Capital Region Curated: September 21-27
Alan Koslow’s weekly guide to Capital Region campus events, with the Albany Book Festival at UAlbany, Jay Carlon’s WAKE at EMPAC, Francine Berman on technology that puts people first, and the new play Franny in Troy.
Alan Koslow
20
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.
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Books, Bodies, Better Tech & a Brand-New Play
The Albany Book Festival arrives, WAKE takes over EMPAC, Francine Berman rethinks technology, and Franny opens in Troy
Jay Carlon’s WAKE comes to EMPAC on Thursday, September 24, combining dance, live vocals, video, grief, queer Filipino experience, and the Filipino concept of kapwa.
This week has one very big Saturday.
After several weeks of looking ahead to it, the Albany Book Festival finally arrives at UAlbany with more than 100 authors, simultaneous conversations, local writers and publishers, children’s activities, and enough programming to occupy most of the day.
But don’t skip the rest of the week.
Francine Berman asks how technology can be made more accountable to the people who live with it. WAKE brings dance, live experimental vocals, Filipino identity, Catholicism, boxing, grief, and collective ritual into EMPAC. Franny opens at Russell Sage. Deborah Dancy speaks at Opalka. The Tang Teaching Museum opens a major new art-and-ecology exhibition. Billy Hart brings an extraordinary jazz quartet to Zankel on Friday, and Somi launches a new Well-Being Concert series there Sunday.
Tuesday and Thursday both require some choosing.
Saturday requires even more.
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🧭 START HERE: WHAT’S INSIDE THIS WEEK
⭐ Top Picks: Albany Book Festival, WAKE, Francine Berman, and Franny
🏛️ Ideas & Public Life: technology and the public interest, digital privacy and older adults, environmental health, and Siena’s St. Francis commemoration
🎭 Theater & Performance: Shakespeare outdoors at Siena and the new play Franny
🎨 Art & Visual Culture: WAKE, Deborah Dancy, the Tang’s Dunkerley Dialogue, 500 Dams, Family Saturday, and a daily Town Crier
🎶 Music: NEA Jazz Master Billy Hart, Somi, and barbershop harmony
📚 Albany Book Festival: five writers to know before Saturday
🔥 Plan Ahead: Senior Citizens Law Day, diplomacy, Flaherty film, immersive audio, Pam Tanowitz, jazz, and Bard’s Arendt Forum
📅 NEW — PUT THIS WEEK ON YOUR CALENDAR
Download the Full Week Calendar — September 21–27
One file adds this week’s events to Apple Calendar, Outlook, Google Calendar, or another calendar app that imports ICS files.
Individual Google | Apple | Outlook links are also included with the four Top Picks.
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TOP PICKS
These are the events most worth building your week around.
⭐ Albany Book Festival — Give Saturday to Books
📅 Saturday, September 26 · 10:30 AM–5 PM 📍 UAlbany Campus Center, Albany
More than 100 writers, conversations running simultaneously, a large local-author marketplace, publishers, children’s programming, and an entire Campus Center filled with books. This is not an event to squeeze into an hour. Look at the schedule beforehand and decide what you most want to hear.
📚 Full festival coverage and five featured authors below.
⭐ WAKE — Performance That Doesn’t Fit Neatly Into a Box
📅 Thursday, September 24 · 7–8:30 PM 📍 EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman, Troy
Choreographer Jay Carlon and composer-vocalist Micaela Tobin bring dance, video, live sound, Filipino identity, Catholicism, boxing, grief, and the idea of kapwa into EMPAC. It is an unusual chance to see experimental work still taking shape.
🎨 Full details under Art, Performance & Visual Culture below.
⭐ Francine Berman — Who Should Technology Be Built For?
📅 Tuesday, September 22 · 4:30 PM 📍 UAlbany Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, Albany
Computer scientist Francine Berman joins WAMC’s Joe Donahue to discuss Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace. The question is larger than AI: how should society design, regulate, and govern technologies that increasingly shape ordinary life?
🏛️ Full details under Ideas, Public Life & Campus Conversations below.
⭐ _Franny_ — A New Play Opens in Troy
📅 Thursday–Saturday, September 24–26 · 7 PM; Sunday, September 27 · 2 PM 📍 James L. Meader Little Theater, Troy
The Theatre Institute at Sage opens its season with a new play by Russell Sage alumna Barbara Gural ’72, directed by David Baecker.
🎭 Full details under Theater & Performance below.
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IDEAS, PUBLIC LIFE & CAMPUS CONVERSATIONS
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Smart Health Devices, Hidden Risks: Older Adults’ Awareness of Data Privacy
UAlbany 📅 Monday 9/21 · 3:30–5 PM 📍 ETEC 149A/151A, 1220 Washington Ave., Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Jeannine M. Rowe, PhD, MSW examines a problem that is becoming more important as watches, phones, home health devices, and other connected technologies collect increasing amounts of personal health information.
The presentation focuses particularly on older adults: what people understand about the information their devices collect, how privacy concerns affect trust and adoption, and the need for stronger digital privacy literacy.
It is a useful complement to Tuesday’s Francine Berman conversation: two events on consecutive days asking who benefits from technology and who bears its risks.
Francine Berman discusses Better Tech with WAMC’s Joe Donahue at UAlbany on Tuesday, September 22.
Francine Berman — Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace
UAlbany / NYS Writers Institute 📅 Tuesday 9/22 · 4:30 PM 📍 Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details 📅 Calendar: Google | Apple | Outlook
Computer scientist Francine Berman comes to UAlbany for a conversation and audience Q&A with WAMC’s Joe Donahue about her new book, Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace.
Berman directs Public Interest Technology at UMass Amherst and is a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Her career has included major work in digital data preservation and cyberinfrastructure.
The central question is bigger than any single technology: How do we decide what technological progress is for?
Better Tech shifts the conversation away from simply asking what new systems can do and toward accountability, public benefit, risk, governance, and who bears the consequences when technology is deployed at scale.
Academic Convocation — Brother William Short, OFM
Siena University 📅 Thursday 9/24 · 4:30 PM 📍 UHY Center, Loudonville 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Siena opens its observance of the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi with Franciscan scholar Brother William Short, OFM.
His keynote, The Siena Testament of St. Francis: A Greeting from the Past to Bless Our Future, looks at Francis’s legacy and its relationship to Siena’s Franciscan identity.
The procession begins at 4:30 PM, followed at 6 PM by Siena’s Summer Research Symposium and reception in the Quad.
President’s Forum on Health Disparities: Behind the Label — Consumer Product Chemicals & Our Health
UAlbany / College of Integrated Health Sciences 📅 Friday 9/25 · 8:30 AM–3:30 PM 📍 ETEC, 1220 Washington Ave., Albany 🎟️ Registration required 🔗 Details / Register
The all-day forum focuses on chemicals encountered through consumer products and their relationship to health.
Featured speaker Dr. Tamarra James-Todd is an environmental reproductive epidemiologist whose research examines environmental exposures and reproductive and metabolic health.
With a full day devoted to the subject, the forum offers considerably more depth than a standalone lecture and should appeal particularly to people interested in public health, environmental exposure, epidemiology, reproductive health, or health disparities.
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THEATER & PERFORMANCE
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The Theatre Institute at Sage presents Barbara Gural’s new play Franny September 24–27 in Troy.
_Franny_ — A New Play by Barbara Gural ’72
Russell Sage College 📅 Thursday–Saturday 9/24–26 · 7 PM; Sunday 9/27 · 2 PM 📍 James L. Meader Little Theater, Troy 🎟️ $15 | Tickets 🔗 Details
📅 Calendar: Thursday:Google | Apple | Outlook · Friday:Google | Apple | Outlook · Saturday:Google | Apple | Outlook · Sunday:Google | Apple | Outlook
Written by Russell Sage alumna Barbara Gural ’72 and directed by David Baecker, Franny opens the Theatre Institute’s fall season. The production is recommended for ages 10 and older.
New work has a different appeal from a revival: this production gets to establish the play on its own terms. Four performances provide plenty of flexibility during a crowded week.
_Measure for Measure_ — Will Kempe’s Players
Siena University 📅 Tuesday 9/22 · 7 PM 📍 Roger Bacon Lawn, Loudonville 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Will Kempe’s Players bring Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure to Siena for an outdoor performance.
Afterward, Br. Michael Perry, OFM and Siena religious-studies professor Fr. Dennis Tamburello, OFM discuss Franciscan themes in the play.
Measure for Measure is deeply concerned with justice, morality, mercy, authority, hypocrisy, and the use and abuse of power. Siena puts those themes into conversation with Franciscan thought.
Bring a blanket or lawn chair.
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ART, PERFORMANCE & VISUAL CULTURE
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Jay Carlon and Micaela Tobin bring the developing performance WAKE to EMPAC on Thursday, September 24.
Work in Progress: WAKE — Jay Carlon
RPI 📅 Thursday 9/24 · 7–8:30 PM 📍 EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman, Troy 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details 📅 Calendar: Google | Apple | Outlook
How do you choreograph grief?
That question sits inside WAKE, choreographer Jay Carlon’s developing performance with Filipino American composer and vocalist Micaela Tobin.
The work draws together queer nightlife, Catholicism, combat and boxing imagery, movement, video, Tobin’s live voice and electronics, and kapwa — a Filipino concept of shared identity and interconnectedness. Personal mourning opens outward into questions of migration, inherited trauma, cultural displacement, memory, ancestry, and belonging.
This is explicitly a work in progress, which is part of the appeal. Audiences see an excerpt followed by conversation with the artistic team as the work develops toward a 2027 revival.
Be The Media! Workshop: WAKE
RPI / Sanctuary for Independent Media 📅 Wednesday 9/23 · 5–7 PM 📍 Sanctuary for Independent Media, Troy 🎟️ Free · Registration available 🔗 Details / Register
Carlon and Tobin lead a public workshop exploring how personal experience and shared culture become interdisciplinary performance.
The program begins at 5 PM with the workshop itself, followed by informal food and conversation with the artists.
Participants encounter video from WAKE and aspects of the artists’ creative process, giving the evening a more participatory character than a conventional artist talk.
Artist Lecture — Deborah Dancy
Russell Sage College 📅 Tuesday 9/22 · 6:30–7:30 PM 📍 Opalka Gallery, 140 New Scotland Ave., Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Artist Deborah Dancy discusses her work in Opalka’s current exhibition, Light and Transient Causes.
Hearing directly from one of the exhibiting artists offers a useful route into a group show built around perception, grievance, memory, power, and the question of what societies decide deserves sustained attention.
It also makes a convenient Tuesday pairing: Francine Berman at UAlbany at 4:30, followed by Dancy at Opalka at 6:30.
Dunkerley Dialogue with Ruben Olguin and Tarah Rowse
Skidmore College 📅 Thursday 9/24 · 6 PM 📍 Payne Room, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Multimedia artist Ruben Olguin joins Tarah Rowse, Skidmore’s Director of Sustainability and Environmental Initiatives, for a conversation connecting artistic practice with environmental stewardship.
Olguin’s work appears in the new Tang exhibition 500 Dams, which opens Saturday. The conversation provides useful context for the ecological and artistic ideas behind the show.
500 Dams: Art, Ecology, and Radical Care at Anaya Springs opens September 26 at the Tang Teaching Museum.
EXHIBITION NOW OPEN — 500 Dams: Art, Ecology, and Radical Care at Anaya Springs
Skidmore College 📅 Opens Saturday 9/26 · Through January 10, 2027 📍 Winter Gallery, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Exhibition Details
There is no timed September 26 opening reception, so think of this as the date the exhibition becomes available rather than another Saturday appointment.
500 Dams brings art and science together around the Survival Kit Collective’s work regenerating grasslands at Anaya Springs in New Mexico.
The project grows from the long-term practice of building small dams from rocks already present in the landscape. Around that act of ecological repair, the artists work through sculpture, painting, animation, video, mapping, data, landscape architecture, and environmental practice.
The exhibition runs into January, so there is no urgency to see it Saturday.
Family Saturday
Skidmore College 📅 Saturday 9/26 · 2–3:30 PM 📍 Payne Room, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free · Ages 5+ · No registration required 🔗 Details
The Tang’s Saturday afternoon family program turns art on view in the museum into a hands-on art-making project.
Designed for children ages 5 and older with an accompanying adult, Family Saturday supplies the materials. With 500 Dams opening the same day, families can combine an exhibition visit with an activity.
Town Crier Performance
Skidmore College 📅 Tuesday–Sunday · 2 PM 📍 Wachenheim Gallery, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
At 2 PM each day the Tang is open, a member of the Skidmore community becomes a Town Crier inside Mark Thomas Gibson’s exhibition We Are A Constellation.
