SARATOGA SPRINGS —Two-time Grammy nominee Raul Midón will perform at Caffe Lena at 7 p.m. Sunday, April 28. 

The blind singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist – an advocate for artists and professionals in the entertainment biz with disabilities – comes to town with a new, 10-song album “Lost & Found.” 

Midón is joined on the album, released April 26, by friends Andrés Forero (Hamilton, Phish, U2) on Drums & Percussion, Richard Hammond (Hamilton) on bass, and Federico Peña (Black Generations Project) on keyboards & piano. 

More information, tickets, go to: caffelena.org. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Dan Navarro will stage a workshop and a show at Caffe Lena on May 3. 

Navarro’s career began as a songwriter, most often with Eric Lowen, for artists as diverse as Pat Benatar, The Bangles, Jackson Browne, Dave Edmunds, The Temptations, Dionne Warwick, and others. In the 1990s and 2000s, he and Lowen recorded and toured as the acclaimed acoustic duo Lowen & Navarro until 2009. Navarro has transitioned smoothly into a busy solo career over the past decade, touring nationally almost constantly. 

His latest album, “Horizon Line,” released in August was produced by Jim Scott (Tom Petty, Wilco, Dixie Chicks, & the first five Lowen & Navarro albums) in a dozen sessions in mid-2021 and a dozen more in spring 2022. 

Caffe Lena is located at 47 Phila St., Saratoga Springs. Performance tickets are $23-25. Afternoon workshop tickets sold separately. Call 518-583-0022 or go to: www.caffelena.org. 

GLENS FALLS — The Park Theater Foundation presents ‘Comedy After Dark’ featuring highly-acclaimed comedian, Shafi Hossain. 

Currently working out of NYC, Hossain made his TV appearance on Kevin Hart’s LOL Network’s show Road Comics. He was named one of New York’s Funniest Stand Up by the New York Comedy Festival (2021), is a regular at Comedy Cellar and has headlined performances in international locales, captivating audiences in Canada, Paris, and London. 

The evening of laughter and fun takes place 8 p.m. April 26. Tickets: $25. Doors: 7:30 p.m.

The Park Theater is located at 14 Park St., Glens Falls. visit www.parktheatergf.com.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — On Friday, April 26, Caffe Lena will host the Captain Fun Lunchtime Listening Hour, featuring choice vinyl cuts from the Al McKenney collection sonically oozing through the cafe’s stellar system of sound. 

The event takes place from noon to 1 p.m. Friday April 26, and admission is free. Bring your brown bag lunch, coffee and tea are provided. 

The tunes to be spun come from among the 1,516 record albums (and several hundred CD’s) curated by the late Al “Captain Fun” McKenney. 

Designated record spinner Rochmon AKA Chuck Vosganian serves as regular event host, and each month features a different playlist chosen by a different charismatic member of the local community. This month’s playlist was chosen by Thomas Dimopoulos.     

Marc Ribot is coming to Saratoga Springs. 

One-time member of John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards. Go-to guitar guy by a diversity of artists from Tom Waits, Elvis Costello and Allen Ginsberg to Robert Plant, John Zorn and Marianne Faithful. Recording artist who has released more than two dozen albums under his own name over a 40-year career. 

Ribot (pronounced REE-bow), was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1954. The guitar legend will be at the Arthur Zankel Music Center at Skidmore College at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 28 for a live accompaniment to Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 silent film “The Kid.”

Ribot’s score was commissioned by the New York Guitar Festival and premiered in 2010 at Merkin Hall. 

In an interview with Flavorpill, Ribot said, “I did not use Charlie Chaplin’s score as a reference. I admire his score greatly, and his writing greatly, but I did not want to use that as a reference because my interest in this, as with everything else, comes from doing a particular reading. And my particular reading of this film is as a contemporary film.”

Tickets are $20 general public, $5 for the Skidmore College community (students, faculty, staff, and alumni). Purchase online at https://www.tix.com/ticket-sales/zankel/7074/event/1379633 or call the box office at 518-580-5321 between 1 and 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. 

