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Theater pops up all over

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theater HZTSTS does Grease

Theatrical director Laurie Sepe-Marder was at Brio’s, the Phoenicia pizzeria, seeking a slice and worrying about how she was going to cast the male lead, Danny Zuko, in the STS Playhouse production of Grease. She took a look at the young, curly-haired, blond waiter who offered to take her order and asked him, “Do you sing?”

Terrence Boyer, who watched Grease every day after school throughout eighth grade, says he wouldn’t have taken a role in any other play. This theatrical experience is his first. Isadora Newcombe, who played many parts on the STS stage as a teenager, including the title role in Gypsy!, seven years ago, has returned to play Sandy, the female lead in Grease, which opens Friday, May 31, and runs for three weekends in Phoenicia.

With its focus on 1950s high school hijinks, Grease is a high-energy show that gives young people an opportunity to step onto the stage. Several Onteora students and an actor from Margaretville make up a chunk of the ensemble, with a Belgian exchange student, Audrey Arku, playing Frenchy. Chelsea Goodwin, co-owner of Pine Hill Books, has the part of Miss Lynch. Sepe-Marder, a veteran of over 35 directing gigs, including many blockbuster musicals at the Center for Performing Arts in Rhinebeck, brought four Rhinebeck actors to the show.

Cast members include Kristen Caputo, Kyle Berryann, Tori McCarthy, Amber McCarthy, Becca Frank, Sequoia Sellinger, Matt Michael, Thomas Hagakore, Chris Williams, Travis Gooderham, Brian Murray, and Tom Schimmerling.

The play has strong associations for Michael Koegel, artistic director of STS Playhouse, who played Sonny in a production of Grease in the 1970s. The Salt City Players in his hometown of Syracuse was the first amateur company to pounce on the rights to the show after it finished its initial Broadway run. Koegel was close friends with Broadway’s original Kenickie, Timothy Meyers, who has passed away. “He was the only member of the original cast to get a Tony nomination,” said Koegel. “I have the certificate somewhere.”

Koegel is pleased the theater has chosen to do Grease. “We’re reaching out and bringing in new people from outside the area as well as using our talented local actors. And we’re producing a show that is both artistically satisfying and will be a hit with the local community.”

Language must work differently for dancers than for the rest of us.

“Ba ba da da, it’s just the arm, it’s out and it’s quick, it’s gotta loop around….Down two up two tilt three four ba ba da, it comes around, bing, da. ‘Go for your diploma…’ Okay, that’s where the diagonals go.” There are sketchy movements that accompany this recitation, as Sepe-Marder reviews the routine she has just demonstrated for a section of “Beauty School Dropout.” It seems improbable to the casual spectator that the result will be less than chaos. Not so. The dancers are right with her.

“Last time you put in two steps before the tilt,” points out Becca Frank. “This time you put one.”

“Well, let’s see,” replies the director/choreographer, glancing at her notes. They wave, step, and tilt through several bars, and she decides one step will work fine. The music recommences, and the five women, with Sepe-Marder filling in for an absent actress, glide briskly through the moves, evincing surprisingly few wobbles.

Outside the theater, three young men are waiting for their turn onstage. “We’re going to have to slick back our hair,” observes Travis Gooderham. It’s hard to picture Thomas Hagakore’s long dark locks and Boyer’s curls greased straight back for the performances.

Boyer discusses his decision to take the part of Danny. “People asked me if I’d be nervous onstage,” he muses. “But I figure I’m in front of people at the restaurant all the time. It’s going to be the same people in the audience. This is a small town.”

Violet Snow

Grease will run for three weekends at Shandaken Theatrical Society’s STS Playhouse, 10 Church Street, Phoenicia. Shows are May 31, June 2, 7, 8, 14, 15 at 8 p.m.; June 2, 9, 16 at 2 p.m. (No show June 1, two shows June 2.) Tickets are $15 general admission; $12 for seniors, students, STS members. For reservations, call 845-688-2279. See also http://stsplayhouse.com.

 

 


Down to the Crossroads

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Son House, Muddy Waters and Peter Green. (illustrations by Margie Greve)

Son House, Muddy Waters and Peter Green. (illustrations by Margie Greve)

The famous tale, as John Milward relates it in his new book Crossroads: How the Blues Shaped Rock ‘n’ Roll (and Rock Saved the Blues) published by Northeastern University Press, has a young Robert Johnson creating “an unholy racket” while playing on the breaks at a Son House gig in the 1930s. He played so badly that they had to make him stop. Yet less than a year later, when Johnson asked for a chance to play on one of House’s breaks, he’d become a visionary virtuoso of the blues, said to be a product of a deal he made with the devil, selling his soul for artistic transcendence at the crossroads near Clarksdale, Mississippi.

And though there was much that went before, and though Johnson never achieved fame and fortune while still alive (he died mere years later, in 1938, before the age of 30 under equally legendary circumstances) the blues was never the same.

But more than just telling the story of the blues, Milward is concerned with its connection with rock, with how, as Muddy Waters sang, “the blues had a baby and they called it rock ‘n’ roll.”

He chronicles the love affair with young British youth, showing how long forgotten blues artists found adoring, fertile audiences and acolytes in the young U.K. rebels…Clapton, Peter Green, the Rolling Stones; weaves the connections by telling the stories of the country bluesmen, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, Son House and how they were rediscovered on the heels of the folk movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s; shows how young American players, like Mike Bloomfield and Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, all took it all a step further; looks at the giants, Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King and how the reverence the young players had for them translated into second, more popular careers, propelling the blues to ever headier peaks.

The book is also filled beautiful illustrations by Margie Greve.

Milward will read from and sign copies of this very entertaining and fascinating account at a book release party, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 15 at the Colony Café, 22 Rock City Road in Woodstock. Admission is free and at 9 p.m. Milward’s band, Comfy Chair, will crank it up and perform. Milward sings and plays acoustic guitars, Josh Roy Brown performs on electric and lap steel guitars; Eric Parker is the drummer and Baker Rorick sings and plays bass.

For more information, see www.colonycafewoodstock.com or call 679-8639.

Revived Woodstock Playhouse celebrates 75th anniversary

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Director Randy Conti. (photo by Dion Ogust)

Director Randy Conti. (photo by Dion Ogust)

The ladies are in full costume, with hoop skirts, bustiers and Victorian-era high heels, while the men are in tank tops and shorts. Not that it matters once everyone opens their mouths and starts singing, the chorus taking on a life of its own and edging the various leads of the new Woodstock Playhouse production of Les Misérables to ever-greater heights.

The production’s director Randy Conti, Playhouse co-owner with his New York Conservatory for the Arts partner Doug Farrell, watches everything intently, marked-up script in his hands. No smiles, nary an emotion…until he calls for a break and effuses over the tightness of the production and performances taking shape.

“We actually staged the whole show in three days,” he says. “Now we can actually have fun with it.”

The curtain comes up on the Conti/Farrell/NYCA Woodstock Playhouse’s third season with a special sold out (and added seats) gala Thursday evening, June 20. Stories are starting to run in not only the regional press, but trade and theater papers elsewhere about how this, being the 75th year since the Woodstock Playhouse’s founding, things seem to be at an all-time peak only now.

Move over Helen Hayes, Lee Marvin, Diane Keaton and Larry Hagman…the new stars are rising amongst the two dozen members of this season’s Woodstock Playhouse summer stock company. And many of them rose last year, too…and the one before. In their world, this place, and this experience for both actors and audiences, has gained traction and excitement. The buzz is on!

“Let’s move to scene 8 now,” Conti says as everyone moves confidently over the black dance floor at the NYCA main building in West Hurley, the week before they move into the Mill Hill Road theater for final rehearsals. The pianist strikes up the music and everyone’s on, immediately, with what’s becoming the patented new Playhouse style — everyone at peak intensity, with a grouped penchant for infectious entertainment. It’s hard not to be riveted, to want to be on stage, too.

Conti later tells me that the farthest to come for the company this year is from Vancouver. Others are from California, the Midwest. Many have been in the city. Most are in their early 20s, a few are as old as 30. Then there are locals, some from NYCA and others from the community, augmenting the basic company. Like my old buddy Clara, who used to fall asleep on my lap when she was three but is now singing and hoofing it with the rest of them.

