Capital Region Curated: October 12-18
Alan Koslow’s weekly guide to Capital Region campus events, with Nobel economist Claudia Goldin, the Sagrada Família architect and more.
Alan Koslow
33
mins read time
Originally published at
Substack: Capital Region Curated
Capital Region Curated, Alan Koslow’s weekly guide to Capital Region campus events.
What’s worth your time at Capital Region colleges and universities.
🏆 🏛️ 🎶 🎭 📚
Nobel economist Claudia Goldin, a leading scholar of women’s work and economic opportunity.
A NOBEL ECONOMIST, GAUDÍ’S UNFINISHED MASTERPIECE, WHISTLING WITH AN ORCHESTRA & A MUSICAL MEETING OF MINDS
Claudia Goldin at UAlbany; the Sagrada Família architect at RPI; Molly Lewis and the Skidmore Orchestra; Jennifer Koh and Vijay Iyer at Union; and Bard’s three-day Arendt Forum.
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🧭 START HERE: WHAT’S INSIDE THIS WEEK
⭐ Top Picks — Nobel economist Claudia Goldin; the architect completing Gaudí’s Sagrada Família; whistling virtuoso Molly Lewis with the Skidmore Orchestra; and Jennifer Koh and Vijay Iyer’s New York premiere.
🏛️ Ideas & Public Life — Women’s economic autonomy, architectural innovation, parental burnout, university-community engagement and workforce development.
📚 Books, Writers & Ideas — Andy Rooney’s life, Kristen Millares Young’s memoir and queer art and identity.
🎭 Theater & Performance — Pam Tanowitz’s creative process and Compagnie Hervé Koubi’s dance residency.
🎨 Art & Visual Culture — The Massry Center’s reopening, UAlbany’s artists’ reception, the Tang’s fall exhibitions, Town Crier and guided tour.
🎶 Music, Sound & Technology — Four-hand piano, The Cookers, two Molly Lewis performances, contemporary classical music, German art song and Alash’s Tuvan throat singing.
🎬 Film — Backrooms at EMPAC.
🌎 Regional Extension — Bard’s Hannah Arendt Forum and The Orchestra Now.
🔥 Plan Ahead — Research programs, major speakers, concerts, fall theater and early warnings through winter.
📅 ADD THE COMPLETE WEEK
Add the supplied weekly calendar to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook.
📅 ADD THE COMPLETE WEEK — GOOGLE · APPLE · OUTLOOK
🔐 VISITING A CAMPUS EVENT?
Some campus buildings now have controlled or ID-card access, particularly during the day. If you’re attending a public event and find the doors locked, ask someone for help and explain that you’re a visitor coming for the program. Arriving a few minutes early for smaller daytime events is a good idea.
Evening events are generally held in buildings that are open and accessible for the program.
💬 READER FIELD NOTES
Did you attend something listed in Capital Region Curated?
Leave a quick comment: what did you see, and would you recommend it? One sentence is enough.
⭐ TOP PICKS
🏆 Claudia Goldin — The Rise of Female Autonomy and the Decline of Fertility
UAlbany · Wednesday, October 14 · 4–5:30 PM
Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin has transformed how we understand women’s work, education and economic independence. Her research reveals how changes in technology, employment and family life reshaped opportunities for women across generations—and why the gender earnings gap persists even among highly educated professionals. At UAlbany, she examines the connection between women’s expanding autonomy and declining fertility, a subject that reaches far beyond economics into the future of families and society. Registration closed October 7.
See 🏛️ Ideas, Public Life & Campus Conversations below.
🏛️ Mauricio Cortés Sierra — Sagrada Família
RPI/EMPAC · Wednesday, October 14 · 5–6:30 PM
More than 140 years after construction began, Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família remains one of the world’s most remarkable architectural undertakings. Mauricio Cortés Sierra, who has worked on the Barcelona basilica since 2006, will explain how generations of architects and craftspeople have translated Gaudí’s surviving designs into a structure that modern engineering is finally making possible. From the central towers to the still-unfinished Glory Façade, this free lecture offers an unusually direct perspective on a building whose construction has become part of its history.
See 🏛️ Ideas, Public Life & Campus Conversations below.
🎶 Skidmore Orchestra Featuring Molly Lewis
Skidmore · Friday, October 16 · 7–9 PM
A professional whistler performing as an orchestral soloist may sound improbable, but Molly Lewis has made the human whistle an expressive instrument capable of surprising precision and emotional range. Her work moves between jazz, lounge music and cinematic atmosphere, and her whistling has reached audiences through film as well as her own recordings. On Friday, she joins the Skidmore Orchestra in a free program that places her distinctive sound alongside classical repertoire. She returns Saturday with her own five-piece band for a very different performance.
See 🎶 Music, Sound & Technology below.
🎻 Jennifer Koh & Vijay Iyer
Union College · Sunday, October 18 · 3–4:30 PM
Violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist-composer Vijay Iyer are two of contemporary music’s most adventurous collaborators, each known for expanding the possibilities of classical performance. Their Union College concert brings Bach into conversation with new music, including the New York premiere of Iyer’s Scenes of Living & Dying, Part 2: The Betweens. Capital Region Classical helped commission the work, giving the local performance a special connection to its creation. Children and college students are admitted free at the door.
See 🎶 Music, Sound & Technology below.
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🏛️ IDEAS, PUBLIC LIFE & CAMPUS CONVERSATIONS
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🏆 Claudia Goldin — The Rise of Female Autonomy and the Decline of Fertility
University at Albany · Pong S. Lee Memorial Lecture
Goldin’s historical research overturned the assumption that women’s participation in paid work rose steadily with economic growth. By tracing employment, education and marriage across generations, she showed how industrialization, the rise of office work and access to professional training changed women’s economic options.
Her work on the gender earnings gap also identifies the premium many employers place on long or unpredictable hours. Those rewards can become particularly consequential after parenthood, even among people who began their careers with similar qualifications. Her research helped explain why changes in education and employment opportunities did not automatically eliminate earnings inequality.
Her Albany lecture connects that history to declining fertility as women gain greater control over careers, relationships and family formation. The subject touches economics, public policy and the choices families make in societies where women’s opportunities have expanded dramatically.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 4–5:30 PM
📍 Performing Arts Center, Recital Hall · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free · Registration required
Registration closed October 7.
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Gaudí’s Sagrada Família in Barcelona, with its intricate, nature-inspired architecture.
🏛️ Sagrada Família — The Dream of a Genius, A Collective Endeavour Across Generations
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute · Steven Ehrlich ’69 Architecture Lecture
Construction of Antoni Gaudí’s basilica began in 1882, and the architect died in 1926 with much of his design unrealized. Later architects inherited surviving models and drawings, some damaged during the Spanish Civil War, and faced the unusual responsibility of completing another architect’s work across generations. The Sagrada Família is therefore both an architectural monument and an extraordinary example of continuity across changing technologies and artistic eras.
Mauricio Cortés Sierra has worked on the basilica since 2006 and helped direct its central towers. Digital modeling, structural geometry and precision manufacturing now make it possible to construct forms Gaudí developed through physical models and experiments. The challenge is not simply to finish a building but to understand how its original design principles can be carried forward responsibly.
This Steven Ehrlich ’69 Architecture Lecture focuses on how the project balances fidelity to Gaudí with contemporary engineering, including the remaining Glory Façade. The opportunity to hear from an architect directly involved in the work makes the presentation especially worthwhile for readers interested in architecture, engineering, design or the history of Barcelona’s most famous building. It is a lecture at EMPAC, not a structural tour.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 5–6:30 PM
📍 EMPAC Theater · RPI · 50 8th Street, Troy
🎟️ Free
Details — Architecture Lecture Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🍕 Public Engagement on the Menu — Lunch & Learn
University at Albany · University-Community Partnerships
What counts as public engagement—and whose contributions tend to go unrecognized? UAlbany’s inaugural lunch-and-learn, “What? That’s public engagement?”, looks at the many ways university work connects with communities beyond campus, including partnerships that may receive less attention than formal research projects.
Jay Bloom, Lakia Green, Janine Jurkowski and Sheri Stevens bring perspectives from the AI Plus Institute, inclusive excellence, public health and community service. The discussion offers a chance to consider how different kinds of expertise and community relationships contribute to a university’s public role. Pizza and dessert are included.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 11:45 AM–1 PM
📍 Minerva Room, University Main Library · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free · Registration requested
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🧠 Rachel Dinero — The Impact of Social & Economic Disruption on Parental Burnout: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic
Union College · Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium
The pandemic abruptly collapsed boundaries between paid work, childcare and schooling. Parents who had previously relied on schools, relatives and childcare providers suddenly found themselves managing overlapping responsibilities at home. Dinero’s research asks how those disruptions affected parental exhaustion and whether economic and social pressures continued to shape families after lockdowns ended.
The Le Moyne College psychologist studies relationships, family well-being and social health. Her presentation draws on evidence collected during a period when families faced unusually intense demands, providing a research-based perspective on experiences that many parents remember vividly. The topic also raises broader questions about work arrangements, social support and the conditions that make parenting sustainable.
Union’s Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium offers an opportunity to hear current psychological research outside a conventional classroom. Community members are welcome, and complimentary lunch and refreshments are offered.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 12:45–1:50 PM
📍 Karp 105 · Union College · 807 Union Street, Schenectady
🎟️ Free · Public welcome · Complimentary lunch
Details — Psychology Speaker Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🏭 Advancing Workforce Development — Research & Panel Discussion
Hudson Valley Community College · HVCC North
What skills will the region’s employers need, and how can colleges prepare students and workers to meet those needs? Hudson Valley’s workforce-development program brings research and discussion together around those questions, connecting education with the changing demands of the regional economy.
The program presents workforce-survey findings and a panel discussion with industry and community perspectives. For readers interested in education, economic development or the relationship between colleges and employers, it offers a chance to hear how institutions are approaching the preparation of the next generation of workers.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 10–11:30 AM
📍 HVCC North · 345 Hermes Road, Ballston Spa
🎟️ Open to the public
Details — HVCC Inauguration Week Programs
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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📚 BOOKS, WRITERS & IDEAS
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📖 Paul Grondahl — Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life
University at Albany · New York State Writers Institute
Albany-born Andy Rooney became familiar to generations of viewers through his wry closing essays on CBS’s 60 Minutes, where his observations about ordinary irritations and human behavior made him one of television’s most recognizable commentators. Yet that late-career fame was only part of a much longer journalistic life. Rooney began reporting during World War II for Stars and Stripes and went on to work across radio, television and print.
Paul Grondahl approaches Rooney as a fellow Albany journalist. A longtime Times Union reporter and director of the New York State Writers Institute, Grondahl brings a local perspective to a national media figure whose career spanned major changes in American journalism. His biography follows Rooney’s development as a writer, his professional relationships and the sometimes complicated personality behind the public image.
The evening includes a discussion of Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life and a book signing. SUNY Press is a cosponsor as part of its 60th-anniversary programming. For readers interested in journalism, broadcasting or Albany history, this is a chance to revisit an unusually long and influential career.
📅 Tuesday, October 13 · 7:30–9 PM
📍 Page Hall Auditorium · UAlbany Downtown Campus · 135 Western Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
📚 Kristen Millares Young — Desire Lines
University at Albany · New York State Writers Institute
Kristen Millares Young’s fiction and nonfiction explore migration, cultural inheritance and the uneasy question of who gets to tell another person’s story. Her novel Subduction follows an anthropologist working in the Pacific Northwest and examines the ethics of observation, particularly when an outsider’s professional ambitions intersect with another community’s history and experience.
Her memoir Desire Lines turns that attention inward, tracing family history, motherhood, sexuality and the expectations that shape women’s lives. The title evokes the informal paths people make for themselves rather than the routes laid out for them. Young’s writing examines the tension between inherited obligations and individual desire, bringing literary form to questions that are at once intimate and social.
The UAlbany appearance offers an opportunity to hear how Young approaches personal material as a writer and how questions of identity become questions of narrative craft. A book signing follows, giving readers an opportunity to continue the conversation.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 4:30–5:30 PM
📍 Campus Center West Boardroom · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
📖 Ira Baumgarten — Shapeshifters: Bodies Like Water
Russell Sage / Opalka Gallery
Shapeshifters: Bodies Like Water considers bodies and identity as changing rather than fixed, bringing queer experience, landscape and transformation together through images and multimedia work. The project uses the idea of shapeshifting to explore how people understand themselves and how those understandings may evolve in response to place, memory and relationships.
Ira Baumgarten’s presentation connects the accompanying book with the larger artistic project. Opalka Gallery’s setting makes it possible to consider the material and visual dimensions of the work alongside its written ideas. The subject crosses the boundaries between art, personal narrative and social experience, encouraging audiences to think about identity as something lived and continually reinterpreted.
The evening includes discussion and a book signing, with proceeds benefiting a local LGBTQ+ nonprofit. It is an accessible opportunity to encounter the project and the community questions behind it.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 6:30–7:30 PM
📍 Opalka Gallery · Russell Sage College · 140 New Scotland Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
Details — Opalka Programs & Events
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎭 THEATER & PERFORMANCE
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Pam Tanowitz, known for her inventive approach to ballet and modern dance.
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💃 Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral: Artists in Conversation
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
Choreographer Pam Tanowitz has built an international reputation by taking the formal vocabulary of ballet and modern dance apart and recombining it in unexpected ways. Her work often looks deceptively orderly at first: dancers move through recognizable patterns, only to interrupt or redirect the audience’s expectations. That combination of classical precision and contemporary experimentation has made her one of the most distinctive voices in American choreography.
Her Pastoral project uses Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony as a point of departure rather than a score to illustrate literally. The work brings choreography into conversation with visual art, music and ideas of landscape. Collaborators including artist Sarah Crowner, dramaturg Gideon Lester and composer Caroline Shaw contribute different perspectives on how an audience experiences space, sound and movement.
At the Tang, Tanowitz joins Crowner, Lester and poet April Bernard in a conversation moderated by Brian Lawson. Rather than presenting a finished performance, the discussion opens a window onto the decisions that shape one—an appealing opportunity for anyone interested in how artists work across disciplines.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 5:30–7 PM
📍 Payne Room, Tang Teaching Museum · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free and open to the public
Details | Skidmore Residency Announcement
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Dancers in Sol Invictus, blending contemporary movement and acrobatics.
💃 Compagnie Hervé Koubi — Residency and Sol Invictus
Union College / The Egg · Stephanie C. Davis Dance Residency
Hervé Koubi’s dancers combine contemporary choreography with acrobatics, capoeira and street-dance movement. Rapid lifts, catches, aerial turns and floorwork create images that depend as much on collective trust as on individual athleticism. The company draws on a wide range of movement traditions, creating performances that can feel both highly disciplined and startlingly spontaneous.
Union College’s Stephanie C. Davis Dance Residency makes the creative process visible before the public performance. Friday’s free master class and lecture-demonstration offer different ways to encounter the company: one emphasizes movement and technique, while the other helps audiences understand how the dancers build their physical vocabulary and work together. These activities are distinct from Saturday’s ticketed stage production.
On Saturday, the company performs Sol Invictus at The Egg, preceded by a conversation with Koubi and Union dance director Laurie Zabele Cawley. The residency offers an unusually complete experience of a visiting dance company, from the rehearsal-room process to the finished work. All four components are listed separately in the calendar so readers can choose the events that interest them.
Friday, October 16 — Union College
📅 5–6:15 PM · Master Class
📅 6:30–7:30 PM · Lecture/Demonstration
📍 Henle Dance Pavilion · Union College · 807 Union Street, Schenectady
🎟️ Free and open to the public · No registration required
📅 Calendar — Master Class: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Lecture/Demonstration: Google | Apple/Outlook
Saturday, October 17 — The Egg
📅 6:15–6:45 PM · Pre-show Talk
📅 7 PM · Sol Invictus
📍 The Egg · Empire State Plaza, Albany
🎟️ Ticketed performance · See ticket page for prices and pre-show access
📅 Calendar — Pre-show Talk: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Sol Invictus: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎨 ART & VISUAL CULTURE
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🎨 Massry Center for the Arts — Reopening & “New Walls”
Hudson Valley Community College · Albany
The Massry Center for the Arts begins a new chapter under Hudson Valley Community College’s leadership. The reopening returns the former College of Saint Rose facility to public view as a center for arts, education, performance and community engagement. Wednesday morning’s ribbon-cutting and open house offer an opportunity to visit the building and mark its renewed place in Albany’s cultural life.
Later that afternoon, the Esther Massry Gallery welcomes visitors for New Walls, a faculty art exhibition and opening reception. The two public events offer different ways to encounter the center: through its reopening in the morning and through the work of its artists in the afternoon. Neither requires registration.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 10:30–11:15 AM · Ribbon-cutting & Open House
📍 Massry Center for the Arts · 1002 Madison Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Open to the public · No registration required
📅 Calendar — Ribbon-cutting & Open House: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 4–6 PM · “New Walls” Opening Reception
📍 Esther Massry Gallery, Massry Center for the Arts · 1002 Madison Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Open to the public · No registration required
📅 Calendar — New Walls: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎨 University Art Museum — Artists’ Reception
University at Albany · University Art Museum
Three exhibitions are on view at UAlbany’s University Art Museum: Howard Schwartzberg: Volume, Surface, Core, mosie romney: ash, whistle & redress, and Invitation to the Light Factory. The exhibitions bring together different approaches to making and experiencing art, from the physical qualities of objects to the relationship between images, language and perception.
Schwartzberg’s title points toward the interaction of volume, surface and internal structure. Romney’s exhibition introduces a different set of materials and associations, while Invitation to the Light Factory brings artist Suzan Frecon into dialogue with poet Marcella Durand. Together, the presentations demonstrate the breadth of contemporary practice within a university museum.
Friday’s artists’ reception allows visitors to see all three exhibitions during a single evening and meet people involved in the work. Light refreshments and free parking in the State Quad Student Parking Lot are listed for the program.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 5–7 PM
📍 University Art Museum, Fine Arts Building · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
An installation view at the Tang Teaching Museum, known for its interdisciplinary exhibitions.
🖼️ Tang 2026 Fall Opening Reception
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang opens five exhibitions spanning ecology, political history, contemporary art and archival sound. 500 Dams examines grassland regeneration in New Mexico, while Chaia—Yiddishland on the Move draws on digitized recordings from YIVO’s archives. The subjects are quite different, but both demonstrate how museums can connect artistic practice to environmental and cultural memory.
Other exhibitions include A Feeling of With, a faculty-co-curated presentation of the museum’s collection; Mark Thomas Gibson: We Are A Constellation, examining American history and citizenship; and Sheila Pepe: When & Where We Rest, an installation drawing on religion, sociology, queer theory and cultural histories extending from ancient Greece and Rome to the Silk Road. Together, the five exhibitions offer several entry points into the Tang’s cross-disciplinary approach, which regularly places art in conversation with history, politics and other fields of inquiry.
Saturday’s free opening reception is an opportunity to see the entire fall program at once. Readers who enjoy meeting other museumgoers and experiencing a gallery during a public celebration may prefer the opening; those looking for more interpretation can return for Sunday’s separate guided tour.