Costumed and carrying a bell, the crier delivers two brief announcements: one drawn from the news of that date 250 years ago, in 1776, and one from the present day.
The performances may last only a minute or two, but over the run of the exhibition they accumulate into a record of two historical moments separated by 250 years — and a playful experiment in who gets to announce, narrate, and remember the news.
Tang Guide Tour
Skidmore College 📅 Sunday 9/27 · 2 PM 📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
A Tang Guide leads visitors through current exhibitions Sunday afternoon.
One practical problem: the tour begins at exactly the same time as Somi at Zankel. If you are making the trip to Saratoga Springs, you will have to choose.
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MUSIC
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Billy Hart Quartet
Skidmore College 📅 Friday 9/25 · 7:30 PM 📍 Arthur Zankel Music Center, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Pay-what-you-will 🔗 Details
Drummer Billy Hart, an NEA Jazz Master, comes to Zankel with a formidable quartet: saxophonist Craig Handy, pianist Ethan Iverson, and bassist Ben Street.
Hart’s career stretches across more than six decades of modern jazz. His recordings and collaborations include work with Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, McCoy Tyner, Wes Montgomery, Pharoah Sanders, and many others.
For jazz listeners, this is one of the strongest musical events of the week.
Somi opens Zankel Music Center’s Well-Being Concert series on Sunday, September 27.
Somi: A Well-Being Concert
Skidmore College 📅 Sunday 9/27 · 2 PM 📍 Arthur Zankel Music Center, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Ticketed | Tickets 🔗 Details
Somi is a Grammy-nominated and NAACP Image Award-winning vocalist, composer, playwright, and actor whose work draws from jazz, soul, and African musical traditions.
She launches Zankel’s new Well-Being Concert series, introducing a new programming strand at one of the region’s strongest campus music venues.
For a Sunday afternoon built around music rather than another lecture, gallery visit, or festival, Somi is the standout choice.
Electric City Chorus with Catalyst and 942
SUNY Schenectady 📅 Saturday 9/26 · 4–6 PM 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed | Tickets 🔗 Details
The Electric City Chorus is joined by quartets Catalyst and 942 for an afternoon of barbershop harmony.
This one is easy to overlook because it does not appear prominently on the college’s main event calendar, but Taylor Auditorium continues to serve as an important public performance venue for community and partner organizations.
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ALBANY BOOK FESTIVAL
Saturday belongs to readers
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The 9th Annual Albany Book Festival fills UAlbany’s Campus Center on Saturday, September 26.
9th Annual Albany Book Festival
NYS Writers Institute / UAlbany 📅 Saturday 9/26 · 10:30 AM–5 PM 📍 Campus Center, Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Festival Website | Featured Authors 🗓️ Festival Schedule — Full Saturday Program 📅 Calendar: Google | Apple | Outlook
We have been looking ahead to this for several weeks. Now it is here.
The Albany Book Festival is the NYS Writers Institute’s major annual literary gathering, with more than 100 authors, simultaneous conversations, more than 60 local authors plus publishers and literary organizations, children’s programming, open-mic readings, and a full day of activity throughout the Campus Center.
The practical advice is simple: look at the schedule before you arrive.
You cannot see everything.
Here are five writers worth knowing before you choose.
Elizabeth Kolbert
3:45–4:45 PM — Life on a Little-Known Planet
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elizabeth Kolbert is one of the country’s most prominent writers on climate change, extinction, and humanity’s impact on the natural world.
Her The Sixth Extinction won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Her newest collection, Life on a Little-Known Planet: Dispatches from a Changing World, gathers writing about the extraordinary complexity of life on Earth and the pressures reshaping it.
Namwali Serpell
1–2 PM — Toni Morrison
Novelist, critic, and Harvard professor Namwali Serpell comes to Albany with On Morrison, her book-length exploration of Toni Morrison’s writing.
There is a strong local connection. Morrison taught in UAlbany’s English Department from 1984 to 1989 and wrote Beloved during those years.
Gish Jen
Noon–1 PM — Bad Girls, with Carol Gilligan
Gish Jen has spent much of her career writing about immigration, family, American identity, cultural inheritance, and the complicated negotiations between individual freedom and family expectations.
Her new Bad, Bad Girl turns toward her own difficult relationship with her mother.
Carol Gilligan
Noon–1 PM — Bad Girls, with Gish Jen
Psychologist Carol Gilligan reshaped debates about moral development and the psychology of women and girls with her landmark 1982 book In a Different Voice.
Pairing Gilligan with Gish Jen creates an unusual intersection of psychology, gender, family, relationships, memoir, and fiction.
Keith McNally
10:30–11:30 AM — with Kelly McMasters
Restaurateur and memoirist Keith McNally brings a very different kind of New York story.
McNally created or operated some of the restaurants that helped define modern downtown Manhattan dining, including Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and The Odeon. His memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, became a New York Times bestseller.
The larger point: don’t build Saturday around a single famous name. Study the program and construct your own festival.
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PLAN AHEAD
September 28–October 18
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These are the events where knowing now matters — because registration, tickets, limited capacity, or a substantial time commitment makes waiting until event week risky.
⚖️ Senior Citizens Law Day / Nancy M. Sills ’76 Memorial Lecture
If you want a free attorney consultation, act this week
Albany Law School 📅 Saturday 10/3 · 8:30 AM–2 PM 📍 80 New Scotland Ave., Albany 🎟️ Free · Registration required for attorney consultations 🔗 Details / Register
Senior Citizens Law Day is a free community program for older adults, people approaching retirement age, families, and caregivers. Workshops cover estate planning, Medicaid and long-term care, powers of attorney, senior living, government benefits, tenant rights, emergency preparedness, and related practical issues.
The crucial detail is the free one-on-one attorney consultations from 9 AM to noon.
Preregistration for those consultations closes Friday, September 25.
🌍 Engage America: A Century of American Diplomacy
What diplomats actually do when foreign policy becomes real life
UAlbany / International Center of the Capital Region 📅 Tuesday 10/6 · Doors 6:30 PM · Program 7 PM 📍 Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, Albany 🎟️ Free · Registration available 🔗 Details / Register
This public program looks at American diplomacy through the experiences of people who have practiced it.
Recently retired Foreign Service Officer Tom Selinger presents Portraits of American Diplomacy, drawing on oral histories collected by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.
The program covers the work diplomats perform during international crises, in assisting Americans abroad, in commercial and diplomatic negotiations, and in maintaining relationships between countries.
🎬 Whole Grain: Flaherty Film Seminar Screenings
Three days of experimental and documentary film
Skidmore College 📅 Thursday 10/8–Saturday 10/10 📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free · Registration requested 🔗 Details / Register
Whole Grain is a multi-day gathering built around watching and discussing experimental and documentary film in the tradition of the Flaherty Film Seminar.
The format encourages sustained viewing and conversation rather than a single screening. Anyone seriously interested in documentary practice, experimental cinema, film criticism, or moving-image culture may want to attend several sessions.
🎧 INTERFACE: Immersive Audio
Listen to space itself
RPI 📅 Thursday 10/8 · 6–7 PM 📍 EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman, Troy 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Felix Deufel and RPI composer-technologist Matthew Goodheart discuss spatial sound, acoustics, composition, and the ways artists can use a room itself as part of a musical or sonic work.
The talk is only the beginning. Deufel leads a 3D-audio software workshop the following day, and on October 10 his work can be heard through Studio 1’s 39-speaker ambisonic system.
💃 Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral: Artists in Conversation
Skidmore College 📅 Wednesday 10/14 · 5:30 PM 📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Choreographer and McCormack Visiting Artist-Scholar Pam Tanowitz anchors an interdisciplinary conversation about dance, artistic practice, scholarship, and the idea of the pastoral.
🎷 The Cookers
A Place for Jazz / SUNY Schenectady 📅 Friday 10/16 · 7 PM 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed | Tickets 🔗 Details
The Cookers bring an all-star jazz septet to Schenectady as part of the fall A Place for Jazz series.
With a touring ensemble and advance ticketing, this is a concert worth putting on the calendar before event week.
🚗 REGIONAL EXTENSION PICK — BARD COLLEGE
The Arendt Forum 2026: Solidarity — What Are We Fighting For?
Hannah Arendt Center / Bard College 📅 Thursday 10/15–Saturday 10/17 📍 Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson 🎟️ $199 non-members · Hannah Arendt Center members free · Registration required 🔗 Schedule / Register
The annual Arendt Forum is a multi-day public intellectual gathering rather than a single lecture. The 2026 theme is Solidarity: What Are We Fighting For?, with sessions examining solidarity, liberalism, civic life, democracy, immigration, and the bonds that hold plural societies together.
Participants include Carol Gilligan, George Packer, Rowan Williams, Hélène Landemore, Patrick Deneen, Zephyr Teachout, and others.
For Capital Region readers considering the drive to Bard, the commitment is the key consideration. This is a three-day destination event, registration is required, and some smaller sessions have sharply limited capacity.
🔭 LONGER-RANGE EARLY WARNING
UAlbany Research & Entrepreneurship Week
📅 October 19–23 📍 UAlbany / ETEC
Five days devoted to research, innovation, entrepreneurship, and university-industry connections.
The week incorporates the Albany Nanotechnology Symposium, October 22–23, covering semiconductors, quantum technologies, photonics, and academic-industry collaboration.
_Grease_ — Russell Sage College
📅 October 30–November 8 📍 James L. Meader Little Theater, Troy 🎟️ Ticketed
The Theatre Institute at Sage brings the perennial musical to Troy for a multi-performance run.
This belongs on the early-warning list because it is ticketed and gives readers a reason to choose a performance before the run begins.
Ernie Watts Quartet
📅 Friday, October 30 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, SUNY Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed
Two-time Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Ernie Watts brings his quartet to Schenectady as part of the A Place for Jazz season.
INTERFACE: Cognitive Science
📅 Thursday, November 12 📍 EMPAC, Troy 🎟️ Limited capacity · Advance reservations
Featuring Brett Fajen and Heidi Latsky, this installment of EMPAC’s INTERFACE series brings cognitive science into conversation with movement and artistic practice.
Limited capacity makes this one worth noticing well before November.
Ali Ryerson Quartet
📅 Friday, November 13 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, SUNY Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed
Flutist Ali Ryerson brings her quartet to the A Place for Jazz series.
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BY DAY CALENDAR
Monday — September 21
• Smart Health Devices, Hidden Risks — UAlbany ETEC · 3:30–5 PM · Free
Tuesday — September 22
• Francine Berman — Better Tech — UAlbany PAC Recital Hall · 4:30 PM · Free
• Deborah Dancy — Opalka Gallery · 6:30–7:30 PM · Free
• Measure for Measure — Siena, Roger Bacon Lawn · 7 PM · Free
Wednesday — September 23
• Be The Media! Workshop: WAKE — Sanctuary for Independent Media · 5–7 PM · Free
Thursday — September 24
• Academic Convocation — Siena, UHY Center · 4:30 PM · Free
• Dunkerley Dialogue — Tang Teaching Museum · 6 PM · Free
• WAKE — EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman · 7–8:30 PM · Free
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 7 PM · $15
Friday — September 25
• President’s Forum on Health Disparities — UAlbany ETEC · 8:30 AM–3:30 PM · Registration required
• Billy Hart Quartet — Zankel Music Center · 7:30 PM · Pay-what-you-will
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 7 PM · $15
Saturday — September 26
• Albany Book Festival — UAlbany Campus Center · 10:30 AM–5 PM · Free
• 500 Dams — Tang Teaching Museum · Exhibition opens · Free
• Family Saturday — Tang Teaching Museum · 2–3:30 PM · Free
• Electric City Chorus with Catalyst and 942 — Taylor Auditorium · 4–6 PM · Ticketed
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 7 PM · $15
Sunday — September 27
• Somi: A Well-Being Concert — Zankel Music Center · 2 PM · Ticketed
• Tang Guide Tour — Tang Teaching Museum · 2 PM · Free
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 2 PM · $15
Note: The Tang’s recurring Town Crier Performance takes place at 2 PM Tuesday through Sunday and is listed in full under Art, Performance & Visual Culture rather than repeated six times here.
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COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER PARTNERS
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The Jewish World
A local source for Jewish community news, culture, events, and stories.
The 518 Newsletter
A guide to the best events, arts & culture, food, and curated music throughout the Capital Region.
📣 SHARE CAPITAL REGION CURATED
This only works if people share it—feel free to forward to anyone who attends campus events.
I’m building this into a comprehensive weekly guide—recommendations are always welcome.
And if you are going to the Albany Book Festival: look at the schedule before Saturday. There is too much happening to improvise the day.
