Jewels of the Dance

This is the best kind of classical-crossover concert: a collaboration between the Schenectady Symphony Orchestra and members of the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company (pictured).

The SSO, who are in their 75th anniversary season, will perform some of the “most romantic and best-loved classical music written for the dance.” This includes works by Tchaikovsky (waltzes from Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty), Copland (Music for the Theatre), Bernstein (Symphonic Dances From West Side Story), Delibes (“Waltz of the Hours” from Coppelia) and others. The dancers will perform three works with the company, including two new choreographies by company director Sinopoli.

The Schenectady Symphony Orchestra will present Jewels of the Dance on Sunday (Nov. 23) at 3 PM at Proctors Theatre (432 State St., Schenectady). Tickets are $7.50 for adults and $5 for students. There is also a prelude concert for ticket holders at 2 PM in the upstairs gallery space at Proctors. For more info, call 346-6204.

River of Drone

Can it be? The Albany Sonic Arts Collective is turning 1! For the past year, the good folks of ASAC have been hosting, organizing, performing, conjuring and materializing a series of shows that have permanently left our brains inside-out, disembodied, and in orbit of Jupiter’s 46th moon Callirrhoe. In case you don’t recall, their monthly events have featured international electro-acoustic master Andrea Neumann, local psychonauts Century Plants, and Thurston friggin’ Moore (who you might remember from a little band called Sonic Youth). This Saturday, the group will throw off the bib and rub musical cake all over its rosy dimples.

From noon to midnight, the Upstate Artists Guild (ASAC’s unofficial clubhouse) will be aflood. For 12 hours, musicians situated around the gallery (some mobile) will improvise a continuous River of Drone, owing to minimalist La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music, which is intended to “develop a musical vehicle for immersion, reflection, deep listening, meditation, and concentration.” Visitors are encouraged to walk around, hunker down, bring a snack, and spend as much or little time as they’d like listening and viewing the similarly improvised video projections.

The River of Drone will flow from noon to midnight on Saturday (Nov. 22) at the UAG Gallery (247 Lark St., Albany). Admission is free. For more info, go to albanysonicarts.blogspot.com.

Rockwell Kent: This Is My Own

In the 1930s and ’40s, he created commercial art for the American Lung Association and General Electric that achieved great popularity and renown. In the 1950s, he sparred with Sen. Joseph McCarthy over his socialist beliefs, and received the International Lenin Prize from the Soviet Union. In the 1920s, he was acclaimed for illustrations for Moby Dick and The Canterbury Tales. In 1915, the Danes kicked him out of Denmark because they thought he was a German spy. And he’s buried on the grounds of his beloved Adirondack home, Asgaard (“home of the gods”), in Au Sable Forks.

Rockwell Kent led an interesting life.

This exhibit, the latest in the Bank of America’s Great Art Series at the New York State Museum, features works from all stages of Kent’s career. Curated by Cecilia M. Esposito, it draws from the collection of the Plattsburgh State Art Museum at SUNY Plattsburgh—a collection based on a donation from Kent’s widow, Sally Kent Gorton. Pictured is Save This Right Hand, a color lithograph he created for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in 1949.

Rockwell Kent: This Is My Own opens Saturday (Nov. 22) and runs through May 17 at the New York State Museum (Empire State Plaza, Albany). For more info, visit nysm.nysed.gov or call 474-5877.