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 5 PM
📍 Tang Teaching Museum · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
📣 Tang Town Crier — Ongoing Performance
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang’s Town Crier brings a live performance element into the museum experience, announcing news from 1776 and today. The juxtaposition places historical events beside contemporary headlines, inviting visitors to hear how public announcements connect different moments in American life.
The Town Crier is scheduled at 2 PM Tuesday through Sunday during the issue week. Because it is a repeated program rather than six distinct productions, it appears here once, with its daily appearances repeated in the By Day Calendar for readers’ convenience.
📅 Tuesday–Sunday, October 13–18 · 2 PM daily
📍 Wachenheim Gallery, Tang Teaching Museum · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free
🖼️ Tang Guide Tour
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
Sunday’s guided tour provides an introduction to the Tang’s fall exhibitions, including projects examining ecology, archival sound, identity and contemporary art. The museum’s exhibitions are designed to encourage connections across disciplines, and a guide can help visitors understand how individual works contribute to those broader conversations.
Rather than simply moving from one object to the next, a guided tour can explain why particular artists and materials appear together, how the exhibitions were organized and what questions the curators hope visitors will consider. It can be especially useful when the works address unfamiliar historical or cultural subjects.
For readers who would rather explore the exhibitions through conversation than during a crowded opening reception, this is the quieter alternative. The tour also offers an opportunity to ask questions and return to individual works with a clearer understanding of their context.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 2 PM
📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Atrium · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎶 MUSIC, SOUND & TECHNOLOGY
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🎹 Chamber Music Series — Four-Hands Piano
SUNY Schenectady · School of Music
Four-hand piano music once allowed listeners to experience arrangements of large-scale orchestral works in homes and salons before recorded sound was widely available. But the format is more than a practical substitute for an orchestra. Two performers sharing one keyboard can create intricate textures, rapid exchanges and musical conversations that are difficult for a single pianist to achieve.
Megan Glikes and Mark Evans perform music by Mozart, Debussy, Dvořák and Brahms, including Debussy’s Petite Suite and selections from Brahms’s Hungarian Dances and Liebeslieder Waltzes. The program spans contrasting musical styles, from Classical-era elegance to Romantic warmth and the coloristic writing associated with French music.
Because both musicians share the same instrument, their coordination becomes part of what the audience sees as well as hears. The free performance at SUNY Schenectady offers an accessible introduction to a chamber-music format that is less commonly encountered than solo piano or string quartet concerts.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 7–8:30 PM
📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium · SUNY Schenectady · 78 Washington Avenue, Schenectady
🎟️ Free
Details — Chamber Music Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
The Cookers, bringing together generations of experience in modern jazz.
🎷 The Cookers
A Place for Jazz · SUNY Schenectady
The Cookers bring together veteran jazz musicians whose careers connect directly to the hard-bop and post-bop traditions. The group’s name recalls a Freddie Hubbard album, but this is not a historical recreation. The ensemble draws on decades of experience to create contemporary performances grounded in the powerful ensemble writing and improvisational energy associated with modern jazz.
Their recordings, including Believe, The Call of the Wild and Peaceful Heart and Look Out!, combine tightly shaped compositions with expansive improvisation. The music allows individual players room to develop ideas while retaining the sense of a group working toward a shared musical direction. That balance between structure and freedom is central to the band’s appeal.
A Place for Jazz brings the ensemble to SUNY Schenectady, where the concert setting makes the interaction among soloists and rhythm section part of the experience. Trumpeter Eddie Henderson, bassist Cecil McBee, pianist George Cables and drummer Billy Hart bring firsthand connections to the jazz developments of the 1960s into the ensemble’s present-day sound.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 7–8:30 PM
📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium · SUNY Schenectady · 78 Washington Avenue, Schenectady
🎟️ $25 at the door · $26.95 online
Details / Tickets — A Place for Jazz Concert Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Molly Lewis, whose expressive whistling gives her music its distinctive sound.
🎶 Skidmore Orchestra Featuring Molly Lewis
Skidmore College · Arthur Zankel Music Center
Whistling is usually treated as a novelty or casual accompaniment. Molly Lewis instead uses precise pitch, breath and phrasing to make it a fully expressive solo instrument, drawing on jazz, lounge music and cinematic sound. Her musical style can evoke an earlier era of film scores and sophisticated popular entertainment, yet her approach is distinctly contemporary.
Her whistling can be heard in the closing credits of Barbie, and her own recordings—including On the Lips—build an atmospheric musical world around the instrument. What makes Lewis especially interesting is not simply that she whistles exceptionally well, but that she uses the instrument with the phrasing and expressive control associated with accomplished singers and instrumentalists.
On Friday, she appears with the Skidmore Orchestra in a program combining her compositions with music by Delibes, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Fauré and Mozart. The orchestral setting provides a distinctive opportunity to hear her sound in dialogue with a larger ensemble. Saturday’s Café Molly is a separate performance with her own band.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 7–9 PM
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎶 Café Molly: An Evening with Molly Lewis
Skidmore College · Arthur Zankel Music Center
Molly Lewis has two very different Skidmore performances this week. Friday night she appears as the featured soloist with the Skidmore Orchestra; Saturday night, she performs with her five-piece ensemble, bringing her own repertoire into a smaller setting.
The Saturday program draws on jazz, film music and mid-century lounge sounds, with the whistle occupying the role that a singer or horn might take in another ensemble. Lewis’s arrangements create an atmosphere that can feel at once playful, mysterious and nostalgic, demonstrating how an unexpected instrument can become the expressive center of a band.
Café Molly offers a chance to hear how Lewis’s distinctive sound works in her own musical environment rather than in an orchestral setting. Readers interested in her artistry may find the contrast between the two evenings particularly rewarding. Admission is Pay What You Will.
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 8–9 PM
📍 Arthur Zankel Music Center · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Pay What You Will
Details — Skidmore Music Events
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist-composer Vijay Iyer, collaborators across musical traditions.
🎻 Jennifer Koh, Violin & Vijay Iyer, Piano
Capital Region Classical · Union College
Violinist Jennifer Koh is a Grammy-winning advocate for living composers, while pianist-composer Vijay Iyer moves between contemporary classical music and improvisation. Both have built careers around collaboration across musical boundaries, challenging the idea that classical music must remain confined to a fixed historical repertoire. Their work often places familiar traditions in conversation with new musical languages.
Their Union College program places Bach’s D-minor Partita beside newer music, including the New York premiere of Iyer’s Scenes of Living & Dying, Part 2: The Betweens. Bach’s solo violin writing offers one kind of musical intensity, while Iyer’s contemporary composition approaches questions of life, death and the spaces between them through a different sound world.
Capital Region Classical helped commission the Iyer work, making this more than a touring concert: a local presenter participated in bringing the music into existence. The performance offers audiences a chance to hear the new work from the artists closely associated with it. Children and college students are admitted free at the door.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 3–4:30 PM
📍 Memorial Chapel · Union College · 807 Union Street, Schenectady
🎟️ $40 · Children and college students free at the door
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎼 Joshua Tanis & Nellie Rustick Meier — Alumni Concert
University at Albany · Performing Arts Center
Pianist Joshua Tanis and soprano Nellie Rustick Meier return to UAlbany for a recital centered on Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. Both cycles occupy important places in the German Romantic song tradition, using the combination of poetry and music to explore longing, reflection and emotional transformation.
Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder anticipates the harmonic world of Tristan und Isolde, making the songs especially revealing for listeners interested in how his musical language developed. Strauss’s late songs turn toward evening, memory and mortality with long vocal lines and luminous harmonies. Heard together, the two works create a journey across related but distinct musical worlds.
The pairing gives the alumni recital a coherent focus, while the intimate Performing Arts Center Recital Hall provides a setting well suited to voice and piano. Admission is $10, making it an accessible opportunity to hear major works of the art-song repertoire.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 3–4:30 PM
📍 Performing Arts Center, Recital Hall · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ $10
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎶 Alash — Tuvan Throat Singing
Skidmore College · Arthur Zankel Music Center
Tuvan throat singing allows a performer to produce multiple pitches at once, creating a musical texture that can sound almost instrumental. Alash brings that tradition to Skidmore through the voices and traditional instruments of Bady-Dorzhu Ondar, Ayan-ool Sam and Ayan Shirizhik.
The ensemble’s work preserves the sound of Tuva while opening it to encounters with other musical traditions. Collaborations with artists including Béla Fleck and the Sun Ra Arkestra have introduced Alash to audiences far beyond Central Asia. Sunday’s concert offers a chance to hear a form of vocal music whose overtones, rhythms and instrumental colors reward close listening.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 4–5:30 PM
🎟️ See presenter’s ticket information
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎬 FILM
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🎬 Backrooms — Film Screening
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute · EMPAC
Backrooms brings an unsettling online horror phenomenon into the cinema. Its familiar-looking but disorienting spaces turn ordinary architecture into a source of dread, drawing on the sense that a place can look recognizable while feeling fundamentally wrong.
EMPAC’s screening offers an opportunity to experience that atmosphere on a theater screen with a shared audience. For readers interested in contemporary horror, internet-born storytelling or the ways sound and space shape a film’s effect, this is a different kind of campus outing.
📅 Tuesday, October 13 · 7 PM
📍 EMPAC Theater · RPI · 50 8th Street, Troy
🎟️ $3 at the door
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🌎 REGIONAL EXTENSION
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🏛️ The Arendt Forum 2026 — Solidarity: What Are We Fighting For?
Bard College · Hannah Arendt Center
The Hannah Arendt Center’s three-day forum asks what solidarity can mean amid migration, inequality, polarization and declining trust in institutions. Solidarity is often invoked as a political virtue, but it can describe very different kinds of relationships: shared identity, mutual obligation, cooperation across differences or collective action in pursuit of a common goal. The forum approaches these questions through philosophy, sociology, politics, theology and literature.
Thursday includes Carol Gilligan’s In a Human Voice at 10:30 AM. Gilligan’s influential work on moral development and the ethics of care challenged assumptions about how people reason about responsibility and relationships. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams speaks at 2:30 PM on Solidarity: The Work of Recognition, bringing theological and philosophical perspectives to the question of what it means to acknowledge the humanity of others. The day closes with a 6–7 PM reception.
Friday includes Eva Illouz and Thomas Chatterton Williams in the 11 AM session Fraternity Without Illusions. Illouz’s scholarship examines the relationship between emotion, culture and social institutions, while Williams has written extensively about identity, race and public debate. Their participation offers contrasting perspectives on how people might build political and social connections without denying genuine differences. Other sessions address labor, civic love and shared American purpose. A 5–6 PM reception follows.
Saturday’s 9–11 AM Envisioning Solidarity Together session is participatory, moving from formal presentations toward discussion of what solidarity might look like in practice. Readers should consult Bard’s official schedule for individual sessions, locations and registration information.
This is a Regional Extension selection because it brings nationally and internationally prominent thinkers together around a substantial public question. It is the kind of concentrated intellectual program that may justify a trip to Bard for readers interested in political thought, contemporary society and the future of democratic life.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 10 AM–7 PM
📅 Friday, October 16 · 9:30 AM–6 PM
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 9–11 AM
📍 Olin Hall and related campus locations · Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson
🎟️ General registration $199 · Hannah Arendt Center members complimentary
Details / Register / Full Schedule
📅 Calendar — Thursday: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Friday: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Saturday: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎼 The Orchestra Now — The American Spirit
Bard College · Fisher Center
The American Spirit expands the customary picture of American orchestral music by placing Aaron Copland alongside Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery and William Grant Still. The program explores several ways composers have expressed American identity, drawing on different musical traditions and historical experiences rather than presenting a single national sound.
Guest conductor Kellen Gray leads The Orchestra Now, with violinist Melissa White performing Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Price’s music has gained renewed attention after decades of neglect in mainstream concert programming. As a Black woman composer working in the first half of the twentieth century, she faced barriers that shaped how her work was performed and remembered.
The program also includes Copland’s Short Symphony, Montgomery’s Hymn for Everyone and Still’s Fourth Symphony, Autochthonous. Heard together, these works invite audiences to reconsider the breadth of the American orchestral tradition. Tickets begin at $15 at Bard’s Fisher Center.
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 7–9 PM
📍 Sosnoff Theater, Fisher Center · Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson
🎟️ From $15
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🔥 3-WEEK PLAN AHEAD
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October 19–November 8
🔬 UAlbany Research & Entrepreneurship Week — October 19–23
The University at Albany’s research and entrepreneurship programming highlights work taking place across university laboratories, research centers and industry partnerships. The week includes the Albany Nanotechnology Symposium on October 22–23, an opportunity to explore developments in semiconductor technology and related fields.
🚀 RPI Entrepreneur of the Year — Ajit Prabhu — October 21
RPI honors Quest Global co-founder and CEO Ajit Prabhu at EMPAC. The program brings together an award celebration, conversation, startup pitches and research presentations, connecting the university’s entrepreneurial history with current innovation.
Wednesday, October 21 · 1 PM · EMPAC
📚 Garth Greenwell — 56th Annual Steloff Lecture — October 22
Award-winning novelist Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You, Cleanness and Small Rain, visits Skidmore for the annual Steloff Lecture. His fiction is known for its close attention to language, intimacy and the complexity of human relationships.
Thursday, October 22 · 8 PM · Skidmore
🏛️ Danielle Allen — Kuroda Symposium — October 23
Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen comes to Skidmore to address questions connected to democracy, citizenship and American political culture. Allen’s work examines how democratic institutions and civic participation can support a more inclusive public life.
Friday, October 23 · 5 PM · Skidmore
🎷 Ernie Watts Quartet — October 30
Two-time Grammy-winning saxophonist Ernie Watts brings his quartet to SUNY Schenectady for an A Place for Jazz concert. Watts has worked across jazz, popular music and studio recording, developing a powerful and immediately recognizable saxophone sound.
Friday, October 30 · 7 PM · SUNY Schenectady
Details / Tickets — A Place for Jazz Concert Series
🎬 Raiders of the Lost Ark in Concert — October 31–November 1
The Orchestra Now performs John Williams’s complete score live while Steven Spielberg’s film plays at Bard’s Fisher Center. The presentation gives audiences an opportunity to experience how Williams’s music drives the film’s adventure, suspense and humor.
October 31–November 1 · Bard Fisher Center
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🔭 LONG-RANGE EARLY WARNING
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November 9–February 8
🔊 INTERFACE: Brett Fajen & Heidi Latsky — November 12
RPI/EMPAC brings cognitive science and choreography together in a program exploring perception, movement and the knowledge contained in physical action. The collaboration offers a meeting point between scientific inquiry and contemporary performance.
Thursday, November 12 · 6 PM · RPI/EMPAC
🎷 Ali Ryerson Quartet — November 13
Jazz flutist Ali Ryerson brings her quartet to SUNY Schenectady for A Place for Jazz. Ryerson has helped establish the flute as a compelling jazz solo instrument, with a career spanning performance, recording and education.
Details / Tickets — A Place for Jazz Concert Series
🎼 Gershwin, Jazz & the Music of Jewish Émigrés — November 14–15
Bard explores connections among Jewish immigration, European musical traditions, jazz and the development of American concert and popular music. The program offers a historical perspective on the musical exchanges that helped shape twentieth-century American culture.
Details — Fisher Center Programs
🍭 Hansel and Gretel — December 11 & 13
Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera transforms the Grimm fairy tale into a richly orchestrated work combining childhood fantasy with the musical language of late Romanticism. Bard’s production offers a seasonal opportunity to experience one of opera’s best-known fairy-tale adaptations.
Details — Fisher Center Programs
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🎭 FUTURE THEATER ON CAMPUS
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Capital Region
October 21–25 — The Drunken City — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
October 23–28 — BECKETT: Nothing Is Certain — Skidmore — Details
October 30–November 8 — Grease — Russell Sage / Theatre Institute — Details — Season
November 12–21 — Rent — Siena — Details — Creative Arts Events
November 18–22 — A Doll’s House — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
November 20–December 5 — This Emancipation Thing — Skidmore — Details
December 2–10 — Little Women: The Musical — Russell Sage / Theatre Institute — Details — Season
February 24–March 3 — Clue — Russell Sage / Theatre Institute — Details — Season
March 3–7 — Musical — title forthcoming — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
April 14–17 — FRESH ACTS: A Festival of New Plays — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
Regional Extension Watch
October 23–25 — Rossum’s Universal Robots — Bard — Details
November 7 — Dead as a Dodo — Williams — Details — ’62 Center Calendar
November 19–21 — Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play — Williams — Details
These are advance dates for planning. Check the presenting theater for performance times, ticket sales and any schedule changes.
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📅 BY DAY CALENDAR
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Monday, October 12
No qualifying public campus events currently confirmed.
Tuesday, October 13
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
7 PM — Backrooms · RPI/EMPAC
7:30–9 PM — Paul Grondahl, Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life · UAlbany
Wednesday, October 14
10:30–11:15 AM — Massry Center Ribbon-cutting & Open House · Hudson Valley / Albany
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
4–5:30 PM — Claudia Goldin · UAlbany
4–6 PM — New Walls Faculty Art Exhibition Opening · Esther Massry Gallery / Albany
5–6:30 PM — Sagrada Família / Mauricio Cortés Sierra · RPI/EMPAC
5:30–7 PM — Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral · Skidmore/Tang
7–8:30 PM — Four-Hands Piano · SUNY Schenectady
Thursday, October 15
10 AM–7 PM — Arendt Forum, Day 1 · Bard
11:45 AM–1 PM — Public Engagement on the Menu · UAlbany
12:45–1:50 PM — Rachel Dinero · Union College
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
4:30–5:30 PM — Kristen Millares Young · UAlbany
6:30–7:30 PM — Ira Baumgarten · Russell Sage/Opalka
Friday, October 16
9:30 AM–6 PM — Arendt Forum, Day 2 · Bard
10–11:30 AM — Advancing Workforce Development · HVCC North / Ballston Spa
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
5–6:15 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi Master Class · Union
5–7 PM — University Art Museum Artists’ Reception · UAlbany
6:30–7:30 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi Lecture/Demonstration · Union
7–8:30 PM — The Cookers · SUNY Schenectady
7–9 PM — Skidmore Orchestra featuring Molly Lewis · Skidmore
Saturday, October 17
9–11 AM — Arendt Forum, Day 3 · Bard
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
5 PM — Tang Fall Opening Reception · Skidmore
6:15–6:45 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi Pre-show Talk · The Egg
7 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi, Sol Invictus · The Egg
7–9 PM — The Orchestra Now, The American Spirit · Bard
8–9 PM — Café Molly · Skidmore
Sunday, October 18
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
2 PM — Tang Guide Tour · Skidmore
3–4:30 PM — Jennifer Koh & Vijay Iyer · Union College
3–4:30 PM — Joshua Tanis & Nellie Rustick Meier · UAlbany
4–5:30 PM — Alash · Skidmore
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CAPITAL REGION CURATED
What’s worth your time at Capital Region colleges and universities.
Edited by Alan Koslow
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Capital Region Curated: October 12-18
Alan Koslow’s weekly guide to Capital Region campus events, with Nobel economist Claudia Goldin, the Sagrada Família architect and more.
Alan Koslow
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Originally published at
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Capital Region Curated, Alan Koslow’s weekly guide to Capital Region campus events.
What’s worth your time at Capital Region colleges and universities.
🏆 🏛️ 🎶 🎭 📚
Nobel economist Claudia Goldin, a leading scholar of women’s work and economic opportunity.
