The Weimar cabaret and the French chanson are often treated as parallel traditions — Berlin and Paris both working through the interwar years in small halls, both arriving at the conclusion that loss and irony and a decent melody were the only honest tools available. Yael Rasooly’s program for Close Encounters With Music on December 13 treats them as a single conversation.
About the Show
Rasooly (a singer-actress-director who trained as a classical pianist before turning to visual theater) performs alongside pianist Daniel Rein in a program drawing on the bold, satirical songs of the Weimar era and the French chansons associated with Edith Piaf, with tributes to Piaf and Marlene Dietrich woven through works by Kurt Weill and Brecht. What distinguishes Rasooly’s approach is the theatrical apparatus she brings to these songs: mime, elaborate costumes, and life-size puppets created specifically for the production, populating the stage with the world of 1920s and 1930s Berlin and Paris. The New York Times described her work as having “inspired wackiness,” a phrase that undersells the discipline involved but captures something true about the results. She received the Rosenblum Award for the Performing Arts in 2022; her latest work, Edith and Me, received seven international awards in 2025. Her work has been presented in over 35 countries. An equivalent program at Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie in New York sold out in November 2025, and this marks Rasooly’s debut with Close Encounters With Music.
Close Encounters With Music is a nonprofit presenting organization founded by cellist and artistic director Yehuda Hanani, whose “knack for creating theme programs” has shaped an approach critics have called the work of “the supreme master builder of thematic programming.” Each concert includes Hanani’s commentary contextualizing composers and their historical periods, a format that, over the organization’s three decades, has made Close Encounters concerts something closer to guided listening than a standard hall event. A program built around the artistically charged ferment of interwar Europe is exactly the kind of material the series was designed for.
Venue & Logistics
The performance takes place at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington — the organization’s home venue in the Hudson Valley. The concert runs from 4 to 6 p.m. on Sunday, December 13.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Early bird subscriptions close September 7; regular season tickets go on sale September 28. Close Encounters With Music can be reached at 800-843-0778. Buy tickets