“I went to the Playhouse once before it burned down in 1987 and saw a musical, whose name I can no longer remember,” Conti  says. “I didn’t see anything in those years after it was partially rebuilt and the plays were happening partly outdoors.”

Conti notes how his parents used to take him to summer stock productions on Long Island when he was a kid, although the ones he recalled in an amphitheater in Eisenhower Park tended to be less repertory and longer running, bigger productions. Eventually, during college at C.W. Post, he got involved in summer theater himself…first handling props and then as an assistant choreographer and finally as a choreographer and director. After which there was no looking back.

“One of the things I learned early on was how you take the lead performers in one show and put them in the chorus in the next, and vice versa. It builds a very strong chorus and makes for equally strong principals,” he said. “I’ve since noticed how different the folks in the stock company are from the students at the Conservatory, who all know each other away from the stage, as well. This troupe — in two days it’s like they’ve all known each other forever, and it’s because they all share the same focus, and they’ve all made the same commitment to their craft.”

Petersham Handmade House Tour

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petersham HZTHer first book, Under the North Light, the Life and Work of Maud and Miska Petersham, was recently heralded with prestigious awards. Now author Lawrence Webster will lead a tour of Storybook, the home where Maud and Miska Petersham lived and created iconic children’s books together over a 40-year career. The couple’s granddaughter, Mary Petersham Reinhard, will join Webster in relating anecdotes and childhood memories as they re-explore the nooks and alcoves of the studio where they played and which the Petershams — two of the most influential illustrators of children’s books in the 20th century — designed during the 1920s. Decorated with motifs familiar to their illustrations, Storybook is a work of art in itself.

The tour of the house at 2380 Glasco Turnpike starts at 3 p.m. Saturday, June 22. Webster will present a new slide show of the artists’ work related to Storybook, which she describes as “a classic Woodstock handmade house.” The Petershams bought the land from Peter Whitehead (son of the founder of the Byrdcliffe Art Colony) circa 1922. Miska oversaw the construction by local carpenters and stone masons. Although Byrdcliffe was prominent in the Arts and Crafts movement, the Petershams’ studio was not of that genre. Inspired by the imagination of children, this habitat is truly one of a kind.

The Golden Notebook is sponsoring the event made possible by Storybook’s new owner, Lou Teti, who graciously agreed to open the house for this special occasion. Webster will sign copies of her book, for which she was honored with the 2013 gold medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards Association for Best Biography and the Benjamin Franklin Award for 2013 in the biography category. She is also is a finalist for the 2012 ForeWord Book of the Year Award in biography.

“I’m tickled,” said Webster, a Woodstock native known as Larry. Her parents were friends of Maud and Miska since before she was born. She knew the Petershams well while growing up in Woodstock during the 1950s and 1960s. Mary, her contemporary, visited during the summers, and they played at each other’s homes. One year when Larry was in 7th grade and the Petershams were in Florida, the Webster family lived in Storybook. “I loved it,” Larry recalled. “I have such great memories of Christmas there with my older sisters.”

The publisher, Woodstock Arts, owned by Julia and Weston Blelock, received the 2013 Ben Franklin Gold Medal in the Editorial and Production category. Under the North Light is indeed a beautiful book, a feast for the eyes as well as the mind, and this recognition provides a well-deserved boost for the local independent publisher.

“This is a real honor. It’s very hard for a smaller press like ours to even think about winning national awards,” Weston Blelock said. “We’re thrilled. It pulls us out of the pack. We have an original perspective with an emphasis on house stories and personal memories.” The Independent Book Awards Association is a huge organization with an annual competition. Publishers submit their latest copies for independent judging. There are fifty categories with thirty to one hundred books in each category.

Reviews of the book have been overwhelmingly positive from a variety of sources. A brief search on Amazon yields pertinent results. By closely examining the Petershams’ professional and business documents Webster has virtually unveiled the genre of children’s book production from inspiration to publication while capturing the warmth and distinction of the Petershams’ unusually close artistic collaboration. She brings the couple to life with their disparate backgrounds and personalities as they complemented each other almost magically. The tour may be an opportunity for the couple, who were known to hold seances, to indicate their presence. Who knows?

Who knew? Maud, a 1912 Vassar graduate, had deep Yankee roots. Miska, the grandson of a shepherd, immigrated from Hungary in 1912 after rigorous study at the Royal National School of Applied Arts in Budapest. She was shy, he was larger than life. They met while working at a commercial design studio in New York City, married in 1917, and moved to Woodstock in 1920. The Petershams were among a handful of people who set the direction for illustrated children’s books as we know them today. Webster makes that clear in her book, the first comprehensive and definitive examination of this remarkable couple.

A labor of love, Under the North Light is a triumph for Webster, Woodstock Arts, and art historians everywhere. Autographed first editions will be available for purchase Saturday.

Under the North Light; The Life and Work of Maud and Miska Petersham by Lawrence Webster;Woodstock Arts, PO Box 1342, Woodstock, NY www.WoodstockArts.com.

Chen, Miró Quartet open Maverick Season

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(Photo by Dion Ogust)

(Photo by Dion Ogust)

Maverick Concerts’ 2013 season will be emphasizing both Britten the composer and Britain his country. At the first performance, Sunday afternoon at 4, a relatively little known major work by Sir Edward Elgar will be Britain’s contribution, and the performers are filled with enthusiasm about it.

Pianist Melvin Chen was once a regular presence in the Hudson Valley during his tenure at Bard College. He has since moved on to Yale University, but returned this spring to give a recital at Bard and now opens the Maverick Season. “Maverick has such a great history and tradition,” he told me this week. “The Miró Quartet and I feel it’s an honor and a pleasure.” Miró’s cellist Joshua Gindele adds another element of continuity. “With the recent retirement of the Tokyo Quartet, we feel we’re picking up that spot. They were former mentors of ours. It’s an honor to be taking their place in any series, which we’re doing several times this season.”

Both Chen and Gindele feel that the Elgar Piano Quintet is a neglected masterpiece. “It’s a spectacular piece that people don’t get to hear,” says Gindele. And it’s an old favorite of Chen’s. “When you think of Piano Quintets,” he says, “you think of Brahms, Dvorák, and Schumann. But I’ve played the Elgar often, more than some of the other famous quintets. Many people don’t know it, but it’s very, very beautiful, quintessentially English but also full of passion.” The collaboration of Chen and Miró on the Elgar Quintet is new, although they will be playing it twice in the week before the Maverick performance. But Chen says he has played it often, and Gindele says his ensemble has done it “forty or fifty times.”

Schumann’s Piano Quartet is much less familiar than his Piano Quintet. Gindele says that string quartets prefer to collaborate on the Piano Quintet because in the Quintet they can all play. But the Piano Quartet, written weeks before the Quintet, is “very exuberant, a real crowd-pleaser,” according to Chen. “I haven’t played it in two years but it’s like riding a bicycle, it comes right back.”

The Miró Quartet has been spending a lot of time on Beethoven’s “Middle” Quartets, and has just released a recording of the Op. 59 set. But, Gindele told me, all three of those works are too long to make a good program with the Elgar and Schumann works. So they chose Beethoven’s Op. 95, the last one considered part of the “middle” period, which is “just the right length to open with.” The ensemble has been playing Beethoven cycles over the last two years.

“Festival season is always busy,” Gindele says. “We have a ton of festivals this summer.” The Miró Quartet will be playing a long series in Portland, Oregon; concerts in Quebec, Maine, and “all over the U.S.” Chen also has a busy summer. “This concert comes in the middle of a chamber program I run for kids ages 12-15 at the Hotchkiss School [in Lakeville, Connecticut]. We do concerts every Friday and Saturday, some with the Miró Quartet. After Maverick I’m off to Taiwan for some solo recitals. In the fall I go back to teaching at Yale. I also have recitals in North Carolina and China, but I focus more on teaching during the school year. I don’t want to leave my students hanging.”