Originally published at
Substack: Capital Region Curated
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Capital Region Curated: September 21-27
Alan Koslow’s weekly guide to Capital Region campus events, with the Albany Book Festival at UAlbany, Jay Carlon’s WAKE at EMPAC, Francine Berman on technology that puts people first, and the new play Franny in Troy.
Alan Koslow
20
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.
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Books, Bodies, Better Tech & a Brand-New Play
The Albany Book Festival arrives, WAKE takes over EMPAC, Francine Berman rethinks technology, and Franny opens in Troy
Jay Carlon’s WAKE comes to EMPAC on Thursday, September 24, combining dance, live vocals, video, grief, queer Filipino experience, and the Filipino concept of kapwa.
This week has one very big Saturday.
After several weeks of looking ahead to it, the Albany Book Festival finally arrives at UAlbany with more than 100 authors, simultaneous conversations, local writers and publishers, children’s activities, and enough programming to occupy most of the day.
But don’t skip the rest of the week.
Francine Berman asks how technology can be made more accountable to the people who live with it. WAKE brings dance, live experimental vocals, Filipino identity, Catholicism, boxing, grief, and collective ritual into EMPAC. Franny opens at Russell Sage. Deborah Dancy speaks at Opalka. The Tang Teaching Museum opens a major new art-and-ecology exhibition. Billy Hart brings an extraordinary jazz quartet to Zankel on Friday, and Somi launches a new Well-Being Concert series there Sunday.
Tuesday and Thursday both require some choosing.
Saturday requires even more.
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🧭 START HERE: WHAT’S INSIDE THIS WEEK
⭐ Top Picks: Albany Book Festival, WAKE, Francine Berman, and Franny
🏛️ Ideas & Public Life: technology and the public interest, digital privacy and older adults, environmental health, and Siena’s St. Francis commemoration
🎭 Theater & Performance: Shakespeare outdoors at Siena and the new play Franny
🎨 Art & Visual Culture: WAKE, Deborah Dancy, the Tang’s Dunkerley Dialogue, 500 Dams, Family Saturday, and a daily Town Crier
🎶 Music: NEA Jazz Master Billy Hart, Somi, and barbershop harmony
📚 Albany Book Festival: five writers to know before Saturday
🔥 Plan Ahead: Senior Citizens Law Day, diplomacy, Flaherty film, immersive audio, Pam Tanowitz, jazz, and Bard’s Arendt Forum
📅 NEW — PUT THIS WEEK ON YOUR CALENDAR
Download the Full Week Calendar — September 21–27
One file adds this week’s events to Apple Calendar, Outlook, Google Calendar, or another calendar app that imports ICS files.
Individual Google | Apple | Outlook links are also included with the four Top Picks.
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TOP PICKS
These are the events most worth building your week around.
⭐ Albany Book Festival — Give Saturday to Books
📅 Saturday, September 26 · 10:30 AM–5 PM 📍 UAlbany Campus Center, Albany
More than 100 writers, conversations running simultaneously, a large local-author marketplace, publishers, children’s programming, and an entire Campus Center filled with books. This is not an event to squeeze into an hour. Look at the schedule beforehand and decide what you most want to hear.
📚 Full festival coverage and five featured authors below.
⭐ WAKE — Performance That Doesn’t Fit Neatly Into a Box
📅 Thursday, September 24 · 7–8:30 PM 📍 EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman, Troy
Choreographer Jay Carlon and composer-vocalist Micaela Tobin bring dance, video, live sound, Filipino identity, Catholicism, boxing, grief, and the idea of kapwa into EMPAC. It is an unusual chance to see experimental work still taking shape.
🎨 Full details under Art, Performance & Visual Culture below.
⭐ Francine Berman — Who Should Technology Be Built For?
📅 Tuesday, September 22 · 4:30 PM 📍 UAlbany Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, Albany
Computer scientist Francine Berman joins WAMC’s Joe Donahue to discuss Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace. The question is larger than AI: how should society design, regulate, and govern technologies that increasingly shape ordinary life?
🏛️ Full details under Ideas, Public Life & Campus Conversations below.
⭐ _Franny_ — A New Play Opens in Troy
📅 Thursday–Saturday, September 24–26 · 7 PM; Sunday, September 27 · 2 PM 📍 James L. Meader Little Theater, Troy
The Theatre Institute at Sage opens its season with a new play by Russell Sage alumna Barbara Gural ’72, directed by David Baecker.
🎭 Full details under Theater & Performance below.
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IDEAS, PUBLIC LIFE & CAMPUS CONVERSATIONS
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Smart Health Devices, Hidden Risks: Older Adults’ Awareness of Data Privacy
UAlbany 📅 Monday 9/21 · 3:30–5 PM 📍 ETEC 149A/151A, 1220 Washington Ave., Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Jeannine M. Rowe, PhD, MSW examines a problem that is becoming more important as watches, phones, home health devices, and other connected technologies collect increasing amounts of personal health information.
The presentation focuses particularly on older adults: what people understand about the information their devices collect, how privacy concerns affect trust and adoption, and the need for stronger digital privacy literacy.
It is a useful complement to Tuesday’s Francine Berman conversation: two events on consecutive days asking who benefits from technology and who bears its risks.
Francine Berman discusses Better Tech with WAMC’s Joe Donahue at UAlbany on Tuesday, September 22.
Francine Berman — Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace
UAlbany / NYS Writers Institute 📅 Tuesday 9/22 · 4:30 PM 📍 Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details 📅 Calendar: Google | Apple | Outlook
Computer scientist Francine Berman comes to UAlbany for a conversation and audience Q&A with WAMC’s Joe Donahue about her new book, Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace.
Berman directs Public Interest Technology at UMass Amherst and is a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Her career has included major work in digital data preservation and cyberinfrastructure.
The central question is bigger than any single technology: How do we decide what technological progress is for?
Better Tech shifts the conversation away from simply asking what new systems can do and toward accountability, public benefit, risk, governance, and who bears the consequences when technology is deployed at scale.
Academic Convocation — Brother William Short, OFM
Siena University 📅 Thursday 9/24 · 4:30 PM 📍 UHY Center, Loudonville 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Siena opens its observance of the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi with Franciscan scholar Brother William Short, OFM.
His keynote, The Siena Testament of St. Francis: A Greeting from the Past to Bless Our Future, looks at Francis’s legacy and its relationship to Siena’s Franciscan identity.
The procession begins at 4:30 PM, followed at 6 PM by Siena’s Summer Research Symposium and reception in the Quad.
President’s Forum on Health Disparities: Behind the Label — Consumer Product Chemicals & Our Health
UAlbany / College of Integrated Health Sciences 📅 Friday 9/25 · 8:30 AM–3:30 PM 📍 ETEC, 1220 Washington Ave., Albany 🎟️ Registration required 🔗 Details / Register
The all-day forum focuses on chemicals encountered through consumer products and their relationship to health.
Featured speaker Dr. Tamarra James-Todd is an environmental reproductive epidemiologist whose research examines environmental exposures and reproductive and metabolic health.
With a full day devoted to the subject, the forum offers considerably more depth than a standalone lecture and should appeal particularly to people interested in public health, environmental exposure, epidemiology, reproductive health, or health disparities.
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THEATER & PERFORMANCE
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The Theatre Institute at Sage presents Barbara Gural’s new play Franny September 24–27 in Troy.
_Franny_ — A New Play by Barbara Gural ’72
Russell Sage College 📅 Thursday–Saturday 9/24–26 · 7 PM; Sunday 9/27 · 2 PM 📍 James L. Meader Little Theater, Troy 🎟️ $15 | Tickets 🔗 Details
📅 Calendar: Thursday:Google | Apple | Outlook · Friday:Google | Apple | Outlook · Saturday:Google | Apple | Outlook · Sunday:Google | Apple | Outlook
Written by Russell Sage alumna Barbara Gural ’72 and directed by David Baecker, Franny opens the Theatre Institute’s fall season. The production is recommended for ages 10 and older.
New work has a different appeal from a revival: this production gets to establish the play on its own terms. Four performances provide plenty of flexibility during a crowded week.
_Measure for Measure_ — Will Kempe’s Players
Siena University 📅 Tuesday 9/22 · 7 PM 📍 Roger Bacon Lawn, Loudonville 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Will Kempe’s Players bring Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure to Siena for an outdoor performance.
Afterward, Br. Michael Perry, OFM and Siena religious-studies professor Fr. Dennis Tamburello, OFM discuss Franciscan themes in the play.
Measure for Measure is deeply concerned with justice, morality, mercy, authority, hypocrisy, and the use and abuse of power. Siena puts those themes into conversation with Franciscan thought.
Bring a blanket or lawn chair.
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ART, PERFORMANCE & VISUAL CULTURE
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Jay Carlon and Micaela Tobin bring the developing performance WAKE to EMPAC on Thursday, September 24.
Work in Progress: WAKE — Jay Carlon
RPI 📅 Thursday 9/24 · 7–8:30 PM 📍 EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman, Troy 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details 📅 Calendar: Google | Apple | Outlook
How do you choreograph grief?
That question sits inside WAKE, choreographer Jay Carlon’s developing performance with Filipino American composer and vocalist Micaela Tobin.
The work draws together queer nightlife, Catholicism, combat and boxing imagery, movement, video, Tobin’s live voice and electronics, and kapwa — a Filipino concept of shared identity and interconnectedness. Personal mourning opens outward into questions of migration, inherited trauma, cultural displacement, memory, ancestry, and belonging.
This is explicitly a work in progress, which is part of the appeal. Audiences see an excerpt followed by conversation with the artistic team as the work develops toward a 2027 revival.
Be The Media! Workshop: WAKE
RPI / Sanctuary for Independent Media 📅 Wednesday 9/23 · 5–7 PM 📍 Sanctuary for Independent Media, Troy 🎟️ Free · Registration available 🔗 Details / Register
Carlon and Tobin lead a public workshop exploring how personal experience and shared culture become interdisciplinary performance.
The program begins at 5 PM with the workshop itself, followed by informal food and conversation with the artists.
Participants encounter video from WAKE and aspects of the artists’ creative process, giving the evening a more participatory character than a conventional artist talk.
Artist Lecture — Deborah Dancy
Russell Sage College 📅 Tuesday 9/22 · 6:30–7:30 PM 📍 Opalka Gallery, 140 New Scotland Ave., Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Artist Deborah Dancy discusses her work in Opalka’s current exhibition, Light and Transient Causes.
Hearing directly from one of the exhibiting artists offers a useful route into a group show built around perception, grievance, memory, power, and the question of what societies decide deserves sustained attention.
It also makes a convenient Tuesday pairing: Francine Berman at UAlbany at 4:30, followed by Dancy at Opalka at 6:30.
Dunkerley Dialogue with Ruben Olguin and Tarah Rowse
Skidmore College 📅 Thursday 9/24 · 6 PM 📍 Payne Room, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Multimedia artist Ruben Olguin joins Tarah Rowse, Skidmore’s Director of Sustainability and Environmental Initiatives, for a conversation connecting artistic practice with environmental stewardship.
Olguin’s work appears in the new Tang exhibition 500 Dams, which opens Saturday. The conversation provides useful context for the ecological and artistic ideas behind the show.
500 Dams: Art, Ecology, and Radical Care at Anaya Springs opens September 26 at the Tang Teaching Museum.
EXHIBITION NOW OPEN — 500 Dams: Art, Ecology, and Radical Care at Anaya Springs
Skidmore College 📅 Opens Saturday 9/26 · Through January 10, 2027 📍 Winter Gallery, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Exhibition Details
There is no timed September 26 opening reception, so think of this as the date the exhibition becomes available rather than another Saturday appointment.
500 Dams brings art and science together around the Survival Kit Collective’s work regenerating grasslands at Anaya Springs in New Mexico.
The project grows from the long-term practice of building small dams from rocks already present in the landscape. Around that act of ecological repair, the artists work through sculpture, painting, animation, video, mapping, data, landscape architecture, and environmental practice.
The exhibition runs into January, so there is no urgency to see it Saturday.
Family Saturday
Skidmore College 📅 Saturday 9/26 · 2–3:30 PM 📍 Payne Room, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free · Ages 5+ · No registration required 🔗 Details
The Tang’s Saturday afternoon family program turns art on view in the museum into a hands-on art-making project.
Designed for children ages 5 and older with an accompanying adult, Family Saturday supplies the materials. With 500 Dams opening the same day, families can combine an exhibition visit with an activity.
Town Crier Performance
Skidmore College 📅 Tuesday–Sunday · 2 PM 📍 Wachenheim Gallery, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
At 2 PM each day the Tang is open, a member of the Skidmore community becomes a Town Crier inside Mark Thomas Gibson’s exhibition We Are A Constellation.