A NOBEL ECONOMIST, GAUDÍ’S UNFINISHED MASTERPIECE, WHISTLING WITH AN ORCHESTRA & A MUSICAL MEETING OF MINDS
Claudia Goldin at UAlbany; the Sagrada Família architect at RPI; Molly Lewis and the Skidmore Orchestra; Jennifer Koh and Vijay Iyer at Union; and Bard’s three-day Arendt Forum.
📣 HELP SPREAD THE WORD
It really helps when readers share Capital Region Curated.
If you work with a college department, program, gallery, museum, performing arts office, campus newsletter, or personal newsletter, I’d be grateful if you would share it with people who might want a weekly guide to public events on Capital Region campuses.
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🧭 START HERE: WHAT’S INSIDE THIS WEEK
⭐ Top Picks — Nobel economist Claudia Goldin; the architect completing Gaudí’s Sagrada Família; whistling virtuoso Molly Lewis with the Skidmore Orchestra; and Jennifer Koh and Vijay Iyer’s New York premiere.
🏛️ Ideas & Public Life — Women’s economic autonomy, architectural innovation, parental burnout, university-community engagement and workforce development.
📚 Books, Writers & Ideas — Andy Rooney’s life, Kristen Millares Young’s memoir and queer art and identity.
🎭 Theater & Performance — Pam Tanowitz’s creative process and Compagnie Hervé Koubi’s dance residency.
🎨 Art & Visual Culture — The Massry Center’s reopening, UAlbany’s artists’ reception, the Tang’s fall exhibitions, Town Crier and guided tour.
🎶 Music, Sound & Technology — Four-hand piano, The Cookers, two Molly Lewis performances, contemporary classical music, German art song and Alash’s Tuvan throat singing.
🎬 Film — Backrooms at EMPAC.
🌎 Regional Extension — Bard’s Hannah Arendt Forum and The Orchestra Now.
🔥 Plan Ahead — Research programs, major speakers, concerts, fall theater and early warnings through winter.
📅 ADD THE COMPLETE WEEK
Add the supplied weekly calendar to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook.
📅 ADD THE COMPLETE WEEK — GOOGLE · APPLE · OUTLOOK
🔐 VISITING A CAMPUS EVENT?
Some campus buildings now have controlled or ID-card access, particularly during the day. If you’re attending a public event and find the doors locked, ask someone for help and explain that you’re a visitor coming for the program. Arriving a few minutes early for smaller daytime events is a good idea.
Evening events are generally held in buildings that are open and accessible for the program.
💬 READER FIELD NOTES
Did you attend something listed in Capital Region Curated?
Leave a quick comment: what did you see, and would you recommend it? One sentence is enough.
⭐ TOP PICKS
🏆 Claudia Goldin — The Rise of Female Autonomy and the Decline of Fertility
UAlbany · Wednesday, October 14 · 4–5:30 PM
Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin has transformed how we understand women’s work, education and economic independence. Her research reveals how changes in technology, employment and family life reshaped opportunities for women across generations—and why the gender earnings gap persists even among highly educated professionals. At UAlbany, she examines the connection between women’s expanding autonomy and declining fertility, a subject that reaches far beyond economics into the future of families and society. Registration closed October 7.
See 🏛️ Ideas, Public Life & Campus Conversations below.
🏛️ Mauricio Cortés Sierra — Sagrada Família
RPI/EMPAC · Wednesday, October 14 · 5–6:30 PM
More than 140 years after construction began, Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família remains one of the world’s most remarkable architectural undertakings. Mauricio Cortés Sierra, who has worked on the Barcelona basilica since 2006, will explain how generations of architects and craftspeople have translated Gaudí’s surviving designs into a structure that modern engineering is finally making possible. From the central towers to the still-unfinished Glory Façade, this free lecture offers an unusually direct perspective on a building whose construction has become part of its history.
See 🏛️ Ideas, Public Life & Campus Conversations below.
🎶 Skidmore Orchestra Featuring Molly Lewis
Skidmore · Friday, October 16 · 7–9 PM
A professional whistler performing as an orchestral soloist may sound improbable, but Molly Lewis has made the human whistle an expressive instrument capable of surprising precision and emotional range. Her work moves between jazz, lounge music and cinematic atmosphere, and her whistling has reached audiences through film as well as her own recordings. On Friday, she joins the Skidmore Orchestra in a free program that places her distinctive sound alongside classical repertoire. She returns Saturday with her own five-piece band for a very different performance.
See 🎶 Music, Sound & Technology below.
🎻 Jennifer Koh & Vijay Iyer
Union College · Sunday, October 18 · 3–4:30 PM
Violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist-composer Vijay Iyer are two of contemporary music’s most adventurous collaborators, each known for expanding the possibilities of classical performance. Their Union College concert brings Bach into conversation with new music, including the New York premiere of Iyer’s Scenes of Living & Dying, Part 2: The Betweens. Capital Region Classical helped commission the work, giving the local performance a special connection to its creation. Children and college students are admitted free at the door.
See 🎶 Music, Sound & Technology below.
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🏛️ IDEAS, PUBLIC LIFE & CAMPUS CONVERSATIONS
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🏆 Claudia Goldin — The Rise of Female Autonomy and the Decline of Fertility
University at Albany · Pong S. Lee Memorial Lecture
Goldin’s historical research overturned the assumption that women’s participation in paid work rose steadily with economic growth. By tracing employment, education and marriage across generations, she showed how industrialization, the rise of office work and access to professional training changed women’s economic options.
Her work on the gender earnings gap also identifies the premium many employers place on long or unpredictable hours. Those rewards can become particularly consequential after parenthood, even among people who began their careers with similar qualifications. Her research helped explain why changes in education and employment opportunities did not automatically eliminate earnings inequality.
Her Albany lecture connects that history to declining fertility as women gain greater control over careers, relationships and family formation. The subject touches economics, public policy and the choices families make in societies where women’s opportunities have expanded dramatically.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 4–5:30 PM
📍 Performing Arts Center, Recital Hall · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free · Registration required
Registration closed October 7.
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Gaudí’s Sagrada Família in Barcelona, with its intricate, nature-inspired architecture.
🏛️ Sagrada Família — The Dream of a Genius, A Collective Endeavour Across Generations
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute · Steven Ehrlich ’69 Architecture Lecture
Construction of Antoni Gaudí’s basilica began in 1882, and the architect died in 1926 with much of his design unrealized. Later architects inherited surviving models and drawings, some damaged during the Spanish Civil War, and faced the unusual responsibility of completing another architect’s work across generations. The Sagrada Família is therefore both an architectural monument and an extraordinary example of continuity across changing technologies and artistic eras.
Mauricio Cortés Sierra has worked on the basilica since 2006 and helped direct its central towers. Digital modeling, structural geometry and precision manufacturing now make it possible to construct forms Gaudí developed through physical models and experiments. The challenge is not simply to finish a building but to understand how its original design principles can be carried forward responsibly.
This Steven Ehrlich ’69 Architecture Lecture focuses on how the project balances fidelity to Gaudí with contemporary engineering, including the remaining Glory Façade. The opportunity to hear from an architect directly involved in the work makes the presentation especially worthwhile for readers interested in architecture, engineering, design or the history of Barcelona’s most famous building. It is a lecture at EMPAC, not a structural tour.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 5–6:30 PM
📍 EMPAC Theater · RPI · 50 8th Street, Troy
🎟️ Free
Details — Architecture Lecture Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🍕 Public Engagement on the Menu — Lunch & Learn
University at Albany · University-Community Partnerships
What counts as public engagement—and whose contributions tend to go unrecognized? UAlbany’s inaugural lunch-and-learn, “What? That’s public engagement?”, looks at the many ways university work connects with communities beyond campus, including partnerships that may receive less attention than formal research projects.
Jay Bloom, Lakia Green, Janine Jurkowski and Sheri Stevens bring perspectives from the AI Plus Institute, inclusive excellence, public health and community service. The discussion offers a chance to consider how different kinds of expertise and community relationships contribute to a university’s public role. Pizza and dessert are included.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 11:45 AM–1 PM
📍 Minerva Room, University Main Library · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free · Registration requested
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🧠 Rachel Dinero — The Impact of Social & Economic Disruption on Parental Burnout: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic
Union College · Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium
The pandemic abruptly collapsed boundaries between paid work, childcare and schooling. Parents who had previously relied on schools, relatives and childcare providers suddenly found themselves managing overlapping responsibilities at home. Dinero’s research asks how those disruptions affected parental exhaustion and whether economic and social pressures continued to shape families after lockdowns ended.
The Le Moyne College psychologist studies relationships, family well-being and social health. Her presentation draws on evidence collected during a period when families faced unusually intense demands, providing a research-based perspective on experiences that many parents remember vividly. The topic also raises broader questions about work arrangements, social support and the conditions that make parenting sustainable.
Union’s Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium offers an opportunity to hear current psychological research outside a conventional classroom. Community members are welcome, and complimentary lunch and refreshments are offered.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 12:45–1:50 PM
📍 Karp 105 · Union College · 807 Union Street, Schenectady
🎟️ Free · Public welcome · Complimentary lunch
Details — Psychology Speaker Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🏭 Advancing Workforce Development — Research & Panel Discussion
Hudson Valley Community College · HVCC North
What skills will the region’s employers need, and how can colleges prepare students and workers to meet those needs? Hudson Valley’s workforce-development program brings research and discussion together around those questions, connecting education with the changing demands of the regional economy.
The program presents workforce-survey findings and a panel discussion with industry and community perspectives. For readers interested in education, economic development or the relationship between colleges and employers, it offers a chance to hear how institutions are approaching the preparation of the next generation of workers.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 10–11:30 AM
📍 HVCC North · 345 Hermes Road, Ballston Spa
🎟️ Open to the public
Details — HVCC Inauguration Week Programs
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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📚 BOOKS, WRITERS & IDEAS
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📖 Paul Grondahl — Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life
University at Albany · New York State Writers Institute
Albany-born Andy Rooney became familiar to generations of viewers through his wry closing essays on CBS’s 60 Minutes, where his observations about ordinary irritations and human behavior made him one of television’s most recognizable commentators. Yet that late-career fame was only part of a much longer journalistic life. Rooney began reporting during World War II for Stars and Stripes and went on to work across radio, television and print.
Paul Grondahl approaches Rooney as a fellow Albany journalist. A longtime Times Union reporter and director of the New York State Writers Institute, Grondahl brings a local perspective to a national media figure whose career spanned major changes in American journalism. His biography follows Rooney’s development as a writer, his professional relationships and the sometimes complicated personality behind the public image.
The evening includes a discussion of Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life and a book signing. SUNY Press is a cosponsor as part of its 60th-anniversary programming. For readers interested in journalism, broadcasting or Albany history, this is a chance to revisit an unusually long and influential career.
📅 Tuesday, October 13 · 7:30–9 PM
📍 Page Hall Auditorium · UAlbany Downtown Campus · 135 Western Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
📚 Kristen Millares Young — Desire Lines
University at Albany · New York State Writers Institute
Kristen Millares Young’s fiction and nonfiction explore migration, cultural inheritance and the uneasy question of who gets to tell another person’s story. Her novel Subduction follows an anthropologist working in the Pacific Northwest and examines the ethics of observation, particularly when an outsider’s professional ambitions intersect with another community’s history and experience.
Her memoir Desire Lines turns that attention inward, tracing family history, motherhood, sexuality and the expectations that shape women’s lives. The title evokes the informal paths people make for themselves rather than the routes laid out for them. Young’s writing examines the tension between inherited obligations and individual desire, bringing literary form to questions that are at once intimate and social.
The UAlbany appearance offers an opportunity to hear how Young approaches personal material as a writer and how questions of identity become questions of narrative craft. A book signing follows, giving readers an opportunity to continue the conversation.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 4:30–5:30 PM
📍 Campus Center West Boardroom · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
📖 Ira Baumgarten — Shapeshifters: Bodies Like Water
Russell Sage / Opalka Gallery
Shapeshifters: Bodies Like Water considers bodies and identity as changing rather than fixed, bringing queer experience, landscape and transformation together through images and multimedia work. The project uses the idea of shapeshifting to explore how people understand themselves and how those understandings may evolve in response to place, memory and relationships.
Ira Baumgarten’s presentation connects the accompanying book with the larger artistic project. Opalka Gallery’s setting makes it possible to consider the material and visual dimensions of the work alongside its written ideas. The subject crosses the boundaries between art, personal narrative and social experience, encouraging audiences to think about identity as something lived and continually reinterpreted.
The evening includes discussion and a book signing, with proceeds benefiting a local LGBTQ+ nonprofit. It is an accessible opportunity to encounter the project and the community questions behind it.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 6:30–7:30 PM
📍 Opalka Gallery · Russell Sage College · 140 New Scotland Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
Details — Opalka Programs & Events
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎭 THEATER & PERFORMANCE
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Pam Tanowitz, known for her inventive approach to ballet and modern dance.
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💃 Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral: Artists in Conversation
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
Choreographer Pam Tanowitz has built an international reputation by taking the formal vocabulary of ballet and modern dance apart and recombining it in unexpected ways. Her work often looks deceptively orderly at first: dancers move through recognizable patterns, only to interrupt or redirect the audience’s expectations. That combination of classical precision and contemporary experimentation has made her one of the most distinctive voices in American choreography.
Her Pastoral project uses Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony as a point of departure rather than a score to illustrate literally. The work brings choreography into conversation with visual art, music and ideas of landscape. Collaborators including artist Sarah Crowner, dramaturg Gideon Lester and composer Caroline Shaw contribute different perspectives on how an audience experiences space, sound and movement.
At the Tang, Tanowitz joins Crowner, Lester and poet April Bernard in a conversation moderated by Brian Lawson. Rather than presenting a finished performance, the discussion opens a window onto the decisions that shape one—an appealing opportunity for anyone interested in how artists work across disciplines.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 5:30–7 PM
📍 Payne Room, Tang Teaching Museum · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free and open to the public
Details | Skidmore Residency Announcement
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Dancers in Sol Invictus, blending contemporary movement and acrobatics.
💃 Compagnie Hervé Koubi — Residency and Sol Invictus
Union College / The Egg · Stephanie C. Davis Dance Residency
Hervé Koubi’s dancers combine contemporary choreography with acrobatics, capoeira and street-dance movement. Rapid lifts, catches, aerial turns and floorwork create images that depend as much on collective trust as on individual athleticism. The company draws on a wide range of movement traditions, creating performances that can feel both highly disciplined and startlingly spontaneous.
Union College’s Stephanie C. Davis Dance Residency makes the creative process visible before the public performance. Friday’s free master class and lecture-demonstration offer different ways to encounter the company: one emphasizes movement and technique, while the other helps audiences understand how the dancers build their physical vocabulary and work together. These activities are distinct from Saturday’s ticketed stage production.
On Saturday, the company performs Sol Invictus at The Egg, preceded by a conversation with Koubi and Union dance director Laurie Zabele Cawley. The residency offers an unusually complete experience of a visiting dance company, from the rehearsal-room process to the finished work. All four components are listed separately in the calendar so readers can choose the events that interest them.
Friday, October 16 — Union College
📅 5–6:15 PM · Master Class
📅 6:30–7:30 PM · Lecture/Demonstration
📍 Henle Dance Pavilion · Union College · 807 Union Street, Schenectady
🎟️ Free and open to the public · No registration required
📅 Calendar — Master Class: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Lecture/Demonstration: Google | Apple/Outlook
Saturday, October 17 — The Egg
📅 6:15–6:45 PM · Pre-show Talk
📅 7 PM · Sol Invictus
📍 The Egg · Empire State Plaza, Albany
🎟️ Ticketed performance · See ticket page for prices and pre-show access
📅 Calendar — Pre-show Talk: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Sol Invictus: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎨 ART & VISUAL CULTURE
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🎨 Massry Center for the Arts — Reopening & “New Walls”
Hudson Valley Community College · Albany
The Massry Center for the Arts begins a new chapter under Hudson Valley Community College’s leadership. The reopening returns the former College of Saint Rose facility to public view as a center for arts, education, performance and community engagement. Wednesday morning’s ribbon-cutting and open house offer an opportunity to visit the building and mark its renewed place in Albany’s cultural life.
Later that afternoon, the Esther Massry Gallery welcomes visitors for New Walls, a faculty art exhibition and opening reception. The two public events offer different ways to encounter the center: through its reopening in the morning and through the work of its artists in the afternoon. Neither requires registration.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 10:30–11:15 AM · Ribbon-cutting & Open House
📍 Massry Center for the Arts · 1002 Madison Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Open to the public · No registration required
📅 Calendar — Ribbon-cutting & Open House: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 4–6 PM · “New Walls” Opening Reception
📍 Esther Massry Gallery, Massry Center for the Arts · 1002 Madison Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Open to the public · No registration required
📅 Calendar — New Walls: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎨 University Art Museum — Artists’ Reception
University at Albany · University Art Museum
Three exhibitions are on view at UAlbany’s University Art Museum: Howard Schwartzberg: Volume, Surface, Core, mosie romney: ash, whistle & redress, and Invitation to the Light Factory. The exhibitions bring together different approaches to making and experiencing art, from the physical qualities of objects to the relationship between images, language and perception.
Schwartzberg’s title points toward the interaction of volume, surface and internal structure. Romney’s exhibition introduces a different set of materials and associations, while Invitation to the Light Factory brings artist Suzan Frecon into dialogue with poet Marcella Durand. Together, the presentations demonstrate the breadth of contemporary practice within a university museum.
Friday’s artists’ reception allows visitors to see all three exhibitions during a single evening and meet people involved in the work. Light refreshments and free parking in the State Quad Student Parking Lot are listed for the program.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 5–7 PM
📍 University Art Museum, Fine Arts Building · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
An installation view at the Tang Teaching Museum, known for its interdisciplinary exhibitions.
🖼️ Tang 2026 Fall Opening Reception
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang opens five exhibitions spanning ecology, political history, contemporary art and archival sound. 500 Dams examines grassland regeneration in New Mexico, while Chaia—Yiddishland on the Move draws on digitized recordings from YIVO’s archives. The subjects are quite different, but both demonstrate how museums can connect artistic practice to environmental and cultural memory.
Other exhibitions include A Feeling of With, a faculty-co-curated presentation of the museum’s collection; Mark Thomas Gibson: We Are A Constellation, examining American history and citizenship; and Sheila Pepe: When & Where We Rest, an installation drawing on religion, sociology, queer theory and cultural histories extending from ancient Greece and Rome to the Silk Road. Together, the five exhibitions offer several entry points into the Tang’s cross-disciplinary approach, which regularly places art in conversation with history, politics and other fields of inquiry.
Saturday’s free opening reception is an opportunity to see the entire fall program at once. Readers who enjoy meeting other museumgoers and experiencing a gallery during a public celebration may prefer the opening; those looking for more interpretation can return for Sunday’s separate guided tour.
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 5 PM
📍 Tang Teaching Museum · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
📣 Tang Town Crier — Ongoing Performance
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang’s Town Crier brings a live performance element into the museum experience, announcing news from 1776 and today. The juxtaposition places historical events beside contemporary headlines, inviting visitors to hear how public announcements connect different moments in American life.