The 2013 season actually begins with a Young People’s Concert by Elizabeth Mitchell & Friends on Saturday, June 29, at 11 a.m. That evening, Liederworks presents at Maverick a bicentennial celebration of “Verdi and Wagner Rarities” with Kerry Henderson, baritone; Kimberly Kahan, soprano; Babette Hierholzer and Jürgen Appell, piano; and August Ventura, narrator, at 6:30 p.m. All these events take place at the Maverick Concert Hall, Maverick Road, Woodstock. Next weekend, the Eribeth Chamber Players perform a Young People’s Concert, Saturday, July 6, 11 a.m., featuring music of Benjamin Britten, a focus of the season in general.

Actors & Writers will occupy the hall that evening at 6:30 with a program called “Noteworthy Shorts: The Music Plays.” Sunday, July 7, at 4 p.m., the popular Shanghai Quartet returns with works of Beethoven (Op. 18, No. 2), Shostakovich (Quartet No. 6), and Dvorák (Quartet No. 14, Op. 105). More information on Maverick, lots more, can be found at www.maverickconcerts.org; on Liederworks, at www.liederworks.com; and on Actors & Writers at www.actorsandwriters.com.

A Winter’s Tale at Comeau

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(Photo by Alan Carey)

(Photo by Alan Carey)

A jealous king, an abandoned child, a message from the Delphic oracle, and a princess ignorant of her royalty are the elements at the core of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, to be presented by the Bird-On-A-Cliff Theatre Company from July 12 through August 4. As usual, the Woodstock Shakespeare Festival shows are held on their outdoor stage at the Comeau Property in the center of Woodstock, starting at 5 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and admission is free.

The play is one of Shakespeare’s late works. Although it contains comedic moments, it’s often referred to as a romance, with intense psychological drama and fantastical elements, leading to a happy ending.

Producer and Bird-On-A-Cliff co-founder Elli Michaels says, “It’s different. It’s intriguing. The language is tougher, more sophisticated, and there’s a lot of stuff going on. It’s almost like two plays, the first part dark, the second part more fluffy and light.”

Veteran director and actress Nicola Sheara is directing. “Nicola makes it subtle,” says Michaels, “as in ‘Less is better’ and ‘Make sure you know what you’re saying.’ It’s a joy to work with her.”

David Aston-Reese, the company’s other co-founder, plays the lead, King Leontes. Woodstock Shakespeare Festival regulars have joined the cast, which includes Chris Bailey, Michael DaTorre, Bethany Goldpaugh, Elli Michaels, Christina Reeves, and Bob Sheridan, among others.

“Leontes is challenging,” says Aston-Reese, “because he opens the play with his best pal, Polixenes, who’s been his guest for nine months. It starts out buddy-buddy, he wants Polixenes to stay longer, and within four lines, Shakespeare has Leontes suspecting his best friend of having an adulterous affair with his wife. ‘Too hot, too hot! To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods. ‘”

The performances mark Woodstock Shakespeare Festival’s 18th summer season. The four weekends of Shakespeare will be followed with a play by Andre Gregory (My Dinner with Andre) — his dark version of Alice in Wonderland, running August 9 through September 1 and directed by Aston-Reese.

Bird-On-A-Cliff Theatre Company presents Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, directed by Nicola Sheara, on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 5:00 p.m., July 12 through August 4, at the outdoor stage on the Comeau Property, Comeau Drive (off Tinker Street), Woodstock. Bring a blanket or folding chair, bring a picnic, bring the kids! Admission is free, although donations of $5 or even more are gratefully accepted. See http://www.birdonacliff.org/.

Breslau in one woman show for PAW

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Sharon Breslau

Sharon Breslau

Sharon Breslau, whose one woman play Gloriously Naked & Flailing opens in a fresh new version at the Byrdcliffe Theatre Thursday for two weekends of Friday and Saturday evening performances following a July 18 pay-what-you-will preview, fills a room. Coming into Sunfrost’s brightly-lit but well-cooled juice bar on a recent morning, she’s got everyone buzzing and meeting each other in moments. And simultaneously keeping up conversations on her Bluetooth…confusing some by seemingly breaking into the occasional non sequiter before folks realize they’re just one of at least two conversations in progress.

Breslau, who is also one of the region’s top realtors, and a very busy mom and wife, is one of those sorts. She doesn’t do anything half-cocked or part-time.

Her new play is partly a reconfiguration of an older work she started putting together in the 1990s, and put on for Performing Arts of Woodstock in 2007. But it’s also largely new, having been workshopped into a fresh narrative form, from a writerly as well as an actor’s perspective, with a longtime writer friend during a North Carolina creative retreat Breslau took last winter. It follows the 30 year journey of a woman named Gloria and the people she encounters. Autobiographical? Totally…

But so is the way that Breslau has shaped her life so each of its parts makes sense for the rest.

“Both of my parents were in real estate; I was going to closings from the age of eight. And I started doing theater when I was very little,” she confides about her upbringing in rural Connecticut. “Then I went to study with Stella Adler in New York for three years, after which I worked improv and comedy clubs for years. I worked regional theater in Albany and Portland, did network pilots, had big bouquets of flowers delivered to my hotel rooms…and yet I never really played the game.”

In her 30s she married, then noticed how loudly her biological clock was ticking. She became a mom at 39…

“I said theater shmeater, I want to be with my children. I took six years off and we moved to Rutherford, NJ,” she recalls. “I had to be with my mother, who had Alzheimers, but then my husband Chuck and I realized we wanted our children to grow up in someplace fantastic. Maybe I could do some theater on the side…”

Years earlier, Breslau had tried keeping a second home in Fleischmanns. This time she wanted something with the sort of community she could really jump into and enjoy…and a decent real estate market she could ply her natural talents within.

Voila, Woodstock. And, very shortly after moving in, she auditioned at Performing Arts of Woodstock after Chuck showed her an ad for talent in Woodstock Times.

“I got a part, but then I tried out for another part as well, in disguise,” Breslau notes with a deep laugh. “I have no idea what gave me the balls for that.”

She ended up getting both and playing them as she auditioned for them…not revealing what she was doing each evening until curtain call, when she’d take off her wig and reveal the fullness of her talents.

In the years since, Breslau has directed four productions at PAW, including that first run of Naked & Flailing, and has appeared in countless roles. Performing Arts of Woodstock is presenting this completely new version of the one-woman show, with outside backing, she adds.

So what of the other sides of her life?

Real estate-wise, Breslau started by telling Chuck she’d need two years to get up to speed before letting him follow his own dream as a musician.

“True to word, I’ve now been a top producer at Century 21 and now Westwood, Metes and Bounds for years, rated number eight of all agents in the county last year,” she said. “How’d I do it? I feel the thing I’m selling is part of who I am; I love this area, its beauty, its diversity. And although when I started I was somewhat secretive about my being an actress, too — knowing how some look on actors as sort of stupid — I ended up realizing it’s part of who I am and what I’m selling about this area.”

So is she content enough now to simply follow the various strands of her current life, without further ambition?

“If someone comes along and asks me to be in their movie, I’ll be in their movie,” she answers quickly. “And I do have a new play I wrote in North Carolina while working this one into its present shape.”

She pauses, reflectively, for a moment.

“In the end, though, I‘m happy with all I have…this place, my family, my life. I’m a lucky girl,” Breslau continues. “I guess, like a newborn baby, I am gloriously naked and flailing.”

Performing Arts of Woodstock presents Sharon Breslau’s one woman show, Gloriously Naked & Flailing, at 8 p.m. on Friday, July 19, Saturday, July 20, and Friday and Saturday July 26 and 27. There’s a preview performance on Thursday, July 18, plus a Sunday, July 28 matinee at 5 p.m., all at The Byrdcliffe Theatre. For further information call 679-7900 or visit www.performingartsofwoodstock.org.

In the midst of controversy, new film will look at local railroad history

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Catskill-Cairo Railroad engine.

Catskill-Cairo Railroad engine.

When West Hurley filmmaker Tobe Carey started making a documentary about local railroads, a year and a half ago, the project looked like an uncomplicated history leading up to a charming account of current-day tourist lines. Then the conflict broke out over railroads versus rail trails, Catskill Mountain Railroad versus Ulster County executive Mike Hein, and the film suddenly had to grapple with the story of the ongoing controversy in all its bitterness.

