SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College will host a book-launch party for “Forms of Awakening: Tibetan Art from the Jack Shear Collection” on Friday, Nov. 14 at 6 p.m. in the Arthur Zankel Music Center Lobby. Following the celebration will be a free 7:30 p.m. performance by Tenzin Choegyal and Attacca Quartet.

With a clothbound cover and endpapers drawn from the artworks inside, “Forms of Awakening” is three books in one: a full catalog of Jack Shear’s gift of Tibetan art to the museums at Vassar College, Williams College, and Skidmore College; a scholarly volume of essays exploring the possibilities of engagement with Tibetan visual culture (both within and beyond the classroom); and documentation of the exhibitions at Vassar, Williams, and Skidmore.

Free tickets for the 7:30 p.m. performance are available at www.skidmore.edu/zankel/events.php.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The hallway that connects The Parting Glass’ front bar with a backroom stage is decorated with fading images of musicians who once performed at the venue. The talent that graced the Irish pub’s stage includes Alison Kraus (winner of 27 Grammy Awards), Bela Fleck (17-time Grammy winner), and legendary folk group The Kingston Trio.

But it’s been some time since these artists visited a place that, well into the 21st century, was still outfitted with 1980s and 90s analog gear. One Parting Glass regular, Anthony Mangano-Delaney, used to gaze at the worn images of nationally touring musicians on the walls and wonder if perhaps his local watering hole wasn’t due for a resurgence.

In November of 2024, Mangano-Delaney created Fast Tony Productions, a company that for the past year has been booking, promoting, and staging concerts at the Parting Glass. It was the long-time music enthusiast’s first foray into the actual music business. Despite this, he’s already sold thousands of tickets to nearly two dozen shows, while also handling all the lights, sound, and event production himself.

“There’s never been one show that just went totally smooth, uneventful, or unsurprising,” Mangano-Delaney told Saratoga TODAY. “There’s always something new that pops up, which, in a way, that’s why I continue to do it and enjoy doing it. There’s always a new challenge.”

One of the self-taught promoter’s first orders of business was updating Parting Glass’ equipment. He moved the old school analog gear up to a section of the attic that he calls “The Parting Glass Museum” and replaced it with new speakers and mixing boards. Now, the venue boasts equipment that meets modern-day touring standards. Musicians coming from larger venues in places like New York City can simply plug in and play.

“Life isn’t easy on the road for theater acts these days, let alone acts that are in smaller clubs and bigger bars,” Mangano-Delaney said. “So to be able to give them five-star treatment, to give them a great artists’ area, great hospitality, a full menu, everything you could want to drink…a great sound check, a great place to rest—it’s good to be able to offer that to people.”

Mangano-Delaney said that the revamped Parting Glass has impressed visiting bands enough that most have either returned or plan to return.

Among the acts booked thus far are veteran rocker Pat Travers, Irish-American band the Young Dubliners, and Jimmy Vivino, leader of the house band featured on Conan O’Brien’s late-night talk show.

Next up on the schedule is a Nov. 14 co-headling “Heavyweights of Soul” show featuring Grammy winner Mike Farris and Grammy nominee Sugaray Rayford; a Dec. 10 concert with Curtis Salgado, the real-life inspiration behind John Belushi’s Blues Brothers characters; a Dec. 21-23 McKrells Christmas residency; a Jan. 13 show with Tantric, who are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their certified gold debut album; and a Jan. 23 performance by five-time Grammy nominees Professor Louie & the Crowmatix, whose frontman produced three of The Band’s studio albums.

It’s a busy lineup, but for Mangano-Delaney, the juice is worth the squeeze.

“When you wrap up a show, the house lights come on, you put on the house music, and you have people coming up wanting to shake your hand and wanting to give you a hug,” Mangano-Delaney said. “I like to see the smiles on their faces and know that the same passion that I have, I’m able to share that and see other people’s faces light up. That’s really cool for me.”

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Opera Saratoga is celebrating its 65th anniversary with a “modern new minimalism that makes room for maximum drama,” the company announced last Friday.

“With a move towards the future, Opera Saratoga announces an upcoming season that is stripped down, up close, and unmistakably NOW,” said General and Artistic Director Mary Birnbaum in a news release. “The modern audience has made it clear that it wants to connect with art that has a level of realness and purity. So, we’re pushing imagination to take center stage with minimal scenery and maximum drama.”