The Town Crier is scheduled at 2 PM Tuesday through Sunday during the issue week. Because it is a repeated program rather than six distinct productions, it appears here once, with its daily appearances repeated in the By Day Calendar for readers’ convenience.
📅 Tuesday–Sunday, October 13–18 · 2 PM daily
📍 Wachenheim Gallery, Tang Teaching Museum · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free
🖼️ Tang Guide Tour
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
Sunday’s guided tour provides an introduction to the Tang’s fall exhibitions, including projects examining ecology, archival sound, identity and contemporary art. The museum’s exhibitions are designed to encourage connections across disciplines, and a guide can help visitors understand how individual works contribute to those broader conversations.
Rather than simply moving from one object to the next, a guided tour can explain why particular artists and materials appear together, how the exhibitions were organized and what questions the curators hope visitors will consider. It can be especially useful when the works address unfamiliar historical or cultural subjects.
For readers who would rather explore the exhibitions through conversation than during a crowded opening reception, this is the quieter alternative. The tour also offers an opportunity to ask questions and return to individual works with a clearer understanding of their context.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 2 PM
📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Atrium · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎶 MUSIC, SOUND & TECHNOLOGY
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🎹 Chamber Music Series — Four-Hands Piano
SUNY Schenectady · School of Music
Four-hand piano music once allowed listeners to experience arrangements of large-scale orchestral works in homes and salons before recorded sound was widely available. But the format is more than a practical substitute for an orchestra. Two performers sharing one keyboard can create intricate textures, rapid exchanges and musical conversations that are difficult for a single pianist to achieve.
Megan Glikes and Mark Evans perform music by Mozart, Debussy, Dvořák and Brahms, including Debussy’s Petite Suite and selections from Brahms’s Hungarian Dances and Liebeslieder Waltzes. The program spans contrasting musical styles, from Classical-era elegance to Romantic warmth and the coloristic writing associated with French music.
Because both musicians share the same instrument, their coordination becomes part of what the audience sees as well as hears. The free performance at SUNY Schenectady offers an accessible introduction to a chamber-music format that is less commonly encountered than solo piano or string quartet concerts.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 7–8:30 PM
📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium · SUNY Schenectady · 78 Washington Avenue, Schenectady
🎟️ Free
Details — Chamber Music Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
The Cookers, bringing together generations of experience in modern jazz.
🎷 The Cookers
A Place for Jazz · SUNY Schenectady
The Cookers bring together veteran jazz musicians whose careers connect directly to the hard-bop and post-bop traditions. The group’s name recalls a Freddie Hubbard album, but this is not a historical recreation. The ensemble draws on decades of experience to create contemporary performances grounded in the powerful ensemble writing and improvisational energy associated with modern jazz.
Their recordings, including Believe, The Call of the Wild and Peaceful Heart and Look Out!, combine tightly shaped compositions with expansive improvisation. The music allows individual players room to develop ideas while retaining the sense of a group working toward a shared musical direction. That balance between structure and freedom is central to the band’s appeal.
A Place for Jazz brings the ensemble to SUNY Schenectady, where the concert setting makes the interaction among soloists and rhythm section part of the experience. Trumpeter Eddie Henderson, bassist Cecil McBee, pianist George Cables and drummer Billy Hart bring firsthand connections to the jazz developments of the 1960s into the ensemble’s present-day sound.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 7–8:30 PM
📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium · SUNY Schenectady · 78 Washington Avenue, Schenectady
🎟️ $25 at the door · $26.95 online
Details / Tickets — A Place for Jazz Concert Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Molly Lewis, whose expressive whistling gives her music its distinctive sound.
🎶 Skidmore Orchestra Featuring Molly Lewis
Skidmore College · Arthur Zankel Music Center
Whistling is usually treated as a novelty or casual accompaniment. Molly Lewis instead uses precise pitch, breath and phrasing to make it a fully expressive solo instrument, drawing on jazz, lounge music and cinematic sound. Her musical style can evoke an earlier era of film scores and sophisticated popular entertainment, yet her approach is distinctly contemporary.
Her whistling can be heard in the closing credits of Barbie, and her own recordings—including On the Lips—build an atmospheric musical world around the instrument. What makes Lewis especially interesting is not simply that she whistles exceptionally well, but that she uses the instrument with the phrasing and expressive control associated with accomplished singers and instrumentalists.
On Friday, she appears with the Skidmore Orchestra in a program combining her compositions with music by Delibes, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Fauré and Mozart. The orchestral setting provides a distinctive opportunity to hear her sound in dialogue with a larger ensemble. Saturday’s Café Molly is a separate performance with her own band.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 7–9 PM
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎶 Café Molly: An Evening with Molly Lewis
Skidmore College · Arthur Zankel Music Center
Molly Lewis has two very different Skidmore performances this week. Friday night she appears as the featured soloist with the Skidmore Orchestra; Saturday night, she performs with her five-piece ensemble, bringing her own repertoire into a smaller setting.
The Saturday program draws on jazz, film music and mid-century lounge sounds, with the whistle occupying the role that a singer or horn might take in another ensemble. Lewis’s arrangements create an atmosphere that can feel at once playful, mysterious and nostalgic, demonstrating how an unexpected instrument can become the expressive center of a band.
Café Molly offers a chance to hear how Lewis’s distinctive sound works in her own musical environment rather than in an orchestral setting. Readers interested in her artistry may find the contrast between the two evenings particularly rewarding. Admission is Pay What You Will.
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 8–9 PM
📍 Arthur Zankel Music Center · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Pay What You Will
Details — Skidmore Music Events
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist-composer Vijay Iyer, collaborators across musical traditions.
🎻 Jennifer Koh, Violin & Vijay Iyer, Piano
Capital Region Classical · Union College
Violinist Jennifer Koh is a Grammy-winning advocate for living composers, while pianist-composer Vijay Iyer moves between contemporary classical music and improvisation. Both have built careers around collaboration across musical boundaries, challenging the idea that classical music must remain confined to a fixed historical repertoire. Their work often places familiar traditions in conversation with new musical languages.
Their Union College program places Bach’s D-minor Partita beside newer music, including the New York premiere of Iyer’s Scenes of Living & Dying, Part 2: The Betweens. Bach’s solo violin writing offers one kind of musical intensity, while Iyer’s contemporary composition approaches questions of life, death and the spaces between them through a different sound world.
Capital Region Classical helped commission the Iyer work, making this more than a touring concert: a local presenter participated in bringing the music into existence. The performance offers audiences a chance to hear the new work from the artists closely associated with it. Children and college students are admitted free at the door.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 3–4:30 PM
📍 Memorial Chapel · Union College · 807 Union Street, Schenectady
🎟️ $40 · Children and college students free at the door
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
ADVERTISEMENT
🎼 Joshua Tanis & Nellie Rustick Meier — Alumni Concert
University at Albany · Performing Arts Center
Pianist Joshua Tanis and soprano Nellie Rustick Meier return to UAlbany for a recital centered on Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. Both cycles occupy important places in the German Romantic song tradition, using the combination of poetry and music to explore longing, reflection and emotional transformation.
Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder anticipates the harmonic world of Tristan und Isolde, making the songs especially revealing for listeners interested in how his musical language developed. Strauss’s late songs turn toward evening, memory and mortality with long vocal lines and luminous harmonies. Heard together, the two works create a journey across related but distinct musical worlds.
The pairing gives the alumni recital a coherent focus, while the intimate Performing Arts Center Recital Hall provides a setting well suited to voice and piano. Admission is $10, making it an accessible opportunity to hear major works of the art-song repertoire.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 3–4:30 PM
📍 Performing Arts Center, Recital Hall · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ $10
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎶 Alash — Tuvan Throat Singing
Skidmore College · Arthur Zankel Music Center
Tuvan throat singing allows a performer to produce multiple pitches at once, creating a musical texture that can sound almost instrumental. Alash brings that tradition to Skidmore through the voices and traditional instruments of Bady-Dorzhu Ondar, Ayan-ool Sam and Ayan Shirizhik.
The ensemble’s work preserves the sound of Tuva while opening it to encounters with other musical traditions. Collaborations with artists including Béla Fleck and the Sun Ra Arkestra have introduced Alash to audiences far beyond Central Asia. Sunday’s concert offers a chance to hear a form of vocal music whose overtones, rhythms and instrumental colors reward close listening.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 4–5:30 PM
🎟️ See presenter’s ticket information
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎬 FILM
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🎬 Backrooms — Film Screening
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute · EMPAC
Backrooms brings an unsettling online horror phenomenon into the cinema. Its familiar-looking but disorienting spaces turn ordinary architecture into a source of dread, drawing on the sense that a place can look recognizable while feeling fundamentally wrong.
EMPAC’s screening offers an opportunity to experience that atmosphere on a theater screen with a shared audience. For readers interested in contemporary horror, internet-born storytelling or the ways sound and space shape a film’s effect, this is a different kind of campus outing.
📅 Tuesday, October 13 · 7 PM
📍 EMPAC Theater · RPI · 50 8th Street, Troy
🎟️ $3 at the door
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🌎 REGIONAL EXTENSION
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🏛️ The Arendt Forum 2026 — Solidarity: What Are We Fighting For?
Bard College · Hannah Arendt Center
The Hannah Arendt Center’s three-day forum asks what solidarity can mean amid migration, inequality, polarization and declining trust in institutions. Solidarity is often invoked as a political virtue, but it can describe very different kinds of relationships: shared identity, mutual obligation, cooperation across differences or collective action in pursuit of a common goal. The forum approaches these questions through philosophy, sociology, politics, theology and literature.
Thursday includes Carol Gilligan’s In a Human Voice at 10:30 AM. Gilligan’s influential work on moral development and the ethics of care challenged assumptions about how people reason about responsibility and relationships. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams speaks at 2:30 PM on Solidarity: The Work of Recognition, bringing theological and philosophical perspectives to the question of what it means to acknowledge the humanity of others. The day closes with a 6–7 PM reception.
Friday includes Eva Illouz and Thomas Chatterton Williams in the 11 AM session Fraternity Without Illusions. Illouz’s scholarship examines the relationship between emotion, culture and social institutions, while Williams has written extensively about identity, race and public debate. Their participation offers contrasting perspectives on how people might build political and social connections without denying genuine differences. Other sessions address labor, civic love and shared American purpose. A 5–6 PM reception follows.
Saturday’s 9–11 AM Envisioning Solidarity Together session is participatory, moving from formal presentations toward discussion of what solidarity might look like in practice. Readers should consult Bard’s official schedule for individual sessions, locations and registration information.
This is a Regional Extension selection because it brings nationally and internationally prominent thinkers together around a substantial public question. It is the kind of concentrated intellectual program that may justify a trip to Bard for readers interested in political thought, contemporary society and the future of democratic life.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 10 AM–7 PM
📅 Friday, October 16 · 9:30 AM–6 PM
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 9–11 AM
📍 Olin Hall and related campus locations · Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson
🎟️ General registration $199 · Hannah Arendt Center members complimentary
Details / Register / Full Schedule
📅 Calendar — Thursday: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Friday: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Saturday: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎼 The Orchestra Now — The American Spirit
Bard College · Fisher Center
The American Spirit expands the customary picture of American orchestral music by placing Aaron Copland alongside Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery and William Grant Still. The program explores several ways composers have expressed American identity, drawing on different musical traditions and historical experiences rather than presenting a single national sound.
Guest conductor Kellen Gray leads The Orchestra Now, with violinist Melissa White performing Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Price’s music has gained renewed attention after decades of neglect in mainstream concert programming. As a Black woman composer working in the first half of the twentieth century, she faced barriers that shaped how her work was performed and remembered.
The program also includes Copland’s Short Symphony, Montgomery’s Hymn for Everyone and Still’s Fourth Symphony, Autochthonous. Heard together, these works invite audiences to reconsider the breadth of the American orchestral tradition. Tickets begin at $15 at Bard’s Fisher Center.
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 7–9 PM
📍 Sosnoff Theater, Fisher Center · Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson
🎟️ From $15
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🔥 3-WEEK PLAN AHEAD
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October 19–November 8
🔬 UAlbany Research & Entrepreneurship Week — October 19–23
The University at Albany’s research and entrepreneurship programming highlights work taking place across university laboratories, research centers and industry partnerships. The week includes the Albany Nanotechnology Symposium on October 22–23, an opportunity to explore developments in semiconductor technology and related fields.
🚀 RPI Entrepreneur of the Year — Ajit Prabhu — October 21
RPI honors Quest Global co-founder and CEO Ajit Prabhu at EMPAC. The program brings together an award celebration, conversation, startup pitches and research presentations, connecting the university’s entrepreneurial history with current innovation.
Wednesday, October 21 · 1 PM · EMPAC
📚 Garth Greenwell — 56th Annual Steloff Lecture — October 22
Award-winning novelist Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You, Cleanness and Small Rain, visits Skidmore for the annual Steloff Lecture. His fiction is known for its close attention to language, intimacy and the complexity of human relationships.
Thursday, October 22 · 8 PM · Skidmore
🏛️ Danielle Allen — Kuroda Symposium — October 23
Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen comes to Skidmore to address questions connected to democracy, citizenship and American political culture. Allen’s work examines how democratic institutions and civic participation can support a more inclusive public life.
Friday, October 23 · 5 PM · Skidmore
🎷 Ernie Watts Quartet — October 30
Two-time Grammy-winning saxophonist Ernie Watts brings his quartet to SUNY Schenectady for an A Place for Jazz concert. Watts has worked across jazz, popular music and studio recording, developing a powerful and immediately recognizable saxophone sound.
Friday, October 30 · 7 PM · SUNY Schenectady
Details / Tickets — A Place for Jazz Concert Series
🎬 Raiders of the Lost Ark in Concert — October 31–November 1
The Orchestra Now performs John Williams’s complete score live while Steven Spielberg’s film plays at Bard’s Fisher Center. The presentation gives audiences an opportunity to experience how Williams’s music drives the film’s adventure, suspense and humor.
October 31–November 1 · Bard Fisher Center
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🔭 LONG-RANGE EARLY WARNING
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November 9–February 8
🔊 INTERFACE: Brett Fajen & Heidi Latsky — November 12
RPI/EMPAC brings cognitive science and choreography together in a program exploring perception, movement and the knowledge contained in physical action. The collaboration offers a meeting point between scientific inquiry and contemporary performance.
Thursday, November 12 · 6 PM · RPI/EMPAC
🎷 Ali Ryerson Quartet — November 13
Jazz flutist Ali Ryerson brings her quartet to SUNY Schenectady for A Place for Jazz. Ryerson has helped establish the flute as a compelling jazz solo instrument, with a career spanning performance, recording and education.
Details / Tickets — A Place for Jazz Concert Series
🎼 Gershwin, Jazz & the Music of Jewish Émigrés — November 14–15
Bard explores connections among Jewish immigration, European musical traditions, jazz and the development of American concert and popular music. The program offers a historical perspective on the musical exchanges that helped shape twentieth-century American culture.
Details — Fisher Center Programs
🍭 Hansel and Gretel — December 11 & 13
Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera transforms the Grimm fairy tale into a richly orchestrated work combining childhood fantasy with the musical language of late Romanticism. Bard’s production offers a seasonal opportunity to experience one of opera’s best-known fairy-tale adaptations.
Details — Fisher Center Programs
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🎭 FUTURE THEATER ON CAMPUS
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Capital Region
October 21–25 — The Drunken City — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
October 23–28 — BECKETT: Nothing Is Certain — Skidmore — Details
October 30–November 8 — Grease — Russell Sage / Theatre Institute — Details — Season
November 12–21 — Rent — Siena — Details — Creative Arts Events
November 18–22 — A Doll’s House — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
November 20–December 5 — This Emancipation Thing — Skidmore — Details
December 2–10 — Little Women: The Musical — Russell Sage / Theatre Institute — Details — Season
February 24–March 3 — Clue — Russell Sage / Theatre Institute — Details — Season
March 3–7 — Musical — title forthcoming — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
April 14–17 — FRESH ACTS: A Festival of New Plays — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
Regional Extension Watch
October 23–25 — Rossum’s Universal Robots — Bard — Details
November 7 — Dead as a Dodo — Williams — Details — ’62 Center Calendar
November 19–21 — Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play — Williams — Details
These are advance dates for planning. Check the presenting theater for performance times, ticket sales and any schedule changes.
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📅 BY DAY CALENDAR
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Monday, October 12
No qualifying public campus events currently confirmed.
Tuesday, October 13
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
7 PM — Backrooms · RPI/EMPAC
7:30–9 PM — Paul Grondahl, Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life · UAlbany
Wednesday, October 14
10:30–11:15 AM — Massry Center Ribbon-cutting & Open House · Hudson Valley / Albany
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
4–5:30 PM — Claudia Goldin · UAlbany
4–6 PM — New Walls Faculty Art Exhibition Opening · Esther Massry Gallery / Albany
5–6:30 PM — Sagrada Família / Mauricio Cortés Sierra · RPI/EMPAC
5:30–7 PM — Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral · Skidmore/Tang
7–8:30 PM — Four-Hands Piano · SUNY Schenectady
Thursday, October 15
10 AM–7 PM — Arendt Forum, Day 1 · Bard
11:45 AM–1 PM — Public Engagement on the Menu · UAlbany
12:45–1:50 PM — Rachel Dinero · Union College
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
4:30–5:30 PM — Kristen Millares Young · UAlbany
6:30–7:30 PM — Ira Baumgarten · Russell Sage/Opalka
Friday, October 16
9:30 AM–6 PM — Arendt Forum, Day 2 · Bard
10–11:30 AM — Advancing Workforce Development · HVCC North / Ballston Spa
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
5–6:15 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi Master Class · Union
5–7 PM — University Art Museum Artists’ Reception · UAlbany
6:30–7:30 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi Lecture/Demonstration · Union
7–8:30 PM — The Cookers · SUNY Schenectady
7–9 PM — Skidmore Orchestra featuring Molly Lewis · Skidmore
Saturday, October 17
9–11 AM — Arendt Forum, Day 3 · Bard
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
5 PM — Tang Fall Opening Reception · Skidmore
6:15–6:45 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi Pre-show Talk · The Egg
7 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi, Sol Invictus · The Egg
7–9 PM — The Orchestra Now, The American Spirit · Bard
8–9 PM — Café Molly · Skidmore
Sunday, October 18
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
2 PM — Tang Guide Tour · Skidmore
3–4:30 PM — Jennifer Koh & Vijay Iyer · Union College
3–4:30 PM — Joshua Tanis & Nellie Rustick Meier · UAlbany
4–5:30 PM — Alash · Skidmore
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CAPITAL REGION CURATED
What’s worth your time at Capital Region colleges and universities.
Edited by Alan Koslow
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Capital Region Curated: October 12-18
Alan Koslow’s weekly guide to Capital Region campus events, with Nobel economist Claudia Goldin, the Sagrada Família architect and more.
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Originally published at
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Capital Region Curated, Alan Koslow’s weekly guide to Capital Region campus events.
What’s worth your time at Capital Region colleges and universities.
🏆 🏛️ 🎶 🎭 📚
Nobel economist Claudia Goldin, a leading scholar of women’s work and economic opportunity.