Costumed and carrying a bell, the crier delivers two brief announcements: one drawn from the news of that date 250 years ago, in 1776, and one from the present day.
The performances may last only a minute or two, but over the run of the exhibition they accumulate into a record of two historical moments separated by 250 years — and a playful experiment in who gets to announce, narrate, and remember the news.
Tang Guide Tour
Skidmore College 📅 Sunday 9/27 · 2 PM 📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
A Tang Guide leads visitors through current exhibitions Sunday afternoon.
One practical problem: the tour begins at exactly the same time as Somi at Zankel. If you are making the trip to Saratoga Springs, you will have to choose.
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MUSIC
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Billy Hart Quartet
Skidmore College 📅 Friday 9/25 · 7:30 PM 📍 Arthur Zankel Music Center, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Pay-what-you-will 🔗 Details
Drummer Billy Hart, an NEA Jazz Master, comes to Zankel with a formidable quartet: saxophonist Craig Handy, pianist Ethan Iverson, and bassist Ben Street.
Hart’s career stretches across more than six decades of modern jazz. His recordings and collaborations include work with Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, McCoy Tyner, Wes Montgomery, Pharoah Sanders, and many others.
For jazz listeners, this is one of the strongest musical events of the week.
Somi opens Zankel Music Center’s Well-Being Concert series on Sunday, September 27.
Somi: A Well-Being Concert
Skidmore College 📅 Sunday 9/27 · 2 PM 📍 Arthur Zankel Music Center, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Ticketed | Tickets 🔗 Details
Somi is a Grammy-nominated and NAACP Image Award-winning vocalist, composer, playwright, and actor whose work draws from jazz, soul, and African musical traditions.
She launches Zankel’s new Well-Being Concert series, introducing a new programming strand at one of the region’s strongest campus music venues.
For a Sunday afternoon built around music rather than another lecture, gallery visit, or festival, Somi is the standout choice.
Electric City Chorus with Catalyst and 942
SUNY Schenectady 📅 Saturday 9/26 · 4–6 PM 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed | Tickets 🔗 Details
The Electric City Chorus is joined by quartets Catalyst and 942 for an afternoon of barbershop harmony.
This one is easy to overlook because it does not appear prominently on the college’s main event calendar, but Taylor Auditorium continues to serve as an important public performance venue for community and partner organizations.
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ALBANY BOOK FESTIVAL
Saturday belongs to readers
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The 9th Annual Albany Book Festival fills UAlbany’s Campus Center on Saturday, September 26.
9th Annual Albany Book Festival
NYS Writers Institute / UAlbany 📅 Saturday 9/26 · 10:30 AM–5 PM 📍 Campus Center, Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Festival Website | Featured Authors 🗓️ Festival Schedule — Full Saturday Program 📅 Calendar: Google | Apple | Outlook
We have been looking ahead to this for several weeks. Now it is here.
The Albany Book Festival is the NYS Writers Institute’s major annual literary gathering, with more than 100 authors, simultaneous conversations, more than 60 local authors plus publishers and literary organizations, children’s programming, open-mic readings, and a full day of activity throughout the Campus Center.
The practical advice is simple: look at the schedule before you arrive.
You cannot see everything.
Here are five writers worth knowing before you choose.
Elizabeth Kolbert
3:45–4:45 PM — Life on a Little-Known Planet
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elizabeth Kolbert is one of the country’s most prominent writers on climate change, extinction, and humanity’s impact on the natural world.
Her The Sixth Extinction won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Her newest collection, Life on a Little-Known Planet: Dispatches from a Changing World, gathers writing about the extraordinary complexity of life on Earth and the pressures reshaping it.
Namwali Serpell
1–2 PM — Toni Morrison
Novelist, critic, and Harvard professor Namwali Serpell comes to Albany with On Morrison, her book-length exploration of Toni Morrison’s writing.
There is a strong local connection. Morrison taught in UAlbany’s English Department from 1984 to 1989 and wrote Beloved during those years.
Gish Jen
Noon–1 PM — Bad Girls, with Carol Gilligan
Gish Jen has spent much of her career writing about immigration, family, American identity, cultural inheritance, and the complicated negotiations between individual freedom and family expectations.
Her new Bad, Bad Girl turns toward her own difficult relationship with her mother.
Carol Gilligan
Noon–1 PM — Bad Girls, with Gish Jen
Psychologist Carol Gilligan reshaped debates about moral development and the psychology of women and girls with her landmark 1982 book In a Different Voice.
Pairing Gilligan with Gish Jen creates an unusual intersection of psychology, gender, family, relationships, memoir, and fiction.
Keith McNally
10:30–11:30 AM — with Kelly McMasters
Restaurateur and memoirist Keith McNally brings a very different kind of New York story.
McNally created or operated some of the restaurants that helped define modern downtown Manhattan dining, including Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and The Odeon. His memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, became a New York Times bestseller.
The larger point: don’t build Saturday around a single famous name. Study the program and construct your own festival.
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PLAN AHEAD
September 28–October 18
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These are the events where knowing now matters — because registration, tickets, limited capacity, or a substantial time commitment makes waiting until event week risky.
⚖️ Senior Citizens Law Day / Nancy M. Sills ’76 Memorial Lecture
If you want a free attorney consultation, act this week
Albany Law School 📅 Saturday 10/3 · 8:30 AM–2 PM 📍 80 New Scotland Ave., Albany 🎟️ Free · Registration required for attorney consultations 🔗 Details / Register
Senior Citizens Law Day is a free community program for older adults, people approaching retirement age, families, and caregivers. Workshops cover estate planning, Medicaid and long-term care, powers of attorney, senior living, government benefits, tenant rights, emergency preparedness, and related practical issues.
The crucial detail is the free one-on-one attorney consultations from 9 AM to noon.
Preregistration for those consultations closes Friday, September 25.
🌍 Engage America: A Century of American Diplomacy
What diplomats actually do when foreign policy becomes real life
UAlbany / International Center of the Capital Region 📅 Tuesday 10/6 · Doors 6:30 PM · Program 7 PM 📍 Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, Albany 🎟️ Free · Registration available 🔗 Details / Register
This public program looks at American diplomacy through the experiences of people who have practiced it.
Recently retired Foreign Service Officer Tom Selinger presents Portraits of American Diplomacy, drawing on oral histories collected by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.
The program covers the work diplomats perform during international crises, in assisting Americans abroad, in commercial and diplomatic negotiations, and in maintaining relationships between countries.
🎬 Whole Grain: Flaherty Film Seminar Screenings
Three days of experimental and documentary film
Skidmore College 📅 Thursday 10/8–Saturday 10/10 📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free · Registration requested 🔗 Details / Register
Whole Grain is a multi-day gathering built around watching and discussing experimental and documentary film in the tradition of the Flaherty Film Seminar.
The format encourages sustained viewing and conversation rather than a single screening. Anyone seriously interested in documentary practice, experimental cinema, film criticism, or moving-image culture may want to attend several sessions.
🎧 INTERFACE: Immersive Audio
Listen to space itself
RPI 📅 Thursday 10/8 · 6–7 PM 📍 EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman, Troy 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Felix Deufel and RPI composer-technologist Matthew Goodheart discuss spatial sound, acoustics, composition, and the ways artists can use a room itself as part of a musical or sonic work.
The talk is only the beginning. Deufel leads a 3D-audio software workshop the following day, and on October 10 his work can be heard through Studio 1’s 39-speaker ambisonic system.
💃 Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral: Artists in Conversation
Skidmore College 📅 Wednesday 10/14 · 5:30 PM 📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Choreographer and McCormack Visiting Artist-Scholar Pam Tanowitz anchors an interdisciplinary conversation about dance, artistic practice, scholarship, and the idea of the pastoral.
🎷 The Cookers
A Place for Jazz / SUNY Schenectady 📅 Friday 10/16 · 7 PM 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed | Tickets 🔗 Details
The Cookers bring an all-star jazz septet to Schenectady as part of the fall A Place for Jazz series.
With a touring ensemble and advance ticketing, this is a concert worth putting on the calendar before event week.
🚗 REGIONAL EXTENSION PICK — BARD COLLEGE
The Arendt Forum 2026: Solidarity — What Are We Fighting For?
Hannah Arendt Center / Bard College 📅 Thursday 10/15–Saturday 10/17 📍 Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson 🎟️ $199 non-members · Hannah Arendt Center members free · Registration required 🔗 Schedule / Register
The annual Arendt Forum is a multi-day public intellectual gathering rather than a single lecture. The 2026 theme is Solidarity: What Are We Fighting For?, with sessions examining solidarity, liberalism, civic life, democracy, immigration, and the bonds that hold plural societies together.
Participants include Carol Gilligan, George Packer, Rowan Williams, Hélène Landemore, Patrick Deneen, Zephyr Teachout, and others.
For Capital Region readers considering the drive to Bard, the commitment is the key consideration. This is a three-day destination event, registration is required, and some smaller sessions have sharply limited capacity.
🔭 LONGER-RANGE EARLY WARNING
UAlbany Research & Entrepreneurship Week
📅 October 19–23 📍 UAlbany / ETEC
Five days devoted to research, innovation, entrepreneurship, and university-industry connections.
The week incorporates the Albany Nanotechnology Symposium, October 22–23, covering semiconductors, quantum technologies, photonics, and academic-industry collaboration.
_Grease_ — Russell Sage College
📅 October 30–November 8 📍 James L. Meader Little Theater, Troy 🎟️ Ticketed
The Theatre Institute at Sage brings the perennial musical to Troy for a multi-performance run.
This belongs on the early-warning list because it is ticketed and gives readers a reason to choose a performance before the run begins.
Ernie Watts Quartet
📅 Friday, October 30 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, SUNY Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed
Two-time Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Ernie Watts brings his quartet to Schenectady as part of the A Place for Jazz season.
INTERFACE: Cognitive Science
📅 Thursday, November 12 📍 EMPAC, Troy 🎟️ Limited capacity · Advance reservations
Featuring Brett Fajen and Heidi Latsky, this installment of EMPAC’s INTERFACE series brings cognitive science into conversation with movement and artistic practice.
Limited capacity makes this one worth noticing well before November.
Ali Ryerson Quartet
📅 Friday, November 13 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, SUNY Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed
Flutist Ali Ryerson brings her quartet to the A Place for Jazz series.
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BY DAY CALENDAR
Monday — September 21
• Smart Health Devices, Hidden Risks — UAlbany ETEC · 3:30–5 PM · Free
Tuesday — September 22
• Francine Berman — Better Tech — UAlbany PAC Recital Hall · 4:30 PM · Free
• Deborah Dancy — Opalka Gallery · 6:30–7:30 PM · Free
• Measure for Measure — Siena, Roger Bacon Lawn · 7 PM · Free
Wednesday — September 23
• Be The Media! Workshop: WAKE — Sanctuary for Independent Media · 5–7 PM · Free
Thursday — September 24
• Academic Convocation — Siena, UHY Center · 4:30 PM · Free
• Dunkerley Dialogue — Tang Teaching Museum · 6 PM · Free
• WAKE — EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman · 7–8:30 PM · Free
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 7 PM · $15
Friday — September 25
• President’s Forum on Health Disparities — UAlbany ETEC · 8:30 AM–3:30 PM · Registration required
• Billy Hart Quartet — Zankel Music Center · 7:30 PM · Pay-what-you-will
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 7 PM · $15
Saturday — September 26
• Albany Book Festival — UAlbany Campus Center · 10:30 AM–5 PM · Free
• 500 Dams — Tang Teaching Museum · Exhibition opens · Free
• Family Saturday — Tang Teaching Museum · 2–3:30 PM · Free
• Electric City Chorus with Catalyst and 942 — Taylor Auditorium · 4–6 PM · Ticketed
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 7 PM · $15
Sunday — September 27
• Somi: A Well-Being Concert — Zankel Music Center · 2 PM · Ticketed
• Tang Guide Tour — Tang Teaching Museum · 2 PM · Free
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 2 PM · $15
Note: The Tang’s recurring Town Crier Performance takes place at 2 PM Tuesday through Sunday and is listed in full under Art, Performance & Visual Culture rather than repeated six times here.
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COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER PARTNERS
Capital Region Curated is pleased to cross-promote with two local publications that help readers stay connected to the larger community.
The Jewish World
A local source for Jewish community news, culture, events, and stories.
The 518 Newsletter
A guide to the best events, arts & culture, food, and curated music throughout the Capital Region.
📣 SHARE CAPITAL REGION CURATED
This only works if people share it—feel free to forward to anyone who attends campus events.
I’m building this into a comprehensive weekly guide—recommendations are always welcome.
And if you are going to the Albany Book Festival: look at the schedule before Saturday. There is too much happening to improvise the day.