The filmmaker will not take sides, and the movie may be completed before the battle is resolved. But train buffs will find plenty to like in the nostalgic portrayal of Catskills railroads, depicted through photos, film footage new and old, songs, and interviews.

Carey, who professes no particular personal interest in trains, is known for his documentaries on local subjects, including Deep Water, about the making of the Ashokan Reservoir; Catskill Mountain House and the World Around, about the heyday of the Catskills resorts; Sweet Violets, about the Rhinebeck violet industry of the early 1900s, and others. When friends suggested he tackle railroads, he was reluctant, knowing the scope of the topic was vast and might take up three years of his life, as the Mountain House film had done.

However, the idea grew on him, and now Rails to the Catskills is well underway. The first public showing will be on October 13 at 2 p.m. at the Maritime Museum in Kingston, although the version presented may not be the final cut.

Carey pieces together a history that begins with the Rondout & Oswego, begun in the late 1860s, its Ulster County section designed to convey Pennsylvania coal from the Delaware & Hudson Canal to the port at Rondout on the Hudson River.

A plethora of local lines were built, then renamed, as they failed, changed hands, and were resuscitated. The Rondout & Oswego became the Ulster & Delaware, which delved into the mountains and was nicknamed the Up & Down. The Ontario & Western connected Oswego with Weehawken, by way of the Catskills, and was called the Old & Weary.

“There was a belief that wherever the railroad ran, financial success would follow,” notes Carey. “Railroads were key to industrial development.”


Festival of the Voice prepares for its biggest event yet

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(photo by Dion Ogust)

(photo by Dion Ogust)

It took the organizers of the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice a whole day to design a schedule for rehearsals and sound checks to accommodate 60 soloists, 110 choristers, and 40 orchestra musicians. Fifty-five local residents have offered space in their homes to accommodate visiting performers, while the orchestra members will spend their one overnight in rooms donated by Hudson Valley Resort and Spa in Kerhonkson.

As Louis Otey and Maria Todaro put together the fourth annual festival, the largest one yet, the logistics are mind-boggling. The couple depends upon the grace and generosity of numerous volunteers, indispensable to keeping the cost of tickets at affordable rates. Most shows are $15 or $25, with lower rates for children. The event will be held in Phoenicia from Thursday, August 1, through Sunday, August 4.

Besides bringing in audiences to hear singers who perform around the U.S. and internationally, Otey and Todaro say their project is designed to build community. The couple has sung for the Phoenicia Business Association — not to solicit donations, but to establish a connection. Interns from Shandaken, Saugerties, Kingston, and Italy have thrown themselves into administrative tasks. Young Mary Sorich of Mount Tremper, who wants to be a journalist, recorded interviews with three artists for posting on the festival website. After members of the Bruderhof religious community heard Todaro sing at the lighting of a Christmas tree in Kingston, a series of meetings resulted in their offering to build the festival stage.

“It takes all these organizational things, people donating goods and services and time,” said Otey, “but in the end, it’s all about the music. We cut a wide swath that narrows down to the singing that everyone will hear — that’s why we do it.”

The 2013 program observes the bicentennials of Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi. The Saturday night opera is Verdi’s Rigoletto, starring Otey, soprano Nancy Allen Lundy, and English tenor Barry Banks. The Festival orchestra will be conducted by Steven White of the Metropolitan Opera.

Every penny helps

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Louis Otey and Maria Todaro (photo by Dion Ogust)

Louis Otey and Maria Todaro (photo by Dion Ogust)

“It’s a chance to listen to international stars in a rustic, picturesque setting — without having to pay hundreds of dollars,” said Louis Otey, co-founder and co-director of the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice with his wife, Maria Todaro.

The Phoenicia festival’s 2013 program will observe the bicentennials of Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi, while also featuring its usual wide-ranging mix of world music, theater, jazz, gospel, Gregorian chant, prose reading, and more. The fourth annual festival will take place August 1-4 on an outdoor stage on Phoenicia’s parish field and at other venues around the town.

The third member of the Phoenicia-based founding group, baritone Kerry Henderson, has withdrawn to focus on his new company, LiederWorks, reviving the art of the classical song recital.

Other changes this year include a bigger stage and bandshell, plus a 42-piece Festival of the Voice orchestra. A campaign on Kickstarter.com has been launched to come up with the funds to pay top-notch players, many of them drawn from the Westfield Symphony Orchestra of New Jersey. Todaro sang the role of Carmen last year with the Westfield Symphony under the direction of David Wroe, who is helping to assemble the festival orchestra.

Garry Kvistad, founder of Woodstock Chimes and director of the Drum Boogie Festival, will be participating on percussion, along with his brother, timpanist Richard Kvistad of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra. Garry Kvistaad has performed extensively with Steve Reich and is a member of the Nexus percussion ensemble.

The Saturday-night opera will be Verdi’s Rigoletto, starring soprano Nancy Allen Lundy, who has been performing at Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The title role will be sung by Otey, recently returned from an operatic gig in Copenhagen. Another leading role goes to Barry Banks, an English tenor who has sung with the Metropolitan Opera, the Welsh National Opera and many other companies worldwide. The festival orchestra will be conducted by Steven White of the Metropolitan Opera.

Another Verdi masterpiece, the choral Requiem, will close the festival on Sunday, with 120 singers from local choirs and professional soloists. Wroe will conduct.

To compensate for Wagner’s anti-Semitic reputation, a program entitled “The Art of the Cantor” has been scheduled for Friday afternoon, when female cantors will explore the richness of Hebrew liturgy. The evening performance will be the festival’s “Voices of Distinction,” in which up-and-coming opera stars mingle with seasoned performers, presenting vocal works by Wagner.

Actor and writer Carey Harrison, with lively musical accompaniment by pianist Justin Kolb, will read from personal journals and letters exchanged among Verdi, Wagner and Liszt.

Theatrical director Shauna Kanter presents Master Class, a play about the great soprano Maria Callas, at the STS Playhouse. Festival attendees will also have the chance to watch a master class of young professionals, led by dramaturg Cori Ellison, providing insights into the construction of an opera scene.

Among the Saturday events is a performance by The Spirit of Sepharad, an ensemble that includes a vocalist, a flamenco dancer, and musicians playing oud, saz, guitar, violin, and other instruments. They trace the migration of Sephardic music from medieval Spain across North Africa, to the Middle East, and beyond, uniting many cultures.

Other festival features include an opening-night celebration of gospel music; the Cambridge Singers, returning to the festival with their renditions of Gregorian and Medieval music; Ensemble Pi, performing the work of living and undiscovered composers, under the artistic direction of pianist Idith Meshulam; music for kids by Story Laurie; and late-night Latino jazz and bossa-nova mix by Abacaxi at the Sportsmen’s Bar.

Otey and Todaro are giving fundraising performances for the next several weekends in Albany, New York City, Garrison and Rhinebeck, mostly at the homes of affluent music lovers whose donations will go a long way to supporting the festival. “It’s a courtship,” explained Todaro, referring both to private donors and to granting agencies. A festival is not eligible for grants until it has three years under its belt, so this year the grant applications have been going out. Results are awaited.

The couple are also giving a performance for the Phoenicia Business Association — not to seek donations but to share with the business owners what they’re up to. Many local shopkeepers have to mind the store all summer and can’t make it to the festival performances, so a private concert is a good chance to hear the music. “It’s important for us to connect with the businesses,” said Todaro. “We’re building a crowd that’s sensitive to what we’re doing.”

While the big bucks are greatly to be desired, fundraising is aimed at every level of the festival audience. “Every penny helps,” Todaro said. “Even a dollar, multiplied by thousands of people, helps. The director of development of the New York City Opera told us not to neglect small donations. All those little donations make things go.”

The Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice will be held August 1-4 in the hamlet of Phoenicia.

Guitar Festival kicks off with Oriole9 opening

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(Photos by Norman Bacon)

(Photos by Norman Bacon)

Roger Shultis, 85, used the particular saw he gave to Rennie Cantine when he was young on Ohayo Mountain, as did his father and his grandfather. According to Cantine, the saw that is now part of a Guitar Sculpture is at least 150 years old. “17 years ago he gave me saw blades that I wanted to do something with. I made guitar sculptures and he said he loved them so much that he had more blades for me…” Cantine says he told Shultis that he should pass the saws down to his own family. “It’s my saw blade and I can give it to whoever I want,” replied Shultis.