A NOBEL ECONOMIST, GAUDÍ’S UNFINISHED MASTERPIECE, WHISTLING WITH AN ORCHESTRA & A MUSICAL MEETING OF MINDS
Claudia Goldin at UAlbany; the Sagrada Família architect at RPI; Molly Lewis and the Skidmore Orchestra; Jennifer Koh and Vijay Iyer at Union; and Bard’s three-day Arendt Forum.
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If you work with a college department, program, gallery, museum, performing arts office, campus newsletter, or personal newsletter, I’d be grateful if you would share it with people who might want a weekly guide to public events on Capital Region campuses.
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🧭 START HERE: WHAT’S INSIDE THIS WEEK
⭐ Top Picks — Nobel economist Claudia Goldin; the architect completing Gaudí’s Sagrada Família; whistling virtuoso Molly Lewis with the Skidmore Orchestra; and Jennifer Koh and Vijay Iyer’s New York premiere.
🏛️ Ideas & Public Life — Women’s economic autonomy, architectural innovation, parental burnout, university-community engagement and workforce development.
📚 Books, Writers & Ideas — Andy Rooney’s life, Kristen Millares Young’s memoir and queer art and identity.
🎭 Theater & Performance — Pam Tanowitz’s creative process and Compagnie Hervé Koubi’s dance residency.
🎨 Art & Visual Culture — The Massry Center’s reopening, UAlbany’s artists’ reception, the Tang’s fall exhibitions, Town Crier and guided tour.
🎶 Music, Sound & Technology — Four-hand piano, The Cookers, two Molly Lewis performances, contemporary classical music, German art song and Alash’s Tuvan throat singing.
🎬 Film — Backrooms at EMPAC.
🌎 Regional Extension — Bard’s Hannah Arendt Forum and The Orchestra Now.
🔥 Plan Ahead — Research programs, major speakers, concerts, fall theater and early warnings through winter.
📅 ADD THE COMPLETE WEEK
Add the supplied weekly calendar to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook.
📅 ADD THE COMPLETE WEEK — GOOGLE · APPLE · OUTLOOK
🔐 VISITING A CAMPUS EVENT?
Some campus buildings now have controlled or ID-card access, particularly during the day. If you’re attending a public event and find the doors locked, ask someone for help and explain that you’re a visitor coming for the program. Arriving a few minutes early for smaller daytime events is a good idea.
Evening events are generally held in buildings that are open and accessible for the program.
💬 READER FIELD NOTES
Did you attend something listed in Capital Region Curated?
Leave a quick comment: what did you see, and would you recommend it? One sentence is enough.
⭐ TOP PICKS
🏆 Claudia Goldin — The Rise of Female Autonomy and the Decline of Fertility
UAlbany · Wednesday, October 14 · 4–5:30 PM
Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin has transformed how we understand women’s work, education and economic independence. Her research reveals how changes in technology, employment and family life reshaped opportunities for women across generations—and why the gender earnings gap persists even among highly educated professionals. At UAlbany, she examines the connection between women’s expanding autonomy and declining fertility, a subject that reaches far beyond economics into the future of families and society. Registration closed October 7.
See 🏛️ Ideas, Public Life & Campus Conversations below.
🏛️ Mauricio Cortés Sierra — Sagrada Família
RPI/EMPAC · Wednesday, October 14 · 5–6:30 PM
More than 140 years after construction began, Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família remains one of the world’s most remarkable architectural undertakings. Mauricio Cortés Sierra, who has worked on the Barcelona basilica since 2006, will explain how generations of architects and craftspeople have translated Gaudí’s surviving designs into a structure that modern engineering is finally making possible. From the central towers to the still-unfinished Glory Façade, this free lecture offers an unusually direct perspective on a building whose construction has become part of its history.
See 🏛️ Ideas, Public Life & Campus Conversations below.
🎶 Skidmore Orchestra Featuring Molly Lewis
Skidmore · Friday, October 16 · 7–9 PM
A professional whistler performing as an orchestral soloist may sound improbable, but Molly Lewis has made the human whistle an expressive instrument capable of surprising precision and emotional range. Her work moves between jazz, lounge music and cinematic atmosphere, and her whistling has reached audiences through film as well as her own recordings. On Friday, she joins the Skidmore Orchestra in a free program that places her distinctive sound alongside classical repertoire. She returns Saturday with her own five-piece band for a very different performance.
See 🎶 Music, Sound & Technology below.
🎻 Jennifer Koh & Vijay Iyer
Union College · Sunday, October 18 · 3–4:30 PM
Violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist-composer Vijay Iyer are two of contemporary music’s most adventurous collaborators, each known for expanding the possibilities of classical performance. Their Union College concert brings Bach into conversation with new music, including the New York premiere of Iyer’s Scenes of Living & Dying, Part 2: The Betweens. Capital Region Classical helped commission the work, giving the local performance a special connection to its creation. Children and college students are admitted free at the door.
See 🎶 Music, Sound & Technology below.
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🏛️ IDEAS, PUBLIC LIFE & CAMPUS CONVERSATIONS
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🏆 Claudia Goldin — The Rise of Female Autonomy and the Decline of Fertility
University at Albany · Pong S. Lee Memorial Lecture
Goldin’s historical research overturned the assumption that women’s participation in paid work rose steadily with economic growth. By tracing employment, education and marriage across generations, she showed how industrialization, the rise of office work and access to professional training changed women’s economic options.
Her work on the gender earnings gap also identifies the premium many employers place on long or unpredictable hours. Those rewards can become particularly consequential after parenthood, even among people who began their careers with similar qualifications. Her research helped explain why changes in education and employment opportunities did not automatically eliminate earnings inequality.
Her Albany lecture connects that history to declining fertility as women gain greater control over careers, relationships and family formation. The subject touches economics, public policy and the choices families make in societies where women’s opportunities have expanded dramatically.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 4–5:30 PM
📍 Performing Arts Center, Recital Hall · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free · Registration required
Registration closed October 7.
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Gaudí’s Sagrada Família in Barcelona, with its intricate, nature-inspired architecture.
🏛️ Sagrada Família — The Dream of a Genius, A Collective Endeavour Across Generations
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute · Steven Ehrlich ’69 Architecture Lecture
Construction of Antoni Gaudí’s basilica began in 1882, and the architect died in 1926 with much of his design unrealized. Later architects inherited surviving models and drawings, some damaged during the Spanish Civil War, and faced the unusual responsibility of completing another architect’s work across generations. The Sagrada Família is therefore both an architectural monument and an extraordinary example of continuity across changing technologies and artistic eras.
Mauricio Cortés Sierra has worked on the basilica since 2006 and helped direct its central towers. Digital modeling, structural geometry and precision manufacturing now make it possible to construct forms Gaudí developed through physical models and experiments. The challenge is not simply to finish a building but to understand how its original design principles can be carried forward responsibly.
This Steven Ehrlich ’69 Architecture Lecture focuses on how the project balances fidelity to Gaudí with contemporary engineering, including the remaining Glory Façade. The opportunity to hear from an architect directly involved in the work makes the presentation especially worthwhile for readers interested in architecture, engineering, design or the history of Barcelona’s most famous building. It is a lecture at EMPAC, not a structural tour.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 5–6:30 PM
📍 EMPAC Theater · RPI · 50 8th Street, Troy
🎟️ Free
Details — Architecture Lecture Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🍕 Public Engagement on the Menu — Lunch & Learn
University at Albany · University-Community Partnerships
What counts as public engagement—and whose contributions tend to go unrecognized? UAlbany’s inaugural lunch-and-learn, “What? That’s public engagement?”, looks at the many ways university work connects with communities beyond campus, including partnerships that may receive less attention than formal research projects.
Jay Bloom, Lakia Green, Janine Jurkowski and Sheri Stevens bring perspectives from the AI Plus Institute, inclusive excellence, public health and community service. The discussion offers a chance to consider how different kinds of expertise and community relationships contribute to a university’s public role. Pizza and dessert are included.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 11:45 AM–1 PM
📍 Minerva Room, University Main Library · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free · Registration requested
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🧠 Rachel Dinero — The Impact of Social & Economic Disruption on Parental Burnout: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic
Union College · Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium
The pandemic abruptly collapsed boundaries between paid work, childcare and schooling. Parents who had previously relied on schools, relatives and childcare providers suddenly found themselves managing overlapping responsibilities at home. Dinero’s research asks how those disruptions affected parental exhaustion and whether economic and social pressures continued to shape families after lockdowns ended.
The Le Moyne College psychologist studies relationships, family well-being and social health. Her presentation draws on evidence collected during a period when families faced unusually intense demands, providing a research-based perspective on experiences that many parents remember vividly. The topic also raises broader questions about work arrangements, social support and the conditions that make parenting sustainable.
Union’s Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium offers an opportunity to hear current psychological research outside a conventional classroom. Community members are welcome, and complimentary lunch and refreshments are offered.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 12:45–1:50 PM
📍 Karp 105 · Union College · 807 Union Street, Schenectady
🎟️ Free · Public welcome · Complimentary lunch
Details — Psychology Speaker Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🏭 Advancing Workforce Development — Research & Panel Discussion
Hudson Valley Community College · HVCC North
What skills will the region’s employers need, and how can colleges prepare students and workers to meet those needs? Hudson Valley’s workforce-development program brings research and discussion together around those questions, connecting education with the changing demands of the regional economy.
The program presents workforce-survey findings and a panel discussion with industry and community perspectives. For readers interested in education, economic development or the relationship between colleges and employers, it offers a chance to hear how institutions are approaching the preparation of the next generation of workers.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 10–11:30 AM
📍 HVCC North · 345 Hermes Road, Ballston Spa
🎟️ Open to the public
Details — HVCC Inauguration Week Programs
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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📚 BOOKS, WRITERS & IDEAS
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📖 Paul Grondahl — Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life
University at Albany · New York State Writers Institute
Albany-born Andy Rooney became familiar to generations of viewers through his wry closing essays on CBS’s 60 Minutes, where his observations about ordinary irritations and human behavior made him one of television’s most recognizable commentators. Yet that late-career fame was only part of a much longer journalistic life. Rooney began reporting during World War II for Stars and Stripes and went on to work across radio, television and print.
Paul Grondahl approaches Rooney as a fellow Albany journalist. A longtime Times Union reporter and director of the New York State Writers Institute, Grondahl brings a local perspective to a national media figure whose career spanned major changes in American journalism. His biography follows Rooney’s development as a writer, his professional relationships and the sometimes complicated personality behind the public image.
The evening includes a discussion of Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life and a book signing. SUNY Press is a cosponsor as part of its 60th-anniversary programming. For readers interested in journalism, broadcasting or Albany history, this is a chance to revisit an unusually long and influential career.
📅 Tuesday, October 13 · 7:30–9 PM
📍 Page Hall Auditorium · UAlbany Downtown Campus · 135 Western Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
📚 Kristen Millares Young — Desire Lines
University at Albany · New York State Writers Institute
Kristen Millares Young’s fiction and nonfiction explore migration, cultural inheritance and the uneasy question of who gets to tell another person’s story. Her novel Subduction follows an anthropologist working in the Pacific Northwest and examines the ethics of observation, particularly when an outsider’s professional ambitions intersect with another community’s history and experience.
Her memoir Desire Lines turns that attention inward, tracing family history, motherhood, sexuality and the expectations that shape women’s lives. The title evokes the informal paths people make for themselves rather than the routes laid out for them. Young’s writing examines the tension between inherited obligations and individual desire, bringing literary form to questions that are at once intimate and social.
The UAlbany appearance offers an opportunity to hear how Young approaches personal material as a writer and how questions of identity become questions of narrative craft. A book signing follows, giving readers an opportunity to continue the conversation.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 4:30–5:30 PM
📍 Campus Center West Boardroom · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
📖 Ira Baumgarten — Shapeshifters: Bodies Like Water
Russell Sage / Opalka Gallery
Shapeshifters: Bodies Like Water considers bodies and identity as changing rather than fixed, bringing queer experience, landscape and transformation together through images and multimedia work. The project uses the idea of shapeshifting to explore how people understand themselves and how those understandings may evolve in response to place, memory and relationships.
Ira Baumgarten’s presentation connects the accompanying book with the larger artistic project. Opalka Gallery’s setting makes it possible to consider the material and visual dimensions of the work alongside its written ideas. The subject crosses the boundaries between art, personal narrative and social experience, encouraging audiences to think about identity as something lived and continually reinterpreted.
The evening includes discussion and a book signing, with proceeds benefiting a local LGBTQ+ nonprofit. It is an accessible opportunity to encounter the project and the community questions behind it.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 6:30–7:30 PM
📍 Opalka Gallery · Russell Sage College · 140 New Scotland Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
Details — Opalka Programs & Events
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎭 THEATER & PERFORMANCE
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Pam Tanowitz, known for her inventive approach to ballet and modern dance.
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💃 Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral: Artists in Conversation
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
Choreographer Pam Tanowitz has built an international reputation by taking the formal vocabulary of ballet and modern dance apart and recombining it in unexpected ways. Her work often looks deceptively orderly at first: dancers move through recognizable patterns, only to interrupt or redirect the audience’s expectations. That combination of classical precision and contemporary experimentation has made her one of the most distinctive voices in American choreography.
Her Pastoral project uses Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony as a point of departure rather than a score to illustrate literally. The work brings choreography into conversation with visual art, music and ideas of landscape. Collaborators including artist Sarah Crowner, dramaturg Gideon Lester and composer Caroline Shaw contribute different perspectives on how an audience experiences space, sound and movement.
At the Tang, Tanowitz joins Crowner, Lester and poet April Bernard in a conversation moderated by Brian Lawson. Rather than presenting a finished performance, the discussion opens a window onto the decisions that shape one—an appealing opportunity for anyone interested in how artists work across disciplines.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 5:30–7 PM
📍 Payne Room, Tang Teaching Museum · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free and open to the public
Details | Skidmore Residency Announcement
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Dancers in Sol Invictus, blending contemporary movement and acrobatics.
💃 Compagnie Hervé Koubi — Residency and Sol Invictus
Union College / The Egg · Stephanie C. Davis Dance Residency
Hervé Koubi’s dancers combine contemporary choreography with acrobatics, capoeira and street-dance movement. Rapid lifts, catches, aerial turns and floorwork create images that depend as much on collective trust as on individual athleticism. The company draws on a wide range of movement traditions, creating performances that can feel both highly disciplined and startlingly spontaneous.
Union College’s Stephanie C. Davis Dance Residency makes the creative process visible before the public performance. Friday’s free master class and lecture-demonstration offer different ways to encounter the company: one emphasizes movement and technique, while the other helps audiences understand how the dancers build their physical vocabulary and work together. These activities are distinct from Saturday’s ticketed stage production.
On Saturday, the company performs Sol Invictus at The Egg, preceded by a conversation with Koubi and Union dance director Laurie Zabele Cawley. The residency offers an unusually complete experience of a visiting dance company, from the rehearsal-room process to the finished work. All four components are listed separately in the calendar so readers can choose the events that interest them.
Friday, October 16 — Union College
📅 5–6:15 PM · Master Class
📅 6:30–7:30 PM · Lecture/Demonstration
📍 Henle Dance Pavilion · Union College · 807 Union Street, Schenectady
🎟️ Free and open to the public · No registration required
📅 Calendar — Master Class: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Lecture/Demonstration: Google | Apple/Outlook
Saturday, October 17 — The Egg
📅 6:15–6:45 PM · Pre-show Talk
📅 7 PM · Sol Invictus
📍 The Egg · Empire State Plaza, Albany
🎟️ Ticketed performance · See ticket page for prices and pre-show access
📅 Calendar — Pre-show Talk: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Sol Invictus: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎨 ART & VISUAL CULTURE
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🎨 Massry Center for the Arts — Reopening & “New Walls”
Hudson Valley Community College · Albany
The Massry Center for the Arts begins a new chapter under Hudson Valley Community College’s leadership. The reopening returns the former College of Saint Rose facility to public view as a center for arts, education, performance and community engagement. Wednesday morning’s ribbon-cutting and open house offer an opportunity to visit the building and mark its renewed place in Albany’s cultural life.
Later that afternoon, the Esther Massry Gallery welcomes visitors for New Walls, a faculty art exhibition and opening reception. The two public events offer different ways to encounter the center: through its reopening in the morning and through the work of its artists in the afternoon. Neither requires registration.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 10:30–11:15 AM · Ribbon-cutting & Open House
📍 Massry Center for the Arts · 1002 Madison Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Open to the public · No registration required
📅 Calendar — Ribbon-cutting & Open House: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 4–6 PM · “New Walls” Opening Reception
📍 Esther Massry Gallery, Massry Center for the Arts · 1002 Madison Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Open to the public · No registration required
📅 Calendar — New Walls: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎨 University Art Museum — Artists’ Reception
University at Albany · University Art Museum
Three exhibitions are on view at UAlbany’s University Art Museum: Howard Schwartzberg: Volume, Surface, Core, mosie romney: ash, whistle & redress, and Invitation to the Light Factory. The exhibitions bring together different approaches to making and experiencing art, from the physical qualities of objects to the relationship between images, language and perception.
Schwartzberg’s title points toward the interaction of volume, surface and internal structure. Romney’s exhibition introduces a different set of materials and associations, while Invitation to the Light Factory brings artist Suzan Frecon into dialogue with poet Marcella Durand. Together, the presentations demonstrate the breadth of contemporary practice within a university museum.
Friday’s artists’ reception allows visitors to see all three exhibitions during a single evening and meet people involved in the work. Light refreshments and free parking in the State Quad Student Parking Lot are listed for the program.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 5–7 PM
📍 University Art Museum, Fine Arts Building · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
An installation view at the Tang Teaching Museum, known for its interdisciplinary exhibitions.
🖼️ Tang 2026 Fall Opening Reception
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang opens five exhibitions spanning ecology, political history, contemporary art and archival sound. 500 Dams examines grassland regeneration in New Mexico, while Chaia—Yiddishland on the Move draws on digitized recordings from YIVO’s archives. The subjects are quite different, but both demonstrate how museums can connect artistic practice to environmental and cultural memory.
Other exhibitions include A Feeling of With, a faculty-co-curated presentation of the museum’s collection; Mark Thomas Gibson: We Are A Constellation, examining American history and citizenship; and Sheila Pepe: When & Where We Rest, an installation drawing on religion, sociology, queer theory and cultural histories extending from ancient Greece and Rome to the Silk Road. Together, the five exhibitions offer several entry points into the Tang’s cross-disciplinary approach, which regularly places art in conversation with history, politics and other fields of inquiry.
Saturday’s free opening reception is an opportunity to see the entire fall program at once. Readers who enjoy meeting other museumgoers and experiencing a gallery during a public celebration may prefer the opening; those looking for more interpretation can return for Sunday’s separate guided tour.
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 5 PM
📍 Tang Teaching Museum · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
📣 Tang Town Crier — Ongoing Performance
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang’s Town Crier brings a live performance element into the museum experience, announcing news from 1776 and today. The juxtaposition places historical events beside contemporary headlines, inviting visitors to hear how public announcements connect different moments in American life.
The Town Crier is scheduled at 2 PM Tuesday through Sunday during the issue week. Because it is a repeated program rather than six distinct productions, it appears here once, with its daily appearances repeated in the By Day Calendar for readers’ convenience.
