SARATOGA SPRINGS – Greenwich native and Skidmore College graduate Josh Chambers made a name for himself around Saratoga in the 1990s as both a musician, playwright and director. Chambers passed away Feb. 12, 2021 at the age of 45. 

Spa City born hometown rockers The Figgs will perform in a special tribute to the life and legacy of Josh Chambers, 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 20. In-person tickets are $12.50-$25. Proof of vaccination is required for attendees.

For more information and a complete calendar of upcoming events at Caffe Lena, go to: caffelena.org. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS – Opera Saratoga has announced a return to large scale performances this summer with a new festival model that embraces partnerships with multiple venues across the region. Those venues include: Proctors in Schenectady; The Egg in Albany; The Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs; The Round Lake Auditorium in Round Lake Village; The Barn at French Mountain in Lake George Village; and The Mansion Inn in Rock City Falls. 

At the heart of the 2022 Summer Festival will be performances of Rossini’s bel canto comedy The Barber of Seville on Proctors MainStage, as well as his Petite Messe Solennelle at The Round Lake Auditorium; Sky on Swings by Lembit Beecher and Hannah Moscovitch at The Egg, which explores the journey of two women living with Alzheimer’s disease; and Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway masterpiece, Sweeney Todd, on the Amphitheater Stage of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. 

Additional events will include A Broadway Cabaret at The Mansion Inn; A Juneteenth Celebration at Proctors’ GE Theater; and a series of master classes featuring members of Opera Saratoga’s Young Artist Program, to be announced. In addition, the 2022 Opera Gala will take place on Sunday June 5th at The Barn at French Mountain, in Lake George Village. 

“While our decision to expand our geographic footprint this summer was catalyzed by the need for renovations at The Spa Little Theater, where we have been performing since 1998, it has also been inspired by our increased activity across the region throughout the year,” said Opera Saratoga’s Artistic and General Director Lawrence Edelson, in a statement.

“We began asking: with so many remarkable theaters in our region, might we be able to better serve our mission by reconceiving our Summer Festival in a way that doesn’t limit us to a single venue? While we remain committed to producing in Saratoga Springs, as the opera company of the Capital Region, our goal is to provide access to our Summer Festival programming in the same way we are able to do with our year-round programs.” 

PETITE MESSE SOLENNELLE – June 2 and June 3 @ 7:30 p.m. Presented by Opera Saratoga in partnership with The Round Lake Auditorium.

A BROADWAY CABARET – June 12 @ 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Presented by Opera Saratoga in partnership with The Mansion Inn.

A JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION WITH SIDNEY OUTLAW – June 19 @ 2:30 p.m. Produced by Opera Saratoga in Partnership with Proctors.

SWEENEY TODD – THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET. June 29 and June 30 @ 7:30 p.m. Produced by Opera Saratoga in Partnership with the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

SKY ON SWINGS – July 7 @ 7:30pm and July 9 @ 2 p.m. Produced by Opera Saratoga in Partnership with The Egg. 

THE BARBER OF SEVILLE | IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA. July 8 @ 7:30 p.m. and July 10 @ 2 p.m. Produced by Opera Saratoga in Partnership with Proctors. 

Tickets for the 2022 Summer Festival will be available through Festival Passes and Single Tickets. Festival Passes, which provide a 20% discount on single ticket prices and priority seating for all productions and events, will be available beginning February 1. Single Tickets will go on sale March 15. 

Opera Saratoga’s 2022 Summer Festival is made possible in part with the support of the New York State Council on the Arts and the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. 

Audience members will be required to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 for all performances, and masks will be required based on prevailing conditions at the time of the Festival. 

Opera Saratoga, formerly known as Lake George Opera, began with a production of Die Fledermaus at the Diamond Point Theatre on July 5, 1962, playing to an audience of 230. The Company now calls Saratoga Springs home and performs for more than 25,000 people annually. For more information, visit www.operasaratoga.org 

SARATOGA SPRINGS – Home Made Theater has been awarded $49,500 grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to support the recovery of the nonprofit arts and culture sector. 

Following New York State’s $105 million investment in the arts for FY2022, NYSCA has awarded more than $80 million since June 2021. 

“The arts have long been a critical sector in our economy, and as we continue to rebuild a stronger New York, it’s essential we do all we can help this industry thrive once again,” NY Gov. Kathy Hochul said, in a statement. “These awardees represent the best of what New York’s vibrant communities have to offer and with this funding in hand, they will be able to not only continue their creative and inspiring work, but help spur revitalization in their own backyard as well.”

Home Made Theater will use the funds to help fulfill their mission to enrich the cultural life of the Capital Region and beyond by offering a diverse range of locally sourced live theater created by professionally minded artists, providing the opportunity for exciting and rewarding participation in all aspects of theater to the community. 

“2022 will continue to bring change and Home Made Theater will play a vital role in the renewal of our state’s economy and creative ecosystem,” said Mara Manus, Executive Director, NYSCA. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Congregation Shaara Tfille and The Jewish Community Center of Saratoga Springs host a live streaming Winter Film Festival from Dec. 31 – Jan 9.  The wide variety of exclusive, award-winning new full features and documentaries and are open to the entire community.

The films are presented by Menemsha Films, an organization that has worked for 20 years with a mission to preserve and share Jewish stories collected from around the world.  Menemsha has built the largest library of its kind anywhere outside of Israel.

The 20 full features include A Starry Sky Above The Roman Ghetto (Un Cielo Stellato Sopra Il Ghetto Di Roma), An Impossible Love, An Irrepressible Woman, Asia, Born in Jerusalem and Still Alive, Broken Mirrors, Here We Are, If You See My Mother, Labyrinth of Peace, Neighbours, Plan A, Shadow Country, The Crossing, The Sign Painter, Those Who Remained, Thou Shalt Not Hate, Tiger Within, Valiant Hearts, Wet Dog and Winter Journey. Website: www.saratogasynagogue.org. 