The sculptures, Cantine’s passion, have been part of his Woodstock Guitar Festival for years now. It’s a series of events that begins with the placing of sculptures by different artists at locations all over town, as they have been all summer.

Official ceremonies kick off 5 p.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, August 10 with an opening reception for some of the cream of the crop at Oriole9 restaurant, with artists including Woodstock luthier Joe Veillette, whose Grand Guitar is the model for the sculptures; Cantine, who’s created a number of them; Lenny Kislin, who curates the Oriole9 shows; Writer’s Festival guru Martha Frankel; photographer and artist Elliott Landy, Lee Sanna, Keira Guip Sixtus, who makes makes guitar sculptures for the Hard Rock Cafés; Conner Wenk, Meryl Meisler. And, of course, Steve Heller. Says Cantine, “Steve Heller is the only one that does not have to follow the rules. He’s just a genius and my mentor and it’s great to have him along for the ride.”

On August 17, as part of Woodstock’s gala Volunteer’s Day picnic, Rennie Cantine and friends will perform throughout the afternoon at Andy Lee Field. Performers include Joe Veillette and the JV Squad; Cleoma’s Ghost; Zumbi Sumbi; Bill Pfleging and Gordon Wemp; and Harvey Boyer and the Bennett School Jazz Band.

The Guitar Sculptures will be on display at Oriole9 and throughout town until August 24, when they will go up for auction at the Bearsville Theater, with Barry Cherwin reprising his role from last year. And after the Auction, there’ll be a concert there, featuring The Woodstock Guitar All Stars, with Cantine and Joe Beesmer; Purple Knif, and Bruce Ackerman.

“After I’d been making guitar sculptures and playing with the local luthiers, they’re always bugging me when are you going to make a real guitar,” says Cantine, “and I’d tell them, when are you going to make a sculpture?” So Joe was the first one to step up. Now I’m going to make a real one…”

For more information on the events, see www.woodstockguitarfestival.us.

First film for local woman profiles changes in Woodstocker’s life

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Jogger John

Jogger John

Kaleigh Griffin grew up in Woodstock and Olive, graduated from Onteora, and then SUNY New Paltz with a double major in English and Media Production, served as an intern at Beacon’s Beahive last summer, and is currently in between jobs living in New Haven. She’s an aspiring journalist and film producer whose first video production, a documentary, created so much buzz following its showing in a senior thesis classroom presentation that she’s been asked to take it down from the Internet…at least until it gets its first festival screenings and distribution deal.

John Synan was born and raised in Amityville, Long Island to a huge family with 9 brothers and sisters. He was an ace in school, with a genius-level IQ, and became a technical illustrator for NASA after which he spent some years in the military, eventually ending up in Vietnam…from which he was honorably discharged and sent home. And eventually made it to Woodstock, riding north from New York on a bike, following some time in mental hospitals.

Griffin’s film, First Name: Jogger, Last Name: John, is a 20-minute exploration of this sweet man Woodstockers have known as one of their own for years now…but never as well as they will once they see this filmed portrait of him. We see him riding his bike in the cold and rain, dancing wildly, sweeping dust from Tinker Street, and meeting the many who are his friends all around town. Most poignantly, we learn a bit about how his fellow town residents have long seen him — challenged by the elements but happily engaged in living fully in the now; and then watch as he wins one of the rentals at Woodstock Commons, the long-fought-over but instantly-accepted new affordable housing village off Playhouse Lane behind Bradley Meadows.

“You don’t have time to stop…you don’t even realize, after a while, that your hands are dirty,” he says at one point before the big move.

Then he’s in his own domain, filling its walls with his beautifully gentle drawings of spherical abstractions, playing guitar, and enjoying the bits and pieces of furniture he gets given

“The timeline of his life was incredibly challenging to piece together so the order of these facts may be askew. Even the reasons for his military discharge are still a little fuzzy to me, his family and I think even to himself,” Griffin said of her subject, who she knew and was intrigued by while growing up around town. “After visiting the town he decided to stay and make Woodstock his new home and he says it himself — the town saved him…He had a stroke and overcame his health issues by running. He even ran, once, from Windham to Woodstock!”

Every penny helps

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Louis Otey and Maria Todaro (photo by Dion Ogust)

Louis Otey and Maria Todaro (photo by Dion Ogust)

“It’s a chance to listen to international stars in a rustic, picturesque setting — without having to pay hundreds of dollars,” said Louis Otey, co-founder and co-director of the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice with his wife, Maria Todaro.

The Phoenicia festival’s 2013 program will observe the bicentennials of Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi, while also featuring its usual wide-ranging mix of world music, theater, jazz, gospel, Gregorian chant, prose reading, and more. The fourth annual festival will take place August 1-4 on an outdoor stage on Phoenicia’s parish field and at other venues around the town.

The third member of the Phoenicia-based founding group, baritone Kerry Henderson, has withdrawn to focus on his new company, LiederWorks, reviving the art of the classical song recital.

Other changes this year include a bigger stage and bandshell, plus a 42-piece Festival of the Voice orchestra. A campaign on Kickstarter.com has been launched to come up with the funds to pay top-notch players, many of them drawn from the Westfield Symphony Orchestra of New Jersey. Todaro sang the role of Carmen last year with the Westfield Symphony under the direction of David Wroe, who is helping to assemble the festival orchestra.

Garry Kvistad, founder of Woodstock Chimes and director of the Drum Boogie Festival, will be participating on percussion, along with his brother, timpanist Richard Kvistad of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra. Garry Kvistaad has performed extensively with Steve Reich and is a member of the Nexus percussion ensemble.

The Saturday-night opera will be Verdi’s Rigoletto, starring soprano Nancy Allen Lundy, who has been performing at Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The title role will be sung by Otey, recently returned from an operatic gig in Copenhagen. Another leading role goes to Barry Banks, an English tenor who has sung with the Metropolitan Opera, the Welsh National Opera and many other companies worldwide. The festival orchestra will be conducted by Steven White of the Metropolitan Opera.

Another Verdi masterpiece, the choral Requiem, will close the festival on Sunday, with 120 singers from local choirs and professional soloists. Wroe will conduct.

To compensate for Wagner’s anti-Semitic reputation, a program entitled “The Art of the Cantor” has been scheduled for Friday afternoon, when female cantors will explore the richness of Hebrew liturgy. The evening performance will be the festival’s “Voices of Distinction,” in which up-and-coming opera stars mingle with seasoned performers, presenting vocal works by Wagner.

Actor and writer Carey Harrison, with lively musical accompaniment by pianist Justin Kolb, will read from personal journals and letters exchanged among Verdi, Wagner and Liszt.

Theatrical director Shauna Kanter presents Master Class, a play about the great soprano Maria Callas, at the STS Playhouse. Festival attendees will also have the chance to watch a master class of young professionals, led by dramaturg Cori Ellison, providing insights into the construction of an opera scene.

Among the Saturday events is a performance by The Spirit of Sepharad, an ensemble that includes a vocalist, a flamenco dancer, and musicians playing oud, saz, guitar, violin, and other instruments. They trace the migration of Sephardic music from medieval Spain across North Africa, to the Middle East, and beyond, uniting many cultures.

Other festival features include an opening-night celebration of gospel music; the Cambridge Singers, returning to the festival with their renditions of Gregorian and Medieval music; Ensemble Pi, performing the work of living and undiscovered composers, under the artistic direction of pianist Idith Meshulam; music for kids by Story Laurie; and late-night Latino jazz and bossa-nova mix by Abacaxi at the Sportsmen’s Bar.

Otey and Todaro are giving fundraising performances for the next several weekends in Albany, New York City, Garrison and Rhinebeck, mostly at the homes of affluent music lovers whose donations will go a long way to supporting the festival. “It’s a courtship,” explained Todaro, referring both to private donors and to granting agencies. A festival is not eligible for grants until it has three years under its belt, so this year the grant applications have been going out. Results are awaited.

