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. 

SCHENECTADY — Legendary country music quartet, The Oak Ridge Boys, will be bringing their distinctive harmonies and deep catalog of smash hits to the Rivers Casino & Resort Schenectady Event Center on Sunday, March 13, 2022. 

The Oak Ridge Boys bring four decades of charted singles, and 50 years of tradition. Their string of hits includes “Bobbie Sue,” “Dream On,” “Thank God For Kids,” “American Made,” “I Guess It Never Hurts To Hurt Sometimes,” “Fancy Free,” “Gonna Take A Lot Of River,” and many more. In 2009, they even covered the rock duo White Stripes song, “Seven Nations Army,” and in 2011, they rerecorded a thirtieth anniversary version of “Elvira.”

Tickets go on sale Friday, Dec. 17. Ticket cost starts at $40 and will be available at RiversCasino.com/Schenectady. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — On Tuesday, Dec. 21, Rochmon Record Club will converge Live in Caffe’ Lena to listen to, and learn about, Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones – one of the greatest drummers for one of Rock & Roll’s greatest bands –  as well as a sonic celebration of the lives of other musicians who left the planet this year.

Doors will open at 6:30, the show begins at 7 p.m. with a live audio & video presentation by Chuck Vosganian, aka “Rochmon” and his sidekick, Alyssa, aka “The Button Pusher!”

A Rochmon Record Club Listening Party is meant to inform and deepen our understanding of the history of the individual performers, songs and the stories that went into the making of this classic album. By listening together, we get to hear the music again for the first time.

Also this week, Let’s Be Leonard, a jazzy five-piece rock and roll jam band from Saratoga Springs, perform their annual holiday concert at Caffe Lena. The show takes place 7 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 23. 

Caffe Lena has returned to full capacity. In order to ensure everyone’s safety, proof of vaccination for all attendees is required. For more information about tickets and events at Caffe Lena, go to: caffelena.org. 

ALBANY — Following the announcement of their upcoming studio album “Requiem,” due Feb. 4 via Loma Vista Recordings, Korn has announced a March 2022 tour produced by Live Nation. 

Accompanied by very special guests Chevelle and Code Orange, the 19-date arena tour begins on March 4 in Springfield, Missouri and will stage a show in Albany at the TU Center on March 20. 

Since forming, Korn has sold 40 million albums worldwide, collected two Grammys and toured the world countless times.   

Tickets for the upcoming tour go on sale Friday, Dec. 17 on Ticketmaster.com. 

CAMBRIDGE — Things have changed, to say the least, explains David Andrew Snider, executive and artistic director of the Hubbard Hall Center for the Arts and Education. 

The arts field is resizing, recombining, rethinking. Gone are the days of long-term subscribers and reliable audiences. Arts organizations must become more flexible, adaptive, and nimble to survive and thrive in today’s world. Arts managers must engage, adapt, and innovate. Great management invites creativity. Vibrant artistry welcomes strong management. “Managing Arts Organizations” can help, he says.

In “Managing Arts Organizations,” Snider provides a playbook for navigating arts management in this new era and seeks to inspire a new generation of arts managers. Each chapter is focused on a specific topic, with principles, stories, exercises, advice, and best practices related to that topic. The appendix includes eight case studies, each illuminating issues in arts management via a real-world scenario or organization. These narratives will enhance the reader’s understanding of topics including financial management, marketing, programming, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts, and accessibility across multiple disciplines. 

Snider has more than 25 years of experience as a director, educator, producer, and administrator. Currently he is the executive and artistic director of the Hubbard Hall Center for the Arts and Education in Cambridge, and a lecturer in the arts administration program at Skidmore College. thedavidsnider.com

The book will be released worldwide by Rowman & Littlefield publishers on Jan. 15 and is available for pre-order via Amazon, from Rowman & Littlefield , or from Cambridge, New York’s local bookstore Battenkill Books. Readers pre-ordering through Battenkill Books will receive a copy signed by the author.