Email likebertrand518@gmail.com to obtain trailers and the live streaming links. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS —Composer and fictioneer Rees Shad returns to his roots at Caffe Lena with The Convo Combo to premiere songs from the upcoming album, “One Glass At A Time,” on Jan. 8 at Caffe Lena. 

Shad began performing at the Caffe’s open mic nights in 1984 and was encouraged by its founder and namesake, American folk impresario Lena Spencer, to explore deeper narratives which the songwriter credits as foundational to his career. 

A native of Manhattan who used his father’s Dictaphone to record his first song at the age of four, Shad grew up absorbing New York’s downtown music scene from Gerde’s Folk City to CBGB’s.

His recordings range from his debut album Walls (1993) to The Watcher (2019). The Convo Combo features longstanding Shad collaborator/drummer Bobby Kay and bassist Jeff Link who join Shad to explore a more improvisational approach to performing his crafted narratives. 

For more information, go to www.ReesShadMusic.com. For tickets, go to: www.caffelena.org. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Rolling Stones registered as the highest grossing tour of Pollstar’s 2021 chart year, bringing in $115.5 million and more than 516,000 tickets over the course of just two months. 

Looking ahead to the new year on the regional stage, the following shows are currently scheduled to take place at Saratoga Performing Arts Center as part of the pop concert season in 2022. 

June 3: Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Raising The Roof

June 10: John Mulaney: From Scratch

June 16: The Doobie Brothers with Tom Johnston, Michael McDonald, Pat Simmons and Jon McFee

June 21: Steely Dan with Special Guest Steve Winwood

July 3: Tedeschi Trucks Band – Wheels Of Soul, Featuring: St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Gabe Dixon

July 7: Morgan Wallen with special guest HARDY/The Dangerous Tour

July 17: Chicago and Brian Wilson with Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin

July 19: Foo Fighters/Live in North America 2022

July 22: Rod Stewart

July 23: Backstreet Boys: DNA World Tour

July 31: Matchbox Twenty

Aug. 17: REO Speedwagon & Styx with Loverboy/Live and UnZoomed

Aug. 19: Goo Goo Dolls

Aug. 20: Bill Burr (Slight Return)

Aug. 21: Dispatch & O.A.R. with special guest G. Love

The 26th Annual Saratoga Festival of Trees took place December 1-5 at the Saratoga Springs City Center presented by Catholic Charities. Photos by Super Source Media. 

The 35th Annual Victorian Streetwalk Weekend took place December 2-5, presented by The Saratoga Springs Downtown Business Association. The event began with the Annual Tree Lighting Ceremony in Downtown Saratoga Springs and continued throughout the weekend with live performances, holiday window displays, Santa neighborhood visits and more. Photos by Super Source Media.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — This week is the final week to see the stunning exhibition Opener 33: Sarah Cain—Enter the Center at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College.

Cain, a Los Angeles–based artist, has transformed the Wachenheim Gallery with experiments in color, composition, and non-conformity. Enter the Center features more than a dozen major paintings from 2012 through 2020, a site-specific hand-painted gallery floor, painted furniture, and a new facsimile artist book. She modified her canvases by cutting, sewing, and attaching found objects. She painted the floor and furniture on-site, grounding the space in the present tense. 

The artist book is based on Cain’s Music Book, a project Cain began in 2008 in which she paints on pages of sheet music from old music books. The artist edition of the music book is designed by Los Angeles–based artist and designer Conny Purtill and published by the Tang Teaching Museum in association with X Artists’ Books. 

Also on View

Elevator Music 42: Laura Splan — Rhapsody for an Expanded Biotechnical Apparatus: The artist Laura Splan’s interactive sound and sculptural work re-envisions the Tang elevator as an organism’s cell and its visitors as proteins. Through April 10.

Lauren Kelly: Location Scouting: Artist and curator Lauren Kelley reshapes the Tang Teaching Museum’s mezzanine by combining meditations on travel with snapshots of everyday life in her drawings, sculpture, and stop-motion animation videos. Through September 10, 2023.

On Their Own Terms: This student-curated exhibition showcases visual art and lives of artists such as Howard Finster, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses,  Bill Traylor, and Joseph Yoakum who have been called “outsider” artists, while also interrogating the ways that curators, dealers, and scholars have sometimes overlooked this important work. Through April 10.

Hyde Cabinet #15: Doomsday: Organized by Paige Meade ’22, the student-curated project explores the legacy of the Y2K bug through the Jan. 18, 1999, cover of Time magazine and Prince’s album 1999. Through Feb. 27.

Admission is free. The museum will be open Friday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. All visitors must show proof of vaccination and wear masks at all times. The Museum will be closed during Skidmore’s winter break beginning Dec. 20 to prepare new exhibitions to open Saturday, Jan. 29. For more information, call the Visitors Services Desk at 518-580-8080, email tang@skidmore.edu or visit tang.skidmore.edu.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Nacre Dance Group’s Empire State Youth Dance Ensemble provides pre-professional training and performance to a select group of talented teenage dancers in the Capital Region through this annual audition. 

Auditions will be held from 1-2:30 p.m. Jan. 8 at SPAC/School of the Arts. There is a $15 audition fee.

Accepted dancers will begin a 6-week rehearsal schedule on Sundays starting the weekend of January 15. Rehearsal location and time varies depending on role. Performance is Feb. 26 at Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga Springs, with two performances – at 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

Pre-registration is required. Go to: nacredance.org/esyde.