📅 Tuesday–Sunday, October 13–18 · 2 PM daily
📍 Wachenheim Gallery, Tang Teaching Museum · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free
🖼️ Tang Guide Tour
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
Sunday’s guided tour provides an introduction to the Tang’s fall exhibitions, including projects examining ecology, archival sound, identity and contemporary art. The museum’s exhibitions are designed to encourage connections across disciplines, and a guide can help visitors understand how individual works contribute to those broader conversations.
Rather than simply moving from one object to the next, a guided tour can explain why particular artists and materials appear together, how the exhibitions were organized and what questions the curators hope visitors will consider. It can be especially useful when the works address unfamiliar historical or cultural subjects.
For readers who would rather explore the exhibitions through conversation than during a crowded opening reception, this is the quieter alternative. The tour also offers an opportunity to ask questions and return to individual works with a clearer understanding of their context.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 2 PM
📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Atrium · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎶 MUSIC, SOUND & TECHNOLOGY
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🎹 Chamber Music Series — Four-Hands Piano
SUNY Schenectady · School of Music
Four-hand piano music once allowed listeners to experience arrangements of large-scale orchestral works in homes and salons before recorded sound was widely available. But the format is more than a practical substitute for an orchestra. Two performers sharing one keyboard can create intricate textures, rapid exchanges and musical conversations that are difficult for a single pianist to achieve.
Megan Glikes and Mark Evans perform music by Mozart, Debussy, Dvořák and Brahms, including Debussy’s Petite Suite and selections from Brahms’s Hungarian Dances and Liebeslieder Waltzes. The program spans contrasting musical styles, from Classical-era elegance to Romantic warmth and the coloristic writing associated with French music.
Because both musicians share the same instrument, their coordination becomes part of what the audience sees as well as hears. The free performance at SUNY Schenectady offers an accessible introduction to a chamber-music format that is less commonly encountered than solo piano or string quartet concerts.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 7–8:30 PM
📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium · SUNY Schenectady · 78 Washington Avenue, Schenectady
🎟️ Free
Details — Chamber Music Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
The Cookers, bringing together generations of experience in modern jazz.
🎷 The Cookers
A Place for Jazz · SUNY Schenectady
The Cookers bring together veteran jazz musicians whose careers connect directly to the hard-bop and post-bop traditions. The group’s name recalls a Freddie Hubbard album, but this is not a historical recreation. The ensemble draws on decades of experience to create contemporary performances grounded in the powerful ensemble writing and improvisational energy associated with modern jazz.
Their recordings, including Believe, The Call of the Wild and Peaceful Heart and Look Out!, combine tightly shaped compositions with expansive improvisation. The music allows individual players room to develop ideas while retaining the sense of a group working toward a shared musical direction. That balance between structure and freedom is central to the band’s appeal.
A Place for Jazz brings the ensemble to SUNY Schenectady, where the concert setting makes the interaction among soloists and rhythm section part of the experience. Trumpeter Eddie Henderson, bassist Cecil McBee, pianist George Cables and drummer Billy Hart bring firsthand connections to the jazz developments of the 1960s into the ensemble’s present-day sound.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 7–8:30 PM
📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium · SUNY Schenectady · 78 Washington Avenue, Schenectady
🎟️ $25 at the door · $26.95 online
Details / Tickets — A Place for Jazz Concert Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Molly Lewis, whose expressive whistling gives her music its distinctive sound.
🎶 Skidmore Orchestra Featuring Molly Lewis
Skidmore College · Arthur Zankel Music Center
Whistling is usually treated as a novelty or casual accompaniment. Molly Lewis instead uses precise pitch, breath and phrasing to make it a fully expressive solo instrument, drawing on jazz, lounge music and cinematic sound. Her musical style can evoke an earlier era of film scores and sophisticated popular entertainment, yet her approach is distinctly contemporary.
Her whistling can be heard in the closing credits of Barbie, and her own recordings—including On the Lips—build an atmospheric musical world around the instrument. What makes Lewis especially interesting is not simply that she whistles exceptionally well, but that she uses the instrument with the phrasing and expressive control associated with accomplished singers and instrumentalists.
On Friday, she appears with the Skidmore Orchestra in a program combining her compositions with music by Delibes, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Fauré and Mozart. The orchestral setting provides a distinctive opportunity to hear her sound in dialogue with a larger ensemble. Saturday’s Café Molly is a separate performance with her own band.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 7–9 PM
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎶 Café Molly: An Evening with Molly Lewis
Skidmore College · Arthur Zankel Music Center
Molly Lewis has two very different Skidmore performances this week. Friday night she appears as the featured soloist with the Skidmore Orchestra; Saturday night, she performs with her five-piece ensemble, bringing her own repertoire into a smaller setting.
The Saturday program draws on jazz, film music and mid-century lounge sounds, with the whistle occupying the role that a singer or horn might take in another ensemble. Lewis’s arrangements create an atmosphere that can feel at once playful, mysterious and nostalgic, demonstrating how an unexpected instrument can become the expressive center of a band.
Café Molly offers a chance to hear how Lewis’s distinctive sound works in her own musical environment rather than in an orchestral setting. Readers interested in her artistry may find the contrast between the two evenings particularly rewarding. Admission is Pay What You Will.
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 8–9 PM
📍 Arthur Zankel Music Center · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Pay What You Will
Details — Skidmore Music Events
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist-composer Vijay Iyer, collaborators across musical traditions.
🎻 Jennifer Koh, Violin & Vijay Iyer, Piano
Capital Region Classical · Union College
Violinist Jennifer Koh is a Grammy-winning advocate for living composers, while pianist-composer Vijay Iyer moves between contemporary classical music and improvisation. Both have built careers around collaboration across musical boundaries, challenging the idea that classical music must remain confined to a fixed historical repertoire. Their work often places familiar traditions in conversation with new musical languages.
Their Union College program places Bach’s D-minor Partita beside newer music, including the New York premiere of Iyer’s Scenes of Living & Dying, Part 2: The Betweens. Bach’s solo violin writing offers one kind of musical intensity, while Iyer’s contemporary composition approaches questions of life, death and the spaces between them through a different sound world.
Capital Region Classical helped commission the Iyer work, making this more than a touring concert: a local presenter participated in bringing the music into existence. The performance offers audiences a chance to hear the new work from the artists closely associated with it. Children and college students are admitted free at the door.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 3–4:30 PM
📍 Memorial Chapel · Union College · 807 Union Street, Schenectady
🎟️ $40 · Children and college students free at the door
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎼 Joshua Tanis & Nellie Rustick Meier — Alumni Concert
University at Albany · Performing Arts Center
Pianist Joshua Tanis and soprano Nellie Rustick Meier return to UAlbany for a recital centered on Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. Both cycles occupy important places in the German Romantic song tradition, using the combination of poetry and music to explore longing, reflection and emotional transformation.
Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder anticipates the harmonic world of Tristan und Isolde, making the songs especially revealing for listeners interested in how his musical language developed. Strauss’s late songs turn toward evening, memory and mortality with long vocal lines and luminous harmonies. Heard together, the two works create a journey across related but distinct musical worlds.
The pairing gives the alumni recital a coherent focus, while the intimate Performing Arts Center Recital Hall provides a setting well suited to voice and piano. Admission is $10, making it an accessible opportunity to hear major works of the art-song repertoire.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 3–4:30 PM
📍 Performing Arts Center, Recital Hall · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ $10
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎶 Alash — Tuvan Throat Singing
Skidmore College · Arthur Zankel Music Center
Tuvan throat singing allows a performer to produce multiple pitches at once, creating a musical texture that can sound almost instrumental. Alash brings that tradition to Skidmore through the voices and traditional instruments of Bady-Dorzhu Ondar, Ayan-ool Sam and Ayan Shirizhik.
The ensemble’s work preserves the sound of Tuva while opening it to encounters with other musical traditions. Collaborations with artists including Béla Fleck and the Sun Ra Arkestra have introduced Alash to audiences far beyond Central Asia. Sunday’s concert offers a chance to hear a form of vocal music whose overtones, rhythms and instrumental colors reward close listening.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 4–5:30 PM
🎟️ See presenter’s ticket information
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎬 FILM
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🎬 Backrooms — Film Screening
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute · EMPAC
Backrooms brings an unsettling online horror phenomenon into the cinema. Its familiar-looking but disorienting spaces turn ordinary architecture into a source of dread, drawing on the sense that a place can look recognizable while feeling fundamentally wrong.
EMPAC’s screening offers an opportunity to experience that atmosphere on a theater screen with a shared audience. For readers interested in contemporary horror, internet-born storytelling or the ways sound and space shape a film’s effect, this is a different kind of campus outing.
📅 Tuesday, October 13 · 7 PM
📍 EMPAC Theater · RPI · 50 8th Street, Troy
🎟️ $3 at the door
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🌎 REGIONAL EXTENSION
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🏛️ The Arendt Forum 2026 — Solidarity: What Are We Fighting For?
Bard College · Hannah Arendt Center
The Hannah Arendt Center’s three-day forum asks what solidarity can mean amid migration, inequality, polarization and declining trust in institutions. Solidarity is often invoked as a political virtue, but it can describe very different kinds of relationships: shared identity, mutual obligation, cooperation across differences or collective action in pursuit of a common goal. The forum approaches these questions through philosophy, sociology, politics, theology and literature.
Thursday includes Carol Gilligan’s In a Human Voice at 10:30 AM. Gilligan’s influential work on moral development and the ethics of care challenged assumptions about how people reason about responsibility and relationships. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams speaks at 2:30 PM on Solidarity: The Work of Recognition, bringing theological and philosophical perspectives to the question of what it means to acknowledge the humanity of others. The day closes with a 6–7 PM reception.
Friday includes Eva Illouz and Thomas Chatterton Williams in the 11 AM session Fraternity Without Illusions. Illouz’s scholarship examines the relationship between emotion, culture and social institutions, while Williams has written extensively about identity, race and public debate. Their participation offers contrasting perspectives on how people might build political and social connections without denying genuine differences. Other sessions address labor, civic love and shared American purpose. A 5–6 PM reception follows.
Saturday’s 9–11 AM Envisioning Solidarity Together session is participatory, moving from formal presentations toward discussion of what solidarity might look like in practice. Readers should consult Bard’s official schedule for individual sessions, locations and registration information.
This is a Regional Extension selection because it brings nationally and internationally prominent thinkers together around a substantial public question. It is the kind of concentrated intellectual program that may justify a trip to Bard for readers interested in political thought, contemporary society and the future of democratic life.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 10 AM–7 PM
📅 Friday, October 16 · 9:30 AM–6 PM
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 9–11 AM
📍 Olin Hall and related campus locations · Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson
🎟️ General registration $199 · Hannah Arendt Center members complimentary
Details / Register / Full Schedule
📅 Calendar — Thursday: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Friday: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Saturday: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎼 The Orchestra Now — The American Spirit
Bard College · Fisher Center
The American Spirit expands the customary picture of American orchestral music by placing Aaron Copland alongside Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery and William Grant Still. The program explores several ways composers have expressed American identity, drawing on different musical traditions and historical experiences rather than presenting a single national sound.
Guest conductor Kellen Gray leads The Orchestra Now, with violinist Melissa White performing Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Price’s music has gained renewed attention after decades of neglect in mainstream concert programming. As a Black woman composer working in the first half of the twentieth century, she faced barriers that shaped how her work was performed and remembered.
The program also includes Copland’s Short Symphony, Montgomery’s Hymn for Everyone and Still’s Fourth Symphony, Autochthonous. Heard together, these works invite audiences to reconsider the breadth of the American orchestral tradition. Tickets begin at $15 at Bard’s Fisher Center.
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 7–9 PM
📍 Sosnoff Theater, Fisher Center · Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson
🎟️ From $15
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🔥 3-WEEK PLAN AHEAD
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October 19–November 8
🔬 UAlbany Research & Entrepreneurship Week — October 19–23
The University at Albany’s research and entrepreneurship programming highlights work taking place across university laboratories, research centers and industry partnerships. The week includes the Albany Nanotechnology Symposium on October 22–23, an opportunity to explore developments in semiconductor technology and related fields.
🚀 RPI Entrepreneur of the Year — Ajit Prabhu — October 21
RPI honors Quest Global co-founder and CEO Ajit Prabhu at EMPAC. The program brings together an award celebration, conversation, startup pitches and research presentations, connecting the university’s entrepreneurial history with current innovation.
Wednesday, October 21 · 1 PM · EMPAC
📚 Garth Greenwell — 56th Annual Steloff Lecture — October 22
Award-winning novelist Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You, Cleanness and Small Rain, visits Skidmore for the annual Steloff Lecture. His fiction is known for its close attention to language, intimacy and the complexity of human relationships.
Thursday, October 22 · 8 PM · Skidmore
🏛️ Danielle Allen — Kuroda Symposium — October 23
Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen comes to Skidmore to address questions connected to democracy, citizenship and American political culture. Allen’s work examines how democratic institutions and civic participation can support a more inclusive public life.
Friday, October 23 · 5 PM · Skidmore
🎷 Ernie Watts Quartet — October 30
Two-time Grammy-winning saxophonist Ernie Watts brings his quartet to SUNY Schenectady for an A Place for Jazz concert. Watts has worked across jazz, popular music and studio recording, developing a powerful and immediately recognizable saxophone sound.
Friday, October 30 · 7 PM · SUNY Schenectady
Details / Tickets — A Place for Jazz Concert Series
🎬 Raiders of the Lost Ark in Concert — October 31–November 1
The Orchestra Now performs John Williams’s complete score live while Steven Spielberg’s film plays at Bard’s Fisher Center. The presentation gives audiences an opportunity to experience how Williams’s music drives the film’s adventure, suspense and humor.
October 31–November 1 · Bard Fisher Center
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🔭 LONG-RANGE EARLY WARNING
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November 9–February 8
🔊 INTERFACE: Brett Fajen & Heidi Latsky — November 12
RPI/EMPAC brings cognitive science and choreography together in a program exploring perception, movement and the knowledge contained in physical action. The collaboration offers a meeting point between scientific inquiry and contemporary performance.
Thursday, November 12 · 6 PM · RPI/EMPAC
🎷 Ali Ryerson Quartet — November 13
Jazz flutist Ali Ryerson brings her quartet to SUNY Schenectady for A Place for Jazz. Ryerson has helped establish the flute as a compelling jazz solo instrument, with a career spanning performance, recording and education.
Details / Tickets — A Place for Jazz Concert Series
🎼 Gershwin, Jazz & the Music of Jewish Émigrés — November 14–15
Bard explores connections among Jewish immigration, European musical traditions, jazz and the development of American concert and popular music. The program offers a historical perspective on the musical exchanges that helped shape twentieth-century American culture.
Details — Fisher Center Programs
🍭 Hansel and Gretel — December 11 & 13
Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera transforms the Grimm fairy tale into a richly orchestrated work combining childhood fantasy with the musical language of late Romanticism. Bard’s production offers a seasonal opportunity to experience one of opera’s best-known fairy-tale adaptations.
Details — Fisher Center Programs
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🎭 FUTURE THEATER ON CAMPUS
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Capital Region
October 21–25 — The Drunken City — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
October 23–28 — BECKETT: Nothing Is Certain — Skidmore — Details
October 30–November 8 — Grease — Russell Sage / Theatre Institute — Details — Season
November 12–21 — Rent — Siena — Details — Creative Arts Events
November 18–22 — A Doll’s House — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
November 20–December 5 — This Emancipation Thing — Skidmore — Details
December 2–10 — Little Women: The Musical — Russell Sage / Theatre Institute — Details — Season
February 24–March 3 — Clue — Russell Sage / Theatre Institute — Details — Season
March 3–7 — Musical — title forthcoming — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
April 14–17 — FRESH ACTS: A Festival of New Plays — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
Regional Extension Watch
October 23–25 — Rossum’s Universal Robots — Bard — Details
November 7 — Dead as a Dodo — Williams — Details — ’62 Center Calendar
November 19–21 — Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play — Williams — Details
These are advance dates for planning. Check the presenting theater for performance times, ticket sales and any schedule changes.
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📅 BY DAY CALENDAR
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Monday, October 12
No qualifying public campus events currently confirmed.
Tuesday, October 13
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
7 PM — Backrooms · RPI/EMPAC
7:30–9 PM — Paul Grondahl, Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life · UAlbany
Wednesday, October 14
10:30–11:15 AM — Massry Center Ribbon-cutting & Open House · Hudson Valley / Albany
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
4–5:30 PM — Claudia Goldin · UAlbany
4–6 PM — New Walls Faculty Art Exhibition Opening · Esther Massry Gallery / Albany
5–6:30 PM — Sagrada Família / Mauricio Cortés Sierra · RPI/EMPAC
5:30–7 PM — Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral · Skidmore/Tang
7–8:30 PM — Four-Hands Piano · SUNY Schenectady
Thursday, October 15
10 AM–7 PM — Arendt Forum, Day 1 · Bard
11:45 AM–1 PM — Public Engagement on the Menu · UAlbany
12:45–1:50 PM — Rachel Dinero · Union College
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
4:30–5:30 PM — Kristen Millares Young · UAlbany
6:30–7:30 PM — Ira Baumgarten · Russell Sage/Opalka
Friday, October 16
9:30 AM–6 PM — Arendt Forum, Day 2 · Bard
10–11:30 AM — Advancing Workforce Development · HVCC North / Ballston Spa
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
5–6:15 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi Master Class · Union
5–7 PM — University Art Museum Artists’ Reception · UAlbany
6:30–7:30 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi Lecture/Demonstration · Union
7–8:30 PM — The Cookers · SUNY Schenectady
7–9 PM — Skidmore Orchestra featuring Molly Lewis · Skidmore
Saturday, October 17
9–11 AM — Arendt Forum, Day 3 · Bard
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
5 PM — Tang Fall Opening Reception · Skidmore
6:15–6:45 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi Pre-show Talk · The Egg
7 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi, Sol Invictus · The Egg
7–9 PM — The Orchestra Now, The American Spirit · Bard
8–9 PM — Café Molly · Skidmore
Sunday, October 18
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
2 PM — Tang Guide Tour · Skidmore
3–4:30 PM — Jennifer Koh & Vijay Iyer · Union College
3–4:30 PM — Joshua Tanis & Nellie Rustick Meier · UAlbany
4–5:30 PM — Alash · Skidmore
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CAPITAL REGION CURATED
What’s worth your time at Capital Region colleges and universities.
Edited by Alan Koslow
Subscribe here: Capital Region Curated
Originally published at
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Capital Region Curated: October 12-18
Alan Koslow’s weekly guide to Capital Region campus events, with Nobel economist Claudia Goldin, the Sagrada Família architect and more.
Alan Koslow
33
mins read time
Originally published at
Substack: Capital Region Curated
Capital Region Curated, Alan Koslow’s weekly guide to Capital Region campus events.
What’s worth your time at Capital Region colleges and universities.
🏆 🏛️ 🎶 🎭 📚
Nobel economist Claudia Goldin, a leading scholar of women’s work and economic opportunity.
A NOBEL ECONOMIST, GAUDÍ’S UNFINISHED MASTERPIECE, WHISTLING WITH AN ORCHESTRA & A MUSICAL MEETING OF MINDS
Claudia Goldin at UAlbany; the Sagrada Família architect at RPI; Molly Lewis and the Skidmore Orchestra; Jennifer Koh and Vijay Iyer at Union; and Bard’s three-day Arendt Forum.
