Clark Art Presents Music in the Manton Concert Series

08:07AM / Sunday, March 02, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — This spring, the Clark Art Institute presents Music in the Manton, a series of concerts in the Manton Research Center auditorium.

The lineup includes:

Friday, March 21, 7 pm
Flore Laurentienne
Canadian Mathieu David Gagnon's incomparable musical project Flore Laurentienne comes from a happy marriage between electronic and classically influenced music. The project is committed to constantly pushing the boundaries between various genres, including ambient, experimental, and progressive rock. Flore Laurentienne has recently released a new album, 8 tableaus, available on Secret City Records. The composer, orchestrator, and musician draws inspiration from the works of Canadian painter and sculptor Jean Paul Riopelle with this new offering.

This program is presented in collaboration with Belltower Records, North Adams, Massachusetts.

Sunday, April 27, 2 pm
Umi Garrett
New York-based pianist Umi Garrett performs works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sergei Prokofiev, J.S. Bach, Frédéric Chopin, Florence Price, Gabriel Kahane, and works composed by Williamstown resident and established classical composer Stephen Dankner. Garrett recently released her debut chamber album of Ludwig van Beethoven's Five Sonatas for Piano and Cello with Emily Mantone. She is currently studying for her Artist Diploma at the Juilliard School with Hung- Kuan Chen and Shai Wosner and is a Collaborative Piano Fellow at the Yale School of Music. In the summers, she is a staff collaborative pianist at the Ravinia Steans Music Institute in Chicago.

Friday, May 2, 6 pm
Benjamin Hochman
Benjamin Hochman presents a solo piano recital centered around brilliant American composer Matthew Aucoin's The tracks have vanished, a work inspired by Aucoin's forthcoming opera Demons, itself based on Dostoyevsky's eponymous novel. The recital program draws on an intricate web of interconnected themes, including nihilism and life under Russian totalitarianism (including Ustvolskaya's Preludes) and the genre of opera transcriptions (including from operas by Wagner and Gluck).

Tickets for all concerts $10 ($8 members, $7 students, $5 children 15 and under). Advance registration encouraged. Capacity is limited. Accessible seats available. For more information, visit clarkart.edu/events.

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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
07:00AM / Saturday, September 12, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.

"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.

"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."

Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.

The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.

"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.

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