• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content

MASS MoCA

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

  • Login
  • Visit
    • Get Tickets
    • Plan Your Visit
    • FAQ & COVID Info
    • Directions
    • Groups
    • Stay
    • Eat
    • Accessibility
    • Courtesy Code
    • On Campus
    • 1040 MASS MoCA WAY North Adams, MA 01247

      Today's Hours: 10am - 5pm

  • Events
  • Exhibitions
    • Current
    • Upcoming
    • Long-Term
    • Sound Art
    • Sol LeWitt
    • Anselm Kiefer
    • Past Exhibitions
      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Sarah Oppenheimer S-334473

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Jenny Holzer Benches

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Louise Bourgeois

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        James Turrell: Into The Light

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Laurie Anderson

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Anselm Kiefer

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Sol LeWittA Wall Drawing Retrospective

      View All
  • Performing Arts
    • Upcoming Performances
    • Artists-in-Residence
    • Past Performances
      • <?php the_title() ?>

        La Seca: Armando Guadalupe Cortés and M. Elijah Sueuga

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Florencia Cuenca & Jaime Lozano: Broadway en Spanglish

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Armando Guadalupe Cortés with Juvenal Cortés: aún los gallos lloran

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Akoma: Jlin and Florence To

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Ivy Sole

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Eight Elements in Eight Hours Co-presented by Jacob’s Pillow

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Old Man and the Sea

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Urban Bush Women: Haint Blu Co-presented by Jacob’s Pillow & Williams College

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        FreshGrass | North Adams 2023

      View All
  • Education
    • Main
    • Kidspace
    • Schools & Educators
    • MASS MoCA From Home
    • Families & Community
    • Adult Education
    • Museum Hours

      Wednesdays–Mondays
      10am–5pm

    • Address

      1040 MASS MoCA Way
      North Adams, MA 01247

      Subscribe
    • Contact

      413.662.2111
      info@massmoca.org

      Buy Tickets
    • Museum Hours

      Open every day
      10am–5pm
      Address

      1040 MASS MoCA Way
      North Adams, MA 01247

    • Contact

      413.MoCA.111 (413.662.2111)
      info@massmoca.org

      Buy Tickets
      Subscribe
  • About
    • Main
    • History
    • Leadership
    • Contact Us
    • On Campus
    • Assets for Artists
    • Statement on Equity and Antiracism
    • Press Room
    • Jobs & Internships
    • Host Event / Rent Space
    • Land Acknowledgment
    • Museum Hours

      Wednesdays–Mondays
      10am–5pm

    • Address

      1040 MASS MoCA Way
      North Adams, MA 01247

      Subscribe
    • Contact

      413.662.2111

      Contact Us

      Buy Tickets
    • Contact

      413.662.2111
      info@massmoca.org

      Buy Tickets
      Subscribe
    • Museum Hours

      Open every day, 10am–6pm

      Address

      1040 MASS MoCA Way
      North Adams, MA 01247

  • Shop
  • Join/Give
    • Main
    • Join Now!
    • Donate Now
    • Membership
    • Host Event / Rent Space
    • Museum Hours

      Wednesday–Monday
      10am–5pm
       

    • Contact

      413.662.2111
      info@massmoca.org

    • Buy Tickets
    • Donate Now

Big Thief

  • The MASSMoCA Blog
  • Posted October 18, 2016
  • Performing Arts

For Immediate Release
18 October 2016
Contact: Jodi Joseph
Director of Communications
413.664.4481 x8113
jjoseph@massmoca.org

Big Thief

Indie folk rockers on the rise

NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS — Brooklyn’s Big Thief released Masterpiece this May on Conor Oberst’s Saddle Creek label — an impressive debut that churns with singer-guitarist-songwriter Adrianne Lenker’s “evocative scenes of people and places, while the band shifts nimbly between lo-fi acoustic and throwback rock hooks” (Pitchfork). Big Thief graces the stage of MASS MoCA’s Club B10 on Saturday, November 5, at 8pm.