After the company’s first-ever winter offering, a semi-staged “La bohème” at Universal Preservation Hall on Dec. 5, the company will produce a touring education opera, “Stone Soup,” by Mark Campbell and Joe Illick. This opera will tour over 30 schools and community venues throughout March.

In May, Opera Saratoga and the Glimmerglass Festival will partner to present Kurt Weill, Berthold Brecht, and Elizabeth Hauptmann’s “Happy End.” Censored after its second performance in Germany in 1929, “Happy End” is a satire of “big business and big religion.” The show will be music directed by Robert Ainsley, the artistic and general director of the Glimmerglass Festival, and it’ll feature Ana Karneža, who won the Kurt Weill Foundation’s Lotte Lenya competition in 2024. The performance will be directed by Birnbaum in collaboration with the Glimmerglass Festival dramaturg Kelley Rourke. The piece will tour venues all over the state, including two performances at Universal Preservation Hall on May 28 and 30.

“This is an exciting new model of producing opera where regional companies partner with each other to bring opera to individual communities rather than expecting them to travel to us,” Birnbaum said.

The Opera Saratoga Summer Festival season, which features 20 rising opera stars selected from a pool of 850, will continue with the following performances: 

Rodgers & Hammerstein concert at the Mansion of Saratoga on May 31; 

Festival Artist Portrait Concerts focused on what made the singers want to become artists at Saratoga Arts on May 20 & 27 and June 3 & 10; 

Fully staged productions from June 20-28 of Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady,” Donizetti’s “The Elixir of Love,” and a workshop of “Drift” from Opera Saratoga’s first ever mainstage commission from an all-female team, composer Alyssa Weinberg and librettist, J. Mae Barizo.

In addition to these programming announcements, Opera Saratoga also announced the appointment of pianist, coach, and educator Adam Nielsen to the company as the head of music staff and director of the festival artist program.

“Adam’s work on the music staff of the Metropolitan Opera, as a recitalist with major opera stars like Davòne Tines and Ryan Speedo Green, as well as his work as an educator at The Juilliard School, make him a perfect fit to lead the Festival Artist Program into the next era of Opera Saratoga,” Birnbaum said. “In addition, we are so lucky to have Laurie Rogers continuing to lead the company in a new role as director of artistic operations.”

For more information about Opera Saratoga, visit operasaratoga.org.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Spring Street Gallery will be hosting “Harvest to Horizon,” a solo exhibition of paintings by local artist Kate Edwards, until Nov. 9. Edwards’ work reflects on landscapes and still lifes, with familiar scenes from the Adirondack region.

“Overall, Edwards’ style is painterly in the truest sense: expressive, textured, and guided by an emotional response to her subject rather than rigid precision,” said Belinda Colón, curator and director, in a news release.

A multidisciplinary artist, Edwards also specializes in fine art framing and co-owns Kettlewell & Edwards at 13 Phila Street in downtown Saratoga.

Spring Street Gallery’s hours are Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.; or by appointment by emailing springstreetgallerylist@gmail.com at least 24 hours in advance. The gallery is located at 110 Spring Street.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Lotus, an electronic rock group that has been a jam scene mainstay for decades, will perform at Putnam Place on April 15, 2026, in support of their new album, “Rise of the Anglerfish,” the venue announced this week. Tickets go on sale Friday, Nov. 7 at 10 a.m.

Lotus describes themselves as “innovators in blending electronic dance music with the jam band model of improvisation.” The group draws inspiration from genres such as psychedelic rock, krautrock, post-rock, disco, and funk. Over the last two decades, the band has toured extensively throughout the country, including at legendary venues like Red Rocks and at popular music festivals like Bonnaroo and Electric Forest.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Billy Strings might be the most popular bluegrass musician on the planet right now, adored by both genre purists and jam band fans alike. Ahead of his headlining Nov. 12 concert at the MVP Arena in Albany, Saratoga TODAY uncovered a little-known story about Strings’ journey to the top, which passed through the famed Spa City folk venue Caffe Lena.

Alan Epstein is a local musician who sometimes teaches mandolin classes at Lena. In the fall of 2013, he received an email from a friend and fellow mandolin player, Don Julin, praising a young guitarist named Billy Strings, who would’ve been around 21 years old at the time. Epstein trusted Julin’s ear for music and decided to book a concert featuring Julin and Strings at a yoga studio in Greenwich. 

