Los Lobos, Los Straightjackets

Latin soul rockers Los Lobos will headline tonight’s Alive at Five show down at the Corning Preserve in downtown Albany. The long-running East L.A. quintet (they’ve been together for three and a half decades) are busy touring; their tour dates hop all around the states over the next year. They’re touring in support of their latest album, The Town and the City (Hollywood), which was out last fall (and features their song “The Valley,” which was used in the last episode of The Sopranos this spring). Los Lobos are family-friendly, and user-friendly: If you know you’re going to go to this show, you can visit the Los Lobos Web site to request a song online. We think that’s pretty cool. Masked Nashville-based rockers Los Straitjackets will open the show.

Los Lobos and Los Straightjackets will perform at Alive at Five (Corning Preserve, Albany) tonight (Thursday, Aug. 9) at 5 PM. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 434-2032 or visit albanyevents.org.

Bard Music Festival

The weekend sees the start of the musical heart of Bard Summerscape: the Bard Music Festival.

The theme is Elgar and His World, a tribute to Edward Elgar, the first Brit composer since Henry Purcell to gain international acclaim. The folks at Bard posit that Elgar’s music “embodies the poles that defined Victorian England: imperialist expansion and an inward-looking debate about the place and nature of an art and culture that called for social reform and a premodern aesthetic ideal in the face of industrialization.”

You can judge for yourself at an intense series of concerts over the next two weekends. The concerts are in both the Richard B. Fisher Center and Olin Hall, and feature such artists as the American Symphony Orchestra, the Daedalus Quartet, Bard Festival Chorale, Bard Festival Chamber Players, the Claremont Trio and the Grammercy Brass Orchestra.

The Bard Music Festival will be held this weekend at Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson) in multiple venues. For a complete listing of show times and prices, see our detailed listing on page 46 of this issue, visit fishercenter.bard.edu, or call (845) 758-7900.

The Colored Museum

This weekend, the Underground History Project’s UGR Players will present George C. Wolfe’s 1988 play The Colored Museum. With a sharp, satirical series of sketches, Wolfe turns traditional views of black history upside down.

The Underground History Project’s mission is to “educate, as well as entertain. . . . Our theater is in the community, utilizing people from the community, bringing quality, affordable theater to the community.”

The cast includes some well-known and not-so-well-known local performers, including Carla Page.

The Colored Museum will be presented tomorrow (Friday, Aug. 10) and Saturday (Aug. 11) at 7:30 PM, and Sunday (Aug. 12) at 4 PM, at the Hilton Performing Arts Center (40 Russell Road, Albany) by the UGR Players. General admission tickets are $10.50, senior tickets are $9.50 and the admission for high school students with ID is $5.50. For more info, call 432-4432 or 465-7672.