ALBANY  — Guitarist Dweezil Zappa is set to embark on a 30-city concert tour across the U.S., celebrating two of his father Frank Zappa’s landmark albums, “Roxy & Elsewhere” and “Apostrophe.” 

The tour, which commemorates the 50th Anniversary of both albums, will stage a show at the Palace Theatre on Aug. 23. 

The “Rox-Postrophy” Tour kicks off on Aug. 1 in Phoenix, Arizona. Zappa has curated a setlist highlighting fan-favorite tracks from each record; replete with unique hybrid arrangements. 

“The songs you think you know, may just end up surprising you with parts you’ve never heard before” Zappa said in a statement. “If you have never heard my father’s music, this might be the tour to start your obsession.” 

Tickets range from $29.50 – $89.50 and are available via Ticketmaster at ticketmaster.com. Tickets are also available for purchase at the Palace Theatre Box Office (located at 19 Clinton Ave.) Box Office hours are Monday – Friday noon to 5 p.m.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — For two weekends, starting on Friday, April 1h, Home Made Theater will present The Humans, written by Stephan Karam.

Winner of the 2016 Tony Award for Best Play, The Humans is filled with equal parts humor and hurt. 

Breaking with tradition, Erik Blake has brought his Pennsylvania family to celebrate Thanksgiving at his daughter’s apartment in lower Manhattan. As darkness falls outside the ramshackle pre-war duplex, eerie things start to go bump in the night and the heart and horrors of the Blake clan are exposed. The Humans is also the winner of a 2016 Obie Award for Playwriting and a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Actors in The Humans that may be familiar to Home Made Theater audiences include Mary Ellen Dowling (Calendar Girls), Antoinette Fasino (‘night, Mother) and Daniel Perez (Cry It Out). New to Home Made Theater are Jessie House, Jocelyn Khoury, and David Skeele.

Performances are Fridays and Saturdays, April 19th, 20th, 26th, and 27th at 7:30 p.m., and Sundays, April 21st and 28th at 2 p.m.. There will be a Thursday at 7:30 performance on April 25th. 

All performances are at the Dee Sarno Theater, inside Saratoga Arts, 320 Broadway in Saratoga Springs. Tickets are available at Home Made Theater’s website, www.HomeMadeTheater.org, or by calling 518- 587-4427 during business hours.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College invites the public to its April programs, featuring tours, screenings, family programs, and two special performances How Vowels Endure Winter on April 12 and If Our Hands Could Hold The Weight Of Promise on April 17.

How Vowels Endure Winter will be performed at 7 p.m. on Friday, April 12. It is the world premiere performance of a series of monologues with piano created by David Greenberger and Tyson Rogers in response to work by the artist Joachim Schmid that occupies an entire wall in the Tang exhibition Studio/Archive. The new work features short tales about collecting, creating, organizing, and memory. 

On Wednesday, April 17, at 5 p.m., if our hands could hold the weight of promise features Elevator Music 48: Alone, only in flesh exhibiting artists MIZU, Theresa-Xuan Bui, and Antonius-Tín Bui, as well as dancer Glenna Yu. They will activate the Tang elevator and atrium staircase with cello, improvisational movement, spoken word poetry, and audience interaction with traditional Vietnamese garments (áo dài). 

These performances are in addition to the Framing the Flesh feature film screenings, weekly Tang Guide tours, curator’s tours, family art-making workshops, and a conversation around The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, a groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist in the US.

Additional events:

Saturday, April 13, 2 p.m. – Family Saturday: Rock Animals. A multigenerational art-viewing and art-making workshop inspired by Yvette Molina: A Promise to the Leaves. For children 5 and older with an adult companion. Another Family Saturday will be April 27. 

Wednesday, April 17, 4:30 p.m. – K-Pop Dance Performance! Students in Visiting Artist-in-Residence Chia-Ying Kao’s Dance 317: K-Pop II class will perform as part of their semester’s final work. 

Thursday, April 18, noon – Curator’s Tour of Elevator Music 48: Alone, only in flesh. Curatorial Assistant Ivy Vuong leads a tour of the latest elevator installation. 