“We invited Don and Billy to stay with us, and I remember, like it was yesterday, the day they arrived,” Epstein told Saratoga TODAY. “They had driven straight through from Traverse City, and after they unloaded their gear, Billy took out his guitar and started to pick and sing. [My wife] Bonnie and I were speechless. It felt like, for lack of better words, he was the real deal. I called all my friends and told them to come out to the concert. It was a small crowd but an outstanding show.”

Fast forward a year later, and Epstein received another email from Julin about booking a second show with Strings. This time, the yoga studio was booked, so Epstein needed a backup plan. He had recently begun hosting a monthly bluegrass jam at Caffe Lena, so he reached out to Sarah Craig, the venue’s executive director. The two couldn’t figure out an immediate booking solution, so Epstein and his wife Bonnie decided to host the bluegrass wunderkind at their home in Greenwich. Craig was among the 32 privileged few in attendance who gathered in Epstein’s living room to hear Strings play. It was at this house show, Epstein recalled, that Craig spoke with Julin about booking him and Strings at Caffe Lena for the following spring.

According to the caffe’s records, Strings and Julin then played a show there on April 3, 2015. Epstein called it “one of the best I had ever heard them play.” While Strings was in town, he stayed at Epstein’s home, where the pair jammed together. They picked “Bill Monroe tunes on two mandolins after I had made us all a breakfast of fried matzah,” Epstein said.

That memorable experience would predate Strings’ rise to nationwide fame, which was still a couple years away. In 2017, Rolling Stone named Strings one of “ten new country artists you need to know.” Also that year, Strings released his debut solo studio album, “Turmoil & Tinfoil,” which landed on the Billboard Bluegrass Albums chart for seven straight weeks. HuffPost proclaimed the album to be among the best of the year. It was the beginning of a whirlwind that would result in Strings collaborating with big names like Willie Nelson and Luke Combs, as well as earning a 2021 Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album that cemented his reputation as a bonafide star.

But Strings’ success was never a sure thing. In fact, far from it. He was born in Michigan in 1992, to a biological father who would die of a heroin overdose when Strings was only two years old. While still a child, Strings’ mother and stepfather struggled with methamphetamine addiction. At just 13, he left home and battled addiction himself.     

“My parents are recovering addicts,” Strings told podcaster Theo Von in an interview last year. “They’re doing so great these days. We all are, too. It’s like we’ve all sort of made it through some crazy shit and we made it out the other side and we went, ‘Holy shit, how the hell did we do that?’ But all that is to say that I’m super proud of my parents these days and I’m proud of myself. We all made it.”

Somehow, Strings emerged from a rough start in life to become both “California sober” and a wildly successful musician. It’s an unlikely journey that included a few early stopovers in the Saratoga area, where locals quickly saw the gifts Strings had to offer.

“I’m a big fan of Billy Strings and I love what he has done for bluegrass music,” Epstein said.

Those unfamiliar with Strings’ talent will have a chance to see it up close on Nov. 12, when he plays at the MVP Arena in Albany.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Saratoga Torch Club invites the public to an evening of history and performance on Monday, Nov. 17 at the Saratoga Springs Holiday Inn. Dinner begins at 6 p.m., followed at 7 p.m. by Nathan Richardson’s portrayal of Frederick Douglass.

“My goal isn’t to reenact history,” Richardson said in a news release. “It’s to embody it—to bridge past and present in a conversation that still demands to be heard.”

A 22-year U.S. Army veteran, Richardson said that when he started reading Douglass’ work, he could “literally hear his voice—his rhythm, his cadence. It was like music to a poet’s ear.”

Richardson performs more than a dozen of Douglass’s speeches, from “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July” to his addresses on the Constitution and civil rights. Richardson’s presentations mix history, performance, and audience engagement, inviting spectators to ask Douglass anything they wish. That interaction, he said, is what makes interpretation different from reenactment. “A reenactor sticks to the script. An interpreter can talk about anything—the person’s friends, the politics, the price of bread. You become the person.”

For more information about the event or to reserve a seat, go to www.smartacus.com/civic-conversations/interpreting-frederick-douglass.

The Saratoga Torch Club is part of a national network of forums where professionals and community members meet to share ideas, promote civil discourse, and explore issues of public interest. Monthly dinners are open to the public and feature guest speakers from diverse fields.