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B y A n a s t a s i a S t a n m e y e r
10x10
Barrington Stage Company’ s wildly popular 10x10 New Play Festival is in full swing through March 15, so make sure to catch it before this year’ s festival is one for the books. Experience Barrington Stage favorites in the spotlight as 100 minutes of dreams, drama, and pure delight unfold on the St. Germain Stage in Pittsfield. These fast-moving plays— 10 plays, each 10 minutes in length— will make you laugh, might make you cry, and promise to make you think. The 10x10 is directed by Alan Paul, Matthew Penn, and Moira O’ Sullivan. Check out the plays this year: Do You Hear an Echo? by Cynthia Faith Arsenault; Love Shovel by John C. Davenport; Top Shelf Tolstoy by Maximillian Gill; A Modest Proposal II by David MacGregor; Tannenbaum by James McLindon; Best By Date by Scott Mullen; The Rebound Quiz by Byron Nilsson; Cricket by Erin Osgood; Waking Greek by Jessica Provenz; and Missed Disconnections by Samara Siskind. barringtonstage. org
CITYJAZZ FEST AT 20
The 20th annual Pittsfield CityJazz Festival is a profile of Women In Jazz. The headline concerts feature Georgia Heers, a rising artist who channeled Ella Fitzgerald in George Clooney’ s 2025 Broadway reincarnation of Good Night and Good Luck; Grace Kelly, a 34-year-old titan of the alto saxophone who has just completed her 20th year as a professional performer; and Veronica Swift, perhaps the most successful crossover vocalist on the jazz / rock scene today. The two ticketed concerts will take place on the campus of Barrington Stage. Heers sings the music of Billie Holiday on April 18 in the intimate( and most Billie-like) setting of Mr. Finn’ s Cabaret; and the capstone concert on April 25 with Kelly, Swift, and the UConn Jazz Ensemble will be at the Boyd-Quinson Stage, the site of the first Pittsfield CityJazz Festival in 2005.( Back then, the venue was known as the Berkshire Music Hall. The inaugural Pittsfield CityJazz Festival was held on the last weekend before the conversion to Barrington Stage began.) Interspersed among the headline concerts will be Berkshires Jazz’ s annual“ jazz crawl,” a jam session, and its jazz prodigy concert, the latter sponsored by the Friends of the Athenaeum. berkshiresjazz. org
HBD to The Bookstore and to Matt!
OLIVIA DOUHAN
The Bookstore in Lenox celebrates its 50th anniversary on April Fool’ s Day. That’ s when Matt Tannenbaum bought it, in the year of our country’ s bicentennial. The month of April is another milestone for Matt, who turns 80 on 11th— which makes it even more of a reason to celebrate! David Silverstein opened The Bookstore in 1966 in Stockbridge, in the living room of a small rented house. The Bookstore moved to Lenox several years later, and the torch was passed to Matt in 1976.( And when he’ s ready, he will pass it on to his daughter, Shawnee.) Matt has become a bit of a celebrity after the 2022 release of the widely shown Hello, Bookstore. Plans are in the works to mark The Bookstore’ s half-century milestone with perhaps an open mic and some invited speakers. Keep checking bookstoreinlenox. com as details unfold.
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
TASTE & TELL
Want the inside scoop on where local notables go for something savory or sweet? Writer Heather Dunhill, a new and somewhat opinionated local who brought us“ What To Do in Lenox,” is back again with some tasty restaurant recommendations. Here’ s an excerpt from her story“ Taste & Tell,” which appears exclusively online:“ Instead of hoarding all the suggestions myself, I tagged a crew of longtime locals and asked them one question:‘ Where are you going on repeat these days— for food, drink, or something sweet?’ The answers did not disappoint.” She reached out to notables such as MASS MoCA Executive Director Kristy Edmunds, former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick,“ clean beauty” entrepreneur Jane Iredale, folk legend Arlo Guthrie, and others. Read the story at berkshiremag. com.
6 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE Spring 2026