📣 HELP SPREAD THE WORD
It really helps when readers share Capital Region Curated.
If you work with a college department, program, gallery, museum, performing arts office, campus newsletter, or personal newsletter, I’d be grateful if you would share it with people who might want a weekly guide to public events on Capital Region campuses.
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🧭 START HERE: WHAT’S INSIDE THIS WEEK
⭐ Top Picks — Nobel economist Claudia Goldin; the architect completing Gaudí’s Sagrada Família; whistling virtuoso Molly Lewis with the Skidmore Orchestra; and Jennifer Koh and Vijay Iyer’s New York premiere.
🏛️ Ideas & Public Life — Women’s economic autonomy, architectural innovation, parental burnout, university-community engagement and workforce development.
📚 Books, Writers & Ideas — Andy Rooney’s life, Kristen Millares Young’s memoir and queer art and identity.
🎭 Theater & Performance — Pam Tanowitz’s creative process and Compagnie Hervé Koubi’s dance residency.
🎨 Art & Visual Culture — The Massry Center’s reopening, UAlbany’s artists’ reception, the Tang’s fall exhibitions, Town Crier and guided tour.
🎶 Music, Sound & Technology — Four-hand piano, The Cookers, two Molly Lewis performances, contemporary classical music, German art song and Alash’s Tuvan throat singing.
🎬 Film — Backrooms at EMPAC.
🌎 Regional Extension — Bard’s Hannah Arendt Forum and The Orchestra Now.
🔥 Plan Ahead — Research programs, major speakers, concerts, fall theater and early warnings through winter.
📅 ADD THE COMPLETE WEEK
Add the supplied weekly calendar to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook.
📅 ADD THE COMPLETE WEEK — GOOGLE · APPLE · OUTLOOK
🔐 VISITING A CAMPUS EVENT?
Some campus buildings now have controlled or ID-card access, particularly during the day. If you’re attending a public event and find the doors locked, ask someone for help and explain that you’re a visitor coming for the program. Arriving a few minutes early for smaller daytime events is a good idea.
Evening events are generally held in buildings that are open and accessible for the program.
💬 READER FIELD NOTES
Did you attend something listed in Capital Region Curated?
Leave a quick comment: what did you see, and would you recommend it? One sentence is enough.
⭐ TOP PICKS
🏆 Claudia Goldin — The Rise of Female Autonomy and the Decline of Fertility
UAlbany · Wednesday, October 14 · 4–5:30 PM
Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin has transformed how we understand women’s work, education and economic independence. Her research reveals how changes in technology, employment and family life reshaped opportunities for women across generations—and why the gender earnings gap persists even among highly educated professionals. At UAlbany, she examines the connection between women’s expanding autonomy and declining fertility, a subject that reaches far beyond economics into the future of families and society. Registration closed October 7.
See 🏛️ Ideas, Public Life & Campus Conversations below.
🏛️ Mauricio Cortés Sierra — Sagrada Família
RPI/EMPAC · Wednesday, October 14 · 5–6:30 PM
More than 140 years after construction began, Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família remains one of the world’s most remarkable architectural undertakings. Mauricio Cortés Sierra, who has worked on the Barcelona basilica since 2006, will explain how generations of architects and craftspeople have translated Gaudí’s surviving designs into a structure that modern engineering is finally making possible. From the central towers to the still-unfinished Glory Façade, this free lecture offers an unusually direct perspective on a building whose construction has become part of its history.
See 🏛️ Ideas, Public Life & Campus Conversations below.
🎶 Skidmore Orchestra Featuring Molly Lewis
Skidmore · Friday, October 16 · 7–9 PM
A professional whistler performing as an orchestral soloist may sound improbable, but Molly Lewis has made the human whistle an expressive instrument capable of surprising precision and emotional range. Her work moves between jazz, lounge music and cinematic atmosphere, and her whistling has reached audiences through film as well as her own recordings. On Friday, she joins the Skidmore Orchestra in a free program that places her distinctive sound alongside classical repertoire. She returns Saturday with her own five-piece band for a very different performance.
See 🎶 Music, Sound & Technology below.
🎻 Jennifer Koh & Vijay Iyer
Union College · Sunday, October 18 · 3–4:30 PM
Violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist-composer Vijay Iyer are two of contemporary music’s most adventurous collaborators, each known for expanding the possibilities of classical performance. Their Union College concert brings Bach into conversation with new music, including the New York premiere of Iyer’s Scenes of Living & Dying, Part 2: The Betweens. Capital Region Classical helped commission the work, giving the local performance a special connection to its creation. Children and college students are admitted free at the door.
See 🎶 Music, Sound & Technology below.
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🏛️ IDEAS, PUBLIC LIFE & CAMPUS CONVERSATIONS
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🏆 Claudia Goldin — The Rise of Female Autonomy and the Decline of Fertility
University at Albany · Pong S. Lee Memorial Lecture
Goldin’s historical research overturned the assumption that women’s participation in paid work rose steadily with economic growth. By tracing employment, education and marriage across generations, she showed how industrialization, the rise of office work and access to professional training changed women’s economic options.
Her work on the gender earnings gap also identifies the premium many employers place on long or unpredictable hours. Those rewards can become particularly consequential after parenthood, even among people who began their careers with similar qualifications. Her research helped explain why changes in education and employment opportunities did not automatically eliminate earnings inequality.
Her Albany lecture connects that history to declining fertility as women gain greater control over careers, relationships and family formation. The subject touches economics, public policy and the choices families make in societies where women’s opportunities have expanded dramatically.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 4–5:30 PM
📍 Performing Arts Center, Recital Hall · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free · Registration required
Registration closed October 7.
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Gaudí’s Sagrada Família in Barcelona, with its intricate, nature-inspired architecture.
🏛️ Sagrada Família — The Dream of a Genius, A Collective Endeavour Across Generations
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute · Steven Ehrlich ’69 Architecture Lecture
Construction of Antoni Gaudí’s basilica began in 1882, and the architect died in 1926 with much of his design unrealized. Later architects inherited surviving models and drawings, some damaged during the Spanish Civil War, and faced the unusual responsibility of completing another architect’s work across generations. The Sagrada Família is therefore both an architectural monument and an extraordinary example of continuity across changing technologies and artistic eras.
Mauricio Cortés Sierra has worked on the basilica since 2006 and helped direct its central towers. Digital modeling, structural geometry and precision manufacturing now make it possible to construct forms Gaudí developed through physical models and experiments. The challenge is not simply to finish a building but to understand how its original design principles can be carried forward responsibly.
This Steven Ehrlich ’69 Architecture Lecture focuses on how the project balances fidelity to Gaudí with contemporary engineering, including the remaining Glory Façade. The opportunity to hear from an architect directly involved in the work makes the presentation especially worthwhile for readers interested in architecture, engineering, design or the history of Barcelona’s most famous building. It is a lecture at EMPAC, not a structural tour.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 5–6:30 PM
📍 EMPAC Theater · RPI · 50 8th Street, Troy
🎟️ Free
Details — Architecture Lecture Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🍕 Public Engagement on the Menu — Lunch & Learn
University at Albany · University-Community Partnerships
What counts as public engagement—and whose contributions tend to go unrecognized? UAlbany’s inaugural lunch-and-learn, “What? That’s public engagement?”, looks at the many ways university work connects with communities beyond campus, including partnerships that may receive less attention than formal research projects.
Jay Bloom, Lakia Green, Janine Jurkowski and Sheri Stevens bring perspectives from the AI Plus Institute, inclusive excellence, public health and community service. The discussion offers a chance to consider how different kinds of expertise and community relationships contribute to a university’s public role. Pizza and dessert are included.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 11:45 AM–1 PM
📍 Minerva Room, University Main Library · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free · Registration requested
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🧠 Rachel Dinero — The Impact of Social & Economic Disruption on Parental Burnout: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic
Union College · Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium
The pandemic abruptly collapsed boundaries between paid work, childcare and schooling. Parents who had previously relied on schools, relatives and childcare providers suddenly found themselves managing overlapping responsibilities at home. Dinero’s research asks how those disruptions affected parental exhaustion and whether economic and social pressures continued to shape families after lockdowns ended.
The Le Moyne College psychologist studies relationships, family well-being and social health. Her presentation draws on evidence collected during a period when families faced unusually intense demands, providing a research-based perspective on experiences that many parents remember vividly. The topic also raises broader questions about work arrangements, social support and the conditions that make parenting sustainable.
Union’s Psychology Department Speaker Series and Honors Colloquium offers an opportunity to hear current psychological research outside a conventional classroom. Community members are welcome, and complimentary lunch and refreshments are offered.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 12:45–1:50 PM
📍 Karp 105 · Union College · 807 Union Street, Schenectady
🎟️ Free · Public welcome · Complimentary lunch
Details — Psychology Speaker Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🏭 Advancing Workforce Development — Research & Panel Discussion
Hudson Valley Community College · HVCC North
What skills will the region’s employers need, and how can colleges prepare students and workers to meet those needs? Hudson Valley’s workforce-development program brings research and discussion together around those questions, connecting education with the changing demands of the regional economy.
The program presents workforce-survey findings and a panel discussion with industry and community perspectives. For readers interested in education, economic development or the relationship between colleges and employers, it offers a chance to hear how institutions are approaching the preparation of the next generation of workers.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 10–11:30 AM
📍 HVCC North · 345 Hermes Road, Ballston Spa
🎟️ Open to the public
Details — HVCC Inauguration Week Programs
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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📚 BOOKS, WRITERS & IDEAS
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📖 Paul Grondahl — Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life
University at Albany · New York State Writers Institute
Albany-born Andy Rooney became familiar to generations of viewers through his wry closing essays on CBS’s 60 Minutes, where his observations about ordinary irritations and human behavior made him one of television’s most recognizable commentators. Yet that late-career fame was only part of a much longer journalistic life. Rooney began reporting during World War II for Stars and Stripes and went on to work across radio, television and print.
Paul Grondahl approaches Rooney as a fellow Albany journalist. A longtime Times Union reporter and director of the New York State Writers Institute, Grondahl brings a local perspective to a national media figure whose career spanned major changes in American journalism. His biography follows Rooney’s development as a writer, his professional relationships and the sometimes complicated personality behind the public image.
The evening includes a discussion of Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life and a book signing. SUNY Press is a cosponsor as part of its 60th-anniversary programming. For readers interested in journalism, broadcasting or Albany history, this is a chance to revisit an unusually long and influential career.
📅 Tuesday, October 13 · 7:30–9 PM
📍 Page Hall Auditorium · UAlbany Downtown Campus · 135 Western Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
📚 Kristen Millares Young — Desire Lines
University at Albany · New York State Writers Institute
Kristen Millares Young’s fiction and nonfiction explore migration, cultural inheritance and the uneasy question of who gets to tell another person’s story. Her novel Subduction follows an anthropologist working in the Pacific Northwest and examines the ethics of observation, particularly when an outsider’s professional ambitions intersect with another community’s history and experience.
Her memoir Desire Lines turns that attention inward, tracing family history, motherhood, sexuality and the expectations that shape women’s lives. The title evokes the informal paths people make for themselves rather than the routes laid out for them. Young’s writing examines the tension between inherited obligations and individual desire, bringing literary form to questions that are at once intimate and social.
The UAlbany appearance offers an opportunity to hear how Young approaches personal material as a writer and how questions of identity become questions of narrative craft. A book signing follows, giving readers an opportunity to continue the conversation.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 4:30–5:30 PM
📍 Campus Center West Boardroom · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
📖 Ira Baumgarten — Shapeshifters: Bodies Like Water
Russell Sage / Opalka Gallery
Shapeshifters: Bodies Like Water considers bodies and identity as changing rather than fixed, bringing queer experience, landscape and transformation together through images and multimedia work. The project uses the idea of shapeshifting to explore how people understand themselves and how those understandings may evolve in response to place, memory and relationships.
Ira Baumgarten’s presentation connects the accompanying book with the larger artistic project. Opalka Gallery’s setting makes it possible to consider the material and visual dimensions of the work alongside its written ideas. The subject crosses the boundaries between art, personal narrative and social experience, encouraging audiences to think about identity as something lived and continually reinterpreted.
The evening includes discussion and a book signing, with proceeds benefiting a local LGBTQ+ nonprofit. It is an accessible opportunity to encounter the project and the community questions behind it.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 6:30–7:30 PM
📍 Opalka Gallery · Russell Sage College · 140 New Scotland Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
Details — Opalka Programs & Events
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎭 THEATER & PERFORMANCE
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Pam Tanowitz, known for her inventive approach to ballet and modern dance.
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💃 Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral: Artists in Conversation
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
Choreographer Pam Tanowitz has built an international reputation by taking the formal vocabulary of ballet and modern dance apart and recombining it in unexpected ways. Her work often looks deceptively orderly at first: dancers move through recognizable patterns, only to interrupt or redirect the audience’s expectations. That combination of classical precision and contemporary experimentation has made her one of the most distinctive voices in American choreography.
Her Pastoral project uses Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony as a point of departure rather than a score to illustrate literally. The work brings choreography into conversation with visual art, music and ideas of landscape. Collaborators including artist Sarah Crowner, dramaturg Gideon Lester and composer Caroline Shaw contribute different perspectives on how an audience experiences space, sound and movement.
At the Tang, Tanowitz joins Crowner, Lester and poet April Bernard in a conversation moderated by Brian Lawson. Rather than presenting a finished performance, the discussion opens a window onto the decisions that shape one—an appealing opportunity for anyone interested in how artists work across disciplines.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 5:30–7 PM
📍 Payne Room, Tang Teaching Museum · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free and open to the public
Details | Skidmore Residency Announcement
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Dancers in Sol Invictus, blending contemporary movement and acrobatics.
💃 Compagnie Hervé Koubi — Residency and Sol Invictus
Union College / The Egg · Stephanie C. Davis Dance Residency
Hervé Koubi’s dancers combine contemporary choreography with acrobatics, capoeira and street-dance movement. Rapid lifts, catches, aerial turns and floorwork create images that depend as much on collective trust as on individual athleticism. The company draws on a wide range of movement traditions, creating performances that can feel both highly disciplined and startlingly spontaneous.
Union College’s Stephanie C. Davis Dance Residency makes the creative process visible before the public performance. Friday’s free master class and lecture-demonstration offer different ways to encounter the company: one emphasizes movement and technique, while the other helps audiences understand how the dancers build their physical vocabulary and work together. These activities are distinct from Saturday’s ticketed stage production.
On Saturday, the company performs Sol Invictus at The Egg, preceded by a conversation with Koubi and Union dance director Laurie Zabele Cawley. The residency offers an unusually complete experience of a visiting dance company, from the rehearsal-room process to the finished work. All four components are listed separately in the calendar so readers can choose the events that interest them.
Friday, October 16 — Union College
📅 5–6:15 PM · Master Class
📅 6:30–7:30 PM · Lecture/Demonstration
📍 Henle Dance Pavilion · Union College · 807 Union Street, Schenectady
🎟️ Free and open to the public · No registration required
📅 Calendar — Master Class: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Lecture/Demonstration: Google | Apple/Outlook
Saturday, October 17 — The Egg
📅 6:15–6:45 PM · Pre-show Talk
📅 7 PM · Sol Invictus
📍 The Egg · Empire State Plaza, Albany
🎟️ Ticketed performance · See ticket page for prices and pre-show access
📅 Calendar — Pre-show Talk: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Sol Invictus: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎨 ART & VISUAL CULTURE
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🎨 Massry Center for the Arts — Reopening & “New Walls”
Hudson Valley Community College · Albany
The Massry Center for the Arts begins a new chapter under Hudson Valley Community College’s leadership. The reopening returns the former College of Saint Rose facility to public view as a center for arts, education, performance and community engagement. Wednesday morning’s ribbon-cutting and open house offer an opportunity to visit the building and mark its renewed place in Albany’s cultural life.
Later that afternoon, the Esther Massry Gallery welcomes visitors for New Walls, a faculty art exhibition and opening reception. The two public events offer different ways to encounter the center: through its reopening in the morning and through the work of its artists in the afternoon. Neither requires registration.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 10:30–11:15 AM · Ribbon-cutting & Open House
📍 Massry Center for the Arts · 1002 Madison Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Open to the public · No registration required
📅 Calendar — Ribbon-cutting & Open House: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 4–6 PM · “New Walls” Opening Reception
📍 Esther Massry Gallery, Massry Center for the Arts · 1002 Madison Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Open to the public · No registration required
📅 Calendar — New Walls: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎨 University Art Museum — Artists’ Reception
University at Albany · University Art Museum
Three exhibitions are on view at UAlbany’s University Art Museum: Howard Schwartzberg: Volume, Surface, Core, mosie romney: ash, whistle & redress, and Invitation to the Light Factory. The exhibitions bring together different approaches to making and experiencing art, from the physical qualities of objects to the relationship between images, language and perception.
Schwartzberg’s title points toward the interaction of volume, surface and internal structure. Romney’s exhibition introduces a different set of materials and associations, while Invitation to the Light Factory brings artist Suzan Frecon into dialogue with poet Marcella Durand. Together, the presentations demonstrate the breadth of contemporary practice within a university museum.
Friday’s artists’ reception allows visitors to see all three exhibitions during a single evening and meet people involved in the work. Light refreshments and free parking in the State Quad Student Parking Lot are listed for the program.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 5–7 PM
📍 University Art Museum, Fine Arts Building · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
An installation view at the Tang Teaching Museum, known for its interdisciplinary exhibitions.
🖼️ Tang 2026 Fall Opening Reception
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang opens five exhibitions spanning ecology, political history, contemporary art and archival sound. 500 Dams examines grassland regeneration in New Mexico, while Chaia—Yiddishland on the Move draws on digitized recordings from YIVO’s archives. The subjects are quite different, but both demonstrate how museums can connect artistic practice to environmental and cultural memory.
Other exhibitions include A Feeling of With, a faculty-co-curated presentation of the museum’s collection; Mark Thomas Gibson: We Are A Constellation, examining American history and citizenship; and Sheila Pepe: When & Where We Rest, an installation drawing on religion, sociology, queer theory and cultural histories extending from ancient Greece and Rome to the Silk Road. Together, the five exhibitions offer several entry points into the Tang’s cross-disciplinary approach, which regularly places art in conversation with history, politics and other fields of inquiry.
Saturday’s free opening reception is an opportunity to see the entire fall program at once. Readers who enjoy meeting other museumgoers and experiencing a gallery during a public celebration may prefer the opening; those looking for more interpretation can return for Sunday’s separate guided tour.
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 5 PM
📍 Tang Teaching Museum · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
📣 Tang Town Crier — Ongoing Performance
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang’s Town Crier brings a live performance element into the museum experience, announcing news from 1776 and today. The juxtaposition places historical events beside contemporary headlines, inviting visitors to hear how public announcements connect different moments in American life.
The Town Crier is scheduled at 2 PM Tuesday through Sunday during the issue week. Because it is a repeated program rather than six distinct productions, it appears here once, with its daily appearances repeated in the By Day Calendar for readers’ convenience.