Originally published at
Substack: Capital Region Curated
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Capital Region Curated: September 21-27
Alan Koslow’s weekly guide to Capital Region campus events, with the Albany Book Festival at UAlbany, Jay Carlon’s WAKE at EMPAC, Francine Berman on technology that puts people first, and the new play Franny in Troy.
Alan Koslow
20
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.
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Books, Bodies, Better Tech & a Brand-New Play
The Albany Book Festival arrives, WAKE takes over EMPAC, Francine Berman rethinks technology, and Franny opens in Troy
Jay Carlon’s WAKE comes to EMPAC on Thursday, September 24, combining dance, live vocals, video, grief, queer Filipino experience, and the Filipino concept of kapwa.
This week has one very big Saturday.
After several weeks of looking ahead to it, the Albany Book Festival finally arrives at UAlbany with more than 100 authors, simultaneous conversations, local writers and publishers, children’s activities, and enough programming to occupy most of the day.
But don’t skip the rest of the week.
Francine Berman asks how technology can be made more accountable to the people who live with it. WAKE brings dance, live experimental vocals, Filipino identity, Catholicism, boxing, grief, and collective ritual into EMPAC. Franny opens at Russell Sage. Deborah Dancy speaks at Opalka. The Tang Teaching Museum opens a major new art-and-ecology exhibition. Billy Hart brings an extraordinary jazz quartet to Zankel on Friday, and Somi launches a new Well-Being Concert series there Sunday.
Tuesday and Thursday both require some choosing.
Saturday requires even more.
📣 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.
Subscribe here: Capital Region Curated
🧭 START HERE: WHAT’S INSIDE THIS WEEK
⭐ Top Picks: Albany Book Festival, WAKE, Francine Berman, and Franny
🏛️ Ideas & Public Life: technology and the public interest, digital privacy and older adults, environmental health, and Siena’s St. Francis commemoration
🎭 Theater & Performance: Shakespeare outdoors at Siena and the new play Franny
🎨 Art & Visual Culture: WAKE, Deborah Dancy, the Tang’s Dunkerley Dialogue, 500 Dams, Family Saturday, and a daily Town Crier
🎶 Music: NEA Jazz Master Billy Hart, Somi, and barbershop harmony
📚 Albany Book Festival: five writers to know before Saturday
🔥 Plan Ahead: Senior Citizens Law Day, diplomacy, Flaherty film, immersive audio, Pam Tanowitz, jazz, and Bard’s Arendt Forum
📅 NEW — PUT THIS WEEK ON YOUR CALENDAR
Download the Full Week Calendar — September 21–27
One file adds this week’s events to Apple Calendar, Outlook, Google Calendar, or another calendar app that imports ICS files.
Individual Google | Apple | Outlook links are also included with the four Top Picks.
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TOP PICKS
These are the events most worth building your week around.
⭐ Albany Book Festival — Give Saturday to Books
📅 Saturday, September 26 · 10:30 AM–5 PM 📍 UAlbany Campus Center, Albany
More than 100 writers, conversations running simultaneously, a large local-author marketplace, publishers, children’s programming, and an entire Campus Center filled with books. This is not an event to squeeze into an hour. Look at the schedule beforehand and decide what you most want to hear.
📚 Full festival coverage and five featured authors below.
⭐ WAKE — Performance That Doesn’t Fit Neatly Into a Box
📅 Thursday, September 24 · 7–8:30 PM 📍 EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman, Troy
Choreographer Jay Carlon and composer-vocalist Micaela Tobin bring dance, video, live sound, Filipino identity, Catholicism, boxing, grief, and the idea of kapwa into EMPAC. It is an unusual chance to see experimental work still taking shape.
🎨 Full details under Art, Performance & Visual Culture below.
⭐ Francine Berman — Who Should Technology Be Built For?
📅 Tuesday, September 22 · 4:30 PM 📍 UAlbany Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, Albany
Computer scientist Francine Berman joins WAMC’s Joe Donahue to discuss Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace. The question is larger than AI: how should society design, regulate, and govern technologies that increasingly shape ordinary life?
🏛️ Full details under Ideas, Public Life & Campus Conversations below.
⭐ _Franny_ — A New Play Opens in Troy
📅 Thursday–Saturday, September 24–26 · 7 PM; Sunday, September 27 · 2 PM 📍 James L. Meader Little Theater, Troy
The Theatre Institute at Sage opens its season with a new play by Russell Sage alumna Barbara Gural ’72, directed by David Baecker.
🎭 Full details under Theater & Performance below.
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IDEAS, PUBLIC LIFE & CAMPUS CONVERSATIONS
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Smart Health Devices, Hidden Risks: Older Adults’ Awareness of Data Privacy
UAlbany 📅 Monday 9/21 · 3:30–5 PM 📍 ETEC 149A/151A, 1220 Washington Ave., Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Jeannine M. Rowe, PhD, MSW examines a problem that is becoming more important as watches, phones, home health devices, and other connected technologies collect increasing amounts of personal health information.
The presentation focuses particularly on older adults: what people understand about the information their devices collect, how privacy concerns affect trust and adoption, and the need for stronger digital privacy literacy.
It is a useful complement to Tuesday’s Francine Berman conversation: two events on consecutive days asking who benefits from technology and who bears its risks.
Francine Berman discusses Better Tech with WAMC’s Joe Donahue at UAlbany on Tuesday, September 22.
Francine Berman — Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace
UAlbany / NYS Writers Institute 📅 Tuesday 9/22 · 4:30 PM 📍 Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details 📅 Calendar: Google | Apple | Outlook
Computer scientist Francine Berman comes to UAlbany for a conversation and audience Q&A with WAMC’s Joe Donahue about her new book, Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace.
Berman directs Public Interest Technology at UMass Amherst and is a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Her career has included major work in digital data preservation and cyberinfrastructure.
The central question is bigger than any single technology: How do we decide what technological progress is for?
Better Tech shifts the conversation away from simply asking what new systems can do and toward accountability, public benefit, risk, governance, and who bears the consequences when technology is deployed at scale.
Academic Convocation — Brother William Short, OFM
Siena University 📅 Thursday 9/24 · 4:30 PM 📍 UHY Center, Loudonville 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Siena opens its observance of the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi with Franciscan scholar Brother William Short, OFM.
His keynote, The Siena Testament of St. Francis: A Greeting from the Past to Bless Our Future, looks at Francis’s legacy and its relationship to Siena’s Franciscan identity.
The procession begins at 4:30 PM, followed at 6 PM by Siena’s Summer Research Symposium and reception in the Quad.
President’s Forum on Health Disparities: Behind the Label — Consumer Product Chemicals & Our Health
UAlbany / College of Integrated Health Sciences 📅 Friday 9/25 · 8:30 AM–3:30 PM 📍 ETEC, 1220 Washington Ave., Albany 🎟️ Registration required 🔗 Details / Register
The all-day forum focuses on chemicals encountered through consumer products and their relationship to health.
Featured speaker Dr. Tamarra James-Todd is an environmental reproductive epidemiologist whose research examines environmental exposures and reproductive and metabolic health.
With a full day devoted to the subject, the forum offers considerably more depth than a standalone lecture and should appeal particularly to people interested in public health, environmental exposure, epidemiology, reproductive health, or health disparities.
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THEATER & PERFORMANCE
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The Theatre Institute at Sage presents Barbara Gural’s new play Franny September 24–27 in Troy.
_Franny_ — A New Play by Barbara Gural ’72
Russell Sage College 📅 Thursday–Saturday 9/24–26 · 7 PM; Sunday 9/27 · 2 PM 📍 James L. Meader Little Theater, Troy 🎟️ $15 | Tickets 🔗 Details
📅 Calendar: Thursday:Google | Apple | Outlook · Friday:Google | Apple | Outlook · Saturday:Google | Apple | Outlook · Sunday:Google | Apple | Outlook
Written by Russell Sage alumna Barbara Gural ’72 and directed by David Baecker, Franny opens the Theatre Institute’s fall season. The production is recommended for ages 10 and older.
New work has a different appeal from a revival: this production gets to establish the play on its own terms. Four performances provide plenty of flexibility during a crowded week.
_Measure for Measure_ — Will Kempe’s Players
Siena University 📅 Tuesday 9/22 · 7 PM 📍 Roger Bacon Lawn, Loudonville 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Will Kempe’s Players bring Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure to Siena for an outdoor performance.
Afterward, Br. Michael Perry, OFM and Siena religious-studies professor Fr. Dennis Tamburello, OFM discuss Franciscan themes in the play.
Measure for Measure is deeply concerned with justice, morality, mercy, authority, hypocrisy, and the use and abuse of power. Siena puts those themes into conversation with Franciscan thought.
Bring a blanket or lawn chair.
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ART, PERFORMANCE & VISUAL CULTURE
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Jay Carlon and Micaela Tobin bring the developing performance WAKE to EMPAC on Thursday, September 24.
Work in Progress: WAKE — Jay Carlon
RPI 📅 Thursday 9/24 · 7–8:30 PM 📍 EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman, Troy 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details 📅 Calendar: Google | Apple | Outlook
How do you choreograph grief?
That question sits inside WAKE, choreographer Jay Carlon’s developing performance with Filipino American composer and vocalist Micaela Tobin.
The work draws together queer nightlife, Catholicism, combat and boxing imagery, movement, video, Tobin’s live voice and electronics, and kapwa — a Filipino concept of shared identity and interconnectedness. Personal mourning opens outward into questions of migration, inherited trauma, cultural displacement, memory, ancestry, and belonging.
This is explicitly a work in progress, which is part of the appeal. Audiences see an excerpt followed by conversation with the artistic team as the work develops toward a 2027 revival.
Be The Media! Workshop: WAKE
RPI / Sanctuary for Independent Media 📅 Wednesday 9/23 · 5–7 PM 📍 Sanctuary for Independent Media, Troy 🎟️ Free · Registration available 🔗 Details / Register
Carlon and Tobin lead a public workshop exploring how personal experience and shared culture become interdisciplinary performance.
The program begins at 5 PM with the workshop itself, followed by informal food and conversation with the artists.
Participants encounter video from WAKE and aspects of the artists’ creative process, giving the evening a more participatory character than a conventional artist talk.
Artist Lecture — Deborah Dancy
Russell Sage College 📅 Tuesday 9/22 · 6:30–7:30 PM 📍 Opalka Gallery, 140 New Scotland Ave., Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Artist Deborah Dancy discusses her work in Opalka’s current exhibition, Light and Transient Causes.
Hearing directly from one of the exhibiting artists offers a useful route into a group show built around perception, grievance, memory, power, and the question of what societies decide deserves sustained attention.
It also makes a convenient Tuesday pairing: Francine Berman at UAlbany at 4:30, followed by Dancy at Opalka at 6:30.
Dunkerley Dialogue with Ruben Olguin and Tarah Rowse
Skidmore College 📅 Thursday 9/24 · 6 PM 📍 Payne Room, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Multimedia artist Ruben Olguin joins Tarah Rowse, Skidmore’s Director of Sustainability and Environmental Initiatives, for a conversation connecting artistic practice with environmental stewardship.
Olguin’s work appears in the new Tang exhibition 500 Dams, which opens Saturday. The conversation provides useful context for the ecological and artistic ideas behind the show.
500 Dams: Art, Ecology, and Radical Care at Anaya Springs opens September 26 at the Tang Teaching Museum.
EXHIBITION NOW OPEN — 500 Dams: Art, Ecology, and Radical Care at Anaya Springs
Skidmore College 📅 Opens Saturday 9/26 · Through January 10, 2027 📍 Winter Gallery, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Exhibition Details
There is no timed September 26 opening reception, so think of this as the date the exhibition becomes available rather than another Saturday appointment.
500 Dams brings art and science together around the Survival Kit Collective’s work regenerating grasslands at Anaya Springs in New Mexico.
The project grows from the long-term practice of building small dams from rocks already present in the landscape. Around that act of ecological repair, the artists work through sculpture, painting, animation, video, mapping, data, landscape architecture, and environmental practice.
The exhibition runs into January, so there is no urgency to see it Saturday.
Family Saturday
Skidmore College 📅 Saturday 9/26 · 2–3:30 PM 📍 Payne Room, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free · Ages 5+ · No registration required 🔗 Details
The Tang’s Saturday afternoon family program turns art on view in the museum into a hands-on art-making project.
Designed for children ages 5 and older with an accompanying adult, Family Saturday supplies the materials. With 500 Dams opening the same day, families can combine an exhibition visit with an activity.
Town Crier Performance
Skidmore College 📅 Tuesday–Sunday · 2 PM 📍 Wachenheim Gallery, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
At 2 PM each day the Tang is open, a member of the Skidmore community becomes a Town Crier inside Mark Thomas Gibson’s exhibition We Are A Constellation.