The couple are also giving a performance for the Phoenicia Business Association — not to seek donations but to share with the business owners what they’re up to. Many local shopkeepers have to mind the store all summer and can’t make it to the festival performances, so a private concert is a good chance to hear the music. “It’s important for us to connect with the businesses,” said Todaro. “We’re building a crowd that’s sensitive to what we’re doing.”

While the big bucks are greatly to be desired, fundraising is aimed at every level of the festival audience. “Every penny helps,” Todaro said. “Even a dollar, multiplied by thousands of people, helps. The director of development of the New York City Opera told us not to neglect small donations. All those little donations make things go.”

The Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice will be held August 1-4 in the hamlet of Phoenicia.

Concerts on the Woodstock Village Green begin again

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Students from Paul Green’s Rock Academy (here rehearsing for Pink Floyd’s The Wall, as performed last weekend) will be on the bill for the Concerts on the Green.

Students from Paul Green’s Rock Academy (here rehearsing for Pink Floyd’s The Wall, as performed last weekend) will be on the bill for the Concerts on the Green.

Miss the Rock Academy take on Pink Floyd’s The Wall up at the Byrdcliffe Barn last weekend? Needing to hear some hot music outdoors to completely shake the winter’s cobwebs, and the past week’s rainy hangover, once and for all?

The 8th season of the free Woodstock Concerts on the Green, curated and engineeed by the Woodstock Music Shop’s Jeff Harrigfeld, who also records everything he presents, starts up this Saturday, May 25 with a 1 p.m.-6 p.m. line-up that starts with those talented and fired-up students from the new Paul Green Rock Academy (who go on to perform the best of Zep in Bearsville next weekend), the booty shakin’ bluegrass group Two Dollar Goat, Sin City playing “cosmic American music,” world musicians Passero; the Hamilton Hill Robotic Steel Band from Schenectady, classic rock and blues from the Ronnie Bait Band and up-and-comers Two Dark Birds closing out what promises to be a truly great bill.

“The concerts have developed into a tradition by building community, promoting business and most importantly, giving local musicians a chance to share their music with locals and visitors,” noted Harrigfeld of the Village Green events he’ll be putting on for the town every other week on June 8, June 29, July 6, July 27, August 10, August 31 and September 7 featuring talented musicians from all over the Hudson Valley.

In addition to those young kids from the Paul Green Rock Academy — one of the sponsors of the concerts this year, alongside the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce & Arts, Radio Woodstock, Chronogram, Mid-Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union, Markertek, Photosensualis, Woodstock Apothecary and the Woodstock Music Shop — some of the musicians expected to play this summer include the likes of Catskill-based instrument inventor Brian Dewan, folksters Mike & Ruthy, Dharma Bums, Eric Erickson, dubster Ras T. Asheber, young Noel Fletcher, quiet legend George Quinn, the Rev. Thunderbear Traveling Road Show, Kris Garnier & friends, and dozens more.

According to Harrigfeld, a free compilation CD of the 2012 Woodstock Concerts on the Green performances that he’s made will be handed out to concert goers while supplies last.

It’s true Woodstock fun, in classic rock and roll style (with quite a few truly contemporary touches, as befits the changes the entire region’s been going through of late).

For a full schedule and further information, including bad weather updates, visit www.woodstockchamber.com or look for Woodstock Concerts on the Green on Facebook.

Then again, you can also just find Harrigfeld at the Woodstock Music Shop, alongside his wife Jenn, at 6 Rock City Rd, call 679-3224, or e-mail concertsonthegreen@gmail.com.

Champions of Love

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Warren Bernhardt and Marc Black.

Warren Bernhardt and Marc Black.

“We were playing tunes, just Marc and I,” says pianist Warren Bernhardt, from his deck on a lake in Wisconsin, “and I said, y’know we sound really good, we should do an album just us.”

Marc Black, the singer/songwriter who may just have played more gigs in Woodstock than anyone, ever, agreed. “Just as a document because we have all this life behind us,” he says, from back here in New York. “So I said OK. We decided to do it at Scott Petito’s [studio, in Catskill] because he has a really nice piano and is pretty flexible in his understanding of music. We basically just set up next to each other, went in for two days, did about five or six songs a day and that was it.”

The result is an extremely heartfelt and lovely CD called Champions of Love, and the two will celebrate its release with a show at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, August 31 at the Maverick Concert Hall. “We got this idea, Champions of Love, because we could feel that’s what the music was about, championing love,” says Black. “It feels like a completion. This is just about living the lives that we have lived in Woodstock. I’ve chosen a path, a little off the beaten path, for all of us. It’s a little slowed down now, to give yourself time to breathe.”

The sweet combination of just guitar and piano graces some familiar tunes.

“Some of the songs are ones I wrote 40 years ago, when I first met Warren. It just felt like they were in our blood,” says Black. They’ve included “Reason to Believe” and “Misty Roses,” two Tim Hardin songs on the recording.

“One of the reasons I originally came to Woodstock is I was a huge Tim Hardin fan,” says Black. “First time I saw him was in a duet with Warren. Then, I wound up living in Tim’s house. I was really influenced by him. I wound up playing with most of the players that played with him, his best band included Donald MacDonald, Mike Mainieri, and Warren, who came to Joyous Lake one night when I was playing, and every song it seemed like he was getting closer to the band and at the last song he asked if he could sit in and he sat down and never got up.”

Bernhardt confirmed the history. “Marc kind of inherited his band. It just continued on from there, the White Water Depot, we produced some albums, played on a lot of the gigs. He’s one of the most creative people I’ve met. It just pours out of him, you can’t stop it.”

One song that will stop the hearts of long time Woodstockers is Marc’s “I Believe in You,” that he wrote for Betty MacDonald, who played her violin alongside Marc for decades before passing on in 2010.

Black continues to wander the world, singing his songs. The Maverick show will have Marc playing solo for a time in the opening set, and then Warren will play some jazz, maybe a classical piece or two.

The second half will be the songs that comprise the recording.

“The two of us inspire each other,” says Black. “It’s very true. Our music is so different and there are a couple of times in there when we were listening back and we said, gee, what genre is this? It’s not jazz it’s not folk. And Warren said, it’s just what we do. Living in Woodstock, molded by that environment. There’s a real tenderness and a feeling of love for the whole project.”

It’s not a typical album for Bernhardt, who has spent much time lately learning Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, “…the last thing he wrote for piano. It’s a long running project, I’ve been working on it for over a year, 97 pages of beauty. Leo Treitler is learning the other piano, the orchestra reduction. We have to find a place to play it, with two pianos. Otherwise, I’m kinda semi-retired, there are not a lot of big tours happening. I’ll be turning 75 in November. I’m doing some stuff with Paul Winter, we played at the Kennedy White House and he just released the tapes. The band broke up in ‘63. So we’re playing at Kennedy Library in Boston on the 50th anniversary.”

And he says he’s extremely proud of Champions of Love.

“It’s a whole different thing for me,” says Bernhardt, who has toured with Steely Dan, and Simon and Garfunkle, among many huge acts. “It’s not jazz, classical, or high energy pop. It’s all acoustic, all first takes, no edits, I love that kind of recording. It’s just the way we sound. It’s honest.”

Black sums it up.

“Jim Reed (a writer for Woodstock Times in the 1980s) said that what’s different about Woodstock is that underlying all the stuff that goes on there is a belief in enlightenment…”

Marc Black and Warren Bernhardt will perform at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, August 31 at the Maverick Concert Hall, 120 Maverick Road in Woodstock. Tickets range from $5 to $40 and are available at www.maverickconcerts.org or by calling 679-8217.


Woodstock Film Fest to honor Bogdanovich

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Peter Bogdanovich

Peter Bogdanovich

Within a month the 2013 Woodstock Film Festival will be history…and its new posters, t-shirts and other paraphernalia all collectibles. We’ll be running wrap up stories on the various celebrities who came to town — or nearby sites for the action including Kingston, Rhinebeck, Rosendale, and Saugerties — to mingle with the crowds of locals who attend screenings and workshops, concerts and parties, as well as the many who help out the big event each fall as volunteers, making it one of the community’s key events each year.