📅 Tuesday–Sunday, October 13–18 · 2 PM daily
📍 Wachenheim Gallery, Tang Teaching Museum · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free
🖼️ Tang Guide Tour
Skidmore College · Tang Teaching Museum
Sunday’s guided tour provides an introduction to the Tang’s fall exhibitions, including projects examining ecology, archival sound, identity and contemporary art. The museum’s exhibitions are designed to encourage connections across disciplines, and a guide can help visitors understand how individual works contribute to those broader conversations.
Rather than simply moving from one object to the next, a guided tour can explain why particular artists and materials appear together, how the exhibitions were organized and what questions the curators hope visitors will consider. It can be especially useful when the works address unfamiliar historical or cultural subjects.
For readers who would rather explore the exhibitions through conversation than during a crowded opening reception, this is the quieter alternative. The tour also offers an opportunity to ask questions and return to individual works with a clearer understanding of their context.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 2 PM
📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Atrium · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎶 MUSIC, SOUND & TECHNOLOGY
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🎹 Chamber Music Series — Four-Hands Piano
SUNY Schenectady · School of Music
Four-hand piano music once allowed listeners to experience arrangements of large-scale orchestral works in homes and salons before recorded sound was widely available. But the format is more than a practical substitute for an orchestra. Two performers sharing one keyboard can create intricate textures, rapid exchanges and musical conversations that are difficult for a single pianist to achieve.
Megan Glikes and Mark Evans perform music by Mozart, Debussy, Dvořák and Brahms, including Debussy’s Petite Suite and selections from Brahms’s Hungarian Dances and Liebeslieder Waltzes. The program spans contrasting musical styles, from Classical-era elegance to Romantic warmth and the coloristic writing associated with French music.
Because both musicians share the same instrument, their coordination becomes part of what the audience sees as well as hears. The free performance at SUNY Schenectady offers an accessible introduction to a chamber-music format that is less commonly encountered than solo piano or string quartet concerts.
📅 Wednesday, October 14 · 7–8:30 PM
📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium · SUNY Schenectady · 78 Washington Avenue, Schenectady
🎟️ Free
Details — Chamber Music Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
The Cookers, bringing together generations of experience in modern jazz.
🎷 The Cookers
A Place for Jazz · SUNY Schenectady
The Cookers bring together veteran jazz musicians whose careers connect directly to the hard-bop and post-bop traditions. The group’s name recalls a Freddie Hubbard album, but this is not a historical recreation. The ensemble draws on decades of experience to create contemporary performances grounded in the powerful ensemble writing and improvisational energy associated with modern jazz.
Their recordings, including Believe, The Call of the Wild and Peaceful Heart and Look Out!, combine tightly shaped compositions with expansive improvisation. The music allows individual players room to develop ideas while retaining the sense of a group working toward a shared musical direction. That balance between structure and freedom is central to the band’s appeal.
A Place for Jazz brings the ensemble to SUNY Schenectady, where the concert setting makes the interaction among soloists and rhythm section part of the experience. Trumpeter Eddie Henderson, bassist Cecil McBee, pianist George Cables and drummer Billy Hart bring firsthand connections to the jazz developments of the 1960s into the ensemble’s present-day sound.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 7–8:30 PM
📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium · SUNY Schenectady · 78 Washington Avenue, Schenectady
🎟️ $25 at the door · $26.95 online
Details / Tickets — A Place for Jazz Concert Series
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Molly Lewis, whose expressive whistling gives her music its distinctive sound.
🎶 Skidmore Orchestra Featuring Molly Lewis
Skidmore College · Arthur Zankel Music Center
Whistling is usually treated as a novelty or casual accompaniment. Molly Lewis instead uses precise pitch, breath and phrasing to make it a fully expressive solo instrument, drawing on jazz, lounge music and cinematic sound. Her musical style can evoke an earlier era of film scores and sophisticated popular entertainment, yet her approach is distinctly contemporary.
Her whistling can be heard in the closing credits of Barbie, and her own recordings—including On the Lips—build an atmospheric musical world around the instrument. What makes Lewis especially interesting is not simply that she whistles exceptionally well, but that she uses the instrument with the phrasing and expressive control associated with accomplished singers and instrumentalists.
On Friday, she appears with the Skidmore Orchestra in a program combining her compositions with music by Delibes, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Fauré and Mozart. The orchestral setting provides a distinctive opportunity to hear her sound in dialogue with a larger ensemble. Saturday’s Café Molly is a separate performance with her own band.
📅 Friday, October 16 · 7–9 PM
🎟️ Free
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎶 Café Molly: An Evening with Molly Lewis
Skidmore College · Arthur Zankel Music Center
Molly Lewis has two very different Skidmore performances this week. Friday night she appears as the featured soloist with the Skidmore Orchestra; Saturday night, she performs with her five-piece ensemble, bringing her own repertoire into a smaller setting.
The Saturday program draws on jazz, film music and mid-century lounge sounds, with the whistle occupying the role that a singer or horn might take in another ensemble. Lewis’s arrangements create an atmosphere that can feel at once playful, mysterious and nostalgic, demonstrating how an unexpected instrument can become the expressive center of a band.
Café Molly offers a chance to hear how Lewis’s distinctive sound works in her own musical environment rather than in an orchestral setting. Readers interested in her artistry may find the contrast between the two evenings particularly rewarding. Admission is Pay What You Will.
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 8–9 PM
📍 Arthur Zankel Music Center · Skidmore College · 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs
🎟️ Pay What You Will
Details — Skidmore Music Events
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
Violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist-composer Vijay Iyer, collaborators across musical traditions.
🎻 Jennifer Koh, Violin & Vijay Iyer, Piano
Capital Region Classical · Union College
Violinist Jennifer Koh is a Grammy-winning advocate for living composers, while pianist-composer Vijay Iyer moves between contemporary classical music and improvisation. Both have built careers around collaboration across musical boundaries, challenging the idea that classical music must remain confined to a fixed historical repertoire. Their work often places familiar traditions in conversation with new musical languages.
Their Union College program places Bach’s D-minor Partita beside newer music, including the New York premiere of Iyer’s Scenes of Living & Dying, Part 2: The Betweens. Bach’s solo violin writing offers one kind of musical intensity, while Iyer’s contemporary composition approaches questions of life, death and the spaces between them through a different sound world.
Capital Region Classical helped commission the Iyer work, making this more than a touring concert: a local presenter participated in bringing the music into existence. The performance offers audiences a chance to hear the new work from the artists closely associated with it. Children and college students are admitted free at the door.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 3–4:30 PM
📍 Memorial Chapel · Union College · 807 Union Street, Schenectady
🎟️ $40 · Children and college students free at the door
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
ADVERTISEMENT
🎼 Joshua Tanis & Nellie Rustick Meier — Alumni Concert
University at Albany · Performing Arts Center
Pianist Joshua Tanis and soprano Nellie Rustick Meier return to UAlbany for a recital centered on Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs. Both cycles occupy important places in the German Romantic song tradition, using the combination of poetry and music to explore longing, reflection and emotional transformation.
Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder anticipates the harmonic world of Tristan und Isolde, making the songs especially revealing for listeners interested in how his musical language developed. Strauss’s late songs turn toward evening, memory and mortality with long vocal lines and luminous harmonies. Heard together, the two works create a journey across related but distinct musical worlds.
The pairing gives the alumni recital a coherent focus, while the intimate Performing Arts Center Recital Hall provides a setting well suited to voice and piano. Admission is $10, making it an accessible opportunity to hear major works of the art-song repertoire.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 3–4:30 PM
📍 Performing Arts Center, Recital Hall · UAlbany · 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany
🎟️ $10
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎶 Alash — Tuvan Throat Singing
Skidmore College · Arthur Zankel Music Center
Tuvan throat singing allows a performer to produce multiple pitches at once, creating a musical texture that can sound almost instrumental. Alash brings that tradition to Skidmore through the voices and traditional instruments of Bady-Dorzhu Ondar, Ayan-ool Sam and Ayan Shirizhik.
The ensemble’s work preserves the sound of Tuva while opening it to encounters with other musical traditions. Collaborations with artists including Béla Fleck and the Sun Ra Arkestra have introduced Alash to audiences far beyond Central Asia. Sunday’s concert offers a chance to hear a form of vocal music whose overtones, rhythms and instrumental colors reward close listening.
📅 Sunday, October 18 · 4–5:30 PM
🎟️ See presenter’s ticket information
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🎬 FILM
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🎬 Backrooms — Film Screening
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute · EMPAC
Backrooms brings an unsettling online horror phenomenon into the cinema. Its familiar-looking but disorienting spaces turn ordinary architecture into a source of dread, drawing on the sense that a place can look recognizable while feeling fundamentally wrong.
EMPAC’s screening offers an opportunity to experience that atmosphere on a theater screen with a shared audience. For readers interested in contemporary horror, internet-born storytelling or the ways sound and space shape a film’s effect, this is a different kind of campus outing.
📅 Tuesday, October 13 · 7 PM
📍 EMPAC Theater · RPI · 50 8th Street, Troy
🎟️ $3 at the door
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🌎 REGIONAL EXTENSION
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🏛️ The Arendt Forum 2026 — Solidarity: What Are We Fighting For?
Bard College · Hannah Arendt Center
The Hannah Arendt Center’s three-day forum asks what solidarity can mean amid migration, inequality, polarization and declining trust in institutions. Solidarity is often invoked as a political virtue, but it can describe very different kinds of relationships: shared identity, mutual obligation, cooperation across differences or collective action in pursuit of a common goal. The forum approaches these questions through philosophy, sociology, politics, theology and literature.
Thursday includes Carol Gilligan’s In a Human Voice at 10:30 AM. Gilligan’s influential work on moral development and the ethics of care challenged assumptions about how people reason about responsibility and relationships. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams speaks at 2:30 PM on Solidarity: The Work of Recognition, bringing theological and philosophical perspectives to the question of what it means to acknowledge the humanity of others. The day closes with a 6–7 PM reception.
Friday includes Eva Illouz and Thomas Chatterton Williams in the 11 AM session Fraternity Without Illusions. Illouz’s scholarship examines the relationship between emotion, culture and social institutions, while Williams has written extensively about identity, race and public debate. Their participation offers contrasting perspectives on how people might build political and social connections without denying genuine differences. Other sessions address labor, civic love and shared American purpose. A 5–6 PM reception follows.
Saturday’s 9–11 AM Envisioning Solidarity Together session is participatory, moving from formal presentations toward discussion of what solidarity might look like in practice. Readers should consult Bard’s official schedule for individual sessions, locations and registration information.
This is a Regional Extension selection because it brings nationally and internationally prominent thinkers together around a substantial public question. It is the kind of concentrated intellectual program that may justify a trip to Bard for readers interested in political thought, contemporary society and the future of democratic life.
📅 Thursday, October 15 · 10 AM–7 PM
📅 Friday, October 16 · 9:30 AM–6 PM
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 9–11 AM
📍 Olin Hall and related campus locations · Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson
🎟️ General registration $199 · Hannah Arendt Center members complimentary
Details / Register / Full Schedule
📅 Calendar — Thursday: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Friday: Google | Apple/Outlook
📅 Calendar — Saturday: Google | Apple/Outlook
🎼 The Orchestra Now — The American Spirit
Bard College · Fisher Center
The American Spirit expands the customary picture of American orchestral music by placing Aaron Copland alongside Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery and William Grant Still. The program explores several ways composers have expressed American identity, drawing on different musical traditions and historical experiences rather than presenting a single national sound.
Guest conductor Kellen Gray leads The Orchestra Now, with violinist Melissa White performing Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Price’s music has gained renewed attention after decades of neglect in mainstream concert programming. As a Black woman composer working in the first half of the twentieth century, she faced barriers that shaped how her work was performed and remembered.
The program also includes Copland’s Short Symphony, Montgomery’s Hymn for Everyone and Still’s Fourth Symphony, Autochthonous. Heard together, these works invite audiences to reconsider the breadth of the American orchestral tradition. Tickets begin at $15 at Bard’s Fisher Center.
📅 Saturday, October 17 · 7–9 PM
📍 Sosnoff Theater, Fisher Center · Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson
🎟️ From $15
📅 Calendar: Google | Apple/Outlook
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🔥 3-WEEK PLAN AHEAD
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October 19–November 8
🔬 UAlbany Research & Entrepreneurship Week — October 19–23
The University at Albany’s research and entrepreneurship programming highlights work taking place across university laboratories, research centers and industry partnerships. The week includes the Albany Nanotechnology Symposium on October 22–23, an opportunity to explore developments in semiconductor technology and related fields.
🚀 RPI Entrepreneur of the Year — Ajit Prabhu — October 21
RPI honors Quest Global co-founder and CEO Ajit Prabhu at EMPAC. The program brings together an award celebration, conversation, startup pitches and research presentations, connecting the university’s entrepreneurial history with current innovation.
Wednesday, October 21 · 1 PM · EMPAC
📚 Garth Greenwell — 56th Annual Steloff Lecture — October 22
Award-winning novelist Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You, Cleanness and Small Rain, visits Skidmore for the annual Steloff Lecture. His fiction is known for its close attention to language, intimacy and the complexity of human relationships.
Thursday, October 22 · 8 PM · Skidmore
🏛️ Danielle Allen — Kuroda Symposium — October 23
Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen comes to Skidmore to address questions connected to democracy, citizenship and American political culture. Allen’s work examines how democratic institutions and civic participation can support a more inclusive public life.
Friday, October 23 · 5 PM · Skidmore
🎷 Ernie Watts Quartet — October 30
Two-time Grammy-winning saxophonist Ernie Watts brings his quartet to SUNY Schenectady for an A Place for Jazz concert. Watts has worked across jazz, popular music and studio recording, developing a powerful and immediately recognizable saxophone sound.
Friday, October 30 · 7 PM · SUNY Schenectady
Details / Tickets — A Place for Jazz Concert Series
🎬 Raiders of the Lost Ark in Concert — October 31–November 1
The Orchestra Now performs John Williams’s complete score live while Steven Spielberg’s film plays at Bard’s Fisher Center. The presentation gives audiences an opportunity to experience how Williams’s music drives the film’s adventure, suspense and humor.
October 31–November 1 · Bard Fisher Center
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🔭 LONG-RANGE EARLY WARNING
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November 9–February 8
🔊 INTERFACE: Brett Fajen & Heidi Latsky — November 12
RPI/EMPAC brings cognitive science and choreography together in a program exploring perception, movement and the knowledge contained in physical action. The collaboration offers a meeting point between scientific inquiry and contemporary performance.
Thursday, November 12 · 6 PM · RPI/EMPAC
🎷 Ali Ryerson Quartet — November 13
Jazz flutist Ali Ryerson brings her quartet to SUNY Schenectady for A Place for Jazz. Ryerson has helped establish the flute as a compelling jazz solo instrument, with a career spanning performance, recording and education.
Details / Tickets — A Place for Jazz Concert Series
🎼 Gershwin, Jazz & the Music of Jewish Émigrés — November 14–15
Bard explores connections among Jewish immigration, European musical traditions, jazz and the development of American concert and popular music. The program offers a historical perspective on the musical exchanges that helped shape twentieth-century American culture.
Details — Fisher Center Programs
🍭 Hansel and Gretel — December 11 & 13
Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera transforms the Grimm fairy tale into a richly orchestrated work combining childhood fantasy with the musical language of late Romanticism. Bard’s production offers a seasonal opportunity to experience one of opera’s best-known fairy-tale adaptations.
Details — Fisher Center Programs
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🎭 FUTURE THEATER ON CAMPUS
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Capital Region
October 21–25 — The Drunken City — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
October 23–28 — BECKETT: Nothing Is Certain — Skidmore — Details
October 30–November 8 — Grease — Russell Sage / Theatre Institute — Details — Season
November 12–21 — Rent — Siena — Details — Creative Arts Events
November 18–22 — A Doll’s House — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
November 20–December 5 — This Emancipation Thing — Skidmore — Details
December 2–10 — Little Women: The Musical — Russell Sage / Theatre Institute — Details — Season
February 24–March 3 — Clue — Russell Sage / Theatre Institute — Details — Season
March 3–7 — Musical — title forthcoming — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
April 14–17 — FRESH ACTS: A Festival of New Plays — UAlbany — Details — Department Performances
Regional Extension Watch
October 23–25 — Rossum’s Universal Robots — Bard — Details
November 7 — Dead as a Dodo — Williams — Details — ’62 Center Calendar
November 19–21 — Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play — Williams — Details
These are advance dates for planning. Check the presenting theater for performance times, ticket sales and any schedule changes.
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📅 BY DAY CALENDAR
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Monday, October 12
No qualifying public campus events currently confirmed.
Tuesday, October 13
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
7 PM — Backrooms · RPI/EMPAC
7:30–9 PM — Paul Grondahl, Andy Rooney: A Lucky Life · UAlbany
Wednesday, October 14
10:30–11:15 AM — Massry Center Ribbon-cutting & Open House · Hudson Valley / Albany
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
4–5:30 PM — Claudia Goldin · UAlbany
4–6 PM — New Walls Faculty Art Exhibition Opening · Esther Massry Gallery / Albany
5–6:30 PM — Sagrada Família / Mauricio Cortés Sierra · RPI/EMPAC
5:30–7 PM — Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral · Skidmore/Tang
7–8:30 PM — Four-Hands Piano · SUNY Schenectady
Thursday, October 15
10 AM–7 PM — Arendt Forum, Day 1 · Bard
11:45 AM–1 PM — Public Engagement on the Menu · UAlbany
12:45–1:50 PM — Rachel Dinero · Union College
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
4:30–5:30 PM — Kristen Millares Young · UAlbany
6:30–7:30 PM — Ira Baumgarten · Russell Sage/Opalka
Friday, October 16
9:30 AM–6 PM — Arendt Forum, Day 2 · Bard
10–11:30 AM — Advancing Workforce Development · HVCC North / Ballston Spa
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
5–6:15 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi Master Class · Union
5–7 PM — University Art Museum Artists’ Reception · UAlbany
6:30–7:30 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi Lecture/Demonstration · Union
7–8:30 PM — The Cookers · SUNY Schenectady
7–9 PM — Skidmore Orchestra featuring Molly Lewis · Skidmore
Saturday, October 17
9–11 AM — Arendt Forum, Day 3 · Bard
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
5 PM — Tang Fall Opening Reception · Skidmore
6:15–6:45 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi Pre-show Talk · The Egg
7 PM — Compagnie Hervé Koubi, Sol Invictus · The Egg
7–9 PM — The Orchestra Now, The American Spirit · Bard
8–9 PM — Café Molly · Skidmore
Sunday, October 18
2 PM — Tang Town Crier · Skidmore
2 PM — Tang Guide Tour · Skidmore
3–4:30 PM — Jennifer Koh & Vijay Iyer · Union College
3–4:30 PM — Joshua Tanis & Nellie Rustick Meier · UAlbany
4–5:30 PM — Alash · Skidmore
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HELP SHAPE CAPITAL REGION CURATED
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CAPITAL REGION CURATED
What’s worth your time at Capital Region colleges and universities.
Edited by Alan Koslow
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© 2026 The Jewish World · Since 1965 - The Capital Region's gateway to Jewish life
Designed and Developed by Ta-Da Studios
© 2026 The Jewish World · Since 1965 - The Capital Region's gateway to Jewish life
Designed and Developed by Ta-Da Studios