Costumed and carrying a bell, the crier delivers two brief announcements: one drawn from the news of that date 250 years ago, in 1776, and one from the present day.
The performances may last only a minute or two, but over the run of the exhibition they accumulate into a record of two historical moments separated by 250 years — and a playful experiment in who gets to announce, narrate, and remember the news.
Tang Guide Tour
Skidmore College 📅 Sunday 9/27 · 2 PM 📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
A Tang Guide leads visitors through current exhibitions Sunday afternoon.
One practical problem: the tour begins at exactly the same time as Somi at Zankel. If you are making the trip to Saratoga Springs, you will have to choose.
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MUSIC
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Billy Hart Quartet
Skidmore College 📅 Friday 9/25 · 7:30 PM 📍 Arthur Zankel Music Center, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Pay-what-you-will 🔗 Details
Drummer Billy Hart, an NEA Jazz Master, comes to Zankel with a formidable quartet: saxophonist Craig Handy, pianist Ethan Iverson, and bassist Ben Street.
Hart’s career stretches across more than six decades of modern jazz. His recordings and collaborations include work with Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, McCoy Tyner, Wes Montgomery, Pharoah Sanders, and many others.
For jazz listeners, this is one of the strongest musical events of the week.
Somi opens Zankel Music Center’s Well-Being Concert series on Sunday, September 27.
Somi: A Well-Being Concert
Skidmore College 📅 Sunday 9/27 · 2 PM 📍 Arthur Zankel Music Center, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Ticketed | Tickets 🔗 Details
Somi is a Grammy-nominated and NAACP Image Award-winning vocalist, composer, playwright, and actor whose work draws from jazz, soul, and African musical traditions.
She launches Zankel’s new Well-Being Concert series, introducing a new programming strand at one of the region’s strongest campus music venues.
For a Sunday afternoon built around music rather than another lecture, gallery visit, or festival, Somi is the standout choice.
Electric City Chorus with Catalyst and 942
SUNY Schenectady 📅 Saturday 9/26 · 4–6 PM 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed | Tickets 🔗 Details
The Electric City Chorus is joined by quartets Catalyst and 942 for an afternoon of barbershop harmony.
This one is easy to overlook because it does not appear prominently on the college’s main event calendar, but Taylor Auditorium continues to serve as an important public performance venue for community and partner organizations.
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ALBANY BOOK FESTIVAL
Saturday belongs to readers
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The 9th Annual Albany Book Festival fills UAlbany’s Campus Center on Saturday, September 26.
9th Annual Albany Book Festival
NYS Writers Institute / UAlbany 📅 Saturday 9/26 · 10:30 AM–5 PM 📍 Campus Center, Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Festival Website | Featured Authors 🗓️ Festival Schedule — Full Saturday Program 📅 Calendar: Google | Apple | Outlook
We have been looking ahead to this for several weeks. Now it is here.
The Albany Book Festival is the NYS Writers Institute’s major annual literary gathering, with more than 100 authors, simultaneous conversations, more than 60 local authors plus publishers and literary organizations, children’s programming, open-mic readings, and a full day of activity throughout the Campus Center.
The practical advice is simple: look at the schedule before you arrive.
You cannot see everything.
Here are five writers worth knowing before you choose.
Elizabeth Kolbert
3:45–4:45 PM — Life on a Little-Known Planet
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elizabeth Kolbert is one of the country’s most prominent writers on climate change, extinction, and humanity’s impact on the natural world.
Her The Sixth Extinction won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Her newest collection, Life on a Little-Known Planet: Dispatches from a Changing World, gathers writing about the extraordinary complexity of life on Earth and the pressures reshaping it.
Namwali Serpell
1–2 PM — Toni Morrison
Novelist, critic, and Harvard professor Namwali Serpell comes to Albany with On Morrison, her book-length exploration of Toni Morrison’s writing.
There is a strong local connection. Morrison taught in UAlbany’s English Department from 1984 to 1989 and wrote Beloved during those years.
Gish Jen
Noon–1 PM — Bad Girls, with Carol Gilligan
Gish Jen has spent much of her career writing about immigration, family, American identity, cultural inheritance, and the complicated negotiations between individual freedom and family expectations.
Her new Bad, Bad Girl turns toward her own difficult relationship with her mother.
Carol Gilligan
Noon–1 PM — Bad Girls, with Gish Jen
Psychologist Carol Gilligan reshaped debates about moral development and the psychology of women and girls with her landmark 1982 book In a Different Voice.
Pairing Gilligan with Gish Jen creates an unusual intersection of psychology, gender, family, relationships, memoir, and fiction.
Keith McNally
10:30–11:30 AM — with Kelly McMasters
Restaurateur and memoirist Keith McNally brings a very different kind of New York story.
McNally created or operated some of the restaurants that helped define modern downtown Manhattan dining, including Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and The Odeon. His memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, became a New York Times bestseller.
The larger point: don’t build Saturday around a single famous name. Study the program and construct your own festival.
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PLAN AHEAD
September 28–October 18
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These are the events where knowing now matters — because registration, tickets, limited capacity, or a substantial time commitment makes waiting until event week risky.
⚖️ Senior Citizens Law Day / Nancy M. Sills ’76 Memorial Lecture
If you want a free attorney consultation, act this week
Albany Law School 📅 Saturday 10/3 · 8:30 AM–2 PM 📍 80 New Scotland Ave., Albany 🎟️ Free · Registration required for attorney consultations 🔗 Details / Register
Senior Citizens Law Day is a free community program for older adults, people approaching retirement age, families, and caregivers. Workshops cover estate planning, Medicaid and long-term care, powers of attorney, senior living, government benefits, tenant rights, emergency preparedness, and related practical issues.
The crucial detail is the free one-on-one attorney consultations from 9 AM to noon.
Preregistration for those consultations closes Friday, September 25.
🌍 Engage America: A Century of American Diplomacy
What diplomats actually do when foreign policy becomes real life
UAlbany / International Center of the Capital Region 📅 Tuesday 10/6 · Doors 6:30 PM · Program 7 PM 📍 Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, Albany 🎟️ Free · Registration available 🔗 Details / Register
This public program looks at American diplomacy through the experiences of people who have practiced it.
Recently retired Foreign Service Officer Tom Selinger presents Portraits of American Diplomacy, drawing on oral histories collected by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.
The program covers the work diplomats perform during international crises, in assisting Americans abroad, in commercial and diplomatic negotiations, and in maintaining relationships between countries.
🎬 Whole Grain: Flaherty Film Seminar Screenings
Three days of experimental and documentary film
Skidmore College 📅 Thursday 10/8–Saturday 10/10 📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free · Registration requested 🔗 Details / Register
Whole Grain is a multi-day gathering built around watching and discussing experimental and documentary film in the tradition of the Flaherty Film Seminar.
The format encourages sustained viewing and conversation rather than a single screening. Anyone seriously interested in documentary practice, experimental cinema, film criticism, or moving-image culture may want to attend several sessions.
🎧 INTERFACE: Immersive Audio
Listen to space itself
RPI 📅 Thursday 10/8 · 6–7 PM 📍 EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman, Troy 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Felix Deufel and RPI composer-technologist Matthew Goodheart discuss spatial sound, acoustics, composition, and the ways artists can use a room itself as part of a musical or sonic work.
The talk is only the beginning. Deufel leads a 3D-audio software workshop the following day, and on October 10 his work can be heard through Studio 1’s 39-speaker ambisonic system.
💃 Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral: Artists in Conversation
Skidmore College 📅 Wednesday 10/14 · 5:30 PM 📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Choreographer and McCormack Visiting Artist-Scholar Pam Tanowitz anchors an interdisciplinary conversation about dance, artistic practice, scholarship, and the idea of the pastoral.
🎷 The Cookers
A Place for Jazz / SUNY Schenectady 📅 Friday 10/16 · 7 PM 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed | Tickets 🔗 Details
The Cookers bring an all-star jazz septet to Schenectady as part of the fall A Place for Jazz series.
With a touring ensemble and advance ticketing, this is a concert worth putting on the calendar before event week.
🚗 REGIONAL EXTENSION PICK — BARD COLLEGE
The Arendt Forum 2026: Solidarity — What Are We Fighting For?
Hannah Arendt Center / Bard College 📅 Thursday 10/15–Saturday 10/17 📍 Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson 🎟️ $199 non-members · Hannah Arendt Center members free · Registration required 🔗 Schedule / Register
The annual Arendt Forum is a multi-day public intellectual gathering rather than a single lecture. The 2026 theme is Solidarity: What Are We Fighting For?, with sessions examining solidarity, liberalism, civic life, democracy, immigration, and the bonds that hold plural societies together.
Participants include Carol Gilligan, George Packer, Rowan Williams, Hélène Landemore, Patrick Deneen, Zephyr Teachout, and others.
For Capital Region readers considering the drive to Bard, the commitment is the key consideration. This is a three-day destination event, registration is required, and some smaller sessions have sharply limited capacity.
🔭 LONGER-RANGE EARLY WARNING
UAlbany Research & Entrepreneurship Week
📅 October 19–23 📍 UAlbany / ETEC
Five days devoted to research, innovation, entrepreneurship, and university-industry connections.
The week incorporates the Albany Nanotechnology Symposium, October 22–23, covering semiconductors, quantum technologies, photonics, and academic-industry collaboration.
_Grease_ — Russell Sage College
📅 October 30–November 8 📍 James L. Meader Little Theater, Troy 🎟️ Ticketed
The Theatre Institute at Sage brings the perennial musical to Troy for a multi-performance run.
This belongs on the early-warning list because it is ticketed and gives readers a reason to choose a performance before the run begins.
Ernie Watts Quartet
📅 Friday, October 30 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, SUNY Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed
Two-time Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Ernie Watts brings his quartet to Schenectady as part of the A Place for Jazz season.
INTERFACE: Cognitive Science
📅 Thursday, November 12 📍 EMPAC, Troy 🎟️ Limited capacity · Advance reservations
Featuring Brett Fajen and Heidi Latsky, this installment of EMPAC’s INTERFACE series brings cognitive science into conversation with movement and artistic practice.
Limited capacity makes this one worth noticing well before November.
Ali Ryerson Quartet
📅 Friday, November 13 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, SUNY Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed
Flutist Ali Ryerson brings her quartet to the A Place for Jazz series.
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BY DAY CALENDAR
Monday — September 21
• Smart Health Devices, Hidden Risks — UAlbany ETEC · 3:30–5 PM · Free
Tuesday — September 22
• Francine Berman — Better Tech — UAlbany PAC Recital Hall · 4:30 PM · Free
• Deborah Dancy — Opalka Gallery · 6:30–7:30 PM · Free
• Measure for Measure — Siena, Roger Bacon Lawn · 7 PM · Free
Wednesday — September 23
• Be The Media! Workshop: WAKE — Sanctuary for Independent Media · 5–7 PM · Free
Thursday — September 24
• Academic Convocation — Siena, UHY Center · 4:30 PM · Free
• Dunkerley Dialogue — Tang Teaching Museum · 6 PM · Free
• WAKE — EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman · 7–8:30 PM · Free
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 7 PM · $15
Friday — September 25
• President’s Forum on Health Disparities — UAlbany ETEC · 8:30 AM–3:30 PM · Registration required
• Billy Hart Quartet — Zankel Music Center · 7:30 PM · Pay-what-you-will
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 7 PM · $15
Saturday — September 26
• Albany Book Festival — UAlbany Campus Center · 10:30 AM–5 PM · Free
• 500 Dams — Tang Teaching Museum · Exhibition opens · Free
• Family Saturday — Tang Teaching Museum · 2–3:30 PM · Free
• Electric City Chorus with Catalyst and 942 — Taylor Auditorium · 4–6 PM · Ticketed
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 7 PM · $15
Sunday — September 27
• Somi: A Well-Being Concert — Zankel Music Center · 2 PM · Ticketed
• Tang Guide Tour — Tang Teaching Museum · 2 PM · Free
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 2 PM · $15
Note: The Tang’s recurring Town Crier Performance takes place at 2 PM Tuesday through Sunday and is listed in full under Art, Performance & Visual Culture rather than repeated six times here.
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This only works if people share it—feel free to forward to anyone who attends campus events.
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And if you are going to the Albany Book Festival: look at the schedule before Saturday. There is too much happening to improvise the day.
Originally published at
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Capital Region Curated: September 21-27
Alan Koslow’s weekly guide to Capital Region campus events, with the Albany Book Festival at UAlbany, Jay Carlon’s WAKE at EMPAC, Francine Berman on technology that puts people first, and the new play Franny in Troy.