For now, though, the WFF headquarters are abuzz with activity as everyone starts the countdown to the festival’s October 2 through October 6 run. Press releases have gone out announcing who’s going to be getting the big honors this year, and what films have been chosen from local, national and global entries to play in the festival’s 14th outing.

Did you know that legendary film director Peter Bogdanovich, the former critic and Museum of Modern Art film programmer who made such late 1960s and early 1970s seminal works as The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc and Paper Moon before going on to become an actor on The Sopranos, among other roles, was born and raised in Kingston? From what we hear, he’s looking forward to coming back to old haunts as much as he’s geared up about getting a Maverick Lifetime Achievement Award.

“I am particularly honored to receive the Woodstock Film Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award from an organization that promotes artists and culture, as these pertain to film,” said Bogdanovich, who will also be showing up for the New York premiere of Cold Turkey by Will Slocombe, in which he stars, and doing a one-on-one panel discussion on his career, in addition to scooping p his award in a space where his movie-loving started years ago…now Kingston’s Backstage Productions. “The spirit of Woodstock couldn’t be closer to my own sensibilities and I am looking forward to returning to the area where I was born.”

Also returning home to receive an award, as it were, is former Maverick Lifetime Achievement Award winner Mira Nair, picking up an Honorary Meera Gandhi Giving Back Award and participating in a special talk with Academy Award-winning film composer Mychael Danna. Along with jazz legend, saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins, for a screening of Sonny Rollins: Beyond the Notes.

Among the nearly 150 independent films, panels, events and concerts, including 25 world premieres, five U.S. premieres, two North American premieres, 19 East Coast premieres and 20 N.Y. premieres, will be actor Keanu Reeves’ filmmaking debut, At Middleton, featuring Andy Garcia (also participating in an Actor’s Dialogue session), the U.S. premiere of The Motel Life with Stephen Dorff, another Actor’s Dialogue participant, and a presentation of the documentary, Breastmilk, by Ricki Lake.  Local films will include works by Annie Nocenti and the new short doc on Jogger John, a truly Woodstock personality.

Exposure films focused on current affairs will feature intimate looks into Tea Party politics, end-timers, Tibet politics, cancer survivors and other current issues. Music films will include a piece on MC5 founder Wayne Kramer, and music events will include a performance of Rocky Horror Picture Show by Paul Green’s Rock Academy kids…along with a number of rising local acts including Connor Kennedy and friends. World cinema will feature works from South Africa, Germany, Mexico, China, Poland, Sweden, Italy, Pakistan, Brazil, Turkey, France, Tunisia, Australia and Canada. Plus plenty of shorts, regional works from throughout the Hudson Valley, and cinema from kids.

 

Everything you need to know…

Panels will discuss acting, film financing, making television for the internet, film music, turning shorts into features, and everything you need to know about making documentaries…with a host of the business’s best, including Barbara Kopple, Joe Berlinger, Liz Garbus and Ron Mann. Indiegogo founder Slava Rubin will not only talk about how to crowdfund a film to completion…but also give a keynote speech for all the would-be and actual flmmakers on hand, as well as all who care about the future of this once-fragile art form.

“This year’s lineup is made up of a stimulating collection of independent films that truly push the envelope. These films open our eyes and ignite our hearts. We are looking forward to being able to share the filmmaking experience in all of its diverse approaches, with our audience come the beginning of October,” said Meira Blaustein, WFF executive director and co-founder. “With our panels and honorees, we’ll be looking back and forward at the same time…a real treat for our festival goers, who can get a sense of where film is headed from our busy weekend in October.”

For further information on all things Woodstock Film Festival, call 679-4265, visit www.woodstockfilmfestival.com, or stop by those bustling headquarter offices at 13 Rock City Road right in te heart of Woodstock.

WSA mounts historic Woodstock Landscape show

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Speicherhouse by Charles Rosen, in the WSA landscape show.

Speicherhouse by Charles Rosen, in the WSA landscape show.

What is it about a place that attracts people? Fords and falls, bays and crossroads? But what draws artists and thinkers, and those wishing to commune with something more inspiring than mundane? Why one small valley, when there are so many around?

Why this place?

Answers will abound as artists and townsfolk gather at the opening of a monumental new exhibit of local landscapes spanning more than a century of works, at the Woodstock School of Art on Saturday, September 14 (an opening will take place 3 p.m.-5 p.m. that day.) Most will be visually imparted, meant to be taken in quietly, soulfully, the way we take in landscapes themselves.

But that’s the magic of The Woodstock Landscape: Then and Now, curated by current WSA president Kate McGloughlin. By including singular works — by everyone from Birge Harrison, John Carlson, Bolton Brown, Carl Eric Lindin and other artists who first moved into the community 100 plus years ago, through the modernists and expressionists of the 1920s and 1930s to such current landscape painters as Tor Gudmundson, Eva Van Rijn, Mariella Bisson, and McGloughlin herself — what comes through is less a view of individual talents, or trends in painting, as the sense of place, and how it continually provides inspiration.

Yes, there are gaps…none of the abstractions pulled from the hills and trees, skies and winters, and autumn colors, or the outsider pieces, or photography and sculpture, pulled into existence by where we are in the show. And yet in the WSA’s handsome, timelessly-Woodstock Robert Angeloch Gallery — centered on the school’s historic campus, once home to the Arts Students League — this collection feels somehow perfect for the moment. And cathartic, given how it will mirror so many of the changes going on all around us over the coming weeks, as the show runs through November 2.

Concerts on the Woodstock Village Green begin again

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Students from Paul Green’s Rock Academy (here rehearsing for Pink Floyd’s The Wall, as performed last weekend) will be on the bill for the Concerts on the Green.

Students from Paul Green’s Rock Academy (here rehearsing for Pink Floyd’s The Wall, as performed last weekend) will be on the bill for the Concerts on the Green.

Miss the Rock Academy take on Pink Floyd’s The Wall up at the Byrdcliffe Barn last weekend? Needing to hear some hot music outdoors to completely shake the winter’s cobwebs, and the past week’s rainy hangover, once and for all?

The 8th season of the free Woodstock Concerts on the Green, curated and engineeed by the Woodstock Music Shop’s Jeff Harrigfeld, who also records everything he presents, starts up this Saturday, May 25 with a 1 p.m.-6 p.m. line-up that starts with those talented and fired-up students from the new Paul Green Rock Academy (who go on to perform the best of Zep in Bearsville next weekend), the booty shakin’ bluegrass group Two Dollar Goat, Sin City playing “cosmic American music,” world musicians Passero; the Hamilton Hill Robotic Steel Band from Schenectady, classic rock and blues from the Ronnie Bait Band and up-and-comers Two Dark Birds closing out what promises to be a truly great bill.

“The concerts have developed into a tradition by building community, promoting business and most importantly, giving local musicians a chance to share their music with locals and visitors,” noted Harrigfeld of the Village Green events he’ll be putting on for the town every other week on June 8, June 29, July 6, July 27, August 10, August 31 and September 7 featuring talented musicians from all over the Hudson Valley.

In addition to those young kids from the Paul Green Rock Academy — one of the sponsors of the concerts this year, alongside the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce & Arts, Radio Woodstock, Chronogram, Mid-Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union, Markertek, Photosensualis, Woodstock Apothecary and the Woodstock Music Shop — some of the musicians expected to play this summer include the likes of Catskill-based instrument inventor Brian Dewan, folksters Mike & Ruthy, Dharma Bums, Eric Erickson, dubster Ras T. Asheber, young Noel Fletcher, quiet legend George Quinn, the Rev. Thunderbear Traveling Road Show, Kris Garnier & friends, and dozens more.

According to Harrigfeld, a free compilation CD of the 2012 Woodstock Concerts on the Green performances that he’s made will be handed out to concert goers while supplies last.

It’s true Woodstock fun, in classic rock and roll style (with quite a few truly contemporary touches, as befits the changes the entire region’s been going through of late).

For a full schedule and further information, including bad weather updates, visit www.woodstockchamber.com or look for Woodstock Concerts on the Green on Facebook.

Then again, you can also just find Harrigfeld at the Woodstock Music Shop, alongside his wife Jenn, at 6 Rock City Rd, call 679-3224, or e-mail concertsonthegreen@gmail.com.

