerts and open rehearsals. Believe me, it’s stunning.
Bang on a Can: LOUD Weekend
MASS MoCA, North Adams
Thursday, July 30 – Saturday, Aug. 1
Bang on a Can’s LOUD Weekend brings more than 70 adventurous musicians to MASS MoCA for three packed days of experimental music in the museum’s galleries, stages, and outdoor spaces. This year’s lineup includes the Bang on a Can All-Stars performing a new arrangement of Philip Glass’s Glassworks, guitarist Yasmin Williams, pianist Conrad Taothe percussion/synth duo NOMON, and tons more. LOUD Weekend is the grand finale of Bang on a Can’s three-week summer residency at MASS MoCA, when the whole campus starts to feel like a laboratory for new sound.