Alan Koslow
20
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.
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Books, Bodies, Better Tech & a Brand-New Play
The Albany Book Festival arrives, WAKE takes over EMPAC, Francine Berman rethinks technology, and Franny opens in Troy
Jay Carlon’s WAKE comes to EMPAC on Thursday, September 24, combining dance, live vocals, video, grief, queer Filipino experience, and the Filipino concept of kapwa.
This week has one very big Saturday.
After several weeks of looking ahead to it, the Albany Book Festival finally arrives at UAlbany with more than 100 authors, simultaneous conversations, local writers and publishers, children’s activities, and enough programming to occupy most of the day.
But don’t skip the rest of the week.
Francine Berman asks how technology can be made more accountable to the people who live with it. WAKE brings dance, live experimental vocals, Filipino identity, Catholicism, boxing, grief, and collective ritual into EMPAC. Franny opens at Russell Sage. Deborah Dancy speaks at Opalka. The Tang Teaching Museum opens a major new art-and-ecology exhibition. Billy Hart brings an extraordinary jazz quartet to Zankel on Friday, and Somi launches a new Well-Being Concert series there Sunday.
Tuesday and Thursday both require some choosing.
Saturday requires even more.
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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.
Subscribe here: Capital Region Curated
🧭 START HERE: WHAT’S INSIDE THIS WEEK
⭐ Top Picks: Albany Book Festival, WAKE, Francine Berman, and Franny
🏛️ Ideas & Public Life: technology and the public interest, digital privacy and older adults, environmental health, and Siena’s St. Francis commemoration
🎭 Theater & Performance: Shakespeare outdoors at Siena and the new play Franny
🎨 Art & Visual Culture: WAKE, Deborah Dancy, the Tang’s Dunkerley Dialogue, 500 Dams, Family Saturday, and a daily Town Crier
🎶 Music: NEA Jazz Master Billy Hart, Somi, and barbershop harmony
📚 Albany Book Festival: five writers to know before Saturday
🔥 Plan Ahead: Senior Citizens Law Day, diplomacy, Flaherty film, immersive audio, Pam Tanowitz, jazz, and Bard’s Arendt Forum
📅 NEW — PUT THIS WEEK ON YOUR CALENDAR
Download the Full Week Calendar — September 21–27
One file adds this week’s events to Apple Calendar, Outlook, Google Calendar, or another calendar app that imports ICS files.
Individual Google | Apple | Outlook links are also included with the four Top Picks.
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TOP PICKS
These are the events most worth building your week around.
⭐ Albany Book Festival — Give Saturday to Books
📅 Saturday, September 26 · 10:30 AM–5 PM 📍 UAlbany Campus Center, Albany
More than 100 writers, conversations running simultaneously, a large local-author marketplace, publishers, children’s programming, and an entire Campus Center filled with books. This is not an event to squeeze into an hour. Look at the schedule beforehand and decide what you most want to hear.
📚 Full festival coverage and five featured authors below.
⭐ WAKE — Performance That Doesn’t Fit Neatly Into a Box
📅 Thursday, September 24 · 7–8:30 PM 📍 EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman, Troy
Choreographer Jay Carlon and composer-vocalist Micaela Tobin bring dance, video, live sound, Filipino identity, Catholicism, boxing, grief, and the idea of kapwa into EMPAC. It is an unusual chance to see experimental work still taking shape.
🎨 Full details under Art, Performance & Visual Culture below.
⭐ Francine Berman — Who Should Technology Be Built For?
📅 Tuesday, September 22 · 4:30 PM 📍 UAlbany Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, Albany
Computer scientist Francine Berman joins WAMC’s Joe Donahue to discuss Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace. The question is larger than AI: how should society design, regulate, and govern technologies that increasingly shape ordinary life?
🏛️ Full details under Ideas, Public Life & Campus Conversations below.
⭐ _Franny_ — A New Play Opens in Troy
📅 Thursday–Saturday, September 24–26 · 7 PM; Sunday, September 27 · 2 PM 📍 James L. Meader Little Theater, Troy
The Theatre Institute at Sage opens its season with a new play by Russell Sage alumna Barbara Gural ’72, directed by David Baecker.
🎭 Full details under Theater & Performance below.
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IDEAS, PUBLIC LIFE & CAMPUS CONVERSATIONS
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Smart Health Devices, Hidden Risks: Older Adults’ Awareness of Data Privacy
UAlbany 📅 Monday 9/21 · 3:30–5 PM 📍 ETEC 149A/151A, 1220 Washington Ave., Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Jeannine M. Rowe, PhD, MSW examines a problem that is becoming more important as watches, phones, home health devices, and other connected technologies collect increasing amounts of personal health information.
The presentation focuses particularly on older adults: what people understand about the information their devices collect, how privacy concerns affect trust and adoption, and the need for stronger digital privacy literacy.
It is a useful complement to Tuesday’s Francine Berman conversation: two events on consecutive days asking who benefits from technology and who bears its risks.
Francine Berman discusses Better Tech with WAMC’s Joe Donahue at UAlbany on Tuesday, September 22.
Francine Berman — Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace
UAlbany / NYS Writers Institute 📅 Tuesday 9/22 · 4:30 PM 📍 Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details 📅 Calendar: Google | Apple | Outlook
Computer scientist Francine Berman comes to UAlbany for a conversation and audience Q&A with WAMC’s Joe Donahue about her new book, Better Tech: Putting People First in Cyberspace.
Berman directs Public Interest Technology at UMass Amherst and is a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Her career has included major work in digital data preservation and cyberinfrastructure.
The central question is bigger than any single technology: How do we decide what technological progress is for?
Better Tech shifts the conversation away from simply asking what new systems can do and toward accountability, public benefit, risk, governance, and who bears the consequences when technology is deployed at scale.
Academic Convocation — Brother William Short, OFM
Siena University 📅 Thursday 9/24 · 4:30 PM 📍 UHY Center, Loudonville 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Siena opens its observance of the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi with Franciscan scholar Brother William Short, OFM.
His keynote, The Siena Testament of St. Francis: A Greeting from the Past to Bless Our Future, looks at Francis’s legacy and its relationship to Siena’s Franciscan identity.
The procession begins at 4:30 PM, followed at 6 PM by Siena’s Summer Research Symposium and reception in the Quad.
President’s Forum on Health Disparities: Behind the Label — Consumer Product Chemicals & Our Health
UAlbany / College of Integrated Health Sciences 📅 Friday 9/25 · 8:30 AM–3:30 PM 📍 ETEC, 1220 Washington Ave., Albany 🎟️ Registration required 🔗 Details / Register
The all-day forum focuses on chemicals encountered through consumer products and their relationship to health.
Featured speaker Dr. Tamarra James-Todd is an environmental reproductive epidemiologist whose research examines environmental exposures and reproductive and metabolic health.
With a full day devoted to the subject, the forum offers considerably more depth than a standalone lecture and should appeal particularly to people interested in public health, environmental exposure, epidemiology, reproductive health, or health disparities.
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THEATER & PERFORMANCE
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The Theatre Institute at Sage presents Barbara Gural’s new play Franny September 24–27 in Troy.
_Franny_ — A New Play by Barbara Gural ’72
Russell Sage College 📅 Thursday–Saturday 9/24–26 · 7 PM; Sunday 9/27 · 2 PM 📍 James L. Meader Little Theater, Troy 🎟️ $15 | Tickets 🔗 Details
📅 Calendar: Thursday:Google | Apple | Outlook · Friday:Google | Apple | Outlook · Saturday:Google | Apple | Outlook · Sunday:Google | Apple | Outlook
Written by Russell Sage alumna Barbara Gural ’72 and directed by David Baecker, Franny opens the Theatre Institute’s fall season. The production is recommended for ages 10 and older.
New work has a different appeal from a revival: this production gets to establish the play on its own terms. Four performances provide plenty of flexibility during a crowded week.
_Measure for Measure_ — Will Kempe’s Players
Siena University 📅 Tuesday 9/22 · 7 PM 📍 Roger Bacon Lawn, Loudonville 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Will Kempe’s Players bring Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure to Siena for an outdoor performance.
Afterward, Br. Michael Perry, OFM and Siena religious-studies professor Fr. Dennis Tamburello, OFM discuss Franciscan themes in the play.
Measure for Measure is deeply concerned with justice, morality, mercy, authority, hypocrisy, and the use and abuse of power. Siena puts those themes into conversation with Franciscan thought.
Bring a blanket or lawn chair.
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ART, PERFORMANCE & VISUAL CULTURE
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Jay Carlon and Micaela Tobin bring the developing performance WAKE to EMPAC on Thursday, September 24.
Work in Progress: WAKE — Jay Carlon
RPI 📅 Thursday 9/24 · 7–8:30 PM 📍 EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman, Troy 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details 📅 Calendar: Google | Apple | Outlook
How do you choreograph grief?
That question sits inside WAKE, choreographer Jay Carlon’s developing performance with Filipino American composer and vocalist Micaela Tobin.
The work draws together queer nightlife, Catholicism, combat and boxing imagery, movement, video, Tobin’s live voice and electronics, and kapwa — a Filipino concept of shared identity and interconnectedness. Personal mourning opens outward into questions of migration, inherited trauma, cultural displacement, memory, ancestry, and belonging.
This is explicitly a work in progress, which is part of the appeal. Audiences see an excerpt followed by conversation with the artistic team as the work develops toward a 2027 revival.
Be The Media! Workshop: WAKE
RPI / Sanctuary for Independent Media 📅 Wednesday 9/23 · 5–7 PM 📍 Sanctuary for Independent Media, Troy 🎟️ Free · Registration available 🔗 Details / Register
Carlon and Tobin lead a public workshop exploring how personal experience and shared culture become interdisciplinary performance.
The program begins at 5 PM with the workshop itself, followed by informal food and conversation with the artists.
Participants encounter video from WAKE and aspects of the artists’ creative process, giving the evening a more participatory character than a conventional artist talk.
Artist Lecture — Deborah Dancy
Russell Sage College 📅 Tuesday 9/22 · 6:30–7:30 PM 📍 Opalka Gallery, 140 New Scotland Ave., Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Artist Deborah Dancy discusses her work in Opalka’s current exhibition, Light and Transient Causes.
Hearing directly from one of the exhibiting artists offers a useful route into a group show built around perception, grievance, memory, power, and the question of what societies decide deserves sustained attention.
It also makes a convenient Tuesday pairing: Francine Berman at UAlbany at 4:30, followed by Dancy at Opalka at 6:30.
Dunkerley Dialogue with Ruben Olguin and Tarah Rowse
Skidmore College 📅 Thursday 9/24 · 6 PM 📍 Payne Room, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Multimedia artist Ruben Olguin joins Tarah Rowse, Skidmore’s Director of Sustainability and Environmental Initiatives, for a conversation connecting artistic practice with environmental stewardship.
Olguin’s work appears in the new Tang exhibition 500 Dams, which opens Saturday. The conversation provides useful context for the ecological and artistic ideas behind the show.
500 Dams: Art, Ecology, and Radical Care at Anaya Springs opens September 26 at the Tang Teaching Museum.
EXHIBITION NOW OPEN — 500 Dams: Art, Ecology, and Radical Care at Anaya Springs
Skidmore College 📅 Opens Saturday 9/26 · Through January 10, 2027 📍 Winter Gallery, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Exhibition Details
There is no timed September 26 opening reception, so think of this as the date the exhibition becomes available rather than another Saturday appointment.
500 Dams brings art and science together around the Survival Kit Collective’s work regenerating grasslands at Anaya Springs in New Mexico.
The project grows from the long-term practice of building small dams from rocks already present in the landscape. Around that act of ecological repair, the artists work through sculpture, painting, animation, video, mapping, data, landscape architecture, and environmental practice.
The exhibition runs into January, so there is no urgency to see it Saturday.
Family Saturday
Skidmore College 📅 Saturday 9/26 · 2–3:30 PM 📍 Payne Room, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free · Ages 5+ · No registration required 🔗 Details
The Tang’s Saturday afternoon family program turns art on view in the museum into a hands-on art-making project.
Designed for children ages 5 and older with an accompanying adult, Family Saturday supplies the materials. With 500 Dams opening the same day, families can combine an exhibition visit with an activity.
Town Crier Performance
Skidmore College 📅 Tuesday–Sunday · 2 PM 📍 Wachenheim Gallery, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
At 2 PM each day the Tang is open, a member of the Skidmore community becomes a Town Crier inside Mark Thomas Gibson’s exhibition We Are A Constellation.
Costumed and carrying a bell, the crier delivers two brief announcements: one drawn from the news of that date 250 years ago, in 1776, and one from the present day.