Theater pops up all over

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theater HZTSTS does Grease

Theatrical director Laurie Sepe-Marder was at Brio’s, the Phoenicia pizzeria, seeking a slice and worrying about how she was going to cast the male lead, Danny Zuko, in the STS Playhouse production of Grease. She took a look at the young, curly-haired, blond waiter who offered to take her order and asked him, “Do you sing?”

Terrence Boyer, who watched Grease every day after school throughout eighth grade, says he wouldn’t have taken a role in any other play. This theatrical experience is his first. Isadora Newcombe, who played many parts on the STS stage as a teenager, including the title role in Gypsy!, seven years ago, has returned to play Sandy, the female lead in Grease, which opens Friday, May 31, and runs for three weekends in Phoenicia.

With its focus on 1950s high school hijinks, Grease is a high-energy show that gives young people an opportunity to step onto the stage. Several Onteora students and an actor from Margaretville make up a chunk of the ensemble, with a Belgian exchange student, Audrey Arku, playing Frenchy. Chelsea Goodwin, co-owner of Pine Hill Books, has the part of Miss Lynch. Sepe-Marder, a veteran of over 35 directing gigs, including many blockbuster musicals at the Center for Performing Arts in Rhinebeck, brought four Rhinebeck actors to the show.

Cast members include Kristen Caputo, Kyle Berryann, Tori McCarthy, Amber McCarthy, Becca Frank, Sequoia Sellinger, Matt Michael, Thomas Hagakore, Chris Williams, Travis Gooderham, Brian Murray, and Tom Schimmerling.

The play has strong associations for Michael Koegel, artistic director of STS Playhouse, who played Sonny in a production of Grease in the 1970s. The Salt City Players in his hometown of Syracuse was the first amateur company to pounce on the rights to the show after it finished its initial Broadway run. Koegel was close friends with Broadway’s original Kenickie, Timothy Meyers, who has passed away. “He was the only member of the original cast to get a Tony nomination,” said Koegel. “I have the certificate somewhere.”

Koegel is pleased the theater has chosen to do Grease. “We’re reaching out and bringing in new people from outside the area as well as using our talented local actors. And we’re producing a show that is both artistically satisfying and will be a hit with the local community.”

Language must work differently for dancers than for the rest of us.

“Ba ba da da, it’s just the arm, it’s out and it’s quick, it’s gotta loop around….Down two up two tilt three four ba ba da, it comes around, bing, da. ‘Go for your diploma…’ Okay, that’s where the diagonals go.” There are sketchy movements that accompany this recitation, as Sepe-Marder reviews the routine she has just demonstrated for a section of “Beauty School Dropout.” It seems improbable to the casual spectator that the result will be less than chaos. Not so. The dancers are right with her.

“Last time you put in two steps before the tilt,” points out Becca Frank. “This time you put one.”

“Well, let’s see,” replies the director/choreographer, glancing at her notes. They wave, step, and tilt through several bars, and she decides one step will work fine. The music recommences, and the five women, with Sepe-Marder filling in for an absent actress, glide briskly through the moves, evincing surprisingly few wobbles.

Outside the theater, three young men are waiting for their turn onstage. “We’re going to have to slick back our hair,” observes Travis Gooderham. It’s hard to picture Thomas Hagakore’s long dark locks and Boyer’s curls greased straight back for the performances.

Boyer discusses his decision to take the part of Danny. “People asked me if I’d be nervous onstage,” he muses. “But I figure I’m in front of people at the restaurant all the time. It’s going to be the same people in the audience. This is a small town.”

Violet Snow

Grease will run for three weekends at Shandaken Theatrical Society’s STS Playhouse, 10 Church Street, Phoenicia. Shows are May 31, June 2, 7, 8, 14, 15 at 8 p.m.; June 2, 9, 16 at 2 p.m. (No show June 1, two shows June 2.) Tickets are $15 general admission; $12 for seniors, students, STS members. For reservations, call 845-688-2279. See also http://stsplayhouse.com.

 

 

Pele the conqueror!

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Pele deLappe, by her father, Wes deLappe

Pele deLappe, by her father, Wes deLappe

Part I

During much of the last century it wasn’t so rare a thing for an extraordinary talent to pass through town, crystallizing a moment in art. Such work soon entered the collective memory of a community committed — for much of its history, anyway — to the creation of similar expression. The result being that the town became the recipient of art speaking simultaneously of an individual, a time, and the place called Woodstock.

Pele deLappe who died in 2007 at 91 was exactly such a gifted transient, though it’s unlikely even she realized how unique her talent was since it never brought her wealth or fame. Those who believe in fate, however, might look back over the early years of her remarkable life and recognize in these a period of what might just be called genius. Nor did such a prodigy spring from a vacuum but from a co-mingling of raw talent, patronage, the mentorship of exactly appropriate greats and near-great artists, political views denying her fashionable success while keeping her at the very edge of such, all roiling within an immense energy including — but hardly limited to — a frank sexuality. In short, Pele deLappe epitomized a capped volcano which might have lit the world but for the fact she was 1) committed to the downtrodden, i.e. a radical; 2) soon married and repeatedly pregnant; and 3) yes — a woman in a man’s world.

Pele’s “moment” here, which spoke loudest of what she had (that Woodstock didn’t) took place when she was only 15 in 1932. Though never considered a beauty, she was tall, shapely, long-legged, darkly tanned and often dressed in “island” garb accentuating her exotic nick-name. Lethally intelligent, Pele was politically idealistic and thought art should speak of and for “the people.” She was gutsy, funny, flirtatious and, if that wasn’t enough and anyone actually bothered to investigate her talent, there was little end to it. Subtextually, Pele was also just the sort of “fresh meat” the hungry lions of Woodstock’s art colony traded among themselves as amusements. But instead of directly admitting to such, Ms. deLappe, years later coyly recalled an apt couplet, “In Woodstock there is said to be/Virgins unto the age of three.”

Newly arrived from San Francisco, she was flattered, excited, and nervous that July at being sponsored in the second show of the season at the Woodstock Artists Association. Her teacher, mentor, and a member the WAA’s exhibition committee, Arnold Blanch, discovered her while teaching the previous year at The California School of Fine Arts. According to Pele, Arnold “overlooked her politics,” when choosing her painting “Fitting Room” [location unknown] for exhibition. The opening reception, of course, served as Pele’s introduction to Woodstock as a whole.

In a review of the exhibition in The Overlook, July 16, 1932, Wendell Jones wrote: “In Pele de Lappe’s ‘Fitting Room’ we see a well composed and technically pleasing painting. It is an extremely accomplished piece from a young painter. In spite of her youth she has shown evidence of a strong and sensitive talent.” And in the same issue from a review of the show by Hobson Pittman: “Attention should be given to the sensitively composed ‘Bouquet’ by Helen Rous, ‘Yellow Trees’ by Doris Lee and to Pele de Lape’s [sic] ‘Fitting Room.’”

A mere 15 months earlier Wes deLappe, a heavy-drinking, chain-smoking, third-generation San Franciscan aetheist of an illustrator (who’d taught his daughter to draw caricatures on his knee) yanked Pele out of junior high at 14 and sent her off to art school with the vow, “No kid of mine is going to be a commercial artist!” Of course, he was, himself, just such an artist and, as such, had facilitated Pele’s first pay-check of five dollars for a drawing she knocked off at age eight. Her mother, Dot, was a pianist who eventually encouraged her daughter’s interest in jazz. The immense $200 a month allowance the deLappes soon made available to their only child’s education would disqualify her from WPA grants, while affording Pele art school (and travel) smack dab in the middle of The Great Depression.

The California School of Fine Arts was just a few blocks from her home on Russian Hill. And while Miss deLappe was at first shocked to behold a “liberated” drawing class featuring a nude woman model, it was not very long before her own virginity was forfeit to an associated art instructor’s further liberation. Herewith a precedent was set as Pele developed a penchant for “rubbing up against talent” confident some of it would wear off. Much did. However, for readers of an all-but-unknown memoir Pele wrote in later life, it becomes increasingly difficult to ascertain from exactly who, among many gifted men she “bumps up against,” she gleaned similar inspiration.

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