Thursday, April 18, 6 p.m. – Framing the Flesh: birth/rebirth (2023). The third and final screening in the Framing the Flesh series, organized by Piper Ingels ’24, explores our fascination with and revulsion to the fantasies of unconventional bodily alterations. 

Friday, April 26, 8 p.m. – Tang Party 2024. The annual Tang Party celebrates student creativity with immersive and interactive installations and performances on the Tang grounds. 

Current exhibitions include – Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour A tour-de-force, ten-screen video installation explores the life of Frederick Douglass.

All events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Tang Visitors Services Desk at 518-580-8080 or visit the Tang website at http://tang.skidmore.edu.

When local farmer Frank Vadney went out to inspect his fields at the edge of town in Bethlehem, N.Y. 43 years ago, he could not have expected to find a dead body on the corner of his property – but he did. Was this a murder? The body was so badly decomposed, the cause of death was uncertain. 

In the area that has since been referred to by the Vadney family as Dead Man’s Cove, the discovery of human remains in 1981 would be the start of an intriguing investigation – one that would go cold for decades. In 2013, Sergeant Adam Hornick of Bethlehem PD was tasked with researching the old John Doe computer entry made by his department. The journey to identify the body found on the Vadney Farm in 1981 takes Hornick through a web of unknowns, challenges, and obstacles. But his persistence pays off with the eventual identification of the ‘man without a name’ who had been buried long ago in a pauper’s grave in Albany County. 

Hornick recalls his journey using investigative processes, new technologies and gut instinct as he searches for a missing person who had never been reported missing. The episode, Dead Man’s Cove, is as much a story about the compassion of a police officer to the survivors of Bethlehem’s John Doe, as it is an account of advancements in DNA science, genetic genealogy and evolving state law. Former police chief Mark Spawn interviews Retired-Commander Adam Hornick about the case of Franklin Feldman in this week’s episode of APB Cold Case. 

APB Cold Case is a true crime audio podcast featuring unsolved missing persons and murder cases from across the country.

Episode Link – Dead Man’s Cove: Anatomy of a John Doe Case. Go to: www.APBColdCase.com. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Roots scholar, multi-instrumentalist and Caffè Lena favorite Michael Eck will be staging his 60th Birthday celebration at Caffe Lena on April 19, and he’s bringing a full band AND a brand new album along with him. 

Eck, who first debuted at Caffè Lena in 1990 will be joined by an all-star ensemble featuring Rosanne Raneri, Kevin Maul – who’s flying in from Florida for the show, and Sten Isachsen and Bob Buckley of Jim Gaudet & The Railroad Boys. 

“A nifty little ensemble to accompany me on an evening of original chestnuts, new compositions and classic folk songs at my favorite venue,” Eck says. 

The new album is titled “Fermata,” and will be released in conjunction with the show. 

“A fermata is a musical notation. It looks like a bird’s eye and is sometimes called a hold. It allows the player discretion regarding the value of a note or a rest. To me, it speaks of freedom in music,” says Eck, who will spend the earlier part of the show date getting the design tattooed on his back. 

“Each of the characters singing these songs, whether myself, an addict in Kentucky, an old coin, a bereft wife or a bullet in a revolver, has been thrown an unexpected pause—a hold. And I know from pauses,” he says. 

Eck’s musical legacy in the region is lengthy – breaking in with the Albany punk scene of the early ‘80s with Glaze, to more recent collaborations with Ramblin Jug Stompers and Lost Radio Rounders. The release of Fermata comes 30 years after Eck’s debut, Cowboy Black, and along the way he has served as curator and host of WAMC’s American Roots Series at The Linda; assistant producer of the Music Haven Concert Series, and producer, host of fundraising concerts, and longtime board member at Caffe Lena, alongside among many other accomplishments. 

“It’s a celebration of my 60th birthday, and I hope you’ll join me,” says Eck. “I’m not old, I’m seasoned!”

The special Michael Eck and Friends performance will be staged 8 p.m. Friday, April 19, at Caffe Lena, 47 Phila St., Saratoga Springs. For more info, go to: www.caffelena.org.