The performances may last only a minute or two, but over the run of the exhibition they accumulate into a record of two historical moments separated by 250 years — and a playful experiment in who gets to announce, narrate, and remember the news.
Tang Guide Tour
Skidmore College 📅 Sunday 9/27 · 2 PM 📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
A Tang Guide leads visitors through current exhibitions Sunday afternoon.
One practical problem: the tour begins at exactly the same time as Somi at Zankel. If you are making the trip to Saratoga Springs, you will have to choose.
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MUSIC
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Billy Hart Quartet
Skidmore College 📅 Friday 9/25 · 7:30 PM 📍 Arthur Zankel Music Center, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Pay-what-you-will 🔗 Details
Drummer Billy Hart, an NEA Jazz Master, comes to Zankel with a formidable quartet: saxophonist Craig Handy, pianist Ethan Iverson, and bassist Ben Street.
Hart’s career stretches across more than six decades of modern jazz. His recordings and collaborations include work with Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, McCoy Tyner, Wes Montgomery, Pharoah Sanders, and many others.
For jazz listeners, this is one of the strongest musical events of the week.
Somi opens Zankel Music Center’s Well-Being Concert series on Sunday, September 27.
Somi: A Well-Being Concert
Skidmore College 📅 Sunday 9/27 · 2 PM 📍 Arthur Zankel Music Center, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Ticketed | Tickets 🔗 Details
Somi is a Grammy-nominated and NAACP Image Award-winning vocalist, composer, playwright, and actor whose work draws from jazz, soul, and African musical traditions.
She launches Zankel’s new Well-Being Concert series, introducing a new programming strand at one of the region’s strongest campus music venues.
For a Sunday afternoon built around music rather than another lecture, gallery visit, or festival, Somi is the standout choice.
Electric City Chorus with Catalyst and 942
SUNY Schenectady 📅 Saturday 9/26 · 4–6 PM 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed | Tickets 🔗 Details
The Electric City Chorus is joined by quartets Catalyst and 942 for an afternoon of barbershop harmony.
This one is easy to overlook because it does not appear prominently on the college’s main event calendar, but Taylor Auditorium continues to serve as an important public performance venue for community and partner organizations.
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ALBANY BOOK FESTIVAL
Saturday belongs to readers
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The 9th Annual Albany Book Festival fills UAlbany’s Campus Center on Saturday, September 26.
9th Annual Albany Book Festival
NYS Writers Institute / UAlbany 📅 Saturday 9/26 · 10:30 AM–5 PM 📍 Campus Center, Albany 🎟️ Free 🔗 Festival Website | Featured Authors 🗓️ Festival Schedule — Full Saturday Program 📅 Calendar: Google | Apple | Outlook
We have been looking ahead to this for several weeks. Now it is here.
The Albany Book Festival is the NYS Writers Institute’s major annual literary gathering, with more than 100 authors, simultaneous conversations, more than 60 local authors plus publishers and literary organizations, children’s programming, open-mic readings, and a full day of activity throughout the Campus Center.
The practical advice is simple: look at the schedule before you arrive.
You cannot see everything.
Here are five writers worth knowing before you choose.
Elizabeth Kolbert
3:45–4:45 PM — Life on a Little-Known Planet
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elizabeth Kolbert is one of the country’s most prominent writers on climate change, extinction, and humanity’s impact on the natural world.
Her The Sixth Extinction won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Her newest collection, Life on a Little-Known Planet: Dispatches from a Changing World, gathers writing about the extraordinary complexity of life on Earth and the pressures reshaping it.
Namwali Serpell
1–2 PM — Toni Morrison
Novelist, critic, and Harvard professor Namwali Serpell comes to Albany with On Morrison, her book-length exploration of Toni Morrison’s writing.
There is a strong local connection. Morrison taught in UAlbany’s English Department from 1984 to 1989 and wrote Beloved during those years.
Gish Jen
Noon–1 PM — Bad Girls, with Carol Gilligan
Gish Jen has spent much of her career writing about immigration, family, American identity, cultural inheritance, and the complicated negotiations between individual freedom and family expectations.
Her new Bad, Bad Girl turns toward her own difficult relationship with her mother.
Carol Gilligan
Noon–1 PM — Bad Girls, with Gish Jen
Psychologist Carol Gilligan reshaped debates about moral development and the psychology of women and girls with her landmark 1982 book In a Different Voice.
Pairing Gilligan with Gish Jen creates an unusual intersection of psychology, gender, family, relationships, memoir, and fiction.
Keith McNally
10:30–11:30 AM — with Kelly McMasters
Restaurateur and memoirist Keith McNally brings a very different kind of New York story.
McNally created or operated some of the restaurants that helped define modern downtown Manhattan dining, including Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and The Odeon. His memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, became a New York Times bestseller.
The larger point: don’t build Saturday around a single famous name. Study the program and construct your own festival.
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PLAN AHEAD
September 28–October 18
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These are the events where knowing now matters — because registration, tickets, limited capacity, or a substantial time commitment makes waiting until event week risky.
⚖️ Senior Citizens Law Day / Nancy M. Sills ’76 Memorial Lecture
If you want a free attorney consultation, act this week
Albany Law School 📅 Saturday 10/3 · 8:30 AM–2 PM 📍 80 New Scotland Ave., Albany 🎟️ Free · Registration required for attorney consultations 🔗 Details / Register
Senior Citizens Law Day is a free community program for older adults, people approaching retirement age, families, and caregivers. Workshops cover estate planning, Medicaid and long-term care, powers of attorney, senior living, government benefits, tenant rights, emergency preparedness, and related practical issues.
The crucial detail is the free one-on-one attorney consultations from 9 AM to noon.
Preregistration for those consultations closes Friday, September 25.
🌍 Engage America: A Century of American Diplomacy
What diplomats actually do when foreign policy becomes real life
UAlbany / International Center of the Capital Region 📅 Tuesday 10/6 · Doors 6:30 PM · Program 7 PM 📍 Performing Arts Center Recital Hall, Albany 🎟️ Free · Registration available 🔗 Details / Register
This public program looks at American diplomacy through the experiences of people who have practiced it.
Recently retired Foreign Service Officer Tom Selinger presents Portraits of American Diplomacy, drawing on oral histories collected by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.
The program covers the work diplomats perform during international crises, in assisting Americans abroad, in commercial and diplomatic negotiations, and in maintaining relationships between countries.
🎬 Whole Grain: Flaherty Film Seminar Screenings
Three days of experimental and documentary film
Skidmore College 📅 Thursday 10/8–Saturday 10/10 📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free · Registration requested 🔗 Details / Register
Whole Grain is a multi-day gathering built around watching and discussing experimental and documentary film in the tradition of the Flaherty Film Seminar.
The format encourages sustained viewing and conversation rather than a single screening. Anyone seriously interested in documentary practice, experimental cinema, film criticism, or moving-image culture may want to attend several sessions.
🎧 INTERFACE: Immersive Audio
Listen to space itself
RPI 📅 Thursday 10/8 · 6–7 PM 📍 EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman, Troy 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Felix Deufel and RPI composer-technologist Matthew Goodheart discuss spatial sound, acoustics, composition, and the ways artists can use a room itself as part of a musical or sonic work.
The talk is only the beginning. Deufel leads a 3D-audio software workshop the following day, and on October 10 his work can be heard through Studio 1’s 39-speaker ambisonic system.
💃 Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral: Artists in Conversation
Skidmore College 📅 Wednesday 10/14 · 5:30 PM 📍 Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs 🎟️ Free 🔗 Details
Choreographer and McCormack Visiting Artist-Scholar Pam Tanowitz anchors an interdisciplinary conversation about dance, artistic practice, scholarship, and the idea of the pastoral.
🎷 The Cookers
A Place for Jazz / SUNY Schenectady 📅 Friday 10/16 · 7 PM 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed | Tickets 🔗 Details
The Cookers bring an all-star jazz septet to Schenectady as part of the fall A Place for Jazz series.
With a touring ensemble and advance ticketing, this is a concert worth putting on the calendar before event week.
🚗 REGIONAL EXTENSION PICK — BARD COLLEGE
The Arendt Forum 2026: Solidarity — What Are We Fighting For?
Hannah Arendt Center / Bard College 📅 Thursday 10/15–Saturday 10/17 📍 Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson 🎟️ $199 non-members · Hannah Arendt Center members free · Registration required 🔗 Schedule / Register
The annual Arendt Forum is a multi-day public intellectual gathering rather than a single lecture. The 2026 theme is Solidarity: What Are We Fighting For?, with sessions examining solidarity, liberalism, civic life, democracy, immigration, and the bonds that hold plural societies together.
Participants include Carol Gilligan, George Packer, Rowan Williams, Hélène Landemore, Patrick Deneen, Zephyr Teachout, and others.
For Capital Region readers considering the drive to Bard, the commitment is the key consideration. This is a three-day destination event, registration is required, and some smaller sessions have sharply limited capacity.
🔭 LONGER-RANGE EARLY WARNING
UAlbany Research & Entrepreneurship Week
📅 October 19–23 📍 UAlbany / ETEC
Five days devoted to research, innovation, entrepreneurship, and university-industry connections.
The week incorporates the Albany Nanotechnology Symposium, October 22–23, covering semiconductors, quantum technologies, photonics, and academic-industry collaboration.
_Grease_ — Russell Sage College
📅 October 30–November 8 📍 James L. Meader Little Theater, Troy 🎟️ Ticketed
The Theatre Institute at Sage brings the perennial musical to Troy for a multi-performance run.
This belongs on the early-warning list because it is ticketed and gives readers a reason to choose a performance before the run begins.
Ernie Watts Quartet
📅 Friday, October 30 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, SUNY Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed
Two-time Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Ernie Watts brings his quartet to Schenectady as part of the A Place for Jazz season.
INTERFACE: Cognitive Science
📅 Thursday, November 12 📍 EMPAC, Troy 🎟️ Limited capacity · Advance reservations
Featuring Brett Fajen and Heidi Latsky, this installment of EMPAC’s INTERFACE series brings cognitive science into conversation with movement and artistic practice.
Limited capacity makes this one worth noticing well before November.
Ali Ryerson Quartet
📅 Friday, November 13 📍 Carl B. Taylor Auditorium, SUNY Schenectady 🎟️ Ticketed
Flutist Ali Ryerson brings her quartet to the A Place for Jazz series.
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BY DAY CALENDAR
Monday — September 21
• Smart Health Devices, Hidden Risks — UAlbany ETEC · 3:30–5 PM · Free
Tuesday — September 22
• Francine Berman — Better Tech — UAlbany PAC Recital Hall · 4:30 PM · Free
• Deborah Dancy — Opalka Gallery · 6:30–7:30 PM · Free
• Measure for Measure — Siena, Roger Bacon Lawn · 7 PM · Free
Wednesday — September 23
• Be The Media! Workshop: WAKE — Sanctuary for Independent Media · 5–7 PM · Free
Thursday — September 24
• Academic Convocation — Siena, UHY Center · 4:30 PM · Free
• Dunkerley Dialogue — Tang Teaching Museum · 6 PM · Free
• WAKE — EMPAC Studio 1—Goodman · 7–8:30 PM · Free
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 7 PM · $15
Friday — September 25
• President’s Forum on Health Disparities — UAlbany ETEC · 8:30 AM–3:30 PM · Registration required
• Billy Hart Quartet — Zankel Music Center · 7:30 PM · Pay-what-you-will
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 7 PM · $15
Saturday — September 26
• Albany Book Festival — UAlbany Campus Center · 10:30 AM–5 PM · Free
• 500 Dams — Tang Teaching Museum · Exhibition opens · Free
• Family Saturday — Tang Teaching Museum · 2–3:30 PM · Free
• Electric City Chorus with Catalyst and 942 — Taylor Auditorium · 4–6 PM · Ticketed
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 7 PM · $15
Sunday — September 27
• Somi: A Well-Being Concert — Zankel Music Center · 2 PM · Ticketed
• Tang Guide Tour — Tang Teaching Museum · 2 PM · Free
• Franny — James L. Meader Little Theater · 2 PM · $15
Note: The Tang’s recurring Town Crier Performance takes place at 2 PM Tuesday through Sunday and is listed in full under Art, Performance & Visual Culture rather than repeated six times here.
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📣 SHARE CAPITAL REGION CURATED
This only works if people share it—feel free to forward to anyone who attends campus events.
I’m building this into a comprehensive weekly guide—recommendations are always welcome.
And if you are going to the Albany Book Festival: look at the schedule before Saturday. There is too much happening to improvise the day.
Originally published at
Substack: Capital Region Curated
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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
© 2026 The Jewish World · Since 1965 - The Capital Region's gateway to Jewish life
Designed and Developed by Ta-Da Studios