Big Thief’s chief singer-songwriter Adrianne Lenker and guitarist-singer Buck Meek began their creative friendship after meeting in Brooklyn, NY, culminating in a pair of collaborative albums titled A-Sides and B-Sides. Lenker and Meek took the show on the road, spending years performing in backyards, barns, and basements, and living the rubber-tramping road life together. On this journey, they gained a couple partners and Big Thief was born.

Led by Lenker’s lusty lyrics, Meek’s guitar, and complemented by Max Oleartchik on bass and James Krivchenia on drums, Big Thief builds a montage of memory, life, love, and the heartache of human experience. In Lenker’s words, Big Thief’s debut album Masterpiece tracks “the masterpiece of existence, which is always folding into itself, people attempting to connect, to both shake themselves awake and to shake off the numbness of certain points in their life. The interpretations might be impressionistic or surrealistic, but they’re grounded in simple things.”

Big Thief pounds out songs with a fierce tenderness reminiscent of folk-indie-rock bands Mothers and Whitney. Masterpiece, rooted in real experiences and hand-crafted with solicitous lyrics, is included in NPR Music’s “30 Favorite Albums of the Year” and in June, NPR listeners voted the band the best new artist of 2016’s first half. “The power of Big Thief lies in the stunning voice of Adrianne Lenker — as well as the band’s intense rhythms, the guitar playing of Buck Meek and, right, the lyrics. Come to think of it, everything this band does serves the muscular warmth of these brilliant songs, which are not only memorable, but meaningful” (NPR Music). Currently on the road in North America, Big Thief has spent the last year playing the UK and Europe, on tour in support of Eleanor Friedberger and Yuck, and rounded it all out in September with a major gig supporting Lucius and JD McPherson on Central Park’s SummerStage. Big Thief brightens our stage on Saturday, November 5, at 8pm.

Join us before the show when Lickety Spit, MASS MoCA’s café, serves up crisp salads, hearty soups, and lip-smacking pub fare. A full bar serves Bright Ideas Brewing beers and Berkshire Mountain Distillery spirits. Tickets are $10 for students, $12 advance, $18 day of, and $24 preferred. Tickets for all events are available through the MASS MoCA box office located on Marshall Street in North Adams, open 11am to 5pm every day except Tuesdays. Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 during box office hours or purchased online at massmoca.org.

Images
High-resolution images of MASS MoCA’s fall 2016 events are available through this link: bit.ly/mmfall2016

About MASS MoCA
MASS MoCA is one of the world’s liveliest (and largest) centers for making and enjoying today’s most important art, music, dance, theater, film, and video.

Gallery admission is $18 for adults, $16 for veterans and seniors, $12 for students, $8 for children 6 to 16, and free for children 5 and under. Members are admitted free year-round. The Hall Art Foundation’s Anselm Kiefer exhibition is open seasonally, spring – fall. For additional information, call 413.662.2111 x1 or visit massmoca.org.

Hours
11am to 5pm, closed Tuesdays

Download the Big Thief press release

TAKE PART

Newsletter sign-up
Mass MoCA Instagram Mass MoCA Facebook Mass MoCA Twitter
LOGIN ABOUT HOST EVENTS / OFFICE SPACE PRIVACY POLICY

It is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) rests on the ancestral homelands of the Muhheaconneok or Mohican people (People of the Waters That Are Never Still) and the Wabanaki peoples. Despite tremendous hardship in being forcibly relocated from these lands by Dutch, English, and US colonizers, today the Muhheaconneok or Mohican community resides in Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community The Wabanaki Confederacy, also known as The People of the Dawnland, include the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Abenaki Nations, who are indigenous to the lands with the English placenames Maine, Vermont, northwestern Massachusetts, and parts of Canada, and continue to reside in these areas. We pay honor and respect to these ancestors past and present as we commit to building a more inclusive and equitable space for all. More information can be found here.

MASS MoCA

1040 MASS MoCA WAY
North Adams, MA 01247

413.662.2111

info@massmoca.org

Copyright © 2023 Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

MASS MoCA Sponsors
Mohawk Trail Region MCC Barr Foundation Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism New England Foundation for the Arts National Endowment for the Arts